St Stephen the Younger

Stephen the Younger is one of the great monk-martyrs of the Iconoclast persecution. Still a teenager, he was placed in the monastery of St Auxentius near Chalcedon, later sold his inheritance for the poor, settled his mother and sister in religious life, and eventually became abbot over the scattered cells on the mountain.

After years of rule and manual labor he withdrew to a still harsher solitude in a tomb-like cell, but the attack on holy images under Constantine Copronymus dragged him back into public conflict. Because Stephen would not bend to the imperial policy against images and monks, he was slandered, imprisoned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Constantinople, and finally killed by a mob inflamed by that persecution.