Claudia Rapp

• University of Vienna

Robert Bartlett's book is devoted to one question that, at first glance, is deceptively simple: Why Can the Dead do Such Great Things? The question, it turns out, requires an extensive answer in the course of just under 800 pages. They are supported by forty-four pages of bibliography of primary sources, which are quoted with preference in the rela...

Tackling issues of church and state is a tall order under any circumstances. Taking the metahistorical view and summarizing the scholarship on church and state makes it positively daunting, especially when the half-century under consideration spans the entire lifetime of the author. This task is made even more challenging when the societies and cul...

This volume examines the evolving role of the city and citizenship from classical Athens through fifth-century Rome and medieval Byzantium. Beginning in the first century CE, the universal claims of Hellenistic and Roman imperialism began to be challenged by the growing role of Christianity in shaping the primary allegiances and identities of citiz...

The relation of the Christians of the first centuries to the world in which they lived has perhaps been of greater concern to modern scholars than it was to the men and women of the time. Our post-Enlightenment sensibilities have conditioned us to postulate a strict barrier between religion and politics, between church and state, and even between t...

This volume examines the evolving role of the city and citizenship from classical Athens through fifth-century Rome and medieval Byzantium. Beginning in the first century CE, the universal claims of Hellenistic and Roman imperialism began to be challenged by the growing role of Christianity in shaping the primary allegiances and identities of citiz...

Report of a three-days symposium, held at Syracuse University, on the subject of "iconic books."

This deceptively slim volume represents a pioneering effort to illuminate the entire political and cultural zone of the Roman Empire and its immediate neighbors at a given moment in time. The geographical starting point where the author—an Italian Armenologist, now a professor at the University of Rouen (France)—begins his panoramic tour of the Med...

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The period beginning around the year 300 was a time of experimentation with expressions of faith, piety and belief. The legitimating of Christianity at the end of the Persecutions in 312 and the prospect of lasting imperial support for Christianity and its practitioners opened up new opportunities for social acceptance and public expression of the...

This paper isolates the literary motif of the desert as the idealized locus of monastic retreat and shows the transformation of this concept from pagan to Christian literature. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of the notion of the desert as a state of mind of detachment from and indifference to the world. This allows for the practic...

This chapter investigates the role of the bishop within the context of his city. It aims to bring out the concrete manifestations of the pragmatic authority of bishops, which was often determined by their elevated social origin prior to their election. This is followed by treatments of three aspects of the pragmatic authority of the bishop that inv...

This chapter proposes a critical reassessment of Constantine's measures in order to show that they merely confirmed the existing episcopal oversight over practical matters that were considered to be of particular concern to Christians in general. It also reports a comparison of the different manifestations of the parrhēsia of bishops and of holy me...

This chapter provides a comparison of the treatment of bishops in the Theodosian Code and in the Justinianic Code and Novellae shows that in the interval between these two codifications, bishops who had in the fourth century been regarded and revered as model Christians were in the sixth century treated as dependable model citizens. It then argues...

This chapter demonstrates the concept of spiritual authority with reference to its most eloquent post-apostolic spokesmen, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and their remarks on bearers of the Spirit (pneumatophoroi) and bearers of Christ (christophoroi). It explores how individual holy men were appreciated by their contemporaries for their ability...

This chapter mainly addresses the ascetic authority. Special emphasis is placed on the importance of the desert—a symbol of total withdrawal and rejection of the world—as a training ground for those who aspire to ascetic authority. The complex nature of episcopal leadership as a combination of pragmatic, spiritual, and ascetic authority provides an...

This chapter presents patterns of recruitment to the episcopate, which reveal that wealthy and locally prominent men were increasingly at an advantage as candidates for this ministry. Not surprisingly, many status-conscious urban citizens were eager to attain the episcopate as an additional distinction at the end of their careers. A good education...

Justinian’s reign is distinguished by its lasting accomplishments in law and architecture. It is also unusually rich in written sources, a treasure trove of documentation that provides insight and detailed knowledge about the sixth century that is rarely matched for other periods in the ancient world or Byzantium. There is no consensus, however, in...

Arethusa 33.3 (2000) 315-320 It has been thirty years since the study of late antiquity was established as a discipline in its own right in the English-speaking world. Since then, scholars have tried to define the distinctive character of the late antique period by isolating one or another aspect of its rich and diverse fabric, often by formulating...

Cette etude a pour but de contribuer au debat en cours concernant La vie de Constantin. L'auteur propose une lecture qui eclaire d'une lumiere nouvelle les references a Constantin en tant qu' eveque et en meme temps apporte un argument supplementaire en faveur de l'unite conceptuelle de l'oeuvre. D'abord il montre qu'un leitmotiv important de La vi...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:It has been thirty years since the study of late antiquity was established as a discipline in its own right in the English-speaking world. Since then, scholars have tried to define the distinctive character of the late antique period by isolating one or another aspect of its rich and di...

Claudia Rapp, University of California (Los Angeles), rapp@histr.sscnet.ucla.edu

Claudia Rapp , University of California at Los Angeles, rapp@history.ucla.edu