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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,...
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.
A New York Times bestseller and a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, The New York Times Book Review, Amazon, The Boston Globe, LitHub, Vulture, Slate, Elle, Vox, and Electric Literature “Tana French’s best and most intricately nuanced novel yet.” —The New York Times An “extraordinary” (Stephen King) and “mesmerizing” (LA Times) standalone novel from the master of crime and suspense and author of the forthcoming novel The Hunter. From the writer who “inspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New Yorker) and has been called “incandescent” by Stephen King, “absolutely mesmerizing” by Gillian Flynn, and “unputdownable” (People) comes a gripping new novel that turns a crime...
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.
The essays in this provocative collection exemplify the innovations that have characterized the relatively new field of late ancient studies. Focused on civilizations clustered mainly around the Mediterranean and covering the period between roughly 100 and 700 CE, scholars in this field have brought history and cultural studies to bear on theology and religious studies. They have adopted the methods of the social sciences and humanities—particularly those of sociology, cultural anthropology, and literary criticism. By emphasizing cultural and social history and considerations of gender and sexuality, scholars of late antiquity have revealed the late ancient world as far more varied than ha...
'Transformation' is a notion apposite to essays in honour of Peter Brown. 'The transformation of the classical heritage' is a theme to which he has devoted, and continues to devote, much energy. All the essays here in some way explore this notion of transformation; the late antique ability to turn the past to new uses, and to set its wealth of principle and insight to work in new settings.
During the fourth century, Antioch on the Orontes was the most important imperial residence in the Roman Empire and a "hot-bed" of intellectual and religious activity. The writings of men such as Libanius, the emperor Julian, Ammianus Marcellinus, John Chrysostom, Theodoret, and many others, provide a density of written sources that is nearly unmatched in antiquity, while the archaeological evidence of the city's evolution is much harder to reconstruct. This volume assembles state-of-the-art scholarship on these ancient authors within the context of recent archaeological work to offer a rare comprehensive view of this late Roman city. Contributors: Rudolf Brandle, Gunnar Brands, Silke-Petra Bergjan, Susanna Elm, Johannes Hahn, Gavin Kelly, Blake Leyerle, Jaclyn Maxwell, Wendy Mayer, Yannis Papadogiannakis, Catherine Saliou, Adam M. Schor, Christine Shepardson, Jan R. Stenger, Claudia Tiersch, Edward Watts, Jorit Wintjes
Medical healing implies knowledge of the assumptions that underlie our understanding of "health," and, concomitantly, how we define well being and its opposites, illness and disease. Today, health, health care (business, wellness, recreation), and medicine (especially research-driven scientific medicine) have become separate entities with different institutions, budgets, marketing philosophies and "corporate cultures". Furthermore, healing is individual and subjective, yet at the same time also culturally determined. The present volume brings together papers on these topics in an unique interdisciplinary approach. The book provides an ethical framework for healthcare from a political perspec...
This collection of essays offers a series of rigorously focused art-historical, historical, and philosophical studies that examine ways in which materiality has posed and still poses a religious and cultural problem. The volume examines the material agency of objects, artifacts, and environments: art, ritual, pilgrimage, food, and philosophy. It studies the variable "senses” of materiality, the place of materiality in the formation of modern Western religion, and its role in Christianity’s dialogue with non-Western religions. The essays present new interpretations of religious rites and outlooks through the focus on their material components. They also suggest how material engagement theory - a new movement in cultural anthropology and archeology - may shed light on the cultural history of Christianity in medieval and early modern Europe and the Americas. It thus fills an important lacuna in the study of western religion by highlighting the longue durée, from the Middles Ages to the Modern Period, of a current dilemma, namely the divide between materialistic and what might broadly be called hermeneutical or cultural-critical approaches to religion and human subjectivity.
Papers presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2003 (see also Studia Patristica 40, 41, 42 and 43). The successive sets of Studia Patristica contain papers delivered at the International Conferences on Patristic Studies, which meet for a week once every four years in Oxford; they are held under the aegis of the Theology Faculty of the University. Members of these conferences come from all over the world and most offer papers. These range over the whole field, both East and West, from the second century to a section on the Nachleben of the Fathers. The majority are short papers dealing with some small and manageable point; they raise and sometimes resolve questions about the authenticity of documents, dates of events, and such like, and some unveil new texts. The smaller number of longer papers put such matters into context and indicate wider trends. The whole reflects the state of Patristic scholarship and demonstrates the vigour and popularity of the subject.