Feast Day of Saint Emilian the Confessor, Bishop of Cyzikus

Saint Emilian, Bishop of Cyzikus, lived during the reign of the Iconoclast emperor Leo the Armenian (813-820). He was summoned with other bishops to the emperor’s court, who insistently urged the bishops to refrain from the veneration of holy icons.

Saint Emilian was the first to tell the emperor firmly that the question of the veneration of holy icons should be discussed and decided only within the Church by its spiritual leaders and not at the imperial court. In the year 815, he was sent to prison for the Orthodox Faith, where he died as a confessor.