Sághy Marianne, Schoolman Edward M. (eds.) Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire: New Evidence, New Approaches 4th-8th Centuries

Central European University Press, 2018. — 382 p.Do the terms pagan and Christian, transition from paganism to Christianity still hold as explanatory devices to apply to the political, religious and cultural transformation experienced Empire-wise? Revisiting pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity has been a fertile site of scholarship in recent years: the paradigm shift in the interpretation of the relations between pagans and Christians replaced the old conflict model with a subtler, complex approach and triggered the upsurge of new explanatory models such as multiculturalism, cohabitation, cooperation, identity, or group cohesion. This collection of essays inscribes itself into the revisionist discussion of pagan-Christian relations over a broad territory and time-span, the Roman Empire from the fourth to the eighth century. A set of papers argues that if paganism had never been fully extirpated or denied by the multiethnic educated elite that managed the Roman Empire, Christianity came to be presented by the same elite as providing a way for a wider group of people to combine true philosophy and right religion. The speed with which this happened is just as remarkable as the long persistence of paganism after the sea-change of the fourth century that made Christianity the official religion of the State. For a long time afterwards, pagans and Christians lived in between polytheistic and monotheist traditions and disputed Classical and non-Classical legacies.Marianne Sághy was Associate Professor at the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, and at the Department of Medieval and Early Modern Universal History, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.Edward M. Schoolman (University of Nevada, Reno) associate professor of history teaches courses on the ancient and medieval Mediterranean oikumené. His research primarily focuses on Italy and its cultural transformation in the post-Roman world. His book, Rediscovering Sainthood in Italy: Hagiography and the Late Antique Past in Ravenna appeared in 2016.