According to ancient tradition, Lazarus was thirty years old when the Lord raised him; and from that date, he lived another thirty years on island of Cyprus until he finally fell asleep in the Lord.
Also it is said, that Lazarus never laughed till the end of his life except for one time , when he saw someone stealing a clay vessel, and laughingly said, “Clay stealing clay.”
His grave is situated in the city of Kition, now buried under the modern town of Larnaca, having the inscription: “Lazarus the four days dead and friend of Christ, ” but In 890 his sacred relics were transferred to Constantinople by Emperor Leo VI, who also called the Wise,((born Sept. 19, 866—died May 11, 912, Constantinople) as he was “Wishing to behold the tomb of Lazarus . . .”
The Emperor Leo was twenty when he ascended to the throne upon the death of his father of Constantive V, in 775. The following year, at the request of the army and with the support of the Senate and the citizens, Leo’s young son Constantine was crowned coemperor, passing over the caesar Nicephorus, a stepbrother of Leo. The resulting conspiracy in favour of the caesar Nicephorus was, however, suppressed, and the conspirators were exiled.
When Leo first assumed power, he did not continue his father’s fierce Iconoclastic policy forbidding the use of icons (religious images). but instead supported the proponents of icons, even appointing them to bishoprics. This action is though to be the result of Irene, who was strongly orthodox and his teacher Photius the Great, a devout iconolater and the chief author of the great Roman-Byzantine schism.
Emperor Leo’ image was is in a mosaic over the central door of Hagia Sophia; on the left is Saint Photius the Great, his mentor.
Leo wrote several decrees on a wide range of ecclesiastical and secular problems. as well as a funeral panegyric on his father, liturgical poems, sermons and orations, secular poetry, and military treatises.
Emperor Leo’s Hymns to Lazarus….
The Apolytikion is chanted right before dismissal, in the First Tone
O Christ our God, before Your Passion,You raised Lazarus from the dead to confirm the common Resurrection for all. Therefore, we carry the symbols of victory as did the youths, and we cry out to You, the victor over death, “Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. ”
Kontakion is chanted by the deacon in the Second Tone Christ, everyone’s joy, the truth, the light, life, the resurrection of the world, has by His goodness appeared to those on earth. He is the archetype of the resurrection, granting divine forgiveness to all.