Theodora of Constantinople

Venerable Theodora of Constantinople (died 940) was a pious elderly woman of the Byzantine capital, in whose house Venerable Basil the New received those who sought comfort and counsel. She is known chiefly from the Life of Saint Basil the New, in which her story, "The Walk of Theodora through the Toll-⁠houses", became the best-⁠known account of the toll-⁠houses in Greek and Slavic literature. The Church commemorates her on 30 December.

Her life

According to church sources, Theodora was a well-⁠to-⁠do Greek woman and a citizen of Constantinople. After her husband's death she devoted herself to serving her neighbour and to prayer. By the Lord's command she "took up her cross" and received the monastic habit. By another church source she received the monastic habit before her death.

Venerable Basil lived in her house, in a prayer cell made especially for him. Under his guidance Theodora led a pious life. By another account, blessed Basil moved to the house of the pious Constantine, next to Theodora's, and she, at Constantine's invitation, began to serve Basil zealously as a servant of God. When anyone came to see the recluse Basil, Theodora announced him, and Basil spoke with the man in Theodora's cell. Theodora was also a diligent woman of prayer. This was at the time when, in the Byzantine capital, Venerable Symeon the New Theologian encouraged those in struggle with teachings on the love of God. Having reached old age, Theodora fell asleep on 30 December 940.

The vision of the disciple Gregory

Basil's disciple, the monk Gregory, wished to learn Theodora's fate after death and often asked the ascetic to reveal it to him. At Basil's prayers, Gregory saw Theodora in a dream. The old woman told him how her soul, after death, passed through the toll-⁠houses and how Basil's prayers helped her. In the account of Dimitry of Rostov, during Gregory's sleep a youth of bright appearance came to him and told him to go quickly, since Venerable Basil was calling him to show him Theodora. Gregory was caught up to the gates of paradise, then led into the holy places, where he saw Basil and Theodora, and all rejoiced together. Gregory asked her how she endured the dread hour of death and how she was delivered from the evil spirits.

According to Theodora's account, when her soul parted from her body she saw fearsome Ethiopians, who showed her a scroll with all her former deeds, gnashing their teeth and squealing like pigs. Then angels took her and led her through the toll-⁠houses. The first toll-⁠house was lying, the second slander, the third envy, the fourth false offence out of self-⁠love, the fifth anger with fury, the sixth pride, the seventh abuse and shameful speech, the eighth usury and flattery, the ninth vainglory, the tenth love of money, the eleventh drunkenness, the twelfth remembering wrongs, the thirteenth sorcery, the fourteenth spells and the wearing of talismans, the fifteenth gluttony and idol-⁠worship, the sixteenth adultery, the seventeenth murder, the eighteenth theft, the nineteenth fornication, the twentieth mercilessness. When at some toll-⁠house her good deeds alone were not enough to clear Theodora, the angels added to them from the gift of Venerable Basil's good deeds. So she passed through all the toll-⁠houses without hindrance and was brought into the blessed place. But a sinful soul, the story says, is handed over to those Ethiopians, who torment it and lead it down to suffering.

When the angels were carrying Theodora's soul, Venerable Basil took a small casket from his bosom and gave it to them, as help for the soul, a kind of ransom capital. According to the Life, this is Basil's spiritual gold, the surplus of virtues gathered through his labours.

The Life of Basil the New and its spread

The core of the Life of Saint Basil the New, which appeared about the middle of the tenth century, is made up of two great accounts of the visions of his disciple Gregory, which often circulated separately: "The Walk of Theodora through the Toll-⁠houses" and "The Vision of the Last Judgment". "The Walk of Theodora" is the best-⁠known description of the toll-⁠houses and, in Greek and Slavic literature, the most detailed. The Fathers of the Church did not develop this theme of the end in detail, and the author of "The Walk" built on it a "monumental epic of death", as one scholar called it, which struck the imagination of the medieval reader with vivid mystical pictures of the other world. Gregory replaced Satan, who appears in earlier descriptions, with personified Death, whose appearance interrupts the initial dispute of angels and demons. He ordered the theological description of the soul's fate after death and gave it an instructive character. Using images familiar to his contemporaries, tax collectors, scales, trials, he explained the mechanism of judgment at the toll-⁠houses, stressing that the demons in each already know the soul's deeds from records sent during the person's life. Special attention is given to confession to a spiritual father, which reflects the development of the sacrament of confession in the ninth and tenth centuries, when its public aspect disappeared and the first penitential guides appeared. For those who did not confess before death, salvation is possible through a store of one's own good deeds and the intercession of a saint.

In the Greek versions of the Life, as in Slavic and Russian translations, the number of trials, their names and their order differ to a greater or lesser degree. The order thought closest to the original is one in which slander, abuse, envy, lying, anger, arrogance, idle talk, usury, vainglory, love of money, drunkenness, remembering wrongs, sorcery, gluttony, idolatry, sins against nature, adultery, murder, theft, fornication and mercilessness are reproved. "The Walk" is believed to have been influenced by the account of the toll-⁠houses in the Chronicle of George Hamartolos. There is also an Arabic translation, made at Damascus in 1693. The Life of Basil the New was translated into Church Slavonic already in the eleventh century and spread in several redactions. The short Life of Theodora is read on 30 December in the second redaction of the prose Prologue. From the second half of the seventeenth century the Life had a second birth among the Old Believers. Hundreds of copies from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries survive, many illustrated, and in the nineteenth century popular prints were made on the theme. The version of Dimitry of Rostov appeared in the third volume of the "Book of Lives of the Saints" (Kyiv, 1700).

Influence of the story

The Life of Basil the New, known in Rus from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, markedly influenced early Russian literature, art and folklore. In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the story of the toll-⁠houses was the source of the "Word on the Heavenly Powers", attributed to Abraham of Smolensk. The story also passed into popular speech. A folk version was noted in eastern Siberia in the first quarter of the twentieth century: in it the saint says that death came with a scythe and a saw, and that her soul passed through forty toll-⁠houses. Belief in the toll-⁠houses went deep into popular beliefs about the end. In some places in Russia, forty days after a person's death, relatives baked a long wheat flatbread with crossbars for the toll-⁠houses, a "little ladder". Those who ate it helped the dead person's soul pass through the spirits of darkness.

Theodora is canonized among the venerable saints, and the Serbian Orthodox Church commemorates her on 30 December by the old calendar (12 January by the new).