The Rest Is History - 218. Theodora: Empress of Byzantium

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

In the first episode of a three part series, Tom and Dominic dive into the incredible story of Justinian and Theodora. Tune in for an incredible (and racy) introduction to the powerful Byzantine empress, the collapse of the Western half of the Roman Empire, and a deep-dive into the great city of Constantinople. Justinian and Theodora episode release schedule: Monday 8th August - THEODORA: EMPRESS OF BYZANTIUM Tuesday 9th August - JUSTINIAN: MAKING ROME GREAT AGAIN Thursday 11th August - JUSTINIAN & THEODORA: THE SECRET HISTORY Alternatively, get all episodes right now by signing up to The Rest Is History Club at restishistorypod.com *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. Often in the theatre, in the full view of the people, Theodora would throw off her clothes and stand naked in their midst, having only a pair of knickers over her private parts and her groin,

not because she was ashamed to expose these also to the public, but because no one is allowed to appear there absolutely naked. Underwear is compulsory. And with this costume, she would spread herself out and lie on her back on the floor. Certain menials on whom this task had been imposed would then sprinkle barley grains over her private parts, and geese trained for the purpose used to pick them off with their beaks one by one and swallow them. Theodora, far from blushing when she stood up again, actually seemed to be proud of this performance, for she was not only shameless herself, but did more than anyone else to encourage shamelessness. And many times she threw off her

clothes and stood in the middle of the actors on the stage, leaning over backwards or pushing out her rear to invite both those who had already enjoyed her and those who had not been intimate as yet, parading her own special brand of gymnastics. With such lasciviousness did she misuse her own body that she appeared to have her privates, not like other women in the place intended by nature, but in her face. That, Dominic, was Procopius, a historian from Palestine in the 6th century, writing about indisputably the most famous of all the empresses of Constantinople, Theodora. And it is one of the most notorious, scabrous, shocking passages in the whole of ancient literature. Yes, it is, Tom. Her own special brand of gymnastics.

That's a phrase that I think a lot of our listeners will take with them from this podcast. Yes. And so the huge question that hangs over that is, how is it that the most famous empress of Constantinople could have such filth? I think you can call it filth. I think you can call it filth. I think you can. Sexist filth indeed, Tom. Written about her.

Is it true? And what is the context for this extraordinary passage? Well, Tom, let us remember one thing. The woman we're talking about here is a saint. It's literally a saint. So that is a further dimension. A further complication. So Theodora and her husband Justinian are probably the two most famous,

most celebrated individuals associated with what we now think of as the Byzantine Empire. Although, Tom, that's not a label that they ever used of themselves. They're the Romans. They were the Romans. So this is the glamour, the decadence, the so-called decadence, the exoticism to Western observers of the Eastern Roman Empire, of the successor. Well, is it a successor state? We can talk about that in the podcast.

Of this empire that from, let's say, what would you say, Tom? The 4th century to the 15th century dominates the Eastern Mediterranean. It's the world of icons, of mosaics, of magnificent churches, of Constantinople, the greatest city on earth. The empire that is seen by some historians today as the sort of the shield of Europe against Islam. But it's actually not as well known, I in the west as it should be would you agree with that tom well this is this is a topic both of us have really wanted to do so i've written a book about this in the shadow of the sword just get my plug in and um you are wearing a t-shirt with the emblem of byzantium on the front i am by coincidence i'm not wearing it deliberately for

this oh i thought because i've always been an aficionado of this because i studied it at university and um and funnily enough the reason i studied at university was the first thing i did when i went to oxford and it was because it was so it seemed to me you know i was 18 and it seemed so exotic and glamorous compared with the english civil war which i've been doing for a level and i think to most people byzantium still has that allure doesn't it it's the sort of golden horn yes the very um the very language so um john the lydian um historian another historian byzantine historian described constantinople as the all golden city and it's that idea of gold isn't it and it's that idea i mean some some people will be familiar with this because we did a podcast about the vikings in the east and the idea of the vikings sailing down all these

rivers and into the black sea and at the end they see this golden city that is basically the template for asgard this world of a harbor full of ships massive city walls the churches the dome of the hagia sophia the church of thedom, like nothing they had ever seen on earth. Caesar's golden city. Yeah. I mean, it just has an incredible resonance and romance. So I think probably the best way to start on this story, and I think we should come to the question of how accurate that portrayal of the Taurus youth may have been. And also we should say that Procopius is equally as rude about Justinian. He is indeed. We shall become to Justinian's face later in the podcast.

So he's not just being sexist when he's rude. I mean, he's rude about everybody. Yeah. But I think to begin with, it would make sense, wouldn't it, to look at Constantinople, the city that is the stage for both these extraordinary figures. And you talked about how this is described as the capital of the Byzantine Empire, but you also then immediately said, well, yes, but it's the Roman Empire as well.

So we should probably just kind of focus in on the degree to which what we call the Byzantine Empire is a break from the Roman Empire and not. And I would say it isn't really. Yeah, I agree with you completely because the key thing about constantinople is it is it is strategically it's incredibly defensible so it's a kind of promontory sticking out from thrace sticking out from the kind of the easternmost section of europe that means that if you build walls around it it's very easy to defend but it's also, it controls what already by the second century are the two key areas for Roman strategists, namely the Danube and the frontier with the Syrian frontier. So I'm writing about Hadrian at the moment. And when he becomes emperor, he's facing war both

on the Syrian frontier and on the Danube. And so the first winter that he spends as emperor, he spends probably in Byzantium, which is the original Greek name of the city. So even then you can see that the fact that this is a position from which you can control these kind of two frontiers makes it absolutely key. And really the question is why it wasn't bigger. I think one of the reasons why it wasn't bigger and more strategic before it kind of gets promoted to become the second rome the new rome is is the lack of water um it's as basic as that yeah but once you sort that out so once you've got aqueducts these tremendous aqueducts bringing water to the city i mean as you say i think the position is so you can go to the the bosphorus obviously most people will have heard of the bosphorus the waterway the strait

that divides europe from Asia. You've got the Sea of Marmara. And once you go down through that, you're into the Aegean. So the strategic location is perfect. And I think if you think about the Roman Empire, so obviously Rome, the city of Rome, still has this tremendous sort of prestige. But all the action has been taking place on the frontiers for the Romans by the fourth century, I suppose. And they've been moving around, haven't they, the emperors? They've spent time in Milan.

They're military emperors who need to be close to the frontiers to deal with the action on the frontiers, which is the kind of, in inverted commas, barbarian incursions. And Constantinople makes sense as you say because actually we we often because we're so western orientated we forget that for the romans the big rival was always the same wasn't it was persia yeah and that frontier in mesopotamia is of all the frontiers i suppose that's the high value one the prestigious because a victory against the persians is more valuable in in pr terms than a victory against gothians is more valuable in PR terms than a victory against Goths or something. Because back in Hadrian's day, he's facing the Parthians who are a kind of shadowy threat compared to the Persian, the Sasanian empire that emerges in the third century and which kind of endures throughout this period. And effectively, it's a rival superpower, which the Romans hadn't previously had to face. And so that I think is really the key to why the city of Byzantium in the early fourth century becomes the city of

Constantinople. Constantinople. Constantine has defeated all his rivals for the rule of the empire. He's the sole ruler. And just as he is the sole ruler on earth, so he has enshrined as the prevailing deity over the Roman Empire, the Christian God who rules alone over the universe, the cosmos. And he wants a new capital. And I think that that is what makes Constantinople different to say Milan or Trier or any of these other kind of places that have been temporary capitals, is that Constantine deliberately sets out to make it a second Rome, a new Rome. But what's so interesting about Constantinople, though, isn't it, Thomas, that it is the duality. So it's both a new Rome, and at first they have lots of statues of Romans,

don't they? They do it in that kind of classical style. But at the same time, it quickly becomes a sort of rival centre of Christendom to Rome itself, doesn't it? And that's really important because it gives it a different character from Rome, which I suppose to some people might seem tainted by the paganism of the past. To a degree. But I think that when Constantine founds Constantinople, and right the way up to the time of Justinian in the early 6th century, the patterns that Constantinople has inherited from Rome are really important. So obviously, you have the figure of the emperor and his palace. And initially, Constantine, it's modeled on a praetorium, so a kind of military headquarters, but it rapidly becomes much, much larger than that, this kind of great sprawling edifice. Then you have a Senate, and then you have the masses of the people. And just as in Rome, the emperor meets the people in the Circus Maximus, which is the great chariot racing space.

So in Constantinople, you have this space, the Hippodrome, where chariots race. And so that idea of a kind of tripartite division of the emperor, the Senate, the people is something that Constantinople inherits. And I think that there's a kind of, people in Constantinople feel the kind of anxiety of Parvenus in the early years, which is why Constantine, basically, I mean, he does a Lord Elgin. He just goes around, you know, the great cities ofantine, basically, I mean, he does a Lord Elgin. He just goes around, you know, the great cities of Greece, stripping them of all their treasures and dumping them in Constantinople. So there's this great bath complex there, the Baths of Zypos, which are absolutely adorned with, you know, it's kind of like the British Museum.

It's absolutely stuffed full of loot. So I think that that matters. And they, and topographers kind of, you know, they rustle up seven hills in Constantinople. I'm just looking at a map now with these seven hills that by a remarkable coincidence, same number as in Rome. Yeah. And Rome had always been the city that grain comes from Egypt and North Africa and Constantinople has that kind of grain as well. So you have all these kinds of elements that are very, very deliberately modelled on Rome. I mean, I'm just looking at a map of Constantinople in the 6th century. Now,

you can download them from the internet. And to just pick up on what you were saying, I mean, the Hippodrome is right by the palace complex. It actually reminds me in some ways, Tom, of something we did talked about in a previous podcast, Ptolemaic Alexandria, of a city that is both a city of great learning and sort of a city of scholarship and sort of seriousness and stuff. And yet there's always that mob. You know, there's that sort of. And the fact that the palace and the hippodrome are so close together. So to give people who don't know much about this a sort of sense of it. This is Istanbul.

It's modern Istanbul. It's the part of Istanbul called Fatih.anbul it's modern istanbul it's the part of istanbul called fatty so it's on the european side it's on the southern side of the of the harbor known as the golden horn and i mean constantinople grows so quickly doesn't it tom so by the time we're talking about it's probably got what half a million people yeah but half a million probably the biggest city in the world i think i mean maybe chinese historians might dispute that but i think it's most people would say it's probably the big single biggest city in the world the measure of that is that constantine has built walls and they've rapidly kind of grown out of them so um in the um in the fifth century an empirical theodosis

second builds another vastly imposing sequence of walls that are further out. And so essentially, the stretch of land between Constantine's walls and Theodosius' walls are where cisterns can be built to store water. There are monasteries, there are kind of market gardens. They're the walls that you see today, by the way, the Theodosians. They're still standing. I mean, they're incredible. And they're the walls that you see today by the way the theaters they're still standing i mean they're fast and i think there's a case for saying that they are probably the best infrastructure investment of all time because they enable constantinople to withstand any number of

sieges um and they're built with the you know all the resources that rome then had and a hugely beneficial investment. Well, I think that's a really important point, Tom, because the portrait ever since Edward Gibbon wrote his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the image we've had of this world in English speaking countries has been one of a sort of sad decline from the virtues of the Roman heyday, and a sort of decadence. So in other words, you'll have a sort of a book on the Roman Empire in which they'll cover 500 years in 400 pages and then another thousand years in 10 pages. Oh, this was a sad epilogue and it's all very decadent and orgiastic. And of course, the end was coming. The writing was on the wall basically when they founded

Constantinople. But obviously, that's a ludicrous way of looking at it. I mean, this is a city that endures for the best part of a thousand years until it's taken by the Fourth Crusade. Is it the Fourth Crusade? It is the Fourth Crusade, isn't it? And then later on, the Ottomans. I mean, this is a very, very rich, sophisticated... I mean, as we said, the biggest city on earth, incredibly multicultural, cosmopolitan. You would have heard in the marketplaces every imaginable language i mean obviously it's a very christian city but there must have been visitors from every part of the known world um you could buy anything you wanted it's a city of pleasure it's a it's got these kind of seething crowds in the hippodrome i mean an incredibly intoxicating place and i think also

part of the reason why whybon and why, you know, the word Byzantine has become such a kind of pejorative is because there's a feeling that the less Roman it becomes, the more it goes into decline. But I don't think, I mean, I don't think that's true at all. I mean, the elements of the Roman remain, and I think they are very radically recalibrated under Justinian in paradoxical ways. And in many ways, Justinian's reign is both an attempt to restore the Roman Empire and a complete recalibration of it. And it does end up becoming a Greek empire, a Christian empire. The Roman and the pagan elements tend to, you know, fade away. But the kind of the richness of that means that it is an astonishingly sophisticated and fascinating civilization. And Justinian and Theodora play key, key roles.

Just before we get on to Justinian and Theodora, just one last thing about the geopolitics of it. Because obviously, the Roman Empire has changed since it's what we commonly think of as its heyday but the bits that have been as it were lost i mean they are the bits you would actually if you had to lose but including rome they are the bits you would you would choose to lose because they're poorer so you would choose to lose britain and if you had to you would get rid of gaul okay fine you you'd prefer to keep Spain, but if you have to lose it, you do. Because the bits that are left are not some sort of decadent leftover.

They are the richest, most productive, you know, they're the most interesting, most potent bits, aren't they? So it's basically the half that Mark Antony had when he and Octavian divided up the empire. It's exactly that half. It is, and that reflects the fact that there are kind of geographical factors in the split between the West and the Eastern halves. And the Western half that gets conquered by

the barbarians, as the Romans would call them, they drift away because of the fact you have the Alps, you have the Adriatic, you know, these are kind of natural barriers and borders. But having said that, you know, if you had to give up anything, you'd give up the Western half. There are two obvious areas that people in Constantinople are particularly keen to get back. One is North Africa, which is incredibly rich as a supplier of grain. So that really matters. And the other, of course, is Italy, because Italy has the original Rome. Just to fill people in, Tom, to the Vandals in North Africa.

So that's, when we say North Africa, we're talking about the coasts of Algeria, Libya, Tunisia. And then Italy has fallen to the Goths, hasn't it? Yeah, the Ostrogoths. And this matters not just because the loss of the original Rome is a humiliation, but also because in a Christian world, the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, remains the senior bishop. Even though the patriarch, the Bishop of Constantinople, has been kind of promoted over the heads of the bishops of Antioch and Jerusalem and Alexandria.

So the links with Rome are still very important and this is something that that does kind of haunt people in constantinople the sense that they have they've lost a kind of vital part of what it is to be roman so let's talk about the should we talk about the characters our principles so let's start with since we've framed this through Theodora, I should say, Tom, we've been very remiss, haven't we, in not pointing out to our listeners, some of whom I think are new because we've accumulated new listeners in recent days, that Theodora is actually the reigning champion of historical Love Island. She is, yes. Yes, she absolutely is. Which was a much-fated show, a much-fated historical reality show that we did, in which she triumphed

along with former Prime Minister, three-time Prime Minister. In the 30s? In the 20s, 20s and 30s, Stanley Baldwin. They made a lovely couple. Improbable. Improbable, but very successful. Much liked by the fans. Yes. And if you want to find out more about that, you should go to our

historical Love Island episode. But Dominic, of course, also Theodora's husband, Justinian, of course, was the theme of our previous episode that we did with Karl Harper on the collapse of the Roman Empire and the impact that pathogens had on it. And in that episode, when we talked about the Justinianic plague, Justinian is the Justinian as in the Justinianic plague. Exactly. And he's a great character too, actually, Tom. He is a tremendously impressive character. Or is he, as we will discuss.

So let's start with, should we start with Theodora? So Theodora, she is born about, we don't know exactly, about 500, I think that's fair to say, isn't it, Tom? Yeah, roughly that, yeah. And again, we don't know, well, because she's from a lowly background, we're not entirely sure, I think that's fair to say, isn't it Tom? Yeah, roughly that, yeah. And again, we don't know. Well, because she's from a lowly background, we're not entirely sure, I think, of her sort of, as it were, her ethnic ancestry. So some people said she was from Cyprus. Some people said she was from Syria.

But we do know that she grew up in the city, in Constantinople, because her father, I believe, was a bear keeper. He was, yeah. And he's a bear keeper for one of the two main rival teams in the Hippodrome. Yeah. So this is, what, Manchester City, Manchester United? Yeah, but it's bigger than that. It's much bigger than that. Liverpool, Everton.

The Greens and the Blues. The Greens and the Blues. And they hate each other. The supporters hate each other. But they're not just... So people often... I mean mean it's one thing that people who don't know much about constantinople know about constantinople is they have these mad circus sort of chariot racing factions and teams but they're more than sports teams aren't they they're kind of militias they're almost yeah they're not they're kind of clubs they're yeah and they take sides in kind of

theological arguments, which I think is something that we very much miss from contemporary sport. Yeah, you don't get that with fans of West Bromwich Albion, do you? They are. Well, they're potential paramilitaries. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, obviously, if you've got huge gangs of ultras, I mean, that's the kind of standing temptation, aren't they?

Yeah. You kind of get that slightly in Russia, don't you, yeah in russia you got it in yugoslavia in the 1990s um fans of dino mozagreb or red star belgrade yeah absolutely i mean that's not unknown at all i mean to a degree perhaps just you know a little bit in glasgow celtic rangers yeah i mean slight kind of you know there's because because there you have a kind of sectarian divide people taking positions i mean you know they're not arguing about transubstantiation or anything but you know there's a slight kind of theological edge there so that's maybe a kind of very faint distorted parallel so so anyway the the greens have their own bear i mean they obviously must

put on shows and they both have bears yes Yes. I mean, they must have multiple animals, I assume. And Theodore's father, who I think is called Acacius, he is a bear keeper, isn't he? And we don't know her mother's name. Her mother probably, again, a performer, an acrobat, a dancer. What do you think, Tom? I think if you kind of imagine the Super Bowl crossed with a kind of very high class strip club. You probably have some idea of what's going on in the kind of the intervals between the races. Yeah. Because after each race, invariably people will crash.

You know, bits of body will have to be removed from the sand will have to be swept up. Everything has to be prepared. And often you're having kind of 20 or so races in a day. So they need entertainment because you've got what kind of 50 000 people it because this is a vast hippodrome the original one that was built but back in the early third century wasn't large enough um so it kind of sticks off the hill on which it's been built and it's held up on kind of great concrete props so it's a it's an extraordinary structure and it has this this great kind of spine running down the middle that's decorated with an obelisk and statues and and actually um the the famous trophy that the greeks

set up in delphi and after the defeat of the persians back in the fifth century bc and which is still there um so an extraordinary place and this is what um theodora her two sisters her mother her father they are making their living from this so they're kind of born into the entertainments that are laid on in between the races well she appears as a child doesn't she she appears in burlesques and comedies and so it you know she's it's like being born into a circus family, but sort of turned up to a thousand. But her father dies, doesn't he, when she's quite young. Yeah. And her mother marries again, I think.

So they're with the Greens. Yeah. And her mother goes to see the Greens and says, I've married again. And she takes her children with her, I think, Theodore among them. She goes to see the Greens and she said, the bosses of the Greens, she says, I've married again.

That bear keeper job, can my new husband have the bear keeper job? And the Greens say, no, we've given it to someone else. And she is so outraged that the whole family switch allegiances. Well, she does it in public. So she brings the children trying to tug the heartstrings of the crowd before where the um you know the leaders of the greens are and they turn her down publicly and so that the leaders of the blues then say oh we'll we'll give you the job yeah so so they switch and um this is quite important for the story because justinian before he becomes emperor is a big partisan of the blues

so he is yes that means that from this point on, Theodora and Justinian are supporting the same team. And so Theodora has to make her way in the world. Her mother, you know, they've got this link with the a dancer, an acrobat, a comedian, that in the world of Constantinople in the early 6th century, that blurs quite imperceptibly into the world, as you said, of being a stripper or indeed of being a courtesan. Because that effectively, I guess, is what she probably was when she was in her late teens, maybe.

So this is something that Constantinople, again, has inherited from Rome, who viewed actors as the lowest of the low, so ranked alongside prostitutes. And as you say, the boundary between prostitute and actress was often very narrow. And so Constantinople has inherited that prejudice but it's now also a christian city in which acting burlesques and prostitution are all condemned for christian reasons right so there's there's uh there's lots of reasons why theodora might get you know public condemnations um and why in due course uh she betters herself by essentially turning her back on the on the theater and on the on the hippodrome because she gets a patron doesn't she yeah oh the civil

servant guy who goes off to govern Libya yeah Hekebalus and he's a bit of a brute so he beats her yeah and so she runs away leaves him and goes to Alexandria where she seems to have had a kind of religious experience so so that everybody Christian, and they take it incredibly seriously. I mean, well, not everyone is Christian. Well, who's not Christian? Well, we'll come to this, but say there are Platonists in Athens, say, still at this point. Not many people. But they are still very much a part of the fabric of it. But the details of Christian doctrine are a matter of enormous political and cultural significance.

And the arguments about those details, when she ends up, she's been in Constantinople, she goes to Alexandria. She is going to a part of the empire that many people in the capital regard as heretical, don't they? Because the people in Alexandria,andria it's alexandra is a hotbed of something called monophysitism should we at this point take a break before everyone runs for terror should we have a break and then when we come back i think we should um roll up our sleeves and just we won't go into it in huge detail but we just need to explain what the what the point of issue is and it's actually very exciting, Tom. It is exciting. I think actually, I think people will, it's a cliffhanger. I've just, I've become so kind of, you know, sensitive to you complaining when we talk

about Christianity that... Do you know, I should tell the listeners this, this is the only time in recorded history where when we were discussing this episode, I said to Tom, come on, get stuck into it, do it properly. And he was, he was a little And he was a little bit nervous. So come back after the break to see Tom talking about the nature of Christ. See you in a minute. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes,

and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Now, you may remember that the first half of this episode began with an extraordinary reading from Tom Holland about the special brand of gymnastics performed by the Empress Theodora when she was a girl.

Now, Tom will be producing his own special brand of gymnastics as he is going to explain the nature of the monophysite heresy. A very exciting subject. It's actually a bloodstained subject. So it's much more interesting than sceptics might think. So Tom, what on earth is going on? So probably one of the things that people know about Byzantium, and it's been a kind of subject of mockery again, ever since the time of Edward Gibbon is that the the empire and the church is endlessly debating the nature of Christ. So this happens right from the beginning. So under Constantine, there are debates about whether whether the son, Jesus, you know, whether Christ is a part of God, whether the son is is kind of co-eternal with the father all this kind of stuff and that gets resolved and they decide basically that yes uh that the father son and and spirit are

all kind of part of a whole um this is very precise but by the by the fifth century there's a new controversy and that is basically uh so theologians have decided that christ the figure of jesus is both human and divine so he has two natures he has his divine nature and he has his human nature and the question then is what is the relationship of these two natures yeah yeah so basically you boil it down to thinking like this so is it like gin and tonic? So you have your gin, let's say that's the divine, and you have your tonic, that's the human, and you mix them up in a glass and they become indivisible.

Yeah. Or are they like olive oil and water? They don't mix. And they don't mix. No. And so this becomes the kind of the great great dividing line i mean we could sort of get bogged down in all this couldn't we in the in the details of it but i suppose the essence of it is that am i right in thinking there was a there was a ecumenical

council that's a big a big meeting of church bigwigs in 451 bishops in chalcedon which is now but again part of istanbul but on the Asian side. Yeah. And they basically hammered out what they thought was the formula. And then some people didn't like it. Yeah. So the formulation that they arrive at Chalcedon, which is still upheld by pretty much the Orthodox, the Catholics, Protestants, I mean, they all uphold it, is that you have one and the same

son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man. So in other words, the oil and the water, they're both equally important. They haven't mixed to create what in Greek is monophysis, a single, a soul nature. I told you it would be tom's special brand of gymnastics and it is but after chalcedon there are still people who who are very keen on the idea that this single nature is what christ is all about so they come to be called monophysites so as far as i can tell from my reading of this this is not just a sort of doctrinal theological issue. It's also an issue about power and regions and so on. Everything is.

Yeah, of course. So you've got, as it were, the, in inverted commas, orthodox view, which is the view held in Constantinople, and it's associated, I suppose, with the state, with the emperor, and with a sort of central authority. And then you have this heresy, as it's called, which is monophysitism. And that's stronger in places like Alexandria

and bits of Syria and so on. So in other words, in Egypt, North Africa, in places that maybe would resist very strong central control and being bossed around by the capital. So it's a capital versus provincial thing to some extent, isn't it? Well, I mean, you mentioned Alexandria, which is the second city so of the empire it always has been ever since um the defeat of cleopatra uh it's like constantinople a very

turbulent city very proud of its dignity and status and in a way the kind of the tensions between chalcedonian and monophysite christians become a way for alexandria to kind of proclaim its its um its distinctiveness yeah and so when theodora turns up there she comes under the wing of the patriarch timothy and she she she becomes a very devout monophysite rather i suppose rather in the manner, and I think that this is kind of an important part of her appeal to Christians in the long run, rather like the way that Mary Magdalene is coming to be portrayed as a kind of repentant prostitute. Even if there is nothing in the Gospels themselves that sustains that, the idea that someone who has turned to Christ, whose background perhaps

is not all it could have been, in a way is a kind of greater catch. Yeah, of course. But that's part of Theodore's enduring appeal. I mean, in a way you could argue, Tom, that's one of the reasons we're doing this podcast at all, is because that archetype of the sort of- The repentant whore. Yeah. The woman who was once terribly licentious but has now repented and become incredibly good and incredibly impressive. I mean, that runs through Western culture, doesn't it? Yeah.

So she must have returned, we don't know exactly when, I think, to Constantinople at the end of her teens or in her very early 20s. Yeah. And there at some point that we don't know, again, she's obviously still a great catch. I mean, she's still young. And she meets an older man who is a real rising star whose name is, well, his original name

is Flavius Petrus Sabartius. But now he calls himself Justinian. Because he's been adopted by a guy called Justin who just happens to be the emperor just happens to be the emperor exactly so the empire when theodora was born the emperor was a man called anastasius yes who had two interesting distinction his eyes were different colors yes one was black and one was blue wasn't yeah a black eye and he was also very bald very bald i mean can he be very bald?

I think he, well, very bald because he gets praised by poets who are looking to flatter him. Right. About his baldness. Yes, because they hail him. They say of his forehead that it gleams like silver. So he's a bolder man than Stanley Tucci, who's very bald, but he's even bolder. But I think his forehead has this kind of this. Tremendous- This tremendous glow. This glow.

And he is basically a kind of, he's a bureaucrat. He's a civil servant who's been, he's kind of stepped up because there's a gap, there's a vacancy. And the fact that he can be praised for having a gleaming forehead, it's a reflection, not just on his boldness, but also the fact that he's an absolute whiz at accountancy. And the treasury has been a bit depleted. Anastasius' great contribution,

rather than going out and kind of leading campaigns, he stays in the palace, he crunches numbers, he counts beans, and he sets the Roman currency, the Byzantine currency, on a tremendously strong new footing. So the solidus, as it's called, it is solid. It's a massively strong currency made of gold. And basically, this will be the kind of the underpinning for Byzantine financial strength for centuries and centuries to come. An immensely bold emperor with a very, very solid solidus is what you're saying. But anyway, I think it's good to talk about Anastasius because that gives the lie to any lingering ideas that this is a sort of decadent, shambolic, incompetent, excessively corrupt, all of these kinds of things that have been thrown at the Eastern Roman Empire. This is a confident, relatively stable state, isn't it? Dominating the Eastern Mediterranean. relatively stable state isn't it dominating the eastern mediterranean it's based so basically

it's run by militarized accountants yes of whom anastasius is the absolute exemplar so kind of civil servants who are working in the great palace are kind of recruited into a non-existent legion and they they have swagger sticks they they wear gold, they wear purple, they wear tremendous belts, these military belts that descend from the legionary tradition that become the emblem of the bureaucrat. constantine quite a kind of austere basis by this point it's a kind of cross between gorman garst and the office it's it's a huge kind of great warren of passageways many different floors or you know they even have a riding school in the middle of it i mean this is basically like 10 downing street tom i mean yeah but on a much much larger scale yeah but you still have this kind of it's it's this kind of weird fusion of of you know the legionary inheritance but they're all accountants so so anastasius is absolutely the

exemplar of that but of course anastasius needs to have guards you need to have bodyguards because as an as the emperor of course you do so they are also a feature of it and bodyguards usually are recruited from you know the the more barbarous reaches of the empire the balkans traditionally and so this guy arrives uh as a refugee from a barbarian invasion from uh from what is now scopier so scoopy it's called and this is justin i think his original name was istock yes he's a peasant stock isn isn't he? Possibly sort of Thracian ethnicity, we don't know. He's not, interestingly, Justin is not literate. So he has a stencil when he becomes,

he has to do everything with a special sort of stencil. Anyway, we're jumping ahead. He's the commander of the guard, isn't he? Yeah. And basically, Anastasius has been emperor, what, from the end of the fifth century, and then he dies in 518, in the summer of 518. He's got no heir. And he doesn't have a son. Well, he does. I mean, potentially, he has three nephews. There's a very shambolic scene, isn't there, with his nephews. You know about the stuff with the couches? Remind me.

So supposedly, I mean, this is one of these stories in the rest of his history in which he specialised that's almost certainly untrue. He decided that God would decide who would succeed him. So he wrote a note with the word regnum, and he put it under the cushions of one of the couches, and he decided that which of the nephews sat on this couch would succeed him because God would have chosen him. And they all came in, but they were great pals, all the nephews.

They all sat on the same couch. So they didn't. So it didn't work. Now, the other story is that he then said, oh, that was a terrible disaster. I shall pray to God. And he prays overnight and God gives him this vision and says, the man who comes into your bedchamber first tomorrow will be your heir. I mean, that's obviously a terrible way of

deciding. The man who comes in as the commander of the guard, who is this Vulcan peasant. Justin. Called Justin. But there's another story, isn't there, that Justin basically bribes his way. Well, so when Anastasius dies, one of these three nephews, who's a very able man called Hypatius, is in command of the Roman forces on the eastern frontier against Persia. So that's a key military command. He's linked to the emperor and he has command of the armies, but he doesn't want it, basically. So he's happy to stand down. He's clearly not an ambitious man.

So you have this kind of squabble in the palace over who's going to do it. And one of the rival candidates gives Justin, who is commander of the guard, a whole load of gold and says, go out and bribe everyone to support me. So Justin goes out, he's got all this gold, and he thinks, well, I might as well bribe them to support me. And that's what he does.

It's very House of Cards, isn't it? Yeah. It's very House of Cards. So he becomes emperor and he has this, he can't read and write, what he does it's very house of cards isn't it yeah very house of cards so he becomes emperor and he has this he can't read and write but he has this stencil with the word leggy on it in purple ink he's the only person allowed to use purple ink so he can sort of stencil his approval on all these documents but by this stage justin or i mean his name is flavius justinus he is in his mid-60s is he i think 70 even i mean he's pretty old so the real power behind him is his nephew who he definitely is literate yes who's almost certainly had an

education in constantinople has come to sort of you know to to profit from his uncle's success in the guard and this is the person who calls himself very clearly very clever and quite serious tom he's a very very devout christian yeah he's also very very patriotic he wants to see the roman empire restored he has all kinds of plans he's impatient with justin who by this point if procopius is to be trusted is um is slightly losing it he's joe biden basically he's slightly joe biden well no i think i think even maybe even worse um but justinian has big big plans but he obviously needs to you know there's nothing guaranteeing the fact that he will succeed so you know he's he's a he's a bit like a kind of, you know, a prime minister or president in waiting, like a vice president or chancellor of the Exchequer or something.

Yeah. You know, he's running a campaign to make sure that he does it. And as part of that, you know, we mentioned before, he's a keen devotee of the blues in the Hippodrome. Yeah. And the blues are, there's a kind of a particular paramilitary wing who all wear mullets. Yes, I've heard about that. They're more than strange shirts that are very big, but they narrow at the end of their arms and their wrists. Weird.

So they look, they're kind of like Hephthalites, kind of Hunnic people who are busy attacking the Persians at this point so they're obviously very menacing and justinian employs them as a kind of paramilitary unit to essentially you know establish himself as the master of constantinople while justin is in the palace um and he is he's he's preparing for for the rule of the empire and this is when he meets theodora yeah there's a problem he He falls madly, madly in love with her. And even Procopius, there's not a breath in Procopius' assassination, literary assassination of Justinian Theodora, that they were ever anything other than utterly devoted to each other. But there's a problem because she comes from the kind of background that is legally unacceptable. It's not just in for a dig. It's positively illegal. For somebody of senatorial rank, which Justin is,

sorry, which Justinian is, Justinian was also made consul, I think, in 521. So he's had every office bar the imperial title that you could have, and he just is not allowed to marry her. And there's a further complication, which is that even though Justin is happy to kind of wangle the law and basically kind of fix it so that if you're a repentant actress, which I think is a wonderful concept, a repentant actress or prostitute, then the marriage is fine. There's a further complication because Justin's wife,

again, if Procopius is to be trusted, was herself a slave. She had originally been a slave, a concubine. So her name originally was Lupicina. And lupa in Latin means a she-wolf, but it also meant a prostitute. So whether this is just Procopius being muckraking or whether that's true, we don't know. But clearly she came from, again, quite an infradig background. She has taken on, I think, the very telling name of Euphemia, which means well-spoken. So maybe... Very Pygmalion there, Tom.

Yeah, expressive of a certain kind of social anxiety. So basically, the last thing that Euphemia wants is to have this kind of showgirl as a yeah as a daughter-in-law because that will then direct attention to her own kind of awkward background so so she dies fortunately just in the nick of time so justinian and theodore are able to get married um and then justin dies and justinian is able to become emperor. And Theodora is given a remarkable degree of dignity. I mean, so Augusta, female of Augustus, this is the title of the empress. But Theodora is joined with Justinian in all kinds of salutations and formulae across the emperor. And he makes it absolutely clear that Theodora is going to rule

alongside him so this is the year 527 the spring of 527 i think the first of april uh justinian is in his mid-40s 45 or so uh theodora is still in her late 20s about 20s probably about 27 or so and they are they now have the reins of power in what is still the mediterranean's most glittering most potent most glamorous and prestigious state don't they and justinian has all these ideas about how he's going to plan he's going to rebuild the glory of rome he's going to change he's going to transform the map of europe and well tom we've been talking for almost 50 minutes um and i think the what happens next which is tremendously exciting which involves riots uh disembodied heads um persians plague

every horseman of the apocalypse imaginable. Cathedrals. Yeah, building cathedrals. It's tremendously exciting stuff. And I think we should reconvene next time to find out what happens next. Let's do that. So let's do that. We shall see you next time. Bye-bye.

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