The Monk Makarios, Hegumen of the Pelikiteia Monastery, was born at Tsar'grad (Constantinople). While still a lad he lost his parents. The saint fervently read the Word of God and became so absorbed with it, that he decided to devote his life entirely to God. He entered the Pelikiteia monastery in Bithynia, where at the time the hegumen was the reknown ascetic, the Monk Ilarion (+ c. 754, Comm. 28 March). After the death of this monastic head, the Monk Makarios was unanimously chosen by the brethren as hegumen. During the reign of the Byzantine emperors Leo V the Armenian (813-820) and Michael II the Stammerer (820-829), the Monk Makarios suffered as a confessor for the veneration of holy icons. He was dispatched to the island of Aphusia, where he died in about the year 830. 
