Kate Cooper

?Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy?

Here is one of the laws of history: every event begins with a woman. It is the woman who confers life or death. It is in conformity with the nature of things that Helena should have converted Constantine. It is contrary to the nature of things that Constantine should have converted Helena. While we may smile at the ruminations of a nineteenth-century bourgeois on the sexual politics of Constantines conversion to Christianity, if we turn our attention for a moment from the Emperor to the Empire itself we will perceive that our own more scientific studies reflect a similar vision of Helena, refracted in the persons of pious matrons across the Empire. For we generally imagine the religious changes which swept the later Roman Empire as resulting from a fateful collaboration, that of a few unusually persuasive clerics with a multitude of devout Christian women, who enforced the views of their clerical friends at home, and shepherded their prominent husbands towards the once-only cleansing of baptism. The view has much to recommend it, and it has sparked some of the most interesting writing on late antiquity in recent decades, beginning with a celebrated contribution by Peter Brown to this journal.

The fall of the Roman household

In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon laid the fall of the Roman Empire at Christianity’s door, suggesting that ‘pusillanimous youth preferred the penance of the monastic to the dangers of a military life . . . whole legions were buried in these religious sanctuaries; and the same cause, which relieved the distress of individuals, impaired the strength and fortitude of the empire.’ Gibbon’s idea still presents a challenge for historians. Certainly, Christian values and institutions changed the landscape of possibility during this key period of Roman history, but how? This surprising study suggests that, far from seeing Christianity as the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire, we should understand the Christianization of the household as a central Roman survival strategy. By establishing new ‘ground rules’ for marriage and family life, the Roman Christians of the last century of the Western empire found a way to reinvent the Roman family as a social institution to weather the political, military, and social upheaval of two centuries of invasion and civil war. In doing so, these men and women – both clergy and lay – found themselves changing both what it meant to be Roman, and what it meant to be Christian.

Religion, dynasty, and patronage in early Christian Rome, 300-900

This collection of essays traces the central role played by aristocratic patronage in the transformation of the city of Rome at the end of antiquity. Rather than privileging the administrative and institutional developments related to the rise of papal authority as the paramount theme in the post-classical history of the city, as previous studies have tended to do, here the focus shifts to the networks of reciprocity between patrons and their dependants. Using material culture and social theory to challenge traditional readings of the textual sources, the volume undermines the teleological picture of ecclesiastical sources such as the Liber Pontificalis, and presents the lay, clerical and ascetic populations of the city of Rome at the end of antiquity as interacting in a fluid environment of alliance-building and status negotiation. Drawing on work by members of the Centre for Late Antiquity at theUniversity ofManchester over the last decade, the collection focuses on a wide range of topics, from imperial policy, to the inheritance strategies of aristocratic households, to the rise of monastic foundations. By bringing the city whose aristocracy is the best documented of any ancient population squarely into the centre of discussion, the volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role played by elites across the end of antiquity.

The martyr, the matrona and the bishop: the matron Lucina and the politics of martyr cult in fifth- and sixth-century Rome

The present study attempts to build on the achievement of Pietri and Llewellyn in assessing the peculiarities and limitations of the gesta martyrum as a source for late ancient and early medieval Rome, while shifting interpretative stress away from the lay—clerical binary which has dominated recent treatments of the cult of the saints, and toward an emphasis on factional conflict among lay—clerical coalitions. Central is an analysis of the literary motif, which recurs across the gesta of Lucina, the aristocratic matrona or widow who sees to the burial of the martyr on her own lands. Though the stereotypical figure of Lucina warns us of the limitations of the gesta as a source for the patronage activity of the lay aristocracy, it is argued, her appearance in crucial texts such as the Passio Sebastiani can nonetheless help us to trace the role which the memory of the martyrs played in texts such as the gesta martyrum,the Symmachan Forgeries, or the Liber Pontificalis,as well as the role which martyr shrines such as the Vatican basilica and the memoria apostolorumon the Via Appia played in the contestation and consolidation of Roman episcopal authority.

The Gender of Grace: Impotence, Servitude, and Manliness in the Fifth-Century West

This essay attempts to stage an encounter between post-Foucauldian approaches to masculinity in the ancient world on the one hand, and the reading of Augustine of Hippos idea of Original Sin as a disjunction of the will, put forward in Robert Markuss Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine. Emphasis is placed on Book XIV of the City of God, where Augustine emblematises the result of Original Sin not –pace Foucault – through an image of irrepressible lust, but rather through that of the impotent male, humiliated by his inability to embody his desire.

?Poverty, Obligation, and Inheritance: Roman Heiresses and the Varieties of Senatorial Christianity in Fifth-century Rome?

In 410, Augustine of Hippo had a difficult letter to write to Caeonia Albina, daughter of the Roman praefectus urbi Caeonius Rufinus Albinus ( praefectus urbi from 389 to 391), widow of the senator Valerius Publicola, and mother of the future saint Melania the Younger. Melania had visited Hippo with her husband, Pinian, as part of a tour of visitation to the couples estates in Italy and Africa. In a pious spree characterized more by enthusiasm than good sense, the pair, both in their mid-twenties, were selling off as many of their extensive land-holdings as the market would bear, and undertaking a one-off bonanza of pious gift-giving to the religious individuals and institutions along their way. Things had evidently gone badly wrong in Augustines own town of Hippo. Albina had addressed a sharp letter to Augustine, and although her reprimand is now lost, Augustines letter of reply stands as a record of the tensions and uncertainties in the fifth-century churches regarding the role of aristocratic patrons. In this heady period of experimentation, the ‘ground rules’ for the direction of aristocratic wealth to pious causes had yet to be established. It is with the fifth-century attempt to develop these ground rules, especially with regard to that most self-possessed group of donors, the senatorial aristocracy, that the present chapter will concern itself.

The Long Shadow of Constantine

The fifth-century Christian writer Sozomen of Constantinople preserves a story told by certain pagans about the philosopher Sopater of Apamea, whom the emperor Constantine put to death in a.d. 333 on the advice of the Christian Flavius Ablabius, then Praetorian Prefect of the East. Constantine had consulted the philosopher — so the story goes — in an attempt to redress his guilt at having ordered the murder of some of his nearest relations, among them his son Crispus. But Sopater replied that such moral defilement could admit of no purification. Afterwards, on meeting some Christian bishops, Constantine was delighted to learn that the sins of those who truly repented could be washed away in Christian baptism. It was this that led him to adopt the faith, and to encourage his subjects to do the same.

Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900: ICONS OF AUTHORITY: POPE AND EMPEROR

This collection of essays traces the central role played by aristocratic patronage in the transformation of the city of Rome at the end of antiquity. Rather than privileging the administrative and institutional developments related to the rise of papal authority as the paramount theme in the post-classical history of the city, as previous studies have tended to do, here the focus shifts to the networks of reciprocity between patrons and their dependants. Using material culture and social theory to challenge traditional readings of the textual sources, the volume undermines the teleological picture of ecclesiastical sources such as the Liber Pontificalis, and presents the lay, clerical and ascetic populations of the city of Rome at the end of antiquity as interacting in a fluid environment of alliance-building and status negotiation. Drawing on work by members of the Centre for Late Antiquity at theUniversity ofManchester over the last decade, the collection focuses on a wide range of topics, from imperial policy, to the inheritance strategies of aristocratic households, to the rise of monastic foundations. By bringing the city whose aristocracy is the best documented of any ancient population squarely into the centre of discussion, the volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role played by elites across the end of antiquity.

Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900: LAY, CLERICAL, AND ASCETIC CONTEXTS FOR THE ROMAN GESTA MARTYRUM

This collection of essays traces the central role played by aristocratic patronage in the transformation of the city of Rome at the end of antiquity. Rather than privileging the administrative and institutional developments related to the rise of papal authority as the paramount theme in the post-classical history of the city, as previous studies have tended to do, here the focus shifts to the networks of reciprocity between patrons and their dependants. Using material culture and social theory to challenge traditional readings of the textual sources, the volume undermines the teleological picture of ecclesiastical sources such as the Liber Pontificalis, and presents the lay, clerical and ascetic populations of the city of Rome at the end of antiquity as interacting in a fluid environment of alliance-building and status negotiation. Drawing on work by members of the Centre for Late Antiquity at theUniversity ofManchester over the last decade, the collection focuses on a wide range of topics, from imperial policy, to the inheritance strategies of aristocratic households, to the rise of monastic foundations. By bringing the city whose aristocracy is the best documented of any ancient population squarely into the centre of discussion, the volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role played by elites across the end of antiquity.

Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900: Contents

This collection of essays traces the central role played by aristocratic patronage in the transformation of the city of Rome at the end of antiquity. Rather than privileging the administrative and institutional developments related to the rise of papal authority as the paramount theme in the post-classical history of the city, as previous studies have tended to do, here the focus shifts to the networks of reciprocity between patrons and their dependants. Using material culture and social theory to challenge traditional readings of the textual sources, the volume undermines the teleological picture of ecclesiastical sources such as the Liber Pontificalis, and presents the lay, clerical and ascetic populations of the city of Rome at the end of antiquity as interacting in a fluid environment of alliance-building and status negotiation. Drawing on work by members of the Centre for Late Antiquity at theUniversity ofManchester over the last decade, the collection focuses on a wide range of topics, from imperial policy, to the inheritance strategies of aristocratic households, to the rise of monastic foundations. By bringing the city whose aristocracy is the best documented of any ancient population squarely into the centre of discussion, the volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role played by elites across the end of antiquity.