Ven. Theophanes the Confessor

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Ven. Theophanes the Confessor

  Theophanes the Confessor (c. 759/760 – 817/818) was a wealthy Byzantine noble of Constantinople who renounced rank and riches to become a monk, and who is remembered on three counts above all: as founder and abbot of the great monastery of the Great Field (Megas Agros) on the peninsula of Sigriane by the Sea of Marmara; as author of the Chronographia, the annalistic chronicle of the years 284–813 that is one of the primary sources for Byzantine, Persian, and early Islamic history; and as a confessor of the holy icons in the second iconoclasm. Married in youth but living with his wife in continence until both took the monastic habit, he distributed his fortune, built monasteries, and signed the decrees of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787). When Leo V the Armenian revived iconoclasm, Theophanes, already broken by a painful illness, refused to condemn the icons, was imprisoned some two years, and was exiled to the island of Samothrace, where he died of his sufferings a few days after arrival, on March 12. His relics were returned to Megas Agros, and he is venerated throughout the Orthodox world.

• St Gregory the Great (the Dialogist), Pope of Rome (604)

  Gregory the Dialogist (c. 540 – 604), known in the West as Gregory the Great, was Pope of Rome from 590 to 604 and is honoured by East and West alike as a Father of the whole undivided Church and one of the four great Latin Doctors. Born to a Roman senatorial family, he rose to be Prefect of the City, then renounced the world, turned his houses into monasteries, and became a monk; drawn back into service as papal legate at Constantinople and then, against his will, as pope, he governed Rome through plague and Lombard war with wisdom and charity. He is remembered for the Dialogues — from which the East names him "the Dialogist" — for the Pastoral Rule, the classic manual of the shepherd's office, and the Moralia on Job; for sending the mission of Augustine to convert the Anglo-Saxons; for the reform of the Roman chant that bears his name; and, in Orthodox tradition, as the compiler to whom the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts of Great Lent is ascribed. He reposed at Rome on March 12, a day kept in Lent, and is one of the few Western fathers venerated without interruption in the Orthodox East.

• Repose of St Symeon the New Theologian (1021)

  Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) is the great mystical theologian of Byzantium: monk of Stoudios, abbot of St. Mamas in Constantinople, spiritual son of Symeon the Pious, and the poet of the Hymns of Divine Love. He taught, against the polite religion of his age, that the conscious experience of God — the vision of the divine light, the felt presence of the Holy Spirit — is not the privilege of a vanished apostolic past but the birthright and calling of every baptised Christian now; for this he was tried, exiled, and finally vindicated. Of all the saints, only he, John the Theologian, and Gregory of Nazianzus bear the title "Theologian."

• Phineas the High Priest

  Phineas (Hebrew Pinchas) was the son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron, and the third high priest of Israel, remembered in Scripture for the burning zeal by which he turned away the wrath of God from his people. When Israel, encamped at Shittim, was drawn into the idolatry and licence of Baal-Peor and a plague broke out among them, Phineas rose up and struck through an Israelite man and the Midianite woman with him, and the plague was stayed. For this the Lord granted him and his descendants a covenant of peace and an everlasting priesthood (Numbers 25). He led Israel in later crises, kept the priesthood after Eleazar, and his name became in the tradition of Israel and the Church a byword for righteous zeal for God. The Orthodox Church commemorates him among the holy righteous of the Old Covenant on March 12.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Paul Aurelian of Wales, bishop of Ouismor (575)
• St. Alphege the Elder, bishop of Winchester (951)
• St. Mura McFerednach of Donegal (645)

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