The Roman Church And Its Bishops 431
Felix IV, for instance, convened councils of clerics and senators to help them
choose successors (see below).
Very little is known about the location and physical buildings of Rome’s
episcopal administration during the Ostrogothic period. The first reference to
the Lateran basilica as the site of the bishop’s household and headquarters
appears in ca. 500 in a document issued by Theoderic, wherein he refers to the
de arca vero vel domo Lateranensi (‘the treasury or rather Lateran household’).29
It is obviously significant that Theoderic believed that the Roman bishop’s
household and treasury were located in the Lateran neighbourhood at the
Caelian, and that his domus was connected to the arca. However, this is all
that we know. Archaeologists have not discovered remains of what can be
positively identified as Rome’s episcopium. The absence of material evidence
impairs our ability to do more than speculate about where and how the Roman
bishop lived. Interestingly, 5th- or 6th-century Roman martyr narratives (the
gesta martyrum) depict two pre-Constantinian bishops living in different parts
of the city, suggesting alternative traditions about episcopal residential space.30
Moreover, the embattled bishop Symmachus developed the area around
S. Peter’s basilica to serve as his residence during the Laurentian schism (see
below). The setting and status of Rome’s ecclesiastical archives are also unclear.
The Ostrogothic-era church certainly had archives, which held the writings of
present and past bishops along with other documents. Moreover, the Liber
Pontificalis suggests that the early 6th-century church wished to create (or had
created) a personal ecclesiastical archive for clergy, in which clerics could store
important private documents (e.g. wills, contracts, etc.).31 Some popes seem to
have had personal archives (e.g. Agapitus). But there is no conclusive evidence
that the church had centralized its archives at the Lateran basilica at this time.32
In many respects, the administration of the Roman church during the
Ostrogothic period more closely resembled a private institution, such as a
household. As Egyptian papyrological evidence shows, large landowning
householders typically employed notaries and kept extensive archives to man-
age their estates and labour—just as the bishop of Rome.33 In fact some of our
29 Anagnosticum Regis, ed. Mommsen, p. 426.
30 Passio S. Pancratii 2 (Cornelius living on the Caelian Hill) and Passio S. Susannae 2 (Gaius
living on the Esquiline).
31 The Liber Pontificalis claims that Pope Julius (337–52) had established such an archive
(Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, p. 205), but this is surely a retrojection of 6th-century
realities or aspirations.
32 Pace Richards, The Popes and the Papacy, p. 289.
33 Sarris, Economy and Society.