Saint Niketas Bishop of Chalcedon

Niketas was a bishop of Chalcedon, the city on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus opposite Constantinople, who is venerated as a confessor for his defense of the holy icons during the second period of Byzantine iconoclasm. He is commemorated in the Orthodox Church on May 28. According to the synaxarion he was raised to the episcopate on account of his God-pleasing life, and he became known above all for his mercy and his care of the poor.

The accounts of his life dwell on his charity. He is said to have helped the poor, to have lodged travelers in his own home, to have cared for orphans and widows, and to have interceded on behalf of those who had been wronged. When the iconoclast emperor Leo V the Armenian renewed the persecution of the icons after his accession in 813, Niketas openly denounced the heresy and urged his flock to venerate the icons of Christ, the Theotokos, and the saints.

For this confession he suffered greatly at the hands of the emperor and his supporters: the tradition relates that he was subjected to tortures and sent into exile. He is reckoned among the confessors because he endured this persecution without renouncing the veneration of the icons. The synaxarion records that he died at the beginning of the ninth century and that many miracles of healing afterward occurred from his relics.