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 Needleis 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 Needlechallenges 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.
This groundbreaking study brings into dialogue for the first time the writings of Julian, the last non-Christian Roman Emperor, and his most outspoken critic, Bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, a central ...figure of Christianity. Susanna Elm compares these two men not to draw out the obvious contrast between the Church and the Emperor's neo-Paganism, but rather to find their common intellectual and social grounding. Her insightful analysis, supplemented by her magisterial command of sources, demonstrates the ways in which both men were part of the same dialectical whole. Elm recasts both Julian and Gregory as men entirely of their times, showing how the Roman Empire in fact provided Christianity with the ideological and social matrix without which its longevity and dynamism would have been inconceivable.
For too long, the study of religious life in Late Antiquity has relied on the premise that Jews, pagans, and Christians were largely discrete groups divided by clear markers of belief, ritual, and ...social practice. More recently, however, a growing body of scholarship is revealing the degree to which identities in the late Roman world were fluid, blurred by ethnic, social, and gender differences. Christianness, for example, was only one of a plurality of identities available to Christians in this period.
InChristians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 CE, Éric Rebillard explores how Christians in North Africa between the age of Tertullian and the age of Augustine were selective in identifying as Christian, giving salience to their religious identity only intermittently. By shifting the focus from groups to individuals, Rebillard more broadly questions the existence of bounded, stable, and homogeneous groups based on Christianness. In emphasizing that the intermittency of Christianness is structurally consistent in the everyday life of Christians from the end of the second to the middle of the fifth century, this book opens a whole range of new questions for the understanding of a crucial period in the history of Christianity.
Between 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.
While it has often been recognised that the development of Christian orthodoxy was stimulated by the speculations of those who are now called heretics, it is still widely assumed that their ...contribution was merely catalytic, that they called forth the exposition of what the main church already believed but had not yet been required to formulate.
This book maintains that scholars have underrated the constructive role of these “heretical” speculations in the evolution of dogma, showing that salient elements in the doctrines of the fall, the Trinity and the union of God and man in Christ derive from teachings that were initially rejected by the main church. Mark Edwards also reveals how authors who epitomised orthodoxy in their own day sometimes favoured teachings which were later considered heterodox, and that their doctrines underwent radical revision before they became a fixed element of orthodoxy.
The first half of the volume discusses the role of Gnostic theologians in the formation of catholic thought; the second half will offer an unfashionable view of the controversies which gave rise to the councils of Nicaea, Ephesus and Chalcedon. Many of the theories advanced here have not been broached elsewhere, and no synthesis on this scale had been attempted by other scholars. While this book proposes a revision in the scholarly perception of early Christendom, it also demonstrates the essential unity of the tradition.
Evagrius of Pontus (c.345–99) was one of the most prominent figures among the monks of the desert settlements of Nitria, Sketis, and Kellia in Lower Egypt. Through the course of his ascetic writings ...he formulated a systematic presentation of the teaching of the semi-eremitic monks of these settlements. The works of Evagrius had a profound influence on Eastern Orthodox monastic teaching and passed to the West through the writings of John Cassian (c.365–435). This book provides an English translation of Evagrius' Greek ascetic writings, based on modern critical editions, where available, and, where they are not, on collations of the principal manuscripts. Two appendices provide variant readings for the Greek texts and the complete text of the long recension of Eulogios. The translations are accompanied by a commentary to guide the reader through the intricacies of Evagrian thought by offering explanatory comments and references to other Evagrian texts and relevant scholarly literature. Finally, detailed indexes are provided to allow the reader to identify and study the numerous themes of Evagrian teaching.
One route to understanding the nature of specifically religious violence is the study of past conflicts. Distinguished ancient historian Brent D. Shaw provides a new analysis of the intense sectarian ...battles between the Catholic and Donatist churches of North Africa in late antiquity, in which Augustine played a central role as Bishop of Hippo. The development and deployment of images of hatred, including that of the heretic, the pagan, and the Jew, and the modes by which these were most effectively employed, including the oral world of the sermon, were critical to promoting acts of violence. Shaw explores how the emerging ecclesiastical structures of the Christian church, on one side, and those of the Roman imperial state, on the other, interacted to repress or excite violent action. Finally, the meaning and construction of the acts themselves, including the Western idea of suicide, are shown to emerge from the conflict itself.
The Roman emperor Julian is a figure of ongoing interest and the subject of David Neal Greenwood's Julian and Christianity. This unique examination of Julian as the last pagan emperor and ...anti-Christian polemicist revolves around his drive and status as a ruler. Greenwood adeptly outlines the dramatic impact of Julian's short-lived regime on the course of history, with a particular emphasis on his relationship with Christianity. Julian has experienced a wide-ranging reception throughout history, shaped by both adulation and vitriol, along with controversies and rumors that question his sanity and passive ruling. His connections to Christianity, however, are rooted in his regime's open hostility, which Greenwood shows is outlined explicitly in Oration 7: To the Cynic Heracleios. Greenwood's close reading of Oration 7 highlights not only Julian's extensive anti-Christian religious program and decided rejection of Christianity but also his brilliant, calculated use of that same religion. As Greenwood emphasizes in Julian and Christianity, these attributes were inextricably tied to Julian's relationship with Christianity—and how he appropriated certain theological elements from the religion for his own religious framework, from texts to deities. Through his nuanced, detailed readings of Julian's writings, Greenwood brings together ancient history, Neoplatonist philosophy, and patristic theology to create an exceptional and thoughtful biography of the great Roman leader. As a result, Julian and Christianity is a deeply immersive look at Julian's life, one that considers his multifaceted rule and the deliberate maneuvers he made on behalf of political ascendancy.
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