Part III of this book reconstructs expectations of official churchgoing and entanglements with churchmen and Christian institutions in select political environments across the fifth and sixth centuries. Ch. 6 pursues this problem in the best attested of these: the Eastern imperial capital of Constantinople. It begins by charting norms of imperial religious observance. Eastern emperors seem to have attended public churches at major festivals and special occasions. Various reports suggest that when the emperor went to church, those who served them (and the senatorial aristocracy as a collective) were supposed to go too. Within these politics of church attendance, the bishop of Constantinople represents a surprisingly peripheral figure. Although some courtiers and bureaucrats were regular attendees at Hagia Sophia, they seem to have kept themselves at a critical distance from the bishop’s pastoral authority. As with other members of the Constantinopolitan elite, many imperial officials focused their Christian identities on activities within their own households, whether these were dynastic commemorations, building projects, patronage arrangements for clerics, monastic start-ups, or their own ascetic practices. This chapter shows how the religious practices and affiliations of these ‘over-mighty congregants’ were also shaped by the corporate Christianity of the imperial palace, consistory, and Senate.

The book is devoted to the relationships between Nicene and Homoian Christianities in the context of broader religious and social changes in post-Roman societies from the end of the fourth to the seventh century. The main analytical and interpretative tools used in this study are religious conversion and ecclesiastical competition. It examines sources discussing Nicene–Homoian encounters in Vandal Africa, Gothic and Lombard Italy, Gaul, and Hispania – regions where the polities of the Goths, Suevi, Burgundians, and Franks emerged. It explores the extent to which these encounters were shaped by various religious policies and political decisions rooted in narratives of conversion and confessional rivalry. Through this analysis, the aim is to offer a nuanced interpretation of how Christians in the successor kingdoms handled religious dissent and how these actions manifested in social practices.

The Introduction presents the main topic of the book – the role of conversion and competition between Nicene and Homoian churches in the post-Roman West – and the methods applied. It explains terminology (Nicene, Homoian), theorises the concept of conversion as a tool of historical analysis, and presents the purpose of the cross-regional comparison that follows.