St. Michael the Confessor, Bishop of Synnada

Michael was born in the late eighth century in the Phrygian highlands of Asia Minor and educated at Constantinople in the patriarchal academy under the Patriarch Tarasius, in the years immediately following the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), which had vindicated the veneration of holy icons against the iconoclast emperors. He was ordained, served in the patriarchal household, and was eventually elected bishop of Synnada, a city of central Phrygia, before the year 800.

When iconoclasm was revived under the Emperor Leo V the Armenian in 815, Michael was among the bishops who refused to compromise. Summoned to Constantinople and pressed to sign documents repudiating the veneration of icons, he steadfastly refused. He was deposed from his see, imprisoned, beaten, exposed to the elements, and finally exiled — passed from town to town in Asia Minor under the policy by which the iconoclast emperors hoped to break the bishops by separating them from their flocks. He endured fourteen years of this ill-treatment under three successive emperors before he was finally permitted to return at the restoration of the icons in 843, by which time he was an old man broken in body but unbroken in spirit.

He died shortly after his return, around 845. The Church honors him among the iconodule confessors of the ninth century — those who suffered for the truth defended by the Seventh Council. His feast falls on May 23.