episcopal see in Rome in 590. He had already spent the previous eleven years in the service of the church, first as a deacon, then as papal legate to Constantinople. Prior to his ecclesiastic career, Gregory had acquired ample experience in civil administration, since his privileged senatorial background and his extensive studies in grammar, rhetoric, and law had led to his appointment as city prefect in Rome in 572/573. His Pastoral Care reveals the concern of an experienced administrator for the practical aspects in the exercise of ecclesiastical office.130 It also addresses the tension between the contemplative and the active life to which Christian officeholders are exposed.131 Like John Chrysostom’s treatise, Gregory’s Pastoral Care begins as an apology to a close friend for his own desire to hide in order to avoid the responsibility of office. The work enjoyed instant popularity. The author himself sent copies to several bishops and priests of his acquaintance. It also reached the court of the emperor Maurice in Constantinople and was translated there into Greek.132 It was widely circulated in the Latin Middle Ages, when it was even read as a “mirror of princes”: religiously sanctioned ecclesiastical leadership and religiously sanctioned royal leadership were obviously thought to have a great deal in common. With Pastoral Care, finally, we have a proper and complete manual for priests, a how-to guide for the discharge of the priestly office that is concrete testimony to Gregory’s manifold efforts to breathe new life into the ecclesiastical administration of Italy. This was not an easy task. In his personal letters, Gregory admits that he was often overwhelmed by the challenge of maintaining a religious outlook in the midst of administrative work: “Under the pretext of the episcopate, I am reduced to the concerns of the world.”133
Gregory’s Pastoral Care proceeds in systematic and logical fashion, arranged in four books:
The nature of the case requires that one should carefully consider the way in which the position of supreme rule ought to be approached, and when it is duly reached, how life should be spent in it; how, in a life of rectitude, one should teach others; and, in the proper performance of his teaching office, with vigilance one should realise each day one’s weakness. All this must be ensured lest humility be wanting when office is assumed, the way of life be at variance with the office accepted, teaching divest life of rectitude, and presumption overrate teaching.134
Writing two centuries after John Chrysostom, Gregory senses the need to remind the priests in his charge not to take their ordination into the Christian ministry lightly nor to neglect the duties of their office. He follows Chrysostom in declaring ordination to be the final confirmation of personal virtues, a responsibility for service to others that those in possession of the requisite virtues cannot reject. He places particular emphasis on the congruity of personal lifestyle and teaching. Only if the priest himself is perceived as practicing what he preaches will his words be heeded and he will become an exemplar to others. All of book 3 is dedicated to the issue of preaching. After dealing with teaching by example, Gregory gives detailed and practical advice on how to address an audience that consists of men and women of different social backgrounds who have different life experiences and spiritual needs. Gregory here reaches an unprecedented level of reflection on preaching, which was only barely hinted at in Chrysostom’s treatise. He places a high prize on the priest’s role as interpreter of the Word of God and on his interaction with his congregation through his sermons. The possession of personal virtues validates and lends authority to the priest’s words of textual interpretation and moral admonition from the pulpit. In other words, the bishop’s ascetic authority lends credence to his claim to possess spiritual authority.
CHAPTER THREE
Spiritual Authority
Spiritual authority is the authority that comes from the possession of the Holy Spirit. In its purest form, it is received as a divine gift, without any participation or preparation on the side of the recipient. The active involvement of the individual to prepare himself for the receipt of this gift, or to enhance the gift that has already been received, falls under the purview of what I call ascetic authority and will be discussed in the next chapter. The present chapter begins with an investigation of the conception of spiritual authority among the Greek church fathers. The distinction they made between bearers of the Spirit (pneumatophoroi) as passive recipients of the Spirit and bearers of Christ (christophoroi) as conscious collaborators of the Spirit shows how ascetic authority—with its emphasis on an individual’s active contribution—could be placed at the service of spiritual authority. The Spirit is, by its very nature, expansive and communicates itself, through the pneumatophoros, to others. One of its effects on the individual is to open up and maintain unclogged his channels of communication with the divine, which he can then impart to his surroundings. In this way, the Spirit-bearer becomes a holy man in communication with others. The second part of this chapter therefore examines how individual holy men were appreciated by their contemporaries for their ability to work intercessory prayer. The third and last part of the chapter studies a specific kind of intercessory prayer, namely, that for the remission of sins as it was offered by martyrs, holy men, and bishops. It is in this context that the nexus to ascetic authority is most pronounced, because the efficacy of intercessory prayer is thought to correlate directly with an individual’s personal conduct.
The critical modern reader may find it strange or unnecessary to treat spiritual authority in isolation, given that it is in reality often coupled with ascetic authority. But there are exceptions where spiritual authority is operative by itself—for example, in the holy fools who employed every trick in the book to disguise their holiness from their contemporaries. Moreover, since the Christian authors themselves deal with spiritual authority as a separate category, we must take them at their word. Finally, a clear (perhaps artificially so) definition of spiritual authority can serve as an important diagnostic tool in identifying the commonalities among holy men who practice different lifestyles.
CARRIERS OF THE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT
Pneumatophoros and Christophoros
In the growing Christian communities of the first centuries, certain individuals were singled out by their spiritual authority—the presence of the Holy Spirit or a special connection with Christ made manifest in special gifts or qualities. When Jesus was gathering his disciples, they became his “brothers” and “sisters.” As children of the same “father” in heaven, they formed one large spiritual family, whose members had been touched, transformed, and elevated by their personal encounter with God. These men and women had associated themselves with Jesus before his death, had been in the presence of the resurrected Christ, or had received the grace of the descent of the Holy Ghost. The apostles’ personal experience with God lent a special force to their preaching, and those who followed their beliefs looked to them as leaders and teachers. Some of the men and women who had joined the Christian community after the events of Pentecost were privileged as recipients of the Holy Spirit, even though they had not known the living or the resurrected Christ. In the Jerusalem church described in the Acts of the Apostles and the communities to whom Paul addressed his epistles, some members had the gift of the Spirit to exorcise, speak in tongues, and utter prophecies. These people were recognized as bearers of the Spirit (pneumatophoroi; sing., pneumatophoros) or bearers of Christ (christophoroi; sing., christophoros).
The idea that certain individuals are invested with the gifts of the Spirit did not come to an end with the apostolic age. In subsequent centuries, the application of the designation “bearer of the Spirit” or “bearer of Christ,” which had originally been reserved for the prophets and teachers, was enlarged to include martyrs, monks, holy men, priests, and bishops. They were recognized as such because the Spirit was manifest in a myriad of different ways. As Pseudo-Macarius put it in the late fourth century: “And even though there are thousands of pneumatophoroi, [God’s] grace is manifest in them in this way or that, in many parts and in many ways.”1 The concept of Spirit-bearers is central to the writing of the theologians Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 220) and Origen (185–253). It plays an important role in the monastic spirituality of the fourth century, especially among authors of a mystical bent, such as Pseudo-Macarius
