St. Methodius I, also spelled Methodios, (born 788/800, Syracuse, Sicily —died June 14, 847, Constantinople)was patriarch of Constantinople from 843 to 847.
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 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.
Methodios was released in 829 and assumed a position of importance at the court of the even more fervently iconoclast Emperor Theophilos.
John Skylitzes, commonly Latinized as Ioannes Scylitzes was a Greek historian of the late 11th century.
His major work is the Synopsis of Histories, which covers the reigns of the Byzantine emperors from the death of Nikephoros I in 811 to the deposition of Michael VI in 1057; it continues the chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor. There is a continuation of this work, known as Scylitzes Continuatus covering 1057 to 1079; some historians hypothesize that it was also written by Skylitzes. More on John Skylitzes
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.
A week after his appointment, accompanied by Theodora, Michael, and Theoktistos, Methodios made a triumphal procession from the church of Blachernae to Hagia Sophia on March 11, 843, restoring the icons to the church. This heralded the restoration of Catholic orthodoxy, and became a holiday in the Byzantine Church, celebrated every year on the First Sunday of Great Lent, and known as the "Triumph of Orthodoxy".
Throughout his short patriarchate, Methodios tried to pursue a moderate line of accommodation with members of the clergy who were formerly Iconoclasts. This policy was opposed by extremists, primarily the monks of the Stoudios monastery, who demanded that the former Iconoclasts be punished severely as heretics. To rein in the extremists, Methodios was forced to excommunicate and arrest some of the more persevering monks.
Methodios was well-educated; engaged in both copying and writing of manuscripts. His individual works included polemica, hagiographical and liturgical works, sermons and poetry. More on St. Methodius I
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