Saint George the Confessor and Bishop of Antioch, in Pisidia

Commemorated on April 19.

Saint George the Confessor, Bishop of Antioch in Pisidia, lived during the Iconoclast period. In his youth he became a monk, was known for his holiness of life and was made bishop of Antioch in Pisidia.

Saint George was at Constantinople during the iconoclastic persecution under Emperor Leo the Armenian (813-820). He denounced the Iconoclast heresy at a Council of bishops, calling on the emperor to abandon it. When Saint George refused to remove the icons from the church, as ordered by the emperor’s decree, he was exiled to imprisonment (813-820).