St. Theodore the Studite

Theodore became abbot of the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople and made it the centre of Byzantine monastic life, with a thousand monks, a workshop for copying books and a strict common life. When iconoclasm returned in 815 he led a procession through the city carrying the icons, and he was beaten and exiled. He kept writing letters to encourage the faithful, and many of the hymns of the Lenten Triodion are his. He died in 826, before the icons were finally restored.

• Feast: November 11 (New Calendar)
• Lived: 759–826
• Place: Stoudios, Constantinople