Scholars of late antique liturgy usually find the origins of baptismal imagery in the Bible and the daily life of early Christians. This article reveals that some metaphors, such as the ‘furnace’ image, may also come from pre-Christian literature. In ancient Greek and Mesopotamian sources, the female uterus is compared to a furnace. This article argues that, based on its use in pre-Christian literature, the furnace image might also be considered feminine. This image describes a broader range of activities in baptism than that ascribed to female agency until now and seems more empowering for today's women.

This article argues that the liturgical tradition of celebrating Christmas on 25 December travelled from the Latin West to the Greek East at the behest of Theodosius I upon his arrival in Constantinople in AD 380. From there it made its way to Cappadocia, Pontus and Syrian Antioch by means of travelling clerics who belonged to a pro-Nicene network. The essay also makes the larger methodological point that in late antiquity liturgical traditions did not travel of their own accord; rather, they were often carried by networks of travelling bishops and ‘radiated out’ from major sees to minor ones.

This article traces how early Christian thinkers (including Irenaeus, Eusebius, Epiphanius and Jerome) conceptualised ‘Jewishness’ in bibliographic terms. The material that early Christian sources associate with the Gospel according to the Hebrews exhibits a substantial textual relationship with the Gospel according to Matthew. The distinction emerges within a fourth- and fifth-century heresiological project of bibliographic categorisation that seeks to differentiate Jewish and Christian books and readers. Bibliography is a way of distinguishing reading communities and thereby advances the late ancient rhetorical project often known as the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity.

In this article, I analyse how the Shepherd of Hermas constructs an ancient Christian reading culture through concurrent portrayals of Christian reading, copying and book production. I argue that, by portraying its protagonist Hermas as an idealised reader, scribe and auditor, the Shepherd constructs an early Christian reading culture that authenticates Hermas's role as prophet, activates the textual dissemination of the Shepherd and ritualises the practice of Christian auditory ‘reading’. The article closes with ‘Hermas the freedman’, which considers how Hermas's self-presentation as a formerly enslaved person may have connections to the Shepherd's centralisation of ancient reading cultures.

In early medieval Iberia, Suevic and Visigothic conversions to Nicene Christianity in the 560s and 580s generated ongoing episcopal and royal attention to cathedral liturgies and to the clerics who performed them. This article turns to this Iberian context to illuminate how lectors and cantors and their aural duties became increasingly central to the production of Christian orthodoxy. It is argued that in the early 600s Visigothic anxieties over the production of correct liturgical sound eventually became a focal point of longstanding episcopal efforts to clericalise the minor officers of the Church.

What is a photisterion? Translators usually render the Greek word phōtistērion (site of illumination) as ‘baptistery’ (site of immersion in water). This article reopens the study of phōtistēria, arguing that being ‘immersed’ or ‘illuminated’ evokes different senses of the concomitant meaning of the sites and rites of initiation. It situates late ancient phōtistēria from epigraphic and literary sources in their theological and liturgical contexts. The evidence from Galilee, Syria, Jordan and Cyprus corroborates the idea that many Christians of late antiquity preferred ‘illumination’ to express the composite rite of initiation in a phōtistērion, within which ‘baptism’ was one part.

This study addresses the lack of critical analysis on Gregory of Nazianzus’ title of ‘the Theologian’. In doing so it addresses two areas: the origin of the title in the Address to Marcian, and the significance of its attribution to Gregory by Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Alongside Theodoret, this study takes account of a range of usages in Christian and non-Christian authors in order to argue that the title was attributed to Gregory as part of a pre-existing Christian response encompassing Moses, John and the prophets and pagan theologians such as Orpheus and Homer.

In the De decretis Athanasius claims that Arius ‘copied’ and ‘learned’ from Asterius. This study explores how this could have happened by arguing that in the writing of his Thalia Arius was influenced by Asterius’ Syntagmation. Besides complicating the literary and theological relationship between Arius and Asterius, this reconstruction provides the clearest evidence for the new perspective on Arius which has emerged in recent revisionist scholarship, and which argues that he is best understood as embedded within a theological tradition and as a catalysing participant in its efforts to articulate a theological vision. By dating the Syntagmation to about 322 and the Thalia to about 323 this study also gives qualified support to Rowan Williams's dating of some pre-Nicene events and discredits a recent attempt to position Asterius as having had a formative influence on Arius.

In a letter to the monk Patricius, Philoxenus told a cautionary tale about the downfall of the monk Adelphius. He was said to have accepted a Satanic vision of the Holy Spirit, abandoned ascetic labour and become the founder of the heresy of the ‘Messalians’. This article places Philoxenus’ account against the longer background of the invention of ‘Messaliainism’, and in particular of Adelphius as Messalian heresiarch. It shows how Philoxenus drew on traditions about monks receiving Satanic visions found in ascetic literature. It also demonstrates that Philoxenus’ story reflected polemical claims that the Messalians, like other heretics, were inspired by demons and Satan.

While Bede did not know the year of Augustine's death, he possessed papal letters which provide sufficient information to deduce it with some confidence. The early epistles from popes which Bede quoted or referred to in the ‘Historia ecclesiastica’ associated journeys by delegations sent by the early Church in Kent to Rome with the request for, and collection of, the pallium for the new bishop of Canterbury. In this light the likely purpose for the otherwise unexplained visit of Mellitus to Rome in 610 becomes clear: he had come to ask Pope Boniface IV for the pallium for Laurence, following the death of Augustine on 26 May 609.

Richard Burgess, in his Studies in Eusebian and post-Eusebian chronology, argues convincingly for the existence of a hitherto unknown Antiochene continuation of Eusebius' Chronicle. While Burgess does much to advance understanding of fourth-century historiography, his conclusion that this effort derives from a pro-Nicene author is less convincing than his other arguments. Internal evidence in the fragments themselves, and circumstances surrounding the life of the fourth-century bishop Eusebius of Emesa, point to that prelate as the likely author of the source identified by Burgess.

A sense of an ending dominates accounts of African Christianity after the Vandal conquest of the 430s, not least as a result of the apparent disappearance of the Donatists in an Africa now ruled by Homoian Christians. In fact, the transfer from Donatist schism to new ‘Arian controversy’ more closely resembles the broader picture of Vandal Africa which has emerged from recent scholarship: significant continuity amid dynamic transformation. The cultural and rhetorical legacies of the Donatist schism were used by both parties (Catholic and Homoian) in Africa's new church conflict to present themselves as the true African Church.

Abraham's encounter at Mamre (Genesis xviii.1–16) captivated the Christian imagination from the tradition's very origins. The story hints at God's self-disclosure in a triad of visitors – a theophany that evoked the presence of the Logos or even the Trinity. This article examines late antique exegetical trajectories, focusing upon the interaction between text and expositor in light of the latter's socio-historical context. For patristic exegetes, the Mamre account contained profound spiritual truth if read through the correct doctrinal lens, while presenting a foothold for heresy to the unwary. Changing visions of Trinitarian orthodoxy thus gave rise to new strategies of reading.

This article offers, for the first time in English, a reconstruction of the career of Theodore of Heraclea, a leading figure in the Eusebian alliance from the early 330s until the mid-350s. It also provides an overview of Theodore's literary remains and suggests that the anti-Marcellan tone of his surviving fragments is in keeping with the other documents that emanated from the Eusebian alliance during this period, especially those from the Council of Serdica (343) and the Council of Sirmium (351). Finally, it is suggested that the diversity of ways in which Theodore was received by later patristic authors illustrates that the polarising categories of ‘Arian’ and ‘Nicene’ are insufficiently nuanced to describe Theodore's actual theological concerns.