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Monk, missionary, church leader, (titular) Bp. of Ephesus, hagiographer, and historian.
Born in 507 in Roman Mesopotamia, John became a monk already in his childhood. Since the late 530s, he mainly lived in Constantinople where he enjoyed good relations with Justinian despite his miaphysite convictions. John earned fame with his missionary campaigns in Asia Minor and rose, in 558, to become bishop and one of the miaphysite leaders in Constantinople. John participated in the debates to find a formula of faith that could be accepted by both the miaphysites and the Chalcedonians. He was a victim of the miaphysite persecution starting in 571 and repeatedly imprisoned until his death in about 589. He wrote the Lives of the Eastern Saints, a collection of hagiographic tales, and a large Ecclesiastical History, of which the third part dealing with the events of the 570s and 580s has been preserved.