6 III: Mar Marcos (Universidad de Cantabria) Ecclesiastical Rivalries and Urban Violence in Late Antique Rome: Evidence from Canonical Collections

The city of Rome was always tumultuous. In Late Antiquity, ecclesiastical tensions compounded the existing social and economic factors, leading to several outbreaks of violence, sparsely documented in literary sources. Most urban riots were orchestrated, instigated, or manipulated by Rome’s political and social elites. In the Christian Empire, bishops—often part of the same elite—added to the complexity of these events.Without a police force in the modern sense, maintaining public order in the city depended on urban officials, particularly the praefectus urbi, who worked, sometimes contentiously, with the vicarius urbis Romae.

This paper examines the management of street violence in fourth- and fifth-century Rome caused by ecclesiastical rivalries, drawing on exceptional documentation preserved in two canonical collections: the Collectio Avellana and the Collectio Quesnelliana, both compiled in Rome during the late fifht and the sixth century. In addition to canons, these collections include imperial, senatorial, and papal letters not found in other sources. The study focuses on three dossiers of documents originally from the prefect’s office, which provide insights into the mechanisms of law production and communication, as well as the control of violence in Rome.