Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (52 page)

So Justinian was projected into the Middle Ages by the cult of Theodora, and bound to sacred Judeo-Christian history by his cherished model Solomon; but he had not lost touch with the older Roman imperial tradition. He had always cherished the memory of Julius Caesar, and when in 552 he annexed the southern part of the Iberian peninsula the Augustus felt even closer to his ancient paragon. The annexation marked the greatest expansion that the Christian empire was to have in its thousand years of existence.

In the same year, Narses the eunuch (who was older than seventy) and John, Vitalian’s nephew, took the “Roman” troops into battle in Italy. The army finally had adequate resources, and it dealt a fatal blow to the Gothic resistance: the indomitable, “immortal” Totila perished. In 553 the leader of the last Gothic effort, the bellicose Teia, also died. And although Procopius admired their valor and paid them homage in his
Wars
, in 554 Justinian published the
Pragmatic Sanction
, in which he equated Totila with a tyrant and abolished all the laws that the Goth had instituted for Italy’s social renewal. He then placed the Italian peninsula under the supervision of the local landed aristocracy and the clergy.

The second Rome had won its war against the Goths and reannexed the first Rome. But it had won
to the detriment of Italy
: the war had lasted eighteen years (with a lull during the plague) and had led to a dramatic deterioration of urban and civilian life. Sources likened the Italy of those years to a desert. In the words of Procopius, “Italy … [had] become everywhere even more destitute of men than
Libya,” it was a such a “wilderness”
²
that an epigram commissioned by the “most glorious” Narses in 565 rings particularly false and sinister. Almost ninety years old by this time, Narses was celebrating the restoration of a bridge near Rome, in the “thirty-ninth year of the empire of the most pious and always triumphant our Lord Justinian, father of our Fatherland, the August.” The elegiac couplets of the epigraph contain the following exhortation:

Go agreeably to your pleasures, O Quirites [Roman citizens]

and let resounding applause cheer the name of Narses, everywhere.
³

But how many Roman citizens were left? What pleasures were to be had, and what was there to cheer about, when the second Rome had destroyed the first Rome under the pretext of defending it?

The fruits of victory—of the extraordinary patience that characterized the second phase of Justinian’s rule—would prove bitter and disappointing. Justinian died in 565 (the year of Narses’ epigram), and as early as 568 the Longobards left their lands in Pannonia (a Roman province roughly corresponding to Hungary) to cross the Julian Alps and enter the Italian peninsula. Over time, Italy’s territory came to be fragmented, permitting the eventual rise of the papal state, an unequalled union of Rome and Ravenna, of the Church and temporal power. The heritage of Byzantium in southern Italy would endure for centuries, but the same cannot be said of Justinian’s conquest of the Iberian peninsula. And at the opposite frontier of the empire, in the northeast, the Danube was to be crossed often by Slavic people who would change many aspects of the Balkans, from geographic boundaries to governmental administration to the ethnic makeup of its inhabitants.

In Africa, Egypt, and the Near East, the issues of “national” and religious identity—the issues that Theodora had been able to keep under control for so many years—would continue to be explosive. In the course of a few generations there was to be a frontal clash with Persia,
and then the area would be invaded by Islamic Arabs. The living space of the Christian empire of Constantinople would shrink, and its center would shift to the Balkans and to Anatolia; ultimately the Greek language would prevail over Latin. Only then—in the middle of the seventh century—could one properly refer to it as the Byzantine empire.

So Justinian turned out to be unable to use his armies to reach his lifelong goal of lasting geopolitical and religious unity in the Mediterranean. The strength of the second Rome in his lifetime lay elsewhere: in his immense juridical opus, in the quality of his arts and architecture, and in the introduction of silkworm cultivation to the Mediterranean basin. (The silk industry was the work of enterprising monks who in 552 succeeded in importing the eggs from Sogdiana—now Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—to Constantinople, bypassing the Persian monopoly.)

Finally, then, Justinian’s achievement was not so much a restoration of antiquity as a realization of the new: he established a sophisticated, opulent paradigm that was already medieval and Byzantine.

From a historical perspective, these developments would not have been possible without the Nika resistance—without Theodora. But the Augusta, with her background in the theater, had left much more to the throne and to the future style of medieval Byzantium: above all, she bequeathed the use of Christian preaching for political purposes. As late as the mid-Byzantine period, the Slavic peoples were evangelized by two brothers, Constantine-Cyril and Methodius; this push, now considered to be one of the major elements in the Christianization of Europe, was the continuation of a plan launched in the sixth century. It emulated the evangelical work of the Monophysites John of Tella in Bithynia, John of Amida in Caria and Phrygia, Jacob Baradeus throughout the Near East, and Julian in remote African Nubia. Nubia had been drawn into the second Rome through a sleight of hand by Monophysite missionaries—Theodora had played on a parallel Dyophysite mission to achieve her aim.

On two continents—Asia and Africa—Theodora had promoted versions of Christianity that endured in part because the local churches were solicitous of their specific environments and their peoples’ needs.
Her constant attention to the human element was the perfect corrective to the theorizing that characterized Justinian’s thinking—theorizing that twisted and undid what he intended to do, and sometimes backfired completely.

A letter by Gregory the Great, Roman pope from 590 to 603, speaks of an otherwise unknown excommunication of Theodora by Pope Vigilius;
⁴
but the Sixth Ecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in 680–81, spoke of her “most devout memory.” That council proclaimed that Christ had a double will and a double energy: this was as far from Monophysitism as it was possible to be. Nor was this the only paradox or mystery of the Christian faith, of the story of this empire, or of the psychology of these people: without Theodora in the last years of his life, Justinian moved further away from his original Dyophysitism and turned decisively toward an extreme version of Monophysitism. He warmed to Aphthartodocetism (from the Greek
aphthartos
, “incorruptible”), a heretical doctrine possibly inspired by ancient Gnosticism, according to which the earthly body of Jesus Christ was divine and therefore naturally incorruptible: it was nothing but an illusion. This was just what Julian of Halicarnassus had taught. Julian was an adversary of Severus and the historical leader of those “visionaries” that Justinian and Theodora had ordered expelled by force from Alexandria in 535.

Whatever his reasons, the emperor issued an edict on the subject (perhaps in 564), but instead of reestablishing unity it ignited more controversy. In the past, his forays into the field of theology had moved at the same pace as his concrete political, legislative, and administrative activity. Now the equation between Roman and Christian had become increasingly problematic, for the former term referred to civilian matters that he no longer took into consideration, while the latter brought confrontation and strife instead of unity.

Theodora’s originality and passion, and her protean skill in self-transformation, made her the last woman of antiquity. The new Aphthartodocetism insisted on the incorruptibility of God made man,
whereas earlier Christian orientations had stressed the persistence of human nature, celebrating it and sublimating it in myth and above all in art, and one of the most celebrated people of the time had been Theodora. For this reason we might even call her archaic—a final echo of Medea, Dido, and Antigone. She rose from the depths and she ultimately became a legend, but not because she was revered by the Monophysite historians who wrote in Syriac or because she was briefly mentioned in Procopius’s
Wars
and
Buildings.
Her modern fame was inspired by the rhetoric of vituperation that pervades the
Secret History
, and by the visual arts (which had been important to her even at an early age).

Her miraculously enduring fame and her metamorphosis was ensured by the celebrated mosaic in the presbytery of the basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, one of the most extraordinary and most controversial representations of imperial splendor and womanly power ever produced.

On the wall to the left of the altar is a vigorous but not friendly interpretation of the theme of “Church and empire” [
fig. 2
]. Justinian is surrounded by prelates (including Maximianus, bishop of Ravenna) and military officers, including one who may be Belisarius and another whom recent studies identify as Anastasius, Theodora’s grandson. On the opposite wall, to the right of the altar, is Theodora [
fig. 1
]. She advances majestically toward the onlooker, flanked by two courtiers (probably eunuchs) on her right and on her left a cortège of seven ladies, whom scholars have tried to identify as Antonina and her daughter Joannina (Anastasius’s beloved) and other specific women. The enigma of those faces is seductive enough, and then the artist undeniably used all sorts of techniques (in both draftsmanship and composition) to stress and exalt the dignity of the empress.

Theodora is at the center of the mosaic, her crowned head surrounded by the halo of the elect; her figure is inscribed within a niche that probably holds a throne. The image includes every single attribute of sovereignty and of the pomp of Constantinople’s court: Theodora wears the purple chlamys and the imperial
maniakon
(a bejeweled collar),
and
praependulia
ornaments dangle from her crown. She bears a precious chalice, which she is offering to the basilica of San Vitale. The artist stressed that the very construction of the church was also a sign of imperial munificence. The concept of the offering—more subtly, an offering from the East—is strengthened by a detail of Theodora’s robe: embroidery on the lower hem of her chlamys represents the three Magi from the East bearing gifts for the Savior. The Augusta’s gesture is as elegant as it is laconic, and her huge eyes (under the knitted brow that Procopius remarked on) gaze off into the distance, beyond the onlookers. Her presence is both oneiric and hieratic: dreamlike and formally stylized.

Theodora never visited Ravenna; it doesn’t appear that she ever intended to. But those who see the empress as a blind champion of the Eastern Monophysite cause should consider that she was pictured with unequalled splendor in the basilica of the political and administrative capital of the West. The most important thing about her was that she was the Augusta. She sympathized with the Monophysites in the East, but she clung tightly to her purple as if it were an altar of asylum—she was enfolded by it as if it were a shroud.

When the sponsors of the Ravenna basilica mosaics asked Constantinople for models or sketches of the imperial couple, Justinian and Theodora must have posed in the positions that we see today in San Vitale. Thus the mosaic is a snapshot of the Augusta and her court in the palace of Constantinople around 545 or 546, when the artwork was commissioned. The commission may have come from Belisarius, chief commander of the army in Italy at the time. The general and Antonina may have wanted to stress their closeness to the emperor and empress, a closeness that Joannina’s marriage to Anastasius would have reinforced. If that is the case, the mosaic expresses a project that did not materialize—one of the many paradoxes of history.
⁵

Others have suggested that the portrait in Ravenna depicts Theodora’s otherworldly destiny. Her unusual pallor, which the literary sources also stressed, has been interpreted as an allusion to her
being already deceased when the colored tesserae were set on the wall. The water of the fountain to her right has been interpreted as the “water of life” for baptismal regeneration in the afterlife. The niche above Theodora could be a distinctive sign that denotes the presence of a deceased person. And the curtain pulled aside by a eunuch in one corner of the mosaic gives a glimpse of a dark room and has been read as the curtain that rises in the final moment of life, disclosing the world beyond. In early Christian iconography, furthermore, eunuchs and angels often had similar features, so the eunuch opening the curtain supports an otherworldly interpretation.

Yet what the artist who made the sketch in Constantinople actually
saw
was simply a procession in the palace, led by the Augusta who was offering a gift. The cortège advances from the observer’s right, and the eunuch pulls aside the curtain to allow Theodora to pass freely to another hall. The palace had many fountains: they were among the rulers’ main delights. For the artist, the eunuch’s gesture and the jets of water were lively, exquisite details that were simply realistic.

The artist who worked on the mosaics in San Vitale was not the same artist who drew the sketch. He infused the mosaics with a spirit that makes him “one of the great artists of the first Christian millennium,” and the mosaic is filled with apocalyptic elements. It is a cosmic recapitulation of sacred history interpreted as a unitary flow that leads to the lamb of salvation.
⁶
He gave the realistic palace scene a tint of prophecy that was certainly specific to
his
art. Such a prophetic quality would also be typical of the so-called figural method of the poetry of Dante Alighieri (who was to die in Ravenna in 1321). It is almost as if the artist had been physiologically predestined to spiritualize the “real” image, independent of whether he knew about the empress’s illness and later her death.

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