Theodore

Holy Hierarch Theodore was bishop of Gortyna in Crete in the sixth century. He took part in the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553, as the only bishop from Crete and the only metropolitan of Eastern Illyricum present there. The council condemned the Three Chapters. Theodore had also taken part in the local Synod of Constantinople in 536, accompanied by the archimandrite of the Monastery of the Cretans, Polychronius, who co-⁠signed its acts.

His name, with the title of archbishop, has been found on an inscribed architrave at Gortyna and, more recently, in a mosaic of the great early Christian basilica in the village of Metropolis, south of Gortyna, which was uncovered by chance in 1978; excavations began in 1991. In the view of the former ephor of Byzantine antiquities, Emmanuel Borboudakis, this great basilica was the metropolitan church of Saint Titus, and all the archaeological evidence supports this. Saint Theodore is commemorated on 25 July, in the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style).