Venerable John the Psichaite

St John the Psichaite is known from an anonymous Life written by a contemporary monk. Born in the second half of the eighth century in northern Asia Minor, the son of a priest named Leo, he became a monk with his father and brothers at the monastery of the Theotokos at Pege in Constantinople and was ordained deacon by St Tarasius. Later he and his brother Theodore were sent to the new monastery of the Theotokos 'ton Psicha' on the European shore of the Bosphorus, which John came to govern as abbot; he restored its buildings after the siege of Constantinople by Khan Krum in 813.

Under Emperor Leo V the Armenian (813–820) he refused communion with the iconoclast patriarch Theodotus, was arrested, flogged, imprisoned and exiled, and remained steadfast even at a trial before the emperor himself. Freed after Leo's death in 820, he settled with other monks in Cherson in the Crimea, where, according to the Life, he received the gift of healing. Seeking to avoid fame, he returned with his disciple Parthenius to his monastery, foretold his death and died there, probably under Michael II (about 820–829). The Russian Church commemorates him on 26 May and in the Synaxis of Crimean Saints.