An Anatomy of a Crisis in Ecclesiastical Leadership: Isidore and Eusebius in Pelusium

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates a crisis in leadership in the Christian church after changes in imperial policy made it more acceptable socially and more advantageous financially to occupy clerical positions. For several decades in the early 5th century, Isidore of Pelusium and his network of friends reproached and lamented the venal conduct of Eusebius, bishop of Pelusium, and several clerics he had appointed. But their efforts to alter the situation had little effect. To understand why this was so, the paper considers the types of people who wrote letters lamenting the situation in order to understand the nature of their response in relation to their social or political position, and it explores reasons why Eusebius and the other clerics were not dislodged by the censure and even derision of their critics. The conflict, it is argued, exposes the limitations of παρρησία as a means of altering the actions of the powerful and qualifies the role of ascetic authority in the de facto exercise of episcopal office in Late Antiquity.