The Church of Alexandria and the City's Economic Life in the Sixth Century

Abstract

ONE of the most remarkable phenomena of the late Roman empire was the extension of the functions of the bishop beyond the purely religious aspects of his office. Among other features of his extensive extra-religious functions, the Byzantine bishop sometimes played a prominent role in the economic life of the community. The patriarch of Alexandria, in particular, was placed in a peculiar position which especially permitted him to develop such a role. The present article is designed to illustrate that aspect of his activities with material drawn largely from the Greek hagiographical literature of the sixth and early seventh centuries, in particular, Leontius' biography of St John the Compassionate.' It is based on material indexed some years ago as a project sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. From the reign of Constantine and the Peace of the Church the emperors continued to confer increased powers upon the bishop. In the sixth century, Justinian, having once established throughout the empire the so-called caesaropapism which reduced the bishops to the status of magistrates, was quite willing still further to enhance their functions. Indeed, he invested the episcopacy with more extensive powers than had any sovereign before him.2 So much did the secular business of a Byzantine bishop's life expand that it came to occupy the greater proportion of his time.' 'As the empire decreased,' Otto of Freising had the perspicacity to observe much later, 'the church adapted itself to the intermission and began to appear in great authority.'4 Nowhere was this more true in the sixth and seventh centuries than in the case of the isolated and, in fact, derelict bishopric of Rome. The Church of Alexandria also offers an interesting example. On the periphery of imperial influence, it was able to assume a measure of autonomy and independence. Jean Maspero5 has presented a vivid picture of the semi-independent position of the Egyptian patriarch. The fact that Egyptian national consciousness found in the church a means of venting its resentment against the empire, and some compensation for its alien domination, centered tremendous prestige in the person of the ecclesiastical autocrat enthroned in the ancient chair of the Evangelist