Urban religious rivalries have often resulted in raucous and competing processions as a means of marking territory. To process through a space serves to claim that very space. One need only consider the violence attendant upon the contentious Protestant and Catholic processions in Belfast in Northern Ireland.Footnote 1 There was no shortage of religious competition and dissent in late antique Rome. In fact, there were at least five, often hotly, disputed episcopal elections in the fourth through the sixth centuries. However, this intra-Christian competition did not lead to the contestation of space in the form of processions or other public ceremonial, as it did in Alexandria or Constantinople. At Rome, Christian competition took the form, at least rhetorically, of siege and occupation, because the Roman aristocracy and their patronage of traditional forms of public display still dominated and defined the public sphere. Instead of conquering urban space through processions, circumstances specific to Rome compelled rival claimants to the see of Peter to resort to warfare—until the mid-sixth century when an impoverished aristocracy ceased to lavish its diminished wealth on traditional public rituals.Footnote 2
I. Aristocratic Public Display in Late Antique Rome
The ancient Mediterranean city was replete with processions. Such processions were not mere pomp: public rituals were at the very heart of ancient urban life—as confirmed by the virulent Christian polemic against these traditional spectacles, contemptuously called pompa diaboli.Footnote 3 The entirety of Rome's religious calendar—its games, spectacles, sacrifices, and processions—formed a complex tapestry, into which various Roman identities and histories were woven. For the ancient Roman, processions provided a map of Roman-ness, offered a school of romanitas, embodied Roman life and history.Footnote 4
For this reason, after the conversion of Constantine (306–336), the first Christian Roman emperor, churches throughout the Mediterranean developed their own forms of public ceremonial in order to re-imagine civic identity. In early-fourth-century Alexandria, the presbyter Arius (circa 260–336), made famous by the eponymous Arian theological controversy, composed easily memorized slogans which were chanted as his supporters processed through the city.Footnote 5 On the one hand, intra-Christian competition in early-fifth-century Constantinople resulted in dueling processions between later followers of the Arian position and adherents to the Nicene creed.Footnote 6 Similarly, Catholic and Donatist bishops performed competing parades to attract attention and advertise power as the two groups arrived in Carthage for a council at Carthage in 411.Footnote 7 On the other hand, at about the same time also in North Africa, Christians unsuccessfully attempted to put an end to a traditional ritual procession that passed with “unbounded effrontery” in front of a church.Footnote 8 In all three cases, groups of Christians effected and attempted to alter traditional civic festival and spectacle life. Of course, Alexandria, Carthage, and North Africa also tolerated a fair amount of internecine Christian violence.Footnote 9 But, at least on occasion, public ceremony could substitute for violence, even if such ceremonial also sometimes became an occasion for violence.
Fourth- and fifth-century Rome certainly witnessed its own religious competition, not doctrinal or dogmatic but rather ecclesiastical—that is, electoral contests involving deacons, presbyters, aristocrats, and even other bishops. Yet, strangely, the Roman church did not organize its first procession until 556, nearly 200 years later than elsewhere.Footnote 10 What is more, in 408 with Alaric, leader of the Visigoths, menacing the city just before his infamous sack in 410, haruspices, diviners, from Tuscany convinced the urban prefect, Pompeianus, who still adhered to the Roman traditional cults, that they could drive off Alaric by means of their traditional arts. Faced with the danger posed by Alaric and under pressure from the urban prefect, bishop Innocent put aside his own sentiments and acquiesced, allowing the Tuscans to perform whatever rites were necessary but only in secret, according to Zosimus. The haruspices refused, insisting that traditional public sacrifices needed to be conducted and that the senate must ascend to the Capitol to perform the necessary rites. Though no one would participate in so public a manner, nonetheless the bishop of Rome had still been compelled to concede the (private) performance of Roman traditional rituals.Footnote 11 While a recognized touchstone of orthodoxy throughout the Mediterranean, the church at Rome was not even master of its own city.Footnote 12 Rome's late antique aristocracy—some of the wealthiest private landowners of all time—still ruled the roost and their continuing adherence to classical Roman ceremonial still defined the city's public sphere.Footnote 13
During the fourth and fifth centuries, the church at Rome, nicely endowed by Constantine in the early fourth century, continued to attract donations and bequests. However, the scale of its wealth could not compete with wealth of some individual aristocratic families, not to mention the aristocracy as a whole, until the later-fifth century.Footnote 14 In fact, in the late-fourth century, the bishop of Rome's income may have amounted to just over one fifth of what Symmachus, a Roman aristocrat of merely middling wealth, spent on his son's games. Symmachus, an adherent of the religious tradition formerly known as paganism, spent an incredible sum on the praetorian games of his son in 401, shelling out nearly 2,000 lbs of gold—a short while later the Christian senator Maximus doubled that on his son's games—whereas the bishop of Rome had an annual income of just over 400 lbs.Footnote 15 The assets of the super-rich of Rome even far exceeded that of their colleagues in the senate in Constantinople—the sum spent by a praetor in Constantinople was “a bagatelle” compared to what Symmachus spent.Footnote 16 Of course, the senate at Constantinople was also newer and less swamped by a deep sea of tradition, for which reason, in part, Christian processions could take place in Constantinople, by contrast to Rome.Footnote 17
In the increasingly common absence of the emperor in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman aristocracy magnified its public presence—the prominence of which has been long overshadowed by scholarship concerned with the supposedly seamless shift from emperor to pope in late antique Rome.Footnote 18 Without imperial oversight or interference, the Roman elite expanded its scope of activity—though its political paths were largely confined to offices in the city of Rome and nearby provinces, a number of aristocrats held illustrious posts at the imperial court.Footnote 19 For example, the senator Probus (circa 328–390), a scion of the eminent Anician family, “was summoned from Rome to fill the office of praetorian prefect [at the imperial court], a man known for the distinction of his family, his influence, and his great wealth, throughout the whole Roman world, in almost all parts of which he possessed estates here and there.”Footnote 20 By and large, however, the aristocracy of Rome exercised an extra-official influence, which far outstripped the constitutional role of the senate, in part due to its immense fortunes, stemming from far-flung landholdings throughout the empire.Footnote 21
The aristocracy of Rome, however, was defined as much by its adherence to tradition as by its staggering wealth. Its massive wealth allowed the aristocracy to pursue power and prestige through very traditional and thoroughly ostentatious means.Footnote 22 In particular, through the mid-sixth century chariot races in the Circus Maximus continued to attract large crowds of all religious stripes, offering an unparalleled opportunity for public munificence and patronage: first the game-giver conducted a dazzling procession from the temple of Capitoline Jupiter through the Forum to the Circus, where he then presided over the extraordinarily popular races.Footnote 23 Similarly, the Colosseum witnessed shows and spectacles, though no longer featuring gladiators, until the early-sixth century.Footnote 24 In addition to races in the Circus Maximus and shows in the Colosseum, the Roman aristocracy consistently reiterated its claim on the ancient heart of the city—the Forum Romanum—by erecting statues, even ones with “pagan” connotations, and restoring buildings through the early-sixth century.Footnote 25
The aristocracy also continued to patronize civic religious festivals, maintaining the Roman heritage industry upon which elite identity was founded.Footnote 26 The last known traditional cult ritual performed at Rome, the Lupercalia in which near-naked men ran through the city center whipping women accused of sexual improprieties, was also one of its oldest with a history likely stretching back to the earliest days of archaic Rome. In 495 C.E., bishop Gelasius condemned aristocratic support of this ancient festival with its drunken nudity, bawdy violence, and riotous disorder, insisting that one cannot be a Christian while participating in the pomps of the devil:Footnote 27
You cannot, indeed, share the table of the Lord and the table of demons at the same time, nor drink from the chalice of the Lord and the chalice of demons; you cannot be a temple of God and a temple of the devil, light and shadow cannot come together at the same time in you.Footnote 28 (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:21)
In effect, the bishop attempted to polarize a fluid situation, forcing the aristocracy to choose between his episcopal vision of Christianity or its longstanding adherence to Roman traditions. But, even Gelasius himself seemed to recognize the futility of his attack:
I do not dare to accuse my predecessors of negligence, when rather I believe that they perhaps had tried to eliminate this perversity but certain motives and contrary desires impeded their intentions, just as now not even you yourselves want to desist from mad, wild undertakings and considerations.Footnote 29
Just as his predecessors failed to put an end to the frenzied Lupercalia, so too Gelasius admitted that there was little hope now. The Roman senate still desired to see the madness continue and so it would—a fact to which Gelasius seems resigned. His attempt to steer Christian aristocrats towards his understanding of Christianity had failed.
In the fourth through sixth century, Roman social, political, and religious life was deeply divided between Roman traditions and ecclesiastical rites, private religions and public cults, aristocratic prerogatives and church demands—a fragmentation that extended into the church itself.Footnote 30 Christian devotion was dispersed in various forms throughout the city, much of which the bishop could not claim to control. Even the seemingly well-attended martyr festivals held at extramural cemeterial churches lacked both spectacularity and organization, while remaining beyond the grasp of the bishop—the Damasan elogia, inscribed poems dedicated to the martyrs and erected at their shrines by bishop Damasus, only represent the beginning of a process of episcopal control.Footnote 31 In short, whether “pagan” or Christian, the result is the same: up through the early-sixth century, aristocratic traditions, their sacred and political rituals, controlled the public sphere, the political core, and monumental center of a still classical city. That is, pagan and Christian aristocrats alike competed for power and prestige in the same classical idiom. In the face of this ritual and spatial domination of Rome, intra-Christian competition expressed itself in the language, if not also the practice, of siege and occupation.
II. Disputed Episcopal Elections at Rome 350–530Footnote 32
Any history of the institutional development of the Christian church in late antique Rome is inevitably limited by the extant sources, specifically the so-called Liber Pontificalis, the Book of Pontiffs, a serial biography of the bishops of Rome first written in the early-sixth century and maintained continuously thereafter until the ninth century, and the Collectio Avellana, a compilation of fourth- and fifth-century letters also assembled in the early-sixth century. For the fourth and early-fifth centuries, such a history may also draw upon other sources, like the historian Ammianus Marcellinus or the Christian poet Prudentius, but in the main a late antique history of the Roman episcopacy depends upon sources generated by the episcopacy itself.Footnote 33
The Liber Pontificalis, likely composed by anonymous members of the papal bureaucracy, presents short episcopal biographies, or vitae, arranged in chronological order with a clear emphasis on the institution and administration of the church at Rome. That emphasis seems to have led its various writers to show a marked interest in disputed elections—remarkably not always siding with the winner. The compiler(s) of the Collectio Avellana showed an equal interest in schismatic elections, but instead of condensing its sources into a single coherent vita, the Collectio Avellana presents epistles written during the disputes—epistles which often provide a wider view of the situation, sometimes contradicting the terse vitae of the Liber Pontificalis. Though both the Liber Pontificalis and the Collectio Avellana drew material from similar archives in efforts to write a history of episcopal bureaucratic traditions from within, nonetheless, the two often offer contrasting vantages on episcopal history, which allows for a fuller, even if incomplete and distorted, analysis.Footnote 34
In 350 C.E., the emperor Constantius II (337–361) exiled Liberius, the bishop of Rome (352–366), for his refusal to condemn bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (circa 295–373) and his staunch opposition to the emperor's Arian tendencies.Footnote 35 The archdeacon Felix was then appointed to serve as bishop (and so may be called Felix II though tradition marked him as an anti-pope), despite the fact that he and the entire church had sworn to have no bishop but Liberius. According to the pro-Ursinian (a protagonist in the very next episcopal election) epistle Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos, the clergy, contrary to divine law, wickedly perjured themselves by supporting the archdeacon Felix, who was ordained as bishop in place of Liberius. “This act displeased the entire populace and so a procession [or public appearance] of his [Felix] was halted by the people.”Footnote 36 It is remarkable that in the mid-fourth century, the bishop Felix attempted to hold a procession or to make a public appearance by which he could stake a legitimate claim on the city. Equally remarkably, the Roman people would have no such thing in either case.
In 358, after a number of years of exile, Liberius recanted his opposition to imperial demands and so was allowed to return to Rome. At first, Liberius could not enter the city, so he lived at the cemetery of St. Agnese with the emperor's sister (fig. 1.1).Footnote 37 Subsequently, the emperor Constantius ejected Felix and recalled Liberius, discarding the unwelcome idea of having two bishops. Felix then retired to an estate on the Via Portuensis. “Shortly thereafter, at the instigation of the clergy, Felix invaded the city” and seized the basilica Julia in Trastevere (fig. 1.2), which seems to have been the closest basilica inside the walls to the Porta Portuensis.Footnote 38 Once he had successfully seized and occupied the church, Felix “dared to give a station”—the first attestation of the word statio to denote a liturgical assembly—after which he was again thrown out of the city.Footnote 39 More commonly, statio meant a staging post on a road or an anchorage at sea as well as an armed post, a military garrison, or a guard-post—though in early Christian Latin usage, it also meant a fast.Footnote 40 In this situation the use of the word statio for a liturgical assembly seems particularly apt given the military overtones of the passage, as if Felix had besieged the city, breached its walls, and then occupied the church. The statio denoted both a liturgical synax and a kind of Felician beachhead into the city.
Fig. 1. Map of Rome.
This same strategy of occupation may be seen in the other disputed episcopal elections of the fourth through the sixth centuries.Footnote 41 Traditional, aristocratic public rituals still dominated the urban image of Rome, which inhibited ecclesiastical processional claims on the city, and so competing claims to the bishop's throne were fought by a kind of static, occupational strategy rather than a mobile, processional one. This strategy of spatial occupation accords well with the circumstances—the slow growth of monumental Christian buildings (a decidedly static mode of Christianization) in a city whose public spectacles were still almost entirely non-Christian.Footnote 42 In fact, the very next papal election offers another illustration.
After the death of Felix, Liberius and the supporters of Felix managed to forge a short-lived peace until Liberius died in 366, at which point the flames of partisanship flared anew. The supporters of Liberius, or at least those who disliked Felix, gathered at the Julian Basilica on the Via Lata (or perhaps the Julian basilica in Trastevere) (fig. 1.3 or 1.2) to elect the deacon Ursinus who was immediately consecrated by the bishop of Tivoli; while another deacon, Damasus (366–384), supposedly the appointed successor to Liberius, was elected in Lucinis, which may refer to a titulus in the northern Campus Martius now known as St. Lorenzo in Lucina (fig. 1.4).Footnote 43 “But when Damasus, who had always canvassed for the episcopacy, found out, he roused all the charioteers and ignorant rabble by bribery. Armed with cudgels, he forced his way into the Julian Basilica and raged without control for three days with a great slaughter of the faithful.”Footnote 44 The siege and slaughter allowed Damasus to gain control of the episcopium at the Lateran (fig. 1.5) with the help of “every perjurer and gladiator,” where he was ordained bishop one week after his election.Footnote 45 Once in control of the Lateran, Damasus engaged civic authorities to rid Rome of his adversaries.
Ursinus was ejected from the city, but his partisans, in an effort to gain credibility through an association with Liberius, occupied the newly founded Liberian basilica on the Esquiline, now St. Maria Maggiore (fig. 1.6):
Then Damasus with the perfidious summoned the gladiators, charioteers, gravediggers, and all the clergy. With axes, swords, and cudgels, he besieged the basilica and roused grievous battle at the second hour of the day on the seventh day before the Kalends of November in the consulship of Gratian and Dagalais. Breaking down the doors and setting a fire, having assailed, he invaded. While destroying the roof of the basilica, some of his household was also annihilating the faithful with tiles. Then, as they forced their way into the basilica, all the Damasiani slaughtered a hundred and sixty of the people, both men and even women. They wounded even more, many of whom died. But no one of Damasiani was killed.Footnote 46
The “pagan” Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus may have described the same incident—if the basilica Sicininus was the Liberian basilica—when he noted, “It is a well-known fact that in the basilica of Sicininus, where the assembly of the Christian sect is held, in a single day a hundred and thirty-seven corpses of the slain were found.”Footnote 47 It is also possible, however, that the Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos and Ammianus refer to separate massacres. Despite the many ignominies, the Ursinians may have held out for a year before finally being expelled beyond the walls. Or if the Ursinians did indeed flee the assault, they may have later re-occupied the basilica Sicininus or the Liberian basilica, which seems to have functioned as a kind of Ursinian anti-cathedral for a time.Footnote 48
Once the Ursinians were finally expelled, they occupied the cemetery of St. Agnese, again associating themselves with Liberius who had stayed there with Constantina, where they celebrated a series of stationes, meaning, it seems, a prayer-gathering as there was no clergy to offer Mass.Footnote 49 The supporters of Ursinus remained at the tomb of St. Agnese on the Nomentana for about a year, before once again Damasus “armed with his accomplices attacked and destroyed many in a massacre of his ravaging.”Footnote 50 This last act of violence ended the Ursinian opposition—as the Ursinians were banished from the city.Footnote 51 Notably, bishop Damasus later included the tomb of Agnese amongst those he enhanced with his elogia—one of the rare female martyrs whom Damasus publicized, though his reasons are rather obvious.Footnote 52 After this bloody beginning, Damasus seems to have restored his reputation by his careful cultivation of the saints.
Yet another electoral dispute erupted after the death of bishop Zosimus in 418, resulting in the double election of the archdeacon Eulalius (418–419) and the presbyter Boniface (418–422).Footnote 53 Upon the death of Zosimus, Eulalius and his supporters hastened to the Lateran, which Eulalius held until he could be properly ordained. The urban prefect Symmachus, who favored Eulalius, simply wrote that the archdeacon lingered at the Constantinian basilica “with great multitudes and the majority of the priests,” whereas a partisan of Boniface insisted that “blockading every entrance entirely, the archdeacon Eulalius, impiously neglecting the funerary rites of so great a priest [bishop Zosimus] occupied the Lateran church with deacons, a very few presbyters, and uproarious hordes of plebs.”Footnote 54 On another day, presumably to allow for a proper funeral for Zosimus, the partisans of Boniface assembled at the church of Theodora—otherwise unknown—to elect the presbyter. Boniface was then consecrated in the church of Marcellus (fig. 1.7), according to the report of the urban prefect, or the nearby Julian basilica, according to the Liber Pontificalis.Footnote 55
After his ordination, the supporters of Boniface marched upon St. Peter's (fig. 1.8). “And with him [Boniface], they advanced upon the basilica of the holy apostle Peter.”Footnote 56 The verb used by the urban prefect, procedo, more usually meant to go forward, advance, or proceed, often in military usage, though, interestingly, it is also used for processions.Footnote 57 In these circumstances, the martial meaning seems more apt, for the urban prefect Symmachus, who favored Eulalius at this point, would not have wanted to portray Boniface acting piously. Like the word statio, procedo may here have a double valence: both a religious and a martial tone were justly used throughout these documents that described the vicissitudes of these disputed elections.
The western emperor Honorius (393–423), having accepted the prefect's version of events, confirmed the election of Eulalius and promptly ordered Boniface to leave the city.Footnote 58 Boniface then established himself temporarily in St. Paul's Outside the Walls (fig. 1.9).Footnote 59 While Eulalius celebrated mass at St. Peter's, the urban prefect sent an agent to Boniface to warn the recalcitrant would-be bishop against any further public display and to bring him to the office of the urban prefecture. “With contempt for the charge, Boniface marched upon [or processed to] (processit) the city, turning the prefect's agent over to his followers to be roughed up.”Footnote 60 In this incident, the urban prefect again used the verb procedo, but in this case its martial overtones are even clearer. Much like Felix just over a half-century earlier, Boniface also attacked the walls of Rome—though he, unlike Felix, was stopped before he could invade the city. After a violent struggle, Boniface was stopped at the very gates and subsequently confined outside the walls under the surveillance of the urban prefect.
As Boniface cooled his heels, his partisans sent a letter of protest to the emperor, who, now better informed, called a synod to decide the matter.Footnote 61 While awaiting the synod, both Eulalius and Boniface were to remain outside the city of Rome—Boniface at St. Felicitas (fig. 1.9), while Eulalius waited at St. Hermes in Antium, a nearby town.Footnote 62 In their absence, the bishop of Spoleto would conduct the Easter liturgy.Footnote 63 The Ravennate synod made little progress before the emperor Honorius convened a larger, more general synod in Spoleto, inviting bishops from Italy and North Africa to attend.Footnote 64 Eulalius, however, contending that the faithful demanded that he return, re-occupied the Lateran by force accompanied by rioting.Footnote 65 In response, the urban prefect Symmachus expelled the once-favored Eulalius from the Lateran and from Rome with his own forces to avoid further violence and also imperial displeasure. As may be expected, the emperor Honorius then decided in favor of Boniface.Footnote 66
At the end of the fifth century and into the early-sixth (498–506), Symmachus (498–514) and Lawrence (498–499, 501–506) competed at length for the cathedra.Footnote 67 In 498, just four days after the death of bishop Anastasius (496–498), two candidates were elected nearly simultaneously for the episcopal cathedra: the deacon Symmachus with the support of other deacons was elected in the Constantinian basilica, the Lateran; while his opponent, the presbyter Lawrence, favored by the aristocrats and the other presbyters, was elected in the Liberian basilica, St. Maria Maggiore. The Ostrogothic king Theodoric (493–526), also called the Amal, who was the power in Italy by the end of the fifth century, appears to have decided in favor of Symmachus, as he was ordained first with the most supporters, which were the criteria established by Theodoric to decide such contests.Footnote 68 Lawrence was then made bishop of Nuceria, as a consolation perhaps but forcibly according to the Laurentian fragment of the Liber Pontificalis—part of an earlier series of episcopal biographies composed between 514–519 written in favor of Lawrence it would seem.Footnote 69 The issue seems to have been largely settled until 501/2, when the Laurentians leveled further charges against Symmachus, including celebrating Easter incorrectly and consorting with women of ill repute, in particular with a certain woman named “Spicy.”Footnote 70 Theodoric summoned bishop Symmachus to Ravenna to answer these charges. According to the Laurentian fragment, one morning at Ariminium, where Symmachus was staying awaiting the Ravennate synod, he saw these women with whom he was accused of sinning as he walked along the beach. That night, Symmachus “fled back to Rome and barricaded himself inside the precinct of St. Peter the apostle.”Footnote 71
The flight from judgment seems to have aroused suspicion, so Peter of Altinum was appointed as a visitor to conduct the episcopal liturgical services until a synod was convened.Footnote 72 After a number of false starts, a synod was finally convened at the Sessorian palace, now St. Croce (fig. 1.10).Footnote 73 Again according to the Laurentian fragment, Symmachus long refused to attend this synod, which would have required him to traverse the entire city from St. Peter's in the Vatican to St. Croce in the southeast, where the synod was housed near the Lateran.Footnote 74 According to the pro-Symmachan entry in the Liber Pontificalis, “Those who were rightly in communion with blessed Symmachus and chanced to be at large in the city were killed by the sword.”Footnote 75 The partisans of Lawrence “killed many sacerdotes, including Dignissimus and Gordian the priests of St. Peter ad vincula and Saints John and Paul; these they killed with clubs and sword. They killed many Christians, so that it was unsafe for any clergy to travel in the city by day or night.”Footnote 76 Throughout, it seems, Symmachus remained at St. Peter's, from which he refused to leave for fear of violence, despite a second and third warning to attend the synod. After these warnings, the synod convened one last time, during which the assembled bishops threw in the towel, as without the presence of Symmachus they could not perform the service for which they had been gathered—the bishops seem to have simply acquitted Symmachus, decreeing “what they thought would suit Symmachus, and thus left the city in total chaos.”Footnote 77
With the synod gone and Symmachus barricaded in St. Peter's, Lawrence returned to Rome, governing the city as if he were bishop from 501/2–6. In particular, the episcopal authority of Lawrence was founded on his occupation of tituli on the Viminal and Esquiline hills (roughly the area around St. Maria Maggiore), where he had once served as a presbyter.Footnote 78 Symmachus, who was not a Roman of Rome, drew support from Trastevere, traditionally, if not always accurately, associated with foreigners, where his sole known senatorial supporter had a palace.Footnote 79 Eventually however, the efforts of Symmachus once again prevailed as Theodoric ordered Lawrence to return control of the churches of Rome and their property to Symmachus, after which Lawrence was compelled to stay on the estates of his aristocratic patron Festus until death.Footnote 80
Finally, in 530 after the death of bishop Felix IV/III (526–530) (according to tradition, Felix II was strictly speaking an anti-pope), the deacon Dioscorus was elected in the Lateran Basilica, after which the supporters of the archdeacon Boniface II (530–532), the appointed successor of Felix, retired to the Julian basilica, where they elected him bishop. It is possible, according to Louis Duchesne, that this basilica Iulii was one of the grand halls of the Lateran palace, instead of the Julian basilica in Trastevere.Footnote 81 Either way, the supporters of Boniface occupied the basilica for a short while, as the dispute itself was short-lived. According to the Liber Pontificalis, “the strife among the clergy and senate lasted 28 days. Then Dioscorus died on 14 October.”Footnote 82 Boniface II then did his best to reconcile the pro-Byzantine party who had favored Dioscorus, though the length of time between his death and the election of his successor indicates that this did not go entirely well.Footnote 83
III. Pelagius I and the Advent of Christian Public Ceremonial
From the fourth to the sixth century, as the Roman aristocracy expended no small portion of its fantastic wealth on traditional forms of public display and as various claimants to the seat of Peter battled in the streets and in ink, the relative positions of the aristocracy and the episcopacy did not, of course, remain stable.Footnote 84 In brief, the power of the aristocracy waned as that of the bishop waxed.Footnote 85 In the fourth and fifth centuries in particular, the vast fortunes of the aristocracy allowed them to purchase symbolic power through the patronage of traditional public ceremony, while the bishops struggled to control Christian aristocratic domestic worship and extramural martyr festivals or shed each other's blood in the streets or in churches. However, starting in the mid-fifth century the foundation of aristocratic power and prestige, its landed wealth which allowed it to finance this expensive and expansive array of public spectacles, eroded as “barbarian” kingdoms slowly appropriated large chunks of the western Roman empire.Footnote 86 The foundation of aristocratic authority was also worn away from another direction—the gradual conversion of the aristocracy to Christianity, which, although it did not prohibit classical ceremonial, slowly channeled aristocratic benefactions in other directions, namely the church.
Roman aristocratic wealth was overwhelmingly based on land ownership. In particular, the wealthiest Roman aristocrats owned lands scattered throughout the empire, though with a notable concentration in Italy, Sicily, and North Africa. In the fifth and sixth centuries, this landed wealth was severely impaired; while that of the church at Rome continued to expand.Footnote 87 First, in the mid-fifth century the Vandals, a group of Germanic speakers fortified by Alans (once nomadic Iranian speakers) conquered North Africa, in particular the provinces around Carthage, some of the most productive and profitable regions of the Roman world. A second devastating blow was struck in the mid-sixth century during the reconquest of Italy, when the eastern Roman emperor Justinian (527–565) attempted, and succeeded, in recapturing Italy from the Ostrogoths, who under Theodoric the Amal had taken over Italy in the late-fifth century. The reconquest or Gothic wars dragged on for nearly twenty years, ending just in time to see yet another disaster fall upon the beleaguered peninsula. Just as the eastern Roman empire regained Italy, yet another “barbarian” group, the Lombards, invaded Italy, sparking another thirty years or so of intense fighting, with intermittent fighting continuing long afterwards.Footnote 88 This nearly half-century of continuous warfare completed the work begun by the Vandal conquest—by the end of the sixth century, the super-rich of Rome were dispossessed of much of the property whose incomes had allowed them to patronize a lavish calendar of public ceremonial and traditional festivals.Footnote 89
The gradual conversion of the aristocracy matched the equally gradual, though certainly more dramatic, impoverishment of the Roman aristocracy. However, Christianity was quite compatible with most classical aristocratic values.Footnote 90 As Peter Brown notes, “even after they had become Christian, the senators of Rome remained fiercely loyal to the memories of their city.”Footnote 91 The aristocracy may well have largely converted by the end of the fifth century. But at the same time, an elite version of late antique Roman Christianity had largely accommodated classical culture, as aristocratic distinction, regardless of religious affiliation, depended upon a conservative adherence to classical culture, its literature, art, and even norms of deportment.Footnote 92 In 598, even pope Gregory I (590–604) could wonder, “How anyone can be seduced by Constantinople, and how anyone can forget Rome, I don't know.”Footnote 93 That is, even the bishops of Rome defended its place and privileges.Footnote 94
During the fourth and early-fifth centuries, Christianity and the Roman aristocracy “met and merged.”Footnote 95 But even if conversion should no longer be viewed as a massive change in elite values, nonetheless it had consequences for public ceremonial. Specifically, Christianity offered new opportunities to accrue symbolic capital: almsgiving, the foundation of ascetic communities, and the construction of Christian churches or chapels in particular. Some of the funds which were once freely given to traditional public display were now channeled in other directions. In addition, ascetic versions of Christianity could indeed contradict the mores of classical culture: in a spectacular pot-latch gesture, Melania the Younger and her husband Pinian renounced their vast properties, causing a panic among their relatives as well as in the real estate market.Footnote 96 Similarly, ascetic impulses compelled men and women from many of Rome's most august families to reject the public sphere and its temptations, withdrawing instead to private devotions in private (but often grand) chapels (sometimes with their own clergy) within the household.Footnote 97
The aristocracy seems to have remained dominant until the end of the fifth century even after the loss of North Africa to the Vandals, when the scale began to tip towards the bishop.Footnote 98 The adventus-ceremony which greeted the Ostrogothic king Theodoric upon his arrival at Rome in 500 may best illustrate the turning of the tides. Prior to 500, the occursus, the Roman civic group which went to meet the arriving dignitary, had always been described as the senate and the Roman people, SPQR.Footnote 99 In 500, however, “The Pope Symmachus and the entire senate and people of Rome amid general rejoicing met [Theodoric] outside the city”—the very first recorded appearance of the bishop in the occursus at Rome.Footnote 100 In the midst of the declining power of an increasingly Christian aristocracy, the bishop of Rome had finally managed to insinuate himself into one of the more hallowed rituals of late antiquity.
Given such circumstances, it might elicit little surprise that the first recorded Roman Christian procession took place shortly after the Byzantine re-conquest of Rome—which crippled an already weakened aristocracy, the paramount barrier to Christian public ceremonial—in the midst of a contentious papal election.Footnote 101 As a deacon under bishop Vigilius (537–555), Pelagius I (556–561) had originally supported his predecessor's opposition to the condemnation of the Three Chapters.Footnote 102 The emperor Justinian, however, offered Pelagius the papal throne in return for his support.Footnote 103 Pelagius accepted, for which, according to the Liber Pontificalis, “monasteries and a large number of the devout, the prudent, and the nobility withdrew from communion with him saying he had implicated himself in the death of pope Vigilius and so had brought great punishments on himself.”Footnote 104 At that moment in 556, Pelagius turned to the Byzantine general Narses, who served, it seems, as the conduit by which a rather long history of Christian public ceremonial from the new Rome, Constantinople, reached the old. Again according to the Liber Pontificalis:
Narses and pope Pelagius adopted a plan: when the litany had been given out at St. Pancras's they processed with hymns and spiritual chants to St. Peter, the apostle. Pelagius, holding the gospels and the cross of the Lord above his head, went up onto the ambo; in this way he satisfied the entire populace and the plebs that he had caused Vigilius no harm.Footnote 105
The itinerary is striking. It was entirely extramural, beginning and ending at martyr-shrines, avoiding the monumental core of Rome entirely. To begin at St. Pancras (fig. 1.11), a relatively humble martyr basilica, seems like an odd choice. This martyr first appears only in the fifth-century Hieronymian martyrology.Footnote 106 Towards the end of the fifth century, bishop Symmachus built the first church dedicated to Pancras, as part of his battle with the Laurentians for control over the martyrs along the Via Aurelia.Footnote 107 In the course of this contest it seems, martyr stories were elaborated or invented, which were eventually recorded by Gregory of Tours. According to Gregory of Tours, “[Pancras's] harsh punishment publicly distinguishes [oaths], so listeners either believe the truth or they witness the judgment of the blessed martyr against deceit.”Footnote 108 In an effort to vindicate himself, Pelagius, after having offered prayers to the martyr, would have sworn that he had had nothing to do with the death of Vigilius. If he had lied, he would have died—or at least been possessed by a demon. The procession, then, in which Pelagius and his entourage made their way down the northern slopes of the Janiculum to St. Peter's below, while singing hymns and chants and carrying crosses and sacred books, functioned as spectacular proof that Pelagius had indeed sworn truthfully.
The choice of St. Peter's as the destination seems obvious, as it is difficult to overestimate its importance.Footnote 109 In fact, about forty years after this Pelagian procession, Gregory I would call Rome the threshold of Saint Peter, prince of the Apostles.Footnote 110 However, the Lateran basilica would have served much the same purpose, in addition to providing a longer and more accessible itinerary through the city center. Perhaps the papacy was still figuring out its place in the city, as Rome's streets and squares might have still been haunted by the memory of traditional Roman spectacles once patronized by an elite that only recently been rent by the ravages of war.
All told, the first known Christian procession at Rome appears to have been rather humble, comprising a rather short, extramural itinerary from the shrine of a martyr who kills perjurers to the apostle Peter. Such a public ritual was made possible primarily by the devastation of the classical Roman aristocracy, whose traditions had previously defined the public space of the city, but also by the presence of Byzantines, like Narses, who acted as channels for the long history of Christian processions in Constantinople.
IV. Conclusion
In the fourth and fifth centuries, local church leaders throughout the Mediterranean and even Europe took advantage of the new opportunities afforded by imperial favor and its often-incalculable material support. In the scramble to exploit these new prospects, conflicts developed between competing Christian groups, many of which were settled with violence, but some of which were contested symbolically through public rituals. In many of the major cities of the empire—Alexandria, Carthage, and Constantinople in particular—Christian groups staked their claim to the civic public sphere through processions. On occasion, rivals groups held conflicting processions. Even fifth-century Gaul witnessed the emergence of such public ceremonial.Footnote 111
Rome, however, did not see its first Christian procession until 556, nearly two centuries later than elsewhere. Up until that moment, Rome's public sphere, its streets and fora, was still sated with a full calendar of traditional Roman ceremonies and other aristocratic forms of public display. The super-rich of Rome, whose wealth far exceeded that of the church at Rome and even the elite of Constantinople, continued to distinguish itself from the average run of humanity by financing customary ceremonies, erecting statues, and restoring buildings in the Roman Forum. From the fourth until the mid-sixth century, then, the Christian contestation of space among rival Christian groups could only take the form, at least rhetorically if not actually, of bloody conflict. Competing claimants to the seat of Peter repeatedly engaged in acts which were construed as violent. Even acts which may have been rituals were described in military terms.
Throughout all of these electoral disputes three elements consistently emerge: first, the use of martial language to describe the events; second, the concentration on a few contested sites; and third, internal fragmentation among Christians at Rome. Felix, after having been driven out of the city upon the return of Liberius, invaded (inrumpit) Rome. He then presumed to hold a station (stationem . . . dare praesumit), whose military connotations have already been noted.Footnote 112 The bloody conflict between Damasus and Ursinus was also aptly described in military terms. Damasus and his armed (armatus) charioteers and ignorant mob forced their way (perrumpit) into the Julian basilica where they murdered indiscriminately for three days (per triduum debacchatus est).Footnote 113 Damasus later had his supporters—gladiators, charioteers, and gravediggers—besiege (obsedit) and then charge (inrumperet) the Ursinians, who were holed up in the Liberian basilica.Footnote 114 Much the same happened at the cemetery of St. Agnese, where Damasus attacked and massacred (irruit . . . deiecit) a group of fearful Ursinians.Footnote 115 Pointedly, the pro-Ursinian epistle, Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos, characterized this Damasan violence as war: “Damasus waged war for a fifth time.”Footnote 116
During the struggles between Eulalius and Boniface, the partisans of Boniface advanced (processerunt) or marched on St. Peter's, while Eulalius occupied (obsederat) the Lateran basilica.Footnote 117 Later, Boniface marched upon (processit) the city—an advance only stopped at the city walls. Even Eulalius forcibly re-occupied the Lateran.Footnote 118 The Laurentian fragment described the battles between Symmachus and Lawrence as civil wars (bella civilia).Footnote 119 Symmachus, after fleeing Ravenna to avoid charges of sexual impropriety, barricaded (concludit) himself within the compound of St. Peter's.Footnote 120 While Symmachus was confined to the Vatican, Lawrence was occupying (optinebat) several tituli.Footnote 121 Finally, the Liber Pontificalis characterized the relatively brief conflict (intentione) between Boniface II and Dioscorus as strife or discord (dissensio) and not violence or war, probably because Dioscorus died before the situation could worsen.Footnote 122
This overwhelming use of military language suggests that from the mid-fourth to the mid-sixth century, the spatial strategies and behaviors of the Christian church, as represented by its various officials, were best understood as occupation and war. Various protagonists occupied, held, and barricaded themselves in churches or cemeteries, which were advanced upon, charged at, and invaded. Importantly, even movements through space were colored with military tones. Boniface may well have been conducted to St. Peter's by a procession, but the language suggests more strongly that he and his supporters marched upon the church. The religio-military language, as also with the word statio, is ambiguous and yet telling, suggesting that Christian religious movement through the city developed metaphorically out of military maneuvers during these schisms. That is, what might have been ecclesiastical public rituals were described as if they were military operations, if they were not actually assaults or invasions. Once an increasingly impoverished aristocracy released its near exclusive hold on the city, such acts were subsequently construed as unambiguously ceremonial—violence and rituals described in ambiguously martial terms eventually yielded to purely symbolic acts of urban conquest.
It is also noteworthy that many of the same sites were occupied again and again: in particular, within the walls, the Basilica Iulii on the via Lata near the Forum of Trajan—later the basilica Apostolorum or SS Apostolorum—the Liberian basilica or St. Maria Maggiore, and the Constantinian or Lateran basilica. These intramural patriarchal basilicas would also figure prominently in the late sixth-century organization of the stational liturgy.Footnote 123 Thus to control these churches, in particular the Lateran, was to hold a strategic site. Very often, the occupation of the Lateran granted the contestant victory—though not always, as the examples of Eulalius and Dioscorus demonstrate. As the seat of the bishop, the Lateran, which would eventually become the traditional home of papal ordinations, conferred a certain degree of legitimacy. The two Lateran extensions, the Liberian and Julian basilicas, functioned similarly, but seem to have been recognized as a consolation prize in lieu of holding the Lateran itself. Other intra-mural churches, like the basilica Iulii in Transtiberim, the church in Lucinis, the church of Theodora, the church of Marcellus, and unnamed tituli, played smaller roles in these electoral contests.
Among the extra-mural sites, St. Peter's, unsurprisingly as one of the three extra-mural patriarchal churches, played a large role in a pair of these disputes, most importantly as the long-term base of Symmachus, while his opponent Lawrence occupied the Lateran and much of the rest of the city. Before Symmachus, Boniface I had tried to make use of the prestige of Peter by marching upon or processing to St. Peter's. Oddly, St. Paul's FLM, the second most prestigious extra-mural church, appeared once, and then only briefly, during these conflicts; while St. Lorenzo FLM, called maior in the fourth and fifth centuries, was ignored entirely.Footnote 124 Obviously, the principal intra-mural churches were strategically more important, though if exiled or denied Rome, its martyr-shrines, particularly that of Peter, would suffice. Political concerns, namely the presence of the emperor's sister, dictated that Liberius live at St. Agnese while awaiting a restoration to his see. The Ursinians attempted to make use of this precedent and the continuing appeal of Liberius when they in turn occupied this cemeterial basilica. The later tenure of Boniface I at St. Felicitas goes unexplained by the Liber Pontificalis, so perhaps Boniface had some personal attachment to the saint.
Lastly, internal fractures within the institutional church emerge as a third leitmotif—more specifically, many of these disputed elections pitted titular presbyter against papal deacon.Footnote 125 In 418 the archdeacon Eulalius contended with the presbyter Boniface, while from 498–506 the deacon Symmachus fought with the presbyter Lawrence. This tension between presbyter and deacon may well have originated with the foundation, endowment, and institutional status of the titular churches in which the presbyters served. In the fourth through sixth centuries, the titular churches seem to have functioned as an odd compromise between the status concerns of the aristocracy, which provided the funds, and the centralizing impetus of the bishop. Thus the titular presbyters were caught in between the centrifugal force of the aristocracy and the centripetal efforts of the episcopate.Footnote 126 In a nutshell, a number of the disputed elections may have served as proxy wars in which the traditional Roman aristocracy and the growing authority of the papal curia battled for the control of the Roman public sphere and the Roman people.
Eventually, however, the failure of the western empire and the conversion of the aristocracy greatly altered the balance of power in Rome. The aristocracy was steadily impoverished even as it began increasingly to direct its remaining wealth towards Christian foundations and the institutional church. Towards the end of the fifth century, the scales began to tip clearly in the direction of the bishop, culminating with the procession of Pelagius in 556, in which the Roman episcopacy finally claimed the very streets of the city without violence. By means of ritual not bloodshed, Pelagius conquered Rome.
In sum, aristocratic domination of the public sphere precluded any simply symbolic appropriation of civic space by the bishop. Limited in this way, episcopal electoral disputes roiled intensely like a tempest in a teapot as a strategy of militaristic occupation of centrally important churches marked these schisms. Each side marched upon and occupied the principal churches of Rome, invading and expelling their enemies from other principal churches when they could. The martial language in the descriptions of these conflicts often veered close to the religious, indicating, hinting, that the origins of Christian processions lie in conflict and battle. From the literal soldiers of Christ, like the thugs of Damasus armed with clubs, rocks, and swords, emerged the spiritual soldiers of Pelagius I bearing crosses and singing hymns.
