Letter 210: Theodore Studite, Letter 210; Greek heading: Ἀνεπίγραφοσ.

I learn, O my most blessed father, that you are imprisoned and, as it were, being tested in a furnace of fire by the impious. Would that it were possible for me to reach the prison that holds you, so that I might embrace that head which to me is holy and venerable, singing to you words of praise, because for Christ's sake you are being tormented, you go hungry, you thirst, you are pressed into a narrow place, you are buffeted, you are afflicted, and perhaps you do not even have the freedom to breathe the air; I forbear to speak of the revilings, the mockings, the threats, and all the other things that prison brings and that those who do evil are accustomed to do. On account of all these things I, the lowly one, am in pain over your holiness; I am in anguish, I writhe, I groan, praying for you, as a sinner, for endurance, for relief, for the completion of the contest. And indeed I believe that He who has begun in you the witness of His confession will also bring it to completion, unto the glory of His might, unto the praise of His Church, unto the boast of us who are least and feeble. All of us look toward you, all of us lean upon you, like those who are made ready to run the course in a second assault and who, by the victory of those who went before, either take courage, or, on the contrary, have shrunk back and do not have the vigor of manliness. We beseech you: make us manly; yes, yes, we entreat your fatherly bowels of compassion, give us a sign of victory in your unconquered swift courses, and not the opposite, which may it be far even to imagine. So that you are for us both a crown and a joy and a hope and a witness in the presence of Christ; who will grant to us, together with you who are worthy of God, to accomplish blamelessly the contest of His confession that lies before us.