Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium

The essays collected in Christians Shaping Identity celebrate Pauline Allen’s significant contribution to early Christian, late antique, and Byzantine studies, especially concerning bishops, heresy/orthodoxy and christology. Covering the period from earliest Christianity to middle Byzantium, the first eighteen essays explore the varied ways in which Christians constructed their own identity and that of the society around them. A final four essays explore the same theme within Roman Catholicism and oriental Christianity in the late 19th to 21st centuries, with particular attention to the subtle relationships between the shaping of the early Christian past and the moulding of Christian identity today. Among the many leading scholars represented are Averil Cameron and Elizabeth A. Clark.

Geoffrey D. Dunn, Ph.D. (2000), Australian Catholic University, is Senior Research Fellow at that university. He has published extensively on North African Christianity and fifth-century Roman bishops. Most recently he is editor of The Bishop of Rome in Late Antiquity (Ashgate, 2015).
Wendy Mayer, Ph.D. (1996), Australian Catholic University, is Research Fellow at that university. She has published extensively on John Chrysostom and his milieu, including, with Pauline Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch 300-638 CE (Peeters, 2012).

'Die große und illustre Kreis der Beitragenden spiegelt die hohe Wertschätzung wider, die Allen in der patristischen scientific community genießt und dokumentiert zugleich den Dialog der australischen Forscherin mit der Patristik Nordamerikas, Europas, Südafrikas und Japans. [...] Mit dem Band [liegt] eine für Kirchen- und Kulturhistoriker, Patristiker, Byzantinisten und Ökumeniker gleichermaßen relevante Sammlung zur Herausbildung und Transformation christlicher Identitäten von der neutestamentlichen Zeit bis in die Gegenwart vor.' - Martin Illert, in: Theologische Literaturzeitung 141 (2016) 12