Portraits of spiritual authority : : religious power in early Christianity, Byzantium, and the Christian Orient / / edited by Jan Willem Drijvers and John W. Watt.

• Superior document: Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, Volume 137
• TeilnehmendeR: Drijvers, Jan Willem,; Watt, John W.,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, [Netherlands] ;, Boston, Massachusetts ;, Koln, [Germany] : : Brill,, 1999.; ©1999
• Year of Publication: 1999
• Language: English
• Series: Religions in the Graeco-Roman world ; Volume 137.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (244 pages).
• Notes: Includes index.

This volume deals with several figures of spiritual authority in Christianity during late antiquity and the early middle ages, and seeks to illuminate the way in which the struggle for religious influence evolved with changes in church and society. A number of literary portraits are examined, portraits which, in various literary genres, are themselves designed to establish and propagate the authority of the people whose lives and activities they describe. The sequence begins with visionary and prophetic figures of the second and third centuries, proceeds through several testimonies from the fourth century to the power of holy persons, moves on to Syriac portraits of the fifth to seventh centuries, and ends with the demise of the authority of the holy man in the eighth.

Table of Contents

Preliminary material / Jan Willem Drijvers and John W. Watt -- REWRITING EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY; AUGUSTINE’S REPRESENTATION OF MONICA / ELIZABETH A. CLARK -- MAGI AND VISIONARIES IN GNOSTICISM / ALASTAIR H.B. LOGAN -- SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY AND THE “HERETICAL” WOMAN: FIRMILIAN’S WORD TO THE CHURCH IN CARTHAGE / CHRISTINE TREVETT -- TROUBLED BREASTS: THE HOLY BODY IN HAGIOGRAPHY / ROWAN WILLIAMS -- PROMOTING JERUSALEM: CYRIL AND THE TRUE CROSS / JAN WILLEM DRIJVERS -- THE LIFE AND LIVES OF GREGORY THAUMATURGUS / STEPHEN MITCHELL -- RABBULA, BISHOP OF EDESSA: SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY AND SECULAR POWER / HAN J.W. DRIJVERS -- A PORTRAIT OF JOHN BAR APHTONIA, FOUNDER OF THE MONASTERY OF QENNESHRE / JOHN W. WATT -- BABAI THE GREAT’S LIFE OF GEORGE AND THE PROPAGATION OF DOCTRINE IN THE LATE SASANIAN EMPIRE / GERRIT J. REININK -- SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY AND MONASTICISM IN CONSTANTINOPLE DURING THE DARK AGES (650-800) / PETER HATLIE -- INDEX / Jan Willem Drijvers and John W. Watt -- RELIGIONS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD / Jan Willem Drijvers and John W. Watt.