Overview

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.

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9789523690974

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Katja Ritari is Docent of Study of Religions at University of Helsinki. She has a PhD in Celtic Studies from University College Cork and she is the author of Saints and Sinners in Early Christian Ireland: Moral Theology in the Lives of Saints Brigit and Columba (Brepols, 2010) and Pilgrimage to Heaven: Eschatology and Monastic Spirituality in Early Medieval Ireland (Brepols, 2016). Jan R. Stenger is Professor of Classics at the Julius-Maximilians-Universit�t Würzburg. From 2012 to 2019 he was Douglas MacDowell Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow. He has also held fellowships at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (2015-2016) and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala (2017-2018). His research focuses on Greek lyric poetry and the literature and culture of Late Antiquity. He is especially interested in the relationship between Christianity and classical culture from the 4th to the 6th centuries. Stenger's publications include a monograph on education in Late Antiquity (Education in Late Antiquity: Challenges, Dynamism, and Reinterpretation, 300-550 ce, 2022) as well as books and articles on Libanius, John Chrysostom and the monasticism of Gaza. William Van Andringa is Director of Studies at the �cole Pratique des Hautes �tudes (University PSL, UMR 8546 AOROC, Paris). He has also held fellowships at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, in 2011-2012 and 2015-2017. His work focuses on the urban archaeology and the religious and funerary practices of the Roman and medieval eras, areas he has studied on two archaeological sites, at Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges (France) and Pompeii (Italy), as well as in numerous books and publications.

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