Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages PDF Author: Ilkka Lindstedt
Publisher: Studies on the Children of Abr
ISBN: 9789004471153
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
"Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages contains eight thought-provoking articles that discuss the formation of antique and early medieval religious identities and ideas in rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, Islam, and Greco-Roman culture. The articles question the artificial disciplinary and conceptual boundaries between traditions. Instead, they stress their shared nature. The collection is a result of discussions at the international symposium "Ideas and Identities in Late Antiquity: Jews, Christians, and Muslims" at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies on March 12-13, 2018"--

Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages PDF Author: Ilkka Lindstedt
Publisher: Studies on the Children of Abr
ISBN: 9789004471153
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
"Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages contains eight thought-provoking articles that discuss the formation of antique and early medieval religious identities and ideas in rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, Islam, and Greco-Roman culture. The articles question the artificial disciplinary and conceptual boundaries between traditions. Instead, they stress their shared nature. The collection is a result of discussions at the international symposium "Ideas and Identities in Late Antiquity: Jews, Christians, and Muslims" at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies on March 12-13, 2018"--

Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004471162
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This collection of articles analyzes the formation of antique and early medieval religious identities and ideas in rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, Islam, and Greco-Roman culture. The authors question the artificial disciplinary and conceptual boundaries between these traditions.

Strategies of Identification

Strategies of Identification PDF Author: Walter Pohl
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503540443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
"How were identities created in the early Middle Ages and when did they matter? This book explores different types of sources to understand the ways in which they contributed to making ethnic and religious communities meaningful: historiography and hagiography, biblical exegesis and works of theology, sermons and letters. Thus, it sets out to widen the horizon of current debates on ethnicity and identity. The Christianization and dissolution of the Roman Empire had provoked a crisis of traditional identities and opened new spaces for identification. What were the textual resources on which new communities could rely, however precariously? Biblical models and Christian discourses could be used for a variety of aims and identifications, and the volume provides some exemplary analyses of these distinct voices. Barbarian polities developed in a rich and varied framework of textual ‘strategies of identification’. The contributions reconstruct some of this discursive matrix and its development from the age of Augustine to the Carolingians. In the course of this process, ethnicity and religion were amalgamated in a new way that became fundamental for European history, and acquired an important political role in the post-Roman kingdoms. The extensive introduction not only draws together the individual studies, but also addresses fundamental issues of the definition of ethnicity, and of the relationship between discourses and practices of identity. It offers a methodological basis that is valid for studies of identity in general"--Back cover.

Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 CE

Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 CE PDF Author: Éric Rebillard
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801465559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
For too long, the study of religious life in Late Antiquity has relied on the premise that Jews, pagans, and Christians were largely discrete groups divided by clear markers of belief, ritual, and social practice. More recently, however, a growing body of scholarship is revealing the degree to which identities in the late Roman world were fluid, blurred by ethnic, social, and gender differences. Christianness, for example, was only one of a plurality of identities available to Christians in this period. In Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 CE, Éric Rebillard explores how Christians in North Africa between the age of Tertullian and the age of Augustine were selective in identifying as Christian, giving salience to their religious identity only intermittently. By shifting the focus from groups to individuals, Rebillard more broadly questions the existence of bounded, stable, and homogeneous groups based on Christianness. In emphasizing that the intermittency of Christianness is structurally consistent in the everyday life of Christians from the end of the second to the middle of the fifth century, this book opens a whole range of new questions for the understanding of a crucial period in the history of Christianity.

Transformations of Romanness

Transformations of Romanness PDF Author: Walter Pohl
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311059756X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 712

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Book Description
Roman identity is one of the most interesting cases of social identity because in the course of time, it could mean so many different things: for instance, Greek-speaking subjects of the Byzantine empire, inhabitants of the city of Rome, autonomous civic or regional groups, Latin speakers under ‘barbarian’ rule in the West or, increasingly, representatives of the Church of Rome. Eventually, the Christian dimension of Roman identity gained ground. The shifting concepts of Romanness represent a methodological challenge for studies of ethnicity because, depending on its uses, Roman identity may be regarded as ‘ethnic’ in a broad sense, but under most criteria, it is not. Romanness is indeed a test case how an established and prestigious social identity can acquire many different shades of meaning, which we would class as civic, political, imperial, ethnic, cultural, legal, religious, regional or as status groups. This book offers comprehensive overviews of the meaning of Romanness in most (former) Roman provinces, complemented by a number of comparative and thematic studies. A similarly wide-ranging overview has not been available so far.

Civic Identity and Civic Participation in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Civic Identity and Civic Participation in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages PDF Author: Cedric Brelaz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503590103
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
During the Ancient Greek and Roman eras, participation in political communities at the local level, and assertion of belonging to these communities, were among the fundamental principles and values on which societies would rely. For that reason, citizenship and democracy are generally considered as concepts typical of the political experience of Classical Antiquity. These concepts of citizenship and democracy are often seen as inconsistent with the political, social, and ideological context of the late and post-Roman world. As a result, scholarship has largely overlooked participation in local political communities when it comes to the period between the disintegration of the Classical model of local citizenship in the later Roman Empire and the emergence of 'pre-communal' entities in Northern Italy from the ninth century onwards. By reassessing the period c. 300-1000 CE through the concepts of civic identity and civic participation, this volume will reassess both the impact of Classical heritage with regard to civic identities in the political experiences of the late and post-Roman world, and the rephrasing of new forms of social and political partnership according to ethnic or religious criteria in the early Middle Ages. Starting from the earlier imperial background, the fourteen chapters examine the ways in which people shared identity and gave shape to their communal life, as well as the role played by the people in local government in the later Roman Empire, the Germanic kingdoms, Byzantium, the early Islamic world, and the early medieval West. By focusing on the post-Classical, late antique, and early medieval periods, this volume intends to be an innovative contribution to the general history of citizenship and democracy.

Rituals of Power

Rituals of Power PDF Author: Frans Theuws
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004477551
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
13 papers by 16 leading archaeologists and historians of late antiquity and the early middle ages break new ground in their discussion, analysis and criticism of present interpretations of early medieval rituals and their material correlates. Some deal with rituals relating to death, life cycles and the circulation in other contexts of objects otherwise used in the burial ritual. Others are concerned with the symbolism and ideology of royal power, the formation of a political ideology east of the Rhine from the mid-5th century onwards, and penance rituals in relation to Carolingian episcopal discourse on ecclesiastical power and morale. All deal with the creation of new identities, cultures, norms and values, and their expression in new rituals and ideas from the period of the Great Migrations through the Later Roman Empire down to the society of Beowulf and the later Carolingians.

Citizenship in Classical Athens

Citizenship in Classical Athens PDF Author: Josine Blok
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521191459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This book argues that citizenship in Athens was primarily a religious identity, shared by male and female citizens alike.

Being Pagan, Being Christian in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages

Being Pagan, Being Christian in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages PDF Author: Katja Ritari
Publisher: Helsinki University Press
ISBN: 9523690981
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
What does it mean to identify oneself as pagan or Christian in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages? How are religious identities constructed, negotiated, and represented in oral and written discourse? How is identity performed in rituals, how is it visible in material remains? Antiquity and the Middle Ages are usually regarded as two separate fields of scholarship. However, the period between the fourth and tenth centuries remains a time of transformations in which the process of religious change and identity building reached beyond the chronological boundary and the Roman, the Christian and ‘the barbarian’ traditions were merged in multiple ways. Being Pagan, Being Christian in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages brings together researchers from various fields, including archaeology, history, classical studies, and theology, to enhance discussion of this period of change as one continuum across the artificial borders of the different scholarly disciplines. With new archaeological data and contributions from scholars specializing on both textual and material remains, these different fields of study shed light on how religious identities of the people of the past are defined and identified. The contributions reassess the interplay of diversity and homogenising tendencies in a shifting religious landscape. Beyond the diversity of traditions, this book highlights the growing capacity of Christianity to hold together, under its control, the different dimensions – identity, cultural, ethical and emotional – of individual and collective religious experience.

Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Kocku von Stuckrad
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004184236
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
One characteristic of European history of religion is a two-fold pluralism—a pluralism of religious identities on the one hand, and a pluralism of various societal systems that interact with religious systems on the other. Addressing discourses of perfect knowledge in Western culture between 1200 and 1800, this book integrates the study of Western esotericism in a larger analytical framework of European history of religion. Viewed from a structuralist perspective, ‘esoteric discourse’ provides an analytical framework that helps to reveal genealogies of modern identities in a pluralistic competition of knowledge. Experiential philosophy, kabbalah, astrology, Hermeticism, philology, and early modern science are linked to knowledge claims that shaped the way in which Western culture defined itself.