medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today, 25. February, is also the feast day of:
2) Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople (d. 806). The secularly well educated T. (also Tharasius; in Greek, Tarasios) belonged to a prominent family of Constantinople. His father had been city prefect and he himself is attested as imperial protoasecretis in 780. T. was not in Holy Orders when in December 784 he was elected patriarch at the behest of the empress Irene. Her chosen instrument for the restoration of the icons, he progressed swiftly through the major orders and secured pope Hadrian I's grudging acceptance of his elevation. T. proceeded in 786 and 787 to manage the Second Council of Nicaea (the Seventh Ecumenical Council), at which iconoclasm was condemned.
For the remainder of his pontificate T. attempted to avoid domination both by rigorists at the Stoudios monastery and by the emperor Constantine VI, whose bigamous second marriage T. declined to solemnize but nonetheless managed to countenance. He also abolished fees for the ordination and promotion of priests. T. endowed a hospital, built homes for the indigent, and provided the poor of his city with a monthly donation of food and clothing. His Bios by his secretary Ignatius (BHG 1698) presents him as holy and much put upon. Personally ascetic, he was venerated as a saint after his death.
T. at left as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1317-1318; conservation work in 1968) by the court painters Michael and Eutychius in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/392gcmp
T. at left (St. Metrophanes of Constantinople at right) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1330s) on the triumphal arch of the the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/ykbrj6l
T. (at right; at left, St. Ignatius of Antioch) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the altar area of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/4ctd7cb
Detail (T.):
http://tinyurl.com/4tl7suy
T. as depicted by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (Theophanes the Cretan) in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1546 or 1546) in the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
hhttp://www.santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/42700/42700.JPG
Irene as depicted on gold solidi from her reign:
http://tinyurl.com/ydmb35e
http://tinyurl.com/ydsolyd
http://tinyurl.com/ydvc8jh
Irene as depicted in one of the enamels of the later twelfth-century (1172) lower portion of the Pala d'Oro in Venice's basilica di San Marco:
http://tinyurl.com/y8vole2
The Seventh Ecumenical Council as depicted in the late tenth- or early eleventh-century (ca. 1000) so-called Menologium of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. Gr. 1613):
http://tinyurl.com/4ayg9pn
The Seventh Ecumenical Council as depicted in the early sixteenth-century (1502) frescoes by Dionisy and sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast (at center: Constantine VI and Irene [who did not attend in person]; the flanking patriarchs are almost certainly pope Hadrian I [who was represented by legates] and T.):
http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/118/276/index.shtml
The former church of Hagia Sophia in Iznik (Nicaea), scene of all but the final session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council:
http://tinyurl.com/yetyerf
A plan and a series of views of the remains of the originally fifth-century church of St. John the Forerunner in the Stoudios monastery are at no. 15 here:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/html/Byzantine/index.htm
Orthodox and other eastern-rite churches celebrate T. today. Today was also T.'s day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology until the latter's revision of 2001 (at which time he was moved to 18. February, his _dies natalis_).
Best,
John Dillon
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