Educational Communities

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the interconnectedness of education and communities in late antique educational thinking. In the wake of profound changes in politics, society, and religion in the fourth century CE, questions of group allegiance and identity gathered momentum. Leading thinkers promoted educational practices that would reform the thoughts and behaviour of their respective communities. The chapter considers three discourses that put the effects of instruction and learning on the building of communal identities centre stage: catechesis in the fourth-century church (John Chrysostom, Augustine); imperial legislation on schooling (Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus); and elite culture in fifth-century Gaul (Sidonius Apollinaris). These discourses revolved around the influence exerted by teaching, literary practices, and reading habits on the life and cohesion of cultural and religious groups. Educational thinking thus became an exercise in identity-making. Drawing on the concept of ‘textual communities’, the chapter suggests the notion of ‘educational communities’ for describing how education was utilized to define and demarcate groups in an increasingly fragmented society.