Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World
Ed. G.W. Bowerrsock, Peter Brown, Oleg Grabar
Number of quotes: 22
Book ID: 126 Page: 5
Section: 2D
By the 6th and 7th century, lists of councils, with their canons, had become a standard way of claiming authority in doctrinal matters.
Quote ID: 2870
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 126 Page: 7
Section: 2A1,2E1,3C
The powerful but apocryphal idea of the finding of the True Cross by Constantine’s mother Helena gave rise to a tangle of further stories, among them the entirely legendary tale of the baptism of Constantine by Sylvester, the bishop of Rome.
Quote ID: 2871
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 126 Page: 8
Section: 2A3
The bones of martyrs, eagerly transported across the empire, conveyed the same exciting feeling of closeness to the past. Constantine had to make do with being placed in a mausoleum at Constantinople surrounded by twelve empty sarcophagi representing the apostles, but his son Constantius managed to find the bones of Timothy, Luke, and Andrew and bring them to the capital.
Quote ID: 2872
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 126 Page: x
Section: 4B
Even our access to the earlier classics of the ancient world, in Latin and Greek, was made possible only through the copying activities of the late antique Christians and their early medieval successors, locked in an endless, unresolved dialogue with their own pagan past.
Quote ID: 2869
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 126 Page: 13
Section: 4B
Christians found various ways in which to exert a claim over the classical culture which long remained the main staple of education for the elite. Indeed, among the 7th century liturgical and documentary papyri found in the remote outpost of Nessana on the Egyptian border are texts of Virgil.
Quote ID: 2873
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 126 Page: 36
Section: 2A3
Christians had developed a different attitude than pagans and Jews toward the dead. Their martyr’s dead bodies, far from being perceived as polluting, were approached with veneration, for the saints were deemed to be alive and present at God’s side, interceding for the faithful who placed their trust in them. Such ideas were horrendous to pagans and Jews.
Quote ID: 2874
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 126 Page: 37
Section: 2A3
Christians were often suspected of not representing the religious dedication of urban space. Pagans justly feared that Christians would unlawfully bury martyrs inside their churches. Some complaints must have reached the emperors because, in 381, a law promulgated by Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius I tried to curb this development: “All bodies that are contained in urns or sarcophagi and are kept above ground shall be carried and placed outside the city, that they may present an example of humanity and leave the homes of the citizens their sanctity.” Although written by Christian emperors, the law reminded everyone that Roman cities still sat upon religiously consecrated ground that was not to be polluted by the dead, and that burial of bodies was not allowed in the shrines of the martyrs. The law ultimately did not stop this practice, but it did make it possible for pagan believers to defend the religious purity of their cities for a short time.
Quote ID: 2875
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 126 Page: 37
Section: 2A3
In about a century, a total revolution had happened. That which had defiled the space in the eyes of pagans sacralized it in the eyes of Christians. Prudentius, at the dawn of the 5th century, could write about Rome’s famous relics of Paul and Peter.
Quote ID: 2876
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 126 Page: 40
Section: 2E3,3C
The Christian sacralization of space was not as old as Christianity itself. For the first two or three centuries, Christians met in private houses, which were not sacred buildings.
Quote ID: 2877
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 126 Page: 82
Section: 3A2B
In 391, Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria, supported by the imperial authorities, had attacked and destroyed the great temple of Sarapis in the Egyptian metropolis.…
We also read that at this time Christians went around chipping off the reliefs of Sarapis that adorned lintels and other parts of private houses throughout the city, and painting crosses in their place.
Quote ID: 2878
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 126 Page: 83
Section: 1A,2C
The unselfconsciousness of traditional religion in the Roman empire--what we call “paganism” or “polytheism”-- is manifest especially in its lack of a distinctive name for itself. Threskeia, eusebeia, and nomos; hieros, hosios, and hagios; religio and pietas; sacer and santus: all these words lack specific historical reference contained in such terms as “Jew” or “Christian”.
Quote ID: 2879
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 126 Page: 88
Section: 2D1
Just as Acts is centered on the missionary work of the apostles, so Eusebius’sEcclesiastical History, the next most important account of the church’s early progress, is built around the the “apostolic succession” of bishops who led the major sees and, by fair means or foul, constantly consolidated and widened their territory.
Quote ID: 2880
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 126 Page: 90
Section: 1A,4B
A romantic and of course very political school of thought used to hold that ancient polytheism-- that of the temples rather than the schools-- “survived” under a decent yet not suffocating veiling of Christianity. In the extreme case of crypto-polytheism one might indeed literally turn around an icon of Christ and find Apollo painted on the back. But what more usually happened was that late polytheism went on evolving, often--as in the case of Iamblichus and Julian-- under the direct or indirect influence of Christianity, but also itself influencing the practices of ordinary Christians, so that in the resultant local fusions there was much, on both sides, that was passed to posterity, although impure and thoroughly alloyed.
Quote ID: 2881
Time Periods: 247
Book ID: 126 Page: 107
Section: 4B
The concept of “barbarian” was an invention of the Graeco-Roman world, projected onto a whole spectrum of peoples living beyond the frontier of the empire.
Quote ID: 2882
Time Periods: 014
Book ID: 126 Page: 110
Section: 3A1
Four hundred years later another barbarian ruler, Charlemagne, absorbed the empire into his person, having himself acclaimed emperor on Christmas Day, 800.
Quote ID: 2883
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 126 Page: 115
Section: 3D2
Bonitus was the first of a long series of Franks in Roman service. In 355 his son, the thoroughly Romanized Silvanus who was commander of the Roman garrison at Cologne, was proclaimed emperor by his troops. Although Silvanus was quickly assassinated by envoys of Emperor Constantius.
Quote ID: 2884
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 126 Page: 170
Section: 2E1,3C
On 11 May 330, Rome ceased to be the most important place in the Roman empire. Five hundred miles east of the Eternal City, on a site occupied by modern Istanbul, a new imperial capital was dedicated and (like Rome before it) named after its founder: Constantinople, the city of Emperor Constantine. The inauguration ceremonies were magnificent. On the first of forty days of celebrations, parades, and largesse, the imperial court assembled at the foot of a tall porphyry column erected in the center of the city’s new forum…
was crowned by a radiate diadem like the rising sun; each of its seven glittering rays contained a sliver from the nails used to crucify Christ. Inside the statue, as further guarantee of the city’s security, was hidden a splinter from the True Cross.
…
This stunning ritual was repeated each year on Constantine’s orders to mark the anniversary of the city’s dedication. For the next two years hundred years, as the golden image rounded the turning post of the Hippodrome and neared the imperial box, Roman emperors and their courtiers prostrated themselves before Constantinople’s glittering founder.
Quote ID: 2885
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 126 Page: 172
Section: 2E2,4B
But away from the stark simplicities of the desert and its holy men who had turned their back on the cities of the Roman world, the accommodation between Christianity and the habits, customs, and social expectations of many in the empire was a vital factor in securing widespread acceptance of the new imperial religion.
Quote ID: 2886
Time Periods: 27
Book ID: 126 Page: 172
Section: 1A
A shared language of power based on a coalition between Christianity and classical culture allowed emperors to emphasize their distant, godlike status while at the same time making possible the effective voicing of praise or disagreement by those whose cooperation and participation remained essential for the collection of taxes and the maintenance of good order in the provinces.
Quote ID: 2887
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 126 Page: vii
Section: 4B
In Rome itself the pope was still a “Roman.” Every document emanating from the papal chancery was dated by the regnal date of the Roman emperor who reigned at Constantinople and by the Indicto, a fifteen-year tax cycle that had started in 312.Pastor John’s Note: at 800 AD. DBL CHECK DATE
Quote ID: 2866
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 126 Page: vii
Section: 4B
The tax system of the Islamic empire continued with little break the practices of the Roman and Saasanian states. Its coins were danarii, dinars. The system of post-horses and of governmental information on which its extended rule depended was called after its Roman predecessor veredus, al-barid. Its most significant enemy was still known, in Arabic, as the empire of Rum-- the empire of Rome in the east, centered on Constantinople.Pastor John’s Note: at 800 AD
Quote ID: 2867
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 126 Page: viii
Section: 4B
Although alternately decried and romanticized by scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries as pure “barbarians,” the ruling classes of the postimperial kingdoms of the west had, in fact, inherited a basically Roman sense of social order and a Roman penchant for extended empire. Power still wore a Roman face.
Quote ID: 2868
Time Periods: 567
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