olasticism, but a scholasticism apart, still it would
not be untrue to describe S. Theodore as the last of the Greek Fathers.
He came at a time in Byzantine history when a great crisis was before
the Church and State, so closely conjoined in the Eastern Empire. Born
in the last half of the eighth century, and dying on November 11th,
826, Theodore lived through the most vital period of the Iconoclastic
struggle, and he left, in his {161} theological and familiar writings,
the most important memorial of the orthodox position which he did so
much to render victorious.

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
Studi