Venerable Theophanes the Confessor of Sigriane

Theophanes was born in Constantinople into a noble family related to the Isaurian emperors. Married young by arrangement, he and his wife agreed to live as brother and sister and later both entered monasteries. He founded the monastery of Megas Agros on Mount Sigriane, near the Sea of Marmara, and in 787 rode to the Second Council of Nicaea on a poor donkey in patched clothes. He also wrote the Chronographia, a history of the empire from 284 to 813.

When the Iconoclast emperor Leo V the Armenian renewed the attack on icons, Theophanes, already old and sick, refused to sign. He spent two years in a dark prison, was flogged, and was exiled to Samothrace, where he died after twenty-three days, in 818.