 About This BishopRegnal dates: UnknownRegnal length: Unknown Profession before consecration: Unknown Father: Unknown Birth place: Unknown Burial place: With Sixtus, his predecessor, in the church of St. Sixtus & Sinicius. Distinctive features: Unknown Key players: St. Peter, St. Sixtus, Divitian | Episcopal StatsMiracles performed: Vaguely described. The holiness of the two men together was illustrated by miracles and by the growth of offerings to Reims and the church in which Sts. Sixtus and Sinicius were buried.Dead revived: Unknown People converted: Unknown Priests ordained: Unknown, but Flodoard is specific about the fact that there was a congregation of priests (sometimes as many as 10) in those days, as opposed to the present when the church had diminished and there were only a few. Precious objects donated: Unknown Churches built: Unknown Martyred: Sinicius himself wasn't martyred, but there is mention that the holiness of the church of Reims was bolstered not only by Sixtus and Sinicius but also by a number of martyrs from the time of Nero, during which Sixtus and Sinicius were purported to have lived. |
Sinicius, like Sixtus before him, had a personal relationship with St. Peter, a relationship which served to strengthen the church of Reims. Yet Sinicius’ ties to his predecessors’ authority don’t end there. Flodoard adds a description of Sicinius that is key to understanding the relationship between each successive bishop in a see. As a result of “working zealously to save souls and decisively fighting the good fight, [Sicinius] deserved to be associated with his predecessor in heaven as well as on earth.”[1] That is, Sinicius’ deeds earned him the right to be associated with Sixtus, Sixtus’ deeds on earth, and Sixtus’ spiritual ascendancy.[2]
This tie between Sixtus and Sinicius, and Flodoard’s reference to episcopal predecessors as a yardstick by which the current bishop was measured, emphasizes the duality of a sitting bishop’s authority. Both the office and the person were important: the former for its historical precedent, the latter for his his individual behavioral patterns and personal relationships with other authority figures. Upon consecration of a bishop, the official and personal elements fused, imbuing the individual person of an archbishop with the full authority inherent in–and inherited from–the office and the men who held it previously. In Sinicius’ case, his individual conduct and its resulting authority rendered him worthy of the authority of the episcopal seat itself.
The presentation of this fusion of personal and official authority so early in Flodoard’s gesta nicely sets the stage for an ongoing augmentation of the authority of Reims’ episcopal seat via the actions of the individual men who held the seat. In turn, we can explain the appearance of episcopal gesta across a broad expanse of time and space in medieval Europe because only by recording episcopal deeds in serial form can bishops call on the full accretion of power as we see it in the life of Sinicius.
Works cited: Historia Remensis Ecclesiae; Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition; Maureen Miller, The Bishop’s Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy.
FOOTNOTES
1. Historia Remensis Ecclesiae I.III. “Ubi pro animarum salute fideliter elaborans, bonumque certamen decertans, cum decessore, ut in coelis, ita etiam meruit in terris habere consortium….”↑
2. Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, 6-10; Maureen Miller, The Bishop’s Palace, 50.↑