A Christian Paradoxography: Humans, Animals, and Monsters in the Life of Makarios the Roman (BHG 1004-1005)
By Julie van Pelt, Ghent University
This paper investigates the (largely unexplored) intersection between animals in late antique Christian literature and paradoxography, by analyzing the Life of Makarios the Roman (ed. Vassiliev). It argues that the Life uses paradoxographical marveling – a cognitive response to the world’s vastness and the limits of human understanding of it – to express the unfathomable aspects of sanctity. It also argues that the representation of animals is central to this process.
The Animal as Index of Difference in Daphnis and Chloe 1.16
By Clare Kearns, Brown University
In Longus’ 2nd century BCE novel Daphnis and Chloe, the boundaries between humans and animals are porous. Both protagonists are suckled by animals (a goat and a sheep) in infancy; one character, Dorcon, disguises himself as a wolf in an attempt to rape Chloe; and most notably, the humans who populate Longus’ bucolic setting often compare one another to animals, making sense of human interactions and status through observation of the animals around them (Bowie 2005; Epstein 1995). This porosity, however, is not simply a result of the novel’s bucolic setting.
Animality and Edibility in Ambrose’s Hexameron
By Lydia Herndon, University of Chicago
Ambrose of Milan’s Hexameron, a series of sermons on the six days of creation originally delivered to a congregation participating in a fast for holy week, is preoccupied with questions of food, edibility, and poison. Within these homilies, Ambrose’s “zoological imagination” (Cox Miller, 2018) extends to a fascination with what animals eat: starlings consume poison hemlock (Hex. 3.9), lions hate having leftovers for dinner (6.14), and tortoises season their diet of serpents with marjoram (6.19).
Filling the bellies of the beasts.” Late antique Christian criticism of animal hunts and the problem of chain consumption
By Konstanze Schiemann, University of Amsterdam
For the Christians of late antiquity, the resurrection of the mortal body was a cornerstone of their faith. While the Nicene Creed of 325 AD enshrined the resurrection of the dead in a general statement of faith, the concept had been much disputed in the preceding centuries. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries several treatises were written in response to pagans who questioned what exactly would happen on the Day of Judgement (e.g., Tatian, Ps.-Athenagoras, Tertullian).