Letter 426: Theodore Studite, Letter 426; Greek heading: Δημόχαρι λογοθέτῃ γενικῷ.

An encounter with good men gives confidence even to strangers to hasten toward them, not to mention those who are acquainted with them and have had experience of their good order. For this reason we, the lowly, take courage to write to your extraordinary and most pious Greatness, praising it, as is fitting, because you are a noble offshoot of a well-bred root, because you are a holy achievement of right discernment, because you are an eagerly sought ornament of manifold learning. From this you are welcome to emperors and spoken of by all; and on this account, exchanging office after office, you have risen up to the most eminent of those in high station, rightly indeed and altogether fittingly. And if it is also the case that you are beloved by us, the worthless, for the sake of that very virtue, this is not at all among the admirable things, on account of our being of no account; except that the occasion may suggest that even from worthless men an exhortation be brought to you. And this is, that you stretch out a hand to the Church among us, which has fallen by a downfall of impiety. This indeed we have heard that you have done, and we have prayed for you as sinners, and have blessed you from a labored heart, because also with a just reproof you reproved the arch-impious John [the iconoclast patriarch John VII Grammatikos, or his faction], saying as much as it was fitting for that abominable man to hear, things which, I think, have been made plain beforehand both to us and to many others; since there is nothing hidden which shall not be made known, as the oracles [Scripture] say, and otherwise too, because the leaders of impiety have most justly been shown to be guilty of such deeds. Do not, then, O my lord, leave off from your good struggle, but contribute to your most exalted eminence an equally weighty assistance, as one called by God to this task by the necessity of the time; for thus you will the more be held in good repute both before God who has shown his good pleasure, and before the emperor who has made a beginning of acting piously, and among all who champion the right word of the truth; and moreover you will thereby bestow upon yourself a protective remedy against the defilement that comes through communion with the heretics.