This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Jepson School of Leadership St... more This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
These three essays are a version of lectures delivered at Cambridge. The occasion was organized a... more These three essays are a version of lectures delivered at Cambridge. The occasion was organized at Clare Hall by Dr. Janet Huskinson with unfailing thoughtfulness. It was rendered gracious by the hospitality and by the participation throughout of the president, Sir Anthony Low. The panel of discussants chaired by Keith Hopkins -Peter Garnsey, Robin Lane-Fox, Christopher Kelly, and Rosamod McKitterick -have not only left me with food for thought for many years to come: they provided us all with a model, for our times, of commentary and disagreement that were as lively as they were courteous. The presence in the audience of so many friends and colleagues -Henry Chadwick, Ian Wood, Robert Markus, William Frend, Andrew Palmer, to mention only a few -guaranteed that the discussion ranged vigorously throughout the entire late Roman and early medieval period. Altogether, I present these essays with a touch of sadness: they are, simply, the lees of the wine -what survives in print of an unusually vivid and humane occasion. A shorter version of the first lecture had been delivered, in the previous year, as a Raleigh lecture of the British Academy. 1 The themes of that lecture, and of the two subsequent lectures, emerged in large part as a result of my work for sections of volumes 13 and 14 of the Cambridge Ancient History. I owe much to my ergodiôktés in this venture, Averil Cameron, who, along with her editorial colleagues, has done nothing less than put, at long last, three whole centuries of the later Roman period in their rightful place, at the culmination of the history of the ancient world. I was 1
Prayer, Despair, and Drama: Elizabethan Introspection. By Peter Iver Kaufman. Studies in Anglican History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. xiv + 166 pp. n.p
Both Machiavelli and Shakespeare were drawn to Livy\u27s and Plutarch\u27s stories of the legenda... more Both Machiavelli and Shakespeare were drawn to Livy\u27s and Plutarch\u27s stories of the legendary field commander turned political inept, Caius Martius, who was honored with the name Coriolanus after sacking the city of Corioles. The sixteenth-century ‘coriolanists’ are usually paired as advocates of participatory regimes and said to have used Coriolanus\u27s virulent opposition to power-sharing in early republican Rome as an occasion to put plebeian interests in a favorable light. This article objects to that characterization, distinguishing Machiavelli\u27s deployment of Coriolanus in his Principe and Discorsi from Shakespeare\u27s depiction of Coriolanus and his critics on stage. The essay that follows puts Machiavelli\u27s and Shakespeare\u27s comments on Caius Martius in the context of the ‘factious practices’ they deplored in late medieval Italy and Elizabethan and early Stuart England, respectively
By discussing several of the issues that complicated the Christian\u27s cohabitation and politica... more By discussing several of the issues that complicated the Christian\u27s cohabitation and political participation in this wicked world, as Augustine saw them, the remainder of this contribution will garrison the ground we have gained collecting the bad news he conveyed in his city. We shall inquire whether the assorted consolations he enumerated compensated for the corruption. And we shall consider one reason he might have had for composing his tome as a massive disorienting device. Of course, certainty about authorial intent is impossible to pocket, yet one can make the case that Augustine dropped City of God into the post-410 conversation about empires, conquest, glory, and cupidity to put such ephemera in perspective. Might he have wanted to give pause to colleagues who too readily acquiesced in the hot pursuit of trifles in their terrestrial cities? Before attempting to answer, we ought to ask if dystopia is the right term to characterize Augustine\u27s city where trifles and the...
During Augustine\u27s life, government authorities were generally friendly to the Christianity he... more During Augustine\u27s life, government authorities were generally friendly to the Christianity he came to adopt and defend. His correspondence mentions one imperial magistrate in Africa, Virius Nicomachus Flavianus, a pagan vicar of Africa who seemed partial to Donatist Christians whom Augustine considered secessionists. Otherwise, from the 390s to 430, assorted proconsuls, vicars, and tribunes sent from the imperial chancery and asked to maintain order in North Africa were willing to enforce government edicts against Donatists and pagans. To an extent, Augustine endorsed enforcement. He was troubled by punitive measures that looked excessive to him, yet scholars generally agree with Peter Burnell that Augustine unambiguously approved punitive judgments as an “unavoidable” necessity. But Burnell and others seem to make too much of it: Augustine\u27s position on punishment supposedly indicates that he posited “an essential continuity” (rather than emphasized the contrast) between “an...
Popularized by the mass media, Max Weber's sociological concept of charisma now has a demotic mea... more Popularized by the mass media, Max Weber's sociological concept of charisma now has a demotic meaning far from what Weber had in mind. Weberian charismatic leaders have followers, not fans, although, exceptionally, fans mutate into followers. This essay aims to trace some of the dimensions of Weberian charismatic religious leadership in comparative perspective, medieval and modern. Examples include: preachers,-double charisma,‖ professors,-collective charisma,‖ religious radicals, the economy of charisma, transgressive sexuality, demagogues, living saints.
Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 1998
Social historians have long suspected that religious convictions made a difference in the sixteen... more Social historians have long suspected that religious convictions made a difference in the sixteenth century, and historians of the late Tudor religious and political settlements have recently emphasized the differences that advanced forms of Calvinism are alleged to have made. They say that religious radicals—puritans and precisianists, to their contemporary critics—were social conservatives who thought wealth was a blessing and poverty a curse. According to Keith Wrightson and David Levine, the “firmly committed Puritans among the yeomen of the parish” promoted a “sense of social distance” between themselves (“the better sort”) and the less respectable. The 1995 republication of Wrightson's and Levine's study of social discontinuity, Poverty and Piety in an English Village, seemed a splendid occasion to revisit the intersection of religious conviction and social practice and to ponder the precision with which puritanism's supposed contributions to social stratification—...
We know relatively little about prophecies or “exercises” that early Elizabethan reformers devise... more We know relatively little about prophecies or “exercises” that early Elizabethan reformers devised as in-service training. Nearly all textbooks report that Archbishop Grindal objected to government orders that prophesying be suppressed, for, in 1576, his reservations cost him the queen's and regime's confidence. Yet the suppressed exercises have lately been depicted as tame Elizabethan adaptations of continental practices that featured sermons delivered publicly but discussed only clerically. That was so in Zurich, Emden, and elsewhere, but I think that if we look at prophesying again, look, that is, at what the critics, patrons, and partisans said about the exercises in England, we will discover that lay involvement and initiative were just as subversive and disruptive as some thought at the time.
To assist colleagues from other disciplines who teach Augustine’s texts in their core courses, th... more To assist colleagues from other disciplines who teach Augustine’s texts in their core courses, this contribution to the Lilly Colloquium discusses Augustine’s assessments of Emperors Constantine and Theodosius. His presentations of their tenure in office and their virtues suggest that his position on political leadership corresponds with his general skepticism about political platforms and platitudes. Yet careful reading of his revision of Ambrose’s account of Emperor Theodosius’s public penance and reconsideration of the last five sections of his fifth book City of God—as well as a reappraisal of several of his sermons on the Psalms—suggest that he proposes a radical alternative to political conformity relevant to undergraduates’ conventional expectations of society’s progress and their parts in it
Christianity, Democracy, and the Shadow of Constantine
B eginning in 1970 and continuing for forty years thereafter, Robert Markus informed and enlivene... more B eginning in 1970 and continuing for forty years thereafter, Robert Markus informed and enlivened discussions of Constantinian Christian ity. His impressive erudition still illumines our understanding of the period "during which Christian Romans came slowly to identify themselves with traditional Roman values, culture, practices, and established institutions." 1 Markus identifi es the world in which that assimilation slowly occurred as "the secular." Accustomed to hearing about assimilation of that sort when conversations turn to Chris tian ity's affi rmations of-or accommodations to-democratic structures or, more pointedly, to civil religion, we may consider Markus po liti cally correct. Yet because he conscripted Latin Chris tian ity's prolifi c paladin, Augustine of Hippo, into the ser vice of the secular, as it were, Markus invites us to question whether he was, on that count, historically correct. 2 According to Markus, Augustine subscribed neither to his faith's repudiation nor to its usurpation of the po liti cal cultures around it. What required repudiation, Markus's Augustine claims, was-and is-the profane or unacceptable. Th e "neutral realm of the acceptable" was "secular." Th e Christians of the late fourth and early fi fth centuries-living in Constantine's shadow and especially after Emperor Th eodosius I emphatically proscribed pagan worship-found it diffi cult to conceive of municipal or imperial politics as alien or, to borrow Markus's terms, to perceive the secular as profane; the empire "had become the vehicle of their religion and its natu ral po liti cal expression." Participation in po liti cal culture was hardly compulsory. "Christians could treat [it] as secular," Markus allowed, "per
Clerical Leadership in Late Antiquity: Augustine on Bishops' Polemical and Pastoral Burdens Augus... more Clerical Leadership in Late Antiquity: Augustine on Bishops' Polemical and Pastoral Burdens Augustine returned from Italy to North Africa in 388, apparently elated to have found his calling. The cities he had known, Thagaste and Carthage, and would soon come to know, Hippo Regius, were relatively prosperous, despite taxes collected for the central government which had been making increasing demands since the time of Emperor Constantine. The funds available for municipal improvements were depleted (gravement amputés), Claude Lepelley calculated, siting the African cities in "a history of inexorable decline" from the 380s into the 430s. 1 In the coastal city of Hippo, however, Augustine, as bishop was busy from the late 390s, exchanging ideas and insults with polemicists of various stripes. He had not meant to take a prominent part in African Christianity's bouts with sectarians, secessionists, and pagans. He planned to retire to his family estate in Thagaste with several like-minded friends. He only traveled to Hippo to consult with a man whom he hoped to tempt to join his small company of contemplatives and perhaps to confer with the faithful about the prospects for locating another contemplative collective there. He tells us he disliked traveling. He feared that his reputation for eloquence and insight might tempt the faithful far from his home and friends in Thagaste to waylay him to fill a vacancy. He would be safe in Hippo, he thought; the incumbent, Valerius, was well respected. Yet, at that time (391), Valerius was thinking ahead. He had his parishioners seize Augustine, ordained him, and after several years nominated him as his coadjutor and successor. 2
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