Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine

by Brent D. Shaw

• ISBN13: 9780521196055
• ISBN10: 0521196051
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-10-17
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

One route to understanding the nature of specifically religious violence is the study of past conflicts. Distinguished ancient historian Brent D. Shaw provides a new analysis of the intense sectarian battles between the Catholic and Donatist churches of North Africa in late antiquity, in which Augustine played a central role as Bishop of Hippo. The development and deployment of images of hatred, including that of the heretic, the pagan, and the Jew, and the modes by which these were most effectively employed, including the oral world of the sermon, were critical to promoting acts of violence. Shaw explores how the emerging ecclesiastical structures of the Christian church, on one side, and those of the Roman imperial state, on the other, interacted to repress or excite violent action. Finally, the meaning and construction of the acts themselves, including the Western idea of suicide, are shown to emerge from the conflict itself.

Table of Contents

This terrible custom

Church of the traitors

Poisonous brood of vipers

Archives of memory

City of denial

Ravens feeding on death

Little foxes, evil women

Guardians of the people

In the house of discipline

Sing a new song

Kings of our age

We choose to stand

Athletes of death

Bad boys

Men of blood

Divine winds

Bishops and bishoprics in Africa: the numbers

Origins of the division: chronology

The Catholic conference of 348

The peasant jacquerie of Axido and Fasir

The mission of Paul and Macarius

Historical fictions: interpreting the circumcellions

The archaeology of suicide

African sermons

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