Lay patronage of the late antique Roman church presents us with something of an oddity. In the fourth and fifth centuries the Roman church was preparing itself to become one of the most powerful and richest dioceses in the western Roman empire, while in its midst resided the proud members of an extremely wealthy senatorial aristocracy, who were slowly, but inevitably, converting to Christianity. The assumption of interdependency between the two phenomena suggests itself. Yet, for most of the period we have little evidence of where the Roman church got its money from and how far the senatorial aristocracy were involved. In fact, altogether we know of only twelve fairly securely attested interventions by Roman aristocrats on behalf of Roman churches for the fourth and the fifth centuries from the epigraphic and literary evidence.

Yet, there is one particular type of church foundation in the city of Rome that is often and extensively cited not only to show the involvement of the Roman aristocracy in this matter, but also to provide insight into the legal details of their patronage. In a famous subscription list at a synod held in Rome in 499 the Roman presbyters appear as attached to twenty-nine churches distinguished by the term titulus and a personal name in the genitive (for example titulus Caeciliae). It is usually assumed that these personal names were for the most part the original founders’ names.