Confessor
Confessor Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople
патриарх 447 — † 449
Hierarch Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople — deposed the heretic Eutyches for Monophysitism, was brutally beaten at the "Robber Council" of Ephesus (449) and died from his injuries in exile; posthumously vindicated by the Fourth Ecumenical Council.
St. Flavian was a presbyter and treasurer (skevophylax) of the Constantinople cathedral, elevated to the patriarchal throne in 447 after Hieromartyr Proclus.
In 448 he convened a local synod of about 40 bishops that deposed the archimandrite Eutyches for teaching one nature in Christ (Monophysitism). Eutyches's ally, the powerful court eunuch Chrysaphius, engineered the so-called "Robber Council" (Latrocinium) at Ephesus in 449, presided over by Dioscorus of Alexandria, which reinstated Eutyches and deposed Flavian; during the session the hierarch was violently beaten by monks (some accounts say by Dioscorus himself).
Exiled in chains, Flavian died from his injuries within days (August/September 449). The Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon (451) posthumously vindicated him; his relics were translated by Empress Pulcheria to the Church of the Holy Apostles.
His feast is kept on February 18/March 3.
NOTE: consistent Orthodox liturgical tradition (days.pravoslavie.ru, azbyka.ru, drevo-info.ru) titles him "hierarch-confessor," never hieromartyr — despite dying from his beating, the Church treats this death as a confessor's, not a martyr's, feat. Explicitly distinguished from a separate St. Flavian, Archbishop of Antioch (d. 404, feast February 16/March 1) — similarly named but a different person with a close but distinct commemoration date.