enjoyed the same privilege, and thus this chapter concludes with a comparison of the different manifestations of the parrhēsia of bishops and of holy men with the emperor.
The last chapter of part 2 takes issue with the oft-repeated view that the bishop steps into a power vacuum created by the decline of the curiales, the wealthy city councilors, and argues that instead of being integrated into existing structures, he fulfills a new role that derives its authority precisely from the idealized status that adheres to his ecclesiastical rank. A comparison of the treatment of bishops in the Theodosian Code and in the Justinianic Code and Novellae shows that in the interval between these two codifications, bishops who had in the fourth century been regarded and revered as model Christians were in the sixth century treated as dependable model citizens. I then go on to argue that the bishop was never absorbed into the curia but instead joined the new ruling group of leading citizens that was crystallizing at the time, forming a new urban and Christian elite.
The brief epilogue gives a synthetic overview of the literary representation of bishops in hagiographical works to the seventh century. It is the nature of those texts to extol the personal holiness of their protagonists in order to celebrate them as saints. The subtle shifts in emphasis on the spiritual authority of bishops that can be traced in these texts over time confirm the general trends and developments in the exercise of the bishops’ pragmatic authority that have been identified in the previous, historical chapter. The hagiographical treatment of holy bishops shows them increasingly engaged in activities and duties that resemble those of civic functionaries. At the same time, these Lives are an attempt to vindicate the bishops by pointing to the spiritual origin of their authority and by elaborating on the divine powers that are at their disposal in the discharge of all aspects of their office and that are especially present in their celebration of the eucharistic liturgy.
This is the moment to make a full disclosure of what this book does not attempt: it does not provide a complete and detailed treatment of the development of the episcopal office within the framework of the church as an institution, nor does it deal in any detail with issues connected to the bishops’ liturgical role at baptism, ordination, and the celebration of the eucharist. It does not treat the role of bishops in the theological debates that threatened the doctrinal unity of the church, nor does it investigate specific moments of friction between episcopal and imperial power. Finally, it deliberately avoids the treatment of highly prominent bishops, such as the Cappadocian fathers, aiming instead to draw a composite picture of the bishop as a leadership figure in late antique society.46 If the pattern that emerges helps to reinsert into their contemporary conceptual framework the thousands of bishops who were discharging their duties, for better or for worse, throughout late antiquity, my purpose will have been served.
CHAPTER TWO
Pragmatic Authority
The average bishop of a large city in the later Roman Empire fulfilled a number of different roles: he was a preacher to his community; a teacher to the catechumens; administered baptism to neophytes; celebrated the eucharist and other liturgical occasions; and admonished and, if necessary, reprimanded Christians who had stumbled. He was responsible for the charitable works of his congregation, the care of consecrated virgins, widows and orphans, prisoners, travelers, and the poor. In addition, he was in charge of the discipline and proper discharge of office of the clergy under his authority, the priests, deacons, and perhaps chorepiskopoi, and—if he was metropolitan or patriarch—of the other bishops within his region. Once Christianity had gained a stronger foothold in society, beginning in the fourth century, bishops also gradually became involved on a hitherto unknown scale in the administration of their cities and in regional politics. As a consequence of the process of Christianization set in motion by Constantine, bishops would eventually enjoy unrivalled power in their cities in the European Middle Ages.
It is all too easy to neglect the slow historical evolution of the episcopate and to project modern notions of the episcopal office onto the formative period of late antiquity, when definitions of the episcopate were just beginning to be formulated. The danger of such historical anachronism lies in treating the office of a bishop as if it consisted of a predetermined portfolio of tasks and obligations, and in assuming that the episcopal officeholder had to meet an unchanging set of personal requirements. But this was not the case. In this chapter, I wish to draw attention to the fluidity of the definition of the episcopal role in late antiquity by examining the normative texts that were generated within the church to describe and define ecclesiastical leadership. Of particular interest is the way in which these texts set spiritual, ascetic, and pragmatic authority in relation to one another.
In the apostolic age, the episkopos was nothing more than an administrative officer. Beginning in the second century, as he increasingly took on teaching and preaching duties, he was also expected to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. This relation between pragmatic and spiritual authority is explained in the first part of this chapter. For the discharge of his pastoral obligations, the bishop needed to set an example of moral and virtuous conduct to his congregation. The development of this line of thought can be traced in the patristic comments on the passage in the First Letter to Timothy, which gives a catalog of episcopal virtues. This is the subject of the second part of this chapter. Beginning with Ambrose and John Chrysostom, separate treatises devoted to ecclesiastical leadership were composed; these are discussed in the third and last part of this chapter.
THE EARLY CHURCH ORDERS
The episcopal office, as it developed over the first three centuries, was in essence a hybrid creation the original administrative function of which was uncomfortably juxtaposed to the demand for spiritual leadership that was added to it by the second century.1 These two components of the office could be held together only by adding a third: personal virtues (or, as I call it, ascetic authority).
The bishop’s original administrative function is encapsulated in the history of the Greek word episkopos, whose Latinized adaptation episcopus is the root of the English word bishop. Derived from the Greek verb meaning “to oversee” (episkopein), the episkopos is literally an “overseer.” The word episkopos thus originally refers to an activity or a function that could be performed in various situations and by various people. It could then also denote the person who fulfilled this function on a regular basis within a group, and in this way became a title.2 The Christians were not the first to employ this designation. In classical antiquity, the highest officers of corporations, including collegia of pagan priests, were also called episkopoi.3 The oscillation between the function and the title of episkopos could still give occasion for amusing puns in the early fifth century. A pious monk, who was also the cook for his monastery, was once told that he would one day become episkopos, that is, hold the office of a bishop. He rejected this prospect, cheerily announcing that he was already an episkopos: he held the function of overseer, over the pots and pans in his kitchen.4
It is striking that the word episkopos and its cognates appear only rarely in the New Testament. It is entirely absent from the Gospels, surfaces in Acts only as a quotation from a psalm,5 and appears in the letters of the apostle Paul for a total of seven times. Paul met with the elders (presbyteroi) of the community of Ephesus and admonished them to fulfill their responsibility with zeal and watchfulness: “Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers (episkopous), to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son” (Acts 20:28). The same image of the shepherd who, as an episkopos, watches over those entrusted to him is evoked in the First Letter of Peter (1 Pet. 2:25), but this time with reference to Christ, who has gathered the lost souls into his flock. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians begins with his greetings to the Christian community, including the episkopoi and deacons (Phil. 1:1).
In the most significant passage, to which I will return below, Paul advised his disciple and close associate Timothy on how to regulate the internal structure of the Christian
