Sergius the Confessor

Our Venerable Father Sergius the Confessor of Constantinople, with his wife Irene and their children

Confessor · Venerable · d. in exile, before 843

Commemorated 13 May — Confession for the holy icons under Theophilus, and repose in exile

Sergius was a patrician of Constantinople, of one of the great families of the city, and the father of Photius the Great; he was closely akin to the holy Patriarch Tarasius, who had presided at the Seventh Ecumenical Council. In the second iconoclasm, under the emperor Theophilus (829–842), he and his wife Irene refused to give up the veneration of the holy images. He was anathematised by the iconoclast synod, stripped of his whole estate, dragged with a rope about his neck through the streets of the capital as a public spectacle, imprisoned, and then sent with his wife and children into exile in a waterless place, where he died of his hardships before the restoration of the icons in 843. The Slavic calendars keep the same confessor under the name George. The Church honours him on May 13 with Irene and their children.

The house of the confessors

Sergius belonged, in the words of the Greek synaxaristes, to "a glorious and noble family of Byzantium" — the senatorial aristocracy of the capital, holding the rank of spatharios and then of patrician in the imperial service. His family had already given the Church its greatest recent hierarch: the holy Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople (784–806), who convoked and presided at the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 787 and secured the first restoration of the holy icons. The synaxaristes calls Sergius the brother of Tarasius; the fuller prosopography of the family makes him rather Tarasius's nephew or grand-nephew, so that Tarasius is the great-uncle of Sergius's son (see Disputed questions). Either way the point the sources are making is the same: the defence of the images was the inheritance of this house before it was Sergius's own act of courage.

Of his marriage to Irene — herself, by the tradition, of the same confessing stock and honoured with him as a saint — was born Photius, the most learned man of the ninth century and afterwards Patriarch of Constantinople, together with other children whose names the synaxaria do not give. Photius grew up in the household while his parents were under persecution, and in his own writings looked back on his father and mother as those who had paid for Orthodoxy before he was called to defend it.

The second iconoclasm

The iconoclast reaction renewed by Leo the Armenian hardened under Theophilus (829–842), the last of the emperors to persecute the icons, whose reign saw the branding of Theodore and Theophanes the Graptoi and the scourging of painters and monks. Sergius, a man of consequence in the capital and therefore a useful example, was required to renounce the veneration of the holy images. He refused, and — the Slavic life preserves the words of the exchange — answered that in venerating the icon the worship passes to its eternal Prototype, so that the honour given to the image of Christ is given to Christ Himself: the argument of Saint Basil the Great, made the standing defence of the icons at the Seventh Council.

For that answer he and Irene were formally anathematised by the iconoclast synod along with their son. The punishments followed in order: confiscation of the whole family estate, which was considerable; then a public degradation, in which he was bound by the neck with a rope and paraded through the streets of Constantinople — the diapompeusis, the ritual shaming reserved for traitors — and then prison.

Exile and repose

From prison Sergius was sent into exile with his wife and children, to a place the Greek notice describes as ἄνυδρος, waterless: a dry and desolate spot where the family had to live from nothing. Irene went with him, and the children with her; the Slavic life is explicit that she chose the exile rather than be parted from her husband, and she is honoured in the calendars with him for it. There, after "many afflictions," Sergius died — the sources give no year, but it must have been before the restoration of the icons in 843, since he did not live to see the triumph he had suffered for.

He is called ὁμολογητής, confessor, in the strict sense in which the Church uses the word: one who bore the whole cost of persecution and died of it without being formally executed. The Church's tradition, as the life of his son records it, goes further and speaks of him as one who "died a martyr for the holy icons." His son Photius was raised to the patriarchal throne in 858, fifteen years after the Triumph of Orthodoxy, and the vindication of his father's confession is one of the constants of his correspondence.

Feast and commemoration

May 13 (church date; New Calendar civil May 13, Old Calendar civil May 26). He is kept in both the Greek and the Slavic usage, though under different names, and always as a secondary commemoration of a day headed by Glyceria; the Menaion appoints him no proper service, and where a hymn is required the common of a venerable confessor is sung. Because the date of Pascha moves, May 13 may fall either within the Paschal season or after Pentecost, and no fixed seasonal note attaches to it. His memory belongs naturally with the other confessors of the second iconoclasm, and with the Triumph of Orthodoxy kept on the first Sunday of Great Lent, which vindicated the cause he died for.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable confessor)

A guide of Orthodoxy, a teacher of piety and purity, thou wast shown forth by the constancy of thy confession, O Father Sergius: bearing the loss of all thy goods, the rope and the shame of the streets, and the desert of thine exile, thou didst not deny the image of Christ. Wherefore, with Irene thy companion, intercede that our souls may be saved.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

Sergius is painted as a layman of rank and not as a monastic: middle-aged to elderly, dark-bearded going to grey, in the long tunic and the patterned chlamys of a Byzantine patrician, one hand raised in witness and the other holding a small icon of Christ — the attribute that marks the confessors of the iconoclast persecutions and distinguishes them at a glance from other lay saints. Irene stands beside him, veiled and in the maphorion, and their children behind, so that the group is read as a household of confessors. In narrative form the scene chosen is his diapompeusis: the patrician led with a rope about his neck through the streets while the crowd mocks, an image that echoes the parading of Saint Theodore the Branded. His feast being in May, the Menologion of Basil II (September–February) offers nothing; no pre-1900 image of this saint has been identified for this collection, and the group is easily confused in Russian icon-captioning with other ninth-century confessor families.

Disputed questions

Sergius or George? The Greek synaxaria commemorate on May 13 Σέργιος ὁ Ὁμολογητής, the father of Photius, with his wife Irene. The Slavic calendars and the Orthodox Church in America commemorate on the same day George the Confessor of Constantinople, with his wife Irene and their children — and the content of the two notices is the same in every particular: the reign of Theophilus, the refusal to renounce the icons, the confiscation of goods, the rope about the neck and the parading through the streets, the imprisonment, the exile with wife and children, the death from affliction in exile. OrthodoxWiki, which collates the two streams, prints the entry as "Saint Sergius (George) the Confessor." The present entry treats them as one saint under two transmitted names, keeping the Greek name in the title because the Greek tradition also supplies the family identification, and recording the divergence here rather than suppressing it. If the two are ever shown to be distinct persons, this entry must be split.
The kinship with Tarasius. The Greek notice makes Sergius the brother of Patriarch Tarasius. The chronology is difficult: Tarasius died in 806, and Sergius was still being persecuted after 829 and was the father of a son born about 810–820. The account followed in the entry on Photius — that Tarasius was Photius's great-uncle — is the better-attested reckoning, and makes Sergius a nephew or grand-nephew of the patriarch rather than a brother. The synaxarion's looser use of "brother" for a kinsman is a common feature of these notices.
Irene's separate commemoration. Some calendars, including the OCA's, give Irene an entry of her own on May 13 alongside her husband's, though the notice is the same commemoration told from her side; there is no separate service, and she has no cultus apart from him. She is treated here within her husband's entry, as the Greek synaxaristes treats her.
Not to be confused with the numerous other Sergii of the calendar — the martyr Sergius of Rasapha (October 7) or Sergius of Radonezh (September 25) — nor with the iconoclast patriarchs of the same era; nor is this George to be confused with George of Mytilene or the other ninth-century confessors named George.
Not to be confused, most easily of all, with Sergius the Magistros of Paphlagonia (June 28) — a second lay confessor of the holy icons in the same reign, of the same aristocratic rank, likewise called "confessor," and likewise a kinsman of the imperial house. The two are distinct: this Sergius was a patrician, brother or kinsman of Tarasius and father of Photius, who was anathematised, stripped and exiled and died in exile before 843; the other was a magistros, kinsman of the empress Theodora, who survived Theophilus, pressed for the council that restored the icons, and reposed in Crete about 866.