St.
Methodios I or
Methodius I (), (788/800 – June 14, 847) was
Patriarch of Constantinople from March 4, 843 to June 14, 847. He was born in
Syracuse and died in
Constantinople. His
feast day is celebrated on June 14.
Life
Born to wealthy parents, Methodios was sent as a young man to Constantinople to continue his education and hopefully attain an appointment at court. But instead he entered a monastery in
Bithynia, eventually becoming
abbot.
Under the Emperor
Leo V the Armenian (813-820) the
Iconoclast persecution broke out for the second time. In 815 Methodios went to
Rome, perhaps as an envoy of the deposed
Patriarch Niκephorοs. Upon his return in 821 he was arrested and exiled as an
iconodule by the
Iconoclast regime of Emperor
Michael II. Ironically, Methodios was released in 829 and assumed a position of importance at the court of the even more fervently iconoclast Emperor
Theophilos.
Soon after the death of the emperor, in 843, the influential minister
Theoktistos convinced the Empress Mother
Theodora, as
regent for her two-year-old son
Michael III, to permit the restoration of
icons by arranging that her dead husband would not be
condemned. He then deposed the iconoclast Patriarch
John VII Grammatikos and secured the appointment of Methodios as his successor, bringing about the end of the iconoclast controversy. A week after his appointment, accompanied by Theodora, Michael, and Theoktistos, Methodios made a triumphal procession from the
church of......
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