The Bishop and the Exile

Before I begin with my summary of Dr. Barry’s excellent book, Bishops in Flight, I would like to proceed with a very short announcement so that those of you who are in the wrong room can exit inconspicuously: there are no airplanes in this book. So, those of you who were curious about whether Athanasius ordered the chicken or the fish, if Tertullian managed to stow his carry-on luggage wheels-first, or if John Chrysostom kept getting out of his seat while the pilot turned on the seatbelt sign, this book will answer none of those questions. Those of you seeking these answers should proceed to the nearest exit, noting that the nearest exit may be behind you.

But while Barry’s book is not about an upcoming rebranding of Virgin Airlines, it is about bishops and how they and their biographers spun a narrative of Christian exile as a heroic endeavor rather than a cowardly withdrawal. As she explains, “the discourse of exile served as a new rhetorical and discursive mode in heresiological discourse––and a notably fluid and flexible one at that, as Christians looked to earlier literary sources to help them to understand and articulate their own experience…exile in antiquity was not just a concrete sociopolitical phenomenon; it also functioned as a discursive performance or an act of rhetorical self-representation” (p. 11). Furthermore, “the formation of exilic identities in late antiquity continuously draws from and mimics discursive formulas found in earlier Greek and Roman exilic literature…In addition to these classic characters, Christian authors alluded to biblical exemplars in order to fashion flexible exilic identities” (p. 16). By appealing to stories of heroic exile from Greek, Roman, and biblical literature, these bishops and biographers were able to successfully “flip the script” of previously popular martyr narratives.

The rhetorical strategies these Church Fathers deployed evolved over time beginning with Athanasius, who reinterpreted his multiple forced migrations as persecutory. Barry traces his rhetoric across three texts, Defense Before Constantius, Defense of His Flight, and Life of Anthony to transform his ousting from his position by political rivals into a quasi-martyrological narrative with himself in the starring role, and his “heretical” opponents playing the part of imperial aggressors modeled on previous anti-Christian persecutions under non-Christian emperors. Furthermore, through his Life of Anthony, “Athanasius capitalizes on this new identity of civic and ecclesial authority” in the figure of the desert monk, who represents “a mirrored spiritual ruler of the new city, the exiled politeia of the desert” (p. 49). As a result, the Life of Anthony not only “epitomizes Athanasius’s ascetic program…it also legitimizes his exile” (p. 53). However, it is not enough for the bishop to cultivate an ascetic spirituality in the “politeia of the desert.” At the core of the mythic narrative created by and through these bishops in flight is the necessity of the bishop’s triumphant return from exile.

However, the responsibility for the building of this “triumphal return” narrative falls mostly on Athanasius’s biographers, specifically, Gregory of Nazianzus, whose In Praise of Athanasius “reimagined Athanasius’s exile as an ascetic retreat to reaffirm this fleeing bishop’s reputation as a persecuted orthodox figure” so that “[t]he true Alexandrian bishop was ultimately made over into the ideal monk-bishop ready to take up his episcopal throne after his illustrious banishment” (p. 74). This two-part narrative builds on Athanasius’s reimagination of the desert as a “training ground” for ascetics, whilst locating the triumphant finish-line at the exiled bishop’s return to the urban center. Thus, Nazianzen reimagines “The monk-bishop…as a model for the new ecclesiastical ideal: the true monk-bishop easily transitions back into the active life of the city because he holds onto the solitary life of the desert” (p. 74).

But, what happens, Barry asks, when an exiled bishop cannot achieve this triumphant return? She then shifts from Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers to a conversation centered around John Chrysostom and his biographers. Barry’s argument from chapters three through six is of a piece, ending with a study of the bishop, Meletius of Antioch. Forming a kind of inclusio from chapters three through six, the life of this Antiochene bishop and his relationship to that city form a kind of backdrop, or comparative element, alongside Chrysostom and his relationship to Constantinople. John’s sermon on Meletius depicts the exiled bishop as a persecuted man, following along the same rhetorical tropes as Athanasius’s re-interpretation of the bishop in flight as a martyr: “It is not the city that makes the man, but the man who makes the city––even when he is outside its walls” (p. 84). As such, the exiled bishop comes to represent orthodoxy in bodily form and his entry and exit from the city is indicative of the city’s orthodoxy.

This idea becomes central to John’s rivalry with Theophilus, the other bishop of Constantinople, who John implies causes calamity to the city by manipulating the emperor to expel John. “John closes the letter [to Innocent] with a brief description of the devastation that resulted in the aftermath of Theophilus’s departure and John’s expulsion from the city. The oft-quoted scene of the invasion of Hagia Sophia, mentioned only briefly in this letter but greatly detailed in Palladius’s account, foreshadows what would happen if John were not restored to his see” (p. 91). However, this threat of ecclesiastical calamity becomes a problem that needs to be resolved when the bishop in question dies before resuming his rightful place as guardian of the city.

In the case of John Chrysostom, it was up to his biographers to address this problem by writing “significantly altered events leading up to and during John’s exile from Constantinople. His defenders did not invoke their hero’s final vision of a universalized exile but instead drew their readers back to the space he was first exiled from. They made Constantinople once again a central focus for the promotion and restoration of John’s afterlife, much as Gregory Nazianzus did with Athanasius’s legacy” (p. 104). By linking John’s legacy directly to Athanasius, Chrysostom’s biographers, Pseudo-Martyrius and Palladius, are able to rehabilitate John’s memory even as the Goldenmouth’s exile never ended in a triumphal return. Simply drawing parallels between John’s experiences and Athanasius’s was enough to imbue Chrysostom’s memory with the tried-and-true Athanasian formula.

At the same time orthodox theologians and biographers worked to rehabilitate their favorite exiled bishops, they likewise sought to undermine the reputations and memories of the bishops they labeled heterodox as well as the cities with which they were affiliated. Barry focuses on the example of Eusebius of Nicomedia, Athanasius’s “chief enemy” who died as the bishop of Constantinople, but whose memory was intertwined with Nicomedia in a mutually enforcing smear campaign engineered by orthodox biographers and historians (p. 133). As Eusebius’s reputation was attacked, so too was Nicodemia’s damaged, and vice versa. In the end, the bishop becomes a kind of cipher for the city with which he is associated, and vice versa. Thus, John Chrysostom is remembered as intimately linked to Constantinople, even though he never achieved his triumphant return to the city. Likewise, Eusebius, though he died in Constantinople, was wrapped into a package deal with Nicomedia so that Eusebius’s heterodoxy was symbolic of Nicomedia’s heterodoxy, and Nicomedia was transformed in memory to a nest of heresy. It is a classic “steers and queers” rhetorical sleight of hand. In case you are unfamiliar, I’m referencing the scene in Full Metal Jacket, where the drill sergeant yells, “Only steers and queers come from Texas, private cowboy, and you don’t much look like a steer to me so that kinda narrows it down.” Why this rhetoric works is that the reputation of the place becomes the explanation for the representative individual, who in turn likewise reinforces the stereotype. It’s a clever rhetorical tautology that forms an enclosed and mutually reinforcing package of stereotypes that becomes magnified through repetition.

As we reach the end of the book, Barry leaves us with a site of ambivalence. As we have flown through her book, Athanasius and Alexandria, along with John Chrysostom and Constantinople, have been successfully elevated, while Eusebius and Nicomedia have been rhetorically diminished by our orthodox historians and biographers. But what happens to a bishop and a city that seems to stand at the crossroads? Barry concludes Bishops in Flight with the story of Meletius of Antioch, an exiled bishop whose triumphant return was quite literally halted at the city’s walls. Despite the best efforts of John Chrysostom to redeem his memory, and Sozomen’s to undermine it, Meletius is remembered as a liminal character whose orthodox bona fides would remain forever precarious. As Barry concludes, “Meletius’s failure was tied directly to his displacement. He never fully made it back into the Antiochene community but always resided just beyond its walls, even in death” (p. 172).

The contributions of Barry’s book are multiple, and I am undoubtedly going to pass over some of them in this brief summary. First is her critical reading of “the great” figures of Christian orthodoxy as master politicians and rhetoricians rather than as straightforward contemplative theologians. She demonstrates that even their seemingly innocuous writings on flight and exile are not simply descriptive, but are purposefully crafted to serve specific political aims. Thus, Barry revitalizes a hermeneutic of suspicion, long a mainstay in biblical studies, within the field of early Christianity and historical theology. Just as the biblical text is scrutinized and deconstructed, so too must the so-called “histories” and “lives” of the early Church Fathers.

Following on this first contribution, Barry’s book also represents an excellent addition to the study of late antiquity within the academic discipline of history––apart from early Christian studies, Church history, or historical theology. By reading Athanasius, John Chrysostom, etc., within the context of imperial politics and the Byzantine power struggles (pun intended!) of the late Empire, Barry provides an excellent analysis of this period of history as history. As such, I would not be surprised to find her book on Ancient History comprehensive exam reading lists or in graduate seminars in the fields of Classics and History. Nevertheless, there is still so much work to be done in the field of late antiquity, and as someone who also focuses on late antiquity (albeit a very different area of it), I am excited to see Barry open the door to what I hope will be many more books on the wide variety of historical topics that lie between Classics and Medieval Studies.

However, what I found most fascinating about Barry’s work here, as someone who sees myself as less of a historian than a philosopher, is her mapping of late ancient imaginary topographies, or, to put it more simply, her attentiveness to the importance of space, place, and geography within the Christian imaginary. Contra the work of Benjamin Dunning, Aliens and Sojourners, which argues that Christians cultivated an imagination of alienation¬¬––making themselves citizens of the heavenly realm, rather than the earthly, Barry shows that early Christians were actually incredibly attached to and invested in earthly geography, which they then imbued with theological significance.

Just like our own geographical mythologies surrounding Ground Zero in New York City, the Alamo (an example that would have been particularly apt were we actually––and not virtually––in San Antonio), and the Arthur Pettis Bridge, so too did early Christian politicians like Athanasius, John Chrysostom, and even more so, their biographers, weave mythologies around particular places, imbuing them with meaning. The importance of earthly geography in the history of Christian identity formation is often overlooked in favor of Christian theological claims of otherworldliness. Barry demonstrates that this rhetoric has always been a Red Herring and that what we would call “Christian nationalism” actually has its roots in much older material. Barry’s book therefore serves as a warning to Christian ressourcement theologians who look to patristic material for tools to combat the Christian Right’s prodigious slide into fascism. As Audre Lorde warned us, “The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.”

Still, I think what will stay with me the longest will be Barry’s critique of the subject position of the exile in her Epilogue. As a perpetual foreigner––a person who lives in a constant state of exile, a person who was been told to “go back to where I come from” by white Americans, and told “you’re not really Chinese, you’re American,” by Chinese nationals--the idea that the exile could, perhaps, maintain a privileged vantage point has always been attractive to me. It seems like a fair consolation prize. If you’re not welcomed anywhere, if you spend your nights homeless, then maybe you see things differently than those who have homes to go to. The realization that even these vantage points are so easily corrupted by a desire for power––but also a desire for recognition––was deeply unsettling to me. I believe in humility, and I think it’s important that my fragile little ego gets smashed sometimes. So, I don’t want this to sound like a complaint. There is something important in being reminded that “you’re no better than anyone else.” It’s just that this reminder is rarely followed by an acknowledgment of the pain of alienation and rejection. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we need to weep for Athanasius or John Chrysostom, but maybe there’s room to shed a small tear for those exiles, like Meletius of Antioch, who tried their best, but still never found their way back home––not even in memory. No matter how bad they were, how craven in politics, how wishy-washy in their theology, maybe there was a tiny part of them that heard “Go back to where you come from,” and asked, where?