Administrer la propriété de l’Église : l’évêque comme clerc et comme entrepreneur

This paper discusses the economic role(s) of bishops under the later Roman Empire. Its aim, on the one hand, is to examine whether the dual function of bishops, at the same time clerics and managers of Church property, has an impact on their economic behaviour and leads to the emergence of an ecclesiastical economy which can be distinguished from the rest of the late Roman economy. On the other hand the paper also explores the impact economic activity and the integration into a wider imperial economy have on the clerics themselves, i.e. whether in the face of the Church becoming increasingly mainstream in the 4th century, its clerics can potentially develop – and maintain – a different and original socio-economic stance. The approach chosen to answer these questions is part empirical, part modelising. We are going to reexamine and if necessary reinterpret some already well-known material, but the main interest of the present discussion is to modelise the compatibility of various options of ecclesiastical economic behaviour with, on the one hand, the known development of the church organisation and, on the other hand, the make-up and development of the imperial economy and society in general. Three interlocking arguments are being developed: in the first instance we are going to show that with the various constraints – legal and pragmatic – imposed on the economic strategies of bishops, an ecclesiastical economy tending towards a slow accumulation of capital is the most likely outcome. Spectacular charity or personal enrichment on the basis of the revenue derived from a Church’s institutional property are not immensely plausible. In a second argument we are going to demonstrate that the recruitment of clerics from the economic elites both depends on and conditions economic behaviour by bishops broadly in line with the economic behaviour of other elite classes. The key element here being patronage exercised by bishops on the basis of the double fudge of, on the one hand, the theoretical distinction between the institutional and the personal property of a bishop and, on the other hand, the a priori impossible distinction between economic and charismatic prestige. In the third and final argument we are going to show that there is not only a strong empirical indication that bishops use the same economic strategies as other large landowners, but that for reasons of coherence and plausibility – and consumption patterns! – the “ecclesiastical” economy of late Roman bishops can neither be very original nor very differing in performance from the rest of the late Roman economy.