Crisis Management in Late Antiquity (410-590 CE)

Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil investigate crisis management as conducted by the increasingly important episcopal class in the 5th and 6th centuries. Their basic source is the neglected corpus of bishops’ letters in Greek and Latin, the letter being the most significant mode of communication and information-transfer in the period from 410 to 590 CE. The volume brings together into a wider setting a wealth of previous international research on episcopal strategies for dealing with crises of various kinds. Six broad categories of crisis are identified and analysed: population displacement, natural disasters, religious disputes and religious violence, social abuses and the breakdown of the structures of dependence. Individual case-studies of episcopal management are provided for each of these categories. This is the first comprehensive treatment of crisis management in the late-antique world, and the first survey of episcopal letter-writing across the later Roman empire.

Pauline Allen, Director of the Centre for Early Christian Studies, Australian Catholic University, is known internationally for her work on homiletic literature, Maximus the Confessor, the Council of Chalcedon, Severus of Antioch, and letter-writing in Late Antiquity. She is research associate in the Department of Ancient Languages, University of Pretoria.

Bronwen Neil holds the Burke Senior Lectureship in Ecclesiastical Latin at Australian Catholic University, and is Assistant Director of the Centre for Early Christian Studies. She has published widely on Maximus the Confessor, Pope Martin I, Anastasius Bibliothecarius and Pope Leo I, as well as poverty and welfare in Late Antiquity.

"a real pleasure to read" – Brian J. Matz, Fontbonne University, Clayton, Missouri, in: RBL, 06/2016
"...brimming with important insights. [...] The book is well-written, clearly organized and structured such that it will appeal to any who are interested in crisis, both natural and man-made, beyond the later Roman Empire and its successor kingdoms in the West." – Susanna Elm, Berkeley, in: Theologische Literaturzeitung 140 (2015)
"A well-researched, original and finely presented study dealing with widely divergent personalities such as Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, Gelasius, Leo Magnus, Nestorius, Pelagius I of Rome, Severus of Antioch, Synesius of Cyrene, Theodoret of cyrrhus, and many others." – J. van Oort, in: Vigiliae Christianae 68 (2014)