Barbarians as the Religious Other in the Late Roman World
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A01=Maijastina Kahlos
Author_Maijastina Kahlos
barbarians
Category=DSBB
Category=NHC
Category=QRAM9
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heresies
Late antiquity
migration period
Nicene Christianity
paganism
Product details
- ISBN 9781399514446
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Feb 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Two major transformations of Late Antiquity redefined what it meant to be Roman: the Christianisation of imperial power and the collapse of the Western Roman state. This book examines how Prudentius, Athanasius, Augustine and other Roman and post-Roman writers used the figure of the ‘barbarian’ to articulate these shifting religious, political, and cultural boundaries. Religious identity — especially the divide between Nicene orthodoxy and so-called ‘heretical’ forms such as Homoian Christianity — became a key marker of Romanness. Barbarians such as Goths and Vandals were not only portrayed as ethnic outsiders but also as ‘pagans’ or ‘heretics’, threatening both the Church and Roman civilisation itself. While heresy was often equated with barbarism, Roman elites also downplayed these differences when politically convenient, using religious language to both legitimise and delegitimise power. Through thematic and regional case studies, Kahlos shows how religion, ethnicity and imperial traditions were entangled in the construction of Roman identity – and how ‘barbarians’ were used to define, defend or reshape it.
Maijastina Kahlos holds the title of Docent at the University of Helsinki and is a Principal Researcher at the University of Lisbon
