Means of Christian Conversion in Late Antiquity
Means of Christian Conversion in Late Antiquity

Author: Klára Dolezalová

Publisher:

Published: 2022-02-03

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9788021099791

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This volume presents the proceedings of the conference Materiality and Conversion: The Role of Material and Visual Cultures in the Christianization of the Latin West organized by the Centre for Early Medieval Studies in 2020. Its contributions thus focus on the Christianization of the Roman Empire between the fourth and sixth centuries. The studies examine the religious change through the "material turn" approach, building on the material and sensorial dimension of Christian conversion and especially the baptismal rite as one of the key components of the process. The material and visual cultures are regarded as vectors and witnesses of conversion to Christianity, while human body is viewed as one of the agents in ritual actions. The volume covers a wide range of topics, including the prebaptismal purification, the moment of immersion in the baptismal font, the postbaptismal alteration of perception, as well as the continuous changes in funeral forms. As such, the papers attempt to shed more light on the role of materiality in the complex and rapid conversion to Christianity in Late Antique West.

Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity
Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity

Author: Jeremy M. Schott

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2013-04-23

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0812203461

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In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire. Schott focuses on the works of the Platonist philosopher and anti- Christian polemicist Porphyry of Tyre and his Christian respondents: the Latin rhetorician Lactantius, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the emperor Constantine. Previous scholarship has tended to narrate the Christianization of the empire in terms of a new religion's penetration and conquest of classical culture and society. The present work, in contrast, seeks to suspend the static, essentializing conceptualizations of religious identity that lie behind many studies of social and political change in late antiquity in order to investigate the processes through which Christian and pagan identities were constructed. Drawing on the insights of postcolonial discourse analysis, Schott argues that the production of Christian identity and, in turn, the construction of a Christian imperial discourse were intimately and inseparably linked to the broader politics of Roman imperialism.

Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity
Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity

Author: Dirk Rohmann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-07-25

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 3110486075

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It is estimated that only a small fraction, less than 1 per cent, of ancient literature has survived to the present day. The role of Christian authorities in the active suppression and destruction of books in Late Antiquity has received surprisingly little sustained consideration by academics. In an approach that presents evidence for the role played by Christian institutions, writers and saints, this book analyses a broad range of literary and legal sources, some of which have hitherto been little studied. Paying special attention to the problem of which genres and book types were likely to be targeted, the author argues that in addition to heretical, magical, astrological and anti-Christian books, other less obviously subversive categories of literature were also vulnerable to destruction, censorship or suppression through prohibition of the copying of manuscripts. These include texts from materialistic philosophical traditions, texts which were to become the basis for modern philosophy and science. This book examines how Christian authorities, theologians and ideologues suppressed ancient texts and associated ideas at a time of fundamental transformation in the late classical world.

Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Author: Kenneth Mills

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9781580461252

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A re-examination of the social processes behind religious conversions in the Ancient and Early Middle Ages. This volume explores religious conversion in late antique and early medieval Europe at a time when the utility of the concept is vigorously debated. Though conversion was commonly represented by ancient and early medieval writersas singular and personally momentous mental events, contributors to this volume find gradual and incomplete social processes lurking behind their words. A mixture of examples and approaches will both encourage a deepening of specialist knowledge and spark new thinking across a variety of sub-fields. The historical settings treated here stretch from the Roman Hellenism of Justin Martyr in the second century to the ninth-century programs of religious and moral correction by resourceful Carolingian reformers. Baptismal orations, funerary inscriptions, Christian narratives about the conversion of stage-performers, a bronze statue of Constantine, early Byzantine ethnographic writings, and re-located relics are among the book's imaginative points of entry. This focused collection of essays by leading scholars, and the afterword by Neil McLynn, should ignite conversations among students of religious conversion andrelated processes of cultural interaction, diffusion, and change both in the historical sub-fields of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages and well beyond. This book is one of two collections of essays on religious conversion drawn from the activities of the Shelby Cullum Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University between 1999 and 2001. The other volume, Conversion: Old Worlds and New, is also published by the Universityof Rochester Press. Contributors: Susan Elm, Anthony Grafton, Richard Lim, Rebecca Lyman, Michael Maas, Neil McLynn, Kenneth Mills, Eric Rebillard, Julia M. H. Smith, Raymond Van Dam.

From Shame to Sin
From Shame to Sin

Author: Kyle Harper

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-06-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0674074564

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The transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian is one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center was sex. Kyle Harper examines how Christianity changed the ethics of sexual behavior from shame to sin, and shows how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution.

Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond
Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond

Author: Dr Neil McLynn

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2015-09-28

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 1409457389

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The papers in this volume investigate the two important movements of conversion that frame late antiquity: Christianity and Islam. Despite their historical significance, those two movements of conversion have never been systematically compared to each other, and this volume attempts to do this by studying the various issues at stake in conversion for both religions. Some perspectives from the rise of Buddhism in East Asia at roughly the same period have been included so as to avoid remaining within purely Mediterranean and monotheistic models.

Christian Divination in Late Antiquity
Christian Divination in Late Antiquity

Author: Robert Wisniewski

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Published: 2020-10-21

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9048541018

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In Late Antiquity, people commonly sought to acquire knowledge about the past, the present, and the future, using a variety of methods. While early Christians did not doubt that these methods worked effectively, in theory they were not allowed to make use of them. In practice, people responded to this situation in diverse ways. Some simply renounced any hope of learning about the future, while others resorted to old practices regardless of the consequences. A third option, however, which emerged in the fourth century, was to construct divinatory methods that were effective yet religiously tolerable. This book is devoted to the study of such practices and their practitioners, and provides answers to essential questions concerning this phenomenon. How did it develop? How closely were Christian methods related to older, traditional customs? Who used them and in which situations? Who offered oracular services? And how were they treated by the clergy, intellectuals, and common people?

Cities and the Meanings of Late Antiquity
Cities and the Meanings of Late Antiquity

Author: Mark Humphries

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-11-04

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9004422617

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The last half century has seen an explosion in the study of late antiquity, which has characterised the period between the third and seventh centuries not as one of catastrophic collapse and ‘decline and fall’, but rather as one of dynamic and positive transformation. Yet research on cities in this period has provoked challenges to this positive picture of late antiquity. This study surveys the nature of this debate, examining problems associated with the sources historians use to examine late antique urbanism, and the discourses and methodological approaches they have constructed from them. It aims to set out the difficulties and opportunities presented by the study of cities in late antiquity in terms of transformations of politics, the economy, and religion, and to show that this period witnessed very real upheaval and dislocation alongside continuity and innovation in cities around the Mediterranean.

The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion
The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion

Author: Lewis R. Rambo

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-03-06

Total Pages: 829

ISBN-13: 0199713545

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The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The thirty-two innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, indigenous religions, and new religious movements. The essays also offer a wide range of disciplinary perspectives-psychological, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, feminist, and geographical-on methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.