Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (51 page)

None of these developments would have been possible without Theodora. She also deserves recognition for her successful effort on behalf of the Coptic churches in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Nubia, which have welcomed millions of believers. In different ways they all inherited
the Monophysite tradition developed by the patriarchate of Alexandria, the institution that had had such a momentous effect on Theodora; she always defended that part of the world as a spiritual Promised Land.

Was Justinian, a Dyophysite, informed of Jacob’s investiture? Did he give his consent? Did he feign indifference? We do know that in the same period he entrusted the still semipagan regions of interior Anatolia, Caria, and Lycia to John of Amida (better known as John, bishop of Ephesus). Despite the latter’s Monophysite beliefs, converts were accepted into the Dyophysite Church, which could be called the “state Church.” On the other hand, it would be incorrect to attribute the appointment of Bishop Jacob to a whim or a secret plan of Theodora’s. In this and other matters, she could have achieved much more during the emperor’s illness, but she chose not to act then. So we must presume that she informed her husband of the appointment of Jacob, putting “reasons of state” ahead of reasons of dogma. Justinian, who was deeply indebted to her not only for all the years during which they shared power but also for the long months of his illness, might have consented unofficially.

The events of recent years had made Justinian more flexible about the popes’ ecumenical and universalist expectations for the deserts and the tells of the non-Latin-speaking Near East, lands that Theodora knew so well. Perhaps the emperor believed that when the moment was right he could heal the split with some sophisticated theology. Certainly ambiguously Monophysite subjects were preferable to no subjects at all: he would have lost his subjects altogether if the followers of Monophysitism, exhausted by war and plague, had been forced to migrate to Persia.

Senescit mundus
?
—
was the world growing old? Certainly Eastern Christendom showed no signs of aging, of pathetic senility, or nostalgia for the past: it was theologically and ethnically vital. We must look elsewhere for a gloomy antiquarian stubbornness: for example, in Justinian’s 547 welcome to Khosrow’s ambassador, Isdigousnas Zich (Yazd-Gushnap).

Constantinople and Ctesiphon had signed a new truce in 545 that cost the Romans dearly. The Persians had no intention of respecting the agreement; they intended only to exploit it in order to reinforce their position in the Black Sea. Khosrow had sent Isdigousnas to the new Rome with a series of cavils and pretexts that might divert Justinian’s attention from his real aims. The ambassador had come to the palace with his wife and children and an entourage of five hundred. All the pomp was a facade with very little substance behind it: apart from the gifts, the only message that Khosrow sent to Justinian concerned the state of his health. He even teased him playfully about his recovery after the epidemic.

No ambassador was ever treated with greater honors by Justinian, who considered that his only “noble” opponent was his historical enemy, Persia. Just a short time before, he had dismissed Totila’s Gothic messengers abruptly and sent them back to Belisarius: he could not foresee that the future of the empire would depend as much on relations with the Goths and the other northern “barbarians” as on a confrontation with the illustrious Persian adversary. Once again he was misled by the spell of antiquity and its traditions.

At the same time, the high cost of maintaining peace with Persia jeopardized the initiatives in the West that were at the very heart of Justinian’s restoration project. Consequently, he continued to begrudge Belisarius supplies in Italy. This looks even more paradoxical when we consider that the two great empires of the Ecumene—so intent on celebrating each other’s greatness in banquets and feasts—would survive for only a few more decades. (Each aiming to finally vanquish the other, the two empires were to clash again at the beginning of the seventh century; the struggle weakened and impoverished them both and left the field open for the Islamic Arabs.)

The receptions and banquets of 547 planted the seed of at least one sad death, a result of Justinian’s informality leading to what became known as the “Bradukios incident.” Justinian had an elevated sense of his imperial persona but was nevertheless unwilling to create barriers between himself and his collaborators, so in one meeting he invited not only Isdigousnas but also Bradukios, the interpreter in the
ambassador’s retinue, to share his triclinium. Observers already irritated by the emperor’s expenditure of time and money noted that “no one ever saw an interpreter become a table companion of even one of the more humble officials, not to speak of a king.”
⁴
Justinian granted this liberty as an instance of his personal benevolence, but it was repugnant to the rigid protocol of the Persians. When in 550 Isdigousnas appeared in the city again for more summit meetings, Bradukios was no longer with him. Khosrow, the Persian king, had explained that “as a mere interpreter, [Bradukios] would not have achieved such high honour from the emperor unless he had betrayed the cause of the Persians.”
⁵
Other sources hint that Isdigousnas himself killed the interpreter. However Bradukios died, it’s certain that few people paid more for the ephemeral honor of sitting next to the powerful emperor.

For Bradukios, power turned out to be a subtle perfume that wafted over him for the length of a single banquet dinner. For Hypatius, power had been the mirage of one single Sunday in the Hippodrome. For John the Cappadocian, power was the dream of his whole career. For Theodora, power was a discipline that she honed every day for twenty years as Augusta (527–48). But in the summer of 547 she began to live daily with another, equally solemn, kind of discipline: the discipline of pain, which she endured and dutifully disguised.

This pain was among the first symptoms of her fatal illness; she may have had a tumor, but the terminology is imprecise in the only source that mentions it—and the source is a hostile one. She never got a chance to grow old in her world, the world that she was helping to transform. She weakened over the course of the year, and on June 28, 548, Theodora died. Chroniclers report that her death was attended by earthquakes, thunder, and lightning bolts, together with the “universal inauspicious omen,” the shattering of a column.
⁶

In that final year, she let no word of her sickness get out to the public. Perhaps she recognized it not as a calamity but as a sign. Perhaps the Almighty had come to collect on the vow she had made in 542, sacrificing her own life in exchange for Justinian’s recovery (and for the continuity of his power). Authority and power had to be maintained,
and so physicians and chamber servants were sworn to silence. Of course, Monophysites came more often to her bedside in the women’s quarters. Among other things, they brought her updates on the latest developments: the successes of Jacob Baradeus in the East and Pope Vigilius’s yielding in his
Iudicatum
, which seemed to open up favorable possibilities.

Theodora died in the comfort of the sacraments and according to the rites of the one Church, the Catholic and Orthodox Church of Vigilius and of the Dyophysite patriarch Menas. There was no contradiction, because Theodora, insofar as she was empress of the new Rome, certainly did not and could not follow deviant, ethnic beliefs. She wanted to remain in communion with the “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic” Church that was celebrated in all professions of faith and in the oath of the magistrates. It was the same Church that Justinian had built up with so many laws, the Church that, liberally interpreted, could and should have accepted Theodora’s favorite holy men, the deceased (Timothy of Alexandria and Severus of Antioch) and the living (Patriarch Theodosius, confined to his villa outside the city; Jacob, who wandered the Near Eastern and Middle Eastern deserts; and Anthimus, who was to see the light of day again only after long years spent in the recesses of the palace).

No one felt so abandoned and grief-stricken as Justinian. Theodora’s illness and death deprived him of the only person he had ever loved. And in addition to this private, personal suffering, he was now burdened with the problems that Theodora had handled with such superior skill for so many years; suddenly they fell on the shoulders of the sixty-five-year-old Justinian.

Just as when disease had struck Justinian in 542, the long course of Theodora’s illness gave the couple time to exchange information about managing their estate, the problem of the Monophysites and the East, and their family strategies. It is most unlikely that the imperial couple discussed whether it would be appropriate for another woman to be at Justinian’s side; neither one mentioned Lady Anastasia, who, years before, had allegedly been driven by Theodora’s jealousy to seek refuge in an Egyptian convent. One hagiographer of Anastasia tells us
that the widowed emperor searched for her but failed to find her. Anastasia hid her identity and remained faithful to her religious seclusion, never returning to the court where she had briefly shone like a bright meteor.
⁷
She never fully realized her destiny in the secular world, as Theodora did.

On the day of her death, the Augusta may have recognized the moment her life slipped away; but if so, she probably didn’t grab some-one’s hand for comfort, and try to stave off death. She had said it already, sixteen years earlier, in her Nika speech: it is impossible for someone who has seen the light of this world not to die. She did not rebuke life because it was leaving her. Rather, she trusted that she was leaving something of herself to life, for Justinian was surviving her; the prestige of the purple had not been diminished; her power had not been separated from his; her protégés would continue to receive support even in the most remote lands of the empire;
⁸
and her family could look forward to bright prospects and high ambitions.

She shut her eyes on an infinitely greater stage than the one she saw when her father, Acacius the bear keeper in the arena, had died. She perceived that her next stage would be even vaster once the bars that kept her inside were lifted, once the gates of the Hippodrome chute were flung open so she could race forward, once the gilded ceilings that still shielded her became the domes that imitate Heaven with their gentle curve, once everything opened up to a single, everlasting, brilliant light.

HEODORA!
Theodora! Theodora! The Lord of Lords calleth thee!” repeated the chanters in the official funeral rite. Amid the smoke of the incense, candlelight flickered over the multitude of subjects, functionaries, and courtiers who had so feared her, and the one man who had loved her. The words had a special meaning, because Theodora had aspired to a place among the lords and ladies, and Justinian had worked to expand the range of her domain.

The corpse with the funeral accoutrements of the deceased lady (who had long prevented other women from using the title of “lady”) was finally lowered by devout hands into the waiting sarcophagus. The great chest was made of the prized marble (referred to as “golden” or “rosy alabaster”) from Hierapolis (now Pamukkale, Turkey). The sarcophagus was placed in the imperial mausoleum of the Holy Apostles that she had so treasured; the building was completed and consecrated on the second anniversary of her death, June 28, 550.

Justinian often returned to the church of the Holy Apostles to pray intensely. His visit on August 11, 559, had special significance, for he recited prayers and lit candles on Theodora’s tomb that day after having repelled an attack near Constantinople by the Kutrigur Huns. It was the first and only battle he himself directed during his long reign. He was seventy-seven years old, and his consort had become a holy relic; her very name was a magic spell,
¹
and she was invoked and thanked after any lucky military or civilian event. (Although the term
civilian
did not mean what it means to us today.) Though now out of sight, Theodora’s body—once the object of so much desire, controversy, and inquiry—was still quite present: it became a vessel for collective salvation rather than individual, personal fulfillment. This was a medieval approach, which is all the more significant for having appeared during the reign of Justinian, the last emperor of antiquity. This great change can be seen as yet another metamorphosis of Theodora’s.