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  1. Home
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  3. Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power
  • Cited by 5
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2023
Print publication year:
2023
Online ISBN:
9781009299312
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009299312
Subjects:
Ancient History, Classical Studies, Classical Studies (General), Religion, Church History
Series:
Greek Culture in the Roman World
Information

Book description

This book rethinks the Christianisation of the late Roman empire as a crisis of knowledge, pointing to competitive cultural re-assessment as a major driving force in the making of the Constantinian and post-Constantinian state. Emperor Julian's writings are re-assessed as key to accessing the rise and consolidation of a Christian politics of interpretation that relied on exegesis as a self-legitimising device to secure control over Roman history via claims to Christianity's control of paideia. This reconstruction infuses Julian's reaction with contextual significance. His literary and political project emerges as a response to contemporary reconfigurations of Christian hermeneutics as controlling the meaning of Rome's culture and history. At the same time, understanding Julian as a participant in a larger debate re-qualifies all fourth-century political and episcopal discourse as a long knock-on effect reacting to the imperial mobilisation of Christian debates over the link between power and culture.

Reviews

‘Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power is filled with insight and fresh thinking that breathes new life into the study of kingship literature and the way Christians successfully adapted classical values to their own uses.’

Harold Drake Source: Sehepunkte

‘… the author offers an important contribution to the understanding of the internal tensions of the clergy and pagan culture of the 4th century, studied in the light of an extremely rich bibliography and a great variety of literary and iconographic sources (fifteen images, mainly coins). Lea Niccolai's book thus marks a fundamental stage in the study of the political and religious history of the 4th century AD.’

Gianluca Piscini Source: Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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