Patristic Worlds

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Over the past fifty years, patristic scholars have shown increasing interest in the diversity and pluralism of the ancient Christian world. This paper marks these changes by presenting two ‘windows’ into Christianity of the patristic era. First, the Greek historian Sozomen presents aspects of religious pluralism that bear upon how scholars understand ancient Christianity as a religion. Second, Syriac liturgical poetry provides an example of the diverse voices patristic scholars have increasingly come to value in recent years. In both cases, I seek to emphasise religion as an embodied experience, physically performed and sensorily engaged. This perspective itself marks a recent turn in scholarly attention, one that again brings to light the multiplicity of Christianity during the patristic era. This paper will not argue a thesis, but rather present considerations for re-thinking the ancient Christian world in larger, more diverse terms than have characterised patristic scholarship in other times and places.