Sergius the Magistros
Our Venerable Father and Confessor Sergius the Magistros, of Paphlagonia
Venerable · Confessor · d. c. 866, in Crete
Commemorated 28 June — Repose in Crete after his confession for the holy icons
Sergius, called the Magistros from the high Byzantine dignity he held, was a nobleman of Niketia in Paphlagonia, on the Black Sea coast near Amastris, and a kinsman of the empress Theodora, wife of the last iconoclast emperor Theophilus. In a court committed to the war against the holy images he remained openly Orthodox: he sheltered those hunted for the icons, laboured for their restoration, and after the emperor's death used his standing with Theodora to press for the council that restored the icons in 843. He ended his life in Crete, where he is especially honoured, reposing about the year 866; first buried at the monastery that bore his title, his relics were afterwards translated to the monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos near Nicomedia, the house founded from his own town. The Church keeps him on June 28 as a confessor.
The magistros of Paphlagonia
Niketia, the saint's birthplace, lay in the district of Amastris on the Paphlagonian shore of the Black Sea — one of the recruiting-grounds of the ninth-century Byzantine aristocracy, and the home region of the family of the empress Theodora, to whom Sergius was related by blood. Of good birth and educated, he rose in the imperial service to real eminence: the title by which the calendar knows him, magistros (μάγιστρος, from the old magister officiorum), was in the ninth century one of the highest dignities the emperor could confer outside the imperial family itself, and it marks him as a man of the inner circle of government rather than a provincial notable.
Confessor under Theophilus
The reign of Theophilus (829–842) was the last and, in its way, the most systematic phase of iconoclasm. Monks and painters were flogged, exiled and branded; the veneration of images was a crime; and the empress herself, an iconodule, kept her icons hidden in her apartments. In that court Sergius held office, and the synaxarion's praise of him turns on the fact that his position did not soften his confession. He is remembered for two things: that he openly maintained the veneration of the holy icons, at the cost of the emperor's favour; and that he gave shelter and protection to those persecuted for them — which for a man of his rank was the more useful, and the more dangerous, of the two services.
He is called a confessor rather than a martyr because he suffered for the faith without dying for it; the Church's title records the witness, not the manner of death.
The restoration of the icons
Theophilus died in January 842, leaving Theodora regent for the child Michael III. What followed — the deposition of the iconoclast patriarch John the Grammarian, the elevation of Methodius, the synod at Constantinople and the solemn restoration of the images on the first Sunday of Lent, 11 March 843, kept ever since as the Triumph of Orthodoxy — was the work of a party at court of which Sergius was one. The notice says that after the emperor's death he used his influence with the empress to urge the convening of the council that restored the icons to the Church. He thus belongs, with Theodora herself, with Methodius, and with the confessors of the Studite party, to the small company whose perseverance under Theophilus made 843 possible. On the empress herself see Theodora the Empress.
Crete, repose, and relics
The last years take him far from Paphlagonia. Sergius ended his life in Crete, where he is held in particular veneration, and reposed in peace about the year 866. He was buried first in the monastery of the Magistros, the house that carried his own title; afterwards his relics were translated with honour to the monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos near Nicomedia — called in the sources Nikitiatou or Nikitiatus, from Niketia, the saint's native town, whose name the foundation preserved. The Slavonic and English calendars, following the Greek, give the epithet variously as "of Paphlagonia," from his birth, and "the Magistros," from his office.
Feast and commemoration
June 28 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 11), on which the Greek Synaxaristes gives Ὁ Ὅσιος Σέργιος ὁ μάγιστρος and the OCA "Venerable Confessor Sergius of Paphlagonia." He is kept without a proper service. The Greek lists of the day also name him as founder — that is, as the patron whose title the monastery of the Theotokos called Nikitiatou near Nicomedia carried, and where his relics came to rest.
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 didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, and to attend to the soul, a thing immortal; and thou didst contend for the holy icons and confess the Word made flesh. Wherefore, O venerable Sergius, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Sergius has no settled iconographic type of his own. As a confessor who was a layman and a great officer of state rather than a monk, he would properly be painted in the court dress of a ninth-century Byzantine dignitary — the patterned skaramangion and the jewelled loros or mantle of rank — holding an icon in his hands, the attribute that marks the confessors of the images and distinguishes them at a glance from other lay saints; some later usage, following the epithet "venerable," shows him instead in the monastic habit. His natural company in a calendar-icon of the day is with the other confessors of the second iconoclasm. No pre-1900 image of him has been identified for this collection, and the risk of confusion with the many other Sergii of the calendar makes a mis-identified image especially easy to store; none has been.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Sergius the Confessor of Constantinople (May 13), the patrician and father of Photius the Great, who was likewise an iconodule confessor under Theophilus, was anathematised, stripped of his goods and exiled, and died before 843. The two are contemporaries, of the same rank, in the same struggle, and both are called "confessor"; they are nevertheless distinct men, distinguished by their offices (patrician and father of a patriarch, against magistros and kinsman of the empress), by the manner of their end (exile and death before the restoration, against survival, influence upon it, and a repose in Crete a generation later), and by their days (May 13 against June 28). The Slavonic books give the Constantinopolitan confessor under the name George, which further separates the two.
- The Cretan connection is asserted by the tradition without explanation: no source known to this collection says whether he was sent to Crete, retired there, or was exiled there. Since Crete was in Arab hands from about 824 to 961, a Byzantine dignitary's presence and burial on the island in the 860s is historically striking and may point to a mission, a captivity, or a confusion in the transmission. The entry records the tradition and marks the difficulty.
- The year 866 is given in the calendar notices; it is not independently attested, and it would make the saint very old if he was already a man of standing under Theophilus.