Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy 491
The survival of these ancient centres, however, is not directly documented.
A direct link between the monastery of Eusebius, for instance, and the
scriptorium of 10thcentury Vercelli, known from the time of Bishop Atto, seems
untenable.59 Nor can it be assumed that there was some relationship between
the monastery of Ambrose and the auditorium mentioned by Ennodius in
the 6th century, which seems rather to have been a school conducted by the
rhetorician Deuterius.60 Nevertheless, during the Ostrogothic period groups
of young laypeople who were devoted to an ascetic lifestyle and lived with a
priest or bishop who acted as their teacher were especially prevalent in Italy.
Indeed they served as a sort of model community, even beyond the Italian
peninsula, as demonstrated by a proposal made at the Council of Vaison in
529, which sought to establish similar centres in Gaul, where the clergy would
live a communal life and youths would begin the study of sacred texts, all in
imitation of what was happening in Italy.61 The regulations of the Council of
Chalcedon (ca. 4 and 26), which had submitted monks and monasteries to the
jurisdiction of bishops, as well as the canons of the councils celebrated in Gaul
(at Agde in 506, at Orleans in 511 and 533, and at Epaone in 517)62 and the inter
vention of Justinian, who intensified episcopal control over monasteries in the
first half of the 6th century,63 certainly encouraged the growth and spread of
this kind of clerical—monastic institution, whose features could be attributed
to the first male monasteries of northern Italy.
59 Levine, “Historical Evidence”, pp. 573–7; contra Scaravelli, “La collezione canonica
Anselmo dedicata, pp. 46–9.
60 Magani, Ennodio, vol. 1, pp. 288–9, thought Ennodius had taught in the seminary estab
lished by Epiphanius in Pavia, but it seems more likely that as a deacon he taught in the
Milanese auditorium. See Ennod., no. 3 (= dict. 7), ed. Vogel, pp. 6–8 (school transfer in the
forum); no. 59 (= dict. 8), pp. 78–80 (presentation of his nephew Lupicinus to the rhetori
cian Deuterius); no. 85 (=dict. 9), pp. 112–15 (introduction of Arator to the same school).
See also Marconi, Ennodio, pp. 76–86.
61 Concilium Vasense, c. 1, ed. Maassen, p. 56. We do not know if paroecia was still a synonym
for diocese, according to the use of, for example, Paulinus of Nola, or if the term already
indicated parishes in rural areas, as used by Gregory the Great; see Penco, Storia della
Chiesa, p. 86.
62 A canon of the council held in Venice between 481 and 491 granted the abbot the right to
give permission to the monks to live in cells outside the monastery without permission
of the bishop (Conc. Venet. a. 481–491, c. 7, ed. Munier, p. 153). The Gallic councils instead
were aimed at increasing the authority of the bishops over abbots and their monasteries.
Cf. Conc. Agath. a. 506, cc. 27 and 38, ed. Munier, pp. 205 and 208; Conc. Arel. a. 511, cc. 7; 19;
22, ed. de Clercq, pp. 37; 10; Conc. Epaon. a. 517, cc. 8 and 10, ed. de Clerq, p. 26; II Conc. Arel.
a. 533, c. 21, ed. de Clerq, p. 171.
63 Novell. Iust. 58; 131.8, ed. Schoell/Kroll.