Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/976

 infer that Procopius exaggerates, yet we may well believe that her life was an abandoned one, without believing all his scandalous stories. Reduced to great distress, she in appearance or reality changed her mode of life, and supported herself by spinning wool. Justinian, nephew of the reigning emperor Justin, married her, and succeeding his uncle in 527, caused her to be crowned as empress regnant, but not till 532 does she appear to have exercised a preponderating voice in public affairs. She died of cancer in June 548. Unlike her husband, she was an ardent Monophysite. Her influence was unbounded, her cruelty insatiable. She assumed an especial jurisdiction over the marriages of her subjects, giving the daughters of her former associates to men of high rank, and marrying noble ladies to the lowest of the people.

Her portrait in the mosaics at St. Vitale at Ravenna has been well engraved in Hodgkin's Invaders of Italy, vol. iii. 606.

Sources.—The three works of Procopius, esp. the Anecdota; Evagr. H. E. iv. 10, 11; Victor. Tunun. Chron.; Liberat. Breviar. 20–22; ''Lib. Pont., Vitae Silverii et Vigilii''.

Literature.—Gibbon, cc. 40–41; Dahn, Prokopius von Cäsarea; Hodgkin, Invaders of Italy, iii.–iv.; Prof. Bryce, in ''Contemp. Rev. Feb. 1885; M. Debidour, Thesis'' (pub. in 1877), who tries to make the best of Theodora.

[F.D.]

Theodoretus (2), bp. of Cyrrhus, or Cyrus, in the province of Euphratensis, was born at Antioch probably c. 393 (Tillemont). His parents held a high position at Antioch. His maternal grandmother was a lady of landed property (Relig. Hist. p. 1191, vol. v. ed. Schulze, Halae, 1771). His writings indicate a well-trained and highly cultivated mind, enriched by complete familiarity with the best classical authors. But his chief study was given to the Holy Scriptures and the commentators upon them in several languages. He was master of Greek, Syriac, and Hebrew, but unacquainted with Latin. His chief theological teacher, to whom be never refers without deserved reverence and admiration, was Theodore of Mopsuestia, "the great commentator," as he was called, the luminary and pride of the Antiochene school, but one who undoubtedly prepared the way for the teaching of Nestorius by his desire to provide, in Dorner's words, "for a free moral development in the Saviour's manhood." Theodoret speaks also of Diodorus of Tarsus as his teacher, but this can only have been through his writings.

The parents of Theodoret were both dead when he was 23 years old. Being their sole heir, he immediately proceeded to distribute his inheritance among the poor (Ep. 113), taking up his abode in a monastery, one of two founded in a large village called Nicerte, 3 miles from Apamea, and about 75 from Antioch (Ep. 119).

After some 7 years in the Apamean monastery, he was drawn to assume the cares of the episcopate. Of the circumstances of his consecration we are entirely ignorant. The see was that of Cyrus, or more properly Cyrrhus, the chief city of a district of the province of Euphratensis, called after it Cyrrhestica, an extensive fertile plain between the spurs of the Amanus and the river Euphrates, intersected by mountain ranges. His diocese was 40 miles square, and contained 800 distinct parishes, each with its church. It was singularly rich in monastic houses for both sexes, some of them containing as many as 250 inmates, and it boasted of a large number of solitaries. All of these enjoyed Theodoret's unremitting and affectionate solicitude and frequent visits. Cyrrhus was equally fertile in heretics. The East has ever been the nursery of heresy. Lying, as it were, in a corner of the world, not reached by the public posts, isolated by the great river to the E. and the mountain chains to the W., peopled by half-leavened heathen, Christianity there assumed many strange forms, sometimes hardly recognizable caricatures of the truth. Eunomians, Arians, Marcionites, and others who still more wildly distorted the pure faith abounded. To the recovery of these Theodoret devoted his youthful ardour and still undiminished strength, at personal risk. "often," he writes, "have I shed my blood; often have I been stoned; nay, brought down before my time to the very gates of death." Nor were his labours fruitless. Eight villages polluted by Marcionite errors, with their neighbouring hamlets comprising more than a thousand souls, one village filled with Eunomians, another with Arians, were brought back to the sound faith. He could boast with all honesty to pope Leo I. in 449 that by the help of his prayers not a single plant of tares was left among them, and that his whole flock had been delivered from heretical errors (Epp. 81, 113, 116, vol. vi. pp. 1141; 1190, 1197). He carried his campaign against error, which embraced Jews and heathen as well as misbelieving Christians, beyond his own diocese. He was unwearied in preaching, and his acquaintance with the Syrian vernacular enabled him to reach the poorest and most ignorant. His care for the temporal interests and material prosperity of his diocese was no less remarkable. The city of Cyrrhus, though the winter quarters of the tenth legion, could boast little dignity or architectural beauty. He calls it "a small and desolate city," with but "few inhabitants, and those poor," whose ugliness he had striven to redeem by costly buildings erected at his own expense (Ep. 183, p. 1231). &amp;gt;From his own ecclesiastical revenues—which cannot have been small—he erected public porticos, two large bridges, and public baths, and, finding the city without any regular water-supply, constructed an aqueduct, and by a catchwater drain guarded the city against inundation from the marshes (Epp. 79, 81). These works attracted architects and engineers to the city, and afforded remunerative employment to many people, for whose benefit he secured the help of presbyters skilled in medical science (Epp. 114, 115). Finding that the severity of the state imposts caused many to throw up their farms, leaving the civil authorities to make good their deficiency, a liability they were seeking to avoid by flight, he wrote to the empress Pulcheria, entreating her to lighten so intolerable a burden (Ep. 43, p. 1102), as well as to the patrician Anatolius (Ep. 45, p. 1104). With considerable trouble he obtained from Palestine relics of prophets, apostles, and