Andrew of Crete

Andrew of Crete (c. 650–740) was a Byzantine theologian, homilist, and hymnographer who served as Archbishop (Metropolitan) of Gortyna on the island of Crete. Born in Damascus and educated at the Lavra of Saint Sabas near Jerusalem, he served as a representative of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681) in Constantinople, where he contended against Monothelitism. He subsequently remained in Constantinople as archdeacon at Hagia Sophia and as administrator of an orphanage and hospice for the elderly. He is credited with developing the kanon as a major liturgical verse-form and composed the Great Canon of Repentance, the longest liturgical poem in Christianity at 250 strophes, still chanted in Orthodox Great Lent. He also left a significant corpus of homilies on Marian feasts. He attended the conciliabulum of Constantinople in 712 under the Monothelite emperor Philippicus Bardanes and briefly subscribed to the repudiation of Christ's two wills, but amended his course in 713; his veneration as a saint in both Eastern Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church rests on his larger theological and hymnographic legacy.