The Hagiographical Experiment: Developing Discourses of Sainthood throws fresh light on narratives about Christian holy men and women from Late Antiquity to Byzantium. Rather than focusing on the relationship between story and reality, it asks what literary choices authors made in depicting their heroes and heroines: how they positioned the narrator, how they responded to existing texts, how they utilised or transcended genre conventions for their own purposes, and how they sought to relate to their audiences. The literary focus of the chapters assembled here showcases the diversity of hagiographical texts written in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac, as well as pointing out the ongoing conversations that connect them. By asking these questions of this diverse group of texts, it illuminates the literary development of hagiography in the late antique, Byzantine, and medieval periods.

This volume explores concepts of fiction in late antique hagiographical narrative in different cultural and literary traditions. It includes Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Persian and Arabic material. Whereas scholarship in these texts has traditionally focussed on historical questions, this book approaches imaginative narrative as an inherent element of the genre of hagiography that deserves to be studied in its own right. The chapters explore narrative complexities related to fiction, such as invention, authentication, intertextuality, imagination and fictionality. Together, they represent an innovative exploration of how these concepts relate to hagiographical discourses of truth and the religious notion of belief, while paying due attention to the various factors and contexts that impact readers’ responses.

This volume represents the first discussion of rewriting in Byzantium. It brings together a rich variety of articles treating hagiographical rewriting from various angles. The contributors discuss and comment on different kinds of texts from late antiquity to late Byzantium.

This book breaks new ground for the philosophy of religion by showcasing work that engages with the lived reality of the spiritual life. It demonstrates that philosophy’s relationship with spirituality is more than a historical curiosity and that, in the twenty-first century, it is still meaningful to think about philosophy in connection with spirituality. The chapters are organised around the following themes: spiritual practice and philosophical understanding; philosophical reflections on living a spiritual life; philosophical problems concerning the spiritual life. The first part discusses whether or not the topic of spirituality should be given a more fundamental role within the philosophy of religion, and, if so, how that might be accomplished. The second part addresses fundamental issues concerning human beings, their lives, and their self-understanding in relation to the spiritual life. The final part considers philosophical problems that emerge when discussing the spiritual life. By bringing together discussions of these topics, this volume constitutes a valuable resource for scholars in disciplines in which the spiritual life is a focus of interest, particularly philosophy, theology, and religious studies.

Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, written in the early fourth century, continues to serve as our primary gateway to a crucial three hundred year period: the rise of early Christianity under the Roman Empire. In this volume, James Corke-Webster undertakes the first systematic study considering the History in the light of its fourth-century circumstances as well as its author's personal history, intellectual commitments, and literary abilities. He argues that the Ecclesiastical History is not simply an attempt to record the past history of Christianity, but a sophisticated mission statement that uses events and individuals from that past to mould a new vision of Christianity tailored to Eusebius' fourth-century context. He presents elite Graeco-Roman Christians with a picture of their faith that smooths off its rough edges and misrepresents its size, extent, nature, and relationship to Rome. Ultimately, Eusebius suggests that Christianity was - and always had been - the Empire's natural heir.

Converting Verse provides a fresh account of the ways Christian poets in the late Roman world-especially those in the outlying provinces of Gaul-reinvented Latin poetry's purpose and power during the turbulent fifth century, a period that witnessed barbarian incursions, the rise of monasticism, and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire itself.

During the fourteenth century in Western Europe, there was a growing interest in imitating the practices of a group of hermits known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Laypeople and religious alike learned about their rituals not only through readings from the Vitae patrum (Lives of the Desert Fathers) and sermons but also through the images that brought their stories to life. In this volume, Denva Gallant examines the Morgan Library’s richly illustrated manuscript of the Vitae patrum (MS M.626), whose extraordinary artworks witness the rise of the eremitic ideal and its impact on the visual culture of late medieval Italy. Drawing upon scholarship on the history of psychology, eastern monasticism, gender, and hagiography, Gallant deepens our understanding of the centrality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers to late medieval piety. She provides important insights into the role of images in making the practices of the desert saints both compelling and accessible to fourteenth-century city dwellers, who were just beginning to cultivate the habit of private devotion on a wide scale. By focusing on the most extensively illuminated manuscript of the Vitae patrum to emerge during the trecento, this book sheds new light on the ways in which images communicated and reinforced modes of piety. It will be of interest to art historians, religious historians, and students focusing on this period in Italian history.

The fall of Communism in Eastern Europe opened up a new future—for theology, too, not least in Romania, perhaps of all Orthodox nations the most open to the West. Young Romanian Orthodox theologians seized the opportunity to study and research in the West, availing themselves of mentors and resources hitherto denied them; some have settled in the West, others returned home. This welcome volume displays a theological revival as young Romanian theologians draw on tradition and address new problems. We can discern here a welcome confidence in the Orthodox tradition, no longer on the defensive nor concerned to mark itself off from the theology of the ‘West’. It is a ‘generous Orthodoxy’ (a term that has been used of the theological approach of the late Metropolitan Kallistos), ready to share its treasures with other Christians and eager to learn from them and engage with them.

This is the most detailed and comprehensive study to date of early Latin language, literary and non-literary, featuring twenty-nine chapters by an international team of scholars. 'Early Latin' is interpreted liberally as extending from the period of early inscriptions through to the first quarter of the first century BC. Classical Latin features significantly in the volume, although in a restricted sense. In the classical period there were writers who imitated the Latin of an earlier age, and there were also interpreters of early Latin. Later authors and views on early Latin language are also examined as some of these are relevant to the establishment of the text of earlier writers. A major aim of the book is to define linguistic features of different literary genres, and to address problems such as the limits of periodisation and the definition of the very concept of 'early Latin'.

The collective volume Syriac Hagiography: Texts and Beyond explores several late-antique and medieval Syriac hagiographical works from the complementary perspectives of literature and cult.