St. Michael the Confessor
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In an eleventh-century Byzantine book of saints known as the Menology of Basil, Michael is described as a “pious and God-fearing” monk. He was educated by the
patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Tarasius, who at his
accession to the episcopate had brought the Byzantine Church back to communion with the See of
Rome after a six-decade schism. Tarasius sent Michael as the courier of a synodal letter to Pope Saint Leo III. In 787 Michael was consecrated
bishop of
Synnada (Turkey). Michael’s defense of the veneration of religious images, in opposition to the Iconoclast
heresy that condemned this traditional
Christian practice, led to his suffering exile under the Iconoclast Byzantine emperor
Leo V (“the Armenian”). Michael told the emperor, “I venerate the immaculate and divine image of our Savior and Lord,
Jesus Christ, and of his most holy Mother.” Michael spent the remainder of his
life in exile at Eudokiadu (Turkey), dying there in 818.
© Magnificat 2006
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