AJR Forum on Bishops in Flight | A Response

I would like to extend my gratitude to Mika who put this panel together over two years ago and helped shepherd it through the pandemic. I truly am grateful for all that you’ve done to make this event happen, Mika. Sincerely. Thank you. I would also like to extend my gratitude to you all for taking the time to respond to my book. I was both humbled and immensely grateful for each of your thoughtful and thorough engagements with my work. Rather than address each respondent individually point by point, I thought I would focus on a few overlapping threads that might help expand our conversation here today.

To structure my response, I will begin with a brief reflection on the contributions I had hoped to make when this project went to print. I will then turn to consider points raised by my colleagues that I too found incomplete and resulted in subsequent publications and opened up new avenues of research. And finally, I will draw together what I saw as overlapping themes in the responses provided that have either been left unexplored or have now inspired me to think to offer as a point of departure for further discussion.

I. The contributions I hoped to make

As with many first books, this research began what feels like an entire lifetime ago. It certainly evolved as it moved from the dissertation (2013) to book (2019). For example, I dropped two chapters, added a prologue, and conducted new research which resulted in two additional chapters. The scope and focus of the book changed a great deal after I found myself immersed in the lively and growing area of study on exile in the late ancient world. I was very fortunate to encounter conversation partners, which pushed me to think about Christian flight in new ways. For example, in 2012 I became more involved with the Clerical Exile Project and struck up a friendship with Julia Hillner, who is one of the Principal Investigators of this fantastic digital humanities project. Both Julia and Eric Fournier (who has also written a good deal on exile in late antiquity) provided me with thoughtful feedback and invited me on more than a few occasions to contribute and collaborate in a variety of publications and pre-arranged panels. Moreover, I am indebted to early readers and generous colleagues, who were instrumental to how I thought about the ancient texts I engaged and the theoretical interventions I made throughout the book. It should be very clear that Tina’s book Controlling Contested Places was a major influence on my assessment of Antioch, for example, and helped me immensely to think about space and place theory. This book was the result of many engaging and brilliant conversations I was able to have as an early career scholar and many of those conversations are still ongoing, which made this panel all the more enjoyable as I think back on a moment in time that allowed me to develop not just as a scholar of episcopal exile, but someone heavily invested in the construction of scholarly networks that gave me the tools necessary to navigate fields that pushed me beyond my disciplinary training.

There were at least three explicit contributions I aimed to make. First, I wanted to draw attention to the persistent and unchallenged reliance on Athanasius’s presentation of the “facts” about his flights from Alexandria. I was frequently stunned by how often the ancient sources stepped over this simple yet salient detail. And the more I followed his travels and those who received Athanasius’s version of the events, the more I became fascinated with the scholarly reception as well. Athanasius’s exiles were almost a given and I spent a good deal of time examining why and how that came to be, which ultimately lead me to see how the discourse of exile functioned as a rhetorical tool central to his self-fashioning as a hero of Nicene orthodoxy.

Second, my use of space and place theory was then a way to situate myself and arrange my examination of the sources. The movement of bodies across landscapes became a way to trace a growing discourse of episcopal legitimacy in surprising ways. I incorporated spatial theory to offer a new way to engage a larger assessment of the construction of orthodoxy and heresy. As I insist throughout the book, the imaginative landscape and a focused understanding of how spaces and place functioned within narratives of displacement, revealed a great deal about the story of Nicene orthodoxy as M, George, and Tina all helpfully summarized.

Finally, I wanted to look at the limits of our contemporary definitions of exile and unpack scholarly assumptions about the objective outsider. The exilic figure was too often infused with an unwarranted, often unearned, authority. As my concluding remarks highlight, the looming legacy of Athanasius is partially looming because of the myths that surround scholarly obsessions with the modern Exile. And simultaneously, this objective authority was made possible because there was quite a bit of premodern work that went into the creation of that myth. The fantasies ancient writers and contemporary scholars create around these larger than life “Fathers” continue to be a point of interest for me and those fantasies have histories of their own.

II. Contributions made elsewhere

As I read through the responses, and as I hear them read during the book panel, I was tickled that many of the suggestions for further research or points of departure were the very same moments I felt still needed to be addressed.

For example, Tina’s excellent point about the “tangle” that takes place in my descriptions of two model cities also left me wondering if there was a better way to organize the material and think about what exactly made Alexandria and Constantinople model cities. I very recently published an article titled, “We didn’t start the fire: The Alexandrian Legacy in Christian memory” where I attempt to accomplish that goal. There I explored how fifth-century ecclesiastical historians crafted episcopal legitimacy through the memorialization of the destruction of two significant Alexandrian holy sites: the Great Alexandrian Church and the Serapeum. The fire and destruction stories are then transplanted into Constantinople at the very moment its legacy came under threat with John Chrysostom’s departure. In that article, I was able to spend more time thinking about how both cities and sacred spaces in Alexandria and, subsequently, Constantinople, were shaped and forged by holy fire.

George also pointed to some elements where the space and place theory might be expanded. And while Henri Lefebvre never quite worked for how I imagined this project, I found his engagement quite enticing and I imagine this would have been a very different book as he teased in his creative reframing of the spatial triad. The theory and theorists I did engage allowed me to expand how I saw these ancient authors construct themselves as they moved in and out of different spaces. And while I focused primarily on the symbolic spaces of the desert in the book and the importance of that symbolic retreat, I was able to explore the afterlife of Nicomedia and her exiles in another side project recently published in a special issue on exile in late antiquity in the Studies of Late Antiquity. The article titled “Damning Nicomedia: The spatial consequences of exile” integrated both space theory and tools pulled from the clerical exile project cited above. There, I had more freedom to examine how various social networks forged in and outside of Nicomedia ultimately lead to its historical and symbolic demise in a more developed fashion.

Another area that was initiated by research from this book, which has really laid the foundations for my next research trajectory, evolved out of my critical examination of how heroes are constructed through exilic discourse. As I stressed at several points, to construct an orthodox hero, you need a heretical villain—or villains. Specifically, in Ch 4, I focused on two invading bishops Gregory of Cappadocia and Theophilus of Alexandria. But in an article, I published in 2016, titled, “Diagnosing Heresy: Ps.-Marytrius’s Funerary Speech for John Chrysostom,” I focused more on another known enemy of John Chrysostom, namely the empress Eudoxia (the wife of the emperor Arcadius). Her story ends in a much more tragic fashion than her male counterpart, Theophilus, who received the equivalent of a slap on the hand for his meddling in John’s affairs—Theophilus eventually dies of natural causes and is merely remembered as a power-hungry instigator. The female villain of John’s story, however, does not escape so easily. As John’s biographers describe it, Eudoxia suffers two painful miscarriages and dies in childbirth. The details of which are graphically described in Ps.-Matryirus’s funerary speech. He credits Eudoxia’s involvement in John’s exiles as the chief cause behind her suffering and death. In gory detail, Ps.-Martyrius describes how the divine takes particular interest in bringing about her gruesome end. The Christian author concludes, that her death is just punishment for what is described as nothing short of a war against the church.

Now two things stood out to me in this narrative that has led me to my next book project on male fantasies of gender violence in late antiquity: Eudoxia’s death was a very gendered one and the divine played a key role in her execution through, what I identify as the active fantasy life of John’s biographer. In this next book project, I turn to consider other arresting scenes of gendered violence that include reproductive violence, sexual assault, and the construction of female culpability, but I’ll reserve those conversations for another time. For now, I’d like to return to the paths still unexplored from Bishops in Flight for further discussion here today.

III. Paths unexplored and points for further discussion

Both George and Tina have pointed to new entry points into the material that I would like to dwell on a bit more here. I agree with both panelists that the spatial theories and spicy entanglements I’ve woven are just too enticing to leave unexplored. For example, there are new and exciting works out that have since helped me to expand my theoretical lens and inspire new possible projects such as Peter Anthony Mena’s award-winning book Place and Identity in the lives of Antony, Paul, and Mary of Egypt where he used of Gloria Anzaldua’s work on borderlands to explore the imaginative deserts of the holy lives of late ancient men and women. His sophisticated approach might draw us closer to the boundaries and crossings in the making—and breaking—of late ancient cities. I’m also excited to see Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos’s book is now out, which offers us new insights into Constantinople’s rise in the Christian imagination. And, of course, Sarah Porter’s work on affect, deathscapes, and the material remnants of Antioch. I look forward to hearing more about how space and place theory will continue to help scholars rethink the ancient landscapes we encounter—especially as we turn to consider the many ways fleeing bodies shape and are shaped by the lands, cities, deserts that they temporarily inhabit.

Both Mika and M have helped me to expand my way of thinking about the larger imaginative thought world of this peculiar late ancient moment. I am particularly excited to see how this book contributes to emerging comparative conversations to find ways to critically examine how our disciplinary boundaries are easily and productively crossed—and really how much we have to say to one another. My recent intellectual networks have intentionally tried to thoughtfully engage new conversation partners through the framing lens of the First Millennium. I am a steering committee member of the First Millennium Network in the DC area, which is a cross-institutional network of scholars that seek to extend this reorientation in scholarly perspective by finding creative ways to encourage interdisciplinary and comparative studies. The Network has placed a special emphasis on the diversity of, and interconnections among, the religious communities within first millennium societies—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Manicheanism, Zoroastrianism, etc.—in their multitude of forms. I am delighted to find my work in the middle of a delightfully rich conversation framed by a familiar question of what happens if we put biblical, Syriac, Rabbinic, and late Roman scholars on one panel? As we have seen already in these responses, the possibilities are rich and seemingly endless. This is precisely the environment that excites and inspires me to continue to learn and expand my thinking of the long late antiquity through shared themes and investments.

For example, Mika’s comparison of the fleeing bishop and heroic Jewish sages emphasized the anxiety and the ambivalence that surrounds these figures and how much more there is to say about how subjectivity is constructed in overlapping fashions. Her move then to a discussion on heroic Jews versus ordinary Jews was especially striking and I would love to hear more about how this point of entry might help us to reframe and study other late ancient bodies that flee. Which of course then calls to mind Tina’s example of Philoxenos (that lover of strangers!). In other words, how might we incorporate and think about lay figures who are displaced and how they fashion their flights as orthodox? Philoxenos’s experience, for example, might be more akin to Jerome’s experience rather than Athanasius—and yet, it is the bishop he invokes to define his flight. I wonder, Mika, if there are similar models of rejection or assimilation in the cases you brought up?

George, your observations about doors and walls have continued to haunt me as I keep turning toward details about gateways and physical boundaries in the texts I study. They tempt me as I consider how materiality and the spatial imagination intersect with discussions about gender and who passes through gateways and church doors in ceremonial fashion as well as who is hidden behind those doors and walls—which I’m sure Matthew could say a great deal more about given his forthcoming work on incarceration.

Matthew, your deft and delightful response posed two questions that I would love to think more about. As a literary historian, I focus on mostly rhetoric and tracing larger discourses of displacement even as I rely on those cultural historians to push my line of reasoning in one direction or another. I, therefore, love the question concerning social class, which Mika also touched on. I also dwelt quite a bit on another case study while I was writing this book that I could never quite figure out. I still do not have a firm historical answer for, why Ambrose, when he challenged Theodosius, was not tossed out of Milan? And here, I think social class coupled with timing, location, and social networks all played a significant role, but would love to hear others’ thoughts on the issue because his direct conflict with said emperor resulted in a very different outcome from what Athanasius or even John Chrysostom experienced. To quote Matthew: “They had not committed different crimes; they were simply different people—or more precisely people of radically different social status.” Here, I might draw us back to spatial analysis and focus on cities and ask: what does Alexandria have to do with Milan?

Your second question, Matthew, concerning media is an especially inviting one as I begin to think alongside both George’s and Tina’s responses. There is something about the use of letters and the way they travel that continues to interest me. I have begun to play with John’s epistolary corpus a bit in a few digital mapping projects, but the use of letter writing in exilic self-fashioning, which I first found in Wendy Mayer’s piece on John’s self-fashioning of exile. This line of reasoning has a lot of potential here—especially if we consider how letters as media pass through different spaces and how they are then quite literally woven into later histories. There is just still so much work I’d love to do with the ecclesiastical historians.

To conclude these brief points of departure and reflections on these rich ideas, I will end with how a comment on how I was finally was able to let this project go. As with many scholars, I struggled to finally turn it over to my editor because there were always more texts to look up or questions left unanswered or arguments to untangle. In the middle of one of my many revisions, I received a wonderful piece of advice from a colleague. He said, “Jenny, it is fruitless to think that any book is the final say on any topic. Instead, think of your book as a project produced in a particular moment. This is not the end, but the start to a new conversation.” And so, I’ll stop here and turn to what I hope will be a set of new beginnings and more rich conversations that will continue to challenge and even change how I think about the discourse of exile in late antiquity. Thank you.

Jennifer Barry is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Mary Washington.