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IMC 2016: Sessions

Session 1211: Forming Christian Authority in Late Antiquity, I: Bureaucrats and Bishops

Wednesday 6 July 2016, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Oxford Medieval Studies Programme
Organiser:Robin Whelan, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge
Moderator/Chair:Stefan Esders, Geschichte der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Paper 1211-aElite Competition in Ecclesiastical Patronage at Constantinople, c. 400
(Language: English)
Meaghan McEvoy, Abteilung für Alte Geschichte, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main
Index terms: Administration, Byzantine Studies, Ecclesiastical History, Lay Piety
Paper 1211-bThe Christianisation of Political Service in the Late Antique West
(Language: English)
Robin Whelan, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Lay Piety, Political Thought, Theology
Paper 1211-cAll Episcopal Politics are Local: Strategies of Creating Communities in Late Antique Gaul
(Language: English)
Merle Eisenberg, Department of History, Princeton University
Index terms: Administration, Ecclesiastical History, Religious Life, Social History
Abstract

The Christianisation of the late antique Mediterranean presented both opportunities and challenges for those who had to project their authority within state structures, ecclesiastical institutions and society at large. This session considers how officeholders ('secular' and 'ecclesiastical') sought to fashion distinctly Christian modes of authority. Individual papers will examine how courtiers and bureaucrats in early 5th-century Constantinople and the 5th- and 6th-century West sought to represent their prestige and authority according to Christian (and often decidedly ecclesiastical) cultural norms, and, contrariwise, the strategies used by bishops in 5th-century Gaul to claim a wider remit over their urban communities.