Book contents
- Empire and Religion in the Roman World
- Empire and Religion in the Roman World
- Copyright page
- Frontispiece
- Contents
- Figures
- Table
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Empire
- Part II Religion
- Chapter 5 The First Christian Family of Egypt
- Chapter 6 Missionaries, Pious Merchants, Freelance Religious Experts, and the Spread of Christianity
- Chapter 7 Christian Piety in Late Antiquity
- Chapter 8 Ausonius at the Edge of Empire
- Chapter 9 Peregrinationes in Psalmos
- Chapter 10 Muḥammad’s Rivals
- Chapter 11 Brent Shaw
- Appendix: Bibliography of Brent D. Shaw’s Publications to 2020
- Index
- References
Chapter 7 - Christian Piety in Late Antiquity
Contexts and Contestations
from Part II - Religion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 August 2021
- Empire and Religion in the Roman World
- Empire and Religion in the Roman World
- Copyright page
- Frontispiece
- Contents
- Figures
- Table
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Empire
- Part II Religion
- Chapter 5 The First Christian Family of Egypt
- Chapter 6 Missionaries, Pious Merchants, Freelance Religious Experts, and the Spread of Christianity
- Chapter 7 Christian Piety in Late Antiquity
- Chapter 8 Ausonius at the Edge of Empire
- Chapter 9 Peregrinationes in Psalmos
- Chapter 10 Muḥammad’s Rivals
- Chapter 11 Brent Shaw
- Appendix: Bibliography of Brent D. Shaw’s Publications to 2020
- Index
- References
Summary
What is the most virtuous form of Christian life and the best path to perfection? And what is the best form of social organization and context to achieve this? This chapter addresses these questions by bringing together three different sets of sources for Egypt and Palestine in the fourth to seventh centuries: normative monastic treatises on the desirable and undesirable ways to achieve spiritual perfection, hagiographical narratives that praise the “hidden sanctity” of laypeople, and descriptive historical sources (including papyri) regarding the activities of pious lay groups (spoudaioi, philoponoi). Taken together, these sources reveal that the charitable activities of laypeople played a sufficiently large role in late antique society to challenge the sense of spiritual superiority that began to prevail in monastic circles.
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- Empire and Religion in the Roman World , pp. 161 - 186Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021