THE OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES series includes scholarly volumes on the thought and history of the early Christian centuries. Covering a wide range of Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, the books are of interest to theologians, ancient historians, and specialists in the classical and Jewish worlds.
Titles in the series include:
The Minor Prophets as Christian Scripture in the Commentaries of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria
Hauna T. Ondrey (2018)
Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East: A Study of Jacob of Serugh
Philip Michael Forness (2018)
God and Christ in Irenaeus
Anthony Briggman (2018)
Augustine’s Early Thought on the Redemptive Function of Divine Judgement
Bart van Egmond (2018)
The Idea of Nicaea in the Early Church Councils, ad 431–451
Mark S. Smith (2018)
The Many Deaths of Peter and Paul David L. Eastman (2019)
Visions and Faces of the Tragic: The Mimesis of Tragedy and the Folly of Salvation in Early Christian Literature
Paul M. Blowers (2020)
Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors
Morwenna Ludlow (2020)
Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature: A Cosmopolitan Anthropology from Roman Syria
David Lloyd Dusenbury (2021)
The Acts of the Early Church Councils
Production and Character
THOMAS GRAUMANN
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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Acknowledgements
The study of church councils in the ancient world has found renewed interest and received fresh impulses over the course of the last two decades. The publication in 2016 of the final volume of the acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (ad 787), edited by Erich Lamberz, marked the conclusion of the editorial project of the Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum which Eduard Schwartz had started almost exactly one hundred years previously. With it the acts and documents of the ecumenical councils of antiquity are finally all available in modern critical editions. Simultaneously, Richard Price has published English-language translations of the great majority of these texts, and work is proceeding on the remainder. This recent availability of critical editions and modern translations has opened up the complex material to a new readership. It justifies a closer examination of the processes that created these texts and a fuller analysis of their character. It is hoped that clarification of the practical work of notaries and secretaries in the councils, and of the expectations and intentions of the bishops and imperial officers under whom they worked, may provide a helpful foundation for future study of conciliar acts by historians and theologians alike.
The historical, cultural, and theological contingencies that characterize the many councils conducted over the course of more than four centuries led to a wide variety in the bureaucratic practices that produced their acts. No allencompassing, universally followed ‘handbook’ of textual practices in these councils may be reconstructed. Yet examination reveals a defined range of procedures and conventions that illuminate the work of conciliar secretariats and show the importance of the role they played. It is these that are the subject of the present study.
In my work on conciliar acts and documents I have benefited from frequent discussions with doctoral and other students in Cambridge, from the critical feedback from audiences at conferences and workshops, and from the generous advice of colleagues and friends too numerous to list here individually. Among them, particular thanks are due to Rudolf Haensch (Munich), who guided me into the world of ancient papyri, and to Peter Riedlberger (Bamberg), who helped my understanding of ancient legal practice and who kindly read a draft. I had stimulating discussions with the members of the research group in Bamberg that he leads. The editors of the series and anonymous readers for the Press made helpful suggestions for improvement. Yet, above all, I owe a debt of gratitude to
Richard Price (London), who generously gave up time to read the entire draft and offered most valuable comments. Parallel to working on this study, I had the additional good fortune to collaborate with him on the English edition of the acts of the Council of Ephesus. It is impossible to overstate the stimulus and enlightenment that this provided.
9. The Stenographic Protocol: Professionalism, Conventions, and Challenges
Memory, Recording, and Writing
What (Not) to Record: Comprehensiveness, ‘Omission’, and the Status of Utterances
(Don’t) Write This! Dictation, Instructions, and
10. ‘Transferring’ Shorthand Notes to Longhand Transcript
PART IV. THE WRITTEN RECORD
11. The Hypomnēmata:
Qualities
12. Documents Incorporated–Incorporating
13.
14.
15. The Structure and Elements of the ‘Ideal’ Session-Record and the Role of ‘Editing’
PART V. FILES, COLLECTIONS, EDITIONS:
16. Council Acts Gathered and Organized: Minutes, Case Files, and Collected
17. Ancillary Documentation and the Beginnings of Dossierization
18. The Preparation of ‘Editions’ and the Dissemination
Abbreviations and Conventions
1. Abbreviations Used for Councils, Synods, and Assemblies
C.Aquil.(381) Concilium Aquileiense (anno 381)
Coll.Carth. Collatio Carthaginiensis (anno 411)
C.Ephes.(431) Concilium Universale Ephesenum (anno 431)
CA Collectio Atheniensis (ACO I.1.7, pp. 17–167)
CC Collectio Casinensis (ACO I.3–4)
CP Collectio Palatina (ACO I.5, pp. 1–215)
CQ Collectio Quesnelliana (ACO I.5, pp. 321–340)
CV Collectio Vaticana (ACO I.1.1–6)
CVer Collectio Veronensis (ACO I.2)
CW Collectio Winteriana (ACO I.5)
C.Ephes.II(449) Concilium Ephesenum Secundum (anno 449)
CChalc. Concilium Chalcedonense (anno 451, but containing proceedings dating originally from 431–451)
III(ii) we number sessions after the Latin tradition (also used in Richard Price’s translation, q.v.) and add in brackets the session’s number in the Greek traditions where they differ trans. Price We reference by name only the frequently cited translation by Richard Price (see bibliography Concilium Chalecedonense).1
C.Cstpl.II(553) Concilium Universale Constantinopolitanum Secundum (anno 553)
C.Cstpl.III(680–1) Concilium Universale Constantinopolitanum Tertium (anno 680–1)
C.Nic.II(787) Concilium Universale Nicaenum Secundum (anno 787)
2. General Bibliographical Abbreviations
Papyri are quoted following the standard abbreviations of the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic, and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca, and Tablets, Founding Editors: John F. Oates and William H. Willis (http://papyri.info/docs/checklist) and using the editions cited there. We additionally provide the Trismegistos number (TM) as their unique identifier.
1 The translations of the acts of most ecumenical councils in the period provided by Richard Price in the Series of Translated Texts for Historians (see our Bibliography of ancient texts) are widely used for the convenience of the reader. We regularly modify them to bring out the specific concerns with document characteristics, the processes of their production, and the linguistic specificity of both in the ancient texts.
Abbreviations and Conventions
ABAW.PH
ABAW.PPH
Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Abteilung
Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klasse
ACHCByz Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance
ACO Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum
ACW Ancient Christian Writers
AHC Annuarium historiae conciliorum
AKG Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte
APAW.PH Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Philologisch-historische Klasse
AW Athanasius Werke
BA Bibliotheque Augustinienne
BBS Berliner Byzantinistische Studien
BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift
CCSG Corpus christianorum, series Graeca
CCSL Corpus christianorum, series Latina
CEFR Collection de l’École française de Rome
CrSt Christianesimo nella storia
CSCO Corpus scriptorum christianorum Orientalium
CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
FBR Forschungen zur byzantinischen Rechtsgeschichte
FC The Fathers of the Church
GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte
HAW Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaften
HZ Historische Zeitschrift
JbAC.E Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Ergänzungsband
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
MBPF Münchener Beiträge zur Papyrusforschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte
MEFRA Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Antiquité
Mus Le Muséon
n.F. neue Folge
ÖAW Österreichische Akademie die Wissenschaften
OCP Orientalia Christiana Periodica
OMRO Oudheidkundige Mededelingen uit het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden
OUP Oxford University Press
RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum
RE Pauly’s Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft
SBAW.PH Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Philosophisch-Historische Klasse
SC Sources chrétiennes
SEA Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum
STAC
Studien und Text zu Antike und Christentum
StP Studia Patristica
TTH Translated Texts for Historians
TU
Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur
VigChr Vigiliae Christianae
WBS Wiener Byzantinistische Studien
ZKG
ZNW
ZRG.Kan
ZRG.Rom
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte
Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, romanistische Abteilung
3. Literature Cited in Abbreviation
CCO Clavis conciliorum occidentalium septem prioribus saeculis celebratorum, edited by Andreas Weckwerth. CC Claves. Subsidia 3, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013
COGD Conciliorum oecumenicorum generaliumque decreta, I: The Oecumenical Councils From Nicaea I to Nicaea II (325–787), curantibus Guiseppe Alberigo et al. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006
CPG Clavis patrum Graecorum, cura et studio Maurice Geerard, 5 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 1983; 1974; 1979; 1980; 1987 (2nd ed. 2018); Supplementum, cura et studio Maurice Geerard and J. Noret. Turnhout: Brepols, 1998; Addenda volumini III, a J. Noret parata. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003
CPL Clavis Patrum Latinorum. Editio tertia aucta et emendata, edited by Eligius Decker, Turnhout: Brepols, 1995
DACL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie. 15 vols (in 30). Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1903–51
DGE Diccionario Griego-Español. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto de Filología. Red. bajo la dirección de Francisco R. Adrados. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2008–
EAC Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity, edited by Angelo Di Berardino, Thomas C. Oden, Joel C. Elowsky, and James Hoover. 3 vols. Downers Grove, 2014
HLL Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Vol. 4: Klaus Sallmann (ed.). Die Literatur des Umbruchs. Von der römischen zur christlichen Literatur, 117 bis 284 n. Chr. München: C. H. Beck, 1997. Vol. 5: Reinhart Herzog (ed.). Restauration und Erneuerung.
Abbreviations and Conventions
Lexicon Gregorianum
LSJ
ODB
OLD
PCBE I
PGL
PLRE II
PmbZ
Die lateinische Literatur von 284 bis 374 n. Chr. München: C. H. Beck, 1989
Lexicon Gregorianum: Wörterbuch zu den Schriften Gregors von Nyssa, edited by the Forschungsstelle Gregor von Nyssa an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität, bearb. von Friedhelm Mann, 10 vols, Leiden: Brill, 1999–2014
A Greek-English Lexicon, edited by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott et.al. Ninth edition with a revised supplement, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996
The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, edited by Alexander P. Kazhdan. 3 vols. Oxford: OUP, 1991
Oxford Latin Dictionary, edited by Peter G.W. Glare, 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP, 2012
Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire. Vol. 1: Prosopographie de l’Afrique chrétienne, edited by André Mandouze. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982
A Patristic Greek Lexicon: with addenda and corrigenda, edited by G.W.H. (Geoffrey William Hugo) Lampe. 10th ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991
Martindale, J.R. (John Robert). The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Vol. II: AD 395–527. Cambridge: CUP, 1980
Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit, edited by the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften; nach Vorarbeiten F. Winkelmanns erstellt von Ralph-Johannes Lilie . . . [et al.]. 8 vols, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998–2013
RE [Paulys] Realencyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Neue Bearbeitung begonnen von Georg Wissowa. 84 vols. München/Stuttgart: Druckenmüller, 1894–
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Editus iussu et auctoritate consilii ab academiis societatibusque diversam nationum electi. Leipzig: Teubner, 1900–
Introduction
The councils of the late antique church are remembered for important theological and organizational decisions taken by venerable, even saintly ecclesiastical dignitaries. In the case of imperial councils, the presence of emperors (or high officials representing them) provides additional lustre. This, at least, is the impression gained from iconographic depictions created of these events in later centuries. Less glamorous and hardly ever depicted, however, these councils were also characterized by a substantial administrative operation, to which we owe the transmission of sizeable numbers of records and other texts from these occasions. Such texts are commonly referred to as council acts.
The acts from church councils in the ancient world that we find in modern editions such as the Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum are the product of multiple stages of textual collection and copying stretching over centuries before arriving at those final shapes that form the basis of Eduard Schwartz’s magisterial edition and the work of his successors. The processes of shaping, arranging, and collecting individual texts into council acts began already during the meetings from which they emerged and to which they bear witness. In this respect, councils can be portrayed as exercises in textual practices: in notetaking, reading, copying, transcribing, arranging, editing, handling, collecting, and distributing significant quantities of texts, and in different formats and material manifestations.
And yet, the importance of using and producing ‘documents’ for the work of the councils and the exertions of secretaries and scribes concerned with the production of these records has attracted little scholarly attention. Ancient depictions of judicial scenes in the civil sphere frequently show a small table with a document or two displayed on top to illustrate symbolically the work of the court and so alert us to the importance of paperwork.1 A similar depiction of a council, had it been attempted, would have to show a much bigger pile of papers, documents, and books, requiring a significantly larger table. In a rare exception from the common neglect of these artefacts and the activities associated with them, the illustrator of a Carolingian ninthcentury manuscript sketched a council scene in which much space is given to the secretaries and to the texts they handled and
1 Representing this convention, the trial of Jesus before Pilate is illustrated in this way in the sixthcentury Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, fol. 8r (ed. Arthur Haseloff, Codex Purpureus Rossanensis: Die Miniaturen der griechischen Evangelien-Handschrift in Rossano, Berlin: Giesecke & Devrient, 1898).
Acts of the Early Church Councils: Production and Character. Thomas Graumann, Oxford University Press.
produced.2 In the middle ground formed by an oval of the seated ecclesiastical dignitaries, we see two lecterns with weighty codices opened and displayed, and six scribes with their pens and ink wells and with scrolls of writing material across their knees, hard at work to record proceedings. Despite its early medieval air, this manuscript illustration allows us to imagine the similar administrative operation running alongside the meetings of bishops in antiquity—normally remaining unseen in the background of transactions.
Councils must have been feast days for ecclesiastical (and civil) functionaries and administrators. Their specialist skills were in high demand. Even before meetings were formally opened, the administrative operation kicked into gear and remained in full swing long after the bishops retired, exhausted from their sessions. In Roman administration, the creation and handling of texts had developed into a fine art of professional specialists and in ecclesiastical contexts, too, it often remained the special preserve of the bureaucrats and the keepers of archives and libraries. These men spoke a distinct language, replete with the technical terminology used in the imperial bureaucracies.3
While the workings of the administrators could appear impenetrable to the uninitiated, the administrative paper trail and its operations was ubiquitous in late Roman society. The numerous papyri preserved mostly from Egypt (where climatic conditions were unusually favourable for the preservation of such materials) illustrate the pervasiveness of the bureaucracies of government and of the judicial institutions constantly invoked to assess, adjudicate, and arbitrate nearly all aspects of life. Virtually every Roman citizen had experience at some level with some of this pervasive sprawl of documents, and those in positions of responsibility understood at least some of the mechanics that kept the paperwork flowing. Churchmen shared in this cultural experience and formation. The increasing integration of the church into the institutional setup of empire made many of them practitioners of the bureaucratic arts themselves, whether acting as scribes and notaries, financial administrators (oikonomoi), ecclesiastical advocates (ekdikoi), or, in the case of bishops, as judges. In their own dioceses, bishops were regularly involved in the daily struggle and legal wrangling over deeds, petitions, and lawsuits, which they were required to mediate and adjudicate. The records of these, one imagines, absorbed just as much time and effort as theological reading, writing, and biblical study. Many will have recognized themselves and their daily
2 Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 32, digitalized at http://psalter.library.uu.nl; the drawing is found on fol. 90v.
3 Even in Greekspeaking contexts, and despite the increased usage of Greek in government communications—recently traced by Fergus Millar, A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408–450) (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006)—Latinisms and echoes of Latin technical ‘jargon’ are certain indications of ‘insider’ speak. They are particularly pertinent in legal contexts. See now Matias Buchholz, Römisches Recht auf Griechisch. Prolegomena zu einer linguistischen Untersuchung der Zusammensetzung und Semantik des byzantinischen prozessrechtlichen Wortschatzes (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2018).
plight in Augustine’s wellknown complaint of the inordinate burden that such legal and administrative work placed on him.4 This dimension of their episcopal duties made them all ‘semiprofessionals’, or at least keen amateurs—out of necessity and by practice, if not always by training—in the business of handling texts and recordkeeping.5 Some inevitably moved in the imperial legal system and its paperwork with more confidence than others.6 Specialists in the lower clerical ranks soon emerged and gained importance quickly. The councils we shall examine bring to light a number of specialists in the ranks of the clergy assisting their bishops with their various technical competences.
Such occupations and backgrounds in the handling of everyday church affairs, outside conciliar meetings, then, fostered the expectations of churchmen about the required—and formally correct—engagement with documents and paperwork appropriate for an occasion of the significance of a council, even before we take into account the involvement of imperial officers and their staff in many of the councils examined in this study. They also equipped them with the skills and knowledge to achieve it. The bishops and their officestaff active in late antique councils conducted the necessary scrutiny of documents before accepting them— or at least made the pretence of doing so—in the same way as imperial bureaucrats and legal experts. When preparing their own records, senior bishops—just like civil officeholders—also used the technical formulae that signalled to their subordinates and administrative aides the intended processing of the records, acts, and documents transacted during the sessions, and in this way prompted them to action.
Analogies of conciliar transactions with the work of law courts and deliberative civil assemblies that underscore such communality have long been observed.7 As the natural cultural environment of conciliar activity, such similarities cannot surprise. Yet the significance of the seemingly lesser tasks in the ‘bureaucracy’ of councils has failed to attract sufficient scholarly attention. And with it, the
4 Of his numerous complaints, see only Op.Mon. 29.37; Neil McLynn, ‘Administrator: Augustine in His Diocese’, in Mark Vessey (ed.), A Companion to Augustine (Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2012), 312–22.
5 Some, like Julian, the bishop of Lebedos, had experience of notarial work from earlier stages of their career; CChalc. I.130.
6 Cf. Caroline Humfress, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (Oxford: OUP, 2007); Caroline Humfress, ‘Bishops and Law Courts in Late Antiquity: How (Not) to Make Sense of the Legal Evidence’, JECS 19:3 (2011): 375–400; Erika T. Hermanowicz, Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate at the Time of Augustine (Oxford: OUP, 2008); Norman Russell, ‘Theophilus of Alexandria as a Forensic Practitioner’, StP 50 (2011): 235–43. From the perspective of legal history, see now Peter Riedlberger, Prolegomena zu den spätantiken Konstitutionen. Nebst einer Analyse der erbrechtlichen und verwandten Sanktionen gegen Heterodoxe (StuttgartBad Cannstatt: frommannholzboog, 2020), 495–607.
7 See, classically, Heinrich Gelzer, ‘Die Konzilien als Reichsparlamente’, in Ausgewählte Kleine Schriften (Leipzig: Teubner, 1907), 142–55; Pierre Batiffol, ‘Origine du règlement des conciles’, in Etudes de liturgie et d’archéologie chrétienne (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1919), vol. 3, 84–153.
characteristics of conciliar ‘paperwork’ and the mechanics of its confection and use have yet to be analysed.
The required textualadministrative processes for the production of conciliar records, instigated by the commands of bishops and officials and executed by notaries, secretaries, and scribes with the technical skills of their profession, were not accidental to the work of councils and—it is the contention of this study— barely even secondary to formal proceedings when it came to achieving the councils’ desired efficacy. What is more, the supervision and control of the administrative, textbased, and textcreating processes was also an essential tool in steering the council and its transactions in the desired direction. The administrative personnel behind the main actors on the conciliar stage who carried out this work were indispensable for the operation of a council. Without them, the bishops would be in danger of remaining largely ineffective. Yet with the right aides at their beckoning, leading figures could shape events and records for their benefit and to suit their agenda. The professional and personal affiliations of the assistants working with bishops and officials—where they can be uncovered— therefore hold at least one key to unlocking the lines of communication and influence operating behind the publicfacing exterior of the meetings (Chapter 8). More important still is an understanding of the work these unseen men carried out in between meetings and after the conclusion of sessions, so that the finalized official record—on which so much depended at the time and which is still the basis (often the only one) for any historical or theological investigation now— could become a reality.
For the assessment and interpretation of conciliar acta, understanding the practicalities of their creation is therefore imperative. Crucially, in a significant number of instances, bishops, officers, and secretaries active in councils openly addressed questions relating to the textual and administrative activities to which these records owe their existence. Less frequently, the acts themselves signal for unstated (but often reconstructable) reasons the special significance attached to the documentary record for the purposes of the council. Such instances provide fruitful starting points for our analysis.
With its concern for the textual practices and outputs of church councils, the present study builds and seeks to advance existing scholarship on ancient councils. Assessing past scholarship on the rich treasure of conciliar texts creates a somewhat paradoxical impression. On the one hand, church councils have for centuries occupied historians, theologians, and canon lawyers. In various and manifold ways countless works in these areas have illuminated important aspects of late antique Christianity and late Roman society, of Christian doctrine, and of the generation and transformation of its legal traditions. Research has borne and continues to bear rich fruit in all these areas. The council records examined here have often been the foundational sources and resources for such endeavours.
At the same time, the forbidding complexity and sheer quantity of conciliar texts included in the great collections has probably more often impeded than stimulated interest. In 1927, the first editor of the ACO could observe with some despair that ‘nobody reads council acts’ (Acta conciliorum non leguntur).8 With the exception of a few specialists, this remained true long after Schwartz’s own editorial exertions began to provide these texts in modern critical editions. The editorial project that Schwartz started almost exactly one hundred years ago came to its conclusion only in 2016. A recent surge of scholarly interest appears to be connected not least with the appearance in print of modern language translations, chief among them the English translations of the Acts of the Ephesus I (431), the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Second Council of Constantinople (553), the Lateran Council (649), and Nicaea II (787) by Richard Price and a number of collaborators.9
Almost inevitably, most theological and historical approaches to church councils have been predominantly concerned with council acts as ‘sources’ for distinct thematic research interests. The description of the material and its generation has mostly been relegated to ‘introductory’ concerns and at the most prompted discussion of how the historicalpolitical and intellectual contexts shaping the councils also impinged on their acts and affects their ‘reliability’ as historical sources. Though potentially decisive for the historical and theological interpretation of the ‘source’material, the document characteristics and the textual practices to which the acts owe their existence have not been analysed and examined across different councils and as important in their own right. Only Fergus Millar’s important examination of government communication in the times of Theodosius II—much of it manifested in council acts—begins to gesture in this direction.10
A fundamental interest in the acts in and of themselves, therefore, is almost entirely confined to, and summed up by, the great editorial feats of the Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum and the numerous attendant studies of their editors: Eduard Schwartz, Johannes Straub, Rudolf Riedinger, Heinz Ohme, and Erich Lamberz. To these must be added the editorial work on other councils outside of this corpus: the Council of Aquileia by Manuela Zelzer; the Conference of Carthage by Serge Lancel and more recently by Clemens Weidmann; and less directly, but no less important, the ‘Urkunden’ (documents) of fourthcentury councils initiated by H.G. Opitz and continued by H. Chr. Brennecke and his collaborators.11 Many important insights are also found in the translation
8 Eduard Schwartz, ‘Die Kaiserin Pulcheria auf der Synode von Chalkedon’, in Festgabe für Adolf Jülicher zum 70. Geburtstag (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1927), 212.
9 See the Bibliography, 309–11. 10 Millar, Greek Roman Empire
11 Editions are given in the Bibliography, 309–11 and 315.
volumes by Richard Price mentioned previously, and his associated studies. Our study owes an immense debt to the work of these scholars.
Yet for the provision of critical editions, the main focus of these scholars had to be directed towards the archetypal form of the acts preserved in the manuscript tradition, and the interest in the conditions and circumstances of their origins is shaped by this principal purview.12 Different from such concerns (and complementary to them), this examination instead focuses on the practices employed by the conciliar secretariats themselves when creating the very first form and textual artefact that constituted the ‘official’ protocol of a session, and of the acts of a council—activities that are situated one step (at least) prior to the manuscript tradition that pushes off from what they produced.13 Consequently, our study does not presume to rewrite the history of the creation of council acts from the perspective of their textual transmission, which the editors of the separate volumes of the ACO (and other standalone editions) have magisterially portrayed for each separate occasion.
Our research of the creation of council acts, and the instances of their early use and handling, instead aims to evaluate the importance of textual production, receptions, and handling for the core business of various councils and for these councils’ institutional convictions and selfperception. As both texts and objects, the completed records express the council’s sense of purpose and embody its claim to validity. The acts, in this perspective, are not the byproduct and mere textual fallout of the important transactions by the councils concerned, which more or less directly present the ‘reality’ of discussions and decisionmaking and can safely be evaluated in historical and theological research with that interest alone. Instead the acts—as paperwork—lay claim in essence to the authority of the council and the legitimacy of its proceedings and decisions. This character of council acts as legitimizing texts necessarily focuses attention on the open or veiled attempts by their makers to engage with an implied audience in a persuasive manner. Eduard Schwartz has amply demonstrated this underlying purpose as operative in the collections made of these texts in later centuries and pointed out their resultant tendentiousness; he incisively called them ‘publizistische Sammlungen’ (collections for the purpose of partisan argument).14 Similar aims and mechanisms, we contend, not only inform such later collections but also already shape the initial processes for the creation of the original acts. Council
12 Independent of such editorial work, only a few more studies have begun to analyse, sporadically on the basis of select evidence from particular synods, elements relevant to the making of council acts. Emin Tengström’s study of the work of stenographer and scribes at the Conference of Carthage has been foundational in this respect; it forms a helpful springboard for our study (see Chapter 3, pp. 33–6).
13 How closely these theoretically distinct steps are linked is not least determined by the creation of an authoritative ‘edition’ of acts by the conciliar authorities, or its absence (see Chapter 18, pp. 283–95).
14 Eduard Schwartz, Publizistische Sammlungen zum Acacianischen Schisma, ABAW.PH, N.F.10 (München: C.H. Beck, 1934).
acts, then, are not simply, arguably not even predominantly, informational and documentary in character and aspiration; they are rhetorical, argumentative, persuasive, polemical from the outset—which tendencies later compilers and copyists often developed further (at times redirecting and remoulding the originators’ designs in the process). The acts must be understood as compositorialeditorial products of a guiding quasiauthorial mind, even if their leading ‘voice’ may not be one individual’s but representative of complex negotiations of divergent interests.
The argumentative and legitimizing values of the acts, we contend, are inscribed in the practices of their creation and compilation; put differently, textual practices speak of their creators’ intentionality and are the principal means to execute them. These purposes and intentions are at the same time concretely embodied in the acts and documents as physical objects. The acts, therefore, simultaneously need to be understood in their materiality, as artefacts. These ancient material objects are no longer directly available to the modern scholar, having long since decayed together with the archives that kept them. Yet the recorded descriptions and discussions of these objects by the clergy and officials handling them allow reconstruction of important features, some of which may be illustrated by papyrological evidence of similar documents from different social and institutional contexts. Textual practices, then, are the way in which councils actively construed their claims to ‘truth’ and authority, and material textual embodiments of acts reveal and display the legitimizing claims of their makers.
The methodological approach of this study is directly informed by the activities observed in conciliar gatherings. Several councils responded to the work of previous assemblies and openly engaged in the critical scrutiny of the paperwork left behind by those earlier transactions. At the same time and on the same occasions, the bishops (or officials) and the secretaries they instructed began to produce records of the same kind they inspected and discussed. We thus observe two strands of ancient engagement with conciliar (and related) documentation folded into one: one provided a description of textual and administrative activity in action while matters were being transacted, running alongside them and looking forward to their eventual completion; the other offered critical comment on the characteristics of documents previously created by other assemblies by the same kinds of practices and for comparable purposes. The latter perspective allows us to infer expectations and conventions governing the final shape and required formality of the record—whether the ancient critics held up earlier records as positive models or as negative examples of the mistakes to avoid. ‘Proper’ documentary form, reconstructed from expressions of ancient expectation, in turn provides us with the standards by which to evaluate the records they left behind for us. The two counterdirectional yet complementary perspectives find expression in mirroring parts in this study; they analyse the examination of existing records conducted in
councils (Part II) and the textual practices of the councils’ chancelleries for the production of fresh records (Parts III and IV).
The need to focus on the overt discussions of bishops and administrators directs our attention specifically to a number of individual examples from particular councils, and so defines and demarcates the range of evidence we study. The most informative examples for this research interest can be historically situated in a short period of only fifty years in the first half of the fifth century, to which sporadic earlier and subsequent evidence adds (see pp. 21–3 for more detail). These distinctive sources offer a unique opportunity to study the processes active in the textual gestation of acts, and to uncover the assumptions about documentary propriety and purpose on which they rest. Most other conciliar records—which must be the products of analogous practices and concerns—only rarely draw attention to such factors but are more usually content to display before the reader’s eye the finished, and polished, fruits of their labour. The relevant discussions of ancient practitioners in this way directly determine and define the inevitable selection of relevant material chosen for close examination. This requires analysis of the relevant phenomena across several councils. The persistence of the cultural techniques underpinning and enabling the procedures for the creation of records allows us, moreover, to include evidence from the time of Justinian. The similarities between legal and bureaucratic convention and language in Justinian’s legislation, and in the legal compilations overseen by him, and the habits observed in fifthcentury council texts are especially instructive.
The councils of even later periods of Byzantine history, in contrast, inhabit a transformed world, and so do—in different ways—the councils of the Visigothic, Vandal, Merowingian, and Frankish churches in the West contemporary to them. Continuity and semblance in some of their activities can still be observed, while the changed, and changing, cultural and political constellations are responsible for the specific formation of both their procedures and their documentary concerns. They are not, for this reason, studied here in any detail. The only exception is a very limited discussion of two distinct contexts, where acts from earlier councils were scrutinized; they allow us to identify the characteristics of the relevant texts from the vantage point of their ancient users (Chapter 7).
The resultant comparative and complementary approach does not, however, entail the claim that we can presume a common, regularly employed set of rules and techniques on these and all other occasions—as if applying a firm ‘manual’ of conciliar bureaucracy. In fact, the opposite is the case: we shall have occasion repeatedly to point out variety, variation, and divergence running alongside and interposing with the frequent operation of essentially the same basic mechanisms. The investigation, therefore, does not seek to arrive at a synthesis of purported administrative uniformity through the accumulation of evidence from different contexts. Specific contexts in specific councils, rather, function like case studies
which between them draw the contours of the range of possibilities—and outline their limits—within which the notaries and bishops worked and from which they selected.
The selection of the principal evidence on which our study rests—as it is directly derived from the ancient occasions of overt discussion of these phenomena—identifies, finally, a certain type of conciliar text as most fruitful for our investigation and as most deserving of our attention. The late antique discussions about documentary probity, which provide our starting point, are found in sessionprotocols that present themselves as the direct records of ‘live’ oral interventions by individual speakers. Our investigation concentrates effectively on these ‘directspeech’ protocols and the particular needs and requirements of their making. Other modes of representing conciliar business, neglecting direct speech, are in evidence, for which the techniques of written drafting are fundamental; they do not require detailed analysis here. We shall sketch the fuller range of texts emerging from other councils and in different periods which are not in the foreground of our investigation and discuss exceptions from, and intrinsic variations of, the protocols in direct speech in Part I.
PART I
THE QUEST FOR DOCUMENTATION
1
The Earliest Church Councils
A Documentary History
The majority of surviving council records, especially those that record the spoken interventions of individual bishops and officials, originated in the fifth and subsequent centuries. Yet the desire to create and obtain records of what had been discussed and decided in meetings of ecclesiastical leaders arose much earlier and developed alongside the formation of councils as institutions of the church. In fact, the history of early church councils can be told as a history of their documents.
Documentation of one kind or another and attendant written communication were at the heart of conciliar activity and proved essential to the nature and purpose of church councils from an early date. From the late second century onwards, leading churchmen from more than a single locality (civitas or paroikia) convened sporadically to discuss certain challenges arising in their churches and to decide how to respond. Varying interpretations of what constituted ‘true’ Christianity required clarification not just within a single congregation but increasingly on a broader scale, as did divergent liturgical practices and moral choices of teaching and practice. These sporadic gatherings evolved over the course of the third century into more regular synods or councils—the terms synod (σύνοδος)/synodus and council (concilium) were used synonymously in antiquity and do not denote a difference in membership, procedure, or authority.1 In Constantinian and post-Constantinian times councils became more frequent at all levels of the churches’ life and gained a firmer institutional basis in the process. They developed into the main institution of the church’s organizational and disciplinary self-regulation, and provided the most important forum for her efforts at doctrinal definition. In particular, the newly emerging formats of imperial councils, ideally representing the churches of the entire empire, acquired exceptional significance and authority.
In the process councils also became the focal points for, and centres of, textual production, documentation, transmission, and reception. Numerous and varied texts were the products of church councils or were related to their activities. As
1 For the ancient terminology, see Adolf Lumpe, ‘Zur Geschichte der Wörter concilium und synodus in der antiken christlichen Latinität’, AHC 2 (1970): 1–21; Adolf Lumpe, ‘Zur Geschichte des Wortes σύνοδος in der antiken christlichen Gräzität’, AHC 6 (1974): 40–53.
