Scholarship on premodern Mediterranean society has long emphasized the paramount importance of traditional concepts of‘‘honor’’ and ‘‘shame’’ for understanding social relations, and particularly gender roles, at the level of the family or village society. A recent study (Lendon 1997) has postulated honor as a guiding paradigm for interpreting the workings of Roman imperial government and elite society. There has as yet been little significant study of‘‘honor’’ in ecclesiastical usage, and much can be learned by an exploration of the ways in which honor-discourse insinuated itself into the politics of the late Roman Church.
For the bishops who shared in the government of the Church, authority and legitimacy rested upon common understandings of hierarchy, primacy, and deference, concepts articulated in the traditional secular language of honor and dignity. The interest here is less in how bishops operated within their own cities and congregations - the approach adopted in most of the ample scholarship on the role of the bishop that has appeared in recent years - but rather, how bishops related to each other through the larger power structures of the Church (on ‘‘primacy’’ among bishops see Daley 1993; and see Lizzi Testa, ch. 35). Both formal rules and informal mores governed their interactions. Expectations of reciprocal courtesy required bishops to give full faith and credit to the excommunications and disciplinary actions performed by their colleagues. Occasions for conflict arose when bishops failed to respect the judgments of their peers, by harboring or holding communion with persons excommunicated elsewhere (see, e. g., Nicaea canons 5, 16; Antioch canons 3, 6-8; Sardica canon 13; Chalcedon canons 11, 13, 20-1).
The pride of place held by bishops and leading churchmen coexisted uneasily with the admonitions to humility that dominated Christian moral and ascetic discourse. Dignity could all too easily shade into pride and arrogance when those entrusted with the guidance of the Church were tempted to power for its own sake rather than for the sake of the faith. Cyprian of Carthage, in the third century, warned against any man who would make himself a ‘‘bishop of bishops.’’ Echoing the ancient secular fear of concentrating too much power in the hands of ambitious men, Cyprian castigated bishops who went beyond the proper boundaries of their own sees and sought to pursue dominion over the Church as a whole. He had in mind particularly his colleague the bishop of Rome, who even at this early date asserted a special primacy over the Church by virtue of his Petrine succession. Such concerns placed a sharp focus on the roles of individual churchmen, who would in later generations increasingly come to serve as power brokers and politicians as well as moral and spiritual leaders. The Church underscored its awareness of the problem in the numerous canons, regulations, and controversies regarding appropriate or inappropriate ordination, and in the often prohibited and often ignored rules against ‘‘translation,’’ the promotion of bishops from one see to another (e. g., Nicaea canons 4, 6, 9, 15-16; Antioch canons 13, 21-2; Sardica canons 1-2; Chalcedon canons 2, 5-6, 10, 20). Ideologies of clerical duty, humility, and restraint coexisted uneasily with claims by particular bishops and sees - most notably Rome, but also leading eastern cities such as Alexandria and Constantinople - to special status within the Church. Accusations of corruption and misconduct, brought within the context of larger doctrinal and factional divisions and aired at regional and ecumenical synods, served to define and moderate the power of those who would behave as ‘‘tyrants’’ in the Church. Thus, the Council of Chalcedon made an example of the notorious Dioscorus of Alexandria, who was condemned more for his abusive actions at the Second Council of Ephesus (henceforward Ephesus II) than for doctrinal error (see Chalcedon, session 3, Price and Gaddis 2005, ii: 29-116; and more generally Gaddis 2005: chs. 7 and 8). The ecclesiology of late Roman Christianity was shaped by a profound tension: was the Church to be governed on a monarchical model, like the imperial state, or ought it to be guided by a more collegial paradigm of shared authority, exercised through conciliar action and canonical legislation?
In traditional social terms, of course, honor and shame were highly gendered - imposing very different rules upon men and women. As applied to the late antique Church, the qualities of honor and sources of dishonor show an intriguing mixture of both masculine and feminine characteristics. Male dignity often brought with it a certain brittleness, leaving its owners keenly sensitive to insult and easily provoked to anger. The maintenance of prestige required that challenges not go unanswered, demanding a firm and sometimes violent response. The honor of the Christian religion, and indeed that of God himself, could be offended by acts of sacrilege or words of blasphemy. Zealous Christians, driven by a ‘‘godly’’ anger, might use force to avenge these insults (Gaddis 2005: 179-91). There was, said Jerome, ‘‘no cruelty in defending God’s honor’’ (Hieron. Ep. 109. 3).
Female honor, by contrast, tended to focus much more exclusively on sexual purity. Ecclesiastical discourse employed a highly sexualized language of loyalty and betrayal in its frequent invocation of ‘‘adultery’’ to describe heresy, apostasy, and other departures from true faith. Heretical teachers were ‘‘seducers,’’ and women were thought especially susceptible to their blandishments (see, e. g., Burrus 1991; Lyman 1993; Knust 2005). Following normal patterns of subordination, the lay congregation was often described as ‘‘feminine’’ and thus in need of the fatherly guidance and protection of clergy. When the Church was imagined as a whole - the congregation as the collective ‘‘body of Christ’’ - defenders of the faith might invoke feminine imagery when it was subjected to outrage or violation. Athanasius used this strategy to characterize Arian mistreatment of consecrated virgins as symbolic of their violence against the true faith (e. g., Encyclical Letter 1; see Gaddis 2005: 83-7).
Alongside honor, of course, there must come a concept of ‘‘shame,’’ deriving not from external attacks but rather from the conduct of the Church’s own leaders. What were the sources of shame for the Church, and how were these handled? Christian authorities both secular and sacred repeatedly expressed the fear that pagans, Jews, and heretics would ‘‘laugh’’ and take heart at the spectacle of doctrinal disagreement or material corruption within the Church. Prior to the Council of Nicaea, Constantine had rebuked Alexander of Alexandria and his presbyter Arius for their unseemly and divisive doctrinal argument (Eusebius, Vit. Const. 2. 64-72 ; 3. 21, and Socrates, Hist. Eccl. 1. 6; also Millar 2004 on fear of Jewish laughter). The need to present a united and dignified face to those outside the Church, and thus facilitate their conversion, served as an argument to rebuke and control the behavior of those already within it.
As honor was due to individual bishops and clergy, so also and more importantly did it belong to the Church as an institution, and indeed to the Christian faith in the abstract. The honor of the institution could be put at risk by the misconduct of individual clerics, a problem not unique to the period. Augustine, arriving in the town of Fussala to deal with the scandal caused by the reprobate bishop Antoninus, whom he had himself recommended for the office, professed himself so ashamed that he could not look the townspeople in the eye (August. Ep. 20*. 15). But the primary concern of the North African church in this instance was to preserve its own institutional power, and the bishops bent over backward to preserve the dignity ofthe office to which Antoninus had been ordained, going to every possible length to allow him to retain the title and rank that he had dishonored by his behavior. But the normal tendency of the hierarchy to close ranks broke down in the face of doctrinal controversy and political rivalry. Most of our evidence for episcopal misconduct comes from accusations brought against bishops at synods dominated by their enemies (see charges against John Chrysostom at the Synod of the Oak, against Ibas of Edessa and others at the second session of Ephesus II (the so-called ‘‘Robber Council’’), and against Dioscorus at Chalcedon’s third session). Only in such a context - when doctrinal partisanship escalated into ecclesiastical ‘‘civil war’’ - would bishops be willing to set aside normal principles of order and entertain accusations brought by lesser clerics against their hierarchs.
World History
