Description
Book SynopsisIn A Threat to Public Piety, Elizabeth DePalma Digeser reexamines the origins of the Great Persecution (AD 303313), the last eruption of pagan violence against Christians before Constantine enforced the toleration of Christianity within the Empire. Challenging the widely accepted view that the persecution enacted by Emperor Diocletian was largely inevitable, she points out that in the forty years leading up to the Great Persecution Christians lived largely in peace with their fellow Roman citizens. Why, Digeser asks, did pagans and Christians, who had intermingled cordially and productively for decades, become so sharply divided by the turn of the century?
Making use of evidence that has only recently been dated to this period, Digeser shows that a falling out between Neoplatonist philosophers, specifically Iamblichus and Porphyry, lit the spark that fueled the Great Persecution. In the aftermath of this falling out, a group of influential pagan priests and philosophers
Trade Review
"Occasionally in every generation a few books may be published that refreshingly redirect scholarship in their respective areas of expertise. This book by Elizabeth DePalma Digeser indisputably falls into that categoryowing to the fact that she has done something that no one has done beforenamely analyzing the works of ArnobiusLactantiusand Eusibius together to show how their common themes reveal a sustained criticism of the anti-Christian philosopher Porphyry of Tyre." —Michael Bland Simmons
* Journey of Early Christian Studies *
The intellectual conflict between pagan philosophy and Christian theology is one of the fascinating—if not booming—topics in current studies of the third and fourth centuries.... DePalma Digeser's book is a valid attempt to bring together the often fragmented research on the Christian and pagan sides of this discourse. It also highlights the immense importance of both Porphyry and Origen—not only for third-century thought, but also for the eventual developments in the realm of politics and Roman society.
-- Ulrich Volp * Ecclesiastical History *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: From Permeable Circles to Hardened Boundaries
1. Ammonius Saccas and the Philosophy without Conflicts
2. Origen as a Student of Ammonius
3. Plotinus, Porphyry, and Philosophy in the Public Realm
4. Schism in the Ammonian Community: Porphyry v. Iamblichus
5. Schism in the Ammonian Community: Porphyry v. Methodius of Olympus
Conclusion: The Ammonian Community and the Great Persecution
