Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

458 16. state, lordship and community in the west
accepting episcopal authority as the bishops lured him down and then
smashed his pillar (Hist. viii.15). Bishops also acted to regulate the cults
of martyrs and other saints within their dioceses, many such cults coming
to centre on dead and often related predecessors in local episcopal office.
There was nothing particular about Gaul in this respect. The Lives of the
Fathers of Mérida reveal a similarly close association between the bishops
of that city and the martyr cult of Eulalia. Liturgy too could be used to
keep the religious community whole in the face of a proliferation of
different saints’ cults within individual civitates. Processions, for instance,
were used as a device to ensure that, on special occasions, every church
and cult centre of a city could be incorporated into the one celebration.
The congregation would start at the bishop’s cathedral and move round
the different cult sites, emphasizing that all operated under the one episcopally
controlled umbrella.
Aristocrats posed a different challenge. As the political cohesion of
curias broke up, the tendency increased for aristocrats to live on country
estates. Hence sixth-century Gallic church councils ordained that aristocrats
should celebrate the major festivals of the religious year in towns. In
similar vein, a major feature of the conversion of northern Europe (north
and south of the Channel) was a period of aristocratic monastic foundation
in the countryside. These rural religious institutions, at least in part,
superseded episcopal structures. Thus, the former civitas territory of Trier
was broken up into four pagi (German Gaue), in each of which aristocratic
monasteries, such as Echternach and Prum, acted as new religious centres.
The extent to which such foundations created alternative religious communities,
functioning independently of bishops, is unclear. Did aristocrats’
dependants receive their Christianity, such as it was, via their lords’ foundations?
In seventh-century Anglo-Saxon England, this may have been so,
since the foundation of monasteries coincided with a shortage of
bishops. 68
Elsewhere in the post-Roman west, however, bishops again responded
very positively to the challenge of spreading Christianity to the countryside.
The old episcopal monopoly on preaching was broken by the bishops
themselves. A council chaired by bishop Caesarius of Arles in 529 was the
first to allow priests to preach in the countryside, and the practice gradually
spread through Gaul and Spain as the century progressed. This development
was vital if the new religion was to be spread outside of urban
centres, allowing preaching to take place simultaneously at many centres
within one diocese: necessary, controlled devolution rather than an undermining
of episcopal power. At the same time, bishops of Tours, at least,
68 For a general introduction to these developments, see e.g. James (1982) chs. 2, 4, 9; Hillgarth
(1986); Brown (1996) esp. chs. 6–8. More specific contributions: Rousseau, Ascetics; Stancliffe (1983);
Heinzelmann (1976); Van Dam, Leadership and Community pt 4; Van Dam (1993) ch. 2; Collins (1980).
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