Saint Nikephoros I of Constantinople

Nikephoros I (Greek: Νικηφόρος; c. 758 – 5 April 828) was a Byzantine writer and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 12 April 806 to 13 March 815. He was born in Constantinople as the son of Theodore and Eudokia, of a strictly Orthodox family, which had suffered from the earlier Iconoclasm. His father Theodore, one of the secretaries of Emperor Constantine V, had been scourged and banished to Nicaea for his zealous support of Iconodules, and the son inherited the religious convictions of the father. While still young Nicephorus was brought to the court, where he became an imperial secretary and entered the service of the Empire. Under Empress Irene of Athens he took part in the synod of 787 of Nicaea as imperial commissioner. He then withdrew to one of the cloisters that he had founded on the Thracian Bosporus. There he devoted himself to ascetic practices and to the study both of secular learning, as grammar, mathematics, and philosophy, and the Scriptures. Around 802 he was recalled and appointed director of the largest hospital for the destitute in Constantinople. After the death of the Patriarch Tarasios of Constantinople, there was great division among the clergy and higher court officials as to the choice of his successor. Although still a layman, Nicephorus was chosen patriarch by the wish of the emperor (Easter, 12 April 806). The uncanonical choice met with opposition from the strictly clerical party of the Stoudites, and this opposition intensified into an open break when Nicephorus I, in other respects a very rigid moralist, showed himself compliant to the will of the emperor by reinstating the excommunicated priest Joseph. After vain theological disputes, in December 814, there followed personal insults.