Joseph the Confessor was a ninth-century bishop of Thessalonica and a hymnographer, remembered chiefly as the younger collaborator and brother of Saint Theodore the Studite. He was born into a prominent Constantinopolitan family, and with his brother embraced the monastic life under the guidance of their uncle, Saint Plato, at the monastery of Sakkoudion in Bithynia. On account of his ascetic reputation he was, according to the tradition, unanimously chosen archbishop of Thessalonica.
Joseph's career was defined by his resistance to imperial interference in church affairs. Together with his brother he opposed the irregular marriage of the emperor Constantine VI — the dispute known as the Moechian Controversy — and was imprisoned and, the synaxarion relates, banished as a result. A second and longer trial came during the renewal of iconoclasm under the emperor Leo V the Armenian (813–820), when Joseph was tortured and imprisoned for his veneration of the holy icons after refusing to subscribe to the iconoclastic confession of faith. He was freed under the subsequent emperors and spent his final years at the monastery of Stoudios in Constantinople.
Joseph is also honored as a composer of liturgical hymns. He is credited with contributing to the canons and stichera of the Lenten Triodion, including hymns for Holy Week and for the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. He is commemorated in the Orthodox Church on January 26 and July 14. (He is to be distinguished from his contemporary Saint Joseph the Hymnographer, with whom he is sometimes confused.)
