Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity

Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Caroline Humfress
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019151876X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This book approaches the subject of late Roman law from the perspective of legal practice revealed in courtroom processes, as well as more 'informal' types of dispute settlement. From at least the early fourth century, leading bishops, ecclesiastics, and Christian polemicists participated in a vibrant culture of forensic argument, with far-reaching effects on theological debate, the development of ecclesiastical authority, and the elaboration of early 'Canon law'. One of the most innovative aspects of late Roman law was the creation and application of new legal categories used in the prosecution of 'heretics'. Leading Christian polemicists not only used techniques of argument learnt in the late Roman rhetorical schools to help position the Church within the structure of Empire, they also used those techniques in cases involving accusations against 'heretics'- thus defining and developing the concept of Christian orthodoxy itself.

Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity

Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Caroline Humfress
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019151876X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book approaches the subject of late Roman law from the perspective of legal practice revealed in courtroom processes, as well as more 'informal' types of dispute settlement. From at least the early fourth century, leading bishops, ecclesiastics, and Christian polemicists participated in a vibrant culture of forensic argument, with far-reaching effects on theological debate, the development of ecclesiastical authority, and the elaboration of early 'Canon law'. One of the most innovative aspects of late Roman law was the creation and application of new legal categories used in the prosecution of 'heretics'. Leading Christian polemicists not only used techniques of argument learnt in the late Roman rhetorical schools to help position the Church within the structure of Empire, they also used those techniques in cases involving accusations against 'heretics'- thus defining and developing the concept of Christian orthodoxy itself.

Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity

Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Caroline Humfress
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198208413
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Approaching the subject of late Roman law from the perspective of legal practice revealed in courtroom processes, Caroline Humfress argues for a vibrant culture of forensic argumentation in late Antiquity - which included Christian controversies concerning 'heresy' and 'orthodoxy', revealing its far-reaching effects on theological debate.

Honorius

Honorius PDF Author: Chris Doyle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317278070
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Honorius explores the personal life and tumultuous times of one of the last emperors of the Roman West. From his accession to the throne aged ten to his death at thirty-eight, Honorius’ reign was blighted by a myriad of crises: military rebellions, political conspiracies, barbarian invasions, and sectarian controversies. The notorious sack of the city of Rome occurred on Honorius’ watch, and much of the western empire was given over to anarchy and violence. This book should interest undergraduates, research students, and professional scholars. Given the enduring appeal of the fall of Rome and the collapse of western Roman civilization, the wider public should also find much of interest.

Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity

Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Eduard Iricinschi
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161491221
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
"The papers collected in this volume shift the focus away from "heretics" and "heresy" to heresiological discourse, by contextualizing the late antique Jewish and Christian groups that produced our extant literature. The contributors to the volume draw from multiple literary corpora and genres, bringing a variety of late antique perspective to explore the discursive construction of the Other. They unravel ethnic identities, and re-create the multiple voices textured in the dialogue between the "orthodox" and "heretical" writers."--BOOK JACKET.

Being Christian in Late Antiquity

Being Christian in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Carol Harrison
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199656037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
What do we mean when we talk about 'being Christian' in Late Antiquity? This volume brings together sixteen world-leading scholars of ancient Judaism, Christianity and Greco-Roman culture and society to explore this question, in honour of the ground-breaking scholarship of Professor Gillian Clark. After an introduction to the volume's dedicatee and themes by Averil Cameron, the papers in Section I, `Being Christian through Reading, Writing and Hearing', analyse the roles that literary genre, writing, reading, hearing and the literature of the past played in the formation of what it meant to be Christian. The essays in Section II move on to explore how late antique Christians sought to create, maintain and represent Christian communities: communities that were both 'textually created' and 'enacted in living realities'. Finally in Section III, 'The Particularities of Being Christian', the contributions examine what it was to be Christian from a number of different ways of representing oneself, each of which raises questions about certain kinds of 'particularities', for example, gender, location, education and culture. Bringing together primary source material from the early Imperial period up to the seventh century AD and covering both the Eastern and Western Empires, the papers in this volume demonstrate that what it meant to be Christian cannot simply be taken for granted. 'Being Christian' was part of a continual process of construction and negotiation, as individuals and Christian communities alike sought to relate themselves to existing traditions, social structures and identities, at the same time as questioning and critiquing the past(s) in their present.

Cities and the Meanings of Late Antiquity

Cities and the Meanings of Late Antiquity PDF Author: Mark Humphries
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004422617
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
The last half century has seen an explosion in the study of late antiquity, which has characterised the period between the third and seventh centuries not as one of catastrophic collapse and ‘decline and fall’, but rather as one of dynamic and positive transformation. Yet research on cities in this period has provoked challenges to this positive picture of late antiquity. This study surveys the nature of this debate, examining problems associated with the sources historians use to examine late antique urbanism, and the discourses and methodological approaches they have constructed from them. It aims to set out the difficulties and opportunities presented by the study of cities in late antiquity in terms of transformations of politics, the economy, and religion, and to show that this period witnessed very real upheaval and dislocation alongside continuity and innovation in cities around the Mediterranean.

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350-450

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350-450 PDF Author: Maijastina Kahlos
Publisher:
ISBN: 019006725X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity reconsiders the Christianization of the late Roman Empire. The focus is on the shifting position of dissenting religious groups ('pagans' and 'heretics'). The book shows that the narrative is more nuanced than the simple Christian triumph over the classical world.

Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics

Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics PDF Author: Margaret M. Mitchell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521197953
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
This book shows how in the Corinthian letters Paul was fashioning the principles that later authors would use to interpret scripture. This engagingly written demonstration of the hermeneutical impact of Paul's correspondence on early Christian exegetes also illustrates a new way to think about the history of reception of biblical texts.

Doctrine and Power

Doctrine and Power PDF Author: Carlos R. Galvao-Sobrinho
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520383168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
During the fourth century a.d., theological controversy divided Christian communities throughout the Eastern half of the Roman Empire. At stake was not only the truth about God but also the authority of church leaders, whose legitimacy depended on their claims to represent that truth. In this book, Carlos R. Galvao-Sobrinho argues that out of these disputes was born a new style of church leadership, one in which the power of the episcopal office was greatly increased. He shows how these disputes compelled church leaders repeatedly to assert their orthodoxy and legitimacy—tasks that required them to mobilize their congregations and engage in action that continuously projected their power in the public arena. These developments were largely the work of prelates of the first half of the fourth century, but the style of command they inaugurated became the basis for a dynamic model of ecclesiastical leadership found throughout late antiquity.

Medicine and the Law Under the Roman Empire

Medicine and the Law Under the Roman Empire PDF Author: Claire Bubb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192653792
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
What happens when we juxtapose medicine and law in the ancient Roman world? This innovative collection of scholarly research shows how both fields were shaped by the particular needs and desires of their practitioners and users. It approaches the study of these fields through three avenues. First, it argues that the literatures produced by elite practitioners, like Galen or Ulpian, were not merely utilitarian, but were pieces of aesthetically inflected literature and thus carried all of the disparate baggage linked to any form of literature in the Roman context. Second, it suggests that while one element of that literary luggage was the socio-political competition that these texts facilitated, high stakes agonism also uniquely marked the quotidian practice of both medicine and law, resulting in both fields coming to function as forms of popular public entertainment. Finally, it shows how the effects of rhetoric and the deeply rhetorical education of the elite made themselves constantly apparent in both the literature on and the practice of medicine and law. Through case studies in both fields and on each of these topics, together with contextualizing essays, Medicine and the Law Under the Roman Empire suggests that the blanket results of all this were profound. The introduction to the volume argues that medicine was not contrived merely to ensure healing of the infirm by doctors, and law did not single-mindedly aim to regulate society in a consistent, orderly, and binding fashion. Instead, both fields, in the full range of their manifestations, were nested in a complex matrix of social, political, and intellectual crosscurrents, all of which served to shape the very substances of these fields themselves. This poses forward-looking questions: What things might ancient Roman medicine and law have been meant or geared to accomplish in their world? And how might the very substance of Roman medicine and law have been crafted with an eye to fulfilling those peculiarly ancient needs and desires? This book suggests that both fields, in their ancient manifestations, differed fundamentally from their modern counterparts, and must be approached with this fact firmly in mind.