Prudentius, Spain, and Late Antique Christianity

Prudentius, Spain, and Late Antique Christianity
Author: Paula Hershkowitz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2017-01-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108132766

This book provides an innovative approach to the Hispano-Roman Christian poet Prudentius and his poetry. It is a breakthrough in Prudentian scholarship which unifies the differing disciplines of history, archaeology, literature and art history in arguing that Prudentius and his envisaged Spanish audience cannot be fully understood in isolation from their environment in late fourth- and early fifth-century Spain. Paula Hershkowitz focuses on Prudentius' Peristephanon, his collection of verses celebrating the deaths of martyrs, and places these poems within the context of Prudentius' world, uniquely employing material, visual and textual remains as evidence for its religious, social and cultural affiliations. It also draws on this material evidence to contextualise Prudentius' awareness of the significance of the visual as a means of promoting beliefs against the background of this crucial formative period in religious history when many of his Spanish audience were not yet fully committed to the Christian faith.

Hispanojewish Archaeology (2 vols.)

Hispanojewish Archaeology (2 vols.)
Author: Alexander Bar-Magen Numhauser
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1145
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004419926

In Hispanojewish Archaeology Alexander Bar-Magen Numhauser describes the material culture of the Jewish communities in Hispania of the first millennium CE by studying their archaeological remains in the Iberian Peninsula and surrounding western Mediterranean regions.

Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity

Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity
Author: David Morton Gwynn
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 584
Release: 2010
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004180001

This volume in the ongoing Late Antique Archaeology series draws on material and textual evidence to explore the diverse religious world of Late Antiquity. Subjects include Jews and Samaritans, orthodoxy and heresy, pilgrimage, stylites, magic, the sacred and the secular.

The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity

The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity
Author: Ross Shepard Kraemer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 517
Release: 2020-02-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190222271

The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity examines the fate of Jews living in the Mediterranean Jewish diaspora after the Roman emperor Constantine threw his patronage to the emerging orthodox (Nicene) Christian churches. By the fifth century, much of the rich material evidence for Greek and Latin-speaking Jews in the diaspora diminishes sharply. Ross Shepard Kraemer argues that this increasing absence of evidence is evidence of increasing absence of Jews themselves. Literary sources, late antique Roman laws, and archaeological remains illuminate how Christian bishops and emperors used a variety of tactics to coerce Jews into conversion: violence, threats of violence, deprivation of various legal rights, exclusion from imperial employment, and others. Unlike other non-orthodox Christians, Jews who resisted conversion were reluctantly tolerated, perhaps because of beliefs that Christ's return required their conversion. In response to these pressures, Jews leveraged political and social networks for legal protection, retaliated with their own acts of violence, and sometimes became Christians. Some may have emigrated to regions where imperial laws were more laxly enforced, or which were under control of non-orthodox (Arian) Christians. Increasingly, they embraced forms of Jewish practice that constructed tighter social boundaries around them. The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity concludes that by the beginning of the seventh century, the orthodox Christianization of the Roman Empire had cost diaspora Jews--and all non-orthodox persons, including Christians--dearly.