{"title":"Environment and Society in the Long Late Antiquity ed. by Adam Izdebski and Michael Mulryan (review)","authors":"S. Bruce","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0034","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"557 - 558"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49291292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Making of Medieval Rome: A New Profile of the City, 400–1420 by Hendrik Dey (review)","authors":"D. Kinney","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0031","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"551 - 553"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43508583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay explores the relationship between traditional and Christian concepts of imperial failure and disgrace. Using the writings of Eusebius and Lactantius as a springboard, I discuss the significance of the idea that emperors suffered body, image, and name destruction as a consequence of persecuting the Christians. This is then related to a body of epigraphic evidence in North Africa from the time of the first tetrarchy, where numerous examples of the erasure of imperial names have led to suggestions that these are the result of "Christians" targeting their persecutors. This essay evaluates the likelihood of this and considers it in relation to the ways in which the memory of the Great Persecution was cultivated in this region. Through a close analysis of the context of some of these erasures, I argue that they should not be seen as random acts of religious extremism but as part of the careful management of urban spaces by municipal elites in this period. The ambiguity of these modifications left it unclear whether the stigmatization of imperial names was due to the political or religious failure of these emperors, thus merging the two meanings. This was advantageous, since the traditional practice of name-erasure could be interpreted in different ways depending on the values of the viewer and thus represented common ground between different groups.
{"title":"Where Are the Names of the Iovii and Herculii? Exploring Christian Responses to Tetrarchic Material Culture","authors":"Rebecca Usherwood","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay explores the relationship between traditional and Christian concepts of imperial failure and disgrace. Using the writings of Eusebius and Lactantius as a springboard, I discuss the significance of the idea that emperors suffered body, image, and name destruction as a consequence of persecuting the Christians. This is then related to a body of epigraphic evidence in North Africa from the time of the first tetrarchy, where numerous examples of the erasure of imperial names have led to suggestions that these are the result of \"Christians\" targeting their persecutors. This essay evaluates the likelihood of this and considers it in relation to the ways in which the memory of the Great Persecution was cultivated in this region. Through a close analysis of the context of some of these erasures, I argue that they should not be seen as random acts of religious extremism but as part of the careful management of urban spaces by municipal elites in this period. The ambiguity of these modifications left it unclear whether the stigmatization of imperial names was due to the political or religious failure of these emperors, thus merging the two meanings. This was advantageous, since the traditional practice of name-erasure could be interpreted in different ways depending on the values of the viewer and thus represented common ground between different groups.","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"402 - 427"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47584444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article presents a new reading of On the Deaths of the Persecutors as a means to better appreciate Lactantius's political theology. Starting with this text's oddest feature—that though it ostensibly focuses on imperial mistreatment of Christians and the divine punishment that it provoked, much of it in fact does not discuss Christians or Christianity at all—and reading it both in its historical (non-Constantinian) context and as an active intervention in the ideological competition of Lactantius's day, can, I suggest, put our understanding of Lactantius's political theology on a new footing. I argue, first, that Lactantius sought to highlight the dysfunctionality of the non-Christian tetrarchs' interrelationships; second, that he suggested that these intra-imperial machinations had catalyzed systematic mistreatment of household and subject, and sustained social and economic disruption in the empire at large—in other words a continuation of the third century "crisis"—and, third, that he offered Christianity and Christians as delivering that which the non-Christian tetrarchs had not: harmonious imperial relationships, positive treatment of households, and a stable empire. This represents the practical working out of a theory of iustitia inherited from but designed to supersede Cicero. Read thus, On the Deaths of the Persecutors becomes the crown in Lactantius's oeuvre, a crucial epilogue to the Divine Institutes in which Lactantius sought to work through the practical consequences of his theology.
{"title":"Lactantius and Empire: Political Theology in On the Deaths of the Persecutors","authors":"J. Corke-Webster","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article presents a new reading of On the Deaths of the Persecutors as a means to better appreciate Lactantius's political theology. Starting with this text's oddest feature—that though it ostensibly focuses on imperial mistreatment of Christians and the divine punishment that it provoked, much of it in fact does not discuss Christians or Christianity at all—and reading it both in its historical (non-Constantinian) context and as an active intervention in the ideological competition of Lactantius's day, can, I suggest, put our understanding of Lactantius's political theology on a new footing. I argue, first, that Lactantius sought to highlight the dysfunctionality of the non-Christian tetrarchs' interrelationships; second, that he suggested that these intra-imperial machinations had catalyzed systematic mistreatment of household and subject, and sustained social and economic disruption in the empire at large—in other words a continuation of the third century \"crisis\"—and, third, that he offered Christianity and Christians as delivering that which the non-Christian tetrarchs had not: harmonious imperial relationships, positive treatment of households, and a stable empire. This represents the practical working out of a theory of iustitia inherited from but designed to supersede Cicero. Read thus, On the Deaths of the Persecutors becomes the crown in Lactantius's oeuvre, a crucial epilogue to the Divine Institutes in which Lactantius sought to work through the practical consequences of his theology.","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"333 - 366"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45226903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction","authors":"R. Flower, M. McEvoy, R. Whelan","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0019","url":null,"abstract":"of","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"326 - 332"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43281403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:A representative sample of late antique and early medieval texts reveals that nearly two-thirds of female characters within them are left nameless by their authors. Whether for narrative or feminist reasons, the instinct of modern historians is to identify as many such women as possible by name. In this article, we instead investigate the range of reasons why late antique and early medieval authors left women nameless and establish a methodological footing for the analysis of female namelessness in such texts. We focus on royal women, as these were among the most high-profile women of the time whose names were often known widely. Leaving such women nameless therefore reveals particular rhetorical or political choices. In order to track changes and continuities of such choices over the period of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, we compare the representation of named and nameless royal women in three case studies: tetrarchic empresses as described in Lactantius's De Mortibus Persecutorum, Merovingian queens in Gregory of Tours's Decem libri historiarum, and Northumbrian queens in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. Our main finding is that throughout the period of investigation there was no straightforward relationship between female namelessness and the erasure or even oppression of women, at least in the case of royal women. Instead, it was often through the naming of women that a negative message about them was conveyed and through polemical texts that women's names were preserved.
{"title":"The Politics of Female Namelessness between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, circa 300 to 750","authors":"J. Hillner, M. Maccarron, Ulriika Vihervalli","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:A representative sample of late antique and early medieval texts reveals that nearly two-thirds of female characters within them are left nameless by their authors. Whether for narrative or feminist reasons, the instinct of modern historians is to identify as many such women as possible by name. In this article, we instead investigate the range of reasons why late antique and early medieval authors left women nameless and establish a methodological footing for the analysis of female namelessness in such texts. We focus on royal women, as these were among the most high-profile women of the time whose names were often known widely. Leaving such women nameless therefore reveals particular rhetorical or political choices. In order to track changes and continuities of such choices over the period of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, we compare the representation of named and nameless royal women in three case studies: tetrarchic empresses as described in Lactantius's De Mortibus Persecutorum, Merovingian queens in Gregory of Tours's Decem libri historiarum, and Northumbrian queens in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. Our main finding is that throughout the period of investigation there was no straightforward relationship between female namelessness and the erasure or even oppression of women, at least in the case of royal women. Instead, it was often through the naming of women that a negative message about them was conveyed and through polemical texts that women's names were preserved.","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"367 - 401"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47314587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article examines aspects of the investiture oath sworn by provincial governors during the reign of Justinian. This oath, which was implemented alongside the promulgation of Novel 8 in 535, was intended to act as an overt articulation of the governor's duties. Owing to this purpose, it is significant that parts of the oath's formula directly relate to the swearer's doctrinal affiliation. The governor could not begin his period of service without first stating his agreement with a sanitized form of imperial Christianity and promising to prevent the existence of sects which opposed what the emperor contemporaneously defined as "orthodoxy." Through these crucial yet brief statements, gubernatorial bureaucrats publicly demonstrated that their administrative remit also concerned provincial religious conflicts. This expression was an imperial response to the ongoing dialogue between state and church actors about the nature of Christian civil service. Through the implementation of this carefully constructed oath of office, Justinian made his provincial governors characterize themselves as "orthodox" servants in an "orthodox" Christian empire.
{"title":"Constructing Christian Bureaucrats: Justinian and the Governor's Oath of Office","authors":"Michael Wuk","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines aspects of the investiture oath sworn by provincial governors during the reign of Justinian. This oath, which was implemented alongside the promulgation of Novel 8 in 535, was intended to act as an overt articulation of the governor's duties. Owing to this purpose, it is significant that parts of the oath's formula directly relate to the swearer's doctrinal affiliation. The governor could not begin his period of service without first stating his agreement with a sanitized form of imperial Christianity and promising to prevent the existence of sects which opposed what the emperor contemporaneously defined as \"orthodoxy.\" Through these crucial yet brief statements, gubernatorial bureaucrats publicly demonstrated that their administrative remit also concerned provincial religious conflicts. This expression was an imperial response to the ongoing dialogue between state and church actors about the nature of Christian civil service. Through the implementation of this carefully constructed oath of office, Justinian made his provincial governors characterize themselves as \"orthodox\" servants in an \"orthodox\" Christian empire.","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"462 - 493"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42097501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Go-Between: Augustine on Deacons by Bart J. Koet (review)","authors":"S. Adamiak","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0028","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"545 - 546"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44629485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:A wealth of political writings survives from early Christian Ireland. While traditionally this material has been understood in terms of a dichotomy between "pagan" and "Christian," recent scholarship has borrowed the category of the "secular" from late antique studies to make sense of early Irish intellectual culture and its political discourses. This article builds on this trend to reveal, through close examination of seventh-century Irish writings, a multitude of differently Christianized discourses existing simultaneously, sometimes even within a single text. Just as the boundary between the "pagan" and the "secular" was not fixed, so too the boundary between the "Christian" and the "secular," giving rise to many different ways late antique Christians (in Ireland and elsewhere) could speak about politics. Much late antique scholarship on the "secular" assumes it was a passing phase ending in Christianization, but this research argues that "secularity" retained its importance in societies where Christians constantly debated and disagreed over where the boundaries of the "Christian" lay.
{"title":"The Christianization of Political Discourse: Reflections on the Irish Evidence","authors":"Conor O’Brien","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0026","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:A wealth of political writings survives from early Christian Ireland. While traditionally this material has been understood in terms of a dichotomy between \"pagan\" and \"Christian,\" recent scholarship has borrowed the category of the \"secular\" from late antique studies to make sense of early Irish intellectual culture and its political discourses. This article builds on this trend to reveal, through close examination of seventh-century Irish writings, a multitude of differently Christianized discourses existing simultaneously, sometimes even within a single text. Just as the boundary between the \"pagan\" and the \"secular\" was not fixed, so too the boundary between the \"Christian\" and the \"secular,\" giving rise to many different ways late antique Christians (in Ireland and elsewhere) could speak about politics. Much late antique scholarship on the \"secular\" assumes it was a passing phase ending in Christianization, but this research argues that \"secularity\" retained its importance in societies where Christians constantly debated and disagreed over where the boundaries of the \"Christian\" lay.","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"519 - 542"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45565278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This paper examines the hagiography of Daniel the Stylite, believed to have been written by one of his disciples soon after the saint's death at Constantinople in the late fifth century. It first explores the identity of Daniel's named patrons, highlighting the status of these individuals as members of former imperial families who were not currently in power in the East, but who were competing with the reigning emperors of the day for patronage of the holy man. Second, it highlights the imperial-like manner of the hagiographer's presentation of Daniel, particularly his column-dwelling existence with its analogies to imperial columns in the city, and his ordination by the hand of God, and it suggests that the author was shaping his presentation of the holy man to appeal to the Christian court of his day. Both of these aspects of the text indicate that the hagiographer wished to present Daniel as the pre-eminent holy man of late fifth-century Constantinople, whose monastery was worthy of future patronage by emperors or aristocrats with imperial connections.
{"title":"Emperors, Aristocrats, and Columns: Christian Imperial Politics in the Late Fifth Century CE as Reflected in the Life of Daniel the Stylite","authors":"M. McEvoy","doi":"10.1353/jla.2022.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2022.0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper examines the hagiography of Daniel the Stylite, believed to have been written by one of his disciples soon after the saint's death at Constantinople in the late fifth century. It first explores the identity of Daniel's named patrons, highlighting the status of these individuals as members of former imperial families who were not currently in power in the East, but who were competing with the reigning emperors of the day for patronage of the holy man. Second, it highlights the imperial-like manner of the hagiographer's presentation of Daniel, particularly his column-dwelling existence with its analogies to imperial columns in the city, and his ordination by the hand of God, and it suggests that the author was shaping his presentation of the holy man to appeal to the Christian court of his day. Both of these aspects of the text indicate that the hagiographer wished to present Daniel as the pre-eminent holy man of late fifth-century Constantinople, whose monastery was worthy of future patronage by emperors or aristocrats with imperial connections.","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":"15 1","pages":"428 - 461"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45177370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：