Abstract
The paper presents a case study for the handling and archiving of documents and acts related to church councils during Late Antiquity. At a sequence of interrelated events-both before assemblies of bishops and in meetings convened by imperial officials-in the run-up to the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) a wide range of documents was examined and utilised. Administrators of church and empire and their staff paid meticulous attention to the characteristic features of textual objects before them and inferred their validity, provenance and previous handling. The terminologies for such documents and acts employed by these ancient practitioners also reflect careful consideration of their status. The paper shows how observation of divergent textual formality and retrieval from different sources combined to reveal different ‘loci’ and modes of authority, and detects a range of administrative practices underlying their use.
