Saint Eudokia and the imperial household of Leo VI

The popularity of polychrome decoration, the figure style, and the costume combine to support an early-tenth-century date for the Eudokia plaque. The identification of the woman and the motivations that guided the selection of this obscure female saint for inclusion in the decorative program of church of the Virgin still need to be explored.

The Sainted Eudokia

In the tenth century, when the Constantinopolitan synaxarion was first compiled and the church of the Virgin was newly constructed, the name Eudokia was common in the imperial family. Leo VI (r. 886-912) was surrounded by women bearing that name. His mother was Eudokia Ingerina.(42) Leo's unhappy marriage to his first wife, Theophano, produced a single daughter named Eudokia. Leo's third wife was named Eudokia Baiane. These three Eudokias were all buried in the Holy Apostles and are possible candidates for the imperial figure remembered in that church by the synaxarion on August 13. Eudokia Ingerina was entombed with her husband, Basil I, and her son, Alexander. The child Eudokia shared a sarcophagus with her mother, Theophano.(43) According to a list of tombs located within the mausoleum that Constantine built in the Holy Apostles, there was "another sarcophagus, green Thessalian, in which lies Eudokia the third wife of the same Lord Leo, she who was surnamed Baiane."(44) The solitary entombment of this Eudokia may indicate that a separate commemorative service was said before her sarcophagus.(45) Other reasons rule out the first two Eudokias as candidates for memorialization in the synaxarion: Eudokia Ingerina had a sullied reputation as Michael III's mistress prior to her marriage to Basil I, and the second Eudokia, the daughter of Leo VI, died at too young an age. In addition to these facts, the date of the commemoration may be significant. As far as can be determined from the sources, none of the three Eudokias was buried on August 13, the date for the memorial service in the Constantinopolitan synaxarion. Eudokia Baiane, however, died on April 12 and was laid to rest in the imperial mausoleum at the Holy Apostles on April 13.(46) It is possible that a scribal error in inserting the abbreviation for April could account for its replacement by the abbreviation for August, the incorrect month, in the late-tenth-century edition of the synaxarion.(47) On the basis of the burial site and the day of commemoration we may hypothesize that Eudokia Baiane, the third wife of Leo VI, was the empress whose memory was recalled in a ceremony in the Holy Apostles. But was she the Eudokia depicted on the Lips plaque?

For an explanation of how this Eudokia might have come to be depicted as a saint we need to look more closely at the imperial household. Leo's marital misfortune combined with unusual ecclesiastical censure made his relationship with his wives a matter of uncommon interest and significance.(48) Leo's first three marriages, to Theophano, Zoe (daughter of Stylianos Zaoutzes), and Eudokia Baiane, were relatively short-lived and failed to produce a male heir. Leo chose to remember his first two wives by constructing churches dedicated to them as saints. Theophano's popularity in Constantinople might have spurred Leo's decision to build a church in her name.(49) An anonymous source contemporary with Leo, commenting on an unrelated text about the construction of temples built in honor of the deified Hephaestion, noted that "the same thing has also happened in our time and everybody is seized by a hysteria characteristic of women so as to proclaim the emperor's [late wife] Theophano a saint."(50) The "imperial canonization" did not sit well with all segments of the Constantinopolitan population. The church dedicated to Saint Theophano was the subject of some controversy among the Byzantine clergy, and the name of the church was changed shortly thereafter to All Saints. Despite the objections to the dedication of a church in her name, Saint Theophano was remembered in the Constantinopolitan synaxarion on December 16 and is the subject of a saint's life.(51)