Dr Neil McLynn: List of publications

This book sheds new light on the religious and consequently social changes taking place in late antique Rome.

Challenging ideas about the declining social role and impact of literature in Late Antiquity, Literature and Society in the Fourth Century AD demonstrates how Greek and Latin literature of the fourth century AD continued to play an ...

This volume brings together sixteen world-leading scholars of ancient Judaism, Christianity and Greco-Roman culture and society to explore this question, in honour of the ground-breaking scholarship of Professor Gillian Clark.

© Oxford University Press, 2013. This chapter discusses Canon 3 of the Council of Constantinople in 381, which proclaimed that "The bishop of Constantinople shall have the privileges of honour after the bishop of Rome, through its being New Rome." This would become the basis of the more precise (and more contentious) definition of Constantinople's status in Canon 28 of Chalcedon. Commentators have tended to assume a connection between the two rulings, as successive stages in the evolution of the new capital into the most powerful see of the eastern church. However, a more complex picture is suggested by looking closely at the evidence, including the writings of Gregory Nazianzen, as well at the terms of the canon itself. The circumstances of the 381 council turn out to be crucial. There was not, in fact, a decisive voice (either from the bishops or from the emperor) demanding the promotion of the see of Constantinople or the relegation of its rivals; rather, the canon should be seen as an attempt at neutralizing the see's authority. This new interpretation requires us to revise our conceptions of the geopolitical horizons of fourth-century churchmen, and of the extent to which Old Rome impinged upon the consciousness of New Rome.

This chapter presents a peculiarity of Augustine's case in reading the Confessions and the equally unreliable memoirs of Gregory Nazianzen and his student fraternity in Athens. The prevailing impression obtained from these student reminiscences is of disorder rather than discipline. It argues that Augustine may have designed his 'disciplinarum libri' to mark a decisive break with the day-to-day untidiness of the schoolroom. In viewing thePhilocalia, it suggests a more lasting analogy between East and West containing encouraging intimations of the possibility of an authentically Christian paideia.

© Oxford University Press, 2013. Historians of late antique government have at last become accustomed to taking imperial ceremonies seriously. 'The increase in the frequency and elaboration of public ceremonial' during the period is no longer dismissed as an irritating distraction, but is credited with a 'central role in the relations between emperors and their subjects'. This chapter explores the ceremonial impact of the most dramatic of all the changes to the character of imperial rulership during the period - the allegiance pledged by Constantine and subsequent emperors to the Christian God. Examination of the evidence for the frequency and character of church attendance by the emperors of the first three Christian dynasties, and for the representations of imperial churchgoing in contemporary literature, will bring into focus the piecemeal character of what is too easily seen as a straightforward evolution.

NEIL MCLYNN is University Lecturer in Later Roman History in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Corpus Christi College. ...