Hierarch Theophanes Graptos of Nicaea, Hymnographer

St. Theophanes Graptos was born around 778 in Jerusalem to the priest Jonah. With his elder brother Theodore, he was educated at the Lavra of St. Sabas, where both were tonsured monks. At the direction of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the brothers went to Constantinople to defend icon veneration under the iconoclast emperor Leo V. For more than twenty years, under three successive iconoclast emperors, they endured imprisonment, exile, and torture. Under the fiercest persecutor, Theophilos (829–842), they suffered public branding: twelve mocking verses were burned into their foreheads with hot needles, giving rise to the epithet "Graptoi" ("the Inscribed"). Imprisoned in Apamea and later separated, Theodore died in captivity around 840, while Theophanes survived, corresponding from exile with the future confessor-patriarch Methodios. After the restoration of icon veneration in 843, he was consecrated Metropolitan of Nicaea and became renowned as a prolific hymnographer, composing numerous liturgical canons. He reposed around 845.