Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire

Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire PDF Author: Richard Damian Finn
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199283605
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
This work highlights the importance of gifts to the poor for Christians in the later Roman Empire. It asks what it meant to give to the poor, the virtues it displayed and the role it played in articulating or challenging the standing of bishops, monks and ordinary lay men and women.

Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire

Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire PDF Author: Richard Damian Finn
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199283605
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work highlights the importance of gifts to the poor for Christians in the later Roman Empire. It asks what it meant to give to the poor, the virtues it displayed and the role it played in articulating or challenging the standing of bishops, monks and ordinary lay men and women.

Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire

Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire PDF Author: Richard Finn OP
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191515787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Richard Finn OP examines the significance of almsgiving in Churches of the later empire for the identity and status of the bishops, ascetics, and lay people who undertook practices which differed in kind and context from the almsgiving practised by pagans. It reveals how the almsgiving crucial in constructing the bishop's standing was a co-operative task where honour was shared but which exposed the bishop to criticism and rivalry. Finn details how practices gained meaning from a discourse which recast traditional virtues of generosity and justice to render almsgiving a benefaction and source of honour, and how this pattern of thought and conduct interacted with classical patterns to generate controversy. He argues that co-operation and competition in Christian almsgiving, together with the continued existence of traditional euergetism, meant that, contrary to the views of recent scholars, Christian alms did not turn bishops into the supreme patrons of their cities.

Almsgiving as the Essential Virtue

Almsgiving as the Essential Virtue PDF Author: Becky Walker
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004687858
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This book seeks to add to common representations in the scholarship on almsgiving in late antiquity concerning the remission of post-baptismal sin, efforts to reform society, and competition between monks and bishops. It demonstrates that John Chrysostom conceptualized almsgiving as not only expiating the sins of the rich, relieving the suffering of the poor, or securing power for its promoters, but also expiating the sins of the poor, unifying the members of his congregation, and making humans like God. Although it could indeed save one from eternal death and physical hunger, it was salvific and transformative on other levels as well.

Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire

Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire PDF Author: Peter Brown
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584651468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
A preeminent classical scholar on the emergence of one of our most familiar social divisions.

John Moschos' Spiritual Meadow

John Moschos' Spiritual Meadow PDF Author: Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317110560
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
John Moschos' Spiritual Meadow is one of the most important sources for late sixth-early seventh century Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian monasticism. This undisputedly invaluable collection of beneficial tales provides contemporary society with a fuller picture of an imperfect social history of this period: it is a rich source for understanding not only the piety of the monk but also the poor farmer. Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen fills a lacuna in classical monastic secondary literature by highlighting Moschos' unique contribution to the way in which a fertile Christian theology informed the ethics of not only those serving at the altar but also those being served. Introducing appropriate historical and theological background to the tales, Llewellyn Ihssen demonstrates how Moschos' tales addresses issues of the autonomy of individual ascetics and lay persons in relationship with authority figures. Economic practices, health care, death and burials of lay persons and ascetics are examined for the theology and history that they obscure and reveal. Whilst teaching us about the complicated relationships between personal agency and divine intercession, Moschos’ tales can also be seen to reveal liminal boundaries we know existed between the secular and the religious.

Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich

Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich PDF Author: Helen Rhee
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1441238646
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
The issue of wealth and poverty and its relationship to Christian faith is as ancient as the New Testament and reaches even further back to the Hebrew Scriptures. From the beginnings of the Christian movement, the issue of how to deal with riches and care for the poor formed an important aspect of Christian discipleship. This careful study shows how early Christians adopted, appropriated, and transformed the Jewish and Greco-Roman moral teachings and practices of giving and patronage. As Helen Rhee illuminates the early Christian understanding of wealth and poverty, she shows how it impacted the formation of Christian identity. She also demonstrates the ongoing relevance of early Christian thought and practice for the contemporary church.

Early Christian Care for the Poor

Early Christian Care for the Poor PDF Author: K.C. Richardson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 149829653X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Beginning with Jesus's ministry in the villages of Galilee and continuing over the course of the first three centuries as the movement expanded geographically and numerically throughout the Roman world, the Christians organized their house churches, at least in part, to provide subsistence insurance for their needy members. While the Pax Romana created conditions of relative peace and growing prosperity, the problem of poverty persisted in Rome's fundamentally agrarian economy. Modeling their economic values and practices on the traditional patterns of the rural village, the Christians created an alternative subsistence strategy in the cities of the Roman empire by emphasizing need, rather than virtue, as the main criterion for determining the recipients of their generous giving.

Asceticism in the Graeco-Roman World

Asceticism in the Graeco-Roman World PDF Author: Richard Damian Finn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521862817
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Pagan asceticism: cultic and contemplative purity -- Asceticism in Hellenistic and Rabbinic Judaism -- Christian asceticism before Origen -- Origen and his ascetic legacy -- Cavemen, cenobites, and clerics.

PALGRAVE HANDBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY AND MONEY

PALGRAVE HANDBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY AND MONEY PDF Author: Joseph J. Tinguely
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031541367
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 803

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Book Description


Food, Virtue, and the Shaping of Early Christianity

Food, Virtue, and the Shaping of Early Christianity PDF Author: Dana Robinson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108802095
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In this book, Dana Robinson examines the role that food played in the Christianization of daily life in the fourth century CE. Early Christians used the food culture of the Hellenized Mediterranean world to create and debate compelling models of Christian virtue, and to project Christian ideology onto common domestic practices. Combining theoretical approaches from cognitive linguistics and space/place theory, Robinson shows how metaphors for piety, such as health, fruit, and sacrifice, relied on food-related domains of common knowledge (medicine, agriculture, votive ritual), which in turn generated sophisticated and accessible models of lay discipline and moral formation. She also demonstrates that Christian places and landscapes of piety were socially constructed through meals and food production networks that extended far beyond the Eucharist. Food culture, thus, provided a network of metaphorical concepts and spatial practices that allowed the lay faithful to participate in important debates over Christian living and community formation.