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

Get Book Here

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

Get Book Here

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

Get Book Here

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

Get Book Here

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.

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

Get Book Here

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.

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

Get Book Here

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.

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

Get Book Here

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.

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

Get Book Here

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

Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity - Volume 3.1

Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity - Volume 3.1 PDF Author: William Bowden
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047407601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 687

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines a number of themes relating to social and political life in Late Antiquity. The first part of the book considers how the powers of the emperor, state and civic authorities were expressed in the phyiscal environment, and how coinage and material culture were caught up in the political life of the period. The second part investigates the "middle classes" and "the poor", who are often less visible in archaeological, textual and epigraphic records. Other articles consider such topics as long term social evolution and the definition of time in Late Antiquity. Two extensive bibliographic essays provide an overview of published literature relating to social and political life.

Liturgical Power

Liturgical Power PDF Author: Nicholas Heron
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823278700
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
Is Christianity exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or do its concepts actually underpin secular politics? To this question, which animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology, Liturgical Power advances a third alternative. Christian anti-politics, Heron contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, he argues, assumes the form of what today we call “administration,” but which the ancients termed “economics.” The book’s principal aim is thus genealogical: it seeks to understand our current conception of government in light of an important but rarely acknowledged transformation in the idea of politics brought about by Christianity. This transformation in the idea of politics precipitates in turn a concurrent shift in the organization of power; an organization whose determining principle, Heron contends, is liturgy—understood in the broad sense as “public service.” Whereas until now only liturgy’s acclamatory dimension has made the concept available for political theory, Heron positions it more broadly as a technique of governance. What Christianity has bequeathed to political thought and forms, he argues, is thus a paradoxical technology of power that is grounded uniquely in service.

A Poor and Merciful Church

A Poor and Merciful Church PDF Author: Ilo, Stan Chu
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608337316
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 457

Get Book Here

Book Description
This important text addresses three key questions which face modern Catholicism, especially in Africa: What is the ecclesiology of Pope Francis? How does this ecclesiology meet the challenges facing the universal church in today's complex world? And how can one translate the practices of this new approach into a theological aesthetics to meet the challenges and opportunities of the African social context?