Models of Gift Giving in the Preaching of Leo the Great Bronwen Neil

Models of Gift Giving in the Preaching of Leo the Great Bronwen Neil Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 18, Number 2, Summer 2010, pp. 225-259 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/earl.0.0322 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/earl/summary/v018/18.2.neil.html Access Provided by Harvard University at 06/17/10 12:16PM GMT Models of Gift Giving in the Preaching of Leo the Great BRONWEN NEIL Rabbinic literature on almsgiving centers on four themes—anonymous indirect giving, indiscriminate giving, justice for the poor, and the redemptive power of alms—which make up a comprehensive rationale for giving that was picked up by late antique advocates of Christian charity. Using the ninety-seven extant homilies of Leo I, bishop of Rome (440–461), I contrast the evidence for the Greco-Roman and Jewish models of gift-giving in the preaching and charitable activities of western bishops. First, I examine the four themes as they appear in rabbinic literature and in Leo’s homilies. Second, I establish why one model of giving remained dominant in Rome in this period: that of redemptive almsgiving (i.e. giving alms in order to attain one’s own salvation), a model that had become standard in western Christian texts on almsgiving by the end of the fourth century.1 The dominance of this model in the West, as evident in the homilies of bishops like Leo the Great, poses a significant challenge to the thesis posed by Patlagean and adopted by Brown, namely, that the rise of the virtue of charitable giving in the fourth and fifth centuries had a significant impact on social and economic relations between rich and poor. Evidence from hagiography, law codes, inscriptions, sermons, and letters presents rather a different picture, one of bishops upholding the status quo while preaching an impossible ideal of justice for the poor. The Derridean concept of the “impos- sibility of the gift” helps to illuminate how the Greco-Roman patronage model inhibited the emergence of a new way of thinking about and acting towards the poor in these centuries. The research for this article was funded by an Australian Research Council Dis- covery Project grant (2006–2008), and undertaken at Australian Catholic University. I am indebted to two JECS reviewers, who gave generously (and anonymously!) of their time and knowledge to make many suggestions for improvement. I am grateful also to my colleagues in the Centre for Early Christian Studies, Prof. Pauline Allen, Dr. Alan Moss, and Dr. Geoffrey Dunn, who read and commented upon early drafts. The paper was first presented at the North American Patristics Society meeting in Chicago, on May 22, 2008, and I sincerely thank Prof. Paul Blowers for the invita- tion to present it in that forum. 1. Boniface Ramsey, “Almsgiving in the Latin Church: The Late Fourth and Fifth Centuries,” TS 43 (1982): 226–59, at 226. Journal of Early Christian Studies 18:2, 225–259 © 2010 The Johns Hopkins University Press 226 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES There is nothing harder than poverty. It is the hardest of all the afflictions in the world. Exod. Rabbah, Mishpatim,≥ 31.122 INTRODUCTION From the first centuries of Christianity, Christian charity was shaped by Greco-Roman and Jewish models of giving to the less fortunate.3 Several models emerged for giving to the poor: the Pauline ideal of a community which held its goods in common; the wealthy patron who gave a portion of his or her surplus wealth to worthy causes; and the property-renouncing monk or bishop who directed resources from the flock to those in most need. These competing models of charitable giving found some resolu- tion in the fifth century, with the establishment of ascetics—the voluntary poor—as a conduit for direct and indirect giving to the involuntary poor. The models of monasticism that emerged in the East in the third and fourth centuries, however, were slow to take hold in the West. The majority of ascetics in Rome in this period were wealthy aristocrats who embraced an ideal of voluntary poverty through charitable giving to the poor. Some monks claimed material support from the faithful, while others sought to be self-sufficient.4 The clergy constituted another class of voluntary poor who claimed material support from their congregations. Bishops in particular had the potential to use their status as leaders in the community to collect and redistribute the resources of their flocks to those in need. 2. A Rabbinic Anthology, ed. and trans. C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, fore- word by R. Loewe (New York: Schocken, 1974) [= ML], 1243, 446 (item number is followed by page number). 3. These have been explored by, amongst others, Anneliese Parkin, “‘You Do Him No Service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving,” in Poverty and the Roman World, ed. Margaret Atkins and Robin Osborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 60–82; Susan R. Holman, The Hungry are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Cappadocia, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Bruce W. Winter, Seek the Welfare of the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens (Grand Rapids, MI and Carlisle Cumbria: Eerdmans, 1994); Peter Garnsey and Greg Woolf, “Patronage of the Rural Poor in the Roman World,” in Patronage in Ancient Society, ed. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (London: Routledge, 1989), 153–70. 4. See the important recent work on this subject of Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002); Caner, “Towards a Miraculous Economy: Christian Gifts and Material ‘Blessings’ in Late Antiquity,” JECS 14 (2006): 329–77. NEIL / MODELS OF GIFT GIVING 227 In recent scholarship on poverty in the late antiquity, the bishop has emerged as the hero of the poor. We need look no further than the sweep- ing influence of Peter Brown’s Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures, published as Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire.5 However, the late nineteenth-century German scholar Gerhard Uhlhorn was the first to present the rise of redemptive almsgiving, which was by definition self- interested giving, as the reason for the decline of selfless Christian giving in the fourth and fifth centuries.6 Since then, self-interest and the related notion of reciprocity have become salient features of most anthropologi- cal and theological discussions of gift-giving. By considering late antique patron-client relations as a subset of giver-receiver relations in Christian, Jewish, and non-Christian contexts, we will be able to see the similarities and differences between their models of charitable giving more clearly. In Part One, I present a summary of rabbinic teachings on almsgiving, com- paring them with the arguments for giving adduced in sermons of Leo the Great. Part Two deals with the adaptation of the Greco-Roman models of giving, especially personal patronage and euergetism (public giving) in the Christian West in the time of Leo. This leads us to ask whether the status of the poor actually changed for the better in late antiquity, as suggested by scholars such as Patlagean, Brown, and Holman. I suggest that real change in the status of the poor, or in relations between rich and poor, was inhibited by the dominance of redemptive almsgiving as a framework for charity in the fifth-century West. It will be seen that, although the poor’s right to justice remained an ideal in the Christian adoption of the Jewish framework, this principle was in fact damaged by the competing Greco-Roman patronage model. While the Greco-Roman system of patronage involved two agents—patron and client in a relationship of reciprocal obligation—the Christian model of charity sought to introduce God as an Über-patron. Within this christianized system, the bishop functioned as both patron and client, just as the poor person played dual roles of giver and receiver. The commercial language of debt and credit was put to the service of this new rhetoric of generosity. The implications of this adaptation for Christian almsgiving and euergetism were significant and far-reaching, as we shall see. It is in Christian 5. P. R. L. Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, Mena- hem Stern Jerusalem Lectures (Hanover, NJ and London: University Press of New England, 2002). 6. Gerhard Uhlhorn, Die christliche Liebestätigkeit in der alten Kirche (Stuttgart: D. Gundert, 1882), the first volume in a three-part series on Christian charity that extended beyond the Reformation. 228 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES treatment of the poor that we should see most clearly the transformation of Greco-Roman society taking place during the fifth century, and yet Christian charity remains largely at the level of rhetoric, precisely because the hold of traditional ties of obligation was so strong. This rather stark conclusion is tested against the evidence of contemporary legal sources, as well as the philanthropic activities of particular western Christian elites who adopted voluntary poverty. Part ONE: THE PROBLEM OF THE GIFT IN LATE ANTIQUITY The act of giving to the poor was (and remains today) fraught with moral dangers. In her 2001 study of Cappadocian homilies on the poor, The Hun- gry are Dying, Susan Holman proved the enduring relevance of French sociologist Marcel Mauss’s essay on gift-exchange economies in ancient societies to an understanding of Christian aid to the poor, especially in the fourth century.7 Mauss highlighted

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