St. Methodius the Confessor vs. Stoudion Monastery

In conformity with the decisions of the Synod, the holy Patriarch [St. Methodius the Confessor] deposed the bishops and abbots who had compromised with the Iconoclasts, but he showed an indulgent attitude towards the lesser clergy, forbidding that any cleric should be submitted to corporal punishment. He had to fill the vacant sees quickly, and the ordination of some of the clerics he chose provoked opposition among the Orthodox clergy. In particular, the monks of the Stoudion rose up violently against the prelate, opposed as they were to his clement measures and also because he had not accorded them the place they reckoned was theirs by reason of their battles for the defence of Orthodoxy. In spite of the triumphal translation of the relics of Saint Theodore the Stoudite, on 26 January 844, at which the Patriarch presided, this opposition was transformed into open revolt when Methodius asked them to destroy the writings of Saint Theodore the Stoudite directed against his predecessors [Saints] Tarasius and Nicephorus [the Confessor], so that he finally ended by declaring an anathema on all the monks of the Stoudion [then under the successor to St. Theodore, St. Naucratius].

- The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, by Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra, Vol. 5, June 14, p. 488.