Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity. Claudia Rapp
integrity of conduct, so that his actions are not silenced by his preaching, or his words are an embarrassment because his deeds are deficient.”77 This is what I call the dialectic of episcopal leadership, meaning that the bishop has to earn the recognition of his authority through his exemplary conduct. At the same time, it was the bishop’s possession of these virtues that first singled him out and recommended him for office. His role as bishop required that he act as a model who instilled in his community the desire to emulate and imitate him. In this regard, the ideal bishop of the fourth century fulfills a role comparable to that of the holy man.
TREATISES ON ECCLESIASTICAL LEADERSHIP
So far we have examined scattered references in a variety of texts—church orders, biblical commentaries, letters—to assemble a spectrum of approaches to the episcopal role in late antiquity. These references allow only a glimpse of each author’s approach, but their quantity and their distribution over time lends them significance as indicators of general attitudes and their development through the centuries.
In addition, there is a sizeable number of treatises devoted specifically to the nature of ecclesiastical leadership, to which I now turn. None of them were composed before the fourth century—a further indication that the newly gained public prominence of the Christian religion challenged the men of the church to give shape and definition to their position in an increasingly Christian society. Among modern scholars, these works are often referred to as treatises on pastoral care, which makes them sound like practical manuals for spiritual shepherds on how to tend their flock. In reality, they are much more than that. The works discussed below all address the nature of spiritual leadership, the conflict between the active and the contemplative life, and the personal qualifications of the Christian minister. It is this last aspect in particular that is of interest here.
The chronological range of these treatises extends from the late fourth to the late sixth century, beginning with Gregory of Nazianzus’s In Defense of His Flight and ending with Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care. The earlier texts in particular employ a very vague terminology with regard to the ecclesiastical ministry. It is by no means clear whether they speak of priests or bishops when they use the Latin sacerdos or the Greek hiereus. This distinction is a modern concern that imposes itself from hindsight.78 The authors well into the fifth century were content with the fact that they were discussing clergy who had been ordained through the imposition of hands, who could claim to be the successors of the apostles, and whose tasks revolved around preaching, the celebration of the eucharist, and ecclesiastical administration, especially of charity.
Gregory of Nazianzus gave voice to his views of the priesthood at a highly charged moment in his life. His father, Gregory the Elder, had ordained him to the priesthood at Christmas 361, thereby designating his son as his successor. This, Gregory claims not very convincingly, took him by surprise, and in his initial panic he hastened to return to the tranquility of the monastic retreat of his friend Basil in Pontus. But by Easter of the following year, he was back in Nazianzus. His Second Oration, entitled In Defense of His Flight, purports to be a sermon he delivered before the congregation in order to explain himself.79 The length and literary craftsmanship of this work, however, seem to indicate that it was intended for a reading public, at least in its present form. As the first coherent treatment of the nature of the priesthood in literature (as opposed to the church orders, which are rule books), Gregory’s Second Oration would exert great influence on later such works, especially those by John Chrysostom and Gregory the Great. 80
Having first rejected, and then accepted the priesthood, Gregory is in a position to argue for the awesome nature of the priestly office and the unattainable requirements made on the person of the priest, on the one hand, and the practical need to fill such appointments with reasonably suitable, if imperfect, candidates, on the other. His practical side comes through when he speaks of the church as one body, where each member must perform the task that is assigned to him, and when he mentions that in every organization there are those who rule and those who are ruled.81 He admits that he was moved to return also by his personal attachment to his elderly parents, by obedience to his father, and by his desire to reciprocate the affection that the congregation had shown him.82 An additional reason that prompted Gregory to accept the priesthood was his desire to do his share to counterbalance the large numbers of unworthy and unprepared clergy who had recently flooded the church to satisfy their ambition or their greed:
They push and thrust around the holy table, as if they thought this order to be a means of livelihood, instead of a pattern of virtue, or an absolute authority, instead of a ministry of which we must give account. . . . For at no time, either now or in former days, amid the rise and fall of various developments, has there ever been such an abundance as now exists among Christians, of disgrace and abuses of this kind.83
As his speech winds down to a close, Gregory does not fail to mention that he has, in fact, been prepared for this moment from his earliest youth. Not only had he grown up in a pious household, but he had also surrendered himself to a life of renunciation and ascetic self-fashioning:
There was moreover the moderation of anger, the curbing of the tongue, the restraint of the eyes, the discipline of the belly, and the trampling under foot of the glory which clings to the earth. I speak foolishly, but it shall be said, in these pursuits I was perhaps not inferior to many.84
Weighing all these considerations, Gregory admits that he realized that his initial urge to seek the tranquility and solitude of monastic retreat would have been a selfish undertaking.85
Framed by these personal remarks are Gregory’s views on the nature of the priesthood and the character of the ideal priest. He brings up the awesomeness of the priest’s liturgical function in consecrating the eucharist,86 a theme that would later be resumed by John Chrysostom and Ambrose, among others. In contrast to later authors on the subject, Gregory does not dwell on the nuisance of the administrative duties of the priesthood. He does, however, go into great detail in comparing the priest to a physician who is responsible for healing and strengthening the souls entrusted to his care.87 This requires both the ability for accurate diagnosis as well as the prescription of the right medicine suited to the disposition of the patient. Gregory insists on the importance of the priest’s ability to address each individual according to his or her personal needs, in his admonition and in his preaching. In essence, the qualities that Gregory requires here in the context of the pastoral care of priests are nothing else but the gift of discernment that, as we shall see below, gave a special quality of immediacy to the teaching of the pneumatophoroi and the desert fathers.
Most important in Gregory’s view is that the priest himself be a model of what he preaches:
A man must himself be cleansed, before cleansing others; himself become wise, that he may make others wise; become light, and then give light; draw near to God, and so bring others near; be hallowed, then hallow them; be possessed of hands to lead others by the hand, of wisdom to give advice.88
According to Gregory, the effectiveness of a priest’s instruction, and indeed the quality of the priesthood as a whole, depend entirely on the priest’s own striving for personal holiness. This holiness, however, was not guardedly preserved in monastic isolation, but shared in ministry to others.
John Chrysostom probably wrote his treatise On the Priesthood during the years that he was in Antioch, probably in the late 380s.89 It must have been something of an instant success, for Jerome records in 392, in his Lives of Illustrious Men, that he has read it.90 The premise of the work is John’s defense against any accusations of wrongdoing for his clever manipulation of the ordination of his friend and monastic companion Basil (not identical with the famous bishop of Caesarea), while managing to escape the same fate himself. This gives him occasion to dwell on the enormity of the responsibility of the priestly ministry, and to describe in detail the different functions that a priest must fulfill. The word he uses throughout, hierosynē, refers to the priesthood in general, without distinguishing between the offices of presbyter and bishop.91
While Gregory of Nazianzus had taken his own experience—initial rejection of office, followed by eventual