types caused some consternation for the established Church. Ascetics disrupted traditional social hierarchies. They were in most cases pious laypeople, not ordained priests. They did not fall under the jurisdiction of bishops, and could often drain authority and charitable funds from “official” representatives of the Church. At the Council of Chalcedon, held in Byzantium in 451, there was an attempt to force monks to live in monasteries and quit wandering, but this had little long-lasting effect.9 For one thing it was practically very difficult to police individual piety. And for another, global cultural networks in the early Middle Ages were already wide and strong enough to mean that
Powers and Thrones
Dan Jones