The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy: Roman Bishops and the Domestic Sphere

THE FORMATION OF PAPAL AUTHORITY IN LATE ANTIQUE ITALY This book is the first cultural history of papal authority in l...

Author: Kristina Sessa

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THE FORMATION OF PAPAL AUTHORITY IN LATE ANTIQUE ITALY

This book is the first cultural history of papal authority in late antiquity. Whereas most traditional histories posit a “rise of the papacy” and examine popes as politicians, theologians, and civic leaders, Kristina Sessa focuses on the late Roman household and its critical role in the development of the Roman church from ca. 350 to 600. She argues that Rome’s bishops adopted the ancient elite household as a model of good government for leading the church. Central to this phenomenon was the classical and biblical figure of the steward, the householder’s appointed agent who oversaw his property and people. As stewards of God, Roman bishops endeavored to exercise moral and material influence within both the pope’s own administration and the households of Italy’s clergy and lay elites. This original and nuanced study charts their manifold interactions with late Roman households and shows how bishops used domestic knowledge as the basis for establishing their authority as Italy’s singular religious leaders. Kristina Sessa is Assistant Professor of History and Associate Director for the Center of the Study of Religion at The Ohio State University. She was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Rome in 2001–2002 and a Fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University in 2006–2007. She is the author of several articles on bishops, Christianity, and the domestic sphere.

The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy Roman Bishops and the Domestic Sphere

KRISTINA SESSA The Ohio State University

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107001060 C Kristina Sessa 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sessa, Kristina. The formation of papal authority in late antique Italy : Roman bishops and the domestic sphere / Kristina Sessa. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn 978-1-107-00106-0 (hardback) 1. Popes – Primacy – History of doctrines – Early church, ca. 30-600. 2. Home economics. 3. Households – Religious aspects – Christianity. 4. Italy – Church history. 5. Papacy – History – To 1309. I. Title. bx1805.s47 2012 262 .1309015 – dc23 2011020200 isbn 978-1-107-00106-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Chris

Contents

Acknowledgments

page ix

Abbreviations

xi

Map of Late Roman Italy Roman Bishops from Peter to Gregory I

xiii xv

Introduction: Household Management and the Bishop of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. The Late Roman Household in Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2. From Dominion to dispensatio: Stewardship as an Elite Ideal . . . . . . . 63 3. Primus cultor: Episcopal Householding in Theory and Practice 87 4. Overseeing the Overseer: Bishops and Lay Households . . . . . . 127 5. Cultivating the Clerical Household: Marriage, Property, and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 6. Mistrusting the Bishop: Succession, Stewardship, and Sex in the Laurentian Schism . . . . . . . . . 208

vii

Contents

7. The Household and the Bishop: Authority, Cooperation, and Competition in the gesta martyrum . . 247 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 Bibliography

283

Index

313

viii

Acknowledgments

This book began as a doctoral dissertation that was completed at the University of California at Berkeley in 2003. By all accounts, it has undergone profound changes in the process of becoming a book, and I owe numerous debts to many mentors, colleagues, family, and friends. At Berkeley, my advisor Susanna Elm first introduced me to the fascinating but problematic nature of episcopal leadership. Her intellectual and professional guidance over the years has been invaluable. Erich Gruen, Ralph Hexter, and the late Gerard Caspary served on the committee that advised the original dissertation. All offered me characteristically sharp comments in their various areas of expertise that helped me to write a much better book. While a graduate student, I also had the good fortune to spend a year at the Centre for Late Antiquity at Manchester University, where I studied with Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser. Kate also served as an external adviser on the dissertation and since then has maintained an avid interest in the development of the project. Both read chapter drafts (and in Conrad’s case, the entire manuscript) and have offered me hospitality and advice at various points in my career. Finally, Peter Brown kindly read the original dissertation and offered many instructive comments on how to improve the study. I hope that this book shows how much I have learned from all of my teachers. Julia Hillner, Anthony Kaldellis, Kevin Uhalde, and Ed Watts read chapters at different stages of development and repeatedly went beyond the call of duty in helping me sort out interpretive problems. I owe special thanks to my good friend Kim Bowes. In addition to reading a draft of the entire manuscript, she helped me to hone my argument over the years in too many ways to mention. I am also grateful to Daniel Caner, Marios Costambeys, David Frankfurter, Caroline Goodson, Lucy Grig, Andrew Jacobs, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Michele Salzman, Ann-Marie ix

Acknowledgments

Yasin, and the anonymous reader for Cambridge University Press for their advice and suggestions on various matters related to this book. Colleagues at the Claremont Colleges and The Ohio State University have been enormously generous with their time and critical assistance. I especially thank Greg Anderson, Lisa Cody, Theodora Dragostinova, Lilia Fernàndez, Ellen Finkelpearl, Fritz Graf, Tim Gregory, Sarah Iles Johnson, and Nathan Rosenstein. Greg Pellam and Elizabeth Kerr also provided invaluable assistance with the notes and bibliography. Additionally, I am grateful to the American Academy in Rome and the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University for extraordinarily generous fellowships in 2001–2002 and 2006– 2007, respectively. My family merits something more than just thanks. I can only hope to repay them for the heroic kindness, support, and love that they have shown me over the past ten years. My father and late mother, Joe and Alice Sessa; my sister and brother-in-law Andrea and Ed Sayago; my aunt and uncle Tony and Donna Sessa; and my stepmother Dale Sessa were constant sources of encouragement. My sons Nicholas and Sam have only known me writing this book and are owed too many weekend afternoons to count. Sarah Kennel, Paige Arthur, and Matthew Pincus have shown what it means to be best friends. But my greatest debt is to my husband, Chris Otter. In addition to helping me edit the final draft, he read every chapter in multiple stages, engaged with me on critical points of interpretation, and put up with me obsessing about popes for a very long time. Finally, I would like to thank my editor, Beatrice Rehl; the staff at the New York office of Cambridge University Press; and my project manager Shana Meyer for their wisdom and help at all stages of the process.

x

Abbreviations

Periodicals are abbreviated according to conventions in L’Année philologique. AA ACO CAH CC CSEL Epp. ERPG ICUR ILCV LCL LK LP MGH PCBE PG PL PLRE RP SK SK2

Auctores Antiquissimi Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum The Cambridge Ancient History Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Epistulae Epistolae romanorum pontificum genuinae et quae ad eos scriptae sunt a S. Hilaro usque ad Pelagium II Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres Loeb Classical Library The Council of Rome: Silvester with 275 Bishops, Laurentian Version Liber Pontificalis Monumenta Germaniae Historica Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas Empire Patrologia Graeca Patrologia Latina Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire Liber regulae pastoralis The Council of Rome: Silvester with 284 Bishops, Version 1 The Council of Rome: Silvester with 284 Bishops, Version 2

xi

10°E

A

15°E

B

C

a

a

Augusta Praetoria

Comum Castelseprio LIGURIA Milan Vercellae

45°N

Turin Dertona

ALPES COTTIAE

VENETIA Opitergium Concordia Tarvisium Aquileia ET Vicetia Brixia Altinum Cremona Verona Patavium HISTRIA

Bergomum

45°N

Placentia Veleia Genoa Ravenna AEMILIA Classis Luna FL AM IN IA

Gubbio basin UMBRIA Spoletium Cosa

TUSCIA ET

40°N

b

UM

CORSICA

EN

Monte Gelato Centumcellae Veii Rome Ostia

PI C

b

SAMNIUM Biferno Valley Sipontum S. Vincenzo Luceria al Volturno Canusium C A Beneventum Barium Venosa M Egnatia PA Naples APULIA ET N CALABRIA IA Brindisium S. Giovanni di Ruoti Hydruntum

40°N

LUCANIA

SARDINIA

ET BRUTTIUM Squillace

Land over 1000 metres

c

c

S I C I LIA

0 0

100

200

50

100 A

300 150

400 km

200 miles

10°E

B

15°E

Map of Late Roman Italy from CAH, Vol. 13, p. 529

xiii

C

Roman Bish ops from Peter to Gregory I

Peter, d. 67 CE Linus, 67–76 Anacletus, 76–88 Clement I, 88–97 Evaristus, 97–105 Alexander, 105–115 Xystus I, 115–125 Telesphorus, 125–136 Hyginus, 136–140 Pius I, 140–155 Anicetus, 155–166 Soter, 166–175 Eleutherius, 175–189 Victorius, 189–199 Zephyrinus, 199–217 Callistus I, 217–222 Urbanus I, 222–230 Pontianus, 230–235 Anterus, 235–236 Fabianus, 236–250 Cornelius, 251–253 Lucius, 253–254 Stephen, 254–257 Xystus II, 257–258 Dionysius, 259–268 Felix, 269–274 Eutychian, 275–283 Gaius, 283–296 Marcellinus, 296–304 Marcellus, 308–309 Eusebius, 309 Miltiades, 311–314 Silvester, 314–335 Marcus, 336 Julius, 337–352

Liberius, 352–366 *[Felix II, 355–365] Damasus, 366–384 *[Ursinus, 366–367] Siricius, 384–399 Anastasius I, 399–401 Innocent, 401–417 Zosimus, 417–418 *[Eulalius, 418–419] Boniface, 418–422 Celestine, 422–432 Sixtus III, 432–440 Leo, 440–461 Hilarus, 461–468 Simplicius, 468–483 Felix III, 483–492 Gelasius, 492–496 Anastasius II, 496–498 Symmachus, 498–514 *[Laurentius, 498–506/7] Hormisdas, 514–523 John I, 523–526 Felix IV, 526–530 Boniface II, 530–532 *[Dioscorus, 530] John II, 533–535 Agapitus, 535–536 Silverius, 536–537 Vigilius, 537–555 Pelagius I, 556–561 John III, 561–574 Benedict I, 575–57 Pelagius II, 579–590 Gregory, 590–604

xv

Introduction: H ouseh old Management and th e Bish op of Rome

oman episcopal leadership in late antiquity has typically

been studied as a public or civic phenomenon, and as a chapter in R the inexorable “rise of the papacy.” This book presents a new approach. Instead of charting the growth of an exceptional ecclesiastical government or the popes’ efforts to remake Rome into a Christian city, it examines the attempts of Roman bishops to anchor their authority in domestic life.1 During late antiquity, the popes faced a fundamental and daunting task: to persuade an exceptionally rich and high-status community of Italian Christians to trust their judgment in some of the most central matters of the household, from marriage, sexual relations, and slavery to property administration. To establish their reputations as strong spiritual leaders, Roman bishops had to convince their congregants, including their own clergy, that they possessed a special expertise in the art and science of household management. Domestic life and models of governing, this book argues, were central to the formation of papal authority in late Roman Italy. Elite households offered the Roman church a variety of resources – material, political, and social – that gave new meaning to the power and stature of its bishops, as Charles Pietri and others have shown.2 The household, however, also played a formative cultural role in the making of episcopal authority. The ancient household was not a marginal female 1

2

By authority, I mean something akin to the Roman concept of auctoritas: a form of moral and even social influence exercised by a person that was predicated on the recognition of his or her influence by others. On the topic of authority, I have found the more theoretical discussions of Sennett 1980, Kaufman 1983, and Lukes 1990 especially helpful. Pietri 1978, 1981, and 1981a. See also Llewellyn 1976; Cooper 1999; and Lizzi Testa 2004: 93–127.

1

The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy

space only obliquely relevant to the governing of city and state. It was a highly masculine institution, the empire’s primary unit of production and wealth, and the most morally revealing realm with respect to the character and capacities of its leaders.3 In antiquity, estate management (oikonomia) was a discourse, a system of ideas and practices associated with the running of a large aristocratic household.4 The system encompassed everything from administering property and disciplining dependents to the oversight of justice and religious order within the home. Oikonomia was also a dynamic discourse that underwent revision in the hands of Christian moralists. The following chapters show how late ancient discourses of household management shaped not only the rhetorical presentation of Roman episcopal authority but also its concrete practice. The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy examines the manifold ways in which Roman bishops drew upon both traditional and emergent constructs of oikonomia to define and exercise their government of the Roman church. The book analyzes papal authority as a form and expression of household management in three closely related domains: the bishop’s own domestic administration in Rome, the households of subordinate Italian clerics, and the homes of elite laypeople in Italy.5 First, the bishop’s domestic administration is explored as both an idea and institution. Specifically, the study traces the development of stewardship as a model of episcopal government in theoretical discussions of the Roman bishop’s responsibilities and influence. It also argues that Roman bishops built a type of ecclesiastical household in Italy from and through which they oversaw the church. Second, the book investigates the rhetorical and material developments that shaped the relationship between the bishop of Rome and his subordinate clergy. Particular attention is given to higher clerics who 3

4

5

See Veyne 1978; Shaw 1987; Wallace-Hadrill 1988; Shaw 1987; Cooper 1992 and 2007a; Saller 1994; and Milnor 2005. On the centrality of the household in the late Roman economy, see Cracco Ruggini 1995 and Sarris 2006. Throughout the book, I translate oikonomia variously as “domestic administration,” “household management,” and “estate management.” Most scholars, however, use these English phrases (and especially “estate management”) more narrowly to refer exclusively to the administration of property and labor. Cf. Saller 1999: 184–85. Alternatively, I wish to convey the broader remit of the term as it was understood by ancient writers. I do not consider monasteries and monastic households in any detail. This is not to suggest that they were unimportant to Roman bishops and their exercise of estate management. On the contrary, they present certain complexities that demand a separate study.

2

Introduction

administered Rome’s titular churches and the suffragan bishops whose sees fell directly within the pope’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction, Italia suburbicaria. Here the discussion focuses on the bishop’s endeavors to govern the domestic life of clerics, namely their proprietary interests, sexual habits, and marital relationships. The boundary dividing a clerical from a lay household was remarkably fluid in late antiquity, just as it was between the church and other contemporary domestic institutions. In fact, Roman bishops attempted to define the clerical household as something different from its lay counterpart in order to place it more firmly under their control. Third, The Formation of Papal Authority describes the complex relationship between the Roman bishop and the households of lay aristocratic men and women, primarily those who owned property and/or resided in Italy. Treating lay and clerical households separately allows us to compare the somewhat invasive tactics that popes used to govern the homes of clergymen with the relatively restrained techniques they employed when intervening within lay Christian households. Specifically, we explore how Roman bishops attempted to forge reputations as expert “domestic counselors” on new and newly problematic matters involving marriage, slavery, and private estate churches. The book also emphasizes the resistance that bishops encountered when they tried to intervene within the domestic sphere, especially (although not exclusively) from lay householders. In fact, this study concludes that the popes’ influence on everyday life remained limited. The late Roman householder did not “cede” his authority to the bishop in religious and ethical matters, as one recent study has suggested.6 In foregrounding the household, the present study builds on more than fifty years of scholarship on Christianity, the late Roman aristocracy, and family life.7 It takes particular direction from research that illuminates the relationship between emergent Christian values and traditional domestic practices and ideologies – what Peter Brown once called “respectable Christianity.”8 As scholars have shown, Christian values, especially those associated with asceticism, neither unmoored nor dramatically transformed the prevailing laws and habits of domestic 6 7

8

Cooper 2007: ix, 29–55. See also 2007a: 32–33. Gaudemet 1958; Brown 1961; Shaw 1987; Hunter 1987, 2003 and 2007; Markus 1990: 45–83; Reynolds 1994; Evans Grubbs 1995; Cooper 1996 and 2007; Nathan 2000; Salzman 2002; and Bowes 2008. Brown 1961: 9.

3


life.9 This book thus also locates dissonances between Christian ethics and Roman household traditions (both social and legal) and elucidates how and why Roman bishops endeavored to claim expertise over their resolution. Although scholars have explored how bishops and other Christian moralists pressed for new formulations of domesticity, none has explained how domestic discourses came to shape the very government of the church.10 Moreover, rather than exclusively examining formal, prescriptive documents (e.g., treatises on marriage and virginity, Christian conduct manuals, and canons issued by ecclesiastical synods), The Formation of Papal Authority privileges evidence for Roman bishops operating on all levels of domestic society and engaging in both everyday and extraordinary household events. Tax fraud on ecclesiastical estates, collecting rents from delinquent tenants, clerics who flaunted celibacy rules and whose heirs committed sex crimes, Christians who remarried after their spouses were carried off into captivity but later returned home, fugitive slaves who joined monasteries or entered the church order, and local bishops who misappropriated the church’s wealth for their personal use are among the many domestic matters that preoccupied late antique Roman bishops. Their routine involvement in these issues played a formative role in the development of their authority, even if they did not always resolve them permanently or definitively. Oikonomia : An Ancient Discourse of Elite Masculine Auth ority

When Roman bishops presented themselves as experts in household management, they drew on an ancient discourse of elite masculine authority. By the fourth century, the term oikonomia had a range of meanings.11 Its primary definition, and the one explored in this book, 9

10 11

See, for example, Evans Grubbs 1995; Cooper 2005; and Bowes 2008. In fact, recent work has stressed how even ascetic ideologies were shaped by traditional domestic practices. See Elm 1994; Jacobs and Krawiec 2003; and Rousseau 2005. For example: Laeuchli 1972; Brown 1990; and Cooper 2005, 2007 and 2007b. Hellenistic authors used oikonomia to connote the general arrangement of one’s life and actions, of political affairs or wealth in a city, or more broadly still, the good ordering of nature and the cosmos. See Natali 1995: 98–99. In ancient rhetoric, oikonomia also was a formal literary property and principle of interpretation that involved subordinating the individual parts of a discourse for the overall whole. See Eden 1997: 27–30. Within a Christian theological and pastoral framework, oikonomia came to mean God’s dispensation on earth as well as a spiritual father’s “temporary

4

Introduction

was “household” or “estate management.”12 A household (Latin: domus; Greek: oikos, oikia) in the ancient world, at least the kind owned and administered by late Rome’s elite citizens, involved much more than simply a nuclear family living together in a single abode.13 A household typically included multiple properties scattered over many different regions as well as hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of dependents, whose livelihoods were directly linked to the householder and his lands. The early fifth-century domus of Melania the Younger and Pinianus, for example, reputedly included a portfolio of properties located across the Mediterranean (Spain, Italy, Sicily, North Africa, Greece, and Egypt) and at least 8,000 dependent laborers.14 Certainly the size of their domus was exceptional (they were perhaps the wealthiest couple in the empire). But its general features (multiregional land holdings and many dependents) are representative of contemporary elite households. Great expertise was thus needed to manage such an extensive and complex enterprise. Consequently, oikonomia was a specialized branch of practical knowledge and personal ethics and was also widely perceived as a mode of government. For instance, the early imperial agronomist Columella (ca. 4–70) called household management both a scientia rusticationis (“knowledge of agriculture”) and a scientia imperandi (“knowledge of commanding others”).15 Let us consider briefly the history of these dimensions of household management: its association with a specific field of knowledge and ethics, and its link to governing and political life.16 The discourse’s foundations were laid in classical Greece, when writers invoked the household in theoretical discussions of political government and social organization. Both Plato (ca. 428–348 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) posited the oikos as an integral part of the larger whole

12

13

14

15 16

adjustments to prescribed reprimands.” On the latter, see Demacopoulos 2007: 12. Oikonomia could also connote stewardship. See below. Oikonomia was often transliterated as oeconomia in Latin. The Roman “economic vocabulary” also included words such as ordo, ordinatio, dispensatio, cura, procuratio, and administratio. See Meyer 1998: 56–58. Most scholars believe that a nuclear unit constituted the core of the Roman household. See Saller and Shaw 1984 and Shaw 1984. Martin 1996 critiques Saller and Shaw’s methods and conclusions, however, arguing that lateral relations were also central in Roman family life. For a description of the late Roman family, see Cooper 2007: 107–11. On Melania and Pinianus’ wealth, see Harries 1984; Giardina 1988; Cooper 2005; and Chapter 1. Columella, De re rustica 11.1.6. Meyer 1998 offers a broad survey of oikonomia in classical, late antique, and medieval literature see.

5


of the city-state.17 In Plato’s words, it was “the starting point of the city-state.”18 Although the two disagreed over the household’s function as a direct model of civic government (Plato thought that it was an apt paradigm; Aristotle firmly rejected this position), they concurred that its administration – what Aristotle called its oikonomia – was a crucial mechanism in the foundation and preservation of a sound state.19 For without the oikos, a city-state would lose its primary source of virtue, wealth, and members.20 The city’s dependence on the household made the householder’s good exercise of oikonomia critical. Ancient thinkers were thus driven to define precisely what good household management entailed. For example, Aristotle characterized household management as a mode of ruling (arche¯ın) exercised by the householder to inculcate moderation, order, and justice within his home.21 His contemporary Xenophon (430–354 BCE) authored the first extant handbook on the subject, the Oikonomikos.22 In it he expressly identified household management as both a form of practical knowledge (epistem¯e ) and a concrete skill (oikonomik¯e techn¯e ).23 For Xenophon, household management was the domain of an elite gentleman, a landowner with property, slaves, and an industrious wife whom he educated and entrusted to manage certain (typically internal) aspects of his oikos. The household administrator’s most important responsibilities were to acquire wealth (chr¯ematistike) and to maintain domestic order. This involved everything from organizing a pantry to directing his wife’s activities and disciplining slaves.24 Hellenistic thinkers further developed several of these core ideas about household management: a synecdochal relationship between household and state, an association of oikonomia with the activities of a male propertied householder (especially his acquisition of wealth), and a prevailing emphasis on the maintenance of order. Members of the era’s major philosophical schools authored treatises “concerning household 17

18 19

20 21 22 23 24

Distilled discussions of fourth-century BCE philosophical views of the oikos appear in Pomeroy 1994: 33–40 and Cartledge 2000: 13–14, 17. Plato, Laws 720e–721a. Plato, Laws 672a, 720e–721a. Aristotle, Pol. 1252–1261; 1280b33–4 and NE 1160a– 1161a. See Foxhall 1989: 22–44; Swanson 1992: 16–31; and Gaca 2003: 41–58. Swanson 1992: 18–25. For an introduction, English translation, and commentary, see Pomeroy 1994. Xenophon, Oec. 1.1, 6.8. Xenophon, Oec. 8.3–9; 6.8.

6

Introduction

management” (peri oikonomias).25 In them, Epicureans, Stoics, and Neopythagoreans discussed the exercise of oikonomia by the “wise man,” placing special emphasis on the philosopher’s management of his own wealth.26 According to the late Stoic (and teacher of Augustus) Arius Didymus, the wise man is “fortunate, happy, blessed, rich, pious, a friend of divinity, worthy of distinction, and . . . both skilled in estate management and the acquisition of wealth.”27 For many of these thinkers, household management was both a precise field of activity with empirical rules (techn¯e ) and a subjective state of mind or disposition (hexis).28 Household management, in other words, was a set of practices that defined who you were in ethical terms. Cicero (106–43 BCE) and other Roman writers understood well these dynamics of oikonomia. In one forensic speech, Cicero viciously attacked the domestic administration of his client’s accusers in order to impugn their public reputations and hence cast doubt on the validity of their charges.29 Elsewhere he argued that any strike made on his own household was itself an attack on the res publica.30 Cicero’s claim was perhaps less startling to his audience than we might think given the long-standing connection in Greco-Roman thought between the household and the state.31 Rome, of course, was both a commonwealth (res publica) and “the fatherland” (patria), a nation of people who mythologized themselves as an ancient race of highly disciplined farmer-soldiers. Authors such as Cato the Elder (234–149 BCE) and Columella pushed the discourse in more empirical directions by writing agronomical handbooks.32 As a recent study has shown, these practical treatises were also highly 25

26

27 28 29

30 31

32

Cf. Ps-Aristotle, Oikonomia and Philodemus, Peri oikonomias. These and other treatises are summarized and discussed in Natali 1995 and Baloglou 1998. The accumulation of wealth by the philosopher, however, was fiercely debated among Stoics and other philosophical sects: Natali 1995: 119–26. Stobaeus II.7, 11g (trans. Natali 1995: 114). Natali 1995: 103; 115–16. Cicero, Pro Caelio as discussed by Leen 2000/1. As Leen shows, household management also functioned as a rhetorical trope in ancient oratory. Cicero, De domo sua 146. See also In Cat. 4.12 and Sallust, Bell. Cat. 52.3. See Cicero, De officiis 1.17.54 for the domus as “the foundation of civil government and the seedbed of the state.” For Cicero, domus and civitas were integral components of the societas hominum. See De officiis 1.53. Cf. Cato, De agr. and Columella, De re rustica. The Roman agronomical treatise is a particular subgenre of Hellenistic household management literature, although Xenophon had also discussed many concrete topics in the Oikonomikos. Xenophon’s Oikonomikos, in fact, was well known among Latin-speaking audiences, primarily through a now lost translation by Cicero. See Pomeroy 1994: 69–73.

7


moralistic works that linked estate management to a particular model of elite masculinity and power.33 In fact, Cato himself stands among a select group of great Roman statesmen whose austere, rural, and chaste households were thought to exemplify the nexus between domus and res publica.34 Many elite thinkers thus believed that expertise in domestic administration directly translated into expertise in public life. “A man ought to have his household well harmonized,” Plutarch (46–120) opined, “who is going to harmonize state, forum, and friends.”35 As numerous studies have shown, the Romans perceived virtually all dimensions of oikonomia, from the physical architecture of a home to the preservation of a chaste marriage and the education of children, as ethical variables that potentially determined an elite man’s capacity to lead.36 Household management was so closely linked with public administration in Greco-Roman culture that Tacitus drew a direct analogy between governing a domus and governing the province of Britain.37 In so doing, Tacitus mobilized an established tradition that the emperors themselves had helped to develop. Augustus (31 BCE-14 CE) was a trendsetter in this regard.38 Augustus showcased his expertise by treating his slaves and dependents well, by eschewing ostentatious luxury, and most significantly, by underlining his oversight and promotion of Roman “family values.”39 Scholars also underscore the extent to which his state administration was effectively an extension of the emperor’s private household.40 Indeed, the emergence of a monarchical government produced a new Roman expression of domesticity, which presented the emperor as the world’s householder and the empire as his household.41

33

34 35 36

37 38 39

40 41

Cf. Cato, De agr. praef. 2 (ed. Goujard 1975: 9): “When our elders praised a good man, ‘good farmer and good cultivator’ is how they praised him” (Et viram bonum quom laudabant, ita laudabant: bonum agricolam bonumque colonum). See Reay 1998. Plutarch, Cato maior 22 and Numa 3.5–6 and 4.1. Plutarch, Moralia 144 C (LCL: 2.333). See, for example, Wiseman 1987; Shaw 1987: 12–14; Wallace-Hadrill 1988; Cooper 1992 and 2007a; Eck 1997; Edwards 2002; and Milnor 2005. Tacitus, Agricola 19.2. Severy 2003 and Milnor 2005. Cf. Suetonius, Aug. 34, 67, 72–73, 76–77. Household management was just as frequently used as a tool of imperial critique. Suetonius, for example, also enumerated Augustus’ many affairs as well as his penchant for debauched dinner parties. Severy 2003. Alföldi 1971; Severy 2003; Milnor 2005. Cf. Seneca, De clementia 1.14.2 and 1.18.

8

Introduction

Th e Four Principal Domains of Ancient H ouseh old Management

When the emperors presented themselves as householders par excellence, they did more than simply adopt a rhetorical stance. Household management was an intrinsically material discourse defined largely by concrete practices. These practices can be placed under four primary (and overlapping) areas of activity: property administration, the ordering of social relationships, ethical oversight, and religious care. Because we shall return to each of the four areas throughout the book in considerable detail, what follows is an outline meant to provide the reader with an introduction to the discourse’s general parameters. In Roman society, a householder or paterfamilias (“father of the family”) was first and foremost an owner of private property. According to the early third-century jurist Ulpian, a paterfamilias is the person within a family who “has dominion in the home (qui in domo dominium habet),” that is, who has primary ownership of all property (e.g., lands, buildings, animals, and slaves) related to the household.42 As Richard Saller notes in his discussion of this passage, because the holding of private property was a right extended to all legally independent (sui iuris) men and women,43 a person did not need to be a father in the biological sense to be a paterfamilias.44 (This meant that a woman could also be a householder or even a paterfamilias – a matter to which we shall return). Similarly, dominus/a, another Latin word used to denote a householder with a primary meaning of “proprietor” or “owner” (typically of slaves), underlines the economic basis of domestic authority in the Roman world. Because of this, Roman commentators on household management emphasized the importance of financial propriety and acumen. According to Seneca (1– 65), a “good father of the family (bonus paterfamilias) should increase what we have inherited. This inheritance shall pass from me to my descendents larger than before.”45 Conversely, a malus paterfamilias failed to ensure his children’s financial and moral future by (for example) appointing an unscrupulous guardian to oversee them.46 A good household 42 43

44 45 46

Dig. 50.16.195.1–5. On property ownership as a concept of Roman civil law, see Kaser 1971: 97; 119– 26; 373 and 400–10; Honoré 1987; and Garnsey 2007: 181–92, who argues that the Romans saw property ownership as a “legal right.” Saller 1999: 184–89. Seneca, Ep. 64.7. Seneca, De Ben. 4.27.5.

9


administrator was thus expected to master a range of complex financial and other skills related to the oversight of agricultural estates and urban properties, most of which were either leased to renters (conductores) or managed directly through agents. Because the ancient economy was largely “embedded” within Roman society, a householder’s social powers and functions were often inextricable from his financial practices.47 For instance, as Seneca’s emphasis on the heirs of the bonus paterfamilias implies, paternity was tightly yoked to property ownership in Roman culture. In his capacity as a father, a paterfamilias theoretically exercised patria potestas over his children for his entire life.48 Patria potestas (“paternal power”) was essentially an economic power, which established a father as the legal owner of all property and income generated by or bequeathed to his dependent children. Paternal power also involved the householder’s control over his children’s bodies. A father could sell or abandon his children and discipline them corporeally.49 Children were also legally required to obtain their father’s permission to contract a marriage. Culturally speaking, paternal power underlined the high status of fatherhood in Roman society and the importance that the Romans placed on obedience. But the father’s relationship to his children was never purely autocratic.50 The central Roman domestic value – pietas – underscored the reciprocal nature of domestic relationships.51 Children were obliged to carry out their fathers’ wishes, but fathers were also required to nurture, educate, and provide materially for their children, as Seneca’s remark on the bonus paterfamilias shows. This reciprocity was precisely the kind of social ordering that all good householders were expected to foster.

47 48

49

50

51

Finlay 1999. This meant that adult children could be under the power of a living father. However, life expectancy rates and the common use of legal tools such as emancipation made the grown man subject to patria potestas a rarity. See Saller 1994: 43–69, and 120–21, and esp. tables 3.1.e and 3.2.e. Saller estimates that only 39 to 43 percent of men at age 25 would have had a living father, a percentage dropping to 28 to 32 percent at the age of 30. Romans even believed that a father could kill a child in certain circumstances. On the so-called ius necis ac vitae as a powerful cultural myth (but not a legal right), see Thomas 1984 and Shaw 2001. The abandonment of children was more stringently regulated in the late empire: see Evans Grubbs 1995: 271. On the stereotype of the authoritarian Roman father, see Dixon 1992: 44; Saller 1994: 102–3; and George 2005: 41–42. I return to this issue in Chapter 1. Saller 1994: 105–14.

10

Introduction

In addition to ordering their paternal relationships, householders were expected to maintain even more complex domestic hierarchies, such as those that structured spousal relations and the dependent labor force of a domus. Wives in the Roman empire were not placed under their husband’s legal power (although sometimes they might have remained under the paternal power of their fathers). As noted, they could own property (including slaves) that was legally separate from their husband’s. Moreover, wives played authoritative roles in domestic administration, often overseeing specific areas of daily life, such as the management of larders and domestic slaves or the education of small children.52 Wives, however, occupied a subordinate position within the household even if they also exercised significant economic and social power.53 Slaves and other dependents presented even greater challenges to the householder. For one, they were often organized into complex micro-hierarchies, with some legitimately exercising power over others.54 A paterfamilias therefore had to choose his stewards and agents with great care and discretion, because he placed them in positions of power not only over his labor force but also over his wealth.55 He also had to discipline his slaves carefully, using only as much physical force as was necessary lest he breach the golden rule of moderation. Excessive discipline revealed the householder’s failures as a man-in-power over himself. Household management also involved the inculcation and performance of core Roman values, such as pietas, castitas, and moderatio. Householders were expected to instill obedience in their children to the family, gods, and the state. They also had to provide an appropriate education and help their children to make good choices in life, such as whom to marry or when to enter political life and go to war.56 Furthermore, a householder had to govern his marital relationship in accordance with particular ethical ideals, such as by ensuring his wife’s chastity (i.e., sexual 52

53

54 55 56

The Laudatio Turiae, a late first-century BCE epitaph created by a husband for his wife, describes her involvement in family business, the administration of property, and so forth. See Treggiari 1991: 243–44; 374–79. Cf. Plutarch, Coniugalia praecepta 11: “Every action performed in a good household is done by the agreement of the partners, but displays the leadership and decision of the husband” (trans. Russell 1999:6). See also Ulpian, Dig. 27.10.4: “For piety is owed equally to both parents, even if their power is not equal” (eds. Mommsen, Krueger and Watson 1985: 812). On wives’ power within their husbands’ domus see Treggiari 1991: 365–96 and Saller 1994: 128–30. Carlsen 1995 and Chapter 1. Carlsen 1995. Aulus Gellius, NA 2.7.11–3.

11


fidelity) and promoting concord in the home.57 As Catherine Edwards has shown, there was no more publicly derided figure in Roman society than the cuckold.58 Most significantly, the householder was supposed to exemplify the values that he promoted in the home by carefully molding his own behavior, especially regarding bodily practices.59 An overly luxurious banquet with too much wine and food, excessive (or passive) sexual activity, hedonistic surroundings, and the use of too much physical force to discipline slaves – all of these traits bespoke a householder who was not in full control of his self.60 Such a man was not fit to run a domus, let alone assume the duty of governing city or state. Finally, in addition to this enormous welter of obligations and tasks, domestic management entailed religious oversight within the home. According to Roman tradition, the householder was ultimately responsible for maintaining worship of the core domestic deities (e.g., lares, penates, and the genii) as well as any additional gods and goddesses whom he and his family chose to cultivate.61 The most important house of a man who owned many dwellings was the one in which he installed his household gods – a connection that reflects an association in Roman culture between domestic religious practice and the presence of a paterfamilias.62 To be clear, a householder typically did not act as the “chief priest” of the domus, personally executing all rites carried out within. On the contrary, evidence suggests that it was the householder’s family and dependents (e.g., wives, clients, even slaves) who actually performed most of the rites on behalf of his home.63 Nevertheless, his religious oversight extended to practices conducted on all of his estates, regardless of whether he lived there permanently.64 With this came the task of ensuring that all 57 58 59

60

61

62

63

64

Cooper 1992. Edwards 1993: 44–45, 57 (and passim). Edwards 1993: 53–57 and 43–49. Veyne 1978 and Foucault 1985: 141–84 and 1986, to be read with Gaca 2003. See also Rousselle 1988; Cooper 1992; and Edwards 2002. Cf. Pliny, Epp. 3.14, 7.25 and 9.12; and Amm. Marc., 14.6.1–25; 27.11.1–6; and 28.4.11–27. On Roman domestic religion, see Orr 1978; Harmon 1987; and Bodel 2008. The householder’s duty to oversee the cultivation of religion in the home was by no means exclusive to Roman tradition: see Xenophon, Oec. 7.6–8. Dig. 50.16.203, cited in Saller 1994: 81. Ancestral household rituals might even be perceived as inheritable res. Argetsinger 1992; Foss 1997; and Bowes 2008: 21–48. On the role of wives and women in Roman religion, see Boëls-Janssen 1993 and Schultz 2006. Roman agronomical treatises underline the religious dominion of the dominus: Cato, De agr. 1.5.3–4, 1.43; Columella, De re rustica 11.22; and Varro, De re rustica 1.5. See also Pliny, Ep. 9.39.

12

Introduction

household members and dependents eschewed improper and excessive rites, what the Romans called superstitiones.65 The householder’s obligations to oversee religious orthopraxy became even more defined in the late empire, when emperors and bishops called on landowners to eradicate improper religious behavior on their properties. Oikonomia and Gender

By all accounts, household management was a manifold set of practices and ideas that involved everything from rent collection to the oversight of ritual performances. Although a householder might not have personally performed each and every task associated with the administration of a multipropertied domus, he was ultimately responsible for delegating them to a range of subordinates, from his wife down to the lowliest kitchen slave. Yet a householder performed very few acts that were tied to his sex. As noted, a paterfamilias was the household’s chief owner and administrator, not the father of children. Nevertheless, household management was gendered as a masculine discourse in Greco-Roman culture; it was a system of power and authority created by and for men.66 With few exceptions, ancient handbooks on domestic administration were written by male authors, aimed at male audiences, and assumed a male head of the house.67 Moreover, despite the fact that a woman could be a paterfamilias, her gender was routinely masked in Roman law by the jurists’ use of the “masculine neuter” in their discussions of property management.68 The most powerful evidence for the masculinity of oikonomia is the fact that emperors such as Augustus regularly drew on the discourse to formulate their official authority. It is hard to imagine such a phenomenon were household management to have had a feminine ring. This is not to suggest that household management could not be applied to (or even adopted by) women. The early sixth-century Christian official Cassiodorus (ca. 490– 585), for example, invoked it when he praised the widowed mother of a 65

66 67

68

Cf. Tacitus, Ann. 13.32. Few classical Roman sources explicitly outline the householder’s authority over religious worship in his home. It is presumed but almost never defined. See Chapter 2. As emphasized by Cooper 1992 and 2007a: 6–7. Exceptions include Pythagorean handbooks attributed to famous female figures, discussed in Natali 1995. There are also numerous early Christian conduct manuals written for women, such as the Ad Gregoriam in palatio. See Cooper 2007: 17–23, 40–55. Gardner 1995; Saller 1999: 187–88; and Cooper 2007: 111–14.

13


recently promoted patricius for her excellence in both educating her son and expanding the wealth of a domus that she had virtuously managed by herself.69 In this respect, oikonomia can tell us much about women in the household and hence about their contributions to civic life, because they too were subject to its strictures.70 Nevertheless, it remained a discourse of authority that was most revealing of power relations among men. * * * Although certain facets of household management underwent change in late antiquity – changes that concern us directly in Chapters 1 and 2 – it remained a relevant and pervasive language of masculine authority in the West. Cassiodorus’ early sixth-century invocation of oikonomia is just one example among many that reveal its continued significance in late ancient formulations of power. Thus, when Roman bishops adopted oikonomia as a model of episcopal government, they embraced a discourse that was part of a late Roman cultural koine. What did it mean, however, for a bishop to present himself as an expert in a field of knowledge principally rooted in property ownership, the discipline of subordinates, marriage, and procreation? Could bishops be householders in any sense of the term? H ouseh old Management and th e Bish op of Rome: Problems and Possibilities To all the poor at the beginning of each month he generally distributed the goods accumulated from revenues. And, at the appropriate times, the Lord’s paterfamilias discerningly doled out grain, wine, cheese, vegetables, lard, edible animals, fish or oil . . . so that the universal church seemed to be nothing other than a universal store house.71 69 70

71

Cassiodorus, Var. 3.6.6. Historians of women and gender in late antiquity grapple with the challenge of researching the experiences of historical female agents within a patriarchal society through evidence that was written almost exclusively by men. Some have concluded that women’s experiences are ultimately inaccessible to modern scholars (e.g., Clark 1998). Other scholars, attuned to the complex interrelationship between rhetorical representations of women in literature and evidence derived from more empirical sources (e.g., Roman law and archival material), have endeavored to recover certain dimensions of the subjectivity of “real” late Roman women. For an example of this approach, see Cooper 2007. John the Deacon, Vita S. Gregorii 2.26 (PL 75: 97). Omnibus omnino kalendis, pauperibus generaliter easdem species quae congerebantur ex reditibus erogabat: et suo tempore frumentum, suo vinum, suo caseum, suo legumen, suo lardum, suo

14

Introduction

John the Deacon’s characterization of Gregory I (590–604) offers an important point of reference for the bishop of Rome’s developing domestic identity. For John, a Roman deacon writing in the ninth century, the pope was “the paterfamilias of the Lord’s flock.”72 John chose the word paterfamilias for a reason. In contrast to the epithet papa, a Latin word for father from which we derive the English moniker “pope,” paterfamilias had a more precise meaning. As discussed, paterfamilias is the term that the ancients used to denote the chief householder.73 The paterfamilias was the figure who occupied the highest rung of the domestic hierarchy and whose legal, economic, social, and religious authority was unparalleled within his home. John’s choice of words therefore was especially fitting for Gregory. While many details of his elevated lineage remain uncertain (he may have been a member of the great gens Anicia), Gregory was the owner of property in Rome and elsewhere in Italy. He had exercised his domestic authority to its fullest extent by establishing his private house on the Caelian Hill as a monastic retreat for other like-minded men.74 Thus, although he had no known children and probably never married, Gregory was nonetheless a paterfamilias in the classical sense of the term. Of course, John invoked another institution when he identified his hero as the Lord’s paterfamilias. He was talking about Gregory’s episcopate, that is, the bishop’s government of the Roman church and especially of its most vulnerable members, the poor. In framing Gregory’s ecclesiastical administration in domestic terms, John built on traditional ground. The author of the New Testament Epistle First Timothy described an ideal “overseer” of the church in the following terms: Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full

72 73

74

manducabilia animalia, suo pisces vel oleum paterfamilias domini discretissime dividebat . . . ita ut nihil aliud quam communia quaedam horrea, communis putaretur ecclesia. John the Deacon, Vita S. Gregorii 3.12. On the early medieval legacy of the paterfamilias, see Arjava 1998. The Latin papa derives from the Greek, pappas. See Labriolle 1928. Richards 1980: 25 and Markus 1997: 8–10.

15


respect. If anyone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?75

For this early second-century author, the ethics of estate management had direct and immediate relevance for the construction of episcopal authority. Their proper performance and inculcation were precisely what distinguished a regular Christian from the man who oversaw the community of the church. Indeed, the Christian writer applied the identical logic to the bishop’s management of oikos and ekklesia as pagan authors used for the paterfamilias’ administration of household and state. This should not surprise us. New Testament authors were oriented by Greco-Roman ideals and habits (especially domestic ones), which formed the basis of their “Christian” worldviews.76 Moreover, many early Christians assembled in private households, the owners of which donated resources for the religious community’s needs.77 These practices contributed to more elaborate metaphorical borrowings from the domestic sphere, wherein both individual churches and the Christian oikoumene became denoted as “the house of God” (domus dei or oikos theou).78 Some pre-Constantinian bishops might have even owned the homes in which their congregations gathered and thus acted in the dual role of paterfamilias and bishop.79 It would seem therefore that John’s description of Gregory invoked an ancient and immutable discourse, wherein classical notions of oikonomia provided a direct model for episcopal leadership. However, as this book shows, a late Roman pope could not simply be another paterfamilias with a pallium. For one, bishops ideally were supposed to shun the earthly duties associated with the administration of domestic life and pursue more contemplative activities that placed them closer to the monk than to the dominus.80 For example, Gregory frequently bemoaned his mundane episcopal responsibilities, claiming that they tore him away from his monastic pursuits and forced him 75 76 77

78

79 80

1 Tim. 3:1–5. See especially Harrill 2006 and Johnson Hodge 2010. Cf. Acts 10:48, 16:13–15, 17:6–7, 20:7–12; and Romans 16:5 and 16:23. Pre-Nicene “house churches” have been extensively studied. For a recent overview of the evidence and analysis of the social context, see Osiek and Balch 1997. On the church as domus dei/oikos theou, see Dassmann and Schöllgen 1986: 801–905; Ohly 1986: 905–1063; and Meyer 1998: 62–70, 189–212. Cooper 2011. Sterk 2004.

16

Introduction

to do the “business of worldly men” (saecularium hominum negotia).81 As Conrad Leyser and others have shown, however, the stark binary drawn in some ancient sources (and consequently, in modern scholarship) between the active and contemplative life is misleading.82 It simplifies the more nuanced and paradoxical thinking of bishops like Gregory and overlooks the ways in which they synthesized an ascetic outlook with a more mundane set of duties. In fact, household management, ostensibly the most “pragmatic” mode of episcopal authority, could be assimilated to ideals of ascetic holiness. Nevertheless, deeply ingrained cultural assumptions challenged the appropriation of the householder’s identity by a bishop. Simply put, the paterfamilias was himself an intrinsically problematic figure in Roman society. Kate Cooper has observed that the householder, although valorized in Roman society, was also regarded with much anxiety and suspicion.83 “It was a widely acknowledged fact,” writes Cooper, “that the will of an individual (or alternatively, the corporate will of a family) was not infallibly harnessed to the common good.”84 In a society in which the state relied on the domus as its primary source of wealth, people, and virtue, a dominus who placed his interests before the common good constituted a potential threat to the public order.85 The concern that a householder might privilege self-interests was rooted in the realization, articulated since Plato, that families routinely put their heirs first and the city second.86 Consequently, a paterfamilias’ actions within the domus were evaluated and regulated by his peers, his subordinates, and even by the state. Sumptuary laws, property regulations, imperial rulings on family planning and religious practice, a judicial system structured around individual lawsuits, housing that provided masters with few opportunities to escape the eyes and ears of their slaves, and numerous media for the circulation of gossip reveal the extent to which a Roman householder was, in Cooper’s words, “closely watched.”87

81 82 83 84 85 86

87

Cf. Gregory, Dial., 1. pr. 3–5. See Leyser 2000: 131–87 and especially Rapp 2005: 100–52. Cooper 2007a. See also Wallace-Hadrill 1988 and Riggsby 1997. Cooper 1992: 152. See also 2007: 150–51 and 2007a. Cooper 2007a: 22. Gaca 2003: 43–48. Plato’s famous solution to this problem in the Republic, of course, was to hold marriages and property in common. Cooper 2007a.

17


Roman bishops encountered these same fears and anxieties when they presented themselves as experts in domestic life. “Bishops should also know that they are priests, not lords” (sed et episcopi sacerdotes se sciant esse, non dominos), wrote Jerome (347–420) to Nepotianus, who had just left a monastery to join the clergy at Altinum where his uncle was bishop.88 As Jerome’s comment suggests, bishops potentially had much in common with the householder, and for some critics this was not a positive symmetry. On the one hand, bishops typically managed large institutions replete with landed wealth and scores of dependents. They were also men of power, leaders addressed as praelati, praesules, rectores, and, of course, patres. Moreover, bishops (including at least a few popes) were often traditional householders, with personal wealth, wives, children, and family obligations. On the other hand, bishops theoretically differed from traditional householders in two fundamental ways. First, unlike their lay counterpart, an episcopal householder was not the possessor of his church’s property but solely its administrator. Bishops were thus supposed to manage ecclesiastical property with great care and circumspection, ensuring that their financial activities were legitimate and beneficial. Second, although men with children might legitimately reach the top levels of the church (at least until the sixth century), they were expected to refrain from sexual activity, and hence from producing heirs, while holding office. We shall argue that this particular development in the domestic life of clergy was in part a response to anxieties surrounding the householder’s proclivities to place self-interests before those of the public good. Indeed, the negative implications of householding were potentially catastrophic for the bishop’s spiritual authority. A bishop therefore could not adopt the householder’s moral influence and concrete powers without alteration. He would have to recalibrate the ethics of oikonomia in a manner that simultaneously established his expertise in matters of everyday life and distinguished his authority from the propertied and procreative paterfamilias, even if in reality he were that man. Roman bishops found an answer to their dilemma in a paradox, the figure of the steward.89 The steward was a key agent within the domus, whom the householder placed in positions of authority over central domains of administration. While lowly within society writ large (and in many 88 89

Jerome, Ep. 52.7. Nepotianus’ uncle was Heliodorus. Paradox, of course, was a primary trope in early Christian literature and central to the construction of a “Christian” worldview. See Cameron 1991: 155–88.

18

Introduction

circumstances, a slave), the steward was a figure of power within the context of the household. Stewardship, in other words, was a social role defined by dependence and authority. In this respect, it accorded well with late ancient conceptions of spiritual authority. Like the steward, holy men and women were simultaneously humble and exalted figures. They were illiterate fishermen who speak the Truth, desert fathers vanquishing demons but subsisting on a few crusts of bread, and matronae dressed in rags doling out their fortunes to the needy. Scholars have long recognized the emerging significance of stewardship as a distinctly Judeo-Christian interpretation of oikonomia, especially regarding the administration of wealth on behalf of the poor.90 More recent work has emphasized its complicated intersection with the traditional landowning habits of late Roman elites, who, despite prevailing ascetic ideals, were unable (or unwilling) to renounce wealth altogether.91 For these men and women, stewardship offered an attractive compromise. Stewardship permitted them to engage in more traditional acts of household management while simultaneously working on God’s behalf, administering, as it were, his things. Thus when Roman bishops characterized themselves as stewards of God, they adapted an emerging Christian model of elite domestic authority that simultaneously asserted the steward’s humility and power. “I am,” Gregory declared to his Roman congregation in a homily on the Gospel of Luke, “the slave of the supreme paterfamilias” (servus enim sum summi patrisfamilias).92 Rome’s bishops, this book demonstrates, understood their domestic authority in similarly subordinate terms. They were the stewards of God, the Chief Householder, slaves chosen by him to oversee the vast multitudes of people and properties composing the domus dei. Just as the slave-steward oversaw his master’s estate and rendered an account of his work on the lord’s return, the Roman bishop would have to present a reckoning of his religious oversight on Judgment Day before the Lord. In various ways Roman bishops endeavored both to distinguish themselves from more traditional householders and to assert a privileged place in the government of souls as the Lord’s “chief slave.” This study explains how – and to what extent – Rome’s popes accomplished these daunting cultural tasks. 90

91 92

The literature on stewardship in Judeo-Christian thought is vast. Cf. Viner 1978: 1–45; Avila 1983: 47–80; Meyer 1998: 96–160; and Carrié 2006. See Cooper 2007: 37–44 and Caner 2008. Gregory, HEv. 36.2 (CC 141: 334).

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Wh y th e H ouseh old? Toward a Domestic Model of Episcopal Auth ority

It is hardly a revelation to learn that early Christian bishops were “watchmen” of a sort.93 Scholars have long discussed bishops as men placed in positions of authority in light of their perceived moral excellence, their oratorical prowess, and their ability to oversee the principal facets of a Christian community’s religious life: its rituals, teachings, clergy, justice, and wealth. Despite many truly extraordinary studies on late antique bishops that have appeared in the recent past, virtually no attention has been paid to the domestic nature of their oversight apart from the administration of ecclesiastical property.94 A brief note by the early medieval historian Janet Nelson on Gelasius’ letter to Anastasius of 494, which underlines the pope’s use of a domestic discourse to define his power vis a` vis the emperor, constitutes the only scholarly intervention to date.95 This book therefore charts what is nearly unexplored ground. It contends that domestic administration, in the broad sense understood here, merits analysis because it helps us to better understand the development of episcopal authority in Rome and perhaps even throughout the late antique world. There are three primary advantages in adopting oikonomia as both a subject of analysis and an analytic framework for the study of late Roman bishops. First, household management is an ancient discourse of authority that was actually used by bishops and contemporary Christian writers. It thus offers scholars a set of cultural parameters and a vocabulary for interpreting the words and deeds of bishops that is both precise and historically attested. Among other things, this approach obviates the need for using modern interpretive categories, like Max Weber’s three ideal types of leadership, which scholars often employ to describe late Roman spiritual figures.96 This is not to suggest that the modern disciplines of sociology and cultural theory cannot contribute to the study of premodern religious authority. This study, for example, builds 93

94

95 96

On the bishop as the “watchman” see Mohrmann 1977; Hoeflich 1980; and Leyser 2000: 60–63. General studies include Jones 1960 and Aigrain 1971. On Roman bishops and property administration, see Spearing 1918; Recchia 1978; Marazzi 1998: 47–98; and Moreau 2006. Nelson 1967. For example: von Campenhausen 1969; Brown 1983; and Markus 1990: 25–6. Rapp 2005: 16–18 redeploys Weber’s categories of “charismatic” and “institutional” leadership as “spiritual,” “ascetic,” and “pragmatic.”

20

Introduction

in part on the observations of Michel Foucault about relations of power within institutions, especially on the multidirectionality of power and the fact that even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant practices have bearing on how power works.97 Nevertheless, it also recognizes the heuristic importance of using late ancient systems of ideas and practices in the analytic process. We seek to understand how Roman bishops talked about themselves and to other householders, as well as to examine the terms and conditions through which late Romans perceived them. Moreover, oikonomia involved mastery of specific skills (e.g., agronomy, inheritance strategizing, and labor management) and was largely predicated on property ownership. It was, we have stressed, an intrinsically material discourse. Consequently, we shall pay close attention to the concrete facets of household management, especially to its legal and social dimensions, which were highly developed in the late Roman world. The domus was not just a metaphor for government; it was also the cornerstone of the late antique economy. As a recent study of the late Roman household has shown, we gain great insight into the complex relationship between religion and daily life by examining domesticity as both an empirical and ethical discourse.98 A similarly dual approach to oikonomia is followed throughout the book. Second, placing the domestic sphere at the center of analysis allows us to examine the politics of episcopal authority from multiple perspectives, rather than solely from the top down. To be sure, there is no shortage of secondary literature on the relationship between the early Christian church and “private” life.99 In the main, scholars have focused on the efforts of bishops to shape personal conduct through ecclesiastical legislation, ritual punishments, and spiritual exhortation. In so doing, however, they typically posit the bishop outside the household: he is a force looking down and in, attempting to mold behavior and belief within the domus from his lofty and highly public perch on the cathedra.100 Moreover, scholars frequently frame these measures as part of the bishop’s 97

98 99 100

Cf. Foucault 1994: 326–48 (first published in 1982) as well as “Truth and Power” and “Power and Strategies” in 1980: 109–145. I do not mean to suggest that episcopal oikonomia conforms to Foucault’s (undeveloped) notion of “pastoral power.” Cooper 2007, which builds methodologically on Cracco Ruggini 1995. See n. 7 as well as the studies in Ariès, Veyne, and Duby 1992. See, for example, Laeuchli 1972; Maier 1995, 1995a, 1996, and 2005; Klingshirn 1994; and Cooper 2007 and 2007a: 32–3. Burrus 1997 presents a more nuanced picture of Priscillian’s interventions within elite households, but her analysis of the orthodox bishops ultimately shares the same top down perspective as these other studies.

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“success story,” that is, as evidence for his expanding power over daily life.101 While these approaches have many merits, they can disconnect the bishop from the social world in which he was embedded, causing us to lose sight of the fact that he too was a householder of sorts. They also cede him far too much influence over domestic matters, even those regarding belief and ritual practice. In fact, Roman bishops perennially struggled to establish their religious authority over numerous areas and practices of domestic life. The domestic approach taken in this book examines episcopal authority and domestic life from many perspectives: from the perspective of the bishop and from the perspectives of the landowners, spouses, guardians, agents, slaves, and coloni of Italy’s elite domus. To this list we must add the suffragan bishops and clergy of Italy. Although these men were members of the pope’s “house,” they often had households of their own. In other words, this study investigates the Roman church and its bishops from the top down, the bottom up, and even from side to side, since Roman popes were enmeshed in horizontal networks as well. Third, a domestic approach serves as a counterpoint or even a corrective to past and present research on late antique bishops as emerging civic leaders. The rise of the bishop in late ancient studies has gone hand in hand with a focus on the development of his public power and persona.102 It is often assumed and sometimes directly asserted that the earliest Christian bishops were “private persons,” whose authority was informal, legally undifferentiated, personal, and even “domestic.”103 During the period following Constantine’s pivotal reign, however, bishops supposedly lost their more private qualities and gradually accrued numerous distinctly public features and functions, becoming increasingly like civic officials. In this vein, scholars have examined developments 101

102

103

Cf. Klingshirn 1985 and 1994; Markus 1990; L. Pietri 2002; Cooper 2007; and Green 2008. The literature on bishops as civic leaders is vast. Cf. Mochi Onory 1933; Brown 1992; McLynn 1994; Rebillard and Sotinel 1998; Lizzi Testa 1989; Humphries 2000; Liebeschuetz 2001; and Rapp 2005. For Roman bishops, see Pietri 1976; Green 2008; and Salzman 2010. Lepelley 1998: 17, describes the bishop as a “personne privée,” citing Gaudemet 1958: 351, and dates the “private” phase of the bishop from Constantine “aux grandes invasions.” More typically, these “private” qualities are associated with the pre-Constantinian bishop: cf. Klauck 1981; Jeffers 1991; and Bobertz 1993, whose conclusions must be reconsidered in light of recent revelations that the Apostolic Tradition is a fourth-century text compiled by eastern Christians.

22

Introduction

such as the construction of public places of worship and forms of urban liturgy,104 the granting of fiscal privileges and public honors to bishops,105 and the creation of novel forms of patronage that established the bishop as patronus of entire urban demographics like “the people” and “the poor.”106 These studies of the bishop as a new type of civic leader are illuminating, but the bishop’s transition from a private to a public leadership role was far less dichotomous than scholars sometimes imply. Consider, for example, recent studies of the so-called episcopalis audientia, the “episcopal hearings.” It is well established that pre-Constantinian bishops acted as mediators of disputes and that they worked in a private capacity as highly respected peacemakers. Many scholars then contrast (implicitly and explicitly) the informal juridical authority of these early bishops with the putatively more formal legal judgments cast by their post-Constantinian counterparts.107 These later bishops, it is thought, intervened in conflicts in a new, distinctly civic capacity as imperially recognized officials whose “public” legal powers were now defined by the state. Yet as Caroline Humfress has recently demonstrated, late Roman bishops continued to dispense justice as private persons even after the emperors tried to clarify these juridical procedures.108 In fact, technical discussions of dispute resolution in ecclesiastical contexts in later imperial legislation did not transform the “bishop’s court” into a civic institution. On the contrary, it remained what it had always been: a legitimate but distinctly private and informal mode of dispute resolution.109 The problem in defining the bishop’s authority as “public” or “private” is partly terminological. Scholars often remark that the English words do not neatly map onto the Latin and Greek publicus/demosios and 104 105

106 107

108

109

See, for example, Pietri 1976; Krautheimer 1980; Curran 2000; and Salzman 2010. Gaudemet 1958: 311–20; 377–408; Jones 1964: 89–91, 118, 480–81, 491–2; Lizzi Testa 2001; and Rapp 2005: 232–89. Brown 1992 and 2002; and Lepelley 1998. Lamoreaux 1995; Harries 1999: 208 (although she also underlines the continued significance of arbitration and other informal modes of adjudication); Liebeschuetz 1999: 115; and Lizzi Testa 2009: 528. Humfress 2007: 155 and 2011. See also Harries 1999 on post-Constantinian bishops as primarily arbitrators and mediators and Rapp 2005: 243–50, who underlines the differences between the judicial authority of a bishop and a provincial magistrate. As Humfress (2011) stresses, the bishop was always a “private” authority whether acting as a delegated judge, mediator, or arbitrator and his judgment – like any private person’s within certain parameters – had always carried weight in the Roman legal system. Harries 1999 also emphasizes that Constantine and his successors did not “revolutionize” episcopalis audientia.

23


privatus/idios.110 In Latin (which concerns us most directly in this study), publicus meant “of the community” or “of the people,” and thus closely conforms to our modern term. Alternatively, the primary meaning of privatus had an unfamiliar, exclusively political connotation. It referred to a person who was neither a magistrate nor a military officer and, during the empire, to anyone who was not the emperor.111 This would mean that all pre- and post-Constantinian bishops were privati. More confusing still, Roman law had a well-defined concept of private property, which was property owned by an individual person or corporation and not by “the community” (i.e., the city or the state). Here public and private often overlapped, since both magistrates and emperors owned private property (in the latter’s case, it was called the res privata). Public and private also overlapped in the use of space. For example, at certain times of the day, rooms in elite private houses such as bedrooms (cubicula) were used for intimate activities like sleep, sex, and personal religious practices. At other times, however, they functioned as reception spaces, wherein the householder conducted business and entertained high-status guests.112 “Public” and “private,” in other words, were not oppositional categories but relational ones. Consequently, they offer little help in clarifying any particular model of authority or leadership.113 Given all of this, we must question the assumption that late antique episcopal authority had evolved from an essentially “private” form of pastoral care and influence into one that was exclusively “public” in its nature and extent.114 Moreover, to assert that late antique bishops were “civic” leaders is to ignore the more complicated relationship between public and private in ancient culture. Alternatively, focusing on the domestic sphere and on household management allows us to obviate this particular teleology and evaluate episcopal authority from a public and private perspective. The household was both a private and public space, its practices simultaneously vital to the individual property owner and the state. 110

111 112 113

114

Wallace-Hadrill 1994: 44; Zaccaria Riggiù 1994; Riggsby 1997: 47–54; Milnor 2005: 16–27; and Cooper 2007a: 17–24, who challenges the very existence of separate public and private spheres in Roman society. Milnor 2005: 19–21. Riggsby 1997: 37–43 and Sessa 2007a. On public and private in ancient society, see Cohen 1991: 70–97 and Riggsby 1997: 47–54. There is as yet no comparable study of public and private in late antiquity. Bowes 2008: 9–10 criticizes the tendency of scholars to associate pre-Nicene Christianity in general with “the private” and post-Nicene Christianity with “the public.” I extend her critique to the characterization of episcopal authority and leadership.

24

Introduction

Just as a Roman official could not shirk his domestic obligations and remain a man of public power, so a bishop needed to master oikonomia in order to lead an emergent civic church. Th e Roman Ch urch and Italy in Late Antiquity

The present study focuses on a single episcopate and geographical region: Rome and the central and southern territories of the Italian peninsula, including the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. These were the areas of Italy over which the Roman bishop exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction (Italia suburbicaria).115 Because the Roman church was frequently contacted by bishoprics outside its technical jurisdiction for advice on matters of doctrine and discipline (including those relating to the domestic sphere), and because it owned property beyond suburbicarian Italy and the islands, we sometimes encounter places and people who were not Italians or directly subject to Rome. Nevertheless, the book is a deliberately regional study.116 It privileges sources by and about Roman bishops and the households that they endeavored to shape and govern from the death of pope Liberius in 366 to the death of Gregory in 604. In certain respects, the relationship between episcopal authority and the household is a topic that lends itself to the more synthetic approach favored by scholars in recent years, wherein material from all over the empire is brought together to form a single snapshot of the late ancient world. As studies have shown, non-Roman bishops such as John Chrysostom (ca. 397–407), Augustine (354–430), and Caesarius of Arles (ca. 470–542) had a great deal to say about the domestic sphere.117 Nevertheless, there is much to gain by leaving these dominant voices aside and allowing others to be heard on the matter of households and bishops. Moreover, the late ancient Mediterranean world was not a homogenous entity. This was especially true during the fifth and sixth 115

116

117

Gaudemet 1958: 384, 445–46 and Jones 1964: 884. The provinces under Rome’s jurisdiction were: Tuscany-Umbria, Campania, Samnium, Lucania-Bruttium, ApuliaCalabria, and Valeria as well as the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The suburbicarian provinces of Egypt were similarly organized around the see of Alexandria, but Rome was unique in the West. In this respect, it offers a parallel to the excellent studies of episcopal authority in northern Italian regions (Italia annonaria) by Lizzi Testa 1989 and Humphries 2000. For example: Shaw 1987; Leyerle 1997; Maxwell 2006: 144–76; Klingshirn 1994: 190–200; and Bailey 2007.

25


centuries, when certain regions (mainly in the West) experienced a disproportionate amount of political, social, and economic upheaval. Between ca. 400 and 600, Rome and Italy witnessed dramatic shifts in its political organization, economic conditions, demography, urbanism, and in the social constitution of its aristocracy.118 For example, the population of Rome dropped from a high of one million in the fourth century to approximately fifty or sixty thousand by the end of the sixth.119 A range of factors contributed to these shifts. The most acutely disruptive were the invasions and wars that began with Alaric’s path through Italy in the first decade of the fifth century and continued intermittently into the late 590s with the Lombards’ expansion. The Gothic War (535–554), a twenty-year conflict pitting Justinian’s imperial armies against the forces of the Ostrogoths, was especially damaging to Italy’s tax base, infrastructure, and urbanism.120 Furthermore, over the course of the sixth century, a once dominant senatorial aristocracy gradually lost ground and political visibility with the rise of new landed elites.121 Whether these changes are concomitant with absolute decline is debatable, but they unquestionably had an impact on households and bishops, whether we are talking about landholding or marital relations. There is, of course, another compelling reason to choose the Roman church and its bishops as the subjects of a study. After all, Rome is not any see but “the papacy.” Since the third century, Rome’s prelates were perceived to hold a position of elevated honor among bishops throughout the Mediterranean world.122 These perceptions were codified at later ecclesiastical councils.123 Late antique Roman bishops asserted their church’s preeminence through rhetorical constructs such as apostolic succession and Petrine primacy. They pronounced on matters of doctrine and discipline and they intended their written responses to be

118

119

120

121 122 123

See especially T. S. Brown 1984; Ward-Perkins 1984 and 2005; Barnish 1988; Wickham 2005; and Christie 2006. Jones 1964 remains foundational for administrative changes in the West. Durliat 1990: 115–17 and Meneghini and Santangeli Valenzani 2001: 23. Rome’s decline in total population is part of an overall pattern in the western Mediterranean: McCormick 2001: 40. For an incisive discussion of these developments, see Wickham 2005: 155–68, 203–11 and T. S. Brown 1984: 1–37. Not all regions were affected in identical ways, of course. See Marazzi 1998: 126–32; Arcuri 2009; and Deliyannis 2010. See Chapter 1. Daley 1993. Gaudemet 1958: 378–82.

26

Introduction

authoritative.124 They also technically governed a more expansive jurisdiction than other bishops in the West.125 Until quite recently, scholars uniformly celebrated late antique popes both as the chief engineers of Rome’s physical transformation into a Christian city and as its sole surviving administrators, diplomats, and protectors.126 Historians underlined the growing institutional “independence” of the papacy and the sophistication of its emerging administrative “machinery” built by exceptional bishops like Gelasius, “one of the makers of the medieval papacy.”127 New work has questioned many of these claims, however. Rome’s late antique popes were by no means the unequivocal leaders of a unified Western Christendom.128 As recent scholarship has shown, churches and clerics selectively requested and accepted Rome’s opinions, asserting them as definitive when they supported their own position, rejecting them out of hand when they conflicted.129 Moreover, even the bishop’s expanding role in Rome’s civic governance has been reconsidered. Leo’s and Gregory’s respective diplomatic gestures to the barbarians have been reassessed as one-off endeavors that more directly involved local nobles and officials.130 Gelasius and subsequent Roman bishops did not appropriate the annona distributions regularly.131 Rome’s physical Christianization was also a slow and uneven process that is irreducible to any coordinated “papal plan” stretching across centuries. Even its bureaucracy, once commonly characterized as the “papal chancellery,” has been 124

125

126

127

128 129

130 131

Pietri 1976: 1537–1627 and Maccarrone 1991. On the decretals, a term that the Roman church borrowed from imperial administrative practice and used to denote its responsa, see McShane 1979: 325–41 and Jasper and Furhmann 2001: 7–87. Rome functioned as a court of appeals in ecclesiastical disciplinary cases and had a special relationship to the metropolitan sees of Arles and Thessalonica. Gaudemet 1958: 397–407. Llewellyn 1971: 83–84; Ullmann 1972: 57–58; Pietri 1976; Durliat 1990: 134–37; Krautheimer 1999; and Guidobaldi 1998 and 2000; Green 2008; and Wessel 2008. Poole 1915: 2 and Llewellyn 1971: 38. The anachronistic characterization of Rome’s ecclesiastical administration as a “machine” appears even in judicious studies: cf. Markus 1997: 123. See also Wessel 2008: 127 on Leo and an emergent papal “hegemony.” Brown 2003: 3–17. Ralph Mathisen’s analysis of Rome’s relationship to southern Gallic ecclesiastics during the fifth century exposes this precise dynamic. See Mathisen 1989: 44–68. A new study has also revised traditional interpretations of Rome’s diplomatic relations with Constantinople. See Demacopoulos 2009. Markus 1990: 126 and 1997: 99–107. On Roman bishops and the annona, see Delogu 1993: 12–13 and 2001 on the ad-hoc participation of Roman bishops in civic administration. See also Liebeschuetz 2001: 156–57.

27


downgraded to a far less sophisticated, relatively unorganized, ad-hoc administration.132 Indeed, in making claims about Roman exceptionalism, we must tread with care, because the late antique Roman church had little in common with its medieval counterpart.133 So little, in fact, that this book henceforth refrains from using “papacy,” “pope,” or cognates thereof, opting instead for the generic but less loaded, “Roman church” and “Roman bishop.”134 Nevertheless, Rome was different from other sees. The present study joins a growing discussion that emphasizes the relative weakness of its bishops and the extraordinary obstacles that they encountered in attempting to govern the Roman church.135 These limitations are discussed passim, but let us outline two of the most significant challenges that Roman bishops confronted. First, until 483, with the election of Felix III, no Roman bishop hailed from the aristocracy. While a more middling social background was not unusual for late ancient bishops, it differentiated many Roman prelates from those in Gaul, where senators and provincial aristocrats regularly joined the ranks of the church.136 More significantly, it also differentiated Rome’s bishops from the Italian householders who dominated local politics and resources. Despite losing its status as a capital in the late third century, Rome remained a center of high culture and elite society, and was the largest city in the West.137 Traditional aristocratic values and habits still pervaded, and members of senatorial families routinely occupied high posts in the urban and provincial 132 133

134

135

136

137

Sotinel 1998: 105–126 and Toubert 2001: 61–7. For a critique of the teleological assumptions built into many studies of the late antique Roman church, see Costambeys 2000. Richards 1979: 1–5 voiced similar concerns. Both debunk the once dominant thesis of Ullmann (1955 and 1972), who contended that late antique popes collectively laid the ideological and institutional foundations of the medieval papacy. Of course, papatum, pontifex, and papa are attested in late antiquity. Nevertheless, “pope” was not the exclusive title of Roman bishops until the later Middle Ages. Thus Moorhead 1985 shows both the increasing use of papa as a title for the Roman bishop during the sixth century and its continued use by non-Roman bishops well into the ninth. See, for example, Sotinel 1998; Delogu 2001; Rebillard 2003 (which is heavily based on Roman evidence); Lizzi Testa 2004; and the essays in Cooper and Hillner 2007. Uhalde 2007 and Bowes 2008: 65–75 show that Roman prelates were not the only bishops to encounter challenges. Sotinel 1997: 196. More generally on the social backgrounds of bishops, who typically came from the decurionate, see Gilliard 1966 and 1984; and Rapp 2005: 183–99. Matthews 1975; Gillett 2001; and Humphries 2007.

28

Introduction

administrations, at least until the Gothic War. In other words, the “status gap” between Roman bishops and the region’s elite householders was critical.138 Among other things, this gap laid the foundation for a longterm relationship of dependence, wherein Roman bishops consistently looked to lay magnates and officials for assistance in virtually every conceivable facet of ecclesiastical governance. They provided political support during periods of controversy and schism, financial aid for building and repairing Roman churches, and administrative help in managing the church’s estates and protecting its officials.139 Second, Rome’s ecclesiastical structure was unusual and especially unwieldy. In the suburbicarian provinces of Italy there were no metropolitans, only bishops, making the Roman prelate the region’s highestranking church official. He was responsible for the consecration and conduct of all suburbicarian bishops and their dioceses.140 These arrangements undoubtedly brought much prestige to the Roman church, but they also made its jurisdictional remit extraordinarily large in terms of the numbers of sees technically under its tutelage. By ca. 500, the relatively compact Italia suburbicaria encompassed nearly 200 bishoprics, with the number dropping to about 140 at the end of the sixth century.141 We can compare these figures to the paltry fifty-three sees in northern Italy subject to the late antique bishop of Milan and to the mere fourteen bishoprics that were subordinate to the prelate of Ravenna.142 Each of these suburbicarian dioceses came with a bishop as well as several priests, deacons, and numerous lower clergy who were all technically under Rome’s jurisdiction. The Roman bishop thus likely oversaw hundreds, if not thousands, of Italian clerics. Within the city of Rome, the bishop governed 130 urban and suburban churches, oratories, and monasteries (and the number increased to 168 in the seventh century).143 Here we have better quantitative estimates of clerical personnel: the intramural Roman churches were served by approximately seventy priests, seven 138

139 140

141 142

143

It was also less pronounced elsewhere in the empire. See Lizzi Testa 2001 and 2009: 528–29. Lizzi Testa 2004: 93–170 and Pietri 1978 and 1981. The arrangement dates to the pre-Diocletianic period, when there were no Italian provinces. Jones 1964: 884. Gaudemet 1958: 325, citing Lanzoni 1927: 1059. Gaudemet 1958: 325 and Deliyannis 2010: 84. In terms of diocesan density, suburbicarian Italy looked more like Africa, although with an entirely different ecclesiastical system. Guidobaldi 1998: 44.

29


deacons, seven subdeacons, plus an undocumented number of lower clergy, notaries, and other officials whose clerical status is uncertain.144 Furthermore, late antique Rome was a city of cathedrals and not a cathedral city. The Lateran, whose association with the bishop’s residence and administration cannot be securely documented before the early sixth century, was by no means an insignificant basilica, but there were other churches that rivaled its size and splendor. Many of these were either more centrally located within the city (e.g., St. Maria Maggiore) or situated among the martyr shrines outside its walls (e.g., St. Peter’s). Finally, the Roman church owned and managed an expanding portfolio of properties, some located as close as the Via Portuensis, others as distantly as Gaul, Dalmatia, Sicily, and (until the mid-fifth century) North Africa, Egypt, Asia, and the Euphrates River.145 God’s House at Rome was no humble domus. Although the size of the Roman church as an institution should not be overemphasized (it was tiny compared with the late Roman imperial bureaucracy), it nevertheless posed obstacles to good and effective episcopal government.146 It is hardly surprising that so much scholarship on the late antique Roman church has focused on the problem of unity and on the various techniques that its bishops used to try to consolidate these disparate churches, clerics, and congregants into a centralized institution.147 To a certain extent, the present study joins this conversation. However, unlike most previous work it does not conclude that Roman bishops enjoyed unmitigated success in achieving this goal or that “unity” was their singular aim in adopting household management as a discourse of government. Their achievements were limited to specific domains of domestic life and to particular types of household practices. Sources and Structure of th e Book

To write the history of households and bishops in late antique Italy, one must engage with a range of sources, some of which are familiar to readers, others perhaps less well-known outside of specialist circles. 144

145 146

147

Saxer 2001: 493–632 and Pietri 1986: 109–122. According to a letter of Cornelius preserved by Eusebius (HE 6.42), the third-century Roman church had over 140 clergy. See Chapter 3. Lizzi Testa 2004: 102 emphasizes that even by the sixth century, Roman bishops did not fully control their local clergy. Pietri 1961 and 1976; Geertman 1986–1987; Guidobaldi 1998; and Sàghy 2000.

30

Introduction

For example, most will recognize at least some of the episcopal correspondence discussed in these pages, especially those letters known as decretals.148 These are the Roman bishop’s official responses to queries posed by other clergy on weighty matters of doctrine and church discipline. Roman bishops also wrote other sorts of letters, such as occasional responses to individual householders (or more frequently, to their agents) and the more programmatic circular epistles addressed to bishops in multiple Italian cities. While not overflowing with material on domestic life, the correspondence of Rome’s bishops offers insight not only into episcopal perspectives on household matters but also into the views of the householders whose concerns are described in the letters. They are not problem-free sources, however. First, their distribution across time is uneven. Most of the letters examined in this study were written between 441 and 604, that is, between the tenures of Leo and Gregory, with Gregory’s correspondence outnumbering all others.149 While reliance on Gregory’s letters is unavoidable (especially because they offer some of the most detailed evidence for bishops and household management), it can be balanced by careful attention to the rich if less numerous epistles of other bishops, such as Gelasius (492–496) and Pelagius I (556–561).150 Second, in most cases, the extant letters were selectively preserved and thus demand especially careful contextualization. Because many appear in medieval corpora of canon law, scholars sometimes misperceive their original meaning, erroneously interpreting the letters as prescriptive, statutory statements rather than as reactions to specific cases brought before the bishops.151 We therefore must separate the medieval reception of Rome’s episcopal correspondence from its late ancient production and meaning.152 148

149

150

151 152

There is as yet no single comprehensive modern critical edition of Rome’s late antique episcopal correspondence. Consequently, scholars must rely on numerous different editions for the letters of individual bishops, many of which are listed in the bibliography. In the notes, I generally identify the specific editions only in the case of Gelasius, for whom three different collections are used. Over 850 of Gregory’s letters are extant, although this represents a fraction of the register’s original size. See Markus 1997: 15. The same problem obtains for the public sermons. Here we encounter an even more limited source base: Leo’s ninety-seven sermons and Gregory’s forty-four Gospel homilies. A small number of liturgical prayers have been attributed to Gelasius, but his authorship is debated. Consequently, I have not considered these texts. Cf. Kéry 1999; Jasper and Fuhrmann 2001; and Wessel 2008: 39. Recent work on the contents, production, and reception of the Theodosian Code offers helpful insights. Like the individual laws of the CT, the pope’s letters were

31


Readers might be less familiar with many of the anonymous sources examined in this study. The Liber Pontificalis presents a deceptively simple series of short biographies of Roman bishops starting with the apostle Peter (designated as Rome’s first bishop). While much remains uncertain (including when the earliest lives were first written), most of the vitae appear to have been composed in the late fifth century and then redacted and compiled (with new vitae added) between 530 and 546.153 T. F. X. Noble proposed that the sixth-century editors of the Liber Pontificalis were low-level clergy with access to the church’s archives.154 Additionally, other Roman writers penned episcopal biographies, some of which convey alternative interpretations of the bishops. One of these vitae, known to scholars as the Laurentian Fragment, presents a highly critical account of Symmachus’ episcopate (498–514) and his role in the Laurentian schism (498–506/7), a protracted contest for the bishopric between Symmachus and the archipresbyter Laurentius that is the subject of Chapter 6. Two other anonymous sources, the so-called Symmachan Forgeries and the gesta martyrum, are also used extensively in this study. Generally speaking, these are narrative texts depicting real Roman bishops engaged in fictionalized scenarios (many of which involve households) that purport to be authentic historical events. The Symmachan Forgeries are eleven documents that claim to date to the fourth and fifth centuries, but they were almost certainly written during the Laurentian schism.155 The gesta martyrum are a corpus of putatively eyewitness accounts of the lives and deaths of Roman martyrs mostly from the pre-Constantinian era. However, internal evidence suggests that the gesta were actually written

153

154

155

originally created as technical responses to specific cases, not as general statutes. See Harries 2011 and Humfress 2011. LP (ed. Duchesne 1886–1892, reprinted in 1955). Duchesne believed that the version of the LP extant (and the one he edited) is a re-elaboration of a lost earlier edition that was completed in ca. 530. He dated the compilation of this second edition to sometime between 530 and 546, and argued that the project was again abandoned thereafter until ca. 640. There are, however, other theories. Mommsen 1898 produced his own edition and argued that both editions were compiled in the seventh century. More recently, Geertman (2003) proposed that the extant edition of the LP is in fact the first and not a second edition, as both Duchesne and Mommsen held. Geertman holds that this first edition was produced in ca. 535 and continued forty years later. Noble 1985 and Davis 1989: iv, who on the basis of the text’s Latinity, suggest that the authors were “relatively junior officials . . . in the papal bureaucracy.” For a more literary-minded analysis of the compilers and their project, see Deliyannis 1997. The more recent and best edition of the Symmachan Forgeries is Wirbelauer 1993.

32

Introduction

during the fifth and sixth centuries.156 In short, both sets of anonymous texts pretend to be something that they are not: accurate, contemporary accounts of events in local Roman history. Whether these events actually occurred is a legitimate question (in most cases I begin with the assumption that they did not), but their historicity in this respect is not our main concern. Our goal is to explore how these historical inventions (or perhaps re-creations) illuminate the ideological expectations and cultural experiences of their fifth- and sixth-century authors and audiences. The following discussion of households and bishops unfolds in seven chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 focus respectively on late Roman households and household management. Chapter 1 presents a select history of the private aristocratic domus in Italy from the late fourth to the early seventh century. This chapter both reviews important features of domestic life and tracks some changes with regard to the late Roman economy, the organization of labor in large households, the social identity of elites, and the nature and force of the paterfamilias’ personal authority within the home. It is by no means a comprehensive or systematic study.157 The second chapter describes the emergence of a new model of household management, one that was oriented around stewardship instead of ownership. Understanding this new iteration of oikonomia as a broader cultural phenomenon is a crucial stage in the argument, because when bishops presented themselves as stewards they borrowed a discourse that was already associated with elite domesticity. Chapter 3 turns to the figure of the Roman bishop and to his reformulation of estate management as an episcopal discourse of authority. The chapter explores the paradox sketched earlier in greater detail: the emergence of ideologically and socially conflicting images of the Roman bishop as both a private householder and the chief steward of the domus dei. The discussion combines an analysis of theoretical statements on

156

157

Dufourcq 1910–1913 remains the only comprehensive study of the gesta martyrum. I have relied primarily on the Bollandist editions published in the Acta Sanctorum (AASS), although in a few cases critical editions are available and have been used. Such a study is needed. Nathan 2000 is a good survey, although it takes Christianity as the sole agent of change and has little to say about the domestic economy. Studies of late Roman family law and the domestic sphere, such as Evans Grubbs 1995 and Arjava 1996, emphasize nonreligious influences on family dynamics, but they are ultimately books about legal developments. More recently, Cooper 2007 pays attention to Roman law, the economy, ethics, religion, and political structures; however, it is not a systematic history of the late Roman household in the West and it draws primarily on patristic sources.

33


Roman estate management and episcopal authority with an examination of the actual episcopal household in Rome. It also looks closely at the bishop’s routine administrative practices, which identified him with other elite householders, including the emperor. Having established the Roman bishop as a “householder-steward,” the argument turns to his exercise of oikonomia within the context of lay (Chapter 4) and clerical (Chapter 5) households. These two chapters explore how Roman bishops presented themselves as experts on emerging problems of domestic life that affected the households of other men. The final two chapters focus on the dynamics of the relationship between estate management and episcopal authority. They examine this relationship both as a source of great conflict and contention (Chapter 6) and as the ideological foundation of a close bond linking householders and bishops (Chapter 7). Chapter 6 explores a larger theme in Rome’s episcopal history through a single ecclesiastical crisis, the Laurentian schism (498–506/7). In addition to offering a new interpretation of the schism as a debate over estate management and episcopal authority, the chapter underscores the tensions that sometimes erupted between bishops and householders when, for example, the former attempted to exert their influence over the latter. Chapter 7 presents alternative ways of seeing the relationship between households and bishops. It explores a series of literary representations in the gesta martyrum of fictional households and householders, whose imagined domestic interactions with bishops reveal the possibilities for a more productive and pious relationship. Although the gesta emphatically underline the agency of the male aristocratic householder in the determination of his domus’ religious life, they also delineate a model of trust that is grounded in acts of competitive cooperation, whereby bishops and householders both gain from their interactions while remaining in a state of tension. These stories of fabled bishops and fictional Roman domini illuminate one important cultural process through which bishops came to achieve a durable but delimited presence in the domestic sphere.

34

Chapter 1

Th e Late Roman H ouseh old in Italy

he domestic sphere was central to ancient conceptions of

Tpower and authority. Classical thinkers stressed the inextricable con1

nections between a man’s ability to conduct his household affairs and his capacities as a public leader. In Tacitus’ words, keeping a household ordered and its members well behaved was “a task often found as difficult as the governing of a province.”2 Householders were expected to master four principal domains of estate management: property administration, the social ordering of dependents, their family members’ ethical instruction and oversight, and the ritual cultivation of the gods. Those who succeeded were lauded by their peers and revered by their subordinates; those who failed were ridiculed in letters between friends, critiqued in moral treatises, and accused of nefarious crimes in public courts. The aristocratic household was simply too central an institution in Roman society to leave unexamined. As a system of ideas and practices that defined domestic and civic expertise, household management was a pervasive and enduring discourse. Management of one’s household remained part of an imperial language of power and governed thinking about elite authority well into the sixth century. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, Julian (361–363) exercised good oikonomia at a politically sensitive moment during the initial days of his reign. Requiring a “legitimacy boost” following Constantius’ death, Julian showcased his moral rectitude by reordering the imperial palace at Constantinople. He rid the court of excessive luxuries and ejected corrupt staff, from the eunuch praepositus sacri cubiculi 1 2

See the Introduction to this book. Tacitus, Agricola 19.2.

35


down to the barbers and cooks.3 Elsewhere, Ammianus presented stinging critiques of the Roman senatorial aristocracy that foregrounded their failures in the realm of estate management. He caricatured their dinner parties as immoderate, their litters as too laden with gold, their reading choices as banal, their treatment of clients as fickle, their clients as greedy and obsequious, and their control over household slaves as extreme.4 He also belittled their oversight of land and claimed that Rome’s noblemen greatly exaggerated their wealth.5 More than a century later, Cassiodorus, a Christian senator and official in Theodoric’s court, invoked oikonomia in a letter written in the king’s name to one of Rome’s most eminent aristocrats, Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus.6 Theodoric hoped to cajole Symmachus into paying for some costly public repairs, and Cassiodorus aimed to persuade the senator by emphasizing his homes’ beauty and order. “Since you have taken such care for private building as to create public works of a sort in your own dwelling,” he wrote, “it is right that you be known as he who maintains Rome in its wonders, which you have embellished by the beauty of your houses . . . Your buildings proclaim your character.”7 Elsewhere, Cassiodorus outlined the political aptitude of a newly appointed patricius by drawing attention to his widowed mother’s excellence in administering his childhood home.8 Household management also inspired at least one late antique agronomical treatise: Palladius’ Opus agriculturae. Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius was likely a Gallo-Romano aristocrat who lived in Italy and wrote in the fifth century, perhaps between 460 and 480.9 Although he worked in an established tradition (he was certainly familiar with Columella), Palladius produced a unique description of the seasonal workings of an Italian praetorium during the second half of the fifth century. Household management, however, was not a static discourse. In late antiquity, new permutations emerged, presenting alternative paradigms 3

4 5 6 7

8 9

Amm. Marc., 22.4. Cf. 30.9.2, where Ammianus describes Valentinian’s double cultivation of pudicitia at home and in public. Amm. Marc., 14.6; 27.11.1–6; and 28.4.11–27. Amm. Marc., 14.6.10. Cassiodorus, Var. 4.51. For Symmachus, see PLRE 2: 1044–46 (Symmachus 9). Cassiodorus, Var. 4.51.1 (CC 96: 177): Cum privatis fabricis ita studeris, ut in laribus propriis quaedam moenia fecisse videaris, dignum est, ut Romam, quam domuum pulchritudine decorasti, in suis miraculis continere noscaris . . . mores tuos fabricae loquuntur . . . (Trans. adapted from Barnish 1992: 79). Cassiodorus, Var. 3.6.6. On the text’s author and date, see Martin 1976: vii–xx and Vera 1999.

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The Late Roman Household in Italy

of domestic administration. This chapter introduces the institution of the aristocratic domus in late ancient Italy, paying particular attention to its concrete practices and structures. It examines changes in land management, the relations of power that defined the domestic community, the parameters of domestic authority, and the habits of religious life within the domus. Regarding the last development, this chapter considers the potential influence of emergent Christian values on elite domestic religious practice. Italian elites were deeply conservative when it came to their cultural and social habits. Recent studies have demonstrated that they embraced ideals like ascetic renunciation at a relatively late moment (largely after 400) and only after grafting them onto preexisting norms.10 These more empirical developments serve as a foundation for (and sometimes as a counterpoint to) assessing specific ideological changes in the following chapter, namely the emergence of stewardship as an alternative model of oikonomia. PRIVATE WEALTH AND LAND MANAGEMENT

Late Romans regarded estate management as an empirical discipline partly focused on the administration of property. For centuries, the ownership of farms, urban housing, and other forms of real estate constituted the basis of wealth and social standing. Property continued to orient household management in late antiquity, despite the fact that dominium (absolute legal ownership) became largely indistinguishable in western property law from possessio, a concept originally denoting actual possession irrespective of legal right.11 Regardless of whether one legally owned the land or simply controlled it, property management, which involved everything from rent collection and agronomy to investment speculation and inheritance strategizing, was the single most important domestic practice for elite Romans. Landholding remained significant during the fifth and sixth centuries even when political turmoil and the gradual erosion of imperial infrastructures generated new habits and practices. Let us begin with a brief sketch of land management in Italy from ca. 350 to 450. During this time, the most elite Roman householders 10 11

Bartlett 2001 and Cooper 2007b. Levy 1951: 19–34, 61–63. Not every form of tenure implied ownership, however. Although long-term leases (emphyteusis or ius privatum), especially those for imperial estates, almost always implied possession, short-term leases (conductio-locutio) did not. See Levy 1951: 44–49.

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owned properties scattered all over the empire. A moderately wealthy senator like Q. Aurelius Symmachus (365–402) had estates in the suburbs of Rome, Lazio, Campania, Samnium, Apulia, Lucania, Sicily, and the North African province of Mauritania Caesarea.12 An even wealthier household, like that of Melania and Valerius Pinianus, had a similar portfolio, with additional holdings in Spain, Gaul, and Greece, and the fourth-century senator Petronius Probus reputedly owned land “in almost every part of the empire.”13 Some of these agricultural estates were organized around sumptuous villa complexes like the Villa Romana del Casale (Piazza Armerina) in Sicily and San Giovanni di Ruoti in Basilicata. These country houses were elaborately decorated with mosaics and included apsidal reception spaces and private baths.14 The most elite householders also typically owned urban real estate, ranging from hilltop mansions in Rome to baths, insulae, and more modest dwellings.15 The scattered, variegated nature of their holdings is reflected in bookkeeping practices. Late Roman householders grouped their properties into various administrative units, namely, the patrimonium or res, the massa, and the fundus. These terms denoted holdings of differing sizes, not necessarily territorially contiguous, that were owned by a single paterfamilias in a particular region.16 Although some individual holdings were no larger than a few acres, others were vast, even encompassing small villages whose residents worked on the landlord’s estates.17 According to her biographer, Melania owned a mega-estate near Rome that included a villa and 62 hamlets (villulae), each supposedly inhabited by 400 agricultural workers (servi agricultures).18 The elite late antique household was therefore not a single proprietary unit but a portfolio of homes, farms, urban properties, and even small villages. 12 13

14 15

16 17 18

Vera 1986: 234–38. Gerontius, Vita sanctae Melaniae iunioris 11, 19 (Greek); Hist. Laus. 61; and Amm. Marc., 27.11.1. Carandini, Ricci, and De Vos 1982, and Small and Buck 1994. On elite urban housing in Rome, see Guidobaldi 1986 and 1999. Symmachus owned at least two houses in Rome, one on the Caelian Hill (thought to be his principal residence) and a second in Trastevere. Symmachus, Epp. 3.12, 3.14, and 7.18–19 cited in Vera 1986: 234. See also Hillner 2004: 191–226. Vera 1999a: 991–1025 and Jones 1964: 785–87. Jones 1964: 788–89. Gerontius, Vita S. Melaniae iunoris 18 (Latin). These figures, if correct, compute to more than 24,000 slaves on her Rome-based holdings alone, a suspiciously high number even for someone of Melania’s stature. The Hist. Laus. 61 records a more modest 8,000 slaves for her Roman properties.

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Transregional property holding on this scale generated staggering incomes for the owners. Olympiodorus of Thebes, who visited Rome just after Alaric’s sack of the city in 410, claimed that a modest aristocrat collected total annual revenues from his land (in cash and kind) of 1,300 pounds of gold; a moderately wealthy senator’s annual income was 2,000 pounds of gold; and an extremely rich householder might make approximately 5,300 pounds a year.19 This income probably reflects rental fees, although late Roman aristocratic householders practiced two different forms of land management.20 Householders might directly employ stewards to oversee farming, labor, and production on individual estates: here, the profits went straight to the dominus’ pockets. Alternatively, householders could lease individual estates to renters (conductores) on a long- or short-term basis and derive income through rents and tax collecting.21 In the latter, indirect, type, a percentage of the payments (perhaps up to one-third) were often rendered in kind.22 As landlords, therefore, Roman domini still had interest in the productivity of their leased estates. Most historians of the late Roman economy maintain that the second form of property management (i.e., leasing) was the more common in Italy.23 Recent work, however, suggests that landowners increasingly combined direct and indirect management, perhaps even on the same estate.24 Although late Roman householders governed through agents and intermediaries (see below), they were not idle absentee landlords. If Symmachus’ letters are any indication, an elite householder visited certain rural estates with some frequency, especially those located relatively close to Rome.25 Ancient commentators on estate management often emphasized the importance of the householder’s constant surveillance of 19 20

21 22 23

24

25

Olympiodorus, Fr. 41.2. Vera 1983: 489–91; Sarris 2004: 306–07; and Wickham 2005: 162. Alternatively, Banaji (2009: 68, n. 24) argues that Olympiodorus’ figures refer to total returns, and not only to rents. Jones 1964: 788–92; Vera 1983: 489–533; and Whittaker and Garnsey 1998: 305–07. Olympiodorus, Frg. 41.2, discussed in Vera 1983: 489–91. For indirect management as the norm, see Vera 1983 and 1999: 255; Wickham 2005: 259–80; and Giardina 2008: 752–53. Alternatively, Banaji 2009 argues for the continuity of slave labor (in practice if not in law) on directly managed estates in the late Roman and early medieval West. Whittaker and Garnsey (1998: 306) allow for the existence of directly managed estates using slaves or bonded tenant farmers (coloni). On the so-called bipartite estate, see Sarris 2004: 304–07 and Wickham 2005: 263, 272–80. These studies challenge the view that the bipartite manor was an early medieval development. Vera 1986: 260. Whittaker and Garnsey 1998: 301–03 and Wickham 2005: 264–65 and 270–72 even argue for “intensified control” by late Roman landlords.

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his estates, even if this service were conducted by proxies. As Pliny the Elder put it, “Since husbandry depends upon labor, this is the reason for the saying of our forefathers that on a farm the best fertilizer is the master’s eye.”26 Palladius would have heartily agreed with Pliny’s sentiment. His Opus agriculturae argued that a good landlord kept a watchful eye on his tenants and investments.27 A landlord did not always conduct surveillance personally, however. Instead, he communicated orders and decisions through notaries and agents, who used Italy’s road systems and shipping lanes to deliver information, transport goods, and collect revenues.28 The householder’s management of a transregional portfolio required safe passage and extensive mobility. Recent work also suggests that Italian agribusiness (as in Egypt, Gaul, and Spain) was closely tied to the tax system and the provisioning of the imperial army (the annona).29 Consequently, many traditional practices of elite property management necessitated a stable, functioning state.30 When Italy’s imperial governing structures began to erode during the later fifth and sixth centuries, certain aspects of private land administration therefore changed. From ca. 450, property management in Italy began to lose its transregional dynamics and gradually became a more localized practice.31 The wealthiest landlords continued to own multiple properties, but these were now concentrated geographically around fewer larger farms that were increasingly self-sufficient.32 Barbarian invasions temporarily disrupted the interregional networks on which householders relied, whereas the rise of barbarian kingdoms reduced the geographical scope of private landholdings. North Africa fell to the Vandals in 439, cutting off those properties from their owners. Sicily was under Vandal control from 440 until 488, when it was reconquered by Odoacer, the new barbarian king of Italy. Barbarian control of the Italian 26 27 28 29

30 31 32

Pliny, HN 18.8. Wickham 2005: 268. Vera 1986: 256 and Sarris 2009: 4. Wickham 2005: 163; Bowes 2010: 85–99; and Costambeys 2009 for similar patterns in early medieval Italy. Wickham 2005: 163–64. Wickham 2005: 204–11 and Costambeys 2009. Sfameni 2004: 366 and Whittaker and Garnsey 1998: 301 posit falling numbers of large estates and landowners. Noyé 2007: 186–91 contrasts the fate of small and mediumsized farms (which largely disappear) with larger ones that absorb new populations and continue to function. Nevertheless, the shift was gradual. Palladius assumed that domini possessed land in several regions and appears to have owned property outside of Rome and in Sardinia. See Vera 1999: 284.

40


peninsula from 476 to 535 produced some of the most significant shifts in the administration of private land. The Scirian Odoacer (476–492) and his Ostrogothic successors, the Amals (492–536), preserved many late Roman political and fiscal structures, enabling some elite Roman householders to continue their traditional practices of land ownership and management.33 However, the permanent presence of barbarians in Italy did adversely affect the portfolios of private domini. Settlement agreements for the Ostrogoths included the expropriation of private land (up to one-third from any given landowner) and the allocation of shares to barbarian federates and the kings’ favored officials.34 Moreover, during the Gothic War, Totila gave coloni land formerly owned by their landlords and siphoned rents from owners to the royal fisc.35 Of course, not all elite householders lost their estates, and some might have benefited from the situation. A few probably reaped financial advantages from property loss if that loss meant a decrease in tax payments.36 Justinian’s conquest of Italy briefly raised the possibility that a reconstituted imperial government might restore the security and fiscal structures that had enabled earlier aristocratic householders to administer widely scattered property with relative ease. Although his “Pragmatic Sanction” of 554 called for new measures intended to support the ailing Roman aristocracy, Justinian ultimately failed to reverse the economic trends described here.37 In fact, the Lombard invasions of 568–569 transformed trends toward regional holding into the status quo. While it is highly unlikely that the Lombards slaughtered every senatorial householder whom they encountered (as Paul the Deacon famously claimed), their establishment of several independent kingdoms within the peninsula destroyed any remaining political unity in Italy.38 Consequently, by 33

34

35 36

37

38

Cracco Ruggini 1995: 349–59; Moorhead 1992: 32–65; and especially Barnish 1986: 170–95. Like most scholars, I interpret the “thirds” as portions of private estates taken from Roman owners and redistributed as shares to the barbarians. See Barnish 1986 contra Goffart 1980. Cracco Ruggini 1995: 337–38 citing Procopius, Gothic War 3.6.5–7, 3.13.1. Barnish 1986: 177. Land also came onto the market as a result of instability, offering owners opportunities to expand their holdings. Cf. Maximus of Turin, Serm. 18.3. Among other measures, Justinian reversed Totila’s policy of diverting rents paid to Roman landowners and returned properties that were illegally handed over to coloni. See Jones 1964: 291. Tax collection, however, continued in areas of the peninsula remaining under Byzantine control post-554, and there is some evidence that the Lombards collected taxes. Nevertheless, as Wickham notes (2005: 115), Italy’s sixth-century wars seriously undermined the peninsula’s politico-economic coherence.

41


the late sixth century most householders managed fewer (but often large) holdings dispersed within limited areas, sometimes even within a single municipality.39 In fact, the Roman church was among the few landowners to maintain transregional portfolios.40 In conjunction with the geographical contraction of property holdings, there was a gradual polarization of the landowning classes. Remaining wealth was funneled into the hands of local possessores.41 Some parts of Italy were certainly more economically robust than others during this period of political disintegration.42 The southern regions and Sicily fared particularly well during the sixth century, as the continued occupation and agricultural output of large villa complexes such as San Giovanni in Ruoti show.43 In fact, the archaeology of agrarian settlements in southern Italy demonstrates that a reduction in the number of villas and the rise of more self-sufficient farms cannot be equated with economic crisis, at least on the local level.44 Overall, however, material evidence, such as the abandonment and/or subdivision of urban housing and villas, and changes in ceramics distribution, suggests that the entire peninsula experienced varying degrees of material decline and a more uneven distribution of remaining resources.45 “There was less wealth,” writes Federico Marazzi, “but that which existed had few reasons or possibilities by which to circulate in Italy outside the circuit controlled by the potentes, who were at this time able to accumulate a higher percentage of the overall available wealth.”46 Italian landowners’ social identity was also in flux during the fifth and sixth centuries. As T. S. Brown has shown, Justinian’s reestablishment of imperial rule over (parts of ) Italy created the conditions for the rise of a militarized elite in the early seventh century, whose landownership tipped the scales further away from the more traditional model of Roman aristocracy and toward a new paradigm of local landed 39

40 41

42 43 44 45 46

Wickham 2002: 122 and 2005: 163. There were exceptions. Cf. Cethegus, who had lived in Rome but later retired to Sicilian property in the 550s (PLRE 2: 281–82) and Rusticiana (PLRE 3: 1101–02), who lived in Constantinople but owned estates in Sicily in the late sixth century. Chapter 3. Wickham 2005: 162–68 and 204–06; Marazzi 1998a: 126–32; and Whittaker and Garnsey 1998: 299–302. Marazzi 1998; Noyé 2007; and Arcuri 2009: 14. Wickham 2005: 204–05; Noyé 2007; and Arcuri 2009. Arcuri 2009: 33–67 synthesizes recent research. Wickham 2005: 204–05 with bibliography and Paroli 2001 for the city of Rome. Marazzi 1998: 132.

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power.47 The emergence of a militarized landowning elite was one stage in a more deeply rooted development that had an impact on estate management: the erosion of traditional markers of aristocratic group identity and the emergence of new indexes. For centuries, elite Romans had claimed membership in one of two groups, the senatorial or equestrian aristocracies. Aristocratic affiliation, which had been partly based on property ownership, was also predicated on birth, office holding, and the possession of cultural knowledge (paideia).48 During the later fifth and sixth centuries, some of these markers became increasingly insignificant for establishing elite identity in Italy. Although ancestry and the display of cultural capital continued to play some role in aristocratic self-definition through the end of the sixth century, senatorial status became tied to public office holding on an unprecedented level.49 Diocletian’s administrative reforms created a larger, more centralized civil administration, whereas Constantine’s establishment of a second senate in Constantinople allowed hundreds of eastern curiales to achieve a coveted place in the empire’s highest social order.50 By the late fourth century, the equestrian stratum had disappeared, and the expanded senatorial ordo was divided into three ranks, with only the lowest grade (the clarissimate) inheritable. By the middle of the fifth century, membership in the senate was limited to illustres, men who achieved the highest possible grade within the senatorial ordo, which was now attainable solely through office holding.51 These political developments did not sound the death knell for the senatorial elite in Italy, however. As John Matthew’s study of Western aristocracies and the courts of the Valentinian emperors shows, many traditional senatorial households took advantage of the new system and came to exert unprecedented power over the political and cultural resources of Rome and Italy.52 Whether this situation constituted a “private takeover of western government” has been questioned, but it did encourage extraordinary acts of elite display in Rome.53 Some early fifth-century Roman senators, for example, reorganized the statuary of preexisting fora to showcase their personal honor and even created new ones, which they embellished with images and inscriptions honoring 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

T. S. Brown 1984: 545–54, 61–108. See Garnsey and Saller 1987: 112–18. On ancestry, see T. S. Brown 1984: 23, n. 5 and 24, n. 6. Jones 1964: 527–30 and Heather 1998: 188–89. Jones 1964: 529–30 and Giglio 1990: 29–46. Matthews 1975. Wormald 1976: 216–26, a review of Matthews 1975.

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their family members.54 Even after 450, numerous Italian senatorial families (e.g., the Anicii, the Petronii, the Rufii, and the Decii) successfully obtained top civilian administrative posts and hence the highest senatorial honors, generation after generation.55 Inscriptions on the seats of the Colosseum demonstrate the self-confidence of these later Italian elites, showing a local aristocracy obsessed with traditions of protocol, rank, and order.56 Being a senatorial aristocrat still had considerable political import and cultural meaning. Numerous novi homines now sat among these “blue-blooded” senators, however.57 These were men without an aristocratic name or reputation for paideia but who had achieved status and wealth through holding office and owning land. Shifts in landholding patterns meant that a range of newcomers (e.g., Ostrogothic soldiers and their families, Lombard dukes, previously undistinguished Roman landowners who served their barbarian kings well) became the owners of valuable property in a period when wealth was more unevenly distributed than ever before. Consequently, new nomenclatures of nobility and rank emerged in Italy. When Theodoric made demands on cities other than Rome, he addressed his correspondence to three tiers of notables: the honorati, persons with claim to higher senatorial ranks; the possessores, the city’s major landowners, who were also undoubtedly officials (although without senatorial status); and the curiales, who still appear in our sources as late as Gregory’s time.58 After the Gothic War, this order gave way to one dominated by men of official senatorial rank and/or of major local landed wealth (i.e., the honorati and possessores), who were subsequently denoted with more generic terms of nobility, such as proceres, optimates, and maiores.59 As one historian observes about Italian elites in the sixth century, 54

55

56 57

58

59

On the former phenomenon, see Machado 2006: 157–92; on the latter, Matthews 1975: 356–57. See Matthews 1975: esp. 357–61 and 386–87; Barnish 1988: 120–55; and Wickham 2005: 156–61. Such openings to official power declined in number after the Gothic War. Barnish 1986: 179 and Orlandi 1999: 249–63. The family of Cassiodorus, based in the Apulian city of Squillace, is the most famous example of the nouveau riche elite. For others, see T. S. Brown 1984 and Noyé 2007: 193–94. Liebeschuetz 2001: 125. Rome continued to be governed by the senate until the 580s. Theodoric typically addressed its ruling elite either collectively as “fathers of the senate” (patres conscripti) or in terms of their specific senatorial rank or honorary title, such as patricius. Cf. Cassiodorus, Var. 1.4.1 and 18 (CC 96: 13, 16). Liebeschuetz 2001: 127.

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“We can only say that there were many nobles, but some were more noble than others.”60 TH E H OUSEH OLD COMMUNITY: TH E PATERFAMILIAS AND H IS DEPENDENTS

The careful cultivation of farms was not the only way in which late Roman householders derived moral authority and social power. Their status as masters of oikonomia was also tied to the oversight of the dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of dependents, who constituted an elite late antique domus. As noted, Melania the Younger might have owned anywhere from 8,000 to 24,000 slaves on her Roman suburban properties alone.61 While hers is an exceptional case, all elite landowners were required to manage the “human resources” that composed their household. The Romans had long idealized the domestic sphere as a perfectly ordered pyramid effortlessly administered by its head, a single male paterfamilias.62 In many respects, the familial structure and dynamics of the elite Roman domus remained unchanged in late antiquity. Households were still organized around a nuclear core and structured around marriage, children, and generating heirs.63 Ascetic ideals, which sometimes encouraged men and women to abandon their marital or natal families and join alternative domestic structures, did not fundamentally erode the traditional structure of late Roman family life. Marriage and procreation were the principal choices of the Christian “silent majority,” a point to which we shall return.64 Furthermore, the paterfamilias remained the household’s center, continuing to hold his (or her) position as the domus’ primary owner and administrator. In fact, the paterfamilias’ status in late Roman society was so significant that in 539 Justinian concluded that any man elected bishop must automatically become a paterfamilias, even if he still had a living father or grandfather.65 In addition, studies of patria potestas, the father’s 60 61 62 63 64 65

Barnish 1988: 122. See above, n. 18. For the paterfamilias, see the introduction. Shaw 1984 and Cooper 2007: 107–111. For the phrase, see Harrison 1996. Justinian, Nov. 81.3. Justinian’s legislation built on an earlier law passed in 472 by Anthemius and Leo, which granted clergy the right to acquire and possess property even if they were in potestate. See CJ 1.3.33 (34).

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legal and economic rights over his dependent children, have shown that the concept of paternal power remained legally relevant through the end of the sixth century.66 Nevertheless, despite the remarkable stability of the paterfamilias and his domestic authority in the late Roman empire, scholars have posited a hardening of his authority within the domus, or conversely, a diminishment of his power over certain dependents. We shall return to these historiographical developments later. The Wider Domestic Community: High-Status Tenants, coloni, and Slaves In addition to wives and children, a late Roman household was organized around intersecting networks and hierarchies of tenants and laborers. Elite householders typically leased many if not most of their properties to tenants, who took charge of the farming, production, and administration. As landlords, householders counted on tenants not only to provide steady income but also to cultivate their land productively, because rents were often paid partially in kind. The relationship between landlord and tenant was especially heterogeneous, since vertical relations coexisted with lateral networks. Sometimes, the conductores were elite landowners in their own right, who leased large estates and effectively controlled all aspects of their administration. Here a householder might be linked to his conductor through ties of friendship and/or family, which were more symmetrical than hierarchical.67 In most cases, however, the tenants were free peasants and even slaves who rented relatively small tracts of land and whose relationship with the possessor was less symmetrical.68 Scholars debate the social and legal dynamics connecting these tenants to their landlords. Much of the disagreement concerns the difference between late Roman slavery and the colonate, that is, between tenants or farm workers who were legally enslaved (servi) and tenants and laborers who were not legally enslaved but who were bound for tax administrative purposes to remain on the land where they lived and worked (i.e., coloni, adscripti, and originarii).69 Some scholars argue for empirical differences in the experiences of servi and coloni with regard to their subordination 66 67

68 69

Arjava 1996: 48–52 and 1998: 147–65. Of course, the landlord could have been the emperor, as was common on estates with emphyteutic leases. Whittaker and Garnsey 1998: 294–7 and Jones 1964: 791–2. For general discussions of the late antique colonate, see Jones 1964: 789–92 and Garnsey and Whittaker 1998: 283–296.

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to the landlord in light of their distinct legal statuses. Alternatively, others conclude that the line separating the two became increasingly faint during the later fifth and sixth centuries.70 Consequently, they maintain, some landlords treated their coloni as servile workers and regularly disciplined them with physical beatings as if they were slaves.71 In either case, the elite householder undoubtedly treated the bonded tenant as a dependent, even if his dependency was less absolute than a slave’s. Slavery, however, remained a distinct form of labor in late antique Italy. Virtually everyone from the wealthiest senatorial aristocrat to the modest farmer owned slaves. Slaves were regularly employed as domestics within urban households and villas, and for numerous duties on rural estates, especially those involved in the manufacture of products like olive oil.72 It is unclear to what extent, if at all, late Roman Italian householders used slaves on a large scale for agricultural work, however.73 The Householder’s Intermediaries: Stewards and Domestic Agents Between the householder and his tenants and slaves stood numerous intermediaries, domestic agents and stewards who undertook routine tasks like rent collection and who helped to resolve problems arising on a given property. On the Apion estates of Egypt, householders mobilized a highly organized hierarchy of paid domestic officials ranging from the lowly estate bailiff to the chief household administrator, the antigeouchos.74 Similarly, the imperial res privata was organized according to an elaborate pyramid, which assigned salaried administrators to oversee the emperor’s personal properties at diocesan, provincial, and estate levels.75 Although 70

71 72

73

74 75

Grey 2007 delineates the distinctions in fourth- and fifth-century imperial legislation between slaves and coloni, with the latter identified through their fiscal function rather than through their social subjugation to the landowner. Alternatively, Sirks 2008 argues on the basis of Justinianic legislation that the legal differences between a colonus and a slave gradually disappeared and landlords treated them indiscriminately. Banaji 2009: 66–78 looks forward to the sixth and seventh centuries where, in post-Roman Gaul at least, the term mancipia referred to both unfree slaves and free coloni. Giardina 2008: 751–2; Sirks 2008; and Banaji 2009. See Melluso 2000 for the Justinianic period and Rotman 2004 for the late Roman and Byzantine East. Harper 2011 appeared too late for consideration in this study. For the continued use of agricultural slavery in the late Roman West, see Banaji 2009: 72. Alternatively, Vera 1999: 287–9 and Wickham 2005: 262–9 argue for its marginality. Sarris 2006: 86–90. Delmaire 1989.

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hierarchies of domestic agents also managed Italian estates, their common organization (if a single paradigmatic hierarchy existed) remains unclear. In contrast to regions like Egypt, where archival evidence has enabled scholars to reconstruct the administrative tiers of several households, our present knowledge of the managerial structure of an Italian domus is limited.76 The following discussion of domestic stewardship and agency as a social institution in late Roman Italy is thus preliminary, but it provides some social context for our discussion of stewardship as an emerging ethical system in later chapters. Late Roman householders seem to have managed their private business through two different sets of intermediaries.77 The first were the householder’s principal assistants, the notarii. These were his emissari padronali, personal representatives entrusted with sensitive information and special duties, who worked closely with the householder.78 Symmachus, for example, relied on several different notarii to relay information to and from himself and his estates.79 The second were agents and stewards who helped the householder to manage business on individual holdings. The procurator was traditionally among the highest-ranking of the paterfamilias’ estate agents. He oversaw other agents and slaves and acted as the landlord’s primary representative on his properties.80 In some late Roman households, the procuratores in turn were supervised by another level of administration, associated with figures like the vicedominus and/or the maiordomus, the former of which was also a domestic official in the Ostrogothic court.81 The Regula Magistri, a late fifth-century monastic rule, lists both of these figures among the maiores familiae “who in place of the dominus, the lesser family members fear.”82 In some cases, the vicedominus might have had a more expansive remit than the procurator, functioning as a sort of estate generalist, whereas the procurator was assigned to oversee specific properties.83 Actores (or actionarii) also frequently appear in the Italian sources. On early imperial Roman estates and households, actores were in charge 76 77 78 79 80

81

82 83

Sarris 2006 and Mazza 2001. Here I follow Vera 1986: 256–7, whose observations are based on Symmachus’ letters. Vera 1986: 256–7. Vera 1986: 256, n. 102–103, citing Symmachus, Epp. 4.60; 6.33; and 9.11. Mentioned in brief by Palladius, Opus agriculturae 1. 36. See Aubert 1996: 183–4 and Vera 1999: 289. Jones 1964: 254, 260–1. The vicedominus was an agent of the king’s personal estates: Cassiodorus, Var. 5.14.8 and FIR2 III 99, discussed by Delmaire 1989: 691–2. Regula Magistri 11.17–20. Gregory, Ep. 9.84 and Jones 1964: 1118, n. 44.

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of financial transactions and acted as cashiers or bookkeepers for the dominus.84 In late antiquity, their duties evidently shifted to rent collection and the general oversight of coloni.85 Landowners typically employed multiple actores, who traditionally were members of a procurator’s staff; however, functional distinctions between these two types of agents seem to have disappeared in the later fifth and sixth centuries.86 Householders also employed agents to oversee domestic finances. The dispensator could have been the domestic equivalent of a chief financial officer, although precisely how his duties and area of activity differed from the creditarius, another attested late Roman domestic agent with financial responsibilities, is unclear.87 Finally, farm bailiffs also appear in several late Roman documents. In his Opus agriculturae, Palladius refers to the agri praesul, a figure whom Domenico Vera plausibly identifies with a vilicus.88 As Palladius’ wording suggests, the bailiff performed supervisory duties on a specific estate, including overseeing labor.89 In fact, Jerome explicitly contrasted the more limited domain of the vilicus (a single villa) with the broader domestic remit of the dispensator who was in charge of not a single farm “but of the money as well as the produce and all things, which the dominus possesses.”90 Unfortunately, Jerome did not in turn differentiate the duties of the dispensator from those of the procurator or actor. The sociolegal status of domestic agents in late Roman Italy remains poorly understood. In the late Republic and early empire, virtually all private agents and domestic stewards were slaves, with the notable exception of procuratores, who were often freedmen. Alternatively, during late antiquity, many seem to have been free or even freeborn, although how their legal status translated into social position is unclear. Evidence from 84 85 86

87

88 89

90

Carlsen 1995: 125–134. Carlsen 1995: 133–4. Later fifth- and sixth-century Roman bishops, for example, routinely addressed letters to actores but never to procuratores, suggesting that the former assumed the role once held by the latter. Earlier sources identify the dispensator with financial duties: Gaius, Inst. 1.122. Jerome (Ep. 121.6.6–9) equated the dispensator with the oikonomos and the vilicus. A fictional creditarius appears in the Passio S. Stephani 7 (AASS Aug. I: 140). Palladius, Opus agriculturae 1.6.18 and Vera 1999: 289. There appears to be continuity between the early and late Roman household, as suggested by Jerome’s notice (Comm. in Ep. ad Titum 1.7 [PL 26: 571]) that the vilicus “is a slave who commands other slaves who are his equal.” See Carlsen 1995: 70–101 and Vera 1983: 512. Jerome, Ep. 121.6.6–9.

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the Ravenna papyri, for example, suggests that vilici on Italian estates (at least those in the north during the sixth century) were of relatively low status and occupied a social position analogous to the colonus.91 In other words, they were legally free but subordinate to their possessor. The relationship between procuratores and actores and the householders whom they represented is more complex. Several laws in the Theodosian Code prescribe corporeal punishment for actores and procuratores who commit crimes on their landlords’ properties,92 implying a relatively low social position for these agents.93 Alternatively, other sources intimate that some domestic agents were of middling or even relatively high social status.94 Curiales, for instance, were legally forbidden from acting as procuratores, a law that suggests their demand in that particular capacity.95 Actores also commonly interacted directly with heads of state and high church officials, including the bishop of Rome.96 Such access underscores the elevated status not only of the householder whom the agents represented but also of the agents themselves. Thus while an actor might have occupied a subordinate place within one man’s household, he was also potentially a man-in-power, wielding authority over stewards within his own household. Additionally, householders sometimes turned to occasional representatives for domestic assistance. While these individuals acted as ad-hoc agents on behalf of a dominus, they clearly did not occupy a subordinate place in his domus. For example, the Roman bishop Pelagius I (556– 561) turned to a comes named Gurdimerus in 559 for assistance on one of the church’s estates just outside of Rome.97 Given his position, it is unlikely that Gurdimerus was a permanent actor of the Roman church or that his collaboration was anything but a temporary arrangement.98 In other cases, householders looked to friends or distant relatives for help in matters irresolvable by a hired agent or slave-steward. For example, Gregory’s friend Rusticiana, who was also possibly a distant relation, 91 92 93

94 95 96 97

98

Cracco Ruggini 1995: 408, and n. 522, 408–9. Cf. CT 16.5.40.7 (407) = CJ 1.5.4. Jones 1964: 790 presumes that actores and procuratores were commonly freedmen or slaves of the owner. Carlsen 1995: 142 and Vera 1999: 289. CT 12.1.92 (382) and Theodosius II, Nov. 9.1 (439) in Jones 1964: 791. Cf. Cassiodorus, Var. 4.35. For Roman bishops and actores, see Chapter 4. Pelagius, Ep. 76. On Gurdimerus as an agent of the Roman church, see Marazzi 1998: 95 and Moreau 2006: 89. Pace Moreau 2006: 89.

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turned to the bishop and the Roman church’s extensive ecclesiasticaldomestic networks in southern Italy to help her to resolve several legal and administrative problems on her Sicilian estates.99 Rusticiana was living at Constantinople and thus could not personally intervene, and her actores had evidently been unable to handle matters on their own. As we shall see in Chapter 3, the Roman bishop routinely looked to bishops and lay elites for assistance in managing the church’s estates in a manner that paralleled the habits of lay householders. Late Roman Domestic Authority: More Coercive or Progressively Limited? By all accounts, late antique elite possessores were powerful people, even if a sixth-century householder held less land and managed fewer bodies than his early fifth-century counterpart. Because domestic authority continued to be practically and legally oriented around property holding, oikonomia remained an especially relevant discourse of authority, despite the fact that other traditional signs of aristocratic status such as birth became increasingly irrelevant. To what extent, however, was the householder’s domestic authority transformed in late antiquity? For many historians, the political, economic, and social shifts sketched earlier also radically transformed social relations within the home. Late antique domini, they contend, exercised power over subordinate household members (children, wives, and slaves, as well as clients and coloni) with a coercive force and authoritarian manner that was unseen in previous centuries.100 As Kim Bowes has shown in a recent historiographical discussion, this argument has its roots in Michael Rostovtzeff ’s assumption that the demise of robust local government and civic life in the late empire led to the monopolization of power and resources by a relatively small number of elites.101 With few controlling the lion’s share of the wealth and political connections, most late Romans were drawn into steeply vertical power structures. According to this interpretation of late Roman society, local possessores provided protection from tax 99

100

101

Gregory, Ep. 9.84. Jones 1964: 790–1 offers parallel examples of this phenomenon from the East. For the Roman church’s ecclesiastical-domestic networks, see Chapter 3. Cf. Shaw 1987; Thébert 1987; Ellis 1988 and 1991; Marcone 1998: 361–3; Cooper 2007: 152–60; Dossey 2008; and Sirks 2008. Landowners are also said to have dominated local civic government: Liebeschuetz 2001. Rostovtzeff 1926: 449ff, highlighted in Bowes 2010: 16 and 26.

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collectors or marauding barbarian armies but in turn came to exercise more coercive forms of patronage (i.e., patrocinium) and paternal power. Scholars have identified this highly authoritarian vision of late antique social relations in numerous sources, from Augustine’s commentaries on the Psalms and Ammianus’ critiques of the Roman senatorial aristocracy to the architecture and decor of late antique houses.102 This rather extreme reading of late Roman domestic authority requires nuance, however. Recently, Bowes has suggested that late Roman social relations cannot be reduced to a single vertical model. According to Bowes, late Roman social relations were primarily focused around interelite competition, which intensified following the Diocletianic reforms.103 Thus, she contends, when late ancient domini introduced more hieratic architectural elements into their homes (e.g., apsidal reception halls), they hoped to emphasize their superior status over other householders, and not over their clients and tenants. Moreover, householders, we recall, relied on different types of agents and stewards to help execute their domestic administration; some were subordinates, but others were clearly peers. In this respect, an elite Roman domus was defined by multiple intersecting domestic networks rather than by a single upand-down hierarchy of power. What many of these assessments of social relations misrecognize is the cultural meaning of literary depictions of authoritarian household management.104 The rhetorical constructions of the despotic householder in sources such as Ammianus’ Res Gestae and Salvian’s On the Government of God were guided by the ancient discourse of oikonomia.105 By drawing attention to the householder’s excessive mistreatment of his dependents, Ammianus and Salvian wished to criticize his moral failings and hence undermine his public reputation. At stake in these vignettes was not the coercion of a client, but the householder’s standing with 102

103

104

105

Cf. Augustine, Enn. Psalm 18.2.6, 32.2.6 and Serm. 349.2; and Amm. Marc., 27.11.1– 6 and 28.4.11–27. Other frequently cited texts include Libanius, Or. 47 and Salvian, De gubernatione dei 5 along with imperial legislation such as CT 11.24 and CJ 11.54. For interpretations of domestic space and decoration in this vein, see Thébert 1987 and Ellis 1988 and 1991, with the judicious criticism of Bowes 2010: 35–60. Bowes 2010: 61–83. On the intensification of interelite relations in late antiquity, see Heather 1998. Cf. Shaw 1987: 5. In contrast, see the highly nuanced interpretations of De Bruyn (1999: 266–73 and 280–86) on Augustine’s discussions of domestic authority and violence. Carrié 2007: 22 makes the same observation regarding the depiction of possessores and tenants in the writings of fourth- and early fifth-century Italian bishops.

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respect to other domini. In short, these sources reveal the critical significance of horizontal relations of power within a heated, competitive environment, and not the rise of a harsher and more steeply hierarchical domestic sphere. These general observations about late Roman social relations hold true for scholarly claims regarding the late Roman husband or father’s domination of social relations within the family.106 As Richard Saller has shown, albeit for an earlier period, reciprocity and not coercion was the central dynamic driving intradomestic power relations.107 The ideal was not to discipline and punish but to educate and persuade through the male householder’s own self-example of pietas, castitas, and moderatio. This is not to suggest that late Roman householders in Italy did not whip their slaves, beat their young children, or physically abuse their wives. Many certainly did such things, but there is no reason to think that they used coercive force more often or with greater intensity and social acceptance than their classical counterparts.108 Even if certain domestic relations became asymmetrical in new ways, as Cooper has recently proposed regarding elite husbands and their lower status wives, these shifts did not necessarily produce more cruelty and violence.109 Such extreme householding had serious public consequences, as the writings of Ammianus and Augustine show. Highly traditional cultural expectations regarding the householder’s oversight of family members and dependents, which valorized moderation and restraint, remained operative in late antique Italy.110 Another reason to question arguments for an empirical hardening of social relations in late antiquity is the fact that other studies have observed the opposite dynamic: the rising number of limitations on the late ancient householder’s powers, especially over his adult children. As Antti Arjava has shown, paternal power remained legally viable and highly relevant in both the eastern and western parts of the empire through the late sixth 106

107

108 109 110

Shaw 1987 and Dossey 2008 describe the late antique father/husband in the West as a coercive authoritarian, who beat his children and wife to maintain the hierarchical ordering of the home. Both rely heavily (and in Shaw’s case, entirely) on Augustine’s writings, however. What these authors ultimately might show is that Augustine’s views on family life were atypical. Saller 1994. For the importance of reciprocity in late Roman Italian social relations, even between masters and slaves, see Cooper 2007: 107, 114–42. De Bruyn 1999: 280–86. Cooper 2007: 152–60. I pursue this argument more fully in Chapter 2.

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century.111 He has also stressed, however, that it was increasingly recognized in law as a set of property rights relevant largely to a householder’s oversight of young children.112 Emancipation became more commonplace in late antiquity, particularly in the West, where it was seen as especially appropriate for adult children over the age of twenty.113 He concludes that this and other legal developments reflect long-held social beliefs that patria potestas as a form of proprietary power was only applicable to minors.114 Arjava’s study correlates with the observations of Theodore de Bruyn that Augustine envisioned young children as the primary subjects of paternal beatings.115 This qualified understanding of late Roman paternal power might help us to understand the potentially awkward situation outlined in a recent study of the late Roman family, in which a son’s success in the imperial administration brought him wealth and social status that outstripped his father’s.116 In the main, fathers expected only to dominate their very young and adolescent children and not their adult sons, who were householders in their own right. Whereas studies often draw dire pictures of late antique household management in the West as increasingly authoritarian, violent, and coercive, the evidence generally suggests stasis rather than radical change. Nevertheless, this study contends that one domain of oikonomia became newly significant in late Roman calculations of elite masculine authority: the oversight of religious practice. The following section lays some groundwork for this argument by means of a general discussion of Christianity and its practice within the late Roman household in Italy. RELIGION IN TH E ELITE LATE ROMAN H OUSEH OLD

Houses, as has been noted, were religious spaces in the ancient world. The cultivation of divine powers within the home was long seen as 111 112 113 114 115 116

Arjava 1996: 48–52 and 1998: 147–65. Arjava 1996: 41–52 and 1998: 161–3. See also Nathan 2000: 144–9. Arjava 1998: 161–2. Arjava 1998: 151–3. De Bruyn 1999. Cooper 2007: 23–9. However, in positing disastrous trickle-down effects of the Diocletianic reforms on the household’s “balance of power,” Cooper does not consider the possibility that fathers were also beneficiaries of this new system and thus were vital agents in their sons’ successes. As John Lydus’ autobiographical account of the sixth-century Constantinopolitan system shows, men still relied on their fathers and local family connections for entry into and advancement within the ranks. See Kelly 2004: 44–51.

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vital to its material productivity, the health of its members, and its future prosperity.117 Recent work suggests that the practice of domestic religion in Roman households was remarkably eclectic and even personalized.118 In addition to the three primary gods (the lares, the penates, and the genius of the paterfamilias), ancient households worshiped deities that were selected individually by family members, ostensibly with the approval of the paterfamilias. In fact, domestic religion was carried out through the very social hierarchies that defined the domestic sphere.119 The physical remains of lararia in low-access rooms like kitchens implies that slaves performed household rites presumably on behalf of their masters, whereas literary evidence shows that clients honored their patrons’ genii on the occasion of their birthdays.120 Villas were also sites of intense religious activity. Householders constructed altars, shrines, freestanding temples, and monumental tombs on their estates.121 Religious rituals, the writings of the agronomists show, were deemed essential to the productivity of farms and were performed with many stages of agricultural production.122 These rites and buildings were “not simply an exercise in familial self-promotion, but . . . part and parcel of land management.”123 In many respects, Christianity did not fundamentally transform the practice of domestic religion.124 Elite householders in Rome and elsewhere considered it their privilege to bring the worship of Christ into the home and to integrate it into traditional rhythms of religion and household management. For example, many welcomed spiritual experts in a manner that recalls the patronage of domestic philosophers.125 Jerome’s letters present anecdotes about Roman clergy lining up outside the bedroom doors of Roman matronae in a perverted salutatio.126 The author’s sarcasm aside, aristocratic Christian householders unquestionably supported spiritual experts within their homes, which functioned as sites of religious discussion and perhaps even debate.127 Jerome was himself 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127

Introduction. Bodel 2008. Bowes 2008: 18–48. Foss 1997 and Argetsinger 1992. Bowes 2008: 33–7. Cato, De agr. 1.2, 83, 134 and Columella, De re rustica 2.21.2–5. Bowes 2008: 37. Bowes 2007 and 2008. Clark 2007. Jerome, Ep. 22.16, 28. Later fourth-century aristocratic householders hosted individuals whose ideas were deemed heretical by orthodox officials. See Lizzi Testa 2004: 191–3 for the Anician

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the beneficiary of such patronage and acted as a spiritual tutor to several late fourth-century Roman Christian households.128 He seems to have developed a niche market: the biblical education and ascetic training of elite women. Nevertheless, there was nothing especially feminine about this phenomenon. In the early sixth century, Dionysius Exiguus (ca. 470– 544), the biblical exegete, textual expert, and specialist on the liturgical calendar, had close relationships with several Italian households, including that of Julianus Anicius, to whom he dedicated his first collection of Roman episcopal letters.129 Late Roman households were also active sites of Christian ritual practice.130 Buried beneath the modern basilica of SS. John and Paul on the Caelian Hill in Rome lie the remains of a fourth-century, multistoried domus.131 The house appears to have had two different ritual spaces. The first was situated within a small courtyard with a fountain and featured an elaborately painted marine scene with a female figure that could be a goddess (Isis or Venus) as well as an altar ostensibly used for polytheistic rites. The second was a nook constructed on the landing of a central staircase, probably several decades after the courtyard, in the late fourth century. The three walls of the area were decorated with images, one perhaps of a martyrdom scene and another depicting a family of donors making an offering; a niche was built into the central wall. These images strongly suggest that the space was created by and for a Christian family. A recent analysis underscores the implications of the space’s miniature dimensions and its physical situation within the house.132 On the one hand, it was separated from other rooms and situated in a relatively low-access area of the house (although far more accessible to a public visitor than a kitchen lararium). The space thus provided a few family members with an intimate, personalized place to pray or perform domestic rituals. On the other hand, its proximity to the more highaccess courtyard, perhaps once (or still?) the scene of sacrifices to other

128 129 130 131

132

patronage of “Luciferians” in Rome during the tenure of Damasus. “Priscillians,” “Arians,” and “Origenists” were also widely supported by individual households. See Clark 1992: 19–39, Burrus 1997: 79–101; and more generally Maier 1995, 1995a and 2005. Rousseau 1978: 114–24 and Clark 1992: 11–42. Momigliano 1960: 234 and Pietri 1981a: 442–3. Brenk 1995, 1999 and 2003: 82–113; and Bowes 2008. Brenk 1995 and Bowes 2008: 88–92. As Brenk shows, the house beneath SS. John and Paul was not a so-called domus ecclesiae, although a church was constructed over it in the early fifth century. Bowes 2008: 90–2.

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gods, highlights the continuities between pagan and Christian forms of domestic religious practice.133 Textual evidence confirms that elite Christian householders used their urban and rural domus for ritual activities. According to her biographer, Melania the Younger often retreated to a domestic chapel in her Roman mansion for nocturnal vigils, whereas several correspondents of Jerome and Gregory created monasteries in their houses.134 The latter development was a social and not a material phenomenon, because there is no evidence of monastic architecture in Italy (such as existed in Egypt) until the early Middle Ages.135 Meanwhile, sometime during the tenure of Damasus (366–384), Ambrose of Milan (337–397) conducted a private mass in the home of a matrona in Trastevere, where the bishop also healed a bath attendant (most likely one of the lady’s clients).136 Roman hagiographical sources imply that households ritually distributed the reserved Eucharist, while the letters of later fifth- and sixth-century Roman bishops bear witness to the construction and use of churches on rural estates.137 Estate management, in other words, came to be expressed in terms of the householder’s Christian responsibilities in the home. A late fourthor early fifth-century bronze lamp in the shape of a boat with figurines of Peter at the stern and Paul in the bow directly connects a householder’s domestic authority to his religious obligations.138 The lamp was discovered in the seventeenth century among the remains of a grand domus on the Caelian Hill that might have belonged to Melania’s father-in-law, Valerius Severus.139 An inscription on the lamp, however, leaves no doubt that its original owner was so named: Dominus legem dat Valerio Severo 133

134

135 136 137

138

139

This may cohere with broader patterns sketched by David Frankfurter in a new study, tentatively entitled Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity. I thank the author for allowing me to read this material prior to its publication. Gerontius, Vita Melaniae iunoris (Greek) 5 (ed. Gorce 1962: 134). For house monasteries, see Jerome, Ep. 127 and Gregory, Epp. 3.17 and 6.44. Gregory founded a monastic community in his Caelian domus. Pani Ermini 1981. Paulinus, Vita sancti Ambrosii 10.1. Passio SS. Polychronii, Xysti, Laurentii et Hippolyti 30. On villa churches, see Chapter 4. Now at the Museo Archeologico in Florence. Colini 1944: 253–8 and Brenk 1999: 77–81. Brenk 2003: 113 and Lega 2003. For this Valerius, see PLRE 1, 748–9 cited in Brenk 1999: 81 and Bowes 2008: 78–9. This would make him the urban prefect of 382. Hillner, however, 2003: 140–3 has voiced doubts about connections between this particular house on the Caelian Hill and the family of Melania.

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Eutropi vivas (“the Lord gives the law to Valerius Severus. May you live, Eutropius!”).140 In these words, the text boldly proclaimed Valerius’ role as both a guardian of the Lord’s law and the religious gubernator of his household. Valerius, the inscription suggests, received a divine mandate from the true and all-powerful dominus to oversee his spiritual precepts and practical rules (the lex) within the home. Moreover, the lamp’s naval design and its prominent display of Rome’s founding apostles linked the inscription’s exhortation to a broader ecclesiastical duty: Valerius must govern the conduct of the law in his domus in a manner that paralleled Peter and Paul’s oversight of all Roman Christians. Regardless of whether Valerius commissioned the lamp personally (the most likely scenario) or received it as a gift, the object demonstrates old and new assumptions about religion and domestic authority.141 The same conservative impulses that characterized the attitudes of elite Italian householders towards the integration of Christian images and practices within the home distinguished their reactions to ascetic renunciation and clerical careers. As stressed in the Introduction, the relationship between material renunciation and domestic practice was far less antithetical than once believed. Even the most ardent supporters of celibacy, communal living, and poverty found middle ground between the imagined world of the apostles and the realities of elite household management. The marriage of Christian renunciatory ethics to oikonomia progressed differently across the various regions of the late empire, however. Compared with their Gallic counterparts, Italian aristocratic Christians did not wholly reject the fundamental domestic practices that had defined elite life for centuries, namely procreation, property ownership, and the power of the paterfamilias.142 Rather than leaving their households to join island monasteries or to sit atop pillars in scorching heat, Christian aristocrats of Italy creatively combined ascetic ideals with their traditional obligations as householders. In Italy, the “ascetic householder” was the norm.143 Householders chose from a range of possible combinations of asceticism and estate management. On one end of the spectrum, we find 140 141

142

143

ILCV 1592. Contra Brenk 1999: 77, I see no reason to assume that the lamp was a gift from the Roman bishop or to read its iconography as “Romano-papal.” The ship was a metaphor for government in general and not for the bishop’s church uniquely. See Markus 1990: 213–22 and especially Bartlett 2001, whose observations are developed further by Cooper 2005 and 2007b. Cooper 2005; 2007; and 2007b.

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Melania and Pinianus, the famous early fifth-century senatorial aristocrats who dedicated themselves to an extreme ascetic lifestyle grounded in ideals of sexual and material renunciation. After the deaths of two infants and Melania’s father, the couple embraced celibacy and announced their intentions to liquidate their property and donate the proceeds to religious causes. This was an enormous undertaking given the extraordinary size of their combined property holdings. Despite the intensity with which the couple embraced these ascetic ideals, they lived them within the context of a marital household that was replete with dependents and organized around traditional practices of domestic administration.144 The slaves’ reliance on their owners for security and a decent quality of life was underscored when some threatened to revolt on receiving word that their owners planned to manumit them as part of their ascetic program.145 The couple’s total lack of concern for their dependents’ welfare betokens a deeply traditional attitude toward slaves as well as their own dominant position at the top of the domestic hierarchy. The celebrated Christian couple remained entrenched in “a continuous career of estate management,” even as they renounced the material and social trappings of their original domus.146 On the other end of the spectrum stands Venantius, a Sicilian magnate and correspondent of the Roman bishop Gregory. As a young man, when the demands of estate management were arguably less heavy, Venantius left Sicily for Constantinople, where he joined a community of ascetic scholars that included Gregory, then the apocrisiarius of the Roman church. After concluding that family life was more appealing than a monastic vocation (a decision perhaps made for Venantius by his parents), he returned to his native Sicily, where he married, fathered two daughters, and played the twin roles of paterfamilias and local official until his death in ca. 602.147 His life recalls in reverse that of several early fifth-century Roman ascetics addressed in Jerome’s letters.148 Marcella, for instance, practiced renunciation only after becoming a widow, when her independent legal status and propertied economic position provided 144

145 146 147 148

See above, n. 13, 18. On Melania and Pinianus’ highly traditional (and deeply callous) attitudes towards their slaves, see Lepelley 1997–8. See also Giardina 1988; Trout 1999: 54–70; and Cooper 2005. Lepelley 1997–8: 21–3. Cooper 2005: 26–7. For Venantius, see, for example, Gregory, Epp. 6.42–3, 11.18–9, 25. It also might follow Gregory’s life in reverse if Gregory had been urban prefect of Rome before adopting an ascetic regime. Markus 1997: 134.

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her with choices that she did not have as a married woman.149 At this point, she declared her suburban villa a place of ascetic retreat, where she lived with several similarly dedicated women. According to Jerome, they organized their day around periods of prayer and vigil and traded their expensive food and clothing for simpler fare and attire.150 Even as a childless celibate with an austere household, however, Marcella did not completely abandon classical habits of oikonomia. Although Jerome claims that she desired to will her fortune to the poor, Marcella acquiesced to her mother’s wishes and left it to her brother’s children. Monasticism was still very much a traditional domestic experience in late Roman Italy.151 Italian aristocratic households embraced clerical careers and involvement in ecclesiastical business with even greater circumspection. Few members of elite households joined the ranks of the clergy before the mid-fifth century, and it was not until the very late fifth century that an aristocratic clerical community emerged in Rome.152 This chronology throws grave doubts on Jerome’s famous claim that the late fourthcentury pagan senator Praetextatus was willing to convert to Christianity if he could be made the bishop of Rome.153 What is more, members of Rome’s most eminent citizens expressed relatively little interest in ecclesiastical business until ca. 450.154 The first recorded participation of senatorial aristocrats in church matters was a hearing of Manicheans held in Rome during the tenure of Leo (441–461).155 Given the fact that the imperial government had condemned Manicheanism, however, the senators’ attendance at the trial does not necessarily imply their collaboration in exclusively “ecclesiastical” business.156 We must wait until 149

150 151

152 153 154

155 156

Aristocratic widows were expected to remarry and reproduce. Christian exhortations to celibacy theoretically challenged these expectations. Marcella thus rebuffed social pressures by choosing to remain a widow, but as a legally independent property owner she was in a very strong position to make such a choice. Jerome, Ep. 127. This seems to have been the case elsewhere in the Mediterranean, at least for female ascetic households in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. See Elm 1994 and Rousseau 2005. Pietri 1981a; Sotinel 1997; and Bartlett 2001. Jerome, Contra Ioannem Hierosolymitana 8. The involvement of Roma matronae in the return of Liberius from exile is an exception. See Lizzi Testa 2004. Leo, Serm. 16. See Wessel 2008: 121 and Maier 1996. Cf. CT 16.5.35, 38, and 40–41. Valentinian, Nov. 18 (445) refers to the senate’s participation in Leo’s Roman tribunal.

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the 480s for definitive proof of senatorial participation in an exclusively church matter.157 CONCLUSION

Household management in late Roman Italy closely resembled classical oikonomia. Although the size and geographic distribution of their portfolios might have changed, fifth- and sixth-century elite householders administered their properties through older mechanisms of leasing and direct management. Regardless of whether the household in question belonged to a landlord or high-status tenant, slaves continued to clean, cook, and run errands, while a labor force of coloni and other workers (perhaps slaves) grew grapes, picked olives, harvested wheat, and produced the goods sold at market. Late Roman householders in Italy also continued to rely on stewards and agents, men in positions of power over material resources and other household members but still subordinate to their lord. Moreover, the householder’s domestic authority did not fundamentally change in late antiquity. A paterfamilias remained responsible for the behavior of his family members and for the social ordering of his home, and this responsibility sometimes warranted the use of physical force. The late antique dominus was no more or less coercive than his secondcentury counterpart, however. He also continued to exert influence over the religious rhythms of his domus. In fact, the adoption of Christianity by members of Italy’s elites did little to alter the material and practical mechanisms through which householders undertook these duties. Householders still used their houses as ritual places and asserted their domestic authority as a form of religious expertise. Even the rising popularity of asceticism among Italy’s elite did not upset the central place of household management in society. On the contrary, it might have enhanced it. Domestic administration was recalibrated in late antique Italy, however. The inscription on Valerius Severus’ boat-shaped lamp – Dominus legem dat Valerio Severo Eutropi vivas – suggests a new and unprecedented role for householders. As the recipient of “the law” from the ultimate lord and householder, Valerius Severus was expected to govern his domus just as Peter and Paul governed the larger church. Although late Republican and 157

See Chapter 3.

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early imperial domini had always been obligated to ensure piety within their domus, their religious authority was not so finely tuned. The next chapter examines how Christian authorities variously recast oikonomia so that it resonated with emergent ideals regarding wealth, bodily discipline, ritual practice, and the cultivation of ethics in the home.

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Chapter 2

From Dominion to Dispensatio : Stewardsh ip as an Elite Ideal

For there is not one of your slaves, male or female, for whom you may believe that you will not have to render an account before God. For to this end mortals were made masters over other mortals, that they might receive the care of the image of God during his sojourn in the world and might keep safe the riches destined for souls, which daily the plunderer of all that is good troubles himself to snatch away . . . By this exemplum you will secure your own salvation and that of those over whom you have been worthy to rule.1

uring late antiquity, christian householders in italy were

asked to reconceive their authority. Authors such as the anonymous D writer of the Ad Gregoriam in palatio, a late fifth- or early sixth-century Christian conduct manual for matronae, exhorted householders to envision their administration in terms of dispensation rather than dominion. They were to behave not as earthly lords and property owners but as God’s most trusted earthly agents. As stewards placed by God in supervisory roles over his property and people, they were to undertake household tasks with a view toward final judgment. Many Christian thinkers understood oikonomia as a form of stewardship, that is, as a discourse of salvation oriented around the earthly householder’s temporary and solicitous oversight of God’s land and people. Scholars have long discussed stewardship as a distinctly Judeo-Christian 1

Ad Gregoriam in palatio 18 (ed. Morin 1913: 420–21): Non erit enim ullus servorum ancillarum tuarum, pro quo te autumes rationem deo minime reddituram. Ad hoc enim domini hominum homines facti sunt, ut imaginis dei in hoc mundo peregrinantis tutelam exciperent, et divitias animabus debitas conservarent, quas cottidie invasor bonorum elaborat eripere . . . Hoc enim exemplo et teipsam salvam facies, et eas quarum domina esse meruisti. (Trans. with some modification from Cooper 2007: 268–69).

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conception of wealth management that posited material property as God’s possessions.2 The focus on material wealth is certainly warranted by the sources. As this passage from the Ad Gregoriam shows, Christian moralists emphasized the financial component of stewardship, especially regarding the use of riches to care for the poor. Stewardship and assistance to the socially dislocated (e.g., the poor, orphans, widows) were closely intertwined in late antique religious thought on oikonomia.3 When understood in terms of stewardship, however, household management had far more expansive and problematic implications for late Roman householders – implications that most scholars have not adequately addressed. For example, stewardship applied to all aspects of household management, not just the administration of wealth and the care of the poor.4 As we have noted, a bonus paterfamilias demonstrated his excellence through a wide range of practices. The ethical training of children, the balanced control of his and his wife’s bodies, the cultivation of gods on behalf of his domus, and the ordering of subordinates (like slaves) were equally important. Furthermore, the Judeo-Christian reconceptualization of oikonomia did not replace the more “classical” GrecoRoman model, wherein dominium (or possessio) served as the foundation of domestic authority and estate management. The two coexisted in late antiquity and not without tension. Stewardship thus presented a paradox for the Christian householder: How could one be the Lord’s steward and the earthly paterfamilias of multiple estates and hundreds of dependents? This question received two different but ultimately reconcilable responses from Italian theorists of oikonomia. On the one hand, thinkers such as Ambrosiaster (fl. 366–384) and the Roman bishop Leo (441–461) underlined the social implications of stewardship: for them, it delimited an earthly householder’s authority. Stewardship, they recognized, effectively constituted a “demotion” for the Roman paterfamilias within a cosmic hierarchy, subordinating him to a more powerful dominus, God, the ultimate “owner” of the earth and overseer of its people. In fact, stewardship might be concomitant with slavery, as several Gospel parables emphasized. On the other hand, authorities posited that stewardship expanded the earthly householder’s authority over the ethical and religious domains of oikonomia. By drawing attention to a householder’s traditional responsibility for his dependents’ piety and spiritual health, 2 3 4

See the Introduction. See especially Meyer 1998 and Caner 2007. Modern scholarship has focused largely on wealth management. On Christian charity and care of the poor, see Brown 2002.

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From Dominion to Dispensatio

stewardship accentuated the dominus’ influence over his household’s ethical behavior and religious life. Although contradictory on many levels, these two interpretations of stewardship might overlap, because the steward had always been a powerful figure within the household, even if he was a mere slave within Roman society at large. STEWARDSH IP IN ANCIENT H OUSEH OLDS AND TH E BIBLE

Stewardship was neither uniquely Christian nor specifically late antique. The Greek oikonomia, which in certain contexts meant “stewardship,” was often rendered in Latin as dispensatio, a word that connoted ordering, administration, or even distribution, and was closely associated with wealth management.5 Stewards were typically the householder’s most trustworthy servants, doing everything from supervising day-to-day agricultural activities to administering household accounts and conducting business deals. The stewards’ highly sensitive roles in the oversight of domestic properties and finances afforded them high status and relatively extensive powers within the household.6 This was despite the fact that, in the classical period at least, most were slaves or freedmen. In late antiquity, stewardship remained an important form of domestic labor and oversight, although it ceased to be performed largely by slaves.7 Thus when late antique moralists fashioned the earthly householder as a dispensator, they imagined a domestic agent who was probably not a slave, who legitimately wielded power within a domus but who was always subject to the will of a dominus. Nevertheless, for Christians accustomed to governing their domus as the recognized possessors of lands and people, the stewardship of the Scriptures did not neatly map onto their social experiences. Passages in the Hebrew Bible present the physical world not simply as God’s creation but as his property.8 According to Leviticus, “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants [Vulgate: coloni]. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.”9 God, 5 6

7 8 9

Meyer 1998: 35–36. See also TLL V.I, s.v. “dispensatio,” II.A.1. In Roman comedy and moral philosophy, the steward was often associated with tyranny and the abuse of power. See Harrill 2006: 104–5. Chapter 1. Cf. Gen. 24; Ex. 3: 7–10; Duet. 15: 4, 19:10, 25:19–26:1; and Ps. 37. Lev. 25: 23–24.

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the Bible taught, had given humans his worldly properties temporarily to oversee and cultivate so that they would flourish. Gospel parables similarly characterize God as the householder and invite readers to identify with the Lord’s stewards. In Luke 12:41–48 (cf. Matthew 24:45–51), good and bad stewards administer their master’s home during his absence: “Who then is the faithful and wise steward (Vulgate: dispensator), whom the master (dominus) will set over his household of slaves (suam familiam) to give them their portion of food at the proper time?”10 Emphasizing the steward’s domestic importance, the parable concludes with a harrowing moral. When the lord returns unannounced, he will hold his stewards accountable for their administration. Here the Gospels accurately reflect Greco-Roman legal practice. Slave-stewards had to present their master with a reckoning of their administration, especially of their householder’s finances, as a prerequisite for manumission.11 In the parable, the good steward who worked in anticipation of his householder’s return is blessed with expanded responsibilities. But the wicked steward, who used his master’s absence as an excuse to abuse his power over other slaves and deplete his master’s wealth, receives a severe beating.12 Later New Testament sources similarly invite readers to identify with the steward, although in a manner that defined his authority more concretely. The so-called Haustafeln (“Household Codes”), which some argue were modeled on Hellenistic treatises peri oikonomias, simultaneously depict the householder as a man having power over others and as a slave of God.13 Passages such as Colossians 3:18–4:2, Ephesians 5:22–6:9, and First Peter 2:18–3:7 present blueprints for an ideal ordering of the household according to Greco-Roman hierarchies (i.e., husband-wife, father-child, master-slave) and a highly traditional ethic of reciprocity.14 The “Household Codes” exhort husbands, wives, children, and slaves to accept and perfect their positions within the household. In this respect, 10 11

12

13

14

Lk 12:42. On slave accounting prior to manumission: Dig. 21.2.69.4, 35.1.82 and 40.4.22, discussed in Buckland 1908: 494–96 and Bradley 1994: 161. Cf. Mk 13:34–37 for God as an absentee landowner, who will return unannounced and whose slaves must always be prepared for a reckoning of their work; and Mt. 25:14– 34, the parable of the talents, wherein the master rewards stewards who maintain or increase wealth entrusted to them. Balch 1988: 25–50 and Balch and Osiek 1998: 182–83. Alternatively, Harrill 2006: 94–97 argues that New Testament sources simply reflect pervasive social constructions of the domestic order and do not reinterpret any particular Hellenistic text. Balch 1981 and 1988; Balch and Osiek 1998.

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they affirm the householder’s traditional exercise of domestic authority by establishing order in the home. As J. Albert Harrill recently observed, however, the codes simultaneously assert an alternative asymmetrical relationship, wherein God is the ultimate Householder and the earthly husband-father-lord is his slave-steward.15 For example, in the letter to the Ephesians, fathers must raise their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord,” and although slaves should obey their earthly masters, earthly masters should “do the same to them, and forbear threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.”16 Elsewhere in the New Testament this recalibrated model of household management is applied to the administration of earthly possessions. “Practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another,” wrote the author of First Peter. “As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards (kaloi oikonomoi; Vulgate: boni dispensatores) of God’s varied grace. . . . ”17 Th e Reception and Remaking of Stewardsh ip in Late Roman Ch ristian Th ough t

Biblical discussions of domestic management as stewardship in the Roman social sense of the term profoundly affected subsequent generations of Christian thinkers. The Bible was, after all, a primary subject of Christian study and homiletic presentation in late antiquity, even if it was also a collection of texts that had been extensively mediated by Greco-Roman culture and social practice. Scholars have long noted that patristic writers reiterated the biblical assertion that all property ultimately belonged to God and that earthly householders were overseers and not owners.18 “Everything belongs to God,” wrote Ambrose (c. 337–397) in a commentary on Second Corinthians, “both the seeds and the seedlings that grow at his nod, and are multiplied for the use of mankind. It is God, therefore, who gives these things and he himself who orders them 15 16 17 18

Harrill 2006: 85–117. Ephesians 5: 21–6: 9. Cf. 1 Peter 2: 16–3: 7 and Colossians 3: 18–4: 1. 1 Peter 4: 9–10. Viner 1978: 1–45; Avila 1983: 47–80; Meyer 1998: 96–160; Karayiannis and Drakopoulou Dodd 1998: 163–208; and Cooper 2007b: 177–78. Carrié 2007: 24 also notes this idea’s ubiquity, although he describes man’s earthly relationship to the property as a form of “usufruct.”

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to be shared with those who need them. . . . ”19 Most early Christian thinkers thus did not categorically reject private property.20 They instead emphasized the importance of using private property, which belonged to God, to achieve appropriate ends. The emphasis on the proper use of property returns us to the ethics of household management. How could an elite householder be a steward in a society in which property holding remained the basis of a man’s domestic powers? What did these intellectual shifts imply for oikonomia as a discourse of elite masculine authority? Sometimes it implied nothing at all. In many texts, stewardship functioned as a metaphor for the “administration” of Christian principles or doctrine and thus had little to do with actual domestic government. As Ulrich Meyer observes, the Christian translation of oikonomia from a discourse based on ownership to one tantamount to stewardship was often allegorized and thus robbed of its more chilling implications for the exercise of earthly authority in the home.21 Consider Jerome’s letter to the Gallic matrona Algasia, in which he interpreted the Gospel parable of the dishonest steward.22 In the letter, Jerome referred directly to Xenophon’s Oikonomikos (or rather, to Cicero’s Latin translation of it) and drew a technical distinction between the domain of the Roman vilicus (a single farm) and that of the Greek oikonomos (the administration of the entire household writ large, dispensationem universae domus).23 However, despite Jerome’s discussion of stewardship as a social practice (the letter provides rare insight into different forms of late Roman stewardship), he nevertheless used the parable to make a doctrinal point about Paul and the law. Paul, he explained, was the ultimate steward of God’s house (on the Greek model), who correctly administered the law to the Gentiles and to the Jews.24

19

20

21 22 23

24

Ambrose, Comm. 2 Cor. 9.10–11 (PL 17: 313–14): Omnia dei sunt, et semina et nascentia dei nutu crescunt, et multiplicantur ad usus hominum: deus ergo quae dat, ipse et iubet de his communicari eis, qui indigent. Avila 1983: 85–98 and Karayiannis and Drakopoulou Dodd 1998: 195–97. Some also idealized communal property as part of a prelapsarian state or apostolic community. See Swift 1979 and Ganz 1995. Meyer 1998: 71–79; Toneatto 2006; and Carrié 2007: 19–20. Jerome, Ep. 121.6, discussed in Meyer 1998: 71–82 and 96–99. Jerome, Ep. 121.6.6–9 (CSEL 56: 22–23). As Meyer notes, Xenophon made no such distinction. Jerome might have cited a qualification in Cicero’s now lost translation. Jerome’s own interpretation was itself based on an exegesis of the passage by Theophilus of Alexandria (d. 412), with whom Jerome frequently corresponded.

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Delimiting th e H ouseh older’s Auth ority: Stewardsh ip as Subordination

The idea that a man’s subordinate position in the cosmic order affected his earthly rule as the dominus of a household was not utterly lost on late Roman thinkers, including Jerome. Christian discussions of estate management as stewardship typically used a very concrete social vocabulary, which rooted the relationship between earthly steward and divine householder in the domestic sphere.25 Jerome chose the Latin dispensator to denote the steward in his translations of Luke 12:41–48 and First Peter. He likely preferred dispensator to other possibilities (e.g., vilicus, procurator, agens) because the dispensator was among the householder’s most trusted slaves, whose domain, the finances of the entire domus, was central to estate administration. Similarly, in his translation of the passage from Leviticus cited previously, Jerome used colonus to designate the “tenant” who oversees God’s property in his absence.26 Although slavery and tenancy were not interchangeable, the dispensator and the colonus occupied relatively low positions within society writ large. Both also had asymmetrical relations with their owner/landlord, regardless of their precise legal status. In fact, Jerome was quick to indicate that the good paterfamilias was actually a slavish steward, who must recognize the Lord’s mastery over his earthly wealth and administration. “Your possessions are no longer your own but a stewardship entrusted to you (dispensatio tibi credita est),” he reminded the wealthy householder-bishop Paulinus of Nola (354– 431).27 Christian writers within and beyond Italy were equally at home with defining God as a householder.28 Preaching to a late sixth-century audience, Rome’s bishop Gregory denoted God as both dominus and paterfamilias: “Who can we better take to be the paterfamilias than our Creator, who rules over those he created, and governs his elect in the world in the same way as a dominus does those subject to him in his house?”29 By explicitly depicting God as a slave master and head of the 25 26

27 28 29

Meyer 1998: 33–34. Salvian of Marseilles also used tenancy as a metaphor to describe the earthly householder’s relationship to his property. See Cooper 2007c: 178. Jerome, Ep. 58.7. De Bruyn 1999: 256–58. Gregory, HEv. 19.1 (CC 141: 143): Quis vero patrisfamilias similitudinem rectius tenet quam conditor noster, qui regit quos condidit, et electos suos sic in hoc mundo possidet, quasi subiectos dominus in domo? Cf. Gregory, HEv 36.2 (CC 141: 334) where God is the summus paterfamilias. Obviously dominus (“lord”) was a common

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house, Gregory reinforced the overlap between the cosmic hierarchy and everyday life. A distinctly biblical “social realist” hermeneutics of stewardship particularly resonated with Christian thinkers in Rome and Italy. Jerome’s contemporary, the late fourth-century Roman writer (and perhaps priest) known as Ambrosiaster, explored the social implications of man’s subordinate status in a discussion of slavery. In many late Roman Christian readings of slavery, man’s enslavement could be interpreted on three different levels: as a fact of life (what Peter Garnsey calls “legal slavery”); as a moral state, in the sense that one is enslaved to the passions or sin; and as an act of free will that defined the Christian, since Christians willingly subjugate themselves as slaves to Christ.30 However, while church fathers typically distinguished the allegorical notion of universal spiritual enslavement from the concrete social institution, Ambrosiaster denied any neat separation. In his commentary on Colossians, Ambrosiaster explicitly delimited the authority of earthly slave owners by referring to them as quasi domini.31 In his opinion, a master’s domination of slaves was incomplete, because God alone exercised absolute authority over all bodies and souls: “Thus [God] shows that they are not true masters, but only like an image; for they are masters of bodies and not of souls. For only the Lord and invisible author of things, God, is as much master of bodies as of souls. . . . ”32 In the hands of Roman bishops, such delimitations of domestic authority had even greater potential impact. A model that underlined God’s dominion and the householder’s subordinated administration was highly relevant to the formulation of ideal lay conduct within the church and thus could be relevant to individual salvation. For example, Leo frequently enjoined his congregation to give to the poor.33 In one sermon delivered in 444, he framed his request in terms of stewardship. Just as spiritual riches are gifts from God, so are “earthly and material

30 31 32

33

epithet for God and did not necessary link him to the earthly figure. But Gregory’s use of it alongside paterfamilias was clearly intended to invoke its sociolegal meaning. Garnsey 1996: 1–22. Lunn-Rockliffe 2007: 104–5. I thank the author for pointing this detail out to me. Ambrosiaster, Ad Col. 4:1.3 (CSEL 81.3: 202): ostendit ergo dominis, quia non vere sunt domini, sed quasi per imaginem; corporem enim, non animorum sunt domini. Solus enim dominus et auctor rerum invisibilis deus tam corporibus quam animis dominatur. . . . Of Leo’s ninety-six extant sermons, forty deal with charity and almsgiving. See Finn 2006: 147–59 and Neil 2007.

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possessions” part of his largess.34 Leo explained that God “may justly seek an account of those things which he has not so much handed down for their possession, than he committed for their stewarding (dispensanda).”35 The earthly steward of God’s possessions must be “benevolent and generous” (benivolis et largis) and must not squander or hoard, “so that the material for good work should not become an occasion of sin.”36 In many ways, Leo’s presentation of wealth management followed classical lines: wealth was a means, not an end, and should be administered by solicitous attention to investment and growth. Leo thus evaluated the householder’s performance of estate management according to axiomatic principles, whereby the practice of oikonomia indicated the moral character of the paterfamilias. Nevertheless, the stakes of good and bad oikonomia had changed. At risk was not only a householder’s public reputation, but also his spiritual health and future. In Leo’s view, a householder who failed to recognize his subordinate status and steward God’s gifts in the proper fashion faced grave consequences, because poor administration was tantamount to sin. As in the Lukan parable, Leo’s God the Householder demands an accounting from his stewards, just as earthly masters did from slaves entrusted with domestic authority over finances and labor – an analogy so carefully drawn in Leo’s sermon that no late Roman householder could have missed it. Concluding with an agricultural metaphor that likened Judgment Day to the harvest, Leo explained how one’s salvation rested on his proper cultivation of God’s property: “And the present, therefore, is the time for sowing, and the moment of retribution is the time of the harvest, when each one shall reap the fruit of his seeds according to the amount of his sowing.”37 For Leo, stewardship offered a solution to the perennial concern in ancient society with the householder’s proclivities to privilege selfinterest over the common good. By recasting oikonomia as a mode of dependent administration, the bishop might persuade a paterfamilias to 34 35

36

37

Leo, Sermon 10.1. Leo, Sermon 10.1 (CC 138: 40): ut merito rationem eorum quaesiturus sit, quae non magis possidenda tradidit, quam dispensanda commisit. Leo, Sermon 10.1 (CC 138: 40): Muneribus igitur dei iuste et sapienter utendum est, ne materia operis boni fiat causa peccati. Leo also proclaimed here and in other sermons that almsgiving (i.e., the proper use of God’s possession) might bring about the expiation of sin. Cf. Sermon 10.2 and 12.4 with Ramsey 1982: 241–47 and Green 2008: 82. Leo, Sermon 10.2 (CC 138: 43–44): Praesens itaque vita tempus est sationis, et retributionis tempus est messis, quando unusquisque seminum fructum secundum sationis suae percipiet quantitatem.

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put the needs of the community before those of his own household. In so doing, however, Leo helped to redefine the social ordering of the domestic sphere, at least from a cosmic perspective. When authorities such as Jerome, Ambrosiaster, Leo, and Gregory proclaimed that the earthly householder was not an owner of property and people, but a slavish administrator of goods and souls all ultimately beholden to God, they demoted the householder. To be sure, this was hardly the first time in Roman history that the householder’s domestic power and influence were delimited. The paterfamilias had always been subjected to manifold forms of supervision.38 In a sense, all that Christian moralists did in making the earthly paterfamilias a slavish steward of God is to add another layer of oversight. An extra rung in the domestic hierarchy did not necessarily translate into expanded episcopal influence over the household, however. Accentuating Oikonomia : Stewardsh ip as Responsibility and Salvation

This mitigated view of domestic authority coexisted with an interpretation that amplified the householder’s religious and ethical responsibilities within the home. Many of the authors cited previously also underscored the householder’s duty to ensure the spiritual well-being of all men and women associated with his domus. A model of oikonomia grounded in stewardship thus accentuated a householder’s authority, by emphasizing his obligation to govern his domus’ religious life. As stated, stewards were also men-in-power, placed in positions of authority over others and in many cases entrusted with overseeing their master’s material wealth, even if they were slaves and their legitimacy to dominate and direct others was always circumscribed. Traditional Expectations of the Householder’s Ethical and Religious Oversight Of course, householders – and not stewards – had traditionally shouldered the responsibility for inculcating good behavior within their dom¯us. Aulus Gellius reasoned that children must always obey their fathers in matters that were “in themselves neither honorable nor base, but are to be approved or disapproved exactly according to the manner in which 38

Introduction.

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we perform them . . . .”39 With their ethical expertise, householders traditionally were also vested with an informal juridical authority. During the early empire, householders privately settled certain issues involving family members within the context of domestic councils.40 To what extent domestic councils persisted in the late Roman period is unclear (our evidence for them largely fades after the early second century).41 Nevertheless, late antique domini were expected to manage their homes according to exacting ethical standards and to act as informal judges within their homes. The domestic sphere remained a legitimate and common context for the resolution of disputes, especially those involving family property, and civil authorities encouraged the dispensation of justice intra domum.42 Moreover, classical Roman householders also exercised a form of religious authority within the home. Cultivation of the family gods was perceived as essential to the continuity of the generations. According to Cicero, each paterfamilias was obliged to preserve the ancestral religious traditions handed down to him and to pass these along to his own children.43 The proprietary dimensions of domestic religion would suggest that the paterfamilias wielded considerable authority over the religious life of his home. Cato, Columella, and Pliny highlighted the paterfamilias’ superior religious authority by stressing the limited capacity of his vilicus/a to execute rites without permission, since, they presumed, the master must ultimately oversee his estate’s rites. Mostly, however, Roman authors did not define the parameters, precise duties, and implications of the householder’s domestic religious authority very carefully. Indeed, the clarity with which Roman legal sources delineated patria potestas and dominion stands in stark opposition to the opaque (and in Roman law, nonexistent) treatment of a householder’s domestic religious powers.44 This does not mean that religious knowledge and influence were not important components of classical oikonomia. In fact, the householder’s 39 40 41

42 43 44

Aulus Gellius, NA 2.7.11–13 (trans. Rolfe 1927: 147). See Volterra 1948; Treggiari 1991: 266–70; and especially Thomas 1990. Evans Grubbs 1995: 213–14. Further study is needed on the continued use of domestic consilia in late antiquity. One possible piece of evidence is CT 9.15.1 (= CJ 9.31.1), a decision issued by Valens and Valentinian in 365 that extended the right to discipline minors to elder family members. Evans Grubbs 2005; Harries 1999; and Humfress 2011. See the Introduction. Cicero, De leg. 2.27, 47–53. Bodel 2008: 261 and Bowes 2008: 42 judiciously acknowledge the presumptive nature of claims that householders directly oversaw all religious choices and practices in their domus.

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religious knowledge and influence might have been so well understood that systematic discussion was unnecessary. Nevertheless, the paucity of analyses and prescriptive statements in classical Roman literature that concretely defined the obligations and stakes of the householder’s religious oversight contrasts sharply with the spotlight placed on them in Christian and other late Roman sources. Stewardship as Intensive Religious and Ethical Oversight Christian and other late Roman sources emphasized the householder’s religious and ethical authority to an extent and in contexts unseen in classical texts. Authors not only yoked these two domains of household management (similar to the Jews, Christians did not readily distinguish ethical conduct from religious belief ). They also framed their administration in a new fashion. Failure to oversee his domus’ ethics and rites came to have concretely defined consequences both here and in the hereafter. Two very early Roman Christian sources, First Clement (ca. 90) and the Shepherd of Hermas (ca. 100–150), envision the householder as the primary ethical and spiritual authority in the home, who holds ultimate responsibility for all errors committed by dependents. The Shepherd of Hermas emphasizes that the salvation of Hermas’ entire household hinges on his personal authority to uphold God’s commandments in his home: “Now I say to you [Hermas], if you do not keep [the commandments], but neglect them, you will not have salvation, neither you nor your children nor your household.”45 Similarly, according to the writer(s) of First Clement, those householders who fail to inculcate the proper moral precepts (e.g., affection for God over others, humility, and obedience), face bodily and/or spiritual death.46 Late Roman emperors also accentuated and defined the householder’s ethical and religious influence. Imperial legislation urged the paterfamilias to exercise his authority over domestic religion with particular solicitude. Numerous imperial laws issued in the later fourth and fifth centuries banned unorthodox practices and assemblies in urban homes and on the grounds of rural estates.47 For example, a law issued by Arcadius, 45 46 47

Shepherd, Mand. 12.3.6 (trans. Osiek 1998: 53). 1 Clement 1:3. For example, CT 16.5.3 (Valentinian and Valens at Trier, 372); 16.5.8 (Gratian, Valentinian and Theodosius at Constantinople, 381); 16.5.57.1 (Honorius and Theodosius at Constantinople, 415); 16.5.58.5 (Honorius and Theodosius at Constantinople, 415). See Bowes 2008: 191–96.

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Honorius, and Theodosius II at Rome in 407 and later included in the Justinianic Code singled out the dominus as ultimately responsible for all unorthodox practices carried out on his estates.48 Any dominus who knowingly permitted such groups to meet at his villas would find his property expropriated by the fisc. (Needless to say, the state did not envision householders as stewards.) If the dominus were ignorant of the meetings, his stewards (actores or procuratores) were deemed responsible and would be punished in a manner befitting their lower status (i.e., corporal punishment). Nevertheless, the householder would suffer from the actions of his dependents. Another provision in the ruling required intervention by local officials in such cases – an act that would publicize the crime committed by the householder’s agents.49 Thus even a dominus who was personally pious and unaware of illegal events on an estate lost his reputation as a bonus paterfamilias if his agents acted impiously. Finally, tenants (conductores) were also required to practice extreme vigilance over the people and property they governed.50 Among other things, this confirms that they too were deemed householders by the state and as such expected to maintain the orthodoxy of their dom¯us. These and similar laws on religion within the private household reflect a growing consensus among late Roman emperors that householders should bear the lion’s share of religious responsibility over their vast households. With biblical discussions of household management, these rulings attuned fifth- and sixth-century Christian authorities to the heightened importance of ritual and ethical oversight in the daily performance of oikonomia. In a sermon preached during the early fifth century, Maximus of Turin sternly reminded every landlord of his duties to ensure that his farm laborers (rustici) did not perform sacrifices on his property. “When an underling sacrifices,” Maximus declared, “he sins not merely in his own regard but also implicates his landlord who does not forbid him, and he certainly would not have sinned if he had forbidden him. . . . ”51 The landlord, he continued, would be contaminated were he to consume food cultivated by a sacrificing rusticus, and the devil would inhabit his entire estate were such rites performed.52 Maximus concluded the sermon by providing his householders with a physical description of the 48 49

50 51 52

CT 16.5.40.7. CT 16.5.40.8 explicitly refers to the provincial governor’s responsibility to try all reported crimes and mete out the appropriate penalties. Cf. CT 15.5.21 (at Constantinople, 392) and 16.5.54.5–6 (at Ravenna, 414). Maximus, Serm. 107.1 (CC 23: 420). (Trans. adapted from Ramsey 1989: 236). Maximus, Serm. 107.2.

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farmhand who was actually a soothsayer or devotee of Diana. He had long unkempt hair, bared breast, legs exposed beneath a mantle, and a long sword in the fashion of a gladiator. The bishop’s parting advice: Find such a man and immediately expel him from your property.53 In certain respects, Maximus’ discussion of idolatry on northern Italian estates recalls advice given by Cato and Columella, who expressly warned the dominus to take care that his slave stewards (vilici) did not perform illicit rites or permit unknown soothsayers on his property. Maximus, however, underlined the repercussions of a landlord’s religious laxity far more precisely than the classical agronomists.54 A householder who knowingly or unknowingly permitted dependents to perform sacrifices on his estates should expect the spiritual contamination of his property, the growth of dangerous crops that could not be consumed by a good Christian landlord, and Satan’s perpetual presence on the estate. Whether Maximus outlined these implications in light of the imperial edicts discussed previously or similar laws prohibiting pagan rites is difficult to know.55 The bishop, in contrast to the state, held the householders directly accountable regardless of their knowledge of the practices. Nevertheless, the sermon expresses an emerging Christian model of estate management, wherein householders were obliged to oversee the ritual activities of their dependents with novel care and concern. Failure to maintain orthopraxy on an estate was tantamount to its ruin. As we shall see, such a heavy-handed approach to lay household management was not favored by Rome’s bishops or by writers who addressed individual Italian patresfamilias of especially high status. Nevertheless, they shared Maximus’ assumptions that household management involved an especially fastidious oversight of ethics and religious practices, and that its proper exercise had spiritual implications.56 For example, the anonymous author of the Epistula ad Demetriadem de vera humilitate, attributed by some to Prosper of Aquitaine and tentatively dated to 435, linked the 53

54

55

56

See also Maximus, Serm. 108, delivered the following Sunday. Here Maximus warned that even landlords residing in the city were responsible for religious activities occurring on their estates. Maximus also assumed that the householders in his audience managed their estates through tenancy. By contrast, the agronomists had envisaged a directly administered villa. Laws against soothsayers and pagan practices include CT 9.16.1–2 (Constantine and Licinius, 319) and 16.10.12 (lares and penates) and 16.10.12.1 (general sacrifices in the home), issued by Theodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius at Constantinople in 395. See Ambrosiaster, Comm. In ep. ad Ephesios 5.28, who held that husbands have a special responsibility to discipline their wives “so that they be religious and holy women.”

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stewardship of wealth to the ethical care of household members and their spiritual health.57 The letter was written for the Anician heiress Demetrias, a consul’s daughter and one of Italy’s most prominent householders.58 Demetrias was renowned for both her virginity (she was dedicated by her mother Anicia Juliana in 413) and her wealth, which she never fully renounced. Indeed, Demetrias stands among the “ascetic householders” discussed in the previous chapter. The author of the De vera humilitate offered advice on how she might combine these roles and stewardship oriented his response.59 According to the author, householders of means were expected to perform their stewardship in both a material and ethical manner. They must treat their possessions “exclusively as the goods of the poor, in a kind of stewardship (procuratione) for church use . . . in order that the Lord’s slave household may be supplied with what is necessary for food and clothing.”60 Simultaneously, the householders’ performance of procuratio involved preserving order and discipline within the domus. Householders, the author wrote, should be “seeing to it that in their own households all are cherished in kindness and controlled by good discipline under a just and holy management (sub iusto sanctoque moderamine). For the Apostle says, ‘If anyone does not take care of his relatives and especially of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:8)’.”61 The author’s invocation of this verse from First Timothy is significant. The biblical quote recapitulated the classical axiom that linked household management to morality and the public good. However, in this case, the axiom connoted something rather different for its author about the exercise of oikonomia. First, Demetrias’ administration is literally expressed as stewardship (procuratio) rather than as authority based on possession. She 57

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60

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On the dating and authorship of the De vera humilitate, see Krabbe 1965: 5–6. Recent discussions include Jacobs 2000; Cooper 2007b: 182–83; and Kurdock 2007: 214–23. Demetrias was also the subject of letters by Jerome, Augustine, and Pelagius. See Jacobs 2000 and Kurdock 2007. Kurdock 2007: 214–23 and Cooper 2007b: 181–84. Cooper also reads this letter as a discourse on stewardship, although she focuses on the treatment of material wealth and its implications for asceticism. De vera humilitate 5 (ed. and trans. Krabbe 1965: 158–59): qui possessionibus suis non aliter quem rebus pauperum praesunt et ecclesiasticae utilitati sub quaedam procuratione famulantur, elaborantes singuli pro suarum virium portione, ut ad victum atque vestium familiae Dei necessaria conferantur . . . De vera humilitate 5 (ed. and trans. Krabbe 1965: 159): et simul prospicientes ut in domibus ipsorum sub iusto sanctoque moderamine omnes et benignitas foveat et disciplina contineat; dicente apostolo: Si quis autem suorum et maxime domesticorum curam non habet, fidem negavit, et est infideli deterior.

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exercised a subordinated domestic authority, although one carrying significant powers within an earthly domus. Second, the householder’s very identity as a Christian is tied directly to her performance of household management. For this author, to be an elite Christian was to be a good procurator, a person of power and authority whose household contributed directly to church life. Conversely, the householder who failed in stewardship was “worse than an unbeliever” and should expect both public ridicule and perhaps even divine damnation. Preaching shortly after Demetrias ostensibly received this letter, Rome’s bishop Leo spoke pointedly about household management in terms of the paterfamilias’ religious and ritual obligations toward his dependents. In a sermon delivered during the 442 Lenten season, Leo declared that God’s mercy might be gained not only by almsgiving and fasting but also by the proper ethical management of the household. In addition to financial sacrifices, householders might win “honors or other crowns” if the following ethics were upheld in the home: If wantonness were repelled, if drunkenness were renounced and the carnal desire conquered by the laws of chastity . . . if, lastly, the conduct of masters and of slaves were so well ordered that the rule of the one is milder and the discipline of the other is more obedient. By this performance, dearly beloved, God’s mercy will be gained, and with the charge of sin wiped out, the most venerable Easter will be devoutly celebrated.62

For Leo, the obligations of Christian stewardship differed little from classical duties of household management. These obligations encompassed the moral discipline and education not only of the householder but also of his wife and slaves. The domestic virtues that Leo exhorted householders to embrace were in fact highly traditional: control over sexual passions through faithful marriages, sobriety, and the exercise of moderation in the master/slave relationship. The sermon also presented a distinct framework for evaluating their inculcation, however. Leo situated oikonomia within the celebration of Easter, the early church’s most holy festival of atonement and rebirth. In this respect, Leo’s Lenten homily of 62

Leo, Sermon 40.5a (CC 138A: 229–30): . . . si pellatur lascivia, si abdicetur ebrietas, et carnalis concupiscentia castitatis legibus edometur . . . si denique dominorum atque servorum tam ordinati mores sint, ut et illorum potestas mitior, et istorum sit disciplina devotior. Hac igitur observantia, dilectissimi, obtinebitur misericordia dei, et abolito peccato reatu, religiose venerandum pascha celebrabitur. (Trans. adapted from Feltoe 1895: 155–56).

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442 figuratively recast household management as a set of ritual practices that, when performed correctly during the Easter season, garnered God’s misericordia and potentially “wiped out” (abolitum) the householder’s sin. In Leo’s mind, the domestic sphere was linked to the church’s liturgical rhythms, and its cultivation was a veritable penitential performance that might bring about the expiation of sin and hence prepare the domus for future glory.63 As he remarked in a later Lenten sermon, “And what is more suitable to the Christian faith than that there should be a forgiveness of sins, not only in the church but also in the homes of all men?”64 For Leo, the householder shouldered an enormous responsibility in his ethical oversight, for his family’s salvation rested on his ability to govern their behavior. Leo, however, did not overlook the implications of good stewardship for the householder’s earthly authority. In the same sermon, he noted several acts of clementia typically performed by the emperors during Lent, such as the release of prisoners and the relaxation of debts. He then presented them to his audience as suitable exempla for the conduct of more ordinary domestic administrators. “Let Christian people, therefore, imitate their princes, and be incited to domestic gentleness by these royal examples. For it is not right that private laws should be severer than public laws.”65 Here, Leo both echoed and inverted sentiments voiced by classical theorists like Seneca in the De clementia, wherein the late Stoic thinker (and elite householder) used oikonomia as a discourse of authority for the young emperor Nero.66 Whereas Nero was exhorted to mimic the good paterfamilias in his exercise of imperial power, here Christian domini are encouraged to imitate the emperors. Leo’s analogy between imperial and domestic administration certainly has a long history, much of which was constructed by the emperors themselves. Nevertheless, it underscored the dual significance of stewardship for the Christian householder: it was a model of estate management that could elevate his 63

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Here I mean “everyday” penance and not the more formal liturgical rite that was also known in this period. See Rebillard 1994 and Uhalde 2007: 116–34. Leo, Sermon 49.5 (CC 138A: 289, dated to 457): Quid autem convenientius fidei christianae quam ut non solum in ecclesia, sed etiam in omnium domibus fiat remission peccatorum? Leo, Sermon 40.5a (CC 138A: 230–31): Imitentur ergo christiani populi principes suos, et ad domesticam indulgentiam regiis incitentur exemplis. Non enim fas est privatas leges austeriores esse quam publicas. Cf. Seneca, De clementia 1.14.2 and 1.18. I am not suggesting that Leo cited Seneca directly or even had the De clementia in mind when he wrote the sermon; I simply wish to underline the parallels between Leo’s thought and that of classical Romans.

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standing both within a public forum (i.e., to be more like the emperor) and secure his household’s spiritual health within the house of God. A similar reorientation of household management appears in the Ad Gregoriam in palatio, the late Roman conduct manual whose advice to the Christian matrona Gregoria opened this chapter. Although its authorship remains debated, it was ascribed early in its textual history to “Bishop John,” perhaps of Constantinople.67 Whether the author was a bishop (named John or otherwise) is unclear, but he certainly speaks to Gregoria with great spiritual authority. As did Leo and the author of the De vera humilitate, the author highlighted the duty of lay Christians to follow God’s commandments in the home, which are expressed as tasks of household management.68 Especially interesting, however, is his assumption that all figures of power within a household, including a wife with a living husband (the situation imagined in the Ad Gregoriam), must embrace stewardship and undertake its ethical obligations. For example, one chapter narrates a comical anecdote about a Christian couple from Palestine, whose bickering had escalated into their pelting each other with loaves of bread.69 After a counseling session with a bishop, the couple asked him to bestow penance on them. Instead of telling Gregoria to follow suit when faced with marital troubles, however, the author exhorted her to stoically endure marriage and her husband’s anger and sexual demands. In so doing, he explained, she performed a daily sacrifice that constituted her wifely contribution to the ordering of the Christian home.70 As a domina, Gregoria was also urged to “keep [God’s] commandments” in the treatment of her slaves. In the passage cited at the beginning of the chapter, the author reminded Gregoria of her duty as mistress to provide for her slaves’ material needs and to avoid using overly harsh discipline. Gregoria is told that she will have to render an account of her actions as a domina at a tribunal presided over by God. In this particular instance, the author of the Ad Gregoriam might have engaged in a double entendre, since both masters and stewards were expected to “render an account” of their management. Under Roman 67

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69 70

On its authorship, dating, and provenance, see Cooper 1996: 108–11 and 2007: 44–45. In some manuscripts, the text is attributed to John Chrysostom. Another strand of scholarship originating with the editorial work of Dom Morin associated the text with Arnobius the Younger. For the gendered implications of the text, see Cooper 1992: 108–11, 119–43 and 2007: 44–55 and passim. Ad Gregoriam in palatio 8. Cooper 1992: 116–43 and 2007: 183–98.

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law, masters were legally obligated for any delicts committed by their slaves and hence could be summoned to answer for their administration in court.71 Alternatively, slave-stewards were also required to present a reckoning of their household business before manumission. In other words, Gregoria’s accounting before God reflected both her spiritual status as a slave-steward and her traditional social role as a domina. The enormity of Gregoria’s double responsibility as both earthly domina and God’s steward is further emphasized in the final sentence of the passage: she is responsible for her own salvation and that of those placed by the Lord in her care.72 No one understood the implications of this recasting of oikonomia better than Gregory, Rome’s bishop from 590 to 604. In one particularly arresting passage in the Liber regulae pastoralis, Gregory’s “handbook” on pastoral preaching for clergy (although a treatise on authority in its own right), he discussed the proper means of admonishing subordinates (subditi) and those in power (praelati).73 Using the father/son relationship as his working metaphor, Gregory claimed that praelati, like fathers, shoulder the more onerous burden because they must simultaneously correct themselves and their “children,” that is, those in their power. Preachers, he explained, should encourage all men-in-power to become like heavenly creatures in their circumspection “full of eyes within and round about (Ezek. 1:18; Rev. 4:6) . . . so that they are both eager to please the internal judge within themselves and, while offering externally examples of life, they also detect those things that must be corrected in others.”74 For Gregory, domination was a terrifying exercise in both self-control and spiritual discipline. Above all, it was a matter of watchfulness – both of others and of the self.75 Here Gregory vividly invoked both Ezekiel’s description of the four winged cherubim, who guard God’s throne, and the four living creatures of Revelations 4:6, who flank the Lord’s celestial seat, underlining their extraordinary powers of vision as creatures who 71 72

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For Roman laws governing noxal liabilities, see Buckland 1908: 599–603. See Cooper 2007: 122–34, who emphasizes this point and examines possible connections between the depiction of domestic slavery in the Ad Gregoriam and specific issues regarding slaveholding in late Roman law. Gregory, RP 3.4. Gregory, RP 3.4 (ed. Judic 1992: 278–80): caeli animalia in circuitu et intus oculis plena . . . ut cuncti qui praesunt intus atque in circuitu oculos habeant, quatinus et interno iudici in semetipsis placere studeant, et exempla vitae exterius praebentes, ea etiam quae in aliis sunt corrigenda deprehendant. Watchfulness was a topos in Gregory’s thought. See Leyser 2000: 160–63.

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are “full of eyes within and round about.” Such an image emblematized the double watchfulness that men with power over subordinates should constantly maintain. Whereas others emphasized the father’s role as a moral exemplum in the home and household governance as an index of his character, late Roman Italian moralists conceived domestic authority as a form of penetrating vision, trained simultaneously on others and within one’s own heart and soul.76 Gregory too expounded on the day of reckoning, when God would demand an account from all householders of their actions. He discussed this moment in his ninth homily on the Gospels, a sermon presumably delivered before a Roman audience sometime between 590 and 592.77 Here he offered an extended reading of Matthew 25:14–30, the parable of the talents. The parable describes a master who distributes three different sums to three different slaves (denoted as servi both in the biblical text and Gregory’s exegesis) before leaving the household. On his return, he demands a reckoning of the sums: the slaves who invested their master’s money and increased it were rewarded; the one slave who simply dug a hole and buried his money was rebuked. In the sermon, Gregory honed in on the master’s return. Expressly likening the master to God and thus his congregants to the servi, Gregory proclaimed that, “[t]he dominus who dispensed the talents returns to demand an account, because he who now generously bestows spiritual gifts makes a rigorous examination of merits, and he takes into account what everyone has received, and weighs up the gain we bring back from his gifts.”78 Gregory’s use of a vivid, concrete language of financial oversight to describe final judgment underlines the extent to which he intended his words to fall heavily on the hearts and minds of Roman householders. Oikonomia was their discourse, and as a man of means himself, it was a system of ideas and practices that Gregory understood well. When read together, these texts show how the earthly exercise of household management became linked inextricably to religious goals 76

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Cf. Ad Gregoriam in palatio 18, where Gregoria is exhorted to be both her own witness and judge. Gregory, HEv. 9. On the date and possibility that a notary – and not Gregory – ´ delivered some of his homilies, see Etaix 1999: v-x. Gregory, HEv. 9.1 (CC 141: 60): Sed dominus, qui talenta contulit rationem positurum redit, quia is qui nunc pie spiritalia dona tribuit, districte in iudicio merita exquirit, quid quisque accepit considerat, et quod lucrum de acceptis reportet pensat. (Trans. adapted from Hurst 1990: 128).

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and cosmic ends. Householders have become stewards, mandated by God to oversee the behavior of their subordinates with great solicitude and to administer their resources with the aim of helping the poor. A householder’s failure or success in these endeavors would be evaluated not only by peers and imperial officials, but also at Judgment Day, when God scrutinized his or her exercise of household management. Moreover, while unquestionably subordinate to God within a cosmic hierarchy, a Christian householder-steward remained very much a figure of power within the domus. In this respect, he bore a striking resemblance to the flesh-and-blood dispensator who both lorded over others and served a lord. Despite, or perhaps because of, its humble associations, the language of oikonomia developed and employed by these authors retained its elitism and authority. For many late Roman Italian thinkers, stewardship was a defining mark of a more conservative brand of aristocratic Christianity, which valorized a middle ground between extreme ideals of ascetic renunciation and traditional norms of domesticity. It was also a potential path to salvation, because its proper exercise could expiate sin, as Leo and others proclaimed. In short, the recasting of oikonomia as stewardship did not fundamentally erode the discourse’s elite resonances. It remained a system of ideas and practices associated with the empire’s most powerful people and continued to function as a barometer of their moral worth on earth and presumably in heaven. TH E CH ALLENGES OF STEWARDSH IP IN AN OWNERSH IP SOCIETY

However self-evident this model of oikonomia might have sounded to some, it carried rather paradoxical implications for domestic authority. Stewardship never replaced dominion as the legal, social, and economic basis of domestic administration in late antiquity. Even the most pious Christian householders, who theoretically perceived themselves as the slave-stewards of God’s property, still conducted their affairs as holders of land and people. Late Roman Christian moralists were hardly unaware of this dissonance. In fact, they drew attention to the numerous problems that stewardship engendered for a Christian householder in an ownership society. “Remember Ananias and Sapphira who from fear of the future kept what was their own, and be careful for your part not rashly to squander what is Christ’s,” Jerome warned Paulinus in the letter cited previously. “Do not, that is, through poor judgment give the property of 83


the poor to those who are not poor, lest, as the wise man said, generosity be lost through generosity.”79 The householder-steward would need guidance in navigating the challenging terrain set before him, especially if he were a clergyman. For some, the problem with stewardship was not its social implications but the many opportunities it afforded to exploit the Lord’s resources. According to the anonymous author of De divitiis (“On Riches”), a treatise once attributed to Pelagius and now thought to have been penned by a Sicilian cleric in the mid-fifth century, stewardship was little more than a convenient fiction for householders who acquired wealth through dubious means.80 Consequently, the author advised Christians not to accumulate excess wealth for any reason, even to enrich their children, but to accrue and transmit to their heirs only the bare minimum needed for survival.81 An extreme form of autarky might provide a check on a steward’s potential misuse and misappropriation of God’s riches, and hence keep him from committing sin. Although more optimistic about the possibilities of stewardship in late Roman society, Gregory was also acutely aware of its potential pitfalls. He was especially attuned to the great difficulties householders faced when asked to trade their traditional identity as domini for the more humble, indeed humiliating, roles of servi and operarii (“workmen” as Gregory elsewhere denoted God’s earthly stewards in another sermon).82 For Gregory, it was crucial that householders understood the nature of and stakes in their new elite identities as slavish agents laboring in God’s domus. Elsewhere in the Liber regulae pastoralis, Gregory directed preachers to approach the earthly landowner qua steward by underlining his subordination to God. They must admonish householders “so that they acknowledge that the heavenly Lord established them as stewards (dispensatores) of temporal resources . . . And when they consider that they have been appointed for the service of those to whom they dispense what they have received, by no means let a swelling [from pride] elate their minds, but let fear repress it.”83 Like other Christian theorists of 79

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Jerome, Ep. 58.7 (CSEL 54: 537): id est, ne inmoderato iudicio rem pauperum tribuas non pauperibus et secundum dictum prudentissimi viri liberalitate liberalitas pereat. De divitiis 6.3. De divitiis 20.2–3. Gregory, HEv 19.2. Gregory, RP 3.20 (ed. Judic 1992: 382): . . . ut a celesti domino dispensatores se positos subsidiorum temporalium agnoscant; et tanto humiliter praebeant, quanto et aliena esse intellegunt quae dispensant. Cumque in illorum ministerio quibus accepta

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household administration, Gregory maintained that the earthly householder was not a dominus but a dispensator called on to manage his Lord’s property carefully and solicitously. Gregory also enumerated the distinct challenges of this role to the earthly householder. For Gregory, pride was the most troublesome side effect of successful stewardship, a position that reveals the bishop’s Augustinian heritage. But he also outlined additional “problem areas” for the Christian dispensator. His list included the following hazards: that they may err in determining how much, on whom, and on what to spend God’s wealth; that their investments on behalf of God could prove unprofitable; that they torment those who ask for help by delaying a response; that their duty to offer gifts is accompanied by unseemly moroseness; and most frightening of all, that they “attribute to themselves the virtue of their generosity.”84 Indeed Gregory understood better than most that the reformulation of oikonomia as a discourse of elite stewardship would present problems for householders. CONCLUSION

Classical discourses of household management not only remained relevant through the end of the sixth century; they flourished. In a period when other criteria of elite status were waning, this traditional ideological framework accrued ever more significance. As late as the early seventh century, oikonomia continued to offer elite Italians a system of ideas and practices on how to be “good gentlemen.” Oikonomia did not remain unchanged, however. This chapter describes two key developments in the late Roman conceptualization of household management: the privileging of stewardship over possession as the basis of domestic administration, and the assimilation of the householder’s traditional ethical authority to inculcate values and teach proper behavior with distinctly religious goals. In this respect, we may speak of an accentuation of the householder’s religious authority in the domus to a degree unknown to classical householders. The late antique householder and his subordinates (e.g., his wife) were charged not only with the onerous duty of shoring up their family’s earthly reputation but also with the responsibility of ensuring its salvation. To claim that the stakes were “higher” within the Christian exercise of oikonomia is injudicious, but it is surely

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largiuntur constitutos se esse considerant, nequaquam eorum mentes tumor sublevet, sed timor premat. Gregory, RP 3.20.

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correct to underline the differences between Leo and Gregory’s visions of household management and those articulated by earlier theorists, such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Plutarch. Material changes in the domestic economy and in the constitution of the household’s social order were connected to these shifts in religious thought and ethical perception. The shrinking horizons (and portfolios) of Italy’s elite landowners might have encouraged them to focus more intensely and personally on the resources that they still commanded: the men, women, and children who depended on their landlords’ property and protection and who provided the vital labor needed to drive production and pay rents. Patrocinium has typically been characterized as an abusive and authoritarian development in late Roman social relations. Like all social relationships, however, it was a reciprocal system that made demands on the householder as well. Anicia Demetrias, for instance, erected a church dedicated to the proto-martyr St. Stephen on a suburban estate that she owned on the Via Latina about three kilometers outside of Rome.85 Leo, bishop at the time, took an interest in her new building, but the evidence suggests that its control remained firmly in Demetrias’ hands during her lifetime.86 By all accounts, this and other “private churches” that dotted Italy’s cities and countryside were extraordinarily complex institutions, especially in regards to their oversight.87 Nevertheless, their popularity among elite Italian householders suggests that some took the mandate of stewardship seriously and endeavored to provide a religious infrastructure for their dependents, many of who lived closer to the dominus than ever before. It is no coincidence that Roman bishops were among the primary architects of this particular (and for some, probably peculiar) model of household management. As we shall see, they too were both householders and stewards. To a greater extent than lay domini, Rome’s bishops grappled with the paradoxes and challenges that this combination of roles engendered. How a bishop could be a householder-steward and how he might exercise his domestic authority in relation to other men’s households are the fundamental questions examined in the chapters to come. 85 86

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An inscription records her foundation: ILCV I.1765. ILCV I.1765 states that Leo had assigned a local presbyter to serve Demetrias’ church after her death. See also LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 47). See Chapter 4.

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Chapter 3

Primus Cultor : Episcopal H ouseh olding in Th eory and Practice

n late antiquity, excellence in household management was

construed as a mark of holiness in a bishop. Nowhere is this axiom Imore apparent than in Gregory’s Dialogues, the late sixth-century bishop’s account of sanctity and the miraculous in contemporary Italy. In the Dialogues, we meet saints such as Boniface of Ferentino, who produced enough wine for the poor and the bishop’s household from a lean harvest of grapes picked from his church’s small vineyard.1 Boniface’s supernatural estate management evidently also included pest control. When the garden was infested with caterpillars, the bishop commanded the bugs to “stop eating these vegetables!” and they obeyed.2 Elsewhere, Gregory extolled Frigdianus of Lucca and Sabinus of Piacenza for redirecting the swollen rivers of their dioceses away from the church’s fields.3 The presence of episcopal householders in the Dialogues with ascetic superstars such as Benedict of Nursia and the bearded widow Galla was not accidental. For Gregory and his predecessors, acts of domestic administration could signal saintliness in a bishop. Roman bishops regarded the elite domus as a model of good government. To lead the church, they had to be seen as expert estate managers, men who could be trusted with the orderly and ethical oversight of property and people. The fact that bishops were religious leaders, men associated with heightened spiritual (even miraculous) authority, does not mean that they were not also masters of oikonomia. Household management offered prelates a system of ethical and practical knowledge applicable to the mundane tasks of running a major ecclesiastical 1 2 3

Gregory, Dial. 1.9.2–5. Gregory, Dial. 1.9.15. Gregory, Dial. 3.9.1–3, 10.2–3.

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institution and to the harder job of forging moral preeminence. Its historical significance equals (and perhaps even surpasses) more familiar paradigms of Roman episcopal authority, like Petrine primacy and apostolic succession. In late Roman Italy, Peter was not only the princeps apostolorum but also the primus cultor, God’s “first caretaker,” who solicitously cultivated the Lord’s lands and souls.4 TH E ROMAN BISH OP AS GOD’S CH IEF H OUSEH OLDER-STEWARD

An overseer (episkopos), wrote the author of First Timothy 3:5, “must manage his own household well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. For if anyone does not know how to manage his own family, then how can he care for God’s church?” In the same manner that contemporary writers such as Plutarch and Tacitus connected domestic management with the government of public life, this early second-century Christian author posited oikonomia as the primary ethical framework for assessing a bishop’s capacity to oversee the church. As we have seen, late Roman discussants of oikonomia recommended a revised model of domestic administration: it both recast the householder as a steward and underlined his religious oversight of the domus. Whereas lay householders were encouraged to embrace these new domestic ethics, Christian bishops were expected to perfect them. Oikonomia as a form of stewardship shaped how numerous Roman thinkers – and especially bishops – conceived the nature and practice of ecclesiastical leadership. Hippolytus on Callistus as the Inept Steward of the Church When Hippolytus (ca. 170–230) adopted oikonomia as a discourse of episcopal authority in the early third century, a single “orthodox” bishop ministered Rome’s Christians and his leadership over a centralized local church was recognized both within the city and abroad.5 Previously, each semi-independent Christian community had multiple leaders (sometimes called episkopoi), who were given administrative responsibilities, including financial duties.6 Although first and second-century texts emphasize the 4 5

6

Gregory, HEv. 31, discussed further below. La Piana 1925 dates the monarchical episcopate to the late second century, whereas Brent 1996 dates it to the early third. Jay 1981 and Lampe 2003: 359–412.

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Primus Cultor

Roman overseers’ roles in the collection and distribution of alms, the provisioning of hospitality, and the care of orphans and widows, none frames their charge in terms of stewardship or householding, or identifies the bishop with the paterfamilias.7 Significantly, Hippolytus employed the language of household management to describe the man who might have been Rome’s first monarchical bishop, Callistus (217–223).8 Callistus was Hippolytus’ great rival in the city, and the latter’s invocation of oikonomia appears as a mode of invective. His attack on Callistus’ leadership took the form of a moralizing critique of the bishop’s abilities to administer property and oversee his congregants’ behavior. According to Hippolytus, Callistus had been a household slave (oiket¯es) of a Christian imperial freedman, in whose name he established a banking business with deposits from other Christians in the community.9 Instead of monitoring the money carefully like a good steward, however, Callistus squandered it and tried to flee the city to escape his master and investors. Later, as bishop, Callistus’ administration proved more noxious still. In addition to permitting twice- and even thrice-married men to enter the clergy and already-ordained clerics to marry, Callistus allowed unmarried women to have sex with free and enslaved partners and to consider themselves “married” even to servile companions. Hippolytus even claimed that some women had abortions to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies by slaves or other socially inappropriate fathers.10 Hippolytus’ depiction of Callistus drew on classical conceptions of household management as an ethical framework for evaluating character and fitness to govern. The productive administration of property and the prudent discipline of dependents (especially their sexual behavior) were crucial domains of oikonomia that all householders should master. However, Hippolytus’ portrait of Callistus also reflects a new application of an emerging Christian paradigm of domestic administration sketched in the previous chapter. Here, financial stewardship and the householder’s ethical responsibilities are core criteria for assessing the legitimacy of 7

8 9 10

Lampe 2003: 399–400. I thus disagree with Jeffers 1991: 121–27, who argues that episcopal authority in late first- and second-century Rome was conceived in terms of paternalism and household management. Moreover, the distinctly paternalistic framework of episcopal authority developed by Ignatius of Antioch (cf. Eph. 5.2; Mag. 7.1; and Trall. 7.2) is significant but anomalous for the time. See Schöllgen 1988 contra Klauck 1981. It also had no influence on early Roman writers. Brent 1996. Hippolytus, Ref. ad haers. 9.12. Hippolytus also accused Callistus of doctrinal errors, like radical theological modalism and performing second baptisms.

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a bishop to lead. Hippolytus expressly likened Callistus to the bad stewards of the biblical parables, who were punished for squandering or hoarding, rather than increasing, their master’s wealth.11 He also built on assumptions about the householder’s duty to maintain moral order within the domus, in this case by guarding the social and sexual behavior of women in his charge. Moreover, he connected these assumptions to an ecclesiastical framework. Callistus, he asserted, had failed to maintain order within the church’s ranks by permitting ethically unqualified men (at least in Hippolytus’ opinion) to gain and hold clerical positions. It is significant that Hippolytus’ indignation was aimed not at Callistus’ servile background but at his moral negligence and ineptitude as a steward. The fact that Callistus might have actually been a slave-steward is probably no more than a coincidence. It did, however, give Hippolytus’ attacks rhetorical traction and might have encouraged him to forge broader connections between Callistus’ ecclesiastical leadership and his exercise of oikonomia. Post-Constantinian Developments: The Bishop of Rome as God’s Chief Householder-Steward Hippolytus’ portrait of Callistus is the earliest extant depiction of a Roman bishop in the guise of the householder-steward. Nevertheless, it adumbrates an emerging tradition in late Roman thought. From the later fourth century, Roman bishops and their supporters turned to oikonomia as a new and especially suitable discourse of episcopal authority. Ambrosiaster, the Roman exegete who was active at the time of Damasus (366–384), affirmed the relevance of oikonomia for defining episcopal authority and broadened its meaning. In his commentary on First Timothy 3:5, Ambrosiaster explained how the bishop who manages his own household correctly “will be judged suitable to become a rector. ‘For he who is trustworthy in small things, is also in great things (Lk 16.10)’.”12 By calling the bishop a rector, Ambrosiaster emphasized his civic face and public stature, since rector was a term for a man who leads and governs not only politically (i.e., the governor of a province) but also morally and judicially, as an authority who casts judgment on a 11 12

Cf. Lk 12: 41–48/Mt 24:45–51 and Mt 25: 14–30, both discussed in Chapter 2. Ad Tim. prima 3.5 (CSEL 81.3: 264): Manifestum est quia tunc potest idoneus rector futurus probari, si prius domum suam recte gubernaverit. Qui enim in minimis fidelis est, et in magnis [fidelis est].

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community.13 Ambrosiaster, however, also carefully contextualized the rector’s power and influence within the frame of stewardship. The Lukan tag in the passage derives from the parable of the so-called dishonest steward, the slave-steward (Vulgate: vilicus) who shortchanged his master, although ultimately to his master’s advantage, and who is consequently commended for prudence in using the things of this world to secure a better future.14 Ambrosiaster’s rector was thus also an expert steward, who demonstrated his capacity to lead through his excellence in administering God’s house. “Although the entire world belongs to God,” Ambrosiaster concluded, “the church may nevertheless be called His house, whose rector is presently Damasus.”15 As Ambrosiaster’s discussion suggests, Roman authors, and especially Roman bishops, articulated episcopal authority through ideas and idioms that resonated with broader developments in household management discussed in the previous chapter. However, their adaption of oikonomia as an episcopal discourse also required careful revision. If an elite model of divinely mandated stewardship and religious oversight in the home were recommended for all householders, then Rome’s bishops would have to develop their own distinct brand of domestic expertise. They accomplished this task through four principal strategies: by emphasizing their asceticism in domestic practices, by underlining the uniquely expansive remit of their moral and juridical authority to “render an account” for the whole of the domus dei, by foregrounding their embodiment of the political and social paradoxes that stewardship engendered for householders, and by claiming to be exceptional guardians of the church’s material possessions. Bishops as “Ascetic Householders” The embrace of celibate marriage (or virginity) constituted one obvious and important way in which the clergy might distinguish their stewardship from other domini-dispensatores. As David Hunter has shown, the adaption of ascetic principles to Roman clerical discipline was 13

14 15

For rector as moral authority and judge, see Cicero, De re publica 2.29.51, 5.4.6 and Ecclesiasticus 10.1–4; 23–24. Damasus used rector as a term for a bishop in his inscribed poems on Roman martyrs (cf. Epigrammata 99, 117, 124). Whether Ambrosiaster chose the epithet because Damasus favored it warrants further study. Lk 16: 1–13. Ad Tim. prima 3.15.1 (CSEL 81.3: 270): ut cum totus mundus dei sit, ecclesia tamen domus eius dicatur, cuius hodie rector est Damasus.

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motivated partly by the need to compete with other contemporary spiritual authorities, some of whom had renounced marriage and sexual activity altogether.16 Beginning in the later fourth century, although existing as an ideal since at least the early third (cf. Hippolytus’ comments on twice- and thrice-married clerics), higher clergymen (i.e., bishops, priests, and deacons) in Rome and Italy were expected to perfect old and new ethics of married life.17 Any man aspiring to the upper grades of the clergy could have only one wife (and she only one husband), and all had to forgo all sexual relations following ordination. For example, in his commentary on First Timothy, in which Ambrosiaster emphasized the importance of stewardship as a foundation for the bishop’s government of the church, he also presented an early defense of clerical celibacy.18 Roman bishops were expected to demonstrate their asceticism in other areas of domestic life as well. All householders had to act as hosts, inviting friends, colleagues, and clients for meals and other leisure activities. Bishops were no exception. Providing hospitality to Christians in need was a mark of excellence in a bishop.19 Hospitality, however, was among the more perilous ethical minefields that Roman bishops navigated in their guise as householder-stewards. We must assume that Rome’s prelates routinely entertained the privileged and were frequently invited to dine with them. When participating in such quotidian social situations, they had to strike a balance between studied graciousness and radical selfdenial. Bishops therefore were expected to avoid certain dining and entertainment rituals that might compromise their reputations as men of exemplary self-control. For example, in a short encomium of Gelasius (492–496), the early sixth-century monk Dionysus Exiguus praised the Roman bishop for his habit of eschewing “slothful leisure” (desidioso otio) and inappropriately luxurious dinner parties.20 According to Dionysius, Gelasius was the perfect abstemious host, who somberly discouraged sumptuous convivia and likened such practices to physical and moral disease. An excessively grand and boisterous dinner party thrown by a bishop violated ethical and even financial principles. In 559, Pelagius I (556–561) rebuked the bishop of Syracuse and his priests for misusing 16 17 18 19

20

Hunter 1987 and 1999. A fuller discussion of clerical marriage appears in Chapter 5. Ambrosiaster, Ad Tim. prima 3:12–13, discussed in Hunter 1999: 145–52. Cf. Passio S. Pancratii 2, in which the late third-century bishop Gaius welcomes Pancratius and his uncle Dionysius, two Christian refugees from Phrygia, into his house on the Caelian Hill. Dionysius Exiguus (PL 67: 232).

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church funds to pay for prandia enormia.21 Similarly, in a 592 letter to Natalis of Salona, Gregory sternly reminded the Dalmatian bishop that banquets should be held for the sake of charity, not for the purpose of engaging in malicious gossip or debating secular affairs.22 “Rendering Accounts” for Earthly Members of the Domus Dei Fortunately, a chaste marriage and ascetic table were not the only practices that might separate the episcopal householder-steward from other experts. While other householders might have overseen expansive multipropertied estates, Rome’s bishops claimed to be the watchmen and stewards of all households within the domus dei. A radically inclusive understanding of stewardship appears frequently in the writings of the mid-fifth-century Roman bishop, Leo, especially in letters and sermons addressed to other bishops. In a letter written in 446 to the bishops of Mauritania Caesariensis, Leo reminded his fellow prelates that they were responsible for any disorder in the “Lord’s Household” (in domini domo) which arose from their ordination of inappropriate men to the episcopate.23 In several sermons, he also expressly characterized bishops as the dispensatores of alms.24 Leo’s most definitive discussion of episcopal authority as a form of elevated and singular stewardship appears in a sermon celebrating the anniversary of his consecration. In 445, before an audience that included visiting Italian clergy, he discussed the bishops’ responsibility as pastores to “render an account” (reddituros rationem) of their congregants’ collective conduct.25 As mentioned previously, to “render an account” was a task widely associated with stewardship and the domestic sphere in late antiquity, and there is little doubt that Leo meant to associate the bishop precisely with these cultural referents. In using this precise wording, however, Leo almost certainly also meant to invoke Hebrews 13:17. In that passage, the exact phrase appears in relation to the religious leaders (Vulgate: praepositi) of the community, who are charged with “rendering an account” of their subjects’ conduct on Judgment Day. In the

21 22 23

24 25

Pelagius, Ep. 25. Gregory, Ep. 2.44. Cf. Pelagius, Ep. 25. Leo, Ep. 12.2. See also Gelasius, Ep. 14.26 (ed. Thiel 1868: 377) to the bishops of Lucania, Bruttium, and Sicily (ca. 494). Leo, Sermons 45.3 and 90.3. Leo, Sermon 5.2 (CC 138: 22–23): sciantque se pro commissis sibi ovibus reddituros esse rationem, nobis tamen cum omnibus cura communis est. . . .

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verse from Hebrews, the Christian denizens addressed in the treatise are told to obey (oboedite) and subject themselves (subiacete) to their praepositi because of their leaders’ unique authority to render a final reckoning of their behavior. Leo’s bishop, in other words, was simultaneously a slavesteward and a man-in-power responsible for an accounting of the entire Christian community. No lay householder-steward – except perhaps the emperor – could make a similar claim. That the emperor potentially challenged the bishop’s claim to a more expansive jurisdiction over the domus dei was not lost on Leo’s successor, Gelasius. In his famous letter Duo quippe sunt addressed to the emperor Anastasius in 494, Gelasius differentiated the emperor’s domain from that of bishops using the discourse of oikonomia.26 According to Gelasius, the auctoritas sacrata pontificum was the weightier and more onerous because it involved the “rendering of an account at divine judgment for these same kings of men.”27 In the letter, Gelasius too used the phrase rationem reddere with its juridical and domestic connotations and identified it as the exclusive burden of the bishop.28 In Gelasius’ view, it was precisely the bishop’s weightier “economic” responsibilities as the Lord’s steward and chief assessor of earthly conduct that distinguished his authority from other elites and placed him in a privileged position over emperors.29 Primus Cultor: The Paradoxical Authority of the Episcopal Householder-Steward Any late Roman confronted with the figure of the householder-steward would have been struck by the deeply paradoxical nature of this particular construct of estate management. Although stewards exercised power and authority in a limited sense, they were by definition subordinates, agents of another more significant lord. How most rationalized their repositioning within the cosmic order remains an open question. In the writings of

26 27

28 29

An observation first made by Nelson 1967. Gelasius, Ep. 12.2 (ed. Thiel 1868: 350): In quibus gravius est pondus sacerdotum, quanto etiam pro ipsis regibus hominum in divino reddituri sunt examine rationem. Nelson 1967 and Meyer 1998: 170, who also linked the passage to oikonomia. Alternatively, Nelson 1967 suggested that Gelasius meant to invoke the legal authority of the paterfamilias in this passage. No Roman bishop, however, expressly linked the householder’s (or bishop’s) expanding religious authority to the principle of noxal liabilities (wherein fathers/masters were legally responsible for the crimes of their slaves and sons), which Nelson argues lies behind Gelasius’ logic. Although Nelson’s interpretation is certainly possible, one that stresses the bishop’s role as steward is closer to the biblical and emerging patristic traditions.

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one Roman prelate, Gregory, this very ambivalence served as the foundation for the bishop’s unique and exemplary authority over other clergy and men.30 Gregory’s bishop is a cultor and an operarius (“workman”), two terms that he (and others) used to denote the episcopal agent who took care of God’s house.31 More concrete still, he is the Lord’s household slave. “I am the slave of the supreme paterfamilias” (servus enim sum summi patrisfamilias), Gregory proclaimed in a homily on the Gospel of Luke.32 At the same time, Gregory’s bishop was also a “ruler” (rex), a “superior” (praelatus), a “governor” (rector), and a member of the “order of leaders” (ordo praepositorum).33 He was, in other words, a man-in-power whom earthly circumstances placed over others. Gregory’s emphasis on the bishop’s subordination and dominance resonates with his general theory of authority. For Gregory, authority was inherently paradoxical; it was a burden that God placed on certain men that they must exercise with great humility.34 These ambivalences inspired Gregory to fashion an alternative apostolic paradigm for the episcopate. In a homily on the parable of the fig tree (Luke 13:6–13), Gregory posed a rhetorical question to his Roman audience: “What does the man who looked after the fig tree represent but the order of those who are in charge of others (praepositorum ordo)?” His next move in the sermon was both expected and highly significant. “While they preside over the church,” he explained, “they without question take care of the Lord’s vineyard. The apostle Peter was the first cultivator (primus cultor) of his vineyard. We, unworthy men, follow insofar as we labor to instruct you by teaching, intervening and rebuking.”35 To a certain extent, Gregory’s sermon reprises familiar themes. Gregory’s bishop is a cultor and a praepositus, a humble caretaker of the fields and a man-in-power over others, who 30

31

32 33 34 35

As discussed earlier, Ambrosiaster also underlined the paradox of the bishop as rector and steward. The fact that Gregory frequently invoked the rector in both his speculative and more pragmatic writings (see below) suggests a closer connection between the two Roman thinkers than has been acknowledged. Cultor: Gregory, HEv. 31.3 and operarius: HEv. 17 (CC 141: 271, 118). Cf. Leo, Ep. 4.2, for the bishop as a field laborer and Ennodius, Carm. 1.9.154–61 for Epifanius of Pavia as cultor of the Lord’s fields. Gregory, HEv. 36.2 on Lk 14: 16–24. Cf. RP 2.6–7 and HEv. 31.3, discussed in Markus 1997: 28–33. Mayvaert 1977: 5; Markus 1997: 30–1; Straw 1988; and especially Leyser 2000: 161–87. Gregory, HEv. 31.3 (CC 141: 271): Quid vero per cultorem ficulneae nisi praepositorum ordo exprimitur? Qui dum praesunt ecclesiae, nimirum dominicae vineae curam gerunt. Huius enim vineae primus cultor Petrus apostolus exstitit. Hunc nos indigni sequimur, in quantum pro eruditione vestra docendo, deprecando, increpando laboramus.

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bore the ominous duty of bringing a morally recalcitrant congregation to the threshold of the Lord’s kingdom. The allusion to Peter as the order’s founder and chief exemplum, however, suggests a program of distinction, which would differentiate bishops from others who might lay claim to this particular paradox. Although it is doubtful that Gregory intended his comments in this local sermon to carry weight in ecumenical debates over Roman primacy, he undoubtedly hoped that refashioning Peter as the primus cultor would inspire all bishops and clergy to carry out their unique but demanding mandate: to instruct, intercede, and reprove. “As often as we correct someone for his sin,” Gregory concluded, “it is as if we are digging around a barren tree, owing to it the proper care.”36 The Bishop as Trustful Steward of Material Possessions Finally and most controversially, Roman bishops claimed special expertise regarding the administration of material property, especially wealth donated to their church by elite members of their congregation. The management of property and movable items like liturgical vessels constituted a major component of the bishop’s quotidian domestic practice. It was also a distinct facet of his ideological claims to excellence as a householder-steward. For example, Gelasius emphasized that all clergy (including priests and deacons) must abide by the classical principles of oikonomia to increase, rather than diminish, the value of the properties with which they had been entrusted by their community.37 His successor Symmachus (498–514), when accused of violating this precise precept of household management, emphatically underlined his own trustworthiness as a steward of God, who was divinely appointed to oversee and protect his church’s wealth.38 Similarly, Gregory assuaged the anxieties of his most elite donors by reminding them that he was a good steward, who would have to “render [his] accounts before the fearful judge, not only for the wealth of S. Peter, but also for [their] possessions.”39 The suspicion that bishops might not be trustful stewards of ecclesiastical gifts was pervasive among late antique Italians. It evidently inspired

36

37 38 39

Gregory, HEv. 31.5 (CC 141: 272): Quoties ergo aliquem de peccato suo corripimus, quasi ex culturae debito circa infructuosam arborem fodimus. Gelasius, Ep. 15.2 (ed. Thiel 1868: 379–80). Acta syn. a. DII (sic) (MGH AA 12: 448). Gregory, Epp. 7.23, to the patricia Theoctista, the emperor Maurice’s sister. Cf. 7.25, to Theodore, an imperial physician in Constantinople, both dated to 597.

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writers of distinctly pro-episcopal texts to construct narratives of Roman bishops as outstanding overseers of material wealth. In one, the Liber Pontificalis, the fourth-century bishop Silvester (314-335) is portrayed as both a solicitous steward of church donations and a private householder who channels his own wealth to the church. According to his vita, Silvester not only baptized Constantine but also worked closely with the emperor to establish numerous imperial basilicas in the city, all of which were heavily endowed with extensive properties and valuable liturgical objects donated by members of the imperial family.40 In fact, the biography contains donation lists that scholars believe are authentic transcriptions of the original fourth-century records.41 The particular preservation and organization of this material in the vita was not simply a function of the writers’ antiquarian sensibilities. Rather, it reflected their interests in forging a particular model of episcopal authority. By presenting the donation lists in their original form and subsuming the foundations within the framework of Silvester’s tenure, the compilers constructed an image of an ordered domestic administration under the bishop of Rome. Silvester, they implied, had carefully and scrupulously maintained the donations as they were originally earmarked by the donor. Silvester thus emerges from his vita as the trustworthy guardian of Constantine’s interests and as the governor of an institution that solicitously protected its most elite patron’s gifts. At the same time, the Liber Pontificalis also emphasized Silvester’s activity as a donor. According to his vita, Silvester established a Roman church presumably on property that he owned, for which Constantine furnished gifts.42 While constituting a new form of civic evergetism, the episcopal foundation of churches also highlights the bishop’s good use of his private resources. In directing their wealth to religious ends, Silvester and his successors established themselves as boni patresfamilias. Another powerful source shaping Roman attitudes toward their bishop’s financial stewardship and discipline was the passion narrative of the third-century bishop Xystus II (257–58) and his archdeacon Laurentius. The story of Xystus’ martyrdom, his entrusting of the church’s property to Laurentius, and Laurentius’ subsequent death on the grill was among the most famous late antique hagiographic legends, with versions told by Ambrose, Prudentius, and the fifth- or sixth-century 40 41

42

LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 170–87). Pietri 1978: 319–21 and Marazzi 1998: 25–42. The LP also transcribes lists for Constantinian foundations in Ostia, Capua, Albanum, and Naples. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1: 187). For clerical donors in Rome, see Hillner 2006. On the tituli, see Chapter 6.

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anonymous Roman author of the “Passion of SS Polychronius, Xystus, Laurentius and Hippolytus.”43 According to this last version, Xystus had been imprisoned and sentenced to death but was able to secure a final meeting in carcere with Laurentius. There, Laurentius pleaded with Xystus that the bishop spare his own life and allow Laurentius to be executed in his place so that the community would not be without a leader: “Where are you going, father, without your son? To where do you hasten, holy sacerdos, without your deacon?”44 Xystus responded in kind, twice calling Laurentius his “son,” and transferring to him (tradere) the church’s property (facultates ecclesiae vel theasauros), which the bishop commanded Laurentius to administer in the bishop’s absence. On one level, the scene simply dramatizes the ecclesiastical relationship between a bishop and his archdeacon: the former was the higher official, with unique ritual powers, whereas the archdeacon was the bishop’s primary assistant in liturgical and administrative matters. On another level, the passion also recast the ecclesiastical order as a domestic relationship, whereby bishop and archdeacon relate to one another not only as higher to lower cleric but also as father to son, paterfamilias to heir. It imagines the Roman church in distinctly domestic terms, as a traditional household characterized by landholding and dynastic relationships, the oversight and possessions of which might be handed down personally from the bishop to a loyal servant of the church. Among other things, the idealized relationship of Xystus and Laurentius presented a powerful counterexample to accounts of bishops abusing their privileged access to ecclesiastical wealth. TH E EPISCOPAL H OUSEH OLD AT ROME: RESIDENCES, MEMBERS, AND PRACTICES

Stories of legendary episcopal estate managers like Xystus and Silvester resonated with late ancient readers precisely because the Roman church was also a household of sorts. Scholars have long recognized the church’s status as a property-owning institution and have studied its mechanisms of land management. Both its proprietary interests and its bishops’ activities as estate managers reflect the Roman See’s material affinities with 43

44

Ambrose, De officiis, 1.41.204–7 and Prudentius, Peristephanon 2 and the Passio SS. Polychronii, Xysti, Laurentii et Hippolyti. On the relation of these earlier versions to the later Roman text, see Verrando 1990: 184–87. Passio SS. Polychronii, Xysti, Laurentii et Hippolyti 13 (ed. Delehaye 1933: 81–83): “Quo progrederis sine filio, pater? Quo, sacerdos sancte, sine diacono properas?

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an elite domus. Historians have not emphasized the church’s domestic orientation, however. Instead, they typically characterize its ecclesiastical administration as a “machine” that bore little relation to the bishop’s concrete knowledge and practice of oikonomia.45 Whereas extensive attention has been paid, for example, to parallels in epistolographic practices between the Roman church and imperial court,46 no one has examined an arguably more fundamental similarity: just as the emperor’s personal household was closely intertwined with the business of public government, so was the bishop’s domus intimately connected to the management of the church. The close relationship of the bishop’s household to the administrative functions and spaces of his church was widely recognized in late antiquity. According to the Regula Magistri, the ordering of authority in the church directly paralleled the ordering of authority “in a human household” (in hominis domo).47 Meanwhile, an official missive of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric referred to matters concerning “the Lateran treasury or indeed the household” (de arca vero vel domo Lateranensi), thereby suggesting that the two institutions were linked spatially and perhaps also shared practices and personnel.48 More explicitly still, in the late sixth century, Gregory described the Roman church’s dependent clergy and tenants as members of its familia ecclesiastica.49 The bishop’s church was thus also a household, albeit with spaces, members, and practices that mapped imperfectly onto traditional models. The Bishop’s Residences and Administrative Headquarters Where did the bishop of Rome live? As Theodoric’s notice demonstrates, an area of the Caelian Hill associated with the toponym “Lateranus,” long known for its luxury housing and the site of a Constantinian basilica, was the location of both the church’s financial headquarters (arca50 ) and an 45 46 47 48 49 50

See the Introduction for bibliography. Cf. McShane 1979: 325–41 and Mathisen 1997: 243–51. Regula Magistri 11.16–35. Anagnosticum regis (MGH AA 12: 426). Gregory, Epp. 1.42 and 5.31 discussed in brief by Recchia 1978: 17, n. 33. Arca typically designated the treasuries of the praetorian and urban prefectures: Delmaire 1989: 6 and Chastagnol 1960: 77; 316–20; 341–45. It is unclear whether this was Theodoric’s term or one used by Roman church officials. Later in the sixth century, there were arcarii (treasurers) of the Roman church, suggesting its adoption of civic nomenclature. Cf. Pelagius, Ep. 83 and De Rossi, BAC (1883): 3, 521.

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episcopal residence (domus), at least in the early sixth century.51 In fact, there is no evidence to support the pervasive assumption that Constantine had built the bishop’s headquarters and house when he constructed the basilica Constantiniana in the 320s.52 While it is possible that a house in the region had served these functions since the early fourth century, the evidence dates only from about 500. Moreover, in striking contrast to other late Roman Sees such as Ravenna, archaeologists have yet to discover any physical remains of this building or buildings.53 We thus have no idea what the bishop’s Lateran house looked like, how large (or small) it was, when and by whom it was first established, or where precisely it was located. Moreover, Roman bishops might have possessed and inhabited multiple dwellings and thus did not live exclusively in a single “official” Lateran episcopium. According to his vita in the Liber Pontificalis, Symmachus built two episcopia flanking St Peter’s basilica.54 Unfortunately, the text fails to supply several crucial details, such as precisely when he established the houses or whether they were new constructions. During the Laurentian schism (498-506), Symmachus lost control of the Lateran arca vel domus to his rival Laurentius for several years (in fact, the return of these buildings to Symmachus was the primary subject of Theodoric’s letter cited earlier). Most scholars thus reasonably interpret the episcopal housing at St. Peter’s as an emergency measure.55 It is also possible that Symmachus’ establishment of dual episcopia St. Peter’s reflects a more normative feature of episcopal householding, whereby bishops personally possessed other dom¯us in the city and did not reside at the Lateran at all times (if at all). Several late Roman prelates, such as Silvester and Damasus in the fourth century and Gregory in the late sixth, owned properties in Rome, and in Gregory’s case 51

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53

54

55

Contra Liverani 1999: 522–49 and 2004: 20–22. His attempt to identify a third-century aedes Laterani with the fourth-century bishop’s house is unpersuasive. However, he is clearly correct that the Fausta of domus Fausta in Laterano could not have been Constantine’s wife, as generations of earlier scholars claimed. Cf. Krautheimer 2000: 110–1 and 1987: 16; de Blaauw 1994: 110; Christie 2006: 99; Miller 2000: 18; and Luciani 2000: I.102–22. For more judicious opinions, see Pietri 1976: 668; Curran 2000: 94–96; and especially Augenti 2004. On late antique episcopia in Italy see Miller 2000: 16–53; on Ravenna, see Deliyannis 2010: 100–01. It is conceivable that such evidence lies unexcavated beneath the modern Ospitale di San Giovanni in Laterano. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 262): Item episcopia in eodem loco [St Peter’s] dextra levaque fecit. Duchesne 1955: 1. 267, n.26. Alchermes 1995.

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the property definitively included a house.56 Although Gregory probably lived at the Lateran at times during his tenure as bishop, he had already founded a monastic community in his Caelian domus before his consecration in 590 and thus could have moved between these two houses, especially given their physical proximity.57 Moreover, according to the fifth- and sixth-century gesta martyrum, earlier Roman bishops resided all over the city. The “Passion of St. Pancratius” placed the residence of the bishop Cornelius (251-53) on the Caelian Hill (thus perhaps consistent with a Lateran location, although the text does not make the connection explicit).58 Alternatively, the “Passion of St. Susanna” located the house of Gaius, another third-century prelate (283-96), on the Esquiline.59 Although our sources could simply be confused on the matter, they might also accurately depict the multiplicity of private episcopal residences in Rome, perhaps even after the creation of the Lateran arca vel domus. Membership: Who Composed the Bishop’s Household? The possibility that Roman bishops also lived in their private households raises questions about the membership of the episcopal domus. Typically, historians have focused on the rank and duties of lay and clerical officials, men with defined posts whose relationship to the bishop was purely ecclesiastical. By contrast, there has been very little consideration given to the presence of wives, children, wards, or slaves.60 Roman bishops surely surrounded themselves with nonfamilial advisers and attendants to an extent that distinguished their own household not only from those of elite lay domini but also from those of local clergy and most provincial Italian bishops. The evidence, however, offers numerous hints that people more traditionally associated with a late Roman family were also part of the Roman episcopal household. It is difficult to assess whether Roman bishops lived with their natal or marital families, because no late antique source states that they did. 56

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Coates-Stephens 1996 shows that early medieval bishops also owned houses all over Rome, raising the possibility that some also continued to reside in their private dom¯us. Ancient elite householders who owned multiple dwellings frequently moved between them. There is no reason to think that this cultural habit played no part in the lives of landowning bishops such as Gregory. Passio S. Pancratii 2. Passio S. Susannae 2. Cf. Richards 1979: 287–306; Pietri 1986: 109–22; and Sotinel 2003: 105–24.

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This is a curious silence. The apostle Peter was widely believed to have fathered a daughter (Petronilla), and this tradition was popular in Rome during the fifth and sixth centuries.61 Moreover, although the Council of Nicaea forbade clergy from living with subintroductae, it permitted them to reside with mothers, aunts, and sisters; it also did not expressly exclude wives from this list.62 At least three Roman bishops had sired children and thus were ostensibly married at some point. Anastasius I (399–401/2) was almost certainly Innocent’s father (401/2–417), Silverius (536) was the son of Hormisdas (514–523), and Felix III (483–492) had several daughters and was probably Gregory’s (590–604) great-great-grandfather.63 There is also substantial epigraphic evidence that many Roman priests and deacons were married, had children, and remained closely linked to their natal and marital households.64 These inscriptions are relevant for assessing the membership of episcopal households, since every late ancient Roman bishop had formerly been either a priest or deacon in the city. Outside Rome, there were many married bishops, some of whom had children. Not only had Paulinus of Nola himself wed early in life (later famously embracing conjugal celibacy), but he had also attended the wedding of a bishop’s son, Julian, the future bishop of Eclanum.65 Julian’s father, the bishop Memor, was present, with another prelate, Aemilius of Beneventum, who might have been the bride’s father. Chapter 5 explores evidence that further attests to the common existence in Italy of local bishops with wives and children.66 The dearth of sources bearing witness to the marriages and children of Rome’s bishops could be partly explained by ideology. New ascetic frameworks for the clerical household strictly discouraged sexual 61 62 63

64 65

66

Cf. Acta SS. Nerei ed Achillei 15. Nicaea, c. 3. On subintroductae, see Elm 1994: 162–64. According to Jerome (Ep. 130.16.2), Anastasius was the father of Innocent, which is confirmed in LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 220), although without note of Anastasius’ episcopal title. The LP also reports that they were buried in the same cemetery, which Anastasius is said to have owned (LP, ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 218 and 222). For Hormisdas as the father of Silverius, see LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 290) and ILCV 984. For Felix III’s family, see below; for his relation to Gregory, see Markus 1997: 8 and PCBE 2.777, though with doubts expressed by Pietri 1981a: 435, n. 84. Chapter 5. On Paulinus’ relationship to Julian of Eclanum’s family, see Trout 1999: 215–16. We know of Paulinus’ presence at the wedding because he composed an epithalamium in honor of it. Sotinel 2006, which deals extensively with this development, came to my attention too late to be considered in any detail for this study. However, her conclusions in many cases closely parallel mine.

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relations among married clergy and in cases privileged virginity and celibacy. Later, Justinianic legislation barred men with wives, children, and grandchildren from attaining the episcopate, and these laws were known in the West.67 Our sources, then, would have been predisposed toward obscuring wives and children had they existed.68 Biological and social factors also could have been at play. As their typically short tenures suggest, most Roman bishops were probably consecrated relatively late in life. In fact, a man technically had to be at least thirty-five years old to obtain the episcopate in Rome.69 A late consecration date would have enabled men to marry and father children before entering the higher grades of the clergy and reaching the episcopate.70 Some of these men could have been widowers with adult children who no longer lived with them. Late Roman Christians, we recall, often moved between traditional and ascetic households at various points in their lives. There is no reason to think that Roman bishops did not have similarly dynamic life histories, even if our sources have omitted traces of their earlier domestic pasts.71 It also might be significant that two of our three episcopal fathers were aristocrats. Claire Sotinel has shown that fourth- and early fifthcentury Roman bishops (whose families can be identified) arose either from nonaristocratic clerical families or from households of curial status.72 This social trend shifted in the late fifth century, when a growing number of Italian senatorial aristocrats and provincial elites became bishops. Felix III was probably the first Roman bishop related to a senatorial family.73 During the sixth century, there were at least six and possibly eight highborn Roman bishops who attained the episcopate almost successively: Hormisdas (514–23), Felix IV (526–530), Boniface II (530–532), Agapitus (535–536), Silverius (536), Vigilius (537–555), John III (561–574) 67

68

69 70 71

72 73

See CJ 1.3.41.2–4 (528); 1.3.47 (531); Nov. 123.1 (546) and 137.2 (565), discussed in Chapter 5. Cooper 2007: 6 stresses that the transmission of late antique religious sources by medieval monastic scribes meant that ascetic-oriented texts were given preference over those that revealed the worldlier aspects of church life. Richards 1979: 249–68. On age requirements, see Faivre 1977: 299–370. Keenly observed by Heid (2000: 324) for late antique clergy in general. Gregory is the only Roman bishop who openly discussed his natal family. See HEv. 38.15 on his aunts Tarsilla and Aemiliana. Sotinel 1997: 193–204. See ICUR I, pp. 371–3 for the collective epitaph of Felix’s wife Petronia (d. 472), whose name is aristocratic and whose daughter, Paula (d. 484), is identified as a clarissima femina. See Richards 1979: 235–7.

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and Gregory (590–604).74 Three of these senatorial bishops (Felix III, Agapitus, and Gregory) were possibly from the same family.75 While not all were from the highest levels of the aristocracy (Hormisdas and his son Silverius were Campanian and probably members of the provincial aristocracy), these bishops had distinctly different social backgrounds than their predecessors. As noted, many Roman bishops, including several socially elite prelates, also had relatives in the local clergy. According to the Liber Pontificalis, Boniface I’s (418–422) father was a local presbyter from an unknown church, Felix III’s father was the priest of the titulus Fasciolae, the father of Anastasius II (496–498) was a presbyter from Rome’s fifth ecclesiastical region, and Agapitus was a priest’s son at the titular church of SS. John and Paul.76 Vigilius had ordained his nephew Rusticus as a deacon, and Hormisdas was related by blood not only to Silverius (his son) but also to Gerontius, the primicerius notariorum (i.e., the highest-ranking notary in the Roman ecclesiastical administration) in the administration of Pelagius I.77 Although none of these connections amounts to a papal dynasty (and in the cases of Boniface I, Felix III, and Agapitus, their fathers were likely long dead by the time they became bishops), the sharp rise in numbers of senatorial bishops and elite clerical families during the later fifth and sixth centuries is significant. It reflects shifting attitudes towards the episcopate and clerical offices as career choices that were socially compatible with 74

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Ennodius described Hormisdas as “pious, wellborn and rich” (Ep. 8.33), suggesting that he and his son Silverius were provincial aristocrats. Boniface II was the son of Sigibuld, perhaps the Sigisvultus who was consul in 437 (LP [ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 281]; PLRE 2.1010). Vigilius was the son of the consul John, who held the posts of comes sacrarum largitionum, vicarianus of Rome, and praetorian prefect under the Ostrogoths (LP [ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 297]; PLRE 2.609–10). John III, son of vir illustris Anastasius, perhaps governor of Flaminia and Picenum Anonarium from 523– 526 (LP [ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 305]). Agapitus and Gregory were probably from the same family: Markus 1997: 8 and Richards 1979: 236. Gregory had been urban prefect in 573 and was possibly an Anician: see Markus 1997: 8–10 and PLRE 3, 1545. Richards 1979: 242 hypothesizes that Felix IV might also have been a member of the provincial aristocracy. Markus 1997: 8–10. Boniface: LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 227); Felix III: LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1.252); Anastasius II: LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 252) and ICUR n.s. II.4149; Agapitus: LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1, 287). Vigilius and Rusticus: Richards 1979: 241; Hormisdas and Gerontius: ILCV 1312. On notarii of the Roman church, see Teitler 1983: 89ff and Sotinel 2003: 107, 113.

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contemporary aristocratic attitudes toward public and private life.78 The expectations of such men toward family and the episcopate would have been different from their nonaristocratic counterparts. Many were likely pressed into early marriages, as was customary among high-status families, thus leaving them ample time for a “second career” as a clergyman. More important, they would have been reared in a world in which ties of kinship, friendship, and clientage were lifelong and could have transcended emerging church institutions, such as the steeply hierarchical clerical cursus, which distinguished among clergy according to rank and powers. Indeed, clerical dynasties were the norm elsewhere in the western Mediterranean.79 The entry of such men into the Roman episcopate would have engendered a far more complex model of an ecclesiastical household, wherein the bishop was responsible not only for his “spiritual brethren” but also for men and women to whom he was related by other bonds, such as blood, friendship, and guardianship. For example, noble boys and even girls were entrusted to Roman bishops, both informally for short periods of time and on a permanent, legal basis. The correspondence between Symmachus and the Gallo-Roman aristocrat Ennodius (473–521, then a deacon of Milan) includes letters of introduction, several of which recommend young boys (adolescentes) of high birth, including his nephew Parthenius and another highborn lad named Beatus.80 Precisely what Ennodius envisioned as Symmachus’ guardianship is difficult to reconstruct, but he clearly expected Symmachus to take responsibility for the boys’ welfare while they pursued a religious education (sancta studia litterarum) in Rome.81 There is nothing in Ennodius’ letters to suggest that the boys in question were actually fatherless, thereby requiring legal guardians, or that Symmachus’ charge was anything other than temporary and informal.82 In fact, in the cases of Parthenius and Beatus, Ennodius had also written to three high-ranking 78

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There are also possible political explanations for this sudden run of socially elite bishops. Richards (1979: 240–44) discusses Justinian’s preference for urban aristocrats to fill the ranks of the Roman episcopate. See Rapp 2005: 195–99 and below. Through correspondence, Ennodius introduced several young men to Symmachus: the sons of a layman named Laurentius; Parthenius; Beatus; and an unnamed boy (Ennodius, Epp. 4.22, 5.10, 3.38, and 8.32 respectively). Kennell 2000: 44–46 also considers the relationship to have been informal. Male and female children younger than twenty-five years (the legal age of majority) were required to have an official guardian. See Arjava 1996: 116–8.

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senatorial aristocrats in Rome asking for precisely the same favor.83 The likelihood that Symmachus was not an aristocrat by birth did not seem to trouble Ennodius, thus suggesting that the informal guardianship of elite wards was slowly emerging as an activity associated institutionally with the Roman bishop’s household. Interestingly, there might have been other ecclesiastical circles of young boys formed around important clergymen in Rome. In another letter, Ennodius introduced presumably the same Beatus to Hormisdas, then a Roman deacon and himself likely a provincial aristocrat. He exhorted Hormisdas to “be his individual guardian” (esto specialis tutor) while Beatus was in Rome.84 Elsewhere Ennodius introduced another young man to Hormisdas, hoping that the deacon would use his influence with Symmachus to place the boy in the bishop’s care.85 The oversight of noble wards is thus one way in which the bishop’s household closely resembled those of elite laymen. More significantly, it demonstrates how it might be located within existing aristocratic networks of family and friendship. Whereas Symmachus’ guardianship was informal, other Roman bishops supported children and adolescents, including girls, in their households more formally.86 Vigilius assumed official guardianship of his niece Vigilia after her father’s death in 539 at the hands of the Ostrogothic king Witiges and arranged a marriage for her.87 Vigilia was almost certainly not legally independent and thus required a male guardian, who was typically an agnatic kinsman. The text does not specify the precise form of Vigilius’ guardianship, that is, whether it was tutela or cura, although both primarily involved the economic oversight of the ward’s property, as well as parental duties such as arranging marriages or even physical discipline.88 Similarly, in 601 Gregory lobbied imperial authorities to 83

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They were: Anicius Acilius Aginantius Faustus, Luminosus, and Anicius Probus Faustus iunior or niger. See Ennodius, Epp. 5.9, 11–12. Ennodius, Ep. 8.39. Ennodius, Ep. 8.33. The Council of Chalcedon, c. 3 permitted clergy to act as legal guardians; however, Justinian later prohibited all bishops and monks from assuming the legal duties of tutores or curators: Nov. 123.5 (546). Roman bishops appear to have been either unaware of or unfettered by his law. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 297). Vigilia was the daughter of Reparatus, the former urban prefect of Rome (527) and praetorian prefect of Italy (538–539). See PLRE 2: 939–40. According to the LP, Vigilius promptly had her husband killed. Tutela was required for all fatherless children under the age of puberty (fourteen for boys, twelve for girls). Cura minoris, a more informal, consensual arrangement,

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win guardianship (denoted as cura in the letter) of the two daughters of his late friend Venantius, a lay patricius from Syracuse whom, we recall, Gregory had known as a monk in Constantinople.89 Close ties of friendship (rather than kinship) prompted Gregory to intertwine his own domus with that of his late friend’s. Like Vigilius, Gregory was eager to marry his wards off and directed the young girls to read the Bible for advice on how to be good wives.90 The episcopal household was also formed around bonds of servitude. Like all elite householders, Roman bishops were slave owners and exercised the same power over their bodies and behavior as any lay dominus. For example, Gregory’s letters reveal a familiar range of treatment: slaves might be beaten, sold, exchanged, manumitted, and defended from harsh discipline.91 Although some bishops like Gregory went out of their way to help slaves enter monasteries (which technically required their manumission), they were equally willing to return an insubordinate slave to his former owner, especially if that owner were another church.92 Gregory even sent slaves to lay householders as gifts.93 Such a practice underscores the extent to which episcopal householders still perceived the slave as the master’s possession. By the late sixth century (if not earlier), the episcopal household’s slave population was large enough to require its own steward, whom Gregory called the ecclesiasticae familiae maior.94 Gregory described one such agent, a cruel man named Peter, who likely held the post under Pelagius II (579–590).95 Peter’s stewardship was not a unique position in the Roman church. In fact, numerous stewards and attendants administered the bishop’s household in Rome. During Vigilius’ tenure in the mid-sixth century, the bishop ordered a Roman priest named Ampliatus to serve as

89 90

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involved young adults who were not sui iuris and under 25. However, the two forms were increasingly assimilated in late antiquity: Beaucamp 1990: I. 46 and Arjava 1996: 115–7. Tutela mulierum, the lifelong guardianship of adult women, became largely obsolete in late antiquity, but there is some evidence of its continued practice. See Arjava 1996: 118–23. Gregory, Epp. 11.25, 59. For Gregory’s relationship to Venantius, see Chapter 1. Gregory, Ep. 11.59. It is thus surely incorrect that the girls were consecrated as nuns by their parents as in PCBE 2.2: 2256. Cf. Gregory, Epp. 3.18; 4.26; 6.10, 32; 9.30, 205 and 210. On Gregory’s attitude toward slaves, see Serfass 2006. Gregory, Epp. 5.28 and 9.108. For fugitive slaves joining monasteries and churches, see Chapter 4. Gregory, Ep. 7.27. Gregory, Dial. 4.37.11. Gregory, Dial. 4.37.11.

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his vicedominus.96 The vicedominus, as mentioned earlier, was a high-level domestic steward, who acted on behalf of private landowners in propertyrelated business.97 Here, Ampliatus’ appointment seems to have been an emergency measure. According to the Liber Pontificalis, Vigilius named the priest to the post just after Justinian arrested and deported him to Constantinople for alleged collusion in the deposition of his predecessor, Silverius. In this instance, the vicedominus probably functioned as the de facto overseer of the episcopal household at Rome. Ampliatus likely had access to its coffers and administered its quotidian needs during Vigilius’ lengthy absence from Rome, from 545 until his death in 555.98 His duties also could have included management of the church’s estates, the more usual function of the vicedominus in elite households, especially because domus and arca were closely associated in Rome.99 We do not hear of a vicedominus again until the late sixth century, however, when Gregory appointed a deacon named Anatolius to this position and entrusted him with the financial stewardship (disponendum) of Rome’s episcopium.100 This chronology suggests that before 545 and under more normal circumstances thereafter until the 590s, Roman bishops had overseen the quotidian financial aspects of their household without the assistance of such an official. Many hypothesize that the archdeacon effectively fulfilled the same domestic duties that were later assumed by the vicedominus, but there is no evidence for this assertion.101 Alternatively, Roman bishops might have relied on lay stewards or even family members, including their wives or sisters, to oversee the daily functions of the episcopal household. In fact, the proceedings of the Roman Council of 595 tell us that “lay boys and secular men” (laici pueri ac saeculares) routinely attended the bishop’s most intimate needs (ad secreta cubiculi servitia).102 The reference appears in relation to Gregory’s reformation of this particular service, whereby he decreed that “certain men chosen from among the clergy and monks should undertake the ministerium cubiculi pontificalis.”103 Although 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 297). Chapter 1. Richards 1979: 143–45. Suggested by Richards 1979: 298. Greg. Ep. 1.11. Richards 1979: 299 and Saxer 2001: 599–600. Gregory, Ep. 5.57a = Council of 595, c. 2 (MGH Epistolae 2: 363). Gregory, Ep. 5.57a (MGH Epistolae 2: 363): De qua re praesenti decreto constituto, ut quidam ex clericis vel etiam ex monachis electi ministerio cubiculi pontificalis obsequantur. . . .

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the passage offers little insight into the precise domestic roles or social position of these attendants, it shows that free laypeople traditionally were among the bishop’s regular personal staff.104 It also reveals that, by the late sixth century, Roman bishops used the term cubiculum to refer to the most intimate aspects of the bishop’s household (e.g., his daily regimen of washing, eating, and sleeping). These are especially interesting developments given the fact that cubiculum, in addition to simply meaning “bedchamber,” was also a synonym for the personal household of the emperor or king.105 Gregory’s decision to re-staff his cubiculum with clergy and monks seems to have been a unique move, however.106 Until Gregory, there is no evidence that Roman bishops lived exclusively with monks and clerics or in a community organized around ascetic regimens, such as those that Eusebius of Vercelli and Augustine had established in the fourth and early fifth centuries.107 Th e Episcopal H ouseh old in Action: Th e conventus and th e patrimonia

An institution increasingly characterized by aristocratic family ties and the presence of wards, slaves, and specially designated stewards and attendants, late fifth- and sixth-century Roman episcopal households had many similarities with other elite dom¯us of the day. Unlike a traditional household, however, whose management exclusively served the private interests of its owner and head, the episcopal household was also closely intertwined with officials and functions of ecclesiastical administration, whose remit was not strictly confined to domestic tasks. The bishop’s inner circle went beyond family members and stewards and included advisors, who assisted the bishop in some of his most important routine duties involving the care of the church writ large. This final section examines the bishop’s household in relation to two key domains of episcopal managerial practice: the conventus and the patrimonia. 104 105 106

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Homes Dudden 1905: 246 and Markus 1997: 123. Jones 1964: 424–25. His decision to replace the lay attendants with monks and clergy is often seen as part of the “clericalization” of Rome’s ecclesiastical organization. (e.g., Faivre 1977: 359–60). However this strikes me as overstating its impact, especially since Gregory’s successors continued to use laypeople. See Llewellyn 1974. On Eusebius of Vercelli’s community, see Jenal 1995: 12–15; on Augustine’s, see Zumkeller 1989.

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The Bishop’s conventus: A Quasi-Domestic Domain of Church Administration An early sixth-century forgery produced during the Laurentian schism illuminates the relationship between the bishop’s household and the administrative duties of his church. This text purports to be the acta issued by a Roman council convened by Constantine and the bishop Silvester at the Baths of Trajan in 324.108 According to one canon, Roman bishops were prohibited from holding small meetings (conventicula) without the attendance of the entire clergy and laity. The same canon, however, states that the following tasks were undertaken appropriately by the bishop within the context of a meeting (conventus) without broad public participation: the oversight of promotions within the church ranks; the distribution of revenues among the clergy; the mediation of disputes between clergy; the inventorying of the church’s property; the handling of welfare for orphans, widows, and the needy; the preaching of apostolic teachings; visits with the sick; devotion to prayer; and trips to the tombs of the martyrs.109 While baseless in its claims to be a genuine fourth-century ruling, the passage nevertheless illuminates many routine activities of early sixth-century bishops and hints at the context of their performance. The authors contrasted such episcopal “meetings” or even “courts” (conventus also had juridical connotations), where the bishop conducted church business and undertook contemplative activities, to publicly attended assemblies, which necessarily included all Roman clergy and people. We can infer from this distinction that the episcopal conventus was a relatively intimate occasion involving a smaller group of people, the men (and perhaps women) composing the bishop’s inner circle. In 600, Probus, an abbot of a Roman monastery and an old friend of Gregory’s, formally requested the bishop’s permission to make a will for his personal property.110 Probus presented his petition in the sort of meeting that was commonplace in the bishop’s household administration. In addition to Gregory, eleven Roman titular priests, several deacons and lower clergy, the secundarius notariorum (the second highest-ranking notary 108

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Wirbelauer 1993: 96–8 (introduction) and 324–41 for the text (“LK”) with German translation. On the Symmachan Forgeries, see Chapter 6. LK, c.14 (ed. Wirbelauer, 330). Gregory, Ep. 11.15. On Probus, see Gregory, Dial. 4.13, 20.1 and Epp. 9. 44 and 68. His monastery is referred to as both St. Reparatus (Dial. 4.13) and SS. Andrew and Lucia (Ep. 11.15).

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in the church), and five bishops visiting Gregory’s household (from as far away as Toulon and as close as Capua) were present. Before handing down his favorable decision, Gregory consulted privately with the entire group. Here we are examining a conventus in action, the closed meeting in which the bishop conducted specific tasks of ecclesiastical business, like juridical hearings of individual cases involving, in this example, a local abbot and his personal property.111 At such events, Roman bishops apparently did not rely on a permanent, well-defined set of administrative officials or Roman clergy. Rather, they looked to an ad-hoc assemblage of advisors, who varied in terms of their numbers, experience, function, and relationship to the bishop’s domus and church. We therefore find in attendance at Probus’ hearing both a senior notary in the ecclesiastical scrinium and Menas of Toulon, a second-time visitor to the bishop’s house, on whom Gregory also relied for information about the monks of Lérins.112 In this respect, the ecclesiastical conventus at Rome shared much with the private domestic hearings conducted by householders, in which they dispensed justice in consultation with a group of other patresfamilias on certain crimes committed by family members.113 Householders were accustomed to adjudicating conflicts intra domum, and the state encouraged private dispute resolution. Moreover, the dispensation of justice was among the late antique bishop’s most distinctive duties, even if it was limited to the adjudication of disputes involving religious officials (like monks) and ecclesiastical matters. On one level, therefore, Probus’ hearing before Gregory accords well with recent evaluations of episcopalis audientia as an extralegal mode of dispute settlement, in which private men resolved conflicts.114 It also demonstrates the increasingly complex – and, as we shall see, potentially dangerous – nature of the conventus as a semisecret, semiopen forum for episcopal activities. In addition to its function as a social space for the dispensation of justice within the church, the conventus was also a site associated with the determination of episcopal succession. Numerous late fifth- and 111

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Contra Pietri 1986: 108, Probus’ hearing did not take place within the context of a Roman synod. Pietri’s conclusion that the titular clergy of Rome shrank to eleven in number by ca. 600 must therefore be reconsidered. Gregory, Ep. 11.9. For Menas’ less than auspicious first visit to Rome sometime between 599 and 600, see Ep. 9.224. Gregory had recalled him in light of his poor performance as bishop. Chapter 2. Humfress 2011.

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sixth-century Roman bishops chose their own successors within the context of relatively intimate domestic meetings without consultation of the whole of the Roman clergy or people. For example, Simplicius (468–483) made arrangements for the appointment of his successor just before his death in 483 in consultation with a few clerics and at least one senator.115 More intimately still, Felix IV gathered a small group of clergy and senators around his deathbed in 530, from which he announced the name of his successor (Boniface II).116 As we shall see, the secret elements of the conventus did not always serve a bishop’s interests. Whereas emperors and kings routinely mixed private interests with the perpetuation of their regime, bishops who did so potentially placed their reputations as holy estate managers in peril.117 Prelates were routinely accused of sinful and illegal activities within these contexts, such as the misappropriation of church property. A later chapter examines several solutions to the spatial and ethical ambiguities of the conventus, one being the appointment of lower clergy to watch over the bishop’s conduct of church business.118 Finally, the conventus was also a social setting in which Roman bishops conducted more contemplative spiritual pursuits. The spurious Silvestrian council, we recall, described it as an appropriate space for scriptural instruction, prayer, and visiting martyr shrines. For these more leisured and personal activities, Roman bishops also relied on attendants and interlocutors to assist them in matters of translation, scriptural exegesis, and the composition of letters and sermons. Figures like Jerome, who worked with Damasus, and Dionysius Exiguus, who had close connections to Gelasius, John I, and Hormisdas, are often inaccurately called “secretaries” or even “clients” to their Roman bishops, thereby suggesting that their relationships were purely administrative or steeply asymmetrical.119 They are better seen as counselors, men who spent time in the bishop’s household and sometimes developed close relationships with him but who did not work for him in any official administrative capacity or necessarily even view him as their patron.120 Moreover, these men were also 115

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On the senator Basilius and his role in the production of the scriptura of 483, see Chapters 5 and 6. See Duchesne 1883 and Richards 1979: 122–3. Jones 1964: 253–57 (Ostrogothic court) and 367–73 (imperial court). Chapter 5. Secrecy was also historically problematic for the reputations of Roman officials. See Riggsby 1997. Cf. Kelly 1975: 82–3 and Richards 1979: 86, 116. Even Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible was more a personal project for Damasus than an official program of his episcopate.

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often involved in the religious life of other aristocratic households.121 In this respect, their participation in an episcopal domus was also important socially, because they could provide links between the bishop and other eminent households.

Administering the Patrimonia According to the forged Silvestrian canon cited earlier, a conventus was the appropriate site of the bishop’s conduct of financial business. The Roman church was a large and sophisticated economic institution managed by a hierarchy of domestic officials. Although the practices of property management performed by Roman bishops were not always identical to those of senatorial landowners or the imperial household, their administrative mechanisms, observes Roberta Mazza, “were informed by a very similar economic-administrative logic.”122 Before examining this logic, we should ask how the Roman church came to be an “owner” of private property, and how its bishops related legally to the patrimony of their church. The Church as a Property Owner and the Bishop as Administrator: Legal Developments The legal status of the church as a property-owning entity and the bishop’s relationship to its wealth are among the least understood developments in early Christian history. Before the early fourth century, there is no conclusive evidence that the state recognized the Christian church or individual churches as legal personalities capable of owning property.123 Individual Christians clearly held land, buildings, and other properties that they used for assembly meetings and perhaps to generate money for the ritual and other social needs of the community.124 In fact, even the burial sites of Roman Christians were individually owned in this period and were not part of the corporate property of the church, as scholars once thought.125 The history of the church’s corporate ownership of

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Chapter 2. Mazza 2006: 704. See also Ziche 2006 and Wickham 2005: 269–71. As Cooper 2011 emphasizes, scholars do not foreground the lack of evidence for the second and third centuries often enough. Lampe 2003: 369–70. Rebillard 1993 and 1997.

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property is considerably less clear, however. In 270, the emperor Aurelian arbitrated the case of the deposed Antiochene bishop Paul of Samosata and his unlawful possession of a church-related building, denoted in Eusebius’ account as “the house of the church” (ekklesias oikos).126 Among other things, Paul’s possession of the disputed property suggests that bishops exercised enormous de facto power over properties associated with their church, because Paul (rightly or wrongly) had been able to hold on to a building even after his deposition.127 Although Eusebius reported that Aurelian ruled with the Antiochenes against Paul, his presentation of the event presents few insights into the legal nature of the house’s ecclesiastical ownership. In fact, no source from this period illuminates the legal basis of the pre-Constantinian church’s property-holding status. As a corporate institution, it probably had no such recognized status at this time.128 The legal circumstances of Christian communities changed in manifold ways in the early fourth century with the end of the Great Persecution and the rise of Constantine. In 311, Galerius proclaimed Christianity to be a licit religion and called for the members’ rebuilding of their places of worship.129 Other contemporary imperial leaders, Constantine, Licinius, and Maxentius, also righted some of the wrongs committed by their predecessors and demanded the return of property confiscated from Christians. In the so-called edict of Milan of 313, Constantine and Licinius legislated the restoration of “all possessions of their corporate right, that is of the churches, not individual persons (ad ius corporis eorum id est ecclesiarum, non hominum singulorum), we command all these to be returned . . . to the aforementioned Christians, that is to the body and their assemblies (id est corpori et conventiculis eorum).”130 Elsewhere, Constantine commanded the return of properties belonging to “the catholic churches” (katholikai ekklesiai), thus implying (but not expressly 126

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Eusebius was the first to use this phrase to denote a generic church building, not a “house church” as scholars have often claimed. See Sessa 2009. There was nothing exceptional about Christians seeking legal recourse at the imperial court in the late third century. The emperor had long functioned as an arbiter of disputes among private citizens. See Millar 1971: 14. Eusebius, HE 7.27–30. Scholars in fact continue to debate the precise legal capacity in which ante-pacem churches owned property. See Thomas 1987: 7–13 and Marazzi 1998: 20–24. Eusebius, HE 8.17 and Lactantius, De mort. pers. 34. Lactantius, De mort. persc. 48.9 and Eusebius, HE 10.5.11. Alternatively, in an edict of 311, Maxentius called for the return of properties “to the Christians” as a collective of individuals, and not as a single body (Eusebius, HE 9.10).

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defining) their institutional ownership.131 In 321, he issued a law (CT 16.2.4) permitting individual people to leave legacies to the sanctissimo catholicae et venerabilique concilio.132 Finally, in 330 Constantine transferred ownership (dominium) of a public building in Cirta to the ecclesia catholica in an attempt to compensate an angry group of Numidian bishops after a Donatist community took over their church.133 Constantine therefore recognized the Christian church as a corporate property-owning entity, even if his rulings failed to establish clearly and definitively the precise juridical nature of its proprietary status. In using words such as corpus, conventicula, concilium, and ecclesia catholica to denote the church’s legal personality, Constantine drew on a fuzzy social and philosophical vocabulary, and not on a terminology established in Roman law.134 Presumably Constantine’s intentions were clear enough to Christians and civil officials, because churches were henceforth recognized as property-holding entities. As Jean Gaudemet noted long ago, however, laws like CT 16.2.4 established the fact of ecclesiastical ownership without clearly defining it.135 Constantine’s actions also failed to clarify a related matter: how exactly was the bishop’s oversight legally defined? Did his bishop’s church administer all the ecclesiastical foundations and properties located within his diocese, or only some of them? Historians typically assert that the post-Constantinian bishop was recognized as the principal administrator, although not the owner, of all wealth attached to the public ecclesiastical foundations situated within his jurisdiction.136 In its general outline, this model seems accurate, but the precise legal parameters of the bishop’s administrative powers and his church’s proprietary remit remained poorly defined throughout most of late antiquity. The bishops at Chalcedon in 451 brought some clarity to the matter when they ruled that no oratories or monasteries could be established in a city without the bishop’s permission.137 Later Justinian drew a distinction between what scholars call “the bishop’s church” (i.e., the churches and other ecclesiastical institutions that were served by the bishop’s own clergy and financed 131 132 133 134 135 136

137

Eusebius, HE 10.5.15. Cf. CT 16.2.4 = CJ 1.2.1 (321). Epistula Constantini de basilica catholis erepta, discussed in Thomas 1987: 13. See Hillner 2007: 237–48 for discussion of the language and related scholarship. Gaudemet 1958: 299–300. Marazzi 1998: 50–3 also emphasizes ambiguity. Gaudemet 1958: 299–311 and Jones 1960 are the most widely cited authorities in this vein. Council of Chalcedon (451), c. 4.

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from his central fund) and those “private” ecclesiastical institutions with their own separate sources of funding and administration.138 However, these legal developments did not fully resolve the ambiguities inherent in a system encompassing different types of ecclesiastical foundations. The coexistence of private foundations and “bishop’s churches” generated confusion among Christian householders and bishops alike. What is more, despite attempts by civic and ecclesiastical authorities to erect boundaries between a bishop’s personal patrimony and the wealth of his church, some bishops continued to treat ecclesiastical property as if it were part of their own domus. This is one of the reasons why the clergy at Chalcedon resolved to require the appointment of a clerical steward (oikonomos) in each see, whose chief duty was to oversee the bishop’s financial transactions.139 Rome’s Patrimonies: Domestic Administration in Action The concern among emperors and churchmen to define ecclesiastical property and the bishop’s relationship to it was grounded in the simple fact that all major post-Constantinian churches were landowners. In the case of Rome, its patrimonies were accrued largely through donation, but it probably also engaged in direct purchasing, especially given the sixth-century upheavals in Italian landownership.140 The extent and geographical distribution of its landholdings recall major senatorial portfolios. For part of the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman church owned estates located all over the Mediterranean, thanks largely to gifts presented to Rome by Constantine and members of his family. According to the donation lists in the Liber Pontificalis discussed above, the church possessed estates in Rome, Italy, Africa, Gaul, Asia, Egypt, and even Mesopotamia.141 Sources dating to the later fifth and sixth centuries suggest a more restricted geography, however. From Gelasius’ late fifth-century tenure to the end of Gregory’s episcopate in the early seventh, the church continued to own estates in northern Italy, southern Gaul (primarily around Arles), Dalmatia, and even in one part of North Africa. Nevertheless, most of its properties were located in the central

138 139

140 141

Jones 1960. Council of Chalcedon (451), c. 26. This canon as well as the bishop’s relationship to his personal wealth and his church’s property are discussed in detail in Chapter 5. On landownership in sixth-century Italy, see Chapter 1. See n. 41 and 42.

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and southern regions of Italy (e.g., the Roman suburbs of Latium, Campania, Bruttium-Lucania, Apulia-Calabria, Tuscany, Picenum, and south along the Via Appia) as well as on Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.142 Most of these regions lay within the Roman bishop’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction (Italia suburbicaria). Moreover, they were sixth-century Italy’s most economically prosperous areas.143 Thus, despite suffering property losses in certain regions during the Lombard invasions (e.g., Istria, Liguria, and Tuscany), the Roman church remained a large-scale, transregional property owner during this later period, even if the church also witnessed the compression of its lands to regions of Italy and the Mediterranean that were relatively close to Rome.144 It is difficult to know the precise size and extent of the church’s holdings within any single area. For example, it is thought that in Gregory’s time the church owned some 400 estates in Sicily (approximately 800,000 hectares).145 According to calculations made by Lellia Cracco Ruggini, this would have placed some 100,000 coloni under Rome’s administration, who with their families could have numbered nearly 500,000.146 These numbers are rough (and speculative) estimations, but they demonstrate that the later fifth- and sixth-century Roman church administered hundreds, if not thousands, of separate units and managed a labor force potentially numbering in hundreds of thousands. In terms of size, it probably rivaled and perhaps surpassed virtually any private domus in the region, although it was also likely dwarfed by very upper elite eastern households, such as the Apiones, and by the private holdings of the imperial family. In the most concrete sense of the term, then, the Roman church was also a domus, a household oriented around the administration of property. Consequently, Roman bishops engaged in many routine activities similar to those performed by traditional patresfamilias. Among the most 142 143 144 145

146

Aigrain 1971: 717–9; Recchia 1978: 11–13; and Marazzi 1998: 111–47. Chapter 1. Aigrain 1971: 718. Jones 1964: 789 and Cracco Ruggini 1980: 493; 517, citing Gregory (Ep. 2.50). To be clear, Gregory did not directly state that the Roman church owned 400 Sicilian estates. Rather, he ordered the subdeacon Peter to divide 400 healthy mares into two parts, giving one half to the conductores and the other to the condoma (“farmer’s collective,” as suggested by Martyn 2004: 229, n.162). Depending on the size of the collective and how many estates it oversaw, the figure in reality could have been significantly lower or higher. Cracco Ruggini 1980: 493, who estimates 250 colonate families inhabited a single estate. Her estimations are reiterated by Vera 1983: 510.

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fundamental were bookkeeping practices.147 Between the late fifth and mid-sixth century, Roman bishops began using established domestic terminology and administrative principles to organize the various units of the church’s property. For example, by the mid-sixth century and possibly from as early as the late fifth, the Roman church used the term patrimonium in the common administrative sense to refer to estates that were grouped on the basis of geography and managed as a unit.148 As mentioned earlier, this term had long been used domestically and in the courts of the emperor and Ostrogothic kings.149 Furthermore, the Roman church evidently kept a master accounting book(s) that recorded all the revenues collected by its agents from the church’s estates as well as its expenditures. At some point, bishops began to call these books the polypticha, the form of which appears to have been similar to the administrative registers used by both private and imperial estate managers.150 Of course, other features of the church’s accounting techniques reflect its distinctly ecclesiastical obligations and needs. From at least the 470s, all revenues were distributed according to a four-part division.151 The so-called quadripartitum divided the returns equally among the bishop, the clergy, the maintenance of church buildings, and the care of pilgrims and the poor.152 The bishop ultimately oversaw the execution of the division, but as noted earlier, his financial activities were in turn overseen by other clerics. Moreover, the quadripartitum effectively limited the bishop’s discretionary funds to one quarter of the church’s annual income. This might have required some bishops to dip into their own personal coffers to maintain their accustomed style of living – an economic situation that potentially further blurred the distinction between the bishop’s private household and his church. 147 148

149 150

151

152

Mazza 2006: 706–8. On the development of the term within the context of the Roman church, see Moreau 2006: 82–84. Scholars debate whether Gelasius or Vigilius first used the term in this precise manner. Jones 1964: 411–27. Mazza 2006: 706. Gelasius is credited with the creation of the polypticha by John the Deacon (cf. Vita S. Gregorii 2.24), but the term does not appear in late Roman sources until the episcopate of Pelagius II (e.g., Ep. ad Gregorium diaconum [MGH Epistolae 2: 440–41]). Pietri 1978: 333, n. 68; Richards 1979: 314–5; Aigrain 1971: 717; and Moreau 2006: 81, n. 10 and 91. Interestingly, the earliest evidence for the quadripartitum is an Egyptian text produced between 350 and 450. See Wipszycka 1972: 131–2. Simplicius, Ep 1.2. Cf. Gelasius, Epp. 14.27, 15.2 and 16.2 (ed. Thiel 1868: 378–81). On the quadripartitum, see Jones 1960 and Marazzi 1998: 65–69.

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As was true for all elite domus of the day, the Roman church generated much of its income through rent collection.153 Rome’s conductores also ranged in terms of their social status, although one recent study of Gregory’s managerial practices argues that this bishop at least preferred to rent to low-status people.154 There is also some evidence for the bishop’s direct administration of properties.155 In both cases, however, the bishop needed representatives on the ground to collect rents and taxes as well as to manage the legions of free, bonded, and servile laborers who worked Rome’s fields, produced its farm products, and lived with their families on its estates. Like any elite household, the Roman patrimonies were administered through networks of intermediaries, men entrusted with the task of managing the day-to-day business of property ownership on their bishop’s behalf. Scholars of Rome’s ecclesiastical patrimonies have typically focused on the emergence of two chief administrative agents in the sixth century: the defensor and the rector. Defensores ecclesiae had been important church officials (and usually laymen, it seems) since the fourth century.156 Previously, the Roman church used defensores for legal assistance (a function that was itself an ecclesiastical permutation of the judicial office of the defensor civitatis). By the sixth century, the church assigned them to deal primarily with the financial, fiscal, labor, and legal matters arising on estates located within a particular patrimonium.157 A letter by the bishop Agapitus dated to 535 presents the first reference to a defensor in this capacity, who served as intermediary between the Roman bishop and those who rented and labored on Rome’s estates.158 Much later, Gregory organized the

153

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155 156 157 158

Recchia 1978: 48–55 and Mazza 2006: 704–7. These rents were probably received in both cash and kind, just as they were on lay-owned estates, although further study is needed on this critical aspect of the church’s economic practices. The church also received income through donations and almsgiving: see Simplicius, Ep. 1.2 and Gelasius, Ep. 14.27 (ed. Thiel 1868: 176, 378). Mazza 2006: 706. According to Mazza, Gregory preferred low-status conductores because they were less likely to be absentee overseers of the properties. Such a preference, she notes, would have differentiated the Roman church’s practice of locutio-conductio from the imperial household’s. Mazza 2006: 704. Sotinel 2003: 111–12. On their functions to 450, see Sotinel 2003: 110–4. Agapitus, Ep. 7 = Caesarius of Arles, Ep. 16, discussed in Moreau 2006: 86. The Roman church had long relied on defensores to assist them in legal matters. See Sotinel 2003: 110–112. For the defensor and patrimonial administration, see Recchia 1978: 25–42.

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defensores into a schola with distinct grades.159 Defensores likely relied in turn on notaries to help them to process what was undoubtedly a great deal of paperwork.160 Gregory might have also pioneered the use of the term rector to denote the bishop’s chief ecclesiastical agent of a particular patrimony. His letters are filled with allusions to rectores, men like the subdeacon Peter, who was in charge of running the church’s two Sicilian patrimonies from 590 to 592. Some have suggested that Gregory created the rectores as a distinct corps of ecclesiastical officials. He used the term not as a title of a new office, however, but in reference to the agent’s administrative functions and, more significantly, his ethical responsibilities.161 Rector, we recall, is a term that Gregory and other writers used in theoretical works on clerical authority to denote a man-in-power, who was both a leader and a judge. In fact, both the rector and the defensor had ethical and disciplinary duties. Like the late Roman imperial defensor civitatis, these ecclesiastical administrators were expected to protect the most vulnerable members of the church’s domus, namely, its coloni and rustici.162 Moreover, they were to serve as the bishop’s representative in the oversight of the clergy in that particular patrimonium and were thus frequently called on to police clerical behavior.163 That Roman bishops adopted an alternative nomenclature for denoting their chief domestic agents is highly significant. It speaks to their desire to distinguish the bishop’s men from those agents who served private or imperial/regal domini. Defensor and rector were more semantically weighty epithets than dispensator, actor, or even procurator. They both shielded the bishop’s stewards from the specter of servitude and implied that his agents possessed ethical, juridical, and even civic authority. As the chief overseer of such men, the rector rectoris, if you will, the Roman bishop could differentiate his own routine property management of the domus dei from the quotidian administration of non-ecclesiastical households. Whereas centralized channels of ecclesiastical administration brought certain logistical advantages (it was obviously easier for the

159 160 161 162

163

Gregory, Ep. 8.26. Recchia 1978: 42–45. Recchia 1978: 25–26, n. 2. Aigrain 1971: 719–20. Gregory was especially persistent in voicing these expectations to his administrators. See Ep. 1.42. Chapter 5.

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bishop to manage the church’s patrimonies in a given area through a few appointed representatives), they also served pointed ideological purposes. The good administration of rectores and defensores, each assigned to specific regions and each carrying out their prelate’s orders on command, emphasized the bishop’s excellence in the preservation of order and prosperity, the guiding principles of oikonomia. The formulation of a distinct terminology to designate the bishop’s chief administrative agents was an important development in the making of the bishop’s household, but it co-existed with his use of a more ad-hoc system of estate management. Rome’s bishops do not appear to have established extensive bureaucracies to administer their properties, as the Apiones did to manage their estates in Egypt.164 Instead, the church typically relied on preexisting networks of bishops, non-Roman clerics, and lay magnates. Their roles in the administration of Rome’s estates were often assigned on a case-by-case basis and they generally did not possess any particular title or epithet.165 In fact, this arrangement seems to have been the norm before the late sixth century. Even the emperor might be petitioned to assist the bishop of Rome in his administrative duties. A letter from Celestine (422–432) asked Theodosius II to protect Rome’s ownership of certain possessiones in Asia against the aggressive interests of local parties.166 Mostly, however, the bishop looked to clerical contacts as well as regional elites, some of whom were also state officials. Gelasius called on Honorius of Salona to intercede on the Roman church’s behalf when the sons of a deceased conductor refused to hand over property belonging to their father’s landlord, Rome.167 In another letter, the same bishop thanked a layman named Agilulphus, possibly the comes Dalmatiae, for his protection of Rome’s property in Dalmatia.168 In a third letter, Gelasius looked to a local deacon for assistance in creating an inventory of the Roman praedia situated in Picenum.169 In southern Gaul, where the Roman church owned a small number of estates around 164 165

166 167 168

169

On the Apiones, see Mazza 2001 and Sarris 2006. See Spearing 1918: 21–39; Recchia 1978: 25–55; and Pietri 1986, although none of these authors emphasizes that the Roman bishop took advantage of preexisting networks to help him administer the patrimonies. Celestine Ep. 23 dated to 432, discussed in Moreau 2006: 80–81. Gelasius, Frg. 28.2 (ed. Thiel 1868: 499–500). Gelasius, Frg. 2 (ed. Thiel 1868: 484). Nothing is known of this Agilulphus outside of Gelasius’ letter, which is fragmentary. Gelasius, Ep.4 (ed. Ewald 1880: 10).

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Arles, Rome employed a string of local aristocrats and Arlesian bishops to oversee their patrimony from at least the middle until the very late sixth century.170 In all of these cases, the bishop’s representatives were neither social inferiors nor ecclesiastical subordinates, but men of equal or even superior social status. They assisted the Roman bishop; they did not serve him. Alternatively, Roman prelates also tapped into the suffragan ecclesiastical networks in Italy for on-the-ground assistance in managing Rome’s estates. Thus, in Italia suburbicaria, provincial bishops were frequently placed in charge of a particular patrimony. Bishop Maurus of Praeneste oversaw Rome’s Tiburtine patrimony between 552 and 558, whereas Julian of Cingulanum (modern Cingoli in Le Marche) watched over Rome’s Picene estates from 556 to 561.171 Both of these examples date to the tenure of Pelagius I, who was left with the difficult task of reorganizing the church’s property holdings following the Gothic War, which ended in 554. The destruction wrought by the twenty-year war in the peninsula might have made the use of local bishops as administrative agents a more practical (and even necessary) choice. A bishop’s success in property management thus depended on the abilities and dedication of his agents. The idea was undoubtedly to select a trustworthy and able representative, such as Gregory’s friend the subdeacon Peter, who oversaw the two Sicilian patrimonies from 590 to 592. The absence of explicit guidelines or “job requirements,” however, made the selection process inherently risky. For example, Vigilius appointed a man named Sebastianus to oversee the church’s Dalmatian estates in 545.172 He was a layman whom the bishop hastily ordained a deacon just before Vigilius’ unplanned departure for Constantinople. Sebastianus’ duties were twofold: he was to watch over the administration of the Roman patrimony in Dalmatia and keep his ear close to the ground in the hope that he would gather information about the churches in the region, many of which had sided against Rome in the Three Chapters Controversy. It turned out, however, that Vigilius had not made a good

170

171 172

Placidus, father of Sapaudus (bishop of Arles), administered lands around Arles under Pelagius I. Under Pelagius II, the Arlesian bishop Licerius of Arles was the overseer; he was succeeded by a local patricius named Dynamius. When Dynamius fell out of favor with the Frankish court, Gregory replaced him with a Roman priest. Pelagius, Epp. 14, 83–84. Vigilius, Ep. 14.8, discussed in Moreau 2006: 88.

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choice. In addition to harboring some inappropriate doctrinal views (he apparently aligned with the Illyrians and Constantinople on the Three Chapters matter), Sebastianus failed to prevent Honorius of Salona from making illicit ordinations and even neglected to collect rents. As it ended badly for all parties involved, Sebastianus’ brief tenure as the bishop’s chief agent in Dalmatia underscores the absence of professional standards in the bishop’s household and also reveals the extent to which the church’s domestic duties coincided with its doctrinal interests. Householders were responsible for religious practices occurring on their estates; however, they were not obliged to guard against incorrect beliefs in another diocese. Here is one rather obvious way in which the bishop’s estate agents differed from their senatorial or imperial counterparts. Despite their extensive reliance on agents, Roman bishops were still remarkably interventionist – a characteristic that placed them closer to the private aristocratic householder than to the imperial lord.173 Their letters record involvement in a wide and deep range of administrative activities: personally issuing receipts to local bishops, defensores of the church, and even conductores for revenues collected from Rome’s patrimonia; offering detailed directions on the sale of livestock and the prices of farm products; directly reprimanding individual clergymen and clerical officials who defrauded the conductores and coloni or otherwise abused their power; intervening in specific property disputes involving conductores and their heirs; and dictating precise figures on the amount of taxes that their agents and the conductores were permitted to levy on the rural workers and hence protecting them from oppressive treatment.174 Roman bishops often interacted directly not only with their renters but also with their 173

174

Wickham 2005: 248, 268–71. Roman bishops were not unique in this regard. Gregory Nazianzus claimed that Basil personally inspected all the lands of the churches in his diocese. See Or. 43.58. Gelasius: Ep. 31: receipt issued by Gelasius for revenues (thirty solidi) collected from the fundus Claculas; Ep. 32: revenues (thirty solidi) from an unspecified fundus (ed. Thiel 1868: 447–48). Pelagius: Ep. 83: Receipt to Julianus of Cingulanum for payment for revenues from Picenum estates; and Ep. 84 letter to the bishop Julianus of Cingulanum with specific directions about how to deal with compensating laborers on church estates. Gregory: Epp. 1.42: letter to Peter, rector of Rome’s Sicilian estates, detailing tax calculations, treatment of renters and laborers as well as directions for resolving a dispute between a subdeacon and the vilica of a local noblewoman; 2.50: directions to Peter for the sale and rendering of livestock; and 9.43: orders to the defensor Scholasticus to pay back wages to a colonus working as a domestic in a church-owned house in Catania.

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renters’ representatives. Gelasius worked with the agents of a conductor named Urbicus but directly with another conductor named Vincomalus (possibly a Roman titular priest175 ). No detail seems to have been too small for the bishop. One letter already mentioned records Pelagius’ request to the Roman comes Gurdimerus to cut the grass on a lot so that it could be seeded.176 Another, penned by Gregory in 601, shows that Roman bishops extended similarly detailed directives to the financial management of other Italian churches.177 Such letters reveal episcopal estate management at its grittiest. They present a bishop who endeavored to appear not as the household’s distant overseer, but as its ever-present micromanager. If their behavior is any indication of their self-understanding as bishops, Roman prelates desired to be known as expert householders, men thoroughly schooled in the most material aspects of estate management, that is, those involving property, agriculture, labor, and production. Although the steward might have been the bishops’ moniker in theoretical treatises and sermons, paterfamilias was their preferred identity when it came to actually running the church. Nevertheless, as the “chief slave-steward” in charge of the Lord’s house, Rome’s bishops went to great lengths to protect their dependents, the thousands of men, women, and children who lived and labored on the church’s estates. Such protection was not solely a function of Christian ideals that valorized charity and pious benevolence. As his predecessors did, Gregory could protect his rustici so directly and efficaciously precisely because he was a man-in-power who headed one of the largest households in all of Italy.178 CONCLUSION

Household management played a formative role in shaping the ideal and reality of the Roman bishop’s authority in late antiquity. In many respects, the bishop’s household bore a striking resemblance to the domus of contemporary elites. Both were structured around hierarchical and vertical 175

176 177 178

For the identification of the conductor Vincomalus with a presbyter tituli Crescentianae under Symmachus, see PCBE 2. 2301–2, although with reservations voiced by Moreau 2006: 82. Pelagius, Ep. 76. Gregory, Ep. 11.22 addressed to Pascasius of Naples in 601. Cracco Ruggini 1995: 252ff presents a far more realistic and socially grounded discussion of Gregory’s administration than most other scholars, who typically praise Gregory’s concerns as reflective of his “Christian” sensibilities (e.g., Recchia 1978).

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relations of power and included members related by birth, friendship, guardianship, dependency, and servitude. Much of the concrete business of land administration seems to have been practiced in similar ways. Moreover, both the bishop and the lay paterfamilias were increasingly encouraged to identify with the slave-steward of the Bible and to carry out their earthly acts of domination with an eye toward their ultimate lord and master, God. There were also significant differences between the bishop’s house and the traditional lay domus. As Theodoric’s passing comment implied, domus and arca were intertwined both conceptually and concretely, so much so that the boundaries separating the bishop’s personal household business from his oversight of the church were extraordinarily thin. In this respect, the emperor’s household, an institution that was also fundamentally interconnected with public officials and management, is an apt comparandum, yet Gelasius and his fellow bishops would have undoubtedly bristled at this comparison. For them, episcopal stewardship was especially sacred and significant. Rome’s bishops consistently emphasized the unique nature of their oversight, the fact that they were God’s chosen agents tasked with the more onerous and extensive duty of “rendering an account” of the entire community’s conduct. Finally, let us recall Gregory’s exchange with Natalis of Salona on the subject of bishops and dinner parties.179 In his letter to the bishop of Salona, Gregory stridently rejected Natalis’ defense of conviviality at the bishop’s table. Although important, Gregory’s strong ascetic sensibilities were not the only factors guiding his reaction. In addition to owning property in the vicinity of the diocese, the Roman church had long endeavored to assert its authority over the Illyrian churches (with varying degrees of success).180 What is especially interesting about this particular exchange between Rome and Salona is the fact that Natalis initiated it: he had written to Gregory with his own exegetical defense of “convivial” banqueting as an appropriate activity for holy bishops and had asked for Gregory’s opinion on the matter. Gregory was largely unimpressed with Natalis’ argument, but these details are less important than the framework within which the two men expressed their views. Both Natalis’ (now lost) letter and Gregory’s response underline an important development in the nature and exercise of Roman episcopal authority that had been taking 179 180

Gregory, Ep. 2.44. Caspar 1930–33: 2. 206–11, 437–42 and Markus 1997: 156–61. On Roman patriˆ monies in Dalmatia and their probable situation around Salona, see Skegro 2004.

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shape over the course of the past three centuries. The ethics of oikonomia, in both their classical and emerging Christian form, had come to frame the way that late Romans regarded the bishop of Rome. His successes and strengths, as well as his failures and weaknesses, were increasingly assessed according to ideals of domestic administration.

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Chapter 4

Overseeing th e Overseer: Bish ops and Lay H ouseh olds

oman bishops faced an impasse when they tried to exercise

influence over the lay household. They and other authorities R encouraged traditional domini to take a leading role in the religious life of their homes. For centuries, ancient householders had recognized their responsibility to ensure that the gods were properly cultivated and worshipped in perpetuity, duties that they solemnly fulfilled even if they did not personally execute every rite. Christianity did little to alter this dynamic, although it did foreground the centrality of religious observance for oikonomia in an unprecedented fashion. The inscription on the bronze boat-shaped lamp created for Valerius Severus illustrates this new emphasis. The epigraph proclaimed that Valerius received “the law” from God and with it the obligation to oversee its proper observance in his home.1 Rather than situate Severus’ duties within an ecclesiastical framework, however, the lamp mentions no church officials. Severus’ name appears with figurines of Peter and Paul, founding fathers of the Roman church to be sure, but hardly “papal” signatures, as some have concluded. In fact, Severus’ lamp underlines the challenges that Roman bishops faced when they tried to establish their presence within traditional elite homes. If householders were the original experts and divinely appointed stewards of the domestic sphere, then what role remained for bishops to play in the governing of a lay Christian domus? On what grounds might they claim authority to oversee the overseer? This chapter examines the efforts of Roman bishops to develop expertise in certain areas of domestic life. It explores how they involved themselves in the resolution of highly ambiguous legal and ethical matters in the lay home. To be clear, Rome’s bishops did not replace the dominus as 1

Chapter 2.

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the primary “decider” of difficult household questions. Lay householders remained powerful ethical authorities as well as crucial overseers of religious activities in their homes. Bishops, however, could offer the family something that lay patresfamilias could not: a reputation for spiritual discernment and a perceived familiarity with both religious ethics and civil law. As Kevin Uhalde has shown, late Roman bishops endeavored to be seen as “exceptional judges,” who were especially adept at discerning certain spiritual and secular obscurities.2 We suggest that Roman prelates wanted to appear not as exceptional judges but as exceptional domestic counselors or “troubleshooters,” who offered advice on seemingly intractable problems involving the intersection of civil law, Christian ethics, and the domestic sphere.3 In this respect, bishops might play a domestic role that largely complemented the lay paterfamilias’ traditional obligations to order and discipline his domus. TH E PROBLEMS AND PERILS OF MARRIAGE

Scholars stress that marriage underwent few (if any) fundamental changes in late antiquity.4 Christianity did not erode its cultural significance as the most elemental form of human association and the primary building block of the state, nor did it transform the experience of marriage for most late Roman families.5 Although we cannot speak of marriage’s transformation in the late empire, we can nevertheless identify ways in which it became problematic to a degree unknown by earlier Romans. Christianity introduced ethics and practices that did not always cohere with traditional Greco-Roman mores of marriage and married life.6 For example, the church’s denigration of divorce and the equation of remarriage with adultery meant that first marriages acquired a significance unfamiliar to most Romans. Asceticism also produced changes in marriage’s daily rhythms by encouraging husbands and wives to abstain 2 3

4

5

6

Uhalde 2007: 10–12, 44–76. Harries 1999: 198 refers to bishops as “universal troubleshooters.” Here I restrict this role to the domestic sphere. On the fluid nature of “Christian” marriage in late antiquity and its continuities with classical practices, see Evans Grubbs 1995; Reynolds 2001; Hunter 2003; and Cooper 2007: 144–5 and 160–5. Cf. Augustine, De civ. dei 19:16–17. Christians could also be hostile to marriage. Cf. reactions to Jovinian’s valorization of marriage as recently explored by Duval 2003 and Hunter 2007. See Cooper 2007:145 and Reynolds 2001: 121–55 for the discordance between Christian attitudes toward marriage and Roman legal traditions.

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from sexual relations. In addition, the tumultuous events of the fifth and sixth centuries catalyzed unprecedented social instability for Italian families. Nearly two centuries of barbarian invasions and a twenty-year war disrupted daily life in virtually every conceivable way. Marriages were sometimes directly affected, such as when Italians were carried off into captivity leaving spouses and children behind. All of these developments and pressures created opportunities for bishops to claim a distinct and new type of domestic expertise. To a certain extent, late Roman Christians expected their bishops to be knowledgeable about marriage and sex. Fifth- and sixth-century handbook traditions, like the Enchiridion of Sixtus and the Ad Gregoriam in palatio, portrayed bishops dispensing advice on sexual relations and the married state.7 A bishop’s reputed wisdom in these domains would have also derived from his participation in marital disputes, whether as a judge or arbiter at ecclesiastical hearings or as a “marriage counselor” to individual families.8 By the early seventh century, a Roman bishop might pronounce on the most intimate aspects of married life. How long must a married couple wait after having sex before they might receive communion? Ought women who were menstruating, pregnant, or who had recently given birth be turned away from the altar? Such were the questions that the missionary Augustine posed to Gregory in 603.9 Gregory’s remarkably detailed responses (replete with an excursus on the benefits of breastfeeding and the evils of wet nurses) demonstrate the Roman bishop’s fluency in these particular areas of estate management, which had become increasingly entangled with the church. It is this very entanglement, however, that demands our close attention. Roman bishops did not accrue a reputation for marital knowledge without great effort. Some adopted punitive tactics like excommunication and penance as a means to enforce the church’s position on, for example, the sins of remarriage or adultery, especially when disciplining the households of clergy.10 But coercion was not the only tool in the 7

8

9 10

The Sentences of Sixtus 230b; 231–3; and 235 (Chadwick1959: 12–63). The Christian version of the text was traditionally ascribed to the third-century Roman bishop Xystus II. The Ad Gregoriam in palatio was attributed to a “bishop John,” whose identity remains uncertain. See Chapter 2. Rapp 2005: 251 presents non-Roman evidence for late ancient bishops acting as marriage counselors. Gregory, Ep. 11.56a (MGH Epistulae 2: 331–43). Cf. Ad Gallos episcopos 11.5–6; Siricius, Ep. 1.8–13; and Innocent, Epp. 2.4–6; 6.1, 4; and 38.

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bishop’s box. He could also use more constructive ritual and rhetorical approaches to build his reputation as a holy expert on matters of marriage and sex among Italian lay households. Specifically, Roman bishops endeavored to achieve this difficult goal by acquiring a reputation for knowledge in two areas of marriage and sex that had become newly problematic: the ambiguous significance of nuptial blessings, and the remarriage of Christians whose spouses were taken into captivity but then returned to the household. Nuptial Blessings and the Veiling of Brides11 Theoretically, Roman marriage was a straightforward affair: two families of appropriate rank and relationship agreed to join their son and daughter in a union. Once the children were of age (twelve for a girl, fourteen for a boy), their marriage was predicated solely on their mutual consent to be married.12 Mutual agreement to be married was all that the law required for the recognition of a iustum matrimonium. Conversely, the removal of consent was all that divorce required in the late Republic and empire. Although former spouses bickered over property and the return of dowries, their divorce was as simple as their next marriage in the eyes of the law.13 Even when Constantine and later Christian emperors placed new restrictions on divorce, they did not alter the fundamental legal principle guiding Roman marriage.14 The mutual consent of both families (especially their fathers or guardians) and the two people joined in the union remained the central tenet of a legitimate marriage.15 In practice, however, Romans experienced a far richer and more complex process when they wed. Betrothals were sometimes multiyear arrangements, with their own distinctive ceremonial attributes, like the 11

12

13

14

15

I do not consider the veiling of virgins, which was also an increasingly important rite for bishops. Among other things, it brought them into contact with some of the region’s most illustrious families. Liberius (352–66), for instance, veiled Ambrose’s sister. See Hunter 1999. Treggiari 1991: 37–57 and Evans Grubbs 1995: 140–147. Cf. Dig. 35.1.15, where Ulpian underscored that consent, and not sexual union, establishes a legal marriage. There was no single procedure for formalizing divorce in Roman law, although it might involve presenting the spouse with a written repudium. See Evans Grubbs 1995: 225–8. Evans Grubbs 1995: 228–60. These new restrictions and penalties had an impact mostly on unilateral divorces, especially for women. Gaudemet 1987: 58–60 and Reynolds 2001: 22–38.

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fiancé’s presentation of an engagement gift (the arra) to the bride’s family or the ritual sealing of the sponsalia with a kiss. Both rites became increasingly significant in late antiquity.16 There was also a wide range of rituals associated with the wedding itself: the bride’s donning of a floral crown and flame-red veil (the flammeum) and the ceremonial procession of the bride from her natal home to the groom’s house (deductio ad domum).17 These rituals publicly and symbolically established the marriage before an audience of witnesses. Some weddings included expressly religious components, such as sacrificial offerings to the gods (the confarreatio), the taking of auspices, and wedding hymns.18 The fact that a Roman marriage was legally predicated on nothing more formal than an agreement, however, meant that its ritualized expression had a varied, fluid history, differing from region to region, perhaps even from household to household. To a great extent, the “Christian” wedding is something of a misnomer in late antiquity, because most evidence for nuptials performed for a Christian couple describes elements that are consistently Roman. For example, Tertullian (ca. 160–220) artfully mixed Christian metaphors with technical (and wholly classical) Roman terms used to connote various aspects of a wedding, like the offering of a wedding day sacrifice and the seal placed on the written marriage documents. As Hunter observed, Tertullian’s description clearly falls short of a distinctly “Christian” nuptial rite.19 We know from Augustine that many North African Christian families composed formal marriage contracts (tabulae nuptiales) just as their classical counterparts had, which recorded items such as the bride’s dowry, the increasingly common groom gift (donatio ante nuptias), and any property that either party owned when entering the union.20 Christians also welcomed the composition and recitation of epithalamia at their weddings, some of which were even authored by bishops. Paulinus of Nola composed an epithalamium in 403 to honor the marriage between the son and daughter of his two friends, Bishop Memor of Beneventum 16

17 18 19 20

Anné 1941: 87–153; Gaudemet 1987: 57–8; Evans Grubbs 1995: 172–83; Arjava 1996: 55–6. On the exchanging of a kiss to seal the betrothal contract (first noted by Tertullian and presumed as normative in CT 3.5.6 [319]), see Anné 1941: 63–85 and Evans Grubbs 1995: 170–1. Treggiari 1991: 163, 166–7. Treggiari 1991: 21–4 Hunter 2003: 69–71. Treggiari 1991: 165 and Evans Grubbs 1995: 145–7. On the tabulae nuptiales or matrimoniales, see Hunter 2007a.

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and Bishop Aemelius of Capua, as did the sixth-century Pavian bishop Ennodius for his friends’ children.21 As these examples suggest, clerical participation was perhaps the only criterion distinguishing a Christian from a non-Christian wedding. Neither the late Roman church nor state developed universal requirements in this regard, however.22 Consequently, the degree of clerical intervention varied enormously. For example, Hunter has argued that the role of bishops at Christian weddings in North Africa was minimal and largely involved the witnessing of the signing and sealing of the tabulae nuptiales.23 In Italy, some bishops participated in a more active, ritualized manner, through the offering of blessings for the couple’s union and/or through the performance of a veiling ceremony.24 These latter rites and their relation to the process of marrying posed the greatest hermeneutic quandaries for Christians. Although sources dating from the late fourth century mention nuptial blessings and veiling, they offer few (and sometimes conflicting) details about what they entailed. In most texts only girls appear to have been veiled, but Paulinus’ epithalamium implies that both the bride and groom received this particular blessing.25 It is presumed that bishops were the primary celebrants of nuptial rites, but in some cases the celebrant is simply denoted as sacerdos, opening up the possibility that priests also performed veiling ceremonies.26 According to one fifth-century Roman source, the rites were performed in an ecclesiastical setting.27 Ambrosiaster claimed that nuptial blessings were restricted to first marriages and were possibly prohibited for subsequent unions.28 This would make sense given the growing consensus among church fathers in the West that 21 22

23 24

25

26

27 28

Paulinus, Carm. 25 and Ennodius, Carm. 1.4. In fact, the Byzantine state did not require a church ceremony as a precondition for a valid marriage until the tenth century. See Laiou 1985. Hunter 2003. For general discussion of nuptial blessings and veiling, see Anné 1941: 182–219 and Ritzer 1970: 223–37. Paulinus, Carm. 25.227–30. Paulinus’ description of nuptial veiling, however, is neither empirical nor representative. In writing the epithalamium, he was not recording an event but composing a poem. More significantly, the two bishops who performed the veiling ceremony, Memor and Aemilius, were also likely the fathers of the bride and groom. Ambrose, Ep. 19 and Paulinus, Carmen 25.227–30 presume bishops, but two Roman sources, Siricius, Ep. 1.5 and “Praedestinatus” 3.31, denote the celebrant as sacerdos. “Praedestinatus” 3.31. Ambrosiaster, Ad 1 Cor. 7:40. See also Ad 1 Tim. 3:12 and 5.3 and Quaes.127.3 (CSEL 50: 400).

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“first marriages” were special, and second marriages (especially those following divorce) were tantamount to adultery. The wealthy divorcée Fabiola performed a spectacular public penance at St. Peter’s, presumably under the direction of Damasus, where she wiped her soul clean of this precise sin.29 While Roman bishops might assist marital sinners in the penance process, they were equally concerned with helping them and their families avoid the sin altogether by making a good first match. Traditionally, it was a bishop’s reputed ability to scrutinize a potential union, to ascertain whether it was conducted for the right reasons, that most recommended his participation in the process of marrying. For example, Ignatius of Antioch (d. ca. 98–117) suggested that Christians “contract their union with the judgment of the bishop, in order that the marriage be according to the Lord and not according to lust.”30 Similarly, Tertullian claimed that Christians do not allow “secret marriages” but only those conducted openly “before the church” (apud ecclesiae), lest they risk being judged as nothing more than opportunities for fornication.31 Bishops and other clerics could somehow distinguish between a union formed for procreation and one connived solely for sexual purposes. To some extent, the participation of bishops and clergy in the validation of a good union recalls the informal matchmaking roles performed by Roman aristocrats like Pliny and Symmachus, who were asked to comment on the appropriateness or viability of certain eligible men or women on behalf of interested friends and family.32 They too would have been expected to judge the character of the two potential spouses. There is also evidence that bishops worked as matchmakers in the more traditional sense of the term, although this evidence does not pertain to Rome.33 What ultimately distinguished late Roman bishops from their lay counterparts was the development of a ritualized expression of their approval: the offering of blessings for the couple and the veiling of the bride. These were symbolic gestures that could be more easily monopolized than measured advice from an experienced friend. Thus Siricius’ (384–399) letter to Himerius of Tarragona and an anonymous tract from a 29 30 31 32 33

Jerome, Ep. 77. Ignatius, Ep. 5.2 (trans. Lake 1: 232). Tertullian, De pudicitia 4.4. Noy 1990 and Sogno 2010. The Epistola Clementis, cc. 7–8 associated priests (but not bishops) with arranging marriages, while Possidius, Vita S. Augustini 23 suggested that some bishops in North Africa engaged in matchmaking. See also Brown 1990: 58–9 and Arjava 1996: 30.

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fifth-century Roman writer known as “Praedestinatus” situate these rites within a framework designed to publicize the bishop’s approval of the union.34 By the sixth century, nuptial blessings were probably fairly commonplace in Roman and suburbicarian churches, although there is no evidence to suggest that bishops required them for lay households as they did for men wishing to marry and enter the ranks of the clergy.35 Nuptial rites might have even begun to be integrated into the liturgy during this period. The so-called Veronense Sacramentary, a seventh-century book containing mass formularies that could have originated in sixth-century Rome, includes numerous prayers possibly used by Roman clergy to bless the couple.36 With the steady use and perhaps even standardization of nuptial rites in Italy, one would assume that their social meaning and spiritual force had also become regularized. However, the fact that marriage continued to be based on mutual consent meant that interpretations of nuptial blessings remained fluid. There are no late Roman imperial laws or ecclesiastical canons that delineated precisely how the bride’s veiling related to the validity of a marriage or where exactly it fit within the process of marrying. One of the unintended effects of the rites’ proliferation was the creation of a new source of confusion for Christians who wanted to marry. How binding were the blessings, especially if they were conducted in lieu of additional, but arguably more traditional, nuptial rights? Did the Roman church view the veiled and blessed desponsata as already married and hence unable to contract a union with another man? Alternatively, was the corporeal state of virginity a more significant criterion for establishing a woman’s eligibility for a legitimate marriage? These were precisely the conundrums that late fifth- and sixth-century Roman bishops attempted to resolve. Their responses reveal how Roman bishops carefully defined their own authority as experts on the nebulous topic of nuptial blessings and their relationship to traditional Roman indexes of a consensual marital union. Confusion surrounded nuptial rites from their earliest attestation in the Roman sources. Siricius’ brief discussion of coniugalis velatio appears in a response to queries of Himerius of Tarragona, who was perplexed as to 34 35 36

Siricius, Ep. 1.5 and “Praedestinatus,” 3.31. See Chapter 5. Sacramentarium Veronense 1105–1110 (eds. Mohlberg, et al. 1966). For possible connections between these formularies and Ambrosiaster’s writings, see Frisch and Hunter 1994.

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what these rites actually meant.37 “On the subject of conjugal veiling,” he wrote to Himerius in 385, “you have asked whether someone can marry a girl who was betrothed to another. By all means we forbid this to be done since that blessing, which a sacerdos imposes on an girl who is about to marry (nupturae), is a kind of sacrilege among the faithful if it is violated by any transgression.”38 Modern scholars have been equally perplexed by Siricius’ answer. Some interpret him to mean that a girl who reneged on an engagement to marry another man could not then receive the nuptial blessing from the bishop.39 This plausible reading is based on the assumption that the nuptial rites blessed the marriage (and not the betrothal), either on the day of or shortly before its consummation.40 As other scholars have observed, however, the Latin suggests that Siricius saw the veiling as a blessing of the betrothal agreement, even if it were not a separate “engagement ritual” of the type seen in the Middle Ages.41 The blessing is given not to the girl who is marrying, but to the one “who will marry.” What Siricius asserted, then, was that a girl who has already received the coniugalis velatio is not free to marry another man.42 Siricius’ interpretation of the nuptial blessing resonates with the heightened significance given to the betrothal (and to betrothal gifts) as a distinct part of the marriage process in fourth-century imperial legislation.43 More important for the history of Roman episcopal authority, this interpretation would provide another reason for householders to seek a bishop’s participation in the marriage process, because his blessing was given not to their children’s union or its future productivity, but to the parents’ choice of a match. In this respect, a bishop’s moral scrutiny would come directly into play through his performance of a ritual that was unavailable to most other advisers, whom a family might otherwise consult when contracting a marriage for their child. 37

38

39 40

41 42 43

Himerius had originally posed his queries to Siricius’ predecessor Damasus, who evidently died before answering them. Siricius, Ep. 1.5 (PL 13.1138): De coniugali autem velatione requisisti, si desponsatam alii puellam, alter in matrimonium posit accipere. Hoc ne fiat, modis omnibus inhibemus: quia illa benedictio, quam nupturae sacerdos imponit, apud fideles cuiusdem sacrilegii instar est, si ulla trangressione violetur. Anné 1941: 194–5. Ritzer 1970: 230–1. Ritzer 1970: 226–7, 231. There is some basis for this interpretation in Paulinus’ wedding hymn (Carmen 25), where the two bishops veil their children at a ceremony clearly intended to celebrate their marriage. As argued by Evans Grubbs 1995: 179–80 and Reynolds 2001: 321–2. Reynolds 2001: 321–2. Anné 1941: 293–306. Evans Grubbs 1995: 156–83.

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A century later, Gelasius too pronounced on the matter of nuptial veiling, although he was dealing with a specific domestic crisis. Hostilius, a comes from Campania, had complained to Gelasius that a young girl, probably the comes’ relative and/or ward (the letter does not specify44 ), had married a cleric or church official (ecclesiae homo) under conditions that Hostilius considered suspicious.45 He claimed that she had been abducted by the man and “married” to him without any of the rites that late Romans traditionally performed to publicize mutual consent for the match.46 Leaving aside for now Hostilius’ claim that the puella had been rapta, let us examine his charge that the marriage was illegitimate because it lacked certain rites.47 In an angry letter addressed directly to the comes, Gelasius categorically rejected the layman’s charge of the marriage’s impropriety. He pointed not only to the girl’s reception of engagement gifts (acceptis arris) but also to her participation in a veiling ceremony (velamine etiam capitis iam peracto).48 The latter, Gelasius argued, was a far more certain and solemn way to demonstrate the marriage’s legitimacy than lewd revelries and songs (lasciviam et ponpam [sic] nuptiarum et symphonyas [sic]). Here Gelasius ostensibly referred to the sexually charged ritual of the deductio in domum.49 In fact, the absence of pompa nuptiarum might have been what raised Hostilius’ suspicions about the marriage. More to the point, for this lay Italian householder, nuptial veiling was not a defining rite in the marriage process. Whereas Hostilius emphasized rites that publicized the imminent consummation of a marriage, Gelasius (like Siricius) stressed the betrothal stages. Gelasius made his case by distinguishing between valid and invalid nuptial rites, that is, between betrothal gifts and nuptial veiling on the one hand and something akin to the racier deductio ad domum on the other. By drawing this distinction, Gelasius did more than simply dismiss Hostilius’ complaint and advocate for the legitimacy of the marriage. He elevated the emerging Christian custom of nuptial veiling 44

45

46 47 48 49

Of course, it is also possible that Hostilius acted as an agent on behalf of another household, but no mention of a third party is made in the letter. The identity of the unnamed “man of the church” remains unknown. Gelasius likely employed the phrase (which was not a standard title or epithet) simply to denote a cleric or official attached to his church in Rome. This is how Gregory used the phrase in a 595 letter to the Frankish queen Brunhilde. Cf. Ep. 6.5. Gelasius, Ep. 73 (ed. Ewald 1880: 562–3). On the abduction charge, see Chapter 6. Gelasius, Ep. 73 (ed. Ewald 1880: 562). On Gelasius’ implied association of the latter with the deductio in domum, see Ritzer 1970: 221.

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to the same status as engagement gifts, asserting that both were equally solemn indices of marital intent and mutual consensus. Of course, both men were correct in their interpretations of the marriage. There was no single set of late antique laws or traditions that demarcated the ritual parameters of marrying. Gelasius’ tactics were therefore entirely rhetorical: to distinguish between “proper” nuptial rituals and “improper” practices in a manner that established his own authority in determining what constituted a marriage. In addition to being sexually suggestive, the rites preferred by Hostilius were not performed within a church or under a cleric’s aegis. In fact, the Roman bishop tried to privilege an ecclesiastical context further by obviating the fact that Hostilius was likely the girl’s guardian. Gelasius was not making canon law but competitively asserting his own expertise. Hostilius was a high-ranking public official, perhaps a member of Theodoric’s court.50 He was also known to Gelasius as a critic of his church, and the bishop of Rome had complained about the comes in another letter.51 Much was at stake here, not least the status of a clerical marriage. It would not reflect well on Gelasius’ stewardship were an ecclesiae homo to have conducted an illicit marriage.52 Moreover, both parties might bring the dispute before Theodoric.53 Given the legal and ritual ambiguity of marital rites, Gelasius was undoubtedly concerned to establish his authority over this household crisis as definitively as possible. Hence he took an imperious tone, contending that bishops were fitter for navigating the shifting contours of marriage than traditional experts, lay elite householders. Whether his tactics were successful is uncertain. At this particular moment in the late fifth century, a Roman bishop invoked nuptial veiling as a legitimate and legitimating rite tantamount to more traditional practices of establishing a marriage. Just fifty years later, another Roman bishop drew a rather different conclusion. In a letter to a bishop called Marcellus dated to March of 559, Pelagius responded to a query regarding the legitimacy of a potential marriage of a cleric named 50

51

52

53

As suggested by Caspar 1930–33: 2.73–76. PLRE 2: 527 and PCBE 2.1: 1018–9 are more circumspect, stating only that he was a comes. Gelasius, Ep. 8 (ed. Ewald 1880: 511). Hostilius had apparently supported clergy who were of low social status and had been improperly ordained. This was not the only time when a layman challenged Gelasius’ oversight of the clerical household. See Chapter 6 for the adulterous cleric whose crimes precipitated Gelasius’ letter to Roman senators on the Lupercalia. In fact, at the end of the letter Gelasius threatened to do precisely this (as well as to excommunicate Hostilius). See Chapter 6.

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Valentinus to a mulier with a complicated past. “Although,” Pelagius wrote, “she had been veiled before to another man, she nevertheless did not marry him, but remains a virgin . . . ”54 As it happened, the man to whom she had been originally betrothed had died, and now Pelagius was asked to decide whether she might once again obtain the nuptial blessings in the context of a new match. Given the fact that the vir in question was a low-level cleric, Pelagius was perhaps under pressure to find a loophole. As is discussed at length in Chapter 5, men who aspired to higher ecclesiastical offices (bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons) could not wed previously married women. Pelagius thus found a way around the impasse: her virginal status, he explained, held greater significance than the veiling ceremony, which might be repeated under extenuating circumstances. Pelagius insisted to Marcellus that he could find nothing in the established canons that might hinder the cleric’s future marriage, or for that matter the (re)veiling of the mulier. In contrast to Gelasius’ tactics, which underscored the binding nature of the veiling rite and equated it with time-honored, publicly legislated practices like the exchange of engagement gifts, Pelagius effectively demoted it to an optional practice, important for the establishment of an engagement perhaps but not concomitant with marriage. It is interesting to note that although Pelagius cited ecclesiastical law as his guide, his decision about the implications of veiling actually followed imperial legislation far more closely, which viewed the death of the sponsus or sponsa as the termination of the agreement.55 The decisions given by Siricius, Gelasius, and Pelagius do not allow us to formulate a single, coherent “papal position” on the meaning of nuptial rites and the veiling of brides for late Roman marriage practices. On the contrary, they reveal a fluid, polysemous set of traditions. Moreover, they attest to a predilection among Roman bishops to prioritize their own expertise on the meaning of nuptial blessings over the construction of a consistent “policy.” In each case, the bishop responded to a problem created by the addition of a new Christian element to an already nebulous area of domestic life. While all Romans agreed that marriage rested on consent and that consent required some form of publicity, no single set of laws or traditions existed regarding its ritualization. Christian nuptial rites thus did not necessarily clash with Roman traditions, but 54

55

Pelagius, Ep. 57 (eds. Gassò and Batlle 1956: 149–52): Caritati tuae quae observare debeat significare curavimus, id est, ut Valentinum clericum, quo, cui mulier cum alio antea velata, non tamen ei nupta, sed virgo permanens . . . Evans Grubbs 1995: 163 and Arjava 1996: 54–6.

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their relative significance had to be interpreted. This was especially true when the validity of the marriage was itself in question (as we saw with both Gelasius and Pelagius). Roman bishops thus seized opportunities to define these problems in their own terms and to demonstrate to clergy and laymen alike that they knew precisely how to steer couples and their families through the maze of hermeneutic possibilities that marrying engendered. Their responses, although not delivered to emperors, kings, or even to bishops of prominent sees, nevertheless indicate the Roman bishop’s interest in developing knowledge about society’s micro-relations of power, those domains of everyday life over which they hoped to exercise authority. Ursa’s Return: Captivity and Remarriage56 Perhaps during the Visigothic siege of Rome in late August of 410, a Roman Christian named Ursa was abducted and carried off into captivity. Her husband, a man named Fortunius, undoubtedly mourned the violent loss of his wife. But rather than await her possible return, he decided to remarry. Much to his surprise, however, Ursa reemerged in Rome sometime later and sought out her husband, only to find that she had been replaced. In need of assistance, Ursa approached the bishop of Rome, Innocent, hoping that he would be sympathetic to her predicament and help to reinstate the original marriage. Innocent agreed to assist the poor woman and executed what was likely his only option: he wrote a letter to an aristocratic lay householder named Probus to see if he might coax Fortunius to return to his first wife.57 Abduction of Romans by barbarian armies was a violent but fairly common event in antiquity, especially in the western regions of the empire during the fifth and sixth centuries. In fact, Innocent’s successor Leo also wrote a letter in 458 on the subject of captivity and the remarriage of wives whose husbands had been kidnapped.58 In this case, Leo responded to queries from his colleague Nicetas of Aquileia, whose city had been ransacked by the Huns in 452. Much of what we know about the phenomenon comes from the writings of bishops, who famously mobilized their financial resources to help families to ransom kidnapped 56

57 58

A fuller treatment of captivity, remarriage, and Roman episcopal authority appears in Sessa 2011. Innocent, Ep. 36. Leo, Ep. 159.

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relatives and friends. As William Klingshirn has demonstrated, this particular form of episcopal assistance represents one important way in which bishops both established ties to individual households and expanded their own reputations as civic and ecclesiastical leaders.59 Yet however celebrated this act of episcopal charity might have been, it did not necessarily end the family’s pain and suffering. As Ursa’s story poignantly shows, abduction inflicted damages on a domus that could not be remedied through the bishop’s payment of a ransom. The kidnapping of a spouse obviously interrupted a marriage, but how precisely was a Christian supposed to handle the legal and religious ambiguities created by abduction? Was it legitimate to seek a new spouse, or was captivity concomitant with divorce (after all, the kidnapped spouse might still be alive among the barbarians), thus rendering remarriage religiously inviolable for the Christian? And what if after years of separation and a new marriage the abducted spouse miraculously returns, as did Ursa? Roman bishops such as Innocent and Leo endeavored to play a privileged role in the definition and resolution of these domestic dilemmas. Captivity, Return, and (Re)Marriage in Roman Law: The Ius Postliminii Before examining the bishops’ responses, it is important to establish that, in the eyes of the state, Fortunius and the wives of Aquileia acted licitly when they forged new unions. Leo actually alluded to the relevant law in the letter to Nicetas: the ius postliminii. Postliminium outlined the legal status of a Roman citizen who was captured by a foreign power, held in captivity in a land beyond the empire’s civil boundaries, but subsequently returned to Rome. In Roman law, captivity under a foreign power was concomitant with the total negation of citizen rights and was a state theoretically equated with slavery.60 Consequently, a Roman citizen captured by an enemy temporarily lost all property, paternal authority, and conubium, the right to contract a legal marriage.61 If a man or woman had been legitimately captured (and did not willingly flee to the enemy) and found his or her way back to Roman territory, citizenship was 59

60

61

Klingshirn 1985. See also Osiek 1981 on pre-Nicene paraenetic traditions on captivity and ransom. On the ius postliminii, the legal status of captives and their technical assimilation with slaves, see Buckland 1908: 291–317; Kaser 1971: I.113–5, 290–1 and II.129–32, 174–5; and Watson 1991: 37–54. Treggiari 1991: 44.

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automatically reinstated under the ius postliminii, with the recovery of all property and citizen rights – everything, that is, except a marriage formed before the abduction.62 Because marriage rested on consent more than any other principle, a returning captive could not force a spouse to revive the marriage; mutual agreement for the match had to be reconfirmed.63 A late Roman law on postliminium issued in 366 similarly made no mention of the reinstatement of marriages, suggesting that the classical exclusion of coniugia from recoverable objects and rights remained intact.64 In fact, in the event that enemy forces captured one’s husband or wife, a spouse could remarry without incurring penalties, although in late antiquity there might have been an accustomed waiting period when the captive’s status was uncertain.65 In the sixth century, however, Justinian altered the right of postliminium: marriages continued as long as the captive was thought to be alive. When the captive spouse was known to be alive, marriages could be dissolved only after incurring legal penalties (i.e., the loss of betrothal gifts or dowry).66 If the survival of the captive were uncertain, Justinian ruled that a spouse could remarry after a waiting period of five years without punishment. Correlating Roman Law and Christian Ideal in a Time of War Justinian’s 536 revision of the law undoubtedly reflected a broader consensus that marriages ought not be dissolved so hastily. When Innocent and Leo were grappling with the problem of returning Christian captives and remarriages, however, they did not have Justinian’s ruling. To be sure, 62

63

64 65

66

Recovery of property: Dig. 49.12.2 and CJ 8.50(51).18–19. Loss and recovery of patria potestas: Inst. 1.12.5. No recovery of marriage: Dig. 49.12.8; 49.15.14.1; 24.2.1; and 49.15.12.4. See Buckland 1908: 296–7 and Watson 1991. Treggiari 1991: 44. Cf. Tryphonius, Dig. 49.15.14.1 (eds. Mommsen and Kruger 1985: 4.889): “A husband does not receive back his wife by right of postliminium in the same way that a father recovers his son, but the marriage may be reinstated by agreement” (Non ut pater filium, ita uxorem maritus iure postiliminii receipt: sed consensu redintegratur matrimonium). CT 5.7.1 (Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, issued at Reims). The question of a prescribed waiting period for remarriage in the context of captivity is especially challenging, partly because it involves two opinions (Paul, Dig. 49.15.8 and Julian, Dig. 24.2.6) that were interpolated by postclassical editors. As suggested in Sessa 2011, the waiting periods before remarriage prescribed in these two opinions could reflect late Roman social practice on the ground. Justinian, Nov. 22.7 issued in 536 and reaffirmed in Nov. 117.12 of 542.

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both were aware of and perhaps even (in Leo’s case at least) knowledgeable about the legal principles and practices governing postliminium.67 Nevertheless, for them the issue turned on how one might correlate emerging Christian principles governing the marital bond with the legal status of the union and the practical realities at hand. Although there was no universal model of “Christian” marriage in late antiquity, the Gospels and Paul’s letters offered some ethical guidelines on divorce and remarriage: the former was clearly denounced, and the latter was tantamount to adultery.68 A marriage, Christian authorities emphasized, was a permanent joining of man and woman based on the biblical model of Adam and Eve that symbolized both God’s creation of humanity and the union of human beings with Christ.69 In another letter dated to 405, Innocent expressly stated that spouses who remarry while their former partners were alive commit adultery.70 Neither Innocent nor Leo would stake their arguments on captivity and remarriage solely (or even primarily) on the grounds of the indissolubility of marriage, however. Instead they presented idiosyncratic solutions, which both established compatibilities between Christian ethics and civil law and reflected the fact that marital practices remained highly fluid in this period.71 Moreover, their responses showcase how tumultuous political events, such as a barbarian attack on a major city, exacerbated a relatively old domestic problem in a new and acute manner. Although Leo and Innocent’s predecessors theoretically faced the identical dilemma (the Roman legal position and biblical ethics predate the fifth century), they probably did not encounter broken marriages on the same scale as two bishops in a warzone. Innocent to Probus on the Overlapping Domains of Christian Ethics and Roman Law For Innocent, the primary challenge in restoring Ursa’s marriage was to persuade the man who possessed the authority to resolve the dispute: Probus. While the letter offers little information about the addressee, 67 68 69 70 71

See especially Reynolds 2001: 134–8; Pietrini 2002: 220–235; and Dunn 2007. Nautin 1974: 243–59 and Reynolds 2001: xxii-xxviii. Reynolds 2001: 121–131; 281–311. Innocent, Ep. 6.6 to Exsuperius of Toulouse. My interpretation thus departs from previous analyses of captivity and remarriage in the letters of Innocent and Leo, which frame the matter as a problem of “Christian” versus “secular” reasoning on remarriage. See, for example, Noonen 1973; Reynolds 2001: 121–42; and Dunn 2007: 115–6.

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Innocent referred to Probus as domine fili merito illustris, thereby suggesting that he was both a Christian and a high-ranking senator. Several scholars have identified this Probus with Flavius Anicius Petronius Probus, a known Christian and ordinary consul of 406.72 A recent study of the letter has argued convincingly that Innocent wrote to Probus not in light of any magisterial power that he might have wielded over Fortunius, but because of his domestic relationships to Ursa and Fortunius, who were perhaps his clients, tenants, or freedmen.73 It is also possible that Probus had been the one to redeem Ursa from her captives, which would have made Ursa even more dependent on Probus.74 Moreover, Innocent’s relationship to Fortunius (if one even existed) would have been strained because he was advocating for his former wife’s position. The Roman bishop, in other words, intervened in this domestic affair solely as Ursa’s counselor, hoping that her patron, Probus, would take up Innocent’s position and urge Fortunius to reunite with his first wife. Epistle 36 therefore reflects the limits of Innocent’s authority to enforce his opinions within a lay household.75 The letter demonstrates that an early fifth-century Roman bishop still had to work through traditional, preexisting channels of domestic government to achieve his goals within the context of lay households. Innocent’s self-presentation was therefore critical, since he needed to forge an argument that would appeal to and hopefully persuade a man who was an expert in household management and its ethical ordering. The extent to which he knew the fine points of postliminium is debatable, but on one level his argument rested on its irrelevance.76 It was 72 73 74

75

76

Cf. PLRE 2.913–4 (= Probus 11) and PCBE 2.2, 1842 (= Probus 5). Dunn 2007: 111, 120–1, contra Noonen 1973: 36. A redeemer had a legal lien on the redeemed that amounted to enslavement for five years or until the ransom was fully repaid. See Buckland 1908: 311–17 and Levy 1963. It is unlikely that Innocent had sat in judgment of the dispute between Ursa and Fortunius within the context of an episcopal hearing. The consent of both parties was necessary for a bishop to assume the role of judge or arbiter in conflicts, except those of a strictly religious nature. Surely Fortunius would not have agreed to allow a Christian bishop to resolve his marriage dispute. See Harries 1999:195, 202–3. Pace Reynolds (2001: 133), a dispute over captivity and remarriage remained a civil matter in ca. 410–17. Innocent implied familiarity with postliminium when writing, “For although [the marriage] had been properly established, the assault of captivity would have made a stain on the marriage of Ursa and Fortunius, if the holy decrees of religion did not provide for it.” Ep. 36 (PL 20: 602): Nam bene constituto matrimonio inter Fortunium et Ursam captivitatis incursus fecerat naevum, nisi sancta religionis statuta providerent.

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not the emperor’s law, Innocent explained, but “the holy decrees of religion” (sancta religionis statuta) that could resolve the matter of Fortunius’ remarriage and Ursa’s abandonment. These, he implied, would uphold the first and only the first marriage. Innocent did not entirely reject the applicability of Roman law to his case, however; on the contrary, he recognized that it offered him some leverage. In the letter, he presented the fact that Fortunius had not divorced Ursa as further proof of the singular legitimacy of their marriage: “For which reason, my lord, son, deservedly illustris, we determine that, with the support of the Catholic faith, that one is the marriage, which had been previously constituted by divine grace; and the agreement with the second woman, since the prior one is alive and has not been dismissed through divorce, cannot be legitimate by any means.”77 Precisely what Innocent meant by invoking divorce has long perplexed scholars, especially because elsewhere he categorically condemned it.78 There are at least two possible explanations. First, he might have wished to underline Ursa’s castitas and good character by emphasizing that her husband had not divorced her for adultery or other less serious faults.79 Adultery was the only reason for separation that early church fathers accepted and that Constantine allowed as a legitimate causa repudii for husbands who wanted to divorce unilaterally.80 Second, Innocent’s reference to divorce also could refer to a common (albeit legally unnecessary) practice of divorcing a kidnapped spouse before remarriage.81 Regardless of Innocent’s precise reasoning for invoking divorce, its rhetorical function would have been identical: the absence of evidence for legal separation in this particular case constituted yet another reason for Probus to uphold the first marriage between Fortunius and Ursa. 77

78 79

80

81

Innocent, Ep. 36 (PL 20: 603): Quare, domine fili merito illustris, statuimus, fide catholica suffragante, illud esse coniugium, quod erat primitus gratia divina fundatum; conventumque secundae mulieris, priore superstite, nec divortio eiecta, nullo pacto posse esse legitimum. See n. 70. Dunn 2007: 117–8, although he does not draw attention to the moral implications of Innocent’s point. On the so-called Matthean exception, see Reynolds 2001: 173–226. However, as Dunn notes (2007: 117–18), Innocent did not actually employ the Matthean argument here or in his other comments on adultery (e.g. Ep. 6). On Constantine’s divorce legislation of 331, see Evans Grubbs 1995: 235–6. Moreover, in ca. 410–17, the Roman government treated unilateral divorce relatively permissively, as Julian had repealed Constantine’s restrictions and Honorius had yet to introduce his more stringent measures in 421. I explore this possibility in Sessa 2011.

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Innocent thus demonstrated knowledge of two different ways of resolving the problem of captivity and remarriage: a traditional Roman method involving postliminium and divorce, which severed their marriage and freed Fortunius to remarry; and a new Christian method based on the “Catholic faith,” which held that the first marriage was still valid, and the second null and void.82 What he argued for, however, was not the justice of the latter option over the venality of the former. Rather, Innocent proposed a synergistic solution. He urged the dominus to see compatibility between the Christian injunctions on the divine sanction of marriage and the absence of divorce and to conclude from this reasoning that the marriage between Ursa and Fortunius had never been severed. The bishop also underscored to Probus his careful investigation of the matter. No one, he assured, could be found to deny Ursa’s claim to be Fortunius’ first wife. Innocent thus took it upon himself to do the dominus’ household business, although in a manner that distinctly highlighted his own status as a counselor. He conducted an investigation into a domestic dispute between two dependents, and he considered two different sets of legal options. Most significantly, Innocent reached a resolution that showcased his familiarity with Roman family law and found common ground between the traditional civil and the emerging ecclesiastical legal systems.83 Toward an Episcopal Oikonomia: Leo on Captivity and the “Recovery” of Marriage Unlike Epistle 36, which engaged Innocent directly in a single domestic dispute, Leo’s Epistle 159 presented the bishop’s measured advice on the dilemma of broken marriages and captivity as a broader, regional phenomenon involving numerous households. Leo, we noted, responded to the queries of a fellow bishop, Nicetas of Aquileia, whose city had been recently sacked by Attila’s army. Like Innocent, Leo underlined both the dire straits of the times and the fact that “the wounds which have been inflicted by enemy attacks might be healed largely through the logic of

82

83

Innocent, Ep. 36 (PL 20.603): illud esse coniugium, quod erat primitus gratia divina fundatum. Ep. 36 is the only extant letter by a Roman bishop addressed to a layman on a domestic matter before the late fifth century. Dionysius Exiguus even included it in the first Roman collection of episcopal correspondence. Cf. Decreta Innocentii papae 37 (PL 67: 251).

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religion.”84 Indeed, Leo opened his discussion by citing several biblical passages that Christian authorities believed stressed the indissolubility of marriage, such as Matthew 19:6. He also pushed this ethical theme in a new direction, by assimilating the Christian valorization of the marital union with the legal principles of postliminium: But since we know that it is written that “a woman is joined to a man by God” (Proverbs 19.14) and again we are aware of the precept that “what God has joined, man may not separate” (Matthew 19.6) we are bound to hold that the compact of lawful marriages must be renewed, and after the removal of evils inflicted by the enemy, to each what was lawfully had must be restored; and we must take every pains that each should recover what is his own.85

Whereas Innocent based his argument on the integrity of Fortunius and Ursa’s marriage, Leo focused his response on the theme of recovery. Circumstances might have sundered these families, he reasoned, but bishops have an obligation to restore them. If men recover their slaves, houses, and properties when they return from captivity, should they not also receive back their marriages “so that what had been disturbed through wartime necessity be restored by the remedy of peace?”86 While quoting precisely those biblical passages on the indissolubility of marriage that made postliminium irrelevant, Leo’s response highlighted the husband’s right of restoration as outlined in Roman law.87 The fact that he was concerned with the recovery of married wives (and not married husbands) also helped Leo to make his case. Although wives were not literally perceived as their husbands’ property in late Roman society, their subordinate status within the household certainly buttressed Leo’s argument. Needless to say, Innocent did not suggest to Probus that Fortunius might be recovered like a slave. In short, Leo looked to correlate the spirit of the biblical precept with the more actionable approach offered by civil 84

85

86

87

Leo, Ep. 159.pr (PL 54: 1136): ut vulnera quae hostilitatis adversitate illata sunt, religionis maxime ratione sanentur. Leo, Ep. 159.1 (PL 54: 1136): Sed quia novimus scriptum, quod a deo iungitur mulier viro (Prov: 19.14), et iterum praeceptum agnovimus ut quod deus iunxit homo non separet (Mt: 19.6), necesse est ut legitimarum foedera nuptiarum redintegranda credamus, et remotis malis quae hostilitas intulit, unicuique hoc quod legitime habuit reformetur, omnique studio procurandum est ut recipiat unusquisque quod proprium est. Trans. adapted from Feltoe 1894: 103. Leo, Ep. 159.2 (PL 54: 1137): ut quod bellica necessitate turbatum est pacis remedio reformetur? Reynolds 2001: 136 and Pietrini 2002: 228–34.

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legislation. Insisting on marriage’s indissolubility backed the Christian bishop into a corner; arguing for the restoration of temporarily abandoned marriages opened new doors for his intervention in this sensitive area of domestic life.88 In looking to resolve problems of captivity and remarriage, Leo and Innocent tried to distinguish their still uncertain domestic authority from the more certain power of the householder and even the civic official. By all accounts, the status of a captive’s marriage was far more ambiguous within a Christian context than outside of it, regardless of any confusion over the legal necessity of divorce. The law of postliminium stated explicitly that consent from both partners was necessary for the reinstatement of a marriage after the return of a spouse from captivity. By insisting that this was also a matter of sancta religionis statuta, Leo and Innocent complicated matters: the problem would have to conform to these decrees as well. Whereas a householder and public official like Probus would be expected to have expertise in the secular treatment of broken marriages, he could hardly claim to outdo a bishop when it came to knowledge of “the holy decrees of religion.” By redefining the problem of captivity and remarriage as both secular and religious, Innocent and Leo transformed it into a matter that only a bishop could resolve. Th e Treatment of Slaves with in Th e Ch ristian H ome

The presence of slaves within a Christian household created various new problems for householders. Certainly no late Roman author, Christian or otherwise, ever challenged slavery’s legitimacy or utility. Late antique Christians, including clergy, continued to sell and own slaves, and in some cases to discipline them brutally.89 Perplexing problems nevertheless arose for Christian slave owners in fifth- and sixth-century Italy. How should a Christian householder deal with the presence of enslaved concubines in households? What recourses were available to the Christian domina or dominus whose slave or colonus fled to seek a new life as a monk or cleric? More broadly still, how should a Christian householder ideally treat his or her slaves and tenant laborers? Since at least the third century, 88

89

It also might have boosted Leo’s legitimacy with respect to other bishops in the region of Venetia et Histria, where Leo lacked direct jurisdiction, a possibility explored in Sessa 2011. There were, of course, legal limitations on the master’s treatment of slaves. See Melluso 2000: 137–48.

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Christian bishops had involved themselves in the slaveholding practices of their congregants, primarily through their roles as official witnesses at manumissions.90 Over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, however, Rome’s bishops developed a more defined expertise in resolving precisely those problems listed here. As they understood well, a reputation for knowledge in this highly sensitive domain of domestic life could embed the bishop within certain networks of the household. Areas of Confusion and Contestation: Slavery as Metaphor, and the Christian Slave Although no Christian author questioned slavery’s legality or clamored for its abolition, they nevertheless debated its ethics and religious significance. As noted in a previous chapter, slavery obtained a range of responses from Christian writers.91 Some, like Augustine, viewed slavery as a distinctly postlapsarian condition, created by the Fall. In this respect, slavery was an egregious punishment that God had designed to remind mankind of its sin.92 Others, including many Roman bishops, frequently adopted slavery as a metaphor that described humanity’s humility and man’s natural subordination to God, the true dominus. Gregory, we recall, even went so far as to call himself “the slave of the Lord’s paterfamilias.”93 A third position, however, not necessarily exclusive of the first two, was also possible. Some church fathers such as Gregory and Leo also viewed slavery in classical terms, as a temporary earthly role but not an innate or natural state.94 In short, no consensus existed among patristic authorities about what slavery meant for Christians. The fact that many slaves and coloni were also baptized probably created far more vexing issues for the Christian householder than the absence of hermeneutic unanimity among church fathers.95 Although it is impossible to say how many slaves and tenant laborers were also Christians, literary evidence suggests that wealthy landowners sometimes converted their dependents en masse.96 The gesta martyrum often portrayed the baptism 90 91 92 93

94 95

96

See CT 4.7.1 (321), discussed in Rapp 2005: 239–40. Chapter 2. Gaudemet 1958: 564; Garnsey 1996: 213–19; Rotman 2004: 190–1. Cf. Gregory, HEv 36.2 (CC 141: 334). On slavery as metaphor, see Garnsey 1996: 220–35. Gregory, RP 3.5 and Leo, Serm. 40 and 44. Baptism did not automatically result in manumission, however, as it would in the eighth-century Byzantine empire. See Rotman 2004: 196. Rotman 2004: 187.

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of large domestic populations (slave or perhaps colonate), and in some cases even provided figures.97 According to the sixth- or early seventhcentury “Passion of St. Alexander,” Rome’s bishop Alexander baptized 1,250 men (with their wives and children) owned by one dominus in a single day on the grounds of the man’s estate.98 The fifth- or sixth-century “Passion of St. Clement” similarly recounts Clement of Rome’s baptism of 423 men, women, and children belonging to a household, whereas the contemporary “Passion of St Stephen” portrays the bishop’s conversion of 60 dependents owned by a tribune.99 Although these narratives and figures are fictional, they presuppose a culture in which landowners routinely converted their dependents in large numbers. Of course, precisely how historical slave owners and landlords brought about conversion is hard to reconstruct. In the gesta, baptisms of dependents appear suspiciously as unproblematic, violence-free occasions. To what extent masters and landlords forced their slaves and coloni to convert is difficult to gauge, but some undoubtedly relied on coercive measures.100 The dependent’s legal and social status also might have been factors. A free and relatively well-off colonus was undoubtedly more difficult to convert (if he were unwilling) than one who was bound to his landlord in a more restrictive relationship or a slave who had few legal rights. Nevertheless, both ecclesiastical and imperial authorities exerted strong pressure on householders to ensure that their dependents refrained from heretical and idolatrous practices.101 Roman bishops could be especially brutal toward pagan dependents on ecclesiastical estates. Gregory threatened to punish any Sardinian bishop whose lands were inhabited by unconverted rustici. He also directed the bishop of Cagliari to crush any pagan laborer on church property “with such a heavy burden of tax, that he is forced to seek righteousness quickly through the very punishment of his debt.”102 Alternatively, on the estates of laypeople, Roman bishops left the sensitive decision of conversion largely to masters and landlords. There is 97

98 99 100

101 102

To be clear, the gesta martyrum do not consistently identify the converted household members as slaves; some were possibly understood as dependent rustici. Passio S. Alexandri 7. Passio S. Clementis 14 and Passio S. Stephani 4. Glancy 2002: 46–9 suggests that the forced conversion of slaves was common even in apostolic times. Chapter 2. Gregory, Ep. 4.26 dated to 594 (CC 140: 245): tanto pensionis onere gravandus est, ut ipsa exactionis suae poena compellatur ad rectitudinem festinare. See also Epp. 4.24 and 9.205.

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also no evidence that they pressured or even encouraged householders to manumit Christian slaves who were baptized.103 In late antiquity, slave owners were under no legal or doctrinal obligations to free a slave either before or after the slave’s conversion.104 Manumission at all points remained entirely at the master’s discretion. This is not to suggest that Christian householders in Italy did not free dependents as demonstrations of their piety, generosity, and wealth. Pinianus and Melania supposedly manumitted 8,000 slaves, an epic act that was undoubtedly performed on smaller scales in households across the Mediterranean.105 Christian domini might time a manumission to coincide with their baptism or ordination to the clergy.106 In fact, the authors of some gesta martyrum staged manumission scenes immediately following the mass baptism of a household.107 The narratives are not consistent with regard to the sequencing, however, and many passions tell of baptisms without manumissions. In short, late Roman householders received “mixed messages” about the management of slaves and other dependent laborers. Given the likelihood that many slaves and coloni were baptized and the fact that authorities advocated different meanings of servitude, Christian householders and clerics were sometimes perplexed as to how one should be a Christian slaveholder or manage labor within a Christian home. The governing of slaves within a Christian domus was therefore another gray area of domestic life that Roman bishops endeavored to define as a domain of episcopal expertise. Giving up Brutality for Lent: Bishops and the Master–Slave Relationship In a 444 Lenten sermon, Leo called his audience’s attention to their deeply traditional authority as owners of men and women: Enter upon the holy days of Lent with pious devotion, and prepare yourselves to merit God’s mercy by your own acts of mercy . . . Lord 103

104

105 106 107

Gaudemet 1958: 566–7 asserted that late Roman bishops commonly exerted such pressure on slave owners, but he cites only the evidence of Augustine. The fact that Roman bishops sometimes manumitted Christian slaves owned by the Roman church does not mean that they pursued this as a general policy for all householders. The only prohibitions against owning Christian slaves targeted Jewish domini, who reputedly sought to covert their servi to Judaism. See Melluso 2000: 196–99. His. Laus. 62.5–6. Rapp 2005: 240–1. Passio S. Alexandri 7, discussed in Chapter 7.

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over your slaves and those who are in your power with fairness, let none of them be tortured by imprisonment or chains. . . . To Him we indeed offer the sacrifice (sacrificium) of true abstinence and true piety, if we unite ourselves away from every evil.108

On a certain level, Leo’s exhortations to Christian domini to manage their slaves and subordinates in accordance with the values of moderation and justice recapitulated classical discussions of estate management.109 On another, Leo’s sermon, delivered during Lent when ascetic awareness among all Christians was at its height, did more than simply reiterate traditional values. It recalibrated them by situating moderatio and iustitia within the context of Christian asceticism and salvation. In Leo’s model of estate management, to refrain from the brutal treatment of one’s slaves was itself a sacrificial act – of vera abstinentia et vera pietas – and thus a way for householders to perform their domestic duties in a distinctly ascetic manner. “In this opportunity for virtue’s exercise,” he explained in another Lenten sermon, “there are also marks of other crowns.” During Lent, people may choose to spend less money, to avoid drink or excessive sex, and perhaps even to adopt celibacy. To this familiar list, Leo added the perfection of the master–slave relationship: “[I]f, at last, the conduct of masters and slaves is so ordered that the rule of the former is milder and the discipline of the latter is more complete.”110 The idea that the proper ordering of the master–slave relationship is a form of ascetic practice allowed Leo to connect it to a larger conceptualization of Lent as a time for the mass imitation of Christ’s great sacrifice for humanity. Brutality and disobedience, like sex and luxury, were to be avoided especially during the Easter season. However, in asceticizing slave management and servile behavior and tying both to Lent, Leo not only endeavored to transform the dynamics of domestic authority from the householder’s perspective. He also attempted to establish himself – as bishop – in a position of oversight within the domestic sphere. If being a slave owner or a slave was a distinctly Christian practice 108

109 110

Leo, Serm. 42.6, rec. ß (CC 138A: 249–50): sanctos quadragesimae dies pia devotione suscipite et ad promerendam misercordiam dei per opera vos misericordiae preparate . . . Servis et his qui vobis subiecti sunt, cum aequitate dominamini, nullus eorum aut claustris crucietur aut vinculis . . . Cui ita demum sacrificium verae abstinentiae et verae pietatis offerimus si nos ab omni malitia continemus. Trans. adapted from Feltoe 1895: 158. Cf. Pliny, Ep. 3.14. Leo, Serm. 40.5.

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that was perfected during Lent, then the bishop must participate in its proper cultivation. Such logic resonates with Leo’s exhortations to his parishioners to conceptualize domus and ecclesia as intersecting institutions, conjoined through shared ideals.111 In sermons delivered during Lent, Leo pushed this conception further still, by emphasizing slavery’s ethical and spiritual implications during a time of heightened ascetic expectations. By transforming the kind treatment of slaves into a Lenten practice that the bishop formally directed, Leo endeavored to create a small but significant space for himself in the management of the domestic sphere.112 The notion that bishops should help to cultivate the master–slave relationship within Christian households guided the author of the Ad Gregoriam in palatio. A recent book has explored this text in detail, including its fascinating discussion of the mistress–slave relationship.113 Here the bishop “John” focused intently on the domina’s spiritual and social obligations to her female slaves, reminding Gregoria that her conduct will be judged in the final days.114 He thus commanded the mistress not only to treat her slaves with fairness (aequitas) and compassion (indulgentia) but also to provide for their moral education and material needs. The association of episcopal authority with this highly sensitive and quintessentially private area of late Roman life is all the more striking in a conduct manual ostensibly written for aristocratic matronae. It suggests that bishops were expected to dole out advice even to subordinate household members on relations of power that were embedded within the dominant patriarchal hierarchy. Episcopal knowledge of estate management thus might also circulate from wives to husbands rather than exclusively from husbands to wives.115

111 112

113 114 115

Chapter 2. Lent was also a period of more frequent episcopal masses at Rome. From the sixth century, bishops made regular processions throughout the season to different churches in the city in what is known as stational liturgy. See Baldovin 1987: 106–118, although his argument for the practice of stational liturgy in the fourth and fifth centuries is not supported by the evidence. Cooper 2007:122–35. Liber ad Gregoriam in palatio 18–19. There are other ways to read this relationship. See Cooper 1992 and 1996 on the “trope of womanly influence.” In addressing a married woman directly, the author might have wished to make a statement about her husband’s domestic piety and power.

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Sex, Slaves, and Marriage In addition to formulating a religious framework for practicing slavery within the home, Roman bishops occasionally involved themselves in specific quandaries created by the presence of domestic slaves in a Christian home. For example, in a letter addressed to the metropolitan prelate Rusticus of Narbonne, Leo responded to numerous questions posed by the Gallic bishop on weighty doctrinal matters such as penance and reconciliation.116 Buried within the letter is a short but fascinating section on a problem that seems to have especially exercised Rusticus: how to deal with the marriage of a presbyter’s or deacon’s daughter to a man who had had a past sexual relationship with an enslaved concubine and had even sired children with her.117 Rusticus wanted to know whether the man was considered married to his slave, thereby making his union with the clergyman’s daughter illegitimate in the eyes of the church. Most readers of the passage have focused on Leo’s knowledge of Roman law, revealed through his attention to the concubine’s legal status (was she free or enslaved?).118 As many note, Leo’s response was entirely consistent with Roman legal principles: the man would not be considered previously married if the concubine were a slave. Leo also stated that the man could, if he so chose, manumit and then marry the concubine. For centuries, Roman law consistently recognized conubium, the right to form a legitimate marriage and to rear legitimate offspring, only among the legally free.119 In the strict legal sense, therefore, the union between the man and the clergyman’s daughter was unequivocally legitimate because the relationship between the man and his slave did not amount to a marriage. Yet Rusticus’ very question implies that Roman law was no longer a sufficient explanatory framework for some Christians. Common as they undoubtedly were, relationships between Christian men and female slaves had become problematic in new ways.120 To repeat, emerging Christian values privileged first marriages over 116 117

118 119

120

Leo, Ep. 167, dated to 458 or 459. Leo, Ep. 167.4. The fact that the fiancée in question is a cleric’s daughter is significant. On the Roman bishop’s more aggressive stance towards clerical households, see Chapter 5. See Reynolds 2001: 38–40, 166–8 and especially Pietrini 2002: 187–207. Buckland 1963: 114. In the East, however, under Justinian, relationships with enslaved concubines were given elevated status in the law. See Melluso 2000: 166–71. Cf. Cooper 2007: 155–8.

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subsequent unions. The fact that the man in question had sired children with the slave concretized his previous relationship in a highly public manner and thus made his marriage to the clergyman’s daughter all the more ethically fraught. This was especially true in a moral atmosphere valorizing bodily self-control for both sexes, even for those choosing marriage over monastic life. It is not hard to understand why Christian fathers – clergy no less – began to think twice about betrothing their daughters to men with such complicated sexual histories. This particular domestic crisis provided Leo with an opportunity to perform his expertise in household management in a manner that parallels his response to Nicetas of Aquileia on kidnapping and remarriage. In the letter to Rusticus, he explained precisely how one might synchronize Roman law and social tradition with developing Christian values. According to Leo, the principle of no marriage between free and enslaved people “had been laid down by the Lord long before Roman law had its beginnings.”121 Leo’s comment certainly signals the bishop’s understanding of the Roman legal position; however, it also reveals a desire to engineer an alternative (although complementary) framework for resolving the problem at hand. It turned what was previously a straightforward legal matter into a religious issue that a bishop might resolve. Through an appeal to Scripture, Leo neutralized the potentially dangerous presence of enslaved concubines within free households by insisting that marriage for Christians was more than the union of the sexes; it had to symbolize the union of Christ and the church. In response to another query in the epistle about women marrying men with sexual partners who were not free, Leo confirmed that for a man to move from concubine to freeborn wife “is not bigamy but honorable progress.”122 Leo thus did not simply assuage Rusticus’ anxieties either by assuring him that any union between free and enslaved was illegal or by rejecting the man’s lifestyle as irredeemably sinful. Leo instead constructed an alternative paradigm for assessing slavery and marital legitimacy – a paradigm that simultaneously restored order to the Christian domus and established Leo as an expert in its management.123

121

122 123

Leo, Ep. 167.4 (PL 54.1204–5): multo prius hoc ipsum domino constituente quam initium Romani iuris existeret. Leo Ep. 167.6. Arjava 1996: 209–10 notes that Christian bishops were far more likely to recommend the dissolution of concubinage than to search for reasons to approve it. Leo’s reactions are certainly consistent with this observation.

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Fleeing to the House of God: A New Problem for Christian Slave Owners Roman bishops engaged with another problem that struck at the very basis of owning Christian slaves: the unauthorized flight of slaves and coloni to churches and monasteries, where they sought a new (and presumably better) life as monks, ecclesiastical slaves, and even clergymen. As Claudia Rapp has shown, an especially humble background might emerge as a detail in hagiographic narratives about exceptional bishops and clergy, such as Alexander the Charcoal-Burner.124 There is even evidence to suggest that a handful of former slaves became bishops in late antiquity.125 The problem that Roman bishops confronted was not simply the moral suitability of a slave or originarius (one of several words in episcopal letters denoting a tenant laborer) to serve the church, however. It also involved the authority of the church to incorporate such people into the clerical ranks and monastic households without the express permission of their owners and landlords. The sources discuss three different but related phenomena: the ordination of slaves and originarii by clergy, the admittance of slaves and originarii into monasteries, and the integration of slaves and originarii into ecclesiastical servitude (ecclesiasticus famulatus). It had always been illegal for a slave to flee his master or a colona to abandon her registered domicile. This remained largely unchanged in late antiquity, even when the flights in question assumed a distinctly religious dimension.126 Valentinian III issued legislation at Rome in 452, which set guidelines for handling this precise issue.127 The law forbade originarii, coloni, and servi as well as curiales (among others) from joining the clergy or monasteries in order to evade their condition and obligations. Those who had obtained clerical ranks were to be returned to their households, save men ordained to the priesthood or episcopate; deacons were permitted to remain so long as they rendered a substitute to compensate their master.128 In 484 Zeno expressly forbade slaves from entering monasteries without their masters’ permission, adding the proviso that any former slave who legitimately entered a monastery but then left it must be returned to 124 125 126 127 128

Rapp 2005: 174. Callistus, for example, was supposedly a former slave. See Chapter 3. Melluso 2000 surveys the legislation. Valentinian, Nov. 35.3 (452 at Rome). Valentinian, Nov. 35.6. Deacons were also forced to return their peculia, and there was a thirty-year statute of limitations for the law.

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his master. He also ruled that slaves who desired to join the clergy must be first freed.129 Justinian passed similar legislation with some additions that were more favorable to the slaves.130 In 546, he pronounced that any slave who entered the clergy with his master’s approval immediately gained freedom.131 But he also ruled that any slave who subsequently abandoned the clergy for secular life must be returned to his slave status and master. Furthermore, Justinian instituted a three-year waiting period before authorities could tonsure slaves who joined monasteries.132 In many respects, the ecclesiastical reaction to the flight of slaves and bonded laborers into clerical ranks and monasteries is strikingly similar to the civil response. At Chalcedon in 451, the council prohibited slaves from entering monasteries without their masters’ permission.133 According to the Liber Pontificalis, the Roman bishop Boniface I had proscribed slaves and decurions from entrance into the clergy because of their obligations to others.134 Whether Boniface personally issued the pronouncement is debatable (there is no other evidence for it than this notice). In any event, Boniface’s ruling in the Liber Pontificalis resembles statements made by his successors Leo and Gelasius. In circular letters addressed to suburbicarian bishops, both categorically prohibited the reception of slaves and originarii who fled their masters and possessors to join the ranks of the church or monasteries.135 For example, Gelasius’ letter of 494 forbade the acceptance of fugitive slaves and originarii who “under the pretext of a religious lifestyle” sought new lives as monks or church slaves.136 So false and ruinous a practice, Gelasius intoned, must be eradicated by all possible means, “lest either things foreign seem to permeate throughout our Christian institution or our communal order (publica disciplina) is turned upside down.”137 In fact, Rome’s bishops consistently underlined the overlap between the ecclesiastical and civil positions on fugitives who illegally entered 129 130 131 132 133 134

135 136 137

CJ 1.3.37 (38) (484 at Constantinople). Melluso 2000: 201–214. Justinian, Nov. 123. 17 (546). Justinian, Nov. 5.2 (535). Council of Chalcedon (451), c. 4. LP (ed. Duchesne I. 227), in which the prohibition is tied to the exclusion of women and monks from touching sacred vestments or placing incense in the churches. Leo, Ep. 4 in 443 and Gelasius, Ep. 14.14, 20–24 in 494 (ed. Thiel 1868: 370–4). Gelasius, Ep. 14.14 (ed. Thiel 1868: 370–1). Gelasius, Ep. 14.14 (ed. Thiel 1868: 371): quae modis omnibus est amovenda pernicies, ne per christiani nominis institutum aut aliena pervadi aut publica videatur disciplina subverti. . . .

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religious institutions. In the circular epistle mentioned above, Leo underscored the shared interests of household and church in eliminating the evidently widespread practice of ordaining bonded men.138 “Men are commonly admitted to the sacred order,” he wrote to the Italian bishops in 443, “who are not qualified by any dignity of birth or character; even those who have failed to obtain freedom from their masters are raised to the rank of priesthood, as if slavish worthlessness might take this honor.”139 Moreover, this action provoked the ire of two different camps because, “both the sacred ministry is polluted by the worthlessness of such a partner, and the rights of masters are loosened so much as concerns the heedlessness of unlawful possession.”140 The Roman bishop warned his fellow clerics to repel not only slaves seeking clerical offices but also those under the bond of origin or other condition of service, unless it could be documented that those who exercised authority over them had given their consent.141 Similarly, Gelasius argued that to ordain a slave or originarius without his master’s or landlord’s permission was to break not one but three sets of laws: those of the emperors, those of the church fathers, and those of Gelasius himself.142 Here Gelasius assimilated Roman law and ecclesiastical tradition with his own “recent warnings” (admonitiones modernas), the latter likely a reference to pronouncements he had circulated among the suburbicarian bishops in 494.143 In theory, Leo and Gelasius did not have to work terribly hard to find common ground between a religious and secular solution; there was little ambiguity on either side about whether such men ought to be admitted. Despite the clarity and consistence of the legislation, local Italian clergy and abbots routinely permitted such men to enter their ranks. Consequently, Roman bishops were frequently drawn into serious disputes among a householder, a slave or originarius who had gained access to a local church or monastery, and the local clergy or monks who 138 139

140

141 142 143

Leo, Ep. 4. Leo, Ep. 4.1 (PL 54.611): Admittuntur passim ad ordinem sacrum, quibus nulla natalium, nulla morum dignitas suffragatur; et qui a dominis suis libertatem consequi minime potuerunt, ad fastigium sacerdotii, tamquam servilis vilitas hunc honorem capiat, provehuntur. . . . Leo, Ep. 4.1 (PL 54.610–11): quod et sacrum ministerium talis consortii vilitate polluitur, et dominorum, quantum ad illicitae usurpationis temeritatem pertinet, iura solvuntur. Leo, Ep. 4.1. Gelasius, Ep. 22 (ed. Thiel 1868: 389). Gelasius, Ep. 14.14 (ed. Thiel 1868: 370–1).

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had received him.144 These cases provided Rome’s bishops with further opportunities to exercise their knowledge of household matters. In fact, unlike many other situations examined in this chapter, the matter of fugitive dependents joining the church was a type of domestic conflict whose resolution necessarily involved the intervention of an ecclesiastical official. Christian authorities were implicated at all levels of the crime while the fugitive slave or colonus in question was physically located within a church or monastery. Some Christian official would have to orchestrate the process of returning the individual to his/her master or landlord. Rather than simply delegating these problems to local clergy, Rome’s prelates actively involved themselves in both the investigation of charges and the oversight of reclamation. Five letters from Gelasius’ epistolary corpus, all dated between 494 and 495, record the Roman bishop’s responses to cases where slaves and originarii fled their households and acquired new identities as clergy in the local churches of southern Italy.145 In one letter addressed to the bishops Martyrius of Acerenza and Justus of Terracina, Gelasius sketched the complaint lodged by two actores representing a vir illustris named Amandianus.146 Although the bishop dealt only with his actores, Gelasius probably knew Amandianus, since he was among several senators who attended a local Roman synod at St. Peter’s in 495.147 According to Amandianus’ agents, an unspecified bishop or bishops had ordained men who were legally obligated to Amandianus, and the landlord demanded action. In this case, Gelasius wrote to Martyrius and Justus because he held them personally responsible for the infraction. Gelasius’ pronounced irritation with the two bishops was partly due to their disregard for his “recent synodal explanation,” by which he appears to refer to his discussion of slaves and originarii in the aforementioned circular letter of 494.148 As in his other letters dealing with specific cases, here Gelasius argued that the bishops were violating the rights of possessores by ordaining their slaves and originarii without documentation or permission. Similarly, in another epistle addressing the ordination to the deaconate of two originarii belonging to a femina illustris et magnifica named Maxima, Gelasius 144

145 146 147 148

See above, Leo, Ep. 4 and Gelasius Epp. 14.14, 20–24. Cf. Gelasius, Frgs. 41 and 43 (ed. Thiel 1868: 505–7); Pelagius, Ep. 73; Gregory, Epp. 2.26; 3.39; and 5.57a.6 (MGH Epistulae 2: 367). Cf. Gelasius, Epp. 20–24, (ed. Thiel 1868: 386–91). Gelasius, Ep. 20 (ed. Thiel 1868: 386–7). For Amandianus, see PLRE 2: 66 and Gelasius, Ep. 103 (CSEL 35: 475–8). Gelasius, Ep. 20 (ed. Thiel 1868: 386–7).

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underlined the role of the local bishop (here of Lucernia) in the conflict, because he had been the one to ordain them.149 Gelasius’ letters suggest that Roman bishops treated such conflicts as opportunities to exercise their emergent domestic authority within two domains. The first was the lay household. Leo, Gelasius, and other bishops like Gregory, who intervened in such crises, consistently championed the lay householder’s position.150 To be sure, Roman bishops sometimes defended freedmen whose status had been challenged by a householder (as discussed shortly), but more often they sided with the master or landlord. This is not to suggest that Roman bishops violated the imperial regulations that established guidelines for the return of men who entered clerical orders. In the letter to Martyrius and Justus, Gelasius carefully explained that anyone who had been ordained to the priesthood must stay in his post. In the case of deacons, they were allowed to retain their offices so long as they provided a substitute, precisely as stipulated by Valentinian.151 All others who joined monasteries or lower clerical ranks were ordered to return to their households immediately. The terms that Gelasius had established for the bishops Herculentius, Stephanus, and Justus in another epistle similarly followed the basic form of the imperial legislation: although the slave Antiochus must retain his presbyterial position, his brother Leontius, who had been ordained to a lower clerical office, should be returned to his owner.152 Gelasius thus consistently enforced imperial law and church rulings, which favored the interests of the landowners and slave owners over those of the slaves, coloni, and perhaps even the local churches. In several cases, he tipped the scale further toward the householder’s interests by going beyond the letter of the law. In the case of Antiochus, who belonged to a femina illustris named Placidia, Gelasius followed the legislation. However, he also offered to compensate Placidia’s loss by suggesting that Antiochus (now a priest) serve Placidia’s private estate church.153 A reputation for the strict enforcement of these laws was crucial for the Roman bishop’s authority within the lay household. It would be hard, if not impossible, to trust his judgment on other matters of estate management if he could not be trusted to protect a householder’s fundamental rights of possession. Although Gelasius did not involve himself directly with the aristocrats 149 150 151 152 153

Gelasius, Ep. 22 (ed. Thiel 1868: 389). Cf. Gregory, Ep. 9.193 (599). Gelasius, Ep. 20 (ed. Thiel 1868: 387). Gelasius, Ep. 21 (ed. Thiel 1868: 388). Gelasius, Ep. 21 (ed. Thiel 1868: 388).

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who owned or had authority over the men involved in these cases – it was apparently customary for their actores to work with the Roman bishop – his reactions to their loss of property and labor undoubtedly provided the bishop with a further store of goodwill. Moreover, in attempting to orchestrate the return of a bonded laborer, the Roman bishop might contribute to the reordering of a layman’s domus. Whatever harm a slave’s flight might inflict on his master’s oikonomia, the Roman bishop could play a role in its restoration. In serving the interests of elite lay householders, Roman bishops also found reason to intervene directly in the government of local churches, our second domain. Bishops like Leo and Gelasius typically blamed their suffragan prelates and abbots for allowing unworthy men into the ranks of the church or monastery. Their duty was to ensure that no slave or tenant laborer was ordained without official permission from his owner or landlord. As Gelasius ordered in his 494 circular epistle, every bishop, priest, deacon, and abbot must inquire into the status of any person seeking entry to the church or monastery. He typically directed suffragan prelates to investigate the claims and resolve them according to guidelines outlined in his letter. Gelasius’ focus on local bishops reflects the disparate, provincial nature of the problem. Not only did householders own properties scattered throughout the Italian countryside, but their slaves and coloni also probably fled to towns and villages outside the diocesan jurisdiction of their place of origin, where they perhaps hoped that their status as obnoxii would pass unnoticed.154 Once ordained, they might move again, ending up in the ministry of yet another diocese. Consequently, the cooperation of several bishops and abbots was often necessary to undertake the investigation and return of a dependent.155 In fact, the complex nature of the recovery process, created by ecclesiastical geography, could help to define the Roman bishop’s still inchoate stewardship of the Italian churches. By involving himself in lay domestic issues such as the flight and return of a single slave or colonus, Gelasius found 154

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This is precisely what a slave did when he traveled all the way from Sicily to Cape Misenum in Campania to join a monastery. See Gregory, Ep. 9.145, to Anthelm, subdeacon of Campania, 599. Cf. Gelasius, Ep. 21 (ed. Thiel 1868: 388) and Gregory, Ep. 9.192, to the defensor Boninus, 599. Gregory’s note is a cover letter for an epistle sent by the abbot of St. Demetrius in Rome, who had written to Fortunatus, abbot of a monastery in Campania, asking for his assistance in the recovery of slaves who had been hiding out on his monastery’s estates.

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reason to intervene in multiple dioceses simultaneously and to exercise his governance over numerous provincial bishops. Gelasius was not entirely indifferent to the plight of slaves or laborers who had joined a monastic house or clerical order. Several times he defended low-status clergy against aggressive former masters and their heirs, who denied that they had manumitted the men. In one case, he sided with Silvester and Faustinianus, two clergy from the church of Grumentina who claimed to be freedmen. The clerics had filed a complaint with Gelasius regarding the heirs of their former master, who disputed their freedom. The heirs apparently had persuaded the archdeacon of Grumentina that Silvester and Faustinianus were still their property and thus had been illegally ordained. The archdeacon then moved to settle the case in favor of the heirs.156 Outraged by the archdeacon’s treatment of the two clergymen and deeply concerned that their lowly status would hinder their chances of a proper hearing in either an ecclesiastical or civil court, Gelasius wrote not only to two local bishops but also to the comes Teia, asking them all for help in defending the men.157 It is highly significant that Gelasius interacted directly with freedmen and actores and not exclusively with aristocratic landowners. It suggests that Roman bishops attempted to exercise their emerging authority within multiple levels of domestic life. As the letters attest, the bishops’ interventions within the lay household do not always appear as the ritualized exchange of favors between two elite men. By presenting their assistance as integral to the administration of slaves and coloni on large estates, Rome’s bishops constructed a central role for themselves as experts in new problems of oikonomia. In addition, this role allowed them to exert influence at all levels of the domestic hierarchy, from the domina and the actor to the freedman and the slave. A PROBLEM OF PROPERTY: ESTATE CH URCH ES AND TH EIR OVERSIGH T

The bishop’s deeply pragmatic attitude toward dependency underscores how the possession of property remained a guiding principle and hard fact of late Roman society. Roman bishops made few efforts to reform their 156 157

Gelasius, Ep. 23 (ed. Thiel 1868: 390). Gelasius, Epp. 23–4 (ed. Thiel 1868: 390–1). For Teia (“Zeia” in Thiel’s edition), see PLRE 2: 1057 and PCBE 2.2: 2155. Teia might have been an Arian, which evidently made no difference to Gelasius in this matter.

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congregants’ landowning habits in any pointed or concrete manner.158 In striking contrast to their micromanagement of ecclesiastical estates, they typically steered clear of interaction and conflict with lay landowners. Indeed, Rome’s bishops seem to have sought a reputation as the defenders of private property, even if it involved something as minor as the recovery of a few silver bowls.159 For example, Gregory repeatedly denounced the aggressive actions of ecclesiastical agents who coerced individual householders to “donate” their lands to the church.160 They were especially cautious when it came to the estates of powerful wealthy nobles.161 Such careful treatment of noble landowners occasionally paid off for the Roman church and its bishops. Testators might name the Roman church as an heir in their wills, especially when they had left directions for the establishment of a religious foundation. One area of property management in which Roman bishops did increasingly attempt to intervene was the consecration and ritual use of private chapels and churches.162 Christians built various cult places in their home, some of which do not appear to have concerned Roman bishops. Small spaces, intended for limited family use, such as the tiny painted “confessio” constructed on a stair landing in the house beneath the church of SS. John and Paul in Rome, could hardly have accommodated more than a few people simultaneously. Spaces such as these were probably not used for a larger ritual service requiring a priest.163 More problematic for bishops in Rome and elsewhere were the chapels and churches erected on rural estates, especially those spacious enough to hold relatively large numbers of congregants. Broadly speaking, lay households used these religious spaces as mausolea, as sites for more 158

159 160

161 162

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We might compare the vocal condemnations of local landowners as rapacious and abusive by clergy in northern Italy with the relative silence on such matters among Roman bishops. Cf. Ambrose, Ep. 36.1; Gaudentius of Brescia, Tract. 13.21–2; and Maximus of Turin, Sermons 18.3 and 82.2 (CC 23: 68–9, 336–7). See Lizzi Testa 1987. Gregory, Ep. 1.42 (CC 140: 55). See Gregory, Epp. 1.42; 3.43; 9.84, 145–6, 235 and 5.57a (MGH Epistulae 2: 362–9), a decree issued at the 595 Roman Synod that prohibited the illegal seizure of land by Roman ecclesiastical officials in the name of the church. Cf. Gregory, Epp. 1.42 and 9.84. The following builds on foundational studies by Violente 1982 and L. Pietri 2002. Virtually all of our evidence for estate churches in Italy is textual. Although there is some material evidence, archaeologists emphasize the difficulty in identifying villa churches as such even when remains have been found. See Cantino Wataghin 2000 and Chavarr´ıa and Lewit 2004. See Chapter 2.

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extensive “processions,” and possibly even for baptisms, although the physical evidence for baptisteries is especially thin.164 The rural estate church engendered several new and difficult questions. What precisely distinguished it from a public church? Should it be a place for personal prayer or a site of Eucharistic liturgies and even baptism? Most problematically, who should exercise ultimate oversight over the management of churches and oratories founded on property with the personal wealth of the donor: the householder, the local bishop, or the bishop of Rome? Indeed the villa church raised an even more pointed political issue regarding the Roman bishop’s relationship to his suffragan clergy. The vague language of legislation on the administration of private churches and oratories left open the crucial issue of which role the metropolitan (or in Rome’s case, the patriarchal) bishop should play in the oversight of villa churches. In Constantinople, this matter was perhaps less ambiguous given the extremely well-defined and highly regulated relationship between the “great church” and its subordinate churches and bishops.165 Ambiguity was perhaps not so troubling in Gaul, Spain, and Northern Italy, where there were relatively few bishops with whom the metropolitan had to compete. In suburbicarian Italy, however, there were between 140 and 200 dioceses (depending on the date) packed into a relatively small area. Among other things, this meant that landowners looking to consecrate a private church first turned to their local bishop, not Rome. Developing a widely recognized expertise in the proper foundation of villa churches would have given Roman bishops a unique authority in the region, allowing them to establish their preeminence in this new aspect of estate management over, and perhaps even against, the local bishop. A New Regulatory Culture for Domestic Piety Given the absence of clear definitions of ecclesiastical property ownership and its administration in late Roman legislation, it is not surprising that the private religious foundation was also legally vague.166 As John Philip Thomas noted, “there is no systematic legal exposition of the rights and

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165 166

Fiocchi Niccolai and Gelichi 2001 and Bowes 2008:147-50 survey the physical evidence. This was especially true during and after Justinian’s reign. See Thomas 1987: 37–58. Chapter 3.

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duties of private benefactors [in late antiquity].”167 During the fourth century, imperial and ecclesiastical authorities made few attempts to regulate the establishment of domestic chapels.168 Bishops, in fact, exhibited various responses to the foundation and use of private chapels. For example, Spanish clergy at Saragossa in 398 cajoled people to participate in masses at the community church rather than in rites held in individual houses.169 Other bishops advocated for domestic religion, however. In ca. 400, John Chrysostom encouraged his parishioners to erect chapels on their rural estates and to worship assiduously in their homes with their own clergy.170 Damasus was far less comfortable with the idea that urban Roman households might have their own private rites. He allegedly used violence to remove a priest from a home where he was celebrating a mass (although there is no evidence to suggest that this particular household had a chapel in the material sense).171 Nevertheless, neither Damasus nor any other fourth-century Roman bishop categorically prohibited or tried to regulate the building and use of private ritual spaces. For much of the fifth century, founders enjoyed considerable freedom when it came to the construction, consecration, and ministration of cult spaces on their estates. A landowner needed no permission to erect a church to his own specifications, dedicate it to a saint, or incorporate it into a family tomb. In a law of 398, the state even required landowners to select a cleric to minister his private church from among those living on the estate where the church was located.172 When a Gothic vir illustris and magister militae named Valila decided in 471 to build a church on his villa at Cornuta near modern Tivoli, he composed and submitted to the municipal archives a detailed inventory of the legacy he assigned for the church’s long-term maintenance. According to a medieval copy of the original fifth-century charter (charta Cornutiana), Valila donated extensive lands, houses, vessels, vestments, and books to maintain the buildings and 167 168

169 170

171 172

Thomas 1987: 3. Thomas 1987: 20. What they did prohibit unequivocally, however, was the practice of pagan rites and heretical assemblies in private houses and estates. For the regulations, see Chapter 2. Council of Saragossa (383), c. 2, 4. Chrysostom, Homilia in Acta Apost. 18. See also Sozomen, HE 9.21.1–13 for private oratories (eukteria) on the estates of wealthy Christians. On this incident, see Chapter 6. CT 16.2.33 (398).

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clergy at the ecclesia Cornutanensis.173 There is no evidence of episcopal involvement in the villa church’s foundation or consecration, since no bishop’s name appears in the document.174 Valila, however, built and endowed his private chapel at a moment when the regulatory climate had begun to shift. During the second half of the fifth century, thinking changed regarding the ecclesiastical management of domestic cult places. At Chalcedon, the attending bishops imposed episcopal control over all monasteries and oratories within the see’s jurisdiction, with the latter structure presumably referring to Christian cult places individually erected on private land (although the canon itself is not specific).175 Still Chalcedon left much unsaid. In fact, it was the late Roman government that assumed the task of defining and restricting the foundation, consecration, and use of private chapels and oratories. Laws issued under Leo I (457–474) and Zeno (474–491) mandated a bishop’s consent for the placement of relics in any building. They also required founders who willed property for the long-term support of their private chapel to submit written records of their donation to public authorities, in the hopes that such documents would bind founders (and heirs) to their professed intentions.176 What is more, Zeno explicitly gave bishops and their stewards (oikonomoi) permission to oversee the execution of the founders’ documented wishes were his/her heirs to ignore the founder’s wishes.177 Not surprisingly, the most interventionist legislation appeared under Justinian. In the first law, dated to 537, Justinian placed major restrictions on the use of oratories for worship in private houses and estates, although he did permit lay householders to invite clergy to their homes 173

174

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176 177

Charta Cornutiana (ed. P. Bruzza 1880) reprinted in LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. cxlvi–vii). See De Francesco 2004: 95–114, who defends the document’s authenticity despite claims that it is a medieval forgery. Valila did, however, explicitly stipulate the handing over of properties named in the charter to the Roman church after his death: charta Cornutiana, 31–3 in LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. cxlvi). Council of Chalcedon (451), c. 4. This canon was primarily targeted at the famously insubordinate (Nestorian) monks of Constantinople. Thus, in its original enactment at least, it was a response to a local Constantinopolitan issue rather than to the more universal problem of private churches and chapels. Cf. cc. 8 and 17, which both assert a similar logic of episcopal autocracy over parish churches, monks, and clergy. Leo: CJ 1.3.26 (459) and Zeno: CJ 1.2.15 (474–94). CJ 1.2.15 (474–491).

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to celebrate rites in special rooms assigned for prayer, with their bishop’s permission.178 In two novellae issued in 545 and 546, he prohibited liturgical performances in private houses or estates (again excepting only clergy who acted with the permission of their local bishop) and categorically forbade laymen from conducting religious processions without their bishop’s participation.179 Such legislative prohibitions were given teeth through state-mandated ritual requirements for the consecration of Christian cult spaces prior to their private use.180 The rites that Justinian laid out, however, might not have been practiced in the West, where consecrations were probably carried out simply by the performance of a mass.181 Defining the Villa Church: Roman Bishops and Their Responses to Householders Although it is always difficult to know the extent to which legislation passed by emperors in Constantinople had force in the West, the laws nevertheless suggest a new and more intense regulatory climate for private estate churches across the late empire. We must place the efforts of Roman bishops to develop a process for the consecration and ritual use of villa churches within this broader context of oversight. Their statements certainly do not amount to a single standardized procedure that was universally followed throughout Italia suburbicaria.182 They did, however, place an increasing number of requirements on the founders – requirements situating Rome at the very center of the process. A recent study by Luce Pietri of episcopal correspondence on this subject from the tenures of Gelasius to Gregory (i.e., from 492 to 604) identifies numerous demands gradually made on estate owners.183 Most significantly, from Gelasius’ time, the householder was obligated to present a written petition (variously called a petitio or petitorium), wherein he 178 179 180

181 182

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Justinian, Nov. 58 (537) and also 67 (538). Justinian, Nov. 131.8 (545) and 123.32 (546), discussed in Thomas 1987: 43. Justinian laid out a consecration ritual requiring the bishop to say a prayer over the site, fix a cross over it, and arrange for a procession in Nov. 67.1 (538). See also Nov. 131.7 (545). Duchesne 1910: 403–4. The Roman church had settled on one by the seventh century, however. The Liber Diurnus includes formulae both for the founder’s petition to Rome and the bishop’s response. See Violante 1982: 992. L. Pietri 2002. Some of these requirements possibly predate Gelasius’ tenure (492– 496).

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sought the Roman bishop’s approval to consecrate (consecrare) or dedicate (dedicare) an estate church to a saint.184 (Of note, a founder apparently did not need Rome’s permission simply to build [fundare] a private chapel.) The petitorium was a crucial addition to established civil and ecclesiastical legislation on private religious foundations, which did not define the metropolitan’s (or patriarch’s) role in the process. As Gelasius’ circular letter of 494 to the suburbicarian bishops suggests, the tendency of local clergy to perform consecrations without Rome’s consent especially irked its bishops.185 Roman bishops’ did not intend to exclude local clergy entirely, however. In fact, all letters on the subject are addressed to suffragan bishops, whom the Roman prelate directed to execute a series of detailed directions, including the ritual consecration of the church.186 In other words, the local bishop within the relevant jurisdiction was to act on Rome’s behalf and perform the actual consecration of the church.187 Additionally, Gelasius and his successors attempted to extend their oversight to the founder’s financial arrangements for the long-term maintenance of the cult space. For example, Gelasius directed the local bishop to investigate the legacy set aside for the foundation before proceeding with the consecration.188 By the mid-sixth century, Roman bishops required even more structured financial inspection. Before the consecration could take place, the local bishop must receive a statement of the founder’s financial plans for the building’s future maintenance.189 A record of the legacy also had to be filed with the municipal authorities (gestisque municipalibus allegatis). Although by no means innovations of the sixth-century Roman church (we recall that Valila filed his charter in the municipal archives in 471 and that the emperor Zeno mandated such action shortly thereafter), these financial stipulations were undoubtedly added partly to ensure that overambitious householders did not create foundations that their heirs could not or would not maintain. Needless to say, a region of abandoned private chapels would not reflect well on the householding expertise of the Roman bishop.190 Roman bishops also proscribed certain ritual practices in estate churches, including masses performed for the sole spiritual benefit of 184 185 186 187

188 189 190

Cf. Gelasius, Epp. 34–35 (ed. Thiel 1868: 448–9). See Gelasius, Ep. 14.4, 25 (ed. Thiel 1868: 364, 375–6). See Violante 1982: 992ff. Consequently, Roman bishops often demanded that the bishop verify his jurisdiction. See Violante 1982: 971–80 on this problem. Gelasius, Ep. 34 (ed. Thiel 1868: 449). Cf. Pelagius, Ep. 86 and Gregory, Ep. 9.72. Thanks to Kim Bowes for pointing this out to me.

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the founder, and consecrations celebrated with “public masses,” perhaps referring to the habit of local landowners of inviting whole villages to their churches.191 Moreover, founders were expressly forbidden from consecrating a chapel on the site of a burial (or burying bodies in an established church), from erecting a baptistery on an estate, and from establishing a permanent priest to serve the villa church.192 If the founder “strongly desire[d]” a mass to be performed in an oratory, he or she had to request one from the local bishop.193 When read together, the letters of late fifth- and sixth-century Roman bishops reveal an interest in delineating a process for the consecration and ritual use of villa churches. Previous studies have offered a “strong” interpretation of this development, whereby the correspondence reflects the Roman church’s already considerable power in Italy. The bishops, they argue, had become sufficiently autocratic so as to deny the “rights” of independent householders over the use of their foundations.194 By requiring founders to petition Rome for permission to consecrate a church in a saint’s name and by restricting the ritual use of these private buildings, Roman bishops clearly attempted to realign an intersecting set of relationships among the founder, the suffragan prelate, the Roman bishop, and God. A householder was now theoretically obligated to seek Rome’s involvement when carrying out one of his most fundamental domestic duties: the religious oversight of the domus. Moreover, local bishops could no longer act independently at a founder’s request. Their participation was also regulated through a series of procedures and prohibitions. In this respect, the Roman bishop undoubtedly hoped to impose his authority on the level of the Italian diocese over and against the local bishop. To interpret the development of the Roman church’s oversight of private religious foundations solely as the imposition of power from above is to miss the more nuanced implications of these novel practices and proscriptions, however. First, civil and ecclesiastical authorities across the empire had already recognized the need to regulate the foundation of 191

192

193 194

Gelasius, Ep. 34 (ed. Thiel 1868: 449). In some cases the local pagi or vici were actually owned by the household, thus further blurring the boundaries. Burial prohibitions: Gelasius, Ep. 33; Pelagius, Epp. 86 and 89; Gregory, Epp. 2.11; 8.5; and 9.181. See also CIL XI. 2089 (fifth/sixth century). No erection of baptistery: Pelagius, Ep. 86; Gregory, Epp. 2.11 and 9.181. No establishment of a permanent priest: Pelagius, Epp. 86 and 89; Gregory, Ep. 9.181. Pelagius, Ep. 86; Gregory, Epp. 9.72 and 9.181–2. Violante 1982 and L. Pietri 2002.

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private estate chapels by the time Roman bishops entered the fray in the very late fifth century. In this respect, their interventions must be viewed as responses to a climate encouraging proactive oversight.195 Second, in every Roman episcopal letter preserved on this matter, householders had already erected their churches before petitioning to consecrate them, which suggests that founders saw little risk in building first and seeking permission later. From their perspectives, petitioning Rome was a relatively straightforward procedure that amounted to little more than a rubber stamp. In fact, we have no record of Roman bishops ever denying consecration to a specific founder. On the contrary, they seem to have searched for ways to facilitate consecration and ritual use, even if this meant going against their own “established rules.” Third, the newly established relationship between founder and Roman bishop was less ritually intimate than might be expected. It was the local suffragan bishops who performed the immediate spiritual labor of consecrating the church and overseeing its long-term financing and use, not the bishop of Rome. Roman bishops, then, did not monopolize already-existing practices; rather, they defined a new set of ritualized procedures that established them as the consummate experts on the making and use of private villa churches. Their claims to expertise were given further weight by the use of procedural language in the correspondence: for example, the submission of a petitorium, the insistence on financial inspection and verification, and the formalization of certain ritual prohibitions by means of quasijuridical expressions like absque missis publicis. In short, these letters reveal the endeavors of Roman prelates to achieve a reputation for a certain kind of domestic knowledge within a domain marked by considerable competition. Rome’s bishops appear as concerned with establishing their identities as unique authorities on the villa church as they were with dictating laws that would be followed universally and to the letter. Consider the case of Magetia, a late fifth-century femina spectabilis who built a religious foundation on her estate in the diocese of Sora (Campania).196 According to Gelasius’ letter of 495–496 to the local bishop John, Magetia had petitioned Gelasius for permission to bury the bodies of household members in the cult building on her property, where she evidently also held public 195

196

Both Violante 1982 and Pietri 2002 ignore ecclesiastical and imperial legislation on private foundations. Consequently, their studies isolate the regulations passed by Rome’s bishops, thereby making their efforts appear uniquely autocratic. PCBE 2.2: 1349.

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processions and assemblies.197 Gelasius expressed a general irritation in the letter at the tendency of lay founders to use their household chapels inappropriately, but the bishop found reason to grant Magetia’s request just the same. The burials should be celebrated with divine offices once and only once. Meanwhile the publicae frequentationes et processiones were to cease. It is important to recognize Magetia’s case as a compromise and as an example of the Roman bishop’s honing his skills in estate management to help a wealthy, aristocratic parishioner mediate between long-standing religious traditions and relatively new rules.198 As Gelasius indicated, Magetia would not actually violate in full the regularum statuta mentioned at the beginning of the letter, because no public masses would henceforth be performed.199 This exception enabled Gelasius to grant Magetia’s request while maintaining the general spirit of his own legislation. Pelagius I and Gregory similarly found reasons to override their established rules.200 In Pelagius’ case, the matter involved a petition from the bishop’s lay legal advisor (consiliarius), a vir magnificus named Theodorus, who owned a private basilica in Gabii (a town with its own see, ca. 20 km outside of Rome) that was already dedicated to St. Laurentius.201 The villa church had always had its own priest, but the position had been vacant for some time, and Pelagius and Theodorus were especially concerned to fill it before the upcoming Easter season. The founder had a candidate in mind, a revered monk named Rufinus, for whose life and morals the aristocratic householder could vouch. Although exhibiting discomfort with the idea of ordaining a monk directly into the priesthood, Pelagius underwrote Theodorus’ choice with one demand: Rufinus was to be made a subdeacon provisionally, and by mid-Lent, if all went well, he could be ordained to the priesthood in time to officiate at Easter. Pelagius thereby endorsed the permanent stationing of a priest in a laymen’s 197

198 199 200

201

Gelasius, Ep. 33 (ed. Thiel 1868: 448) did not state whether Magetia’s foundation was dedicated to a saint, because its consecration happened in the past and did not concern him. Contra Violente (1982: 989), however, I see no reason to conclude that Magetia’s foundation was not a consecrated chapel given the larger context of the letter, which opens with a general discussion of the need for episcopal oversight of oratoria and ecclesiae. Magetia is known only from this letter. Cf. PCBE 2.2: 1349. Gelasius, Ep. 33 (ed. Thiel 1868: 448). L. Pietri 2002: 259–61 also underlines the bishops’ willingness to bend their own rules. Pelagius, Ep. 36 dated to February or March of 559. On Theodorus, see PLRE 3: 1252–53.

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church and abided by the tradition of the founder’s choice, violating his own requirement that the local bishop make the selection.202 He also blatantly bent long-established rules governing the clerical cursus to grant his elite advisor’s request.203 Gregory too on at least one occasion permitted a lay founder to establish a permanent priest in the oratorium on his estate. In a 598 letter addressed to Passivius of Fermo, Gregory asked the bishop to consecrate an oratory to the apostle Peter, which had been recently founded by a local comes named Annio on his estate near Fermo.204 After stating the standard protocol for Passivius to follow, Gregory directed the local bishop to establish a permanent presbyter in the oratorium, “so that however often the aforesaid founder should perhaps want masses said for him, or requires an assembly of the faithful, there should be nothing that might prevent the celebration of the sacred mass.”205 The perennial granting of exceptions suggests that even in the late sixth century, Roman bishops responded more to immediate factors, like the founder’s own preferences, his/her social status and/or relationship to the bishop, than to fixed rules of administration. Moreover, all three bishops surveyed here (Gelasius, Pelagius, and Gregory) governed the Roman church during periods of acute political tension: in the early and uncertain years of an Arian king (Gelasius), in the wake of a civil war (Pelagius), and in the midst of violent barbarian incursions (Gregory). What they sought to institutionalize, therefore, was their authority as individual Roman bishops and not their policies on villa churches. To do so, they formulated their leadership in domestic terms and presented themselves as the experts with the knowledge to resolve some of the thorniest matters of late Roman household religion. Such a reputation could raise the Roman bishop’s spiritual status among lay patresfamiliae, who would now turn to Rome before looking elsewhere for assistance in navigating the murky waters of founding a church on private property. The bureaucratic “ritual” of the petitorium and its attendant interpretive practices, although not liturgical ceremonies per se, thus normalized the Roman bishops’ role in the oversight of lay religious interests and spiritual 202

203 204 205

Pelagius, Ep. 86 dated between Sept. 558 and March 561. It is therefore possible that the letter postdates Pelagius’ decision about Theodorus’ chapel. See, for example, Gelasius, Ep. 14.2 (ed. Thiel 1868: 362). For An(n)io, see PLRE 3: 83 and PCBE 2.1: 143. Gregory, Ep. 9.72 (CC 140A: 628): Presbyterum quoque te illic constituere volumus cardinalem, ut, quotiens praefatus conditor fieri sibi missas fortasse voluerit vel fidelium concursus exegerit, nihil sit quod ad sacra missarum exhibenda sollemnia valeat impedire.

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practices. More important still, these rituals brought them into routine contact with Italy’s most powerful lay householders and their dependents. CONCLUSION

Innocent’s defense of Ursa’s marriage, Leo’s transformation of the master– slave relationship into a Lenten rite, Gelasius’ interventions to return fugitive slaves and originarii and his efforts to streamline the nebulous process of founding private estate churches, Pelagius’ creative interpretations of nuptial veiling, and Gregory’s extraordinary attention to the recovery of private possessions: These practices of oikonomia helped Roman bishops to create spaces for their knowledge and influence within the households of laypeople. Broadly speaking, this chapter explores the attempts of Roman bishops to achieve influence over three areas of domestic life: marriage, slavery, and the administration of land. Their efforts were channeled toward very specific domestic problems, the proper form and resolution of which had become increasingly vexing because of new pressures. Roman bishops, then, never asserted their authority over the household writ large. Such a goal was impossible to achieve in late antiquity. Instead they endeavored to align themselves with the interests of householders by forging a reputation as holy “problem solvers,” uniquely equipped to navigate the intersections of several different (and sometimes conflicting) value systems. Nevertheless, the restricted nature of their efforts demonstrates that even by the early seventh century, Roman episcopal authority remained limited when exercised in relation to the lay household. Innocent had to work through an aristocratic dominus when he attempted to reunite Ursa with Fortunius. Leo too faced similar impasses: his letter to Nicetas explicitly excluded returning male captives who were unwilling to return to their wives.206 As Leo was acutely aware, marriage remained a family affair predicated on individual consent; it was not yet a “sacrament” that could be managed by a church official. 206

Cf. Leo, Ep. 159.3 and Reynolds 2001: 136–7. Leo also expressed exasperation at women who had remarried but refused to reunite with their returning spouses, although in this case he threatened them with excommunication. Nevertheless, the need for such heavy tactics underscores the limits of Leo’s authority over marital practices. See Sessa 2011.

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Furthermore, while Roman bishops claimed knowledge over certain spaces, practices, and ideas, their influence is all but absent from some of the household’s most important domains. To the extent that negative evidence is instructive, fifth- and sixth-century Roman bishops did not play a substantial role in the care of the dead.207 Their views on burial practices are regrettably absent at a time when Christians began to inter their family members in new ways.208 They were typically not involved in the actual selection of marriage partners, nor did they discuss family planning or give moral advice on child rearing.209 (They did provide pedagogical guardianship to the sons of aristocrats, as discussed in Chapter 3). Nor did they pronounce on excessive drinking, gambling, and other forms of lay “recreation” that so perturbed bishops like Caesarius of Arles.210 Roman bishops also avoided most aspects of private property administration (including the purchase, sale, and manumission of slaves), unless it directly involved ecclesiastical land or religious officials. In short, the domestic authority of the bishop did not wholly displace the domestic authority of the Christian householder. 207

208 209

210

A possible exception is Gelasius’ interventions on behalf of Magetia, wherein he permitted her to bury household members in a villa chapel. Early medieval liturgical manuscripts could provide evidence for the insertion of prayers for the dead into the Roman mass in the late fifth century. See Andrieu 1921: 151–4. However, as de Jong (2000: 194–5) has shown, these sorts of reconstructions are deeply problematic. In fact, my observations closely cohere with the conclusions drawn by Rebillard 2003 regarding Roman bishops and burial practices in the third, fourth, and early fifth centuries. Meneghini and Santangeli Valenziani 1993 and 1995 and Costambeys 2001. Vigilius and Gregory, who did make matches, are exceptions because they were legal wards of the women in question. Klingshirn 2004: 195–200 and Bailey 2007.

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Chapter 5

Cultivating th e Clerical H ouseh old: Marriage, Property, and Inh eritance

n the spring of 593, gregory received some disturbing news

about the church of Sipontum, an important see located in the fertile Isoutheastern region of Apulia. The bishop’s grandson had seduced the 1

unmarried daughter of a local deacon, and Gregory had been summoned to straighten out what was by all accounts a messy situation. The same deacon had also raised questions about the bishop’s financial administration. The deacon had been kidnapped not long before, and expected his local church to repay his ransom. Thus far, his bishop had not provided any funds. Incensed by the local prelate’s failure to manage his household and church responsibly, Gregory took action. He ordered the bishop to present an inventory of his church’s property and to resolve the domestic crisis according to Gregory’s terms: his grandson must either marry the girl or submit to a beating and spend the remainder of his life in a monastery. It is an obvious but often overlooked fact that many late antique clergy were married and had their own households. Scholars commonly characterize clerical identity in terms of membership in distinct ecclesiastical orders: the episcopate, priesthood, deaconate, subdeaconate, and so on.2 As Gregory’s interactions with the clergy of Sipontum reveal, this presentation is at best a half-truth. Although an ecclesiastical cursus defined an ideal system of advancement, it did not yet translate into corporate clerical identities, nor did it universally order clerics in a lockstep hierarchy.3 In Rome, for instance, deacons occupied a more powerful and perhaps an 1 2

3

Gregory, Epp. 3.40 and 42. Gaudemet 1958: 100–7; Pietri 1976: 668–70; 708–18; Llewellyn 1976: 424; and Richards 1979: 290–94. On the ecclesiastical cursus, see Faivre 1977 and Rapp 2005: 24–32 (for earlier Eastern sources).

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Cultivating the Clerical Household

even more distinguished status than presbyters, despite their technically subordinate position in the church.4 An ecclesiastical office certainly was a badge of honor as well as a specific religious duty, but it did not exclusively define a cleric’s position or role in the church, let alone in society at large.5 Many clergy, probably the majority, had households of their own.6 Their domestic obligations and ties were not simply incidental. They constituted an important facet of a cleric’s life and identity. Tombstones reveal a great deal about the multiple allegiances of late Roman clergy. Gaudentius, a Roman priest who died in 389, Adeodatus, a late fifth-century deacon, and an early sixth-century priest from the titulus Lucinae were buried with their wives, whereas a presbyter named Celerinus was buried in the cemetery of St. Agnes close to his sister Aemiliana.7 Leo, another presbyter, buried his daughter in 445 in a tomb he purchased for her at St Paul’s outside the walls, whereas Quirillus, a Roman deacon, buried his daughter in Capua in 565.8 There is also evidence for the existence of family tombs, where biologically related clerics were buried together, sometimes with their female relatives.9 Although occasionally buried alone, Roman clergy were almost never interred with fellow clerics as a “college.”10 If their epigraphic habits are any indication, Roman clergy did not exclusively conceive of themselves as officials in a clerical order. They also saw themselves as husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons – members, in other words, of traditional households. 4

5

6

7

8 9

10

Cf. Ambrosiaster, Q. 101, de iactantia Romanorum levitarum and Jerome, Ep. 146, who might have known Ambrosiaster’s text. Most Roman bishops had been deacons immediately before their consecration. See Llewellyn 1976: 421–22. Llewellyn (1976: 417–27) proposed that the priests of Rome’s titular churches formed corporations (what he calls collegia) that were tied to aristocratic patrons in clientage. There is no reference to any collegia of Roman titular priests in the sources and hence no reason to believe that priests organized collectively in any formal manner. This is not to suggest that titular priests did not share interests and concerns. See Chapter 6. Cochini 1990: 84–138. See also Pietri 1976: 711–12 and 716; Hunter 1987 and 2007; Brown 1990: 292–93; and Heid 2001: 137–38, 171–72. Gaudentius: ICUR 2.4823 = ILCV 1030 (389). Adeodatus: ICUR n.s. II.4926 (472). Priest from the titulus Lucinae: ICUR 27537 (400–500). Celerinus: ICUR 8.20798 = ILCV 1129 (381); and Aemiliana: ICUR 8.20878 = ILCV 1129. ICUR II.4917 (Leo) and ILCV 1205 (Quirillus). ICUR 4.11805: Annius Innocentius acolytus and his brother, the priest at the cemetery of SS. Marco and Marcellus; ILCV 1129: Family tomb of a priest and deacon; ILCV 1203 (no date): family of deacon; and ICUR II. 4186 = ILCV 1241: permission for plot at St. Peter’s cemetery for a subdeacon and his posteris. ICUR II. 4312 is a possible clerical tomb (fifth/sixth century) at the cemetery of St. Pancratius.

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Outside Rome, there is extensive evidence that many higher clerics, including bishops, were married and had children. Roman bishops often remarked about local priests and bishops who shamefully paraded their pregnant wives and sons through the streets.11 The man whom Pelagius grudgingly consecrated as bishop of Syracuse in 559 had a living wife and children. Gregory also stated that the Bishop of Ortona was married; in fact, Gregory even appointed the bishop’s son as a Roman defensor for the church’s properties in Abruzzo, although this was not an unproblematic arrangement.12 Some bishops never renounced the most obviously improper sexual prerogatives of the householder. It was widely known that Andrew, bishop of Tarentum in 593, kept a concubine.13 The Roman bishop’s ecclesiastical purview, we recall, encompassed 140 to 200 bishoprics located within central and southern Italy, including the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The provincial Italian bishops, priests, and deacons who administered these churches were arguably the most crucial members of the Roman church. They were responsible for the pastoral care of Christians living in their dioceses and managed properties not only owned by their own institutions but also by Rome. Their cooperation, good behavior, and local influence therefore were essential elements of a materially strong and spiritually robust patriarchal see. Because provincial clerics were ecclesiastical dependents of Rome, their domestic administration also had an impact on the Roman bishop’s own emergent expertise in oikonomia. If the Roman bishop wished to be seen as a consummate householder-steward who governed his church with order and aplomb, then he would have to oversee the dom¯us of the suburbicarian clergy. Stewardship and celibacy were powerful ideals that could potentially reorient how clerical householders approached their own practices of domestic administration. Neither completely eliminated the clerical paterfamilias’ private interests or his manifold responsibilities to care for family, friends, superiors, and dependents outside the church, however. Tensions flared when old practices clashed with new ideals, and there was deep confusion about how one should be a married bishop, priest, or deacon with a householder’s traditional concern for his own property and the perpetuation of his family’s wealth. These conflicts and 11 12 13

Siricius, Epp. 1.8 and 5.1; Innocent, Ep. 38; Leo, Epp. 12.3–5; 14.3–4; and 167.3. Gregory, Ep. 9.195. Gregory, Epp. 3.44–45.

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perplexities encouraged Roman bishops to treat the clerical domus as a social space in grave need of their direct domestic oversight. Each failure of a clergyman to comply with emergent strictures governing the clerical household presented the bishop of Rome with another opportunity to intervene in the running of his home. It was through the exercise of such quotidian influence that Roman bishops began to govern the church in Italy writ large. Three primary (and deeply problematic) domains of regulation and oversight are examined here: the marriage of higher clergy, the separation of a cleric’s private property from his church’s wealth, and the appropriateness of heirship as a model of episcopal succession. MARRIAGE AND TH E CLERICAL H OUSEH OLD

When Paul wrote that “those who have wives should live as if they do not have them” (First Corinthians 7:29 [Vulgate]: Et qui habent uxores ita sint quasi non habeant), he was thinking about end times, not the making of a new and peculiarly Christian institution. This elliptical exhortation, recommended originally for all followers of Christ, became a guiding idea in the late Roman definition of clerical marriage.14 From the late fourth century, church authorities in Rome and elsewhere pressed the importance of sexual abstinence for higher clergy – bishops, priests, and deacons – who were married.15 Marriages were not to be dissolved, but spouses were expected to renounce sex following a husband’s ordination to any of these offices.16 Additional strictures pertained to lower clergy interested in advancing up the ranks. Passages in First Timothy and First Titus state that only a man who was “the husband of one wife” (Vulgate: unius uxoris vir) might become a bishop or deacon.17 The phrase invoked 14

15

16

17

Recent studies of clerical celibacy place its origins in the pre-Constantinian period (e.g., Cochini 1990: 139–58, 245–54 and Heid 2001: 24–90). Gryson 1970: 1–44 presents a more skeptical view, however, and argues that is was largely a postConstantinian development. Canon 33 of the Council of Elvira (ca. 303–306) is the earliest ecclesiastical regulation requiring celibacy among married bishops, priests, and deacons; however, it is almost certainly a late fourth-century interpolation. See Meigne 1975 and Gryson 1980. See Brown 1990: 357–65 for general discussion of clerical celibacy and its significance in the late fourth-century church. Of course, terms like continentia/enkrateia and castitas/sophrosyne could also simply connote “self-control” and “purity” and not necessarily sexual abstinence. See Cooper 1996: 56–58. 1 Timothy 3:2, 3:12; 1 Titus 1:6.

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the revered figure of the univira, the Roman woman who had superior virtue because she remained married to a single husband throughout her lifetime.18 What precisely “one wife” meant was contested well into the sixth century, as this chapter shows. From Hippolytus’ time, some Christians in Rome excluded men who had married more than once from higher clerical offices.19 Others argued that the single marriage requirement also applied to the wives of clergy. Men who aspired to a higher post would have to marry virgins.20 In Rome at least, they would also have to have their marriages blessed by clerics in the church.21 Finally, bishops, priests, and deacons who were already ordained were not permitted to marry. The role of bishops, and especially Roman bishops, in the process of defining clerical marriage in these terms was significant. Some of the most influential pronouncements flowed from the Roman See, prompting scholars of earlier generations to credit the entire movement to Roman bishops and their monolithic exercise of authority.22 Although such a vision of the Roman church is no longer tenable, the question of why Roman bishops intensely and continually focused their attention on the marriages and sexual activities of their clergy warrants close attention. Historians have advanced two theses to explain their sustained interest: ritual purity and ascetic competition.23 Both theses illuminate why Roman bishops advocated a restricted form of clerical marriage. Many undoubtedly wanted to ensure that the clergy who handled the liturgy were permanently pure. Others clearly wished to differentiate clergy from laypeople and to raise their spiritual profile in a competitive religious context in which asceticism increasingly defined holiness. Neither explanation accounts fully for the continued preoccupation of later fifth- and sixth-century Roman bishops with the married clerical household, however. Concerns about governing, property, and power, and the bishop’s reputation as a holy estate manager were also at stake. For if a Roman bishop could not administer the households of his clergy, then how could he lead the suburbicarian church? 18 19 20 21 22 23

Gryson 1970: 1. On the univira, see Treggiari 1991: 216–18. Hippolytus, Ref. ad haers. 9.12. Siricius, Epp. 1.12–3 and 5.4. Chapter 4, and later in this chapter. See now Heid 2001: 283–96. Ritual purity: Gryson 1970; Meens 1995; and Hunter 2007: 213–19. Ascetic competition: Callam 1980; Hunter 1987; and Brown 1990: 358. Hunter 1999 and 2007: 218 shows how they worked in tandem.

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Embedding the Clerical Household within the Bishop’s Church: Marriage and the cursus Thanks partly to Siricius, fifth- and sixth-century Roman bishops treated the clerical household as indivisible from the church.24 In addition to directives regarding sexual continence, a virginal wife, and a single marriage, Siricius’ letter to Himerius and the bishops of Tarragona in 385 delineated what appears to be the first system of ecclesiastical advancement.25 Among the milestones that a man needed to reach to climb the clerical ladder was a decorous lifestyle and a proper marriage: “if he has lived appropriately, content with so much as one wife, whom he received as a virgin with a public blessing by a sacerdos,” Siricius explained, he might assume the functions of the acolyte and subdeacon.26 Lower clergy who in turn desired to advance to the deaconate had to prove themselves worthy (dignum) “with continence leading the way” (continentia praeeunte).27 By requiring a certain form of marriage, wife, clerical blessing, and spousal relationship for admission to and promotion within the clergy, Siricius integrated the clerical household into the emerging institution of the church. From that point, most Roman iterations of the cursus included stipulations about clerical marriage. In 443, Leo insisted in a letter addressed to the bishops of central and southern Italy that only priests who were married once to a virgin bride merited their office. Writing a few years later to Anastasius of Thessalonica, he explained how sexual continence was a requirement for married clergy even in the “fourth order” of the church (i.e., the subdeaconate).28 Similarly, Leo’s immediate successor Hilarus (461–468) reminded his Spanish colleagues in a letter outlining rules of episcopal ordination that candidates should be literate, physically intact, untainted by previous penitential acts, and the husband of one wife, who was herself not previously married.29 In a more detailed version of a cursus, in which he considered both monastic and lay candidates, 24 25

26

27 28 29

As noted by Hunter 2007: 211–12. Siricius, Ep. 1.13. On Siricius’ cursus, see Faivre 1977: 316–18. Eusebius, HE 6.43.11 transcribes a letter sent by Cornelius in 251 listing the various offices of the Roman church in an order that closely follows Siricius’. Siricius, Ep. 1.13 (PL 13: 1143): si probabiliter vixerit, una tantum, et ea, quam virginem communi per sacerdotem benedictione perceperit, uxore contentus, acolythus et subdiaconus esse debebit. Siricius, Ep. 1.13. Leo, Epp. 4.3 and 14.3–4. Hilarus, Ep. 16.5.

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Gelasius included the now-traditional stipulations about single marriages and virginal wives.30 In fact, early sixth-century Romans believed that a particular vision of the clerical household, characterized by a single sexless marriage and a virginal wife, was so elemental in the church’s constitution that they included its definition among the decrees in a forged set of conciliar acts. The supporters of both Laurentius and Symmachus, as mentioned earlier, generated documents purporting to be the proceedings of a synod presided over by Silvester and Constantine in 324. Both versions include canons that reprise many of the rules governing the clerical household.31 In attributing them to Silvester and to a Constantinian synod that was intended to rival Nicaea, the authors imbued them with a new sense of institutional meaning and urgency. A violent debate had erupted recently in Rome over episcopal authority and the domestic sphere, and Symmachus had been charged with breaching existing regulations governing the cleric’s sexual activity.32 In other words, both sides of the schism had reason to present the oversight of the clerical household as an ecumenical imperative endorsed by Constantine, because its proper governance related directly to the bishop’s authority as head of the church. For fifth- and early sixth-century Roman bishops, therefore, clerical marriage and sexual continence were conceived not simply in terms of purity and asceticism. These domestic practices and principles were seen as fundamental building blocks of Rome’s ecclesiastical ordering. A clergyman’s success as a household manager partly determined his advancement within the church. Choosing the right spouse, exhibiting faithfulness to that wife for his entire lifetime (which the ancient Romans long associated with moral purity and the univira), and exercising extraordinary bodily self-control while cohabiting were now ineluctable 30 31

32

Gelasius, Ep. 14.2.3–4 (ed. Thiel 1868: 363–64). Symmachan decrees on the clerical household: No subdeacon may marry: SK, 238– 40 and SK2 c. 5, 312; no one may advance within the clergy unless his union has been blessed by a sacerdos: SK, 244; SK2 c.18, 314; and priests may not contract a marriage from the day of ordination: SK2 c.24 (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 238–40, 244, 312, and 314–15). The Laurentian version was even more focused on the married clerical household: only those with “one wife,” “faithful children,” and living cum omni castitate could be consecrated deacons, priests, or bishops: LK c.7; no twicemarried man (bigamum) may attain the deaconate, priesthood, or episcopate: LK c.23; no clericus (presumably a lower cleric) may couple with a prostitute or a woman rejected by her husband: LK c. 27; no priest or bishop may have sex with his wife after ordination: LK c. 8 (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 328, 328 and 338). See Chapter 6.

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elements of a cleric’s identity and authority. To be a member of a higher clerical order, one should prove not only that he was a competent lector, exorcist, or acolyte but also that he could administer his domestic life according to new and more exacting standards. Given the significance of clerical marriages both within the church order and for emerging constructs of clerical identity, Roman bishops believed that their oversight fell directly within their ambit. They understood their responsibility to govern their clerics’ houses both in the technical sense of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and in a moral and spiritual sense, as the chief stewards of the “House of the Lord.” Writing to the bishops of suburbicarian Italy in 443, Leo explicitly claimed authority to correct the improper ordinations of men who had either remarried or wedded nonvirgins. “And we especially claim for ourselves the duty of this examination (huius discussionis curam), that if any of these irregularities have perhaps been committed, they may be corrected and may not be allowed to happen again and that no excuse may arise from ignorance. . . . ”33 Not surprisingly, Leo chose to articulate his government of the clerical household in terms of oikonomia. First framing his influence using the language of public administration (discussio was word that typically referred to the revision of public accounts by a provincial administrator), Leo then switched to an explicitly domestic discourse in the second part of the passage. Through an elaborate agricultural metaphor, he identified himself with the biblical cultor, who faithfully attended to the Lord’s vineyards.34 What Leo hoped to achieve through this twosided image was a particular relationship to the suburbicarian clergy. Here the Roman bishop did not simply “rule” his subordinate clerics; rather, he carefully cultivated their households like a good householdersteward. In fact, both Leo and his successor Gregory attempted to develop the clerical married household as a potential source of virtue, excellence, and order. “The law of continence,” Leo explained to Rusticus of Narbonne in 458 or 459, “is the same for ministers of the altar [i.e., deacons] as for bishops and priests . . . in order that their marriages may become spiritual instead of carnal, it is necessary for them not to put away their wives but to have them as though they did not have them (First Cor. 7:29), 33

34

Leo, Ep. 4.2 (PL 54: 630): huius discussionis curam nobis specialiter vindicantes, ut si qua forsitan de his commissa sunt, corrigantur nec liceat ultra committi, et ne qua excusatio de ignoratione nascatur . . . (Trans. adapted from Feltoe 1894: 3). Leo, Ep. 4.2.

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whereby their marital love is saved but the work of marriage ceases.”35 Citing Paul’s phrase from First Corinthians quoted at the start of this section, Leo presented a paradox as the guiding ethical principle of the clerical household.36 An ideal clerical domus is one in which a clergyman has a wife but also does not “have” her. Elsewhere Leo described the wife’s presence in the domus as a source of daily desire that all Christian clergy must labor to resist.37 In 599, Gregory put it similarly when he warned the clergy of Sicily that bishops must not abandon their wives but “chastely rule them” (caste debent regere, non relinquant).38 For Leo and Gregory, it was precisely the presence of wives that transformed the clerical household into an ascetic arena. Clergy, unlike their monastic brethren, could never fully escape the dangerous presence of a spouse; rather, they must learn how to live with them in a constant state of embattlement.39 Living the Laws of Restricted Marriage: Bishops and Clerical Households in Practice While perhaps comforting to some men, such ethical subtleties were lost on many clergy and bishops, whose very simple questions about the clerical household reveal a fundamental disconnection from the heroic struggles imagined by Leo and Gregory. As Leo’s letter to the Italian clergy cited previously suggests, local ignorance about precisely what constituted a proper clerical marriage is a common theme in Roman episcopal correspondence.40 Despite the efforts of Siricius and his successors, who delineated guidelines and scriptural proofs that strictly 35

36

37 38 39

40

Leo, Ep. 167.3 (PL 54:1204): Lex continentiae eadem est ministris altaris quae episcopis atque presbyteris . . . ut de carnali fiat spirituale coniugium, oportet eos nec dimittere uxores, et quasi non habeant sic habere, quo et salva sit caritas connubiorum, et cesset opera nuptiarum. (Trans. adapted from Feltoe 1895: 110). Leo also might have been attempting to correlate Christian ethics with Roman law: CT 16.2.44.1 (420 at Ravenna) explicitly prohibited clergy from abandoning wives whom they married prior to ordination. Leo, Ep. 14.4. Gregory, Ep. 9.111. Leo and Gregory’s conceptualization of the married clerical household as an ascetic arena parallels the presentation of marital sex as “living martyrdom” for Christian matronae in the Ad Gregoriam in palatio. See Cooper 1996: 116–43. Innocent, Epp. 2.4–6; 17.2; 37; Leo, Epp. 4.2; 5.3; 6.3; 12.3–5; and 167.3; Pelagius, Ep. 33.

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defined marriage for higher clerics, clergy remained confounded by and resistant to the adoption of practices that were in many respects antithetical even to Christian views of domesticity and asceticism. Lay couples were expected to abstain from sexual relations only for temporary periods around liturgical events, whereas men and women dedicated to a rigorous ascetic life often rejected married life altogether, living instead in single-sex communities.41 The clerical household was thus a curious tertium quid: a domus that Roman bishops defined by the daily presence of a wife on the one hand but by the permanent renunciation of sexual relations with her on the other. What is more, the rules changed continuously. In 325, the Council of Nicaea prohibited clerics from living with women who were not “beyond suspicion,” but it exempted close female relatives and said nothing about wives. Honorius reiterated these church rulings in civil legislation issued in 420, as did Justinian in the sixth century.42 Honorius’ law, however, also forbade married clergy from abandoning wives whom they had married prior to ordination. Ascetic impulses were to be encouraged among clerics but only to a point; they should certainly not lead to unilateral divorce against the wife’s wishes.43 Whereas the rules governing sexual continence for married clerics initially had applied only to deacons, priests, and bishops, Leo evidently extended them to subdeacons in 446. Leo’s “law” did not permeate suburbicarian Italy quickly and evenly. Even by Gregory’s day, married subdeacons in Sicily were unaware of the regulations since they had only just been introduced to the island.44 To complicate matters further, Justinian issued several laws that categorically barred men with living wives, children, or grandchildren from the episcopate.45 These laws were known in the West, as we shall see shortly. Consequently, the clergymen’s queries to Rome on clerical marriage reflect both genuine confusion and a strong desire to subvert. What 41

42

43 44

45

On temporary abstinence among married couples, see Gregory, Ep. 11.56a (MGH Epistulae 2: 331–43). Several famous ascetic couples adopted a continent marriage, such as Melania and Pinianus and Paulinus of Nola and Therasia. Interestingly, their exempla are never invoked in episcopal discussions of the clerical household. CT 16.2.44 (Honorius, issued at Ravenna in 420); Justinian, Nov. 123.29 (546), extended the ban to presbyters and deacons. CT 16.2.44. Gregory, Ep. 1.42 (CC 140: 54–55). According to Gregory, the rule had not been given to Sicily until 588. See below. See below.

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exactly does “one wife” mean?46 What of marriages entered (and presumably ended) before baptism – do they “count” toward the final tally for ordination?47 Could a priest marry after his ordination?48 Must a newly elected bishop be denied the position because he has a living wife and child?49 Rather than ignoring such questions or simply referring the petitioners to earlier decretals and imperial edicts, Roman bishops answered them repeatedly. Wives wed and children born before baptism cannot be ritually wiped away like sins and hence erased from a clergyman’s past, Innocent and Leo explained, in virtually identical terms in four different letters.50 Regarding the wife’s sexual and marital status, a man who sought the episcopate (in the words of Hilarus), “must have taken a virgin wife, not a widow or a divorcée.”51 Hilarus’ finer if not obvious distinction suggests that some had interpreted “virgin” in a rather looser manner. “[He] cannot be a bigamist [i.e., someone twice married] and cannot have chosen a wife who was not a virgin,” Gelasius wrote ca. 494, in what is quite literally a form letter. 52 “No presbyter may enter into a marriage from the date of his presbyterial duty,” stated a Silvestrian canon forged by the supporters of Symmachus in the early sixth century.53 An episcopal candidate, Pelagius twice pronounced in 559 echoing the Justinianic legislation, should “have neither a wife nor children.”54 Especially in letters composed from the second half of the fifth century, the bishops’ responses become increasingly repetitive and laconic, giving the reader the distinct sense of a writer going through the motions. This was precisely the point: the clerical household had become a vehicle for asserting episcopal authority and a subject on which the Roman bishop liked to claim a monopoly. By translating its unusual elements into the mundane features of an ecclesiastical 46

47 48 49 50 51

52

53 54

Innocent, Epp. 6.1.3; 37.2.4; Leo, Epp. 4.2; 5.3; 6.3; 12.3–5; 14.3–4; and 167.3; Hilarus, Ep. 16.4.5; and Gelasius, Epp. 14.2; 15.1; and 16.1 (ed. Thiel 1868: 362–63, 379, 380–81). Innocent, Epp. 2.6; 17.2.3–5; and 37.4 and Leo, Epp. 5.3 and 6.3. SK and SK2 c. 24 (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 246 and 315). Pelagius, Epp. 18 and 33. Innocent, Epp. 2.5; 17.2.3–5 and Leo, Epp. 5.3 and 6.3. Hilarus, Ep. 16.4.5 (ed. Thiel 1868: 168): sacerdos virginem uxorem accipiat, non viduam, non repudiatam. Here Hilarus cites Lev. 21:13. Gelasius, Ep. 16.1 appears to be a version of Ep. 15, a form letter for the approval of an episcopal candidate for office. SK and SK2 c. 24 (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 246 and 315). Pelagius, Epp. 18 and 33.

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institution, Roman bishops tried to subsume the clerical household into their own still rather shaky administrative edifice. Roman bishops did more than field questions about clerical marriage. They actively and sometimes aggressively monitored individual households. Since the late fourth century, Rome’s prelates required all clerical unions to be blessed by a sacerdos.55 The blessing, we recall, probably entailed both an investigation of the betrothed couple’s backgrounds (presumably in this context to verify their virginal statuses) and a veiling ceremony, which in Rome at least took place within a church.56 Although nuptial blessings became increasingly common among the Roman laity in the fifth and sixth centuries, they were mandated only for the clergy. Roman bishops also oversaw formal investigations of clergy who violated the church’s evolving strictures on marriage. In a short, undated letter addressed to two Calabrian bishops, Innocent directed them to explore claims outlined in a report concerning indigni presbyteres in the region, who had allegedly been fathering children.57 He told the bishops to summon all implicated parties and examine the accusations at a local ecclesiastical hearing. If found guilty, the priests were to be removed from office. In fact, there seems to have been interest among some Roman clergy to create a standardized procedure for investigating married clerics who reportedly violated the celibacy rules. The Laurentian forgers of one Silvestrian synodal canon devised a forensic method for determining whether a bishop, priest, or deacon had been sleeping with his wife. He would be examined before the entire church in a trial that required both truthful documentation and twelve Christian witnesses.58 Although there is no evidence that this particular procedure was ever followed, it reveals both the seriousness with which Roman clergy took the ban on marital sex and their desire to see such crimes adjudicated in an ecclesiastical forum. The absence of an episcopal “judge” in this theoretical hearing, however, is telling. It may reflect resistance to the Roman bishop’s efforts to establish himself as the sole arbiter of the clerical household.59 There is little doubt that Roman bishops hoped to be directly involved in the oversight of mismanaged clerical households, however. For example, Pelagius provided Florentius of Chiusi with detailed directions for 55 56 57 58 59

Siricius, Ep. 1.13 and SK (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 244). For the veiling ceremony, see Chapter 4. Innocent, Ep. 38. LK c.8 (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 328). See Chapter 6.

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dealing with one of his deacons, who formed a relationship with a concubine after his wife’s death.60 In a letter dated to March of 559, Pelagius ordered that the ancilla be removed from the deacon’s house at once and placed in a monastery. While Pelagius thought that the deacon should be censured, he did not order his deposition. Apparently he was an old man, and Pelagius believed that he was unlikely to commit the same offense again. It was only four years after the end of the Gothic War, and Pelagius was undoubtedly concerned to preserve as many clerics in office as possible given the drop in both the population and the number of dioceses that had occurred as a result of the twenty-year conflict.61 Pelagius’ soft response to the deacon’s sin also speaks to an important facet of the Roman bishop’s relationship to the clerical household. As often as Roman bishops meted out harsh punishments to those violating the emerging standards of clerical marriage, they also showed leniency and sometimes even ignored standards set by their predecessors. As Pelagius was undoubtedly aware, his forerunners’ letters offered precedents for the punishment of this deacon. Such clergy were to be stripped of their offices either permanently or for a set number of years, and repeat offenders were to be excommunicated.62 Pelagius and his fellow prelates often overlooked certain traditions and authoritative rulings, however. In another letter, also dated to 559, Pelagius chose not to force a newly elected bishop from Syracuse to abandon his wife and children in order to comply with recent Justinianic legislation, which precluded such men from promotion to the episcopate.63 Pelagius certainly had pressing reasons to want to meet the demands of the Syracusan clergy and people. In 559, Sicily was the Roman church’s most productive agricultural region, and Pelagius depended on the assistance of Syracuse’s ecclesiastical officials to help him to manage Rome’s estates. The Syracusan bishop-elect also had a powerful lay patron, as we shall see. Nevertheless, Pelagius’ willingness to bend the rules on the constitution of the clerical household seems to have been common among Rome’s bishops. In a 591 letter to his Sicilian rector Peter the subdeacon, Gregory ordered Peter to excuse the already married subdeacons from compliance with the church law 60 61

62

63

Pelagius, Ep. 47. On the fluctuating population of Italy and numbers of Italian dioceses, see the Introduction. Cf. Siricius, Epp. 1.11 and 5.8.4; Innocent, Ep. 38; Leo, Ep. 4.2; Forged Silvestrian councils: SK and SK2 c.24 (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 244 and 315); and LK (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 328). Pelagius, Ep. 33.

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requiring them to abstain from sexual relations with their wives, since it had only recently been introduced to Sicily, in 588.64 Although we should laud these bishops for their sensitivity to the personal demands made on clergy, we must not ignore the discourse shaping their reactions. Leniency and flexibility were also expressions of power. By demonstrating mercy toward clergymen who failed to live up to Rome’s exacting standards for the clerical household, Pelagius and Gregory underscored their deep understanding of the rules governing this institution and their ability to circumvent them. What ultimately mattered in these cases was that it was the Bishop of Rome who oversaw the investigation and meted out the punishments. In this way, Roman bishops asserted their position as householders of the domus dei, who alone were responsible for maintaining order within the church and by extension within the households of its clergy. Roman bishops also relied on an evolving network of informants and interested parties who reported back to Rome on the sex lives of married clergy. For example, Innocent claimed to have received his information about the wayward Calabrian priests from a layman named Maximilianus, whom Innocent called filius noster agens in rebus.65 Whether Maximilianus was the bishop’s official “information gatherer” is difficult to know, but Innocent certainly wished to present him as such to the Calabrian bishops.66 Gregory’s letters provide fascinating insight into the Roman bishop’s suburbicarian network of informants, some of whom were his own officials.67 Gregory was plugged into a circuit of watchful locals who were keen to provide him with actionable information on the households of higher churchmen. In one case, he ordered his chief administrator of Rome’s estates in Calabria to act on reports “brought to my attention by certain men” that a local priest named Sisinnius kept and venerated idols in his domus, where he also allegedly committed sodomy.68 The charges were probably trumped up (Sisinnius’ morals were already suspect for having stolen the property of a fellow cleric), but Gregory willingly trafficked in the lurid gossip and demanded that his defensor investigate and punish accordingly. Although Gregory typically kept the identities of his informants out of his official correspondence, 64 65 66 67

68

Gregory, Ep. 1.42 (CC 140: 54–55). Innocent, Ep. 38. As Caspar 1930–33: 2. 303. On the late Roman agens in rebus, see Kelly 2004: 206–7. For example, in Ep. 9.111, addressed to Rome’s officials in Sicily, Gregory directs them to report any bishops who were cohabitating with women. Gregory, Ep. 10.2 (599). See also Epp. 4.34 (594) and 13.37 (603).

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he did name at least one. Gregory learned of Andrew of Tarentum’s alleged concubine from John of Gallipoli, another Apulian bishop.69 Why John turned Andrew in is hard to reconstruct, although it undoubtedly had much to do with local competition. It is also likely that John was himself subject to extensive supervision from Gregory. The small see of Gallipoli was probably located within the boundaries of one of the Roman church’s estates, thus requiring especially assertive oversight over its bishop’s actions.70 Gregory’s reactions to the sexual misconduct that occurred in the household of Felix, the bishop of Sipontum, similarly attests to the realization among Roman bishops that the clerical household must be closely supervised. As mentioned previously, Felix’s grandson had had a sexual relationship with the daughter of a local deacon named Evangelus. The daughter was a virgin, the two were unmarried, and their liaison was both illegal and immoral. In this case, Gregory had learned of the matter directly from Evangelus, who had also complained to the Roman bishop about Felix’s financial administration.71 Apparently Felix had refused to pay Evangelus an undisclosed sum, which would allow the deacon to repay a loan he had taken to ransom himself from the Lombards. Gregory was deeply troubled by both matters and dispatched one of his notaries to Sipontum to investigate the charges. He then wrote two letters to Felix, the first on the issue of the debt, the second on the deflowering of Evangelus’ daughter.72 In the second epistle, Gregory expressly drew attention to Felix’s position as a paterfamilias and to the fact that he had utterly failed to oversee his own household. While praising Felix’s efforts to convert the pagans of the Apulian countryside, Gregory also condemned his activities as a householder: “We are very greatly saddened over this matter, because, on the contrary, in the depravity of your grandson [also called] Felix your fault has been clearly shown, for you brought up such a person.”73 Gregory then proceeded to mete out the punishments for the grandson, acting as if he, and not Felix, were the boy’s paterfamilias. In offering Felix’s grandson the choice between marriage and monastic imprisonment, Gregory certainly exercised his juridical authority to 69 70 71 72 73

Gregory, Epp. 3.44–45. Spearing 1918: 9, n. 1. Gregory, Ep. 3.40. Gregory, Epp. 3.41–42. Gregory, Ep. 3.42 (CC 140: 187): Qua de re nimis contristamur, quia e diverso in nepotis tui Felicis pravitate tua evidenter qui talem nutristi culpa monstrata est.

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preside over disputes involving church personnel, even in cases of a criminal nature.74 The young man’s sin, stuprum, was a crime in civil law that (from the time of Justinian) warranted capital punishment.75 Although Gregory could have been trying to save the boy from a more severe fate in a public court, his leniency also underlined the Roman bishop’s authority as an estate manager.76 Gregory’s decision to exercise clemency rather than vengeance, and to press for solutions that were both spiritually sound and morally wholesome, inflected his status as the chief householder-steward of the domus dei. Gregory’s interventions within the bishop of Sipontum’s family life and church administration demonstrate the extent to which Roman bishops had come to perceive the clerical household as an institution demanding their close supervision. The sex crimes committed on Felix’s watch were undoubtedly shocking to Gregory, but they were no more frightening than Felix’s alleged financial mismanagement of the Sipontan See. Evangelus had also complained about Felix’s failure to relieve his debt, and the bishop’s inaction had aroused Gregory’s suspicions. In addition to having Felix’s grandson investigated, Gregory directed his notary to have Felix make a full inventory of the property of the Sipontan church.77 Although it was not a virtual “papal city” like Gallipoli, Sipontum was Apulia’s largest bishopric in the late sixth century and functioned as Rome’s center for the administration of its estates in the region.78 A mistrusted bishop was disastrous for Rome’s church government, not to mention for the men and women of Sipontum, who looked to their local clergy for support at moments of crisis, as when a loved one was kidnapped and ransomed. The fact that this dramatic case involved crimes of both a sexual and proprietary nature is highly significant. Although they were likely unrelated, the matters were linked by Gregory and presumably by Evangelus.79

74

75

76

77 78

79

On the bishop’s exercise of privelgium fori, see Selb 1967: 214–17. On monastic imprisonment, see Hillner 2007b and 2011. Intercourse with unmarried women of status was considered a crime (stuprum) and hence legally actionable. See Beaucamp 1990: 1.178–81 and Arjava 1996: 217–20 for discussion of the legislation. Both Dossey 2001: 108 and Hillner 2011 rightly stress Gregory’s desire to offer the bishop’s grandson an opportunity to escape the death penalty. Gregory, Ep. 3.41. It was the seat of the Roman ecclesiastical defensor in Apulia as well as an imperial tribunus. Cf. Gregory, Epp. 9.170, 175. Gregory, Ep. 3.40.

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The association of sex, children, property, and household management reflects deeply ingrained cultural anxieties about the householder. Ancient authors had long voiced concerns that householders privileged their private family interests over public duties. Felix’s egregious administration confirmed this fear in Gregory’s mind, hence prompting his paternalistic response, wherein the bishop of Rome both criticized the prelate’s oikonomia (“it was you who brought up such a person”) and demonstrated his superior domestic expertise by resolving the crises personally. What Gregory’s interventions within the households of Felix and Evangelus ultimately reveal, however, is less the triumph of Roman episcopal authority than the absence of firm lines separating domus from ecclesia. The weak nature of this boundary surely could serve the Roman bishop’s interest, but it especially challenged his task of ordering the church’s material wealth. TH E PROBLEM OF PROPERTY: SEPARATING TH E EARTH LY H OUSEH OLD FROM TH E DOMUS DEI

A bishop who managed his household well was especially fit to manage God’s church, but how precisely did this hoary adage play out in the more tangible realm of large-scale property management? As we have seen, earthly domini and bishops shared a great deal when it came to practices of land administration, and sometimes they shared too much. Despite a welter of regulations established by ecclesiastics and emperors alike, clerics often “confused” the church’s property with their own private wealth. This confusion (whether deliberate or accidental) was among the Roman bishop’s greatest concerns as the principal steward of God’s house, for it accentuated the already ambiguous nature of the clerical household. Roman bishops never prohibited married men from becoming clerics, nor did they forcefully separate married clerics from their wives and children. Their reactions to married clergy with children, especially adult children, were guided by fears that these holy patresfamilias might abuse their extensive access to their church’s wealth, treat God’s property as if it were their own household’s, and distribute it to their heirs. Whereas fourth- and early fifth-century Roman bishops might have been concerned about ascetic purity and married clerics, their later fifth- and sixth-century counterparts were equally if not more anxious about the material implications of clergy with families for the church’s coffers. For them, even the adult children of bishops and clerics, conceived and reared long before consecration, posed potential threats to the integrity 190


of ecclesiastical property, much of which, of course, had been donated by people in the hopes of bettering their chances for salvation. To a certain extent, their concerns were grounded in experiences of corruption directly involving clerical households. Gelasius had to order the bishop Siricusius to compel the heirs of another bishop named Zacheus to return some sixty pounds of gold, which they claimed that they had inherited but which actually belonged to their father’s church.80 In another letter, Gelasius responded to accusations leveled by the archdeacon of Falerio that his bishop habitually laid claim to certain ecclesiastical properties as if they were his own.81 It is unclear whether this particular bishop had children or a wife, but his attitudes toward the church’s property reveal a deeply traditional view of domestic authority, whereby ownership rather than stewardship was the dominant principle of estate management. Gregory’s letters illustrate some of the most blatant breaches of the boundary separating household and church. In a letter written in 599, Gregory politely but firmly directed his defensor Scholasticus to vacate his father’s house.82 Scholasticus’ father, we recall, was the former bishop of Ortona, who had apparently lived with his son in the episcopal residence and, if Gregory’s comments are accurate, passed it along to Scholasticus with property that rightfully belonged to the church. Another notable case was a bishop-and-son embezzling team from Malta.83 Lucillus, the bishop, had apparently been stealing from his church with the help of his son Peter and some local clergy. Even after Lucillus’ deposition sometime in late 598 or 599, Peter continued to remove valuable items from his father’s church. Gregory also handled less deliberate acts of malfeasance, which nevertheless underline the practical challenges that clergymen faced when attempting to separate the bishop’s personal household property from that of his see. Eusanius of Agrigentum evidently died intestate, leaving his son bereft not only of his father’s fortune but also of his (presumably deceased) mother’s property, which had been deposited in her husband’s church.84 Gregory directed the bishop of Syracuse to investigate the situation, which involved making an inquest into whether 80 81 82 83 84

Gelasius, Ep. 43 (ed. Ewald 1880: 520). Gelasius, Frg. 22 (ed. Thiel 1868: 496). Gregory, Ep. 9.195. Gregory, Epp. 9.25 and 10.1. Gregory, Ep. 4.36. The property of deceased clergy and monks without wills (drawn up before entrance to the church) went directly to their religious institution. See below.

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Eusanius had actually transferred his personal property to the church. As Gregory implied, the absence of a will made this a challenging task. In addition to these “family-oriented” imbroglios, Roman prelates had to contend with blatant acts of theft, aggression toward neighboring private landowners, and general incompetence in financial administration. Januarius of Cagliari, a bishop whose administrative inadequacies appear frequently in Gregory’s letters, spent time before and after mass one Sunday pilfering crops and rearranging the boundary markers on land belonging to a private owner.85 Incensed if not exasperated by Januarius’ illegal and un-episcopal behavior, Gregory reminded him of his charge to “care not for earthly things, but for man’s souls” and directed him to model his management on the figure of the steward in the parable of the talents, whom the Lord expects to return his money multiplied.86 In fact, Roman bishops constantly fielded complaints from landowners, conductores, and domestic agents that church officials, including their own appointed representatives, had expropriated private property in the name of the church and the poor.87 The Separation of Property in Civil and Ecclesiastical Law To a certain extent, Rome’s bishops could look to a long legislative tradition to help guide their reactions to these problems. In addition to the church’s status as a property-owning entity, civil and ecclesiastical authorities attempted to clarify the relationship between the bishop’s administration of his own personal holdings and the property of the church. There was considerable concern that the property of the bishop’s church and his own private wealth might be improperly comingled, resulting in the expansion of one at the expense of the other. Imperial legislation therefore sought to define the bishop’s private status as a property holder more concretely. For example, there were several fifth- and sixth-century laws that regulated how and when clerics and monks could compose wills and transmit property. Generally speaking, all testamentary arrangements had to be made prior to the formal adoption of religious life, while clergy and monks could transmit only wealth acquired before entering the monastery or church orders.88 The property of monks or clergy who 85 86 87 88

Gregory, Epp. 9.1, 11. Gregory, Ep. 9.11. See Chapter 4. CJ 1.3.41.5–7 (528).

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died intestate fell to their dedicated institution.89 Roman law also recognized clerics as property owners in their own right, however. Legislation issued by Anthemius and Leo in 472 declared that all clerics could possess property as legally independent men (sui iuris), even if they remained in the power of an ascendant male relative.90 In 539, Justinian proclaimed that every man who became a bishop automatically received the status of paterfamilias, regardless of whether he had a living father or grandfather.91 As the emperor explained, it was unfitting that the spiritual father of the Christian people would not also be a householder in the legal sense of the word. How much force these rulings had in the West will always be moot, but there is ample evidence that Italian bishops personally owned property and presumed to exercise the legal powers of a paterfamilias.92 While the state was primarily interested in defining the bishop’s personal proprietary status and organizing his testamentary rights, church councils were more concerned with erecting safeguards between the bishop’s personal wealth and the property of his church. Christian authorities had long recognized the possibility that bishops might abuse their access to church wealth. Hippolytus’ searing critique of Callistus’ financial oversight offers an early example of this perspective. A century later, Syrian clergy gathered at a synod in Antioch to discuss the bishop’s stewardship of church property.93 Their decisions form part of a legislative movement that culminated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. There church leaders resolved that all bishops must refrain from participating in the management of other men’s households in the capacity of agents and stewards, henceforth directing their expertise solely to church business.94 Moreover, bishops were required to perform all ecclesiastical business through a clerical steward (oikonomos). The oikonomos was a clergyman chosen from the local ranks charged with executing the bishop’s managerial directives.95 Instead of handling his church’s property directly, a 89 90 91

92

93 94 95

E.g. CT 5.3.1 (Theodosius II in 434). CJ 1.3.33 (34) (Anthemius and Leo at Constantinople, 472). Justinian, Nov. 81.3 (539). Justinian extended the same right to consuls, patricians, and any official exempted from curial duties. For example, in a case discussed in Chapter 3 regarding the testamentary interests of the abbot Probus, the abbot and Gregory were clearly aware of Theodosius’ law of 434 (CT 5.3.1), which denied monks the right to draw up a will after entering a monastery. Council of Antioch (341), c. 24. Council of Chalcedon (451), c. 3. Council of Chalcedon (451), c. 26: “Since in some churches, as we have been informed, the bishops manage the property of the church without administrators

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bishop had to work through a steward, who acted as a buffer between the prelate and his church’s wealth “lest the administration of the church be unsanctioned and as a result the property of the same church be dissipated and criticism be inflicted on the priesthood.” 96 Even the steward of God, the bishops at Chalcedon reckoned, required oversight from below.97 Despite the theoretically universal force of the Chalcedonian statutes, there is no evidence that the Roman church had a clerical oikonomos.98 Nevertheless, Roman clergy clearly grappled with the same ethical problem and proposed their own solutions to it. According to the Liber Pontificalis, the third-century bishop Lucius established a rule whereby all Roman bishops must maintain a permanent entourage of two priests and three deacons, who were to provide “testimony” of the bishop’s activities.99 It is unlikely that this development dates to the third century, but it could reflect a later context, when clerical stewards routinely and openly monitored certain activities that their bishops performed. In 475, the Roman bishop Simplicius (468–483) ordered a provincial Italian church to direct one of its own priests to oversee his bishop’s financial administration of the church’s revenues.100 Both Simplicius’ directives and the discussion in the Liber Pontificalis suggest a consensus among Rome’s clergy that ideal episcopal stewardship might be difficult to realize within a system in which bishops enjoyed significant levels of de facto economic freedom. For many, the line separating bishop and dominus always remained dangerously vague. The assignment of clerical subordinates to roles of episcopal oversight represents one prescriptive attempt to draw it more firmly.

96 97

98

99 100

(oikonomoi), it is decreed that every church is to have both a bishop and a steward chosen from its own clergy who is to manage church property according to the will of his bishop, lest the administration of the church be unsanctioned and as a result the property of the same church be dissipated and criticism be inflicted on the priesthood. If he does not do this, he is subjected to the divine canons.” (Trans. Price and Gaddis 2005: 3.102–3). See also c. 22, which forbade priests from seizing their own property from the church on their bishop’s death. If clergy routinely deposited their money in their bishop’s church, it would have further complicated the principle of separation. Council of Chalcedon (451), c. 26. (Trans. Price and Gaddis: 2005: 308). The “steward of the steward” also could fall under suspicion, however. CJ 1.3.41.10, issued by Justinian in 528, required all clerical oikonomoi to compose annual inventories of their assigned church’s property and present the list to the bishop. If a steward died before rendering his account, his heirs would be investigated. This stands in contrast to the notoriety of the oikonomos in the East. See Rapp 2005: 218–19. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 153). Simplicius, Ep.1.

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For Justinian, the root of the problem addressed at Chalcedon and in Rome lay in a bishop’s potential status as a traditional householder, that is, as a man with a wife and children. It was simply too much to ask a married man with heirs to suppress his domestic “instincts,” which would drive him inevitably to provide for his family’s material future at any cost. This assumption compelled the emperor to pass radical restrictions on episcopal eligibility. In an aforementioned law of 528, Justinian barred men with preexisting children or grandchildren from obtaining the episcopal office, explaining his extraordinary measure in the following terms: For because some men, on account of their hope in God and to make their souls safe, turn towards the holy churches and offer and leave their property to these very places to be spent upon poor houses, the poor and other pious things, it is unfitting that bishops should render these things as a profit to their own household or be lavished on their own children or relatives. For a bishop must not be trammeled by the passionate attachment to children of the flesh; he must be the spiritual father of all the faithful. For these reasons, we forbid anyone to be ordained a bishop who has children or grandchildren.101

In Justinian’s mind, the bishop’s responsibilities of stewardship necessarily conflicted with his natural inclination towards principles of procreation and property ownership. The only way to prevent bishops from treating the church’s wealth as their own and handing it down to their children was to bar fathers and grandfathers altogether from the episcopate. This logic continued to orient Justinian’s thinking about bishops throughout his reign, and he repeated the ban on several occasions, later conjoining to it restrictions that forbade any man with a wife, concubine, or “natural” (i.e., illegitimate) children from obtaining the episcopal office.102 101

102

CJ 1.3.41(42).3–4 (eds. Mommsen and Krueger 1895): tinän gr di tn e«v qe¼n lp©da kaª di t¼ tv autän perisäsai yucv prostrec»ntwn ta±v giwttaiv kklhs©aiv kaª t Ëprconta aÉto±v taÅtaiv prosfer»ntwn kaª katalimpan»ntwn pª t e«v ptwcoÆv kaª pnhtav kaª trav eÉsebe±v taÅtav dapansqai cre©av, top»n sti toÆv pisk»pouv e«v o«ke±on taÓta pofresqai krdov £ perª dia tkna kaª suggene±v katanal©skein. Cr gr kaª t¼n p©skopon m mpodiz»menon prospaqe© sarkikän tknwn pntwn tän pistän pneumatik¼n e²nai patra. di taÓta to©nun pagoreÅomen t¼n conta tkna £ gg»nouv ceirotone±sqai p©skopon. Cf. CJ 1.3.47 (531) adds the further stipulation that bishops should not have a wife; Nov. 123.1 (546) adds concubines and illegitimate children to the list of proscripta; and Nov. 137.2 (565) reiterates the stipulations of Nov. 123.1.

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Roman Episcopal Responses: Ad-hoc Solutions and Claims to Expertise For subsequent Roman bishops who saw case after case of financial malfeasance on the level of the local see, Justinian’s legislation on estate management was hardly the crystalline, definitive solution that the emperor undoubtedly intended. Italian bishops continued to misappropriate funds and treat ecclesiastical coffers as if they were their own personal treasuries. No evidence suggests that Justinian’s banning of married fathers from the episcopal ranks had much impact here. On the contrary, this ban presented Roman bishops with yet another obstacle to overcome in the already complex duty of managing the clerical domus. As mentioned previously, Pelagius found himself confronted with precisely such a problem in 559. With the support of the patricius Cethegus, the clergy and people of Syracuse elected a man with a wife and children as their bishop. According to a letter addressed to Cethegus, Pelagius initially balked at the appointment and asked the patricius and his fellow Syracusans to reconsider their choice.103 Pelagius, the letter makes clear, was well informed about Justinian’s legislation.104 When the Syracusans stood by their choice, however, Pelagius reluctantly agreed to consecrate the man on a single but exceptional condition: the candidate must swear a threefold oath (cautio): he would provide a truthful inventory of his personal worth; he would never usurp the church’s property for himself, his wife, relatives, slaves, or any extraneous person; and he would not leave anything to his heirs other than what had been recorded in the inventory.105 In this case, consistency and the upholding of the law were far less important than establishing the Roman bishop’s authority on the matter. Undoubtedly this particular exception was granted both because of the see’s strategic importance for the Roman church, and because of the man behind the appointment and the addressee of Pelagius’ letter, Cethegus. A former consul and past resident of Rome, Cethegus had retired to his Sicilian estates in 558 and clearly had a stake in this particular man becoming bishop of Syracuse.106 The Roman bishop probably had little choice but to find a way to make Cethegus’ candidate viable, but Pelagius 103 104 105 106

Pelagius, Ep. 33. Pelagius, Ep. 33.4. Pelagius, Ep. 33.5–6. PLRE 2: 281–2, Cethegus 2. He was also apparently involved in the episcopal elections at Catena. Cf. Pelagius, Ep. 33.1.

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nevertheless managed to turn a difficult situation into an opportunity to showcase his own expertise in estate management. Overriding imperial laws proscribing such men from the episcopate, Pelagius demanded that the candidate personally issue a surety to him before consecration. The cautio protected the Syracusan church from potential malfeasance and preserved the financial integrity of the bishop’s individual household. Pelagius, in other words, devised a way for a man to be both an earthly householder and a holy steward of the Lord’s church. In so doing, he underlined his own authority as the ultimate overseer of the clerical household. Although his solution is remarkable, Pelagius’ ingenuity resonates with the approaches of previous Roman bishops to governing the material interests of clerical households. They too drew on numerous juridical, rhetorical, and administrative tools in their continuous attempt to align the interests of the clerical domus with the good management of church property. For example, in the case of the rapacious bishop of Falerio, Gelasius delegated the task of the inquest and resolution to two other local Picene bishops, thereby using established ecclesiastical networks to maintain order on the local level of the see.107 In other situations, Roman bishops requested high-ranking civil officials and local magnates to police the bishop or cleric in question, especially in reported cases of the illegal alienation of property in churches falling outside Rome’s direct control.108 One Roman bishop, Simplicius, even experimented with bookkeeping practices as an instrument of clerical discipline.109 In a letter from November of 475, Simplicius wrote to three bishops concerning news that he had received about the improper activities of Gaudentius, the bishop of Aufinum (probably Ofena in Abruzzo).110 In addition to making episcopal ordinations without Simplicius’ permission, Gaudentius supposedly had alienated some of his congregants’ offerings. In response, Simplicius demanded that Gaudentius adopt the quadripartitum, the four-part division of church revenues used by Rome.111 107

108

109 110 111

Gelasius, Frg. 22 (ed. Thiel 1868: 496), addressed to Respectus (PCBE 2: 1893) and Leoninus (PCBE 2: 1283). Cf. Pelagius, Epp. 26, to Hilaria and John (PCBE 2.1: 984, 1095 [Iohannes 48]) and 55, to Armentarius magister militum (PLRE 3: 121 and PCBE 2.1: 192). See also Ep. 65 where Pelagius requests the help of Carellus magister militum (PLRE 3: 272 and PCBE 2.1: 398) in a case of two Istrian schismatic bishops who continued to direct church property “for their own use.” As observed by Marazzi 1998: 66–67. Simplicius, Ep. 1.2. On the quadripartitum, see Chapter 3.

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Although Simplicius’ language suggests total fiscal malfeasance on Gaudentius’ part, it transpired that the local bishop had been dividing the revenues, although into thirds rather than fourths.112 Simplicius therefore used the quadripartitum as a tool for ordering an unruly suffragan bishop. In so doing, he subjected Gaudentius to a distinctly Roman system of ethical and economic organization that underlined Simplicius’ own domestic excellence and expertise. In addition to ad-hoc measures, Roman bishops used more routine administrative practices to oversee their clergy’s property. For example, they might have created a special archive in Rome to house the personal proprietary records of local clerical households. In the Liber Pontificalis, Julius (337–352) is said to have required all clerici in Rome to file their private property-related documents (“whether they be sureties, deeds, donations, exchanges, transfers, wills, declarations, or manumissions”) through the Roman church in its scrinium sanctum, which was overseen by the primicerius notariorum.113 Property owners (including slave owners) had long been required to deposit public records of their transactions in municipal offices (i.e., gesta municipalia). What the Liber Pontificalis described was therefore an important development in ecclesiastical administration, whereby the Roman church began to provide its clergy with a service that had traditionally been the provenance of the city. Although this particular church archive actually might not date to the fourth century, it was likely a working apparatus of the early sixth-century church.114 The creation and oversight of this scrinium sanctum thus constitutes one very concrete way in which Roman bishops carefully watched the private property of their clergymen.115 Nevertheless, the church did not exercise a monopoly on record keeping even in the early sixth century, since Rome’s municipal archives were still functioning then.116 Thus, when the compilers of the Liber Pontificalis edited Julius’ vita in the 530s 112 113 114 115

116

Simplicius, Ep. 1.2. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 205). Sotinel underlines this anachronism: 2003: 107. This was not the Roman church’s first and only archive. Clerics seem to have built multiple libraries and archives in the city (some likely located in churches), in which they preserved everything from martyr narratives and patristic florilegia to deeds, charters, and the bishops’ correspondence. See Pietri 1976: 672–77; McShane 1979: 202–3; and Scalia 1971. There is no evidence for the consolidation of these separate facilities into a single Lateran archive until the seventh century. See Noble 1990: 85 and Toubert 2001: 61ff. Records were filed at the officium censuale, a department of the urban prefecture. Chastagnol 1960: 77 and Jones 1964: 691.

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or 540s, the city’s clergy had a choice of institutions through which to process and store their records. By projecting both the creation of the apparatus and the clerical requirement to use it back onto the fourth century, the editors of the Liber Pontificalis fashioned a tradition with which they might persuade Rome’s clergy to transact their proprietary business through the bishop’s church. Inh eriting th e Domus Dei : Dynastic Principles and Episcopal Succession

While property conflicts involving clerical households consumed much of their attention, Roman bishops occasionally encountered an equally serious issue: the habit of some bishops to treat ecclesiastical offices as their “possessions,” which might be handed down to a man of their choosing. On a certain level, late Romans recognized clear legal and semantic differences between a munus and a res. Simply put, while property was transmittable, offices were not.117 Even most senatorial honors were no longer heritable. There are, however, numerous instances of prelates applying dynastic principles to their ecclesiastical offices – including several Roman bishops. Whether, and under which conditions, one might legitimately “inherit” a position in the domus dei was a perplexing and potentially divisive matter, evincing no simple or definitive answer.118 That a clerical householder might confuse his dynastic expectations with his ecclesiastical duties had occurred to Innocent. In his letters to Victricius of Rouen (404) and Exsuperius of Toulouse (405), Innocent largely reprised his predecessor Siricius’ explanation of why higher clergy needed to be sexually continent, sometimes quoting his exact words.119 In one place, however, Innocent interrupted Siricius’ train of thought to address the subject of procreation and the inheritance of priestly offices.120 Whereas Old Testament priests had to procreate because their offices were passed on through bloodlines, Innocent explained, Christian 117

118 119 120

There were, however, gray areas. Sons of decurions, for instance, inherited the property from their fathers that qualified them for a curial post, but they did not technically inherit the office. See Jones 1964: 739–40. The rise of local magnates (some with senatorial status) as informal public officials during the fifth and sixth centuries also could have blurred the lines between the inheritance of property and office holding. For Western postcurial civic government, see Liebeschuetz 2001: 124–36 and Wickham 2005: 596–602. It could engender bloody conflict. See Chapter 6 on the Laurentian schism. Innocent, Epp. 2 and 6 reprising Siricius, Ep. 5. Innocent, Epp. 2.9.12 and 6.1.2.

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clergy did not inherit their offices and thus did not need to reproduce. Whether Innocent was alarmed about one bishop choosing his own successor, his child no less, is unclear (most scholars think he was solely concerned with clerical continence).121 But his successor, Hilarus, experienced firsthand the dangers inherent in a dynastic model of succession. In an extant letter from Ascanius, the bishop of Tarragona, Hilarus learned about the inappropriate conditions under which the see of Barcelona had been handed down from one bishop to another.122 The former bishop Nundinarius had evidently bequeathed his personal wealth as well as his office to a bishop from another city named Irenaeus.123 In a response to Ascanius dated to 465, Hilarus judged the appointment to be illegal, not only because it violated a Nicene canon that forbade transfers of bishops from one city to another but also because clerical offices were not inheritable.124 We might ignore this case as nothing more than an impudent act of a provincial bishop, were it not for the fact that Hilarus decided to make Ascanius’ query a topic of a Roman Synod in 465. There Hilarus underscored the inappropriateness of bishops naming their successors on their deathbeds: Finally, some think that the episcopate, which is not given except to those who excel in merit, is not a divine office (divinum munus) but an inherited gain (haereditarium . . . compendium), and believe that, just as transitory things (res caducas) so the priestly office (sacerdotium) can be handed down as if through the right of legacy or testament. For many bishops in the throes of death are known to substitute others designated by name in their place, with the result that there is undoubtedly no expectation for a legitimate selection, but the gratification of the dead is held instead of the approval of the people.125 121

122

123

124 125

Gryson 1970: 136–60; Cochini 1990: 255–59; and Heid 2001: 263–67. None of the studies observes the subtle difference between Innocent’s response and that of his predecessor, however. Hilarus, Ep. 14. In the letter, Nundinarius is the episcopus Barcinonensium civitatis, a place name that I interpret as “the city of the Barcelonians”; however, there are variants in the manuscripts. See Thiel 1868: 157, n. 4. Hilarus, Ep. 16.1. Contra Jones 1964: 916, Irenaeus was clearly already a bishop when Nundinarius selected him as his heir. Hilarus, Ep. 16.2–3. Hilarus, Ep. 15.3.4 (ed. Thiel 1868: 162): Denique nonnulli episcopatum, qui nonnisi meritis praecedentibus datur, non divinum munus sed haereditarium putant esse compendium, et credunt, sicut res caducas ita sacerdotium velut legati aut testamenti iure posse dimitti. Nam plerique sacerdotes in mortis confinio constituti in

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As Hilarus’ recorded statement at the council suggests, it was not just one dying Spanish bishop who mistook the episcopal office for fleeting objects (res caducas) and held that they were transmissible by the earthly conventions of trusts and wills. Many bishops (plerique sacerdotes) apparently thought it appropriate to treat their church as if it actually were their household, its responsibilities to be distributed to their chosen favorites rather than to men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit and elected by the clergy and people. The possibility that a bishop might treat an office as his own personal property was yet another reason to question the integration of traditional practices of oikonomia within the administration of the episcopal church. As Hilarus put it in his response to the Spanish clergy, “let the episcopal honor not be deemed a hereditary right, which is conferred upon us through the singular favor of our God, Christ.”126 We must read Hilarus’ condemnation of dynastic principles with his immediate predecessor Leo’s experimentation with them, in his sermons on St. Peter and the transmission of his authority to successive Roman bishops. On September 29, 441, Leo delivered the first of four extant addresses preached on the anniversary of his consecration in 440.127 Among his audience were local and visiting clergy, who had traveled to Rome to attend what would become an annual synod. In the first sermon, Leo sketched a model of episcopal succession that animated his thoughts for the next few years. Addressing the clergy directly, Leo spoke of Peter’s presence in Rome and of his own relationship to Rome’s great apostolic founder. It was in Leo himself, Peter’s “unworthy heir” (inparis haeres) and the current occupier of his seat, that the apostle’s enduring authority was instantiated.128 On a certain level, Leo’s claim to be the heir of Peter, to whom Christ had entrusted the keys to the kingdom of heaven and the power to bind and loose, is unremarkable. Many of his predecessors had expressed their authority in terms of apostolic succession, a very ancient tradition that was modeled partly on the institution of inheritance.129 Inheritance was also a favored topos of Leo; he used it to describe the relationship of Christians to God, referring to them as the

126

127 128 129

locum suum feruntur alios designates nominibus subrogare; ut scilicet non legitima exspectetur electio, sed defuncti gratificatio pro populi habeatur assensu. Hilarus, Ep. 16.3.4 (ed. Thiel 1868: 167): nec episcopalis honor hareditarium ius putetur, quod nobis sola dei nostri benignitate Christi confertur. Sermons 1–5, with the first preached on the actual date of the consecration. Leo, Sermon 2.2. Cf. Sermons 3.4 and 5.4. Siricius, Ep. 1 pr.1; Innocent, Ep. 25pr. 2; and Zosimus Ep. 12. Apostolic succession was, of course, modeled largely on the relationship between teachers and the transmission of knowledge in philosophical schools (i.e., the diadoche). But see Tertullian,

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Lord’s adopted children who will inherit his promise to Abraham.130 As Walter Ullmann noted, however, an explicit claim to being Peter’s haeres was another matter altogether.131 In Roman law, the heir was considered to be legally indistinguishable from the testator; he (or she) assumed the deceased’s rights and obligations and was expected to carry them out as if he were the testator himself.132 Far more explicitly than his predecessors, Leo conceived the Roman church as a dynastic institution, which Peter continued to govern through his “unworthy heirs,” the bishops of Rome. Leo’s idea was the most radically domestic vision of episcopal succession yet outlined by a Roman bishop. It was perhaps too radical for some. Although few would have demured at the Roman bishop’s claim for a unique relationship to Peter, many might have been uncomfortable with the transmission of clerical authority – especially episcopal authority – through such an earthly modality of succession. This discomfort would help to explain why Leo saw the need to clarify precisely what he envisioned by a Petrine dynasty. Just two years later, in another anniversary sermon preached in 443, Leo opened with what was effectively a disclaimer: unlike the Old Testament priestly line founded by Aaron, the model emulated by Christian clergy was forged by Melchizedek, the Hebrew priest widely recognized by Leo and other early Christian writers as a figure of Christ.133 Melchizedek’s order of priests, Leo explained, “runs not by the line of birth, nor is that which flesh and blood created; it is chosen (eligitur), but without regard to the privilege of paternity and succession by family order.”134 Bishops therefore are not selected on account of their earthly origins; rather, he concluded, “it is the condescension of divine grace which creates the bishop.”135

130 131 132 133

134

135

Praes. haer. 32, who also used testamentary language to describe the mechanics of apostolic succession. Leo, Serm. 26.2, 30.7, 63.2. Ullmann 1960: 33–36. Buckland 1963: 316–17. Leo, Sermon 3.1 (CC 138: 10–11): . . . sed secundum ordinem Melchisedech (Heb. 6:20 and 7:11) in quo aeterni pontificis forma praecessit. Sermon 5.3 returns to Melchizedek and his priesthood as a model for Rome. Leo, Serm. 3.1 (CC 138: 11): Denique cum huius divini sacerdotii sacramentum etiam ad humanas pervenit functiones, non per generationum tramitem curritur, nec quod caro et sanguis creavit eligitur, sed cessante privilegio partum et familarum ordine praetermisso. . . . (Trans. adapted from Feltoe 1895: 116–7). Leo, Sermon 3.1 (CC 138: 11): dignatio caelestis gratiae gignat antistitem.

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Leo therefore came to share his successor’s uneasiness with dynasty as a model for the transmission of episcopal authority and office. In fact, in other letters to metropolitans, Leo chastised bishops such as Hilarius of Arles, who evidently made appointments without the consensus of the entire clergy and people.136 However, while Hilarus rejected outright the application of inheritance to an ecclesiastical context, Leo still embraced its core principle, at least for Rome. The idea that Peter, Christ’s appointed guardian of the church, was present through the living figure of a Roman bishop – Peter’s mystically designated heir, but not his blood kin – was a powerful argument, especially when made before an audience of Italian bishops. The very different contexts of Hilarus and Leo’s comments on inheritance and succession help to explain their distinctive positions. Leo selected a dynastic theme for his anniversary sermons precisely because they were preached before suffragan clergy. In this setting, Leo thought that the ethics of estate management could be carefully adapted to an episcopal framework as long as their more dangerous implications (e.g., the monopoly of episcopal authority by a single family) were neutralized. In Leo’s formulation, claiming to be the heir of Peter was both mystical and utterly mundane, and it pertained exclusively to the authority of Roman bishops. Alternatively, Hilarus addressed the concrete application of dynastic principles to the transmission of episcopal offices in other sees. In his opinion, bishops had to differentiate between the worldly practice of transmitting property and authority within a household, and the mysterious act of God conferring the episcopal honor on his chosen man. The “debate” between Leo and Hilarus on the appropriateness of inheritance as a paradigm for transmitting episcopal authority and office did not end with Hilarus’ death in 468. Although some resisted the introduction of dynastic principles into the church order, others seem to have adopted them. To be sure, episcopal succession in the Roman church, as in other sees in the West, still undoubtedly involved some participation by the clergy and laity.137 That their participation amounted 136

137

Leo, Epp. 10.6 and 14.5. Although pressing for the harmonious consent of the people and clergy in other sees, Leo nevertheless did not say that they were the bodies that chose him as bishop, pace Norton 2007: 43. Norton 2007: 41–5, 161, and passim. See also Gryson 1980a, who suggests that episcopal elections were more democratic in the West. His analysis is rather vague about the process and constituencies involved, and in any case, it pertains only to the fourth century.

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to a genuine “election” in the democratic sense of the term is unlikely, however. Select groups of clergy and local laypeople probably gave support to a particular candidate, who in turn had to be accepted by the majority of the city’s clerics and elites.138 Their consent was needed for pragmatic purposes, if nothing else.139 In any event, although no single family or group of families monopolized the Roman See in the period under discussion, it became increasingly common for individual bishops to engineer the nomination of their successors.140 In fact, evidence suggests that late fifth- and sixth-century Roman bishops expected to appoint their successors. In 483, the dying Simplicius issued an admonitio requesting that his successor be chosen by a council of clergy in consultation with a leading senator and praetorian prefect of Italy, Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius.141 Simplicius evidently believed that his own role in the determination of a successor was authoritative and acceptable. The episcopal appointment of a successor was also assumed in ecclesiastical legislation promulgated at the 499 Roman Synod, a council held in the wake of the double elections of Symmachus and Laurentius in 498. Under the leadership of Symmachus, the synod outlined instructions for how to proceed in the event that a bishop died before naming a replacement.142 (Not incidentally, this was precisely what had happened in 498, when Anastasius II died unexpectedly.) It is also likely that Symmachus, Hormidas, and John II had nominated their successors, while Felix IV named Boniface II from his deathbed at a private meeting of supporters in 530.143 In a signed testamentary document dictated before a small audience of clergy and senators, Felix explained how in the event of his death, God had chosen Boniface to govern the church.144 He then stated that he “handed down” (tradidi) his pallium to Boniface, adding that anyone opposing his 138 139

140 141

142 143

144

This seems to have been the situation in the case of double elections in Rome. Violence could erupt when a community rejected their bishop. When Paul of Nepi was temporarily appointed by Gregory to oversee the church of Naples, he was brutally attacked by opponents of his leadership. See Gregory, Epp. 2.23; 3.1–2. Richards 1979: 95–96 and 122–26. Simplicius’ admonitio is referenced in a scriptura read aloud at a Roman ecclesiastical council convened by Symmachus on Nov. 6, 501: Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12, 445). See Chapter 6. Acta syn. a. CCCCVIIII (MGH AA 12, 402–5). Hormisdas, John I, and Agapitus assumed the episcopal office less than a week after the deaths of their predecessors, suggesting that they too had already been appointed. The praeceptum issued by Felix IV is extant in a document discovered in the nineteenth century. See Duchesne 1883 and Pietri 1981a: 464–65.

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judgment would be excommunicated. Boniface II similarly perceived the selection of a successor as an episcopal prerogative and even attempted to institutionalize the practice. At a local synod held at St. Peter’s before his death in 532, Boniface pronounced the right for bishops to name their successors.145 The attending clergy ratified his decision by signing their names to the decree and swearing oaths to uphold it. Thereafter, Boniface, himself probably the son of a Gothic senator, named another Roman senatorial cleric to the office, the deacon Vigilius.146 The system of transference adopted by these bishops suggests new cultural expectations about power. Of the prelates mentioned above, five were members of the senatorial or provincial aristocracy.147 For them, it seemed only natural that a bishop should have a direct hand in the selection of his successor. For one, most posts in the late Roman civil administration were obtained through appointment; even on the local level, there were few elected officials in late antique Italy.148 Patronage was also still highly significant in terms of a man’s access to and advancement within the imperial bureaucracy.149 It is hard to imagine that it did not also influence the selection process of Roman bishops, especially given the fact that all of Rome’s fifth and sixth-century bishops were former priests or, more commonly still, deacons.150 In some cases, we know of close working relationships between bishops and their successors, such as with Symmachus and his archdeacon Hormisdas and with Pelagius II and his deacon Gregory. More significantly, dynastic principles had long defined succession within the imperial household. Although many factors often prevented emperors from choosing their successors, inheritance (which was rarely limited to biological heirs) remained both an ideal and viable structure through which imperial power was transferred. Finally, the dynamics of domestic authority also operated according to dynastic principles to a certain extent. Sons and daughters, of course, did not “inherit” from their parents the legal right to become a paterfamilias or to head their own household. They did, however, inherit the property that made such legal and social status meaningful. Whereas the inheritance of the episcopal office violated several rules and traditions, it 145 146

147 148 149 150

LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 281). LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 296). Boniface’s choice, however, did not go through. Vigilius would not become bishop until Justinian appointed him in 537. See Chapter 3. Jones 1964: 739. Kelly 2004: 44–51. Richards 1979: 249–60.

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still adhered to a paradigm of heirship – indeed, enough so that fifth- and sixth-century churchmen also used a quasi-legal vocabulary of inheritance to describe both the spiritual mystery of apostolic succession and a more mundane process of episcopal selection. For men like Felix III, Anastasius II, Hormisdas, Boniface II, and Vigilius, who grew up within a world structured by these ideas and practices, the episcopal office thus could be legitimately transmitted by means of inheritance, wherein the living bishop selected his successor. In this respect, the Roman See was not so different from other major western episcopates. Such principles and even outright nepotism governed episcopal succession in late fifth- and sixth-century Gaul. Caesarius of Arles, a man of aristocratic status, was the close relative of the preceding bishop and was groomed by his kinsman to take over his see. Similarly, Avitus of Vienne (494–523) informally inherited the episcopate from his father, Hesychius, Vienne’s former bishop. The late antique Roman church was never “aristocratized” to the same extent as the Gallic sees, however.151 As we shall see in the following chapter, not all endorsed the assimilation of the domestic with the ecclesiastical – including clergy of the Roman church and members of the Italian aristocracy. CONCLUSION

Roman bishops perceived the clerical household as a social space over which ideally they should exercise a more exacting and invasive form of control. The embedding of marital restrictions within the clerical cursus, networks of spies taking note of their local bishops’ trysts, oath taking, letter writing, bookkeeping regiments, and forged synodal acts were all used to define the clerical household as part of the bishop’s church. No breach of ethics and laws governing the clerical domus was too small or unseemly for episcopal attention. On the contrary, Rome’s prelates saw the misunderstanding and violation of episcopal directives as opportunities for direct intervention in the quotidian lives of their suffragan clergy. Although their responses do not amount to a universal “papal plan,” they reveal a collective interest among fifth- and sixthcentury Roman bishops in establishing their government of the clerical household as normative and legitimate. By all accounts, however, this was an extraordinarily challenging goal. Procreation and property remained central to the discourse of oikonomia 151

See Heinzelmann 1976.

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in late Roman Italy, and the households of clergy were no exception. Although Christian authorities in Rome and elsewhere tried to distinguish the clerical household from other models of domesticity, their efforts frequently rubbed against contemporary social realities, financial needs, and cultural expectations. Bishops and clergy continued to defy ecclesiastical rules governing the clerical household well into the early seventh century. No Roman bishop or Christian emperor could eliminate the traditional (a Roman might even say natural) connection between marriage, procreation, and proprietary interests. Roman bishops were not immune to its pull, as their reactions to dynastic principles and episcopal succession show. In fact, these precise tensions between old and new models of oikonomia erupted in one of Rome’s most intense and bloodiest ecclesiastical schisms: the Laurentian schism, the subject of the following chapter.

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Chapter 6

Mistrusting Th e Bish op: Succession, Stewardsh ip, and Sex in th e Laurentian Sch ism

“Indeed no one judges a master in his treatment of a slave!”1

hus spoke bassus, ex consul, householder and episcopal critic.

His sharp rebuke was aimed at Xystus III, the mid-fifth-century T Roman bishop who had audaciously interfered in the running of another man’s domus. A dispute had arisen in Bassus’ house between a young man named Epifanius, who claimed to be a freeborn nobleman and ward of the dominus, and the aristocrat’s slaves, and Bassus had sided with the servi. To add insult to injury, Bassus refused to acknowledge Epifanius’ freeborn status. When Xystus came to the house to intercede on the young man’s behalf, Bassus rudely dismissed him, metaphorically slamming the door in the bishop’s face by denying him the right to participate in a layman’s domestic affairs. Although this incident is entirely fictitious, appearing in an early sixthcentury narrative about a trial involving Xystus III and two imaginary aristocratic householders, it expresses the enormous tension and ill will that sometimes characterized the relationship between householders and bishops in late antique Rome.2 Earlier chapters examined some rhetorical and practical means through which Roman bishops endeavored to establish their authority as estate managers with respect to lay households and the dom¯us of clergy. Although their successes were outlined, their limitations and even failures were also emphasized. We have yet to explore more openly stated objections to this particular permutation of episcopal leadership, however, nor have we addressed in any detail the 1 2

Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 264). On the Gesta de Xysti purgatione and its grouping among the so-called Symmachan Forgeries, see Sessa 2007: 85–88 and below.

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Mistrusting The Bishop

many dissonances between domestic and ecclesiastical models of estate management. These dissonances made it difficult for lay people and clerics to trust their bishop in some of the most sensitive areas of household life, such as the administration of ecclesiastical property and the discipline of the body. In many respects, the bishop’s role as a householder-steward was extraordinarily controversial. This chapter places these conflicts and disjunctions at the center of discussion, giving particular focus to their significance in one of Rome’s most infamous ecclesiastical events, the Laurentian schism (498–506/7). The Laurentian schism began in the late fall of 498, with the double election and consecration of two bishops, the archdeacon Symmachus (the ultimate winner of the conflict) and the archipresbyter Laurentius. Disagreements over episcopal candidates were common in late antiquity, and the Roman church had been divided before.3 This particular schism, however, escalated not only into violent conflict on the streets of Rome but also into several grave challenges to Symmachus’ legitimacy, which led to his temporary loss of control over many urban Roman churches, including the Lateran. The charges prompted the Ostrogothic king Theodoric to have Symmachus tried by an ecclesiastical tribunal in Rome, where he was ultimately declared “beyond judgment” by the attending Italian bishops.4 Long recognized as a conflict over (among other things) the alienation of church property, the Laurentian schism has never been interpreted as a debate over the nature of Roman episcopal authority itself and its proper relationship to the precepts and practices of oikonomia.5 Contestations over the trustfulness of a bishop as the steward of the church were among the primary issues driving clerics and laypeople to schism in early sixth-century Rome. MISTRUSTING TH E BISH OP: A LATE ANTIQUE TRADITION AT ROME

The Laurentian schism was hardly the first moment in Rome’s ecclesiastical history when its bishops’ domestic expertise was questioned. 3

4

5

There were at least three earlier double elections producing Roman schism: Cornelius and Novatus (251–253); Damasus and Ursinus (366); and Boniface and Eulalius (418– 419). Imperial intervention was required in the second two cases. See Pietri 1976: 409–18, 452–60. Modern narratives of the Laurentian schism include Caspar 1930–33: 87–118; Richards 1979: 77–99; Moorhead 1992: 114–39; Wirbelauer 1993: 9–43; and Sardella 1997: 19–39. Pietri 1981a: 459; Amory 1997: 204–5; Sardella 1997: 79–86; and Hillner 2007.

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According to a hostile account, Damasus waged a persecution in the city against a group of ascetic priests (possibly followers of the ultra-Nicene Lucifer of Cagliari) who ministered to private households.6 One of them, Marcarius, was leading nocturnal vigils within a domus when Damasus’ henchmen – a group of the bishop’s clergy cum officialibus – barged into the house, dispersed the vigil, and arrested Marcarius.7 Here is possibly a case in which a Roman bishop brazenly assaulted the religious agency of a Christian householder, who had opened up his home to a priest and a larger group of worshippers. Of course, the group’s alleged doctrinal status greatly compromised the situation. From Damasus’ perspective, these were not pious Christians but “Luciferians.”8 Ecclesiastical and imperial legislation increasingly characterized private households as places of nefarious religious practice and therefore as sites requiring aggressive episcopal oversight.9 Damasus undoubtedly saw himself as acting in accordance with both Christian and civic priorities when he sent his strongmen into this domus to terminate the rituals performed therein. From his critics’ perspective, however, the bishop’s actions were concomitant with a tyrannical episcopal authority over the private home, which recognized neither its own limits nor its corrupt worldliness.10 Gelasius’ letters reveal similar (although less violent) moments of deep antipathy between householders and bishops. He was clearly exasperated by the insubordination of elite villa owners, who blithely dedicated and used their private estate chapels without following his rules.11 Their negligence suggests that some Christian possessores were less than enthusiastic about Rome’s interventions within their homes. The bishop also encountered animus from Hostilius, the Campanian comes who protested the marriage of a young women (probably his ward) to an unnamed cleric or church official.12 Gelasius, as mentioned previously, had defended the marriage’s integrity on the grounds of its publication through a veiling ceremony, but in so doing he deliberately sidestepped the comes’ serious accusation that the girl had been abducted (rapta). As both men 6 7

8 9 10 11

12

Faustinus and Marcellinus, Libellus precum 77–78. The officiales were officials (perhaps the local police force) associated with maintaining civic order. Canellis 2006: 185, n. 1. Faustinus and Marcellinus, Libellus precum 84. Maier 1995, 1995a and Bowes 2008: 196–202. Cf. Faustinus and Marcellinus, Libellus precum 83 and 108 and Bowes 2008: 200–02. Gelasius, Ep. 33 (ed. Thiel 1868: 448), where he contemptuously commented on the “founders [who] spring forth with furtive intrusions contrary to the established rules.” Gelasius, Ep. 73 (ed. Ewald 1880: 562–3). On Hostilius and the ecclesiae homo, see Chapter 4.

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undoubtedly knew, abduction marriages were illegal in late antiquity, even if families often quietly recognized them as legitimate unions after the fact.13 If the abductor had been a cleric, the crime was doubly serious, because the bishops at Chalcedon in 451 called for the anathematization of clergymen who kidnapped their brides.14 The highly questionable circumstances of the marriage ignited a serious dispute between Hostilius and Gelasius over the bishop’s role in condoning a possibly illicit union.15 Rather than settling the conflict to assuage tensions between domus and ecclesia, however, Gelasius aggressively asserted his authority over the aristocratic householder, threatening to report Hostilius to the king and suspend him from communion unless he dropped the case.16 Around the same time, Gelasius faced collective outrage from a group of aristocratic householders in Rome (“certain men sitting in their houses”), who had publicly censured the bishop for his laxity in disciplining a young cleric.17 The clergyman had committed adultery and in the laymen’s view had not been adequately punished by his bishop.18 In response to their rebuke of his oikonomia, Gelasius launched a famously vitriolic attack on his critics’ participation in the Lupercalia, an ancient fertility rite that was evidently still performed by Rome’s leading Christian families in the late fifth century.19 Whether impugning the householders’ ritual traditions was successful remains unclear, but Gelasius pulled no punches in his condemnation of their “spiritual adultery.”20 Gelasius’ standing among the region’s domini was at the very least questionable, especially regarding his oversight of clergy and their domestic activities. While he could be accommodating to elite householders, Gelasius could also be autocratic and imperious, as his responses to Hostilius and the Roman domini show. 13

14

15

16 17

18 19 20

Evans Grubbs 1989 and 1995: 183–93; Beaucamp 1990: 1.107–21; and Arjava 1996: 37–41. Chalcedon (451), c. 27. Otherwise, bishops tended to be tolerant toward abduction marriages, if the families accepted them. Evans Grubbs 1989: 72–76 and Arjava 1996: 38. Only Gelasius’ response is extant, but it suggests that Hostilius strongly protested the situation and held Gelasius accountable. Gelasius, Ep. 73 (ed. Ewald 1880: 563). Gelasius, Ep. 100.1 (CSEL 35: 453): sedent quidam in domibus suis. I consider Gelasius to have authored this letter, but some scholars attribute it to his immediate predecessor Felix III and date it to the late 480s or early 490s. See Duval 1977: 246–50. Gelasius, Ep. 100.1–2, and 6–8 (CSEL 35: 453–55). Holleman 1974; Duval 1977; and McLynn 2008. Gelasius, Ep. 100.3 (CSEL 35: 454).

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As Gelasius’ chosen archdeacon (and probably his hand-picked successor), Symmachus might have inherited his predecessor’s prickly reputation for domestic matters. More damning still, he might have been associated with Gelasius’ notoriety for negligence when it came to the discipline of wayward clerics whose civil crimes could be and typically were judged by the bishop – a legal twist that undoubtedly further exasperated Gelasius’ critics.21 In any case, Symmachus encountered immediate resistance when a rival faction elected an older titular priest to the episcopate just hours after he had been raised to the see. TH E LAURENTIAN SCH ISM (498–506/7): CH ARGES, COUNCILS, AND COMMUNITIES

Past scholars have explained the causes and conflicts of the Laurentian schism in terms of theology and high politics. According to most studies, Symmachus and Laurentius represented diametrically opposed positions on the Acacian schism (484–519). The Acacian schism was a dispute between Chalcedonians and Monophysites over the acceptance of a Christological compromise engineered by the imperial government, and on the question of rapprochement between East and West over the issue.22 Others have emphasized the role of the senate as a unified social and political body in the direction of Roman ecclesiastical affairs.23 None of these explanations, however, takes seriously (if at all) the actual charges that were leveled against Symmachus by his opponents, some of which were subsequently adjudicated in a series of ecclesiastical synods held in Rome between 499 and 502.24 According to the so-called Laurentian Fragment, an early sixth-century account of Symmachus’ episcopate likely composed by his opponents, the Roman bishop was accused of following the wrong calendar to compute the date of Easter, of conducting sexual relations with multiple women, and of improperly administering 21

22

23 24

A bishop’s right to judge even the secular crimes of clergy was tied to his exercise of privilegium fori. See Selb 1967: 214-7. Duchesne 1925: 112–13; Caspar 1930–33: 2. 84–91; Townsend 1937: 233–59; Chadwick 1967: 200–10; Zecchini 1980: 60; Richards 1979: 92ff; Moorhead 1992: 125–26; 134–35; Noble 1993; and Sardella 1997: 8–12 (although with reservations, see below). Picotti 1958 and Pietri 1981a. Emphasized by Amory 1997: 204–5. The only late ancient author to connect the schism to tensions with the East and the Acacian schism was Theodore the Lector (HE 2.17 [PG 86.192–93]), a Constantinopolitan who wrote during the early sixth century.

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ecclesiastical property.25 The accusations raised against Symmachus here and in other sources suggest that underlying this schism was not theology, imperial politics, or conflict between clerics and the senate, but a crisis of trust and legitimacy that struck at the very bases of episcopal leadership in late antique Rome: stewardship, succession, and clerical sexual discipline.26 In short, the causes of the Laurentian schism were domestic and revolved primarily around debates over the ideal relationship between oikonomia and episcopal authority. The Events of the Laurentian Schism: A Brief Synopsis27 The Laurentian schism began with the double consecration of two bishops in November of 498, first Symmachus at the Lateran basilica, and then Laurentius at the church of St. Maria Maggiore. Shortly after, Theodoric summoned both men to Ravenna to determine the outcome: Symmachus, he decided, was the legitimate bishop because he had been consecrated first and appeared to have the majority of supporters. (Not incidentally, Symmachus’ enemies accused the prelate of bribing court officials to achieve this result.) Both men then returned to Rome and for the next year and a half peacefully fulfilled their respective ecclesiastical duties. Symmachus continued to hold the episcopal office and on March 1, 499 convened the first of three councils to consider problems of episcopal leadership and domestic administration. Symmachus, the attending bishops, and local clergy discussed the process of episcopal succession at this council and concluded that Roman clerics would normally play no direct role. Laurentius not only attended the synod of 499 but also signed the official acta, his imprimatur at least suggesting support for

25

26

27

The Laurentian Fragment features several Roman episcopal biographies (similar to the LP in form) that were executed sometime between 514 and 519. For the text, see LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 44–46) with an English translation by Davis 1989: 97–100. Of note, the Easter dating controversy did not arise, at least directly, in any of the councils held in conjunction with the schism. I summarize recent chronologies of the Laurentian schism presented by Wirbelauer (1993: 21–22) and endorsed by Sardella (1997: 27–28). In his reexamination of the records from the councils, Wirbelauer built on the long-recognized observation that the order and dating of the synods presented in Mommsen’s edition (MGH AA 12, 395–455) are partially erroneous. Nevertheless, as Noble stresses (1993: 408), all reconstructions of the events of the Laurentian schism are hypothetical given the confusing state of the evidence.

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Symmachus.28 For the next six months, the Roman church was politically stable, and Symmachus faced little opposition. In his role as the city’s chief Christian official, he participated in Theodoric’s celebratory visit in 500.29 The situation changed during the first half of 501. In the winter or summer of that year, a group of opponents presented Theodoric with the list of charges against Symmachus (enumerated previously).30 Symmachus was once again summoned to Ravenna, but while in route he abruptly returned to Rome and barricaded himself in St. Peter’s. Still Rome’s bishop, he convened a second council on November 6, 501 at St. Peter’s, where with visiting Italian bishops and a much smaller group of Roman clergy, he investigated the financial accusations.31 Although the records suggest that Symmachus regarded the synod’s conclusions as a victory, his enemies were not persuaded. They returned to Theodoric, whom they convinced to establish an interim bishop at Rome, Peter of Altinum.32 They also persuaded the king to convene a third council, which Symmachus would not attend.33 It was hoped that this third council would investigate the charges against him more thoroughly. In a series of meetings culminating in a final session held on October 23, 502, the Italian bishops declared that they could not cast judgment on

28 29 30

31

32

33

Acta syn. a. CCCCXVIIII (MGH AA 12, 419). Anon. Val. 65–69. On this matter, scholars debate both chronology and catalysts. Wirbelauer (1993: 21) argues that the charges were filed against Symmachus in the winter of 501, thus before he would have celebrated Easter on the “wrong” date of March 25. Sardella (1997: 26–7) maintains that it was precisely Symmachus’ celebration of Easter on March 25 (the date calculated using an old Roman system) instead of on April 22 (the date using the Alexandrian system) that inspired his enemies to present the relatio to Theodoric sometime in the summer or early autumn of 501. On the basis of manuscript and prosopographical evidence, Wirbelauer showed that the November 6 council assembled at St. Peter’s was not the final synod held in 502 after Symmachus had been declared “beyond judgment” by the Italian bishops. Rather, it was the second synod of the schism, convened by Symmachus in 501, when his legitimacy was still in question. Not all scholars accept this reconstruction: see Aimone 2000: 64–65, who follows the corrected chronology proposed by Picotti 1958. Peter of Altinum could have been installed in Rome only after the conclusion of the second council in November of 501, because his presence would have divested Symmachus of the authority to convene such a synod. See Sardella 1997: 29–31. Symmachus tried to attend the first meeting of the third council in 502, but his entourage met with such violence in the streets that he had to retreat to St. Peter’s. Thereafter he refused to travel to the meetings.

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Symmachus because of his refusal to attend the hearings and his primatial status as the bishop of Rome. Although the synod’s decision officially exonerated Symmachus (if only on the grounds of technicalities), it also failed to instill widespread trust in his legitimacy. Between 502 and 506 or early 507, many of Rome’s churches, including the Lateran, remained under the direct control of Laurentius. Laurentius’ certainty in his official status propelled him to have his own portrait painted in the gallery of bishops located in the basilica of St. Paul on the Via Ostiense.34 During this period, the schism produced public unrest in Rome, and there are accounts of murders perpetrated by both sides.35 Symmachus’ opponents also circulated a now lost pamphlet that directly challenged the decision reached by the October 502 synod.36 In addition to criticizing the council’s judgment of Symmachus, the pamphlet reiterated two familiar charges: that Symmachus cavorted with women during his hearings, and that he continued to misappropriate church property.37 The schism ended in late 506 or 507, when Theodoric intervened again and decreed the restitution of all the city’s churches and property to Symmachus.38 Laurentius left Rome and spent the rest of his life on an estate owned by a senatorial partisan.39 This summary of events reveals several important facts about the schism. First, with a single exception (the celebration of Easter on the wrong date), the allegations raised against Symmachus before Theodoric were the explicit or implicit subjects of the debates adjudicated at the synods. This demonstrates that, from a Roman perspective, the issues at hand were not only locally specific but also institutional and ideological. They pertained directly to larger questions regarding the Roman bishop’s exercise of authority over domestic domains of the church (i.e., the succession of bishops, administration of ecclesiastical property, and disciplining of sexual passions). Second, Symmachus’ enemies evidently 34

35

36

37 38

39

Wirbelauer 1993: 39. Cf. Cod. Vat. Barb. Lat. 4407, C.4.1 for a seventeenth-century drawing of the mural with the episcopal medallions, which were destroyed by a fire in 1823. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 260–61), pro-Symmachan and Frg. Laur. (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1.46), pro-Laurentian. Its contents are known only from Ennodius’ refutation, the Libellus adversus eos qui contra synodum scribere praesumpserunt. Ennodius, Libellus 65 and 68. Scholars debate precisely when the Laurentian schism ended. Moorhead 1992: 124–5 and Wirbelauer 1993: 39–40 advocate for early 507 as the date, but Pietri 1981a: 461 and Sardella 1997: 38 hold that 506 marked its conclusion. Frg. Laur. (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1.46).

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presented the charges to Theodoric sometime in 501, at least a full year after he had assumed the episcopal office. This gap shows that it was his behavior as bishop that catalyzed Symmachus’ opponents to take their case to Ravenna. Third and most significantly, none of the three councils fully resolved the schism.40 In 502, Symmachus was perhaps Rome’s official bishop, but his authority was challenged and limited because he had no control over many of Rome’s churches and their clergy until 506 or 507, when Theodoric again intervened on his behalf. Social Alliances and the Public Relations Battle Both Symmachus and Laurentius suffered from a legitimacy deficit. Each had risen to the see in a questionable manner and, more important, neither could claim a monopoly on clerical, aristocratic, or popular support. Scholars have long abandoned neat explanatory frameworks for the various factions in the schism: Laurentius was hardly the “aristocratic” choice, nor was Symmachus “the pope of the people.”41 Moreover, Symmachus’ provincial, non-Roman origins hardly impeded his networking with blue-blooded senatorial families.42 He and Laurentius both had extensive senatorial connections.43 Both could also count supporters from the clergy, and there is little evidence beyond rhetorical convention to suggest that “the people” played any role in the events of the schism.44 Similarly, not all deacons supported their archdeacon Symmachus, and not all priests stood behind the titular archpriest Laurentius.45 Both 40

41 42 43

44

45

As Picotti noted (1958: 781–2), even at the final meeting, the bishops did not “absolve” Symmachus so much as suspend their judgment of him. Pietri 1966: 123–39 but rethought in 1981a; and Moorhead 1992: 128–29. Aimone 2000: 70. For their respective aristocratic supporters see Richards 1979: 80–89 (who nevertheless maintains that Laurentius was the senatorial candidate); and Sardella 1997: 52–58. On the absence of evidence for popular groups independently engaging in violence during the schism, see T. S. Brown 1998. At least one Roman deacon initially supported Laurentius: John. His libellus of September 18, 506 addressed to Symmachus, contained an acknowledgment of his “error” and an anathematization of Peter of Altinum and Laurentius. See Libellus Iohannis diaconi, quem obtulit santo papae Symmacho (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 38). Regarding support from priests, Symmachus faced considerable attrition. Although 74 priests attended the first Roman synod of 499, only 37 attended the 501 synod. For tallies, cf. Llewellyn 1977: 249, in which the council of 501 is erroneously labeled (by Mommsen’s edition) as the council of 502.

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factions therefore were “mixed” groups, composed of priests, deacons, lower clergy, and aristocratic laymen and women.46 Symmachus and Laurentius were products of a late Roman culture in which clergymen were increasingly interconnected with members of lay aristocratic households and vice versa. We have already discussed the aristocratic backgrounds and connections of several people, such as the bishop Felix III, himself a titular priest’s son.47 A growing number of clerics and church officials were also from elite households, like the priest Benenatus, whose wife was a clarissima, and the scriniarius Felix, whose family was of senatorial rank.48 Moreover, Roman aristocrats increasingly participated in ecclesiastical politics during the later fifth and sixth centuries.49 In 495, a senatorial contingent attended a Roman church council and sat alongside the local clergy. As early as 483, senators were participating in deliberations over episcopal succession.50 Symmachus and Laurentius therefore fought for legitimacy and support in a society marked by complex networks of elite clergy and regional aristocrats.51 As the events of the Laurentian schism suggest, however, these new combinations of interests did not always cohere seamlessly. While priests and deacons might struggle to balance loyalties between their own households and the church, bishops were supposed to be the city’s preeminent ecclesiastical householders, with ties only to the domus dei. They were to exercise an elevated and exemplary form of stewardship and selfdiscipline, while simultaneously administering an exceptionally wellordered house, wherein clergy were subordinates of one domus and not members of several different households. These tensions played out not only in the records of the Roman councils of 499 to 502 but also in the so-called Symmachan Forgeries. The eleven texts associated with this modern title have been transmitted 46

47 48 49 50

51

See Pietri 1981a: 457–63 (who nevertheless holds that clerics and aristocrats were “sociologically” distinct); and Sardella 1997: 41–70. For general comments in this vein, see Amory 1997: 203–7 and Cooper 1999. Chapter 3. Pietri 1981a: 434, n. 77 and 80. Pietri 1981a: 444–454 and Bartlett 2001: 208–10. Senatorial attendance at church councils, cf. Gelasius, Ep. 30 (ed. Thiel 1868: 437). For participation in the selection of Roman bishops, see the scriptura of 483, discussed below. Lay aristocrats continued to participate in ecclesiastical politics and decisionmaking even during Symmachus’ later tenure. Cf. Symmachus, Ep. 13 (ed. Thiel 1868: 717–22). Sardella 1997, esp. 105–11.

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without authorial attribution.52 Most scholars think that partisans of Symmachus produced most of the texts, although at least two documents suggest another point of view, presumably that of Laurentius’ supporters.53 As Eckhard Wirbelauer recently argued, the documents were created as public relation ploys to buttress the claims and legitimacy of both sides of the schism.54 Specifically, the texts present a series of “historical precedents” designed to ameliorate Symmachus’ predicament between 502 and 506/7, or alternatively to corroborate his opponents’ positions. The eleven documents include three redactions of a Roman council allegedly convened by Constantine and Silvester in 324, whose canons have been discussed previously; four letters to and from Silvester and the bishops at the Council of Nicaea in 325; and four narrative accounts of ecclesiastical events and trials, in which bishops are investigated and exonerated of charges bearing a close resemblance to the allegations leveled against Symmachus during the Laurentian schism.55 Several of the Symmachan Forgeries explicitly depict the tribulations of Rome’s bishops as conflicts over models of estate management and domesticity. They describe scenarios in which bishops either exercise oikonomia in a problematic and/or exemplary manner or interact with imagined aristocratic householders, whose deplorable domestic habits contrast sharply with the pious estate management of the Roman bishop. The texts thus demonstrate that both sides of the Laurentian schism recognized the centrality of household management in the larger debate about episcopal authority and ecclesiastical control. To be clear, there is no incontrovertible evidence linking these sources to this precise context, although the parallels between the developments of the schism and the fictional events depicted in the forgeries seem too close to be coincidental. Moreover, their fictional qualities might not have been recognized, let alone problematized, by their original audiences. The texts’ historical claims would have made them powerful public relation tools in the schism, especially had they been created to provide authoritative examples from the actions of earlier bishops. 52

53

54 55

But see Wirbelauer (1993: 72ff ) and Aimone (2000: 73–77) for two different attempts at identifying the authors’ backgrounds. See Duchesne 1955: 1.cxxxiii-cxvi; Caspar 1930–33: 2.107–10; Townsend 1933: 172; Pietri 1966: 129–30; and Wirbelauer 1993: 5–7. Wirbelauer 1993: 111–14. See also Townsend 1933. Wirbelauer 1993 presents a complete list, discussion, and new edition of the documents with a German translation.

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EPISCOPAL SUCCESSION: A DYNASTIC MODEL FOR SIXTH -CENTURY ROME?

How should the Roman church choose its bishop? Was succession a prerogative of the bishop alone, or should a larger body of clerical and lay participants participate in the process? These questions had arisen fifty years earlier, when Leo and his successor Hilarus discussed the appropriateness of inheritance as a mechanism for transmitting the episcopal office. The questions became acutely relevant again in 483, when Simplicius sought to resolve the problem by devising a format for succession, and in 498, when Symmachus and Laurentius were both chosen to be Rome’s bishop. Despite claims by scholars to the contrary, Rome (like most late ancient sees) had not yet developed a single uniform process for selecting and consecrating its prelates.56 Irregularity and not regularity seems to have been the norm.57 In the months following Symmachus’ successful bid for the episcopate, Romans discussed the process by which they selected their bishops. Specifically, they debated the appropriateness of a domestic model for the church, whereby the living bishop – and not the clergy and people – selected his successor.58 Symmachus and his supporters clearly favored a dynastic paradigm of episcopal succession. As the records of the first council of the schism show, however, some Roman clergy and laypeople protested the adoption of paternalistic principles, which eclipsed the role of the bishop’s subordinates and congregants in the process. The council gathered at St. Peter’s on March 1, 499, with seventy Italian bishops, sixty-seven titular priests, and seven deacons in attendance. In Symmachus’ recorded words, the council had been convened so that “we might firmly and vigorously cut out unlawful episcopal canvassing,” and to ensure that the uncertain confusion and popular unrest that accompanied his election in 498 would not be repeated in the future.59 The first decree resolved that Roman priests, deacons, and clerics should not independently engage in virtually any form of political activity that might constitute a more “democratic” format of episcopal selection.60 They could not rally officially or unofficially behind a particular 56 57

58 59 60

Cf. Pietri 1976: 681–82 for Rome and Norton 2007 more generally. This seems to have been the case throughout the late antique world: see Uhalde’s review of Norton 2007 in CH 77.4 (2008): 1025–27. Chapter 5. Acta syn. a. CCCCXCVIIII (MGH AA 12: 402–3). Acta syn. a. CCCCXCVIIII (MGH AA 12: 403–4).

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candidate, nor could they participate in closed-door conventicula, in which decisions regarding the selections might be made. Whether they were expected to voice their consent (or disapproval) of the choice after the fact is not stated in the text. Another pronouncement extended these prohibitions to general canvassing for the episcopate by any person while the Roman bishop was still living and declared such an act punishable by excommunication.61 The ban on the active solicitation of votes by payment was unquestionably a calculated move on Symmachus’ part, because his opponents had accused him of precisely this in 498. To be sure, accusations of improper canvassing, especially through bribery, in contested political situations constitute a familiar topos in ancient literature. (In fact, Laurentius’ supporters were accused of the same crime in a source more favorable to Symmachus.62 ) In Symmachus’ case, however, there might actually have been some truth in the matter. According to several letters written by his supporter and friend Ennodius, Symmachus began his episcopate with 400 solidi of debt.63 Nevertheless, in removing virtually all viable forms of independent political action from the episcopal selection process, Symmachus eliminated every meaningful manner in which a cleric or layperson might participate (including questionable forms of political persuasion, like bribery).64 Effectively, Symmachus “privatized” the system by removing it from the more unpredictable realm of the wider Roman ecclesiastical community, and relocating it exclusively within the domain of the bishop’s inner circle. By banning clergy and laypeople from holding small gatherings (conventicula) and independent lobbying efforts, the bishop controlled the process.65 Symmachus also expected the Roman bishop to choose his successor without the intervention of clergy or laypeople. This expectation is implied in the penultimate decree of the council: “If, may it not be the case, the death of the pope transpires unexpectedly, so that he is unable to make a decision concerning the selection of his 61 62

63 64 65

Acta syn. a. CCCCXCVIIII (MGH AA 12: 404). Theodore the Lector (HE 2.17) claimed that the Roman senator Festus had bankrolled Laurentius’ campaign in 498. Caspar 1930–33: 2.88 and Kennell 2000: 40–42. Sardella 1997: 72–73 emphasizes this point. This is not to suggest that Symmachus meant to exclude such groups entirely from the process. They probably were expected to voice consent for the man chosen by the previous bishop, and in some cases might have been paid for their support. See Cassiodorus, Var. 9.15–16.

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successor, as it is decided above, then, if indeed the vote of the whole ecclesiastical order is unanimous, let the bishop who is chosen be consecrated. . . . ”66 In outlining a contingency plan (a vote of the full clergy), Symmachus underlined his preferred method for determining episcopal succession: the bishop chose his replacement without any unsanctioned politicking from clerics and laypeople.67 Symmachus’ contention, that the oversight of the domus dei should be transmitted by dynastic principles rather than through the electoral will of the clergy and people, was hardly idiosyncratic. Four of his successors, we noted in Chapter 5, received the episcopal office through appointment by the living bishop, with one of them (Felix IV) literally naming an “heir” from his deathbed. His predecessor Simplicius even issued a scriptura on the subject. According to the document, the bishop had advised his clergy to consult with a Roman lay aristocrat in the determination of his successor.68 As Symmachus did, Simplicius assumed that succession remained largely in the living bishop’s hands, whose testamentary powers were so great that he could will the formation of a special conventus to govern the appointment of a new bishop even after his death. Although the attending clergy undersigned their names to the acta of the council, Symmachus’ preference for a more autocratic model of institutional self-perpetuation was by no means universally shared. It was a fair question: should the episcopal office be treated similarly to a heritable res or a major public officium, which the living bishop – as a paterfamilias or the emperor himself – singularly controlled and passed on to another man of his choosing? Those clerics and laypeople who regularly engaged in practices prohibited in the decrees (i.e., lobbying, canvassing, and bribery) clearly held a different opinion on the matter. While hardly advocates of a “democratic” system in either the ancient or modern sense of the term, they did not abide by Symmachus’ more extreme paternalistic model, now codified in the records of the church. They believed that the bishop’s household should not monopolize a process that ideally encompassed the entire Roman church. Consequently, 66

67

68

Acta syn. a. CCCCXCVIIII (MGH AA 12: 404): Si, quod absit, transitus papae inopinatus evenerit, ut de sui electione successoris, ut supra placuit, non possit ante decernere, siquidem in unum totius inclinaverit ecclesiatici ordinis electio, consecretur electus episcopus. . . . As Townsend noted (1937: 238), the wording of the decree left open the possibility that the bishop could permit lobbying. Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 445) = Symmachus, Ep. 6 (ed. Thiel 1868: 683–95).

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the debate over the appropriateness of dynastic principles in the election of a Roman bishop remained at the forefront of the ecclesiastical controversy. It surfaced once again at the following council of November 6, 501, where the scriptura of 483 was read aloud and its contents discussed. The Scriptura of 483 and the Council of November 6, 501 The extant record of Simplicius’ decision to create a posthumous conventus for the appointment of his successor is a document characterized as a scriptura in our records of the council of November 6, 501.69 Its authorship and contents have been the subjects of spirited debate, not only among modern historians but also among the participating clergy at the council. According to the synod’s records, the scriptura had been drawn up by “Basilius,” most likely Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius, identified in the text as a vir eminentissimus, praetorian prefect, and the agens vices of Odoacer.70 The association of Basilius with the document has prompted scholars to draw one of two conclusions: that the scriptura constituted an official proclamation of the Roman senate or Odoacer’s court, which aimed to assert secular control over the process of episcopal succession,71 and/or that it represented the power of Rome’s early sixthcentury senatorial aristocracy over ecclesiastical politics.72 Both of these interpretations hinge on the recorded reactions of the attending bishops at the Council of 501. They objected to it precisely because it was associated with an aristocratic layman whose participation in ecclesiastical affairs “violated the canons.”73 Before we consider its later reception, let us first try to understand its inception in 483. The scriptura was created by a small assembly held at a mausoleum near St. Peter’s, over which Basilius might have presided, either just before or immediately after Simplicius’ death on March 10.74 69

70

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72 73 74

The scriptura is no longer extant, but it is cited directly and paraphrased in the proceedings of the synod. Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 444–45). Cf. PLRE 2: 217, “Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius iunior” 12, although there are other possible Basilii. See Picotti 1939: 372, n. 46. Cf. Hefele and Leclerq 1907–52: 4: 69; Townsend 1933: 253; Pietri 1981a: 454–55, who characterizes the scriptura as “césaropapiste”; and Moorhead 1992: 120. Picotti 1939: 368–72 and 1958; and Pietri 1981a: 430–32. Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 445). Richards 1979: 58 identifies this site as the imperial mausoleum, unfortunately without evidence.

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This assembly was not “the senate,” although it included at least (but perhaps no more than) one senator, Basilius, who owned a home on the Aventine.75 Moreover, it undoubtedly included clergy, for among other reasons, the punishment it meted out to those violating its precepts, namely excommunication, was one that only clerics could actually implement.76 Whereas Basilius might have presided over the group and composed the document, there is no reason to assume that he singlehandedly masterminded its content or convened the assembly on his own initiative.77 The scriptura thus ought to be understood not in the high political sense, as an official document issued by a king, governing body, or social order, but in a juridical manner, as a testamentary provision intended to convey Simplicius’ dying wishes.78 In fact, the term scriptura connotes this precise legal meaning.79 The document, although not written by the bishop himself, nevertheless presented Simplicius’ strong suggestion (admonitione beatissimi viri papae nostri Simplicii) that “if it were to happen that he dies, the selection of any sort of man should not be celebrated without our consultation.”80 When the clergy presented the scriptura to the council in November of 501 (and the proceedings from the synod clearly state that they were clerics81 ), they presented a document that they believed to be authoritative precisely because it conveyed the opinions of a former Roman bishop. They were also undoubtedly encouraged by the fact that a meeting of the bishop’s advisors, which included Roman clergy and the senator Basilius, had generated the text. It would have made 75

76

77

78

79

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PLRE 2: 217. Pietri claims that the entire senate reunited at the mausoleum for the assembly (e.g. 1966: 136 and 1981a: 430). The text does not actually state this, and I see no reason to assume it. In fact, the only senator mentioned in the conciliar records is Basilius. The participation of clergy is emphasized by Richards 1979: 58. He also suggests that leading local bishops attended, but there is no evidence for this. Pace Picotti 1939 and 1958. Pietri 1978: 333–34 suggests that Simplicius handed Basilius the reins of the church during the bishop’s illness. Again, this goes against what the scriptura seems to have implied. Sardella 1997: 78–79 underlines its informal juridical implications, although without drawing the connection to testamentary provisions. Contra Sardella, however, I think that the document reflects Simplicius’ participation, even if he did not write it himself. Lewis and Short, s.v. “scriptura,” II.B.2 for its use as a juridical term connoting “a testamentary provision” in documents such as CT 16.1.40. Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 445): si eum de hac luce transire contigerit, non sine nostra consultatione cuiuslibet celebratur electio. Cf. Symmachus’ opening statement at the council, where he singles out unnamed clerici, whom he claims brought the scriptura to the council’s attention.

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little sense to offer evidence at a church synod if they did not think that it was a legitimate, ecclesiastical statement. Among other things, the clergy presenting the scriptura wished to respond to Symmachus’ decrees issued at the Council of 499 on the process of episcopal selection. In their opinion, the bishop unquestionably had authority to determine his successor, but he should not exercise this authority autocratically. He should exercise it instead within the context of another Roman ecclesiastical tradition, the quasi-domestic conventus, wherein bishops made important administrative and juridical decisions by consulting with close advisors. To be sure, Simplicius’ selection of Basilius as an advisor had political overtones. He was the praetorian prefect of Italy and a representative of Odoacer. Basilius’ participation thus gave the conventus luster, political teeth, and a certain ethical imprimatur, wherein its decisions were the product not of “secret” deliberations held behind closed doors, but of discussions conducted in a monumental space and attended by one of Italy’s most eminent public officials. By invoking this document in 501, Symmachus’ clerical opponents charged him with advocating a paternalistic form of episcopal authority that was simply too extreme. As the scriptura showed, there was a precedent for the productive cooperation between the Roman bishop and a select council of clerics and elite laypeople, and for a more open forum of episcopal succession. As noted, the scriptura of 483 was rejected outright at the Council of 501 solely because it reflected a layman’s participation in ecclesiastical affairs and hence its contents on the subject of succession were never debated.82 According to the records, neither Symmachus nor the attending bishops commented on the issue of episcopal elections, undoubtedly because Symmachus ostensibly had resolved the matter back in March 499. The matter was far from settled, however. The Symmachan Forgeries suggest that the issue remained at the forefront of the schism. The Laurentian redaction of the Council of 324 presents prohibitions against bishops holding private conventicula without the participation of both clerics and the laity (discussed in Chapter 3) and appointing their successors before their death. In fact, the canons call for elections involving the entire church.83 Some Romans evidently remained unconvinced that inheritance was an appropriate model for selecting their bishops. 82 83

Sardella 1997: 79. LK cc. 13 and 18 (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 330–32).

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STEWARDSH IP IN CRISIS: SYMMACH US, ALIENATION, AND TH E TITULI

At the council of November 6, 501 at St. Peter’s, Symmachus responded to another matter closely related to the problem of dynasty and episcopal succession: the bishop’s role as the trustworthy steward of ecclesiastical patrimony. According to the Laurentian Fragment, “[Symmachus] was also accused by the entire Roman clergy of squandering the ecclesiastical estates in violation of a decree that had been observed by his predecessors and through this, he ensnared himself in the chains of anathema.”84 Symmachus consequently used the council as a venue for clearing his name and defining his position on this particularly sensitive topic. Again the scriptura of 483 played a major role. In addition to delineating a model of episcopal succession, it expressly prohibited bishops from alienating virtually all property belonging to Roman churches.85 In contrast to the council’s handling of the first issue of succession, wherein Symmachus and the bishops denounced the scriptura as illegitimate but passed over its substance in silence, its attendees directly engaged with its discussion of alienation, taking up this particular charge with great intensity and focus. As P. A. B. Llewellyn noted long ago, the fact that clergy and not lay aristocrats raised the charges of financial impropriety against Symmachus is an important detail.86 Contrary to what some (including Llewellyn) have claimed, the council did not pronounce on the “legal rights” of lay donors who founded churches or gave the alienated properties in question.87 The clergy at the synod instead participated in an ethical debate of far more relevance to the ecclesiastical and social world of late ancient Rome: Who best oversaw and safeguarded the ecclesiastical donations of the domus dei, its bishop or its titular priests? In charging Symmachus with the improper alienation of Rome’s patrimony, clerics accused him of exercising a morally base form of household management, one predicated on the principles of possession and self-interest rather than on stewardship and charity. In their minds, bishops were supposed 84

85

86 87

Frg. Laur. (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 44–5): Accusatur etiam ab universo clero Romano quod contra decretum a suis decessoribus observatum ecclesiastica dilapidasse praedia et per hoc anathematis se vinculis inretisset. (Trans. adapted from Davis 1989: 98). Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 446–7). Movable wealth (e.g., plate and textiles) was excluded. Llewellyn (1976: 418 and 1977) and Sardella (1997). See the key discussion by Hillner 2007, which challenges interpretations by Pietri and Llewellyn.

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to be trusted guardians of their church’s possessions, most of which were accrued through gifts from donors. Donations of land and other forms of wealth were spiritual investments that offered a person an opportunity to improve his or her chances for salvation. For any cleric to exercise his oikonomia in a manner too much like a landlord and sell off what had been given to the church for the sake of a soul had potentially grave consequences both on earth and in the hereafter. In response to these serious allegations, Symmachus spent much of the council and the next few years attempting to persuade the Roman community that he was no malus paterfamilias, but a bishop whose stewardship was ethical and beneficial. In fact, in Symmachus’ estimation, it was the titular priests and other clergy who could not be trusted with the church’s wealth, and whose subordination to the bishop’s church demanded continuous reinforcement. The Ethics of Alienation: When Can You Trust the Bishop? Symmachus was hardly the first bishop to be accused of alienating ecclesiastical property. This particular allegation was among the most common charges of financial malfeasance leveled against bishops in late antiquity. Although often seen as a categorically illicit act, alienation (i.e., the transfer, trade, or sale of property) was an important tool of ecclesiastical administration, because it provided bishops with some degree of financial flexibility. Ecclesiastical expenses (including taxes) often exceeded revenues, forcing bishops to make hard decisions about wealth that had been donated to their churches for their upkeep and other charitable purposes.88 While their administrative powers did not translate into a carte blanche (the bishop’s church did not encompass every ecclesiastical foundation within the diocese, and his financial decisions were monitored by clerical stewards), prelates certainly could (and did) sell property.89 Nevertheless, alienation remained a complicated matter that attracted much attention from lawmakers.

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Of course, it had long been illegal to buy or sell consecrated property. See Dig. 18.1.72– 73. On church finances and alienation, see Jones 1960 and 1964: 894–98; Pietri 1978: 332–33; Thomas 1987: 53–58 (largely on Justinian’s legislation); and especially Zeisel 1975. I thank Daniel Caner for bringing Zeisel’s unpublished dissertation to my attention. On the bishop’s church as a proprietary entity, see Chapter 3. For clerical stewards and their oversight of the bishop’s financial management, see Chapter 5.

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Alienation was never prohibited outright in late antiquity (at least in the West90 ), although imperial and ecclesiastical authorities regulated it.91 Most often it was a matter of controlling the circumstances under which the sale or transfer could occur. In a letter dated to October 20, 447, Leo sent a sharply worded response to the bishops of Sicily, wherein he castigated the prelate of Taormina for “having squandered all its estates by selling, giving away, or otherwise disposing of them.”92 The epistle set forth the following position on alienation: “We decree, therefore, that no bishop without exception shall dare to give away or to exchange or to sell property of his church, unless he foresees an advantage likely to accrue from so doing and after consultation with the whole of the clergy, and with their consent he decides upon what will undoubtedly profit that church.”93 Here Leo delimited – without fully prohibiting – the sale or transference of ecclesiastical property. According to Leo’s logic, what distinguished licit from illicit alienation was the bishop’s good judgment. Those who put the needs of the church community first, who generated rather than lost revenues, and who received the consent of their fellow clergy could legitimately sell or transfer ecclesiastical property. As Leo carefully underlined, the stakes involved in this particular domain of episcopal estate management were enormous: “It is wholly just, my dear brothers, that not only the bishop but also the whole of the clergy should . . . keep the gifts unimpaired of those who have contributed their own property to the churches for the well-being of their souls.”94 90

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CJ 1.2.14 (Leo and Anthemius at Constantinople, 470) prohibited the alienation of all church property, but this stricture applied only to the church of Constantinople and was later abrogated under Justinian. On the imperial legislation, which largely attempted to shield churches from dilemmas caused by tax arrears, see Jones 1964: 896–88; Marazzi 1998: 82–85; and Zeisel 1975. As Zeisel notes (137), until the mid-fifth century, the state did not restrain the sale or transfer of ecclesiastical property; henceforth the trend was to delimit rather than to fully prohibit. On the ecclesiastical legislation, see Jones 1964: 898 and Sardella 1997: 103–4. Leo, Ep. 17 (PL 54: 704–6): Taurominitanis enim clericis ecclesiae deplorantibus nuditatem, eo quod omnia eius praedia, vendendo, donando, et diversis modis alienando, episcopus dissiparet. Note that the clergy of Taormina brought their bishop’s financial improprieties to Leo’s attention. Leo, Ep. 17 (PL 54: 704–6): qua sine exceptione decernimus ut ne quis episcopus de ecclesiae suae rebus audeat quidquam vel donare, vel commutare, vel vendere; nisi forte ita aliquid horum faciat, ut meliora prospiciat, et cum totius cleri tractatu atque consensu id eligat, quod non sit dubium ecclesiae profuturum. (Emphasis mine). (Trans. adapted from Feltoe 1895: 30). Leo, Ep. 17 (PL 54: 704–6): quia plenum iustitiae est, fratres carissimi, ut non solum episcopi, sed etiam totius cleri . . . et eorum munera illibata permaneant qui pro

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Why Symmachus sold certain properties is unclear. (Some speculate that he needed cash to pay off debts accrued during his 498 campaign for the episcopate). In any event, he had evidently violated a recent, local ecclesiastical enactment on alienation. Unlike the more tempered rules delineated by Leo in 447 or outlined in roughly contemporaneous imperial and (non-Roman) ecclesiastical decrees, the scriptura of 483 all but prohibited alienation, leaving no room for the good (or bad) judgment of the bishop. Such an extreme position betokens a deep suspicion of the financial power lawfully wielded by Roman bishops, since it was precisely their expansive control of ecclesiastical property that this document abrogated.95 Like Leo, the authors of the scriptura were worried about the salvation of the donors. “For it is unjust and a form of sacrilege,” the scriptura stated, “that those things which someone will have offered or left behind with certainty to help the venerable church’s poor for the salvation or the repose of their souls would be transferred to another by those who are supposed to protect them most of all.”96 This argument is distinctly pastoral and speaks of donors in a broad, generic sense.97 The scriptura claimed that the Roman bishop, in alienating donated church property, jeopardized a donor’s chances for salvation. In the minds of the laypeople and clerics who created the 483 scriptura, and ostensibly in the mind of Simplicius, whose name appears in the document, the bishop could not be completely trusted as an estate manager. Both the propensity for corruption and the spiritual implications were simply too great to grant the bishop unfettered control over church property. While Leo urged bishops to use their good judgment, invoking a more classical conceptualization of oikonomia, the authors of the scriptura held more cynical views about the bishop’s management of ecclesiastical wealth.

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animarum suarum salute propriam substantiam ecclesiis contulerunt. . . . (Trans. adapted from Feltoe 1895: 30). Richards (1979: 58) and Hillner (2007: 253) suggest that the tight regulation of episcopal alienation by the scriptura was enacted to curb bribery in the 483 episcopal elections. This was undoubtedly significant, but the document reveals a more profound insecurity about the bishop’s financial powers. Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 446–47): Iniquum est enim et sacrilegii instar, ut quae vel pro salute vel requie animarum suarum unusquisque venerabili ecclesiae pauperum causa contulerit aut certe reliquerit, ab his, quos hoc maxime servare convenerat, in alterum transferantur. As Hillner demonstrates (2007: 250–52), the scriptura discussed private donations of property to the church, and not (as many scholars have long argued) the original foundation of titular churches by lay people.

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There were certainly manifold reasons to mistrust the Roman bishop in this sensitive domain. Bishops often “confused” their church’s property with their own private patrimony, a tendency that was undoubtedly exacerbated by the fact that many held the episcopal office while simultaneously managing their own personal households, replete with wives, children, and slaves. The line between ownership and stewardship, although clear in theory, was in practice far more fissiparous. Nundinarius of Barcelona, we recall, saw nothing irregular about bundling private property with an ecclesiastical office, and the Italian bishop Zacheus had no problem leaving sixty pounds of his church’s gold to his heirs.98 Whether Symmachus’ behavior truly merited such mistrust is in certain respects irrelevant (although there is no reason to doubt the verity of the accusations). Nevertheless, what matters is that a significant population of Rome’s clergy and lay aristocracy perceived him to be an unethical steward. He had to respond to these perceptions, because accusations of poor household management placed his authority as bishop in question. Consequently, Symmachus’ response to the scriptura foregrounded matters of trust, stewardship, and episcopal authority: I want, if welcomed, to make the matter firm regarding what I believe is appropriate for ecclesiastical properties, so all will know, who empty anger has incited against me, that I desire nothing more than that what has been entrusted to me under the stewardship of God may be kept safe, but also that it ought to be acceptable to any God-fearing successors whatsoever and extend to the guardianship of ecclesiastical patrimony.99

Here Symmachus showcased his propriety as the church’s watchman. After largely reiterating the scriptura’s ban on alienation, Symmachus amended it in several significant ways. First, he extended the freedom to dispose of urban properties to all future bishops, because these were often expensive to maintain. Only rural praedia, arguably the most valuable possessions of the early sixth-century Roman church, could not be sold or transferred.100 Second, he prohibited the financial tool of usufruct, whereby an owner transferred the use (but not the ownership) of property 98

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Hilarus, Epp. 14–16. On Zacheus, see Gelasius, Ep. 43 (ed. Ewald 1880: 520). Both discussed in Chapter 5. Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 448): volo, si placet, rem fieri firmam, quam credo ecclesiasticis facultatibus convenire, ut agnoscant omnes, quos in me vanus furor excitavit, nihil me magis studere, quam ut salvum esse possit quod mihi est a deo sub dispensatione commissum, sed etiam quibuslibet successoribus deum timentibus gratum esse debeat et ad ecclesiatici custodiam patrimonii pertinere. (Emphasis mine). Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 448–49).

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to a person for a period.101 Symmachus exempted only cases when the arrangement went to the support of clerics, pilgrims, or the ransoming of captives.102 Implements like usufruct, he explained, often serve as a pretext for bad management; there were, he added, many other ways in which the church might show its generosity. Symmachus, in other words, turned a damning charge of financial malfeasance into a demonstration of his own exemplary stewardship. By responding to the scriptura on his own terms – terms, scholars have observed, closely cohering to the original document’s ethics of guardianship and salvation103 – Symmachus not only showed the attending bishops and clergy that he controlled the church’s property. But he also underlined his own expertise as a trustworthy and experienced estate manager, who protected his household’s most sacred gifts even from well-meaning clerics. Competing for Trust: Symmachus, the Priests, and the Administration of the Tituli Indeed Symmachus’ boldest move was to extend the logic of the scriptura to those whom Llewellyn identified as his direct competitors and perhaps his harshest critics: the priests serving Rome’s titular churches.104 “We wish,” he proclaimed, “that those who are or who will ever be priests throughout all the tituli of the Roman city be equally bound by the law of the guardian, because it is disgraceful that through the obligation by which the highest pontifex binds himself through the love of Christ, a man of the second order in the church is not held.”105 Here and 101

102 103 104

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Symmachus’ prohibitions against usufruct might have been due to the fact that usufruct became increasingly indistinguishable from possessio in late antiquity. See Levy 1951: 39–40. Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 449–50). Lizzi Testa 2004: 101; Sardella 1997: 86–89; and Hillner 2007: 251. Llewellyn 1976 and 1977. Whereas Llewellyn interpreted the priests as representatives, even clients, of the families who originally founded the tituli (1977: 258), I see them as ecclesiastical agents and domestic experts in their own right and as thus competitors to the bishop. Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 450): Pari etiam ecclesiarum per omnes Romanae civitatis titulos qui sunt presbyteri vel quicumque fuerint, adstringi volumus lege custodis, quia nefas dictu est obligatione, qua se per caritatem Christi conectit summus pontifex, ea hominem secundi in ecclesia ordinis non teneri.

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elsewhere in the synodal acts of November 6, Symmachus singled out Rome’s special order of local clergy, the priests who ministered the city’s neighborhood churches or tituli. He extended the exact limitations on alienation to Rome’s titular priests that he had delineated for bishops. Any priest found guilty of this crime, Symmachus proclaimed, would be stripped of his office. The tituli were post-Constantinian ecclesiastical foundations, which first appear in our sources in the later fourth century.106 By 499 there were as many as 29.107 They were established across the city, although in some instances stood close to one another, such as the titular churches of Pudentiana, Silvester/Equitius, and Eusebius on the Esquiline, which were separated by only a few hundred meters.108 The haphazard topographical distribution of the tituli undoubtedly reflects their origins as privately founded churches.109 Between the mid-fourth and the early fifth century, wealthy lay and clerical patrons (including at least one bishop) donated cash, property, or an actual building site for the establishment of a small but often luxuriously decorated church.110 The church’s foundation through private donation meant that arrangements had to be made for the gifts’ legitimate transfer to the bishop’s control. Bishops and founders used a legal tool, the titulus, which denoted the reason underlying the acquisition of property and the terms under which it had been transferred from one owner to another (i.e., the causa adquiriendi or the causa traditionis).111 In other words, the term titulus indicated that the church and its related property were legally part of the bishop’s church, thus underlining the legitimacy of his financial control, as Julia Hillner 106

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108 109

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On their origins, see Pietri 1976: 90–96, 569–73 and 1978a. Pietri demonstrated that all of Rome’s tituli were post-Constantinian foundations against the still widely accepted claims of Kirsch 1918, who proposed that the tituli were second- and thirdcentury institutions. Pietri also debunked the popular theory that the tituli evolved from the so-called domus ecclesiae, that is, ante-pacem, architecturally modified house churches. Indeed the phrase itself (domus ecclesiae) is unattested before Constantine. See Sessa 2009. For differing tallies of the tituli (between 25 and 29) see Guidobaldi 1998: 123–29 and Saxer 2001: 553–555. Saxer 2001: 560–61. By the sixth century, the tituli were fairly evenly distributed over the city. Pietri 1989: 1039 and Guidobaldi 2000: 123–29, who attributes this development to episcopal engineering, a possible but largely unsubstantiated hypothesis. On the social identities of the founders of Rome’s titular churches, see Hillner 2006. Pietri 1976: 95–96 and especially Hillner 2007: 235.

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has shown in a recent study.112 Although legally possessed by the bishop’s church, however, the tituli appear to have had independently administered patrimonies.113 It would have made little sense for Symmachus to have prohibited titular priests from alienating church property if they had not, in fact, actually managed it. More important, the tituli were living financial entities, whose wealth was not statically determined by the largess of a single, one-time founder. Rather, the wealth fluctuated during the fifth and sixth-centuries, when new donors offered property, objects, and cash to maintain and beautify their favorite neighborhood church. These subsequent donors had much at stake in the security of their gifts. For Symmachus and his critics, therefore, the issue with the tituli was not whether the bishop had trampled on the proprietary rights of the original founders, their heirs, or even more recent donors by alienating their gifts.114 The titulus arrangement clarified the bishop’s rights to control the property; these churches and their attendant properties were legally part of his church. Moreover, although Rome’s titular priests traditionally managed their church’s finances, their institutional subordination to the bishop was technically unambiguous. After all, the Roman bishop was the one who ordained and assigned the priests to their particular titulus.115 Legal clarities do not necessarily resolve ethical ambiguities, however. No one could dispute the bishop’s de iure status over his clergy and ecclesiastical property, but was he necessarily the best one to oversee these separately administered neighborhood churches? In many respects, the more logical stewards were the priests.116 The priests’ connections to the tituli and their respective congregations were spiritually intense, 112

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Hillner 2007: 231–37. Pietri (1976: 95–95) argued that the titulus arrangement underlined the rights of the donors over their gifts, but Hillner explains why this is an inaccurate interpretation of Roman law. Pietri 1976: 95–96 and 1978: 328–331; and Bowes 2008: 65–71. If the custom followed by the imperial family in the fourth century is any indication, people presented gifts to specific churches even if these properties were ultimately owned by the bishop’s church. See Hillner 2007, contra Pietri 1976: 573 and Llewellyn 1977: 257–58, 63. Cf. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 220 and 249), which records Innocent and Simplicius assigning priests and clergy to specific churches. The LP, of course, only definitively reflects conditions ca. 500–540, but the traditions that it described were likely established by the time of Symmachus. I concur with Llewellyn 1976: 423–24 and 1977: 257–58 regarding the independent traditions (although not legal rights) of the tituli.

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liturgically regularized, and possibly even grounded in their own family histories as long-term residents of that particular region of Rome. By the later fifth century, many Romans underwent their most important lifecycle rites at their local titulus. Archaeological and literary evidence shows that baptisteries were added to existing tituli in great numbers during the fifth and sixth-centuries.117 According to the Liber Pontificalis, tituli were originally established by the fourth-century bishop Marcus for the performance of baptisms and penance – a less secure claim about the tituli’s origins, but a plausible reflection of early sixth-century ritual habits.118 Late Roman families might have contacted titular priests to secure tombs in some of the city’s cemeteries.119 Moreover, with the growing number of intramural burials during the later fifth and sixth centuries, some of which appear to have been clustered near churches like the titulus Eusebii, titular priests undoubtedly became even more closely intertwined with the care of the dead.120 Finally and more broadly, a study of Rome’s sixthcentury liturgical calendar by Antoine Chavasse reveals that, despite the emergence of stational liturgy in Rome at this time (a practice whereby on specific feast days Roman bishops processed to and performed masses at different churches, including tituli), most Christians on most Sundays during the year would have participated in a mass with their priest, not their bishop.121 Early fifth-century developments such as the fermentum, the distribution of episcopally blessed bread to the tituli for use in weekly Eucharistic celebrations, would have certainly underlined the bishop’s “presence.”122 But even powerful ritual proxies could not erase the fact that for most Romans most of the time, their primary contact with the spiritual world was through their local titular priests and not their bishop. Moreover, some titular priests grew up near their churches and retained long-term ties to these urban regions. Mercurius was a titular priest of St. Clement’s on the Caelian Hill until becoming Bishop of Rome ( John II) in 533. According to his biography in the Liber Pontificalis, Mercurius 117

118 119

120 121 122

Indeed some scholars hypothesize that each titulus had its own baptistery. See Cantino Wataghin, Cecchelli, and Pani Ermini 2001: 244–50. See also Saxer 1989: 931–35 and Cosentino 2002. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1.164). Meneghini and Santangeli Valenzani 1995: 287–8. Cf. ICUR n.s. 4279 and ICUR n.s. 4280 for tombs (probably at the cemetery of St. Pancratius) purchased from priests of the titulus Chrisogoni (dated to 521 and 525). Costambeys 2001: 169–89. Chavasse 1997: 9–11. On the fermentum as a sign of ecclesiastical unity and episcopal control, see Pietri 1976: 93, 580–81 and 630–31.

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was from the Caelian, a wealthy residential enclave.123 As a minister at St. Clement’s, Mercurius emphasized his devotion by providing his church with a new altar.124 Epigraphic evidence offers additional snapshots of what was unquestionably a common phenomenon, wherein titular priests provided the funds for new repairs, additions, or decorations at their churches.125 A titular priest’s strong ties to his church and community were therefore rooted in his role as a donor. Indeed, priests (and deacons) were expected to abide by the principles of oikonomia.126 They were supposed to manage the properties of their assigned churches with great care and circumspection, ensuring that their value increased. Thus, if titular priests were also household managers, whose access to their community and its coffers was more immediate and routine than their bishop’s, why should they not administer its property, even alienate it, if their good judgment so advised? What Symmachus faced in 501 therefore was an ethical battle with a group of titular priests whose reputations were built on their expertise in the spiritual and financial management of Rome’s neighborhood churches. For some titular priests and their loyal congregants, the aggressively paternalistic tactics of a bishop like Symmachus may have been especially troubling, especially if his “squandering” of church property had had an impact on the finances of a particular titulus.127 In their opinion, the Roman church was best run not as a single autocratic domus but as a network of interdependent ecclesiastic households, each subordinate to the bishop but managed by local stewards with more concrete and regular ties to the community. Whether such impulses originated in the fourth and earlier fifth century, when private donors founded the tituli and Rome’s ecclesiastical organization was looser still, is impossible to determine. They clearly shaped Symmachus’ reactions to his own troubled status in Rome during the first few years of his episcopate, however. The fact that his chief opponent was a popular titular priest may have 123 124 125

126 127

LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1.285). De Rossi 1870: 143. Cf. the interventions of Philipus, priest of the titulus Apstolorum/Eudoxia under Xystus III: ICUR II.110, n. 67 and 143, n. 3; Ilicius, Leopardus, and Maximus, priests at the titulus Pudentis/Pudentianae during tenures of Siricius and Innocent: De Rossi BAC (1867): 51–53 (= ILCV 1772A-B); and Peter, priest of the titulus Sabinae under Celestine: ILCV 1778a. On Roman clergy as donors, see Hillner 2006. Gelasius, Ep. 15.2 (ed. Thiel 1868: 379–80). The sources provide no details about which churches Symmachus allegedly defrauded, however.

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encouraged some Romans to conclude what they suspected all along: that priests were more dependable guardians of their gifts than bishops. By delimiting the administrative latitude of Rome’s titular priests, Symmachus called attention to his own technical authority over them and the properties that they managed. In so doing, he reminded the clergy attending the council that he was the chief steward of a united Roman church. Tellingly, the acts of the council of 501 closed with a final set of anathemas addressed to all priests and deacons who sought out, received, or assented to the one giving away the church property.128 Changing Hearts and Minds: Bishops as Good Stewards in the Symmachan Forgeries Symmachus’ efforts to legislate trust and goodwill at the council of 501 were of limited success in the short term. Even after a panel of visiting prelates declared the Roman bishop “beyond judgment” and restored to him full ecclesiastical jurisdiction at the final meeting of the third council on October 23, 502, many Romans remained unconvinced of his honesty and dependability as the premier steward of their churches, donations, and souls. From ca. 502 to 506/7, many of Rome’s churches remained under the control of Laurentius. Symmachus personally decried this situation at one of the final synod’s sessions, where in a letter he demanded that the renegade churches be returned to him immediately.129 He would not achieve this important goal until late 506 or 507, however, when Theodoric again intervened directly and commanded by fiat that the supporters of Laurentius hand over all of the city’s ecclesiae to Symmachus. In the interim, Symmachus’ partisans sought to redress the negative public opinion of their bishop by circulating the so-called Symmachan Forgeries. For example, the text known as the Gesta Polychronii presents the proper exercise of estate management as a sort of ethical antidote for poorly behaving bishops. An imagined bishop of Jerusalem named Polychronius (perhaps a cipher for Juvenal of Jersusalem [ca. 420–458]) is found guilty of accepting money in exchange for clerical ordinations and ecclesiastical consecrations at a hearing in Rome adjudicated by Xystus III and a council of Italian bishops.130 The narrative is largely 128 129 130

Acta syn. a. DII [sic] (MGH AA 12: 450). Relatio episcoporum ad regem (MGH AA 12: 422). Sardella 1997: 32–33. On the identification of Polychronius with Juvenal, see Wirbelauer 1993: 273, n. 173.

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concerned with posing and answering what was a thorny issue during the final council of 502: How do suffragan bishops judge a bishop of a primatial see? It thus emphasized through various subplots (including the Roman trial of a local Palestinian bishop who testified against his patriarch) the need for primatial bishops to judge themselves, because “it is not permitted for anyone to accuse their pontifex, since the judge shall not be judged.”131 Nevertheless, the narrative concluded with a telling tale about the redeeming possibilities of good stewardship. After Polychronius was deposed and exiled from Jerusalem, he was given the use of ecclesiastical estates to support himself. Instead of using them as directed, he promptly sold the estates and distributed the income to the poor, the clergy, and the people of Jerusalem. In this act, the former bishop of Jerusalem violated numerous laws by selling church property; his was a clear-cut case of illegal alienation. Nevertheless, when Xystus received word of these developments, he was overjoyed and called for Polychronius’ reinstatement. The idea that the proper exercise of a Christian model of oikonomia, that is, one oriented around episcopal stewardship and the care of the poor, might neutralize the negative implications of alienation and even expiate the simoniacal sins of a bishop would have had strong resonance in early sixth-century Rome. According to the Laurentian Fragment, simony was among the crimes that Symmachus continued to commit against the Roman church following his victory over Laurentius.132 A popular story about a bad bishop who transformed himself into an excellent estate manager therefore could have helped Symmachus persuade congregants that he too could be trusted. The themes of household management and episcopal authority are even more pronounced in what scholars believe to be the companion text to the Gesta Polychronii, the Gesta de Xysti purgatione, the document with which this chapter opened. In a series of scenes all set in Rome, Xystus III confronted a pair of unscrupulous and greedy senatorial householders, whose own behavior starkly contrasted with the more measured, benign, and just oikonomia practiced by Xystus.133 In the narrative, audiences are introduced to two opposing models of household expertise, 131

132 133

Gesta Polychronii (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 276): non licet quemquem accusare pontificum suum, quoniam iudex non iudicabitur. Frg. Laur. (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 46). I have elsewhere explored the literary topography of this text, calling attention to how it redirects themes and topoi borrowed from biblical and early Christian sources such as Paul’s letter to Philemon and the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. See Sessa 2007: 91–99.

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one predicated on venality, ownership, and domination, the other on generosity, stewardship, and a concern for the socially vulnerable. In short, the Gesta de Xysti purgatione aimed to associate Symmachus with a holy domesticity, a model of household administration that befitted a Roman bishop. The Gesta de Xysti purgatione opens with a property dispute. A Roman patricius named Marinianus learned from one of his slaves that his aristocratic neighbor had willed all of his property, including estates in Sicily worth 700 solidi, to the Roman church.134 Marinianus, who owned property nearby, had his eye on the Sicilian land and thus demanded (postulare) that Xystus hand it over. Xystus, however, steadfastly refused: “Nothing from my income has increased to the disadvantage of the church, from which, dearest son, the church desires to support the old and the poor, not to ruin them.”135 This scene most explicitly invokes Symmachus’ own situation in the early years of his episcopate, when he was accused of illicitly selling properties owned by the Roman church. Of course, the Gesta de Xysti purgatione presented the opposite scenario: a Roman bishop, pressed by a powerful aristocratic landowner to hand over valuable estates in Sicily, steadfastly refused to bow to the pressure and proclaims his commitment to guarding the church’s patrimony for the benefit of elderly and poor congregants. Roman bishops, the Gesta de Xysti purgatione boldly proclaimed, were not in the habit of indiscriminately selling, giving away, or transferring ecclesiastical estates. On the contrary, “precedent” shows that they valiantly upheld the principles of ecclesiastical stewardship, whereby the bishop’s sacred role was to oversee lands bequeathed to the church by pious householders. Xystus therefore is not only an exemplary estate manager but also the champion of the lay aristocratic donor.136 If this scene highlighted the Roman bishop’s tendency to protect the wishes of donors, then the next vignette underscored his strong adherence to an emerging ethos of estate management that was distinctly 134 135

136

Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 262). Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 262): Nihil ex meis reditibus crevit ecclesiae, unde, carissime fili, pauperorum senecta sublevare desiderat ecclesia, non subvertere. This sentence, and especially the construction pauperorum senecta, is odd. I have followed Wirbelauer’s (German) translation, which conveys at least the spirit of the statement. Pace Picotti 1939: 368; Richards 1979: 81–82; and Aimone 2000, who characterize the Gesta de Xysti purgatione and the other Symmachan Forgeries as anti-aristocratic texts.

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pastoral. In this scene, oikonomia is expressed not only in moral terms as moderation and affection but also as a practical concern for the spiritual and social welfare of household members, who find themselves caught in a domestic crisis. Here, we recall, a young man claiming to be a noble ward of an aristocratic ex-consul named Bassus approached Xystus after being maltreated in Bassus’ home by both the householder and his slaves. The young man, Epifanius, swore to Xystus that he was freeborn and that Bassus was his guardian, and so the bishop visited the household on Epifanius’ behalf in the hopes of resolving the dispute.137 Bassus then reacted in an extreme and arrogant manner to Xystus’ intervention. Not only did he curtly dismiss the bishop (“no one,” he claimed, “judges a dominus in his handling of a slave”) but he also threw Epifanius out of his house and seized all of his property.138 Xystus subsequently appealed to Valentinian III so that the emperor might help the church to vindicate Epifanius by undersigning his freeborn status. In the Gesta de Xysti purgatione, the imagined households of Marinianus and Bassus are spaces of conflict and tension, wherein householders perversely exercise their private power. These very perversions set into relief a more wholesome model of domestic authority that is associated exclusively with the Roman bishop. In the case of Marinianus, it was his unbalanced desire to increase the wealth of his domus that impelled him to interfere in a pious act of lay patronage to the Roman church. The tense interaction between the two men clearly reveals their antithetical approaches to estate management. Whereas Marinianus viewed property solely as a source of personal gain, Xystus’ reactions highlight an alternative model of oikonomia, wherein profit is directed toward assisting others. Bassus’ crime is even more unconscionable: to deny a ward his rightful legal status and to steal the very goods that, as Epifanius’ guardian, he was legally and morally bound to protect. As we have seen, guardians were among the most central members of a household.139 As classical and late Roman legislation shows, however, they were also among the most mistrusted.140 Although the guardians’ power over their ward’s property 137

138

139 140

Here Xystus is imagined as the advocate of a private citizen in a domestic dispute, not as a judge in an ecclesiastical hearing. See Sessa 2007: 94, n. 67. Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 264): Nemo enim iudicavit dominum in consilio servi. On guardianship, see Chapter 3. The state closely regulated the financial dimensions of legal guardianship. Cf. CT 2.16.1 (326); 3.17.1 (319); 3.30.1 (314); 3.30.2 (between 319 and 332); 3.30.3 (336); and 3.32.1 (322).

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was heavily regulated, they could and did exploit their domestic authority. Bassus, in other words, is the paradigmatically unscrupulous guardian. Xystus, by contrast, emerges as a prudent and exceedingly just Christian overseer of the domus dei, who devoted his time to guarding the church’s property and its most vulnerable members, namely, the wards of undisciplined guardians. In juxtaposing Xystus’ concern and care for Epifanius and his property with Bassus’ malevolence and greed, the Gesta de Xysti purgatione offers oppositional models of guardianship, leaving little doubt as to which householder, the sacred or the secular, was preferable to watch over your donations and children. DISCIPLINARY FAILURES: SEXUAL MISCONDUCT IN TH E LAURENTIAN SCH ISM

As mentioned previously, Symmachus also was charged with unspecified sex crimes. The bishop had abruptly returned to Rome while traveling to Ravenna, where Theodoric had summoned him in 501. According to the Laurentian Fragment, he turned around directly after encountering a group of mulieres on the beach at Arminium “with whom he was accused in relation to a serious crime (scelus); the women were going to court upon royal orders.”141 Scholars reasonably interpret this passage as indicative of an adultery charge, although the precise nature of the scelus is unstated.142 Symmachus’ physical urges allegedly did not abate even after securing the episcopate from Laurentius in 506/7: “disgusting stories blackened him on many counts,” wrote the authors of the Laurentian Fragment, “particularly about a woman whom they commonly called Conditaria.”143 Whether any sexual charges against Symmachus were investigated at the three councils is unclear, although records from the final synod in 502 suggest it. According to a summary of a session held on September 1 in the Basilica Sessoriana, the bishops rejected a libellus presented by Symmachus’ opponents that enumerated his crimes.144 They offered

141 142

143

144

Frg. Laur. (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 44). Moorhead 1992: 115. A mulier could be a wife or any woman who had already had sexual relations. Frg. Laur. (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 46): Symmachum vero postmodum quamvis victorem de multis rebus fama decoloravit obscenior, et maxime de illa quam vulgo Conditariam vocitabant. Trans. Davis 1989: 97–98. Quarta [sic] synodus habita Romae Palmaris (MGH AA 12: 428).

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two reasons, the second of which is relevant: testimony given by Symmachus’ slaves had apparently constituted the evidence for one of the charges.145 The bishops threw out the testimony, rightly claiming that neither secular nor ecclesiastical law allowed slaves to bear witness against their masters.146 Although the nature of the slaves’ unheard testimony is not stated, the Symmachan Forgeries may provide some insight. In the Gesta de Xysti purgatione Xystus is charged with stuprum (specifically sex with a consecrated virgin), and like Symmachus, he is tried for the crime in the Basilica Sessoriana.147 Moreover, in this imagined scenario, a slave provided the evidence of Xystus’ alleged sex crime, indicating a possibly similar situation at the historical trial of Symmachus. On a certain level, it does not matter whether these charges were adjudicated at Symmachus’ trial or whether they refer to real crimes. More important, they constituted persistent rumors that dogged the bishop even after 506/7. Charges of sexual impropriety against men of public import were commonplace in antiquity. They are so common that it is often difficult to say whether accusations of sex crimes like adultery (sex with a married woman) or stuprum (sex with an unmarried freeborn female, including widows and divorcées) were based on empirical reality or a powerful rhetorical discourse. In her study of sex and masculinity in imperial Rome, Edwards delineated a pervasive cultural logic that equated a man’s ability to discipline his body and the bodies of those subordinate to him (e.g., his wife and daughter) with his moral worth and political authority.148 In early sixth century Rome, a similar gendered formula for masculine excellence oriented Symmachus’ critics and champions. Accusations of sexual immorality leveled against Roman bishops would have been closely linked to deep anxieties about their authority as men, as disciplinarians, as stewards of church property, and as guardians of salvation and the cosmic order. Controlling the Body, Managing the Household, and Administering the Church As head of the domus dei, Roman bishops were expected to govern two sets of bodies: their own and those of the clergy serving the Roman 145 146 147 148

Quarta [sic] synodus habita Romae Palmaris (MGH AA 12: 428). Buckland 1963: 637. Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 264). Edwards 1993.

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church. In the case of the latter, we have already seen how Rome’s bishops defined the cleric as a subordinate through the regulation of his sexual habits and marriage. Their persistent concerns to order the clerical domus were tied just as closely to the project of government as they were to ritual purity and the ascetic ideal. Above all else, the Roman bishop had to appear as the consummate estate manager, who took solicitous care not only of his church’s patrimony but also of its principal members, the clergy. Accusations of sexual misconduct, whether committed by the bishop himself or by his clergy, struck at the very basis of this order. They directly questioned the bishop’s trustworthiness as an able disciplinarian and manager of hierarchy, two duties that characterized domestic and public discourses of authority. Fifth- and sixth-century Roman Christians, both lay and clerical, expected their bishops to maintain an exceptional level of personal and public decorum. It was perhaps their most important ethical duty, because the spiritual health of their congregants was at stake. For one, a cleric’s failure to discipline his body had enormous ritual implications. A married priest who had polluted himself with sexual activities jeopardized the efficacy of the liturgies that he performed; a bishop who in turn failed to reprimand such a priest imperilled his obligation to ensure the salvation of all his congregants; and a celibate bishop who caroused with married women broke a string of secular and sacred laws, thereby endangering his own ability to perform ordinations, consecrations, and other rites that expressly reinforced his command over the ecclesiastical order.149 In fact, doubts about Symmachus’ liturgical propriety had been voiced since the early days of the schism, when he was widely accused of celebrating Easter on the wrong date. As our sources show, Symmachus’ preference for an archaic Roman calendrical system over a more popular Alexandrian one could be closely connected with his failure to discipline the passions.150 According to the Laurentian Fragment, Symmachus was on his way to defend himself before Theodoric against the Easter charges when he encountered the mulieres on the beaches of Arminium, who were witnesses to (or victims of) the bishop’s alleged sex crime.151 Moreover, allegations of sexual misconduct would have also stirred anxieties concerning the bishop’s administration of property. Just as the 149 150 151

On the link between sexual pollution and ritual efficacy, see Meens 1997. Moorhead 1992: 114–15, 207–8. Frg. Laur. (ed. Duchense 1955: I. 44).

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householder had long been suspected of privileging his personal interests over the common good, a cleric who ignored ecclesiastical regulations and engaged in sex, even within the legitimate context of a marriage, was deemed more likely to steal from his church. This exact association of procreation with financial impropriety motivated Justinian to bar men from the episcopate who had living children, grandchildren, and wives.152 Justinian’s laws obviously postdate the Laurentian schism. But they voiced (and attempted to legislate) the same fear that animated Symmachus’ opponents back in Rome at the turn of the sixth century. A claim that he indiscriminately slept with women further discredited his professed dedication to steward Rome’s churches, their lucrative properties, and the salvation of those who offered them. A crime of sexual excess was bad enough if committed by an elite householder, because it could lead to a reputation of effeminacy.153 It was unconscionable in a theoretically celibate bishop, the man whom householders were supposed to trust with their most important and intimate domestic problems, including those that involved their wives and daughters. In classical terms, Symmachus’ opponents drew him as a malus paterfamilias, the householder who privileged his personal interests, passions, and ambitions over other considerations. In late Roman Christian terms, they used a closely related domestic language to depict him as a failed steward: a dependent of God, but still a man-in-power who put his immoderate interests before his duty to look after the domus dei. To counter these serious attacks, Symmachus and his supporters strenuously emphasized the steeply hierarchical structure of the church, with his own dominant position at its apex clearly underlined. Symmachus’ advocates used pamphlets to articulate a remarkably autocratic vision of the bishop’s church. The Symmachan redactions of the fictional Silvestrian council of 324 contain numerous canons that underscore the rigidity of the ecclesiastical order. One canon declared that all clergy and monks (including abbots) must show obedience to their bishop “in both public and private.”154 Another required that all deacons wishing to become priests undergo rigorous scrutinies, whereby the bishop inspected their family life, present habits, and spiritual orthodoxy.155 152 153

154 155

Chapter 5. On the association of male sexual excess with effeminacy, see Edwards 1993: 68–69 and Knust 2006: 35–37, 44–47. SK2 (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 312). SK (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 242).

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Through these spurious pronouncements, linked directly to Constantine and the origins of imperial Christianity at Rome, Symmachus’ partisans asserted a highly authoritarian vision of the ideal Roman church. Thus, in response to accusations that Symmachus brought chaos to the Roman church through his sexual excess, his supporters projected a world of consummate order, wherein the bishop single-handedly governed a highly disciplined clergy. A more extreme reaction to allegations of sexual misconduct structures the highly dramatic final turn of the Gesta de Xysti purgatione. The two householders Marinianus and Bassus join forces to ruin Xystus by making sexual accusations against him. On the basis of testimony provided by one of Marinianus’ slaves, the men formally accuse Xystus before Valentinian III and Galla Placidia of violating a consecrated woman.156 The emperor and his mother are appalled by the charges, and with “much of the Roman population,” immediately suspend their communion with the bishop. Xystus, subsequently confined to St. Peter’s, goes on to demand a public trial. Valentinian then convened a hearing in the Basilica Sessoriana. In addition to being the site of the October 6 session of the council of 501, the church was a Constantinian foundation constructed on the imperial family’s private land, which the historical Valentinian, Galla Placidia, and Honoria later decorated with a mosaic inscription.157 In attendance at the imagined hearing were senators, priests, clergy, and monks, with Valentinian presiding. Although he initially pressed Bassus for evidence of the sex crime, Valentinian instead endorsed the pronouncement of an exconsul, who declared that it was improper to cast judgment on the pontifex.158 Xystus was thus pronounced to be beyond judgment, just as Symmachus had been by the Italian bishops in 502. On another day, a second meeting is held in the Sessorian basilica, but now it was Xystus who “sits in the same place [as Valentinian]” to render an account of his accusers.159 Holding court alone with his 156

157 158 159

Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 264). Xystus’ trial may be historical. The LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 232) also recorded Xystus’ trial before Valentinian and Galla Placidia, although here only Bassus appears as Xystus’ accuser, and the charges are not specified. Curran 2000: 96. On the inscription (now lost), see Krautheimer 1983: 156, n. 22. Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 266–68) Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 268): Alia autem die fecit collegi omnes presbyteros urbis Romae. Et sedit in eodem loco, qui ibidem consistebat augustus.

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priests, he condemned both men and severed their communion with the church.160 While Marinianus derided the punishment, Bassus grew fearful and attempted to negotiate his way back into the bishop’s good graces by offering to donate all of his estates to the church. Xystus, however, was unmoved. Reminding them in Christ’s own words that “a slave is not above his master, nor is a student above his teacher” (Mt. 10:24), the Roman bishop formally excommunicated the householders, thereby curtailing their chances for salvation.161 In the Gesta de Xysti purgatione, Xystus is an exemplary householdersteward precisely because he eschewed the potentially self-serving interests that were synonymous with traditional Roman ideals of masculinity and its iconic practices of procreation and land ownership. His final actions project a steeply hierarchical relationship between the church and the lay aristocratic household, whereby the bishop of Rome, from the lofty perch of the emperor’s own domus, meted out punishment to two treacherous householders. Symmachus’ own embattled episcopate undoubtedly benefited even from tacit comparison to the exceptional morals and actions of his fabled predecessor. Although Symmachus’ direct involvement in the production of these texts remains an open question, his role in an extensive building campaign at St. Peter’s is unquestionable. Probably after 506/7, once he had regained control of the city’s churches, Symmachus expended considerable resources to expand and embellish the complex of buildings built around Constantine’s basilica at the tomb of St. Peter.162 According to the Liber Pontificalis, he improved access and resources for pilgrims and built a new rotunda dedicated to Peter’s brother, Andrew, with additional oratories dedicated to Roman and Italian martyrs.163 Symmachus’ 160 161

162

163

Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 268). Gesta de Xysti purgatione (ed. Wirbelauer 1993: 268–70). Cf. the conclusion of Xystus’ trial in LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1. 232). In this version, the imperial family penalized the householders. Angered that Xystus acted too leniently toward his accuser, they confiscated all of Bassus’ estates and handed them over to the church. On Symmachus’ interventions, see Alchermes 1995. Alchermes’ assertion that this extensive (and expensive) construction took place between 501 and 506, when Symmachus had lost control of the city, is unsubstantiated and improbable. More likely, the work was undertaken after Symmachus reclaimed the churches, that is, between 506/7 and 514. It is plausible that the episcopia established on either side of the basilica date to 501–506, because these might have simply been Symmachus’ temporary lodgings during the schism. See Chapter 3. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955 1. 262).

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intervention introduced Andrew to St. Peter’s, and it is tempting to speculate that the bishop chose him partly because of the two saints’ familial connection.164 A steeply paternalistic episcopal model symbolically cohered with an emphasis on dynasty at “the house of Peter.” Moreover, St. Peter’s was also the burial site for the emperor Honorius and his family, as well as numerous high-ranking Christian senators such as Junius Bassus and Petronius Probus.165 It thus offered Symmachus further opportunities to associate his “Petrine” household with these stratospherically elite domus. CONCLUSION

The Laurentian schism presents a single case for examining the manifold ethical, spiritual, and institutional contestations surrounding a bishop’s endeavors to exert his influence as a form of domestic expertise. By paying close attention to the conciliar acts and by reading them with the propagandistic texts produced by partisans of both contenders for the see, we have shown that Symmachus’ troubles as bishop were consistently tied to his identity as a householder-steward. His advocacy for a more paternalistic process of episcopal succession; his self-promotion as the exemplary and honest dispensator of Rome’s ecclesiastical patrimony; his casting of doubt on the integrity of his competitors, the titular priests, as stewards of the city’s churches; and his supporters’ attempts to deflect accusations (valid or trumped up) that he had had immoral and illegal sexual relations show that the public authority of the Roman bishop was inextricably tied to his perceived excellence in household management. As demonstrably apologetic sources such as the Gesta de Xysti purgatione show, many Romans mistrusted their bishops when it came to their government of sex, stewardship, and episcopal succession. Yet conflict and contention were not the only possible forms that the relationship between householders and bishops might take. Fifth- and sixth-century Romans could also envision a more productive partnership, one grounded in an ethos of cooperation. The gesta martyrum, a corpus of fifth- and sixth-century Roman martyr narratives explored in the next 164

165

Several early medieval metrical inscriptions displayed at the basilica emphasized the fraternal relationship between Peter and Andrew. See Alchermes 1995: 21–23. See Alchermes 1995: 7–8 for the epigraphic evidence.

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and final chapter, present an alternative way of seeing the Roman bishop as an estate manager. For although the gesta martyrum clearly delimited the bishop’s ethical authority within the private household, they also celebrated the productive possibilities of his presence for its spiritual and social transformation.

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Chapter 7

Th e H ouseh old and Th e Bish op: Auth ority, Cooperation, and Competition in th e Gesta Martyrum

ot everyone trusted the bishop in household matters.

Resistance to his claims of domestic expertise took various forms, N from foot-dragging and public censure to organized schism. A more positive and cooperative perspective on the relationship between the household and the bishop was also possible, however. In the gesta martyrum, a body of popular martyr narratives independently written between ca. 450 and 600, householders and bishops join forces to preserve the integrity of the domus and the spiritual imperatives of its lordly overseer. Here Rome’s early bishops play integral roles in the transformation of an elite “pagan” household into a pious and productive Christian domus, in which the householder’s authority is oriented around the ethics of stewardship and robust religious oversight. Roman bishops of the gesta martyrum inhabit a distinct and durable place within the households of other men; their presence both strengthens the paterfamilias’ power and reveals its dependence on the bishop’s assistance. Yet the gesta martyrum also draw the clearest line yet between the bishop’s authority in the church and his reach into the domestic sphere. Following a discussion of the texts’ dating, authorship, and audiences, this chapter examines the cultural and religious meaning of a recurring “tale type” in the gesta: the conversion of a prosperous aristocratic pagan household through the spiritual and ritual interventions of a Christian holy man, who is often (but not always) a bishop.1 The first part of the analysis establishes how the domestic conversion episode turns on a 1

Folklorists (cf. Dundes 1997) use the term “tale type” to refer to a narrative unit that combines several different motifs, stands as a unique entity, and presents a pure form of the tale with the existence of variants as a given. The domestic conversion episode fulfills these criteria.

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dynamic of social and ritual exchange, wherein bishops and householders cooperate not only to convert a pagan household but also to define the householder’s social identity as “elite.” Close attention is paid to the bishop’s role in the process as a healer and ritual celebrant and to how his exercise of charismatic power establishes his authority within certain spaces of the domestic sphere. This section focuses on six versions of the domestic conversion episode that foreground episcopal characters: the passions of Clement (c. 95), Alexander (c. 110), Callistus (217–222), Cornelius (251–253), Stephen (254–257), and Marcellus (305/6–306/7).2 The second section examines how episcopal authority is circumscribed within the imagined households of the gesta. This section also analyzes variants of the domestic conversion episode that depict nonepiscopal holy men and that underline spaces within the household that were off limits to the bishop. The demarcation of the household and the emphasis on spiritual competitors in these other narratives present a counterpoint to the strongly episcopal vision of the household conveyed elsewhere in the gesta. LOCATING TH E GESTA MARTYRUM : DATING, AUTH ORSH IP, AND AUDIENCE

Gesta martyrum was the term used in late antiquity to denote a body (or perhaps a genre) of passion narratives about Rome’s early Christian martyrs.3 The martyrs were late ancient superheroes, figures venerated for their remarkable feats of sanctity and endurance. The gesta were primarily written to celebrate their trials, bodily torture, and execution at the hands of Roman officials. Many of these martyrs also had active cult sites in Rome since the fourth century.4 Like many contemporary hagiographical texts, the gesta were created to entertain relatively wide audiences and to transmit general ethical points about proper behavior in their everyday lives.5 They are remarkably simple narratives in their morality and message: good and bad are easily identifiable, and religious 2

3 4

5

For the sake of clarity, I use the English form “The Passion of St. X” to denote each martyr narrative. In fact, the various editions preserve different titles, some of which are reflected in the footnotes. Cf. LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1.123 and 148). The literature on Rome’s martyr cults is enormous. Recent studies include Fiocchi Niccolai 1995, Pergola 2000, and Trout 2005. In this respect, they function like many other hagiographical texts. See Delehaye 1962; Vauchez 1991; and Cooper 1996: 116–27.

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The Household and The Bishop

truths are delivered in sound-bite form.6 The gesta thus probably had an ideological impact that went beyond that of a partisan pamphlet or episcopal decretal. As sources of late Roman episcopal discourses and socioreligious relations, however, the narratives present three fundamental hermeneutic obstacles. First, although they depict the lives and deaths of specific martyrs, the gesta are highly formulaic texts that share much in terms of style, theme, language, and subject matter. The domestic conversion episode is itself a meta-narrative in early Christian literature, appearing in the Bible, the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, and in post-Constantinian saints’ lives.7 Despite their similarities, however, the gesta seem to have been produced independently, by individual authors. In fact, they were not grouped into thematic collections (i.e., passionaries and legendaries) until later, in the Middle Ages.8 Second, the dating of the gesta martyrum is very indefinite. Until the early twentieth century, most scholars believed that the gesta were authentic accounts of the persecutions written by eyewitnesses to the events. Albert Dufourcq successfully debunked this view, demonstrating largely through internal analysis of the texts that they could not have been written before the mid-fifth, sixth or even early seventh centuries.9 Consequently, readers of the gesta must work within a broad post-Constantinian chronological framework, from ca. 450 to ca. 600. Although a few scholars have suggested more precise dates for individual texts, in truth we cannot be certain when the Roman martyr narratives were written.10 A third and especially vexing feature of the gesta is the lack of authorial attribution. Identifying an author’s signature is a challenge not only because the gesta share many forms and themes but also because many circulated in multiple versions.11 Additionally, some authors drew on preexisting passions and built their narratives on oral traditions. These 6 7 8

9 10

11

Sessa 2005. Sessa 2007. Recent studies of the manuscript evidence have debunked the once popular notion of a late antique ur-collection of the gesta. See Pilsworth 2000 and Franklin 2001. Dufourcq 1910: 1. 279–321. Dufourcq 1910: 1. 279–92 argued that some gesta were composed during the Ostrogothic period (493–535), but he also dated others to the early seventh century (e.g., Passio S. Alexandri ). Some gesta have termini ante quem or post quem, which provide more secure parameters. The “Passion of St. Laurentius [the archdeacon]” draws on a tradition of Laurentius’ martyrdom known to Ambrose and Prudentius, thus placing its date sometime after the early fifth century. See Verrando 1990. For the variations, consult the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina.

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creative practices further elided an individual writer’s contributions.12 We can, however, draw a few tentative conclusions about the original authors. They almost certainly lived in Rome or at least knew the city well. Scholars have long recognized the Roman provenance of the gesta largely because of their numerous topographical allusions to specific regions, monuments, and burial sites located within the city and its suburbs.13 Many authors also appear to have had a similar educational background. There is no hint that they had deep knowledge of classical literature, although there is evidence for some religious education and a basic familiarity with the Bible.14 In the main, these authors do not appear to have been highly trained rhetoricians, theologians, or exegetes. Some might also have shared an institutional affiliation. Roman clergy have long been suspected as possible authors, at least of certain texts.15 Several of the gesta present detailed descriptions of Christian liturgies, notably baptism, including dramatic renditions of the three-part baptismal oath. Although it is impossible to say whether they are historically precise (the fluid state of late antique Christian liturgy makes it difficult to identify any single iteration of a rite as normative), the descriptions suggest that the writers had fairly detailed knowledge of the baptismal process.16 Moreover, a sixth-century source known as the Decretum Gelasianum explicitly proscribed the reading of the gesta martyrum in Roman churches, which of course suggests that this was one place where they were traditionally read.17 To be clear, the Decretum Gelasianum is a Gallic source that was falsely attributed to Gelasius and may not preserve a genuine Roman tradition.18 Moreover, other sources seem not to assume clerical authorship. Biographies in the Liber Pontificalis describe directives handed down by two pre-Constantinian bishops to notaries to “diligently search out” and “collect” the gesta martyrum from the city’s seven 12 13

14

15

16 17

18

Verrando 1990 and Jones 2007. De Rossi 1864–1877 first outlined a topographical approach to the Roman gesta martyrum based on internal references to historically verifiable sites. See now Amore 1975 and Cooper 1999. One striking feature, however, of the gesta martyrum is the relatively small number of direct biblical quotes or paraphrases. Dufourcq 1910: I. 359–64 emphasized the clerics’ function as redactors of oral traditions rather than authors. This may be true. See also Lanzoni 1927: I.41; Delehaye 1936: 12; and Sessa 2007: 90–91. Vogel 1986: 4 and 64. Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis 204–218. Bishop Hadrian of Rome (772–790) reversed the prohibition. See de Gaiffier 1964 and 1969. De Gaiffier 1969: 63–65.

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ecclesiastical regions, but they do not mention clerical authors or the gesta’s performance in churches.19 Similarly, in a letter to the Alexandrian bishop Eulogius, Gregory denied the existence of a single codex of Roman martyr narratives in Rome’s churches and archives.20 Thus while Roman clergy might have authored some of the gesta, they were not exclusively associated with them. In fact, Leyser has suggested that one version of a Roman martyr narrative was written (or at least substantially modified) by Italian monks outside of Rome.21 Scholars must also rely on inference to reconstruct the original readers of the gesta. For example, the clerical writers of the Liber Pontificalis constituted one group of readers, for they mined individual martyr narratives for information on several pre-Constantinian Roman bishops.22 The gesta martyrum also apparently enjoyed popularity among lay and monastic circles. If they had been read in local Roman churches (although when and under what circumstances remain unclear), then laypeople (and clergy) would have been among their primary consumers. Lay interest in the gesta was also assumed by the anonymous author of the Ad Gregoriam in palatio. In one section, he seems to allude to the “Passion of St. Anastasia,” suggesting not only that he knew the work but also that he thought its ideas were relevant for a lay readership.23 Moreover, the conversion of aristocratic dom¯us is a topic that would have appealed to many different types of households, including the monastic. As Leyser’s study demonstrates, sixth-century monks at an Italian monastery copied a version of one martyr narrative (perhaps tailoring it to their interests) in a book that was otherwise dedicated to monastic writings.24 In sum, the gesta martyrum as a body of texts do not represent any single point of view. They were composed largely by clergy and perhaps also by monks but were enjoyed by a broader spectrum of the Christian 19 20

21 22 23

24

LP (ed. Duchesne 1955: 1.123 and 148). Gregory, Ep. 8.28. Eulogius’ inquiry specifically referred to a codex of Roman passions written by Eusebius of Caesarea. This might not be the same body of martyr narratives known to the authors of the LP. Nevertheless, there was a tradition that Eusebius authored Roman saints’ lives. See Pohlkamp 1992: 139–41 and the Passio S. Symphrosae cum septem filiis (AASS Iul. IV: 355–59). Leyser 2007. Duchesne 1955: 1. lxxxix-ci. de Gaiffier 1964: 347, n. 2 and Cooper 2007: 187–88, who is more circumspect than de Gaiffier but still emphasizes strong thematic continuities between the two texts. Leyser 2007. The book (the so-called vetustissimus of Corbie) contains a version of the “Passion of SS. John and Paul” with excerpts from Augustine’s Rule and the Regula Magistri.

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community, including laypeople. Most important, the gesta do not collectively reflect an episcopal agenda, at least directly or in every case.25 Their attention to household members, practices, and spaces therefore cannot be reduced to an ecclesiastical initiative aimed at subsuming the domus within the bishop’s church, as Pietri concluded.26 Rather, the focus on the household in the gesta spoke to a broader and very complex debate within late Roman society over the role of bishops and other holy men as domestic experts and to the controversial task of integrating their presence into elite households. The gesta present multiple responses to these issues, including some that emphasized cooperation, power, and dependence. TH E DYNAMICS OF DOMESTIC CONVERSION: BISH OPS, TRANSFORMATION, AND AUTH ORITY

The imagined householders of the gesta typically work in tandem with external figures of spiritual authority, men from outside the home renowned for their powers to heal the body and transform the soul through miracles and ritual actions. In several of the gesta, this charismatic figure is the bishop of Rome. In the “Passion of St. Stephen,” for example, the third-century bishop Stephen restored sight to the daughter of the tribune Nemesius, an event that led directly to both the father’s and daughter’s baptism.27 Similarly, in the “Passion of St. Alexander,” Alexander’s resurrection of the only son of Hermes, a vir illustris and urban prefect, propelled the senator to adopt the religion for his entire family. In the same text, a pagan tribune chose to embrace Christianity after Alexander healed an unsightly tumor on his daughter’s neck.28 Negotiating Conversion: Exchange and Reciprocity Between Householders and Bishops Although seemingly simple and straightforward, these conversion scenes have deceptively complex social, ritual, and political dynamics. Brought into the domus at the householder’s request, the Roman bishop engaged in a series of negotiations with the householder before the household was 25 26

27 28

Pace Pietri 1981a: 435–53. Pietri 1981a. Elsewhere, I have also challenged the popular thesis that the gesta are foundation legends for specific churches in Rome. See Sessa 2007: 82–84 and 2009. Passio S. Stephani 3. Passio S. Alexandri et al. 7–8, discussed in detail below.

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actually baptized. The narratives’ emphasis on exchange and reciprocity is significant. Bishops and householders trade favors in a manner that accords well with our understanding of ancient patronage as an asymmetrical but nevertheless voluntary personal relationship among two or more parties. Significantly, these imagined exchanges also involved a supernatural element, when the bishop proffers his power to heal and baptize. As we shall see, such scenes gave credence to the idea that bishops and householders could cooperate as trustful partners in the management of the domestic sphere and to the idea that the head of the domus dei might secure a permanent place in the households of other men. Two particularly illustrative examples appear in parallel domestic conversion episodes featured in the “Passion of St. Alexander,” a later iteration of the tale type possibly written in the early seventh century.29 As noted previously, Alexander had resurrected Hermes’ only son, and the miracle had prompted the senator’s conversion. The details of this particular episode demand close attention. When Hermes’ only son fell ill, he consulted with pagan priests at the Capitolium, but their sacrifices were ineffective, and the boy died.30 Distraught at the death of his only child and heir, Hermes learned from the boy’s nurse about the bishop Alexander and his reputed healing powers. Were Hermes to believe in Christ, she explained, Alexander could help to bring his child back to life. The senator remained skeptical, however, and decided to send the nurse first, who happened to be blind. After visiting Alexander at St. Peter’s tomb (ad limina Petri), she returned several days later with her eyesight restored. Convinced of the bishop’s powers but still uncertain about his Christian reputation, Hermes ordered the nurse to present his son to Alexander. When the child returned home alive, Hermes’ attitude toward the bishop underwent a startling transformation. Throwing himself at Alexander’s feet, he begged the bishop to make him a Christian. Alexander obliged, and the householder then offered him several gifts: a large donation to Alexander’s church from his and dead wife’s possessions earmarked for the poor, the manumission and baptism of his 1,250 slaves, and the guardianship of his only son.31 In the second domestic conversion episode, a pagan tribune named Quirinus also came to embrace Christianity through a series of negotiated exchanges with Alexander. According to the text, Hermes was 29 30 31

Dufourcq 1910: I. 14. Passio SS. Alexandri et al. 7. Passio SS. Alexandri et al 7.

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imprisoned in the tribune’s house following his conversion.32 While in Quirinus’ custody, Hermes spoke at length of Alexander’s miraculous actions conducted on his household’s behalf; however, Quirinus did not accept Hermes’ account without proof and insisted on testing both urban prefect and bishop. Specifically, Quirinus challenged the vir illustris to demonstrate the bishop’s supernatural powers by having Alexander, who was imprisoned elsewhere, physically transport himself to Hermes’ room. Hermes agreed, and although both men were shackled and locked in separate rooms of different buildings, Alexander nevertheless materialized in Hermes’ cubiculum. When Quirinus opened the door, he found both men unchained and praying.33 Thereafter, Quirinus inquired whether he might also strike a deal with Christ and the Roman bishop: “Let Christ therefore win my soul (lucretur animam meam) through you [Alexander and Hermes] in this way. . . . ”34 Quirinus explained that he had a beautiful daughter with a tumor on her neck. Were Alexander to remove this blemish, Quirinus would promise to hand over everything to Alexander and Christ. Alexander agreed to the paterfamilias’ request and presented Quirinus with a collar to place around his daughter’s neck. Alexander then made demands on Quirinus. Specifically, the bishop asked the tribune to hand over several Christian clerics also imprisoned in his house.35 Each made good on his end of the bargain: Alexander healed Quirinus’ daughter Balbina with the collar and the intervention of a mysterious young boy, who appears to Balbina and demands that she remain a perpetual virgin in return for her healing. Quirinus assented to this additional request.36 Quirinus also permitted Alexander to have an audience with the two imprisoned Christian priests. Alexander then raised the ante: “If you want to offer me a favor (beneficium), persuade everyone who is in prison to be baptized so that they may become Christians.”37 Quirinus agreed, and Alexander baptized the prisoners. The entire episode concluded with Alexander’s baptism of the tribune’s household and with Quirinus’ handing over Balbina to a religious 32

33 34

35 36 37

Domestic imprisonment is both a prominent motif in the gesta and a historically attested practice in late antiquity. See Hillner 2007. Passio SS. Alexandri et al. 4–6. Passio SS. Alexandri et al. 8 (AASS Mai I: 372): Lucretur ergo animam meam Christus per vos hoc modo. Passio SS. Alexandri et al. 8. Passio SS. Alexandri et al. 14. Passio SS. Alexandri et al. 10 (AASS Mai I: 373): Si vis mihi praestare beneficium, suade omnibus, qui sunt in carcere, baptizari, ut fiant Christiani.

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woman associated with Alexander, who was charged with safeguarding her virginity. Transforming the Householder and Preserving the domus The story of Alexander’s interventions in the households of Hermes and Quirinus combines several familiar biblical and hagiographical elements. The healing of a family member and the conversion of a pagan household by a visiting Christian holy man are motifs found in many popular texts, from Christ’s raising of Lazarus in the Gospels to Martin of Tours’ healing and conversion of pagan households in his early fifth-century vita.38 Moreover, a similarly structured domestic conversion episode appears in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, in which apostles enter pagan homes at the request of a family member and subsequently convert the household.39 In many pre-Nicene sources, however, the relationship between householder and apostle is antagonistic: the two typically exchange criminal accusations or even blows, not favors. In texts like the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the apostle does not preserve the traditional domestic structures and powers; rather, he encouraged their subversion by exhorting household members to abandon traditional moorings of elite identity, such as marriage, reproduction, and property ownership.40 Alternatively, post-Constantinian Roman gesta such as the “Passion of St. Alexander” fortify the household as a patriarchical institution grounded in practices of household management by reinforcing its significance within a specifically late Roman Christian framework. In this respect, these gesta identify more with the conservative religious ethics favored by fifth- and sixth-century Italian Christians, which focused on stewardship and the householder’s heightened duty of religious observance.41 For example, the depiction of the converts’ gift giving underlined their status as powerful, and in Hermes’ case especially, wealthy householders. In Hermes’ own words, “I established [Alexander] as the guardian (tutor) for my son, and offered to this man the entire patrimonium of his dead mother and added some from my own. Additionally, I freed all of my slaves, who had become Christians with me, and whatever was 38

39 40

41

John 11:38–53 and Sulpicius Severus, Vita S. Martini 17. Sessa 2007:103–4 presents a more detailed comparison. Cf. Acts of Andrew 15, 30. On the socially subversive dynamics of the Apocryphal Acts, see Perkins 1994 and Cooper 1996: 45–67. Chapter 2.

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left over, I distributed to the poor.”42 All of Hermes’ legacies constitute acts of authority synonymous with oikonomia. In his role as dominus, he manumits 1,250 slaves, a decision that was both magnanimous and costly. (As we have seen, possessing that many household dependents was hardly unusual in late antique Italy.43 ) Moreover, he directed Alexander to baptize them. In his guise as paterfamilias, Hermes named a guardian for his son and managed his own wealth in a manner consistent with the ethics of stewardship. He not only donated some of his own property to Alexander’s church and for the care of the poor but also offered all of the wealth once owned by his deceased wife. In legal terms, the latter act of beneficence is harder to interpret, because husbands and wives still maintained their properties separately in late antiquity, and the law had long regulated gifts between spouses.44 Nevertheless, the detail’s rhetorical function is clear: It further accentuated the absolutism of Hermes’ power over the bodies and properties of his domus and his commitment to a new Christian model of household management. In Quirinus’ case, the tribune seemingly had less wealth to offer, and no figures are offered to quantify his baptized dependents, although the office of tribunus did bring elite (but not senatorial) honors in the late empire.45 As did Hermes, Quirinus gave Alexander his most valuable possession, his daughter, now consecrated as a virgin. Here the father did not protest his daughter’s renunciation of sex and marriage; on the contrary, he enabled it.46 The deep conservatism of the episcopal gesta, exemplified by Quirinus’ definitive exercise of paternal power over his 42

43 44

45 46

Passio S. Alexandri et al. 7 (AASS Mai. I. 372): Constitui ipsum filio meo tutorem, et omne patrimonium matris eius defunctae ipsi contuli, aliquanta etiam de meo addidi: cetera, vero omnibus servis meis, qui mecum facti sunt Christiani, simul cum libertate donavi: quicquid vero superfuit erogavi pauperibus. (Emphasis mine). Chapter 1. On the separation of marital property and gift giving between spouses, see Treggiari 1990: 365–74 and Arjava 1996: 133–54. Arjava notes that the ban on gifts between spouses might not have had much force in the later empire and that in reality the separation of properties had always been difficult to maintain (hence the need for inventories upon marriage). Jones 1964: 528–29, 92. Passio S. Alexandri et al. 14. Cf. the Passio S. Susannae, in which both Susanna’s father, the priest Gabianus, and her uncle, the Roman bishop Gaius, support her decision to reject a marriage offer (from the emperor’s son) so that she can remain a virgin, and the Passio SS Restitutae et Secundae (ed. Mombritius 1978: II.243), in which the virgin sisters seek refuge on their parents’ property from the aggressive gestures of their pagan fiancés.

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daughter’s body, is especially striking when compared with their preNicene antecedents. In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, for example, Thecla rejected her parents’ expectations for marriage and defiantly chose celibacy. It is also striking when compared with other gesta martyrum, in which daughters and wives do resist their family’s sexual and social demands.47 The strong emphasis in “The Passion of St. Alexander” on the householder’s agency and authority is a prominent theme of the domestic conversion episode throughout the episcopal passions. The masculine gendering of the scenes is one key aspect of this discourse. To be sure, female householders (especially widows) frequently appear in the gesta. As Cooper has shown, they are often portrayed as patronesses who donate their resources to caring for the martyrs’ remains.48 In narratives that present this particular “tale type,” however, the householders are consistently men. The gendering of the domestic conversion episode undoubtedly reflects cultural associations of estate management with the authority of male aristocrats. The story of the pagan dominus Sisinnius in the “Passion of St. Clement” is especially illustrative of the masculine orientation of domestic conversion in certain gesta.49 After secretly following his Christian wife Theodora into church, Sisinnius was struck blind and deaf. Theodora then seemingly usurped the householder’s role by providing for her husband’s cure: she invites Clement to their home, where the bishop promptly restored Sisinnius’ sight and hearing. Theodora’s interventions did not directly lead to her husband’s conversion, however, or, for that matter, to a loss of his domestic authority. When the householder discovered a Christian bishop in his house, he erupted into anger and ordered his slaves to tie Clement up. Instead of shackling Clement, the slaves misperceive the reality before them and chain some broken columns together instead. It was only after experiencing this bizarre event that Sisinnius recognized his own error, confessed a belief in Christ, and demanded that Clement baptize him and all 423 members of his household.50 Rather than exposing her husband’s lack of authority in the domus, Theodora’s

47

48 49 50

Cf. Passio S. Anastasiae (ed. Delehaye 1936: 221–49); Passio S. Caeciliae 3–5 (ed. Delehaye 1936: 196–7); and the Passio S. Anatoliae. See especially Cooper 1999. Passio S. Clementis 7–12. Passio S. Clementis 14. On the topos of misperception in the Roman martyr narratives, see Sessa 2005.

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relationship with Clement emphasized her chaste devotion to Sisinnius.51 The scene affirms, rather than challenges, the male householder’s ultimate dominance within the home. The depiction of the master-slave relationship in the domestic conversion episode further exaggerated the Christian householder’s domestic authority. Tellingly, none of the six episcopal gesta examined here dramatizes situations in which slaves refuse to follow their masters’ command to embrace Christ. In fact, several narratives highlight the slaves’ extreme obedience to their newly Christianized master and to his (and now their) religion. For instance, in the “Passion of St. Stephen,” Nemesius’ creditarius, who was baptized along with the rest of his master’s household, refused to hand over his lord’s facultates to a pagan tribune.52 Imprisoned in the tribune’s house, the slave is threatened with bodily punishment and death unless he transfers Nemesius’ property to the state and sacrifices to the gods. Predictably, the slave evaded the threats and informed his persecutor that Nemesius’ possessions have already been handed over to Christ, their true owner. In addition to conforming to the ethics of stewardship, this idealized vision of Christianization in the late Roman household contrasts sharply with known cases of recalcitrant pagan dependents on rural Christian estates.53 It also conflicts with accounts of converted slaves and coloni who fled their masters to seek a better life in a monastery or church.54 For these very reasons, however, the scene underlined Nemesius’ authority as an exemplary Christian slaver owner, who instills an extreme sense of loyalty among his dependents. The social status of the pagan household is another prominent detail that speaks to the narratives’ broader interests in buttressing (rather than subverting) elite domestic authority. Although a few households imagined in the gesta are modest (the converted domus in the “Passion of St. Cornelius” belonged to a soldier), most are associated with a definitively senatorial householder. Aristocratic status in the narratives is typically glossed through late Roman offices and honorary titles. Men with 51

52

53 54

The scene thus reverses the dynamics of what Cooper calls “the apostolic love triangle” in the Apocryphal Acts, whereby a female family member’s close relationship to an apostle undermines the male householder’s authority over her and the household. See Cooper 1996: 51–56. Passio S. Stephani 7. See also cc.15–17, in which a similar scenario regarding the protection of master’s facultates plays out between a Roman official and a slave of the senator Olympius. Chapter 3. Chapter 5.

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posts that brought senatorial honors (e.g., urban prefects, vicars, even a primiscrinius, one of the highest ranking officials in the Praetorian Prefecture) as well as those called vir illustris, senator, and consul, typically appear as the owners and heads of converted households.55 To be sure, the contextualization of aristocratic conversion in the first, second, and third centuries is among the gesta’s most blatant historical gaffes. Studies have shown that the majority of Rome’s senators did not embrace Christianity until the later fourth and fifth centuries.56 Nevertheless, it was a compelling late ancient narrative. Jerome’s specious genealogies tailored to flatter his patronesses, and Prudentius’ invented claims that the descendents of Cato brought about the conversion of the senate square with the historical claims of the gesta that Rome’s first Christians and martyrs hailed from its upper classes.57 Given the later dates of the gesta, the emphasis on the senatorial status of the converted household is significant. Aristocratic identity, to repeat, was in flux during this period, with some classical markers of elite status (e.g., birth, traditional dignitates, and paideia) gradually falling into obsolescence.58 In this respect, the senatorial identities of the householders in the gesta hint at a process of cultural transformation, whereby “senatorial” standing was now linked to a particular form of Christian household management. Indeed, the revolutionary transformations associated with Christian conversion in the episcopal gesta largely hinge on the actions of the householder and on his choice between two paths for his domus: to maintain it as a polytheist home, where idols are vainly worshipped and Christian values are mocked, or to convert it into a pious Christian household, where he will drive all family members to participate in the improvement of their souls. Estate management, in other words, lies at the very center of these tales of domestic conversion. Specifically, the stories call for the subtle realignment of oikonomia as delineated in Chapter 2: the orientation of the householder’s authority around stewardship and the evaluation of his status according to success or failure in securing his household’s salvation. As do many other late ancient sources, these texts assert that senatorial self-understanding should be rooted in the domestic sphere. Although the householders depicted in the gesta remain senatorial aristocrats in name and title, what made them “senators” was not their holding of office but their exercise of good stewardship and an 55 56 57 58

On the offices and their related honors, see Jones 1964: 528–29, 592. Salzman 2002. Cf. Prudentius, Contra Symm. 1. 544–65 and Jerome, Epp. 54.4; 107.2 and 108.1, 34. Chapter 1.

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augmented religious responsibility for all members of their household. In fact, a householder who orchestrated the conversion of his domus in the manner outlined here could expect to stand above his peers. According to one narrative, a Christian dominus had the capacity to hold the households of pagan lords “in his power” (in sua potestate).59 In this respect, the gesta martyrum offered Christian elites an ethical blueprint for success in the competitive and highly fluid society of late Roman Italy.60 These same choices and actions also forged a more permanent place in the elite domus for the bishop of Rome. Again, the “Passion of St. Alexander” is a characteristic example. In this gesta, Hermes handed his and his wife’s property directly to the bishop for him to oversee. Needless to say, Hermes’ inherent trust in Alexander to steward his ecclesiastical donations stands in marked contrast to the deep suspicion voiced by historical Roman householders toward bishops such as Symmachus. To a greater extent than the transferring of family possessions to Alexander’s church or even the urban prefect’s dramatic gesture of proskynesis at the bishop’s feet, the naming of Alexander as his son’s tutor most securely established his long-term presence within Hermes’ home.61 Quirinus also entrusted Alexander with his daughter, once designated for marriage but now consigned to a life of virginity. In exchange for resolving acute domestic emergencies in the households of two important pagan men, Alexander received an honorable and permanent place in their domus. Moreover, cooperation with the bishop of Rome offered the senators opportunities to underline their aristocratic status according to a new model of oikonomia. According to the social logic of these gesta, without the Roman bishop, there could be no domus or dominus – at least in the emerging Christian sense of the terms. Asymmetries of Authority in the Household: Baptism and the Bishop as Ritual Expert The most authoritative transformative moment in the domestic conversion episode is the mass baptism of the householder and his family, 59 60

61

Passio S. Callisti 4. It has even been suggested that the conversion narratives in individual gesta were created to bolster the honor and public acclaim of specific late Roman families. See Cracco Ruggini 1988. Whether Alexander’s oversight was to be understood as an informal guardianship of the sort that Symmachus provided to Ennodius’ nephew or a legally defined relationship, such as Vigilius exercised over his niece, is left unstated.

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an act often situated within the walls of his domus. Some of these ritual scenes explicitly evoke the liturgical experiences of fifth- and sixthcentury Christians by presenting baptism as a multistage rite, commencing with the householder’s confession of true belief, moving to his and his family’s catechism, and concluding with their immersion in a blessed font and the householder’s recitation of the three-part, oath-like baptismal prayer.62 In addition to the prominent role that the householder played in the rite’s conduct – he alone recited the creed in coordination with the celebrant – the space of his domus is a key detail. On a certain level, the situation of baptism within a private household accords with the dramatic dates of the narratives. After all, these are texts purportedly written during the pre-Constantinian era, when “house churches” were places of assembly and ritual for Christian communities in Rome and elsewhere.63 By the fifth and sixth centuries, however, baptism in Rome was an ecclesiastical event, a rite occurring in fitted masonry baptisteries built within churches. In fact, during the fifth and sixth centuries, the number of baptisteries in Rome proliferated, with many added to the city’s various tituli.64 Household baptism, at least in an urban context, was a practice of the past and would have probably struck many audiences of the gesta as an anachronism.65 Of course, these scenes performed their most important ideological work in their capacity as rhetorical contrivances. In depicting the baptism of aristocratic households as domestic events, the gesta called attention to the physical space of the house itself and to its significance as a metric of a householder’s exercise of estate management. The integral and even inextricable role of the bishop in the ritual transformation of the senatorial household complicates the reciprocity that structures relationships in the gesta. In the episcopal martyr narratives, the Roman bishop alone channels the supernatural power that makes the households of Hermes, Quirinus, and others “complete.” Bishops appear in the gesta not only as charismatic healers but also as regular celebrants of baptismal rites that transform a pagan domus into a

62 63 64 65

I treat depictions of baptism in the gesta more fully in Sessa 2007: 106–11. Introduction. On baptisteries in Roman churches, see Chapter 6. Baptisms might have been performed in rural contexts on private estate chapels during this period. As noted in Chapter 4, later fifth- and sixth-century Roman bishops forbade the building of baptisteries in villa chapels, thereby suggesting that baptismal rites were regularly conducted on these estates.

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Christian household. As shown elsewhere, the entire initiation process in the episcopal gesta is compressed into a series of short rites culminating in the final prayer, immersion, and sealing.66 It is this baptismal prayer, realistically depicted as a three-part, oath-like exchange uttered at the moment of the candidate’s submersion, that best illustrates the dynamics of liturgy in the gesta.67 For here the initiant (householder) and the celebrant (bishop) trade beneficia in a manner that reveals the spiritual politics of their relationship. Although patronage was grounded in an ethic of reciprocity, it was also a social system ultimately predicated on asymmetry. To be sure, the episcopal gesta martyrum do not unambiguously present the bishop as the patron. In traditional Roman terms, it is the householders who have more to offer by way of resources. As Catherine Bell has shown in other contexts, however, liturgy can reify certain relations of power between the celebrant and initiant.68 Unlike other miraculous spectacles of transformation in the gesta like bodily healing and exorcism, baptism (or at least the final rites of the liturgy, which involved immersion and sealing) was increasingly treated as a different type of supernatural event altogether. As noted earlier, in cities like Rome, churches were retrofitted to accommodate baptismal rites. Moreover, sources such as the Apostolic Tradition (now thought to be a fourth-century work of Syrian origins) and Ambrosiaster’s tirades against the ritual presumptions of deacons suggest a broader ideological and institutional movement to restrict the performance of many Christian rites, including those related to initiation, to a relatively small group of ritual experts.69 Broadly speaking, the gesta both support and subvert this emergent liturgical ordering. They concur on one important point, however. Although a householder could personally perform or direct a wide range of Christian rituals within his home, he could not expect to call on the Holy Spirit and Christ to enter his body and heal his sins. For this, he needed help from a holy man. In the episcopal passions, it was the bishop’s spiritual power to invoke God and channel his supernatural agency during initiation that ultimately converted an irreligious pagan domus into a pious Christian household. In this respect, the baptismal sequence (as depicted in these 66 67

68 69

Sessa 2007. See Sessa 2007: 107–9 for a comparison of baptismal oaths in gesta with an early medieval baptismal formulary in Cod. Vat. Reg. 316 (ca. 750). Bell 1992: 67 and 90. Apostolic Tradition 1–9 and Ambrosiaster, Quaes. 101. For the recent reevaluation of the Apostolic Tradition, see Bradshaw, Johnson et al. 2002.

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sources at least) modified the traditional structure of domestic authority by portraying the Roman bishop – and not the householder – as the sole ritual agent of the household’s social and spiritual well-being. The fact that domestic conversion is presented as a liturgical event in the gesta reveals much about these texts’ cultural meaning. If baptism were the key to the (re)definition of the late Roman aristocratic domus as an elite “senatorial” space, then bishops necessarily played a direct role in the process. By foregrounding the baptismal scenes as the denouement of domestic transformation, the authors constructed a history of the early Christian household that depicted the bishop not as an invasive interloper propelled by personal interests, but as an altruistic and even unwilling expert summoned to help in a ritual capacity at the householder’s bidding. These particular versions of the domestic conversion episode, then, present the Roman bishop’s presence within the home as ancient and legitimate. TH E LIMITS OF EPISCOPAL AUTH ORITY IN TH E DOMESTIC SPH ERE

Although this strong but still complex perspective on episcopal authority characterizes several of the gesta, it does not monolithically describe the dynamics of religious power and influence in the Roman martyr narratives. Other authors (and presumably audiences) of the gesta evidently held very different views on the place of the bishop within the domestic sphere. As emphasized earlier, there are many variations of the domestic conversion episode in the gesta. In some of them, the bishop’s authority within the household appears to be deliberately circumscribed through spatially conceived barriers and through the depiction of active competitors, namely, other holy men in the city of Rome whose charismatic and liturgical powers might also transform a pagan home and householder. No Bishops in the Bedroom! In the gesta martyrum, Roman bishops never enter cubicula: small, narrow, and enclosed rooms in a Roman house that were used for a variety of activities, especially (but not exclusively) for sleep.70 This observation is intriguing for numerous reasons, especially because the cubiculum frequently appears in the gesta as the primary household room where men, 70

This has been confirmed through word searches of the AASS.

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women, and children experienced the transformative effects of divine presence.71 Of all domestic spaces in ancient Rome, the cubiculum was most closely associated with secrecy, because it was widely seen as the room in which activities could be, to some degree, shielded from certain audiences. The secrecy of the cubiculum had two very different effects when it came to the householder’s moral reputation.72 On the one hand, it occluded the activities of its occupants, inviting speculation about their behavior and hence their moral state. The cubiculum was consequently associated with improper and even nefarious acts. On the other hand, the secrecy of the cubiculum might foster the solitude needed for ethically positive activities, such as philosophical study and writing.73 Christians inherited these traditions of secrecy and ambivalence, and perceived the cubiculum as a place where both depraved and salubrious activities ensued. For example, the cubiculum is typically the room in the gesta where pagan householders stored and/or performed polytheistic activities. Images that the tribune Olympius heroically smashed in the “Passion of St. Stephen” were kept in a cubiculum, a detail that reveals the persistence of more negative interpretations of the room as a site of potentially evil and harmful activities.74 Alternatively, in other Christian sources such as the Gospel of Matthew and Jerome’s letter to Eustochium, the cubiculum is a place of solitude and self-improvement, and a refuge within the domus from the more “public” spaces and practices of the house associated with morally hazardous activities such as dining and entertaining.75 The early Christian conceptualization of the cubiculum as a space simultaneously occupied by dangers and divine presence influenced the room’s close association in the gesta with the martyr. It is frequently a site of intense ascetic undertakings, where the saint endures – and overcomes – potentially catastrophic trials of faith and resolve. For example, in the passion of the child martyr Vitus, the cubiculum served as the young 71

72 73 74

75

See Sessa 2007a for a more extensive discussion of the cubiculum as a cultural category and spiritual space in both early Christian thought and the Roman martyr narratives. Riggsby 1997, esp. 37-43. See also Ker 2004: 219–21; and Ziolkowski 1990. See also Passio S. Stephani 9 and Passio SS. Gordiani et Epimachi 2. The association of pagan rituals and objects with the cubiculum is often made in both classical and Christian texts: cf. Apuleius, Apologia 58; Ammianus Marcellinus 26.3.3; and the Bohairic version of the Life of Shenoute discussed by Frankfurter 2005. The cubiculum was also a preferred space for performing magical rites: Cf. PGM 2.1–182; 4.62, etc., discussed by Smith 1995: 23. Mt 6.5–6 and Jerome, Ep. 22.25–26.

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boy’s prison and torture chamber.76 According to the text, Vitus’ pagan father had locked his Christian son in a cubiculum adorned with expensive fabrics, pillows, and gems to coerce Vitus to commit apostasy. Vitus then prayed for assistance to withstand the temptations, and the Lord responded by enveloping the cubiculum with a blinding light, which temporarily disabled his father and allowed Vitus to escape with his faith intact. Alternatively, the Roman matrona and martyr Caecilia faced sexual challenges in her cubiculum.77 Caecilia, an aristocratic Christian, had vowed to preserve her virginity, but her marriage to a pagan named Valerianus threatened it. When they entered the cubiculum for their first night together as a married couple, Caecilia deflected her husband’s entreaties to consummate the marriage by informing him that she already had a lover, the angelus dei, who had commanded that she preserve her virginity. Valerianus was initially suspicious that his wife had a human lover, but he was quickly persuaded to convert to Christianity and to embrace a celibate marriage. He then left the room (and the house) to find the Roman bishop Urban, who catechized and baptized the nobleman in an unspecified spot beyond the city walls. When Valerianus returned dressed in the white robes of the neophyte, he saw that Caecilia was not alone but sitting with the angel of God, who welcomed the husband into the cubiculum and crowned the couple with floral wreaths. Both examples share an understanding of the cubiculum as the household’s most holy and most treacherous space, the room in which Christians and non-Christians faced trials and tribulations. Here the inhabitants of a cubiculum triumphantly overcame tests of their faith or ascetic commitment, thereby demonstrating either that they were already devoted ascetics or, in Valerianus’ case, that they were prepared for conversion. None achieved triumph in the cubiculum without assistance: in both passions, God intervened directly within the room by the miracle of the bright light in Vitus’ case, and through the appearance of the angel in Caecilia’s. The figure, however, who is ostentatiously missing from these and other cubiculum scenes in the gesta is the Roman bishop. Indeed, while Roman bishops frequently visit aristocratic households in the narratives, they never enter this particular space, nor do they play any immediate role in the transformations ensuing within it. This is the case even in texts that expressly imagine the physical destruction or desecration of a 76 77

Passio S. Viti 7. Passio S. Caeciliae 4–8.

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cubiculum as a pagan ritual space within an aristocratic house. For example, although the Roman bishop Gaius ultimately entered the domus of an urban prefect in the “Passion of St. Sebastian” to baptize the householder and his family, he played no role in a crucial “home improvement” that led to the prefect’s salvation: the destruction of a cubiculum holovitreum that had been used by generations of family members for astral speculation.78 The bishop Stephen also did not appear in the scene from his passion, in which the tribune Olympius acted on advice from his Christian prisoner, a slave no less, and smashed the idols in his cubiculum. The “Passion of St. Caecilia” underscored the bishop’s spatial absence from the cubiculum even more literally. Valerianus physically left the room and the house altogether to seek out Urban’s liturgical powers. The text’s juxtaposition of the imagined spiritual intimacy of the couple’s cubiculum with the perfunctory description of Urban’s post outside Rome could not be more striking. An angel of God may enter the bedroom of a married couple, but bishops could not expect unmediated access to this highly privileged space. Given the moral ambivalence of the cubiculum, the fact that its secrecy could be interpreted in culturally negative terms and that many of its associated practices (e.g., sex and astrology) were unfitting for a bishop, it is perhaps not surprising that bishops are excluded from this particular room in the gesta martyrum. After all, Roman and Italian bishops frequently were accused of sexual misconduct. Gregory, we recall, actually replaced young boys and saeculares with monks and clergy as his personal attendants (ministerium cubiculi pontificalis) precisely because he recognized the potential abuse of power by those having access to his private chambers.79 In so doing, the bishop was not acting entirely on ascetic impulses. As Symmachus’ lengthy trial and loss of control of the city’s churches demonstrate, charges of sexual crimes or improprieties leveled against Roman bishops could potentially bring down their episcopate.80 Fifth- and sixth-century bishops might have wanted to stay out of the cubiculum, even if Roman audiences perceived it as a place of divine power and spiritual transformation within the domus. The exclusion of bishops from the cubiculum in the gesta martyrum also reflects a consensus that certain domains of domestic piety should remain beyond episcopal reach. In providing their audiences with exempla of 78 79 80

Acta S. Sebastiani 16.54, discussed in Sessa 2007a: 188, n. 53. Gregory, Ep. 5.57a (MGH Epistolae 2: 363). Chapter 6.

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how to be good Christians within the home, the gesta delineated a model of religious practice that could be enacted with or without the bishop’s supervision. Stories of harrowing spiritual and bodily experiences within the cubiculum could have inspired readers to envision their own domestic spaces as sites of ascetic endurance, the proper use of which was a matter of their own initiative and not the result of a bishop’s pressure or persuasion.81 They help to explain the continued significance of the private household as a place of Christian religious rites even in a city like Rome, where congregants could choose among many dozens of churches in which to worship. They also show that Romans conceived the cultivation of sanctity as a distinctly domestic process, which involved only select family members and did not necessarily require an episcopal impresario – much to the chagrin, we might imagine, of Roman bishops such as Damasus who endeavored to establish precisely this equation. More so perhaps than any other narrative feature of the gesta martyrum, the cubiculum scenes emphasize an alternative paradigm of the Christian community, one organized around household structures, spaces, and practices rather than civic or ecclesiastical institutions and monuments. Although bishops often played a role within this alternative model, especially in their capacity as liturgical officials, their categorical exclusion from the cubiculum underlines that the exercise and reach of their authority within the domestic sphere did have certain limitations. The Bishop’s Domestic Competitors: Priests, Deacons, and Holy Men If the bishop’s absence from the cubiculum is a significant narrative detail, so is the ubiquitous presence of other clergy and holy men within this room and other spaces of the domestic sphere. We have already noted the extent to which many Roman priests and deacons were not only householders in their own right but also forged close relationships with other dom¯us. Clergy and holy men participated in rituals of domestic piety either as personal spiritual advisors and/or in their more official capacities as titular priests or regional deacons. These were roles that placed them in continuous and direct contact with individual households.82 Although these ubiquitous relationships occasionally provoked hostile responses 81

82

Household practices, such as marital sex, could also be conceived in terms of ascetic endurance. See Cooper 1996: 108–43 and 2005: 91–107. See Chapters 2 and 6.

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from Christian officials, they nevertheless demonstrate that Roman bishops faced competition not only from heretics and schismatic bishops but also from their own clergymen. In fact, nonepiscopal spiritual advisors and ritual experts feature prominently in the gesta and in certain versions of the domestic conversion episode. Some even frequent the cubiculum, a room consistently deemed off limits to Roman bishops. For example, the lay holy man Sebastian and the priest Polycarp both entered a cubiculum of an urban prefect (although not the one used for pagan rites), whereas the deacon Cyriacus was granted special entrance to the cubicula of the daughters of the emperor Diocletian and of the Persian king Sapor.83 Their comparatively unfettered access to the bedrooms of the empire’s most powerful men and women suggests that these clergy and holy men might have enjoyed a competitive edge over bishops when it came to certain spaces and practices of the domestic sphere. Nonepiscopal household experts potentially fit more seamlessly into the hierarchies of power that had long defined the social structure of the elite household. The story of the Roman deacon Cyriacus and his interactions with the household of Diocletian in the “Passion of St. Marcellus” illustrates how nonepiscopal clergy might have been perceived as the dependents of a householder. In what is arguably the single most fantastic episode in all of the gesta, the emperor Diocletian turned to Cyriacus for ritual assistance when his daughter Artemia was possessed by a demon.84 (The demon, incidentally, had expressly requested the Roman deacon: “Unless Cyriacus the deacon comes,” he announced to the emperor, “I won’t leave.”85 ) After Cyriacus successfully performed an exorcism on the girl in the imperial cubiculum, he baptized both her and her mother, named Serena in the text.86 (The fact that deacons were technically not supposed to perform baptisms evidently did not trouble the authors of this narrative.) Diocletian’s reactions to these events underscore the importance of exchange as the social dynamic driving domestic conversion 83 84

85

86

Passio S. Marcelli 10–13. Passio S. Marcelli 10. The historical daughter of Diocletian was named Valeria, not Artemia. To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence for her conversion outside of this text. Passio S. Marcelli 10 (AASS Ian. II: 7): Hoc cum nuntiatum fuisset Diocletiano Augusto, intrauit ad eam in cubiculum: et ecce ipse daemon clamare coepit per os Artemie¸ praesente Diocletiano, dicens: Nisi venerit Cyriacus Diaconus, non exeo. Passio S. Marcelli 12. Again the martyr narrative presents false information. Prisca is Diocletian’s only known wife, and her conversion to Christianity is also an invention of the narrative.

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in the gesta. While the great persecutor of Christians did not personally convert (such a patently false transformation was clearly beyond the pale even for the authors of the gesta), Diocletian still reciprocated by extending to the deacon benefits of the emperor’s personal patronage and protection. First, he offered Cyriacus the gift of a house located near the emperor’s recently completed baths, and second, he sent the deacon to assist the Persian king Sapor (ostensibly the Sassanid Shapur II, 309–379), whose daughter Iobia was possessed by the same demon that had made Diocletian’s daughter ill.87 During the emperor’s lifetime, Diocletian protected Cyriacus from persecution, allowing the deacon not only to live unmolested in the house with two fellow priests but also to construct a baptistery within it.88 It was only after Diocletian’s death and the accession of Maximian that Cyriacus faced imprisonment, martyrdom, and the confiscation of his domus.89 Cyriacus, in other words, became Diocletian’s client, the two bound in an asymmetrical but still reciprocal relationship. While the imagined bond between Diocletian and Cyriacus is exceptional among the gesta, it is not unique. At least one other version of the domestic conversion episode presents a similar interaction between householder and clergy. According to their passion, the priest Anthimus and deacon Sisinnius encountered an enfeebled senator named Faltonius Pinianus, glossed in the narrative as the proconsul of Asia under Diocletian and Maximian.90 Through the mediation of Pinianus’ pagan but “most prudent” wife Lucina (none other, we are told, than the great-granddaughter of the emperor Gallienus), the clerics are promised rewards and protection if they heal the senator. Predictably, they direct Pinianus to become a Christian. Pinianus evidently agreed to their terms, and the clerics were brought into his cubiculum, where the dying dominus was lying on his bed. After discussing the primary tenets of the faith with the householder, Anthimus, Sisinnius, and five other Christian men cured the sickly senator, and after seven days of catechetical instruction, 87

88 89

90

Passio S. Marcelli 12–13. The location of the house iuxta thermas Diocletianas is noted at c. 15. Passio S. Marcelli 15 and 23. Passio S. Marcelli 23. Here our text again presents an inaccurate history of Diocletian’s reign. Both Diocletian and Maximian, co-augusti since 286, retired together in 305. Both came out of retirement in 308 after the tetrarchy effectively collapsed, partly because of Maximian’s attempt to retake the throne in the West. Maximian committed suicide in 308, and Diocletian did not die until 311. This is a different Sisinnius from the householder depicted in the “Passion of St. Clement.”

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baptized him, his wife Lucina, and “all those related to their familia and inheritance.”91 To show his gratitude, Pinianus presented Sisinnius and two of the men with an estate in Picenum next to the city of Auximus, where the deacon and his fellow Christians lived in safety until their martyrdom three years later.92 Anthimus meanwhile found refuge in a small house close to another of Pinianus’ estates located outside of Rome on the twentieth milestone of the Via Salaria, where he hid from the Roman officials until they dragged him away to the mines.93 As in the tale of Diocletian and Cyriacus in the “Passion of St. Marcellus,” this story imagines Roman clergy as dependents of an illustrious and prosperous householder, who enjoy the benefits of their patron’s wealth, and temporarily at least, his protection. The exceptionally high statuses of Diocletian and Pinianus might have demanded a more steeply hierarchical relationship with their domestic spiritual advisors, wherein the material and political power of the patronus was clearly differentiated from the social and spiritual capital provided by the clerics. In fact, outside of these two texts, the gesta fail to define the bond between householder and holy man in such explicitly paternalistic terms. More often priests and deacons in the gesta martyrum occupy a more ambivalent place in the household’s social structure, appearing both as beneficiaries of the householder’s largess and as his superior in ritual matters. In other words, their interactions with the domestic sphere were identical to those of the bishops. In the “Passion of St. Sebastian,” for example, the priest Polycarp healed and baptized the household of the primiscrinius Nichomachus in a scene depicting the rite of initiation with the same level of liturgical detail as in episcopal narratives such as the “Passion of St. Stephen.”94 Similar encounters, although lacking the vividness of the “Passion of St. Sebastian,” appear in other texts such as the “Passion of St. Laurentius,” in which the deacon Laurentius healed and baptized the vicarius Hippolytus and his household; and the “Passion of SS. Gordianus and Epimachus,” in which the priest Januarius, imprisoned in the house of the vicarius Gordianus, baptized his elite jailor, his wife, and his domus.95 In all of these passions, the 91

92 93 94 95

Passio SS. Anthimi, Sisinnii, Piniani, Lucinae et soc. 4 (AASS Mai II: 616): omnes qui pertinebant ad familiam et haereditatem eorum. Passio SS. Anthimi, Sisinnii, Piniani, Lucinae et soc. 5. Passio SS. Anthimi, Sisinnii, Piniani, Lucinae et soc. 7. Passio S. Sebastiani 36–37. Passio SS Gordiani et Epimachi.

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interactions between the clergy and the householders followed the same formulaic stages of the domestic conversion episode that we examined in the episcopal martyr narratives, whereby healings preceded confessions of faith, followed by household baptisms. In effect, one could simply substitute bishop for priest or deacon in these scenes, because the narratives’ ultimate outcome, at least from the householder’s perspective, was the same (i.e., a strengthened Christian aristocratic domus, with a reorientation of his domestic authority around stewardship and religious duties). That some authors of the Roman martyr narratives imagined episcopal and nonepiscopal clergy occupying similar if not identical positions in the conversion of an aristocratic domus demonstrates that bishops could not claim a monopoly on the hearts, minds, and rituals of Christians. It was possible to conceive of the aristocratic household as a transformational and historic Christian space that was not concomitant with the bishop’s presence. Priests and deacons could assume the very same roles within the domus as did their episcopal counterparts: as healers and spiritual advisors, as ritual celebrants, and as enablers of the householder’s transformation from a skeptical and persecuting pagan to a convinced and pious Christian, who now exercises his domestic authority exclusively with a view toward stewardship and the eternal health of his family. As these alternative iterations of the domestic conversion episodes show, fifth- and sixth-century Romans did not associate the bishop exclusively with the making of the ancient Christian aristocratic domus and dominus. CONCLUSION

Although they were neither written in concert nor read as a single body of texts in late antiquity, the Roman gesta martyrum reveal collective thinking about the significance of the aristocratic household in the ideological making of Christian Rome. They present a history of Rome as a city inhabited by wealthy senatorial elites whose conversion from paganism to Christianity defined their identities as men of power within the home and the civic sphere. Whether the gesta preserve records of active pagan practice among the aristocracy of fifth- and sixth-century Rome is a question that probably demands more consideration than has been given here. Alternatively, we have focused on the cultural implications of these tales of domestic conversion and on how they constitute responses to what might be termed a “crisis of identity” among Italian 271


elites of the day.96 How one elite householder asserted his authority over another in ethical and moral terms was an open question in the later fifth and sixth centuries. The gesta present a model of action for such men: adopt an emerging system of estate management, one organized around stewardship instead of ownership, that accentuated the religious obligations of the householder. The pagan householders who embrace this relatively new and peculiarly Christian discourse of oikonomia receive rewards both here and in the hereafter. Their family members are healed, their households held together intact, their domestic authority underlined, and most important, their future glory with Christ made certain. It is hardly a coincidence that many of our senatorial converts are also martyrs, their suffering and deaths vividly portrayed in later scenes of the passions. According to the social logic of the gesta, a male “senatorial aristocrat” is not necessarily a man who holds a high office (although this remains a relevant criterion) or even a dominus with great wealth (although this still clearly matters too). Rather, he is the father, husband, master, and patron who masterfully exercised his domestic agency in a manner that best ensures his household’s spiritual health. What also appears to have united the authors of the gesta was the determination that such transformations could not occur without the assistance of an outsider, a man who could channel divine power to the householder’s advantage and benefit. In many cases, this outsider is the bishop of Rome. In at least a half dozen versions of the domestic conversion episode, the bishop and householder enter into a series of exchanges that culminate in the healing and preservation of a domus and the establishment of the bishop as a permanent member of the household. Here bishops and households do not contend for the household and its resources. On the contrary, they cooperate in an idealized manner through the mutual offering of beneficia. Through such stories, told formulaically in at least six different texts, the gesta presented late Roman audiences with a strong argument for trusting their bishop in matters of household life and religion. Just as their hoary pagan ancestors had turned toward Rome’s bishops at moments of great difficulty, so too should they look to their pontiff ’s leadership, knowledge, and expertise to resolve their own domestic emergencies, whether it was the flight of a slave or personal identity crises. The relationship between bishops and householders in the gesta is also deceptively complex, however. For one, rather than simply asserting that 96

See Chapters 1 and 2.

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the authority of the paterfamilias is ceded to the bishop, the narratives envision a more nuanced system of power, wherein the structure of the domus is not a static pyramid but an oscillating reciprocity. The fact that texts like the “Passion of St. Alexander” make it difficult to determine who wields the greater influence over the domus – the pious householder or the pious bishop – hints at a far messier social reality. It was by no means a foregone conclusion that the bishop of Rome ought to have an honored and permanent place in the domestic sphere. Even in the early seventh century, householders still had to be “reminded” that his presence could serve the householder’s own interests as well as the bishop’s church. The apologetic framework of the episcopal passions becomes all the more palpable when they are read with other versions of the domestic conversion episode. Here priests, deacons, and lay holy men play the same roles within aristocratic domus as bishops. To be sure, there are some significant differences. For one, while deacons and priests could be a householder’s clients, no such association seems to have been made for bishops. Nevertheless, the mere existence of these spiritual competitors both in the gesta and in the society that produced them underlines the fact that bishops could not and did not monopolize domestic expertise when it came to the households of other men. More interesting, even when they were benignly envisioned as the worthy partner of the householder and the ritual leader of his transformation, bishops did not necessarily direct all religious activities within a home. Certain domestic spaces, notably the cubiculum, still lay outside the reach of episcopal authority. Trust, even in its ideal form, had its limits. Bishops in the gesta thus help to govern the domestic sphere, but they do so with a remarkably light touch and only at special moments, in particular spaces, and under certain conditions. Remarkably, even the episcopal martyr narratives do not imagine a society in which the householder’s agency over ethical and religious matters is handed over to the bishop.

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Conclusion

he clergy of sardinia had long posed challenges to rome’s

leadership, but the decision of their bishop, Januarius of Cagliari, T to place the administration of his church’s patrimony in the hands of thieving local landowners was the last straw.1 Writing to Januarius in July of 599, Gregory sternly directed his suffragan to use only clerics as overseers in the future. Unlike “secular men,” he explained, the clergy are “approved by your office” and thus can be more easily punished.2 Similar to other crises explored in this book, this incident boldly underlines two facts about households and bishops in late antique Italy: the line between domus and ecclesia was never firmly drawn, and Rome’s prelates viewed the breaching of the boundary as an opportunity for intervention in domestic matters. Gregory’s solution, to separate the interests of individual households from those of the church by having Januarius manage his see’s property directly, was intelligent but probably ineffective. Although clergy might be disciplined more efficiently than lay conductores, they were hardly impervious to the constant pressure of personal domestic allegiances. This was as true in the earliest moments of ecclesiastical history, when households literally provided the space, resources, and possibly even the leadership for Christian communities, as it was in the late sixth century, when the bishop of Rome struggled to govern an institution with its own nominally distinct personnel and legal property. The very nature of Gregory’s advice to Januarius, however, speaks to a more historically contingent development: the adaptation of household management as a model of government by late antique Roman 1 2

Gregory, Ep. 9.205. Gregory, Ep. 9.205.

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Conclusion

bishops. Although oikonomia had oriented discussions of episcopal leadership since the early second century, it did not define the Roman bishop’s identity and actions until the later fourth century, that is, well after Constantine’s conversion and at the precise moment when Western senatorial aristocrats began to embrace Christianity in larger numbers.3 More exactly, the period from ca. 440 to 600 was the most fruitful time for the recalibration of household management as a discourse of Roman episcopal authority. While earlier prelates such as Siricius and Innocent made important inroads, it was their successors – Leo, Gelasius, Symmachus, Pelagius I, and Gregory – who articulated their influence and power more systematically in terms of domestic expertise. Rather than always being an important facet of the bishop’s influence and identity, estate management became increasingly central over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries. Certainly the existing state of the evidence potentially mitigates this argument (i.e., the fact that medieval collection makers selectively preserved the letters of Rome’s bishops); there might have once been hundreds of documents attesting to the interests of thirdand fourth-century Roman prelates in oikonomia. Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that we are witnessing historical change. First, shifts in landholding patterns could have favored the Roman church’s profile as an elite landowner. Chapter 1 describes some of the primary differences between property management in the years from ca. 300 to 450 and ca. 450 to 600. Among the most notable was a drift toward regionalization, wherein portfolios shrank in size and geographic range. Whereas a fourth-century dominus such as Q. Aurelius Symmachus owned lands scattered across the empire, his mid-sixth-century counterpart Cethegus seems to have possessed properties distributed strictly within Italy and Sicily. In the earlier period, the Roman church also owned land throughout the Mediterranean. Precisely how its bishops managed these far-flung patrimonies remains an open question because there are very few sources documenting its administration. They did run into problems that were partly a consequence of distance, however. One of our few texts from this period, a letter from the bishop Celestine to Theodosius II, requests the emperor’s help in protecting Rome’s ownership of possessiones in Asia against the aggressive interests of local parties.4 After 450, the church’s patrimonies also contracted geographically and were henceforth located in Italy, the islands, and a few areas of 3 4

Salzman 2002. Celestine Ep. 23.

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southern Gaul and Dalmatia.5 Interestingly, this is the precise moment when episcopal interest in land management exploded.6 There are surely numerous explanations for this development, but changes in landholding patterns appear to have been a key factor. Relatively concentrated portfolios situated closer to Rome were more easily administered, thus allowing Rome’s bishop to practice household management with greater effectiveness and confidence. Moreover, given the likely drop in the total number of landholders in Italy, the Roman church could have risen to regional prominence essentially through attrition. Furthermore, the remission of the imperial administration in Italy between 476 and 554 might have compelled Roman bishops to assume a more dominant role in land management, especially because the new barbarian kings were Arians and hence less likely to involve themselves in such internal matters (as opposed to a Catholic emperor such as Theodosius II). As Gelasius’ and Pelagius’ letters show, during this time Rome relied heavily on networks of metropolitan and diocesan bishoprics as well as local elites to help with property management. Of course, some of these networks predate the Ostrogoths. Later fifth- and sixth-century prelates, however, put them to new uses at a time when secular authorities could not (or perhaps would not) provide routine assistance.7 Second, this chronology for the adoption of household management by Rome’s bishops coincides with another documented change in the episcopate: the appearance of the first Roman bishops and clergy with aristocratic backgrounds. Compared with their Gallic counterparts, Italian Christian elites hesitated to pursue clerical careers. However, they began to join the ranks during the second half of the fifth century (Felix III, consecrated in 483, was the city’s first senatorial bishop) and when this happened, they brought new expectations about government and influence to episcopal leadership. Among them was the axiomatic relationship between householding and public life, that is, that a man’s moral reputation as a civic leader hinged on his capabilities to manage his dependents, his properties, and his own person. Again, although 5

6

7

Spearing 1918: 1–20 and Recchia 1978: 11–14 detail Rome’s late fifth- and sixthcentury patrimonial losses. Cf. Marazzi 1998 and Moreau 2006, the two most recent studies of Roman ecclesiastical landholding. Virtually all of the evidence that they discuss dates from the tenure of Simplicius (468–483). This period (ca. 450–600) also corresponds with several major doctrinal controversies, which divided the Roman church from the emperor and episcopate of Constantinople. Caspar 1930–1933 remains an excellent treatment of these developments.

276

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oikonomia had long been part of Christian discussions of the episcopate (e.g., 1 Tim. 3:5), the concept became more acutely relevant when wealthy and socially distinctive men, who were reared to become possessores and domini, actually took charge of the church. What gives these developments historical significance in the long term is that expertise in household management gradually became tied to the office of the bishop and embedded within the institution of the Roman church. Of the five bishops listed previously, only Gregory had a senatorial pedigree and was a former public official. His extraordinary facility with domestic administration and his signature development of the discourse had much to do with his own background as an aristocratic paterfamilias. For this reason, we cannot interpret Gregory’s episcopate as a telos in the institutionalization of stewardship as a principal mode of episcopal government at Rome. Nevertheless, Gregory’s distinctive emphasis on household management is part of a larger pattern. He and his predecessors recognized that a reputation for handling certain types of elite domestic matters would bring them much-needed status as church leaders in both public and private domains. It offered them regular opportunities to intervene in the daily lives of their congregants and clergy and to forge relationships not only with heads of households but also with their wives, agents, tenants, and even their slaves. Through increasingly routine conversations, convent¯us, letter exchanges, and ritual activities, Roman bishops haltingly established their authority within certain spaces of Italy’s most important economic institution and a central venue of its political life. Without the trust of Italy’s laypeople and clerics in their quotidian and important matters, the bishop of Rome could not have become a civic leader, let alone “the pope” in the medieval sense of the term.8 Rome’s bishops, however, did not indiscriminately or inexorably impose their expertise on the households of other men. For one, they developed strikingly different approaches to the dom¯us of clerics and laymen. Chapters 4 through 7 demonstrate a marked contrast between the aggressive and invasive nature of episcopal interventions within clerical households and the more limited and even deferential tactics that they used when dealing with a lay domus. Clerical households were a major source of concern to Roman bishops, mostly because their status was so ambiguous. They posed a potential great danger to the church’s moral and 8

Consensus and trust were also crucial for the emperor and the efficacy of his influence across the empire. See Ando 2001.

277


material integrity. For these reasons, Rome’s prelates emphasized rules governing clerical marriage and the cleric’s handling of church property that linked the clergyman’s domus to the institution of the church. As we observed, these rules (not all of which were of the Roman bishop’s making) were continuously broken, but each infraction presented the bishop with yet another opportunity to intervene directly in the domestic life of his suffragan clergy. Alternatively, when dealing with the lay household, Roman bishops attempted to assert their influence over relatively few practices and problems, namely nuptial blessings, the marriages of captives, fugitive slaves who joined churches or monasteries, and the consecration and use of private churches. Although they could certainly behave imperiously and even violently against lay domini (Damasus’ home invasion, arrest, and accidental killing of an ascetic priest is one memorable example), they more often acted obligingly, searching for ways to meet the householder’s needs. In fact, the Roman bishop’s reputation as a domestic authority among the laity was forged mostly through a willingness to circumvent established rules in order to achieve results desired by the inquiring parties. It was the bishop’s flexibility, not his intransigence, that most recommended him as a unique and trustworthy expert in household affairs.9 Of course, Roman bishops also experienced differing degrees of success in their efforts to establish a durable presence in the households of other men and women. When resolving conflicts between Roman legal principles and emerging Christian values on matters like captivity and remarriage or fugitive slaves, the bishops might have been generally successful. (Unfortunately, the results of their interventions typically remain unknown, although the fact that many householders continued to request their assistance suggests progress.) They also often failed, however, and sometimes spectacularly. Gelasius was publicly censured by some of Rome’s most prominent householders for his mismanagement of a sex crime involving a cleric. Symmachus’ advocacy and practice of an extreme form of episcopal paternalism was also highly unpopular among Roman clerics and laypeople, and consequently the bishop literally lost control of the see for at least four years. More often, however, resistance to the bishop as a domestic expert materialized in less dramatic forms. A 9

Rome was not the only episcopal church to have recognized the pastoral benefits of a more flexible approach to the lay household. See Bailey 2011 on the sermons in the Eusebius Gallicanus collection from late antique Gaul.

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lay householder might ignore the bishop’s regulations on private chapels, or a provincial bishop could look the other way when a colleague illegally ordained an originarius. More subtly still, a family member could envision her household prayers as independent ritual actions undertaken within a space that was, in her mind at least, off limits to the bishop. Nevertheless, these actions and thoughts do not amount to an inherently antagonistic history of households and bishops. The bishop and householder were not necessarily antithetical figures, locked in a perennial battle over control of “the private.”10 Not only were public and private relational (and not oppositional or ontological) categories, but the Roman bishop was also a householder of sorts, the church itself a domestic institution. The problem was that ecclesia and domus were too closely intertwined, and not that they constituted separate spheres, the former synonymous with the public, the latter with the private. Moreover, the Italian paterfamilias’ agency over his household’s ethical and religious life remained robust; in fact, in certain ways it was accentuated, often through the bishop’s help. This development was especially significant in a society where the ethics of stewardship, landholding, and local connections were increasingly paramount in the constitution of elite identity. Stewardsh ip: A Model of Pastoral Leadersh ip in a World of Tension

When the bishop of Rome and others theorized his domestic authority, they compared him to a slave-steward, whether by biblical allusion or sociorealist nomenclature. Although his hierarchical status within the church and material responsibilities increasingly pulled him into the orbit of the dominus, the bishop was emphatically a dispensator, the servus summi patrisfamilias and the Lord’s chief agent, charged with the final reckoning of the domus dei on Judgment Day. Significantly, stewardship was not 10

Markus 1990: 129–36; Maier 1995, 1995a, 1996 and 2005; Burrus 1997; L. Pietri 2002; Frankfurter 2005a and 2010; and Bowes 2007 and 2008. To be clear, most of these studies examine the household as a “private” space in regard to its association by bishops and other authorities with “heretical” or “pagan” ritual activities and teachers; several also discuss material dating earlier than 450. Although Roman bishops certainly could associate heresy with the household (cf. Maier 1996 on Leo and the Manicheans), they typically did not. Further studies, especially those of a comparative nature, could shed further light on this potential point of contrast between Rome ca. 450–600 and other regions and periods.

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exclusively an episcopal discourse in late antiquity. On the contrary, it was presented by a wide range of authorities (including a number of Roman bishops) as an inspired alternative to traditional models of household management, which were grounded in the possession of property and the production of heirs. In short, stewardship was already becoming a new elite model of ascetic domesticity when Rome’s bishops appropriated it as a distinctly ecclesiastical paradigm of pastoral leadership. What made stewardship an especially powerful pastoral model for episcopal authority was its material resonances and implications. Discussions of “sex and money” have appeared in every chapter of this book precisely because they were among the primary preoccupations of late Roman Christians. Contrary to what some scholars have asserted, they are not mere ciphers “mask[ing] more important areas of controversy,” nor were they exclusively “worldly” matters having no place in the life of a holy bishop.11 As the steward of the church, the Roman bishop was expected to watch over the donations of his flock and to ensure that these gifts were invested productively. Christians offered their wealth and property not only for the welfare of others but also for their own spiritual health and future. Thus when a prelate inappropriately alienated church property, his action had political, ethical, and spiritual implications. Trustworthiness in this critical domain was essential. Likewise, the discipline of clerics, especially their sexual habits and marital relationships, was central to the task of governing the church. These were the men who performed the rituals and looked after the ecclesiastical coffers at the level of the provincial see and titular church. Ultimately they were Rome’s responsibility and householders openly voiced their criticisms of bishops who failed to steer Italy’s clergy in the right directions. Gelasius especially struggled with this problem, although his confrontations with householders over adultery and abduction marriages were hardly unique. Christians were genuinely confused about how to live material lives. In recent years, scholars have been reluctant to overemphasize Christianity’s impact on daily life. Their circumspection is certainly warranted, but in so doing they have overlooked some of the considerable hermeneutic quandaries that elite householders faced even if they chose a “respectable” Christianity over its more radical siblings. Thanks to the manifold (and inconsistent) pronouncements of biblical scriptures and Christian authorities on marriage, adultery, wealth, slavery, and domestic religion, late Roman householders had to navigate a shifting ethical landscape that 11

Moorhead 1992: 135.

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Conclusion

nevertheless remained tied to the ancient poles of property and procreation. An authority with knowledge of the challenges engendered by daily life in a semi-Christian world was both especially welcome and desperately needed. Stewarding the Christianization of the domestic sphere, therefore, was arguably the most significant pastoral role that the bishop of Rome had. It might have been the most significant pastoral role of bishops throughout the late antique world, but this is a matter for further studies. This brings us to our final point. Bishops, for good reason, are thought to have been among the most important (and infamous) agents of Christianization. Their sermons, rituals, and written regulations aimed at transforming how people perceived and practiced many aspects of their lives.12 Recent studies of Christianization underline its processual nature. Bishops could not and did not effect simple substitutions of, for example, a pagan practice for a Christian rite.13 Rather, they participated in an ongoing process that was driven by consonances and dissonances between established and emerging discourses on the relationship between human and divine.14 Tension, this study has shown, was an especially critical dynamic in the formation of stewardship as a model of Christian household management. It was also central to the moral and material formation of the bishop as an expert in household life. Tension, in other words, is not what kept households and bishops apart in late Roman Italy. On the contrary, tension is what brought them together, thereby creating the possibilities for episcopal leadership in Rome, Italy, and beyond. 12

13 14

Cf. Laeuchli 1972; Pietri 1976; Klingshirn 1994; Maxwell 2006; Latham 2007; and Bailey 2011. Forcefully argued by Bowes 2007. On the dual importance of assimilation and dissonance in the process of Christianization, see Frankfurter 1998 and 2010.

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312

Index

Acacian schism, 212 actor (domestic agent), 48, 50, 51, 158 Acts of Paul and Thecla, 255, 257 Ad Gregoriam in palatio, 63, 80–81, 129, 152, 251 authorship, 80 adultery, 128, 129, 133, 142, 144, 211, 240 Aemilius of Beneventum, 102 Agapitus of Rome and the administration of church property, 119 aristocratic background, 103 Alaric, 39 Alexander I of Rome and the baptism of dependents, 149 Amandianus, vir illustris, 158 Ambrose of Milan, 57, 67 Ambrosiaster, 70, 262 and nuptial blessings, 132 on First Timothy, 90, 92 on stewardship, 64 Ammianus Marcellinus, 35, 52 Ampliatus, vicedominus of the Roman church, 107 Anastasius I of Rome father of Innocent I, 102 Anastasius of Thessalonica, 179 Anastasius, Emperor, 94 Anatolius, vicedominus of the Roman church, 108 Andrew of Tarentum, 176, 188 Apion estates, 47, 117, 121 apostolic succession, 26, 88

Apostolic Tradition, 262 Apulia, 117, 174 archdeacon, 108 Aristotle, 5 Arius Didymus, 7 Arjava, Antti, 53 Arles, 122 Ascanius of Tarragona, 200 asceticism and domestic life, 3, 45 and the late Roman Gallic aristocracy, 58 and the late Roman Italian aristocracy, 37, 58–60, 77 Augustine of Hippo, 25, 52, 54, 109, 148 Augustus, 8 Aulus Gellius, 72 Aurelian, 114 Avitus of Vienne, 206 Basilica of SS. John and Paul, 56, 104 Basilica of St Maria Maggiore, 213 Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, 215 Basilica of St Peter, 100, 158, 205, 214, 219, 222, 225, 243, 244 Basilica Sessoriana, 239, 243 Basilius, Caecina Decius Maximus and the sciptura of 483, 222 participation in episcopal succession, 204 Bassus, Junius, 245 Benenatus, Roman priest, 217

313

Index

bishop of Rome administration of church property, 96–98, 113–124, 226–230 and asceticism, 91–93 and sex crimes, 180, 239–245 as householder-steward, 14–19, 88–98, 209 as father and husband, 101–105 as guardian of wards, 107, 256 definition of a clerical cursus, 179–182 expert in household management, 124, 129, 166–172, 235–239 limitations of influence within the domestic sphere, 172–173, 247, 263–271, 273, 278 on clerical marriage, 177–190 on problems of marriage and remarriage, 128–147. See also nuptial blessings and captivity and remarriage on slaves within the Christian home, 150–154 on stewardship, 70–72, 78–80, 81–83, 84–85, 86, 88–98 on the return of fugitive slaves and coloni, 157–161 oversight of clerical households, 90, 137, 196–199, 206, 277 oversight of private estate churches, 166–172 relationship with elite lay households, 3, 29, 196–197, 210–212, 216–217, 272, 278. See also Chapter 4 relationship with Italian clergy, 2, 98, 122, 160, 163, 167, 176, 274 residence(s) in Rome, 100–101, 108 scholarship on, 27–28 social background, 29, 103–104, 277 suspicions of mismanagement, 89, 96–97. See also Chapter 6 bishops and church property, 18, 193 and the domestic sphere, 21, 25, 57, 160, 168 and the ransoming of captives, 140, 188 as civic leaders, 22–25 as patresfamilias, 14–16, 193

as traditional householders, 18, 102, 192–195. See also Chapter 5 and bishop of Rome legal definition of proprietary oversight, 115 Boniface II of Rome, 112 and episcopal succession, 205 aristocratic background, 103 chosen by predecessor for episcopate, 204 Bowes, Kim, 51–52, 56–57 Brown, Peter, 3 Bruttium, 117 Caesarius of Arles, 25, 173, 206 Calabria, 117, 187 Callistus of Rome suspicions of mismanagement, 88–90 Campania, 116 captivity and remarriage, 139–147. See also postliminium Cassiodorus, 14, 15, 36, 44, 48, 220, 283 castitas, 11, 12, 53, 144 Cato the Elder, 7, 73, 76 Celestine I of Rome and property management, 121 celibacy as a clerical ideal, 18, 102, 177, 178, 180 as a lay ideal, 183 Cethegus, Fl. Rufius Petronius Nichomachus, 196–7, 275 role in appointment of Syracusan bishop, 196 charta Cornutiana, 164 children, 8, 10, 11, 46, 53, 54, 67, 72, 73, 84, 102, 106, 149, 153, 176, 188, 190, 195, 196 church of Rome archives for clergy, 198 as a domestic institution, 98–124 before Constantine, 88–90 bishop’s residence and headquarters. See also Lateran and bishop of Rome property holdings, 116–117 and slaves and domestic agents, 107, 119–123 Cicero, 7, 73

314

Index

Latin translation of Xenophon, Oikonomikos, 68 Clement I of Rome and the baptism of dependents, 149 clementia, 79, 187 clergy and property crimes, 191–192 and sex crimes, 174, 187, 189, 211 and the alienation of church property, 197 as husbands and fathers, 174–176 as property owners, 199 entrance and advancement within the cursus, 171, 179–182 illegal ordination of slaves and coloni, 155–161 resistance to the bishop of Rome, 183, 207 social background, 217 clerical marriage, 177–190. See also celibacy Columella, 5, 7, 36, 73, 76 concubines, 153–154, 176, 186 Constantine, 43 and Silvester, 97, 180 and the apocryphal Roman Synod of 324, 110 and the legal definition of church property, 114–115 conventicula, 110, 115 as venues of episcopal selection, 220 conventus, 110–113 as venue for episcopal selection, 224 ethical dangers of, 112 Cooper, Kate, 12, 17, 21, 53, 59 Corsica, 25, 117, 176 Council of Antioch (341), 193 Council of Chalcedon (451) and church property, 115 regulation of bishops and church property, 193 Council of Nicaea (325) regulation of the clerical household, 183 Council of Saragossa (398), 164 Cracco Ruggini, Lellia, 117 creditarius, 49. See also domestic agents and stewards cubiculum, 24

accessibility to Roman bishop, 264–267 depiction in the gesta martyrum, 267 personal household of the bishop, emperor or king, 109 secrecy and moral ambivalence, 264 Dalmatia, 122 Damasus of Rome as rector of the Roman church, 91 expulsion of priest performing private mass, 164, 210 relationship with elite lay households, 210 de Bruyn, Theodore, 54 De divitiis, 84 deacons, 29, 30, 110, 122, 174, 194, 205, 217, 219, 242, 262 and clerical marriage, 92, 102, 177, 186 and episcopal elections, 219 and household management, 96 as spiritual competitors to the Roman bishop, 267–271 illicit ordination of, 155 decretals, 31, 184 Decretum Gelasianum, 250 defensor ecclesiae, 119, 120, 187, 191 Demetrias, Anicia, 77 foundation of St Stephen, 86 dining, 12, 92 Diocletian, 43, 52 depiction in the gesta martyrum, 268 Dionysius Exiguus, 56, 112 panegyric of Gelasius, 112 dispensator, 49, 66, 69, 84, 93. See also domestic agents and stewards domestic agents, 39–40 elite agents, 50–51 sociolegal status, 49–50 domestic authority and modern scholarship, 51–54 domestic religion. See also household management and Christianity, 55–61, 166–172 responses of bishops to, 13, 163–166 responses of the late Roman state to, 13, 74, 163–166 role of householder’s family and dependents, 12

315

Index

domestic religion (cont.) traditional deities and rituals, 12, 55, 56–57, 73 domestic space and religious rituals, 56–57, 261 as public and private, 24 elite housing, 38 domus. See household domus dei, 16 Dufourcq, Albert, 249 ecclesiasticae familiae maior, 107 Edict of Milan (so-called), 114 Edwards, Catherine, 12 elites and asceticism, 58–60, 77–78 and clerical careers, 60 wealth and identity in flux, 26, 40–45, 259 emancipation of children, 54 Enchiridion of Sixtus, 129 Ennodius of Pavia, 105, 220 epithalamium, 132 episcopal succession and democratic practices of election, 203, 219 and dynastic principles, 199–206, 219, 220–221 and Old Testament priesthoods, 199, 202 competing models in Rome, 219–224 episcopalis audientia, 23, 111, 189 Epistula ad Demetriadem de vera humilitate, 76–78 estate management. See household management Eusanius of Agrigentum, 191 Eusebius of Vercelli, 109 Evangelus, deacon of Sipontum, 188 Exsuperius of Toulouse, 199 Felix III of Rome as father and husband, 102 Rome’s first aristocratic bishop, 28, 103 Felix IV of Rome and episcopal succession, 204 appointment of a successor at a conventus/conventicula, 112 aristocratic background, 103

Felix of Sipontum, 174, 188–190 fermentum, 233 First Clement, 74 First Corinthians 7, 177, 182 First Timothy, 15, 77, 88, 90, 177 Foucault, Michel, 21 Galerius Edict of Toleration, 114 Gallipoli, 188 Gaudemet, Jean, 115 Gaudentius of Aufinum, 197 Gelasius of Rome, 20 and property administration, 121, 124 and property crimes of Italian clergy, 191 letter to Emperor Anastasius, 94 on clerical marriage, 180, 184 on nuptial blessings and veiling, 136–137 on private estate churches, 167, 168, 169 on stewardship, 94, 108 on the flight of slaves and coloni, 158–161 relationship with elite lay households, 210 Gesta de Xysti purgatione. See Symmachan Forgeries gesta martyrum baptism of households, 260–263 cooperation between households and Roman bishops, 252–260 dating, authorship, and provenance, 32, 248–252 definition of elite lay identity, 255–260, 271 domestic conversion episode, 247, 249, 252–263 limitations of episcopal authority in the domestic sphere, 263–271, 273 Passion of SS. Anthimus and Sisinnius, 269 Passion of SS. Gordianus and Epimachus, 270 Passion of SS. Polychronius, Xystus, Laurentius and Hippolytus, 98 Passion of St Alexander, bishop of Rome, 252, 253–255, 260

316

Index

Passion of St Anastasia, 251 Passion of St Clement, bishop of Rome, 257 Passion of St Cornelius, bishop of Rome, 258 Passion of St Marcellus, bishop of Rome, 268 Passion of St Sebastian, 270 Passion of St Stephen, bishop of Rome, 252, 258 Gesta Polychronii. See Symmachan Forgeries Gothic War, 26, 29, 41, 44, 122, 186 Gregory I of Rome and clerical households, 188–190 and property crimes of Italian clergy, 191 and slaves, 107, 148 and the administration of church property, 123, 124 and the clerical household, 174, 187 and the rector, 120 aristocratic background, 104 as apocrisiarius in Constantinople, 59 as guardian of wards, 106 as paterfamilias, 15 Dialogues, 87 forced conversion of rustici on church estates, 149 Liber regulae pastoralis, 81, 84 on clerical marriage, 181 on private estate churches, 168, 171 on stewardship, 81–82, 84–85, 95 relationship with Italian clergy, 188–190 re-staffing of the bishop’s cubiculum, 108 guardianship, 105–107, 238, 253 Gurdimerus, Roman comes, 124 Hellenistic treatises peri oikonomias, 7, 66 Hesychius of Vienne, 206 Hilarius of Arles, 203 Hilarus of Rome and episcopal succession, 200–201, 203 on clerical marriage, 179, 184 Himerius of Tarragona, 133, 134, 179 Hippolytus of Rome and household management, 88–90

Honorius regulation of the clerical household, 183 Honorius of Salona, 121, 123 Hormisdas of Rome and episcopal succession, 204 aristocratic background, 103 as guardian, 106 father of Silverius, 102 Hostilius, comes, 136 conflict with Gelasius, 210 house churches, 16, 261 household. See also household management and property as a masculine space, 1, 257 as the cornerstone of the ancient economy, 1, 21 fluid boundaries with the church, 3–16, 118, 125, 152, 190, 199, 274 membership, 45 relation to the state in Greco-Roman thought, 6, 7 Household Codes (Haustafeln), 66 household management ancient Greco-Roman discourse of authority and government, 1, 5–8, 35 and asceticism, 17, 58–60, 91–93, 150–152 and dispute resolution, 73, 111 and gender, 6, 8, 12, 15, 257 and imperial authority, 8, 36, 79 and property administration, 37, 64, 256 and the salvation of family and dependents, 74–83, 259 as a rhetorical program, 7, 36, 89 as an index of moral character, 7, 8, 35–36, 71, 89 discourse of episcopal authority and government, 2, 14–19, 87, 274–277 Four Principal Domains, 9–13, 35 in the Bible, 16 Huns, 139 Hunter, David, 91, 131 Ignatius of Antioch, 89, 133 imperial authority and the domestic sphere, 8

317

Index

imperial household, 125 praepositus sacri cubiculi, 35 res privata, 24, 47 inheritance, 10. See also Chapters 5 and 6 Innocent I of Rome and episcopal succession, 199 and the oversight of clerical households, 185 on captivity and remarriage, 139, 142–145 on clerical marriage, 184 son of Anastasius I, 102 Italia suburbicaria, 117 ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Roman church, 3, 25 numbers of dioceses, 163 Italy barbarian invasions and kingdoms, 26, 41, 117, 171 changes in urbanism, 26, 42 economic history and material decline, 26, 42 imperial presence and authority, 43, 276 siege of Rome (410), 139 Januarius of Cagliari, 192, 274 Jerome, 18, 55, 59, 60, 68, 69, 83, 112, 259, 264 John Chrysostom, 25, 164 John II of Rome and episcopal succession, 204 as Mercurius, tiutlar priest of St Clemente, 233 John III of Rome aristocratic background, 103 John of Gallipoli, 188 John the Deacon, 15, 118, 285 Julian, 35 Julian, of Eclanum, 102 Julius I of Rome, 198 Justinian definition of the “bishop’s church,” 115 Gothic War and (re)conquest of Italy, 42 laws barring husbands, fathers, and grandfathers from the episcopate, 103, 183, 195, 242

legal definition of bishops as patresfamilias, 45, 193 regulation of private estate churches, 165 Klingshirn, William, 140 Lateran arca vero vel domo, 105 Rome’s episcopal residence and administration, 99–101 Symmachus’ loss of control over, 100. See also Chapter 6 Latium, 116 Laurentian Fragment, 32, 212, 225, 236, 239, 241 Laurentian schism, 212–245. See also Symmachan Forgeries and sex crimes, 239–245 and the alienation of church property, 226–230 and the scriptura of 483, 222–224, 225, 228 and the stewardship of church property, 225–239 and the titular priests, 230–235 charges against Symmachus, 212, 215, 220, 225, 236 debates over episcopal succession, 219–224 Roman Synod of 499, 213, 219–221 Roman Synod of 501, 214, 222–224, 226–230 Roman Synod of 502, 214, 235, 239 social alliances, 216–217 Theodoric’s interventions, 214, 215 traditional interpretations of, 212 Laurentius, archdeacon and Xystus II, 97 Laurentius, archpriest, 32, 209, 212, 213, 215. See also Laurentian schism consecration at St Maria Maggiore, 213 in control of Roman churches, 215 Lent, 78, 151 Leo I of Rome and episcopal succession, 201–203 and slaves, 152

318

Index

and the oversight of clerical households, 181 on captivity and remarriage, 139, 145–147 on clerical marriage, 179, 183, 184 on enslaved concubines and marriage, 153–154 on fugitive slaves and coloni, 157 on slaves, 148 on stewardship, 64, 70–72, 78–80, 93–94 on the alienation of church property, 227 relationship with Italian clergy, 181 Leo I, emperor, 165 Leyser, Conrad, 17, 251 Liber Pontificalis, 97, 108, 156, 194, 198, 244, 250 dating and authorship, 32 donation lists, 97, 116 Llewellyn, P. A. B., 225, 230 Lombards, 26, 41, 117, 188 Lucania, 117 Lucifer of Cagliari, 210 Lucillus, corrupt bishop of Malta, 191 Lucius of Rome, 194 Lupercalia, 211 Magetia, femina spectabilis founder of private estate church, 169 maiordomus, 48 maiores familiae, 48 Malta, 191 Manicheans trial in Rome, 60 Marazzi, Federico, 42 Marcarius, Roman priest expulsion from private home by Damasus, 210 Marcella Christian widow and ascetic householder, 59 marriage and abduction, 210 and slavery, 153–154 associated rituals, 130 Christian views on, 45, 128, 142, 146 clerical marriage. See clerical marriage clerical participation in, 132–134

engagement practices, 130, 135, 136 in Roman law, 10, 130, 153 Matthews, John, 43 Maxima, femina illustris, 158 Maximus of Turin, 75–76 Mazza, Roberta, 113 Melania the Younger, 38, 45, 59, 150 Meyer, Ulrich, 68 moderatio, 11, 53, 151 monasteries established in households, 57 illicit entry of slaves and coloni, 155–161 municipal archives, 167, 198 Natalis of Salona, 93, 125 Nelson, Janet, 20, 94 Nero, 79 Nicetas of Aquileia, 139, 145, 154 Noble, T. F. X., 32 notaries (notarii) agents of the Roman church, 189 domestic agents in Roman households, 40, 48 primicerius notariorum, 104, 198 secundarius notariorum, 111 Nundinarius of Barcelona, 200, 229 nuptial blessings and veiling, 128–139 mandated for clerical marriages, 185 Odoacer, 40 oikonomia. See also household management and the ordering of the household, city, cosmos, and nature, 4 as a formal literary property in ancient rhetoric, 4 in Christian theology, 4 oikonomos clerical steward, 116, 165, 193 domestic steward in the Greek household, 68 oikos. See household oikos theou. See domus dei Olympiodorus, 39 Ostrogoths, 26, 41, 48, 106, 118, 209 Palladius, Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus, 36, 40, 49 Opus agriculturae, 36, 40, 49 papacy, 1, 26, 27, 28

319

Index

paterfamilias and traditional domestic religion, 12 bishops defined as patresfamilias in Roman law, 45 evaluation and oversight of, 17 in late antiquity, 46 in Roman law and classical culture, 10, 14 privileging personal interests over the common good, 17, 72, 178, 195, 241 patria potestas in late antiquity, 45, 54 in Roman law and classical culture, 10 patronage, 52, 253 Paul and domestic authority, 57 Paul of Samosata, 114 Paulinus of Nola, 69, 83, 102 epithalamium, 131 Pelagius I of Rome and Cethegus, patricius, 196–197 and clerical marriage, 186 and the administration of church property, 122, 123, 124 and the oversight of clerical households, 122, 185 on clerical marriage, 184 on nuptial blessings and veiling, 137–138 on private estate churches, 168, 170 Pelagius II of Rome, 107 Peter and apostolic succession, 201 and domestic authority, 57 and Roman primacy, 26, 88 as primus cultor, 88, 95 Peter of Altinum, 214 Peter, Roman subdeacon, 122, 186 Peter, son of Lucillus of Malta, 191 Picenum, 117 pietas, 10, 11, 53, 151 Pietri, Charles, 1, 252 Pietri, Luce, 166 Pinianus, 38, 59 Placidia, femina illustris, 159 Plato, 5, 17 Pliny the Elder, 40

Pliny the Younger, 73 as matchmaker, 133 Plutarch, 8, 88 polypticha, 118 pope, 15, 28 postliminium, 140–141, 145, 147 Praedestinatus, 134 Praetextatus, Vettius Agorius, 60 Pragmatic Sanction, 41 presbyters. See priests and titular priests priests, 29, 32, 70, 104, 107, 187, 194, 205, 217. See also titular priests and clerical marriage, 92, 102, 175, 176, 177 and episcopal elections, 219 and household management, 96 and nuptial blessings and veiling, 132 and private estate churches, 159, 168 and the administration of church property, 92, 194 as spiritual competitors to the Roman bishop, 210, 267–271 illicit ordination of, 155 in the Old Testament, 199 Melchizedek as model for, 202 pagan, 12 private as a relational category (to publicus), 23–24 meanings in Latin and Roman culture, 23–24 private estate churches, 86, 161–172 civil and ecclesiastical regulation of, 163–166 consecration by local bishops, 167, 169 increased oversight by Roman bishops, 166–172 Probus, Flavius Anicius Petronius Probus Addressee of Innocent, Ep. 36, 143 Probus, Roman Abbot, 110 Probus, S. Claudius Petronius, 38, 245 procurator, 48, 49, 78. See also domestic agents and stewards property alienation of church property, 225, 226–230 changes in landholding patterns, 37–42, 275

320

Index

churches as property owners – legal history, 113–116 ecclesiastical donations and salvation, 191, 226, 280 forms of land management, 39 late Roman legal concepts of, 37 portfolios of Italian elites, 37–39 women as property owners, 9 Prosper of Aquitaine, 76 Prudentius, 259 public as a relational category, 23–24 meanings in Latin and Roman culture, 23–24 quadripartitum, 118, 197 Rapp, Claudia, 155 rector domestic agent in the Roman church, 120 the Roman bishop as, 90, 91 Regula Magistri, 48, 99 reserved Eucharist, 57 Roman Synod of 465, 200 Roman Synod of 499. See Laurentian schism Roman Synod of 501. See Laurentian schism Roman Synod of 502. See Laurentian schism Roman Synod of 595, 108 Rome, 25, 26 general population fluctuations, 27 Rostovsteff, Michael, 51 Rusticiana, 50 Rusticus of Narbonne, 153 Saller, Richard, 9, 53 Salvian of Marseilles, 52 San Giovanni di Ruoti, 38, 42 Sardinia, 25, 117 Scholasticus, defensor of the Roman church, 191 scriptura of 483. See Laurentian schism Sebastianus, Roman deacon, 122 Seneca, 9, 10 De clementia, 79 Severus, Valerius Eutropius

and bronze lamp with Christian inscription, 57, 127 Shepherd of Hermas, 74 Sicily, 25, 38, 40, 42, 59, 117, 176, 186, 187, 275 Silverius of Rome, 108 aristocratic background, 103 son of Hormisdas, 102 Silvester of Rome and the apocryphal Roman Synod of 324, 110, 180 apocryphal baptism of Constantine, 97 as steward and donor in the Liber Pontificalis, 97 simony, 236 Simplicius of Rome, 194 and the quadripartitum, 197 and the scriptura of 483, 204, 222 appointment of successor, 112, 204 Sipontum, 174, 188 Siricius of Rome on clerical marriage, 179 on nuptial blessings and veiling, 133, 134 slavery, 47 Christian views on, 70, 148–150 slaves, 45, 59, 266 and discipline, 6, 8 and noxal liabilities, 81 as church property, 107 conversion by Christian masters, 148, 256, 257, 258 flight to churches and monasteries, 155–161 organization of within the home, 12 sodomy and the bishop of Rome, 187 Sotinel, Claire, 103 spiritual advisors in late Roman households, 55 in the Roman bishop’s household, 112 stational liturgy, 233 Stephen I of Rome and the baptism of dependents, 149 stewards as biblical figures and agents of God, 91, 192 as servants in the Roman household, 39, 65

321

Index

stewards (cont.) householders as, 74–78, 83, 84. See also Chapter 2 Roman bishops as, 18–19 sociolegal status, 49–50, 65 stewardship and care of the poor, 64 and Roman episcopal authority, 88–98 and the reckoning of accounts, 80, 82, 93–94 as a discourse of salvation, 70–72 as the oversight of God’s land and people, 63 in the Bible, 67 paradoxical discourse of authority and government, 18–19, 64–65, 69–85, 94–96 patristic views of, 67–68, 281 stuprum, 189, 240 subdeacons, 30, 120, 138, 170, 179, 183, 186 Symmachan Forgeries, 32 and stewardship of church property, 235–239 and the Laurentian schism, 217 apocryphal Roman Synod of 324, 110, 180, 184, 185, 224, 242 Gesta de Xysti purgatione, 208, 236–239, 243–244 Gesta Polychronii, 235 Symmachus of Rome and episcopal succession, 204 and sex crimes, 239–245 and the administration of church property, 226–230 and the Laurentian schism. See Laurentian schism as guardian of wards, 105 building projects at St Peter’s, 244 consecration at the Lateran basilica, 213 construction of episcopia at St Peter’s, 100 Symmachus, Q. Aurelius, 38, 275 as matchmaker, 133 Symmachus, Q. Aurelius Memmius, 36 Syracuse, 186, 191, 196 Tacitus, 8, 35, 88

Teia, comes, 161 tenants coloni, 41, 46–47, 69, 123, 155–161 conductores, 10, 39, 46, 75, 119, 123–124 Tertullian, 131, 133 Theodoric, 36, 44, 100, 214 and the Laurentian schism. See Laurentian schism Theodorus, vir illustris and consiliarius of Pelagius I founder of private estate church, 170 Theodosian Code, 50 Theodosius II assistance in management of Roman patrimonies, 121 Thomas, John Philip, 163 Three Chapters controversy, 122 titular churches of Rome (tituli), 231–233, 261 titular priests, 110, 124, 217, 219, 231–234 and the administration of church property, 230, 232 as stewards of ecclesiastical donations, 225, 234 ritual functions, 233 strong ties to neighborhood churches, 233 Totila, 41 Tuscany, 117 Uhalde, Kevin, 128 Ullmann, Walter, 202 Ulpian, 9 univira, 178, 180 Ursa, captive wife and Christian, 139 Valila, vir illustris founder of private estate church, 164, 167 Vandals, 40 Venantius, patricius and ex-ascetic, 59, 107 Vera, Domenico, 49 Veronense Sacramentary, 134 Via Appia, 117 vicedominus. See also domestic agents and stewards domestic agent in the Roman church, 108 in private late Roman households, 48

322

Index

Victricius of Rouen, 199 Vigilius of Rome, 205 and the administration of church property, 122 aristocratic background, 103 as guardian of a ward, 106 vilicus, 68, 73 in late antique households, 49 in Roman households, 76 villa churches. See private estate churches Villa Romana del Casale, 38 virginity requirement for clerical marriages, 178

Weber, Max, 20 widowhood and ascetic renunciation, 59 Wirbelauer, Eckhard, 218 Xenophon, 6 Oikonomikos, 6, 68 Xystus II of Rome, 97 Xystus III of Rome in the Symmachan Forgeries, 235, 236, 239, 243 Zeno, 165, 167

323

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