social position at Constantinople. Thus he was a youth sixteen years old when Irene restored the worship of pictures, and the greater part of his life was spent in the subsequent period of image worship. Under the influence of his uncle Paul, who renounced the gay society of Constantinople and retired to a cave, a wave of enthusiasm for monasticism swept over the whole family. Theodore, with his father, his remaining uncles and his brothers, went into a monastic retreat under the direction of Paul, while his mother took her one little daughter to live with her "in cellular fashion." It would seem that the mother was the dominant influence in this scattering of her family, for when her youngest son, breaking down at the piteous moment of parting, clung to her neck begging her to let him stay with her, the determined woman answered, "If you do not go willingly, my child, I will drag you with my own hand on board ship."
For thirteen years Theodore lived in the monastery of Saccudio under his uncle Paul, who ordained him to the priesthood and then insisted on consecrating him abbot in place of himself—a singular act of self-abnegation, which, while it does honour to the devotion and humility of the senior, and helps us to understand the spell he had cast on his family, also testifies to the high qualities that had been revealed in the junior. Practically they lived as joint abbots—for Theodore would not let his uncle retire—first at Saccudio and then at Studium, a monastery situated within the walls of Constantinople. Constantine Porphyrogenitus had broken up the establishment at Saccudio in a rage because the monks would not give their consent to his second marriage. This incident, revealing the emperor's desire to have an endorsement of his conduct from the monks, followed by the refusal of the monks to grant it, shows how powerful the monastery was as an independent body. On her return to power Irene had reinstated the scattered monks. But a raid of the Saracens afterwards made it necessary for them to retreat across the Bosphorus; and then it was that Theodore was
