Jacob the Confessor
Our Venerable Father and Confessor Jacob, Bishop of Catania
Venerable · Confessor · Bishop · d. 9th century
Commemorated 21 March — Commemoration of the iconodule confessor-bishop
Jacob (James) the Confessor was a monk from his youth who, raised to the episcopate, endured imprisonment, hunger and exile for the veneration of the holy icons during the second period of Byzantine Iconoclasm in the early ninth century. He did not die a martyr's death but is numbered among the confessors, having borne much affliction for the faith and lived out his days in ascetic labour. In the Greek synaxaria he is associated with the church of Catania in Sicily.
The surviving notice of Jacob is brief. From childhood he embraced the monastic discipline, giving himself to fasting, vigil and prayer, and by the purity of his life was accounted worthy of the priesthood and at length of a bishopric. When the iconoclast emperors renewed the war on the holy images, Jacob stood firmly for the Orthodox confession, teaching that the honour shown to the icon passes to its prototype. For this he was seized, subjected to hunger and every hardship, and driven into exile, where he continued in his ascetic struggles until his peaceful repose. Because he suffered greatly for the icons yet was not put to death, the Church honours him as a confessor.
Feast and commemoration
March 21 (church date; Old Calendar civil April 3), within Great Lent.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable confessor)
In thee, O Father, was preserved unimpaired that which is according to God's image; for taking up the Cross thou didst follow after Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Jacob, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Jacob is shown as a bishop-monk in the omophorion, holding a Gospel or a scroll. No pre-1900 icon of him alone has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- The synaxarion notices give little beyond his ascetic formation and his confession under the Iconoclasts; the identification with the see of Catania rests on the Sicilian synaxaria, alongside the earlier bishops of that city (Beryllus and others) and distinct from Leo of Catania (Feb 20).