Today, our Holy Church honors the memory of St. Nikiforos the Confessor, Archbishop of Constantinople, who was born in Constantinople in 758 AD.
His parents Theodoros and Evdokia belonged to a noble and official social class and at the same time, they were pious and virtuous people, who nurtured their son with the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the Tradition of our Holy Orthodox Church.
In fact, his father’s devotion to the right faith caused him to be persecuted and exiled by the iconoclastic emperor Constantine V to Nicaea, where he died.
When the Archbishop of Constantinople, Tarasios, died, Emperor Nikiforos I pointed to the clergyman Nikiforos as his worthy successor.
Patriarch Nikiforos gave tough theological struggles for the honor and worship of the sacred Icons. But when in 813 AD. Leo V the Armenian ascended the imperial throne of Constantinople, a great and relentless persecution broke out against the defenders of the honorary worship of images. His unbowed spiritual leadership and theological stability made Patriarch Nikiforos a patron of the Orthodox Church’s crew and of the proper teaching of sacred icons and their honorary worship. Naturally, all this angered the emperor, who removed him from the patriarchal throne.
Patriarch Nikiforos suffered a lot and finally, quite distressed by the theological ignorance, arrogance, distortion of tradition, and the eminent demagogy of the lords, he surrendered his spirit on June 2, 822 AD.
Source: Church of Cyprus
