Manuel of Constantinople.

There were two Manuels patriarchs of Constantinople, Manuel I (Charitopulus), and Manuel II, the subject of the present article. Cave, Oudin, and others seem to have confounded the two, for they state that Manuel Charitopulus succeeded Germanus II in A.D. 1240. Charitopulus was the predecessor of Germanus, not his successor; Manuel II was his successor, though not immediately, for the brief patriarchate of Methodius II and a vacancy in the see, of considerable but uncertain length, intervened. Manuel's death is distinctly fixed as having occurred two months before that of the emperor Joannes Ducas Vatatzes, A.D. 1255, Oct. 30. The duration of his patriarchate is fixed by Nicephorus Callisti, according to Le Quien, at eleven years; but the table in the Parotrepticon of Labbe assigns to him fourteen years, so that A.D. 1240 or 1244 may be assumed as the year of his accession, according as one or the other of these authorities is preferred. Manuel held, before his patriarchate, a high place among the ecclesiastics of the Byzantine court, then fixed at Nice, and was reputed a man of piety and holiness, "though married," and of a mild and gentle disposition, but by no means learned. The three Sententice Synodales of the patriarch Manuel given in the Jus Graeco-Romanum undoubtedly belong to this patriarch, not to Charitopulus, for the second of them. De Translatione Episcoporum, is expressly dated July, Indict. 8, A.M. 6578, oera of Constant. = A.D. 1250. Some works in MS., especially a letter to pope Innocent by "Manuel Patriarcha CPol.," probably belong to Manuel of Constantinople (Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, i, col. 279; Cave, Hist. Litt. ad ann. 1240, 2:297 [ed. Oxford, 174C-42]; Oudin, Conment de Scriptorib. et Scriptis Eccles. iii, col. 177; Fabricius, Bibl. Graec. 11:668). — Smith, Dict. of Gr. and Romans Biog. and Mythol. s.v.