Discipline, Authority, and Text in Late Ancient Religion

This collection of essays on religious practice in the Mediterranean, Near East, and Middle East (ca. 100–800 ce) celebrates the impact that Professor David Brakke has had on the study of late antique religious history. Nineteen scholars celebrate the career of Professor Brakke with essays on a range of subjects on late ancient religion. Some chapters treat monastic texts, ascetic practice, and ritual performance; others address the roles of magic, demons, and miracle stories; still others examine Christian violence and martyrdom.

In particular, many of these essays explore the kinds of ascetic theory, practice, identity, organization, performance, and writing found throughout the diverse authors, groups, and locales of Late Antiquity. Essay topics cross disciplinary boundaries and operate in the overlapping intellectual space of Religious Studies, History, Classics, English, Anthropology, and Comparative Literature. By treating asceticism as a phenomenon within a relatively confined time period and geography across a variety of religious and literary traditions, this volume highlights the ascetic impulse within new areas.

The volume thus stands alone for its multifaceted discussions of religion and asceticism in Late Antiquity, and advances scholarly investigation of and discourse about late antique asceticism by expanding conceptual and disciplinary boundaries in new and exciting directions.