Venerable George of Mytilene

St George the Confessor, metropolitan (archbishop) of Mytilene, is known from two differing accounts. According to his anonymous Greek Life, he was born around 776 on the western coast of Asia Minor, became a monk at 18, later lived as a hermit in a cave on Lesbos and in 804, aged 28, was elected bishop of Mytilene. When Emperor Leo V the Armenian (813–820) renewed iconoclasm, George refused to accept it and was exiled with Patriarch Nicephorus to an island near Constantinople, where he died on 7 April aged 45. After the restoration of icon veneration Patriarch Methodius translated his relics to Mytilene.

Another account, used in the Lives of the Saints of St Demetrius of Rostov, makes him a confessor already under Leo III and says that in 815 he denounced the emperor and the iconoclast patriarch Theodotus and was exiled to Cherson, where he died after 820; a bright star was seen over Lesbos on the day of his death. Greek synaxaria also commemorate him on 16 May, and scholars still debate whether there were one, two or three saintly bishops named George in Mytilene. The Russian Church keeps his feast on 7 April (20 April, new style).