THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE BLESSED THEODORETUS, BISHOP OF CYRUS.

I. — PARENTAGE, BIRTH, AND EDUCATION.

At Antioch, at the close of the fourth century, there lived a husband and wife who were wealthy and happy in the enjoyment of all the good things of this life, with one exception: they were childless. Married at seventeen, the young bride lived for several years enjoying the pleasures that wealth and society could provide. At the age of twenty-three, she was attacked by a painful disease in one of her eyes, for which neither the books of older authorities nor later medical discoveries could suggest a remedy. One of her domestic servants, feeling pity for her distress, informed her that the wife of Pergamius—who was then in authority in the East—had been healed of a similar ailment by Petrus, a famous Galatian hermit who was living in the upper story of a tomb nearby, accessible only by a ladder.

The afflicted lady, according to the story her own son repeats,¹ hastened to climb to the hermit’s latticed cell, dressed in all her customary elaborate attire: wearing earrings, necklaces, and other gold ornaments, her silk robe blazing with embroidery, her face smeared with red and white cosmetics, and her eyebrows and eyelids artificially darkened. "Tell me," said the hermit, upon beholding his brilliant visitor, "tell me, my child, if some skillful painter were to paint a portrait according to his art's strict rules and offer it for exhibition, and then some dauber were to come along and, on the spur of the moment, dash off additions—lengthening the lines of the brows and lids, whitening the face, and heightening the red of the cheeks—what would you say? Do you not think the original painter would be hurt by this insult to his art and these needless additions by an unskilled hand?" These arguments, we learn, eventually led to the young Antiochene gentlewoman’s improvement in both piety and good taste, and her eye is said to have been restored to health by the sign of the cross. It is not impossible that the discontinuance of cosmetics may have helped, if not caused, the cure.

For six more years the husband and wife lived together a more religious life, but they remained unblessed with children. Among the ascetic hermits whom the disappointed husband begged to aid him in his prayers was one Macedonius, distinguished by the simplicity of his diet as "the barley eater." In answer to his prayers, it was believed, a son was at last granted to the pious pair.² The condition of this blessing being that the boy should be devoted to divine service, he was appropriately named at his birth "Theodoretus," or "Given by God."³ Regarding the exact date of this birth, which resulted in such important consequences for the history and literature of the Church, no precise knowledge is attainable. The less probable year is 386, as given by Garnerius,⁴ while the more probable and now generally accepted year, 393, follows the calculation of Tillemont.⁵

¹ Religious History, 1188 et seq.
² Religious History, 1214.
³ The Hebrew equivalents of this general designation are Nathaniel and Matthew. Modern English custom has returned to the Greek for its Theodore and Theodora, but "Dieudonné" and "Diodati" are familiar in French and Italian.
⁴ Garnier, the French Jesuit Father, was born in Paris in 1612 and died in 1681. His "Auctarium Theodoreti Episcopi Cyrensis," with dissertations, was published in 1684.
⁵ According to this reckoning, Theodoret would be fifty-six at the time of the letter to Leo, written in 449, in which he speaks of his old age, and about thirty at his consecration as bishop in 423.
W. Möller in Herzog's Encyclopedia of Protestant Theology (Ed. 1885. xv. 402) gives 390.