Episcopate and the Seventh Ecumenical Council
Euthymius was ordained metropolitan bishop of Sardis, a major see in western Asia Minor, by Patriarch Tarasios of Constantinople in the period between about 784 and 787. His elevation fell during the brief peace in which the empress Irene and Tarasios worked to reverse the first phase of Byzantine Iconoclasm.
In 787 he attended the Second Council of Nicaea, recognized as the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which formally condemned Iconoclasm and affirmed the veneration of holy images. According to the accounts that survive, Euthymius played a leading part in the council's proceedings and advocated for the restoration of traditional icon veneration and the reinstatement of bishops who had been exiled under the iconoclast emperors.
Persecution and exile
Under Emperor Nikephoros I (802-811), Euthymius was deposed and banished together with other Orthodox hierarchs; he and his companions endured a long exile. Modern accounts associate this exile with the island of Pantelleria, while the synaxarion names the place of his banishment Patalareia.
When Iconoclasm was once more adopted as official policy under Leo V the Armenian (813-820) and Michael II the Amorian (820-829), Euthymius openly denounced the heresy and continued to defend the veneration of icons. For this he was arrested, whipped, and sent again into exile. The synaxarion records that Michael II tried without success to compel him to renounce the icons.
Martyrdom
Under Emperor Theophilos (829-842), the last of the iconoclast rulers, Euthymius was subjected to severe torture. The synaxarion relates that he was stretched on four poles and beaten with ox thongs, and that he died several days afterward from the effects of this treatment. Modern scholarship places his death on 26 December 831 in island exile.
Because he both confessed the faith throughout repeated persecutions and finally died from the violence inflicted on him, the Church honors him as a hieromartyr and confessor.
