Augustin Sokolovski
On June 5, the Church celebrates the memory of Saint Michael, Confessor and Bishop. Saint Michael was bishop of Sinada, in the center of modern-day Turkey. A participant in the Seventh Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 787, later he negotiated with the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the Western Emperor Charlemagne, and the popes of Rome at the behest of the emperor of Constantinople.
When iconoclasm resumed in 815, Michael spoke out against Emperor Leo V (813–820): “I bow before the holy icons of my Savior Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, His Mother, and all the saints, and I venerate them. I will not fulfill your order to take out the icons from the churches.” Saint Michael was eventually removed from his see and arrested.
He was sent from one prison to another, and when in 820 the iconoclast Leo was killed during the Christmas service in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, he gained his freedom, but did not return to the diocese. Soon, exhausted by persecution and wounds, he died. Saint Michael of Synnada stands before us as an example of a rare simultaneous martyrdom from heretics and human, political, ingratitude.