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The Confraternities of Byzantium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Peregrine Horden
Peregrine Horden*
Affiliation:
All Souls College, Oxford
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Extract

‘The medieval drive to association’. That phrase comes from a monograph by Susan Reynolds. It is to be found in a chapter on guilds and confraternities. And it is representative of the quasi-biological vocabulary to which historians of those institutions seem especially prone. ‘How appropriate is this talk of drives? What, in this context, is the force of ‘medieval’? My ultimate purpose is to address those questions from a Byzantine perspective; to ask in effect whether evidence of confraternities from the eastern Roman empire between approximately 400 and the Ottoman conquest will sustain talk of a Byzantine ‘drive to association’. The enquiry is, however, worth a preliminary approach on a broader front. This is partly because the historiography of European confraternities shapes the questions that must be put to the Byzantine sources. It is also because, unusually, a Byzantine perspective may illuminate problems arising from the western material. Finally it is because the comparative history of confraternities may, by implication, have a modest contribution to make to the larger question of the differences between eastern and western Christianity. Much energy has been expended on accounting for the ‘parting of the ways’ - less, perhaps, on measuring the distance between them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 23: Voluntary Religion , 1986 , pp. 25 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1986

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References

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26 References in Reynolds pp. 67-8. I here omit discussion of monastic con fraternities of prayer.

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31 Cf Patlagean’s collected papers, Structures sociales, famille, chrétienté à Byzance, IVe-XIe siècle (London 1981); The Byzantine Saint, Studies supplementary to Sobornost 5, ed Sergei Hackel (1981); Peter Brown, ‘A Dark Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy’, EHR 88 (1973) pp. 1–34, a rare perspective on local religion.

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38 For all which see Vryonis, ‘Demokratia’.

39 The most useful modern works are MacMullen, Ramsay, Roman Social Relations (New Haven and London 1974) pp. 68–831 Google Scholar, and Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven and London 1981) pp. 12, 36-9; Meeks, , First Urban Christians, pp. 31–2 Google Scholar. On burial clubs see Hopkins, Keith, Death and Renewal (Cambridge 1983) cap 4 pt 3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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42 For the urban geography of crafts compare MacMullen, Roman Social Relations pp. 71-2 on antiquity with Vryonis, ‘Demokratia’ pp. 298-9 on Constantinople c. 1000. For Byzantine burial clubs see Patlagean, Pauvreté pp. 70, 158.

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45 Kazhdan and Epstein pp. 39 seq; Michael Angold, The Byzantine Empire 1025-1204, cap 4; Yannopoulos pp. 161-73 for the seventh to ninth centuries. I gloss over here the question of ‘the disappearance and revival of cities’ in the latter period: see Cyril Mango, Byzantium (London 1980) cap 3. For a different perspective, which makes the proposed continuity of guild life more intelligible, see Hugh Kennedy, ‘From Polis to Madina: Urban Change in Late Antique and Early Islamic Syria’, PP 106 (1985) pp. 3-27.

46 Vryonis, , ‘Demokratia’ p. 302 Google Scholar, ‘Panegyris’ pp. 213, 220-3.

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54 DACL sv ‘Parabalani’ (H. Leclercq) col 1575.

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57 Papyri ¡andanae, ed J. Hummel (Leipzig 1938) pp. 383-7 no 154 lists those to whom wine should be distributed, probably by a church at Oxyrhynchus, c.600. It seems to include parabolani among the minor clerics. We cannot, however, assume a similarity of function between these and the Alexandrian parabolani. Cf Miller p. 129 for the analogous case of the dekanoi.

58 Meersseman, Cf, Ordo Fraternitatis, 1 pp. 25, 113–35 Google Scholar, 154–87.

59 Barlow, , pp. 22–30, 249.Google Scholar

60 Brigden p. 96 with n 157. Norman, Cf Tanner, P., The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370-1532 (Toronto 1984) pp. 75–6 Google Scholar for a further example.

61 Sathas, C.N., Documents inédits relatifs à l’histoire de la Grèce au moyen âge, vol 1 (Paris 1880) pp. 46–51 Google Scholar no 41; Romanos, I.A., Deltion tes Istorikes kai Ethnologikes Etairias tes Ellados, vol 2 (1889) pp. 591–608 Google Scholar. See also Lemerle, P., ‘Trois actes du Despote d’Epire Michel II concernant Corfu’, Hellenika 4 (1953) pp. 418–23, 425–6 Google Scholar. I owe these references to the kindness of Professor D.M. Nicol.

62 Barlow pp. 229-30.

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71 Chitty, Derwas J., The Desert a City (Oxford 1966) p. 3 Google Scholar. Pétridès, S., ‘Spoudaei et Philopones’, Echos d’Orient, 7 (1904) pp. 341–8 Google Scholar, to which DACL sv ‘Con fréries’ (H. Leclercq) adds little; Ewa Wipszycka, ‘Les confréries dans la vie religieuse de l’Egypte chrétienne’, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Con gress of Papyrology, ed Samuel, Deborah H. (Toronto 1970) pp. 511–25 Google Scholar. See also Miller, pp. 124–31 Google Scholar, perhaps viewing confraternities too exclusively from the perspective of urban monasticism. Generalizations that follow are largely based on the evidence assembled by Pétridès and Wipszycka, though I cannot always follow their interpretations of it. Full discussion and documentation must be reserved to a forthcoming work.

72 Scholasticus, Zacharias, Life of Severus ed Kugener, M-A., PO 2 p. 24 Google Scholar shows that philoponos was the local Egyptian variant of spoudaios, and refers to still other groups of ‘companions’ who are for obvious reasons virtually untraceable.

73 The story of ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’ (n 48 above) is the clearest evidence.

74 PO 1 p. 12; cf p. 214 (Life by John of Beith-Aphthonia).

75 Wipszycka pp. 513-15; Vita Auxentii (Metaphrastic) PG 114 col 1380 seq; Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Theodosii coenobiarchae, ed H. Usener (Leipzig 1890) pp. 105-6. The strangest function of the Alexandrian philoponoi was to remind the Patriarch John ‘the Almoner’ that his tomb was unfinished: E. Dawes and N.H. Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (Oxford 1948) pp. 228-9.

76 Kitzinger, Ernst, ‘The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm’, DOP 8 (1954) PP. 83–149 Google Scholar.

77 Wipszycka p. 513. Philoponoi or spoudaioi might marry, though perhaps live chastely: ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’; L. Clugnet, ‘Vies… d’anachorètes’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 10 (1905) pp. 47-8; Sophronius, Miracles of SS Cyrus and John, ed Natalio Fernández Marcos, Los ‘Thaumata’ de Sofronio (Madrid 1975) cap 5 pp. 249-51. Charity: ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’; Cyrus and John cap 35 pp. 318-22. See also n 93 below.

78 PO 2 pp. 54-5; ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’.

79 Though cf John Moschus, Pratum Spirituale, cap 176, PC 87 col 3044.

80 Clugnet, ‘Vies… d’anachoretès’; PO 2 p. 54; Wipszycka pp. 518-19; Pétridès pp. 342-3. Length of service in a confraternity: Pratum Spirituale cap 61, PG 87 col 2913; Miracles of Artemius p. 19.

81 Cf ‘Fragmente einer Schrift des Märtyrerbischofs Petrus von Alexandrien’, ed C. Schmidt, TU 5.4 (1901) p. 7.

82 Papyri Iandanae (n 57 above); Berlin papyrus published Wipszycka pp. 522-5.

83 Arthur Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, vol 1 CSCO sub 14 (Louvain 1958) pp. 97 seq, vol 2 sub 17 (1960) pp. 332 seq gives the ‘standard’ interpretation. For different etymologies see Sebastian Brock, ‘Early Syrian Asce ticism’, Numen 20 (1973) pp. 7-8.

84 Vööbus, , Asceticism, 2 p. 332 Google Scholar.

85 Syriac and Arabic Documents regarding Legislation relative to Syrian Asceticism, ed Vööbus (Stockholm 1960), pt 1 cap 3 no 20.

86 Vööbus, , Asceticism, 2 pp. 339–41 Google Scholar. Charity: Vita of Rabbuia of Edessa in S Ephraemi Syri, Rabulae Episcopi… Opera Selecta, ed J.J. Overbeck (Oxford 1965) p. 203.

87 John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, cap 16, PO 17 pp. 242-3; The Canons Ascribed to Maruta of Maipherqat, ed Vööbus, CSCO 439 (Louvain 1982) no 26.

88 Vööbus, , Asceticism, 2 pp. 336–7 Google Scholar.

89 Canons Ascribed to Maruta canon 25.

90 Cf PO 2 p. 24: ‘we found ourselves in the churches with those that one calls philoponoi’. References to spoudaioi laikoi and such like need not on the other hand always indicate the formation of confraternities. Spoudaios and philoponos retained their ‘non-technical’ meanings: cf Athanasius, Life of Antony, cap 4, PC 28 col 436A for individual spoudaioi; Socrates HE viii 23. The sixth-century Monophysite philosopher John Philoponos need not ever have belonged to a philoponion: that was simply his name (1 am grateful to Mr P.M. Fraser for advice here).

91 ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’; Cyrus and John caps 5, 35; PO 2 pp. 54-5 - cf W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 2nd ed (Cambridge 1979) p. 203; Pétridès pp. 346-7; Chitty p. 93. See also n 93 below.

92 Cyrus and John cap 5; PO 2 pp. 32-3; Vita Theodosii pp. 105-6.

93 Evidence collected by Patlagean, Pauvreté, p. 192.

94 Heresy: Gilbert Dagron, ‘Les moines et la ville’, Travaux et Mémoires, 4 (1970) pp. 229-76; Patlagean, Pauvreté, pp. 134-5.

95 I discussed the topic of confraternities with the late Professor J.M. Wallace-Hadrill only a few days before his sudden death. I take this, the first opportunity of recording a largely scholarly indebtedness to him. I am grateful to Mr. P.M. Fraser, Dr John Henderson and Dr Richard Smith for comments on an earlier version of this paper.