St. Michael the Confessor and Bishop of Synnada

Michael was a monk from his youth. He lived with Theophylact, later bishop of Nicomedia, in a monastery on the Black Sea coast. His Life tells that during a harvest heat wave their prayer filled an empty copper vessel with water for the exhausted workers. Patriarch Tarasius (784-806) made Michael bishop of Synnada in Phrygia, and Theophylact bishop of Nicomedia.

When Emperor Leo the Armenian renewed the ban on holy images, Michael refused to obey and spoke against it before the emperor. He was driven from place to place and died in exile about 821. The Church remembers him as a confessor, one who suffered for his faith without being put to death.