Not all prostitutes are Saints. But some are!
2. Theodora
Few women, if any, can match Theodora’s rise from cheap slut to empress and eventual saint. Born c.500 AD, the young Theodora started out servicing members in a Constantinople brothel. She soon became an “actress,” delighting crowds with weird sex-shows complete with rampant after-parties.
One of her greatest crowd-pleasers was sprinkling barley on her bush before having a flock of lucky geese peck her clean. Weird.
Anyway, she started travelling around with various men of power before ditching her “acting” career and shacking up with Justinian, heir to the Byzantine throne. He became Emperor, she became Empress, everyone was happy, and then she died and became a Saint.
Pay or Pass? Definitely pay, no questions asked. She was smart, attractive, witty and kinky. And who’d turn down a lap dance from a Saint?
Theodora was the daughter of a Byzantine bear-tamer at the Hippodrome (the Byzantine version of the Roman arena). Her father died when she was little, leaving behind a wife, Theodora and her two sisters Comito and Anastasia. The widow re-married but things did not improve for them financialy. As soon as the girls were old enough she put her daughters on the stage, which in those days was a profession which inevitably led to prostitution. The eldest, Comito was already an accomplished courtesan by the time Theodora started to assist her. It was not too long until she too became a prostitute. She was infimous. As she could not play any musical instruments or dance, according to Procopius, she "merely sold her attractions to anyone who came along, putting her whole body at his disposal". She would also perform outrageous acts on stage, which only added to her notoriety. She was said to be given to "unlimited self-indulgence. Often she would go to a dinner party with ten young men or more, all at the peak of their physical powers...and would lie with all her fellow diners in turn, the whole night long. When she had reduced them all to a state of exhaustion she would go to their servants, as many as thirty on occasions, and copulate with every one of them."
Theodora met Justinian, magister militum praesentalis in Constantinople and in 523 they got married. He became emperor in 527 A.D. She was a clever, cunning woman and quickly showed a talent for governance and got involved in many aspects of state business. She had laws passed that prohibited forced prostitution, gave women more rights in divorce cases, allowed women to inherit and own property and made rape a crime punishable by death.
Theodora died of cancer in A.D 548.
References: "The Secret History", by Procopius of Caesarea, The Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_(6th_century)
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_theodora.htm |
