Theodora of Alexandria

About Theodora of Alexandria

Theodora of Alexandria is commemorated on September 11 in the Orthodox Church in America calendar. The surviving account associated with her is a Greek hagiographic Life catalogued in the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca under numbers 1727–1729e. The existence of this textual tradition is documentable; its narrative is not equivalent to contemporary biographical evidence.In the received story, Theodora is a married woman who, after committing adultery, leaves home and enters a men’s monastery disguised under the name Theodore. The OCA retelling says she remains there as a monk. Later, when an abbess’s daughter becomes pregnant, she falsely identifies Theodore as the father; the abbot accepts the accusation and sends Theodora away with the child. The story presents her accepting the hardship without revealing her sex. These details are reported as features of the hagiographic account, not as independently verified events.Scholarship on Byzantine hagiography examines stories of female ascetics through themes of movement, enclosure, and monastic identity. That context supports reading Theodora’s narrative as part of a literary and devotional tradition. The reviewed sources do not establish her historical dates, birthplace, or an independently corroborated life beyond that tradition.