Byzantine monk and saint (born 735)

Plato of Sakkoudion

Plato the Studite, also Plato of Sakkoudion, was a Byzantine minor official who became a monk in 759. After refusing the metropolitan see of Nicomedia or the headship of a monastery in Constantinople, in 783 he founded the monastery of Sakkoudion on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, of which he became the first abbot. He is notable, along with his nephew Theodore Stoudites, for his iconodule stance during the Byzantine Iconoclasm and his participation in the Second Council of Nicaea, and to his firm opposition to the second marriage of Emperor Constantine VI to his (Plato's) niece Theodote. He was canonized by the Church, and his feast day is April 4.