Religious education was crucial to the emergence and development of Christianity in late antiquity. It stood within the tension between human and divine agency. This volume analyzes the human agents of such education: bishops, catechists, mothers and fathers, and both male and female monastic teachers. It thus offers a comparative analysis of teachers' roles in Christian educational contexts.
Religion requires education. Soon after the emergence of Christianity, religious education became crucial to the development of Christian communities in towns and in the countryside. People were educated in different ways: via socialization in families and peer-groups, education by teachers at home, in school and in catechetical settings, and in the form of self-formation. Religious education, moreover, is transmitted within the tension between human and divine agency: while educational processes are initiated by human teachers, Christ is often understood as the real teacher when it comes to believing in God. But religion was nonetheless taught by human beings in families, parishes, monasteries and elsewhere. The present volume analyzes the human agents of such education: bishops, catechists, mothers and fathers, and monastic teachers both male and female. It thus offers a comparative analysis of teachers' roles in Christian educational contexts, dealing with questions such as: Who taught in late antique Christianity? Which imagery is used to describe such teaching? What impact do gender ascriptions have on teaching roles and processes? And where do conflicts emerge between different roles and their social settings?
Table of contents:
Arthur Urbano: Literary and Visual Images of Teachers in Late Antiquity -
Peter Gemeinhardt: Men of Letters or Fishermen? The Education of Bishops and Clerics in Late Antiquity -
Juliette Day: The Bishop as Mystagogical Teacher -
Olga Lorgeoux: Cyril of Jerusalem as Catechetical Teacher: Religious Education in Fourth-Century Jerusalem -
Carmen Angela Cvetković:Si docendus est episcopus a laico, quid sequetur? Ambrose of Milan and the Episcopal Duty of Teaching -
David Rylaarsdam: John Chrysostom on the Human and the Divine Teacher of Christianity -
Therese Fuhrer:Ille intus magister. On Augustine's Didactic Concept of Interiority -
Maria Munkholt Christensen: Holy Women as Humble Teachers. An Investigation of Hagiographical Texts from Late Antiquity -
Katharina Greschat: »Early Impressions are Hard to Eradicate from the Mind«. The Lasting Influence of Domestic Education in Western Late Antiquity -
Henrik Rydell Johnsén: Physicians, Teachers and Friends: Lower Egyptian Desert Elders and Late Antique Directors of Souls -
Christoph Birkner: Between Monastic Leadership and Spiritual Instruction: Aspects of Teaching in the Hagiographical Corpus of Cyril of Scythopolis -
Andreas Müller: The Monastic Fathers of Mount Sinai as Teachers of Spirituality -
Peter Gemeinhardt/Olga Lorgeoux/Maria Munkholt Christensen: Concluding Remarks