Women of Early Christianity

by Alfred Brittain; Mitchell Carroll

A portrait of the Byzantine empress would be incomplete if it did not speak of her religious sentiments and the prominent part she took in ecclesiastical politics. In religious matters we see not only the best side of Theodora's nature, but also the supreme exhibition of her influence in the affairs of the Empire. Like all the Byzantines of her time, she was pious and devoted in her manner of life. She was noted for her almsgiving and her contributions to the foundations established by the Church. Chroniclers cite the houses of refuge, the orphanages, and the hospitals founded by her; and Justinian, in one of his ordinances, speaks of the innumerable gifts which she made to churches, hospitals, asylums, and bishoprics.

Yet, in spite of these many exhibitions of inward piety, Theodora was strongly suspected by the orthodox of heresy. She professed openly the monophysite doctrine,--the belief in the one nature in the person of Jesus Christ. She also endeavored to bring Justinian to her view, and, with an eye to the interest of the state, she entered upon a course of policy which reconciled the schismatics--but disgusted the orthodox Catholics, who were in unison with Rome. The people of Syria and Egypt were almost universally Monophysites and Separatists. Theodora, with a political finesse far greater than that of her husband, saw that the discontent in the Orient was prejudicial to the imperial power, and she endeavored by her line of policy to reconcile the hostile parties and to reestablish religious peace in the Empire. She recognized that the centre of gravity of the government had passed permanently from Rome to Constantinople, and that consequently the best policy was to keep at peace the peoples of the East.

Justinian, on the other hand, misled by the grandeur of Roman tradition, wished to establish, through union with the Roman See, strict orthodoxy in the restored empire of the Cæsars. Theodora, with greater acumen, observed the irreconcilable lines of difference between East and West, and recognized that to proscribe the learned and powerful party of dissenters in the Orient would alienate important provinces and be fatal to the authority of the monarchy. She therefore threw her influence into the balance of heresy. She received the leaders of the Monophysites in the palace, and listened sympathetically to their counsels, their complaints, their remonstrances. She placed men of this faith in the most prominent patriarchal sees--Severius at Antioch, Theodosius at Alexandria, Anthimius at Constantinople. She transformed the palace on Hormisdas into a monastery for the persecuted priests of Syria and Asia. When Severius was subjected to persecution, she provided means for him to escape from Constantinople; and when Anthimius was deposed from the metropolitan see, she extended to him, in spite of imperial orders, her open protection, and gave him an asylum in the palace. Her boldest coup, however, consisted in placing on the pontifical seat at Rome a pope of her own choice, pledged to act with the Monophysites.

For this rôle she found the man in the Roman deacon Vigilius, for some years apostolic legate at Constantinople. Vigilius was an ambitious and clever priest who had won his way into the confidence of Theodora, and the empress thought to find in him, when elevated to the pontifical chair, a ready instrument for her purposes. It is recounted that, in exchange for the imperial protection and patronage, Vigilius engaged to reestablish Anthimius at Constantinople, to enter into a league with Theodosius and Severius, and to annul the Council of Chalcedon. Upon the death of the presiding pope, Agapetus, Vigilius set out for Rome with letters for Belisarius, who was then at the height of his power in Italy, and these letters were such that they did not admit of objection. Apparently, in this affair Justinian had secretly assented to the plans of the empress, seeing perhaps in the movement a solution which would bring about the unity which he desired and place the Roman pontiff in accord with the Orientals. But it was not without trouble that Vigilius was installed. Immediately upon the death of Agapetus, the Roman party had provided a successor in Silverius; and to seat Vigilius in the chair of Saint Peter, they must first make Silverius descend. Belisarius was charged with this repugnant task. With manifest reluctance, he undertook his part in the questionable intrigue. He first suggested to Silverius a dignified way of settling the affair by making the concessions which the emperor desired of Vigilius. Silverius indignantly refused to make any such compromise. Thereupon, under the imaginary pretext of treason, he was brutally arrested, deposed, and sent into exile. Vigilius was at once ordained pope in his stead. Theodora seemed to have conquered.

But when securely installed, Vigilius, in spite of the threats of Belisarius, deferred the fulfilment of his promises. Finally, however, he was compelled to make important concessions to the empress. This was the last triumph of Theodora; and toward the close of her life, in the growing progress of the Eastern Church, and in the declining influence of the pope, she had reason to believe that the dreams of her religious diplomacy were realized.

Theodora's advocacy of the cause of the dissenters accounts for much of the vituperation heaped upon her by orthodox Catholics. In the eyes of the Cardinal Baronius, the wife of Justinian was "a detestable creature, a second Eve too ready to listen to the serpent, a new Delilah, another Herodias, revelling in the blood of the saints, a citizen of Hell, protected by demons, inspired by Satan, burning to break the concord bought by the blood of confessors and of martyrs." It is worthy of note that this was written before the discovery of the manuscript of the Secret History. What would the learned cardinal have said had he known of the alleged adventures of the youth of this woman, classed by pious Catholics as one of the worst enemies of the Church?

Perhaps, after all, we are to find in Theodora's religious defection the source of all the scandal which has attached to her name. Damned in the eyes of pious churchmen because of her religious faith that Christ's nature was not dual, it was easy for the tongue of scandal regarding her early life to gain credence. Had Theodora followed the orthodox in the belief in the two natures, she might have committed worse offences than were charged to her, and no such vituperation would have been uttered by any member of the orthodox Church; but her position in the religious controversies of the sixth century will certainly, in the twentieth century, do her memory little harm.

Theodora's health was always delicate. After these years of stormy dissension, as her strength began to fail, she was directed to use the famous Pythian warm baths. Her progress through Bithynia was made with all the splendor of an imperial cortege, and all along the route she distributed alms to churches, monasteries, and hospitals, with the request that the devout should implore Heaven for the restoration of her health. Finally, in the month of June, A. D. 548, in the twenty-fourth year of her marriage and the twenty-second of her reign, Theodora died of a cancer. Justinian was inconsolable at her loss, which rightly seemed to him to be irreparable. His later years were lacking in the energy and finesse that had characterized him during her lifetime, and it was doubtless her loss which clouded his spirits and removed from him the chief inspiration of his reign. Some years after Theodora's death, a poet, desiring to gratify the emperor, recalled the memory of the excellent, beautiful and wise sovereign, "who was beseeching at the throne of grace God's favor on her spouse."

We can hardly think of Theodora as a glorified saint, yet her goodness of heart and her charity may atone for many of the serious defects in her character. We know not whence she came nor the story of her early life; but as an empress she exhibited all the defects of her qualities. She was a woman cast in a large mould, and her faults stand out in equal prominence with her virtues. She was at times cruel, selfish, and proud, often despotic and violent, utterly unscrupulous and pitiless when it was a question of maintaining her power. But she was resourceful, resolute, energetic, courageous; her political acumen was truly masculine; in a critical moment she saved the throne for Justinian, and during all her lifetime she was his wise Egeria, by her counsel enabling him to succeed in great movements; when her influence ceased to exercise itself a decadence began which continued during the remaining years of Justinian's reign.

As a woman, she was capricious, passionate, vain, self-willed, but sympathetic to the unfortunate and infinitely seductive. Truly imperial was she in her vices, truly queenly in her virtues. Whatever may have been her youth, her career on the throne is the best refutation of the scandal of the Secret History, and she deserves a place in the records of history as one of the world's greatest, most intelligent, most fascinating empresses.