Nikola Ispovednik

Who they were

Nicholas the Confessor came from the island of Crete. He went to Constantinople to visit his kinsman Theodore, abbot of the Stoudios monastery, stayed there and became a monk, and as a monk took up every labour for the saving of his soul. In the persecution of Christians under Leo V the Armenian both Theodore and Nicholas were harshly tortured, and after Theodore's death Nicholas became abbot of the Stoudios.

He is said to have healed Eudokia, the wife of the emperor Basil, and Helen, the wife of the patrician Manuel. When the nobleman Theophilos Melissenos, whose children did not survive, brought him his newborn daughter, he blessed her and foretold that she would live and have many children, which came about to her parents' joy. He died in 868, and the Orthodox Church keeps his day on 4 February.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

An abbot of the Stoudios monastery tortured for the holy images.