Reactions (original) (raw)

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350-450

Abstract

This chapter analyses the various ways in which people responded to the altered social and religious circumstances in the Christianizing empire. Many accommodated the dominant form of Christianity. Bishops usually spoke about conversion in a favourable manner. Some reservations were shown when a few recent converts became more militant than their fellow Christians. Outward religious conformity and feigned conversions were despised by both Christian and pagan writers. However, not everyone accommodated the changing circumstances. We have appeals from dissidents, even though these have not been preserved in equal quantity as the mainstream Christian literature. Many of the non-conforming religious practices shifted to private spaces, beyond the control of the ecclesiastical and imperial authorities. There seems to have been self-segregation among several Christian sects as well as some pagan Neoplatonist circles. Resistance could also be aggressive, in the form of verbal violence and ...

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