How Comfortable Were the Travels of Bishops in Antiquity?

Abstract

On the evidence of Greek ecclesiastical historians from the 4th and early 5th centuries, the Alexandrian bishop Athanasius, and the laws collected in the codex of Theodosius, the paper illustrates the travel of bishops in late antiquity. The manner of their travelling attests not only to the options available to travellers at the time but also to the role played by the Church. Ever since Constantine the Great, the activities of church and state had been increasingly intertwined. As a result, much of the information in the texts selected for this study reveals the emperors’ influence on bishops’ journeys. Presumably eager to speed up the solution of emerging problems, emperors made bishops’ journeys viable, easier and faster by allowing them to travel by state post. The paper focuses on three aspects of bishops’ travels: in what cases they were allowed to use the post, how this option affected their travels, and their own opinion of the conditions in which they travelled.