Andrew of Crete the Martyr

Venerable Andrew of Crete the Martyr was a monk and defender of the holy icons, killed at Constantinople in 766 or 767 by order of the iconoclast emperor Constantine V. He is venerated as a martyr in the Orthodox and the Catholic Church and is remembered on 17 October (30 October on the new calendar). He is not to be confused with the hymnographer Saint Andrew of Crete.

He was born in the first half of the eighth century on Crete and lived the monastic life in a place called Kastron. Learning of the persecution of icons, he came to the imperial palace and rebuked the emperor Constantine for heresy. For this he was seized, beaten and thrown into prison. As he was dragged along the ground toward the place of execution, a merchant cut his leg with a knife, and from this wound the saint gave up his spirit, in the Forum Bovis. The martyr's body was thrown into a ravine with the corpses of criminals, and only after three months was it buried by pious people at Krisei, where there was a monastery with a church of the Holy Apostle Andrew, later known as the church of Andrew of Crete. His death is placed about 760. A hundred years later Saint Joseph the Hymnographer wrote a canon for him. His relics rested in the church at Krisei, now the Koca Mustafa Pasha Mosque in Istanbul. Modern scholars hold that, like many iconophile saints of the iconoclast era, his figure is not historically verified.