Letter 86: Theodore Studite, Letter 86; Greek heading: Λέοντι πατρικίῳ.

If you yourself do not grow weary of doing good to my lowliness out of compassionate love of mankind, how then shall I bear not to make some return to your good soul, if only by a word? Oh, your sympathetic disposition! Oh, heart full of mercy! Oh, soul that loves compassion! You seem to me, my lord, like an ever-flowing spring that refreshes me from a thirst both of the senses and of the mind, or rather like a paradise filled with every kind of seasonable fruit, from which it is granted me to enjoy the things I desire. And truly there is nothing among all that exists that can be given in exchange for a faithful friend. As for me, I count you worthy to be addressed as father, since you have displayed toward me the marks of a father's love from old times down to the present; which is indeed a thing to marvel at, that neither time nor manner of affliction, nor occasion of trial, nor the stripping away of one's possessions through malicious assault, nor anything else, small or great, has blunted the fullness of your goodness. And yet we see that in the case of parents the natural affection is not in every case preserved, but there are times when it slackens or even is turned into enmity through some occurrence or other. But in the case of your greatness of nature and your piety it is not so; for you are ever the same and unchanging, since you have acquired the love of God, who is unchanging and ever constant. To you, then, O man of God, belongs such glory; but I am afraid lest at some time the abundance of your goodness should become a matter of judgment against me; for what could I, a poor man, render in return, except a prayer cast aside as worthless? I ask, therefore, my good God to bring about, in place of my lowliness, his oversight [episkope, divine watchful care] over you toward every kind of salvation, but most of all against the raging Christ-fighting heresy [hairesis; here the iconoclast heresy that 'wars against Christ' by rejecting the veneration of his image].