The Role of the Bishop in Late Antiquity

Conflict and Compromise

Andrew Fear, José Fernández Urbiña, Mar Marcos Sanchez

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781472504173
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

Late Antiquity witnessed a major transformation in the authority and power of the Episcopate within the Church, with the result that bishops came to embody the essence of Christianity and increasingly overshadow the leading Christian laity. The rise of Episcopal power came in a period in which drastic political changes produced long and significant conflicts both within and outside the Church. This book examines these problems in depth, looking at bishops' varied roles in both causing and resolving these disputes, including those internal to the church, those which began within the church but had major effects on wider society, and those of a secular nature.

1

A Dispute of Episcopal Legitimacy: Gregory Nazianzen and Maximus in Constantinople^*

Juana Torres, Ramón Teja
Universidad de Cantabria

When once again in the peace and quiet of his family farm in Arianzum, Gregory remembered his turbulent stay in Constantinople: the struggles, conflicts and accusations that the old bishop had to face before taking the decision to resign from his post at the episcopal see in the city in June AD 381, during the Synod that he himself was chairing. With the perspective of distance and as a kind of balance for the events he had undergone in Constantinople, he wrote about these experiences in several poems and letters, as he combined literary activity with asceticism – his ideal way of life since he had been a boy. At last, after his retirement, the secessus in villam,¹ he was able to devote himself to his true vocation, philosophical otium, and he had decided to remain silent during Lent 382. This was a gesture of ascetic sacrifice and at the same time a kind of penitence for the mistake of publicly expressing his support for a false philosopher, one who would later try to usurp his own see.² The most interesting of these literary works is the long autobiographical poem, written in iambic trimeters, usually known as Carmen de vita sua, which tells of the ups and downs in the author’s life, from his birth to the time he left Constantinople. It is a very useful historical source for this period and, above all, some significant events for Gregory, such as his dispute with the false philosopher, Maximus the Cynic. The section of the poem about that unfortunate experience, 385 lines out of a total of 1949, gives an idea of the enormous importance he attached to it. However, we should bear in mind that Gregory’s main intention in writing this autobiography was to rehabilitate his reputation and his authority in the church, and he therefore is giving us his own personal view of these occurrences.³

Consequently the information we can extract from it is biased and provides a distorted portrait of his adversary. In any case, the aim of the present study goes beyond a mere description of events to attempt an understanding of the importance that the See of Constantinople was beginning to acquire at that time.

With a Nicene emperor for the first time after 40 years of Arian dominance, Constantinople was to become the Christian capital in the East, almost equal to Rome. In addition, we believe that the Maximus ‘affaire’ is perhaps the best expression of the difficulties in consolidating the figure of a bishop in a large Eastern city at a time when, with the rise to power of Theodosius I, it was foreseeable that a Christian empire would be established based on the Nicene dogma. It was surely not by chance that the enthronement of Gregory of Nazianzus in New Rome was contested by two bishops from the main sees at the time, Rome and Alexandria, whom Theodosius himself had shortly before established as guarantors of orthodoxy and possessors of a patent of legitimacy for any bishop.⁴ This is clearly seen in the numerous contradictions and politico-ecclesiastical conflicts involving the bishops at this key moment in the history of Christianity in the late fourth century and early fifth century. These included, inter alia, the opposition between East and West; the rivalry between Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople; the contrast between the power of the synods and that of the great episcopal sees; the dichotomy between an ascetic and mystical bishop like Gregory and the mundane Cynic philosopher that Maximus seemed to be; and the involvement of sovereigns and cliques centred around clientela in episcopal elections. In short, we believe that the dispute with Maximus is a faithful reflection of the difficulties involved in the practical application of the ideals of a Christian bishop, as explained by some contemporary theoreticians, including Gregory of Nazianzus himself in his Oratio II.⁵

In 378, the Nicene bishop Peter of Alexandria returned from his exile in Rome after the amnesty proclaimed by the Arian emperor Valens. With Theodosius’ rise to power the following year, it seemed clear that the situation was going to improve for the Nicenes. This signified the triumph, following Athanasius’ death, of those principles that he had fought for all his life and had caused him to be banished several times. Alexandria was the second largest city in the empire after Rome and its bishop occupied the second place of honour, after the Bishop of Rome. Additionally, both sees had been leaders in Nicene orthodoxy for the previous half century. Theodosius’ arrival should have strengthened Alexandria’s religious leadership in the East. It was no coincidence that the Thessalonica edict of 28 February 380 designated Damasus of Rome and Peter of Alexandria as guarantors of the faith that other bishops should follow.⁶ This is why Gregory of Nazianzus, on being called to Constantinople in early 379 to take charge of the small Nicene community, sought the support of the powerful patriarch in Alexandria to take up this post. He had already expressed his support by means of a letter when Gregory arrived in the city. As Gregory himself states: ‘You who are wise, explain this problem (for I cannot understand it easily unless some clever person explains it): how it was that Peter himself, the leader of the shepherds, not long ago installed me by means of letters so clearly free from ambiguity, (as the wording of his letters to me proves), and honoured me with the insignia of office.⁷’ Clearly, through this recognition, Peter was trying to establish a strategic alliance between the Sees of Alexandria and Constantinople.

In spring 380, the patriarch sent an Egyptian delegation to Constantinople, headed by Maximus, to offer Gregory support against the Arians. This individual presented himself as a Cynic philosopher and he was attired with the typical attributes of that school: a staff, white tunic and long blonde hair.⁸ His undeniable support for the Nicene doctrine of consubstantiality (homoiousia) gained him Gregory’s unconditional friendship and trust, to the point of him wondering: ‘Was there anyone who shared my house, my table, teachings, plans as Maximus did?’ (Greg. Naz., Carm. II, 1, 11, v. 811). He thus became a valuable defender in such a hostile environment as Constantinople was for him. In recognition of his aid, just before the philosopher left for home in autumn of the same year, Gregory made a public eulogy in the Church of Anastasia, expressing his numerous virtues. It was a true panegyric, which described Maximus as ‘the truest defender of the truth, the paladin of the Trinity to the blood, and the persecutor of the persecutors who harm him, bravely bearing the evil he suffers, since nothing defeats the persecutor like the courage of the victim. [. . .] He is the best among the best, the most noble of the noble’.⁹ However, in contrast, Maximus aimed to establish an Egyptian power base, loyal to Peter of Alexandria and not to Gregory, in the capital. He soon returned, this time accompanied by several Egyptian bishops, with precise orders from the patriarch to be consecrated as the Nicene Bishop of Constantinople and thus take Gregory’s place. We do not know the course of events in Alexandria, whether Maximus acted from the start as Peter’s emissary in Constantinople or whether he contrived to attract him to his cause. In any case, it would not have been a difficult task, considering the resentment that Peter must have felt towards most Eastern bishops, who had previously persecuted his brother Athanasius. In addition, foreseeing the great importance that the See of Constantinople would acquire with Theodosius in power, he would not look kindly on it being occupied by a friend of Basil of Caesarea and Meletius of Antioch, who had never been on good terms with Alexandria.

Peter saw in Maximus the chance to possess a firm ally and docile instrument in the see of the new capital, and he did not hesitate to resort to the most scandalous and least diplomatic methods to achieve his aim. It is easy to imagine the naive Gregory’s reaction when he discovered this stratagem, and he even considered resigning his post. He withdrew to the solitude of the countryside for a while, carried away by an innate tendency to flee that was a constant throughout his career from when his father ordained him a priest in 362, again in 370 when Basil of Caesarea named him Bishop of Sasima and in 380 when he fled out of the shame of being usurped from his see. As Nicanor Gómez Villegas says, ‘the pattern of runaway-return is one of the leitmotiv characterising Gregory’s biography and career’.¹⁰ On his return, he had to face up to the criticism aimed at him, not from the Arians but from his own clergy and the faithful of the Church of Anastasia, and defend his reputation as they reproached him for his ingenuity and timidity (deilía), his excessive circumspection (periesskemménia), his inaction (rathumía) and his lack of leadership. With that aim, once he had overcome the profound crisis the Maximus episode had caused in him, he composed Address 26. In it he expresses ideas that are often repeated in his works, such as his displeasure with everything around him: society, the ambition of the people, the city, the plebs, urban tumult, etc. He also makes some disparaging comments about the Cynic philosopher, resorting for the first time to the play on words offered by Maximus’ situation as a ‘Cynic’, a word whose etymology is connected with the word ‘dog’. To give an example, ‘I am wary of dogs that have been accepted as sheep dogs and for which, paradoxically, they have no other merit than that of having cut off their hair, to which they have shamelessly given all their care’.¹¹ The later descriptions of Maximus are totally different from the eulogies in Address 25, and especially those in his autobiographical poem: ‘There was amongst us in the city at that time an effeminate creature, a phantom from Egypt, a pestilential fanatic, a dog, a puppy, a street-walker, a disaster with no sense of smell, no bark, a great hulking monster, a raven-haired blond, his hair both straight and curled (the one his original state, the other recently acquired, for art is a second creator)’.¹² In reality, the reason why Gregory returned from his brief retirement in the country and took charge of the Nicene community again was the fear that the Arians would make up lost ground and that Maximus would take advantage of his absence to return to the city. The speech he made on his reappearance, acknowledging his error and asking the faithful for their pardon, must have had the desired result, and he regained their support.¹³

The events that culminated with Maximus’ consecration as bishop are well known thanks to Gregory’s account of them. The setting was the small church of Anastasia, where the philosopher arrived one night, accompanied by the Egyptian bishops who were to ordain him. Acting as his supporters were the sailors from the merchant fleet from Egypt, anchored in the port of Constantinople and who had previously been bribed. He had also attracted a presbyter from Thasos to his side; he was in the capital to buy Proconnesian marble¹⁴ for a church in his town and he used the money that he had brought for this purpose to support Maximus’ cause, perhaps to bribe the sailors. Maximus took advantage that Gregory was confined by illness to carry out his plan, but an unforeseen complication arose. Ecclesiastical canons laid down that the bishop should have his hair tonsured before his consecration. Maximus’ lengthy hair meant that this operation took longer than usual and dawn began to break before it was finished. One of the bishops who lived next to the church realized what was happening and sounded the alarm. The public went there and the ceremony had to be halted, and continued later at a piper’s house. Maximus was thus consecrated a bishop, with the aspiration of being recognized as the legitimate head of the orthodox community in Constantinople. However, nobody in the city took his consecration seriously, and it was rejected as if it had been a joke. When he was expelled from the city by Gregory’s followers, he went to Thessalonica in the hope of gaining the emperor’s support, but Theodosius sent him away abruptly: ‘he had been cast out like a dog, in terrible rage and with oaths which made one shudder’ (Greg. Naz., Carm. II, 1, 11, vv. 1009–10). Later, Maximus went to Milan and there won over Bishop Ambrose, who, with Acho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction  Andrew Fear, José Fernández Ubiña and Mar Marcos
• 1 A Dispute of Episcopal Legitimacy: Gregory Nazianzen and Maximus in Constantinople  Juana Torres and Ramón Teja
• 2 The Donatist Conflict as Seen by Constantine and the Bishops  José Fernández Ubiña
• 3 Ius et religio: The Conference of Carthage and the End of the Donatist Schism, 411 AD  Carlos García Mac Gaw
• 4 Pacifiers and Instigators – Bishops and Interreligious Conflicts in Late Antiquity  Maijastina Kahlos
• 5 Controversy and Debate over Sexual Matters in the Western Church (IV Century)  Teresa Sardella
• 6 ‘Bishops, Judges and Emperors: CTh 16. 2. 31/ CTh 16.5.46/ Sirm. 14(409)’  María Victoria Escribano Paño
• 7 Bishops, Heresy and Power: Conflict and Compromise in Epistula 11* of Consentius to Augustine  Purificación Ubric Rabaneda
• 8 Papal Authority, Local Autonomy and Imperial Control: Pope Zosimus and the Western Churches (a. 417–18)  Mar Marcos
• 9 East and West, Emperor and Bishop: Hormisdas and the Authority of the See of Rome  Alexander Evers
• 10 Preaching and Mesmerizing. The Resolution of Religious Conflicts in Late Antiquity  Alberto J. Quiroga Puertas
• 11 Bishops, Imperialism and the Barbaricum  Andrew Fear
• 12 Conflict and Compromise: The Spanish Catholic Bishops and the Arian Kingdom of Toledo (from Vouillé to Leovigild)  Pedro Castillo Maldonado
• 13 The Bishops and the Byzantine Intervention in Hispania  Francisco Salvador Ventura
• Index