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 ([Greek: apraktos]) 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