Day of Remembrance of St. Theodore the Studite, Confessor (24/11)

Theodore, nicknamed Studite, was born in Constantinople in 758. Through the efforts of his noble and wealthy parents, he received a good and versatile education. At the age of 32, Theodore and his wife Anna decided to devote themselves to a monastic life. In Saqqudian, near Constantinople, Saint Theodore indulged in the strictest feats of monasticism, zealously continuing to study the Holy Scriptures, the interpretation of the Holy Fathers and the creations of Basil the Great. Consecrated a presbyter, Theodore was elected abbot against his will. Meanwhile, St. Theodore faced a new feat of countering violators of the truth and truth of Christ.

Tsar Constantine forcibly forced his wife Maria to take tonsure into a monastery, and he himself married his relative. The example of lawlessness did not go without imitators. Cases of divorces and illegal marriages began to recur between those close to the court. St. Theodore did not want to remain an indifferent witness to the disregard for the charters of the Church and acted as a denouncer of the king’s untruth.

An angry Constantine ordered him to be imprisoned, from where, after cruel torture in 796, the monk, along with 10 monks, was exiled to imprisonment in the city of Solun. After Constantine's death, his mother Queen Irene released Saint Theodore from captivity and granted him the management of the Studio Monastery in 798. The Monk Theodore landscaped and fenced off the monastic life with a strict charter, known under the name of Studiysky. According to this charter, the monks were prohibited from any property; they had to learn various skills necessary for the monastery, and themselves produce all the work necessary for everyday life.

Soon Saint Theodore was again persecuted by Nikephoros, who took the throne from Irene. In 809, Saint Theodore was exiled to imprisonment with all followers and only after the death of the king in 811 was he returned to the capital. Three years later, the persecution of icons began under Leo the Armenian, and the monk again acted as a confessor and defender of the truth. For this, after terrible torture, Leo exiled St. Theodore to a remote prison in the city of Metop.

From there, in 815, he was transferred to Anatolia to Bonit, where no one was allowed to see him, but St. Theodore continued to act in favor of Orthodoxy with written messages and managed to convert many iconoclasts. For this they beat him and tormented him with hunger and thirst in a damp dungeon, but he endured everything with patience, and strengthened himself and was consoled by the communion of the holy Mysteries.

In 820, with the death of Leo the Armenian, the seven-year exile of St. Theodore the Studite ended. Returning to Constantinople, Saint Theodore did not remain there. He did not want to be an indifferent witness to the ongoing heresy, since although it was forbidden to speak against icons, at the same time, no one should have dared to speak in defense of their veneration, and they were not restored in the churches of Constantinople. The Monk Theodore retired to a secluded place, to Cape Acritus, near Nicomedia. And then, together with several disciples, he lived at the Church of St. Tryphon until his death in 826.

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