Preaching as Communication of Education in Late Antique Christianity
Final Report Abstract
The project (now finished) investigated Christian preaching as the principal means of communicating Christian education. Religious speech was delivered in regular worship and on festive days and contributed to the creation and stabilization of Christian group-identity and practice. Preachers made use of ancient rhetoric in order to argue their case. Accordingly, the project analyzed late antique sermons with regard to concrete speech acts (ranging from the micro-level of individual elements of speeches to the macro-level of entire sermons) and related these performative practices to classical and Christian theories of rhetoric. Equally, the content-matter of the sermons – Christian education in terms of knowledge and behavior – which should be communicated was at stake; finally, the reflection upon possibilities and limits of such educational processes was scrutinized. In short, the project investigated how late antique Christian sermons a) employed education, that is, used rhetorical devices (formal aspect) b) communicated education in the same process (subject-related aspect) and c) reflected upon this educational enterprise (didactic aspect). The framework of the investigation was Gaul and Italy, two cultural spaces which, in Late Antiquity, were subject to severe social, political, and religious transformations and which offered the possibility to reconstruct the fading of different constellations of education in a paradigmatic way. Concretely, the corpora of sermons of the bishops Peter Chrysologus of Ravenna (d. 458) and Caesarius of Arles (d. 542) respectively were put in the foreground; in comparative perspective, other collections of sermons were touched upon. Although no preacher authored a theoretical treatise like Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine, sermons were created carefully and consciously. In this way, they contributed fundamentally to the communication of Christian education. Thus, the claim could be substantiated that Late Antiquity was certainly no “period of decline”: moreover, education was paramount as a highly effective means of stabilizing and dynamizing Christian identity in a period of transition.
Publications
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2 Die Rhetorik der Predigt der Alten Kirche. Handbuch Homiletische Rhetorik, 29-50. De Gruyter.
Gemeinhardt, Peter
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Wie kommt die Exegese in der altkirchlichen Predigt an?. Kerygma und Dogma, 68(4), 266-289.
Gemeinhardt, Peter
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Tagungsbericht: Preaching the Christian Life and Faith. Communication of Religious Education in Late Antique Latin Sermons: H-Soz-Kult, 25.02.2023
Schirrmeister, Elske-Ellen
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Christianisierung des Habitus. Mohr Siebeck.
Anders, Nicolás M.
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Did Late Ancient Christianity Depend on Classical Paideia, and Did It Ever Get Rid of It?. EB-Verlag Dr. Brandt.
Gemeinhardt, Peter
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Monastic Teaching and Episcopal Preaching: Education in the Lives of the Bishops of Arles in Late Antiquity. Journal of Late Antiquity, 17(2), 451-492.
Gemeinhardt, Peter
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Bildung im Gespräch. Mohr Siebeck.
Hantel, Lina
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Preaching the Christian Life and Faith. Mohr Siebeck.
Gemeinhardt, Peter; Anders, Nicolás & Hantel, Lina
