Anna Wilson has a stimulating essay on the rise of biography after the conversion of Constantine, the Vita Constantini of Eusebius being the leading model. The rise of biography manifests the change in the fortunes of the church, as bios replaced martyrion as the leading subject of Christian . . . . Continue Reading »
Barnes notes an incident recorded by Sozomen that represents the typical relationship between church and emperor under Constantine. Basil of Ancyra, along with a number of other bishops, was deposed by the Council of Constantinople in 360. It was alleged that Basil”gave orders to the civil . . . . Continue Reading »
Gibbon wrote that “the distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers, which had never been imposed on the free spirit of Greece and Rome, was introduced and confirmed by the legal establishment of Christianity” with the result that “a secret conflict between the civil and . . . . Continue Reading »
During 324-5, Constantine, in Timothy Barnes’s summary, “outlawed the performance of animal sacrifice, ordered that no new cult statues of the traditional gods be dedicated, and forbade magistrates and governors to begin official business with the traditional act of casting incense or . . . . Continue Reading »
After explaining the intrusive gaze of the Roman censor, Shardi asks whether the Romans created an ancient predecessor of Bentham’s panopticon, made famous by Foucault. She recognizes the analogies, but says that the “differences are perhaps more striking than the similarities.” . . . . Continue Reading »
Shadi Bartsch ( Mirror of the Self ) notes that the Romans sometimes regarded the wax death masks of their ancestor ( imagines ) to be their judges: “In his oration Pro Murena , for example, Cicero, as he tried to move the jurors to acquit a newly minted Roman consul, did not ask how the man . . . . Continue Reading »
As a philosophy of history, typology highlights the unintended consequences of our actions, the unintended meanings of our words. Conspiracy theories have no room for unintended events. If something happened, someone somewhere planned it. Typology and conspiracy are competing theories of history. . . . . Continue Reading »
MH Abrams notes that at the heart of Romanticism was a transfer of Christian concepts into a new, subjectivist, context: “Much of what distinguishes writers I call ‘Romantic’ derives from the fact that they undertook, whatever their religious creed or lack of creed, to save . . . . Continue Reading »
Gadamer points out that the Enlightenment operated on “an unshakable premise: the scheme of the conquest of mythos by logos.” For the Enlightenment, this represented a progress. Romanticism assumed the same development, but considered it a tragic lost. Romantics found “that olden . . . . Continue Reading »
Rivers (volume 1 of Reason, Grace, and Sentiment ) gives a sympathetic portrayal of the post-Restoration latitudinarians. She cites Gilbert Burnet’s history several times. According to Burnet, the latitude-men “and those who were formed under them, studied to examine farther into the . . . . Continue Reading »
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