"... From theological titans such as Ambrose and Chrysostom, to the humblest Egyptian bishops tabulating church revenues on shattered ceramics, Christian leaders always framed ecclesiastical clerks as sacralized servants of God in much the same fashion as John Lydus decked out Roman magistracies with a preternatural aura. Threats to the operation of the Church represented challenges to providence itself. An injury to the Church’s institutional body or to its administrators was an attack on Christ. And bishops and emperors were particularly keen to remind ecclesiastical administrators that any negligence or abuse in their office could subject them to penance, demotion, or excommunication. As Pope Gregory reminded his bureaucratic clerics who collected rents on church lands, “you will render an account (ratio) of your actions before the judgment of God.” When Gregory learned that one of his minions had forged documents to increase church revenues at the expense of the peasantry, he reminded the notary to recall “the oath and especially what sort of oath” that he had made “before the most sacred body of St. Peter the apostle.” Gregory forced the notarius to use the fraudulently gained money “to buy cows, sheep, and pigs, and to distribute them to all the poorer coloni,” adding a literal dimension to pastoral care.11 Slightly later, John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria asked chidingly of some work-shy ecclesiastical lawyers, “Are we not legally bound to take on the petitions of our fellow-servants with all care, remembering the words of our Lord, ‘With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you again’ (Matthew 7:2), and those of the prophet, ‘As thou hast done, so be it done unto thee!’” (Obadiah 1:15)? ..."