The Moechian controversy

Established chronology

1. 795The emperor Constantine VI puts away his wife and marries Theodote; the priest Joseph blesses the union.
2. 796 to 797St Plato of Sakkoudion and St Theodore the Studite break communion over the toleration of the adulterous marriage and are imprisoned and exiled; Constantine VI is deposed and blinded in 797.
3. 806Under the emperor Nicephorus I, a synod under Patriarch Nicephorus reinstates the priest Joseph by economy; the Studites again break communion, now with the patriarch, holding that an economy condoning a violation of the Gospel is no economy.
4. 809 to 811St Theodore and his monks are exiled for the second stand; after the death of the emperor Nicephorus I (811) the priest Joseph is again deposed and St Theodore is reconciled to the patriarch.

Synodal decisions

• No synod ever vindicated the adulterous union; the priest Joseph was ultimately deposed. The dispute ended with the removal of the scandal, not with any condemnation of the Studites, who soon became the leaders of Orthodoxy in the second Iconoclasm.

Actions of the saints

• St Theodore and St Plato ceased commemoration over an open and unrepented transgression tolerated by economy, and endured exile rather than commune; they founded no rival church and returned when the scandal was removed.

Competing interpretations

• The permissive reading stresses that this was a disciplinary and moral question, not a doctrinal heresy, and that St Theodore's severity toward an act of economy was itself contested in his day. The stricter reading finds in it the principle that economy cannot legitimize what the Gospel forbids, and that communion with the toleration of open sin defiles. Both agree it is not a heresy case in the narrow sense; its weight is as a precedent about the limits of economy and communion.