Niketas Stethatos wrote "On Paradise", putting particular emphasis on paradise as interior to man; it is preserved with eight annexed letters. A member of the secular intelligentsia took exception to the treatise and criticised it. Niketas wrote some disparaging remarks on these criticisms, and sent copies of these, with the treatises "On the Soul" and "On Paradise" themselves, to Niketas, synkellos and chartophylax, son of Koronis. The latter responded to all these documents with thanks and his (humble) comments. These comments produced a rection from Stethatos, who defended his position, principally with references to Pseudo-Dionysios and John of Damascus. Gregorios the sophist too criticised Stethatos' treatises "On the Soul" and "On Paradise". Stethatos replied with four letters: the first responded rather irritably to Gregorios' response to the two treatises, while the second disagreed strongly with Gregorios' view on the nature of paradise. The third letter to Gregorios accused him of a Nestorian interpretation of the present resting-place of the souls of the just, and warned him that as a layman he had no teaching role in the church. The fourth criticised him for arguing that the laity should observe the Eucharistic mysteries and for having a private chapel