Hagiographical Sources of Bishop's’ Fight against Paganism: A Rhetorical Topos and Historical Reality

Student: Kravchenko Andrey

Educational Programme: History (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 8

Year of Graduation: 2016

The development of Christianity in the age of Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages was occurring in acute struggle with paganism on ideological and practical levels. The present paper will seek to explore the main forms of this antagonism, which is represented in the hagiographic sources (vitae, praxis, passio, laudatio) dedicated to the bishops who lived from the end of the 2nd until the beginning of the 6th century. Analysis will focus on the examination of the rhetorical topoi and their correlations with historical reality. The question is how and why authors of the live of saints constructed ideological basis of Christianity in the polemic with pagan culture, in which cases the represented episodes and motifs could be considered as an adequate depiction of the historical reality and when it is a pure invention, based on the mentality, cultural specificity and ideological influence.

Full text (added May 17, 2016)

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