Saint George the Younger

This week’s Saint of the Week is Saint George the Younger who was born in 776 to a wealthy family.  He joined a monastery at 17 years of age and became Bishop of Mitylene, Greece at 27.  He was called the younger because he was the youngest of two previous Bishops, also named George.  Saint George opposed Emperor Leo the Armenian, in what has come to be known as the iconoclast wars, defending the practice of holy icons. Iconoclasm is a heresy that forbade the veneration of holy images, which was wrongly thought to be worship of the images themselves. The dispute resulted in the destruction of countless, priceless Christian images in the early church. Saint George was exiled by the emperor to modern day Ukraine, where he died of natural causes in the year 816.