Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond

Papers from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, University of Oxford, 2009-2010

Arietta Papaconstantinou, Daniel L. Schwartz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317159728
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Altertum

The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one, the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon. The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as an external comparator that was not caught in the net of the Abrahamic religions. The volume is organised around several themes, reflecting the concerns of the initial project with the articulation between norm and practice, the role of authorities and institutions, and the social and individual fluidity on the ground. Debates, discussions, and the expression of norms and principles about conversion conversion are not rare in societies experiencing religious change, and the first section of the book examines some of the main issues brought up by surviving sources. This is followed by three sections examining different aspects of how those principles were - or were not - put into practice: how conversion was handled by the state, how it was continuously redefined by individual ambivalence and cultural fluidity, and how it was enshrined through different forms of institutionalization. Finally, a topographical coda examines the effects of religious change on the iconic holy city of Jerusalem.

Index

All index entries shown here correspond to the page numbers within the printed edition only. Within this digital format these page numbers allow for cross referencing only.

Abbasid period 168, 172, 311, 314–15

ʿAbd al-Malik 301, 307, 316–17

ʿAbd al-Ra

mān 208

Abī Shayba 208n51

abjuration procedures xxv, xxxii, 30–32, 35, 206, 270

‘abode of Islam’ 166, 172

abolition of taxes 58, 76

Abraham 35, 156, 181, 236–8, 261, 289

Abrahamic xxi, xxiv, 95, 171

religions xxi, 95

violent form of conversion 272

Abū Bakr al-Khallāl 198

Abū l-Faraj al-I

fa

ānī 166

Abū Mu

ammad al-Najjārī 304

Abū Tammām 260

Abyssinians 175–6, 204

accidental conversion 163–74

adhesion, concept of xix–xx, xxxi, 23

Adiabenian royal family 231

Aelia 283–97

biblical history of 288

bishops emphasize their city’s Christian past 288, 294

and the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre 288–9

coins depicting Zeus, Athena, Victoria, Tychè and Dionysus 286

forum of 288

fourth-century 294–5

inhabitants of 294

landscape of 295

mobile liturgy 291

paganism 286

spatial reconfiguration 289

and the strengthening of Christianity 288

and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• In Memoriam: Thomas Sizgorich (1970–2011)
• Abbreviations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction by Arietta Papaconstantinou
• PRINCIPLES
• PRACTICE I: RAISON D’ÉTAT
• PRACTICE II: HUMAN AMBIGUITIES
• PRACTICE III: SYMBOLS AND INSTITUTIONS
• BUILDING JERUSALEM
• References
• Index