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These essays examine how various communities remembered and
commemorated their shared past through the lens of utopia and its
corollary, dystopia, providing a framework for the reinterpretation
of rapidly changing religious, cultural, and political realities of
the turbulent period from 300 to 750 CE. The common theme of the
chapters is the utopian ideals of religious groups, whether these
are inscribed on the body, on the landscape, in texts, or on other
cultural objects. The volume is the first to apply this conceptual
framework to Late Antiquity, when historically significant
conflicts arose between the adherents of four major religious
identities: Greaco-Roman 'pagans', newly dominant Christians;
diaspora Jews, who were more or less persecuted, depending on the
current regime; and the emerging religion and power of Islam. Late
Antiquity was thus a period when dystopian realities competed with
memories of a mythical Golden Age, variously conceived according to
the religious identity of the group. The contributors come from a
range of disciplines, including cultural studies, religious
studies, ancient history, and art history, and employ both
theoretical and empirical approaches. This volume is unique in the
range of evidence it draws upon, both visual and textual, to
support the basic argument that utopia in Late Antiquity, whether
conceived spiritually, artistically, or politically, was a place of
the past but also of the future, even of the afterlife. Memories of
Utopia will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, and art
historians of the later Roman Empire, and those working on religion
in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.
Gender was a key social indicator in Byzantine society, as in many
others. While studies of gender in the western medieval period have
appeared regularly in the past decade, similar studies of Byzantium
have lagged behind. Masculine and feminine roles were not always as
clearly defined as in the West, while eunuchs made up a 'third
gender' in the imperial court. Social status indicators were also
in a state of flux, as much linked to patronage networks as to
wealth, as the Empire came under a series of external and internal
pressures. This fluidity applied equally in ecclesiastical and
secular spheres. The present collection of essays uncovers gender
roles in the imperial family, in monastic institutions of both
genders, in the Orthodox church, and in the nascent cult of Mary in
the east. It puts the spotlight on flashpoints over a millennium of
Byzantine rule, from Constantine the Great to Irene and the
Palaiologoi, and covers a wide geographical range, from Byzantine
Italy to Syria. The introduction frames the following nine chapters
against recent scholarship and considers methodological issues in
the study of gender and Byzantine society. Together these essays
portray a surprising range of male and female experience in various
Byzantine social institutions - whether religious, military, or
imperial -- over the course of more than a millennium. The
collection offers a provocative contrast to recent studies based on
western medieval scholarship. Common themes that bind the
collection into a coherent whole include specifically Byzantine
expectations of gender among the social elite; the fluidity of
social and sexual identities for Byzantine men and women within the
church; and the specific challenges that strong individuals posed
to the traditional limitations of gender within a hierarchical
society dominated by Christian orthodoxy.
Pope Leo I's theological and political influence in his own time
(440-461) and beyond far outweighs the amount of attention he has
received in recent scholarship. That influence extended well beyond
Rome to the Christian East through his contribution to preparations
for the Council of Chalcedon and its outcome. For this he was
alternately praised and vilified by the opposing parties at the
Council. Leo made his views known through letters, and a vast
number of homilies. While so many of these survive, Leo and his
works have not been the subject of a major English-language
socio-historical study in over fifty years. In this brief
introduction to the life and works of this important leader of the
early church, we gain a more accurate picture of the circumstances
and pressures which were brought to bear on his pontificate. A
brief introduction surveys the scanty sources which document Leo's
early life, and sets his pontificate in its historical context, as
the Western Roman Empire went into serious decline, and Rome lost
its former status as the western capital. Annotated translations of
various excerpts of Leo's letters and homilies are organised around
four themes dealing with specific aspects of Leo's activity as
bishop of Rome: Leo as spiritual adviser on the life of the
faithful Leo as opponent of heresy the bishop of Rome as civic and
ecclesiastical administrator Leo and the primacy of Rome. Taking
each of these key elements of Leo's pontifical activities into
account, we gain a more balanced picture of the context and
contribution of his best-known writings on Christology. This volume
offers an affordable introduction to the subject for both teachers
and students of ancient and medieval Christianity.
Gender was a key social indicator in Byzantine society, as in many
others. While studies of gender in the western medieval period have
appeared regularly in the past decade, similar studies of Byzantium
have lagged behind. Masculine and feminine roles were not always as
clearly defined as in the West, while eunuchs made up a 'third
gender' in the imperial court. Social status indicators were also
in a state of flux, as much linked to patronage networks as to
wealth, as the Empire came under a series of external and internal
pressures. This fluidity applied equally in ecclesiastical and
secular spheres. The present collection of essays uncovers gender
roles in the imperial family, in monastic institutions of both
genders, in the Orthodox church, and in the nascent cult of Mary in
the east. It puts the spotlight on flashpoints over a millennium of
Byzantine rule, from Constantine the Great to Irene and the
Palaiologoi, and covers a wide geographical range, from Byzantine
Italy to Syria. The introduction frames the following nine chapters
against recent scholarship and considers methodological issues in
the study of gender and Byzantine society. Together these essays
portray a surprising range of male and female experience in various
Byzantine social institutions - whether religious, military, or
imperial -- over the course of more than a millennium. The
collection offers a provocative contrast to recent studies based on
western medieval scholarship. Common themes that bind the
collection into a coherent whole include specifically Byzantine
expectations of gender among the social elite; the fluidity of
social and sexual identities for Byzantine men and women within the
church; and the specific challenges that strong individuals posed
to the traditional limitations of gender within a hierarchical
society dominated by Christian orthodoxy.
Pope Leo I's theological and political influence in his own time
(440-461) and beyond far outweighs the amount of attention he has
received in recent scholarship. That influence extended well beyond
Rome to the Christian East through his contribution to preparations
for the Council of Chalcedon and its outcome. For this he was
alternately praised and vilified by the opposing parties at the
Council. Leo made his views known through letters, and a vast
number of homilies. While so many of these survive, Leo and his
works have not been the subject of a major English-language
socio-historical study in over fifty years. In this brief
introduction to the life and works of this important leader of the
early church, we gain a more accurate picture of the circumstances
and pressures which were brought to bear on his pontificate. A
brief introduction surveys the scanty sources which document Leo's
early life, and sets his pontificate in its historical context, as
the Western Roman Empire went into serious decline, and Rome lost
its former status as the western capital. Annotated translations of
various excerpts of Leo's letters and homilies are organised around
four themes dealing with specific aspects of Leo's activity as
bishop of Rome: Leo as spiritual adviser on the life of the
faithful Leo as opponent of heresy the bishop of Rome as civic and
ecclesiastical administrator Leo and the primacy of Rome. Taking
each of these key elements of Leo's pontifical activities into
account, we gain a more balanced picture of the context and
contribution of his best-known writings on Christology. This volume
offers an affordable introduction to the subject for both teachers
and students of ancient and medieval Christianity.
Letter collections in late antiquity give witness to the
flourishing of letter-writing, with the development of the mostly
formulaic exchanges between elites of the Graeco-Roman world to a
more wide-ranging correspondence by bishops and monks, as well as
emperors and Gothic kings. The contributors to this volume study
individual collections from the first to sixth centuries CE,
ranging from the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline letters through
monastic letters from Egypt, bishops' letter collections and early
papal collections compiled for various purposes. This is the first
multi-authored study of New Testament and late antique letter
collections, crossing the traditional divide between these
disciplines by focusing on Latin, Greek, Coptic and Syriac
epistolary sources. It draws together leading scholars in the field
of late antique epistolography from Australasia, Sweden, the United
Kingdom and the United States.
Conflict has been an inescapable facet of religion from its very
beginnings. This volume offers insight into the mechanisms at play
in the centuries from the Jesus-movement's first attempts to define
itself over and against Judaism to the beginnings of Islam.
Profiling research by scholars of the Centre for Early Christian
Studies at Australian Catholic University, the essays document
inter- and intra-religious conflict from a variety of angles.
Topics relevant to the early centuries range from religious
conflict between different parts of the Christian canon, types of
conflict, the origins of conflict, strategies for winning, for
conflict resolution, and the emergence of a language of conflict.
For the fourth to seventh centuries case studies from Asia Minor,
Syria, Constantinople, Gaul, Arabia and Egypt are presented. The
volume closes with examinations of the Christian and Jewish
response to Islam, and of Islam's response to Christianity. Given
the political and religious tensions in the world today, this
volume is well positioned to find relevance and meaning in
societies still grappling with the monotheistic religions of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Conflict has been an inescapable facet of religion from its very
beginnings. This volume offers insight into the mechanisms at play
in the centuries from the Jesus-movement's first attempts to define
itself over and against Judaism to the beginnings of Islam.
Profiling research by scholars of the Centre for Early Christian
Studies at Australian Catholic University, the essays document
inter- and intra-religious conflict from a variety of angles.
Topics relevant to the early centuries range from religious
conflict between different parts of the Christian canon, types of
conflict, the origins of conflict, strategies for winning, for
conflict resolution, and the emergence of a language of conflict.
For the fourth to seventh centuries case studies from Asia Minor,
Syria, Constantinople, Gaul, Arabia and Egypt are presented. The
volume closes with examinations of the Christian and Jewish
response to Islam, and of Islam's response to Christianity. Given
the political and religious tensions in the world today, this
volume is well positioned to find relevance and meaning in
societies still grappling with the monotheistic religions of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
These essays examine how various communities remembered and
commemorated their shared past through the lens of utopia and its
corollary, dystopia, providing a framework for the reinterpretation
of rapidly changing religious, cultural, and political realities of
the turbulent period from 300 to 750 CE. The common theme of the
chapters is the utopian ideals of religious groups, whether these
are inscribed on the body, on the landscape, in texts, or on other
cultural objects. The volume is the first to apply this conceptual
framework to Late Antiquity, when historically significant
conflicts arose between the adherents of four major religious
identities: Greaco-Roman 'pagans', newly dominant Christians;
diaspora Jews, who were more or less persecuted, depending on the
current regime; and the emerging religion and power of Islam. Late
Antiquity was thus a period when dystopian realities competed with
memories of a mythical Golden Age, variously conceived according to
the religious identity of the group. The contributors come from a
range of disciplines, including cultural studies, religious
studies, ancient history, and art history, and employ both
theoretical and empirical approaches. This volume is unique in the
range of evidence it draws upon, both visual and textual, to
support the basic argument that utopia in Late Antiquity, whether
conceived spiritually, artistically, or politically, was a place of
the past but also of the future, even of the afterlife. Memories of
Utopia will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, and art
historians of the later Roman Empire, and those working on religion
in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.
Recent decades have seen great progress made in scholarship towards
understanding the major civic role played by bishops of the eastern
and western churches of Late Antiquity. Brownen Neil and Pauline
Allen explore and evaluate one aspect of this civic role, the
negotiation of religious conflict. Conflict and Negotiation in the
Early Church focuses on the period 500 to 700 CE, one of the least
documented periods in the history of the church, but also one of
the most formative, whose conflicts resonate still in contemporary
Christian communities, especially in the Middle East. To uncover
the hidden history of this period and its theological
controversies, Neil and Allen have tapped a little known written
source, the letters that were exchanged by bishops, emperors and
other civic leaders of the sixth and seventh centuries. This was an
era of crisis for the Byzantine empire, at war first with Persia,
and then with the Arab forces united under the new faith of Islam.
Official letters were used by the churches of Rome and
Constantinople to pursue and defend their claims to universal and
local authority, a constant source of conflict. As well as the
east-west struggle, Christological disagreements with the Syrian
church demanded increasing attention from the episcopal and
imperial rulers in Constantinople, even as Rome set itself adrift
and looked to the West for new allies. From this troubled period,
1500 letters survive in Greek, Latin, and Syriac. With translations
of a number of these, many rendered into English for the first
time, Conflict and Negotiation in the Early Church examines the
ways in which diplomatic relations between churches were developed,
and in some cases hindered or even permanently ruptured, through
letter-exchange at the end of Late Antiquity.
This is the first general book on Greek and Latin letter-writing in
Late Antiquity (300-600 CE). Allen and Neil examine early Christian
Greek and Latin literary letters, their nature and function and the
mechanics of their production and dissemination. They examine the
exchange of Episcopal, monastic and imperial letters between men,
and the gifts that accompanied them, and the rarer phenomenon of
letter exchanges with imperial and aristocratic women. They also
look at the transmission of letter-collections and what they can
tell us about friendships and other social networks between the
powerful elites who were the literary letter-writers of the fourth
to sixth centuries. The volume gives a broad context to
late-antique literary letter-writing in Greek and Latin in its
various manifestations: political, ecclesiastical, practical and
social. In the process, the differences between 'pagan' and
Christian letter-writing are shown to be not as great as has
previously been supposed.
This is the first general book on Greek and Latin letter-writing in
Late Antiquity (300-600 CE). Allen and Neil examine early Christian
Greek and Latin literary letters, their nature and function and the
mechanics of their production and dissemination. They examine the
exchange of Episcopal, monastic and imperial letters between men,
and the gifts that accompanied them, and the rarer phenomenon of
letter exchanges with imperial and aristocratic women. They also
look at the transmission of letter-collections and what they can
tell us about friendships and other social networks between the
powerful elites who were the literary letter-writers of the fourth
to sixth centuries. The volume gives a broad context to
late-antique literary letter-writing in Greek and Latin in its
various manifestations: political, ecclesiastical, practical and
social. In the process, the differences between 'pagan' and
Christian letter-writing are shown to be not as great as has
previously been supposed.
What did dreams mean to Egyptian Christians of the first to the
sixth centuries? Alexandrian philosophers, starting with Philo,
Clement and Origen, developed a new approach to dreams that was to
have profound effects on the spirituality of the medieval West and
Byzantium. Their approach, founded on the principles of Platonism,
was based on the convictions that God could send prophetic dreams
and that these could be interpreted by people of sufficient virtue.
In the fourth century, the Alexandrian approach was expanded by
Athanasius and Evagrius to include a more holistic psychological
understanding of what dreams meant for spiritual progress. The
ideas that God could be known in dreams and that dreams were linked
to virtue flourished in the context of Egyptian desert monasticism.
This volume traces that development and its influence on early
Egyptian experiences of the divine in dreams.
Why did dreams matter to Jews, Byzantine Christians, and Muslims in
the first millennium? Dreams and Divination from Byzantium to
Baghdad, 400 - 1000 CE shows how the ability to interpret dreams
universally attracted power and influence in the first millennium.
In a time when prophetic dreams were viewed as God's intervention
in human history, male and female prophets wielded was unparalleled
power in imperial courts, military camps, and religious gatherings.
The three faiths drew on the ancient Near Eastern tradition of
dream key manuals, which offer an insight into the hopes and fears
of ordinary people. They melded pagan dream divination with their
own scriptural traditions to produce a novel and rich culture of
dream interpretation. Prophetic dreams enabled communities to
understand their past and present circumstances as divinely
ordained and helped to bolster the spiritual authority of dreamers
and those who had the gift of interpreting their dreams. Bronwen
Neil takes a gendered approach to the analysis of the common
culture of dream interpretation across late antique Jewish,
Byzantine, and Islamic sources to 1000 CE, in order to expose the
ways in which dreams offered women a unique opportunity to exercise
influence. The epilogue to the volume reveals why dreams still
matter today to many men and women of the monotheist traditions.
Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662) has become one of the most
discussed figures in contemporary patristic studies. This is partly
due to the relatively recent discovery and critical edition of his
works in various genres, including On the Ascetic Life, Four
Centuries on Charity, Two Centuries on Theology and the
Incarnation, On the 'Our Father', two separate Books of
Difficulties, addressed to John and to Thomas, Questions and
Doubts, Questions to Thalassius, Mystagogy and the Short
Theological and Polemical Works. The impact of these works reached
far beyond the Greek East, with his involvement in the western
resistance to imperial heresy, notably at the Lateran Synod in 649.
Together with Pope Martin I (649-53 CE), Maximus the Confessor and
his circle were the most vocal opponents of Constantinople's
introduction of the doctrine of monothelitism. This dispute over
the number of wills in Christ became a contest between the imperial
government and church of Constantinople on the one hand, and the
bishop of Rome in concert with eastern monks such as Maximus, John
Moschus, and Sophronius, on the other, over the right to define
orthodoxy. An understanding of the difficult relations between
church and state in this troubled period at the close of Late
Antiquity is necessary for a full appreciation of Maximus'
contribution to this controversy. The volume provides the political
and historical background to Maximus' activities, as well as a
summary of his achievements in the spheres of theology and
philosophy, especially neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism.
Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662) has become one of the most
discussed figures in contemporary patristic studies. This is partly
due to the relatively recent discovery and critical edition of his
works in various genres, including On the Ascetic Life, Four
Centuries on Charity, Two Centuries on Theology and the
Incarnation, On the 'Our Father', two separate Books of
Difficulties, addressed to John and to Thomas, Questions and
Doubts, Questions to Thalassius, Mystagogy and the Short
Theological and Polemical Works. The impact of these works reached
far beyond the Greek East, with his involvement in the western
resistance to imperial heresy, notably at the Lateran Synod in 649.
Together with Pope Martin I (649-53 CE), Maximus the Confessor and
his circle were the most vocal opponents of Constantinople's
introduction of the doctrine of monothelitism. This dispute over
the number of wills in Christ became a contest between the imperial
government and church of Constantinople on the one hand, and the
bishop of Rome in concert with eastern monks such as Maximus, John
Moschus, and Sophronius, on the other, over the right to define
orthodoxy. An understanding of the difficult relations between
church and state in this troubled period at the close of Late
Antiquity is necessary for a full appreciation of Maximus'
contribution to this controversy. The editors of this volume aim to
provide the political and historical background to Maximus'
activities, as well as a summary of his achievements in the spheres
of theology and philosophy, especially neo-Platonism and
Aristotelianism.
Maximus the Confessor and his Companions provides the first English translations of seven documents from the seventh century which recount the legal trials, banishment, and deaths of the monk Maximus the Confessor, his disciples and friends, and Pope Martin I. The background to these documents is formed by Byzantine imperial religious policy, radical change in the Byzantine empire, Arab and Persian attacks, and the close ties which existed between Maximus and his followers and the West.
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