The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity

1971 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 80-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Brown
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Patient Work ◽  
Eastern Empire ◽  
And Function ◽  
Holy Man ◽  
Lives Of The Saints ◽  
Late Roman

To study the position of the holy man in Late Roman society is to risk telling in one's own words a story that has often been excellently told before. In vivid essays, Norman Baynes has brought the lives of the saints to the attention of the social and religious historian of Late Antiquity. The patient work of the Bollandists has increased and clarified a substantial dossier of authentic narratives. These lives have provided the social historian with most of what he knows of the life of the average man in the Eastern Empire. They illuminate the variety and interaction of the local cultures of the Near East. The holy men themselves have been carefully studied, both as figures in the great Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries, and as the arbiters of the distinctive traditions of Byzantine piety and ascetic theology.The intention of this paper is to follow well known paths of scholarship on all these topics, while asking two basic questions: why did the holy man come to play such an important rôle in the society, of the fifth and sixth centuries ? What light do his activities throw on the values and functioning of a society that was prepared to concede him such importance? It is as well to ask such elementary questions. For there is a danger that the holy man may be taken for granted as part of the Byzantine scene. Most explanations of his position are deceptively easy.

Regum Externorum Consuetudine: The Nature and Function of Embalming in Rome

1996 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek B. Counts
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
First Century ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
Significant Aspect ◽  
Death Ritual ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Apparent Shift ◽  
And Function

Although embalming is traditionally considered an Egyptian custom, ancient sources suggest that in imperial Rome the practice was not employed by Egyptians or Egyptianized Romans alone. The mos Romanorum in funerary ritual encompassed both cremation and inhumation, yet embalming appears in Rome as early as the first century AD and evidence points to its limited use during the first three centuries AD. Within the social structure of Rome's dead these preserved corpses certainly occupied a distinct place. Yet who were they and why were they embalmed? It is argued here that various factors allowed for the occasional use of embalming by Romans: (1) an apparent shift in attitudes towards Egypt, (2) the manipulation of death ritual for social distinction, and (3) the flexibility of the traditional Roman funeral, which was able to incorporate deviations in methods of body disposal. Although embalming has been largely ignored as a significant aspect of Roman funerary history, its patrons come from the classes of highest status, including even the imperial household. This fact alone makes it worthwhile to examine this small corpus of evidence. For example, the emperor Nero embalmed his wife Poppaea; such a deviation from standard disposal methods reflects imperial fashion, but also requires us to re-evaluate Nero's reign and, especially, the societal constructs of Neronian Rome. This study attempts to contextualize embalming within Roman society and offer some likely causes and effects of its use.

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350-450

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maijastina Kahlos
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Roman

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity reconsiders the religious history of the late Roman Empire, focusing on the shifting position of dissenting religious groups. The groups under consideration are non-Christians (‘pagans’) and deviant Christians (‘heretics’). The period from the mid-fourth century until the mid-fifth century CE witnessed a significant transformation of late Roman society and a gradual shift from the world of polytheistic religions into the Christian Empire. This book demonstrates that the narrative is much more nuanced than the simple Christian triumph over the classical world. It looks at everyday life, economic aspects, day-to-day practices, and conflicts of interest in the relations of religious groups. The book addresses two aspects: rhetoric and realities, and consequently delves into the interplay between the manifest ideologies and daily life found in late antique sources. We perceive constant flux between moderation and coercion that marked the relations of religious groups, both majorities and minorities, as well as the imperial government and religious communities. Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity is a detailed analysis of selected themes and a close reading of selected texts, tracing key elements and developments in the treatment of dissident religious groups. The book focuses on specific themes, such as the limits of imperial legislation and ecclesiastical control, the end of sacrifices, and the label of magic. It also examines the ways in which dissident religious groups were construed as religious outsiders in late Roman society.

Holiness and Sanctity in the Early Church

2011 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Louth
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Western Society ◽  
The World ◽  
And Function ◽  
Holy Man ◽  
The Way

In 1971 Peter Brown published his justly famous article, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’. It is no exaggeration to say that this article — and the host of articles and books that succeeded it — have transformed the way we think about saints and their cult in late antiquity. This change is part of a wider transformation of the study of the world of early Christianity, a change that has much to do with the changing, not to say declining, place of Christianity in Western society. The very words Peter Brown used in the title of his article are emblematic of this changed perspective: holy, man, late antiquity. Others have noted the change of words from what one might have expected, or from what one would have expected a few decades, even years, earlier. Averil Cameron spoke of Peter Brown ‘rightly avoiding the term “saint”, for in this early period there were no formal processes of sanctification, and no official bestowal of sainthood’. Put like that, it seems obvious why Brown talked about the ‘holy man’. I want to suggest that the nature of the change involved is much less easy to track down, and furthermore that awareness of the specific suggestions implicit in Brown’s choice of words will enable us to contemplate the world of late antiquity from the perspective Brown was largely inaugurating, while not losing the other perspectives that were implicit in the language and concepts laid aside.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Social Function ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Holy Man ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
Cultural Developments

This chapter introduces this book’s main issues and questions. How were hagiographic texts used in the discourse of creating or recreating monastic identities? Was there a change in the social function of monasteries, and how did this come about? What was innovative about Jonas’s Vita Columbani, and how did he seek to establish new concepts of sanctity based on the community rather than on the individual holy man? It broaches these questions while framing the principal characters and subjects of the book—the life and works of Jonas of Bobbio, Columbanus, and the Columbanian monastic network—within the wider context of the religious and cultural developments of Late Antiquity. It also provides a historiographical introduction to previous scholarship on Jonas and an overview of Jonas’s three saints’ Lives.

Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire: New Evidence from Aphrodisias

1984 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 181-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Roueché
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Late Roman

This article has been engendered by yet another important discovery made during the current excavations at Aphrodisias in Caria, of a unique series of acclamatory texts in honour of a local benefactor, Albinus. The texts were inscribed, probably in the first half of the sixth century, on the twenty columns of the west portico of the Agora, nineteen of which survive. They provide relatively little information either about Albinus or about the history of Aphrodisias; but they are of outstanding interest as the fullest series of inscribed acclamations which has yet been identified anywhere. The purpose of this article is to consider the status and function of acclamations in late Roman society, and their relationship to earlier practice, in order to assess the full significance of the texts presented here.

Eunuchs in Politics in the Later Roman Empire

1963 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 62-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Real Power ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Social ◽  
Court Life ◽  
Eastern Empire ◽  
Lives Of The Saints ◽  
The Church

Why Eunuchs? Primarily because they were important. No-one who has waded through the church histories of the fourth and fifth centuries or the numerous later Byzantine chronicles, or those lives of the saints which touch upon court life, can have failed to be struck by die frequent imputation that, in the Eastern Empire especially, the real power lay in the hands not of the emperor nor of his aristocrats, but of his chief eunuch; or alternatively that the corps of eunuchs as a group wielded considerable if not predominant power at court. Yet the eunuchs were barbarians by birth and slaves into the bargain. The purpose of this paper is to explain why eunuchs held so much power in the imperial and aristocratic society of Eastern Rome, to put this power in the context of the socio-political developments of the later Empire, and to analyse some of the social functions of this power.Yet here, right at the beginning, the objection might be raised that we are faced with nothing but a problem in historiography. Eunuchs might have been to Byzantine historians nothing more than women and gods were to Herodotus, convenient personal pegs to hang historical causes on.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND LATE ANTIQUE SOCIAL STRUCTURES

2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-56
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Sodini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Rural Environments ◽  
The Social

The archaeological remains of late antique sites can be interpreted in terms of what they can tell us about ancient social structures. This is more straightforward when examining the social structures of the upper classes, who possessed the attributes that allow them to be recognised as such. These attributes occur on a Mediterranean-wide basis and include lavishly decorated residences (in both urban and rural environments), monumental funerary structures within churches, splendid garments, precious table wares and implements, and the insignia of rank in the form of jewellery such as gold brooches, fibulae, or belt buckles. The middle class is also traceable in the cities (mostly in the form of craftsmen) and in the countryside, where small landowners and peasants could share similar lifestyles, marked in some regions (such as the Near East and Asia Minor) by conspicuous levels of wealth. However, the lives of these middle classes could change abruptly, casting them into poverty and consequently making them difficult to trace archaeologically. Nonetheless, judicious interpretation of the material remains in tandem with the evidence of documentary and epigraphic sources allows us to make some suggestions as to the social structures of Late Antiquity.

Hagiography and Autobiography in the Late Antique West

2011 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 41-50
Author(s):  
Peter Turner
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Classic Essay ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
And Function ◽  
Holy Man

Peter Brown’s classic essay of 1971, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, is celebrated for applying the tools of sociology and anthropology to the study of late antique sanctity. It strove to remove holy men from the distorting literary texts through which we know them, and to place them instead in a rich context of everyday concerns. My starting point here, however, is not the essay itself but a no less interesting critique of it subsequently made by the author himself. In 1998, Brown offered a number of pieces of advice he would now give to a younger self embarking on the same topic. In 1971, he claimed, he had unwittingly colluded with the hagiographical texts by presenting holy men in dramatic, epic terms. Focusing on what holy men did for society, he had observed the phenomenon from a purely third-person perspective, and had neglected their own personal quest for sanctity. Although he had located the holy man’s activity in the everyday, he had effectively conceded that the ultimate locus of the holy man’s holiness — his superior understanding — was unknowable.

SOME ASPECTS OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE ROMAN DOMUS BETWEEN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Polci
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Type ◽  
Late Roman

This essay concerns some aspects of the transformation of the Late Roman domus into the Early Medieval house and focuses on the spaces designed for reception and entertainment. First, I will consider the use and the development of the reception areas of wealthy houses, and their relationship with the growth in private patronage in Late Antiquity. Second, I will examine the transformation of this late antique model of elite housing into the new type of upper-class dwellings that emerged in Early Medieval Italy. In particular, I will focus on the transferral of reception halls and banqueting chambers to the upper story, and on the social and architectonic implications of this feature.

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