Saint Theodore the Studite

Theodore was born in Constantinople in 759 and became a monk under his uncle, Saint Plato. As abbot of the great monastery of Studios he renewed monastic life with a wise rule, liturgical hymns and a spirit of work and prayer, and his community grew to about a thousand monks. He opposed an emperor's unlawful second marriage and, when the iconoclast emperors tried to destroy sacred images, defended the veneration of icons, appealing to the Pope of Rome. For this he was exiled, imprisoned and beaten several times, and he died in 826.

His rule shaped monastic life in the Byzantine world and on Mount Athos. Many of his hymns are still sung in the Eastern Churches.