ABSTRACT
In 413, at the age of 14, Pulcheria (b. 399-453, Augusta 414), eldest daughter of the emperor Arcadius and the empress Eudoxia, took a solemn vow of virginity.1 The Augusta (empress) kept the vow all of her life, including her three years of marriage to the emperor Marcian (r. 450-53). Unsurprisingly, the historical sources on the virgin empress portray a life governed by religious devotion. She emerges from the sources as a nun-like figure, modest in deportment and passionate about orthodoxy.2 Under Pulcheria’s influence, the court of her brother, the emperor Theodosius II, allegedly resembled a monastery with its daily life organized around prayer and the singing of hymns.3 The empress endeavored to set the tone in church matters as well. She was deeply invested in the theological debates concerning the role of the Virgin Mary in the nature of Christ. In the late twenties and early thirties of the fifth century, the Augusta championed the notion that the Virgin Mary
1 Brian Croke, The Chronicle of Marcellinus. A Translation and Commentary, ed. Pauline Allen, Byzantina Australiensia (Sydney: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1995) [hereafter Marcellinus Comes], s.a. 399, p. 7 (born), s.a. 414, p. 11 (Augusta). For Pulcheria’s life, see Kenneth G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 90-111; Christine Angelidi, Pulcheria: La castità al potere, ed. Gaetano Passerelli, trans. Daniela Serman, Donne d’Oriente e d’Occidente (Milan: Jaca Book, 1998), 14-36. All dates follow A.P. Kazhdan, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) [hereafter ODB].
