Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

peers and lords: local communities 457
reconstructing the operations of a comital court. The first formula in a surviving
collection from Clermont, for instance, mentions a vir laudabilis,presumably
the count, who presided over the meeting, the defensor (civitatis),
and the presence of numerous local notables (honorati). The practice in
both late Roman and Carolingian times was for the president of the court
to make and enforce critical decisions in consultation with the assembled
local landowners. There is every reason to think that this would also have
been the procedure in the intervening period. 65 A picture of civitas-based
episcopal and comital courts dominating local dispute settlement is precisely
that suggested by the most famous post-Roman case of them all: the
feud which broke out in Tours in the time of bishop Gregory. The men
involved were of sufficient standing for the case eventually to make its way
to the king, but, in the first instance, a tribunal of Touraine citizens, the
count’s court and even the bishop attempted to halt the feud’s progress.
Noteworthy, too, is the way that Gregory acted against the letter of the law,
offering church funds to promote reconciliation. 66 Some bishops at least,
then, continued the established Roman traditions of their courts.
In his proper sphere, too, the steadily rising profile of the bishop in the
post-Roman west reinforced the importance of the city to local senses of
community. The establishment of episcopal sees substantially followed the
administrative pattern of the Roman empire, each civitas having its own
bishop. One obvious reflection of the increasing importance of the bishop
and of Christianity was the changing architectural face of the late antique
city. Post-Roman cities in the west tended to be dominated by episcopal
complexes: of cathedral and satellite churches, bishop’s palace, and bapistery,
and perhaps with attendant urban monasteries and lodgings for pilgrims.
67 Much has rightly been written about the rise within the town of the
bishop’s secular power, which this physical domination reflects, but the
bishop’s role within the Christian hierarchy also made the city the religious
centre of the local community.
The fourth century had seen the rise of the holy man: self-appointed
religious authorities whose lives and posthumous cults potentially challenged
the dominance of bishops. In the late and post-Roman west, this
and other challenges to the bishop were met head-on. The later fourth
century saw a switch of hagiographical emphasis towards the monkbishop
– most famously in Sulpicius Severus’ Life of Martin of Tours. At
the same time, bishops exercised their rights to regulate asceticism.
Gregory of Tours preserves a nice example of a would-be stylite tearfully
65 Late Roman procedure: Heather (1994) 25ff. Carolingian procedure emerges clearly from Davies
and Fouracre (1986) esp. 214ff. Clermont: Formulae Avernenses 1, MGH, Legum 5, with Wood (1986) 12ff.;
cf. James (1983).
66 Greg. Tur. Hist vii.47; ix.19. For commentary from a different angle, see Wallace-Hadrill (1962).
67 See e.g. ch. 8 (Liebeschuetz), pp. 209,10, 217,19 and 230 above.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008