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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 June 2012
This article re-examines the development of the chorepiscopoi using hagiographic sources in Syriac. These suggest that more peripheral regions of the Roman world, such as Osrhoene, with an ‘open frontier’ with local pagans, retained these subepiscopal structures into the sixth century. Furthermore, these structures fostered the independent activity of the parts of the institutional Church in defiance of their bishops in times of disagreement over doctrine. This localised emphasis explains in turn the defence of ascetic customs that had once been categorised as heteropraxy.
1 The epigraphic evidence is surveyed in Mitchell, S., Anatolia: land, men and gods in Asia Minor, Oxford 1993, i. 96–106Google Scholar.
2 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Historia religiosa, ed. and trans. Canivet, P. and Leroy-Molinghen, A., in L'Histoire des moines de Syrie: histoire philothée, Paris 1979Google Scholar.
3 See further Dagron, G., ‘Entre Village et cité: la bourgade rurale des ive–viie siècles en Orient’, Koinonia iii (1979), 29–52Google Scholar.
4 Destephens, S. and Métivier, S., ‘Chorevêques et evêques en Asie Mineure aux ive et ve siecles’, Topoi xv (2007), 343–77Google Scholar, esp. pp. 343–8. See further H. Leclerq, ‘Chorevêque’, DACL, 1430, and Amadon, J., ‘Chorevêques et periodeutes’, L'Orient Syrien iv (1959), 233–40Google Scholar.
5 There are full references in Jones, A. H. M., The later Roman Empire, 284–602: a social, economic and administrative survey, Oxford 1964Google Scholar, ii. 879 n. 13.
6 For the role of the Church in Cilicia as an employer and the ability of minor clergy to criticise a corrupt bishop see Wickham, L. R., ‘Aspects of clerical life in the early Byzantine Church’, this Journal xlix (1995), 3–18Google Scholar.
7 For example H. W.Elton, ‘Ecclesiastical politics in fifth and sixth-century Isauria’, in B. Salway and J. Drinkwater (eds), Wolf Liebeschuetz remembered, London 2007, 78–86.
8 Basil of Caesarea, epp. xxiv, liii–iv, cxxxxii–cxxxxiii in Letters of Basil of Caesarea, ed. R. Defferrari, Cambridge, Ma 1926–32. See also Scholten, C., ‘Der chorbischof bei Basilius’, ZKG ciii (1990), 149–73Google Scholar, esp. pp. 170–1.
9 Note also that chorepiscopoi are recorded in a small number of fifth- and sixth-century inscriptions for Phoenicia, Mesopotamia and Armenia: Huebner, S., Das Klerus in der Gesellschaft des spätantike Kleinasiens, Stuttgart 2005Google Scholar, 65 n. 50.
10 Segal, J., Edessa and Harran, Oxford 1963Google Scholar, and Edessa : the blessed city, Oxford 1970, 68, 206.
11 Julian romance, ed. J.Hoffmann, in Iulianos der Abtreunigge: syrische Erzaehlung, Leiden 1880, 146–7.
12 Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, ed. W. Wright, London 1882, 30, and trans. F. Trombley and J. Watt, Liverpool 2000, 28.
13 Rabbula, Rules for the Bnay Qyama, 17, 53–4, in Syriac and Arabic documents regarding legislation relating to Syrian asceticism, ed. A. Vööbus, Stockholm 1960, 39, 45.
14 W. Bauer presents Mesopotamia as a land of heresy, where ‘the universal church’ was not a dominant orthodoxy until well into the fifth century: Orthodoxy and heresy in earliest Christianity, trans. Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, Miflintown 1996, 5, 39–45. This would also fit the decentralised impression of the Church at the time of Rabbula. For the idea of a ‘universal Church’ in Syriac see Murray, R., Symbols of Church and kingdom, London 2004Google Scholar, 113, 341–5.
15 See P. Wood, ‘Syriac and the “Syrians”’, in S. Johnson (ed.), Oxford handbook of late antiquity, New York 2012, forthcoming.
16 Syriac-speaking Christianity also gave great importance to local lay ascetics, the bnay qyama: Brock, S., ‘Early Syrian asceticism’, Numen xxii (1973), 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 John of Ephesus, Lives of the eastern saints, ed. and trans. Brooks, E. W., PO xvii–xix, Paris 1923–5.Google Scholar On this text see further S. A. Harvey, Asceticism and society in crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the eastern saints, Berkeley 1990.
18 On the effects of this persecution in the 520s see Menze, V.-L., Justinian and the making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, Oxford 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 John of Ephesus, Lives, PO xvii.125.
20 For another example of the saint as a binding force see ibid. xvii. 79.
21 Brown, P., Power and persuasion in late antiquity: towards a Christian empire, Madison 1992Google Scholar.
22 For a monk refusing a gift from the empress Theodora see John of Ephesus, Lives, PO xviii. 633.
23 Ibid. xvii. 159; xviii. 633.
24 Ibid. xvii. 127.
25 The conditional nature of the emperor's rule over orthodoxy is also emphasised in Elias, Life of John of Tella, ed. and trans E. W. Brooks, in Vitae vivorum apud Monophysitas celeberrimorum: pars prima, Louvain 1907, 73, where the saint's Persian captors are appalled at the emperor's attempts to force the saint to abandon the faith of his fathers.
26 John of Ephesus, Lives, PO xvii.125–6.
27 Ibid. xvii. 162–4.
28 For boulders see HR, 24; on diet see John of Ephesus, Lives, PO xvii.135, and HR, 3, 13; on Nazirites see John of Ephesus, Lives, PO xvii. 39–48, 104, and HR, 10, 11; on weeping see John of Ephesus, Lives, PO xvii. 128, and HR, 30.
29 Ephraem describes Saba as an ihidaya on the model of Christ in Hymns on Julian Saba, ii.13, in Des hl. Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen auf Abraham Kidunaya und Julianus Saba, ed. E. Beck, CSCO cccxxii–cccxxiii, Scriptores Syri cxl–cxli, Leuven 1972, 41, and Ephraem's followers situate Saba's continuous prayers in the mountains and in the wasteland, xvii.2 and xxii.13 (Beck edn, 65, 81). See further Griffith, S., ‘Julian Saba: father of the monks of Syria’, Journal of Early Christian Studies ii (1994), 185–218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Rabbula, Laws on monks 3, in Syriac and Arabic documents, 28.
31 On ihidaye in the fifth century see S. Griffith, ‘Asceticism in the Church in Syria: the hermeneutics of early Syriac monasticism’, in V. Wimbush and R. Valantasis (eds), Asceticism, Oxford 1995, 220–45.
32 John of Ephesus, Lives, PO xvii. 39–48, 104.
33 Stewart, C., Working the earth of the heart: the language of Christian experience in the Messalian controversy, the writings of pseudo-Macarius and the Liber graduum, Oxford 1991Google Scholar, 53–68; Caner, D., Wandering, begging monks: spiritual authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity, Berkeley 2002Google Scholar, esp. pp. 87–9.
34 Escolan, P., Monachisme et église: le monachisme syrien du IVe au VIIe siècle: un ministère charismatique, Paris 1999Google Scholar, esp. p. 94.
35 This may also be translated as ‘to cause to wander’, which may carry an association with the wandering Messalians.
36 Elias, Life of John of Tella, 77.
37 John of Ephesus, Lives, PO xvii. 87–9; xviii. 538, 642, 671; xvii.120, 299–300.
38 Ibid. xvii.120, 299–300.
39 Ibid. xvii. 240, 242.
