[1][2] He was born in Constantinople as the son of Theodore and Eudokia, of a strictly Orthodox family, which had suffered from the earlier Iconoclasm.

[3] After the death of the Patriarch Tarasios of Constantinople, there was great division among the clergy and higher court officials as to the choice of his successor.

He was mild in his ecclesiastical and monastical rules and non-partisan in his historical treatment of the period from 602 to 769 (Historia syntomos, breviarium).

Heraclius failure to heed the Egyptian patriarch's advice is what ultimately brought about the Arab conquest of Egypt.

[9] His tables of universal history, Chronography or Chronographikon Syntomon, in passages extended and continued, were in great favor with the Byzantines, and were also circulated outside the Empire in the Latin version of Anastasius Bibliothecarius, and also in Slavonic translation.

His merit is the thoroughness with which he traced the literary and traditional proofs, and his detailed refutations are serviceable for the knowledge they afford of important texts adduced by his opponents and in part drawn from the older church literature.