Elias 5 was head priest (protopresbyter) of the Church of Our Lady the Theotokos of Blachernai; in 787 he was present at the Second Council of Nikaia (the Seventh Ecumenical Council) as one of the official readers; he is attested at the fourth session, on 1 October 787, where he read out from the Canons of the Sixth Ecumenical Council; after the reading he confessed to the Council that he had been an iconoclast and guilty of persecuting the Church but had been converted after reading the present document, and after help from Tarasios 1: he is styled Ἠλίας ὁ εὐλαβέστατος πρωτοπρεσβύτερος τῆς ἁγιωτάτης ἐκκλησίας τῆς δεσποίνης ἡμῶν Θεοτόκου τῶν Βλαχερνῶν: Mansi XIII 40-41.

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