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.
Katja Ritari holds the title of docent of Study of Religions at the University of Helsinki.
Jan R. Stenger is a professor of Classics at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.
William Van Andringa is a director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études Paris.
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This work has been peer reviewed.Language
- English
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Pages
340ISBNs
- Introduction Katja Ritari et al.
- Christianness and Material Culture, 250–400 CE Éric Rebillard
- Funerary Practices and the Construction of Religious and Social Identities in the South-East of Gaul from the 4th to the 10th Century Frédérique Blaizot
- Material Culture and Religious Affiliation in 4th-Century Gaul: A Time of Invisibility William Van Andringa
- Statuary, the Secular and Remaining Powers in Late Antiquity Ine Jacobs
- The Effect of Persecution on Religious Communities: An Experiment in Comparative History Elizabeth DePalma Digeser
- ‘Barbarian Sages’ between Christianity and Paganism in Ammianus Marcellinus and the Cosmographia Aethici Antti Lampinen
- Paradise Lost/Regained: Healing the Monastic Self in the Coenobium of Dorotheus of Gaza Jan R. Stenger
- In Search of Local People and Rituals in Late Antiquity Maijastina Kahlos
- Being Christian in Late Antique Ireland Elva Johnston
- Ireland at the Edge of Time and Space: Constructions of Christian Identity in Early Medieval Ireland Katja Ritari
- The Liber Pontificalis and the Transformation of Rome from Pagan to Christian City in the Early Middle Ages Rosamond McKitterick
- Vanishing Identity: The Impossible Definition of Pagans and Paganism in the West from the 4th to the 6th Century Hervé Inglebert
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