MICHAEL OF SYNNADA

June 5 (May 23) The Church honors the memory of St. Michael of Sinnada (750–826). Michael was a priest and monk, and later a bishop. During the era of persecution, he suffered from the iconoclasts and is commemorated in the liturgical calendar as a confessor of the faith.

The city of Sinnada was located in Phrygia in the continental part of Asia Minor, not far from the modern Turkish city of Suhut. Before the defeat of the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 and the conquest of the Asia Minor peninsula by the Turks, the city was an important economic center and ecclesiastical metropolis. Michael was born here around 750. Having received his education at home, he went to Constantinople.

In the capital, he met the secretary of the Patriarch St Tarasios (784–806) named Theophylact. Then the future patriarch and confessor St Niсephoros (806–815) founded a monastery on the Asian shore of the Bosporus. Michael and Theophylact went to this monastery, and Tarasios ordained them priests and elevated them to the then honorable title of “skeuophylax,” as the guardians of the sacred vessels were called in Greek. Such spiritual communication and brotherhood in the future allowed the faithful servants of the Church to boldly, constructively and competently resist iconoclasm. The persecutors of holy icons were often careerists. They supported each other, taking advantage of the defenselessness of the Orthodox, the fact that they, as it seemed to many, were not of this world. Soon, Michael was elected bishop of his hometown and participated in the VII Ecumenical Council in Nicaea (787), which restored the veneration of icons.

Historians tell us that, on behalf of Emperor Niсephoros I (802–811), Michael went to Baghdad to negotiate peace with Caliph Harun Al-Rashid, which was concluded in 806. In 811, Emperor Michael I Rangabe (811–813) sent him on an embassy to Charlemagne in the hope of improving relations with the West. At the same time, Michael gave Pope Leo III (795–816) a canonical letter from Patriarch Nicephorus, in which he notified the Roman bishop of his election and asked for an apology for his delay. Michael’s mission was successful and ended with the signing of a peace treaty in 812.

Participation in the diplomatic missions of the Emperors of Constantinople makes Michael related to Saints Cyril (827–869) and Methodius (815–885), who, just half a century later, also carried out these very risky assignments for those times. Episcopal authority, that is, in a literal sense, succession, that is, direct legitimation from the Apostles, or, according to contemporaries, supernatural education, a direct gift from heaven, created a kind of prototype of the modern immunity of ambassadors.

The Life of Michael reports that on the way from Rome, Michael met the wandering monk Gregory of Crete (760–820), whom he invited with him to Constantinople and gave him shelter in one of the monasteries, where he shone with monastic virtues (commemorated on January 18). Such was the spiritual brotherhood of saints.

After defeat in a battle with the Bulgarians near Adrianople, Emperor Michael Rangabe was deposed and became a monk. For St Michael, an era of martyrdom began. The new emperor Leo V the Armenian (813–820), who had deposed his predecessor, announced at a meeting of secular and ecclesiastical officials in December on the eve of Christmas 814 that he was renewing the ban on icon veneration. Michael of Sinnada spoke out against iconoclasm. He turned his outstanding education, experience as a diplomat and imperial envoy, his preaching gift into polemics against the powers that be. On the side of the authorities in the persecution and destruction of icons for reasons of conformity were many hierarchs. For this, Michael was subjected to numerous persecutions. After the deposition of Patriarch Nicephoros in 815, he was imprisoned in a fortress, and then he was transported from one prison to another. What turned out to be unthinkable for Western rulers and Muslim caliphs turned out to be quite acceptable for emperors who considered themselves Orthodox!

On Christmas Day 820, Leo was killed by conspirators during a service in Hagia Sophia. This monstrous crime was a symbolic reflection of what the iconoclasts themselves committed in relation to the holy icons and believers who defended the sacred space from the treacherous encroachment of the authorities.

The power in Constantinople changed, and Michael gained freedom, but was never able to return to his diocese. On this day (May 22) in 821, he died, exhausted by numerous misadventures. His last-minute friend was the Monk Theodore the Studite (750–826). The greatest of the spiritual teachers of his time and a confessor of iconoclastic persecution, Theodore stayed with Michael during his death, and then in one of his catechumen teachings he told his monastic brethren about the sufferings of the confessor.