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Biography

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Gregory of Dekapolis (Grigorios ho Dekapolites), also called Gregory the Decapolite, was a Byzantine monk, ascetic, and miracle-working saint of the ninth century. He is known chiefly from a hagiographical Life written soon after his death by Ignatios the Deacon. He was born in Irenopolis (Eirenopolis) in the Isaurian Decapolis, a group of cities in southeastern Asia Minor under Byzantine rule, in the later eighth century. His parents were named Sergios and Maria. They intended him for marriage, but from youth he was drawn to monastic life. He left home in secret, received the monastic tonsure at a monastery whose abbot was a kinsman (often identified as his uncle Symeon), and thereafter lived under a rule of strict fasting, vigil, and prayer.

After his early formation he moved between coenobitic houses and periods of solitude in his native region and elsewhere in western Asia Minor. When imperial Iconoclasm was revived under Emperor Leo V the Armenian (813–820), Gregory stood with the defenders of the holy icons. He spent time in Constantinople, was imprisoned for his iconophile stance, and was released after Leo’s death in 820. In the following years he traveled widely as a wandering holy man. The tradition of his Life takes him through Ephesus and other coastal centres, to Thessalonica (where he is associated with the monastery of Saint Menas), and as far west as Italy and Sicily, including Syracuse. In these places he is described as healing the sick, converting sinners, and giving spiritual counsel.

In his last years Gregory settled again in Constantinople, occupying a modest cell and gathering a small circle of disciples. Among them was Joseph, later known as Joseph the Hymnographer, who regarded Gregory as his spiritual father and who, according to later tradition, received miraculous aid from Gregory after the saint’s death. Gregory died in the capital on 20 November 842, only months before the official restoration of icon veneration in 843. He was buried in Constantinople. Because the principal source is a near-contemporary hagiography rather than a documentary archive, many points of exact chronology and itinerary remain uncertain, but the outline of an Isaurian origin in the late eighth century, a monastic career spanning the second Iconoclasm, extensive travel, and death in Constantinople in 842 is consistently reported.

His memory is kept on 20 November in the Eastern Orthodox Church and appears in some Western calendars. He was venerated as a wonderworker; no specific civic or professional patronages are firmly attested in the early sources. Relics associated with him were later claimed by various churches and monasteries, but the original place of burial was Constantinople. He never held episcopal or patriarchal office and lived as a monk from the time he fled the marriage arranged for him.

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