Saints who resisted heresy
Sts Theophanes and Theodore the Branded
Οἱ Γραπτοί
Refused even a single act of communion with the iconoclasts, “as easy to overturn earth and heaven as to move us from piety”, and had verses branded on their faces.
- Period
- 9th c.
- Witness
- Monks, confessors
- Controversy
- Iconoclasm
Witness under persecution
What this saint faced
The teaching resisted
Iconoclasm under successive Byzantine emperors.
How the saint stood firm
Defended holy icons before imperial rulers, enduring repeated demands for conformity.
Persecution and suffering
Reported repeated beatings, exile, imprisonment and deliberate inscription of mocking verses on their faces.
Several periods of persecution after 813 and into the 830s. Exact total cannot be reliably calculated; the branding is traditionally dated 836, disputed by some historians.
Chronology of the confession
- After 813Exile
Banished after confronting Leo V.
- 830sTorture
Their Lives report beatings and additional periods in exile.
- Traditionally 836Facial branding
Verses were cut or burned into their faces to publicly shame them.
The dating has been contested in historical scholarship.
Sources for this account
Words and testimony of the Holy Fathers
Only words with an identifiable attribution are displayed. Reported speech in a Life is not the same as a passage written by the saint.
No checked direct quotation is published yet. Quotations can be added when the work, edition and page are identified.