Popular Preaching and Christianization in Theodosian-Era Constantinople

• Applicant: Dr. Robert Edwards
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology ; Ancient History
• Term: Funded in 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 518180720

During the reign of the Theodosian emperors (AD 379–457), Constantinople, the eastern capital of the Roman empire, underwent a period of intense Christianization. Although the city experienced Christianization under other emperors, it is at this time that Christianity began to take over both public and private life of the capital: the empire was governed from the city by baptized and sometimes ascetic emperors and empresses, urban monasticism took root, and the city’s bishop came to hold unprecedented power for such a young city. At the same time that the city’s institutions were being Christianized, it also attracted some of the most impressive preachers of the age. Some of these were Constantinople’s bishops (Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Nestorius, Proclus), and some visited at the pleasure of the emperor and his family (Gregory of Nyssa, Severian of Gabala). Far from treating these historical facts as coincidental, this project contends that Constantinople was thoroughly Christianized not only through institutions, but also through an intensive program of preaching. The key objective of this project is to explore how preachers sought to Christianize Constantinople’s populace. While it will examine the substantial ritual and ethical changes that preachers sought to bring about, it focuses on how preachers cultivated a Christian imagination among their Constantinopolitan audiences. For although many institutions had already been ‘de-paganized,’ much work remained to Christianize the cultural and thus religious imaginations of Constantinople’s populace. This project highlights five areas of change: (1) the Christianization of space, with Constantinople’s places being demarcated as either sacred or demonic; (2) the Christianization of time, in which the day, the week, and the year were ordered around Christian feasting, fasting, and prayer; (3) the Christianization of urban politics, in which heresy and orthodoxy became political matters; (4) the Christianization of Roman mores, in which the elite assumed new cultural norms inherited not by pagan forebears, but by Christian ones, (5) the role that the new narratives of Christ and the saints played in the cultivation of a new imagination, over and against the traditional stories that dominated a city still in the process of becoming Christian. By focusing on this specific location and timeframe, for which there is a significant amount of evidence, we can come to a better understanding of how Christianity came to dominate urban life within the Roman empire.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants