The life of St Basil the Confessor
They remained imprisoned for years, their release coming only with the death of the emperor who had condemned them, at which point Basil and Procopius, along with others who had suffered the same cause, were finally set free. Rather than withdraw from public life after such an ordeal, Basil returned to his ascetic labors and spent his remaining years instructing others in the Orthodox faith and in the life of virtue, work he continued until his peaceful death in the year 750. He is remembered together with Procopius, his companion through imprisonment and exile, and is carefully distinguished in the Church's own records from a separate, unrelated confessor bearing the same name, Basil the Confessor, Bishop of Parium, who resisted the same heresy in the same era but as a different man entirely.
