A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

or SYNGELUS (MICHAEL). a Greek writer of the lower empire, several of whose works have been published. From his life of Theodore Studita, and from a letter of Theodore Studita to him (Theodor. Studit. Epistol. lib. ii. Ep. 213, apud Sirmond. Opera Varia, vol. v. p. 733), we learn that he was a contemporary, apparently a disciple in the monastic life of that busy ecclesiastic (who died A. D. 826), that he was Syncellus of the Greek patriarch of Jerusalem, Μιχαὴλ συγκέλλῳ Ἁγιοπολίτῃ, and that he supported the worship of images in the great controversy on that subject in the ninth century. From the title to his Greek version of a letter of Theodore Abucara (THEODORUS, literary and ecclesiastical, No. 3) we gather that he was Syncellus to Thomas who held the patriarchate of Jerusalem for about twenty years, from A. D. 801, or, according to other accounts, from 807. Michael. however, must have survived both Theodore Studita and the patriarch Thomas, for he suffered a long imprisonment for his defence of image worship in the reign of the iconoclastic emperor Theopilus, which extended from A. D. 829 to 842. (Theophanes Continuat. De Theophilo, 100.15. p. 66, edit. Paris, p. 106, ed. Bonn.; Cedrenus, Compend. p. 522, ed. Paris, vol. ii. p. 117, ed. Bonn.) Baronius places his imprisonment in A. D. 835. These few facts constitute all that is known of the life of Michael.

[J.C.M]