“Gentilitas y paganismus en los sermones de Máximo de Turín: reconsideración de una sinonimia infundada” (original) (raw)

By reading the Sermons of Maximus of Turin (…398-…423) it has been traditionally argued that the fight against a still very lively “paganism” was one of the main concerns of his episcopate. Analysis of sermon XLVIII will allow us to meet the double aim of this paper: on the one hand, to refute this statement, showing that it is based on the acceptance of an unfounded synonymy between the terms gentilis-gentilitas and paganus-paganismus. On the other hand, to demonstrate that Maximus referred with each of those terms to two entities which were not only different, but also opposed in their fundamental characteristics.