Christianity’s Quiet Success: The Eusebius Gallicanus Sermon Collection and the Power of the Church in Late Antique Gaul (review)

The Eusebius Gallicanus collection consists of seventy-six sermons, originally composed in late-antique Gaul (text in CCSL 101-101B). Some are for holy days; some commemorate saints such as Genesius of Arles, Honoratus of Arles, and Maximus of Riez; others deal with moral issues or questions of doctrine. Most of the sermons appear to have been addressed to lay congregations, but a significant minority was addressed to monks.

The collection gained its name from its attribution in some manuscripts to an (apparently fictional) Eusebius, and until now almost all scholarship on the collection has been concerned with trying to establish its authorship. Lisa Kaaren Bailey’s monograph, Christianity’s Quiet Success, is the first full-length study of the collection and for most of the sermons the first scholarly work to examine them except in relation to the authorship question. Bailey’s opening chapter discusses the function of preaching within the increasingly Christianized society of fifth-century Gaul, and the way in which sermon collections provided material for preachers less able to produce their own. The second chapter discusses the question of authorship, concluding that the sermons (originally the work of several authors from mid- to late-fifth-century Gaul) were assembled and edited by a compiler to provide just such a collection of model sermons to be used or adapted by preachers.

The next three chapters examine the ways in which the sermons address lay congregations, dealing with the attempts of preachers to promote unity within their congregations and civic communities, with their strategies for explaining the Bible and Christian doctrine, and with the ways in which they attempted to counteract sin. Bailey argues that in all these areas a major concern was to create and maintain a sense of community, with the preachers emphasizing consensus, and stressing the unity between themselves and their congregations, rather than claiming a position of leadership (pp. 51–54). Similarly, Bailey characterizes their approach to scriptural exegesis as “controlled, safe and simple” (p. 73), avoiding the discussion of difficult or potentially controversial passages. When addressing the issue of sin, the sermons avoid confrontation and denunciation: Bailey emphasizes again the ways in which they attempt to find consensus and to shift responsibility for addressing sin to members of the congregation by means of introspection and penance.

In her examination of the sermons addressed to monks (chapter 6), Bailey argues that these share most of the presuppositions of those addressed to lay congregations. As with sermons to the laity, the preachers stress their position within the congregation rather than above it. Any feeling of ascetic superiority is counteracted by emphasis on the greater demands which are made on ascetics because of their religious commitment and the consequent greater danger of failure (a position that owes much to St. John Cassian).

Throughout the book, Bailey illustrates her discussion with abundant translated quotations. She discusses points of comparison with other sermons from the period, focusing particularly on those of St. Augustine and, most of all, St. Caesarius of Arles, whose aggressive, confrontational stance is contrasted with the consensus-based approach of the Eusebius Gallicanus preachers. Simply by providing an exposition of such an important, but hitherto almost ignored, collection of texts, Bailey has provided a service to scholarship. However, her analysis of the sermons and of what they imply about Gallic Christianity, both in secular and monastic settings, is extremely convincing throughout. Her work is a significant expansion of our knowledge of Christianity in late-antique Gaul.