St. Tarasius of Constantinople

Tarasius was born around the year 730 of a noble family of Constantinople and rose in the imperial service to the high office of first secretary to the throne. He was a layman of learning and probity when, on the resignation of the patriarch Paul, the empress Irene and the Church looked to him to fill the see of the imperial city.

He consented only on the condition that a general council be summoned to heal the wound of the iconoclast heresy, which for sixty years had stripped the churches of their holy images and persecuted those who venerated them. He was ordained through the grades of the clergy and enthroned as patriarch in 784.

With Irene he set about the gathering of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. A first attempt at Constantinople in 786 was broken up by iconoclast soldiers; the next year the Fathers met in safety at Nicaea, the city of the First Council, and there, with Tarasius presiding, more than three hundred bishops restored the veneration of the holy icons, distinguishing the honour paid to the image from the worship due to God alone.

He governed the church of Constantinople for more than twenty years, gentle toward the penitent and lavish toward the poor, for whom he kept open table and built houses of mercy. He reposed on the twenty-fifth of February, 806.

The Church keeps his memory on that day, honouring the patriarch who presided over the Seventh Ecumenical Council and gave back to the Church her icons.