Acknowledgements

This book has taken me a long time to write. I had the original idea towards the end of my PhD in Cambridge. When writing a section on competing notions of ‘service’ in elite Christian identities in Vandal Africa, I expected to find lots of critical recent work on Christianity and office-holding in the later Roman Empire, whose sophisticated analysis I could simply lift for my own purposes. What I found instead was a surprising gap in the modern scholarly literature on the Christianisation of the Roman world. This problem has now been the focus of my research for over a decade.

My work on the religious mentalities, identities, and entanglements of imperial and royal officials has followed me through several posts and many life changes. I worked out the contours of the project (and realised quite what I’d got myself in for) during a Hulme University Fund and John Fell OUP Research Fund Fellowship at Brasenose College, Oxford and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, with a one-year interregnum to take up posts as Departmental Lecturer in Early Medieval History at Balliol and Brasenose College and Stipendiary Lecturer in Medieval History at St Peter’s College. I then brought it with me to my current job in the Department of History at the University of Liverpool. I wrote the bulk of this book during an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship (AH/T011521/1), which I held between September 2020 and August 2023 (with an official five-month career break to look after my son through the worst of the pandemic and many more unofficial interruptions). I finished it in precious snatches of concentration between teaching, administration, and childcare. Of course, as that last sentence might imply, my academic cursus only tells part of the story.

I have too many debts to acknowledge here and I’m sure I have missed someone important. (I’m sorry if you are reading this and you feel you should be here!) I feel lucky to have gained so many generous colleagues, friends, and communities over my career in academia, who continue to offer support and encouragement to me, both in this project, and in my wider working life. Special mention should be made for my writing group allies, for helping me to maintain my sanity through the trials and tribulations of research: Jenny Barry and Ellen Muehlberger; Anna Bocking-Welch, Sam Caslin, and Chris Pearson; and Danica Summerlin.

I thank my colleagues in the Department of History at the University of Liverpool for their support over the past seven years. It is fair to say that this has been a challenging period to work in UK higher education; their kindness and solidarity have helped me immeasurably. I would single out my post-docs and PhD students, Dave Addison, James Duncan, Matt Hassall, Elle Jones, and Carole Pinnington, who have helped to form a late antique and early medieval community on Merseyside. I would also offer special thanks to Marios Costambeys, Elaine Chalus, Lin Foxhall, Joey Gaynor, and Laura Van Oort, who helped me to arrange unpaid leave and a suspension of my AHRC grant. Their consideration allowed me to navigate a particularly difficult time. The library team at the university also provided invaluable help in getting hold of books and organising Open Access publication.

I would like to thank Michael Sharp and Katie Idle at Cambridge University Press for all their work in bringing the book to publication, as well as the readers for the Press for their generous comments and acute suggestions. Many friends and colleagues read sections of the manuscript at various stages of drafting and rewriting: Dave Addison, Lisa Bailey, Susanna Elm, Hugh Elton, Richard Flower, Helen Foxhall Forbes, Matt Hassall, Caroline Humfress, Christopher Kelly, Meaghan McEvoy, Andy Merrills, and Ellen Muehlberger. Others kindly shared work in advance of publication: Dave Addison, Christoph Begass, Mateusz Fafinski, Ben Kolbeck, Conor O’Brien, and Michael Wuk. I should also note generous colleagues who read various pieces that fed into my arguments here: Shane Bjornlie, Gillian Clark, Susanna Elm, Luise Frenkel, Geoffrey Greatrex, Christopher Jones, Christopher Kelly, Conrad Leyser, Ellen Muehlberger, Michele Salzman, Adam Schor, and Graeme Ward. Versions of these chapters and related material were presented at the LLAMA work-in-progress seminar in Liverpool, the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, the Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity conference at Ohio State University, the Postgraduate/Early Career Late Antiquity Network conference, the Ancient History seminar of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, the Late Roman Seminar in Oxford, the Mediæval Seminar at St Andrews, and the Historical Association conference. I thank the audiences at those events for their feedback.

I could not have written this book without the love and support of my family on both sides of the Atlantic: Evelyn, Tim, Fränze, and Juliander; Chris and Kristen; Karen, Abhijit, Anand, Anya, and Arya; and, of course, Ingrid, Aidan, and Margot. Aidan has a more sophisticated understanding of religious change in the Roman world than any six-year-old should. I count myself so lucky to have him and Margot. Ingrid remains – now, more than ever – the reason I can do any of this.

The cover image is taken from the Cathedra of Maximian in the Archiepiscopal Museum in Ravenna. I chose it because it shows Joseph dressed as an imperial official. It thus exemplifies a key argument of the book: that late ancient people could think of those who served the state as Christian authority figures. This scene of Joseph embracing Jacob is also fitting since, while working on this project, I both became a father and lost my own. I dedicate this book to my dad. His pride in me and my work will stay with me always.