1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910154786203321

Autore

Lander Shira L.

Titolo

Ritual sites and religious rivalries in late Roman North Africa / / Shira L. Lander [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2016

ISBN

1-316-94220-1

1-316-94412-3

1-316-94444-1

1-316-94476-X

1-316-54471-0

1-316-94604-5

1-316-94508-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xvii, 253 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

276.1/02

Soggetti

Church history - Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600

Christian shrines - Africa, North

Rites and ceremonies - Africa, North

Africa, North Church history

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 28 Nov 2016).

Nota di contenuto

Scaffolding -- Foundational assumptions -- Christian perceptions of communal places -- Internecine Christian contestation -- Christian supersession of traditional Roman temples -- Christian supersession of synagogues -- Ritual spatial control, authority, and identification.

Sommario/riassunto

In Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa, Lander examines the rhetorical and physical battles for sacred space between practitioners of traditional Roman religion, Christians, and Jews of late Roman North Africa. By analyzing literary along with archaeological evidence, Lander provides a new understanding of ancient notions of ritual space. This regard for ritual sites above other locations rendered the act or mere suggestion of seizing and destroying them powerful weapons in inter-group religious conflicts. Lander demonstrates that the quantity and harshness of discursive and



physical attacks on ritual spaces directly correlates to their symbolic value. This heightened valuation reached such a level that rivals were willing to violate conventional Roman norms of property rights to display spatial control. Moreover, Roman Imperial policy eventually appropriated spatial triumphalism as a strategy for negotiating religious conflicts, giving rise to a new form of spatial colonialism that was explicitly religious.