[Antiquitas] Michele Renee Salzman esitelmöi Helsingin yliopistossa 21.3. 2013

[Maijastina Kahlos]

Professori Michele Renee Salzman (University of California at  
Riverside) vierailee Helsingin yliopistossa ja pitää esitelmän:

“Pagans and Christians in Constantine’s Rome”

Aika: 21.3.2013, klo 16.15
Paikka: Maailman kulttuurien laitos, Klassillisen filologian  
seminaarihuone, Unioninkatu 40 (huomaa käyntiosoite: Metsätalo,  
Fabianinkatu 39, A-siipi, 2. krs, käynti 3. kerroksen kautta)

Professori Salzman on ehdottomasti yksi myöhäisen Rooman historian  
merkittävimpiä tutkijoita. Hän on julkaissut mm. tutkimuksia  
kalentereista ja aikakäsityksistä myöhäisantiikissa (The  
Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity,  
University California Press, 1990) ja roomalaisen aristokratian  
kristillistymisestä 300-luvulla (The Making of a Christian  
Aristocracy, Harvard University Press, 2002). Vastikään Salzman on  
julkaissut Michael Robertsin kanssa käännöksen ja kommentaarin  
Symmachuksen kirjeistä (The Letters of Symmachus: Book 1, Brill 2012)  
sekä toimittaa teosta The Cambridge History of Religions in the  
Ancient World.

Lisätietoja antaa:
Maijastina Kahlos, Tutkijakollegium, Helsingin yliopisto,  
maijastina.kahlos at helsinki.fi

Esitelmän abstrakti
“Pagans and Christians in Constantine’s Rome”
After the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, the emperor Constantine  
entered Rome and faced the senate and people even as he revealed his  
support for his new religion, Christianity. Constantine’s relations to  
the senate and Rome’s resident senatorial aristocracy in this period  
and throughout his rule (312-337) lie at the heart of discussions of  
the conversion of the empire, and have consequently attracted a good  
deal of scholarly attention, but not consensus. Some scholars have  
proposed that a strong pagan senate confronting an aggressively  
Christianizing ruler naturally led to overt political conflict; others  
have argued that an acquiescent pagan senate responding to a tolerant  
or intentionally ambiguous emperor meant there was no political  
conflict. As I will show, each component of this narrative – conflict,  
imperial efforts at Christianization, and senatorial power – requires  
independent consideration. Such an analysis, carried out in this  
paper, leads me to propose a different model of this relationship.  
Rising senatorial prestige and administrative reforms of the senate  
and senatorial order undertaken by Constantine made the senate less  
than willing to take an overt, political stand in opposition to this  
emperor in the early fourth century. Nonetheless, senate, and  
senators, engaged in disguised, political criticism in the face of an  
increasingly powerful emperor, as literary and material evidence  
indicate.

-- 
Maijastina Kahlos
PhD, Docent (adjunct professor) in Latin language and Roman literature
Research fellow
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Fabianinkatu 24 (P.O. Box 4)
00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
maijastina.kahlos at helsinki.fi
http://www.maijastinakahlos.net
http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/english/staff/Kahlos/kahlos.htm