Education in Late Antiquity: Challenges, Dynamism and Reinterpretation, 300–550 CE by Jan R. Stenger (review)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

• Education in Late Antiquity: Challenges, Dynamism and Reinterpretation, 300–550 CE by Jan R. Stenger
• Lillian I. Larsen

Jan R. Stenger
Education in Late Antiquity: Challenges, Dynamism and Reinterpretation, 300–550 CE
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022
Pp. ix + 325. £81.00

Through looking at "how people of the late antique Mediterranean were thinking and discussing questions of upbringing, formal education, and self-formation" (2), Jan Stenger's Education in Late Antiquity: Challenges, Dynamism and Reinterpretation, 300–550 CE aims to show that one is "missing out on a crucial dimension of education" if one "neglect[s] the theorization made by [late antique] thinkers" (2). By documenting the degree to which education surfaces as a "pervasive topic in literature, thought, and society" (3), Stenger seeks to correct a long-held "prejudice that this period was anything but original" (5). Just as importantly, Stenger demonstrates that "paideia was a central issue of the time," both in the "secular realm" and "within the church" (3). "While not denying the strong and palpable continuities in schooling across the epochal watershed of c. 300 CE" (6), Stenger premises that by shifting "the focus from practice" to "analysis of theorization," it is possible to "re-evaluate the relationship between education and society" (7). As he harnesses more than two centuries of late ancient debate, Stenger redefines late antiquity as a period that was "by no means suffering from wholesale decline but . . . rather marked by "dramatic upheavals and symptoms of transition" (7).

Juxtaposing Greco-Roman theorists with emergent Christian voices, the volume is structurally organized as a dialogue about pedagogy. Following a detailed introduction (1–16), discussion begins with exploration of late antiquity's primary "Educational Communities" (17–56), then turns to "The Emergence of Religious Education" in Chapter Two (57–98). In his third chapter, Stenger seeks to temper the notion of "ancient Schooling [as a] training ground for elite men" (99–106) by re-orienting the question to "What Men Could Learn from Women" (99–140). Chapter Four extends this discussion to "The Life of Paideia" (141–88) as narratively encapsulated in exemplary Lives and teachings. In the fifth chapter, Stenger situates emergent templates within a social and civic frame, addressing the implications of education aimed at "Moulding the Self and the World" (189–238).

The volume's final chapter brings the conversation full circle. Having traced the social, religious, demographic, cultural, and civic exchanges that govern "The [End Page 139] Making of the Late Antique Mind" (239–84), Stenger presents the Vivarium of Cassiodorus as a creative melding of Greco-Roman and Christian education. Retrospectively reimagined, here one meets the revival of classical pedagogies sequenced as derivative of Judeo-Christian antecedents. Stenger's "Conclusion" (285–92) recaps the volume's overall assessments, underscoring the degree to which late antiquity's "fierce controversies turned the domain of education into a field of intense competition" and, as such, "a marketplace for rivaling ideologies" (291). Stenger summarizes his approach as a corrective to "scholarship . . . [that] has tended to deal with pagan, Christian, Greek and Roman approaches separately." He argues instead that the tensive "reflections on upbringing, instruction, and formation," which shaped transitional, late ancient understandings of education, must be examined in conversation (292).

In each of the volume's six chapters, Stenger demonstrates deft familiarity with his source material. His analyses, however, concurrently underscore the challenges implicit to maintaining a critical perspective when engaging deeply rooted interpretive traditions. For example, in addressing "What Men Could Learn from Women" (Chapter Three), Stenger astutely reads portrayals of women's literacy against the grain. He observes that "however curious and scholarly" Christian women were—qualities that are repeatedly acknowledged—they are often "confine[d]" by their male biographers "to the role of the inquisitive student drinking from the sources of [a male teacher's] expertise and authority" (135). Noting recurrent resistance to portraying female figures "as biblical scholars on equal terms," Stenger observes that self-commissioned male reporters appear "anxious to stress their [colleagues'] . . . need for . . . theological guidance" and is eager to clarify that they have been enlisted "at a female scholar's request" (135; cf. Jer. Epist. 23.1, et al.). Simultaneously, Stenger's avoidance of...