Marriage of queen Matasuntha (495-535) and patrician Herman (500/505-550): cultural-political and church-canonical aspects

The article is devoted to the problem of the marriage of the Ostrogoth queen Matasuntha and the East Roman patrician Herman. The author considers the history of this marriage, which is reflected in the writings of Procopius of Caesarea and Jordanus as a key episode of the Gothic war of the Emperor Justinian. Special attention is paid to the canonical aspect of the marriage. The author analyzes the sources of the canonical law of the Byzantine Church and comes to the conclusion that the Emperor Justinian deliberately spared the Arian Matasuntha from the need for a formal conversion to Orthodoxy at least until the moment when the authority of Matasuntha as the granddaughter of Theodoric the Great would not have influenced the vigilance of the Gothic squad and would not have pushed the Goths to the side of the Eastern Roman Empire. Herman’s premature death did not allow this plan to come to fruition.