Saint Stephen the Confessor, the Younger
Date of celebration: 28/11
Saint Stephen was born in Constantinople and his pious parents John and Anna raised him in the best Christian way. When he grew up, he was educated enough and later became an abbot at the famous Mount Agios Auxentios.
When the war broke out against the holy icons, he not only did not comply with the imperial orders, but also called the iconoclast kings heretics. He was denounced to the emperor Constantine Copronymus, who hoped by his personal imposition, when he brought him before him, to tame the mind of Stephen. But the opposite happened. Stephen, one of the people with “much courage in faith in Christ” (1 Timothy, 3:13), that is, with much boldness and courage in proclaiming the faith professed by those who are in communion with Jesus Christ, strictly check the Copronym face to face. He then imprisoned him and after days ordered his death.
So after they took him out of prison, they started stoning him and beating him with heavy clubs. A strong blow to the head ended Stephen’s life (in 767 AD). Then his body was thrown into the sea, but pious Christians who found it when the waves brought it to the beach, buried it with due honor.