Methodios I of Constantinople
Patriarch of Constantinople
Methodius I of Constantinople or Methodios I (Greek: Μεθόδιος Α΄; c. 788/800 – 14 June 847) was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 11 March 843 until his death on 14 June 847. He is best known for restoring the veneration of icons in the Byzantine Church in 843, marking the end of the second period of Byzantine Iconoclasm. He is venerated as a saint in both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, and his feast day is celebrated on 14 June.
Life
Born to wealthy parents, Methodius was sent as a young man to Constantinople to continue his education and hopefully attain an appointment at court. But instead, he entered a monastery in Bithynia, eventually becoming abbot.
Under Emperor Leo V the Armenian (813–820) the Iconoclast persecution broke out for the second time. In 815 Methodius went to Rome, perhaps as an envoy of the deposed Patriarch Nicephorus I of Constantinople. Upon his return in 821 he was arrested and exiled as an iconodule by the Iconoclast regime of Emperor Michael II. In 828 Michael II, not long before his death, mitigated the persecution and proclaimed a general amnesty. Methodius returned to Constantinople.
Michael II was succeeded by his son, Theophilos, who followed his father's policies.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1256661. VIAF identifies the subject as 42197025. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Methodios I of Constantinople” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.