Book contents
- Religious Violence in the Ancient World
- Religious Violence in the Ancient World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- A Note on Abbreviations
- General Introduction
- Part I Methodology
- Part II Religious Violence in the Graeco-Roman World
- Part III Religious Violence in Late Antiquity
- Chapter 10 Religious Violence in Late Antiquity: Current Approaches, Trends and Issues
- Chapter 11 Coercion in Late Antiquity: A Brief Intellectual History
- Chapter 12 Crowd Behaviour and the Destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in 391/392 ce
- Chapter 13 Violence and Monks: From a Mystical Concept to an Intolerant Practice (Fourth to Fifth Century)
- Chapter 14 The Discipline of Domination: Asceticism, Violence and Monastic Curses in Theodoret’s Historia Religiosa
- Chapter 15 Suffering Saints: Shaping Narratives of Violence after Chalcedon
- Chapter 16 Fighting for Chalcedon: Vitalian’s Rebellion against Anastasius
- Chapter 17 The Emperor, the People and Urban Violence in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries
- Index of Sources
- General Index
Chapter 12 - Crowd Behaviour and the Destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in 391/392 ce
from Part III - Religious Violence in Late Antiquity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020
- Religious Violence in the Ancient World
- Religious Violence in the Ancient World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- A Note on Abbreviations
- General Introduction
- Part I Methodology
- Part II Religious Violence in the Graeco-Roman World
- Part III Religious Violence in Late Antiquity
- Chapter 10 Religious Violence in Late Antiquity: Current Approaches, Trends and Issues
- Chapter 11 Coercion in Late Antiquity: A Brief Intellectual History
- Chapter 12 Crowd Behaviour and the Destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in 391/392 ce
- Chapter 13 Violence and Monks: From a Mystical Concept to an Intolerant Practice (Fourth to Fifth Century)
- Chapter 14 The Discipline of Domination: Asceticism, Violence and Monastic Curses in Theodoret’s Historia Religiosa
- Chapter 15 Suffering Saints: Shaping Narratives of Violence after Chalcedon
- Chapter 16 Fighting for Chalcedon: Vitalian’s Rebellion against Anastasius
- Chapter 17 The Emperor, the People and Urban Violence in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries
- Index of Sources
- General Index
Summary
The riotous behaviour by crowds towards other crowds, individuals, buildings or objects is considered in many studies to be a main component of ‘religious violence’ in Late Antiquity.2 Yet these studies often fail sufficiently to take into account three, interrelated points. The first is that the, mostly Christian, sources typically describe the incidents in stark antithetical terms depending on the author’s agenda (‘pagan’–Christian, Arian–‘orthodox’, miaphysite–Chalcedonian and so on). The resulting black-and-white picture tends towards exaggeration and overemphasises the religious antithesis.3 A second point is that despite the focus in the sources on religious differences in reality – as with religious violence in general – almost always other factors were in play.
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- Religious Violence in the Ancient WorldFrom Classical Athens to Late Antiquity, pp. 286 - 305Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020