‘WE REVERENCE THE HOLY IMAGE, O BLESSED ONE. . . ‘
826
Saint Theodore called “the Studite” after Studios, Constantinople’s leading monastery, which he revived, populated with over 700 monks, and launched on its period of maximum influence in studies, culture, and Church affairs.
As the formost mentor of Byzantine monasticism since St. Basil the Great, Theodore is principally responsible for making it more cenobitic, and in that way more “Basilian”; but he also succeeded in retaining much of the spirituality of the more solitary laura system.
Studios came into its own during the second and final Iconoclast persecution when Abbot Theodore, true to the great prophetic tradition of that monastery, had his monks go in solemn procession through the streets around the monastery carrying the sacred images and chanting a hymn which begins, “We reverence the holy image, O blessed one. . . . . “
Theodore, already twice exiled for reproving the injustices of previous emperors, was now banished by Leo V the Armenian, imprisoned, and cruelly abused; but he continued to animate orthodox resistance by his correspondence.
His letters, of which 550 remain, also show him to be the great Byzantine doctor of the papal primacy, a Greek “version” of St. Leo I.
His constantly recurring theme is that Peter continues to govern the universal church through his successors in Rome.
He sees the pope as the divinely appointed head of the patriarchs and the unshakeable rock of faith without whose approval no ecumenical council is possible.
Seventeen years after his death, the Iconocast controversy now over, St. Theodore’s body was brought back to Constantinople in great triumph as champion of the holy images.
LIVES OF THE SAINTS
Father Augustine Kalberer, OSB
November 12: Saint Theodore ‘the Studite’
Pages 412 – 413
LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL ICONOPHILE PROPAGANDA 826 – 2009
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