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Author: Peter Brown
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 1989-10-25
Total Pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9780520068001
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith the blend of art and learning that is the hallmark of his work, Peter Brown here examines how the sacred impinged upon the profane during the first Christian millennium.
Author: Peter Brown
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Published: 1992
Total Pages: 196
ISBN-13: 9780299133443
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA preliminary report on continuing research into the political, cultural, and religious milieu of the later Roman Empire, from a humanist historiographic perspective. Discusses autocracy and the elites, power, poverty, and the forging of a Christian empire. Does not assume a knowledge of Latin. Paper edition (unseen), $12.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Peter Brown
Publisher:
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 135
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Paul Antony Hayward
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9780199253548
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book contains eleven essays, prefaced by a general introduction, on a set of related themes: the characteristic traits and diverse functions of holy men; the fashioning of saints out of a small minority of holy men and a number of other individuals of high social status but with moredubious spiritual credentials; the literary processes involved in the construction of hagiographical texts; the role of hagiography in the creation and diffusion of cults; and the worldly interests and other purposes which were served by hagiographical texts and the cults which they propagated.These themes are explored across a wide range of social and cultural milieux, extending from the late antique east Mediterranean through the early medieval Frankish world and Byzantium to Russia and Islam in the high middle ages. The work of Peter Brown, in particular his article, 'The Rise andFunction of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity', first published in 1971, forms a constant point of reference, acknowledged by the contributors as having irradiated the whole field with fresh, provocative, and illuminating ideas.
Author: Claudia Rapp
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2013-05-01
Total Pages: 363
ISBN-13: 0520931416
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBetween 300 and 600, Christianity experienced a momentous change from persecuted cult to state religion. One of the consequences of this shift was the evolution of the role of the bishop—as the highest Church official in his city—from model Christian to model citizen. Claudia Rapp's exceptionally learned, innovative, and groundbreaking work traces this transition with a twofold aim: to deemphasize the reign of the emperor Constantine, which has traditionally been regarded as a watershed in the development of the Church as an institution, and to bring to the fore the continued importance of the religious underpinnings of the bishop's role as civic leader. Rapp rejects Max Weber’s categories of "charismatic" versus "institutional" authority that have traditionally been used to distinguish the nature of episcopal authority from that of the ascetic and holy man. Instead she proposes a model of spiritual authority, ascetic authority and pragmatic authority, in which a bishop’s visible asceticism is taken as evidence of his spiritual powers and at the same time provides the justification for his public role. In clear and graceful prose, Rapp provides a wholly fresh analysis of the changing dynamics of social mobility as played out in episcopal appointments.
Author: Peter Robert Lamont Brown
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2007-08-01
Total Pages: 351
ISBN-13: 1556351747
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPeter Brown, author of the celebrated 'Augustine of Hippo', has here gathered together his seminal articles and papers on the rapidly changing world of Saint Augustine. The collection is wide-ranging, dealing with political theory, social history, church history, historiography, theology, history of religions, and social anthropology. Saint Augustine is, of course, the central figure; and in an important introduction Peter Brown explains how the preoccupations of these essays led him to write the prize-winning biography. Brown then goes on to explore the heart of Augustine's political theory, not only showing how it factors in Augustine's thought, but also pointing to what is different from and similar to twentieth-century political thought.
Author: Jeremy M. Schott
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2008-08-26
Total Pages: 264
ISBN-13: 0812240928
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 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.
Author: Peter Brown
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013-09-02
Total Pages: 806
ISBN-13: 1400844533
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA sweeping intellectual history of the role of wealth in the church in the last days of the Roman Empire Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity. Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven. Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.
Author: Kate Cooper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2020-10-01
Total Pages: 395
ISBN-13: 1108783724
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSocial Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds explores the small-scale communities of late antiquity – households, monasteries, and schools – where power was a question of personal relationships. When fathers, husbands, teachers, abbots, and slave-owners asserted their own will, they saw themselves as maintaining the social order, and expected law and government to reinforce their rule. Naturally, the members of these communities had their own ideas, and teaching them to 'obey their betters' was not always a straightforward business. Drawing on a wide variety of sources from across the late Roman Mediterranean, from law codes and inscriptions to monastic rules and hagiography, the book considers the sometimes conflicting identities of women, slaves, and children, and documents how they found opportunities for agency and recognition within a system built on the unremitting assertion of the rights of the powerful.
Author: Manolis Papoutsakis
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-05
Total Pages: 572
ISBN-13: 1351878085
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book focuses on a simple dynamic: the taking in hand of a heritage, the variety of changes induced within it, and the handing on of that legacy to new generations. Our contributors suggest, from different standpoints, that this dynamic represented the essence of 'late antiquity'. As Roman society, and the societies by which it was immediately bounded, continued to develop, through to the late sixth and early seventh centuries, the interplay between what needed to be treasured and what needed to be explored became increasingly self-conscious, versatile, and enriched. By the time formerly alien peoples had established their 'post-classical' polities, and Islam began to stir in the East, the novelties were more clearly seen, if not always welcomed; and one witnesses a stronger will to maintain the momentum of change, of a forward reach. At the same time, those in a position to play now the role of heirs were well able to appreciate how suited to their needs the 'Roman' past might be, but how, by taking it up in their turn, they were more securely defined and yet more creatively advantaged. 'Transformation' is a notion apposite to essays in honour of Peter Brown. 'The transformation of the classical heritage' is a theme to which he has devoted, and continues to devote, much energy. All the essays here in some way explore this notion of transformation; the late antique ability to turn the past to new uses, and to set its wealth of principle and insight to work in new settings. To begin, there is the very notion of what it meant to be 'Roman', and how that notion changed. Subsequent chapters suggest ways in which fundamental characteristics of Roman society were given new form, not least under the impact of a Christian polity. Augustine, naturally, finds his place; and here the emphasis is on the unfettered stance that he took in the face of more broadly held convictions - on miracles, for example, and the errors of the pagan past. The discussion then moves on to
