St Aemilian the Confessor, Bishop of Cyzicus (+815–820)

Saint Aemilian, Bishop of Cyzicus, governed the episcopal see of Cyzicus in the time of the iconoclast Emperor Leo the Armenian (813–820). The godless ruler summoned him to the palace together with other hierarchs and demanded that they renounce the holy veneration of icons. Saint Aemilian was the first to answer the tormentor that the question of the veneration of icons should be examined in the Church, by the clergy, and not in the king’s palace. In 815 the blessed hierarch was arrested for confessing Orthodoxy and exiled. Between 815 and 820 he gave up his spirit in captivity.