Feast day: June 14
St. Methodius I of Constantinople
A patriarch of Constantinople, imprisoned and beaten for his defense of sacred images, who lived to see the final restoration of the icons after the long iconoclast struggle.
Methodius was a monk and patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century, one of the great champions of the holy images in the long and bitter struggle known as the Iconoclast controversy — the dispute over whether it was lawful to make and venerate icons of Christ and the saints.
Born at Syracuse in Sicily toward the end of the eighth century, he became a monk and went to Rome. When the emperors of Constantinople renewed their war on the icons, Methodius stood firmly for their veneration, even carrying a papal letter urging the emperor to relent. For his defiance he was savagely scourged and shut up for seven years in a tomb-like prison on a desert island.
When at last the iconoclast emperor died and the empress Theodora became regent, she resolved to restore the icons for good. In 843 Methodius, the scarred confessor, was made patriarch of Constantinople and presided over the solemn restoration of the images — an event still celebrated in the Eastern Church every year as the 'Triumph of Orthodoxy.'
He governed the Church of Constantinople for the few remaining years of his life, working to heal the divisions the long struggle had left, and died in 847. He is honoured as a saint and confessor who suffered for the icons and lived to see them vindicated.
He presided over the 'Triumph of Orthodoxy' in 843, the day the Eastern Church restored its icons for good — still celebrated every year in the East.
Image: anonymous (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/09242a.htm
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