Hereziologija

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How to Read Heresiology

Averil CameronKeble CollegeUniversity of Oxford

If, as has been suggested, literature is the Cinderella of Byzantine studies,then heresiology is still the Cinderella of late antique and Byzantine litera-ture.1 Whether writings against heresy can be considered literature at all is ofcourse a wider question; this essay starts from a lower level of inquiry andsets more basic questions. Our starting point, it must be emphasized, is thealmost total lack of rhetorical or literary interest shown for this type of writ-ing in late antiquity and Byzantium; indeed, one might even say that it isusually treated with a degree of repugnance and embarrassment. This maybe hard to understand, given the huge interest in heresy in the later medievalWest and the sophistication of some recent discussion, and the recent grow-ing interest in heresy in late antiquity. I would like to demonstrate the cen-trality of the topic for Byzantium as well as the West, and to raise the ques-tion of how heresiological texts should be approached.

Baroque in its variations and its ornament, Christian heresiologydid not of course begin in late antiquity with the extraordinarily inventive,even fictive, catalogues contained in the Panarion, or “Medicine-Chest,” ofEpiphanius of Salamis in the 370s, but from that moment on it neverlooked back.2 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, another neglected writer, this time ofthe fifth century,3 countered with works including a Compendium of Hereti-cal Fables and a “Remedy” for the Affectiones of the “Greeks,” or pagans; foras I shall suggest, these writers operated with a capacious definition of whatconstituted error. Judaism was regarded as a heresy by Epiphanius, Islam byno less a person than John of Damascus. A certain Timothy wrote on thereception of repentant heretics into the Church in the seventh century, andthe Patriarch Nicephorus in the ninth carried on the same enthusiastic list-ing and (mis)naming of both historical and contemporary beliefs.4 Theywere succeeded in later centuries by a host of others. As part of the process,and at the same time to cash in on it, iconoclasm, not a heresy in modern

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33:3, Fall 2003. Copyright © by Duke University Press / 2003 / $2.00.

Derek Day

Muse

eyes, was presented as such by its opponents, and the ending of the longcontroversy over the status of religious images (or better, over the represen-tation of the divine) stimulated the production of the so-called Synodikonof Orthodoxy. This crucial document could be progressively updated to meetnew conditions, offering to the imaginative flights of heresiology an officialand prominent place within the Lenten liturgy.5

Tracing the existence and the nature of Byzantine heresy as anobjective entity is notoriously difficult. We tend to have only the version ofthe orthodox or of the persecutors, and they themselves irritatingly call theirsubjects by a variety of anachronistic or otherwise inappropriate names. Incontrast the study of medieval heresy in the West profits from a wholly dif-ferent level of documentation.6 Those who work on the East, or indeed onheresy in late antiquity, have much to learn from the huge amount of schol-arship that now exists on medieval heresy, but in the absence of such docu-mentary records for the East we shall probably never know whether ordinarypeople in Byzantine villages really harbored heretical ideas, or how their alle-giances affected their lives and their families. Nevertheless, the heresiologieshave a poetics of their own that has yet to be studied. A reviewer commentedon my Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire that heresiology was not thereincluded, and that had it been, a different, and darker, Foucauldian analysismight have emerged, the story of Byzantine power relations.7 Perhaps, butthat may take too literal a view of the literature. There may be other agendasthat heresiology also served, and I believe that it is well worth looking at thisprolific, and to us not very attractive, genre in order to find out what theseagendas might have been.

It seemed appropriate that an essay in a volume dedicated to Eliza-beth A. Clark should continue her own extremely welcome exploration ofthe rhetorical techniques and the discourses adopted by early Christian writ-ers. If I concentrate on a period somewhat later than the one Clark hasmade her own, it is with a lively consciousness both that the period coveredby what we often call “the early Church” needs to be generously defined inorder to understand it properly, and that the patterns set in late antique andByzantine heresiological discourse form a coherent and easily traceable tra-jectory from the earliest centuries of Christianity through to the medievalworld. In addressing this topic, moreover, I am able to build on Clark’s workon Epiphanius and others in The Origenist Controversy, a book which set thedoctrinal quarrels of the late fourth century firmly in the context not only ofpersonal rivalries but also of polemical writings.8

Heresiology is an embarrassment to modern scholars. It began early

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and never lost its appeal. But our modern liberal prejudices make us highlyresistant to the idea that there can be much imaginative content in suchwriting, still less that anyone can have found it interesting. Is heresiologytherefore merely utilitarian, or worse, a kind of scholastic exercise? For whomwas it written, and did anyone bother to read it? Was it the equivalent ofpublishing a note in a learned journal, whose main claim to fame will be thenumber of entries in a future citation index? One suspects that this wasindeed the case with John of Damascus’s De haeresibus, a hundred chaptersrefuting wrong beliefs, which drew the first eighty from Epiphanius, butwith further additions including a controversial and tantalizing final chapteron Islam, the “heresy of the Saracens.”9 Why bother, except as one moreaddition to the encyclopedism already evident in theological writing in theperiod?

This modern feeling is a major barrier to appreciation. Jean Gouil-lard, the editor of such a classic heresiological text as the Byzantine Syn-odikon of Orthodoxy, is only one of many scholars in describing the por-trayal of heretics in the Greek texts as somewhat “mechanical.”10 Writing ofEpiphanius, he describes him as marking by common agreement the apogeeof heresiology.11 The tendency to encyclopedism noted by Gouillard led, ata later date, to anthologies or panoplia of heresies, like that commissionedfrom Euthymius Zigabenus (fl. ca. 1100) by Alexios I,12 or the Treasury ofNicetas Choniates (d. 1217),13 or to monographs on specific examples.14 InGouillard’s view, the genre led to stylized, defensive, and limited ways ofdescribing heresy, and to a lack of originality and a superficiality whichimpedes accurate description. The latter point is certainly true: nowhere is itmore apparent than in the sources relating to the Paulicians and later theBogomils, dualist heretics who appear in the texts from the early medievalperiod onward, if one is trying to reconstruct the extent and nature of thesebeliefs themselves.15 Nor is this distaste for heresiology an uncommon gen-eral reaction, if for example we judge from the scholarly consensus, dis-cussed below, on Epiphanius of Salamis.

I suggest that the very nature of these writings is the first problemto be addressed.16 Scholars frequently complain that writing about heresy ismade the more difficult because we have to depend so heavily on the ver-sions of the winning side, those who successfully appropriated for them-selves the term orthodox. This is reinforced by the representations of hereticsin Byzantine art, which again naturally stem from the “orthodox” side, andtend equally to reduce their subjects to caricatures and stereotypes.17 SoByzantine heresy is doubly difficult for the historian. On the one hand, the

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cataloguing of heresy itself is a subject with which most of us in the post-Enlightenment West have little sympathy and which we are apt to dismisswith disparaging remarks about superficiality and stereotyping, while on theother hand, the texts themselves with few exceptions present heresy andheretics from only one side, as the realm of the “other,” or even the demonic.All these reactions, let it be noted, start from the premise that heresiologiesare there as sources of information, rather than as performative or func-tional texts.

Such reactions have of course fuelled the idea of Byzantium as arepressive and unenlightened society. Scholars have in the main read heresi-ologies and other writings on heresy as indicative of real situations. Withinthe field of Byzantine studies, orthodox theology is generally regarded as aspecial technical area, and therefore when it comes to heresiology historianshave rarely been willing to take the theological content seriously. A well-known article by Robert Browning, for example, describes what he saw asthe “emasculation” of Hellenism, in the form of education, in Byzantium inthe twelfth century.18 John Italos, the successor of Psellos as Consul of thePhilosophers, and others like him were in his view the victims of a repressiveatmosphere in which genuine questioning was stifled. Many scholars haverefused to take the actual charges on their own terms; rather, the victimswere tried for “intellectual” heresy, to be distinguished from allegedly “pop-ular” heresies such as Bogomilism is said to have been.19 Real religiousmotives are discounted, and on this reductionist view it is the state that leadsthe attack; the fact that the charges against John form part of the cataloguein the Synodikon of Orthodoxy is noted rather than discussed.20 Writtensome twenty-five years ago now, Browning’s article still illustrates howextremely hard it is for modern historians to approach either the topic ofheresy or heresiological material as such. More recently, Michael Angold hasadopted an essentially similar approach, seeing the trials as “political” andthe charges as at least partly “trumped up.”21 Indeed, refusal to take them ontheir own terms is rather the norm than the exception, and I think we mustrecognize that it is a response arising from the assumption, familiar enough,that the appropriate explanation must be both rationalizing and reduction-ist.22 Perhaps, however, it is precisely here where the inspection of heresio-logical texts as texts can help.

Attempting to write the history of late antique and Byzantineheresy does indeed involve one in treading a very slippery path. In the firstplace, evidence is often scanty, and particularly for the Byzantine period,surviving texts may lack modern editions. In the second, contemporaries


continued to use old names for new ideas: Arians, Manichaeans, Mon-tanists, Messalians—all these labels are applied to “heretics” in later cen-turies, whether iconoclasts, Paulicians, or Bogomils. Timothy of Constan-tinople in the seventh century and John of Damascus in the eighth repeatas though still current lists of “Messalians,” which some argue went back tothe fifth-century councils.23 Heretics and Jews are mentioned in one breath,as though tarred with the same brush even if not quite identical, and fur-thermore the accusation of being a “Judaizer” is standard.24 Like the here-siologist Timothy, the canons of the Quinisext Council in the late seventhcentury distinguish between types of heresy in relation to the procedures foradmitting them into orthodox communion, dividing them into heresies ofancient standing, whose adherents are to be treated on a par with pagansand baptized, and two types of christological heresy, whose followers are tobe required to produce libelli or to anathematize Nestorians and Mono-physites.25 But in general, it is distressingly difficult to deduce from heresi-ological texts what was really happening, as scholars of later medieval heresyhave also found. It is not surprising, then, if many scholars give up thequest, leaving the field to others keen to trace a new Manichaean diaspora orto recover their own national and religious identity, a quest in which theBogomils become symbolic of national struggle against an oppressive feudal-ism, or of nostalgia for a pre-Ottoman past.26

We can at once blame and credit Epiphanius and his predecessorsfor the (to us) irritating traits of their successors in the genre. Epiphanius’sPanarion, or “Medicine Chest,” is one of the most baroque, yet also themost classical, of heresiologies, which with its lists of rare and exotic groupsand practices continues to be searched by many scholars for evidence ofunknown sects or female cults.27 Yet writing as he did in the 370s, Epipha-nius already came at the end of a line of earlier writers, and he himselfdepended heavily on the mainly lost Syntagma of heresies by Hippolytus(ca. 170–236) and on the five books of Irenaeus’s Adversus haereseis (latesecond century).28 The notion of heresies as serpents whose bites requiredthe remedy of truth was not original to Epiphanius, and he may have derivedhis awareness of classical treatises on remedies from a handbook.29 Nor hashe received a sympathetic reception among modern scholars. Frances Youngwrites of him that “few would claim that Epiphanius was an original thinkeror an attractive personality,” and others have described his style as difficultand his language as clumsy and contorted.30 The use of the Panarion as areliable guide to the geography of heresy is at once undermined by the pridewith which Epiphanius reveals that he has modelled his list of heresies on


the number of concubines in the Song of Songs, reaching the number ofeighty in all by listing seventy-five heresies and five “mothers of heresies.”31

And there is more to it even than this, for he illustrates the numerology ofthe Song of Songs by counting the generations of the faithful before Christ,and the line of philosophers from Thales to Epicurus. Thus Epiphaniusposes an interpretative challenge to the modern reader. For Young, this is allpart of Epiphanius’s deficiencies of intellect, which included “fanatical ani-mosities,” and which are also revealed in the slightly earlier Ancoratus by theformulaic statements which she sees as replacing real argument.32 To quoteanother modern writer on Epiphanius, “Indignant historians have formu-lated harsh judgements on his person and style; his unfairness has been pun-ished by a lack of attentive study of his heresiology.”33 Quite.

A less hostile view might be willing to recognize a degree of literaryskill in the ways in which Epiphanius modelled the Panarion both on theSong of Songs and on scientific treatises on snake bites and poisons.34 It isan ambitious work, in other words, if also a pretentious one. It is also inter-esting, and important for understanding later writings on heresy, that itbegins with classifications which in modern terms would not be relevant toChristian heresy at all, namely, the five “mothers of all the sects,” barbarism,Scythianism, Hellenism, Judaism, and Samaritanism. From this seeminglyodd and even incoherent group, according to Epiphanius, flowed everyother sect.35 With a logic that, on this point at least, cannot be challenged,we are told that only after the coming of Christ and the establishment oforthodoxy did heresies in the common sense break away.36 In fact, if wewonder where the first four of the “mothers of heresies” are to be found, wehave only to look to Colossians 3:11, “In Christ Jesus there is neither bar-barian, Scythian, Hellene nor Jew, but a new creation,” cited explicitly laterin the Panarion (Anacephaleosis I.4.2, 1.9, 8.2). Yet the work is predicatedon classical models, not merely Nicander. It also competes with them: forwhile the Greek authors, the poets and chroniclers, invoke the Muse, saysEpiphanius, he will invoke the Lord of all (pref. II.1.3).

Epiphanius shares the Eusebian view of the evolution of mankindthrough the centuries from barbarism to Christianity;37 his treatise on here-sies is part of a broader vision of the history and development of mankindaccording to the dispensation of God. It is, in other words, an apologeticvision, like that of Eusebius, whose work was well known to Epiphanius. At the same time, while following on from the work of his predecessors,Epiphanius set a definitive pattern for the rhetorical treatment of heretics inByzantine literature. Aline Pourkier describes the technique as two-fold: first


exposition and then refutation.38 The first involved the notion of a geneal-ogy or family tree of heresies, their naming and classification, the delin-eation of a type of a typical heresiarch, and the attribution of ideas not nec-essarily actually held, and the assimilation of one heresy to groups of others,so that all could be tarred with the same brush.39 At the same time, the notionof a “genealogy” or family tree of heresies goes far toward explaining whyEpiphanius and the later Byzantine heresiologists thought it important torecord historical as well as contemporary heresies; their aim was to producea traditio haereticorum, the perfect antithesis of the traditio legis.40 The resultof this maneuver has unfortunately been confusion and puzzlement for gen-erations of scholars trying to understand the origins of later heresies whichare described in terms applicable to earlier centuries, but the thinkingbehind it is understandable enough. Once the heresy or heresies had beencaricatured in this way, the heresiologist would move on to the formal refu-tation, which might take one or more of several approaches: refutation by apparently rational argument, refutation from Scripture, refutation fromtradition, and finally straightforward polemic, the resort to abuse, word-play, rhetorical questions, exclamations, and so on, in fact in many ways thedirect antithesis of the rhetorical style and techniques that might be employedby the same writer in his homilies, but the close relative of contemporarywriting directed against Jews.

What then did Epiphanius’s Panarion establish about the writing ofheresiology? Baroque though it may seem, this work enshrines certain fun-damentals about heresiological literature. For example, it names the manyheresies it wishes to condemn; in so doing it differentiates them from astated norm, and thereby defines the nature of that norm; it classifies, that is,it imposes an ordering on things according to the principles of the writer; itlays down a virtual hierarchy of heresies according to their origins; andfinally it prescribes their nature, and thereby defines and lays down the struc-ture of knowledge. As conceived in late antiquity, Christianity implied astructured system of explanation, covering everything from the naturalworld and the nature of history to anthropology and the nature of man. Wecan also see from the work of Epiphanius that the point of heresiology wasnot simply to record (and condemn) Christian sects. It was also intended todemonstrate the superiority of Christianity over paganism and Judaism, andto express the truth of orthodoxy. As we have seen, it was not enough tocondemn; one had also to state the correct dogma. Thus the third part ofthe Panarion consists of an Expositio of the orthodox faith, and this is alsowhat Theodoret of Cyrrhus did in his late Compendium, which illustrates


the easy step, not quite yet taken by Epiphanius, from heresiology to pro-ducing what was effectively an encyclopedia of orthodoxy. John of Damas-cus’s Fount of Knowledge is perhaps the best known and most conspicuousexample of the genre, comprising both heresiology and a conspectus of ortho-doxy—the negative and the positive, synthesis of what is allowed goinghand in hand with condemnation of the aberrant.

Theodoret, writing in the fifth century, illustrates these develop-ments very well. The Compendium, strictly the “Compendium of HereticalMyths,” and still awaiting a critical edition, comprises five books on sectsand heresies.41 It cites the names of earlier heresiologists—Justin, Irenaeus,and so on—but takes its own line, and appropriately to the period, its empha-sis is christological. Furthermore, Theodoret turns from the genealogicalmodel to a synthetic one, classifying heresies by types.42 As Ian Tompkinshas argued, the first book contains an account of Marcionism (and this maybe typical) which is allusive at best but more likely extremely distorted.43

But the last book turns from heresiology to synthesis, from the listing ofheresy to the statement of orthodoxy. Theodoret had his own line to pursue,and as a bishop he was also an energetic seeker out of heretics himself.44 Butthat does not in itself explain his output in this field; by now, it is clear,heresiology has become a major enterprise, and it is no surprise when wefind Theodoret sending a copy of Epiphanius’s Panarion to Naukratios.45

He lists his own antiheretical works as including writings against Arius,Eunomius, Apollinarius, and Marcion, against Jews and gentiles, a Curatioin twelve books against pagan beliefs, and the Eranistes, an extraordinarywork consisting of three dialogues between an orthodox and an opponentexpressing a variety of heretical positions, each dialogue with a florilegiumattached of passages adduced to support the orthodox position.46 Scholarshave naturally been interested in the nature and source of the citations inthe florilegia, but they ought to be equally curious about the work’s veryinteresting form, a form which was to be taken up by others in later cen-turies and which has close parallels with the dialogues in the Adversus Iudaeostradition.

Scholars have noted a change over time in heresiology toward amore encyclopedic and less argumentative presentation, in which familiarpositions are rehearsed rather than new arguments produced.47 As I havesuggested already, John of Damascus’s treatise had many precedents, includ-ing the Synodical Letter of Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem in the 630s,with its attached list of heresies to be anathematized, or the Patriarch Ger-manus’s work on heresies and councils in the early eighth century, to name


only two surviving examples.48 It is facile, however, to see this tendencymerely to copy out an existing model as a symptom of a genre which wasrunning out of steam.49 In the first place, writing against heresy took manyforms, among which heresiology in the narrow sense of listings was onlyone. Even the latter still had a long life ahead of it. Further, the perceivedneed to combat error in whatever form, and indeed to label it as heresy, byno means came to an end in late antiquity with the supposed establishmentof orthodoxy; on the contrary, it was to remain a fundamental and urgentaim in Christian writing throughout the Byzantine period. The notion thatthe genre was somehow becoming less necessary equally fails to take intoaccount the many complex issues surrounding the legal and conciliarprocesses against heresy, which became so prominent a feature from lateantiquity onwards, and which indicate a lively interest in the matter.50

Finally, like writing against Judaism, arguments against and condemnationof heresy can be found as an integral part of almost every type of Byzantinereligious literature.51 Our challenge is to understand why this was so, andwhat form it took.

Other factors encouraged this tendency toward listing rather thanargument. Chief among them was the search for authoritative proof textsand their collection in specialized lists (florilegia ), a process which can beseen from the fifth century onwards. By the early iconoclastic period, whenJohn of Damascus was writing, these were a major component in doctrinalargument.52 Indeed one can hardly exaggerate the importance attached inthe large Byzantine literature dealing with heresy to the citation of earlierprecedent. Substantial parts of the literary attack on heresy always dependedon listing authorities and the repetition of orthodox definitions. We can seethe same process in works on the councils such as that by Germanus ofConstantinople (that also draws on Epiphanius but is now significantly enti-tled “On heresies and synods”) and in their depiction in visual art.53 At theconclusion of the Second Council of Nicaea, the victorious iconophiles hada strong interest in endorsing their council as the seventh and culminatingrepresentative of a series already formally recognized.54 They wanted to haveit all ways: thus Tarasius termed the iconoclasts “Jews and Saracens, Hel-lenes and Samaritans, Manichaeans and phantasiasts, equal to Theopas-chites.”55 Naming was all important, for it was far from clear that the icon-oclasts were in fact heretics. The same drive to categorize had arisen in anearlier period in relation to the Donatists in late Roman North Africa, andBrent Shaw opens a recent study with the observation that one of theimportant texts for understanding the progress and the procedures of


Catholic dealings with Donatists is in fact Alice in Wonderland.56 “Who areyou?” asks the Caterpillar when he sees Alice. And Alice replies, “I—Ihardly know, Sir, just at present.” Like Alice, the Donatists, and others con-sidered to be heterodox, would be told by the dominant group just wherethey belonged in the pecking order.

The repetition of standard accusations and standard authorities isitself an important rhetorical technique. Polemical lists, of which there aremany from late antiquity onwards, are an obvious candidate for explanationin terms of labelling theory, as a technique whereby deviance is identifiedand embedded.57 But the dismissal of works like that of John of Damascusas wholly academic and static fails to take into account the fact that they toowere constantly being adapted to changed conditions. Thus the additionalchapter on the “heresy” of Islam added to the part of the Fount of Knowl-edge dealing with heresies makes some attempt to describe the actual beliefsof Muslims, and is in fact the earliest attempt from the Byzantine side to do so. Overall, John’s voluminous writings illustrate the actual flexibility ofheresiology, its connections with the Adversus Iudaeos texts and its tendencyto inform other types of writing and to spill over into other genres.

The claim that Iconoclasm was a heresy and therefore fell withinthe realm of the techniques of heresiology was something that needed to beargued. The justification may not indeed fit well with modern ideas of whatheresy is: thus, according to the ninth-century Life of Niketas of Medikion,Iconoclasm is undoubtedly a heresy of the worst kind, both because itstrikes at the very oikonomia of Christ and because it originated suddenlyand in the very bosom of imperial power.58 Neither argument is very con-vincing. Yet the assimilation was vital to the iconophile case. A useful exam-ple of official attitudes toward heretics had been given by the decrees ofcapital punishment issued against Montanists and “Manichaeans” by theiconoclast emperors Leo III and Constantine V and their attemptedenforcement by Michael I.59 Guilt by association was implied in the use ofthese and other classic labels. If iconoclasts could be consigned to the samecategory, the iconophile case was made.60 Similarly if Peter of Sicily in theninth century could make a plausible case for classifying the Paulicians asManichaeans, they too would fall within the scope of the laws just men-tioned.61 All that a heresiologist had to do was to draw on an established tra-dition and on well-established existing arguments against Manichaeanism.62

Few heresiologists were as inventive in amassing a vocabulary ofdenigration as the Patriarch Nicephorus (patriarch 806–15), whose Apolo-geticus and Antirrhetici against the iconoclasts enabled their French transla-


tor to compile a whole lexicon of terms of abuse.63 Again Nicephorus’s aimis two-fold—to set out the correct (orthodox) doctrine of images and toattack and disparage that of the iconoclasts. In order to achieve the latter, heproduced a three-pronged attack: iconoclasts are enemies of the holy, theyare irrational, and they are the antithesis of culture and oikonomia . The Jews and Hellenes, like the familiar triad of Arius, Apollinarius, and Euty-ches, are cited for comparison: the iconoclasts are like them, or worse. Thelanguage of heresiology, like the language commonly employed about Jews,easily turns into the language of scorn and the vocabulary of abuse.64 Simi-larly, in the ninth-century illuminated psalters, iconoclasts are directlyequated with heretics. Thus John the Grammarian is likened to SimonMagus, the head and leader of all heresies according to the Acts of SecondNicaea and many earlier texts, in the Chludov and Pantokrator psalters.65

Not surprisingly, heretics are also, and even more frequently, equated withJews, in an elision of anti-Jewish, antiheretical, and anti-iconoclast rhetoric.66

As I have argued, heresiology has much in common with theAdversus Iudaeos literature, but it has not shared in the interest which thelatter has recently aroused, nor has it stimulated the same speculation as toits relation to “reality” or its implications for Byzantine attitudes.67 Why somany dialogues against Jews continued to be written through the Byzantineperiod, and the nature of their relation to the actual situation of Christiansand Jews, for instance in connection with the decrees of forced baptism ofJews issued by Heraclius, Leo III, and Basil I, remains a difficult question.68

It tends to be forgotten that heresiologies also continued, and at times over-lapped with the anti-Jewish texts. How and why the two types of writinginteract is a story yet to be fully told.

At least in its written culture, Byzantium was a debating society.Richard Lim has drawn attention to the importance of debate in late antiq-uity, whether in the form of public disputation or in writing.69 Much of themost striking late antique evidence concerns Manichaeans, in whose case aprecedent had been set in 302 by Diocletian, himself a pagan emperor, whoordered their condemnation and the burning of their books,70 and it is clearthat dealings with the Manichaeans provided ample instruction for thedevelopment of procedures against heretics. In the well-known case ofAugustine, written treatises and actual debate worked together in the for-mulation of Augustine’s arguments against Manichaeans and Donatists.Augustine was caught by the “burning zeal for disputations” through hisexperience when a Manichee himself,71 and undoubtedly the treatment ofManichaeans set many examples for the future; even repeated and ferocious


imperial legislation was not enough in itself, and had to be accompanied byan astonishing amount of anti-Manichaean writing and argument.72

Manichaeism also provided a label; how useful that could be can be seenfrom the fact that the later Augustine could still be attacked as “a newManichaean.”73 In this way, Manichaeism provided both the exemplar andvocabulary for later antiheretical works.

In general, internal Christian disputes, beginning in the earliestcenturies, intensified in late antiquity and continued throughout the Byzan-tine period. This led in itself to a large literature of debate, which could beboth apologetic and polemical. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration tosay that this huge literature, of which heresiology forms a part, is one of thefeatures that characterizes late antique and Byzantine Christian culture. Ihave argued elsewhere that it formed an important element in Christianpedagogy, that is, in the formation of a Christian intellectual system.74 Con-frontation, labelling, and the listing of authorities can all be seen as part ofthis process. In the Adversus Iudaeos texts of late antiquity, we tend to findconfrontations, real or fictive, between Jews and Christians, or even, as inthe so-called Trophies of Damascus, a text from the seventh century, between“Hellenes, Saracens, Samaritans, many Jews and Christians, in a word, alarge number of spectators.”75 The end of this dialogue contains an obvi-ously fictionalized “narrative” of the discomfiture of the Jews after theirdebate and their recognition that the Christian had won the argument. Sig-nificantly, the same author also composed a listing of all heresies from Ariusonwards as part of a refutation of the Monophysites.76 Thus while there isa connection apparent from the earliest stages between Christian heresiologyand anti-Jewish writing, which certainly needs more exploration, bothbelong to this culture of debate and dispute that became so embedded inearly Christian and later in Byzantine discourse.77 Both, again, raise pro-found and difficult issues about the level of intolerance within early Chris-tianity.78

It has often been remarked that real persecution, and in particularexecution, for heresy was relatively rare in Byzantium, and this is certainlytrue in comparison with procedures in the medieval West. This is worthnoting, in view of the increased severity of legal penalties in late antiquity,and the topic certainly needs more study.79 But over the centuries, thedenunciation of heresy in Byzantium became both shriller and more thor-oughly ritualized. It was also made visible. The removal of names from thepatriarchal diptychs, on the pattern of the Roman damnatio memoriae, isone example that began at an early stage. It was a visible and public act,


which at the same time underlined the degree to which the official denial oforthodoxy was a matter of real power and competition. Justinian decreedthat his edicts should be posted in churches,80 and the battles over heresy, ashappened in the course of the Monothelete controversy of the seventh cen-tury, were often conducted by literally pinning Typos and Antitypos to thedoors of S. Sophia in Constantinople. Another manifestation of this publicvisibility lay in the records of councils, which involved not only complexmatters of procedure and verification but also the control of attendance listsand the carefully structured control of the acta, or in essence, the minutes,a procedure highly familiar to anyone who is concerned in our own day withgetting decisions through committees and making sure they have anychance of being carried out afterwards.81 It has even been shown that theacta of later councils were commonly composed before the meeting actuallytook place, and that spaces were simply left for signatures to be appropri-ately filled in. There were complex legal issues involved, and the proceedingsof councils have been likened to senatorial precedent, condemnation ofheretics being like the Roman trials for treason.82 The formal reading of theSynodikon of Orthodoxy (the defeat of iconoclasm having been significantly,if inaccurately, defined in terms of the establishment of orthodoxy) duringthe Lenten liturgy is another example of this ritualization, and no oneapparently thought it odd that it should be revised as new heretics camealong. This was done even as late as the Palamite controversy in the four-teenth century, and was accompanied in typically Byzantine manner by thedepiction of the reading of the anathemas in visual art.

The liturgical character of the Synodikon is apparent from manydetails in the textual tradition, and it was read from the ambo like theGospel and the homily.83 Like the epigraphic recording of imperial edicts,it was also engraved on tablets in S. Sophia.84 Above all, it became, even ifit did not originate as such, a public and a political document. Even its ear-liest form listed a roll call of orthodox, that is, iconophile, clerics, the pur-pose of which was the exclusion of the opposite side from the approvedrecord. The list of four orthodox (iconophile) patriarchs is followed, pre-dictably, by anathemas on heretics; thus we see again in this document, asin the literary heresiologies, orthodox exposition juxtaposed with condem-nation of heresy.85 The Synodikon is only the most conspicuous example.86

There are many and deep questions to be asked about Byzantine attitudes toheresy: Was there a gap between language and practice, and if so how didthis come about? Who in fact read all these treatises? What is the relation of


Byzantine discourses about heresy to the condemnation of pagans and Jews?Why was such a premium placed on the seemingly unachievable ideal of apure orthodoxy? What does this tell us about the nature of Byzantine cul-ture and society? None of these can be answered without previously analyz-ing the texts, especially in terms of their rhetorical techniques, just as Elizabeth Clark has argued for the writing of church history. This papercannot answer the questions above; rather, it seeks to raise the issue ofheresiological discourse as something which needs to be addressed ratherurgently.

How then, to return to my title, should one learn to read heresiol-ogy? I am aware, first of all, that we have not yet even defined what it is thatwe are “reading,” for even allowing for derivativeness and repetition in somecases, heresiological treatises in fact come in many different shapes andforms. Dismissing heresiology as sterile or boring, as mere scholastic exer-cises, therefore misses several points at the same time. Insecurity and asceticclosure, both explanations favored by me in the past, now seem too reduc-tionist in the first case and too ready to take Byzantium on its own terms inthe second.87 We can of course read these contests as a power game betweenindividuals or groups, the politics of the early Christian world. Many mod-ern critics, both of late antiquity and Byzantium, remain uncomfortablewith the idea that theological argument needs to be taken seriously as a his-torical factor; in this they could learn much from the historiography ofother periods such as Reformation history. Whether we like it or not as his-torians, writing heresy, in all its various forms, did occupy a major place inByzantium—so much so indeed that a full treatment would in its way con-stitute a new history of Byzantium. This is far from having been written asyet.88 But meanwhile, at the very least, I suggest that one ought to read thesecompositions, so strange to our minds, as part of Byzantine pedagogy andthe Byzantine sociology of knowledge, self-perpetuating constructions thathelped to formulate thought and underpin social norms.89

�


Notes

1 Hence one is grateful for the welcome collection edited by S. Elm, E. Rébillard, andA. Romano, Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire, Collection de l’École française deRome 270 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2000). I take the reference to literature asa “Cinderella” from Margaret Mullett, a notable pioneer in the effort to change thesituation.

2 For Epiphanius, see further below; for earlier heresiology, which was already well estab-lished by the late second century, see in the first place A. Le Boulluec, La notiond’hérésie dans la littérature grecque IIe–IIIe siècles, 2 vols. (Paris: Études augustiniennes,1985). For heresiology as a genre, and a list of examples in Greek and Latin up to ca.430, see H. Inglebert, “L’histoire des hérésies chez les hérésiologues,” in B. Pouderonand Y.-M. Duval, eds., L’historiographie de l’Église des premiers siècles, Théologie his-torique 114 (Paris: Beauchesne, 2001), 105–25.

3 See, however, Helen Sillet, “Culture of Controversy: The Christological Disputes ofthe Early Fifth Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1999); IanTompkins, “The Relations between Theodoret of Cyrrhus and His City and Its Terri-tory, with Particular Reference to the Letters and Historia Religiosa” (D.Phil. diss.,University of Oxford, 1993); Theresa Urbainczyk, Theodoret of Cyrrhus: The Bishopand the Holy Man (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002); and see below.

4 Timothy of Constantinople, De receptione haereticorum, Patrologia Graeca (PG )86:1.13–68; Nicephorus, see further below. A work on “sects” with similar listings,also beginning with Hebrews and Samaritans (PG 86:1.1194–1265), is ascribed inthe manuscripts to Leontius of Byzantium (sixth century); see M. van Esbroek, “Ladate et l’auteur du De Sectis attribué à Léonce de Byzance,” in C. Laga, J. A. Munitiz,and L. van Rompay, eds., After Chalcedon: Studies in Theolog y and Church HistoryOffered to Professor Albert Van Roey for his Seventieth Birthday (Leuven: Peeters, 1985),415–24.

5 J. Gouillard, ed., “Le Synodikon d’orthodoxie,” Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967): 1–313. 6 There is a vast literature, constantly increasing. A classic is R. I. Moore, The Formation

of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1987). G. G. Merlo, ed., Eretici e eresia medievali nella stori-ografia contemporanea, Atti del XXXII Convegno di Studi sulla reforme e i movimentireligiosi in Italia, Bollettino delle Società di Studi Valdensi 174 (Torre Pellici, Italy:n.p., 1994), contains substantial bibliographical surveys; and see J. Le Goff, ed., Héré-sies et sociétés dans l’Europe préindustrielle, 11e-18e siècles, Colloque du Royaumont27–30 Mai 1962 (Paris: Mouton, 1968). But there is almost always a gap whereByzantium should be.

7 G. Woolf, Journal of Roman Studies 83 (1993): 241, reviewing Averil Cameron, Chris-tianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Formation of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1991).

8 Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an EarlyChristian Debate (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992). The presentessay builds on lectures and seminars delivered in a number of places, including theOxford Patristic Conference 1999, the conference of the Australian Association ofByzantine Studies held at Macquarie University in July 1999, at Reading and Lund


Universities and elsewhere in Sweden. I am grateful for all those invitations andopportunities for discussion.

9 See R. Le Coz, Jean Damascène: Écrits sur l’Islam, Sources chrétiennes 383 (Paris: Cerf,1992), with discussion of authenticity and numbering. The number of heresies gradu-ally accumulated between Epiphanius and John of Damascus: see J. M. McClure,“Handbooks against Heresy in the West, from the Late Fourth to the Sixth Century,”Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 30 (1979): 186–97. Another who drew on Epipha-nius was Augustine, in his unfinished De haeresibus.

10 J. Gouillard, “L’hérésie dans l’empire byzantine des origines au XIIe siècle,” Travaux etMémoires 1 (1965): 299–324, at 301–2. It is perhaps indicative that, as Gouillardpoints out, there is as yet no book that attempts to address the place of heresy inByzantine culture as a whole. But the very title he has chosen for his article (heresy,not heresiology) is revealing of an attitude looking for the real heresy behind the texts.Gouillard’s view of heresy is also limited on the whole to the dogmatic, whereas evencontemporaries debated whether heresy extended to ritual and behavior, as well asdoctrine. For good discussion, see T. Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 88–101.

11 Ibid., 301.12 Euthymius Zigabenus, PG 130. This panoplion, too, began early with Epicureanism

and took the listing up to the Paulicians and Bogomils of Euthymius’s own day.13 Nicetas Choniates, Treasury, PG 139– 40. Again we find the notion of collecting all

heresies together. 14 PG 301.15 Paulician texts are edited by C. Astruc, W. Wolska-Conus, J. Gouillard, P. Lemerle, D.

Papachryssanthou, and J. Paramelle in Travaux et Mémoires 4 (1970): 2–227; see alsothe translations of texts on the Paulicians and Bogomils in Janet and Bernard Hamil-ton, Christian Dualist Heresies in the Byzantine World, c. 650–c. 1405 (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1998). Not trusting the texts they present, the editorsfrequently refer to “alleged” Paulicians and the like. Following this line of argument,see also C. Ludwig, “The Paulicians and Ninth-Century Byzantine Thought,” in LeslieBrubaker, ed., Byzantium in the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive? (Aldershot, Hampshire:Ashgate, 1998), 23–35. Studies of dualist beliefs include N. G. Garsoian, The Pauli-cian Heresy (The Hague: Mouton, 1967); P. Lemerle, “L’histoire des Pauliciens d’AsieMineure d’après les sources grecques,” Travaux et Mémoires 5 (1973): 1–144; M. Loos,Dualist Heresy in the Middle Ages (Prague: Akademia, 1974); D. Obolensky, TheBogomils (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948); Y. Stoyanov, The HiddenTradition in Europe: The Secret History of Medieval Christian Heresy (London: Arkana,1994), rev. as The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000). Against social, regional, and dualistinterpretations of the Paulicians, see N. G. Garsoian, “Byzantine Heresy: A Reinter-pretation,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 25 (1971): 87–113.

16 Gouillard, “L’hérésie,” 324, rightly calls for more critical editions: “l’austère critiquedes sources sans laquelle il n’est pas de synthèse qui vaille”; my point here is rather oneof methodological approach.

17 See C. Walter, “Heretics in Byzantine Art,” Eastern Churches Review 3 (1970): 40– 49.


18 R. Browning, “Enlightenment and Repression in Byzantium in the Eleventh andTwelfth Centuries,” Past and Present 69 (1975): 3–23; cf. Dion Smythe, “Alexios Iand the Heretics,” in M. Mullett and D. Smythe, eds., Alexios I Komnenos: I Papers(Belfast: Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations, 1996), 232–59; also Smythe, “Out-siders by Taxis : Perceptions of Non-conformity in Eleventh and Twelfth-Century Lit-erature,” in L. Garland, ed., Conformity and Non-conformity in Byzantium (Amster-dam: Hakkert, 1997), 229– 49.

19 Ibid., 14–19. Admittedly, Alexios himself made this into a state affair.20 Ibid., 14. For the dossier of documents surrounding the trial, see, however, J. Gouil-

lard, “Le procès officiel de Jean l’Italien, les Actes et leurs sous-entendus,” Travaux etMémoires 9 (1985): 133–73. The dossier does not include the Synodal semeiosis, butit was these anathemas which were included in the Synodikon. The matter is admit-tedly more complex than I suggest here, and Gouillard underlines the extent to whichthe emperor did seek to control and direct the synod, though he concludes that “lanature réelle de l’enjeu nous échappe” (169).

21 Michael Angold, Church and Society in Byzantium under the Comneni, 1081–1261(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). According to Angold, the EmperorAlexios’s synchronization of John Italos’s trial with the celebration of the Feast of Ortho-doxy was the emperor’s “most brilliant stroke” (51). Of course a rhetorical analysis ofthe texts in no way precludes recognition of political manipulation. See also P. Agapitos,“Teachers, Pupils, and Imperial Power in Eleventh-Century Byzantium,” in Y. Lee Tooand N. Livingstone, eds., Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 170–91, at 184–87. To adapt Kolbaba,Byzantine Lists, 171, “religion is not all theology”; but equally, neither is it all politics.

22 For discussion see Kolbaba, Byzantine Lists, introduction.23 See C. Stewart, Working the Earth of the Heart: The Messalian Controversy in History,

Texts and Language to A.D. 431 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 33. 24 See Averil Cameron, “Jews and Heretics—A Category Error?” in Annette Yoshiko

Reed and Adam Becker, eds., The Ways That Never Parted, Texts and Studies in AncientJudaism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming); and on the accusation of being a“Judaizer” in the seventh century, G. Dagron, “Judaïser,” Travaux et Mémoires 11(1991): 359–80, but the accusation is ubiquitous.

25 Abjuration formulae were prescribed for repentent heretics and some survive, bothfrom the anti-Manichaean context and from later periods. Cf. Timothy of Constan-tinople, De receptione haereticorum; also canons 71 and 95 of the Quinisext Council of691, following a precedent set already in the canons of Nicaea in 325 (cf. canon 8).For a later period, see the important article by E. Patlagean, “Aveux et désaveux d’héré-tiques à Byzance (XIe–XIIe siècle),” in L’aveu: Antiquité et Moyen Âge, Collection del’École française de Rome 88 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1986), 243–60, whopoints to the intensification of the evidence for trials and abjuration procedures fromthe eleventh century on, and likewise to the production of yet more encyclopedicheresiological works.

26 See Stoyanov, Hidden Tradition in Europe, 129, 131, 209.27 Epiphanius’s Panarion is edited by K. Holl, in Ancoratus und Panarion, Griechische

Christliche Schriftssteller, 3 vols. (Leipzig: J. C. Hiurichs, 1915–33), and rev. J. Dum-


mer (1980– ), hereafter cited parenthetically in the text; English translation by F.Williams, The Panarion, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1987); partial translation also by P.Amidon, The Panarion of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis (New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1990). See A. Pourkier, L’hérésiologie chez Epiphane de Salamine (Paris:Beauchesne, 1992); R. Lyman, “The Making of a Heretic: The Life of Origen inEpiphanius, Panarion 64,” Studia Patristica 31 (1997): 445–51; Lyman, “Origen asAscetic Theologian: Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Fourth-Century Church,” in W. B.Bienert and U. Kühneweg, eds., Origeniana Septima: Origenes in den Auseinanderset-zungen des 4. Jahrhunderts (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 189–84; Lyman, “Ascetics andBishops: Epiphanius and Orthodoxy,” in Elm, Rébillard, and Romano, eds., Ortho-doxie, christianisme, histoire, 149–61. See also Cameron, “Jews and Heretics.”

28 See Pourkier, L’hérésiologie chez Epiphane, 81 f., 93–114; G. Vallée, A Study in Anti-Gnostic Polemics: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius, Studies in Judaism and Chris-tianity 1 (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981), 63–69.

29 See J. Dummer, “Ein naturwissenschaftliches Handbuch als Quelle für Epiphaniusvon Constantia,” Klio 55 (1973): 289–99.

30 F. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon (London: SCM Press, 1983), 133; cf. Young,“Did Epiphanius Know What He Meant by ‘Heresy’?” Studia Patristica 17.1 (1982):199–205.

31 See, however, Pourkier, L’hérésiologie chez Epiphane, for detailed discussion of Epipha-nius’s sources.

32 Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon, 134, 138.33 Vallée, A Study in Anti-Gnostic Polemics, 74.34 Panarion, pref. II.3.1, ed. Holl; cf. Dummer, “Ein naturwissenschaftliches Handbuch.” 35 Samaritanism being a Jewish heresy, not a Christian one. However, Epiphanius was

not the first in this: see Cameron, “Jews and Heretics.”36 Much has been written on the development of the term heresy in the Christian sense.

Epiphanius uses it in the pejorative sense, to include schism (a disagreement aboutmatters other than doctrine).

37 The inverse, as it happens, of the view held by Tatian and Clement of Alexandria ofChristianity as the “barbarian philosophy” in contrast to Greek paideia. See G. G.Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (Tübin-gen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999).

38 Pourkier, L’heresiologie chez Epiphane, 486–95; Vallée, A Study in Anti-Gnostic Polem-ics, 68–69, 73: “E. has no equal in the history of heresiology for the art of insulting.”

39 On the genealogical approach in heresiology, see Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie; Vir-ginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Contro-versy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Susanna Elm, “The PolemicalUse of Genealogies: Jerome’s Classification of Pelagius and Evagrius Ponticus,” StudiaPatristica 33 (1997): 311–18; D. Kimber Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alex-andria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,1999).

40 Vallée, A Study of Anti-Gnostic Polemics, 70.41 Theodoret’s Compendium may be found in PG 83:335–556.42 See Helen Sillet, “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Theodoret of Cyrus’s Compendium of


Heresies,” in Elm, Rébillard, Romano, eds., Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire, 261–73,esp. 263–67.

43 See n. 3. There is room for argument as to why this should be so, i.e., what sourcesTheodoret was using.

44 For Theodoret the bishop and his agenda in the Historia Religiosa, see Urbainczyk,Theodoret of Cyrrhus.

45 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Epistula 4.22–25, in Yvan Azéma, ed., Correspondance: Théo-doret de Cyr, 3 vols., Sources chrétiennes 40, 98, 111 (Paris: Cerf, 1964–82).

46 Theodoret lists antiheretical works in Epistula 146. Theodoret, Curatio, ed. P. Canivet,Sources chrétiennes 52 (Paris: Cerf, 1958); see P. Canivet, Histoire d’une entrepriseapologétique au Ve siècle (Paris: Bloud and Gay, 1957). Theodoret, Eranistes, ed. G.Ettlinger (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). The date of the work is probably 447, andEutyches was condemned in 448 (3– 4).

47 See Sillet, “Orthodoxy and Heresy,” 262–63. Kolbaba, Byzantine Lists, emphasizesthat the texts she discusses take a similar or even more stereotyped form, but also thatthey were by no means the only heresiological works directed against the Latins inMiddle Byzantium.

48 For the anathemas, see Sophronius, PG 87:3.3189–92, 3193, also included in thedocuments of the Sixth Ecumenical Council: Germanus, De haeresibus et synodis, PG98:40–88, again without critical editions. Gouillard, “Le Synodikon,” 306–7, com-ments that Germanus was not original, but again that is because Gouillard is lookingfor historical evidence about actual heresy. For other examples, see J. Munitiz, “Synop-tic Greek Accounts of the Seventh Council,” Revue des études byzantines 32 (1974):147–86. Munitiz comments that “the [later] synoptic accounts of the Councils offerlittle attraction at first sight” (177). But they make their own contribution to the per-suasive power of the sheer repetition of orthodox doctrine. Moreover, the anathemasof the councils themselves provided the subject matter for heresiology and constitutedthe official and legal record.

49 Vallée, A Study of Anti-Gnostic Polemics, 5–6.50 For the incorporation of legal arguments in the literature, see Caroline Humfress,

“Roman Law, Forensic Argument, and the Formation of Christian Orthodoxy(III–VI Centuries),” in Elm, Rébillard, and Romano, eds., Christianisme, orthodoxie,histoire, 125– 47. Lists of anathemas were also attached to conciliar documents. Forthe later standing court, which acted in such matters, see J. Hajjar, Le synode perma-nente (synodos endemousa) dans l’église byzantine des origines au XIe siècle, OrientaliaChristiana Analecta 164 (Rome: Pontifical Institute, 1962).

51 For this tendency in relation to Judaism, see Averil Cameron, “Blaming the Jews: TheSeventh-Century Invasions of Palestine in Context,” Travaux et Mémoires 14 (MélangesGilbert Dagron) (2002): 57–78.

52 See Averil Cameron, “Texts as Weapons: Polemic in the Byzantine Dark Ages,” in AlanK. Bowman and Greg Woolf, eds., Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 198–215. For this development as shownin the evidence of the sixth- to eighth-century councils, see A. Alexakis, Codes Parisi-nus Graecus 1115 and Its Archetype (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1996).

53 C. Walter, L’iconographie des conciles dans l’art byzantin, Archives de l’orient chrétien


13 (Paris: Institut français d’etudes byzantines, 1970). Walter makes a striking connec-tion between the iconography of councils and the emphasis in early Christian art onscenes of teaching and instruction (187–98).

54 Munitiz, “Synoptic Greek Accounts of the Seventh Council,” 175.55 Mansi 157 E, cited by P. Speck, Ich bin’s nicht: Kaiser Konstantin ist es gewesen; die Leg-

enden vom Einfluss des Teufels, des Juden und des Moslem auf den Ikonoklasmus (Bonn:Habelt, 1990), 25. Speck’s book memorably traces the blackening of the name of theiconoclast Constantine V in the “orthodox” sources. In the thirteenth-century Trea-sury of Theognostos, for example, we find the anathemas of II Nicaea against theleaders of the “impious” Council of 754 (ed. J. Munitiz, Corpus Christianorum seriesgraeca 5 [Turnhout-Leuven: Peeters, 1979], 203–22).

56 Brent Shaw, “African Christianity: Disputes, Definitions, and ‘Donatists,’ ” in M. R.Greenshields and T. A. Robinson, eds., Orthodoxy and Heresy in Religious Movements:Discipline and Dissent (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 5–34.

57 For this and other theories of deviance, see Jack T. Sanders, Schismatics, Sectarians,Dissidents, Deviants: The First One Hundred Years of Jewish-Christian Relations (Lon-don: SCM Press, 1993), 129–51; Margaret Mullett, “The ‘Other’ in Byzantium,” inDion C. Smythe, ed., Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider (Aldershot, Hamp-shire: Ashgate, 2000), 1–22. Byzantines were also famously snobbish about the supe-riority of their own culture and society when compared to those of any others; see alsoKolbaba, Byzantine Lists, 133–36.

58 Acta Sanctorum, April I.23.59 Gouillard, “Le Synodikon,” 308–10. On Michael I, see Theophanes Confessor, Chro-

nographia, ed. Carl de Boor, 2 vols. (1883; repr. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1963–65),1:494–95; with P. Alexander, “Religious Persecution and Resistance in the ByzantineEmpire of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries: Methods and Justifications,” Speculum 52(1977): 238–64, at 239. The extent of the actual persecution under iconoclasm isopen to question, but is beyond the scope of this study.

60 Marie-France Auzépy has recently underlined the sticky ground on which the SeventhCouncil found itself in condemning a particular form of worship rather than devia-tion from dogma: “Manifestations de la propagande en faveur de l’orthodoxie,” inBrubaker, ed., Byzantium in the Ninth Century, 85–99, esp. 87, 93.

61 See Ludwig, “Paulicians and Ninth-Century Byzantine Thought,” 29 ff. 62 For the argument that there was a revival of concern about Manichaeanism in the

early Islamic period, in response to a real encounter on the Islamic side, see G. G.Stroumsa, “Aspects de la polémique antimanichéenne dans l’antiquité tardive et dansl’Islam primitif,” in G. G. Stroumsa, Savoir et Salut (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 355–77, esp.376 f.; cf. C. Riggi, Epifanio contro Mani (Rome: Pontificium institutum altioris Latini-tatis, 1967). Manichaeanism continued to provide a model for many centuries; forexample, Augustine’s anti-Manichaean arguments were known to Western writers onthe Cathars.

63 See M.-J. Mondzain-Baudinet, Nicephore: Discours contre les iconoclastes (Paris: Klinck-sieck, 1989), 327–50; cf. Speck, Ich bin’s nicht.

64 Cameron, “Texts as Weapons.”


65 See K. Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992), 27 f.

66 Ibid., 30–37 and chap. 3.67 For the anti-Jewish literature, see recently G. G. Stroumsa and O. Limor, eds., Contra

Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews (Tübingen: J. C. B.Mohr, 1996); Cameron, “Blaming the Jews,” with further bibliography.

68 See particularly the contributions by G. Dagron and V. Déroche, Travaux et Mémoires11 (1991).

69 Richard Lim, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1995); Lim, “Christian Triumph and Controversy,” inG. W. Bowersock, Brown, and Grabar, eds., Late Antiquity: A Guide to the PostclassicalWorld (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 196–218.

70 See Lieu, Manichaeism, 97, 157.71 Augustine, De duabus animabus 11, cited by Lim, Public Disputation, 90. 72 See S. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China, rev. ed.

(Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1992); Lieu, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the RomanEast (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Lim, Public Disputation, chap. 3. On laws against Mani-chaeans, see Lim, Public Disputation, 104; and on anti-Manichaean writings, see thelist in Lieu, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia, 197–202.

73 Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire, chap. 6. Technically, Manichaeismremained on the books until an amazingly late date, as even did Donatism. Lieubelieves that Justinian’s persecution of Manichaeans resulted in the extermination ofthe sect, and sees the continued use of the term by heresiologists as a useful rhetoricalfeature adopted by them (215). Lim accepts that Manichaeism ceased to be a force inthe Byzantine Empire after the sixth century and argues for a general closure on reli-gious debate (Public Disputation, chap. 7); but this is not borne out by the laterByzantine evidence.

74 Averil Cameron, “Education and Literary Culture,” in Averil Cameron and Peter Garn-sey, eds., Cambridge Ancient History III: The Late Empire, A.D. 337–425 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1998), 665–707, esp. 702– 4. For both heretical andantiheretical writings as pedagogy in the medieval West, see, e.g., Rita Copeland, Peda-gog y, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

75 Les trophées de Damas: controverse judéo-chrétienne du VIIe siècle, ed. G. Bardy, Patrolo-gia Orientalis 15 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1927), 233–34.

76 Ibid., 277 ff.77 See Cameron, “Jews and Heretics”; and Averil Cameron, “Apologetics in the Roman

Empire—A Genre of Intolerance?” in Jean-Michel Carrié and Rita Lizzi Testa, eds.,“Humana sapit”: Études d’Antiquité tardive offertes à Lellia Cracco Ruggini, Biblio-thèque de l’Antiquité Tardive 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 219–27.

78 See Cameron, “Apologetics.”79 For the summa supplicia in relation to heretics (only once in the Theodosian Code,

when there is an association with Manichaeans), see D. Grodzynski, “Torture mor-telles et catégories sociales: Les summa supplicia dans le droit romain aux IIIe et IVe


siècles,” in Du châtiment dans la cité: supplices corporels et peine du mort dans la mondeantique, Collection de l’École française de Rome 79 (Rome: École française de Rome,1984), 361– 403, at 380; J. Callu, “Le jardin des supplices au Bas-Empire,” ibid.,313–59, at 344– 45.

80 Justinian, Novellae 6.1. 81 See Alexakis, Codex Parisinus Graecus 1115, chap. 1. For a vivid exposition of the

lengths to which this process could go, see Wolfram Brandes, “Orthodoxy and Heresyin the Seventh Century: Prosopographical Observations on Monotheletism,” in AverilCameron, ed., Fifty Years of Prosopography: Rome, Byzantium, and Beyond (Oxford:Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2003), 105–20; and cf. E. Chrysos,He ekklesiastike politike tou Ioustinianou (Thessaloniki: Patriarchikon Hidryma Pateri-kon Meleton, 1969); Chrysos, “Konzilsakten und Konzilsprotokolle vom 4. Bis 7.Jahrhundert,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 15 (1983): 30– 40.

82 See Walter, L’iconographie des conciles, 125–26, 151–55.83 Gouillard, “Le Synodikon,” 12–13.84 Walter, L’iconographie des conciles, 161.85 On the origins of the Synodikon, see Gouillard, “Le Synodikon,” 141 ff.86 Cf., for instance, the Synaxarion or the Menologion of Basil II; see Walter, “Heretics in

Byzantine Art,” 159–60.87 Cf. Averil Cameron, “Ascetic Closure and the End of Antiquity,” in Vincent L. Wim-

bush and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (New York: Oxford University Press,1995), 147–61.

88 But G. Dagron, Empereur et prêtre: Étude sur le “césaropapisme” byzantin (Paris: Galli-mard, 1996), presents a powerful case for the competition and uncertainty which(contrary to popular impressions) were characteristic of Byzantine political life. Like-wise Kolbaba, Byzantine Lists, 102–23, argues for the complexity of Byzantine reli-gion, which left room for “gray areas between doctrine and ritual.”

89 See Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1987); Mary Douglas and David Hull, eds., How Classification Works: Nelson Good-man among the Social Sciences (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992); NelsonGoodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978).


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