CHRISTIANIZATION AND ITS CHALLENGESexile. The church historian Socrates comments on the number of enemies the
latter made through his strict moral teaching and habit of excommunicating
backsliders:
What contributed greatly to gain credence for these complaints was the
bishop’s always eating alone and never accepting an invitation to a feast.
His reasons for thus acting no one knew with any certainty, but some
persons in justifi cation of his conduct state that he had a very delicate
stomach and weak digestion which obliged him to be careful in his diet,
while others impute his refusal to eat in company with any one to his rigid
and habitual abstinence.
(Socrates, HE VI.4)In contrast to Ambrose and John, Augustine, their greatest contemporary,
who had been strongly infl uenced by Ambrose in his conversion, about which
he wrote in his unforgettable Confessions, spent the whole of his bishopric in
the obscure town of Hippo on the North African coast, writing, preaching
and living under a quasi-monastic rule.^29 Christian bishops were highly aware
of the importance of communication, and Augustine was a master of the art
of preaching and teaching; he wrote treatises about the best techniques of
reaching every individual in the congregation, from the educated to the igno-
rant. We cannot unfortunately assess the impact on his local congregation of
his extraordinarily modern understanding of the psychology of audiences, and
one might be tempted to conclude that his genius was wasted in such a setting.
However, among certain ecclesiastical circles and their upper-class followers
the level of travel and letter-writing was such that ideas and infl uences could
spread very quickly, and Augustine was in communication not only with such
fi gures as Ambrose and Jerome but also with Christian aristocrats in Rome,
some of whom fl ed to his side when Rome was sacked in 410; new letters and
sermons by Augustine identifi ed in recent years have vividly demonstrated
many of the pastoral concerns with which he grappled. A very different fi gure
was Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus in northern Syria in the mid-fi fth century,
another voluminous writer, theologian and controversialist, who also led a
busy life dealing with the practical problems of his see. Theodoret wrote in
Greek, but his see included a majority of Syriac speakers and some exotic
ascetics.^30 Theodoret’s theology was condemned at the Second Council of
Ephesus and by the Council of 553, and he became a highly controversial
fi gure from Ephesus I onwards, banned by the emperor from travel beyond
his own see in 448 for disturbing the peace. Yet energetic though Theodoret
was in fi ghting for his doctrinal beliefs, his many surviving letters demonstrate
the care and attention which he also gave to pastoral matters, and while he
was a particularly voluminous writer, this broad-ranging view of his role was
not untypical.
As time went on, bishops became more, not less, important. They were
usually drawn from the educated upper classes and had often had a thorough