Basil of Caesarea is thought of most often as an opponent of heresy and a pioneer of monastic life in the eastern church. In this new biographical study, however, controversy is no longer seen as the central preoccupation of his life nor are his ascetic initiatives viewed as separable from his pastoral concern for all Christians. Basil's letters, sermons, and theological treatises, together with the testimonies of his relatives and friends, reveal a man beset by doubt. He demanded loyalty, but gave it also, and made it a central feature of his church. In Rousseau's portrait, Basil's...
Basil of Caesarea is thought of most often as an opponent of heresy and a pioneer of monastic life in the eastern church. In this new biographical stu...
Pachomius, who died in 346, has long been regarded as the "founder of monasticism." Available again, Philip Rousseau's careful reading of the available texts reveals that Pachomius's pioneering enterprise has been consistently misread in light of later monastic practices. Rousseau not only provides a fuller and more accurate portrait of this great teacher and spiritual director but also gives a new perspective on the development of monasticism. In a new preface Rousseau reviews the scholarly developments that have modified his views and emphases since the book was published. The result is to...
Pachomius, who died in 346, has long been regarded as the "founder of monasticism." Available again, Philip Rousseau's careful reading of the availabl...
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...
In his "Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian," first published in 1978, Philip Rousseau presents a survey of asceticism in the western church until about 400, including a selective study of Jerome, and then, moving into the fifth century, a reading of Sulpicius and Cassian. Rousseau explores such societal changes as the eventual triumph of the coenobitic movement and its growing effect within the church, not least on the episcopate. He focuses primarily on the development among ascetics of a certain concept of spiritual authority; on the attraction of that...
In his "Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian," first published in 1978, Philip Rousseau presents a survey of asceti...
This is a full survey of the first 600 years of Christian history from the world of second-temple Judaism to the Byzantine age, the rise of Islam, and the beginnings of medieval European polities.
This is a full survey of the first 600 years of Christian history from the world of second-temple Judaism to the Byzantine age, the rise of Islam, and...
Charting the first six hundred years of the Christian movement, THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CENTURIES carries the reader from the world of second-temple Judaism to the Byzantine age, the rise of Islam, and the beginnings of medieval European polities.With a combination of rare tact and acuity, Philip Rousseau takes the measure of a generation of scholarship on early Christianity and the late Roman world. He stresses the importance of shifting historical consciousness, the continuity and development of ideas, and the urge for social respectability. Paying the greatest attention to the 'inner'...
Charting the first six hundred years of the Christian movement, THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CENTURIES carries the reader from the world of second-temple Judai...
