NICEPHORUS, one of the Byzantine historians (see vol. iv. p. 614), surnamed PATRIARCHA, was patriarch of Constantinople from 806 to 815. He was born about 758 ; from his father Theodorus, one of the secretaries of the emperor Constantine Copronymus, who for his zeal as an image-worshipper had been scourged and dismissed into exile, he inherited literary talent as well as strong religious convictions. He was present as secretary to the imperial commissaries at that second council of Nice in 787 which witnessed the triumph of his opinions ; but court vicissitudes soon afterwards drove him again into private life. In 806 he was suddenly raised by the emperor Nicephorus I. from the condition of a monk to the patriarchate of Constantinople, and this office he held until 815, when he accepted deposition rather than assent to the iconoclastic edict promulgated by Leo the Armenian in the previous year. He retired to the cloister of St Theodore, which he himself had founded, and died there in 828. Nicephorus is the author of a valuable and well-written compendium (Breviarium Historicum) of Byzantine history from 602 to 770, first printed at Paris in 1616, of a much less important Chronologia conzpendiarict, and of one or two controversial writings against iconoclasm.