St. Theodosius the Great

Theodosius was born on January 11, 347, in Cauca in northern Spain, the son of the Roman general Theodosius the Elder. He was raised a Nicene Christian in a Spanish provincial home. He served as a young general under Valentinian I and was set aside under the Arian Emperor Valens.

When Valens was killed by the Goths at the battle of Adrianople in August of 378, the empire passed to the western Augustus Gratian, who recalled Theodosius from retirement and made him emperor of the East. Within a year of his elevation, Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica (380) declaring the Faith of Nicaea, as held by the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch of Alexandria, to be the public confession of the Roman world. The Arianizing settlements of the previous fifty years were quietly ended.

In 381 he summoned the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople, to ratify Nicaea, to confess the divinity of the Holy Spirit against the Pneumatomachi, and to set the order of the new Eastern patriarchates. He was present at the council in person, supported St. Gregory the Theologian when he was attacked, and, when Gregory withdrew to spare the council division, presided in person at the baptism, ordination, and consecration of Nectarius to the throne of Constantinople in a single day.

In April of 390 there was a riot at Thessaloniki in which an imperial general was killed by the crowd. In retaliation Theodosius ordered a public reprisal in the city's circus, and the slaughter was extensive (the traditional figure is seven thousand). St. Ambrose of Milan refused him Communion until he had done public penance. Theodosius came out of his palace in the dress of a penitent, stood at the door of the cathedral of Milan with the catechumens, and was not received again to the Holy Mysteries until he had wept his way through the canonical period of penance. It is the most famous instance in the patristic age of an emperor submitted to the discipline of the Church, and the principle has stood ever since: there is no rank in the Body of Christ above the canons of the Faith.

He died at Milan on January 17, 395, in the presence of his sons Arcadius and Honorius and of St. Ambrose, who preached his funeral oration. The Church keeps his memory as Theodosius the Great, equal to Constantine in his defense of the Nicene confession.