CMRS Center for Early Global Studies

This lecture, "Religious dissent and violence in Late Antiquity," is by Professor Maijastina Kahlos (Helsinki/Lisbon), part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Spring 2023, Persecution and Defiance: Religious Minorities in the Roman World 200-700 CE (History201B). Violence was part of the late antique life. How considerable role did violent conflicts play in Late Antiquity? At least on the level of imagery, religious violence had a considerable role. Violence occupies a great deal of space in the Christian narratives on the demise of “paganism” and in the polemics against Jews and “heretics”. I will discuss violence in words and...