Folia Canonica 5. (2002)

STUDIES - Kenneth Pennington: Bishops and their Dioceses

STUDIES

FOLIA CANONICA 5 (2002) 7-17.

KENNETH PENNINGTON

BISHOPS AND THEIR DIOCESES*

Metaphors have defined the relationship of a bishop and his diocese since Apostolic times. From the earliest church a bishop was the head of a community, the pastor, the shepherd who cared for his flock. His relationship to that community was based on the recognition that his leadership was personal, caring, and mutual. The shepherd needs flock; the flock needs a shepherd. The bishop was the pastor of his community, the shepherd of the flock who defended them from the wolves of the community and from the dangers of the outside world. His relationship to his church was matrimonial - he was married to his church. This metaphor emphasized the bishop’s commitment to his church and his life-long obligation to it. The bishop, his church, and his flock were also part of a larger institution, the congregratio fidelium, the ecclesia Catholica, and the ecclesia universalis. In large part the constitutional position of the bishop in his diocese is the story of the clash of these metaphors.* 1

Like every geographical space, a bishop’s diocese can be thought of as an imagined place, shaped more by the human mind than by geological formations. When the place’s boundaries are traced on paper to create a map, a place gains substance, solidity, and permanence that it never had in the past. If we look back to the origins of dioceses through the prism of historical experience, we can begin by seeing the diocese as being a territorial unit inherited from the Roman empire. In the early church a bishop was associated with his civitas and the pagus that surrounded the civitas. As the church’s constitution became Romanized, the civitas and the pagus were transformed into a diocese. In their origins dioceses were Roman but were shaped and formed by local conditions in many non-Roman parts of Europe. This was a long, slow, and diverse process. In Italy

‘Conference held at the International Congress on “Territoriality and Personality in Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Law - Canon Law Faces the Third Millennium” (Budapest September 2-7, 2001).

1 See a general discussion and bibliography see J. Gaudemet, Le gouvernement de l’Église a l'époque classique: Le gouvernement local (Histoire du droit et des Institutions de l’Église en Occident 8.2), Paris 1979. For a survey of the status of the bishop in the early church with bibliography, see K. Pennington - U. Hergemöller, Bischof, Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 2, München 1981, 228-236; K. Pennington, Bistum, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 2, München 1981, 251-253