Episcopus et plebs: L'eveque et la communaute ecclesiale dans les conciles africains (345-525) (review)

Abstract

Ancient and Medieval Episcopus et plebs: L'eveque et la communaute ecclesiale dans les conciles africains (345-525). By Jean-Anatole Sabw Kanyang. [Publications Universitaires Europeennes, Series XXIII: Theology Vol. 701.] (Bern: Peter Lang. 2000. Pp. xiv, 396; 2 folding maps. $57.95 paperback.) Episcopus et plebs is a masterful examination of church life and the episcopate in late Roman Africa, glimpsed through the prism of canonical legislation from that region. Scholars of North African Christianity owe a debt of gratitude to Sabw Kanyang (and to his thesis director, Otto Wermelinger, at the University of Fribourg) for this much-needed volume. Until its appearance, no systematic survey of the African canons had ever been produced; scholars had simply mined Mansi's eighteenth-century compendium for relevant statutes. Sabw Kanyang rightly lauds Charles Munier for his excellent critical edition of the African canons (Concilia Afrtcae, CSEL vol. 149, 1974), without which Sabw Kanyang's own work would never have been possible. The author investigates the era when the schismatic Donatist Church dominated the African landscape and the Cadiolic Church there was in disarray. Chapter 1 concentrates on a problem handicapping the Catholic side-a severe lack of clergy. Desperate for candidates, the African bishops decided to recruit ex-Donatist clergy, a solution frowned upon by the sees of Rome and Milan, whom the Africans often consulted on disciplinary issues. Sabw Kanyang wisely sees that the Africans adhered to their own policy while remaining highly respectful of the transmarine churches. A brief overview of the North African Church and some historiography on its canons would be useful here. The author should also highlight the crucial efforts of Augustine and Aurelius (primate of Carthage) to revitalize the African Church through a series of councils spanning thirty years whose canons form the bedrock of this volume. Central to the reformers' ambitious program was better clerical education, but such a goal was not easily achieved. Readers should be cautioned that ignorance, indifference, and geographical isolation characterized a significant portion of the African episcopate. Chapter 2 analyzes episcopal elections, consecrations, and the organization of dioceses. The provincial primate and neighboring bishops played a preponderant role in elections, but theplebs (the congregation) also were expected to approve or veto candidates, whom they usually knew well. Conditions in some dioceses were chaotic due to poaching of sees, partitioning of sees to accommodate exDonatist congregations, and burgeoning populations straining ill-defined country dioceses. …