I promised to report back, so here it is! Of course, I 've pursued this
question myopically, looking to Orosius only. Nevertheless, I hope to
expand my search throughout the summer.
The most helpful source to my immediate purposes was Benoit Lacroix,
_Orose et ses idees_ (Montreal and Paris, 1965), esp. pp. 145-55.
[Please forgive the lack of accents.] Lacroix notes that the expanse of
Rome and the Augustan peace served the diffusion of Christian doctrine.
He writes, "Nous croisons ici un theme important de la pensee
patristique: la vocation messianique de Rome se poursuit dans son oeuvre
d'evangelisation: Dieu a voulu que Rome demure comme il a voulu
l'Eglise, en vue d'une diffusion plus rapide et plus efficace de la
doctrine du Christ." Thus Orosius, V, ii: "Unus Deus qui temporibus
quibus ipse innotescere voluit hanc regni unitatem ab omnibus et
diligetur et timetur."
Consequently, "la bonheur et le malheur de Rome ont dependu du
l'attitude qu'elle a prise à l'egard de l'Eglise du Christ." In other
words Christ's citizenship was a necessary step in the transmission of
His message. With the foundation of the Church, though, that citizenship
seems to have somehow transferred to the Church. It doesn't seem to have
defined the corporeal Christ, sustaining a duality that Kantorowicz
argued was the general case in medieval kingship. This seems to be the
case if only because the attitude of secular rulers towards the Church
is considered the measure of their temporal success, irrespective of
their nationality or ethnicity. Consequently, Barbarian kingdoms will
flourish when their populations are true to Christian doctrine, and will
suffer when they are not (as Gildas, Bede, AElfric, and Wulfstan
declare, ultimately following Jeremiah and Augustine).
But to those who noted the Byzantine appropriation of Christ to its
cultural models, I was led to consider Byzantine and Roman attitudes
towards the Church as distinct by Peter Brown's La societe et le sacre
dans l'Antiquite tardive (sorry, I only have the French trans.). There,
he refines Pirenne's thesis on the homogeneity of Mediterranean culture,
arguing that the relationship between Church and society in Rome was
relatively separate compared to Eastern attempts to obtain unanimity
between the two (125). Consequently, I confine my own observations to
late antique culture in Rome and to the Barbarian ethno-states that
inherited its dominion.
I hope this is of some interest. I am very grateful for everyone's
extremely helpful suggestions.
Steve Harris
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