Download or read book Ambrose of Milan and Community Formation in Late Antiquity written by Ethan Gannaway and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ambrose, the first patrician bishop and a prolific writer of a broad range of works, presents numerous opportunities for interdisciplinary research. His participation in many social groups, sometimes at odds with each other, and sometimes overlapping, demanded flexibility. The result is a protean figure, whose motives are not always clear. His own works and those of the scholars who contribute to this volume are accordingly multidisciplinary. Fields such as theology (especially historical theology), history, classics, philosophy, linguistics, and aesthetics, among others, and the recent international research that belongs to them nuance the volume’s investigation of Ambrose’s actions and motivations. The reader will find that Ambrose’s efforts to create and to strengthen social cohesion included building relationships and erecting social structures set on the foundations of Nicaean Christianity against heresy and paganism. A fusion of Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian intellectual traditions reinforced the solidarity Ambrose promoted. These endeavors met with success then, and continue to do so now, as indicated by the modern community of scholars found within this book.
Download or read book Christian Emperors and Roman Elites in Late Antiquity written by Rita Lizzi Testa and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-04-28 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together a number of case studies to show some of the ways in which, as soon as the Roman Senate gained new political authority under Constantine and his successors, its members crowded the political scene in the West. In these chapters, Rita Lizzi Testa makes much of her work – the fruit of decades of research –available in English for the first time. The focus is on the aristocratics' passion for aruspical science, the political use of exphrastic poems, and even their control of the hagiographic genre in the late sixth century. She demonstrates how Roman senators were chosen as legates to establish proactive relations with Christian emperors, their ministers and military commanders, and Eastern and Western provincial elites. Senators wove a web of relations in the Eastern and Western empires, sewing and stitching the empire's fabric with their diplomatic skills, wealth, and influence, while lively and highly litigious assembly activity still required of them a cultured rhetoric. Through employing astute political strategies, they maintained their privileges, including their own beliefs in ancient cults. Christian Emperors and Roman Elites in Late Antiquity provides a crucial collection for students and scholars of Late Antique history and religion, and of politics in the Late Roman Empire.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy written by Myrto Garani and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-24 with total page 649 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Several decades of scholarship by now have demonstrated that Roman thinkers have developed in new and stimulating directions the systems of thought they inherited from the Greeks, and that, taken together, they offer a range of perspectives that are of philosophical interest in their own right. This collection of essays pursues a maximally inclusive approach, covering not only authors such as Augustine, but also poets or historians. It pays attention to the mode in which these works were written (giving rhetoric too its due) and their often conscious reflections on the process of translating, or transferring Greek ideas to Roman contexts"--
Download or read book The Politics of Heresy in Ambrose of Milan written by Michael Stuart Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-examines the 'Arian' opposition to Ambrose in Milan, arguing that he misrepresented it to suit his own agenda as bishop.
Download or read book Righteousness written by Jeffrey J. Niehaus and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-10-11 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume of this three-volume work reviews the history of efforts to define biblical righteousness. Modern views are engaged and critiqued, from the seminal article (1860) by Ludwig Diestel (God’s righteousness as the agreement of his will and purpose) to others in the theological stream known as the “New Perspective.” Scholars discussed include Walther Eichrodt, Gerhard von Rad, Elizabeth Achtemeier, James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright. Other perspectives are also engaged, including H. H. Schmid’s definition of righteousness as conformity to the created order (Weltordnung), John Piper’s view that God’s righteousness is God’s concern for his own glory, and the traditional view, championed by C. L. Irons, that God’s righteousness is his iustitia distributiva. The author examines these views, all of which have been supported by inductive studies, in light of a proposed alternative: that righteousness is conformity to God’s Being and doing. That definition will be explored further in Volumes II (OT) and III (NT). Unlike previous studies, the present work proceeds deductively and experimentally, and thereby seeks to avoid the pitfalls of a dogmatic approach. Extra-biblical, patristic, medieval, and reformation views of righteousness are also considered as background to the modern study of righteousness.
Download or read book Private Worship Public Values and Religious Change in Late Antiquity written by Kimberly Diane Bowes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-28 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional histories of late antique Christianity tell the story of a public institution - the Christian church. In this book, Kim Bowes relates another history, that of the Christian private. Using textual and archaeological evidence, she examines the Christian rituals of home and rural estate, which took place outside the supervision of bishops and their agents. These domestic rituals and the spaces in which they were performed were rooted in age-old religious habits. They formed a major, heretofore unrecognized force in late ancient Christian practice. The religion of home and family, however, was not easily reconciled with that of the bishop's church. Domestic Christian practices presented challenges to episcopal authority and posed thorny questions about the relationship between individuals and the Christian collective. As Bowes suggests, the story of private Christianity reveals a watershed in changing conceptions of "public" and "private," one whose repercussions echo through contemporary political and religious debate.
Download or read book Through the Eye of a Needle written by Peter Brown and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 806 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping intellectual history of the role of wealth in the church in the last days of the Roman Empire 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 Needle is 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 Needle challenges 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.
Download or read book Ostia in Late Antiquity written by Douglas Boin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-22 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Ostia in Late Antiquity' narrates the life of Ostia Antica, Rome's ancient harbor, during the later empire.
Download or read book Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity written by Thomas Sizgorich and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-03-19 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity, Thomas Sizgorich seeks to understand why and how violent expressions of religious devotion became central to the self-understandings of both Christian and Muslim communities between the fourth and ninth centuries. Sizgorich argues that the cultivation of violent martyrdom as a path to holiness was in no way particular to Islam; rather, it emerged from a matrix put into place by the Christians of late antiquity. Paying close attention to the role of memory and narrative in the formation of individual and communal selves, Sizgorich identifies a common pool of late ancient narrative forms upon which both Christian and Muslim communities drew. In the process of recollecting the past, Sizgorich explains, Christian and Muslim communities alike elaborated iterations of Christianity or Islam that demanded of each believer a willingness to endure or inflict violence on God's behalf and thereby created militant local pieties that claimed to represent the one "real" Christianity or the only "pure" form of Islam. These militant communities used a shared system of signs, symbols, and stories, stories in which the faithful manifested their purity in conflict with the imperial powers of the world.
Download or read book Trace and Aura written by Patrick Boucheron and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the foremost medievalists of our time, a groundbreaking work on history and memory that goes well beyond the life of this influential saint. Elected bishop of Milan by popular acclaim in 374, Ambrose went on to become one of the four original Doctors of the Church. There is much more to this book, however, than the captivating story of the bishop who baptized Saint Augustine in the fourth century. Trace and Aura investigates how a crucial figure from the past can return in different guises over and over again, in a city that he inspired and shaped through his beliefs and political convictions. His recurring lives actually span more than ten centuries, from the fourth to the sixteenth. In the process of following Ambrose’s various reincarnations, Patrick Boucheron draws compelling connections between religion, government, tyranny, the Italian commune, Milan’s yearning for autonomy, and many other aspects of this fascinating relationship between a city and its spiritual mentor who strangely seems to resist being manipulated by the needs and ambitions of those in power.
Download or read book Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches written by Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-06-19 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches analyzes the hagiographic traditions of seven missionary saints in the Syriac heritage during late antiquity: Thomas, Addai, Mari, John of Ephesus, Simeon of Beth Arsham, Jacob Baradaeus, and Ahudemmeh. Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent studies a body of legends about the missionaries’ voyages in the Syrian Orient to illustrate their shared symbols and motifs. Revealing how these texts encapsulated the concerns of the communities that produced them, she draws attention to the role of hagiography as a malleable genre that was well-suited for the idealized presentation of the beginnings of Christian communities. Hagiographers, through their reworking of missionary themes, asserted autonomy, orthodoxy, and apostolicity for their individual civic and monastic communities, positioning themselves in relationship to the rulers of their empires and to competing forms of Christianity. Saint-Laurent argues that missionary hagiography is an important and neglected source for understanding the development of the East and West Syriac ecclesiastical bodies: the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Church of the East. Given that many of these Syriac-speaking churches remain today in the Middle East and India, with diaspora communities in Europe and North America, this work opens the door for further study of the role of saints and stories as symbolic links between ancient and modern traditions.
Download or read book The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy written by Kristina Sessa and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-21 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first cultural history of papal authority in late antiquity. While most traditional histories posit a 'rise of the papacy' and examine popes as politicians, theologians and civic leaders, Kristina Sessa focuses on the late Roman household and its critical role in the development of the Roman church from c.350–600. She argues that Rome's bishops adopted the ancient elite household as a model of good government for leading the church. Central to this phenomenon was the classical and biblical figure of the steward, the householder's appointed agent who oversaw his property and people. As stewards of God, Roman bishops endeavored to exercise moral and material influence within both the pope's own administration and the households of Italy's clergy and lay elites. This original and nuanced study charts their manifold interactions with late Roman households and shows how bishops used domestic knowledge as the basis for establishing their authority as Italy's singular religious leaders.
Download or read book Studia Patristica written by Maurice Wiles and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Church and Society in Late Antique Italy and Beyond written by Claire Sotinel and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers presented here explore in various ways the interactions between clerics and the society in which Christian churches put down roots in Late Antiquity. Some of these complex processes, involved in the christianization of the Late Roman world, form the theme of the first three sections. Amongst other aspects, the essays in these sections examine the Three Chapters controversy and the participation of lay and clerical protagonists in it, the social standing of Italian bishops (including their use of lay personnel and their economic impact), and a comparison of pagan and Christian places of worship. The essays included in the last section deal with communication in Late Antiquity. They present the first results of a long-term project on the changing role of information during the last centuries of the Roman world. Eight papers in the volume are published in English for the first time.
Download or read book Cities and the Meanings of Late Antiquity written by Mark Humphries and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines how cities have become an area of significant historical debate about late antiquity, challenging accepted notions that it is a period of dynamic change and reasserting views of the era as one of decline and fall.
Download or read book The Christian Invention of Time written by Simon Goldhill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-03 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time is integral to human culture. Over the last two centuries people's relationship with time has been transformed through industrialisation, trade and technology. But the first such life-changing transformation – under Christianity's influence – happened in late antiquity. It was then that time began to be conceptualised in new ways, with discussion of eternity, life after death and the end of days. Individuals also began to experience time differently: from the seven-day week to the order of daily prayer and the festal calendar of Christmas and Easter. With trademark flair and versatility, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill uncovers this change in thinking. He explores how it took shape in the literary writing of late antiquity and how it resonates even today. His bold new cultural history will appeal to scholars and students of classics, cultural history, literary studies, and early Christianity alike.
Download or read book Enchantment and Creed in the Hymns of Ambrose of Milan written by Brian Dunkle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revision of the author's doctoral dissertation, "Nocturna Lux Viantibus: The Methods, Meaning, and Mystagogy of Ambrosian Hymnody," (Univ. of Notre Dame, 2015).
