St Michael the Confessor, Bishop of Synnada (821)

Saint Michael the Confessor, Bishop of Synnada (+821), strove from childhood for the monastic life. The holy Patriarch Tarasius (784–806) sent him to a monastery on the shore of the Black Sea. With him to the monastery came Saint Theophylact (commemorated 8 March), the future hierarch of Nicomedia. Both monks laboured zealously in the monastery. For their zealous life they received grace from the Lord. Once, at harvest time, through the prayer of the holy monks an empty vessel was filled with water.

Patriarch Tarasius consecrated Saint Michael Bishop of the city of Synnada. His flock loved him with all their heart, as did the Emperors Nicephorus I (802–811) and Michael I (811–813). In 787 Saint Michael was present at the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

The iconoclast emperor Leo the Armenian, who later ascended the throne, drove the Orthodox hierarchs from their sees and appointed in their place heretics who shared his views.

Leo the Armenian decided to punish the holy bishop, and he answered: “I venerate the holy icons of my Saviour Jesus Christ and of His Mother the All-holy Virgin and of all the saints. I will not carry out thy command, I will not take the holy icons out of the church.” Leo the Armenian exiled Saint Michael to Eudokias, where he died in 821. Saint Michael’s head is kept in the Lavra of Saint Athanasius on Athos, and his holy relics in the Iviron monastery.