sentences:  Many of them were condemned to exile, and some took advantage of this condemnation to reorganize their religious life in Italy.Ironically, St. John of Damascus, living in a Moslem nation was independent of the iconoclast emperors and could defend the faith from afar.The second half of the 8th century seems to have been a time of very general decadence; but about the year 800 St. Theodore the Studite (c. 758 - c. 826)—destined to be one of the most creative names in Eastern monasticism—became abbot of the monastery of St. John the Baptist, called the "Studium" (founded at Constantinople in the fifth century).