Letter 85: Theodore Studite, Letter 85; Greek heading: Ἄννῃ ἡγουμένῃ.

With what gladness did I receive what I heard concerning your Honor, when I learned that she has now been imprisoned for the sake of our Lord and God! O wisest of women! O blood of the blessed Theoktiste, fleshly at once and spiritual! This is for you the diadem of the ascetic struggles you have already accomplished; this is the new shoot of your proven obedience. How very great is your glory! How exceedingly brilliant your achievement! Noble sprung from the noble, both according to the flesh and according to the spirit. What discourse concerning you is not worthy of praise? What tongue is not a debtor of encomiums to you? But what is the thing sought after? That you bring your struggle to completion. Even if you are imprisoned alone, yet you are with Christ and the angels; even if it is bodily painful, yet spiritually it is a cause for rejoicing, since you do not look toward the things that are seen, which are temporary, but toward the things unseen and heavenly. If your work be brought to completion, what a thing it will be for you to dance in chorus with the confessors of Christ! Stand fast, I beg you, lady; be strengthened from on high. Do not be terrified of the emperor, if you must come before his face, just as the women martyrs were not terrified; nor of the stripping of the body and blows, if this too should come; for Christ is your covering, your help to be strong in all things, like Phebronia [Febronia, an early martyr-virgin venerated in the East] and those who rival her. These things I send you out of much concern and out of the love that is according to the Lord, that you may not become a denier of Christ.