1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910818937603321

Autore

Digeser Elizabeth DePalma <1959->

Titolo

A threat to public piety [[electronic resource] ] : Christians, Platonists, and the great persecution / / Elizabeth DePalma Digeser

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, : Cornell University Press, 2012

ISBN

0-8014-6396-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (218 pages)

Disciplina

272/.1

Soggetti

Persecution - History - Early church, ca. 30-600

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

Christianity - Philosophy - History

Platonists

Violence - Philosophy

Philosophy and religion

Violence - Religious aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: From Permeable Circles to Hardened Boundaries -- 1. Ammonius Saccas and the Philosophy without Conflicts -- 2. Origen as a Student of Ammonius -- 3. Plotinus, Porphyry, and Philosophy in the Public Realm -- 4. Schism in the Ammonian Community: Porphyry v. Iamblichus -- 5. Schism in the Ammonian Community: Porphyry v. Methodius of Olympus -- Conclusion: The Ammonian Community and the Great Persecution -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

In A Threat to Public Piety, Elizabeth DePalma Digeser reexamines the origins of the Great Persecution (AD 303-313), the last eruption of pagan violence against Christians before Constantine enforced the toleration of Christianity within the Empire. Challenging the widely accepted view that the persecution enacted by Emperor Diocletian was largely inevitable, she points out that in the forty years leading up to the Great Persecution Christians lived largely in peace with their fellow Roman citizens. Why, Digeser asks, did pagans and Christians, who had intermingled cordially and productively for decades, become so sharply



divided by the turn of the century?Making use of evidence that has only recently been dated to this period, Digeser shows that a falling out between Neo-Platonist philosophers, specifically Iamblichus and Porphyry, lit the spark that fueled the Great Persecution. In the aftermath of this falling out, a group of influential pagan priests and philosophers began writing and speaking against Christians, urging them to forsake Jesus-worship and to rejoin traditional cults while Porphyry used his access to Diocletian to advocate persecution of Christians on the grounds that they were a source of impurity and impiety within the empire.The first book to explore in depth the intellectual social milieu of the late third century, A Threat to Public Piety revises our understanding of the period by revealing the extent to which Platonist philosophers (Ammonius, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus) and Christian theologians (Origen, Eusebius) came from a common educational tradition, often studying and teaching side by side in heterogeneous groups.