Letter 401: Theodore Studite, Letter 401; Greek heading: Ἀναστασίῳ πρωτοσπαθαρίῳ.

How fair a thing is friendship, both for other reasons and because, even when absent, it is wont to benefit those it loves as though it were present. Such indeed is your conspicuous love and piety toward me, the wretched one, long ago and down to the present day, both when present before my eyes and now, separated by so immeasurable a distance: benefiting me from Sicily when I was in Byzantium, and from Byzantium when I was confined here and there, just as also at the present moment. And what is this, that toward a sinful man, one unworthy of your nobility, you act in such a way? It can only be because I love you exceedingly on account of your virtue in all things and your love of God [philotheia], which not only Sicily and this land here and a certain person sing of, but indeed the imperial city itself. For this reason you are dear even to emperors and to those in office, and your dignities come to you from your virtue. Loving God in this way, you are loved both by Him and by those who are His. But I, for my part, am at once bereft and at the same time orphaned. My father has forsaken me, having departed to the Lord, as you too have surely learned, and likewise also Kalogeros [a fellow monk]. The brother and archbishop alone has been left to me; but he too, on account of the dreadful things that have now overtaken us, has been torn very far away. I am hemmed in on every side, yet, because it is for Christ's sake, this is both exceedingly sweet and most spacious. But what is one to do against the surging flood of unbelief, in which there is, as far as the dominion under our sway is concerned, a shipwreck of the whole world? Behold, my lord, into what evils we have been delivered up, falling little or not at all short of Judaism, when the icon [eikon, image] of Christ, of the holy Mother of God [Theotokos], and of every saint is set at naught, treated as nothing, insulted. For Christ Himself, together with His Mother and His servants, is the one who undergoes these things, even if it does not seem so to those who deny it. But may the Lord guard you in the right understanding, unbaptized [into heresy], even if you are sprinkled from without by the heretical waves (since it is not possible for you to escape them altogether, turning about in their midst); and may He grant you the reward for my lowliness many times over, both here and in the age to come.