Pagans and Christians in Late Ancient Rome

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-75
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Life Change ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Vestal Virgins

Chapter 4 explores the meaning of “pagan” in late antiquity, debates over its use today, and the meaning and progress of Christianization. Recent controversies over “conversion” and the pace of Christianization, especially among the senatorial aristocracy, have called into question mid-twentieth-century claims that there was an ardent “pagan revival” among aristocrats at the end of the fourth century. Some key elements in that controversy involved the removal of the altar of the goddess Victory from the senate house and the fate of the Vestal Virgins. The chapter details later imperial rulings against pagan practices from the 390s onward. Recent scholarship questions whether conversion to Christianity entailed a radical life change for upper-class Romans. The growth of the number and role of bishops is noted. Christianity’s charity operations were probably a factor in winning some to the new faith. Soon, “heresy” would become a more pressing concern to bishops and some emperors than the occasional “pagan” practitioner.

The Bishop's Two Bodies: Ambrose and the Basilicas of Milan

2010 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Chin
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Organism ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Embodiment ◽  
Two Bodies

The late ancient body is a historiographical problem. In the combined lights of feminist, Foucaultian, and post-Foucaultian methodologies, much recent scholarship on bodies in late antiquity has focused on bodies as sites on which power relations are enacted and as discourses through which ideologies are materialized. Contemporary concern with definitions and representations of the posthuman, however—for example, in medical technologies that expand the capacities of particular human bodies, in speculative pursuit of the limits of avatars, or in the technological pursuit of artificial intelligence or artificial life—seem both to underline the fundamental lability of the body, and to require a broadening of scholarly focus beyond the traditional visible boundaries of the human organism. At the same time, scholarship on the posthuman emphasizes contemporaneity and futurity to an extent that may seem to preclude engagement with the premodern. I would like to suggest here that doubt about the boundaries of human embodiment is a useful lens through which to reconsider some very traditional questions in the history of Christianity, and that we may begin to think of bodies in Christian premodernity in terms of what we might call their pre-humanity, that is, as fundamentally open to extension, transformation, and multiple instantiation. The figure on whom I focus is Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan, who, I argue, defined his own body in such a way that he was able to instantiate physically in dozens of living human bodies, at least two dead human bodies, thousands of angelic bodies, and four church buildings. Ambrose's dynamic conception of his episcopal body was formed within a complex political and theological situation, so questions concerning the political ideology of bodies remain very much at issue. I add to these questions a concern for premodern uncertainty about how to recognize a body, both when it is visible and, perhaps more importantly, when it is not.

Defining the Boundaries of Orthodoxy: Eunomius in the Anti-Jewish Polemic of his Cappadocian Opponents

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-723
Author(s):  
Christine Shepardson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Christian Leaders

Scholars have long recognized that the theological arguments of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa against their opponent Eunomius helped to shape the development of Christian orthodoxy, and thus Christian self-definition, in the late fourth-century Roman Empire. The cultural and theological significance of the strong anti-Judaizing rhetoric contained within these Cappadocian authors’ anti-Eunomian treatises, however, remains largely unexamined. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the critical role of anti-Judaizing rhetoric in the arguments that early Christian leaders Athanasius of Alexandria and Ephrem of Nisibis used against “Arian” Christian opponents in the middle of the fourth century, and the implications of this rhetoric for understanding early Christian-Jewish and intra-Christian relations. Scholars have yet to recognize, however, that anti-Judaizing rhetoric similarly helped to define the terms and consequences of the anti-Eunomian arguments made by Basil, Gregory, and Gregory in the decades that followed. The anti-Judaizing rhetoric of their texts attests to the continuing advantages that these leaders gained by rhetorically associating their Christian opponents with Jews. By claiming that Eunomius and his followers were too Jewish in their beliefs to be Christian, and too Christian in their behaviors to be Jewish, Basil, Gregory, and Gregory deployed anti-Judaizing rhetoric to argue that Eunomians were significantly inferior to both true Christians and Jews. The Cappadocians’ strategic comparisons with Jews and Judaism rhetorically distanced their Eunomian opponents from Christianity and thus strengthened the Cappadocians’ own claims to represent Christian orthodoxy.

A Place at the Altar

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan J. DiLuzio
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Roman People ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
Vestal Virgins

This book illuminates a previously underappreciated dimension of religion in ancient Rome: the role of priestesses in civic cult. Demonstrating that priestesses had a central place in public rituals and institutions, the book emphasizes the complex, gender-inclusive nature of Roman priesthood. In ancient Rome, priestly service was a cooperative endeavor, requiring men and women, husbands and wives, and elite Romans and slaves to work together to manage the community's relationship with its gods. Like their male colleagues, priestesses offered sacrifices on behalf of the Roman people, and prayed for the community's well-being. As they carried out their ritual obligations, they were assisted by female cult personnel, many of them slave women. The book explores the central role of the Vestal Virgins and shows that they occupied just one type of priestly office open to women. Some priestesses, including the flaminica Dialis, the regina sacrorum, and the wives of the curial priests, served as part of priestly couples. Others, such as the priestesses of Ceres and Fortuna Muliebris, were largely autonomous. The book offers a fresh understanding of how the women of ancient Rome played a leading role in public cult.

Worshippers of the Gods

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattias P. Gassman
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Religious History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Changing Attitudes

Worshippers of the Gods Worshippers of the Gods tells how the Latin writers who witnessed the political and social rise of Christianity rethought the role of traditional religion in the empire and city of Rome. In parallel with the empire’s legal Christianisation, it traces changing attitudes toward paganism from the last empire-wide persecution of Christians under the Tetrarchy to the removal of state funds from the Roman cults in the early 380s. Influential recent scholarship has seen Christian polemical literature—a crucial body of evidence for late antique polytheism—as an exercise in Christian identity-making. In response, Worshippers of the Gods argues that Lactantius, Firmicus Maternus, Ambrosiaster, and Ambrose offered substantive critiques of traditional religion shaped to their political circumstances and to the preoccupations of contemporary polytheists. By bringing together this polemical literature with imperial laws, pagan inscriptions, and the letters and papers of the senator Symmachus, Worshippers of the Gods reveals the changing horizons of Roman thought on traditional religion in the fourth century. Through its five interlocking case studies, it shows how key episodes in the Empire’s religious history—the Tetrarchic persecution, Constantine’s adoption of Christianity, the altar of Victory affair, and the ‘disestablishment’ of the Roman cults—shaped contemporary conceptions of polytheism. It also argues that the idea of a unified ‘paganism’, often seen as a capricious invention by Christian polemicists, actually arose as a Christian response to the eclectic, philosophical polytheism in vogue at Rome.

scholarly journals A ‘Great Deal of Discrimination is Necessary in Administering the Law’: Frontier Guards and Migration Control in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-53
Author(s):  
Rachel K. Bright
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Migration Experiences ◽  
British Colonies

This article provides a corrective to recent scholarship surrounding modern migration control, which has emphasised the shared origins of the legal systems created to control migration in the us, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The article demonstrates that the implementation of migration controls in British colonies was arbitrary. It uses the personal papers of Clarence Wilfred Cousins, the Chief Immigration Officer in the Cape, then South Africa (1905–1922), to demonstrate the role of frontier guards in shaping migration experiences. The article highlights the uses and limitations of using ‘ritual’ to understand migration control and how border spaces are experienced.

The divinatory kit from Pergamon and Greek magic in late antiquity

2002 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 173-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Attilio Mastrocinque
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Evidence

Divination was one of the most important features of the learned magical arts in the Imperial period. Not only do the Graeco-Egyptian ‘magical papyri’ contain an abundance of recipes which claim to enable the practitioner to know the future, but several ancient authors attest that divination was of special interest to occultists. Recent scholarship has indeed recognised the importance of divination in ritual-magical practice, but the relevant archaeological evidence has not been much discussed since the publication of the second volume of Th. Hopfner'sGriechisch-ägyptischer Offenbarungszauberin 1924. The major new evidence here has been the Near-Eastern divination- and incantation-bowls. The present article, however, is concerned with the possible implications of a much older find, the divination kit from Pergamon, and its recently-discovered analogue from Apamea in Syria, for the study of specifically theurgic divination. The rôle of magical ritual within theurgy has received considerable attention in recent years, but the relevance of the divination kits has not hitherto been noticed. I shall argue that the physical instruments employed in theurgic divination help us to understand several features of theurgic practice. I shall also stress the possible contribution of magical gems in the same context, for in them we can recognise images and attributes of divine beings with whom magicians and theurgists identified themselves during their performances.

scholarly journals The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (33) ◽  
pp. 19780-19791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Fuks ◽  
Guy Bar-Oz ◽  
Yotam Tepper ◽  
Tali Erickson-Gini ◽  
Dafna Langgut ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Proximate Cause ◽  
International Scope ◽  
Common Era

The international scope of the Mediterranean wine trade in Late Antiquity raises important questions concerning sustainability in an ancient international economy and offers a valuable historical precedent to modern globalization. Such questions involve the role of intercontinental commerce in maintaining sustainable production within important supply regions and the vulnerability of peripheral regions believed to have been especially sensitive to environmental and political disturbances. We provide archaeobotanical evidence from trash mounds at three sites in the central Negev Desert, Israel, unraveling the rise and fall of viticulture over the second to eighth centuries of the common era (CE). Using quantitative ceramic data obtained in the same archaeological contexts, we further investigate connections between Negev viticulture and circum-Mediterranean trade. Our findings demonstrate interrelated growth in viticulture and involvement in Mediterranean trade reaching what appears to be a commercial scale in the fourth to mid-sixth centuries. Following a mid-sixth century peak, decline of this system is evident in the mid- to late sixth century, nearly a century before the Islamic conquest. These findings closely correspond with other archaeological evidence for social, economic, and urban growth in the fourth century and decline centered on the mid-sixth century. Contracting markets were a likely proximate cause for the decline; possible triggers include climate change, plague, and wider sociopolitical developments. In long-term historical perspective, the unprecedented commercial florescence of the Late Antique Negev appears to have been unsustainable, reverting to an age-old pattern of smaller-scale settlement and survival–subsistence strategies within a time frame of about two centuries.

scholarly journals The Politics of Arabic Naming And Islamization In Java: Processes of Hybridization and Purification

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-94
Author(s):  
Askuri Askuri ◽  
Joel Corneal Kuipers
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Quantitative Method ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Sharp Rise ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Classification

Arabic names are a component of a changing Islamic discourse in Java. If Arabic names in Java undergo change and growth, then this has implications for changes in Javanese Islam. This research demonstrates the validity of an approach that uses names as a window into Javanese culture. Drawing on a dataset of 3.7 million names analyzed diachronically across 100 years, and  using a quantitative method sharpened by ethnography, the analysis of names offers a new way to investigate trends that were previously often difficult to document systematically. In the past, Javanese names usually reflected social classification: santri, abangan, priyayi, or lower and upper class. However, towards the end of the twentieth century, names with class connotations were increasingly abandoned (see Kuipers and Askuri 2017). In this paper we explore further the connection between the decline of class marked names, and the rise of Arabic names. Drawing on data from Askuri (2018), we argue that although the decline of class marked names precedes the sharp rise in the use of Arabic names, the former does not seem to have caused the latter in a simple way. Our data show that in the 20th century, there were two important stages in the Arabisation of Javanese names; 1) an initial “synthetic” stage of one-word blended Javanese Arab names, popular from roughly 1930-1960; 2) a later stage, beginning in 1980, of 2 and 3 word names, one of which was a purified Arabic name . The conclusions have implications for an understanding of the role of hybridity and purification in Javanese Islamic modernity. [Nama-nama Arab merupakan salah satu komponen dari wacana Islam yang dinamis di Jawa. Jika nama-nama Arab di Jawa mengalami perubahan dan pertumbuhan, maka hal ini memiliki implikasi perubahan dalam masyarakat Islam di Jawa. Penelitian ini menunjukkan validitas pendekatan yang menggunakan nama sebagai jendela ke dalam budaya Jawa. Berdasarkan pada dataset 3,7 juta nama yang dianalisis secara diakronis sepanjang 100 tahun, dan menggunakan metode kuantitatif yang dipertajam dengan etnografi, analisis nama menawarkan cara baru untuk menyelidiki trend yang sebelumnya sering sulit untuk didokumentasikan secara sistematis.Di masa lalu, nama-nama Jawa biasanya mencerminkan klasifikasi sosial: santri, abangan, priyayi, atau kelas bawah dan atas. Namun, menjelang akhir abad ke-20, nama-nama dengan konotasi kelas semakin ditinggalkan. Dalam makalah ini kami mengeksplorasi lebih lanjut hubungan antara penurunan nama-nama yang berkonotasi kelas rendah yang ditandai dengan dan munculnya nama-nama Arab. Berdasarkan data dari Askuri (2018), kami berpendapat bahwa meskipun penurunan nama yang berkonotasi kelas rendah mendahului kenaikan yang tajam dalam penggunaan nama-nama Arab, yang pertama tampaknya tidak menyebabkan yang terakhir dengan cara yang sederhana. Data kami menunjukkan bahwa pada abad ke-20, ada dua tahapan penting dalam Arabisasi nama-nama di Jawa; 1) tahap awal “sintesis” dari nama campuran Jawa-Arab dalam satu kata, yang populer dari sekitar 1930-1960; 2) tahap selanjutnya, dimulai pada tahun 1980, yang tersusun dari 2 atau 3 kata, dimana salah satunya ialah nama Arab yang dimurnikan (purified Arabic names). Kesimpulan ini memiliki implikasi dalam pemahaman tentang peran hibriditas dan pemurnian dalam modernitas Islam di Jawa.]

Hasidism Beyond Modernity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naftali Loewenthal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Theoretical Underpinning ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Individual

The Habad school of Hasidism is distinguished today from other hasidic groups by its famous emphasis on outreach, on messianism, and on empowering women. This book provides a critical, thematic study of the movement from its beginnings, showing how its unusual qualities evolved. Topics investigated include the theoretical underpinning of the outreach ethos; the turn towards women in the twentieth century; new attitudes to non-Jews; the role of the individual in the hasidic collective; spiritual contemplation in the context of modernity; the quest for inclusivism in the face of prevailing schismatic processes; messianism in both spiritual and political forms; and the direction of the movement after the passing of its seventh rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in 1994. Attention is given to many contrasts: pre-modern, modern, and postmodern conceptions of Judaism; the clash between maintaining an enclave and outreach models of Jewish society; particularist and universalist trends; and the subtle interplay of mystical faith and rationality. Some of the chapters are new; others, published in an earlier form, have been updated to take account of recent scholarship. This book presents an in-depth study of an intriguing movement which takes traditional Hasidism beyond modernity.

cAbdullah Yūsuf cAlī & Muhammad Asad: Two Approaches to the English Translation of the Qur'an

2000 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muzaffar Iqbal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
British India ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
The Times

This article attempts to present a comparative study of the role of two twentieth-century English translations of the Qur'an: cAbdullah Yūsuf cAlī's The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ān and Muḥammad Asad's The Message of the Qur'ān. No two men could have been more different in their background, social and political milieu and life experiences than Yūsuf cAlī and Asad. Yūsuf 'Alī was born and raised in British India and had a brilliant but traditional middle-class academic career. Asad traversed a vast cultural and geographical terrain: from a highly-disciplined childhood in Europe to the deserts of Arabia. Both men lived ‘intensely’ and with deep spiritual yearning. At some time in each of their lives they decided to embark upon the translation of the Qur'an. Their efforts have provided us with two incredibly rich monumental works, which both reflect their own unique approaches and the effects of the times and circumstances in which they lived. A comparative study of these two translations can provide rich insights into the exegesis and the phenomenon of human understanding of the divine text.

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