Theodore Studites

(also Theodore the Studite, Theodore of Studion). Born 759; died Nov. 11, 826, in the Princes Islands. Byzantine writer and ecclesiastical figure.

In 798, Theodore became abbot of the Studion Monastery in Constantinople. He defended the independence of monks from imperial control and in 815 became an outspoken critic of Iconoclasm. Theodore was exiled three times. In catecheses, sermons, and poems he advocated the communal monastery, or cenobitic community, in which strict discipline was required of the monks, who were kept busy with work and were subject to the abbot’s despotic power. Theodore’s letters, more than 500 of which survive, are an important source for the history of political and ideological struggles in the Byzantine Empire of the early ninth century.