Aelia Flaccilla

356 – 386 · Generation V · Empress · Valentinian · Theodosian

Aelia Flaccilla (AD 356 – 386). Empress. Married Theodosius around AD 376. First wife of Theodosius I. Of Hispanian Roman descent, she married Theodosius at a time when, after his father’s unexplained execution, he had retired from public life to Cauca in Gallaecia. Their son Arcadius and daughter Pulcheria were born before fortune turned: when Valens fell at Adrianople in 378, Gratian raised Theodosius to the eastern throne in January 379, and Flaccilla became empress with the title augusta. A second son, Honorius, followed in 384; both boys would become emperors. A committed Nicene, she kept her husband from meeting Eunomius, leader of the extreme Anomoean wing of Arianism, and Ambrose and Gregory of Nyssa praised her piety, while Theodoret recorded that she tended the disabled with her own hands. She died in 386, soon after her daughter, and Gregory of Nyssa delivered her funeral oration. Both the Catholic and Orthodox churches honour her as a saint, with a feast on 14 September.

Place in the family

• The archive records 3 of her descendants, across 2 generations.

One of 13 people of Valentinian · Theodosian (321–460) in this archive. The emperors who saw the western half fall away while the east held.

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Partners

• Married Theodosius I (347 – 395) in 376 — one child together

Children

• Arcadius (377 – 408)

Life

• 356 — Born
• 376 — Married Theodosius
• 386 — Died