Flavius Theodosius ( 11 January 347 – 17 January
395), also called
Theodosius I and
Theodosius the Great (
Greek:
Θεοδόσιος Α΄ and
Θεοδόσιος ο Μέγας), was
Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Reuniting the
eastern and western portions of the empire, Theodosius was the last
emperor of both the
Eastern and
Western Roman Empire. After his
death, the two parts split permanently. He is also known for making
Nicene Christianity the official
state religion of the Roman
Empire.
Career
Theodosius
was born in Cauca, in Hispania (modern day Coca
, Spain
) or, more
probably, in or near Italica
(Seville
), to a
senior military officer, Theodosius the
Elder. He accompanied his father to
Britannia to help quell the
Great Conspiracy in 368. He was military
commander (
dux) of
Moesia, a Roman province on the lower
Danube, in 374. However, shortly thereafter, and at
about the same time as the sudden disgrace and execution of his
father, Theodosius retired to Spain. The reason for his retirement,
and the relationship (if any) between it and his father's death is
unclear. It is possible that he was dismissed from his command by
the emperor
Valentinian I after the
loss of two of Theodosius' legions to the
Sarmatians in late 374.
The death of Valentinian I in 375 created political pandemonium.
Fearing further persecution on account of his family ties,
Theodosius abruptly retired to his family estates where he adapted
to the life of a provincial aristocrat.
From 364 to 375, the Roman Empire was governed by two co-emperors,
the brothers
Valentinian I and
Valens; when Valentinian died in 375, his
sons,
Valentinian II and
Gratian, succeeded him as rulers of the Western
Roman Empire.
In 378, after Valens
was killed in the Battle of Adrianople
, Gratian appointed Theodosius to replace the fallen
emperor as co-augustus for the East. Gratian was
killed in a rebellion in 383, then Theodosius appointed his elder
son,
Arcadius, his co-ruler for the East.
After the
death in 392 of Valentinian II, whom Theodosius had supported
against a variety of usurpations, Theodosius ruled as sole emperor,
appointing his younger son Honorius
Augustus as his co-ruler for the West (Milan
, on 23
January 393) and defeating the usurper Eugenius on 6 September 394, at the Battle of the
Frigidus
(Vipava river, modern
Slovenia
) he restored
peace.
Family
By his first wife, the probably Spanish
Aelia Flaccilla Augusta, he had two sons,
Arcadius and
Honorius and a daughter, Aelia
Pulcheria; Arcadius was
his heir in the East and Honorius in the West. Both Aelia Flaccilla
and Pulcheria died in 385.
His second wife (but never declared
Augusta) was
Galla, daughter of the emperor
Valentinian I and his second wife
Justina. Theodosius and Galla had
a son Gratian, born in 388 who died young and a daughter Aelia
Galla Placidia (392–450). Placidia
was the only child who survived to adulthood and later became an
Empress; a third child, John, died with his mother in childbirth in
394.
Diplomatic policy with the Goths
The
Goths and their allies (
Vandali,
Taifalae,
Bastarnae and the native
Carpi) entrenched in the
provinces of
Dacia and eastern
Pannonia Inferior consumed Theodosious'
attention.
The Gothic crisis was so dire that his
co-Emperor Gratian relinquished control of the Illyrian provinces and retired to Trier
in Gaul to let Theodosius operate without
hindrance. A major weakness in the Roman position after
the defeat at Adrianople
was the recruiting of barbarians to fight against other
barbarians. In order to reconstruct the Roman Army of the
West, Theodosius needed to find able bodied soldiers and so he
turned to the most capable men readily to hand: the barbarians
recently settled in the Empire. This caused many difficulties in
the battle against barbarians since the newly recruited fighters
had little or no loyalty to Theodosius.
Theodosius
was reduced to the costly expedient of shipping his recruits to
Egypt
and replacing them with more seasoned Romans, but
there were still switches of allegiance that resulted in military
setbacks. Gratian sent generals to clear the dioceses of Illyria (Pannonia and Dalmatia) of Goths, and Theodosius
was able finally to enter Constantinople
on 24 November 380, after two seasons in the
field. The final treaties with the remaining Gothic forces,
signed 3 October 382, permitted large contingents of primarily
Thervingian Goths to settle along the
southern
Danube frontier in the
province of
Thrace and
largely govern themselves.
The Goths now settled within the Empire had, as a result of the
treaties, military obligations to fight for the Romans as a
national contingent, as opposed to being fully integrated into the
Roman forces. However, many Goths would serve in Roman legions and
others, as
foederati, for a
single campaign, while bands of Goths switching loyalties became a
destabilizing factor in the internal struggles for control of the
Empire.
In 390 the population of Thessalonica rioted in complaint against
the presence of the local Gothic garrison. The
garrison commander was killed in the
violence, so
Theodosius ordered
the Goths to kill all the spectators in the circus as
retaliation;
Theodoret, a contemporary
witness to these events, reports:
In the last years of Theodosius' reign, one of the emerging leaders
of the Goths, named
Alaric, participated in
Theodosius' campaign against
Eugenius in
394, only to resume his rebellious behavior against Theodosius' son
and eastern successor,
Arcadius, shortly
after Theodosius' death.
Civil wars in the Empire
After the death of
Gratian in 383,
Theodosius' interests turned to the
Western Roman Empire, for the usurper
Magnus Maximus had taken all the
provinces of the West except for Italy. This self-proclaimed threat
was hostile to Theodosius' interests, since the reigning emperor
Valentinian II, Maximus' enemy, was
his ally. Theodosius, however, was unable to do much about Maximus
due to his still inadequate military capability and he was forced
to keep his attention on local matters. However when Maximus began
an invasion of Italy in 387, Theodosius was forced to take action.
The armies of Theodosius and Maximus met in 388 at Poetovio and
Maximus was defeated. On 28 August 388 Maximus was executed.
Trouble arose again, after Valentinian was found hanging in his
room. It was claimed to be a suicide by the
magister militum,
Arbogast. Arbogast, unable to assume the
role of emperor, elected
Eugenius, a former
teacher of rhetoric. Eugenius started a program of restoration of
the
Pagan faith, and sought, in vain,
Theodosius' recognition. In January 393, Theodosius gave his son
Honorius the full rank of
Augustus in the West, citing Eugenius' illegitimacy.
Theodosius campaigned against Eugenius.
The two armies faced
at the Battle of
Frigidus
in September 394. The battle began on 5
September 394 with Theodosius' full frontal assault on Eugenius'
forces. Theodosius was repulsed and Eugenius thought the battle to
be all but over. In Theodosius' camp the loss of the day decreased
morale. It is said that Theodosius was visited by two "heavenly
riders all in white" who gave him courage. The next day, the battle
began again and Theodosius' forces were aided by a natural
phenomenon known as the
Bora, which
produces cyclonic winds. The Bora blew directly against the forces
of Eugenius and disrupted the line.
Eugenius' camp was stormed and Eugenius was captured and soon after
executed. Thus Theodosius became the only emperor.
Art patronage
Theodosius oversaw the removal in 390 of an Egyptian
obelisk from Alexandria to Constantinople.
It is now
known as the obelisk of Theodosius
and still stands in the Hippodrome
, the long racetrack that
was the center of Constantinople's public life and scene of
political turmoil. Re-erecting the monolith was a challenge
for the technology that had been honed in the construction of
siege engines.
The obelisk, still
recognizably a solar symbol, had been moved
from Karnak
to Alexandria
with what is now the Lateran obelisk by Constantius II). The Lateran obelisk
was shipped to Rome soon afterwards, but the other one then spent a
generation lying at the docks due to the difficulty involved in
attempting to ship it to Constantinople. Eventually, the obelisk
was cracked in transit. The white
marble base
is entirely covered with
bas-reliefs
documenting the Imperial household and the engineering feat of
removing it to Constantinople. Theodosius and the imperial family
are separated from the nobles among the spectators in the
Imperial box with a cover over them as a mark
of their status. The naturalism of traditional Roman art in such
scenes gave way in these reliefs to
conceptual art: the
idea of order,
decorum and respective ranking, expressed in serried ranks of
faces. This is seen as evidence of formal themes beginning to oust
the transitory details of mundane life, celebrated in Pagan
portraiture. Christianity had only just
been adopted as the new state religion.
The Forum
Tauri in Constantinople was renamed and redecorated as the Forum of Theodosius, including a
column and a triumphal
arch
in his honour.
Nicene Christianity becomes the state religion
Theodosius promoted Nicene Trinitarianism within Christianity and
Christianity within the Empire. On 27 February 380, he declared
"Catholic Christianity" the only legitimate imperial religion,
ending state support for the traditional Roman religion.
Nicene Creed
In the 4th century, the
Christian
Church was wracked with controversy over the divinity of
Jesus Christ, his
relationship to
God the Father, and the nature
of the
Trinity. In 325,
Constantine I convened the
Council of Nicea, which asserted
that Jesus, the Son, was equal to the Father, one with the Father,
and of the same substance (
homoousios in Greek). The
council condemned the teachings of the theologian
Arius: that the Son was a created being and inferior
to God the Father, and that the Father and Son were of a similar
substance (
homoiousios in Greek) but not identical (see
Nontrinitarian). Despite the
council's ruling, controversy continued. By the time of Theodosius'
accession, there were still several different church factions that
promoted alternative
Christology.
Arians
While no mainstream churchmen within the Empire explicitly adhered
to
Arius (a presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt)
or his teachings, there were those who still used the
homoiousios formula, as well as those who attempted to
bypass the debate by merely saying that Jesus was like
(
homoios in Greek) God the Father, without speaking of
substance (
ousia). All these non-Nicenes were frequently
labeled as
Arians (i.e., followers of Arius)
by their opponents, though they would not have identified
themselves as such.
The Emperor Valens had favored the group who used the
homoios formula; this
theology was
prominent in much of the East and had under the sons of Constantine
the Great gained a foothold in the West. Theodosius, on the other
hand, cleaved closely to the
Nicene
Creed which was the interpretation that predominated in the
West and was held by the important
Alexandrian church.
Establishment of Nicene Orthodoxy
On 26
November 380, two days after he had arrived in Constantinople,
Theodosius expelled the non-Nicene bishop, Demophilus of Constantinople,
and appointed Meletius patriarch
of Antioch, and Gregory of
Nazianzus, one of the Cappadocian Fathers from Antioch
(today in Turkey), patriarch of
Constantinople. Theodosius had just been baptized, by bishop
Acholius of Thessalonica,
during a severe illness, as was common in the early Christian
world.
On 27 February 380 he,
Gratian and
Valentinian II published the so called
"
Edict of Thessalonica"
(decree "
Cunctos populos",
Codex Theodosianus xvi.1.2) in order
that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of
Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith). The move was mainly a
thrust at the various beliefs that had arisen out of Arianism, but
smaller dissident sects, such as the
Macedonians, were also
prohibited.
In May 381, Theodosius summoned a new ecumenical council at
Constantinople (see
First Council of
Constantinople) to repair the schism between East and West on
the basis of Nicean orthodoxy. "The council went on to define
orthodoxy, including the mysterious Third Person of the Trinity,
the Holy Ghost who, though equal to the Father, 'proceeded' from
Him, whereas the Son was 'begotten' of Him." The council also
"condemned the Apollonian and Macedonian heresies, clarified church
jurisdictions according to the civil boundaries of dioceses and
ruled that Constantinople was second in precedence to Rome."
With the
death of
Valens, the Arians' protector, his defeat probably damaged the
standing of the Homoian faction.
Conflicts with Pagans during the reign of Theodosius I
Death of Western Roman Emperor Valentinian II
On 15 May
392, Valentinian II was found hanged
in his residence in the town of Vienne
in Gaul. The Frankish soldier and Pagan
Arbogast, Valentinian's protector and
magister militum, maintained that
it was suicide. Arbogast and Valentinian had frequently disputed
rulership over the Western Roman Empire, and Valentinian was also
noted to have complained of Arbogast's control over him to
Theodosius. Thus when word of his death reached Constantinople
Theodosius believed, or at least suspected, that Arbogast was lying
and that he had engineered Valentinian's demise. These suspicions
were further fueled by Arbogast's elevation of a
Eugenius, pagan official to the position of Western
Emperor, and the veiled accusations which
Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, spoke during his
funeral oration for Valentinian.
Valentinian II's death sparked a civil war
between Eugenius and Theodosius over the rulership of the west in
the Battle of the
Frigidus. The resultant eastern victory there led to
the final brief unification of the Roman Empire under Theodosius,
and the ultimate irreparable division of the empire after his
death.
Proscription of Paganism
For the first part of his rule, Theodosius seems to have ignored
the semi-official standing of the Christian bishops; in fact he had
voiced his support for the preservation of temples or pagan statues
as useful public buildings. In his early reign, Theodosius was
fairly tolerant of the pagans, for he needed the support of the
influential pagan ruling class. However he would in time stamp out
the last vestiges of paganism with great severity. His first
attempt to inhibit paganism was in 381 when he reiterated
Constantine's ban on sacrifice. In 384 he prohibited
haruspicy on pain of
death, and unlike earlier anti-pagan prohibitions, he made
non-enforcement of the law, by Magistrates, into a crime
itself.
In 388 he sent a prefect to Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor with the
aim of breaking up pagan associations and the destruction of their
temples. The
Serapeum
at Alexandria was destroyed during this campaign. In a series of
decrees called the "Theodosian decrees" he progressively declared
that those Pagan feasts that had not yet been rendered Christian
ones were now to be workdays (in 389). In 391, he reiterated the
ban of
blood sacrifice and decreed
"no one is to go to the sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or
raise his eyes to statues created by the labor of man" (decree
"
Nemo se hostiis polluat",
Codex Theodosianus xvi.10.10). The
temples that were thus closed could be declared "abandoned", as
Bishop
Theophilus of
Alexandria immediately noted in applying for permission to
demolish a site and cover it with a Christian church, an act that
must have received general sanction, for
mithraea forming crypts of churches, and
temples forming the foundations of 5th century churches appear
throughout the former Roman Empire. Theodosius participated in
actions by Christians against major Pagan sites: the destruction of
the gigantic
Serapeum of Alexandria by
soldiers and local Christian citizens in 392, according to the
Christian sources authorized by Theodosius (
extirpium
malum), needs to be seen against a complicated background of
less spectacular violence in the city:
Eusebius mentions street-fighting in
Alexandria between Christians and non-Christians as early as 249,
and non-Christians had participated in the struggles for and
against
Athanasius in 341 and 356. "In
363 they killed Bishop George for repeated acts of pointed outrage,
insult, and pillage of the most sacred treasures of the city."
By decree in 391, Theodosius ended the subsidies that had still
trickled to some remnants of Greco-Roman civic Paganism too.
The
eternal fire in the Temple of
Vesta in the Roman Forum
was extinguished, and the Vestal Virgins were disbanded. Taking
the
auspices and practicing
witchcraft were to be punished. Pagan members of
the
Senate in Rome appealed to him to
restore the
Altar of Victory in the
Senate House; he refused. After the last
Olympic Games in 393, it is believed
that Theodosius cancelled the games although there is no proof of
that in the official records of the Roman Empire, and the reckoning
of dates by
Olympiads soon came to an end.
Now Theodosius portrayed himself on his coins holding the
labarum.
The apparent change of policy that resulted in the "Theodosian
decrees" has often been credited to the increased influence of
Ambrose,
bishop of Milan.
It is
worth noting that in 390 Ambrose had excommunicated Theodosius, who
had recently given orders which resulted in the massacre of 7,000 inhabitants of
Thessalonica
, in response to the assassination of his military
governor stationed in the city, and that Theodosius performed
several months of public penance. The specifics of the
decrees were superficially limited in scope, specific measures in
response to various petitions from Christians throughout his
administration .
Some modern historians question the consequences of the laws
against pagans.
Death
Theodosius died, after battling the vascular
disease oedema, in Milan on 17
January 395. Ambrose organized and managed Theodosius's
lying in state in Milan. Ambrose delivered a
panegyric titled
De Obitu Theodosii
before
Stilicho and
Honorius in which Ambrose detailed the suppression
of heresy and paganism by Theodosius. Theodosius was finally laid
to rest in Constantinople on 8 November 395.
See also
References
- Brown, Peter, The Rise of Western Christendom, 2003,
p. 73–74
- Williams, Stephen and Gerard Friell, Theodosius: The Empire
at Bay, Yale University Press, 1994.
Notes
- Cf. decree, infra.
- See the Hydatius and Zosimus's critics and other arguments by
Alicia M. Canto, «Sobre el origen bético de Teodosio I el Grande, y
su improbable nacimiento en Cauca de Gallaecia», Latomus
(Brussels) 65.2, 2006,
págs. 388–421, cf.[1]
- Zos. Historia
Nova 4.24.4.
- Williams and Friell, p34.
- Williams and Friell, p 64.
- Williams and Friell, p129.
- Williams and Friell, p 134.
- Lenski, Noel, Failure of Empire, University of
California Press, 2002, ISBN 0-520-23332-8, pp235–237.
- Williams and Friell, p54.
- William and Friell, p55.
- "Theodosius I", Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912
- Socr., V, 16
- Michael Routery, ©1997, The First Missionary War. The
Church take over of the Roman Empire, Ch. 4, The Serapeum of
Alexandria
- Ramsay McMullan, Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D.
100-400 (Yale University Press) 1984, p90.
- J. Norwich, Byzantium: The Early Centuries, p112.
- R. Malcolm Errington, Christian Accounts of the Religious
Legislation of Theodosius I. in Klio 79, 1997, pp. 398ff.
- Williams and Friell, p.139.
- Williams and Friell, p.140.
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