Kallistos II, Patriarch of Constantinople
Holy Hierarch
Saint Patriarch Callistus II, known as Xanthopoulos, labored in the monastery of Xanthopoulos on the Holy Mountain of Athos. In 1397, he ascended to the patriarchal throne during the reign of Manuel Palaiologos. After leaving the patriarchate, he united with Ignatius, also Xanthopoulos, and they lived in harmony, as if having one soul in two bodies. They contemplated deeply about the prayer of the mind, expressing their thoughts in one hundred chapters, placed in the book 'Philokalia'. Simeon of Thessalonica describes that they received divine illumination, and their faces shone like the apostles on the mountain, at the outpouring of grace.
