St. Theodore was an eighth-century monk from Jerusalem who became a prominent defender of icon veneration. Alongside his brother Theophanes, he resisted the second Iconoclastic period in the Byzantine Empire. During the reign of Emperor Leo V, the brothers faced imprisonment and physical abuse for their religious convictions. They are famously known as the Grapti, or the "written upon," because the Emperor Theophilos ordered verses to be tattooed onto their skin as a form of punishment.