Theodore of the Studium is a striking example of the influence of environment, tradition, and _esprit de corps_. His life is inextricably bound up with the history, and his opinions were indubitably formed to a very large extent by the influence, of the great monastery of S. John Baptist of the Studium, founded towards the close of the fourth century by Fl. Studius, a Roman patrician, the remains of which still charm the traveller who penetrates through the obscurest part of Constantinople to the quarter of Psamatia. The house was dedicated to S. John Baptist, and according to the Russian traveller, Antony of Novgorod, it contained special relics of the Precursor. A later description shows the extreme beauty, seclusion, severity of the place, surrounded by cypress trees and looking forth on the great city which was mistress of the world. Even to-day the splendid columns which still remain and the impressive beauty of the crypt make the church, though in an almost ruinous condition, a striking object in Constantinople. The monastery first became famous as the home of the Akoimetai, or Sleepless Monks, (as they were called from their hours of prayer,) when they withstood the heresies of the later fifth century,[1] and fell themselves into error, but from the date of the Fifth General Council to the outbreak of the Iconoclastic controversy they remained in comparative obscurity. The era of Iconoclasm, which did so much to devastate the East, and which, by the emigration of some {162} 50,000 Christians, cleric and lay, to Calabria, exercised so important an influence on the history of Southern Italy, might have cast a fatal blight on the Church in Constantinople had it not been for the stand made by the Monks of the Studium. [Sidenote: The Monks of the Studium and the Iconoclastic Controversy.] The age of the Iconoclasts was the golden age of the Studite monks. Persecuted, expelled from their house by Constantine Copronymus, they were restored at his death in 775, but had dwindled, it seems, to the number of twelve. A new era of power began for them under their Archimandrite Sabbas, and this was increased by his successor, Theodore, whose life covered the period of the greatest theological importance in the history of Iconoclasm. When the patriarchal see was held for seven-and-twenty years by Iconoclasts, Theodore upheld the spirits of his brethren, and even in exile contrived to be their indefatigable leader and support. His was never a submissive, but always an active resistance to the imperial attempt to dragoon the Church, and a typical audacity was the solemn procession with all the monastery's icons, the monks singing the hymn "_Ten achranton eikona sou proskunoumen_, _agathe_" which caused his expulsion. His exile produced a series of impressive letters in which, with every vigour and cogency of argument of which a logical Greek was capable, he exhorted, encouraged, and consoled those who, like himself,