Letter 29: Theodore Studite, Letter 29; Greek heading: Λέοντι ὀρφανοτρόφῳ.

We ourselves wished to be present and to share in the misfortune that has befallen you concerning your blessed child, my most longed-for lord, and not merely to lament the suffering through a letter and to share with you in your grief. For how is it not pitiable, how is it not staggering, to suffer the loss of child upon child, and as it were to lose the living treasure, the wealth of the parental succession, the much-prayed-for fruit of the mother's breast, the most beautiful eye of the household, the rejoicing of the grandmother, the honored boast of the whole kindred? The first fruit came, and untimely it was snatched away from the parental hands. The second was born, and bitter death ravaged this one too. The third shoot flourished, a consolation for the former ones, blooming, most beautiful, carrying its viability into the span of three years, in which the souls of the parents hung suspended upon it; and alas for the calamity (for the suffering hinders even speech), this one too departed from your eyes and, what is yet more pitiable, not even before the sight of the father's presence. And why must one make a tragedy of the misfortune? Your heart has been cut through, the father's, the mother's, the lady patrician's, and a sword has passed through the midst of you both [cf. Luke 2:35]. And the pain will be healed not by word, not by consolation, neither from man nor from angel, but from God alone, who has thus appointed the bounds of our life; for it is he, my master, who has taken to himself your thrice-longed-for child, just as he also took to himself those who went before. Grievous indeed, and exceedingly so, is your case, but not at all so for those who have been taken up, since, undefiled and unstained from sins by reason of their newborn state, having withdrawn from the things here below toward the blessed and impassible life, they dance in the bosom of Abraham, they are gathered together with the holy infants, they sing in chorus with the children who bear Christ. So the fairest children have not perished, but have been preserved for you and abide; and you shall look upon them a little later, when this temporal life receives its end, rejoicing and exulting not in a brief span of age, but in the perfection of the fullness of Christ, as it is written. Therefore we exhort and we entreat you to charm yourselves truly with these reflections and thereby to remove from the soul the immoderate grief. For the Lord has given us measures, that we may both display our natural affections [literally, our natural bowels] and not overstep the bounds of self-sufficiency; for the one moves the Divine to mercy, while the other makes us bear ourselves contrary to the ordinances of providence. And the one gladdens those who have departed, while the other is wont to grieve those very ones who have obtained repose; for everyone wishes to rejoice in his own joy, but not that those who profess to love him should be grieved. And we believe that the lady the chartularissa [wife of a chartularios, a senior fiscal or administrative official] will again conceive in the womb and will bear a son no longer destined for a swift death, but living long days for the succession of the family, only if we moderate the suffering and render the thank-offerings on behalf of the child, in deed and in word, acceptable to the Master Christ.