Maijastina Kahlos

With this book, we aim to foreground mobility as a fundamental condition of ancient societies. History and archaeology identify instances of mobility in the past as a matter of course; and yet there is a lack of explicit thinking about the range of forms of mobility and their diverse effects upon societies. While our outlook in this issue is distinctively historical, important lessons can be learned from neighbouring disciplines. This theme issue brings together a diverse group of specialists in the fields of history and archaeology, sociology, classical philology, and religious studies to explore various aspects and manifestations of movement in the Mediterranean region across time. The present work emerges from the conference “Mediterranean Flows: People, Ideas and Objects in Motion” at the Collegium for Advanced Studies of the University of Helsinki in December 2020. Already in the fifth century BCE, Greek authors were engaged in an active discussion concerning constant movement and change as the prime drivers of life. In the Roman Empire, Seneca coined a dictum which embodies the main idea of the theme issue: “Humankind is constantly rushing to and from; in this vast world something is changing every day.” These examples from the Greek and Roman world raise the specifically Mediterranean orientation of our inquiry: the ‘inside out’ topography of this region, with landmasses facing onto a single body of eminently navigable water, dotted with islands, and populated since a very early age. The Mediterranean thus attracts narratives of mobility throughout history like no other. We take an inclusive approach to the multidimensional topic of Mediterranean movement, as the themes to be discussed include migration, trade, traveling objects, knowledge exchange, and dissemination of books. The case studies demonstrate the impact of movement on the processes of identity building, whether social, cultural, or religious. The theme issue also touches upon the question of how movement is studied in different disciplines. What kinds of scholarly approaches to and definitions of movement have been employed either historically or currently? What are the limits of our research on movement? One fundamental problem arises when mobility is defined only at a single scale, instead of at multiple scales. For example, mobility can all too easily come to be equated with macro-scale processes such as migration. However, as the contributions of this issue demonstrate, such movements were relatively intermittent and infrequent in the past. Therefore, we also need to consider the possible immobility and sedentarism that take over once migration has happened, which implies that mobility needs to be considered at different scales. It may be more helpful to imagine immobility being an everyday condition in human society, rather than an extraordinary event. Apart from textual sources, the articles included in this issue explore the movement of objects that are characterised by temporal continuity, embodying a prior existence with lingering effects. Traditionally, an understanding of people and their actions can be inferred through the archaeologically preserved remains of lives, settlements, houses, possessions, and rubbish, i.e., the material world in which people lived. Leading on from this perhaps, one of the most useful indicators of lives being lived, social contacts and organisation, is that gained through objects which have been moved from their point of origin through the landscape by trade and exchange mechanisms or direct procurement. As objects transform through time and space, so do the values and functions attributed to them. A similar “palimpsest effect” is made by the aftermath of the movement of people whose possessions, authoritative texts, and beliefs appear to be tied up to a particular place of origin or their owners just as much as their identity. A parallel move to that from artifact biographies to trajectories in relation to movement of things in time also exists for the spatial dimension. Indeed, this issue also reflects upon globalisation, a topic that fosters an alternative kind of history in which the movement of objects is allowed to take centre stage. Processes of constant movement prompt cultural fluidity, variety, and richness, but do they have any drawbacks? What is the self-perception of people involved in constant movement and change? How does movement affect and shape human lives or identities? The process of mapping out itineraries of value in the realm of the material allows us to grasp the nature of a given social formation through the shape and meaning taken on by them. It also provides insights into the nature of dynamic synergy between the world of material objects and the realm of beliefs, knowledge, and identities. As the present moves to the past, it is evident that people, objects, and ideas change their matter and meaning. By exploring the process of this eternal shift, the aim of this issue…

This chapter analyses the various ways in which people responded to the altered social and religious circumstances in the Christianizing empire. Many accommodated the dominant form of Christianity. Bishops usually spoke about conversion in a favourable manner. Some reservations were shown when a few recent converts became more militant than their fellow Christians. Outward religious conformity and feigned conversions were despised by both Christian and pagan writers. However, not everyone accommodated the changing circumstances. We have appeals from dissidents, even though these have not been preserved in equal quantity as the mainstream Christian literature. Many of the non-conforming religious practices shifted to private spaces, beyond the control of the ecclesiastical and imperial authorities. There seems to have been self-segregation among several Christian sects as well as some pagan Neoplatonist circles. Resistance could also be aggressive, in the form of verbal violence and ...

This chapter looks at the limits that the aristocracy in general and the landowning elites at the local level set to imperial and ecclesiastical power. In late Roman society, aristocrats had remarkable power, economic resources, and prestige, especially on the local level. The wishes of the central administration and the local realities were often in tension with each other. In some cases, imperial decrees could be ignored in the local setting if they were not well received. Local authorities could even decide not to enforce a law. In the local realities of dissident groups, the patronage relationships were decisive: a powerful landowner could influence his tenants to either embrace Christianity or retain old practices. There was often a conflict of interests between local landowners and bishops in their struggle for hegemony at the regional level. Bishops expected Christian landowners to put an end to pagan practices on their estates, and they complained about the laxity if they di...

An exploration of both the rhetoric of manifest ideologies and complex daily realities is necessary for an understanding of the religious changes of the late Roman Empire, particularly the shifting position of dissenting religious groups. The dramatic accounts of violence need to be balanced with dreary everyday life. Changes in economic structures and the social factors in local communities were more influential in terms of religious transformation than the uproars depicted in hagiographies and church histories. The religious changes and diversity in Late Antiquity can be outlined in many ways, not only as ‘Christianization’, which presupposes a dichotomy between pagan and Christian practices. The Mediterranean area had for centuries been diffused with different cults, practices, religious ideas, and beliefs, which were continuously cross-pollinating each other. The spread of various Christian groups is a part of these religious changes in Antiquity.

This chapter explores the economic aspects of religious dissidence, such as the confiscation of temples and churches, as well as competing philanthropic practices, civic euergetism, and ecclesiastical charity. In many instances, economic issues carried more weight than the solemn proclamations of emperors and church councils. When the emperor chose a cult or a group as something to support, he recognized that cult or religious group as a receiver of privileges and donations. The emperors’ economic support of Christian communities strengthened the position of the churches. The withdrawal of imperial support hit pagan cults that had traditionally been endowed with land, property, and exemptions from duties. Furthermore, late Roman society saw another great transformation in the economics of practices. The philanthropy of the Christian churches gradually replaced the traditional Graeco-Roman form of civic philanthropy in the fourth and fifth centuries.

During the fourth and fifth centuries, Christian festivals gradually developed and were merged into the life of cities and villages. At the same time, many traditional local celebrations important to the communal life of these localities continued. This chapter examines the late antique bishops’ condemnations from the viewpoint of discursive boundary-marking in which the borders of ‘pagan’, ‘Christian’, ‘cultic’, and ‘civic’ were constantly shifting. The same persons took part in both pagan and Christian festivities. Practices that in the eyes of bishops appeared incompatible with Christian conduct were not irreconcilable for the participants themselves. One of the most popular feasts was the celebration of the New Year, which remained popular in the Christian Empire. Christian emperors did not prohibit festivals of this kind, which they defined as a common pleasure for all. The imperial government defined the content of urban celebrations in a manner that diverged from the delineations of ecclesiastical leaders.

This chapter discusses the various ways in which bishops and church councils coped with religious diversity, attempting to enforce conformity of beliefs and rituals within Christianity. In their struggle to achieve religious unity, bishops enhanced the notion of religious unity, whether it was meant to exclude the option of other religions or the option of other Christian inclinations. In the relationship between imperial and ecclesiastical powers, there was both collaboration and rivalry. Emperors and bishops had shared interests as well as conflicting ones. The bishops made ample use of the means that the imperial power had at its disposal in disciplining and chastising religious dissidents through coercion, whether they were pagans outside the church or heretics within it. This does not mean that the emperors always fell neatly under the influence of bishops. The different aims frequently led to collisions of interests between the imperial government and the ecclesiastical establ...

This chapter questions the categories ‘pagans’ and ‘heretics’ that were built and maintained as a given in imperial and ecclesiastical discourses. It discusses the construction of an identity as an abstract and universal process, but profoundly embedded in specific historical, cultural, social, and material environments. Groups, but also individuals, have a propensity to mould their identities. Thus, despite an individual being classified as a Christian by late antique bishops, being Christian was not the only available alternative. An individual could activate and deactivate identities in a given situation from a situational selection of identities. The category ‘pagans’ developed by Christian writers should not be taken for granted. Instead, scholars ought to analyse the processes by means of which the late antique writers used categories such as ‘pagans’ and ‘heretics’, as well as ‘Christians’, to make sense of their world. The boundaries between groups such as late antique pagan...

The religiosity of late antique and early medieval communities in the Mediterranean world has been vigorously examined and debated. This religious life has been called (among many other terms) ‘popular Christianity,’ ‘local Christianity,’ the ‘second church,’ ‘Religion zweiter Ordnung,’ and ‘the third paganism.’ In my article, I analyse late antique religious life from the viewpoint of encounters—between the ideals of the ecclesiastical elite and the people’s local cultic practices. These practices, embedded in the local communities, varied by regions but we can see similarities in the interaction of bishops with their local population. I will show how the ecclesiastical writers portrayed local cultic practices in negative terms as another religion (‘paganism,’ ‘idolatry,’ ‘demonic/ diabolic practices’), divergent from their own (‘Christianity’), or even as a distortion beyond ‘proper’ religion (‘magic’, ‘superstition’, ‘sacrilege’). In my analysis, I discuss and test various approa...

The words in the title (‘A Christian cannot employ magic’), taken from Jerome’s Life of Hilarion, represent the self-image that Christian writers constructed. I discuss the use of rhetoric in constructing Christian identity in which ‘magic’ had no part to play. Here I understand the concept ‘magic’ as a discursive category that is dependent on the perceiver—an ancient perceiver as well as a modern perceiver. The image of magicless Christianity was enhanced in many kinds of contexts—apologetic treatises, tractates, sermons, and especially in hagiography. I show that, in situations of rivalry between ritual experts (holy men, ‘magicians’), it was imperative for Christians to refute accusations of magic and redirect them against opponents. In these situations, Christian writers were at pains to create a distinction between proper Christian holy men and those others (pagans, Jews, heretics) who were represented as practising either injurious magic or just harmless tricks.

In the course of history, the divine sphere has frequently been harnessed to serve the needs of political leaders. Political power has thus been legitimized as authorized by divine forces. In pre-modern societies, and especially in the Roman Empire, phenomena that people today call religion and politics were closely intertwined, even inseparable.1 This can be perceived most clearly in the relationship of the Roman emperors to the divine – in their support of different deities, in their role as the mediators between the divine and humankind, and in their policies towards the many different cults and religious groups across a vast Empire. The manifestation of proximity to the divine was one of the most important ways of legitimating imperial power. The articles of the present volume Emperors and the Divine analyse the various means by which imperial power was justified. Emperors supported cults of various deities, representing themselves as the guardians of the cosmic order, whether t...

that many more families participated in the forms of competitive self-representation and political jockeying so clearly illustrated in the family of the Symmachi. Although this book’s main lines of argument are aimed at the city of Rome specifically, the analysis engages with some of the most interesting issues in late antique studies, among them aristocratic and imperial involvement in the creation of the Christian city, religious continuity and change, domestic and public building and maintenance, urban unrest and social conflict, and of course aristocratic self-representation. As a result, the themes investigated and the approaches followed are readily transferable, and scholars working in other areas of the late antique Mediterranean will find much of value. A comprehensive analysis of urban space and aristocratic power in late antique Rome is certainly an ambitious undertaking. There is no shortage of studies on individual aspects of the city’s public topography or on specific monuments and types of evidence. But in bringing a wide range of sources to bear on the theme of urban space and aristocratic power, M. has crafted a valuable new resource for scholars of late antique Rome in particular and for those studying late antique urbanism more generally.

The introduction defines several concepts that are used throughout the book. The religious dissidents in late Roman society were pagans and heretics. These terms are only shorthand: ‘pagans’ for non-Christians, and ‘heretics’ for deviant Christians. They are relational, meaning that there would have been no pagans without the viewpoint of Christians. Similarly, the question of who was a heretic depended on the perceiver. The period under scrutiny saw the Christianization of imperial and ecclesiastical discourses of control. Imperial power is understood as the emperors in both the East and the West, the imperial courts, and the administration. Ecclesiastical power refers to church leaders—mainly bishops, whose authority was increasing during the fourth and fifth centuries. There was no uniform church, and Christian congregations were miscellaneous assemblages of adherents.

En el siglo IV, los escritores del Cristianismo establecieron una oposicion binaria entre cristianos y paganos con vistas a clarificar y fortalecer la identidad cristiana. No obstante, existio una amplia zona de indefinicion entre el politeismo radical y el cristianismo a ultranza en la tardia antiguedad. En la literatura al respecto, quienes se situaban entre el cristianismo y el paganismo han sido designados habitualmente como "semipaganos", "criptopaganos" o cristianos "de nombre". En este articulo desarrollaremos un nuevo concepto, el de incerti, para ilustrar la imposibilidad de establecer estrictas dicotomias, asi como para designar individuos inclasificables e indefinibles situados en el territorio intermedio entre paganos y cristianos. Ofrecemos varios ejemplos de tales incerti, que den cuenta de esas ambiguedades en la tardia antiguedad. En el trasfondo historico del De civitate Dei de Agustin se detecta tambien uno de esos incerti, el culto se...

Introduction Pacifiers and Instigators: Bishops in Interreligious Conflicts in Late Antiquity Maijastina Kahlos (Finnish Academy, Finland) Preaching and Mesmerizing. Christian Rhetorical Delivery and the Resolution of Conflicts Alberto Quiroga Puertas (Universidad de Granada, Spain) 'Holy Bishops': Strategies of Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution Purificacion Ubric Rabaneda (Universidad de Granada, Spain) Councils as Political and Ecclesiastical Conflicts in Late Antiquity: the Role of Bishops Silvia Acerbi (Universidad de Cantabria, Spain) Controversy and Debate over Sexual Matters among Western Churches Teresa Sardella (Universita di Catania, Italy) The Donatist Conflict as Seen by Constantine and the Bishops Jose Fernandez Ubina (Universidad de Granada, Spain) Ius et religio: The Conference of Carthage and the End of the Donatist Schism Carlos Garcia Mac Gaw (Universidad de La Plata, Argentina) Arians and Nicenes in Conflict: Gregory of Nazianzus in Constantinople Ramon ...

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity reconsiders the religious history of the late Roman Empire, focusing on the shifting position of dissenting religious groups. The groups under consideration are non-Christians (‘pagans’) and deviant Christians (‘heretics’). The period from the mid-fourth century until the mid-fifth century CE witnessed a significant transformation of late Roman society and a gradual shift from the world of polytheistic religions into the Christian Empire. This book demonstrates that the narrative is much more nuanced than the simple Christian triumph over the classical world. It looks at everyday life, economic aspects, day-to-day practices, and conflicts of interest in the relations of religious groups. The book addresses two aspects: rhetoric and realities, and consequently delves into the interplay between the manifest ideologies and daily life found in late antique sources. We perceive constant flux between moderation and coercion that marked the relations of ...

criticised Cyprian for introducing a “universalist ecclesiology” based on law and modeled on the Roman imperial ideal. By contrast, Afanasiev’s vision of the church was based on the (primitive) local eucharistic assembly where each local church fully manifested the church of God in Christ. Grace and love replaced law, the Eucharist replaced the Episcopate. Whilst this “localist” theory has laudable ecumenical aspirations for reconciling Catholic and Orthodox churches, it also fails to address the crucial question of what happens to communion when churches are in severe disagreement about fundamental issues. For Cyprian such issues were ultimately discerned by the bishops acting in concert. Safranski has contributed a carefully considered and scholarly study to the growing volume of recent monographs on the legacy of St. Cyprian. Graeme Clarke, Australian National University

'Pacifiers and Instigators: Bishops and Interreligious Conflicts in Late Antiquity’, Conflict and Compromise: The Role of the Bishop in Late Antiquity, ed. Andrew Fear, José Fernández Ubiña & Mar Marcos, London: Bloomsbury, 2013, 63–82

... Qui enim in coitu et saturitate Epicur-eus est, subito in retributione meritorum Stoicus efficitur. Cf. Contra Iovinianum 2.33: noster Zeno; 2.36: Epicurum nostrum. This charge also serves to assimilate the opponent with pagan philosophy. ...

The theme of this year's symposium is Slavery in Late Antiquity. Research on slavery in the late Roman Empire and in the post-Roman kingdoms has been expanding and evolving in the recent decades. The theme will be approached from a wide perspective, including social, economic, political, legal, ideological and religious levels. The keynote speakers of the symposium are: Chris De Wet (New Testament and Early Christian Studies, University of South Africa), Marianne Bjelland Kartzow (New Testament Studies at the University of Oslo) and Marja Vierros (Classics, University of Helsinki). Please refer to the programme below. The symposium is free, but the number of participants we can take is limited. It will be organized at the Tvärminne Zoological Station on the southern coast of Finland. We offer transportation from Helsinki to Tvärminne and the return journey, as well as accommodation (one night) and meals in Tvärminne. However, we are not able to cover any travel costs to or accommodation in Helsinki.