reference to Constantine. John Julius Norwich maintains that "for the last few years of his life, Constantine had regularly used the title isapóstolos", though he does not cite a primary source. The New Catholic Encyclopedia (supplement 2010) states that Eusebius did refer to Constantine with this title, although it too does not cite a primary source. Aidan Nichols also shares this view, positing that Eusebius did indeed describe Constantine as isapóstolos, but that a later editor, or "interpolator," had reduced his status to isepiskopos—Equal-to-a-Bishop—so as to make Constantine seem more modest. In contrast to this, Jonathan Bardill states rather bluntly that our sources do not directly speak of Constantine as an equal of the apostles until the 5th century (that is, after Eusebius). This characterization was not without its problems, however. As alluded to above, though Constantine himself may very much have intended to be recognized as isapóstolos, many theologians and churchmen were made uneasy at this prospect. As Gilbert Dagron explains, the difficulty was not necessarily that Constantine was unworthy (merely immodest, more like), but rather that the title resulted in a very ambiguous mixing of church and state. Thus when Sozomen deals with Constantine's funeral in his ecclesiastical history, he makes a point of saying that bishops were afterwards interred in the same place, "for the hierarchical dignity is not only equal in honor to imperial power, but, in sacred places, even takes the ascendancy." In time, however, the soon to be sainted Constantine would nevertheless become firmly established as isapóstolos, being enshrined as such in the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca and other Byzantine literature (ex. Anna Komnene confidently calls him the 13th apostle in the Alexiad, to whom she likens her father Alexius). Indeed, in this capacity he proved to be an irresistible model for many later Byzantine rulers, who would regularly make use of the title isapóstolos themselves—for political—as well as religious reasons. References Groups of Eastern Orthodox saints Types of saints Christian terminology