Theodosius II
“I agree with Bishop Nestorius.Cyril is a heretic”
“I agree with Patriarch Cyril. Nestorius is a heretic.”
“I agree with my wife Eudocia. Pulcheria is a pushy cow.”
“I have banished my wife. Pulcheria was right.”
In the days of the Roman Republic, the title emperor was an honorary title for any successful general who had got the better of effete Greeks, crafty Parthians or mud splattered barbarians. It meant in effect 'Commander in Chief'. Therefore it did suggest that to be such a person, you would have required at least some years out in the military field. The Roman Empire as established by Augustus tried to follow this rule. Some previous emperors had been on the young side like Gordian or young and perverted like Elagabalus. Theodosius II was still on his milk teeth when he became Emperor of the Eastern Empire at the age of 7 in 408.
Theodosius's uncle Emperor Honorius was the 'senior' member of the purple empowerment team but he was over in Italy with his chickens. Rome had already gone through one sacking by Alaric the Goth in 410 and the Visigoths and allies had broken the Rhine frontier and were roaming round Gaul and Spain unchallenged. Theodosius's father, the cheap games fixated Arcadius had left instructions that Theodosius be brought up to emulate his grandfather namesake Theodosius the Great but that wasn't to happen either. The new emperor's primary interests were religious disputation and watching his wife and elder sister slug it out over who got access to his imperial ear. He never outgrew the unkind but correct moniker 'Theodosius the Little'.
A word about this sister before we continue. Her name was Pulcheria and like her aunt Galla Placidia she was to show, proof-positive that the Romans would have been better off junking the male heirs of Theodosius the Great and supporting the females in the family. Pulcheria was 10 when her father died (her mother was already dead) and was sure she knew more about how to run the Roman Empire. Denied the regency of baby brother, Pulcheria grabbed power a couple of years later at the grand age of 15 and proclaimed herself 'Augusta' - in effect, Empress of the East and therefore the equal to Theodosius. To prevent any sexual monkey business with her brother, Pulcheria and her two sisters Arcadia and Martina pledged themselves to perpetual virginity and wore heavy clothing that sparked off an electrical charge if you got too close.
Walls[edit]
Theodosius's city of Constantinople had already long burst its original boundaries and so it was decided to build a new wall in reflect this fact. They were built especially tough as a triple whammy to defer any but the most bone headed attacker. The 'Theodosian Walls' as they got to be called did a good job. It needed the invention of effective artillery in the 15th Century to knock a hole big enough to gain access.
Walls besides, Theodosius II and his government gave no help to the Western Roman Empire as it was attacked by Visigoths, Vandals, Hooligan Huns and such like. The excuse was always 'well, we are making sure the Persians don't attack you from the South East' and so Honorius's empire shrank like a mouldy old prune.
Not that Theodosius had a shortage of other barbarians to deal with in the Balkans. The latest incomers were the Huns and a confederate array of other Germanic skull crushers including the Ostrogoths, Lombards and the Gepids.
Wives and Relatives[edit]
It must have been a bit grim at court for Theodosius with his sisters running the empire. Pulcheria also banned 'filthy pagans' from imperial jobs and ordered the demolition of synagogues with the jews still inside. In Alexandria christian mobs took the empress's overt bigotry as a call to hunt down and kill the philosopher Hypatia as being (a) a know-it all woman and (b) a pagan and (c) for all the reasons listed above. Theodosius doesn't seemed to have shared this fanaticism but went along with it.
The emperor wasn't given a look-in on who was to be his bride either. Pulcheria arranged that too, finding a Greek woman called Athenais. She also happened to be a pagan (i.e. follower of the old Olympian Gods) but was baptised and converted with the new name Eudocia. Pulcheria thought she would be a wimp to match her brother but once enthroned as Empress Eudocia, Pulcheria now had a new rival to handle.
It was around this time that unexpected family refugee from Ravenna arrived. This was Empress Galla Placidia with her two children, Justa Grata Honoria and Valentinian, later to be Roman emperor in the West. Galla Placidia had already survived marriage to a Visigoth warlord who had looted her from Rome in 410 and then later hooked up with a Roman general called Constantius. He was to briefly co-rule the Western Empire with Honorius as emperor but died of bird flu in 421 caught off one of Honorius mangy chickens. Widowed again, Galla had to escape some incestuous pawing by her brother and moved to Constantinople.
Uncomfortable with three pushy women in the palace (sister, wife and auntie), Theodosius retreated to his study to renew a private interest in religion. Even this didn't stop Galla Placidia from locating the miserable Theodosius, so he got rid of her and her family by supplying a fleet to return to Ravenna and reclaim the Western Roman Empire from a upstart bureaucrat who called himself Emperor Ioannes (Honorius having previously died from a chicken related illness). To sweeten the deal - Theodosius promised his daughter Eudocia Juvenillia as a marriage mate for the young Valentinian when she became of age - and deducted most of the Balkans from the Western Empire as 'expenses' to his own half of the imperial domain. Ioannes was 'retired' (what was left got fed to the pigs) and the Roman world was re-united under the same family again.
Anathemas at Dawn?[edit]
Christianity had been the official state religion of the Roman empire since Theodosius the Great. All other alternatives had been officially closed down or given over to active persecution. If you were rich and well connected, paganism was still a popular badge worn secretly by many aristocrats who were appalled that they were regarded as 'equals in front of God' along with the local plebians or worse, slaves.
In the previous century the early Church had got into bitter and bloody conflict with each other over whether Jesus had been a man with special powers (the SuperJesus option) or just God walking about Earth in a fleshy form. The former (the 'Arians') had lost that argument and got the boot out of all their lucrative positions in the Church as the latter Catholic and Orthodox Christians predominated with their famous 'God-in-Three-Forms' (Old Man, Young Man and the smoke in between), a doctrine later called 'Trinitarianism'. The Arian Christians had fled amongst the barbarians beyond the borders where their message received a better welcome and cartload of converts amongst the Goths and Vandals.
In the Western end of the Roman Empire there was Saint Augustine writing about his sinful past and generally having a real miserable life. In the Eastern half, men of religion took to disputations and hurling calls of heretic against each other. The Latin speaking West never understood why the Greek rabbiting East loved this nit picking so much. Something in the water perhaps?
The new dispute started off about the Virgin Mary. Theodosius's head man, Nestorius the Patriarch of Constantinople argued a mortal woman couldn't give birth to a God, that was very much old style pagan stuff. She was the 'Mother of Christ', Jesus's mortal bits and pieces. Emperor Theodosius thought that seemed reasonable and called a Church Council to make that the 'Dogma of the Day'. However in Rome the Pope had kittens and said this was heretical and damned nasty business. He was supported by Patriarch St.Cyril of Alexandria. A supposed man of God who had organised riots against Jews in his home city, Cyril had the female philosopher Hypatia killed for daring to argue with him. Cyril wanted Nestorius's writings burnt and depending on which way the wind was blowing, the 'heretical' theologian too as a bonus.
In 431 a council of Christian bigwigs decided to review Nestorius's doctrines. A compromise saw Nestorius was stripped of office and his clothing. His crozier broken in two and Nestorius was exiled to Antioch where he was forbidden to talk about Christianity or lose his tongue.
But then the extreme anti-Nestorians went to the other theological end and said Jesus had no human hang ups and doubted if he even slept like a mortal man. Cyril wasn't so sure to go that that far (which is why he is Saint Cyril to this day) but plenty of his supporters did (they were called the Monophysites - One Track Minders) and were lead by Timothy the Weasel (because he looked and acted like one), Patriarch of Alexandria. A new council was called in Ephesus to confirm this, Theodosius again agreed that argument could also be true and declared everyone was a winner.
In the nature of things, the church had another council his until finally a new 'centre' agreed to drop both the Nestorians with their too earthly Jesus and the Monophysites with their unblemished god approach. Jesus was both human and divine and that this struggle was what made him understand the pain of dying. In fact by the time they had agreed, Theodosius was dead and in a place to test the truth of all religious positions about the status of Jesus or not.
Back to the Family[edit]
Theodosius's relative luxury of listening to wild eyed churchmen with beards was interrupted by some domestic issues. His wife Eudocia and sister Pulcheria had grown to despise each other. Theodosius was sat on by both of them until a scandal about Eudocia finding huggy comfort with the palace eunuchs got her exiled by Pulcheria.
Then a few years later, Theodosius's cousin Valentinian made the trip over. He had been promised a bride and wanted to take one of his cousins. In return he dropped his own sister Honoria off with Theodosius. Honoria had been marked down for some dull marriage but instead she had written to Attila the Hun (as you do) to rescue her. The so-called brotherly emperors hastily dispatched separate embassies to Attila to bribe the Hun to attack each other's half of the Roman Empire. The Western Empire lost that bidding war so Attila packed up his horde and marched towards Gaul. Theodosius chuckled at his deviousness but perhaps God wasn't amused by the shifty imperial politics of the emperor. A few months later Theodosius was dead. Not from the hand of an assassin or a heroic death in battle. He was killed by his horse which did a 'buckaroo' on him and dumped Theodosius head first into a river, breaking his master's neck.
References[edit]
| Preceded by: Arcadius |
Roman Emperor 408-450 |
Succeeded by: Pulcheria (in the East) |
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