The Making of Christian Communities sheds light on one of the most crucial periods in the development of the Christian faith. It considers the development and spread of Christianity between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and includes analysis of the formation and development of Christian communities in a variety of arenas, ranging from Late Roman Cappadocia and Constantinople to the court of Charlemagne and the twelfth-century province of Rheims, France during the twelfth century. The rise and development of Christianity in the Roman and Post-Roman world has been exhaustively studied on many different levels, political, legal, social, literary and religious. However, the basic question of how Christians of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages formed themselves into communities of believers has sometimes been lost from sight. This volume explores the idea that survival of the Christian faith depended upon the making of these communities, something that the Christians of this period were themselves acutely - and sometimes acrimoniously - aware.

This book contains eleven essays, prefaced by a general introduction, on a set of related themes: the characteristic traits and diverse functions of holy men; the fashioning of saints out of a small minority of holy men and a number of other individuals of high social status but with more dubious spiritual credentials; the literary processes involved in the construction of hagiographical texts; the role of hagiography in the creation and diffusion of cults; and the worldly interests and other purposes which were served by hagiographical texts and the cults which they propagated. These themes are explored across a wide range of social and cultural milieux, extending from the late antique east Mediterranean through the early medieval Frankish world and Byzantium to Russia and Islam in the high middle ages. The work of Peter Brown, in particular his article, 'The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity', first published in 1971, forms a constant point of reference, acknowledged by the contributors as having irradiated the whole field with fresh, provocative, and illuminating ideas.

This volume seeks to explain developments within the structure of the family in antiquity, in particular in the later Roman Empire and late antiquity. Contributions extend the traditional chronological focus on the Roman family to include the transformation of familial structures in the newly formed kingdoms of late antiquity in Europe, thus allowing a greater historical perspective and establishing a new paradigm for the study of the Roman family. Drawing on the latest research by leading scholars in the field the book includes new approaches to the life course and the family in the Byzantine empire, family relationships in the dynasty of Constantine the Great, death, burial and commemoration of newborn children in Roman Italy, and widows and familial networks in Roman Egypt. In short, this volume seeks to establish a new agenda for the understanding of the Roman family and its transformation in late antiquity.

This book introduces the Age of Justinian, the last Roman century and the first flowering of Byzantine culture. Dominated by the policies and personality of emperor Justinian I (527–565), this period of grand achievements and far-reaching failures witnessed the transformation of the Mediterranean world. In this volume, twenty specialists explore the most important aspects of the age including the mechanics and theory of empire, warfare, urbanism, and economy. It also discusses the impact of the great plague, the codification of Roman law, and the many religious upheavals taking place at the time. Consideration is given to imperial relations with the papacy, northern barbarians, the Persians, and other eastern peoples, shedding new light on a dramatic and highly significant historical period.

The first part of this collection brings together a selection of Peregrine Horden's papers on the history of hospitals and related institutions of welfare provision from their origins in Late Antiquity to their medieval flourishing in Byzantium and the Islamic lands as well as in western Europe. The hospital is seen in a variety of original contexts, from demography and family history to the history of music and the liturgy. The second part turns to the history of healing and medicine, outside the hospital as well as within it. These studies cover a period from Hippocratic times to the Renaissance, but with a particular focus on the Mediterranean region - Byzantine, Middle Eastern and Western - in the Middle Ages.

Review: "More than 100 scholars contributed to this carefully researched, well-organized, informative, and multi-disciplinary source on death studies. Volume 1, "The Presence of Death," examines the cultural, historical, and societal frameworks of death, such as the universal fear of death, spirituality and varioius religions, the legal definition of death, suicide, and capital punishment. Volume 2, "The Response to Death," covers such topics as rites and ceremonies, grief and bereavement, and legal matters after death."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004.

An Open Access edition will be available on publication thanks to the kind sponsorship of the libraries participating in the Jisc Open Access Community Framework OpenUP initiative. Desire and Disunity explores the struggles of Christianising late ancient sexuality in the late Roman West. Through an examination of fourth to sixth century sermons, letters, laws, and treatises in Latin-speaking communities, the difficulties of late antique clerics in moving ascetically influenced sexual ideals into wider practice become evident. Western clerics faced challenges on several fronts: the dedication and devoutness of lay Christians varied, while the military-political upheavals of the fifth century created new challenges and opportunities for influencing one’s flock. Furthermore, Roman sexual norms continued to inform the thinking of many clerics and lay figures alike, even when in opposition to more scripturally based moral reasoning. Problems of bigamy, concubinage, sex work, incest, homosexual acts, adultery, and more troubled western Christian communities, with contradicting rules and traditions on what was acceptable and what was not. What reach did elite clerical perspectives on sexual norms have amongst the non-elite? How did clerics navigate tensions between the idealisation of Christian communal purity and the actions of congregants that fell short of these ideals? What influenced clerical perceptions of sex and how did they articulate these ideas to their audiences? Clerical sources of this time reflect these challenges as well as varying church attempts to reform the sex lives of their congregants – and, indeed, church failure in doing so.

The Alamans were early victims of post-Roman expansion of the Frankish empire; studies consider both races from historical, archaeological and linguistic perspectives.(3-6c)

The 19 papers presented in this volume by North American and European historians and archaeologists discuss how early medieval political and religious elites constructed ‘places of power’, and how such places, in turn, created powerful people. They also examine how the ‘high-level’ power exercised by elites was transformed in the post-Roman kingdoms of Europe, as Roman cities gave way as central stages for rituals of power to a multitude of places and spaces where political and religious power were represented. Although the Frankish kingdoms receive a large share of attention, contributions also focus on the changing topography of power in the old centres of the Roman world, Rome and Constantinople, to what ‘centres of power’ may have meant in the steppes of Inner Asia, Scandinavia or the lower Vistula, where political power was even more mobile and decentralised than in the post-Roman kingdoms, as well as to monasteries and their integration into early medieval topographies of power.

The Second Edition of A History of the Later Roman Empire features extensive revisions and updates to the highly-acclaimed, sweeping historical survey of the Roman Empire from the accession of Diocletian in AD 284 to the death of Heraclius in 641. Features a revised narrative of the political history that shaped the late Roman Empire Includes extensive changes to the chapters on regional history, especially those relating to Asia Minor and Egypt Offers a renewed evaluation of the decline of the empire in the later sixth and seventh centuries Places a larger emphasis on the military deficiencies, collapse of state finances, and role of bubonic plague throughout the Europe in Rome’s decline Includes systematic updates to the bibliography