The life of St Stephen the New
He became known for his fidelity to the veneration of icons at a time when the emperor Constantine the Fifth was enforcing a fierce campaign against it, culminating in a council that declared such veneration heretical. Stephen refused to accept its decisions. He was falsely accused of improper conduct with a nun, who died under torture without admitting any wrongdoing, and of tonsuring a courtier without permission. He was imprisoned, exiled to an island, and finally brought back to Constantinople, questioned by the emperor himself, and condemned to death; soldiers dragged him through the streets, where he was beaten to death, and his body was thrown into a common burial pit.
Some modern historians have suggested that the emperor's underlying quarrel was as much with the wealth and independence of the monasteries as with icons themselves, though the Church has always remembered Stephen chiefly as a defender of the holy images. His skull and other relics were later gathered and venerated in Constantinople.
