Cvetković Carmen Angela Gemeinhardt Peter Peter - Episcopal Networks in Late Antiquity: Connection and Communication Across Boundaries

Episcopal Networks in Late Antiquity

Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte

Founded by

Karl Holl and Hans Lietzmann

Edited by

Christian Albrecht and Christoph Markschies

Volume 137

ISBN 978-3-11-055188-4

e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-055339-0

e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-055251-5

ISSN 1861-5996

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2018964953

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

www.degruyter.com

Abbreviations for journals, series and reference works are given according to Siegfried M. Schwertner, Internationales Abkrzungsverzeichnis fr Theologie und Grenzgebiete (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2014). When the works of Christian ancient works are abbreviated, these abbreviations follow Lexikon den antiken christlichen Literatur , eds. Siegmar Dpp/Wilhelm Geerlings (Freiburg: Herder, 1999).

Recent studies on the development of early Christianity emphasize the important role played by the regional or local contexts in what is nowadays commonly regarded as an increasingly fragmented late ancient world. However, despite the political fragmentation of the late Roman Empire, one distinctive feature of the Christianity of this time that needs to be taken more into consideration is its inter-connectivity. As Peter Brown has observed, the basic module of Christianity consisting of a bishop, clergy, people and a place to worship was remarkably stable and easily transferrable to any region. Once established, such basic structures did not develop in isolation but remained closely connected, thus leading to the emergence of a web of Christian belief and practice that spread over much of the later Roman Empire. Both local and trans-regional networks of interaction contributed to the expansion of Christianity in this age of fragmentation.

The present volume investigates a specific aspect of the inter-connectivity that characterizes the late ancient Christianity in the area of the Mediterranean by focusing on the formation and operation of episcopal networks . The gradual rise of the bishop as a key figure of authority in the late antique city has been explained based on multiple converging factors, such as: an increase in the number of episcopal responsibilities facilitated by the vacuum of local power, well documented throughout the Roman empire beginning with the third century; the recognition of the bishop as the highest moral and spiritual authority within Christian communities which required ecclesiastical leaders to set an example of moral and virtuous conduct to their congregation; the transfer in the bishops hands of the management of funds and economic resources. Thus, at a local level, the bishops in their various roles as patrons, teachers, defenders of faith, pastoral counselors, managers of economic resources etc. were expected to interact with individuals of diverse social background that formed their congregations as well as with secular authorities.

To the above mentioned factors, one must also add the official recognition of Christianity as religio licita in the Roman Empire which was followed by a number of privileges granted by Constantine to bishops, which strengthened the role

The ability of bishops to interact at local level with different segments of the late ancient society as well as episcopal long-distance interactions will be under scrutiny in this volume. The papers assembled here explore the nature and quality of various types of episcopal relationships in Late Antiquity attempting to understand how they were established, cultivated or put to use across cultural, social or geographical boundaries. These papers are revised versions of the lectures presented at a conference dealing with the topic of Episcopal Networks in Late Antiquity: Connection and Communication across Boundaries, held in Gttingen from 28 to 30 September 2016 at the Universitys Historical Observatory, and generously funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. The conference brought together researchers working in various disciplines (ancient history, church history, theology and classics) and belonging to different academic traditions (Britain, Germany, Denmark, France, the United States, Belgium, Switzerland and Hungary). In addition to the contributors to this volume, the conference included also Kate Cooper (London), Julia Hillner (Sheffield), David Lambert (Rome/Oxford), Seraina Ruprecht (Bern) and David Natal (London).

The meeting offered the opportunity to address a number of questions in order to assess an array of issues regarding the bishops rise to or fall from power, transfer of knowledge, development of religious disputes, long-distance mobility and connectivity, the nature of ancient sources and their suitability for a study of networks. Some of the main questions raised by the participants in the conference and which also shape the contributions to the present volume are:

During the last century, in particular the social and exact sciences manifested a steady growing scholarly interest in the concept of networks, which came to be applied in a variety of ways. For a long time, scholars made extensive use of the image of network of social relations in a metaphorical sense in order to represent the interconnections of social relationships without specifying the properties of these interconnections which could help to interpret social actions. Milgram conducted an experiment, which showed that, in average, six social ties were needed in order to connect any two randomly selected people. Defining interpersonal ties as strong (high-level of interaction, e. g., friends), weak (low-level of interaction, e. g., acquaintances) and absent, Granovetter identified the weak ties as responsible for the transmission of information to a larger number of people than those accessible via strong ties. Additionally, the information that flows through weak ties traverses greater social distance and is more novel than that diffused by strong ties. For social scientists network description is based on comprehensive data collected through direct observation, questionnaires, interviews etc. that allow a precise and thorough documentation of social connectivity.

In parallel with these theoretical perspectives developed in the fields of anthropology and sociology, mathematical work on graph theory was also concerned with the functioning of networks. Already in the 1950s, Paul Erds demonstrated that only a relatively small percentage of a networks potential links was needed in order to connect every element in a network. Building on Stanley Milgrams findings about the surprising connectivity of the American society, the mathematicians Steven Strogatz and Duncan J. Watts have discovered in 1998 a graph, which provides a key to understanding the small world mystery, or how it is possible that six degrees of separation exist between any two people on this planet.