The life of Alexander, John and Paul, Patriarchs of Constantinople
John, called the Faster for the ascetic discipline he had kept since youth, led the see two centuries later, in the sixth century, and remained known even as patriarch for his humility and his constant care for the poor.
Paul, called the New, a native of Cyprus, held the patriarchate in the eighth century, in the later and comparatively milder years of the iconoclast controversy. Though he worked to defend the veneration of icons, he found himself unable to turn back the emperor's policy, and rather than continue in an office he judged himself powerless to fill rightly, he resigned it, withdrew to a monastery, and lived out his remaining years there in the monastic habit.
Three widely separated lives, joined in the Church's memory on a single day, are honored together as shepherds who each, in their own age, kept faith with the flock entrusted to them.
