Theodoret on the "School of Antioch": A Network Approach

Abstract

The School of Antioch has more often been treated as a doctrinal abstraction than a social entity. This study reinterprets the Antiochene phenomenon as a socio-doctrinal network, a group of clerics bound by a call and response of doctrinal language. Conciliar documents and the letters of Theodoret of Cyrrhus showcase this network in operation in the 430s and 440s. For earlier, formative decades, the network must be approached indirectly through historical narrative. In his Church History Theodoret narrates how one bishop-claimant (Meletius of Antioch) and his partisan following (featuring Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia) combined preaching, teaching, and ascetic associations to claim and organize Syrian bishoprics.While sometimes tendentious, Theodoret's narrative presentation finds external confirmation. It suggests that Antiochene doctrines coalesced in a specific social context, a germinating mix of clerical friendships and enmities, and that they developed as part of an intertwined socio-doctrinal dynamic.

Event-based Archaeological Registration Principles

“…The emergence of Greek identity, for example, has been interpreted in light of the relative strength of ties between mother cities and colonies collectively giving rise to a "Greek Wide Web" where geographical distance is seen to enforce the awareness of "sameness" (Malkin 2003). The potential of a networks approach for exploring textual sources is particularly clear in Giovanni Ruffini's social network analysis of individuals mentioned in the Oxyrhynchos papyri (Ruffini 2004;Ruffini 2008), Adam Schor's social network analysis of Syrian clergy mentioned in Theodoret's History (Schor 2007) and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller's complex network analysis of social dynamics in Byzantine times (Preiser-Kapeller 2011; Preiser-Kapeller working paper).…”