In:
Harvard Theological Review, Cambridge University Press (CUP), Vol. 78, No. 3-4 ( 1985-10), p. 327-352
Abstract:
I propose to discuss what might be called the “mechanics of conversion” in the countryside of the sixth-century later Roman Empire. This process consisted fundamentally in implanting monasteries in districts where few villages had been Christianized, or where the population was nominally Christian but so badly instructed that earlier pagan cult practices persisted. There is considerable evidence for rural conditions in the hagiographic lives of monks and in the ecclesiastical histories of this period. One of the principal difficulties in this sort of study is the geographic distribution of the sources. Hagiographic texts are, in effect, local histories, largely confined to the environs of the monastery. Thus, we are reasonably well informed about western Asia Minor and Galatia in the sixth century, for which sources like this exist, but hardly know anything about paganism in Greece until the tenth century, when monasteries finally began to appear in rural districts.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0017-8160
,
1475-4517
DOI:
10.1017/S0017816000012426
Language:
English
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Publication Date:
1985
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2051494-3
SSG:
1
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