Saint Emilian the Confessor, Bishop of Cyzicus — August 8 / August 21 (Julian Calendar)

On this day, August 8 according to the Julian Calendar (August 21 civil calendar), the Georgian Orthodox Church commemorates Saint Emilian the Confessor, Bishop of Cyzicus.

Saint Emilian, Bishop of Cyzicus, governed the episcopal see of Cyzicus during the reign of the iconoclast emperor Leo the Armenian (813–820). The impious ruler summoned him to the palace together with other hierarchs and demanded that he renounce the holy practice of the veneration of the icons.

Saint Emilian was the first to answer the tyrant, declaring that the question of the veneration of the icons must be examined within the Church, by those in holy orders, and not in the palace of the emperor.

In the year 815 the blessed hierarch was arrested and sent into exile for his confession of Orthodoxy. Between the years 815 and 820 he gave up his soul in captivity.