Barbarian Plain
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€74.99
A01=Elizabeth Key Fowden
ancient roman history
ancient world
antiquity
arab christianity
archaeology
Author_Elizabeth Key Fowden
Category=JPA
Category=NHB
Category=NHC
Category=NHF
Category=NK
Category=QRA
Category=QRS
christianity
church history
cult of sergius
early christian studies
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
euphrates
frontier
history
iran
islam
late roman culture
martyr
mesopotamia
muslim conquest
nonfiction
persia
pilgrimage
political history
relics
religion
religious cult
religious history
roman culture
roman empire
rome
rusafa
rusafa sergiopolis
saint sergius
saints
shrine
syria
Product details
- ISBN 9780520216853
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 30 Nov 1999
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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During the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. there arose on the Euphrates frontier, between the empires of Rome and Iran, a city girded with glittering gypsum walls. Within these walls stood a great church, a shrine for the relics of Saint Sergius, who was martyred there, at Rusafa, in the early fourth century. Around Rusafa stretched the 'Barbarian Plain,' inhabited by Rome's Arab allies, many of whom revered the saint. Elizabeth Key Fowden examines the rise of the cult of Sergius in late antiquity, drawing on literary accounts, inscriptions, archaeology, images, and the landscape itself to construct a many-faceted picture of the role of religion in this frontier society. Focusing on the socio-cultural as well as the political dimensions of the Sergius cult, her study sheds light on the lives of the ordinary faithful, as well as on religion's place in the strategic calculations of hostile empires.
Beginning with a detailed analysis of the surviving accounts of the martyrdom of Sergius, Fowden provides a discussion of Syrian Rusafa-Sergiopolis, traces the spread of the Sergius cult in Syria and Mesopotamia, and provides a provocative interpretation of the relation between the saint's presence at Rusafa and his role in frontier defense. She also discusses Arab Christianity in the context of late Roman culture in the East, as well as the continuation of the Sergius tradition after the Muslim conquest, emphasizing the changes and continuities brought by the rise of Islam.
Elizabeth Key Fowden is a Research Fellow at the Center for Greek and Roman Antiquity in Athens, Greece.
