PREFACE

The Monk Theodore, Abbot of Studio, is known in Church History as a great ascetic, as a confessor of the Orthodox faith, and as a teacher of monasticism. He was born in Constantinople in the year 759, A.D., of pious and noble parents, in the reign of the iconoclast Constantine Copronymos, and from his youth he led a virtuous life. Having by nature excellent gifts, Pr. Theodore also received a good external education: he was a rhetorician and philosopher. Being twenty-two years old from birth (781), he left the worldly life, and together with his father in the flesh and two brethren withdrew to live in Boscit, near Sakkoudion, within the boundaries of the Byzantine region, a wooded place and very convenient for wilderness dwelling, where later a monastery was founded. Together with them, Theodora's uncle, Pr. Plato, who was already a skilful monk at that time. Under his guidance, Theodore zealously asceticized in the field of monastic life. His prayer was fervent and unceasing, his obedience to his teacher was complete and unquestioning, his humility was deep, his labors were unceasing, and his abstinence was prudent. At the same time, the monk loved to read the books of the Holy Scriptures and the discourses of the Holy Fathers, especially Basil the Great, and was a strict executor of his monastic rules. Out of obedience to his uncle Pr. Platon, he accepted the presbytery in the 25th year of his birth (784), and in the 35th year, by the will of the same Platon and by the desire of all the brethren, he accepted the abbotship in his monastery, and at the same time intensified his asceticism, teaching all his spiritual children in word and deed. Three times a week he preached sermons to the brethren from the church pulpit; And throughout his life, even under all unfavorable circumstances, he did not cease to teach his instructions, full of spiritual wisdom and power, in writing or orally, to those seeking spiritual benefit.

During his abbotship, Pr. Theodore, among all the Holy Fathers of his time, was distinguished by zeal and firmness in the true faith and piety. He boldly denounced impiety and unorthodoxy not only in ordinary people, but also in the tsars themselves, for which he was exiled three times.

The first time he was exiled to Thessalonica for denouncing the lawless marriage of the Emperor Constantine the Younger with Theodotius (795); but during the reign of Irene (797) he was returned to his monastery, and soon, on the occasion of the invasion of the Saracens, he moved for safety to Constantinople, to the Studite monastery [1]. Here, when the number of his disciples greatly increased (up to 1000 people), Pr. Theodore established special kinds of monastic offices: steward, steward, etc., and wrote for his monastery a rule of church worship and monastic deanery: for everyone in the monastery, from the abbot to the cook, he set forth in detail the rules of what should be done and what should not be done, and determined the punishments for all, even minor, offenses. Theodore the Studite is all the more remarkable for us, since even in the time of Theodosius of the Caves it was introduced into use in all Orthodox Russian monasteries; about which in the life of Pr. Theodosius is written thus: "Give him (Pr. Theodosius) God knew the rule of Studio, and his blessed Ephraim the eunuch, who was then visiting that holy place, copied one by one, and brought to him: if our venerable Father Theodosius received the writing, he began in his Pechersk monastery to build everything according to the rule of the holy Studite monastery. And then, having begun all the monasteries of Russia, the perfect order (which had not been found in Russia before), was maintained, looking at the beginning of the Pechersk monastery in everything, and honoring it as the primacy" [2].

For the second time, Pr. Theodore was exiled to prison (809) not far from Constantinople because he opposed the intention of the Emperor Pichiphoros to introduce into ecclesiastical communion the presbyter Joseph, who had performed an illegitimate marriage over Constantine the Younger; but in the year 811 he was again returned to his monastery.

For the third time he was exiled by the iconoclast Leo the Armenian for his zeal and firmness in confessing the dogma of the veneration of holy icons, first to the fortress of Metopus, not far from Constantinople (814), and then transferred to Bonitus, to Anatolia (815), and finally to the Smyrna prison (819). In this last exile of Pr. Theodore endured so many beatings and great sufferings from hunger and thirst, from cold and heat, from cruel tortures and from his constant stay in a stuffy and cramped room, that he almost died. But even in such extreme circumstances, he did not cease to strengthen with his divinely inspired teaching the fathers and brethren and spiritual children who were kept in various places of the dioceses, exhorting, admonishing and imploring them not to depart from the confession of Christ, and not to lose heart in suffering for the truth. After the death of Leo (820), Pr. Theodore was returned from prison. And since the iconoclastic heresy in Constantinople did not cease, due to the indifference to Orthodoxy of Michael Travlius, the monk, not wishing to be a witness to the people's misfortune, did not remain in the city, but withdrew to the so-called Crescentian places, and then moved to the neighboring peninsula of St. Tryphon (823).

There, among his spiritual children, Pr. Theodore peacefully reposed in the Lord in the year 826, in the 68th year of his life.

Among the unceasing labors and feats of monasticism, abbot and confessor, Pr. Theodore wrote many books. The main of his creations are as follows:

A rule setting out the order of church services throughout the year.

Canons and Three Songs with Stichera Included in the Lenten Triodion.

A dogmatic sermon on the veneration of holy icons;

Epistle to the Emperor Theophilus and Letter to Pr. Plato, about the same. (Printed in the 99th volume of the Patrology of Minya).

Three Homilies, Seven Chapters, and Other Polemical Discourses Written in Refutation of the Iconoclastic Heresy. (Printed in the same place)

Homilies on the Feasts of the Lord, the Mother of God, in honor of the Forerunner and other Saints. (Some of them are printed in the same place).