While Theodore was in exile, the leadership of the Studite congregation was assumed by the Abbot Leontios, who for a time adopted the iconoclast position and won over many individual monks to his party. He was, however, eventually won back to the iconodule party. The Studite situation mirrored a general trend, with a number of bishops and abbots at first willing to reach a compromise with the iconoclasts, but then in the years between 816 and 819 renouncing the iconoclast position, a movement that was perhaps motivated by the martyrdom of the Studite monk Thaddaios. It was during this upswell in icondule sentiment that Theodore began to compose his own polemic against the iconoclasts, the "Refutatio", concentrating in particular on refuting the arguments and criticizing the literary merits of the new iconoclastic epigrams on the Chalke.