Religious experience in late Antiquity: theological ambivalence and Christianization

Abstract

This paper contains a discussion of religious experience from the perspective of sociological and psychoanalytic theory by applying it to a selection of Late Antique texts. Inscriptions and certain hagiographic texts that contain personal statements are particularly important, because they show less redactional and stylistic manipulation than theologically inspired works like Augustine's Confessions and Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History. The most common types of religious experience were dream- and wakingvisions of divine and daemonic beings, Christian martyrs and recently deceased family members. The paper concludes that there is a clear correspondence between the descriptions given in Late Antique texts and the types of phenomena addressed in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and that this discipline can add a new dimension to our understanding of religious behaviour.