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Including both traditional and underrepresented accounts and geographies of soul, body, gender, and sexuality in late antique history, philosophy, and theology, this volume offers substantial re-readings of these and related concepts through theories of dis/embodiment. Bringing together gender studies, late antique philosophy, patristics, history of asceticism, and history of Indian philosophy, this interdisciplinary volume examines the notions of dis/embodiment and im/materiality in late antique and early Christian culture and thought. The book’s geographical scope extends beyond the ancient Mediterranean, providing comparative perspectives from Late Antiquity in the Near East and South A...
Do the terms ?pagan? and ?Christian,? ?transition from paganism to Christianity? still hold as explanatory devices to apply to the political, religious and cultural transformation experienced Empire-wise? Revisiting ?pagans? and ?Christians? in Late Antiquity has been a fertile site of scholarship in recent years: the paradigm shift in the interpretation of the relations between ?pagans? and ?Christians? replaced the old ?conflict model? with a subtler, complex approach and triggered the upsurge of new explanatory models such as multiculturalism, cohabitation, cooperation, identity, or group cohesion. This collection of essays, inscribes itself into the revisionist discussion of pagan-Christ...
Christians have often admired and venerated the martyrs who died for their faith, but for a long time thought that the bodies of martyrs should remain undisturbed in their graves. Initially, the Christian attitude towards the bones of the dead, saint or not, was that of respectful distance. The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics examines how this attitude changed in the mid-fourth century. Robert Wi'niewski investigates how Christians began to believe in the power of relics, first over demons, then over physical diseases and enemies. He considers how the faithful sought to reveal hidden knowledge at the tombs of saints and why they buried the dead close to them. An essential element of this ne...
Melania the Younger: From Rome to Jerusalem explores the richly detailed story of Melania, an early fifth-century Roman Christian aristocrat who renounced her staggering wealth to lead a life of ascetic renunciation. Hers is a tale of "riches to rags." Born to high Roman aristocracy in the late fourth century, Melania encountered numerous difficulties posed by family members, Roman officials, and historical circumstances in disposing of her wealth, property (spread across at least eight Roman provinces), and thousands of slaves. Leaving Rome with her entourage a few years before Alaric the Goth's sack of Rome in 410, she journeyed to Sicily, then to North Africa, finally settling in Jerusale...
A new look at the Cult of the Saints in late antiquity: did it really dominate Christianity in late antique Rome?
The Romans who established their rule on three continents and the Europeans who first established new homes in North America interacted with communities of Indigenous peoples with their own histories and cultures. Sweeping in its scope and rigorous in its scholarship, Empires and Indigenous Peoples expands our understanding of their historical parallels and raises general questions about the nature of the various imperial encounters. In this book, leading scholars of ancient Roman and early anglophone North America examine the mutual perceptions of the Indigenous and the imperial actors. They investigate the rhetoric of civilization and barbarism and its expression in military policies. Indi...
Examines the three key markers of sanctity – cult, hagiography, feast day – together for the first time / The first book to explore an ‘unsuccessful’ saint in detail / Investigates the texts in all the languages in which they were written: Latin, Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Georgian, and Armenian / Includes original research of hagiographical manuscripts
At various times over the past millennium bishops of Rome have claimed a universal primacy of jurisdiction over all Christians and a superiority over civil authority. Reactions to these claims have shaped the modern world profoundly. Did the Roman bishop make such claims in the millennium prior to that? The essays in this volume from international experts in the field examine the bishop of Rome in late antiquity from the time of Constantine at the start of the fourth century to the death of Gregory the Great at the beginning of the seventh. These were important periods as Christianity underwent enormous transformation in a time of change. The essays concentrate on how the holders of the office perceived and exercised their episcopal responsibilities and prerogatives within the city or in relation to both civic administration and other churches in other areas, particularly as revealed through the surviving correspondence. With several of the contributors examining the same evidence from different perspectives, this volume canvasses a wide range of opinions about the nature of papal power in the world of late antiquity.
Through a unique blend of the personal and historiographical, Charity after Augustine explores why the Augustinian tradition's attempts to build solidarity or social cohesion in the societies of the Latin West have ended in disaster just as often as they have brought about justice. The conceit at the heart of the book is that the concrete practices of love or charity—almsgiving, works of mercy, good works—can tell us much about how religious leaders attempted to bind and hold communities together while also, in fits and starts with some startling reversions, attempting to expand and include others in a given community. The first part probes Augustine's understanding of how love is put in...
This book does not claim absolute truths, but it speaks for those who can no longer speak for themselves by the histories they witnessed, wrote about, and which defined their ancestors and descendants, including the most powerful woman that ever lived – Countess Elizabeth Bathory. She tried to change the world; she paradoxically succeeded and failed. But what drove her? What did she know, we do not? What is her history? To begin to understand all this, one must travel back in time to when it began, when truth first became obscured, and when European society – Western culture - went horribly wrong. It is why her world was the way it was. Today, historiological “truths” of European Med...