Letter 423: Theodore Studite, Letter 423; Greek heading: Νικηφόρῳ τῷ ἁγιωτάτῳ πατριάρχῃ.

I wrote to you long ago, wretch that I am, not with an eye to a return of letters—since indeed no debt is owed by masters to slaves—but yearning to disclose something of my own disposition, since both longing and the occasion thus pressed upon me, not without reason. But you yourself, O divine and supreme summit of the sacred heads [i.e. the highest of the holy hierarchs], not only deigned to write back to the unworthy one, plainly bearing yourself in imitation of God, but also from the very superscription you displayed to us so great a divine height of your humble-mindedness [tapeinophrosyne, humility] that our pitiable mind was struck with amazement. Oh, the wonder! If one so great and of such dignity, having his virtue also flashing forth in equal measure with it, as the very facts themselves bear witness, called himself the son of a nobody, what shall the man who is a nobody and obscure name himself? And if the lamp of holiness should subscribe himself a sinner, what then shall the sinner and the destitute man even answer? Surely, even if nothing else had been written in the letter, this alone would have sufficed both to astound the mind of the one receiving it and to celebrate in triumph the unsurpassable quality of its sender in virtue. And since we lowly ones came to know the whole texture of the sacred book [i.e. the letter], then we rejoiced all the more, finding the whole body of the discourse fittingly completed to match its heading. You know, O holy one of God, what things you uttered under the moving of the Spirit, how you strengthened our feeble mind with the remedies of praise, how you rooted us together in patient endurance so as not to lose heart amid the afflictions, and how many other things were intimated, adorned with godly wisdom. But blessed be God, who in such an earthquake of impiety has bestowed so great a champion and at once a helmsman upon his own Church—unshaken, immovable, holding fast the word of life, kindling the light of confession for the world beneath the sun. And if the storm has by no means yet passed, even though some small clear sky has flashed out, we must not be downcast, O thrice-blessed one; for the Lord who has given the brief kindling-spark of peace is able, bowed by your God-inclined prayers, to spread open the whole spring of orthodoxy—and that, plainly, at the time when the cloud of wrath shall have been wholly changed and the longing of those who love God shall have been proved more brilliantly. These things I have now ventured, like some little puppy, to growl out to my truly good chief shepherd, who has also received the venerated handbook [encheiridion] with surpassing exultation.