From the Socratics to Augustine, men used women’s voices in philosophical dialogues to speak as experts on the body, especially in three aspects: birth, the physical details of death, and erotic desire. These connections were inaugurated by Plato and Xenophon. However, a changing anthropology, and especially the belief that the body persisted after death, led certain Christian authors to increase the role given to female characters. When the body was revalued and brought into the centre of philosophical focus, women’s voices moved from reported speech into direct speech. Simultaneously, late ancient Christian authors reflected on the inherent connection between erotic desire and the genre of the dialogue itself, matching their subject to their form. Using female characters in their dialogues helped male authors come to know certain things that using male voices could not do as well, by thinking through specific topics ‘like a woman’; the female, with her culturally embodied nature, became a model of an ideal life which insisted on the persistence of the body, even in the afterlife.

In this study, Jeremy L. Williams interrogates the book of Acts in an effort to understand how early Christian texts provide glimpses of the legal processes by which Roman officials and militarized police criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated people in the first and second centuries CE. Williams investigates how individuals and groups have been, and still are, prosecuted for specious reasons – because of stories and myths written against them, perceptions of alterity that render them subhuman or nonhuman, the collision of officials, and financial incentives that foster injustices, among them. Through analysis of criminalization in Acts, he demonstrates how critical race theory, Black studies, and feminist rhetorical scholarship enable a reconstruction of ancient understandings of crime, judicial institutions, militarized police, punishment, and sociopolitical processes that criminalize. Williams’ study highlights how the criminalization of Jesus’ followers as depicted in Acts enables connections with contemporary movements. It also presents the ancient text as a critique against the shortcomings of some contemporary understandings of justice and human rights.

Scholars in late-antique Western Christendom relied both on ‘scientific’ knowledge and on theological interpretation of scripture to understand and explain the natural world. Previous scholarship discussing the process of seeking knowledge in general, and the investigation of science and theology in particular, has often centred on the issues of innovation and derivativeness. For centuries, following ideas developed during the Renaissance and ‘Enlightenment’, it was held that the fall of the Western Roman empire heralded a ‘Dark Age’ in which there was little intellectual development and scholarship was almost entirely derivative. More recently, scholars have argued instead that there was innovation in this period, at least to some degree. This chapter offers a preliminary examination of the methods and processes of inquiry used by late-antique scholars in their attempts to uncover knowledge, focusing on the topic of creation.

Chapter 3 considers the underlying narrative structures of Corippus’ epic and how the poet positions the campaigns of John Troglita in their wider context. The Iohannis surveys the events of circa 530–46 in a series of analeptic ‘flashbacks’. As a succinct verse history of North Africa between the late 520s and 546, these surveys differ wildly from contemporary imperial propaganda. This chapter argues that these accounts must be considered as meaningful responses to the recent past within Byzantine Africa and as functional parts of the Iohannis. It is argued that Corippus’ presentation of these counter-narratives created a space for the interrogation of a complex past which would otherwise have been unavailable to him.

The second part of the chapter looks at the prolepses in the Iohannis, where Corippus’ narrative moves from the narrated time of John’s campaigns to their anticipated resolution and the composition of the epic itself. This teleology is not only explored through many direct references to the coming Roman triumph, but also to the counterfactual ‘futures’ anticipated by the Moors. Corippus’ resolution of these accounts through authorial interjections help to underscore the inevitability of imperial victory while emphasizing the sense of crisis within the historical narrative.

It is striking that Christians were so successful. They had internal dissension; lacked relics; had no common temple; came from less educated classes and the periphery of the empire; Jews and pagans harassed, even persecuted them. Because they did not offer sacrifices, excluding them from offices and festivals, and were unable to maintain certain family traditions they appeared antisocial. Yet Christ-followers succeeded in winning over non-Jews as well. The persecutions welded Christians together, and martyrs served as role models, even to those who had manifested weakness. In areas such as sexual morality, Christians sought to demonstrate that they were superior to contemporaries of other faiths. They also formed transregional networks. The opportunity to gain prestige in Christian communities also attracted people. Various forms of authority competed with each other, especially the charismatic and spiritual authority of those who excelled in ascetic practices. That in the end monarchical bishops were to become the decisive figures in Christianity was by no means clear from the beginning. That Roman emperors would support Christianity was an unlikely development that changed Christianity significantly. But the tradition of a defiant piety that defined the beginnings was not lost, so that Christianity continued to renew itself.

The continuity of the Christian faith with classical philosophy is one of the common variables to Augustine’s three earliest dialogues. Augustine is particularly interested in the relation between faith and reason or, more precisely, the relation between Christian auctoritas and reason. This chapter contends that Augustine does not conceive of authority and reason as two diverse paths of ascent, but as distinct elements that comprise one integrated path of ascent. For Augustine, authority and reason are coordinate means of ascent to wisdom and happiness. The dialectal character of authority and reason operate in tandem to purify and enlighten the soul for the ascent to God. In the dialogues, it is the role of reason to offer an intellectus fidei, an intellectual account of the mysteries delivered by authority.

Christians oriented their lives towards the expectation of a life in the hereafter and yet had to orient themselves in this world. This resulted in very different attitudes. While some were fundamentally anti-family or, rather, against sex in general, others thought about what it meant to have a Christian marriage. While some wanted to participate in the pleasures of everyday life, others rejected this. All tried to live a humble life and do good works, especially towards the poor, orphans and widows. Penance was an institution that allowed Christians to be absolved of their sins, but it also allowed bishops to gain power, albeit in varying degrees Therefore, the question of a Christian way of life was always controversial.

This chapter investigates a liturgical mode of knowledge-creation in the sixth century. Romanos the Melodist, a late ancient hymnographer, and Leontius, a preacher in Constantinople, each attempt to build knowledge and understanding of the divine by immersing their listeners in an emotional, sensory, and dramatic liturgical world. Through narrative techniques interwoven with ritual performance, Romanos and Leontius work to shape their listeners’ emotional responses to and sensory appreciation of the divine. This chapter argues that these sixth-century writers put their listeners through a liturgical purification of the mind (senses, emotions, intellect) so that they may grow into a higher spiritual knowledge.

In this chapter, I contextualise the engagement of Christian intellectuals with the Roman empire’s medical marketplace in the second century, focusing on Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Pseudo-Justin’s On the Resurrection. I show that Justin, Tatian, and Pseudo-Justin attempted to derive authority from displays of medical and philosophical expertise regarding bodily and mental health. Justin’s limited treatment of bodily health and medicine was driven by his interests in presenting Christians as philosophers who faced death without fear, a goal that aligned him more closely with his philosophical contemporaries. Tatian and Pseudo-Justin, in contrast, launched challenges against the authority of physicians, presenting an ascetic form of regimen as a superior Christian method of achieving excellent bodily and mental health.

Very few Christians rejected the Roman Empire in principle; rather, many saw it as a prerequisite for their mission because of the peace that the Empire created. Nevertheless, conflicts arose: Few understood why Christians, who worshipped only one God, did not want to sacrifice. In the eyes of contemporaries, this could provoke the gods and endanger social peace, and was a reason for persecution in many places. Many Christians made sacrifices under pressure, but some also became martyrs who gained great prestige. Meanwhile, some Christians entered the service of the state and held public office or became soldiers. They often made compromises that strict Christians criticised. Some seemingly enjoyed the glamour of public duties. That Christians would dominate the empire was by no means a foregone conclusion even at the end of the third century, at the time of Constantine the Great.

In this study, Jeremy L. Williams interrogates the book of Acts in an effort to understand how early Christian texts provide glimpses of the legal processes by which Roman officials and militarized police criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated people in the first and second centuries CE. Williams investigates how individuals and groups have been, and still are, prosecuted for specious reasons – because of stories and myths written against them, perceptions of alterity that render them subhuman or nonhuman, the collision of officials, and financial incentives that foster injustices, among them. Through analysis of criminalization in Acts, he demonstrates how critical race theory, Black studies, and feminist rhetorical scholarship enable a reconstruction of ancient understandings of crime, judicial institutions, militarized police, punishment, and sociopolitical processes that criminalize. Williams’ study highlights how the criminalization of Jesus’ followers as depicted in Acts enables connections with contemporary movements. It also presents the ancient text as a critique against the shortcomings of some contemporary understandings of justice and human rights.

In their scholarship, Origen and Eusebius made revolutionary use of tabular organisation, a device little known in earlier Greek and Roman contexts. This usage is driven by a variety of ideological motives but likely enabled by physical features of their working environment. In the more specific case of his Hexapla, Origen drew on the already quasi-tabular form of bilingual texts previously used for language instruction. This has consequences for debates about the meaning of the ordering and function of the individual columns. It also suggests that the reader was to be interpellated as a (subordinate) student, whatever their actual relationship to Origen or his text was.

The wordless, often unwritable sound of the vox confusa is usually contrasted with the verbal, writeable sound of the vox articulata. The former was held to be irrational and meaningless; the latter, rational and significant. This chapter will examine the role which the vox confusa played in Augustine’s thought. It will argue that, in his later works, we encounter a wild(er) Augustine who appears to be more willing than his earlier self to recognise and exploit the vox confusa in a theological context.

The Venerable Bede’s epistemology was scholarly and experiential. His work drew on the combined riches of classical and patristic knowledge, as he encountered them at the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow. Supported by lavish patronage, he turned these resources to the teaching, preaching, and exegesis of the scriptures. His writing on pain, pleasure, poverty, and preaching suggests that every faithful Christian has experiential access to unique knowledge. They may taste future joys, enter Christ’s mind, and glimpse the divine nature through embodied practices infused by grace. Yet access to such knowledge is unequal. ‘The perfect’, with their greater understanding and virtue, are best suited for shaping societal and ecclesial life. They meditate unceasingly on holy things, without care or need and with resources beyond the reach of most. Bede’s epistemological emphases were integrated in his self-image, as teacher and monk, and his teaching elaborated an influential ‘inequality regime’.