Category: Monograph

Ungvary on the Poetics of Asceticism

David Ungvary wrote Converting Verse: The Poetics of Asceticism in Late Roman Gaul, Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity, Oxford: OUP, 2024.

See item in catalogue here

Has a chapter on Sidonius: ‘Announcing Renunciation: Sidonius Apollinaris and Poetic Disavowal’. The blurb reads:

  • Offers one of the first English translations of Ennodius’s Eucharisticon, among the earliest successors to Augustine’s Confessions
  • Provides a new cultural history of Christian Latin poetry, with a focus on Gaul
  • Illuminates the strong social affiliations and literary interplay among understudied and non-canonical Latin authors of Late Antiquity
  • Employs a diverse interpretive methodology, drawing from Classics, religious studies, historiography, and literary theory, to update literary historical analysis of postclassical poetry

Grig on Popular Culture

Lucy Grig has put out Popular Culture and the End of Antiquity in Southern Gaul, c. 400–550, Cambridge: CUP.

Go to catalogue

ToC
1 Introduction: Popular Culture and the Study of (Late) Ancient History 1
2 Urban Contexts for Popular Culture in an Age of Transformation 36
3 Popular Culture, Society and Economy: The Countryside in Transition in Late Antiquity 73
4 Christianizing Popular Culture: The View ‘from the Pulpit’ 110
5 An Alternative View: Lived Religion As Popular Culture 144
6 The Kalends of January: The Persistence of Popular Culture 173
7 Conclusions: Popular Culture and the End of Antiquity? 219

All About the Terminology of Christian Buildings

Gaëlle Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard has put out a detailed study of the terminology of Christian buildings: Naissance du discours sur les édifices chrétiens dans la littérature latine occidentale: d’Ambroise de Milan à Grégoire de Tours, Turnhout: Brepols, 2023.

Here goes to the publisher’s catalogue

As to Sidonius, the book discusses: Les descriptions d’édifices religieux dans l’œuvre de Sidoine Apollinaire | Les vers consacrés à la description de l’église de Lyon, à la demande de l’évêque Patiens et leur présentation par Sidoine, Lettre 2, 10, 2-4 | Nouvelle évocation de l’œuvre édificatrice de Patiens de Lyon, Lettre 6, 12, 3-4 | Évocation de la reconstruction (ou agrandissement) de la basilique Saint-Martin de Tours et les vers que Sidoine a composés à ce sujet à la demande de l’évêque Perpetuus, Lettre 4, 18, 4 | Autres passages de Sidoine Apollinaire évoquant avec un certain degré de précision des édifices religieux.
Its second part is a full glossary of the vocabulary of the description of Christian buildings.

Ferrari’s Reappraisal of Paganism

Carlo Ferrari argues for the re-emergence of Celtic – and, in fact, Eurasian – religiosity in Gaul in the upheaval of late antiquity: Santi e sciamani. Una lettura storico-religiosa della Gallia tardoromana, Sesto San Giovanni: Mimesis, 2022. See the publisher’s catalogue.

The book is an adaptation of Ferrari’s PhD thesis ‘Observatio paganorum: pratiche e comportamenti religiosi nella Gallia tardoantica (IV-VI secolo d.C.)’, Florence, 2019, which is available in open access here.