Pagans and Christians

Gregory of Nazianzus’ (d. 390 AD) funerary oration for his sister Gorgonia (Oration 8) praises her as a woman of incomparable sophrosyne, possessing the modesty, temperance, and devotion to husband and home that defined the ideal wife in antiquity.

When Constantine stipulated that Sunday be a day of rest and the law courts closed, he may have been responding to queries from officials in the city of Rome. Indeed, his revolutionary 321 law (Codex Justinianus 3.12.2(3), ed. Krueger= C. Th. 2.8.1) was directed to Helpidius, the vicar of the city of Rome. But the impetus for this law likely arose from this emperor’s interactions with bishops, including, the bishop of Rome at that time, Silvester. Unfortunately, we have no reliable fourth-century evidence for Silvester’s relationship with Constantine.

Stylites or “pillar-saints” represent Christian asceticism at its most extreme. These men and women stood on columns and endured the harsh elements, sometimes for decades, while fasting and praying. Such a lifestyle is intrinsically material. Without a column, there is simply no stylite. Late antique authors and artists were quick to play with this association, even blurring the boundary between the two. In the Life of Alypius the Stylite (BHG 65), the saint becomes a “living statue” whose flesh is paradoxically sturdier than real statues of bronze.

Tucked away in Augustine’s vast corpus is an account of a conversation held, ca. 406–410, with members of his congregation (De divinatione daemonum 1.1–2.5; den Boeft 1999). These laymen argued that the publica sacra, defined according to the libri pontificales, had once been acceptable to God. Now in his disfavor for mysterious reasons, they were not evil and had nothing in common with clandestine polytheism, which the libri pontificales had also forbidden.

Julian’s attitudes towards religious reform have been controversial (Wiemer 2017, Nesselrath 2013, Bouffartigue 1992). The evidence from Julian’s own writing indicates that whatever his intentions might have been, they were rooted deeply in his study of Plato (Elm 2012, Smith, 1996).