Transformations of Religious Practices in Late Antiquity

Éric Rebillard is Professor of Classics and History at Cornell University, USA.

• Contents: Foreword; Part I Pastoral Care and Conversion in the Age of Augustine: The ’conversion’ of the Empire according to Peter Brown; Interaction between the preacher and his audience: the case-study of Augustine’s preaching on death; Preaching in a local context: Augustine on the fear of death; Catechumens and the delay of baptism in the preaching of Augustine; Augustine and the cult of statues; The Christian mob and the destruction of pagan statues: the case of North Africa in the age of Augustine; Augustine and the epistolary rituals of the social and cultural elite of his time: a processual analysis of the relations between bishop and city in late Antiquity; ’To live with the heathen, but not die with them’: the issue of commensality between Christians and non-Christians in the first five centuries; The sacred and Christian identity in the time of Augustine. Part II The Construction of Orthodoxy and the Pelagian Controversy: Deviance theory and orthodoxy: the case of the Pelagian controversy on grace; A new style of argument in Christian polemic: Augustine and the use of patristic citations; Dogma populare: popular belief in the controversy between Augustine and Julian of Eclanum; Quasi funambuli: Cassian and the Pelagian controversy on perfection. Part III The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity: Church and burial in late antiquity (Latin Christianity, 3rd to 6th centuries CE); Koimhthrion and coemeterium: tomb, martyr tomb, necropolis; Were the Carthaginian areae Christian cemeteries or burial enclosures for Christians?; The Church of Rome and the development of the catacombs: on the origin of Christian cemeteries; The burial of the poor in the Roman Empire and its evolution in late Antiquity; Index.