The exile of bishops in Gregory of Tours: Curbing political perdify in Merovingian Gaul

Eric Fournier - University of Southern California, Santa Barbara

The importance of bishops in Late Antiquity is not a new topic. Indeed, in the last years, the tendency has been to emphasize their position of power, as a new elite, and to underline the benefits the emperors - especially Constantine - granted them. Under the Germanic kings, they maintained their social status and even acquired new powers, so that by the end of the sixth century they had become the highest local authority representing royal power. Studying sanctions imposed upon bishops is therefore to go against the mainstream of historical inquiries regarding their position in Late Antique society. However, analyzing the sentence of exile as a sanction used against bishops by Christian rulers will certainly contribute to redress the balance concerning the status of this "new elite" of Late Antique Gaul.

In a recent work on Constantine and the Bishops, Harold Drake has argued that the bishops represented new 'power players' that had to be accounted with in the renewed political arena following the emperor's inclusion of Christianity as a tolerated religion. In this paper, I would like to explore this idea along different lines. I would like to suggest that the incredible amount of potential power gathered in the hands of bishops had to be checked by the secular power, and that exile was the most effective way to deal with politically threatening bishops. In order to support my argument, I will use, from the works of Gregory of Tours, the examples of bishops exiled by Merovingian kings: Quintien of Rodez, Praetextatus of Rouen, Nicetius of Trier, and Egidius of Reims. These cases will provide a basis to argue that exile, while less violent than other methods, was still a means of coercion.

Finally, a comparison with the cases of more violent methods of coercion used against the clergy will emphasize the mild character of this method of coercion. For rulers would usually exile bishops as a secular enforcement of an ecclesiastical sentence of deposition determined by a synod. Conversely, the cases of murder and torture of bishops or lesser clergymen would generally be instigated by others than the king: usurpers, queens through their agents or slaves, royal officials getting out of hands or other clergymen. This last point will show that Merovingian kings were particularly concerned with respecting the status of the bishops and displaying their Romanitas.