Theophanes the Confessor

About Theophanes the Confessor

The OCA life places Theophanes’s birth in Constantinople in 759 and describes his later monastic life in the Sigriane region. It recounts that he attended the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 and defended the veneration of icons. These biographical episodes come from a later church life and are presented as its tradition.The OCA says Theophanes was imprisoned after refusing an iconoclast demand under Leo V and gives his death in 818. It also credits him with the Chronographia. Scholarship treats the chronicle as a joint project shaped by George the Synkellos and questions how authorship should be assigned; so the chronicle is traditionally attributed to Theophanes without treating his sole authorship as settled.