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Bibliotheca Hagiotheca · Series Colloquia
II
Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints:
Proceedings of the 3rd Hagiography Conference organised by Croatian Hagiography Society
'Hagiotheca' and International Hagiography Society, Poreč, 27-30 May 2010
Edited by John S. Ott and Trpimir Vedriš
Bibliotheca Hagiotheca · Series Colloquia, vol. 2.

Series editors: Ana Marinković and Trpimir Vedriš
First published 2012
Croatian Hagiography Society 'Hagiotheca'

Vrbanićeva 6, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia
Copyright © 2012 by the publisher and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN 978-953-56205-1-8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National and University Library in
Zagreb under number 815948.
Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints
edited by
John S. Ott
and
Trpimir Vedriš
h
HAGIOTHECA · ZAGREB
2012
Contents
Acknowledgements iii
Abbreviations v
Preface vii
Between Heaven and Earth: Saintly Bishops and
Bishops’ Saints
John S. Ott
Papers
1. Shifting Identities: From a Roman Matron to Matrona
Dei in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis
Thomas J. Heffernan 1
2. Martyr Bishops and the Bishop's Martyrs in Fourth-
Century Rome
Marianne Sághy 13
3. Public Displays of Asceticism: Holy Bishops and the
Conversion of Gaul in the Vita Sancti Martini
John Marcus Beard 31
4. A Self-Made Living Saint? Authority and the Two
Families of Theodoret of Cyrrhus
Ville Vuolanto 49
5. Putria tecta, the Bishop and His Martyr: Mutual
Patronage and Configuration of Power in Byzantine
Istria
Marina Miladinov 67
6. Benedict, father of monks, in the chronicle of Mellitus,
bishop of London
Luciana Cuppo 87
7. Where He Is, Thither Will the Eagles Be Gathered Together:
The Metropolitan Status of the Bishop of Spalato from
the Decline of Salona until the Councils of Spalato in
925 and 928
Vadim Prozorov 103
8. The Businessman Saint: Bishop Æthelwold in the Liber
Eliensis
Rachel S. Anderson 123
9. In the Apse or in between: The Benedictional of
Engilmar and Traditions of Episcopal Patronage in the
Apse at Poreč
Evan A. Gatti 137
10. The Place of Holy and Unholy Bishops in Byzantine
Hagiographic Narrative (Eighth-Twelfth Centuries)
Stephanos Efthymiadis 169
11. No Way to Salvation for German Bishops? The Case of
Saint Engelbert of Cologne
Victoria Smirnova 183
12. Episcopal Authority and Disputed Sanctity in Late
Medieval Italy
Janine Peterson 201
13. Bishops Fighting with Demons in Swedish Canonization
Processes
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa 217
14. Popular Images of Saintly Bishops in Late Medieval
England
Sherry L. Reames 235
15. The Pastor Bonus: Saint Stanislaus of Cracow in Sermons
and Bishop Saints as Exemplars in the Late Middle Ages
Stanislava Kuzmová 253
Contributors 273
Acknowledgements
This volume arose from the conference held in Poreč (Croatia) in May 2010.
The conference was co-organised by the Croatian Hagiography Society
‘Hagiotheca’ and the International Hagiography Society, and financially supported
by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia.
Remembering the event, we are grateful to all the organizers, participants,
and guests who made the conference a successful and enjoyable event. The list
of those to whom we are particularly indebted opens with thanks to Sherry
Reames and Ana Marinković as the “first ladies” of our two societies, whose
contacts and initiative made the conference moving. We hope that they will
also enjoy this volume as the fruit of their own labour. Further thanks are due
to the members of our common Organisational Board, who had unrewarding
task of choosing the contributions from the great number of proposals we
have received. We would like to express our special gratitude to the Bishopric
of Poreč and Pula and His Excellency, The Right Reverend Bishop Monsignor
Ivan Milovan in person, for making the conference possible in the unique
space of the Episcopal complex of Poreč. This and many other details which
gave the conference its special flavour would be missing without the
enthusiasm and help of Ivan Matejčić, to whom we express our warmest
gratitude. We are further thankful to Mirko Sardelić and others who helped
us with the conference organisation.
When it comes to the volume production, we are (once again)
indebted to Gábor Klaniczay and Neven Budak for having financially
supported the publication of this volume through their respective projects;
EuroCORECODE ESF-OTKA project Symbols that Bind and Break
Communities: Saints’ Cults and Stimuli and Expressions of Local, Regional, National
and Universalist Identities and Monumenta Medievalia Varia, a project of the
Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia. Further
thanks are due to the reviewers, who generously invested their time and
efforts in reading the articles and suggesting possible improvements. Finally,
we are grateful to Ivan Landeka (and his Print4U) for his unfailing technical
and human support, which made the task of preparing the final version of the
publication manuscript so much easier.
Zagreb, September 19, 2012

At the Feast of Remigius of Rheims ☺
Abbreviations
Apart from the following, most common titles, all works are cited in full at
the first reference and subsequently in short-title form in each paper. Well-
known sources (such as Bible or the Church Fathers) are cited in their
commonly accepted abbreviated forms. Other frequently used abbreviations
are listed here, while the more specific ones (used by a single author) are
abbreviated in the footnotes of the particular text.
AASS Acta Sanctorum, Antwerp – Brussels.

AB Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels
BHG Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, Brussels.
BHL Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, Brussels.
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Turnhout.
CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna.
MGH AA Monumenta Germaniae Historica Auctores Antiquissimi, Berlin.
MGH EP Monumenta Germaniae Historica Epistolae, Berlin.
MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, Hanover
MGH SRM Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum
Merovingicarum, Hanover.
PG Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca, Paris.
PL Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina, Paris.
Introduction
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH: SAINTLY

BISHOPS AND BISHOPS’ SAINTS
John S. Ott
For nearly as long as there have been epískopoi at the head of Christian
communities, and ever since early Christians came to believe that certain
men and women had been elected by God to guide others by their moral
authority or wonder-working virtue, there have been bishop-saints. In
retrospect, this is an unsurprising development. Bishops crowded the ranks
of the earliest Christian martyrs and confessors. They were the community
organizers of the new religion and evangelists to the polytheistic peoples of
the Roman world. Drawn primarily from the imperial Roman aristocracy
in the West, bishops defended the urban centers of the empire and
maintained their infrastructure; they educated and converted non-
Christians (and members of other Christian sects); and they built and
decorated churches and shrines like the beautiful Basilica Eufrasiana, the
sixth-century successor to the earlier, fourth-century edifice dedicated to
St. Maurus, first bishop of Roman Parentium (modern Poreč). In the post-
Constantinian eastern empire, bishops for several centuries routinely came
from the desert or monastery to rule the church. There, a markedly ascetic
ethos pervaded the contemporary ideals of episcopal sainthood, shaping the
norms and expectations of episcopal conduct whether bishops came from
monastic backgrounds or not.1
To echo and slightly modify Marianne Sághy’s turn of phrase,
bishops and bishop-saints alike “invaded the media” of the late antique
world.2 As the socially prominent, founding fathers of Christian
1
Among many important recent monographs, see Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and
the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian, 2d ed. (Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2010 [1978]); Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity. The Nature of
Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005);
Andrea Sterk, Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church. The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004); and the contribution by Stephanos
Efthymiadis in this volume.
2
See chap. 2 of this volume.
viii John S. Ott
communities, and as the ones chiefly responsible for the upkeep of their
local churches, bishops routinely came to be venerated as saints. Texts,
images, and oral testimony preserved local and, in some cases, trans-
regional memories of their deeds and virtues across western Eurasia.3
Medieval frescoes, mosaics, and manuscripts regularly depicted the bishop
holding a facsimile of the church or town in his hands, as the suitably
named bishop Ecclesius can be seen doing in the sixth-century apse of San
Vitale in Ravenna, and as the bishop-saint Eufrasius does in the basilican
apse in Poreč.4 At Poreč and elsewhere, a near-perfect terrestrial syzygy
bound together the bishop, the Christian community, and the episcopal
church and its saints.
Behind every oral, visual, or written claim to sanctity lies an
assertion of authority. It is well known that in the Latin church the process
of canonization was not centralized in papal hands until the late twelfth
century, and even then could remain open to local pressures, develop from
local ecclesiastical or communal initiatives, or reflect local religious
cultures.5 Prior to the twelfth century, the right to declare a man or
woman sanctus/a belonged in principle to the bishop. By their authority
and ability to inscribe an individual’s name in the litanies and prayer-lists
of the local church, bishops ultimately made (and occasionally unmade)
saints. But as scholars have long pointed out, the actual process by which
an individual came to be venerated as a saint was far more complicated
than this, and involved many more hands than the bishop’s alone.6 The
road to sanctity often began with a single text, sometimes as simple as an
epigram or festal list. “Official” affirmation or communal acceptance might
follow much later, or not come at all. Whatever the source of acclamation,
saints’ cults were often sustained over time through episcopal intervention
3
For a survey of written sources, see René Aigrain, L’hagiographie. Ses sources – Ses méthodes –
Son histoire (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 2000 [1953]), 156-192, 404-434.
4
See the essays by Marina Miladinov and Evan Gatti in this volume, with references there
to the extensive literature on the Basilica Eufrasiana. The episcopal audience chamber of the
Basilica Eufrasiana served as the site of the Third Biennial Conference of Hagiotheca on 27-
29 May 2010.
5
See, as a starting point, André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen
Age, d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome: École française de
Rome, 1981), and the contributions of Janine Peterson and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa to this
volume. Vauchez’s seminal work has been translated into English and Italian.
6
The work of Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), as is evident in several of the contributions in
this volume, remains a touchstone for understanding the social function of relics and their
place in networks of power and patronage, especially episcopal networks. Despite its
problems, Nicole Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints. Formation coutumière d’un droit
(Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, 1975), is likewise still useful. See pp. 74-90.
Between Heaven and Earth ix
– in the form of relic elevations and translations, which bishops alone were
authorized to perform, or by integration into liturgical rites. By virtue of
their authorizing power and their roles as founders and directors of local
churches, bishops, more consistently than any other social group or clerical
order, acted as doorkeepers to the celestial court.
A bishop’s religious position and authority were crucial elements
of saint-making. From the advantageous position of his provincial capital,
he exercised direct control over the tools of literary production and
dissemination.7 With impressive material and cultural resources at their
disposal, and conscious of the benefits of connecting social memory to the
episcopal succession and its central place in regional and civic histories,
bishops frequently took an interest in hagiographical writing. They often
put stylus to parchment themselves, or patronized the work of others. In
western Europe, the work of Gregory, bishop of Tours and avid collector of
hagiography, comes immediately to mind.8 He was by no means unique.
The bishop’s position as an arbiter of sanctity and patron of hagiography
meant that he was enviably well positioned to craft the textual traditions
and collective memories of holy men and women. In the case of Theodoret,
bishop of Cyrrhus (423-457), this privilege even extended to
autobiographical self-fashioning.9 As many of the contributors to this
volume make clear, to write (or re-write) a saint’s life meant to invent,
fashion, constrain, or intrude upon it, sometimes in ways that self-
consciously ignored or departed from the existing traditions, or invented
new ones whole-cloth.10
Given the malleability of written traditions, among many other
factors, is it still possible to identify a collection of attributes that define
the saintly bishop? Like other holy men and women, bishop-saints often
7
Among the essays contributed to the special issue of Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven
mediävistischer Forschung 7/1 (2002), on Bischofsstädte als Kultur- und Innovationszentren, ed.
Steffen Patzold, see especially Patzold’s introduction, “Bischofsstädte als Kultur- und
Innovationszentren” (5-11) and Frank Fuerbeth, “Bischofsstädte als Orte der
Literaturproduktion und -rezeption. Am Beispiel von Würzburg (Michael de Leone) und
Konstanz (Heinrich Wittenwiler)” (125-146).
8
The works of Gregory of Tours are conveniently available in English translation: Life of the
Fathers, trans. Edward James, 2d ed. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991); Glory of
the Martyrs, trans. Raymond Van Dam (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004
[1988]); Glory of the Confessors, trans. Raymond Van Dam (Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2004 [1988]).
9
See the essay by Ville Vuolanto in this volume.
10
See the introductory essay by Monique Goullet and Martin Heinzelmann, eds., La
réécriture hagiographique dans l’Occident médiévale. Tranformations formelles et idéologiques
(Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2003), and the chapters contributed below by Heffernan,
Sághy, Beard, Vuolanto, Anderson, Efthymiadis, Smirnova, and Reames.
x John S. Ott
served as ciphers – idealized, static figures onto whom the community

projected its aspirations and desires. The saintly bishop was a particularly
chimerical figure, however.11 Looking beyond the late antique world, we
find among the lists of saintly prelates bishops who became monks; monks
who became bishops; ascetics; mendicants and itinerants; career
administrators; courtiers, warriors and peace-makers; recluses; pilgrims
and crusaders; patrons of the arts; city-builders; institutional founders;
lawyers; theologians; teachers – the list is extensive.12 A simple, satisfying
description of the bishop-saint that takes such diversity into account,
together with the regional and cultural differences concerning sanctity, and
the inevitability of historical change, is in practice very hard to produce.
Scholars have had some success in tracking the changing popularity of
bishops-as-saints. Those who have examined the pace of creation of new
saints in western Europe have singled out Late Antiquity, the Merovingian
era, and the period of the Ottonian and Salian dynasties as high points in
the canonization of bishop-saints.13 During all three periods, bishops
emerged as critical personnel in the ambitions and functioning of western
European monarchies and other polities. In the Byzantine east, the
fortunes of holy bishops likewise ebbed and flowed, ceding considerable
space to monastic and ascetic saints in the post-Constantinian period
11
A function and reflection of the complicated nature of episcopal office, occupying as it did
a delicate position between service and leadership, contemplation and action, power and
humility. See Thomas Head, “Postscript: The Ambiguous Bishop,” in The Bishop Reformed.
Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages, ed. John S. Ott and Anna
Trumbore Jones (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 250-264; Michel Parisse, “The Bishop: Prince
and Prelate,” in The Bishop: Power and Piety at the First Millennium, ed. Sean Gilsdorf
(Münster: LIT, 2004), 1-22.
12
Several essays in the collection Les fonctions des saints dans le monde occidental (IIIe-XIIIe
siècle). Actes du colloque organisé par l’École française de Rome avec le concours de l’Université de Rome
‘La Sapienza,’ Rome, 27-29 octobre 1988 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1991), including
those by Brigitte Beaujard (175-191), Michel Sot (225-240), and Jean-Charles Picard (371-
384), examine saintly episcopal “types” and/or the roles of bishops in the promotion of
saints.
13
Thomas Wünsch, “Der heilige Bischof – Zur politischen Dimension von Heiligkeit im
Mittelalter und ihrem Wandel,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 82/2 (2000): 261-302, esp. pp.
282-298; General surveys that offer a wider context for the popularity of bishop-saints
include Donald Weinstein and Rudolf M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western
Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Michael Goodich,
Vita Perfecta. The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann,
1982); Vauchez, Sainthood; and, most recently, Julia M. H. Smith, “Saints and their Cults,”
in The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 3, Early Medieval Christianities c. 600-c. 1100, ed.
Thomas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 581-605.
Between Heaven and Earth xi
before experiencing something of a resurgence in the eighth and ninth

centuries.14
Tabulating the production of new episcopal vitae as a measure of
the popularity of the bishop-saint figure is problematic in at least two
significant respects, however. First, completely new vitae represent only a
small fraction of the total number of hagiographical texts produced at any
given time. Far more prevalent were reproductions: older saints’ lives that
were copied, circulated, and copied again, or revised and rewritten. Any
reckoning of the popularity of bishop-saints must take into account the
frequency with which episcopal vitae were reworked, as well as newly
conceived. For example, Medardus, the sixth-century bishop of Noyon and
Tournai in northern Francia, was the subject of at least three distinct vitae
(as well as diverse sermons, songs, and verses), the latest composed in the
eleventh century under the auspices of the bishop of Noyon-Tournai,
Radbod (1068-1098). We cannot count Medardus among the “new”
bishop-saints of the late eleventh century; his cult had been widely
venerated for many hundreds of years. Yet surely, Radbod’s intervention in
the written tradition of his saintly predecessor reflects a personal interest in
re-casting Medardus’ history for the religious and civic communities over
which he presided. Estimating the popularity of holy bishops in northern
France in the late eleventh century by the number of bishops newly
canonized and endowed with vitae – a mere handful at this time – would
omit Radbod’s vita of Medardus and likely underestimate the bishop-
saint’s enduring cultic appeal, even as other saintly “types” emerged and
gained in popularity. A far better measurement would take into account
the variety of ways in which devotion to saintly bishops was registered,
including their celebration in routine and extra-routine liturgical contexts.
A second difficulty in measuring the popularity of bishop-saints
lies in the fact that in many instances, cultic veneration is clearly evident
even in the near- or total absence of formal written sources.15 Inscriptions,
epitaphs, episcopal lists; iconographic representation in the form of effigies,
frescoes, mosaics, metal arts, and sculpture; and songs, verses, prayers, and
sermons, to say nothing of the countless tales spread by word-of-mouth –
all were aspects of the cultural and religious practices of saint-veneration,
and holy bishops occupied an unquantifiable but unquestionably
14
See the essay of Stephanos Efthymiadis in this volume.
15
A point made or demonstrated by several contributors, including Saghy, Cuppo, Gatti,
Miladinov, and Prozorov.
xii John S. Ott
important, perhaps even dominant, part of this inheritance.16 Holy bishops

and their deeds were never far from the eyes, ears, or lips of medieval
supplicants.
Figures who were recognized authorities in theological,
philosophical, and practical matters, such as Augustine of Hippo, Ambrose
of Milan, or Gregory the Great, all bishops, had considerable power to
influence which saints were venerated – and how – and could affect the
popularity of saints’ cults for years to come.17 The same capacity to shape
popular perceptions of saints held true of later medieval collections of
saints’ lives, like the wildly successful Legenda Aurea of the Dominican
Jacobus de Voragine, who finished his career as archbishop of Genoa
(1292-1296).18 Less visible to modern scholars, though perhaps more
important than we have typically acknowledged, sermons, litanies, and
prayers – the mundane stuff of the annual liturgical cycle and daily
devotions – carried perhaps the greatest power of all to shape perceptions
of holiness, episcopal or otherwise, among ordinary folk.
Given the ubiquity and diversity of saintly bishops and the
prelates who promoted them, is it wise or even possible to identify a
selection of traits that distinguished the holy bishop from other saintly
types? Bishops played many roles in their communities; they were perhaps
chiefly recognized for their sacramental authority and the office of
preaching. Yet these specific attributes did not necessarily inform the
depictions of bishop-saints, or could be decisively downplayed by their
authors in favor of other qualities, such as asceticism or withdrawal from
the world.19 Episcopal vitae do commonly associate their subjects with the
example of Jesus and the Apostles, whose successors bishops were
considered to be. Moses furnished another archetype of the pastor.20 Two
16
The study of Jean-Charles Picard, Le souvenir des évêques. Sépultures, listes episcopales et culte
des évêques en Italie du Nord des origines au Xe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988), is
foundational.
17
For an apposite example, see the essay by Thomas J. Heffernan concerning Augustine’s
sermons on the Passio of Perpetua and Felicitas in this volume.
18
Jacobus composed The Golden Legend in the 1260s; for a recent consideration of the
collection’s popular reworking of many saints’ stories, see Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made
Word. Saints’ Stories and the Western Imagination, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Cambridge, Mass.:
The Belknap Press, 2008), 239-277.
19
For a survey of attributes accorded saintly bishops in visual sources, see Cynthia Hahn,
Portrayed on the Heart. Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the
Thirteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 129-171.
20
Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, 125-136; Marguerite Harl, “Moïse figure de l’évêque
dans l’Eloge de Basil de Grégoire de Nysse (381),” in The Biographical Works of Gregory of
Nyssa. Proceeding of the Fifth International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Mainz, 6-10
September 1982), ed. Andreas Spira (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1984),
71-119.
Between Heaven and Earth xiii
biblical passages in particular served as touchstones for idealized portraits

of bishops and bishop-saints alike: the passages of John 10:1-18, known by
the proclamation of 10:11, “I am the good shepherd”; and 1 Tim. 3:1-7, a
survey of the attributes of a good bishop.21 John 10 and 1 Tim. 3 presented
visions of engaged, active prelates, with which saintly bishops were often
compared, although these were models to which all bishops, not just the
holiest ones, were to aspire. Yet they were just as likely to be absent from
literary portrayals of bishops when it was the meditative withdrawal of
Mary, rather than the bustling service of Martha, that a community valued
in its pastors.
It is equally difficult to discern whether, among episcopal
hagiographers and patrons, bishops preferred to promote one type of saint
over others. As Marina Miladinov demonstrates in her essay for this
volume, bishops often identified themselves with their sainted
predecessors.22 Developing such a personal or patronal connection was
presumed to have a tangible benefit to the bishop. His stewardship over
the cults of his forerunners situated the bishop within existing celestial and
terrestrial hierarchies, whose authority and operation would have appeared
timeless or at least sustained from prelate to prelate in an unbroken chain.
Yet the value to bishops of asserting relationships premised on strict
hierarchies between heaven and earth might, depending on the time and
circumstance, be off-putting to their parishioners if not risky to a prelate’s
authority. As Sherry Reames shows below, there could be considerable
social value in a bishop-saint who appeared as a man of the people or a
humble monk rather than an imposing hierarch.23
If there was one common and relatively constant attribute that
both hagiographers and ordinary people extolled in their pastors, it was
humility. Episcopal vitae often stressed, following 1 Tim. 3:1, that the
pastoral charge was “good work” (bonum opus) not a comfortable sinecure.
Humility evidenced the bishop’s self-awareness of this fact. Humility
further signaled the bishop’s realization that his power was superior to that
of those under him, but that this power presented its holder with an
opportunity to serve, rather than an excuse to dominate.24
21
See the collected essays in Theo Clemens and Wim Janse, ed., The Pastor Bonus. Papers
read at the British-Dutch Colloquium at Utrecht, 18-21 September 2002 (Leiden: Brill, 2004),
and Stanislava Kuzmová’s contribution in this volume, which focus on the later Middle
Ages. The passages in question are widely cited in texts from earlier periods, however.
22
See below, chap. 5.
23
See below, chap. 14.
24
A point emphatically made by Gregory the Great in his Rule for pastors: Règle pastorale,
ed. and French trans. Bruno Judic, Floribert Rommel, and Charles Morel, 2 vols. (Paris:
xiv John S. Ott
As the preceding overview has implied, social contexts, as well as

the pastoral and political exigencies of episcopal patrons and writers of
hagiography, dictated the sorts of saints that bishops promoted. The flock
also had its say: ordinary people expected their prelates to exhibit certain
behaviors. It is fair to say that the two sides did not always agree on what
those standards and behaviors were to be. But both bishops’ saints and
saintly bishops were social products, figures fashioned from the dialectical
process by which authority was established and maintained, a process to
which parishioners and pastors alike contributed.
In the past two decades, we have seen a renewed scholarly interest
in the iconographical and literary representation of bishops and bishop-
saints.25 This trend appears poised to continue.26 These recent studies,
together with the essays contained in this volume and many others not
mentioned here, are to be welcomed. We might liken them to the colorful
pixels in a digital image of the medieval episcopacy that is slowly coming
into focus. Attaining that bigger picture, a survey of what we know and
what we still do not know, is the single most pressing need confronting the
field. Assembling such a survey will be a formidable task, requiring
international cooperation. The exchange of information and ideas about
bishops’ saints and bishop-saints across national and disciplinary
boundaries is thus crucial, as is the need for regional studies that can serve
as the basis for comparative analysis.27 Hagiotheca’s biennial conference in
Poreč, Croatia, in May 2010 demonstrated the potential of cementing
Editions du Cerf, 1992), 2.6, pp. 205-206: Unde cuncti qui praesunt, non in se potestatem debent
ordinis, sed aequalitatem pensare condicionis; nec praeesse se hominibus gaudeant, sed prodesse.
25
Matthew Mesley, “The Construction of Episcopal Identity: The Meaning and Function of
Episcopal Depictions within Latin Saints’ Lives of the Long Twelfth Century” (Unpublished
D.Phil dissertation, University of Exeter, 2009); Jeffrey Robert Webb, “Cathedrals of
Words: Bishops and the Deeds of their Predecessors in Lotharingia, 950-1100”
(Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Harvard University, 2008); Eva Elm, Die Macht der
Weisheit. Das Bild des Bischofs in der Vita Augustini des Possidius und anderen spätantiken und
frühmittelalterlichen Bischofsviten (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Cynthia Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart
(2001); Stephanie Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum. Eine Quellengattung zwischen Hagiographie
und Historiographie, untersucht an Lebensbeschreibungen von Bischöfen des Regnum Teutonicum im
Zeitalter der Ottonen und Salier (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 2000); Eric Palazzo, L’évêque et
son image. L’illustration du Pontifical au Moyen Âge (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999); Barbara Abou
El-Haj, The Medieval Cult of Saints. Formations and Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994).
26
The publication of Envisioning the Medieval Bishop, ed. Sigrid Danielson and Evan A. Gatti
(Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming), is anticipated in the near future.
27
Ludger Körntgen and Dominik Waßenhoven, eds., Patterns of Episcopal Power. Bishops in
Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe / Strukturen bischöflicher Herrschaftsgewalt im
westlichen Europa des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), is the fruit of one
such endeavor. The editors have also equipped the collection of essays with a valuable
bibliography of works published since 1980 (pp. 163-224).
Between Heaven and Earth xv
international contacts, sharing research, and utilizing comparative and

multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of bishops, holy and not, and
their saints.
GENDER AND THE SOURCES OF AUTHORITY IN
ST. AUGUSTINE'S SERMONS ON PERPETUA AND
FELICITY
Thomas J. Heffernan
St. Augustine knew the story of Perpetua and Felicity from the Passio
Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (hereafter Passio) intimately, having heard it
from childhood in the liturgy readings for their feast day.1 As bishop of
Hippo he wrote at least five sermons on their feast day and discussed their
story in De origine animae.2 He wrote the five sermons that have come down
to us over a period of twenty years.3 They differ in style, length, theme and
solemnity.4 Sermon 280, which may be the earliest and which Augustine
calls a sermo sollemnis, was likely preached in his church in Hippo. It is more
1
It is likely that his sermons and De anima are based on the Passio and not the Acta version
of the martyr’s narrative. Perpetua is depicted as the charismatic leader of the martyrs in
the Passio, but Saturus appears more dominant in the Acta. This fact would make moot
Augustine’s efforts at accounting for the apparent heroism of her gender as the leader.
Secondly, Perpetua’s dream of her dead brother Dinocrates is entirely omitted from the Acta
and that account is the very subject of Augustine’s extenegivend discussion – which we will
not consider here – on why he believed Dinocrates was baptized before he died; see De
anima et eius origine, 1.12.1. That Augustine heard the Passio in his childhood does not
intimate that he was attracted to Christianity as a young man.
2
PL 38: 1280-6, and see François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit d’origine Africaine pour la
fête des saintes Perpétue et Félicité,” in: Augustin et la prédication en Afrique: recherches sur
divers sermons authentiques apocryphes ou anonymes (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes,
2005), 349-354, and Isabella Schiller, Dorothea Weber and Clemens Wiedmann, “Sechs
neue Augustinus Predigten,” Wiener Studien. Zeitschrift fuer Klassische Philologie und Patristik
und Lateinische Tradition 221 (2008): 227-284. Similar themes can be found in the pseudo-
Augustine sermon 394. See also Victor Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques en Afrique chrétienne aux
premiers siècles. Les témoignages de Tertullien, Cyprien,et Augustin a la lumiere de l’archéologie
africainé. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1980), 315-321 and Cyrille Lambot, “Les sermons de saint
Augustin pour les fêtes de martyrs”, Analecta Bollandiana 67 (1949): 249-266.
3
We have no accurate date for the sermons on the Passio; Hill provides conjectural dating
from ca. 400 for Sermon 280 to 415-420 for 283; see Edmund Hill, “Sermons,” in: The
Works of St. Augustine (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1994), 72-86. See also Lambot, “Les
sermons”, and Saxer, Morts, 315-321.
4
Augustine would likely have given the sermon on their feast day throughout his career
and hence the five extant sermons represent a small sample of his sermons on the Passio. It
has been estimated that he preached approximately 8,000 sermons. See also Pierre-Patrick
Verbraken, Études critiques sur les sermons authentiques de Saint Augustine (Steenbrugge: Nijhof,
1976), 17-18, who lists more than 500 extant sermones ad populum alone.
2 Thomas J. Heffernan
than six times the length of Sermo 282 and treats topics as varied as gender,
his present congregation’s descent from the persecutors of the martyrs, and
one’s fear of death contrasted with the martyrs’ scorn for it, and ends with
a brief discussion of the theology of the communio sanctorum. Sermo 281 does
not identify the day it was preached; it is largely concerned with such
gender issues as Perpetua’s adoption of the persona of a man to combat the
devil’s choice of a male wrestler, so that like would face like. Augustine
points out that the choice of her father as an antagonist is part of Satan’s
strategy to play on her affection for her family. Sermo 282, the briefest of
the sermons on the Passio, was preached on their feast day and is chiefly
concerned with explaining why the feast is named only after the two
women when men also were martyred. Augustine concludes that “it was a
greater miracle for the women in their weakness to overcome the ancient
enemy, and that the men in their strength engaged in the contest for the
sake of perpetual felicity.”5 The sermons found by Dolbeau, Schiller,
Weber and Weidmann are for our purposes not significantly different
thematically from sermons 280 through 282. The Passio’s representation of
the figure of Perpetua as a female not wholly subordinate to male authority
was a stumbling block for Augustine, the bishop. His sermons on the
Passio, rhetorically sophisticated as they are, nonetheless represent an effort
to subordinate the women’s heroism to a palatable theological lesson.
Augustine, like his North African fellow Catholics, revered the
Passio as one of their foundational “scriptures” – as indeed it was also for
the Donatists. Along with the Acta Scillitanorum Martyrum the Passio stands
at the very beginning of African Christianity. Perhaps Augustine also felt a
special kinship to the story of the martyrs since the lives of the Bishop of
Hippo and the Roman matron Perpetua share a number of uncanny
parallels, parallels seldom mentioned. For example, aside from their
uniquely first person conversion narratives, both authors were from curial
families, though Augustine was significantly less well off than Perpetua;
both were well-educated and, among their siblings, were favored by their
parents; both had parents of mixed religions – their disapproving fathers
pagan, their mothers Christian; both were nurtured by the cosmopolitan
atmosphere of Roman Carthage; both refer to their partners anonymously,
partners from whom they were later separated; both had only sons whom
they lost; both were converts who adopted a life of celibacy; and both held
leadership positions in their Christian communities.6 Furthermore, there is
5
PL 38, Sermo 282: …sed muliebris infirmitas inimicum antiquum miraculo majore devicit, et
virilis virtus propter perpetuam felicitatem certavit; and Hill, “Sermons”, 82.
6
The complete absence of any mention of her husband in the Passio may underscore the
New Prophecy’s encratic tendencies and their preference for sexual abstinence in its leaders.
Gender and the Sources of Authority 3
an early tradition that claims Monica so revered the memory of Perpetua

that she named her daughter, Augustine’s only sister, after the
Carthaginian martyr. Perpetua was a presence in Augustine’s life from his
earliest years.
Perpetua’s autobiography may have provided him with a Christian
model for his own Confessions and, like the desert-dwelling Anthony,
Perpetua represented to this intellectual a life where faith discards
theological nuance for action. For the Bishop of Hippo, however, her
narrative, as it was read in the churches of Africa, was not only an
inspirational source of heroic faith, but also a problematic theological
model of some concern. Despite his admiration for Perpetua and Felicity –
and it is the women he principally focuses on – he sought to re-inscribe the
reasons for their actions. The sermons promote an argument that the
actions depicted in the Passio – actions which in the original celebrate an
autonomous female agency acting in concert with faith – are not actions
governed by female free will alone, but rather behaviors fully dependent on
the prevenient and co-operating grace of the Holy Spirit, though such
grace does not diminish their will.7 Faith is for Augustine a freely bestowed
gift from God, which cannot be merited, and emerges at the prompting of
prevenient grace, which provides the basis for the will’s later action. It is
impossible to know his motives for such a representation of the martyrs’
action but surely in addition to being a product of the traditional Roman
African male upbringing and the exigencies of his theological concerns,
Augustine’s role as bishop and teacher to a large and largely illiterate
diocese, where traditional behaviors were normative, must be part of our
understanding.
Augustine’s North African Church revered its historic roots as a
church of persecution and martyrs. Indeed, his sermons on the Passio were
composed at a time when sectarian violence, persecution, and martyrdom
between Catholics and Donatists, particularly in Augustine’s Numidia –
couched by the opposing sides in language reminiscent of the earlier
persecutions of the Christians by the Romans – was a fact of life.8 The
7
The subject of grace in Augustine is labyrinthine in complexity as his thinking continued
to change throughout his life. See De gratia et libero arbitrio I.4: Neque cum aliquid secundum
Deum operatur, alienet hoc a propria voluntate; and Peter King, ed., On the Choice of the Will, On
Grace and Free Choice, and other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
and his introduction. See also Augustine’s anti-Pelagian tract De Natura et Gratia, where he
makes the case for the effect of grace on righteous actions. Since the dates for sermons 280-
282 are tentative, it is difficult to know how they reflect his thought at a specific time.
8
Ep. 88 and 134. Donatist theology was not monolithic over time but evolved to confront
different challenges; see Matthew Alan Gaumer, “The evolution of Donatist Theology as a
response to a changing late antique milieu,” Augustiana 58/3-4 (2008): 201-231.
earliest Latin Christian text – and indeed the earliest evidence of

Christianity in Roman Africa – is the account of the martyrdom of the
Scillitans (ca.180). A mere two decades after their martyrdom, Perpetua
and her companions were condemned ad bestias in the military
amphitheatre of Carthage (ca.203), and a half century after their
martyrdom, Cyprian was beheaded for his profession of Christianity (258).
There were certainly others who were killed in local pogroms about which
we have scant information. Thus Roman African Christianity ab initio is a
community whose foundational soteriological paradigm is a belief in the
efficacy and importance of blood witness as a guarantee of salvation. A
Church whose memory centers on the celebration of blood witness is one
deeply indebted to a rigorist eschatological and apocalyptic Christianity.
Self-sacrifice as an act of individual courageous witness played such a
pivotal role in African ecclesiology precisely because it was supported by a
belief in the active presence of the Holy Spirit and a belief in the
imminence of the end time as they crystallized in certain prophetic
personalities.9
Celebration of blood sacrifice as the highest witness dramatically
changed in the post-Constantinian African Church. While its ecclesiology
now changed due to the legal enfranchisement of the church in the empire,
the African Church did not wholly abandon its rigorism or its celebration
of martyrdom, as witness the Donatists and the suicidal behavior of the
Circumcellions, some of whom threw themselves from cliffs and sought
death rather than allow themselves to be “polluted” by those Catholics
they considered “traitors”. Despite their often-manic behavior, significant
segments of the population honored these extreme deeds, considering those
who died genuine martyrs. Thus at the very least amongst some part of the
Christian community – and perhaps principally amongst the indigenous
Punic speakers who made up a sizable number of the rural lower classes –
blood sacrifice was still revered and those who died volitionally for their
belief were considered heroic and sainted.10 Thus in addition to the
continuing theological issues of concern to African Christianity, like that
Honorius’s “Edict of Unity” (issued in February 405) declared the Donatists schismatic. For
a discussion of the Edict, see Emilien Lamirande, Church, State, and Toleration: An Intriguing
Change of Mind in Augustine (Villanova: Villanova University Press, 1975), 9-12.
9
Although Tertullian makes no distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Paraclete (see
his De virginibus Velandis, I.6-7), some of the more rigorist members of the Christian Church
in Carthage did draw a distinction.
10
For Augustine’s knowledge of Punic, see Sermo 288.3. See also Alexander Evers, Church,
Cities and People: A Study of the Plebs in the Church and Cities of Roman Africa in Late Antiquity
(Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 155-160, who argues against Frend’s thesis that the Donatists
were chiefly drawn from the rural poor.
on the status of the lapsi, there also appears to be a flourishing, long-

standing cultural substrate of both latent anti-authoritarianism and
hostility to a philosophical theology in this church, which continued to
thrive in the varied Donatist and Circumcellion communities long after the
church had become the legal authority by the mid-fifth century.11
The earliest public leader of this church of whom we have any
record was Tertullian, who left a complex body of work, often polemical,
rigorist, and perforce anti-authoritarian in tone and yet revered by Cyprian
– who referred to Tertullian as his “master”.12 While it is easy to overstate
Tertullian’s increasing debt to a kind of indigenous rigorism, there is little
doubt that it became more pronounced as he grew older. His fiery rhetoric
left a powerful imprint on future generations of African Christians. His
depreciatory cry “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens,” read against his
triumphalist claim that “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church,” sums up this rigorist Roman African Christian mentality, which
remained for many Christian Africans a revered ancestral cry against the
tyranny of the Roman state and provided a theological foundation for the
unique rigorist spirit of African Christianity.13 Historical Christianity first
appears in Africa with the deaths of the Scillitan martyrs (ca.180).
Tertullian sees these men and women as his ancestors in the faith and their
model as representing the highest standard to which a Christian could
aspire. His “perfectionist” eschatology seems to lead him into an even more
rigorist moral theology, particularly after 207 as he becomes increasingly
committed to the encratic tendencies of the New Prophecy.14 It was his
conviction that the martyr alone was cleansed from all sin (Ad Scorp. 6.10)
and taken immediately to heaven on his or her death. All other Christians
awaited their resurrection in Hades until the return of the Lord. Tertullian
knew the Passio and revered the martyr Perpetua, placing her in heaven
and emphasizing that it was her heroic martyrdom which made that
ascension possible.15 Augustine’s attitude to Tertullian is complicated. He
read Tertullian and had considerable respect for his intellect and style, but
11
Maureen A. Tilley, “From Separatist Sect to Majority Church: The Ecclesiologies of
Parmenian and Tyconius,” Studia Patristica 33 (1997): 260-265; and Robert A. Markus,
“Donatism: The Last Phase,” Studies in Church History 1 (1964): 118-126.
12
Paul Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique Chrétienne (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1901),
especially chapter 3, “Le Polémiste,” 293-335.
13
See Augustine’s reprise (an homage?) of Tertullian’s famous (semen est sanguis christianorum,
Apol. 50.13) in Sermo 22.4.4: sparsum est semen sanguinis, surrexit seges ecclesiae.
14
David Rankin, Tertullian and the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
92 ff.
15
De Anima, 55.4: Quomodo Perpetua, fortissima martyr, sub die passionis in reuelatione paradisi
solos illic martyras uidit, nisi quia nullis romphaea paradisi ianitrix cedit nisi qui in Christo
decesserint, non in Adam?
ultimately placed him amongst the heretics because of the former’s

adoption of New Prophecy positions (evident after his composition of De
anima, ca. 207/8),..16 Tertullian’s celebration of Perpetua’s heroism and
Augustine’s knowledge of Tertullian’s Montanist sympathies may have
figured in Augustine’s anxiety about her depiction in the Passio. In short,
the martyr’s reputation for Augustine may have been compromised by
Tertullian’s praise.17
By the late fourth century the Passio of the martyrs Perpetua and
Felicity had acquired a revered and foundational status, perhaps akin – to
use a not entirely apt modern analogy – to the textual inviolability of the
American Constitution in American jurisprudence. Augustine, for example
– and perhaps with some incredulity finds it necessary to point out to
Vincentius Victor that Perpetua’s brother does not appear in either the
Hebrew or Christian Bible.18 Such status and the reason for popular
reverence troubled Augustine, but not mainly because of any taint of
Montanism. The narrative of the Passio was held in such high esteem that
bishops, and particularly Augustine, were concerned that the women’s
popularity amongst the people was such that their narratives, aside from
continuing to celebrate blood witness, would jeopardize the status of the
canonical scriptures, emphasize individual agency over the magisterium, and
minimize the bishops’ role as the interpreter and disseminator of scripture
and church teaching. In sum, the complex sub-text of the laity’s love for
the Passio was a serious matter for the hierarchy. Augustine’s concern is
manifold: his first priority is to safeguard the paramount centrality of the
scriptures, subordinate charismatic behavior to the argument of approved
Catholic theology lest the saint be appropriated by Donatists, and protect
the paramount authority of the Catholic episcopacy.19 For example,
Augustine never mentions the anecdote in the Passio which shows Bishop
16
See Augustine, Gen. Litt. 10.25.41 for his praise of Tertullian’s keen intellect (quoniam
acutus est), but he nonetheless listed him with the heresiarchs because of his Montanism,
which caused him to condemn second marriage as adultery, see De Haer. 86: Non ergo ideo est
Tertullianus factus haereticus…stupra damnare.
17
Kenneth B. Steinhauser, “Augustine's Reading of the Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et
Felicitatis,” Studia Patristica 33 (1997): 244-49, argues that the Passio is thoroughly
Montanist and that Augustine’s understanding of this was partly cause for his muting the
heroism of Perpetua. I do not believe the Passio so Montanist and have presented my
position in my review of Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & "New Visions": Evidence of
Montanism in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, Vigiliae Christianae 61/3 (2007): 357-359.
18
De Anima et eius origine, 1.12.1: De fratre autem sanctae Perpetuae Dinocrate, nec scriptura ipsa
canonica est…
19
Augustine was embroiled with the Donatist bishops concerning, among other matters,
the role of personal holiness versus ecclesial consecration of the bishop. See his Contra
Litteras Petiliani in PL 43, cols. 86-191.
Optatus and Aspasius the presbyter prostrate before Perpetua’s feet

seeking her counsel and he struggles against the considerable popularity of
Donatist bishops, notably in his response to Petilianus.20 Although the
heroism of martyrdom that the Passio promoted was no longer practicable,
the struggles of Perpetua and Felicity – and it is chiefly the two women
from the group of six who were martyred, not their male companions –
was continually represented to the faithful in the liturgy and on their feast
days as a model for imitation. Thus the local churches continually
reinforced their iconic heroic status of powerful female leaders acting
courageously. The two women were the founding mothers of the church in
Carthage and it was perilous for anyone – and surely Augustine knew this
– who sought to redefine their status.
The problem for Augustine is twofold, both theological and
cultural. Theologically, his problem was how to rewrite the narrative of the
Passio so that its extraordinary depiction of courageous and volitional
female martyrdom could be shown as a reflection of Catholic thinking
about the nature of grace operating through faith on free will. Culturally,
Augustine was a traditional Roman African elite male who would have
found Perpetua’s public behavior, particularly towards her father, as
eccentric, and, if not an outright fiction, then certainly non-normative and
worthy of comment. He surely believed that a child – perhaps even more
singularly a female child – naturally owed a kind of respectful compliance
or obsequium to the parent’s wishes.21 For example, he himself did not
confront Monica with the truth of his flight to Italy, but – in order not to
violate a filial respect – he lied to her.22 While he later deplored this
deception, it is noteworthy that at the time he preferred deception to
confrontation. Furthermore, as an adult of 32 years of age, he nonetheless
respected her wish that he abandon his concubine of 16 years and become
betrothed to a young girl.
20
Passio 13.1-2. Et exivimus et vidimus ante fores Optatum episcopum ad dexteram et Aspasium
presbyterum doctorem ad sinistram, separatos et tristes. Et miserunt se ad pedes nobis, et dixerunt:
“Componite inter nos, quia existis, et sic nos reliquistis.”
21
Augustine hints at his suspicion of the Passio’s claim to have been written in part by
Perpetua in De Anima et eius origine, 1.12.1: …nec illa sic scripsit, vel quicumque illud scripsit, ut
illum puerum qui septennis mortuus fuit. Judith P. Hallett in a discussion of women in the
ancient Mediterranean notes that gender roles and their traditions “coexist with the male
supremacist tradition represented by Augustine, a powerful tradition that assumes the
differences between the sexes are all important,” in: “Women’s Lives in the Ancient
Mediterranean,” in: Women & Christian Origins, eds. R. S. Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18, and Catherine Fales Cooper, “Closely
Watched Households: Visibility, Exposure and Private Power in the Roman Domus,” Past
& Present 197 (2007): 3-33.
22
Confessiones, 5.8.15. The scene is deliberately modelled on that of Aeneid 9.287.
Augustine considered Perpetua’s rejection of her father’s pleas and

her refusal to listen to anyone in authority, save her interior promptings, as
unwomanly and representing a public repudiation of the mos maiorum. In
the scenes with her father, the narrative depicts Perpetua as the touchstone
of power and authority. She has turned from being her father’s child in
filiae loco and in his patriae potestate, since he is the pater familias, to a woman
in potestate Dei alone. Her last words to her father, before the procurator
Hilarianus pronounced the death sentence, announce the dissolution of this
contract between her father and herself. She says: “For you must know that
we are no longer in our own power but in God’s.”23 Her father leaves her,
publicly vanquished. She expresses sorrow for his “old age” but not for his
person as her father.
Augustine found the narratives depicting Perpetua’s public
behavior towards her father potentially socially disruptive since they
seemed to sanction Perpetua’s unfilial behavior. The Bishop of Hippo, in
his role as the anointed shepherd of the Church, sought to mollify the
Passio’s representation of her socially unsettling behavior. The later Acta,
reflecting something of Augustine’s discomfort with the representation of
daughter and father in the Passio, dramatically change the Passio’s
representation of her disdain for parental prerogatives, reinventing her as a
dutiful daughter. Augustine’s world was one in which women did not
confront men, particularly in public, as is made brutally clear when
Augustine notes that his mother was the only woman amongst her married
friends who did not exhibit bruises from being beaten by their husbands.
Monica knew how to mollify Patricius’ wrath. Accordingly, Augustine
sought to interpret the narrative of the martyrdom, particularly the
behavior of the women – and especially Perpetua’s relationship with her
father – as an allegory, as the story of her father’s possession by Satan and
her efforts to cure him. Thus he argues that Perpetua is not disrespecting
her father in disputing with him, but rather exposing the malign spirit
placed in him by Satan. He notes “That old and crafty enemy …he [Satan]
gave to her father beguiling words, hoping that a religious spirit which
would not be softened by the promptings of pleasure, might be broken by
the attack of family duty and feeling.”24 Having blamed the devil for her
attack on her father, Augustine mutes the superficially disrespectful
behavior of the female child against the parent. He re-inscribes her
behavior as the necessary promptings of the Holy Spirit working through
grace in Perpetua to chastise the devilish arguments of a misguided and
23
Passio 3.6. scito enim nos non in nostra esse potestate futoros, sed in Dei.
24
Sermo 281.2.3-5: Merito ille vetus ac veterator inimicus…pietatis impetu frangeretur, and Hill,
“Sermons,” 78-9.
possessed parent. In Sermon 281, he states explicitly: “She neither violated

the commandment by which honor is owed to one’s parents…[but] what
she hated in him was his folly, not his nature, his unbelief, not her
origin.”25 Thus Augustine “de-fangs” her presentation in the Passio and
represents her behavior as beneficent, as the application of a caring, healing
power intended to root out the demonic spirit in her father. He deftly
presents her behavior not as rebellious and socially disruptive, but as that
of a dutiful daughter motivated by love for her father and seeking familial
cohesion. The daughter is not usurping the role of the parent but seeks to
return her father to his rightful place and authority. He concludes by
saying et cui non praebuit assensum, servavit affectum: “her affection for him
was undiminished” and she grieved when the authorities struck him.26 His
is a brilliant, albeit bowdlerizing reading. While he may believe her
behavior to be heroic and prompted by the spirit, he argues it is a
masculine spirit working in a female body. He states, “A more splendid
crown, I mean, is owed to those of the weaker sex (ubi sexus infirmior),
because a manly spirit has clearly done much more in women (Quia profecto
virilis animus in feminas majus) when their feminine frailty (fragilitas feminea)
has not been undone under such enormous pressure.”27
The anecdote with her father – and indeed the power and
authority of Perpetua – troubled Augustine since it seemed his
congregation either did not see or understand the theological argument
implicit in the narrative. Accordingly, he tried to show how Perpetua’s
behavior was not an action of free will alone, but was rooted in the grace of
the Holy Spirit working in her soul. Theologically, Augustine’s
understanding of the soul seems initially to derive from Neo-Platonic
psychology, which sees the human soul as an independent, animating,
causal principle. While it is essential to the body, it is non-material and
does not have spatio-temporal dimensionality.28 The soul is our center of
consciousness and the point from which self-awareness derives. The divine
logos is then mysteriously joined to this human soul. However, the logos is
co-mingled rather than mixed in a substantial way. Augustine says,
following Plotinus, that the transcendent logos “bears” (portare) and acts
through (agere) the human person, but does not overwhelm will. Until
Ockham, the standard understanding of Augustine’s theology of grace is
25
Sermo 281.2.6: Ibi vero doluit illa sensis parentis injuriam; et cui non praebuit assensum, servavit
affectum. Oderat quippe in illo stultitiam, non naturam; et eius infidelitatem, non origine suam.
26
Sermo 281.2.3.
27
Sermo 281.1.2: Nam ibi est corona gloriosior, ubi sexus infirmior. Quia profecto virilis animus in
feminas majus aliquid fecit, quando sub tanto pondere fragilitas feminea non defecit.
28
This is one of complaints against Tertullian, who argued for the corporeality of the soul.
that grace is a type of internal illumination, which restores an individual’s

connection to the good. Augustine says in his sermons that the martyrs’
iconic behavior was not solely an act of courageous volition; instead, what
the listener might interpret in the Passio readings as an example of
unalloyed human heroism is actually the Holy Spirit manifested in the
logos fully expressing itself in concerted action with the free agency of the
women.29 Thus Pereptua’s behavior to her father is not in effect that of a
rebellious Roman daughter; instead, she is, in part, the agent of the Holy
Spirit exposing and correcting judgments placed in him by Satan. Her
ability to correct her father – to act in concert with God’s will – does not
imply that she is a passive recipient of grace, but it does, for Augustine,
mean that she does not merit such grace and is subservient to its reception.
Thus the theology subsumes the cultural argument by identifying the
wellsprings of Perpetua’s volition as an inextricable part of the grace of the
Holy Spirit, which she receives unmerited.
Augustine argues that the relationship of the martyr’s behavior to
the figure of Christ is a transformative one, in which the causal effects of
divine grace present in the logos become the motivating human center
while not usurping agency. Whereas the point of his theological argument
was to clarify the Christological nature of the Spirit operating in people, an
intentional contingent effect was to mitigate for his listeners their
celebration of the purely volitional bravery of the women. Augustine’s
argument rhetorically subsumes the distinctive nature of their achievement
as women into a larger Christological paradigm. Yet, Augustine had to
proceed gingerly, that is, he had to present his argument in such a way so
as to appear not to diminish the martyrs’ sacral status and the magnitude of
their personal sacrifice to his African audience. His project was a delicate
one as, if he had failed – that is, if his congregations had not been
convinced that his Christological argument complemented the women’s
heroism, but instead minimized their free choice – he would have risked
alienating his congregation and possibly sending some of them into the
Donatist communities.
Let me conclude by acknowledging that it is difficult to know
precisely what the effects of Augustine’s arguments were on the
subsequent popularity of the cult in Roman North Africa. Did his
reconfiguration of the idea of the heroic martyrs through his Christology
augment or diminish their status amongst the people? The cult seems to
have maintained some of its popularity in the later fifth century but
significantly no African bishop after Augustine – save Quodvultdeus –
29
Sermo 280.1.4: Sed hoc illius potissimum laus est, in quem credentes, et in cujus nomine fideli studio
concurrentes, and 282.4: Divina ergo providentia gubernante istae non solum martyres….
wrote much about it.30 Curiously, their feast is not mentioned in the
Calendar of Carthage for the 7th of March, its traditional day of
celebration.31 The reason for this is the likelihood that in the sixth century
the feast fell under an interdict forbidding the celebration of popular saints’
days during Lent.32 Lastly, although it achieved something approaching a
canonical status once it was taken into the canon of the Mass, the Passio
never again – particularly in medieval Europe – had a significant popular
following.33 Did the great bishop of Hippo’s success in subordinating the
heroism of the women to a theological lesson diminish the impact of the
Passion for later generations – likely not – or had it become such a “sacral”
canonical text that the Passio resisted efforts at populist transformation,
thus leaving an opportunity for the emergence of the populist Acta with its
intentional mass appeal?
30
Cf. Opera Quodvultdeo Carthaginiensi episcopo tributa. De tempore Barbarico I.V.18b, CCSL 60,
ed. R. Braun (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976). Quodvultdeus cites from the Passio but adds little
to the discussion of the martyrs, mostly paraphrasing Augustine’s sermons on them.
31
PL 13, cols. 1219-30, Kalendarium Antiquissimum: Ecclesiae Carthaginensis with the
minatory note from Mabillon: Nullum festum per totam Martium mensem, [col. 1217] id est per
totam Quadragesimam.
32
See Victor Saxer, Vie liturgique et quotidienne à Carthage vers le milieu du IIIe siècle (Città del
Vaticano: Pontifico Instituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1969), 310 and Dolbeau, “Un
sermon,” 340, who cites a Carthaginian deacon Ferrand, the compiler of the Breviatio
canonum (ca. 523-46), which document prohibited the celebration of saints’ days during
Lent, the likely time when their feast occurred.
33
There are but nine extant Latin Passio manuscripts, none later than the twelfth century,
and one early-eleventh century Greek manuscript. There are, however, approximately
ninety manuscripts of the more hagiographic Acta, dating from the ninth through the
fourteenth century. It has almost no representation in the plastic arts after its depiction in S.
Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (ca. 560).
MARTYR-BISHOPS AND THE BISHOP'S MARTYRS
IN FOURTH-CENTURY ROME
Marianne Sághy
Exhorted in missives, venerated at their tombs, implored on epitaphs,

commemorated in calendars, represented on gold glass, catacomb frescoes,
and in bedchambers, the Christian bishop invaded the media in late
antique Rome.1 The “rise of the bishop” has attracted much scholarly
attention and sparked an intensive debate,2 particularly as to the imperial
policy or the Roman bishopric's claim to primacy among the churches.3
The construction of the episcopacy at Rome was a long and complex
process, in which Church politics ran parallel to and complemented the
legal measures of the Roman administration. This paper takes some
untrodden paths to inquire about the making of the “martyr-bishop”
within the Church of Rome. It examines textual and visual representations
of the martyr-bishop at Rome during and after the Arian crisis in order to
identify the key themes of episcopal holiness and the motivations behind
the burgeoning representations of “martyr-bishops.
In marked contrast with the Greek East,4 the fourth-century
Roman clergy did not produce homiletical and hagiographical texts about
1
See Charles Pietri, Roma Christiana. Recherches sur l’Eglise de Rome, son organisation, sa
politique, son idéologie de Miltiade à Sixte III (311-440), 2 vols. (Rome: École française de
Rome, 1976); Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Vescovi e pastori in epoca teodosiana (Rome:
Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1997); John Curran, Pagan City and Christian
Capital. Rome in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); Lucy Grig, Making
Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London: Duckworth, 2004).
2
Mark Humphries, „From Emperor to Pope? Ceremonial, Space, and Authority at Rome
from Constantine to Gregory the Great,” in Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early
Christian Rome, 300-900, ed. K. Cooper and J. Hillner (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 21-58.
3
Erich L. E. Caspar, Primatus Petri: eine philologisch-historische Untersuchung ub̈ er die Ursprünge
der Primatslehre (Weimar: Böhlau, 1927); John Meyendorff, The Primacy of Peter: Essays in
Ecclesiology and the Early Church (Crestwood: SVS Press, 1992); Stephen K. Ray, Upon This
Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1999).
4
Current research on the ‘holy bishop’ has concentrated on examples from the Eastern half
of the Roman Empire; see Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of
Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: California University Press, 2005);
Vescovi e pastori ; Marcella Forlin Patrucco, “Modelli di santità e santità episcopale nel IV
14 Marianne Sághy
holy bishops. Non-traditional textual and visual sources, however, such as

festal lists, catacomb inscriptions, and catacomb paintings, allow us a
glimpse into the formation of the Roman discourse of episcopal holiness
under the pontificates of Liberius (352-366) and Damasus (366-384),
when bishops increasingly came to be represented by their colleagues as
saintly exemplars of steadfast faith in Christ. The ascendancy of the
martyr-bishop, concomitant with the anti-Arian propaganda of the Nicene
bishops of Rome, was part of the legitimizing strategies of the bishop in
power. Yet, as this paper aims to show, the discourse on the holy bishop
was not worked out by the pontiff alone, but in close collaboration with his
élite Christian supporters.
Charles Pietri, the great historian of Roma christiana, had noted
that, in the Vrbs, holy bishops emerged in a liturgical rather than a
hagiographical context.5 Instead of sermons and legends, the Roman
Church produced martyr lists. Between 354-384, these internal documents
were “leaked out” from Church archives and surfaced in works that were
traditionally associated with, and reserved for, the display of urban civic
culture and aristocratic commemoration: calendars and cemeteries. The
liturgical innovations and compilations appearing in calendars and
catacombs help us figure out what the ideal holy bishop was like in fourth-
century Rome. On the basis of two sets of interrelated, yet distinct texts,
the Liberian catalogue and the Damasian carmina, this paper aims to show
that these works, created in association with powerful private patrons,6 did
not result from an antiquarian interest, but responded to the problems of
the day and advanced a particular image of the martyr-bishop. The
Liberian catalogue and the Damasian inscriptions were executed by the
same artist, without being identical. Scholars have focused on the overlaps7
rather than the differences between the two works. I would argue that the
different pressures produced slightly divergent conceptions and different
secolo: l’elaborazione dei padri cappadoci,” in Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento:

contrasti, intersezioni, complementarità, ed. Giulia Barone, Marina Caffiero, andFrancesco
Scorza Barcellona(Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1994), 65-79; Rita Lizzi Testa, Il potere
episcopale nell’Oriente romano. Rappresentazione ideologica e realtà politica (IV-VI sec. d. C.) (Rome:
Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1987).
5
Pietri, Roma Cristiana, 358: “la littérature hagiographique, les actes apocryphes de Pierre
et de Paul excitent médiocrement, semble-t-il, l’intérêt du christianisme romain.”
6
For the continuity of private patronage in the Church, see Kim Bowes, Private Worship,
Public Values and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008).
7
Victor Saxer, “Damase et le calendrier des fêtes des martyrs de l’église romaine,” Saecularia
Damasiana: Atti del Convegno internazionale per il XVI centenario della morte di Papa Damaso I
(Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1986), 61-88.
Martyr-bishops 15
accents in the construction of the martyr-bishop, who was nevertheless

well on his way, already in this period, towards representing Rome.
Martyr-bishops
For the year of 354 A.D., the Roman aristocrat and calligrapher Furius
Dionysius Filocalus8 offered a deluxe present to his friend Valentinus: a
richly illustrated calendar representing the religious and civic holidays of
the year, with important textual sections complete with astrological
indications, imperial anniversaries, lists of consuls, emperors, urban
prefects, and excerpts from the history of Rome.9 So far, there seemed to be
nothing surprising about Filocalus' gift. What was highly unusual were the
lists that this upper-class artist appended to his calendar: the feasts of
Christian bishops (depositio episcoporum) and Christian martyrs (depositio
martyrum), as well as a catalogue of the bishops of Rome, giving the lengths
of tenure of each pontiff with the corresponding consular and imperial
dates.10
These appendices constitute the first extant feriale and the first
extant bishop list of the Church of Rome (called the „Liberian catalogue” in
scholarship, because it was compiled under Liberius' pontificate and he is
the last bishop mentioned in the list). Curiously, these important church
documents were preserved for posterity not in an ecclesiastical archive, but
in a Roman aristocrat’s “secular” – that is, “pagan” – calendar.11 How did
the bishops’ list, an internal document of the Church of Rome, make it into
Valentinus’ diary? The inclusion of conspicuously Christian information
into a secular almanac suggests not only that Valentinus and Filocalus
were Christians, but also that they were on good terms with the bishops of
Rome: in fact, we have evidence that Filocalus, the donor and illustrator of
8
On Filocalus’ upper-class background and senatorial friends, see Alan Cameron, “Filocalus
and Melania,” Classical Philology 87 (1992), 140-144.
9
Michele R. Salzman, On Roman Time. The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban
Life in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), convincingly clarified
the confessional affiliation of the Calendar’s dedicatee, Valentinus, and examined the codex
in the context of urban elite culture.
10
Published by Theodore Mommsen, ed., Chronica Minora I, MGH AA 9 (Berlin:
Weidmann 1892), 70-76.
11
Every holiday represented in the Calendar is pagan, which led scholars such as Henri
Stern and András Alföldi to assume that both the donor and the owner of the calendar were
pagans. Salzman, however, pointed out that not they, but Roman time itself was “pagan” in
the fourth century: no Christian holidays existed yet. See also Salzman, “The
Christianization of Sacred Time and Sacred Space,” in The Transformations of ‘Urbs Roma’ in
Late Antiquity, ed. W. V. Harris, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary series 33
(Portsmouth, Rhode Island: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1999).
16 Marianne Sághy
the Codex, called himself an „admirer and friend” (cultor atque amator) of
Bishop Damasus.12
By adding the episcopal list to the calendar, Filocalus assimilated
Christian institutions and holidays into the “preexisting secular models.”13
By juxtaposing two types of information, Roman and Christian, the Codex-
Calendar suggested that the bishopric was on a par with the venerable
institutions of Rome’s political life, the consulate and the imperial office.
This design allocated the same standing to the feasts of the Christian
martyrs as to Rome’s immemorial, pre-Christian urban traditions. The fact
that Filocalus made a place for Christianity in the history of Rome reveals
that the Christian aristocrats could and would envisage the Church as an
important institution in the city. The Calendar also makes it plain that the
initiative to include Christian holidays in a traditional Roman calendar
originated with aristocrats such as Valentinus or Filocalus. Producing such
a Calendar was an upper-class concern: Christian aristocrats were eager to
see the Church represented as one of the respectable and ancient
institutions of the Vrbs Roma.
The “Liberian catalogue“brought a tantalizing ideological
innovation into the history of the Roman bishopric by starting the list of
popes with Saint Peter the Apostle. It affirmed that Peter had founded the
Church of Rome after the Ascension of Christ in the time of Emperor
Trajan and had ruled it for twenty-five years.14 This sounds less surprising
today than it did in the fourth century, when the claim that the Apostle
Peter had been the first bishop of Rome was provocatively new, for it
defied Irenaeus of Lyons' record that the Church of Rome had been
founded by the apostles Peter and Paul,15 and challenged Eusebius of
Caesarea's story in which he had called Linus the first bishop of Rome.16
12
Filocalus styles himself Damasi pappae cultor atque amator, see Epigrammata Damasiana, ed.
Antonio Ferrua (Città del Vaticano: Pontificio istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), nr.
18. See also Salzman, “The Christianization,” 202-204.
13
Salzman, On Roman Time, 22.
14
MGH AA 9, ed. Mommsen 73-76: Imperante Tiberio caesare passus est dominus noster Iesus
Christus duobus Geminis cons. viii kal. Apr. et post ascensum eius beatissimus Petrus episcopatum
suscepit. Ex quo tempore per successionem dispositum, quis episcopus quot annis prefuit vel quo
imperante. Petrus ann. XXV mens. uno d. VIIII. fuit temporibus Tiberii Caesaris et Gai et Tiberi
Claudi et Neronis, a consul. Minuci et Longini usque Nerine et Vero. Passus autem cum Paulo die III
kal. Iulii consul. ss. Imperante Nerone.
15
Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 3. 3. 2.
16
Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 3. 2, 5.6-1.3. Cf. John Wenham, “The Date of Peter’s
Going to Rome,” in Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1992), 146-172.
Martyr-bishops 17
The pre-dating of Peter's tenure17 was also revolutionary in the Liberian

catalogue. After Jesus’ resurrection, Peter engaged in the career of a
wandering religious teacher with no fixed see. In Peter’s time, and for a
long time afterwards, there was no ‘episcopacy’ at all in Rome. The
spiritual care of Rome’s Christian community was the charge of a
presbyterial body rather than a single individual. The dating offered by the
Liberian catalogue obviously did not conform to the historical truth of the
first century, but reflected the concerns of the fourth. This is why it would
be seriously misleading to dismiss this construction as simple 'falsification'
or dramatic 'mythologization.'
Rome had developed rather early an episcopal ideology centered
on the figure of Saint Peter.18 The apostle's exaltation in the catalogue,
however, may have served specific purposes, apart from tracing back the
foundation of the monoepiscopacy to Peter. Throughout the Arian
struggle, Nicene ecclesiology emphasized that the bishop derived his
authority from Christ. Hard pressed by the Arianizing imperial power, the
Nicene Catholics took strength from the faith that the Christ in their midst
was the Lord of all, while „the Arians could at best derive their apostolic
authority from a demigod.”19 Consequently, Peter’s long Roman tenure
rang perfectly authentic in Liberius' Nicene church that anchored its
legitimacy in Christ – and in the Apostle Peter.
Saint Peter’s heading the list of Roman bishops had several
functions: it had a strong anti-heretical potential since demonstrating the
successio apostolica of the Catholic bishops and linking them to the earthly
Christ; it underlined the uetustas of the Roman episcopacy as opposed to
the new-fangled heresy of Arius; and it attested the primacy of Rome
among the churches. By dating the beginning of Saint Peter’s episcopacy
to 33 A. D., the compiler of the list endowed the Roman bishopric with a
venerable past and tracked its foundation back to Christ, faithfully
expressing the Nicene ecclesiology. The new construction that assigned
Peter (an itinerant apostle who knew next to nothing about bishops) to
permanent residency in Rome and elevated him to episcopal majesty,
highlighted the primacy of the See of Peter not only among the churches
within the empire, but also among the warring heretical factions of Rome.
It supported the authority of a single bishop in a period when the imperial
Church policy faute de mieux was forced to recognize two (or more) bishops
17
Norbert Brox, „Probleme einer frühdatierung des römischen Primats,” Kairos 18 (1976):
81-99; Robert B. Eno, “The Significance of the List of Roman Bishops in the Anti-Donatist
Polemic,” Vigiliae christianae 47 (1993): 158-169.
18
Pietri, Roma Christiana I, 315-401.
19
George Huntston Williams, “Christology and Church-State Relations in the Fourth
Century,” Church History 20 (1951): 5, 8.
18 Marianne Sághy
in one city. The Liberian list put chronology in the service of its strategy of
power. Bishops are the apostles’ heirs and derive their authority from
Christ: this is the message that the catalogue opposed to the aggressively
Arianizing piety of Emperor Constantius II.
Liberius himself actively promoted the veneration of martyr-
bishops. In 355, when (only a year after the execution of the Codex-
Calendar) the emperor fired the entire Western episcopate, Eusebius of
Vercelli, Hilary of Poitiers, Dionysius of Milan, and Lucifer of Cagliari were
banished to the East and replaced by more pliable court bishops.20
Orthodoxy and episcopal integrity were now at stake.21 In a letter of
consolation written to his colleagues, Liberius addressed them as “martyrs”
(rather than “confessors” as the usual titulature would have required):
The enemy of the human race seems to have oppressed still more
violently under the guise of peace the members of the Church.
Nevertheless, your wonderful and rare faith, priests acceptable to
God, has shown you here approved by God and marked you for
future glory as martyrs.22
Liberius expressed his regret that he had not been the first to suffer so as to
set an example to others.23 He emphasized the closeness of the exiled
bishops to God and asked these ‘martyrs in exile’ to pray for him that he
may yet be worthy to share their destiny:
Because you are now become very near to God, do you by your
prayers lift me, your fellow priest and servant of God to the Lord,
so that when the onslaught comes (…), I may be able to bear it
steadfastly.24
Their prayer was heard. The emperor removed Liberius, too, from Rome:25
out of fear that riots would break out in the city, for Liberius was very
20
David Hunt, „Did Constantius II Have Court Bishops?” Studia Patristica 19 (1989): 86-
90.
21
Hanns Christof Brennecke, Hilarius von Poitiers und die Bischofsopposition gegen Konstantius
II. Untersuchung zur Dritten Phase des arianischen Streites (337-361) (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1984); Timothy D. Barnes, “The Capitulation of Liberius and Hilary of Poitiers,”
Phoenix 46 (1992): 256-265; Eric Fournier, „Exiled bishops in the Christian Empire:
Victims of Imperial Violence?” in Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices, ed.
Harold A. Drake (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 157-167.
22
As it was usual in Cyprian, Ep. 37; Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, 35.
23
Quamuis sub imagine, in S. Hilarii episcopi Pictaviensis opera. Pars Quarta. Collectanea
antiarianea parisina, ed. Alfred L. Feder, CSEL 65 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1916), 164-166.
English translation by James T. Shotwell and Louise R.Loomis, The See of Peter (New York:
Octagon, 1965), 567.
24
Quamuis sub imagine, in Shotwell-Loomis, The See of Peter, p. 567.
25
Ammianus, Res gestae 15.7.6-10.
Martyr-bishops 19
popular,26 the prefectus urbi Leontius had him abducted by night and
dispatched to the imperial capital of Milan.27 Constantius banished Liberius
to Thrace and appointed another bishop, Felix, in his stead, but, compelled
by popular demand, had to restore Liberius in 357.28 The pontiff cut an
ambivalent figure after his return from exile. Instead of becoming an icon
of Nicene resistance, Liberius was accused of having signed the creed of one
of the councils at Sirmium, albeit it was not specified which one: the
heretical, the semi-heretical, or the non-heretical creed.29 The issue divided
the Roman Christians: some maligned Liberius, while others venerated him
as a hero of the Nicene cause.
A wealthy Roman matron called Celerina apparently belonged to
this latter camp. She venerated Liberius to the extent that she had the
bishop represented in her own burial chamber, in the catacomb of
Domitilla. A figure marked as LIBER VS stands there in full stature,30
flanking another martyr-bishop, Sixtus II. The fresco next to them depicts
a lamb between two wolves31 with an inscription saying Susanna. As
Susanna’s story is a parable of a falsely accused person, Celerina might have
commissioned this particular image as an allusion to the false charges
against Bishop Liberius.
26
Ammianus, Res gestae 15.7.6-10: metu populi qui eius amore flagrabat.
27
For the creation and development of the Gesta Liberii, see Steffen Diefenbach, Römische
Erinnerungsräume: Heiligenmemoria und kollektive Identitäten im Rom des 3. bis 5. Jahrhunderts n.
Ch. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 447-480.
28
Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica 2. 14: “The ladies mentioned these facts to the emperor.
Their persuasions were successful; and he commanded that the great Liberius should be
recalled from exile, and that the two bishops should conjointly rule the Church. The edict of
the emperor was read in the circus, and the multitude shouted that the imperial ordinance
was just; that the spectators were divided into two factions, each deriving its name from its
own colours and that each faction would now have its own bishop. After having thus
ridiculed the edict of the emperor, they all exclaimed with one voice, ‘One God, one Christ,
one bishop.’ I have deemed it right to set down their precise words. Sometime after this
Christian people had uttered these pious and righteous acclamations, the holy Liberius
returned.”
29
Barnes, “Capitulation”; Yves-Marie Duval, L'extirpation de l'Arianisme en Italie du Nord et
en Occident: Rimini (359-60) et Aquilée (381), Hilaire de Poitiers (367-8) et Ambroise de Milan
(397) (Aldershot: Ashgate-Variorum, 1998). For a summary of the conflict see Curran,
Pagan City, 129-137.
30
Claude Dagens, “Autour du pape Libère. L’iconographie de Suzanne et des martyrs
romains sur l’arcosolium de Celerina,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Antiquité 78
(1966): 327-381.
31
Roman emperors are identified with “wolves” in Lucifer of Cagliari’s famous anti-Arian
tract, De non parcendo in Deum delinquentibus 273: videmus vos lupos quos praesostendere est
dignatus spiritus sanctus per vas electionis apostolum omnem comprehendere conatos dei gregem; et nos,
episcopos quos spiritus sanctus ad regendam dei ecclesiam constituerit, quod dicit beatus apostolus,
debemus tibi lupo parcere, debemus vereri regni tui diademam, inaurem etiam et dextrocheria, debemus
insignes quas esse cemses vestes tuas honorare et despicere rerum creatorem atque rectorem?
20 Marianne Sághy
An unusually long epitaph that has meanwhile been likewise

connected with Liberius also expands on the theme of the ‘martyr-
bishop.’32 Found on the Via Salaria and preserved in a single transcript by a
seventh-century pilgrim, the inscription celebrates an unnamed bishop
who confirmed the Nicene creed in a council and died in exile for the faith
as a “martyr by exile”33 – a notion promoted by Liberius. The epitaph
glorifies an immaculate bishop (immaculatus papa), saintly teacher of the
Church’s apostolic doctrine (qui bene apostolicam doctrinam sancte doceres). In
this instance, we can see that the bishop was well on his way to becoming a
“holy pope”.
Thus, Liberius’ pontificate marked an important moment in the
elaboration and propagation of episcopal holiness, embodied by the
“martyr-bishop.” Representations of saintly bishops proliferated in Rome
from the catacombs to epitaphs and bishop lists. Not only long-dead
bishops were venerated as saints, but the victims of imperial politics, too:
exiled Catholic pontiffs, even though fully alive, were celebrated as
32
For a summary of scholarly debates about the attribution, see Antonio Ferrua SJ, La
polemica antiariana nei monumenti paleocristiani (Vatican City: PIAC, 1991), 274-280. Ferrua
firmly ascribes the epitaph to Liberius.
33
Bücheler, Carmina Latina Epigraphica 787 = Diehl, Inscriptiones latinae christianae veteres,
967: Quam domino fuerant deuota mente parentes / qui confessorem talme genuere potentem / adque
sacerdotem sanctum, sine felle columbam, / diuinae legis sincero corde magistrum. / haec te mascentem
suscepit eclesia mater / uberibus fidei nutriens de[uot]a beatum, / qui per se passurus erat mala cuncta
libenter. / paruulus utque loqui coepisti dulcia uerba, / mox scripturarum lector pius indole factus, / ut
tua lingua magis legem quam uerba sonaret. / dilecta a domino tua dicta, infantia simplex, / nullis
arte dolis sceda fucata malignis / officio tali iusto puroque legendi. / adque item simplex aduliscens
mente fuisti / maturusque animo, feruenti aetate modestus / remotus prudens mitis grauis integer
aequus. / haec tibi lectori innocuo fuit aurea uita. / diaconus hinc factus iuuenis meritoque fideli, /qui
suc subcere caste ubtegreque pudice / seruieris sine fraude deo quanta pectore puro / atque annis aliquot
fueris leuita seuerus, / ac tali iusta conuersatione beata / dignus qui merito inlibatus iure pernnis / huic
tante sedi Chr(ist)i splendore serene /electus fidei plenus summusque sacerdos, / qui niuea mente
immaculatus papa sederes,/ qui bene apostolicam doctrinam sancte doceres / innocuma
plebem celesti lege magister./ quis te tractante sua non peccata reflebat? / in sinodo cunctis
uictor superatis iniquis / sacrilegis, Nicena fides elata triumphat. / contra quam plures
certamen sumpseris unus, / catholica precincte fide, possederis omnes. / uox tua certantis fuit ‘haec
sincera salubris’ / atque ‘nec hoc metuo neque illud committere opto’ / haec fuit, haec sempre mentis
constantia firma. / discerptus tractus profugatusque sacerdos, / insuper ut faciem quodam nigrore
uelaret, / nobili falsa manu portantes aemula caeli / ut speciem domini foedare luce corusca. / en tibi
discrimen uehemens non sufficit annum, / insuper exilio decedis martyr ad astra / arque inter
patriarchas praesagosq. prophetas, / inter apostolicam turbam martyrumq.potentum, / cum hac turba
dignus mediusque locatus / mite pium domini conspectu,iuste sacerdos. / sic inde tibi merito tanta est
concessa potestas / ut manum imponas patientibus incola Chr(ist)i, / daemonia expellas, purges
mundesque repletos / ac saluos homines reddas animoque uigenes / per patris ac filii nomen cui credimus
omnes. / cum tuo hoc obitu precellens tale uidemus, / spem gerimus cuncti proprie nos esse beatos / quiu
sumus hocque tuum meritum fidemque secuti.
Martyr-bishops 21
“martyrs”. Liberius was a popular pastor, much liked by his flock:

members of the congregation established Liberius’ cult in epitaphs and in
private burial chambers. The opaque conditions of his reconciliation with
the emperor, however, marred Liberius’ reputation. This is shown by the
confused and contradictory versions of Liberius’ pontificate as presented in
the sixth-century Liber pontificalis. On the one hand, it states that Liberius
started a persecution upon his return, but saved Felix,34 while on the other
hand, it affirms that Felix fell victim to the Liberian purge35 and that the
memory of this martyr-bishop was cultivated by Damasus.36
Liberius’ exile and return divided the Church of Rome: those who
remained faithful to Liberius refused communion with those who accepted
his replacement bishop, Felix. The schism broke out at the death of
Liberius in 366, when his two archdeacons, Damasus37 and Ursinus, were
both elected bishop. Claiming fidelity to Liberius, the Ursinians accused
Damasus to be a Felician “traitor”, while the Damasians accused the
followers of Ursinus of being “Arians”. In the deadly fight for the
bishopric, Damasus’ partisans killed at least a hundred and thirty-seven
supporters of Ursinus in the basilica Sicinina, and raided the schismatics in
cemeteries where they held their meetings. Information about clerical
violence famously made it into the Ursinian libel of 367, written to the
emperors,38 into the Res gestae of the pagan Ammianus Marcellinus,39 and
even into Jerome's Chronicle.40 Remarkably, Ursinus' supporters left no
34
Liber pontificalis 38. 5 (Liberius): et eregit Felicem de episcopatu, qui erat catholicus, et reuocauit
Liberium. Ab eodem die fuit persecutio in clero ita ut intra ecclesiam presbiteri et clerici necarentur et
martyrio coronarentur. Qui depositus Felix de episcopatum habitauit in praediolo suo uia Portuense,
ubi et requieuit in pace IIII kal. Aug.
35
Liber pontificalis 38. 3 (Felix): Qui etiam capite truncatur cum multis clericis et fidelibus occulte
iuxta muros Vrbis (…). Et exinde rapuerunt corpus eius christiani cum Damaso presbitero et
sepelierunt in basilica supradicta eius (…) in pace.
36
See Curran, Pagan City, 131-135.
37
On Damasus’ pontificate, see Pietri, Roma Christiana I, 271-272; Carlo Carletti, “Damaso
I santo,” in Enciclopedia dei papi. (Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia italiana, 2002), 349-372;
Ursula Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366-384) : Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2009).
38
“Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos,” in Epistulae imperatorum pontificum
aliorum inde ab a. CCCLXVII usque ad a. DLIII datae Avellana quae dicitur collectio 1, ed. O.
Günther, CSEL 35 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1895).
39
Ammianus, Res gestae 17. 3. 12-13: “It is a well-known fact that in the basilica of
Sicininus, where the assembly of the Christian sect is held, in a single day a hundred and
thirty-seven corpses of the slain were found, and that it was only with difficulty that the
long-continued frenzy of the people was afterwards quieted.” See also Neil McLynn,
“Christian Controversy and Violence in the Fourth Century,” Kodai 3 (1992): 15-44.
40
Hieronymus, Chron. 366.
22 Marianne Sághy
trace of an attempt to commemorate the victims of the Damasian violence

as 'martyrs.'
Bishop’s Martyrs
Following his victory, Damasus launched a monumental campaign to
establish martyr memorials in the catacombs around Rome. The bishop
reconstructed the holy tombs, built subterranean basilicas and shrines
above them, and placed metrical inscriptions (epigrams or carmina) onto
the graves.41 The inscriptions were designed by none other than Furius
Dionysius Filocalus. Some thirteen years after the execution of the Codex-
Calendar of 354, Filocalus was again involved in a project that
commemorated Rome's martyr-bishops. The artist engraved Damasus’
poems in red letters onto large marble tablets and even invented an
exquisite new font (filocaliana). Thanks to the joint effort of Damasus and
Filocalus, the martyr graves of Rome were transformed into powerful lieux
de mémoire.42
Damasus’ epigrams were meant to demonstrate the continuity of
martyr veneration within the Catholic faction. To die for Christ made sense
only in a church that recognized the full deity of Christ. Martyrdom
derived its very sense from the belief in Christ, the Creator and Savior Lord
of All. Arianism did not develop martyr veneration and was critical
towards the saints’ cults and their promoters.43 Thus, Damasus brought
home with extraordinary confidence and purposefulness the Nicene
conviction that the Church was the Body of Christ. Nowhere is the
41
Ferrua, ed., Epigrammata Damasiana, recensed 59 Damasian epigrams and 18 copies
(pseudodamasiana).
42
Saecularia Damasiana (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1986);
Paul-Albert Février, “Un plaidoyer pour Damase: les inscriptions des nécropoles romaines,”
Institutions, société et vie politique dans l'empire romain au IVe siècle ap. J. –C., ed. Michel
Christol, et al. (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1992), 497-506; Lucrezia Spera, “Interventi
di papa Damaso nei santuari delle catacombe romane: il ruolo della committenza private,”
Bessarione 11 (1994): 111-127; Jean Guyon, “Damase et l’illustration des martyrs. Les
accents de la dévotion et l’enjeu d’une pastorale,” in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary
Perspective. Memorial Louis Reekmans, ed. M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun (Leuven: Peeters,
1995), 157-177; Marianne Sághy, “Scinditur in partes populus: Pope Damasus and the
Martyrs of Rome,” Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000): 273-287; Dennis E. Trout, “Damasus
and the Invention of Early Christian Rome,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies
33/3 (2003): 517-536; Alan Thacker, “Rome of the Martyrs. Saints, Cults and Relics,
Fourth to Seventh Centuries,” in Roma felix: formation and reflections of medieval Rome, eds. E.
Ó’Carragain and C. L. Neuman de Vegvar (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 13-49.
43
Damasus was rebuked by his Arian opponents for appropriating Peter and Paul for
Rome: Maximini contra Ambrosium dissertatio, in PLS 1, 722 and Charles Pietri, “Concordia
apostolorum et renovatio urbis (Culte des martyrs et propagande pontificale),” MEFR 73
(1961), 305 n. 4.
Martyr-bishops 23
communio sanctorum, the Eucharistic fellowship of all believers and their

participation in the Resurrection Body, made more tangible than in
Damasus' great martyr memorials in subterranean Rome.
When identifying the holy tombs of the martyrs, Damasus and
Filocalus must have relied on the Liberian catalogue and the lists of
depositiones. Historians maintain that the Damasian carmina officialized the
Liberian catalogue on stone.44 Undoubtedly, there are significant overlaps
between the festal calendar and tomb inscriptions. But Damasus did not
simply copy the Chronographer of 354: a number of differences attest that
he consciously evaluated his source. The carmina Damasiana include more
saints than the deposition-lists,45 and in some cases, display conscious
revision. Rather than transcribing, Damasus authoritatively retold the
Liberian catalogue.
The revision of the Liberian lists is most obvious in the case of
Saint Peter. Three Damasian inscriptions46 are related to the Apostle or to
his basilica, but no papal inscription is positioned on his tomb. As opposed
to the Liberian catalogue that produced an innovative chronology for Saint
Peter’s tenure and exalted him as bishop, Damasus favored the traditional
view of the apostle’s Roman activity. Saint Peter is not presented as the
first bishop of Rome: instead, Damasus goes back to the conception of
Irenaeus and Eusebius and commemorates jointly Apostles Peter and Paul
at their ancient Roman cult place in the basilica Apostolorum near the
Callixtus catacomb. In the epigrams, there is no mention of the foundation
of the Church of Rome or of Peter’s long Roman episcopacy. The return to
the concelebration of the apostles was not dictated by traditionalism alone,
but also motivated by the need for unity in the time of division: the
synergy of the two apostles offered a valid model of collaboration between
churchmen of different temper, character, or opinion. The concordia
apostolorum reflected not only the political ideals of the Church of Rome,
but also set an example for Christian civic behavior:47
You should know that the saints dwelt here at one time
You, who seek the names of both Peter and Paul.
We freely acknowledge that the East sent them as disciples
For Christ’s sake and the merit of his blood
44
Charles Pietri, Roma Christiana I, 607; Carlo Carletti, “Dalla ‘pratica aperta’ alla ‘pratica
chiusa’: produzione epigrapfica a Roma tra V e VIII secolo,” in Roma nell’alto medioevo
(Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2001), 325-392.
45
Marianne Sághy, “Codex to Catacomb: The Uses and Functions of the Roman Bishop List in
the Fourth Century,” in The Charm of a List. From the Sumerians to Computerised Data Processing,
ed. Lucie Doležalová (Cambridge: Scholars Publishing, 2009), 46-66.
46
Damasus, Epigrams 3,4, and 20.
47
Charles Pietri, „Concordia apostolorum”, 275-322 = Christiana respublica II, 1085-1133.
24 Marianne Sághy
They followed Him across the stars

And sought heavenly regions, kingdoms of pious souls.
Rome merited to claim them as citizens.
Damasus wished to proclaim these things,
O new stars, to your praise.48
The apostles also appear in tandem on typical Roman catacomb-products,

such as gold-glasses. On the gold-glasses of the period, Damasus is always
represented between the twin apostles. The image of Saint Peter is not
appropriated as a symbol of the bishop: Peter and Paul together stand for
the Church of Rome.49 This trend is visible on artifacts representing
individual believers as well. Peregrina, a noble Roman lady, also preferred
to acknowledge the patronage of the two Princes of the Apostles, rather
than opting for just one of them.50 Emphasis on the Romanitas of the
apostles was also in line with the theme of political allegiance. Damasus
chose to praise the Roman citizenship of the apostles. As “disciples coming
from the East” (discipulos Oriens misit), Peter and Paul became Roman
citizens by their sacrifice (Roma suos potius meruit defendere cives). Damasus
exalts the “new stars” (nova sidera) of Rome. Again, Damasus subverts
rather than supports Liberius’ rhetoric: the naturalization of the apostles is
a kind of obverse “martyrdom in exile.”
In one instance, Saint Peter does become the sole protagonist of a
Damasian poem that also celebrates the Apostle’s exalted position in the
Kingdom of Heaven. This poem adorned the new baptistery of Saint
Peter’s basilica, built by Damasus “with the help of Saint Peter, the
doorkeeper of Heaven” (praestante Petro, cui tradita ianua caeli est). The
bishop achieved the great work of construction, where Christian initiation
was solemnly performed, with the spiritual support of the Apostle Peter.
The bishop proclaims that baptism is a once-in-a-lifetime experience (una
Petri sedes, unum verunque lavacrum)51 – an important statement in a city
with a dozen schismatic Christian bishops (Novatians, Donatists, Melitians,
Apollinarians, Sabellians), many of them (e.g., the Novatians) favoring
rebaptism. The context of religious controversy explains why Damasus
rejected rebaptism and underlined the bishop’s unique connection to
Christ. As heirs to Saint Peter, the bishops of Rome possessed the power of
the keys.
48
Ep. 20.
49
Lucy Grig, “Portraits, pontiffs and the Christianisation of Fourth-Century Rome,” Papers
of the British School at Rome 72 (2004): 203-230.
50
See: http://www.learn.columbia.edu/treasuresofheaven/relics/Gold-Glass-with-Sts-Peter-
and-Paul-and-Peregrina.php (last accessed 10.07. 2012).
51
Damasus, Ep. 4.
Martyr-bishops 25
The bishops of Rome do occupy an important place in Damasus'

epigrams, even if they do not constitute a majority.52 The carmina give a
good idea about the process of idealization of episcopal sanctity. One of the
best-known epigrams of Damasus praises a large group of holy bishops
buried in the Crypt of the Popes of the Callixtus catacomb, near the
Basilica Apostolorum:
Here, if you ask, lies gathered a group of devout men.
The venerable graves still hold the saints’ bodies,
but the Court of Heaven has seized aloft to itself their souls.
Here are the companions of Xystus, who carry off the trophy from their
foes.
Here is the throng of prelates that keeps the altars of Christ.
Here is laid the priest who lived during the long time of peace.
Here are the holy confessors whom Greece has sent.
Here are young men and boys, old men and their chaste grandsons,
whose preference it was to keep a virginal purity.
Here I, Damasus – I admit it—wished to bury my own body,
but I was afraid of disturbing the holy ashes of the saints.53
The Crypt of the Popes, a third-century “holy spot,” was made a center of
pontifical commemoration by Damasus, who constructed an underground
church there. Originally a private funerary area, the crypt had been
transformed into the burial place of the Roman bishops in the middle of
the third century. Nine pontiffs were buried there: Pontianus, Antherus,
Fabianus, Lucius, Eutychius, Sixtus, Stephen, Dionysius, and Felix. Their
Greek epitaphs have been preserved and Damasus also alluded to them.
He praised the bishops for having faithfully served “the altar of Christ.”
This was an anti-Arian manifesto, which becomes particularly evocative in
light of another Damasian innovation: the pontiff established altars above
the relics of the martyrs, thus making clear the correspondence between
the sacrifice of Christ, the sacrifice of the martyr, and the sacrifice
presented by the officiating priest.54
Apart from the joint commemoration of the bishops, Damasus
also consecrated a suggestive elogium to Sixtus and his four deacons, who
had been killed on this very spot. Sixtus’ cathedra stood here: sitting there,
52
Marianne Sághy, “Martyr Cult and Collective Identity in Fourth-Century Rome,” in
Identity and Alterity in the Making and Practice of Cults, ed. Ana Marinković – Trpimir Vedriš
(Zagreb: Hagiotheca, 2010), 17-35.
53
Damasus, Ep. 16.
54
Francesco Tolotti, “Il problema dell’altare e della tomba del martire in alcune opere di
papa Damaso”, in Studien zur spätantiken und byzantinischen Kunst F. W. Deichmann gewidmet
(Bonn: R. Habelt, 1986), 51-71.
26 Marianne Sághy
the bishop taught the faithful, explaining the Holy Scripture to them.
Martyrdom gave an opportunity for the bishop to demonstrate in practice
that he was the good pastor of his flock, determined to sacrifice his life in
order to defend them:
At the time when the sword pierced the bowels of the Mother
I, buried here, taught as pastor the Word of God.
When suddenly the soldiers rushed in, dragged me from the chair.
The faithful offered their necks to the sword,
But as soon as the Pastor saw the ones who wished to rob him of the palm
he was the first to offer himself and his own head,
not tolerating that the frenzy should harm the others.
Christ, who gives recompense, made manifest the Pastor's merit,
preserving unharmed the flock.
Sixtus suffered martyrdom under the Valerian persecution, fifty years

before the final, Diocletianic persecution. The recent past, the Great
Persecution under Diocletian, is represented by three bishops in the
Damasian epigrams: Marcellus, Eusebius, and Mark. Damasus used the
term ‘martyr’ in the same generous sense as Liberius: exile also qualified as
martyrdom, not just “death by torture.” Thus, Eusebius was a “martyr in
exile,” deposed by a tyrant, dying far away from Rome:
Heraclius would not allow backsliders to repent of their sins;
Eusebius taught the unfortunates to weep for their offenses.
The people was split into factions; the frenzy heightened:
sedition, murder, fighting, disunion, strife.
Suddenly, both were exiled by the tyrant’s brutality,
although the bishop had kept intact the peaceful communion.
He gladly suffered exile by the Lord’s decision.
He left the world and this life on the shores of Sicily.
Damasus’ choice of bishops seems to have been dictated not only by

traditions of the Church of Rome, or by popular devotion at the grave, but
also by the very example that the pontiffs set by their lives. The prelates
celebrated by Damasus fight Satan, establish peace, end schisms, and
legislate on the lapsi. Damasus clearly selected those bishops whose life and
behavior resonated with his own times. Persecution, exile, division, and
schism rhymed with the recent experience of the Nicene Christian faction
in Rome: the evocation of Hippolytus, Marcellus, and Eusebius, living in
“times when the sword pierced the holy bowels of Mother Church” (tempore
quo gladius secuit pia viscera matris), rang a bell with the visitors to the
catacombs:
Martyr-bishops 27
Because this pontiff, a champion of truth, told

Lapsed Christians to weep for their sins, to all those
Unfortunate people he was a bitter enemy.
This was followed by madness, by hatred, disunion,
strife, sedition, murder; peaceful communion was dissolved.
For the crimes of another, who had denied Christ in time of
Peace, he was driven from his country’s borders
By the tyrant’s brutality.
Damasus undertook briefly to relate this information,
so that the people may recognize
the worth of Marcellus.55
Damasus’ most lyrical enraptures are reserved to express the special

relation between the bishop and Christ. Bishops are disciples and friends of
Christ: Mark is a ‘perfect friend of Christ’ (Christi perfectus amicus),56 Sixtus
is rewarded by Christ (ostendit Christus, reddit qui praemia vitae).57 Christ
confers victory to the martyrs: He makes martyrdom a shining path to
heaven for Peter and Paul (sanguinis ob meritum Christumque per astra secuti
aetherios petiere sinus regnaque piorum).58 This was an expression of Nicene
belief. Emphasis on Christ’s transcendental saving power was highly
relevant in the post-Arian context of martyr veneration. The bishop was
presented as the teacher of his flock, instructing them in the
commandments of Heaven and leading them to salvation. Sixtus was killed
by the persecutors in the act of teaching, sitting on his very cathedra set up
in a catacomb.59 The bishop’s martyrdom is never a selfish act, but a
sacrifice on behalf of the community.
The bishop is a follower of Christ, the cornerstone of his orthodoxy
being his recognition of Christ as God. Damasus affirms the creed of the
Nicene orthodox bishop in his own epitaph and confesses his belief in
Christ’s life-giving power after death: solvere qui potuit letalia vincula mortis.60
Bishops, even those who failed, may reach the Kingdom of the Blessed
once they confess Christ: devotus Christo peteret cum regna piorum.61
Orthodoxy, the defining characteristic of the bishop, is pivoted on his
relationship to Christ. The bishop’s chief task is to proclaim the glory of
Christ:
55
Ep. 40.
56
Ep. 50.
57
Ep. 17.
58
Ep. 20.
59
Ep. 17.
60
Ep. 12.
61
Ep. 35.
28 Marianne Sághy
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified
as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ
Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation by His blood
through faith. (Rom 3, 21-25).
Since it is the saving work of Christ that unites Christians, unity is the
essential doctrine that defines orthodoxy: “Make my joy complete by being
of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on
one purpose.” (Phil 2:2). Orthodoxy is unity: it is in this context that the
problem of traitors (lapsi) and schism becomes so important. Guilty
members of the Church threaten to split the community, but
excommunication is no solution either. The bishop therefore must be
clement and merciful with those who failed. Without condemning or
excommunicating them, he must compel them to confess their sins and ask
pardon. Marcellus was considered an enemy by the lapsi, because he
prescribed penance for them. Riots broke out and the unity of the Church
was dissolved.62 Marcellus’ successor Eusebius accepted back those who had
failed in the times of persecution, providing they did penance, whereby he
provoked the furor of the rigorist faction:63
By pointing out the Church of Rome’s ever-present tendency to
dissent and splinter, Damasus was referencing his own struggle against the
rigorist Ursinians and Luciferians. “Re-living” the experience of the martyr-
bishops, Damasus assimilated his own contemporary experience to that of
the martyrs. These epigrams constitute a manifesto against the schismatics,
proclaiming that division is sin, unity is virtue. Ursinus’ party had broken
the communion and celebrated the eucharist in out-of-the-way cemeteries.
Damasus, “the people’s bishop” (rector plebis),64 was compelled to bring
them back to the flock. Maintaining the unity of the community is the
greatest purpose for which every bishop should work: this is why “peaceful
communion” (foedera pacis) remains a Leitmotiv of the Damasian carmina.
Christian unity is a holy communion with the martyrs in Christ. The
Church is an institution constituted by living and dead Christians.
Damasus’ epigrams testify to the communio sanctorum and the triumph of
Christ. What is new is the intercessory role and the earthly authority of the
bishop: it is the bishop who guarantees not only the authenticity of the
martyrs, but also the faith of the Church: Credite per Damasum, possit quid
gloria Christi.65 Invited to sanctity, the bishop distinguishes between false
and true beliefs just as he sorts out false and true martyrs. Invited to
62
Ep. 40.
63
Ep. 18.
64
Ep. 44.
65
Ep. 8.
Martyr-bishops 29
partake in the life of Christ, the bishop also participates in the history of
the martyrs.
Conclusion: Constructing the Holy Bishops of Rome

Despite the lack of hagiographic texts, the Liberian catalogue and the
Damasian epigrams allow us to reconstruct the rise of the martyr-bishop in
fourth-century Rome. Apart from the Petrine primacy, the Church of
Rome – in tandem with imperial legislation and aristocratic support –
worked out the representation of episcopal sanctity that was embodied by
the martyr-bishop. Triggered by the crisis of episcopal authority caused by
the Arian conflict, bishops Liberius and Damasus deployed impressive
efforts to celebrate their predecessors as martyr leaders of the Church.
Nicene Catholics revered the bishop as an idealized figure of leadership, the
guarantor of orthodoxy and unity.
This paper revisited some of the key moments that marked the
construction of cult of the martyr-bishop and identified the virtues for
which the martyr-bishop was celebrated and the motivations of the bishops
who chose to commemorate them. It argued that the promotion of the
figure of the holy bishop under Liberius and Damasus revolved around
Christ, as part of a multimedia Catholic campaign against Arian heresy.
Liberius’ festal calendar and Damasus’ cult of the martyrs emphasized the
belief in the intercessory power of the martyr between humans and God.
Laying down his life for Christ, the martyr conquered death and became a
friend of Christ. The celebration of the martyr’s superhuman sacrifice was a
celebration of Christ’s salvific power that gave a new life to his amici in
heaven. Rejoicing in Christ’s presence, the martyr took care of his earthly
community, acting as a mediator. What was new in fourth-century Rome
was the stress that the living bishops, too, could intercede for their flock at
God.
While originating in a religious controversy, martyr
commemoration was also eminently an historical enterprise. Historical
authenticity mattered when collecting the proper dates of the deaths of the
martyrs or authenticating the actual graves of the martyrs and identifying
the martyrs themselves. Liberius’ calendar and Damasus’ topographical
recension were both rooted in history and betrayed a concern for historical
truthfulness. Paradoxically, however, neither Liberius nor Damasus wrote
“history” as we understand it. Neither paid much attention to the actual
historical circumstances of martyrdom, and seldom do graphic descriptions
of torture or horrifying scenes of cruelty appear in Damasus’ epigrams.
Instead of a “best of martyrdom,” Damasus offered a “hit-parade” of
bishops. Despite their respect for tradition, Liberius and Damasus twisted
30 Marianne Sághy
or rewrote history with gusto. Both actualized the martyrs’ stories for their
own purpose: Liberius projected the martyr ethos onto exiled fellow-
bishops and titled them “prospective martyrs,” while Damasus retrojected
the problems that marred his own pontificate (strife, disunion, schism) into
the lives of the martyr-bishops. As presented by Liberius and Damasus,
Rome’s late martyr-bishops look very much like their fourth-century
colleagues. Informed by the ruling pontiff’s policy and by the
circumstances in which and for which these texts were produced, the
episcopal ideal expressed a distinctive view of the recent past and related
the saintly bishop to the practical matter of living in the contemporary
world. By revisiting the bishops of Rome, Liberius and Damasus inscribed
the martyr-bishops into the history of Rome – and themselves into the
history of episcopal sanctity.
PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF ASCETICISM: HOLY BISHOPS
AND THE CONVERSION OF GAUL IN THE VITA
SANCTI MARTINI
John Marcus Beard
Ascetics and bishops often stood in opposition to each other in Christian

history. Though both groups were working to convert others to
Christianity and to demonstrate the powers of the Christian god, they
often found themselves in conflict. The ascetics, at least as they rose to
prominence in the deserts of the East, operated outside the official channels
of church power and control. They performed miracles and converted
others, generally by making themselves into spectacles that attracted
others to them.1 Converts and miracle seekers that went to the ascetics
may have done so at the expense of visiting a priest or church. Thus, the
clergy would have seen the ascetics attracting Christians away from the
church as a threat to their powers, especially when conversion was
involved. The possibility existed that the ascetics would convert the
throngs gathered around them to a form of Christianity that was outside
the control of the ecclesiastical authorities, perhaps one that gained
legitimacy solely from the powers of a lone holy person rather than the
apostolic authority of the church. One may find a similar tension during
the conversion of Gaul in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, where
the church authorities faced similar threats from ascetics. Rather than allow
them to exist independently, as often happened in the East, the western
church authorities absorbed them into the church hierarchy. They were
aided in their endeavor by Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Sancti Martini (circa 396
CE), which used St. Martin of Tours to represent the ideal western ascetic
and bishop. The hagiography of St. Martin helped forge a connection
between asceticism and ecclesiastical authority in Gaul that would
consolidate the power of the church authorities by redefining the meaning
of asceticism. The new ascetic bishops would then serve as a primary means
of converting Gaul to a form of Christianity acceptable to the ecclesiastical
authorities.
1
See Patricia Cox Miller, “Desert Asceticism and the Body from Nowhere,” Journal of Early
Christian Studies 2 (1994): 137-153.
32 John Marcus Beard
Rather than start with Martin, however, I am going to start with a

story related by Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks.2 Though
Gregory lived about two hundred years after Martin, his encounter with
the monk Vulfolaic helps to clearly present the tensions between ascetics
and bishops explored below. Gregory met Vulfolaic at a monastery near
Trier, and the monk related to him how he had been inspired to take up an
ascetic life by the great St. Martin. Vulfolaic found a site once associated
with the goddess Diana and there began what was—at least in Gaul—a
very unusual monastic practice. He told Gregory:
I myself set up a column, on which I remained standing with bare
feet, no matter how much it hurt me. When winter came in its
season, it so froze me with its icy frost that the bitter cold made my
toenails fall off, not once but several times, and the rain turned to
ice and hung from my beard… Crowds began to flock to me from
the manors in the region and I kept telling them that Diana was
powerless, that her statues were useless and that the rites which
they practiced were vain and empty… Night and day I prayed that
the Lord would vouchsafe to cast down the statue and free the
people from their false idolatry. God in his mercy moved their
rustic minds, with the result that they began to listen to what I had
to say, to forsake their images and to follow the Lord… There came
to me certain bishops whose plain duty it was to exhort me to press
wisely on with the task which I had begun. Instead they said to me,
‘It is not right, what you are trying to do! Such an obscure person
as you can never be compared with Symeon the Stylite of Antioch!
The climate of the region makes it impossible for you to keep
tormenting yourself in this way. Come down off your column, and
live with the brethren whom you gathered around you.’ Now, it is
2
Claudia Rapp takes a similar approach in Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of
Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005),
beginning with another stylite, Daniel, who took up his pillar in Antioch before moving
closer to Constantinople in the fifth century. Unlike Vulfolaic, though, the archbishop
recognized Daniel’s authority as an ascetic. Eventually ordained as a priest—while
remaining on top of his pillar—Daniel never exercised any of the authority granted to him
by his ordination nor changed any of his ascetic practices (3-5). The differences between
Daniel and Vulfolaic’s reception by the bishops are emblematic of the differences between
eastern and western asceticism, and highlight the importance of Martin of Tours’ ordination
as a means of establishing proper roles for both bishop and ascetic in the West. For context
on Gregory of Tours, see Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the
Sixth Century, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
For the influence of Gregory on Merovingian hagiography – especially in regards to
Christianization – and the importance of saints for his history, see Martin Heinzelmann,
“Grégoire de Tours et l’hagiographie mérovingienne,” in Gregorio Magno e l’agiografia fra IV
e VII secolo: atti dell’incontro di studio delle Università degli studi di Verona e Trento, Verona, 10-
11 dicembre 2004 (Florence: SISMEL,2007), 155-192.
Public Displays 33
considered a sin not to obey bishops, so, of course, I came down and
went off with those brethren and began to take my meals with
them.3
Under pretense of saving Vulfolaic from the icy grip of a Gallic winter,
these bishops highlight a theme common in stories of Christian ascetics:
the tension between the holy person and the bishop, or put another way,
between ascetic power and ecclesiastical authority.4 Surely it was not the
poor Vulfolaic, standing alone on his column, piles of toenails at his feet,
about whom these bishops were concerned. Rather, they were aware of the
threat he posed to their power: by virtue of the ascetic life, Vulfolaic had
access to divine powers, but divine powers that were gained outside the
auspices of the church and its hierarchy. Furthermore, by performing such
feats in public, Vulfolaic was making a spectacle of himself, attracting
others to him, and persuading them to convert to Christianity. It was
Vulfolaic, a lowly ascetic who did not hold even the basest of church
offices, and not the powerful bishops of Gaul, who was responsible for
winning converts from among the pagans. It was thus important for the
bishops to ensure that ecclesiastical power was consolidated. In doing so,
they would maintain control of all means of access to divine powers and
the forms of Christianity present in Gaul: they would control the process of
conversion. Since the ascetic demonstrated powers the bishops lacked, the
latter sought a way to contain and manage that power. In persuading
Vulfolaic to lead a cenobitic rather than eremitic life, the bishops were
simply doing what the western church usually did in dealing with ascetic
imports from the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and the East. Such excessive
practices may have been fine out in the deserts—where wild, untamed, and
eccentric ascetics were not only acceptable, but also commonplace – but
3
Gregory of Tours, Historiarum Libri Decem, ed. Rudolf Buchner, 2 vols. (Berlin: Deutscher
Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1955), 8.15 (trans. Lewis Thorpe, The History of the Franks
[London: Penguin, 1974], 446, 447). Aviad Kleinberg discusses this passage in Flesh Made
Word: Saints’ Stories in the Western Imagination, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap, 2008), 130 ff.
4
Examples abound in accounts of desert ascetics: St. Antony the Great left his mantle to
Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria – an early example of the collapse of ascetic and
ecclesiastical authority; Symeon the Stylite told the crowds around his pillar they would
receive a better blessing from Theodoret, a priest who later became Bishop of Cyrrhus; the
recluses Marana and Cyra, out of respect for ecclesiastical authority, would permit only
Bishop Theodoret to dig through the barricade into the secluded cell where they lived. See
also David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995),
in particular 80-141 and 245-265, on the relationship between ascetics and church officials
in Egypt.
they were not going to play in Poitiers. In Gaul, things were going to be
done differently.5
Claudia Rapp has recently argued for the ways that ascetics and
bishops shared power in Late Antiquity. Rapp notes three basic types of
power – pragmatic, spiritual, and ascetic – and traces their deployment
through both bishops and ascetics.6 Rapp sees the bishop as occupying a
middle ground between the poles of religious and secular authority, and
notes that the bishop needed some form of ascetic power to help validate
his role.7 Accordingly, Rapp argues that the locus of power was not in the
office, but in the person, making a fine line between the type of power
wielded by a bishop within the ecclesiastical hierarchy and an ascetic on the
fringes of mainstream Christian practice.8 Rapp’s arguments allow for a
deeper analysis of what was occurring in the power plays between bishops
and ascetics, and provide a solid reason for the simultaneous attraction and
repulsion of the ascetic for the church: the ascetic had a type of power the
bishops needed in order to ensure their position and rank, but also a type
of power that could threaten the church hierarchy by allowing the laity to
access miracles, healings, and forgiveness from people other than ordained
clergy. Thus, there would need to be some means of controlling the types
of power wielded by the ascetics or of bringing their powers under the
authority of the church.
Rapp deals primarily with the East; Martin was a western ascetic
and bishop. While there are many similarities between the two forms of
asceticism, there are many important differences that point to the different
ways bishops in the West dealt with the ascetics in their midst.9 Peter
Brown’s discussion of the holy man provides a good description of practices
in the eastern desert and their social functions, where the holy person acted
as a patron for the larger society and as a mediator between the human and
5
Conrad Leyser provides a good overview of the situation of asceticism and authority in
fifth-century Gaul in Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2000), 39-47.
6
Rapp uses “ascetic power” rather than “charismatic power,” rejecting Max Weber’s idea of
charisma in favor of a new approach that allows for a much more nuanced view of the
relations between bishops and ascetics along the three nexuses mentioned above (Rapp,
Holy Bishops, 17). I tend to follow her arguments in this paper.
7
Ibid., 6, 92ff.
8
Ibid., 98.
9
See Eva Elm, Die Macht der Weisheit: Das Bild des Bischofs in der Vita Augustini des Possidius
und anderen spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Bischofsviten (Leiden: Brill, 2003). Elm situates
the hagiographies of bishops in context from the New Testament through the ninth
century. Though she centers on a discussion of Augustine, she provides a good history of
bishops, their roles, and the idealistic portrayals of them in hagiographies.
Public Displays 35
the divine.10 Daniel Caner’s book, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual

Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, also provides
context on the world of eastern asceticism.11 Caner notes how eastern
ascetic practices were performative or public, practices that placed the
ascetic in the eyes of others. Accordingly, even in the East, these ascetics
faced attempts to bring them into more acceptable roles in the church, and
Caner points out that the fourth and fifth centuries marked numerous
attempts to subordinate the holy person to ecclesiastical authorities.12
However, in the East, the pubic performative nature of these ascetics did
not diminish, as witnessed by the story of Daniel the Stylite: though
ordained as a priest, he never once used his powers, but remained on his
pillar, mortifying his flesh. In the West, the ascetic impulse would be
channeled into communal monasticism—also an eastern innovation—
providing space for a tempered ascetic existence that downplayed the
extreme practices of the East. In the West, ascetics would be brought into
the ecclesiastical fold, their powers harnessed for the benefits of the church
and to help promote conversion; they rarely, if ever, had the chance to
gather followers of their own through public spectacles of holy power.
It is the powers of these holy people that lead to their complex
relations with church leaders. Ascetics stood at a place between heaven and
earth and helped bring ordinary Christians into contact with the divine; as
a result of their endeavors, the ascetics gained both a special status and the
ability to work miracles and win converts without the intervention of
church authorities.13 Claudia Rapp points out that ordination distinguished
the bishops and gave them divine sanction; a conversion worked by
someone without such a divine sanction was potentially problematic,
perhaps demonstrating to laity that the powers of the ecclesiastical
authorities were not exclusive.14 The ascetic, then, could be a troublesome
figure. As an individual who had no official status within the church, but
who still could perform miracles and win converts, these men and women
provided a direct challenge to the church and its priests and bishops.
Christianity had a strong ascetic tradition and church authorities would not
10
See Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of
Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80-101, and “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late
Antiquity, 1971-1997,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 353-376.
11
Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of
Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
12
Ibid., 83-84.
13
Peter Brown explores these issues and their place in the Christian cult of the saints in The
Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981).
14
Rapp, Holy Bishops, 142.
have wanted to dispense with all ascetic practices; however, the leaders in
the West felt threatened enough that they would want to prevent such
figures from engaging in ascetic practices in their dioceses without
somehow controlling their powers.
Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Sancti Martini (Life of St Martin), written
shortly before the death of Martin in 396 CE, shows an earlier attempt to
deal with issues of ascetic and ecclesiastical power and helps redefine both
the idea of asceticism and the role of the bishop for the western church and
late antique Gaul. Martin, in Sulpicius’ vita, is both an ideal ascetic and an
ideal bishop. By making the ascetic a bishop and the bishop an ascetic,
Sulpicius redefined both roles for the church in Western Europe,
maintaining the powers imbued in individuals through ascetic practices,
but locating them under the auspices of an ecclesiastical office. As
Sulpicius’ vita would help establish standards for western hagiography and
asceticism, it would also help establish standards for ideal bishops. As Eva
Elm points out, Sulpicius is dealing primarily with the idealistic nature of
these bishops and Martin; she argues that the vita was written to address
tensions in the West over whether a bishop should be a man from an
aristocratic background or a man who demonstrated Biblical and ascetic
ideals of holiness.15 Additionally, Clare Stancliffe notes that there were
hostilities in Gaul between ascetics and other Christians; Sulpicius thus
addresses criticisms of the saint in the vita and makes Martin into a figure
that could appeal to both.16 Appearing towards the end of the fourth
century, near the end of Roman Gaul, the vita was written at a time when
Gallic society was in transition. The Roman, pre-Christian power
structures were waning as a new Germanic Christian society was on the
rise. The Vita Sancti Martini, and the power relations between the ascetics
and bishops detailed therein, would become crucial in helping to convert
Merovingian Gaul and to establish the balance of power between bishops
and ascetics there. The holy ascetic bishop of Sulpicius’ vita would become
a central figure in defining and establishing a new society in Gaul.17
Sulpicius’ Vita Martini is a text full of power relations between
Martin and others. From Martin’s childhood with his pagan parents and
his youth in the Roman military to his adulthood as both an ascetic and a
15
Elm, Macht, 79-80.
16
Clare Stancliffe, St. Martin and His Hagiographer: History and Miracle in Sulpicius Severus
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 72-73.
17
See John H. Corbett, “Changing Perceptions in Late Antiquity: Martin of Tours,” Toronto
Journal of Theology 3 (1987): 263-251, and Raymond Van Dam, “Images of St. Martin in
Late Roman and Early Merovingian Gaul,” Viator 19 (1988): 1-27, on the influence of St.
Martin as depicted in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, Gregory of Tours, and other
Merovingian authors.
Public Displays 37
bishop, Sulpicius reveals to his readers the ways the saint negotiated power
structures. The most outstanding among the early incidents concerns
Martin’s time in the military. As a soldier, Martin was most unusual: “He
was content with only one servant to attend on him and even then, topsy-
turvy fashion, it was the master who performed the services.”18 Here,
Martin acted like a servant rather than a soldier, confusing social roles and
power relations. Additionally, Martin was mocked by the other soldiers for
his ascetic lifestyle – Sulpicius informs us that Martin did not fall prey to
the typical temptations and vices of soldiers – as well as for his ragged
cloak, which he had cut in half to share with a beggar (who was actually
Jesus in cunning disguise).19 Even when narrating events from before the
time Martin entered the religious life, Sulpicius portrays him as different,
as a person who interrupted social conventions and norms of behavior.
One of the norms that Martin upset was the bishop’s role.20 In
Late Antiquity, bishops were very powerful and important figures, and
were expected to be refined and dignified.21 Clare Stancliffe observes that
by the fourth century bishops could “behave and dress as members of the
aristocracy.”22 Powerful and worldly figures, educated and with fine
clothes, bishops would provide a perfect foil for the desert ascetic, who was
often uneducated, dirty, and dressed in coarse garments. These men were
the first that would provide a challenge to Martin, because he represented
a threat to their status and authority and did not look like a bishop. The
18
Sulpicius Severus, Vita Sancti Martini (hereafter VSM), in Vie de Saint Martin, ed. Jacques
Fontaine, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1967), 2.5; “The Life of Saint Martin of
Tours,” in Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle
Ages, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head, trans. Thomas F. R. Hoare (University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 6.
19
See Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 67ff.,on the symbolic dimensions of
clothing in the vita and how these relate to the tensions between ascetics and bishops.
20
For details on bishops and aristocracy in Gaul see Raymond Van Dam, Leadership and
Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); S. T.
Loseby, “Bishops and Cathedrals: Order and Diversity in the Fifth-Century Urban
Landscape of Southern Gaul,” in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, ed. John
Drinkwater and Hugh Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 144-155;
and M. A. Wes, “Crisis and Conversion in Fifth-Century Gaul: Aristocrats and Ascetics
between ‘Horizontality’ and ‘Verticality,’” in Fifth-Century Gaul, ed. Drinkwater and Elton,
252-263.
21
See Rapp, Holy Bishops, 172ff., on the bishops’ connections to the upper classes and
nobility. In Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries, there were even a number of bishops of
senatorial rank, including Gregory of Tours, passing the title along family lines (193). Also
see Elm, Macht der Weisheit, 84ff.
22
Stancliffe, St. Martin, 267.
account of Martin in Sulpicius’ vita would lead to a reconsideration of these

bishops and their aristocratic affectations.
As soon as he left the army, the ascetic and pious Martin
journeyed to Poitiers, where he found favor with the city’s powerful and
renowned bishop, Hilary. While in the army, Martin had lived a life of
renunciation and was attempting to continue this path in Poitiers. Aviad
Kleinberg notes:
As long as the ascetic is far away, he can work wonders. It is
proximity that makes him intolerable for those lacking charisma;
that is why charismatics are tolerated only when they constantly
acknowledge their readiness to respect and obey the hierarchy.23
The reactions of the church officials in Gaul to Martin are one example of
the taming that Kleinberg notes. Martin soon attracted the attention of
church officials, and they wanted to make him one of their own, to
incorporate his ascetic powers into the official structures of the church.
Rather than turning him loose, Hilary attempted to find an ecclesiastical
role for Martin that would allow him to live an ascetic life – with all its
resultant powers – under the auspices of the church. Sulpicius tells us:
“Hilary tried to attach [Martin] more closely to himself and to bind him to
the sacred ministry by conferring the diaconate on him.”24 By making him
an officer of the church, Martin could be more easily controlled and
whatever powers the ascetic life may have given him could be routed
through the official power structures of the church. Martin vehemently
refused Hilary’s offer several times, until Hilary eventually tried a sneaky
move.
[T]his deeply understanding man saw that there was only one way
of keeping a hold on him: by conferring on him an office that could
be taken as a slight on him. He therefore told him that he must be
an exorcist, and Martin did not resist ordination to this office for
fear that it might look as if he regarded it as beneath him.25
Hilary made Martin an offer he could not refuse, effectively ordaining him
against his will to a low and undignified office. Sulpicius is a little unclear
on precisely what Hilary’s motivations might have been in doing so and
why he was so keen to ordain Martin by hook or by crook; the text,
however, provides some clues. The Latin word translated “to keep a hold
23
Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 131-132. One may think of Kleinberg’s discussion of
charisma here as the ascetic powers Rapp discusses.
24
Sulpicius Severus, VSM, 5.2 (trans. Hoare, “Life of Martin,” 9).
25
Ibid. See Rapp, Holy Bishops, 143-147, on the rejection of ordination by ascetics. Rapp
argues that this often served to show that the person being ordained possessed the necessary
humility for the position.
Public Displays 39
on” is constringi—to restrain, control, limit, or bind—thus implying that

Hilary had more in mind that just keeping a hold on Martin. Surely,
having been in close contact with Martin, Hilary had witnessed his
incredible asceticism, potential for power, and ability to convert others.
Hilary, thus, was attempting to constrain Martin and harness his powers
for the church. Even by channeling these into the lowly office of an
exorcist, Martin was brought squarely under the control of the church.
Aviad Kleinberg argues:
In one way or another, society must confront and domesticate the
destructive force and the terrifying personality of the ascetic who
emerges from the sacred world to enter the profane world.26
In attempting to ordain Martin, Hilary is really attempting to constrain
the powers of the ascetic, as Hilary sought ways to limit and control the
ascetic potential of Martin before Martin had time to begin to live fully as
a hermit. Almost from the moment of his conversion and his release from
the army, he was ordained into a church office. All of Martin’s most
elaborate ascetic endeavors would occur after he was made part of the
ecclesiastical power structure.
Though Sulpicius had previously given hints of Martin’s powers in
the Vita, it is not until after Martin was ordained as an exorcist that his
potential for miracle working is fully explored. Martin helped reinforce this
as the correct form of Christianity by performing miracles and winning his
fights against both demons and heretics, both of which were important for
the role of conversion: Martin used his ascetic powers to help drive out
forces in Gaul that were working against the church hierarchy and to serve
as an example to potential converts of the powers of orthodox Christianity.
Martin ate poison and survived, vanquished the devil (appropriately given
his official status), and raised the dead. Martin also battled against Arian
Christians, reinforcing his connection to orthodox, Nicene Christianity, the
hierarchy of the Roman church, and the conversion of Gaul. Additionally,
Martin began living in hermitages, imitating the ascetics of the eastern
desert; shunning the urban centers where other churchmen lived, Martin
resided in humble abodes on the outskirts of towns. Such activities earned
him a reputation of being more than just an ordinary exorcist. He who
“was already regarded by everybody as a saint now was looked upon as a
man of power and in very truth an apostle.”27 Hilary’s attempt to restrain
Martin’s powers actually resulted in the latter becoming even more
powerful, leading to a reputation for holiness among the people, who now
26
Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 134-135.
27
Sulpicius Severus, VSM, 7.7 (trans. Hoare, “Life of Martin,” 11).
looked upon the lowly exorcist as they would upon an apostle. These sorts
of ascetic powers would have threatened the authority of the bishops: a
man from the lowest ranks of the clergy was capable of powers above and
beyond theirs. The reversals of status and power that mark the vita surface
again here, as one of the lowest church offices becomes a locus of incredible
powers and is equated with some of the most powerful figures in Christian
history.
Martin’s ordination as exorcist was not the end of his relations
with ecclesiastical powers. Sometime between 370 and 372 the people of
Tours decided they wanted Martin for their bishop. “There was but one
purpose among them; all had the same desire and the same opinion, which
was that Martin was the fittest to be bishop and that the church would be
fortunate to get such a priest.”28 Knowing it was difficult to get him to
leave his secluded hermitage, they developed a ruse to lure him out. A man
pretended his wife was ill, and when Martin came to his aid, the hermit
was taken to Tours “practically as a prisoner.”29 Though the people of
Tours were clamoring for Martin to be their bishop, the bishops who came
to ordain him balked at admitting him to their ranks. The man who stood
before them was not what one would expect a bishop to be:
They said … that Martin was a despicable individual, quite unfit to
be a bishop, what with his insignificant appearance, his sordid
garments, and his disgraceful hair. But the folly of these men, who
in their very efforts to vilify this remarkable man were singing his
praises, was laughed at by the people, whose judgment was sounder
than theirs.30
Martin was an unusual candidate for a bishop: he was not a well-educated,
refined gentleman from the upper classes, but rather a lower-middle-class
former soldier, who was unkempt and wild looking. However, according to
Sulpicius, Martin was more suited to the role of bishop than the typical
bishops of Gaul; though he did not appear to fit the part, Sulpicius makes
it clear that his apparent flaws were actually virtues that suited him for the
office. He was a new type of bishop that would serve to redefine the role
and the conceptions of asceticism for the western church. It was Martin
who,, for the West at least, began the fusion of pragmatic, spiritual, and
ascetic powers into the single role that Claudia Rapp notes about the
eastern bishops.
Once bishop, Martin made no changes to his way of life, thus
radically altering the expectations for the bishop’s office. Sulpicius wrote:
28
Ibid., VSM, 9.3 (trans. Hoare, “Life of Martin,” 12).
29
Ibid., 9.2 (trans. Hoare, “Life of Martin,” 12).
30
Ibid., 9.3-4 (trans. Hoare, “Life of Martin,” 12).
Public Displays 41
For with unswerving constancy he remained the same man as

before. There was the same humble heart and the same poverty-
stricken clothing; and amply endowed with authority and tact, he
fully sustained the dignity of the episcopate without forsaking the
life or virtues of the monk.31
At first, Bishop Martin lived in his monastic cell, but when he could no
longer endure the disturbances from his many visitors, he made himself a
hermitage about two miles from the city. The place was so secluded and
remote that it had all the solitude of the desert. On one side it was walled
in by the rockface of a high mountain, and the level ground that remained
was enclosed by a gentle bend of the Loire. There was only one approach to
it, and it was a very narrow one.32
A place such as this – spectacular though it sounds – was not a
typical bishop’s dwelling. Despite the reactions of the other bishops,
Martin continued his former ascetic lifestyle, and according to Sulpicius,
attracted around eighty brethren who lived alongside him, sometimes in
caves, as a sort of monastic community, continually practicing the ascetic
life:
It was seldom that anyone left his cell except when they assembled
at the place of worship. All received their food together after the
fast was ended. No one touched wine unless ill health forced him to
do so. Most of them wore clothes of camel’s hair; softer clothing
was looked upon as an offense there.33
Many of these ascetic monks later became bishops themselves, emphasizing
the role of Martin as a model bishop in Gaul and the new connections
between asceticism and the bishop’s office. Sulpicius, in fact, points out
how remarkable this was “because there were many among them of noble
rank, who had been brought up to something quite different before forcing
themselves to this lowliness and endurance.”34 This was directly connected
to the noble bishops who decried Martin’s ordination: even the bishops
coming from among the ranks of the nobility were earning the office based
upon their ascetic endurance rather than their posh backgrounds. Sulpicius
emphasizes here that it was not Martin’s ways that needed to change, but
the church’s conception of the bishop’s office. Martin helped to redefine the
office along the ascetic lines, and brought the eastern desert to Western
Europe. There he took up an ascetic life, but an ascetic life sanctioned by
31
Ibid., 10.1-2 (trans. Hoare, “Life of St. Martin,” 13).
32
33
34
Ibid., 10.8 (trans. Hoare, “Life of St. Martin,” 14).
the church by virtue of his role as a bishop.35 Rather than being an ascetic
or a bishop, Martin was an ascetic bishop, collapsing the two roles into
one. No longer would bishops and ascetics have to compete for power in
the West: if the bishop was an ascetic and the ascetic was a bishop, and the
powers of both combined into a single role in the official church hierarchy,
then the ascetic would no longer pose a threat to the bishop or the
hierarchy; instead, he would become part of the hierarchy.
In the Vita Sancti Martini, it is only after Martin’s ordination and
incorporation into the ecclesiastical hierarchy that his powers reached the
level of the eastern ascetics he was emulating. Sulpicius had previously
hinted at these powers, but it was only once Martin had become part of the
church hierarchy that his full potential was realized: the vita then becomes
little more than a laundry list of all the miracles performed by the great
ascetic bishop Martin. In the West, Sulpicius’ vita would still allow for
asceticism to be a route to power, but this ascetic power could only be fully
realized when appropriately channeled through an established ecclesiastical
hierarchy. Martin the soldier lived a holy life. Martin the exorcist
performed a few miracles. Martin the ascetic bishop was a miracle-working
powerhouse, astounding all around him and sealing his reputation as a
saint. It is to St. Martin and his cult that we must now turn to see the
lasting effects of the new society emerging in Gaul after the collapse of the
Western Roman Empire.
Like Vulfolaic after him, Martin battled tirelessly against the
pagans of Gaul. Along with his miracles, this is another example of his
divine power and sanctity. The miracles Martin performed after his
consecration point to a concern with establishing Christianity in Gaul: he
battled more Arians, determined that a grave venerated as a shrine to a
martyr was false; literally halted a pagan burial; and demolished and
burned a number of pagan shrines. Similar to the miracles and conversions
that followed his ordination as bishop, all of these incidents served to
reinforce the powers of the Roman church and to establish Nicene
Christianity in Gaul. Martin, the ascetic bishop, became a tool for
converting Gaul to orthodox Christianity; the location of ascetic authority
and ability to perform divinely sanctioned conversions in one individual
helped ensure that even when an ascetic inspired a conversion, it was to an
appropriate form of Christianity within the control of the ecclesiastical
authorities. The appeal of the ascetic to the average person is well
documented in texts; people were drawn to these charismatic figures and
35
See Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 150.
Public Displays 43
their spectacular displays of power.36 After his ordination as bishop, Martin

made use of this appeal and his charismatic powers to wage war – he was a
former soldier, after all – on the traditional religious practices and heresies
of Roman Gaul. The power of the ascetic, combined with the authority of
the bishop, gave Martin the power to convert others to Christianity. The
positioning in the vita of these feats of ascetic powers is significant: the
conversions and miracles happened only after Martin was made a part of
the church hierarchy and his powers were being used for their benefit.
Martin’s conversions were not performed by an outsider on the fringe of
Christian practice, but by one of the key figures in the church’s power
structure.
In the years after Sulpicius completed the Vita Sancti Martini, the
Roman Empire underwent enormous changes, which deeply altered the
culture and society of Gaul. Gaul itself was also converting to Christianity,
or at least in some places from Arian to Nicene Christianity. The last
Roman Emperor in the West, Romulus Augustus, was deposed in 476, and
by this time Childeric I had effectively succeeded the Romans as the main
political power in Gaul. Childeric’s son, Clovis I, would be the first
Frankish monarch to convert to Christianity circa 496.37 The descendants
of Childeric and Clovis – the Merovingian dynasty – would rule in Gaul
until the eighth century, and it was under this dynasty that the cult of
Martin of Tours became increasingly important.38 The saint that Sulpicius
depicted would have enormous influence in the establishment of
Merovingian Gaul as a Christian kingdom, and he would provide an
example of the ideal western bishop. The history of the rise and support of
the cult of St. Martin is clearly tied to the conversion of Gaul and shows
how Sulpicius’ portrayal of the saintly bishop continued to exert influence
on the kings and bishops of the West.
Clare Stancliffe notes the discrepancies between Sulpicius’ account
of Martin and the recollections of his other contemporaries.39 Raymond
Van Dam as well asserts that after his death circa 397 Martin was not
36
The accounts of the desert ascetics are full of stories of men and women who came to visit
the hermits. See Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian
Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), on these visitors to the
ascetics. In Gregory’s account of Vulfolaic, similar visitors are mentioned in Gaul, allowing
the conclusion that Christians in the West made similar pilgrimages to ascetics as those in
the East.
37
A further significance of this conversion is that Clovis converted to the orthodox Nicene
Christianity of the Roman church rather than the Arian Christianity practiced by other
Germanic kingdoms, such as the Goths.
38
Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), 25.
39
Stancliffe, St. Martin, 6-7.
instantly honored as a model saint, bishop, and patron of all Gaul: “after
his death, the image of the saint as a model bishop did not become
dominant, even at Tours, until a generation later.”40 Patrick Geary echoes
this, focusing on Martin’s ascetic practices and providing some reasons why
Martin, given his popularity, was not instantly influential in Gaul:
The ascetic tradition he introduced, a rather eclectic form
combining eastern traditions of asceticism with the life of the Gallic
clergy in the West took no root beyond the areas where he had
been most active… Unlike the great aristocratic bishops of Gaul,
Martin was an outsider, a soldier (a déclassé profession in the eyes
of Roman aristocrats), and above all a strange hybrid of a monk-
bishop – an ascetic who nevertheless relentlessly involved himself in
the activities of the world.41
By the fifth and sixth centuries – according to some of the stories related
by Gregory of Tours – Martin had become a prominent figure in Gaul. It
was during the intervening years, I would argue, that Sulpicius’ version of
Martin became increasingly important for the newly Christianized Gaul
and the way its ecclesiastical authorities would incorporate ideas of
asceticism and monasticism into their vision of the church.
The patronage of Clovis, the first Christian king of Gaul and the
first of the Merovingian dynasty, and the vita by Sulpicius were largely
responsible for the increased importance of Martin in Gaul and furthered
the conversion of the kingdom. As the king converted, so did the kingdom.
His patronage and promotion of Martin would help make the bishop saint
an important, revered, and influential figure to be emulated by others.
When the king began to promote his cult, the people soon followed.
Patrick Geary believes that Martin’s past may have been largely
responsible for Clovis’ interest in him.
Martin was clearly not a great intellectual or a man of letters like
the majority of southern bishops Clovis must have encountered.
Instead he was a man of action who knew the sources of real power
and how to wield it… Clovis’ patronage transformed Martin from a
patron of the Aquitainian bishops to the patron of the Frankish
kingdoms and the symbol of the new Frankish church.42
The cult and the resultant images of bishops thus spread throughout the
Frankish kingdoms with royal sanction. St. Martin provides a link to both
ecclesiastical and secular powers in Merovingian Gaul. Of course, the Vita
40
Van Dam, Saints and Miracles, 14.
41
Patrick J. Geary, Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the
Merovingian World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 141.
42
Ibid., 142.
Public Displays 45
Sancti Martini also did a good deal to shape the image of Martin the
bishop, the patron of Gaul.
The ultimate popularity of this most unusual man was to a great
extent the result of the image drawn of him by his biographer, Sulpicius
Severus, an educated and refined follower, who, in his account of Martin’s
life, presented him as an ideal new type of bishop – one who could be a
great churchman pursuing the life of action typically associated with high
Roman office and still be able to lead the life of self-renunciation
characteristic of monastic observance.43
Clovis’ connections to the saint and Sulpicius’ portrayal of him as a
person who could appeal to both Roman and Christian ideas of political
power and religious observance helped facilitate the spread not only of
Christianity, but also of Martin’s cult and the new images of the bishop
that were presented by Sulpicius.
Raymond Van Dam sees a certain domestication of Martin over
this time: the wild, ascetic bishop had, in the people’s memory, become a
milder, miracle-working bishop.44 This is significant for the western
conception of asceticism and authority. Here Martin’s miraculous powers
stemmed not from his ascetic endeavors, but from his consecration as
bishop. The text helps establish this: remember, Sulpicius did not begin to
fully describe Martin’s miracles until after he had entered the church
hierarchy. Sulpicius seems to have been indicating that whatever
supernatural powers Martin had, and from wherever they might have
come, they at least did not reach fruition until after the ascetic Martin had
become properly situated in the church hierarchy of Gaul and had routed
his asceticism and powers through these channels. Later Christians would
see these powers as being associated with the office of bishop rather than
the ascetic. It is thus that Sulpicius helped to establish the later Christian
ideas on bishops and power through the Vita Sancti Martini.
This brings us back to the start and to the monk Vulfolaic,
standing on his pillar near Trier. Gregory of Tours himself was from a long
line of wealthy, powerful bishops. His encounter with Vulfolaic appears in
his History of the Franks, a didactic history infused with theology.45 Among
the ideas Gregory wished to convey, according to Martin Heinzelmann,
was that saints, bishops, and kings may serve as representatives of the
righteousness of a society and that one accesses the spiritual through the
clergy.46 This helps to provide some context for his inclusion of this story
43
Ibid., 141.
44
Van Dam, Saints and Miracles, 27-28.
45
Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, 36, 153.
46
Ibid., 126-127, 176.
and perhaps an explanation for the reactions of the bishops, who seem
closer to those wealthy aristocrats opposing Martin. Two hundred years
after Martin, the tensions between the ascetics and bishops were still
around. However, when bishops approached the ascetic and issued a
command, he obeyed without question or hesitation – he knew his place.
Gregory is showing that asceticism must always and only come as
subservient to ecclesiastical authority; for Gregory, this would have begun
with Martin of Tours.47 Ascetic endeavors could be undertaken in Gaul,
but only behind the closed doors of a monastery, as part of the cenobitic
lifestyle, where certainly nothing as extreme as publicly standing on a
pillar would be permitted.48 Under the thumb of the bishops and the
control of the church authorities, ascetic labors continued in Gaul,
sometimes even resulting in the conversion of pagans, but it was the
bishops – who after Martin may be seen as a combination of ecclesiastical
and ascetic authority – who held the real authority and acted as the real
arbiters of power. Divine power, ecclesiastical power, miraculous power:
these had become the domain of the church, not the lone ascetic,
upholding Gregory’s ideas of bishops and the correct means of deploying
spiritual power in Gaul. Vulfolaic claimed to have been inspired by St.
Martin, which leaves us to wonder whether Sulpicius was inspired by
Martin as great bishop or by Martin as figure who was able to find a
channel within the ecclesiastical hierarchy where one could lead a
moderated ascetic life.
So what is the importance of this consolidation of powers into one
figure when we look at the conversion of Gaul? Raymond Van Dam
believes that the conversion of Gaul is too broad and vague an idea from
which to begin exploring Martin.49 Perhaps so, but I think – at least when
one adds the ideas of asceticism and power into the discussion – that the
relationship between the rise of Christianity in Europe and Sulpicius’
redefinition of the role of bishop is an avenue worth exploring. Accounts of
conversion are found in the stories about both Martin and Vulfolaic, and
they are connected to issues of asceticism and ecclesiastical authority. As
Christianity tried to take root and spread in the West, the church made
sure that there would be no one else to serve as an arbiter of divine power.
They demonized the Arians, tamed and domesticated eastern asceticism,
consolidated power in the hands of a few, and transferred the power of the
47
Ibid., 108.
48
Gregory’s account is contemporary with the rise of Benedictine monasticism in Western
Europe, which promoted cenobitic asceticism over the eremitic lifestyle and called for an
orderly, regulated ascetic regime.
49
Van Dam, Leadership and Community, 121.
Public Displays 47
living holy people of the eastern deserts into the shrines, images, and relics
of dead saints. Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Sancti Martini is, of course, not the
sole reasons for these changes, but in his portrayal of Martin one can see
the beginnings of a differing idea of sanctity and bishophood, and the way
that these would be used to help establish and consolidate the power of the
Roman church as Christianity began to spread through Gaul and Western
Europe.
A SELF-MADE LIVING SAINT? AUTHORITY AND
THE TWO FAMILIES OF THEODORET OF
CYRRHUS
Ville Vuolanto
Introduction
In the course of the fourth and early fifth centuries, asceticism and the
angelic life1 became identified as embodiments of the distinctively
Christian way of living a good life. It became important for those yearning
for ecclesiastical authority to associate themselves with asceticism, ascetic
values, and, even more specifically, to the ascetics themselves, whether
virgins at homes or hermits in the desert. Ascetic discourses were used to
form hierarchies of distinction in Christian communities all over the
Mediterranean, and an ascetic lifestyle became one of the most effective
sources for ecclesiastical power.2
In this essay, I will approach the self-promotion of ecclesiastical
writers through links with ascetic networks and praxis from the point of
view of one individual, Theodoret of Cyrrhus. My study tracks the ways in
which he built his spiritual authority especially through the representation
of his own childhood and youth. A point of comparison is furnished by
Theresa Urbainczyk’s recent study. According to her, Theodoret wilfully
depicted himself as enjoying a special authority, respect, and influence
among the Syrian ascetic holy men, by showing himself as having been
educated by them and still having links with them.3 Urbainczyk claims
* I am grateful for the very fruitful comments of the anonymous referee.

1
On ascetics seen as ‘angels’ in the fourth century, see e.g. Conrad Leyser, “Angels, Monks
and Demons in the Early Medieval West,” in Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages, ed. R.
Gameson and H. Leyser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 11-14.
2
See e.g. Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity. The Nature of Christian Leadership in
an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 137-152; and David
Hunter, “Rereading the Jovinianist Controversy: Asceticism and Clerical Authority in Late
Ancient Christianity,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33/3 (2003): 453-470,
esp. 466.
3
Theresa Urbainczyk, Theodoret of Cyrrhus: the Bishop and the Holy Man (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2002), 19-20, 93-94, 146-151. See also Hartmut Leppin,
“Zum kirchenpolitischen Kontext von Theodorets Mönchsgeschichte,” Klio 78 (1996): 212-
230.
50 Ville Vuolanto
that Theodoret needed this picture of himself as a tool in the doctrinal

disputes between the Alexandrians and the Antiochians over the heritage
of Nestorius – the message being that in fighting against Theodoret, the
Alexandrians also fought against those holy men of God.4 On the other
hand, Claudia Rapp has recently presented a new model of episcopal
authority in Late Antiquity. According to her, it consisted of pragmatic
authority, expressed through public activity for others; spiritual authority,
which was a personal but God-given characteristic, visible institutionally in
episcopal ordination and calling, as well as on a personal level, in deeds
inspired by the Holy Ghost, such as preaching and miracle working; and
ascetic authority, which stemmed from personal religious efforts and served
as a link between the other two.5 Thus, Urbainczyk’s interpretation of
Theodoret’s position and strategies highlights what Rapp calls ascetic
authority while overlooking the possible claims of spiritual and (to a lesser
degree) pragmatic authority.
As for pragmatic authority, Adam Schor has richly demonstrated
how effectively Theodoret assumed and performed the role of patron for
his friends and community, and how this was propagated by and linked
with his doctrinal network of support.6 According to him, this made
Theodoret the leading figure of the Antiochian side in the Christological
debates over Nestorianism in the 430s and early 440s.7 This phase of his
life also formed the context for his writing a collection of biographies of the
Syrian hermits, most often referred to as Historia Religiosa, to be dated to
the mid-440s at the latest.8 The particulars of Theodoret’s own childhood
and youth are carefully interwoven in these stories, and they serve as the
main source for my study.
Focusing on Theodoret’s representation of his background has a
double function in my study: firstly, by making it possible to see how far
4
Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 23-8 and 146-7.
5
Rapp, Holy Bishops, 16-18.
6
Adam M. Schor, Theodoret’s People. Social Networks and Religious Conflict in Late Roman Syria
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), esp. 153-155, 172-179. See also Philip
Rousseau’s analysis of the relationship between ascetics, bishops, and patronage in
“Eccentrics and Coenobites in the Late Roman East,” Byzantinische Forschungen 24 (1997):
35-42.
7
Ibid.,106-109. However, Theodoret ended up being considered dogmatically
controversial. The reasons for this are beyond the scope of the present study; see Schor,
Theodoret’s People, 110-130. For a more traditional account, concentrating on the doctrinal
struggles, see Paul B. Clayton, Christology of Theodoret of Cyrus. Antiochene Christology from the
Council of Ephesus (431) to the Council of Chalcedon (451) (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007).
8
The work is usually dated either to 440 or to 444; see Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 33.
Self-made Living Saint? 51
the conceptual framework of Rapp’s model is applicable to the specific case

of Theodoret. Moreover, I am interested in the question of why the stories
of childhood and youth played such an important role in the context of
forging Theodoret’s rhetoric of the self. To answer this, and to
contextualize Theodoret’s autobiographical sketches, I will compare his
narrative with other contemporary autobiographical depictions. It is clear
that these texts should be interpreted with caution, as autobiographic
writing in Late Antiquity took part in elaborate discourses that used
different narrative strategies for self-promotion and apology.9 In ancient
autobiographic texts, three interlinked aims can be identified which would
have taken precedence over any ”unmasking of the self” which would
nowadays be connected with memoirs: the preservation of memory;
portraying oneself as an exemplary figure; and justifying one’s specific
deeds or ideas.10 However, specifically because of these features,
autobiographic writing is useful in directing the modern scholar’s attention
to discourses on values and authority – and self-claimed sanctity.
Theodoret the Chosen One

In a letter from 448, Theodoret needed to defend his orthodoxy and
dogmatic authority in a difficult situation. His intent was to strengthen
both his leadership and his orthodox position by appealing to an array of
justifications and sources. First of all, he backed his claim to his ascetic
authority by emphasizing his love of monastic quietness and by referring to
his time spent in the monastery. He also used his pragmatic authority by
referring to his extensive patronage program in Cyrrhus, claiming to have
built porticoes, baths, and bridges from the revenues of the see, and to
have taken care of the community’s water supply, while simultaneously
pointing out that he did not accept any gifts for himself or for his
household. Further reference to his traditional civic virtues was his claim
that during his twenty-five years of episcopacy there had been no lawsuits
in which he was involved. Naturally, he also made references to his
9
This has not been self-evident in research: see e.g. Clayton, Christology, 7-10, and Pierre
Canivet, Le monachisme syrien selon Théodoret de Cyr (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977), 39-48, who
accept as facts all the details Theodoret gives about his childhood and parents.
10
See especially Simone Follet, “A la découverte de l’autobiographie,” in L’invention de
l’autobiographie d’Hésiode à Saint Augustin. Actes du deuxième colloque de l’Équipe de recherche sur
l’hellénisme post-classique, ed. M.-F. Baslez, P. Hoffmann, and L. Pernot (Paris: Presses de
l’Ecole normale superieure, 1993), 326 (conclusions to the volume); and Marek
Starowieyski, “L’autobiographie dans l’Antiquité chrétienne,” in Chartae caritatis: Études de
patristique et d’antiquité tardive en hommage à Yves-Marie Duval, ed. B. Gain, P. Jay, and G.
Nauroy (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2004), 37-54.
52 Ville Vuolanto
institutional spiritual status: as a bishop (unwillingly consecrated, he is

careful to add, linking himself to a long list of likewise reluctant ascetic
bishops11), he had always defended orthodoxy and fought against heresy,
taught the Gospel, and ordained priests. Thus, what we have here is a list
of all forms of episcopal authority presented in Claudia Rapp’s model.
However, Theodoret backed his apology with two further points: firstly,
that his parents had promised him to God even before his birth, and
secondly, that they had indeed vowed him to God and educated him
accordingly.12 What kind of authority was he claiming by referring to this
family background?
Theodoret was born around 393 CE13 to a prosperous Antiochian
14
family. After nine years of marriage, the future mother of Theodoret was
twenty-two years old, but still childless. According to Theodoret, even if
she took her childlessness calmly, the response of his father to the situation
was different. He was “going around everywhere to beg the servants of
God to ask for children from God.”15 Eventually, the hermit Macedonius
promised to him that the couple would have a child. When three more
years had passed without any signs of pregnancy, the husband visited the
hermit again, and this time Macedonius asked for Theodoret’s mother,
whom he told that a child would indeed be born, but it should be given to
God. She promised this, and her humbleness led Macedonius to promise
that the child would be a son. The following year she was pregnant, but
during the fifth month, a miscarriage threatened the mother and the
unborn baby. She sent Macedonius a message, and the hermit arrived,
restating the need of consecrating the child to God. She assured him again
that this would happen. After that Macedonius gave her some water, her
health recovered, and the child was born at the expected time.16
Some researchers have claimed that the story shows the reluctance
of Theodoret’s mother to have any children, as she was more eager to live
11
For the recurrence of this topos in contemporary narratives, see Rapp, Holy Bishops, 141-
147.
12
Theodoret de Cyr. Correspondence II, ed. and trans. Yvan Azéma, Sources Chrétiennes 98
(Paris: Cerf, 1964), Ep. 81.
13
Also 386 CE has been suggested, but without further evidence; see Clayton, Christology,
7, with notes. See also Canivet, Le monachisme, 39.
14
Théodoret de Cyr. Histoire des moines de Syrie vol. I-II, ed. and trans. Pierre Canivet and Alice
Leroy-Molinghen. Sources Chrétiennes 234 and 257 (Paris: Cerf, 1977-1979), 9.6; and
Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 21, 150.
15
Theodoret, Religious History, 13.16.
16
Ibid.
ascetically than have a child.17 However, the story as Theodoret tells it

concentrates on highlighting the piety and humbleness of the mother
rather than her reluctance to have any children at all. As Derek Krueger
notes, the narrative of a barren woman giving birth “not only interprets his
mother’s experience in light of Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth, but provides
Theodoret a biblical gloss on his whole life.”18 Moreover, the thrice-
repeated motif of making a vow also served as a mnemonic device, and a
way of linking these promises to yet another biblical exemplum: after all,
Peter had to promise three times that he would “feed the lambs” of Jesus
(John 21:15-19).
It was a common feature in Roman autobiographic narratives that
some dramatic change would take place before one’s real self, vocation, and
divine favor could be unveiled.19 In Late Antique biographies, this motif is
pronouncedly frequent. Earlier in Theodoret’s narrative, his mother
started a new phase in life when her eye disease was miraculously cured:
she had been living in luxury until, afflicted by a serious eye disease, she
contacted a hermit, Peter the Galatian, who lived on a nearby mountain
south of Antioch. Peter managed to cure her, convincing her at the same
time of the superiority of the ascetic lifestyle.20 Likewise, according to
Gregory of Nyssa, it was the death of her fiancé that made his sister
Macrina dedicate herself to virginity; in Gregory of Nazianzus’ story about
his sister Gorgonia, her miraculous recovery from illness and a cart accident
were the events which revealed her hidden holiness; and in the Confessions,
Augustine presents the garden scene as the initial turning point which
culminated in his baptism. Augustine also writes that he was almost
baptized when he was ill at a young age – the only context in which his
childhood religiosity is directly mentioned in his text.21 The motif of divine
17
Canivet, Le monachisme, 41-43; see also Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women,
and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988),
324.
18
Derek Krueger, “Writing as Devotion: Hagiographical Composition and the Cult of the
Saints in Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Cyril of Scythopolis,” Church History 66/4 (1997): 707-
719, at p. 710.
19
Mireille Hadas–Lebel, “Le double récit autobiographique chez Flavius Josèphe,” in
L’invention de l’autobiographie, ed. Baslez, et al., 127.
20
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Religious History, 9.5-8.
21
Gregoire de Nysse, Vie de sainte Macrine, ed. and trans. Pierre Maraval (Paris: Cerf, 1971),
3; Gregoire de Nazianze, Discours 6-12, ed. and trans. Marie-Ange Calvet-Sebasti (Paris:
Cerf, 1995), Oration 8.15-18, with Virginia Burrus, “Life after Death: The Martyrdom of
Gorgonia and the Birth of Female Hagiography,” in Gregory of Nazianzus. Images and
Reflections, ed. Jostein Børtnes and Tomas Hägg (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press,
2006), 162-163; Augustine, Confessions, ed. James J. O’Donnell (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
54 Ville Vuolanto
favor was not limited to Christian discourse: Libanius, in his Autobiography,

is constantly depicting himself as the favorite of Fate (Tykhe) and a virtuous
intellectual hero.22 Acts of divine intervention were understood as showing
special favor to the individual for whom they occurred.
However, the story of Theodoret most closely resembles that
which Gregory of Nazianzus wrote about himself. Gregory tells that his
mother, Nonna, had dedicated him to God at his birth, after a miraculous
dream in which his name was also announced. However, the turning point
in his life happened only later: in Gregory’s interpretation, he redeemed his
mother’s promise by taking baptism and dedicating himself to God’s
service after having nearly drowned in a stormy sea at about twenty years
of age. In this instance, he was saved because of his own and his mother’s
prayers, even claiming that a boy on the ship had seen Nonna walking on
water and directing the ship through the storm. This event functioned as a
final climax in his narratives on different kinds of divine favors in his life.23
Such miraculous stories of recovery and deliverance from danger were
utilized to highlight the divine intervention in the lives of their
protagonists, and thus include references to being chosen by God. Indeed,
Susanna Elm even characterizes Gregory’s self-portrait as creating a picture
of a man predestined to become a messenger of the Logos.24
Theodoret’s story is different in one point: he presents the
dramatic change and “conversion” in his own life as having taken place
even before his own birth. In fact, Theodoret’s birth was a multiple
miracle; not only was it a response to his parents’ prayers, but also his sex
was due to his mother’s piety, and, moreover, he wondrously survived the
danger of miscarriage. Thus, Theodoret presents himself as “chosen” even
before his birth. Accordingly, he depicts his later childhood and life as a
young man as a logical continuation of this early dedication to spiritual
1992), 8.12.28 and 9.6.14, with James J. O’Donnell, Augustine, Sinner and Saint: A New
Biography (London: Profile Books, 2005), 53. On Augustine’s illness and his intended
baptism as a child, see Augustine, Confessions, 1.11.17.
22
Libanius, Autobiography (Oration 1), ed. and trans. A. F. Norman (London: Oxford
University Press, 1965), with Bernard Schouler, “Libanios et 1’autobiographie tragique,” in
L’invention de l’autobiographie, ed. Baslez, et al., 317-319.
23
Grégoire de Nazianze, Oeuvres poetiques, vol. 1/1,Poèmes personnels (II, 1, 1-11), ed. André
Tuilier and Guillaume Bady, trans. Jean Bernardi (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2004):
2.1.1.118-122, 308, 320 and 424-444; 2.1.11.51-94 and 121-209. See also Raymond Van
Dam, Families and Friends in Late Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 88-93, on Gregory and his mother.
24
Susanna Elm, “Gregory’s Women: Creating a Philosopher’s Family,” in Gregory of
Nazianzus, ed. Børtnes and Hägg, 189-191.
life: depictions of religious practices and education are present throughout

Theodoret’s narrative about his childhood.
Theodoret as an Apprentice to the Hermits

Theodoret claims he was well socialized into ascetic Christianity from his
youth, especially because of his frequent visits to the holy men of the
family, Peter the Galatian and Macedonius, who were responsible for the
miracles which had occurred in the household. Theodoret’s mother sent
him to Peter the Galatian once a week to obtain his blessing, and as a child
he often sat on the knees of Peter, who gave him bread with raisins. He
also frequently met Macedonius to have his blessing and to listen to his
teachings. These ascetics also visited their home occasionally. Theodoret
tells how Macedonius used to remind him about the promise made by his
mother and Macedonius’ own efforts in praying for his birth, thus urging
him to live virtuously “as a sacred offering to God.” Theodoret was
consecrated to spiritual life.25 Still a child, he also joined his mother to see
the renowned hermit Aphrahat. According to Theodoret, even though his
mother was a rich lady with a direct relationship to ascetics, and acted as
an intercessor between the living saints and her household and network of
family friends, she could only briefly communicate with the hermit
through the door. Theodoret, however, was allowed to enter his cell and
receive a blessing.26
Theodoret also continued these visits on his own, depicting himself
as an apprentice to the hermits. He refers to his experiences at the shrine of
Simeon the Stylite as a bishop; much earlier, in the early 410s, he had lived
for a week with the ascetic David in Teleda, some fifty kilometres from
Antioch. Theodoret was then a student and served as a reader in the
Antiochian church. He also sought advice from the hermit Zeno, and
conversed with him for a long time about the ascetic life. At the end of
their meeting, the ascetic asked Theodoret to pray for him. To Theodoret’s
surprised reaction Zeno explained that in the kingdom of God he was a
civilian, whereas Theodoret was a soldier because he was a reader in the
25
In general, see Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Religious History, 13.1; visits to Peter: Religious
History, 9.4; visits to Macedonius: Religious History 13.18; home: e.g., Macedonius in
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Religious History, 13.3; Peter in Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Religious
History, 9.14. On the language Theodoret used for his own status as a consecrated offering,
see also the commentary by Canivet and Leroy-Molinghen in Théodoret de Cyr. Histoire des
moines de Syrie, vol. 1, 507.
26
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Religious History, 8.15; Aphahat died most probably in 407, when
Theodoret was thirteen or fourteen: see Canivet, Le monachisme, 160.
56 Ville Vuolanto
church. Theodoret points out that he was still quite young then: only
recently had there appeared a slight growth of down on his cheek. Thus,
the story was crafted to show both the humbleness of Zeno and the respect
Theodoret enjoyed among the hermits when still a young man – as well as
the spiritual authority inherent in the ecclesiastical office.27
Theodoret’s intent was to combine his early life and later career
into one continuous and inevitable whole, in which his early vow led to
constant interaction with the ascetic living saints, and finally to the
monastic life: according to his own words, soon after his parents had died
he sold his family fortune and started living in poverty. In another instance
he claimed that he had lived in a monastery for years preceding his
ordination as the bishop of Cyrrhus in 423.28 From these short accounts it
has been inferred as self-evident that Theodoret spent the time between his
parents’ death and his ordination as a monk, having entered the monastery
sometime between 413 and 416, when he was twenty to twenty-three
years old.29 However, he himself does not claim that he lived in a
monastery for the entire period, nor does he anywhere give the number of
years he spent there – even if these details would fit very well into his
argument in those apologetic letters in which he recollects his career.30
Even the date of his parents’ death is far from fixed to the proposed years.
On the other hand, curiously but appropriately for the literate profile
Theodoret created for himself, he never mentions his secular education –
even if it is clear that he acquired a very extensive classical knowledge
during his adolescence.31 Indeed, it is tempting to propose that Theodoret
did not enter the monastery in his early twenties, but only later, having
finished his secular studies first.
27
On Simeon the Stylite, see Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Religious History, 26.14-16; David:
Religious History, 4.10; Zeno: Religious History, 12.4 (see also Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 140).
On these visits, see also Canivet, Le monachisme, 55-56 (esp. for their dating) and Cornelia B.
Horn, “Children as Pilgrims and the Cult of Holy Children in the Early Syriac Tradition:
The Cases of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and the Child-Martyrs Behnām, Sarah, and Cyriacus,”
in Pilgrimages and Shrines in the Syrian Orient. Proceedings of the ARAM Twenty First
International Conference, University of Oxford, 6-8 July 2005 (Oxford: ARAM Society, 2007),
449.
28
Theodoret, Correspondence II-III, Epp. 81 and 113. For chronology, see Canivet, Le
monachisme, 57-58. After all, he seems not to have been ordained priest before he was
elected bishop (Ibid., 61).
29
See e.g. Canivet, Le monachisme, 58; Clayton, Christology, 10; István Pásztori-Kupán,
Theodoret of Cyrus (London: Routledge, 2006), 4-5; Schor, Theodoret’s People, 6.
30
Theodoret, Correspondence II-III, Ep. 113 with Epp. 80 and 81.
31
On Theodoret’s learning: Clayton, Christology, 6 and 9-10; Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 18-19.
Theodoret seems to have felt, though, that he had to explain to his

readers why he did not become an ascetic desert dweller in his youth. He
seeks to clarify this by telling a story about how he once heard a
conversation between Peter the Galatian and his servant-apprentice
Daniel. Daniel remarked, in referring to the miracles around Theodoret’s
birth, that Theodoret would also be worthy to serve Peter. Peter, however,
responded that this could not happen because Theodoret’s parents were
much too attached to the boy.32 This explanation sought moral support in
the dominant Greco-Roman family values: Theodoret would have become
an ascetic disciple of Peter, if only his parents had not been so attached to
him.33 This claim includes at least two moral statements: firstly, Theodoret
himself was virtuous enough not to challenge his parents, and to show
proper piety towards them. He had time to wait. Secondly, his parents had
the weakness of attaching themselves to earthly things – to their only son.
Theodoret as a Family Man

Theodoret was, however, careful not to accuse directly his parents – or
rather his mother. He shows his father as a rather worldly character,
anxiously running around the mountains of Antioch in his yearning for
progeny: after this episode, he disappears from Theodoret’s story. His
mother, however, is depicted as near to an ascetic saint as a housewife can
get. According to Theodoret, after Peter the Galatian had cured her eyes,
she was also spiritually cured, so that she threw away her cosmetics, no
longer used her golden ornaments, began to dress in a simple manner, and
sought the company of ascetics. He also tells that her diet, suitable to her
ascetic lifestyle, was so strict that on one occasion only a clever story told
by Macedonius made her take some food as a cure for her illness.34
Not only did the mother send Theodoret as a child to converse
with ascetics, but also, like the mother of Gregory, she took care of his
religious education in other respects. Often she told him stories about the
ascetics and the miracles they had accomplished. Many of the stories
concerned the family traditions that I have already referred to.35 There
32
Theodoret, Religious History, 9.4.
33
For the centrality of pietas in Roman thought, see Richard P. Saller, Patriarchy, Property
and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 105-114.
For the importance of familial piety in Late Antiquity, even among the ascetic writers, see
Andrew S. Jacobs, “Let Him Guard pietas: Early Christian Exegesis and the Ascetic Family,”
Journal of Early Christian Studies 11/3 (2003): 265-281.
34
Theodoret, Religious History, 13.3 and 13.16.
35
Ibid., 9.9-10; 9.14; and 13.3.
58 Ville Vuolanto
were also stories about other close acquaintances of Theodoret, such as the
exorcism story about a peasant whose grandmother was Theodoret’s nurse,
or a cook from his parents’ household, both of whom were cured by Peter
after the intervention of Theodoret’s mother. The mother is also said to
have visited Symeon the Elder, obtaining his blessing, and to have told
many stories about the hermit to her son.36 Moreover, it was she who used
the prophylactic girdle of Peter to cure her husband, her son, and herself.
She also loaned this miraculous belt to family friends, and, according to
Theodoret, was always eager to “make known the power of the grace
which was in [Peter].”37 The story about the spiritual conversion of
Theodoret’s mother also underlines the wealth and the high social status of
the family – which is further elaborated in Theodoret’s claim that, when he
sold the family property after his parents’ death, it was a well-known story
throughout the Orient.38 An heir to great riches and earthly status, he
chose to exchange them for spiritual nobility.
In Theodoret’s stories, his relationship with the ascetics is not only
free from all conflict or disputes of authority (a rare situation, if we take
Theodoret’s words at face value),39 but he also depicts himself correcting
the excesses of the ascetics later in his life – and they always yield to his
episcopal authority, at least temporarily: Marana and Cyra accept him to
their cell and cease to wear their heavy iron chains; Polychronios accepts
assistants to accompany him; Jacob complies by lying down in shadow
instead of the midday sun and putting away his load of chains.40 Thus,
while Theodoret guarantees the orthodoxy of these ascetics, he
simultaneously asserts a special influence over them. If Zeno wanted
Theodoret the lector to pray for him, Simeon the Stylite orders the
pilgrims to seek benediction from Theodoret the bishop for spiritual
profit.41 Also, in a broader sense, he gives an impression that the ascetics
were under the general control of ecclesiastical authority: except for his
own episcopal authority, he depicts Simeon the Stylite as accommodating
himself to the control of his monastic superiors and that of the chorepiskopos
36
Theodoret, Religious History, 9.9-10; 6.14.
37
Ibid., 9.15; later, the girdle was stolen from the family.
38
Theodoret, Correspondence III, Ep. 113.
39
See Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 20, 56, 68, 151, with McLynn, “A Self-Made Holy Man,” 469.
40
Theodoret, Religious History, 29.5.; 24.4.; 21.6-8.
41
Ibid., 12.4 and 26.14. See also 20.4 for Maris receiving the Eucharist from Theodoret and
claiming that this was the most joyful event of his life.
Meletius, and the hermit Baradatos came out from his cell after an
intervention by Theodotos, archbishop of Antioch.42
For Theodoret, extreme ascetic practices are something that an
orthodox ecclesiastical authority must intervene against, and he himself
stands for moderate and cultured asceticism. Nevertheless, he makes it
clear that the practices are in themselves admirable and wondrous: the
point in these stories is the humbleness of these ascetics and their
willingness to obey people who are invested with authority, rather than
censuring the practices as such.43 Thus, as soon as the authorities in
question have left the ascetics, Theodoret depicts them as either returning
to their old ways, or inventing some other, equally strict means of self-
mortification.44 It is only in his letters, which are more closely bound to the
living reality, that the ascetics are shown to have actual influence on
Theodoret:45 Historia religiosa shows the way in which Theodoret hoped his
authority would shine out, not how it actually turned out to be.
Likewise, ascetics are depicted as aiding Theodoret when he was in
need: thus, Jacob of Cyrrhestica’s miraculous powers helped him to fight
against the Marcionites in his own bishopric at Cyrrhus.46 Not surprisingly,
in his Ecclesiastical History, Theodoret gives monks in general – and monks
related to him in particular –extensive roles, not only as miracle workers,
but also as agents in various ecclesiastical and political affairs. Macedonius,
for example, is depicted as intervening for Antioch when Emperor
Theodosius – according to Theodoret – threatened to destroy the city
because of disputes over taxation.47 Even more generally, as Theresa
42
Theodoret, Religious History, 26.5-7, 10; 27.3. For competition in acquiring recognition
by the monks, and efforts invested in the “domestication of holy men,” see also McLynn, “A
Self-Made Holy Man,” 480-482.
43
Cf. Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 135-136, and Rousseau, “Eccentrics and Coenobites,” 36-38.
44
See also Niketas Siniossoglou, Plato and Theodoret: The Christian Appropriation of Platonic
Philosophy and the Hellenic Intellectual Resistance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 135-138 (with notes) on Theodoret “never renouncing the extremes of unnatural
asceticism but tolerated them and expressed his admiration for his ‘athletes’.”
45
Especially when in 434 Baradatus, Jacob of Cyrrhestica and Simeon the Stylite intervened
to make Theodoret change his mind (Theodoret, Correspondence IV, Ep. 27 [in collectio
conciliaris]). See also Theodoret needing the prayers of an archimandrite – and the
comments of another (Theodoret, Correspondence II, Ep. 50 and Theodoret, Correspondence I,
Ep. 4). On the importance of monks in the doctrinal disputes of the fourth and fifth
centuries, see further Richard Finn, Asceticism in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 151-153.
46
Theodoret, Religious History, 21.15-18.
47
Macedonius: Théodoret de Cyr. Histoire ecclesiastique, ed. and trans. L. Parmentier, G. C.
Hansen, Pierre Canivet, et al., 2 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 2006-2008), 5.19; other Syrian ascetics:
Ibid., 2.19; 2.26; 4.22-26; 5.35. See also ibid., 5.36. And see Derek Krueger, Writing and
60 Ville Vuolanto
Urbainczyk notes, those holy men who were most closely connected to
Theodoret, were also presented as the most efficient miracle workers.48
Indeed, miracles surrounded Theodoret, his family, birth, and
early life. But he not only depicted his youth and childhood as encircled by
holy people; he was also ordained by the ascetics: Peter the Galatian cut
his long belt in two and girded his loins with the one part while girding
Theodoret with the other. This, again, is a reference to Jesus, who girded
the Apostle Peter and authorized him to become a preacher of the new
faith.49 Indeed, Theodoret continued the spiritual lineage of his ascetic
friends, different only because he was to enter an ecclesiastical career.
Requirements of an Autobiographic Childhood

Theodoret is not an exception in the tradition of autobiographic writing in
Late Antiquity, as he combines the typical features of ancient
autobiography with the rhetoric of sainthood, presenting himself as a
virtuous and authoritative eyewitness, observer, and ascetic chosen by God.
The most evident example is Gregory of Nazianzus, whose
autobiographical works aim at explaining and justifying his past deeds,
presenting him as a saintly intellectual, at first as a fugitive local cleric and
later as a church politician and patriarch forced to retire, hand-picked by
God right from his birth.50 Indeed, as it is evident from my very title, this
Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 24.
48
Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 90 and 93.
49
Theodoret, Religious History, 9.15. John 21:18: “… when you were younger you girded
yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will gird you and lead you where you do not want to go” (translation
from New International Version, with modification). For Theodoret’s self-comparison with
Moses, and his positioning himself “as an author-creator whose work is analogous to God’s
work,” see Theodoret, Religious History, 1.1, with Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 30-32. See
also Rapp, Holy Bishops, 128, and Horn, “Children as Pilgrims,” 447, comparing the event
with Elijah placing his mantle on Elisha, initiating him into prophetic asceticism. On
Theodoret as a divinely ordained bishop, see also Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 142.
50
McLynn, “A Self-Made Holy Man,” 463-483. For Gregory’s writing as an apology, see
Jean Bernardi, “Trois autobiographies de saint Grégoire de Nazianze,” in L’invention de
l’autobiographie, ed. Baslez, et al., 159-161. See also Elm, “Gregory's Women.” Similarly,
Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions deal only with those instances in his life through which
specific theological points and ideological statements could be made (Jean-Claude
Fredouille, “Les Confessions d’Augustin, autobiographie au present,” in L’invention de
l’autobiographie, 168-169, 177-178). The same can be said about the figure of young John
appearing as the main protagonist in the frame narrative of John Chrysostom’s On Priesthood
(Jean Chrysostome, Sur le sacerdoce [Dialogue et homélie], ed. and trans. Anne-Marie
Malingrey [Paris: Cerf, 1980]).
study forms a kind of parallel to Neil McLynn’s magisterial article on

Gregory of Nazianzus as a self-made holy man. McLynn starts his
discussion on Gregory by contrasting him to Syrian asceticism as presented
in Theodoret’s Historia Religiosa, associating Gregory with a cultured,
refined, and comfortable asceticism in opposition to the ”huts, caves, and
cisterns of Theodoret’s heroes.” In this, however, McLynn bypasses
Theodoret himself, who offers a point of comparison regarding Gregory’s
strategies of self-promotion and claims to holiness.51
Gregory of Nazianzus’ rhetorical strategy was to create a
philosophical family of parents, siblings, and spiritual children in order to
show himself as a family man whom “eugeneia had predestined […]
towards the divine” and as a messenger of the Logos.52 For Theodoret, it
was his mother’s religiosity and especially to her nearness to the holy
hermits that he wanted to associate himself with. Indeed, he explicitly
presented this as a guarantee of his piety and apostolic faith: “for I received
the apostolic nourishment from my mother’s breast and the creed laid
down at Nicaea by the holy and blessed Fathers.”53 As Gregory, also
Theodoret depicted himself as set apart54 from other people.
Another important similarity to Gregory is the way in which
Theodoret depicts the influence of his mother. Gregory tends to show his
father as subordinated to his wife, and eagerly depicts himself as beyond
the reach of paternal authority.55 As show above, also the central role of
the mother in the dramatic change of his life is similar. Indeed, this role of
mothers, or women of the family more generally, as crucial to the spiritual
life and future of the male protagonists, is a recurrent theme in late Roman
autobiography: Both Emmelia and her daughter Macrina, for example,
were depicted as having crucial influence on the education, spirituality, and
the subsequent episcopacy of their sons and brothers Basil of Caesarea,
Peter of Sebaste, and Gregory of Nyssa. Basil, moreover, highlighted his
contacts with his grandmother as a guarantee of his orthodox family
51
McLynn, “A Self-Made Holy Man,” 463, states that “Gregory’s first-person perspective
creates one obvious difference between de vita sua and Theodoret’s biographies”. See also
ibid., 465.
52
Elm, “Gregory’s Women,” 189-190.
53
Theodoret, Correspondence II, Ep. 88 (trans. Pásztori-Kupán, Theodoret of Cyrus, 4). Indeed,
Theodoret’s mother is presented not only as a “suitable parent of a future bishop”
(Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 135-137), but also as a suitable mother of a saintly ascetic.
54
For a similar strategy in Gregory, see Neil B. McLynn, “A Self-Made Holy Man: The
Case of Gregory Nazianzen,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6/3 (1998): 463-483, at pp.
466, 470-473.
55
See especially McLynn, “A Self-Made Holy Man,” 472. Gregory shows his father “only in
company of and subordinate with his wife, the genuine olive upon whom he was crafted.”
62 Ville Vuolanto
heritage – and as a link to the ascetic authority of Gregory Thaumaturgus.

In the West, the way in which Augustine depicted Monica’s crucial
influence upon his life is a well-known story.56
On a more general level, in his autobiographical notes Theodoret
depicts himself as having chosen both filial piety and ascetic values: he
stayed with his parents until their death, but still obeyed his mother’s vow.
This feature of proper familial pietas and references to the appropriate
family background and education also appear in two influential Late
Antique treatises dealing with the nature of priesthood: Gregory of
Nazianzus’ Oration 2 and John Chrysostom’s On Priesthood.57
Why make claims of holiness through stories of one’s childhood
and youth? Firstly, in this kind of narrative the author has more freedom to
represent himself as being beyond the control of contemporaries, since his
relationships were for the most part things of the past,– Theodoret’s actual
ascetic relations and network would have been more difficult to present as
self-evidently subjected to his authority. Moreover, it seems that the
Greco-Roman understanding of childhood has relevance here: children
were thought to be born innocent (in the sense of being pure and not
involved in adult intrigues) and ready to be moulded by their educators.
Thus, childhood would in many ways predestine the future character of an
individual.58 To show that one has had a proper education with the right
sort of (orthodox) influences as a child was to guarantee one’s constancy
and proper (orthodox) mind-set as an adult. Thirdly, what clearer
assurance would there be of the person’s priestly and episcopal dutifulness
than previously performed filial dutifulness?
56
On Emmelia and Macrina, see Van Dam, Families and Friends, 100-113. On Basil and his
grandmother: Saint Basile, Lettres, ed. and trans. Yves Courtonne, 3 vols. (Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 1957-1966), Ep. 204.6, see also Epp. 210.1 and 223.3; Augustine, Confessions,
3.4.7-8 and 9.9-9.13. See also Libanius, Autobiography, 4-5, 12 and 27. Further Ville
Vuolanto, “Family Relationships and the Socialization of Children in the Autobiographical
Narratives of Late Antiquity,” in Approaches to the Byzantine Family, ed. Shaun Tougher and
Leslie Brubaker (Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming 2013).
57
Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 1-3, ed. and trans. Jean Bernardi (Paris: Cerf, 1978),
Oration 2.102-103, with Rapp, Holy Bishops, 43, and Chrysostome, Sur le sacerdoce, ed. and
trans. Malingrey, 1.3-1.5.
58
On innocence, see Ville Vuolanto, “Faith and Religion,” in A Cultural History of Childhood
and Family in Antiquity, ed. Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence (Oxford: Berg, 2010), 148-
149. On the child as a tabula rasa for the educators of the (late) Roman world, see e.g. Jean
Chrysostome, Sur le vaine gloire et l’education des enfants, ed. Anne-Marie Malingrey (Paris:
Cerf, 1972), 20-29; and Teresa Morgan, “Ethos: The Socialization of Children in Education
and Beyond,” in A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds, ed. Beryl Rawson
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 515.
Moreover, in weaving himself and his mother tightly into the

hermit stories, Theodoret gives an impression that ascetics themselves were
his family members right from birth. He links himself not only to the
lineage and inheritance of his biological father, but also to the ascetic
succession: he was a child of the hermits. On the other hand, he also makes
the claim that the lifestyle of the local elites is a feature of his long gone,
pre-ascetic life, while at the same time reminding his readers of this family
background and elite education.59 That is a strong claim, again parallel to
that of Gregory of Nazianzus: he is a cultured ascetic (even if his angelic
friends were perhaps not), and therefore a competent mediator between the
ascetics and “the world”.
This formed a firm basis for his self-promotion as an ascetic and
holy bishop in the midst of the ecclesiastical struggles of the 430s and
440s. As Adam Schor proposes, the Historia Religiosa aimed at reinforcing
the links between the Syrian ascetics and the Antiochene theological
network in this critical period.60 Moreover, Theodoret “comes to resemble
his saints”61 and is at the same time sanctified through his narration – a
result that Theodoret himself would have hardly missed.
However, interpreting Theodoret’s self-portrait only through the
need of a direct response to the ecclesiastical and political struggles
between the Antiochians and the Alexandrians, and narrowing Theodoret’s
aims down to his wish to depict himself as a person of influence and
connections among the Syrian holy men, a leader of “a monk army,” would
mean appreciating only a part of the story at the most: it could be
misleading to read Theodoret's autobiographic notes in the Historia
Religiosa merely as texts aiming at network building.62 Indeed, writing
hagiography was also an act of devotion for Theodoret.63 Moreover, the
fact that he was born, as his name implies, both as God’s gift and a gift to
God,64 and his wish to proclaim not only his present influence on the
59
Compare with Gregory of Nazianzus’ problems in setting himself apart from the
traditional elite of a small city and his obligations to the relatives: McLynn, “A Self-Made
Holy Man,” 466-467.
60
Schor, Theodoret’s People, 119.
61
Krueger, “Writing,” 712.
62
Similarly, see Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 23. Cf. Urbainczyk, Theodoret, 147 and 149-
150; Schor, Theodoret’s People, 118-20. Indeed, it would not do justice to ecclesiastical
writers to explain their interest in asceticism as being motivated primarily by their aim of
building up their own authority and power, or that of the Church, see also for example
Brown, Body and Society, 345, on Ambrose of Milan.
63
Krueger, “Writing,” 711-713 and 719.
64
For Theodoret’s statements on this, besides the above-cited passages in Religious History,
see Theodoret, Correspondence II, Ep. 81, lines 4-7.
64 Ville Vuolanto
ascetics, but also his childhood and youth experiences and relations, seems
to have been central for Theodoret’s self-understanding.
Conclusions: Theodoret, a Bishop with Two Families

How did Theodoret seek to justify his claims of authority and sanctity? To
categorize the findings of my study I will return to Claudia Rapp’s model
of the sources of episcopal authority. In the stories of the Historia Religiosa,
the pragmatic authority stemming from his activities as a local bishop and
benefactor played only a secondary role. Instead, Theodoret built a picture
of his life as a spiritual enterprise continuing the heritage of the hermits,
programatically highlighting his closeness to ascetic sainthood. Later, he
continued this tradition by living “with the labours of a monk and the
cares of a bishop,” as he claimed Abraham of Carrhae had been able to do.
Episcopal and coenobitic elements combined not only in Theodoret’s
Historia Religiosa, but also and especially in his own person.65 His claim to
leadership and unparalleled spiritual authority was, therefore, backed by
his status as a man chosen by God to become a bishop and by his
personally performed and propagated links to ascetic sanctity.66
Theodoret, however, stresses one further source of authority, not
mentioned in Rapp’s model: he justified his status as a dogmatic and
orthodox leader with claims based not only on his pragmatic or ascetic
authority, or his “charisma” or status as an ordained bishop, but also by
invoking his childhood and youth. He stressed clearly that he was
acquainted very early with the proper values and a certain way of life. In
this, Theodoret was not alone in his time, even if the extent to which he
refers to his childhood experiences and education is exceptional among his
contemporaries.
65
Theodoret, Religious History, 17.1, with Rousseau, “Eccentrics and Coenobites,” 38-42.
For more on Theodoret and the monk-bishops in Syria, see Rapp, Holy Bishops, 148 and
297. Only in the early fifth century did ascetics begin to be ordained as bishops in Syria –
and Theodoret himself was among the first.
66
Even if my study here concerns rather Theodoret’s claims to authority and its sources,
whereas Adam Schor is more concerned about the Antiochian network and the actual
reasons for the rise and fall of Theodoret’s influence, it still seems to me that his study
would have benefited from exploring the justifications for his claims to leadership. Using
Claudia Rapp’s concepts, I might say that Schor explains Theodoret’s authority mainly as
based on its pragmatic side (especially on social strategies), paying only minimal attention
to his claims of ascetic authority. On ascetic authority in Schor, see Theodoret’s People, 118–
119. See also Schor’s Figure 4 (on p. 47) and Figure 10 (on p. 66) on the Antiochian ascetic
networks. The latter, however, does not include Theodoret himself.
Therefore, if pragmatic authority is linked to the bishop’s

patronage and his public and communal contacts, spiritual authority to the
ecclesiastical and transcendental spheres, and ascetic authority to the
personal and individual performance, there still was a further component in
his authority, which was linked to the familial sphere, necessitating the
propagation of a personal tradition. This aspect cannot be overlooked when
studying the dynamics of ecclesiastical authority – as shown in the present
study. In Theodoret’s case, the family discourse had two facets: firstly, he
claimed a spiritual lineage through the family of the living saints, the
ascetics, by whom he was educated and whose heir he was. On the other
hand, he evoked his mother as a guarantee of his character and authority,
claiming to have revealed his real self through the stories of his childhood
and youth. Theodoret had two saintly families, both of them necessary for
his claim to authority.
PUTRIA TECTA, THE BISHOP AND HIS MARTYR:
MUTUAL PATRONAGE AND CONFIGURATION OF
POWER IN BYZANTINE ISTRIA
Marina Miladinov
Under the paradisiacal green turf strewn with lilies, on the central mosaic
of the Eufrasian basilica of Parentium, on which saintly figures are lined up
in a solemn ceremonial posture, a dark belt of dedicatory epigraph
commemorates the construction of this magnificent building, beginning
with the following words:
At first, this temple was harmed and horribly decayed, threatened
by collapse and lacking firm foundation; it was without glistening
mosaic and its roof was hanging only by the power of the saints ...1
Apart from reflecting the desolate physical condition of the so-called pre-
Eufrasian basilica, which would have been about a century old when
Bishop Eufrasius was appointed to its see, the image of the collapsing
basilica sustained by a saintly miracle functions as a rhetorical device
presenting the age of the bishop as one of renovatio and restauratio and
himself as a subject of this process, aided from above: “when he saw that
his see would soon collapse, the provident bishop Eufrasius, burning with
ardent faith, prevented the ruin by his holy mind and demolished the
church so that it could be redone more solidly.”2
What Bishop Eufrasius was restoring was indeed more than just a
building. The time in which he lived was felt to be in constant threat from
heresies, and although in the second half of his episcopacy he would
himself become engaged in a controversy that would brand him as a
1
Hoc fuit in primis templum quassante ruina / terrribilis labsu nec certo robore firmum exiguum
magnoque carens tunc furma metallo sed meritis tantum pendebant putria tecta... Attilio Degrassi,
Inscriptiones Italiae, vol. 10, regio 10, fasc. 11, Parentium (Rome: Istituto poligrafico dello
Stato, 1934), nr. 81, pp. 37-40. The most recent monograph on the Eufrasian basilica with
detailed reproductions of the mosaics and the actual bibliography is that by Ann Bennett
Terry and Henry Maguire, Dynamic Splendor: The Wall Mosaics in the Cathedral of Eufrasius at
Poreč, 2 vols. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).
2
Ut vidit subito labsuram pondere sedem / providus et fidei fervens ardore sacerdos/ Eufrasius
s(an)c(t)a mente ruinam. / Labentes mellus sedituras deruit aedes. . . . Degrassi, Inscriptiones Italiae
(as in note 1).
68 Marina Miladinov
schismatic, his building activity was taking place still in full concordance
with the papal and imperial policy. Although the Arian faith probably
never dominated in Istria,3 the network of bishops installed by Justinian
would have perceived the victory over Arianism as shared, and the
reestablishment and renovation found their expression in the blooming
building activity parallel to the process of the reconciliatio of the Arian
churches to Catholicism in their former strongholds, such as Ravenna.
Both tendencies were characterized by lavish decoration and accentuated
assertion of the cult of saints, neither of which was typical of the Arian
concept of cultic edifices.4 Within this framework, Bishop Eufrasius would
have invested considerable finances and energy in order that his creation
should not lag behind the magnificent buildings of the imperial centres
such as Ravenna or Constantinople itself. “Now you can observe how he,
completing what he started, decorated it (the church) with a large number
of various glistening mosaics,” proclaims the epigraph.5
I will leave aside the discussion of the extent of Ravennate
influence with respect to the artistic aspect of the Parentine achievement.
Art historians have been gradually abandoning the interpretation of
Ravenna as the mediator of Byzantine influences and opting instead for the
theory of direct impact, pointing to the similarities in features between
regions which were not at all likely to have received artistic influence
through Italy, such as the example of Iustiniana Prima (Caričin Grad) –
and it was not only artistic influences, but to a large extent the finances,
material, and expertise that seem to have reached Parentium, specifically
for this project and directly from Byzantium.6 A considerable body of
3
Scholars are divided in this respect, mostly denying the spread of Arianism in Istria; to the
contrary see, for example, Branko Marušić, who has identified a longitudinal basilica with a
baptistery in Mulandarija nearby Poreč as an Arian cathedral: Istra u ranom srednjem vijeku.
Arheološko-povijesni prikaz [Istria in the Early Middle Ages: An Archaeological and Historical
Account] (Pula: Arheloški muzej, 1962), 8.
4
In S. Apollinare Nuovo, the reconciliatio to Catholicism was marked by the addition of the
processions of martyrs and virgins.
5
Ovas cernis nuper vario fulgere metallo / perficiens coeptum decoravit numere magno. . . . Degrassi,
Inscriptiones Italiae (as in note 1).
6
Eugenio Russo, Sculture del complesso eufrasiano di Parenzo (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche
Italiane, 1991), passim; Ivan Matejčić, “The Episcopal Palace at Poreč – Results of Recent
Exploration and Renovation,” Hortus Artium Medievalium 1 (1995): 84-89. It is not known
to what extent the building of the basilica was financed by Bishop Eufrasius himself or
directly from the imperial budget. Justinian’s building activity has been interpreted as an
intentional aspect of his program of religious conversion and consolidation, for example by
Procopius in his Buildings of Justinian. Cf. Averil Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 84ff. It is probable that Eufrasius built his
basilica combining these two sources; and the region of Istria, untouched either by Arian
Putria tecta 69
scholarly literature has been dedicated to these problems and I leave it to

the experts to enlarge our knowledge of the rules and conditions of artistic
creation during the era of Justinian. My aim is to investigate a different
aspect of the complex discourse represented by the Eufrasian basilica: that
of the social and political connotations of the saintly cult and the
relationship of mutual patronage between the bishop and his martyr – in
this case the first bishop of Parentium, Maurus, martyred presumably
during Diocletian’s persecutions and occupying a prominent position on
the mosaic in the apse, next to Eufrasius himself.
In his seminal study on the cult of the saints, Peter Brown
dedicated considerable attention to the problem of mutual patronage
between the bishop and his saint in Late Antiquity.7 He has convincingly
demonstrated that the veneration of saints was not, as previously stated,
the consequence of the vulgarization of Christianity through polytheism
characteristic of the “popular culture,” but quite the contrary – that it was
consciously and consistently promoted by the ecclesiastical elite, which
monopolized the cult, thus turning it into a powerful element of
legalization of its power within the community. Although the cult itself
would spring spontaneously, focused around the grave of a martyr, the
bishop would be the one to transfer the cult within the city walls and
transform it into the focus of the community’s identity. The insertion of
relics into the altar of the basilica, adjacent to the episcopal residence,
monopolized the promotion of the cult, placing it in the hands of the
bishop and providing him in return with a patron more powerful than any
worldly authority. As a perfectly balanced system of patronage, it
functioned in two directions, legitimizing the influence of both parties
within the community as well as the influence of the community with
respect to any external threat to its identity.8
The religious centripetal force of a late-antique urban entity was
thus determined by two coordinates: the altar and the cathedra, both
related to the bishop. He united in his person not only the two religious
functions – the baptismal and the liturgical – but to a considerable extent
the religious and the secular as well, since it was precisely in this period
that the jurisdiction of Emperor Justinian extended bishop’s authority so as
to include powers which partly overlapped with those of the civil
controversy or by barbarian attacks, seems to have enjoyed sufficient prosperity during this
period.
7
Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981).
8
Cf. Paolo Golinelli, Città e culto dei santi nel medioevo italiano (Bologna: CLUEB, 1991), 9.
70 Marina Miladinov
authorities.9 This fact contributed to the need for an enlarged episcopal

complex, which would now include a hall for audiences related to secular
or, to be more precise, non-religious matters, as well as a granary.
The spiritual power of the bishop was very much related to the
process of internalization and appropriation of the saintly cult. Although
this development had set on as early as the end of the fourth century, when
Ambrose of Milan has been mentioned as the first example of a bishop who
intentionally monopolized saints and their cults,10 the fifth and sixth
centuries witnessed the pinnacle of this process as the result of the merging
of the cult of the dead with the liturgical cult. Despite the continuously
confirmed edicts against the transfer of relics into urban churches as well as
burials within the city walls, these prohibitions were increasingly ignored
9
It should, however, be noted that this public role of the bishop had its roots in his
canonically defined duties, such as the defence of the weak and the oppressed, and this
inevitably led to sporadic confrontations with secular powers. Legal elaboration of the
particular aspects of the bishop’s civil action began as early as the Constantinian legislation,
most probably in an attempt to give a legal basis to the already existing state of affairs, and
continued throughout the regulations promulgated by Honorius, Theodosius, and especially
Justinian. The latter’s legislation further enlarged the bishop’s authority to encompass his
participation in the choice of the defensor civitatis, the surveillance of prisons and the correct
execution of punishment, and the distribution of grain, duties noted down primarily in title
1.4 of the Codex repetitae praelectionis (De episcopali audientia et de diversis capitulis quae ad ius
curamque et reverentiam pontificalem pertinent), ed. Theodor Mommsen, Corpus iuris civilis 2,
new ed. (Berlin: Weidemann, 1954). Further constitutions counted among the bishop’s
duties included: the control of the budget, supervision of public works, prevention of
misuse of public finances or soil for private purposes, and control of usury; and it is of no
minor importance that the punishment for a bishop not fulfilling these duties was equal to
that of a civil functionary, which means that his person was now divided between canonical
and the civil legislation, respectively. See Maria Rosa Cimma, L’episcopalis audientia nelle
costituzioni imperiali da Costantino a Giustiniano (Turin: G. Giapicchelli, 1989); also Elisabeth
Hermann, Ecclesia in re publica. Die Entwicklung der Kirche von pseudostaatlicher zur staatlich
inkorporierter Existenz (Frankfurt a. M. and Bern: Lang, 1980) and Sergio Mochy Onory,
“Vescovi e città (sec. IV-VI),” Rivista del diritto italiano 4 (1931), 5 (1932), and 6 (1933);
and for a broader picture, see the articles collected in I poteri temporali dei vescovi in Italia e
Germania nel Medioevo, ed. Carlo Guido Mor and Heinrich Schmidinger (Bologna: Il Mulino,
1979). Useful insights for Gaul are given by Friedrich Prinz, “Die bischöfliche
Stadtherrschaft in Frankenreich vom 5. bis zum 7. Jahrhundert,” Historische Zeitschrift 217
(1974): 1-35.
10
Brown, Cult of the Saints, 36-37; Bernhard Kötting, Der frühchristliche Reliquienkult und die
Bestattung im Kirchengebäude (Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1965), 21, 28-
29. Dyggve points out the change in burial customs that took place in Salona at the very
beginning of the fifth century, after which period the graves of bishops are found only in
the privileged cemetery of Marusinac. Ejnar Dyggve, History of Salonitan Christianity (Oslo:
Aschenhoug, 1951), 64. This hypothesis has, however, been criticized by Emilio Marin,
Starokršćanska Salona. Studije o genezi, profilu i transformaciji grada [Early Christian Salona:
Studies on the Genesis, Profile, and Transformation of the City] (Zagreb: Latina et Graeca,
1988), 57-58.
Putria tecta 71
and, from the fifth century at the latest, corporeal relics were to form the
indispensable contents of every altar. Consequently, the character of the
basilica within the walls was largely modified: whereas the older Christian
edifices of cult still clearly differentiated between the urban basilica,
dedicated most frequently to the Saviour (later to the Virgin Mary as
Mother of God), and the memorial (cemeterial) chapels erected at the
graves of the martyrs, these two types of churches were later fused into a
new type of parallel church, known in scholarship as a “twin church”
(basilica geminata).11 It is probable that such a church would already have
contained the corporeal relics of its titular saint, although it is doubtful in
those cases when the memorial part was dedicated to an Apostle, as was
the case in Pola.12 In any case, the translation was performed with a large
celebration, including a procession that could be joined by the entire
community and would have served as a powerful moment of integration.13
11
An early example is the basilica episcopalis in Salona; further cases are the church in Pola,
today’s cathedral, where in the sixth century one part was dedicated to the Virgin Mary,
while the other contained the relics of the patron-saint, Apostle Thomas; the basilica of
Aquileia, dedicated to the Virgin and to Ermagora and Fortunatus; and that of Tergestum,
where the older, northern part was dedicated to Mary and the more recent, southern one to
Iustus, a Tergestine martyr of Diocletian’s time. See Dyggve, History, 40-41.
12
In my opinion, the possibility of any relics mentioned in this period actually being of the
brandea type should not be discarded too lightly, since they were often treated as equal in
power to the corporeal ones. Yvette Duval has pointed out that even those relics the vicinity
of which secured the deceased a burial ad sanctos were often simply ashes or contact relics
placed near his or her grave. Yvette Duval, Auprès des saints corps et âme. L’inhumation ‘ad
sanctos’ dans le chrétienté d’Orient et d’Occident du IIIe au VIIe siècle (Paris: Études
augustiniennes, 1988), 56. Thus, even the presence of a fenestella confessionis or expressions
such as translatus est, as in the case of Maurus, cannot be used to prove the presence of
corporeal relics with certainty. Maurus’ relics have been the object of confusion since their
transfer to Rome during the pontificate of John IV (640-642), where they have allegedly
been resting until the present day in the oratory of St. Venantius, despite their subsequent
reappearance in various places (including Parentium, Fondi, Gallipoli, and later Fleury-sur-
Loire), which led each of them to construct its own passio account relating how they got
there. This situation continued with the rivalry between Parentium and Genoa, which in
the twentieth century led to a process of relic identification. For more details, see Giuseppe
Cuscito, Martiri cristiani ad Aquileia e in Istria. Documenti archeologici e questioni agiografiche
(Trieste: Del Bianco Editore, 1992), 111-129.
13
Dyggve uses the example of an ivory relief from sixth-century Trier in order to illustrate
such a translation: to the right, there stands the church to be consecrated, while the
procession with the relics approaches from the left; the relics, contained in a small
sarcophagus, are accompanied by two high ecclesiastical dignitaries and the emperor, while
the empress meets the procession at the church gate. See Dyggve, History, 55-56. The
description of such a procession is found in Gaudentius’ Sermo 17, PL 20, 959. It should also
be noted that the urban community shared the building costs, according to the individual’s
standing. A reflection of this integrative moment is the inscription on the mosaic floor of
the Salonitan basilica urbana, which commemorates that the bishops built it c/u/m clero et
populo. Cf. Emilio Marin, “Cum clero et populo,” in Civitas splendida Salona – Geneza, profil i
72 Marina Miladinov
In the sixth century, these churches were further enlarged, which can be
explained through several reasons: the growth of the community; the
imperial policy of restoring orthodox Christianity on a large scale with a
corresponding budget; and, last but not least, the growing importance of
the cult of the saints, whereby usually one saint entered into a sort of
mutual patronage relationship with the bishop, as mentioned above, and
occupied the most prominent place within the main altar, while the relics
of other, minor, local or imported saints were placed in smaller memorial
chapels adjacent to the episcopal basilica.
This process, however, did not take place in an equal way
everywhere. In Parentium, the corporeal relics of the first bishop, Maurus,
were transferred within the city walls at a very early date. According to
Ante Šonje, the translation took place even before the Theodosian edict
prohibiting the transfer of relics in 386. At that occasion, the first domus
ecclesiae, located possibly in a house belonging to his family and continually
used for both liturgical and baptismal purposes, would have been restored
and enlarged – as a result of the growing influence and wealth of the
Christian community – into what is termed nowadays the ecclesia primitiva
or “first basilica.”14 Another possibility is that they were translated during
the early fifth century, despite the interdicting legislation, since the bishop
had the authority to decide upon the necessity of the relic transfer.15 An
inscription dated usually to the fifth century16 calls Maurus episcopus et
confessor and testifies to both the translation (hic condigne translatus est) and
the aforementioned enlargement of the church (haec primitiva eius
orationibus reparata est ecclesia . . . ideo in honore duplicatus est locus).17 Another
transformacija starokršćanske Salone (Split: Arheološki muzej, 1994), 64. For the entire
description, see Dyggve, History, 45 n. 27.
14
On the current results of archeological investigations, see: Ivan Matejčić and Pascale
Chevalier, “Nouvelle interprétation du complexe ‘pré-euphrasien’ de Poreč,” Antiquité
Tardive 6 (1998): 355-365; Ann Terry and Fiona Gilmore Eaves, Retrieving the Record: A
Century of Archaeology at Poreč (1847-1947) (Zagreb: University of Zagreb – Motovun:
International Research Center for Later Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 2002); Pascale
Chevalier and Ivan Matejčić, “Du cardo au ‘nartex’ de la cathédrale: contribution à l’étude
du développement du groupe épiscopal de Poreč,” in Mélanges d’Antiquité tardive: Studiola in
honorem Noël Duval, ed. Catherine Balmelle, Pascale Chevalier, and Gisela Ripoll (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2004), 149-164.
15
This right was later, in the Codex Iustinianus, reserved for the emperor alone. Codex
Iustinianus 3, 44, 14, ed. Mommsen in Corpus Iuris Civilis 2, 148.
16
For a concise overview of the discussion around the dating of the inscription, see Cuscito,
Martiri, 115-116, n. 18.
17
The complete text of the inscription is to be found in Paolo Deperis, “S. Mauro e S.
Eleuterio, vescovi martiri di Parenzo,” Atti e Memorie della Società Istriana di Archeologia e
Storia Patria 14 (1898): 11. There is a more recent edition in Cuscito, Martiri, 116. Dyggve
has explained the much-discussed expression duplicatus est locus as an indication that the
Putria tecta 73
inscription, very fragmentary and also variously dated, tells of the

translation of the relics (victricia membra) within the city walls (intra muros
huius civitatis Parentinae),18 which scholars have unanimously interpreted as
referring to Maurus. Nevertheless, archaeologists have located a martyrium
in the older church as well, which would speak for the first hypothesis,
possibly moving the date of the transfer of relics to a period very soon after
the establishment of Christianity as the state religion.
We do not possess any information about the date of the translatio
inter moenia of other Istrian saints, but the example of the Dalmatian
bishopric of Salona demonstrates that the process of appropriation of
saintly cults by the bishops could take an entirely different course. There
the relics of Domnius and Anastasius, the city’s two most venerated saints,
as well as a series of minor martyr-saints, did not leave the cemeteries
outside the city walls until possibly the move of the citizens of Salona to
Spalato. Instead, groups of memorial chapels were built by wealthy
individuals, who could thus fulfil their vows and secure for themselves a
burial ad sanctos. An outstanding example is that of the martyr Anastasius,
whose relics were taken care of by a certain Asclepia, citizen of Salona, and
placed in a martyrium built for the occasion, according to André Grabar,19
or in the already existing family mausoleum, according to Emilio Marin.20
The developing tendency to seek and even reserve a burial plot ad sanctos
was followed, as elsewhere, by an immediate ecclesiastical reaction in the
form of the appropriation of the saintly cult, but at Salona its focus
remained at the three cemeteries outside the city walls. Instead of
transferring the relics into the urban basilica of the episcopal complex,
bishops organized the building of cemeterial churches and reserved for
themselves, and even for future bishops, burial sites that stood closest to
those of the martyrs. The entire religious life of the city was thus not
concentrated within the city walls, or even in the episcopal complex, as was
largely the case in Parentium, but connected to several main points which,
however, all stood under direct episcopal control and dominance.21
basilica where Maurus was translated was the double urban basilica that is today called pre-
Eufrasiana, dated to the fifth century. Dyggve, History, 47 n. 64. For a different
interpretation, see Nenad Cambi, “Ideo in honore duplicatus est locus,” Radovi Filozofskog
fakulteta u Zadru 36 (1997-1998): 79-88.
18
Deperis, “S. Mauro,” 14; Cuscito, Martiri, 117.
19
André Grabar, Martyrium. Recherches sur le culte des reliques et l’art chrétien antique, 2 vols.
(Paris: Collège de France, 1943-1946), 1:94-97.
20
Marin, Starokršćanska Salona, 56-57. The mausoleum was also discussed by Dyggve in
Forschungen in Salona 3 (1939), 82 (fig. 109a), and the visual reconstruction of the entire
edifice is reproduced as well in Kötting, Der frühchristliche Reliquienkult, 46 (plate 4).
21
The burial ad sanctos is far better documented for other regions, and African examples
supply valuable comparative material. See Yvette Duval, Auprès des saints, and her Loca
74 Marina Miladinov
The paleo-Christian cemetery had probably remained without the

local community’s first bishop before his cult could develop there, which
would support Šonje’s hypothesis of a very early translation. Apparently,
other local martyrs seem to have rested there until Eufrasius took into his
hands the promotion of their cults. Before going into details regarding the
place these minor martyrs obtained in the hierarchy of the episcopal
basilica, it is important to say a few words about Bishop Eufrasius himself.
There is an ongoing debate about the origins to Eufrasius: while
some scholars follow the reading of the first letter of Pope Pelagius I to the
exarch of Ravenna, which calls the bishop Thracius,22 others argue that he
was a Latin and probably a native of Istria,23 a man of Greek name in Latin
spelling to whom priests had to be sent from Rome for the verification of
his privilege.24 In order to become a bishop under Justinian, who
personally supervised the appointment of a network of trustworthy
bishops,25 he must have somehow proved himself prior to his accession to
the episcopal see, or else he had excellent references; for this reason, Sergio
Tavano has labelled him “a creature of Maximian of Ravenna,”26 as the
latter was himself a native of Istria and made an excellent career as a
reliable promoter of the imperial policy and that of Pope Vigilius at
Ravenna, subduing its tendencies towards libertas ecclesiae and turning it
sanctorum Africae. Le culte des martyres en Afrique du IVe au VIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Rome: École
française de Rome, 1982).
22
Thus, for example, Ante Šonje, Crkvena arhitektura zapadne Istre. Područje porečke biskupije
od IV. do početka XVI. stoljeća [Sacral Architecture of western Istria: The Diocese of
Parentium from the Fourth to the early Sixteenth Century] (Zagreb and Pazin: Kršćanska
sadašnjost, 1982), 16. Detailed reasons for this misunderstanding have been supplied by
Giuseppe Cuscito, “Fonti e studi sul vescovo Eufrasio e sulla chiesa parentina del secolo VI.
Bilancio critic-bibilografico,” AMSI 23 (1975): 68 n. 14. The letter can be found in PL 69,
393-394.
23
See, for example: Trois mémoires posthumes d’histoire et de géographie de l’Orient chrétien
(Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1961); Mate Križman, Rimska imena u Istri (Zagreb: Latina
et graeca, 1991).
24
Antonio Pogatschnig, “Parenzo dalle origini sino all’imperatore Giustiniano,” AMSI 26
(1910): 52 and n. 2. A concise overview appears in Cuscito, “Fonti,” 61-62. The privilege is,
however, known to us only from the redaction of Bishop Adalperus from 1222, of which
three copies have come down to us in the first and the third volumes of the collection Iurium
episcopalium ecclesiae parentinae, preserved at the episcopal archive in Poreč. See Bernardo
Benussi, “Privilegio eufrasiano,” AMSI 18 (1892): 25-86, for the text and the commentary.
25
Further such bishops were, for example, Macedonius and Elias of Grado, Frugiferus of
Tergestum, and Isaac of Pola.
26
Sergio Tavano, “Mosaici parietali in Istria,” in Mosaici in Aquileia e nell’alto Adriatico. Atti
della settimana di studi Aquilesi (Udine: Arti grafiche Friulane, 1975), 254-255 and 267-270.
Quoted from Cuscito, “Fonti,” 67 n. 12.
Putria tecta 75
into a firm stronghold of both imperial and papal power.27 However, even
if we trust the Eufrasian privilege and its dating of the consecration of the
basilica to 543 (which is a rather early date resting upon a very dubious
source), and add a few years needed for its erection, we must suppose that
Maximian would have been able to exercise such influence even before his
own investment as archbishop in 546, when he was still a deacon at Pola: a
possibility, since according to the Carolingian historian Agnellus of
Ravenna he managed during this period to assert himself in the theological
discussions at the imperial court,28 but not a certainty. Or, again, we must
presume that Eufrasius was able to impose himself upon the emperor as the
most suitable person for the see of Parentium and was supported by
Maximian afterwards, when the latter obtained the function of a sort of
primate for Italy during the prolonged absence of Pope Vigilius, and
stretched his authority over Istria, which enabled him to engage himself in
extensive building activity in Pola.29
In any case, the beginning of Eufrasius’ career must have been
marked by solid loyalty to the emperor, persisting throughout the first
years of the Tricapitoline Schism, that is, between the condemnation of the
Three Chapters (543) and the Second Constantinopolitan or Fifth
Ecumenical Council (553).30 We do not know anything about the
circumstances of Eufrasius’ investment, but it is most probable that the
choice was very carefully thought over. The awareness of the extreme
importance of having a trustworthy person in restless regions is reflected in
the case of Maximian: after the death of Bishop Victor, there was a vacancy
for five years before the emperor decided upon his choice of the right
bishop for Ravenna, and then imposed him upon the Ravennate clergy
instead of their own candidate. In view of the Tricapitoline Schism already
flaring in Africa and Northern Italy, an equally careful choice of bishops of
27
Cf. Augusto Vasina, “L’Italia della restaurazione imperiale all’invasione langobarda,” in
Agnello, arcivescovo di Ravenna. Studi per il XIV centenario della morte (570-1970), ed. Paola
Monti (Faenza: Fratelli Lega, 1971), 93.
28
Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatensis, ed. Alessandro Testi-Rasponi (Bologna:
N. Zanichelli, 1924).
29
On the career of Maximian of Ravenna, see Giuseppe Bovini, “L’opera di Massimiano da
Pola a Ravenna,” in Aquileia e l’Istria, vol. 2 of Aquileia e l’alto Adriatico (Udine: Arti
grafiche friulane, 1972), 147-165, with bibliography. On his building activity in Pola, see
Mario Mazzotti, “L’attività edilizia di Massimiano di Pola,” Felix Ravenna 72 (1956): 5-30.
30
The most extensive discussions of the influence of this schism on Istria are those by
Giuseppe Cuscito, Fede e politica ad Aquileia: dibattito teologico e centri di potere (secoli IV-VI)
(Udine: Del Bianco, 1987), and by Carole Straw, “Much Ado About Nothing: Gregory the
Great’s Apology to the Istrians,” in The Crisis of the Oikoumene: The Three Chapters and the
Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean, ed. Celia Chazelle and Catherine
Cubitt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 121-160.
76 Marina Miladinov
Istria would have been seen as indispensable. We do not know much about
the bishops of other Istrian sees, but Parentium seems to have been the
most prominent one, which can be attributed precisely to the antiquity of
its Christianity and to the success of the cult of the first bishop, visible in
the continuity and constant enlargement of his sanctuary.
Another argument for the early orientation of Eufrasius might be
the inscription at the base of the altar, where Eufrasius reasserts his
catholicity, and which might be considered a very immediate response to
the condemnation of the Three Chapters by Emperor Justinian, as well as
the surging schismatic movements in Africa and Northern Italy.
Nevertheless, the importance of the term catholica, especially as attributed
to sancta aecclesia, and not to the bishop himself, has in my opinion been
largely exaggerated.31 I concede that the extreme complexity of the issue of
the Tricapitoline Schism from its very beginnings, especially with respect
to the papal allegiances, deserves attention, since any mentioning of
catholicity may prove highly revealing with respect to the orientation of
Eufrasius and even the more accurate dating of the basilica itself. It is,
however, difficult to determine the programmatic character of this term
with any certainty.32 More than a decade later, it would reflect the
divergence between the papal and the schismatic understanding of the
church; but during the period to which the altar inscription is dated, the
counterpoised forces were not yet papal vs. schismatic, but papal vs.
imperial, with the reawakened strivings for libertas ecclesiae against the all-
pervasive intervention of the emperor in ecclesiastical matters penetrating
even the most delicate spheres of theology. Before 552 – when the famous
papal encyclical so stirred ecclesiastical spirits with resistance against the
imperial rule over the Church that the ensuing council was boycotted by
the Western bishops – the term “catholicity” would not have yet acquired
that special programmatic value which it would possess after the turn in
orientation of Pope Pelagius I.33 If one keeps in mind the Arian proximity
and the guarding of orthodoxy, as well as the unity of the Church, as one
31
Pogatschnig, “Parenzo,” 54.
32
Note the use of the word by Pope Pelagius I in his Ep. 3: insensati et perversissimi homines . .
. suam divisionem catholicam esse credentes Ecclesiam. . . (PL 69, 396). It is highly interesting that
before the Tricapitoline controversy Justinian was to define Catholicism in the following
way (addressing Pope Hormisdas): Hoc enim credimus esse catholicum quod vestro religioso responso
vobis fuerit intimatum. See Andreas Thiel, ed., Epistolae Romanorum pontificum genuinae et quae
ad eos scriptae sunt a S. Hilario usque ad Pelagium II. (Braunsberg: Eduard Peter, 1867), 897.
Taken from Cuscito, Fede e politica, 124.
33
See Cuscito, Fede e politica, especially his section concerning “La fede calcedonese e la
questione dei Tre capitoli,” 95-133.
Putria tecta 77
of the primary episcopal duties, the mention of ecclesia catholica is only to be

expected on an altar of the episcopal basilica.34
Having established the circumstances in which Eufrasius built and
decorated his basilica, we should now take a closer look at the
representation of sanctity in its mosaics, which might help us gain new
clues as to the religious and political orientation of its bishop. The cult of
the saints, notably that of Maurus, played a prominent role in both phases
of Eufrasius’ episcopal career, before and after the schism, and in both of
them it represented the divine confirmation of his orthodoxy and spiritual
authority, as well as the means of legitimizing his power with respect to
both ecclesiastical (papal) and secular authorities.
For it is only in the context of conflicts that we will ever hear of
Bishop Eufrasius, who has remained in history as one of the principal
leaders of the schismatics. After the council announcing the final
condemnation of the Three Chapters, his basilica consecrated and his
power firmly established, he took part in the synod of Aquileia in 557,
convoked by the new patriarch Pelagius, successor of Macedonius, where
the self-proclaimed ecumenical council was flatly repudiated. This resulted
in the letters of Pope Pelagius, written between 558 and 560 to Narsetes,
the exarch of Ravenna, in which he left out hardly any deadly sin in the
outpour of his antagonism towards the Parentine bishop.35 Eufrasius as a
fratricide, engaging in adultery and incest, dissipating the goods of his
church for private purposes – the pope employed all methods in order to
undermine Eufrasius’ authority, and he resorted to action as well, sending
to Parentium a priest called Peter and a notary by the name of Proiectus in
order to investigate the matter, arrest the bishop, and bring him to Rome.
He also mobilized the secular forces of the exarch Narsetes, of the magister
militum Carellus, and of the patricius John. All these missions, however,
failed: the cities stood firmly behind their schismatic bishops and thus
enabled them to act more boldly than ever, excommunicating the
addressee of the above-mentioned letter.
Unfortunately, the story of Eufrasius’ role in the Istrian-Aquileian
schism ends rather abruptly, since sources are silent about him after 560,
leaving room for the assumption that he died in that year or soon
afterwards. But even those sources we possess are an excellent testimony of
a social and political constellation within which a bishop could acquire
unlimited authority within his community, which gave him the legitimate
34
Cf. the Salonitan Greek funerary inscription ekklesia katholiké, dated to the fifth century.
Quoted from Dyggve, History, 49.
35
See especially Ep. 3, PL 69, 396.
78 Marina Miladinov
right, at least in the eyes of his citizens, to enter into conflicts on a very
large scale.36
In my opinion, not the least role in the development of the events
can be attributed to Eufrasius’ heavenly patrons: they gave the community
a sense of importance as participants, or at least observers, of happenings
that were wider than their earthly existence, and this can explain their
firmness in view of both the papal and secular emissaries. To the bishop,
they provided a divine justification of his attitudes and actions, whereby his
basilica became the stage of moments of intense urban integration.37
Raymond Van Dam has pointed out that the rise of the cult of relics was
interrelated with the change in attitude of local churches (in his case, those
of Gaul) towards Rome as the universal head and with their increased
readiness to disregard the authority of the pope.38 The cult of the local
saints deprived Rome of much of the awe in which it had been held by
peripheral churches, and Van Dam quotes an excellent example of a late
fifth-century sermon delivered at Lyon, where the preacher spoke of St.
Alexander and St. Epipadius as “two prizes of victory, rivals to the
apostolic city. . . . [S]ince we have our own Peter and Paul, we oppose our
two patrons to that sublime see of Rome.”39
The Eufrasian basilica had a double dedication, which was a
frequent practice: to the Virgin Mary and the patron-saint.40 The relics of
Maurus were placed under the altar in the central nave, which was new
with respect to their previous placement in a martyrium. Since building
more than one altar in a church was prohibited, other relics could be placed
only in separate chapels – martyria or the episcopal chapel – so that one
saint, the titular one, was necessarily raised in honour far above the others.
In the case of Parentium, the choice was clear: the cult of the first bishop of
the community had kept its prominence with apparent continuity. If a
larger number of early bishops were available, the bishop-aedificator could
choose to promote the cult of additional ones after the cult of the first had
36
The conflict with the emperor, however, never took place, although in the case of other
bishops he did not hesitate to resort to repression; it has been presumed that a powerful
group of bishops standing in opposition more to the pope than to himself must have suited
him as a counterbalance to papal power; in the later course of events, the strong Lombard
presence necessitated caution as well.
37
Cf. Raymond Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), 62-64.
38
Van Dam, Leadership, 166-167.
39
Eusebius ‘Gallicanus,’ Collectio Homiliarum, ed. Fr. Glorie, CCSL 101A (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1971), Hom. 55, 1, 4, 639-640. Quoted from Van Dam, Leadership, 171.
40
Originally, it was dedicated to Christ, which may be concluded from the dedicatory
inscription; however, the central position occupied by the Theotokos points to a dedication to
the Virgin, in correspondence with her growing cult and prevailing theological trends.
Putria tecta 79
been established. Such was the case with Maximian of Ravenna and his
basilica dedicated to Probus, into which he transferred the relics of the pre-
Constantinian praesules Probus, Eleuchadius, and Calogerus, whom he also
arranged to be depicted on its façade.41
The primacy of the first bishop over other martyrs appears
indisputable. There are several reasons for this. The high position of a
bishop in the ecclesiastical hierarchy gave him equal dominance in the
saintly sphere. Let us recall the words of Pontius, biographer of St.
Cyprian: “Since our elders in their veneration of martyrdom as such paid
such great honour even to plebeians and catechumens who suffered it . . . it
would certainly be harsh to be silent about the suffering of such a bishop
and such a martyr, who could teach us things even without martyrdom.”42
Certainly, many worthy martyrs who were laymen and laywomen could
find their place in the reliquaries of the memorial chapels and even on the
mosaics of the main apse, but the titular saint was a martyr and a bishop.
And we will see that Bishop Eufrasius was even more explicit than that in
terms of hierarchy: the seven Parentine personages depicted on the main
mosaic in the apse are all ordained except for the little boy, and even he is
wearing the liturgical garments and carrying candles or scrolls as a sign of
his future dignity. Thus, the entire mosaic scene is one of a large and
timeless divine office, where the clerical structure is represented as re-
established in the company of Christ, the Apostles, the Theotokos, and the
Archangels.43
Furthermore, the obvious connection between the first bishop,
with his white garments and the crown of a martyr, and the present one,
must have raised the latter even more in his honour and power, passing
over to him some of the glory of his predecessor. This is clearly what
41
Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Ravenna. Hauptstadt des spätantiken Abendlandes, 3 vols.
(Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1976), 2:315-316. A non-cultic purpose, but still that of the
establishment of a successio, could be attributed to the series of bishops depicted by
Maximian in the Tricolis-chapel of the episcopium or on the altar cloth, on which Agnellus
reports that all Maximian’s predecessors were present, but neither of these images is extant.
42
Certe durum erat, ut cum maiores nostri plebeis et catecuminis martyrium consecutis tantum honoris
ro martyrii ipsius veneratione debuerint. . . . Cypriani tanti sacerdotis et tanti martyris passio
praeteriretur, qui et sine martyrio habuit, quae doceret. Vita Cypriani 1, in Vita di Cipriano, Vita
di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostino, ed. A. A. R. Bastiansen, vol. 3 of Vite dei Santi, ed. Christine
Mohrmann (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1975), 4.
43
The progressive rise in the function of Eleuterius, Proiectus, and Accolitus would reach its
visual representation in 1277 at the latest, on the baldachin of Bishop Otto, where the first
two martyrs are depicted in episcopal garments. By that time the confusion of Eleuterius
with the Illyrian bishop of the same name, and of Proiectus with a French bishop-martyr (in
which process Accolitus was given the name of his companion Elpidius) would have taken
place already.
80 Marina Miladinov
Eufrasius wished to express with the central mosaic of the main apse. There
he is depicted together with Maurus, standing at his right side among the
figures grouped around the Virgin Mary as the Theotokos. The two angels
on Mary’s sides are slightly turned towards the next figure approaching,
whom they seem to introduce or lead, and who on the left side is Maurus,
dressed in white robes and holding his crown of martyrdom in hands veiled
by the Roman pallium, decorated with gemmed crosses. He seems to be
followed by Eufrasius, who is repeating the same gesture, only that the
achievement he is offering is his basilica, symbolized in its model. His
mantle is purple and he has no halo above his head, but his hands are
veiled as well (even though by his penula rather than a pallium), which
points to the liturgical and sacred character of the moment: he is following
Maurus, who is led towards the Virgin by an angel, and offering his
contribution to the glory of God. This Geleitmotiv is frequent on sixth-
century mosaics and reflects well the ideological transposition of the bishop
further into the heavenly company, albeit without the ecclesiastical
exclusivity of the Parentine mosaic.44
An especially interesting case of linking a bishopric to an episcopal
martyr-founder – combined with an attempt to place the foundation of the
Christian community in apostolic times – is the cult of Domnius at Salona.
There it led to an outright confusion in the episcopal chronotaxis: although
Venantius had been a bishop and a martyr, he had not lived early enough,
and an attempt to produce a bishop who was a disciple of an Apostle
resulted in the appearance of Domnius, probably a phantom reduplication
44
A fine example is the mosaic of S. Vitale in Ravenna: there the two Archangels standing
on each side of the Mother of God, leading the martyr (who is not a bishop) and the donor
– Bishop Ecclesius – towards her, actually have hands placed upon their shoulders. The
similarity of composition (Vitalis offering his crown of martyrdom, Ecclesius the basilica)
might raise an interesting question of Eufrasius’ preference for his place next to Maurus
rather than on the other side, directly next to an Archangel. It is, of course, impossible to
give any definite answer to that, except for a suggestion that for some reason he wanted his
family to be depicted together and still not without a saint at their side. An interesting
parallel is the central apse mosaic in the church of Ss. Cosmas and Damian in Rome, from
the same period, where the donor, Pope Felix IV, offers his church to Christ, mediated by
Peter and Paul as well as by the titular saints and Theodore Stratelates. Since Christ is
holding a scroll and the entire scene is placed on the banks of Jordan, the composition
appears a contraction of the usual dedication motif with that of traditio legis. For a recent
discussion of the bishop’s role as the model-builder, represented by the small-scale basilica
in his veiled hands, see Maria Cristina Carile, “Memories of Buildings? Messages in Late
Antique Architectural Representations,” in Images of the Byzantine World: Visions, Messages
and Meanings. Studies Presented to Leslie Brubaker, ed. by Angeliki Lymberopoulou (Farnham,
UK: Ashgate, 2011), 16-23.
Putria tecta 81
of a later bishop’s name from the chronotaxis.45 He became the patron-

saint of Salona and, after the transmigration of the Salonitans to the
Diocletian Palace, of Spalato.46
These two links – that between Christ and his disciples and the
first bishop, and that between him and the present bishop – was actually
seen as guaranteeing the direct and uninterrupted transmission (traditio) of
the Christian message, besides accentuating the bishop’s apostolic
representation. They give the present bishop, even though elected by
clergy and the people, or perhaps simply by the emperor, a mark of divine
appointment, appropriating somewhat the apostolic authority received
from Christ himself, and associated with the special powers and grace of
the ones whom the “Spirit had set in the churches as overseers.”47 The
uninterrupted continuity between the beginnings of Christianity and the
present bishop is of great importance: the successio, which more important
episcopal sees noted down in their – partly fictive – chronotaxes. Even
though no such proof of continuity has come down to us with respect to
the Parentine church, as indeed no written source is extant prior to the
Carolingian period, there is a feature in the mosaic of the basilica which
could be understood as pointing towards it: the traditio legis motif, set on
the highest place within the iconographical hierarchy, that is, above the
apse on the upper part of the triumphal arch. Christ, young and beardless,
sits upon a globe holding an open book in which it is written: Ego sum lux
vera. On his left and right, the Apostles are standing, led by Peter and
45
Frane Bulić and Josip Bervaldi, Kronotaksa solinskih biskupa [Chronotaxis of the Bishops of
Salona] (Zagreb: Tiskara Hrvatskog kat. tiskovnog društva, 1912-1913), 97. Cf. Nenad
Cambi, “XIII Meñunarodni kongres za starokršćansku arheologiju Split – Poreč 1994.
godine i starokršćanska arheologija na području Istre” [Thirteenth International Congress
for Early Christian Archaeology, Split – Poreč 1994, and early Christian archaeology on the
territory of Istria], Diadora 15 (1993): 16. In a later source (Historia Salonitana by Thomas
the Archdeacon), Domnius appears as a disciple of St. Peter, sent by him to Salona at the
same time as Apollinaris was sent to Ravenna and Mark to Venice. It is highly interesting
that the Apostle in question was not Paul, who could have at least been connected to
Dalmatia on the basis of his letters, but Peter, and not only in the case of Salona: the
traditional first Aquileian bishop Hermagoras was considered to have been inaugurated by
St. Peter and St. Mark, and his cult was much more prominent than that of the Aquileian
martyrs Hilarius and Titianus. The most likely explanation is Peter’s association with
episcopacy.
46
We can note that it is often precisely the most influential bishoprics that have had the
urge to link their beginnings to apostolic times. There is no reason to believe that
Parentium attempted a similar fraud, but we can witness the phenomenon in Aquileia, with
the cult of St. Hermagoras. On the problem of apostolicity, an abundant bibliography has
been collected by Paolo Tomea in the editor’s introduction to the volume Tradizione
apostolica e coscienza cittadina a Milano nel Medioevo (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1993), 3-16.
47
Acts 20:28.
82 Marina Miladinov
Paul. This motif, appearing in its variations from the second half of the
fourth century, and almost exclusively on mosaics and the sarcophagi of
bishops, is usually considered as transmitting the idea of the central role of
the ecclesiastical hierarchy, accompanying the rise of episcopal power.48
Establishing the direct line of connection from Christ and the Apostles over
the martyr (bishop) to the present bishop, the hierarchical Church would
have sought to retain the exclusivity of its right to transmit Christ’s
message in a Christianity that was increasingly fascinated by various forms
of monasticism, individualistic and marginal with respect to the
ecclesiastical structures. In Eufrasius’ basilica, however, the ecclesiastical
hierarchy depicted on the central mosaic, connecting the heavenly and the
earthly Church, would have been intended simply to reaffirm and cherish
the order of things and to preserve its image into eternity, as far as the
duration of the mosaic would have allowed.
Eufrasius’ choice of other saints depicted in mosaic might give us
further clues as to the links he sought to establish between himself and his
patrons, both heavenly and earthly. The hierarchy of the local saints has
already been discussed: the four of them that were traditionally known as
ordained obtained their place in the central mosaic, even though it remains
an open question why three of them lack name inscriptions. They form a
group counterbalancing that of Maurus, Eufrasius, and Claudius, to some
extent even in order of appearance: the first one can be identified as
Eleuterius, and he is dressed in the white robes of a martyr resembling
those of Maurus. The middle figure, presumably Proiectus, is dressed in a
golden robe and holds a red book instead of a martyr’s crown, while his
accolitus is dressed in a white dalmatica like Claudius. It is not known where
their relics were kept, but it is probable that they were translated from the
cemetery to the memorial chapels adjacent to the basilica, possibly with
another mosaic depicting them. That is where two further local saints had
their remains deposited as well, and were commemorated in mosaic:
probably Julian and Demetrius, laymen allegedly martyred during the
same wave of persecutions and deposed in the right apse of the episcopal
48
Thus, for example, in S. Lorenzo in Milan, dated to the time of Ambrose; S. Pudenziana
in Rome, executed under Pope Innocent I; S. Giovanni in Naples, ordered by Bishop
Severus; the dome of the Orthodox Baptistery at Ravenna, started by Ursus and completed
under Neanus; and others. It is present also on sarcophagi, such as those preserved at
Ravenna and first described in detail (with photographs) by Alois Riegl, Die spätrömische
Kunst-Industrie nach den Funden in Österreich-Ungarn (Vienna: Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hof-
und Staatsdruckerei, 1901), 100ff. On the early development of the idea of apostolic
succession, see Hans von Campenhausen, Kirchliches Amt und geistliche Vollmacht (Tübingen:
J. C. B. Mohr, 1953), passim, esp. 149-177.
Putria tecta 83
chapel.49 Could it be that the central apse contained the relics of the three
others, whose clerical status obviously gave them a preeminent position in
Eufrasius’ hierarchy of saints? We must leave this question open.
In conclusion, I will comment upon the two couples depicted in
mosaic in the side apses, as well as the interior of the triumphal arch, lined
with medallions.
The two fragments of the side apses are similar to each other in
composition and depict two pairs of saints receiving wreaths from Christ.
The inscriptions of their names have been severely damaged, and the few
letters preserved have been interpreted as designating on one side Cosmas
and Damian, and on the other Severus and Ursus, two archbishops of
Ravenna, each identified as well by his archbishop’s pallium. The name of
Severus has remained preserved in its totality and there is no reason to
question his identity. Although the only reliable information (and earlier
than Agnellus) that we have about him is his attendance at the church
council at Serdica in 343, his sanctity had obviously been established in
Ravenna a decade, or slightly more, before the consecration of the
Eufrasian basilica, during the episcopacy of Ursicinus, and a memoria was
built for him in Classis somewhat later. It was probably at this time that
the main traits of the legend of his episcopal election by a dove must have
been formed.50 In the basilica of S. Apollinare in Classe, he is depicted close
to Ursus, the builder of the Ravennate cathedral; although they have no
saintly attributes, the posture of the four bishops in spaces between the
windows, the red codices they are holding, as well as the wreaths or
diadems sustained over their heads, have caused art historians to interpret
them as offering a parallel to the Evangelists.51 Even if this interpretation
perhaps goes too far, the presence of the wreaths still catches our attention,
since on the Parentine mosaic it is Christ who is holding them above the
49
It is, however, difficult to discern the later layers of identity reconstruction, and Delehaye
has shown how easily a conjecture from any time-period can form an opinion that has
prevailed until today. In the cases of Julian and Demetrius, the basis of such an opinion is a
document found in a fourteenth-century manuscript, relating their invention in the time of
Bishop Fulcherius (mentioned as well in a document from 1210), in which the saints
revealed their identity and the location of the mosaic with their figures and names in a
vision, after which they were translated into the basilica and placed in the main altar (where
today all relics are preserved). Today there is no trace of this mosaic which, according to the
document, adorned the wall of the archiepiscopal chapel; and Delehaye has introduced the
question of whether the names may have been reconstructed by the author of the revelatio
after the two martyrs mentioned in relation to the place-names Syria and Ostia, which were
confused with Istria. Still, both saints are even today spoken of as positively venerated by
Eufrasius. Hippolyte Delehaye, “Santi dell’Istria e Dalmazia,” AMSI 16 (1900): 401-403.
50
Deichmann, Ravenna, 2:262.
51
Deichmann, Ravenna, 1:273.
84 Marina Miladinov
unknown bishops’ heads. Thus, although the identity of Ursus is

questionable, since these two Ravennate bishops do not form a saintly
couple in iconography, it cannot be accepted or refuted with certainty.
Another candidate might be Apollinaris, since only he and Severus are
mentioned in Martyrologium Hieronymianum,52 but eventually both
possibilities point to the orientation of Eufrasius as clearly defined by these
two coordinates: Constantinople and Ravenna.
It remains to search for possible clues to Eufrasius’ preferences in
the choice of the twelve virgin martyrs depicted at the interior of the arch,
in imagines clipeatae. At first, they appear usual for the Ravennate churches
from the period: five of them repeat almost the entire series in medallions
of the vault arch of the archiepiscopal chapel, and nine of them correspond
to the procession of virgins in S. Apollinare Nuovo, which is somewhat
later than the Eufrasiana. Opinions on the criterion of choice for the virgins
are extremely diverse so that, for example, Deichmann, following Grabar,
assumed the possession of the relics of all saints represented in mosaic,
while Lucchesi has concluded that the virgins were included simply in a
number as large as possible, even in this way falling short of the martyrs by
four members.53
The analysis of the saintly cults promoted by Bishop Eufrasius
thus leads us to the following conclusions:
During the course of his episcopacy, Eufrasius took special care of
the saintly cults, which was in concordance with the trend in the rest of the
Christian world. The appropriation of the already existing cult of Maurus
was marked by the translation of his relics to the main altar of the newly
constructed basilica, which made him its titular saint next to the Virgin
Mary. The central mosaic of the main apse places the builder of the basilica
together with his attendants (presumably family members) in a special
relationship to both the Theotokos and the local martyrs, especially to
Maurus, at whose side Eufrasius let himself be depicted, holding in his
hands a model of the basilica. The choice of other saints represented on the
mosaics reveals a strong prevalence of the local cult, as well as the homage
paid to the preferred imperial saints and the Ravennate bishops, which fact
allows the conclusion that Eufrasius was loyal to the emperor and oriented
towards the Ravennate church during the period in which the basilica was
built, the latter circumstance being possibly related to the personality of
52
Ibid., 2:175.
53
Ibid., 2:183; Grabar, Martyrium, 2:61; Giovanni Lucchesi, “I santi celebrati
dall’Arcivescovo Agnello,” in Agnello, arcivescovo di Ravenna, ed. Monti, 72. In the case of
Parentium, Deichmann might be right, at least if we trust the aforementioned fourteenth-
century document, which mentions in altari maiori . . . duodecim vascula reliquiarum duodecim
sanctuarum, the text continuing with the list of their names. Delehaye, “Santi,” 402.
Putria tecta 85
Maximian. The situation obviously changed towards the end of his life but,
although in sharp conflict with Rome, Eufrasius (as well as his successors)
kept balanced relations with the emperor, who never undertook measures
to suppress the Istrian schism.
We can presume that the degree of authority that Bishop
Eufrasius achieved through his policy regarding the building activity and
the patronage of the saintly cult determined to a considerable extent his
course of action during the Tricapitoline Schism. The urban integrity of
Parentium was demonstrated in the decisive stand taken by its citizens in
defence of their bishop. With regard to all these circumstances, we can
conclude, in spite of the lack of hagiographic material, that the relationship
of mutual patronage in which he entered with the local bishop-martyr
functioned as the principal source of his authority, superseding any earthly
bond of patronage, which is in concordance with the tendencies in the rest
of the churches peripheral to Rome. For the history of the Church in
Byzantine Istria, it demonstrates the need for a more comprehensive view,
which would seek to observe the episcopacy in a context larger than its
immediate liturgical and administrative structure.
BENEDICT, FATHER OF MONKS, IN THE
CHRONICLE OF MELLITUS, BISHOP OF LONDON
Luciana Cuppo
This paper will study the promotional work of a bishop, himself eventually
a saint, in favor of a monk who was also sainted. The bishop is Mellitus,
bishop of London, while the saint is Benedict of Nursia, better known as
Saint Benedict; the means of promotion is a chronicle known to the Middle
Ages as Chronicon Melliti. It consists of the chronicle of Isidore of Seville in
its first recension (615 A.D.) with some significant editorial interventions
and additions; therefore, Mellitus is to be considered the editor rather than
author of the work. But who was he? Mellitus’ identity has been doubted
and even denied; his chronicle (extant in the MS Vat. lat. 1348 of the
Vatican Library) is still unpublished.1 Yet, for our purposes it is important
to establish whether Mellitus was an unknown copyist or someone
influential.2 For, early in the seventh century, he was clearly promoting the
image of Benedict of Nursia and Benedictine monasticism along with it;
and just how effective this promotion would be depended to a large extent
on the status of the promoter.
Happily, there is sufficient evidence to affirm that Mellitus was
not just any obscure scribe, but the monk-bishop sent by Pope Gregory I
to England in 601 as a companion to Augustine of Canterbury. Eventually,
Mellitus became bishop of London and one of the successors to Augustine
1
Vat. lat. 1348, copied in Italian caroline minuscule during the reign of Pope Paschal II
(1099-1118) from a northern Italian exemplar, is known to the students of canon law for its
Collectio V librorum that constitutes the bulk of the codex (fols. 7v-165). On fols. 166-181v
is found the chronicle of Mellitus, tentatively attributed to Isidore and followed by a
catalogue of Lombard kings and by a catalogue of popes independent from the Roman Liber
Pontificalis. The catalogue of popes, in its first part perhaps contemporary with the
chronicle, was published as: Luciana Cuppo, “The Other Book of Pontiffs: A View from
Lombard Italy (MS. BAV, Vat. lat. 1348),” in Vivarium in Context, ed. S. J. B. Barnish
(Vicenza: Centre for Medieval Studies Leonard Boyle, 2008), 55-75. The additions on
Benedict were published by Mommsen as Additamenta to the chronicle of Isidore in Chronica
minora 2, MGH AA 2 (Berlin: Weidemann, 1894), 424-481.
2
The recent edition of Isidore’s chronicle considers him unknown: “C1 est attribué à un
inconnu Mellite” (Isidorus, Chronica, ed. J. C. Martín [Turnhout: Brepols, 2004], 247 n. 8).
Furthermore, the editor speculates that Mellitus could be a copyist or owner of the
manuscript: “On pense qu’il s’agissait soit du copiste soit du possesseur du modèle de M
[MS. Paris, BN lat. 4860] (p. 78* n. 226).
88 Luciana Cuppo
at Canterbury. Given his ecclesiastical standing, the choices made by

Mellitus, in the matter of saints as in other matters, were not simply a
question of personal preference, but were likely to shape the English
Church for centuries to come. Therefore, his regard for Saint Benedict and
Benedictine monasticism goes beyond private devotion and is likely to have
influenced monasticism both in Merovingian France (where Mellitus
travelled extensively and lived during his exile from Britain) and in
England.
If Mellitus the chronicler and Mellitus of London are one and the
same person, the chronicle turns out to be a very early witness (after the
Dialogues of Pope Gregory I) to devotion to Saint Benedict, indeed an
instrument for such devotion; and a useful tool for historians, because it
gives a precise date of death for Benedict (a date that differs from that
conventionally accepted) and maps out with precision the areas of influence
of early Benedictine monasticism in Europe. Thus, it is appropriate at this
point to marshal the evidence for the identity of Mellitus.
Mellitus, a real person

Throughout the Middle Ages and until Mommsen published his edition of
Isidore’s chronicle in 1894, no one had cast doubts on the existence of
Mellitus or his chronicle. The work is listed in the catalogue of additions to
the library of Reichenau drawn by the librarian Reginbert in 838-842.3 In
the MS Paris, BN 4860, written in Mainz, Isidore’s chronicle is titled
Chronicon Melliti,4 while in the MS Limoges, Bibliothèque Municipale 1, it
is given as anonymous, although a contemporary note says that “Miletus”
(Mellitus) augmented it, while a later hand identified the author of the
chronicle as Isidore of Seville.5 Marianus Scotus, writing in Mainz in 939-
3
From the catalogue of Reginbert: In tertio libro habentur chronica Eusebii Caesariensis episcopi
et Hieronymi presbyteri et Prosperi et chronica Cassiodori Senatoris et chronica Iordanis episcopi et
chronica Melliti. Et chronica Bedae presbyteri et chronica excerpta Isidori episcopi et chronica brevis.
After Gustav Becker, Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui (Bonn: Max Cohen, 1885), 21. The
catalogue includes books copied by the librarian Reginbert, who died in 846, or donated to
the library of Reichenau during his term as scriba between 823 and 842. The catalogue is
discussed by Theodor Mommsen in Chronica minora 1, MGH AA (Berlin: Weidemann,
1892), 363.
4
For a detailed description of the codex, see the “Introduction générale” to the chronicle of
Isidore in Martín 2004, 73*-78*. The chronicle of Isidore is included in a section of the
manuscript that comprises the chronicles of Eusebius/Jerome, Prosper, Cassiodorus,
Jordanes, and Bede. This section ended in the exemplar with a collectio temporum dated 840
A.D.; the works included therein correspond to those in Reginbert’s catalogue of
Reichenau.
5
Theodor Mommsen, relying on the catalogue prepared by Émil Ruben for the
Bibliothèque Municipale of Limoges, described this codex in his edition of the chronicle of
Benedict, Father of Monks 89
954, cited among the sources for his work both Mellitus and Isidore.6 In
the thirteenth century, Riccobaldo da Ferrara cited among his sources the
breviarium Melliti, and the same work was noted in the margin of Codex
X.72 (3362) of the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, apparently as the source
for the catalogue of popes in the same codex.7
Though fairly frequent, references to Mellitus were not verified
because the chronicle itself was never found: in the MSS Paris BN 4860
and Limoges 1 the chronicle “that Miletus [Mellitus] augmented” turned
out to be that of Isidore of Seville in its first recension of 615.8 For this
reason, Mommsen decided that Mellitus was a figment of imagination
(personatus Mellitus) and Martín referred to Mellitus as “inconnu” and
conjectured that he could have been the copyist of the work.9
The intuition of Martín (and before him, of Florez and Arévalo)
was basically correct, for “chronicle of Mellitus” does not necessarily mean
that Mellitus was its author; he could have been an owner, patron, editor,
or copyist. Yet there was a straw in the wind. In the manuscripts Limoges
1 and Paris BN 4860, one variant points to a deliberate intervention in
Isidore’s text: the word “year” instead of “era” to indicate the fifth year of
Heraclius. Bent on recovering the Urtext of Isidore, Mommsen, aware of
that variant, dismissed it as a menda, an error. An error it is not: well before
Mommsen, others had recognized in that variant an editorial intervention
that could contribute to the identification of the mysterious Mellitus.
These were Arévalo and Florez. The former proceeded to sketch a profile of
Mellitus, who was not a Spaniard (he would have used “era,” not “annus”),
was a contemporary of Isidore, and wrote c. 615 A.D. Mellitus was a man
sufficiently known to medieval scholars to dispense with the
characterizations of provenance; and the only such Mellitus known to
Arévalo was Mellitus, bishop of London and the third successor to
Prosper (MGH AA 2, 357-358). The collection of historical works in Limoges 1 follows the
same pattern as Paris BN 4860 and the catalogue of Reginbert: Eusebius/Jerome, Prosper,
Isidore. Some quires are missing, but according to Pontacus (Arnauld de Pontac), who saw
the manuscript in 1604, the codex included Iordanes.
6
The world chronicle of Marianus Scotus is extant in Codex Pal. lat. 830 of the Vatican
Library. Marianus cites as witnesses on fol. 22v both Isidore and Mellitus (teste Isidore et
Mellito).
7
In Codex 3390 of the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, Riccobaldo lists among the sources
for his own chronicle those of Jerome, Prosper, Miletus, and Isidore.
8
The note in Limoges 1, fol. 176, reads: Item brevis chronicon quod Miletus Christi famulus
adauxit [Next, a brief chronicle that Miletus, servant of Christ, augmented]. Mommsen
took this to mean that the chronicle was attributed to Miletus (Mellitus): chronica isidoriana
proposita hic sub nomine Mileti (MGH AA 2, 358).
9
MGH AA 2, 401. For Martín, see n. 2 above.
90 Luciana Cuppo
Augustine of Canterbury.10 However, Arévalo did not pursue that

hypothesis, because the episcopal see of London and Isidore’s Spain seemed
to him far apart and it was difficult to see a connexion between the two.
Arévalo was unaware of the MS Limoges 1. That codex, besides
confirming Arévalo’s intuition that Mellitus was an editor, not the author,
of the chronicle, provides accurate information on how Mellitus did his
work: chronicon quod Mileti famuli Christi adauxit [a chronicle augmented by
Miletus, servant of God]. In Limoges 1, however, there are no additions to
Isidore’s text. That codex is, then, the foundation on which Mellitus built
his chronicle, which is a revised and augmented edition of the chronicle of
Isidore in its first edition of 615 A.D.11
The recensions of the text in Limoges 1 and Paris BN 4860 are
very similar, but neither manuscript is a copy of the other. They go back to
the same exemplar, which must have predated 842 A.D., because the
attribution of the chronicle to Mellitus found in both manuscripts is the
same as that in the catalogue of Reichenau, compiled before that year. The
codex at Reichenau included the same works as Paris BN 4860 and
Limoges 1, an indication that all three manuscripts have a common
exemplar. This exemplar, the ancestor of Paris BN 4860 and Limoges 1,
seems to have gone through Continental Irish hands. In both manuscripts
there are Irish symptoms, and Reichenau was a foundation with a
substantial Irish component. In Paris BN 4860 the “f” of Africa, africanus,
is systematically doubled (a typical Irish symptom), and i is substituted for
e with a frequency that goes well beyond the confusion frequently found in
medieval manuscripts.
The most interesting trait is the name “Kelius Pertinax” in the list
of Roman emperors. He is, of course, Helvetius Pertinax, named “Aelius
Pertinax” in Limoges 1. The initial K is a display letter apparently copied
from the exemplar, where the display initial was the K-shaped H familiar
to palaeographers, a letter that does look like a K to the untrained eye.
This particular type of letter K was used as display script in Late
Antiquity, so that, theoretically, the miniator of Paris BN 4860 could have
10
Faustino Arévalo, ed., Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Hispaniarum doctoris opera omnia (Rome:
Antonium Fulgonium, 1803), reprinted in PL 81 as Isidoriana. The discussion on Mellitus is
in PL 81.535C-538B.
11
An interesting error shows that the text of Limoges 1 was the foundation for Mellitus’
edition: at line 205 in MGH AA 2, where the correct reading is Iesus filius Sirach, Limoges 1
abbreviates to ihs filius sirach. The scribe of Vat. Lat. 1348 (or its exemplar) took this to
mean Iohannes filius Sirach, and this is the reading in Vat. lat. 1348 and in no other
manuscript collated by Mommsen or Martín.
imitated an ancient model.12 On the other hand, the K-shaped H was also
used in later centuries: it is found in the MS Milan, Ambrosiana O 210
sup., a codex that was at Bobbio in the seventh century but was not
written there. The same type of letters is also present in the Vatican codex
Pal. lat. 920, from the early ninth century, from Lorsch but possibly
written in Burgundy. Attala (the second abbot of Bobbio and the first
successor to Columbanus) was of Burgundian origin, had been educated at
Lérins, and had served at Luxeuil, so that a Burgundian origin for Ambr. O
210 sup. seems a reasonable possibility. If so, the “Kelius” of Paris BN
4860 is a telltale error, a symptom of a Burgundian origin with Insular
influences for the exemplar of Paris BN 4860.
The initials in Limoges 1 also betray the origin of its exemplar.
The main script, all in one hand and dated to the twelfth century by
Mommsen, but perhaps earlier, shows some Visigothic traits (er-ligature,
bowed t, occasional i-longa), indicating that the codex may well have been
copied at Lodève, where it was before it came into the possession of Petrus
Guidonis. The initials, however, have Merovingian and/or Insular traits
probably derived from the exemplar. Specifically, the first two initial letters
of a word are regularly treated as capitals. An analogous treatment can be
observed in the three large initial letters for the same word in the MS. Pal.
lat. 68 of the Vatican Library. Lowe described it as Anglo-Saxon, from the
eighth century, and reproduced fol. 153 (CLA 1.78). The exaggeratedly
elongated shafts of P and E, with their very tall bows, are reminiscent of
Merovingian chancery script, while the angularly protruding left shafts of
M and U appear in mss. from Burgundy as well as in Insular script.13
The Irish on the Continent knew about the work of Mellitus and
its main feature: that he added to Isidore.14 Yet, in this chain of
12
In the MS Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 8084, containing poems of Prudentius and
dated c. 527 A.D., there is on fol. 29v a K-shaped H reproduced in E. A. Lowe, ed., Codices
latini antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts prior to the Ninth Century, 12
vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934-1971), 5:571a (hereafter CLA).
13
Some examples drawn from CLA: Ms. Pal. lat. 177, of the Vatican Library (CLA 1.79),
described as “Anglo-Saxon, eighth century,” has on fol. 36v an angular A in erat and an
angular U in ut; the same type of A and U can be observed in Ms. Saint Petersburg, Public
Library F.V.I.8 f. 177 (CLA 11.1605), described as “Anglo-Saxon majuscule, eighth
century”; there is an angular U in the MS. Sankt Gallen 221 fol. 375 (CLA 7.927), whose
origin is defined as “uncertain, apparently a Swiss centre under Burgundian and Insular
influence.”
14
The variant Alani for Alemanni is found only in the chronicle of Mellitus in Vat. lat. 1348,
but the scribe of Paris BN 4860 added it in the margin to his text, next to the word
Alamanni. The thirty regnal years of Heraclius (a later addition to the chronicle in Vat. lat.
1348) are noted in Limoges 1; Marianus Scotus added to his own chronicle a citation from
Jerome written out as a marginal note, with the same content and in the same format as it
appears in Vat. lat. 1348, fol. 113v.
92 Luciana Cuppo
transmission that we might call Continental Irish, there is no sign of

additions about Benedict. While this may be due to accidental losses in
transmission, it may also be a signal that Mellitus’ interventions in Isidore’s
text were not received enthusiastically by the Continental Irish monks.
Additions about Benedict were not likely to be welcomed by Irish ears, for
the monks of Columbanus already had a founder and a spiritual father, and
were not ready to accept as their monastic model the “monk and father of
monks” Benedict, imported from Italy. Nor were they enthusiastic about
the years ab Incarnatione (A.D. years) that Mellitus added in his chronicle to
the regnal years of each emperor after the death of Christ, because the
chronology ab Incarnatione was related to the Easter computation of
Dionysius Exiguus, which the Irish did not accept.
A revised and augmented edition

The augmented edition exists and confirms that Mellitus, editor of the
chronicle, is Mellitus of Canterbury. The edition can be found in toto in
Vat. lat. 1348, with bits and pieces elsewhere.15 The main additions are
listed in the Appendix; those on Benedict are our special concern.
Among the additions, there are numerous marginalia that
contribute to the identification of Mellitus, because they are unmistakably
Vivarian in origin and show that whoever added them to the text was
familiar with, and availed himself of, the writing and editing techniques
introduced at Vivarium by Cassiodorus half a century earlier. This does not
necessarily mean that the archetype of Vat. lat. 1348 was written
physically at Vivarium (though this is a possibility), but that the person
responsible for the augmented edition had at his disposal scribes familiar
with the Vivarian techniques. This presupposes not only open
communication with Vivarium, but also the availability of Vivarium-
trained manpower to work for the editor of Isidore. These facts considered,
Mellitus of Canterbury is a very likely editor: before being sent to France
and England, he served in Rome under Pope Gregory; and Gregory not
only knew the works of Cassiodorus, but was involved in the
administration of the monasterium castellense after the death of the founder
and may well have controlled it.16 Cooperation between the Vivarian
monks and Gregory’s men was likely indeed.
The typical traits of Vivarian marginalia have been discussed at
length by Fabio Troncarelli, their discoverer, and can be summarized as
15
A substantial number of additions derived from the exemplar of Vat. lat. 1348 can be
found in the MS Cividale, Museo Archeologico 6, codex that deserves a detailed study.
16
Gregorius Magnus, Registrum epistularum. Libri VIII-XIV, ed. Dag Norberg, CCSL 140A
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1982), Epp. 8.30 and 8.32, both of the year 598.
follows:17 In manuscripts produced at Vivarium, Cassiodorus introduced

the convention of writing annotations to the text within silhouettes
resembling grape-clusters, chalices, or vases. These motifs are easily
distinguishable from the simple arrangement of annotations in the shape of
a triangle or within a tabula ansata, as found in other late antique
manuscripts. In the first place, Vivarian marginalia look different: a grape-
cluster is not a simple triangle, but is characterized by tendrils, of the kind
frequently used in late antique mosaics to identify Bacchus or Autumn.
Next, Vivarian marginalia are not merely ornamental, but have a symbolic
value, which Cassiodorus explained precisely in Institutiones.18 Thirdly,
Vivarian marginalia are so closely related to the text that they can be
considered its extensions. Within the silhouettes representing grapes,
vases, or cups, there are titles or brief summaries of the text on the same
page. Often – and this is a trait so far found only in Vivarian manuscripts –
they cite the source of the text written on the same page.
The chronicle in Vat. lat. 1348 presents marginalia with these
characteristics. They are to be found on folios 167v, 168, 168v, 170, 170v,
171, 171v, 174v, 176, 177v, and 178 of the manuscript. While some
additions to the text were entered after the time of Mellitus, the bulk of
editorial interventions must be attributed to Mellitus of London.19 This
man, first as the envoy of Pope Gregory to France and England, then as
the archbishop of Canterbury, was a powerful patron for Benedict of
Nursia.
Having thus identified Mellitus, the promoter, we now turn to
Benedict and the promotion he received through the chronicle. Of the
17
The results of Troncarelli’s research are summed up in Fabio Troncarelli, Vivarium. I libri,
il destino (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988). Particularly pertinent to our discussion are the chapter
“Botrionum formulae,” 67-78, plates 36 and 37 for the vase and chalice motifs, and plates
34 and 42 for the grape cluster motif.
18
Describing the codex with the books of the prophets, Cassiodorus explains: In quo [scil.
prophetarum codice] botrionum formulae ex ipsis annotationibus forsitan competenter appositae sunt,
quatenus vinea Domini caelesti ubertate completa suavissimos fructus intulisse videatur [“Wherein
[i.e., in the codex of the prophets] have been added (perhaps in pertinent fashion), out of
those annotations, small contoured figures in the shape of grape clusters, so that it be made
visible that the vine of the Lord, filled with heavenly plenty, has yielded the sweetest
fruits”] (Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, ed. R. A. B. Mynors [Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1937], 1.3.1).
19
Entries added or continued after Mellitus: the note on the thirty regnal years of
Heraclius; the series of Lombard kings; and the attribution of the chronicle to Augustine
and Jerome. The catalogue of popes on folios 182-188v is a further addition to the
chronicle. It has been published in Cuppo, “The Other Book of Pontiffs,” 55-75. I proposed
there that the catalogue originated in northern Italy, in the context of the Three Chapters
controversy. For further details on the identification of Mellitus the chronicler and Mellitus
of London and Canterbury, see my forthcoming edition of the chronicle of Mellitus.
94 Luciana Cuppo
traditional hagiographical framework (life of the saint, miracles) there is

nothing; and this is particularly striking if compared with the narrative
about Benedict in the second book of the Dialogues attributed to Pope
Gregory I. Gregory had made it quite plain that factual details were
unimportant to him and that the allegorical meaning of various episodes in
the life of Benedict was paramount; hence the vagueness of chronological
references and the importance attributed to miracles, which – in the spirit
of Gregory I – must be understood as allegories with a distinct teaching
purpose, leading (among other things) to a correct understanding of the
Scripture. Thus, Benedict is a new Peter who walks on the water, or a new
David who weeps over his dead enemy.
To the contrary, Mellitus takes a historian’s approach, presenting
the bare historical facts within the customary annalistic framework that
Jerome, Prosper, and Isidore had used before him. In the chronicle, there
are two passages concerning Benedict. The first one gives the time of death
of Benedict, while the second indicates his fame (and, presumably, the
dissemination of Benedictine monasticism) in Europe in the time of
Emperor Justin II (565-578). The first entry, placed at the end of the reign
of Justin I immediately before the accession of Justinian (527 A.D.), reads:
The venerable father Benedict lived under Pope John in the time of
Justin I and Emperor Justinian. At that time, King Theoderic ruled
in Italy. And from the Blessed Benedict to Pope Gregory there are
seventy-eight years.20
The fact that Justin I and Justinian are presented as reigning concurrently
is a near-contemporary trait. For, although formally there was no joint
reign of Justin and Justinian, in fact Justin entrusted the government to
his nephew Justinian very soon after his accession. The entry in the
chronicle of Mellitus mirrors the reality of the situation such as it was
known to contemporaries in Italy and Byzantium. According to the
chronicle of Mellitus, Benedict died in 526 (Gregory died seventy-eight
years later, in 604). This contrasts with the date handed down by Leo
Marsicanus, who stated that Benedict died in 541.21 The indiction and the
year given by Leo do not match, and for this reason modern scholars are
cautious about his date, preferring to say that Benedict died “c. 540.” But
20
Temporibus Iustini maioris et Iustiniani imperatoris fuit sanctus Benedictus abbas sub Iohanne
papa. Tunc Theodericus rex in Italia praeerat. Et a beato Benedicto usque ad Gregorium papam anni
sunt LXXVIII (fol. 178v).
21
Migravit ad Dominum anno quidem incarnationis eius 542 indictione quinta [“he returned to
the Lord in the year 542 A.D., fifth indiction”], Leo Marsicanus, Chronica monasterii
Casinensis/Die Chronik von Montecassino, ed. Hartmut Hoffmann, MGH Scriptores 34
(Hannover: Hahn, 1980), 1.1.
the real contradiction is that between the dies natalis of Benedict, on March
21, and the tradition that he died on a Holy Saturday; because the only
Holy Saturdays that fell on March 21 were in 509 and 604 – thus making
Benedict’s lifespan either too long or too brief.
Leo Marsicanus seems to have known the chronicle of Mellitus,
because he used some of its expressions: claruit autem temporibus imperatorum
Iustini senioris et Iustiniani, Romanorum vero pontificum Iohannis
primi...Theoderico apud Italiam arriano regnante; and the chronicle of Mellitus
may in fact be the chronica Romanorum imperatorum atque pontificum, which
Leo cited among his sources.22 Leo, who thought that Benedict founded
Monte Cassino in 529, could hardly accept a date of death as early as that
of the chronicle, but another source confirms the date reported by Mellitus:
Abbo of Fleury.
Like Leo Marsicanus, Abbo of Fleury (c. 945-1004) was aware of
the tradition that Benedict died on a Holy Saturday on March 21 and
professed firm faith in his written source, which he characterized as gesta
veracissima.23 But unlike Leo, Abbo was an expert in the science of computus
and was familiar with the Easter reckoning as taught by Dionysius Exiguus
and Bede. Relying on his own independent calculations, but invoking the
authority of both Dionysius and Bede, Abbo concluded that, if it was true
that Saint Benedict died on March 21, the only time when that could have
happened was 497 years after the Passion of Christ. The Passion of Christ
was traditionally set in 28/29 A.D. and the year began on March 25,
believed to be the day of the Passion. If Abbo counted 497 years according
to this traditional chronology, his figures and those of the chronicle of
Mellitus are very close indeed. As far as Holy Saturday goes, Abbo made
no further mention of it, and neither should we.
There is yet another source that predates Leo Marsicanus and may
derive from the chronicle of Mellitus – and if this is the case, it would be a
sign that the promotion of Benedict by Mellitus had been effective. It is a
marginal entry, contemporary with, or very close in time to the main text
in MS Oxford, Bodleian Library e Mus. 113, fol. 113. As it now stands, it
reads: scs Benedi/trans. The first word is abbreviated, while the second and
the third are incomplete because the margin of the page has been cut off;
the full note should read, sanctus Benedictus transiit [“Saint Benedict passed
away”]. This entry was partially published by Mommsen, who omitted the
22
Leo Marsicanus, Chronica, 1.1.
23
Sabbato sancto Paschae ex hac vita migravit xii Kalend. Aprilium, sicut legitur in gestis
veracissimis [“He departed from his life on a Holy Saturday before Easter on the twelfth day
before the kalends of April, as stated in eminently truthful records”]. Abbo Floriacensis,
Praefatio in circulos Dionysianos, PL 139, 575.
96 Luciana Cuppo
trans and thought that the annotation referred to the time of Emperor
Justin II.24 Actually, it refers to Iustianus, a misspelling of Iustinianus also
found in the MSS Paris BN 4860 and Pal. lat. 239 (Vatican Library); but
in e Mus. 113 the name was later corrected by a different hand, making it
Iustinianus. Thus, we must conclude that this was the emperor meant.
Justin I and Justinian are named concurrently as rulers in the
chronicle of Mellitus. E mus. 113, dated to the ninth-tenth century, was
copied from an exemplar that, like Vat. lat. 1348, included a catalogue of
popes that ended with Pope Theodor (642 A.D.) and, further, a collectio
temporum dated to the reign of Theoderic of Neustria (c. 675-691). Before
the end of the seventh century, the promotion of Benedict had reached
Neustria, apparently through the chronicle of Mellitus.
The second annotation on Benedict reads: “at that same time
Abbot Benedict, father of monks, was held in high esteem throughout
Campania, Apulia, and the Roman province.”25 Succinct as it is, this entry,
situated in the reign of Justin II, renders graphically the status of
dissemination of Benedictine monasticism between 565 and 578 A.D.
This dissemination is outlined in a realistic fashion, without indulging in
hyperbolic praise of the saint, and the geographical distribution of
Benedict’s renown (and, presumably, of Benedictine monasticism along
with it) is consistent with what we know from other sources. The fame of
Benedict had spread in the area of Monte Cassino, which remained a
Benedictine monastery even when its monks fled to Rome at the time of
the Lombard invasion, and in Apulia. This description covers all of
southern Italy except modern Calabria, an area which Mellitus does not
mention; possibly because in that region the influence of Vivarium was
strong, and the intellectual orientation given by Cassiodorus to his
foundation had little in common with early Benedictine monasticism. The
allusion to a “Roman Province” (modern Provence?) where Benedict was
held in esteem is tantalizing: Lérins was important there, and it would be
interesting to learn how, and when, Benedictine monasticism was received.
Insignis habetur
The geographical overview of Benedict’s fame ends with the attribution of
the title insignis to Benedict. At first glance, this seems in keeping with the
style of Jerome and Isidore. Jerome, followed by Prosper, had created a list
of some sixty “famous persons” characterized as clari, illustres, or insignes.
24
MGH AA 2, 491.
25
Per idem tempus Benedictus abbas pater monachorum per totam Campaniam atque Apuliam necnon
romanam Provinciam insignis habetur (Vat. lat. 1348, fol. 179).
These attributes do not seem to follow a definite pattern. Based on

frequency, the illustres (five names) and insignes (fifteen names) do not fare
as well as the clari (forty-six names). If Jerome mirrored in his chronicle the
distinctions in social rank present in Roman society, whereby an illustris
was higher on the social ladder than a clarus, the insignis would fall between
the two; but I see no evidence for such differentiation, which must remain
conjectural.
Continuity with Jerome, Prosper, and Isidore (who, following
Jerome’s pattern, added some famous persons) is a matter of style rather
than of conceptual content: Mellitus praises Benedict using the same words
as Jerome, but the spirit in which he gives praise is different indeed.
Jerome had been extremely open-minded, not to say heterogeneous, in his
catalogue of famous men and women. The line between mythological and
historical figures was often blurred. The bulk of names (thirty-three
persons) are pagans. Jews are mixed with pagans. The common
denominator among them all is that they were famous, but the reasons for
their fame vary greatly, the most frequent being their artistic or other
intellectual achievements. Moral evaluations or any value judgement are
remarkably absent from Jerome’s Who’s Who of famous people.
The additions supplied by Isidore are few: Fulgentius of Ruspe and
Leander of Seville, both bishops and conspicuous for their doctrine. There
is the transposition in Christian terms of the concept of “fame”: where
pagans had prized artistic or intellectual achievements, Christians still prize
intellectual achievements, but channel them in the defense of orthodox
doctrine. Prosper and Victor of Tunnuna, who continued the chronicle of
Jerome and were among Isidore’s sources, focused on Christians, where
bishops and/or doctors of the Church take the lion’s share of attention:
Donatus (the bishop, not the grammarian), Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria,
Ambrosius, Jerome, Fulgentius, Leander of Seville. Among this social
and/or intellectual élite there is only one famous person who was neither
bishop nor scholar: John the Anachorite, who had foretold victory to
Emperor Theodosius over his opponent Eugene.
The shift from an all-inclusive fame, characteristic of Jerome, to
that based on learning in the service of Catholic doctrine is remarkable.
Equally remarkable, though less obvious, is the shift from Isidore to
Mellitus, which involves Benedict as the “monk and father of monks.”
Fulgentius of Ruspe and Leander of Seville are the only famous
persons added by Isidore; according to the established pattern, they were
bishops and scholars. Mellitus adds Pope Gregory I and Benedict. The
entry on Gregory, which fell into the customary pattern, was well received
– it was incorporated in the chronicle of Isidore and preserved in roughly a
98 Luciana Cuppo
dozen manuscripts.26 But the entry on Benedict is innovative: he is not

renowned for doctrine or for being a bishop of the Church, and not even
for his miracles, but solely for being a monk and father of monks, a
founder and organizer of monastic communities. And he is not only clarus,
but also insignis.
Beyond the obvious promotion of Benedictine monasticism, this
entry reveals a substantial continuity with the position of Pope Gregory
and his school of thought. By celebrating a man who was neither a bishop
nor a scholar, Mellitus followed in the footsteps of Gregory, who had
praised Benedict for his enlightened ignorance. Benedict, Gregory
explained, had not lacked opportunities for higher education: he was born
into an upper-class family (liberiori genere exortus) and had been sent to
Rome to study letters (Romae liberalibus litterarum studiis traditus fuerat).27
But young Benedict realized that, along with the liberal arts, he would also
learn much vice in that environment; consequently, “having held in
contempt the study of the liberal arts, leaving his possessions and his
ancestral home, he sought the permanent situation of a holy state of life,
desiring to please God alone. Thus, he withdrew wisely ignorant,
knowingly unlearned.”28 Such is Gregory’s version of the facts.
The contempt shown by young Benedict for the liberal arts
harmonizes fully with Gregory’s own stated contempt for such pursuits.
Like Benedict, Gregory was not ignorant of grammar, but held the Bible
superior to such trifles. His passionate cry that the word of God cannot be
fettered by the rules of Donatus is well known: “I disdain to observe
location, motion, and even the case required by prepositions, because I
deem it utterly unworthy to restrain the words of the divine oracle under
the rules of Donatus.”29
Yet, few have realized that this passionately rhetorical cry contains
a pointed allusion to Cassiodorus. The words situs (location) and motus
26
These are: Paris BN 4860; Bruxelles, Bibliothèque Royale 5413-5422; Paris, BN 10910;
Albi 29; Modena, O.I.11; BAV, Pal. lat. 239; Berlin Cheltenham 41; and Florence,
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Pl. XX.54, all with the chronicle of Isidore in its first
edition. In addition, two manuscripts of the chronicle in its second edition remember Pope
Gregory: Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 133, and Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek,
Helmstedt 532.
27
These and the following citations are from the Prolegomena to the life of Benedict (Book
2 of Dialogorum libri quattuor, PL 66).
28
Despectis itaque litterarum studiis, relicta domo rebusque patris, soli Deo placere desiderans, sanctae
conversationis habitum quaesivit. Recessit igitur scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus (Gregorius
Magnus, Dialogi, PL 66, 125-126).
29
Gregorius Magnus, Moralia in Iob I-X, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CCSL 143 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1979), 7.219-222. Situs motusque etiam et praepositionum casus seruare contemno, quia
indignum vehementer existimo, ut uerba caelestis oraculi restringam sub regulis Donati.
(motion), chosen by Gregory, are the same ones that Cassiodorus had used
in his instructions to the monks of Vivarium, cautioning them not to
confuse the ablative and accusative endings: “In words that require
prepositions with the accusative or the ablative case, consider carefully
location (situs) and motion (motus), because on these points editors not
knowledgeable in the art of grammar are known to make the most serious
errors.”30 Cassiodorus had no hesitation in making Donatus the focal point
of grammatical learning, suggesting to his students the works of this
author with their commentaries: “But we choose as the focal point
Donatus, as especially appropriate for children and also well-suited to
beginners; and we left double commentaries to his work, so that – besides
the fact that he wrote in Latin – he may be made clearer by a twofold
explanation.”31
The antithesis between Gregory’s ideal of monastic life and that of
Cassiodorus was long-standing. Some forty years earlier, Cassiodorus,
aware of the contrast, had eulogized two monks quite different in
temperament and vocation, yet in his eyes both worthy of praise: Abbot
Eugippius and Abbot Dionysius. Of Eugippius he wrote that he was not
learned to quite the same extent in secular letters, but that he was replete
with readings from the Holy Scripture,32 while Dionysius deserved praise
not only for his knowledge of the Bible, but also for his ability as a
rhetorician and translator from the Greek.
Thus, Cassiodorus was trying to reconcile two different positions.
Some fifty years later, Mellitus made a similar attempt in his chronicle. He
followed squarely in the footsteps of his mentor Gregory by extolling the
monastic qualities of Benedict, which did not include particular intellectual
achievements. But he situated his memorial of Benedict in the context of
Isidore’s world history, side-by-side with famous men and women who
were not monks, but artists, poets, or (if Christian) bishops and scholars.
Thus, Mellitus accepted the standards of Isidore as well as those of Pope
Gregory. His promotion of Benedict was perhaps the first step toward a re-
evaluation of intellectual work in the Benedictine order, as well as a
promotion of that order beyond the boundaries it had attained at the time
of Justin II.
30
Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ed. Mynors, 1.15.9. In verbis quae accusativis et ablativis
praepositionibus serviunt, situm motumque diligenter observa, quoniam librarii grammaticae artis
expertes ibi maxime probantur errare.
31
Ibid., 2.1.2. Nobis tamen placet in medium Donatum deducere, qui et pueris specialiter aptus et
tironibus probatur accommodus; cuius gemina commenta reliquimus, ut, supra quod ipse latinus est, fiat
clarior dupliciter explanatus.
32
Ibid., 1.23.1. Non usque adeo saecularibus litteris eruditum, sed Scripturarum divinarum lectione
plenissimum.
100 Luciana Cuppo
Appendix: The edition of Mellitus in Vat. lat. 1348
Biblical additions
Vat. lat. 1348 adds to the genealogy of the patriarchs in the chronicle of
Isidore the age of the patriarchs from Adam to Malalahel at the time of
their death (Gn 1.5). The biblical chronology from Adam to the Flood
(Age of the World = 1,656 years), derived from the Hebrew text of the
Bible, is reported on the same page (fol. 167) as that derived from
Jerome/Isidore (2,242 years). Other dates with the specific citation of their
source (Flavius Iosephus) are noted, within a frame, in the margins of the
pages.
Additions pertaining to Roman history

Other additions show interest in, and knowledge of, Roman history beyond
what was handed down in Isidore’s chronicle. This is not surprising,
considering that Pope Gregory – and, presumably, his close co-workers –
came from a Roman senatorial environment where Romanist-nationalistic
feelings could run high. Some of these “Roman” additions are as follows:
(a) MGH AA 2, line 146: Where Isidore notes the foundation of Rome by
Romulus, Mellitus adds Remus and the topographical detail in monte
Palatino (“on the Palatine Hill”).
(b) MGH AA 2, line 34: Isidore notes the beginning of the Third Age of
the World at the time of Abraham. Mellitus adds the concordance between
the age of Abraham and Roman history. Inside a trapezoidal frame, the
entry reads: Nota: Habraham natum circiter anno millesimo ducentesimo ante
Romam conditam (“Note: Abraham was born about one thousand two
hundred years before the foundation of Rome”).
(c) Mellitus adds to the names of Roman emperors those left out by Isidore
because of the brevity of their reigns: Galba; Otho (here known as
Honorius); Vitellius; and all between Nero and Domitian, 68/69 A.D.
Further, there is Aemilianus, who reigned with Valerianus in 253 A.D.;
and Quintilius (called Quintinus), who reigned in 270.
(d) Following Jerome, Isidore had dated the birth and death of Christ in
concordance with Roman history: the nativity was in the forty-second
regnal year of Augustus and the crucifixion in the eighteenth regnal year of
Tiberius. Mellitus expands considerably on these data, inserting at this
point a summary of Roman history:
Herodes the Foreign-Born ruled for twenty-six years. In his twenty-

third year, our Lord Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem from the
Virgin Mary, in the twelfth consulship of Augustus and the second
of Silvanus, on a Sunday, the eighth day before the Kalends of
January. After the kings were expelled, the state was governed by
consuls and kings and dictators for 364 years until Julius Caesar,
who ruled for four years and six months. Octavian Augustus
succeeded him. In his forty-second year, Christ was born. Tiberius
ruled after him for twenty-three years. In his fifteenth year, the
Lord was baptized by John when he was thirty, and then preached
for three years and three months until the eighteenth year of
Tiberius. Octavian ruled for fifty-six years. In his reign, the sixty-
nine weeks in Daniel were fulfilled, kingship and priesthood of the
Jews came to an end, and Christ was born from the Virgin in the
forty-second year of his reign. In the year 1 of the nativity of the
Lord, fourth indiction, eleventh epact, fifth concurrent, and the
eighteenth lunar cycle.33
From Caligula on, the chronicle of Mellitus adds to the regnal years of each
emperor the respective A.D. years. Although such additions may have been
done after Mellitus, when the chronology of the nativity became
commonly used, it seems more likely that such concordance was attempted
in Mellitus’ edition of Isidore. It is not found elsewhere in the transmission
of Isidore’s chronicle, where the chronological data are the regnal years of
each ruler and the age of the world; it has frequent mistakes, unlikely in
later centuries, when the A.D. chronology had become fixed; finally, ever
since Dionysius Exiguus, who had worked with Cassiodorus and the first
generation of monks at Vivarium, the study of the Dionysiac Easter
reckoning with the related chronology of the Year of the Lord was pursued
(albeit intermittently) at Vivarium. In the chronicle of Mellitus, the
addition on the time given for Christ’s birth, complete with the epact,
concurrent, and lunar cycle, is derived from the Easter cycles of Dionysius.
In 616, Felix of Squillace was continuing those cycles and explaining the
33
Herodes alienigena regnavit annos xxvi. Huius xxiii. anno natus est Dominus noster Iesus Christus
ex Virgine Maria in Bethleem, Augusto duodecimo et Silvano secundo consulibus, die dominico, viii
Kl. ianuarii. Pulsis regibus a romanis a consulibus et regibus et dictatoribus res publica est gubernata
per annos trecentos lxiiii usque ad Iulium Caesarem, qui regnavit annos quattuor et menses vi. Cui
successit Octavianus Caesar Augustus. In cuius quadragesimo secundo anno natus est Christus. Post
quem regnavit Tiberius annos xxiii. In cuius xv. anno baptizatus est Dominus a Iohanne cum esset
xxx annorum et postea praedicavit annos iii ac menses iii usque ad Tiberii annos xviii. Octavianus
regnavit annos lvi. Sub cuius imperio septuaginta ebdomadae in Daniele scriptae complentur et cessante
regno ac sacerdotio Iudaeorum Dominus Iesus Christus ex virgine nascitur anno regni eius
quadragesimo secundo, indictione tertia. Anno vero nativitatis Domini primo indictione iiii epacta
vero undecima concurrente v ciclo lunae xviii (Vat. lat. 1348, fol. 173).
102 Luciana Cuppo
chronology of the Year of the Lord (A.D. years).34 The catalogue of Roman
and Byzantine emperors published by Mommsen, which gives a
concordance between the regnal years of each emperor and the respective
A.D. years, is, as I proposed a while back, Vivarian in origin.35 If so, that
catalogue was part of the Vivarian material that Mellitus had at his
disposal for the compilation of his chronicle.
34
Luciana Cuppo, “Felix of Squillace and the Dionysiac Computus I: Bobbio and Northern
Italy (MS. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana H 150 inf.),” in The Easter Controversy of Late
Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Its Manuscripts, Texts, and Tables. Proceedings of the 2nd
International Conference on the Science of Computus, Galway, 18-20 July 2008, ed. Dáibhí
O’Cróinín and Immo Warntjes, Studia Traditionis Theologiae 10 (Turnhout: Brepols
2012), 110-136.
35
MGH AA 1, 751-756; Luciana Cuppo Csaki, “Roma magistra historiae: The Year 680 as
caput saeculi in Cas. 641,” in Roma magistra mundi: Itinerari culturae medievalis. Mélanges offerts
au Père L. E. Boyle à l’occasion de son 75e anniversaire, ed. Jacqueline Hamesse, vol. 2
(Turnhout: Brepols 1998), 534-541.
WHERE HE IS, THITHER WILL THE EAGLES BE
GATHERED TOGETHER: THE METROPOLITAN
STATUS OF THE BISHOP OF SPALATO FROM THE
DECLINE OF SALONA UNTIL THE COUNCILS OF
SPALATO IN 925 AND 928
Vadim Prozorov
In Late Antiquity, when the Church of Salona started to play the role of
the metropolis of Dalmatia (at least since the beginning of the sixth
century) and St. Domnius was widely acclaimed as its holy protector, there
emerged a tradition of the apostolic foundation of this Church.1 In the
ecclesiastical tradition, St. Domnius, victim of Diocletian’s persecution, was
transferred from the late third or early fourth centuries to the first century
and assigned with the mission as the disciple of St. Peter the Apostle, the
apostle to Dalmatia and the first bishop of Salona. Barbarian incursions in
the first half of the seventh century led to the decay of Salona and the
decline of Dalmatian Church organization.2 However, it soon revived. The
inhabitants of Salona first fled to the islands by the coast, but soon some of
1
Vadim B. Prozorov, “The Passion of St. Domnius: the Tradition of Apostolic Succession in
Dalmatia,” Scrinium. Revue de patrologie, d’hagiographie critique et d’histoire ecclésiastique, vol. 2,
Universum Hagiographicum. Mémorial R. P. Michel van Esbroeck, SJ (1934-2003) (2006): 219-
239.
2
Frane Bulić, “Sull’anno della distruzione di Salona,” Bullettino di archeologia e storia
dalmata (hereafter BASD) 29 (1906): 268-304; Lovre Katić, “Vjerodostojnost Tome
Arciñakona i posljednji dani Solina” [Thomas the Archdeacon’s reliability and Salona’s last
days], Vjesnik za arheologiju i historiju dalmatinsku (hereafter VAHD) 53 (1952): 99-119; Ivan
Marović, “Reflexions about the Year of the Destruction of Salona,” VAHD 77 (1984): 293-
314; Nikola Jakšić, “Constantine Porphyrogenitus as the Source for Destruction of Salona,”
VAHD 77 (1984): 315-326; Mate Suić, “Nova post vetera – ponovni pad Salone,”
Mogućnosti 36/3-4 (1988): 329-336; Željko Rapanić, Od carske palače do srednjovjekovne općine
[From the Imperial Palace to the Medieval Commune] (Split: Književni krug, 2007), 137-
170. Recent scholarship tends to accept a view of slow “dying out” of urban centres on the
Adriatic coast. See e.g. Danijel Dzino, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations
in Post-Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 155-161. However, even
the partisans of this new paradigm admit that Salona was highly vulnerable to the
barbarian attacks, though they were not crucial in the process of the “natural” decline of the
city, which was especially intense in the mid-seventh century. See Ivo Goldstein, Bizant na
Jadranu od Justinijana I. do Bazilija I. [Byzantium in the Adriatic from Justinian I to Basil I]
(Zagreb: Latina et Graeca, 1992), 89-95.
104 Vadim Prozorov
them returned and settled in Diocletian’s palace near the desolated city.
This place was called Spalatum (Spalato, present-day Split).
The thirteenth-century historian Thomas the Archdeacon of
Spalato tells the story of the restoration of the archiepiscopal status of
Salona by John of Ravenna, sent by the pope3 soon after the destruction of
the Dalmatian metropolis by the barbarians, which was described in detail
by Constantine Porphyrogenitus and Thomas himself.4 This may have
happened in the middle of the seventh century, although some scholars
doubt the reliability of this account, especially the foundation of the
archbishopric in Spalato.5 Thomas states that it was John of Ravenna’s
initiative to renew the archbishopric of Salona on a new site.6 The pope
consecrated him and transferred all privileges of Salona to the Church of
Spalato.7 As the metropolitan of Dalmatia (including the Slavic lands),
Archbishop John “restored churches, appointed bishops, established
parishes,” and started the missionary work in the territories of Dalmatia.8
3
According to Historia Salonitana maior, it was John IV (640-642). See Historia Salonitana
Maior, ed. Nada Klaić (hereafter HSM) (Belgrade: Naučno delo, 1967), 95.
4
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. Gyula Moravcsik and trans.
Romilly J. H. Jenkins (hereafter DAI) (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Center for
Byzantine Studies, 1967), 122-125, ch. 29 and 140-143, ch. 30; Thomas Spalatensis,
History of the Bishops of Salona and Split (hereafter HS), ed. Damir Karbić, Mirjana Matijević
Sokol, and James Ross Sweeney (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006), 32-43, ch. 7.
5
Nada Klaić, having accumulated these doubts, argues that this story is a legend, that
there was no metropolitan organization in Dalmatia until the first council of Spalato (925),
and that the idea of its establishment belongs to Pope John VIII (872-882). She identifies
John of Ravenna with Archbishop John of Spalato, who presided over the councils of
Spalato. See Nada Klaić, “Ivan Ravenjanin i osnutak splitske nadbiskupije” [John of
Ravenna and the Foundation of the Metropolis of Spalato], VAHD 65-67 (1971): 209-249.
Radoslav Katičić has tried to prove that Thomas’ story is based on old documents and
advanced new arguments in favor of the authenticity of Severus the Great involved in the
restoration of the metropolis by John of Ravenna. See Radoslav Katičić, “Vetustiores
Ecclesiae Spalatensis Memoriae,” in idem, Uz početke hrvatskih početaka. Filološke studije o
našem najranijem srednjovjekovlju [About the Beginning of Croatian Beginnings. Philological
Studies on Our Earliest Middle Ages] (Split: Književni krug, 1993), 99-130.
6
On the time of the destruction of Salona, see Marović, “Reflexions,” 293-314.
7
HS, 54-55, ch. 11: “It was granted to him [John of Ravenna–V.P.] by the Apostolic See
that the church of Spalato would have all the privileges and honors that Salona had
formerly enjoyed.”
8
HS, 54-55, ch. 11: “he went about Dalmatia and Slavonia, restoring churches, ordaining
bishops and setting up parishes, and little by little he drew the ignorant people to
knowledge of the Catholic faith.” In the catalogue of the archbishops in HS, 58-59, ch. 13,
Archdeacon Thomas writes: “The archbishops of the church of Spalato were many, and to
them all bishops of both Upper and Lower Dalmatia were obedient, according to the right
of privilege of the church of Salona, inasmuch as they had been suffragans from ancient
times.” Certainly we should remember that Thomas, composing his work, had the aim to
show the antiquity and priority of the metropolitan church of Spalato over all the bishops of
Dalmatia and Croatia. The very word suffraganeus was being introduced from the end of the
Where he is 105
In this paper, despite the skepticism expressed in the current

literature, I will try to demonstrate that the transfer of the see, along with
the relics of its holy protector and the first bishop St. Domnius, to the new
site did not necessarily lead to the loss of the metropolitan status of the
church.9 Quite the contrary, the deposition of St. Domnius’ body in
Spalato signified the transfer of metropolitan authority to the bishop of
Spalato.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ De administrando imperio informs us
that “Emperor Herakleios sent and brought priests from Rome, and made
of them an archbishop and a bishop and elders and deacons, and baptized
the Croats.” This information can be regarded as a confirmation of
Thomas’ account about the activity of John of Ravenna.10 Thomas narrates
that the Salonitans who had returned to Spalato requested protection
against the barbarians from the “emperors in Constantinople” and were
given the special “sacred rescript of the noble rulers,” and a corresponding
“command (jussio) was sent to the chiefs” of the barbarians.11
One of the components of John’s program, according to Thomas,
was a translation of the bodies of the holy martyrs Domnius, the first
bishop of Salona, and Anastasius of Aquileia from Salona to the Spalato
church of the Virgin Mary, the former mausoleum of Emperor Diocletian.
Thus the legitimacy of the bishopric of Spalato as a successor to the
archbishopric of Salona was definitely established through the intercession
eighth century; see Friedrich Kempf, ed., The Church in the Age of Feudalism, trans. Anselm
Biggs, vol. 3 of History of the Church, ed. Hubert Jedin (Kent: Burns and Oates, 1991), 288.
9
Mirjana Matijević Sokol, Toma Arhiñakon i njegovo djelo. Rano doba hrvatske povijesti [Thomas
the Archdeacon and His Work. The Early Period of Croatian History] (Jastrebarsko:
Naklada Slap, 2002), 75-110; Ivan Basić, “Venerabilis presul Iohannes. Historijski Ivan
Ravenjanin i začetci crkvene organizacije u Splitu u VII. stoljeću” [Venerabilis presul
Iohannes. The Historical John of Ravenna and the Beginning of Church Organization in
Split in the Seventh Century], Povijesni prilozi 29 (2005): 7-28; HS, 51, notes 1 and 2.
10
DAI, 148.
11
Katičić, “Vetustiores,” in idem, Uz početke, 119-120, shows that this information on the
rescript and the command was derived from an old and reliable source, and complied with
the Byzantine diplomatic usage. He refers to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De ceremoniis
aulae byzantinae, ed. Johann Jacob Reiske (Bonn: Impensis Ed. Weberi, 1829), 1:691. In the
seventh century, there were two cases of co-ruling the Empire: between 638 and 25 May
641 and between 655 and 681 (cf. Ernst Kornemann, Doppelprinzipat und Reichsteilung im
Imperium Romanum [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1930], 162-165). The first period corresponds
to John IV’s pontificate (640-642). Stjepan Gunjača narrows this period to three months –
March-May 641 – when Constantine III and Heraklonas were real co-emperors after their
father Herakleios’ death. Stjepan Gunjača, Ispravci i dopune starijoj hrvatskoj historiji 1
[Corrections and Additions to Early Croatian History] (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1973), 193-
198. John of Ravenna’s consecration could have been performed by Pope John IV either in
December 640 or in December 641. Liber pontificalis, ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH Gesta
pontificum Romanorum 1 (hereafter LP) (Berlin: Weidmann, 1898), 177.
106 Vadim Prozorov
of holy protectors.12 Thomas highlighted the continuity of ecclesiastical

organization when he pointed out that, despite their residence in Spalato
(since the time of John of Ravenna), “archbishops, indeed, were not styled
archbishops of Spalato, but archbishops of Salona.”13 Obviously, this
relatively short period of transition in the seventh century was the time
when the Church needed the tradition of its holy protector most. The
bishopric on the new site was going to reinforce the metropolitan rights of
the Church of Salona based on its apostolic foundation.
Pope John IV’s biography in the Book of Pontiffs compiled under
Pope Conon (686-687)14 narrates that the Dalmatian-born pope John sent
abbot Martin to Dalmatia to ransom Christian captives from the pagans
and to collect relics of the local saints, in whose memory the chapel of St.
Venantius was erected near the Lateran baptistery in Rome. The relics
brought to Rome from Dalmatia and Istria were deposited there,15 with
the holy martyrs depicted in mosaic.16 The representation of St. Domnius
“with his pallium and other episcopal vestments”17 in the chapel, to the
right of Christ just after St. Peter and John the Baptist, suggests the
outstanding importance of this holy bishop and the prominent status of the
Church of Salona, perhaps as the ecclesiastical metropolis. Thomas of
Spalato refers to the relics brought to Rome as reliquiae, i.e. remnants of
the holy bodies, while the bodies of St. Domnius and St. Anastasius
translated by John of Ravenna in Spalato are called corpora.18 When in
1962-1964 the reliquaries in Rome were opened, it became evident that
only some fragments of the bodies of Dalmatian and Istrian saints had
been deposited in the chapel.19
Scholars have found a contradiction in the Book of Pontiffs and
Thomas of Spalato’s accounts of the translation of the relics of St. Domnius
12
HS, 56-57, ch. 12: “The translation of Saint Domnius and Saint Anastasius.”
13
HS, 58-59, ch. 13.
14
LP 1, XIII-XIV.
15
LP 1, 177. Thomas of Spalato repeats this account in HS, 44-47, ch. 8.
16
See Fabijan Veraja, “Kapela sv. Venancija u Rimu i kult solinskih mučenika” [The Chapel
of St. Venantius in Rome and the Cult of the Salonitan Martyrs], in Zbornik u čast sv. Nikole
Tavelića (Rome: Postulatura bl. Nikole Tavelića, 1970), 165-187; Giuseppe Bovini, “I
mosaici dell’oratorio di S. Venanzo a Roma,” Corso di Cultura sull’Arte Ravennate e Bizantina
18 (1971): 141-154; Gillian Vallance Mackie, Early Christian Chapels in the West: Decoration,
Function, and Patronage (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 212-230.
17
HS, 46-47.
18
HS, 56-57, ch. 12.
19
Makso Peloza, “Rekognicija relikvija dalmatinskih i istarskih mučenika u oratoriju sv.
Venancija kod baptisterija Lateranske bazilike u Rimu 1962-1964. godine” [Recognition of
the Relics of Dalmatian and Istrian Martyrs in the Chapel of St. Venantius near the
Baptistery of the Lateran Basilica in Rome in 1962-1964], VAHD 63-64 (1961-1962):
163-180.
Where he is 107
and St. Anastasius to Rome and to Spalato. However, the Book of Pontiffs
does not indicate that the remains of St. Domnius were among the relics of
other Dalmatian saints transferred to Rome. It only confirms that St.
Domnius was depicted in gold mosaic, which still exists in the Lateran.
According to Thomas of Spalato, John of Ravenna transferred the
bodies of St. Domnius and St. Anastasius from the episcopal basilica of
Salona, although in fact they had been venerated at the cemeteries outside
the city – in Manastirine and in Marusinac, respectively.20 In order to
explain this apparent contradiction, we may assume that during the
barbarian attacks on Salona its citizens may have brought the relics of their
holy protectors inside the city and then, evacuating it in haste, abandoned
the holy bodies in the basilica.21 This assumption certainly works if we
insist on the catastrophic paradigm of the end of Salona.
The history of the following centuries is obscure due to the lack of
information. It was a period of accommodation of various Slavic and non-
Slavic peoples in the Balkans and attempts of the Byzantine administration
to secure the remains of its authority, at least on the Adriatic coast, and its
links with the exarchate of Ravenna via Dalmatia.22 Scholarly opinions
differ as to which patriarchate – Rome or Constantinople – established its
jurisdiction over the Dalmatian ecclesiastical province in the eighth and
ninth centuries.23 When about the middle of the eighth century the
20
Forschungen in Salona, vol. 2, Der altchristliche Friedhof Manastirine, ed. Rudolf Egger
(Vienna: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1926); Forschungen in Salona, vol. 3,
Der altchristliche Friedhof Marusinac, ed. Ejnar Dyggve and Rudolf Egger (Vienna: Rudolf M.
Rohrer, 1939).
21
Frane Bulić and Josip Bervaldi, Kronotaksa solinskih biskupa uz dodatak Kronotaksa spljetskih
nadbiskupa (od razorenja Solina do polovice XI. v.) [Catalogue of the Bishops of Salona with the
Catalogue of the Archbishops of Spalato (from the destruction of Salona until the mid-
eleventh century)] (Zagreb: Tiskara Hrvatskog katoličkog tiskovnog društva, 1912), 124-
125.
22
Jadran Ferluga, L’amministrazione bizantina in Dalmazia (Venice: Deputazione di storia
patrie per le Venezie, 1978); Goldstein, Bizant na Jadranu, 125-150; Džino, Becoming Slav,
92-175. Tibor Živković, “Taktikon Uspenskog i tema Dalmacija” [The Taktikon Uspenskij
and the Theme of Dalmatia], Istorijski časopis 48 (2001): 9-44. He has challenged the
traditional date of compilation of the Taktikon and moved the date of restoration of the
archontia to 812 and the organization of the theme of Dalmatia to 817.
23
Viktor Novak, “Pitanje pripadnosti splitske nadbiskupije u vrijeme njezine organizacije”
[The Question of Subordination of the Archbishopric of Spalato in the Time of its
Organization], VAHD 46 (1923): 57-77; Antun Dabinović, “Kada je Dalmacija pala pod
jurisdikciju carigradske patrijaršije?” [When did Dalmatia fall under the Jurisdiction of the
Constantinopolitan Patriarchate?], Rad JAZU 239 (1930): 242; Miho Barada, “Episcopus
Chroatensis,” Croatia sacra 1 (1931): 166; Vladimir Koščak, “Pripadnost istočne obale
Jadrana do splitskih sabora 925-928” [The Sway Over the Eastern Adriatic Coast up to the
Time of the Split Synods in 925 and 928], Historijski zbornik 33-34 (1980-1981): 291-355;
Goldstein, Bizant na Jadranu, 112-126.
108 Vadim Prozorov
iconoclastic emperors withdrew eastern Illyricum from the authority of

Rome and placed it under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, Dalmatia,
although not included in this province, could still have been subordinated
to the Constantinopolitan patriarchate. At least, Bishop John of Salona and
some other Dalmatian bishops appear among the eastern prelates of
archiepiscopal rank in the acts of the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.24
Radoslav Katičić considered that all the former western bishoprics
alienated from the Roman Church by the iconoclastic emperors received
the honorary archiepiscopal title within the Constantinopolitan
patriarchate.25
After the conclusion of the treaty between Byzantium and the
Franks in 812, Dalmatian towns remained under the eastern empire while
the Croats were loyal allies of the Carolingians. In the first half of the ninth
century, the Byzantines organized an archontia in Dalmatia with its center
in Iader (present-day Zadar).26 In this time, the earliest charter of a
Croatian ruler, Duke Trpimir, granted certain rights to the Church of
Salona over lands and the tithe in the territories of the Croats.27 The
archbishop is named “of the Church of Salona,”28 identified as “the
metropolis up to the bank of the Danube and through almost all the
kingdom of the Croats.”29 We can suppose that the Church of Salona
24
Jean Darrouzès, “Listes épiscopales du concile de Nicée (787),” Revue des études byzantines
33 (1975): 5-76, at 24-26, 59-60.
25
Radoslav Katičić, “Imena dalmatinskih biskupija i njihovih biskupa u aktima
ekumenskoga koncila u Niceji godine 787” [The Names of Dalmatian Bishoprics and their
Bishops in the Acts of the Ecumenical Council in Nicaea (787)], in idem, Uz početke, 25-35.
26
For the first time the archontia of Dalmatia is mentioned in the Taktikon of Uspenskij;
Ferluga, Vizantiska uprava, 49-54.
27
Miho Barada maintains the authenticity of the charters of Trpimir and Muncimir and
states that they were models for the charters of the successors of these Croatian rulers. See
Miho Barada, “Dvije naše vladarske isprave: diplomatično-paleografska studija” [Two
Charters of Our Rulers: Diplomatic and Palaeographic Study], Croatia sacra 13-14 (1937):
1-96. Nada Klaić has challenged the authenticity of these documents. She argues that their
form of a private document does not correspond to the pattern of a royal charter in Europe.
She states that all the charters of Croatian rulers were composed in the second half of the
twelfth century, although the content of the charters can reflect the earlier circumstances.
See Nada Klaić, “O Trpimirovoj darovnici kao diplomatičkom i historijskom dokumentu”
[On the Donation of Trpimir as Diplomatic and Historical Document], VAHD 62 (1960):
105-155. Olga Perić shows that the donation of Trpimir consists of several linguistic layers,
i.e. the authentic charter of Trpimir may have been recast. See Olga Perić, “Jezični slojevi
Trpimirove isprave” [Linguistic Layers of the Charter of Trpimir], Živa antika 34 (1-2)
(1984): 165-170.
28
Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, ed. Marko Kostrenčić, vol. 1
(Zagreb: JAZU, 1967): 5, no. 3 (4 March 852) (hereafter CD 1): Petrus, Salonitanę ecclesie
archiepiscopus.
29
CD 1, 5, no. 3: metropolis usque ripam Danubii et pene per totum regnum Chroatorum.
Where he is 109
mentioned here means in fact the Church of Spalato, and the holy martyr
Domnius, the first bishop and the holy protector of Salona, along with St.
Anastasius, St. Cosmas, and St. Damian, is obviously associated with this
Church.30
Even though the previously quoted passage is obscure, it is most
probable that the Church of Spalato sought to be the ecclesiastical
metropolis for the huge territory. The territory identified in the charter
seems to have been an exaggeration, for it is hard to imagine that the
jurisdiction of Salona–Spalato spread up to the Danube. However, it can be
explained as a claim of the archbishop of Spalato supported by the Croatian
Duke Trpimir, who called Archbishop Peter of Salona his “dear godfather”
(dilectus compater). Moreover, the same attitude of the predecessor of
Trpimir, Mislav, to the Church of Salona–Spalato is assumed from the fact
that he granted to it the tithe from his possessions in Klis, one of the
residences of the Trpimirovići.
In 879, Pope John VIII received letters from Duke Branimir of
Croatia, who confirmed the spiritual loyalty of the Croats to the Roman
Church.31 The predecessor of Branimir, Duke Zdeslav, the son of Trpimir,
came to rule over Croatia with considerable help from the Byzantine
emperor.32 Only a few mentions of Zdeslav survive and thus we can only
speculate that he tried to orient the Croatian Church towards the East.33
Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ story about the Christianization of the
heathen Croats under Emperor Basil I (867-886) is probably related, at
30
CD 1, 5, no. 3: Si quis vero de superscriptis quicquid deo inspirante amore sanctorum inflamati . .
. optulimus, concessimus et in posterum inconuulsa, firmata manere censuimus, in cenobium sanctorum
martirum Domnii, Anastasii, Cosme et Damiani, ut, si quis diripere uel subtrahere aut per uim
opponere tentauerit . . . uinculo insolubili anathemate maranatha denodetur. . . . According to
Barada, “Dvije naše,” 32, this row of saints associated with the church of Spalato confirms
the authenticity of the charter. He refers to the copy of the Psalter compiled under
archbishop Paul of Spalato (1015-1030) in honor of “Holy Martyrs Domnius, Anastasius
and also Saints Cosmas and Damian.”
31
CD 1, 13, no. 10; CD 1, 14, no. 11: tuę nobilitati dignas ualde gratias his nostri apostolatus
litteris agimus paternoque amore, utpote karissimum filium, ad gremium sanctę sedis apostolicę matris
tuę, de cuius uidelicet purissimo fonte patres tui melliflua sanctę predicationis potauere fluenta
redeuntem suscipimus. . . .
32
Documenta historiae Chroaticae periodum antiquam illustrantia, ed. Franjo Rački (Zagreb:
Sumptibus Academiae scientiarum et artium, 1877), 373, no. 185: His diebus Sedesclavus,
Tibimiri ex progenie, imperiali fultus praesidio Constantinopolim veniens, Sclavorum ducatum
arripuit.
33
The letter of Pope John VIII (early 879; CD 1, 12, no. 9) dilecto filio Sedesclauo, glorioso
comiti Sclauorum, shows that the relations between Rome and Croatia were not interrupted.
At the beginning of the letter, the pope named St. Peter and St. Paul the protectors of
Zdeslav; however, it may have been merely a rhetorical device.
110 Vadim Prozorov
least to a certain extent, to Zdeslav’s pro-Byzantine policy and Basil I’s

attempts to gain the loyalty of Croatia for Constantinople.34
After the overthrow and death of Zdeslav,35 it seemed necessary
for Branimir to confirm his fidelity to Rome, which may have been
questioned in the preceding years. From this we can conclude that under
Zdeslav the aggressive Byzantine policy in the Balkans had won over the
Croatian prince and Church to Constantinople. Now, under Branimir, they
returned to the spiritual guidance of Rome.36 The pope welcomed this act
and blessed the Croats in several letters.37
The bishopric of Nona (present-day Nin), the head of which
appears as the bishop of the Croats in the acts of the first council in
Spalato, was founded sometime in the mid-ninth century – as it is usually
considered.38 However, the first bishop of Nona who is known to historians
34
DAI, 68-78.
35
Rački, Documenta, 374, no. 187.
36
However, there could be another explanation. Branimir overthrew Zdeslav, Trpimir’s
son, the legal heir, and thus appeared as a usurper of power, and that is why he hurried to
assure Rome of his and his people’s fidelity, trying to legitimate his position.
37
CD 1, 13-15, 18-19, nos. 10, 11, and 14.
38
There are many different opinions in Croatian historiography concerning the foundation
and subordination of the bishopric of Nona. Most authors have dated the establishment of
the bishopric of Nin to the ninth century: 1) Ferdo Šišić, Priručnik izvora hrvatske historije [A
Reference Book of the Sources on Croatian History] (Zagreb: Naklada Kraljevina Hrvatske–
Slavonije–Dalmacije zemaljske vlade, 1914), 190-191, and Josip Srebrnić, “Odnošaji pape
Ivana X. prema Bizantu i Slavenima na Balkanu” [Attitudes of Pope John X towards
Byzantium and the Slavs in the Balkans], in Zbornik kralja Tomislava u spomen tisućugodišnjice
Hrvatskoga kraljevstva [A Collection of King Tomislav in Memory of the Millenium of the
Croatian Kingdom] (Zagreb: JAZU, 1925), 134: the early ninth century, a suffragan of
Split; 2) Franjo Rački, Nutarnje stanje Hrvatske prije XII. stoljeća [The Situation in Croatia
until the Twelfth Century], Rad JAZU 116 (1894): 41-42, and Svetozar Ritig, Povjest i
pravo slovenštine u crkvenom bogoslužju, vol. 1 [History and Right of the Slavonic Language in
Liturgy] (Zagreb: C. Albrecht, 1910), 131, 149: under Pope Nicholas I (858-867), a
suffragan of Split; 3) Marko Perojević, “Ninski biskup Teodozije” [Bishop Theodosius of
Nin], Prilog VAHD 1 (1922): 1-37, assumed that the bishop of the Croats who had been
chorbishop received the title of bishop in the mid-ninth century and was subordinated to
the patriarch of Aquileia; 4) Miho Barada, “Episcopus Chroatensis,” Croatia sacra 1 (1931):
161-215, wrote that the bishopric of Nin was founded between 864 and 867 under Prince
Domagoj, when Dalmatian cities supported Patriarch Photius, whereas the Croats remained
loyal to Rome. The bishop of the Croats was subordinated to the pope, since Dalmatian
cities were not under the jurisdiction of Rome, and, although the bishop of Spalato bore the
title of archbishop, he was not the metropolitan of Dalmatia; 5) Nada Klaić, Povijest Hrvata
u ranom srednjem vijeku [A History of the Croats in the Early Middle Ages] (Zagreb: Školska
knjiga, 1971), 232-239, posed the hypothesis according to which the bishopric of Nona was
founded under Duke Trpimir, somewhere in the mid–ninth century, and supervised by the
patriarchate of Aquileia; 6) Neven Budak, Prva stoljeća Hrvatske [The First Centuries of
Croatia] (Zagreb: Hrvatska Sveučilišna naklada, 1994), 92-96, refers to the fact that the
church of Nin continued to exist from Late Antiquity, pointing out that the archpriest of
Where he is 111
is Theodosius. We can infer that he had predecessors only from the letter
of Pope John VIII on 7 June 879.39 It can be also presumed from the letter
of Pope Nicholas I (858-867) that the bishopric of Nona had been
established under this pope, but initially without his consent. This is the
famous fragment included in the Decretum Gratiani (p. III de consecratione,
dist. I, c. 8). The pope laid the following question before the clergy and
people of the Church of Nona: how can the Church as a congregation of
catholics (catholicorum collectio) be established without the pope’s consent if
even a new basilica cannot be built without his decision?40
The significant act of papal policy at that time in Dalmatia was
the consecration of Bishop Theodosius of Nona in Rome.41 We can infer
from the letters of Pope John VIII that Theodosius visited Rome soon after
the pope’s invitation.42 The Roman pontiff referred to the fact that
Theodosius’ predecessors had been consecrated in Rome. It seems
improbable to assume that this is a mere expression of the pope’s wish or a
rhetorical device instead of the reality. The bishopric of Nona had been
constituted recently and probably before Theodosius’ very eyes. Six or
seven years later, when Stephen V (VI) (885-891) occupied the see of
Rome, the same Theodosius became archbishop of Salona, i.e. metropolitan
of Dalmatia.
Pope John VIII sent a letter to Dalmatia along with the above-
mentioned letters to Croatia.43 He urged the Dalmatian bishops to return
to the Roman Church, highlighting the fact that it was the tradition of
their predecessors to follow the spiritual guidance of Rome and receive the
pallium there.44 In the ninth century, the pallium was conferred by the pope
on all metropolitan bishops who had addressed a corresponding request to
Rome, and it became a sign and sanction of their jurisdiction over their
provinces. The metropolitans had to apply to Rome for the pallium and
Nona may have been under the jurisdiction of Zadar. According to him, the bishopric of
Nona was founded by the clergy of Nona without the pope’s consent. However, it was
subordinated to the Roman church.
39
CD 1, 16, no. 12.
40
CD 1, 8, no. 4. Regarding the construction of a new basilica, Nicholas I refers to the
decree of Pope Gelasius I in: Epistolae Romanorum pontificum genuinae, ed. Andreas Thiel, vol.
1 (Braunsberg: Eduard Peter, 1868), Ep. 14.4, 364.
41
CD 1, 16, no. 12: Sed toto corde totaque uoluntate ad gremium sedis apostolicę, unde antecessores
tui diuinę legis dogmata melliflua cum sacrę institutionis forma summique sacerdotii honorem
sumpserunt, redeas, quatenus et ipse ab apostolica sede, quę caput et magistra est omnium ecclesiarum
dei, episcopalem consecrationem per nostrę manus imposionem [sic] Christo annuente percipias.
42
CD 1, 18-19, no. 14.
43
CD 1, 16, no. 13.
44
CD 1, 17, no. 13.
112 Vadim Prozorov
then submit their profession of faith, usually in person.45 Pope John VIII’s
words from his letter to Dalmatia presumably mean that the Dalmatian
archbishop, who had “the honor of the highest priesthood” in Dalmatia,
received the consecration not from the Roman Church, from which his
predecessor had accepted “the apostolic doctrine,” but from another center,
which may have been Constantinople. It is significant in this sense that the
pope offered his “powerful support” to the Dalmatian bishops if they
“hesitated to revert to us, or receive the consecration and the pallium
because of any considerations concerning the Greeks or the Slavs.”46 He
ordered the Dalmatian bishops and people to elect an archbishop who
would accept consecration (gratiam episcopalis consecrationis) and the pallium
from the pope “according to the ancient tradition.”47 The pope stressed in
his letter that there was a tradition of papal spiritual guidance and
institutional subordination of the Dalmatian ecclesiastical province to the
Roman Church, but it had been broken by Dalmatia’s turn to
Constantinople. We do not know whether he succeeded in his intention,
but he seems to have seen in the bishop of Salona–Spalato the metropolitan
of Dalmatia.
The letter was addressed “to the bishops Vitalis of Zadar, Dominic
of Osor, and other Dalmatian bishops, as well as Archpriest John of the
Holy see of Salona,” and “to all the population of Spalato, as well as Zadar
and all the other cities.” We can presume that “the Holy see” of Salona–
Spalato was vacant when the pope wrote his letter, and that the bishop of
Zadar appeared in the first place in the intitulation as the senior Dalmatian
bishop. Nevertheless, in the reference to the “Archpriest John of the Holy
see of Salona,” there is a hint at the exceptional rights of the Church of
Salona. The name of “the Holy see of Salona” (Sancta sedis Salonitana) is
suggestive. Moreover, the designation of the population of Spalato over
that of Zadar suggests that the former was more important in an
ecclesiastical sense than the latter.
The Dalmatian bishops elected a new archbishop of Salona–
Spalato, the evidence for which can be found in the HS. Thomas of Spalato
writes that “Marinus was archbishop in the time of King Charles and Duke
45
Steven A. Schoenig, The Papacy and the Use and Understanding of the Pallium from the
Carolingians to the Early Twelfth Century (Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Columbia
University, 2009), 31-77, 184-201.
46
CD 1, 17, no. 13.
47
CD 1, 17, no. 13: Quapropter uos . . . hortamur, ut . . . electus a uobis canonice archiepiscopus una
cum uestro omnium consensu et uoluntate ad nos ueniens gratiam episcopalis consecrationis sanctumque
pallium a nobis more pristino incunctanter percipiat. This means that the pope consecrated the
archbishop of Salona by himself, probably according to the tradition continuing from the
consecration of John of Ravenna.
Where he is 113
Branimir of Sclavonia.”48 His name also appears in the letter of Pope

Stephen V (VI).49
After Marinus’ death, Bishop Theodosius of Nona had the
ambition to occupy the see of Salona–Spalato.50 Presumably, Theodosius
appealed to the patriarch of Aquileia, the closest metropolitan center in the
territories of the Franks, who were the senior allies of the Croats. Patriarch
Walpertus consecrated him as the bishop of Spalato.51 Stephen V (VI)
reproached the former for intruding into another’s province, namely
Salona, which was not under his jurisdiction.52 In his letter to Theodosius,
the pope reproved him for having received consecration from Aquileia
when he should have accepted it from Rome. Moreover, Bishop Theodosius
violated the rule according to which a bishop was not allowed to exchange
one see for another.53 It is not clear whether Theodosius occupied two sees
at the same time, which seems rather improbable. The pope says it,
however, as he compares the exchange of a see to the exchange of a wife.54
It is likely that he meant that this change of see would be regarded as
having two wives, since no one may cancel his first consecration, just as no
one may divorce a wife or a husband.
In the next letter to Theodosius in 887/888, Pope Stephen V (VI)
greeted his zeal in restoring churches all over the province with these
significant words: “We wish very much that the church of Salona which, as
48
HS, 58-59, ch. 13. Charles the Fat was Louis the German’s youngest son, king of
Alemannia (Swabia) from 876, king of Italy from 880, and crowned emperor in 881; he
died in 888.
49
CD 1, 21, no. 17.
50
CD 1, 15-16, no. 12; 1, 18-19, no. 14.
51
It can be presumed from the letter of Stephen V to Theodosius (CD 1, 21, no. 17).
52
CD 1, 20, no. 16: transgressis terminis tibi commissis in ecclesia Salonensi episcopum ad
indecentiam sedis apostolicae praesumpsisti.
53
CD 1, 21, no. 17: Desine iam tali tabescere ignavia et disce paternis obedire regulis, ne inveniaris
statutos a partibus terminos transgredi vel per ambitionem de maiori ad maiorem transire ecclesiam,
quod tentantem laica etiam communione sacri privant canones. This prohibition was confirmed by
various conciliar decisions with some minor modifications but with its essence intact. In the
collection of Dionysius Exiguus Codex canonum ecclesiasticorum: Chalcedon (451), canon 5 (PL
67, col. 172D); Carthage (419), canon 71 (PL 67, col. 205B). The council of Serdica based
it on the principle that a cleric should not seek any profit from leaving his perhaps smaller
and poorer church for another larger and richer one: Serdica (343), canons 1 and 2 in the
collection of Dionysius Exiguus (PL 67, cols. 176D-177B); Hamilton Hess, The Early
Development of Canon Law and the Council of Serdica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),
162-178.
54
The situation was traditionally regarded in the Church as a break of matrimonial
relations, a mystical union between the clergyman and the church where he had been
consecrated. Cf. Hess, Early Development, 162-163.
114 Vadim Prozorov
you say, has been restored, should return to its previous standing.”55 He
also mentioned the erection of new churches. As Theodosius wanted to
obtain the pallium from the pope, Stephen promised to confer it on him
upon arrival in Rome. If Theodosius visited Rome, he probably received the
pallium, the pope’s confirmation of the archbishop’s metropolitan rights.
In 892, the Croatian ruler Muncimir confirmed the donation of his
father Trpimir, for the first time calling the church of Spalato Spalatensis
ecclesia and its head Peter Spalatensis archiepiscopus. It is expressive that,
although Peter of Spalato is called archbishop, his opponent, who bears the
German name of Aldefredus and was the most probable successor of
Theodosius in the see of Nona, is cautiously named the head of the church
of Nona (Nonensis praesul). Presumably, we should seek the reasons for the
future claim of Bishop Gregory of Nona to the primacy in Dalmatia in that
precedent, that is, when the bishop of Nona became the archbishop of
Salona.
Muncimir’s charter raises several questions. Firstly, it reflects the
arguments of the churches of Salona–Spalato and Nona concerning
Trpimir’s donation to the former. Both churches submitted claims to this
donation, but there is no evidence that the possessions in question were
ever obtained by the church of Nona. Meanwhile they were definitely
donated to the archbishopric of Salona–Split according to Trpimir’s
charter.
Secondly, the argument of Aldefredus of Nona was as follows: “it
[the church of St. George] is not the possession of the church of Spalato,
but pertains to the dominion of our church and should not be the
possession of the church of St. Domnius and St. Anastasius since it had
been given for temporary use to the head of this church.”56 To be fair,
Trpimir prohibited in his donation that the church of St. Domnius and St.
Anastasius, i.e. Salona-Spalato, should be deprived of the property donated
by him “in the future” (in posterum).57
Finally, could the change of the title of archbishop of Salona to
that of Spalato reflect the situation when the bishop of Spalato, then under
the jurisdiction of Constantinople, lost his metropolitan rights in Dalmatia
in favor of the bishop of Nona, who had kept his loyalty to Rome? In any
case, the Croatian ruler seems to have taken sides with Archbishop Peter of
55
CD 1, 22, no. 18: Salonitana ecclesia, quam deo auxiliante restitutam asseris, ut [ad] pristinum
gradum redeat, inhianter cupimus.
56
CD 1, 23, no. 20: Non ita habetur, sed nostre potius ecclesiae dominio detinetur, quoniam non in
ecclesia sanctorum Domnii et Anastasii, ut dicitis, possidenda, sed ipsius presuli fruenda ad tempus
tradita est.
57
CD 1, 5, no. 3.
Where he is 115
Spalato against Bishop Aldefredus of Nona, and confirmed the donation by

his predecessor to the former church.
Archbishop John of Salona–Spalato appears for the first time in
the catalogue of archbishops in Thomas’ HS, where it is written: “John was
archbishop in the year of Our Lord 914, in the time of Duke Tomislav.”58
The name of his closest predecessor emerges in Duke Muncimir’s
confirmation of the donation of Duke Trpimir to the church of Salona in
892: Archbishop Peter of Spalato, the first archbishop whose title was
“archbishop of Spalato” rather than “archbishop of Salona.”59 Meanwhile,
in the catalogue of archbishops in the HS, Archbishop Marinus, whose
name belongs to the time of the Carolingian King Charles the Fat (King of
Italy from 880, Emperor 881-888), precedes Archbishop John. Archbishop
Martinus – “in the time of Emperor Theodosius” – is called the nearest
successor of John in the catalogue, so a gap of fifty-six years separates the
mention of John and Martinus in the catalogue.60
Although the precise date and circumstances of the consecration of
Archbishop John remain unknown, he was already archbishop in 914
according to Thomas of Spalato. All that is certain is that he disappeared
before 925, when Dalmatian bishops led by Archbishop John, King (and
above-mentioned Duke)61 Tomislav of Croatia, and Duke Michael of
Zahumlje, along with the aristocracy, appealed to Pope John X asking him
to send legates with an “admonition containing the teaching of the
Christian religion” (monitorium christiane religionis dogma continentem). The
pope dispatched his legates, bishops John of Ancona and Leo of Palestrina,
with a letter concerning the use of the Slavonic language in the metropolis
of Salona.62 In the papal letter, John is called Archbishop of Salona
58
HS, 60-61, ch. 13.
59
CD 1, 22-24, no. 20.
60
HS, 60-61, ch. 13. Archbishop Martinus is also mentioned in the documents from 994
and 1000 (CD 1, 47, no. 32; 1, 51, no. 35). The mention of Emperor Theodosius in the
previously cited passage is considered Archdeacon Thomas’ mistake. John Tzimiskes (969-
976) was emperor in 970. The probable explanation for this mistake is suggested by
Katičić, Uz početke, 110-111.
61
Ivo Goldstein is of the opinion that the available sources cannot provide precise
information concerning the titles of Croatian rulers until King Zvonimir, and that therefore
we cannot be consistent in their use. He proposes to follow the Croatian historiographic
tradition and to call them rulers. See Ivo Goldstein, “O latinskim i hrvatskim naslovima
hrvatskih vladara do početka 12. stoljeća” [On the Latin and Croatian Titles of the Croatian
Rulers until the Early Twelfth Century], Historijski zbornik 36 (1983): 141-164.
62
CD 1, 32, no. 23. The same pattern was followed when Pope John X sent his legate
Bishop Peter of Orte to the synod in Hohenaltheim (916): praefatus sancti Petri et domini
Iohannis pape missus proferens cartam apostolicis litteris inscriptam, qua monebamur, arguebamur et
instruebamur de omnibus ad veram religionem christiane fidei pertinentibus (MGH Concilia 6/1,
19-20).
116 Vadim Prozorov
(Salonitane ecclesie archiepiscopus), but he still has not received the pallium
from the pope.
At the beginning of the aforementioned letter, the pope
reproaches Archbishop John for not having visited Rome in a long time.63
Moreover, it seems that he did not visit Rome at all, since he did not have
the pallium as the pope’s confirmation of his archiepiscopal dignity.64 At
that time, not every metropolitan was granted the right to wear the pallium
and the title of archbishop. In the Carolingian period, in addition to the
institutional prerogatives, conferring the pallium suggested special relations
between the see and the papacy. In the case of Salona, we should bear in
mind the fact that in 879 Pope John VIII wrote that the archbishop of
Salona had to be honored by the pallium after his consecration in Rome, i.e.
that his consecration should be performed in Rome.65 Pope Stephen V (VI)
also referred to this tradition, which probably goes back to the consecration
of John of Ravenna by the pope.66
When the papal legates arrived in Dalmatia, the council was
called. The ecclesiastical organization of Dalmatia and Croatia was the
main issue on the agenda of the council of Spalato in 925.67 Scholars debate
the question of the political subordination of these areas in the ninth and
tenth centuries.68 The council of 925 confirmed the rights of the church of
Spalato to the legacy of ancient Salona. It also confirmed the primacy of
63
CD 1, 29, no. 22.
64
Leo VI granted him the pallium after the council in Spalato in 928 (CD 1, 39, no. 27).
65
CD 1, 17, no. 13.
66
HS, 54-55, ch. 11.
67
Canons 1, 2, 3; canons 8, 9, 11, and 12 deal with the cases of individual bishoprics,
although the two last canons have great importance for the ecclesiastical organization of
Dalmatia and Croatia in general.
68
Stjepan Antoljak, “Zadar za vrjeme hrvatskih narodnih vladara” [Zadar at the Time of
the Croatian National Rulers], Radovi Filozofskog fakulteta u Zadru 14-15 (1976): 23-24.
Antoljak follows the traditional opinion of Croatian historiography (up to the mid-
twentieth century) that the Croatian king Tomislav was honored with the title of consul by
the Byzantine emperor and delegated power over Dalmatia. Meanwhile, Jadran Ferluga,
Nada Klaić, and Lujo Margetić have argued that Dalmatia was under the jurisdiction of
Byzantium at the beginning of the tenth century. See Nada Klaić, “U povodu priloga Lj.
Karamana, O nekim pitanjima hrvatske povijesti do XIII stoljeća” [On the Supplement of
Lj. Karaman ‘On Some Questions of Croatian History until the Thirteenth Century’],
Historijski Zbornik 17 (1964): 414; Ferluga, L’amministrazione bizantina in Dalmazia, 186;
Lujo Margetić, “Marginalije uz rad V. Koščaka ‘Pripadnost istočne obale (…)’” [Marginal
Notes on the Work of V. Koščak ‘The Sway Over the Eastern (…)’], Historijski Zbornik 32-
34 (1980-1981): 277-283. Mladen Ančić concludes that Byzantium lost control of the
eastern Adriatic coast after the overthrow of Duke Zdeslav in 879. See his, “Imperij na
zalasku. Nestanak bizantske vlasti na istočnoj obali Jadrana u 9. stoljeću” [The End of
Empire: Disappearance of Byzantine Power on the Eastern Adriatic Coast in the Ninth
Century], Radovi Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Zadru 41 (1999): 1-20.
Where he is 117
the church of Spalato, where the body of the holy Dalmatian protector St.
Domnius was buried, in Dalmatia as well as in Croatia. The text of Canon
1 runs:
Since long ago Blessed Domnius was sent by Peter the Apostle to
preach in Salona, he has established that this church and city, where
his holy remains rest, shall have primacy among all the Churches of
this province and shall legitimately obtain the name of metropolis
over all the dioceses, therefore by the order of its bishops, who by
divine grace retain this see, the synod and the consecration of the
bishops shall be celebrated, because the Lord says, ‘Where he is,
thither will the eagles be gathered together.’69
Since the metropolitan prerogatives of the bishop of Salona–Spalato were
challenged by the bishop of Nona, the fathers of the council had to
maintain local customs. Thus, the right of the bishopric of Spalato as a
successor to the archbishopric of Salona to convoke councils and to
consecrate suffragan bishops was confirmed by the authority of the holy
protector of Salona–Spalato, St. Domnius himself.
The tradition of attributing the foundation of episcopal, especially
metropolitan, sees to disciples of the Apostles, and claiming primatial
rights on the grounds of apostolic succession spread across Europe during
the ninth and tenth centuries. The idea was suggested by the forged
preface to the Acts of the Council of Nicaea, included in the ninth-century
Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals.70 Therefore, it is not surprising that at the close of
the ninth century the church of Spalato should attribute its foundation and
its metropolitan competence to the disciple of St. Peter, St. Domnius.
Canons 11 and 12 of the first council in Spalato confirm the
subordination of “the bishop of the Croats (episcopus Croatorum), i.e. the
bishop of Nona, to the archbishop of Spalato. The status of the bishop of
69
CD 1, 31, no. 23: Quoniam antiquitus beatus Domnius ab apostolo Petro predicare Salonam
missus est constituitque, ut ecclesia ipsa et civitas ubi sancta eius membra requiescunt inter omnes
ecclesias provintie huius primatis habeat et metropolis nomine super omnes episcopatus legitime sortiatur,
ita dumtaxat, ut ad eius iussionem episcopi, qui per divinam gratiam cathedram ipsam retinuerint, et
sinodus celebretur et consecratio episcoporum; quia dicente domino, ‘ubi fuerit illuc congregabuntur et
aquile (Luke 17: 37).’
70
Decretales Pseudo–Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni, ed. Paul Hinschius (Leipzig: Bernhard
Tauchnitz, 1863), 255. The Church in the Age of Feudalism, ed. Kempf, 292. The chapter
devoted to the ecclesiastical organization from the ninth to the eleventh century was
written by Friedrich Kempf. He refers particularly to the cases of Trier and Cologne, which
fought over primacy in the tenth century. See in detail: Eugen Ewig, “Kaiserliche und
apostolische Tradition in mittelalterlichen Trier,” Trierer Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst
24-26 (1956-1958): 147-186; Das Bistum Köln von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des 12.
Jahrhunderts, ed. Wilhelm Neuss and Friedrich W. Oediger, vol. 1 of Geschichte des
Erzbistums Köln, ed. Eduard Hegel (Cologne: J. P. Bachem, 1964), 97-111.
118 Vadim Prozorov
Nona before the first council of Spalato is unknown. It can be assumed

that he was considered one of the bishops of Dalmatia,71 and subordinated
to the metropolitan of Salona–Split, as Canon 11 implies: “Let the bishop
of the Croats admit that he is, as we all are, subordinated to our
metropolitan Church.”72
Canon 12 determines that “if the Croatian king or nobles venture
to subdue all the bishoprics of our metropolitan province to their own
pontiff, then no bishop of our province will baptize, or consecrate churches
or priests in the territory of their province.”73 King Tomislav and Duke
Michael appear marginally in the documents. Their participation in the
councils is questionable, although they, together with the Dalmatian
bishops, called upon the pope to send his representatives to Dalmatia. This
canon implies that the king of Croatia and his aristocracy supported the
claim of the bishop of the Croats.
71
CD 1, 32, no. 23. The preamble of the first council of Spalato lists Bishop Gregory of
Nona among the Dalmatian ecclesiastical hierarchy: dictus Croatorum rex et Michaelo cum suis
proceribus simulque episcopis Dalmatiarum, idem Ioannes archiepiscopus primas Spaleto, Forminus,
Gregorius ceterisque episcopis consulenter poposcerunt dictum uenerabilem papam. . . .
72
The fact that Bishop Theodosius was consecrated in Rome means that the bishopric of
Nona had had a certain independent status in Dalmatia under Pope John VIII. When
Theodosius became the archbishop of Salona, the bishopric of Nona may have been
subordinated to the metropolis of Dalmatia. There was an analogous case in the late tenth
century when Bishop Giselher of Merseburg (971-981) became the archbishop of
Magdeburg (981-1004). In order to legitimate Giselher’s transfer from a smaller and poorer
church to another, larger and richer one, the bishopric of Merseburg, Otto the Great’s
foundation, was regarded as nonexistent on the grounds of its uncanonical foundation and
de facto dissolved. Its territories were partly given to the archiepiscopal see, although it did
not last. See Karl Uhlirz, Jahrbücher des deutschen Reiches unter Otto II. und Otto III., vol. 1
(Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1902), 158-159; Siegfried Hirsch, Jahrbücher des deutschen
Reiches unter Heinrich II., vol. 1 (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1862), 274.
73
CD 1, 32, no. 23: Quod si rex et proceres Croatorum omnes dioceseos episcoporum infra limites
nostre metropolitane suo cupiunt vindicare pontifici, nullus ex nostris per omnem provinciam eorum
neque regenerationes faciat, neque ecclesias vel presbiteros consecret; tam(en) in suis sedibus
conmorantibus pro misericordie opus quisquis ad nos accesserit consecrari, regenerari, crismam sibi dari
poposcerit, absque scropulo omni per totam provintiam ipsa tribuant. De cetero autem ipsi, cum suo
pontifice, deo reddant rationem de his omnibus, que in eis chrystiane religionis dogma deffuerit; nostra
coram deo conscientia est absoluta. The distinction between “our metropolis” and “their
province” is not clear. There is probably a mixture of the ecclesiastical and political notions.
“Our metropolis” was certainly an ecclesiastical unit, which must have comprised not only
coastal Dalmatia, but also Croatian territories, since episcopus Croatorum was proclaimed a
suffragan of the metropolitan Church. “Their province” can be perceived as a political unit.
At the beginning of the acts of the councils, it is said that these events took place tempore
Iohannis pape sanctissimo (!), consulato peragente in prouintia Croatorum et Dalmatiarum finibus
Tamisclao et Michaelo (!) in suis finibus presidente duce, beatissimo igitur Ioanne Romane ecclesie
presidente cathedra. Thus “the province of the Croats” was definitely differentiated from the
Dalmatiarum fines, that is, the territories of the Dalmatian cities (Dalmatiarum ciuitates). See
CD 1, 33, no. 23.
Where he is 119
The acts of the first council of Spalato were submitted to the pope
through his legates and Presbyter Peter of Spalato. As the short
introduction to the papal answer reveals, the council’s decisions met with
the open disagreement of Bishop Gregory of Nona, “the bishop of the
Croats,” who “wishing to acquire the primacy over Dalmatian bishops,
which he had not executed before, directed his unjust objections against
the decision of the synod to apostolic ears.”74 All these facts lead to the
conclusion that “the bishop of the Croats,” namely of Nona, aspired to the
metropolitan rights over Dalmatia and Croatia. His pretension was
probably based on the success of Theodosius in the second half of the ninth
century. Nonetheless, there is no evidence to the legality of Gregory’s
claim, and, as it is clear from the previously cited passage, the anonymous
composer of the texts, who called Bishop Gregory “our brother” (frater
noster), asserted that the bishop of Nona never had primacy in Dalmatia.
In his reply, sent through Presbyter Peter, the pope confirmed the
canons of the council, except for the disputable ones.75 It can be supposed
that they were those relating to the question of primacy in Dalmatia and
Croatia (canons 1, 12), subordination of the Croatian bishop (canons 2,
11), and the boundaries of Dalmatian dioceses. John X, who personally
wished to hear the arguments of both sides, proposed that Archbishop
John of Spalato or his representative should visit Rome together with
Bishop Gregory of Nona.
Nothing is known about the results of their argument. However,
in 928, another council was held. The papal legate (apocrisarius),
Madalbertus, on his way to Rome from Bulgaria, where he had moderated
peace negotiations between Bulgaria and Croatia, summoned the second
council of Spalato, which was attended by Bishops John, Forminus, and
Gregory, as well as the Croatian prince (presumably Tomislav) and
aristocracy. Madalbertus, as the papal legate, confirmed all the boundaries
of ancient Dalmatian dioceses under the rule of the archbishop of Spalato,76
as well as “all episcopal privileges according to the ancient decrees for all
74
CD 1, 35, no. 25: Sed cum terminare cuncta legitime antiquo more prestolaremur . . fuit fratris
nostri episcopi nonensis, qui sibi vendicare cupiens primatum Dalmatiarum episcoporum, hoc quod non
expediebat, contra dictam sinodum an auribus apostolicis iniustum iniecit certamen.
75
CD 1, 35-36, no. 25. This is the last mention of the title of the archbishop of Salona in
the documents.
76
CD 1, 37, no. 26: tam Jadaritana quam cetere Dalmatiarum, Arbensis, Velclensis, Absaranensis,
que sunt in occindue parte posite; ecclesie uero alie, que in oriente habentur, id est Stagnensis,
Ragusitana et Catharitana. . . .
120 Vadim Prozorov
churches.”77 The metropolitan rights of Salona were fixed forever for “the
Church of St. Domnius,” that is, Spalato as the successor to Salona.
As far as the bishopric of Nona is concerned, it was completely
abolished, because according to the conciliar decision, “the Church of Nona
had no bishop since ancient times, but only an archpriest under the
supervision of the bishop.”78 The second council applied canon 2 of the first
one to the case of the bishopric of Nona. It decreed that the only sees that
could preserve the status of bishoprics were those which had had a bishop
for a long time, as well as enough clergy and people. As far as minor
ecclesiastical communities in small towns and villages were concerned, the
canon prescribed that, according to the “decrees of the Fathers,” such
churches could not have their own bishops, for thus “the very title of
bishop would be devalued.”79 This canon alludes to canon 6 of the council
in Serdica (342 or 343), which says that a bishop should not be ordained in
a village or small town, since a priest could take care of it.80 As it is said in
the acts of the second council, the Church of Nona had been taken care of
by the “archpriest under the supervision of the bishop.” The bishop very
often entrusted the supervision over baptismal churches to rural
archpriests.81 Their parishes consisted of a baptistery and some chapels.82
77
CD 1, 37, no. 26. As a European parallel to the Salonitan canon, one can regard canon 10
of the synod in Hohenaltheim, which also confirmed privileges of all churches: Privilegia
ecclesiarum et sacerdotum sancti apostoli iussu salvatoris intemerata et inviolata omnibus decreverunt
manere temporibus (MGH Concilia 6/1, 23). It follows canon 15 of the decree of Pseudo-
Anacletus, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. Hinschius, 73, 21-22.
78
CD 1, 37, no. 26: Nonensis vero ecclesia non episcopum antiquitus, sed archipresbiterum sub
dictione episcopi habuisse cognoscitur.
79
CD 1, 31, no. 23: Ut in cunctis ecclesiis, in quibus supra recolitur episcopos habitasse, nunc autem
clero, ordine et populis sufficiens adest infra dioceseos limites, episcopus habeatur; quia iuxta decreta
patrum non licet in modicis ciuitatibus uel villis episcopos statui, ne nomen episcopi uilescat, et ut
episcopus uacans uacantem diocesim cum consilio metropolitani et ceterorum episcoporum commune
accipiat.
80
In the collection of Dionysius Exiguus (PL 67, col. 178A-B): Licentia vero danda non est
ordinandi episcopum aut in vico aliquo, aut in modica civitate, cui sufficit unus presbyter, quia non est
necesse ibi episcopum fieri, ne vilescat nomen episcopi et auctoritas. Non debent in his civitatibus quae
episcopos habuerunt, aut si qua talis, aut tam populosa civitas, quae meretur habere episcopum. See
also Hess, The Early Development of Canon Law and the Council of Serdica, 157-161.
81
The synod of Pavia in 850 decreed that every bishop had to supervise archpriests in rural
parishes, as well as in singulis urbium vicis et suburbanis et per municipalium (MGH Capitularia
2, 118, ch. 6). The capitulary of Verneuil, issued by Carloman, king of the Western Franks
(882-884), prescribes that in vicis autem et villis longe a civitate remotis unusquisque episcopus
reverendos et cautos atque prudentia morem temperatos presbyteros . . . ad quos alii presbyteri minores et
minus cauti suam causam referant (MGH Capitularia 2, 373-374 [March 884]). There is a
chapter in the capitulary of Ravenna, issued by Lambert II (of Spoleto, emperor 892-898) in
898: Ut singulae plebes archipresbyterum habeant (MGH Capitularia 2, 110, ch. 12). It is highly
probable that the acts of the councils in Spalato refer to this archpriest supervising such a
parish as plebania.
Where he is 121
Unfortunately, it is not said which bishop supervised the archpriest of

Nona. We can only suppose that this refers to one of the bishops whose
sees were offered to Gregory of Nona by the council in exchange for his
bishopric. The council proposed that Bishop Gregory should choose the see
of one of three dioceses: Scardonitana, Sisciana, or Delminiensis. Since Siscia
(present-day Sisak) and Delminum were too far away from Nona, the most
appropriate ecclesiastical center for the diocese of Nona would have been
Scardona (present-day Skradin). The church of Nona de facto extended its
jurisdiction, challenged by the councils at Spalato, over the territory of the
Croats, which included the former dioceses of Scardona, Siscia, and
Delminium. Therefore, the fathers of the council corrected the situation
under which the bishop of Nona had controlled all three vacant sees whose
bishops had been unheard since the sixth century.83
Bishop Madalbert took the acts of the council to Rome, where the
deposed and killed John X had been replaced by Leo VI (May/June-
December 928). Leo VI confirmed the decrees of the second council of
Spalato and in his letter to bishops Forminus of Zadar, Gregory of Nona,
and all the Dalmatian bishops, urged them to obey their metropolitan, the
archbishop of Spalato, and not to intrude in another’s diocese. He
approved that the archbishop of Spalato should have his parish in the land
of the Croats, because the Church of Salona had had it and “the parish
could not [be] only inside the walls of the city, but [should stretch]
throughout the lands in the countryside, to villages, landlords’ homesteads,
and churches as well as among the people, [who had been] assigned to it
since ancient times.”84 The pope suggested that Gregory of Nona should
occupy the see of Scardona without any attempt to claim other sees, under
the threat of excommunication. The pope sent the pallium to Archbishop
John of Spalato. From that time, the metropolitans of Dalmatia and
Croatia were called not of Salona, but of Spalato.85
82
Alain Amanieu, “Archiprêtre,” Dictionnaire de droit canonique, vol. 1, ed. Raoul Naz (Paris:
Letouzey and Ané, 1935), 1004-1026. Such archpriests were first mentioned at the sixth-
century councils in Gaul. In the mid-ninth century, the Gallic terminology was applied to
the similar institution in Lombard Italy (e.g. in the previously quoted capitulary of Pavia
issued in 850).
83
CD 1, 37, no. 26. The existence of the diocese of Delminium is questionable, although
the acts of the council of Spalato in 928 confirms it. See counterarguments posed by Ante
Škegro, "Tobožnja Delminijska biskupija” [The Alleged Diocese of Delminium], Opuscula
Archaeologica Radovi Arheološkog zavoda 31 (2008): 283-302.
84
CD 1, 38-39, no. 27.
85
CD 1, 39, no. 27 (928-929): Ioanni, sancte Spalatensis ecclesie archiepiscopo …; CD 1, 47, no.
32 (9 February 994): Martini, archiepiscopi Spalatensis . . .; CD 1, 101, no. 72 (1066):
Laurentio, sancte sedis Spalatine archiepiscopo . . ., etc.
122 Vadim Prozorov
In the present-day historiography, there prevails an opinion that

before 925 the church of Spalato had no metropolitan rights in Dalmatia.86
It found its clearest expression in Mirjana Matijević Sokol’s book.
Discussing Thomas’ narrative about John of Ravenna, and concluding that
his information on the early history of the metropolitan church of Spalato
lacks precision and does not deserve to be believed, the author clearly
postulates that the first canon of the council of Spalato in 925 presents
firm evidence of the elevation of the see of Spalato to metropolitan status
in the tenth century.87
I wanted to argue that if we do not overcriticize the available
sources and their evidence, presented in this paper and mostly well-known
in Croatian historiography since Ivan Lučić's times, it must be admitted
that the see of Spalato claimed metropolitan privileges over the see of
Salona and obtained them before the tenth-century councils of Spalato,
and that the provision of the first canon of the council of Spalato in 925
did not implement, but rather confirm them against the Bishop of Nona’s
lawless pretension.
86
Toma Arhiñakon, Povijest salonitanskih i splitskih prvosvećenika [Historia Salonitanorum
atque spalatinorum pontificum], ed. Olga Perić, Mirjana Matijević Sokol, and Radoslav
Katičić (Split: Književni krug, 2003), 49 n. 1; 408; HS, 58 n. 3; 88 n. 1.
87
Matijević Sokol, Toma Arhiñakon, 91: “Meanwhile it is well-known that the metropolitan
rights of the archbishops of Salona, i.e. of Spalato, were settled in 925 at the first council of
Spalato, when all the bishops of Upper and Lower Dalmatia, including the bishop of the
Croats, were subjected to the first archbishop John as their metropolitan.” Further in the
text, she argues that Pope John VIII was the first to suggest to the Dalmatian churches that
they should restore the metropolitan province, although this project was realized more than
forty years later.
THE BUSINESSMAN SAINT: BISHOP ÆTHELWOLD
IN THE LIBER ELIENSIS
Rachel S. Anderson
According to his earliest biographer, Wulfstan of Winchester, the saint

and bishop Æthelwold (d. 984) was an “apostolic teacher” who was, by his
faith, to “banish the blind darkness of ignorance from men’s hearts, set
alight the minds of believers with the fire of heavenly love, and, driving
away the hunger and poverty that had so long afflicted the mass of the
peoples, fill them full with the banquet of eternal life.”1 Both Wulfstan
and a later adapter of this text, the homilist Ælfric of Eynsham, stress
Æthelwold’s saintly virtues of wisdom and learning, and the benefits those
virtues brought to the Anglo-Saxon people. 2 These two authors were
writing within a few decades of Æthelwold’s death; Ælfric, for example,
specifically dedicates his Vita to Bishop Cenwulf of Winchester, who held
the post from 1005-6.3 Both writers were clearly engaged in promoting
the bishop’s cult at Winchester and throughout England; both went to
pains in order to highlight those virtues that emphasized his saintliness
within the accepted constructs of the notion at that time. However, a man
like Æthelwold, who was a prominent church reformer, one of the
wealthiest men in England, and, as a result, one of the leading intellectual
and economic forces of his day, surely had more facets to his professional
life than are revealed in his vitae. Therefore, it is necessary to go beyond
these vitae, if possible, to determine his political relationships and how he
interacted within a secular world. In this study, I will first briefly examine
how Wulfstan and Ælfric’s texts overlook and downplay his political role
in late tenth-century England. To contrast, I will then more expansively
address how a later text, the Liber Eliensis, offers us greater insight into
Æthelwold’s business acumen and how it endeavors to incorporate this
1
Wulfstan of Winchester, Life of St. Æthelwold, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge and Michael
Winterbottom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 2, 3. Qui euangelicae fidei
inlustratione perfusi caecas ignorantiae tenebras ab humanis cordibus effugarent, et ut credentium
mentes igne superni amoris inflammarent, et, elongata diuturnae mendicitatis esurie, populorum turbas
aeternae uitae epulis satiarent.
2
For a detailed analysis of the priority of Wulfstan’s text, see Michael Lapidge, “Æthelwold
as Scholar and Teacher,” in Bishop Æthelwold: His Career and Influence, ed. Barbara Yorke
(Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), 89, n 1.
3
Ælfric, “Vita S. Æthelwoldi,” in Wulfstan, Life of St. Æthelwold, 71.
124 Rachel S. Anderson
aspect of his personality into his sanctity. Finally, I will conclude by briefly
exploring the dissonance this project creates for the compiler of the Liber
Eliensis when he is faced with the need to valorize Æthelwold’s sharp
economic dealings while subtly denigrating the very strong connection he
had with another major patron of Ely, Queen Ælfthryth (964-1001). In
sum, this project seeks to elucidate the process of hagiography that may be
seen even in non-hagiographic texts, and the ways in which a saint’s image
is one that is constantly changing depending on the needs of an authoring
community.
I. St. Æthelwold: Vitae

Æthelwold was born in the early tenth century (perhaps around 909), most
likely to a noble, but not royal family. 4 As a young man, he became
attached to the court of King Æthelstan (924-939), which enabled him to
join the household of Bishop Ælfhere, where he was ordained as a priest
with the bishop’s nephew, the fellow reformer-saint Dunstan (d. 988).
Æthelwold, Dunstan, and the third major monastic reformer bishop,
Oswald, became the leaders of the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine Reform under
the royal auspices of King Edgar (943-975), who came to the English
throne in 959.5 Æthelwold is widely regarded as being the “most austere”
of the three reformers, and the most interested in the Continental reform
movements of the ninth century, specifically the work of Benedict of
Aniane and the ecclesiastical developments at Fleury, in Francia.6 In fact,
Æthelwold, denied permission to study on the Continent himself, managed
to send a few of his protégés to Fleury; it is increasingly clear that their
reports back to Æthelwold had a significant impact on the latter’s
reformist work.7
The Benedictine Reform was a systematic project, backed by King
Edgar’s enthusiastic support, to replace the secular canons inhabiting many
of the nation’s monastic centres with reformed monks. Æthelwold was first
4
Barbara Yorke, “Introduction” to Bishop Æthelwold, 1, 2.
5
On the history of the Benedictine Reform, see John Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon
England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); John Lowrie Daly, Benedictine Monasticism,
Its Formation and Development through the 12th Century (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965);
and Mechthild Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of the Benedictine Reform (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999).
6
See James Campell, “Observations on English Government from the Tenth to Twelfth
Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 25 (1975): 47-8, and Marco Mostert, The
Political Theology of Abbo of Fleury: A Study of the Ideas about Society and Law of the Tenth-
Century Monastic Reform Movement (Hilversum: Verloren, 1987).
7
Yorke, “Introduction”, 2. See also Patrick Wormald, “Æthelwold and His Continental
Counterparts: Contact, Comparison, Contrast,” in Bishop Æthelwold, 13-42.
Businessman saint 125
sent to the Abbey of Abingdon, which was located near the royal seat of
Winchester. The reform process was one that required the reformers to
have a great deal of political acumen; it must not have been easy to
convince a group of secular canons to leave their homes, and to further
convince many local landowners to give up estates that had reverted back
to their families from monastic control generations ago. Royal power – and
threat – was almost certainly part of the equation; in return, Æthelwold
and the other reformers did their best to enhance the royal power of the
king with the beneficent aura of the church. Æthelwold was instrumental
in the reformation of a number of monastic sites; however, his influence
seemed to be most effective in the area around Winchester and in East
Anglia, where he sponsored the reforms of Peterborough, Ely, and
Thorney.
Æthelwold’s vitae are, first and foremost, hagiographic documents.
Their goal was to establish Æthelwold’s sanctity and they did this by
focusing almost exclusively on his religious, rather than secular life. In her
compendious study, “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,”
Barbara Yorke teases out the ways in which Æthelwold took part in
contemporary political issues, examining his relationships with Kings
Athelstan and Edgar, and his especially close ties with Queen Ælfthryth.8
Yorke focuses on what the analysis of other historical documents from the
late tenth century can add to our understanding of Æthelwold’s political
life, even while noting that the vitae cannot but provide some indication of
Æthelwold’s involvement in the duties of kingship. Yet these vitae failed to
mention any of Æthelwold’s more contentious political actions, such as his
support for King Eadwig’s marriage to Ælfgifu in 955 (famously opposed
by Dunstan) and his support for Æthelræd to succeed Edgar in 975, rather
than Æthelræd’s elder half-brother, Edward.9 On both of these occasions,
Æthelwold was on the losing side of the debate; his hagiographers chose to
remain silent about these aspects of Æthelwold’s political life. They also
avoided mentioning Æthelwold’s business acumen. While Wulfstan (but
interestingly not Ælfric) notes that he was quite wealthy in passing, he
focuses on Æthelwold’s generosity during a time of famine, or his “sedula
cooperatione” in the founding of monastic institutions throughout
England. 10 If we are to get a stronger sense of Æthelwold’s economic
8
Barbara Yorke, “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,” in Bishop Æthelwold,
73-74, 81-83.
9
See Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971),
365-366; 372-374. For a deeper exploration of the relationship between Eadwig and Edgar,
see Shashi Jayakumar, “Eadwig and Edgar: Politics, Propaganda, Faction,” in Edgar, King of
the English, 959-975 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 84-90.
10
Wulfstan, Life of St. Æthelwold, ch. 29, 45, 47; ch. 27, 42.
presence in the late tenth century, we must consult other, later texts for
this aspect of his life. The Liber Eliensis is one such document that gives us
insight into Æthelwold the businessman.
II. St. Æthelwold: Liber Eliensis

The Liber Eliensis, a “cartulary-chronicle”, was compiled toward the end of
the twelfth century by an unknown monk (or perhaps monks) at Ely
Abbey. 11 This compiler was most likely English, or at least was able to
read English, as he writes in his preface that he consulted texts “which
were committed to writing in English.” and assembled information
contained in “English and Latin writs.” 12 He divides the text into three
books, the first of which is dedicated to the story of Ely’s major saint,
Æthelthryth, her successors, and the decline of the monastery in the
following centuries. The second book is about the “time of the monks” of
Ely, or the period after 970, when the foundation was reformed under the
patronage of Bishop Æthelwold and the leadership of Abbot Byrhtnoth.
This lengthy section covers up to 1109, in which year began the “times of
the bishops,” or when Ely gained the episcopal seat. The third part of the
Liber Eliensis naturally details the years following 1109 up until 1173, the
compiler’s present day.13
As the compiler’s comments in the prologue intimate, the source
material for the Liber Eliensis is varied and, at times, indeterminate to a
modern scholar. One of the most valuable sources for the compiler’s
portrait of the era of Bishop Æthelwold’s benefaction of the abbey is a text
called, variously, the Libellus Æthelwoldi episcopi (The Little Book of Bishop
Æthelwold) or The Book of the Lands of Bishop Æthelwold. This book forms
the basis for much of Book II of the Liber Eliensis; the Libellus itself may be
found in two manuscripts: Cambridge, Trinity College O.2.41 pp. 1-64
(C) and London, British Library Cotton Vespasian A.xix 2r-27v (A).14 This
text is an early twelfth-century production compiled under the direction of
Bishop Hervey (1108-1131), most likely by Gregory, the same monk who
11
Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1962).
English Translation: Janet Fairweather, trans., Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely from
the Seventh Century to the Twelfth (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005). For more on the background
of the text, see Janet Fairweather, “Introduction”, in Liber Eliensis, xiv, xvii.
12
Liber Eliensis, Prologus (Blake, 1; Fairweather, 1): Anglico stilo inserta sunt . . . , de scriptis
Anglicis et Latinis.
13
Fairweather, “Introduction”, xxiii.
14
Alan Kennedy, “Law and Litigation in the Libellus Æthelwoldi episcopi,” Anglo-Saxon
England 24 (1995): 131. An edition of the text of these manuscripts is promised in Simon
Keynes and Alan Kennedy, Anglo-Saxon Ely: Records of Ely Abbey and Its Benefactors in the
Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Woodbridge: Boydell, forthcoming).
wrote the metrical vita of St. Æthelthryth. 15 Alan Kennedy, a leading

expert on this text, speculates that Gregory’s source was a pre-Conquest
Old English text that might have been composed around 990, “perhaps in
response to anxieties about the security of the Ely endowment in the
disturbances which followed the death of Bishop Æthelwold in 984.” 16
Thus a significant portion of Book II of the Liber Eliensis may be
theoretically traced to a contemporary record of the events which it
narrates. However, the compiler of the Liber Eliensis, while reliant on the
Libellus of Æthelwold, was not slavishly devoted to it. He includes other
material in Book II, much of it presumably from local historical sources
and oral tradition.17 These sources, most of which were probably of later,
twelfth-century provenance, represent the development of institutional
thought about the figure of Bishop Æthelwold and his relationships with
other major figures of Anglo-Saxon England. By examining Æthelwold’s
portrayal in Book II of the Liber Eliensis, and in particular those episodes
which the compiler takes from source material other than the Libellus, we
may see the ways in which the bishop’s legacy was developed at Ely during
the first 200 years after his death.
The Liber Eliensis, and presumably the Libellus, show that
Æthelwold’s primary role seems to be one of a real estate broker for the
monks. Æthelwold clearly was an active, involved participant in a number
of land deals that all increased the foundation of Ely Abbey. What is
interesting, though, is that many of these deals, especially the larger ones,
were not simply donations or bequests on the part of the landowner.
Often, Æthelwold was the major financial force in the deal, providing cash
to purchase land that he subsequently handed over to Ely, or engineering
land trades that enabled the Abbey to acquire a piece of land close to the
Isle of Ely rather than further away, and thus less useful to the monks.
Many transactions had elements of all of the above, plus an
occasional hint of coercion here and there. For example, chapter 4 of Book
II describes a particularly complex deal that established the base
foundation for the abbey. In this exchange, Edgar made 20 hides of land18
available to Æthelwold within the Isle of Ely, along with the “honour and
soke” of 7.5 hundreds – two within the isle itself, and the rest in East
Anglia. The king did not give the land and privileges without recompense,
however. For his generosity, Æthelwold gave to the king 60 hides in
Harting “which he got from his lord Æthelstan,” £100, and a golden cross
15
Kennedy, “Law and Litigation,” 131.
16
Ibid., 133.
17
Fairweather, “Introduction,” xv.
18
One hide = 120 acres.
“embellished with marvellous workmanship and filled with relics.” Edgar

then proceeded to offer the cross back to the abbey, along with a
“wonderful gospel-book.” Æthelwold in turn granted Ely the lands he
acquired in this deal. 19 This section of the text ends with the rather
ominous sentence that “It needs to be set down here in order that it may
be clear to all with what stability the house of God rests upon its
foundation.” 20 This statement highlights an impetus behind the
compilation of the Liber Eliensis. It was, at its heart, a document with a
very specific purpose: to prove that the lands it claimed were truly the
abbey’s. The Norman Conquest and William’s subsequent redistribution of
land were not kind to Ely; East Anglia nurtured some of the longest-
lasting resistance to Norman rule post 1066, including the famous
rebellion led by Hereward the Wake.21 The Liber Eliensis, by making every
step of these early transactions clear, up to and including the praise of St.
Æthelwold’s magnificent generosity, was both a major rhetorical point in
their favor and an assertion of their claims to the lands described therein.
It is often clear, as even a cursory reading of the Liber Eliensis
shows, that Æthelwold’s generosity was facilitated by his strong business
acumen. In chapter 10, the compiler-author of the Liber Eliensis describes a
particularly dramatic scene:
[a noble couple, Leofric and his wife] were endeavouring by their
entreaties to obtain the consent of the bishop to dedicate their
church at Brandon. At the time, therefore, when its dedication had
come to pass they offered him a forty-shilling silver bowl, for the
love and honour which he had shown towards them, with very
many other fine things. When these things had been given to him,
the bishop said to them: ‘Most dear people, I do not want your
silver, nor these gifts, but they are all yours. Merely grant, most
dear Leofric, that I may be permitted to buy the land belonging to
two sisters, namely eight hides at Stretham which their brother
Leofric [not the same one] bequeathed to them on his death’…
Leofric freely gave his permission, and the sisters of the man in
question … likewise acceded.22
19
Liber Eliensis, II. 4 (Blake, 75-76; Fairweather, 99).
20
Liber Eliensis, II. 4 (Blake, 76; Fairweather, 99): Quod iccirco hic ponendum videtur, ut cunctis
liqueat quanta firmitate domus Dei fundamento suo innitatur.
21
Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995), 45-57.
22
Liber Eliensis, II. 10 (Blake, 82-83; Fairweather, 106): Circa idem tempus prefatus Leovricus et
Ædelflæd ab episcopo precibus impetrabant, ut ecclesiam suam de Brandune dedicaret. Ubi itaque
ventum erat ad hoc quod dedicate fuisset, pro amore et honore quem eis exhibuerat, optulerunt ei
argenteam scutellam xl solidorum cum aliis rebus quamplurimis et optimis. Quibus oblatis, ait eis
episcopus: ´Karissimi, nolo argentum vestrum nec ista munera, sed hec omnia sint vestra. Tantummodo,
karissime Leovrice, annue, ut terram sororum duarum mihi emere liceat, scilicet viii hydas in Stretham
The text goes on to describe the details of the deal, namely that Æthelwold
gave each sister £30 for four hides and the stock thereon. So, on the one
hand, these sisters seemed not to have much of a choice about selling their
land; the desires of Leofric who was not their dead brother and Æthelwold
combined seemed enough to guarantee the sale of the land. On the other
hand, the sisters got top price for their trouble. At £7.5 a hide, this is one
of the highest per-hide sale prices that I was able to calculate in the Liber
Eliensis. Generally, the “going price” for a hide of land in East Anglia was
between £5-6.23
Clearly, Æthelwold was not the apolitical figure his pre-Conquest
biographers, Ælfric of Eynsham and Wulfstan of Worchester, describe. He
was a shrewd negotiator who, on the whole, was able to get the better end
of any deal he brokered. In fact, in chapter 11a the compiler of the Liber
Eliensis, echoing Gregory, the author of the Libellus, laments a particularly
disappointing deal – one which did not involve Æthelwold’s intervention –
with uncharacteristic emotion:
O the sacrilegiousness of the age! Oh, the deviousness of the
World! It never ceases to hunger after the possessions of the
Church, to tear them to pieces by hungering after them, and to
diminish them by tearing them to pieces! See how unfair this
commerce is! The abbot gave this woman nine pounds and has for
the money no more than a hide and 24 acres of arable land which is
without claim, and six and a half farms bare and laid waste. 24
The author elaborates, in case we don’t understand how grievously the
abbey was cheated: “That hide, therefore, cost a hundred shillings and the
twenty-four acres, 20 shillings, and the six and a half farms cost sixty
shillings, which nobody with any sense would value at more than twenty
quas Leovricus frater earum moriens eis dimisit. . . . . Leovricus libens annuit et sorores eius Æthelfled
et Æðeleve nuncupate similiter concesserunt.
23
There are several monetary systems in place; however, all larger denominations are based
on the penny. 12 pence (p.) = 1 shilling (d.); 20d. = 1 pound (£). 8 mancuses also equals
1£; 1 mancuse therefore equals 2d.6p. 1 mark = 2/3 of a pound, or 13d.4p. In terms of
land area, 1 hide = 120 acres; a hundred is 100 hides. The £5-6 per/hide average was
determined based on a comparison of given land exchange prices (translated into pounds) in
the second book of the Liber Eliensis; the land price is only a rough estimate, as some estates
would have contained improvements, livestock, etc.
24
Liber Eliensis, II. 11a (Blake, 91; Fairweather, 114): O nefas seculi! o ambitio mundi! que
nunquam cessat ecclesiasticis rebus inhiare, inhiando dilacerare et dilacerando minuere. Videte quam
iniquum commercium. Abbas dedit mulieri huic ix libras et non habet pro his nisi unam hydam et
xxiiii acras arabiles de terra que absque calumpnia sit et vi predia cum dimidio nuda et vastata.
shillings!” 25 Obviously, if Æthelwold had been in on this deal, then the

abbey wouldn’t have overpaid for their land so badly.
It is clear that Æthelwold was a man who had an enormous
amount of capital to hand; as Barbara Yorke remarked, “There is no
parallel in Anglo-Saxon England for this scale of expenditure by someone
not of the royal house.”26 However, even the richest man in England could
not have done what Æthelwold had done without royal support. And
Æthelwold certainly had the support of King Edgar. What is less
apparent, but still visible in the Liber Eliensis, is that he also had a very
strong relationship with Edgar’s third wife, Queen Ælfthryth.
III. St. Æthelwold and the Queen
The relationship between Bishop Æthelwold and Queen Ælfthryth is well
attested in the contemporary historiography.27 Perhaps the most overt sign
of their alliance appears in the Regularis Concordia, authored by Æthelwold
around the year 970 at the behest of King Edgar.28 This text prominently
assigns to Ælfthryth the position of “protectress of the nunneries,” in
concert with her husband’s role as protector of the monasteries. 29 Alone
among the reformers, Æthelwold sought to include the Queen as a
benefactor of the monastic movement, and to reward her spiritually for her
patronage. 30 This relationship may have been in place before Ælfthryth
became queen. In chapter 39 of the Liber Eliensis we hear that:
A woman called Ælfthryth pleaded with King Edgar that he sell to
the blessed Æthelwold ten hides at Stoke, which is near Ipswich,
and two mills which are situated in the southern part. Her
entreaties availed with him. For the bishop gave the king 100
mancuses (or £12.5 pounds) for that land and the mills.31
25
Liber Eliensis, II. 11a (Blake, 91; Fairweather, 114): Constitit igitur illa hyda c solidis et
xxiiii acre xx solidis, et vi predia et dimidium constiterunt lx solidis, que nemo qui sapit appretiaret
plusquam xx solidos.
26
Yorke, “Æthelwold,” 69.
27
For a full overview of their relationship, see Yorke, “Æthelwold,” 81-83, and Marc
Anthony Meyer, “Patronage of the West Saxon Royal Nunneries in Late Anglo-Saxon
England,” Revue bénédictine 91 (1981): 343-345.
28
Symonds, “Introduction” to Æthelwold, Regularis Concordia, xxiv.
29
The full passage reads (Regularis Concordia, 2): coniugique suae Ælfthrithae sanctimonialium
mandras ut impauidi more custodies defenderet cautissime praecepit; ut uidelicet mas maribus, femina
feminis, sine ullo suspicionis scrupulo subueniret.
30
See, for example, her inclusion in the prayers following the psalms in Æthelwold’s
description of the liturgy in the Regularis Concordia, 13-14.
31
Liber Eliensis, II.39 (Blake, 111-122; Fairweather, 135): Quedam matrona, que dicebatur
Alfthreth cepit deprecari regem Ædgarum, ut beato Æðelwoldo venderet x hydas apud Stoche, quod
prope est de Gippeswic, et duo molendina que sunt sita in australi parte. Cuius preces valuerunt apud
Note this rather low selling price of £1 5d. per hide! Ælfthryth’s entreaties
must have been quite effective. In short, Queen Ælfthryth aided Bishop
Æthelwold in his goal of funding his reformed monastic foundations,
including Ely; he then helped her by publicly supporting her son’s claim to
the throne at Edgar’s death in 975, even when that meant opposing St.
Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury and easily Æthelwold’s equal in
power in late tenth-century England. Their bid was unsuccessful; Edward,
not Ælfthryth’s son Æthelræd, became king, and both she and the bishop
experienced a period of royal disfavor during Edward’s brief reign.32
One would expect that both, as major benefactors of the Ely
foundation, would be equally lauded in the Liber Eliensis. This is most
certainly not the case. While the Liber Eliensis plays up the benefactor role
Bishop Æthelwold filled for the institution, and cannot completely elide
the mutually beneficial alliance between him and Queen Ælfthryth, it does
its best to obscure the ways these two powerful figures worked together to
found Ely by engaging in a program of image manipulation. Simply put:
Æthelwold’s role as benefactor is highlighted, as we have seen, and
Ælfthryth’s image is denigrated.
A prime example of this image manipulation may be seen by
examining two passages in Book II of the Liber Eliensis. These two passages
describe the same event, namely a delegation to Ely by a party including
Bishop Æthelwold, Queen Ælfthryth, and the prince Æthelræd at some
point during the reign of King Edward (975-978). The first description of
this event occurs in Book II, chapter 11, in the context of one of the many
bequests that Bishop Æthelwold facilitated:
Not long afterwards Siferth of Downham, incapacitated and
declining into the feebleness of old age, was seriously afflicted by a
disease of the feet which is called gout. At the time when the
blessed Æthelwold had brought with him to Ely Æthelred, the
future king but at that time an earl, and his mother, Queen
eum. Nam episcopus dedit regi pro illa terra et pro molendinis c aureos et postea optulit eandem terram
et eadem molendina sancte Æðeldreðe.
32
For an overview of the period, see Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 372-374; Christine E.
Fell, Edward, King and Martyr (Leeds: University of Leeds School of English, 1971), xvi-xvii,
xx-xxii; Simon Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘The Unready’ (978-1016): A Study in
Their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 163-174;
Ann Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (London: Hambledon and
London, 2003), 4-6; and Ian Howard, The Reign of Æthelred II: King of the English, Emperor of
All Peoples of Britain 978-1016 (Oxford: BAR British Series, 2010), 1-14, 80-90. For an
analysis of the specific “anti-monastic” reaction during Edward’s reign, see D[ouglas] J[ohn]
V[ivian]Fisher, “The Anti-Monastic Reaction in the Reign of Edward the Martyr,”
Cambridge Historical Journal 10 (1950-1952): 254-270, and for Keynes’ reaction to this
thesis, see his Diplomas, 169-171.
Ælfthryth, and many of the senior men of England, this man, with
his wife Wulfflæd by name, came to the bishop. In the presence of
the people already mentioned, he informed him that on his death
he would give the two hides which he possessed at Downham to
God and St. Æthelthryth for the sake of his soul, and said that he
had chosen the place of his burial there, and asked all who were
present to be witnesses to this matter.33
The main textual function of this passage is to emphasize Ely’s claim to the
two hides in Downham. However, the passage reveals much more than
that. Here we have a record of a ceremony attended not only by the donor
Siferth and the abbey monks, but also by a royal embassy. Æthelwold
brought with him a young Æthelræd, a boy who was soon to become king.
However, as the passage stresses, he was “yet an earl” and accompanied by
his mother, Queen Ælfthryth.
The Liber Eliensis includes a second reference to this visit; this
passage, however, is crafted as a recollection from the point of view of
Æthelræd and is included later in the text, in chapter 78:
The glorious king [Æthelræd] therefore acted further to adorn the
church of Ely with renown and honour, just as he had promised
when St. Æthelwold had taken him there with his mother and the
nobles of the kingdom, during the reign of King Edward, his
brother, when before a crowd of people, at the tomb of the blessed
virgin [St. Æthelthryth], to whom he had been entrusted with
affection and much love, he pledged that from henceforth he would
be her servant. When afterwards, on attaining the kingdom, he
realized that he was the servant of another King, he observed in
royal fashion the commands of his King and elevated that King’s
bride, the Church, as, so to speak, his Mother, with gifts and
services, and tied them down with the ropes of charters, etc.34
33
Liber Eliensis, II.11 (Blake, 86; Fairweather, 109-110): Nec multo post Siverthus de Dunham
defractus viribus vergensque in senium, infirmitate pedem, que podagra dicitur, graviter contrahebatur.
Qui eo tempore, quo beatus Æðelwoldus Æðelredum, futurum regem tunc vero comitem, et matrem eius
Æfltreðam reginam et plures mairoes natu Anglie ad Hely secum adduxerat, venit cum coniuge sua
nomine Wlfled ad episcopum et ei coram prememoratis notificavit se post diem suum duas hydas quas in
Dunham habuit Deo sancteque Æðeldriðe pro anima sua daturum ibique se dixit sortitum esse locum
sepulture sue rogavitque omnes qui aderant, ut super hac re sibi testificarentur.
34
Liber Eliensis, II.78 (Blake, 146; Fairweather, 174): Adiecit itaque gloriosus rex gloria et
honore Elyensem decorare ecclesiam, sicut pollictus fuerat quando eum illic cum matre et nobilibus regni
sanctus Ædelwoldus adduxerat tempore fratris sui Ædwardi regis, ubi coram multitudine plebis ad
sepulchrum beate virginis, cui affectu et multa dilectione deditus erat, se servum deinceps illius fore
spopondit. Qui postea, suscepto regno, alterius regis se intelligens esse mancipium, sui regis precepta
regaliter observabat et sponsam eius ecclesiam, tamquam matrem suam, donis et obsequiis sublimabat et
privilegiorum fune subligavit.
The Liber Eliensis thus twice describes a tableau of profoundly interesting

people at Ely, all gathered at the shine of a saint who was herself an Anglo-
Saxon queen. In both passages, the leader of the party is Æthelwold,
Bishop of Winchester, the monastic reformer and a future saint. With him
are the Queen Dowager, Ælfthryth, and her son and future king, the
young Æthelræd. Most likely accompanying them is Ely’s first Abbot,
Byrhtnoth. Invoked, yet absent, is the current king, Edward, who himself
is soon to become St. Edward the Martyr. All of these illustrious nobles,
minus Edward, of course, gather at Æthelthryth’s holy tomb and serve as
witnesses to a rather minor donation of two hides of land (about 240
acres). More importantly, as the second passage stresses, they are witnesses
to Æthelræd’s rhetorical realization of his role as king-protector of the
monastic life and its concomitant benefits.
In these passages, we can see two divergent, yet critical functions.
On the one hand, they furnish evidence of the political alliance between
Bishop Æthelwold, Queen Ælfthryth, and Prince Æthelræd during the
murky years of Edward’s short reign. On the other hand, the minor
differences in the two passages show a shifting perception of those
alliances. In the first, Queen Ælfthryth is mentioned by name; in fact, she
is given the prominence of place, mentioned only behind St. Æthelwold
and her son, the future King Æthelræd. In the second, Ælfthryth is only
mentioned as the “mother” of Æthelræd, equal in status to the other
nameless nobles that accompany Æthelwold and Æthelræd to the saint’s
tomb at Ely. Furthermore, the text clearly seeks to replace Æthelræd’s
earthly family ties with heavenly ones. Specifically, he, as a servant to that
more powerful King, namely Christ, is to “elevate . . . that King’s bride,
the Church, as, so to speak, his Mother, with gifts and services, and tie . . .
them down with the ropes of charters.” The Church is not just the Christ’s
bride, as is the usual formulation: Æthelræd is to elevate the Church “as . .
. his Mother.” This passage, by suppressing Ælfthryth’s name and
explicitly replacing her with the Church, betrays a profound anxiety about
her role in the re-foundation and benefaction of Ely.
The source of this anxiety was most likely the declining reputation
of Ælfthryth. During her lifetime, and during the remainder of the tenth
century, she was not singled out for particular criticism, specifically in
reference to her involvement in the death of her stepson, Edward. While
the earliest text to describe the murder, Byrhtferth’s Vita Oswaldi, situates
the death near Ælfthryth’s residence, the hagiographer portrays her as
having no foreknowledge of the event, pinning the blame on an unnamed
supporter of Æthelræd.35 Ælfthryth becomes complicit in the murder only

by the early eleventh century, in the anonymous Passio Eadwardi, which
Christine Fell attributes to Goscelin of St. Bertin.36 As the eleventh century
progresses, Ælfthryth’s agency in Edward’s murder becomes a more and
more prominent aspect of the story; by the twelfth century, her hand is the
one that accomplishes the deed. 37 Pauline Stafford has examined the
queen’s decline in her analysis of the state of nunneries during and after the
tenth-century reform movement.38She has noted that the majority of the
eleventh-century texts may be sourced to nunneries which had housed
products of “King Edgar’s serial monogamy,” and were subject to “the
resultant rivalries among his different wives and their offspring.”39 Thus by
the twelfth century, the time in which the Liber Eliensis was compiled, the
image of Ælfthryth had been “reprocessed . . . through the stereotypes of
misogyny to produce the most damning picture of all.”40 Thus it seems
that the question now becomes not why Ælfthryth’s portrayal in the Liber
Eliensis was so elided, but how her profitable and amiable relationship with
the Bishop Æthelwold could be traced at all, and why his relationship with
her did not impede his reputation in the same way.
The answer to this question lies in two textual facets: the bishop’s
saintly and gendered status, and the source material that the compiler used
for his material relating to Æthelwold and Ælfthryth. To address the
latter of these points first, it is a simple matter to note that the passages
which mention Queen Ælfthryth by name, and in a positive light with
reference to Ælthelwold, may all be found in the Libellus, the compiler’s
main source for the material related to Æthelwold. Even then, some
obfuscation seems to be at work. In one of the examples cited above (the
passage from chapter 39), for instance, Ælfthryth is only called a matrona,
or “lady”, and her (perhaps future) queenship is not emphasized, thus
obscuring her probable identity. Furthermore, in the passage from chapter
11, in which the queen accompanies her son and Æthelwold to Ely, only
35
Byrhtferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St. Oswald and St. Ecgwine, ed. and trans. Michael
Lapidge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 137-139.
36
Fell, Edward King and Martyr, xx.
37
See, for example, Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. Ian Short (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009), ll. 3988-4054 (pp. 218, 220).
38
Pauline Stafford, “Queens, Nunneries, and Reforming Churchmen: Gender, Religious
Status, and Reform in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England.” Past and Present 163 (1999):
3-35, see especially p. 24 and following.
39
Stafford, “Queens, Nunneries”, 25. See also Barbara Yorke, “The Women in Edgar’s
Life,” in Edgar, King of the English, 959-975, ed. Donald Scragg (Woodbridge: Boydell,
2008), 144-145.
40
Stafford, “Queens, Nunneries,” 30.
one manuscript, the oldest, actually includes her given name.41 Her name
is elided in the later manuscripts of the text, much like the revised version
of the visit related in chapter 78. The source for this later chapter is local
rather than the Libellus of Æthelwold. Its elision of Ælfthryth, along with
the inclusion of another locally-sourced tale about her murder of Ely’s first
abbot, Byrhtnoth, through witchcraft and a well-placed dagger, indicate
that the reputation of the queen in Ely declined in a way similar to the
decline Stafford has noted at nunneries at the end of the eleventh
century.42Indeed, Ælfthryth’s portrayal as a sorceress who fornicated with
horses and the woman who murdered a holy abbot for interrupting her
wilderness escapades indicates that her reputation had declined further
over the course of another hundred years.
In the end, it is bishop and saint Æthelwold’s posthumous status
that ensures his saintly reputation in works like the Liber Eliensis. While
early hagiographic treatments actively avoided any mention of his business
acumen, later texts like the Liber Eliensis are able to reincorporate this
aspect of his life, preserved in their records and legends, into his holy
image. In this text, we may also see, perhaps, a process of scapegoating at
work, as Æthelwold’s more negative traits and associations, in particular
his close alliance with Queen Ælfthryth and his support for Æthelræd over
the future saint Edward upon Edgar’s death, are displaced onto the Queen
herself, whose reputation takes a decided turn for the worse in the
intervening years. By incorporating such texts as the Liber Eliensis into a
discussion of sanctity and hagiography, we may not only find a more
complete picture of the saint in question, but also see the processes of
image formation and manipulation at work over the centuries.
41
This is the E manuscript, or Trinity College, Cambridge O.2.1. This is the earliest
manuscript, and dates from the late twelfth century. See Blake, “Introduction,” xxiii. See
also p. 86 n. j.
42
Liber Eliensis, II.56 (Blake, 127; Fairweather, 153). This text has puzzled the few scholars
who have commented on it; C[yril] E[rnest] Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon
England (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1939), 158, called it “a most curious one,” and goes on
to note that it “appears nowhere else.”
IN THE APSE OR IN BETWEEN: THE
BENEDICTIONAL OF ENGILMAR AND
TRADITIONS OF EPISCOPAL PATRONAGE IN THE
APSE AT POREČ*
Evan A. Gatti
In medieval studies, the city of Poreč (Parentium, Parenzo) is best known

for the Eufrasian Basilica and its sumptuous sixth-century, Byzantine-style
mosaics (Fig. 1). Since its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site
in 1997, the episcopal complex has taken on special significance as an
“outstanding example of an early Christian episcopal ensemble that is
exceptional by virtue of its completeness.”1 In other words, Poreč and its
apse, which has become an icon for the episcopal complex, are exceptional
because of how well – and here we mean how completely – they present
the past.2 But what one sees today is not a single monument from the sixth
century, a pure moment from the past, but an accumulation of pasts
* I would like to thank Sigrid Danielson, Eliza Garrison, Lynn Huber, John Ott, Trpimir
Vedriš and a third anonymous reviewer for reading drafts of this essay and providing
extremely helpful comments. Any mistakes that remain are, of course, my own. I offer this
essay in memory of my mother Michael Anslem Hogan Gatti, who inspired so much of
what led me here.
1
The quotation above can be found on “The Episcopal Complex of the Euphrasian Basilica
in the Historic Center of Poreč,” UNESCO World Heritage Centre Website (20 June 2011),
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/809. This is the same language found in the 1997 Decision
and Report, “21COM VIIIC – Inscription: The Episcopal Complex of the Euphrasian
Basilica in the Historic Centre of Poreč (Croatia),” UNESCO World Heritage Centre Website,
which reads: “The Committee decided to inscribe this property on the basis of criteria (ii),
(iii) and (iv), considering that the Episcopal complex of the Euphrasian Basilica in the
historic centre of Poreč is an outstanding example of an early Christian episcopal ensemble
that is exceptional by virtue of its completeness and its unique Basilican cathedral.” (20
June 2011), http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/2873.
2
A similar argument is made for the city of Ravenna. “San Vitale is one of the most
important examples of Byzantine art in Europe because of the clarity with which it
expresses the ideology and religious fervour of the age of Justinian and at the same time the
use of architecture as a means of asserting Imperial dominance.” “Advisory Board
Evaluation – The Early Christian monuments and mosaics of Ravenna,” UNESCO World
Heritage Centre Website (26 December, 2011),
http://whc.unesco.org/archive/advisory_body_evaluation/788.pdf. For a critique of this
perspective, namely that San Vitale “expressed the ideology and religious fervor of the Age
of Justinian,” see Irina Andreescu-Treadgold and Warren Treadgold, “Procopius and the
Imperial Panels of San Vitale,” The Art Bulletin 79 (1997): 708-723, especially 722-723.
138 Evan A. Gatti
preserved for the present as an object of bricolage.3 From its foundation, the
episcopal complex served as a locus for the continued significance of the
Parentine episcopate, its patron-saint Maurus, and its first bishop
Eufrasius.4 The apse especially marked the significance of the see – or in
some periods of waning influence, the hoped-for significance of the see – to
its institutional alliances and the local community. Rather than secure the
Basilica to a single moment in the past, as was argued for its justification as
a World Heritage Site, in this essay I suggest that we should take a cue
from the apse itself. In the pages below, I will discuss the apse at Poreč as
an active liturgical site that secured episcopal (and by association Parentine)
legitimacy across multiple pasts and into the present. Artistic commissions
created in, about, and for the apse of the Eufrasian basilica will be analyzed
for the ways they articulate, in visual terms, an episcopal legitimacy that
requires a saint as mentor, and a bishop as model. While the sixth-century
mosaic program will serve as the foundation for this argument, I will
project its significance into other periods of importance for Poreč.
My first case study will argue that an eleventh-century
illuminated benedictional made to accompany the Bavarian bishop
Engilmar to his new post in Poreč (Fig. 2) references broader traditions of
imperial, episcopal, and even archiepiscopal patronage. The benedictional
secures the authority of the bishop, and provides a connection to his
3
I would like to thank Eliza Garrison for her suggestion that the continued patronage of
the apse at Poreč should be connected to discussions of medieval bricolage. Bricolage has
become a useful term for medievalists who want to look at monuments synchronically. A
full explanation and history of the use of the term is not possible here, rather one might
consult Lynda L. Coon’s, “A Carolingian Aesthetic of Bricolage,” in Dark Age Bodies: Gender
and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2011), 42-68. Coon argues that groups who participated in bricolage, which she
examines through collecting and display rather than patronage, used “methods of exerting
control over the past,” p. 48. The practice of participating in bricolage is not limited to the
Carolingian period: Coon cites an essay by Karen Rose Mathews that discusses bricolage as
an Ottonian enterprise: “Expressing Political Legitimacy and Cultural Identity Through the
Use of Spolia on the Ambo of Henry II,” Medieval Encounters 5 (1999): 156-183. See also
Jane Hawkes, “The Rothbury Cross: An Iconographic Bricolage,” Gesta (1996): 77-94, and
Marilynn Desmond and Pamela Sheingorn, Myth, Montage, & Visuality in Late Medieval
Manuscript Culture: Christine de Pizan’s Epistre Othea (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2006), 5 n. 24-25; Dale Kinney, “The Concept of Spolia,” in A Companion to Medieval
Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Oxford: Blackwell,
2006), 233-252, especially p. 234.
4
Recent excavations of the sacristy, conducted under the direction of Ivan Matejčić, have
uncovered sites of continued patronage, from the foundations of a Roman house, to a
sarcophagus for a “St. Maurus,” to a memorial chapel with fifteenth-century frescoes. Ivan
Matejčić,“La cattedrale di Parenzo e il culto di San Mauro” (lecture and tour presented at
the joint meeting of Hagiotheca and the Hagiography Society, Poreč, Croatia, 27-30 May
2010).
In the Apse or In Between 139
ancestors, through a celebration of the acts and gestures made before the
altar, beneath the apse. Often separated from one another in art historical
conversations because of their styles of origin, the original apse program
and the Bavarian benedictional can be seen to inform one another,
especially in the examples of their continued reuse.
The second case study will discuss one of the most striking
features of the present-day apse, but one that is also most often ignored
(and even resented) by scholar and tourist alike – the large, thirteenth-
century ciborium that dominates the architectural space and obscures one’s
view of the sixth-century mosaic program (Fig. 3). A monument of
Venetian manufacture, the ciborium points to a historical tension between
Istria and the Venetian Republic, and the episcopal tenure of Otto (1256-
1279) caught in between. This thirteenth-century “intrusion,” as it has
been called, references yet another period when the bishop of Poreč was
caught between the aspirations of his imperial ally and the expectations of
the landed noble class.5
Finally, I will consider briefly the contemporary context of the
apse. This will include the current state of the altar, which preserves a
modern act of desecration, as well as various functions of the episcopal
complex: cathedral, tourist site, academic subject. Reflecting on the
paradigm shift spurred by my own experience of the space, I would like to
suggest that we embrace the long history of the apse at Poreč rather than
limit our view to a particular historical moment. In doing so, we should
bring our attention to the continued acts of episcopal patronage, as well as
the equally complex contemporary politics of preservation to which the
Eufrasian site and the art of eleventh-century Istria are subjected.
I. A Model in Mosaic: Maurus and Eufrasius

Most studies of the sixth-century apse program, and indeed most mass-
produced images of the Eufrasian basilica, focus on the central apse mosaic
(Fig. 4). At the center of the mosaic, the Virgin Mary is seated on a golden
bench, her feet, clad in red shoes, are raised on a pedestal. She is clothed in
a purple mantle over a purple tunic marked by golden clavi. The ends of a
white sash decorated with a black cross and fringed in gold peek out from
beneath the hem of the mantle.6 The Christ child seated on her lap is
wrapped in a golden mantle over a white tunic; he makes a gesture of
blessing with his right hand and holds a closed scroll in his left. The hand
of God reaches from the top of the apse and offers a jeweled crown to the
5
Ann Bennett Terry and Henry Maguire, Dynamic Splendor: The Wall Mosaics in the Cathedral
of Eufrasius at Poreč (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 4.
6
Terry and Maguire, Dynamic Splendor, 105 n. 22.
140 Evan A. Gatti
enthroned pair. A pair of angels flanks the Virgin and Child, the one to her
left pointing toward them, as if to recognize them as the focus of the apse.
The angel to her right gestures to a group of three anonymous figures, as
well as two martyrs holding their crowns who flank a saint in a golden
cloak holding a book.7 These central figures and those to right side of the
mosaic remind the visitor to whom the Basilica is dedicated.
As is typical of apse mosaics of this period, however, the program
also reminds the visitor who dedicated the basilica.8 From the far left of the
apse program, moving towards the right, are figured the sixth-century
Archdeacon Claudius holding a book,9 the diminutive figure of his son,
Eufrasius, who holds two candles,10 and the see’s first bishop Eufrasius
(524),11 who holds a model of the basilica. His hands covered in his purple
mantle, Eufrasius offers the model of the basilica to his right, towards the
Virgin and Poreč’s patron saint Maurus,12 who similarly holds a martyr’s
crown in his veiled hands.13 With these gifts offered to the Virgin, an
7
There are no inscriptions on this side of the mosaic, an idea to which we will return below.
In their comprehensive study of the mosaic program, Ann Bennett Terry and Henry
Maguire argue that this is not a loss, that there were never inscriptions on this side of the
program, and that the inscriptions on the left side are original to the sixth-century
production. Terry and Maguire, Dynamic Splendor, 113-116.
8
Beat Brenk, The Apse, the Image and the Icon: An Historical Perspective of the Apse as a Space for
Images (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010), 85. Deborah Deliyannis has also argued that we
should see the portraits of bishops in the apse mosaics from this period as part of a larger
trend, whereby the Liber pontificalis is similarly arguing for the episcopal responsibility of
renovating or decorating the apse, and the episcopal privilege such an act ensures. This
thesis was first presented as “The Episcopal Donor in Text and Image” (paper presented at
the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, 13 May, 2011). The paper
forms part of an article in progress entitled, “Ecclesius of Ravenna as Donor in Text and
Image,” to be included in an interdisciplinary volume edited by this author and Sigrid
Danielson.
9
Claudius is the only figure whose hands are not covered.
10
Usually identified as scrolls or torches; Terry and Maguire argue that these objects should
be considered candles. Terry and Maguire, Dynamic Splendor, 112-3, 140-142.
11
Francesco Babudri, “I Vescovi di Parenzo e la loro cronologia,” Atti e Memorie della Società
Istriana di Archeologia e Storia Patria 25 (1909): 170-284, at 187.
12
Pietro Kandler’s edited collection from Istrian archives includes a document dated to 21
November 284 (Rome) that lists Maurus as patron saint. “Matirio di S. Mauro Patrono di
Parenzo.” Codice Diplomatico Istriano: Anni 50-1194, vol. 1 of Codice Diplomatico Istriano, ed.
Pietro Kandler (Trieste: Lloyd Austriaco 1862-1865, reprinted: Trieste: Societa di Minerva,
1986), 19, no. 9.
13
A great deal of work at the basilica complex has been dedicated to the excavation of the
house or chapel of St. Maurus. A full explanation of these findings is beyond the scope of
this paper, but would be a valuable addition to any study of this site, especially as we
consider the historical accretions to the space. For a basic introduction to the evolution of
the basilica complex, see Milan Prelog, The Basilica of Euphrasius in Poreč, trans. Janko
Paravić (Zagreb: Associated Publishers, 1986), 29-32.
offering facilitated, or we might argue accepted by the angel at her side,

the left side of the mosaic preserves both the object and the subject of the
sixth-century dedication.
Scholarly publications on the mosaics, including the two-volume
study by Ann Terry and Henry Maguire, Dynamic Splendor: The Wall
Mosaics in the Cathedral of Eufrasius at Poreč, and a recent work by Marina
Vicelja-Matijašić, argue for dynamic readings of the apse program as an
extension of its complex political climate. In particular, both studies argue
that the mosaics spoke to the prominent role that Istria and Poreč played
in the sixth-century Three Chapters dispute.14 The dispute centers on the
actions of Emperor Justinian I (483-565), who pushed for the adoption of
his anathema against the three writings at the Fifth Ecumenical Council
held in Constantinople in 553. The heat of the controversy does not lie in
Justinian’s condemnation of the writings themselves, however, but rather
in what the bishops of Istria interpreted as an “attack on the orthodoxy of
the council,” since these same writings had been approved by the Council
of Chalcedon in 451.15 By 599 Istria had seceded from Rome in protest of
the pope’s support for the edict and, perhaps more significantly, against
imperial interference in established doctrinal affairs.16 Terry, Maguire, and
Vicelja-Matijašić suggest that Eufrasius may have been specifically called to
blame for his refusal to condemn the writings following their
anathematization; a letter from Pope Pelagius I (556-561) to John the
Patrician I “names a certain Eufrasius whose crime he characterizes in the
most lurid terms, accusing him of adultery and incest.”17
14
Marina Vicelja-Matijašić, “Christological Program in the Apse of Basilica Eufrasiana in
Poreč,” Ikon 1 (2008): 91-102, especially 94-95. See also Dino Milinović, “Ikonografski
program mozaika u središnjoj apsidi Eufrazijeve bazilike u Poreču: Carsko pokroviteljstvo i
uloga Bogorodice” [Iconographic program of the mosaics in the central apse of Basilica
Eufrasiana in Poreč: Imperial sponsorship and the role of the Theotokos], Prilozi povijesti
umjetnosti u Dalmaciji 38 (1999-2000): 73-88. I would like to thank my anonymous
reviewer for bringing Milinović’s essay to my attention. While I have consulted this essay, I
have not woven it into my argument above. Milinović’s study is noteworthy, however, as it
focuses specifically on the iconography of the Virgin Theotokos to draw connections
between the mosaic at Poreč and the cult of the Virgin fostered by Justinian. The mosaic,
Milinović argues, represents Justinian’s efforts to protect his “investments” (Milinović,
“Ikonografski program,” 88), which are represented in Poreč by Eufrasius, an arbiter for
orthodoxy, but only as mandated by the emperor.
15
Terry and Maguire, Dynamic Splendor, 129.
16
For recent contributions to the significance of the Three Chapters controversy across the
Mediterranean, see The Crisis of the Oikoumene: The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for
Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean, ed. Celia Martin Chazelle and Catherine Cubitt
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).
17
142 Evan A. Gatti
While space does not permit a detailed outline of these arguments

and their differences here, it is clear that Terry, Maguire, and Vicelja-
Matijašić see the public aspects of the mosaic program as a celebration of
the episcopate as it existed in between competing interests: local,
ecclesiastical, papal, and imperial. For Vicelja-Matijašić, this is accentuated
in the symmetry and hierarchy of the apse, which links the human nature
of the Christ-child at the apex of the apse to the cross of Golgotha included
above the cathedra of the bishop in the synthronon. Similarly, Terry and
Maguire link the visual and physical aspects of the apse space and argue
that Eufrasius, in defense of his see, stands (or sits, in the case of the
imagery aligned with the cathedra) as “a worthy successor to Maurus” and
a model for the future.18
Beyond the public parts of the apse program, Terry and Maguire
have identified the so-called private aspects of the program, aspects that
should be unread, or are intentionally anonymous. Specifically, they point
to the three saints included on the right vault of the apse that are without
identifying inscriptions (Fig. 5). These saints, they argue, were left
unnamed “because they were the object of private petitions for the benefit
of Eufrasius, Claudius, and the small child Eufrasius; it was not necessary
for the public at large to know who they were.”19 While the two scholars
do not elaborate on why they think these private petitions were necessary,
they do suggest that the public, while not privy to the identities of the
saints, would have understood them as having individualized meanings. To
illustrate this point further, the authors discuss the very specific
differentiation in the saints’ facial features and costume.20
Like the modern observer, who may not comprehend the specific
meaning of a mosaic titulus but understands the significance of including
specific bodies in the apse, the sixth-century public recognized the position
of our patrons as petitioners, as well as the consequence of such petitions. If
there were doubts, however, Terry and Maguire point to the lengthy
dedicatory inscription included at the base of the apse mosaic, before the
fenestration, as evidence that the postures of penance and devotion
performed across the apse functioned as an ex voto: “Thus, joyful from his
work, a happy man, he fulfilled his vow”21 (Fig. 6). The precious codex
18
Ibid., 145.
19
Ibid., 144.
20
Ibidem.
21
Ibidem. The full inscription is included in Attilio Degrassi, Inscriptiones Italiae, vol. 10,
Regio X, fasc. 2, Parentium (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1934), 37-40, no. 81. Degrassi’s
transcription with an English translation is included in Terry and Maguire: “At first this
temple, with ruin shaking it, was terrible in its [threatened] collapse, being neither solid nor
secure of strength, small, filthy, and then devoid of great mosaic decoration; the rotted roof
carried by Claudius, the donation of candles by the young Eufrasius, the

model of the church presented by Bishop Eufrasius, and the martyr’s crown
proffered by Maurus imbue the mosaic program with private content
addressed to a public good. The saints at the right of the program, and
even the Annunciation to the Virgin panel and the Visit to Elizabeth pictured
in the panels below, reflect the consequence of making an offering and the
responsibility associated with its reception.
Consideration of the longer inscription further affirms, as it was
designed to do of course, that Eufrasius’ rebuilding of the basilica, and
especially in the decoration of the apse, were acts of necessary, yet
exceptional patronage. While we should consider the description of the
state of the basilica in the inscription to be hyperbole – the building was in
danger of “collapse… being neither solid nor secure of strength, small,
filthy, and devoid of great mosaic decoration,” the dedication included
below the figural mosaics offers an extension of, or perhaps better stated a
foundation for, the acts in the apse. In this light we see Eufrasius’ work, as
it is marked for remembrance in the apse, establishing an expectation for
and a celebration of episcopal interactions with the space. While we have
scant evidence of the changes made through the latter Middle Ages and
the Early Modern period (only accounts that suggest there were some), the
recent publication of documents detailing modern restoration efforts
suggests that this expectation – that there be a sense of episcopal pride in
and a concomitant responsibility for the apse – was fulfilled across time.22
Of course, this situation is not unique to Poreč. In the last decade
a number of scholars have argued that apse mosaics, especially from this
early period, were designed specifically to function in similarly didactic and
multivalent ways. From Thomas Mathews’ The Clash of Gods and Beat
Brenk’s The Apse, the Image and the Icon, to Emanuel S. Klinkenberg’s study
of the donor’s model, Compressed Meanings: The Donor’s Model in Medieval
Art to around 1300, it can be argued that while apse programs include
hung only by the power of grace. Immediately when Eufrasius, provident bishop and
fervent in the zeal of the faith, saw that the church was about to fall under its own weight,
he forestalled the ruin with saintly inspiration; he demolished the ruinous temple in order to
set it more firmly. He built the foundations and erected the roof of the temple, finishing
what you now see, shining with new and varied mosaic. Completing his undertaking, he
decorated it with great munificence and naming the church he consecrated it in the name of
Christ. Thus, joyful from this work, a happy man, he fulfilled his vow.” Terry and Maguire,
Dynamic Splendor, 4-5, n. 14.
22
Terry and Maguire mention specifically the actions of the eighteenth-century bishop
Gaspare Negri (1748-1749, dates of the restoration), under whom the north apse was
“refurbished . . . to receive the relics of Saint Maurus and Saint Eleuterius,” and the
restoration of the complex (but not the mosaics) by Bishop Peteani in the nineteenth
century (1846-1847, dates of the restoration). Terry and Maguire, Dynamic Splendor, 36.
144 Evan A. Gatti
similar “players,” the dynamics between the figures included are locally
determined, with the potential to shift across historical moments. In fact,
Brenk argues specifically that, “The apse mosaic teaches the onlooker how
normal mortals have to behave in the presence of the heavenly
prominence.”23 In the case of Poreč, the apse mosaic fixed the donation and
devotion of Eufrasius as model for future pious acts, and as we shall see
below, offered a particularly striking exemplum for an episcopal ex voto.
While the gestures of devotion are frozen in the tesserae, the acts of piety,
from Claudius and Eufrasius, through Maurus and the martyrs, to the
Virgin and Christ, are ever present.24 Forging a continual connection to a
sacred past, the apse mosaics offer a model for future acts of episcopal
piety, and in doing so, locate the potential of episcopal power in the space
of the decorated apse. While prescriptive in that the mosaics identify the
individual patrons of the Eufrasian basilica, the program also allows for
interactions that can be individually defined, as with the anonymous saints.
In reading the sixth-century mosaics as a “dynamic medium,” the
interpretive potential of the apse offers a foundation, rather than a
terminus, for a study of its many alterations. This foundation highlights
the potential of images to reach across the past and into the present, to a
place where style makes meaning, and iconography establishes identity.25
II. Blessing at the Border: Engilmar at Poreč

Created nearly 500 years after the construction of the original apse
mosaics, an eleventh-century illuminated benedictional, known today as
the Benedictional of Engilmar of Parenzo, signals the continued significance of
the Parentine episcopate.26 In its original form, the Benedictional opens with
23
Brenk, Apse, 85. See also Thomas F. Mathews, “Larger-than-Life,” in The Clash of Gods: A
Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art, Revised and Expanded edition, (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2003), 92-114, especially 114.
24
Brenk, Apse, 85.
25
The conclusion of Terry and Maguire’s text volume is titled “Conclusion: Mosaic as
Dynamic Medium,” 149-152.
26
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS Ludwig VII, 1. For bibliography, see Wilhelm
Vöge, “Eine deutsche Malerschule um die Wende des ersten Jahrtausends: Kritische
Studien zur Geschichte der Malerei in Deutschland im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert,”
Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst, Ergänzungsheft 7 (Trier: Fr. Lintz’chen
Buchhandlung, 1891); Ernst Friedrich Bange, Eine bayerische Malerschule des 11. und 12.
Jahrhunderts (Munich: H. Schmidt, 1923); Herbert Köllner, “Eine wiedergefundene
Handschrift aus Muri, Berlin MS. theol. lat. 4° 199,” in Studien zur Buchmalerei und
Goldschmiedekunst des Mittelalters. Festschrift für Karl Hermann Usener zum 60. Geburtstag am
19. August 1965, ed. Frieda Dettweiler, et al. (Marburg: Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars der
Universität, 1967), 293-326; Georg Stadtmüller and Bonifaz Pfister, Geschichte der Abtei
Niederaltaich 741-1971 (Ottobeuren: Bayerische Benediktinerakademie, 1972), 129, 407,
a miniature depicting a bishop blessing at the altar (Fig. 2). A titulus above
the head of the bishop identifies him as Engilmar[u]s ep[i]s[copus], a monk
from Niederaltaich who had been elected to serve as bishop of Poreč from
1028 to 1045.27 While little can be stated with certainty about Engilmar –
there are no other artistic commissions or writings that can be associated
with him, and no vita was written after his death – even the modest
information we have about him links the portrait of Engilmar blessing to
his most pressing responsibilities in Poreč, defining and defending his see.28
412; Anton von Euw and Joachim M. Plotzek, Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig, 4
vols. (Cologne: Schnutgen-Museum, 1979-1985), 1:293-96; Eckhard Freise, Dieter
Geuenich, and Joachim Wollasch, eds., Das Martyrolog-Necrolog von St. Emmeram zu
Regensburg, MGH Libri memoriales et necrologia, n.s., 3 (Hannover: Hahn, 1986), 77;
Rosemary Lee, “Das Benediktionale des Bischofs Engilmar unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung der Ikonographie” (MA thesis, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, 1988);
Regensburger Buchmalerei: Von frühkarolingischer Zeit bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters: Ausstellung
der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München und der Museen der Stadt Regensburg, ed. Florentine
Mütherich and Karl Dachs (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1987), no. 22, p. 36; Masterpieces of the
J. Paul Getty Museum: Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. Thomas Kren (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty
Museum, 1997), no. 4, 17; Marino Baldini, “Benedikcional biskupa Engelmara: Početak
istarskog freskoslikarstva” [The Benedictional of Bishop Engelmar: Beginnings of Istrian
Fresco Painting], Istarska Danica (2004): 107-112; Evan A. Gatti, “Building the Body of
the Church: A Bishop’s Blessing in the Benedictional of Engilmar of Parenzo,” in The Bishop
Reformed: Studies in Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages, ed. John S. Ott and
Anna Trumbore Jones (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2007), 92-121.
27
E. F. Bange believed that the inscription was not contemporary with the miniature but
instead dated to ca. 1050, five to ten years after the episcopate of Engilmar. Bange, Eine
bayersiche Malerschule, 55. In 1972, however, Romuald Bauerreiss argued that the inscription
was contemporary with the rest of the text and that the later date proposed by Bange
should not be a reason to separate the manuscript from the person of Engilmar. Bauerreiss
cites the liturgy more specifically as a reason to continue associating the manuscript with
the bishop, since, as will be discussed below, special attention is given to feasts of particular
importance to Poreč. Romuald Bauerreiss, “Über den Mönch Engilmar von
Niederharthausen (NDBY), später Bischof von Parenzo (XI. s.) und sein Benediktionale,”
Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 35 (1972): 31-39, at 32. In later publications, the
date of the inscription and the attribution of the manuscript to Engilmar of Poreč stand
without question. See, for example, von Euw, Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig,
1:293-296; Regensburger Buchmalerei, ed. Mütherich and Dachs, no. 22, p. 36; Masterpieces of
the J. Paul Getty Museum, ed. Kren, no. 4, p. 17.
28
While I was not able to consult them firsthand, I would like to thank my anonymous
reviewer for recommending sources that explicate the connections between Engilmar and
the church of St. Michael in Kloštar (also known as St. Michael above Lim); see Danilo
Klen, “Neke misli i podaci o Sv. Mihovilu nad Limom” [Reflections and Data on St.
Michael above Lim], Bulletin JAZU 11 (1963): 11-12; Ana Deanović, “Ranoromaničke
freske u opatiji svetog Mihovila nad Limskom Dragom” [Early Romanesque Frescoes in the
Abbey of St. Michael above Limska Draga], Bulletin JAZU 4 (1956): 18. In my previous
study of the manuscript (Gatti, “Building the Body of the Church”) very few Croatian-
language sources were cited and those that were had been made available through later
English translations. Many of the untranslated Croatian-language sources have only
146 Evan A. Gatti
These responsibilities, and the privileges that come with them, are pictured
in the blessing at the opening of the original codex, an image that
celebrates Engilmar at the altar, in the apse. The Benedictional shifts our
focus from the physical space of the apse to its spiritual significance as a
locus of ritual performance and its political potential as an extension of
imperial and Benedictine patronage. While the mosaics and the
manuscript (and the scholarship concerned with them) exist in separate
spheres, consideration of the cathedral as part of the material context of the
manuscript allows us to imagine the potential of Engilmar’s position in
Poreč – as a mediator on the model of the saints, who exists in between
competing powers and conflicting interests.
The codex containing the Benedictional of Engilmar measures 23.2
cm x 16 cm and is composed of 117 folios that can be broken down into
four parts, dating from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The third and
largest part of the manuscript, comprised of fol. 16 through fol. 87,
contains the original eleventh-century benedictional. The first two parts
can be considered updates to the original benedictional and date to the
thirteenth century. These include fol. 1 through fol. 6, comprised of
miscellaneous blessings and a few blank folios, and fol. 7 through fol. 15,
which contain an opening rubric followed by blessings in liturgical order,
beginning with the first Sunday in Advent. The fourth part, fol. 88
through fol. 117, can also be dated to the thirteenth century and includes
an Order of the Mass.29 Similar to the apse, the Benedictional represents a
document across time. The eleventh-century blessings are reconfigured as
an integral part of the thirteenth-century continuation, including the
portrait of the first bishop-owner, Engilmar. While such acts of
compilation are common in the Middle Ages, they need not be ignored as
meaningless. The portrait could have just as easily been removed, or the
vellum scraped and re-used for a continued list of prayers, a new portrait,
or at the very least, updated with a more current inscription.
recently been included in (or made accessible by) databases and digital collections. Once
known, the difficulty of gaining physical access to these sources has been great, suggesting
that collaborations such as those sponsored by Hagiotheca are invaluable to making better
connections across the cultures that made up the medieval world. For this reason, among
many others, I am thankful for the expanded perspective of the reviewers; any bias that
remains is, of course, the responsibility of the author and a call for continued scholarly
conversations.
29
The collation of the manuscript, according to the microfilm published by the Getty
Museum, is listed as follows 18-1, 2-38, 410, 5-78, 88-1, 910-2, preceded by a1, b4, c10; and
followed by d-e10, f8, g2 = 117 leaves. Signatures a-g are additions dating from the twelfth
to fifteenth centuries. See von Euw, Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig, 1:293;
Regensburger Buchmalerei, ed. Mütherich and Dachs, 36, no. 22; and Lee, “Das
Benediktionale des Bischofs Engilmar,” 18.
In its eleventh-century compilation, the portrait of Engilmar

(found today on fol. 16v) would have most likely been paired with an
opening dedication or some sort of prefatory text, although that cannot be
stated with certainty.30 A small stub before the Engilmar portrait suggests
something was removed when the thirteenth-century additions were made
to the original codex. Further evidence for an opening text can be found in
a rubric on fol. 7r of the thirteenth-century benedictional, which reads,
Incipiunt benedictiones pontificales per totius anni circulum, and which may be in
imitation of what was removed from the original manuscript. Furthermore,
the text on fol. 16v, which includes the blessings for Christmas vigil, is
repeated in the additions to the manuscript following the blessings for the
first Sunday in Advent, an ordering common to the later benedictional.
Beyond these repetitions, there are also additions that suggest the
manuscript would have been intended for use by a later bishop, as
additional benedictions were included to facilitate its reuse within an
expanded liturgical calendar.
Continuation of the manuscript into the later Middle Ages draws
our attention back to the portrait of Engilmar. As the manuscript is
reconstituted, the miniature shifts from a dedication portrait to a portrait
of a predecessor, mimicking the relationship we see in the Eufrasian
mosaic, where the celebrant and the saint work together to ensure
salvation. Engilmar, however, is not a saint, so those who used this
manuscript in the years to come were not praying for him or to him, but as
him. This notion, namely that the miniature, like the mosaic of Eufrasius,
offers a model for Engilmar and his successors to emulate, requires a closer
examination of the details of the miniature. Like the apse mosaics discussed
above and the ciborium to be discussed below, the Benedictional of Engilmar
exists across separate spheres of influence; its liturgies, its artistic style, and
its models represent disparate contexts, contexts that must be continually
negotiated by the bishop’s office and person.
The frontispiece miniature depicts Engilmar standing to the right
of the altar, which is at the center of the folio, below the inscription. The
bishop is portrayed as an older man with gray hair, tonsured and bearded,
and dressed in mass vestments including a golden stole, a chasuble, and a
dalmatic, a green and gold-trimmed cope, the pallium, and jeweled (or
30
I would like to thank Elizabeth Teviotdale for sharing her knowledge of the Benedictional
with me, and in particular for bringing my attention to some of the anomalies in the re-
ordering of the episcopal blessings. Additionally, Dr. Teviotdale has remarked that it was
not unusual for the opening leaf of the first gathering to have been left blank in this period,
unlike later manuscripts that include flyleaves. For other interpretations, see von Euw, Die
Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig, 1:293, and Lee, “Das Benediktionale des Bischofs
Engilmar,” 23 n. 47.
148 Evan A. Gatti
embroidered) buskins. He holds his right hand in a gesture of blessing and

points towards the altar with his left. A younger-looking cleric stands
behind Engilmar, at the far right of the miniature, and holds a golden
book in his draped hand. He is dressed in a rose-colored cloak over a white
alb, with a golden-colored cowl. Across the altar stands Engilmar’s deacon.
Also presented as a young man, and with tonsure, the deacon is dressed in
a golden dalmatic. He holds open a book, perhaps this very Benedictional,
from which Engilmar reads and towards which he gestures in blessing.
Behind the altar, prepared for the Mass with a golden paten and chalice,
one can see the top of a second open book, perhaps a Gospel book or a
sacramentary, to be used during the liturgy.
Behind the deacon, at the far left of the miniature, six lay figures
represent the bishop’s congregation. The bearded figure at the front of the
group could be identified as a secular nobleman.31 His rich garments,
including a short, embroidered tunic, calf-high boots, leggings and a gold-
trimmed green cape, provide a striking parallel to the episcopal regalia of
Engilmar. Further, the nobleman’s right hand is shown in a gesture that
mirrors that of Engilmar’s left, perhaps signaling the reception of the
blessing made by the bishop. Similar to the interaction of the figures in the
sixth-century apse mosaic, these figures act out their roles in the hierarchy
of an ecclesiastical community as part of an ideal Church. The figures in
the manuscript, however, all remain earthbound, unlike the martyrs,
angels, and the Virgin in the apse. In being so, they act out gestures of
blessing, support, and even fealty towards an idealized, but earthly
Church.
The architectural space rendered in the Benedictional does not
closely resemble Poreč, with the minor exception that the original ciborium
that covered the altar was probably also square.32 As is typical of
manuscripts from the Regensburg school, to which this manuscript has
been affiliated, the space of the miniature is rendered in a conceptual style.
31
It has been suggested to the author that this figure demonstrates striking similarities to
Henry the Wrangler (Henry II, Duke of Bavaria) in the Rule Book of Niedermünster,
Regensburg (Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Msc.Lit.142, fol. 4v). While it would be impossible
to say for certain whether this figure was intended to be Henry II, the visual connection to a
Saxon nobleman highlights Engilmar’s role as a spiritual leader with secular responsibilities.
For a discussion of the Rule Book of Niedermünster and its connection to the Ottonian
court of Henry II, see Eliza Garrison, “Henry II’s renovatio in the Pericope Book and
Regensburg Sacramentary,” in The White Mantle of Churches: Architecture, Liturgy and Art
around the Millennium, ed. Nigel Hiscock (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 57-79.
32
While the square ciborium that currently resides in the apse of the Eufrasian Basilica is a
thirteenth-century renovation, most believe that the sixth-century original would also have
been square. Otto Demus, “The Ciborium Mosaics of Parenzo,” The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 87 (1945): 238-245, and Milan Prelog, Basilica of Euphrasius, 26-28.
The bishop, the clerics, and the congregation float before the background,
while the architectural elements of the miniature are sharply foreshortened.
The fortress-like walls of the cathedral, executed with a strong diagonal,
appear rusticated and topped with crenellation, and the roof of the
structure is articulated in terra-cotta tile.33 A white triangular pediment
caps the space enclosing the liturgical act and gold foil illuminates the
background of the miniature. Additionally, nothing of the Eufrasian
mosaics is hinted at here. But this is not surprising. Firstly, very few
liturgical miniatures of this type refer, literally, to a specific sacred space.34
Secondly, as will be discussed further below, the manuscript was almost
certainly made in a context far removed from Poreč and the early
Byzantine traditions that inspired its mosaics.35 Almost certainly the
product of a Bavarian scriptorium, the manuscript would cull from
Bavarian, and as will be noted below, Benedictine artistic traditions in
order to legitimize Engilmar’s place at Poreč. That does not mean,
however, that the manuscript was compiled without specific reference to
Engilmar’s new post. In fact, I would suggest that the style of the
manuscript, the iconography of the frontispiece, and the rites included in
the liturgical blessings all point to an awareness of, or at least an anxiety
about, Engilmar’s role as the head of the historical Parentine episcopate.
The frontispiece, in particular, focuses the meaning of the manuscript’s
commission on its literal use (or the idea that it could be used) and the
concomitant episcopal privilege that came with that use. In other words,
the manuscript brought attention to the potential of Engilmar’s actions in
Poreč, and likewise the potential of Poreč’s position within the empire.
While not inspired by the apse at Poreč in formal ways, the manuscript’s
33
Meyer Schapiro has suggested that these motifs are typical of the Regensburg style.
Meyer Schapiro, The Parma Ildefonsus: A Romanesque Illuminated Manuscript from Cluny and
Related Works (New York: College Art Association of America, 1964), 22, fig. 61. It has
also been brought to my attention that the Rule Book of Niedermünster, a Regensburg
production, is abstractly rendered with heavily patterned backgrounds.
34
Consider, for example, the dedication of the altar bi-folia included in the Precious Gospels
of St. Bernward of Hildesheim. While it has been argued that many of the specific elements
in that image make reference to Bernward’s patronage of the abbey church, little of specific
significance can be attributed to the rendering of the architectural space. See Jennifer P.
Kingsley, “The Bernward Gospels: Structuring Memoria in Eleventh-Century Germany”
(Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2007), and Kingsley,
“Picturing the Treasury in Ottonian Art,” Gesta 50 (2012): 19-39.
35
It should be noted that the Regensburg school is often linked to a Byzantinizing style;
that connection, however, does not imply a direct link between Byzantine mosaics and
manuscripts but rather a more complicated interest in Byzantinizing elements and the
Ottonian court.
150 Evan A. Gatti
commission reflects the same ideologies embedded in the original

Parentine mosaics: a promise made, a blessing sought, a vow fulfilled.
I have argued elsewhere that the image of Engilmar blessing,
when understood as an extension of visual hagiographies, draws specific
attention to the act of episcopal blessing as a metaphor for establishing
both literal and spiritual boundaries.36 The few episcopal documents that
can be associated with Engilmar are surely not exhaustive of his episcopal
activities in Poreč, but it is suggestive that they focus on his role as a
protector (or at least as a “definer”) of Parentine properties.37 For example,
a charter documenting the donation of land to the monastic house of Saint
Michael Archangel in Pula includes the promise of anathema, performed
by Engilmar, for anyone who molests the land.38 Engilmar’s protection of
St. Michael Archangel also recognizes an expanding network of support for
his episcopacy. This period saw renewed patronage for and expansion of
the Benedictine houses across Istria.39 The dates of Engilmar’s tenure, in
particular, coincide with the beginning of what current research in Istrian
frescoes suggests was a dynamic period of rebuilding and painting that can
be attributed to northern and imperial influences.40 While none of this
36
Gatti, “Building the Body of the Church,” 92-121.
37
A document dated 7 August 1030 (Parenzo) records the bishop’s participation in the
donation of land and products of the monastery of Saint Cassian to the monastic house of
Saint Michael Archangel in Pula. A second document, dated 15 September 1040 (no place
name) records a conflict between the bishop and the abbot of St. Michael in Kloštar (also
known as St. Michael above Lim) for the privilege of tithing, a conflict that was ultimately
decided by King Henry III. Babudri, “I Vescovi di Parenzo,” 170-284, at 214-215. See also
Kandler, 193-194, no. 91, and 209-210, no. 99.
38
Kandler, 193-194, no. 91.
39
The eleventh century saw “a period of demographic and social revival” along the Adriatic
Coast, which can be attributed to the proliferation of Benedictine monasteries in that
region. As noted by Tomislav Raukar, “New Benedictine monasteries were founded along
the coast in the second half of the 11th century, Sv. Marija (St. Mary’s) in Zadar, Sv. Ivan
Evanñelist (St. John Evangelist’s) in Biograd, Sv. Petar I Selu (St. Peter’s in Selo), with
estates established in the hinterland increased the economic activity and led to the
appearance of the first urban communities in Slavonia.” Tomislav Raukar, “Land and
Society,” in Croatia in the Early Middle Ages: A Cultural Survey, ed. Ivan Supičić (London:
Philip Wilson, 1999), 192. For examinations of Benedictine monasteries in Istria and
especially the church of St. Michael in Kloštar, see: Ivan Ostojić, Benediktinci u Hrvatskoj
[Benedictines in Croatia] (Split: Tkon, 1965); Ana Deanović, “Ranoromaničke freske,” 12-
20; Danilo Klen, “Neke misli i podaci,” 9-19; Igor Fisković, “Nova viñenja oko
benediktinskog samostana na Limu” [New perspectives regarding the Benedictine
monastery at Lim], Arheološka istraživanja u istri 18 (1997): 235-252.
40
See Baldini, “Benedikcional Biskupa.” Baldini’s thesis that Engilmar’s Benedictional had a
direct influence on Istrian painting, has been refuted by Željko Bistrović in “Istrske freske:
skriti zakladi” [Istrian Frescoes: hidden treasures] Srce Istre (2007): 177-227. (6 August
2012), http://heartofistria.org/fileadmin/documents/brosure/freskeSLO_GB.pdf. Bistrović
argues that, “Though it did not exert a direct artistic influence, the Benedictional indicates
work has been attributed to Engilmar specifically, what has been identified
suggests a revived system of patronage, with episcopal alliances at its
center. As a part of the Bavarian Benedictine system, Engilmar would have
been in an excellent position to be both privy to a tradition of significant
acts of episcopal artistic patronage, and a recipient of sustained imperial
support.41
The impetus for the development and expansion of monastic
houses in an around Poreč should also be understood as a reflection of the
aspirations of their newly minted metropolitan at Aquileia Archbishop
Poppo of Aquileia (1019-1042), also known as Wolfgang, was appointed
to his office by Emperor Henry II and upon his death enjoyed the
patronage of his successor, Conrad II.42 During his tenure, Poppo secured
the primacy of Aquileia over Grado, reversing a rivalry between the
metropolitans that began as a result of the Three Chapters controversy. To
celebrate his victory, Patriarch Poppo began reconstructing the cathedral
in Aquileia, which was eventually consecrated on 12 July 1031. A link
between Poreč and Aquileia has long been established by the apse
decoration of the two cathedrals, as Poreč’s sixth-century program has
the interrelations between German feudal lords, the Istrian region and European artistic
centres.” This conclusion was confirmed in personal correspondence with Bistrović, who was
also kind enough to provide me with a copy of Baldini’s essay (Željko Bistrović, e-mail
message to the author, 5 July 2010). For a deeper discussion of the stylistic relationships
between Ottonian and Istrian painting, see Nikolina Maraković, “Le pitture murali nella
chiesa di San Martino a San Lorenzo del Pasenatico: nuove interpretazioni di un capolavoro
pittorico di XI secolo in Istria,” Hortus artium medievalium 16 (2010): 311-332; and eadem,
Zidno slikarstvo u Istri od 11. do 13. stoljeća. Revalorizacija lokalne umjetničke baštine u europskom
kontekstu [Mural Painting in Istria from the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries: Reevaluating
the Local Artistic Heritage in the European Context] (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Zagreb, 2009). While I have not consulted Maraković's dissertation firsthand,
I am thankful to Ana Marinković and Trpimir Vedriš for recommending her work to me. I
am also grateful to Nikolina Maraković for offering an insight into her general conclusions
about the stylistic comparisons between Istrian painting and the Regensburg school
through email correspondence (Maraković, e-mail message to the author, 23 June 2010).
41
During the reign of Emperor Henry II, who was educated at St. Emmeram, the
monastery was considered a principal house in ecclesiastical politics and reform, as well as
an artistic center. In particular, Henry II and Regensburg are associated with the eleventh-
century Gorze reform. See Henry Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, 2 vols.
(London: Harvey Miller, 1999), 1: 129.
42
For a discussion of the role of Poppo in the art and politics of Aquileia, see Thomas E. A.
Dale, Relics, Prayer, and Politics in Medieval Venetia: Romanesque Painting in the Crypt of
Aquileia Cathedral (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 10, 14-15; and Silvia
Blason Scarel, “Poppone di Aquileia: il contesto storico e la sua basilica, La Basilica di
Aquileia: gli affreschi dell’abside maggiore, ed. Sergio Tavano, ed., Udine: Forum, 2008,
119-125.
152 Evan A. Gatti
been suggested as model for Poppo’s eleventh-century program (Fig. 7).43

Included in the apse at Aquileia, from left to right, are the apostle St.
Mark, the late Emperor Henry II (974-1024), the bishop-saint Hilary,
Archbishop Poppo, and the deacon-saint Tatian. At the center of the
program can be found the Virgin and Child. To the left of the Virgin are
Prince Henry III (1026-1028), the bishop-saint Hermagoras, Emperor
Conrad II (1024-1039), the deacon-saint Fortunatus, the martyr-saint
Euphemia, and finally, Empress Gisela.
While Poreč may be seen as a compositional model for the frescoes
in Aquileia (the Virgin sits at the center surrounded by local saints and
members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy), the association between the two
sites goes beyond these formal considerations. As evidence of a hard-fought
battle for supremacy in the region that required imperial support to both
achieve and sustain, the apse fresco at Aquileia serves as ideological
paradigm for the region. Particularly relevant for the case of Engilmar
would be the overt references in the Aquileian frescoes towards the
patronage of the Salian imperial family, a link I will suggest below can also
be seen in the style of Engilmar’s ornate benedictional.44 For the purposes
of this essay, it is also worth underlining that in his reconstruction of the
cathedral at Aquileia Poppo pays particular attention to the apse, re-
imaging (and thus re-imagining) the iconographic potential of this space
by using an older model of episcopal dedication portraiture. In rebuilding
the cathedral and reviving the landscape around Aquileia, Poppo revived
the ancient Roman city, hoping to reconnect the area to the significance of
its economic and imperial pasts.45
Given this archiepiscopal exemplum, we seek ways to understand
how Engilmar’s Benedictional similarly maps out his significance to the
Parentine see. Although there is no extant record of Engilmar’s nomination
to his post by the Salian emperors, the style and the iconography of the
Benedictional assert episcopal privilege as an extension of both Benedictine
and imperial systems of patronage. This privilege, however, is not
43
For Aquileia, see Maria Cristina Cavalieri, “L’affresco absidale della Basilica patriarcale di
Aquileia,” Bollettino d’arte 61 (1976): 1-11, at 3-4. The cathedral may have been in some
decline during this period; see Prelog, Basilica of Euphrasius, 26.
44
Maria Cristina Cavalieri has linked the frescoes from the apse at Aquileia to Ottonian-
style frescoes, such as those in Friuli and the abbey church of Saint George, Oberzell-
Reichenau, as well as to contemporary manuscripts such as the Psalter of Egbert of Trier.
See Cavalieri, “L’affresco absidale,” 5-6. See also Giovanna Valenzano, “Le pitture murali
dell’abside di Aquileia. Questioni di tecnica e di stile in affreschi absidali nella basilica di
Aquileia,” Restauro nel Friuli Venezia Giulia 5 (2005): 29-56.
45
See Ian D. L. Clark, “Patriarch Poppo (1019-42) and the Rebuilding of the Basilica at
Aquileia: The Politics of Conspicuous Expenditure,” in The Church and Wealth, ed. W.J.
Shiels and Diana Wood, Studies in Church History 24 (1987), 37-45.
commemorated with a traditional donor image as it is in the Eufrasian

mosaic, or an imperial portrait like those at Aquileia.46 Instead, a painted
frontispiece identifies Episcopus Engilmar (EPS ENGILMARS) performing
a liturgical blessing at the altar. While I cannot argue that Engilmar had
the Benedictional made with the legacy of Eufrasius and the physical altar at
Poreč in mind, I suggest that the commission of the manuscript by or for
Engilmar affirmed his role as the celebrant – at the altar – as central to the
stability of the see.
Centuries after the Three Chapters controversy, Poreč was still
caught between the patriarch and the pope. From the late tenth through
the eleventh century, Poreč’s metropolitan alternated between Aquileia
and Grado no less than four times, and in each case allegiance to the
Byzantines and their patriarch or the Ottonian/Salian Empire and the
papacy followed accordingly. Unlike Eufrasius, in the case of Engilmar
there are reasons to suggest that the bishop was closely allied with the
imperial desires for stability in the area.47 Firstly, charters associated with
Engilmar mention a relationship with both Conrad and Henry III.
Secondly, the style and the iconography of the Benedictional’s miniatures
exhibit similarities to the Bavarian school of Regensburg, specifically to the
Benedictine house of St. Emmeram.48 Engilmar is known to have visited
that monastery, where, according to Arnold of St. Emmeram, he witnessed
a miracle.49 The text places Engilmar at St. Emmeram and acknowledges a
close relationship between Arnold and Engilmar. This has led scholars to
46
It is possible that the Benedictional belonged to a larger group of works that would have
been bequeathed to Poreč.
47
For a similar thesis, see Nikolina Maraković, Zidno slikarstvo u Istri, especially 13. The
specific page number was suggested by an anonymus reviewer. As stated in n. 40, I have
not consulted the dissertation firsthand, but a brief conversation with Maraković and
consultation with her other publications, such as “Le pitture murali nella chiesa di San
Martino a San Lorenzo del Pasenatico,” suggest that stylistic continuities indicate a
cooperative relationship between Salian dynasties and Istrian institutions, such as
Benedictine houses and the episcopal see. The work of Maraković, as is true for many of the
studies published at the Heart of Istria website (for example, Ž. Bistrović, “Istrske freske”),
have the potential to reorganize and expand the study of pre-romanesque and romanesque
fresco painting, such as that found in the work of Marcia A. Kupfer, Romanesque Wall
Painting in Central France: The Politics of Narrative (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1993). While this study is geographically specific, it is also thematically organized, offering
opportunities for expanded visions of the significance of medieval wall painting across
modern (and medieval) boundaries.
48
For a summary of the state of the research on the style of the manuscript, see Lee, “Das
Benediktionale des Bischofs Engilmar,” 4-5. See also Regensburger Buchmalerei, ed. Mütherich
and Dachs, no. 22, p. 36.
49
Arnold of St. Emmeram, in “Ex Arnoldi libris de S. Emmerammo,” ed. Georg Waitz,
MGH SS 4 (Hannover: Hahn, 1841), 570. As cited in von Euw, Die Handschriften der
Sammlung Ludwig, 1:294.
154 Evan A. Gatti
propose that the Benedictional was made at St. Emmeram sometime

between 1030 and 1040.50 What is most important about this connection
for the case of Poreč is that this link to the manuscripts produced at St.
Emmeram provides compelling examples of a (desired-for) reciprocal
relationship between episcopacy and empire.51 This can be seen most
notably in the frontispiece of the Sacramentary of Henry II (Munich,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 4456, fol. 11), which depicts Henry II
crowned by the hand of Christ and handed the symbols of his office by two
angels. Flanking the emperor, as well as literally supporting him, are the
bishop-saints Emmeram of Regensburg and Ulrich of Augsburg. In his
important essay on the motif at the center of the miniature, Meyer
Schapiro argues that this trio of figure types was used consistently during
the Middle Ages to connote the interdependence of Ecclesia and Empire,
an interdependence in search of strength and stability.52
The sumptuous Christological program included in the
Benedictional and the personalized portrait at its opening suggests that, in
addition to the manuscript’s liturgical purpose, the codex also functioned
as a status symbol for the bishop.53 As such, the manuscript marked the
significance and the circumstances of Engilmar’s episcopate.54 But while
50
Bernhard Bischoff, “Literarisches und künstlerisches Leben in St. Emmeram (Regensburg)
während des frühen und hohen Mittelalters,” in Mittelalterliche Studien. Ausgewählte Aufsätze
zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1966-1981), 2:77-
115, at 84.
51
Gatti, “Building the Body,” 109.
52
Meyer Schapiro, Words, Script, and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language (New York: G.
Braziller, 1996), 26. Schapiro also argues that the image group was adopted throughout the
Middle Ages to represent a sense of cooperation between bishops and kings. In particular,
the Exodus story was told in support of the military campaigns of Charlemagne, the wars of
King Robert of France, and the preaching of the First Crusade. Schapiro, Words, Script, and
Pictures, 25-46. Finally, the image group may reflect the posture of the king and bishops
upon entering the church on certain feast days and at the king’s coronation (41). Another
miniature in the Pericopes of Henry II (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 4452, fol.
2), given to the cathedral at Bamberg by Henry around 1014, also depicts the emperor
being crowned by Christ, this time supported by Saint Peter and Saint Paul. See also
Garrison, “Henry II’s Renovatio,” 57-79.
53
For a more complete look at Engilmar’s Benedictional, one should consult the online
“collection” of the J. Paul Getty Museum. At least nine folia from the manuscript,
including the Engilmar portrait, are presented in full color and at a high resolution. See, for
example, fol. 25v, “The Adoration of the Magi” (accessed 1 January 2012),
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=3486.
54
The idea that the nomination of bishops of German origin to episcopal posts throughout
the Empire was part of an institutionalized relationship between the Ottonian Church and
German rulers (known as the Reichskirchensystem), wherein Germanic bishops were elected to
keep the local aristocracy at bay, has been the topic of significant debate. See in particular
Timothy Reuter, “The ‘Imperial Church System’ of the Ottonian and Salian Rulers: A
the style of the manuscript may reference an allegiance to the empire, the
Benedictional is not a generic product of imperial commitment. Firstly, the
manuscript is a specifically episcopal document, containing only the
blessings and benedictions recited by the bishop. Secondly, the rites of the
Benedictional were crafted with the local significance of Poreč in mind. The
blessings in the Benedictional include the feast of St. Maurus of Parentium,
to be celebrated on 21 November. This benediction, included on fol. 54v,
is illuminated with a large golden initial and a double golden border.55 A
rare feast for a Bavarian liturgical calendar, the feast of St. Maurus draws a
distinct connection between Engilmar’s book and his position at Poreč.
Furthermore, the blessing and its illuminated initial link it to other
liturgical books made for Istrian contexts. For example, Hana Breko
Kustura has argued that the Liber sequentiarum et sacramentarium in Šibenik,
copied at the Bavarian scriptorium of Tegernsee between 1050-1070, was
originally made for use at St. Thomas’ basilica in Pula. Evidence for this
attribution is found in the combination of Germanic and Istrian saints in
the liturgical calendar, most notably St. Maurus of Parentium.56
At the time when the Benedictional of Engilmar was commissioned,
between 1030-1040, Poreč was a place in between, on the edge of the
German Empire, bordering on the territories of Byzantium and the
medieval kingdom of Croatia. These contested borders, alliances, and
enmities disclose a complex web of influences in which the region’s early
Christian and Byzantine pasts were negotiated as part of its Ottonian and
Salian presents. Such historical and stylistic designations, most of which are
modern scholarly constructions, mark the disciplinary boundaries that
divide places like Poreč from itself, separating artistic traditions from their
historical contexts, and privileging some as meaningful while deeming
Reconsideration,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33 (1982): 347-374, and a rebuttal by Josef

Fleckenstein, “Problematik und Gestalt der ottonisch-salischen Reichskirche,” in Reich und
Kirche vor dem Investiturstreit: Vorträge beim wissenschaftlichen Kolloquium aus Anlass des
achtzigsten Geburtstags von Gerd Tellenbach, ed. Karl Schmid (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1985),
83-98. In the case of Engilmar and Poreč, there is reason to assume that the bishop was
closely allied with the imperial desires for stability in the area. The charters associated with
Engilmar mention a relationship with both Conrad and Henry III, who was ultimately
called upon to solve a dispute concerning the rite to tithe. See Kandler, ed., Codice
Diplomatico Istriano, 193, no. 91; 209, no. 99. Beyond asserting a continued (Germanic)
episcopal presence in Poreč, there is no reason to assume that Engilmar’s posting was
intended to suppress the nobility, or that the local rulers were hostile to his imperial
connections.
55
For a transcription of the prayer, see Bauerreiss, “Über den Mönch Engilmar von
Niederharthausen,” 36.
56
Hana Breko, “The so-called Liber sequentiarum et sacramentarium (Šibenik, Monastery of
Franciscans the Conventuals), 11th Century. The Oldest Medieval Missal of Pula, Istria,”
Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 45:1-2 (2004): 35-52.
156 Evan A. Gatti
others out of place or time. In cases such as this, local history, and in this
case local hagiography, become even more significant as tools for
interpretation. It is likely that the portrait of Engilmar was always
intended to honor both the bishop’s person and his position, especially as
the placement of the miniature at the opening of the text means that the
miniature did not illustrate a particular blessing, but rather characterized
the liturgical manuscript as an episcopal possession. As a dedicatory
miniature or another ex voto, the petitions, here via the bishop on behalf of
his community, were offered to God in perpetuity. In doing so, the
miniature ennobled the act of episcopal blessing and established the
spiritual legitimacy of Engilmar.57
We do not know the names of the bishops who served in Poreč
immediately before and after the tenure of Engilmar, but even the few
extant details of Engilmar’s episcopacy suggest he brought attention, and a
certain degree of stability, to his see.58 This stability is perhaps best
demonstrated through the recognition of Engilmar’s donation of San
Cassian to Saint Michael Archangel, reconfirmed by Engilmar’s successors
through 1146.59 And, as noted above, we know that the manuscript was
updated and used through at least the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
In this way, the Benedictional did what Engilmar might have hoped it
would. It set him forth as a model for the future, formed by the past. The
bishops who used this Benedictional, be they in Poreč or in some other
context, allowed the image of Engilmar to punctuate the extension of the
liturgical rites. Preserved alongside the images of the passion, Engilmar,
identified by his inscription, enacted the blessing enclosed in the text.
Allow me to suggest one more animation: if we imagine the
Benedictional as it was used in the apse, Engilmar’s reception of his own
likeness, in the shadow of his saintly predecessors, the bishop-saint Maurus
and Eufrasius, can be seen to collapse liturgical space and time.60 As
Engilmar looked at the portrait of himself blessing his congregation, he
literally and figuratively stood at the feet of his episcopal predecessors. I
cannot recreate the specific context in which Engilmar commissioned this
manuscript, but by including this manuscript in the active, episcopal
57
Rosemary Lee refers to Engilmar as a “spiritual statesman” (geistlichen Staatsmannes). Lee,
“Das Benediktionale des Bischofs Engilmar,” 10.
58
See Babudri, “I Vescovi di Poreč,” 214-215. Note the dates for Arpus, which may be used
in some sources as the terminus ante quem for Engilmar.
59
Kandler, ed., Codice Diplomatico Istriano, 194, no. 91.
60
Gatti, “Building the Body,” 118. See also Jennifer P. Kingsley, “To Touch the Image:
Embodying Christ in the Bernward Gospels,” Peregrinations 3 (2010): 138-173 (accessed 28
December 2011), http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu/vol3_1/index.html.
contexts of the apse, we can speculate about the possibility of a bishop who
desired to align himself at the foot of the saints, as the head of his see.
III. Ciborium: Lifting the Veil

Before we leave the apse in the past and re-enter the present, we should
look at one more episcopal commission at Poreč, the “white elephant” in
the apse, or what Terry and Maguire describe as “an intrusion of the 13th
century,” the marble and mosaic ciborium.61 In 1277, during what turned
out to be a brief calm between storms, Bishop Otto (1256-1279)
commissioned a ciborium to cover the main altar before the apse. The
ciborium is reconstructed (in some parts) from the sixth-century altar
canopy, although there is some disagreement as to how many of the
columns can be dated to the Eufrasian period. It has also been suggested
that the ciborium is a copy of an earlier version found in San Marco,
Venice, and that the Parentine version is even the product of Venetian
manufacture.62 Among all these inconsistencies, however, what is certain is
that the ciborium was intended to be a link between the original Eufrasian
basilica and the see’s complicated (and contested) political present, which
was made manifest through the Venetian style of the mosaics and the
altered pattern of the ciborium.
Despite being seen by most modern scholars as something
“beyond Istria,” the ciborium is an important part of the history of the
apse, especially as it is such a significant component of its physical present.
First of all, many believe that its shape reflects an earlier canopy that
covered the altar, and as noted above, at least two columns are believed to
be from the original structure. Additionally, the iconography of the
mosaics that adorn a part of the ciborium imitates that found along the
walls of the apse, the view of which the ciborium now precludes. For
example, a scene of the Annunciation by Gabriel to the Virgin Mary is
included along the left wall of the apse and the same scene is included
across the spandrels of the canopy. Further, the sides of the canopy include
bust medallions of saints, in pairs: (left/north) Acolitus and Projectus;
(right/south) Maurus and Eleuterius; (back/east) Demetrius and Julianus.63
61
62
Demus, „The Ciborium Mosaics,” 241.
63
“The Virgin, and the Saints invoked by the bishop in the inscription and represented in
the mosaics are the patrons of the town and the cathedral. Maurus, the Akolyth Elpidius,
Eleutherius and Julianus were Illyrian martyrs and of Demetrius and Projectus the
cathedral possessed relics which had shortly before (1247) been collocated in the high altar,
erected 1233.” Demus, „The Ciborium Mosaics,” 140 n. 5. Terry and Maguire note that a
number of modern scholars have also indentified the three “anonymous” saints as
“Eleutherius, Projectus, and Accolitus” (112 n. 67).
158 Evan A. Gatti
And, like the apse program behind it, the ciborium includes a lengthy
dedication that runs along the top and down the sides of the front of the
canopy.64
In a short article on the mosaics, Otto Demus quoted from the
dedicatory inscription in which the bishop prays to the Virgin and to
Maurus “so that love may illuminate the hearts of the people; that sweet
peace may reign in the town; that the hearts of the people may be purified
and that the darkness taken from their minds.”65 The “hearts” and “minds”
to which Bishop Otto refers in this dedication are those same citizens
whom he had excommunicated after a revolt in 1278, an anathema
repeated by his successor Boniface in 1280 and 1296. During the three
revolts, the bishops sought the protection of Venice and in 1267 Poreč was
designated a Venetian protectorate, a dependent relationship referenced in
the style of the mosaics.66
The ciborium similarly reflects a struggle between local interests,
metropolitan aspirations, and imperial alliances. Like the sixth-century
apse mosaics, the ciborium negotiates the intentions and expectations of
the bishop, the local nobility, potential political partners, and spiritual
predecessors. Although in retrospect the petition from the inscription
seems to have been in vain, the commission ex voto perfecit episcopus Otho
remains intact and active. It is even possible to imagine, although
impossible to prove, that two of the anonymous saints represented in the
apse would now be readily identified with the relics recently (1233)
64
Tempora surgebant Christi nativa potentis / Septem cum decies septem sum mille ducentis / Virginis
absque pare cum sacre sedulus are / Hoc opus ex voto perfecit episcopus Otho / Perpetuando pia laudes
tibi Virgo Maria. / Hoc quicumque legis dic o virguncula munda / Cui nec prima fuit nec successura
secunda / Et tu Sancte Dei Martir celeberrime Maure / Pro nobis Christi vox intercedat in aure / Ut
divinus amor lustret precordia turbe / Et dulcis pacis concordia crescat in urbe. / Ut tandem tota cordis
rubigine lota / Et prorsus demptis tenebris de lumine mentis / Cum iam succident vitalia stamina pares
/ Nos miserante Deo coeli salvemur in area. Amen (transcribed by Demus, 238). Prelog, Basilica
of Euphrasius, includes a more literal transcription in his book, as well as an English
translation that differs only slightly from Demus’ paraphrase. I have included the most
relevant part of Prelog’s translation here: “The years had passed seven and ten and one
thousand two hundred / Since Christ was born of the peerless and powerful Virgin, when /
Otto the bishop, devoted to the holy altar / Completed this work and fulfilled his vow, / In
eternal gratitude to you, oh Blessed Virgin Mary. … You who read this, say: O you pure
Virgin, / Who have had no predecessor nor will have a successor. / And you, holy martyr of
God, illustrious Maurus, / Let Christ’s voice intercede for us in heaven / And the wind of
divine love cleanse the hearts, / So that the pleasant harmony of peace may flourish in the
town / That the decay of the heart might finally be cleaned / And the darkness chased from
the light of the soul / When the thread of life is already breaking, have mercy / That we
might, by the Grace of God, / Be saved in the Court of Heaven. Amen. See Prelog, Basilica
of Eufrasius, 26-27.
65
Demus, „The Ciborium Mosaics,” 238.
66
Ibid., 238-241.
installed in the high altar, extending the public presentation of private

petitions into a new era.67 Images of these saints, namely Demetrius and
Projectus, are repeated in mosaic roundels on the ciborium, but given that
the ciborium also includes a roundel of Maurus on the north side, we
should imagine that this kind of duplication was not a problem, but rather
desirable. As we know that parts of the ciborium were formed from the
original altar canopy, it can be assumed that the mosaic program similarly
acted as a reflection of the past. Rather than replace the program in the
apse, the ciborium echoed the original mosaics, amplifying its meaning as an
integral part of the decoration of the apse. This idea becomes more
significant when one considers that the iconography being repeated here is
that of the Incarnation, noted in the opening section of this essay as a
significant reciprocal gesture: with privilege comes responsibility, with
responsibility comes privilege. In the case of the ciborium, and in a
rhetorical manner that would please any exegete, what the altar canopy
conceals is revealed (or re/veiled) by its mosaics. The thirteenth-century
ciborium is an extension of the visual and material conversation begun in
the sixth century. Or, the ciborium literally re-frames the apse, obscuring
parts of its Parentine past only to re-present them as new political (and
visual) alliances.
Finally, it is worth pausing to consider a part of the inscription
that Demus describes as “concerning the right way to receive the
sacrament.”68 The inscription is included along the lower edges of the
vaulting in golden letters on a dark blue background. Milan Prelog
transcribes it as follows:
SI MALE SVMATVR SVMENTI PENA PARATVR/ QVI RODIT
MANDIT COR…OS* ET GVTTVRA TANGIT / SI COPITVR*
DIGNE CVPIENTEM* SERVAT AB IGNE / INTESTINA
TAMEN NON TANGIT NOBILE STAMEN* / ESCA
SALVTARIS QUE SACRIS PONITVR ARIS.69 (If taken badly, the
taker will be punished / He who gnaws, bites, touches the heart*,
mouth and throat / If taken well, he will understand and be
preserved from fire / the stomach however will not touch the noble
67
Ibid., 241 n. 5. While I have not been able to access the following publication, I would
like to thank one of my anonymous reviewers for suggesting that one can find a more
complete bibliography and different opinions about the dating in Marina Viceljas, Istra i
Bizant (Bizant u Istri) [Istria and Byzantium (Byzantium in Istria)] (Rijeka: Matica
hrvatska, 2007), 176-177.
68
Demus, „The Ciborium Mosaics,” 238 n. 3.
69
Prelog, Basilica of Euphrasius, 27.
160 Evan A. Gatti
thread* / The food of salvation is placed on the altar by sacred

rites.)70
There are a number of issues that must be noted with regard to Prelog’s
transcription. First, there is some disagreement as to the proper order of
the inscription. For example, Charles and Georges Rohault de Fleury
transcribe the inscription as beginning with SI CAPITUR DIGNE
CAPIENTEM SERVAT AB IGNE, followed by QUI RODIT MANDIT
COR OS ET GUTTURA TANGIT. The order then concludes with
INTESTINA TAMEN NON TANGIT NOBILE STAMEN / ESCA
SALUTARIS QUE SACRIS PONITUR ARIS / SI MALE SUMATUR
SUMENTI PENA PARATUR.71 In fact, a set order for the inscription is
not clear, as it appears that each phrase begins with a Greek cross and ends
with a decorative flourish.72 As the inscription is relatively unique, it is
difficult to suggest with any certainty whether there was ever intended to
be a right order for the phrases. Finally, the English translation of Prelog’s
transcription takes some liberties in its interpretation.73 For example, male
is translated as “maliciously” when it could simply mean badly or wrongly.
Rodit and mandit are translated as “slanders” and “torments,” taking heart
as their subject, when they could also be understood to mean gnawing or
biting and in that case more than likely refer to the host. Despite these
problems, or perhaps because of them, a focus on the inscription is valuable
70
The asterisks included in the transcription and translation mark problematic places in
the inscription to be discussed further below.
71
Charles Rohault de Fleury and Georges Rohault de Fleury, La messe: études archaéologiques
sur ses monuments, 8 vols. (Paris: Morel, 1883), 2:37.
72
A clean idiomatic translation of the inscription is not only complicated by the various
possibilities for the order of the phrases but also the meaning of the ellipses following cor.
Unfortunately a careful study of the inscription in situ was not possible so my conclusions
are derived from published transcriptions as well as published and personal photographs of
the ciborium’s vaulting. I was not been able to confirm the transcriptions of the part of the
inscription that lies under the front (west) vault as it is an area not often, or easily
documented. Additionally, stamen as transcribed by Prelog and others, when checked
against magnified photographs, appears to be stramen. Further, COPITVUR should be
transcribed as cupitur and CVPIENTVM should be transcribed as capientem. I would like to
thank Alice Chapman for her willingness to discuss the inscription and all of its
idiosyncrasies with me. I am especially grateful for her help with the term STRAMEN,
which as she pointed out could be translated as a fine foundation, or a fine composition,
which would then refer to the ‘fine composition of the food of salvation’.
73
I have included the English here for consultation, however, it should be noted the
English translation may actually be a translation of the original Croatian-language
publication and may not a reflect a Latin to English translation, but rather a Latin to
Croatian to English translation. “If taken maliciously, / Punishment awaits the taker. /
Whoever slanders, torments the heart… hurts the mouth and throat. / If one wishes
worthily, he will be kept from fire. / But the intestines are not affected by the noble thread.
/ The salutary food placed on holy altars.” Prelog, Basilica of Euphrasius, 27.
as it suggests that like the figural mosaics, the meaning of the inscription is
subject to personal interpretation. Whether or not the terms male or rodit
carry the strong sentiment suggested by Prelog is debatable, but that the
inscription reveals a serious concern as to the proper mindset of those
about to take communion is not.
The placement of the inscription within the vaulting of the canopy
suggests it was meant to be seen primarily by Otto and his deacons. The
inscription offers a warning that those who would come to the altar
unprepared, or “male,” should be wary. What is more interesting for this
essay, however, is the role that the inscriptions play in speaking to various
audiences for the apse. Like the anonymous saints in the conch of the apse,
the figures included in the roundels and along the spandrels act as
intercessors for all. The dedicatory language of the inscription, like that in
the broad blue banner of the apse, similarly marks its construction by the
bishop as a vow fulfilled—ex voto perfecit. When taken together, these
mosaics and the inscription bring our attention to the same dynamic
exchange expected of the apse by Eufrasius, Englimar, and now Otto. The
historical circumstances are different, of course, and because of these
differences the decoration of, for, or about the apse evolves, but as it does,
so too does it continue to reflect the significance of the episcopal acts that
came before it.
There is not a great deal of scholarly literature on the thirteenth-
century ciborium.74 This is, in itself, telling. Even Demus’ essay is only
interested in the ciborium as an example of Venetian mosaic workshop
tradition. He is not interested in the relationship that might exist between
the original apse mosaics at Poreč and their replication on the ciborium.
For most, it seems, the ciborium only stands in the way.75 For others it is
simply not relevant. It is a provincial example of a mosaic workshop better
seen in San Marco.76 I would like to argue, however, that in looking past or
around the ciborium we miss what it might tell us about the episcopal
expectations for the artistic patronage in and about the apse. As Eufrasius
74
For example, the thirteenth-century ciborium is not even mentioned in the description of
the apse on the UNESCO website: “The Episcopal Complex of the Euphrasian Basilica in
the Historic Center of Poreč,” UNESCO World Heritage Centre Website (accessed 21 March
2011), http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/809.
75
Admittedly, my own experience of the apse was frustrated by the ciborium. Had I been
able to stand at the altar, I would have only seen a painted blue canopy, dotted with golden
stars. But as I strained to see around the monument, while maintaining decorum before a
consecrated altar, I had to remind myself that rather than obfuscate my focused view into a
specific past, the canopy reiterated those aspects of the apse that had always been the
subject of Parentine episcopal patronage.
76
Otto Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice, vol. 1/1 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984), 183.
162 Evan A. Gatti
had done, Engilmar had imagined, and Poppo had modeled, Otto
decorated the apse in a manner that aligned his position with the
appropriate powers. In his case, he realigned the allegiances of Poreč
against its local artistic heritage, but in doing so he did not obfuscate the
past; rather, he highlighted the actions of donation in the apse above and
behind him. In fact, I imagine a moment when the canopy, which may
have been created in Venice, was brought to Poreč and reconstructed.
Perhaps the masters were unwilling to alter the columns from the original
ciborium, and there was a collective sigh when they realized that the size of
the canopy was not the appropriate size for the apse. But there is an
alternative scenario too: perhaps Otto, who so resented the tenants of his
see for their continual rebellions, smiled as his altar eclipsed their apse.
While we may not be able to access the bishop’s intentions, we should not
ignore them. His short tenure endures in the apse at Poreč, for better—or
for worse.
IV. Contemporary Contexts: From Apse to Icon

In the fifteenth century, Bishop John of Parentium (who the local
guidebook states was a Croat “by birth”) is said to have “brought the
Renaissance to Poreč” through his commission of an antependium of gilded
silver depicting the Virgin with the saints (Fig. 8).77 The figures adorning
the altar are called late originals, as they were ordered in 1669 to replace
the lost originals. But while one can appreciate this commission in
photographs and archives, the present state of the antependium is
surprising; the gilded “late originals” were stolen sometime between the
tenth and the eleventh of February, 1974.78 Rather than replace the stolen
figures, the diocese chose to leave the altar bare in memoria of the theft. As
the guidebook states, “so that even today there is only emptiness.”79
Given the great lengths we have undertaken to understand the
layers of patronage in the apse, especially as it relates to petitions to the
saints, the lacunae on the altar are surprising. Perhaps I take us too far in
asking that we imagine this silent protest as providing a model—or
proof—of the continued significance of the apse as a locus of ex voto. But
certainly the theft, and the bare altar frontal that reminds us of it, suggest
that the Eufrasian basilica is not lost to time. On the contrary, like so
many World Heritage Sites, it reflects an accumulation of historical
moments, a site of continued memory. The Eufrasian Basilica and its
magnificent apse has done what Eufrasius originally intended: the site has
77
Ante Šonje, Poreč: Euphrasian Basilica, (Poreč: Turističko društvo, 1987), 26.
78
Milan Pelc, Renesansa (Zagreb: Nakada Ljevak, 2006), 416 n. 859. See also Šonje, 22.
79
Šonje, 26.
created a continued legitimacy for the Parentine episcopate, even if a

significant part of that legacy welcomes tourists and scholars as often as
congregants.
In the opening paragraphs of this essay it was remarked that the
Eufrasian Complex secured a place on the World Heritage List because it
was a complete example of an early Christian episcopal compound. Surely
the site is similar to Ravenna and Aquileia in its decoration, and thereby its
artistic and cultural significance, but it is also exceptional in its entirety,
with all the appropriate appendices.80 Unlike a site such as Pompeii or
Herculaneum, which remained intact because of a cataclysmic disaster that
preserved the past in toto (so to speak) or the excavated remains of a site
long forgotten, the Episcopal Complex at Poreč remains in use. It is this
continued maintenance, this continued significance, that brings the
complex to the present.
In a final section of the report recommending the Episcopal
Complex at Poreč for inclusion on the World Heritage List, the
authenticity of the site is described thus:
The authenticity of the Euphrasian episcopal complex is an
exemplary illustration of historical multistratification, in the spirit
of the 1964 Venice Charter. Restoration work has been carried out
here from the Middle Ages up to the present day, according to the
perceptions and philosophies of the succeeding periods. The results
of this continuous activity have become intrinsic parts of the
monument itself and bestow a special value on it as witnesses to
historical change.81
And the Venice Charter states in its preamble:
Imbued with a message from the past, the historic monuments of
generations of people remain to the present day as living witnesses
of their age-old traditions. People are becoming more and more
conscious of the unity of human values and regard ancient
monuments as a common heritage. The common responsibility to
safeguard them for future generations is recognized. It is our duty
to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity.82
80
“Comparative Analysis” in the September 1997, Action by ICMOS included in the
Advisory Body Evaluation (June, 20, 2011), http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/809/documents/.
81
“Conservation and Authenticity” included in the 1996 Advisory Body Evaluation (June, 20
2011), http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/809/documents/.
82
See ICMOS 1964 Venice Charter: International Charter for the Conservation and
Restoration of Monuments and Sites (June 20, 2011),
http://www.icomos.org/venice_charter.html.
164 Evan A. Gatti
While this final framing of the apse, unlike its episcopal

predecessors, is a scholarly one, it too is not outside of political contexts
and desired-for alliances. As noted above, new research on the eleventh-
century Croatian painting, architecture, and manuscript production has
opened doors for scholars of the Middle Ages with a traditional focus on
Central and Western Europe to the significance of territories in Eastern
Europe and beyond.83 These connections and concomitant publications
create ever more dynamic versions of the medieval past (and the present),
especially when centered on case studies or locally-specific histories rather
than sweeping historical and geographical characterizations.84 These
conversations have the potential to reconnect a place to its many pasts,
across time and into the present, but they are not often the modus operandi
of the contemporary scholar. Focused on a single place, a body of
scholarship, or a geographical location, we may want to look beyond and
not at obstacles to the past. These are constant questions for the
archaeologists, as well as the restoration specialists and agencies such as
UNESCO, who decide which past is privileged. In thinking of Bishop Saint
Maurus as a model, and Bishops Eufrasius, Engilmar, and Otto as
mediators, we ought to revel in the complexity of the pasts as a series of
continued presents and consider those aspects of modernity, and especially
the modern politics of preservation, that make visible what is possible to
know about the past.
This final point could not have been made more clearly than
when, at the opening of the Hagiotheca conference from which this
volume derives, we were welcomed by the current Parentine Bishop in
Eufrasius’ newly-restored episcopal palace. As I gave my own paper,
Engilmar’s Benedictional, which now resides in the J. Paul Getty Museum in
Los Angeles, was once more opened in the Eufrasian complex. The
Benedictional was only a digital image and the image itself was projected in
the palace rather than the apse, but something in the projection functioned
just the same. As Engilmar echoed Eufrasius, and Otto invoked Maurus –
so these icons of the Parentine episcopate remain at the foot of the saints,
at the head of the see.
83
See, for example, the massive five-volume series Croatia and Europe, ed. Ivo Supičić, 5 vols.
(Zagreb: AGM, 1999-2008). The volumes are organized chronologically from the early
Middle Ages to the contemporary period.
84
Some scholars have argued that the desired-for connection with a (western) European
present has recast the art and architecture of Croatia, and by extension the tourism
industry, as “likewise” European and thereby disconnected from the multi-nationalism that
used to characterize the area as unique. See especially Lauren A. Rivera, “Managing
‘Spoiled’ National Identity: War, Tourism, and Memory in Croatia,” American Sociological
Review 73/ 4 (Aug., 2008), pp. 613-34.
+Four more pages for pics… Evan has five images. Her suggestion: “I
assume that the apse mosaic may be reprinted elsewhere (and before my
essay) so if it will save space and money I do not have to reprint it here.”
Fig. 1. Poreč, Eufrasian Basilica, nave (photo: Todd Nicolet)

166 Evan A. Gatti
Fig. 2. Benedictional of Engilmar of Parenzo, Los Angeles, California, The J. Paul

Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig VII, 1, folio 25v (photo: The J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles)
Fig. 3. Poreč, Eufrasian Basilica, apse and ciborium (photo: Todd Nicolet)
168 Evan A. Gatti
Fig. 4. Aquileia, Patriarchal Basilica, apse (photo: Todd Nicolet)
Fig. 5. Poreč, Eufrasian Basilica, main altar (photo: Todd Nicolet)

THE PLACE OF HOLY AND UNHOLY BISHOPS IN
BYZANTINE HAGIOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE
(EIGHTH-TWELFTH CENTURIES)
Stephanos Efthymiadis
Today hardly anyone who views the iconography of an Orthodox parish

church can be surprised by the thematic orientation and hierarchy of its
frescoes and icons. Scenes taken from Christ’s life as narrated in the
Gospels take precedence in size and location over episodes from the life of
the Virgin Mary, or the figures of the evangelists, apostles, and Old
Testament prophets. When it comes to the saints, the distribution looks
equally fair: martyrs, male and female, prevail over the Church Fathers,
monks, patriarchs, emperors, and bishops.
By and large, a similar proportion is found among the saints
registered in the thick volume of the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca.
Passiones, Miracula, and Enkomia celebrating the early Christian martyrs by
far outnumber the vitae and Enkomia of later saints, whether these were
monks, patriarchs, or bishops. This impression does not rest solely on late
antique textual evidence, when the stories and cults of the martyrs were
still recent, but derives from a diachronic and panoramic view of Byzantine
hagiography. As a matter of fact, more than any kind of saint, early
Christian martyrs did not cease to inspire hagiographers from medieval
Byzantium and after, whether those authors were simple anonymous
monks or among the finest pens of Byzantine letters. Along with the
Church Fathers, martyrs – some of whom, we should not forget, were
bishops – were regarded as the perennial defenders of faith, thereby
deserving to be celebrated on different occasions and praised by orators and
learned writers.1
1
There are well over fifty saintly bishops among the martyrs commemorated in the
liturgical calendar of Constantinople. See Vera von Falkenhausen, “Bishops,” in The
Byzantines, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 173. For
the priority that Byzantine hagiography assigned to martyrs and Church Fathers, see
Stephanos Efthymiadis, “Two Gregories and Three Genres: Autobiography,
Autohagiography and Hagiography,” in Gregory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections, ed.
Jostein Bjørtnes and Tomas Hägg (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), 239-
240 [repr. in idem, Hagiography in Byzantium: Literature, Social History and Cult (Farnham,
Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), x].
170 Stephanos Efthymiadis
If Byzantine hagiography privileged martyrs throughout its long

history, this was not the case with other kinds of holy men and women,
for, in terms of the selection of saints, a clear-cut dichotomy (or
discontinuity) marks the Byzantine millennium, not to say the concept of
sainthood itself. Along with the crisis of urban culture in the mid-seventh
century and the ensuing shifts in the economic and social spheres,
sainthood came close to being totally identified with the ascetic and
monastic ideals of life. The disintegration of urban centres, which mostly
came about as a result of Persian and Arab expansion in the East, as well as
Avar, Bulgarian, and Slavic invasions in the Balkans, led to the devaluation
of local, decentralized authority. Thus, episcopal power in cities and towns
in lands that were still included in the empire’s orbit dwindled. Bishops
may not have been totally divested of the authority which they had
enjoyed and the ‘overtones of secular power’ which they were associated
with in late antiquity, yet they could no longer compete on equal terms
with the holy prestige of the monastic abbot or the anchorite.2 The
imposing representation of the bishop-patron that we admire today on the
mosaics of the cathedral of Eufrasius at Parentium/Poreč was not
reproduced in any medieval Byzantine church.3 What we find instead is
the portrait of a secular donor-patron or that of a monastic abbot.
Not only with the hindsight of modern historians who study
eighth-century Byzantine society, but also in the eyes of the ninth-century
authors themselves, the iconoclastic controversy came about, among other
things, as a reaction to the rising power of monks in Byzantine society.
What is more, in the interim period between the First and the Second
Iconoclasm (787-815), this opposition was projected within the iconophile
camp as the monks of Stoudios in Constantinople resisted the lenient
policy of the patriarch Tarasios (784-806) and his successor Nikephoros
(806-815) regarding a number of ecclesiastical matters. A clear opposition
2
For a survey of the bishop’s authority in Late Antiquity, see Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in
Late Antiquity. The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2005). For the ensuing period see Benjamin Moulet, Evêques, pouvoir et
société à Byzance (VIIIe-XIe siècle). Territoires, communautés et individus dans la société provinciale
byzantine (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011).
3
The most recent studies in English and German on Eufrasius’ cathedral include Ann
Bennett Terry and Henry Maguire, Dynamic Splendor: The Wall Mosaics in the Cathedral of
Eufrasius at Poreč, 2 vols. (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007);
Yiannis Theocharis, “Die Darstellung des kleinen Eufrasius in der Basilika von Poreč,”
Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 58 (2008): 209-216; and Rainer Warland, “Der
Knabe im Apsismosaik der Basilika Eufrasiana in Poreč und die visuelle Repräsentation
frühbyzantinischer Bischöfe,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 60 (2010): 173-179.
The Place of Holy and Unholy 171
between what has been termed secular and monastic clergy divided the
Byzantine Church until at least the first decades of the tenth century.4
All in all, the rise and imposition of monastic power in society
typified much of Byzantine culture in the period from the eighth through
the tenth century and had its impact on proclaiming new saints.
Calculations have shown that from a total of ninety saints dating from this
and the ensuing period of the eleventh to the fifteenth century, and about
whom a work of hagiography survives, only fifteen were bishops,
presbyters, or laymen, all the remainder being monks or nuns.5 Four of
these bishops were occupants of episcopal sees in Asia Minor and another
five or six were active in towns of Greece, Bulgaria, southern Italy, and
Cyprus. Interestingly, this quantitative imbalance between monks and
other types of saints was not confined to the identity of the hagiographic
hero, but was also a question of focus in the hagiographical narrative itself.
If one compares the textual passages referring to a saintly bishop’s urban
activity to the space accorded to a saintly bishop’s ascetic feats and to his
life in isolation, the change is felt as qualitative too. In other words, in the
Life of a saintly bishop references to his episcopal career are brief, often
vague, and insignificant, whereas episodes and anecdotes drawn from his
‘monastic experiences’ are rich in detail and extensive. By the same token,
the biographers of monastic saints were reluctant to mention even the
existence of local bishops, let alone their jurisdiction over the local
monasteries where those saints were active.6
This is in marked contrast to the lively picture of cities recorded in
late antique hagiography.7 As may be inferred from a fair number of texts,
the episcopate was considered the culmination of years lived in ascetic
isolation, yet hagiographers provided their listeners/readers with many
highlights from the activity of holy bishops as patrons, wonderworkers,
and city benefactors.8 By contrast, their medieval counterparts tend to
represent urban space in the abstract terms of a writer who is relying more
on clichés and literary reminiscences than on his personal experience and/or
concrete information provided by others.
4
This rivalry between influential monasteries and the patriarchate was first discussed by
Ernst von Dobschütz, “Methodius und die Studiten,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 18 (1909): 41-
105.
5
See Peter Charanis, “The Monk as an Element of Byzantine Society,” Dumbarton Oaks
Papers 25 (1971): 63ff.
6
See Rosemary Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 843-1118 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 149-153.
7
On this picture see Helen G. Saradi, The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century. Literary Images
and Historical Reality (Athens: Society of Messenian Archeological Studies 2006), 102-117.
8
Recapitulation of the power and authority assumed by bishops in Late Antiquity, with
references to previous bibliography, in ibid., 181-185; and Rapp, Holy Bishops, 6-16.
In sum, in many respects medieval Byzantine hagiography severed

its connection with the late antique literary types of the holy bishops and,
what is more, sometimes reserved an utterly negative portrait for them. As
the holy monk now lived in proximity to the world or even within it – the
Egyptian and Judean deserts were no longer part of Byzantine territory –
the bishop assumed the role of an opponent, usually disputing the
protagonist’s saintly identity. A typical example is St. Peter of Atroa (d.
837), whose healing activity was met with scepticism and animosity on the
part of bishops. In his Life, the latter are said to suspect him of sorcery and
of being a servant of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. In the same vita,
Peter meets an ascetic by the name of James, who was a former bishop of
Anchialos, a town in modern Bulgaria, and who abandoned his see and
retreated to Mount Olympos in Bithynia “because he was extremely fond
of God and the anchorite’s life.” Clearly, as Peter’s biographer, the monk
Sabas, would have it, the ascetic life by far wins out over the episcopacy.9
Though a rarity, however, the holy men who in medieval
Byzantium were consecrated bishops, remaining in office for a shorter or
longer period, deserve particular attention. Their hagiography is worth
surveying especially because it exemplifies continuities and discontinuities
in the figure of the medieval holy man, is indicative of anti-monastic and
centrifugal tendencies, and points to a spirit of secularization which,
among other things, opposed the recognition of new saints. We should
always bear in mind that, when read between the lines and placed in a
historical context, hagiography may be regarded as representing the
dissident or the sceptic’s voice, and it is in this light that the Lives of saints
and other texts falling into this period will be read in the following
paragraphs.
Taking texts in chronological order and standing at the starting
point, i.e. the verge of the eighth century, one hardly gets the impression
that interest in bishops died out with the coming of the Middle Byzantine
period. The picture of the holy man as urban patron is amply attested in
the Life of an eighth-century bishop, George of Amastris (BHG 668), a
maritime town in Paphlagonia, in northern Asia Minor. In essence,
George’s story reads as that of any late antique bishop. After a period of
solitary life, he left his homeland for Constantinople, where he became
noticed and ready for a promising career in the world of ecclesiastical
officialdom. Not long afterwards, however, he was called back to local
9
See Vitalien Laurent, ed., La vie merveilleuse de saint Pierre d’Atroa (+837) (Brussels: Société
des Bollandistes, 1956), 145 and 193. On the resigned bishop James, who appears in other
sources too, see Stephanos Efthymiadis, “Notes on the correspondence of Theodore the
Stoudite,” Revue des études byzantines 53 (1995): 146-148.
service by his fellow countrymen, who had nominated him as the successor
to the deceased bishop of their hometown. Despite the fact that this met
with the emperor’s opposition as well as the reaction of the metropolitan of
Gangra, a town located nearby, in ca. 790 George was elected bishop of
Amastris. Responding to the confidence he had inspired in the local
population, George developed an activity ante mortem encouraging his
people during attacks by the Arabs, as well as post mortem, when his town
fell victim to an onslaught of Rus’, a “barbarian” race which, as the
hagiographer has it, reminded one of the Tauroscythians of Euripides. In a
similar vein, the saint acted as the city’s patron in the case of several
merchants who were wrongly accused of public crimes in Trebizond in the
Pontos and condemned to death. Despite the reaction of the local officer,
the merchants were acquitted following George’s personal intervention. In
a sense, as a bishop George acquired the function of the medieval holy
man, who was to provide mental and spiritual support to a flock exposed
to raiders and looters.10
To be sure, on account of its large number of late antique
reminiscences, this vita was out of step with the subsequent literary history
of Byzantine hagiography. This biography of a rather provincial saint –
whose reputation did not spread far – never found its equal in the rich
hagiographic output that marked the Age of Iconoclasm and the ensuing
period.11 It may not be accidental that this vita, written in the first half of
the ninth century, raised the suspicion of having pro-iconoclastic
sympathies, or at least passing over in silence the debate regarding the
practice of icon-worship.12 As a matter of fact, the text unfolds on neutral
ground and is reticent on the issues of the controversy, unless it can be
further argued that the choice of a local bishop as the main hero was not
without a cause. Opposition to icon-worship definitely involved an open
clash with the increasing influence of monks in society, while the selection
of a bishop as its saintly hero and the writing of his sacred biography in a
traditional fashion, i.e., with his episcopal activity in focus, may suggest a
depreciation of monasticism.
10
For these episodes, see ed. Vasilij Grigorevic Vasil’evskij, “Žitija sv. Georgija
Amastridskago,” Russko-Vizantijskija izsledovanija 2 (1893): 37-41 (Arabs); 42-47 (Rus’),
and 64-68 (Trebizond). Reprinted also in idem, Trudy III/1 (St Petersburg, 1915).
11
On the hagiography of this period see now Stephanos Efthymiadis, “Hagiography from
the ‘Dark Age’ to the Age of Symeon Metaphrastes (Eighth–Tenth Centuries),” in The
Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, Volume I: Periods and Places, ed. idem
(Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate 2011), 96–142.
12
As pointed out by Ihor Ševčenko, “Hagiography of the Iconoclast Period,” in Iconoclasm,
ed. Anthony Bryer and Judith Herrin (Birmingham: Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1977),
121-125 [= idem, Ideology, Letters and Culture in the Byzantine World (London: Variorum
Reprints, 1982), v].
As already hinted at, monks constituted the overwhelming

majority of heroes in the iconophile hagiography produced from the first
half of the ninth century onwards. Leaving aside the patriarchs and
empresses who gave their support to the iconophile cause and were
sanctified on this account, it was the monks who were hailed as the
confessors of the true faith, i.e., the victims of imperial persecution who
endured flogging, imprisonment, and exile. A prominent example of such a
monk and martyr is St. Stephen the Younger, who suffered persecution
and martyrdom in Constantinople during the reign of the “loathsome”
emperor Constantine V (741-775). His long Life was produced in the first
decade of the ninth century and was to find wide acclaim, judging from the
large number of manuscripts in which it has been preserved.13 This
triumph of monasticism is more than visible in the hagiographical and
other writing that was produced before and after 843. The official
restoration of the veneration of icons and the so-called triumph of
Orthodoxy, proclaimed in that year, meant in fact an accreditation of the
influential role of monks in the Byzantine state and Church politics. In the
so-called Synodikon of Orthodoxy, a liturgical document which was first
circulated after the Restoration of Orthodoxy in 843 and gave a list of holy
men who were deemed worthy of eternal commemoration for their
opposition to the iconoclastic policy of Byzantine emperors, the names of
monk-saints who opposed the imperial policy appeared after those of the
saintly bishops.14
Lives of saints and other documents underline the emergence of
what has been called the “monasterization” of sanctity,15 which, in many
respects, accompanied a declining interest in holy bishops in general and,
in the few cases in which the central hero was the holy bishop, a minimal
attention by the hagiographer to his episcopate. If these bishops were
deeply involved in the iconophile cause and later regarded as confessors,
this stance of the hagiographer may find a fair explanation; for, by and
large, the emphasis had to be laid on his struggle against heresy and
violence. As a matter of fact, in this age bishops outrivaled monks in terms
13
At least nineteen were used for the edition by Marie-France Auzépy, La Vie d’Etienne le
Jeune par Etienne le Diacre (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 43-60.
14
See Jean Gouillard, “Le Synodikon d’Οrthodoxie. Édition et commentaire,” Travaux et
mémoires 2 (1967): 53.
15
The term was launched by Rosemary Morris, “The Political Saint of the Eleventh
Century,” in The Byzantine Saint, ed. Sergei Hackel (London: Fellowship of St Alban and St
Sergius, 1981), 50. See also Evelyne Patlagean, “Sainteté et pouvoir,” in ibid., 98, who
underscores “la supériorité du monachisme sur l’épiscopat.” On the monastic revival which
came about in the ninth century see Alexander P. Kazhdan and Ann Wharton Epstein,
Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985), 11-14.
of their resistance to imperial policy.16 A good example is provided by

Theophylaktos, bishop of Nicomedia, an iconophile clergyman celebrated
in two extant but rather unnoteworthy vitae. In the earlier vita only a few
words are said about the years of his episcopate, focusing on his work as a
social benefactor who cared for the needy and the poor. More space is
allotted to the saint’s deposition and summoning to a trial in
Constantinople when the Second Iconoclasm broke out in 815.17 In the
later vita, more rhetorical than the first, the dialogue which the saint had
with the “tyrant” iconoclast Emperor Leo V is amplified and an interesting
detail is added. While a bishop, Theophylaktos had schools built and
instructors appointed so that the boys of Nicomedia could achieve
eloquence and drop their “barbaric tongue.”18 Providing his flock with
good schooling was an initiative befitting a good prelate.
Unlike their late antique predecessors, bishops in the Middle
Byzantine period were appointees of the patriarchate or the imperial palace
and, as men of social standing, were natives of or educated in the
Byzantine capital. Episcopal careers were reserved for men of learning, or,
differently put, men of learning would expect an ecclesiastical rather than
administrative career.19 Although it is hard to determine how many among
them were absentees or, in fact, titular bishops, it is plausible to assume
that the less distant sees from Constantinople were always the most
sought-after. At any rate, the functional, sentimental, and other bonds
which used to keep bishops very tightly attached to their own sees in Late
Antiquity had now dramatically loosened. Moreover, crises such as
iconoclasm and the division between the followers of Patriarch Ignatios
and the partisans of his successor Photios suffice to show that the whole
body of ecclesiastical hierarchy was expected to resign or be replaced along
with the political change. Bishops were the main participants of
ecclesiastical synods and their votes were always critical for reaching a
consensus. The Life of Patriarch Ignatios (847-858, 867-877), which reads
like a secular rather than a saintly biography and is permeated by a
concern for historical detailing, includes an impressive list of bishops who
were either adherents to his own party or his opponents. This text, written
16
This point has been emphasized by Michel Kaplan, “L’évêque à l’époque du second
iconoclasme,“ in Monastères, images, pouvoirs et société à Byzance, ed. Michel Kaplan (Paris:
Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006), 183-206.
17
See vita A (BHG 2451), ed. Albert Vogt, “S. Théophylacte de Nicomédie,” Analecta
Bollandiana 50 (1932): 74-75 (episcopate) and 75-81 (persecution, exile, and death).
18
See vita B (BHG 2452), ed. François Halkin, Hagiologie byzantine. Textes inédits publiés en
grec et traduits en français (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1986), 176.
19
The tradition of bishops as teachers and scholars no doubt goes back to the fourth-
century Church Fathers; see von Falkenhausen, “Bishops,” 176-181.
in the first decade of the tenth century, is a good pointer to how politically
ambiguous and unstable episcopal authority had become.20
It was around this time that signs of a rising centrifugal force were
manifested.21 To a certain extent, ecclesiastical and political centralisation,
which was typical of the middle Byzantine period, was contested. Saintly
bishops came back to the fore, sometimes taking up the role of local
patrons and mediators. The Vita of St Demetrianos, bishop of Chytroi
(Kythrea), a small town on Cyprus (ca. 829/830-911/913), a text couched
in a Greek language with sophisticated pretensions relates the story of a
local holy man who, once wedded and widowed after a forced marriage at
the age of fifteen, followed first a monastic and then an ecclesiastical
career. His fame incited Eustathios, the local bishop of Chytroi, to ordain
him a presbyter. Before long, however, when the same Eustathios became
archbishop of Cyprus, he was offered the episcopate of Chytroi.
Demetrianos remained long in hiding from the archbishop’s assistants to
avoid the appointment, and it was only by force that he was consecrated
bishop of the small town. His service lasted for twenty-five years and
culminated in the early tenth century, when the saint travelled to Baghdad
to intercede with the caliph for the liberation of his fellow countrymen,
captured after an Arab attack on the island. According to his vita, he also
managed to expel a swarm of locusts which endangered the plants and
crops of Cypriot farmers.22
Consciously or not, the hagiographer here portrayed a local holy
man using vigorous brushstrokes. Granting as he did a long narrative
section to the saint’s ascetic feats, he underscored that ordination was the
result of personal virtue and spiritual perfection attained after a long
ascetic practice. Moreover, in overemphasizing the topos of the holy man’s
humility and reluctance to take up high ecclesiastical office, he conformed
to the spirit of his age, implying as he did that, for his hero, the
abandonment of monastic isolation would have meant deviating from the
path to holiness. Yet when writing this vita, his underlying purpose was to
promote a sort of decentralization, a switch to local efficiency and
20
See PG 105, cols. 487-573. The most recent discussions of this text are those of Symeon
A. Paschalides, “From Hagiography to Historiography: The Case of the Vita Ignatii (BHG
817) by Niketas David the Paphlagonian,” in Les “Vies des saints” à Byzance. Genre littéraire
ou biographie historique?, ed. Panagiotis A. Agapitos and Paolo Odorico (Paris: Centre
d’études byzantines, néo-helléniques et sud-est européennes, 2004), 161-173; and Irina
Tamarkina, “The Date of the Life of the Patriarch Ignatius Reconsidered,” Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 99 (2006): 615-630.
21
On this tendency see Efthymiadis, “Hagiography,” 121–125.
22
See Henri Grégoire, “Saint Démétrianos, évêque de Chytri (île de Chypre),” Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 16 (1907): 228-236; the text has also been edited by Hippolyte Delehaye in Acta
Sanctorum, Nov. vol. 3, 305-308.
patronage. The local bishop Demetrianos made himself a successful

ambassador in his own right rather than representing the right of the
central state, i.e. the emperor. A distant province could put up with
hardships independently of Constantinople.
The re-emergence of bishops in Middle Byzantine hagiography is
further illustrated in some rhetorical Enkomia celebrating the occupants of
sees in the Peloponnese. Saints such as Peter of Argos, Athanasios, bishop
of Methone (Modon), and Theokletos, bishop of Lakedaimon (Sparta),
anticipated an overall change of geographical emphasis which marked the
Byzantine empire after the late tenth century and which placed the
Balkans on an equal footing with Asia Minor, i.e., with what had until
then been the core of the empire. These hagiographies are poor in concrete
information, paying little attention to the bishop’s presence in the city; and
in terms of historical interest, they merely record barbarian invasions,
which, of course, are miraculously averted through the intercession of the
saint.
As the last representative of this group we should reckon
Nikephoros, bishop of Miletos in western Asia Minor, whose life spanned
the period from Romanos I Lakapenos’ reign (920-944) to the end of the
century. Nikephoros was castrated at a very early age and sent to
Constantinople to be educated and, as a eunuch, follow a career in the
imperial administration. At some point he was drafted into the imperial
clergy and it was perhaps in that capacity that during the reign of
Nikephoros Phokas (963-969) he accompanied the Byzantine fleet on an
unsuccessful expedition for the recovery of Sicily. Yet, as his biographer
would have it, the wanderings of this man of God knew no limit, a quality
for which he became famous. On account of this fame, he was entrusted
with the bishopric of Miletos where, we are told, he did not stop caring for
the needy and the poor to the point where he travelled to Constantinople
to demand from the emperor a sum of money seized by some imperial tax
officials. On his way back from the Queen of the Cities, soon after John
Tzimiskes was elevated to the throne, Nikephoros was escorted by a
notorious man by the name of Sachakios, who made an unsuccessful
attempt to poison him. Apart from this episode, the hagiographer found
nothing exciting to recount with regard to Nikephoros’ episcopate. For
unspecified reasons the bishop left his city for the adjacent Mt. Latros (or
Latmos), where, it was said, some ascetics originating near Mt. Sinai had
found refuge in olden times as a result of barbarian raids. It is at this point
of the narrative that the longest section of the vita (BHG 1388) unfolds,
filled with a succession of miraculous events and experiences relating, of
course, to his monastic path to holiness. What deserves to be singled out
among various stories is the former bishop Nikephoros’ conflict with a local
bishop. Although the latter initially promised to provide the former with
as much assistance as he could wish, under the influence of a demon, we
are told, he finally kicked him out of his diocese.23
The picture of a failed, resigned, or perhaps deposed bishop who
later became a perfect monk and was thus sanctified is reconfirmed in the
vita of an eleventh- or twelfth-century holy man. This is Gregory, bishop
of Assos, born as George on the island of Lesbos in either the reign of
Manuel I Komnenos (mid-twelfth century) or that of Konstantinos IX
Monomachos (mid-eleventh century).24 His elevation to the episcopal
throne of Assos, a small harbour town across from Lesbos, was preceded by
a long course in ascetic toils, which were made known to the imperial and
ecclesiastical authorities of Constantinople by his spiritual father Agathon.
The see of Assos being vacant, he was asked to journey up to the capital,
where he was consecrated bishop. His service, however, was blocked by
many obstacles and slanders, the harshest of which was the calumny that
he had sexual intercourse with his disciple Leo. Denounced and summoned
before the authorities of Constantinople, both the spiritual father and son
were acquitted. But this hardly discouraged his accusers from launching a
new set of slanders against him. The saint, escorted by his disciple, was
forced to abandon his bishopric during the night, and with his cloak and
the Bible alone he sailed to his native island of Lesbos. Not unlike that of
Nikephoros of Miletos, Gregory’s episcopate was a kind of short
parenthesis, outside the brackets of which his biographer related his two
superior periods of his life, those of a rising and an established monastic
father.25
Speaking of monastic fathers, the case of a more renowned saint
(perhaps more today than he was in medieval Byzantium), should not pass
unnoticed. Symeon the New Theologian, a Constantinopolitan monk, an
23
See the edition by Hippolyte Delehaye in Theodor Wiegand, Milet: Ergebnisse des
Ausgrabungen und Untersuchung seit dem Jahre 1899, vol. 3/1, Der Latmos (Berlin: De Gruyter,
1913), 163-164.
24
This discrepancy is due to the two versions in which Gregory’ biography has come down
to us, that of a full-length vita of which two redactions survive (BHG Novum Auctarium
710a) and that of the Synaxarion notice (BHG Novum Auctarium 710c): see Demetrios Ζ.
Sophianos, “Ὁ ἅγιος Γρηγόριος ἐπίσκοπος Ἄσσου (β΄ μισό τοῦ ιβ΄ αἰώνα) καὶ
τὰ ἁγιολογικά του κείμενα,” Mesaionika kai Nea Ellenika 7 (2004): 307-318, 319-
346, and 347-351; and the previous edition by François Halkin, “Saint Grégoire d’Assos.
Vie et Synaxaire inédits (BHG et Auctarium 710a et c),” Analecta Bollandiana 102 (1984): 5-
34.
25
For a full biographical sketch of St. Gregory of Assos, see Anthony Kaldellis and
Stephanos Efthymiadis, The Prosopography of Byzantine Lesbos (284-1355). A Contribution to
the Social History of the Byzantine Province (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2010), no.
87.
important church poet, writer of catechetical sermons, and a mystic, led a

life full of tribulations, temptations, and confrontations with those who
disputed his spiritual gifts and his right to be reckoned among the saints.
His long vita unfolds as a series of confrontations with the incarnations of
evil.26 One of its longer sections is devoted to the saint’s quarrel with
Stephen, bishop of Nicomedia, a man of learning who became the synkellos,
i.e., the secretary of the patriarch of Constantinople. This Stephen accused
the saint of being illiterate, an uncouth and voiceless man unable to
pronounce a proper word in front of the wise men who were able to handle
speech critically and artfully. In a conversation they both had in the
patriarchate, and in response to a theological question posed by the bishop
as to how the Father is to be distinguished from the Son in the Holy
Trinity, that is whether mentally or really, Symeon humbly pointed out
that the responsibility to understand the mysteries of God falls upon
prelates and not those who, as disciples of fishermen, lack oral skills. In a
theatrical fashion, the bishop is presented as moving into the upper
chambers of the patriarchate while the saint joined his community and his
usual prayers, out of which he was able to compose a hymn responding to
and resolving Stephen’ theological puzzle. This quarrel lasted for six years
and ended in the denunciation that Symeon venerated his spiritual father
(also called Symeon) as a saint and had him painted as an icon. In what
followed, Stephen was able to convince the other prelates about Symeon’s
serious infraction, bring him to the patriarchal synod, and have him
condemned to exile and the icons of his holy father broken into pieces.27
His biographer Niketas Stethatos deemed this accusation similar to the
ones that were leveled at Jesus Christ and he regarded Symeon as a martyr
without persecution and the whole crisis as reminiscent of the iconoclastic
one.28
Forming the core and the central argument of the whole vita, the
section recounting the clash of the monk Symeon with Stephen exemplifies
two sides of the same coin: on the one hand, the strained relations between
the official Church and the monastics, and on the other hand, the
26
For the dispute between the monk Symeon and the bishop Stephen, see the Life of
Symeon the New Theologian (BHG 1692), ed. Symeon Koutsas, Νικήτα τοῦ Στηθάτου
Βίος καὶ Πολιτεία τοῦ ἐν ἁγίοις πατρὸς ἡμῶν Συμεὼν τοῦ νέου Θεολόγου
(Athens; Akritas editions, 1996), 198-240.
27
The negative portrayal of Stephen of Nicomedia in the Life of St Symeon should not lead to
the conclusion that he was not a prelate of scholarly and other merit; see Dirk Krausmüller,
“Religious Instruction for Laypeople in Byzantium: Stephen of Nicomedia, Nicephorus
Ouranos, and the Pseudo-Athanasian Syntagma ad quendam politicum,” Byzantion 77 (2007):
239-250.
28
See Life of Symeon (BHG 1692), ed. Koutsas, 238-240 and 272-274.
scepticism with which the recognition of new saints was greeted in

Constantinopolitan society. Bishops were the representatives of a more
rational, more down-to-earth attitude towards monastic authority and
power, which at times tried to re-affirm its central role in the guidance of
the Byzantine believer by favouring the admission of new saints into the
ecclesiastical calendar. Symeon the New Theologian came to be sanctified
in a century, the eleventh, which almost irrevocably declared that the age
of the saints had come to a close. Until the fourteenth century, when first
the opposition of Eastern to Western Christianity and then the Hesychastic
movement resuscitated an interest in new saints, the marks of which are
visible in the hagiographic efflorescence of the period, in practice Byzantine
society rather sided with the position of Symeon’s opponent, Stephen of
Nicomedia.
The revival of towns and the upsurge of urban life in eleventh-
and twelfth-century Byzantium went along with the emergence of
important figures who came to occupy provincial ecclesiastical sees.29 As
before, these were Constantinopolitan intellectuals and appointees of the
patriarchate, hardly fascinated by the behavior and the ideals of monastic
life. What is more, some of them demonstrated an utterly hostile attitude
towards the monks, either by judging the display of their excessive toils as
hypocritical or by treating their involvement in secular affairs in a
derogatory way. Distrust of these practices found its most eloquent
expression in the writings of Eustathios, archbishop of Thessalonike, no
doubt the most brilliant scholar in twelfth-century Byzantium. Eustathios
was a vitriolic critic of monastic hypocrisy, targeting the excessive aspects
of asceticism such as mounting a pillar or being engirdled in chains. He
showcased several cases of reproachable conduct that he saw emerging in
his time, both in his extensive treatise, in fact an invective, De emendanda
vita monastica, and in shorter works of a similar critical scope, such as De
simulatione (On hypocrisy) and Ad stylitam quondam Thessalonicensem (Address to
a stylite).30 More tactfully formulated but still similar ideas permeate his
single hagiographical work devoted to a contemporary saint, Philotheos of
Opsikion, a married man with no spectacular biography and an
insignificant miraculous record.31 This hagiography should be read in the
29
On the distribution of bishoprics in the Comnenian era (1081-1185), several of which
were occupied by members of some prominent families, see Michael Angold, Church and
Society in Byzantium under the Comneni 1081-1261 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), 139-147.
30
On Eustathios’ views on monasticism, see Angold, Church , 348-355.
31
Edition of this Life (BHG 1535) in Theophilus L. F. Tafel, Eustathii metropolitae
Thessalonicensis opuscula (Frankfurt am Mainz: Sigismundus Schmerber, 1832), 145-151 (=
PG 136, cols. 141-161). On the change of attitude towards the holy man as exemplified by
light of the anti-monastic hints it includes rather than as a eulogy of a holy

man se ipso.
Yet the most extensive portrayal of a model bishop in this age
comes from the pen of the most famous pupil of Eustathios, Michael
Choniates. An archbishop of Athens, a town he praised in an inaugural
speech but an appointment he finally came to regret, he offers us the most
rhetorical and realistic picture of a provincial bishopric in his Enkomion to
Niketas, who was his brother’s godfather and from 1143 metropolitan of
his native town of Chonai in Phrygia. Chonai, identified with ancient
Colossai, was famous for the cult of Archangel Michael in a shrine which
Niketas himself had repaired. Choniates’ Enkomion is made up of short
rhetorical treatises such as the praise of Niketas as a eunuch, the
description of St. Michael’s pilgrimage church, his attraction to ascetic life,
the annual trade fair taking place in his town, his miracle-working activity
which succeeded in averting drought and other plagues which threatened
the local population, etc.32 In thus praising a bishop, Michael Choniates re-
affirmed the crucial role of a bishop in running the affairs of the local
Church without disregarding its spiritual advancement. The
incompatibility of ascetic life with the secular concerns of the bishopric,
which came up as a serious question in late antique Lives of saints and
turned into an insurmountable contrast during the eighth to tenth
centuries, was no longer an issue in Choniates’ overall view.
At the end of these five centuries which span the Middle
Byzantine period, the picture looks reversed. Identification of sanctity with
monastic identity, which reached its peak in the ninth and tenth centuries,
was finally called into question. What could previously be read between
the rather few lines which Middle Byzantine hagiography reserved for holy
and unholy bishops was now, on the eve of 1204, pronounced in clear
terms in the writings of the intellectual elite. A spirit of renovation was
this Life, see Kazhdan – Wharton Epstein, Change in Byzantine Culture, 93-95. On the
decline of hagiography in the twelfth century, see Paul Magdalino, “The Byzantine Holy
Man in the Twelfth Century,” in Hackel, Byzantine Saint, 51-66; and for a reconsideration,
Symeon Paschalidis, “The Hagiography of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in The
Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, Volume I: Periods and Places, ed.
Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate 2011), 143–171.
32
Edition of the Enkomion to the blessed metropolitan of Chonai Sir Niketas by Spyridon P.
Lampros, Μιχαὴλ Ἀκοµινάτου τοῦ Χωνιάτου τὰ σῳζόµενα, vol. 1 (Athens, 1879; reprint
Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis N.V., 1968), 24-71. On the role of Michael Choniates as
bishop, see Angold, Church, 197-212; as archbishop of Athens, see Anthony Kaldellis, The
Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), 145-149. On the information concerning a town in the Byzantine
frontier zone to be drawn from this Enkomion, see Paul Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I
Komnenos, 1143-1180 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 129-132.
cultivated which despised monastic supremacy and monopoly in spiritual

matters, without suggesting in return the proclamation of bishops as saints
and the writing of a new, say “urban” hagiography. As a matter of fact, the
monolithic picture of Byzantine sainthood in the Middle Ages was
shattered only for a while, this eleventh- and twelfth-century respite, and
at the expense of holy monks, not in favour of holy bishops.
THE PLACE OF HOLY AND UNHOLY BISHOPS IN
BYZANTINE HAGIOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE
(EIGHTH-TWELFTH CENTURIES)
Stephanos Efthymiadis
Today hardly anyone who views the iconography of an Orthodox parish

church can be surprised by the thematic orientation and hierarchy of its
frescoes and icons. Scenes taken from Christ’s life as narrated in the
Gospels take precedence in size and location over episodes from the life of
the Virgin Mary, or the figures of the evangelists, apostles, and Old
Testament prophets. When it comes to the saints, the distribution looks
equally fair: martyrs, male and female, prevail over the Church Fathers,
monks, patriarchs, emperors, and bishops.
By and large, a similar proportion is found among the saints
registered in the thick volume of the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca.
Passiones, Miracula, and Enkomia celebrating the early Christian martyrs by
far outnumber the vitae and Enkomia of later saints, whether these were
monks, patriarchs, or bishops. This impression does not rest solely on late
antique textual evidence, when the stories and cults of the martyrs were
still recent, but derives from a diachronic and panoramic view of Byzantine
hagiography. As a matter of fact, more than any kind of saint, early
Christian martyrs did not cease to inspire hagiographers from medieval
Byzantium and after, whether those authors were simple anonymous
monks or among the finest pens of Byzantine letters. Along with the
Church Fathers, martyrs – some of whom, we should not forget, were
bishops – were regarded as the perennial defenders of faith, thereby
deserving to be celebrated on different occasions and praised by orators and
learned writers.1
1
There are well over fifty saintly bishops among the martyrs commemorated in the
liturgical calendar of Constantinople. See Vera von Falkenhausen, “Bishops,” in The
Byzantines, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 173. For
the priority that Byzantine hagiography assigned to martyrs and Church Fathers, see
Stephanos Efthymiadis, “Two Gregories and Three Genres: Autobiography,
Autohagiography and Hagiography,” in Gregory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections, ed.
Jostein Bjørtnes and Tomas Hägg (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), 239-
240 [repr. in idem, Hagiography in Byzantium: Literature, Social History and Cult (Farnham,
Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), x].
If Byzantine hagiography privileged martyrs throughout its long

history, this was not the case with other kinds of holy men and women,
for, in terms of the selection of saints, a clear-cut dichotomy (or
discontinuity) marks the Byzantine millennium, not to say the concept of
sainthood itself. Along with the crisis of urban culture in the mid-seventh
century and the ensuing shifts in the economic and social spheres,
sainthood came close to being totally identified with the ascetic and
monastic ideals of life. The disintegration of urban centres, which mostly
came about as a result of Persian and Arab expansion in the East, as well as
Avar, Bulgarian, and Slavic invasions in the Balkans, led to the devaluation
of local, decentralized authority. Thus, episcopal power in cities and towns
in lands that were still included in the empire’s orbit dwindled. Bishops
may not have been totally divested of the authority which they had
enjoyed and the ‘overtones of secular power’ which they were associated
with in late antiquity, yet they could no longer compete on equal terms
with the holy prestige of the monastic abbot or the anchorite.2 The
imposing representation of the bishop-patron that we admire today on the
mosaics of the cathedral of Eufrasius at Parentium/Poreč was not
reproduced in any medieval Byzantine church.3 What we find instead is
the portrait of a secular donor-patron or that of a monastic abbot.
Not only with the hindsight of modern historians who study
eighth-century Byzantine society, but also in the eyes of the ninth-century
authors themselves, the iconoclastic controversy came about, among other
things, as a reaction to the rising power of monks in Byzantine society.
What is more, in the interim period between the First and the Second
Iconoclasm (787-815), this opposition was projected within the iconophile
camp as the monks of Stoudios in Constantinople resisted the lenient
policy of the patriarch Tarasios (784-806) and his successor Nikephoros
(806-815) regarding a number of ecclesiastical matters. A clear opposition
2
For a survey of the bishop’s authority in Late Antiquity, see Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in
Late Antiquity. The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2005). For the ensuing period see Benjamin Moulet, Evêques, pouvoir et
société à Byzance (VIIIe-XIe siècle). Territoires, communautés et individus dans la société provinciale
byzantine (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011).
3
The most recent studies in English and German on Eufrasius’ cathedral include Ann
Bennett Terry and Henry Maguire, Dynamic Splendor: The Wall Mosaics in the Cathedral of
Eufrasius at Poreč, 2 vols. (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007);
Yiannis Theocharis, “Die Darstellung des kleinen Eufrasius in der Basilika von Poreč,”
Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 58 (2008): 209-216; and Rainer Warland, “Der
Knabe im Apsismosaik der Basilika Eufrasiana in Poreč und die visuelle Repräsentation
frühbyzantinischer Bischöfe,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 60 (2010): 173-179.
between what has been termed secular and monastic clergy divided the
Byzantine Church until at least the first decades of the tenth century.4
All in all, the rise and imposition of monastic power in society
typified much of Byzantine culture in the period from the eighth through
the tenth century and had its impact on proclaiming new saints.
Calculations have shown that from a total of ninety saints dating from this
and the ensuing period of the eleventh to the fifteenth century, and about
whom a work of hagiography survives, only fifteen were bishops,
presbyters, or laymen, all the remainder being monks or nuns.5 Four of
these bishops were occupants of episcopal sees in Asia Minor and another
five or six were active in towns of Greece, Bulgaria, southern Italy, and
Cyprus. Interestingly, this quantitative imbalance between monks and
other types of saints was not confined to the identity of the hagiographic
hero, but was also a question of focus in the hagiographical narrative itself.
If one compares the textual passages referring to a saintly bishop’s urban
activity to the space accorded to a saintly bishop’s ascetic feats and to his
life in isolation, the change is felt as qualitative too. In other words, in the
Life of a saintly bishop references to his episcopal career are brief, often
vague, and insignificant, whereas episodes and anecdotes drawn from his
‘monastic experiences’ are rich in detail and extensive. By the same token,
the biographers of monastic saints were reluctant to mention even the
existence of local bishops, let alone their jurisdiction over the local
monasteries where those saints were active.6
This is in marked contrast to the lively picture of cities recorded in
late antique hagiography.7 As may be inferred from a fair number of texts,
the episcopate was considered the culmination of years lived in ascetic
isolation, yet hagiographers provided their listeners/readers with many
highlights from the activity of holy bishops as patrons, wonderworkers,
and city benefactors.8 By contrast, their medieval counterparts tend to
represent urban space in the abstract terms of a writer who is relying more
on clichés and literary reminiscences than on his personal experience and/or
concrete information provided by others.
4
This rivalry between influential monasteries and the patriarchate was first discussed by
Ernst von Dobschütz, “Methodius und die Studiten,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 18 (1909): 41-
105.
5
See Peter Charanis, “The Monk as an Element of Byzantine Society,” Dumbarton Oaks
Papers 25 (1971): 63ff.
6
See Rosemary Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 843-1118 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 149-153.
7
On this picture see Helen G. Saradi, The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century. Literary Images
and Historical Reality (Athens: Society of Messenian Archeological Studies 2006), 102-117.
8
Recapitulation of the power and authority assumed by bishops in Late Antiquity, with
references to previous bibliography, in ibid., 181-185; and Rapp, Holy Bishops, 6-16.
In sum, in many respects medieval Byzantine hagiography severed

its connection with the late antique literary types of the holy bishops and,
what is more, sometimes reserved an utterly negative portrait for them. As
the holy monk now lived in proximity to the world or even within it – the
Egyptian and Judean deserts were no longer part of Byzantine territory –
the bishop assumed the role of an opponent, usually disputing the
protagonist’s saintly identity. A typical example is St. Peter of Atroa (d.
837), whose healing activity was met with scepticism and animosity on the
part of bishops. In his Life, the latter are said to suspect him of sorcery and
of being a servant of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. In the same vita,
Peter meets an ascetic by the name of James, who was a former bishop of
Anchialos, a town in modern Bulgaria, and who abandoned his see and
retreated to Mount Olympos in Bithynia “because he was extremely fond
of God and the anchorite’s life.” Clearly, as Peter’s biographer, the monk
Sabas, would have it, the ascetic life by far wins out over the episcopacy.9
Though a rarity, however, the holy men who in medieval
Byzantium were consecrated bishops, remaining in office for a shorter or
longer period, deserve particular attention. Their hagiography is worth
surveying especially because it exemplifies continuities and discontinuities
in the figure of the medieval holy man, is indicative of anti-monastic and
centrifugal tendencies, and points to a spirit of secularization which,
among other things, opposed the recognition of new saints. We should
always bear in mind that, when read between the lines and placed in a
historical context, hagiography may be regarded as representing the
dissident or the sceptic’s voice, and it is in this light that the Lives of saints
and other texts falling into this period will be read in the following
paragraphs.
Taking texts in chronological order and standing at the starting
point, i.e. the verge of the eighth century, one hardly gets the impression
that interest in bishops died out with the coming of the Middle Byzantine
period. The picture of the holy man as urban patron is amply attested in
the Life of an eighth-century bishop, George of Amastris (BHG 668), a
maritime town in Paphlagonia, in northern Asia Minor. In essence,
George’s story reads as that of any late antique bishop. After a period of
solitary life, he left his homeland for Constantinople, where he became
noticed and ready for a promising career in the world of ecclesiastical
officialdom. Not long afterwards, however, he was called back to local
9
See Vitalien Laurent, ed., La vie merveilleuse de saint Pierre d’Atroa (+837) (Brussels: Société
des Bollandistes, 1956), 145 and 193. On the resigned bishop James, who appears in other
sources too, see Stephanos Efthymiadis, “Notes on the correspondence of Theodore the
Stoudite,” Revue des études byzantines 53 (1995): 146-148.
service by his fellow countrymen, who had nominated him as the successor
to the deceased bishop of their hometown. Despite the fact that this met
with the emperor’s opposition as well as the reaction of the metropolitan of
Gangra, a town located nearby, in ca. 790 George was elected bishop of
Amastris. Responding to the confidence he had inspired in the local
population, George developed an activity ante mortem encouraging his
people during attacks by the Arabs, as well as post mortem, when his town
fell victim to an onslaught of Rus’, a “barbarian” race which, as the
hagiographer has it, reminded one of the Tauroscythians of Euripides. In a
similar vein, the saint acted as the city’s patron in the case of several
merchants who were wrongly accused of public crimes in Trebizond in the
Pontos and condemned to death. Despite the reaction of the local officer,
the merchants were acquitted following George’s personal intervention. In
a sense, as a bishop George acquired the function of the medieval holy
man, who was to provide mental and spiritual support to a flock exposed
to raiders and looters.10
To be sure, on account of its large number of late antique
reminiscences, this vita was out of step with the subsequent literary history
of Byzantine hagiography. This biography of a rather provincial saint –
whose reputation did not spread far – never found its equal in the rich
hagiographic output that marked the Age of Iconoclasm and the ensuing
period.11 It may not be accidental that this vita, written in the first half of
the ninth century, raised the suspicion of having pro-iconoclastic
sympathies, or at least passing over in silence the debate regarding the
practice of icon-worship.12 As a matter of fact, the text unfolds on neutral
ground and is reticent on the issues of the controversy, unless it can be
further argued that the choice of a local bishop as the main hero was not
without a cause. Opposition to icon-worship definitely involved an open
clash with the increasing influence of monks in society, while the selection
of a bishop as its saintly hero and the writing of his sacred biography in a
traditional fashion, i.e., with his episcopal activity in focus, may suggest a
depreciation of monasticism.
10
For these episodes, see ed. Vasilij Grigorevic Vasil’evskij, “Žitija sv. Georgija
Amastridskago,” Russko-Vizantijskija izsledovanija 2 (1893): 37-41 (Arabs); 42-47 (Rus’),
and 64-68 (Trebizond). Reprinted also in idem, Trudy III/1 (St Petersburg, 1915).
11
On the hagiography of this period see now Stephanos Efthymiadis, “Hagiography from
the ‘Dark Age’ to the Age of Symeon Metaphrastes (Eighth–Tenth Centuries),” in The
Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, Volume I: Periods and Places, ed. idem
(Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate 2011), 96–142.
12
As pointed out by Ihor Ševčenko, “Hagiography of the Iconoclast Period,” in Iconoclasm,
ed. Anthony Bryer and Judith Herrin (Birmingham: Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1977),
121-125 [= idem, Ideology, Letters and Culture in the Byzantine World (London: Variorum
Reprints, 1982), v].
As already hinted at, monks constituted the overwhelming

majority of heroes in the iconophile hagiography produced from the first
half of the ninth century onwards. Leaving aside the patriarchs and
empresses who gave their support to the iconophile cause and were
sanctified on this account, it was the monks who were hailed as the
confessors of the true faith, i.e., the victims of imperial persecution who
endured flogging, imprisonment, and exile. A prominent example of such a
monk and martyr is St. Stephen the Younger, who suffered persecution
and martyrdom in Constantinople during the reign of the “loathsome”
emperor Constantine V (741-775). His long Life was produced in the first
decade of the ninth century and was to find wide acclaim, judging from the
large number of manuscripts in which it has been preserved.13 This
triumph of monasticism is more than visible in the hagiographical and
other writing that was produced before and after 843. The official
restoration of the veneration of icons and the so-called triumph of
Orthodoxy, proclaimed in that year, meant in fact an accreditation of the
influential role of monks in the Byzantine state and Church politics. In the
so-called Synodikon of Orthodoxy, a liturgical document which was first
circulated after the Restoration of Orthodoxy in 843 and gave a list of holy
men who were deemed worthy of eternal commemoration for their
opposition to the iconoclastic policy of Byzantine emperors, the names of
monk-saints who opposed the imperial policy appeared after those of the
saintly bishops.14
Lives of saints and other documents underline the emergence of
what has been called the “monasterization” of sanctity,15 which, in many
respects, accompanied a declining interest in holy bishops in general and,
in the few cases in which the central hero was the holy bishop, a minimal
attention by the hagiographer to his episcopate. If these bishops were
deeply involved in the iconophile cause and later regarded as confessors,
this stance of the hagiographer may find a fair explanation; for, by and
large, the emphasis had to be laid on his struggle against heresy and
violence. As a matter of fact, in this age bishops outrivaled monks in terms
13
At least nineteen were used for the edition by Marie-France Auzépy, La Vie d’Etienne le
Jeune par Etienne le Diacre (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 43-60.
14
See Jean Gouillard, “Le Synodikon d’Οrthodoxie. Édition et commentaire,” Travaux et
mémoires 2 (1967): 53.
15
The term was launched by Rosemary Morris, “The Political Saint of the Eleventh
Century,” in The Byzantine Saint, ed. Sergei Hackel (London: Fellowship of St Alban and St
Sergius, 1981), 50. See also Evelyne Patlagean, “Sainteté et pouvoir,” in ibid., 98, who
underscores “la supériorité du monachisme sur l’épiscopat.” On the monastic revival which
came about in the ninth century see Alexander P. Kazhdan and Ann Wharton Epstein,
Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985), 11-14.
of their resistance to imperial policy.16 A good example is provided by

Theophylaktos, bishop of Nicomedia, an iconophile clergyman celebrated
in two extant but rather unnoteworthy vitae. In the earlier vita only a few
words are said about the years of his episcopate, focusing on his work as a
social benefactor who cared for the needy and the poor. More space is
allotted to the saint’s deposition and summoning to a trial in
Constantinople when the Second Iconoclasm broke out in 815.17 In the
later vita, more rhetorical than the first, the dialogue which the saint had
with the “tyrant” iconoclast Emperor Leo V is amplified and an interesting
detail is added. While a bishop, Theophylaktos had schools built and
instructors appointed so that the boys of Nicomedia could achieve
eloquence and drop their “barbaric tongue.”18 Providing his flock with
good schooling was an initiative befitting a good prelate.
Unlike their late antique predecessors, bishops in the Middle
Byzantine period were appointees of the patriarchate or the imperial palace
and, as men of social standing, were natives of or educated in the
Byzantine capital. Episcopal careers were reserved for men of learning, or,
differently put, men of learning would expect an ecclesiastical rather than
administrative career.19 Although it is hard to determine how many among
them were absentees or, in fact, titular bishops, it is plausible to assume
that the less distant sees from Constantinople were always the most
sought-after. At any rate, the functional, sentimental, and other bonds
which used to keep bishops very tightly attached to their own sees in Late
Antiquity had now dramatically loosened. Moreover, crises such as
iconoclasm and the division between the followers of Patriarch Ignatios
and the partisans of his successor Photios suffice to show that the whole
body of ecclesiastical hierarchy was expected to resign or be replaced along
with the political change. Bishops were the main participants of
ecclesiastical synods and their votes were always critical for reaching a
consensus. The Life of Patriarch Ignatios (847-858, 867-877), which reads
like a secular rather than a saintly biography and is permeated by a
concern for historical detailing, includes an impressive list of bishops who
were either adherents to his own party or his opponents. This text, written
16
This point has been emphasized by Michel Kaplan, “L’évêque à l’époque du second
iconoclasme,“ in Monastères, images, pouvoirs et société à Byzance, ed. Michel Kaplan (Paris:
Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006), 183-206.
17
See vita A (BHG 2451), ed. Albert Vogt, “S. Théophylacte de Nicomédie,” Analecta
Bollandiana 50 (1932): 74-75 (episcopate) and 75-81 (persecution, exile, and death).
18
See vita B (BHG 2452), ed. François Halkin, Hagiologie byzantine. Textes inédits publiés en
grec et traduits en français (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1986), 176.
19
The tradition of bishops as teachers and scholars no doubt goes back to the fourth-
century Church Fathers; see von Falkenhausen, “Bishops,” 176-181.
in the first decade of the tenth century, is a good pointer to how politically
ambiguous and unstable episcopal authority had become.20
It was around this time that signs of a rising centrifugal force were
manifested.21 To a certain extent, ecclesiastical and political centralisation,
which was typical of the middle Byzantine period, was contested. Saintly
bishops came back to the fore, sometimes taking up the role of local
patrons and mediators. The Vita of St Demetrianos, bishop of Chytroi
(Kythrea), a small town on Cyprus (ca. 829/830-911/913), a text couched
in a Greek language with sophisticated pretensions relates the story of a
local holy man who, once wedded and widowed after a forced marriage at
the age of fifteen, followed first a monastic and then an ecclesiastical
career. His fame incited Eustathios, the local bishop of Chytroi, to ordain
him a presbyter. Before long, however, when the same Eustathios became
archbishop of Cyprus, he was offered the episcopate of Chytroi.
Demetrianos remained long in hiding from the archbishop’s assistants to
avoid the appointment, and it was only by force that he was consecrated
bishop of the small town. His service lasted for twenty-five years and
culminated in the early tenth century, when the saint travelled to Baghdad
to intercede with the caliph for the liberation of his fellow countrymen,
captured after an Arab attack on the island. According to his vita, he also
managed to expel a swarm of locusts which endangered the plants and
crops of Cypriot farmers.22
Consciously or not, the hagiographer here portrayed a local holy
man using vigorous brushstrokes. Granting as he did a long narrative
section to the saint’s ascetic feats, he underscored that ordination was the
result of personal virtue and spiritual perfection attained after a long
ascetic practice. Moreover, in overemphasizing the topos of the holy man’s
humility and reluctance to take up high ecclesiastical office, he conformed
to the spirit of his age, implying as he did that, for his hero, the
abandonment of monastic isolation would have meant deviating from the
path to holiness. Yet when writing this vita, his underlying purpose was to
promote a sort of decentralization, a switch to local efficiency and
20
See PG 105, cols. 487-573. The most recent discussions of this text are those of Symeon
A. Paschalides, “From Hagiography to Historiography: The Case of the Vita Ignatii (BHG
817) by Niketas David the Paphlagonian,” in Les “Vies des saints” à Byzance. Genre littéraire
ou biographie historique?, ed. Panagiotis A. Agapitos and Paolo Odorico (Paris: Centre
d’études byzantines, néo-helléniques et sud-est européennes, 2004), 161-173; and Irina
Tamarkina, “The Date of the Life of the Patriarch Ignatius Reconsidered,” Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 99 (2006): 615-630.
21
On this tendency see Efthymiadis, “Hagiography,” 121–125.
22
See Henri Grégoire, “Saint Démétrianos, évêque de Chytri (île de Chypre),” Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 16 (1907): 228-236; the text has also been edited by Hippolyte Delehaye in Acta
Sanctorum, Nov. vol. 3, 305-308.
patronage. The local bishop Demetrianos made himself a successful

ambassador in his own right rather than representing the right of the
central state, i.e. the emperor. A distant province could put up with
hardships independently of Constantinople.
The re-emergence of bishops in Middle Byzantine hagiography is
further illustrated in some rhetorical Enkomia celebrating the occupants of
sees in the Peloponnese. Saints such as Peter of Argos, Athanasios, bishop
of Methone (Modon), and Theokletos, bishop of Lakedaimon (Sparta),
anticipated an overall change of geographical emphasis which marked the
Byzantine empire after the late tenth century and which placed the
Balkans on an equal footing with Asia Minor, i.e., with what had until
then been the core of the empire. These hagiographies are poor in concrete
information, paying little attention to the bishop’s presence in the city; and
in terms of historical interest, they merely record barbarian invasions,
which, of course, are miraculously averted through the intercession of the
saint.
As the last representative of this group we should reckon
Nikephoros, bishop of Miletos in western Asia Minor, whose life spanned
the period from Romanos I Lakapenos’ reign (920-944) to the end of the
century. Nikephoros was castrated at a very early age and sent to
Constantinople to be educated and, as a eunuch, follow a career in the
imperial administration. At some point he was drafted into the imperial
clergy and it was perhaps in that capacity that during the reign of
Nikephoros Phokas (963-969) he accompanied the Byzantine fleet on an
unsuccessful expedition for the recovery of Sicily. Yet, as his biographer
would have it, the wanderings of this man of God knew no limit, a quality
for which he became famous. On account of this fame, he was entrusted
with the bishopric of Miletos where, we are told, he did not stop caring for
the needy and the poor to the point where he travelled to Constantinople
to demand from the emperor a sum of money seized by some imperial tax
officials. On his way back from the Queen of the Cities, soon after John
Tzimiskes was elevated to the throne, Nikephoros was escorted by a
notorious man by the name of Sachakios, who made an unsuccessful
attempt to poison him. Apart from this episode, the hagiographer found
nothing exciting to recount with regard to Nikephoros’ episcopate. For
unspecified reasons the bishop left his city for the adjacent Mt. Latros (or
Latmos), where, it was said, some ascetics originating near Mt. Sinai had
found refuge in olden times as a result of barbarian raids. It is at this point
of the narrative that the longest section of the vita (BHG 1388) unfolds,
filled with a succession of miraculous events and experiences relating, of
course, to his monastic path to holiness. What deserves to be singled out
among various stories is the former bishop Nikephoros’ conflict with a local
bishop. Although the latter initially promised to provide the former with
as much assistance as he could wish, under the influence of a demon, we
are told, he finally kicked him out of his diocese.23
The picture of a failed, resigned, or perhaps deposed bishop who
later became a perfect monk and was thus sanctified is reconfirmed in the
vita of an eleventh- or twelfth-century holy man. This is Gregory, bishop
of Assos, born as George on the island of Lesbos in either the reign of
Manuel I Komnenos (mid-twelfth century) or that of Konstantinos IX
Monomachos (mid-eleventh century).24 His elevation to the episcopal
throne of Assos, a small harbour town across from Lesbos, was preceded by
a long course in ascetic toils, which were made known to the imperial and
ecclesiastical authorities of Constantinople by his spiritual father Agathon.
The see of Assos being vacant, he was asked to journey up to the capital,
where he was consecrated bishop. His service, however, was blocked by
many obstacles and slanders, the harshest of which was the calumny that
he had sexual intercourse with his disciple Leo. Denounced and summoned
before the authorities of Constantinople, both the spiritual father and son
were acquitted. But this hardly discouraged his accusers from launching a
new set of slanders against him. The saint, escorted by his disciple, was
forced to abandon his bishopric during the night, and with his cloak and
the Bible alone he sailed to his native island of Lesbos. Not unlike that of
Nikephoros of Miletos, Gregory’s episcopate was a kind of short
parenthesis, outside the brackets of which his biographer related his two
superior periods of his life, those of a rising and an established monastic
father.25
Speaking of monastic fathers, the case of a more renowned saint
(perhaps more today than he was in medieval Byzantium), should not pass
unnoticed. Symeon the New Theologian, a Constantinopolitan monk, an
23
See the edition by Hippolyte Delehaye in Theodor Wiegand, Milet: Ergebnisse des
Ausgrabungen und Untersuchung seit dem Jahre 1899, vol. 3/1, Der Latmos (Berlin: De Gruyter,
1913), 163-164.
24
This discrepancy is due to the two versions in which Gregory’ biography has come down
to us, that of a full-length vita of which two redactions survive (BHG Novum Auctarium
710a) and that of the Synaxarion notice (BHG Novum Auctarium 710c): see Demetrios Ζ.
Sophianos, “Ὁ ἅγιος Γρηγόριος ἐπίσκοπος Ἄσσου (β΄ μισό τοῦ ιβ΄ αἰώνα) καὶ
τὰ ἁγιολογικά του κείμενα,” Mesaionika kai Nea Ellenika 7 (2004): 307-318, 319-
346, and 347-351; and the previous edition by François Halkin, “Saint Grégoire d’Assos.
Vie et Synaxaire inédits (BHG et Auctarium 710a et c),” Analecta Bollandiana 102 (1984): 5-
34.
25
For a full biographical sketch of St. Gregory of Assos, see Anthony Kaldellis and
Stephanos Efthymiadis, The Prosopography of Byzantine Lesbos (284-1355). A Contribution to
the Social History of the Byzantine Province (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2010), no.
87.
important church poet, writer of catechetical sermons, and a mystic, led a

life full of tribulations, temptations, and confrontations with those who
disputed his spiritual gifts and his right to be reckoned among the saints.
His long vita unfolds as a series of confrontations with the incarnations of
evil.26 One of its longer sections is devoted to the saint’s quarrel with
Stephen, bishop of Nicomedia, a man of learning who became the synkellos,
i.e., the secretary of the patriarch of Constantinople. This Stephen accused
the saint of being illiterate, an uncouth and voiceless man unable to
pronounce a proper word in front of the wise men who were able to handle
speech critically and artfully. In a conversation they both had in the
patriarchate, and in response to a theological question posed by the bishop
as to how the Father is to be distinguished from the Son in the Holy
Trinity, that is whether mentally or really, Symeon humbly pointed out
that the responsibility to understand the mysteries of God falls upon
prelates and not those who, as disciples of fishermen, lack oral skills. In a
theatrical fashion, the bishop is presented as moving into the upper
chambers of the patriarchate while the saint joined his community and his
usual prayers, out of which he was able to compose a hymn responding to
and resolving Stephen’ theological puzzle. This quarrel lasted for six years
and ended in the denunciation that Symeon venerated his spiritual father
(also called Symeon) as a saint and had him painted as an icon. In what
followed, Stephen was able to convince the other prelates about Symeon’s
serious infraction, bring him to the patriarchal synod, and have him
condemned to exile and the icons of his holy father broken into pieces.27
His biographer Niketas Stethatos deemed this accusation similar to the
ones that were leveled at Jesus Christ and he regarded Symeon as a martyr
without persecution and the whole crisis as reminiscent of the iconoclastic
one.28
Forming the core and the central argument of the whole vita, the
section recounting the clash of the monk Symeon with Stephen exemplifies
two sides of the same coin: on the one hand, the strained relations between
the official Church and the monastics, and on the other hand, the
26
For the dispute between the monk Symeon and the bishop Stephen, see the Life of
Symeon the New Theologian (BHG 1692), ed. Symeon Koutsas, Νικήτα τοῦ Στηθάτου
Βίος καὶ Πολιτεία τοῦ ἐν ἁγίοις πατρὸς ἡμῶν Συμεὼν τοῦ νέου Θεολόγου
(Athens; Akritas editions, 1996), 198-240.
27
The negative portrayal of Stephen of Nicomedia in the Life of St Symeon should not lead to
the conclusion that he was not a prelate of scholarly and other merit; see Dirk Krausmüller,
“Religious Instruction for Laypeople in Byzantium: Stephen of Nicomedia, Nicephorus
Ouranos, and the Pseudo-Athanasian Syntagma ad quendam politicum,” Byzantion 77 (2007):
239-250.
28
See Life of Symeon (BHG 1692), ed. Koutsas, 238-240 and 272-274.
scepticism with which the recognition of new saints was greeted in

Constantinopolitan society. Bishops were the representatives of a more
rational, more down-to-earth attitude towards monastic authority and
power, which at times tried to re-affirm its central role in the guidance of
the Byzantine believer by favouring the admission of new saints into the
ecclesiastical calendar. Symeon the New Theologian came to be sanctified
in a century, the eleventh, which almost irrevocably declared that the age
of the saints had come to a close. Until the fourteenth century, when first
the opposition of Eastern to Western Christianity and then the Hesychastic
movement resuscitated an interest in new saints, the marks of which are
visible in the hagiographic efflorescence of the period, in practice Byzantine
society rather sided with the position of Symeon’s opponent, Stephen of
Nicomedia.
The revival of towns and the upsurge of urban life in eleventh-
and twelfth-century Byzantium went along with the emergence of
important figures who came to occupy provincial ecclesiastical sees.29 As
before, these were Constantinopolitan intellectuals and appointees of the
patriarchate, hardly fascinated by the behavior and the ideals of monastic
life. What is more, some of them demonstrated an utterly hostile attitude
towards the monks, either by judging the display of their excessive toils as
hypocritical or by treating their involvement in secular affairs in a
derogatory way. Distrust of these practices found its most eloquent
expression in the writings of Eustathios, archbishop of Thessalonike, no
doubt the most brilliant scholar in twelfth-century Byzantium. Eustathios
was a vitriolic critic of monastic hypocrisy, targeting the excessive aspects
of asceticism such as mounting a pillar or being engirdled in chains. He
showcased several cases of reproachable conduct that he saw emerging in
his time, both in his extensive treatise, in fact an invective, De emendanda
vita monastica, and in shorter works of a similar critical scope, such as De
simulatione (On hypocrisy) and Ad stylitam quondam Thessalonicensem (Address to
a stylite).30 More tactfully formulated but still similar ideas permeate his
single hagiographical work devoted to a contemporary saint, Philotheos of
Opsikion, a married man with no spectacular biography and an
insignificant miraculous record.31 This hagiography should be read in the
29
On the distribution of bishoprics in the Comnenian era (1081-1185), several of which
were occupied by members of some prominent families, see Michael Angold, Church and
Society in Byzantium under the Comneni 1081-1261 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), 139-147.
30
On Eustathios’ views on monasticism, see Angold, Church , 348-355.
31
Edition of this Life (BHG 1535) in Theophilus L. F. Tafel, Eustathii metropolitae
Thessalonicensis opuscula (Frankfurt am Mainz: Sigismundus Schmerber, 1832), 145-151 (=
PG 136, cols. 141-161). On the change of attitude towards the holy man as exemplified by
light of the anti-monastic hints it includes rather than as a eulogy of a holy

man se ipso.
Yet the most extensive portrayal of a model bishop in this age
comes from the pen of the most famous pupil of Eustathios, Michael
Choniates. An archbishop of Athens, a town he praised in an inaugural
speech but an appointment he finally came to regret, he offers us the most
rhetorical and realistic picture of a provincial bishopric in his Enkomion to
Niketas, who was his brother’s godfather and from 1143 metropolitan of
his native town of Chonai in Phrygia. Chonai, identified with ancient
Colossai, was famous for the cult of Archangel Michael in a shrine which
Niketas himself had repaired. Choniates’ Enkomion is made up of short
rhetorical treatises such as the praise of Niketas as a eunuch, the
description of St. Michael’s pilgrimage church, his attraction to ascetic life,
the annual trade fair taking place in his town, his miracle-working activity
which succeeded in averting drought and other plagues which threatened
the local population, etc.32 In thus praising a bishop, Michael Choniates re-
affirmed the crucial role of a bishop in running the affairs of the local
Church without disregarding its spiritual advancement. The
incompatibility of ascetic life with the secular concerns of the bishopric,
which came up as a serious question in late antique Lives of saints and
turned into an insurmountable contrast during the eighth to tenth
centuries, was no longer an issue in Choniates’ overall view.
At the end of these five centuries which span the Middle
Byzantine period, the picture looks reversed. Identification of sanctity with
monastic identity, which reached its peak in the ninth and tenth centuries,
was finally called into question. What could previously be read between
the rather few lines which Middle Byzantine hagiography reserved for holy
and unholy bishops was now, on the eve of 1204, pronounced in clear
terms in the writings of the intellectual elite. A spirit of renovation was
this Life, see Kazhdan – Wharton Epstein, Change in Byzantine Culture, 93-95. On the
decline of hagiography in the twelfth century, see Paul Magdalino, “The Byzantine Holy
Man in the Twelfth Century,” in Hackel, Byzantine Saint, 51-66; and for a reconsideration,
Symeon Paschalidis, “The Hagiography of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in The
Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, Volume I: Periods and Places, ed.
Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate 2011), 143–171.
32
Edition of the Enkomion to the blessed metropolitan of Chonai Sir Niketas by Spyridon P.
Lampros, Μιχαὴλ Ἀκοµινάτου τοῦ Χωνιάτου τὰ σῳζόµενα, vol. 1 (Athens, 1879; reprint
Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis N.V., 1968), 24-71. On the role of Michael Choniates as
bishop, see Angold, Church, 197-212; as archbishop of Athens, see Anthony Kaldellis, The
Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), 145-149. On the information concerning a town in the Byzantine
frontier zone to be drawn from this Enkomion, see Paul Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I
Komnenos, 1143-1180 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 129-132.
cultivated which despised monastic supremacy and monopoly in spiritual

matters, without suggesting in return the proclamation of bishops as saints
and the writing of a new, say “urban” hagiography. As a matter of fact, the
monolithic picture of Byzantine sainthood in the Middle Ages was
shattered only for a while, this eleventh- and twelfth-century respite, and
at the expense of holy monks, not in favour of holy bishops.
NO WAY TO SALVATION FOR GERMAN BISHOPS?
THE CASE OF ST. ENGELBERT OF COLOGNE
Victoria Smirnova
I. Introduction
“I can believe anything, but I cannot believe that a German bishop could
ever attain salvation.” That opinion, quite unfavorable to German high
clergy, was expressed by a certain thirteenth-century French scholastic and
is cited at least twice by the German Cistercian monk Caesarius of
Heisterbach (1180-1240): in one of his Homilies (H)1 and in the famous
Dialogus Miraculorum (DM).2 What did that French scholastic mean? As
Caesarius explains, he reproached German bishops for being secular
sovereigns rather than spiritual leaders: they wage war and shed people’s
blood. They care more about procuring financial support for their military
forces than about guiding their flocks to salvation.3 Does Caesarius agree
with the French scholastic? In effect, yes, though he rejects the rather
scandalous generalization. To counterbalance it, he mentions the saintly
archbishops of Cologne: Bruno I (953-965), Anno II (1056-1075), and
Heribert (999-1021). In the Homily for the second Sunday after Easter,
touching on the same subject, he also speaks of archbishops Pilgrim
(1021-1036) and Hermann (probably Hermann II, archbishop from 1036
to 1056). All of them, Caesarius specifies, were dukes and bishops at the
same time; but, he continues, they were pious and religious men who
destroyed castles and built monasteries, in contrast to modern bishops who
1
Fasciculus moralitatis venerabilis fr. Caesarii, Heisterbacencis monachi,... homilias de infantia
Servatoris Jesu Christi complectens. Pars prima, in Evangelia a Nativitate usque ad octavam
Epiphaniae; Homiliae dominicales venerabilis fr. Caesarii, Heisterbacensis monachi... Pars secunda,
in Evangelia post octavas Epiphaniae ad usque Pentecosten...; Homiliae venerabilis fr. Caesarii,
Heisterbacensis monachi... Pars tertia, in dominicas Pentecostes et deinceps usque ad Nativitatem
Christi...; Homiliae festivae venerabilis fr. Caesarii Heisterbacensis monachi... super festis anni
totius…, ed. Joannes A. Coppenstein (Cologne: P. Henningius, 1615).
2
Caesarii Heisterbacensis monachis ordinis cisterciensis Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. Joseph Strange,
2 vols. (Cologne: J. M. Heberle, 1851). References to books (distinctiones) are in Roman
numerals and references to chapters in Arabic numerals.
3
The anonymous French scholastic echoes a cardinal who said to Abbot Gerard of
Siegburg, interceding for the canonization of Anno II: De terra vestra solent pugnatores venire;
mirum, quod Sancti ibi esse possint. Translatio s. Annonis archiepiscopi, ed. Rudolf Köpke, MGH
SS 11, 516.
184 Victoria Smirnova
destroy monasteries and build castles.4 Thus, the exceptions prove the sad
rule. In Caesarius’ writings one can find constant criticism of German
church hierarchs: just like the French scholastic, he reproaches the secular
clergy, especially those of high rank, for their excessive extortions and
oppressions, their lack of piety, their greed, and their “worldly” behavior,
as well as their neglect of cura animarum.5 No wonder. In Caesarius’ own
recollection, two archbishops of Cologne – Adolf and Dietrich – had been
excommunicated and deposed by the pope. Caesarius cites both as “anti-
examples”: corrupted by greed, they heavily oppressed the province.6 In a
few words, being a bishop meant endangering one’s soul. A monk from
Clairvaux, Caesarius relates in DM, was promoted to bishop. He refused
this high position despite all inducements and all pressure. Shortly
afterwards, he died and then appeared in a vision to one of his comrades,
saying:
Had I been obedient and had I taken the episcopal charge, I would
be damned for eternity. And then he added a very terrible thing:
4
DM II, 27, ed. Strange, 1:99: Monachus: Clericus quidam Parisiis ante paucos annos verbum
terribile contra Episcopos locutus est, dicens: Omnia credere possum, sed non possum credere, quod
unquam aliquis Episcopus Alemanniae possit salvari. Novicius: Quare magis iudicavit Episcopos
Alemanniae, quam Episcopos Galliae, Angliae, Lombardiae vel Tusciae? Monachus: Quia pene omnes
Episcopi Alemanniae utrumque habent gladium, spiritualem videlicet et materialem; et quia de
sanguine iudicant et bella exercent, magis eos sollicitos esse oportet de stipendiis militum, quam de salute
animarum sibi commissarum. Invenimus tamen ex Episcopis Coloniensibus, qui Pontifices simul fuerunt
et Duces, aliquos fuisse sanctos, beatum videlicet Brunonem, sanctum Heribertum et sanctum Annonem.
See also the Homily for the second Sunday after Easter (H 2:98-99): Monachus: Duplicem
habent gladium poenae omnes Episcopi Allemanniae: unde et magnus eis timor incumbuit. Hoc
considerans Scholasticus quidam Parisiensis dixisse fertur: Omnia possum credere, sed non possum
credere quod umquam aliquis Episcoporum Allemaniae in suo episcopatu possit saluari. Novitius: Hoc
falsum est, quia ex episcopis Coloniensibus Bruno primus, Peregrinus, Hermannus, Anno sancti sunt.
Hi omnes duces erant et pontificis. Monachus: Illi viri erant pii ac religiosi, castra sicut in eorum gestis
legitur, destruentes et monasteria aedificantes; modo castra aedificant et coenobia, siue in aedificiis suis
siue in praediis dissipant. Ad huiusmodi opera incitantur consiliis militaribus, linguis saecularibus. . .
5
On the problem of belligerent German bishops and their political activity, see Jan Keupp,
“Die zwei Schwerter des Bischofs. Von Kriegsherren und Seelenhirten im Reichsepiskopat
der Stauferzeit,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 117 (2006): 1-24; and idem,
“Reichsministerialen und Bischofsmord in staufischer Zeit,” in Bischofsmord im Mittelalter /
Murder of Bishops, eds. Natalie Fryde and Dirk Reitz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and
Ruprecht, 2003), 273-302.
6
DM II, 30, ed. Strange, 1:101-102: O Colonia, deplora calamitates tuas, quae venient tibi,
quoniam non solum ex culpa solius Episcopi, sed etiam ex communi peccato venient mala supradicta.
Verumtamen ipse Episcopus plurimum debet dolere, quoniam ipse omnibus aliis est praelatus. . . .
Pastorem hunc superiorem, Adolphum Episcopum intelligo, qui post mortem Henrici Imperatoris quasi
venale Imperium habens, veneno avaritiae se ipsum infecit, plurimosque interfecit.
No Way to Salvation 185
The state of the Church is now such that it deserves to be ruled

only by wicked bishops.7
The worldliness of German high clergy must have been all the more
scandalous for Caesarius given the fact that it was his fellow Cistercians
who actively encouraged the spiritual reform of the clergy and contributed
to the propagation of an ascetic model of episcopal conduct. Departing
from earlier models, the Cistercians demanded of the bishop not only that
he fully follow the precepts laid down by Gregory the Great in his Regulae
Pastoralis “to be a humble companion to the good and firm in the zeal of
righteousness, rigid against the vices of sinners,”8 but also to maintain
balance between cura interiorum and occupatio exteriorum. The Cistercians also
regarded the monastic style of life as highly desirable for prelates: for those
drawn from the Cistercian order as well as for all others. In his De moribus et
officiis episcoporum, Bernard of Clairvaux admonished bishops not to seek
beautiful vestments, fine horses, and palaces, but to embellish themselves
with spiritual studies, distinguished mores, and charity.9 He insisted on the
importance of contemplative virtues, especially that of humility, and gave
the example of such an ideal bishop in his Vita sancti Malachiae.10 This
monastic model of episcopal conduct, as André Vauchez points out,
became predominant in thirteenth-century hagiography.11
7
DM, II, 28, ed. Strange, 1:99-100: Si obediens fuissem, et Episcopatum illum suscepissem,
damnatus essem aeternaliter. Subiunxitque verbum valde terribile. Ad hoc, inquit, iam devenit status
Ecclesiae, ut non sit digna regi, nisi a reprobis Episcopis.
8
Gregory the Great, The Book of Pastoral Rule, trans. George E. Demacopoulos (New York:
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007), 61.
9
De moribus et officiis episcoporum, PL 182, cols. 812-813 : Honorificabitis autem non cultu
vestium, non equorum fastu, non amplis aedificiis, sed ornatis moribus, studiis spiritualibus, operibus
bonis. Quam multi aliter! Cernitur in nonnullis sacerdotibus vestium cultus plurimus; virtutum aut
nullus, aut exignus. . . . On the Cistercian attitudes towards bishops, see Martha Newman,
The Boundaries of Charity. Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098-1180 (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press , 1996), 141-170.
10
Vita sancti Malachiae, PL 182, col. 1098: A die primo conversionis suae usque ad extremum
vitae, sine proprio vixit. Non servos, non ancillas, non villas, non viculos, non denique quidquam
redituum ecclesiasticorum saeculariumve, vel in ipso habuit episcopatu. Mensae episcopali nihil prorsus
constitutum, vel assignatum, unde Episcopus viveret. Nec enim vel domum propriam habuit. . . . Non
fuit in victu, non fuit in vestitu, in quo potuisset Malachias dignosci inter caeteros fratres: in tantum,
cum major esset, humiliavit se in omnibus. . . . Denique cum exiret ad praedicandum, cum peditibus
pedes et ipse ibat, episcopus et legatus. Forma apostolica haec: et inde magis mira in Malachia, quo
rara nimis in aliis. Verus profecto apostolorum haeres est iste, qui talia agit.
11
André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge (1198-1431)
(Rome : École Française de Rome, 1988), 329-358.
II. Engelbert of Berg: a bad bishop worthy of being a saint?

In light of the above-mentioned Cistercian preference for a more ascetic
model of episcopal conduct, and the proverbial “worldliness” of the
German high clergy, a vita of a typical “German bishop” would have
appeared as something quite controversial. The vita we are talking about is
that of the powerful and noble Engelbert, count of Berg and archbishop of
Cologne,12 written by Caesarius of Heisterbach in 1226, a year after the
archbishop’s cruel murder: the Vita, passio, et miracula s. Engelberti (VE).13
Much like his predecessors, Engelbert spent much of his life as a politician
and lead quite a sumptuous life, to the point that Caesarius himself, giving
his first reaction to the archbishop’s assassination, characterized him
(through the words of a certain Cistercian monk) as not a good bishop:
While we were writhing this, there came one more thing to write
about: alas! the unfortunate death of our archbishop Engelbert. . . .
It is possible, like many people say, that God wished to remove the
fault of his descent from Jerusalem to Jericho. By Jerusalem, where
the temple and religion were found, spiritual matters are meant; by
Jericho, mundane and secular ones. Being a bishop and a duke, he
paid little attention to the former and was too preoccupied with the
latter. Therefore one of our monks said to him: ‘My Lord, you are a
good duke, but not a good bishop.’14
The originality of VE, as scholars have already pointed out,15 consists in a
certain level of criticism of the archbishop’s conduct that Caesarius of
Heisterbach expressed time and again. He did not even attempt to present
Engelbert as a spiritual man leading the ascetic life in secret. Even though
omitting the most unflattering description – “not a good bishop” – in VE,
12
On Engelbert of Berg see Julius Ficker, Engelbert der Heilige, Erzbischof von Köln und
Reichsverweser (Cologne: J. M. Heberle [H. Lempertz], 1853).
13
Vita, passio et miracula s. Engelberti auctore Caesario Heisterbacensi, Acta Sanctorum, Nov. vol.
3, cols. 644-681.
14
H, 3:90-91: Et dum ista scribimis, materiam nobis scribendi auget, heu, miserabilis casus
Archipraesulis nostri Engelberti. . . . Et forte, sicut plures opinantur, Deus voluit delere culpam
descensionis eius ab Hierusalem in Iericho. Per Ierusalem in quo templum erat et religio, negotia
designantur spiritualia; per Iericho mundane atque saecularia. Cum episcopus esset et dux, minus illis
intendebat et ad ista nimis descendebat, ita ut quidam monachorum nostrorum illi diceret: Domine vos
estis bonus dux, sed non bonus episcopus.
15
See, for example, Jacqueline E. Jung, “From Jericho to Jerusalem: The Violent
Transformation of Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne,” in Last Things: Death and the
Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 60–82; Paul B. Pixton, The German Episcopacy and
the Implementation of the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1216-1245: Watchmen on the
Tower (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 93 (on the critics of the German clergy) and 210 (on
Engelbert).
Caesarius could not help remarking that Engelbert was not a preacher
(that was a great shortcoming for a bishop responsible for preaching and
religious education); that he was not good in spiritual conversation nor in
commenting on the Bible, and that his youth was absorbed in worldly
activities. And more than that, Caesarius constantly presented Engelbert’s
sanctity as contested by many people who considered the archbishop a
proud, tough, and belligerent man, and therefore largely doubted that he
could have been God’s martyr:
Let it be heard by those . . . who for any reason calumniate the
martyr and envy him, saying: ‘We will never believe that a proud,
greedy, and worldly man can make miracles.’ They think of him as
he used to be, but they do not understand what he became after his
martyrdom.16
As for Engelbert’s murder, it is seen by Caesarius as redemption for the
archbishop’s sumptuous secular life. The emphasis of VE is clearly on the
martyrdom, as Jacqueline Jung points out. By giving a long account of
Engelbert’s death (and not sparing a single bloody detail), she argues,
Caesarius presented the murder as a purification ritual that transformed
the beautiful body of a mighty public persona into a mass of bleeding,
naked flesh. Thus, in death Engelbert becomes everything he was not in
life, a “vessel of glory” instead of a “vessel of wrath,” and wins salvation.17
Even the posthumous miracles are indications not of his holy life (as the
traditional hagiographical model, well-known to Caesarius, would require)
but of his glorious death: Caesarius remarked that they would not have
been necessary, had his life been more perfect.
As Engelbert’s martyrdom has been well studied, in this paper I
propose to concentrate on the account of his lifetime activity. As vitae
generally focus on the positive qualities of the subject’s life, which of
Engelbert’s traits or deeds does Caesarius find it possible to eulogize in
16
VE, col. 661: Audiant ergo . . . qui ob quamcunque causam martiri detrahentes et glorie eius
invidentes dicere solent: ‘Nequaquam credere possumus virum superbum, avarum et prorsus seculo
deditum miracula posse facere.’ Considerant quid aliquando fortassis fuerit; sed quid per martirium
factus sit non attendunt. See also VE, col. 665: Cum heu! tristis rumor occisionis eius insonuisset,
multi qui actus eius seculares noverant, de salute eius desperantes, aiebant: ‘Heu! modo perdidit corpus
et animam.’ VE, col. 667: In Siberg oppido non multum remoto a civitate Colonia manens est quidam
aurifaber, Arnoldus nomine, qui huiusmodi virtutibus fidem adhibere non potuit, sed quociens eo
presente loqueretur quis de sanctitate presulis, vel irrisit, vel contradixit. ‘Quomodo,’ inquit, ‘posset esse
vel dici sanctus, ad cuius mandatum multe domus exuste sunt, spoliati multi, et quem multorum fuisse
constat auctorem malorum?’ VE, col. 661: Miles quidam, Arnoldus nomine . . . in contumeliam
martiris erupit, et ait: ‘Multi dicunt quod dominus iste, qui multos lesit, dampnificavit et
exhereditavit, sanctus sit et miracula faciat. Hoc si verum est, quod tamen non credo, hec faciat mihi
Deus et hec addat ut, antequam moriar, insanus efficiar.’
17
Jung, “From Jericho to Jerusalem,” 75.
order to fill an obligatory part of the Vita before proceeding to the

narration of his subject’s glorious martyrdom?
III. A life to construct

a. Zeal for justice
First of all, Caesarius of Heisterbach praises the archbishop’s love of justice.
This may be the most important theme of VE, a common thread that runs
through it. Speaking of the “cause” of Engelbert’s death, Caesarius usually
adds (from the very beginning of VE) the standard phrase that it happened
pro iustitia.
Let us briefly summarize the events leading to Engelbert’s
martyrdom. His cousin, Count Frederick of Isenberg, abused his position
as an advocatus (secular administrator) for the nuns of Essen to steal their
property and oppress their dependants. The abbess made a number of
unsuccessful complaints against him, first to Archbishop Dietrich (1209-
1212), and then to Engelbert. Finally, the case reached the pope and the
emperor, who urged Engelbert to protect the nuns in their rights. The
archbishop in his turn tried to bring his cousin to reason, but to no effect.
Frederick, in fear of being disinherited by his mighty kinsman, conspired to
kill Engelbert. On 7 November 1225, as the archbishop was journeying
from Soest to Schwelm to consecrate a church, he was attacked by
Frederick and his associates and brutally murdered.
To be killed for justice, Caesarius argues, is very meritorious,
much more so than the accidental martyrdom of the two holy bishops of
Cologne, Evergill and Agillolf, since one of them was killed by brigands
and another by thieves; it was their piety and innocent life, Caesarius
continues, that made martyrs of them. As for Engelbert, he was “made a
martyr” by his obedience to the pope and his zeal for justice.18
Then, while describing Engelbert’s episcopal activity, Caesarius
says from the start that “he ruled over his major cities, Cologne and Soest,
with power and a great zeal for justice, more than any other bishop before
him.”19 No wonder that among the few deeds of the archbishop recounted
by Caesarius the main acts of justice play a crucial role.20 One of these
18
VE, col. 662: Quod si obicitur de sancto Evergillo et sancto Agillolfo Coloniensibus episcopis, qui et
ipsi passi sunt, responderi potest non tam meritoriam fuisse causam martirii eorum sicut in Engelberto.
Primus illorum noctu a latronibus occulte occisus est, alter vero aperte a predonibus, qui diocesis sue
terminos pervaserant. Illos martires fecit pietas et innocencia vite, istum vero virtus obediencie et zelus
iusticie.
19
VE, col. 648: In civitatibus suis principalibus, Colonia scilicet et Susacia, maiorem exercuit
potestatem zelo iusticie quam aliquis episcoporum ante eum.
20
It should be noted that Heisterbach Abbey itself benefited several times from Engelbert’s
justice. The archbishop at least twice took the abbey’s side in its property conflicts with the
episodes is quite revealing: just before his assassination, he restituted to a

widow a fief that had been earlier adjudicated to him.21 Caesarius compares
this act to the famous “justice of Trajan”: the Roman emperor rendered
justice to the mother of a murdered man despite all the other demands on
his time: “we read, he says, the same in the Roman history on the pious
prince (princeps) Trajan.”22 But Engelbert (here also called princeps) actually
did more, because Trajan simply settled a case, whereas Engelbert
“converted all judgments into mercy.”23 Both princes acted out of their
love for justice, rather than secular glory. However, as Caesarius puts it, for
the pagan emperor the deed could only serve as a mitigation of
punishment in the afterlife, whereas the Christian bishop could earn eternal
glory. Indeed, he did this not extra caritatem like Trajan, but ex caritate. Let
us mention in passing that here Caesarius once again cannot help
establishing a certain critical distance from his subject: “this deed of the
bishop, which was performed out of love, as we hope [note this “as we
hope”], made him suitable for the martyr’s glory.”24
The emphasis on justice is reinforced by the recurrent comparison
of Engelbert to Judas Maccabeus or to the lion. The exemplary hero and
the exemplary animal both have a noble nature and zeal for justice, so they
spare the humble and overthrow the proud. Both symbolize a powerful and
perfect warrior, a king. Judas was one of the Nine Worthies – nine
historical figures who, in the Middle Ages, were believed to personify the
ideals of chivalry. We shall return later to the “chivalric” and “royal”
aspects of this comparison. Here it is important to say that, having begun
VE with praise for justice, Caesarius ends it in the same way. In the last
local seigneurs. See Urkundenbuch der Abtei Heisterbach, ed. Ferdinand Schmitz (Bonn:
Hansrein, 1908), 141-142 and 147-148. Let us add that Heisterbach obtained a papal
exemption in 1213 (ibid., 133-134) and therefore was not under episcopal control.
21
VE, cols. 654-655: Cui eodem die vidua quedam occurrit super duabus causis sub interminacione
divini nominis iudicium illius flagitans. Cuius vociferacione Domini sacerdos commotus, ne in hoc
inferior videretur iudice iniquitatis, de quo Dominus dicit in Evangelio, qui Deum non timebat et
hominem non reverebatur, mox de equo descendit et, sede composita, loco ducis ad iudicandum sedens,
super feodo de quo vidua conquesta est sentenciam quesivit et accepit. Pro se enim et contra viduam
sentenciam audiens latam, ex multa cordis compassione cum effectu protulit verbum memoria dignum:
‘En, domina’, inquit, ‘feodum de quo conquesta estis, vobis per sentenciam est ablatum mihique
adiudicatum. Sed ego propter Deum, vestre compassus miserie, illud vobis relinquo. Alterius negocii
vestri querimonia ad me non pertinet.’
22
VE, col. 655: Simile aliquid legimus in hystoria romana de pio principe Traiano.
23
Ibid.: Amplius aliquid operatus est princeps noster. Traianus per iudicium vidue fecit iusticiam,
Engelbertus omne iudicium convertit in misericordiam.
24
Ibid.: Opus imperatoris, eo quod extra caritatem fieret, mortuum remansit; opus vero episcopi, quod
ex caritate factum speramus, glorie martirii multum eum habilitavit.
book, which comprises the account of miracles, people who seek help from
Engelbert do it because “he was killed for the love of justice.”25
No wonder that in such a “justice-oriented” setting the incident
with the nuns of Essen, who were oppressed by Engelbert’s cousin, Count
Frederick of Isenberg, the secular administrator for the abbey, the conflict
which later lead to Engelbert’s murder, was likely to be perceived as the
supreme act of the archbishop’s justice. In this regard, it is possible to draw
a parallel between Engelbert and Erkenbald of Burban, whom Caesarius
presents in DM as amatorem iustitie (IX, 38). This noble and powerful man
was so righteous that in his justice he spared no one. Thus, he killed his
relative who had committed a serious crime and did not repent. For this a
priest refused to give him Holy Communion, but the Body of Christ
appeared miraculously in Erkenbald’s mouth. In that way, Caesarius
continues, the words from the book of Wisdom of Solomon were fulfilled:
“Love justice, you that are the judges of the earth. Think of the Lord in
goodness, and seek him in simplicity of heart. For he is found by them that
tempt him not: and he sheweth himself to them that have faith in him
(6:1-3).”26 If perfect justice, disregarding blood ties, could redeem a
terrible sin, would it not also redeem secular conduct?
It is easy to forget that Engelbert neglected the complaints of the
oppressed nuns for many years; and it was only under pressure from both
the pope and the emperor that he tried to call his cousin to order. An act of
justice was not performed though: for the love of his relative, Engelbert
was still trying to find a compromise, right until his death. Administration
of justice on behalf of the nuns was planned and, although not achieved,
was presented as an accomplished fact. No wonder, then, that even in the
chronicles of the time Engelbert appears as “the most righteous judge and
the brave defender of the Church of God and of the fatherland,”27 a “pillar
of the Church,”28 a “defender of orphans and widows, killed for the liberty
and protection of the Church,”29 and so forth.
25
VE, col. 667: Abbate cum duce et comite abeuntibus, illa [Countess Margarita of Gelren] orare
cepit et dicere: ‘Domine mi sancte episcope, si potes aliquid apud Deum, sicuti te posse credimus, succurre
nunc mihi misere mulieri.’ Et adiecit: ‘Domine Deus, exaudi me et libera me a doloribus istis propter
sanguinem quem pro iusticia fudit episcopus Engelbertus.’ Que mox exaudita est. VE, col. 672: Qui [a
lay brother from the Campus monastery] cum frequenter disciplinas corporales reciperet et
diversorum suffragia sanctorum imploraret, illorum auxilio sperans liberari, nec proficeret, tanem
memor archiepiscopi Engelberti pro iusticia passi flexis in oracione genibus, illum invocare cepit.
26
DM, ed. Strange, 2:193-195.
27
Constanter enim speratur ipsum martirii premia meruisse, quia equissimus iudex et strennuus patrie
et ecclesiarum Dei defensor fuit, et pro earum occubuit defensione. Annales Colonienses maximi, ed.
Karolus Pertz, MGH SS 17, 839.
28
Engelbertus, Coloniensis archiepiscopus, columna ecclesiae, cleri decus, stabulimentum regi. See the
Gesta Trevirensium archiepiscoporum, in Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum,
b. Love of peace
The second of Engelbert’s merits that Caesarius constantly praises is the
restoration of peace in the suffering diocese and the reparation of the
damage inflicted upon his archiepiscopal see:
These things were inserted, O reader, so that future generations
may understand in what condition our bishop-made-martyr found
the church [of Cologne], damaged and impoverished by long and
varied schisms, and in what condition he left it.30
This motif allows Caesarius to compare Engelbert to Solomon: the
archbishop was a peacemaker; he praised peace and strove to establish it.
In the feat of peacemaking Engelbert cared neither about expenses nor
about his own inconvenience. So, Caesarius continues, if peacemakers are
blessed, according to the Gospel, Engelbert is also blessed.31 To be a
peacemaker in the troubled times after the German throne controversy
meant to find compromise between the pope and the emperor. As for
Engelbert, he was definitely loyal to both. He thus seemed to surpass
Thomas Becket of Canterbury not only in sufferings during his
martyrdom, as Caesarius says at the beginning of VE, but also in the virtue
dogmaticorum, moralium, amplissima collectio, ed. Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, vol. 4
(Paris: Montalant, 1729), col. 241.
29
Circa idem tempus vir venerabilis Engelbertus Coloniensis archiepiscopus, ecclesie murus pupillorum et
viduarum defensor, a Frederico comite de Ysenbergh, consanguineo suo, pro libertate et defensione ecclesie
insidiose occisus est. . . . Balduini Ninovensis Chronicon, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH SS 25,
541.
30
VE, col. 647: Ecclesie vero Coloniensi libera electio remissa est. Hec inserta sunt, o lector, ut posteris
innotescat in quali statu ecclesiam per longa et varia scismata laceratam et depauperatam martyr noster
factus episcopus invenerit et in quali illam dimiserit. See also VE, col. 649: Et quid laudi eius
immorer, cum gloria, diviciis et potencia, sicut de Salomone legitur, omnes supergressus sit pontifices qui
ante eum fuerunt in Colonia, excepto Brunone primo, cuius gracia ducatus episcopatui per Ottonem
primum imperatorem, cuius frater erat, additus est; in rebus exterioribus et fama sub nullo pontifice
usque ad diem hanc tantum ecclesia Coloniensis profecit quantum sub Engelberto. Caesarius of
Heisterbach, Catalogus archiepiscoporum Colonensium, ed. Friedrich Boehmer, Fontes rerum
Germanicarum 2 (Aalen: Scientia, 1969), 281: Nam insolentias comitum nobilium
ministerialium atque burgensium diocesis sue ita repressit, ut nullus ei auderet resistere. Eius industria
nobile castrum Turunh ecclesia Coloniensis obtinuit. Ecclesie sue bona diu distracta et ab antecessoribus
suis diu neglecta ipse recuperavit, et alia plura que prius non habebat illi conquisivit. Factus autem
regis Heinrici septimi, filii Friderici imperatoris, tutor, tam strenue et tam fideliter regni negotia per
totam Alemanniam administravit, tantamque pacem fecit, ut gloria et fama nominis eius longe lateque
diffunderetur. . . . Et quia pro iustitia et defensione ecclesie de Essenden occubuit, hodie multis claret
miraculis. . . .
31
VE, col. 649: Cui nomen Salomonis realiter congruebat, eo quod esset multum pacificus, pacem
diligens et pacem faciens. Gracia pacis reformande neque expensis neque corpori pepercit. Unde, si beati
pacifici, immo quia beati, ipse beatus est.
of obedience. As Caesarius himself mentions in DM (VIII, 69), Becket’s

sanctity was largely disputed: some people said he must be damned as a
betrayer of his country, while others asserted that he was a martyr, because
he was a defender of the Church. This question, reports Caesarius, had
been debated in Paris. Master Roger said that Becket had been worthy of
death, judging the constancy of the saint to be a manifestation of his
obstinacy. Peter the Chanter objected: Thomas was God’s martyr, killed
for the liberty of the Church.32 Speaking for Engelbert, no one could call
him a traitor: his behavior was exemplary for any feudal lord of the time. I
would like to mention here in passing that Caesarius also brings up the
question of peacemaking in his discussion/description of Frederick. He
etymologizes the name of the criminal who killed his cousin: in German
Friedrich means “rich in peace,” but in fact that can only be an antiphrasis,
as Frederick was, on the contrary, “poor in peace” and his associates were
the “enemies of peace.”33
c. Princely vigor: the difficult question of the two swords

The third notable merit of Engelbert is his princely might: in fact, it is
impossible to keep peace without sufficient military force. In VE Engelbert
is depicted as a victorious ruler. No one dared to ravage the province
during his episcopate. His involvement in the military conflicts is not
passed over in silence in VE: Engelbert, Caesarius says, subdued to his
power “dukes and nobles.” He did it, the author then specifies, more “with
the help of his wisdom than with numerous wars,”34 but this cliché does
not necessarily make the powerful military leader a pacifist.
Praising Engelbert, Caesarius refers to the very popular metaphor
of the two swords, based on an allegorical interpretation of John 18:1135
and Luke 22:38.36 During the Middle Ages, it was largely used as an
argument in polemics on the supremacy of either the spiritual or temporal
authority – by the partisans of both sides. It should be noticed that Alcuin,
32
DM, ed. Strange, 2:139-140.
33
VE, col. 652: Fridericus nomen theutonicum est et interpretatur pacis dives, misero isti non nisi per
antyphrasim, id est per contrarium, congruens. Nam pacis inops erat, pacis inimicos sibi socians.
34
VE, col. 648: Sic comitum sive aliorum nobilium vel potentum insolencias repressit ut pene nullius
castrum destrueret vel terram vastaret, magis prudencia quam bellorum copia sibi subiugans omnia.
35
Simon ergo Petrus habens gladium eduxit eum et percussit pontificis servum et abscidit eius
auriculam dextram erat autem nomen servo Malchus dixit ergo Iesus Petro mitte gladium in vaginam.
36
At illi dixerunt Domine ecce gladii duo hic at ille dixit eis satis est.On the two swords, see:
Joseph Leclerc, “L’argument des deux glaives (Lc 22, 38) dans les controverses politiques du
Moyen Age,” Recherches de science religieuse 21 (1931): 299-339; James Henderson Burns, The
Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350-c. 1450 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1988); Keupp, “Die zwei Schwerter” esp. 8-12.
who seems to have been the first to consider the metaphor in the light of
power and authority, depicted the emperor as the one who holds the two
swords: one to defend the Church from its inner enemies (heretics), and
another to fight the external one (pagans).37 In contrast to Alcuin,
subsequent authors (for example, John of Mantua38) interpreted one sword
as the power of excommunication, belonging to the Church hierarchs, and
the other as the power of military coercion, belonging to the secular rulers.
The two powers are seen as distinct, though not altogether separated. They
could and should, as Peter Damian (or Nicholas of Clairvaux, to whom J.
Joseph Ryan attributes the sermon in question39) pointed out, act together
for the sake of both church and kingdom.40 (But whatever power was
thought to be superior, temporal or spiritual, the two swords could not be
used by the same ruler, either ecclesiastical or lay, and this point is very
important for our discussion). The famous assertion that the pope has both
swords – papa utrumque habet gladium – was either contested or refined.
Thus, Gottschalk of Aachen, in his letter written against the pope in the
name of Henry IV, said that the latter’s attempt at misappropriating the
temporal sword would mean the reduction of two swords into one. That
was inadmissible, because God clearly said: “Two swords are enough, not
one.”41 The two swords, said Geoffrey of Bath, are indeed in the Church,
but just as the affairs of the Church had nothing to do with kings, those of
the state did not concern bishops.42 That is why the Apostle Peter, who
used the material sword to cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, was
reprimanded by Christ. Bernard of Clairvaux also saw the two swords as
37
Hoc mirabile et speciale in te pietatis Dei donum praedicamus, quod tanta devotione ecclesias Christi
a perfidorum doctrinis intrinsecus purgare tuerique niteris quanta forinsecus a vastatione paganorum
defendere vel propagare conaris. His duobus gladiis vestram venerandam excellentiam dextra levaque
divina armavit potestas; in quibus victor laudabilis et triumphator gloriosus existis. Ep. 171, MGH
Epistolae 4, 282.
38
Johannis Mantuani in Cantica Canticorum et de sancta Maria tractatus ad comitissam Matildam,
ed. Bernard Bischoff and Burkhard Taeger (Fribourg: Universitätsverlag, 1973), 52-53.
39
Joseph J. Ryan, “Saint Peter Damian and the Sermons of Nicholas of Clairvaux, a
clarification,” Mediaeval Studies 9 (1947): 151-161.
40
Sermon 69, PL 144, col. 900: Felix autem, si gladium regni cum gladio jungat [the king]
sacerdotii, ut gladius sacerdotis mitiget gladium regis, et gladius regis gladium acuat sacerdotis. Isti
sunt duo gladii, de quibus in Domini passione legitur: ‘Ecce gladii duo hic; et respondetur a Domino:
Sufficit.’
41
Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., ed. Carl Erdmann, MGH Dt. MA 1, 25, no. 17: Deus non unum
sed duos gladios satis esse dicit. Ipse [Gregory VII] vero unum fieri intendit, dum nos destituere
contendit. . . .
42
PL 162, col. 1476: Sicut non convenit regibus, quod ad stolam pertinet, sic nec episcopus, quae
regis sunt, exercere debet. Text usually attributed to Anselm of Laon; the new attribution has
been made by Fulcran Vigouroux, see Dictionnaire de la Bible, vol. 1 (Paris: Letouzey, 1895),
col. 1350.
belonging to the Church, but on one condition: whereas the Church used
the spiritual sword by itself, the temporal one was used by military men
under the control and on behalf of the Church:
Why should you again try to use the sword, which you were once
and for all bidden to put into its sheath? Yet if anyone should deny
that you have the sword, he does not seem to me to have paid
sufficient attention to his Lord’s words: ‘Put back thy sword into
the sheath.’ To you, then, the sword belongs, and it should be
unsheathed, it may be with your consent, though not by your hand.
Otherwise, if it in no way belonged to you, when the apostles said,
‘Lo, here are two swords,’ and the Lord would not have replied, ‘It
is enough’; He would have said, ‘They are too many.’ Both swords
belong to the Church, the spiritual and the material; the one is to
be used to defend the Church, but the other must even be banished
from the Church; the one is wielded by the priest, the other by the
soldier, but of course with your consent, and at the command of the
Emperor.43
Leaving aside the obvious authority of St. Bernard for each Cistercian, it
should be observed that in Caesarius’ times it was this opinion that
prevailed among theologians and canonists.44 Though in Germany the
usage of the two swords by the same person was sometimes justified,45
Caesarius definitely perceived the two powers as distinct46 and was
therefore, I argue, the first to use the popular metaphor to criticize the
German bishops. He mentions the two swords both in his Dialogue on
Miracles and in the Homily on the second Sunday after Easter. Just after
having cited the opinion of the French scholastic, he says that the German
bishops wield two swords: the physical one and the spiritual one. He does
not explain what the spiritual sword exactly means; as for the corporal one,
it is mostly used, he argues, by the German bishops to interfere in the
affairs of state, to wage wars, and to shed blood. There is an obvious
43
De consideratione, I, 3, 7. PL 182, col. 776: Quid tu denuo usurpare gladium tentes, quem semel
jussus es reponere in vaginam? Quem tamen qui tuum negat, non satis mihi videtur attendere verbum
Domini dicentis sic: Converte gladium tuum in vaginam (Joan. XVIII, 11). Tuus ergo et ipse, tuo
forsitan nutu, etsi non tua manu evaginandus. Alioquin si nullo modo ad te pertineret et is, dicentibus
Apostolis, Ecce gladii duo hic; non respondisset Dominus, Satis est (Luc. XXII, 38); sed, Nimis est.
Uterque ergo Ecclesiae et spiritualis scilicet gladius, et materialis, sed is quidem pro Ecclesia, ille vero et
ab Ecclesia exserendus: ille sacerdotis, is militis manu, sed sane ad nutum sacerdotis, et jussum
imperatoris. Trans. George Lewis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 104.
44
Leclerc, “L’argument des deux glaives,” 318-319.
45
Keupp, “Die zwei Schwerter ,” 12-14.
46
H, 3:173: Duplex hec potestas duo gladii sunt, quos Domino Petrus presentavit, illo respondete:
‘Satis est’ (Luc. 22, 38). Unus gladius spiritualis est, qui Pape collatus est a Domino; alter
materialis, quem tenet imperator similiter a Deo. Hoc duplici gladio regitur ac defensatur ecclesia
Christi.
criticism of the abuse of military power, but there is more to it than that;
the very fact of “being a bishop and a duke,” and therefore of possessing
and using both swords, was seen as a cause of imperfection and spiritual
decay47 (as the subordinating causal conjunction quia shows):
Since almost all German bishops have two swords, temporal and
spiritual; and since they sentence people to death and wage wars,
they care more about procuring financial support for their military
force than about guiding their flock to salvation.48
However, in VE Caesarius insists that the temporal sword of dukedom was
used by Engelbert in the most appropriate way: in order to keep justice
and to restore peace. The spiritual sword is also mentioned; it symbolizes
the episcopal power to excommunicate enemies:
He received the spiritual sword with the episcopate and the
material sword with the dukedom. He fought the rebels with the
sword in both ways, excommunicating some and fighting others
with military force. Likewise Maccabeus is read to have fought first
with his own sword to overthrow enemies, and later with the sword
of Apollonius.49
Nevertheless, except for this brief mention, Engelbert does not figure in
the Vita as an excommunicating bishop (once again in contrast to Thomas
Becket), whereas the theme of fighting the enemies of the Church is
recurrent. As Pope Honorius III says: “All Germany fears Engelbert, and
therefore it fears me.”50 If the use of the two swords by one ruler was
suspect, Caesarius tries to solve the problem by putting a clear emphasis on
the righteous usage of the temporal one.
47
This idea was quite common. For example, Gerhoh of Reichersberg, one of the most
distinguished theologians of Germany in the twelfth century, describes as ‘monstrous’ the
conduct of those bishops who sit in court with both a cross and a ducal banner: At nunc
videmus quiddam tercium ex duarum potestatum permixtione confectum, dum quibusdam episcopis solio
iudicii residentibus crux dominica, pontificatus vel Christiane humilitatis insigne, ac simul vexillum
ducis videlicet ad vindictam malefactorum a rege missi signum preferuntur. Quod mihi pro mea
estimatione monstruosum potius videtur. . . . Gerhoh of Reichersberg, De investigatione Antichristi,
ed. Ernst Sackur, MGH Libelli de lite 3, 344.
48
DM, II, 27, ed. Strange, 1:99: Quia pene omnes Episcopi Alemanniae utrumque habent gladium,
spiritualem videlicet et materialem; et quia de sanguine iudicant et bella exercent, magis eos sollicitos
esse oportet de stipendiis militum, quam de salute animarum sibi commissarum.
49
VE, col. 649: Acceperat enim cum episcopatu gladium spiritualem et cum ducatu gladium
materialem. Utroque gladio rebelles cohercuit, quosdam excommunicando, quosdam per miliciam
debellando. Sic Machabeus prius proprio in deiectione inimicorum, deinde Apollonii gladio legitur
pugnasse.
50
VE, col. 651: Unde cum domnus Honorius papa mortem eius deplangeret, dixisse fertur hoc verbum:
‘Omnes de Alemannia timore ipsius me timebant.’
d. It’s all about power

Even the deeds that should exemplify Engelbert’s care for the poor are
presented as praise of his power. In the chapter “On his compassion
towards the oppressed and the poor,” Caesarius reports that one day a
merchant asked the archbishop for an escort to ensure safe travel.
Engelbert (called here once Machabeus noster and “a lion”) did not give him
any guards, but a letter saying that he would compensate any loss the
merchant might suffer. The power of the episcopal letter, or rather fear of
the bishop, as Caesarius specifies, allowed the merchant to travel safely.51
One must also mention Engelbert’s humility, or rather his respect
for monks, whose advice and criticism he humbly accepted:
He sought to honor monks so much, or, more likely, Christ himself
in monks, that in the presence of private persons he stood up and
talked with them as humbly as if he were their subordinate.52
And when monks sometimes reproached him for the exactions he had
inflicted upon his people, he excused himself very humbly and admitted his
fault, saying that he could not restore peace without money.53
Maybe that falls short of exemplary episcopal humility, but for the
author of VE it seems to have been sufficient for creating a favorable
portrait. It is important to mention that the theme of ‘good advice and
good advisers’ was crucial for Caesarius of Heisterbach in particular and for
the Cistercians in general. For example, Bernard of Clairvaux begins his De
moribus et officiis episcoporum with nothing other than reasoning on good and
bad advice.54 Caesarius emphasizes this problem in the homily on the
Biblical verse Ego sum pastor bonus (John 10:11-12), in which he reflects
upon pastoral duty and secular authority. German bishops, he says, are
often led to scandal and crime by “the advice of knights and by the
tongues of secular men.” Then Caesarius gives an example of Dietrich, the
deposed archbishop of Cologne (1209-1212), who was too strongly
influenced by the nobles. In VE he also mentions Archbishop Adolf, also
deposed, who was seduced by “depraved advisers” and corrupted by
money:
51
VE, col. 648: Et fecit sic, gratia signi, immo timore episcopi sua securus deducens.
52
VE, col. 651: Religiosos, immo in religiosis Christum, ita honorare studuit ut personis privatis
assurgeret et tam humiliter cum eis loqueretur ac si illis subditus esset.
53
VE, col. 649: Qui cum aliquando argueretur a religiosis quare exactiones faceret in populum sibi
subiectum, humiliter se excusavit, culpam recognovit, dicens sine pecuniis pacem se non posse facere in
terris.
54
PL 182, col. 811: Prudenter igitur cogitastis sacerdotale onus, episcopale opus, curamque
pastoralem digne non posse administrari sine consilio.
Novice: I think that bad surroundings and the advice of knights

often lead bishops to such scandals. Knights frequently, and clerics
rarely, keep company with them. Monk: You are right. Knights
seek to increase their payments and to get more lands; therefore
they often advise or rather persuade bishops to make exactions and
to increase taxes.55
In terms of listening to advice, Engelbert seems to be irreproachable – once
again in contrast to his murderer Frederick, who is depicted as surrounded
by bad advisors.
And the last but not least merit of Engelbert is the help he offered
to the poor and his generosity towards the church – in a time of food
shortage, he even sent ships with victuals to the poorest monasteries. He
also gave money to renovate the cathedral of Cologne. That permits
Caesarius to make one more comparison with the legendary rulers, this
time with King David: “like Saint David he delighted in the ornament of
the House of God.”56
IV. A new Becket or . . . a suffering king?

At this point it is possible to argue that Caesarius did not try to present
Engelbert as a new or “better” Becket. Despite having mentioned in the
very beginning of VE that Thomas Becket’s martyrdom and Engelbert’s
martyrdom resulted from the same cause, namely their defense of the
liberty of the Church,57 he did not construct Engelbert’s sanctity by
adjusting Becket’s hagiography to his own project. After all, Becket was
portrayed by his hagiographers as a good bishop, with a clear emphasis on
his spiritual studies, hidden ascetic zeal, and contempt for worldly things.58
And, let us mention it once again, as a bishop who fought for the
separation of spiritual and temporal authorities, Becket did not use the
55
H, 2:98: Novitius: Puto quod mala latera et consilia militaria ad huiusmodi scandala saepe
Episcopos impellat. Milites crebro, clerici rarius circa illos versantur. Monachus: Ita est. Milites ut eis
stipendia sua augeantur, ut copiosius infeudentur, saepe suadent, immo instigant Episcopos, ut
exactiones faciunt, ut telonia aggrauent. See also H, 2:98-99: Ab his [secular persons] eductus et
seductus Coloniensis Archiepiscopus Theodoricus, per totam quadragesimam, ut nosti, non orationibus et
eleemosynas, sed incendiis vacauit atque rapinis. Unde eodem tempore iusto Dei iudicio excommunicatus
est et depositus. Novitius: Si idem Theodoricus tunc usus fuisset consilio priorum suorum et non
curialium, forte in honore suo stetisset. Monachus: Idem condicit antecessori eius Adolpho.
56
VE, col. 615: Decorem domus Dei cum sancto David sic dilexit, ut ecclesiam Sancti Petri, que
mater est omnium ecclesiarum provincie Coloniensis, renovare fratres hortaretur.
57
VE, col. 662: Sicut diverse sunt species martirii, ita sunt diverse cause martirii. . . . [T]empore
moderniori in sancto Thoma episcopo Cantuariensi occisus est propter libertatem ecclesie conservandam.
Eadem causa mortis exstitit in presule nostro Engelberto.
58
Vita s. Thomæ Cantuariensis archiepiscopi et martyris ab auctoribus contemporaneis scripta et nunc
primum e codicibus omnibus mstis edita, ed. John A. Gilles (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1845).
temporal sword at all, relying instead on his power to excommunicate. At

the council called at Northampton, he explicitly contrasted the king’s
sword, which killed bodies physically, to his own, which hurt spiritually
and cast the soul into Gehenna.59
The merits we have listed, such as concern for justice,
peacemaking, and military power, but also respecting the monks and
helping the poor, correspond to the image of an ideal prince as portrayed
by numerous Mirrors of Princes or by the biographers of saintly kings such
as, for example, Saint Louis. The image of the good sovereign is reinforced
by recurrent comparisons of Engelbert with King Solomon, Judas
Maccabeus, and King David (the latter was also listed among the Nine
Worthies, the greatest warriors in history), as well as with the lion, an
evident symbol of worldly power. Given the doubts regarding the
archbishop’s sanctity, the stress put on his noble origin and his sufferings,
as well as the constant mention of him having been betrayed by his own
relative, the resemblance of Engelbert’s image as constructed by Caesarius
to that of a holy ruler, and especially to that of a suffering king or prince, is
quite striking.
Assassination of a prince often caused an outburst of devotion,
usually among the common people, since murder was equaled withc
martyrdom.60 In their vitae, murdered kings were mainly presented as just
monarchs whose power stemmed mainly from their great piety, but also
from their princely vigor: they were terrible and severe to their enemies,
gentle and benevolent to priests, they fought aggressors and restored
churches and monasteries. The author of the Vita Dagoberti III regis
francorum offers us a perfect example of such a king, the more so because he
knew nothing about the historical Dagobert and therefore had to create his
ideal image by hagiographical means.61 Regarding the cult of the suffering
king, one thing is very important for our discussion here. A suffering king
was not necessarily a rex justus, or a martyr for the faith by definition:
sometimes a murdered ruler was venerated as a saint regardless of his
lifetime behavior. Thus, St. Sigismund, king of the Burgundians
(516-523), killed his own son; the fact was mentioned by Gregory of Tours
59
Si gladius regis carnaliter corpora caedit, gladius meus spiritualiter percutit et animam mittit in
gehennam. See Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, vol. 1 (London:
Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1868), 227. There is more on this episode in Martin
Aurell, “Le meurtre de Thomas Becket: Les gestes d’un martyre,” in Bischofsmord im
Mittelalter, ed. Fryde and Reitz, 187-211, esp. 191-196.
60
On the cult of suffering kings see: Robert Folz, Les saints rois du moyen âge en Occident (VIe-
XIIIe s.) (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1984); Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident.,
187-197.
61
MGH SSRM 2, 512-523.
both in the Gesta Francorum and the De gloria martyrum, but omitted in the
eighth-century Passio Sigismundi.62 In the De gloria martyrum. Gregory
shows an efficient way to deal with this troubling fact: the murder of the
king is presented as an act of retribution, implored by the repentant
Sigismund himself.63 Sacred blood washes away even the most terrible sins.
And then let us mention St. Canute, king of Denmark (1080-1086), a hard
ruler whom his own people called a tyrant and eventually revolted against.
In his Passio he is described as one who supported the poor, loved bishops
and priests, and was gentle and generous to them, and frequented
churches; however, he is not portrayed as a king of great piety, purity of
life, kindness, or ascetic zeal.64 Engelbert, in fact, had more in common
with Canute than with any saintly bishop of his time. Of course, in
thirteenth-century Germany, the cult of the suffering king was not of
importance; and it was hardly possible that Caesarius used one of the
suffering kings’ vitae as his model. Nevertheless, it is likely that he was
deliberately working with the fairly well-known model of the ‘innocent
martyr’ that influenced greatly the development of lay sanctity throughout
Europe:65 he could also have been familiar with the story of Count Charles
I of Flanders (1119-1127), who was killed by his own vassals and with
whom Engelbert, as seen by Caesarius, had much in common.66 Caesarius
did not try to transform Engelbert into a good shepherd and a spiritual
person, unwillingly involved in worldly affairs for the sake of the Church,
but presented him as a righteous suffering prince. And it could be quite a
successful strategy to show that not only the death of Engelbert, but also
his life, was praiseworthy. As Thomas Aquinas will say later in his treatise
De regno, a king could attain a great reward in heaven if he loved justice,
helped the poor, and so on.67 Would anyone demand of a perfect king that
he also be a perfect hermit? The resemblance of motifs in the description of
Engelbert’s life in the Vita and the praise of him by the poet Walther von
der Vogelweide is likewise striking. Walther says:
Noble Bishop of Cologne, you have good cause to be happy. You
have served the Empire well – so well that your fame has grown in
the meantime, and now hovers high. Should your esteem be
offensive to any common cowards, you chief of princes, may that be
62
MGH SSRM 2, 239-340.
63
De gloria martyrum libri duo, I, 75 (Cologne : M. Cholinus, 1583), 95.
64
Passio sancti Kanuti regis et martyris, in Scriptores rerum Danicarum medii aevi, ed. Jacob
Langebek, et al., vol. 3 (Copenhagen: Godiche, 1774), 317-323.
65
Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident, 173-183.
66
Gualterus Tarvanensis, Vita Caroli Boni, PL 166, cols. 910-943; Galbertus Brugensis,
Altera vita Caroli boni, PL 166, cols. 943-1045.
67
De regno, I, 11, http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/orp.html (accessed 1 October 2011).
to you an empty threat. Loyal guardian of the king, you are widely
famous – better than any chancellor the guarantor of the emperor’s
honor, protector of Tree Kings and Eleven Thousand Virgins.68
We are left with a paradox. Caesarius emphasizes the bishop’s involvement
in the affairs of the state and his worldly power – the same things he
criticizes the German bishops for! In the “life” part of the Vita Caesarius
seems to develop with utmost virtuosity the double image of the “good
duke and the bad bishop,” which culminates in Engelbert’s purifying
death. Had he not been a good ruler, maybe he would not have been
granted the godly gift of martyrdom, as he lacked most of the required
pastoral qualities, such as praying, preaching, etc. Thus, his worldly power,
much criticized in other German bishops, becomes an important part of
the way to salvation and a means of constructing a positive image of a
rather “difficult saint.”
68
Cited by Jung, “From Jericho to Jerusalem,” 63.
EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY AND DISPUTED
SANCTITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ITALY
Janine Larmon Peterson
During the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the papacy
effected a major change in how sanctity was to be determined and by
whom. Previously the majority of canonizations occurred at the diocesan
level. The move to make pontifical canonizations the only route to
sanctity forced bishops to relinquish a significant portion of their judicial
autonomy. In the wake of this shift in the institutional power structure,
bishops in north-central Italy in the following two centuries challenged
the new canonization process and defended their traditional prerogatives
by promoting new local saints and their cults, even in the face of official
opposition. This phenomenon can be observed in the examples of the
bishop of Parma, who protected Gerardo Segarelli, ultimately burned as a
relapsed heretic; the bishop of Ferrara, who spearheaded canonization
efforts for the sentenced heretic Armanno Pungilupo; and the bishop of
Ascoli, who supported the thrice-condemned local holy man Meco of
Ascoli. A driving force for episcopal contumacy was undoubtedly the
conviction that the individuals in question were worthy of veneration, but
there were additional reasons that bishops ventured to incur disfavor or
even a reprimand for their actions. I argue that these motives included the
bishops’ desire to assert customary episcopal authority to determine
sanctity; identification with local rather than papal interests, particularly
during a period of very powerful and controversial popes; and pressure
from the Christian souls under their care to champion would-be holy
patrons.
Prior to the twelfth century, it was primarily bishops who decreed
that someone was officially sanctified, made manifest through the formal
ritual of the translation of the saint’s body.1 When a local community
achieved consensus that an individual was worthy of veneration, the
bishop would investigate and, if the person’s holiness was determined
genuine, would confer the title of saint with the translation of the new
saint’s relics. Episcopal canonizations were the standard and usually based
1
André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge (1198-1431) (Rome:
École française de Rome, 1981); cited in English translation, Sainthood in the Later Middle
Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 20.
202 Janine Peterson
on the vox populi, the voice of the people.2 While popes in this early period
certainly ratified cults, the first pontifical canonization of a saint from
outside of the Italian peninsula did not occur until 993.3 According to
André Vauchez, the verb canonizare was not used until 1016 and only
infrequently until the middle of the twelfth century.4 Clearly, a papal
canonization was not the only or even the primary route to official sanctity
in the first millennium of Christianity. This state of affairs changed in the
twelfth century, as the papacy centralized its authority over Christendom.5
The canonization process became part of the pope’s purview when
shortly after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) the papacy adopted the
rigors of the inquisitional procedure to determine sanctity as the final step
in gaining control over the canonization process.6 Articles of interrogation,
set questions posed to elicit information from witnesses about postulant
saints, meant that “canonization was now conceived as a judicial
inquisitorial procedure.”7 This change lessened the likelihood that a
postulant saint would achieve official endorsement in the late Middle
Ages. The voice of the people was no longer the determining force.
Miracles as well as the saint’s moral virtues had to be proved and broad
(rather than merely local) veneration had to be substantiated.8 As a result,
2
There are exceptions to this generalization, of course, as in cases where a bishop or abbot
promoted a saint for his own interests, at times even stealing an individual’s relics for the
translation ceremony (see Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle
Ages, rev. ed. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990]).
3
This canonization was of Ulric of Augsburg by Pope John XV.
4
Vauchez, Sainthood, 22.
5
The exact process and when the papacy officially asserted supreme authority for
canonizations is debated; see Stephan Kuttner, “La réserve papale du droit de canonization,”
Revue historique de droit français et étranger 18 (1938): 172-228; cf. E.W. Kemp, Canonization
and Authority in the Western Church (New York: AMS Press, 1980 [1948]), 99-104.
6
For this development, see Vauchez, Sainthood, 33-58; for a discussion of the development
of the inquisitio, or the process of interrogation, as the procedure for determining truth in
the later Middle Ages, see Annie Cazanave, “Aveu et contrition. Manuels de confesseurs et
interrogatories d’Inquisition en Languedoc et en Catalogne (XIIIe-XIVe siècles),” in La piété
populaire au Moyen Age. Actes du 99e Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes (Besançon, 1974)
(Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1977), 333-352; for the similarities between canonization
inquiries and the inquiries of inquisitors see Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality
and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2004), 119-179.
7
Aviad Kleinberg, “Proving Sanctity: Selection and Authentication of Saints in the Later
Middle Ages,” Viator 20 (1989): 189; see also Enrico Menestò, “The Apostolic Canonization
Proceedings of Clare of Montefalco, 1318-1319,” in Women and Religion in Medieval and
Renaissance Italy, ed. Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996), 111. These articles of interrogation were first used in the canonization process
of St. Dominic in 1233.
8
Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982), 142-143; Kleinberg, “Proving Sanctity,” 189; Vauchez, Sainthood, 47. Pope
Episcopal Authority 203
the canonization process became very expensive and time-consuming,

since communities had to gather the necessary documentation and hire a
procurator to initiate an inquiry.9 The economic burden of the process and
the more exacting criteria for sanctity lessened the regional saint’s chances
for canonization, and consequently the number of newly canonized saints
decreased in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Those saints that did
achieve official recognition were predominantly bishops, with slightly
fewer coming from the ranks of the new mendicant orders.10
The inability of communities to obtain official recognition of their
local and usually lay saints in this environment did not mean that their
cults disappeared. Towns continued to venerate their perceived holy men
and women despite the fact that the papacy had not endorsed them. The
author of the Life or vita of Facio of Cremona asserted, for instance, that
although Facio had not been canonized by the Church militant on earth,
he had been by the Church triumphant in Heaven.11 Regional saints like
Facio functioned in late medieval communities much as canonized saints,
serving as patrons of towns, performing miracles, engendering
pilgrimages, and prompting ritual devotions. Some historians, such as
André Vauchez, have characterized this situation as marking a divergence
between “official” and “popular” sanctity, while others have gone further
and suggested that the people of medieval Italy were “voluntary outsiders”
to religion.12 The participation of members of the clerical elite like bishops
in these local cults, however, strongly argues against the binary opposition
of clergy versus laity or “center” versus “marginal.” Peter Brown’s
description of the growth of saints’ cults in the fourth and fifth centuries is
useful for illustrating the relationship between bishops and their flocks.
Brown argued in part that in the early centuries of Christianity bishops
acquired power and prestige by collaborating with families to become
patrons of new cults. While I suggest here that such collaboration
continued, the very different historical context changed the purpose and
Innocent III was the first to outline the official signs of sanctity, requiring both a virtuous
life and the performance of miracles, in a bull of 12 January 1199 canonizing Homobonus
of Cremona (Die Register Innocenz’ III., ed. Othmar Hageneder and Anton Haidacher, vol. 1
[Graz: H. Böhlaus Nachf., 1964], 762; see also Michael Goodich, Vita Perfecta: The Ideal of
Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century [Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1982]), 23.
9
Vauchez, Sainthood, 69-70.
10
Ibid., 256, table 10.
11
Si non est canonizatus in Ecclesia militanti, scilicet sic infra, canonizatus est supra in Ecclesia
triumphanti (after: Andrè Vauchez, ed., “Sainteté laïque aux XIIIe siècle: la vie du
bienheureux Facio de Crémone,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Âge, 84 [1972]:
36).
12
Vauchez, Sainthood, 283; Alexander Murray, “Piety and Impiety in Thirteenth-Century
Italy,” Studies in Church History 8 (1971): 84.
204 Janine Peterson
process. Later medieval Italian bishops identified not only with the elite
and with influential patrician families (that also produced many bishops),
but also with the more general lay artisan and merchant population of the
towns. In addition, the goal was to wrest authority from other aspects of
the church hierarchy, rather than be part of a wider effort to promote
ecclesiastical authority over private religiosity.13
Many unofficial cults emerged in the later Middle Ages,
therefore, as a result of the difficulty of securing a canonization and the
collaborative efforts of communities in obtaining local saintly patrons.
Although popes rarely hindered veneration of these individuals, if there
was a question regarding the venerated person’s orthodoxy they took
action to halt the cult. Many times in these cases bishops followed
institutional directives. Yet on occasion bishops rather supported the
veneration of individuals who were condemned or suspect as heretics. The
response could be censure, excommunication, or even interdict, thus
placing the souls of their flock in peril, a situation that demands analysis.
Weinstein and Bell argue it was unlikely that local bishops had the ability
to recognize doctrinal error.14 Even if this generalization were true, it does
not account for the fact that some bishops refused to obey the decrees of
papal agents such as inquisitors, who were presumably better trained in
identifying doctrinal error. A more likely explanation was that bishops, in
accord with their traditional custom of conferring sanctity, held a differing
opinion regarding what criteria demonstrated holiness. The papacy asked
for evidence that could, in essence, “stand up in court” and persuade the
most objective judge. In contrast bishops, like their parishioners, based
their determination on personal experience and interpretation of the signs
of sanctity.
This attitude is clear in the support that several members of the
clerical elite, including the bishop of Parma, gave Gerardo Segarelli (d.
1300), who was ultimately burned as a heretic. The nature of the
information available regarding Segarelli, the leader of a thirteenth-
century reform movement, is highly problematic. The Cronica of
Salimbene de Adam, Segarelli’s contemporary, is the most substantive
source.15 Salimbene was living at the Franciscan convent in Parma when
Segarelli tried to join the community but was rejected for reasons
unknown. Salimbene also was intimately acquainted with a converso named
13
Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981), esp. 8-9 and 31-42.
14
Weinstein and Bell, Saints, 142.
15
Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, ed. Guiseppe Scalia, 2 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998);
citations from the English translation, The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, ed. Joseph L.
Baird, Guiseppe Baglivi, and John Robert Kane (Binghamton, NY: SUNY Press, 1986).
Robert who had left the Franciscans to join Segarelli’s followers, who came
to be called the Apostles. It is clear that Segarelli’s success in starting a
popular reform movement that rivaled Salimbene’s own Franciscan order,
and even lured members away, led to the hostility and derision with which
Salimbene discusses the movement.16 A treatise attributed to the
inquisitor Bernard Gui is the other major contemporary source.17 Gui,
writing about a decade after Segarelli’s death, conflates Segarelli with a
subsequent leader of the movement, a man named Dolcino of Novara (d.
1307), even though there is evidence the ideas and intentions of the two
men differed markedly.18
The limitations of the sources hamper the historian’s task of
reconstructing Segarelli’s history, but the general facts of his life can be
gleaned from Salimbene’s chronicle, even if the interpretation of those
facts is highly biased. After being rejected by the Franciscan convent in
Parma, Segarelli was undeterred in his desire to live like the Apostles.19 A
papal notary named Alberto of Parma brought him to the abbot of the
Cistercian monastery of Fontevivo, who advised him to embark on an
itinerant existence.20 Segarelli grew his hair long, dressed himself in a
rough garment and sandals, and sold his possessions. Taking the money
he had made from the sale of his goods, he threw it into a crowded piazza,
mimicking the conversion experience of Francis of Assisi.21 He lived the
vita apostolica by wandering around Emilia-Romagna, supported by charity
and preaching penance. People flocked to this man who appeared so pious
16
Brian R. Carniello, “Gerardo Segarelli as the Anti-Francis: Mendicant Rivalry and Heresy
in Medieval Italy, 1260-1300,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57 (2006): 226-251.
17
Bernard Gui, De secta illorum qui se dicunt esse de ordine Apostolorum, trans. Arnaldo
Segarizzi, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 9/5 (Città di Castello: Tipi della casa editrice S. Lapi,
1907), 17-36.
18
On Dolcino see Corrado Mornese and Gustavo Burratti, eds., Fra Dolcino e gli apostolici tra
eresia, rivolta e roghi (Rome: Derive Approdi, 2000); Raniero Orioli’s studies: Fra Dolcino:
nascita, vita e morte di un’eresia medievale (Milan: Europía, 1984); Venit perfidus heresiarcha: il
movimento apostolico-dolciniano dal 1260 al 1307 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio
Evo, 1988); and “Ancora su Fra Dolcino: ex condicto et ordinatione et inductione,” La
Cultura 24 (1986), 190-210; Elena Rotelli, Fra Dolcino e gli apostolici nella storia e nella
tradizione (Turin: Claudiana, 1979); and Ferruccio Vercellino, Frà Dolcino: il brigatista di Dio
(Milan: L. Rangoni, 1997).
19
Salimbene, Chronicle, 250.
20
Ibid., 255.
21
Thomas of Celano, “The First Life of St. Francis,” in St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early
Biographies, ed. Marion A. Habig, 4th rev. ed. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983),
229–237. The striking similarity of Segarelli’s and Francis’ actions was not lost on
Salimbene. He attempted to counteract such a comparison by remarking that Segarelli, an
illiterate fool, gave his money to the vagrants who were gambling in the square rather than
to the poor (Salimbene, Chronicle, 250).
206 Janine Peterson
and holy, leading Salimbene to disparage the seventy-two postulants that

he saw passing through Modena on their way to join Segarelli in Parma in
1284.22 Besides the papal notary and Cistercian abbot who supported his
desire to live like the Apostles, Segarelli apparently became a favorite of
the bishop of Parma, Obizzo Sanvitale (r. 1258-1295).23 According to
Salimbene, Bishop Obizzo imprisoned Segarelli on charges of sexual
misconduct with his female followers, but later released him to stay at the
episcopal palace. There Segarelli feasted with the household, for “he was a
very funny, foolish man” and the bishop “laughed at him because he
considered him more a silly entertainer than a religious man.”24 This
characterization of Obizzo’s attitude, however, is disproved by Salimbene
himself. Later he recounts a situation in which three Apostles sexually
molested a new bride in 1286, forcing Obizzo to expel the group from
Parma “although, previously, he had favored them for the sake of brother
Gerardo Segarello, their founder.”25 Segarelli seemed to be under the
protection of Obizzo, to the extent that Stephen Wessley claimed
Segarelli’s holy reputation and clerical support prepared him for a future
canonization.26
Salimbene’s critiques against Segarelli’s group were that they
were unlearned and behaving like an order akin to his own Franciscans,
although they were unqualified to do so. Paradoxically, it was Segarelli’s
and his group’s very likeness to the early Franciscans that engendered
papal disapproval. The Fourth Lateran Council had effectively put a ban
on new orders by claiming that anyone who wanted to join the monastic
life had to do so under a previously approved rule.27 The similarity of
dress, verbal catchphrases, and private practices of Segarelli’s Apostles
functioned as signs that they were indeed acting unofficially as an order.
Papal bulls in 1286, 1290, and 1294 put increasing pressure on the
22
Ibid., 570.
23
Ibid., 627; see the discussion of this point in Carniello, “Gerardo Segarelli,” 228 n. 8.
24
25
Ibid., 626-627.
26
Stephen Wessley, Enthusiasm and Heresy in the Year 1300 (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Columbia University, 1976), 36-37. Carniello and Merlo agree with this depiction of
episcopal support, while Lambert stated that the bishop merely did not “move against”
them (Carniello, “Gerardo Segarelli,” 227-228; Grado Giovanni Merlo, Eretici ed eresia
medievale [Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989], 104; Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular
Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3d ed. [Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
2002], 219).
27
Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, Canon 13, in H. J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the
General Councils (St. Louis: Herder, 1937); Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the
Middle Ages, trans. Steven Rowan (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995),
60.
Apostles to disband, and ordered secular and clerical officials to take them
into custody.28 While Bishop Obizzo of Parma protected Segarelli, the
actions of Segarelli’s followers left him open to attack. After four members
of the group were burned as heretics in 1294, Pope Boniface VIII
intervened and took Segarelli into custody.29 He was burned as a heretic
on 18 July 1300.30
Bishop Obizzo served as Segarelli’s patron perhaps because of his
similarity to Francis: in his piety, his views on poverty and mendicancy,
and if Salimbene can be believed, in his entertaining and idiosyncratic
approach to spiritual expression. Segarelli’s simple understanding of the
vita apostolica resonates with the description of St. Francis as the “new fool”
(novellus pazzus), attributed to Brother Leo.31 The bishop reacted in a
manner similar to Francis’ protector, Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia, in his
support of this unconventional penitent.32 The differences, however, were
that Ugolino became a pope while Obizzo did not, and that in the
intervening years the papacy had drastically reduced the possibility for
another “Francis” to be recognized as a saint. Bishop Obizzo tried to walk
the tightrope between his own as well as general enthusiasm for Segarelli
and papal wishes. He was granted the archbishopric of Ravenna in 1295,
the same year that Segarelli was imprisoned and transferred to Ravenna.33
The circumstances surrounding this promotion are unclear, but the fact
that he was granted the office that was in charge of Segarelli’s
incarceration suggests that Obizzo ultimately acceded to papal wishes.
Pressure from his family, no less than personal ambition and the demand
of the authoritative Boniface VIII, could have resulted in the bishop’s
capitulation, if such was the case. Obizzo was from the aristocratic
Sanvitale family, who undoubtedly were nursing dynastic ambitions.
Parma’s long history of communal rule, which stretched back to circa
28
Les registres d’Honorius IV, ed. Maurice Prou (Paris: Ernst Thorin, 1888), 223; Les registres
de Nicholas IV, ed. M. Ernest Langlois (Paris: Ernst Thorin, 1905), 625; Salimbene,
Chronicle, 626-627.
29
For the burning of the members, see Annales parmenses maiores, MGH SS 18 (Hanover:
Hahn, 1863), 713; for the incarceration of Segarelli, see Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed.
Georges Digard, et al. (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1904), 260-261.
30
Gui, De secta illorum, 450.
31
Legenda Perusina in Rosalind B. Brooke, ed. and trans., Scripta Leonis Rufini et Angeli
sociorum S. Francisci: The Writing of Leo, Rufino, and Angelo, Companions of St. Francis (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 288-289.
32
For Ugolino and Francis’ relationship, see Rosalind B. Brooke, Early Franciscan
Government: Elias to Bonaventure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 59-76.
33
See Les registres de Boniface VIII, 260-261; discussion in Wessley, “Enthusiasm,” 231;
Carniello, “Segarelli,” 228 n. 8; and Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition, 3 vols.
(New York: Russell and Russell, 1958), 3:107.
208 Janine Peterson
1140, was coming to an end as communes started to fall apart in the late
thirteenth century due to internecine fighting.34 Local lords, or signori,
emerged as the new rulers of localized dynasties throughout north-central
Italy.35 Parma itself would succumb to one of the most powerful signorial
families, the Milanese Visconti, in the 1340s. Yet that was not yet
Parma’s recognized destiny. The role of the Sanvitale family in Parma’s
pro-papal political scene could have led to expectations of acquiescence to
papal wishes, and their position in local politics against rival families like
the Rossi was strengthened by solid relations between Obizzo and the
pope.
A combination of these factors may have led Obizzo to withdraw
his longstanding support of Segarelli and recognize the pope as the source
of his own authority in the newly solidified chain of ecclesiastical
command. Another relevant issue was the fact that this bishop, along with
the bishops of Reggio-Emilia and Cremona, was already receiving criticism
for promoting the cult of another saint, Albert of Villa d’Ogna (d. 1279),
a poor wine carrier who died at Cremona. According to Salimbene again,
Albert’s cult quickly spread throughout the Po plain. A chapel dedicated
to him was constructed in the parish of S. Matteo in Cremona and public
processions venerating him took place in Parma.36 Salimbene criticized the
clergy who allowed images of Albert to be painted in churches even
though he was not canonized, stating:
At that time his image was painted not only in the churches, but
also on many walls and porticoes of cities, villages, and castles.
This, however, is expressly against the laws of the Church, for no
man’s relics are supposed to be held in reverence unless he is first
approved of by the Church and written in the catalogue of saints. . .
Those bishops [of Parma, Reggio-Emilia, and Cremona], therefore,
who allow such abuses to be practiced [sic] in their diocese merit
removal from office.37
Although canon 62 of the Fourth Lateran Council prohibited the sale of
old relics and the veneration of new relics without the pope’s approval, it
did not comment on images. André Vauchez commented, “it is difficult to
follow [Salimbene] here, in the absence of a specific text on the question in
34
Evidence comes from a treaty dated 1149 (Giovanni Drei, ed., Le Carte degli archivi
parmensi del secolo XII [Parma: L’Archivio di Stato, 1950], doc. 194; see also Reinhold
Schumann, Authority and the Commune. Parma 833–1133 [Parma: Deputazione di storia
patria, 1973]).
35
Trevor Dean, “The Rise of the Signori,” in Italy in the Central Middle Ages, ed. David
Abulafia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 104-124.
36
37
Ibidem.
contemporary canon law. The facts contradict his claims, since

innumerable frescoes and paintings . . . portraying saints who had never
been canonized have survived to this day.”38 Since Albert was never
suspected of heresy like Segarelli, his cult remained active and in 1744 the
city of Cremona succeeded in initiating a canonization process.39
Nevertheless, Salimbene’s critique demonstrates two points: that in his
mind papal recognition was required for a person to be venerated, and
that he considered the bishops derelict in their duty for allowing the cult
to continue without the pope’s official approval. His appraisal clearly
establishes that in the thirteenth century there was debate between those
bishops who sided with their communities in supporting new holy patrons
and the papacy, who claimed the sole right to canonize saints. This tension
is encapsulated in Bishop Obizzo of Parma, who allowed public
processions for Albert of Villa d’Ogna, and protected Gerardo Segarelli
and his Apostles through nearly a decade of papal demands for the group
to disband and the local authorities to round them up. In the end, as we
have seen, Obizzo acknowledged papal supremacy in the matter of
determining sanctity and heresy, and was rewarded with an archbishopric
in return.
The nature of episcopal power was fragile, and not just for
bishops who were papally appointed like Obizzo. Bishops were also
dependent upon the goodwill of their communities. Parishioners at times
could exert at least as much pressure as popes or papal agents. This is
evident in the account of a thirteenth-century holy man named Guido
Lacha of Brescia. Inquisitors exhumed his bones after he was
posthumously condemned as a heretic, leading the bishop to fear a riot.
According to a Dominican chronicler, onlookers watched as the inquisitors
threw Lacha’s bones into the fire. Rather than burning, the bones
levitated, hanging suspended above the flames. The author attributed this
event to demons that were unseen by the populace. Local observers had
another interpretation, viewing it as a miracle:
The people began to cry out, saying, ‘the bishop and the
friars who wanted out of jealousy to burn God’s saint should
die, look how Our Lord does not wish [it].’ Then the bishop
was afraid. However, certain brothers comforted him, saying:
‘my lord, we are here for the defense of faith, prepare yourself
38
Fourth Lateran Council (1215), canon 62, in Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees, 286;
Vauchez, Sainthood, 86.
39
Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Congregazione dei Riti, il processo della canonizzazione 661
(Albert of Villa d’Ogna, 1744).
210 Janine Peterson
for mass because God performs some miracles lest faith is

lost.’40
When the bishop subsequently said mass, the sight of the Eucharist (the
“true” miracle, in the chronicler’s eyes) sent the demons fleeing.
Notwithstanding the author’s obvious attempt to contrast the spiritual
mettle of the Dominican inquisitors to that of the Brescian bishop, the
account demonstrates the type of pressure that bishops received from their
communities and that perhaps contributed to their participation in
contesting papal or inquisitorial authority.
These pressures led some other bishops to maintain more stamina
in challenging the authority of popes or papal agents. Just how dependent
a bishop could be on the support of his diocese is demonstrated in Ascoli
in the 1330s and 1340s. Bishop Rainaldo IV had been elected to office by
the townspeople, rather than by the cathedral chapter or appointed by the
pope or other senior members of the church hierarchy. The fact that
Rainaldo’s authority came directly from the community was unusual;
Urban II had granted Ascoli this privilege in 1091.41 As a result, he had a
particular duty to address local concerns and heed the voices of his
constituency, which Rainaldo did when he protected a sentenced heretic
named Meco del Sacco, whom the Ascolani revered as a holy man. On
several occasions Bishop Rainaldo contested the authority of the
Franciscan inquisitors in Ascoli. The first instance occurred after Meco del
Sacco’s initial condemnation for heresy. Meco had gone through a
conversion experience similar to that of St. Francis or Gerardo Segarelli.42
He became dedicated to a penitential life and wrote treatises that
contained radical concepts, according to the inquisitor who sentenced him
in 1334.43 Meco abjured heresy and upon his absolution the inquisitor
burned his treatises. Although he was clearly considered suspect by papal
agents, Bishop Rainaldo nevertheless granted Meco permission to build an
40
Philippe de Ferrara, “Liber de introductione loquendi,” Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
Pal. Lat. 960, fol. 94v; cited in Raymond Creytens, “Le manuel de conversation de Philippe
de Ferrare, OP,” Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 16 (1946): 120-121.
41
Antonio DeSantis, Meco del Sacco, inquisizione e processi per eresia. Ascoli-Avignone 1320-1346
(Ascoli Piceno: A. DeSantis, 1982 [1980]), 10.
42
The extant documents of Meco’s sentences and appeals are given as appendices in
DeSantis, Meco del Sacco, 280-308. H. C. Lea incorrectly identifies 1337 as the year of his
conversion. This date is impossible, as inquisitors already had questioned him in 1334 (Lea,
Inquisition, 3:124).
43
The early modern historian F. A. Marcucci claimed that Meco’s books were “uno in
francese spori i Salmi, e due in volgare intorno al Vangelo e all’Apocalisse” (F. A. Marcucci,
Saggio di Cose Ascolane e de’ vescovi di Ascoli nel Piceno (Bologna: A. Forni, 1984 [1766]), cited
in DeSantis, Meco, 162.
oratory on nearby Monte Polesio shortly after his condemnation.44 Meco

consequently gained a following and embarked on charitable endeavors,
such as building a hospital in town that catered to pilgrims.45
Meco’s growing acclaim did not allow him to remain under the
inquisitorial radar for long. In 1337 he was questioned for a second time,
condemned as a heretic, and imprisoned. Once again the bishop came to
his aid. Meco was let out on bail, a surprising development considering
that he had become a relapsed heretic, a condition that required harsh
punishment, if not death. The fact that he obtained his release strongly
suggests that Bishop Rainaldo was pressuring the inquisitors since he was
the only person who could exert that kind of coercion on the Franciscan
convent in the city. Meco left Ascoli to appeal his sentence. During his
absence some clergy from a parish church vandalized his hospital and
oratory, confiscating the valuables. Documents show that the bishop
intervened by granting Meco license to rebuild and naming him and his
heirs patrons of the hospital for perpetuity.46 Rainaldo’s actions
constituted a direct challenge to the authority of the local inquisitors,
since these favors were granted to a man who was still condemned as a
relapsed heretic and whose property consequently should have been
forfeited. Meco won his appeal and his second condemnation was
overturned. Seven years later, in 1344, inquisitors sentenced Meco for a
third time, only to have the condemnation once again reversed on appeal,
which was finalized posthumously.
The events in Ascoli are unusual to say the least, and much of it
can be attributed to Bishop Rainaldo’s patronage of Meco del Sacco and
his recalcitrance in following the inquisitorial directives. The bishop’s
insubordination resulted from the fact that Rainaldo owed his tenure to
his parishioners, since he was elected by the people rather than by the
cathedral chapter or being appointed by the pope. The Ascolani were
staunch supporters of their local holy man, joining Meco in a penitential
lifestyle in his oratory or favoring his institutions with generous donations
(which led to their subsequent looting during his absence in 1337).47 The
citizens of Ascoli viewed Meco as a persecuted holy man, and the bishop,
heeding those who had elected him to office, lobbied on Meco’s behalf and
supported his endeavors. The local political scene also heightened the
likelihood that a bishop would contest papal power and that of the pope’s
44
DeSantis, Meco, appendix X.
45
Sebastiano Andreatonelli, Historiae Asculanae (Bologna: Forni, 1968 [1673]), 289.
46
DeSantis, Meco, appendix VI and V, respectively. Meco had been married before turning
to the spiritual life, and he and his wife Clarella had at least two sons, Angelo and Pietro.
Angelo was named rector of the church and the hospital in 1344 (ibid., 187).
47
Ibid., appendix IV.
212 Janine Peterson
agents. Ascoli was part of the Papal States, in which the pope ruled not
just as the spiritual head, but also from afar as a territorial lord after 1309,
when the papal seat moved to Avignon. Cities like Ascoli, Perugia,
Spoleto, Assisi, and Ancona did not want a distant overlord who refused
to relinquish terrestrial control. The pope just prior to this Ascoli case was
the controversial John XXII, who died in 1334, the year that Meco was
first sentenced as a heretic. Ascoli was particularly disobedient to papal
overlordship and as a consequence found itself under interdict three times
within the span of a century.48 The last interdict, imposed by Pope John
XXII, was in effect from 1324-1346.
The fact that the city was under interdict during the course of
Meco’s travails is significant. Bishop Rainaldo’s authority derived from the
Ascolani and it was their loyalty he needed to retain his position. Since the
city was already under interdict, the risk of additional punishment for
recalcitrance was virtually non-existent. Furthermore, the authority of the
Avignon papacy was already being questioned, and not just by those who
suffered under papal lordship. For instance, Rainaldo and Obizzo d’Este,
members of the traditionally pro-papal Ferrarese family, argued in 1321
that “that man [Pope John XXII], who is called pope, is not the true
pope, because he was not elected at Rome in the seat of blessed Peter, nor
ever came to the said seat nor was there, and therefore in the truth of the
matter is not pope, nor were those things that he did and said of any
worth.”49 The d’Estes thus contended that only popes who were elected in
Rome and resided there were legitimate. Although there was no real
canonical foundation for this argument, it resonated with the emotions of
the Italian public during the Avignon papacy and served to bolster efforts
to assert episcopal power. In Ascoli, Meco’s piety and charitable endeavors
provided the means of unifying episcopal and lay interests against the
48
Innocent III placed them under interdict in 1202 for rebelling against Rome under
Marcoaldo; in 1264 Urban IV did the same for being partisans of Frederick II’s son
Manfred; and John XXII similarly punished the town in 1324 for its “eccessivo zelo” in a
recent war against the rival city of Fermo (ibid., 5).
49
Quod ille, qui dicitur papa, non est verus papa, quia non fuit electus Rome in sede b. Petri, nec
umquam venit ad dictam sedem nec fuit ibi, et ideo in rei veritate papa non est, nec illa, que facit et
dicit, sunt alicuius valoris (F. Bock, “Der Este-Prozess von 1321,” Archivum Fratrum
Praedicatorum 7 [1937]: 41-111, at 59-60). Another enemy of John XXII also charged with
heresy, Muzio di Francesco d’Assisi, denounced John XXII for the same reasons. See the
testimony of magister Andrea: Mutius dixit quod quilibet papa debet sedere in sede beati Petri Rome
et quia presens papa Iohannes non sedit in dicta sede ideo non est papa (Stefano Brufani, Eresia di un
ribelle al tempo di Giovanni XXII: il caso di Muzio di Francesco d’Assisi: con l’edizione del processo
inquisitoriale [Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1989], 146-147). Also see the remarks of
Nicolutius Ioli: dixit quod audivit Mutium dicentem quod iste papa non erat papa de iure quia non
sedet in sede Petri (ibid., p. 190).
mendicant inquisitors who represented papal authority. Bishop Rainaldo’s

support of Meco came in part from his conviction of the man’s piety and
in part from heeding the cries of his flock, but the fact that his
insubordination to inquisitors constituted a bid for political and religious
autonomy cannot be overlooked. The interdict from the pope resulted in
the bishop’s assertion of his own religious authority, as expressed through
his patronage of a convicted, relapsed heretic. This case led to the papacy’s
recognition that the source of episcopal power in Ascoli was a threat to
papal power. Pope Clement VI subsequently revoked Ascoli’s right to
elect their own bishop in 1344, the year of Meco’s final condemnation and
the year that his powerful supporter, Rainaldo IV, died.
One final example, of the bishop of Ferrara’s efforts to canonize
the condemned heretic Armanno Pungilupo (d. 1269), demonstrates a
similar championing of episcopal authority, but also shows how the ability
to determine sanctity could be a path to reassert episcopal autonomy. In
this case, Bishop Alberto Prandoni of Ferrara did not just support
Armanno or tolerate his cult, but actively spearheaded his canonization
inquiry. As a result, Bishop Alberto incurred inquisitorial wrath, his own
excommunication, and interdict for the town of Ferrara. Armanno’s
history parallels that of Meco in that he was condemned for heresy, in this
case for holding dualist Cathar beliefs, and also abjured those beliefs.50
After his abjuration and absolution in 1254, Armanno exhibited the
behavior of a pious Christian. Upon his death, the cathedral canons of
Ferrara carried Armanno’s body in a public procession, buried him in the
cathedral, and erected an altar over his tomb.51 These actions suggest two
significant aspects to the events in Ferrara: the bishop and the canons were
eager to adopt a new holy patron and they anticipated that Armanno
would be acceptable to the Ferrarese, perhaps because he was already
considered a prospective saint. Soon the citizens of Ferrara, joined by
pilgrims from Padua, Parma, and Trieste, gathered at Armanno’s
sepulcher so that their prayers of supplication could miraculously be
answered.52
50
For general introductions to Catharism, see Malcolm Barber, The Cathars: Dualist Heretics
in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages (New York: Longman, 2000); Lambert, Medieval
Heresy, 62-69, 115-57; idem, The Cathars (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 1998); and Stephen
O’Shea, The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (New
York: Walker and Company, 2000).
51
The documents are collected in Gabriele Zanella, Itinerari ereticali patari e catari tra Rimini
e Verona (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1986), 72.
52
Ibid., 81, 82, 78, respectively.
214 Janine Peterson
Bishop Alberto quickly initiated a diocesan inquiry into

Armanno’s spiritual merit and began to collect testimony of his miracles.53
Simultaneously, the inquisitor of Lombardy launched an investigation to
determine if Armanno had been a relapsed heretic.54 Apparently, eight
years before Armanno’s death the inquisitor frà Aldobrandino captured
several heretics at Sermione, who mentioned Armanno during their
interrogation. Aldobrandino had asked an inquisitorial official of Verona, a
man named Nicolaus, to inquire “diligently” after Armanno. Nicolaus
discovered that the future would-be saint had received the Cathar
consolamentum, or ritual laying of the hands signifying entrance into the
Cathar community. He informed Aldobrandino, who missed the
communication because he had left for Rome. There the inquiry ended
until Armanno died and the Ferrarese began to venerate him as a holy
man. What ensued was a thirty-year struggle of competing inquiries, one
into Armanno’s holiness and one into his heterodoxy.
On several occasions during this time the bishop of Ferrara was
non-compliant with inquisitorial requests. In fact, the very speed with
which the bishop initiated a diocesan inquiry into Armanno’s canonization
could have been a pre-emptive strike to counteract any renewed rumors of
Armanno’s relapse into heresy.55 The most striking occasion of episcopal
disobedience was in 1271, when Alberto failed to fulfill the inquisitor’s
demand to exhume and burn Armanno’s remains. The result was that the
inquisitor placed Ferrara under interdict and excommunicated the bishop
and the canons. The bishop successfully appealed these sentences in front
of Pope Gregory X (d. 1276) and renewed canonization efforts by
submitting amended files to the papacy. After Bishop Alberto’s death in
1274, two successive bishops, Giacomo (d. 1290) and Federico (d. 1303),
took up the gauntlet and advanced the effort by sending delegates to the
curia and prompting Pope Boniface VIII to appoint a judicial council to
53
Armanno died on 16 December 1269. The first questioning of witnesses affirming
miracles at Armanno’s tomb occurred on 20 December 1269 (ibid., 72).
54
Aldobrandino formally opened a process, first questioning witnesses in August 1270
(ibid., 58).
55
See Aviad Kleinberg, who argued that the purpose of collecting information about
Armanno’s miracles was to prove Armanno’s orthodoxy, and thus the orthodoxy of his cult,
rather than to demonstrate that he was a saint who should be canonized (Aviad M.
Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the
Later Middle Ages [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 38). Yet the fact that the
bishop began to amass information about Armanno’s miracles before the inquisitor opened
his investigation could suggest to the contrary that the bishop’s motivation was eventual
canonization for his saint and not just a reaction to inquisitorial interference. Additionally,
the collection of miracles on a local level overseen by the bishop was the normal procedure
for an inquiry (Vauchez, Sainthood, 33-35 and 40-43).
decide Armanno’s fate. Finally in 1301, on the advice of the council,

Boniface VIII decreed that Armanno indeed had been a relapsed Cathar
and instructed the Ferrarese bishop to destroy all images and statues
associated with his cult. If the cathedral chapter disobeyed, they would be
excommunicated and stripped of their offices, and Ferrara again would be
placed under interdict, this time at the papacy’s behest.56
The dedication of Bishop Alberto and his episcopal successors to
Armanno’s cult was bolstered by the populace’s quick acceptance of
Armanno’s sanctity. The community’s certitude in his holiness was not
abated by the papal decree; when the Ferrarese discovered that the
inquisitor under the cover of night had fulfilled Pope Boniface VIII’s
directive, they rioted in the streets.57 Nor did the Ferrarese let their
bishop’s efforts go unrewarded (even if those efforts had led to the city
being placed under interdict). After Bishop Alberto died, there was
enough communal support for the canons to promote the sainthood of the
recently deceased bishop.58 The inquiry failed and, in a cruel twist of fate,
in 1303 Pope Boniface VIII punished Ferrara for their former bishop’s
recalcitrance by appointing Guido of Vicenza, the inquisitor who carried
out the ultimate condemnation of Armanno Pungilupo in 1301, bishop of
Ferrara.59
Another impetus for episcopal contumacy besides the popularity
of Armanno’s cult was local rivalry for saintly patronage. The bishops of
Ferrara in the late thirteenth century used the creation of saints’ cults as a
means by which to increase their prestige and local authority vis-à-vis
other ecclesiastical institutions. In Ferrara, the Benedictine convent of St.
Anthony recently had obtained the remains of Beatrice II d’Este (d. 1262),
whom they were promoting as a saint.60 Beatrice was a member of the
local ruling family and so was an auspicious patron. Since the Estes only
recently had taken control of Ferrara, the Benedictines’ appropriation of
Beatrice was an obvious attempt to link themselves with this powerful
Guelph family. Bishop Alberto and his successors spearheaded efforts to
canonize Armanno to assert their authority: in one fell swoop, they could
unobtrusively challenge the new cult of the Benedictines as well as secure
56
Zanella, Itinerari ereticali, 94-96.
57
Bartolomeo of Ferrara, Libro del Polistore ab anno 1287 usque ad 1347, ed. L. A. Muratori,
Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 24/2 (Milan: S. Lapi, 1738), 707.
58
Acta Sanctorum, Aug. 3, vol. 1, cols. 160-163; see discussion in Janine Larmon Peterson,
“The Politics of Sanctity in Thirteenth-Century Ferrara,” Traditio: Studies in Ancient and
Medieval Thought, History, and Religion 63 (2008): 307-326.
59
Lea, Inquisition, 2:242.
60
Wessley, “Enthusiasm,” 202 n. 4.
216 Janine Peterson
the loyalty and support of the Ferrarese who believed in Armanno’s

sanctity.
Episcopal support for questionable postulant saints demonstrates
that in the late thirteenth century there was a debate over whether a
saint’s authenticity should be determined by the people and their bishops
or the papacy. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, popes
were attempting to expand their spiritual prerogatives by introducing the
notion of the pope’s plenitude of power.61 Moreover, the papacy was also
asserting its temporal power over north-central Italy and any criticism of
the papacy’s spiritual authority also undermined the papacy’s temporal
authority. The papacy articulated its position as the pre-eminent authority
in part by centralizing the canonization process. The subsequent eroding
of traditional episcopal power and privileges resulted in some bishops
challenging popes or inquisitors as they tried to negotiate the boundaries
of what constituted episcopal and papal power. Bishops were willing to do
so when they had personal experience of what they deemed to be the
spiritual worth of the would-be saint; when there was a communal
consensus of the individual’s sanctity; when they were reliant on the
support of their parishioners to retain their authority; and when political
instability or institutional rivalry made it either easier or more necessary to
promote local cults. The ramifications of such instances of contested
sainthood were enormous, especially for the papacy’s claims of spiritual
hegemony. The phenomenon of bishops championing local interests
through the medium of challenging the canonization process functioned as
microcosms of this religious and political contestation.
61
See Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility 1150-1350: A Study on the Concepts of
Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1972); cf. James Heft,
John XXII and Papal Teaching Authority (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellon Press, 1986),
who argued that papal infallibility had a longer historical tradition than Tierney’s
description of it as a sudden doctrinal development of the late thirteenth century.
BISHOPS FIGHTING WITH DEMONS IN SWEDISH
CANONIZATION PROCESSES*
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa
One evening in May 1417, Johannes Karoli, a parish priest from Skäninge,
was sitting at a table in his house with three of his chaplains. He started to
blaspheme the saints and especially Nicolaus of Linköping, saying:
By the death of Jesus Christ I do not care about Gangulph, or
Nicolaus or Peter or Paul or Andreas. I do not want to associate
with them: I lent Nicolaus a lot of money when I was in his service
and I never received it back, and I do not wish for it either. I have
many times made and fulfilled a vow to him to regain my health
but I have always ended up frustrated. Let it be up to the Devil
then, what is going to happen to me in the future. 1
After that Johannes Karoli took a drink of anise (“pimpinella”), as was his
habit; immediately he was miserably afflicted with illness and fell to the
ground in anguish. After a while he got up, stammering that he saw a
multitude of big black dogs around him. He acted violently and, rolling
his eyes, started to curse people around him. The chaplains were terrified,
they made a humble vow to St. Nicolaus, and immediately the victim
stopped raving and woke up as if from a dream.
While the canonization records do not clearly label Johannes Karoli
as a demoniac, he manifested the typical symptoms of demonic possession;
he blasphemed the saints and insulted his fellows. Furthermore, in the
medieval imagination, black animals, especially dogs and other black
things, were the typical incorporated forms of demons, since blackness, sin,
death, and damnation were linked together.2
* I am grateful to the academy of Finland for financial support while writing this article.
1
Processus canonizacionis beati Nicolai Lincopensis, ed. Tryggve Lundén (Stockholm: Bonniers,
1963), 362-364: Per mortem Ihesu Cristi, ego non curo de Gangulpho neque de Nicolao neque de
Petro siue Paolo uel Andrea nec de eorum consorcio seu societate me de cetero intromittam, ego enim
magnam pecuniam mutuam domino Nicolao quondam episcopo Lincopensi per tempus et tempora quibus
sibi seruiuj quam numquam rehabui nec me rehabiturum vnquam [sic] spero. Pluries eciam sibi feci
votum et factum compleui pro sanitate mea recuperanda, sed semper optata circa eum et alios fueram spe
frustratus. Curet ergo inquit infortunium dyaboli quid aut quale mihi futuri euenerit.
2
Joan Young Gregg, Devils, Women and Jews. Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories
(New York: State University of New York Press, 1997), 33.
218 Sari Katajala-Peltomaa
This case was recorded in the canonization process of Nicolaus of

Linköping and it illuminates many typical features of Nordic canonization
processes and other hagiographic material; demons are a commonplace
theme among the miracles recorded in these hearings. They are described
in a vivid and detailed manner, and typically connected with the punitive
ability of a local intercessor. Furthermore, local bishops seem to have been
especially active in promoting such cases; in the case of Johannes Karoli,
the protagonist St. Nicolaus was a former bishop of the area and other
local bishops acted as commissioners interrogating, evaluating, and
recording the case.
The aim of this article is to analyze how and why Scandinavian
bishops were fighting with demons either as saintly protagonists or as
commissioners holding the canonization hearings of the area: especially
those of Bridget of Sweden,3 Nicolaus of Linköping,4 and Brynolf of Skara.5
3
Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373) was a member of a Swedish elite family. She was married
to Ulf Gudmarsson and was a mother of eight children. She is one of the most famous and
also most disputed medieval saints. The records for her canonization process were gathered
on several occasions during the years 1374-1380, and hearings were held in Sweden and in
Italy. Her life and revelations have inspired a lot of scholarly work, too vast to be cited here.
On the historiography published in her jubilee year alone, see Birgitta Frits, “St Birgitta
and Vadstena Abbey in Scholarly Literature Published during the Jubilee Year 2003,”
Scandinavian Journal of History 20 (2003): 277-286. Miracles performed by St. Bridget have
aroused far less interest. See, however, Anders Fröjmark, Mirakler och helgonkult. Linköpings
biskopsdöme under senmedeltiden (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 1992); Janken Myrdal and
Göran Bäärnhielm, eds., Kvinnor, barn & fester i medeltida mirakelberättelser (Skara:
Skaraborgsd länsmuseum, 1994); Christian Krötzl, Pilger, Mirakel, und Alltag. Formen des
Verhaltens im skandinavischen Mittelalter (Helsinki: SHS, 1994). On the practicalities of
Birdget’s canonization, see Tore Nyberg, “The Canonization Process of St. Birgitta of
Sweden,” in Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge–Medieval Canonisation Processes, ed. Gábor
Klaniczay (Rome: École française de Rome, 2004). The commissioners of her hearing were
four cardinals: Thomas de Frignano, a Franciscan friar and former general of the order;
Johannes de Amelia, former archbishop of Corfu; Agapitus de Columna, former bishop of
Lisbon; and Gentilis de Sangro. Acta et processus canonizacionis Beate Birgitte, Svenska
Fornskriftsällskapet ser. 2, Latinska Skrifter, vol. 1, ed. Isak Collijn (Uppsala: Almqvist and
Wiksells boktryckeri Ab., 1924-1931), 5.
4
Nils/Nicolaus Hermansson (1325/6-1391, bishop 1374/5-1391) was born in a bourgeoisie
family in Skäninge. After his studies in Paris and Orléans, he was a chaplain and archdeacon
in Uppsala and Linköping. He was elected bishop of Linköping in 1374 and was promoted
by Pope Gregory XI in 1375. A hearing for his canonization was held in Vadstena and
Linköping in 1417. Lundén, “Inledning,” 12-17; Fröjmark, Mirakler och helgonkult, 44, and
Krötzl, Pilger, Mirakel, und Alltag, 87.
5
Brynolf Algotsson (b. ca. 1240) was bishop of Skara (1278-1317). Brynolf had studied in
Paris and he was an important member of the Swedish ecclesiastical elite of his time.
Brynolf’s fame of sanctity emerged after a vision seen by St. Bridget; from the middle of the
fourteenth century, his grave attracted pilgrims. Brynolf’s canonization hearing was held in
1417, but he was never canonized. See Göran Bäärnhielm, “Brynolfs mirakler,” in Kvinnor,
Bishops fighting with Demons 219
Obviously, St. Bridget herself was not a bishop, nor were the
commissioners of her canonization hearing. However, Nils/Nicolaus
Hermansson, the bishop of Linköping, later known as St. Nicolaus, was
active in promoting her cult and canonization, and organized a separate
hearing to register miracles performed by her. We will focus on this
additional hearing as well as on the letters Bishop Nicolaus Hermansson
sent to the pope concerning the miracles of St. Bridget. Nicolaus
Hermansson himself, as well as Brynolf of Skara, another Swedish bishop,
had a reputation for sanctity and hearings for their canonization were
organized in 1417. The commissioners were Scandinavian bishops: Jacob
Knutsson from Oslo, Magnus Tavast from Turku, and Eskil Torstensson of
Växjö.6
Our analysis follows the themes introduced in the case of Johannes
Karoli. It asks whether the typical features of Scandinavian culture and
society can explain the multiplicity and vividness of cases of demonic
possession. Was fighting against malign powers an essential element of
Nordic sanctity? Or were miracles featuring demonic activity a deliberate
choice of the inquisitorial committees, used to promote their own political
and social purposes?
Canonization processes are part of the hagiographic genre, but at
the same time they are judicial records. Officially, the ability to proclaim a
person to be a saint was a papal prerogative, but before an official
canonization occurred an inquiry into the candidate’s sanctity was needed.7
Judicially, canonization hearings were a form of inquisitio; papal officials
had the duty to pursue the case, a reputation for sanctity among the public
was a prerequisite for opening a process, and the devotees – before being
summoned to give witness – did not have any judicial standing in the
inquiry. The witnesses, usually respectable lay Christians, testified to their
barn & fester, 159-163, and Anders Fröjmark, “The Canonization Process of Brynolf
Algotsson,” in Procès de canonisation, ed. Klaniczay, 87-100.
6
Vita s. Brynolphi Episc. Scarensis cum processu eius canonizationis, in Scriptores rerum Svecicarum
medii aevii, vol. II/2 (hereafter SRS II) (Uppsala: Zeipel et Palmblad, 1876), 139.
7
On the practicalities in canonization hearings, see André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident
aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge, d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques
(Rome : École française de Rome, 1988), 39-67; on papal pursuits in canonization
procedures during the thirteenth century, see especially Roberto Paciocco, Canonizzazioni e
culto dei santi nella christianitas (1198-1302) (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 2006). On the
canonization privilege, see Aviad Kleinberg, “Canonisation without a Canon,” in Procès de
canonisation, ed. Klaniczay, 7-18. On the veneration and canonization of saints in
commentaries of canon law, see Thomas Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht. Das
Kanonisationsverfahren im europäischen Mittelalter (Köln: Böhlau, 2004), 244-276. See also Sari
Katajala-Peltomaa, “Recent Trends in the Study of Medieval Canonization Processes,”
History Compass 8/9 (2010): 1083-1092, for the historiography.
personal miraculous experiences as well as to the beliefs and customs of

their daily life.8
The canonization records were shaped by both witnesses and
commissioners. The approach of the inquisitorial committee, the
commissioners of high clerical rank and the notaries affected the outcome
of the records. First of all, the commissioners chose the witnesses to be
interviewed as well as the cases to be scrutinized. They formulated the
questionnaire and interrogated the witnesses on topics they considered
important and worth investigating. The act of interrogation as well as the
commissioners’ anticipation and expectations of the answers given, and the
general requirements of the hagiographic genre, such as the desperate
situation before the cure and the proper methods of invocation,
undoubtedly affected the testimonies. Furthermore, some moulding of the
record took place when the notaries turned the spoken interrogation into
Latin and into a form of written testimony. Standardization of the
depositions may have also taken place; the notaries could have shaped the
testimonies according to certain patterns while writing them down.9
Furthermore, the choice of Latin vocabulary in the records was not made
by the witnesses, who typically gave their testimony in the vernacular, but
by the commissioners holding the hearing or the notaries translating and
registering the testimony.10
Canon law influenced the practicalities of and gave guidelines for
the formation of the interrogators’ questionnaire. Yet, no clear rules or
8
Considerations of gender, age, and reputation were important aspects in the process of
validating witnesses. The mentally ill were forbidden to give testimony and preference in
selection was given to the wealthy rather than the poor. Christian Krötzl, “Prokuratoren,
Notare und Dolmetscher. Zu Gestaltung und Ablauf der Zeugeneinvernahmen bei
spätmittelalterlichen Kanonisationsprozessen.“ Hagiographica 5 (1998): 119-140. The
methods of choosing the witnesses varied from one process to another, see Paolo Golinelli,
“Social Aspects in Some Italian Canonization Trials,” in Procès de canonisation, ed. Klaniczay,
166-180, and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles and Daily Life. The Evidence of
Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 23-56.
9
The work of notaries and occasionally interpreters shaped the final records; the notaries’
task was to write down the testimonies. They translated the vernacular oral testimony of
the witnesses into the written Latin deposition found in the records. It was the notaries who
guaranteed the judicial reliability of the process. See Vauchez, La sainteté, 53-54 and Krötzl,
“Prokuratoren,” 119-140. On standardization of the depositions of canonization processes,
see Didier Lett, Un procès de canonisation au Moyen Age. Essai d’histoire sociale: Nicolas de
Tolentino, 1325 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008), 265.
10
For example, in the canonization process of Charles of Blois, the parents of little
Guillamecta, witnesses to her affliction and subsequent miraculous recovery, described her
conditions as illness and seizures, yet the commissioners or notaries labelled the case as
demonic possession: de demoniaca liberata. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. Lat. 4025
fol. 99r.
norms concerning the way of organizing a canonization hearing were given

in the major compilations of canon law. The judicial requirements were not
always met meticulously. This is evident in the additional hearing carried
out by the local clergy, and in the letters concerning the miracles of St.
Bridget. Furthermore, occasionally not all the depositions were written
down in the actual canonisation hearings, but rather a synthesis of various
testimonies. For example, in the aforementioned case of Johannes Karoli
only one statement was written down even though all three chaplains
testified.
I. Demons in the mental milieu of medieval Scandinavia

During the Middle Ages, Scandinavia was the sparsely inhabited northern
frontier of Western Christianity facing the non-Christian Sami people in
the North and the Orthodox Slavic people in the East. Scandinavia was
Christianized relatively late, and its cities were few and rather small; they
were not big urban centers of education and scholarship.11 According to
Michael Goodich, belief in demons was especially strong in the rural parts
of medieval Europe. He argues that the belief in the vigorous activity of
demons is a feature of a not fully Christianized culture.12 Descriptions of
demonic activity in Nordic canonization processes seem to support this
claim. Furthermore, acquaintance with demons and malign spirits can be
found in other kinds of Nordic literature, too.13
11
Estimations of the number of inhabitants vary considerably, yet presumably there were
approximately 700,000 inhabitants in medieval Sweden (covering the majority of modern
Sweden, except the southern parts and modern Finland). The diocese of Linköping was,
however, one of the more densely inhabited and prosperous parts of the kingdom. On
estimations of the population, see Kirsi Salonen, The Penitentiary as a Well of Grace in the Late
Middle Ages. The Example of the Province of Uppsala 1448-1527 (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of
Science and Letters, 2001), 218-227. On the Christianization of Sweden, see Anders
Fröjmark, “La christianisation de la Suède (XIe-XIVe siècles): aspects méthodologiques de
la recherche actuelle,” in La christianisation des campagnes. Actes du colloque du C.I.H.E.C. (25-
27 août 1994), ed. Jean-Pierre Massaut and Marie-Elisabeth Montulet-Henneau, vol. 1
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 95-102.
12
Michael Goodich, “Battling the Devil in Rural Europe: Late Medieval Miracle
Collections,” in La christianisation des campagnes, ed. Massaut and Montulet-Henneau, 139-
152.
13
For example, in Olaus Magnus’ Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, one can find several
cases of sorcery and witchcraft, while contacts with demons are typically due to rivalry
between a saint and the demons. See Olaus Magnus, Historia om de nordiska folken, ed. Knut
Hagberg (Stockholm: Gebers, 1963), 52-53; on saints and demons, see p. 61. Olaus
Magnus based many of his examples on the earlier text of Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta
Danorum. See, for example Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. J. Olrik and H. Ræder
(Copenhagen: The Royal Library, 1931), 7.2.7; 9.4.37; 10.1.7; 10.14.6; 13.4.1; 14.30.4;
However, there appears to be a serious shortcoming with the model

set up by Michael Goodich: the polarity of good and evil was an essential
element of the medieval mode of thought. Demons were by no means an
exclusively Scandinavian phenomenon, nor were they considered or
characterized only by peasants. Angels, saints, and demons were part of a
God-ordained cosmology: supernatural forces constructed the unseen
world of medieval Christians. “Demons exist, they are multiple, they are
evil, and they infest people,” as Caesarius of Heisterbach14 defined their
position.15
In the Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215, the clerical elite
defined the role, position, and powers of the Devil and the demons as fallen
angels.16 Afterwards, the Devil and demons were a common presence in
miracle stories and exempla, sermons, and philosophical tractates.
However, the cases of demonic possession are not among the most popular
miracles in the medieval canonization processes, even though miracles with
biblical prototypes were favored when interrogating witnesses about the
powers of a saintly candidate. Resurrections and recoveries of the blind and
the lame were typical manifestations of an intercessor’s abilities, but
deliverances of spirit possession are rather rare, despite the model set by
Christ when casting seven demons out of Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2).17
14.39.32; 14.39.43. See http://www2.kb.dk/elib/lit/dan/saxo/lat/or.dsr/7/2/index.htm.

Digitized and converted by Ivan Boserup (accessed on 7 May 2009).
14
Caesarius (ca. 1180–1240) was a Cistercian monk and prior in the monastery of
Heisterbach. He compiled altogether thirty-seven books; the famous Dialogus miraculorum
was written around 1219-1223. It was primarily intended to be a guidebook for the novices
of the Cistercian order. However, it became quite popular and widespread in circles outside
the order, as well as among the laity. Altogether sixty manuscripts have survived up to the
present day; in the fifteenth century it was translated into German. Karl Langosch,
Caesarius von Heisterbach. Leben, Leiden und Wunder des heiligen Erzbischofs Englebert von Köln
(Cologne: Böhlau, 1955), 6, and Brian Patrick McGuire, “Inledning,” in Triviallitteratur og
samfund i latinsk middelalder. Caesarius af Heisterbach og hans Dialogus miraculorum, ed. Brian
Patrick McGuire (Copenhagen: Köpenhavns Universitet, 1982), 34-37.
15
DM, V, 1: De eo quod demones sint, quod multi sint, quod mali sint et hominibus infesti. On
demons and popular religion in the Middle Ages in general, see Aron Gurevich, Medieval
Popular Culture. Problems of Belief and Perception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988). Compare Alain Boureau, Satan hérétique. Histoire de la démonologie (1280-1330) (Paris:
Odile Jacob, 2004), who claims that obsession with demons was not a typical feature of
medieval culture in general, but emerged only at the end of the thirteenth century.
16
Lucifer had been an angel but was cast out of heaven due to the sin of pride. Therefore
demons were part of the spiritual realm and possessed knowledge of spiritual things.
Concilium Lateranense IV, cons. 1 in Conciliorum Ȇcumenicorum decreta, ed. Josepho
Alberigo, Perikle-P. Joannou, Claudio Leonardi, and Paolo Prodi, 2d ed. (Freiburg: Herder,
1962).
17
Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen. Preaching and Popular Devotion in
the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 22-23. On the
Thus, demons and demonic possession were a recurrent

phenomenon in medieval Christianity, not typical only of northern Europe
or its rural peripheries. Nevertheless, such cases do seem to be rather
numerous and particularly detailed in the Scandinavian material –
especially among Bridget’s miracles in the additional hearing organized by
Bishop Nicolaus Hermansson – when compared to other contemporary
canonization processes, where they may even be completely missing.18 The
significance of demons in Swedish miracles is further stressed by the fact
that the speech of the possessing or appearing demons is regularly recorded
verbatim, in the form of direct quotation.19 Regularly, only the elements
that were considered essential by the inquisitorial committee were written
down in the final records, especially in the Swedish material, where not all
the testimonies were recorded in full, but abbreviated. Clerical control and
moulding of the written narrative is evident in the additional hearing
regarding the miracles of St. Bridget; they are not direct depositions, but
rather a synthesis of various testimonies.
Even if the laity in medieval Scandinavia, like in many other parts of
rural Europe, may have been uneducated, their lack of education cannot
explain the multiplicity and vividness of these cases. Furthermore, the
Nordic bishops holding and organizing these hearings had studied abroad;
for example, Nicolaus Hermansson had studied civil and canon law in Paris
importance of biblical miracles in canonization processes, see Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender,

Miracles and Daily Life, 25, 54.
18
Demonic activity is mentioned at least in the following cases: Acta et processus, ed. Collijn
109-110, 118, 120-123, 124, 125, 126-127, 130, 138, 141, 141-142, 156, 175, 176-177;
Processus Canonizacionis, ed. Lundén, 294-296, 362-364, 366; SRS II, 144, 169. There are no
clear cases of demonic possession in the nearly contemporary canonization processes of
Thomas Cantilupe, Philippe of Bourges, Louis of Toulouse, and Clare of Montefalco. BAV
MS Vat. Lat. 4015, 4019, Processus Canonizationis et Legendae varie Sancti Ludovici O.F.M.
Episcopi Tolosani, ed. Michael Bihl and Benvenuto Bughetti (Quaracchi: Collegium s.
Bonaventurae, 1951), and Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, ed. Menestò
Enrico (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1984).
19
Direct quotations can be found, for example, in the following cases: Acta et processus, ed.
Collijn, 109-110, 118, 120, 124, 141-142, 156; Processus Canonizacionis, ed. Lundén, 294-
296. As a point of comparison, one may mention the five clear cases of demonic possession
found in the canonization process of Nicholas of Tolentino. Altogether eighteen depositions
were recorded of these cases, and words of the demons were quoted in the form of direct
speech in only two of them – even though opprobrious words and immodest songs were the
main symptoms. Il processo per la canonizzazione di s. Nicola da Tolentino, ed. Nicola Occhioni
(Roma: Padri Agostiniani di Tolentino, École française de Rome, 1984), testis XX–XXII;
CVIII, CXXIII–CXXVI; CCII, CCIX–CCXI. Furthermore, important details such as
invocations or words of the appearing saint were typically recorded in the form of direct
quotation; see Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles and Daily Life, 249-262.
and Orléans.20 Lack of education does not explain the choice to include so
much testimony about demons.
However, on a general level, a lack of medical knowledge was
apparent in medieval Sweden, and it may explain some of the
interpretations; there were practically no university-trained doctors, and
mentions of “doctor” or “cirurgicus” are very rare in canonization processes
– contrary to the depositions collected in Italian cities, for example.21 In
the later Middle Ages, the raving madness or “furia” came to be considered
a medical condition, and the desire to separate it from spirit possession is
clear; the number of cases of demonic possession was decreasing in the late
medieval canonization processes and possession miracles are absent from
the processes that were tightly controlled by the clergy.22 In Scandinavian
processes, labels like “demens”, “amens”, and “demoniacus/a” were used
interchangeably as a rule.23 Raving madness was not a separate condition,
and the inquisitorial committees did not doubt the demonic activity
behind the afflictions or require further proof for such categorization.24
20
Lundén, “Inledning”, 12.
21
Sten Lindroth, Svensk lärdoms historia. Medeltiden , reformationstiden (Stockholm: P.A.
Norstedt and Söners förlag, 1975), 147-160, and Sverre Bagge, “Nordic Students at
Foreign Universities until 1600,” Scandinavian Journal of History 9:1 (1984): 1-29. Cf. Jussi
Nuorteva, Suomalaisten ulkomainen opinkäynti ennen Turun Akatemian perustamista 1640
(Helsinki: SHS, 1997), 72. On the availability of medical help in general, see Michael
McVaughn, Medicine before the Plague: Practitioners and Their Patients in the Crown of Aragon,
1285-1345 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). For example, in canonization
processes the doctor’s care was sought for children twice as often in the southern parts of
Europe as in the North. Ronald Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in
Medieval Miracles (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 95-96.
22
Vauchez, La sainteté, 547-548. Alain Boureau, “Saints et démons dans les procès de
canonisation,” in Procès de canonisation, ed. Klaniczay, 203-209 and 220-221. According to
Nancy Caciola, the number of exorcism miracles decreased in miracle collections during the
fifteenth century. The reason was not a decline in the importance of the phenomenon; quite
the contrary. Exorcisms became more important in defining the proper religious practice,
yet they were more often performed by the priest and not by heavenly intercessors.
Deliveries from spirit possession were no longer spontaneous miraculous healings, but
ordained liturgical performances. Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits. Divine and Demonic
Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 236.
23
Processus canonizacionis, ed. Lundén, 294, 366; Acta et processus, ed. Collijn, 110, 138; SRS
II, 169. However, raving madness and demonic possession were still typically categorized
together in the miracle collections of the fourteenth century. See, for example, the relatio,
the abbreviation of the canonization process of Nicholas of Tolentino: De demoniacis invasacis
seu evanitis et adrabicis liberatis. BAV MS Vat. Lat. 4027 fol. 27r.
24
As a point of comparison, one may mention the miraculous recovery of “furious Editha”
in the canonization process of Thomas Cantilupe (1307). Editha’s husband supposed that
she had been possessed by a malign spirit, yet when further interrogated, he replied that he
had not seen her doing anything by the power of malevolent spirits: credit quod fuit arepticia
For example, a ten year-old-boy, Petrus Gedde, recovered from

demonic possession at the shrine of St. Bridget. His condition was
described in the following manner: He stretched his arms and legs in the
form of a cross, pushing them firmly to the ground. His stomach was so
swollen that it seemed to have risen up to his chest and even to the chin.
Often the middle of the body was raised up and they boy remained curved,
“stetit incurvatus,” resting upon his head and heels.25
A very down-to-earth explanation of these symptoms is that Petrus
may have contracted tetanus, a bacterial infection rather common in
unhygienic environments. It is dangerous, but not always fatal. It causes
muscular spasms, and a curved body described above is a typical symptom
in severe cases.26 Likewise, toxic substances are sometimes used to explain
symptoms that the medieval sources labelled as demonic possession.27 This
may be a plausible explanation in the aforementioned case of Johannes
Karoli, too. The herb called “pimpinella,” which he drank, was likely the
anise used to spice wine and liqueur, or its relative, the salad burnet, which
was more common in the North. Both of these herbs were used for
medicinal purposes, too. Anise can ease nervous cramps, but in large
quantities it becomes toxic.28
Thus, in Sweden the lack of medical knowledge may be one
explanation for the multiplicity of cases of demonic possession; it may have
influenced the patterns of interpretation. In other, more urban parts of
Europe, infection caused by tetanus, for example, may have been known
and recognized as a separate disease. Doctors in need of patients may have
been active in the process of interpreting whether the infection was an
earthly disease, in which case a medical expert could help, or a spiritual
torment, in which case it was better to seek a cure from the spiritual
sphere, from the healing powers of a saint.29 However, since the bishops
sed tamen non vidit quod portaretur nec mutaretur de loco ad locum nec quod fecerit aliquem actum ex
potencia malignorum spirituum. BAV MS Vat. Lat. 4015 fol. 215v; see also 212v.
25
This case was recorded in the additional hearing organized by the bishop of Linköping.
Acta et processus, ed. Collijn, 142.
26
For other cases with similar symptoms labelled as demonic possession, see Acta et processus,
ed. Collijn, 130 and 176-177, and SRS II, 144.
27
Michael Goodich, “Sexuality, Family, and the Supernatural in the Fourteenth Century,”
Journal of the History of Sexuality 4 (1994): 493-515, esp. 513, and Ronald C. Finucane,
Miracles and Pilgrims. Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1995 [1977]), 108.
28
For further information on these herbs, see NaturGate:
http://www.luontoportti.com/suomi/en/ (accessed on 24 January 2011).
29
Already Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica estimated that physicians may oppose
theological explanations such as witchcraft as the cause of illness. Henry Ansgar Kelly, The
holding the hearings were willing to accept these kinds of interpretations

in the official records, demonic activity must have served their needs, too.
As we shall see, the fight between good and evil forces was linked to the
earthly hierarchies and manifestations of sacred and profane power.
II. Punishing miracles and the manifestation of power

When the relics of St. Bridget were carried to Sweden in 1374, a nobleman
called Hans Smek,30 a king’s knight of German origin,31 mocked them
saying: “What do I have to do with this old hag and her remains?” After
that he became so mad that he not only saw a multitude of demons, but
also ran to a forest, took off his clothes, kneeled in front of a tree, and
whipped himself severely. Later he rode to a church, closed the doors, and
flagellated and beat his body and head with sticks and whips shouting at
his friends:
You thieves and oppressors, you have spoken just as badly of that
blessed domina Bridget as I have, you are just as worthy of
malediction and the company of demons as I am. 32
When he regained his senses, he promised to undertake a pilgrimage. In
utmost humility, he approached the monastery of Vadstena and the relics
of St. Bridget; only then was he cured.
In these canonization processes, many cases of demonic possession
were connected with punishing miracles like this one. Furthermore, many
of them contained particularly vivid descriptions, as the aforementioned
Devil, Demonology and Witchcraft. The Development of Christian Beliefs in Evil Spirits (New
York: Doubleday, 1968), 62.
30
Interestingly, the nickname smek was also used for King Magnus, the predecessor of King
Albrecht. Magnus had a bad reputation among his contemporaries and Bridget took part in
his defamation. It has been argued that the nickname smek means a sodomite, but more
likely it did not have sexual connotations, despite its apparent negativity. It may have
rather meant “credulous,” someone who flattered or listened to flatterers. Olle Ferm, “King
Magnus and his Nickname ‘Smek’,” in Saint Birgitta, Syon and Vadstena. Papers from a
Symposium in Stockholm, 4–6 October 2007, ed. Claes Gejrot, Sara Risberg, and Mia Åkestam
(Stockholm: The Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, 2010), 227-230. It
remains unknown whether this defaming knight was deliberately named in this manner or
was this merely a coincidence.
31
During the reign of Albrecht of Mecklenburg (1364-1389), German nobility played an
important role in the Swedish realm, and the Swedish aristocracy considered their privileges
threatened by them. Fröjmark, Mirakler och Helgonkult, 196.
32
This case was also recorded in the additional hearing, ordered by Nicolaus in 1376. Acta
et processus, ed. Collijn, 109-110: Vos, maledicti latrones et tyranni, ita male locuti estis de illa
domina beata Brigida sicut et ego et ita digni estis malediccione et demonum societate sicut et ego. the
case was also investigated by the archbishop (ibid., 147-148) and the procurator Ludovicus
Alphonsis (ibid., 26).
cases of Johannes Karoli and Hans Smek illustrate. Punishing miracles are
by no means a Scandinavian speciality; the ability of heavenly intercessors
to punish belittling words and deeds was a known topos already in Late
Antiquity, and examples of such miracles are typical of medieval
canonization processes.33
Yet, in medieval Sweden the ability and right to use violence was
connected with noble status.34 Typically, saints in northern Europe were of
elite origin: bishops, kings, or other members of the nobility;35 Bridget was
a lady of noble origin, and Nicolaus and Brynolf held elevated positions in
the ecclesiastical hierarchy. These earthly attributes and abilities seem to
have been valid in celestial hierarchies as well. The ability to chastise and
govern was a rather typical feature of northern sanctity; the ability “to get
angry” with one’s subjects was a sign of real sanctity.
The following example, which stresses the ability of punishing
unbelievers as a proof of sanctity, comes from the miracle collection of St.
Henry36 from Finland:
When Gudmundus, the servant of the bishop of Turku, arrived in
the house of a parish priest in Sandhem, West Götaland, he, after
33
For non-Scandinavian cases, see for example BAV MS Vat. Lat. 4025, fols. 127v–128r,
130v–131r, 132r; Il processo per la canonizzazione di s. Nicola da Tolentino, testis XIV, 107-
111; testis XCV, 275-277, and testis CXC, 432-434; Processus Canonizationis et Legendae
varie Sancti Ludovici, cap. CLXXXIIII–CLXXXIX, 233-238. On miracles of punishment,
see Gábor Klaniczay, “Miracoli di punizione e maleficia,” in Miracoli. Dai segni alla storia, ed.
Sofia Boesch Gajano and Marilena Modica (Rome: Viella, 2000), 109-135, and Paolo
Golinelli, Il medioevo degli increduli. Miscredenti, beffatori, anticlericali (Milano: Mursia, 2009),
67-73 and 90-93.
34
Jonas Liljequist, “Violence, Honour and Manliness in Early Modern Northern Sweden,”
in Crime and Control in Europe from the Past to the Present, ed. Mirkka Lappalainen and Pekka
Hirvonen (Helsinki: Hakapaino, 1999), 174-207.
35
The different types of sainthood, especially between Mediterranean culture and central
and northern Europe, have been identified by André Vauchez and Robert Brentano. They
claim that a typical saint in Mediterranean Europe was an ascetic of humble origins. In
central and northern Europe, however, saints were more often of elevated social status and
held high offices in the church, the saintly bishop being a typical figure of northern
sainthood. On typologies, see Vauchez, La sainteté, 163-256, and Robert Brentano, Two
Churches. England and Italy in the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988), 174-237.
36
St. Henry was supposedly the first bishop in Finland who took part in the so-called “first
crusade” to Christianize the southwestern parts of Finland. This expedition was led by the
Swedish king Erik, and is dated to the mid-twelfth century. Nowadays, it is clear that there
were Christians in Finland before that time and the so-called crusade was most likely
undertaken for secular purposes: in order to secure taxing privileges and manifest power.
Nevertheless, historians still disagree on Henry’s role in Christianizing the Finns, his person,
and the historical accuracy of his legend. See Tuomas Heikkilä, Pyhän Henrikin legenda
(Helsinki: SKS, 2005).
the dinner, drank a toast for Saint Henry. When the priest heard
this, he laughed and said: If he is a saint, let him get angry at me, if
he can (irascatur mihi si potest).37
Later that night, the said priest was afflicted; his stomach swelled up and
he was in pain. He repented his offensive words, understanding that he had
thus provoked the saint’s anger, and he made a vow to St. Henry that he
would always fast on the vigil of his feast day; he was then cured.
The swelling of the body was occasionally seen as evidence of an
unclean spirit dwelling within it. However, in this case the punishment
was not carried out by demons, and the blaspheming led to a more lenient
punishment – to corporeal pain. Nevertheless, the message was clear: St.
Henry was able and willing to punish anyone who offended his saintly
status. The words of the west-götalandish priest seem almost like a
challenge to the saint. If he were a real saint, he would be able to punish
and discipline, just like an earthly ruler. In the end, the hierarchy between
the petitioner and the heavenly intercessor was established. The patient
asked for mercy and humbled himself, admitting his deviant actions:
fasting required at least some amount of humility, and perpetual
commemoration of the feast day tied the offender to the cult as a devotee.
From a theological perspective, the role of the possession miracles
was to manifest the eternal struggle between good and evil–and the victory
of the divine powers. They helped create the proper order of the world and
manifest God’s grace, they were a way to emphasize the holy powers of the
local patron.38 Yet at the same time such cases, especially those linked with
the punishing miracles, seem to have been a way to construct the social
hierarchy. The victims were in a submissive position in relation to the
malign spirit, and especially in relation to the divine powers working
through the heavenly intercessor. At the same time, these cases augmented
the bishops’ social position: the saints were adversaries of the malign
powers – the demons and the unfaithful Christians – and in these struggles
bishops were on the same side as the divine power.
III. Religious rhetoric in the Swedish context

The turn of the fifteenth century was a very turbulent era in Scandinavia; it
marked the beginning of the Kalmar Union, in which the three
Scandinavian kingdoms were united under one monarch. Before and
during the union, the aristocratic elite, king, nobility, and church leaders
37
Legenda Sancti Henrici, in Pyhän Henrikin legenda, ed. Heikkilä, 418. The first versions of
the vita et miracula were most likely written at the end of the thirteenth century, but new
miracles were added later. Heikkilä, Pyhän Henrikin legenda, 226-246.
38
Compare Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 235.
were in constant power struggles trying to secure their positions, and both
groups of elites, secular and ecclesiastical, felt threatened by the other.
Examples of bishops getting involved in power struggles with the king or
the secular nobility are numerous. Bishops were the spiritual leaders of
their dioceses, yet their position was also political: Swedish bishops were
members of the Council of the Realm.39 Furthermore, Swedish bishops
typically came from local noble families and were thus often driven into
political strife between rival clans. Occasionally, the archbishop and
bishops got involved even in warfare, although canon law forbade the
clergy to shed blood.40
As an example of the political strife of the era one may mention
Nicolaus Hermansson’s turbulent path to the episcopal seat. Nils
Markusson, Nicolaus’ predecessor as the bishop of Linköping, was much
occupied by mundane tasks and ended up in exile. The next bishop,
Gotskalk Falkdal, was killed by a local nobleman within two years of his
election. Next Nicolaus Hermansson was elected to the office, despite the
resistance of King Albrecht. Nicolaus was promoted by Pope Gregory XI
in 1375, yet he could not take hold of his office until he had reconciled
with King Albrecht, who was to allow Nicolaus to take charge of his office.
Conflicts with the political elite did not end there, however.41 Obviously,
political turbulence and strife between ecclesiastical and earthly leaders was
not a Swedish specialty. Quite on the contrary, it could describe much of
Europe in the central and later Middle Ages.42
Nicolaus was in close contact with Bridget and her personal friend.
Apparently, he had many reasons to promote her cult, simultaneously
augmenting the clergy’s intermediary role and arguing for the rights of the
39
The Swedish Council of the Realm (riksrådet) consisted of aristocratic and clerical
members whom the king saw fit for his advisory service. In addition to the archbishop, the
bishops whom the king chose, as well as twelve native-born men, were to form the council.
Herman Schück, “Sweden as an Aristocratic Republic,” Scandinavian Journal of History 9
(1984): 65–72, and Petri Karonen Pohjoinen suurvalta. Ruotsi ja Suomi 1521-1809 (Helsinki:
WSOY, 1999), 22, 23, 58.
40
Salonen, The Penitentiary, 236-237.
41
The chaplains of his chapter saw Nicolaus as a successful fighter for the rights of the
church. Lundén, “Inledning,” 13-26; Herman Schück, Ecclesia lincopensis. Studier om
linköpingskyrkan under medeltiden och Gustav Vasa (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1959),
86-88.
42
See, for example, Benjamin Arnold, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); idem, Count and Bishop in Medieval
Germany: A Study of Regional Power, 1100-1350 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1991); and David Foote, Lordship, Reform, and the Development of Civil Society in
Medieval Italy: The Bishopric of Orvieto, 1100-1250 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2004).
church.43 The eagerness of Swedish bishops to control the cult of saints can
also be seen in an undated letter from the early fifteenth century. This
letter was written by an unidentified bishop to Bishop Knut Bosson of
Linköping. It urges the clerics to take charge of the cult of an otherwise
unknown saint called Jöns. The clerics should take care of votive offerings
and gather proofs for his canonization; the laity should not interfere. The
writer claims that without clerical control laymen and laywomen would
end up risking their souls due to superstitious practices. Such a cult should
be forbidden since it would threaten the proper order and the church’s
privileges.44 Swedish bishops were eager to underline the hierarchy and
their leading position in relation to the laity and its devotional practices.
Likely, the author of the letter considered that lay veneration should be
controlled and guided by the better-educated clerics – especially by the
bishops. However, this was not only a question of education and theology;
such a leading role was the church’s prerogative, and to let laity take the
initiative in venerating a saint would violate this privilege.
During political conflicts, bishops were not allowed to assert their
leadership by violence, but they had other means, such as a skilful use of
religious rhetoric. Religious rhetoric was also used for mundane ends by
other religious orders. For example, the brothers of Vadstena monastery
were eager to comment on daily politics and assert the political leadership
of the spiritual estate in their sermons.45 On a general level, hagiography
was used as an ideological tool in medieval Europe; vitae and miracle
collections were rhetorical constructions serving various purposes, and
examples of political motives are regularly found in hagiographic
material.46 Scandinavian canonization processes are no exception to this.
43
Anders Fröjmark argues that, notwithstanding the controversial position of Bridget, the
Swedish nobility used her cult to strengthen their position against the king’s powers, which
were threatening their political and economic privileges. Fröjmark, Mirakler och Helgonkult,
170-180.
44
The letter was written after 1407 and possibly after 1411. Knut Bosson died in 1436. It
has been cited by Beata Losman, Norden och reformkonsilierna 1408-1449 (Göteborg:
Elanders Boktryckeri aktiebolag, 1970), 59.
45
For sermons on daily politics composed by the monks of Vadstena, see Louise Berglund,
Guds stat och maktens villkor. Politiska ideal I Vadstena kloster ca 1370–1470 (Uppsala:
Uppsala Universitet, 2003).
46
Felice Lifshitz has emphasized that medieval literature, including hagiography, is always a
“rhetorical construction that serves historical purposes.” Felice Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism
and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative,” Viator 25 (1994): 96-113. On
the influence of political motives and social relationships on narrative methods, see Didier
Lett, “Deux hagiographes, un saint et un roi. Conformisme et créativité dans les deux
recueils de miracula de Thomas Becket,” in Auctor et auctoritas: invention et conformisme dans
l’écriture médiévale. Actes du colloque de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, 14-15 juin 1999, ed. Michael
Zimmermann (Paris: École des Chartes, 2001), 201-216.
Especially the didactic elements are stressed in the additional

hearing of miracles of St. Bridget. For example, when Nikolaus Rike fell off
a bridge, it was not only a sudden accident, since he was snatched by the
Devil (raptus est a diabolo). Furthermore, the Devil’s scheme was to get his
soul to hell: Nikolaus had not made his confession of sins for two years.47
Similarly, Katherina from the city of Örebro was corrected from her
erroneous ways by the help of demons. She took part in dances, chorea,
during Lent and was miserably possessed by a demon. She was severely
afflicted, losing her speech, sight, and hearing. Two honorable priests came
to her aid and, together with some friends, made a vow to St. Bridget; the
abovementioned priests were witnesses to the case.48
A moralizing tone and didactic motive are particularly evident in
the letters that Nicolaus Hermansson, as the bishop of Linköping, sent to
the pope, as is seen in the case of Katherina from Örebro. Proper
manifestations of gratitude and humbleness in front of the heavenly
intercessor are the key elements, as emphasized in the affliction of Cristina;
she saw demons in various forms even as a child, but was fiercely possessed
just after her wedding. Her husband sought out various cures, but the
torments lasted for a year. She was relieved at the shrine of St. Bridget, but
was possessed again shortly afterwards. A clear didactic message is
incorporated in the description of her affliction.
Oh, the irrational and obstinate obduracy of the sinner! To recover
from the bad you should understand how maliciously the evil
torments the soul in which the Devil, because of his, enormous
malice, fully presides and afflicts the body with such ferociousness,
since the [sinner’s] soul does not fully govern [the body].49
Apparently, the reason for the renewed attack was, in addition to the lack
of spiritual guidance of the body, the lack of proper gratitude after the first
cure. Witnesses to this case were priors and priests from the diocese of
Linköping. The need for humility is also emphasized in the case of Hans
Smek. He acknowledged his faults and tried to make up for them by
making a pilgrimage to Aachen. This was not a proper cure for his actions,
however, and he was reinfected. Only when he approached the cloister at
Vadstena and the relics of St. Bridget with humility, with bare feet and
47
48
49
Acta et processus, ed. Collijn, 121: o insensate peccatorum obstinate duricia, ut a malis resipiscas
intelligere, quanta malicia puniat animam in quam secundum scelerum suorum enormitatem plene
prevalet cum tanto furore affligit corpus in cuius anima dominium forte non possidet.Ibid., 123: nos
vidimus eam pro accepta gracia minus regraciari tibi quam deberet, nonne ergo propter ingratitudinem
maligno spiritui iterum affligenda tradita est. . . .
humble clothing – a striking difference from his status as a king’s knight –

was he recuperated.
These cases are not just testimonies of lived experiences or typical
manifestations of the heavenly intercessor’s powers; they contain
meticulously chosen rhetoric and precise messages: above all the
importance of penance and humility in front of St. Bridget. Apparently,
only clergy could give proper spiritual guidance in order to avoid the
aforementioned torments. But at whom were such messages targeted;
what kind of audience was meant to understand the rhetoric and act
accordingly? Obviously, such messages were useful and important for the
lay audience, since penance and humility were essential for salvation.
Consequently, by amending the errant ways of the laity, the social and
political position of the clergy would be enhanced, too. Typically, the
depositions of canonization proceedings were made public after the
hearing, and these occasions may have also provided a good opportunity
for propagating such aims.
However, most likely the laity and especially the secular power elite
were not the only motivators of these choices. The local clergy itself was
the ever-present audience at the depositions: local bishops and priests
formed the inquisitorial committees, acted as notaries, and in many cases
of demonic possession acted as witnesses, too. Therefore, they may have
been the main audience. Cases of demonic possession and emphasis on
certain features, like the punitive ability of a saint, may have been a
method of creating a sense of identity for the clergy; they were fighting on
God’s side against the malign powers, demons, and unfaithful Christians.
An even more important goal may have been the pope and the
papal curia, where the records and letters were eventually sent. The
inquisitorial committee may have wished to gain support – mental or
material – by stressing their difficult position among the ignorant and
uncouth laity. Not only demons, but other elements may imply this. A
case in point is the choice of the intercessor; the decision to invoke a
particular saint could have been based on casting lots. Casting lots seem to
have been a typically Scandinavian element of interacting with saints and is
rarely found in other parts of Europe.50 Legitimation of this practice
originates from the Bible (Acts 1:26), when the apostles cast lots to replace
Judas, and the tradition of sors consultoria was approved by the church.
50
On casting lots in Scandinavian miracle collections, see Kröztl, Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag,
300-302. See also Fröjmark, Mirakler och helgonkult, 94-96. Compare with Finucane,
Miracles and Pilgrims, 85; Cordelia Heß, Heilige machen im spätmittelalterlichen Ostseeraum. Die
Kanonisationsprozesse von Birgitta von Schweden, Nikolaus von Linköping und Dorothea von Montau
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), 154-157.
However, if the intercessor was chosen by casting lots, it does not seem to
prove firm and perpetual devotion on the side of the petitioner. Cordelia
Heß even claims that the purpose of recording these cases in a canonization
process may have been the commissioner’s attempt at depicting an image
of the laity as ignoring the church’s authority.51
IV. Fighting with demons

Cases of demonic possession are multiple and manifold in the canonization
processes of medieval Sweden. Both the approach of the inquisitorial
committee and the witnesses shaped the records. The appearance of body-
possessing demons was undoubtedly a genuine fear of the laity, as it was in
other parts of Europe. However, some of the Nordic cases may be
explained by the lack of medical knowledge, since it may have influenced
the patterns of interpretation. However, labelling or permitting to label
the cases of raving madness, infection by tetanus, or toxic poisoning as
demonic possession must have likewise served the needs of the bishops in
charge of the interrogation.
In the political context of medieval Sweden, the cases of demonic
possession seem to have been an element of the church’s propaganda in
emphasizing the bishops’ spiritual leadership. They stressed the hierarchy
of cosmological as well as earthy powers: the saints ruled over the malign
spirits and unfaithful Christians, who were blaspheming the heavenly
intercessors. In the Swedish context, the bishops were not only struggling
against the secular elite for political power but on a general level tried to
secure their spiritual leadership among the laity. Many cases of demonic
possession were not just testimonies of lived experiences, but contained
didactic messages as well. The essence of such messages was the need for
penance and humility among the laity. Bishops were fighting against
malign powers, and in this fight they used demons to justify their claims
and emphasize the significance of their intermediary position.
51
Heß, Heilige machen, 155-157.
POPULAR IMAGES OF SAINTLY BISHOPS IN LATE
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Sherry L. Reames
My interest in the popular images of bishops was first aroused by late

medieval accounts of the English bishop-saint Wulfstan of Worcester. The
historical Wulfstan was one of the few Anglo-Saxon bishops not replaced
by a foreign candidate after the Norman Conquest; in fact, he survived
under the new regime for nearly thirty years, retaining his position as
bishop of Worcester until his death in 1095. According to William of
Malmesbury, who wrote Wulfstan’s Latin Vita (ca. 1130?), and other early
sources, Wulfstan probably owed his long tenure in office to his
competence in fulfilling his episcopal duties and his statesmanlike ability to
establish good working relationships with both Anglo-Saxon and Norman
rulers.1 In vernacular retellings of Wulfstan’s legend, however, and even in
many of the Latin ones, these mundane facts are replaced by a dramatic
story that has Wulfstan miraculously vindicated at the tomb of Edward the
Confessor when William the Conqueror tries to depose him in favor of a
more learned Norman bishop. This miracle story, which is not mentioned
by William of Malmesbury and has no apparent historical basis, evidently
originated with Osbert of Clare (writing ca. 1138 – more than forty years
after Wulfstan’s death and a good seventy after the Conquest), who
included it as one of the posthumous miracles in his Vita of King Edward,
and around 1160 it was rewritten by Aelred of Rievaulx as part of the
official dossier that finally secured King Edward’s canonization.2 Although
this miracle story was not originally part of Wulfstan’s own Vita at all, it
came to dominate later traditions about Wulfstan, overshadowing all the
more authentic material about his life.
The briefest and most accessible retelling of the story is found in
the late Middle English collection of highly abbreviated saints’ lives called
the Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande (printed by Pynson in 1516):
1
For a good discussion of this issue, see Emma Mason, “St. Wulfstan's Staff: A Legend and
Its Uses,” Medium Ævum 53 (1984): 157-179, esp. 165-166.
2
Osbert’s Latin version, edited by Marc Bloch, appears in Analecta Bollandiana 41 (1923):
5-131, at 116-120. Aelred’s Latin text is in PL 195, cols. 779-781; a recent English
translation appears in Aelred of Rievaulx: The Historical Works, trans. Jane Patricia Freeland
and ed. Marsha L. Dutton (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2005), 220-225.
236 Sherry L. Reames
The Kyng Wyllyam Conqueroure, bycause Seynt Wlstane coulde

speke no Frenche and that [because] he thought he was but of
small connynge [knowledge], wolde have deposed hym. And
whenne Seynt Lamfranke then Archebysshoppe of Caunterburye at
a counseyll bad hym resygne his staffe and his rynge, he sayd he
knewe wel he was never worthye to have the rome [office], but he
sayd Saynt Edwarde by auctoryte of the pope and by hole
[unanimous] assent as well of the clergye as of the people leyde that
burden in [on] his necke agaynst his wyl, wherfore he sayd he
wolde resygne to hym; wherupon he went to Seynt Edwardes
shryne & there put his staffe upon the stone that lay upon Seynt
Edwarde & sayd he resygned to hym, and the stone receyved the
staffe and helde it fast. And when the kynge and Saynt Lamfranke
herde therof they came thyder, wherupon Seynt Lamfranke
makynge his prayers attempted to have pulled out the staffe but it
wolde nat remove. And whenne Seynt Wulstane toke it it came
lyghtly [easily] out, wherfore Seynt Lamfranke fell downe to his
fete and cryed hym mercy, sayinge veryly his symplycyte [humility;
lack of sophistication, ignorance] was accepted of [by] almighty
God, and with great instaunce [urgent entreaty] of the kynge and
of Seynt Lamfranke he toke the bysshopryke agayne.3
Although the cult of St. Wulfstan apparently never became
popular enough to attract many pilgrims to his shrine unless they lived
nearby,4 this story about his staff was remembered and retold far beyond
the borders of his own county and diocese. Multiple versions of it survive in
Latin, Anglo-French, and Middle English, and it was represented in church
windows and wall paintings not only in Westminster Abbey (where it
supposedly took place) and Worcester Cathedral, but as far afield as
Norwich, St. Albans, and Wells.5 The story undoubtedly owed much of its
3
Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande, ed. Manfred Görlach (Heidelberg:
Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1994), 188-189. Here and throughout this essay, the modern
English glosses and translations added to Middle English passages are my own. I have also
silently normalized the word division and the distribution of u/v and i/j in these passages,
slightly modernized the capitalization and punctuation, and replaced the medieval letters
thorn and yogh with modern equivalents.
4
Ronald W. Finucane characterizes the pilgrims to Wulfstan’s shrine as “neither numerous
nor exceptional” and concludes that, of those who can be connected with particular towns
or villages, “three quarters lived less than forty miles from Worcester” (Miracles and
Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England [Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977],
130, 169).
5
On the visual representations, see Robin Flower, “A Metrical Life of St Wulfstan of
Worcester,” National Library of Wales Journal 1 (1939-1940): 120-130; David Park,
“Simony and Sanctity: Herbert Losinga, St Wulfstan of Worcester and Wall-paintings in
Norwich Cathedral,” in Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture presented to Peter Lasko, ed.
David Buckton and T. A. Heslop (Dover, NH: Alan Sutton, 1994), 157-170.
Popular Images of Saintly Bishops 237
popularity to the memorable symbol of the stone that holds the staff tight,
publicly revealing who has (and who has not) been chosen by God to wield
it. Marsha Dutton has argued convincingly that this miracle story may
have exerted a lasting influence on secular literature by inspiring the
Arthurian legend of the sword in the stone.6 For our purposes, however,
even more significant than its central symbol is the way the story of
Wulfstan’s staff encapsulates the four most common themes in late
medieval popular accounts of saintly English bishops.7 Within this
tradition, the saintly bishop is almost invariably portrayed as (1) an
exceptionally humble and unassuming man, (2) who never aspired to
become a bishop and (3) would gladly live a simple, austere monastic life
instead. Somewhat paradoxically, however, (4) the saintly bishop depends
crucially on the king to reveal his sanctity to the public, sometimes by
welcoming and promoting his influence but more often by opposing him.
The remainder of this paper will illustrate both the recurrence of these
standard themes and some significant variations on them in the four most
widely read Middle English legendaries that include English bishop-saints:
the South English Legendary (first version ca. 1270-1300), the Gilte Legende
(mid-fifteenth century), Caxton’s Golden Legend (first published 1483), and
the aforementioned Kalendre (1516).8
6
Marsha Dutton, “The Staff in the Stone: Finding Arthur’s Sword in the Vita Sancti
Edwardi of Aelred of Rievaulx,” Arthuriana 17 (2007): 3-30.
7
By “popular,” I mean both that the legendaries on which I am relying were written in the
vernacular and that there is further evidence to suggest that they were designed largely or
entirely to reach lay audiences without a great deal of education. The Kalendre, for example,
describes its intended audience as theym that understande not the Laten tonge (43), deploring
the fact that few among the commen people have even heard of most of the saints who helped
to establish and build the English church (44), and tailors its accounts to ordinary readers
(or hearers) by using noticeably plain language and syntax for its time.
8
Manfred Görlach provides a useful overview of the many surviving manuscripts of the
South English Legendary (hereafter cited as SEL), their approximate dates, and their
complicated relationships with each other in The Textual Tradition of the South English
Legendary (Leeds: School of English, University of Leeds, 1974). Unless otherwise noted, all
my quotes and references from the SEL are based on the standard edition of this legendary,
ed. Charlotte d’Evelyn and Anna J. Mill, 2 vols., EETS o.s. 235 and 236 (London: Oxford
University Press for the Early English Text Society, 1956), which unfortunately is based on
just two of the manuscripts, with variants from two more. The main corpus of the Gilte
Legende is a translation of Jean de Vignay’s Légende dorée and includes very few English
saints. The added accounts of English bishops, most of which show the strong influence of
the SEL and would go on in turn to influence Caxton, can be found in Supplementary Lives in
Some Manuscripts of the Gilte Legende, ed. Richard Hamer and Vida Russell, EETS o.s. 315
(Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 2000); hereafter cited
as Supplementary Lives.
I. The saintly bishop’s humility

As illustrated in the story of his staff, Wulfstan is so humble that
when ordered to give up his episcopal staff he readily concedes that he has
never felt worthy to be a bishop. Wulfstan also behaves with such
simplicity and forthrightness that he can easily be mistaken for an ignorant
man, especially by highly learned foreigners like Lanfranc. Some retellings
of the staff story, including the one quoted above from the Kalendre, claim
that he couldn’t speak French (a historical improbability, given the
multilingual culture in which he had to operate even before the
Conquest).9 Other retellings go further, suggesting that Wulfstan was
poorly educated even by Anglo-Saxon standards. The most prominent
source in this category is the South English Legendary (hereafter called the
SEL), an anonymous late-thirteenth-century compilation that remained the
most influential English collection of saints’ legends until the age of
printing.10 As Emma Mason has pointed out, the late medieval popularity
of Wulfstan’s image as a “simple yet saintly” bishop, who triumphs over
his intellectually pretentious opponents, suggests some grassroots
resistance to the growing number of university-educated bishops in this
period.11
The theme of holy humility stands out in popular accounts of
many saintly English bishops besides Wulfstan. For example, Caxton
illustrates the humility of Hugh of Lincoln with a memorable anecdote in
which another cleric challenges the saint by pointing out that, although
Hugh often kisses lepers, unlike St. Martin he hasn’t healed any of them
that way. Hugh’s immediate response is to concede the superiority of St.
9
Another prominent source that asserts Wulfstan’s inability to speak French is the
thirteenth-century Burton Annals (in a passage translated by Emma Mason in St Wulfstan of
Worcester, c.1008-1095 [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990], 282).
10
Nou nas noght sein Wolston wel gret clerk in lore, / For wan he scholde to scole go, at churche he was
more (Now, Wulfstan was not a very learned clerk, for when he was supposed to go to
school he was more often in church) (SEL, 11, lines 101-102). Some dozen lines later in the
SEL, the king and archbishop explicitly accuse him of having too little knowledge (“to lite
he couthe of lore” [line 111]) and add that only fools could have endowed such a fool with
episcopal authority (lines 113-114). Other retellings that label him ignorant, rather than
“unworthy” in a more general sense, include the Latin verse life of Wulfstan in
Aberystwyth, NLW MS Peniarth 386 (published in part by Flower in “A Metrical Life of
St. Wulfstan” [cited above in n. 5], 122), and the fifteenth-century English prose account of
Edward the Confessor in the Gilte Legende (Supplementary Lives, 30-31). Some but not all of
the key wording from the passage in the Gilte Legende reappears in the chapter on St.
Edward in Caxton’s Golden Legend (London: J. M. Dent, 1900; rept. New York: AMS,
1973, 6 vols.), 6:36-37.
11
For Mason’s discussion of this issue, see “St. Wulfstan's Staff” (cited above in n. 1), 166-
167.
Martin and explain that he himself kisses lepers to heal his own soul.
Caxton underlines the point by saying, “This was a humble and a meek
answer” (6:243). Edmund of Abingdon’s academic career could not be
completely denied, but his intellectual distinction is minimized – most
noticeably in the SEL, which portrays him as strongly resisting his
appointment to the school of divinity at Oxford and pleading his
unworthiness, and praises his teaching for its affective power (moving his
students to tears) rather than his knowledge and understanding.12 But
these popular sources typically emphasize more outward and visible aspects
of the saintly bishops’ humility: their refusal to adopt the kinds of behavior
and material display that might be expected from men in high
ecclesiastical positions. Thus the SEL, Gilte Legende, and Caxton all praise
the selfless generosity of Edmund, who while a canon and treasurer of
Salisbury Cathedral gave so much of his income to the poor that he could
not afford his own lodgings; and the SEL explicitly notes the contrast with
the prideful spending of his peers.13 All four Middle English collections
hold up the example of Swithun of Winchester, who traveled humbly on
foot rather than with great pomp when he went to consecrate churches,
and the Gilte Legende and Caxton add a pointed comment about the
contrast with their own contemporaries: “For he loved no pride, ne to ride
on gay horses, ne to be praised ne flattered of [by] the people, which in
these days such things be used over much. [May] God cease it” (Caxton,
4:54).14 More pointedly yet, the SEL sets the humility of Chad, who as
archbishop of York went out preaching on foot, against the self-important
behavior of contemporary bishops:
The archbishop of York would not now care to go around on his
feet preaching, nor would many others. They ride on their fine
12
SEL, 500-501, lines 243-246 and 249-256. The only teachings the SEL credits to
Edmund have to do with very basic pious practices, most of them learned during his
childhood. And the narrative rarely mentions his studies except in cautionary anecdotes in
which the studies play the role of temptations, distractions that occasionally cause St
Edmund to neglect one of his pious routines, thereby becoming subject to some kind of
supernatural chastisement.
13
Imaked he was at Salesbury canoun seculer; / Provendre [Prebends/Stipends] he hadde of the hous &
was tresourer. / Tho [When] he was avanced, he tolde therof lute [cared little about it]; / He spende
aboute [spent for] pore men that othere dude in prute [what others did on pride] (SEL, 505, lines
385-388). For the corresponding passages in the Gilte Legende and Caxton, see Supplementary
Lives, 136, and Golden Legend, 6:237, respectively.
14
For the corresponding passage in the Gilte Legende, see Supplementary Lives, 201.
horses, lest they should stub their toes. But wealth and worldly
pride cause harm to Holy Church.1
The concept of episcopal humility is thus defined largely in negative or
oppositional terms: the humble bishop is a rare exception to the apparent
rule that bishops are corrupted by the wealth and privileges of their rank.
II. The saint’s lack of ambition for episcopal office

The holy men in these popular accounts never set out to become bishops;
in fact, many of them resist their appointment or election, refusing to
accept it until they are compelled to do so. In the course of the staff story
quoted above, Wulfstan describes the combination of forces that finally
persuaded him: “he sayd Saynt Edwarde by auctoryte of the pope and by
hole [unanimous] assent as well of the clergye as of the people leyde that
burden [on] his necke agaynst his wyl” (Kalendre, 188). Similarly, Oswald
is reported to have become archbishop of York only by the compulsion of
King Edgar and St. Dunstan, and the unanimous will of the clergy
(Kalendre, 146; cf. SEL, 75-76, lines 143-46). When Hugh was elected
bishop of Lincoln, it reportedly took the combined pressure of the
Carthusian authorities, the whole body of canons at Lincoln, and the
personal entreaties of the dean and the head of the cathedral chapter to
overcome his resistance (Kalendre, 116; Caxton, 6:242). Edmund of
Abingdon’s reluctance to accept his election as archbishop of Canterbury
receives even more emphasis; indeed, the SEL, Gilte Legende, and Caxton all
present an extended narrative about his resistance that ends with him
weeping bitter tears during his consecration,15 and even the drastically
abbreviated account in the Kalendre includes his testimony that nothing
could have persuaded him to consent to his election except the fear of
displeasing God (82).
Although the saint’s reluctance to accept higher office is an old
hagiographical convention, abbreviated accounts like these Middle English
ones would not have kept finding room for a convention that was not still
considered important. Its function in these accounts, moreover, like the
emphasis on the saints’ humility, seems to be largely oppositional: it
provides a critique of ecclesiastical careerists and corrupted processes for
filling a vacant see. One of the most overt indications of concern with
1
SEL, 79, lines 25-28: The erchebissop of Everwik ne kepte noght nou go / To prechi aboute in is
vet, ne another nothemo / Hi rideth up hore palfrei, leste hi sperne hore to / Bote richesse and worles
prute deth Holi Churche wo.
15
These narratives run to some fifty verse lines in the SEL, 505-507; twenty-four prose lines
in the Gilte Legende (Supplementary Lives, 137); and twenty-eight lines in Caxton, Golden
Legend 6:237-238.
episcopal elections is found in the Kalendre’s chapter on St. Dunstan, which

juxtaposes the saint’s divinely blessed consecration as archbishop with the
case of an ambitious candidate who tried to obtain the same office by
simony and obtained divine retribution instead:
after the deth of Odo [or Oda], Archebusshope of Caunterbury,
Elsynus, which longe had labouryd for it, by corrupcyon of money
was made archebusshope, wherefore as he was goynge towarde
Rome he dyed of colde in the snowe. And shortly after [afterwards]
Seynt Dunstane was electyd archebushope, and he fet [received] his
pall [pallium] at Rome. And the fyrste daye that he came home and
was howselynge [administering the Eucharist to] the people,
sodeynly a clowde came over the churche and a whyte dove was
seen [to] descende uppon hym (79).16
Elsewhere, these vernacular accounts of episcopal saints tend just to insist
on the unimpeachable means by which the saintly bishop is chosen –
selection by another saint, sometimes on the basis of a vision or prophecy;
or election by such a unanimous vote that it sounds almost miraculous; or
at the very least (for earlier saints) selection by a good king on the basis of
the prospective bishop’s holy life.17 The contrast with more questionable
routes to the episcopacy is left unstated, but often implied.
III. The saint’s adherence to monastic values and disciplines

When Wulfstan leaves his episcopal staff at King Edward’s tomb, most
retellings of the story point out that he is resuming his former identity as a
monk. As Caxton puts it, “anon he did off the habit of a bishop, and did on
a cowl, and stood among the monks in such degree [in the same
rank/status] as he did tofore ere he was bishop” (6:37-38). In fact, the
vernacular accounts all portray Wulfstan as embracing his identity as a
monk more whole-heartedly than he had ever embraced his identity as a
bishop. For example, they emphasize his exceptionally austere habits with
regard to food and sleep, his custom of maintaining silence during certain
parts of each week, and his unflagging dedication to the liturgy of the
hours.18
16
Further attention to corrupt processes can be seen in the Kalendre's account of William of
York, whose election was long impeded by an ambitious archdeacon and a pope who
showed favoritism to a candidate from his own religious order (175).
17
The first two patterns are both exemplified in the SEL account of St. Alphege, 149, lines
27-36 (chosen as bishop of Winchester) and 41-44 (elected as archbishop of Canterbury);
the third, in the SEL accounts of Chad (78, lines 9-12) and Dunstan (208, lines 115-120
and 133-136).
18
Illustrating his commitment to the liturgy, the Kalendre asserts that he required all his
servants not only to hear Mass, but also to pray seven times a day “as clerkes be bounden to
Like Wulfstan, most of the other holy bishops in these sources are
portrayed as monks at heart, and many of the accounts emphasize their
preference for the most rigorous kind of monastic life. The Kalendre reports,
for example, that the pre-Conquest St. Oswald went to the Benedictine
Abbey at Fleury in search of a more disciplined way of life than anyone was
following at home, and came back to England “to instructe other [men] in
reguler discipline” (146); the SEL and Gilte Legende also emphasize the
strictness with which Oswald observed the Benedictine Rule. The Kalendre
explains that Lanfranc chose the abbey of Bec in Normandy because it was
“the porest house he could here of” (131). Caxton and the Kalendre both
report that Hugh spent his early life as a regular canon, but afterwards
became a Carthusian monk to “put his flesh to more penance” (Caxton,
6.241) or “for zele of a streyghter [stricter] religion” (Kalendre, 115).
Although Edmund of Abingdon was not officially a monk, the Middle
English accounts of his life all emphasize his commitment to virginity and
to the most rigorous monastic disciplines, including fasts, vigils, constant
wearing of a hairshirt, and other bodily mortifications, as well as his
dedication to prayer and contemplation.19
Also conventional but clearly important are the details which
show that these saints remained committed to monastic values and
disciplines even after their elevation to the episcopate. Although the theme
of monastic discipline is most obvious in the accounts of saints like Oswald
or Dunstan, who were connected with the tenth-century Benedictine
Reform, the pattern persists in the accounts of post-Conquest bishops.
Thus the Kalendre credits Lanfranc as archbishop with reforming the monks
of Canterbury, who before his time had engaged in “wanton disportys” like
hunting and hawking (132). Caxton suggests that Hugh as bishop
reformed the morality of the leper houses by separating the women from
the men (6:242). The SEL asserts that Edmund actually increased his
do” whenever they were away on journeys, and says that he himself recited the whole
Psalter whenever he traveled (189). The SEL retells a story in which he appears after death
to awaken and gently chide the monks who had fallen asleep during the vigil around his
bier (15, lines 204-218).
19
To demonstrate Edmund’s commitment to virginity, even as a youth, the SEL, Gilte
Legende, and Caxton all retell the dramatic story of his violent attack on a girl who tried to
seduce him; the Kalendre substitutes the much milder assertion that the adult Edmund
cared so much about chastity that he would not employ any lay servants who lapsed in this
regard (82). A more distinctively monastic link is the Kalendre’s suggestion that he began
early in youth to recite the entire Psalter before he would eat on holidays. In addition, all
the sources make clear that he spent substantial periods of his own life in monasteries, and
the SEL and Gilte Legende mention his arrangements for his sisters to become nuns.
extraordinary personal asceticism after his consecration as archbishop.20

And so on. According to the Middle English accounts, these saints were
never corrupted by the worldly privileges and pleasures they could have
claimed in their status as bishops. Although they may have been outwardly
clothed in the power and wealth of great lords, their values remained those
of strict, plain-living monks.
This monasticized image of the saintly bishop seems to have
appealed to the writers and intended audiences of these collections for at
least three reasons. Most obviously, it was easier for ordinary Christians to
admire an unpretentious, highly disciplined monk than to appreciate the
potential holiness of either a scholarly type of bishop or a more princely
one. Secondly, since the saintly bishop was envisioned as an approachable,
plain-living person, he could be expected to sympathize with the needs of
ordinary, powerless members of society. The Kalendre makes this point
explicitly about St. Osmund: “He was of the kynges blode and dayly in
presence of his prynce, & yet he wolde here the causes [was willing to hear
the legal cases] of pore men, pupillis and wydowes” (145). And all four
collections tend to credit their bishop-saints with the generous habits of
charity and kindness to the poor.21 But they typically place even more
emphasis on the third point: the bishop-saint was a man of such strong
principles that he could neither be corrupted nor intimidated. Again the
oppositional tendency is clear. The saintly bishop would heroically oppose
evil and injustice, no matter how powerful the perpetrators were – taking
the kind of stand the writers and audiences of these accounts may well
have wished they could take themselves.
IV. The saintly bishop’s interactions with kings

In Aelred of Rievaulx’s official Latin version (ca. 1160), the story of
Wulfstan’s staff had no villains. In fact, the story was evidently designed to
20
If his lyf was holi er, wel betere hit was tho; / In penance he was strong ynough, in fastinge & other
wo (SEL, 507, lines 463-464). (If his life was holy before, it became even better then; he was
remarkable in asceticism, in fasting and other forms of hardship.)
21
The SEL tends to make this point most emphatically, asserting for example that Edmund
always had compassion for helpless people, since it seemed to him that the powerful
constantly oppressed them (He hadde evere of seli men pite & deol ynough, / For him thoghte that
heghe men dude hem aldai wough [507, lines 465-466]). The Gilte Legende and Caxton delete
the appeal to justice when they rework this passage, just crediting the bishop-saint with
uncontroversial forms of charity: “[helping] the poor in theyre grete nede” (Supplementary
Lives, 137) or “[giving] great alms to poor people” (Caxton, Golden Legend 6:238). The
Kalendre credits St. Richard with having done justice to both rich and poor, refusing any
kind of reward and making no distinction between “the personys of grete man or small”
(158). Other bishop-saints whose care for the poor is said to have gone beyond the usual
almsgiving include Alphege and Oswald.
promote the ideal of harmonious cooperation between Normans and

Anglo-Saxons.22 Wulfstan’s only named opponent was Archbishop
Lanfranc, and Lanfranc’s intentions were pure: he was attempting to
reform the English church and demanded the return of Wulfstan’s pastoral
staff only because he had been erroneously informed that Wulfstan was too
ignorant to be a good bishop. Before the end of the twelfth century,
however, some Latin retellings had moved William the Conqueror from
the periphery of this story to the center, and started portraying him as an
enemy of the saintly bishop Wulfstan.23 Thus reimagined, the story ideally
suited the political agenda of the SEL, which – as many critics have noted
– was strongly anti-Norman and pro-English. The SEL boldly exploits this
opportunity to demonize the Norman interloper (whom it insists on calling
William the Bastard) and to set him in sharp opposition to his saintly
English predecessor, Edward the Confessor, as well as to Wulfstan. Firstly,
the SEL provides a new frame for the story, prefacing it with a polemical
account of the Conquest that ends with a lament for England’s tragic
defeat and total subjection to the invaders. In this context, the new king’s
attempt to depose Wulfstan becomes a final act of war, an attempt to
humiliate and destroy the last remnant of Anglo-Saxon authority in the
church. The SEL also portrays William as an unjust and tyrannical
oppressor, and it markedly changes the characterization of Wulfstan
himself, casting him as the last brave defender of English virtues and
claiming that he spoke out intrepidly against William when everyone else
was afraid:24
As soon as he was made king and occupied all of England as he
desired with foreign men, and no one could hinder him, this holy
saint Wulfstan often rebuked him, [saying] that he with injustice
had done such an evil deed, and boldly spoke against him and
didn’t hold back for any fear – for he was the noblest [and/or
truest, most genuine, most honorable] Englishman of any valor, for
nearly all the others were dispossessed. The king was angry with
him because he feared him so little; he immediately swore an oath
22
Dutton, “The Staff in the Stone” (cited above in n. 6), 19-20.
23
This development is traced in my article, “Rewriting St Wulfstan of Worcester, the Last
Anglo-Saxon Bishop, in the 12th and 13th Centuries,” forthcoming in Envisioning the
Medieval Bishop, ed. Evan Gatti and Sigrid Danielson (Turnhout: Brepols).
24
The only other account I have seen that characterizes Wulfstan this way is the Latin verse
life in Aberystwyth, NLW MS. Peniarth 386, which actually includes a passage of dialogue
in which King William and the saint exchange insults. For that text, see Flower, ‘A
Metrical Life of St Wulfstan” (cited above in n. 5), 122-123.
to pluck him out of his bishopric. He had him summoned also to

Westminster, to answer to him for his crimes.2
In the SEL’s retelling of the staff story, then, Wulfstan is summoned to
Westminster specifically to be shamed and punished for his opposition to
the king; Lanfranc is reduced to an accomplice who participates in the
king’s attempt to humiliate Wulfstan. The earliest surviving copy of this
version, Bodleian MS Laud Misc. 108, even includes some daring lines of
protest, omitted from all but a few of the later manuscripts, which charge
that England has had no legitimate kings since the Conquest (some 200
years earlier).25After this dramatic expression of English resentment against
“alien” rulers, the later Middle English versions of the story about
Wulfstan’s staff look surprisingly mild and apolitical. But there are
interesting differences among them. The Gilte Legende just gives an
abridged translation of Aelred’s account, specifying that the case against
Wulfstan began with “some envyous men” who accused him to Lanfranc,
the new archbishop of Canterbury, and keeping the wise and learned
Lanfranc in the central position thereafter as Wulfstan’s opponent; King
William is mentioned at the start as having “medle[d] with the Churche”
after the Conquest, but his role sounds essentially benign and is
subordinate to Lanfranc’s (Supplementary Lives, 30). Caxton, however,
drastically abbreviates the beginning of the account in the Gilte Legende,
omitting the envious accusers and the laudatory description of Lanfranc
and so blurring the distinction between Lanfranc’s activity and the king’s
that they seem to be working together against Wulfstan:
When William Conqueror had gotten all England, and had it
under his power, then he began to meddle with the church, and by
the advice of Lanfranc, the holy bishop S. Wulstan was challenged
2
SEL, 11, lines 91-100: As sone so he was king ymad & al Engelond bysette, / Ase he wolde, mid
strange men ac no man ne mighte hym lette, / This holy sein Wolston wel ofte him withsede / That he
with unright hadde ido a such uvel dede, / And spak ayen hym baldeliche & ne sparede for no drede
/ For he was the kundeste Englisse man that was of eny manhede, / For alle other were deserited ney.
The kyng was with him wroth / That he dradde so lite of hym; he swor anon is oth / To pulte him of is
bissopriche. He let him somni also / To Westmi[n]stre to answerie hym of that he hadde misdo.
25
The Early South-English Legendary or Lives of Saints, ed. Carl Horstmann, EETS o.s. 87
(London: Trübner, 1887), 73, lines 83-90: alas thulke stounde, / that Enguelond was thorugh
tresoun thare ibrought to grounde! / For thulke that the king [Harold] truste to failleden him wel
faste; / So þat he was bineothe ibrought and overcome at the laste/ And to grounde ibrought, and alle
his, and al Enguelond also, / Into unecouthe mannes honde, that no right ne hadden tharto; / And
never eft ne cam ayein to righhte Eyres none– / Unkuynde Eyres yeot huy beothth, ore kingues echone.
(Alas that time when England was brought down there through treason! For those whom
the king trusted failed him completely, so that he was defeated and overcome at last and
brought down, and all his troops and all England too, [brought] into the hands of strangers
that had no right to it, and it never afterwards returned to any rightful heirs. All our kings
still are alien [and/or unnatural, untrue, ungrateful, ungenerous] heirs).
that he was not able of letters [sufficient in literacy], ne of conning

[knowledge] for to occupy the realm and office of a bishop, and was
called tofore Lanfranc, and willed him to resign by the consent of
the king to the said Lanfranc, archbishop. . . . (6:36-37)
The retelling in the Kalendre is based on a different source, but it takes the
next logical step beyond Caxton, casting the king as the instigator and
Lanfranc as his agent:
The Kyng Wyllyam Conqueroure, bycause Seynt Wlstane coulde
speke no Frenche and [because] he thought he was but of small
connynge [knowledge], wolde have deposed hym. And whenne
Seynt Lamfranke then Archebysshoppe of Caunterburye at a
counseyll bad hym resygne his staffe and his rynge. . . . (188)
Notice the ease, almost the inevitability, with which this story has again
devolved into a contest between the saintly bishop and the less-than-
saintly king. Such dramatic confrontations were a familiar ingredient in the
legends of martyrs, of course, and the expectations of popular audiences
may have been shaped in large part by the famous conflict between
Thomas Becket and King Henry II. But the phenomenon is both broader
and more complicated than that. The standard Latin Lives of most English
bishop-saints included stories about fruitful cooperation between the
bishop and the king, as well as stories of conflict, and the Middle English
collections vary considerably in the way they treat these stories.
As its account of Wulfstan suggests, the SEL makes a sharp
distinction between kings who reigned before the Norman Conquest and
those who have reigned since. In the earlier period, as Thorlac Turville-
Petre has noted, “the enemies of the Church and people come from outside
the community, often from across the sea, and the ideal of Church/state
harmony is represented by king-saints such as Oswald and Edmund.”26
Examples of church/state harmony can also be found in the SEL’s accounts
of pre-Conquest bishop-saints like Dunstan, who with Ethelwold and
Oswald conducted a clerical reform mission under the authority of the
enlightened king who had commissioned them:
He arranged that throughout England each parish priest must
choose to turn away from lechery and become chaste or lose his
church. . . . These two bishops and St. Dunstan and Edgar the good
king were all of one purpose, to do this good deed. These three
26
Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity,
1290-1340 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 62.
bishops journeyed all over England and cast out every wicked
parish priest. . . .3
Similarly, the SEL accounts of Chad (78-79) and Swithun (275)
give credit to good kings who appointed and empowered these saints to do
their good work of preaching and reforming the people. But “with the
Conquest [Turville-Petre continues], that close relationship comes to an
end and the Church becomes the protector of a people oppressed by a
rapacious and greedy Crown” (62). Wulfstan, as we have seen, is
reimagined as a patron saint of English resistance to a foreign tyrant. The
life of Thomas Becket, the archetypal post-Conquest bishop-saint, is retold
at great length, and again “the strategy is to portray [the saint] as a
champion of the people in his resistance to the despotism of the king”
(Turville-Petre, 63). And Edmund, the most recent bishop-saint in the
SEL, is envisioned as Becket’s true heir, an intrepid defender of the poor
who chooses to endure exile and even death if necessary rather than accede
to the king’s oppression of the church.
When the Gilte Legende and Caxton adapt the bishops’ legends in
the SEL, they tend to soften or remove the boldest political messages. Thus
when they retell the story about Edmund’s response to a widow
impoverished by the system of heriot, which would confiscate a tenant
farmer’s best animal for his lord when the tenant died, they retain the
account of the saint’s generosity to this particular widow but omit every
word of his strong protest against the injustice of the system.27 They also
simplify the SEL’s account of Edmund’s long struggle against Henry III
and his allies, deleting the indications that the saint was opposed along the
way by the papal legate, the monks of Canterbury, and much of the
English public, as well as the king himself, and giving only the vaguest
hints of the issues at stake and the tactics used on each side.28
The Kalendre cannot so easily be compared with earlier vernacular
legendaries. It includes abridged Lives of far more English bishops and
provides more biographical and historical information than the earlier
Middle English collections do, but it tends even more predictably than the
3
SEL, 209, lines 139-40, 143-46: He [King Edgar] formede thoru al Engelonde that eche person
ssolde chese //To wite him chast fram lecherie other is chirche leose. . . .//This tweie bissops & sein
Donston were al at one rede // And Edgar the gode king, to do this gode dede. // This threo bissops
wende aboute, thoru al Engelonde, // And eche luther person caste out. . . .
27
SEL, 507-508, lines 477-482; cf. Supplementary Lives, 137-138, Caxton, Golden Legend
6:238-239.
28
SEL, 508-510; cf. Supplementary Lives, 138-139, Caxton, Golden Legend 6:239-240. The
account in the SEL is already greatly simplified, of course. For the way this struggle is
depicted in other sources, see C. H. Lawrence, St. Edmund of Abingdon: A Study in
Hagiography and History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).
SEL to play up the conflicts between bishop-saints and kings. Even when
its Latin sources told fairly memorable stories about cooperation between
pre-Conquest bishops and the Crown, the Kalendre tends to omit or de-
emphasize them, preferring stories in which the bishop chastises or corrects
the king. The standard Life of Oda of Canterbury, for example, includes a
popular story about Oda’s contribution to a famous victory over foreign
armies at Brunanburh by miraculously mending King Athelstan’s sword,
which had broken in the heat of battle. Although the SEL has no chapter
on Oda himself, it retells this story in its chapter on Oswald. The chapter
on Oda in the Kalendre, on the other hand, finds room only for a much
harsher story about the steps this saint took to put an end to the
“abominable adultery” of another Anglo-Saxon king:
And when he [Oda] was archebyssop he reproved the kynge of his
abhominable advoutrie, and the women that the kynge kept he
toke theym and burned theym in the face with yron & abanysshed
them [from] the realme (Kalendre, 143).29
The Kalendre account of St. Dunstan is similarly skewed toward the
oppositional; it mentions his warm relations with King Edgar, but focuses
primarily on the way he rebuked this king for a sexual crime and forced
him to do penance for a full seven years:
[O]n a tyme he came to Kynge Edgare & reprovyd hym for
kepynge of a nonne. And when the kynge wolde have had hym syt
downe by hym, he sayd he wolde not be frende with hym to whom
our Lord was enemy. And the kynge herynge that was aferde and
anon knowlegyd his offence and askyd penaunce & forgyvenesse.
And Seynt Dunstane gave hym in penaunce that he shuld not were
his crowne [for] vii yere and that he shulde faste twyse every weke,
which penaunce the kynge dyd. . . . (Kalendre, 79)
To illustrate Lanfranc’s relationship with William the Conqueror, the
Kalendre includes a single anecdote in which the bishop reminds the king
that he is not God and urges him to punish anyone who flatters him by
saying otherwise.30 The Kalendre’s account of Hugh retells three long
29
The king in question is presumably Eadwig, son of the martyred Edmund’s successor
Eadred, but the details are quite different in Eadmer’s Life of Oda and other standard
sources. See for example Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan,
and Oswald, ed. and trans. Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2006), 221-223.
30
Kalendre, 131-132: As he satte by the kynge at a solempne feest, a rayler [supporter] seyinge
[seeing] the kynge syt in gloryouse apparell seyd: ‘Lo, I se God, lo, I se God.’ And Seynt Lamfranke
remembrynge the hystorye of Herode advertysyd [advised] the kynge that he shuld not suffer [allow]
such wordys spokyn to hym that belongyd only to God, but that he shuld commaunde hym that speke
[spoke] them to be betyn, so that he shulde never after dare speke such wordys, and so it was don.
stories about this saint’s confrontations with kings, all emphasizing his
masterful use of gentle persuasion to convert an angry or sinful king to his
own way of thinking. The climactic example comes in a scene with Richard
I, who is initially furious with him for refusing to let his diocese be taxed to
help pay for the current war against France, but is gradually so won over
by Hugh’s courage and perseverance that he smiles, kisses him, and allows
the saintly bishop to admonish him about his clerical appointments and his
own sexual morality. On this occasion the king himself expresses the
intended message, saying, “if there were many such bysshoppes, there
durst no prynce do agaynst theym” (no prince would dare to act against
them) (Kalendre, 117).
It is worth noting that the Kalendre, unlike the SEL, does not
portray the bishop-saint as opposing the king primarily in order to defend
the poor or safeguard the church against royal tyranny. Rather, this
collection strongly suggests that episcopal correction of royal behavior is a
good and necessary thing in itself, whether the behavior in question is a
matter of public injustice or private sexual misconduct. Evidently this
writer was so concerned about malfeasance in high places that he felt it
necessary to hold up example after example of bishops who were brave
enough and principled enough to apply the same rules to everybody,
including kings. The Kalendre makes the point explicitly in its closing
description of Oda of Canterbury: “He was always adversarye inflexible
agaynst sin. The pleasure or joyes of the world ne yet thretes [or even
threats] coulde nat fere [frighten] hym neyther lette [or deter] hym fro
doynge justice” (143).
V. The work of saintly bishops

There is a conspicuous silence in most of these sources about the kinds of
work that medieval bishops were ordinarily expected to do. The story of St.
Wulfstan’s staff suggests that bishops might occasionally be summoned to
a council where some sort of business was conducted, but the only business
specified is to confirm or question the bishops’ own fitness to hold their
office (whatever that might entail). Apart from speaking boldly against the
king’s tyranny and attending that council, the SEL says nothing whatever
about Wulfstan’s activities as a bishop except that he performed some
miraculous healings and prepared for his own death. Although Wulfstan is
an extreme case, the episcopal activities attributed to most other bishop-
saints in these four collections are similarly limited, and almost always
overshadowed by the emphasis on the saints’ personal asceticism, their
monastic piety, and the stands they took against powerful wrong-doers
and enemies of the church. One almost has to conclude that the late
medieval writers of these collections either had no idea of the positive
contributions a good bishop could make to the everyday life of the church
or considered such matters insufficiently saintly to mention. There are
some exceptions worth citing, however.
In sharp contrast with the Kalendre, which portrays Hugh’s
episcopacy as a series of dramatic scenes between the saintly bishop and
angry kings, Caxton focuses largely on the exemplary way in which Hugh
discharged the day-to-day responsibilities of his office, to the benefit of his
diocese and the larger church:
[He] recovered many droits and rights which had been taken away
from the church. This holy man made many good statutes and
ordinances in his diocese, and went and visited the churches and
places of his cure and charge, and lived a holy life. And he would
visit the houses of lepers and lazars. . . . This holy man S. Hugh in
all his life was much diligent in burying of dead men, and of his
humanity would gladly do the office [perform the service] about
their sepulture [burial], wherefore our Lord gave and rendered to
him by retribution condign [worthy recompense], honourable
sepulture; for what time he departed out of this world, and the
same day that his body was brought to the church of Lincoln, it
happed that the king of England, the king of Scotland, with three
archbishops, barons, and great multitude of people were gathered
at Lincoln, and were present at his honourable sepulture. . . .
(6:242-43)
All four Middle English legendaries pay tribute to the work of three
Anglo-Saxon bishop-saints, Oswald, Dunstan, and Ethelwold, who labored
in cooperation with King Edgar to reform the clergy of their time. The
SEL, Gilte Legende, and Kalendre focus on the monastic elements in this
reform effort, crediting the bishops primarily with having replaced
undisciplined and non-celibate clergy with monks, founded many new
monasteries, and reformed the existing ones.31 Caxton’s account of St.
Dunstan broadens the picture considerably, suggesting the difference a
good archbishop could make for the population at large:
then king Edgar made S. Dunstan archbishop of Canterbury, which
he guided well and holily to the pleasure of God, so that in that
time of king Edgar and Dunstan archbishop was joy and mirth
through the realm of England, and every man praised greatly S.
Dunstan for his holy life, good rule, and guiding. And in diverse
places, whereas [where] he visited and saw curates that were not
good, ne propice [favorable] for the weal [welfare] of the souls that
they had cure of, he would discharge them and put them out of
31
SEL, 75 and 209; Supplementary Lives, 177 and 183; Kalendre, 98 and 146.
their benefices, and set in such as would entend [take heed] and
were good men. . . . (Caxton, 3; 190-91).
Both the Gilte Legende and Caxton credit King Ethulf with having
governed the land wisely and well, thanks to the good counsel he received
from St. Swithun, and also give a broadly appealing picture of the
flourishing condition of the diocese of Winchester under Swithun’s
leadership:
when Elmeston the Bishop of Winchester was dead, Swithin was
made Bishop there after him, whereof the people were full glad,
and by his holy living he caused the people to live virtuously, and
to pay their tithes to God and holy church. And if any church fell
down, or was in decay, S. Swithin would anon amend it at his own
cost. Or if any church were not hallowed, he would go thither afoot
and hallow it (Caxton, 4:54; cf. Supplementary Lives, 201).
Although such vignettes are few, they may have reminded their medieval
audiences that the ideal role for saintly bishops was not always one of
confrontation and resistance to secular rulers. And they remind us that
even such longstanding hagiographical conventions as the emphasis on
monasticism can eventually change, in the hands of authors with new
outlooks and different priorities. The anonymous authors behind the SEL,
the Gilte Legende, and the Kalendre may well have been friars or monks
themselves, and their intended audience probably consisted in part of nuns.
The hints of a broader perspective in Caxton’s Golden Legend are not
surprising when one recalls that Caxton was a very different kind of writer
– not just a layman, but an entrepreneur, a successful merchant and
printer who produced his translations for sale to a readership that consisted
primarily of other affluent and intellectually curious members of the laity.
THE PASTOR BONUS ST. STANISLAUS OF CRACOW
IN SERMONS AND BISHOP-SAINTS AS EXEMPLARS
IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES
Stanislava Kuzmová
Bishops have always belonged to the most successful and numerous groups
among those who achieved canonization. In the Late Middle Ages,
episcopal sainthood, this very traditional type of holiness, was perhaps
overshadowed by the increased appeal of the new models of “living
sanctity,” an achievable and imitable one, represented by members of the
new religious orders, lay persons, and female saints. Even if episcopal
sanctity seems to have been slightly in crisis and out of fashion in some
regions of Christendom, bishop-saints continued to act as patrons and
intercessors for the faithful, and contemporary bishops continued to fashion
themselves as had their saintly predecessors, using their cults to boost their
own prestige. However, did holy bishops really serve as the exemplars of
saintly life like other types of saints increasingly did in the Late Middle
Ages? Or were they perceived only as unattainable authorities and patrons?
It is a question of interest, even more so because, at the same time, the
criticism of clergy intensified and the efforts at their moral, intellectual,
and pastoral renewal increased, especially in the late fourteenth and the
first half of the fifteenth century. Many writers and theologians were
preoccupied with the issue of moral renewal of prelates as a vehicle of
Church reform in this period. On the one hand, clerics faced criticism and
even hostile sentiments; on the other, there had to be a positive model, a
reference point, which they were expected to achieve. Reformers could use
saintly bishops as tangible models and illustrations when they spoke about
the ideal prelate and preached their sermons on various occasions.
This is a case study devoted to a particular bishop-saint, St.
Stanislaus, Bishop of Cracow (d. 1079, canonized 1253). I use a special
type of source – sermons – in order to investigate the functions of the
saint’s cult. Was this traditional type of saint, a martyr-bishop who had
died long before the Late Middle Ages, perceived in later centuries as an
imitable example or as a protecting, miracle-working intercessor only?
Sermons on saints, like hagiography in general, contained two major
elements in variable proportion: praise of the saints (the admirable, the
heroic) and exhortation to follow their example (the imitable, the
254 Stanislava Kuzmová
exemplary). On the one hand, sermons presented the saints as almost

unattainable heroes, to whom the faithful were to pray for intercession. On
the other, preachers put them forward as models of behavior and sanctity
that their listeners could and should achieve; this tendency increased from
the thirteenth century onwards, as Vauchez has argued, especially with the
new types of sainthood. In the last centuries of the Middle Ages, the
exemplary aspect of the saint’s life became more accentuated. Readers and
writers of hagiography, as well as preachers and their listeners, could now
identify with the saints – clerics with the models of monastic or pastoral
life, and laymen with the examples of charity.1
Constructing the Sermons about the Good Shepherd

Preachers focused on various aspects of the saint’s personality and of his
cult – the saint as a martyr, a miracle-worker, a powerful intercessor – but
frequently favored one, that of a good shepherd. The basis for my
investigation is a dossier of eighty various sermons and preaching materials
from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, preserved in written form in
numerous manuscript codices. They were put down in Latin in various
stages of elaboration, ranging from developed model texts to sermon notes.
They were composed by a variety of authors, some of them important
figures in Cracow or elsewhere, others anonymous.2 The prominence of the
topic of the good shepherd in sermons for the feasts of St. Stanislaus sheds
light on some aspects of the function and uses of the cult of this saint and
of the cults of bishop-saints in general during this period. Discussion of the
good shepherd was frequently an occasion to present a model for the clerics
through preaching.
Liturgical and hagiographic works described St. Stanislaus as a
good shepherd in some places.3 This recurring image often became the
1
Siegfried Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England: Orthodox Preaching in
the Age of Wyclif (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 250; and André Vauchez,
“Saints admirables et saints imitables: les fonctions de l’hagiographie ont-elles changé aux
derniers siècles du Moyen Age?” in Saints, prophètes et visionnaires: le pouvoir surnaturel au
Moyen Age (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999), 56-66, esp. 61-62, 66.
2
These sermons are found in eighty-six various manuscript codices (altogether 129
occurrences of the sermons on Stanislaus). This paper is an adapted version of a chapter
(5.1) of my unpublished Ph.D dissertation, “Preaching St. Stanislaus: Medieval Sermons on
St. Stanislaus of Cracow and Their Role in the Construction of His Image and Cult”
(Budapest, Central European University, 2010), which provides an overview of the sermons
on St. Stanislaus of Cracow together with a catalogue of the manuscripts containing them.
3
For a short discussion of the Good Shepherd motif in the liturgy of St. Stanislaus’ feast, see
Jerzy J. Kopeć, “Św. Stanisław, biskup krakowski, Pater Patriae, w tekstach liturgii
średniowiecznej” [St. Stanislaus, Bishop of Cracow, Pater Patriae, in Medieval Liturgical
Texts], in Św. Stanisław w Ŝyciu kościoła w Polsce. 750-lecie kanonizacji [St. Stanislaus in the
Pastor Bonus 255
focal point of a sermon. One of the most decisive factors for the content of
the sermo modernus (a sermon type diffused from the thirteenth century) was
the thema – its beginning verse, taken from the liturgy of the day, biblical
readings, etc. This verse anticipated the content of the sermon, which was
to be constructed from it.4 Although there was a wide spectrum of themata
of sermons on St. Stanislaus (as many as forty-five), many of them were
used only once.5 Studies on some dossiers of sermons on particular saints
have shown that preachers often tended to favor one thema which
condensed the saint’s personality into a prominent image.6 Similarly to
sermons on the martyr-bishop St. Thomas Becket, an emblematic verse
that carried the most important message about Stanislaus was Ego sum
pastor bonus from the Gospel of John (John 10:11) and its variations.7 As
many as thirteen texts were constructed on this verse, but altogether
seventeen distinct texts in thirty-seven manuscript copies drew on the
particular Gospel reading about the Good Shepherd (John 10:11-16)
(including the texts on Bonus pastor dat animam suam from the same Biblical
locus; the verse John 10:14 – Ego sum pastor bonus et cognosco meas et cognoscunt
me mee; and two redactions of sermon materials which exposed the whole
pericope). Popularity of the thema is itself evidence of the frequent use of
the good shepherd motif. Preaching was tied to the liturgy, as this verse
was taken from the most popular Gospel reading for the feast of St.
Stanislaus.8 The pericope about the Good Shepherd (John 10:11-16) was
Life of the Church in Poland. 750th Anniversary of Canonization], ed. Andrzej A.

Napiórkowski (Krakow: Skałka, 2003), 192-193, 198-199. I discussed the motif in
hagiography and liturgy in my dissertation, “Preaching St. Stanislaus,” especially chapters
1.1. and 1.2 .
4
For more on the thema as the characteristic feature of the sermo modernus and on the sermon
construction technique (dilatatio, divisio), see for example Nicole Bériou, “Les sermons latins
après 1200,” in The Sermon, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 370-
382.
5
For the themata of the sermons on St. Stanislaus, see chapter 3.4, pp. 128-132 of my
dissertation.
6
On St. Bartholomew, see Nicole Bériou, “Pellem pro pelle (Job 2.4). Les sermons pour la fête
de saint Barthélemy au XIII siècle,” in La pelle umana. The Human Skin (Firenze: Sismel
Edizioni Galluzzo, 2005), 267-284, esp. 270.
7
Phyllis Roberts listed as many as 18 out of 184 texts on the themes Ego sum pastor bonus
and Bonus pastor animam suam dat for St. Thomas Becket, which proved them to have been
the most frequently occurring verses; Phyllis B. Roberts, Thomas Becket in the Medieval Latin
Preaching Traditions: An Inventory of Sermons about Saint Thomas Becket c. 1170 - c. 1400 (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1992), nos. 19-30 and 48-53.
8
Besides my dissertation mentioned above, I have presented the popular thema Ego sum
pastor bonus in its broader liturgical context, including the use of the pericope in the liturgy
of the feast and on preaching occasions, in an earlier version in my paper “An Exemplary
Shepherd: Thema ‘Ego sum pastor bonus’ and Sermons on Saint Stanislaus of Kraków in the
Later Middle Ages,” in Przestrzeń religijna Europy Śródkowo-Wschodniej w średniowieczu –
prescribed for the Second Easter Sunday (First Sunday after the Easter
octave) in the liturgical cycle of the year.9 In the course of the fourteenth
century, it was introduced into the mass formulary proper for St.
Stanislaus’ feast of martyrdom (8 May), gradually overshadowing all other
Gospel texts, and was also used for the feast of translation (September
27).10 This Gospel was especially fitting for the feast of a martyr-bishop
owing to its content, which is why it was also frequently used in the liturgy
of St. Thomas Becket.11
There were many ways of building a sermon on the Ego sum pastor
bonus theme. Sermons on other themata also discussed the pastor bonus and
the ideal prelate. Authors of sermons on St. Stanislaus made use of the long
tradition of pastoral imagery, and also of the contemporary discussion of
the ideal prelate, and recalled various exempla from the saint’s life in order
to illustrate their message about the good shepherd. In the Biblical
context, the simile and the metaphor of the good shepherd was most often
used for Christ in the New Testament (or God in the Old Testament).12 In
exegetical works and in sermons, the attributes of Christ the Good
Shepherd were transferred primarily to his followers in office, the pastores
moderni, who could emulate his model of life: to priests, and by extension
also to secular lords. As the Gospel about the Good Shepherd was read on
multiple occasions, preachers employed the verse Ego sum pastor bonus as the
thema of sermons for several liturgical circumstances: most often for the
Second Sunday after Easter, for synodal sermons, and in other
circumstances of preaching ad clerum (e.g., in synodo ad praelatis, sacerdotis,
clerum, in generali capitulo, or the Pentecost Sunday – which was a date for
synods as well), applying it also on the feast days of martyr-bishops St.
Religious Space of East-Central Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. Krzysztof Bracha and Paweł Kras
(Warsaw: DiG, 2010), 235-255.
9
Mary O’Carroll, “The Lectionary for the Proper of the Year in the Dominican and
Franciscan Rites of the Thirteenth Century,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 49 (1979): 79-
103.
10
Wacław Schenk, Kult liturgiczny św. Stanisława biskupa na Śląsku w świetle średniowiecznych
rękopisów liturgicznych [The Liturgical Cult of Saint Stanislaus in Silesia in the Light of the
Medieval Liturgical Manuscripts] (Lublin: Nakładem Towarzystwa naukowego
Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1959), 63, and for the feast of Translation, 69.
11
For the use of this pericope in the liturgy of Thomas Becket’s feast, see “Liturgical Offices
for the Cult of St. Thomas Becket,” ed. and trans. Sherry Reames, in Medieval Hagiography:
An Anthology, ed. Thomas Head (New York: Garland Publishers, 2000), 561-593.
12
Theo Clemens, “Searching for the Good Shepherd,” in The Pastor Bonus. Papers read at the
British-Dutch colloquium at Utrecht, 18-21 September 2002, ed. Theo Clemens and Wim Janse
(Leiden: Brill, 2004), 17-19.
Pastor Bonus 257
Thomas Becket and St. Adalbert.13 Thus, preachers could help themselves
with the model sermons on this thema composed for other occasions and
diffused in various collections, especially a host of texts written for the
Second Sunday after Easter, one of which was found in almost every model
collection de tempore. In general, the content of sermons on this thema was
suited to various occasions of preaching ad clerum and resembled a speculum
prelatorum.14 Moreover, in some places synods occurred on the Second
Sunday after Easter.15 Importantly, a number of sermons on St. Stanislaus
(like those on St. Thomas Becket) could have actually been addressed to
clerical audiences, although in many other cases preachers could present
Stanislaus as a good shepherd also to the lay or mixed public present at
these festa fori, only with a slightly different agenda. There was definitely a
custom of preaching to the clergy on the occasion of the feasts of St.
Stanislaus in the cathedral in Cracow – regularly in front of the assembly of
cathedral canons and sometimes at diocesan synods, which were held in
Cracow on the feast days of St. Stanislaus.16 Especially in these cases,
preachers held up St. Stanislaus as an exemplar for other “shepherds” by
office, that is, bishops and clerics. The following section shows some
examples of St. Stanislaus as a model of the good shepherd for clerics from
sermons. Less frequently, the saintly bishop was presented as an exemplar
of the good shepherd for laymen, especially high secular dignitaries.17
13
Schneyer’s Repertorium lists more than 300 sermons on this thematic verse until 1350 and
another 100 after 1350; for an extensive index, see Johannes Baptist Schneyer, Repertorium
der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit von 1150-1350, 9+2 vols. (Münster:
Aschendorff, 1969-1995), 11:278-280; and idem, Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des
Mittelalters für die Zeit von 1350 bis 1500, CD-ROM, ed. Ludwig Hödl and Wendelin Koch
(Münster: Aschendorff, 2001). The overwhelming majority of those sermons were meant for
the Second Easter Sunday, others were much less numerous. The use for sermons on St.
Adalbert was not noted by Schneyer; for references, see my dissertation, chap. 3.4, p. 132
and n. 52.
14
In this respect, a typical subject of sermons for the Second Easter Sunday, namely the
clerical ideal, has been described by Jussi Hanska, “Reconstructing the Mental Calendar of
Medieval Preaching: A Method and Its Limits: An Analysis of Sunday Sermons,” in
Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002),
302-305.
15
For more on synodal preaching (and sermons ad clerum), see Nicole Bériou, “La
prédication synodale au XIIIe siècle d’après l’exemple cambrésien,” in Le clerc séculier au
Moyen Âge. Actes du Colloque de la Société des Historiens Médiévistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur
(Amiens, 1991) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1993), 229-247; and Wenzel, Latin
Sermon Collections, 263-277.
16
I have demonstrated these special preaching occasions on the feasts of St. Stanislaus in
Cracow at length elsewhere; see chap. 2.2.1.4 of my dissertation and my article “An
Exemplary Shepherd: Thema ‘Ego sum pastor bonus,’” 235-255.
17
This motif appeared in other sermons on Ego sum pastor bonus as well, for example, in
sermons for the Second Easter Sunday; Hanska, Reconstructing the Mental Calendar, 304. This
Spiritual Shepherds: Personal Virtues and Pastoral Duties, Ideals and

Deficiencies
Comparison with Christ, the Good Shepherd par excellence, is
present throughout the texts. Sometimes the preachers chose to speak of
Christ and almost failed to mention the saint beyond the rubric, as is the
case with a sermon on St. Stanislaus written by Jan of Słupca (1408-1488),
a university teacher, theologian, and cathedral preacher in Cracow, based
on the Johannine thema.18 Having spoken about Christ’s passion, he
recalled the verse from Peter’s Epistle (1 Peter 2:21): “For unto this are you
called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you
should follow his steps.” According to Jan of Słupca, St. Stanislaus followed
this example and gave his life for his sheep.19 Given that the Gospel about
the Good Shepherd was the most frequently read pericope on the feasts of
St. Stanislaus and a frequent thema of sermons on those days, it is not
surprising that preachers often emphasised the analogies between Christ
and Stanislaus as two good pastors. An anonymous Franciscan Observant
friar said at the outset of his sermon that the Gospel words about the Good
Shepherd pertained to Christ, but to Bishop Stanislaus as well. He was “a
faithful shepherd of his flock and gave his life for his sheep.”20 This
observation was a typical way of starting a sermon on a saint.
paper does not deal with St. Stanislaus as an exemplar for secular shepherds; for more on
this topic, see my dissertation, chap. 5.1.5. The topic appeared for example in two sermons
on St. Stanislaus based on the theme of Ego sum pastor bonus by Paul of Zator, the first holder
of the office of cathedral preacher at Wawel (1454-1463), in MS. Cracow, Biblioteka
Jagiellońska (Jagiellonian Library) (hereafter BJ) 491, fol. 195, and in other copies; and in
the sermon by Jan of Słupca, in MS. BJ 2364, fol. 279r-280r, and in other copies. In
general, preachers maintained that the duties of spiritual and secular shepherds, that is,
priests and lay dignitaries, were interrelated. When secular shepherds failed to fulfill their
duties, the efforts of the spiritual shepherds also came up short and failed to meet with the
appropriate feedback from the subjects, no matter how diligent and excellent the priests
may have been.
18
For biographical information about the author, see Zofia Siemiatkowska, “Jan ze
Słupczy,” in Polski Słownik Biograficzny [Polish Biographical Dictionary] (hereafter PSB), ed.
Władysław Konopczyński et al. (Cracow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności; Wrocław:
Wydawnictwo Zakładu Narodowego im. Ossolińskich, 1935-), 10:476-478; Mieczysław
Markowski, Dzieje Wydziału teologii Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego w latach 1397-1525 [History
of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Krakow in 1397-1525] (Cracow:
Wydawnictwo Naukowe Papieskiej Akademii Teologicznej, 1996), 164-166.
19
BJ 2364, fol. 278r-v: Exinde ergo beatus Stanislaus cepit exemplum, ut dignaretur animam suam
ponere pro ovibus suis, et pro grege suo mori. This sermon is preserved in various manuscripts.
20
MS. Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
(hereafter Kórnik) 53, fol. 123v: Ideo hec scribit sanctus Iohannes cancelarius Iesu Christi ad
honorem Dei omnipotentis et sancti Stanislai, que verba predicta bene expetunt sancto Stanislao
episcopo, qui fuit pastor fidelis super gregem suum et animam suam dedit pro ovibus suis.
Pastor Bonus 259
The image of the good shepherd as one who does not hesitate to
sacrifice himself for his flock was an important motif. He had to be ready
to offer his life if necessary. The saint’s martyrdom was not necessarily
meant to be imitated, but certainly something to admire and follow at
least metaphorically. The good shepherd and the martyr were “twin
images,” continually present in sermons preached on the feasts of St.
Stanislaus, as well as on the feasts of St. Thomas Becket.21 The martyrdom
of Stanislaus was often compared to Christ’s passion (imitatus est in morte),
and often set in the context of the good shepherd image.22 Moreover, it
was obviously an Easter topic, which was very fitting since the feast of the
martyrdom of St. Stanislaus fell during the Easter period. One of the
dominant parallels between Christ and Stanislaus was their sacrifice for the
sake of their flocks: Stanislaus resembled Christ in that he had offered his
life for his sheep. The image of a suffering victim and the imitatio is
increasingly present in the sermons on St. Stanislaus, especially those from
the fifteenth century. For an anonymous preacher from a fifteenth-century
Wrocław manuscript, St. Stanislaus was a companion of Christ in suffering
and that is why he deserved to accompany him to consolation and glory,
paraphrasing the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 1:7).
The preacher added that this sequence was quite visible in the vita of St.
Stanislaus, a brief version of which he appended to his sermon.23
An anonymous fifteenth-century sermon on the thema, now
consisting of the whole verse Ego sum pastor bonus, Bonus pastor dat animam
suam pro ovibus suis, also used typical good shepherd imagery. The author
divided the thema into two main points: firstly, the holiness of St. Stanislaus
(Ego sum pastor bonus) and secondly, his usefulness to his people (Bonus pastor
dat animam suam pro ovibus suis). The latter part was devoted to his
martyrdom. The former part used a motif that was frequent in sermons on
this theme. St. Stanislaus was the pastor of the diocese of Cracow and he
fed his sheep with three types of bread: material (he took care of the poor,
the sick, widows, and others), spiritual (sancta doctrina – he converted the
people to the right faith by preaching), and eternal (the body of Christ).24
The same metaphor of the threefold bread was used in many other works.25
21
Anne Duggan, Thomas Becket (London: Arnold Publishers, 2004), 236.
22
I discussed the topic of martyrdom and the imitatio motif in sermons on St. Stanislaus in
more detail in my dissertation, in chapters 5.1.4 and 5.1.3, respectively.
23
MS. Wrocław, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka (University Library) (hereafter BUWr) I F 561,
fol. 226r-v: Quia ergo beatus Stanislaus socius fuit passionum utque tunc meruit esse socius
consolacionum, quod videndum est in vita eius que sic habetur. . . .
24
BJ 1626, fol. 152v-153r.
25
E.g. on St. Stanislaus in a sermon in MS. Kórnik 53, fol. 123v; and on St. Thomas Becket
in Roberts, Inventory, nos. 36, 52. In the case of a sermon in Wrocław, Biblioteka Zakładu
Another sermon also used a classical distinction (although the end of the
sermon is now lost) according to the various personages appearing in the
biblical parable: the good shepherd, the mercenary, the wolf, and the
sheep.26 A number of sermons on the same theme chose to analyze all the
protagonists of the parable, as did a sermon by Pope Innocent III.27
When preachers were presenting St. Stanislaus as an exemplar of
the good shepherd for clerics, they focused mainly on two aspects (besides
his martyrdom): firstly, on his personal moral perfection and virtues
(conversatio, sancta vita, and so on) and secondly, on his fulfilment of
pastoral duties which belonged to the office of a priest or bishop (doctrina
and the like). The two were often interconnected and appeared in various
combinations. The oldest extant statutes of the diocese of Cracow, with a
pastoral manual promulgated by Bishop Nanker in 1320 (re-confirmed
several times before the first half of the fifteenth century, and used in other
dioceses as well), likewise reiterated the universally accepted importance of
these two basic elements in its introduction: Sane quia viris ecclesiasticis duo
principaliter sunt necessaria, videlicet vita et conversacio irreprehensibilis necnon
sciencia scripturarum.28
Many preachers enumerated all the virtues that St. Stanislaus had
and every bishop or prelate ought to have. The oldest example, which was
then often borrowed by other preachers, was the description of pontifical
vestments, in which each piece of clothing signified a virtue, found in a
widespread model sermon from the turn of the fourteenth century, written
by the Dominican Peregrinus of Opole (ca. 1260-1333).29 Other
Narodowego im. Ossolińskich (Library of the National Foundation of the Ossolinski

Family) (hereafter Ossolineum), MS 824/I, fol. 201r-203v, each type of food is signified by
a flower or herb. Pope Innocent III spoke about triplici alimento in his sermon on the theme
Ego sum pastor bonus on the Second Sunday after Easter: Et ipse tribus modis nos pascit, videlicet,
alimento naturae, cibo doctrinae, et pabulo eucharistiae. Innocent III, Sermo XXI. Dominica
Secunda post Pascha, in PL 217, cols. 405-410.
26
Wrocław, Ossolineum MS. 824, fol. 173v. Similarly, a sermon in MS. Cracow, Biblioteka
Czartoryskich (Czartoryski Library) 3793 II, fol. 273-274 on the theme of Ego sum pastor
bonus, is divided into [1] pastor (dat animam), [2] mercenarius (fugit), [3] lupus (rapit).
27
Innocent III, Sermo XXI. Dominica Secunda post Pascha, in PL 217, cols. 405-410.
28
Najstarsze statuty synodalne krakowskie bpa Nankera z 2. paźdiernika 1320 r. [The Oldest
Synodal Statutes of Cracow of Bishop Nanker from 2 October 1320], ed. Jan Fijałek
(Studya i materyaly do historyi ustawodawstwa synodalnego w Polsce, vol. 3) (Cracow:
PAU, 1915), 2; Krzysztof OŜóg, “Duszpasterskie zabiegi biskupów krakowskich w późnym
średniowieczu” [Pastoral Efforts of Cracow Bishops in the Late Middle Ages], Rocznik
Krakowski 71 (2005): 44-47.
29
For Peregrinus and his sermon on St. Stanislaus, see Peregrinus de Opole, Sermones de
tempore et de sanctis, ed. Ryszard Tatarzyński (Warsaw: Institutum Thomisticum PP.
Dominicanorum, 1997), especially the sermon In festo sancti Stanislai on the theme of Talis
decebat ut esset nobis pontifex (Heb 7:26) on pages 584-591; my article “Recepcja kazania
Pastor Bonus 261
universally used metaphors for virtues were various flowers or colors.30

Most often, the saint was presented as full of virtues in various
combinations. Sometimes the qualities were discussed in a general way
only, but at other times episodes or passages taken from his Life
exemplified the particular virtues and described his excellence in pastoral
office. One characteristic episode, which illustrated his fortitudo in a number
of sermons, was how the saintly bishop admonished King Boleslaus, trying
to correct his sinful way of life and opposing his oppression of his
subjects.31
Studies and education were considered prerequisites for the
qualified exercise of pastoral office, catechetical teaching, and preaching.
With time, it became more or less obligatory to mention Stanislaus’
preaching, although it was rather anachronistic. The topos of erudition was
nothing new: a number of sermons echoed the saint’s Life,32 stating that he
had studied at a studium generale or a university abroad, some of them
adding various details. One text went so far as to note that Stanislaus had
attended the studium generale in Paris together with St. Thomas Becket,
although a marginal gloss in one of the manuscript copies adjusted the
faulty information.33 A number of preachers referred to Stanislaus’
Peregryna z Opola o św. Stanisławie w kazaniach autorów późnego średniowiecza” [The

Reception of the Sermon on St. Stanislaus by Peregrinus of Opole in Sermons of Late
Medieval Authors], in Mendykanci w średniowiecznym Krakowie. Zbior studiów [Mendicants in
Medieval Cracow. Collected Studies], ed. K. OŜóg, T. Gałuszka, and A. Zajchowska
(Cracow: Esprit, 2008), 425-458; and chap. 4 of my dissertation, with references to
additional literature.
30
E.g., the iris and its various colors in a sermon on the theme Vidi alterum angelum
descendentem (Rev. 10:1) in MS. Cracow PAN/PAU Library 1707, fol. 262r-263v; various
colors of vestments in a sermon on the theme of Propheta magnus surrexit in nobis (Luke 7:16)
in MS. BUWr I F 581, fol. 252r-254r.
31
Vita sancti Stanislai episcopi Cracoviensis (Vita maior), ed. Wojciech Kętrzyński, Monumenta
Poloniae Historica (MPH) 4 (Lviv: Nakładem Akademii Umiejętności w Krakowie, 1884)
(hereafter Vita maior), 370-371, 384-389; Vita sancti Stanislai episcopi Cracoviensis (Vita
minor), ed. Wojciech Kętrzyński, MPH 4, 283-317 (hereafter Vita minor), 257, 279.
32
Vita maior, 369.
33
A sermon with a life appended on the theme of Ego sum pastor bonus by Nicolaus of
Kozłow in MS. BJ 1614, fol. 78r, notes: Cum igitur primus etatis existens, ad studium generale
venisset. In unum fraternitatem cum beato Thoma Cantuariensi convenit; in qua una domo, uno
comedo, uno lecto, una mensa utentes. . . . The marginal gloss then claims that the information
could not have come from “authentic” sources, as the writer originally claimed, since the
saints were not contemporaries: Istud non potest verificari ex aliquibus cronicis autenticis, eo quod
constet beatum Thomam Cantuariensem occisum fuisse post occisionem sancti Stanislai anno domini
Millesimo centesimo septuagessimo, sanctum autem Stanislaum anno domini Millesimo septuagessimo
octavo ex cronicis autenticis et veris. I discussed this in my article “Preaching on Martyr Bishops
in the Later Middle Ages: Saint Stanislaus of Kraków and Saint Thomas Becket,” in Britain
preaching as an important pastoral activity. Prelates were expected to

preach to their subjects according to Polish synodal prescriptions as well34
Jean Gerson acknowledged the importance of preaching in his synodal
sermon on the theme Ego sum pastor bonus, delivered in Reims in 1408,
which presented one of his most comprehensive programs for Church
reform: he devoted the lengthy first part of his sermon to the preaching
duty of prelates and their necessary education for this task.35
John-Jerome of Prague (born before 1370, died in 1440), the
court preacher who studied in Prague and in Cracow, a Premonstratensian
and later Camaldolese monk, wrote a sermon on Stanislaus (Ego sum pastor
bonus). He emphasized in the Prologue to his model collection of sermons
on saints, Exemplar salutis from 1409, that saints should be examples for his
contemporaries, who should imitate their virtues.36 He selected as the
motto the following verse: “Look and make it according to the pattern,
that was shown to you on the mount” (Exod. 25:40). St. Stanislaus was
then depicted as an example of charity – as a good shepherd, who loved his
and Poland-Lithuania. Contact and Comparison from the Middle Ages to 1795, ed. Richard Unger
and Jakub Basista (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 75; and in my dissertation, p. 247.
34
Zenon A. Kliszko, “Przepisy synodalne w Polsce średniowiecznej o kaznodziejstwie”
[Synodal Prescriptions concerning Preaching in Medieval Poland], Studia Theologica
Varsoviensia 13 (1975): 111-142. The synodal statutes of Bishop Wojciech Jastrzębiec of
Cracow from 1420, which, following the statutes of Nanker, also included a new pastoral
compendium and became popular in other dioceses as well, contained a particular section
about preaching; Statuta Alberti Jastrzębiec Episcopi Cracoviensis, ed. U. Heyzmann, in Statuta
synodalia episcoporum Cracoviensium XIV et XV saeculi, Starodawne Prawa Polskiego Pomniki,
vol. 4 (Cracow: Nakładem Akademii Umiejętności, 1875), 63-86, esp. 77-79; OŜóg,
“Duszpasterskie zabiegi,” 48-51, esp. 50-51.
35
Sermon Bonus pastor animam suam dat pro ovibus suis (Reims, 29 April 1408) appears as
“Sermo de officio pastoris,” in Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, 10 vols., ed. Palémon Glorieux
(Paris: Desclée, 1960-1968), 5, no. 215, 123-144; an analysis and a commentary of the
sermon’s content can be found in Louis B. Pascoe, Jean Gerson: Principles of Church Reform
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), 110-123, 128-145; and in Brian Patrick McGuire, Jean Gerson
and the Last Medieval Reformation (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2005), 182-185, in a cursory way.
36
The collection is preserved in more than ten copies. For biographical details, see Jerzy
Zathey, “Hieronim Jan Silvanus z Pragi,” in PSB 9, 507-509; J. Bidlo, “Čeští emigranti v
době husitské a mnich Jeroným Pražský” [Czech Emigrants in the Hussite Period and the
Monk Jerome of Prague], Časopis Musea království Českého 69 (1895): 118-128, 232-265,
424-452, for John-Jerome, see especially 242-263. More recent works include especially
William Patrick Hyland, “Reform Preaching and Despair at the Council of Pavia-Siena
(1423-1424),” The Catholic Historical Review 84 (1998): 409-430; and idem, “Abbot John-
Jerome of Prague: Preaching and Reform in Early Fifteenth-Century Poland,” Analecta
Praemonstratensia 80 (2004): 5-42. There is also a recent book about his life and career,
based on older literature and partially also on his works, by Jan Stejskal, Podivuhodný příběh
Jana Jeronýma [The Curious Story of John-Jerome] (Prague: Mladá fronta, 2004).
Pastor Bonus 263
sheep with such love that he gave his life for them.37 Like many others,
John-Jerome formulated several imperatives for the clergy, who were
expected to follow the example of the holy bishop: they ought to love God
and sacrifice themselves if necessary, they ought to be chaste and celibate,
and they ought to teach and preach, for which they had to have the
required knowledge. His efforts to reform the status quo led him not only to
compose sermon collections and a confessional manual for pastoral use and
as a clerical aid,38 but also to present the ideal that clerics should follow in
the footsteps of St. Stanislaus.
John-Jerome’s contemporary Stanislaus of Skarbimiria (ca. 1360-
1431), a renowned cathedral preacher and university teacher, explicitly
urged his audience, perhaps consisting of clerics, to examine the life of the
saintly bishop closely and to follow him, in his sermon on the translation
feast of St. Stanislaus, which he delivered in 1394 or 1412, although it did
not start with the theme Ego sum pastor bonus, but with the verse Statuit ei
Dominus testamentum pacis (Sir. 45:30).39 The author compared Stanislaus,
who had known and followed the books of the Scripture, to a book full of
virtues, with a “cover full of precious stones, which contained everything
which pertained to episcopal perfection.”40 St. Stanislaus “meditated day
and night” about God’s Testament, the Holy Scripture, including passages
37
MS. Budapest University Library, Cod. Lat. 50, fol. 309r-v: Inspice et sanctum presulem
Stanislaum servum caritatis exemplum, qui more boni pastoris oves sibi comissas tanto fervore caritatis
dilexit, quod pro eis animam morti exposuit, quia bonus pastor animam suam dat pro ovibus suis. The
sermon on Stanislaus with a short redaction of the life appended can be found in ibid., fol.
313v-316v.
38
Hyland, “Abbot John-Jerome,” 8. In 1430, John-Jerome wrote a work called De vera et
falsa poenitentia at the request of the Polish bishop Stanislaus of Płock, which resembles a
confessional summa and was meant rather for secular priests (Stejskal, Podivuhodný příběh
Jana Jeronýma, 63-65). He criticized the way of life and the low morals of contemporary
prelates and called for a moral renewal in his several other works, especially in the sermons
delivered at the Council of Pavia-Siena in 1423-1424; see Hyland, “Reform Preaching and
Despair at the Council of Pavia-Siena,” 409-430; Stejskal, Podivuhodný příběh Jana Jeronýma,
42-45.
39
The sermon is preserved in MS. BJ 190, fol. 315r-317r. For Stanislaus of Skarbimiria and
an overview of his preaching, see Jerzy Wolny, “Uwagi nad kaznodziejstwiem
uniwesyteckim w Krakowie w XV. stuleciu” [Some Considerations on University Preaching
in Fifteenth-Century Cracow], in Sw. Jan Kanty – w sześćsetną rocznicę urodzin (1390-1990)
[St. John Cantius – The Six Hundredth Anniversary of his Birth], ed. Roman M. Zawadzki
(Cracow: Kolegiata Św. Anny w Krakowie, 1991), 36-43; on this collection, see Roman M.
Zawadzki, Spuścizna pisarska Stanisława ze Skarbimierza. Studium Ŝródłoznawcze [Written
Heritage of Stanislaus of Skarbimiria. A Source Study] (Cracow: Polskie Towarzystwo
Teologiczne, 1979), 29-30.
40
MS. BJ 190, fol. 316r: ipse liber scriptus intus et foris [Ezek. 2:9; Rev. 5:1] virtutibus, cuius
operimentum est omnis lapis preciosus [Ezek. 28:13], in quo quidquid ad perfeccionem episcopalem
pertinet, est repertum.
from St. Paul’s Epistle to Timothy (1Tim. 3:2-5) and Titus (Tit. 1:7-9),
which were frequently cited when discussing rules for bishops.41 The
preacher insisted that the life of St. Stanislaus contained all aspects of this
rule as described by the Apostle, and invited his audience to examine it.42
Stanislaus of Skarbimiria repeated the invitation to examine the holy
exemplars of priesthood and encouraged his audience to read their lives
and the Scripture in another of his sermons, which he delivered before
students, prospective or actual priests, or possibly on the occasion of a
consecration. Such reading of saints’ lives, he said, should not be motivated
by curiosity or vain knowledge, but by desire for edification.43 Stanislaus of
Skarbimiria also preached to clerical audiences at synods held in the
Cracow diocese.44
Well versed in canon law, Stanislaus of Skarbimiria used a host of
references to canon law collections, like his contemporaries John-Jerome of
Prague and Matthew of Koło (d. 1441).45 These sermon authors quoted
various passages from the Church Fathers concerning the requirements for
bishops and prelates, mostly through canonistic texts: Gratian’s Decretum,
the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, and others.46 When discussing pastoral
duties, Stanislaus of Skarbimiria47 and others employed the Pseudo-
Dionysian vocabulary, which was extensively used and re-defined by Jean
41
Ibid., fol. 316r: Ipse in testamento Dei meditabatur die ac nocte et si vis scire, audi qualiter, ut
patet, videantur opera sua bona et glorificaretur Pater celestis. Ecce namque Apostolus 1 Ad
Thimotheum IIIo [2-5] inquit: oportet episcopum. . . . Et eandem regulam tradit in epistula ad
Thitum [1:7-9], licet aliquiter variat aliqua, ubi ait. . . . For the use of these Scriptural
passages in the Middle Ages, see Anton G. Weiler, “The Requirements of the Pastor Bonus
in the Late Middle Ages,” in The Pastor Bonus, 57-58.
42
MS. BJ 190, fol. 316r: Quere, lege vitam istius sancti, attende signa, obstupesce prodigia, et
videbis, quod nedum in flore premissa puncta regule apostolice, sed et in maturitate reperies. Vide
ingressum ad cathedram, cerne progressum in cathedra, contemplare egressum in agone.
43
Stanislaus de Skarbimiria, Sermones sapientiales, vol. 3, 187 (no. XCIX, “De sacerdotum
vita et honestate,” Honorifice sacerdotes [Eccl. 7]): Sacerdos es, sciens legem Dei. Lege igitur
sanctorum vitam et doctrinam, tum ut comparatione ipsorum vita tua tibi sordescat, tam ut vita
sanctorum et doctrina flamma dileccionis in te accendat, tum ut provoceris ad studium virtutum et
informeris in intellectum sanctarum scripturarum, tam ut scias discernere verum a falso et bonum a
malo et vitium a virtute. Non legas vel studeas, ut doctus aut curiosus videaris, non legas, quae non
aedificant, quis vana lectio vanas cogitationes generat et mentis devocionem extinguit.
44
Sermons delivered at the synod of Cracow in 1408 are edited in Stanislaus de Skarbimiria,
Sermones sapientiales, ed. BoŜena Chmielowska, vol. 1 (Warsaw: Akademia Teologii
Katolickiej, 1979), nos. 3 and 4, 44-76.
45
He recorded a sermon on St. Stanislaus (Talis decebat, Heb. 7:26) in his manuscript BJ
836, fol. 158v-159v. About the author, see Maria Kowalczyk, “Maciej z Koła,” in PSB 19,
20-21; Wolny, Uwagi, 46.
46
Weiler, “The Requirements of the Pastor Bonus,” 59-76.
47
Stanislaus of Skarbimiria said: ordo sit in rebus, ut superiora purgent, illuminent et perficiant
media et infima. BJ 190, fol. 315r.
Pastor Bonus 265
Gerson in roughly the same period. Jean Gerson adopted the Dionysian
terms – to purify, to illuminate, and to perfect – in order to describe the
duties of prelates in relation to the laity: they were to illuminate the
faithful with their teaching and preaching, purify them through their
example, and perfect them by the administration of sacraments.48 Gerson
employed the same vocabulary in his synodal sermon on the Pastor bonus in
Reims, on which occasion he explained all three pastoral duties more
thoroughly.49
Frequently the preachers emphasized that the dignity of priestly
or episcopal office lay not only in the capacity of the office itself, but also in
the moral qualities that the true prelate should possess and in the good
deeds and charity that he exercised. They rarely forgot to indicate the
deficiencies of their contemporaries in this sphere. One of the theological
problems that sprang from this matter was the validity of sacraments
administered by sinful priests. This theological issue had very practical
implications for the lives of Christian communities, and it became
extremely topical in the age of the Hussite reform movement. Sermons to
clergy repeatedly emphasized moral imperatives. This prerequisite for the
priesthood was never questioned, although the reality was often more
complicated and the Church had to deal with and, in a way, tolerate
human imperfection. Nicolaus of Kozłow (ca. 1378-1443), a doctor of
theology and another important figure in Cracow 50 composed a large part
of his sermon on Stanislaus, held at the Council of Basel in 1435, around
this issue. Based on the Ego sum pastor bonus theme, it dealt more precisely
with a particular theological quaestio: Utrum ultra necessitatem salutis
pastoralis perfeccio ipsius ovibus afferat quid utilitatis.51 This was already the
period when the Hussite movement was perceived as an acute problem and
a threat, not only in Bohemia, but also in the neighboring Poland, and the
48
Catherine D. Brown, Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 39-55; and Pascoe, Jean Gerson, 113ff.
49
Jean Gerson, “Sermo de officio pastoris,” 123-144. For perhaps the most elaborate
application to the problem of ecclesiastical reform in a conciliar context, see Gerson’s tract
from 1417 called De potestate ecclesiastica in his Oeuvres complètes, ed. Glorieux, 6:210-250 (as
n. 35, above).
50
For more about his biography, activities, and works, see Mieczysław Markowski, “Mikołaj
z Kozłowa,” in Materialy i studia Zakładu Historii filozofii staroŜytnej i średniowiecznej
[Materials and Studies of the Department of History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy],
vol. 5 (Wrocław-Warsaw-Cracow: Wydawnictwo PAN, 1965), 76-141; and idem, Dzieje
wydziału, 129-132; Krzysztof OŜóg, Uczeni w monarchii Jadwigi Andegaweńskiej i Władysława
Jagiełły (1384-1434) [Intellectuals in the Monarchy of Hedwig of Anjou and Wladislaus
Jagiełło] (Cracow: PAU, 2004), 107-111.
51
MS. BJ 1614, fol. 74v-81; a truncated copy in MS. Oxford, Balliol College 165a, fol.
744v-748; and a different redaction in MS. BJ 1354, pp. 182-186.
Hussites were often fervently discussed at the university in Cracow before,

during, and after the Council of Basel.52 Naturally, these debates were
addressed to the gatherings of higher, educated clergy, after which the
final, uniform, and unambiguous position could be transmitted to the
diocesan clergy and further down (either in sermons or in normative
documents such as synodal statutes, edicts, or pastoral manuals).
Generally, the theological position ex opere operato, reiterated when facing
anticlerical movements (or when the authority of the priesthood
decreased), and triggered by thinkers such as Wycliff and Hus, meant that
the validity of the sacraments performed by a cleric’s action did not depend
on his virtue or character, but only on the capacity of his office, which he
gained upon his ordination.53 The sacramental sacerdotal power, as a
privilege and source of authority for the clergy, required reiteration by
theologians and preachers. In his sermon – while developing his first
conclusion – Nicolaus of Kozłow said that only the best from the virtuous
were to be elected pastors. He further admitted that, although it was very
dangerous to have unfit pastors (and he enumerated the dangers resulting
from having bad shepherds, as well as the benefits for the flock of having
virtuous ones), their perversity neither obstructed the efficacy of the
52
From the vast literature on the subject, see a concise overview of the Hussite heresy in
relation to the Council of Basel in Michael D. Bailey, Battling Demons. Witchcraft, Heresy, and
Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2003),
55-74; and Johannes Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil 1431-1449: Forschungsstand und Probleme
(Cologne: Böhlau, 1987), 353-72; František M. Bartoš, The Hussite Revolution 1424-1437,
ed. and trans. John M. Klassen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 73-111. For
Poland and the Hussite heresy and movement, see the monograph by Paweł Kras, Husyci w
piętnastowiecznej Polsce [Hussites in Fifteenth-Century Poland] (Lublin: Towarzystwo
Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1998); and more specifically J. Garbacik
and A. Strzelecka, “Uniwersytet Krakowski wobec problemów husyckich w XV wieku”
[Cracow University Facing the Hussite Problems in the Fifteenth Century], Acta
Universitatis Carolinae – Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 5 (1964), fasc. 1-2, 7-12;
Tomasz Graff, “Biskupi monarchii Jagiellonskiej wobec herezji husyckiej w pierwszej
polowie XV wieku” [Bishops of the Jagiellonian Monarchy in the First Half of the Fifteenth
Century], Nasza Przeszlość 109 (2008): 37-53; Jan Drabina, “Episkopat polski wobec
husytyzmu” [Polish Bishops Facing Hussitism], in Polskie echa husytyzmu, Materiały z
konferencji naukowej Kłodzko, 27-28 września 1996 [The Polish Echoes of Hussitism.
Materials from the Conference in Kłodzko, 27-28 September 1996], ed. Stanisław Bylina
and Ryszard Gładkiewicz (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Historii PAN, 1999), 63-81.
53
For the issue in sermons by John Milicius of Kroměříž/Cremsir, see Peter C. A. Morée,
Preaching in Fourteenth-Century Bohemia. The Life and Ideas of Milicius de Chremsir and His
Significance in the Historiography of Bohemia (Heršpice: EMAN, 1999), 130. As a practical
problem in Gerson’s teaching, see Brown, Pastor and Laity, 41-42. For the position of ex
opere operato, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 35, 50.
Pastor Bonus 267
sacraments, nor hindered the eventual salvation of their subjects.54 The

issue was addressed by numerous theologians in that period, for example in
Cracow in the times of Bishop Wysz.55 The synodal statutes of 1420 dealt
with the problem in terms of the sacrament of the holy orders. The statute
made clear that the priest administering the sacraments in a state of sin
committed a sin, but the sacraments were nevertheless valid.56
Criticism of contemporary prelates was visible already in the lives
of St. Stanislaus, especially in the Vita written by Długosz, side by side
with the role model represented by the holy bishop.57 It was a recurrent
topic of synodal sermons and sermons ad clerum given on various occasions,
including those on Thomas Becket. Criticism did not usually appear in the
sermons preached in front of lay or uneducated audiences in an orthodox
milieu (as it did with the Lollards, the Hussites, and so on).58 This was a
general tendency: when a preacher wanted to criticize his fellow clerics, he
was expected to do that in front of a clerical audience only, and not
instigate anticlerical feelings among the laity, as the Lollards and the
Hussites had been doing. Sermons on St. Stanislaus were no exception. A
number of them could have actually been addressed ad clerum (at the
general chapter assemblies or synods on the feasts of St. Stanislaus in the
cathedral in Cracow).59 For example, Bartholomew of Jasło (1360-1407), a
university master, who preached on St. Stanislaus on the theme Iustus sicud
leo (Prov. 28:1) in front of a clerical audience in the Cracow cathedral in
1391, sharply criticised the clerics’ mistakes, their meanness, their behavior
at processions, and their lack of inner piety.60 Much of the criticism in
sermons was surely a commonplace. The authors explicitly or implicitly
54
For instance, BJ 1614, fol. 75v: et si periculosum est pastores habere indignos ac tamen eorum
perversitas nec efficaciam aufert sacramentis nec salutem minuit subiectorum.
55
Władysław Seńko, Piotr Wysz z Radolina i jego dzieło Speculum aureum [Peter Wysz of
Radolin and His Work Speculum Aureum] (Warsaw: Instytut Tomistyczny OO.
Dominikanów, 1996), 249: Quaestiones factae per magistrum Stephanum et Petrum episcopum
Cracoviensem, q. 24: Quaritur, utrum presbyter peccans et celebrans missam, utrum prodest alicui.
Respondetur quod prodest, quia materialia ministerii non vitiant divinitatem; quia prodest illis, pro
quibus celebrat; et ergo, si non paenitebit pro illo, damnabitur perpetue.
56
Statuta Alberti Jastrzębiec Episcopi Cracoviensis, 69; OŜóg, “Duszpasterskie zabiegi,” 49.
57
See chap. 1.1 of my dissertation, “Preaching Saint Stanislaus,” for details.
58
Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections, 269-277.
59
See the reference above, n. 16.
60
Autograph of the sermon in MS. BJ 2192, fol. 28r-32r. It has been transcribed by Jan
Kuś, “Justus sicut leo: Studium z ikonografii św. Stanisława Szczepanowskiego” [A Study
on the Iconography of St. Stanislaus of Szczepanow], Rocznik Krakowski 51 (1987): 5-22.
For more about the author and his work, see Maria Kowalczyk, “Odnowienie Uniwersytetu
Krakowskiego w świetle mów Bartłomieja z Jasła” [The Restoration of Cracow University
in the Light of Bartholomew of Jasło’s Speeches], Małopolskie Studia Historyczne 6 (1964),
nos. 3-4, 37-38; Wolny, “Uwagi,” 31-36; OŜóg, Uczeni, 76-79.
borrowed ideas from well-circulated and well-known authorities, the

Church Fathers, and canon law (authors like Gregory the Great, Bernard
of Clairvaux, or Pseudo-Chrysostom). In some cases, what looked like a
colorful, fervent, and highly topical criticism turned out to be another
authority called upon to help the preacher. Numerous treatises, as well as
repeated prescriptions and bans in synodal statutes, prove that the urge to
purge the clerics’ way of life recurrently, or rather, continuously pertained
to the efforts of religious revival.61 Nevertheless, some issues were surely
topical. Sermons on St. Stanislaus, especially those from the end of the
fourteenth century and the fifteenth century, represent only a small
portion of a number of other works of various genres (treatises, sermons,
etc.) that were preoccupied with an ideal bishop and prelate, criticised the
moral and intellectual state of contemporary clerics, and called for
renewal.62
The preachers’ exhortations were in accord with the reformist
activities of the Polish and Cracow bishops in the pastoral field during this
period, and with a general turn to practical pastoral theology.63 Master
Bartholomew, his contemporary Stanislaus of Skarbimiria, and other
intellectuals in Cracow strove together with the bishops John Radlica and
61
Historians have various opinions about the real value and effects of criticism in medieval
synodal preaching and preaching ad clerum; e.g. Gerald R. Owst (Preaching in Medieval
England: An Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts of the Period c. 1350-1450 [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1926; reprint New York: Russell and Russell, 1965], 251)
considers this criticism to be full of formalism, routine, and moralising, and mainly “a
tradition to be maintained”; while, conversely, another historian has suggested that the
sermons were closer to reality than the normative sources (at least the reportationes, like
those by Eudes Rigaud, which he dealt with), and had supposedly a certain influence on the
priests; Louis Duval-Arnould, “Trois sermons synodaux de la collection attribuée à Jean de
la Rochelle,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 69 (1976): 336-400 and 70 (1977): 35-71,
here 337.
62
For the contemporary priestly ideal, see Joseph Avril, “Peut-on parler d’un ‘idéal
sacerdotal’ à la fin du Moyen Age?” in Recherches sur l’économie ecclésiale à la fin du Moyen Age
autour des collégiales de Savoie. Actes de la table ronde internationale d’Annecy, 26-28 avril 1990
(Annecy: Académie Salésienne, 1991), 11-26. Among others, important figures like Pierre
d’Ailly and Jean Gerson wrote treatises and sermons on the reform of the clergy; see Louis
B. Pascoe, Church and Reform: Bishops, Theologians, and Canon Lawyers in the Thought of Pierre
d’Ailly (1351-1420) (Leiden: Brill, 2005), esp. chapters 2-4; and idem, Jean Gerson, 110-
164; Brown, Pastor and Laity. Besides that, the humanist genre of recommendations for
bishops and clerics, reminiscent of similar works for noblemen, started to proliferate from
the second half of the fifteenth century; see Oliver Logan, “The Ideal of the Bishop and the
Venetian Patriciate: c. 1430-c. 1630,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 29 (1978): 415-440.
63
For the reform activities of Bishop Peter Wysz and also for practical pastoral theology, see
Mieczysław Markowski, Dzieje Wydziału teologii Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego w latach 1397-
1525 [History of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Cracow in 1397-1525]
(Cracow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Papieskiej Akademii Teologicznej, 1996), especially 80-
94 .
Pastor Bonus 269
his successor Peter Wysz (1392-1412) (and with the support of King
Wladislaus Jagiello) for the restoration of the university (1390), which
would bring forth moral renovation and education to the clergy, who
would then become good shepherds of their flocks.64 Diocesan synodal
statutes and pastoral compendia presented an ideal for clerics throughout
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.65 Manuscripts containing treatises
and sermons (synodal or others addressed ad clerum) by renowned preachers
(such as the sermons delivered by Matthew of Cracow66 and Jan Milíč of
Kromĕříž/Milicius of Cremsir at synods in Prague67) circulated among the
clergy. Channels of diffusion of these renewal ideas were facilitated and
strengthened by personal contacts of the Polish lands with Bohemia,
through the Poles who studied at Prague University in the late fourteenth
century (among the authors of sermons on St. Stanislaus, one should
mention Matthew of Koło, Stanislaus of Skarbimiria, Bartholomew of
Jasło, and Nicolaus of Kozłow – practically the entire older generation of
intellectuals from the period before the university was established in
Cracow), and also through a number of Bohemians active in Poland
(among the authors of sermons on Stanislaus, one should mention John-
Jerome of Prague).68 A whole group of clerical intellectuals at the court of
Queen Hedwig (Jadwiga) of Anjou promoted church reform, including
Stanislaus of Skarbimiria, Bartholomew of Jasło, Jan Štěkna, John-Jerome,
and Henry Bitterfeld.69
64
Kowalczyk, “Odnowienie,” 23-42; Wolny, “Uwagi,” 31-36.
65
OŜóg, “Duszpasterskie zabiegi,” 41-53; Kazimierz Dola, “XV-wieczne synody diecezji
wrocławskiej o Ŝyciu i posłudze kleru” [Fifteenth-Century Synods in the Diocese of
Wrocław on the Life and Duties of Clergy], Studia Teologiczno-Historyczne Śląska Opolskiego 4
(1974): 85-106. For synodal statutes and materials for the instruction of clergy in general,
see Weiler, “The Requirements of the Pastor Bonus,” 76-82.
66
Five sermons of Matthew of Cracow delivered at synods in Prague between the years
1378-1389 have been edited in “Sermones synodales,” in Mateusza z Krakowa “De praxi
Romanae Curiae,” ed. Władysław Seńko (Wrocław-Warsaw-Cracow: Ossolineum-
Wydawnictwo PAN, 1969), 125-175.
67
Iohannis Milicii de Cremsir, Tres sermones synodales, ed. Vilém Herold and Milan Mráz
(Prague: Academia, 1974); also analyzed by Marie Bláhová, “Milíč von Kromĕříž und seine
Synodalpredigten,” in Partikularsynoden im späten Mittelalter, ed. Nathalie Kruppa and
Leszek Zygner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2006), 363-376.
68
About the beginnings of the reform movement in Prague and the criticism of clergy, see
among others: Olivier Marin, L’archevêque, le maître et le dévot: Genèses du mouvement
réformateur pragois (1360-1419) (Paris: Éditions Champion, 2005). For the Bohemian-Polish
contacts, see Bidlo, “Čeští emigranti v době husitské a mnich Jeroným Pražský,” 118-128,
232-265, 424-452.
69
Krzysztof OŜóg, “Kościół krakowski wobec wielkiej schizmy zachodniej i ruchu
soborowego u schylku XIV i w pierwszej połowe XV wieku” [The Church of Cracow Facing
the Great Schism and Conciliar Movement at the End of the Fourteenth and in the First
In these sermons on the saintly bishop, especially those intended

for clerical audience, St. Stanislaus embodied the ideals of renewal: he was
a prelate of high moral and intellectual stature, who fulfilled his pastoral
duties towards the faithful entrusted to him. The topic of the good
shepherd and the ideal prelate, and criticism of the clergy in its current
state, were by no means uncommon. However, what was special was the
strong connection with a figure other than Christ himself and the fact that
the sermons were not reduced to a mere generalized discussion – they
exemplified the virtues and actions of the good shepherd by using actual
data from the saint’s legend. Did preachers present other saints and other
bishops as exemplars of conduct to the clergy? Did the reformers come up
with concrete role models besides Christ when they spoke about the ideal
prelate in the Late Middle Ages? Or – to put it differently – did they make
use of the bishops’ cults and the preaching opportunities on their feast days
to speak about moral and pastoral reform?
Hagiography likewise provided a model for the bishop and the
prelate, although episcopal sainthood was in crisis in the Late Middle Ages.
Vauchez has observed that, statistically, even at the upper levels of the
Roman Church, bishops had lost favor as candidates for sainthood from the
end of the thirteenth century onwards. While episcopal cults remained
important (and even new bishops were proposed for canonization) in
England, Scandinavia, and Central-Eastern Europe, they were much less
represented in the Germanic countries and above all in Italy. Italy was rich
in regular and lay saints, who also sought the reformation of the Church.
However, it was not so much interested in venerating new saints from the
ranks of secular clergy, or from the ecclesiastical hierarchy.70 Vauchez
maintains that the cults of the martyr-bishops, the “Becket duplications,”
enjoyed great success in countries with a powerful episcopate and a
monarchy weakened by the increasing power of the aristocracy, such as
England and Poland, but no longer worked in urban societies like Italy.
These cults, Saint Stanislaus’ cult among them, manifested the prestige
and ambitions of the episcopate and the clergy at the expense of royal
power.71 Several fifteenth-century bishops became saints because they
Half of the Fifteenth Century], in Kościół krakowski w Ŝyciu państwa i narodu polskiego, ed.
Andrzej Pankowicz (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PAT, 2002), 21-60.
70
André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 305-310. On the crisis of episcopal sainthood, also Bernard Guillemain,
“L’exercice du pouvoir épiscopal à la fin du moyen âge,” in L’institution et les pouvoirs dans les
églises de l’Antiquité à nos jours. Colloque de Strasbourg, septembre 1983, ed. Bernard Vogler
(Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1987), 101-132.
71
For the support of Stanislaus’ cult by the bishops of Cracow (Prandota, Zbigniew
Oleśnicki), see my MA thesis, “The Construction of the Image and Cult of Saint Stanislaus
Pastor Bonus 271
abhorred or renounced their office, considering it as an obstruction rather

than a means of sanctification, such as the Franciscan St. Louis of Toulouse
or Anjou (1274-1297)72 and St. Peter of Luxembourg (1369-1387).73
Moreover, they both came from important noble families, which raised
their prestige and chances for canonization. They did not quite fall into the
pattern of the good shepherd, active in pastoral care. Saintly bishops,
precisely as the exponents of Church reform, were rehabilitated more
universally later, with the Council of Trent (1545-63) and with the Italian
St. Carlo Borromeo (1538-1584), making the ideal become the reality.74
Late medieval sermons presented St. Stanislaus and St. Thomas
Becket as ascetic, praying, and charity-working men, but also as bishops
who did not neglect their pastoral duties. Among many others, Richard
FitzRalph (ca. 1300-1360), a zealous Irish prelate and Archbishop of
Armagh, who fashioned his own life and pastoral office according to the
model of Becket, preached on Becket as an exemplar of the good shepherd
at the papal court in Avignon.75 Phyllis Roberts has shown that numerous
other preachers presented Becket as an exemplar of the good shepherd.76
as a Holy Bishop from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century” (Budapest, Central
European University, 2003), especially 24-36, 46-66. Other bishops besides Stanislaus of
Cracow were venerated, and there were attempts to establish bishops’ cults in various
regions of Poland.
72
Canonization process launched in 1308; canonized in 1317. Vauchez, Sainthood, 307-309.
For the details of Louis of Anjou’s life and sanctity, see Margaret R. Toynbee, St. Louis of
Toulouse and the Process of Canonisation in the Fourteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1929).
73
Canonization process launched in 1387, but canonized only in the sixteenth century.
Vauchez, Sainthood, 307, 309-310. About St. Peter of Luxembourg, see, most recently,
Johannes Helmrath, “Aktenversendung und Heilungswunder. Kanonisierung des Peter von
Luxemburg (1369-1387) und die Überlieferung seines Kanonisationsprozesses,” in Religiöse
Bewegungen im Mittelalter. Festschrift für Matthias Werner zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Enno Bünz,
Stefan Tebruk, and Helmut G. Walther (Köln-Weimar-Wien: Historische Kommission für
Thüringen, 2007), 649-662.
74
Guillemain, “L’exercice du pouvoir épiscopal à la fin du moyen âge,” 131-132. For Carlo
Borromeo as an ideal, see Logan, “The Ideal of the Bishop and the Venetian Patriciate,”
437ff.; Giuseppe Alberigo, “Carlo Borromeo come modello di vescovi nella chiesa post-
tridentina,” Rivista storica italiana 79 (1967): 1031-1052; Joseph Bergin, “The Counter-
Reformation Church and Its Bishops,” Past and Present 165 (1999): 30-73.
75
He preached several sermons ad clerum there, in 1335, 1340, and 1341, which are
preserved in his sermon diary; for their analysis, and also for his portrait, see Katherine
Walsh, A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard FitzRalph in Oxford, Avignon and
Armagh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). The sermons are analyzed on pp. 188-195.
76
Roberts, Inventory, 32-34; and eadem, “Thomas Becket: The Construction and
Deconstruction of a Saint from the Middle Ages to the Reformation,” in Models of Holiness in
Medieval Sermons, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale
des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 1996), 8-12. Phyllis Roberts views the emphasis on the
exemplary aspect as evidence of a concept of sanctity that came closer to real life for
For Pierre d’Ailly, a reformer and bishop himself, bishops were supposed to
act as the main initiators of reform in the whole Church, and their moral
renewal, accompanied by pastoral activity, was for him a precondition for
the reform of other members of the Church and of the whole institution.
Pierre d’Ailly saw not the monastic and mendicant orders, but the
spiritually renewed episcopacy as the primary agents in the reformation of
the Church.77 D’Ailly’s disciple Jean Gerson was also engaged in efforts for
the reform of clergy and the Church, and he equally emphasized the crucial
role of the prelates and especially their moral and pastoral qualities in the
revival of the Church.78 Pierre d’Ailly preached on St. Louis of Anjou, the
Franciscan Bishop of Toulouse, in 1417 at the Council of Constance,79 and
promoted the canonization of another bishop, Peter of Luxembourg, by
preaching a sermon on him at the papal court in Avignon in 1389.80
Pascoe has demonstrated that the preacher presented the saints as role
models for prelates, although they had been considered saintly not so much
because they had fulfilled their episcopal duties (which they almost
abhorred and tried to escape), but rather because they had renounced
them, as Vauchez maintains. D’Ailly presented the two bishops as
examples of a morally and intellectually renewed episcopacy.81
The ideal personified by a bishop or a cleric was not frequent and
not easily found in this period, which witnessed growing anti-clerical
sentiments and criticism of contemporary clerics. Although not many
bishops who lived in the late medieval period were considered saintly and
venerated, preachers could still turn back to a more distant history for their
exemplars. For example, preachers ad clerum in the cathedral of Wrocław
presented St. John the Baptist as an exemplar.82 St. John the Baptist was
everyone, something achievable that could be followed there and then, a concept that
strengthened in the thirteenth century, as argued by Vauchez, Sainthood, 340-352.
77
Pascoe, Church and Reform, 49.
78
For example, Gerson’s sermon, “Sermo de officio pastoris,” in his Œuvres complètes, ed.
Glorieux, vol. 5, no. 215, 123-144; and “Sermo Dominicae misericordie Domini,” in Jean
Gerson, Opera omnia, ed. L. E. du Pin, vol. 3 (Antwerp, 1706), cols. 1214-1222. Gerson’s
thought has been well analyzed by Pascoe, Jean Gerson, and Brown, Pastor and Laity.
79
“Sermo de Sancto Ludovico Tolosano I,” in Petrus de Ailliaco, Tractatus et sermones
(Straßburg, 1490).
80
“Collatio pro apotheosi Petri de Luxemburgo I,” in César Égasse du Boulay (Bulaeus),
Historia Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. 4 (Paris, 1668, reprint Leiden: Brill, 1966), 651-669.
81
See the sermons of Pierre d’Ailly cited above, and the sub-chapter on “Episcopal Models
of the Apostolic Life” in Pascoe, Church and Reform, 157-164.
82
I would like to thank Dr. Anna Zajchowska, who in her dissertation has analyzed the
sermons ad clerum composed by Jan Frankenstein of Ząbkowice, OP, for pointing this out to
me in an informal conversation; Między uniwersytetem a zakonem - rękopiśmienna spuścizna
filozoficzno-teologiczna i źródła do biografii dominikanina Jana z Ząbkowic (zm. 1446) [Between
the University and the Order: The Manuscript Philosophical-Theological Heritage and the
Pastor Bonus 273
the patron saint of the cathedral and the diocese, and the gatherings of
clergy (synods, chapter assemblies) took place on his feast day. Similarly to
St. Stanislaus in Cracow and St. Thomas Becket, it was a good occasion for
preaching to the clergy, presenting a role model and criticizing their own
deficiencies. There may be other examples of bishop-saints like these.
Thomas Becket became an exemplar of clerical probity in the eyes of the
reformist theologians in Paris (like Peter the Chanter, Stephen Langton,
and others) at the end of the twelfth century,83 just as St. Stanislaus would
later be for the reformists in Cracow and Poland.
Two aspects of the message related to Stanislaus’s sanctity, the
exemplary and the admirable, are present in the dossier of collected
sermons. A number of sermons tried to preserve the balance between the
two, presenting both the saint’s meritum, which he showed in his life, and
the premium, with which he was rewarded in heaven, as a career pattern to
which everybody was invited. Thus, sermons presented St. Stanislaus both
as an achievable role model in life and as an advocate acting from heaven.
Emphasis on the bishop’s life as an exemplar was directed in particular to
the clerics, his successors in the office of spiritual shepherds, to whom
sermons on St. Stanislaus were preached also on special occasions of clerical
gatherings on his feast days. Interestingly, Bishop Stanislaus, who died at
the apogee of the Gregorian reform, was canonized in the aftermath of the
reformist Fourth Lateran Council, and remained a role model for clerics in
the fifteenth century.
Sources for the Biography of Jan of Ząbkowice] (Unpublished Ph.D dissertation,

Jagiellonian University, Wydział Historyczny – Institute of History, Cracow, 2009).
83
This dimension has been especially emphasized by Anne Duggan, Thomas Becket, 236,
264-266, who has warned against reducing him to “a caricature of ‘Gregorianism’ or
‘narrow clericalism’,” instead of seeing him as the moral and ethical exemplar that he would
have been for reformist clerics.
Contributors
Rachel Anderson received her Ph.D. from Indiana University in
Bloomington and is currently an Associate Professor of English at Grand
Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her research has
focused on Anglo-Saxon religious writing and saints’ lives; she is currently
finishing a book on King Edward the Martyr of England. Recent
publications include a revised and updated edition of her chapter “Saints’
Lives” in A History of Old English Literature (2012) and “The Old Testament
Homily: Ælfric as Biblical Translator” in Precedence, Practice, and
Appropriation: The Old English Homily, ed. Aaron Kleist (2007).
John Marcus Beard received his PhD in religion from Syracuse University
(2009) and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Women, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies at Gettysburg College. His most recent research
focuses on reading the lives of the saints from the perspective of theories on
intersexuality and third genders and exploring ‘queer’ families in late
antique and medieval Christianity.
Luciana Cuppo teaches at Padua, is a contributor to the International

Medieval Bibliography (University of Leeds), and studies the transmission of
manuscripts related to Vivarium in Calabria. Her recent publications
include “Felix of Squillace and the Dionysiac computus I: Bobbio and
Northern Italy (MS Ambrosiana H 150 inf.)” in The Easter Controversy of
Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, eds. Dáibhi Ó Cróinín and Immo
Warntjes (2012), and “Moses and the Paschal Liturgy” in Illuminating
Moses: A History of Reception, ed. Jane Beal (forthcoming in 2013). She is
currently preparing an edition with English translation of Complexiones in
Apocalypsi of Cassiodorus for the Library of Early Christianity directed by
John Petruccione.
Stephanos Efthymiadis is Professor at the Open University of Cyprus. He

has published numerous studies on Byzantine hagiography, historiography,
and prosopography. He co-edited (with Alicia Simpson) the volume Niketas
Choniates: a Historian and a Writer (2009). A volume of collected articles on
Byzantine hagiography appeared in the Variorum Collected Studies series
in 2011. He is the editor of Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine
Hagiography, of which vol. I appeared in 2011 and vol. II is now in press.
His future project is to publish a monograph on Trends and Techniques of
Rewriting in Byzantium.
276
Evan A. Gatti (PhD University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is

Associate Professor of Art History at Elon University. Gatti’s work focuses
on episcopal liturgical portraiture and questions of categorization, and the
problem of the so-called Ottonian art in North Italy. Her recent
publications include “Building the Body of the Church: A Bishop’s
Blessing in the Benedictional of Engilmar of Parenzo” in The Bishop Re-
formed: Studies in Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages
(2007) and “In a Space Between: Ivrea and the Problem of (Italian)
Ottonian Art” in a special issue of Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art &
Architecture (2010), which she also edited. She recently co-edited an
interdisciplinary volume dedicated to the image of the medieval bishop and
is preparing a study on north Italian painting in the first half of the
eleventh century.
Thomas J. Heffernan is Kenneth Curry Professor in Humanities in the

Departments of English & Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee
and the Director of the University of Tennessee’s Humanities Centre. He
has received a number of prestigious awards, teaching prizes, and honors,
including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and
the American Council of Learned Societies. His recent publications include
(with T. Burman) Scripture and Pluralism. Reading the Bible in the Religiously
Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (2005) and “Martyrdom,
Charisma, and Imitation: Paths to Christian Sanctity” in Church and Society,
ed. G. P. Liacopulos (2007). His paper “The Legacy of Misidentification:
Why the Martyrs in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis were not
from Thuburbo Minus?” was recently submitted to Vigiliae Christianae. His
critical edition of The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity appeared in 2012 with
Oxford University Press. His recent work is on the theology and
representation of vicarious atonement in the martyrologies of the 2nd and
3rd centuries.
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa is Research Fellow (with the title of Associate

Professor) in History, at the University of Tampere, Finland. Her recent
publications include Gender, Miracles and Daily Life. The Evidence of
Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes (2009), “Socialization Gone Astray?
Children and Demonic Possession in Later Middle Ages” in Darker Sides of
Childhood. Marginalisation and Socialisation in Classical and Medieval World,
eds. K. Mustakallio and C. Laes (2011), and “Recent Trends in the Study
of Medieval Canonizations,” History Compass 8/9 (2010). She is currently
working on a project called “Gender and Demonic Possession in Later
Medieval Europe,” funded by the Academy of Finland.
277
Stanislava Kuzmová is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department

of Medieval Studies, Central European University in Budapest, working on
the EuroCORECODE ESF-OTKA project called Symbols that Bind and
Break Communities: Saints’ Cults and Stimuli and Expressions of Local, Regional,
National and Universalist Identities. She received her PhD in Medieval
Studies from CEU, Budapest. Her dissertation Preaching Saint Stanislaus:
Medieval Sermons on Saint Stanislaus of Cracow and Their Role in the
Construction of His Image and Cult is soon to appear in print. Her research
interests include medieval sermons and manuscript sermon collections,
hagiography, and religiosity. Her recent publications include “Division and
Reintegration of St. Stanislaus: A Political Analogy in Sermons?” in
Promoting the Saints’ Cults and Their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the
Early Modern Period , eds. O. Gecser, J Laszlovszky, et al. (2010).
Marina Miladinov received her PhD in Medieval Studies from CEU,

Budapest (2003) and currently teaches Church History and Latin for
Theologians at the Theological Faculty “Matthias Flacius Illyricus” in
Zagreb. Her publications include Margins of Solitude: Eremitism in Central
Europe between East and West (2008) and a series of articles on medieval
hagiography topics, as well as her relatively new field of interest: usage of
saints in Reformation and Counter-Reformation controversies. She has
edited two volumes of proceedings from international conferences
dedicated to Matthias Flacius Illyricus (2008 and 2012), and published
several volumes of translations of medieval Latin sources. She currently
holds a fellowship at Gerda Henkel Stiftung, preparing a book on the
criticism of the veneration of saints in the Reformation period. Miladinov
co-founded Hagiotheca in 2001 and had the honour of serving as its first
president (until 2010).
John S. Ott is Associate Professor of History at Portland State University

in Portland, OR. He is the co-editor, with Anna Trumbore Jones, of The
Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle
Ages (2007), and the author of Bishops, Authority and Community in
Northwestern Europe, c. 1050-1150, forthcoming with Cambridge University
Press. His current research focuses on the poetry, politics, and personalities
of the archiepiscopal court of Reims in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Janine Larmon Peterson is Associate Professor of History at Marist

College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her primary research interest is the religious
and cultural history of late medieval Italy, particularly attitudes towards
heretics and local saints. She has just completed a draft of her book
278
manuscript, “Contested Sanctity and Communal Identity in Italy, 1250-

1400,” supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Her recent publications include “Holy Heretics in Later Medieval Italy,”
Past and Present 204 (2009) and “The Politics of Sanctity in Thirteenth-
Century Ferrara,” Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Thought, History,
and Religion 63 (2008). She is currently serving her second term as the
Communications Chair for the US-based Hagiography Society.
Vadim Prozorov is Associate Professor of Late Antique and Early

Medieval history at Lomonosov State University in Moscow. His chief area
of interest is early Christianity, in particular legal ideas and notions as
expressed in the exegetical texts of the patristic age. The current focus of
his studies is the legacy of Pope Gregory I. His latest article is entitled
“Discipline and Mercy: Moses as a Pattern for Good Rulers in the Works
of Pope Gregory the Great” (forthcoming). He is also deeply interested in
the early medieval Balkan transformations and teaches late antique and
medieval Balkan history.
Sherry Reames is Professor Emerita of English and Medieval Studies at

the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught from 1977 to
2009. She has published a book on the Legenda aurea (1985), an annotated
edition of Middle English lives of female saints (2003), and many articles
on medieval legends and liturgical commemorations of saints in England.
Notable recent examples are “Reconstructing and Interpreting a
Thirteenth-Century Office for the Translation of Thomas Becket” (article
and edition), Speculum 80 (2005) and “The South English Legendary and Its
Major Latin Models” in Rethinking the South English Legendaries, ed. Heather
Blurton and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (2011). She helped founding the
Hagiography Society in 1990 and served as its head until 2010.
Victoria Smirnova received her PhD from the Moscow State University in
2006. She currently works as a senior lecturer at the Department of
Ancient Languages, Russian Sate University for the Humanities. Her
research interests are primarily in the work of Caesarius of Heisterbach;
but also extend to a broader field of medieval sermons and exempla.
Victoria Smirnova contributes to the Sermones.net project and prepares a
digital edition of Caesarius of Heristerbach's sermons. Her most recent
publications include “Actualization of the Past in Caesarius Of
Heisterbach's Dialogus Miraculorum” in The Making of Memory in the Middle
Ages, ed. L. Doležalová (2010), “Flatter les érudits et instruire les simples:
le rôle de l’exemplum dans le système des styles de la prédication
279
medieval,” Studia classica et mediaevalia KEHTABP-CENTAURUS 7 (2010),

and “Le Dialogus miraculorum de Césaire de Heisterbach: le dialogue comme
axe d’écriture et de lecture” in Formes dialoguées dans la littérature exemplaire,
ed. M.A. Polo de Beaulieu (2012).
Marianne Sághy received her PhD from Princeton University in 1998.

Currently she is Associate Professor at CEU and ELTE in Budapest. Her
research focuses on late antique religious and social history. She has
published a monograph on the relationship between episcopal power and
the cult of martyrs in fourth-century Rome, a study on monastic lives, and
various articles on epigraphic poetry. Her book Damasus and the Martyrs:
Cult, Conflict, Community in Fourth-Century Rome is forthcoming.
Trpimir Vedriš is Senior Lecturer at the Department of History,

University of Zagreb. His research and teaching focus on the history of
Christianity, hagiography, and the cult of the saints in Late Antiquity and
the Middle Ages, most notably in southeastern Europe. His recent
publications include (co-edited with Ana Marinković) Identity and Alterity
in Hagiography and the Cult of Saints (2010), and “In What Manner Did the
Ninth-Century Zadar Rotund of the Holy Trinity Resemble the Church of
St. Anastasia in Constantinople?” in Stjepan Gunjača and Croatian Medieval
Historical and Archeological Heritage, ed. T. Šeparović (2012). He is currently
preparing an edition of the Iadertine Hagiographic Cycle, with a broader view
to the hagiography of the patron saints of Zadar.
Ville Vuolanto is Senior Lecturer in history at the School of Social Sciences

and Humanities, University of Tampere. His research focuses on late
antique social history, especially children, family, and religion. His doctoral
dissertation (2008) focused on family, asceticism, and continuity strategies
in the fourth and fifth centuries. He is currently researching the everyday
life of children in the Late Roman world. His recent publications include
“Family Relations and the Socialization of Children in the
Autobiographical Narratives of Late Antiquity” in Approaches to the
Byzantine Family, ed. S. Tougher and L. Brubaker (forthcoming) and (with
S. Katajala-Peltomaa) “Children and Agency. Religion as Socialization in
Late Antiquity and the Late Medieval West,” Childhood in the Past 4
(2011).
Design: Grlom u jagode
Print: Print za vas d.o.o., Zagreb

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Bibliotheca Hagiotheca · Series Colloquia

Edited by John S. Ott and Trpimir Vedriš

Bibliotheca Hagiotheca · Series Colloquia, vol. 2.

First published 2012

Croatian Hagiography Society 'Hagiotheca'

Copyright © 2012 by the publisher and contributors

Zagreb, September 19, 2012

AASS Acta Sanctorum, Antwerp – Brussels.

BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH: SAINTLY

served as ciphers – idealized, static figures onto whom the community

before experiencing something of a resurgence in the eighth and ninth

important, perhaps even dominant, part of this inheritance.16 Holy bishops

biblical passages in particular served as touchstones for idealized portraits

As the preceding overview has implied, social contexts, as well as

international contacts, sharing research, and utilizing comparative and

an early tradition that claims Monica so revered the memory of Perpetua

earliest Latin Christian text – and indeed the earliest evidence of

on the status of the lapsi, there also appears to be a flourishing, long-

ultimately placed him amongst the heretics because of the former’s

Optatus and Aspasius the presbyter prostrate before Perpetua’s feet

Augustine considered Perpetua’s rejection of her father’s pleas and

possessed parent. In Sermon 281, he states explicitly: “She neither violated

that grace is a type of internal illumination, which restores an individual’s

Exhorted in missives, venerated at their tombs, implored on epitaphs,

holy bishops. Non-traditional textual and visual sources, however, such as

secolo: l’elaborazione dei padri cappadoci,” in Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento:

accents in the construction of the martyr-bishop, who was nevertheless

The pre-dating of Peter's tenure17 was also revolutionary in the Liberian

An unusually long epitaph that has meanwhile been likewise

“martyrs”. Liberius was a popular pastor, much liked by his flock:

trace of an attempt to commemorate the victims of the Damasian violence

communio sanctorum, the Eucharistic fellowship of all believers and their

They followed Him across the stars

The apostles also appear in tandem on typical Roman catacomb-products,

The bishops of Rome do occupy an important place in Damasus'

Sixtus suffered martyrdom under the Valerian persecution, fifty years

Damasus’ choice of bishops seems to have been dictated not only by

Because this pontiff, a champion of truth, told

Damasus’ most lyrical enraptures are reserved to express the special

Conclusion: Constructing the Holy Bishops of Rome

John Marcus Beard

Ascetics and bishops often stood in opposition to each other in Christian

Rather than start with Martin, however, I am going to start with a

the divine.10 Daniel Caner’s book, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual

account of Martin in Sulpicius’ vita would lead to a reconsideration of these

on” is constringi—to restrain, control, limit, or bind—thus implying that

For with unswerving constancy he remained the same man as

their spectacular displays of power.36 After his ordination as bishop, Martin

* I am grateful for the very fruitful comments of the anonymous referee.

that Theodoret needed this picture of himself as a tool in the doctrinal

the conceptual framework of Rapp’s model is applicable to the specific case

Theodoret the Chosen One

institutional spiritual status: as a bishop (unwillingly consecrated, he is

ascetically than have a child.17 However, the story as Theodoret tells it

favor was not limited to Christian discourse: Libanius, in his Autobiography,

life: depictions of religious practices and education are present throughout

Theodoret as an Apprentice to the Hermits

Theodoret seems to have felt, though, that he had to explain to his

Theodoret as a Family Man

Requirements of an Autobiographic Childhood

study forms a kind of parallel to Neil McLynn’s magisterial article on

heritage – and as a link to the ascetic authority of Gregory Thaumaturgus.

Moreover, in weaving himself and his mother tightly into the