Letter 516: Theodore Studite, Letter 516; Greek heading: Ἠλίᾳ πρεσβυτέρῳ.

Your kiss, O holy man of God, is most venerable and preserves the mark of our shared soul; but your question, I do not know how to put it, is unsuitable and not in accord with our humility. For not even to this day have we heard of children being tonsured [shorn for the monastic life] by their father under compulsion and not willingly. For if they are altogether infants, that is, before the age [of discretion], the choice does not lie in themselves; for they are not yet capable of distinguishing good from evil, but the matter must be referred to the will of those who begot them, as in the case of Anna [Hannah], who offered Samuel to God, and of those who rival her in not fearing for the future, as Gregory, surnamed after theology [Gregory of Nazianzus, called 'the Theologian'], says somewhere; for he too was given to God before his birth. Yet the offering of such ones is not in every case successful, because of the sin committed by some; and here there is reason to consider both the person of those who are to be offered and the time, on account of the failures, since some offerings, as has been recognized both long ago and now, turned out well, while others turned out the opposite. But when the children are of sound mind and of lawful age, that parents should impose monastic perfection upon them under compulsion has neither been heard of nor has any basis in nature. And since we have been charged to give an account concerning things contrary to nature, in order that we ourselves may not be reckoned, by the foolish, to be likewise unnatural, or rather without understanding, among the senseless, let us set aside the elucidation concerning this matter. But you, the faithful and God-loving man, we remind and we implore to rightly divide the word of truth, having the word as fire, in imitation of your namesake [Elijah]. And the monk who has given himself over to fornications, admonish him, exhort him, enlighten him to recover from his fall and not to make the members of Christ the members of a harlot; perhaps the word, once it has touched him, may at last, like a spark upon drier material, kindle in him the love of Christ within the inner man, who has the recall made easy by the fact that the outer man has been made a monk. But the one who has utterly rejected the confession [of the faith], as one who has offended against the very Holy Spirit, from whom also comes the grace, you yourself must refuse, and so must everyone of the pious, not even to share salt with him, according to the commandments of the God-given oracles [Scriptures].