Letter 82: Theodore Studite, Letter 82; Greek heading: Πέτρῳ Νικαίασ.

Although I have often set myself to write to your holiness, beloved and fatherly to me, I have been hindered by my sins (for I shall blame nothing else, up to the present); but now, having found both an occasion and a letter-carrier, I gladly greet at last and address that head which is to me revered and holy. For even if every lover of piety who contends on its behalf is exceedingly dear to my wretchedness, nevertheless a singular reverence attaches to me toward your fatherhood. For since I am loved, unworthily, by it, not unfittingly do I also love it beyond the many. And that I am cherished, the greatest proof was that, at the time of the testing of affairs [the assaying, as of a bell being struck], I was extolled and praised by it as being someone useful for the common advantage; and this not somehow privately and in a corner, but already even being referred up to the very ears of the chief priests [the higher hierarchy]. This is a mark of your friendship and, so to speak, of your hospitable speaking-up for a stranger, but something foreign to my own unworthiness, which even now still shudders at the praise of your godly-mindedness. So much, then, concerning this, since I am making for myself a kind of apology. But what of what follows? You, father, were lifted up and carried off; you were confined and removed beyond the borders. Report coming upon report alarmed and terrified us, your children, who knew not the manner of it, who were ignorant of the circumstances. For we, the lowly, as upon an anchor, in the heresy [the iconoclast heresy] that now tosses and seeks to sink us, have placed our confidence in your greatness, which steers and directs us by its God-strengthened firm stands [enstaseis, steadfast resistance] into a danger-free fair voyage. Make known to us, therefore, O blessed one, even in summary touch, how things stand with you, that by your support we may be girded about with strength. And in addition to these things, may you be strong in your prayers, may you anoint us with your exhortations, may you persuade us that the Lord will not in the end leave the rod of sinners striking his own Church; or if otherwise, that we are to bear patiently the delay which, by his unsearchable judgments of wisdom, he knows how to bring upon us, the lowly, altogether for our advantage.