Speaking of Eastern monks and abbots, especially during the eighth and ninth centuries, Mr. Finlay, the historian, justly remarks that 'the manners, the extensive charity, and the pure morality of these abbots, secured them the love and admiration of the people, and tended to disseminate a higher standard of morality than had previously prevailed in Constantinople. This fact must not be overlooked in estimating the various causes which led to the regeneration of the Eastern Empire under the iconoclast emperors. While the Pope winked at the disorders in the palace of Charlemagne, the monks of the East prepared the public mind for the dethronement of Constantine VI. because he obtained an illegal divorce and formed a second marriage. The corruption of monks and the irregularities prevalent in the monasteries of the West contrast strongly with the condition of the Eastern monks.' Certainly to no one is this tribute of praise due more than to the brotherhood in the monastery of Studius.
The monks of the Studion, like most Greek monks, lived under the rules prescribed by S. Basil for the discipline of men who aspired to reach 'the angelic life.' Theodore, however, quickened the spirit which found expression in those rules, and while inculcating asceticism in its extremest form, showed greater consideration for the weakness of human nature. The penalties he assigned for transgressions were on the whole less Draconian than those inflicted before his time.
According to the moral ideal cherished in the monastery, the true life of man was to regard oneself but dust and ashes, and, like the angels, to be ever giving God thanks. If a monk repined at such a lot, he was to castigate himself by eating only dry bread for a week and performing 500 acts of penance. The prospect of death was always to be held in view. Often did the corridors of the monastery resound with the cry, 'We shall die, we shall die!' The valley of the shadow of death was considered the road to life eternal. A monk could not call even a needle his own. Nor were the clothes he wore his personal property. They were from time to time thrown into a heap with the clothes of the other members of the House, and every monk then took from the pile the garment most convenient to his hand. Female animals were forbidden the monastery. A monk was not allowed to kiss his mother, not even at Easter, under penalty of excommunication for fifty days. Daily he attended seven services, and had often to keep vigil all night long. There was only one set meal a day; anything more in the way of food consisted of the fragments which a monk laid aside from that meal. No meat was eaten unless by special permission for reasons of health.
If a brother ate meat without permission he went without fish, eggs, and cheese for forty days. The ordinary food consisted of vegetables cooked in oil. Fish, cheese, and eggs were luxuries. Two, sometimes three, cups of wine were permitted. If a brother was so unfortunate as to break a dish, he had to stand before the assembled monks at dinner time with covered head, and hold the broken article in view of all in the refectory.[55] It was forbidden to a monk to feel sad. Melancholy was a sin, and was to be overcome by prayer, one hundred and fifty genuflexions, and five hundred Kyrie Eleisons a day. The monks were required to read regularly in the monastery library.[56] The task of copying manuscripts occupied a place of honour, and was under strict regulations. Fifty genuflexions were the penalty prescribed for not keeping one's copy clean; one hundred and fifty such acts of penance for omitting an accent or mark of punctuation; thirty, for losing one's temper and breaking his pen; fasting on dry bread was the fate of the copyist guilty of leaving out any part of the original, and three days' seclusion for daring to trust his memory instead of following closely the text before him.[57]
Ignatius of Smolensk[58] found Russian monks in the monastery employed in transcribing books for circulation in Russia. Stephen of Novgorod[59] met two old friends from his town busy copying the Scriptures. A good monastic scriptorium rendered an immense service; it did the work of the printing-press.
Yet, notwithstanding all restrictions, men could be happy at the Studion. One of its inmates for instance congratulates himself thus on his lot there, 'No barbarian looks upon my face; no woman hears my voice. For a thousand years no useless (ἄπρακτος) man has entered the monastery of Studius; none of the female sex has trodden its court. I dwell in a cell that is like a palace; a garden, an oliveyard, and a vineyard surround me. Before me are graceful and luxuriant cypress trees. On one hand is the city with its market-place; on the other, the mother of churches and the empire of the world.'[60]
Hymnology was likewise cultivated at the Studion, many hymns of the Greek Church being composed by Theodore and his brother Joseph.
Two abbots of the monastery became patriarchs: Antony (975),[61] and Alexius (1025),[62] the latter on the occasion when he carried the great relic of the Studion, the head of John the Baptist, to Basil II. lying at the point of death.[63]
At least as early as the reign of Alexius I. Comnenus, the abbot of the Studion held the first place among his fellow-abbots in the city. His precedence is distinctly recognised in a Patriarchal Act of 1381 as a right of old standing.[64]
The spirit of independence which characterized the monastery did not die with the abbot Theodore. The monks of the Studion were the most stubborn opponents of the famous Photius who had been elevated to the patriarchal throne directly from the ranks of the laity, and in the course of the conflict between him and the monks during the first tenure of his office for ten years, the abbots of the House were changed five times. Indeed, when Photius appointed Santabarenus as the abbot, a man accused of being a Manichaean, and who professed to be able to communicate with departed spirits, many of the monks, if not all of them, left their home. Nor was this the last assertion of the freedom of conscience for which this monastery was distinguished, and which makes it memorable in history.