Anthony the Confessor

Saint Anthony the Confessor was Metropolitan of Dyrrachium and then Archbishop of Thessalonica, a defender of the holy icons in the second period of the struggle against iconoclasm. He reposed on 2 November 844. The few details of his life are known mainly from the Life of Saint Theodora of Thessalonica (812-892), written by the priest Gregory of the metropolis of Thessalonica, who gives him a section of his own.

He is believed to have been born on Aegina, like Theodora, to whom he was related. It is not known when or why he came to Thessalonica with his sister Katherine, who became abbess of the convent of the Evangelist Luke, where Theodora's daughter Theopisti entered monastic life. Anthony received a fine education and embraced the monastic life while young. Because of his learning and virtuous life he was elected Metropolitan of Dyrrachium (Durres).

When the emperor Leo V the Armenian revived iconoclasm, Anthony delivered before him a discourse in defence of the holy icons. The emperor had him tortured, which left him with incurable wounds and shook his health, and then condemned him to exile. Saint Theodore the Studite wrote him two letters, one before 815 and one in 826, praising him warmly; the two men may have been friends from long before, perhaps from Theodore's exile at Thessalonica in 797.

In 820, when Michael II came to the throne, Anthony was recalled from exile. About two decades later he was elected Archbishop of Thessalonica, but his time there was short: he died a few months after the restoration of the icons, on 2 November 844. His body was laid on the left side of the Church of Saint Demetrius, in the chapel of Saint John the Forerunner. Forty-⁠six years later his relics were found incorrupt and were moved to the tomb of another, unknown archbishop of Thessalonica, perhaps Methodius.

His name is not in the synaxaria of the Church, but it is in the more recent lists of the Saints of Thessalonica and is mentioned in the second Service to All Saints of Thessalonica by the hymnographer Gerasimos Mikragiannanitis. His only known icon is a fresco in the Church of Saint Gregory Palamas in Thessalonica. He is commemorated on 2 November, by the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style).