Recent work on the notoriously passionate Christian conflicts of the later Roman Empire has elucidated their wide-ranging political and social implications. However, the fifth-century conquest of the Roman West by “barbarian” rulers brings this train of inquiry to a juddering halt, as scholars of early Christianity turn eastward for new doctrinal developments, and early medieval historians focus on political continuity and ethnic identity in the new kingdoms. This book argues that Christian controversy retained its sophistication and its sociopolitical consequences in the post-imperial West. It examines church conflict under the Vandals, who ruled the former Roman province of Africa (the modern-day Maghreb) from 439 to 533 CE. Exploiting neglected Christian texts, this book exposes a sophisticated culture of disputation between Nicene (“Catholic”) and Homoian (“Arian”) Christians, and it explores their rival claims to represent the true church, which consciously evoked earlier ecclesiastical controversies. It argues that this Christian conflict cannot be firewalled from other developments in post-imperial Africa, revealing its implications for issues of social identity and political formation. Through careful comparison with the evidence for Homoian Christianity in the other barbarian successor kingdoms, it seeks to set out a new framework for understanding Christian identity across the post-imperial West.
This article tackles a relatively under-studied aspect of the Christianisation of the Roman aristocracy. It considers the influence of Christian norms on a key stage in the elite male life course: service to the state. Drawing on the letters of Isidore of Pelusium, Augustine of Hippo and Theodoret of Cyrrhus to imperial officials, this article argues that a Christian rhetoric of office-holding had developed across the Mediterranean by the first half of the fifth century. It traces these authors’ varying expectations of how the religious identities of elite Christian men would shape their political agency. Their letters demonstrate the diffusion of Christian political ideas within the imperial state — and the terms on which Christian affiliations and traditional public careers were understood to be compatible — under the Theodosian dynasty.
This article considers an issue surprisingly marginal both to cultural histories of late antique Christianity and political histories of the later Roman Empire: the Christian identities of imperial officials. It draws on three early sixth-century texts which tackled this problem head-on: the Selected Letters of Severus of Antioch, the Variae of Cassiodorus, and the Letter to Reginus of Ferrandus of Carthage. These letters to, by, and about, political servants split the difference between contemporary advice letters for aristocrats who had “renounced the world,” and the classicizing treatises on administrative ethics which have attracted so much attention from scholars of the age of Justinian. Severus, Cassiodorus, and Ferrandus set up the possibilities of a committed Christian lifestyle within the state in differing, but complementary, ways, rooted in the attainment of an idealized inner state. The authors use biblical exempla, concepts of ascetic progress, and ecclesiological ideas to frame the duties of an administrator. All in all, these letters show how, for at least some Christian writers and officials, ascetic discourse had reshaped the character of service to states across the sixth-century Mediterranean.
This article seeks to contribute to recent debates over Christian dialogue in late antiquity. It explores a specific form of dialogue text: invented debates about the definition of correct doctrine, often starring renowned church Fathers and notorious heretics. It argues that, far from symbolizing an ‘end’ to dialogue in late antiquity – closed down by appeals to patristic authorities – these heresiological dialogues helped to perpetuate controversial Christian debates.
American Methodist story. In the meantime, students, teachers and seasoned scholars alike will value The Cambridge companion to American Methodism for its review of major topics in the field as well as for its efforts to advance the conversation through well-written, scholarly forays into the varieties of American Methodist history, doctrine and practice. JEFFREY W. BARBEAU WHEATON COLLEGE, ILLINOIS The fate of the dead in early third century north African Christianity. The 'Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas' and Tertullian. By Eliezer Gonzalez. (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum, .) Pp. xii + . Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, . € (paper). ; JEH () ; doi:./S The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas remains one of the most intriguingly enigmatic texts in early Christianity. In The fate of the dead in early third century north African Christianity (based on a Macquarie University PhD thesis), Eliezer Gonzalez explores one aspect of this most challenging of martyr narratives: its approach to the afterlife. Gonzalez's central thesis is that the Passion marks a key moment in a broader shift from a doctrine of eschatological resurrection to one of immediate post-mortem resurrection. He seeks to substantiate and develop this point by sketching out a series of possible contexts for and influences upon the text, including Jewish apocalyptic writings, ancient motifs of ascent and contemporary Christian burial practices. The book is at its most convincing when dealing with specific theological questions. Gonzalez carefully teases out the differences between contrasting early Christian views on the afterlife (chapter iii) andmost notably for scholars of Christianity in third-century Africabetween those expressed in the Passion and those articulated by Tertullian, a point which Gonzalez adduces against the view that the latter redacted the text (chapter v). Gonzalez's detailed discussion of the voluminous scholarship on the Passion similarly results in pleasingly nuanced positions on the text and on a number of critical issues in early Christian scholarship. Unfortunately, these nuances are lost both in the structural schema of the book and in its central argument. Any number of categories problematised at various points ('orthodox', 'Gnostic', 'canonical', 'apocryphal') are simply reinstated in the manner in which the texts cited as comparanda are organised, and thus filter back into the book's analysis and conclusions. The book's central thesis similarly rests on a distinctionrepeatedly adduced, but never properly justifiedbetween the 'patristic' or 'ecclesiastical' statements of Church Fathers and apologists and the 'popular' views 'reflected' by the Passion (for example pp. , , , , -, ; cf. pp. - where the considerations adduced refer to later dissemination). This dichotomy between the 'official' and the 'popular'problematic in most historical periodsseems particularly dubious in an account of early third-century Christianity. A mor...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.