Hierarch Germanus I Of Constantinople

St. Germanus I, Patriarch of Constantinople, held the see from 715 to 730. Sources do not establish his exact birth year (information on his early years is largely later, hagiographic material); he was the son of the patrician Justinian, executed under Emperor Constantine IV, and tradition holds he was castrated as a child by that emperor's order. Before his elevation to the patriarchate he held the metropolitan see of Cyzicus. As patriarch, he became a zealous defender of icon veneration at the outset of the Iconoclast controversy — tradition records his reply to Emperor Leo III the Isaurian: "If I am Jonah, cast me into the sea." For refusing to accept the emperor's iconoclast policy, he was deposed in 730 and withdrew to his family estate, where he died in exile around 740. He was buried at the Chora Monastery in Constantinople. He authored several theological works defending icon veneration and liturgical hymns (texts preserved in Migne's Patrologia Graeca, vol. 98). He was posthumously restored to the diptych of saints by the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, which condemned iconoclasm. His feast is kept on May 12.

NOTE: the entry's original structured dates (272-337, the era of Constantine the Great) directly contradicted this same card's own bio text, which states he died "around 740" — corrected to the accurate c. 7th century-†740. The original feast_days (Jul 27/Aug 10/Jul 30/Aug 12) belonged to two different saints — St. Herman of Solovki (Jul 30/Aug 12) and St. Herman of Alaska (Jul 27/Aug 9) — and had nothing to do with St. Germanus of Constantinople; corrected to the single accurate date, May 12.