cooper, k - the martyr, the matrona and the bishop

The martyr, the matrona and the bishop:the matron Lucina and the politics

of martyr cult in fifth- andsixth-century Rome

Kate Cooper

The present study attempts to build on the achievement of Pietri andLlewellyn in assessing the peculiarities and limitations of the gestamartyrum as a source for late ancient and early medieval Rome, whileshifting interpretative stress away from the lay±clerical binary which hasdominated recent treatments of the cult of the saints, and toward anemphasis on factional conflict among lay±clerical coalitions. Central is ananalysis of the literary motif, which recurs across the gesta of Lucina, thearistocratic matrona or widow who sees to the burial of the martyr on herown lands. Though the stereotypical figure of Lucina warns us of thelimitations of the gesta as a source for the patronage activity of the layaristocracy, it is argued, her appearance in crucial texts such as the PassioSebastiani can nonetheless help us to trace the role which the memory ofthe martyrs played in texts such as the gesta martyrum, the SymmachanForgeries, or the Liber Pontificalis, as well as the role which martyrshrines such as the Vatican basilica and the memoria apostolorum onthe Via Appia played in the contestation and consolidation of Romanepiscopal authority.

It is a complex and poignant story; but the outcome was plain ± themartyr took on a distinctive late-Roman face. He was the patronus,the invisible, heavenly concomitant of the patronage exercisedpalpably on earth by the bishop.1

The last quarter of the twentieth century may well be remembered, byfuture historiographers of late antiquity, as the age of the bishop. Theproblem of how, across three or four centuries, a new class of men took

1 P. Brown, [The] Cult of the Saints: [its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity] (Chicago, 1981),p. 38.

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power over the institutions of the ancient city, establishing themselves asthe legitimate arbiters of political, social and metaphysical reality, hasheld the attention of a generation of late Roman historians. Beginningfrom the dense core of Christian communities no larger than a Romanhousehold, the platform of authority of the Christian bishop extendedprogressively through ever-larger communities, and finally into the civicinstitutions of what had been pagan society.

Equally, the rise of the cult of the saints has enjoyed particularhistoriographical prominence as a medium through which the trans-formation of antiquity into the Christian Middle Ages was achieved.2

The central collision of the post-Constantinian church, it has beenargued,3 was not between pagan and Christian per se, but rather betweenalternate notions of familia, one based on the bonds of kin and dynasty,and the other on a chosen kinship, that of the Christian ecclesia, whoseties were as durable as those of blood. In the fourth and fifth centuries,these two notions of community found their champions in, respectively,a newly Christianized aristocracy on the one hand and a newlyaristocratic episcopacy on the other. The cult of the saints, in turn, hasbeen seen as a by-product of the bishops' struggle to retain control of achurch now inundated by a rich, articulate, and even imperious, laity.

When viewed through the episcopal lens, the martyr as intercessorseems to be a supporter of hierarchy, lending distance and symmetry tothe relationship between the faithful and their deity.4 This article,however, will argue that the cult of martyrs at the end of antiquityshould be understood in agonistic, not hierarchical terms: the martyr'spower was accessible to those in every rank of a contending faction, apoint which the third-century bishops had discovered to theirdiscomfort. There is no reason to assume that in the post-Constantinianperiod the martyr's power should have been any less volatile. Ifanything, once real power was in the gift of the church, it found itselfmore, rather than less, riven by factional conflict.

This accords well with what we know about how kinship groups inthe early Middle Ages would come to use ecclesiastical and monasticpatronage, and perhaps especially the cult of relics, to forward dynasticclaims.5 But fully to assimilate the idea of the martyr as champion

2 The arguments put forward in E. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York, 1979), especiallychapter 2: ` ``One God, One Bishop'' [:the Politics of Monotheism'], have influenced much ofsubsequent English-language scholarship; see also P. Brown, Power and Persuasion in LateAntiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, WI, 1992), and literature cited there.

3 The position outlined here is a central argument of Brown's Cult of the Saints.4 This is a view made influential by Pagels, `One God, One Bishop'.5 See, for example, F. Prinz, FruÈhes MoÈnchtum [im Frankenreich: Kulture und Gesellschaft in

Gallien, den Rheinlanden und Bayern am Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung (4. bis 8.Jabrhundert)] (Munich, 1965).

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requires a layer of `de-clericalization' of our reading of the rise ofChristianity in late antiquity. The imaginative step is away from seeingclerical status as decisive to a person's identity and commitments,instead accepting that clerical status and factional position were twofactors which might sometimes work at odds with one another, and atother times work in tandem.

It is perhaps significant that the historiography in question has for themost part evolved without significant consideration of the case of Rome,the city for which we have the best documentation in late antiquity.There are reasons to expect that Rome should stand as an exception tothe clerical±lay emphasis of the model presented above. To begin with,Rome's pyramids of patronage are too complex and too well-documented to be accounted for by a simple polarity of clerical andlay interest, and often, indeed, they follow a traditional, dynasticpattern, with clergy simply slotting into the kin-based allegiances ratherthan constituting a category unto themselves. Another complicationarising from Rome's physical expanse and rich documentation is that itis necessary, and sometimes possible, to talk not of the urbs, per se, but ofsmaller geographical arenas of allegiance and contestation.

G.B. De Rossi argued over a century ago in his Roma Sotteranea thatthe study of martyr cult at Rome should proceed on the basis of atopographical method, one which is attentive to the assertiveness of localinterests in competition with one another for resources and prestige.6 Healso argued that his approach would provide the key to interpreting anabundant, yet highly unreliable body of source material, the earlymedieval historical romances known as the gesta of the Roman martyrs.His challenge found an early response in the work of Albert Dufourcq,whose eccentric EÂ tude sur les gesta martyrum romains remainsunsurpassed on the subject of the gesta, although it is now nearly acentury out of date.7 Dufourcq's contribution was to see the gesta not asreflecting the reality of the pre-Constantinian martyrdoms, but rather asvehicles for the concerns of the Roman ecclesia of their authors' own day.While Dufourcq's work has been much criticized, it gave rise to anenergetic industry during the first decades of this century.8

6 G.B. De Rossi, Roma sotteranea cristiana, descritta ed illustrata, 3 vols. (Rome, 1864±77), III,p. xxii.

7 A. Dufourcq, EÂtude sur les gesta martyrum romains, 4 vols. (Paris, 1900±10), reissued with aposthumous fifth volume (Paris, 1988).

8 J.P. Kirsch, Die roÈmischen Titelkirchen im Altertum (Paderborn, 1918), and F. Lanzoni, `I titolipresbyterali di roma antica nella storia e nella leggenda', Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 2(1925), pp. 195±257, both developed Dufourcq's interest in the gesta as foundation myths forthe Roman churches. For subsequent bibliography on individual cults, see Agostino Amore,I martiri di Roma (Rome, 1975).

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A century later, the Roman topography of dynasty and allegiance hasyet to be established conclusively, though in an important 1989 articleCharles Pietri attempted to account for how the seven-fold Romandiaconal structure followed on from the fourteen civil regions of thetime of Augustus.9 Both Pietri and the British scholar Peter Llewellynhave sought to develop Dufourcq's approach, mining the gesta martyrumfor clues to the social tensions of the fifth and sixth centuries, the periodin which the bulk of the gesta are presumed to have been written.10 Bothwriters give substantial weight to the lay±clerical binary: each would seethe gesta martyrum as reflecting an ever more acute tension between thesenatorial aristocracy and the increasingly centralized, and increasinglyambitious, clerical hierarchy of the city of Rome.

The present study attempts to build on the achievement of Pietri andLlewellyn in assessing the peculiarities and limitations of the gestamartyrum as a source for late ancient and early medieval Rome, whileputting less stress on the lay±clerical binary. Instead, a topographicalapproach will emphasize competition among rival cult sites sponsoredby what may well have been lay±clerical coalitions. Special attention tothe literary representation of lay±clerical collaboration is paid, but notwith the hope of gaining evidence for actual historical events. Central toour story, rather, is a specific literary motif which recurs across the gesta,that of the aristocratic matrona or widow who sees to the burial of themartyr on her own lands. The matrona Lucina appears in so manypassiones, set in such diverse historical periods, that she can only, in herpresent form, be a pious fiction, whatever the core of truth or traditionstanding behind her figure. Attention to the Lucina motif reveals thatthe gesta are as unreliable as they are evocative when it comes to thequestion of lay±clerical relations and ecclesiastical patronage. Yet thoughthe stereotypical figure of Lucina warns us of the limitations of the gestaas a source for the patronage activity of the lay aristocracy, herappearance in crucial texts such as the Passio Sebastiani can help us totrace the role which martyr shrines such as the Vatican basilica and the

9 C. Pietri, `ReÂgions eccleÂsiastiques et paroisses romaines', Actes du Xie congreÁs internationald'archeÂologie chreÂtienne. Lyon, Vienne, Grenoble, GeneÁve et Aoste (21±28 september 1986), vol. II(Vatican City, 1989), pp. 1035±67.

10 Among the more important contributions by Pietri and Llewellyn are: P.A.B. Llewellyn, `TheRoman Church [During the Laurentian Schism: Priests and Senators]', Church History 45(1976), pp. 417±27; P.A.B. Llewellyn, `The Roman Clergy during the Laurentian Schism: apreliminary analysis', Ancient Society 8 (1977), pp. 245±75; C. Pietri, `Aristocratie et socieÂteÂcleÂricale dans l'Italie chreÂtienne au temps d'Odoacre et de TheÂodoric', MeÂlanges des EÂcolesFrancËaises de Rome et d'AtheÁnes 93 (1981), I, pp. 417±67; idem, `Donateurs et pieuxeÂtablissements [d'apreÁs le leÂgendier romain (Ve-VIIe s.)]', in Hagiographie, cultures et socieÂteÂs,Ive-XIIe sieÁcles. Actes du colloque organiseÂe aÁ Nanterre et aÁ Paris (2±5 mai 1979). Centre deRecherches sur l'antiquiteÂ Tardive et le Haute Moyen Age, UniversiteÂ de Paris X (Paris, 1981),pp. 435±53; and idem, `EÂvergeÂtisme et richesses eccleÂsiastiques dans l'Italie du Ive aÁ la fin duVe s.: l'exemple romain', Ktema 3 (1984), pp. 317±37.


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memoria apostolorum on the Via Appia played in the consolidation ofRoman episcopal authority.

Bishops, laity, and martyr cult in early sixth-century Rome

There are certainly good reasons why the turn of the sixth century hasstood as a particularly important hinge-point in the developing andtense relationship between the Roman aristocracy and their bishops.Best-known is the towering figure of Gelasius, pope from 492 to 496,whose pronouncements on the Two Powers became a bulwark of themedieval papacy, but Gelasius was only one of a constellation of figurescontending over the division of authority between lay and clericalspheres. Much of this contention was focused not on the macrocosm ofpope and emperor, but on the microcosm of a priest's relation to hismore estimable parishioners. Donation of funds by lay grandees carriedwith it a bothersome expectation of controlling their use: Charles Pietrihas shown how from the death of Pope Simplicius in 483 to that ofSymmachus in 514, a recurring point of debate was whether the laydonor who provided funds for a church should retain the right to decidetheir use, or whether the clergy might exercise autonomy in dispensingthem.11 A debate carried out by senators and bishops assembled under thechairmanship of the Praetorian Prefect Caecina Decius Maximus Basiliusafter the death of Simplicius exacerbated this tension by finding infavour of the lay donors. Pope Gelasius openly defied the assembly'sfinding, a policy carried forward with far less success by his near-successor Symmachus (498±514). The patronage class, in turn, seems tohave resisted his attempt to encroach on habits of evergetism far olderthan Christianity itself.

The emergence of a contest over the papacy at the election ofSymmachus can only have made matters worse. The schism, known asthe Laurentian Schism after Laurentius, the Roman priest who stoodagainst Symmachus, lasted from 498 to 507 or 8; it has been argued withforce by Pietri and Llewellyn that one of the central issues in the schismwas Symmachus' attempt to wrest control over the Roman tituli, andperhaps other shrines, from the lay aristocracy, with the bishop able toexploit a tension among the laity itself, between upper and lower classes.In 1966, Charles Pietri argued that the coalitions which took formduring the Laurentian schism had arisen from a senate±plebs dividebased in the green and blue factions of the circus, the Roman agonisticvenue par excellence.12 This argument lost much of its power in 1976,

11 Idem, `Donateurs et pieux eÂtablissements', pp. 440±1.12 Idem, `Le seÂnat, le peuple [ChreÂtien et les partis du Cirque aÁ Rome sous le Pape Symmaque

(498±514)]; MeÂlanges d'ArcheÂologie et d'histoire de l'EÂcole FrancËaise de Rome 78.1 (1966),pp. 123±39.



when Alan Cameron established that the circus factions in fact playeda disarmingly narrow role in Rome as professional audience claques;13

one might also remember that the charge carried in the propagandaproduced by Symmachus' party, that the senate was united against him,may have been formulaic. An alternate, and perhaps more helpful viewof the division among the laity would pay attention to clusters ofdynastic allegiance, paying attention to the multi-class pyramids atwhose pinnacle would stand a figure such as the senator Festus, patronof Laurentius, or the senator Anicius Probus Faustus Niger, cos. 490,patron of Symmachus.

As is well known, the literary manipulation of the holy dead playedan important role in the contest: one need only think of the so-calledSymmachan forgeries to see that the heroic figures of early ChristianRome were harnessed as apologists for either side.14 The LiberPontificalis itself reflects this tendency to reach for historical precedent:its manner of characterizing the early popes often reflects the issues inplay during the early sixth century, a point particularly noticeable whereits characterization of the history of the cult of the martyrs isconcerned.15

Suggested here is that the cult of the martyrs, too, must have playedan important role as a medium of papal self-assertion. There is no lackof evidence to support this point. One of the standard benchmarks, forexample, for the development of martyr cult in Rome is the renovationof St Peter's basilica on the Vatican Hill to the west of the city,commissioned by Pope Symmachus during the first part of his reign.Symmachus did much to establish the Vatican as a centre of papalpower, conferring on St Peter's a prominence among the suburbanmartyr basilicas which it had not enjoyed previously. If the LiberPontificalis is an accurate reflection, the veneration of the martyrs was forSymmachus a means of projecting a picture of the pope as head of apan-Italian episcopal coalition. His entry in the Liber Pontificalis is oneof the most staggering in terms of the number of buildingscommissioned or renovated, the quantity of church plate bestowed.

Symmachus' intervention at the Vatican is known particularly for theaddition of an oratory complex centred on the cult of Saint Andrewthe apostle and brother of Peter, which commemorated and housed therelics of other Roman and non-Roman saints: the roman pair Protus and

13 A. Cameron, Circus Factions (Oxford, 1976).14 On the forgeries, see. W.T. Townsend, `The So-called Symmachan Forgeries', Journal of

Religion 13 (1933), pp. 165±74, and G. Zecchini, `I ``gesta de Xysti purgatione'' e le fazioniaristocratiche a Roma alla metaÁ del V secolo', Rivista della storia della chiesa in Italia 34 (1980),pp. 60±74.

15 On the use of the Symmachan forgeries by the editor of the Liber Pontificalis, for example, seePietri, `Donateurs et pieux eÂtablissements', p. 440.


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Hyacinth, the Campanian martyr Sossus, and the north Italians, Cassianof Imola and Apollinaris of Ravenna.16 With their complex layering ofcult upon cult, this collection of oratories and the related oratory ofThomas, Andrew's apostolic colleague, represent a new stage in thearticulation of martyr piety in Rome, and serve, perhaps, to advertiseand to strengthen Symmachus' links with the bishops in whose citiesthe non-Roman martyrs were venerated ± bishops who may, indeed,have supplied him with relics. In addition, the Constantinian associ-ations of the place loomed large; there is some evidence that Symmachusintended to establish his own sarcophagus there17 ± a quasi-imperialgesture brazen in its defiance of the emperor's support for his opponentLaurentius.18

Of course, the enhancement of the Vatican was an inspiration born ofnecessity. It was Laurentius, not Symmachus, who controlled thetraditional papal residence, the Lateran palace in the south-east of thecity.19 Symmachus may have been left with nothing to do but to developan alternate site, calling down upon it all the powers of heaven. Thelayering of multiple cults which characterizes Symmachus' programmefor the Vatican is perhaps best understood as an attempt to channel bothearthly and spiritual powers toward synergy, an embodiment of thehuman and supernatural resources which undergird his claim to theRoman see.

Symmachus' role as impresario of martyr cult on the Vatican wasparalleled by textual efforts. Clearly, both parties used hagiographicaltexts to manipulate the memory of early Christian Rome. Just as thepopes of an earlier era played a crucial role in the romans aÁ clef ofthe Symmachan forgeries, so certain of the martyrs commemorated bythe gesta, and, perhaps, certain passages of the Liber Pontificalis itself,seem to have been harnessed to the dramas of early-sixth-century Rome.Giovanni Nino Verrando, for example, has found among the gesta anapologia for the Symmachan party.20 Further work would be welcomeon the relationship between the gesta and the other polemical texts ofearly-sixth-century Rome, such as the divergence between the Passio of

16 Recent and useful discussion is offered by J.D. Alchermes, `Cura pro mortuis [and cultutmartyrum: Commemoration in Rome from the Second through the Sixth Century]', PhDthesis, New York University, 1989, pp. 273ff.

17 Discussion in Alchermes, `Cura pro mortuis', p. 284.18 Discussion of imperial support for Laurentius in Pietri, `Le seÂnat, le peuple', and John

Moorhead, `The Laurentian Schism: East and West in the Roman Church', Church History 47(1978), pp. 125±36.

19 On Symmachus' construction of two episcopal palaces at the Vatican to compensate for hislack of access to the Lateran, see R. Krautheimer, St. Peter's and Medieval Rome (Rome, 1985),pp. 20±1.

20 G.N. Verrando, `Note sulle tradizioni [agiografiche su Processo, Martiniano, e Lucina]',Vetera Christianorum 24 (1987), pp. 353±73 at p. 354.



Polychronius, the bishop of Jerusalem contemporary with Sixtus, andthe Gesta de Xysti purgatione produced by the Symmachan party amongits forgeries.21

Use of the gesta on the Laurentian side in turn has been the subject ofan important article by Peter Llewellyn, who argued that the intertwinedvitae of Pudentiana and Praxedis should be read as apologetics for theauthority of the senatorial party within the Roman ecclesia, whose powerbase lay in the independent, and often ancient, traditions of the tituli.22

In the case of Pudentiana and Praxedis, the focus was the TitulusPraxedis on the Esquiline Hill, where Laurentius himself held office aspriest before becoming a contender for the episcopacy. For Llewellyn, thereferences to church finance in the Acta Pudentianae et Praxedis (BHL6988) ± particularly the minutiae of how an aristocrat might establish alegacy which is water-tight against claims after his death ± are intendedas imparting legitimacy to the concerns of lay donors who resented theattempts of the non-Roman popes, Gelasius and Symmachus, to curtailtheir treatment of the local titulus as an Eigenkirche.23 This accords wellwith what the Liber Pontificalis allows us to learn about Symmachus'escalation of papal patronage: if he was seen as annexing to theepiscopacy a role which many felt should be exercised by the laity, it isnot surprising that when his detractors sought a point on which tocondemn him, it was his handling of the papal treasury which theychose.24 Where the present approach differs from that of Llewellyn canbe summarized as follows. While accepting that Symmachus undertookto strengthen the pope's ex officio role as an impresario of martyr cult ± apoint which is in fact difficult to assess, since our main source, the LiberPontificalis, may well be coloured in its account of earlier periods by thedevelopments of the early sixth century25 ± the present study suggeststhis escalation of the officium of the bishop should not be understood inexclusively lay±clerical terms. Rather, both senators and clerics may have

21 Beyond the scope of this article but meriting attention is the confused relationship betweenthese two texts. The Sixtus of the Passio Polychronii (BHL 6884), edited by Delehaye, isdistinctly Pope Sixtus II (d. 258): his successor, Dionysius (d. 267), and the emperors Deciusand Valerian, are named within the text. But the Gesta de Xysti purgatione et de Polychroniiaccusatione clearly intend Polychronius as the contemporary of Sixtus III (d. 440).

22 Llewellyn, `The Roman Church', pp. 418ff.23 On the use of ecclesiastical patronage to forward dynastic claims, see Prinz, FruÈhes MoÈnchtum,

pp. 489±502.24 See the Laurentian Fragment of the Liber Pontificalis, in L. Duchesne (ed.), Le Liber

Pontificalis. Texte, introduction et commentaire, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886±92), repr. with a thirdvolume, ed. C. Vogel (Paris, 1955±7) (hereafter cited as LP), I, pp. 43±6 at p. 44.

25 The editorial lens of the LP may be present, for example, in the clerical emphasis which itimputes to lay donations. So, for example, the account of the bequest of the illustrissimaVestina to build a martyr basilica under Innocentius (pope from 401/2 to 417) portraysInnocentius, not Vestina, as the basilica's patron: LP, I, p. 220.


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worked together in support of Symmachus, with the shared under-standing that the more powerful (in both human and supernaturalterms) he was able to make his office, the more likely he was to be ableto keep it.

The `gesta martyrum' and the `Liber Pontificalis':interdependent visions of early Christian Rome

That De Rossi's problem, how to make sense of the gesta martyrum, hasgone unsolved is not surprising. The gesta are self-mystifying as texts ±the claim to stand as eye-witness accounts which a few of them make isalmost certainly false ± and since in their present form it cannot bedetermined whether or not their protagonists actually existed, they aremost usefully understood by the historian as edifying fictions, borrowingnarrative outlines and characters from the hellenistic romance in orderto hold the attention of a readership whom they are designed both todelight and to instruct.

Even their collective title ± the gesta martyrum ± is a mystification, aterm coined by the roughly contemporary Liber Pontificalis, a text whichseems to bear a pointed interest in according legitimacy to the ± or atleast some ± Roman martyr narratives. The Liber Pontificalis claims thatthe popes from Fabian (pope from 236±50) onwards kept filesdocumenting the heroic deeds (gesta) of the city's martyrs.26 From thefourth century to the sixth, Fabian's dossier seems to have expanded,however. While the fourth-century Liberian Catalogue (whose terminusante quem is 354 because it appears in the Calendar of Philocalusproduced in that year) credits Fabian with instituting the city's diaconalstructure along with a system of care for the cemeteries,27 the secondedition of the Liber Pontificalis (produced after 530 and before 546)credits the same Fabian as `one who appointed seven subdeacons whodirected seven clerks to faithfully gather the deeds of the martyrs (gestamartyrum) in their entirety'.28

Nothing could be farther from the truth, insofar as we know it. Onthis point, as on many others, the Liber Pontificalis is a peculiarly suspectwitness. The `records' of the Roman martyrs, at least as they arepreserved, are by no means official accounts, contemporary with the

26 Ibid., I, p. 148.27 `Hic regiones divisit diaconibus et multas fabricas per cymiteria fieri iussit', ibid., I, pp. 4±5.28 Ibid., I, p. 148: `Hic regiones divisit diaconibus et fecit VII subdiaconos qui VII notariis

inminerent, ut gestas martyrum in integro fideliter colligerent, et multas fabricas per cymiteriapraecipit.' Cited here is the translation of R. Davies, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis)(Liverpool, 1989), p. 8.



events in question.29 The gesta as we know them are anonymoushagiographical romances, each spun around the death of one or moresaints, and by no means constituting an official, or even an integrated,corpus. Each text bears its own complex relationship to a variety ofsources and often to other texts in the group. Each has its ownindependent manuscript tradition. Although various of the gesta can befound together in the medieval liturgical books known as legendarii andpassionarii, there seems to have been no convention whatsoever of treatingthem as a fixed corpus. (Indeed, the gesta usually travel in idiosyncraticclusters, mixed freely with other non-Roman hagiographical narratives,and sometimes with other texts of another kind altogether.) The numberof manuscript witnesses to a given passio often run into the hundreds,with a staggering variety of text combinations attested in the survivingmanuscripts.30 Given the lateness of our manuscript witnesses and theabsence of critical editions for most of the texts in question, the datesassigned to the texts themselves by current scholarship are often theresult of nineteenth-century guesswork, and rest on only a very slimevidentiary basis.

There was, it is clear, already some anxiety on the part of their authorsabout the origins of the gesta. This is evident in the passio of Symphorosa(BHL 7971), whose prologue offers an alternative genealogy for the gestato that afforded by the Liber Pontificalis, asserting that according toEusebius of Caesarea, a certain Africanus recorded nearly all the gesta notonly of the city of Rome but of all Italy. (This Africanus is presumablymeant to be taken for the Julius Africanus whose Cbronica, now lost,Eusebius discusses at Ecclesiastical History VI. 31.) It is ironic that it is thepassio of Symphorosa which makes this gesture of self-legitimation, for itis one of the passiones among the gesta which is most transparently abricolage of borrowings rather than a genuine eye-witness account.

29 It may be worth emphasizing here the distinction between the so-called gesta martyrumreferred to here, whose basis in pre-Constantinian tradition is very much in doubt, and theacta martyrum, texts which are understood as originally pre-Constantinian even if they haveundergone subsequent redactions. G. Bisbee, The Pre-Decian Martyr Acts and Comentarii(Philadelphia, 1988), establishes a redaction-critical approach which, he argues, makes itpossible to see behind the third- and fourth-century editors of the pre-Decian acta. No similarapproach has been developed for the gesta, in part because their post-Constantinian context ofproduction, and their quasi-fictional status, have rendered them of little interest to redactioncritics, who tend to focus their interest on texts of greater canonical standing.

30 G. Philippart, `Martyrologi e leggendari', in G. Cavallo, C. Leonardi and E. MenestoÁ (eds.),Lo spazio letterario del medioevo, I: Il medioevo latino (Rome, 1992), pp. 605±48. Interestedcolleagues may contact via website (http//:bhlms.fltr.ucl.ac.be) a database being preparedunder Philippart's direction at the University of Namur, Belgium which gives data formanuscript attestation of all hagiographical texts (listed by BHL number) listed in theBollandist catalogues of hagiographical manuscripts, allowing the user to comparetransmission routes.


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If the gesta martyrum are polemical in origin, this would help toexplain why although they are widely circulated throughout the MiddleAges they were already, by the late sixth century, difficult to trace. PopeGregory the Great, clearly thinking of the Liber Pontificalis entry underFabian, writes of his surprise at being able to find no official record inthe papal archive of the gesta of the martyrs.31 It is unclear whetherGregory means this as a comment on the gesta still in circulation. SofiaBoesch Gajano has argued that Gregory's Dialogues represent, if notprecisely a repudiation of the existing gesta, at the very least an attemptto provide an alternative hagiography.32 It is not that Gregory fails tohold the martys in esteem: his preaching includes a number of sermonson the saints of the gesta, including a substantial treatment of Felicitas asthe example which proves that not only a bishop, but even a member ofthe laity and a woman at that, may act as a praedicator on behalf of thefaithful.33 It may be that Gregory viewed the gesta, or too many of themfor comfort, in the same light as the Symmachan forgeries.

We will see below that the attribution of the rise of the gesta toFabian, rather than some other pope, may not have been a coincidence.It was under Fabian that the schismatic Novatian had established hisrival claim as bishop, and the memory of Novatian runs like a chargedwire through the annals of the papacy from Damasus to Symmachus.References to Novatian and the Novatianists ± who may have endured asa group within the Roman polity well into the sixth century ± seem toemerge particularly pointedly at momeÁnts when the Roman see iscontested.

A case in point is the Liber Pontificalis' entry under Cornelius, thepope (251±3) directly following Fabian. Cornelius was well-known as thepope who endured exile in Centumcellae during the Schism ofNovatian. The text differs significantly from the same martyr-pope'spassio recorded among the gesta martyrum. The central differencebetween the two texts turns on the activities of a curious figure, thequodam matrona who is given the name Lucina by both the PassioCornelii and the Liber Pontificalis, who sees both to the burial of PopeCornelius and, during his lifetime, to the translation of the relics of Paulfrom the Via Appia to the Via Ostiense while Cornelius sees to those of

31 Gregory the Great, Letter VIII, 28 July 598, to Eulogius of Alexandria (Corpus ChristianorumSeries Latina 140A, p. 549).

32 S. Boesch Gajano, `La proposta agiografica dei Dialoghi di Gregorio Magno', Studi Medievali,ser. 3a, 21 (1980), pp. 623±64.

33 Baldoin de Gaiffier, `La lecture des passions des martyrs aÁ Rome avant le Ixe sieÁcle', AnalectaBollandiana 87 (1969), pp. 63±78, argues (at 75 n. 5) for the significance of Gregory's interestin the Passio Felicitatis but Franca Ela Consolino has argued that the version of the Passiopreserved among the gesta (BHL 2853) was not what Gregory had to hand: `Modelii di santitaÁfemminile nelle piuÁ antiche passioni romane', Augustinianum 24 (1984), pp. 83±113 at pp. 88±9.



Peter from the Appia to the Vatican. Scholars have tended to take theseassertions of the Liber Pontificalis more or less at face value: as HenryChadwick puts it, `These statements of the Liber Pontificalis are sounexpected that it is not altogether surprising that a few scholars havebeen inclined to regard the Life of Cornelius (as distinct from the PassioCornelii) as containing some substratum of truth.'34

But Lucina is a figure worthy of further inquiry. She appears in a half-dozen of the gesta martyrum relating to martyrs of various centuries,from Processus and Martinianus, according to the Passio Processi etMartiniani (BHL 6947) the jailers converted by Peter and Paul duringtheir first-century imprisonment in the custodia Mamertini, to the PassioSebastiani set in the time of Diocletian ± a period far too long for thelife-span of a historical individual. The chronological problemsassociated with Lucina's activities were already attracting attention atthe time of the production of the gesta,35 and have not gone entirelyunnoticed by modern scholars.36 But Lucina is not only a problematicfigure herself: she is also only one of a group of suspiciously similarmatronae who play virtually identical roles across nearly thirty of thegesta. The most intriguing of these is Lucina's near-twin Lucilla, whomPope Damasus (pope from 366 to 384) records in an inscription ashaving seen to the burial of the martyrs Marcellinus and Peter on theVia Labicana.37 The link between these two figures, and their shared linkto Damasus, will prove significant for understanding one of the mostintractable source-critical problems of early medieval Roman history, thecompetition between the Vatican and the Via Appia over the memory ofthe apostle Peter.

The matron Lucina and the memory of the apostles

The long-standing debate over the location of the bones of Saint Peterhas received virtually immeasurable attention in recent decades, in theaftermath of excavations under the Vatican.38 The historical record isconfused on the point of the apostle's original burial, with early34 H. Chadwick, `St. Peter and St. Paul [in Rome: the Problems of the memoria apostolorum ad

catacumbas]', Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 8 (1957), pp. 31±52 at p. 40.35 G.N. Verrando, `Note sulle tradizioni', notes (at p. 371, n. 8) that one text, the Passio Anthimi

(BHL 561), attempts to reconcile the chronological disparity surrounding Lucina by explainingthat she lived to be ninety-five years old, though this would not actually cover the period fromPaul the Apostle to Diocletian. On a later composite passio, see B. de Gaiffier, `Le culte desainte Lucine aÁ Lucques', Analecta Bollandiana 88 (1970), pp. 17±21.

36 To supplement Verrando's account of the existing secondary literature, see also Alchermes,`Cura pro mortuis', p. 22, n. 34, and Chadwick, `St. Peter and St. Paul', p. 40, n. 4.

37 See R. Krautheimer, S. Corbett and W. Frankl (eds.), Corpus Basilicarum ChristianarumRomae II (Vatican City, 1959), pp. 192±3, for text and discussion.

38 A summary of the decade of scholarship following the Vatican excavations of 1940±9 is givenin the notes of Chadwick, `St. Peter and St. Paul', pp. 33±8.


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memoriae recorded at both the Vatican and the Via Appia, in the lattercase jointly with Paul. What is not clear is whether either site was fromearly times believed actually to contain the apostle's grave: the termtrophaion preserved by Eusebius for the Vatican shrine, for example, isentirely ambiguous. A variety of sources from the time of Eusebius tothat of Gregory the Great records a bewildering variety of explanationsfor why there was more than one shrine.

This can be seen clearly in the Liber Pontificalis, which reflects anearly-sixth-century argument for the Vatican as the home of the bonesof Saint Peter, artfully subordinating the claim of the basilica adcatacumbas on the Via Appia, which had been venerated as a joint shrineof Peter and Paul from the third century. This is entirely in keeping withPope Symmachus' attempt to enhance the Vatican in architecturalterms.39 As we have seen above, the Liber identifies Pope Cornelius asSymmachus' precursor in enhancing the Vatican, by the very importantcontribution of having brought the body of Peter to rest there. It is anaccount which differs dramatically from that of the roughly con-temporary Passio Cornelii (BHL 1958) preserved among the gestamartyrum, with the difference hinging on the figure of the matronaLucina.

It is worth looking closely at how the Passio Cornelii and the LiberPontificalis vary in their accounts of Lucina's activity. Written, evidently,before the first edition of the Liber Pontificalis,40 the Passio Corneliirecords the beata Lucina as having seen to the martyr-pope's burial.

Accompanied by the clergy and her own familia, she buries him `inagro suo in cripta iuxta cimiterium Callisti', but neither has anyinvolvement with the relics of Peter and Paul.41 The first edition of theLiber Pontificalis, written soon after 530, expands the story. NowCornelius and Lucina are collaborators: it is at her initiative (`rogatus aquodam matrona' ± though Lucina is named explicitly in the nextclause) that Cornelius exhumes the bodies of Peter and Paul. The popethen takes Peter to be interred on the Vatican Hill,42 while the matronabrings Paul to the Via Ostiensis. She buries him in praedio suo and, sometime later, goes on to bury Cornelius himself.43

39 H. Tjorp, `The Vatican Excavations and the Cult of Saint Peter', Acta Archaeologica 24 (1953),pp. 27±66, suggests (at p. 65), following G. Belvederi and J. Carcopino, that it was during thesixth-century additions to St Peter's that the relics of Peter were moved from the Via Appia.

40 On dating, see Verrando, `Note sulle tradizioni', p. 371.41 Passio Cornelii, Mombritius I, p. 373. This accords with the Depositio martyrum preserved in

the Calendar of 354, which records commemoration of Peter in catacumbas; for discussion, seeLP, I, pp. vi±x; Alchermes, `Cura pro mortuis', pp. 92±3.

42 The phrase, iuxta locum ubi crucifixus est, seeks to account for the innovation: LP, I, pp. 66±7.43 Ibid., I, pp. 66±7.



The interpolated episode furnishes a legitimating history for thepresence of the body of Peter at the Vatican,44 illustrating in additionthe issue of papal control. It is understandable that the redactor of theLiber Pontificalis, wishing to honour the memory of Symmachus andperhaps drawing on pro-Symmachan sources, would wish to stressPeter's bodily presence at the Vatican, conferring spiritual power on theshrine developed by Symmachus there. But the story is complicated by athird text, the Passio Sebastiani (BHL 7543), a text whose origin has beenlinked to the fifth-century re-invention of the basilica ad catacumbas onthe Appia as the Basilica of St Sebastian, although it could easily havebeen produced in the early sixth century as well.

In the Passio Sebastiani, Lucina acts of her own accord `ipsa per secum servis suis' to bury the martyr Sebastian. After his death, the martyrappears to her in a post-mortem vision and asks her to bury him `adcatacumbas, iuxta vestigia apostolorum' (i.e. of Peter and Paul), whichshe does, fishing his body out of the Cloaca Maxima.45 Like the authorof the Liber Pontificalis, the author or redactor of the Passio Sebastianiintends to acknowledge a claim that the relics of Peter and Paul hadonce rested on the Appia, although it allows, tacitly, for the claims of theVatican and the Ostiense ± that is, for the possibility that the relics havesubsequently been moved. The motive here is to account for Sebastian'spresence on the Via Appia through his own desire, expressed in Lucina'svision, to be buried ad sanctos, and for this the author needed only tobelieve that the relics were on the Appia at the time of Sebastian's death.Some scholars have argued that the Passio is in fact designed precisely tomediate the substitution of Sebastian for the apostles. It can be argued,however, that this reading only really makes sense if one supplementsthe Passio with the Liber Pontificalis entry for Cornelius, and to do soone must suppress important details. Read independently, the text isevidence that its author either believed that the bodies of the apostles layon the Via Appia, or at least wished to assert that they had done so at thetime of Sebastian's martyrdom.

This is where the account in the Passio Sebastiani comes into conflictwith the Liber Pontificalis. While the Passio Sebastiani asserts that at thetime of Sebastian's martyrdom under Diocletian the bones of Peter andPaul had still lain on the Via Appia, the Liber Pontificalis asserts thatthey had been moved away a generation earlier, during the reign ofDecius (the persecution which occasioned the death of Cornelius). Thatthe same Lucina is represented as having seen to the burial of Corneliusand Sebastian during the two chronologically distant persecutions only

44 See also the LP entry for Peter: ibid., I, pp. 50±3.45 Passio Sebastiani 88 (Ian. II, p. 278). Acta Sanctorum.


310 Kate Cooper

compounds the confusion. Such uncertainties about dating were theoccupational hazard of the early medieval writer as we have seen above;in the case of the bodies of Peter and Paul the confused biography ofLucina intersects with what was already, in the early sixth century, acomplex historiography.

It is a well-known fact that the Depositio martyrum recorded in theCalendar of Filocalus in 354 records `Petri in catacumbas et PauliOstense, Tusco et Basso consulibus' ± from 258, the year in which,according to the Liber Pontificalis, the martyr-pope Sixtus and hisdeacon Lawrence were executed.46 By the time of Pope Damasus, it waspapal policy to assert that the apostles were no longer on the Via Appia,as Damasus' metrical inscription at the basilica ad catacumbas (`Hichabitasse prius sanctos cognoscere debes') shows.47

An important dimension of Damasus' strategy for consolidating hispapal authority is his interest in the schism of Novatian, an elementwhich recurs again in the time of Symmachus. At one level, this maysimply be a historical cipher for the broader issue of papal schism, butthe Novatianists do seem to have been alive and well in Rome at theend of the fourth century, and among the gesta martyum one can findtraces of a pro-Novatianist dimension ± of the opposing party, so tospeak. Peter Llewellyn, for example, has argued that the Vita Praxedis,which he assigns to a pro-Laurentian author in the first decade of thesixth century, should be read as a Novatianist roman aÁ clef, with itscentral character the priest Novatus standing in for the schismaticNovatian.48

The memory of Novatian is almost certainly important for under-standing the confusion over the burial place of Peter. The thornyquestion of whether the Depositio martyrum reflects a Novatianist slant,as Duchesne may have suspected and Mohlberg argued in an evocative

46 Depositio martyrum, in LP, I, p. 11. Regrettably, some scholars have wished to homogenize thehistorical record by emending the text to conform to the later Martyrologium Hieronymianumentry, which reads Petri in Vaticano, Pauli vero in via Ostensi, utrumque in Catacumbas, seeR. Krautheimer, S. Corbett and W. Frankl (eds.), Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum RomaeIV (Vatican City, 1970), pp. 102±3 for discussion.

47 Damasus' Epigram 20 (according to Ferrua's numbering) is cited in full in Chadwick,`St. Peter and St. Paul', p. 34:Hic habitasse prius sanctos cognoscere debes,nomina quisque Petri pariter Pauli requiris.Discipulos Oriens misit, quod sponte fatemur,sanguinis ob meritum, Christum per astra secutiaetherios petiere sinus regnaque piorum:Roma suos potius meruit defendere cives.Haec Damasus vestras referat nova sidera laudes.

48 Argument in Llewellyn, `The Roman Church', pp. 419±20.



1952 article,49 is not to be resolved here, but its witness to the cult ofPeter and Paul at the Appia could well reflect Novatianist control of theshrine. Damasus' hic habitasse inscription, combined with his knowninterest in bringing the Novatianists back from schism, would seem tosupport the contention that the shrine on the Appia had Novatianistconnotations. Not insignificant, further, is the fact that the LiberPontificalis attributes a translation of the relics of Peter and Paul to thetime of Cornelius ± relegated to exile at Centumcellae during Novatian'sascendancy. If the Liber Pontificalis goes so far as to retroject thetranslatio of the bones of Peter to the time of Cornelius and Novatian, itis likely that this reflects the view of the early sixth-century redactor ofthe Liber that the trouble over Peter's location had its roots in Cornelius'face-off with Novatian, a view perhaps mirroring the importance ofNovatianist claims in his own day.

Mohlberg alters the widely accepted idea that the Passio Sebastianiwas generated during the papacy of Sixtus III (432±40), when the LiberPontificalis records the pope as founding a monastery ad catacumbas;50

by calling attention to a slightly earlier initiative of Innocent I (401±17)vis-aÁ-vis the Novatianists.51 He suggests that the monastery was intendedas a way of dispelling Novatianist claims on the shrine, and the Passio assubordinating the Appia's claim on the bones of Saint Peter to that ofthe Vatican, by abetting the substitution of Sebastian for the apostles asthe main object of veneration on the Appia. In fact this interpretationof the Passio's origin is not dependent on a Sixtine dating of the text,since the Novatianist presence in Rome continued up to the sixthcentury at least. In any event, it is possible that the Passio Sebastiani andthe Liber Pontificalis both stem from a clumsily co-ordinated attempt tominimize the claims of a Novatianist shrine of Peter rival to that of theVatican. Their divergent views of exactly when the relics of the apostlesleft the Appia could, on this reading, be seen as independent, and thusunsuccessfully co-ordinated, attempts to `solve' the same historicalproblem.

But the Passio Sebastiani does not in fact argue that the bones of theapostles are no longer on the Appia ± Mohlberg's hypothesis rests on thenot entirely convincing idea that the ad sanctos burial of Sebastian `iuxta

49 L.K. Mohlberg, `Historisch-kritische Bemerkungen [zum Ursprung der sogennanten``Memoria Apostolorum'' an der Appischen Straûe]', in B. Fischer and V. Fiala (eds.),Colligere Fragmenta: Festschrift Alban Dold zum 70 Geburtstag am 7.7.52 (Beuron: BeuronerKunstverlag, 1952), pp. 52±74.

50 On the foundation of the monasterium in catacumbas, see LP, I, p. 234; G. Ferrari, EarlyRoman Monasteries: Notes for the History of the Monasteries and Convents at Rome from the Vthrough the X Century (Vatican City, 1957), pp. 163±5; and Krautheimer et al., CorpusBasilicarum IV, pp. 99±105.

51 Mohlberg, `Historisch-kritische Bemerkungen', pp. 70±1 and 74.


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vestigia apostolorum' would have served to supplant, rather thanreinforcing, the memory of the apostles. The opposite possibility shouldnot, however, be ruled out. This is that the Passio Sebastiani was in factintended to support the claim that the apostles' bones still lay on theAppia ± as in the case of the seventh-century Roman version of the Lifeand Miracles of Saint Thecla, where Thecla's travel to find her resting-place next to the bones of Saint Paul on the Via Ostiense presumes thatPaul's bones are indeed still in situ. In this case, there seem to be twomain possibilities to account for its origin. The first is that the textpre-dates Damasus' claim `hic babitasse' that the bones have been moved:i.e. that the Passio was written during the time between the persecutionof Diocletian and the death of Damasus in 384. While this goes against aconsensus of scholarship that has held for close to a century, there is noabsolute reason why it could not be the case. The second possibility isthat the text was written in opposition to the Damasan claim that thebones of the apostles were no longer on the Appia. In this case the textmight have its origin among the Novatianists, the Ursicinians, theLaurentians, or indeed another as yet unidentified group who opposedthe claims of the Vatican and perhaps, by extension, of the papacy. Thefact that in burying Sebastian Lucina acts of her own accord `ipsa perse cum servis suis', rather than in conjunction with the clergy or thepope as in the Passio Cornelii and the Liber Pontificalis, would in thiscase acquire added significance.

There is at present no final answer to the mystery of Lucina andSebastian, or indeed of the authorship and intended purpose of thePassio Sebastiani. A final, inconclusive clue regarding Lucina's genesisleads back to the Novatianist problem by a roundabout route. It ispossible that the name Lucina has its origins in the titulus Lucinae in theCampus Martius, a variant on the system by which the names of thetitular churches were revised into saints' names with apposite passiones,such as, for example, the titulus Caeciliae giving rise to St. Caecilia, orthe titulus Anastasiae giving rise to St. Anastasia, although since there isno late Roman passio of Lucina, the case here would be somewhatdifferent. The church becomes, not Sancta Lucina, but S. Lorenzo inDamaso: the church in which Damasus was elected.52 (It must be saidthat Lucina does not appear with Lawrence in the Passio Polychronii(BHL 6884), although a similar figure, the widow Cyriaca, appearsin that text and sees to the burial of the saint.) It is possible, in any event,that the author of the Passio Sebastiani borrowed Lucina's name fromthe Titulus Lucinae, on the understanding that the titulus was namedafter a patron of the pre-Constantinian church. Was he aware of the

52 Krautheimer et al., Corpus Basilicarum II, p. 160.



anti-Novatianist initiatives of the church's late-fourth-century patron,Damasus? Or had Damasus, indeed, attempted to supplant the memoryof Lucina in the Campus Martius as part of an anti-Novatianistinitiative?53 It is at this point that Lucina's DoppelgaÈnger Lucilla, whoseburial of Peter and Marcellinus Damasus records, comes to be ofparticular interest.

Damasus would almost certainly have been aware of the parallelbetween Lucilla and Lucina. If Lucina were already a Novatianist icon inDamasus' time (a notion at least as plausible as that of Sebastian as apapal tool for directing the memory of the bones of the apostles awayfrom the Via Appia), Damasus' Lucilla may have been a counter-figure`borrowed' from the opposition. Alternately, if Lucina is to beunderstood as a papal tool in Damasus' time ± a role she certainlyplayed in the time of Symmachus ± then Lucina and Lucilla may havebeen two of any number of now forgotten historical±fictional matronaewhose memory Damasus celebrated, a point intriguingly consonant withhis nick-name, auriscalpius matronarum.54 Whatever the resolution ofthe mystery, the Lucina motif bears significance beyond sixth-centuryRome. It is attested in other regions, though by no means in so great aconcentration as in the case of Rome. Re-evaluation of non-Roman textsbearing the Lucina motif would call into question the authenticity, forexample, of as central a text for the study of martyr cult as the ActaMaximiliani, a text which Victor Saxer has proposed as the earliest datedattestation of ad sanctos burial in late antiquity.55 Although it is possiblethat the authentic Acta of Maximilian served as a pattern for the laterand more historically suspect material in the gesta martyrum, it shouldalso be asked whether the Acta Maximiliani should not be `demoted' tothe status of the Passio of Maximilian's contemporary Sebastian ± bothare recorded as martyred under Diocletian ± and thus should no longerbe accepted as documentary evidence for the historical events surround-ing Maximilian's death. It is certainly the case that in North Africaaround the beginning of the fourth century, the narrative motif of thematrona who wishes to control martyr cult against the wishes of a bishophad already evolved into a stock tale type anticipating the quarrelbetween the Empress Eudoxia and the bishop of Constantinople, John

53 The Lucina trope exists, but not Lucina, in the Passio Laurentii. Passio Polychronii 29 recordsthat Laurentius was buried ìn praedio Cyriacae viduae'. Text in H. Delehaye, `Recherches surle leÂgendier romain: la passion de S. Polychronius', Analecta Bollandiana 51 (1933), pp. 34±98at p. 93.

54 J. Fontaine, Ùn sobriquet perfide de Damase: matronarum auriscalpius', in D. Porte and J.-P.NeÂraudau, (eds.), Hommage aÁ Henri Le Bonniec: Res Sacrae (Brussels, 1988), pp. 177±92.

55 V. Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques en Afrique chreÂtienne aux premiers sieÁcles: les teÂmoignages deTertullin, Cyprien, et Augustin aÁ la lumieÁre de àrcheÂologie africaine (Paris, 1980), p. 108. Text ofthe Acta Maximiliani, with English translation, in H. Musurillo, The Acts of the ChristianMartyrs (Oxford, 1972), pp. 244±9.


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Chrysostom;56 it is equally possible that the positive version of thematrona±bishop tale type should also be taken as a sign of quasi-fictionalstatus.57

Two broader questions remain. Why was Lucina, the instrument ofrevision used both by the Passio Sebastiani and the Liber Pontificalis, awoman? And why was martyr cult so crucial a territory for the bishop ofRome ± or the Novatianists ± to control? The answer to each is in somerespects self-evident. Both the biblical and the classical traditions hadgiven prominence to women in matters funerary ± as mourners, aspreparers of the body for burial, as guardians of the tomb. Similarly, themartyrs had held an important place in the Christian imagination fromthe Book of Acts onwards, and the Christian community's urgentinterest in their bodily remains is well attested. But one would like to bemore specific about what made these elements of existing tradition socompelling as carriers of the voice of a schismatic or an aspiring pope.

Conclusion: the martyr and civic agonism

Sixth-century Rome, like other early medieval towns, was a bear-garden.58 The Roman bishops aspired to mediate the continualaltercations of fractious nobles and the crowds from whom theyclaimed allegiance;59 it was an aspiration which required unflaggingpolitical manoeuvring, and one whose fulfilment was the price ofattaining, and staying in, office. That civitas would always be riven bythe conflicting interests of those who aspired to stand at its pinnacle wasa fact embodied by the martyr's agonistic figure. It was also a fact whichan earlier age had understood as not merely unavoidable, but even as asign of the ancient city's health. Like the Greeks, the Romans hadtended to see the love of honour as a force which could be dangerous butwhich, properly harnessed, could lead its citizens to perform greatgestures for the common good. For the Christian polity to endure as ameans for ordering the life of the city, it was necessary to develop such aspecifically Christian language for harnessing the love of honour, and formediating the civic conflict which often accompanied it.

56 On the altercation between Lucilla of Carthage and the archdeacon Caecilian over martyrrelics in her possession, see Optatus of Milevis, Libri VII, I.16, (SC 412, pp. 206±8). OnChrysostom and Eudoxia, see K. Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood inLate Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 1996).

57 On how `negative' and `positive' versions of the topos of womanly influence reinforce oneanother, see K. Cooper, `Insinuations of Womanly Influence: an Aspect of the Christian-ization of the Roman Aristocracy', Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992), pp. 150±64.

58 P.R.L. Brown, Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours (Reading, 1977), p. 20.59 A helpful analogy may be drawn to the Saxon kings discussed by K.J. Leyser, Rule and Conflict

in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (Bloomington, IN, 1979), pp. 98ff.



To `de-clericalize' our reading of the Roman church in late antiquityshould not be to forget the bishop, but rather to remember that if heraised himself marginally above the tumult of contending parties, andsucceeded in proposing himself as the broker of a moment's truce, thiswas a not inevitable achievement. Clerics were paid-up participants infactional conflict; indeed, their power was often bought through theirown expertise in such negotiations. What set the cleric apart from laydynasts whose claim to power was grounded in such givens as inheritedproperty and birth-order, was an element of liminality. In the pyramidof patronage and allegiance, his position was peculiarly malleable,and peculiarly fragile. What he needed, like his lay counterpart, was amorally legitimate language of self-assertion.

This is important for understanding the ever-increasing significanceof the cult of the martyrs to a society as profoundly agonistic as Rome atthe end of antiquity. As the Roman polity found itself increasinglydependent on the social language accessible within the Christiantradition, the limitations of that tradition became increasingly evident.The Roman aristocrat, schooled as he was in the concerns of dynasty andthe habits of competitive display, would have discovered quickly oneof the new moral language's most glaring inadequacies, its patentinability to furnish a moral infrastructure for the legitimate assertionof power. As he grappled with a social rhetoric geared finely to theotherworldly gestures of turning the other cheek and shielding the lefthand from a view of the right, the Christian statesman ± be he bishop ormagistrate ± might well alight with relief on an image which allowedhim to feel that his own position ± one that might well be genuinelyprecarious ± was endowed with the moral superiority of the weak.

That a woman might serve as an icon of this morally superiorweakness should come as no surprise. But no icon could serve thispurpose more compellingly than the martyr. The singular Christianexemplar of a virtue unfolding in a fatal act of fidelity to his or her cause,the martyr was a tailor-made champion for the Christian in conflict.60

The ferocity of the martyrs in Christian legend was well-attested,whether in the genuine pre-Constantinian narratives or in the laterwriters such as Prudentius. This righteous violence, this intrinsicallyagonistic power, had traditionally been directed against figures outsidethe Christian community ± the Roman authorities, the crowd, therecalcitrant families, the Devil himself. If it could be annexed as alegitimate vehicle for expressing the conflicts of interest which arosewithin the now vastly expanded Christian polity, it might serve as an

60 See K. Cooper, `The Voice of the Victim: Gendering Early Christian Martyrdom', Bulletin ofthe John Rylands University Library of Manchester 80:3 (1998), pp. 147±57, and literature citedthere.


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immeasurably useful channel, escape valve, and weapon. It was preciselythe martyr's anti-civic origins which made him or her so powerful a toolfor resolving the tensions of Christian civitas. Indeed, the problem withmartyrs was, if anything, that their ability to represent aggressive moralsuperiority could be all too supple: by the fourth century, we find rivalcommunities each producing their own martyr narratives.61

The Roman martyrs, as it happens, were to go on to a brilliant careerthroughout the Middle Ages, and far beyond Rome, for precisely thisreason. The wide circulation of Roman relics, and of the gesta martyrumthemselves in manuscript form, was to supply a means by which bishops,abbots and abbesses across Europe could harness the voice of the martyrswhile asserting a privileged relationship to the Roman church ± a processin which Lucina, Sebastian and Pope Cornelius figured prominently.Tangible evidence, for example, exists of the vitality of the inter-urbannetworks of relic exchange so important to Pope Symmachus a centurylater during the reign of Gregory the Great, despite the later Pope'shesitancy, discussed above, regarding the status of the gesta martyrum.Preserved in the cathedral treasury at Monza is a papyrus inventoryrecording the names of the Roman martyrs from whose shrines a certainJohn had collected lamp-oil, which he then sent as a gift to the LombardQueen Theodelinda, `tenporibus (sic) domni Gregorii papae'.62 Theinventory begins with the apostles Peter and Paul and includes a widevariety of Roman martyrs, including Lucina, Cornelius and Sebastian.Read in the comparative flatness of a list, the names lose their drama,becoming neither more nor less than additions to the number of Rome'sheavenly advocates. The contested circumstances of their entry into thehistorical record are long forgotten. This dimension of intermittentanonymity ± combined with the broad circulation of liturgical books inwhich their story was recorded in all-too-vivid, if formulaic, terms ±would generate a steady livelihood for Lucina and Cornelius, and evenmore so Sebastian, for centuries to come.

Department of Religion and Theology, University of Manchester

61 This is particularly striking in the case of the Donatist martyrs: see now M. Tilley, TheDonatist Martyrs (Liverpool, 1997).

62 `I papiri di Monza', in R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti (eds.), Codice Topografico della cittaÁ diRoma II (Rome, 1942), pp. 29±47 at p. 47.



cooper, k - the martyr, the matrona and the bishop

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