Women of Early Christianity

by Alfred Brittain; Mitchell Carroll

Eudocia was also generous in her gifts to the city. She induced the emperor to enlarge its walls, and herself bestowed upon it a donation of two hundred pounds of gold to restore the public baths. She graciously accepted the statues which were decreed to her in gratitude for her munificence--a statue of gold erected in the Curia, and one of bronze in the museum. To the empress, with her earlier love of the sacred traditions of the city of the violet crown, her enthusiastic reception in the most thoroughly Hellenized city of the Orient must have been a most gratifying occurrence.

From Antioch the empress probably followed the pilgrims highway to the Holy Land. There with doubly chastened soul the cultivated convert visited the places hallowed by the Saviour's sufferings and glory. From Bethlehem, where the Mother found shelter in a stable, and therein "in a manger laid" the newborn Redeemer, to receive the adoration of the shepherds, on through the country which the Lord travelled in His mission, till finally she beheld Mount Calvary and looked upon the place of the Sepulchre, now marked by the Christian temple raised by Helena. Her presence brings to mind the visit of this Helena, the Emperor Constantine's mother, one hundred years before, but the Greek matron must have beheld it with very different emotions. She had been reared in the philosophers' gardens of Athens, amid the glories of the Parthenon and the many wonderful works of art which the Greek genius had created, and in her new home in Constantinople she had not been altogether weaned from the traditions of her youth. In glowing contrast to ancient Athens she now saw a city whose prized monuments were the chapels erected on spots rendered sacred by the footsteps of the Christ and the relics of saints and martyrs. To this city she came as a Christian pilgrim, and her devoutness of spirit showed that her heathen culture, in which she took a pardonable pride, had been consecrated to the religion she professed, and her endeavor to relieve the sufferings of the poor and the unfortunate proved that she had learned the lesson of caring for others from the example of the Master.

Her alms and pious foundations in the Holy Land exceeded even those of the great Helena; and the destitute of the land had reason to be grateful to the empress for her unbounded liberality. In return for her zeal, she had the conscious satisfaction of returning to Constantinople with some of the most sacred relics of the Church--the chains of Saint Peter, the relics of Saint Stephen, and a portrait of the Virgin Mary, reputed to be from the brush of Saint Luke. The first martyr's relics were deposited with great ceremony in the chapel of Saint Laurence, and the piety of the empress won for her the loving admiration of the devout populace.

But this pilgrimage to Jerusalem, with its many tokens of the affection of her subjects, and her triumphal return to the capital city, marks the termination of the glory of the Athenian maiden as empress of the East. Then began the rivalries and conflicts which finally brought about Eudocia's downfall. To understand these we must first of all take into consideration the difference of temperament of the two empresses. Pulcheria was essentially Roman; Eudocia was essentially Greek. Pulcheria belonged to the orthodox party which strictly condemned everything which savored in the least degree of paganism; Eudocia encouraged Greek art and letters and lent a friendly ear to the heresies which were the product of Greek speculation. Pulcheria was puritanical and austere in her manner of life, while Eudocia had a fondness for dress and for the innocent gayeties of life which characterized the women of her race. It was utterly impossible for two women of such marked difference of temperament to live in perfect harmony under the same roof.

Furthermore, during Eudocia's absence a new factor had entered prominently into the life of the palace. The influence of the eunuchs, which had been so marked during the reign of Arcadius, had not made itself felt during the earlier years of Theodosius's reign, because of the ascendency of the two women, but it gathered strength by degrees as years passed. Antiochus was the first chamberlain to make himself powerful, and upon his fall, the eunuch Chrysaphius, because of his personal beauty and winning manner, won the favor of Theodosius and acquired the art of bending the emperor to his will. Chrysaphius knew also how to play the two empresses off against each other, so as to gain his own ends.

It seems altogether probable that immediately after her return from Jerusalem, the spouse of the emperor more than ever dominated the court at Constantinople. An important indication of this was the prominence of one of her favorites during the years 439-441--Cyrus of Panopolis, who was a poet of renown, a "Greek" in faith, and a student of art and literature. He won great popularity during his long tenure of office as prefect of the city. He restored Constantinople on so magnificent a scale, after it had experienced a disastrous earthquake, that the people once cried out in the circus: "Constantine built the city, but Cyrus renewed it."

The type of culture represented by Cyrus and Eudocia, and the manifest sympathy between them, greatly offended the strictly orthodox, who regarded it in the light of a Christian duty to sever all connection with paganism, and who considered all tolerance of the Muses and Graces of a more beautiful past to be a heinous sin. This religious party found their ideal and their inspiration in Pulcheria, and she in consequence became their natural leader. Hence, both their natural proclivities and the zeal of their followers forced the two empresses into an attitude of rivalry which could only be settled by the retirement or fall of one or the other of them.

Shortly after her return it seems that Eudocia, in union with Chrysaphius, succeeded in lessening the influence of Pulcheria. So thoroughly did she control her weak but fond husband that Pulcheria withdrew from the palace to the retirement of her villa at Hebdomon, and it has even been asserted that Theodosius, at the request of his wife, meditated making his sister take orders as a deaconess, so that she would have to relinquish her secular power. Thus for a time Eudocia experienced the keen delight of sole and uncontested power. But the retirement of the Augusta, who had for so many years exercised the paramount influence in the court, was the very step to arouse the orthodox and to lead them to undertake every form of intrigue for the ruin of Eudocia and the return of Pulcheria. The result was that, after enjoying for a brief period the sole supremacy, Eudocia fell from the loftiest heights of supreme authority into the deepest depths of humiliation and sorrow.

The orthodox party, with a cleverness which discounted the aims of the nobility, utilized the jealousy of Theodosius as the lever to overturn the beautiful and talented empress. Paulinus had been the boyhood friend of Theodosius, and their intimacy had grown with the passing of the years. He had ardently approved the prince's determination to make the Athenian maiden his wife, and had acted as his best man in the wedding festivities. Owing to the affectionate relations between the two men, Paulinus had enjoyed a free association with both emperor and empress, unhindered by the restricting bonds of court etiquette; and his relations with Eudocia were always of the most friendly and open-hearted character. These relations the enemies of Eudocia seized upon for the attainment of their ends, and their attempt succeeded only too well. It is fitting to tell the story in the words of John Malalas, the earliest chronicler who records it:

"It so happened," says the chronicler, "that as the Emperor Theodosius was proceeding to the church In Sanctis Theophaniis, the master of offices, Paulinus, being indisposed on account of an ailment in his foot, remained at home and made an excuse. But a certain poor man brought to Theodosius a Phrygian apple, of enormously large size, and the emperor was surprised at it, and all his court. And straightway the emperor gave one hundred and fifty nomismata to the man who brought the apple, and sent it to Eudocia Augusta; and the Augusta sent it to Paulinus, the master of offices, as being a friend of the emperor. But Paulinus, not being aware that the emperor had sent it to the empress, took it and sent it to the Emperor Theodosius, even as he was entering the palace. And when the emperor received it, he recognized it and concealed it. And having called Augusta, he questioned her, saying: