MATTEO NORIS’S ATTILA (1672) AND THE REPRESENTATION OF LATE ANTIQUITY ON THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY STAGE

Reviewed by: Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler Blake Leyerle Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity Maria E. Doerfler Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. Pp. xii + 396. ISBN: 9780520304154 In this nuanced and exquisitely written study, Maria Doerfler takes readers on an extended survey of the richly variegated terrain of loss. Drawing on hymns, as well as on homilies and commentaries, she not only assesses the response of clerics to child mortality but also illuminates the affective responses of bereaved parents. Throughout the work, she stresses the powerful role of the liturgy in scripting emotions, and she explores how expressions of grief are typically gendered. The merits of this splendid work are many. Chief among them is the rich array of cited evidence. With impressive ease, Doerfler ranges across genres and linguistic communities, weaving Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopian sources into a conversation usually solidly dominated by Greek and Latin authors. To extend and clarify her analysis, she draws on contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman sources, adduces ancient material evidence, and cites voices from the medieval period, as well as from our own. Epigraphs to the chapters are as likely to feature quotations from recently published manuals on parenting as extracts from documentary papyri, a verse from Galit Hasan-Rokem's poetry as a passage from Theodoret. An introductory chapter sets up the study. Although information about the death of children in Late Antiquity remains frustratingly scanty, the experiences of one particular group of children, namely biblical characters, "were amply—one might even say excessively—documented and discussed" (5). The fact that most of these children, (Abel, Isaac, Jephthah's daughter, and the Maccabean mother's seven sons) are adult offspring underscores how this study is as much about parental bereavement as it is about the death of subadults. For if theological treatises, borrowing from philosophical writings, often conclude that an early death is a boon to both the deceased and their families, the reactions of biblical characters suggest otherwise. In their unrestrained grief, they offer vital, if often overlooked counternarratives (12). After a helpful summary of the social, religious, and ritual contexts surrounding children's death and commemoration, each subsequent chapter focuses on one or two of these dramatis personae. Chapter 2 focuses on scripture's first bereaved parents. Presented as paragons of suffering, Adam and Eve functioned not only to moderate but also to elevate the grief of ordinary parents. The laments placed into Eve's mouth by Ephrem, among others, invited parents to set their own loss within that narrative framework, and thus they offered reassurance that their children—just like Abel—would enjoy a paradisiacal future (59–71). Chapter 3 takes up the binding of Isaac, which Doerfler presents not as an exceptional story but as a familiar horror: "the threatened death of an aged couple's only son—and with it, the end of the family's lineage" (77). Portraying Abraham as a paragon of piety and emotional restraint, homilists urged parents to respond to the surrendering of their children—to martyrdom or the ascetic life, as well as to premature death—in a similarly pious and trusting manner (82–88). Realism enters, however, in the [End Page 252] figure of Sarah, whom homilists insert into the narrative to give voice to maternal grief and to theological protest. Her words allow "writers to express what Abraham in these texts could not, but what late ancient audiences evidently felt the situation required" (96). Indeed, for some homilists, Isaac's survival was due to her vociferous lament (99–101). In an especially brilliant chapter, Doerf er illuminates how the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter and the death of the Maccabean mother's seven sons function as parallel narratives to the Akedah. Although Jephthah is praised by Jacob of Serugh as a model parent, one who balanced allegiance to the divine and devotion to his family, for most early commentators, he is "a compromised hero, a counterfeit Abraham, a dangerous example" (116). Condemned as much for his overt expression of grief as for his rash vow, his mourning...

Reviewed by: Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition Robin Darling Young Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition. By Claudia Rapp. [The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, Vol. 37.](Berkeley: University of California Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 346. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-520-24296-3.) If its title provides a near occasion for cognitive dissonance, it is not because this book lacks an interesting thesis and rich documentation: Rapp amply illustrates the activities and aims of the numerous early Christian leaders whose rise as a new order of politicians revolutionized the Mediterranean world. An exception proves her case. Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch from 260 to 272, lost his job for doctrinal error, but his accusers added charges of moral turpitude for good measure; yet he could be deposed only after his protector Zenobia suffered military defeat. If holiness could not secure his office, its alleged lack demonstrated the justice of his punishment. The book has two parts. The first, chapters 1 through 4, describes the quality of holiness as a necessity—no less than for the ascetic—for the bishop and traces it through three aspects. The second part, chapters 5 through 9, considers bishops' specific contexts in late antiquity and the institutions that grew out of them. Rapp begins her treatment with a review of previous scholarship on the episcopacy in early Christianity. She distinguishes three groups of previous studies: histories of the episcopacy's development, ending with Constantine; the "public role of bishops" in urban or rural sees; and biographies of particularly notable bishops. Rapp wants to dispute the importance of the reign of Constantine, particularly dear to European historians as a watershed, and, by making the chronological range of her book the third to sixth century, to discount the corrosiveness of imperial sponsorship upon Church and bishop. She also recommends a "more integrative approach" in the studies of particular [End Page 779]bishops to link their activities within Stadtherrschaftto "their religious position as Christian leaders" (p. 13). In part 1, Rapp groups the "pragmatic," "spiritual," and "ascetic" aspects of this leadership. The method and content of this part might be called theological, because, compared with the second, it is based upon the concept of the "holy man," especially following the discussion of Peter Brown; and because, to extend the concept from the ascetic and patronusdescribed by Brown, it gathers examples from various works to arrive at a synthetic portrait of the quality of episcopal holiness. By contrast, part 2 is more empirical, beginning with a contrast between two bishops—Synesius of Cyrene and Theodore of Sykeon—and going on to examine social contexts (chapter 6, cities (chapter 7, empire (i.e., the relationship between empire and bishops in the imperial system [chapter 8]), and ending in chapter 9 with a description of what was, after all, a notable change in the significance of this highest Christian office—the transition "from model Christians to model citizens" (p. 275). Here the book seems to revert to a previous historiographical model, by claiming that "[i]n the two centuries after Constantine, a new understanding of the episcopate developed that privileged the bishop's pragmatic authority over his ascetic authority" (p. 274)—in other words, it reduced prior expectations for holiness and drew upon status and money to make the bishop an indispensable urban and imperial official. A few errors should be noted—the Apostolic Traditionis known to be a composite of the fourth century, not a witness to the second; the Didacheprobably favors local officials, not the mobile "prophets and teachers" against whom it cautions; and in the fifth century, the miaphysite Peter the Iberian certainly did not support Nestorius. Robin Darling Young University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press

Reviewed by: Prison, Punishment and Penance in Late Antiquity by Julia Hillner Daniel Washburn Julia Hillner. Prison, Punishment and Penance in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xx, 422. $115.00. ISBN 978–0-521–51751–5. In her recent book, Julia Hillner analyzes the late-antique practice of enforced cloistering and its historical precursors. Hillner argues that throughout antiquity philosophers and commentators on the law had conceived of punishments, especially isolation, designed to improve transgressors’ moral sensibilities; monasteries institutionalized this long-standing ideal. In making its case, the book examines a thousand years of thought on, and practice of, rehabilitative punishment. The book is divided into three parts, each containing several chapters. The first, “Punishment, Reform and Penance,” traces conceptions of justice in Platonic, Roman, and Christian contexts. Part 2, “Prison and Punishment,” examines methods of confinement, including public prison, domestic seclusion, and exile. The book culminates in part 3, “Prison and Penance,” in which Hillner situates monastic confinement in ecclesiastical and imperial contexts. The final section argues that this particular form of seclusion developed from Christian notions of justice (it instilled reflection and contrition in the offender) and was co-opted eventually by state authorities for its utility. Learnedness and meticulousness mark this work. Stretching from Plato to Gregory the Great, the book displays a vast range in its materials. One representative page draws from Leontius of Byzantium, an anonymous Pelegian treatise, Basil of Caesarea, Libanius of Antioch, one of Diocletian’s rescripts, and an Egyptian military archive (144). The book displays equally extensive coverage in its scholarly bibliography. Similarly, the maps and tables that Hillner includes convey a great amount of scholarship in easily digestible forms. In its approach, the work maintains a careful balance between theoretical and practical explanations. The need for this balance often arises, as Hillner [End Page 434] considers not only discourses of power but also logistical issues, such as the portion of a house where domestic seclusion could have occurred (168). Hillner shows sound judgment, considering each development on its own merits. For instance, she concludes that a sentence to work in the flour mill was chosen primarily for economic motives (171), whereas frontier exile served an ideology of “social hygiene” and worked woefully in practice (234). In addition to its specific claims, the book provides a model for how to argue. Hillner supplies clear, thoughtful reasons for taking material as unique or as part of a larger trend (for example, 294). Her interpretation of language likewise exhibits precision. She uncovers the significance of sources’ terms in each specific context. In particular, the book’s first part elucidates subtle but significant shifts in the meaning of emendatio/emendare (38–49, 58–63, 66–76, 96–103). These qualities, such a boon to specialists, will also make the book difficult for others. Scholars working in fields apart from Roman law will probably derive uneven benefits from the first two parts of the work. Undergraduates are clearly not the intended audience and would find the book overwhelming. Hillner seems aware of these qualities and frequently directs the reader to the connections with relevant arguments in other sections. Furthermore, each part contains a trenchant summary of the preceding chapters. These features will greatly assist casual readers. Even so, the book contains so much evidence and so many overlapping lines of inquiry that, on occasion, a reader can struggle to determine what is essential for the argument and what is not. In particular, the discussion of late-antique coloni may have provided too much explanation of what we cannot know (172–185). Similarly, the book at first blush seems to address monastic confinement, yet it is only the last part that takes up this topic directly. A reader expecting a discussion of late-antique monasteries will have to wait for the concluding section. Nevertheless, Hillner’s is a valuable book. Part 3 will stimulate any scholar working in the fields of late antiquity or the early Middle Ages. Those specializing in later Roman law or empire will find excellent discussions in parts 1 and 2. All readers of Hillner’s work will develop a keener sense of what a Christian Roman empire entailed and...

List of Figures .. ix Acknowledgements .. xv Late Antique Housing and the Uses of Residential Buildings: an Overview .. 1 Simon Ellis Bibliographic Essays Housing in Late Antiquity: Thematic Perspectives .. 25 Inge Uytterhoeven Housing in Late Antiquity: Regional Perspectives .. 67 Inge Uytterhoeven Episcopia Domus in Qua Manebat Episcopus: Episcopal Residences in Northern Italy during Late Antiquity (4th to 6th c. A.D.) .. 97 Yuri A. Marano Architecture and Church Power in Late Antiquity: Canosa and San Giusto (Apulia) .. 131 Guliano Volpe Episkopeia in Asia Minor .. 169 Burcu Ceylan Other Thematic Studies Private Space in Late Antique Cities: Laws and Building Procedures .. 197 Isabella Baldini Lippolis Public Use and Privacy in Late Antique Houses in Asia Minor: the Architecture of Spatial Control .. 239 Lale Ozgenel Shedding Light on Late Roman Housing .. 283 Simon Ellis Regional Studies The Urban Domus in Late Antique Hispania: Examples from Emerita, Barcino and Complutum .. 305 Alexandra Chavarria, Javier Arce and Gisela Ripoll Late Antique Domus in Africa Proconsularis: Structural and Decorative Aspects .. 337 Francesca Ghedini & Silvia Bullo Domus and Villa: Late Antique Housing in Carthage and its Territory .. 367 Jeremy Rossiter Cappadocia's Rock-Cut Courtyard Complexes: a Case Study for Domestic Architecture in Byzantium .. 393 Veronica Kalas Recently Investigated Urban Houses A Late Roman House at Eauze (Cieutat), France .. 417 Simon Esmonde Cleary The Palace of Theoderic at Ravenna: a New Analysis of the Complex .. 425 Andrea Augenti The Triconch Palace at Butrint: the Life and Death of a Late Roman Domus .. 455 William Bowden and John Mitchell The House of the Lycian Acropolis at Xanthos .. 475 Anne-Marie Maniere-Leveque Two Late Antique Residential Complexes at Sagalassos .. 495 Marc Waelkens et al. The Excavation of an Umayyad Period House at Pella in Jordan .. 515 Alan Walmsley Index .. 523

:<i>La villa dopo la villa 2: Trasformazione di un sistema insediativo ed economico nell’Italia centrale tra tarda Antichità e Medioevo</i>

This volume takes a broad view of the intersection of maritime activities with the socioeconomic development of the Mediterranean world. Focusing on evidence from the Roman and late antique eastern Mediterranean, with particular attention to the area of southwestern Turkey and southern Cyprus from the second century BCE to the seventh century CE, Leidwanger presents an economic history intrinsically connected to the dynamic maritime world.The initial chapter, “Maritime Interaction and Mediterranean Communities,” utilizes previous influential works of F. Braudel (1972), C. Broodbank (2000), and P. Horden and N. Purcell (2000) to establish the opposition of approaches taken in conceptualizing the Mediterranean from the perspective of a “unified sea” to “fragmentation and microregions” considered over the longue durée. In this volume, Leidwanger’s aim is to take a diachronic and multiscalar approach to the maritime activities that shaped the economic and daily lives of those tied to the Mediterranean. He applies his knowledge of connectivity in the analysis of the multiscalar movements between maritime landscapes to understand the impact of the sea on the development of commerce, among other facets of daily life, in the ancient classical (Roman/late antique) world. His work with social network analysis (SNA) is applied here to model the diachronic evolution of economies linked to maritime activity, as well as landscapes. At the core of his network analysis is the relationship between nodes; his consideration of both ports and shipwrecks, as well as their cargoes, represents distinct datasets, valuable by themselves but given a new dimension of depth considered together in his overarching analysis. The choice of southeast Turkey and Cyprus as the focal point for his case study provides numerous centers of maritime activity in addition to extensive archaeological evidence from a single region. Within the Braudelian process, the long durée temporal scale of his study allows for the observance of changes in maritime and economic patterns within this single, particularly active region.The physical and social parameters encountered in his model are explored in Chapter 2, “Topography and Tools of Interaction,” through the examination of the region’s marine and coastal topographies, currents, and winds, which in turn impacted ship-building technologies and construction techniques, cargos and their capacity, as well as crew size. The interplay between these parameters is exemplified in his incorporation of current research on sailing seasons with the Mediterranean and their influence and effect on maritime technology, specifically in shipbuilding. The data under consideration for this region and study derives from shipwrecks and is reinforced by evidence from ancient texts and iconography. Leidwanger notably distinguishes between the iconography of the elites in sources such as ornate mosaics and those reflective of the lower classes in the form of dipinto. He applies these parameters along with data from the replica fourth-century BCE ship Kyrenia II (originally wrecked off the coast of Cyprus) to demonstrate the strength of recent research, which shows that sailing not only continued into the night but also through the winter season. His model ascribes these considerations not to a linear development but rather views it as the result of knowledge and experience of sailors and merchants, who over time responded to local environmental and economic variables. Given that this knowledge existed on a local and regional level, a strong case emerges for the legitimacy of interconnected, smaller networks driving maritime exchange.Chapter 3, “Modeling Maritime Dynamics,” moves on to the theoretical implications of the author’s network model set within a regional scope. Leidwanger dives into the complex terminology of concepts of “regionalism” and “regions,” along with their ties to maritime connectivity. Using the parameters explored in Chapter 2 together with descriptions of regions and journeys by ancient authors, he argues that the experiences of mariners are reflected in the nomenclature of informal boundaries, which in turn highly influenced sailing habits. Leidwanger acknowledges the “importance of the interrelated mobilities of goods and people” (91), along with the centrality of fishing, which help to create links across regions, economies, and social classes. This multiscalar approach gives much greater agency to the broader spectrum of players involved in maritime trade, looking beyond elite movement between large ports.At the center of this volume is a valuable dataset presented in Chapter 4, “Exploring Shipwreck Data,” in which 67 shipwrecks are evaluated based on the proposed model put forth in the previous chapters. This is a significant analysis and contribution to the field as there are less than 200 total shipwrecks published from the Roman and late antique eastern Mediterranean. Leidwanger’s corpus therefore represents a valuable undertaking. The most compelling takeaway from his analysis is the identification of spikes in maritime activity during the early Roman and late antique periods, with a relative lull during the third century CE, a phenomenon limited to the eastern Mediterranean. Leidwanger uses his experience with network analysis to evaluate the connectivity based on the various cargoes of ships. The quantification of the data reveals not only patterns over the breadth of time covered in this study but also allows for the identification of important developments on variable scales and in different areas (152). This model takes into consideration the impact of dynamic landscapes, spatial and relational data from shipwrecks, and temporal rhythms, among other factors, presenting a more nuanced picture of the ancient maritime economy.The other line of evidence in his analysis is presented in Chapter 5, “Ports and Everyday Economies,” in which he provides an assessment of port sites. Here too, a multifaceted approach is taken to the material by evaluating the archaeological evidence, as well as issues of geography, topography, and environment. This methodology highlights Leidwanger’s attention to regionalism and the variables specific to the different maritime and coastal landscapes. Using the GIS software Gephi for network analysis, he creates models of his study areas with port sites, providing new data on many unpublished sites. Exemplifying the usefulness of GIS applications, Leidwanger then combines his port-site models with data from terrestrial archaeological surveys on the agricultural production of commodities found in ports and wrecks to illustrate the connectivity between the inland networks of production and transport with those of the maritime pathways. This is an important contribution as it coalesces what are two usually distinct datasets from land and sea into a single, more complete picture of economic production and distribution. The mapping reveals a complex network of ports of varying scales that was intimately tied to environmental constraints, geography, and navigational abilities specific to that region. The value of local ports is highlighted in which the movement of goods through this highly localized geography could occur more easily, and frequently solidify connections with the regional network (195). The chronological framework of the author’s project allows for the recognition of development and changing patterns in the maritime networks of production and exchange in which during the Roman period the Aegean is the central node with networks radiating to more immediate connections in Cyprus, Cilicia, and the Levant, but also extending to the Adriatic, Black Sea, and the western Mediterranean in Gaul. However, the picture changes during late antiquity when Cyprus, Cilicia, and the Levant gain centrality within the broader production network.Chapter 6, “Maritime Networks in the Roman East,” brings together the data and arguments from the previous chapters and frames them within the eastern Mediterranean’s sociopolitical and economic spheres. Leidwanger discusses the shifts in maritime activity with concentrations in the early Roman period and during late antiquity. The economic zone created between Cyprus and the Aegean in the early Roman period, from the second century BCE to the second century CE, and reaching an apex slightly earlier than the western Mediterranean in the first century CE, shows that this region was integrated into the imperial network but maintained its own distinct zone of economic interaction. The other upturn in maritime activity corresponds to the establishment of Constantinople at the beginning of the fourth century CE, when the case-study regions of southwestern Turkey and southern Cyprus emerged as central nodes within the broader late antique economic networks, extending through the fifth century CE. At this time the regions developed greater connectivity through interregional trade as well as linking with broader networks associated with the Black Sea and Danube regions. Leidwanger reveals that the well-held perception of economic decline and reduction of late antique shipwrecks does not reflect a retraction of network use. Rather, late antiquity was a period of busy regional markets in the eastern Mediterranean.A short closing section, “Further Journeys,” postulates the direction of maritime archaeology and its development as a field of study. One area where the field could be exponentially enriched is with the addition of more multiscalar regional assessments, identifying southern France, Sicily, and Israel as regions with potential for regional projects similar to Leidwanger’s own. Echoing Horden and Purcell, the value of an analysis in the longue durée allows for greater detail, further broadening the chronological scope to include material from the Hellenistic through the later medieval periods in order to potentially add to this already rich corpus of evidence. Beyond expanding the temporal framework, Leidwanger suggests expanding the contextual data to include “other major indicators of mobility, interaction, and economic development throughout the hinterlands” (226). Ties between maritime networks with coastal and inland markets would provide new insights across a more unified regional economy.Two appendixes conclude the monograph. The first one of Roman and late antique shipwrecks from southwest Turkey and the northeast Mediterranean provides valuable information to further support Leidwanger’s analysis, such as the types of cargo recovered and wreck context in deposition. This is also a concise record, useful for future scholars to access the primary datasets (Parker, OXREP, DARMC) in one place through Leidwanger’s meticulous reassessment. The second appendix presents a thorough discussion of and data on wind patterns for the relevant regions through which one can see the impact of environmental variation on maritime movement.This volume makes several strong contributions to theoretical and methodological approaches toward the analysis of maritime economy. Leidwanger’s model highlights the continued need to move away from the previous, and somewhat current, trends of top-down approaches focused on exchange between large, urban ports. His case studies clearly demonstrate the complexity of maritime networks operating from the bottom-up, highly affected by regional variation in landscape, weather, and geography. They also highlight the local agency of mariners working at multiple levels of involvement in maritime movement and trade, producing a comprehensive model with aspects not previously considered in broader pan-Mediterranean models. An aspect of his research, rarely acknowledged, are the multifaceted roles these maritime agents played in trade, with varying identities, likely simultaneously as sailors, merchants, fishermen, and other operators that drove the regionalized worlds of maritime trade. Their small worlds, connected on a scale of no more than a few days’ journey in familiar territory, reinforce the focus on opportunistic harbors and regional networks operated by local experts. The geographical flexibility and dynamic nature of this model solidifies it as the primary mode of maritime trade in the eastern Mediterranean, despite different narratives held for traditional Mediterranean-wide models based on large port-to-port exchange.As with any study including ceramics and network analysis, petrography can add a whole other dimension of information. While this is an ideal inclusion for analysis, it is often unrealistic to be able to obtain extensive petrographic information, especially when looking at numerous assemblages from various excavations over an extended period. It would also be of interest to expand the dataset by including other ceramic vessel types, beyond those of transport amphorae, found in wrecks and port assemblages. Inclusion of ceramic vessels such as fine wares within this model would lend new information about their distribution from port to inland sites, including vessels moving with, and on, established agricultural market networks. As Leidwanger suggests in his “Further Journeys” section, inland trade-network studies provide another dimension of analysis toward understanding the complete movement of goods to inland sites, beyond their entrance at ports and small harbors.This volume represents an important move forward in our understanding of how multiscalar connectivity influenced not only maritime trade but the Roman economy itself. This comprehensive research provides a valuable model for future regional studies.

Review: <i>The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur’an: Scripture, Polemic, and Exegesis from Late Antiquity to Islam</i>, by Michael Pregill

Reviewed by: The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity Andrew Louth The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity. By Patricia Cox Miller. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2009. Pp. viii, 263. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-812-24142-6.) This latest of Patricia Cox Miller’s books draws together two themes that have been her concerns for a long time: the holy and the bodily, or perhaps more precisely, saints and bodies. The links between the two have been noticed ever since scholars paid attention to the notion of the holy in late antiquity. In the first martyrdom account preserved, that of Polycarp, the faithful used to vie with one another to touch his body during his lifetime; after his death, his relics were important. Such respect, or rather, veneration, for the dead bodies of saints marked out Christians from pagans, who were horrified by bringing corpses into cities, the dwelling place of the living. The cult of icons, which developed out of the cult of relics, also concerns bodily elements. What Miller does in this book is to explore the various notions of bodily elements in late antiquity and also apply the methods and results of modern cultural theory, in particular “thing theory,” taken from the work of Bill Brown. There seem to be two aspects to Miller’s approach. On the one hand, she distinguishes various approaches to bodily elements connected with thing theory—i.e., the notion that in certain ways bodily objects become things, as opposed to mere objects—a focus of attention and significance, which is expressed in late-antique writing through ecphrasis and what Miller calls “visceral seeing” (p. 104). She also introduces notions such as the corporeal imagination of the book’s title and the notion of the “material turn” (p. 3). This latter notion sounds familiar, as it is present in Miller’s “linguistic turn” (in The Poetry of Thought in Late Antiquity: Essays in Imagination and Religion [Burlington, VT, 2001], p. 6) and “cultural turn” (in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography, ed. Dale B. Martin and Miller, Durham, NC, 2005). On the other hand, Miller takes us through various ways in which the body becomes significant in late antiquity: the way in which the body becomes integral to the notion of selfhood; the significance of relics; and the way bodies are depicted, which leads naturally to the icon. Throughout, Miller provides examples, drawn from her extensive knowledge of the primary and secondary literature. She moves through the material at quite a pace and too frequently moves from one investigation to another before reaching any, if provisional, conclusion. In the end, it cannot be said that Miller’s discussion is comprehensive. There is no question that her subject is of immense importance. In the ascetic literature, to which she [End Page 514] pays less attention, it is increasingly evident how the very importance of ascetic practice, for all that it seems to be directed against the body, ultimately confers on the body central significance. The development of Eucharistic theology points in the same direction: It is our bodies that enable us to participate in the divine through the Eucharistic elements—something, as St. John Damascene points out, denied to the angels, so that in some sense we are superior to the angels through our bodies. Miller helps us to see the importance of the tangible in Christian religious experience in late antiquity, but the treatment is too episodic to be entirely satisfying. Andrew Louth University of Durham Copyright © 2010 The Catholic University of America Press

Reviewed by: Repentance in Late Antiquity: Eastern Asceticism and the Framing of the Christian Life c. 400–650 CE by Alexis Torrance Kevin Uhalde Repentance in Late Antiquity: Eastern Asceticism and the Framing of the Christian Life c. 400–650 ce Alexis Torrance Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 244. ISBN 978–0-19–966536–5. For some time now, a sizeable chorus of scholars has called for a New History of Penance (the title of a recent essay collection), including a revision of how we understand the development of Christian penance during late antiquity. It is in this earlier period, compared with work on medieval and Reformation-era penance, that so far more fault-finding than reconstruction has been accomplished. A number of historians, for example, including this reviewer, have voiced their doubts over whether a sudden decline in public penance during the fifth and sixth centuries created a “void,” as Cyrille Vogel once wrote, that Irish monks fortuitously filled with private forms of penance. But if not the fall of one and the rise of another form of penance, what sort of narrative can describe the evident change between ancient and medieval penance? The skepticism of at least one historian, writing recently in the premier issue of Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, has some justification, when she expresses her unease over how “the penitential landscape has appeared to flatten out.” But not for long. By challenging the virtually unchallenged dichotomy between lay penance and monastic repentance, searching back in time for the sources of penitential thought, and successfully avoiding the pull of medieval and modern categories of interpretation, Alexis Torrance shows us how rich and varied the historical terrain of penance might become. In his well-written and highly original study, Torrance does far more than analyze the penitential theology of four major contributors to Greek monastic literature (although this alone would have made a significant contribution). Rather, he also provides scholars an effective framework for interpreting penitential language in early Christian literature and the role of repentance in late antique culture generally. What is more, he demonstrates how his framework works, in two chapters surveying the history of repentance from the Septuagint to John Chrysostom. Including as well a concise, up-to-date review of scholarship in the introductory chapter, the first half of the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the culture of repentance or the origins of penance (i.e., the liturgy or sacrament). The first half also lays the groundwork for the following three case studies, focused on the Greek monastic writers just alluded to: Mark the Monk, Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, and John Climacus. From his careful reading of [End Page 196] these authors, Torrance identifies related but separable aspects of repentance, with which he constructs a “threefold framework” for understanding a total concept of repentance, one which he proposes to have been deeply rooted, long-lived, and influential. The strength of this interpretative framework grows apparent over the course of the book, as with something like magnetic force it is used to attract supporting evidence from a range of sources, and as its rather simple taxonomy coheres into the substantive parts of a penitential process, something an ancient person might actually have experienced, as well as expounded upon and extolled to others. First, according to Torrance’s progressive model, initial repentance marked the moment when people made a conscious break from a sinful, ignorant life and began anew, through either baptism in the case of new believers, or ecclesiastical penance in the case of strayed believers. Thenceforth, a life of existential repentance entailed an ongoing process of humility, correction, and atonement that could work for the salvation, not only of the penitent subjects themselves, but ultimately and ideally for others vicariously—what Torrance calls Christ-like repentance. As useful as his framework proves to be, it is important to remember, as Torrance himself reminds us, that it is a device he has constructed—not that late antique authors did not think in similar terms or favor tripartite distinctions. Texts as early as The Shepherd of Hermas (pp. 71–72) emphasized the continual nature of repentance, punctuated...

The flourishing of late-antique studies in the last half-century has coincided with the rise of “world history” as an area of academic research. To an extent, some overlap has occurred, particularly with Sasanian Persia being considered alongside the late Roman Empire as constituting an essential component in what we think of in terms of the “shape” of late antiquity. Yet it is still the case that many approaches to late antiquity are bound up with conventional western narratives of historical progress, as defined in Jack Goody's The Theft of History (2006). Indeed, the debate about whether late antiquity was an age of dynamic transformation (as argued by Peter Brown and his disciples) or one of catastrophic disruption (as asserted, most recently, by Bryan Ward-Perkins) can be regarded as representing two different faces of an essentially evolutionary interpretation of western historical development. This article argues, however, that we can challenge such conventional narrative frameworks by taking a world historical perspective on late antiquity. It shows, first, that our interpretation of late antiquity depends on sources that themselves are representative of myriad local perspectives. Secondly, it argues that since Gibbon's time these sources have been made to serve an essentially western construct of and debate about history. The final section considers how taking a more global perspective allows us to challenge conventional approaches to and narratives of late antiquity.

Reviewed by: Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by Judith Herrin Edward M. Schoolman Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe Judith Herrin Princeton. Princeton University Press, 2020. Pp. xxxvii + 537. ISBN: 978-0-691-15343-8 There are many ways to locate the city of Ravenna. Geographically, it rested at the southern edge of where the wide Po valley met the Adriatic in northern Italy. Politically, it was central to the late Roman empire and its immediate successors in Italy, serving as the capital for both the Ostrogothic kingdom and, for more than two hundred years, the Byzantine exarchate of Italy, before finally being seized by the Lombards (if only temporarily). Into the Middle Ages, this past made the city a desired location on royal itineraries in the age of the Carolingians. Culturally, it was the recipient of imperial and significant local patronage in its late Roman and early Byzantine guises, leading to the constructions of some of the best-preserved churches of the period, resplendent in their glittering mosaics, but was also the site of the production of other more mobile items, exemplified by illuminated Gothic bibles on the one hand, and texts like the anonymous early eighth century Cosmography on the other. In Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe, Judith Herrin acknowledges the multiple positions of the city, while locating Ravenna as an integral node in a much wider context by connecting its history to the broader transitions from the late Roman world into a differentiated medieval Europe. Despite the broad stokes that this entails, Herrin masterfully ties together the details that make this book compelling. In thirty-seven chapters, neatly subdivided into smaller sections sprinkled with full color plates, she touches on Ravenna's frequently central role in historical events, including the cultural production of the city. Her analysis ultimately showcases the utility of understanding the fortunes of one place as a lens for viewing larger patterns of early medieval history. While Ravenna's periodization and general scope match Herrin's 1989 The Formation of Christendom, this volume nevertheless represents an entirely different approach in its execution. There is, in fact, nothing quite like this volume. Its focus could make it a fitting companion to Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis's Ravenna in Late Antiquity, which centered on the material and built environment. It nevertheless stands on its own as a way to trace the development of the Mediterranean from the reign of Constantine to that of Charlemagne. Herrin pulls in major figures like Theodoric and Justinian, but is equally adept and weaving in the activities of the Popes, Ravenna's bishops, and its Byzantine Exarchs; religious disputes including Arianism, the Three Chapters Controversy, and Iconoclasm; and even the lives of soldiers, monks, priests, Goths, and the workers of land who appear (often only once) in the church of Ravenna's rich collection of preserved papyri and parchment documents. She also taps into relatively obscure sources to uncover unlikely connections, like the anonymous Cosmographia composed in Ravenna around 700 ce by a scholar who "travelled" through the literature that was on hand, revealing the now-lost books and maps available during these so-called "dark ages." Designed for a more general readership, Ravenna would serve as an ideal a [End Page 317] book for the classroom, perhaps in some version of a course on a long Late Antiquity or the parallel early medieval version, "From Constantine to Charlemagne." With its clear organization, short chapters, and chronological breadth, Ravenna stands as a central point of balance between more traditional narratives of the early Middle Ages in the "West," and narratives that encompass a wider, multi-cultural perspective on Late Antiquity and highlight the contributions of the Byzantine Empire to this history. More broadly speaking, as a history of the Mediterranean and ultimately centered on the transition between "modes" of antiquity and those of the Middle Ages, Herrin's work here is satisfying in its elasticity, moving its focus from one tightly bound to the confines of Ravenna to a much wider field of vision to relate how major political and cultural changes rippled through the sea. As of the writing of this review, Ravenna has...

Reviewed by: Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and his Congregation in Antioch David F. Buck Jaclyn L. Maxwell. Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and his Congregation in Antioch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xi + 198. CDN $96.00. ISBN 13: 978-0-521-86040-6. Christianity and Communication in Late Antiquity is a study of John Chrysostom’s sermons to his congregation in Antioch. It began as a Princeton Ph.D. thesis written under the supervision of Peter Brown, and its basic purpose is “to learn about the Christianization of late antique society” (3). As Maxwell makes clear in the Introduction, she has [End Page 274] good reasons for both her subject matter and her approach. Sermons are fertile source material, for they “can provide information about the process of Christianization, the variety of religious beliefs and practices coexisting at one time, and about the ways in which laypeople interacted with church authorities” (1). Her particular focus is also an excellent choice, for Chrysostom was the outstanding preacher of his time and gave most of his sermons in Antioch, one of the best-documented cities of late antiquity. Maxwell has a good understanding of how to use these sermons as historical sources. In the Introduction, she addresses their content, their delivery within the liturgy, and their dating and chronology. Her discussion of the relationship of the spoken to the written versions of the sermons, however, could have probed the question of rhetorical embellishment more deeply. For example, given the importance in this study of the interactions between Chrysostom and his congregation, it would be helpful to know whether or not the reported exchanges between them are likely to be fictional. In the first chapter, “Philosophical preaching in the Roman world,” Maxwell shows that both the expectations of the Christian congregations and the sermons delivered by the preachers were formed by the public rhetoric of the Second Sophistic. Thus Christian preachers like Chrysostom were the heirs of the philosophers, especially the Cynics, and, like them, had to choose between public and private lives. She devotes several pages to the fundamentally important question of whether or not the common people who spoke Koine understood and appreciated the Attic Greek declaimed by the orators, and concludes that they did. This lays the groundwork for a similar answer to the same question about Chrysostom’s congregation later in the book. Finally, a case study of the rhetor and bishop, Amphilochius of Iconium, who was both Li-banius’ pupil and Gregory of Nazianzus’ cousin, captures and deftly illustrates the main points of the chapter. The second chapter is about the “culture of public speaking” (42) at Antioch where the same people who heard Chrysostom’s sermons frequently and enthusiastically listened to declamations, panegyrics, forensic speeches, and especially theatrical performances. Thus Maxwell draws attention to the similarity between the performances by actors and by preachers, for, despite his disapproval of the theatre, Chrysostom was clearly influenced by it. She also emphasizes that the common people were not passive spectators in the law courts, theatres or churches, and could influence government policy or even the choice of bishops with demonstrations and acclamations. Chapter 3 is a social and economic study of Chrysostom’s congregation. In the debate about whether Chrysostom preached to an élite or a [End Page 275] diverse audience, Maxwell uses references in the sermons to argue convincingly that it was diverse. Thus she finds evidence for the rich, the middling classes, artisans and workers, slaves and women. There were also the poor, and Maxwell is careful to show how Chrysostom adjusted his definition of “poor“ to fit the particular sermon. However, as Maxwell shows, the Syriac-speaking farmers seldom joined the congregation, and this fact raises questions about Chrysostom’s attitude towards the urban/rural and Greek/Syriac cultural and economic divides of late Roman Antioch which might have been worth pursuing. Were these divides less important to Chrysostom than the distinctions of wealth and class which he strove to overcome? In chapter 4, Maxwell progresses from the demographics of Chrysostom’s congregation to his teaching of them. Here she finds continuity with the psychagogy or spiritual...

Late Antiquity as a period has a complex history with moments when the issues pertaining to it seem to intensify. One of these was without a doubt the aftermath of World War I and reached its apex in 1923 during the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Brussels. The tragic events that had shaken Europe had a deep impact on historiography. In the aftermath of World War II, this trend was reversed on account of a progressive change of perspective and sensibility. The new trend in late antique studies is linked especially to the work of Henri-Irénée Marrou and, more recently, Peter Brown. Marrou is responsible for the acquisition of esthetic standards that promoted an appreciation for the literary and artistic values of Late Antiquity. The very innovative reading of Late Antiquity (“a long Late Antiquity”) proposed by Brown also has had a great impact: on the one hand, Brown’s reading has made useless a periodization based on historical events, and, on the other, it has rendered impossible the concepts of crisis and decline. Recently, however, periodization has made a comeback and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire again seems worthy of consideration.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Religion in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Reviewed by: Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity by David Frankfurter Ann Marie Yasin David Frankfurter Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017 Pp. xix + 314. $39.95. David Frankfurter's new monograph offers a rich and compelling examination of processes of religious change. His petri dish is late antique Egypt, and the study is solidly tethered to the particularities of primary source material preserved by its sands and scribal traditions, but the insights and methodological approaches he presents also make hearty fare for students of religious transformation in other places and times. Profiting greatly from examination of material and textual sources through lenses of anthropology and comparative religion, Frankfurter takes pains to walk readers through the historiographic and theoretical armature of his analysis. The volume is animated by a critical shift in orientation as to how we conceptualize the phenomenon of "Christianization." Frankfurter turns away from the notion of "conversion," to embrace instead a model of ongoing processes of negotiation and syncretism. The difference is far from semantic, for a conversion model implies a change of identity, a rejection of one religious order (with its attendant narratives, forms of devotion, sets of rituals, structures of authority, etc.) for another. Frankfurter's rehabilitation of the notion of syncretism, by contrast, highlights the active selectivity and combination, what he calls "creative assemblage" (4), of institutionally-promoted Christian elements along with traditional forms and practices that have conventionally been identified by scholars (and occasionally disparaged in late antique sermons) as pagan hold-overs or "survivals." Frankfurter's syncretism, moreover, is not merely a stew-pot combination of items from different religions' "ingredients lists," some from column A and some from column B, but rather a more nuanced, complicated process of appropriation and transformation as well as a contemporary contestation over claims of religious purity (though this later point remains less deeply pursued than the former). Frankfurter thus reorients us to consider Christianity not as something that increasing numbers of people in late antiquity "were" but as an amalgam of symbols, artifacts, words, and actions that individuals drew on, redefined, and embodied in different social settings. His wide-ranging study takes up numerous classes of sources, both textual and material, to interrogate the issue of Christianization at the local, everyday level. His stress on the situatedness of religious practice undergirds the organization of the book's core chapters around a set of social contexts in which a variety of instruments of religious syncretism were fashioned: the domestic realm, the holy man, the saint's shrine, the craft workshop, scribal practice, and landscapes of religious architecture. As is clear from this list, Frankfurter intends the notion of "sites of Christianization" not only to encompass literal places but something more abstract, closer to "social environments," that encompass people and artifacts, gestures and words, the ritual and the mundane. For example, for the author, the craft workshop need not be an archaeologically identified space—there are no architectural plans or analyses [End Page 498] of tools, facture, or spatial layouts in the "Magic of Craft" chapter. Rather, his discussion broadly encompasses the sphere of "making," whether in the home or in the monastery; the focus is on the creative act of fashioning things, such as figurines, cloth, tombstones, and panel paintings, that drew on both traditional and Christian iconography. Here as throughout the volume, there is a refreshing move away from superficial examination of objects' or places' appearance as some sort of index of the purity of their makers' or users' Christianity. Instead, the main thrust of the book's analysis lies in the ways in which individuals amalgamated elements drawn from traditions both familiar and new to tap into forms of religious authority and to achieve a perceived efficacy. Though a superficial look at the table of contents would appear to map out a social topography of apparently discrete "spheres," productive overlaps and interrelations within and between the social contexts identified by the chapter titles abound: the domestic concerns, for example, identified by emphasis on health, family, and ancestors, are also found in interactions with holy men and actions at saints' shrines; individual classes of...