gave to the preaching of the Gospel its greatest apostles. The position of the monks in the empire was one of great power, and their wealth helped to increase their influence. Thus their development ran a course parallel to that of their Western brethren. The monks, as a rule, followed the theological vicissitudes of the emperors and patriarchs, and they showed no notable independence except during the iconoclastic persecution; the stand they took in this aroused the anger of the imperial controversialists. The Faith had its martyrs among them; many of them were condemned to exile, and some took advantage of this condemnation to reorganize their religious life in Italy. Of all the monasteries of this period the most celebrated was that of St. John the Baptist of Stoudio, founded at Constantinople in the fifth century. It acquired its fame in the time of the iconoclastic persecution while it was under the government of the saintly (abbot) Theodore, called the Studite. In 781, Platon, a monk in the Symbola Monastery in Bithynia, and the uncle of Theodore the Studite, converted the family estate into the Sakkoudion Monastery. Platon served as abbot, with Theodore as his assistant. In 794, Theodore was ordained by Tarasios of Constantinople and became abbot. Around 797 Empress Irene made Theodore leader of the ancient Stoudios Monastery in Constantinople. He set himself to reform his monastery and restore St. Basil's spirit in its primitive vigour. But to effect this, and to give permanence to the reformation, he saw that there was need of a more practical code of laws to regulate the details of the daily life, as a supplement to St Basil's Rules. He therefore drew up constitutions, afterwards codified, which became the norm of the life at the Stoudios monastery, and gradually spread thence to the monasteries of the rest of the Greek empire. Thus to this day the Rules of Basil and the Constitutions of Theodore the Studite, along with the canons of the Councils, constitute the chief part of Greek and Russian monastic law. The monastery was an active center of intellectual and artistic life and a model which exercised considerable influence on monastic observances in the East. Theodore attributed the observances followed by his monks to his uncle, the saintly Abbot Plato, who first introduced them in his monastery of Sakkoudion. The other monasteries, one after another adopted them, and they are