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.

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.

Preaching Poverty in Late Antiquity

Preaching Poverty in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Pauline Allen
Publisher: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt
ISBN: 3374027288
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
In 2002 the influential scholar of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown, published a series of lectures as a monograph titled Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire. Brown set out to explain a trend in the late Roman world observed in the 1970s by French social and economic historians, especially Paul Veyne and Evelyn Patlagean, namely that prior to the fourth century and the rise in dominance of Christianity, the poor in society went unrecognized as an economic category. This corresponded with the Greco-Roman understanding of patronage, whereby the state and private donors concentrated their largesse upon the citizen body. Non-citizens, for instance, were excluded from the dole system, in which grain was distributed to citizens of a city regardless of their economic status. By the end of the sixth century, rich and poor were not only recognized economic categories, but the largesse of private citizens was now focused on the poor. Brown proposed that the Christian bishop lay at the heart of this change. The authors set out to test Brown's thesis amid growing interest in the poor and their role in early Christianity and in Late Antique society. They find that the development and its causes were more subtle and complex than Brown proposed and that his account is inadequate on a number of crucial points including rhetorical distortion of the realities of poverty in episcopal letters, homilies and hagiography, the episcopal emphasis on discriminate giving and self-interested giving, and the degree to which existing civic patronage structures adhered in the Later Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries.

Through the Eye of a Needle

Through the Eye of a Needle PDF Author: Peter Brown
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400844533
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 806

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Book Description
A sweeping intellectual history of the role of wealth in the church in the last days of the Roman Empire Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity. Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven. Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.

Poverty in the Roman World

Poverty in the Roman World PDF Author: Margaret Atkins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139458825
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Book Description
If poor individuals have always been with us, societies have not always seen the poor as a distinct social group. But within the Roman world, from at least the Late Republic onwards, the poor were an important force in social and political life and how to treat the poor was a topic of philosophical as well as political discussion. This book explains what poverty meant in antiquity, and why the poor came to be an important group in the Roman world, and it explores the issues which poverty and the poor raised for Roman society and for Roman writers. In essays which range widely in space and time across the whole Roman Empire, the contributors address both the reality and the representation of poverty, and examine the impact which Christianity had upon attitudes towards and treatment of the poor.

The Ransom of the Soul

The Ransom of the Soul PDF Author: Peter Brown
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674967585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year A Tablet Book of the Year Marking a departure in our understanding of Christian views of the afterlife from 250 to 650 CE, The Ransom of the Soul explores a revolutionary shift in thinking about the fate of the soul that occurred around the time of Rome’s fall. Peter Brown describes how this shift transformed the Church’s institutional relationship to money and set the stage for its domination of medieval society in the West. “[An] extraordinary new book...Prodigiously original—an astonishing performance for a historian who has already been so prolific and influential...Peter Brown’s subtle and incisive tracking of the role of money in Christian attitudes toward the afterlife not only breaks down traditional geographical and chronological boundaries across more than four centuries. It provides wholly new perspectives on Christianity itself, its evolution, and, above all, its discontinuities. It demonstrates why the Middle Ages, when they finally arrived, were so very different from late antiquity.” —G. W. Bowersock, New York Review of Books “Peter Brown’s explorations of the mindsets of late antiquity have been educating us for nearly half a century...Brown shows brilliantly in this book how the future life of Christians beyond the grave was influenced in particular by money. —A. N. Wilson, The Spectator

The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism

The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism PDF Author: Gregg Gardner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107095433
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Charity is a central concept of Judaism and a hallmark of Jewish giving is to provide for the poor in collective and anonymous ways. This book examines the origins of these ideas in the foundational works of rabbinic Judaism, texts from the second to third centuries C.E.

The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity

The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Averil Cameron
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136673067
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
This book provides both a detailed introduction to the vivid and exciting period of `late antiquity' and a direct challenge to conventional views of the end of the Empire.

People, Personal Expression, and Social Relations in Late Antiquity

People, Personal Expression, and Social Relations in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Ralph W. Mathisen
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472112463
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
A collection of Latin sources that shed light on the changing world of Late Antiquity throughout Western Europe

Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium

Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium PDF Author: Geoffrey Dunn
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004301577
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
The essays collected in Christians Shaping Identity celebrate Pauline Allen’s significant contribution to early Christian, late antique, and Byzantine studies, especially concerning bishops, heresy/orthodoxy and christology. Covering the period from earliest Christianity to middle Byzantium, the first eighteen essays explore the varied ways in which Christians constructed their own identity and that of the society around them. A final four essays explore the same theme within Roman Catholicism and oriental Christianity in the late 19th to 21st centuries, with particular attention to the subtle relationships between the shaping of the early Christian past and the moulding of Christian identity today. Among the many leading scholars represented are Averil Cameron and Elizabeth A. Clark.

Ex Auditu - Volume 27

Ex Auditu - Volume 27 PDF Author: Klyne Snodgrass
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 172524750X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Introduction / Klyne Snodgrass A Christian View of Wealth and Possessions: An Old Testament Perspective / Hugh G. M. Williamson Response to Williamson / James K. Bruckner Poverty and Paul's Gospel / Bruce W. Longenecker Response to Longenecker / Aaron Kuecker A Patristic View of Wealth and Possessions / Helen Rhee Response to Rhee / Bradley Nassif Blessings, Curses, and the Cross / Kelly Johnson Money and Possessions: A Biblical Perspective / Jonathan J. Bonk Response to Bonk / Liz Mosbo VerHage Decorum and Deeds in 1 Timothy 2:9-10 in Light of Ephesiaca by Xenophon of Ephesus / Gary G. Hoag Response to Hoag / Lyn Nixon Wealth, Lordless Powers, and the Rule of Christ / Mark Husbands Response to Husbands / William Myatt Money and Possessions / Will Willimon