Pilgrims in the deserts of Egypt and the holy land during the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. often reported visiting holy people as part of their tours of holy places. This is the first comprehensive study of pilgrimage to these famous ascetics of late antique Christianity. Through an original analysis of pilgrim writings of this period, Georgia Frank discovers a literary imagination at work, one that both recorded and shaped the experience of pilgrimage to living saints. Taking an important new approach to these texts, Frank finds in them a record of the writers' and readers' spiritual...
Pilgrims in the deserts of Egypt and the holy land during the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. often reported visiting holy people as part of their tou...
The two centuries between a.d. 250 and a.d. 450 witnessed the creation of a distinctive Christian Greek culture in the eastern part of the Roman empire. This book focuses on the transition from ancient to Christian Hellenism as it was expressed in the biographical and panegyric literature of the period. The essays show how literary genres focusing on individual lives help to reveal this historical process. The contributors are leading scholars who bring several disciplines to bear on these texts: they are historians, theologians, classicists, and historians of religion. Together, the...
The two centuries between a.d. 250 and a.d. 450 witnessed the creation of a distinctive Christian Greek culture in the eastern part of the Roman empir...
"Peers' insightful and wide-ranging study supplies a clear and comprehensive history of the angelic image in cosmology and cult during the formative period prior to Iconoclasm. The paradoxes of the angelic body provide the proving ground for fiercely contested and incompatible claims for text and image as authoritative representations of the holy."--Jeffrey F. Hamburger, author of "Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent"
"[Peers takes] the angelic experience as an instance of the problems inherent in Christian representation. But both astutely and elegantly, he treats...
"Peers' insightful and wide-ranging study supplies a clear and comprehensive history of the angelic image in cosmology and cult during the formative p...
Clothing, jewelry, animal remains, ceramics, coins, and weaponry are among the artifacts that have been discovered in graves in Gaul dating from the fifth to eighth century. Those who have unearthed them, from the middle ages to the present, have speculated widely on their meaning. This authoritative book makes a major contribution to the study of death and burial in late antique and early medieval society with its long overdue systematic discussion of this mortuary evidence. Tracing the history of Merovingian archaeology within its cultural and intellectual context for the first time, Effros...
Clothing, jewelry, animal remains, ceramics, coins, and weaponry are among the artifacts that have been discovered in graves in Gaul dating from the f...
An apostolic lifestyle characterized by total material renunciation, homelessness, and begging was practiced by monks throughout the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Such monks often served as spiritual advisors to urban aristocrats whose patronage gave them considerable authority and independence from episcopal control. This book is the first comprehensive study of this type of Christian poverty and the challenge it posed for episcopal authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity. Focusing on devotional practices, Daniel Caner draws together diverse...
An apostolic lifestyle characterized by total material renunciation, homelessness, and begging was practiced by monks throughout the Roman Empire in t...
"Three features make this book remarkable. First, its scholarship is impeccable, unusually broad, and complete. Second, its author has a clear story to tell. Third, it illuminates the world of Late Antiquity, which is only now beginning to be understood."--Oleg Grabar, author of "The Shape of the Holy"
"Three features make this book remarkable. First, its scholarship is impeccable, unusually broad, and complete. Second, its author has a clear story t...
Between 300 and 600, Christianity experienced a momentous change from persecuted cult to state religion. One of the consequences of this shift was the evolution of the role of the bishop--as the highest Church official in his city--from model Christian to model citizen. Claudia Rapp's exceptionally learned, innovative, and groundbreaking work traces this transition with a twofold aim: to deemphasize the reign of the emperor Constantine, which has traditionally been regarded as a watershed in the development of the Church as an institution, and to bring to the fore the continued importance of...
Between 300 and 600, Christianity experienced a momentous change from persecuted cult to state religion. One of the consequences of this shift was the...
What did it mean to be a professional teacher in the prestigious "liberal schools"--the schools of grammar and rhetoric--in late antiquity? How can we account for the abiding prestige of these schools, which remained substantially unchanged in their methods and standing despite the political and religious changes that had taken place around them? The grammarian was a pivotal figure in the lives of the educated upper classes of late antiquity. Introducing his students to correct language and to the literature esteemed by long tradition, he began the education that confirmed his students'...
What did it mean to be a professional teacher in the prestigious "liberal schools"--the schools of grammar and rhetoric--in late antiquity? How can we...