The blurring of the boundaries between the secular and the spiritual is a fundamental characteristic of this period (Markus 1990; Cameron 1995a; and see Lim, ch. 33).
Both state and society in Late Antiquity were profoundly if subtly shaped by discourses ultimately religious in origin, from the disciplinary paradigm of corrective force employed for the moral betterment of subjects that served to justify much of the state’s violence, to the ascetic overtones that pervaded exhortations by both legislators and preachers. But the influence went both ways. Secular models of legitimacy and conflict, political virtues and vices, were transposed into the ecclesiastical sphere and applied to the government of the Church. This process can be seen, for example, in the application of the classical political category of ‘‘tyranny’’ to describe abuses of power by Christian bishops. Ecclesiastical writers, in defining the proper scope and exercise of ecclesiastical power, drew upon an ancient moral vocabulary of virtues and vices, the rights and wrongs of reason and emotion (see, e. g., Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule 2. 9). Employing political discourses formerly used to praise and condemn the behavior of kings and emperors, Christian thinkers and leaders scrutinized themselves and their colleagues critically, as they weighed the dangers of pride, vanity, and ambition for an episcopacy caught between spiritual and worldly imperatives.
The government of the Church, both inside and outside the councils themselves, offered an arena in which clashing conceptions of ecclesiastical authority, and the proper boundaries between religious and secular spheres, could be contested. Late antique ideas on the relationship between Church and state, and on the nature of the Church itself, represented an ongoing struggle to define the proper boundaries between the spiritual and the worldly. Fifth - and sixth-century religious leaders were groping toward a constitution for Christendom, an ecclesiology that could embrace both the spiritual ideals of the Church and its necessary involvement with the powers and priorities of this world.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A comprehensive introduction to ecclesiastical politics and the narrative of early church history can be found in Chadwick 2001. Young 1983 surveys the key authors and personalities of the fourth and early fifth centuries. With respect to secular politics, I have found several works to be particularly thought-provoking: Lendon 1997 on honor, Harries 1999 on law, Kelly 2004 on imperial government. I discuss in greater detail the use of violence and coercion in relations between church authorities and secular powers in Gaddis 2005. On the emperor’s role in the Church, see now Dagron 2003. For the theology and political theory that informed Church-state relations in Late Antiquity, see Field 1998. Fundamental studies of the political and social role of the bishop include Brown 1992 and 2002; Drake 2000; and now Rapp 2005a. Lim 1995 is essential for understanding the means by which authority was defined and constructed within the fourth-century Church. Gray 1989 discusses the role of‘‘the Fathers’’ as a source of doctrinal authority. The Christological controversies of the fifth century and their aftermath are thoroughly narrated in Frend 1972 and Meyendorff 1989. An essential resource for further theological and intellectual study is the exhaustive treatment of Grillmeier 1975, 1987, 1995-6. For the Council of Chalcedon, see now the translation, with extensive introduction and commentary, in Price and Gaddis 2005.
World History
