ENGLISH

Crisis Management in Late Antiquity (410–590 CE): A Survey of the Evidence from Episcopal Letters

By Pauline Allen , Bronwen Neil

Book information

Publisher
BRILL
Year
2013
ISBN
9004185771, 9789004185777
ISSN
0920-623X
Google Books ID
5fSZAAAAQBAJ
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (1746583 bytes)
Series
Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 121
Pages
xiv+284\299
Topic
Religion
Orientation
yes
Paginated
yes
Scanned
portrait
Time added
2014-02-19 02:54:44

Description

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.

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