Journal of Early Christian Studies Volume 19 / Number 3 / Fall 2011
The John Hopkins University Press
Number of quotes: 39
Book ID: 122 Page: 328
Section: 3A1,3A3
...an ability to sate the craving for justice of aggrieved parties like Annianus was an indispensable asset to religious specialists and magistrates alike in the third and fourth centuries. Among the religious specialists, Christian bishops seem to have had a gift for making their ability to deliver justice seem natural and even inevitable, but our understanding of the real basis of their authority is still in its infancy.
Quote ID: 2781
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 122 Page: 332
Section: 3A1
....there is no compelling evidence that the churches could claim legal personality before the time of Constantine.
Quote ID: 2782
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 122 Page: 335
Section: 2E3
No pre-Constantinian literary evidence describes the buildings in which early Christians gathered for common prayer, beyond occasional glancing reference, such as the “upper room” in Acts or the preaching of Paul in the house of Onesiphorus as mentioned in the Acts of Paul and Thecla.
Quote ID: 2784
Time Periods: 1234
Book ID: 122 Page: 336
Section: 2E3
It is well known that the archaeological record holds virtually no evidence for Christian use of buildings before the fourth century, and what little there is, is increasingly disputed. The churches had no legal right to hold title to property since they did not exist as legal personalities under Roman law.{21} Logic would suggest that, across the first three centuries, Christians continued to meet on an informal basis in spaces made available to them by the private owners of those spaces.{22}
Quote ID: 2785
Time Periods: 1234
Book ID: 122 Page: 338
Section: 2E3
From the early fourth century, the changed legal status of the churches meant that they could begin to acquire rights and privileges on an institutional basis rather than depending on the goodwill of individual members....
Quote ID: 2786
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 122 Page: 341
Section: 4B
Decius’ decree in effect established a requirement that all Romans, i.e. all those living in the Roman Empire, had to sacrifice to their local gods in a manner approved by the imperial authorities.”{31}
Quote ID: 2787
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 122 Page: 347
Section: 3C
As we shall see, rhetorical exhortation was a device used by Constantine as well as Julian to reshape the religious landscape without doing so ostensibly.
Quote ID: 2788
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 122 Page: 372
Section: 3C
....the rhetoric provided justification for zealous Christians to claim Constantine’s support for general ban and to attempt to enforce it. At this point, Constantine was obliged to issue a “clarification”: he had “heard” that some believed that “the customs of the temples and the agency of darkness” had been removed in their entirety, but this was not so, because it was impractical.{93}
Quote ID: 2789
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 122 Page: 375
Section: 3A1,3A3
Under the later Roman Empire, Christian bishops not only judged disputes concerning their fellow clerics and ruled on matters relating to church discipline and doctrine, they also settled cases that fell under the Roman civil law.
Quote ID: 2790
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 122 Page: 382
Section: 3C
At the beginning of his reign, Constantine had ratified the right of the bishop to act as the supreme arbiter of civil suits brought before him by the faithful....The validation of the episcopalis audientia was a characteristically Constantinian device. It was both grandiose and opportunistic. It enabled the emperor to demonstrate his respect for Christian bishops. At the same time, it recruited an intermediate institution, bureaucracy, in an attempt to “put a cap” on litigation.{23}{23} Brown, Poverty and Leadership, 67.
Quote ID: 2791
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 122 Page: 402
Section: 3A4B
Fortunius had remarried a woman named Restituta and saw no reason why he should ever sever the new bond and resume his first marriage. While emotionally harsh, his reaction to Ursa’s return was in complete accordance with Roman law on captivity and marriage. Roman citizens who were kidnapped by enemy forces lost all of their citizen rights, from property ownership and patria potestas to the contraction of a legitimate marriage (conubium).. . . .
By the early fifth century, developing Christian social norms emphasized the dissolubility of the marital bond. Marriages were not to be severed under virtually any condition.{4} In the opinion of Rome’s bishop Innocent I (401-417 C.E.), to whom Ursa appealed for help, Ursa and Fortunius’s marriage had been “constituted by divine grace” and was, therefore, the only legitimate union.{5}
Quote ID: 2792
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 122 Page: 403
Section: 3A1,3A3
We shall suggest that such emergent “grey areas” of everyday life, freshly created by the confluence of enduring Roman traditions, nascent paradigms of Christian mortality, and acute periods of social instability, opened up new areas of potential intervention for Roman bishops in the domestic sphere.{9}
Quote ID: 2793
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 122 Page: 407
Section: 3A1,3A3
On the most basic level, late antique bishops were “watchmen”, men placed in positions of authority in light of their perceived moral excellence and their ability to oversee various facets of a Christian community’s religious life: its rituals, its teachings, its dispensation of justice, its wealth.{20} Yet oversight was a fairly plastic charge, which could be folded into a variety of paradigms.
Quote ID: 2794
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 122 Page: 409
Section: 4B
Consequently, elite householders were expected both to resolve highly ambiguous situations and to settle fractious disputes involving their family members.. . . .
During the early empire, householders privately settled conflicts involving family members within the context of domestic councils (consilia).{29}
Quote ID: 2795
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 122 Page: 410
Section: 3A1,3A3,4B
.....late ancient bishops, especially those in Rome, wielded far less power in society than elite householders.{33} However, bishops could potentially offer the family something that lay householders could not: a reputation for spiritual acuity and a perceived familiarity with both religious ethics and civil law.
Quote ID: 2796
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 122 Page: 411
Section: 3A1A,3A3
This is not to suggest that Roman clerics were the first to attempt to exercise authority within the private home. Christian clergy throughout the late antique world had long tried to do just this, whether as marriage counselors, ritual celebrants of domestic rites, administrators of almsgiving, or even informal arbitrators in civil disputes involving family members.{37} Moreover, through the institution of the church council, bishops tried to legislate how Christians lived within the home from as early as the first decade of the fourth century.
Quote ID: 2797
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 122 Page: 412
Section: 3A1A,4B
A remarriage in the wake of a spouse’s kidnapping by a Visigothic or Hunnic army generated a welter of new questions for the Christian householder, which neither Roman law, classical tradition, nor biblical text could independently answer. These new grey areas of Christian life produced precisely the sorts of questions that late antique Roman bishops tried to define and resolve.. . . .
The abduction of Romans by barbarians was a violent but fairly commonplace event in late antiquity, especially the western regions of the empire during the fifth and sixth centuries.
Quote ID: 2798
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 122 Page: 414
Section: 4B
Thus, because marriage rested on consent more than any other principle, a returning captive could not force a spouse to revive the marriage; mutual agreement for the match had to be reconfirmed.{48}
Quote ID: 2799
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 122 Page: 415
Section: 3A1A,4B
However, in the sixth century, Justinian altered the right of postliminium: marriages continued so long as the captive was thought to be alive. In cases where the captive spouse was known to be alive, marriages could be dissolved only after incurring legal penalties (i.e. the loss of betrothal gifts or dowry).{51} If the survival of the captive was uncertain, Justinian ruled that spouse could remarry after a waiting period of five years without punishment.
Quote ID: 2800
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 417
Section: 3A1A,4B
While the circumstances and precise date of Ursa’s return to Rome are uncertain, she arrived in the city sometime between 410 and 417 C.E. only to discover that her husband, Fortunius, had remarried in her absence. It is unclear precisely what motivated Ursa to dispute her husband’s new union and to insist on the legitimacy of their original marriage.. . . .
Ursa on her own approached the bishop of Rome, Innocent, in the hope that he might not only be sympathetic to her cause, but also help her to reinstate the original marriage.{58}
Quote ID: 2801
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 122 Page: 417/418
Section: 3A1
Innocent to Probus. The disorder of the barbarian storm has caused an emergency to the application of the law. For although the marriage had been properly established, the assault of captivity would have made a strain on the marriage of Ursa and Fortunius, if the holy decrees of religion did not provide for it.
Quote ID: 2802
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 122 Page: 420
Section: 3A1
Ep. 36, therefore, reflects the limits of Innocent’s power to enforce his juridical opinions within a lay household. The letter testifies to the fact that an early fifth-century Roman bishop still needed to work through traditional, already-existing channels of domestic authority in order to achieve his ethical goals within the context of a lay domus.
Quote ID: 2804
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 122 Page: 422
Section: 3A1
The right of postliminium held that consent from both partners was necessary for the reinstatement of a marriage after the return of a spouse from captivity. However, by insisting that this was also a matter of sancta religionis statuta, Innocent threw a new spanner in the works: the problem would have to conform to these decrees as well. While a householder and public official like Probus might be expected to have expertise in the secular treatment of broken marriages, he could hardly claim to outdo a bishop when it came to knowledge of “the holy decrees of religion.”
Quote ID: 2806
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 122 Page: 423
Section: 3A1
In the absence of Probus’s response or a follow-up letter from Innocent, we have no idea how the story of Fortunius, Ursa, and Restituta ended.
Quote ID: 2807
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 122 Page: 423
Section: 3A1
Innocent’s authority as a counselor derived not from his dogmatic advocacy of the Christian system, but from his creative combination of Roman and ecclesiastical law on an intimate and emotionally wrought family matter.. . . .
It was exemplary not only in light of its subject matter (the sanctity of marriage even in the context of captivity), but also in light of its language of authority, which presented the Roman bishop as an expert in even the most quotidian matters of Christian life.
Quote ID: 2808
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 122 Page: 424/425
Section: 3A1
Echoing perhaps the actual law passed by Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian in 366 C.E., Leo explicity argued for the restoration of remarriages:For you see that many things that belonged to those who were led into captivity can pass into another’s power, and nevertheless it is fully just that their own things be restored to those who have returned. Given the fact that this is properly observed in the case of slaves and land, or also in cases of houses and properties, how much more ought it be done for the restoration of marriages, so that what had been disturbed through wartime necessity should be restored by the remedy of peace?{81}
To an even greater extent than Innocent’s, Leo’s argument involved the assimilation of Christian precept to Roman law rather than their distinction.{82} If property was recoverable, surely marriage, he reasoned, ought to be too.
Quote ID: 2809
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 122 Page: 432
Section: 3A2A
Gregory in other cases also ordered deposition, excommunication, or exile.{25}
Quote ID: 2814
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 122 Page: 433
Section: 3A1,3A2A,2E2
In the sixth century, emperors, kings, and bishops discovered the monastery as a tool of government. In particular, this century saw the transition of confinement in a monastery from a voluntary form of penance to a legal penalty.
Quote ID: 2811
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 437
Section: 3A2A
Monastic confinement had a very firm place in his program of pastoral flexibility. It was a last resort for stubborn offenders who did not respond to other measures that would have corrected their behavior ....
Quote ID: 2812
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 443
Section: 3A2A,2E2
Gregory habitually and expectedly prescribed monastic confinement for fugitive ascetics.{31}
Quote ID: 2815
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 450
Section: 3A1,4B
The abduction of nuns was not only an offense against Christian discipline, but–as laid down in a Novel by Justinian from 546 well known to Gregory–also a crime recognized by civil law.{53}
Quote ID: 2816
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 457
Section: 3A1,3A2A
....from a letter of Gregory’s predecessor Pelagius from 559, which presents us with the very first evidence for lay monastic confinement in Italy. Pelagius here instructed a sub-deacon of the Roman church to assign an adulterous woman to a secure place..... . . .
It is therefore not far-fetched to suggest that the “secure place” Pelagius was thinking of was a convent.
Quote ID: 2817
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 458
Section: 3A1,3A2A
In response to this case, Gregory gave Evangelus three rescripts to take home. One was addressed to Gregory’s agent for the Roman church’s landed property in Apulia, the notary Pantaleon. Pantaleon was to investigate the case, and if he found it as Evangelus had described it, he was to make sure that the junior Felix married the girl, or, if this did not happen. to flog, excommunicate, and assign him to a monastery to perform penance for an unspecified time.{76}
Quote ID: 2818
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 459
Section: 3A1
What this means is that, if Evangelus had chosen to approach a civil judge in this matter, and the judge had found the junior Felix guilty, he would potentially have faced execution. It is not clear whether Evangelus knew about his implication when he decided to seek justice for his daughter. It is clear, however, that he did not see a civil judge about the case, but had first approached bishop Felix,........this case may reflect, as argued by Tom Brown, that the power of the civil bureaucracy was considerably weakened in late sixth-century Italy due to a lack of funds, competition with military authority, and general wartime chaos and disruption. Bishops therefore may have increasingly been recognized as those in charge of maintaining public order in Italy.{79}
Quote ID: 2819
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 460
Section: 3A1
If this was so, Gregory’s response to the case did not disappoint. Here it is important to note that Gregory mentioned that also he, as a bishop, could and should really inflict the penalty of the civil law. This is in accordance with Justinian’s law that bishops, where they held trial over lay people, were supposed to follow procedures “according to the law”.{83}
Quote ID: 2820
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 461
Section: 3A1,3A3
Gregory therefore diverted from the letter of the law in the case of Felix of Sipontum (and perhaps in other cases involving monastic confinement in a variety of ways. He did not involve a civil judge in the hearing or sentencing, and he prescribed a different penalty than the law prescribed. Yet Gregory apparently did not anticipate that his procedure would create any problems with civil authority.. . . .
Recent research has shown that, in the context of Roman criminal procedures, it was common judicial practice that judges applied discretion in sentencing and very often diverted from the penalties prescribed by the laws.{85}
Quote ID: 2821
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 462
Section: 3A1,3A3
Surely in principle, in an ideal world of functioning civil authority, a civil judge would have taken care of lay people. However, in Gregory’s Italy, at least judging from the evidence of his letters, the reality was that many people turned to the bishop. In these individual cases, Gregory made sure to let his audience know–which was probably widely accepted–that he shouldered the burden of the civil judge.
Quote ID: 2822
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 463
Section: 3A1
In the context of forgiveness, Gregory’s take on jurisdiction was therefore based on divine, rather than Roman law. If needed, though, Gregory would inflict punishment, but one that was both an ecclesiastical and a civil penalty.
Quote ID: 2823
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 122 Page: 471
Section: 2E2,3A1
Yet, as Conrad Leyser has shown, the significance of Gregory for the development of asceticism in late antiquity lies essentially in his dismissal of the monastery as the model for the ideal Christian community.. . . .
It is here where the monastery found its place in Gregory’s pastoral framework. It is not in its ability to foster a communal way of life, but in its ability to provide a space for correction within the hierarchy of episcopal power that monastery captured his interest. It may be argued that Gregory so fully embraced the new role of coercive authority that Justinian’s legislation gave to the church because it fit his idea that correction of sin was more urgent than ever.
Quote ID: 2825
Time Periods: 6
End of quotes