James of Constantinople

Holy Martyr James of Constantinople is numbered among the martyrs who suffered for the holy icons in the year 730, in the time of the iconoclast Emperor Leo the Isaurian. The calendar commemorates together Julian, Marcian, John, James, Alexis, Demetrius, Photius, Peter, Leontius, the patrician Maria and the protospatharios Gregory. Of James it says nothing apart from his name in the list of the nobles.

After Leo removed Patriarch Germanus from his throne and put in his place the iconoclast Anastasius, a soldier climbed with a ladder onto the bronze gate of Constantinople to take down the wonderworking icon of the Saviour. The crowd rose, the patrician Maria pulled the ladder from the wall, the soldier fell and died (19 January 730), and the emperor put many Orthodox to death. The nobles Julian, Marcian, John, James, Alexis, Demetrius, Leontius, Photius and Peter stayed in prison for about eight months, receiving every day five hundred blows, but by the power of Christ they remained alive. By the emperor's order their faces were burned with red-⁠hot iron and their heads cut off. Their bodies were buried in the place called Pelagius's, near the church of Saint Theodore, and after one hundred and thirty-⁠nine years were found incorrupt.

They are commemorated on 22 August (new style).