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Aspects of Clerical Life in the Early Byzantine Church in Two Scenes: Mopsuestia and Apamea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

L. R. Wickham
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Extract

On Monday 23 May 550 a directive was issued by the Emperor Justinian to John, metropolitan bishop of Anazarbus in Cilicia Secunda. Another directive, cast in corresponding terms, was sent to Cosmas, bishop of Mopsuestia (the present day Misis, seventeen miles east of Adana in southern Turkey) in the same province. ‘We indicate to your holiness”, he writes to John, ‘that you are to convene all the most-religious bishops of your synod; you are to repair to the town of Mopsuestia and make a detailed examination, with the senior men (whether clerics or laity), there established, foregathering, and learn from them whether they know the date when Theodore's name was removed from the diptychs.” If the senior persons in question do not know the answer, the fact is to be expressly recorded and the diptychs themselves are to be duly checked. Into the events leading up to this directive I will not now enter. It must suffice to recall that the setting was the so-called Three Chapters Controversy: what to do about Nestorius' precursors Theodore and Diodore, about Theodoret's writings against Cyril of Alexandria's twelve Anathematisms and the Letter of Ibas to Maris. On these matters the Council of Chalcedon had been indecisive. A hundred years after that council, it looked to many people, the emperor included, as if a few modest addenda to the council's decisions, amounting, perhaps, to nothing more than explications of its mind on Nestorius and his school, would put an end to the painful disunity of eastern Christendom.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , January 1995 , pp. 3 - 18
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Renamed Justinopolis after the Emperor Justin, who rebuilt it after its devastation by earthquake in 525. The old name still stuck, even in official texts.

2 Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, ed. Straub, J., Berolini 1914–1982 (hereinafter cited as ACO), iv/i, 117Google Scholar. The account of the assembly at Mopsuestia forms part of the fifth session of the Council of Constantinople (553).

3 See his ep. lxxii to Proclus of Constantinople ( = CPG 5372).

4 See ACO iv/1, 199ff. There is an English translation in Coleman-Norton, P. R., Roman state and Christian Church, London 1966, no. 559Google Scholar.

5 Taft, Robert F., A history of the liturgy of St John Chrysostom, IV: The diptychs, Rome 1991, pp. 49–52Google Scholar, discusses this episode in the context of the important evidence it offers for the ‘diptychs of the dead” i.e. their commemoration in the liturgy. The anomalous presence of Cyril of Alexandria's name (and absence of Theodore's) in the list at Mopsuestia, indicates a shift from a ‘local” to a ‘confessional” commemoration.

6 For the reasons, consult Straub's preface, ACO iv/i, vif.

7 Justinian was keen to ensure that the clergy applied themselves to daily prayer: Codex 1. 3. 41, trans, in Coleman-Norton, , Roman state, no. 579Google Scholar.

8 A fine essay by Vogel, Cyrille, ‘Les rites de la celebration du mariage: leur signification dans la formation du lien durant le haut moyen age”, Settimane di studio del centro Italiano di studi sull' altro medioevo Spoleto xxiv (1977), 397–465Google Scholar, brings together the sources for the history of the nuptial benediction and (more importantly) of the principles governing the celebration of marriage in church.

9 The fourteen homilies of Leontius, presbyter of Constantinople (recently translated into English under that title by Pauline Allen and Cornelis Datema, Brisbane 1991) tell us a good deal about the members of Leontius' town parish, and their lives, in the mid sixth century, though less about the preacher himself.

10 Ep. lii. 15.

11 There is a distinction of grade between ‘chorescopi” and ‘periodeuts”; for details on the offices see Kisten, E., ‘Chorbischop”, RAC ii (1954), 1105–14Google Scholar, and the more extensive articles by Leclercq, H., ‘Chorévêques” and ‘Périodeute”, DACL iii (1914), 1423–52Google Scholar, and xiv (1939) 369–79.

12 See Peter of Callinicum: anti-tritheist dossier, ed. and trans. Ebied, R. Y., Van Roey, A. and Wickham, L. R., Leuven 1981, 55Google Scholar, for a notice of a report from one of the periodeuts of the ‘Monophysite” patriarch of Antioch in the late sixth century.

13 The number of Basil's chorepiscopi is given (angrily) by Nazianzen, Gregory in his poem De vita sua, line 447 (PG xxxvii. 1060A)Google Scholar.

14 A helpful article by Ruhbach, Gerhard, ‘Klerusausbildung in der alten Kirche”, Wort und Dienst: Jahrbuch der kirchlichen Hochschule Bethel NF xv (1979), 107–14Google Scholar, collects most of the meagre information we have about the requirements for clerical ‘formation” in the period. (I owe this reference to Allen, and Datema, , Fourteen homilies, I n. 6Google Scholar.) Ruhbach makes the important observation (‘Klerusausbildung”, 113) that in the third century catechetical instruction was not necessarily in the hands of the clergy; and that the growth of the practice of infant baptism must have materially altered the scope and content of the theological instruction given to, and by, the clergy. In the period and area with which I am dealing, catechesis was undertaken by the clergy (bishops being expected to take a part in it) and the candidates were mostly adults (see the account of Peter of Apamea, below).

15 According to Bingham, Joseph, Antiquities of the Christian Church, London 1840, vi. 3Google Scholar. I take the point on trust from a particularly thoughtful section of that distinguished work.

16 Peter, of Callinicus, , Against Damian iii. 5Google Scholar. R. Y. Ebied, A. Van Roey and I are preparing an edition of this work, which deals with the doctrine of the Trinity, for the Belgian corpus. (The name of the author's place of origin is, apparently, only found once in the nominative case, in any ancient source, and there appears as ‘Callinicus”. To that testimony we have now bowed and fulfilled all righteousness. ‘Callinicum”, however, which frequently appears in modern writings, is scarcely wrong.)

17 Severus of Antioch, , Select letters 1. 22, ed. and trans. Brooks, E. W., London 1903, ii/1 (Eng. trans.), 78Google Scholar.

18 Ibid. 1. 57 = ii/1, 172.

19 The most striking example of this is given in actio XIII (30 Oct. 451) of the Council of Chalcedon, where rival pretenders to the throne of Ephesus (Stephen and Bassian) are pensioned off at the expense of the church: ACO ii/1, ch. xxvi, 415.

20 Severus, , Select Letters 1. 42 = ii/1, 120)Google Scholar makes the complaint. But there are plenty of other examples – and, indeed, of better justified cases.

21 Later Roman empire, Oxford 1964, ii. 1045ffGoogle Scholar.

22 See Greenslade's, S. L. review in the Journal of Theological Studies xvi (1965), 220ff, esp. p. 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Zonaras, , Annalium xiv, ix (PG cxxxiv. 1252)Google Scholar. We may add that the laws of Justinian show an increasing insistence on the involvement of bishops in the provision of the infrastructure of imperial life, for example in the oversight of the construction of such public works as bridges (see Codex 1. 4. 26, in Coleman-Norton, , Roman state, 606)Google Scholar.

24 Sozomen, , Historia ecclesiastica 7. 28Google Scholar. The same Acacius complained of the meagreness of the hospitality of John Chrysostom (see Palladius, , Vita Chrysostomi 6Google Scholar) and subsequently assisted at his downfall. A good diet (Basil of Caesarea is supposed to have ruined his liver by fasting) perhaps contributed to the fact that he lived to be a centenarian, whose valued support was sought, in vain, by Cyril of Alexandria in the quarrel with Nestorius.

25 Commentary on Isaiah i. 3 (PG lxx. 1093 – with a slight lacuna in the Greek, )Google Scholar. In this case there is no other printed text except Aubert's, reprinted in PG, which has many faults. The novice student of Cyril should be warned never to use PG where a more recent edition is available. A Greek manuscript evidently contains the complete text of the passage, but Aubert did not print it. The passage in full occurs, in Syriac rendering, in Against Damian iii ad. fin. (see n. 16) where the patriarch of Antioch incites the supporters of the pope of Alexandria to rebellion.

26 See his letter to Hormisdas, (Collectio Avellana 193Google Scholar, CSEL xxxv. 650f.), trans. Coleman-Norton, Roman state.

27 ACO iii. 92ff.

28 There is a piquant counter-part to ‘Flighty” in Pope Symmachus' faithful female friend of earlier, less sober years, Conditaria (‘Hot Stuff”): Chadwick, H., Boethius, Oxford 1981, 32Google Scholar.

29 The belief, expressed in the older literature, that ‘Monophysites” and ‘state-churchmen” were supporters of Green and Blue circus factions respectively, has no basis whatsoever: it is a multiple error resting on a misunderstanding of the nature of the factions: Cameron, Alan, Circus factions, Oxford 1976, ch. viGoogle Scholar.

30 ‘My patronus” is found as an early address to bishops. The fourth-century Liber graduum, a collection of Syriac writings on the religious life, knows it as appropriate: Memra xvi. 2, Patrologia Syriaca, I/3: Liber graduum, ed. Kmosko, M., Paris 1926Google Scholar.