St George the Confessor, Bishop of Antioch in Pisidia (IX)

Saint George the Confessor, Bishop of Antioch in Pisidia (IX), lived at the time when the iconoclast heresy was raging. The saint was tonsured a monk in his youth. He became renowned for his holy life and was consecrated Bishop of Antioch in Pisidia.

When the Emperor Leo the Armenian (813–820) forbade the veneration of the holy icons, Saint George came to Constantinople, denounced the iconoclast heresy at a council of bishops, and urged the emperor to return to Orthodoxy. The saint refused to remove the icons from the church, for which he was seized and exiled (+c. 813–820).