Bishop of Cyzicus in the second iconoclast crisis. Summoned to the palace with the other bishops in 815 and ordered to accept the removal of the icons, he was the one who answered first and answered plainly, that a matter of the faith of the Church is not settled in a palace, and he was deposed and exiled and died there.
- Reposed
- c. 820 (in exile)
- See
- Cyzicus
- Feast
- August 8
The Emperor Leo the Fifth, called the Armenian, reopened the iconoclast persecution that the Seventh Ecumenical Council had closed a generation earlier. At the end of 814 he summoned the Patriarch Nikephoros and the bishops of the capital and its neighborhood and pressed them to accept the removal of the images.
Aemilian of Cyzicus was among them, with Euthymius of Sardis, Michael of Synada, Theophylact of Nicomedia and Joseph of Thessalonica. The tradition records that when the emperor demanded an answer, Aemilian spoke first: that a question of the Church's faith is examined in the Church and not in a palace, and that if the emperor wished it discussed, he should leave the room.
He was deposed and sent into exile with the rest and died there about the year 820. He is called the Confessor because he did not recant and was not killed, which is the office the word names.
The Church keeps his memory on the eighth of August. The icons were restored for good in 843, twenty three years after he died in exile for them.
Events during this saint's life
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