Letter 63: Theodore Studite, Letter 63; Greek heading: Ἀβολίῳ καὶ Ἰωάννῃ μονάζουσιν.

Having received your greeting, you who are holy, from Isaiah, the most God-loving bishop and spiritual father, I was not only informed who your holy and fatherly pair is, but I was also moved to inscribe to you this pitiable letter. We, though lowly and sinful, nevertheless loving you, have given ourselves to this writing in order to kindle you into love, than which nothing is more to be preferred, and moreover in fulfillment of obedience. And indeed we give thanks to God that you also, in the earthquake of the iconoclast heresy [the doctrine that holy images must be destroyed], have remained unshaken, holy fathers, not having been caught in the soul-destroying communion that belongs to it, but rather, by your flight, having won the God-blessed crown of persecution, a thing truly worthy of virtue and manifest evidence of the ascetic struggles already accomplished by you; for from the things that have already come to pass everyone furnishes a proof of his former life. And it is well, and is so in yet another way too: you who are clothed in holiness have put on also the confession of Christ, having become beautiful in both. For the confession of Christ, fathers, is the championing of His holy icon [image], just as, on the contrary, he who denies it is one who sets Christ at naught; because, as Basil the Great says, the honor paid to the image ascends to the prototype, and in each the other is both seen and venerated [proskynesis: the act of venerating reverence offered to the image] — even though Leo, he of the beast's name [Emperor Leo V the Armenian] and the servant of Satan, raging in his madness through zeal for the impiety of Constantine of old [Constantine V, the earlier iconoclast emperor], raged against Christ, and against His holy Mother, and against every saint; may his memory perish with the resounding of an eternal anathema. But may you be preserved as pillars and foundations for the Church of God, and as defenders and consolers on our behalf, the lowly ones, before God the good, so that, having faith working through love, we may be saved from the evil one. And since we have written, fulfilling the work of love, may we also receive in return a word in writing, so that we may all the more come to know one another, and that, as seeing and being seen through written address, we may abide in Christ Jesus our Lord; whose undefiled icon is the salvation of the world, set against the error of the idols.