Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition by Claudia Rapp (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 290 Nicholas Penny’s contribution looks to the Raphael’s singular reputation and considers the presence of his creations in several British collections. Well written and thoroughly researched, this exceptional catalogue is accessible to both students and scholars. The index is rather limited, however the bibliography is thorough, and Minna Moore Ede’s updated chronology is quite helpful. All in all, this text is a must-have for anyone attempting to do serious research on Raphael and his art. HEATHER SEXTON, Art History, UCLA Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press 2005) 346 pp. In a law promulgated in 528, the emperor Justinian gave bishops the power to oversee financial court cases in the absence of imperial officials (Codex Justinianus 1.4.21). Although this was an instance of bishops explicitly granted a specific political role within the imperial administration, throughout the third, fourth and fifth centuries their roles had been growing and changing, challenged not only by their pastoral, ecclesiastical and civic responsibilities, but also by a radically shifting emphasis towards the ascetic, spiritual, and holy. Claudia Rapp’s Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity not only reconsiders these latter characteristics, but generates a new model in which the notion of bishop is reconciled with that of holy man, and furthermore reexamines the bishops in the reality of their daily life, utilizing a variety of sources (literary, documentary , and archaeological) allowing for the production of a work of phenomenal breadth and depth. Rapp succeeds in not only placing the many roles and characters bishops were able to undertake, but redefines the nature of leadership within the greater community of late antique Roman society. Holy Bishops is well organized into two main sections, the first on methodological issues of leadership and authority and a template for understanding bishops in their changing roles in respect to holy men, and the second applying this framework onto bishops themselves and the realities of their office. Furthermore, the sections are intelligently divided into chapters and sub-headings which greatly increase its functionality. In the first chapter, Rapp presents her novel approach that the best way to understand the position of bishops is to examine them by the ways in which they receive and exercise their authority, and that their actual role is highly nuanced and complex. This methodology is a rejection of older models, some of which describe bishops as primarily “political actors whose power derives from their social position and wealth” (9), and circumvents the narrow focus which recent late antique scholarship has taken on bishops with regards to their secular and religious interplay. Instead, the focus shifts to two facets: the first is the central theme of a bishop’s own personal holiness as not only a compatible but necessary element for their authority, and the second is an introduction of a new model for understanding episcopal authority, rejecting the simplistic model of secular and religious power, and instead changing the criteria for power by looking at ascetic, spiritual, and pragmatic authority. In the next three chapters, different types of authority as proposed by this new model are examined. First described is pragmatic authority, which is de- REVIEWS 291 fined by the duties for which the bishops were responsible not only for the religious needs of their Christian communities (such as celebration of the eucharist or baptism), but also their growing role in civic administration. Rapp traces the development of the episcopate, starting from the Paul’s letter to Timothy, and primarily using the writings of bishops themselves from the second -century Ignatius of Antioch through Ambrose of Milan and John Chrysostom , and church orders such as the Didascalia. In these works, the concept of pragmatic authority which initial derives from a spiritual power, evolves into a model Rapp describes as “the dialectic of episcopal leadership” (41) where the bishop must be a model of exemplary behavior, while at the same time he earn the recognition of his position through it. Spiritual authority is approached in the same way as pragmatic authority, and a similar conclusion is drawn, where authority does not merely exist on its own...