Theodore Stratelates

The two Theodores

Before his own story is told, a word is owed on the pair of martyr-Theodores who stand together in the Byzantine tradition, for their histories were early drawn into one another. Theodore the Recruit — Tyron, "the recruit" or "the conscript," from the Latin tiro — is the martyr of the town of Amasea (or Euchaita) in Pontus, a common soldier of the legion who burned the temple of the Mother of the gods and was burned alive for it, kept on February 17 and again on the first Saturday of Great Lent for the miracle of the kollyva. Theodore Stratelates — "the general" — is the officer and governor of Heraclea in Thrace, kept on February 8. The names, the soldiering, the shared association with Euchaita, and the near-identical iconography (a young warrior-saint in armour, with spear and shield) drew the two together, and a strong current of modern scholarship holds that Stratelates is in origin a doublet of the Recruit — the humble tiro of the older cult "promoted" to a general and given a fuller, more literary passion in the later Byzantine centuries, with Euchaita, the shrine-city of the Recruit, carried over to the general as the resting-place of his relics. The Church, however, keeps them as two, with two feasts, two passions, and two proper offices; this entry follows the Church's usage, telling the passion of the general as the tradition transmits it, and records the scholarly question under Disputed questions.

Officer of Heraclea

Theodore was, the passion relates, a man of noble bearing and rare gifts — brave, eloquent, and beautiful in appearance — who rose in the Roman army to the rank of stratelates, a general officer, and was appointed by the emperor Licinius (308–324) as commander and governor of Heraclea (Herakleia Perinthos) on the Sea of Marmara, in Thrace. He was already a Christian, and he used his office not to persecute but to preach: by the integrity of his rule and the gentleness of his person he drew many of the city to the faith, so that Heraclea became, under its Christian governor, half-won to Christ. The tradition attaches to this period a dragon-slaying — Theodore going out alone to kill a great serpent that had ravaged the country near Euchaita, in the strength of the Cross — a wonder that belongs to the common stock of the warrior-saints and is shared, in other tellings, with the Recruit and with George.

The idols, and the confession before Licinius

Licinius, who had turned from the toleration of the Edict of Milan to a renewed persecution of the Christians in his eastern domains, learned that his own general at Heraclea was a Christian and that the city inclined to the new religion. Rather than move at once against so popular an officer, the emperor is said to have sent to Theodore a great weight of idols of gold and silver — the images of the gods — with orders that he offer public sacrifice upon them and lead the city back to the old worship; by one account Theodore himself, feigning readiness, asked that the images be sent to him that he might honour them in his own house. When they came, he broke the idols in pieces and distributed the gold and silver to the poor of the city — so that the very substance of the false gods was turned into alms — and then, when the fraud upon the false gods was discovered, he stood before the emperor and openly confessed Christ, reproaching the dead images that could not save themselves from being melted down for the needy.

Passion and martyrdom

The emperor's favour turned to fury. Theodore was subjected to a long and terrible succession of tortures, which the passion recounts at length: he was scourged and beaten, his body torn with iron claws and burned with torches, his eyes put out, and at the last he was nailed to a cross and left to die, the executioners adding fresh cruelties — shooting him with arrows, so that his sight and his wounds alike were, the account says, healed in the night by an angel who came to him upon the cross and took him down whole. The sight of the martyr living and unharmed after such torments converted a multitude of the onlookers and soldiers, who confessed Christ and were themselves put to the sword. Theodore, refusing to flee when his fellow-Christians would have risen in arms to save him — restraining them, as the tradition insists, that he might complete his martyrdom and that no blood be shed on his account — gave himself up and was beheaded on February 8 of the year 319. Before his death he charged his servant Varus (Uar), who had recorded the whole passion, to carry his body to his family estate at Euchaita in Pontus, and there it was buried.

Relics and translation

The relics of Theodore were laid, according to his own dying instruction, at Euchaita — the town in the Pontic hinterland that was already the shrine-city of Theodore the Recruit, and that took its later name, Theodoroupolis, from the Theodores it honoured. The translation of his relics to Euchaita is kept by the Church as a second feast on June 8. Euchaita became one of the great pilgrimage centres of Asia Minor, and the cult of "the Theodores" — general and recruit, often invoked and depicted together — spread from it through the whole Byzantine world; the eleventh-century bishop of Euchaita, John Mauropous, wrote in their honour and is one of the chief witnesses to the twinned veneration.

Veneration and later cultus

Theodore Stratelates is, with George, Demetrius, the Recruit, and the others of their company, one of the holy warrior-martyrs (οἱ ἅγιοι στρατηλάται) whom the Byzantine army and the Christian East loved as protectors in battle and patrons of soldiers. Emperors bore his name and built churches to him; his image, a young soldier in the panoply of a Roman officer, stands in the warrior-tier of countless iconostases and on the walls of the fortress-churches of the Byzantine and Slavic worlds. In the Slavic lands his veneration was especially strong — the great twelfth-century church of Theodore Stratelates "on the Brook" in Novgorod, with its famous frescoes, is only the most celebrated of many dedications — and the Russian princely house honoured both Theodores as heavenly commanders. His feast on February 8 is kept universally.