Imperial Throne When Theodosius Held, The

DESCRIPTION: "The Imperial throne when Theodosius held In Palestine a holy hermit dwelled, Whose shining virtues and extensive fame The world astonished -- Zozimus was his name." (Possibly goes on to tell the tale of Mary of Egypt being found by Zozimus)
AUTHOR: "Dr. Coyle"? Michael J. Moran (Zozimus) ?
EARLIEST DATE: 1871 (Memoir of the Great Original Zozimus)
KEYWORDS: royalty | hermit
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
379-395 - Reign of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I "the Great"
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Brady-AllInAllIn, p. 8, "The Imperial throne when Theodosius held" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Gulielmus Dubliniensis Humoriensis [Joseph Tully?], Memoir of the Great Original Zozimus (Michael Moran) (Dublin,1976 (reprint of the 1871 edition, which is available on Google Books)), pp. 11-16, "Zozimus's Great Recitation (The Life of Saint Mary of Egypt)" (1 text)
ST BAAI008B (Partial)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Finding of Moses" (another piece by Zozimus, with background on Zozimus)
NOTES [632 words]: There are several odd facts about this piece. Someone, somewhere (I've lost the reference), claimed that it was an Irish nursery rhyme. Brady, the only folk source I've seen that seems to quote the piece, seems to agree, and suggests that the performer Michael Moran took his name from the "Zozimus" of the rhyme. (For Moran/Zosimus/Zozimus, see the notes to "The Finding of Moses"). Supposedly it was one of Moran's most popular pieces, so people called him "Zosimus" after the poem. Boylan, p. 255, while he agrees that Michael Moran took his name from the poem, thinks Moran got it from "Dr. Coyle, Bishop of Raphoe." This is also the opinion of Humoriensis, p. 8. But then how did it become a folk rhyme? (If it did.)
Also, if the rhyme isn't from Coyle, how would an Irish folk rhyme know the names of Theodosius and (even more so) Zosimus? Might not Moran have originated the piece and caused it to gain whatever faint hint of traditionality it had?
When the Roman Emperor Diocletian abdicated in 305, the Roman Empire (which he had largely reassembled) started to fall apart again. Half a dozen claimants rose and ruled parts of the Empire before Constantine the Great reunited it in 324 and made Christianity the legal religion (Chadwick, pp. 121-132; Qualben, pp. 100-103). Diocletian's mistake had arguably been to appoint multiple successors, but Constantine did the same, and between his death in 337 and the end of the Constantide dynasty in 363, there was a lot of fighting (some dynastic, some theological, over the Arian heresy and others; Chadwick, pp. 136-145). But when Julian the Apostate died in 363, things really got bad. Again the Empire started to divide, between east and west. One of Julian's more successful successors, Valentinian I, had a daughter Galla. Theodosius married her, and became Emperor (Theodosius I) in 379, and for the last time reunited the Roman Empire. He reigned until 395, and was known as "Theodosius the Great." He earned that title in part because he managed to reunite the Roman Empire for the last time, and also because he finally determined that Catholic/Orthodox Christianity would be the religion of the Empire (which made the Church writers, who were writing the histories, favor him); the Arian heresy went into permanent decline and the Monophysite sects were weakened and mostly became local and isolated. But he also raised taxes to an almost intolerable level, and on other issues he was indecisive (Grant, pp 270-274).
He certainly did not save the Roman Empire. When he died, he split the Empire between Arcadius and Honorius, his sons by his first wife Aelia Flacilla, Arcadius ruling the east and Honorius the west. The east became what we now know as the Byzantine Empire, and survived for another thousand years and more; the western empire was gone within eighty years. There were two other Emperors Theodosius (one in the east from 408 to 450, who was the grandson of Theodosius I by Arcadius; Grant, p. 258), and another, much later, very briefly, also in the Byzantine Empire), but in the Latin West "Theodosius" would surely always mean Theodosius the Great. (Most of the above is summarized from Sinnigen/Boak, pp. 425-430, 513-514, 519.)
None of the various ancient people named Zosimus/Zozimus (for whom again see "The Finding of Moses") were really contemporary with Theodosius I, but the pope Zozimus would have lived his early years in the reign of Theodosius I, and was active during the reign of Theodosius II (although Theodosius II was an eastern emperor, and the Papacy was in the west). So although the Zozimus of the song is probably Zozimus the priest who received the confession of Mary of Egypt, it's easy to see how he was dated to the reign of Theodosius (Kelly, pp. 38-39; OxfordSaints, p. 558). - RBW
Bibliography

Boylan: Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography, second edition, St. Martin's Press, 1988
Grant: Michael Grant, The Roman Emperors: A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of Imperial Rome 31 BC-AD 476, 1985 (I use the 1997 Barnes & Noble edition, the dust jacket of which has the astonishing error "318 BC" for "31 BC")
Humoriensis: Gulielmus Dubliniensis Humoriensis [i.e., loosely, William of Dublin the Joker; pseudonym for Joseph Tully?], Memoir of the Great Original Zozimus (Michael Moran), 1871; reprinted with a new introduction by Thomas Wall, Curraig Books, 1976
Kelly: J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, Oxford University Press, 1986
OxfordSaints: David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, fifth edition, 2003 (I use the 2004 paperback edition)
Qualben: Lars P. Qualben, A History of the Christian Church, revised edition, Nelson, 1936
Sinnigen/Boak: William G. Sinnigen and Arthur E. R. Boak, A History of Rome to A. D. 565, 1921-1977, sixth edition, Macmillan, 1977

Last updated in version 6.7
File: BAAI008B

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography