428 Sessa
issue final judgement on appeals from churches and clerics throughout the
empire. However, this particularly expansive claim to appellate authority was
grounded in a canon from the Council of Serdica (343), which was not rec-
ognized by most eastern churches and was erroneously conflated with those
of Nicaea in Rome’s Latin translation of the Nicene canons.13 As studies have
shown, clerics welcomed Rome’s claims to supra-appellate authority when it
served their needs, but ignored or even contested it when it did not.14
Rome’s Urban and Suburban Churches
Unlike most late ancient sees, Rome was not a cathedral city but a city of
cathedrals. Within the city and its environs, the late 5th-century bishop
oversaw some 130 churches, oratories, and monasteries, including numer-
ous major basilicas constructed in the 4th and 5th centuries by the emperors
and their families.15 Generally speaking, the Ostrogothic period did not wit-
ness any new major ecclesiastical foundations in Rome, which previously had
been the result of imperial patronage. This is expected given the largely non-
Nicene Christian orientation of the Amal dynasty, though Theoderic made a
small offering to S. Peter’s during the episcopate of Hormisdas. A few of the
city’s bishops were involved in smaller-scale projects.16 Symmachus (498–514)
built an extensive new chapel for S. Peter’s dedicated to the apostle’s brother
Andrew, and undertook other renovations and decorative work both there and
at S. Paul’s.17 Felix IV (526–30) is responsible for the only ex-novo church built
in Rome during the Ostrogothic period, the diminutive but elegant basilica of
SS Cosmas and Damian on the Via Sacra inside the Roman Forum. Dedicated
in 527, the church was constructed by linking two formerly separate buildings,
the so-called ‘Library of Peace’ (Bibliotheca Pacis) and sections of the presum-
ably long defunct Temple of Romulus. The basilica also features a spectacular
apsidal mosaic depicting the parousia (i.e. the second coming of Christ) as well
13 Serdica, c. 3.
14 Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Hess, The Early Development of Canon Law.
15 Late 5th-century Rome’s major basilicas include: Basilica S. Petri, Basilica S. Pauli, Basilica
Constantiniana (S. Giovanni Laterano), S. Maria Maior (S. Maria Maggiore), Basilica
Apostolorum (S. Sebastiano), and the Basilica Sessoriana (S. Croce in Gerusalemne).
16 To what follows, we might add the church of S. Stefano in Rotondo on the Caelian Hill,
which was begun during the tenure of Leo I (441–61) to house the relics of S. Stephen pro-
tomartyr, but not completed and consecrated until the episcopate of Simplicius (468–83).
17 Alchermes, “Petrine Politics”.