Download or read book Virgins of God written by Susanna Elm and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1996-01 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated in a period that witnessed the genesis of institutions that have lasted to this day, this path-breaking study looks at how ancient Christian women, particularly in Asia Minor and Egypt, initiated ascetic ways of living, and how these practices were then institutionalized. Susanna Elm demonstrates that--in direct contrast to later conceptions--asceticism began primarly as an urban movement, in which women were significant protagonists. In the process, they completely transformed and expanded their roles as wife, mother, or widow: as Christian ascetics, they became `virgin wives', `virgin mothers', and `virgin widows' - with all the legal and economic implications of such a dramatic shift. As importantly, though, Christian men and women ascetics lived together. As `virgins of God' they created new families `in Christ'. No longer determined by their human bonds or human sexuality, they were `neither male nor female'. Finally, the book demonstrates how asceticbishops - today known as saints - eventually `reformed' these early models of communal, ascetic life by dividing the `virgins of God' into monks and nuns and thus laid the foundation for the monasticism we know today.
Download or read book Virgins of God written by Susanna Elm and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Virgins of God The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity written by Susanna Elm and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1994-09-15 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the institutions fundamental to the role of men and women in society today were formed in late antiquity. This path-breaking study offers a comprehensive look at how Christian women of this time initiated alternative, ascetic ways of living, both with and without men. The author studies how these practices were institutionalized, and why later they were either eliminated or transformed by a new Christian Roman elite of men we now think of as the founding fathers of monasticism. - ;Situated in a period that witnessed the genesis of institutions fundamental to this day, this path-breaking study offers a comprehensive look at how ancient Christian women initiated ascetic ways of living, and how these practices were then institutionalized. Using the organization of female asceticism in Asia Minor and Egypt as a lever, the author demonstrates that - in direct contrast to later conceptions - asceticism began primarly as an urban movement. Crucially, it also originated with men and women living together, varying the model of the family. The book then traces how, in the course of the fourth century, these early organizational forms underwent a transformation. Concurrent with the doctrinal struggles to redefine the Trinity, and with the formation of a new Christian --eacute--;lite, men such as Basil of Caesarea changed the institutional configuration of ascetic life in common: they emphasized the segregation of the sexes, and the supremacy of the rural over urban models. At the same time, ascetics became clerics, who increasingly used female saints as symbols for the role of the new ecclesiastical elite. Earlier, more varied models of ascetic life were either silenced or condemned as heretical; and those who had been in fact their reformers became known as the founding fathers of monasticism. -
Download or read book Children and Asceticism in Late Antiquity written by Ville Vuolanto and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Late Antiquity the emergence of Christian asceticism challenged the traditional Greco-Roman views and practices of family life. The resulting discussions on the right way to live a good Christian life provide us with a variety of information on both ideological statements and living experiences of late Roman childhood. This is the first book to scrutinise the interplay between family, children and asceticism in the rise of Christianity. Drawing on texts of Christian authors of the late fourth and early fifth centuries the volume approaches the study of family dynamics and childhood from both ideological and social historical perspectives. It examines the place of children in the family in Christian ideology and explores how families in the late Roman world adapted these ideals in practice. Offering fresh viewpoints to current scholarship Ville Vuolanto demonstrates that there were many continuities in Roman ways of thinking about children and, despite the rise of Christianity, the old traditions remained deeply embedded in the culture. Moreover, the discussions about family and children are shown to have been intimately linked to worries about the continuity of family lineage and of the self, and to the changing understanding of what constituted a meaningful life.
Download or read book Late Antique Images of the Virgin Annunciate Spinning written by Catherine Gines Taylor and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Late Antique Images of the Virgin Annunciate Spinning: allotting the scarlet and the purple, Catherine Gines Taylor traces the way early Christians assimilated the symbolism of spinning into images of the Annunciation. Taylor offers an art historical and interdisciplinary look at the earliest images of Mary spinning, underscoring the iconographic model of idealized matronage consistent with lay piety and the cult of Mary. The personal and domestic nature of this motif is evidence toward popular Mariological devotion that preceded the exclusive, semi-divine presentation of the Theotokos, and stands in contrast with traditional ascetic models for Mary.
Download or read book Repentance in Late Antiquity written by Alexis Torrance and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study provides a fresh perspective on the concept of repentance in early Christianity. Alexis Torrance focuses on writings by several ascetic theologians of the fifth to seventh centuries, and also examines texts from Scripture, early Christian treatises and homilies, apocalyptic material, and canonical literature.
Download or read book Clothed in the Body written by Hannah Hunt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hunt examines the apparent paradox that Jesus' earthly existence and post resurrection appearances are experienced through consummately physical actions and attributes yet some ascetics within the Christian tradition appear to seek to deny the value of the human body, to find it deadening of spiritual life. Hunt considers why the Christian tradition as a whole has rarely managed more than an uneasy truce between the physical and the spiritual aspects of the human person. Why is it that the 'Church' has energetically argued, through centuries of ecumenical councils, for the dual nature of Christ but seems still unwilling to accept the full integration of physical and spiritual within humanity, despite Gregory of Nazianzus's comment that 'what has not been assumed has not been redeemed'?
Download or read book Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity written by David Morton Gwynn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in the ongoing Late Antique Archaeology series draws on material and textual evidence to explore the diverse religious world of Late Antiquity. Subjects include Jews and Samaritans, orthodoxy and heresy, pilgrimage, stylites, magic, the sacred and the secular.
Download or read book Individuality in Late Antiquity written by Alexis Torrance and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late antiquity is increasingly recognised as a period of important cultural transformation. One of its crucial aspects is the emergence of a new awareness of human individuality. In this book an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars documents and analyses this development. Authors assess the influence of seminal thinkers, including the Gnostics, Plotinus, and Augustine, but also of cultural and religious practices such as astrology and monasticism, as well as, more generally, the role played by intellectual disciplines such as grammar and Christian theology. Broad in both theme and scope, the volume serves as a comprehensive introduction to late antique understandings of human individuality.
Download or read book The Monastic Landscape of Late Antique Egypt written by Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-23 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces changing perceptions of Egypt's monastic landscape through an analysis of archaeological and documentary evidence from late antiquity.
Download or read book The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity written by Oliver Nicholson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 1743 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity is the first comprehensive reference book covering every aspect of history, culture, religion, and life in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East (including the Persian Empire and Central Asia) between the mid-3rd and the mid-8th centuries AD, the era now generally known as Late Antiquity. This period saw the re-establishment of the Roman Empire, its conversion to Christianity and its replacement in the West by Germanic kingdoms, the continuing Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Sassanian Empire, and the rise of Islam. Consisting of over 1.5 million words in more than 5,000 A-Z entries, and written by more than 400 contributors, it is the long-awaited middle volume of a series, bridging a significant period of history between those covered by the acclaimed Oxford Classical Dictionary and The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. The scope of the Dictionary is broad and multi-disciplinary; across the wide geographical span covered (from Western Europe and the Mediterranean as far as the Near East and Central Asia), it provides succinct and pertinent information on political history, law, and administration; military history; religion and philosophy; education; social and economic history; material culture; art and architecture; science; literature; and many other areas. Drawing on the latest scholarship, and with a formidable international team of advisers and contributors, The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity aims to establish itself as the essential reference companion to a period that is attracting increasing attention from scholars and students worldwide.
Download or read book Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice written by Richard Valantasis and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-06-19 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of nearly seventy Late Antique primary religious texts that constitute a comprehensive view of religious practice in Late Antiquity. This sourcebook includes discussions of asceticism, religious organization, ritual, martyrdom ...
Download or read book Simplicity and Humility in Late Antique Christian Thought written by Jaclyn L. Maxwell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The social values of upper-class Christians in Late Antiquity often contrasted with the modest backgrounds of their religion's founders – the apostles – and the virtues they exemplified. Drawing on examples from the Cappadocian Fathers, John Chrysostom, and other late antique authors, this book examines attitudes toward the apostles' status as manual workers and their virtues of simplicity and humility. Due to the strong connection between these traits and low socioeconomic status, late antique bishops often allowed their own high standing to influence how they understood these matters. The virtues of simplicity and humility had been a natural fit for tentmakers and fishermen, but posed a significant challenge to Christians born into the elite and trained in prestigious schools. This volume examines the socioeconomic implications of Christianity in the Roman Empire by considering how the first wave of powerful, upper-class church leaders interpreted the socially radical elements of their religion.
Download or read book Christianity and the Contest for Manhood in Late Antiquity written by Nathan D. Howard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-24 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Nathan Howard explores gender and identity formation in fourth-century Cappadocia, where pro-Nicene bishops used a rhetoric of contest that aligned with conventions of classical Greek masculinity. Howard demonstrates that epistolary exhibitions served as 'a locus for' asserting manhood in the fourth century. These performances illustrate how a culture of orality that had defined manhood among civic elites was reframed as a contest whereby one accrued status through merits of composition. Howard shows how the Cappadocians' rhetoric also reordered the body and materiality as components of a maleness over which they moderated. He interrogates fourth-century theological conflict as part of a rhetorical battle over claims to manhood that supported the Cappadocians' theology and cast doubt on non-Trinitarian rivals, whom they cast as effeminate and disingenuous. Investigating accounts of pro-Nicene protagonists overcoming struggles, Howard establishes that tropes based on classical standards of gender contributed to the formation of Trinitarian orthodoxy.
Download or read book Body and Gender Soul and Reason in Late Antiquity written by Gillian Clark and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-14 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to say that a human being is body and soul, and how does each affect the other? Late antique philosophers, Christians included, asked these central questions. The papers collected here explore their answers, and use those answers to ask further questions, reading Iamblichus, Porphyry, Augustine and others in their social and intellectual context. Among the topics dealt with are the following. Humans are mortal rational beings, so how does the mortal body affect the rational soul? The body needs food: what foods are best for the soul, and is it right to eat animal foods if animals are less rational than humans? The body is gendered for reproduction: are reason and the soul also gendered? Ascetic lifestyles may free our bodies from the limitations of gender and desire, so that our souls are free to reconnect with the divine; but this need must be balanced with the claims of family and society. Philosophers asked whether life in the body is exile for the soul; Christians defended their claim that body as well as soul would live after death, and even the smallest fragment of a martyr's body is proof of resurrection.
Download or read book Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity written by Tomas Hägg and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How classical narrative models were adapted as early Christian culture took shape and developed.
Download or read book Asceticism in the Graeco Roman World written by Richard Finn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-02 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asceticism deploys abstention, self-control, and self-denial, to order oneself or a community in relation to the divine. Both its practices and the cultural ideals they expressed were important to pagans, Jews, Christians of different kinds, and Manichees. Richard Finn presents for the first time a combined study of the major ascetic traditions, which have been previously misunderstood by being studied separately. He examines how people abstained from food, drink, sexual relations, sleep, and wealth; what they meant by their behaviour; and how they influenced others in the Graeco-Roman world. Against this background, the book charts the rise of monasticism in Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria, and North Africa, assessing the crucial role played by the third-century exegete, Origen, and asks why monasticism developed so variously in different regions.
