Roman emperor of the East (37995). Made emperor because of his military abilities, he solved the long-standing Gothic problem by allowing the Goths to settle S of the Danube as allies of Rome. His title comes from his vigorous championship of orthodox Christianity.
| Theodosius I | ||
|---|---|---|
| Emperor of the Roman Empire | ||
| A coin of Theodosius I | ||
| Reign |
August 378 - 15 May 392 (emperor in the east, with Gratian in the west); 15 May 392 - 17 January 395 (whole empire) |
|
| Full name | Flavius Theodosius | |
| Born | 11 January 347 | |
| Cauca, modern Spain | ||
| Died | 17 January 395 | |
| Milan | ||
| Buried | Milan | |
| Predecessor | Valens (in the east); Valentinian II in the west | |
| Successor |
Arcadius in the east; Honorius in the west |
|
| Wife/wives | 1) Aelia Flaccilla (?-385) | |
| 2) Galla, daughter of Valentinian I | ||
| Issue |
By 1)Arcadius, Honorius and Pulcheria (?-385) By 2) Galla Placidia |
|
| Dynasty | Theodosian | |
| Father | Theodosius the Elder | |
| Mother | Thermantia | |
Flavius Theodosius (January 11, 347 - January 17, 395), also called Theodosius I and Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 until his death. Reuniting the east and west fractions of the empire, Theodosius was the last emperor of both the Eastern and Western Roman Empire.
He is also known for making Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire.
Career
Born in Cauca (modern Coca, Spain), to a senior military officer, Theodosius the Elder, Theodosius accompanied his father to Britannia to help quell the Great Conspiracy in 368. However, shortly thereafter, and at about the same time as the sudden disgrace and execution of his father, Theodosius retired to Cauca.
From 364 to 375, the Roman empire was governed by two co-emperors, the brothers Valentinian I and Valens; 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. After the death in 392 of Valentinian II, whom Theodosius had supported against a variety of usurpations, Theodosius ruled as sole emperor, defeating the usurper Eugenius on September 6, 394, at the Battle of the Frigidus.
Family
By his first wife, Aelia Flaccilla, he had two sons, Arcadius and Honorius and a daughter, Pulcheria;
Diplomatic policy with the Goths
The East was quiet during the reign of Theodosius. The Gothic crisis was bad enough that his co-Emperor Gratian relinquished control of Illyrian provinces and retired to Trier in Gaul to let Theodosius operate without hindrance. Theodosius was reduced to the expensive 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 Illyria of Goths, and Theodosius was able finally to enter Constantinople on November 24, 380, after two seasons in the field.
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. Theodosius campaigned against Eugenius, whose army was defeated at the Battle of the Frigidus. Theodosius became the only emperor.
Theodosius the patron
Theodosius oversaw the raising in 390 of the Egyptian obelisk from Karnak. 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.
Nicene Christianity becomes the state religion
Theodosius promoted Nicene Trinitarianism within Christianity and Christianity within the empire.
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.
Arians
While no mainstream churchmen within the Empire explicitly adhered to Arius or his teachings, there were those who still used the homoiousion formula, as well as those who attempted to bypass the debate by merely saying that Jesus was like (homoi in Greek) God the Father. Theodosius, on the other hand, cleaved closely to the Nicene Creed: this was the line that predominated in the West and was held by the important Alexandrian church.
Establishment of Nicene orthodoxy
Two days after Theodosius arrived in Constantinople, (November 24, 380), Theodosius expelled the non-Nicene bishop, Demophilus of Constantinople, and surrendered the churches of that city to Gregory Nazianzus, the leader of the small Nicene community there, an act which provoked rioting. Theodosius had just been baptized, by bishop Acholius of Thessalonica, during a severe illness, as was common in the early Christian world.
Although much of the church hierarchy in the East had held non-Nicene positions in the decades leading up to Theodosius' accession, he managed to impose Nicene uniformity during his reign.
Persecution of Paganism
For the first part of his rule, Theodosius seems to have ignored the semi-official standing of the Christian bishops; Theodosius participated in actions by Christians against major Pagan sites: the destruction of the gigantic Serapeum of Alexandria and its library by a mob in around 392, authorized by Theodosius (extirpium malum) and described in exultant detail by Christian propagandists, was only the most spectacular such occasion (see Brown).
By decree in 391, Theodosius ended the subsidies that had still trickled to some remnants of Greco-Roman civic Paganism too. After the last Olympic Games in 393, Theodosius cancelled the much-diminished games, and the reckoning of dates by Olympiads soon came to an end. It is worth noting that in 390 Ambrose had excommunicated Theodosius, who had recently ordered the massacre of several thousand 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.
Theodosian women
Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius Serena, niece of Theodosius and wife of Flavius StilichoDeath
Theodosius died in Milan, in 395.
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