MACEDONIUS, a deacon, was raised to the patriarchate of Constantinople as successor of Eusebius of Nicomedia by the Arian bishops in 341 a.d., while the orthodox party elected Paul, whom Eusebius had superseded. The partisans of the two rivals involved the city in a tumultuous broil, murdered Hermogenes, the general whom Constantius II., during his own absence, had empowered to preserve order, and were not quelled until the emperor himself returned to the city and banished Paul. Macedonius was recognized as patriarch in 342. In that year Paul again returned, and was again banished, and Macedonius, amid much tumult and bloodshed, was forcibly installed in his see by the imperial troops. Compelled by the intervention of Constans in 348 to confine his authority again to one church, and to resign the patriarchate in favour of his former opponent, he was reinstalled in 350. He then took vengeance on his opponents by a general persecution of the adherents of the Nicene creed. In 356 he occasioned a disastrous and bloody tumult in Constantinople by causing the ashes of Constantine the Great to be removed from the dilapidated church of the Apostles to that of St Acacius. In 359, on the division of the Arian party into Acacians (or pure Arians) and semi-Arians, Macedonius adhered to the latter, and in consequence was expelled from his see by the council of Constantinople in 360. He now became avowed leader of the sect of Pneumatomachi, Macedonians, or Marathonians, whose distinctive tenet was that the Holy Spirit is but a divine influence pervading the universe and not a person distinct from the Father and the Son. He did not long survive his deposition.