that the neglect of public structures was offset by an increase in private and ecclesiastical building. The structures associated with the old, pagan way of life—theatre, hippodrome, forum, public bath—were replaced in their function as social centers by the churches that were now increasingly erected in prominent spots, often with the active encouragement and financial support of bishops.
As the outward appearance of cities changed, so did their demographic profile. Beginning in the fourth century, the various regions of Gaul had to accommodate Visigoths, Franks, and Burgundians. The northern part of the Italian peninsula became home to the Ostrogoths in the fifth century; a century later the Lombards settled primarily in the center and the south. Although these immigrants established themselves mostly in the countryside, their presence necessitated adjustments in the economy, political mechanisms, and social structure of these regions. After the end of imperial rule in Italy, the aristocrats of the Latin West were deprived of the opportunity to enhance their profile through appointment in the imperial service and found a new outlet for their ambitions by joining the episcopate.
Several studies have explored these developments in Gaul17 and Italy,18 with a special emphasis on the role of the bishop in providing political leadership as well as much-needed social services in times of crisis and transition. In this respect, the late antique bishop in Gaul and Italy has been seen as an early incarnation of his medieval counterpart, who exercised complete control over his city. The prototypes of such episcopal activity were Martin of Tours and Ambrose of Milan. We are exceptionally well informed about them through their hagiographers, and in the case of Ambrose also through his own writings, including his letters. Not surprisingly, both Martin and Ambrose have become the subject of several self-contained studies.19 Similarly, the sheer number of hagiographies of later bishops in Gaul and Italy, such as those of Caesarius of Arles, Germanus of Auxerre, Epiphanius of Pavia, Leo the Great, and Gregory the Great, has contributed to the fact that the bishops of these regions, whether individually or collectively, have received more scholarly attention than those of other areas of the later Roman Empire.20
A related strand of studies has tried to uncover the late antique roots of the Stadtherrschaft of bishops. As the absence of an English translation of this term indicates, this is a particular concern in German scholarship. The beginnings of this phenomenon can be attributed to the dwindling local powers and the absence of a strong central government in the Merovingian period, although it reached its full extent in the tenth to twelfth centuries, when the bishops of large cities in Germany and Gaul held all the reins of civic administration, complemented by legal and financial independence, thus acting as veritable “lords of their cities.”21 This form of Stadtherrschaft of bishops is a later, medieval development, however, that did not necessarily follow from the role of bishops in the later Roman Empire alone but resulted from a combination of other factors specific to Gaul and Germany. In other regions of the Roman Empire, bishops of the fourth to sixth centuries fulfilled the same functions as representatives of their cities and providers of humanitarian help in times of crisis, yet this did not lead to the autonomous episcopal governance of cities in later centuries. Dietrich Claude attempted to apply this Gallic model to early Byzantium in order to show that bishops in the Eastern Roman Empire also exercised a veritable Stadtherrschaft, but the limitations of this approach have long been recognized, at least by Byzantinists.22 More recent studies of the transformation of cities in Asia Minor have emphasized the stabilizing role of bishops in up-holding and perpetuating the existing social order as they operated in conjunction with the people and the leading men of their cities.23 The writings of the Cappadocian fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, have generated several scholarly treatments of their views of the episcopate and their own exercise of this office.24
Studies of the role of bishops along the southern shore of the Mediterranean have centered on issues such as the patterns of urbanization, the structure of civic life, the presence of dissenting Christian groups, and the nature of the surviving evidence. Since Egypt spawned the thriving monastic movement that attracted pilgrims and followers from all over the empire, monasticism in all its forms is the focus of most studies of Christian life in this region,25 while less energy has been devoted to the discussion of dissenting movements within the church, such as Arianism and Monophysitism.26 As a consequence, modern studies concentrating on this region accord only a marginal role to bishops within their urban setting. An exception is Athanasius of Alexandria, whose prolific literary output has given rise to several studies of his dogmatic stance, political maneuvering, and ascetic outlook.27 Apart from the bishop of Alexandria, bishops do not dominate the picture, while the papyri often show village priests in a uniquely prominent role. Because of the wealth of the surviving documentary evidence, scholars have been able to investigate the ecclesiastical and economic administration of Egypt as an organic entity in which the bishops were firmly embedded.28
The nature of the available sources has also influenced the studies of Christianity in North Africa. Here Augustine of Hippo is the towering figure, not so much because of the saint’s Life written by his disciple Possidius, but because of the numerous works that survive from his pen, especially his extensive epistolographical collection, which has been augmented in recent years by Johannes Divjak’s discovery of additional letters.29 North Africa was also a densely urbanized region that enjoyed great economic prosperity until the Vandal invasion of the late 430s and beyond. The archaeological work, and especially the epigraphic record, provide a mine of information about the life of the North African cities and the bishops’ participation in it.30
Previous studies of bishops in late antiquity thus fall into three distinct groups: histories of the development of the episcopal office within the church, which usually end with the reign of Constantine; investigations of the public role of bishops within their urban or regional context, which usually begin with Constantine’s legislation in favor of the clergy; and biographies of important men of the church, based to no small extent on their own literary record. Each of these areas of study has considerable merit in contributing important insights into specific aspects of the role of bishops in late antiquity. But at the core of these studies are two underlying assumptions, one chronological, the other ideological. The chronological assumption consists in highlighting the reign of Constantine as a radical turning point when the idealized, charismatic age of early Christianity came to an end and the church became tainted through its exposure to the empire, a decline that is thought to be accompanied, as if in a seesaw, by the rise of the bishops. What has been lacking is a study that deemphasizes the reign of Constantine and that, instead of treating it as a watershed in the history of the institutional development of the church, follows the continuous flow of developments, both in Christian culture and in the Roman Empire, in the centuries before and after Constantine’s reign. The present study is intended as a first step in this direction, as its chronological range extends from the third to the sixth century.
The general ideological assumption upon which most studies of the episcopate have rested until about two decades ago is that of a strict division between the religious and the secular aspects of the role of bishops, in order to concentrate on the bishops’ social prominence and political power. Yet there are some notable exceptions of scholars who have chosen a more integrative approach, in an effort to link the bishops’ public activities within their cities with their religious position as Christian leaders. Thus Henry Chadwick31 and Philip Rousseau32 explore the interconnection between the roles of monks and those of bishops. In a similar vein, Rosemarie Nürnberg acknowledges that asceticism provides the foundation and justification for episcopal power in late antique Gaul, and Andrea Sterk has undertaken a similar study for Cappadocia.33 Bernhard Jussen, by contrast, pursues the notion of the survival of elites in changing political circumstances and points out that the new prominence of aristocratic bishops in Gaul since the fifth century goes hand in hand with their ceremonial self-representation as charismatic leaders through the performance of the liturgy in its various forms.34 An entire volume of essays was dedicated to the interconnection of episcopal power and pastoral care in 1997.35 Rita Lizzi has investigated the role of bishops, especially prominent bishops, in the East
