The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations

Author
Publication Year
2023

Type

Book
Abstract

The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations traces the beginning of Late Antiquity from a new angle. Shifting the focus away from the Christianization of people or the transformation of institutions, Mark Letteney interrogates the creation of novel and durable structures of knowledge across the Roman scholarly landscape, and the embedding of those changes in manuscript witnesses. Letteney explores scholarly productions ranging from juristic writings and legal compendia to theological tractates, military handbooks, historical accounts, miscellanies, grammatical treatises, and the Palestinian Talmud. He demonstrates how imperial Christianity inflected the production of truth far beyond the domain of theology — and how intellectual tools forged in the fires of doctrinal controversy shed their theological baggage and came to undergird the great intellectual productions of the Theodosian Age, and their material expressions. Letteney's volume offers new insights and a new approach to answering the perennial question: What does it mean for Rome to become Christian?

Publisher
Cambridge University Press

Awarded the 2024 Lautenschläger Award, and shortlisted for the SHARP Book History Book Prize and the AAR Award for Best First Book in the History of Religions. 

Reviews: Antiquité TardiveAugustinianaBryn Mawr Classical ReviewChurch HistoryJournal of Early Christian StudiesJournal of Ecclesiastical HistoryJournal of Late AntiquityJournal of Roman StudiesPlekosSehepunkteScripta TheologicaTextual CulturesTimes Literary Supplement

Corrigenda are available here.