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7/23/2019 Markus (R. a.)_The Imperial Administration and the Church in Byzantine Africa
1/7
American Society of Church History
The Imperial Administration and the Church in Byzantine AfricaAuthor(s): R. A. MarkusSource: Church History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar., 1967), pp. 18-23Published by: Cambridge University Presson behalf of the American Society of Church HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3162341.
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2/7
THE
IMPERIAL
ADMINISTRATION
AND
THE
CHURCH IN BYZANTINE
AFRICA
R.
A.
MARKUS,
University
of
Liverpool
There
are
only
two
moments
during
the
Byzantine
era at
which
the
African
Church
emerges
into
something
like
daylight:
on the
morrow
of
the
reconquest,
in the
middle
years
of the
sixth
century,
and
again
almost
a
century
later,
under
the
emperors
Heraclius
and
Constans
II.
Both
in
the
controversies
over
the
'three
chapters'
under
Justinian,
and
in
those
over
monothelitism
in
the seventh
century,
the
African
Church
took
the
lead
in
resisting
what
seemed,
in the
eyes
of its
leading
churchmen,
attempts
by
the
Court
to
subvert
the
Chal-
cedonian
orthodoxy.
Both
these
episodes
in the African Church's
history
are
tolerably well-known,' though
in
both cases
one
could
wish for a
much
greater
volume
of
material
than
exists
to
throw
light
on
the
details
of
the
part
played by
the
imperial
administration
in
Africa.
The
eighty
or
so
years
between
these
two
episodes
are
years
of
almost
total
darkness,
broken
only
by
a few
stray rays
of
light
during
the
pontificate
of
Gregory
the
Great. His extensive cor-
respondence
gives
us
some
tantalizing glimpses
of the African
Church
during
a
few
years
at the
turn
of the
century.
From
these
glimpses
we
certainly
cannot
construct
anything
like
a
complete
picture,
even
an outline
sketch,
of
the
life
of
the
African
Church.
It
is
tempting
to fill out the hints
by
interpreting
them on the
analogy
of what we
know
of
the African
Church
at
other and much
more
fully
docu-
mented
periods,
for
instance,
at the time of
Saint
Augustine.
This
is,
it seems
to
me,
what all current
interpretations
of the
evidence
have
done
in
effect. The
allusions
to a revival
of 'Donatism' and
the references to
the
imperial
authorities
in
Africa
have
all been
construed
in the
light
of
parallels
with
the
classical
period
of
the
Donatist
schism,
at
the
end
of
the
fourth
century
and the
beginning
of
the fifth.
I
have
studied
the evidence
for
the
reality
concealed
behind
Gregory
the Great's words about 'Donatism' elsewhere,2and
concluded
that
it
will
not
bear
the
interpretation
universally
placed
upon
it. Of
'Donatism' in
any recognizable
sense
there
is no
evidence
in Africa
by
the
sixth
century.
That
the schism
lasted well
into the
Vandal
period
we
may accept;
but
beyond
this all
is
obscure
and the
alleged
evidence
for
its
survival
in
the sixth
century-and
later-
needs
careful
sifting. By
the
590's
all
that
we
can be
sure about is
that
there
were
churches
in
Africa,
and
especially
in
Numidia,
in
which
intervention neither
by
imperial
nor
by
papal
authority
was
welcome.
In this
paper
I
wish
to
re-examine
the
evidence
on
which
the
current views
on
the
attitude
of the
imperial
authorities
to
the Church
1. Cf.
C.
Diehl,
L'Afrique
byzantine
(Paris
1896);
L.
Duchesne,
L'eglise
au
sixienme siecle
(Paris
1925),
among
other
accounts.
2.
'Donatism:
the last
phase,
Studies
in
Ch7urch
history,
vol.
I.
1964, 118-26.
18
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3/7
BYZANTINE
AFRICA
are
based.
As
a
rough summary
of
these views
I
quote
the
judg-
ment
of
J.
Ferron
and G.
Lapeyre,
which has
the
added
merit
for
my purpose of being endorsed in the latest instalment of Pere Gou-
bert's
Byzance
avant l'Islait.3
In
their 'remarkable
article'
on Carth-
age,
as
Pere
Goubert
refers to
it,
they
write:
The successors
of
Justinian
and
especially
Maurice
[the
text
has
Maxime],
while
favour-
ing
the
Catholic
Church,
exerted
themselves
to
keep
a
religious
peace
by
means
of
enacting
laws
of toleration
in
favour
of
Jews
and
Do-
natists.
The
Churches
of
Africa
are
turning
towards
Rome,
a
stream of
letters
and
emissaries
passes
between them.
The
bishops
appeal
to
Rome
against
the
government,
and so
forth.
Gregory
I,
in
particular,
intervenes
very frequently
in
the
ecclesiastical and
even
the
civil affairs
of
Africa,
and re-establishes
in
Africa
unity,
concord and
ecclesiastical
discipline.
Here
we
have,
in its
simplest
form,
the view
expressed
by
most
scholars
in
a
more
guarded
form.
With
various
qualifications
it
is,
in
substance,
common
to
historians
of
Byzantine
Africa4
of
Donatism,5
of
the
papacy
and
of
the
pon-
tificate of
Gregory
I
in
particlar.6
But
there is
nothing
in the
evidence
that
supports
such
a
view
of
the
African
Church,
united with the
papacy,
estranged
from
and
opposed
to
the
government
and united
in
concord and
ecclesiastical
discipline
under
Gregory I,
and there is
a
great
deal
that
points
in
quite
another direction.
Of the
policies
pursued
at the court
in
Constantinople
with
re-
gard
to
the African Church
we
know
next
to
nothing,
but
the
little
we
do
know
is that there
was
no
question
of
legislative
toleration
of
Donatism.
Maurice,
we
know,
had issued
iussiones
which
gave
clear
testimony,
in
Gregory's
eyes,
of
the
emperor's
turning against
the
wicked
depravity
of
the
Donatists,
moved
by
concern
for
righteous-
ness and
zeal
for the
purity
of
religion. 7
The
iussiones
referred
to
have not survived; but Gregory's language scarcely entitles us to con-
clude
that
they
were laws
granting
toleration
to
Donatists.
In
this
respect
the
emperor's policy
for
Africa contrasts
with
his refusal
to
take
coercive
measures
against
the
Istrian
schismatics.
If
however
the
iussiones
themselves
met with
Gregory's
approval,
their
execu-
tion
by
the
authorities
in
Africa
left much
to
be
desired.
In
the
Af-
rican
provinces,
Gregory thought
the
Catholic
faith
was
being
pub-
3.
DHGE,
XI.
1208-9,
quoted
by
P.
Goubert,
Byzance
avant
l'Islam, t.2;
Byzance
et
I'Occident
sous
les
successeurs
de
Justinien,
II:
Rome,
Byzance
et
Carthage
(Paris,
1965), 235. Of. also the judgment of P. Romanelli, referred to ibid., 235-6. (Much of
the text
of
Ferron
and
Lapeyre
is
taken
from
Diehl,
op.
cit.,
510.)
4. Cf.
Diehl,
op.
cit.,
510-6.
5. W.
H.
Frend,
The
Donatist
Church
(Oxford 1952),
300-314.
6. E.
Caspar,
Geschichte
des
Papsttums,
II
(Tiibingen, 1933),
442-6;
F.
H.
Dudden,
Gregory
the
Great
(1905),
I,
414-28.
7.
Ep. VI.61;
cf.V.3
(All
references
to
Gregory's
letters are in
the edition
of
the
Register
by
Ewald and
Hartmann,
M.G.H.,
Epistolae,
I
and
II).
19
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CHURCH
HISTORY
licly
sold ;
and
inevitably,
he
blamed the
refusal
of
the
African
ad-
ministration
to
put
the
imperial
policies
into
effect
on Donatist
bribery.8
Gregory's
own
correspondence
contains
ample
evidence
of
the
reluctance felt
by
the
officials
on
the
spot
to enforce
whatever
the
anti-Donatist
policies
of
the
court
amounted
to.
The
most
revealing
instance in
this
connection is
the case of
Paul,
bishop
of an
unknown
see
in
Numidia.
In
the
summer
of
594
we
find
the
pope
asking
the
Prefect of
Africa to
send
this
bishop
off
to
him
without
delay,
in
order
that
he
might
have his
first-hand
report
on
the
situation and
that
they
might
consult
together
as
to
how
to
deal most
effectively
with the
trouble.9 As
early
as
three
years
before
this, Gregory
had
urged
the
Exarch of
Africa
not to
delay
any
Numidian
bishops
who
wished
to
go
to
Rome;10
but
it
was
not
until
the
year
596
that
Paul
arrived
in
Rome. In
Rome,
Paul
explained
that far from
being
as-
sisted to make
his
way
to
the
pope,
he
had been
hindered
in
many
ways.
Further,
he
said,
his
complaint
was
not
so
much
that
he
had
incurred
enmity by
his
zeal
in
coercing
Donatists,
but
that
his
ef-
forts
in
defence
of
the
Catholic
faith
had met
general ingratitude.
He
added some
further
charges,
which
the
pope
did
not
judge
the
time
right
to
specify
in the
letter
he
wrote
to remonstrate
with
the
Ex-
arch.
Bishop
Paul's chief
enemy appears
to
have been the
Exarch
himself;
Gregory,
in
view
of
the
fact
that the civil
authority
was
in-
volved
in
the
case,
referred
bishop
Paul to
the
imperial
court,'2
com-
mending
him
to
the
Emperor's
support
with
unusually
vehement lan-
guage
about
his
adversaries.
Eighteen
months
later
we
meet
Paul
back
in
Rome with his case
referred
by
the
Emperor
for
trial,
not
by
the
Pope
but,
significantly, by
a
synod
in
Africa.l3
How
little
Gregory
could
rely
on African
officials
in the
furtherance of
his own
aims
is
further illustrated
by
a
letter
he
wrote
to
one
Boniface,
vir
mag-
nificus-an
unknown
official?-summoning
him and others of his
mind to
come
to
Rome
and
clear themselves of
the
suspicion
of
heresy
which
they
have
incurred.'4 On
another
occasion,
again,
it
was
a
local
official
who
had
been instrumental
in
the
failure
of
an
eccle-
siastical case
reaching
Rome,
notwithstanding
the
Emperor's
wish
that
it should
be
judged
there.l5
The
pope's
frequent
appeals
to
Af-
rican
administrative
personnel
and a lack
of
adequate
scrutiny
of
the
8.
Ep.
VI.
61.
9.
Ep.
IV. 32.
A
similar
letter
which has
not
survived
must
have
been
sent to
the
Exarch
at this
time--f.
Ep.
VI. 59.
10.
Ep.
I. 72.
11.
Ep.
VI.
59. The
further
charges
in all
probability
refer
to
the
refusal
of
the
adminis-
tration
to
put
the
imperial
iussiones
into
effect--f.
Ep.
VI. 61.
12.
Ep.
VI.
61;
ef.
VII.
2,
where it
appears
that the Exarch
had
sent
his chancellor
along
with
three members
of
Paul's
church
to
give
evidence
against
Paul.
13.
Ep.
VIII.
13, 15;
the
inference
is
made
by
Caspar,
op.
cit.
445.
14.
Ep.
IV.
41.
The
'heresy'
of
which
they
are
suspected
can
only
be
'Donatism.'
15. Cf.
Ep.
IX. 27.
20
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5/7
BYZANTINE AFRICA
only
cases where we
can follow
their
response,
have
combined
to
ob-
scure
the
fact that what
Gregory
saw
as a
heresy
had
much
support
among the ranks of the imperial administration and, at least so far
as
our
evidence
goes,
no
opposition
whatever.
It
would
be
quite
unjustified
however
to
assume
that
what
the
government
in
Africa was
conniving
at was
identical
with
the
heresy
the
spectre
of which
looms so
large
in
Gregory's
correspondence.
Bishop
Paul's
case
again
is instructive:
it
is clear
that
this
Numidian
busybody
had
incurred
widespread unpopularity
among
the
African
episcopate,
even
to the extent of
being
excommunicated
by
a
provin-
cial
council.l6
The
scanty
evidence
combines
to
suggest
that he
was
distrusted for his fussy intransigence not only by the government
but
also
by
his
fellow-bishops.
Elsewhere
I
have
argued
that
in
any
case
the
distinction
between
'Dontatist'
and
'Catholic'
had
lost
much
of its old
sharpness,
and
in
all
probability
had
by
this
time
ceased
to
have
any
meaning
to
African churchmen.17
The two
communities-
if indeed
there were
two
communities-had
learnt
to
live
in
peaceful
co-existence,
broken
only
by
trouble-makers
such
as
Paul. The
image
projected
onto
the African scene
by
Gregory
had
lost contact
with
the
reality;
like much
else in
his
awareness
of more
distant
parts
of
the world, it was formulated in terms of a fiction which
had
once
corresponded
to
the facts.
This does
not mean that
there was
nothing
Gregory
need
have
had
misgivings
about. The case of
bishop
Paul
displays
a
fact
for
which
there
is
much
other evidence:
that
the
African Church
prefer-
red to
keep
the
papacy
at
arm's
length.
Even
Paul's
excommunica-
tion
by
the
Numidian
bishops
was not disclosed
to
the
pope by
the
primate
or
the
province,
as
Gregory
noted
somewhat
peevishly,
but
by
the
Exarch. 8
The Numidian
bishops,
in
particular,
were
in no mind
to follow papal directives. Gregory's special agent and informant
among
them,
bishop
Columbus,
was to
find
his
friendship
with
the
pope
a dubious
asset:
in
596 he
complained
of
becoming
unpopular
in
his
province
on account
of
the
many
letters
sent
him
by
the
pope.19
And
even with
the
help
of this
confidential
agent,
Gregory
could
not
count
on
Numidian councils
acting
in
accordance
with what he
thought
to
be
in line
with
the tradition
of
the
Fathers
and
the canons.
Where
the
bishops
failed
him,
Gregory
was
prepared
to resort
to
the
Exarch,20
or
even
to the
superintendent
of
the
Roman
Church's
African
lands,21
to try
to
get offending
measures
reversed. There is
no
evidence that
his
efforts
met
with
any
success.
Furthermore,
the
bishops,
far
from
16.
Cf.
Ep.
VI. 59.
17. Cf.
my paper
referred
to
above,
n.
2.
18.
Ep.
VI.
59.
19.
Bp.
vn.
2.
20.
Ep.
IV.
7,
cf.
also
Ep.
I.
72.
21.
Ep.
I.
82;
IL 46.
21
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CHURCH
HISTORY
appealing
to Rome
against
the
government,
were
flocking
to
the
Court
to
avoid
having
their
cases
judged
by
Rome.22
WVhether ny of Gregory's appeals to the secular authorities in
Africa
met
with
success,
we
cannot
know. The
only
evidence
points
to a
notable
lack
of
readiness
on
their
part
to
further
his
aims,
and
a
tendency
to
identify
themselves
with
the
independent
line
taken
by
the
African
episcopate.
The
inference
that
Gregory
must have
brought
his
plans
to
fruition
because in his
later
years
references
to
Donatism
disappear
from
his
correspondence
rests on
the
shakiest
of founda-
tions.
There
is,
on
the
contrary,
an
air of
disillusion
about
Gregory's
later
dealings
with
the African
Church,
born
out
in his conduct both
over the case of the primate of Byzacena,23and with regard to
Numidia.24
There
is
nothing
to
suggest
that
he
found
it
any
easier
to
get
his
way,
only
that he
had
come to
recognize
and to
some extent
Io
accept
the situation
as
inevitable.
The
exception
to
the
general
impression
of the
position
of
the
papacy
in
Africa
created
by
Gregory's
correspondence
is the
see
of
Carthage. Gregory's
correspondence
with the
primate,
Dominicus,
stretching
over
nine
years,
suggests
a
close
personal
friendship.
Even
if
we
make the
necessary
allowances
for
therapeutic flattery-an
art
of which the pope was a master-Gregory could, it seems, count on
support
in
Carthage.
Among
the
several reasons
which
may
account
for
this I
single
out
one:
the see of
Carthage
and
the
Proconsular
province
in
general
was
differently
placed
and did
not
share
the
same
concerns
as
the Church
in
Numidia,
and
even
in
parts
in
Byzacena.
How
very
different
the
Carthaginian
point
of
view was
at
this
time
appears
clearly
in
the
year
594. In this
year
a
Carthaginian
Coun-
cil
had decreed
to
put
into
effect the
imperial provisions
for
the
re-
pression
of
Donatism. The
Council's
decrees
laid down
heavy penal-
ties for failure to combat the heresy by the clergy. When Gregory
was
notified
of
these
regulations,
he was horrified
by
the
likelihood
he
foresaw
of serious
opposition
to
such
legislation
in
the other
Af-
rican
provinces.25
The
Carthage
attitude,
plainly,
was
almost as
re-
mote
from the
realities
of
the
other
African
provinces
as the Roman.
There
is
no
evidence to
justify
the
view
that
the
support
of
men
like
Dominic-any
more
than
of Numidians
like Columbus
or
Paul-made
the
slightest
contribution
to the
alleged
re-establishment
of
unity,
con-
cord and
ecclesiastical
discipline
in
Africa. 26
22. Cf. Epp. IX. 24, 27.
23.
Epp.
IX.
24,
27;
XII. 12.
24.
Cf.
Epp.
XII.
8,
9.
25.
Cf.
Ep.
V.
3.
The
Council must
presumably
have
been
one
of
the
whole
African
Church,
since
the
legislation
was
meant to
apply
not
only
in
the
Proconsular
province.
If
this
is
the
case,
it
is
interesting
that such a Council
could enact
legislation
as
severe
as
this
in this
matter.
The
implication
is that few if
any
bishops
from
the other
provinces
were
present.
26.
Diehl,
op.
cit.,
510.
Cf.
above,
n.
4.
22
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7/7
BYZANTINE
AFRICA
The
conclusion
to
be
drawn from
this
enquiry
is that
in
order
to
answer
the
question
what the
relation of
the
government
to
the
African Church was like we need to make two sets of distinctions:
first,
it
will matter
greatly
whether we have in
mind the Court
in
Constantinople,
or
the
Exarch
and other
African officials.
Secondly,
it will
matter even
more
whether
we
have in
mind
the
Church
of
Rome
or
that
of
Numidia,
of
Byzacena
or
Proconsularis. Neither
the
Church
(even,
as
I
have
argued,
the
African
Church)
nor the
gov-
ernment
can be
treated
as monolithic
in
this
respect.
If we
look
at
the
relations between
Church
and
government
in
this
perspective,
the
situation
during
the
years
of
Gregory
I's
pontificate
will not seem
so
very very
different
from
the
situation
some fifty years
earlier
or
some
forty years
later. Much of
the old
sense
of
constituting
an
autonomous
province
with
its own traditions was
still
alive
in
the
African Church. Under
Justinian
this sense found
an
outlet
in the
courageous
stand made
by
African
churchmen
against
his
Kirchen-
politik.27
At
the
turn
of
the
century
it
served
to
define its
Autono-
miegefiihl
with
regard
to Rome.
In
the
seventh
century
it
led
natu-
rally
to the alliance between the
African Church and
the
African ad-
ministration
against
the
Emperor
Constans
II.
The one
essential
difference
between
the
situation
around
640
and a
century earlier,
under
Justinian,
is
that the
administration had become
closely
identified
with
African
interests,
among
them not least those of the
African
Church.
The
period
with which I have been concerned
in this
paper
marks
an
important
stage
in
this
development.
27.
Cf.
my
paper
Reflections
on
religious
dissent
in North Africa in the
Byzantine
period,
Studies
in
Church
history,
3,
1966,
140-9.
23
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