The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity

269 Pages·2016·0.965 MB·English

by  George E. Demacopoulos

The Invention of Peter
DIVINATIONS:REREADINGLATEANCIENTRELIGION
SeriesEditors:DanielBoyarin,VirginiaBurrus,DerekKrueger
Acompletelistofbooksintheseries
isavailablefromthepublisher.
T H E I N V E N T ION
OF PE T E R
Apostolic Discourse
and Papal Authority
in Late Antiquity
George E. Demacopoulos
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
Copyright(cid:2)2013UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsusedfor
purposesofrevieworscholarlycitation,noneofthisbook
maybereproducedinanyformbyanymeanswithout
writtenpermissionfromthepublisher.
Publishedby
UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Demacopoulos,GeorgeE.
TheinventionofPeter:apostolicdiscourseandpapal
authorityinlateantiquity/GeorgeE.Demacopoulos,—
1sted.
p. cm.—(Divinations:rereadinglateancient
religion)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-8122-4517-2(hardcover:alk.paper)
1.Popes—Primacy—Historyofdoctrines—Early
church,ca.30–600.2.Petrineoffice—Historyof
doctrines—Earlychurch,ca.30–600.I.Title.
II.Series:Divinations.
BX1805.D377 2013
262(cid:2).1309015—dc23 2012041494
contents
Introduction 1
Chapter1.PetrineLegends,ExternalRecognition,
andtheCultofPeterinRome 13
Chapter2.TheManyFacesofLeo’sPeter 39
Chapter3.Gelasius’DomesticProblemsandInternationalPosture 73
Chapter4.ThePetrineDiscourseinTheoderic’sItaly
andJustinian’sEmpire 102
Chapter5.RestraintandDesperation
inGregorytheGreat’sPetrineAppeal 134
Postscript:TheLifeofSt.GregoryofAgrigentum
asaSeventh-CenturyPetrineCritiqueofthePapacy 163
Conclusion:TheInventionofPeter 169
AppendixI:PopeGelasiustoAugustusAnastasius 173
AppendixII:TractVI 181
Notes 191
Bibliography 245
Index 255
Acknowledgments 261
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
On June 29, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI ratified a document prepared by the
CongregationfortheDoctrineoftheFaiththatsoughttoclarifytheRoman
CatholicChurch’spositiononcertaincontemporaryecclesiologicalquestions
rootedintheproclamationsofVaticanII.Amongotherthings,thedocument
defined other Christian traditions as ‘‘defective’’ because ‘‘communion with
the Catholic Church, the visible head of which is the Bishop of Rome and
the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular
Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles.’’1 In other
words, membership in the ‘‘one Church of Christ’’ is actualized, according
to this text, by solidarity with the bishop of Rome, and this assertion is
justifiedonthebasisofthebiblicalPeter’slinktotheancientsee.
Howevercontentioussuchadeclarationmaybe,allstudentsofChristian
history are familiar with papal claims to ecclesiastical authority. Equally
familiar is the justification for this authority on the basis of the special con-
nection between Peter the apostle and the bishops of Rome who are said to
‘‘inherit’’ hisprimatial authority. And whilethere is certainly noshortage of
historicalstudiesthathavesoughttochronicletheso-calledriseofthepapacy
from late antiquity into the Middle Ages, there seems to be a surprising
dearthofinvestigationsintothecircumstancesunderwhichthisPetrinecon-
nection was initially promoted, how those proclamations evolved, and how
theywereperceivedbyotherChristiansatthetime.
What differentiates the present study from previous histories of the
papacy is that it is not so much concerned with chronicling the acts of any
particularpopeor ecclesiasticalconflict asitisdevotedtounderstandingthe
emergence of a particular kind of discourse, the Petrine discourse, which
helpedtomakepossiblewhatwemightnowcallapapaltheory.Assuch,the
current project is not a history of the early papacy per se so much as it is a
studyofhowthe literaryandritualisticembellishmentofa linkbetweenthe
historic Peter and the papal see of subsequent centuries functioned within a
2 introduction
series of existent and interconnected late ancient discourses of authority and
exclusion.
Withthatgoalinmind,thisbookoffersthreeoverlappinglevelsofinves-
tigationandanalysis.First,itseekstoidentifythecontent,shape,andshifting
parameters of what I call the ‘‘Petrine discourse’’ between the two most cre-
ativeanddynamicpopesoflateantiquity—Leothe‘‘Great’’(bishopofRome
440–461)andGregorythe‘‘Great’’(bishopofRome590–604).2Second,this
book offers a historical narrative that emphasizes the ways multiple actors
employed, extended, transformed, and/or resisted the Petrine discourse for
their own purposes. Third, this project provides a revisionist history of the
papacy, particularly as it relates to the escalations in its rhetorical claims to
ecclesiastical authority in this period. This revisionist history challenges the
dominant narrative of an inevitable and unbroken rise in papal power from
lateantiquitythroughtheMiddleAges.Resistingthetemptationtointerpret
late ancient papal claims to authority as representing actualized or actualiza-
ble power and international respect, I argue that the escalations of papal
rhetoric,almostalwayslinkeddirectlytoaPetrineclaim,wereoftenborn in
moments of papal anxiety or weakness. In other words, whenever a Roman
bishop in this period claimed to be the primary or sole arbiter in dogmatic,
moral, or judicial conflicts, especially if that claim was rhetorically bolder
than those that preceded it, we would be well served to consider whether or
not such a statement was uttered in response to the same bishop’s authority
having been threatened, challenged, or simply ignored by a particular audi-
ence.3Aswewillsee,thosehumiliationscameinmanyformsandfrommany
places,bothdomesticandinternational,layandecclesiastical.
Employing this three-pronged analysis, I will argue that specific features
ofthePetrinediscoursecontributedtothesurvivaland,ultimately,theexcep-
tionalstatusofthebishopofRome.Wewillsee,forexample,thattheelasticity
of the Petrine topos in papal hands was of fundamental importance to the
discursive presentation of the papacy’s hegemonic claims and the ultimate
willingnessofotherChristianstoauthenticatethoseclaimsthroughtheirown
use of them.4 Despite (or perhaps because of) the malleable character of the
Petrine topos, however, we will also notice that the papal presentation of
Petrineauthoritywasoften‘‘totalizing’’initsscope—notonlyintermsofthe
completeness of the apostle’s personal authority but also in the sense that all
ChristianmeaningissaidtoflowfromPeterand,significantly,fromhisheirs.5
Finally,wewillseethatthemostcreativeRomanbishopswereabletocombine
the literary and ritualistic traditions of the Petrine topos (particularly as they
Introduction 3
relatedtoPeter’sshrineandrelics)tofurthertheconnectionsbetweenPeter’s
spiritualauthorityandtheirownabilitytoaccessanddistributethatauthority.
Why Discourse Analysis?
Totheextentthatthisstudyemploysdiscourseanalysisalongsideother,more
traditional, historical methods, it is appropriate to say at least a few words
aboutwhatIhopetoachievefromthisapproach.InhisArchaeologyofKnowl-
edge, Michel Foucault offered an alternative model for the study of the past
notbyemphasizingtheparticulareventsoractorsofhistory(seekinginthem
a continuity or a discontinuity with that which comes before or after), but
byexploringtheconditionsthatunitewhathecalledacollectionofdiscursive
events (i.e., statements, whether oral or written) made in history. In other
words, Foucault proposed that there was much to learn from the past (and
present)byinvestigatingthe‘‘knowledgestructures’’thatbothmakepossible
andholdtogetheraparticularrealmofdiscourse,beitthediscourseofmedi-
cine, of economics, or of theology and religion. For Foucault, discourse
entails more than words and texts, it also involves actions, institutions, and
rituals.6 Following in this line of thought, we can understand any discourse
asofferingitsownepistemologicalhorizon,aframeworkwithinwhichstate-
ments or practices are offered, understood, measured, embraced, and/or
resisted.7
Scholars of Christian antiquity have increasingly drawn on the intellec-
tual resources provided by Foucault and other literary and cultural theorists
(an approach sometimes collectively denoted as the ‘‘linguistic turn’’) to
think anew about the development of early Christianity and the ideologies
thatareoftenlurkingunderneathmoretraditionalhistoricalnarrativesabout
it.AsElizabethClarkhasargued,earlyChristianityisanespeciallyrichfield
for theoretical analysis precisely because its surviving documents are charac-
terized by an unusually high level of literary and philosophical sophistica-
tion—stemming, of course, from the fact that they were produced (for the
most part)by mensteeped inthe philosophicallyand rhetorically richtradi-
tions of the Greco-Roman world.8 As this study will show, there is little
doubtthatmanyofthepapaldocumentsofthefifthandsixthcenturiesoffer
prime examples of the rhetorical and philosophical sophistication to which
Clarkrefers.