[PDF] Conversion In Late Antiquity And The Early Middle Ages eBook

Author : Kenneth Mills
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 50,3 MB
Release : 2003
Category : History
ISBN : 9781580461252

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A re-examination of the social processes behind religious conversions in the Ancient and Early Middle Ages. This volume explores religious conversion in late antique and early medieval Europe at a time when the utility of the concept is vigorously debated. Though conversion was commonly represented by ancient and early medieval writersas singular and personally momentous mental events, contributors to this volume find gradual and incomplete social processes lurking behind their words. A mixture of examples and approaches will both encourage a deepening of specialist knowledge and spark new thinking across a variety of sub-fields. The historical settings treated here stretch from the Roman Hellenism of Justin Martyr in the second century to the ninth-century programs of religious and moral correction by resourceful Carolingian reformers. Baptismal orations, funerary inscriptions, Christian narratives about the conversion of stage-performers, a bronze statue of Constantine, early Byzantine ethnographic writings, and re-located relics are among the book's imaginative points of entry. This focused collection of essays by leading scholars, and the afterword by Neil McLynn, should ignite conversations among students of religious conversion andrelated processes of cultural interaction, diffusion, and change both in the historical sub-fields of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages and well beyond. This book is one of two collections of essays on religious conversion drawn from the activities of the Shelby Cullum Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University between 1999 and 2001. The other volume, Conversion: Old Worlds and New, is also published by the Universityof Rochester Press. Contributors: Susan Elm, Anthony Grafton, Richard Lim, Rebecca Lyman, Michael Maas, Neil McLynn, Kenneth Mills, Eric Rebillard, Julia M. H. Smith, Raymond Van Dam.

Author : Roy Flechner
Publisher : Brepols Publishers
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 46,82 MB
Release : 2016
Category : British Isles
ISBN : 9782503554624

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Volume II : "This volume analyses the effects of religious conversion on landscapes of cult and on religious practice in Europe, focusing in particular on Britain and Ireland. Adopting an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, the volume investigates the interaction between different forms of belief, their coexistence and competition. It discusses the coming of writing, the power of the word, landscapes of ritual, and converting communities. The contributors include leading historians, archaeologists, linguists, and literary scholars. This is the second volume to emerge from research undertaken by contributors to the Converting the Isles Research Network and forms a companion volume to The Introduction of Christianity into the Early Medieval Insular World."--

Author : Yosi Yisraeli
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 15,86 MB
Release : 2016-12-08
Category : History
ISBN : 1317160274

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The Mediterranean and its hinterlands were the scene of intensive and transformative contact between cultures in the Middle Ages. From the seventh to the seventeenth century, the three civilizations into which the region came to be divided geographically – the Islamic Khalifate, the Byzantine Empire, and the Latin West – were busily redefining themselves vis-à-vis one another. Interspersed throughout the region were communities of minorities, such as Christians in Muslim lands, Muslims in Christian lands, heterodoxical sects, pagans, and, of course, Jews. One of the most potent vectors of interaction and influence between these communities in the medieval world was inter-religious conversion: the process whereby groups or individuals formally embraced a new religion. The chapters of this book explore this dynamic: what did it mean to convert to Christianity in seventh-century Ireland? What did it mean to embrace Islam in tenth-century Egypt? Are the two phenomena comparable on a social, cultural, and legal level? The chapters of the book also ask what we are able to learn from our sources, which, at times, provide a very culturally-charged and specific conversion rhetoric. Taken as a whole, the compositions in this volume set out to argue that inter-religious conversion was a process that was recognizable and comparable throughout its geographical and chronological purview.

Author : Kenneth Mills
Publisher : University Rochester Press
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 42,95 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781580461238

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A historical investigation of the phenomena of religious conversion from ancient to modern times. This volume explores the subject of religious conversion over broad expanses of time and space, considering cases from the thirteenth through the twentieth centuries and from settings across the world. Leading scholars from a variety of historical sub-fields address the theme at a moment when the utility of the concept of conversion is vigorously debated. The historical settings treated here stretch from thirteenth-century England to sixteenth-century southern India and Andean Peru, from Bohemia to China during the age of the Reformations, from the fifteenth-century Low Countries to seventeenth-century New France and from the nineteenth-century Minnesota borderlands to late colonial Zimbabwe and modern India. The book's broad mixture of examples and approaches will both encourage a deepening of specialist knowledge about particular places and times, and spark new thinking about religious change, cultural appropriations, and interactive emergence across discipline and fields. This book is one of two collections of essays on religious conversion drawn from the activities of the Shelby Cullum Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University between 1999 and 2001. The other volume, Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, is also published by the University of Rochester Press.

Author : Dominic Janes
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 44,92 MB
Release : 1998-02-19
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780521594035

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From the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century, vast sums of money were spent on the building and sumptuous decoration of churches. The resulting works of art contain many of the greatest monuments of late antique and early medieval society. But how did such expenditure fit with Christ's message of poverty and simplicity? In attempting to answer that question, this 1998 study employs theories on the use of metaphor to show how physical beauty could stand for spiritual excellence. As well as explaining the evolving attitudes to sanctity, decorum and display in Roman and medieval society, detailed analysis is made of case studies of Latin biblical exegesis and gold-ground mosaics so as to counterpoint the contemporary use of gold as a Christian image in art and text.

Author : Walter Pohl
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 11,80 MB
Release : 2021-10-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9004476393

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The definition and notion of frontiers changed in the process of the transformation of the Roman world. This volume goes beyond topography to explore the meaning and impact of new frontiers as they were establised. It becomes clear that the transformation of frontiers was not a linear process in which the imperial frontiers were abandoned and the means of controlling them declined, but depended on specific circumstances. Four of the contributions deal with the frontiers of the Carolingian Empire in their political and military aspects, as well as in the context of Christian conversion and missions. Three of the contributions discuss Roman frontiers and their perception in late antiquity, demonstrating that they were not simply defence lines, but also a basis for offensive operations, a focus in elaborate exchange networks and a means of internal control. Other papers describe the frontiers of early medieval kingdoms, two of which propose theoretical models, whereas others analyse the construction and the blurring of frontiers between the empire and the kingdoms of the Visigoths, Lombards and Avars.