BOOKS

J. Hillner, Prison, Punishment and Penance in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Winner of a 2016 PROSE Awards Honorable Mention 

Jacket (2)

D. Rohmann, Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity: Studies in Text Transmission (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016)

Dirk

 

 

 

 

 

 

J. Hillner, J. Ulrich, J. Engberg, Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2016) (Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity, vol . 17)

Exile_Lang

 Introduction

Julia Hillner, Approaches to Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity: Strategies, Experiences, Memories and Social Networks

Part I: Clerical Exile and Social Control

Éric Fournier, Constantine and Episcopal Banishment: Continuity and Change in the Settlement of Christian Disputes

Harry Mawdsley, Mapping Clerical Exile in the Vandal Kingdom (435–484)

Dirk Rohmann, Enforced Career Changes, Clerical Ordination and Exile in Late Antiquity

Part II: Clerics in Exile

David M. Reis, Exile, Identity and Space: Cyprian of Carthage and the Rhetoric of Social Formation

Jörg Ulrich, Dionysius of Alexandria in Exile: Evidence from his Letter to Germanus (Eus. Caes., h.e. VII 11)

Uta Heil, From Hippolytus to Fulgentius: Sardinia as a Place of Exile in the First Six Centuries

Jakob Engberg, Exile and the Dissemination of ‘Donatist’ Congregations

Margerita Vallejo Girvès, Banished Bishops Were Not Alone: The Two Cases of Theodorus Anagnostes, Guardian and Assistant

Part III: Discourses, Legacies, and Memories of Clerical Exile

David M. Reis, Tracing the Imaginary in Imperial Rome

Éric Fournier, Amputation Metaphors and the Rhetoric of Exile: Purity and Pollution in Late Antique Christianity

Jennifer Barry, Receptions of Exile: Athanasius of Alexandria’s Legacy

David Natal, ‘I will never willingly desert you’. Exile and Memory in Ambrose of Milan

 

D. Rohmann, J. Ulrich, M. Vallejo Girvés, Mobility and Exile at the End of Antiquity (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2018) (Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity, vol. 19)

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPECIAL JOURNAL ISSUE

A special journal issues is forthcoming with Studies in Late Antiquity: A Journal, provisionally entitled Exile in Late Antiquity: Space, Community and Memory.

 

Elisabeth O’Connell, “They wandered in the deserts and mountains, and caves and holes in the ground” (Heb. 11:38): Non-Chalcedonian bishops “in exile”

Abstract:

This article examines how models of exile were deployed in non-Chalcedonian communities following the establishment of a parallel episcopal hierarchy under Peter IV (576-577) and the consolidation of the Severan non-Chalcedonian Alexandrian Church under Damian (578-c. 607). Drawing on literary, documentary and archaeological sources, I explore how the memory of exile was mobilised partly in order to validate the uncomfortable truth that members of the new network of bishops did not always live in their capitals, but in local monasteries, just as Peter and Damian did not live in Alexandria, but in the Enaton, nine miles to the west.  After a brief survey of the role of exile in the Alexandrian Church, I discuss literary representations of places of exile in monastic literature, in particular the identification of the “deserts” and “mountains,” “caves” and “holes” in Heb 11.38 with the monastic landscape of Egypt in the late sixth and early seventh century. At this time, monastic habitation of caves, rock-cut tombs and gallery quarries on the desert escarpment above the Nile flood plain flourished. Finally, I survey the archaeological evidence of one region where bishops appointed by Damian settled, and how they put their models of exile into practice.

Jenny Barry, Damning Nicomedia: The Spatial Limits of Exile

Abstract:

All Christian flights were not created equal. With the aid of pro-Nicene authors, Athanasius of Alexandria’s multiple flights quickly became the standard for an orthodox exile. The charge of cowardice, or worse, heresy, was not so easily dismissed, however. While the famed Athanasius would explain away such charges in his own writings, as did many of his later defenders, not all fleeing bishops could escape such a damning verdict. In this article, I will explore how the enemies of Nicaea, re-read as the enemies of Athanasius, also found themselves in exile. Their episcopal flights were no testament to their virtue but within pro-Nicene Christian memory of fifth century ecclesiastical historians, the exiles of anti-Nicene bishops, such as Eusebius of Nicomedia, were remembered as evidence of guilt. To show how this memory making exercise takes place we will turn to the imperial landscape and assess how the space one is exiled from greatly shapes how one’s exile is deemed either orthodox or heretical.

Richard Flower, Witnesses for the Persecution: Textual Communities under Constantius II

Abstract:

During the reign of Constantius II (337-361), a number of Christian bishops were exiled from their sees, reportedly for their opposition to the emperor’s ‘Homoian’ theological position. Several of them (Athanasius of Alexandria, Hilary of Poitiers, Lucifer of Cagliari, Eusebius of Vercelli) responded to their institutional insecurity and geographical isolation by writing accounts of their experiences in a range of textual forms: letters to individuals or groups, historical narratives with quoted documents, formal invectives This article explores the variety of ways in which these examples of exilic literature construct different forms of communities in order to weave supportive narratives around the authors and their allies: Hilary and Lucifer emphasised their possession of parrhesia both within and through their texts; Athanasius constructed a network of opposition to heresy with himself as its focus; Eusebius presented himself as the lynchpin of a north Italian community which he could still lead from exile in Palestine. Through inscribing particular roles onto both their readers and other figures discussed within the texts, these exiled authors sought to foster their own reputations as leaders of these communities and arbiters of membership, thereby bolstering their positions at a time when their authority was under serious threat.

Julia Hillner, The Perils of Patronage: Imperial Women and Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity

Abstract:

Late antique clerical exile is traditionally investigated from the perspective of banished cleric or banishing emperor and council. This article investigates the relationships between banished clerics and imperial women. Drawing on data collected by the Migration of Faith: Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity project, as well as quantitative methods such as social network analysis, I discuss how late antique authors exploited these (at times fabricated) relationships for their narrative agendas. Focussing on the case study of imperial women as patrons of banished clerics, I draw three conclusions: First, there was a constantly negative attitude towards involvement of imperial women in clerical exile throughout late antiquity. Second, there was, nonetheless, variation in this attitude across time and genres. Negative portrayal of imperial women engaged in cases of clerical exile peaked in the fifth century and in Nicene and Chalcedonian sources. Positive portrayal appears only towards the end of the period, and in sixth-century Miaphysite hagiography. I suggest that these differences identified were due to genre, but also responded to changes in the institutional roles of imperial women. As such, the article shows that the study of clerical exile has the potential to fertilize scholarship far beyond the confines of church history.

 

CHAPTERS/ARTICLES

J. Hillner, ‘Exclusion, intégration ou exclusion par l’intégration ? Géographies du banissement et asile à la fin de l’empire romain (ve-vie siècle)’, in C. La Rocca, S.Joye (eds.), La construction du sujet exclu (IVe-XIe siècle): l’individu, la société et l’exclusion (Turnhout: Brepols 2019).

D. Rohmann, ‘Das Martyrion des Babylas und die polemischen Schriften des Johannes Chrysostomos’, Vigiliae Christianae 72 (2018), 206-224.