8th–9th century
Venerable Theophanes the Confessor of Sigriane
A Byzantine aristocrat who became a monk and founded a monastery at Sigriane, author of the Chronographia, who was imprisoned and exiled as a defender of the icons (c. 760–818).
Biography
Theophanes was born around 760 into an aristocratic family in Constantinople. He lost his father as a child, and at his mother's request married young; the marriage was later dissolved by mutual consent, since both spouses wished to enter the monastic life.
In 781 he withdrew to a monastery near Mount Sigriane and later founded his own monastery on the same site, where he worked as a copyist and writer and composed the historical work known as the Chronographia. In 787 he took part in the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, which restored the veneration of icons.
When Emperor Leo V the Armenian later tried to win him over to iconoclasm, Theophanes refused, was imprisoned and exiled to Samothrace, where he died a short time later, around 815–818.