Venerable Macarius of Pelekete

Macarius of Pelekete was a ninth-century abbot and confessor who suffered for the veneration of the holy icons during the second iconoclast persecution. According to the synaxarion he was born at Constantinople around 785 and bore the worldly name Christophoros; orphaned as a child, he was raised by a pious uncle and from his youth was well grounded in the Scriptures. He entered the monastery of Saint John the Theologian at Pelekete in Bithynia, received the monastic tonsure and the name Macarius, and after the death of the abbot Saint Hilarion was chosen by the brethren to succeed him as igumen.

The synaxarion relates that he was credited with the gift of working miracles, and that after he healed the patrician Paul and Paul's wife of an incurable illness, Patriarch Tarasius of Constantinople ordained him to the priesthood. As igumen he was esteemed as a spiritual father, and he guided the Pelekete community through the renewed imperial campaign against the icons.

Under the iconoclast emperors Leo V the Armenian (813–820) and Michael II (820–829) Macarius confessed the veneration of the holy icons and was imprisoned for it. Released after the death of Leo V, he refused the pressure of Michael II to condemn icon veneration and was exiled to the small island of Aphousia in the Sea of Marmara, where he died around 830. He is venerated as a confessor; the OCA records that he was succeeded as igumen by Sergius the Solitary, who wrote his Life.