Letter 60: Theodore Studite, Letter 60; Greek heading: Βασιλείῳ ἡγουμένῳ.

In what your Honor has written, brother, you have shown yourself to be content with the penances and to be pressing on toward better things, just as not only the letter-carrier made plain, but indeed even before him our most honored brother Peter, who is beloved by you as well; at which I, the lowly one, was glad and gave thanks. For it is no small or contemptible thing that we have suffered, my good man, in having shared in the denial of the icon [eikon: the image of Christ venerated by the faithful] of Christ, but it is also exceedingly monstrous and, beyond all doubt, a denial of the faith, because the denial of the icon ascends to the prototype [the original whom the image represents]; and into this very denial of Christ all who have in any way shared have entered together. And since you have again confessed that you also, out of fear of the persecutor, gave permission to destroy icons, the transgression is graver; and because you said that you even signed [the iconoclast decree], the sin and the denial are of the whole body. What, then, must be done, since you both seek out the medicine of healing, and yet say that you cannot bear again the gradual imposition, putting forward your weakness and choosing rather to take on this or that? Both ways are narrow for me: both when I yield because of brotherly love, and when I lessen the medicine because of the magnitude of the sin. Nevertheless, being constrained the more by love, I appoint, with fear and trembling, these things: abstain for one more year, brother, from the holy gifts [Holy Communion], for both of the lapses, I mean both the casting down of the holy icons and the impious signature (for it is a signature even if you were only caught tracing a cross), while performing the same prayers and genuflections, apart from times of sickness. But since the penance is very slight, contribute as a counterweight the offering of a sufficient almsgiving to offset it. How much this should be, the brother Eusebius will indicate, whom, together with two other brothers, I have permitted, at your request, to be there in the manner of a dispensation [oikonomia: a measured concession from strict discipline], both so as to bring to rest those men who were wandering here and there, and so that you may have a consolation of good cheer, though not within the monastery in which place you reside, but somewhere else, on a small estate subject to the monastery. Guard yourself, therefore, beloved, henceforth, just as you also promised, so as never again to fall, nor indeed to go off into the sight of Antony, but to be ready to depart not only from the monastery, but also from the flesh itself, for the love of Christ.