Platón

Who they were

Plato was orphaned in Constantinople at thirteen and trained by an uncle who was imperial treasurer, but at twenty-four he gave up his prospects and became a monk at Symboleon on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, where he copied books and in 770 became abbot. He refused the see of Nicomedia and would not even be ordained priest.

He later governed the monastery of Sakkudion and handed it to his nephew St Theodore Studites. Uncle and nephew opposed the emperor Constantine's second marriage, and Plato was imprisoned, exiled and later banished again by Nicephorus. Released in 811, he spent his last years bedridden and died on 4 April 814.

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

A Byzantine abbot and uncle of St Theodore Studites, persecuted for resisting imperial misconduct.