Letter 8: Theodore Studite, Letter 8; Greek heading: Συμεὼν ἡγουμένῳ.

Your paternal Holiness, supposing our affairs to be above us, has, through its two sacred-handwritten letters, conversed with us about things strange and astonishing. But concerning the letter-carriers God was well pleased, the abbot having bowed in submission, that they should be taken back into their own monastery, your God-fearingness having done this well in bringing them back, through its instructive word, into the paternal and spiritual bowels of compassion. But concerning our brother who has deserted and been, as it were, cast out of the paradise of the cenobitic [communal monastic] life, I do not know what we should say; we too, having beheld the man formerly as truly a God-planted vine, wholly genuine, wholly fruit-bearing. And how is it that of late a boar out of the wood has ravaged it, and a wild solitary beast has devoured it, it having been turned, so to speak, into a deadly bitterness? For surely, having been delivered over to the untamed wild beasts of the passions, I mean love of the flesh and love of rule [ambition for office], is it not possible to see him now, in the contemplation of the mind, being eaten by them and torn to pieces as though from the mouth of lions? For divine Basil [Basil of Caesarea, the great monastic legislator], as you know, judges the falling-away to be equal in the case of one who irrationally withdraws and breaks away from his father, the divine profession [the monastic vow] itself being thereby cast off; and for this reason they are also liable to the same condemnation in the matter of excommunication and the other penalties. But for this man we pray, as sinners ourselves, that he may look up again toward the former light out of his dim-sighted and darkened understanding, and return home once more to his sweet father and his most beloved community. And the brothers themselves we exhort to stand nobly for the cenobitic contest and not to be shaken by the fall of the impious one, but rather, and all the more, to lay hold from this of a more genuine faith and an unbroken fellowship, even so far as blood, as the God-bearing fathers declare, so that by the perfection of their life of obedience they may bind upon themselves the crown of martyrdom on the day of judgment, dancing together with Dositheus and Akakios and Dometianos, those wholly all-holy men, who completed their way of life in perfect obedience. For today, as the rest of the utterances of your Holiness [indicate], there is every disorder and insubordination, since nearly everyone, so to speak, leans upon human customs and upon the holdings of those nearest to them, which are contrary to the commandments of God, and they choose rather to observe the way of life of this or that abbot than that of our divinely-inspired fathers. Hence the shepherds, of whom I am the first, have become foolish, and we do not seek out the Lord, nor do we track out the blameless and unshaken way of life, but as though the divine law had grown old and the Gospel had become idle and the spiritual ordinances had lost their force, and, that I may say something even more blasphemous, as though the unchangeable God had been changed; for this is what it amounts to, to speak and to lay the blame upon the times and the days and the generations, [saying] that those were of one kind and these of another. But I answer in reply that this has not been brought about by the difference of the time (for the heaven has not become of another form, nor of another motion, nor has the luminary, the maker of the day, become of another brightness, nor is the whole [universe] borne along and conducted otherwise than by the former order; for He established them, according to the oracles, unto the age and unto the age of the age; He set an ordinance, and it shall not pass away), but this has come about, O most holy one, by the alteration of the self-determining will [free choice], which has grown negligent of the divine love and has surrendered its own longing to material things, and is unwilling and does not choose to lay hold of the glorious examples, nor to copy from the archetypal and ancestral God-formed image, but [copies] from the misshapen and monstrous and prodigy-wrought ones. For this reason we bring forth images of the soul, having one part of a man, another of a dog, another perhaps of a leopard, another of a fish or of some other of the creeping things, your Holiness taking these in an elevated [allegorical] sense. Those, therefore, who babble such things out of deceit, let them either tear up with bared head the Gospels and the [accounts of] martyrdoms and the ordinances of the Lord and every book handed down by the saints; or, not doing this, let them put away the childish and unreasoning frame of mind, and, as men truly attaining to the maturity of the fullness of Christ, according to the God-given oracles, let them both walk and instruct the others; or, doing neither of the things that have been said, let them at least accuse their own self-will and profligacy. For perhaps there will be for them a time of recovery. But woe to me, most honored father, that, being guilty of all the things that have been said, and a minister of every perversity and crookedness, I have begun to lay hands upon others and to legislate. Let even the senseless stones themselves weep and lament over me, who am in danger at every hour and am wrecking the flock of Christ, which has been unworthily handed over to me. So much was I prompted to answer in reply to you who commanded it, O God-honored one. But may you yourself, being firmly fixed in the power of the Spirit and in the embrace of the lawful and ancestral commandments, remain unmoved and unshaken and undismayed by those things which have in manifold ways been brought in upon you by certain people, like winds or storm-surges of petty arguments, walking in the royal road of the unalloyed way of life, and running past the empty talk of men on either side, and praying without ceasing for our lowliness the best of things.

Ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς τὰ καθ' ἡμᾶς ὑπολαμβάνουσα ἡ πατρική σου ἁγιωσύνη, διὰ τῶν δύο αὐτῆς ἱερογράφων ἐπιστολῶν ὡμίλησεν ἡμῖν τὰ ξενίζοντα καὶ ἐκπλήττοντα. ἀλλὰ περὶ μὲν τῶν γραμματηφόρων εὐδόκησεν ὁ θεός, ὑποκλιθέντος τοῦ ἡγουμένου, ἀναληφθῆναι αὐτοὺς ἐν τῷ οἰκείῳ αὐτῶν μοναστηρίῳ, καλῶς τοῦτο πραξάσης τῆς θεοσεβείας σου εἰς τὸ ἀνθυπενεγκεῖν αὐτοὺς διὰ τοῦ διδακτικοῦ αὐτῆς λόγου εἰς τὰ πατρῷα καὶ πνευματικὰ σπλάγχνα· περὶ δὲ τοῦ λιποτακτήσαντος ἀδελφοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ ὡς ἐκ παραδείσου τῆς κοινοβιακῆς ζωῆς ἐξοστρακισθέντος οὐκ οἶδ' ὅ τι εἴπωμεν, καὶ ἡμεῖς ἑωρακότες τὸν ἄνδρα τὸ πρότερον ὡς ἀληθῶς ἄμπελον θεοφύτευτον, πᾶσαν ἀληθινήν, πᾶσαν καρποφόρον. καὶ πῶς ὅτι ἄρτι ἐλυμήνατο αὐτὴν ὗς ἐκ δρυμοῦ καὶ μονιὸς ἄγριος κατενεμήσατο αὐτήν, στραφείσης αὐτῆς, ὡς εἰπεῖν, εἰς πικρίαν θανατικήν; μὴ γὰρ ὅτι οὐ παραδοθεὶς τοῖς ἀτιθάσσοις θηρσὶ τῶν παθῶν, φιλοσαρκίας τε φημὶ καὶ φιλαρχίας, ἔστιν ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν ἄρτι τῇ τοῦ νοῦ θεωρίᾳ βιβρωσκόμενον ὑπ' αὐτῶν καὶ κατα σπαρασσόμενον οἷα ἀπὸ στόματος λεόντων; τὴν ἴσην γάρ, ὡς οἶσθα, κρίνει ἀπόπτωσιν ὁ θεῖος Βασίλειος τῷ ἀλόγως ἀναχωροῦντι καὶ ἀποσχιζομένῳ πατρὸς τοῦ καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ θεῖον ἐπάγγελμα ἀπορριπτομένου· διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τῆς αὐτῆς εἰσι καταδίκης ἐπὶ τῆς ἀκοινωνησίας καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιτιμίων. Ἀλλὰ τοῦτον μὲν εὐχόμεθα ὡς ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἀντωπῆσαι πάλιν πρὸς τὸ πρότερον φῶς ἐκ τῆς ἀμβλυωπαθοῦς καὶ ἐζοφωμένης αὐτοῦ ἐννοίας καὶ οἴκαδε αὖθις ἐπανιέναι πρὸς τὸν γλυκὺ πατέρα καὶ τὴν φιλτάτην συνοδίαν. αὐτοὺς δὲ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς παρακαλοῦμεν στῆναι γενναίως πρὸς τὴν κοινοβιακὴν ἄθλησιν καὶ μὴ σαλευθῆναι ἐκ τῆς τοῦ ἀσεβοῦς καταπτώσεως, μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐντεῦθεν ἐπιδράξασθαι γνησιωτέρας πίστεως καὶ ἀδιασπάστου συντεύξεως, τοσοῦτον μέχρις αἵματος, καθὼς οἱ θεοφόροι πατέρες διαγορεύουσιν, ἵνα τελειότητι τοῦ ὑποτακτικοῦ αὐτῶν βίου τὸν τοῦ μαρτυρίου στέφανον ἀναδήσωνται ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῆς διαγνώσεως, χορεύοντες μετὰ Δοσιθέου καὶ Ἀκακίου καὶ Δομετιανοῦ τῶν πάνυ παναγίων, τῶν πανυπηκόως τὴν πολιτείαν τετελειωκότων. σήμερον γάρ, καθὼς αἱ λοιπαὶ φωναὶ τῆς ὁσιότητός σου, ἀκρισία πᾶσα καὶ ἀνυποταξία, ἐπερειδομένων τῶν πάντων σχεδὸν εἰπεῖν ταῖς ἀνθρωπίναις συνηθείαις καὶ ταῖς τῶν προσεχεστέρων διακρατήσεσιν, ἐξ ἐναντίας ἐχούσαις τῶν ἐντολῶν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ μᾶλλον αἱρουμένων τοῦ δεῖνος καὶ τοῦ δεῖνος ἡγουμένου παρατηρεῖν τὸν βίον ἢ τῶν θεσπεσίων πατέρων ἡμῶν. ἔνθεν οἱ ποιμένες, ἐξ ὧν ἐγὼ πρῶτος, ἠφρονεύσαμεν καὶ τὸν κύριον οὐκ ἐκζητοῦμεν οὐδὲ τὸ ἀμώμητον καὶ ἀκράδαντον τῆς πολιτείας ἰχνηλατοῦμεν, ἀλλ' ὡς παλαιωθέντος τοῦ θείου νόμου καὶ ἀργήσαντος τοῦ εὐαγγελίου καὶ ἀτονησάντων τῶν πνευματικῶν θεσμῶν καί, ἵνα τι εἴπω καὶ βλασφημότερον, ὡς ἀλλοιωθέντος τοῦ ἀναλλοιώτου θεοῦ· τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι πρὸς τὸ λέγειν καὶ καταιτιᾶσθαι τοὺς χρόνους καὶ τὰς ἡμέρας καὶ τὰς γενεάς, ἀλλοίως μὲν ἐκείνας καὶ ἀλλοίως ταύτας. Ἐγὼ δὲ ἀνταποκρίνομαι ὡς οὐ παρὰ τὸ τοῦ χρόνου διάφορον τοῦτο ὑπήχθη (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἑτερόμορφος γέγονεν ὁ οὐρανὸς οὐδὲ ἑτεροκίνητος οὐδὲ ἑτερολαμπὴς ὁ δημιουργὸς τῆς ἡμέρας φωστὴρ οὐδὲ παρὰ τὴν πρὶν τάξιν φέρεταί τε καὶ διεξάγεται τὸ πᾶν· ἔστησεν γὰρ αὐτά, κατὰ τὰ λόγια, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα καὶ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ αἰῶνος· πρόσταγμα ἔθετο, καὶ οὐ παρελεύσεται), ἀλλὰ τοῦτο συμβέβηκεν, ὦ ἁγιώτατε, κατὰ τὸ ἐνηλλαγμένον τῆς αὐτεξουσίου προαιρέσεως, ὀλιγωρησάσης ἐκ τοῦ θείου ἔρωτος καὶ περὶ τὰ πρόσυλα τὴν ἑαυτῆς ἔφεσιν ἐκδεδωκυίας καὶ οὐ θελούσης οὐδὲ αἱρουμένης τῶν εὐκλεῶν ἐφάψασθαι παραδειγμάτων οὐδὲ μεταγράψαι ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχετύπου καὶ πατρίου θεοειδοῦς εἰκόνος, ἐκ δὲ τῶν δυσμόρφων καὶ ἀλλοκότων καὶ τερατουργημένων. διὰ τοῦτο τὰ ψυχικὰ ἰνδάλματα ἐπιφέρομεν, τὸ μέν τι ἀνθρωπείου μέρους ἔχοντα, τὸ δὲ κυνός, τὸ δὲ λεοπάρδου τυχόν, τὸ δὲ ἰχθύος ἤ τινος ἄλλου τῶν ἑρπετῶν, ἀναγωγικῶς ταῦτα λαμβανούσης τῆς ὁσιότητός σου. Οἱ τὰ τοιαῦτα τοιγαροῦν ἐκ φενακισμοῦ βατταρίζοντες ἢ ῥηξάτωσαν γυμνῇ τῇ κεφαλῇ τὰ εὐαγγέλια καὶ τὰ μαρτύρια καὶ τὰ δικαιώματα τοῦ Κυρίου καὶ πᾶσαν δέλτον ἁγιοπαράδοτον ἤ, τοῦτο μὴ ποιοῦντες, τὸ νηπιῶδες φρόνημα καὶ ἀλόγιστον ἀποθέμενοι, ὡς ὄντως εἰς ἄνδρα τελοῦντες τῆς ἡλικίας τοῦ πληρώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ, κατὰ τὰ θεοπαράδοτα λόγια καὶ περιπατείτωσαν καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐκπαιδευέτωσαν· ἤ, μηδέτερον τῶν εἰρημένων ποιοῦντες, κἂν γοῦν τὸ ἑαυτῶν ἀθέλητον καὶ ἄσωτον κατηγορησάτωσαν. ἴσως γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἔσται καιρὸς ἀνανήψεως. Φεῦ δέ μοι, πάτερ τιμιώτατε, ὅτι ἔνοχος ὢν πάντων τῶν εἰρημένων καὶ πάσης διαστροφῆς καὶ ἀνευθύτητος ὑπουργὸς ὡς ἐπεμβαίνειν ἄλλοις ἠρξάμην καὶ νομοθετεῖν. κλαυσάτωσαν καὶ θρηνείτωσαν ἐπ' ἐμοὶ καὶ αὐτοὶ οἱ ἀναίσθητοι λίθοι, κινδυνεύοντι κατὰ πᾶσαν ὥραν καὶ ῥήσσοντι τὸ ποίμνιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἀναξίως μοι παραδεδομένον. τοσαῦτά μοι προήχθη κελεύοντί σοι, ὦ θεοτίμητε, ἀνταποκριθῆναι. αὐτὸς δέ, ἐρηρεισμένος ὢν τῇ δυνάμει τοῦ πνεύματος καὶ τῇ περιλήψει τῶν νομίμων καὶ πατρίων ἐντολῶν, ἀκίνητος μένοις καὶ ἄσαλος καὶ ἀκαταπτόητος ἐκ τῶν παρά τινων πολυτρόπως προσεπεισφρησάντων σοι, οἷα ἀνέμων ἢ τρικυμιῶν λογυδρίων, βαίνων ἐν τῇ βασιλικῇ ὁδῷ τῆς ἀκραιφνοῦς πολιτείας καὶ τὴν ἐφ' ἑκάτερα παρατρέχων ματαιολογίαν τῶν ἀνθρώπων εὐχόμενός τε ἀδιαλείπτως ὑπὲρ τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν τὰ κράτιστα.