The life of St Tarasius of Constantinople
When the elderly Patriarch Paul resigned in 784, urging Irene toward Tarasius as his successor, Tarasius accepted only on the condition that a council be called to resolve the controversy over icons that had divided the empire for decades; he was then carried in rapid succession through deacon, priest, and bishop before his consecration as patriarch. The council he had asked for met first in Constantinople in 786, where soldiers loyal to the old iconoclast settlement broke up the assembly, and then, once the troops had been removed from the city, reconvened at Nicaea in September 787. There, under Tarasius's presidency, the bishops condemned iconoclasm and restored the veneration of icons to the Church's worship. He governed the see for twenty-two years afterward, living simply and giving away what he had to the aged, the poor, and orphans, and reposed in Constantinople in 806.
