The Roman Church And Its Bishops 439
church property, and committed sex crimes.66 Significantly, in 494 the pope
issued the most comprehensive set of ecclesiastical regulations to date: a letter
listing some twenty-eight canons governing virtually every aspect of clerical
discipline and church order, from the proper ordination process for laymen
and monks and a ban against female liturgical celebrants to procedures for
consecrating private estate chapels.67 However, as subsequent letters show, his
strictures were not always followed. Nevertheless, Gelasius involved himself
directly in even the smallest matters of clerical discipline, suggesting that the
pope viewed these infractions as serious challenges to his authority.
Symmachus’ conflict with Rome’s clergy over ecclesiastical property during
the Laurentian schism was equally if not more troublesome. A considerable
clerical population had sided with Laurentius, and had accused the bishop
before Theoderic of several crimes, including the alienation (sale, trade, or
transfer) of church lands. Generally speaking, bishops were permitted to alien-
ate ecclesiastical property under certain conditions, but in 483 the council
convened at Simplicius’ directive (as mentioned above) had banned alien-
ation outright, suggesting that some Roman clergy (and at least one Roman
senator) wished to tighten the bishop’s financial reins.68 While we do not know
which lands Symmachus allegedly alienated, the acts from the Roman synod
of 501 suggest that they formed part of the endowments funding Rome’s titu-
lar churches. As noted, the tituli were legally part of the bishop’s church, but
they were locally administered both ritually and financially. For many Roman
Christians, they were the centre of their ecclesiastical experience, the place
where they baptized their children and offered their alms. While it is unlikely
that lay donors were behind the anti-Symmachan charges (as Llewellyn sug-
gested), it is possible that certain titular priests formed the heart of the oppo-
sition against Symmachus (Laurentius, after all, was a titular presbyter) and
that their continual partisanship was rooted in Symmachus’ more aggressive
approach to estate administration.69 Symmachus clearly had the tituli in mind
at the 501 synod, when he moved to regulate the alienation of church property
and expressly forbade titular priests from using this or other financial tools to
manage their church’s wealth.70 Moreover, several of the Symmachan Forgeries
66 Allen/Neil, Crisis Management, pp. 163–70 and Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority,
pp. 174–211 for a broader discussion of these issues.
67 Gelasius, Ep. 14, ed. Thiel, pp. 362–79 issued in March 494 to the churches of Lucania,
Bruttium, and Sicily.
68 Acta syn. a DII [SIC], ed. Mommsen, pp. 444–5.
69 Llewellyn, “Roman Church”, with important revisions in Hillner, “Families, Patronage”.
70 Acta syn. a DII [SIC], ed. Mommsen, p. 450.