Means of Christian Conversion in Late Antiquity

Means of Christian Conversion in Late Antiquity PDF

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.

Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond

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

Author: Arietta Papaconstantinou

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 1317159721

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The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one, the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon. The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as an external comparator that was not caught in the net of the Abrahamic religions. The volume is organised around several themes, reflecting the concerns of the initial project with the articulation between norm and practice, the role of authorities and institutions, and the social and individual fluidity on the ground. Debates, discussions, and the expression of norms and principles about conversion conversion are not rare in societies experiencing religious change, and the first section of the book examines some of the main issues brought up by surviving sources. This is followed by three sections examining different aspects of how those principles were - or were not - put into practice: how conversion was handled by the state, how it was continuously redefined by individual ambivalence and cultural fluidity, and how it was enshrined through different forms of institutionalization. Finally, a topographical coda examines the effects of religious change on the iconic holy city of Jerusalem.

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

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

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.

Religious Conversion

Religious Conversion PDF

Author: Professor Miri Rubin

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2014-07-28

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1472421493

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This collection ranges far and wide - from early Christian pilgrims to fifteenth-century Ethiopia; from the Islamisation of the eastern Mediterranean to Reformation Germany - to investigate the multiple causes and characteristics of religious conversion. By probing continuities and fissures, particularly in the Jewish, Muslim and Christian experiences, the volume extends the range of conversion to focus on matters less commonly examined, such as the meaning of sacred space, bodies, gender, and the ways conversion has been understood and narrated.

Repentance in Late Antiquity

Repentance in Late Antiquity PDF

Author: Alexis C. Torrance

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-11-29

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0191643785

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The call to repentance is central to the message of early Christianity. While this is undeniable, the precise meaning of the concept of repentance for early Christians has rarely been investigated to any great extent, beyond studies of the rise of penitential discipline. In this study, the rich variety of meanings and applications of the concept of repentance are examined, with a particular focus on the writings of several ascetic theologians of the fifth to seventh centuries: SS Mark the Monk, Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, and John Climacus. These theologians provide some of the most sustained and detailed elaborations of the concept of repentance in late antiquity. They predominantly see repentance as a positive, comprehensive idea that serves to frame the whole of Christian life, not simply one or more of its parts. While the modern dominant understanding of repentance as a moment of sorrowful regret over past misdeeds, or as equivalent to penitential discipline, is present to a degree, such definitions by no means exhaust the concept for them. The path of repentance is depicted as stretching from an initial about-face completed in baptism, through the living out of the baptismal gift by keeping the Gospel commandments, culminating in the idea of intercessory repentance for others, after the likeness of Christ's innocent suffering for the world. While this overarching role for repentance in Christian life is clearest in ascetic works, these are not explored in isolation, and attention is also paid to the concept of repentance in Scripture, the early church, apocalyptic texts, and canonical material. This not only permits the elaboration of the views of the ascetics in their larger context, but further allows for an overall re-assessment of the often misunderstood, if not overlooked, place of repentance in early Christian theology.

A History of Christian Conversion

A History of Christian Conversion PDF

Author: David W. Kling

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0199717591

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Conversion has played a central role in the history of Christianity. In this first in-depth and wide-ranging narrative history, David Kling examines the dynamic of turning to the Christian faith by individuals, families, and people groups. Global in reach, the narrative progresses from early Christian beginnings in the Roman world to Christianity's expansion into Europe, the Americas, China, India, and Africa. Conversion is often associated with a particular strand of modern Christianity (evangelical) and a particular type of experience (sudden, overwhelming). However, when examined over two millennia, it emerges as a phenomenon far more complex than any one-dimensional profile would suggest. No single, unitary paradigm defines conversion and no easily explicable process accounts for why people convert to Christianity. Rather, a multiplicity of factors-historical, personal, social, geographical, theological, psychological, and cultural-shape the converting process. A History of Christian Conversion not only narrates the conversions of select individuals and peoples, it also engages current theories and models to explain conversion, and examines recurring themes in the conversion process: divine presence, gender and the body, agency and motivation, testimony and memory, group- and self-identity, "authentic" and "nominal" conversion, and modes of communication. Accessible to scholars, students, and those with a general interest in conversion, Kling's book is the most satisfying and comprehensive account of conversion in Christian history to date; this major work will become a standard must-read in conversion studies.

Heirs of Roman Persecution

Heirs of Roman Persecution PDF

Author: Éric Fournier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-10-10

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1351240676

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The subject of this book is the discourse of persecution used by Christians in Late Antiquity (c. 300–700 CE). Through a series of detailed case studies covering the full chronological and geographical span of the period, this book investigates how the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity changed the way that Christians and para- Christians perceived the hostile treatments they received, either by fellow Christians or by people of other religions. A closely related second goal of this volume is to encourage scholars to think more precisely about the terminological difficulties related to the study of persecution. Indeed, despite sustained interest in the subject, few scholars have sought to distinguish between such closely related concepts as punishment, coercion, physical violence, and persecution. Often, these terms are used interchangeably. Although there are no easy answers, an emphatic conclusion of the studies assembled in this volume is that “persecution” was a malleable rhetorical label in late antique discourse, whose meaning shifted depending on the viewpoint of the authors who used it. This leads to our third objective: to analyze the role and function played by rhetoric and polemic in late antique claims to be persecuted. Late antique Christian writers who cast their present as a repetition of past persecutions often aimed to attack the legitimacy of the dominant Christian faction through a process of othering. This discourse also expressed a polarizing worldview in order to strengthen the group identity of the writers’ community in the midst of ideological conflicts and to encourage steadfastness against the temptation to collaborate with the other side. Chapters 15 and 16 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Christian Conversion

Christian Conversion PDF

Author: Arthur Thomas Guttery

Publisher: Sagwan Press

Published: 2015-08-21

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9781298899347

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