LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Theodora: Constantinople
built 643 days ago
Throughout the rest of her life, Theodora and Justinian transformed the city of Constantinople, building it into a city that for many centuries was known as one of the most wonderful cities in the world. They built aqueducts, bridges, and more than 25 churches, the most significant of these being the Hagia Sophia - 'Church of Holy Wisdom'. To women, Theodora may well be considered a noble pioneer of the women's liberation movement. She passed on laws prohibiting forced prostitution and established homes for prostitutes, passed rights that granted women more rights in divorce cases, instituted the death penalty for rape and established laws allowing women to own and inherit property. She ... provided safe shelter for Monophysite leaders who faced opposition from the majority orthodox Christians, even though her husband Justinian was an orthodox Christian.
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In her efforts to help the Monophysites, Theodora influenced the election of popes, provided refuge within the apartments of her palace for Monophysite leaders, and openly established a Monophysite monastery in Sycae, directly across the Golden Horn from Constantinople. In c. 542, she even influenced Justinian to appoint a Monophysite bishop for the pro-Monophysite Arab client state of the Ghassanids. By such efforts, Theodora was able to keep alive the fire of the Monophysite heresy in the eastern provinces of the Empire.
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In 541, al-Harith, the sheikh of the Ghassanid tribe of Saracens whose friendship was important for the security of the south Syrian frontier, was in Constantinople on other business and took the opportunity to approach Theodora with a request for bishops. Imperial prestige in the east was low at this point. Only the year before, the Persians had sacked Antioch. With Theodora's blessing, Theodosius, who from his refuge in the Hormisdas Palace was now recognized as the spiritual leader of the Monophysites, ordained two monks as nomadic bishops. Nominally Jacob Baradaeus was metropolitan of Edessa and Theodore was metropolitan of Bostra but neither resided in their episcopal seats where they might have been vulnerable to arrest. Instead they moved from camp to camp, in the countryside beyond the reach of the Chalcedonian hierarchy.
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