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This book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first - seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. Following its legalization in the fourth century Roman Empire, Christianity cultivated a dramatically flourishing devotional piety, in which the bodily senses were utilized as crucial instruments of human-divine interaction. Rich olfactory practices developed as part of this shift, with lavish uses of incense, holy oils, and other sacred scents. At the same time, Christians showed profound interest in what smells could mean. How could the experience of smell be construed in revelatory terms? What specifically could it convey? How and what could be known through smell? Scenting Salvation argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield, in turn, a particular human identity. Using a wide array of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources, Susan Ashbrook Harvey examines the ancient understanding of smell through religious rituals, liturgical practices, mystagogical commentaries, literary imagery, homiletic conventions; scientific, medical, and cosmological models; ascetic disciplines, theological discourse, and eschatological expectations. In the process, she argues for a richer appreciation of ancient notions of embodiment, and of the roles the body might serve in religion.

Clothing, jewelry, animal remains, ceramics, coins, and weaponry are among the artifacts that have been discovered in graves in Gaul dating from the fifth to eighth century. Those who have unearthed them, from the middle ages to the present, have speculated widely on their meaning. This authoritative book makes a major contribution to the study of death and burial in late antique and early medieval society with its long overdue systematic discussion of this mortuary evidence. Tracing the history of Merovingian archaeology within its cultural and intellectual context for the first time, Effros exposes biases and prejudices that have colored previous interpretations of these burial sites and assesses what contemporary archaeology can tell us about the Frankish kingdoms.Working at the intersection of history and archaeology, and drawing from anthropology and art history, Effros emphasizes in particular the effects of historical events and intellectual movements on French and German antiquarian and archaeological studies of these grave goods. Her discussion traces the evolution of concepts of nationhood, race, and culture and shows how these concepts helped shape an understanding of the past. Effros then turns to contemporary multidisciplinary methodologies and finds that we are still limited by the types of information that can be readily gleaned from physical and written sources of Merovingian graves. For example, since material evidence found in the graves of elite families and particularly elite men is more plentiful and noteworthy, mortuary goods do not speak as directly to the conditions in which women and the poor lived. The clarity and sophistication with which Effros discusses the methods and results of European archaeology is a compelling demonstration of the impact of nationalist ideologies on a single discipline and of the struggle toward the more pluralistic vision that has developed in the post-war years.

In this new and illuminating interpretation of Ambrose, bishop of Milan from 374 to 397, Neil McLynn thoroughly sifts the evidence surrounding this very difficult personality. The result is a richly detailed interpretation of Ambrose's actions and writings that penetrates the bishop's painstaking presentation of self. McLynn succeeds in revealing Ambrose's manipulation of events without making him too Machiavellian. Having synthesized the vast complex of scholarship available on the late fourth century, McLynn also presents an impressive study of the politics and history of the Christian church and the Roman Empire in that period.Admirably and logically organized, the book traces the chronology of Ambrose's public activity and reconstructs important events in the fourth century. McLynn's zesty, lucid prose gives the reader a clear understanding of the complexities of Ambrose's life and career and of late Roman government.

Gregory I (590-604) is often considered the first medieval pope and the first exponent of a truly medieval spirituality. Carole Straw places Gregory in his historical context and considers the many facets of his personality-monk, preacher, and pope-in order to elucidate the structure of his thought and present a unified, thematic interpretation of his spiritual concerns.

Because they list all the public holidays and pagan festivals of the age, calendars provide unique insights into the culture and everyday life of ancient Rome. The Codex-Calendar of 354 miraculously survived the Fall of Rome. Although it was subsequently lost, the copies made in the Renaissance remain invaluable documents of Roman society and religion in the years between Constantine's conversion and the fall of the Western Empire.In this richly illustrated book, Michele Renee Salzman establishes that the traditions of Roman art and literature were still very much alive in the mid-fourth century. Going beyond this analysis of precedents and genre, Salzman also studies the Calendar of 354 as a reflection of the world that produced and used it. Her work reveals the continuing importance of pagan festivals and cults in the Christian era and highlights the rise of a respectable aristocratic Christianity that combined pagan and Christian practices. Salzman stresses the key role of the Christian emperors and imperial institutions in supporting pagan rituals. Such policies of accomodation and assimilation resulted in a gradual and relatively peaceful transformation of Rome from a pagan to a Christian capital.

Pilgrims during the fourth and fifth centuries AD often reported visiting holy people as part of their tours of holy places in the deserts of Egypt and the holy land. This is a study of pilgrimage to these famous ascetics.

Pachomius, who died in 346, has long been regarded as the "founder of monasticism". This reading of the available texts, first published in 1985, reveals that Pachomius's pioneering enterprise has been consistently misread in light of later monastic practices.

Themistius was a philosopher, a prominent Constantinopolitan senator, and an adviser to Roman emperors during the 4th century A D. This work focuses on the culture of Constantinople and the eastern Roman empire during the fourth century. It provides a resource on the late antique period, as well as on Greek intellectual history and oratory.

Offers a comprehensive reconsideration of the life and literary works of Paulinus of Nola (ca 352-431), a Roman senator who renounced his political career and secular lifestyle to become a monk, bishop, impresario of a saint's cult, and prominent Christian poet. This title traces Paulinus' intellectual and spiritual journey.

Focusing on the socio-cultural as well as the political dimensions of the Sergius cult, this study sheds light on the lives of the ordinary faithful, as well as on religion's place in the strategic calculations of hostile empires. It discusses Arab Christianity in the context of late Roman culture in the East.

The 15 hagiographies of holy women of the Syrian Orient collected here include stories of martyrs' passions and saints' lives, pious romances and personal reminiscences. Dating from the 4th to 7th centuries AD, they are translated from Syriac into accessible prose.

Captures the intellectual and religious encounter between Augustine and Vergil. The text seeks to open a door not merely on the content and formation of Augustine's ideas, but also on the meaning of Vergil's poetry at a time of political and religious change.

The rise of Christianity to the dominant position it held in the Middle Ages remains a paradoxical achievement. Early Christian communities in Gaul had been so restrictive that they sometimes persecuted misfits with accusations of heresy.

The grammarian was a pivotal figure in the lives of the educated upper classes of late antiquity. This profession contributed to the social as well as cultural continuity of the Empire. This title provides a study of the place and function of this important but ambiguous figure.

An annotated English translation of the eleven later panegyrics (291-389 CE) of the XII Panegyrici Latini, with the original Latin text prepared by R A B Mynors. Each panegyric has a thorough introduction, and detailed commentary on historical events, style, figures of speech, and rhetorical strategies accompanies the translations.

This text discusses the transition from ancient to Christian Hellenism as it was expressed in the biographical and panegyric literature of the period between AD 250 and AD 450. These essays show how literary genres focusing on individual lives help to reveal this historical process.

A lively and wide-ranging study of the men and ideas of late antique education, this book explores the intellectual and doctrinal milieux in the two great cities Athens and Alexandria from the second to the sixth century to shed new light on the interaction between the pagan cultural legacy and Christianity.