Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

542 19. italy, a.d. 425,605
provide a rare insight into the administration of the Roman church and its
estates. Gregory’s pontificate coincided with the final phase of the territorial
dismemberment of Italy, and the interests displayed in his writings
reflect the process clearly: on him devolved the task of organizing military
defence, diplomatic missions to the Lombards, and the supply of water and
grain to the people of Rome. 79
The popes were not the only bishops to consolidate their position in the
uneasy days of the sixth century. Throughout Italy, bishops sought to
promote the prestige and influence of their sees. In Apulia, the development
of the cult of the Archangel Michael on Monte Gargano gave the
bishops of nearby Sipontum considerable clout in local ecclesiastical politics.
Moreover, the development of the Archangel’s sanctuary as a major
pilgrimage centre gave Sipontum sufficient prestige to grant it a relatively
untraumatic transition from Byzantine to Lombard political control. 80 The
growth of Sipontum is but one example of an explosion in episcopal patronage
of the cult of saints in Italy. It had occurred with papal blessing:
none other than Gelasius I had supported Laurentius of Sipontum’s development
of the sanctuary. Elsewhere, however, the cult of saints could
provoke certain tensions between local churches and papal claims of
supremacy. In northern Italy, both Aquileia and Ravenna developed traditions
of apostolic foundation which threatened the ecclesiastical supremacy
of Rome. Indeed, the cult of St Apollinaris gave Ravenna’s church
enough prestige for Constans II to grant the see autocephalous status in
666. 81 The fragmentation of Italy in late antiquity was manifesting itself,
then, in how the church was developing as a political and administrative
institution.
Ecclesiastical developments also mirrored Italy’s transformation from
notional centre of empire to Byzantine frontier province, particularly in the
relationship between the papacy and Constantinople. This reflected
Constantinople’s claim, as the New Rome on the Bosphorus, to equal prestige
with the Old Rome in the west. Already in 381, the bishop of the eastern
capital was accorded ‘an honorary seniority after the bishop of Rome’
because of Constantinople’s status as the New Rome, a decision amplified
at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. 82 Constantinople even sought to rival
Rome’s apostolic primacy. As popes from Damasus I onwards invoked the
Petrine succession as a major buttress of Roman supremacy, so the church
of Constantinople sought to increase its own prestige by association with
the apostle Andrew. 83 So far as the bishops of Rome were concerned,
however, such claims were vitiated by Constantinople’s absence from the list
79 For what follows, see esp. Richards (1980). 80 Otranto (1983).
81 Picard (1988); Markus (1981).
82 Council of Constantinople (381), canon 3; Council of Chalcedon, canon 28.
83 Dvornik (1958).
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