778–845), called the Grapti (from Greek: γραπτοί, "written upon"), are remembered as proponents of the veneration of icons during the second Iconoclastic controversy.

[1] Theophanes and his brother Theodore were born in Palestine near the end of the eighth century, sons of the Venerable Jonah the Presbyter.

In the course of their journey, in about 812, they landed in Constantinople, entered a monastery, and where in opposition to the Emperor Leo V (813-20) they energetically defended the veneration of images.

However, the Seventh Ecumenical Council had condemned Iconoclasm as a heresy, so they were detained, interrogated, beaten and imprisoned by order of the Emperor Leo V (the Armenian) in 815.

Michael's successor, the tyrannical and Iconoclastic Theophilos (829–42), exiled them again, but recalled them in 836 to the capital, had them imprisoned in the Praetorium of Constantinople and scourged several times, and had twelve lines of verse cut or tattooed into their skin (hence the nickname "written upon").

Theophilus beat them with his own hand and ordered that they be branded on their faces with twelve lines of ‘badly composed’ — the emperor’s own words — if metrically correct, quantitative iambic verses.

Next to Joseph the Hymnographer, Theophanes is the major contributor to the Orthodox liturgical book called the Parakletike.

[2] Thus Theodore Graptus's memory, which had nearly died out by the 14th century, received a rehabilitation of sorts through the attribution to him of Nikephoros's work.