Abstract
Symeon the New Theologian is one of the most famous mystics of the Eastern Church, but he was also a renowned spiritual father in the post-Iconoclasm era. In his days laymen sought their own spiritual fathers among monks because they believed that monks had more powers to save their souls than priests did. When spiritual fathers visited their spiritual sons, many people—their families, relatives, friends, and neighbors—used to surround them and to confess their sins to them. There was a spiritual family which had a spiritual father at the center.
Symeon supported the role of monks as spiritual fathers of laymen and insisted that a spiritual father should be charismatic, not official. He venerated his late spiritual father, Symeon the Stouditis, who was not a priest, as a new saint, namely, a contemporary saint. His belief provoked a counterattack by the official spiritual fathers. Symeon was exiled by the ecclesiastics of the Church of St. Sophia. But his powerful lay spiritual sons and Nikitas Stithatos, his spiritual successor, eventually succeeded in restoring his honor. Symeon's belief in a charismatic father was handed down to the Byzantine society through his hagiography written by Nikitas.
The Byzantine society in the post-Iconoclasm era was a sort of the religious community, where people formed bonds around new saints. In this society even the Byzantine emperors needed a relationship with a new saitnt.
