St. Joannicius the Great of Bithynia

Joannicius was born around 754 in Bithynia of pious Christian parents, named at his birth Bartholomew, and raised as a swineherd. He enlisted in the Byzantine army in his youth and served as a soldier with such distinction that he rose to the rank of commander. At forty he abandoned military life altogether, withdrew to Mount Olympus in Bithynia — one of the principal monastic mountains of Asia Minor — and was tonsured a monk under the abbot Gregory at the monastery of Antidion.

Initially he leaned toward iconoclasm out of confusion (the dispute was at its height during his early military years), but came to a deep orthodox devotion to the icons under the instruction of his elders. He moved to ever more remote cells on the mountain and became a hesychast solitary, eventually living alone in caves for many years and being credited with a remarkable gift of prophecy. The leading orthodox figures of his day — the Studite monks, the patriarchs Nicephorus and Methodius, the empress Theodora — sought his counsel through the long struggle of the second iconoclasm.

When the icons were restored in 843, Joannicius was already an old man past ninety. He continued his quiet life on the mountain, dying around 846 at the age of ninety-four. His feast falls on November 4.