Letter 398: Theodore Studite, Letter 398; Greek heading: Βασιλείῳ πατρικίῳ.

It is the work of your God-honored condescension not only to bring our brother into your holy sight and to converse with him in the spirit about the matters that seemed good, so gently and moderately, but also that you brought the lady patrician [the patrician's wife], reverend to me as well, together with your most noble offspring, and bidden them to bow not their head but their knee toward him. Oh, your supreme humility! Oh, your God-loving prudence! Oh, your surpassing faith amid sinners! And you shall not fail of the reward of a good acceptance because of all these things; and still more, with good reason, in the account of virtue, you, my lord, beloved both in blood and in spirit, have become so in the eyes of all who have come to know and who behold you. And witnesses of this account are your eminences in dignity, which have proved to be the prize of virtue; for which, together with the law of nature, having formed your sons and daughters along with your consort, you have set forth in them images [eikones] truly vivid of your piety, recognized most unerringly from the likeness to you that appears in them. But the account concerning this matter is of such a kind. Yet what consoling word upon the suffering for your most beautiful scion, namesake of the Forerunner [John, sharing the name of John the Baptist, the Forerunner of Christ], might I, the lowly one, find, that might soften a little the grievous thing weighing upon your honored souls? Since it was reported to me by the brother himself what the pain was like, what the tears were like, dripping hot from the eyes, and the cries, the lamentations and the groanings, so that to me too, having heard each of the boy's excellences, I came near to suffering something of the same suffering with you. Oh, how we have been made like the divine David, who sang a mournful psalm over his son! But if he sang thus over one who was wicked and rose up against him and paid the just penalty of parricide, what must be said here, and how great a contribution of words must be made? A boy is gone, leading the very prime of his age, well educated both in manner and in speech, graceful both in character and in voice, drawing the beholder into love by the very sight of him; and what is greater, pure in body, white in soul, the one by virginity, which is most worthy of admiration, not having been caught after the manner of the broken-minded, but leaping over the passion, the other by his non-participation in the heresy [hairesis] now raging like the corybants [iconoclasm, which Theodore regards as a frenzied heresy]. And here a thing marvelously ran together into one and the same: incorruption, incorruption of soul and of body. How praiseworthy the parents, having been named fathers of such a boy, having brought forth a most well-formed scion not only bodily but indeed also spiritually! How blessed the offspring, at once resembling his father and at once having conformed himself to Christ; who, by honoring virginity with virgin birth, has taken your son as his attendant, as a son of light. What then? Is the spectacle one of weeping or of joy? Plainly of gladness, even if his separation has wrought grief in you. He now rejoices with joy in heaven, established as an intercessor. We ought therefore to rejoice together with him who rejoices henceforth, and not to grieve him by grieving. Let the discourse have its end, carrying with it the thanksgiving and the acknowledgment for the blessing that was sent.