Interpreting Exile in Late Antiquity

As we have already heard, Bishops in Flight traces some of the rhetoric around narratives of exile and displacement, starting with some earlier references to Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage but focusing primarily on the fourth-century conflicts that followed the Council of Nicaea and the shifting politics of imperial support in the decades that followed. As with so many things, Athanasius of Alexandria looms large as one of the trendsetters (or shall we say ‘influencers’) whose teachings and experiences will set the tone for defining Christian orthodoxy forever after. The Cappadocians in many ways follow in Athanasius’s footsteps, and in narrating Athanasius’s legacy after his death, they not only participate in their own struggles but also shape the memory of his. John Chrysostom then follows as another key figure in these discussions, and in fact one who complicates the story significantly since unlike his predecessors, he does not have a triumphant homecoming but rather dies while still in exile. The careful construction of Chrysostom’s legacy is the subject of the next chapter, as competing narratives vie to define him as a persecuted pillar of orthodoxy or a justly exiled heretic. At this point, the argument of the book seemed to me to shift slightly as it turned to the question of cities as much as their bishops, first looking at the example of Nicomedia along with its bishop Eusebius and then Antioch and the struggles of its bishop Meletius. Through it all, Barry deftly integrates a methodological focus on space and place as well as on discourse and rhetoric alongside the close study of the primary sources and their historical contexts.

As Barry notes, her book “explores why the discourse of Christian flight became an important part of the narrative of pro-Nicene orthodoxy,” superseding (though integrating) the earlier narratives of the martyrs (p. xiii). Among the significant observations and arguments that the book makes is its demonstration that while Athanasius of Alexandria initially had to overcome earlier concerns such as those expressed by Tertullian and Cyprian that Christians should face persecution and not flee, “by the fifth century, the mere mention of Athanasius’s legacy as a triumphant bishop in flight became the standard by which Christian orthodoxy... was measured” (p. xvi). Ironically, in the process these later “Christian authors would continuously characterize episcopal exile as a new martyrdom,” the very thing that earlier authors argued flight dishonorably avoided (p. 1). Overall, she argues that “the discourse of exile served as a new rhetorical and discursive mode in heresiological discourse” (p. 11), “a flexible discourse that allowed authors to think through the boundaries and limits of orthodoxy” (p. 17). The book represents a significant contribution to the study of late antiquity – of exile, bishops, and fourth-century politics – and it was an enormous pleasure to have a chance to read it for this panel.

Already in her introduction, Barry reshapes traditional history writing when she notes the significance of perspective in understanding late antique authors’ descriptions of exile as well as later historians’ interpretations of episcopal legitimacy. Tracing the numerous times that Athanasius was exiled from his Alexandrian see, the number of years of his episcopacy that he spent in exile, and how soon into his tenure he was removed by imperial fiat, Jenny writes, “Athanasius’s many exiles ought to cause the historian to pause and ask why the departed bishop could claim that he remained the only legitimate bishop throughout his career as an exile – a claim that will continue to go uncontested in pro-Nicene orthodox memory” (p. 2). As she reminds us “the historian must make a judgment call” in deciding how to represent Athanasius and his exiles, and because of the successful PR work and ‘spin’ by Athanasius himself and his supporters, history consistently recognized Athanasius as a legitimate bishop unjustly in exile rather than as a criminal and a heretic (p. 4). Her observations are a valuable reminder about our own perspective as historians and the degree to which we are influenced by the rhetorical success of some ancient leaders over others. It is a particularly welcome reminder for those like myself who have turned our attention to the narratives of those who did not come to dominate the Christian majority. It echoes, for example, the narratives of fifth- and sixth-century Syriac miaphysite Christians who rejected the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) and whose claims to imperial orthodoxy were not in the end legitimated by later emperors. Violence more generally, like the interpretation of exile, was contested throughout late antiquity (and until now) by leaders who were not currently in power. While the empire could explain the use of force, arrest, or exile as the justified enforcement of legal or doctrinal boundaries, others defined the experiences as unjustified violence and claimed the mantel of martyrdom. Barry’s book is thus in some ways a case study of this wider phenomenon, and as such contributes a great deal to our understanding of religious conflict in late antiquity more generally as well as the role that ancient and modern narratives play in its interpretation.

For Barry and others who know me, it will come as no surprise that it particularly warmed my heart to see the insights of cultural geography being so fruitfully and creatively applied to the politics of fourth-century episcopal exile. Her use of Foucault’s concept of heterotopic places produces a rich analysis of how Athanasius described his exile in “the desert” in ways that helped to legitimize his authority and orthodoxy when he returned to “the city,” a model that Gregory of Nazianzus expanded and codified for his own purposes. As Barry concludes, “Gregory effectively assembled several important components, such as Christian flight, persecution, ascetic training, and return, to create an orthodox formula” (p. 75). Her following chapters then demonstrate the challenges that John Chrysostom’s legacy faced because he died before he could return from his exile, and it was with difficulty that his supporters succeeded in countering the persuasive narrative that this end confirmed his heresy.

In the process of this analysis, Barry productively examines how the texts construct the cities associated with these exiled leaders, again engaging with concepts of place to enrich our understanding of where the mantel of orthodoxy settled. This thread of the representation of cities is I think at once one of the strengths of the book and also a place where more work could be done. Unsurprisingly, I love the concept, and the categories of “Model City,” “Condemned City,” and “Not-so-Model City” provide the framework for an engaging discussion. At the moment, I worry that some of the nuance and strength of this narrative thread gets tangled as she tracks the larger conversations about exile and orthodoxy by structuring the discussion around people. The section in the early Athanasius chapter labeled “How to Construct a Model City: Alexandria” contains some useful information but does not show as clearly as one might hope the ways in which Alexandria came to be shaped into a “model city.” The corresponding section in the following chapter focused on Gregory, “How to Construct a Model City: Constantinople,” is strong and likewise includes some useful information about the city and in this case some very relevant observations about how Constantinople changed over time and Gregory’s conflicted relationship with the city. What is not yet as visible again is the “constructing” part of the subtitle that perhaps could have been brought out more clearly from some textual examples.

It is, though, with Antioch and then Nicomedia that this topic becomes more complicated and I think does not yet quite reach its full potential – though perhaps to do so would have required too great a shift in focus and would have in turn threatened the coherence of the book’s primary thesis – so I am just thinking aloud about the potential that I see for more exploration of the enticing topic of model (and not-so-model) cities. With Alexandria now behind us as a model, the focus turns primarily to Constantinople, Antioch, and Constantinople’s close neighbor Nicomedia. Because of the book’s primary focus on individual authors, it is understandable that the discussions of these cities are scattered across several chapters. I do, though, think that a productive article could bring them together and put the cities center stage, and see what we learn from tracing how their descriptions shifted through these decades to serve the greater purpose of defining orthodoxy and heresy. In the chapter on John Chrysostom, for example, the section “How to Construct a Model City: Antioch” is only two pages and focuses mostly on the controversial bishop Meletius more than Antioch itself.

The section “How to Condemn a Model City: Nicomedia” about Eusebius of Nicomedia is one of the most nuanced spatial analyses (in addition to Athanasius’s desert), and Barry persuasively shows how its reputation was tied to that of Constantinople. As she writes, “The memory of both Constantine and that doomed city [Nicomedia] was eventually transformed, and like Athanasius’s, Constantine (along with his memory) was safely transferred to Constantinople, not only to preserve the orthodoxy of the emperor but also to ensure the damning of his more problematic companion, Eusebius of Nicomedia” (p. 136). I love how Barry drew out here the shifting representation of these two cities and the contemporary politicized purposes that they served. Since the focus of this material is primarily on Constantine and Eusebius, with frequent references to Athanasius, it is possible that this material would have been more at home before the John Chrysostom chapters. On the other hand, its use of material from fifth-century historians (Philostorgius, Socrates, Theodoret) explains its place near the end of the book. Nevertheless, I do think that the flow of the argument feels broken up unnecessarily by this choice to follow the chronology of the sources rather than the subjects. The complexity is multiplied by the shift in the same chapter back to Meletius and Antioch in the section “How to Rehabilitate a Condemned City,” both of which then also become the subject of the following chapter, which includes the section “Remembering a Not-So-Model City: Antioch.” We thus see Antioch as the subject of subsections alternately titled throughout the book, “How to Construct a Model City”; “How to Rehabilitate a Condemned City”; and “Remembering a Not-So-Model City.” In each case, the use of Antioch constructively furthers Barry’s cause regarding the episcopal conflicts and exiles she is discussing. In the process, however, it becomes difficult to follow the scattered and shifting representations of the city itself, as it is constructed as a model, rehabilitated from being condemned and finally remembered as a ‘not-so-model’ after all. Barry writes, “one of the primary arguments of this book: the space and place of orthodoxy is central to our understanding Christian flight in late antiquity” (p. 131), and I love what she does with it; bringing together the sections on the same cities magnifies even more what a contribution a focus on place can bring to these discussions of the constructions of orthodoxy and heresy.

Beyond the project’s engagement with the spatial politics of the fourth century, I also find the study particularly fruitful for thinking about the fifth- and sixth-century controversies that I’ve been focused on more recently, so I thought I would take some of my time to demonstrate the significance of Barry’s work for future studies. For example, one of the concrete instances of persecution and suffering that Philoxenus of Mabbug experienced because of his rejection of the Council of Chalcedon was exile, initially being expelled from Antioch in 482-4 and then being exiled from his episcopal see in Mabbug from 519 until his death in 523. Philoxenus’s writings refer to exile frequently as a form of censure by those who have imperial support, whether in the early exiles of Athanasius whom Philoxenus considered orthodox, the exile of those like Nestorius whom he considered heretical, or the exile of Philoxenus himself. In his Letter to the Monks of Senun, for example, Philoxenus wrote that because of his rejection of “evil doctrines,” as he called them, “we have deserved for the Lord to receive this exile.”[1] Like bishops before him, as Barry has shown, Philoxenus countered the argument that this formal punishment implied his separation from God. Speaking generally about any bishop who is “expelled from his church or chased from his see, or deposed by the heretics or submitted by them to an anathema while maintaining the faith that Peter proclaimed,” Philoxenus argued that “all these things which he finds himself subject to are found null and void, and there is no visible effect on him, but rather on those who reject him” because it is they and not he who left God and the true church.[2] This argument does not deny that anti-Chalcedonian Christians like Philoxenus found themselves subject to exile and anathemas, both of which he describes himself suffering. It does, though, lean on Athanasius’s example to reinterpret the significance of these acts of censure to allow for his continuing orthodoxy despite imperial and ecclesiastical punishments that claimed otherwise.

Severus also, like Philoxenus, frequently referred to the exile of anti-Chalcedonian Christians, including himself, and he continued to look to Athanasius of Alexandria as a role model to legitimize his argument. As Barry’s work reveals, miaphysite leaders followed an established tradition of denouncing the legitimacy of their exiles, presenting themselves as the leaders able to confirm for their audience which sufferers were righteous and which were not despite having been deemed heretical and sent into exile by those who held worldly authority. A homily from Severus’s time in Antioch, for example, mentioned the trials that Athanasius of Alexandria suffered, including exile,[3] and one of Severus’s hymns mentioned other fourth-century episcopal exiles, in this case the pro-Nicene bishops who had been exiled by the emperor Valens.[4] Elsewhere Severus recalled the fifth-century exile of Timothy II from Alexandria,[5] and a more recent expulsion of the “monasteries of the East” on account of the “universal wrath” against the miaphysite monks who lived there.[6] Severus also wrote about his own exile, although perhaps less than one might expect, given the years of his life that it shaped.[7] The language that Severus used constructed a clear narrative for his audience of the hardships that anti-Chalcedonian Christians like himself suffered from persecutions and exiles that had the support of the imperial administration, and he offered memories of orthodox role models of devout resistance in order to help his audience locate him in that illustrious tradition.

Jennifer Barry has produced an excellent book that shows the power of narratives to shape the life – and afterlife – of powerful figures, and determine the course of religious orthodoxy. As she writes, “we have found that the orthodox bishop is often shaped in the minds and memories of the pro-Nicene authors,” and even the unquestionably orthodox legacy of the giant of orthodoxy Athanasius of Alexandria “was, and remains, dependent upon a logic of alienation and persecution that demonizes others as it simultaneously reinforces the claims of the outsider” (pp. 175-6). Her study helps us see new ways in which the struggle to claim the title of orthodoxy ranged far beyond church councils and imperial decisions and included the complex commemoration of each author’s villains and heroes. This often started with the bishop himself (Athanasius, John Chrysostom) but always continued well after their death as those who followed in their footsteps worked to shore up the legacies of their heroes and saints, and in the process provide a firm foundation for their own legitimacy as well. By using competing narratives about John Chrysostom as well as the “Arian” historian Philostorgius on the history of Eusebius of Nicomedia, Barry shows that the clean narrative of orthodoxy that we inherit is a carefully curated end product of what was in reality a sharply contested struggle. Thanks to her work we can see a little more of the narratives that ultimately fell by the wayside and imagine some of the paths not taken. Her gestures in the book’s conclusion to the relevance of her discussion for the way in which those in flight are represented in our own context, including migrants and refugees, is particularly powerful. I am already looking forward to her next project: A Violence All Her Own: Male Fantasies in Late Antiquity. Thank you for this wonderful and thought-provoking contribution to our field and for the chance to think about it with everyone here.

Tina Shepardson is a Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of two books, Controlling Contested Places: Fourth-Century Antioch and the Spatial Politics of Religious Controversy (2014) and Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem’s Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria (2008), and the co-editor of two others, Invitation to Syriac Christianity: An Anthology (2022) and Dealing with Difference: Christian Patterns of Response to Religious Rivalry in Late Antiquity and Beyond (2021). Her new project on early Syrian Orthodox Christianity and the political and doctrinal conflicts that consumed the eastern Mediterranean during the fifth and sixth centuries is currently under review.

[1] Philoxenus, Letter to the Monks of Senun CSCO 231.69/232.56-7. For the Syriac edition and French translation of this letter, see André de Halleux, ed. and trans., Lettre aux moines de Senoun, CSCO 231-232 (Leuven: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1963).

[2] Philoxenus, Letter to the Monks of Senun CSCO 231.78/CSCO 232.64.

[3] Severus, Cath. Hom. 91 (PO 25). For the Syriac edition and English translation of Severus’s Cathedral Homilies, see Maurice Brière, François Graffin, et al., eds., Les Homiliae Cathedrales de Sévère d’Antioche, PO 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 29, 35, 36, 37, 38 (Paris: Firmin-Didot; Turnhout: Brepols, 1906-76).

[4] Severus, Hymn 202 (PO 7.666-7). For the Syriac edition and English translation of these hymns, see E.W. Brooks, ed. and trans., The Hymns of Severus and Others in the Syriac Version of Paul of Edessa as revised by James of Edessa, fasc. 1-2, PO 6-7 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1911).
[5] Severus, Select Letters I.1 (1.1.7-8/2.1.7-8); V.8 (1.2.362/2.2.320). For the Syriac edition and English translation of these letters, see E.W. Brooks, ed. and trans., The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis (London: Williams and Norgate, 1902).

[6]Severus, Collection of Letters 35 (PO 12.279). For the Syriac edition and English translation of these letters, see E.W. Brooks, ed. and trans., A Collection of Letters of Severus of Antioch: From Numerous Syriac Manuscripts, PO 12, 14 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1919-20).

[7]Severus, Select Letters II.3 (1.1.256/2.1.228); I.55 (1.1.181-2/2.1.164).