Mois : octobre 2016

Norman Wetzig (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut)

Abstract

When Ammianus Marcellinus in his res gestae lamented the excessive use of the cursus publicus by bishops, saying that „since throngs of bishops hastened hither and thither on the public post-horses to the various synods, as they call them, … he (viz. Constantius II) cut the sinews of the courier-service,“ he was mainly complaining about the alleged economical burden, the travelling clerics imposed on the public purse. It stands to reason if clerics with an imperial evectio were also given the right of hospitium, in the meaning of compulsory quartering and hospitable arrangements, as e.g. soldiers. Many laws and rescripts from the time of Constantine the Great onwards defined the position of higher clerics in the empire’s legal system, granting them tax exemptions or the exemption from compulsory services like the requirement to receive quartered persons. Yet the imperial legislation as well as the some canons from the early church councils evoke the image of a scenario in which clerics should not travel and thus lodge too much and too comfortably. In this paper an attempt is made to clearer determine the written and unwritten laws of Late Roman lodging for clerics and a theory is brought forth about how the church took a new measure to reduce the economical burden it allegedly caused the public.

Konstantin Klein (Otto Friedrich Universität Bamberg)

Abstract

Just as many hagiographical writers before him, Cyril of Scythopolis (fl. mid-fifth century) recorded a considerable number of seemingly stereotypical and repetitive admonitions allegedly uttered by the protagonists of his Vitae, namely that future generations of monks should continue their deeds in the pious field of hospitality: hosting the poor (as well as the rich) and never closing the doors of the monasteries to strangers. Often integrated in the monastic fathers’ deathbed speeches, these testament-like admonitions turned into moral obligations just as well as into a justification for the monasteries’ activities in the political and social sphere. This paper aims to cast a close look upon hospitality as an admonition, an obligation, and a method to gain influence in an age of Christological controversy following the Council of Chalcedon in 451. It will become clear that rivalling monasteries entered into a ‘real’ competition in which the virtue of hospitality served as a powerful tool to gain influence – as well as into a literary competition in which the acts of hospitalities worked as just one more metaphor for the fame and renown of ascetics, abbots, and monks.