This year should prove to be a particularly frenetic one with a record number of conferences and conference papers.

Transcription

1 GEOFFREY DUNN 2006 At the end of 2006 the Australian Research Council announced that I would receive a five-year Australian Research Fellowship from 2007 to 2011, valued at $534,000, to work on a project entitled The Clash of the Sacred and Secular in the Letters of Innocent I. I aim to produce the first edition of the letters of this early fifth-century bishop of Rome since 1721, the first ever English translation of his letters, and a study of his pontificate, focussing on the interaction between church and state between 402 and 417, important years in the western Roman empire which saw Alaric capture Rome in 410, and on the relationship between the Roman bishop and his episcopal colleagues. Firstly, this study will chart a significant moment in the development of Christendom, a reality that existed for more than a millennium. In broader terms, the extent to which the religious views of one group should impact upon the national public policy and should be aligned with the values of the wider society is a topic of contemporary relevance in Australia and elsewhere. Secondly, this study will consider the rise of papal primacy, a topic of immense ecumenical importance among Christian denominations, by examining some of the earliest examples of papal decretals. This year should prove to be a particularly frenetic one with a record number of conferences and conference papers. After the annual Centre meeting in Brisbane on 2-3 February, from 4-8 February I attended the 28th conference of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies hosted by the University of Newcastle. I presented a paper entitled Easter and the Battle of Pollentia. It considered the impact of Christianity on the military and political affairs of the time just before Innocent became bishop of Rome. As always, this was a fruitful occasion of lively interaction with colleagues in the world of classics and ancient history. From 8-11 February I attended the conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Adelaide. Here I presented a paper entitled The Letter of Innocent I to Marcianus of Naissus. It is the third in a series of papers I have written on the relationship between Innocent and the bishops of Illyricum orientale. While Ep. 16 contains interesting information about the reordination of clergy involved in schism and heresy, what is of particular interest is the way in which Innocent continued to exercise patriarchal oversight through a papal vicariate centred on the bishop of Thessalonica for churches that politically had passed from the western to the eastern empire. It was a step in the direction of claims of papal primacy. While in Adelaide I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Messenger, the associate curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Art Gallery of South Australia to discuss the 1883 J.W. Waterhouse painting The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius, which deals with the aftermath of Alaric s capture of Rome, an extended episode in which we have evidence of Innocent being involved in the politics of the age. From 14 February to 4 March I was in Paris, working at the Bibliothèque nationale de France ( Richelieu building, Manuscrits occidentaux) checking the more than forty manuscripts that could be relevant to my current project but which were not catalogued thoroughly enough for me to know which of Innocent s letters may or may not be contained and on what folios. For me the highlight of this experience was to be able to examine Paris BnF, lat , the sixth-century manuscript that contains the Collectio Corbeiensis. Some flaws in the microfilm made physical inspection of the original necessary. To gaze upon copies of Innocent s letters made less than a century after he wrote them was quite a privilege.

2 This was, surprisingly, my first visit to France and so when I had finished in the library each day and on the weekends I went sightseeing. Not only did I spend a day in the Louvre and saw many of the sights Paris has to offer (including visits to the Basilicas of Notre-Dame de Paris and Saint-Denis, and Ste-Chapelle), but I managed to visited Chartres, Rheims, and Fontainebleau as well. Of course, one could not miss out on the palace of all palaces, and so the long-awaited visit to Versailles finally occurred, marred only by the fact that the Hall of Mirrors is undergoing its first restoration in over three hundred years. On Saturday 28 April I presented an invited lecture Augustine s Sermon on the Mammon on Iniquity at Tohoku Gakuin University in Sendai, Japan. I am grateful to Professor Takaaki Haraguchi, head of the Department of Christian Studies, for the invitation to speak at this public lecture and for the fine hospitality of the university, and to Associate Professor Miyako Demura, who provided a Japanese translation of my presentation. The Western Pacific Rim Patristics Society plans to hold in annual meeting for 2009 in Sendai and this was an excellent opportunity for some remote preparation. While in Japan I was able to meet in Tokyo with most of the team funded by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (Kazuhiko Demura, Shigeki Tsuchihashi, Satoshi Toda, and Jun Suzuki Miyako was preparing for me in Sendai), who are working on a project Joint Studies in the Perspectives on Poverty in an Era of Crisis: Testing Some Social Models of Early Christianity. Their joint study is with the Australian Research Council s funded project Poverty and Welfare in Late Antiquity, on which I worked in The paper in Sendai was one of the results of my involvement in that project. From 3 to 5 May I was at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome at the annual incontro. Here I presented a paper entitled The Anicii in Prudentius Contra Symmachum. While in Rome I consulted some manuscripts once again in the Vatican Library before it closes for refurbishment for several years. This trip to Rome was also my first opportunity to visit the Ara Pacis and the gardens of the Villa Medici. It was also the first time I visited Frascati. I was in Vienna from 15 to 22 May in what is becoming an annual event to meet with my colleague, Leena Mari Peltomaa, to discuss work on the International Early Mariology Project. Members of the team have two workshop sessions at the Oxford Patristics Conference in August. I also consulted several manuscripts related to my current project in the Österreichische NationalBibliothek. While in Vienna I did manage to slip away for a day to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, for some sightseeing. I managed to visit St. Michael s Gate, the Franciscan Church, the Primate s Palace, the Old Town Hall, Bratislava Castle, St. Martin s Cathedral, and finished the day at the Schokocafe Maximilian in the Main Square, although there is no photo of me having hot chocolate this time. After two days in London, in which I had my first visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum, it was off to the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon for the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies, as part of the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, from 26 to 28 May. Here I presented my fifth paper for the year: The Bonosan Crisis, the Illyrian Churches and the Development of Papal Primacy: The Letter of Innocent I to the Macedonian Bishops. I am grateful for the generous financial assistance provided by Professor Peter Wilson, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at ACU,

3 under the International Conference Travel Grants scheme, that made my visit to Sendai, Rome, and Saskatoon possible. CSPS in session in Saskatoon When I returned to Brisbane I discovered that my latest book, Cyprian and the Bishops of Rome: Questions of Papal Primacy in the Early Church, had been released. It is volume 11 of our own Early Christian Studies series and marks the culmination of my work between 2000 and 2002 on the ARC-funded project The Bishop as Letter-Writer: Pastoral Care and Civic Administration in Christian Antiquity. In it I argue that Cyprian s relationship with the five bishops of Rome who held the see between 249 and 258 needs to be discovered from what he did in practice, as revealed in his letters, rather than simply from De unitate. While Cyprian had a high regard for the church of Rome he did not believe that it had jurisdictional authority over the African churches and he was prepared to disagree with Roman bishops when he believed they were wrong. In this light, references to the chair of Peter in the treatise must not be understood as reference to the Roman church but to the place occupied by each bishop in their own church. I attended the inaugural international conference of the Australian Research Council Network for Early European Research, held at the University of Western Australia, Perth, from 3-8 July. The conference was entitled Networks, Communities, Continuities: Europe Together with Bronwen and Anne Scott, from the University of Western Australia, I was part of a session devoted to continuity and change in terminology and attitudes to poverty and welfare from pre-christian to late medieval times. I presented a paper entitled Early Christian Continuities and Discontinuities with regard to Wealth and Poverty in the Homilies of Augustine of Hippo. This was a further contribution of mine to the Centre s ARC-funded Poverty and Welfare in Late Antiquity project. This was my first visit to the west and as part of the conference I was able to take part in the excursion to the Benedictine monastery and town of New Norcia. I was invited by Jeff Bingham of Dallas Theological Seminary to part of a panel on Jews and Judaism in early Christian biblical interpretation at the Society of Biblical Literature international meeting in Vienna from 22 to 26 July. My paper was entitled The Sick and the Healthy: Tertullian s Interpretation of Luke 5: This was a fruitful session and I am grateful to Jeff for the invitation. This was my second visit to Vienna in 2007, so I decided to take the opportunity to spend two days visiting Salzburg to learn something of the history and culture of this charming city. From Vienna my next conference for 2007 was in Oxford. Between them I was able to spend just over a week in Prague. Here I was able to attend a performance of Mozart s Requiem one night and a performance of his Don Giovanni the next. The opera was in the Estates Theatre where the opera had premiered in this theatre in October 1787 and this production was a recreation of that premiere performance. I had a great seat in a box next to the central box in this intimate, spectacular theatre. It was moving to watch the conductor stand where Mozart himself had once stood to conduct the same music.

4 While in the Czech Republic I visited Konopiště Castle, the hunting lodge of Archduke Franz Ferdinand d Este, and Karlštejn Castle, built by the emperor Charles IV in the middle of the fourteenth century. Then it was on to Oxford for the 15th International Conference on Patristic Studies (my third), from 6 to 10 August. I presented two papers: a short communication entitled Poverty as a Social Issue in Augustine s Homilies, yet another contribution to the Centre s Poverty and Welfare in Late Antiquity project, and a workshop paper entitled The Functions of Mary in the Christmas Homilies of Augustine of Hippo, a contribution to the International Early Mariology Project. I chaired the two workshop sessions on early Mariology. These five papers complemented the Wednesday evening lecture on portrayals of the Theotokos in Greek homiletic literature by Pauline. As always Oxford was hectic and provided delightful if brief opportunities to catch up with so many friends and colleagues, as well as to discuss new plans and projects and catch up on the latest research results of others. I had the opportunity to meet a number of postgraduate students and scholars working on Tertullian and Cyprian. It was enlightening to hear their insights and a privilege to be able to share my own with them. On the Tuesday evening members of the Western Pacific Rim Patristics Society and some friends were able to gather in the King s Arms for a social evening. On Saturday, 11 August, Wendy and I visited Waddesdon Manor, the home of the English Rothschilds. From Oxford it was on to Cardiff for a joint research workshop day on the 13 th between members of our Centre (Silke, Wendy, Kazuhiko and myself) and members of the Centre for Late Antique Religion and Culture at Cardiff University. This was a most profitable day, not only for the opportunity to learn about the research of members of the Cardiff centre but to discover something about their centre itself. I presented a report The Letters of Innocent I outlining my current research interest. I am grateful to Dr. Nicholas Baker- Brian for organising the day together with Silke and to Dr. Josef Lössl, the Cardiff Centre s director, for his hospitality. A morning of sightseeing the next day with Kazuhiko, including Cardiff Castle, and a few days in London completed my third trip overseas this year. From 26 to 28 September I attended the fourth annual conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association at the University of Sydney. This year s theme was Conversion and Cultural Transformation. I presented a paper entitled Innocent I and the Transformation of the Illyrian Churches on the Question of Heretical Ordination.

5 From 8 to 10 November I was back in Rome to present my twelfth paper for the year. It was the international conference Chrysostomika II at the Patristics Institute, the Augustinianum, and the Pontifical Oriental Institute, to commemorate the 1600th anniversary of the death of John Chrysostom in 407. I was one of eighteen invited speakers, along with my colleague Wendy Mayer, and I presented a paper in response to Sergio Zincone s paper of John s relationship with political power, classical culture, the Jews, and social doctrine. The staff of the Augustinianum and the Oriental Institute are to be congratulated for such excellent planning and splendid hospitality. On 29 November I joined with other members of the Centre, the university, and those interested in early Christian studies in Australia to celebrate the decennalia of the Centre at a state reception hosted by the NSW Minister for Gaming, at which Brian Croke spoke. It was a nice moment to step back from the work and reflect on the past decade and to think ahead to the next.