ABSTRACT
ON a page of his Etudes Historiques,1 Chateaubriand has given in forcible language the r6le of a Bishop in the IVth century: "There is nothing more complete or well filled than the life of the prelates of the IVth and Vth centuries. A Bishop baptised, acted as confessor, preached, prescribed private and public penances, issued anathemas and lifted excommunications, visited the sick, ministered to the dying, buried the dead, ransomed captives, gave relief to the poor, the widows and orphans, founded hospitals and lazar-houses, administered the goods of his clergy, adjudicated as a Justice of the Peace in private suits and arbitrated on the quarrels between different cities. At the same time he published treatises on moral, discipline, and theology, wrote against heresiarchs and philosophers, interested himself in science and history, dictated letters to people who consulted him on one or other religion, corresponded with Churches and Bishops, monks and hermits, sat in Councils and Synods, was called in by Emperors to advise them, was charged with the arrangement of affairs, and despatched to usurpers and barbarian princes to disarm or restrain them: three powersreligious, political, and philosophical-were concentrated in the Bishop."
