Mobility and Exile at the End of Antiquity

List of Contributors

Ariane Bodin is a Postdoctoral Researcher in History at the University Paris Nanterre, France

Samuel Cohen is Assistant Professor of Ancient and Medieval History at Sonoma State University, United States

Michaela Dirschlmayer is Associate Lecturer in Ancient History and Archaeology at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt, Germany

María Victoria Escribano Paño is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Zaragoza, Spain

Éric Fournier is Associate Professor in Church History at West Chester University, United States

Michael Hanaghan is Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, University College Cork, Department of Classics, Ireland

Maria Konstantinidou is Lecturer of Early Byzantine Literature at Democritus University of Thrace, Greece

Sihong Lin is a PhD Student in History at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Rita Lizzi Testa is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Perugia, Italy

Jaime de Miguel Lopez is a PhD Researcher in History at the University of Alcalá, Spain

David Natal is Lecturer in History at Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom

Dirk Rohmann is Lecturer in History at the University of Wuppertal, Germany

Jörg Ulrich is Professor in Church History at the Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

Margarita Vallejo Girvés is Professor in History at the University of Alcalá, Spain

Ute Verstegen is Professor in Christian Archaeology at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

Jessica van ‘t Westeinde is Junior Research Fellow at the Department of History, University of Bern, Switzerland, and Excellence Junior Researcher at the Department of Ancient History, Eberhard-Karls-University of Tübingen, Germany←9 | 10→←10 | 11→

Introduction

Exile, mobility and migration are striking characteristics of the period from the end of antiquity to the early middle ages. These characteristics are even defining features of the period in question as it is known variously as the migration period or Völkerwanderungszeit in several European languages. While academic research into this period has for a long time held a relatively marginal status (in German-language rather than Anglophone academia) due to its being situated in between two well-defined fields of study, it is hardly surprising that both the period itself and the topics of mobility and migration are receiving increasing attention among researchers. The amount of contributions collected in this volume as well as their references to further recent books, volumes and individual contributions attest to this. Within the broad topics of mobility and migration, the category of exile as a legally defined method of forced movement of individuals or groups stands out, not least because the expulsion and movements of clerics contributed to the diversity of late antique Christianity in various regions of the Roman, Byzantine and post-Roman worlds. The present volume therefore sets out to shed new light on these developments.

With few exceptions, the present volume combines pertinent papers presented at three different occasions: a workshop held at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg on 2 September 2016, hosted by Jörg Ulrich; the international Forced Movement in Late Antiquity conference at the German Historical Institute in London from 6 to 8 April 2017, hosted by Julia Hillner and myself; and the III Destex International Workshop: confinamiento y exilio en la antigüedad tardía at the University of Alcalá in October 2017, hosted by Margarita Vallejo Girvés. The papers have been selected in order to explore a number of pertinent questions on late antique exile, with special emphasis on clerical and ecclesiastical exile, and to include a rich and diverse group of scholars at all levels of academic experience and from diverse educational and professional backgrounds (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, USA), reflecting the wide-ranging interest into the ancient heritage of the Mediterranean world. The focus of the various contributors is likewise diverse and interdisciplinary, ranging from classical, ancient and early medieval to archaeological, religious, ecclesiastical and theological studies. All papers have been invited in English in order to make the volume accessible to an international readership.←11 | 12→

The material has been arranged thus to explore specific areas of interest in the history, space and narratives of exile. Part 1 sets out to investigate Roman and Post-Roman Politics of Exile (Lizzi, Fournier, Escribano, de Miguel, Vallejo, and my own contribution) in both synchronic and diachronic ways, discussing either specific periods, or cases studies, or the mechanics of exile over time. Part 2 (Between Life and Death: Places of Exile) focuses on the variety of places associated with exile and, generally, forced movement (Cohen, Dirschlmayer, Verstegen). The final Part 3 (Fashioning the Exile Persona) gives an in-depth review of the ways in which individual destinies of exiles were portrayed, and often distorted, in order to fit specific contemporary narratives of exile, by means either of self-representation or third-party views, whether hostile or not (Ulrich, Natal, van’t Westeinde, Konstantinidou, Hanaghan, Bodin, Lin). In so doing, this part aims to look beyond the narratives provided in ecclesiastical source material and to elucidate life in exile for the very many instances where no such information is otherwise known.

The volume starts with my own contribution in which I describe the methodology of the quantitative assessment and network analysis underlying the database Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity, my research into the data, ways how to use the database and a preliminary presentation of finds.¹ This opening chapter sets out a number of themes that will be addressed in the individual contributions of this volume: legal questions surrounding late antique exile, considerations on the locations of exiles, on the reliability and tendencies of ecclesiastical sources on exile, and on ongoing activities of clerics in exile. Rita Lizzi’s chapter goes on to describe the role of councils in deciding clerical exile sentences for doctrinal reasons during the fourth century. Starting with an in-depth analysis of legal procedures described in a letter by Ambrose of Milan, Lizzi gives no easy answer on the question of whether emperors could expel clerics at will, arguing instead that concerning the principle of episcopal primacy in deciding doctrinal issues “being previously based on custom, it had been variously applied but also widely transgressed.” Nevertheless, the legal basis for imperial judgements involving the banishing of clerics was that of laesa maiestas, often in conjunction with accusations of riots and seditions, even if the cause for seditions was doctrinal in nature, rather than a verdict on the theological dispute itself. This shows that emperors, or post-Roman kings, refused to consult ecclesiastical institutions in cases where summary actions were needed in order to deal with emergencies at hand.←12 | 13→

By contrast, Jaime de Miguel López studies specific Christian attacks on pagan communities and buildings during the reign of emperor Zeno in cities that were centres of classical learning and in which we are therefore the most likely to hear about these attacks.² Proposing as a guiding question the idea that these attacks were orchestrated by imperial guidance rather than spontaneous outbreaks of violence, and that these attacks therefore amount to persecution, de Miguel contends that paganism survived the religious legislation and clampdown on religious practises in urban centres primarily as a culturally-cohesive group who shared their interest in a specifically pagan literary heritage viewed as suspicious in certain ecclesiastical and monastic circles. Exiles and other forms of personal punishment became a tool of imperial legislation with which to gradually deter the remaining pagans of the late fifth and sixth centuries. These legislative acts, primarily ←13 | 14→against magic, as de Miguel shows in case studies, ultimately filtered down to physical attacks against pagans and spontaneous outbreaks of violence in urban areas and became frequent during Zeno’s reign because of a number of rebellions that occurred at the time.

Overall, Part 1 helps to better understand a number of legal procedures associated with clerical and lay exile. Both Lizzi and Fournier extensively deal with the role of councils in banishing exile and with the extent to which emperors were to put into effect pertinent council decrees.³ While emperors tended to leave doctrinal concerns to the ecclesiastical authorities, they could also take summary actions under the ancient prerogative of laesa maiestas. The Nicene responses to Constantius’ reign even illustrate the ways in which church authorities negotiated their right to be considered as the ultimate arbiter of exile decisions in the fourth century. This supports the observations by de Miguel that exile and laesa maiestas came to be employed as tools with which emperors could clamp down on suspicious pagan activity and conspiracies, no doubt without facing intercessions by church leaders, while Vallejo’s chapter even implies that there could have been a whole group of incidents lost to us because of source bias. At any rate, as Escribano’s contribution also shows there is a direct link between laesa maiestas (understood as a crime against the state and personally against the ←14 | 15→emperor), episcopal petitions and charges against paganism (Epicureanism) as attributed to Jovinian.⁴

Part 2 appropriately turns to the types of places associated with forced movement of exile, interpreting these, in line with Vallejo’s observations on exile as the end of civil life, as places in between life and death. Samuel Cohen’s contribution discusses in-depth the highly problematic case of Liberius of Rome, one of the very few exiles who received a recall because (in the emerging interpretation) he retracted previous views, and the distortions it underwent in ensuing partisan accounts on his pontificate. For example, the projection of Liberius’ exile location, in such a highly tendentious late text as the Liber Pontificalis, into the cemetery of St Agnes, outside the urban centre of Rome, is telling because the location is variously associated with the exclusion of heretics, a life in death, famous martyrs, and the purging powers of women in the imperial family who allegedly accompanied Liberius in the cemetery.⁵

An entirely different kind of reception facility for individuals forced to relocate is dealt with in Manuela Dirschlmayer’s contribution: refugee camps and xenodocheia. Explaining the early development of xenodocheiai (guest-houses) as an institute in which to temporarily host pilgrims, the chapter goes on to describe its various forms of use, primarily to provide shelter for people in need and thus its importance for imperial policy and reputation of individual benefactors in Late Antiquity, both clerics and laypersons. Women, and especially empresses, came to play an important role in providing patronage to xenodocheiai. Individuals staying in these facilities included an impoverished migrant workforce in the fourth century, and exiled clerics by the sixth century. This is an important observation as it shows that exiles could no longer rely on support networks but came to be maintained through imperial patronage, and this no doubt contributed to strengthening a sense of identity. Ute Verstegen’s concluding chapter for this part makes a strong case that exile and forced movement had a visible impact on the translation of local rites to the places of destination as can be appreciated from clerical tombs and churches in Naples, Rome and Cyprus, which hosted a number of refugees and exiles from Vandal Africa ←15 | 16→and regions affected by the Muslim conquest, respectively. Veneration of relics of exiles which themselves came to be moved to distant locations also influenced local customs and practices. It is nevertheless interesting to note that while few burial inscriptions actually exist that link individual tombs to exiles, none of these are demonstrably echoed in literary sources, suggesting that exile and forced movement of clerics occurred more often than we are wont to think. Along with the contributions by Cohen and Dirschlmayer, this chapter shows that there are numerous reasons to believe that movement of clerics significantly altered the religious landscape of the Mediterranean and that the heritage of exiled clerics continued to be negotiated about long after their deaths.

The final – and most comprehensive – Part 3 investigates the ways in which individuals either represented themselves on foreign shores or in which their destinies were deliberately chosen to underpin certain narratives which again extended far beyond their deaths, and therefore further illustrates a number of aspects touched on before. We return to Liberius of Rome with Jörg Ulrich’s contribution but from a different angle. Ulrich specifically asks for ways in which individuals could apply for, and ultimately be granted, imperial pardon. The case of Liberius illustrates the lengths convicted exiles had to go to in order to actively secure a recall. Key to this was the lack of a formal inquiry by a synod and council, which means that the exile sentence was solely at the emperor’s discretion, but Liberius also employed a strategy of obtaining indulgentia, through a number of exile letters, in a way similar to how early Christians could obtain the same goal during the persecutions. This case is noteworthy because, save for blanket recalls from exile once an emperor had died, there are few cases known in which exiles were successful in seeking readmission, probably because of the difficulties encountered in such endeavour.

While Liberius’ letters (although these, too, have been interpreted as forgeries) open a window into activities pursued during exile, this is the case in neither the ecclesiastical narratives surrounding Liberius nor in many of the narratives presented in the following contributions. David Natal’s chapter contends that different accounts even by a single author, as in the case of Sulpicius of Severus’ portrayal of Hilary of Poitiers, can reveal diverging narratives of exile, attesting to the wider discourses of imperial and ecclesiastical policies at the time, and the specific purposes of each individual work. This chapter is a strong reminder that more often than not we are simply unable to reconstruct the actual circumstances of clerics in exile from own writings and should instead read later accounts from third parties as testimonials for the ways in which church authors intended to make a stand against emperors, governors, or kings. Natal’s in-depth analysis of third party sources can nicely be read against the contribution by Jessica ←16 | 17→van ‘t Westeinde, who discusses a contentious case of exile which can only be reconstructed from the individual’s own writings: that of Jerome leaving Rome for an extended stay in Bethlehem. As one of the best-preserved authors of Late Antiquity, Jerome’s correspondence is a prime example for how clerics in distant lands kept in touch with the social networks they had left, almost leaving the impression as if they had never left at all. A corpus of sources such as this may indicate that many more clerics kept on corresponding with their existing networks in the places they had left, even though the evidence for this is naturally limited.

The two final contributions, by contrast, attempt to reconstruct the daily life of clerics in exile which are obscure and not handed down to us in own writings. Ariane Bodin’s chapter examines the ascetic lifestyle maintained by Faustus of Praesidium, who was exiled in Vandal Africa, as it is mirrored in the Life of Fulgentius of Ruspe, who was himself the spiritual mentor of Faustus in exile. His case is therefore another pertinent example of how charismatic clerics in exile continued to exert a great deal of influence on their former congregation, while state authorities did little to curb any ongoing interactions, a picture that emerges from several other exile cases ←17 | 18→as well, as I noted in my own contribution. Finally, Sihong Lin undertakes the endeavour to compare two seventh-century exile cases from Northern Europe and the Byzantine Empire, respectively, arguing that while exile was often cast in a negative light, it “could also act as the catalyst for change, as it allowed the people involved to encounter and shape political, cultural, and religious developments far from their homelands.” For example, as Lin’s chapter shows in the context of the monothelete controversy, military, doctrinal and refugee crises gave rise to rare exchanges between the British Isles and the Roman Empire in the seventh century. The phenomena of exile and of migration of faith cannot therefore be seen in regional isolation or within traditional boundaries of early medieval history.