The Missing Link: The Homoian Church in the Danubian Provinces and Its Role in the Conversion of the Goths
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Marta Szada
Abstract
Frequently, studies focusing on the fourth-century Trinitarian controversy stop at the 380s and emphasize the importance of the Council of Constantinople and the Council of Aquileia in 381, and the end of Italian rule of the last Homoian emperor, Valentinian II. In very common interpretation, these events mark the virtual end of the Latin Homoianism—its final extirpation. This thesis mightily influenced the modern thinking about Christianization of the Goths and other barbarian peoples. The process was conceptualized as an “ethnic switch” —the people of non-Roman ethnicity embraced the religion while the Romans completely abandoned it. Thereby, the disavowed Roman heresy changed into the creed able to preserve ethnic difference under the Roman pressure of acculturation. In the present paper, I challenge this interpretation. I argue that the Latin Homoian Church survived long into the fifth century and had an active role in the process of converting the Goths into the Homoian Christianity. I also call into question the role of Wulfila as the Apostle of the Goths directly involved in their Christianization in the 370s, the controvertible image created by the fifth-century church historians. By these means, I aim at dismissing a vision of Christianization of the Goths relying on the solitary mission of a single person. The Goths did not cling to Homoianism because it kept them apart from the Roman neighbours and let preserve their traditions. Quite opposite, in the era of the emperor Valens it was an act of political loyalty to the Roman Empire which later under the formative influence of the Latin Homoian Church transformed into the religious identification founded on the concept of Catholicity—quality of being universally right in the matter of faith—and not on ethnic exclusivism.
Acknowledgments
This article came to life as a part of my doctoral project at the University of Warsaw and I would like to thank my advisors Robert Wiśniewski and Stanisław Adamiak for their guidance and unrelenting enthusiasm, even when faced with yet another draft I have written. Special thanks are due to Helmut Reimitz and Merle Eisenberg who read the previous version of this text and offered invaluable insights. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose remarks greatly improved the text. All that helped me to avoid many pitfalls but, of course, all lingering mistakes and misjudgements are mine.
This research was supported by the grants of the National Science Centre in Poland (2013/10/E/HS3/00202 and 2015/19/N/HS3/00493).
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Edition
- Zwei neuentdeckte Predigten des Nestorios: Adversus haereticos de divina trinitate (CPG 5691) und In symbolum fidei. Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar
- Artikel
- Tertullian on the Afterlife: “Only Martyrs are in Heaven” and Other Misunderstandings
- Ephrem the Syrian’s Use of Beatitudes
- The Missing Link: The Homoian Church in the Danubian Provinces and Its Role in the Conversion of the Goths
- Ascèse et liturgie dans l’Orient chrétien. Coutumes monastiques à l’enfermement d’un reclus
- Book under Discussion
- Maren R. Niehoff, Philon von Alexandria. Eine intellektuelle Biographie (übersetzt von Claus-Jürgen Thornton und Eva Tyrell; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019). Englisches Original: Philo of Alexandria. An Intellectual Biography (Yale: Yale University Press, 2018).
- Rezensionen
- Andrew Gregory, Hg.: The Gospel According to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites, Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 2017, 361 S., ISBN 978-0-19-928786-4, £ 120,–.
- Jane D. McLarty: Thecla’s Devotion: Narrative, Emotion and Identity in the „Acts of Paul and Thecla“, Cambridge (James Clarke & Co.) 2018, 257 S., ISBN 978-0-227-17609-2, £ 65,–
- Kevin Douglas Hill: Athanasius and the Holy Spirit: The Development of His Early Pneumatology, Minneapolis (Fortress Press) 2016, XXII + 289 pp., ISBN 978-1-5064-1668-7, $ 49,–.
- Bradley K. Storin: Self-Portrait in Three Colors: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Epistolary Autobiography, Christianity in Late Antiquity 6, Oakland (University of California Press) 2019, IX + 261 S., ISBN 978-0-520-97294-0, $ 95,–; £ 78,–.
- Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom: The Monastic Landscape of Late Antique Egypt: An Archaeological Reconstruction, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2017, XXVII + 426 pp., ISBN 978-1-107-16181-8, $ 135,–.
- Peter Heather: Die letzte Blüte Roms. Das Zeitalter Justinians, Übers. Cornelius Hartz, Darmstadt (WBG Theiss) 2018 (Übers. von Rome Resurgent: War and Empire in the Age of Justinian, New York [Oxford University Press] 2018]), 446 S., ISBN 978-3-8062-3892-1, € 35,–.
- Eleni Pachoumi und Mark Edwards, Hgg.: Praying and Contemplating in Late Antiquity: Religious and Philosophical Interactions, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 113, Tübingen (Mohr Siebeck) 2018, 229 S., ISBN 978-3-16-156119-1, € 79,–.
- Jared Ortiz, ed.: Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition, CUA Studies in Early Christianity, Washington, D.C. (Catholic University of America Press) 2019, 313 pp., ISBN 978-0-8132-3142-6, $ 75,–.
- Jonathan D. Teubner: Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 2018, VIII + 257 S., ISBN 978-0-19-876717-6, £ 69,–.
- Jérémy Delmulle: Prosper d’Aquitaine contre Jean Cassien: Le Contra collatorem, l’appel à Rome du parti augustinien dans la querelle postpélagienne, Textes et Etudes du Moyen Âge 91, Turnhout (Brepols) 2018, XLIV + 381 pp., ISBN 9782503584294, € 55,–.
