Netflix’s “docudrama” “Queen Cleopatra” is currently one of the most-watched series in the United States, with more than 20 million views in its premiere week, including my family, who viewed it together in its entirety.
It has sparked an international debate about the choice to cast Black British actress Adele James in the title role, an ongoing iteration of the much older “Cleopatra race controversy,” which has engulfed everyone from classical studies scholars to Egyptologists to Shakespearean literary critics to Elizabeth Taylor, the actress who played the Ptolemaic monarch in what was once the most expensive film ever produced.
One of the contemporary show’s contributors, Dr. Islam Issa, has pointed out that “the largely binary racial terms being used today are anachronistic and can hardly be applied to Cleopatra’s context.” Propaganda and misinformation about her background, ethnicity and personal characteristics can be traced to the time of her own reign, including in her longstanding conflict with the same Caesar Augustus, who Saint Luke tells us issued the census that sent the Holy Family to Bethlehem. (Luke 2:1-4)
The name Cleopatra is a Latinized version of Greek words meaning the “glory of her [… or of the] father.” Of course, it is most associated with the queen of the North African breadbasket nation who fathered children of both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony in the decades immediately preceding the birth of Jesus Christ. But she is not the only figure with the moniker; one other in particular lived up to her name in a powerful way in the early Church.
The Roman martyrology, the extensive but not exhaustive list of saints in the Catholic Church, refers to the execution of a Christian soldier named Varus under the reign of the Emperor Maximianus (sometimes called Galerius) in the early 300s AD. Legend has it that a widow also named Cleopatra witnessed Varus’ torture and execution, and subsequently removed his remains – which were now recognized as sanctified relics – from the tree where they were displayed. Though she herself had been born near Mount Tabor in Galilee, she brought the saint’s remains to her later home in Syria and buried them with reverence, erecting a shrine over them nearby.
Her son, John, shared her devotion to the Egyptian soldier saint. After the young man’s death from illness, John and Varus both appeared to Saint Cleopatra in a vision, urging her to continue her work supporting the poor and impoverished in the area by distributing her wealth to them. This Cleopatra is today revered in the Western, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, glorifying God the Father by her service to those most in need.
Three hundred years after the more famous ruler sauntering through the corridors of ancient power between the Nile and the Tiber, the saintly and underappreciated Cleopatra’s public witness to Christ was aroused by an unflinching gaze into the suffering of others. Her conscience apparently could not allow her to turn away from Varus’ painful end with indifference, to say to herself “this is not my affair.” She overcame the natural human revulsion of gore, woe and misery at great personal risk, following the inner voice that recognizes the human dignity even of those others deem alien, menacing or disposable.
Though shrouded in the mists of time and an admittedly hazy historical record, the tradition of Saint Cleopatra should continue to inspire those of us with hardened hearts in the modern period to recognize the face of God in the most vulnerable and angst-ridden in society, those who share in their often silent victimhood with the Lamb slain by the forces of evil, who opened not his mouth before the shearers. For no matter the century, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.” (Ps 34:18) We his disciples, then, attempt to remove or insulate ourselves from such anguish and distress at great personal peril, and exceeding hypocrisy if we wish to call ourselves Christian.
Saint Cleopatra, pray for those suffering violence under the forces of empire, exclusion and apathy today, and for all of us.
Originally from Collingswood, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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