Letter 281: Theodore Studite, Letter 281; Greek heading: Ἀρσενίῳ μοναχῷ.

I received the letter of your love, and on attentively pondering it I groaned over the theatrical performance that has taken place, or rather over the downfall of those who seem to be something, by which your father, who is my brother of one soul, was also taken captive. His former defeat grieved me beyond all the others, just as now his renewed struggle has greatly gladdened me. And I praised exceedingly your painstaking labor, brother, on behalf of that same superior [your father, who was an abbot], because the heartfelt and fiery words of your confession are truly the loving entreaties of a true disciple and the laments of a child that does not lie. For in very truth the collapse and embodiment of the Christ-fighting heresy [iconoclasm, which Theodore regards as making war on Christ] is a death of the soul, as is even a single communion with it on the part of one who has been taken captive, and this after a noble resistance, and this too in a rank that is indeed priestly and abbatial. Fittingly, then, O most prudent one, did you weep; with full understanding did you lament, beholding the paternal misfortune as a bloodstained garment, or rather a spiritual devouring by a wild beast, uttering, as it were, those words: 'An evil beast has seized—not the Joseph whom Jacob of old was mourning, who had been sold by his brothers under the pretense of the tunic that was shown to him, but my father; a man-shaped beast, Joseph [Joseph, the iconoclast patriarch placed over Constantinople], who is accustomed to hunting down those who share his impieties—but not his "dispensations."' [oikonomia, dispensation: the iconoclast claim that communion with them was a permissible accommodation rather than heresy.] That man, brother, in former times also took captive not a few in transgressions of the Gospel; that man even now, having dogmatized communion as a "dispensation" with respect to the rejection of the icon [eikon, image] of Christ, has dragged down with him into the fall those who were lawlessly persuaded. Such, then, is he; but you are blessed, since you wept, and with both your hands drew your father back up together [with you], and established him once again in the same confession; for so it is. And rejoice, because he is alive in the Lord, even if he had first died; for He will strike, it says, and bind up the wound, and on the third day will raise up. Who does these things? He who raised Lazarus, four days dead, from the tomb, and who has now in turn made alive your father—and mine as well. Be glad, be glad, and weep no longer the weeping of Martha [Martha, who wept for her dead brother Lazarus], inasmuch as you are able, even from this point on, to help him—to whom I have also written.