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Angels in Late Ancient Christianity

Author: Ellen Muehlberger

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-03-21

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0199931933

Ellen Muehlberger explores the diverse and inventive ideas Christians held about angels in late antiquity. During the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began experimenting with new modes of piety, adapting longstanding forms of public authority to Christian leadership and advancing novel ways of cultivating body and mind to further the progress of individual Christians. Muehlberger argues that in practicing these new modes of piety, Christians developed new ways of thinking about angels. The book begins with a detailed examination of the two most popular discourses about angels that developed in late antiquity. In the first, developed by Christians cultivating certain kinds of ascetic practices, angels were one type of being among many in a shifting universe, and their primary purpose was to guard and to guide Christians. In the other, articulated by urban Christian leaders in contest with one another, angels were morally stable characters described in the emerging canon of Scripture, available to enable readers to render Scripture coherent with emerging theological positions. Muehlberger goes on to show how these two discourses did not remain isolated in separate spheres of cultivation and contestation, but influenced one another and the wider Christian culture. She offers in-depth analysis of popular biographies written in late antiquity, of the community standards of emerging monastic communities, and of the training programs developed to prepare Christians to participate in ritual, demonstrating that new ideas about angels shaped and directed the formation of the definitive institutions of late antiquity. Angels in Late Ancient Christianity is a meticulous and thorough study of early Christian ideas about angels, but it also offers a different perspective on late ancient Christian history, arguing that angels were central rather than peripheral to the emergence of Christian institutions and Christian culture in late antiquity.

Late Ancient Christianity

Author: Virginia Burrus

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2010-03-01

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1451419465

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The particular excitement of this volume lies in its focus on the everyday realities of Christians' lives in the era of Christian ascendancy and Roman decline. Popular fiction, childrearing and toys, rituals of inclusion, the beginning of veneration of saints and shunning of heretics, the ascetic impulse, food practices—all these and more lend color and texture to the story of a "people's" Christianity in this formative stage.

Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity

Author: Dirk Rohmann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-07-25

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 3110485559

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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.

Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300-450 C.E.

Author: Bart D. Ehrman

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 9780195154603

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Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300-450 C.E: A Reader collects primary sources of the early Christian world, from the last "Great Persecution" under Emperor Diocletian to the Council of Chalcedon in the mid-fifth century. During this period Christianity rose to prominence in the Roman Empire, developed new notions of sanctity and heresy, and spread beyond the Mediterranean world. This reader incorporates standard texts--from authors such as Athanasius, Augustine, and Eusebius--in the most recent translations and also includes less familiar texts, some of which appear in English translation for the first time. Presented in their entirety or in long excerpts, the texts are arranged thematically and cover such topics as orthodoxy, conversion, asceticism, and art and architecture. The editors provide introductions for each chapter, text, and image, situating the selections historically, geographically, and intellectually. Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300-450 C.E.: A Reader highlights the ways in which religion and culture were mutually transformed during this crucial historical period. Ideal for courses in Early Christianity, Christianity in Late Antiquity, and History of Christianity, this reader is an excellent companion to Bart D. Ehrman's After the New Testament (OUP, 1998) and an exceptional

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.

Thorns in the Flesh

Author: Andrew Crislip

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-09-06

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0812207203

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The literature of late ancient Christianity is rich both in saints who lead lives of almost Edenic health and in saints who court and endure horrifying diseases. In such narratives, health and illness might signify the sanctity of the ascetic, or invite consideration of a broader theology of illness. In Thorns in the Flesh, Andrew Crislip draws on a wide range of texts from the fourth through sixth centuries that reflect persistent and contentious attempts to make sense of the illness of the ostensibly holy. These sources include Lives of Antony, Paul, Pachomius, and others; theological treatises by Basil of Caesarea and Evagrius of Pontus; and collections of correspondence from the period such as the Letters of Barsanuphius and John. Through close readings of these texts, Crislip shows how late ancient Christians complicated and critiqued hagiographical commonplaces and radically reinterpreted illness as a valuable mode for spiritual and ascetic practice. Illness need not point to sin or failure, he demonstrates, but might serve in itself as a potent form of spiritual practice that surpasses even the most strenuous of ascetic labors and opens up the sufferer to a more direct knowledge of the self and the divine. Crislip provides a fresh and nuanced look at the contentious and dynamic theology of illness that emerged in and around the ascetic and monastic cultures of the later Roman world.

The End of Ancient Christianity

Author: R. A. Markus

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780521339490

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Examines the nature of the changes that transformed the Christian world from the fourth to the end of the sixth century.

The Limits of Ancient Christianity

Author: Robert Austin Markus

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780472109975

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Sixteen essays explore the end of ancient Christianity

A People's History of Christianity

Author: Diana Butler Bass

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-03-03

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 0061448702

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For too long, the history of Christianity has been told as the triumph of orthodox doctrine imposed through power and hierarchy. In A People's History of Christianity, historian and religion expert Diana Butler Bass reveals an alternate history that includes a deep social ethic and far-reaching inclusivity: "the other side of the story" is not a modern phenomenon, but has always been practiced within the church. Butler Bass persuasively argues that corrective—even subversive—beliefs and practices have always been hallmarks of Christianity and are necessary to nourish communities of faith. In the same spirit as Howard Zinn's groundbreaking work The People's History of the United States, Butler Bass's A People's History of Christianity brings to life the movements, personalities, and spiritual disciplines that have always informed and ignited Christian worship and social activism. A People's History of Christianity authenticates the vital, emerging Christian movements of our time, providing the historical evidence that celebrates these movements as thoroughly Christian and faithful to the mission and message of Jesus.

Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith

Author: Elizabeth Ann Clark

Publisher:

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13:

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This prize-winning text treats the subject of women in the context of the early Christian world, discussing ascetic renunciation and feminine advancement, female monasticism, and patristic exegesis of the story of Eve and Adam and the Song of Songs.