Letter 333: Theodore Studite, Letter 333; Greek heading: Ἰωσὴφ ἀδελφῷ καὶ ἀρχιεπισκόπῳ.

As far as letters go, I have learned nothing of your health. But alas for my sins, that it has come to this; for it was reported to me by the brethren that these things, together with others, have been lost. And behold, the working of the devil! Yet glory to God, who hid them from those in power; for many were about to be endangered. But because the iambic verses also perished along with them, those which you did well to compose in measured lines against the iconoclasts [eikonomachoi, the "image-fighters" who rejected the veneration of holy icons] (and surely you were not going to send them out altogether uncopied and unmarked), these things, as is natural, have grieved us. And I the lowly one once again greet your Holiness, longing for your honored face (and indeed, whose before yours? and is it not always so?), not so much from nature as from our common labor together, a labor not raised up from the ground but worked from heaven almost from the very starting-gate down to the present, as all know and as those who begot us shaped it, let me say both bodily and spiritually. And may it be that we remain thus also for what lies ahead, and that I am not separated from your virtue by the multitude of my sins, being held together by the divine love of mankind and by the intercession of those who brought us into the light. Such, then, are the matters of my prayer. As for the other matters, of what sort and how many they are, worthy of the groanings and lamentations over the Church of God, by now you surely must be hearing them; for things which not even those who in former times took up heresy [hairesis] perpetrated against Christ, these have now been wrought more madly. And Christ sleeps, and the briny sea of unbelief has risen to its crest, working utter destruction. But may there be with you the genuine ones among the disciples, rousing Christ to rebuke and to lay calm the peril. Gone from me also is the sponsor of my [monastic] habit, a good man, who carried off the prize of confession in so very grievous an illness that he was scarcely able even to turn himself upon his bed. How? By standing firm, and being seized, and imprisoned, and then also exiled, and by this completing his martyrdom. The Lord, then, did not overlook his obedient labors, as many as you know, even though he was caught, according to my sins, among the Moechians [the "adulterers," Theodore's name for the party that had condoned the emperor Constantine VI's unlawful second marriage], by reason of his sparing his body, not consenting in his mind, as the events showed. For this reason, by God he was also torn away from that faction and rendered the victory to the other side, just as did the Medikiotes [the abbot of the monastery of Medikion], and indeed also the man of Nicaea, as I was assured by their own letters. And why do I speak of this one and that one? For I am persuaded that each of those who are standing firm is in this same condition. But indeed our true patriarch himself is one who confesses the truth, as I learned from the mouth of one who heard it from him and who praised his steadfastness at that time. I have said these things, at once fittingly honoring the one who has departed, and at the same time making known to your Holiness the things that are owed. But you know that the evil hidden in the bosom, Leontios, once one of ours, was carried off together with the Moechians earlier, and now is a champion of the iconoclasts. For this reason he has also taken over the affairs of Stoudios and unlawfully rules over Sakkoudion. From the unclean nothing clean comes; such as is the one who begot according to the flesh, such indeed is also the offspring. May God turn him about by your holy prayers, and may He establish me, the sinner, in the fear of Him. I greet those who have been deemed worthy to minister to your Honor. He who is with me bows down before you as a servant.