Millennium DIPrPub Date : 2015-11-27DOI: 10.1515/mill-2015-0106
G. Ferri
{"title":"The Last Dance of the Salians: the Pagan Élite of Rome and Christian Emperors in the Fourth Century AD","authors":"G. Ferri","doi":"10.1515/mill-2015-0106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mill-2015-0106","url":null,"abstract":"How does the pagan élite of Rome react to the laws that gradually limited the traditional religion and imposed the Christian faith? Was it an armed resistance or a painless process? The case study to better understand the topic will be an inscription regarding the Salians (CIL 6.2158), a very ancient priesthood of Rome, traditionally held by young Roman patricians. The pontiffs act independently without their maximus (the emperor), trying to go on practising the ancestral rites and restoring the ancient buildings, in this case precisely the mansiones of the Salians. Taking advantage of the evidence provided by the laws contained in the 16th book of the Theodosian Code, it will be very interesting to follow the internal process of change of the Roman élite, more complex than usually regarded, between actions and reactions, resistences until the inevitable conversion. The fourth century is no doubt a turning point in Roman history and religion.1 Christianity gradually imposed itself as the one and only religion of the Empire, not even a century after the so-called “Edict of Tolerance” issued in 313 AD by Constantine.2 From the persecuted, the Christians became persecutors.3 On the recent flourishing of studies on Late Antiquity and for a history of the concept, see A. Giardina, “Esplosione di tardoantico”, Studi Storici. Rivista trimestrale dell’Istituto Gramsci , , –; L. De Giovanni, Istituzioni scienza giuridica codici nel mondo tardo antico, Roma , ch. ; A. Garzya, “Premesse al Tardo antico”, in U. Criscuolo – L. De Giovanni (eds.), Trent’anni di studi sulla Tarda Antichità: bilanci e prospettive. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Napoli – Novembre , Napoli , –. On the complex figure of Costantine, his conversion and his relation with the city of Rome and the traditional religion, see A. Alföldi, The Conversion of Costantine and Pagan Rome, Oxford ; R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean world from the second century ad to the conversion of Constantine, London , –; G. Ostrogorsky, Storia dell’impero bizantino, Torino , –; P. Bruun, “The victorious sign of Constantine: a reappraisal”, Numismatic Chronicle , , –; P. Barcelò, “Warum Christus? Überlegungen zu Costantins Entscheidung für das Christentum”, in C. Batsch, U. Egelhaaf-Geiser, R. Stepper (eds.), Zwischen Krise und Alltag. Conflit et normalité, Stuttgart , –; L. De Giovanni, L’imperatore Costantino e il mondo pagano, Napoli ; A. Fraschetti, La conversione. Da Roma pagana a Roma cristiana, Ed. Laterza, RomaBari , –; M. Sordi, “La conversione di Costantino”, in A. Donati, G. Gentili (eds.), Costantino il Grande. La civiltà antica al bivio tra Occidente e Oriente, Milano , –; G. Filoramo, La croce e il potere. I cristiani da martiri a persecutori, Roma–Bari , ch. ; on Constantine’s legislation, see J. Gaudemet, “Les constitutions costantiniennes du Code Théodosien”, in ARC ","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":"25 19","pages":"117 - 154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/mill-2015-0106","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72499325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Millennium DIPrPub Date : 2015-11-27DOI: 10.1515/mill-2015-0104
K. Piepenbrink
{"title":"Der christliche Identitätsdiskurs im spätantiken Römischen Reich: Griechischer Osten und lateinischer Westen in komparatistischer Perspektive","authors":"K. Piepenbrink","doi":"10.1515/mill-2015-0104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mill-2015-0104","url":null,"abstract":"The paper examines the Christian identity discourse of Late Antiquity in the Greek East and the Latin West in a comparative perspective. It shows structural parallels as well as differences and interprets them in their historical context. Besides, it critically scrutinizes possible interdependencies between the identity discourse, which strongly operates with a fundamental antagonism of ‘Christian’ and ‘pagan’, and real conflicts between the adherents of Christian religion and the so-called pagans in both parts of the Roman Empire. In contrast to former research approaches the paper demonstrates that the real confrontations were more massive as well as complex in the Greek East than in the Latin West, paradoxically because there were more similarities between Christians and non-Christians here, especially among the members of the social elites. On account of this it was more difficult for eastern Christians to cope with a Christian-pagan-antagonism to form their own religious identity than for western Christians. At last the paper shows that the discrepancies between the eastern and the western part of the empire concerning our phenomenon even increased in the course of time: In the West, it lost its significance during the conflicts with the Germanic ethnic groups, when the ‘barbarian’ began to form the counterpart of the ‘Christian’. In the East, Christians operated even more intensively with the antagonistic paradigm as soon as the real conflicts decreased in the fifth and sixth centuries, as it became easier to draw sharp religious borders.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":"15 4 1","pages":"102 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83515535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Millennium DIPrPub Date : 2015-11-27DOI: 10.1515/mill-2015-0111
A. Effenberger
{"title":"Zur „Reliquientopographie“ von Konstantinopel in mittelbyzantinischer Zeit","authors":"A. Effenberger","doi":"10.1515/mill-2015-0111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mill-2015-0111","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I focus on two Problems: One of them concerns the division of relics and their multiple translations within Constantinople. The second is given by the Kniga palomnik” (Book of Pilgrimage) of Anthony of Novgorod. Anthony visited Constantinople in 1200 as a layman, where he inspected a number of churches and recorded their relics and icons. But his text of the Kniga palomnik” poses also two problems: 1.) A considerable part of the lemmata not follows a clear topographical route. 2.) Churches, which are dedicated to same saint, but in different localities were often considered as single one and mistakenly placed. Thereby also the separate routes were conflated in an incorrect manner. In my paper I try to disentangle these contaminations. The main part of the study presents the problem of the Kniga palomnik” under the light of three exemplary cases. Firstly it will be explained how Antonij has used the toponyme Pjaterica both for the quarter ta Petrou and for the Petrion. The churches of this region can be classified in a topographically correct order with the help of a synoptic comparison of the paragraphs in the Latin itinerary (so-called Anonymus Mercati or English pilgrim). The localization of an alleged church of the “Prophet” Elias in the Forum of Constantine rises as one of the important examples to show the mistakes of Antonijs text. In another case Anthony locates the Blachernae und the Chalkoprateia churches in the immediate neighborhood. Both of this sanctuaries preserved parts of the garments of the Virgin Mary. In terms of perception of these relics (maphorion, robe, belt) there are also considerable discrepancies between the Kniga palomnik”, the Latin itinerary and other written sources. Because of the long interval between his visit and his late script one can think that Anthony has difficulties to remember the exact localization of the garment relics. In this section of my study I try to correct such kind of errors of Antony′s text. Conflated churches will be consider separately and assign to two appropriate routes. The following exemplary case concerns the relics in the church of the Holy Apostles. Also here a comparison of the Kniga palomnik”, the Latin itinerary and other catalogues of relics shows considerable differences. This suggests that the bodies or body parts of the saints often moved from a church to another during the “city-internal translations”. The attention is directed Dieser Beitrag versteht sich als weitere Vorarbeit zu meinem Buch „Untersuchungen zur sakralen Topographie von Konstantinopel anhand der Itinerare des Codex Digbeianus lat. und des russischen Pilgers Antonij von Novgorod“. S. schon A. Effenberger, Antonij von Novgorod und die Kirche des Theodoros ἐν τοῖς Σφωρακίου – Ein Beitrag zur sakralen Topographie von Konstantinopel, in: Proceedings of the nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, Sofia – August . Third Plenary Session: Cities and Public Spaces, Sofia , –","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":"44 1","pages":"265 - 328"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73598655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}