Christianity and the History of Violence in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook

This volume brings together a large number of sources with which to illustrate the problem of religious violence in relation to the history of Christianity in the Roman Empire and post-Roman world. The sources are presented in both the original languages and in new English translation and are accompanied by introductions, comments, and short bibliographies. Thematically, Dirk Rohmann focuses on the ways in which Christians were subjected to violence by their pagan surroundings, on the development and scope of the very Christian ideas of martyrdom and of persecution, on how Christians thought about the nature of God and of holy wars, as well as on the problem of violence within the world of early monasticism and asceticism. Drawing on the amount of texts extant from the first to seventh centuries, this book will be of interest to both students and academics in the areas of ancient and early medieval history, classics, and religious studies.