Introduction: Expanding the Discourse on Good Christian Rulership

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Preface V
3. Contents VII
4. Introduction: Expanding the Discourse on Good Christian Rulership 1
5. A. The Good Christian Ruler in the Roman Empire
6. Finding a Common Cause: Fourth-Century Greek Discourses on Rulership 39
7. The Good Sinful Ruler: Ambrose of Milan and Theodosius I 65
8. The Emperor’s Two Cities: Augustine’s Image of the Good Christian Ruler in De civitate Dei 5.24 87
9. Pious and Impious Christian Rulers According to Egyptian Historiography and Hagiography: A First Survey of the Evidence 109
10. Faithful Rulers and Theological Deviance: Ephrem the Syrian and Jacob of Serugh on the Roman Emperor 141
11. B. The Good Christian Ruler between Persia and Rome
12. Images of the Good Ruler in Sasanian Iran: An Emic View 171
13. Representations of Rulership in Late Antique Armenia 181
14. The Depiction of the Arsacid Dynasty in Medieval Armenian Historiography 205
15. Vakhtang I Gorgasali (r. 447–522) as a Christian Monarch in Georgia: His Depiction in the Life of Kartli 221
16. The Creation of a “Pious” Image of King Vačʽagan II (r. c. 485–523) of Caucasian Albania in the Tale of Vačʽagan (Early Sixth Century) 239
17. Concerning Four Kings From the Land of ‘Deep Ravines, Dense Forests and Dark Thickets’ 249
18. C. The Good Christian Ruler in Post‐Roman Traditions
19. The Good Ruler from a Papal Perspective: Continuities and Discontinuities in Papal Letters from the Fourth to Eighth Centuries 291
20. The Image of the Christian Ruler in the Catholic Monarchy of Visigothic Spain: Julian of Toledo’s Historia Wambae 311
21. Goodness and Cruelty: The Image of the Ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire in the Period of Christianisation (Ninth Century) 327
22. A Christian King in Africa: The Image of Christian Nubian Rulers in Internal and External Sources 361
23. D. The Good Ruler under Islamic Rule
24. Justice and Good Administration in Medieval Islam: The Book of the Pearl of the Ruler by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (860–940) 383
25. Images of Emperors and Emirs in Early Islamic Egypt 397
26. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule: Constantine and the Torah in the Melkite Arabic Chronicle of Agapius of Mabbug (Tenth Century) 421
27. Index of Persons and Places 443
28. Subject Index 457