Theodora of Alexandria

The fall

Theodora lived in Alexandria in the later fifth century — the synaxaria place her story in the reign of the emperor Zeno (474–491) — married to a young husband, in a household the sources describe as happy and harmonious. That very harmony, the hagiographers say, provoked the envy of the enemy of salvation. A wealthy man of the city, taken with Theodora's beauty, pursued her long and unsuccessfully, and at last bribed a procuress, who overcame the young woman's resistance with a sophism: a deed done in darkness, which the sun does not see, is hidden from God also. Theodora yielded and betrayed her husband.

Remorse came almost at once, and with violence: she came to herself in horror at what she had done. She went to a well-known abbess and confessed. The abbess did not crush her but set before her the sinful woman of the Gospel who washed the feet of Christ with her tears and was forgiven — and, against the procuress's sophism, the truth that nothing is hidden from God, who knows the deed done in darkness before it is done. Theodora resolved not merely to be forgiven but to expiate: she would give the rest of her life to repentance.

The monk Theodore

Fearing that her husband would seek her out in any women's community, she left her house secretly, cut her hair, put on men's clothing, and presented herself at a men's monastery outside Alexandria — the Greek tradition names the monastery of the Octodecaton, at the eighteenth milestone from the city — calling herself Theodore. The igumen, testing the newcomer's resolve, left her at the gate overnight; in the morning she fell at his knees and begged admission for repentance and labour, and was received.

The monk Theodore became a byword in the community for austerity: all-night prayer on bended knee, extreme fasting, humility, and unquestioning obedience, sustained for eight years. The body once defiled, the synaxarion says, became a vessel of grace and a dwelling of the Holy Spirit.

The false accusation

The saint's great trial began with an errand. Sent to Alexandria to buy provisions, she was blessed by the igumen to lodge on the way, if delayed, at a neighbouring monastery — the sources name the Enaton, the famous monastic settlement at the ninth milestone. Staying at its guest-house at the same time was the daughter of its igumen, who, drawn to the handsome young "monk," attempted to seduce Theodore, not knowing she was propositioning a woman. Refused, the girl sinned with another guest and conceived; and when her pregnancy could no longer be hidden and her father demanded the seducer's name, she named the monk Theodore.

The accusation was reported to Theodore's own igumen. Summoned, the saint answered only, "As God is my witness, I did not do this" — an answer that was literal truth, though she would say nothing more; to prove her innocence outright would have been to reveal her sex and undo her whole repentance. Her igumen, knowing Theodore's life, at first dismissed the charge. But when the child was born, the monks of the Enaton carried the infant to the monastery and reproached its brethren openly; the igumen's confidence broke, and the innocent Theodore was handed the baby and expelled in disgrace.

The years of bearing it

Theodora accepted the slander without a word of self-defence, seeing in the unjust punishment the expiation of the sin that no one knew. She settled in a hut near the monastery and raised the child as her own: shepherds gave her milk for the infant out of pity, and she herself ate wild plants. In this banishment she spent seven years — enduring, the Life adds, assaults of the demons who had engineered her disgrace and now sought to drive her to despair. At last, at the entreaty of the brethren, the igumen received her back into the monastery with the boy, and there she lived a further two years in seclusion, forming the child in the fear of God.

Recognition at death

Sensing her end, Theodora shut herself in her cell with the boy and gave him her last instruction: to love God above all things, to obey the igumen and the brethren, to guard stillness, meekness, and freedom from malice, to flee obscene and idle talk, to love poverty, and never to neglect the common prayer. Then she prayed once more for the forgiveness of her sins, the child praying with her, and died in peace.

The truth was revealed at once. The igumen learned in a vision the spiritual stature of the dead monk — and the secret; and to lift every trace of dishonour from the deceased, he uncovered the saint's breast in the presence of the igumen and brethren of the Enaton, the accusers. The Enaton monks recoiled in terror at the magnitude of their transgression and begged forgiveness with tears before the body. Word reached Theodora's husband, who had never known what had become of his wife: he came, wept over her, and himself received the monastic tonsure in the same monastery, living out his days in her cell. The boy she had raised followed the same path and in time became igumen of that very monastery.