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The Imperial Administration and the Church in Byzantine Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

R. A. Markus
R. A. Markus
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

There are only two moments during the Byzantine era at which the African Church emerges into something like daylight: on the morrow of the reconquest, in the middle years of the sixth century, and again almost a century later, under the emperors Heraclius and Constans II. Both in the controversies over the ‘three chapters’ under Justinian, and in those over monothelitism in the seventh century, the African Church took the lead in resisting what seemed, in the eyes of its leading churchmen, attempts by the Court to subvert the Chalcedonian orthodoxy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 18 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1967

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References

1. Cf. Diehl, C., L'Afrique byzantine (Paris 1896)Google Scholar; Duchesne, L., L'église au sixième siècle (Paris 1925), among other accounts.Google Scholar

2. “Donatism: the last phase,” Studies in Church history, vol. I. 1964, 118–26.Google Scholar

3. DHGE, XI. 1208–9Google Scholar, quoted by Goubert, P., Byzance avant l'Islam, t.2; Byzance et l'Occident sous les successeurs de Justinien, II: Rome, Byzance et Carthage (Paris, 1965), 235Google Scholar. Cf. also the judgment of P. Romanelli, referred to Ibid., 235–6. (Much of the text of Ferron and Lapeyre is taken from Diehl, op. cit., 510.)

4. Cf. Diehl, op. cit., 510–6.

5. Frend, W. H., The Donatist Church (Oxford 1952), 300–314.Google Scholar

6. Caspar, E., Geschichte des Papsttums, II (Tübingen, 1933), 442–6Google Scholar; Dudden, F. H., Gregory the Great (1905), I, 414–28.Google Scholar

7. Ep. VI. 61Google Scholar; cf.V.3 (All references to Gregory's letters are in the edition of the Register by Ewald, and Hartmann, , M.G.H., Epistolae, I and II).Google Scholar

8. Ep. VI. 61.Google Scholar

9. Ep. IV. 32Google Scholar. A similar letter which has not survived must have been sent to the Exarch at this time—cf. Ep. VI. 59.Google Scholar

10. Ep. I. 72.Google Scholar

11. Ep. VI. 59Google Scholar. The further charges in all probability refer to the refusal of the administration to put the imperial iussiones into effect— cf. Ep. VI. 61.Google Scholar

12. Ep. VI. 61Google Scholar; cf. VII. 2, where it appears that the Exarch had sent his chancellor along with three members of Paul's church to give evidence against Paul.

13. Ep. VIII. 13, 15Google Scholar; the inference is made by Caspar, op. cit. 445.

14. Ep. IV. 41Google Scholar. The ‘heresy’ of which they are suspected can only be ‘Donatism.’

15. Cf. Ep. IX. 27.Google Scholar

16. Cf. Ep. VI. 59.Google Scholar

17. Cf. my paper referred to above, n. 2.

18. Ep. VI. 59.Google Scholar

19. Ep. VII. 2.Google Scholar

20. Ep. IV. 7Google Scholar, cf. also Ep. I. 72.Google Scholar

21. Ep. I. 82Google Scholar; II. 46.

22. Cf. Epp. IX. 24, 27.Google Scholar

23. Epp. IX. 24, 27Google Scholar; XII. 12.

24. Cf. Epp. XII. 8, 9.Google Scholar

25. Cf. Ep. V. 3Google Scholar. The Council must presumably have been one of the whole African Church, since the legislation was meant to apply not only in the Proconsular province. If this is the case, it is interesting that such a Council could enact legislation as severe as this in this matter. The implication is that few if any bishops from the other provinces were present.

26. Diehl, op. cit., 510. Cf. above, n. 4.

27. Cf. my paper “Reflections on religious dissent in North Africa in the Byzantine period,” Studies in Church history, 3, 1966, 140–9.Google Scholar