[June 2] St. Nicephorus I, patriarch of Constantinople

True Name: Νικηφόρος Α΄

Parents: Theodore and Eudokia

Date of Birth: circa 758

Predecessor: Tarasios

Reign: 806 – 815

Summary: The son of an exiled iconoclast, the likelihood that Nicephorus would rise to the highest position in Orthodox Christianity was unlikely at the time of his birth. He became a cabinet secretary under Empress Irene and was an imperial commissioner at the synod of 787. Soon after, he retired to a cloister on the eastern side of the Bosporus until 802 when he became the director of a home for the destitute in Constantinople. The emperor, seeing something in the iconoclast Nicephorus that others did not, supported his nomination as patriarch in 806. The clerics strongly disagreed with the decision but Nicephorus was installed all the same.

His term as patriarch lasted only nine years, during which time most of the Orthodox clergy refused to acknowledge his overlordship. In December 814, he was excommunicated by his own clerics and forced to retire to one of his monasteries. He maintained his staunch support of iconodules in the synod of 815 and recommended himself as patriarch to a new emperor in 820. He died mostly forgotten in 829 as a confessor, and the patriarch Methodios interred the former patriarch in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. His reputation was revived in later years due to his universal history of the world, which documented the Biblically-based history of the world from Adam and Eve to his own time. He also documented the history of the iconoclastic movement, which was viewed by both iconoclasts and opponents with respect. He was later canonized despite his controversial views.

Date of Death: 2 June 829

Successor: Theodotos I

Other Monarch Deaths:

Shane, king of Ulster (1567)