Christianity and the Contest for Manhood in Late Antiquity

Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-1-009-08830-5
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 356 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 581 g

In this book, Nathan Howard explores gender and identity formation in fourth-century Cappadocia, where pro-Nicene bishops used a rhetoric of contest that aligned with conventions of classical Greek masculinity. Howard demonstrates that epistolary exhibitions served as 'a locus for' asserting manhood in the fourth century. These performances illustrate how a culture of orality that had defined manhood among civic elites was reframed as a contest whereby one accrued status through merits of composition. Howard shows how the Cappadocians' rhetoric also reordered the body and materiality as components of a maleness over which they moderated. He interrogates fourth-century theological conflict as part of a rhetorical battle over claims to manhood that supported the Cappadocians' theology and cast doubt on non-Trinitarian rivals, whom they cast as effeminate and disingenuous. Investigating accounts of pro-Nicene protagonists overcoming struggles, Howard establishes that tropes based on classical standards of gender contributed to the formation of Trinitarian orthodoxy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Howard, Nathan D.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Systematische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Kirchengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. The sweat of eloquence: epistolary Agon and second sophistic origins; 2. The Agon of friendship: sensory rhetoric, aesthetics, and gift exchange; 3. Personification of sacred Arete; 4. Agon and theological authority: hagiography and polemics of identity.

Über Autor(innen)

Howard, Nathan D.
Nathan D. Howard is Professor of History at the University of Tennessee at Martin. His scholarship has been funded by Dumbarton Oaks, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His work has appeared in a number of edited journals and volumes, including the Journal of Late Antiquity, Approaches to the Byzantine Family, and Studia Patristica.