EXILES AND EXPULSIONS FACILITATING THE SPREAD OF NON-CHALCEDONIAN ECCLESIAL DOMINION: UNPLANNED MOBILITY OF NON-CHALCEDONIAN ORTHODOXY

The leitmotif of the exiled legitimate cleric was more than rhetoric in the Egyptian non-Chalcedonian polemics of the fifth-through-eighth centuries.  This paper analyzes exile and expulsion of non-Chalcedonian leaders as a trope in hagiographies, as well as a galvanizing factor in connecting various Egyptian localities through epistolary correspondence with non-Chalcedonian leaders in exile.  The analysis accounts for expulsions appearing in Christian non-Chalcedonian hagiographical texts (such as Makarius of Tkow, Daniel of Scetis, and Samuel of Kalamoun); and in the letters of Pope Timothy II Aelurus (d.477), written in exile to the faithful in Egypt. The paper discusses the ironies of exilic displacement, showing how: 1) it was subverted, transformed into a credential of authentic authority, and 2) it served to make non-Chalcedonian orthodoxy unexpectedly mobile.  This paper draws significantly on the unpublished files of David W. Johnson, S.J. (†2011), who serves posthumously as a co-author.