The History of Christianity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages Major Trends in Scholarship of the Past Fifty Years Peter Gemeinhardt *

I. Introduction: Nice Places, Historical Questions, and Theological Sensibility

Let us begin this reflection with a quick glance into a neighbouring country. Every four years, the world-wide community of Patristic scholars gathers at Oxford. Breaking off this tradition would seem inconceiv- able to anyone who earnestly participates in Patristic Studies. This is not only due to the fact that Oxford is a nice, medieval-looking city with a famous university – its urban appeal and academic flair is easily matched by other places, including Leuven. There is another reason: since I have been studying the field of Church History, ‘Oxford’ has been the hall- mark of a particular kind of doing research, in conversation with people from virtually all over the world (including many countries where Chris- tianity is not or has never been the dominant religion), across denomi- national divisions, employing methods from theology but also from religious studies, cultural studies, history, linguistics, and – last but not least – dealing with the broadest range of topics one can think of. To be sure, interdisciplinarity is not an invention of the past five decades: already the renewal of Patristic studies after World War II involved a multitude of disciplines and became, at least in principle but in many instances also in reality, the joint enterprise of a highly diverse international

* This paper was presented on May 10th, 2019 at the Catholic University of Leuven, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Lecture Series “50 Years of Interna- tional Programmes in Theology and Religious Studies.” In general, the spoken form has been retained, but some passages have been revised and enlarged, due to helpful sugges- tions from the discussion. I am grateful to Johan Leemans for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper and for improving my English phrasing, to Nicolas Anders for supplying research data, and to Vanessa Schäferjohann for formatting the bibliographical references and correcting the final version. 454 PETER GEMEINHARDT community of scholars.1 According to Charles Kannengiesser, the Oxford conferences are “the brain and the heart of the world-wide patristic community.”2 As it seems, this was true in 1989 and is, with certain qualifications to which we will return, still true thirty years later. In the same paper, however, the author felt obliged to “say a firm good-bye to the spectacular development of patristics in Europe during the past 50 years”: he observed that Patristics, “from being a theological discipline dedicated to the Fathers … had become in the meantime a secular enterprise.”3 This trend, as I would argue, has even accelerated since then. A similar case could be made for the annual International Medieval Congress at Leeds, even larger than the Oxford Conferences and with a significant difference: the Leeds conference series was and is not devoted to religious topics in an outspoken manner (while it is without doubt difficult to avoid encounter- ing religious practices, institutions, or thoughts when studying the Middle Ages).4 Therefore, matters which traditionally belong to the field of Church History are also investigated by scholars from other faculties and disciplines whose research interests and methods may be different from ours. This development opens up new possibilities, yet it also poses new challenges; below, I will return to both aspects. Obviously, looking back at the past fifty years indicates that both fields of study are in transition – and will continue to be so. After all, especially historians should be aware of the fluidity of historical developments and the preliminary character of any ‘trend’, and this affects of course also the history of our own discipline. Yet, the most pervasive trend in the History of Christianity during the last decades seems to me what Oxford, Leeds and other melting-pots of scholarship represent: the establishment of an international, interdisciplinary, non-hierarchical, and multi-perspective scholarly culture within our field.5

1. The French scholar André Mandouze reflected upon this in his opening lecture of the 3rd Oxford Conference in 1959: André Mandouze, “Mesure et démesure de la patristique,” Studia Patristica 3.1 (1961): 3-19. 2. Charles Kannengiesser, “Fifty Years of Patristics,” Theological Studies 50 (1989): 633-656, at 647. 3. Kannengiesser, “Fifty Years,” 655. One year later, in his presidential address to the North American Patristic Society’s meeting, he even pondered to choose the title “Good-bye, Patristics” and was only moved by “friendly mentors” to “avoid the paradoxical or even shocking overtones of that original title”; the address was finally delivered and published under a more positive heading: Charles Kannengiesser, “The Future of Patristics,” Theological Studies 52 (1991): 128-139, at 128. 4. https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/about/about-the-imc/ [accessed April 22th, 2019]. 5. Cf. also Martin Wallraff, “Whose Fathers? An Overview of Patristic Studies in Europe,” in Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century: Proceedings of an International Confer- ence to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the International Association of Patristic Studies, ed. B. Bit- ton-Ashkelony, T. de Bruyn, and C. Harrison (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 57-71, at 64. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 455

Since the late 1960s, the high time of the Cold War, not only political borders have been shattered. The opportunities to meet and engage in discussion have been multiplied, and English has eventually become the global lingua franca of scholarship – whether this is for the better or worse, is a matter of discussion. While not denying possible disadvantages of such a linguistic levelling, here I would like to highlight the obvious advantage: the results of research are accessible to a wider audience than ever. One might speak of a trend to non-discriminating scholarship, since cultural, social, and political borders no longer inhibit intellectual and personal encounter as they had done for centuries, and even the gender balance in the Humanities is continuously equalising. In my account of scholarship during the five decades under consideration, a significant number of female authors appears who have substantially contributed to the trends to be outlined. I am confident that this increasing awareness of diversity with regard to agents and topics of research is irreversible. In other words, the Faculties of Theology in Central Europe are no longer made up only of “old white men” dominating Patristic and Medieval studies. However, to speak of an interdisciplinary, non-hierarchical, and anti-discriminating scholarly culture could seem to be a bold claim. We have not yet “left this life behind and dwell in a place which Holy Scrip- ture calls ‘paradise’, as it were, a place of erudition or, so to speak, a lecture hall for the souls”6 – thus Origen’s eschatological vision of a never-ending academia. Original sin has not been overcome by organ- izing Patristic and Medieval conferences here and there. Scholarship, as long as it is a human affair, will suffer from human shortcomings, mis- understandings, and even hostilities. But to whom am I speaking? After all, it was scholars at Leuven who have masterfully scrutinized Augus- tine’s doctrine of sin and grace, with results that may be considered as major steps of Augustinian scholarship, even if these results may carry with them disillusionment: how to optimistically return to daily work after having delved into the peculiarities of the Donatist controversy? It could seem more attractive to join the Pelagian camp and try to struggle hard for one’s eternal salvation; or one might turn to Jan van Ruusbroec and his teaching of the union of God and the Soul as an alternative, also a key undertaking here in Leuven. And if nothing else helps, there are still colourful insights in early Christian martyrdom on display which have been created right here.

6. Origen, De principiis 2.11.6: Puto enim quod sancti quique discedentes ex hac vita permanebunt in loco aliquo in terra posito, quem “paradisum” dicit scriptura divina, velut in quodam eruditionis loco et, ut ita dixerim, auditorio vel schola animarum. 456 PETER GEMEINHARDT

I was asked to reflect upon major trends in scholarship in the last fifty years and, within this general framework, upon the specific contribution of Leuven scholars in Church History to these developments. I will try to do so in three steps: first by pondering the denomination of the academic discipline under consideration and the repercussions of naming a topic on the shape, contents, and aims of actual research (section II), then by depicting five such major trends (section III), and finally by highlighting where I see ground-breaking contributions of this Faculty (section IV). It goes without saying that my choice of topics in both respects will inevitably be as selective as subjective: it is to a certain extent biased by my own research interests and, more generally, by my personal knowledge and its limits (and by the space allotted to this article!). Readers may miss one or more of the points which they would have expected that I would touch upon. But since every writing of history involves a personal point of view, this is also true for ‘Forschungs- geschichte’, all the more if the author is involved in current research and thus cannot claim to have a perspective from outer space. And even this would not warrant full objectivity, as everyone knows who participates, be it as author, editor, or reviewer, in ‘peer review’ processes which also have been set up in recent times for most scholarly journals and series in our field, but whose benefits and disadvantages do not belong to the subject-matter of this article. To start with, let me state a very general point: it is my deep conviction that studying the History of Christianity – not only at the Fac- ulty of Theology and Religious Studies in Leuven – might be helpful in preparing one for real life. This study introduces scholars, students and the wider readership to the highs and lows in the history of human beings, social communities, the church, and the world. Even if historia is no longer magistra vitae, as Cicero7 and many others until early modern times believed, history still illuminates what human life is in the light of how it became what it is, and what its future possibilities might be. Church History investigates how Christianity has repeatedly and successfully managed to adjust to new cultural, political, and social horizons, and thus it might still provide orientation when we encounter new challenges today. Of course, it does not provide ready-made solutions, but it clarifies the questions and thus elucidates what we are looking for. In one word, by focusing on the past, it has its share in generating orientation for present times: “From an awareness of our own present being, we look at what happened in the early Church, eager to discover

7. Cicero, De oratore 2.9.36. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 457 how the structural truth of the gospel persisted in being translated in so many heterogeneous contexts. It gives us hope for our own time.”8 While every kind of writing history contributes to such individual or collective self-orientation, a Faculty of Theology will tackle this task based on the assumption that history is not limited to human history. As the former Archbishop of Canterbury and renowned church historian, Rowan Williams, wrote, what we need is “a way of reading church history that is theologically sensitive.” Certainly, according to Williams, this does not imply writing history of salvation as in Late Antiquity or the 19th century! Therefore, he hastens to add that “good theology does not come from bad history.”9 Good (Church) history, in turn, might originate from looking at Christian history “expecting to be surprised and questioned” and thus allowing oneself to “emerge from the study of the past with some greater fullness of Christian maturity.”10 If I may anticipate one of my conclusions: this is what distinguishes the Leuven Theological Faculty’s Research Unit of History of Church and Theology – to be theologically sensible and to provide historical insights which may fuel the theological discourse.11

II. What Are We Doing: Church History, History of Christianity, Theology?

To start with, what are we really talking about? In the invitation for this anniversary lecture, the proposed working title was “Major Trends in Scholarship on the History of Christianity / Church History / History of Church and Theology.” Should this multiple terminology be understood as an indication that the Leuven colleagues are not really decided what they are doing? Or do they consider these three designations of our field simply as interchangeable? It may seem that I am lending too much

8. Kannengiesser, “The Future,” 138. Cf. also his previous paper which already has been referred to above (Kannengiesser, “Fifty Years,” 656): “As the only sources that allow us to understand what really happens to Christianity when it adjusts to a new cultural cosmos, the message of the ‘Fathers’ will become meaningful in new ways.” 9. Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church, Sarum Theological Lectures (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005), 2. 10. Williams, Why Study, 3. 11. At Leuven, this issue has been discussed in a collected volume with special focus on the Roman Catholic Theology after Vatican II: Lieven Boeve, Mathijs Lam- berigts, and Terrence Merrigan, eds., The Normativity of History: Theological Truth and Tradition in the Tension between Church History and Systematic Theology, BETL 282 (Leuven: Peeters, 2016). 458 PETER GEMEINHARDT weight to mere names, but we should be attentive here. The vision of an interdisciplinary and multi-perspective culture of research and teaching depends on a common understanding of the meaning of these terms as well as on the compatibility of these disciplines and perspectives. This compatibility may suffer from unclear definitions or might become pre- carious if designations are mixed too quickly. Therefore, I will briefly dwell upon the relationship of res et signa, things and words. Again, the Oxford “International Conferences on Patristic Studies” are a case in point: ‘Patristics’ is not a clear-cut academic discipline. Of course, this has its advantages: every four years in Oxford, people meet who will have differing understandings of what they are doing academically. A Greek Orthodox theologian, a German Church Historian, a French Patristic scholar or an American teacher of Religious Studies can all be members of the Association Internationale d’Études Patristiques and show “a surprising consciousness of unity in reconciled diversity,” thus Martin Wallraff,12 although most probably not all of them would declare themselves scholars of ‘Patristics’ and even less ‘Church Historians’. As soon as one reflects upon such designations, the ambiguities start, as Christoph Markschies formulated it: “‘Patristics’ is nowadays the only umbrella term used to cover different approaches to the rich field of the study of ancient Christianity, which is widely accepted, although nearly everyone has serious problems with that term – a quite paradoxical situation!”13 This can be illustrated by the title of The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, published in 2008 (one of the multitude of compendia whose emergence also may qualify as a pervasive trend in scholarship).14 To be sure, my point is not to question the usefulness of this handbook (which contains many well-written and informative contributions) but only to reflect upon its title. The Handbook is introduced by an article written by the renowned patristic scholar Elizabeth Clark under the heading “From Patristics to Early Christian Studies.”15 Clark herself, in her argumentation, is eager to build “bridges between old and new”16, but she clearly presupposes a development from ‘old’ to ‘new’, and the title itself clearly indicates a new perception of the focus of this field.

12. Wallraff, “Whose Fathers,” 58. 13. Christoph Markschies, “Patristics and Theology: From Concordance and Conflict to Competition and Collaboration?,” in Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Bitton-Ashkelony, de Bruyn, Harrison, 367-388, at 371. 14. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 15. Elizabeth Clark, “From Patristics to Early Christian Studies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Ashbrook Harvey and Hunter, 7-41, esp. 14-23. 16. Clark, “Patristics,” esp. 23-26. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 459

It is an open question whether ‘Church’ and ‘Theology’ are in the same way part of ‘Early Christian Studies’ as they were in ‘Patristics’. This is not an innocent question, also from a Leuven perspective. After all, the Research Unit at KU Leuven is named “History of Church and Theology.”17 The Handbook is, as is clearly visible, only to a limited extent interested in theology: only one (the last) of its eight parts is devoted to “theological themes.” Theology, though still part of the study of Christianity, is nothing more or less than one of many relevant topics which are discussed in the previous sections of the Handbook, like “identities,” “regions,” “structures and authorities,” “expressions of Christian cultures” or “ritual, piety, and practice.” Similar uncertainties arise when asking about which church we are talking when doing ‘Church History’ or ‘History of Church and Theol- ogy’. Can we study ‘the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church’ of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed? Not as an historical phenomenon, I would say. We can investigate the history of a concrete church, e.g. because our respective faculties have institutional bonds to it: the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium or the Protestant Churches in Lower Sax- ony, in my case. Or we can choose any other given church or community for historical inquiry. But then, as is obvious in our common academic practice, we write the history of churches in their plural appearance (or at least the history of one church or community while being aware that there are many others). This might seem trivial, but still it should be made clear that we always envisage a synchronic and diachronic plurality of churches. At least from my protestant point of view, it seems clear that scholars of the History of Christianity, and especially those who are concerned with the one and a half millennia before the age of confessionalization, inevitably scrutinize doctrines, practices, and institutions in their historical variety, that is, plurality in the course of time and plurality at any given moment. Orthodox scholars may object to this point of view, but historically speaking, even those claims to orthodoxy who proved to be widely acceptable – the Trinitarian and Christological definitions of Nicaea-Constantinople and Chalcedon – were contested in the time of their emergence and beyond, and their dogmatic signifi- cance had constantly to be re-established by their adherents. Therefore, any historical inquiry involves a critical view on constructions of orthodoxy and deviations from the Christian faith, in other words, the

17. One of its members has even contributed to the Handbook: Mathijs Lambe rigts, “Pelagius and Pelagians,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Ashbrook Harvey and Hunter, 258-279. 460 PETER GEMEINHARDT description and definition of identities (plural!). While it is the historian’s task to point out why this or that concept of Christian identity might have been more plausible than others in its time, it is not his or her prerogative to declare such a construction as true and without alternative. It is, to give one example, as such no big surprise that the majority of local Christian communities in 2nd-century Christianity ended up with episcopal leadership, but it would be false to state that no meaningful alternative options were available! Put differently: by presupposing which church or which structure of ecclesiastical authority is true and which false, we would stop doing historical work. Our discipline is no victim of this development but had its share in overcoming polemical definitions of ecclesiastical identity, including confessional prejudices. It is thus encouraging that this Faculty of Theol- ogy and Religious Studies at a Catholic University invited me as a protestant theologian (and ordained pastor) to deliver an anniversary lecture, discussing half a century of research in the field of “History of Church and Theology.” But still the question remains: what exactly do we investigate as ‘Church Historians’? Out of the three options mentioned above, I would suggest “His- tory of Christianity” as the most fitting one.18 To be sure, I myself am whole-heartedly professor of ‘Church History’.19 But I have become cautious with this term, since speaking of the ‘Church’ requires careful han- dling. Textbooks often employ this notion with implicit or explicit agen- das. Let’s name two examples: Henry Chadwick’s The Church in Ancient Society (2001) is brilliant in its presentation but also very Anglican in speaking of “the Church,” in the singular, “from Galilee to Gregory the Great,” without reflecting upon this choice.20 Carl Andresen’s book with

18. I have argued this in greater detail – and in conversation with theoretical conceptions and written textbooks of my predecessors at Göttingen, Hermann Dörries (1895- 1977), Carl Andresen (1909-1985) and Ekkehard Mühlenberg (°1938) in Peter Gemein- hardt, “Was schreiben Kirchengeschichtler, wenn sie Kirchengeschichte schreiben? Ein Gespräch mit drei Generationen Göttinger Patristik,” in Streit um die Wahrheit: Kirchen- geschichtsschreibung und Theologie: Festschrift Ekkehard Mühlenberg, ed. S. Frost, U. Men- necke, and J. C. Salzmann (Göttingen: Edition Ruprecht, 2013), 267-297, at 288-292. 19. The English version of my personal website names “History of Christianity in Late Antiquity and in the Early and High Middle Ages” as my main field of work, but this is due to a personal choice when formulating the introductory text. The official term is “Kirchengeschichte / Church History,” as is the case with most professorships of this kind in the German-speaking countries, while many colleagues would presumably be inclined to agree with my following argument. 20. Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). The same is true for his earlier, widely read (and equally brilliant) textbook: Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, Pelican His- tory of the Church 1 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967). THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 461 the quite unusual title The Churches of Ancient Christendom (Die Kirchen der alten Christenheit, 1971), on the other hand, is based on an explicit theory of the plurality of churches: Andresen took into account the difference between ‘Christianity’ and ‘Church’ and developed a typology of churches, indebted to social theories of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch. 21 Yet, his categorizations of the many Christian ways of life still remained too schematic for the actual differences between episcopal churches in late ancient cities and ‘gnostic’ communities or, a millennium later, the papal church in the Middle Ages and the poverty movements or mystic circles living at the fringe of the established church. We have to go a step further: not only in nascent and post-modern Christianity, the boundaries of the Church are blurred; we observe this in many periods. In sum: speaking of (the history of) ‘Christianity’ admits that Christianity is more than the Church. Such open-mindedness does not neglect the notion of ‘Church’ but conceives of it as a manifold phenomenon which, in the course of time, took different shapes which are investigated within the field of ‘History of Christianity’. Dogmatic definitions of the Church can be seen as attempts to establish the identity of this community vis-à-vis other communities, all the more since daily life was less dominated by doctrines than by practices. Thus, as a subject of study the ‘Church’ is included in ‘History of Christianity’, but not its presupposition in an essentialist manner.22 While Alfred Loisy famously said that “Jésus annonçait le royaume, et c’est l’Église qui est venue,”23 we should ask “which Church?,” “why this Church?,” and, finally, “why so many of them?”

21. Carl Andresen, Die Kirchen der alten Christenheit, Die Religionen der Mensch heit 29.1-2 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971), esp. 3-16 and 687-690. For a critical account of this method, see Peter Gemeinhardt, “Patristik – heute eine Disziplin mit Zukunft! Zum Gedenken an Carl Andresen (1909-1985),” in Between Education and Conversion: Ways of Approaching Religion in Late Antiquity, ed. P. Gemeinhardt and T. Georges, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 16.1 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2012), 41-55, at 48-51. 22. See Karen L. King, “Which Early Christianity?,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Ashbrook Harvey and Hunter, 66-84, at 71. 23. Alfred Loisy, L’Évangile et l’Église, 4th ed. (Ceffonds près Montier-en-Der, Haute-Marne: Auteur, 1908), 153. My thoughts upon the categories for defining ‘church’ in Late Antiquity (Peter Gemeinhardt, “Was ist Kirche in der Spätantike? Ein- heit und Vielfalt – Anspruch und Wirklichkeit,” in Was ist Kirche in der Spätantike?, ed. P. Gemeinhardt, Patristic Studies 14 [Leuven: Peeters, 2017], 1-34, at 1-5) start with a critical appraisal of Loisy’s saying and its intellectual background; they are supplemented by the studies in id., Die Kirche und ihre Heiligen: Studien zu Ekklesiologie und Hagio graphie in der Spätantike, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 90 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). 462 PETER GEMEINHARDT

III. Major Trends in Fifty Years of Scholarship: a ‘Reader’s Digest’ In this, the longest section of this article, I will highlight five trends in past and current scholarship and hereby focus on thematic aspects but not on individual writers, because then this article would easily reach book-length!24 It is not possible here to present and discuss the steady stream of textbooks which are published in several languages, although this would be illuminating. Let me just hint at the fourteen volumes of the Histoire du christianisme des origines à nos jours (published 1990-2004 by a team of French scholars).25 This wide-ranging enterprise is exemplary for a number of features characteristic for recent scholarship: a broad understanding of “Christianity”; a predominance of social and cultural aspects of history (with theology no longer in the foreground); a widening of the scope of interest to non-European or non-Western perspectives; and an innovative timeline which (to the surprise of the Protestant historian) does not view the Reformation era as the most important upheaval within the history of the church!

1. Time and Space At first, a few thoughts on very basic categories of all historical research: time and space.26 Fortunately, church historians, historians of Christian- ity and scholars working in related disciplines have left behind what Columba Stewart calls the “binary Patrologia Latina / Patrologia Graeca view of the Church Fathers.”27 When Jacques-Paul Migne laid out the “unbroken” tradition of the “Fathers” from early Christianity to late

24. This is not to deny that, e.g., Augustine naturally participates in some of these trends, as Volker H. Drecoll, ed., Augustin Handbuch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007) aptly illustrates, and the investigation of the Augustinian tradition without doubt bridges several periods of Church History, as is magnificently traced in Karla Pollmann and Wil- lemien Otten, eds., The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). It should also not be passed over in silence that Leuven scholars have contributed to research into Athanasius; see the exhaustive review article by Johan Leemans, “Thirteen Years of Research on Athanasius (1985-1998): A Survey and a Bibliography,” Sacris Erudiri 39 (2000): 105-217. For studies since then, see Peter Gemeinhardt, ed., Athanasius Handbuch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). 25. Jean-Marie Mayeur, ed., Histoire du christianisme des origines à nos jours, 14 vols. (Paris: Desclée-Fayard, 1990-2004). The whole series was immediately translated into German and sometimes updated by the scholars who supervised the translation. 26. Note that Robert A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) structures his account of the “end of ancient Chris- tianity” according to “kairoi” and “topoi.” 27. Columba Stewart, “Patristics beyond ‘East’ and ‘West’,” in Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Bitton-Ashkelony, de Bruyn, Harrison, 317-341, at 322. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 463 medieval times, only theologians of the realm of the former Roman Empire were of interest, a perception that can be traced back as far as Eusebius’ Church History.28 Such a reductionist view has duly become subject to revision: Averil Cameron observes that “within late antique scholarship there has been a decisive turn to the East,” and this includes the question whether Islam, at least in its beginnings, should be counted as part of Late Antiquity.29 This, of course, requires a clarification what is meant by “Late Antiquity” itself. In 1971, Peter Brown’s ground- breaking book “The World of Late Antiquity: From Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad” initiated a still ongoing debate about the coherence and limits of this period.30 Of course, this is not only a question of geography or chronology but also of a vision of common traits of every period or region which should be treated as “late antique.” Here, political and theological, but even more linguistic, literary, and material aspects come to the fore (after all, “Late Antiquity” as term for a period sui generis, not as an epoch of decline à la Gibbon, was first used by art historians!).31 Prominent voices argue for an origin of Islam within Late Antiquity and its discourses.32 This has led to new interest in the melting pot of the

28. It is telling that Eusebius’ continuators in the 5th century, Socrates and Sozo- menos, refrain from naming the Christian communities in “barbarian” regions “Churches”; cf. Hanns Christof Brennecke, “Zu den Proömien der spätantiken Kirchen geschichten,” in Streit um die Wahrheit, ed. Frost, Mennecke, Salzmann, 31-80, at 52-53 with n. 129; 62 n. 197. 29. Averil Cameron, “Patristic Studies and the Emergence of Islam,” in Patristic Stud- ies in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Bitton-Ashkelony, de Bruyn, Harrison, 249-278, at 250. 30. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: From Marcus Aurelius to Muham- mad (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971). Brown argued that “the late seventh and the early eighth centuries, and not the age of the first Arab conquests, are the true turning-point in the history of Europe and the Near East” (ibid., 200), because then non-Arab Muslims (Syrians and Persians) “became the pillars of Islamic civilization” (ibid., 198). For a summary of Brown’s impact on ways and aims of research during the last four decades, see Philip Rousseau and Manolis Papoutsakis, eds., Transformations of Late Antique Christianity: Essays for Peter Brown (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), esp. the contribution of Robert A. Markus, “Between Marrou and Brown: Transformations of Late Antique Christianity,” ibid., 1-13. 31. The first manifesto of a view of Late Antiquity which was not dominated by a decadence model was Alois Riegl, Die spätrömische Kunstindustrie nach den Funden in Österreich-Ungarn im Zusammenhange mit der Gesammtentwicklung der bildenden Künste bei den Mittelmeervölkern, vol. 1 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1901). For an overview of the development of terminologies and perceptions of Late Antiquity in the 20th century see Nora Schmidt, Nora K. Schmid, and Angelika Neu- wirth, eds., Denkraum Spätantike: Reflexionen von Antiken im Umfeld des Koran, Epis- teme in Bewegung: Beiträge zu einer transdiziplinären Wissensgeschichte 5 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016), esp. the editors’ introduction: “Spätantike: Von einer Epoche zu einem Denkraum,” ibid., 1-38. 32. See, e.g., Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäi scher Zugang (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010) and her many other publications; 464 PETER GEMEINHARDT

Arabian peninsula where pre-islamic Arabs, Jews and Christians lived side by side, but it remains difficult to assess the latter’s awareness of and reaction to nascent Islam in detail.33 Since the 70s, Peter Brown has proposed varying periodizations of the first millennium CE, not all of which have proven as fruitful as the concept of Late Antiquity itself. But a certain consensus seems to emerge: Antiquity did neither end with Augustine (as Henri-Irénée Marrou declared in his dissertation “Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique,” to which he later added a famous retractatio)34 nor with the Council of Chalcedon (a point of view dear to earlier representatives of German ‘Dog- mengeschichte’) and also not with the gentile invasion in the 5th century (which appears more as merging of traditions than as violent destruction of the “Nicene” or “catholic” empire by “Arian barbarians”).35 But certainly, there is a grain of truth in all these demarcations: Augustine’s time and work may well be seen as liminal, even if ancient culture did not simply break down but underwent severe transformations; the council of Chalcedon appears a turning-point at least insofar as no later declaration of the faith would qualify as ecumenically accepted “Christological Dogma”; and the Roman Empire in the West did break down in the 5th century (even though there were many reasons for its instability), while in many aspects, Roman traditions and institutions survived for centuries. Elsewhere I have proposed to speak of “multiple Late Antiquities,”36 for we observe similar transformations in various parts of the Roman Empire, but not at the same time: the institutions of law, administration and education also Robert Hoyland, “Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. S. Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1053-1077. If one includes Islam into Late Antiquity, it remains the question when this period terminated – one possible answer is the textual fixation of the Qur’an during the 8th century which made Islam a “religion of the book.” 33. See Cameron, “Patristic Studies,” 251-253; elsewhere she has termed the 6th and 7th centuries in the near East “a region in ferment”: Averil Cameron, The Mediter- ranean World in Late Antiquity ad 395-700, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2012), 168. 34. Henri-Irénée Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, Biblio- thèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 145 (Paris: de Boccard, 1938); the retractatio was added in the 2nd ed. (Paris: de Boccard, 1949), 623-713. For a comparison of the contributions of Brown and Marrou to studies in Late Antiquity, see Markus, “Transformations,” 2-5, 11-12. 35. See Peter Heather, Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development, and the Birth of Europe (London: Macmillan, 2009); Ralph W. Mathisen, ed., Romans, Barbar- ians, and the Transformation of the Roman World: Cultural Interaction and the Creation of Identity in Late Antiquity (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011). 36. Peter Gemeinhardt, “‘Multiple Spätantiken’? Denkräume und Ungleichzei tigkeiten in der Geschichte des Christentums,” in Denkraum Spätantike, ed. Schmidt, Schmid, Neuwirth, 533-563. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 465 vanished in the Latin West during the 6th century and were replaced by alternative models of government in the gentile kingdoms, while the Jus- tinianic restoration of (mainly) the Greek East ran into the Byzantine empire without violent interruptions. Wide parts of the former empire were at that time however under Persian and later under Arab rule, who were for Syriac Christianity a threat and a shelter at the same time: by the latter, ancient education and philosophy were transmitted to early Islam (and, as in the case of Aristotle, later again reinfused into Christian theological and philosophical reflection via Arabic and Jewish intellectuals and their writings).37 Therefore, I am sceptical about Garth Fowden’s proposal to view the “first millennium” as a whole as a decisive period in the history of religions, because this does not do justice to the internal religious developments which we can trace and compare in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, while they did not occur at the same time and took very different shape when it comes to the details.38 If Late Antiquity appears as pluralized period of transition with high mobility, multilingualism, and intellectual creativity,39 we should accordingly write medieval history not as an exclusively Latin affair in which at some point foreign elements intruded (Greek Philosophy, Jew- ish and Muslim Religion). While the contemporaries viewed such encounters as completely unexpected, recent research has outlined different layers of the reception of, e.g., Aristotelian philosophy and its interpretation by Ibn Rushd40 and Moses Maimonides or, turning to inner-Christian reception, the appropriation of Greek writers like John of Damascus or Dionysius the Areopagite in Scholasticism and in mystical theology.41 The monumental Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception

37. The transfer of Greek knowledge into Syriac is highlighted by John W. Watt, Rhetoric and Philosophy from Greek into Syriac, Variorum Collected Studies Series 960 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). An overview is provided by Daniel King, “Education in the Syriac World of Late Antiquity,” in Education and Religion in Late Antique Christianity: Reflections, Social Contexts, and Genres, ed. P. Gemeinhardt, L. Van Hoof, and P. Van Nuffelen (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 171-185. 38. Garth Fowden, Before and After Muḥammad: The First Millennium Refocused (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). For a more detailed discussion of Fowden’s proposal, see Gemeinhardt, “Denkräume,” 556. 39. For the linguistic aspect see esp. Stewart, “Patristics,” 329-335; for theological developments Cameron, “Patristic Studies,” 263. 40. Cf. the short but lucid account in Sebastian Günther, Averroes and Thomas Aquinas on Education (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2012). 41. See, e.g., the contributions in Irena Backus, ed., The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, 2 vols. (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 1997); Rainer Berndt and Michel Fédou, eds., Les réceptions des Pères de l’Église au Moyen Age: Le devenir de la tradition ecclésiale: Congrès du Centre Sèvres – Facultés jésuites de Paris (11-14 juin 2008), Archa Verbi: Subsidia 10 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2013). 466 PETER GEMEINHARDT of Augustine has shown that there is much more than a unified “Augustinianism.”42 Current scholarship covers regions and languages from Western Europe to Byzantium and from Iceland to the Silk Road cultures – all of them part of the “History of Christianity” and represent- ing what I see as a late ancient and medieval “globalization” avant la lettre.43 Should it be our task to bring these topics together and aim at a Global History in pre-modern times? No question that this would be an enormous challenge – but it might be as timely as rewarding. As Johan Leemans reminds me, many younger scholars today know no longer all of the classical languages of the study of Theology (Latin, Greek and Hebrew); but those who know only Greek may be versed in Syriac and Arabic, those who are acquainted with Latin know European vernaculars and so on. Traditional configurations of discipline-based knowledge are obviously shifting. This opens up new possibilities for collaboration in such a “Global History” and makes such collaboration desirable as well as unavoidable.

2. History of Religions Such an enterprise would have to be conceived as a history of religions with Christianity as one religion among many. Today, “History of Christianity” is written from many perspectives, not all of them necessarily indebted to a Christian view from the inside. Earlier perceptions of an open conflict or even war between pagans and Christians in the late 4th century have given way to a more nuanced picture of the suc- cessive Christianization of the empire and its surroundings. Two books are indicative of this shift: in 1977, the Dutch scholar Jelle Wytzes published a monograph in German with the telling title Der letzte Kampf des Heidentums in Rom, and the notion of “war” was to be taken ear- nest.44 In contrast, the British classicist Alan Cameron summarized his

42. Pollmann and Otten, Oxford Guide, cf. esp. the section “The Making of Authority” (vol. 1, 15-50 with contributions by David Lambert, Willemien Otten, and Eric L. Saak). 43. Conceptions of Global History – for a critical survey, see Dominic Sachsen- maier, Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) – have been applied to medieval history, e.g., in Wolfram Drews and Jenny R. Oesterle, eds., Transkulturelle Kompara- tistik: Beiträge zu einer Globalgeschichte der Vormoderne, Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 18.3-4 (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2008). 44. Jelle Wytzes, Der letzte Kampf des Heidentums in Rom, Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’Empire Romain 56 (Leiden: Brill, 1977) following up his doctoral dissertation: id., Der Streit um den Altar der Viktoria: Die Texte der betreffenden THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 467 life-long work on this period of transition in 2011 under the title The Last Pagans, a book which provides an illuminating analysis of the blurred identities of members of the Roman upper class in Late Antiq- uity.45 Cameron’s title is however not purely ironic, since there are indeed traces of a kind of growing “pagan” identity during the 4th century, as Jan Stenger has shown with regard to the Greek East.46 But at the same time, passing over the Christians in silence is no secure indica- tor of an anti-Christian stance, as has been argued with respect to Mac- robius’ Saturnalia, written about 430 ce – even after the traditional cults had been forbidden in public, no writer was obliged to mention the newly dominating religion, nor should an appraisal of the classical Roman literature be seen as a subtle act of resistance.47 Christian writers were more straightforward in drawing boundaries between their own group and “the others”: from early on, e.g., Christians had defined themselves as a “new” or “third race” (τρίτον γένος) among “Pagans” and “Jews,”48 sometimes by claiming explicitly to represent a “barbarian philosophy” with exclusive access to salvific religious knowledge, thus the 2nd-century apologist Tatian.49 But as is well known, most of his contemporaries were more eager to elucidate the coherence of ancient and Christian philosophy and to present the latter as an improvement of the former, seemingly in a convincing way, as revealed by the energetic response of Porphyry who viewed Christianity as a dramatic threat to Neo-Platonic philosophy (which, at that time, successively became

Schriften des Symmachus und Ambrosius mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Amsterdam: Paris, 1936). Many similar titles could be mentioned; a representative choice is offered, pars pro toto, in Arnaldo Momigliano, ed., The Conflict between Pagan- ism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963). 45. Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); see also Edward J. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 53 (Oakland, CA: The University of California Press, 2015). 46. Jan Stenger, Hellenische Identität in der Spätantike: Pagane Autoren und ihr Unbehagen an der eigenen Zeit, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 97 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2009). 47. Thus Matthias Gerth, Bildungsvorstellungen im 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr.: Mac- robius, Martianus Capella und Sidonius Apollinaris, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 111 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2013), 96-97. 48. See Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 49. Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos 12.10; 31.1; 35.2; 42.1. Guy G. Stroumsa, Barbar- ian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity, Wissenschaftliche Untersu- chungen zum Neuen Testament 112 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 57-84 provides a survey of Christian ethnical representations by using the notion of “barbarians,” be it for self-definition or as marker of others; see also Judith Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 239-268. 468 PETER GEMEINHARDT

intertwined with religious practice).50 Robert Wilken’s approach to the early Christians “as the Romans saw them” has proven fruitful for heu- ristic purposes:51 we should not only look at what is distinctively Chris- tian but what contemporaries reckoned typical of this new sect! Generally speaking, in Late Antiquity – in its Brownian extension – social, cultural, and also religious identities and boundaries were constantly invented, negotiated, transformed, or with a popular expression, “made.” “Making of…” has become the literary marker of such a discursive approach, with regard to developments within religious groups but also in comparative perspective.52 The first holder of the “Chair of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions” at the University of Oxford, Guy Stroumsa, has published his findings under the title The Making of the Abrahamic Reli- gions in Late Antiquity,53 he describes this period as “crucible.”54 Regarding the Middle Ages, his successor in Oxford, Anna Sapir Abulafia, has outlined the vital and complex reality of intellectual encounter that lurks behind the well-known façade of Abelard’s ‘Collations’ between a Jew,

50. For Porphyry, see Matthias Becker, Porphyrios, ‘Contra Christianos’: Neue Sammlung der Fragmente, Testimonien und Dubia mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Anmerkungen, Texte und Kommentare 52 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2016); for Neo-Platonism as a kind of system of intellectual reflection and religious practice, see Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy in Late Antiquity: The Invention of a Ritual Tradi- tion, Beiträge zur Europäischen Religionsgeschichte 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). 51. Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). 52. Cf., e.g., Brown, Late Antiquity (concerning “Late Antiquity” as the result of transformations in the 2nd to 4th centuries); Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 ad (Prince- ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012) (a book that might be regarded an updated continuation of the former, focused on the Latin West from the 4th to 6th centuries); Michele R. Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002) (referring to the Roman aristocracy in the 4th century); Eduard Iricinschi and Holger Zellentin, “Making Selves and Marking Others: Identity and Late Antique Her- esiography,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. id., Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 119 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 1-27 (with respect to the blurred boundaries “orthodoxy” and “heresy” in late ancient religions). 53. Guy G. Stroumsa, The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). The concept of “Abrahamic religions,” though in itself not new, has been elaborated in the contributions to Adam J. Silverstein and Guy G. Stroumsa, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiq- uity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), including critical remarks by Rémi Brague, “The Concept of the Abrahamic Religions, Problems and Pitfalls,” ibid., 88-105. 54. Guy G. Stroumsa, “Athens, Jerusalem and Mekka: The Patristic Crucible of the Abrahamic Religions,” Studia Patristica 62 (2013): 153-168 (the printed version of his opening lecture to the Oxford Patristics Conference in 2011). THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 469 a philosopher, and a Christian.55 Concerning my previous thoughts on “Church History” and “History of Christianity,” I should mention that some scholars now prefer to speak of “Christianities” in the plural.56 Whether this is the solution or part of the problem stands to reason: it is certainly worth pondering whether there were plural “Christianizations” in Late Antiquity and beyond, as Hartmut Leppin argues57, but how do the obvious differences between Christian (and Jewish or Muslim) groups relate to the equally visible common traits which made such identities recognizable? Even if the edges of religious identities tended to become frayed (as long as there was no closure for an elitist in-group), the “brand core” – what Christianity makes distinct and recognizable – was still intact: by far, not all Christians did comply with the expectations of conducting a moral life which were time and again uttered in the catechumenate or in episcopal sermons, yet it remained unquestioned that being a Christian required to obey to such ethical demands and that Christians should in this way stand out in their city or village.58 Although something that is constructed does not necessarily lack any real-life basis, current research is informed by the fundamental insight that binary oppositions like “Christian / pagan” or “Christian / Jewish,” but also “orthodox / heretic” or “monastic / scholastic” do not simply mirror reality but shape and create realities.59 In the sources, they serve to “man- age Christian diversity,” thus Wolfgang Wischmeyer.60 The debate about the “parting of the ways” of Judaism and Christianity is a case in point: a longue durée of the emergence of this distinction until the 4th century has

55. See Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in Dispute: Disputational Litera- ture and the Rise of Anti-Judaism in the West (c. 1000-1150), Variorum Collected Studies Series 621 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); updated and supplemented in Anna Sapir Abu- lafia, “Theology and Education in Medieval Discourses between Christians and Jews,” in Theologie und Bildung im Mittelalter, ed. P. Gemeinhardt and T. Georges, Archa Verbi: Subsidia 13 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015), 93-111. 56. E.g., the ancient historian Hartmut Leppin, Die frühen Christen: Von den Anfängen bis Konstantin (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2018) (“Christentümer”). 57. Hartmut Leppin, “Christianisierungen im Römischen Reich,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 16 (2012): 245-276. In fact, this has already become visible by the valuable insights into local peculiarities of the conversion to Christianity which Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization c. 370-529, 2 vols., Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 115, 1-2 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 1993, 1994) has outlined. 58. See the comprehensive study of William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechu- menate, 2nd ed. (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2014) (focusing on Augustine but covering much more material). 59. Cf. the critical reflections upon such dichotomies by Maijastina Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures c. 360-430 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 11-54. 60. Wolfgang Wischmeyer, “A Christian? What’s That? On the Difficulty of Managing Christian Diversity in Late Antiquity,” Studia Patristica 34 (2001): 270-281. 470 PETER GEMEINHARDT been advocated by Daniel Boyarin, but also more cautious scholars like Judith Lieu and Tobias Nicklas61 remind us not to be too quick in assert- ing collective identities of religions in pre-modern times and to be careful not to model them according to modern perceptions of “religion.”62 Some scholars of Religion even tend to argue that there is no “religion” at all before modernity, since this notion, they claim, is only valid for post- enlightenment time and, additionally, heavily impregnated by its protestant inheritance.63 I do not share such an agnostic view:64 already in Late Antiquity, there are sufficient similarities between cults, practices, and intellectual reflections which not only modern researchers but already the contemporaries acknowledged. The Christian apologists and the pagan critics of Christianity in the first three centuries are a case in point: even if they reckoned the others’ “religion” as misled, they still sensed that the debate was about how to approach the Gods in the right manner! But certainly, Christianity was (and is) “a”, not “the” religion, and we should no longer echo Harnack who wrote that “he who knows this religion and its history, knows every religion.”65 Harnack wrote this in the midst of a debate about the establishment of chairs for “Religious Studies” without theological affiliations; famously, F. Max Müller had advertised a “History of Religions” on the basis of his conviction that “he who knows only one religion, knows no religion at all,”66 a claim which inside the Faculties of

61. Lieu, Identity; Tobias Nicklas, Jews and Christians? Second Century ‘Christian’ Perspectives on the ‘Parting of the Ways’, Annual Deichmann Lectures 2013 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). 62. Peter Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums aus dem Geist des Christentums: Fünf Vorlesungen zur Entstehung des rabbinischen Judentums, Tria Corda 6 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) has even advanced the provoking thesis of a “birth of Judaism out of Christianity.” 63. Thus Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2013) and Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016). 64. For a critical discussion, see Peter Gemeinhardt, “Education and Religion in Cultures of the Mediterranean and Its Environment from Ancient to Medieval Times and to the Classical Islam: Collaborative Research Centre at the University of Göttin- gen,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 4 (2017): 325-332, at 327, following Martin Riesebrodt, Cultus und Heilsversprechen: Eine Theorie der Religionen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007). 65. Adolf Harnack, “Die Aufgabe der theologischen Fakultäten und die allge- meine Religionsgeschichte,” in id., Reden und Aufsätze, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Gießen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1906), 159-187, at 168: “Wer diese Religion nicht kennt, kennt keine, und wer sie samt ihrer Geschichte kennt, kennt alle.” 66. Max F. Müller, Einleitung in die vergleichende Religionswissenschaft: Vier Vor- lesungen im Jahre MDCCCLXX an der Royal Institution in London gehalten; nebst zwei Essays „über falsche Analogien“ und „über Philosophie der Mythologie“, 2nd ed. (Strassburg: Trübner, 1876), 14: “Wer eine kennt, kennt keine.” THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 471

Theology was accepted by the “School of the History of Religion” at the beginning of the 20th century. Without any doubt, in these times and until recently, historical research may have suffered from confessional biases, but it is exaggerated to detect and unmask traditional Protestant (and Catholic) apologetics still today in the majority of contemporary research by Christian theologians.67 That within Christianity in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages theological discourses were conducted necessitates their careful analysis, but this does not render the question superfluous why these discourses were invented, elaborated, and transmitted. In short, neglecting this theological dimension in the sources implies the risk of missing an important historical point.

3. Social History Tightly connected to this focus on the formation and negotiation of religious identities is the next trend which I want to single out: the impact of social history and cultural anthropology on the History of Christianity. One might of course attribute the spread of Christianity throughout the ancient world to the Holy Spirit and to the powerful preaching of the Apostles (as Luke-Acts suggest), but researchers (since Harnack’s ground-breaking study on the mission and spread of Christi- anity in its early centuries)68 have also employed sociological, even sta- tistic methods in order to explain the successful mission of Christianity. In The Rise of Christianity, the sociologist Rodney Stark has calculated with a quantitative growth of 40 percent each decade, drawing upon analogies to modern religious movements like the Mormons or Moonies.69 Surely, religious developments do not proceed mechanically; one has to take into account epidemics, persecutions and oscillating inclinations to a belief system like the Christian one. But still one gets an impression of the irresistible spread of the new faith within “a world

67. As Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christi- anities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion 14 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 34, 86-87, et passim suggests. 68. Adolf Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 2 vols., 4th ed. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924). 69. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. 3-13 for his conceptional approach. His book has been much debated in the English-speaking world; cf. the discussion by Todd E. Klutz, Keith Hopkins and Elizabeth A. Castelli and Stark’s energetic reply in Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 162-267 and, for the German- speaking context, the review by Adolf M. Ritter, “Zwanzig Jahre Alte Kirche in Forschung und Darstellung: I. Zugänge,” Theologische Rundschau 69 (2004): 424-451, at 430-437 (with much praise but also with some critical questions). 472 PETER GEMEINHARDT full of Gods,” thus Keith Hopkins,70 and, moreover, it becomes possible to explain why Christianity, in the 3rd century, was already so deeply intertwined with the Greco-Roman world that imperial persecutions, despite all efforts, did not succeed in suppressing it. Especially the refusal of many people to join this religion exclusively and leave all other cults behind – mirrored by the complaints of many bishops about, so to speak, “part-time Christians” in their flock – is det- rimental to statistics! The notion of semichristiani is used, among others, by Augustine71 and John Chrysostom who complains about “half-Chris- tians” (ἐξ ἡμισείας),72 while Ambrose refers to certain members of the Roman senate as aliqui nomine Christiani, “some who are only nominally Christians.”73 This polemical perspective is still uncritically reproduced in studies of the 1970s,74 while Pierre Chuvin, twenty years later, comments upon Pope Gelasius’ accusations about perfidious and corrupt Romans whom he reckoned “neither pagans nor Christians”75: “Those men … in my view were Christians who did not question their faith.”76 Accordingly, Maijastina Kahlos uses the category of incerti in order to describe this phenomenon unpolemically.77 One must not go so far as

70. Keith Hopkins, A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Roman Empire (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999). 71. Augustine, Contra Faustum Manichaeum 1.3. 72. John Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam ad Philippos 1.1; see Laurence Brot- tier, L’appel des “demi-chrétiens” à la “vie Angelique”. Jean Chrysostome prédicateur: entre idéal monastique et réalité mondaine (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2005) and Christoph Mark- schies, “Der Heilige Chrysostomus und die ‘Halbchristen’,” Revista Teologică n.s. 17 (2007): 247-267. For Antioch in the late 4th century and the sermons of John Chrys- ostom see also Emmanuel Soler, “Les ‘démi-chrétiens’ d’Antioche: la pédagogie de l’exclusivisme chrétien et ses ressorts dans la prédication chrysostomienne,” in Le pro- blème de la christianisation du monde antique, ed. H. Inglebert, S. Destephen, and B. Dumézil (Paris: Picard, 2010), 281-292. 73. Ambrose of Milan, Epistula 72.8. 74. See, e.g., Winfried Daut, “Die ‘halben Christen’ unter den Konvertiten und Gebildeten des 4. und 5. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religions wissenschaft 55 (1971): 171-188. 75. Gelasius, Epistula 100.19: nec Christiani nec pagani, ubique perfidi nusquam fideles, ubique corrupti nusquam integri. 76. Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, Revealing Antiquity 4 (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), ET of: id., Chronique des derniers païens: La disparition du paganisme dans l’Empire romain, du règne de Constantin à celui de Jus- tinien (Paris: Les belles lettres, 1990), 24. 77. See, e.g., Maijastina Kahlos, “Incerti in Between – Moments of Transition and Dialogue in Christian Apologetics,” Parola del Passato 59 (2004): 5-24; and Kahlos, Debate, 30-34. For boundary-making in pre-Constantinian Christianity (which reflects the difficulties with creating exclusivity), see Christine Mühlenkamp, “Nicht wie die Heiden”: Studien zur Grenze zwischen christlicher Gemeinde und paganer Gesellschaft in vorkonstantinischer Zeit, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum: Ergänzungsbände, Kleine Reihe 3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2008). THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 473

Kocku von Stuckrad who, in a pointed conceptual article, denied the differentiation between “Christians” and “pagans” as applicable to Late Antiquity in general.78 Certainly, there were people who viewed themselves as belonging to a Christian community, and there were criteria to establish who was admitted to the eucharist and who was not. It is however another question whether everyone who attended worship did this with a clear consciousness of the exclusivity of the devotion to Christ and the Church which bishops kept demanding from their flock. It seems appropriate to reckon with plural strategies of participation in the Church’s life – and again, this is without doubt also relevant in the Mid- dle Ages with its only seemingly monolithic Corpus Christianum, always facing lay movements and new emergences of monastic orders,79 critics of the papacy, and theologians with innovative thoughts like Peter Lom- bard whose teachings first were, in part, classified as heterodox but eventually became the gold standard of theological instruction for centuries.80 According to Stark (and many others), women were central to this process of an accelerated growth of Christianity.81 Women had for long been active in the religious education of their children and now took over this task with regard to Christian belief and practice.82 Apologists claimed that in Christian communities, not only the learned and the rich were allowed to raise their voices but also poor people, slaves, and women, who otherwise were silent in public discourse. It is difficult to assess the verac- ity of such claims to the role of women83 or to prove that social milieus

78. Kocku von Stuckrad, “‘Christen’ und ‘Nichtchristen’ in der Antike: Von religiös konstruierten Grenzen zur diskursorientierten Religionswissenschaft,” in Haire- sis: Festschrift Karl Hoheisel, ed. M. Hutter, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum: Ergänzungsband 34 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2002), 184-202. 79. See, from a sociological point of view, Lutz Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in Medieval Religious Communities (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). 80. Clare Monagle, Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Religious Dis- course: Peter Lombard’s ‘Sentences’ and the Development of Theology, Europa Sacra 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) lucidly traces the contemporary criticism on Lombard’s Christology and his elevation to the teacher of theology par excellence by the 4th Lateran Council in 1215. 81. Stark, Rise, 95-128. 82. For a comparative view of classical Athens and Christian Late Antiquity, see Maria Munkholt Christensen and Irene Salvo, “Die Familie als Ort religiöser Bildung,” in “Das Paradies ist ein Hörsaal für die Seelen”: Institutionen religiöser Bildung in his- torischer Perspektive, ed. P. Gemeinhardt and I. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Studies in Education and Religion in Ancient and Pre-Modern History in the Mediterranean and Its Environs 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 177-200 (with discussion of previous studies). 83. Elizabeth A. Clark, “Thinking with Women: the Uses of the Appeal to ‘Woman’ in Pre-Nicene Christian Propaganda Literature,” in The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries. Essays in Explanation, ed. W. V. Harris, Columbia Studies in 474 PETER GEMEINHARDT were indeed neglected in pre-Constantinian Christianity; most probably, reality was less spectacular, and one should be cautious to take such claims at face-value.84 After all, pre-modern history has nearly exclusively been written by male writers, and we only have dramatically few original texts left over by women (with the notable exception of Hildegard of Bingen and a handful other female mystical theologians in medieval times). But still, Christianity stood out in this world as a highly variegated social entity. If Ramsay MacMullen speaks of “two kinds of Christian- ity,” “the established Church” and “the second Church” which, in his view, is “the Christianity of the many” which were “doing their own thing”85 in the catacombs, he is surely exaggerating. But during the last decades there has been an increase of awareness that the History of Christianity cannot be written on grounds of literary texts alone. Such texts mostly witness to the worldview of the happy few who were educated: bishops, theologians, monks, or school-masters. In contrast, the religious practice of the not so happy many who remained illiterate can and must be revealed by scrutinizing other kinds of sources. Thus, social history leads to “material Christianity,” that is, to an approach to the sources which pays due attention to inscriptions, non-literary texts, images, buildings or remainders thereof, and the like. It is all the more regrettable that the ties of Church History and (Christian) Archaeology have loosened. The question is not only whether institutional developments like the rise of the papacy correspond to contemporary styles of building churches; even more important is the observation that religious practice on the level of everyday life is mainly accessible in material remains like objects of piety, images and icons, or clothing (which then the Classical Tradition 27 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2005), 43-51, at 43 assumes (with explicit reference to Harnack and Stark) “that the extant literature (sc. of the first three Christian centuries) reveals more about the rhetorical and other functions that the appeal to ‘woman’ served in the early Christian (male) imagination than it does about the activities of actual women.” 84. The in-depth study of Christian social history in the city of Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries by Peter Lampe, Die stadtrömischen Christen in den ersten beiden Jahr hunderten: Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2nd series 18, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989; ET: From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003) has proven exemplary for the possibilities and limitations of inves- tigations into the social history of earliest Christianity; for a critical discussion, see Georg Schöllgen, “Probleme der frühchristlichen Sozialgeschichte: Einwände gegen Peter Lampes Buch über ‘Die stadtrömischen Christen in den ersten zwei Jahrhunderten’,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 32 (1989): 23-40. 85. Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400, Writings from the Greco-Roman World Supplement Series 1 (Atlanta GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 105, 107 and 111. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 475 could be interpreted allegorically and thus “re-theologized”). Taking this into account enables us to analyse Christianity as an “embedded” religion,86 deeply intertwined with social, political, and cultural traditions of its local surroundings while, in Late Antiquity, still impregnated by the view that Christianity is never only the religion of this very city or landscape. The many layers of “Romanness” are a case in point – does this refer to the city, the empire or the idea of romanitas? And what did change when Romani became Ῥωμαῖοι – and what remained the same?87 Taken together, these approaches from the angle of social history and cultural anthropology have perhaps generated more questions than the sources will help us to answer; gender issues are a striking example of this.88 But in any case, there will be more, other, and perhaps better questions, if at the cost of such a traditional idea that, as said, the mission of the Church was successful in the first line because of the power of the word of the missionaries and its divine authorization.89 That “the

86. The term “embedded religion” was coined by Robert Parker, “Greek Reli- gion,” in The Oxford History of the Classical World, ed. J. Boardman, J. Griffin, and O. Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 254-274, at 265; for a critical account of its spread throughout classical scholarship see Brent Nongbri, “Dislodging ‘Embedded’ Religion: A Brief Note on a Scholarly Trope,” Numen 55 (2008): 440-460. 87. For a reflection upon these transformations, see the contributions in Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, Cinzia Grifoni, and Marianne Pollheimer-Mohaupt, eds., Transformations of Romanness: Early Medieval Regions and Identities, Millennium-Studien 57 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2018). 88. For a balanced account of possibilities and problems, see Gilian Clark, Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 3-4. Her book uses Christian as well as non-Christian material in order to draw a multifaceted picture of women’s lives and activities in Late Antiquity. Karen J. Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) aims at the same for early Christianity, but due to the scarcity of sources, many of her conclusions remain hypothetical and are sometimes way too optimistic. 89. A promising approach in order to analyse the dissemination of ideas and the spread of religious beliefs has been made by applying social network theory to early and late ancient Christianity; see L. Michael White, ed., Social Networks in the Early Chris- tian Environment: Issues and Methods for Social History, Semeia 56 (Atlanta GA: Scholars Press, 1992), containing programmatic papers of the editor himself: “Finding the Ties that Bind: Issues from Social Description,” ibid., 3-22 and “Social Networks: Theo- retical Orientation and Historical Application,” ibid., 23-36, and a lucid case study in the late ancient debates about Origen: Elizabeth Clark, “Elite Networks and Heresy Accusations: Towards a Social Description of the Origenist Controversy,” ibid., 79-117. Noteworthy is also the analysis of Theodoret’s networks in Adam M. Schor, Theodoret’s People: Social Networks and Religious Conflict in Late Roman Syria, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 48 (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 2011). More recent publications are discussed in the introduction to Carmen A. Cvetković and Peter Gemeinhardt, eds., Episcopal Networks in Late Antiquity: Connection and Communication across Boundaries, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 137 (Berlin and Bos- ton, MA: De Gruyter, 2019), 1-16. 476 PETER GEMEINHARDT word became flesh” (John 1:14) may be a hint that there were more down-to-earth issues at stake. To put it somewhat as anaphorism: the Lord himself may have ascended to heaven, but Christianity is still (and will be) an inner-worldly phenomenon. To investigate the social life and the cultural embeddedness of Christianity in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (and beyond) is thus nothing “un-theological” but does justice to the very object of historical inquiry. The history of Christian- ity has not only an auxiliary function (Karl Barth famously called it a “Hilfswissenschaft”)90 but is an integral part of theology, if the latter is more than an abstract system of thoughts without human agents with human predilections and patterns of behaviour!91

4. Practices of Piety Integrating methods of social historical research into the study of pre- modern Christianity is however not to deny the impact of “power and persuasion” (Peter Brown).92 Materiality and discursivity go hand in hand: buildings, images, and other material remainders may be regarded as speaking for themselves, but only to him or her who is able to deci- pher stones, wood, colour, and the like. At least, in Christian contexts, material structures and the spoken word (preserved in writing, in material form) interact with each other when it comes to practices of piety. Even when the faithful are not able to read themselves, still short biblical texts on small pieces of parchment or papyrus were used as amulets, thus the written word as such is viewed as a sacred object; and images in ecclesiastical buildings correspond to biblical stories and the lives of the martyrs and saints. In a widely illiterate world, one should only reckon

90. Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, vol. I.1 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1932), 3: “Die sogenannte Kirchengeschichte antwortet auf keine selbständig zu stellende Frage hinsichtlich der christlichen Rede von Gott und ist darum nicht als selbständige theologische Disziplin aufzufassen.” It should be noted that Barth called Church History “die unentbehrliche [sic!] Hilfswissenschaft der Theologie” (ibid.): theology proper cannot do without this historical perspective! 91. For my own point of view of the contribution of History of Christianity to Theology as a whole and of writing history within the framework of theological discourse, see Peter Gemeinhardt, “Ernüchterung – Erfahrung – Orientierung: ‘Geschichte’ als Gegenstand und Horizont der Geschichte des Christentums,” in Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie, vol. XXXII: Geschichte, ed. E. Gräb-Schmidt and V. Leppin (Leipzig: Evan- gelische Verlagsanstalt, 2020 [forthcoming]). 92. Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992) has applied these notions fruitfully in order to analyse the transformations of the Roman empire in Late Antiquity. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 477 with images as a crucial means to communicate religious beliefs and identity markers, while symbols were always open to different interpreta- tions: the sun could serve as a philosophical image of unity but also as a sign of imperial power or as a christological argument.93 Therefore, materiality, visuality and rhetoric overlap in a complex ensemble which is, naturally, only partially preserved: the ‘actors’ and their voices are missing.94 In turn, rhetoric (in the narrower, technical sense or in the wider sense of religious speech-acts in general)95 has to be viewed in context, be it the Christian schools of philosophy which adapted patterns of argumentation from the Second Sophistic,96 be it Christian preaching in Late Antiquity as part of the complex staging of the worship for Christ and the veneration of the saints,97 be it processions and passion plays of the Middle Ages which took over the task of instructing the people. While erudite commentaries on the Bible and sophisticated treatises on theological topics are peculiar for Christian theology and the Quaestiones quodlibetales by way of which scholastic masters demonstrated their rhetorical and theological abilities to the public have for long been in the focus of research, in pre-modern times (and beyond) we have to pay attention to performativity, spatiality, and (as said above) materiality when it comes to practices of piety. These dimensions have – very schematically – either been neglected by church historians or analysed without relating them to elaborate theological utterances. Thus, even if practice is not all, Arnold Angenendt’s

93. This is shown by Martin Wallraff, Christus Verus Sol: Sonnenverehrung und Christentum in der Spätantike, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum: Ergänzungsbände 32 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2001), employing a great variety of source materials. 94. For Christian art and its contexts, see Robin M. Jensen, “Material Evidence (2): Visual Culture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Ashbrook Harvey and Hunter, 104-119, esp. 113-116; recently Robin M. Jensen and Mark D. Ellison, The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art (London and New York: Routledge, 2018); for an understanding of the interrelation between Christian art and cult until the end of the Middle Ages remains indispensable: Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), ET of: Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst, 7th ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2011). 95. See now Christian Tornau, “Rhetorik,” Reallexikon für Antike und Christen- tum 29 (2018): 1-94. 96. For the notion of ‘school’, see Tobias Georges, “‘… herrlichste Früchte ech- tester Philosophie …’ – Schulen bei Justin und Origenes, im frühen Christentum sowie bei den zeitgenössischen Philosophen,” Millennium: Jahrbuch zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr. 11 (2014): 23-38. 97. Most recently and comprehensively: Anthony Dupont, Shari Boodts, Gert Partoens, and Johan Leemans, eds., Preaching in the Patristic Era: Sermons, Preachers, and Audiences in the Latin West (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2018). 478 PETER GEMEINHARDT

Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter98 witnesses to a “practical turn” which focuses no longer only on clerical actions but also includes aspects of concrete ‘religiousness’ which cohered more or less with official guidelines – in most cases, without bothering oneself much with being ‘heterodox’ or ‘deviant’.99 The martyr cult is a case in point: from the mid-2nd century onwards, the veneration of martyrs and other saints flourished.100 The much debated (episcopal and then papal) regulations which resulted in a formalized can- onization process only witness to the need of enclosing popular piety in the borders of the cult administered by bishops and clerics – which in turn presupposes that there was much more attraction of martyrs and saints than bishops could control.101 Martyrs and saints – from the early Egyptian hermits and the holy men (and even fools) of late antique Syria to the mer- rymaking on St. Nicholas’ day – were reckoned capable of transcending social boundaries.102 For the emergence of the Christian perception of holiness in Late Antiquity, again the studies of Peter Brown have proven seminal,103 though he later revised his model of the “holy men” in favour of a more functional model of saintly authority.104 Of equal importance was his brilliant book on “The Body and Society” which laid out the Chris-

98. Arnold Angenendt, Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter, 4th ed. (Darm- stadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009). 99. For the problematic notion of ‘heresy’ in the Middle Ages, see Malcolm Lam- bert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). 100. An overview is provided by George Ferzoco, “Hagiography: Medieval Times and Reformation Era,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 10 (2015): 1159-1163 and id., “Holiness: Christianity: Medieval and Reformation Era,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 12 (2016): 61-64. That the protestant reformers were not only critical of the veneration of saints but also initiated a productive reception of earlier saints (complemented by martyrs of the Reformation) is shown by Robert Kolb, For All the Saints: Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood in the Lutheran Reformation (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987). 101. Cf. André Vauchez, La sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge: D’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques, Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 241 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1981); ET: Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 102. For the origin and tradition of the legends of St. Nicholas, see Adam C. Eng- lish, The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus: The True Life and Trials of Nicholas of Myra (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012). 103. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christian- ity (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1981; 2nd, enlarged ed. 2015) and id., Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: The University of California Press, 1982). 104. Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 479 tian discourse on asceticism.105 Asceticism as another major trend of scholarship would deserve a fuller treatment which is not possible within the limits of this article.106 Let me just note that ascetics (in Christianity but also in other religions) lived within the secular sphere, even if detached from it like the desert hermits or medieval recluses, but they interfered with the ‘world’ on a regular basis, as is already visible in Antony the Great’s visits to the ‘outer mountain’ in order to meet monks, laymen, or state officials, and his retirement to the ‘inner mountain’ where he could, so to speak, recharge his ascetics batteries.107 Ascetics did not stop their encounter with other people when they died, quite the contrary: they became addressees of prayers and, as members of the community as saints who were believed to dwell in heaven, were expected to bring them forward before the throne of God. In a recent book Robert Bartlett asks, “Why can the Dead Do such Great Things?”108 In fact, he mainly treats the question of “how”; but he does so in a highly illuminative manner: how could Christians get in touch with their heavenly intercessors? This is a theological question, but also a very practical one, since immediately rituals, prayers, and media (from amulets to icons) come to the fore.109 And last but not least, it is an economical issue, concerning the costs of pilgrimages, the amount of donations and finally the tariffs of indulgences (but this early modern debate does no more belong to the period which the organizers of the celebration had wisely assigned to their Protestant guest!).

5. Theology Doesn’t theology play a smaller role in our field nowadays? Certainly, it still does, but here too some qualifications are in order. Fifty years ago, the

105. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (London: faber & faber, 1988); but see the critical reflections of Averil Cameron, “On Defining the Holy Man,” in The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown, ed. J. D. Howard-John- ston and P. A. Hayward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 27-44. 106. One of the milestones of recent discussion of asceticism was Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 107. Cf. Athanasius, Vita Antonii 85.3-4 with Apophthegmata Patrum Antony 10 (PG 65.77bc). 108. Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Wor- shippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 2013); his book outdoes in scope (but not in the precision of argument) the study of Vauchez, La sainteté. 109. For rituals and beliefs concerning death in early Christianity, see Ulrich Volp, Tod und Ritual in den christlichen Gemeinden der Antike, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 65 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2002). 480 PETER GEMEINHARDT

history of theology or dogma (‘Dogmengeschichte’) was flourishing, not in the least due to the ecumenical encounter of Roman Catholic and Protes- tant scholars with Orthodox theologians. Also among Chalcedonian and Oriental Orthodoxies, a dialogue was established which eventually led to the Christological agreement of Chambésy 1990;110 the former necessitated intensified research into the Fathers of Trinitarian Dogma (which also had a significant impact on systematic Trinitarian theology).111 During the 90s, in Germany alone several monographs112 addressed such issues, while the pre-history of these debates, the so-called “Monarchianism,” had been put in the foreground by the seminal work of Reinhard Hübner who argued that this search for a concept of God based on his μοναρχία even was the mainstream of 2nd century theology.113 This interest in the history of

110. Cf. André de Halleux, “Actualité du néochalcédonisme: Un accord chris- tologique récent entre Orthodoxes,” Revue théologique de Louvain 21 (1990): 32-54 and id., “Orthodoxes Orientaux en dialogues,” Irénikon 64 (1991): 332-357; Dorothea Wendebourg, “Chalkedon in der ökumenischen Diskussion,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 92 (1995): 207-237. 111. For the 4th century, the magisterial account of Richard P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318-381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988) has found an innovative successor with Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Modern appropriations of patristic Trinitarian approaches (namely of the Cappadocians and Augustine, whether by contrasting or combining them) have been pondered in many books and papers; overarching perspectives offer collected volumes like Christoph Schwöbel, ed., Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995) and Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, eds., The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); a comprehensive account of the state of the art is provided by Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 112. Jörg Ulrich, Die Anfänge der abendländischen Rezeption des Nizänums, Patris- tische Texte und Studien 39 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1994); Christoph Markschies, Ambrosius von Mailand und die Trinitätstheologie: Kirchen- und theologiege- schichtliche Studien zu Antiarianismus und Neunizänismus bei Ambrosius und im lateini schen Westen (364-381 n. Chr.), Beiträge zur Historischen Theologie 90 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995); cf. also id., Alta Trinità Beata: Gesammelte Studien zur altkirchli- chen Trinitätstheologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000); Volker H. Drecoll, Die Entwicklung der Trinitätslehre des Basilius von Cäsarea: Sein Weg vom Homöusianer zum Neonizäner, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 66 (Göttingen: Vanden- hoeck & Ruprecht, 1996); Holger Strutwolf, Die Trinitätstheologie und Christologie des Euseb von Caesarea: Eine dogmengeschichtliche Untersuchung seiner Platonismusrezeption und Wirkungsgeschichte, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 72 (Göttin- gen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999). 113. See Reinhard M. Hübner, Der paradox Eine: Antignostischer Monarchianis- mus im zweiten Jahrhundert. Mit einem Beitrag von Markus Vinzent, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 50 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 1999); additional studies are now conveniently accessible in Reinhard M. Hübner, Kirche und Dogma im Werden: Aufsätze zur Geschichte und Theologie des frühen Christentums, ed. R. Kany, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 108 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017). THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 481

dogmatic theology has, at least in German-speaking research, significantly ceased in the new Millennium, while the Anglophone world still produces a steady flow of monographs on more or less limited issues of Trinitarian doctrine.114 Attention was also paid to Arius as a Christian philosopher in his own right – I just name the brilliant book of Rowan Williams on Arius115 – and the Homoian theologians.116 Another former heretic who became the subject of many books but also to a series of conferences was Origen with, to date, twelve congresses since the 1970s. Other examples could be added from the Middle Ages where the lifting of the condemnations of 1054 at the end of the Second Vatican Council provoked thorough research into the relationships of Byzantium and Rome and their contro- versies about icons, the filioque, and the papacy.117 As it seems, the ecumenical climate was favourable for research into historical theology. While there is still a steady flow of books, papers, and conferences on theological topics, I would however register some changes. First of all, there is a shift in attitude: former heretics are viewed as participants in theological discourse, even if they did not succeed with their opinions. Like Arius, recently Apollinaris of Laodicea has received more extensive

114. I just mention the studies of Ayres, Nicaea and Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001) on the 4th century debates, as well as Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) on Augustine. 115. Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 2nd ed. (London: SCM, 1987). The state of the question is documented in Guido M. Berndt and Roland Stein- acher, eds., Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014). 116. Esp. Hanns Christof Brennecke, Studien zur Geschichte der Homöer: Der Osten bis zum Ende der homöischen Reichskirche, Beiträge zur Historischen Theologie 73 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988); a survey of the beginnings and later spread of the Homoian theology is provided by Uta Heil, “The Homoians,” in Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, ed. G. M. Berndt and R. Steinacher (Burlington, VT: Ash- gate, 2014), 85-115. 117. Cf. esp. Henry Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church: From Apostolic Times Until the Council of Florence, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). For a recent account of these debates (deriving from a conference at Leuven in 2012 and covering the period from the 8th to the 15th centuries), see Peter Gemeinhardt, “The Dynamics of Mutual Condemnations in the Filioque Controversy from the Carolingian Era to the Late Middle Ages,” Ephe- merides Theologicae Lovanienses 91 (2015): 201-222. The iconoclast controversy is masterly analyzed in Thomas F. X. Noble, “Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians” (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); for the Filioque question see Peter Gemeinhardt, Die Filioque-Kontroverse zwischen Ost- und Westkirche im Frühmit- telalter, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 82 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2002); on the issue of authority in the debate between East and West throughout the history of Christianity, cf. A. Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and His- tory of a Debate (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 482 PETER GEMEINHARDT scholarly attention,118 and the same goes for many so-called “Miaphys- ites” and “Nestorians.”119 Especially the notion of “Gnostic” or “Gnosti- cism” has come under fire. On the one hand, this is due to the complex variety of texts and genres which have been summarized as “gnostic” – some prefer to confine this category to a certain kind of theologizing (thus David Brakke)120 or do away with “Gnostics” at all because this is too dubious a category (thus Michael Williams and Karen King).121 On the other hand, it has become clear that those who were defamed as “Gnostics” by Irenaeus of Lyons and other contempories were not out- siders but, at least initially, groups within Christian communities. Valen tinus, blamed as school-head of the “Valentinians,” is even known to have applied for the position as bishop of Rome!122 Of course he failed and left in an angry mood (according to Tertullian), but the story indicates that the clear difference of “orthodox” and “heretic” has given way to a plurality of ways of doing theology.

118. Cf. Silke-Petra Bergjan, Benjamin Gleede, and Martin Heimgartner, eds., Apollinarius und seine Folgen, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 93 (Tübin- gen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). 119. On the debate after Chalcedon see Carl Laga, Joseph A. Munitiz, and Lucas Van Rompay, eds., After Chalcedon: Studies in Theology and Church History Offered to Professor Albert Van Roey for His Seventieth Birthday, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 18 (Leuven: Peeters, 1985); and Alois Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2.1: The Development of the Discussion about Chalcedon from 451 to the Beginning of the Reign of Justinian (London: Mowbray, 1987), ET of id., Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche, vol. 2.1: Das Konzil von Chalcedon – Rezeption und Widerspruch (451-518), 2nd ed. (Freiburg, Basel, and Vienna: Herder, 1991); on the emergence of the miaphysite tradition (and the notion of μία φύσις itself) see Christian Lange, Mia energeia: Unter- suchungen zur Einigungspolitik des Kaisers Heraclius und des Patriarchen Sergius von Con- stantinopel, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 66 (Tübingen: Mohr Sie- beck, 2012); on the ‘Nestorian’ tradition, see Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler, The Church of the East: A Concise History (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), ET of Die Apostolische Kirche des Ostens: Geschichte der sogenannten Nestorianer (Klagenfurt: Kitab, 2000); and Hermann Teule, Les Assyro-chaldéens: Chrétiens d’Iran, de Turquie et d’Irak, Fils d’Abraham 30 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 39-58. 120. David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); in his perception, only “Sethian” gnosticism qualifies fully for this classification. 121. Michael A. Williams, Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); similarly Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2003) with an outline of the methodological consequences for writing the history of ancient religions: ibid., 218-236. The debate is so far summarized in Einar Thomassen and Jaan Lahe, “Gnosis, Gnosti- cism,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 10 (2015): 341-369, at 341-343; see also the papers in Christoph Markschies and Johannes van Oort, eds., Zugänge zur Gnosis, Patristic Studies 12 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013). 122. Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos 4.1. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 483

Therefore, besides doctrinal positions, the production, transmission and codification of theology have to be taken fully into account. Chris- toph Markschies, in his ‘prolegomena’ to early Christian theology, includes the biblical canon, liturgy, and institutions of education as institutions; for the 2nd century, he suggests to speak of a “laboratory.”123 Others have scrutinized the functioning of synods and the discrete charm of ecclesiastical bureaucracy.124 Biblical exegesis had always found interest in patristic studies as such,125 but its impact on classical and Christian culture remains to be analysed in full breadth and depth.126 The intercon- nection of theology and education has been investigated, e.g., with regard to the Syriac school-tradition of Edessa and Nisibis.127 Attention has also been paid to the emergence of universities in medieval Europe which was preluded by a time of coexistence and conflict of monastic and episcopal schools and free-lance teachers of arts, philosophy, and theology. Russell Friedman has masterly scrutinized the media and methods of producing scholastic summae in the High Middle Ages and has shown that having a look at Thomas Aquinas is not enough to understand the complexity and dynamics of this field which, at first glance, might seem extremely

123. Christoph Markschies, Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institu- tionen: Prolegomena zu einer Geschichte der antiken christlichen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 380f. 124. For an analysis of 4th-century synods, see Uta Heil and Annette von Stock- hausen, eds., Die Synoden im trinitarischen Streit: Über die Etablierung eines synodalen Verfahrens und die Probleme seiner Anwendung im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert, Texte und Untersuchungen 177 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2017). Thomas Graumann, “Theologische Diskussion und Entscheidung auf Synoden: Verfahrensformen und -erwartungen,” in Die Synoden im trinitarischen Streit, ed. Heil and von Stockhausen, 51-81 as well as id., “Synodale Praxis und administratives Handeln in der spätantiken Kirche: Einige Schlaglichter,” in Was ist Kirche in der Spätantike?, ed. Gemeinhardt, 117-143 has significantly advanced our knowledge of the synodal procedures and the factors of their (dys-)functionality. 125. Comprehensively documented in Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patris- tic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2006). 126. See the pioneering book of Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the For- mation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); that there was no one-way road from pagan rhetorics to Christian exegesis but a lively interaction was already demonstrated in Frances M. Young, “The Rhetorical Schools and Their Influence on Patristic Exegesis,” in The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, ed. R. Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 182-199. 127. See Han J. W. Drijvers, “The School of Edessa: Greek Learning and Local Culture,” in Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East, ed. J. W. Drijvers and A. A. MacDonald, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 61 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 1995), 49-59; Adam H. Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); most recently Ute Possekel, “Selbstverständnis und Bildungsauftrag der Schule von Nisibis,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 19 (2015): 104-136. 484 PETER GEMEINHARDT detached from the lively encounter of scholars; the contrary is the case!128 In an edited volume on “Theology and Education in the Middle Ages,”129 Tobias Georges and I have collected insights in what my colleague in Medieval History at Göttingen, Frank Rexroth, names a “scientific revolution” in his recent book on “Cheerful Scholastics.”130 Brief: the debate has shifted from doctrinal differences to the shared or debated precondi- tions of defining doctrine. To name just an example which certainly is not unknown at Leuven: Augustine and Julian of Aeclanum held different opinions on human nature, original sin, and divine predestination, but they shared an educational background: the schools of grammar and rhetoric. When Augustine named Julian a “philosopher just for show”131 and the latter countered with “Aristotle of the Punic people,”132 this hints at the cultural tradition and the rhetorical weapons which Christians had appropriated in school but also reveals a common uncertainty how to justify this use of the “pagan” education with which Christian discourse was deeply impregnated.133 For this discourse, Averil Cameron has coined the term “rhetoric of paradox.”134 An aspect that has only recently come to the fore is that monastic education was much more indebted to secular education than hitherto acknowledged. Researchers have for a long time been convinced that Antony the Great refused to attend school and “learn letters.”135 Yet, in contrast to Athanasius’ Antony in the Life, in his Letters the hermit appears

128. Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University: The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian Theology among the Franciscans and Domin- icans, 1250-1350, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 108/1-2 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013). 129. Gemeinhardt and Georges, eds., Theologie und Bildung im Mittelalter. 130. Frank Rexroth, Fröhliche Scholastik: Die Wissenschaftsrevolution des Mittel alters (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2018). The starting point of such inquiries is in many cases Anselm of Canterbury; the knowledge of his biography has been greatly advanced by Richard W. Southern, St. Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), while his theological indebtedness to the Patristic period (to Augustine but also to Greek writers) has been highlighted by Giles E. M. Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 131. Augustine, Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 6.18.1: qui valde acutus, et eruditus, et philosophaster, et dialecticus vult videri. 132. Julian of Aeclanum, Ad Florum = Augustine, Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 3.199: Aristoteles poenorum. 133. For the Latin West in the 4th to 6th centuries, this story has been told in Peter Gemeinhardt, Das lateinische Christentum und die antike pagane Bildung, Studien und Texte zum antiken Christentum 41 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). 134. Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse, Sather Classical Lectures 55 (Berkeley, CA: The University of Cali- fornia Press, 1991), 155-188. 135. Athanasius, Vita Antonii 1.2. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 485 as a skilled philosopher in the Origenian tradition, as Samuel Rubenson has shown,136 and Arthur Urbano has argued in great detail but also admi- rable scope that there are numerous parallels between philosophical (mostly neo-platonic) and Christian lives in what he calls the “late antique arena of competition.”137 In the wake of this discovery, further studies have revealed the dynamics of monastic education beyond Egypt,138 in Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor and in the West, especially in Gaul.139 While it has always been claimed that monasteries eventually became sanctuaries of ancient culture in the upheavals of what we nowadays call ‘ethnogenesis’ instead of ‘Völkerwanderung’, research into the institutional, sociological, and theological details of this functioning of monasteries has only begun, and this includes research on the more informal ways of learning as well as the employment of teaching methods which were known from the public schools.140 One could even term late ancient monasticism an educational movement: if anywhere, in the desert and the monasteries a specific Christian education took shape. Again, the importance of educated monks and nuns for the preservation, transmission and reconfiguration of educational ideals and practices connects the beginnings of the history of Christianity with its medieval continuation,141 not to the least with medieval mysticism and the devotio moderna – a field to which Leuven-based scholars made important contributions. Therefore, I want to finish this

136. Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995). Despite some sceptical voices, Ruben- son’s opinion has been widely accepted. 137. Arthur P. Urbano, The Philosophical Life: Biography and the Crafting of Intel- lectual Identity in Late Antiquity, Patristic Monograph Series 21 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013). 138. The state of the art is documented in Lilian I. Larsen and Samuel Rubenson, eds., Monastic Education in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Classical ‘Paideia’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 139. Cf. Martin Heinzelmann, “‘Studia Sanctorum’: Éducation, milieux d’instruction et valeurs éducatives dans l’hagiographie en Gaule jusqu’à la fin de l’époque mérovingienne,” in Haut Moyen-Age: Éducation, culture et société: Études offertes à Pierre Riché, ed. M. Sot (La Garenne-Colombes: Éditions Européennes ERASME, 1990), 105- 138, and Roberto Alciati, Monaci, vescovi e scuola nella Gallia tardoantica, Temi e testi 72 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2009). 140. See, e.g., Lilian I. Larsen, “Early Monasticism and the Rhetorical Tradition: Sayings and Stories as School Texts,” in Education and Religion in Late Antique Christi- anity, ed. Gemeinhardt, Van Hoof, Van Nuffelen, 13-33. 141. Here, further research can build upon the ground-breaking studies by Pierre Riché, Éducation et culture dans l’occident barbare: VIe-VIIIe siècles, Patristica Sorbonensia 4 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962, 4th ed., 1995); ET: Education and Culture in the Barbarian West: 6th through 8th centuries (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1978) and id., Les écoles et l’enseignement dans l’occident chrétien de la fin du 5e s. au milieu du 11e s. (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1979). 486 PETER GEMEINHARDT general survey of major trends in scholarship and turn to my final question: Where can we locate the contribution of Leuven within the trends of scholarship which have briefly been outlined?

IV. The Contribution of Leuven: Martyrs and Mystics – Theology and Practice

I suggest that we begin with the last two sections: practice of piety and theology. That is not to say this research unit had no taste for the comparative study of religions or the impact of social history on the investigation of theological doctrines or that Leuven scholars had no interest in asking questions across a long time span of the history of Christianity. Quite the contrary! There are colleagues at this Faculty whose research foci cover fif- teen centuries (from Augustine to the Second Vatican Council) or, still highly respectable, half a millennium (from the medieval mystics of the Low Countries to the Jesuit order in modern times), not to speak of Syriac studies where you always have to deal with history and present times in tandem. But from my point of view, the obvious strength of this Faculty’s research staff is that there are clearly defined topics around which many projects, publications, doctoral theses, and other activities crystallize and thus represent specific core competences of Leuven. Let me begin with a survey of such focal themes and come back to the aspect of interconnections later.142 Before embarking on this trip, I duly beg the reader’s understanding that I neither am able nor consider it helpful to support my general observations with exhaustive bibliographical references. Since this is not a review article but the polished version of a lecture on occasion of the celebration of fifty years successful teaching with the prospect of continuing it, there is no need to pile up titles and numbers. Again, I should like to stress that I will elaborate upon some aspects which stand out in this spectator’s eye, while I do not claim that there would be nothing else to be said.143

142. I will confine my observations strictly to the Research Unit ‘History of Church and Theology’. The history of the Faculty as a whole – in fact, the first 25 years after the reorganization and also since the inception of the International Studies Programme – is presented by Lieve Gevers and Leo Kenis, eds., De Faculteit Godgeleerdheid in de K.U. Leu- ven 1969-1995, Annua Nuntia Lovaniensia 39 (Leuven: Peeters, 1997). This volume provides also many insights into the previous history of the Faculty of Theology at Leuven; see also Ward De Pril and Johan Leemans, “Patristics in Belgium around 1911: Universities and Beyond,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 15 (2011): 140-162 for patristic research. 143. Ample bibliographical data of all researchers who are mentioned here is available on the respective personal sites at https://theo.kuleuven.be/en/research/researchers [last accessed on May 8th, 2019]. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 487

1. Augustine At first, of course, there is Augustine, the towering figure of late ancient Christian theology in the West and a special favourite of Leuven-based scholars for centuries144, during the time under consideration here initially incorporated by Tarcisius Jan van Bavel. It seems that there has been a real succession of three generations of scholars on Augustine, from Van Bavel to Mathijs Lamberigts and Anthony Dupont, each of them surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, that is, doctoral students, all of them prolific in writing and (increasingly) editing collected volumes. (The latter activity is typical for Leuven; the steady stream of collected volumes testifies to the eagerness to bring together people from different departments of this university and from other institutions.) Yet, I see shifts of emphasis in the course of time: Van Bavel had started with a dissertation on Augustine’s Christology145 but later became interested in his spirituality, in his perception of an individual and communal religious way of life – which is perhaps not surprising for an Augustinian monk. It is no coincidence that his last book deals with “Augustine’s Doctrine on Prayer.”146 But does he really write on doctrine or much rather on practice and the self in the encounter with God, for the book is titled “The Longing of the Heart”? Such a distinction might be mis- leading: in Augustine’s view, in prayer God’s grace is constantly at work,147 and grace is certainly a theological theme! In recent times, this has been the topic of Anthony Dupont’s magisterial study on “Augus- tine’s Sermones ad populum during the Pelagian Controversy”148 to which we will turn in the next section on preaching. Here, it should suffice to note that this young colleague is also following Van Bavel’s footsteps concerning the topic of prayer.149

144. See Mathijs Lamberigts and Leo Kenis, eds., L’Augustinisme à l’ancienne Faculté de théologie de Louvain, BETL 111 (Leuven: Peeters, 1994). 145. Tarcisius J. van Bavel, Recherches sur la christologie de saint Augustin: l’humain et le divin dans le Christ d’après saint Augustin, Paradosis 10 (Fribourg, Suisse: Éditions Universitaires, 1954) – his doctoral dissertation, submitted to the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. 146. Tarcisius J. van Bavel, The Longing of the Heart: Augustine’s Doctrine on Prayer (Leuven: Peeters, 2009; ET of Als je hart bidt…: Augustinus’ leer over het gebed (Heverlee-Leuven: Augustijns Historisch Instituut, 2001). 147. Some fine observations on the forceless necessity of being grateful to God are presented in Van Bavel, The Longing, 101-105. 148. Anthony Dupont, Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum during the Pelagian Controversy: Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights?, Brill’s Series in Church History 59 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013). 149. Anthony Dupont and Matthew Knotts, “Why Pray? Augustine of Hippo’s Multifaceted Doctrine of Prayer,” Journal of Early Christian History 5 (2015): 49-75. 488 PETER GEMEINHARDT

The question of grace in Augustine also connects to Mathijs Lam- berigts’ research on Augustine’s dispute with Julian of Aeclanum. Here, obviously, grace was permanently at stake,150 but there were other questions involved, not only ethics but also ecclesiastical authority151 and, as is well known, marriage and sexuality. Nobody is obliged to concur with Augustine’s view on concupiscentia carnis still today, but Lamberigts has convincingly argued that this topic must be seen in its theological framework. Augustine’s vision of sexuality can neither be excused as nor reduced to “that of an old and passionless man.”152 From the dynamics of this literary exchange of two able theologians, a vivid picture of the challenges of the time emerges: it was hard work to establish oneself as the towering authority of forthcoming Latin theology!153 In comparative perspective, this question has been tackled in an instructive volume on “Shaping Authority”154 in the LECTIO series with the telling subtitle “How did a person become an authority in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?” I just mention in passing that the participation of

150. See Mathijs Lamberigts, “Augustine’s View on Love as Grace in the Contro- versy with Julian of Aeclanum,” Augustiniana 64 (2014): 75-91. 151. Mathijs Lamberigts, “Augustine’s Use of Tradition in the Controversy with Julian of Aeclanum,” Augustiniana 60 (2010): 11-61; id., “Julian of Aeclanum’s Search for Rehabilitation with Nestorius, Ephesus, Celestine, Sixtus and Leo the Great,” in Giuliano d’Eclano e l’Hirpinia Christiana: Il Convegno internazionale Mirabella Eclano 23-25 settembre 2010, ed. Rocco Ronzani (Rome: Istituto Patristico “Augustinianum”; Avellino: Istituto Superiore di Scienze Religiose “G. Moscati”, 2012), 151-166; id., “Was Innocent Familiar with the Content of the Pelagian Controversy? A Study of His Answers to the Letters sent by the African Episcopacy,” in Scrinium Augustini: The World of Augustine’s Letters, ed. P. Nehring, M. Stróżyński, and R. Toczko, Instrumenta Patris- tica et Mediaevalia 76 (Turnhout: Brepols 2017), 203-223. 152. Mathjis Lamberigts, “A Critical Evaluation of Critiques of Augustine’s View of Sexuality,” in Augustine and his Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, ed. R. Dodaro and G. Lawless (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 176-197, at 182; see also id., “Augustine on Marriage: A Comparison of De bono coniugali and De nuptiis et concupiscentia,” Louvain Studies 35 (2011): 32-52. 153. See, e.g., Mathijs Lamberigts, “Was Augustine a Manichean? The Assessment of Julian of Aeclanum,” in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West: Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht Symposium of the International Association of Manichaean Studies, ed. J. van Oort, O. Wermelinger and G. Wurst, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 49 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2001), 113-136 on Julian’s accusation of his oppo- nent as a Manichee; id., “Competing Christologies: Julian and Augustine on Jesus Christ,” Augustinian Studies 36 (2005): 159-194; id., “Augustine on the Holy Spirit in the Controversy with Julian of Aeclanum,” in Spiritus et Littera: Beiträge zur Augustinus- Forschung: Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Cornelius Petrus Mayer OSA, ed. G. Förster, A. E. J. Grote and C. Müller, Res et Signa 6 = Cassiciacum 39.6 (Würzburg: Echter, 2009), 289-315 on the Christological and pneumatological dimension of this debate. 154. Shari Boodts, Johan Leemans, and Brigitte Meijns, eds., Shaping Authority: How Did a Person Become an Authority in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?, LECTIO: Studies in the Transmission of Texts and Ideas 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016). THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 489 scholars of the Research Unit on the History of Theology and the Church in different collaborative projects in the field of Arts and Humanities is remarkable as a lively expression of the desire to engage in interdisciplinary debate and, what must be reckoned inevitable today, to invent structures to provide a constant basis for such encounters. As it seems, scholars at Leuven are eager to turn this necessity into a virtue.

2. Preaching Now, following up my previous remark, how does especially a bishop become an authority? First of all, by being elected – it is to the merit of Johan Leemans and his co-editors that we have easy access to the intrica- cies of “Episcopal Elections in Late Antiquity” by a volume on this topic.155 But once elected, one has to prove one’s own abilities in exegesis, apologetics, and rhetoric. A large part of the bishop’s authority rests on his skills with the word, and ecclesiastical officeholders were at least implicitly expected to have such skills at their disposal.156 And in most cases, they successfully met these expectations! In my view, a highly impressive achievement of Leuven in recent times is precisely the research on such preaching, by in-depth inquiries and comparative studies, in order to draw a comprehensive and nuanced picture of the processes of communicating the faith and the respective ethics. There are on the one hand Johan Lee- mans’ studies on the Cappadocians’ homilies on martyrs, including a paper on the interplay of textuality and visuality under the nice title “Schoolrooms for Our Souls”157 and several studies on Gregory of Nyssa’s

155. Johan Leemans, Peter Van Nuffelen, Shawn Keough, and Carla Nicolaye, eds., Episcopal Elections in Late Antiquity, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 119 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2011). This volume complements and enlarges the scope of the monograph by Peter Norton, Episcopal Elections 250-600: Hierarchy and Popular Will in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 156. That is to say that they either should have attended the school of a ‘pagan’ rhetor or have learned how to act as bishop or cleric by “learning by doing.” See Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 37 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 178-183; Gemeinhardt, Christentum, 307-320; Peter Gemeinhardt, “Men of Letters or Fishermen? The Education of Bishops and Clerics in Late Antiquity,” in Teachers in Late Antique Christianity, ed. P. Gemeinhardt, O. Lor- geoux, and M. Munkholt Christensen, Studies in Education and Religion in Ancient and Pre-Modern History in the Mediterranean and Its Environs 3 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 32-55. 157. Johan Leemans, “‘Schoolrooms for Our Souls’: The Cult of the Martyrs: Homilies and Visual Representations as a Locus for Religious Education in Late Antiq- uity,” in The Challenge of the Visual in the History of Education, ed. M. Depaepe and B. Henkens, Paedagogica Historica 36 (Gent: CSHP, 2000), 113-127. 490 PETER GEMEINHARDT homilies which draw upon biblical images and language but do so by employing the literate education which the homilist had acquired as a young man.158 On the other hand, one can mention Anthony Dupont’s extensive treatment of the sermons from the Pelagian and Donatist con- troversies in two monographs159 and many articles and book chapters. Sermons which Averil Cameron once classified as “the hidden iceberg of Christian discourse”160 have in the past three decades attracted many scholars.161 Whoever knows about the difficulties of investigating this genre will acknowledge that this focus on preaching is as demanding as it is timely. Again, besides these studies of single texts or corpora of individual authors, the topic has been reflected in a comparative manner: there are already three impressive volumes in the Ministerium sermonis series (the next conference on this topic will be held in 2020),162 and there is an additional thematic volume composed by scholars of this Faculty, deriving from a conference on “Preaching after Easter.”163 This shows that, as one should

158. Johan Leemans, “Style and Meaning in Gregory of Nyssa’s Panegyrics on Martyrs,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 81 (2005): 109-129; and id., “Bible, Rhetoric and Theology: Some Examples of Mystagogical Strategies in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Sermons,” in Seeing Through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers, ed. P. van Geest, Late Antique History and Religion 11 (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 105-125. 159. Dupont, Gratia; id., Preacher of Grace: A Critical Reappraisal of Augustine’s Doctrine of Grace in His Sermones ad populum on Liturgical Feasts and During the Donatist Controversy, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 177 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2014); Spanish transl.: Gratia en los Sermones ad Populum de san Agustín durante la controversia pelagiana. ¿Acaso los diversos contextos proporcionan un punto de vista dife- rente? (Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Uniagustiniana, 2016); see also the collected volume by Anthony Dupont, Matthew Gaumer, and Mathijs Lamberigts, eds., The Uniquely African Controversy: Interdisciplinary Studies on Donatist Christianity, Late Antique His- tory and Religion 9 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015). 160. Cameron, Christianity, 79. 161. This recent increase in interest in late ancient homiletics is discussed in Wendy Mayer, “Homiletics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Ashbrook Harvey, and Hunter, 565-583. 162. Gert Partoens, Anthony Dupont, and Mathijs Lamberigts, eds., Tractatio Scripturarum: Philological, Historical, and Theological Studies on Augustine’s ‘Sermones ad populum’, Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia 53 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); Anthony Dupont, Gert Partoens, and Mathijs Lamberigts, eds., Tractatio Scripturarum: Philo- logical, Exegetical, Rhetorical and Theological Studies on Augustine’s Sermons, Ministerium sermonis 2 = Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia 65 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012); Gert Partoens, Anthony Dupont and Shari Boodts, eds., Praedicatio patrum: Studies on Preaching in Late Antique North Africa, Ministerium sermonis 3 = Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia 75 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). 163. Richard W. Bishop, Johan Leemans, and Hajnalka Tamas with the assistance of Liesbeth Van der Sypt, eds., Preaching after Easter: Mid-Pentecost, Ascension, and Pentecost in Late Antiquity, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 136 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2016). THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 491 expect from a Catholic faculty, the close study of homilies includes sensitiv- ity to their liturgical framing and thus to the multi-faceted communication of the biblical message and its reflection in martyrs’ and saints’ lives. As Anthony Dupont has shown, preaching in the early Christian era is situated in a neatly woven net of relationships – the preacher’s individuality, his audience, the liturgical setting, perhaps some controversial circumstances, and, not to forget, the biblical text or the martyr’s act which provides the subject-matter of the sermon. Only recently, as a result of this ongoing research into preaching, we were presented with the impressive volume “Preaching in the Patristic Era”164 which certainly will not have been the last word on this issue but will substantially further additional studies. It seems that these observations hint at another characteristic trait of the kind of History of Christianity which is being written in Leu- ven: a fresh look at Christian thought and practice while not denying that these features are distinctively Christian. That is to say that the search for parallel developments in contemporary religions – quite popular under the label of “comparative studies” – sometimes tends to hide what is particular to a given religion, and this is also true for the cultural reorientation of studies in the fields of Classics, Late Antiquity or the Middle Ages.165 Looking in a new way at the sources does not necessarily imply neglecting what others have seen there previously. As far as I can tell, the work of Leuven’s Faculty of Theology and Reli- gious Studies is not so much concerned with the many “turns” which we have witnessed during the last decades – and of which comprehensive accounts have already been created166 – or with re-thinking Fou- cault’s “souci de soi,” inspiring as this approach may be.167 I don’t want to be misunderstood: clarifying the methods which I use to scrutinize the sources and the individual or institutional presuppositions of my work is essential for sound scholarship, not the least for members of a Faculty of Theology (a discipline which, for the past 800 years,

164. Dupont, Boodts, Partoens, and Leemans, Preaching. 165. E.g., the highly interesting book of Leppin, Christen, on the early Christians widely neglects theological debates which were certainly not negligible in the first three centuries; paradoxically, the same is to be said about the volume of Rexroth, Scholastik, on the development of scholastic culture in the 12th century, published on the same day by the same publishing house! 166. See the contributions in Dale B. Martin and Patricia Cox Miller, eds., The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). 167. Michel Foucault, Histoire de Sexualité, vol. 3: Le souci de soi (Paris: Galli- mard, 1984), ET: The History of Sexuality, vol. 3: The Care of the Self (London: Penguin Books, 1990); the “care of the self” is appropriated, e.g., by Guy G. Stroumsa, La fin du sacrifice: Les mutations religieuses de l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Jacob, 2005), 23-59. 492 PETER GEMEINHARDT has been struggling to make its scientific seriousness plausible). But it is one thing to employ methods in a fruitful way and another thing to restrict oneself to theoretical discussions without actual fruits. And the harvest in Leuven is rich!

3. Mystical Theology This observation of a comparatively relaxed way in dealing with method- ical issues can be illustrated by a remark in Paul Mommaers’ book Jan van Ruusbroec: Mystical Union with God, where he defines his topic as follows: “what makes the mystic a mystic is simply a particular kind of awareness.”168 A few pages later, this definition is complemented by a slightly more elaborated demarcation of the topic: “What is distinct about the God of the mystic is the felt presence of the divine as a datum touching human perceptive consciousness.”169 Of course, one might prefer to add more sophistication to this definition or even to consider “Mysticism” something that cannot be defined at all (this corresponds to the difficulties with defining “Gnosticism” and the like which I mentioned above). It seems however perfectly legitimate to choose a more pragmatic approach to the topic, since, as long as one regards the subject-matter as interesting, Jan van Ruusbroec and Hadewijch, the favourites of Leuven-based research in late medieval theology,170 will without doubt figure among the relevant “mystical” authors and texts, notwithstanding the difficulty to find clear- cut limits of this particular field. Consequently, in his book on Hadewijch, Mommaers provided a phenomenological description of his topic, derived from the sources itself.171 A similar approach had enabled him even to compare Ruusbroec’s mystical experience with Buddhist practices and reflections!172 Such a more flexible notion of “mystical” experiences and of theology also opens up possibilities for comparisons with other periods,

168. Paul Mommaers, Jan van Ruusbroec: Mystical Union with God (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 8. 169. Mommaers, Ruusbroec, 10. A similarly pragmatic approach is found, e.g., Volker Leppin, Die christliche Mystik (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2007), 7-13; see already Paul Mommaers, Wat is mystiek?, Spiritualiteit 12 (Nijmegen: Gottmer, 1977). 170. See John Arblaster and Rob Faesen, eds., A Companion to John of Ruusbroec, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 51 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2014). 171. Paul Mommaers with Elisabeth Dutton, Hadewijch: Writer, Beguine, Love Mystic (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 84-90, ET of id., Hadewijch: Schrijfster, begijn, mystica (Averbode: Altiora, 1989). 172. See Paul Mommaers and Jan Van Bragt, Mysticism Buddhist and Christian: Encounters with Jan van Ruusbroek (New York: Crossroad, 1995). THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 493 e.g., with Augustine who, as Anthony Dupont has argued, is also a mystical writer, even if not a high medieval one.173 Obviously, the same difficulty with terminology and definition holds true for the notion of “deification” to which Rob Faesen and John Arblaster have recently devoted two cross-cutting volumes, including studies from Greek Hesychasm to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and from Egyp- tian Monasticism to Hans Urs von Balthasar.174 Again, I would regard it as a specific strength of this Faculty and its protagonists to meticu- lously investigate some core themes but then use them as point of depar- ture for wide-ranging comparative work, covering the whole History of Christianity or significant parts thereof. Nobody will deny that periodizations are always artificial, but still people are needed who consequently transgress such conceptual boundaries. This can even be entertaining, as is seems: while earlier research has identified the period of Ruusbroec and Hadewijch as what Johan Huizinga called “The Waning of the Mid- dle Ages,”175 that is, a period of decline after which Europe was ripe to fall victim to the Reformation, here in Leuven, one can still find “Pleas- ure in Medieval Christian Mystical Literature” by meditating these writers – thus the very promising title of a recent paper by Rob Faesen!176

4. Martyrdom It might not be equally easy to find pleasure in the next topic which I want to mention: martyrdom (although one should not underestimate the black humour of some early Christian martyrs).177 The achievement of Leuven

173. Cf. Anthony Dupont, “Mystical Experiences and Mystical Theology in Augustine of Hippo? A Reconsideration of the Sources (conf. 9, an. quant. 33, doctr. chr. 2),” Medieval Mystical Theology 27 (2018): 36-59. 174. John Arblaster and Rob Faesen, eds., Mystical Doctrines of Deification: Case Studies in the Christian Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 2018); John Arblaster and Rob Faesen, eds., Theosis / Deification: Christian Doctrines of Divinization, East and West, BETL 294 (Leuven: Peeters, 2018). 175. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth Centuries (Lon- don: Arnold, 1952), ET of id., Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen: Studie over levens- en gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden (Haar- lem: H. D. Tjeenk Willink, 1921). 176. Rob Faesen, “Pleasure in Medieval Christian Mystical Literature: The Anal- ysis of John of Ruusbroec (1293-1381) and Hadewijch (Thirteenth Century),” in Pleas- ure in the Middle Ages, ed. N. Cohen-Hanegbi and P. Nagy, International Medieval Research 24 (Brepols: Turnhout, 2018), 353-378. 177. Cf., e.g., Laurentius who was martyred during the Valerian persecution. Ambrose of Milan, De officiis 1.41.207 ascribes to him the saying: Assum est, versa et manduca – “the roast is ready, turn it around and eat it!” 494 PETER GEMEINHARDT encompasses early martyrdom literature as well as literary, cultic, and theological developments after the end of the persecutions. Schematically, for the first aspect the name of Boudewijn Dehandschutter is representative, for the latter his former doctoral student Johan Leemans. I am not impar- tial here, since a few years ago, we both had the opportunity and pleasure to organize a workshop on “Christian Martyrdom in Late Antiquity”178 at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in Göttingen. There are however so many studies of my dear colleague in this field that I dare to classify his work as major contribution to the scholarly discourse, starting with the edited volume with the telling title Let Us Die That We May Live.179 Here, again, homilies are the material which introduce us to late ancient perceptions of martyrdom and its theological interpretation. Contrary to earlier claims to the documentary value of early martyr texts, which implied a devaluation of later “fictitious” texts,180 all martyr texts, the homilies in questions as well as the pseudepigraphic minutes of trials against Christian believers (acta), are to be understood as literary texts181 and, at the same time, as theological statements. Stemming from late 4th or early 5th century writers like Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Asterius of Amasea, and Hesychius of Jerusalem, such homilies become interesting as soon as one reckons them as important media within the process of construction and stabilization of Christian identity in the course of time. They witness to the specific Christian way of defining itself by recourse to the past, be it Jesus Christ himself or his authentic followers. This discourse on martyrdom is analyzed in an equally diachronic and interdisciplinary manner in other volumes edited by Leemans and Lamberigts respectively.182

178. Peter Gemeinhardt and Johan Leemans, eds., Christian Martyrdom in Late Antiquity (300-450 ad): History and Discourse, Tradition and Religious Identity, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 116 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2012). 179. Johan Leemans, Wendy Mayer, Pauline Allen, and Boudewijn Dehandschut- ter, Let Us Die That We May Live: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine and Syria (c. ad 350-ad 450) (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). 180. Recently renewed by Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History, Tria Corda 6 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) who reckons late antique texts on martyrdom (and on saints like Antony or Martin) “fictitious” and therefore of lesser value than the “authentic martyr acts.” While it is of course legitimate to ask for historical evidence in martyr texts, their kerygmatic aim must be taken into account; thus it seems justified to ask for their “Making of,” as is argued by Lucy Grig, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London: Duckworth, 2004). 181. See the collection of texts with German translations by Hans R. Seeliger and Wolfgang Wischmeyer, eds., Märtyrerliteratur, Texte und Untersuchungen 172 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2015) under the consciously chosen heading “Literature on Martyrs.” 182. Mathijs Lamberigts and Peter Van Deun, eds., Martyrium in Multidiscipli- nary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans, BETL 117 (Leuven: Peeters, 1995); Johan Leemans, ed., More Than a Memory: The Discourse of Martyrdom and the Construction THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 495

Dehandschutter’s focus had been (besides Gnosticism and occa- sional outings into later times) the Martyrium Polycarpi and thus the development of a Christian identity in the era of persecutions.183 He also engaged with the textual transmission of this text and presented in his first book on Polycarp as well as at the point of his retirement critical editions of the latter’s passion.184 His collected Polycarpiana are, taken together, a fine example how the thought and practice of early Christian- ity (or in Robert Wilken’s words, “The Spirit of Early Christian Thought”)185 may be illuminated from the point of view of an individual text, including its contemporary literature and its post-history. With Johan Leemans’ previous and current studies, this focus at Leuven has shifted towards Late Antiquity: the discourse on martyrdom now becomes embedded into the theological debates of this time, especially in Gregory of Nyssa’s homilies (also Augustine has a word to say on this topic),186 and – as Leemans argues – referring to martyrs contributes decisively to the constitution of Christian identity, notably long after the persecutions had ceased!187 Thus, the discourse on martyrs intersects

of Christian Identity in the History of Christianity, Annua Nuntia Lovaniensia 51 (Leuven: Peeters, 2005); id., ed., Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Antique Christianity: Fest- schrift Boudewijn Dehandschutter, BETL 241 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010). 183. See Boudewijn Dehandschutter, Martyrium Polycarpi: Een literair-kritische studie, BETL 52 (Leuven: Peeters, 1979) (his reworked PhD thesis) and id., Polycar piana: Studies on Martyrdom and Persecution in Early Christianity: Collected Essays, ed. J. Leemans, BETL 205 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007) – a collection of papers on Polycarp and his contemporaries. For recent research on the martyrology of this period, see, e.g., Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 184. Cf. Dehandschutter, Martyrium, 221-232 with id., Polycarpiana, 7-22. Unfortunately, only after his untimely death, another new edition was published: Otto Zwierlein, Die Urfassungen der Martyria Polycarpi et Pionii und das Corpus Polycar pianum, 2 vols., Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, 116.1-2 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2014), 1:46-66, based upon the insight that the Arme- nian tradition offers valuable (and hitherto neglected) evidence of the presumably original text. 185. Robert L. Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). 186. Anthony Dupont, “Augustine’s Homiletic Definition of Martyrdom: The Centrality of the Martyr’s Grace in his Anti-Donatist and Anti-Pelagian Sermones ad Populum,” in Christian Martyrdom in Late Antiquity (300-450 ad), ed. Gemeinhardt and Leemans, 155-178. For Gregory of Nyssa, see above section IV.2. 187. Johan Leemans, “Flexible Heiligkeit: Der Beitrag der Märtyrer zur Identitäts konstitution christlicher Gemeinden im griechischen Osten im 4. Jahrhundert,” in Heilige, Heiliges und Heiligkeit in spätantiken Religionskulturen, ed. P. Gemeinhardt and K. Heyden, Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 61 (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2012), 205-227. 496 PETER GEMEINHARDT with contemporary debates about the correct faith and the possibilities and limitations of its expression in human language.188 To this I referred above as theological sensibility when historical inquiry is conducted: without neglecting the contexts, it is theology proper that is done here in Leuven, not only martyrdom as a newly invented genre in early Christianity, not only mystical retreat as a cultural phenomenon in late medieval times. Ancient and later Christians saw their belief in God at stake when people were sentenced to death, when orthodoxy and heresy were publicly debated, when the liturgy was cel- ebrated and the ecclesiastical hierarchy was negotiated: these and many more aspects of theology might be the gift which this discipline could and should contribute to academic and public discussions of this day.189

5. Beyond Borders Such a contribution will be even more convincing if it is valid not only for one region or period but for wide parts of the ancient and medieval ‘global village’ (see above, section III.1). Hence my last observation on theological features typical of Leuven research: even if one includes the postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students, there is still a limited number of persons who cover an impressively wide geographic and chronological range. Until now, it should have become clear that the focus is, geographically, on the Roman Empire in the East and the West and, chronologically, from Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages, here pre- dominantly on the Latin realm. But, moreover, research interest reaches

188. On different aspects of Gregory of Nyssa’s thought and doctrine see Johan Leemans, “Preaching and the Arian Controversy: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Gregory of Nyssa’s Sermons,” in Heretics and Heresies in the Ancient Church and in Eastern Christi- anity: Studies in Honour of Adelbert Davids, ed. J. Verheyden and H. Teule, The Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 60.1-4 (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), 127-143; id., “Logic and the Trinity: Introducing Text and Context of Gregory of Nyssa’s Ad Graecos,” in Gregory of Nyssa: The Minor Treatises on Trinitarian Theology and Apollinarism, ed. V. H. Drecoll and M. Berghaus, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 106 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2011), 111-130; as well as the edited volume: Johan Leemans and Matthieu Cas- sin, eds., Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra Eunomium III: an English Translation with Commen- tary and Supporting Studies, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 124 (Leiden and Bos- ton, MA: Brill, 2014). 189. Interestingly, this has also been attempted for the dialogue between Patristics and Moral Theology on Social Ethics: Johan Leemans, Brian J. Matz and Johan Ver- straeten, eds., Reading Patristic Texts on Social Ethics: Issues and Challenges for Twenty- First-Century Christian Social Thought, CUA Studies in Early Christianity (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011). I appreciate the critical reflections of the editors on the achievements, but also on the shortcomings of their enterprise (instead of wholesale self-praise!). THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 497 also beyond the Empire’s borders to Oriental Christianity. The latter’s history of Leuven started in the period under consideration with Albert Van Roey who focused on the Mono- or, in current terminology, Mia- physites, not the least by way of editing and translating texts.190 Oriental Christianity, especially the Assyrian Church (formerly known as “Nesto- rians”) is at present dealt with by Herman Teule, a Leuven graduate and emeritus of Nijmegen who is an expert not only for the Assyrians but for many Christian groups of the oriental ecclesiastical family. This involves historical research, e.g. in the so-called “Syriac Renaissance” and the interwovenness of the Syriac language, culture, and religion in its environments,191 but also the application of history and tradition to modern questions and problems, for the “Assyro-Chaldeans” are at the same time “Christians of Iran, Turkey, and Iraq.”192 Here, again, an institution is active, the “Louvain Centre for Eastern and Oriental Chris- tianity” (LOCEOC).193 At my home university, we are also fond of founding centres and creating acronyms, therefore I can estimate that this is a substantial platform for cooperation (and am ready to confirm that this is much more than just a nice title). Without explicitly claiming to do so, the Research Unit of History of Church and Theology thus elegantly complies with the recent widening of perceptions of time and space. But to be sure, it does not simply obey to such trends but also sets them itself, as I hope to have shown.

V. Conclusion: from the Investigation of the Past to the Care for Our Shared Future

My thoughts on major trends in scholarship during the past half century have to come to an end, and also my reflections upon the achievements

190. See, e.g., Albert Van Roey, ed./tr., Eliae Epistula apologetica ad Leonem, syn- cellum Harranensem, CSCO 469/470 = Scriptores syri 201/202 (Leuven: Peeters, 1985) and id., ed./tr., Monophysite Texts of the Sixth Century, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 56 (Leuven: Peeters, 1994). 191. Herman Teule, Carmen Fotescu Tauwinkl, Bas ter Haar Romeny, and Jan J. van Ginkel, eds., The Syriac Renaissance, Eastern Christian Studies 9 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010); Herman Teule, ed., Syriac in Its Multi-Cultural Context, Eastern Christian Stud- ies 23 (Leuven: Peeters, 2017); Sara Schulthess, Herman Teule and Joseph Verheyden, eds., Arabica sunt, non leguntur…: Studies on the Arabic Versions of the Bible in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Tradition, The Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 70.1-2 (Leu- ven: Peeters, 2018). 192. This wide-ranging historical horizon is presented in Teule, Assyro-chaldéens. 193. See as a specimen of LOCEOC’s work Verheyden and Teule, eds., Heretics and Heresies in the Ancient Church and in Eastern Christianity. 498 PETER GEMEINHARDT of the Faculty of Theology at Leuven in general and its Research Unit of History of Church and Theology in particular. It has not been possible to include everything that is worth to be mentioned, especially not the other colleagues of the Research Unit who work on questions from Early Modern Times to Zeitgeschichte and those colleagues from other disciplines of this Faculty with whom cooperation is lively and fruitful, as is well known. Such inner interdisciplinarity is characteristic of a Fac- ulty of Theology and renders it, in the best sense, traditional. One thing seems certain: if we consider ourselves doing “History of Christianity,” we have to envisage Christianity as one of many cultural formations of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, not in itself coherent, not in every aspect distinct from other religions, continuously affected by its social, cultural, and political environment and subject to many developments which were only partly initiated and controlled by Christians themselves. To me, such a realistic view is more a gain than a loss. It does not prevent to work with wide-ranging perspectives. Thirty years ago, Charles Kannengiesser described Patristics “as nothing less than a hermeneutic of the historical foundations of European culture.”194 This, I would add, is not only true for the study of Early Christianity and Late Antiquity but also for the Middle Ages when Europe became “Europe” as we know it.195 Yet, it requires some qualifications due to developments since then, including a critical reflection of the focus on Europe – most Church Fathers were no Europeans at all, while today Christians in North Africa and the Near East, cradles of Christianity, often live in difficult circumstances.196 I have hinted at the broadening of the scope of sources, traditions, and religions which are relevant to the writing of the History of Christianity, and it should be not too bold a claim that this history can only be written with regard to the encounters and conflicts of Christians and Muslims and Jews, but also taking into account the mutual intellectual indebtedness of these and other non-Christian religions. However, we do not only encounter sources but also people for whom these texts (or images) form their own religious or cultural inheritance. They might be interested in the History of Christianity out of

194. Kannengiesser, “The Future,” 132. 195. For this, see now the contributions in Michael Meyer-Blanck, ed., Christen- tum und Europa: XVI. Europäischer Kongress für Theologie (10.-13. September 2017 in Wien), Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie 57 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2019). 196. See Wallraff, “Whose Fathers,” 59: “Most Church fathers are not European, and if they fathered children, it was not the European culture (of which they could not and did not know anything, because it originated much later).” THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES 499 reasons which do not fit our scholarly approaches. Nobody will deny that this poses new challenges; the overcoming of colonialist attitudes is easier postulated than achieved. All the more, it has been a decisive step in the right direction that this Faculty established international study programmes half a century ago, not by chance at the same moment when the ways of the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking theologians at Leuven parted.197 This ongoing commitment to form an international community of scholars can only be appreciated in these turbu- lent times in Europe and the world and should absolutely continue.

Peter Gemeinhardt (1970) holds the Chair of Church History (Patristics) at the University of Göttingen; since 2015, he acts as director of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre 1136 “Education and Religion in Cultures of the Mediterranean and Its Environment from Antiquity to Medieval Times and the Classical Period of Islam.” Among others, he serves as editor of the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter) as well as of Fontes Christiani (Freiburg: Herder) and SERAPHIM – Studies in Education and Religion in Ancient and Pre-Modern History in the Mediterranean and Its Environs (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck). His current research focuses on the development of religious education in Late Antiquity, on Christian hagiography, and on Trinitarian Theology from its beginnings to the High Middle Ages. Address: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Theologische Fakultät, Platz der Göt- tinger Sieben 2, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany. Email: Peter.Gemeinhardt@ theologie.uni-goettingen.de.

197. Cf. Lieve Gevers, “A Faculty of Theology in Upheaval: The Process of Sep- aration and Renewal at the Catholic University of Leuven,” in Louvain, Belgium, and Beyond: Studies in Religious History in Honour of Leo Kenis, ed. M. Lamberigts and W. De Pril, BETL 299 (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), 445-462, at 461.