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    Review: BARNES, EARLY CHRISTIAN HAGIOGRAPHY AND ROMAN HISTORY (Tria Corda 5) . Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. Pp. xx + 437. isbn 9783161502262


    Williams, Michael Stuart (2012) Review: BARNES, EARLY CHRISTIAN HAGIOGRAPHY AND ROMAN HISTORY (Tria Corda 5) . Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. Pp. xx + 437. isbn 9783161502262. Journal of Roman Studies, 102. pp. 406-408. ISSN 0075-4358

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    Abstract

    According to its author, the primary purpose of this book is ‘to describe how Christian hagiography began in the second century as the commemoration of martyrs, but became a vehicle for deliberate ction in the fourth century and then a normal mode of literary composition’ (xi). This perhaps overstates the coherence of these seven chapters, which are connected in fairly broad fashion by a range of questions arising from the growth and development of Christianity in the Roman Empire from the rst to the sixth centuries A.D. At the same time, however, it understates the extent to which Timothy Barnes here sets out to be argumentative more than descriptive. In place of a single overall thesis, the book offers the meticulous demonstration of a method: essentially, the application of the historian’s technique of prosopography to the study of the lives and actions of martyrs and saints.

    Item Type: Article
    Keywords: T.D.Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography; Roman History;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > Ancient Classics
    Item ID: 4626
    Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075435812000895
    Depositing User: Dr. Michael Williams
    Date Deposited: 02 Dec 2013 11:43
    Journal or Publication Title: Journal of Roman Studies
    Publisher: Cambridge University Press
    Refereed: Yes
    URI:
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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