Joseph the Confessor

Saint Joseph the Confessor was archbishop of Thessalonica in the ninth century, brother of Saint Theodore the Studite, a confessor of the veneration of the holy icons and a writer of hymns. He is commemorated on 14 July in the English source, while our calendar has him on 26 January. The sources do not agree on the year of his death either: 826 according to our record, 830 according to the Russian source, 832 according to the English source.

Family and apprenticeship

He was the son of Photius or Photeinos, a high financial official in the palace bureaucracy, and of Theoktiste, of a distinguished family of Constantinople. His maternal uncle Plato was also an important man in the imperial financial administration, so the family controlled a large part, if not all, of the imperial financial administration in the time of Constantine V (741 to 775). Joseph had an older and a younger brother (Theodore the Studite and Euthymius) and a sister whose name is not known. Together with his brother Theodore he struggled under the guidance of Plato, in the monastery of Sakkoudion in Bithynia. For his spiritual life he was unanimously elected archbishop of Thessalonica.

Confession

With his brother he spoke out against the unlawful marriage of Emperor Constantine VI (the "Moechian controversy"), for which he was tormented and imprisoned in a dungeon on a deserted island. Emperor Michael I Rangabe freed him from prison. Under Leo V the Armenian, when the second period of iconoclasm began, he was punished again with his brother for the veneration of the holy icons. In prison he was tortured but remained unshaken in his faith. The emperor demanded that he sign the iconoclast confession, and for refusing he was thrown into another, fouler dungeon. Under Emperor Michael II, Joseph and other monks persecuted for icons were freed. He spent his last years in the Studion monastery, where he withdrew in 830.

The hymnographer

He was a spiritual singer. He composed the triodia and stichera of the Lenten Triodion, a penitential canon for the Sunday of the Prodigal Son and other hymns. He wrote several sermons for feasts, of which the best known is the "Sermon on the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-⁠Giving Cross of the Lord".