Venerable Symeon Metaphrastes

Saint Symeon Metaphrastes was a renowned 10th-century Byzantine hagiographer and statesman. Born in Constantinople to a noble family, he received an outstanding rhetorical and literary education. He began his career as a secretary (protasekretis) and rose to prominence at the courts of emperors Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, Nicephorus II Phocas, John I Tzimiskes, and Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer, attaining the ranks of patrician and magistros. His great life's work, undertaken at imperial commission, was to gather and rework — "metaphrase" — the lives of several hundred saints into a unified collection, the celebrated Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes, which became the standard compendium of saints' lives across the Byzantine world for centuries. Modern scholarship attributes roughly 122 authentic saints' lives to him. About half a century after his death, the philosopher and writer Michael Psellos composed his encomium and liturgical office, cementing his veneration as a saint in the Greek Church. He died around 987. His feast is kept on November 9 (Julian) / November 22 (Gregorian).