Nikephoros I of Constantinople

Nikephoros I was born in Constantinople in the mid-eighth century, conventionally dated to about 758, into a family of imperial civil servants. His father, Theodore, served as an asekretis (imperial secretary) under Emperor Constantine V. Because Theodore remained loyal to the veneration of icons during the first period of Byzantine Iconoclasm, he was flogged, stripped of office, and sent into exile, where he later died at Nicaea. Nikephoros’s mother, Eudokia, likewise suffered for the same convictions. Raised in this iconophile household, he received a thorough secular and religious education and, like his father, entered the imperial chancery as an asekretis. He served at court during the later eighth century, including under Constantine VI and Empress Irene.

In 787 he attended the Second Council of Nicaea as an imperial commissioner; that council condemned Iconoclasm and restored the cult of images. Sometime afterward he withdrew from public office, founded a monastery on the eastern shore of the Bosporus, and devoted himself to study and ascetic life, remaining a layman for many years. When Patriarch Tarasios died in 806, Emperor Nikephoros I selected him for the patriarchal throne. Still a layman, he was advanced rapidly through the minor and major orders and consecrated patriarch on 12 April 806. The elevation of a civilian, together with his relatively moderate handling of the Moechian controversy—the scandal of Constantine VI’s uncanonical second marriage—provoked lasting opposition from the rigorist monks of the Stoudios monastery, led by Theodore the Studite.

As patriarch he worked to uphold the decisions of Nicaea II and to maintain ecclesiastical discipline. After Emperor Nikephoros I fell in battle against the Bulgars in 811 and the short reign of Michael I Rangabe ended in 813, Leo V the Armenian revived imperial Iconoclasm. In 814–815 the emperor pressed the patriarch to accept a new synod against images. Nikephoros refused, gathered bishops and abbots in the patriarchal palace to defend icon veneration, and was deposed on 13 March 815. He was replaced by the iconoclast Theodotos I and sent into exile, first to the monastery he had founded and later to other houses on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, including the monastery of Saint Theodore.

In exile he composed historical and theological works that became central to the iconophile cause. These include a short history (the Breviarium or Historia syntomos) covering events from 602 to 769, a Chronographikon syntomon, the Apologeticus minor and Apologeticus major, and three Antirrhetici against iconoclast arguments. He died in exile in 828. After the restoration of icons in 843, known as the Triumph of Orthodoxy, his relics were translated in 846 to the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. He is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and in the Roman Catholic Church, with his principal feast observed on 13 March.