Emperors, Bishops, Art and Jurisprudence: The Transformation of Law in Eusebius of Caesarea

TY - JOUR

T1 - Emperors, Bishops, Art and Jurisprudence

T2 - The Transformation of Law in Eusebius of Caesarea

AU - Corke-Webster, James

PY - 2019/2

Y1 - 2019/2

N2 - This article analyses the collection and repurposing of legal documents in the early fourth century historical writings of Eusebius of Caesarea. Some of these individual documents have been the object of repeated study; others are largely neglected. But they are even more interesting, I suggest, when considered as a collective, as Eusebius’ careful editing reveals they were intended to be. This mobilisation of collated and embedded law was, I argue, the meeting of two separate wider trends that took off in this early fourth century watershed moment – the so-called late antique artistic aesthetic, and the gradually changing legal dynamic between government and governed. Eusebius used both as strategies to resist imperial dominance in the uncertain times in which he wrote. And by deliberately presenting the Christian elites of the church’s past as experts in both, he constructed an image of the bishop capable of going toe to toe with emperors. In doing so he anticipated the growing conflict between church and state in the centuries to come and the strategies it would employ.

AB - This article analyses the collection and repurposing of legal documents in the early fourth century historical writings of Eusebius of Caesarea. Some of these individual documents have been the object of repeated study; others are largely neglected. But they are even more interesting, I suggest, when considered as a collective, as Eusebius’ careful editing reveals they were intended to be. This mobilisation of collated and embedded law was, I argue, the meeting of two separate wider trends that took off in this early fourth century watershed moment – the so-called late antique artistic aesthetic, and the gradually changing legal dynamic between government and governed. Eusebius used both as strategies to resist imperial dominance in the uncertain times in which he wrote. And by deliberately presenting the Christian elites of the church’s past as experts in both, he constructed an image of the bishop capable of going toe to toe with emperors. In doing so he anticipated the growing conflict between church and state in the centuries to come and the strategies it would employ.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85060707649&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/emed.12312

DO - 10.1111/emed.12312

M3 - Article

SN - 0963-9462

VL - 27

SP - 12

EP - 34

JO - EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE

JF - EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE

IS - 1

ER -