A Programmatic Life: Gregory of Nazianzus' Orations 42 and 43 and the Constantinopolitan Elites

The century between the deaths of the emperors Julian in 363 and Theodosius II in 450 witnessed the evolution of a new civilization that we call, at least in the eastern part of the Roman empire, "Byzantine." Instrumental in its inception and formation were men of the first generation after the legalization of Christianity by Constantine, when, for the first time in the history of the Roman empire, a significant number of members of the provincial and senatorial elites grew up Christian (Barnes 1995). They initiated a cultural transformation that changed Roman civilization into a Roman Christian civilization, with centers in Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Milan, and Ravenna, as well as Rome. This new civilization manifested itself in the creation of new models of identity, power, and authority--that of the bishop prominent among them. The process of establishing this new model of episcopal authority, the imperial bishop, was long, protracted, and highly contested, involving numerous players from many walks of life. It was dominated by several individuals who combined in their writings existing concepts of political theory, administrative and legal language and forms, expressions of social status, and various epistemological methods in the formulation of doctrine. These men approached the writings of the Old and New Testament from their own elite vantage point, and their interpretations and explications of Scripture were the result of their own personal political and social positions as well as their philosophical educations.

Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop of Constantinople from November 27, 380 to July 9, 381, honored with the title "The Theologian" by the council of Chalcedon in 431 (a title until then only given to John the Evangelist), was one of these men. ¹ In this paper, I will draw on two of his orations, Oration 42 "Farewell Address to the Bishops" and Oration 43 "In Praise of Basil," both written shortly after July 9, 381, to illustrate some of the mechanisms involved in the formation of a new Christian elite. In these orations, Gregory used aspects of his own life and doctrinal tenets and combined them with Roman administrative and legal procedure to formulate a program designed to exert authority over Nectarius (his successor as bishop of Constantinople) and the bishops assembled in the imperial capital during one of the high points of "orthodox" history, the first ecumenical council of 381. These two orations are thus examples of the dense interplay between theology, politics, and administration that, in my view, characterized the Selbstverständnis of this new elite. By unraveling the component parts of this new Selbstverständnis, I hope to contribute both to the theoretical and methodological discussion surrounding the notion of "elites" in today's discourse, and to the study of the process that led to the formation of the characteristics desirable in a bishop in the Theodosian Age and beyond. ² Here, the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus are singularly fruitful because of their immense influence on his contemporaries and their neglect by modern scholarship. ³

A programmatic life: Traditions of a Rhetoric of Self

By the end of 381, Gregory, then fifty-one years old, had returned once more to his estate at Arianzus. Only a few months before, as late as July of 381, he had been the bishop of Constantinople, until a sequence of turbulent events prompted him to offer his resignation, which, somewhat to his surprise, was accepted with alacrity. And so, on July 9, Gregory left for Cappadocia to write about himself, his colleagues, the state of the Church, and the events that had so "happily" conspired to "free" him from the capital and its episcopal see. ⁴ The two orations that Gregory wrote in the last months of 381, Oration 42 "Farewell to the Bishops" and Oration 43 "In Praise of Basil," were among his last. ⁵ Forming, in the words of their most recent editor J. Bernardi (1992.25), "a diptych," these...