Baring-Gould’s sources: Venerated by the Greeks. Authority: — The life in Greek written, if not by a contemporary, at least very shortly after the time of the saint.] S. John was a native of the Kertch promontory of the Crimea. His parents Leo and Photina were pious people, who dedicated their son to God from early childhood. The bishop of the Goths of Tauro-Scythia having subscribed the decree against the use of sacred images formulated by the council of Constantinople in 754, under Constantine Copronymus, was appointed, as a reward for his compliance with imperial prejudice, to the less remote and more lucrative bishopric of Heraclea, in Thrace. The faithful Goths in the Chersonese refusing to acknowledge the decree of the council, chose John to be their bishop. John went to Jerusalem, and on his return was consecrated by a Catholic bishop. He wrote a defence of the use of holy images, and sent it to the patriarch of Jerusalem, and on the death of Leo IV., in 780, he sent it to Paul, patriarch of Constantinople, and followed it up by visiting Constantinople, where he found that Paul, through real or assumed penitence for his having acquiesced in the condemnation of images, had vacated the patriarchal see and retired into a monastery. John assisted at the second council of Nicaea, and then returned to his flock to find them a prey to the incursions of the barbarians; having escaped from the Chazars who had captured him, he took refuge at Amasea, where he died.