Saint Methodius I of Constantinople

Saint Methodius I was patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century. As a monk he endured scourging and long years of imprisonment for defending the holy images, and as patriarch, together with the empress Theodora, he restored their veneration in the Byzantine Empire. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on June 14. He should not be confused with Saint Methodius, brother of Saint Cyril and apostle of the Slavs.

He came from Syracuse in Sicily, from a wealthy family, and received a careful education there. The year of his birth is not known. As a young man he went to Constantinople intending to make a career at the imperial court. A monk, however, persuaded him to give up these plans, and Methodius entered a monastery.

He lived at the time when the Byzantine emperors forbade the veneration of icons for the second time. In 815 the emperor Leo V the Armenian removed from office the patriarch Nicephorus, who defended them. Methodius then set out for Rome. According to the Roman Martyrology, he went there to Pope Paschal I to defend the holy images. He remained in Rome until the death of the emperor Leo in 820.

The new emperor, Michael II, raised hopes of a change. Methodius returned to Constantinople with a letter from Pope Paschal I asking for Nicephorus to be restored to office. The emperor, however, had Methodius scourged and imprisoned. Accounts differ in their details, but most speak of seven years spent shut up in a tomb on one of the islands. Methodius came out of prison utterly exhausted, yet he did not change his convictions. Under the emperor Theophilus he again stood up for the images and was once more scourged and imprisoned.

After the death of Theophilus in 842, his widow, the empress Theodora, who favored the veneration of images, took power on behalf of their young son, Michael III. The iconoclast patriarch John the Grammarian was deposed, and in 843 Methodius took his place. A synod in Constantinople confirmed the teaching of the Second Council of Nicaea of 787 on the veneration of holy images, and the icons returned to the churches. In memory of this victory a feast was instituted that the Eastern Churches still keep on the first Sunday of Lent as the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Methodius composed for it the text known as the Synodikon.

Methodius led the Church of Constantinople for about four years. He died in Constantinople on June 14, 847. He did not go through a canonization process, since his cult is older than such procedures. The Eastern Churches have venerated him as a saint for centuries, and the Roman Martyrology calls him a bishop who solemnly celebrated the triumph of the orthodox faith.