THEODOSIUS, Monophysite patriarch of ALEXANDRIA. — Died in 566. He was elected after the death of Timothy III in 535, at the insistence of the empress Theodora, who desired a Monophysite patriarch, but one belonging to the moderate tendency of Severus of Antioch and not to the more radical one of Julian of Halicarnassus. The people, however, together with the monks, who favored the Julianists, drove T. out and replaced him with Gaianus.
The emperor Justinian, at Theodora’s instigation, had T. reinstated, hoping that he would be willing to adhere to the Council of Chalcedon; then, in 537, he summoned him to Constantinople and, being unable to persuade him to abandon Monophysitism, exiled him to Derkos and installed the Orthodox patriarch Paul in Alexandria. Later T. was summoned by the Empress to Constantinople, from where he was able twice to travel throughout Asia Minor ordaining priests. In Constantinople, always under Theodora’s protection, he consecrated Monophysite bishops, first and foremost the famous Jacob Baradeus, who subsequently organized the Monophysite hierarchy especially in Syria. T. constantly sought to direct his adherents from the exile in which he died.
Among his writings there have survived, among other things, some letters published by J. B. Chabot and an exposition of his faith addressed to the empress Theodora (v. Mansi, XI, 273, 445).
(from H. Vincent, F.-M. Abel, Bethléem, La sanctuaire de la Nativité, Paris 1911, p. 19)
THEODOSIUS the CENOBIARCH, saint — Plan of the triconch chapel of the monastery of S. Theodosius (second half of the fifth century), today Deir Dōsi (Palestine).
Chabot, Documenta ad originee monophysitarum illustrandas, Louvain 1933, in Corp. Script. Chr. Or. Script. Syri, 2nd series, XXXVII; Fliche-Martin-Frutes, IV, p. 451 ff.
Guglielmo de Vries