Venerable Theodora of Caesarea was an eighth-century monastic of Caesarea in Cappadocia, in Asia Minor. According to her life, she was the daughter of the patrician Theophilus and his wife Theodora, a couple who had long been childless. They vowed that any child granted to them would be dedicated to the service of God, and when a daughter was born and reached a suitable age her mother brought her to the monastery of Saint Anna in Caesarea.
Entering the convent under the guidance of its abbess, Theodora gave herself to the study of spiritual writings and to the monastic life. Her ascetic vocation was interrupted by the iconoclast persecution: the emperor Leo the Isaurian sought to give her in marriage to one of his officials, and she was removed from the monastery against her will and taken to Constantinople. When her appointed husband died in battle during a Scythian attack on the capital, she returned to her convent, where—already tonsured—she could no longer be forced away. She spent the remainder of her life in fasting, vigil, and prayer, and is commemorated on December 30.
