The Servant of the Servants of God’: Imaging Primatial Authority and Power in Late Antiquity

The evocative title "servant of the servants of God", first employed as a papal title by Gregory the Great (590-604), invites consideration of the rich and diverse means of constructing and representing primatial authority in the late antique church.  In this paper I will argue that this title is an excellent example of a broad tendency in late antiquity to theorize power primarily in terms of internalized narratives of moral, spiritual and literary pedagogy – and not constitutional definitions or restraints.  However, this strangely informal fashioning of authority and power often frustrates the formalist and positivist expectations of modern canon lawyers.