Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (35 page)

I also swear that I did not give anything to anybody for the office to which I have been appointed, and shall not do so … but that I have been appointed to this office, so to speak, without any gratuity; and that therefore I can appear before the subjects of our most holy emperors satisfied of the treatment that the treasury has assigned to me … that should I fail at any time to act [with diligence, lack of self-interest, fairness, and justice], may I undergo, both here and in the afterlife, in keeping with the terrible judgment of our great Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ, the fate of Judah, the leprosy of Gihezi, and the terror of Cain; may I suffer the penalties provided for by the law of their mercy.
⁹

Was this a profession of Christian faith or a secular oath to a Roman emperor? By this time the secular and the religious, the Roman and the Christian, the Church and the empire, were indissolubly intertwined. The oath sends the message that would later be transmitted by the San Vitale mosaic in Ravenna depicting Justinian and his court [
fig. 2
]. In the mosaic, the Bibles and the thuribles of the clergy are visually and conceptually counterbalanced by the spears and shields of the soldiers. The empire and the Church were one.

Amid the profusion of Christian elements, the empress is mentioned; that is no surprise in an oath written just a few years after the Nika uprising. Evidently, a reminder of Theodora’s reaction to the rebellion stood as an implied threat of punishment. But most significant is the mention of her name in the preamble to that law (
Novel
No. 8), which notes that the legal provisions were born from the vision shared by the sleepless Justinian, “always solicitous of the good of his
subjects”
¹⁰
and Theodora, “our most pious consort given us by God”
¹¹
(making the usual etymological allusion to her name).

Naming Theodora served two purposes: to threaten functionaries who did wrong, and to remind the minister who was in charge of enforcing the law—John the Cappadocian—about Theodora’s authority. It was not a warning to be taken lightly.

The development of legislation on women’s issues and the confirmation of the empress’s power atop the hierarchy of imperial functionaries were basic elements of Theodora’s inclusion in Justinian’s great policy of restoration. But while the restoration aimed to embrace the whole civilized world, it couldn’t quite contain Theodora’s personality, which was so rich in idiosyncrasies and unmistakably personal moods. In fact, her autonomy and power were so great that she even had her own palace.

Justinian was fond of his native Illyrian town, Tauresium; he renamed it Justiniana Prima (Justiniana the First) and remade it as an “ideal city,” center of the Illyricum prefecture and of the entire region between the capital and the natural border of the Danube River. But Theodora preferred the East, and she slowly acquired vast properties beyond the Bosphorus: in Bithynia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and Paphlagonia. She personally owned lands and mansions that were out of the reach of John the Cappadocian’s tax collectors.

To oversee the management and eventual transfer of her personal property to her relatives and protégés, and to freely pursue her policies, Theodora established her own palace outside of Constantinople. Called the Hieron (“the sacred,” and consequently “the imperial”), it stood in present-day Fenehrbace (a suburb of Istanbul), on the Asian shore of the Propontis. The Hieron was a true citadel: it had a port, thermal baths, squares, and porticoes. The establishment of a private realm by the emperor’s wife became a tradition in the Mediterranean until the end of the nineteenth century when the Empress Elizabeth of Austria—the famous “Sissy,” an empress so different from Theodora—commissioned her neoclassical villa Achilleion on Corfu, the island she loved.

In the summer the Augusta held court at the Hieron, but Justinian preferred to stay and work and spend his sleepless nights in his center of operations at the palace. The existence of two separate courts offered a splendid display of majesty: imperial boats went back and forth along the coastal coves until the early fall, when the two courts were reunited and the emperor and empress again shared the same roof in their palace.

With two centers of power operating simultaneously, daily life was full of surprises, but management and communications became more complex. Boats and messengers continually ran between the palace and the Hieron and back to the city; functionaries and courtiers went from one imperial seat to the other. Powerful breakwaters kept the waves at bay, so the moorings were safe; but the strait held treacherous currents as well as the Porphyry, a legendary whale that occasionally overturned and sank boats. Some malcontents spoke of the Biblical Leviathan, saying that the Porphyry was a calamity sent by the Heavens to punish the rulers in their seeming victories.

Surrounded by her court in her Hieron, Theodora was an unopposed mistress, far above the vile rumors of her long-ago past or her supposed present evils. Her life was packed with activity. She granted audiences to functionaries and courtiers; she received foreign ambassadors; she corresponded continuously with the provinces of the empire. Her foreign mail included simple petitions, concrete appeals for tangible aid and assistance (to monastic institutions or churches, for example), and even theological issues and discussions with her favorite Monophysite interlocutors.

She may have broken up her workday with poetic or musical interludes; certainly she was committed to the visual arts. Both Justinian’s palace and Theodora’s Hieron were full of architectural projects and plans for mosaics and other decorations aimed at increasing the prestige of Constantinople—which became a busy construction site after the damage caused by the Nika rebellion—and the other “thousand cities” of the empire. Before the great new basilica of the Holy Wisdom was finished, the most striking building was the brand-new church dedicated to the Eastern saints Sergius and Bacchus. Known as the “Little
Holy Wisdom” [
fig. 25
], the church was next to the one-time home of the imperial couple, the palace of Hormisdas, which was now part of the Sacred Palace compound. Inside the church, a solemn inscription in beautiful Greek characters celebrated the “lordship of the sleepless emperor” and the “power of Theodora, crowned by God,” her “illustrious merciful mind,” and her “inexhaustible care of the poor.”
¹²

25. Dome of the church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, c. 535, Istanbul.

+ + +

Was every aspect of her life so official and aboveboard? Were there no personal distractions, none of the free-spirited behavior that had marked the life of the young actress (and even the life of the empress, according to Sade and Sardou)? A passage from the
Secret History
seems to indicate such a thing:

And at one time a suspicion arose that Theodora was smitten with love for one of the domestics, Areobindus by name, a man of Barbarian lineage but withal handsome and young, whom she herself, had as a chance appointed to be steward; so she, wishing to combat the charge, though they said she did love him desperately, decided for the moment to torture him most cruelly for no cause, and afterwards we knew nothing about him any more, nor has anyone seen him to this day.
¹³

Procopius describes a crazy passion, just as he did in the passages about Justinian’s passion for Theodora or Antonina’s passion for Theodosius.
¹⁴
But while it was indisputable that Belisarius’s wife fell for the “Thracian youth,” the empress’s passion for the young “barbarian” (whose name suggests Gothic origins) was just gossip—“they said she did love him.” Procopius suggested that the Hieron might have been the setting for a passing fancy of the empress’s that did not, however, tarnish her public image; she still “shew[ed] her teeth in anger” to Antonina precisely because the latter could not separate her private pleasure from the public virtue demanded of the “ladies” of the empire.

Did it seem that the Augusta could rest easy, having achieved everything she cared about? No: the issue of Monophysitism, which was uppermost in her mind, had not yet been resolved.

The oath of the functionary speaks of the “communion of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of God,” therefore implying an overall agreement with the pope in Rome. But, unlike Rome, Justinian after the theological congress of 532–33 seemed inclined to co-opt the moderate Monophysites of Syria and Egypt. His eyes were focused on the
larger landscape of imperial power: nothing but terminological minutiae still seemed to need resolution—for the population of the capital, traditionally pro-Dyophysite, was opening up to the preaching of the ascetics protected by Theodora.

Having created some consensus, Theodora’s perfect sense of timing told her the moment was right to display her jewel: the theologian Severus, with whom she had been corresponding. Although he was already seventy years old, he accepted her invitation and left Egypt for Constantinople. His removal from the patriarchate of Antioch in 518 had been one of Justin and Justinian’s first actions, and it was only because he had been deposed that Theodora had met him in Alexandria. Now that she was empress, she could offer him complete rehabilitation. Everything seemed to be part of a great design for her: she could finally bring together the two minds that she most admired, Severus and Justinian. She hoped they would resolve the Monophysite dispute in a way acceptable even to the West, and return her protégés to the peaceful fold of the Church.

Severus, though he was “anathema,” made a strong impression on the pro-papacy Justinian, who admired the theologian’s deep wisdom and great rationality. Rumors were already flying that Theodora had pulled off a diplomatic and theological masterpiece, but Severus was not convinced.
¹⁴
His intellectual prudence, or his old man’s natural diffidence, or his prophetic power, made him doubt that reconciliation was possible.

Indeed, the rift between the Monophysites and the Orthodox went beyond the abstract issue of the nature of Christ. Pedestrian earthly elements also played a role: the character of the protagonists, geography, the slow pace of communications, and local traditions, especially in Syria and Egypt. But it would be wrong to dismiss the theological disputes as mere “superstructures” opposed to the real economic, social, or other material structures. As the historian Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821–1891) wrote about late antiquity, “theological disputes were the only form of spiritual development in the life of humankind, which was heading for a radical transformation.”
¹⁵

One very human element that had to be considered was the age of
the protagonists. Death took the religious leaders of the three leading Christian centers—Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople—between February and June of that year, 535. The empress grieved especially for her spiritual father, Timothy of Alexandria.
¹⁶
In his city, riots over the succession pitted two local Monophysite groups against each other: the moderates who followed Theodosius against the extremists who followed Gaianus. In just a few months, the assistance of the imperial troops proved decisive in Theodosius’s victory; this was clear proof that the throne supported the followers of Severus, who was then a guest in the capital.

In Rome, meanwhile, the aristocrat Agapetus succeeded Pope John II, and in Constantinople Patriarch Epiphanius died: he had been a perfect example of a “political” patriarch, for he agreed with the throne’s positions and was very close to Justinian and Theodora.

The empress’s accomplishment in bringing Monophysitism back into favor meant that Constantinople could not have a new patriarch who strictly followed the Dyophysite creed. And yet the time was right for Justinian’s Italian campaign, which had been bolstered by his most recent success over the Vandals; Rome would object, though, if a declared Monophysite were appointed. Finally, a bishop from distant Trebizond on the Black Sea (now Trabzon, Turkey) was chosen, a shadowy figure by the name of Anthimus. The Orthodox Dyophysites were initially relieved, but then perturbed: one of the first things Anthimus did in Constantinople was visit and pay homage to Severus the Monophysite.

So Constantinople’s new Christian shepherd was open to moderate Monophysitism, which naturally pleased the imperial couple, especially Theodora. (Perhaps she and her husband had suggested him.) Monophysitism was now welcome in two prestigious sees—Alexandria, traditional stronghold of Monophysitism, and the capital—two of the great Mediterranean ecclesiastical seats, along with Rome, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The opposition Justinian feared was avoided, partly because Jerusalem remained basically neutral, and mostly because Justinian kept to his personal Dyophysite creed and acted as the supreme moderator of the two beliefs.

The equilibrium didn’t last long: just long enough to begin the military expedition to Italy that had been delayed so many times. There was nothing inevitable or organic about the expedition. Since 476—when the last Western Roman emperor was deposed—no emperor from Constantinople had waged war in Italy. And for a long time after Justinian, no Byzantine ruler embarked on another military offensive on the Italian peninsula. This expedition was based on nothing more than the emperor’s own will; it was part of his great plan, born from his ego as a man and an emperor.