The life of Epiphanios of Cyprus and Germanos of Constantinople
Chosen bishop of Salamis in Cyprus around the year 367, he served there for nearly forty years and became known above all as a fierce opponent of heresy; his long treatise the Panarion catalogued and refuted some eighty sects and philosophical schools, though by his own admission he sometimes wrote from hearsay rather than firsthand study. Near the end of his life, already an old man, he was drawn into the controversy over Origen's teaching and set out toward Constantinople at the urging of a bishop who was using the dispute to move against John Chrysostom; realizing too late how he was being used, Epiphanius turned back for Cyprus but died at sea before reaching home, in 403.
Germanus, born in Constantinople to a patrician family, was forcibly made a eunuch as a boy after his father was put to death by the emperor, and was given over to the Church. He rose to become Patriarch of Constantinople in 715, and when the emperor Leo the Third began to move against the veneration of icons, Germanus became the foremost defender of the tradition, corresponding at length with iconoclast bishops in its support. Summoned before a council in 730 and ordered to sign a decree against icons, he refused and was forced to resign; he retired to his family's home, where he died around the year 740.
