appointed abbot of tbe great monastery of Studium. The monks in this monastery were of the order of Acœmeti (the Sleepless), so named because they took turns in a continuous chanting of the praise of God in their chapel that never ceased day or night all through the twenty-four hours the whole year round. This monastery was also a famous centre for the copying of manuscripts, and the beautiful handwriting here developed became famous.
When Leo the Armenian revived the iconoclastic movement, Theodore appeared as the champion of the pictures. In defiance of the imperial commands, he arranged a procession of sacred icons borne aloft through the streets of Constantinople on Palm Sunday in the year 815. It is in Theodore's writings that we get the clearest understanding of the case for image worship. We can understand the popular idolatry. But what we want to see is how men of intelligence, culture, and genuine religious earnestness, like John of Damascus and Theodore of Studium, could support what the reforming emperors were endeavouring to suppress as childish superstition and rank idolatry. There must have been some intellectual reason and some high religious motive in the strenuous opposition of these men to what strikes us as an enlightened and elevated policy. Our best answer to this question is to be found in the writings of Theodore—his Antirrhetica Adversus Iconomachos and his letters. His arguments amount in the main to three: (1) Theodore insists on the impiety of the secular government in interfering with the affairs of the Church. It was late in the day to raise such a point, at Constantinople of all places. But although people had tamely submitted to interference which only affected bishops and theologians, in appointing and deposing ecclesiastics, and in dictating doctrinal statements, it was another matter when emperors ventured to lay their finger on the popular worship in the churches. Besides, the monks had always stood for the independence of the Church, even when the bishops had meekly bowed to the
