Raymond Van Dam’s 1985 monograph--published in The Transformation of the Classical Heritage series--on late antique Gaul and how leadership was exercised there has been appreciated by a generation of scholarship. In addition there is his 1993 work on the cult of saints in late antique Gaul (with its emphasis on Gregory of Tours), to say nothing of translations of Gregory of Tours for Translated Texts for Historians, numerous articles, and more recent monographs on Constantine and on Cappadocia. To have what amounts to a Festschrift from his current and former students on the occasion of his retirement is not only a fitting tribute but a statement of confidence in the future of late antique/early medieval and early Christian scholarship.
The two editors not only provide an overview of Van Dam’s inestimable contribution to scholarship, but by gathering essays on people and places they further his research interest in leadership and community. Adam Schor employs Van Dam’s concept of historical model-building to investigate the social interactions of bishops from the mid-second to the mid-third centuries as urban-based leaders and channels of holiness through the letters exchanged between Ignatius and Polycarp (encouraging bishop-to-bishop interactions and a sense of permanence in such an office), Traditio apostolica (the ritualising centre of the local community, with making a bishop’s role exclusive), andDidascalia apostolorum (the centre of all the activities of the community), works described here as pericanonical and that supported the clericalization of ministry if their recommendations were implemented.
Lisa Bailey considers the leadership shown by the sixth-century Frankish queen, Radegund, in founding an abbey of enclosed nuns in Poitiers, often in defiance of existing leadership structures. This chapter examines the conflict over the installation of a relic of the true cross (and the failure of male episcopal leadership) and the complaints against Leubovera, one of Radegund’s successors as head of the religious community and how her memory was controlled in later generations, as exemplified through the uitae of Venantius and Baudonivia and in Gregory of Tours.
Brent Shaw explores how bishops based their leadership both on Roman political patterns as well as claims to an authority based on their sanctity. The prism through which this is conducted is pseudo-Cyprian’s De duobus montibus Sina et Sion and the end of this homily in which the practice of having a slave boy perched on a raised platform watching over a vineyard before the grapes are harvested is compared with Christ as watchman (speculator) atop Mount Sion. Seeing Christ as watchman in late antique Christianity follows a military image in Ezekiel. What Shaw points to is the uniquely African agricultural version of watchman, exemplified in De duobus montibus, reflecting a common image used centuries later in local pottery, which Shaw argues was based on the Christian interpretation, wherein by the time of Augustine it is the bishop as watchman.
Jaclyn Maxwell offers us insight into the social hierarchy of Antioch in the works of Libanius and John Chrysostom. She asks questions about whether Christian ideals of social status actually affected the way elite Christians viewed themselves and others. A comparison between Libanius and John Chrysostom reveals both being sympathetic towards the poor and the contribution of education to improving one’s social status. John’s homilies on the benefits of being poor, however, met with resistance from his community that obviously longed to be richer.
The role of the governor in building restoration projects in the provinces in Anatolia is the subject investigated by Garrett Ryan. Particularly significant is the notion of restoration as connected with traditional values as expressions of authority. Well-maintained public space was a sign of Roman power as well as a stage for it. Governors had to please both emperor and local populace with differing pressures from each direction. Urban imagery was of civic cohesion in an increasingly anachronistic fashion. The essay finishes with a consideration of how bishops joined in or replaced governors as patrons of such building restorations.
Dennis Trout looks at how Peter was claimed in verse as well as in building by two other Italian bishops of the fifth century, Achilleus of Spoleto and Neon of Ravenna, and for what purpose, at the same time as Roman bishops were reinforcing the connection between Peter and Rome. What made these two bishops distinct was that they built not to Peter and Paul but to Peter alone and that the building was accompanied by verse. Trout argues that Achilleus sought to universalise Peter in the church he built, while Neon depicted Peter in mosaic and verse in a dining hall built in the episcopal complex. Since the decoration of the room had a focus on animals, the focus on Peter is from Acts 10 and the vision at Joppa about all animals being licit to eat.
In considering the tomb of Agnes in Rome and the role Constantina played in it, Virginia Burrus turns to Van Dam’s reflections on memory creating the past. The two are intertwined in memory because of the basilica of St Agnes-outside-the-walls and Santa Costanza (a mausoleum turned into a church) with its own associated (non-ecclesial) basilica. For anyone unfamiliar with the site, remembering that there are three associated buildings is a little complicated, and this essay would have benefited from a plan of the area. It is a pity that Burrus did not have access to the brief but insightful discussion of the archaeology in Nicola Denzey Lewis’ The Early Modern Invention of late Antique Rome (Cambridge, 2020). We are introduced to various uitae of Constantina preserved in several medieval manuscripts and begin to appreciate just how multilayered and complex memory can be.
Benjamin Graham and Paolo Squatriti look at the issue of providing roofs for Rome’s basilicas and argue that such activity involved the assertion of dominion. The maintenance of such structures in the shrunken post-classical Rome was an enormous drain on limited resources. A failure to provide safe space for worship was a failure of leadership and authority. I would have one small quibble with fact in this chapter, regarding Krautheimer’s view that Leo I installed the first series of papal mosaic portraits at St Paul’s-outside-the-walls. As those preserved in the abbey attached to the basilica reveal, they were frescos not mosaics, and more recent scholarship now suggests a date a generation earlier. [1] The authors even suggest that by the time of Gregory I, a control of trees helped him exercise control over other patriarchs. The lack of interest in Liber pontificalis for “the rhetoric of roofing” until the seventh century is explained in terms of historical shifts in the relationship between pope and Byzantine emperor.
Anthony Kaldellis shifts focus to Constantinople and grapples with the idea of duplicating old Rome as new, and invites the read to consider how strange that was; possible only because Rome had become an idea rather than a location. Just as Diocletain had learned how to duplicate emperors, so Constantine learned how to duplicate Rome, following a pattern already established by tetrarchic colleagues, and later emperors and citizens would learn how to replace it altogether.
The sack of Rome in 410 receives attention from Shane Bjornlie, who reminds us that there is no single narrative for the event and that attempts to synthesize them into a single narrative does a disservice to the landscape of memories. The differing agenda of Augustine and Jerome in their reactions to Alaric’s capture of the city is an excellent reminder of this. By considering the agenda of writers such as Orosius, Olympiodorus, Zosimus, and even Cassiodorus (one of his areas of research interest), Bjornlie is able to see “in the round” as it were.
Jonathan Arnold presents the memory of the fall of Rome from Ostrogothic Italy in the following generation in two hagiographies by Ennodius and Eugippius that diverge significantly in outlook, yet both did not see 476 as a moment of significance for the fall of the Roman empire. For both of them Italy remained Roman even without an emperor.
The last chapter is a review by Noel Lenski of Raymond Van Dam’s contribution to historical methodology as a pathfinder. What Lenski is able to summarise for the reader is the way in which leaders’ ability to use power was a function of their connectedness to community, both in terms of people and place. He provides his own review of the book and the contribution of the various authors, one that I did manage to resist reading until after I had written my own comments.
As will all Festschriften, what the reader ends up with is a collage of individual research interests. In this instance, the result, while still a collage, is a coherent, rich tapestry. That tapestry could have been enhanced if the editors had encouraged some interplay between the chapters. For example, Burrus had cause to mention Radegund but made no mention of Bailey’s chapter in the volume. Yet, the two editors, who do not have their own individual contributions, must be thanked for the way in which their introduction ties the chapters together as focussing on people and places in terms of leadership and community. This is reinforced by Lenski’s helpful final analysis. Part of that rich tapestry is the fact that we have scholars from various parts of the world, male and female, some at the start of their careers and others in the maturity of theirs. Raymond Van Dam’s influence extends far and wide. There is much to be gained about patterns of leadership within communities from reading the essays of this volume and I have already turned to several chapters for material for my own research. This volume is more than a tribute to an individual, it is a record of a movement in scholarship.
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Notes:
1. See Nicola Camerlenghi, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).