IOANNICOS, Saint. — Born in Tautamurgus in Bithynia, he was born in 754 at Mericati and died on 3 November 846.
As a soldier he fought in Thrace and against the Bulgars, but after converting from Iconoclasm he preferred the solitary life on Mount Olympus. When the Iconoclast persecution grew, he lived as a true wanderer. He was on familiar terms with St Theodore the Studite and St Methodius of Constantinople, to whom he foretold their elevation to the patriarchal throne and in whose hands, before his death, he made a celebrated profession of Catholic faith. He is praised in an apocryphal letter of the Second Council of Nicaea (B. Montfaucon,
Bibl.: Acta SS. Novembris, II, Brussels 1894, pp. 311–32, with two ancient Lives, by the monks Sabbas (ibid., pp. 333–34) and Peter (ibid., pp. 384–435); Martyrologium Romanum, p. 497).