St Theodore the Studite

Biography

Born in Constantinople c. 759, Theodore became abbot of the great Stoudios monastery, which he reformed into the model of Byzantine cenobitic life. His long career was defined by two confrontations in which he refused communion with hierarchs he judged to have betrayed the canons or the faith.

He was exiled repeatedly and died in exile in 826, shortly before the final restoration of the icons. His enormous correspondence became a permanent reference point for later questions about resistance, economy, and communion.

The controversy

• The Moechian (“adultery”) controversy: Theodore broke communion after the priest Joseph, who had blessed the uncanonical remarriage of the Emperor Constantine VI, was reinstated by economy. Theodore held that an unlawful economy in a matter of the canons could not be received.
• The second period of Iconoclasm under Leo V (from 815): Theodore openly defended the veneration of the icons, refused communion with the iconoclast hierarchy, and suffered exile and scourging.

Position taken

• Communion with one who is himself in communion with condemned error is itself defiled, even when the one commemorating is personally Orthodox.
• Yet Theodore did not teach that the mysteries of the not yet deposed become void; his concern is the defilement of the communicant, and separation as its remedy, pending the Church’s judgment.