Anicia Juliana

Life

Anicia Juliana was born in Constantinople after 461. In 478, Emperor Zeno offered her hand in marriage to Theodoric, but the marriage never took place. She instead married Flavius Areobindus Dagalaiphus Areobindus, a magister militum of the eastern Roman empire, and they had a son named Olybrius who served as consul in 491 while still a child. She spent her life at the court of Constantinople from the reign of Leo I through Justinian I, and was considered both the most aristocratic and the wealthiest inhabitant of the city.

During the 512 riots, a group of pro-Chalcedonian rioters unhappy with Emperor Anastasius went to her home and proclaimed her husband Areobindus emperor, but he had already fled the city. Her pro-Roman political views are preserved in a letter she wrote to Pope Hormisdas, now in the royal library of El Escorial, and are reflected in the Chronicle of Marcellinus Comes, who has been associated with her literary circle. Although she resolutely opposed the Monophysite leanings of Emperor Anastasius, she permitted her son Olybrius to marry the emperor's niece, the daughter of Anastasius's brother Paulus.

Despite her ambitions, her son never became emperor, being ignored in the accession of Justin I after the death of Anastasius.

Artistic patronage

Anicia Juliana's name is attached to the Vienna Dioscurides, also known as the Anicia Juliana Codex, an illuminated manuscript copy of Pedanius Dioscorides's De materia medica, considered one of the earliest and most lavish manuscripts still in existence. Its frontispiece shows a donor portrait of Anicia Juliana, the oldest surviving such portrait in manuscript illumination. She is shown enthroned and flanked by the personifications of Megalopsychia (Magnanimity) and Phronesis (Prudence), while a small female allegory labeled 'Gratitude of the Arts' performs proskynesis, kissing her feet.

A putto at her right side hands her a codex and is labeled with the Greek phrase ΠΟΘΟΣ ΤHΣ ΦΙΛΟΚΤΙΣΤΟΥ, interpreted as 'the Desire to build,' 'the Love of building,' or 'the Desire of the building-loving woman.' The same later scribe labeled the central figure Sophia (Wisdom). A badly damaged encircling inscription proclaims Juliana as a great patron of art and identifies the people of Honoratae, a town on the Asiatic shore of the Bosporus, as having given the codex to her, probably in gratitude for her building a church there.

The 8th–9th-century chronicler Theophanes Confessor corroborates this, noting that in 512 she dedicated a church to the Theotokos in Honoratae. The inscription emphasizes her membership in the ancient patrician Anicia gens through her father Flavius Anicius Olybrius. Of her architectural projects, only three churches she commissioned in Constantinople are known. The ornate basilica of St Polyeuctus was built on her extensive family estates during the last three years of her life, highlighting her illustrious pedigree running back to Theodosius I and Constantine the Great.

Until Justinian's extension of Hagia Sophia, it was the largest church in the imperial capital, and its construction was probably seen as a challenge to the reigning dynasty. The dedicatory inscription compares Juliana to King Solomon and overtly alludes to Aelia Eudocia, her great-grandmother, who founded this church.