The life of St Proclus of Constantinople
Church tradition has long remembered him as a friend and disciple of John Chrysostom, though the fuller record shows he was in fact formed under Archbishop Atticus, serving as his secretary and being ordained deacon and then priest under him; the link to Chrysostom appears to have grown up only later, out of the honor in which both men came to be held. He was chosen bishop of Cyzicus but was kept from the see when the people there had already elected someone else, and he remained in Constantinople.
In 429 he preached before Nestorius himself a sermon defending the title Theotokos, Mother of God, for the Virgin Mary, words later read into the acts of the council that condemned Nestorius's teaching. Raised to the archiepiscopal throne of Constantinople in 434, Proclus governed the church there for some thirteen years, working to calm the doctrinal quarrels of his time and writing letters that eastern bishops found genuinely conciliatory. Through his effort the relics of John Chrysostom, who had died in exile decades before, were brought back to Constantinople in honor. Proclus reposed in 447.
