THEODOSIUS II (Flavius Theodosius, Junior), Emperor of the East. - Born in 401, crowned Augustus on 10 January 402, he succeeded his father Arcadius on 1 May 408. Given the Emperor's age, the regency was exercised by Anthemius, who carried on a broad and fruitful activity, seeking to repress the aspirations to fiscal independence of the great landowners (Cod. Theod., 9, 22, 4: A.D. 409), promoting grain imports from Egypt, settling relations with Persia by peaceful means, reorganizing the army and especially the Danube fleet and the defense of Illyricum, and also beginning (443) the construction of the walls of Constantinople for protection on the landward side.
Furthermore, after subduing the Libyans and Isaurians, as early as 409 he obtained a decisive victory over the Huns who had crossed the Danube. On the death of Anthemius (414), the patrician Aurelian succeeded him as praefectus praetorio, but the regency of the thirteen-year-old T. was assumed by his sister Pulcheria, raised to the dignity of Augusta on 4 July 414. Under the influence of Pulcheria the court of Constantinople became the center of a severe religious rigorism; measures against heretics were made harsher, pagans were excluded from public offices (Cod. Theod., 16, 5, 57 ff.; 16, 10, 21), and the construction of new synagogues was forbidden (ibid., 16, 8, 22). But other problems pressed, such as the situation of large landed property in Egypt, the state of agitation in Palestine, the frequent revolts of troops in the East, and the conflict with Persia. The latter led to a war (421-22), which ended with a success for the Byzantines and was followed by a peace treaty that was to last a hundred years.
In the year 421, on the suggestion of Pulcheria, T. married Athenais (daughter of an Athenian teacher of rhetoric), baptized at that time with the name Aelia Eudocia. She, after the birth of Licinia Eudoxia, obtained the dignity of Augusta and began to exercise a strong influence over her husband, especially in the religious sphere: the reorganization of the school of Constantinople (27 February 425: Cod. Theod., 14, 9, 3; 15, 1, 53) was probably also due to her advice. Meanwhile in the West, on the death of Honorius and the succession of the child Valentinian, profound disorders were stirred up above all by the usurper John, and the East found itself obliged to intervene: Galla Placidia was recognized as Augusta, and Valentinian, after his betrothal to Licinia Eudoxia, was made Caesar in 424 and, once John was defeated, Augustus in 425.
In the East it was necessary to contain the renewed invasions of the Huns (441), with the cession of territories south of the Danube, while religious controversies caused by the Nestorian (v. NESTORIO) and Monophysite (v.) heresies were seething. His ill-advised intervention in these troubled the last years of the Emperor's life; he died in 450. The name of T. is linked to a grandiose legislative work, namely his Code (v. CODEX THEODOSIANOS), which constitutes the first attempt at an official collection of imperial constitutions and served as a model for the Justinian one. The Emperor (Cod. Theod., 1, 1, 5: A.D. 429) had at first conceived a broader design: besides the collection of the constitutiones generales (including the abrogated ones) from Constantine to his own time, he had planned a compilation, mixed of constitutions (leges) and fragments of the writings of jurists (iura), intended for practice. This second part of the program could not be carried out, so that in 435 (Cod. Theod., I, 1, 6) T. reduced it to the first collection, completed in 438 and then also sent to the West, where it was published on 25 December 438, after a solemn session of the Roman Senate, of which the minutes are preserved.
Bibliography4 works
Pietro de Francisci