Venerable Lazarus the Iconographer

Vocation and Persecution

Lazarus lived in Constantinople, where he was a priest who led a strict ascetic life and painted holy icons. According to the tradition preserved in his vita, he became a monk at an early age and learned the art of painting, and was renowned for his almsgiving.

His life fell during the second period of Byzantine iconoclasm under the emperor Theophilos, who reigned from 829 to 842. Brought before the emperor, Lazarus refused to destroy the holy images he had painted, and for this he was imprisoned. On his release he resumed painting icons and was arrested a second time.

The sources describe his torture vividly: Theophilos ordered horseshoes to be heated in a fire until they glowed red, and these were then applied to the iconographer's hands, burning the flesh, because he dared to paint icons of Christ and the saints. He was saved from execution by the intervention of the empress Theodora, a venerator of icons, who according to his vita secluded him for safety in the monastery of Saint John the Forerunner at Phoberos on the Bosporus.

Restoration of the Icons and Later Work

After the restoration of the veneration of icons in 843, Lazarus was again free to pursue his painting. His vita attributes to him the repainting of the celebrated image of Christ Chalkites over the Chalke Gate of the Imperial Palace, an icon that had been a focal point of the iconoclast controversy, and an icon of Saint John the Forerunner painted for the empress Theodora.

He is regarded as the earliest saint to be glorified specifically as an iconographer, and additional works have been associated with his name in later tradition, including a fresco of Saint John at Phoberos.

Mission to Rome and Repose

Lazarus was sent in a delegation on church matters to Pope Benedict III, whose pontificate fell in the years 855 to 858, an embassy undertaken on behalf of the imperial court of Michael III concerning relations between Rome and Constantinople.

He died while returning from Rome. The synaxarion records his death in the year 857 and relates that his remains were taken to Constantinople and buried in the church of Saint Evandrus; other accounts give differing dates and a burial near the city, and the precise date of his repose is disputed among the sources.