John Psychaites
Our Venerable Father and Confessor John Psychaites, of the Lavra of Psicha
Venerable · Confessor · Wonderworker · d. 9th century, in exile
Commemorated 7 May — Commemoration in Greek usage, 26 May — Commemoration in the Slavic and OCA calendars, 15 December — Synaxis of the Saints of the Crimea (Russian usage; on account of his exile)
John, called Psychaites from the monastery in which he lived, was a monk of the Lavra of Psicha near Constantinople in the last years of the eighth century and the first of the ninth, and one of the confessors of the holy icons. He had entered the monastery young, and the fame of his ascetic life and of the healings and exorcisms worked through his prayers had spread beyond it when the imperial power required of him a signature renouncing the veneration of images. He refused it, and called the emperor by his name — a heretic — to his face. For that he was arrested, ill-used and sent into banishment, and by the transmitted account he died in exile. His memory is kept on May 26 in the Slavic calendars and on May 7 in Greek usage.
The Lavra of Psicha
The monastery of Psicha (τὰ Ψιχᾶ) stood in the suburbs of Constantinople and gave its name to a small company of saints, of whom John is the best remembered; the epithet Psychaites means simply "of Psicha," and is the whole of what the sources supply for his origins. Nothing is transmitted of his family or of his birthplace. He took the monastic habit there in his youth and lived by the strict rule of the house, and the notices dwell on his asceticism and his gift of prayer rather than on any office he held: he was neither abbot nor priest in the accounts that survive, but a monk whose life had made him formidable.
Two charisms are ascribed to him. He healed the sick, and he cast out demons; and the notices add a detail more revealing than either — that the strength and boldness of his speech unsettled his opponents and heartened those who were suffering with him. The gifts belong to the pattern of the great Constantinopolitan monastic confessors of the same generation, whose authority with the people was precisely what made them dangerous to the iconoclast government.
The confession of the icons
When the imperial power renewed its war on the holy images, John was among those brought in for examination and required to subscribe a document abjuring their veneration. He would not sign. Instead — and this is the act for which the Church styles him confessor — he denounced the emperor to his face as a heretic, and reproached those who were doing the emperor's work.
He was arrested — and, the notices say, arrested and exiled more than once: released, returning to his confession, taken again. He was beaten and otherwise ill-used at the hands of his persecutors. The Russian tradition adds that his final banishment was to Cherson in the Crimea — the standing place of exile for those the empire wished forgotten, and the reason the Russian Church numbers him among the saints of the Crimea — and that he died in exile, worn out by his sufferings, having contended for the Orthodox faith for the greater part of his life.
Feast and commemoration
May 26 (church date; Old Calendar civil June 8) in the Slavic calendars and in that of the Orthodox Church in America, where he is named after the Apostles Carpus and Alphaeus, the martyrs Abercius and Helen, the new-martyr George the New of Sofia and the uncovering of the relics of Macarius of Kalyazin. Greek usage keeps him on May 7. The Russian Church commemorates him also in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Crimea on December 15, on account of his exile there. No proper service is printed for him in any Menaion; where the day is kept liturgically he is served from the common of a venerable father, or of a confessor.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable confessor)
The image of God was truly preserved in thee, O Father, for thou didst take up the Cross and follow Christ; and by thy deeds thou hast taught us to despise the flesh, which passeth away, and to care for the soul, which is immortal. Wherefore thy spirit, O venerable John, rejoiceth with the angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
John Psychaites would be painted after the type of the monastic confessors of the iconoclast age: an elder in the dark mandyas and koukoulion or with the head uncovered, thin-faced and long-bearded, with the right hand raised in blessing or holding a scroll, and — as the mark of his particular struggle — often shown holding a small icon, the sign by which the painters distinguish those who suffered for the images from other ascetics. Where the iconoclast confessors are grouped, as in the icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, monks of his kind stand in the lower ranks holding images. No pre-1900 image of this saint alone has been identified for this collection, and none of the Russian menologion sheets consulted gives him a distinct figure.
Disputed questions
- Which iconoclast emperor? The Greek and the OCA notices set his confession in the reign of Leo V the Armenian (813–820), who reopened the persecution of the icons after the peace of the Seventh Council; a Russian notice names instead Leo III the Isaurian (717–741), the first iconoclast. The dating of his life to the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries — on which the notices agree — fits Leo V and cannot be reconciled with Leo III, and this entry follows the reign of Leo V. The confusion is a natural one between two iconoclast emperors of the same name.
- Did he die in exile or in peace? The Russian notices have him die in banishment under the hands of his persecutors; the OCA's account, which otherwise follows the same tradition, says that after decades of contending for the faith he reposed peacefully. Both are recorded here. If the exile to Cherson is historical, death in exile is the likelier reading, and the Russian calendar's inclusion of him among the Crimean saints presupposes it.
- May 26 or May 7? The Slavic books and the OCA keep him on May 26; Greek usage keeps him on May 7. Neither date is a translation of relics or a second feast; they are two calendrical traditions for the same single commemoration, and both are carried in the entry's record above, the Slavic date as primary because this corpus follows the Antiochian (New Calendar Byzantine) reckoning in which the day is kept with the Apostles Carpus and Alphaeus.
- Not to be confused with the many other monastic Johns of the iconoclast struggle — above all John of Damascus, the theologian of the images (December 4), and the abbots and confessors of the Studite and Sakkoudion houses. The epithet Psychaites exists precisely to distinguish him.