Bronwen Neil
Bronwen Neil is professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She works on western and eastern history from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
Address: Dept of Ancient History
AHH Level 2
Macquarie University
NSW 2109
Address: Dept of Ancient History
AHH Level 2
Macquarie University
NSW 2109
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of Christian bishops. Attributing a work to a known authority was a means of
making sure that people read the work and circulated it. If it was in a good cause,
such as the promulgation of the faith, or later of orthodox Christian doctrine, the
end was seen to justify the means. This chapter gives a survey of forgery in the
New Testament canon, in episcopal letter collections, and in other Christian texts
in which forged letters were embedded, such as the acts of councils. Forgeries and
falsely attributed letters abounded in Late Antiquity, following the example of the
New Testament canon of deutero-Pauline letters and earlier classical examples.
Even within intellectual circles, such as those of Christian bishops, this was a
respected practice. Just as pseudepigraphy was practiced by followers of the gospel-
writer John and the apostle Paul, among others, to promote the faith in the
earliest Christian communities, in later centuries it was used to promulgate orthodoxy.
I seek to illustrate late antique attitudes to forgery by surveying their origins
in the New Testament, and the reasons for the embedding of forged letters in the
apocryphal writings of early Christianity. I trace the continuation of the practice
by those who made collections of episcopal letters in Late Antiquity. Finally, I
show the usefulness of pseudepigraphy and forgery during the ecumenical councils,
where forged and misattributed letters regularly served as proof-texts and
were included in council acts.
of Christian bishops. Attributing a work to a known authority was a means of
making sure that people read the work and circulated it. If it was in a good cause,
such as the promulgation of the faith, or later of orthodox Christian doctrine, the
end was seen to justify the means. This chapter gives a survey of forgery in the
New Testament canon, in episcopal letter collections, and in other Christian texts
in which forged letters were embedded, such as the acts of councils. Forgeries and
falsely attributed letters abounded in Late Antiquity, following the example of the
New Testament canon of deutero-Pauline letters and earlier classical examples.
Even within intellectual circles, such as those of Christian bishops, this was a
respected practice. Just as pseudepigraphy was practiced by followers of the gospel-
writer John and the apostle Paul, among others, to promote the faith in the
earliest Christian communities, in later centuries it was used to promulgate orthodoxy.
I seek to illustrate late antique attitudes to forgery by surveying their origins
in the New Testament, and the reasons for the embedding of forged letters in the
apocryphal writings of early Christianity. I trace the continuation of the practice
by those who made collections of episcopal letters in Late Antiquity. Finally, I
show the usefulness of pseudepigraphy and forgery during the ecumenical councils,
where forged and misattributed letters regularly served as proof-texts and
were included in council acts.
of Italian bishops over time, from 250 to 490. If we focused solely on the bishop of Rome, we would see only a slow process of decline from the end of the fifth century onwards. However, the waning of Roman episcopal power under Ostrogothic and later eastern Roman rule allowed other bishops to flourish. This is evident from the simple fact that the see of Ravenna had its own Liber pontificalis from the early ninth
century, which reached right back to the first century. Meanwhile, the Roman Liber pontificalis, composed in the early sixth century, suffered from major gaps in its record due to loss of documentation. The history of Italian episcopal power in this period has to be reconstructed carefully, considering the omissions and silences just as much as the rhetoric of Roman triumphalism, and without letting the eventual success of the medieval papacy persuade us that such success was inevitable. After the 250 years we have examined here, the triumph of Roman episcopal power in the Middle Ages was anything but assured.