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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
‘The medieval drive to association’. That phrase comes from a monograph by Susan Reynolds. It is to be found in a chapter on guilds and confraternities. And it is representative of the quasi-biological vocabulary to which historians of those institutions seem especially prone. ‘How appropriate is this talk of drives? What, in this context, is the force of ‘medieval’? My ultimate purpose is to address those questions from a Byzantine perspective; to ask in effect whether evidence of confraternities from the eastern Roman empire between approximately 400 and the Ottoman conquest will sustain talk of a Byzantine ‘drive to association’. The enquiry is, however, worth a preliminary approach on a broader front. This is partly because the historiography of European confraternities shapes the questions that must be put to the Byzantine sources. It is also because, unusually, a Byzantine perspective may illuminate problems arising from the western material. Finally it is because the comparative history of confraternities may, by implication, have a modest contribution to make to the larger question of the differences between eastern and western Christianity. Much energy has been expended on accounting for the ‘parting of the ways’ - less, perhaps, on measuring the distance between them.
1 Reynolds, , Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900-1300 (Oxford 1984) cap 3 (to which I am generally indebted) at p. 77 Google Scholar. Bossy, Cf John, Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (Oxford 1985) p. 58 Google Scholar; Hay, Denys, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century. (Cambridge 1977) p. 66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Brown, Cf Peter, ‘Eastern and Western Christendom in Late Antiquity: A Parting of the Ways’, SCH 13 (1976) pp. 1–24 Google Scholar.
3 Cf in this volume John Henderson, ‘Confraternities and the Church in Late-Medieval Florence’, of which he kindly sent me a typescript; Brigden, Susan, ‘Religion and Social Obligation in Early Sixteenth-Century London’, PP 103 (1984) p. 94 Google Scholar; Martz, Linda, Poverty and Welfare in Hapsburg Spain: The Example of Toledo (Cambridge 1983) p. 159 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bossy, , Christianity, p. 58 Google Scholar.
4 Bras, Gabriel Le, ‘Les confréries chrétiennes: problèmes et propositions’, RHDFE (1940-41) pp. 310–63 Google Scholar remains the best brief survey.
5 Quotation from Bossy, , ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe’, PP 47 (1970) p. 58 Google Scholar, who is rightly cautious of its implications. Cf Le Bras p. 310.
6 Bossy, Cf, ‘Counter-Reformation’, p. 55 Google Scholar; Goody, Jack, The Development of Marriage and the Family in Europe (Cambridge 1983 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
7 Devisse, Cf Jean, Hincmar Archevêque de Reims 845-882 (Geneva 1976) 2 p. 878 n 361 Google Scholar.
8 Bossy, , ‘Holiness and Society’, PP 75 (1977) pp. 120–6 Google Scholar, discussing The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Mediaeval and Renaissance Religion, ed Trinkhaus, Charles and Oberman, Heiko A. (Leiden 1974 Google Scholar). Smith, Cf R.M., ‘The Peoples of Tuscany and their Families in the Fifteenth Century: Medieval or Mediterranean?’,, Journal of Family History (1981) pp. 107–16 Google ScholarPubMed on marriage age. On parishes compare Henderson, ‘Confraternities’; Brigden pp. 94-6.
9 Weissman, Ronald F.E., Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York and London 1982 Google Scholar). Rosenwein, Cf Barbara H., Rhinoceros Bound: Cluny in the Tenth Century (Philadelphia 1982 CrossRefGoogle Scholar), using a similar model.
10 The Pursuit of Holiness pp. 315, 318.
11 Pace Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost - Further Explored (London 1983) pp. 7, 10 Google Scholar.
12 Meersseman, Gilles Gerard, Ordo Fraternitatis, 3 vols (Rome 1977) 1 p. ix Google Scholar.
13 I have not seen Meersseman, , ‘Per la storiografia delle confraternite laicali nell’alto medioevo’, Storiografia e Storia, Studi… Theseider (Rome 1974) 1 pp. 39–62 Google Scholar.
14 Weissman cap 2; Goff, Jacques Le, The Birth of Purgatory, ET (London 1984) pp. 326–8 Google Scholar.
15 Moore, R.I., ‘Family, Community and Cult on the Eve of the Gregorian Reform’, TRHS 30 (1980) pp. 56–7 Google Scholar; Fossier, Robert, Enfance de l’Europe Xe-XIIe siècles, 2 vols (Paris 1982) 1 pp. 361–2 Google Scholar.
16 Meersseman, , Ordo Fraternitatis, 1 pp. 55–65, 95–9 Google Scholar.
17 Thorpe, Benjamin, Diplomatarium Anglicum Aevi Saxonici (London 1865) pp. 605–17 Google Scholar.
18 Barlow, Frank, The English Church 1000-1066, 2 ed (London 1979) p. 249. See also pp. 196–8 Google Scholar.
19 Hodges, Richard, Dark Age Economics (London 1982) pp. 89, 193 Google Scholar. James, Cf Edward, The Origins of France (London 1982) p. 71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Whittaker, C.R., ‘Late Roman Trade and Traders’, Trade in the Ancient Economy, ed Garnsey, Peter et al. (London 1983) pp. 163–80 Google Scholar.
21 MGH Epistolarum vol 2 pp. 118-19. L. Cracco Ruggini, ‘Le associazioni pro fessionali nel mondo romano-bizantino’, SSSpoleto 18 (1970) pp. 192, 222-4. Cf Fossier 1 p. 538.
22 Salmi, M., ‘Magistri Comacini o Commàcini’, SSSpoleto 18 (1970) pp. 409–24 Google Scholar.
23 Reynolds pp. 72-3.
24 The Paris MS BN Latin 9430 is exceptional. Cf Meersseman 1 pp. 99-108.
25 Capitula Presbyteris Data cap 16, PL 125 cols 777-8. Devisse, Hincmar 2
26 References in Reynolds pp. 67-8. I here omit discussion of monastic con fraternities of prayer.
27 E.g. Bede HE i 30; Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria confessorum, cap 2, MGH SRM 1 pp. 749-50. Cf Alcuin, Ep 290, MGH Epp Karolini Aevi 2 p. 448.
28 Le Bras p. 312. Frend, W.H.C., Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford 1965) pp. 325–6 Google Scholar; MacMullen, Ramsay, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven and London 1984) pp. 90, 104–5 Google Scholar; Meeks, Wayne A., The First Urban Christians (New Haven and London 1983 Google Scholar) caps 5-6; Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints (London 1981) pp. 26–30 Google Scholar.
29 (With Giles Constable) People and Power in Byzantium (Washington 1982).
30 Evelyne Patlagean, Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance, 4e-7e siècles (Paris 1977) shows what can be achieved. Contrast the evidential - and analytical - impoverishment of P. A. Yannopoulos, La société profane dans l’em pire byzantin des Vile, Ville, et IXe siècles (Louvain 1975) and A.P. Kazhdan and Ann Wharton Epstein, Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1985).
31 Cf Patlagean’s collected papers, Structures sociales, famille, chrétienté à Byzance, IVe-XIe siècle (London 1981); The Byzantine Saint, Studies supplementary to Sobornost 5, ed Sergei Hackel (1981); Peter Brown, ‘A Dark Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy’, EHR 88 (1973) pp. 1–34, a rare perspective on local religion.
32 Nesbitt, J. and Wiita, J., ‘A Confraternity of the Comnenian Era’, BZ 68 (1975) pp. 360–84 at p. 361 Google Scholar.
33 Cameron, Cf Alan, Circus Factions (Oxford 1976 Google Scholar); Vryonis, Speros Jr, ‘Byzantine Demokratia and the Guilds in the Eleventh Century’, DOP 17 (1963) pp. 289–314 Google Scholar with bibliography p. 293 n 13. See however Patlagean, Pauvreté pp. 228-9.
34 Heers, Jacques, L’Occident aux XlVe et XVe siècles (Paris 1963) p. 308 Google Scholar.
35 Seyâhatnâme pt 2 cap 80. Standard ed by Neib Asim (Istanbul 1896-1900). I have used the translation by Hammer, J. von, Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa (London 1834-48) vol 1 pt 2 pp. 104 seq, at pp. 250, 106 Google Scholar.
36 Vryonis, , ‘The Panegyris of the Byzantine Saint’, The Byzantine Saint, pp. 196–226 at p. 220 Google Scholar; Vryonis, , ‘Byzantium and Islam’, East European Quarterly, 2 (1968) pp. 236–7 Google Scholar.
37 Oikonomidès, N., Hommes d’affaires grecs et latins à Constantinople (Paris 1979) pp. 108–14 Google Scholar.
38 For all which see Vryonis, ‘Demokratia’.
39 The most useful modern works are MacMullen, Ramsay, Roman Social Relations (New Haven and London 1974) pp. 68–831 Google Scholar, and Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven and London 1981) pp. 12, 36-9; Meeks, , First Urban Christians, pp. 31–2 Google Scholar. On burial clubs see Hopkins, Keith, Death and Renewal (Cambridge 1983) cap 4 pt 3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 Finley, Cf M.I., The Ancient Economy (London 1973) p. 138 Google Scholar.
41 Liebeschuetz, Cf J.H.W.G., Antiochi City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford 1972) pp. 219–24 Google Scholar, with bibliography on mon opolistic and restrictive practices p. 222; Ruggini, pp. 146–93 Google Scholar; Patlagean, , Pauvreté P. 175 Google Scholar.
42 For the urban geography of crafts compare MacMullen, Roman Social Relations pp. 71-2 on antiquity with Vryonis, ‘Demokratia’ pp. 298-9 on Constantinople c. 1000. For Byzantine burial clubs see Patlagean, Pauvreté pp. 70, 158.
43 Jones, Cf A.H.M., The Later Roman Empire 3 vols (Oxford 1964) 2 p. 858 Google Scholar; Liebeschuetz, pp. 219, 221 Google Scholar.
44 Patlagean, , Pauvreté pp. 169, 173–4 Google Scholar (compare Liebeschuetz p. 223); Buckler, W.H., ‘Labour Disputes in the Province of Asia’, Anatolian Studies presented to Sir W.M. Ramsay (Manchester 1923) pp. 36 Google Scholar seq.
45 Kazhdan and Epstein pp. 39 seq; Michael Angold, The Byzantine Empire 1025-1204, cap 4; Yannopoulos pp. 161-73 for the seventh to ninth centuries. I gloss over here the question of ‘the disappearance and revival of cities’ in the latter period: see Cyril Mango, Byzantium (London 1980) cap 3. For a different perspective, which makes the proposed continuity of guild life more intelligible, see Hugh Kennedy, ‘From Polis to Madina: Urban Change in Late Antique and Early Islamic Syria’, PP 106 (1985) pp. 3-27.
46 Vryonis, , ‘Demokratia’ p. 302 Google Scholar, ‘Panegyris’ pp. 213, 220-3.
47 Jones, 2 pp. 863–4 Google Scholar; Vryonis, , ‘Demokratia’ pp. 294–5 Google Scholar.
48 ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus et Athanasie son épouse’, Vie et récits de l’abbé Daniel le Scétiote, ed L. Clugnet, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 5 (1900) pp. 371 seq.
49 Weissman, Cf pp. 63–5 Google Scholar.
50 Jones, 2 pp. 858–9 Google Scholar.
51 Patlagean, , Pauvreté p. 173 Google Scholar.
52 Libanius, , Oratio xlvi 21 Google Scholar.
53 XVI ii 42, 43.
54 DACL sv ‘Parabalani’ (H. Leclercq) col 1575.
55 Schubart, W., ‘Parabalani’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 38 (1952) pp. 97–101 Google Scholar with bibliography; Temkin, Owsei, ‘Byzantine Medicine: Tradition and Empiricism’ DOP 16 (1962) p. 112 Google Scholar.
56 Pace the latest general account, Timothy Miller, S., The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire (Baltimore 1985 Google ScholarPubMed).
57 Papyri ¡andanae, ed J. Hummel (Leipzig 1938) pp. 383-7 no 154 lists those to whom wine should be distributed, probably by a church at Oxyrhynchus, c.600. It seems to include parabolani among the minor clerics. We cannot, however, assume a similarity of function between these and the Alexandrian parabolani. Cf Miller p. 129 for the analogous case of the dekanoi.
58 Meersseman, Cf, Ordo Fraternitatis, 1 pp. 25, 113–35 Google Scholar, 154–87.
59 Barlow, , pp. 22–30, 249.Google Scholar
60 Brigden p. 96 with n 157. Norman, Cf Tanner, P., The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370-1532 (Toronto 1984) pp. 75–6 Google Scholar for a further example.
61 Sathas, C.N., Documents inédits relatifs à l’histoire de la Grèce au moyen âge, vol 1 (Paris 1880) pp. 46–51 Google Scholar no 41; Romanos, I.A., Deltion tes Istorikes kai Ethnologikes Etairias tes Ellados, vol 2 (1889) pp. 591–608 Google Scholar. See also Lemerle, P., ‘Trois actes du Despote d’Epire Michel II concernant Corfu’, Hellenika 4 (1953) pp. 418–23, 425–6 Google Scholar. I owe these references to the kindness of Professor D.M. Nicol.
62 Barlow pp. 229-30.
63 ed Nesbit, J. and Wiita, J. in BZ 68 (1975) pp. 360–84 Google Scholar.
64 Meersseman, Cf, Ordo Fraternitatis, 1 pp. 60–5 Google Scholar.
65 Henderson, , ‘Confraternities and the Church’; Weissman pp. 54–6 Google Scholar. Janin, Cf R.. ‘Les processions religieuses à Byzance’, REB 24 (1966) pp. 69–88 Google Scholar.
66 Yet Kazhdan and Wharton Epstein suppose that ‘confraternities began to appear in the eleventh century’ (Change in Byzantine Culture p. 52) and that the location of the Theban confraternity reflects a new ‘decentralization’ of Byzantine life.
67 References in Nesbitt-Wiita p. 382 with n 40.
68 Boissonade, J. Fr., Anecdota Graeca, 2 (Paris 1830) pp. 146–7 Google Scholar.
69 Dobschütz, E.v., ‘Maria Romaia’, BZ 12 (1903) p. 202 no 23 Google Scholar. Cf Janin p. 71.
70 Maas, P., ‘Artemioskult in Konstantinopel’, Byzantinisch-Neugriechische Jahrbiicher 1 (1920) pp. 377–80 Google Scholar. The Miracles were edited by A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus in Varia Graeca Sacra (St Petersburg 1909) pp. 1-79. See especially Miracle 18.
71 Chitty, Derwas J., The Desert a City (Oxford 1966) p. 3 Google Scholar. Pétridès, S., ‘Spoudaei et Philopones’, Echos d’Orient, 7 (1904) pp. 341–8 Google Scholar, to which DACL sv ‘Con fréries’ (H. Leclercq) adds little; Ewa Wipszycka, ‘Les confréries dans la vie religieuse de l’Egypte chrétienne’, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Con gress of Papyrology, ed Samuel, Deborah H. (Toronto 1970) pp. 511–25 Google Scholar. See also Miller, pp. 124–31 Google Scholar, perhaps viewing confraternities too exclusively from the perspective of urban monasticism. Generalizations that follow are largely based on the evidence assembled by Pétridès and Wipszycka, though I cannot always follow their interpretations of it. Full discussion and documentation must be reserved to a forthcoming work.
72 Scholasticus, Zacharias, Life of Severus ed Kugener, M-A., PO 2 p. 24 Google Scholar shows that philoponos was the local Egyptian variant of spoudaios, and refers to still other groups of ‘companions’ who are for obvious reasons virtually untraceable.
73 The story of ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’ (n 48 above) is the clearest evidence.
74 PO 1 p. 12; cf p. 214 (Life by John of Beith-Aphthonia).
75 Wipszycka pp. 513-15; Vita Auxentii (Metaphrastic) PG 114 col 1380 seq; Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Theodosii coenobiarchae, ed H. Usener (Leipzig 1890) pp. 105-6. The strangest function of the Alexandrian philoponoi was to remind the Patriarch John ‘the Almoner’ that his tomb was unfinished: E. Dawes and N.H. Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (Oxford 1948) pp. 228-9.
76 Kitzinger, Ernst, ‘The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm’, DOP 8 (1954) PP. 83–149 Google Scholar.
77 Wipszycka p. 513. Philoponoi or spoudaioi might marry, though perhaps live chastely: ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’; L. Clugnet, ‘Vies… d’anachorètes’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 10 (1905) pp. 47-8; Sophronius, Miracles of SS Cyrus and John, ed Natalio Fernández Marcos, Los ‘Thaumata’ de Sofronio (Madrid 1975) cap 5 pp. 249-51. Charity: ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’; Cyrus and John cap 35 pp. 318-22. See also n 93 below.
78 PO 2 pp. 54-5; ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’.
79 Though cf John Moschus, Pratum Spirituale, cap 176, PC 87 col 3044.
80 Clugnet, ‘Vies… d’anachoretès’; PO 2 p. 54; Wipszycka pp. 518-19; Pétridès pp. 342-3. Length of service in a confraternity: Pratum Spirituale cap 61, PG 87 col 2913; Miracles of Artemius p. 19.
81 Cf ‘Fragmente einer Schrift des Märtyrerbischofs Petrus von Alexandrien’, ed C. Schmidt, TU 5.4 (1901) p. 7.
82 Papyri Iandanae (n 57 above); Berlin papyrus published Wipszycka pp. 522-5.
83 Arthur Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, vol 1 CSCO sub 14 (Louvain 1958) pp. 97 seq, vol 2 sub 17 (1960) pp. 332 seq gives the ‘standard’ interpretation. For different etymologies see Sebastian Brock, ‘Early Syrian Asce ticism’, Numen 20 (1973) pp. 7-8.
84 Vööbus, , Asceticism, 2 p. 332 Google Scholar.
85 Syriac and Arabic Documents regarding Legislation relative to Syrian Asceticism, ed Vööbus (Stockholm 1960), pt 1 cap 3 no 20.
86 Vööbus, , Asceticism, 2 pp. 339–41 Google Scholar. Charity: Vita of Rabbuia of Edessa in S Ephraemi Syri, Rabulae Episcopi… Opera Selecta, ed J.J. Overbeck (Oxford 1965) p. 203.
87 John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, cap 16, PO 17 pp. 242-3; The Canons Ascribed to Maruta of Maipherqat, ed Vööbus, CSCO 439 (Louvain 1982) no 26.
88 Vööbus, , Asceticism, 2 pp. 336–7 Google Scholar.
89 Canons Ascribed to Maruta canon 25.
90 Cf PO 2 p. 24: ‘we found ourselves in the churches with those that one calls philoponoi’. References to spoudaioi laikoi and such like need not on the other hand always indicate the formation of confraternities. Spoudaios and philoponos retained their ‘non-technical’ meanings: cf Athanasius, Life of Antony, cap 4, PC 28 col 436A for individual spoudaioi; Socrates HE viii 23. The sixth-century Monophysite philosopher John Philoponos need not ever have belonged to a philoponion: that was simply his name (1 am grateful to Mr P.M. Fraser for advice here).
91 ‘L’orfèvre Andronicus’; Cyrus and John caps 5, 35; PO 2 pp. 54-5 - cf W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 2nd ed (Cambridge 1979) p. 203; Pétridès pp. 346-7; Chitty p. 93. See also n 93 below.
92 Cyrus and John cap 5; PO 2 pp. 32-3; Vita Theodosii pp. 105-6.
93 Evidence collected by Patlagean, Pauvreté, p. 192.
94 Heresy: Gilbert Dagron, ‘Les moines et la ville’, Travaux et Mémoires, 4 (1970) pp. 229-76; Patlagean, Pauvreté, pp. 134-5.
95 I discussed the topic of confraternities with the late Professor J.M. Wallace-Hadrill only a few days before his sudden death. I take this, the first opportunity of recording a largely scholarly indebtedness to him. I am grateful to Mr. P.M. Fraser, Dr John Henderson and Dr Richard Smith for comments on an earlier version of this paper.
