Marina Severa

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marina Severa († after 375) was the first wife of the Roman emperor Valentinian I and mother of the emperor Gratian .

Surname

The exact name is unknown. The name Marina Severa is a combination of the two name forms that appear in the ancient sources: Socrates Scholastikos calls her "Severa", while Johannes Malalas , the Chronicon Pascale and Johannes von Nikiu call her "Marina". Otto Seeck has pleaded that the latter should have been the correct name, since a daughter of Arcadius , a later emperor of the Valentinian - Theodosian dynasty, also bore this name and the two women of the same name in the Chronicon Paschale are confused with one another.

Life

Marina Severa married Valentinian before taking the throne. Her son, Gratian, was born in Sirmium in the province of Pannonia in 359 . Valentinian was proclaimed emperor in 364; shortly thereafter, Marina Severa and her mother got him to raise their son Gratian to Augustus , that is, to be co-emperor.

Sometime before 370, Valentinian rejected Marina Severa - this is the latest possible time, since the marriage between the emperor and his second wife Iustina, the widow of the opposing emperor Magnentius , must have taken place this year at the latest . The reasons for the breakup are unclear. Johannes Malalas , the Chronicon Paschale and Johannes von Nikiu report that Marina Severa was violated because of her involvement in an illegal business. She took advantage of her position as empress to buy a garden at a price that was far too low, and thus drew the emperor's wrath. In research, however, this story is seen merely as an attempt to justify Valentinian's divorce without blaming the emperor for it.

According to Socrates Scholastikos, on the other hand, the divorce is said to have come about after Marina Severa became friends with Iustina. After seeing her bathing together naked, she is said to have raved about the beauty of Iustina to her husband Valentinian, whereupon Valentinian is said to have decided to marry Iustina. In order to be able to marry Iustina without having to cast off Severa, who was ultimately the mother of his designated successor, Valentinian passed a law according to which every man could have two wives. This explanation has also been rejected by modern research, since the legitimation of bigamy seems very unlikely. However, some historians, including Timothy D. Barnes , suggest that Valentinian's law actually included divorce and remarriage for some Romans, since that was exactly what Valentinian had in mind. Perhaps the emperor wanted to secure his dynastic legitimacy and claim to the throne by marrying Justina (who was perhaps related to Emperor Constantine the Great ).

With Iustina Valentinian had a son, who later became Valentinian II , and three daughters, Galla , Grata and Iusta. Marina Severa, on the other hand, was apparently still at the imperial court in 367, as is evident from a remark in the Epitome de Caesaribus . At some point in the period that followed, however, she seems to have left it, because when, after Valentinian's death in 375, his son Gratian came to power, he brought his mother Marina Severa back to court. There she seems to have had considerable political influence in the period that followed. After her death she was buried next to Valentinian in the Apostle Church in Constantinople .

David Woods published a completely different interpretation of events in 2006. Woods assumes that the first wife of Valentinians was Severa and not Marina or Marina Severa. In reality, it was not she who was rejected by the emperor, but the second wife Justin, and this only happened shortly before Valentinian's death. According to David Woods, a puzzling note in the Consularia Constantinopolitana , which writes about the funeral of Valentinian in 382, ​​is an ancient misunderstanding - in reality Severa was buried there that year at the side of her former husband, who was already buried there. The rest of the research classifies this interpretation by Woods as a "very speculative attempt at reconstruction".

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John Robert Martindale, John Morris : Marina Severa 2. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-07233-6 , p. 828.
  2. ↑ Otto Seeck: History of the fall of the ancient world. Appendix to Volume 5, JB Metzler, Stuttgart o. J., p. 431 ( digitized version ).
  3. ^ Walter E. Roberts: Valentinian I (364-375 AD). Accessed March 31, 2020 (English).
  4. ^ Wilhelm Enßlin : Marina 3. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XIV, 2, Stuttgart 1930, Sp. 1756 f.
  5. ↑ Altay Coşkun : A mysterious Gallic official in Rome, Valentinian's summer campaign and other problems in Ausonius' Mosella. In: Revue des Études Anciennes . Volume 104, number 3/4, 2002, pp. 401-431, here p. 421 ( online ).
  6. ↑ Chronicon Paschale (ed. Bonn.) I 559.7 f .; Johannes Malalas (ed. Bonn.) 341; Johann von Nikiu (ed. Charles) 82.10 ff. ( English translation ).
  7. ^ A b Timothy Barnes: Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality (= Cornell Studies in Classical Philology. Volume 56). Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 1998, ISBN 0-8014-3526-9 , pp. 123-125.
  8. ^ Sokrates Scholastikos, Historia ecclesiastica 4,31.
  9. ↑ Dietmar Kienast , Werner Eck , Matthäus Heil : Römische Kaisertabelle. Basic features of a Roman imperial chronology. 6th edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2017, p. 314 and p. 319.
  10. ↑ Pseudo- Aurelius Victor , Epitome de Caesaribus 45.4.
  11. ↑ Chronicon Paschale (ed. Bonn.) I 560, 17 f .; Johannes Malalas (ed. Bonn.) 341.9 f.
  12. ↑ Ammianus Marcellinus, Römische Geschichte 28,1,57.
  13. ^ Josef Rist: Valentinian I. (Flavius ​​Valentinianus) . In: Traugott Bautz (Hrsg.): Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon . tape 12 , 1997, p. 1055-1060 .
  14. ↑ David Woods: Valentinian I, Severa, Marina and Justina. In: Classica et mediaevalia. Volume 57, 2006, pp. 173-187.
  15. ↑ Dietmar Kienast, Werner Eck, Matthäus Heil: Römische Kaisertabelle. Basic features of a Roman imperial chronology. 6th edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2017, p. 314 and p. 319.
personal data
SURNAME Severa, Marina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first wife of Emperor Valentinian I and mother of Emperor Gratian
DATE OF BIRTH 4th century
DATE OF DEATH before 375