Theosterictus the Confessor

Theosterictus the Confessor was a Byzantine monk and abbot, born around 725 at Trigleia (present-⁠day Tirilye) in Bithynia, and he reposed there on 17 March 807. He suffered for the veneration of the holy icons.

While still young he became a monk at the monastery of Saint John the Theologian, also called Pelekete, in the Propontis, and rose to be abbot. His life and probable confession are told in the life of Saint Stephen the Younger, written by a deacon named Stephen. In 763, in the iconoclast persecution of Constantine V, while he was in church for the services of Great Thursday, he was seized by the general Michael Lachanodrakon, who came with a strong force and arrested the abbot and all the monks. Many were killed on the spot, and others were taken to prison in the region of Ephesus. Theosterictus was tortured: his nose, fingers and ears were cut off, and his beard was smeared with pitch and burned. The monastery was burned and destroyed.

The Greek sources seem to show that he did not die a martyr in the persecution, but was released and took refuge in another monastery that had escaped the persecution, where he reposed on 17 March 807.

The synaxaria record his memory in the Slavic Churches on 28 February and in the Greek Churches on 17 March.