CENTRO PRO UNIONE N. 71 - Spring 2007 ISSN: 1122-0384 semi-annual Bulletin In this issue: Letter from the Director...................................................p. 2 The Relationship between Bishops, the Church and Christian Communities in the Roman Empire of the IV Century Michel-Yves Perrin ................................................p. 3 Methodist/Roman Catholic Relations. Strengthening Each Other’s Hand in God Gillian Kingston ................................................... p. 14 A Bibliography of Interchurch and Interconfessional Theological Dialogues Twenty-second Supplement (2007) ...................................... p. 24 Centro Pro Unione - Via S. Maria dell'Anima, 30 - 00186 Rome, Italy A Center conducted by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement www.prounione.urbe.itDirector's Desk We are pleased to present the twenty-second up-date of the Bibliography of the International Interchurch Theological Dialogues compiled by Dr. Loredana Nepi, our librarian. You may also find the up-to-date bibliography (in real time) on our web site at all times (http://www.prounione.urbe.it click on library and then go to the bibliography of interconfessional dialogues called “dia”). In this issue of the Bulletin, we are publishing the corrected version of the lecture given by Dr. Michel Perrin at the symposium sponsored by the Ecumenical Institute “St. Bernardino”-Venice, the Institute catholique de Paris, the Angelicum and the Centro Pro Unione held in December 2005. Unfortunately the corrected version arrived too late to be included in the first issue of The Jurist 2006 with the other lectures. We apologize and hope that you will find his research enlightening especially as it deals with the issues of the structures and procedures of the early church in the Roman empire of the fourth century. The ninth annual Wattson/White lecture was given by Mrs. Gillian Kingston, president of the Irish Council of Churches and co-chair of the Irish Inter-Church meeting. She was also a member of the International Catholic-Methodist dialogue and one of the principal organizers of the World Methodist Council’s General Assembly held in Seoul in 2006. Her lecture entitled: “Methodist/Roman Catholic Relations. Strengthening Each Other’s Hand in God” offers a wealth of insights and experience from her many years of service within her own Methodist church as well as to the ecumenical community. The tenth annual lecture will be given by Dr. Timothy Radcliff, OP, former Master General of the Dominicans and will deal with the issues of believing in the world today. This year’s programs at the Centro Pro Unione are planned to “Celebrate Lima and the BEM Document’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary (1982-2007)”. Four lectures are planned to look at the influence of BEM document on the churches, what has been achieved and what needs to be on the future ecumenical agenda of the churches. In addition to this program and given the situation in the world today, we agreed to co-sponsor some discussions between Catholics and Mennonites, two traditional “peace churches” on issues of peace and progress in the world today. We have hosted various groups during the second half of last year including the annual visit of students of the Bossey Ecumenical Institute, the staff of the Johann-Adam-Möhler-Institut für Ökumenik who celebrated their 50 th anniversary of foundation (1957-2007), a group of Lutheran pastors from Finland, the Committee for English in the liturgy which deals with common liturgical texts and student groups from diverse educational institutes. This Bulletin is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, published by the American Theological Library Association, 250 S. Wacker Drive, 16 th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606 (http://www.atla.com). James F. Puglisi, sa DirectorN. 71 / Spring 2007Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 3 Centro Conferences CCCC The Relationship between Bishops, the Church and Christian Communities in the Roman Empire of the IV Century Michel-Yves Perrin Professor of Roman history, University of Rouen (Conference given at the Symposium “The Relation between Bishop and the Local Church Old and New Questions in Ecumenical Perspective”, Friday, 2 December 2005) 1 On 19 May 303 the curator of the city of Cirta, the future Constantine, today in Algeria, went escorted by three court clerks and a municipal slave to “the house where the Christians met”, that is, the cathedral church. In his capacity as the chief of police and public order in the Numidian city, he had to oversee the application of the imperial edict of the previous February that laid down the order to confiscate the Scriptures of the Christians and to burn them, and to destroy their places of worship. At the time of this house search, the story of which is known because of the rare conservation of its account found in the minutes of the city council, the bishop Paul received the curator. He was presiding, probably sitting on his cathedra, surrounded by a num- ber of his clergy and was assisted by two priests also seated; standing there were two deacons, four subdea- cons, and at least six gravediggers. The six readers who kept holy books in their homes were absent, but the curator went immediately to their homes to confiscate them. 2 This first hand testimony shows us the Christian clergy of an important city in Roman Africa and the material resources, real estate and furnishings, of a particular church. It testifies to what extent the bishop at the start of the 4 th century was considered as a represen- tative and natural head of the corpus christianorum, to apply a juridical expression used at that time.3 This means the president of the college or association formed by each of the Christian communities of the Great Church according to Roman law. It was not at all unusual at that time to see this kind of visibility given to the hierarchical organization of the immense majority of Christian groups, and more generally to the Christian phenomenon in its diverse manifestations. If during the first half of the 3 rd century it were possible for the Roman authorities in different places to continue to know little or even be unaware of the modalities of internal structuring of the communities of the Great Church, the edict of the emperor Decius at the end of 249 or beginning of 250 that ordered all his subjects to sacrifice to the guardian gods of the Empire revealed, if there were any need, the full extent of the Christian problem throughout the Roman world. The refusal to sacrifice had revealed the diffuse presence of Christians, although varying widely according to regions and localities, and this undoubtedly called attention to their organization. This is evidenced by the edicts of persecu- tion, in the most technical sense of the term, taken against the Christians by the emperors Valerian and Gallienus in 257-258. First to be targeted were the bishops, priests and deacons called before the provincial governors to either sacrifice to the gods or be sent into exile. Meanwhile gathering for worship was forbidden 1 I wish to thank the Reverend Father hervé Legrand, op for inviting me to this conference. I wish to extend my thanks to Reverend Father James Puglisi, sa, Victoria Bridges Moussaron and Béatrice Caseau for their help in translating this text. I wished to preserve the particular flavor of the oral presentation and I have kept the annotations to a minimum. [E DITOR ’ S N OTE : This text is the corrected text which arrived too late for publication if the first issue of The Jurist (2006)]. 2Gesta apud Zenophilum, in OPTATUS OF MILEVIS, Opera. Appendix (CSEL 26) 185-197. See the translation and commentary by J.-L. MAIER, Le dossier du donatisme, t. I, Des origines à la mort de Constance II (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1987) 211-239, and S. LANCEL, P. MATTEI, Pax et Concordia. Chrétiens des premiers siècles en Algérie (III e -VII e siècles) (Alger: Marsa, 2003) 29-32. Cf. Y. DUVAL, Chrétiens d’Afrique à l’aube de la paix constantinienne. Les premiers échos de la grande persécution (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 2000) with reviews by S. LANCEL, Revue d’histoire ecclésia-stique 97 (2002) 180-188, Id., Revue des études latines 80 (2002) 398-401, M. SIMONETTI, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 38 (2002) 367-371, Cl. LEPELLEY, Latomus 62 (2003) 712-715. 3 Constantine and Licinius, “So-called edict of Milan” (in fact a letter to the governor of Bithynia), in LACTANTIUS, De mortibus persecutorum 48. 9 (SC 39). See S. CORCORAN, The Empire of the Tetrarchs. Imperial Pronouncements and Government AD 284-324. Revised Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000) 158-160 and 189.4 Bulletin / Centro Pro UnioneN. 71 / Spring 2007 as was access to ‘what are called cemeteries.’ The first step was to remove the heads of the Christian communi- ties and to deprive them of their leadership. In 260 the edict of Gallienus put an end to the persecutions and de facto grantedminimum official recognition to these communities. This was the start of the period of the ‘Minor Peace of the Church’, as it is referred to by modern historians, which it undoubtedly saw its devel- opment and consolidation, however the scarce the available documentation. The established churches and bishops were more, who had to face the persecution of Diocletian. The testimony of Eusebius of Caesarea recalling the situation of the churches just before this event, however exaggerated it may be, cannot be with- out grounds: ‘one saw how favored, indeed how honored the heads of each church were by those who held procuratorial posts and governorships.’ 4 The privileges, in the technical sense of the term, that is, the special arrangements that the emperors Constan- tine and Licinius (particularly the former) made in favor of the Christians from 312 onward, however revolution- ary they may have been, did not signify for the churches what certain romantic literature liked to imagine (and occasionally still imagines) the transition from the ‘shadow of the catacombs’ to the ‘light of the Christian empire,’ these privileges are more in the context of a ‘return to normal.’ The anti-Christian measures were revoked - which was already the case in the West from 306 - and in particular, confiscated goods were returned. What was new was that the emperor Constantine, who acted as patron and protector of the Christians, displayed evergetism with regard to the corpus christianorum very soon after the battle of Pons Milvius on 28 October 312. He provided the churches with financial gifts and granted clerics a dispensation from municipal responsi- bilities. This put them on equal footing with the heads of Jewish communities and certain pagan priesthoods.5 The application of these measures, well known as concerns Africa, turned bishops into agents of imperial generos- ity. The bishop of Cordoba, Ossius, makes his first appearance at this moment in the sources available today. He seems, for reasons as yet unknown, to have played the role of ecclesiastical adviser to Constantine, for whom he drew up a memorandum listing the benefi- ciaries of the emperor’s largesse. It is the bishop of Carthage, whom Ossius very probably recommended, Caecilian, who was given charge of allotting the impe- rial manna among the African bishops and of correcting any oversight. 6 It is clearly here that the emperor’s gifts binds him, and in consequence he was immediately faced with the divisions in the Great Church in the conflicts among bishops and among communities. Caecilian, after his consecration probably in 308, was contested as bishop of Carthage and had to face the competition of Majorinus and later that of Donatus. Deprived of imperial subsidies, Majorinus also claimed his share part, while the imperial chancery, in an act that was to have such an impact on the future, accepted as its own the heresiological categories of the Great Church and designated as sole beneficiary of the gifts of the emperor ‘the Catholic Church of the Christians.’ But where is the Catholica when two sides dispute the title? Here the emperor and the imperial administration were called to take sides as to the unity of the Great Church, and the binomial ‘orthodoxy’ / ‘heresy’ entered surrepti- tiously into the field of State law. 7 4 EUSEBIUS CAESARIENSIS, Ecclesiastical History, VIII, 1, 4 (SC 55) [translation taken from Early Church Fathers www.ccel.org]. For the historical context, see L. PIETRI, “Les résistances: de la polémique païenne à la persécution de Dioclétien”, in J.-M. MAYEUR, Ch. & L. PIETRI, et al., Histoire du christianisme des origines à nos jours Vol. 2, Naissance d’une chrétienté (250-430) (Paris: Desclée, 1995) 155-172, and T. BARNES, “Constantine and Christianity: Ancient Evidence and Modern Interpretations,” Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 2 (1998) 274-294. 5 See Ch. PIETRI, “La conversion: propagande et réalités de la loi et de l’évergétisme,” in J.-M. MAYEUR, Ch. & L. PIETRI, et al., Histoire du christianisme..., op. cit., 189-227; T. BARNES, “From Toleration to Repression: The Evolution of Constantine’s Religious Policies,” Scripta Classica Israelica 21 (2002) 189-207; R. DELMAIRE, Les lois religieuses des empereurs romains de Constantin à Théodose II, I, Code théodosien XVI (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2005) 56-69. 6 See CONSTANTINE, Letter to Caecilianus of Carthage, in EUSEBIUS CAESARIENSIS, Ecclesiastical History X, 6, 1-5 (SC 55), and the commentary of S. CORCORAN, op. cit., 153. J. VILELLA (Barcelona) is currently preparing the notice ‘Osio de Cordoba’ for the Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, III, Espagne. I am indebted to him for some precisions on Ossius. 7 For the primordia of the donatist crisis see Ch. PIETRI, “L’échec de l’unité ‘impériale’ en Afrique. La résistance donatiste (jusqu’en 361),” in J.-M. MAYEUR, Ch. & L. PIETRI, et al., Histoire du christianisme..., op. cit., 229-248; M. LABROUSSE, “Aspects historiques,” in Optat de Milève. Traité contre les donatistes, I, Livres I et II (SC, 412) 57-81. For the legal notion of heresy, see K.-L. NOETHLICHS, Die gesetzgeberischen Massnahmen der christlichen Kaiser des vierten Jahrhunderts gegen Häretiker, Heiden und Juden (Cologne: Wasmund-Bothmann, 1971) with the reviews of T. PEKÁRY, Gymnasium 80 (1973) 561-563, and Z. VÉGH, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Romanistische Abteilung 89 (1972) 457-464; J. BEAUCAMP, “Législation et refus de(s) dieu(x) dans l’Antiquité tardive,” in G. DORIVAL, D. PRALON (eds.), Nier les dieux, nier Dieu (Aix- en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2002) 345-359; R. DELMAIRE, op. cit., 69-79. On the notion of Catholica in the first Constantinian legislation, see S. CALDERONE, Costantino e il cattolicesimo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1962; reed., Turin: Il Mulino, 2001) 136-150, S. MAZZARINO, L’Impero romano (Rome: Laterza, 1962) II, 654- 656; P. LEMERLE, Philippes et la Macédoine orientale àN. 71 / Spring 2007Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 5 From then on, at the very outset of a period extremely rich in conflicts breaking the Great Church apart – one need only mention the Donatist and the Arian crises - the bishop, teacher of the faith par excellence, became, more than ever, a public figure, which even so does not mean an agent of the State. The recognition, in 318 perhaps, of the episcopalis audientia, that granted to bishops the right to judge civil cases without appeal just like the Jewish religious authorities, and gave them the right to free slaves in the churches with the same conse- quences and classical modalities (manumission by will, vindicta or censu), secured the public role of the bishop. 8 As president of the association that constituted each church in the eyes of the law, he was the natural inter- locutor contacted by functionaries and administrators for any question concerning the Christians in his jurisdic- tion. To repeat the words of Charles Pietri, “[Constantine] established a system of laws that gave the church a new juridical status, economic, social and judicial privileges granted in exchange for insuring functions for the benefit of the res publica”. 9 As a consequence, we can easily understand that it is hardly possible, and even less so in prior centuries, to discuss the ties between bishopsand the Church in the Roman Empire from the 4 th century onward, setting aside what each of these two entities represented beyond the Christian sphere, or in other words, the society they lived in. We cannot recount the history here, but as the decades following Pons Milvius went by, with regard to relations between Church and State - to use the accepted expression which needs much nuancing-, it is enough to emphasize that with the reigns of Gratian and Theodosius I, from the end of the 370s, there was actually a ‘State Catholicism.’ 10 Symbolic of this is an occasionaltext, the edict Cunctos populos of 28 February 380 addressed to the people of Constantinople, whose terms are worth quoting: It is our desire that all the nations subject to our clemency of government should continue in the profession of that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter as it has been preserved by faithful tradition. It is clearly this that is followed by the pontiffs Damasus and Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness, namely, that we must believe according to the teaching of the apostles and the doctrine of the Gospel, in one divinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in one equal Majesty and one holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians. But as for the others, since in our judgement they are foolish and irrational, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their gatherings the name of churches. They will suffer first the chastisement of divine condemnation, and then the punishment which our authority, in accordance with the will of heaven, shall decide to inflict. It would greatly restrict the position of this historical study if the research were limited to a purely ecclesiological analysis, all the more so because it is a period of growing adherence to Christianity. Crevit hypocrisis, id est simulatio, exclaimed Augustine in unison with contemporary preachers, but Origen had already said the same thing 11 - even a non-baptized person could be considered Christian. So, it is in a unified history of Christianity attentive to the inseparable interaction of ecclesial discourses and practices that the historian can try to produce a draft of a synthesis, but without even attempting an exhaustive study. This is where my preliminaries have been leading, and I ask you to excuse their length. This is also the purpose behind the chronology used here that runs from the start of the 4th century - we have just talked about the significance of that date - to the 430s. The choice of the date for the other end of the period under consideration is more arbitrary. The death of Augustine and the prodromes of the Nestorian crisis do not mark, strictly speaking, a new stage in the history of the links between Episkopos and Ekklesia in the Roman Empire, but those years saw a demultiplication in the documentation available, and consequently there is greater difficulty in availing of this kind of data. However, I shall not refrain from stepping over the limit at times according to the needs of the analysis. Two last clarifications are needed before entering in medias res. On the one hand, for information concerning bishops in late antiquity, even for the limited period we are dealing with, the sources are countless and the literature secondary, and after the 17th century at least, plethoric. The last few years have been no different, and in fact have been particularly rich in publications of all kinds. There can be no question then of citing them all and discussing them all in this study. It is a sign of the l’époque chrétienne et byzantine. Recherches d’histoire et d’archéologie (Paris: De Boccard, 1945) 97-98. 8 R. DELMAIRE, op. cit., 61-62. 9 Ch. PIETRI, “La conversion...,” op. cit., 219. 10 Ch. PIETRI, “Les succès: la liquidation du paganisme et le triomphe du catholicisme d’État” in J.-M. MAYEUR, Ch. & L. PIETRI, et al., Naissance d’une chrétienté..., op. cit., 399-434. 11 In Ps. VII, 7; XXX. II, 2, 2, etc. (HDR, p. 284). Cf. A. von HARNACK, Der Kirchengeschichtliche Ertrag des exegetischen Arbeiten des Origenes (Leipsig: Hinrich, 1918-1919) 76: “Hundert Jahre vor Constantin sind wir hier schon mitten in der ‘Weltkirche’.6 Bulletin / Centro Pro UnioneN. 71 / Spring 2007 times that recent specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias have decided against giving an entry ‘bishop / episcopate’ and instead include it in explanatory notes. That means I was obliged to favor certain themes in keeping with the general orientations of this symposium, their historiographic topicality and my own interests, and to offer a very limited range of examples. On the other hand, before it came to belong to the historian’s territory, the episcopate was first of all, throughout the centuries, a major stake in the doctrinal controversies among Christians, particularly after the Reformation. In those debates, each party often found recourse in argumentation of a historical nature, and called on the presumed observances and beliefs of the early church in order to establish the legitimacy of their own practices and teachings, and they put the seal of prevarication on that of the adversary. This intense polemic and apologetic activity benefitted today’s historian further because it greatly contributed to the collection and indeed the elucidation of dispersed testimonies from the Fathers concerning the episcopate. The admirable article ‘Bishop’ in the Dictionary of Christian antiquities by Smith and Cheetham published in 1893 and indebted to the writing of former Fellow of Trinity College Oxford, Arthur West Haddan, is the best proof of this. To cite just one example, the best known of all, The Antiquities of the Christian Church (1710- 1722) by the Anglican canonist Joseph Bingham (1668- 1723) remains a first class work, today largely unknown after having been plagiarized shamelessly. However, the building up of collections of the patristics destined to serve as an armory to feed the jousts of positive theology has also carried with it a procession of hermeneutic distortions that are best avoided. In other words, it is absolutely necessary to keep the sources in mind and to take care not to apply to them labyrinths of anachronistic readings or to search there for categories or theological problems that were mostly produced later. The analysis being drafted here is not meant to provide any norm in any subject whatever. It does not proceed from any primitivism nor is it conceived in principle to serve any restoration or reform in the churches. It is not gauged according to any theological yardstick. This is in my opinion a condition sine qua non for a healthy and profitable articulation of the work of the historian and that of the theologian. Michel de Certeau who was both - which is not my case - , said this in fiery terms in an article that appeared in 1969-1970 in successive issues of Esprit entitled ‘Christian authorities and social structures’ and later published under the title La faiblesse de croire [The frailty to believe]. Under the title ‘L’insolence des faits”, de Certeau wrote: To listen to the lesson of facts is not to submit unconditionally to a new power. Historical relativity does not imply relativism. History is not historicism that substitutes for all others the authority of a conception (moreover outdated) of science. When it replaces a fixed sky of truth with a retinue of religious and social constellations, it does not state what one must think, but that which it is henceforth impossible to deny if one wants to think or act. (...) It is not possible to stop time and to locate the true here or there, nor to refer to an unhistoric synthesis that would erase these differences in the name of a lowest common denominator (in fact understood differently by each one and decided only by some). (...) The historian therefore does not enrol easily in the service of a dogmatic position. He emerges from the vaults and distances of Christian experience to contrast a present time with something else that happened back there. He says, ‘Do not touch! Do not put your hand on man, nor yet on God!’ (...) He unearths the insolent existence of institutions and conceptions different from ours. What he defends is history. It escapes those who try to catch it in the net of a ‘meaning’. It attracts otherness, that slashes assurances that are closed too well. It no longer allows itself to circumvent, like a theater where it would be possible to seize the truth behind the scenery. It is history precisely because it does not concede.12 *** When speaking out against a Luciferian deacon called Hilarion in the period 376-388, Jerome wrote: Given that he was a deacon when he left the church, and that he believed that the crowds of the world were for him alone, Hilarion could not administer the Eucharist as he was neither bishop nor priest nor, without the Eucharist, could he dispense Baptism. As the man is already dead, the sect has also disappeared with the man; because, being a deacon, he could not ordain any clerics after him. There is no church without priests. 13 [On this topic, see Ambrosiaster, Comm. in Epist. I ad Timoth. 3, 7: episcopi et presbyteri una ordinatio est; uterque enim sacerdos est, sed episcopus primus est]. What Jerome is referring to here - and many other parallels could be mentioned -, is primarily the diffusion 12 M. de CERTEAU, La faiblesse de croire (Paris: Éditions du Deuil, 1987). 13 JEROME, Altercatio Luciferiani et Orthodoxi, 21, (SC 273) (Paris: Cerf, 2003).N. 71 / Spring 2007Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 7 of the episcopal organisational model at the end of the 4 th century in the ancient orbis christianus. He is echoed by Ephraim the Syrian in the madrâsh ‘ known under the title Hymns against heresies: he distinguishes the groups separated from the Greater Church, in general before his time, like the Manicheans, the Marcionites, the Bardaisanites or the obscure Gnostics, who may have acquired their own features in liturgy and discipline, etc., and who were thus easily identifiable - these are the ones he calls ‘those who are outside’ (barrây ‘ ) -, and the adversaries that he calls ‘those who are within’ (gaw- way ‘ ), for example the Arians, Sabellians, Photinians, Messalians, Paulicians, etc. whom he described thus: There were ‘bishops’ in their churches, and some were priests and deacons, others scribes or readers; Some belonged to the alliance (ascetical movement). From the church they had stolen the order of the different types of ministry: ordaining priests, baptising, celebrating the Eucharist, and teaching that the Lord has come and will return. Blessed are those who hold all in Truth. 14 In the Greater Church, there were divisions. From at least the middle of the 3rd century, the episcopal structure was part of the common heritage. The accounts delivered by Rufinus of Aquila in his Ecclesiastical History telling of the introduction of Christianity to Aksum on the Abyssinian plateau, or to the Saracens, the nomadic Arabs at the south-eastern extreme of the Empire, in the middle of the 4 th century, show that one of the first predictable requests made by the earliest converts was for a bishop to be sent in order to plant the church. This is because only a bishop could initiate a clergy, particularly priests. These, whether in virtue of ancient traditions or because of new needs resulting from the growth in the number of Christians and places of worship, could baptise and celebrate the Eucharist, give catechesis and preach. This was all under the supervision of the bishop who is the liturgist par excellence. Among the sources testifying to this is a canonical-liturgical compilation produced in Eunomian circles as Apostolic constitutions at the end of the 4 th century. The bishop controlled the register of clerics and personnel attached to the church he administered. The immunities and subventions granted by the State to clerics obliged him, more than in the past, to keep this list up to date, even if the definition of lower frontiers of clergy was a process not yet concluded at that time. Concerning the link that could exist between the cleric and his bishop we have testimony from an exceptional document, a papyrus from Vienna slightly damaged, from the beginning of the 4 th century, and of which the provenance is unknown: To Ammonotheon bishop of ?, Aurelios Besis, son of Akoris of ?, greetings. As I was ordained deacon today at your service and I have made a declaration by which I commit myself to join your diocese (episkop ‘ ) without treachery, I therefore commit myself through this document not to abandon and not to transfer (to the service of another?) bishop or priest [--- ?], unless you agree, because it is with those conditions (that I have made this contract). If I should wish to distance myself without your accord or without a letter, (I would not be able) naturally to be a member of your clergy any longer as a deacon at your service, but only to participate in lay communion, etc. 15 If the links between deacons and their bishop are particularly strong, priests are equally subject to a similar obligation. One of the best proofs of this is the control of spatial mobility of the clerics confirmed by the epistolai sustatikai: clerics could not by right - and the papyri document the practice - leave their diocese except with the consent of their bishop.16 This increasingly responds to the need to identify as such travelling clerics in order to prevent the usurping of functions and to confirm the ‘orthodoxy’ and membership of a given communion of faith. It is also and principally because the clergy were ordained for a precise community incardinated by the bishop - human mediation was essential in antiquity -, just as the bishop was the bishop of a given people, whatever name that had: plebs, populus, parochia, plethos, demos, etc. This explains the numerous conciliar canons from the start of the 4 th century that prohibit the transfer from one see to another, even if - in the East at least it seemed so -, examples to the contrary were not unusual. The transfer of Eusebius from the see of Nicomedia to Constantinople at the end of 338 and the beginning of 339, after the bishop Paul was deposed - Eusebius had already passed from Berytus to Nicomedia - gave rise to a series of stands taken against transfers by the prelates favourable to Athanasius of Alexandria, of whom Eusebius was a sworn enemy. Emblematic in this regard are the canons resulting from the interventions of Ossius 14 EPHRAIM, Hymns against heresies XXII, 21. 15 CPR, V, 11. Cf. E. WIPSZYCKA, “Il vescovo e il suo clero,” in Storia della Chiesa nella tarda antichità ([Milan:] Bruno Mondadori, 2000). 16 T. TEETER, “Letters of recommendation or letters of peace?” in Akten des 21. Internationalen papyrologenkongresses, (Stuttgart, 1997) 954-960, and Shifting Frontiers.8 Bulletin / Centro Pro UnioneN. 71 / Spring 2007 of Cordoba to the western council of Sardica, today Sofia, in 343: A prevalent evil, or rather most mischievous corruption must be done away with from its very foundations. Let no bishop be allowed to remove from a small city to a different one: as there is an obvious reason for this fault, accounting for such attempts; since no bishop could ever yet be found who endeavoured to be translated from a larger city to a smaller one. 17 Athanasius compared such an act to adultery because the bishop, he said, is attached to his church like ‘a wife to her husband’.18 We should not conclude that the transferring of sees was a speciality of the anti-Nicenes, but simply that the growing hierarchisation of the episcopal sees, that we shall deal with later, and the certain advantages to be enjoyed by imperial proximity, caused certain bishops to feel the urge to migrate. Gregory of Nazianzus, who continuously had to defend himself from being transferred from the see of Nazianz- us where he had succeeded his father, to that of Constantinople, during those bitter days that followed his eviction from that city, did not refrain from denouncing in his Carmina ‘the cathedra bazaar’ 19 and the phthonos, the philoneikia and the philarchia of his Nicene confreres. Again it was generally necessary in order to pass from one see to another, for part of the electoral body qualified to decide on the choice of the new bishop to deign to call a bishop as a candidate. Ossius of Cordoba at Sardica also brought up this situation: “But if any such person should be found so mad or audacious as to think to advance by way of excuse an affirmation that he had brought letters from the people [laity], it is plain that some few persons, corrupted by bribes and rewards, could have got up an uproar in the church, demanding, forsooth, the said man for bishop”. 20 In fact, the general customs and laws - we shall have to give further nuances and particulars to this affirmation very soon - require that a bishop be elected. The electoral body is primarily in principle the people and clergy who are to be entrusted to him. This arrangement, confirmed in the 3 rd century several times in the correspondence of Cyprian of Carthage and occasionally in other sources that came from the Greek part of the Empire, remained widely in force during the period we are considering here. 21 At the turn of the 4 th to the 5 th century, the pagan aristocratic author of Histoire Auguste, a series of imperial biographies where fantasy carries him quickly to the accuracy of the information, alludes to this when he imagines that the emperor Alexander Severus, at the start of the 3 rd century, modelled himself on the Jews and Christians by deciding to submit to popular approval the choice of provincial governors just as they did for their priests. 22 As for the exact procedure of this election, the sources are very allusive, if we exclude a series of testimonies kept in the official report of the appearance of the clerics of Cirta before the governor of Numidia, Zenophilus, in 320. In order to determine if the bishop Silvanus of Cirta was a traditor or not, the high functionary called these witnesses of the episcopal election that probably took place in 307, because on that occasion the past morality and behaviour of the bishop had been questioned. One of them, Nundinarius, who was also Silvanus’ accuser, declared: ‘When it seemed that he was going to be made bishop, the people replied: Let it be another; God, forgive us!’. And he continued: ‘You elders (seniores = notable people in the community) you cried out: ‘God, forgive us; we want our fellow citizen (in other words, not Silvanus); that one is a traitor’. And later he added: “When he became bishop we had no dealings with him (non illi communicavimus), because they said he was a traitor. (...) I saw the arena attendant (of the amphitheatre) Mutus take him on his shoulders. (...) He had prostitutes there”. Another witness was more specific: “The arena attendants brought him, as well as the people (populus), because the citizens (cives) were enclosed in the area martyrum”. If this last part is far from being clear, because its exact meaning does not take in the consensus omnium doctorum, 23 if that election is out of the ordinary because it turned into a disturbance - not an unusual occurrence (it is an excellent indication of Christianisation): it suffices to recall the events that led to a bloodbath in Rome at the time of the episcopal election of September-October 366, when the supporters of Damasus, arena attendants, augurs and grave-diggers attacked the basilica Liberii, close by here in the vicinity of Saint Mary Major’s, and they massacred about a 17 Sardica can. 1 [Trans. The Canons of the Council of Sardica, http://www.ccel.org/fathers2] 18 ATHANASIUS, Apologia contra Arianos 6, 7. 19 Carm. II, 1, 13, v. 98 [our translation]. 20 Sardica can. 2 [Trans. The Canons of the Council of Sardica http://www.ccel.org/fathers2]. 21 R. GRYSON, “Les élections ecclésiastiques au IIIe s.,” RHE 68 (1973) 353-404. 22 SHA, Vita Alexandri Severi 45, 6-7. 23 Y. DUVAL, Chrétiens d’Afrique à l’aube de la paix constantinienne: les premiers echos de la grande persecution (Paris, Institut d’études augustiniennes, 2000) with reviews by S. LANCEL, RHE 97 (2002) 180-188, M. SIMONETTI, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 38 (2002) 367-371, Cl. LEPELLEY, Latomus 62 (2003) 712-715.N. 71 / Spring 2007Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 9 hundred supporters of his rival Ursinus. 24 So if episcopal elections are often moments of crisis for a Christian community - the ideal sought being unanimity that is interpreted to be the result of the action of the Holy Spirit -, recalling the election at Cirta allows us to estimate how much this ritual borrows from contemporary civic rituals. In fact the acclamations of the people are one of the most documented elements of late antiquity concerning their participation - to use a vague word - in the decision making of the various instituted powers, in particular in the cities. The writings of Tertullian and Cyprian, as shown by François Jacques and Claude Lepelley, already show ‘a deep-seated impregnation of mentalities by the municipal system.’25 François Jacques wrote that (without considering) the Christian community to be a simple replication of the municipal res publica and denying its originality, we consider (however) that “its plebs would probably not have maintained a compulsory institutional role if, in the world where it was inserted, the people had been excluded from local political life. The cultural ambiance was held in common. The two worlds came together in events and happenings, and interpenetrated at the level of daily life”. 26 This civic ethos is a fortiori at work in the Christian communities of the 4 th century and beginning of the 5 th where, on the one hand, the cities were far from decline, and on the other hand, incidences of osmosis between civic behaviour and ecclesial behaviour had been widely demonstrated. We could add that there seemed to be an increasing emphasis on the preferentially urban character of an episcopal see, that is on the need to establish it in places where civic traditions are alive. 27 Africa’s numerous rural bishoprics in large country properties or in small villages seem to be special cases. Moreover, Christianity at this time spread more in urban areas except for exceptional cases. The bishop increasingly became a central personality in his town, as Sergio Mochi Onory well demonstrated almost three- quarters of a century ago, and as so many contemporary historical works rediscover and develop: 28 the bishop could be his city’s ambassador to the emperor, and exercise real patronage in cases of conflict over taxes, intercede for the wrongly accused and try to protect him by providing refuge in a church, etc. “When there is affirmation and consolidation of the bishop’s authority in ecclesial organisation, his functions begin to go beyond the religious and into the social sphere thus entering resolutely into the system of the civil constitution”. From that time on, it is not surprising that episcopal elections became a civic event. This is the general sense of the outline proposed by Louis Duchesne in a letter recently published that was written on 29 December 1889 to the Bollandist Albert Poncelet: 29 “Certainly there, as elsewhere, there is a preponderance of lay aristocrats and of clergy, yet no one is excluded. Everyone can shout out. It is as it used to happen at one time in the English elections. The presidents agree with the bigwigs to choose the one who seems to have the most qualities and connections, then they show the candidate. Vultis hunc? So we vote at full voice”. The plasticity of the electoral ritual - acclamation and not the vote - opened the way for games of using influence. Just as prominent people had far greater weight in the management of a city, even though they had to take the reactions of the popolo minuto into account and the fact that acclamations were often organised under the form of clapping, in the same way the prominent Christians - known in Africa by the term seniores - had a central place in the episcopal elections, and this probably started long before sources identified their role in these events. In a letter written in 370 in the name of his father, the bishop of Nazianzus, and addressed to the church of Caesarea to favour the election of Basil as bishop, Gregory distinguished four categories of recipients: the hieratikoi , the monastikoi, the magistrates and the members of the boule (curiales), and finally all the people (pas ho demos). 30 Unless there are errors due to the complexity in the case of African seniores, this is the first mention of senators as distinct participants in an episcopal election. A significant work by Yvette Duval, Luce and Charles Pietri, has shown that in the West the phenomenon is recorded much later 24 R. L. TESTA, Senatori, popolo, papi. Il governo di Roma al tempo dei Valentiniani (Bari: Edipuglia, 2004) chap. 2. 25 Cl. LEPELLEY, “Ubique res publica. TERTULLIEN témoin méconnu de l’essor des cités africaines à l’époque sévérienne” reproduced in Aspects de l’Afrique romaine: les cités, la vie rurale, le christianisme (Bari: Edipuglia, 2001). 26 F. JACQUES, “Le rôle du peuple dans l’Église chrétienne d’après la correspondance de S. Cyprien”, in Le privilège de liberté: politique imperiale et autonomie municipale dans les cités de l’Occident romain 161-244 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1984) 426 ff. Cf. A. LEWIN, Assemblee popolari, e lotta politica nella città dell’impero romano (Florence: La giuntina, [1995]). 27 Sardica 6. It was not permitted to establish a bishopric in a village or small town (against the Donatists?); LEO THE GREAT, Epistle to the bishops of Mauritania Caesarea (PL 24, 653): non in quibuslibet locis neque in quibuscumque castellis episcopi consecrentur. 28 S. M. ONORY, Vescovi e città sec. 4.-6. (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1933). 29 L. DUCHESNE, Monseigneur Duschesne et les Bollandistes: Correspondance, ed. Bernard Joassart (Bruxelles: Société des Boallandistes, 2002) Tabularium hagiographicum, 1, 81-83. 30 GREGORY, Ep. 41, 9.Next >