the region, ready to drive their flocks to safety. Elsewhere (and, in times of peace, on
the Anatolian plains as well), peasants worked small plots (sometimes rented,
sometimes owned outright), herding animals, cultivating grains, and tending orchards.
These peasants were subject as never before to imperial rule. With the
disappearance of the traditional town councilors—the curiales—cities and their rural
hinterlands were now controlled directly by the reigning imperial governor and the
local “notables”—a new elite consisting of the bishop and big land owners favored by
the emperor. Freed from the old buffers that separated it from commoners, the state
adopted a thoroughgoing agenda of “family values,” narrowing the grounds for
divorce, setting new punishments for marital infidelity, and prohibiting abortions.
Legislation gave mothers greater power over their offspring and made widows the
legal guardians of their minor children. Education was still important—the young
Saint Theodore of Sykeon (d.613), for example, joined the other boys at his village
school, where presumably he learned some classical Greek literature—but now for
many pious Christians the classical heritage took second place to the Psalter, the book
of 150 psalms in the Old Testament thought to have been written by King David.
Thus, at the age of twelve, Saint Theodore
wanted to imitate David in his holy hymn-writing and accordingly began
to learn the Psalter. With difficulty and much labor he learnt as far as the
sixteenth psalm, but he could not manage to get the seventeenth psalm
by heart. He was studying it in the chapel of the holy martyr Christopher
(which was near the village) and as he could not learn it, he threw
himself on his face and besought God to make him quick of learning in
his study of the psalms. And the merciful God, Who said, “Ask and it
shall be given you” [Matt. 7:7], granted him his request.^1
Iconoclasm