Emilian of Cyzicus
Our Father among the Saints Emilian the Confessor, Bishop of Cyzicus
Confessor · Bishop · d. c. 820, in exile
Commemorated 8 January — Second commemoration, kept within the afterfeast of the Theophany, 8 August — Principal commemoration of the confessor
Emilian the Confessor (died c. 820) was bishop of Cyzicus, on the Sea of Marmara, and a bold defender of the holy icons in the second iconoclast persecution under the emperor Leo V the Armenian. Summoned with the other bishops before the emperor when Leo moved to revive iconoclasm, Emilian refused to yield the veneration of the images and answered the emperor to his face, for which he was deposed, ill-treated, and sent into exile, where he died a confessor of the faith. He is numbered among the company of confessor-hierarchs who suffered in those years for the images of Christ and the saints. His principal feast is August 8; he is commemorated again on January 8, within the afterfeast of the Theophany.
Bishop of Cyzicus and the second iconoclasm
Emilian held the see of Cyzicus, an ancient metropolis on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara, in the early ninth century. His trial came with the revival of iconoclasm under the emperor Leo V the Armenian (813–820), who, persuaded that the military disasters of the empire were a punishment for the veneration of icons restored at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, resolved to overturn that restoration. In the winter of 814–815 Leo summoned the Patriarch Nikephoros and the bishops of the capital and its neighbourhood, and pressed them to enter into a "discussion" of the images as a step toward abolishing their veneration.
The tradition remembers Emilian as one of the hierarchs who stood firm at that confrontation, refusing to betray the faith of the Fathers. When the emperor proposed to debate the matter, the confessor-bishops answered — Emilian among them, and in some accounts leading the retort — that a question already settled by an Ecumenical Council was not to be reopened in the palace at the emperor's pleasure: what belonged to the Church should be treated in the Church, and not by imperial command. For this steadfastness Emilian was deposed from his see, subjected to hardship, and driven into exile.
Confession and repose
Emilian did not recant. He endured deposition and banishment for the sake of the holy icons and died in exile, a confessor rather than a martyr in the strict sense — one who suffered for the faith and was worn down by his sufferings without being put to death outright. The Slavic books accordingly style him a svyashchennoispovednik, a hierarch-confessor; the Greek, ὁμολογητής. His repose is placed about the year 820, near the end of Leo the Armenian's reign; the final restoration of the icons, for which he had contended, came a generation later, in 843.
Feast and commemoration
Emilian's principal feast is August 8 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 21). He is commemorated a second time on January 8 (Old Calendar civil January 21), within the afterfeast of the Theophany, together with the venerable George the Chozebite and Domnica of Constantinople; the Slavic calendars in particular keep the January date. On both days his office is that of a hierarch-confessor, sung on January 8 under the hymns of the afterfeast of the Baptism.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
O God of our Fathers, who dealest ever with us according to thy gentleness, take not thy mercy from us, but by the prayers of thy hierarch Emilian guide our life in peace.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Emilian is depicted as a bishop in the phelonion and omophorion, holding or blessing over the Gospel-book, in the type of the hierarch-confessor; where his confession is emphasised he may hold an icon of Christ or of the Theotokos, the sign of his stand for the images. No storable public-domain image identified with certainty as this Emilian was found at the time of writing; the entry notes a wanted icon.
Disputed questions
Some notices, compressing the account, speak of Emilian's "martyrdom" in 820; the constant tradition, and his very title "the Confessor," hold rather that he suffered exile and hardship for the icons and died in banishment, not by execution — the entry follows this. He is not to be confused with the earlier Sisinius of Cyzicus, likewise a confessor and bishop of the same see but of the fourth century (kept November 23), who suffered under Diocletian and reposed in peace: two confessor-hierarchs of Cyzicus, separated by five hundred years and by wholly different persecutions. Nor is he to be confused with the martyr Emilian of Dorostolum (July 18), burned on the Danube in 362 under Julian the Apostate, or with the penitent Emilian of Rome (March 7).