Virgin Pulcheria

Aelia Pulcheria was born in 399 in Constantinople, the daughter of Eastern Roman emperor Arcadius and empress Aelia Eudoxia, and a member of the Theodosian dynasty. She was the elder sister of Theodosius II and of the princesses Arcadia and Marina. After Arcadius died in 408, Theodosius, still a child, succeeded as emperor. In 414 Pulcheria, then about fifteen, was proclaimed Augusta and took a leading place in the government as her brother’s guardian and principal counselor. In the same period she and her sisters bound themselves by vows of perpetual virginity, a dedication she presented as offering the imperial household to God and as a public religious act as well as a personal one.

As Augusta she exercised wide influence over court ceremonial, ecclesiastical affairs, and policy. Contemporary writers describe a household marked by fasting, liturgical regularity, and charity. Pulcheria founded or endowed churches, monasteries, and institutions for the poor in Constantinople; later tradition especially associates her with churches of the Theotokos, including those at Blachernae and the Chalkoprateia, and with promotion of Marian devotion. She opposed the teaching of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, and supported Cyril of Alexandria. Imperial backing from her circle helped determine the Eastern court’s stance in the controversy that led to Nestorius’s condemnation at the Council of Ephesus in 431.

Her authority at court was not uncontested. She came into conflict with her sister-in-law, empress Aelia Eudocia, and with powerful officials, notably the eunuch Chrysaphius, and at times withdrew from the center of power. After Theodosius II died in 450 from injuries in a riding accident, Pulcheria was decisive in the succession. She agreed to a political marriage with the officer Marcian, who was then proclaimed emperor, on the understanding, stressed by ecclesiastical writers, that her vow of virginity would be honored and the marriage remain unconsummated. She had no children.

As empress-consort she remained a leading imperial supporter of the doctrine later called Chalcedonian. She and Marcian backed the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which defined two natures in the one person of Christ and deposed Dioscorus of Alexandria, and they issued laws in support of its decrees. Pulcheria died in Constantinople in 453. She was commemorated as a saint in Eastern and Western Christianity, with her feast on 10 September; the Roman martyrology remembers her as empress and virgin. Later hagiography presents her as a model of imperial piety and orthodoxy, while historians also emphasize her skill in using religious symbolism to sustain Theodosian, and then Marcian’s, legitimacy.