Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology, inserted by Baronius from the Greek Mensea and Menology. Russian Kalendars. Authority: — A Life in Surius, This saint was bom at Maricat, a village in Bithynia, near the Apollonian lake, in 765. His parents were poor, and he was employed in his early youth as a pig-driver. He afterwards became a soldier, led a careless and disorderly life, and fell into the heresy of the Iconoclasts; but in the reign of Constantine and Irene he returned, at the exhortation of a solitary, to a belief in the reverence due to images, and was moved also, undoubtedly, by the fact that his present masters were diligent promoters of the cultus of images. He began at the same time to be sensible of his sins, and to desire a life to God. He began at once a penitential course, fasting and praying, and lying on the bare earth, though he did not leave the army for six years longer. But after returning from a campaign against the Bulgarians, in which he had distinguished himself, he quitted the service of arms and the vanities of the world, entered several monasteries in succession, so as to learn to read, and to conduct himself in the new service he was about to enter, and then retired to the side of Mount Olympus, on which he spent several years exposed to the cold of winter and the heat of summer, without a shelter for his head. Then he entered a cavern and lived therein on bread and water alone.

After twelve years of this stem life he entered the monastery of Eristae, and took the habit. He had the gift of prophecy, and many miracles are related of him. His reputation extended throughout the empire, and his authority was of great avail to sustain the orthodox in the persecutions of Leo the Armenian, and Michael the Stammerer. Peace having been at length restored to the Church, under the government of the Empress Theodora, S. Joannicus, already at an advanced age, enclosed himself in a narrow cell of the monastery of Mount Antides.

His prudence and moderation were of great advantage in guiding the impetuous Methodius, patriarch [the title of the bishops of the great ancient sees: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem] of Constantinople, in the reaction against Iconoclasm. Some fiery confessors were for denying the orders of all the bishops and priests who had been consecrated by Iconoclastic prelates. Methodius wavered, and applied to Joannicus for advice. The holy abbot advised him to treat them as erring brethren, and not to reject those who returned to Catholic usages, but only those who had been open and defiant Iconoclasts. This advice was followed, and the bishops and abbots who took the extreme view, and refused to acknowledge the reconciled clergy, were banished by the Emperor as mischiefmakers and disturbers of harmony.

S. Charles Borromeo. In 845 Methodius, hearing that S. Joannicus was dying, went to see the old man, and recommended himself to his prayers. Joannicus felt himself honoured by this visit, and foretold that the patriarch would speedily follow him. The saintly anchorite [a hermit, sometimes walled into a cell beside a church] died aA the age of eighty-one, on the 4th of November, in the sixth year of the Emperor Michael, 846, and S. Methodius died of dropsy, eight months after, on the