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CHAPTER ONE

The Nature of Leadership in Late Antiquity

The emperor, the holy man, and the bishop. These were the most powerful and evocative figures in late antiquity. They provided practical leadership, moral guidance, and the dispensation of favors. Their important position in society is illustrated by artistic representations such as the seventh-century mosaic from St. Demetrius in Thessalonike on the frontispiece of this book, which shows the youthful saint flanked by the bishop of the city and a civic dignitary as representative of the emperor. Emperors, bishops, and holy men also occupy center stage in the literary production of late antiquity. The ancient genre of panegyric in praise of emperors flourished on an unprecedented scale, the writing of church history where bishops were the protagonists was a new, pioneering effort, and various forms of hagiographical writing, especially saints’ Lives, were created to extol the virtues of holy men and women.

The interaction of emperor, holy man, and bishop can be seen in the Life of Daniel the Stylite. Inspired by the example of Symeon the Stylite, whose reputation as an exceptional ascetic and miracle worker attracted large crowds to his pillar near Antioch, Daniel established himself in a suburb of Constantinople in the mid-fifth century. The local priests reacted with resentment and jealousy to the presence of this stranger from Syria, whose decision to take up residence in an abandoned temple, and later on top of a pillar, seemed to generate a great deal of interest and admiration among the local population. In response to their complaints, the archbishop of Constantinople looked into the matter. In a personal meeting, he recognized Daniel’s spiritual strength and then convinced the clergy that their suspicions were groundless. The popular local cult of the holy man thus received the stamp of approval from the highest ecclesiastical authority.

Over the following years, the Life explains, Daniel became something like a personal saint for Emperor Leo I (457–474) and for his successor, Zeno (474–491), who depended upon Daniel to soothe restless crowds on the verge of rebellion, to predict the outcome of imperial initiatives, and to quell heretical stirrings. Leo rewarded Daniel’s cooperation with public gestures of recognition, especially by donating a large pillar, topped by an enclosed platform, on which Daniel would live. The holy man was, quite literally, put on a pedestal, so that his extraordinary ascetic stamina—his motionless stance on the small platform, his exposure to the elements—was visible even from afar. To express his gratitude for Daniel’s efficacious prayers, Leo also instigated Daniel’s ordination to the priesthood at the hands of the archbishop of Constantinople. Archbishop Gennadius willingly complied with this request, apparently unperturbed by the prospect of violating a number of church canons that regulate priestly appointments. But when the archbishop asked Daniel to descend from his pillar in order to receive his ordination, the latter refused—most likely because he did not want to be seen as coveting the priesthood. Thus, instead of consecrating the new priest through the customary imposition of hands, Gennadius decided to perform the ordination rite from the bottom of the pillar where he stood. In describing this unconventional procedure, the hagiographer reveals his own awkwardness when he has Gennadius explain to Daniel that during his prayer of consecration “God laid His hand upon you from above.”¹ Daniel’s ordination had no effect on his way of life or daily routine, since he never exercised any priestly duties. His ordination to the priesthood served the exclusive purpose of recognizing, confirming, and enhancing Daniel’s position as a holy man, and it took place at the initiative not of the highest representative of the church, but of the highest secular authority in the empire.

Daniel’s influence in Constantinople and among his followers was considerable. But it is not easy to pinpoint its origin and to establish whether it derived from his reputation as a holy man, his ordination to the priesthood, or his close association with the emperor. In fact, his contemporaries are reported to have had an equally blurry view of the nature of his authority. An episode during the rebellion of Basiliscus, a supporter of Mono-physitism, against the emperor Zeno illustrates this. While the efforts of the new archbishop Acacius to force Basiliscus to embrace orthodoxy remained fruitless and resulted only in stirring up the potential for unrest in the capital, Daniel came to the rescue, restored order in the city, and reaffirmed orthodoxy. This was one of the few occasions when, yielding to popular pressure, he descended from his pillar and entered Constantinople. There, he was acclaimed by the people as “high priest,” while a Goth, presumably an Arian, mockingly referred to him as “the new consul.”² This vignette in the Life shows the Constantinopolitans and the Goth in agreement in their appreciation of Daniel’s authority, even as they conceptualize its origin in different ways, the former as deriving from the institution of the church, the latter from that of the empire. Daniel’s triumphant presence in Constantinople culminated in his visit to the cathedral church of Saint Sophia, where both the rebel emperor Basiliscus and the archbishop Acacius demonstrated their submission to the holy man who had succeeded where they had failed, in bringing unity to a divided population on the brink of civil unrest. They fell at his feet and, while laying prostrate on the ground, were formally reconciled by Daniel, a gesture that derived its particular poignancy from the fact that his feet were crippled and worn down to the bone—a tangible token of his ascetic achievement.³ Thanks to Daniel’s intervention, Basiliscus also gave a formal profession of orthodoxy, which ended his antagonism with Acacius. Shortly before describing Daniel’s death, the hagiographer is at pains to reinforce the notion of Daniel’s position as a “priest,” complete with quasi-liturgical prerogatives. In a vision, the story goes, he saw the saints in heaven asking him to celebrate the eucharistic liturgy. Upon awakening, he asked to receive communion, and his disciples partook of it also. The hagiographer, who claims to have been one of the disciples present on that occasion, explains that it was “just as if he had been administering to us the holy sacrament.”⁴

This extraordinary story illustrates the ambiguous and fluctuating relation between Christian priesthood and personal holiness: Daniel’s “virtual priesthood” was bestowed on him as a confirmation of his sanctity, at the behest of the secular ruler, by the highest representative of the church. At a time of crisis and political instability, both emperor and archbishop submitted to Daniel’s higher authority. He was recognized by the people as their true priest and preserver of doctrinal unity, and his followers even experienced him in the role of a priest consecrating the eucharist. Daniel’s story, as it was narrated for the benefit of his admirers, exemplifies the complex relation between the possession of spiritual gifts, visible evidence of ascetic living, and concrete authority within the institution of the Christian church.

To the modern reader, this story may seem strangely over the top. In our view, the emperor and the holy man embody the contrasting principles of secular and religious leadership. The Enlightenment and its heritage, from the ideals of the French Revolution to the work of Edward Gibbon, have taught us not only to make a sharp distinction between the secular and the religious, but also to consider this distinction as an essential precondition for modern statehood.⁵ Yet the notion of the association of imperial authority with the divine that guided, protected, and guaranteed the emperor’s rule was pervasive in the Roman Empire and was passed on—in Christian guise—to the Byzantine Empire and the medieval West. Just as imperial authority was intricately linked to the divine, the religious authority of holy men had overtones of secular power. The appreciation by his contemporaries of an individual as a holy man depended to a large extent on his ability to bestow on them benefactions of a very concrete, worldly kind: healing from illness, relief of famine, and restoration of social order. To assume that in the later Roman Empire the secular and the religious were perceived as separate and that our view of this period should adhere to this dichotomy is a misleading result of modern thinking. It is more fruitful to conceive of secular and religious authority as the opposing ends of a sliding scale, where each individual, whether emperor, holy man, or bishop, has his own place, depending on his role in society and his own personal conduct.

It is, in fact, the bishop who occupies the middle ground between the two poles of secular and religious leadership. His responsibilities as administrator of a diocese involve him in very mundane matters from financial administration to building works, while his duties as the shepherd of his flock entail such religious obligations as pastoral care, the preservation of doctrinal unity, and the celebration of the liturgy and other Christian rites. The nature of episcopal leadership during the third to sixth centuries is the central theme of this book. This is the formative period during which the church was propelled to assume an ever-increasing role in the public life of the later Roman Empire, and its representatives, the bishops, were saddled with ever-increasing public duties. It is my contention that a proper understanding of the role of the bishops during this time of transition can be accomplished only once we rid ourselves of the anachronistic baggage of a supposed secular-religious dichotomy. This is an artificial distinction that would have been completely incomprehensible to the men and women of late antiquity. In an extended sense, then, this study hopes to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the nature of authority in late antiquity in general.

PREVIOUS SCHOLARSHIP ON THE ROLE OF BISHOPS IN LATE ANTIQUITY

No single figure seems to encapsulate the changes and transformations of late antiquity better than the Christian bishop. Bishops figure prominently in the scholarly literature about this period. They are often invoked in overview treatments of church history, social structure, and urbanism as the focal point on which significant transformations hinge. The common underlying assumption of such studies tends to be that the rise of Christianity goes hand in hand with the rise of the bishop to political prominence, a rise whose lasting consequences reverberate into the Middle Ages and beyond. Bishops were actively involved in the defense of their cities, acted as judges in civil cases, amassed great wealth, became important building patrons, and on more than one occasion usurped or challenged civil authorities. These are just a few of the litany of examples that are commonly adduced to illustrate the rise of the shepherd of the Christian flock to unprecedented political power.

Studies of the growth of Christianity tend to idealize the Christian communities of the apostolic and subapostolic age, where social differentiations were forcefully rejected, the gifts of the spirit were shared by all, and several episkopoi fulfilled the function of overseers. The subsequent departures from this ideal are noted, from the hindsight of the historian, with sadness and alarm. The first significant step in this decline was the stratification and formalization of relationships within the Christian community through the development of a hierarchy of offices within the clergy, combined with the notion that only one bishop should stand at the head of each large urban community. This monarchic episcopate arose at a time when the unity and integrity of the church were threatened by persecution and heresy. Ignatius of Antioch in the late second century and Cyprian of Carthage in the midthird century responded to this challenge by advocating strong episcopal leadership as a guarantee for the cohesion of the church. The second step in the development of the episcopate, which signaled a further departure from the apostolic ideal—so the conventional narrative goes—occurred when the emperor Constantine began to champion Christianity and showered the bishops with privileges and benefactions. At the same time, he charged them with certain tasks and duties that have been interpreted as extending far beyond the bishops’ original reach—a notion that will be challenged in the chapter titled “Empire.” During the age of persecutions, the church had defined itself in opposition to the state; now it was put in a position to cooperate with it. Later developments did not essentially alter this relationship; they merely intensified it. The bishops’ public role and their political power increased over time, especially in those regions where the existing social order was disrupted by invasions and central government had become ineffectual, obsolete, or nonexistent.

Continental historians of early Christianity, in particular, tend to blame the progressive institutionalization of the church for the attendant loss of spirituality of the early times. The extreme position in this approach was taken by Theodor Klauser who regarded Constantine’s ecclesiastical policy as an unprecedented and dangerously successful attempt by the state to absorb the church and its representatives into its administrative apparatus.⁶ Klauser based his argument on the observation that certain adjectives, such as gloriosissimus, which signaled high status at the top of a social hierarchy of imperial offices, were also used to address bishops. His thesis was proposed over half a century ago and has since then repeatedly come under criticism from different angles. Hans Ulrich Instinsky pointed out that martyrs had been honored with this adjective long before the reign of Constantine. His study of the titulature and other elements of episcopal and imperial ceremonial emphasized the similarities and possible mutual influence between the two.⁷ In response to Klauser and Instinsky, Santo Mazzarino noted that in late antiquity episcopal and imperial authority were thought to have a common origin in the supreme divinity as the source of all power and glory.⁸ Ernst Jerg’s systematic study of the variety of forms of address used by secular authorities for bishops settled the issue once and for all by demonstrating that bishops were never formally integrated into the administrative apparatus of the empire.⁹ The recent book by Harold Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, goes a long way to inject a healthy dose of realpolitik into the evaluation of the emperor’s religious politics and his treatment of bishops as uneasy allies, moral and spiritual superiors, and subject citizens.¹⁰ Scholarly debate, however, continues to be occupied with the central question that Klauser raised: How are the public activities of a bishop to be interpreted?

French and Italian scholars, many of them rooted in the Catholic tradition, tend to adopt a teleological perspective and welcome the new, public role of bishops after Constantine as paving the way for the rise of the papacy. This is often evident in the anachronistic use of the term “pope” by these scholars for the bishop of Rome, even though the sources they use clearly speak of the episcopus and were written at a time when the primacy of the see of Rome was not yet taken for granted. Not surprisingly, French scholars have also been in the forefront of the study of early canon law, beginning with the fourth century, which provides valuable insight into episcopal self-definition.¹¹

While the work of church historians especially until the mid-twentieth century is often colored by their own Christian confession, the approach of social and political historians of a more recent generation is marked by a noticeable neglect of the religious or even ecclesiastical dimension of the episcopate. The recent trend in late antique studies to regard the period largely in terms of urban transformations, coupled with the desire to counterbalance the literary record with archaeological findings, has focused attention on the role of bishops not within the empire, or even within the larger structure of the church, but within the context of their own cities. But although the picture that emerges from such studies is more nuanced, the verdict remains the same: bishops are seen as political actors whose power derives from their social position and wealth.

Peter Brown in Power and Persuasion, for example, studies the rising power of the bishop against the background of the transformation of urban culture in late antiquity. In the post-Diocletianic empire, he argues, the bishops gained greater prominence as part of a tighter administrative web that extended a closer grip on cities and individuals than ever before. In this context, the bishop’s ability to become an advocate for his community, including its poor, is explained as having its basis in the common cultural “language” of paideia—a mode of comportment and a form of expression based on a thorough education in the classical tradition—that is shared by bishops and prominent town councilors, provincial governors, and imperial administrators alike.¹² According to this model, the power of bishops has the same root and is measured by their late antique contemporaries with the same yardstick as that of other prominent men.

There is much to be said for this approach, as the city was the primary stage on which the bishop’s role was played out.¹³ The Roman Empire, especially along the coast of the Mediterranean, was dotted with cities, each a microcosm of different social groups, each a cultural hub, and each a focal center for the economy and administration of its rural hinterland. The decline of the traditional markers of city life brought to light by the archaeological record—the disappearance of the grid system of streets, the crumbling of theatres, and the shrinking of the walls that enclosed the city territory—has long been taken as evidence for a widespread, simultaneous, and steady decline of urban culture that marks the end of the Roman Empire. The research of the last decades, however, especially the recent synthesis by Wolfgang Liebeschuetz,¹⁴ has challenged this view as being too schematic. Greater attention is now being paid to regional differences. While in northern Gaul the few existing cities disappeared altogether by the fifth century, the commercial centers in the eastern Mediterranean were thriving well into the seventh century.¹⁵ The excavations at Aphrodisias, for example, have shown the continued vitality of this large city, with its theatre and other public buildings intact.¹⁶ A more nuanced view has also been taken with regard to urban building activity. We now know that the neglect of public structures was offset by an increase in private and ecclesiastical building. The structures associated with the old, pagan way of life—theatre, hippodrome, forum, public bath—were replaced in their function as social centers by the churches that were now increasingly erected in prominent spots, often with the active encouragement and financial support of bishops.

As the outward appearance of cities changed, so did their demographic profile. Beginning in the fourth century, the various regions of Gaul had to accommodate Visigoths, Franks, and Burgundians. The northern part of the Italian peninsula became home to the Ostrogoths in the fifth century; a century later the Lombards settled primarily in the center and the south. Although these immigrants established themselves mostly in the countryside, their presence necessitated adjustments in the economy, political mechanisms, and social structure of these regions. After the end of imperial rule in Italy, the aristocrats of the Latin West were deprived of the opportunity to enhance their profile through appointment in the imperial service and found a new outlet for their ambitions by joining the episcopate.

Several studies have explored these developments in Gaul¹⁷ and Italy,¹⁸ with a special emphasis on the role of the bishop in providing political leadership as well as much-needed social services in times of crisis and transition. In this respect, the late antique bishop in Gaul and Italy has been seen as an early incarnation of his medieval counterpart, who exercised complete control over his city. The prototypes of such episcopal activity were Martin of Tours and Ambrose of Milan. We are exceptionally well informed about them through their hagiographers, and in the case of Ambrose also through his own writings, including his letters. Not surprisingly, both Martin and Ambrose have become the subject of several self-contained studies.¹⁹ Similarly, the sheer number of hagiographies of later bishops in Gaul and Italy, such as those of Caesarius of Arles, Germanus of Auxerre, Epiphanius of Pavia, Leo the Great, and Gregory the Great, has contributed to the fact that the bishops of these regions, whether individually or collectively, have received more scholarly attention than those of other areas of the later Roman Empire.²⁰

A related strand of studies has tried to uncover the late antique roots of the Stadtherrschaft of bishops. As the absence of an English translation of this term indicates, this is a particular concern in German scholarship. The beginnings of this phenomenon can be attributed to the dwindling local powers and the absence of a strong central government in the Merovingian period, although it reached its full extent in the tenth to twelfth centuries, when the bishops of large cities in Germany and Gaul held all the reins of civic administration, complemented by legal and financial independence, thus acting as veritable “lords of their cities.”²¹ This form of Stadtherrschaft of bishops is a later, medieval development, however, that did not necessarily follow from the role of bishops in the later Roman Empire alone but resulted from a combination of other factors specific to Gaul and Germany. In other regions of the Roman Empire, bishops of the fourth to sixth centuries fulfilled the same functions as representatives of their cities and providers of humanitarian help in times of crisis, yet this did not lead to the autonomous episcopal governance of cities in later centuries. Dietrich Claude attempted to apply this Gallic model to early Byzantium in order to show that bishops in the Eastern Roman Empire also exercised a veritable Stadtherrschaft, but the limitations of this approach have long been recognized, at least by Byzantinists.²² More recent studies of the transformation of cities in Asia Minor have emphasized the stabilizing role of bishops in up-holding and perpetuating the existing social order as they operated in conjunction with the people and the leading men of their cities.²³ The writings of the Cappadocian fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, have generated several scholarly treatments of their views of the episcopate and their own exercise of this office.²⁴

Studies of the role of bishops along the southern shore of the Mediterranean have centered on issues such as the patterns of urbanization, the structure of civic life, the presence of dissenting Christian groups, and the nature of the surviving evidence. Since Egypt spawned the thriving monastic movement that attracted pilgrims and followers from all over the empire, monasticism in all its forms is the focus of most studies of Christian life in this region,²⁵ while less energy has been devoted to the discussion of dissenting movements within the church, such as Arianism and Monophysitism.²⁶ As a consequence, modern studies concentrating on this region accord only a marginal role to bishops within their urban setting. An exception is Athanasius of Alexandria, whose prolific literary output has given rise to several studies of his dogmatic stance, political maneuvering, and ascetic outlook.²⁷ Apart from the bishop of Alexandria, bishops do not dominate the picture, while the papyri often show village priests in a uniquely prominent role. Because of the wealth of the surviving documentary evidence, scholars have been able to investigate the ecclesiastical and economic administration of Egypt as an organic entity in which the bishops were firmly embedded.²⁸

The nature of the available sources has also influenced the studies of Christianity in North Africa. Here Augustine of Hippo is the towering figure, not so much because of the saint’s Life written by his disciple Possidius, but because of the numerous works that survive from his pen, especially his extensive epistolographical collection, which has been augmented in recent years by Johannes Divjak’s discovery of additional letters.²⁹ North Africa was also a densely urbanized region that enjoyed great economic prosperity until the Vandal invasion of the late 430s and beyond. The archaeological work, and especially the epigraphic record, provide a mine of information about the life of the North African cities and the bishops’ participation in it.³⁰

Previous studies of bishops in late antiquity thus fall into three distinct groups: histories of the development of the episcopal office within the church, which usually end with the reign of Constantine; investigations of the public role of bishops within their urban or regional context, which usually begin with Constantine’s legislation in favor of the clergy; and biographies of important men of the church, based to no small extent on their own literary record. Each of these areas of study has considerable merit in contributing important insights into specific aspects of the role of bishops in late antiquity. But at the core of these studies are two underlying assumptions, one chronological, the other ideological. The chronological assumption consists in highlighting the reign of Constantine as a radical turning point when the idealized, charismatic age of early Christianity came to an end and the church became tainted through its exposure to the empire, a decline that is thought to be accompanied, as if in a seesaw, by the rise of the bishops. What has been lacking is a study that deemphasizes the reign of Constantine and that, instead of treating it as a watershed in the history of the institutional development of the church, follows the continuous flow of developments, both in Christian culture and in the Roman Empire, in the centuries before and after Constantine’s reign. The present study is intended as a first step in this direction, as its chronological range extends from the third to the sixth century.

The general ideological assumption upon which most studies of the episcopate have rested until about two decades ago is that of a strict division between the religious and the secular aspects of the role of bishops, in order to concentrate on the bishops’ social prominence and political power. Yet there are some notable exceptions of scholars who have chosen a more integrative approach, in an effort to link the bishops’ public activities within their cities with their religious position as Christian leaders. Thus Henry Chadwick³¹ and Philip Rousseau³² explore the interconnection between the roles of monks and those of bishops. In a similar vein, Rosemarie Nürnberg acknowledges that asceticism provides the foundation and justification for episcopal power in late antique Gaul, and Andrea Sterk has undertaken a similar study for Cappadocia.³³ Bernhard Jussen, by contrast, pursues the notion of the survival of elites in changing political circumstances and points out that the new prominence of aristocratic bishops in Gaul since the fifth century goes hand in hand with their ceremonial self-representation as charismatic leaders through the performance of the liturgy in its various forms.³⁴ An entire volume of essays was dedicated to the interconnection of episcopal power and pastoral care in 1997.³⁵ Rita Lizzi has investigated the role of bishops, especially prominent bishops, in the East and highlights what she calls the “process of moralization” that characterizes their interaction with secular authorities and its representation in the sources.³⁶ Recent articles by Susanna Elm and Rebecca Lyman draw attention to the importance of the ascetic stance in the assertion of episcopal authority.³⁷ Conrad Leyser explores the connection between interpretations of asceticism, the formation and internal structure of monastic communities, and leadership within those communities.³⁸ In a similar vein, the latest monograph by Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire,³⁹ focuses on the role of the bishop in his city as the “lover of the poor,” with all the social and political consequences this entails, and at the same time seeks the roots of the bishop’s advocacy for the poor in the religious traditions of Judaism and Christianity. Brown argues that the Judeo-Christian tradition of the distribution of the offerings of the community through its appointed officers prepares the ground for the concrete exercise of Christian charity, while the radically new, Christian idea of a deep-rooted solidarity among fellow humans as a result of the incarnation of Christ provides additional motivation for its practice among Christians. On the whole, there is a noticeable trend, especially in Anglophone scholarship since the late 1980s, to treat episcopal power not as an isolated social or political phenomenon, but as a complex construct of secular and religious elements that come to bear in ever-shifting constellations.

The study of the role of holy men has evolved according to the same pattern. Initial emphasis on the single criterion of personal sanctity has given way to a more integrative interpretation that takes into account additional socioeconomic factors. The important studies by German scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially the seminal works of Karl Holl⁴⁰ and Hans von Campenhausen, isolated the charismatic element as crucial in the establishment of personal holiness.⁴¹ A second wave of scholarship set in with Peter Brown’s foundational 1971 article “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,”⁴² which explained the activities of holy men, especially in fifth- and sixth-century Syria, with reference to the socioeconomic context in which they operated. In this article, Brown explored the holy man’s public role as a patronus and its connection to asceticism, but to the neglect of the spiritual element. Brown has since then added further facets to the interpretation of the functions of the holy man by drawing attention to his role as philosopher-sage and as exemplar, while others have suggested that holy men were at the center of prayer communities that were also linked by common economic enterprises.⁴³ In the study of holy men, as in the study of bishops, the tendency in recent years has been to obliterate the earlier perception of a dividing line between the religious and the secular and to abandon the stark dichotomy of charisma versus institution, mysticism versus politics, and prayer versus power. The present book builds on these trends in two ways. First, it takes as its central theme late antique attitudes regarding the compatibility and interrelation of personal holiness and episcopal office, thereby combining the study of the role of the bishop with that of the holy man. And second, it consciously departs from the established binary opposition of religious and secular power and introduces a new interpretive model of three kinds of authority.

A NEW EXPLANATORY MODEL: SPIRITUAL, ASCETIC, AND PRAGMATIC AUTHORITY

The authority of the bishop is a multifaceted and ever-mutating construct that continued to change as individuals adapted, necessity dictated, and circumstances permitted. The office itself underwent a process of growth and change over time during which certain aspects and tasks gained in importance, while others receded into the shadows.

The main components that define episcopal authority, however, remained the same. What changed was the relative weight of these components, or the way in which they were combined. In order to facilitate the understanding of the role of bishops in late antiquity, I wish to introduce the following three categories: spiritual authority, ascetic authority, and pragmatic authority.

Spiritual authority indicates that its bearer has received the pneuma, the Spirit from God. Spiritual authority has its source outside the individual. It is given by God, as a gift. Spiritual authority is personal. It is given directly to a specific individual, without personal participation or preparation by its recipient. Finally, spiritual authority is self-sufficient. It can exist in the individual independent of its recognition by others. In highlighting the concept of spiritual authority, I follow the lead of the Christian writers of the later Roman Empire who acknowledged God as the source of all gifts of the spirit.⁴⁴

The public recognition of “charismatic” abilities, so important to Max Weber, is encompassed in what I call ascetic authority. Ascetic authority derives its name from askesis, meaning “practice.” It has its source in the personal efforts of the individual. It is achieved by subduing the body and by practicing virtuous behavior. These efforts are centered on the self, in the hopes of attaining a certain ideal of personal perfection. Ascetic authority is accessible to all. Anyone who chooses to do so can engage in the requisite practices. Finally, ascetic authority is visible. It depends on recognition by others, as it is made evident in the individual’s appearance, lifestyle, and conduct.

I refrain from using the term “charismatic” in this context, because it has been given a very specific meaning in Weber’s influential theory of charisma. Charisma, in his view, can exist only inasmuch as it is recognized by others and generates discipleship. It emerges through the interplay between the charismatic leader and his followers.⁴⁵Weber’s notion of charismatic authority functions in specific contradistinction to institutionalized authority, a dichotomization that this study hopes to transcend by introducing a model that embraces three types of authority: spiritual, ascetic, and pragmatic.

The third member of this triad, pragmatic authority, is based on actions (from pratto, meaning “to do”). It arises from the actions of the individual, but in distinction from ascetic authority, these actions are directed not toward the shaping of the self, but to the benefit of others. Access to pragmatic authority is restricted. Its achievement depends on the individual’s wherewithal, in terms of social position and wealth, to perform these actions. Pragmatic authority is always public. The actions are carried out in full public view. The recognition of pragmatic authority by others depends on the extent and success of the actions that are undertaken on their behalf.

These definitions are, of course, schematic and serve merely to isolate the most important distinctions between the three types of authority. The usefulness of this tripartite scheme lies in the fact that it accords a special place of relevance to ascetic authority as the vital link to the other two. The personal practice of asceticism prepares the individual for the receipt of the gifts of the spirit, and thus of spiritual authority, from God. Since ascetic authority is founded on the regulation of lifestyle and behavior, this is a path open to all. In fact, it is the only path by which an individual can hope to bring down God’s grace on his or her own initiative. Yet at the same time, asceticism is a gauge of the presence of spiritual authority. Nobody can walk the difficult and thorny road of ever more demanding ascetic practices unless he or she receives the help of God. To observers and bystanders, ascetic accomplishments are thus the outward face of spiritual authority. In other words, ascetic authority is simultaneously the humanly and freely accessible precondition for spiritual authority and its openly visible confirmation.

At the same time, ascetic authority is also the motivation and legitimation of pragmatic authority. This feature is essential to the understanding of the public activities of bishops in late antiquity. It allows us to perceive a crucial distinction between bishops and civic leaders. Bishops are always held to a higher code of conduct, and their ability to exercise leadership is conditional on their adherence to that code. In contrast to civic leaders, the bishops’ pragmatic actions on behalf of the community are considered to be a manifestation of their ascetic authority, so much so that the successful exercise of the former is believed to be a direct consequence of the latter.

The emphasis on the ascetic component distinguishes this model from previous work on the authority of bishops, while the identification of pragmatic authority as an independent component facilitates the study of the public role of holy men. The combination of these three kinds of authority—spiritual, ascetic, and pragmatic—provides the analytical tools that allow the study of bishops and holy men within the same cultural, religious, social, and political context.

. . .

This book aims to assert and explain the importance of ascetic authority as the focal point at the intersection between spiritual and pragmatic authority. It owes its inspiration to both the German and the Anglophone strands of scholarship, as is perhaps inevitable for an author who moved from Germany to England and then to the United States in the course of her academic and intellectual formation. I became aware of the importance of the spiritual-ascetic-pragmatic nexus while working on my doctoral dissertation on the Vita of Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus. This well-known champion of orthodoxy and author of antiheretical works died in 402; his Life was composed sometime between 430 and 475. Epiphanius is thus one of the earliest bishops who was considered holy and who was honored and immortalized in a saint’s Life. He is joined by a few others: Martin of Tours, who died in 397 and was celebrated in a saint’s Life by Sulpicius Severus; Ambrose of Milan, who died the same year and whose Life was written by his disciple Paulinus; Porphyry of Gaza in Palestine, who died in 420 and whose Life poses particular historical problems; and Augustine of Hippo, who died in 430 and was honored in a Life by his disciple Possidius. The Lives of these bishops were composed around the middle of the fifth century. They were not the last bishops to be honored in this manner. From this time, bishops became the subject of hagiographical literature, where previously only martyrs and ascetics had received such treatment. In contrast to the glorification of those who had attained their spiritual perfection through rejection or avoidance of the world, the Lives of bishops propagate a very different ideal. They celebrate the attainment of holiness by ecclesiastical officeholders in an urban setting and in continued exposure to worldly affairs. How can this new direction in the appreciation of what “makes” a holy man be explained? And how do the hagiographers respond to the challenge posed by the novelty of their topic? These are the central questions that form the undercurrent of the present study.

The book is divided into two major parts. The first part juxtaposes bishops and holy men and deals with the nature of Christian authority and its spiritual roots. The second part compares bishops and civic leaders and addresses the realities of the episcopal office. Following these treatments of what it meant to be “holy” and what it meant to be a “bishop,” an epilogue discusses the hagiographical treatment of “holy bishops.” The chronological framework of this inquiry extends from the third to the sixth century. This time frame was chosen to bracket the reign of Constantine and to allow a thorough reassessment of its consequences for the leadership role of bishops in their cities. The geographical scope expands and contracts depending on the demands of the subject matter, and on the spread of the available source material. The more theoretical analysis includes relevant texts from the Latin West and the Greek East, while the in-depth historical study of the bishop’s activities in the urban context is centered on the cities of the Levant, where the evidence for our period is more plentiful and only occasionally draws on supplementary evidence from the West.

Part 1 is largely based on the writings generated by men of the church. Its subdivisions follow the explanatory model outlined above, discussing pragmatic, spiritual, and ascetic authority in turn. The second chapter serves as an introduction to the history and development of the idea of the episcopate. It shows how the concrete or pragmatic authority of bishops within the church has its roots in an appreciation of a bishop’s spiritual abilities. It begins with an overview of the early church orders that describe the various tasks of the bishop within the community. These texts also emphasize that it was the most outstanding Christian in the community who should be elected to the episcopate. This nexus between pragmatic authority and its justification by ascetic authority is pursued further in a detailed study of the late antique comments on the only passage in the New Testament that describes the role of the bishop in detail, 1 Timothy 3:1–7. Chapter 3 illustrates the concept of spiritual authority with reference to its most eloquent postapostolic spokesmen, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and their remarks on bearers of the Spirit (pneumatophoroi) and bearers of Christ (christophoroi). The next segment gives a direct snapshot of spiritual authority at work. Exclusively based on documentary, not literary, sources, it shows how spiritual men were appreciated by their contemporaries for the power of their intercessory prayer. This kind of prayer is then investigated further, as it was performed on behalf of sinners by martyrs and holy men as much as by priests and bishops, all of whom could make claims to spiritual authority. Ascetic authority is the subject of chapter 4. It is addressed only inasmuch as it has particular bearing on our understanding of the episcopal role. Special emphasis is placed on the importance of the desert—a symbol of total withdrawal and rejection of the world—as a training ground for those who aspire to ascetic authority. The insistence on the physical desert setting as most beneficial for spiritual progress, it is argued, was soon augmented by the notion that the soul could achieve complete inner detachment regardless of its surroundings. This expanded understanding of the significance of the desert as an internalized state of mind made the monastic ideal accessible to those who, like bishops, lived in cities and were active in the public life. The biblical model for bishops who follow the desert ideal while being active on behalf of others is Moses, as discussed in the following section of chapter 4. He was the divinely appointed leader who proved himself worthy through his deeds to hold pragmatic authority over the people of Israel. The complex nature of episcopal leadership as a combination of pragmatic, spiritual, and ascetic authority provides an explanation for the frequent rejection of ordination by monks, which is investigated next. This rejection is occasioned by the notion that ordination is a confirmation of personal virtue and thus should not be coveted by a truly humble person. Yet there was a growing trend to validate the ascetic ideal through honorific ordination, or indeed to attract monks to active service in the clergy. Ascetic authority was the supreme qualification for obtaining the pragmatic authority of office and, for those who lacked ascetic training, the best validation for a successful tenure in office.

Part 2 deals with the realities of episcopal office and is mainly based on historical writing and legal and epigraphic sources. The problematic relation of worldly criteria and spiritual qualifications in the appointment of bishops and in their discharge of office is exemplified in chapter 5, which begins with a comparison between the episcopal careers of Synesius of Cyrene and Theodore of Sykeon, the former a pagan man of leisure in the late fourth century, the latter a seventh-century monk given to ascetic excesses. As these examples show, late antique bishops had ample leeway to define their role and range of activities. Contemporary attitudes were opaque, and theologians sensed the need to defend the nature of the episcopate as work and service, not as an honor.

Chapter 6 offers a detailed overview of the patterns of recruitment to the episcopate, which reveals that wealthy and locally prominent men were increasingly at an advantage as candidates for this ministry. Not surprisingly, many status-conscious urban citizens were eager to attain the episcopate as an additional distinction at the end of their careers.

Chapter 7 examines the role of the bishop within the context of his city. It aims to bring out the concrete manifestations of the pragmatic authority of bishops, which was often determined by their elevated social origin prior to their election. This is followed by treatments of three aspects of the pragmatic authority of the bishop that invite comparison with the activities of prominent citizens and of holy men—namely, the bishop’s residence, his access to wealth, and his distribution of wealth.

Constantine’s laws granting bishops extensive administrative rights and obligations are traditionally regarded as the touchstone of church-state relations in this formative period. Chapter 8 proposes a critical reassessment of Constantine’s measures in order to show that, rather than absorbing the bishops into the apparatus of imperial administration, they merely confirmed the existing episcopal oversight over practical matters that were considered to be of particular concern to Christians in general. A more significant change that was heralded by the reign of Constantine was the open access to the imperial court that the bishops now enjoyed. But holy men of ascetic or monastic distinction enjoyed the same privilege, and thus this chapter concludes with a comparison of the different manifestations of the parrhēsia of bishops and of holy men with the emperor.

The last chapter of part 2 takes issue with the oft-repeated view that the bishop steps into a power vacuum created by the decline of the curiales, the wealthy city councilors, and argues that instead of being integrated into existing structures, he fulfills a new role that derives its authority precisely from the idealized status that adheres to his ecclesiastical rank. A comparison of the treatment of bishops in the Theodosian Code and in the Justinianic Code and Novellae shows that in the interval between these two codifications, bishops who had in the fourth century been regarded and revered as model Christians were in the sixth century treated as dependable model citizens. I then go on to argue that the bishop was never absorbed into the curia but instead joined the new ruling group of leading citizens that was crystallizing at the time, forming a new urban and Christian elite.

The brief epilogue gives a synthetic overview of the literary representation of bishops in hagiographical works to the seventh century. It is the nature of those texts to extol the personal holiness of their protagonists in order to celebrate them as saints. The subtle shifts in emphasis on the spiritual authority of bishops that can be traced in these texts over time confirm the general trends and developments in the exercise of the bishops’ pragmatic authority that have been identified in the previous, historical chapter. The hagiographical treatment of holy bishops shows them increasingly engaged in activities and duties that resemble those of civic functionaries. At the same time, these Lives are an attempt to vindicate the bishops by pointing to the spiritual origin of their authority and by elaborating on the divine powers that are at their disposal in the discharge of all aspects of their office and that are especially present in their celebration of the eucharistic liturgy.

This is the moment to make a full disclosure of what this book does not attempt: it does not provide a complete and detailed treatment of the development of the episcopal office within the framework of the church as an institution, nor does it deal in any detail with issues connected to the bishops’ liturgical role at baptism, ordination, and the celebration of the eucharist. It does not treat the role of bishops in the theological debates that threatened the doctrinal unity of the church, nor does it investigate specific moments of friction between episcopal and imperial power. Finally, it deliberately avoids the treatment of highly prominent bishops, such as the Cappadocian fathers, aiming instead to draw a composite picture of the bishop as a leadership figure in late antique society.⁴⁶ If the pattern that emerges helps to reinsert into their contemporary conceptual framework the thousands of bishops who were discharging their duties, for better or for worse, throughout late antiquity, my purpose will have been served.