Williams, Michael Stuart
(2012)
Review: BARNES, EARLY CHRISTIAN HAGIOGRAPHY AND
ROMAN HISTORY (Tria Corda 5) . Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2010. Pp. xx + 437. isbn 9783161502262.
Journal of Roman Studies, 102.
pp. 406-408.
ISSN 0075-4358
Abstract
According to its author, the primary purpose of this book is ‘to describe how Christian hagiography
began in the second century as the commemoration of martyrs, but became a vehicle for deliberate
ction in the fourth century and then a normal mode of literary composition’ (xi). This perhaps
overstates the coherence of these seven chapters, which are connected in fairly broad fashion by a
range of questions arising from the growth and development of Christianity in the Roman Empire
from the rst to the sixth centuries A.D. At the same time, however, it understates the extent to
which Timothy Barnes here sets out to be argumentative more than descriptive. In place of a
single overall thesis, the book offers the meticulous demonstration of a method: essentially, the
application of the historian’s technique of prosopography to the study of the lives and actions of
martyrs and saints.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
T.D.Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography; Roman History; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > Ancient Classics |
| Item ID: |
4626 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075435812000895 |
| Depositing User: |
Dr. Michael Williams
|
| Date Deposited: |
02 Dec 2013 11:43 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Journal of Roman Studies |
| Publisher: |
Cambridge University Press |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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