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Pious and Impious Christian Rulers According to Egyptian Historiography 111 Alberto Camplani Pious and Impious Christian RulersAccording to Egyptian Historiography and Hagiography: AFirst Survey of the Evidence An effective waytostudythe evolving attitude of the Alexandrian patriarchateto- wards the political power is to trace the imageofthe good Christian emperorin the multiplicity of its historicalrepresentations. In this regard,wide-rangingresearch is needed on how the see of Alexandria presents itself on the religious and political level over the centuries in the histories and the hagiographicaltexts produced within the bishopric or in the circles close to it,deeplyconnected to the institutional and collective dimension of the church.¹ In this context the process should be highlighted that leads from the archivalactivity of the patriarchatetothe production of tales, tra- ditions, stories,which are based on the documentation preserved in the archives,² but are also provided with their own life, theirown images, their own grammar. The patriarchateproducedhistoriographical works conceivedofasasequence of documents and polemical narratives, here and there provided with shortanecdotes. It also created histories of martyrs and saints, normallyconnected to this same doc- umentation, but marked by amore pronounced tendencytorelate episodes or to ex- press ahistorical assessment through images and symbols. The permanence and the reworking of the samemotifs and images through the ages served the function of em- phasizing the sense of continuity and eternal orthodoxy of Alexandria.³ The texts selected in the present contribution are the expression not simplyofan individual author,but rather of anetwork of church relations, in which multiple voi- ces try to emerge – the voices of different groups defending theirinterests, their tra- ditions, and their contribution to the life of the Egyptian church, such as the clergy, the monks, and engaged laity.Irecentlyinvestigated⁴ the changingrole of historical Forapresentationofthe historiographyofthe episcopateofAlexandria see A. Camplani, “The re- ligious identity of Alexandria in some ecclesiasticalhistories of Late Antique Egypt”,inL’historiog- raphie tardo-antique et la transmissiondes savoirs,ed. Ph. Blaudeau, P. vanNuffelen (Millennium- Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n.Chr.55), Berlin – Munich – Boston 2015,85–119. On the archivesofthe bishopric of Alexandria see A. Camplani, “SettingaBishopric/Arrangingan Archive:TracesofArchivalActivity in the Bishopric of Alexandria and Antioch”,inManuscripts and Archives. ComparativeViews on Record-Keeping,ed. A. Bausi, C. Brockmann, M. Friedrich, S. Kienitz (Studies in Manuscript Cultures11), Berlin 2018, 231–272. Ihavestudied the figures and symbols of church and political power in the hagiographical produc- tion tied to the bishopric in A. Camplani, “La percezione della crisi religiosa calcedonese in alcuni testi storici eagiografici prodotti negliambienti dell’episcopatodiAlessandria”, Adamantius 19 (2013) 240 –255. Camplani(cf. fn. 1) 86–89. OpenAccess. ©2021 Alberto Camplani, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110725612-006 110 Alberto Camplani documentation in fourth-to-seventh-century histories.Init, Idescribed the progres- sive loss of references to real documents, the growth of pious narratives concerning clerics, monks, members of the élite, and the emperor himself, and agrowingem- phasis on the cultic buildings, financed by the engaged believers, and their impact on the urban visibility of Christianity.⁵ These writingsreveal not onlythe patriarchal see’sperception of its own evolu- tion,⁶ but also its changingevaluation of bothits political and religious relationships with the emperorand remainingpatriarchates of the Mediterranean world, i.e., Con- stantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome, thus presentingthe outline of the culture and the ecclesiological orientation of achurch milieu. Forthatreason, we will pay the greatest attention to the notion of geo-ecclesiologyasproposed by Philippe Blau- deau, which is aparticular reworking of some conceptual tools belongingto“geo- politics” applied specificallytothatnetwork of congregations which constituted the Christian world of the fourth–sixth centuries.Geo-ecclesiology,inother terms, is the historical approach which considers the patriarchates in theirreciprocal rela- tionship, as well as in their connection to the political power,with particular atten- tion paid to issues such as territorial jurisdiction, areas of influenceand resistance, self-representation,and propaganda.⁷ Afew examples of the series of questions which geo-ecclesiologyisintended to answer could be the following:Which criteria determined the religious and political importance of apatriarchal see such as Alex- andria to be the religious representative of the Empire? Were they apostolicity,mar- tyrdom, orthodoxy,oraprivileged connection to the political power?Which tools promoted aChristian metropolis in the context of the Empire: the writing of political and ecclesiological pamphlets?The circulation of dossiers of documents and canon- ical legislation?The organisation of spectacular manifestations?Atthe same time, after considering some similarities, Blaudeauwarns against believingthat there is no differencebetween geo-ecclesiologyand geo-politics:for instance,inthe former, the breakingofcommunion and the use of violence are, at least in theory,not con- On the roleofthe philoponoi and the rich Christian éliteofAlexandria see A. Camplani, “The Trans- mission of EarlyChristian Memories in Late Antiquity:Onthe editorial activity of laymen and phil- oponoi” in Between Personal and Institutional Religion. Self,Doctrine, and Practice in Late Antique Eastern Christianity,ed. B. Bitton-Ashkelony, L. Perrone (Cultural EncountersinLateAntiquity and the Middle Ages 15), Turnhout 2013,129–153. See A. Camplani, “Tempo delle origini etempo della storia nella percezione dell’episcopatodi Alessandria durantelatarda antichità”,inTempo estoria in Africa /Time and HistoryinAfrica, ed. A. Bausi, A. Camplani, S. Emmel (Africana Ambrosiana 4), Milano 2019,3–32. On the notion of geo-ecclesiology,see Ph.Blaudeau, Alexandrie et Constantinople (451–491): de l’histoire àlagéo-ecclésiologie (Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’AthènesetdeRome 327), Rome 2006,6–8and chapter3;see also A. Martin, “Introduction”,inHistoire “acéphale” et index syriaque des lettres festales d’Athanase d’Alexandrie. Introduction, texte critique,traduction et notespar A. Martin avec la collaboration pour l’édition et la traduction du textesyriaque de M. Albert (SC317), Paris 1985, 34–67. Pious and Impious Christian Rulers According to Egyptian Historiography 111 sidered as normalconflict resolution tools as in the latter.⁸ From the point of view of the intellectual antecedents of the geo-ecclesiological perspective,itshould be asked whether,just as geopolitics refers to Thucydides, geo-ecclesiology could takeits in- spiration from the complex historical perspective offered by Eusebius in his histori- cal writings.⁹ This paper explores the representation of the good Christian emperor in two sec- tions. The first section discusses the representation of the emperor from Athanasius to TimothyAelurus:the Christian emperor is outlinedinthe historical accounts as a person who exercises power in the service of the society and the church. Thisprerog- ative can be put at work either in agood and intelligent wayorinabad one, depend- ing on the emperor’sreligious choices,which in turn are due to his capacity to man- agethe pressures comingfrom both his entourage(wife,other members of the family, religious party,group of bishops) and his personality (self-control, emotions, anger). In the second section, we will trace are-readingofthe fourth- and fifth-century imperial history in post-Chalcedonian sources in order to promoteanew model of leadership.Figures like Constantine, Jovian, but also the twoTheodosii, and others are subject to revision, which leads to the creation of stories in which anew imageof the good Christian emperoremerges: he must support not onlyorthodoxy,but also the fight against the remnants of paganism, and aboveall give financial contribution to the cultic buildings in order to promote the urban visibility of Christianity. See also Ph. Blaudeau, “What is Geo–Ecclesiology:DefiningElements Applied to LateAntiquity (Fourth–Sixth Centuries)”,inLate Antiquity in ContemporaryDebate,ed. R. Lizzi Testa, Newcastle (UK), 156–173, at 156–157. See Ph. Blaudeau(cf. fn. 8): “If geo-ecclesiology is an intimatepart of the discipline of history,itis in some ways conditioned by its intellectual parentage.Just as the specialist in International Rela- tions engages in long,fruitful discussion with Thucydides,because he was the first and he proposed major generalizations about power and imperialism that could lead to atheoretical approach in this regard, so the geo-ecclesiologist is in constant dialoguewith the authors of ecclesiastical history,and with Eusebius of Caesarea in particular.Based on extensive original documentation, this remarkable output is indeed adiscourse on the Church itself, that is to say, etymologicallyanecclesiology with a strong awareness of time (…). So, to him, the true Church is historicallyguaranteed by the ethics of its members,and by their commitment to their faith to the point of martyrdom. It is still manifested de- monstratively and effectively by the communion
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