Ostrogothic Cities 115
individual benefactors should have any residual rights over how properties
they had donated to the church should be used by bishops and other church-
men. Regulations issued by Gelasius have been considered a response to
donors’ ability to interfere with church administration through the arrogation
into the bishop’s hands of the ultimate power to decide, by a clear set of rules,
how to use available resources. The protracted and violent conflicts between
Gelasius’ successor Symmachus and his opponent Lawrence were caused by
the wish of a powerful faction within the Senate of Rome to reverse Gelasius’
policy and to establish at Rome a bishop who would prove more receptive to
the influence of Roman aristocrats over the administration of the sizeable
patrimony that the see of Rome had accumulated over nearly two centuries
since Constantine began favouring Christianity.46 Struggles between the sup-
porters of the two candidates, and the attendant disruption caused in Rome,
occasioned the only instance in which Theoderic intervened in affairs of the
Nicene church. Theoderic mediated between the two factions, attempting to
ameliorate heated passions, although it is interesting that at some stage he
sided with the Laurentian faction, which claimed Symmachus had squandered
episcopal finances. Symmachus apparently favoured the ‘Gelasian’ method for
administrating church patrimonies. The schism indicates that the matter of
church finances could not be left entirely in the bishop’s hands and that those
like the members of the Roman aristocracy who had acted as benefactors to
the church, should not have been deprived of an active role in the manage-
ment of their donations. The church was clearly the focus of political conten-
tion because of its finances, and at Rome the conflict was particularly heated
because it was the wealthiest of the Italian bishoprics.
However, a provincial Italian city like Canosa (Canusium, the main centre of
late antique Apulia), reveals more or less the same picture. In the later years
of Ostrogothic rule its bishop Sabinus (perhaps since 514, but certainly from
531 to 552) acted not only as the most prominent local political figure, but also
as the most dynamic patron of city decor and invested conspicuous amounts
of money in the renewal of Canosa’s urban landscape.47 Of course he inter-
preted his role from a particularly Christian perspective and, as demonstrated
by recent archaeological investigation, his efforts focused on the construction
of new churches and a number of non-ritual buildings directly connected with
46 Cessi, “Lo scisma laurenziano”, pp. 1–229; Pietri, “Le Sénat, le peuple chrétien”, pp. 122–40;
Pietri, “Aristocratie et société cléricale”, pp. 417–67; Marazzi, I “Patrimonia”, pp. 47–78.
47 Volpe, “Architecture”, pp. 131–68; Volpe, “Venerabilis vir restaurator”, pp. 23–52.