What did becoming a bishop mean in practice? By the time of Augustine, the bishopric had been established as an official office in the Roman Empire, following the conversion of Constantine. The role of bishop had thus developed greatly from the earliest days of Christianity. It had grown from being just a local leader of a group of local Christians to a leader of an entire community, with roles in both spiritual and secular matters. The development of the role of bishop had meant that the job was of vital importance by Augustine�s time. Cyprian was perhaps the archetypal bishop in Africa previous to Augustine. He lived in an Empire that was hostile to Christianity and instituted persecutions against the Christians. He provides a useful comparison to Augustine as he was a bishop in Africa under different circumstances to him and had a very different role to play, but with a lot of similarities. This is useful to show how the role of a bishop progressed. The most visual difference between the role of Cyprian as a bishop and that of Augustine as a bishop was that Cyprian was always under the threat of execution for his beliefs, whereas Augustine was safe from official persecution and under very little actual threat of death. One chief social duty of Cyprian as a bishop was to lead fellow Christians in prayer when his congregation were a persecuted minority and with the spectre of persecution and other such punishments perpetually looming. Augustine still had to perform this function, but the emphasis on being the persecuted minority was diminished. Augustine�s congregation was still a minority in Africa due to the pre-eminence of the Donatist sect in Roman Africa. This was one of the central features of Augustine�s career. Cyprian�s congregation was in the minority against pagan, state religions as opposed to a sect of Christianity. The conversion of the Roman Empire made a fundamental difference in the position of bishop. It was not totally beneficial in the eyes of those who would be bishop. Not only was the role now legitimate, the Empire had some control over the bishopric. The power of the Empire was far reaching now over the bishops. The Emperor would appoint loyal bishops to positions over and above the choice of the local churches. This could be done to avoid controversy, impose order or just to enforce the Emperor�s will. The imperative of the bishops was also to not offend Imperial sensibilities to too great a degree. This was the case pre-conversion, but the bishop�s position was now directly susceptible to the imperial power structure. Converse to this was the fact that the bishops now had more influence over the Empire than previous. Ambrose famously punished an Emperor with ex-communication for sanctioning mass executions. It was the start of the age of Christendom. Bishops now had an influence in local affairs, in some cases as much as the local governor did or the pro-consul. They were community leaders for the whole community. It was an office of status, both spiritually and in a secular sense. A bishop had to preach to his local congregation. This was the day to day function of the clergy as it still is today. Augustine was no exception and many of his sermons remain written down today. Van der Meer describes Augustine�s style of preaching as from the heart and full of brilliance. He also quotes Paulins of Nola as saying that �the trumpet of the Lord blows through Augustine�s mouth�. He was widely regarded as a gifted orator. He had a quiet voice, to which he himself made many references in his sermons. He was a preacher who chose to preach in a popular style. This was not a practice followed by all Christian preachers. Many were often long-winded and tiresome, full of words and ideas too elaborate for the common, uneducated man. McDougall describes his sermons thus: �He was assiduous in preaching to them, and many of his sermons have been preserved; doctrinal, as the utterance of so keen an intellect could not fail to be; short for they were standing and he sitting; practical for he well understood every feature of their lives.� (p.79) He was often criticised by opponents, such as those in the Donatist controversy for being too simplistic and pandering too much to his audience. There were many variations in the styles of various bishops, and not only in preaching. The functions of a bishop were performed in different priorities by different bishops. Augustine was a bishop with monastic tendencies. He was a great advocate for the idea of a monastic community of Christians. He did not feel that solitude was the appropriate course of action for a Christian. Being one of the leading early theologians, Augustine was very influential on the task of being a bishop. He was very keen on asceticism. He founded monasteries before he became a bishop, his first in 388 in the house of his parents in Tagaste. He retained monkish tendencies throughout his career. Monasticism was not held in such high regard in Africa as it was in the Roman East where it had originated. They were seen as unusual and not fitting in to the normal scheme of things. The ascetic ideal, which Augustine followed, was not entirely unusual for bishops in this day, but he was much the innovator in a lot of his theology. The process of becoming a bishop was unusual in Augustine�s case. He was a monk of some renown in Roman Africa. He was well known for being a great thinker and a talented orator. He was of great education and a local celebrity. When he visited Hippo in 390, he was constrained by the bishop Valerius to accept ordination (McDougall, p.76). According to Augustine, he was taken by surprise by this turn of events, and it was almost forced upon him. It only took four years for him to become a bishop. This he also did with reluctance, even more so than his initial ordination. He was consecrated in 395 as the colleague of Valerius. Eventually he succeeded him. The initial ordination was the unusual part, as he was chosen to against his will. The majority of priests would have striven to earn this role and been glad to accept the chance. This was because it was a vocation of some distinction and status. To become a bishop was an even greater honour and reluctance to accept this post would have been almost unheard of. The consecration of a bishop was a life-changing moment. The person became a man of some power and was a local leader. History has been a perpetual battle for Christianity to fight heresies. This ranged from the Gnostics in the earliest days of Christianity, to the Reformation, which allowed many variations of Christianity to flourish. Augustine�s time was no different. It was the job of bishops to challenge heresies and stop their communities from turning away from the catholic Christianity and to turn those heretics back to the catholic faith. Augustine strove in the utmost to perform this function. In Augustine�s case, the particular heretics were the Donatists. They were a sect that only had any real success in Africa, but they were in the majority in this province. A dominant theme in the surviving writings of him is Augustine�s correspondence was with Donatist bishops in an attempt to end this heresy. Another heresy that he challenged was Manichaeism with which he had become involved early in his Christian life. Cyprian�s theology was still prevalent in Africa by Augustine�s time. Councils were a crucial part of a bishop�s commitments in Augustine�s time. In Cyprian�s time these had not been sanctioned by the Empire. This had changed with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. He had convened the Council of Nicea. This council was very significant because of this. The council was very much under the auspices of Constantine and he had some influence over the outcome of the decisions of the council. This mixture of influence between secular and spiritual authorities was to continue at least until the present day. Augustine himself participated in many councils. This was a necessary function that bishops had to perform. The structure of the institution, whilst gaining shape was still very much in its infancy and such councils were not yet a regular occurrence, more called for individual needs and situations. As bishop in Hippo, and a prominent local figure in his own right, Augustine was called upon to convene councils in Africa to deal with his own problems. These called for accord to be reached between bishops and for a unanimous stance to be reached. As in the case of the council of Nicea, Imperial influence was never far out of mind at such events. It was the job of the bishops to reach agreement without offending political sensibilities. This was a difficult task even for Augustine. Councils were not attended by all the bishops in a region, mainly for logistical reasons, but it was the responsibility of bishops at the very least to enforce the edicts of these councils. A bishop was a part of a chain of command structure within the institution of the church. The local leaders of individual congregations were the priests. The local bishop led these. The official ranks of bishops, cardinals, etc. had not yet been fully developed, and as other bishops in the more central urban areas led such bishops generally. This was Augustine�s role. As bishop of Hippo, he was the bishop of one of the main centres of population in the province of Africa, second only to Carthage. Such was Augustine�s pre-eminence as a scholar and a theologian that he was the leading clergyman in this region. By this stage, Rome had been established as the centre of the church, and though the term Pope was coming into usage even in Cyprian�s time, the leader of the church was the bishop at Rome. A bishop was to participate in this chain of command in order to combat heresy and other problems, but there was room for discussion as can be seen by Augustine�s regular correspondence with other church leaders. Cyprian had helped establish the system of church order in Africa. Walker compares it to the stricture of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. He says that: �Some Scottish parishes are at as large as was Augustine�s flock at Hippo� (p.35). In conclusion, the role of a bishop was one of both civic and spiritual leader. They were to participate in the life of the community, a fact that Augustine was particularly keen on. They had the role of leading their local clergy in theological issues as well as political issues. They had to participate in councils, which were the central breeding ground for theological developments and control for Christianity in this time. They had to combat heresies such as Donatism and Arianism. With the general low educational standards in the Roman Empire, particularly in the West, the church�s role included that of education. The bishop had to be fully involved in this role of the church as well. The more intellectually able and deepest thinkers of the bishops corresponded with each other with regularity and this is how much of the evidence of the church from this period survives. There was also the interplay of Imperial and church authorities to always be considered. Bibliography St. Augustine by Eleanor McDougall, (1929); Student Christian movement press. The Churchmanship of St. Cyprian by G.S.M. Walker, (1968); Lutterworth Press. Augustine the Bishop by F. Van der Meer, (1961); Sheed and Ward.
