Michael
6. CERULARIUS, was chosen patriarch of Constantinople in 1043, and made himself notorious in ecclesiastical history by his violent attacks upon the Latin church. He caused so much scandal that pope Leo IX. sent Cardinals Humbert and Frederic with Peter, archbishop of Amalfi, to Constantinople in order to persuade Cerularius to a more moderate conduct. Their efforts were not only unsuccessful, but they were treated with such abuse that Humbert excommunicated the virulent patriarch. Cerularius in his turn excommunicated the three legates, and he caused the name of Pope Leo IX. to be erased from the diptychs. In 1057 he prevailed upon the emperor Michael Stratioticus to yield to his successful rival, Isaac Comnenus, whose interest he took care of for some time. Differences, however, soon broke out between them; and when he was once quarrelling with Isaac about the respective authority of the church and the state, he impudently cried out, "I have given you the crown, and I know how to take it from you again." Banishment was his due reward, and Isaac was about to remove him from his see when death removed him from the earth (1058).
Works
Cerularius wrote:
1. Decisio Synodica de Nuptüs in Septimo Gradu
Editions
printed Greek and Latin in the third book of Leunclavius, Jus Graeco-Roman.
2. De Matrimonio prohibit
Editions
fragments in the fourth book of Leunclavius, Jus Graeco-Roman.
3. Epistolae II. ad Petrum Antiochenum
Editions
Greek and Latin, in the second vol. of Cotelerius, Eccles. Graec. Monument.
4. De Sacerdotis Uxore Adulterio polluta
Editions
in Cotelerius, Patres Apotl.
5. Σημείωμα s. Edictum Synodale adversus Latinos de Pittacia seu De Excommunicatione a Latinis Legatis in ipsum ab ipso in Legatos vibrata, anno 1054, die septimo Junü factum
Editions
Graece et Latine in Leo Allatius, De Libr. Eccles. Graecis.
6. Homilia
Editions
Ed. Graece et Latine by Montfaucom, under the title Epistola Synodi Nicaeanae ad Sanctam Alexandriae Ecclesiam, Paris, 1715, fol.
Letters
There are, farther. extant in MS. fragments of several letters, as Contra Rebelles Abbatos, Contra Armenios, De Homiculio facto in Ecclesia, De Episcoporum Judicüs, &c.
Further Information
Cave, Hist. Lit. ad an. 1043; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. xi. pp. 195, 196.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.