Letter 277: Theodore Studite, Letter 277; Greek heading: Εἰς τὴν λαύραν τοῦ Ἁγίου Σάβα.

To my God-honored, beloved, and spiritual father, the lord superior of the renowned Lavra [great monastery] of our all-blessed holy father Sabas, and to the holy fathers under him: Theodore, least of presbyters and abbot of the monastery of Stoudios. Great is my joy and an investiture of glory for me, unworthy as I am, that I have been counted worthy to dispatch my paltry letter to a holy place, to the dwellings of the holy ones who belong to your most longed-for fatherhood. For since it was not possible for me to come to your footsteps in bodily presence and to behold the holy precinct, your sacred enclosure, which I, the lowly one, hold in reverence as the city of God, the good God was well pleased, through the oversight of this letter, to fulfill the desire of my heart, sinner that I am. And so, as though present before your feet, I both embrace you with holy longing and venerate [proskyneo, do reverence to] the divine ground in which the chosen vessel of God lies stored up: the light of monks, the lamp of the inhabited world, the one who drowned the spiritual Pharaoh and the guide of the holy nation, the master of the holy land and the bestower of inheritance of the divine monasteries. I greet together with these also the remaining venerable shrines, upon which lie the sacred bodies of the holy ones, in whom the wealth of the virtues, in the night of this present life, was like stars shining with the light of God. I behold the place in which the pillar of fire appeared together with the pillar of the virtues, the victorious wrestling against the invisible enemies, the drama of wonder-working, this and that variegated by the operations of the Spirit according to each occasion. Oh, how many things does longing impel me to say, and propriety restrains me, lest the letter fall into excess; oh, how many tokens and memorials of good deeds are in you, capable, almost by the very sight of them, of summoning the soul to an advance in virtue. But let the first part of my discourse contain these things, even if it falls short of my desire; and I will pass over to another part, mournful and not joyful, on account of which the former was prompted to come into being for me. The wrath of God has overtaken us, O most holy fathers, because lawlessness has been multiplied and love has grown cold, as the Lord has said [Matthew 24:12], a persecution of pagan character, exceedingly grievous. Our chief shepherd has been driven from the fold; the sheep of Christ have been scattered; grievous wolves have been brought in to corrupt the flock, and indeed a wild boar has ravaged it. What is this? Once again here the august icon [eikon, sacred image] of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, of the Theotokos [Mother of God], and of every holy one whatsoever has been dishonored. For this reason shepherds have acted senselessly, and not because, to speak prophetically, they did not seek out the Lord (for the impiety would have been less), but because they were gathered together in Jewish fashion against the Lord and against his Christ [Psalm 2:2], rejecting his holy icon and that of his mother and of his servants. For this reason holy altars have been destroyed and the temples of the Lord have been darkened in every city and country of the authority here, set forth as a cause of mourning to those who behold them, stripped of their proper ornament of divine beauty; for this reason sacred vessels are being melted down, and divine vestments handed over to the fire together with the figures upon panels and the books in which anything is said concerning icons; for this reason the great mystery of the dispensation [oikonomia, God's plan of salvation in the Incarnation] is mocked, and the world-saving likeness of Christ has been called an abomination (which I shudder to say), or rather Christ together with his mother and his servants, since indeed in honor and in name both are the same, the icon and the prototype; for this reason there are searches and inquisitions both man by man and house by house, and fears and threats, that no one be left untaken by the heresy [hairesis], nor again any icon left; for this reason there are lawless priests and unmonastic monks borne against those of their own habit, disciples against their abbots, carrying off the presidency as the prize of their apostasy, and the one who has raged the most against Christ has been deemed worthy of the more numerous honors; for this reason there are scourgings, bonds, imprisonments, starvings, exiles, deaths upon those who resist. To the impious the high priesthood is not worthy of respect, nor is gray hair worthy of pity, nor the ascetic practice of piety, nor anything else of the things worthy of sparing; there is one law, the will of Caesar, and one zeal, that all be caught in this. The deserts hold those who have fled; the rocks and the caves hold those who have been preserved. Oh, how we have been made like a pelican of the wilderness [Psalm 102:6]; oh, how we have been handed over into hands, to the teeth of the impious; and I have passed over the greater part on account of its surfeit. But groan over us, O most compassionate ones, as those who share one body with us; stretch out an intercessory hand as those who love the brethren. Our affairs are reduced to a more savage barbarity than those in your region. We have already become as Sodom and have already been made like Gomorrah [Isaiah 1:9]. For this reason therefore we lowly ones have cried out to your holiness as with one mouth of all the brethren who suffer together with us; for we know that your righteous supplication, when set in operation, has power, so that by its propitiation the destruction of the heretical sword may cease, the Lord leading back also the church among us into peaceful orthodoxy. And in order that you too, O venerable ones, may know in part what manner of things are the impious dogmas of the godless, I have sent along with this letter these writings in quires [tetradia, gatherings of folded sheets], which I, the unlearned one, undertook to refute, having been urged on by pious men. And I ask that by your divine sagacity they be examined and what is deficient be set right, and that you receive me into pardon for the debts I have incurred, and that I be taken into remembrance in your God-inclined prayers, and indeed also that I be enrolled as the last member of all in the fullness of your holy church.