Suchergebnisse

In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman empire underwent a series of changes that profoundly affected its political, economic, social and cultural organization. The long fourth century saw the growth of Christianity from a minor persecuted movement into the Roman state religion. In the wake of this process and with the generous support of Constantine the Great and his successors, Christian communities flourished throughout the empire. This paper will explore some of the many ways in which women were involved in ascetic Christian life in the late Roman West. It aims to sketch the range of new opportunities that may have followed the conversion to asceticism while also reflecting on the more conventional models of womanhood that were still present. In order to do so, the paper will present four small case studies of women who were partly or loosely associated with each other and who participated in the ascetic networks of the late Roman elite: the prominent example of Melania the Elder and the three lesser known case studies of Therasia, Amanda and Bassula.

This article examines descriptions of emotional distress and social alienation from two interdisciplinary perspectives: modern clinical psychology and late antique hagiography. The first case study examines the current method of classification in psychiatry: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5). Offering a broad perspective on how the DSM-5 came to be, we look at the strengths but also the pitfalls of this classification system. We argue that societal context is important when identifying a disorder, but it, ironically, only plays a small part when applying the DSM-5 in everyday psychiatric practice. Furthermore, it will be argued that historical contexts may usefully inform modern clinical practice (for instance, because they show how the interpretation of 'abnormal' behaviour is in flux). The second section will examine descriptions of emotions and distress in hagiographic sources from Late Antiquity. It analyses a hagiographic collection, the Historia Lausiaca as a taxonomy that both describes and regulates Christian pious life. In Late Antiquity, social developments, such as the growth of and enthusiasm for the ascetic movement, led to the introduction of new concepts for how to deal with and integrate expressions of emotional distress. Ultimately, by occupying the intersection of religion and medicine, this article aims to further psychologists' understanding of how past societies used religious ideas to shape individual behaviour and its interpretation. Additionally, it will inform historians about modern classification methods in psychiatry and how these have influenced the interpretation of behavioural traits.Banner image: Mondino Dei Luzzi, Section of Brain in Dissected Skull, Anatomia Mundini, Ad Vetustis, 1541, {{PD–US}}.

The belief in the Last Things has an integral place in Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The two volumes want to explain how eschatological thought influenced and factored into the political and religious perception and self-definition of medieval communities. How did notions of an imminent end shape a community's identity, the perception of other communities and an individual's perspective towards life and the world?