Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/983

 there and at Pavia. But his greatest works are at Ravenna, his own mausoleum, with its marvellous dome, formed of one block of Istrian stone, and what is now St. Apollinare Nuovo, the church he built for his Arlan fellow-worshippers, of which they retained possession till the time of bp. Agnellus (Agnellus, Lib. Pont. in Rerum Script. Lang. 334).

Almost our only source of information as to his internal administration is the Variarum of Cassiodorus (vid. Mr. Hodgkin's preface to this work). Of modern writings, Dahn's Könige der Germanen, ii.–iv. is the most valuable. Du Roure has published a Life of Theodoric, and there is a brilliant sketch in Gibbon, c. 39, of his rule in Italy.

[F.D.]

Theodoricus (5) I. (Thierry, Theuderich), king of the Franks (511–533), one of the four sons of Clovis, by a concubine. He was considerably older than his three half-brothers, the sons of Clotilda, and had a grown-up son, Theodebert, when his father died (Greg. Tur. Hist. Franc. ii. 28, iii. 1) in 511. The four sons divided the kingdom, nominally into equal portions, but really Theodoric, owing probably to his greater age and capacity, obtained the largest portion. His capital was Metz, and his kingdom comprised the Ripuarian Frankish territory, Champagne, the eastern portion of Aquitaine and the old Salian Frankish possessions to the Kohlenwald (Richter, Annalen, p. 46). Fauriel says that besides Frankish Germany he had so much of Gaul as lies between the Rhine and the Meuse and, as his share of Aquitaine, the Auvergne with the Velai and Gévaudan, its dependencies, the Limousin in part or whole, and certain other cantons of less importance (Hist. de la Gaule Mérid. ii. 92). Theodoric died in 533. He was a strong and capable king, but to the ferocity and lawlessness of his race he added an unscrupulous cunning of his own (ib. iii. 7). His attitude towards the church seems to have been one of indifference, influenced neither by fear nor superstition. Orthodoxy had been so useful a political weapon to his father that the son was presumably a professing Christian, though he is not mentioned among the members of Clovis's family baptized by St. Remigius. He did not shrink from involving churches in his army's pillage and destruction in the Auvergne (iii. 12), and though. he exalted St. Quintian, bp. of Clermont, it was not as a priest, but as a partisan who had suffered in his cause (iii. 2), while he bitterly persecuted Desiderius, bp. of Verdun (iii. 34). He has the credit of reducing to writing and amending the laws of the Franks, Alamanni, and Bavarians (Migne, Patr. Lat. lxxi. 1163).

[S.A.B.]

Theodorus (6) Askidas (ὁ Ἀσκιδᾶς), archbp. of Caesarea in Cappadocia, the chief supporter of Origen's views in the first half of cent. vi. and the originator of the celebrated controversy concerning the "Three Chapters." The general history of his life belongs to that subject; we now give merely a brief outline. He was a monk of the convent of Nova Laura in Palestine, and made, c. 537, archbp. of Caesarea under Justinian. He supported the views of Origen when they were persecuted in Palestine. He secretly favoured Monophysite views, and, when Justinian condemned Origen, saw a chance of condemning the great authorities on the Nestorian side, Theodoret, Theodore, and Ibas. Working, therefore, through the empress Theodora, he persuaded Justinian to attempt to reconcile the Monophysite party; Justinian, at his suggestion, issuing his celebrated edict which gave rise to the great controversy concerning the Three Chapters. At the general council of Constantinople archbp. Theodore subscribed the condemnation of Origen on the one hand, and of Theodoret, Theodore, and Ibas on the other. He died probably c. 558 at Constantinople. The Testimonium of Theodore and of Cethegus the patrician concerning the contradictions of pope Vigilius about the Three Chapters is in Mansi, t. ix. col. 363 (Ceill. xi. 327, 865, 881; Hefele's Councils, § 258).

[G.T.S.]

Theodorus (26), bp. of Mopsuestia; also known, from the place of his birth and presbyterate, as Theodore of Antioch, the most prominent representative of the middle Antiochene school of hermeneutics.

I. Life and Work.—Theodore was born at Antioch c. 350 (see Fritzsche, de Th. M. V. et Scr. pp. 1–4, for the chronology; cf. Kihn, Theodor u. Junilius, p. 39, n. 1). His father held an official position at Antioch, and the family was wealthy (Chrys. ad Th. Laps. ii. in Migne, Patr. Gk. xlvii. 209). Theodore's cousin, Paeanius, to whom several of Chrysostom's letters are addressed (Epp. 95, 193, 204, 220, in Migne, lii.), held an important post of civil government; his brother Polychronius became bp. of the metropolitan see of Apamea. Theodore first appears as the early companion and friend of Chrysostom, his fellow-townsman, his equal in rank, and but two or three years his senior in age. Together with their common friend Maximus, afterwards bp. of Isaurian Seleucia, Chrysostom and Theodore attended the lectures of the sophist Libanius (Socr. vi. 3; cf. Soz. viii. 1), then at Antioch in the zenith of his fame. We have the assurance of Sozomen that he enjoyed a philosophical education (l.c.). Chrysostom credits his friend with diligent study, but the luxurious life of polite Antioch seems to have received an equal share of his thoughts. When Chrysostom himself had been reclaimed from the pleasures of the world by the influence of Basil, he succeeded in winning Maximus and Theodore to the same mind. The three friends left Libanius and sought a retreat in the monastic school (ἀσκητήριον) of Carterius and Diodorus, to which Basil was already attached. Whether Theodore had been previously baptized is doubtful; Chrysostom, however, speaks of him shortly afterwards in terms which seem to imply his baptism (ad Th. Laps.). He gave himself to the new learning with characteristic energy. His days, as his friend testifies, were spent in reading, his nights in prayer; he fasted long, lay on the bare ground, and practised every form of ascetic self-discipline; he was full withal of light-hearted joy, as having found the service of Christ to be perfect freedom. His conversion was speedy, sincere, and marvellously complete, but was followed by a reaction which threatened an utter collapse of his new-found life. He had but just resigned himself to a celibate life when he