The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

60
EVAGRIUS
advance of punishment; accordingly he held the realm as a prize of
virtue, not an inheritance, after the senate and others who ¢lled every
position had provided the imperial power to him unanimously, on the
advice of Pulcheria. Her indeed he took to wife as empress, but he did
not have intercourse and she remained a perpetual virgin until old age. 12
This happened even though Valentinian the emperor of Rome had not
yet rati¢ed the election; still, when he had con¢rmed the vote on
account of Marcian’s virtue, Marcian wished that a common worship
be given to God by everyone, once the voices that had been muddled
through impiety were again piously united, and that the Divinity should
be glori¢ed through one and the same creed. 13
2 Now while he was deliberating on these matters, the men acting on the
instructions of Leo the bishop of elder Rome approached him, saying
that at the Second Synod at Ephesus Dioscorus had not accepted the
Tome of Leo, which was a de¢nition of orthodoxy; 14 so too did those
For Marcian’s generosity, cf. Georgius Monachus ii. 611:12^17, and for other praise of imperial
generosity, Evagrius v.13, p. 209:14^26 (Tiberius).
12 Holum, Empresses 208^9, accepted the importance of Pulcheria’s role in the succession,
but, in an exhaustive analysis of the sources, Burgess (‘Accession’) has argued that she
was no more than a pawn whom Aspar exploited. Although it would be surprising if Aspar
did not have a hand in the elevation of his former domesticus (cf. Zuckerman, ‘Huns’ 176),
quite possibly in collaboration with the magister militum Zeno (Lee, ‘Empire’ 43), Burgess’
scepticism seems excessive: an Augusta could take the initiative in a dynastic crisis (cf.
Ariadne in 491, or Sophia in 574), and an unconsummated marriage need not have been
regarded as totally abnormal in a devout Christian context; further, the one-month interregnum
between Theodosius’ death on 28 July and Marcian’s proclamation on 25 August is
not suspicious, since the empire was legally under the sole rule of Valentinian III (there was
a ¢ve-month ‘gap’ between the death of Valens and the proclamation of Theodosius I).
Rufus, Plerophories 3, records a vision of the priest Pelagius that Pulcheria would be unfaithful
both to orthodoxy (through promoting Chalcedon) and to her vow of virginity.
13 Valentinian, senior Augustus after Theodosius’ death, was not consulted about the
succession. Evagrius hints at a link between Marcian’s organization of the Council of Chalcedon,
which was to uphold the views of Pope Leo, and his o⁄cial recognition by the West in
452. The Monophysite tradition naturally exploited the technical illegality of Marcian’s
accession: John of Nikiu 87.36; Michael the Syrian viii.9, II. p. 36.
14 There are several letters from Leo to Marcian complaining about Second Ephesus:
ACO II.i.1, no. 12 (pp. 25:7^27:18); II.iv.39, 41, 47; the people responsible for delivering
the letter may have been the presbyters Faustus and Martin, who were representing the
Pope’s interests in Constantinople in 450, or perhaps one of the numerous messengers who
travelled between Pope and imperial court in 450/1, e.g. the presbyter Boniface or the agens