Athanasius II of Constantinople

{{Short description|Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 1450 to 1453}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2025}}

{{Infobox Christian leader

| name = Athanasius II of Constantinople

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| church = Church of Constantinople

| archbishop_of = Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople

| term = Summer 1450 – 1453

| predecessor = Gregory III of Constantinople

| successor = Gennadius II of Constantinople

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| religion = Eastern Orthodoxy

}}

Athanasius II of Constantinople (Greek: Ἀθανάσιος) is reckoned as the last Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople before the Fall of Constantinople. Athanasius purportedly served as patriarch from 1450 to 1453, but the only document indicating his existence is "Acts of the council in Hagia Sophia" — widely considered a forgery due to the presence of anachronisms in the text.[http://www.vremennik.biz/opus/BB/II2/53664 Review on the authenticity of the acts (in Russian)].{{Cite journal |last=Dalleggio |first=Eugenio |last2=Laurent |first2=Vitalien |date=1949 |title=Les études byzantines en Grèce (1940–1948) |url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/rebyz_0766-5598_1949_num_7_1_1005 |journal=Revue des études byzantines |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=91–128 |doi=10.3406/rebyz.1949.1005}}

Modern-day scholars dispute his existence, then, suggesting that the unionist patriarch Gregory III of Constantinople, residing in Rome from 1451 on, remained the city's nominal patriarch through the Ottoman capture of the city.Harris, Jonathan; "The Patriarch of Constantinople and the Last Days of Byzantium", The Patriarchate of Constantinople in Context and Comparison, ed. Christian Gastgeber, Ekaterini Mitsiou, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller and Vratislav Zervan (2017), 10.W. K. Hanak – M. Philippiedes, The Siege and Fall of Constantinople in 1453 - Historiography, Topography and Military Studies, Farnham and Burlington, Vermont, 2011, 50, 130.