Joseph the Hymnographer was born around 810 in Sicily to a Sicilian-Greek Christian family that fled the Aghlabid Saracen conquest of Sicily (begun 827) — settling in the Greek-speaking Peloponnese.
He entered monastic life at age 15 at the monastery of Solomon at Thessaloniki, and later at Constantinople. Drawn to the community of St. Gregory of Decapolis (a disciple of St. Theodore the Studite), he became Gregory's disciple and spiritual son.
Around 840, during the second iconoclast crisis, Gregory of Decapolis sent Joseph to Rome to seek papal support for the iconodule cause. En route, the ship was captured by Arab pirates and Joseph was sold into slavery on Crete, where he spent years in captivity before being miraculously freed and returning to Constantinople.
After the Triumph of Orthodoxy of 843 under Empress Theodora, Joseph founded a monastery in Constantinople near the church of St. John Chrysostom, where he served as skeuophylax (keeper of the sacred vessels) of the Hagia Sophia under Patriarchs Methodius I and Ignatius.
He is the author of approximately 1,000 surviving canon-hymns for the Byzantine liturgical calendar — making him the single most prolific hymnographer in the entire eastern-Catholic and Orthodox liturgical tradition. His canons are chanted in the continuous liturgical use of the entire Byzantine-rite world to the present day. He died at Constantinople on April 3, 886.