Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity
Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity
$67.99
USDConventional histories of late antique Christianity tell the story of a public institution – the Christian Church. In this book, Kim Bowes relates another history, that of the Christian private. Using textual and archaeological evidence, she examines the Christian rituals of home and rural estate, which took place outside the supervision of bishops and their agents. These domestic rituals and the spaces in which they were performed were rooted in age-old religious habits. They formed a major, heretofore unrecognised force in late ancient Christian practice. The religion of home and family, however, was not easily reconciled with that of the bishop's Church. Domestic Christian practices presented challenges to episcopal authority and posed thorny questions about the relationship between individuals and the Christian collective. As Bowes suggests, the story of private Christianity reveals a watershed in changing conceptions of 'public' and 'private', one whose repercussions echo through contemporary political and religious debate.
- Uses both texts and archaeology to revise the history of Christianity's first public centuries
- Emphasizes that the family and the individual presented real challenges to the Christian Church
- Presents a history of Christianity in which individuals were more powerful than institutions
Product details
February 2011Paperback
9781107400498
380 pages
254 × 178 × 18 mm
0.92kg
25 b/w illus. 10 maps
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. An empire of friends and family: public and private in Roman religions
- 2. Two Christian capitals: private worship in Rome and Constantinople
- 3. 'Christianizing' the countryside: rural estates and private cult
- 4. Ideologies of the private: private cult and the construction of heresy and sanctity.
