bishops, and holy men also occupy center stage in the literary production of late antiquity. The ancient genre of panegyric in praise of emperors flourished on an unprecedented scale, the writing of church history where bishops were the protagonists was a new, pioneering effort, and various forms of hagiographical writing, especially saints’ Lives, were created to extol the virtues of holy men and women.
The interaction of emperor, holy man, and bishop can be seen in the Life of Daniel the Stylite. Inspired by the example of Symeon the Stylite, whose reputation as an exceptional ascetic and miracle worker attracted large crowds to his pillar near Antioch, Daniel established himself in a suburb of Constantinople in the mid-fifth century. The local priests reacted with resentment and jealousy to the presence of this stranger from Syria, whose decision to take up residence in an abandoned temple, and later on top of a pillar, seemed to generate a great deal of interest and admiration among the local population. In response to their complaints, the archbishop of Constantinople looked into the matter. In a personal meeting, he recognized Daniel’s spiritual strength and then convinced the clergy that their suspicions were groundless. The popular local cult of the holy man thus received the stamp of approval from the highest ecclesiastical authority.
Over the following years, the Life explains, Daniel became something like a personal saint for Emperor Leo I (457–474) and for his successor, Zeno (474–491), who depended upon Daniel to soothe restless crowds on the verge of rebellion, to predict the outcome of imperial initiatives, and to quell heretical stirrings. Leo rewarded Daniel’s cooperation with public gestures of recognition, especially by donating a large pillar, topped by an enclosed platform, on which Daniel would live. The holy man was, quite literally, put on a pedestal, so that his extraordinary ascetic stamina—his motionless stance on the small platform, his exposure to the elements—was visible even from afar. To express his gratitude for Daniel’s efficacious prayers, Leo also instigated Daniel’s ordination to the priesthood at the hands of the archbishop of Constantinople. Archbishop Gennadius willingly complied with this request, apparently unperturbed by the prospect of violating a number of church canons that regulate priestly appointments. But when the archbishop asked Daniel to descend from his pillar in order to receive his ordination, the latter refused—most likely because he did not want to be seen as coveting the priesthood. Thus, instead of consecrating the new priest through the customary imposition of hands, Gennadius decided to perform the ordination rite from the bottom of the pillar where he stood. In describing this unconventional procedure, the hagiographer reveals his own awkwardness when he has Gennadius explain to Daniel that during his prayer of consecration “God laid His hand upon you from above.”1 Daniel’s ordination had no effect on his way of life or daily routine, since he never exercised any priestly duties. His ordination to the priesthood served the exclusive purpose of recognizing, confirming, and enhancing Daniel’s position as a holy man, and it took place at the initiative not of the highest representative of the church, but of the highest secular authority in the empire.
Daniel’s influence in Constantinople and among his followers was considerable. But it is not easy to pinpoint its origin and to establish whether it derived from his reputation as a holy man, his ordination to the priesthood, or his close association with the emperor. In fact, his contemporaries are reported to have had an equally blurry view of the nature of his authority. An episode during the rebellion of Basiliscus, a supporter of Mono-physitism, against the emperor Zeno illustrates this. While the efforts of the new archbishop Acacius to force Basiliscus to embrace orthodoxy remained fruitless and resulted only in stirring up the potential for unrest in the capital, Daniel came to the rescue, restored order in the city, and reaffirmed orthodoxy. This was one of the few occasions when, yielding to popular pressure, he descended from his pillar and entered Constantinople. There, he was acclaimed by the people as “high priest,” while a Goth, presumably an Arian, mockingly referred to him as “the new consul.”2 This vignette in the Life shows the Constantinopolitans and the Goth in agreement in their appreciation of Daniel’s authority, even as they conceptualize its origin in different ways, the former as deriving from the institution of the church, the latter from that of the empire. Daniel’s triumphant presence in Constantinople culminated in his visit to the cathedral church of Saint Sophia, where both the rebel emperor Basiliscus and the archbishop Acacius demonstrated their submission to the holy man who had succeeded where they had failed, in bringing unity to a divided population on the brink of civil unrest. They fell at his feet and, while laying prostrate on the ground, were formally reconciled by Daniel, a gesture that derived its particular poignancy from the fact that his feet were crippled and worn down to the bone—a tangible token of his ascetic achievement.3 Thanks to Daniel’s intervention, Basiliscus also gave a formal profession of orthodoxy, which ended his antagonism with Acacius. Shortly before describing Daniel’s death, the hagiographer is at pains to reinforce the notion of Daniel’s position as a “priest,” complete with quasi-liturgical prerogatives. In a vision, the story goes, he saw the saints in heaven asking him to celebrate the eucharistic liturgy. Upon awakening, he asked to receive communion, and his disciples partook of it also. The hagiographer, who claims to have been one of the disciples present on that occasion, explains that it was “just as if he had been administering to us the holy sacrament.”4
This extraordinary story illustrates the ambiguous and fluctuating relation between Christian priesthood and personal holiness: Daniel’s “virtual priesthood” was bestowed on him as a confirmation of his sanctity, at the behest of the secular ruler, by the highest representative of the church. At a time of crisis and political instability, both emperor and archbishop submitted to Daniel’s higher authority. He was recognized by the people as their true priest and preserver of doctrinal unity, and his followers even experienced him in the role of a priest consecrating the eucharist. Daniel’s story, as it was narrated for the benefit of his admirers, exemplifies the complex relation between the possession of spiritual gifts, visible evidence of ascetic living, and concrete authority within the institution of the Christian church.
To the modern reader, this story may seem strangely over the top. In our view, the emperor and the holy man embody the contrasting principles of secular and religious leadership. The Enlightenment and its heritage, from the ideals of the French Revolution to the work of Edward Gibbon, have taught us not only to make a sharp distinction between the secular and the religious, but also to consider this distinction as an essential precondition for modern statehood.5 Yet the notion of the association of imperial authority with the divine that guided, protected, and guaranteed the emperor’s rule was pervasive in the Roman Empire and was passed on—in Christian guise—to the Byzantine Empire and the medieval West. Just as imperial authority was intricately linked to the divine, the religious authority of holy men had overtones of secular power. The appreciation by his contemporaries of an individual as a holy man depended to a large extent on his ability to bestow on them benefactions of a very concrete, worldly kind: healing from illness, relief of famine, and restoration of social order. To assume that in the later Roman Empire the secular and the religious were perceived as separate and that our view of this period should adhere to this dichotomy is a misleading result of modern thinking. It is more fruitful to conceive of secular and religious authority as the opposing ends of a sliding scale, where each individual, whether emperor, holy man, or bishop, has his own place, depending on his role in society and his own personal conduct.
It is, in fact, the bishop who occupies the middle ground between the two poles of secular and religious leadership. His responsibilities as administrator of a diocese involve him in very mundane matters from financial administration to building works, while his duties as the shepherd of his flock entail such religious obligations as pastoral care, the preservation of doctrinal unity, and the celebration of the liturgy and other Christian rites. The nature of episcopal leadership during the third to sixth centuries is the central theme of this book. This is the formative period during which the church was propelled to assume an ever-increasing role in the public life of the later Roman Empire, and its representatives, the bishops, were saddled with ever-increasing public duties. It is my contention that a proper understanding of the role of the bishops during this time of transition can be accomplished only once we rid ourselves of the anachronistic baggage of a supposed secular-religious dichotomy. This
