Venerable James the Confessor and Bishop of Catania

Very little is known about James. From his youth he was a monk, given to fasting, prayer and the reading of Scripture, and later he became a bishop. Under the Iconoclast emperor Constantine V (741–775) he was pressed to renounce the veneration of icons and refused. He was exiled, imprisoned, starved and tortured, and died of his sufferings in the 8th century.