Controlling Contested Places

Author : Christine Shepardson
Publisher : University of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520303377
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Controlling Contested Places written by Christine Shepardson and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From constructing new buildings to describing rival-controlled areas as morally and physically dangerous, leaders in late antiquity fundamentally shaped their physical environment and thus the events that unfolded within it. Controlling Contested Places maps the city of Antioch (Antakya, Turkey) through the topographically sensitive vocabulary of cultural geography, demonstrating the critical role played by physical and rhetorical spatial contests during the tumultuous fourth century. Paying close attention to the manipulation of physical places, Christine Shepardson exposes some of the powerful forces that structured the development of religious orthodoxy and orthopraxy in the late Roman Empire. Theological claims and political support were not the only significant factors in determining which Christian communities gained authority around the Empire. Rather, Antioch’s urban and rural places, far from being an inert backdrop against which events transpired, were ever-shifting sites of, and tools for, the negotiation of power, authority, and religious identity. This book traces the ways in which leaders like John Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Libanius encouraged their audiences to modify their daily behaviors and transform their interpretation of the world (and landscape) around them. Shepardson argues that examples from Antioch were echoed around the Mediterranean world, and similar types of physical and rhetorical manipulations continue to shape the politics of identity and perceptions of religious orthodoxy to this day.

Author : Ryan Lavelle
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1783273739
Total Pages : 403 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Places of Contested Power written by Ryan Lavelle and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2020 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First full examination of why and how certain locations were chosen for opposition to power, and the meaning they conveyed.

Author : Dayna S. Kalleres
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520276477
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book City of Demons written by Dayna S. Kalleres and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although it would appear in studies of late antique ecclesiastical authority and power that scholars have covered everything, an important aspect of the urban bishop has long been neglected: his role as demonologist and exorcist. When the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the realm, bishops and priests everywhere struggledÊ to ÒChristianizeÓ the urban spaces still dominated by Greco-Roman monuments and festivals. During this period of upheaval, when congregants seemingly attended everything but their own ÒorthodoxÓ church, many ecclesiastical leaders began simultaneously to promote aggressive and insidious depictions of the demonic. In City of Demons, Dayna S. Kalleres investigates this developing discourse and the church-sponsored rituals that went along with it, showing how shifting ecclesiastical demonologies and evolving practices of exorcism profoundly shaped Christian life in the fourth century.

Author : Yitzhak Reiter
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351998846
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Contested Holy Places in Israel–Palestine written by Yitzhak Reiter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last twenty years, there has been a growing understanding that conflicts in or over holy places differ from other territorial conflicts. A holy site has a profound meaning, involving human beliefs, strong emotions, "sacred" values, and core identity self-perceptions; therefore a dispute over such land differs from a "regular" dispute over land. In order to resolve conflicts over holy sites, one must be equipped with an understanding of the cultural, religious, social, and political meaning of the holy place to each of the contesting groups. This book seeks to understand the many facets of disputes and the triggers for the outbreak of violence in and around holy sites. It analyses fourteen case studies of conflicts over holy sites in Palestine/Israel, including major holy sites such as Al-Haram al-Sharif/the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and the Cave of the Patriarchs/Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, in addition to disputes over more minor sites. It then compares these conflicts to similar cases from other regions and provides an analysis of effective and ineffective conflict mitigation and resolution tools used for dealing with such disputes. Furthermore, the book sheds light on the role of sacred sites in exacerbating local and regional ethnic conflicts. By providing a thorough and systematic analysis of the social, economic, and political conditions that fuel conflicts over holy sites and the conditions that create tolerance or conflict, this book will be a key resource for students and scholars of conflict resolution, political science, and religious studies.

Author : Shira L. Lander
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 131694316X
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa written by Shira L. Lander and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-24 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa, Lander examines the rhetorical and physical battles for sacred space between practitioners of traditional Roman religion, Christians, and Jews of late Roman North Africa. By analyzing literary along with archaeological evidence, Lander provides a new understanding of ancient notions of ritual space. This regard for ritual sites above other locations rendered the act or mere suggestion of seizing and destroying them powerful weapons in inter-group religious conflicts. Lander demonstrates that the quantity and harshness of discursive and physical attacks on ritual spaces directly correlates to their symbolic value. This heightened valuation reached such a level that rivals were willing to violate conventional Roman norms of property rights to display spatial control. Moreover, Roman Imperial policy eventually appropriated spatial triumphalism as a strategy for negotiating religious conflicts, giving rise to a new form of spatial colonialism that was explicitly religious.

Author : Juliette Day
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317051793
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Spaces in Late Antiquity written by Juliette Day and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Places and spaces are key factors in how individuals and groups construct their identities. Identity theories have emphasised that the construction of an identity does not follow abstract and universal processes but is also deeply rooted in specific historical, cultural, social and material environments. The essays in this volume explore how various groups in Late Antiquity rooted their identity in special places that were imbued with meanings derived from history and tradition. In Part I, essays explore the tension between the Classical heritage in public, especially urban spaces, in the form of ancient artwork and civic celebrations and the Church's appropriation of that space through doctrinal disputes and rival public performances. Parts II and III investigate how particular locations expressed, and formed, the theological and social identities of Christian and Jewish groups by bringing together fresh insights from the archaeological and textual evidence. Together the essays here demonstrate how the use and interpretation of shared spaces contributed to the self-identity of specific groups in Late Antiquity and in so doing issued challenges, and caused conflict, with other social and religious groups.

Author : Sarah J. King
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1442610964
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fishing in Contested Waters: Place & Community in Burnt Church/Esgenoopetitj written by Sarah J. King and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Risto Uro
Publisher : Oxford Handbooks
ISBN 13 : 019874787X
Total Pages : 753 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual written by Risto Uro and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2019 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of religion have long assumed that ritual and belief constitute the fundamental building blocks of religious traditions and that these two components of religion are interrelated and interdependent in significant ways. Generations of New Testament and Early Christian scholars have produced detailed analyses of the belief systems of nascent Christian communities, including their ideological and political dimensions, but have by and large ignored ritual as an important element of early Christian religion and as a factor contributing to the rise and the organization of the movement. In recent years, however, scholars of early Christianity have begun to use ritual as an analytical tool for describing and explaining Christian origins and the early history of the movement. Such a development has created a momentum toward producing a more comprehensive volume on the ritual world of Early Christianity employing advances made in the field of ritual studies. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual gives a manifold account of the ritual world of early Christianity from the beginning of the movement up to the end of the fifth century. The volume introduces relevant theories and approaches; central topics of ritual life in the cultural world of early Christianity; and important Christian ritual themes and practices in emerging Christian groups and factions.

Author : Andrew S. Jacobs
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812206517
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christ Circumcised written by Andrew S. Jacobs and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-05-28 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first full-length study of the circumcision of Jesus, Andrew S. Jacobs turns to an unexpected symbol—the stereotypical mark of the Jewish covenant on the body of the Christian savior—to explore how and why we think about difference and identity in early Christianity. Jacobs explores the subject of Christ's circumcision in texts dating from the first through seventh centuries of the Common Era. Using a diverse toolkit of approaches, including the psychoanalytic, postcolonial, and poststructuralist, he posits that while seeming to desire fixed borders and a clear distinction between self (Christian) and other (Jew, pagan, and heretic), early Christians consistently blurred and destabilized their own religious boundaries. He further argues that in this doubled approach to others, Christians mimicked the imperial discourse of the Roman Empire, which exerted its power through the management, not the erasure, of difference. For Jacobs, the circumcision of Christ vividly illustrates a deep-seated Christian duality: the fear of and longing for an other, at once reviled and internalized. From his earliest appearance in the Gospel of Luke to the full-blown Feast of the Divine Circumcision in the medieval period, Christ circumcised represents a new way of imagining Christians and their creation of a new religious culture.

Author : Hugo M'endez
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019284699X
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cult of Stephen in Jerusalem written by Hugo M'endez and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the site of only a small and obscure Christian population between 135 and 313 CE, Jerusalem witnessed few instances of anti-Christian persecution. This fact became a source of embarrassment to the city in late antiquity-a period when martyr traditions, relics, and shrines were closely intertwined with local prestige. At that time, the city had every incentive to stretch the fame of its few, apostolic martyrs as far as possible-especially the fame of the biblical St. Stephen, the figure traditionally regarded as the first Christian martyr (Acts 6-8). What the church lacked in the quantity of its martyrs, it believed it could compensate for in an exclusive, local claim to the figure widely hailed as the "Protomartyr", "firstborn of the martyrs", and "chief of confessors" in contemporary sources. This book traces the rise of the cult of Stephen in Jerusalem, exploring such historical episodes as the fabrication of his relics, the construction of a grand basilica in his honour, and the multiplication of the saint's feast days. It argues that local church authorities promoted devotion to Stephen in the fifth century in a conscious attempt to position him as a patron saint for Jerusalem-that is, a symbolic embodiment of the city's Christian identity and power.