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Popes, Patriarchs and Archbishops and the Origins of the Cult of the Martyrs in Northern Italy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Alan Thacker*
Affiliation:
Institute of Historical Research

Extract

Although exceptional skill and learning have been devoted to the origins of martyr cult, undeniably this grand and highly distinguished tradition has been shaped by certain widely shared and long-standing assumptions. In particular, while great scholars such as Duchesne and Delehaye have exhibited a strong (and very proper) scepticism about particular legends, there has in general been a predisposition to accept at face value the underlying context as presented by the post-Constantinian Church. Most historians of the martyrs have followed hagiographical tradition and accepted that, as Pope Leo I claimed in the mid-fifth century, ‘uncounted numbers’ of the faithful had died in the imperial persecutions and were marked out as endowed with power ‘to help those in danger, to drive away sickness, to expel unclean spirits and to cure infirmities without number’. That carefully constructed picture, however, only emerges in the late fourth and fifth centuries, and it is the circumstances and processes which shaped its emergence that will be examined here.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2011

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References

1 Leo I, Tractatus septem et nonaginta 5.4, 76.6 (CChr.SL 138, 24; 138A, 481); ET by Freeland, Jane P. and Conway, Agnes J. in St Leo the Great: Sermons, Fathers of the Church 93 (Washington, DC, 1996), 31–2, 338–9.Google Scholar

2 For what follows, see Thacker, A. T., ‘Gallic or Greek? Archbishops in England from Theodore to Ecgberht’, in Fouracre, P. and Ganz, D., eds, Frankland: The Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages (Manchester, 2008), 44–69 Google Scholar, esp. 45–55.

3 Peri, V., La Pentarchia: Istituzione ecclesiale (IV-VII sec.) e teoria canonico-teologica, Settimane di studio nel Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 34 (Spoleto, 1988), 209–311.Google Scholar

4 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 7.12.9 (Isidori Hispalensis episcope etymologiarum sive originum libri xx, ed. Lindsay, W. M., 2 vols, Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis (Oxford, 1911), 1:299)Google Scholar.

5 In the East, it was also used as a title of honour, applied in particular to bishops who were not subject to a metropolitan but answerable only to their patriarch, a usage first recorded in the ninth century: Bingham, J., Origines Ecclesiasticaeor the Antiquities of the Christian Church, 10 vols (London, 1710-22), 1: 191–4 Google Scholar, 230–1. I am grateful to Andrew Louth for these references.

6 Cassiodorus, Variae 9.15.3 (MGH AA 12,279).

7 Clearly this title was in the air in 585. In that year too Childebert, Guntramn’s nephew, sent a letter to Bishop Laurence of Milan, whom he styled patriarch: ‘Epistolae Austrasicae’, in MGH Epp. 3, 155 (no. 45), cited by C. Sotinel, Identité civique et christianisme: Aquilée du IIIe au VIe siècle, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 324 (Rome, 2005), 336. Cf. Peri, ‘La Pentarchia’, esp. 262–3.

8 In general the term was used unofficially — as in Gregory of Tours’ reference to Nicetius of Lyons as patriarcha: Libri historiarum X 5.20 (MGH SRM 1.1, 227).

9 See pp. 75–6 below.

10 Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. H. Musurillo (Oxford, 1954).

11 Acts, ed. Musurillo, 134, 182–4, 202, 222–4, 234.

12 See pp. 57–61 below.

13 For recent discussion, see C. Pilsworth, ‘Dating the Gesta martyrum’, EME 9 (2000), 309–24.

14 Nicolai, V.F., Bisconti, F. and Mazzoleni, D., Les catacombes chrétiennes de Rome, trans. and rev. Guyon, J. (Regensburg, 1999), 174–5 Google Scholar; see PP. 64–74 below for Chrysogonus and Protus at Aquileia and Felix and Fortunatus at Vicenza.

15 e.g. the burials around the tomb of St Peter at the Vatican: Toynbee, J. and Ward-Perkins, J., The Shrine of St Peter and the Vatican Excavations (London, 1956), 145–62.Google Scholar

16 Martyrologium Hieronymianum, in ActaSS Nov. 2/1, 2/2 [hereafter MH 2/1, 2/2], edited from the principal early surviving manuscripts: Paris, BN, lat. 10837 (E); Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Bongars 289 (B); Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Weissenburg 81 (W).

17 Dubois, J., Les martyrologes du Moyen Âge latin, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental 26 (Turnhout, 1978), 29–37.Google Scholar

18 See, e.g., Lifshitz, F., The Name of the Saint. The Martyrology of Jerome and Access to the Sacred in Francia 627–827 (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), esp. 13–29.Google Scholar

19 This tendency to repeat names in order to add to the list of the martyred is very evident in another witness to MH, the martyrology of Tallaght, at the core of which lies an abbreviated form of MH probably drafted in Northumbria in the later seventh century. Here names are repeated more or less randomly — apparently to ‘punctuate’ long lists of entries — and certainly without any regard to historical veracity: Riain, P. Ó, ‘The Northumbrian Phase in the Formation of the Hieronymian Martyrology: The Evidence of the Martyrology of Tallaght’, Bollandiana 120 (2002), 311–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Recently discussed in Thacker, A. T., ‘Rome of the Martyrs: Saints, Cults and Relics, Fourth to Seventh Centuries’, in Carragáin, É. Ó and de Vegvar, C. Neuman, eds, Roma Felix — Formations and Reflections of Medieval Rome (Aldershot, 2007), 13–49 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Martyr Cult within the Walls: Saints and Relics in the Roman Tituli of the Fourth to Seventh Centuries’, in Minnis, A and Roberts, J., eds, Text, Image and Interpretation (Turnhout, 2007), 31–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 T. D. Barnes has shown that, after the capture of the Emperor Valerian in 260, in the West at least it is unlikely that many Christians suffered martyrdom. The Great Persecution, which between 303 and 311 saw many hundreds of deaths in the East, only lasted from 303 to 306 in the West where it was only partially enforced; it saw no executions at all in Gaul and Britain: see esp. his ‘Lactantius and Constantine’, JRS 73 (1973). 29–46 Google Scholar; Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA, 1981), 22–7, 28, 38–9, 358Google Scholar; The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 180.Google Scholar

22 Thacker, ‘Rome of the Martyrs’, 43–5.

23 See Thacker, ‘Clergy and Custodes at Old St Peter’s from the Fourth to the Eighth Century’, forthcoming in McKitterick, R.et al., eds, Old Saint Peter’s (Cambridge, 2012)Google Scholar.

24 Guyon, J., Le Cimetière aux deux lauriers, Bibiothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 264 (Rome 1987), 262.Google Scholar

25 Sághy, M., ‘Scinditur in partes populus: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome’, EME 9 (2000), 273–87 Google Scholar; Thacker, , ‘Rome of the Martyrs’, 30–8 Google Scholar and references therein.

26 Prudentius, Peristephanon 11, lines 1–16; ed. and trans. Thomson, H.J., LCL 398 (Cambridge, MA, 1953), 304–6.Google Scholar

27 Thacker, ‘Rome of the Martyrs’, 43–5.

28 The martyrs Nabor and Felix were clearly established in Milan before the inventio of Gervasius and Protasius in 386. They had probably been brought there from Lodì before Ambrose’s time, but it was Ambrose who popularized their cult: Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 14, in Vita di Sant’Ambrogio, ed. M. Navoni, Storia della chiesa 6 (Milan, 1996), 75 and note; M. Humphries, Communities of the Blessed (Oxford, 1999), 223–4.

29 Ambrose, Epistula 77 (22) (CSEL 82, 126–40); Paulinus, Vita Ambrosii 14 (ed. Navoni, 74–6).

30 Discussed at greater length by A. T. Thacker, ‘Loca sanctorum: The Significance of Place in the Study of the Saints’, in Thacker, A. T. and Sharpe, R., eds, Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West (Oxford, 2002), 1–43 Google Scholar, at 5–14; Clarke, G., ‘Victricius of Rouen: Praising the Saints’, JECS 7 (1999), 365–99.Google Scholar

31 Entry for 9 May: MH 2/1, 57 (occurs only in ms B); 2/2, 241–2. Entry for 27 Nov.: MH 2/1, 247; 2/2, 623. For MH mss E, B, W, see n. 16 above.

32 Codex Theodosianus 9.17 (‘De sepulchris violatis’), ed. Th. Mommsen and P. Meyer (Berlin, 1905), sections 6 (381), 7 (386).

33 For an authoritative expression of the received view of the development of relics, see P. Séjourné, ‘Reliques’, in Vacant, A., ed., Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 15 vols (Paris, 1903-50)Google Scholar, 13:2312-76. Early African Acta, such as those of Perpetua and Felicitas, show that the faithful valued tokens of the martyrs, such as the ring which the living Saturus returned to Pudens as a pignus et memoria sanguinis after dipping it in his own blood: Acts, ed. Musurillo, 130 (ch. 21).

34 Clarke, ‘Victricius’.

35 Sotinel, Identité civique, 188–9.

36 Introduction to Vita di Sant’Ambrogio, ed. Navoni, 29; Ambrose, Exhortatio Virginitatis (PL 16, 347–79, at 351); F. Bonnard, ‘Bologne’, Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique [hereafter DHGE] 9 (Paris, 1937), cols 645–60, at 650–1.

37 Ambrose, Exhortatio Virginitatis (PL 16, 351, 354); McIynn, N., Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Chiristian Capital (Berkeley, CA, 1994), 347–50.Google Scholar

38 Calzolai, C. C., ‘Florence’, DHCE 17 (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar, cols 533–45, at 534–5.

39 Humphries, Communities of the Blessed, 147–53, 173—5; Sotinel, Identité civique, 199—212. Note that in all this Rome played no part; it was simply the senior (patriarchal) see by virtue of its apostolic status.

40 Sotinel, Identité civique, 16—24.

41 Ibid. 188–208; Humphries, Communities of the Blessed, 73–9, 140–5.

42 Chromatius, Sermones 26 (CChr.SL 9A, 118–22). For the impact on Concordia of the importing of these relics, see G. Brusin and P. L. Zovatto, ‘La trichora paleocristiana nel nuovo complesso monumentale di Concordia’, Felix Ravenna, 3 ser. fasc. 35 (86; 1962), 74—94. The new basilica clearly had considerable prestige and was soon augmented by new tombs of those seeking burial near the saints — ad limina apostolorum — and eventually a second basilica was established beside it, perhaps developed from the tomb of the holy priest Mauricius.

43 Chromatius, Sermones (SC 164, 103–8); Lemarié, J., ‘Homélies inédites de Saint Chromace d’Aquiléé’, Revue Bénédictine 73 (1963), 181–243 Google Scholar, at 229–35.

44 MH 2/1, 115; 2/2, 485–6. Euphemia is recorded in MH ms W as if she were an addition, but relics of the saint were certainly known in the West. They were imported into Milan by Ambrose and distributed to others of his circle: Paulinus of Nola, Carmina 27, lines 428–35 (CSEL 30, 281); MH 2/1, 57; 2/2, 242; Lucchesi, G., ‘Eufemia di Calcedonia’, Bibliotheca Sanctorum 5 (Rome, 1994)Google Scholar, cols 154–9, at 158–9.

45 Brusin, G., ‘La Basilica apostolorum di Aquileia’, in Mullus: Festchrift Theodor Klauser (Münster, 1964), 28–33.Google Scholar

46 Judging by the rankings suggested by the order of episcopal attestations of Frankish councils, 461–585: Concilia Galliae (CChr.SL 148, 148); MGH L Concilia 1, 9, 85, 96, 135, 145, 172.

47 Leo I, Epistolae 1, 2 (PL 54, 593–7, 597–8).

48 Referred to by Pelagius I as an established fact: Epistulae quae supersunt 24, ed. Gassó, P. M. and Battle, C. M., Scripta et Documenta 8 (Montserrat, 1956), 73–4.Google Scholar

49 Fedalto, G., Aquileia: Una chiesa, due patriarcati, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiae Aquileiensis 1 (Città Nuova, 1999), 66–70.Google Scholar

50 Sotinel, C., ‘The Three Chapters and the Transformations of Italy’, in Chazelle, C. and Cubitt, C., eds, The Crisis of the Oikoumene, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 14 (Turnhout, 2007), 85–120 Google Scholar, at 86–9; idem, Identité civique, 323–38.

51 He referred dismissively to Bishop Paul of Aquileia as ‘patriarch, as they suppose (ut ipsi putant) of Venetia and Histria’: Epistulae, ed. Gassó and Battle, 73–4; see pp. 75–6 below.

52 MH 2/2, 1.

53 See pp. 67–9 below.

54 e.g. G. Cuscito, Martiri cristiani ad Aquileia e in Istria, Università degli studi di Trieste, Facoltà di magistero, 3 ser. 25 (Udine, 1992), 9–10, 53; idem, ‘I martiri aquileiesi’, in Tavano, S. and Bergamini, G., eds, Patriarchi. Quindici secoli di civiltà fra l’Adriatico e l’Europa centrale (Milan, 2000), 49; Sotinel, Identité civique, 373.Google Scholar

55 MH 2/1, 69; 2/2, 283.

56 MH 2/1, 78:2/2, 318–19.

57 MH 2/1, 78; 2/2, 319.

58 MH 2/1, 79; 2/2, 322.

59 MH 2/1, 22; 2/2, 102–3 (as Crisentianus).

60 MH 2/1, 146 (23, martyr of Rome (ms W); martyr of Aquileia (ms E); 24, natalis in Rome (ms E)); 2/2, 615, 618.

61 MH 2/1, 77, 90, 106 (natalis of Fortunatus only in mss B and W); 2/2, 314–15, 371.442.

62 Maximus of Turin, Sermo 15 (CChr.SL 23, 57–8): ‘Nee mirum si similes sunt nomine, qui sunt similes passione; si una est illis apud homines appellatio, quibus apud deum est una vocatio.’ Although grand families, most notably of course that of the Emperor Constantine, did identify themselves by alliterative naming, the particular variant endings in this case, -ius, -ianus, -ianella, look distinctly formulaic and were perhaps confected from the nomen or cognomen Cantius: see p. 73 n. 95 below.

63 The origins of the cult are discussed by Billanovich, M. P., ‘Appunti di agiografia aquileiese’, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 30 (1976), 5–24.Google Scholar

64 ‘de vicino loco, non longe ab hac civitate’.

65 ActaSS Jun. 2, 460–3; Bratoz, R., Il Cristianesimo aquileiense prima di Costantino (Udine, 1999), 390–1 Google Scholar; Billanovich, ‘Appunti’, 11.

66 ‘Felicem meritis Vicetia laeta refundit / et Fortunatum fert Aquileia suum’ (Carmen 8, lines 165—6); he also refers to ‘the urn of the blessed martyr Fortunatus in Aquileia’ (Vita S. Martini 4, lines 658–60): MGH AA 4/1, 185, 369 respectively. It is clear that by the ninth century the community at Vicenza itself believed that it possessed only St Felix’s body: Rugini, L. Cracco, ‘Storia totale di una piccolo città: Vicenza romana’, in Broglio, A. and Rugini, L. Cracco, eds, Storia di Vicenza (Vicenza, 1987), 205–303 Google Scholar, at 290–1.

67 Bratoz, Il Cristianesimo, 390; Sacramentariam Bergomense, ed. A. Paredi (Bergamo, 1962); A. Paredi, Le Prefazioni ambrosiani (Milan, 1937), 160–2, 277–90.

68 ‘qui civitatem nostram glorioso martyrio decorarunt’: Chromatius, Sermones 7 (CChr.SL 9A, 30–1).

69 For this, see Lemarié, ‘Homélies de Saint Chromace’, 201–31. Against Lemarié’s arguments must be set the fact that the sermon is anonymous, one of a group recorded in Ripoll in northern Spain in the twelfth century. Lemarié bases his attribution to Chromatius partly on stylistic resemblances, which can hardly be conclusive since only two sermons are securely attributable to the bishop. His crucial argument is that the sermon’s opening sentence must refer to Aquileia. This, however, may well derive from the later passio, whose feast date (14 May) the preacher evidently followed (see p. 67 below). This matter will be addressed more fully in a forthcoming paper by Richard Sharpe and myself.

70 MH 2/1, 106. As construed by Delehaye: ‘In Aquileia Furtunati, Vicetiae Felicis’: 2/2, 442–3, and perhaps best rendered: ‘In Aquileia (the feast day of) Fortunatus, at Vicenza’.

71 V. Saxer, ‘L’hagiographie ancienne d’Aquilée à propos d’un livre récent’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Moyen Âge, temps modernes 92 (1980), 373–92, at 376; Sacramentarinm Bergomense, ed. Paredi, 243.

72 Ibid. 375–6.

73 MH 2/1, 77; MH 2/2, 314–15; Saxer, ‘L’hagiographie’, 380–2.

74 Sotinel, Identité civique, 267–8.

75 ‘Sanctorum locus’, ‘sancta beatorum vicinia’: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinaram [henceforth CIL] 5, Inscriptiones Galliae Cisalpinae Latinae, ed. Th. Mommsen, 2 vols (Berlin, 1872, 1877), nos 1678, 1698; J. B. Brusin, Inscriptiones Aquileiae, 3 vols (Udine, 1991–93), 3: 1089–90, 1105 (nos 3114, 3162); Sotinel, Identité civique, 214 n. 202; Billanovich, ‘Appunti’, 14—15.

76 Although the name Aurelia would perhaps have seemed rather old-fashioned by then: Keenan, J. G., ‘The Names Flavius and Aurelius as Status Designations in Later Roman Egypt’, Zeitschrift für Papyologie und Epigraphik 11 (1973), 33–63; 13 (1974), 283–304 Google Scholar; idem, An Afterthought on the Names Flavius and Aurelius’, Zeitscltrift für Papyologie und Epigraphik 53 (1983), 245-50Google Scholar. I am grateful to Mark Handley for these references.

77 CIL 5, no. 1636; Brusin, Inscriptiones Aquileiae, 3: 1030 (no. 2925); G. Vergone, Le Epigrafi lapidarie del Museo Paleocristiano di Monastero (Aquileia), Antichità Altoadriatiche: Monografia 3 (Trieste, 2007), no. 8 (with illustration).

78 I am grateful to Mark Handley for this suggestion.

79 Rugini, Cracco, ‘Storia totale’, 295–8; M. Mirabella Roberti, ‘La tomba dei martyri’. ‘Gli eóifici’, ‘I musaici’, La Basilica dei Santi Felice e Fortunato in Vicenza, 2 vols (Vicenza, 1979), 1: iii, 13–35, 37–55 Google Scholar.

80 Billanovich, ‘Appunti’, 17–18, though she quotes G. B. de Rossi as thinking it could be much earlier: La Roma sotterranea, 3 vols (Rome, 1864–77), 3: 436. For a later dating, see Bratoz, Il Cristianesimo, 399 n. 153.

81 Roberti, ‘La Tomba’, in La Basilica dei SS Felice e Fortunato, 1: 9–11. The urn apparently contained the remains of only one individual, killed by decapitation, although that of course does not prove that originally both saints had been buried beneath the slab: C. Corrain, ‘Ricognizione antropologia, di tre resti scheletrici’, in ibid. 1: 117–31, at 121–3.

82 Sotinel, Identité civique, 215 n. 208.

83 A bishop is first recorded in 590: Pohl, W., ‘Heresy in Secundus and Paul the Deacon’, in Chazelle, and Cubitt, , eds, Crisis of the Oikoumene, 243–64 Google Scholar, at 253–6. Cf. Cracco Rugini, ‘Storia totale’, 286.

84 Tavano, and Bergamini, , eds, Patriarchi, 65–7 Google Scholar (nos 4.24, 25, 27).

85 Ibid. 65.

86 Roberti, M. Mirabella, ‘La memoria di San Proto a San Canzian d’Isonzo’, Aquileia Nostra 31 (1961), cols 85–94.Google Scholar

87 Tavano, and Bergamini, , eds, Patriarchi, 43–6 (nos 3.3-5)Google Scholar; Gioseffi, D., ‘I pavimenti del vescovo Elia’, in Grado nella storia e nell’arte, 2 vols, = Antichità Altoadriatiche 17 (1980), 2: 325–49.Google Scholar

88 Corrain, C., ‘Resti scheletrici umani dagli scavi di San Canzian d’Isonzo’, Studi Goriziani 39 (1966), 63–72 Google Scholar. Dr C. Callow suggested in a personal communication that this is perhaps a maximalist interpretation; it is quite difficult to sex skeletons, especially of children.

89 Roberti, M. Mirabella, ‘La basilica paleocristiana di San Canzian d’Isonzo’, Aquileia Nostra 38 (1967), cols 61–86Google Scholar; idem, Una basilica paleocristiana a San Canzian d’Isonzo’, Studi Goriziani 39 (1966), 43–62.Google Scholar

90 Maximus, Sermo 15 (CChr.SL 23, 57–8); Saxer, ‘L’hagiographie ancienne’, 376–7.

91 ActaSS Mai 7, 428–30.

92 Tavano, S., ‘Un monastero altomedievale a San Canziano’, Memorie storiche Forogiuliesi 45 (1962-64), 161–9.Google Scholar

93 Thacker, ‘Martyr Cult’, 40–1, 46–7.

94 Moretti, P. F, La Passio Anastasiae, Studi e testi Tardo Antichi 3 (Rome, 2006)Google Scholar; Delehaye, H., Étude sur le Légendier Romain: Les saints de novembre et décembre, Subsidia hagiographica 23 (Brussels, 1936), 48, 151–71.Google Scholar

95 As suggested by an earlier (second/third-century) inscription recording a Lucius Cantius: Sotinel, Identité civique, 70.

96 For a less sceptical view, see Sotinel, Identité civique, 67—72. But note that neither Maximus’s homily nor the passio knew the distance of Ad Aquas Gradatas from Aquileia — i.e. their authors were not local.

97 MGH AA 4/1, 368–9.

98 Bratoz, Il Cristianesimo, 374–5.

99 Cuscito, G., ‘La Basilica martiriale di Trieste’, in idem, ed., San Giusto e la tradizione martiriale Tergestina = Antichità Altoadriatiche 60 (2005), 215–35 Google Scholar, at 221–33; Zovatto, P. L., ‘Il Defensor ecclesiae e le iscrizioni musive di Trieste’, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 20 (1966), 1–8 Google Scholar, at 3–4.

100 For a full bibliography, see Tavano and Bergamini, eds, Patriarchi, 52—4 (no. 4.5).

101 Sotinel, Identité civique, 215–16. He appears as Bishop Valentinus in Aquileia, Nov. 26: MH 1/1, 147; 2/2, 621–2.

102 MH 2/1, 33; 2/2, 147–9; Cuscito, Martiri cristiani, 61–3.

103 Sotinel, Identité civique, 216, 300–2.

104 Billanovich, ‘Appunti’, 20, 22; G. Marchesan-Chinese, ‘La basilica di Piazza della Vittoria a Grado’, in Grado nella storia e nell’ arte, 2: 309–23.

105 For recent approaches, see Chazelle and Cubitt, eds, Crisis of the Oikoumene.

106 Sotinel, ‘Three Chapters’, 85–120; idem, Identité civique, 306–38.

107 See especially Peri, V., ‘Aquileia nella trasformazione storica del titolo patriarcale’, Antichità Altoadriatiche 38 (1992), 41–63.Google Scholar

108 Pelagius I, Epistulae 24 (ed. Gassó and Battle, 73–4); MGH L Concilia 2/1, 586; Pohl, ‘Heresy’, 255.

109 Pelagius I, Epistulae 24 (ed. Gassó and Battle, 73–4).

110 Roberti, ‘Basilica paleocristiana’, esp. 63–5, 73–7.

111 Fedalto, Aquileia, 111–12.

112 Sotinel, Identité civique, 87.

113 This power is first recorded as exercised by Bishop Peter I Chrysologus (c. 430–50). Although Deliyannis claims suffragan bishops for Ravenna, as she herself points out the ascription of suffragans to Peter I is a sixth- or early seventh-century forgery: D. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2010), 84, 210, 335 nn. 261, 264; eadem, Introduction to Andreas Agnellus, Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis, CChr. CM 199, 102—3. Despite being one of the bishoprics of Flaminia and hence a suffragan see of Rome, Ravenna had metropolitan rights over the province of Emilia and in the late sixth century also had jurisdiction in Istria and Liguria: T. S. Brown, The Church of Ravenna and the Imperial Administration in the Seventh Century’, EHR 94 (1979), 1–28, at 7–9.

114 Deliyannis, Ravenna, 209–13.

115 Markus, R., Gregory the Great and His World (Cambridge, 1997), 146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

116 Agnellus, Liber pontificals 72 (CChr.CM 199, 241–2).

117 Ibid., no. 76 (CChr.CM 199, 244); Deliyannis, Ravenna, 256.

118 Paul the Deacon, Gesta episcoporum Mettensium (MGH S 2, 261); Paulinus of Aquileia, Carmen 8 (MGH Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini 1, 140). This paragraph draws heavily on the work of Richard Pollard and I am most grateful to him for allowing me to read and cite his as yet unpublished doctoral thesis: ‘Literary Culture in Ninth-Century Italy’ (University of Cambridge, 2009), esp. ch. 4.

119 Everett, N., ‘The Earliest Recension of the Life of St Sirus of Pavia (Vat. Lat. 5771)’, Studi Medievali 43 (2002), 857–957 Google Scholar; Pollard, ‘Literary Culture’, 270–83.

120 MGH L Concilia 2/1, 583–9. The patriarch of Aquileia-Grado returned to communion with Rome in 606, but the move provoked a most serious division in the province of Venetia-Istria. The bishops in the Lombard territories separated from Aquileia-Grado and adopted a new metropolitan, based eventually at Cividale but still retaining the title of patriarch of Aquileia. This remained so even after their eventual reconciliation with the papacy in 700.

121 Thus Sotinel, Identité civique, 371–2; idem, ‘Three Chapters’, 118–19; Cuscito, Martiri, 43–4; but cf. Pollard who favours a later seventh-century date: ‘Literary Culture’, 281–2, 287. J.-Ch. Picard opted for the late seventh or eighth century: Le Souvenir des évêques, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 268 (Rome, 1988), 696–7.

122 MH 1/1, 90; ‘Passio S. Hermagorae’, ActaSS Julii 3,249-57; Saxer. ‘L’Hagiographie’, 380.