The Holy Monastic Martyrs and Confessors who suffered with Stephen the New
Life
The Monastic Martyrs and Confessors with Stephen the New are a group of monks who suffered for the veneration of the holy icons during the iconoclast persecution of the Byzantine emperor Constantine V Copronymus (reigned 741–775). They were imprisoned in Constantinople together with Saint Stephen the New, the most prominent iconodule martyr of the period, and were executed after his own martyric death. The Orthodox Church commemorates them collectively on November 28, the feast of Stephen the New, as a single body of confessors rather than as separately venerated individuals.
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The companions
The synaxarion names the companions of Stephen the New by their first names — among them Basil, Gregory, a second Gregory, John, Andrew, Peter, and Auxentius — and states that they, with "many others," suffered for the veneration of holy icons together with him. Beyond these names and the fact of their shared imprisonment and death, the sources preserve little that distinguishes the members from one another; they are commemorated as an undifferentiated group of Monastic Martyrs and Confessors. Two of them, Andrew and Peter, are named alongside Stephen in an eleventh-century manuscript illustration depicting their martyrdom.
The iconoclast persecution
The companions belong to the wave of monastic resistance and persecution under Constantine V, who rejected the veneration of icons and convened the Council of Hieria in 754, at which the assembled bishops condemned icons and pronounced an anathema on those who venerated them. Monks were a particular target of the emperor's hostility. According to the synaxarion, when Stephen the New was taken to prison there were already 342 elders languishing there, condemned for the veneration of icons. Under Stephen's influence the prison was kept like a monastery, with the customary prayers and hymns chanted according to the Typikon, and people came in crowds asking for prayers.
Martyrdom
Stephen the New was seized by soldiers, dragged through the streets of Constantinople, and clubbed to death. The synaxarion records that after his martyric death his fellow monastics were likewise executed, sharing in the suffering they had endured with him in prison. For this reason the Church remembers them together with him on a single day, ranking them as Venerable-Martyrs and Confessors.
