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This chapter discusses the place of Photinus of Sirmium in the fourth-century Trinitarian debates and examines the historical and theological situation in the West at the synods of Arles (353), Milan (355), and Béziers (356).

This chapter examines writers on purgatory in the sixth and seventh centuries, including Julianus Pomerius, Caesarius of Arles, and Gregory the Great. It also examines ideas about postmortem purgation as expressed in minor works of the seventh century including De ordine creaturarum and in visions of the afterlife and in hagiography. It concludes by looking at rituals of sacramental purification, especially baptism and penance, and discusses purgation in funeral liturgies, burial practices, and prayers for the dead.

Caesarius of Arles, Julianus Pomerius’ star pupil, has the reputation of a popular preacher of great fervour and enduring influence. In one sense, Caesarius’ mission as a preacher had been to secure the assimilation by his hearers of an inherited language — the words of Scripture and the texts of the Fathers. In devoting his prodigious energies to the fulfilment of this vocation, however, Caesarius had left his successors with an indelible sense of his own voice. His claim simply to represent an established tradition jarred with the palpable force of his intervention. Caesarius’ very rhetorical charisma undermined his own attempts to routinize the spiritual purification of his flock. This tension between the language of tradition and the voice of the individual speaker was inherent in the asceticism of ‘pure speech’ as promulgated by John Cassian. Caesarius’ prowess as a popular preacher is understood to follow from his close attention to the example of Augustine of Hippo.

This chapter examines Cassian's Gallic context. It examines the strategies late antique Gallic writers employed to make an ecclesiastical career seem more plausible and palatable to an aristocratic readership. It focuses on works written by Cassian's contemporaries. These include the writings of Sulpicius Severus, Hilary of Arles, and Eucherius of Lyons. Sulpicius Severus, though pre-dating Cassian, offered the first native Gallic version of the ascetic life, and one of his close friends, Paulinus of Nola was still active and an influential source of ascetic ideals for the readers of Cassian's day. The chapter notes that Sulpicius Severus and Hilary argued for a bright shining path, a new career that preserved traditional positions at the top of the social order. Meanwhile, John Cassian did not write in a safe, untroubled world, but rather in a Gaul whose face was changing rapidly.

This chapter discusses categories of long-, mid-, and short-distance connectivity in the Mediterranean in relation to Phokaian emporia (trading stations) and colonies (notably Massalia and Emporion). Nodes that appear physically distant from each other were sometimes more rapidly connected because of reduced degrees of separation within the network, which itself lasted for centuries. Massalia, a coastal foundational colony, illustrates the maritime perspective and orientation (cf. Arles, by the River Rhône and oriented to the hinterland, was a mixed settlement). Conflicts over Alalia (Corsica) with Carthaginians and Etruscans indicate the transition from “many-to-many” networks to more hub-oriented networks as zones of influence. Regional clusters may contain not only hegemonic centers but also mixed settlements, some of which were founded in response to Greek settlement (“antipolis” foundations). It is a porous middle ground, both concretely and metaphorically, and it is the middle ground, with its material and cultural “dialogue” among various “actors” (as we see, e.g., at Emporion or in commercial transactions on lead tablets), that constitutes the “edges” of Mediterranean networks.

Through four ‘case studies’ this chapter identifies behaviours, attitudes and representations which hint at the emergence of a new figure, and suggest significant moments in the transition from the nineteenth-century’s stereotyping of the habitual drunkard to the twentieth-century’s Existential drinker. Mary Thompson was a habitual drunkard discussed in a Parliamentary Report who rejected all attempts to make her respectable, preferring to live the life of a drunkard; George Eliot’s tale ‘Janet’s Repentance’ provides an unusually sympathetic religious/philosophical apprehension of somebody determined to drink; Zola’s novel L’Assommoir describes the drinker’s response to the modern, alienating city; van Gogh’s painting ‘Night Café at Arles’, along with a letter he wrote to his brother, introduces a self which is perched dangerously close to ruin, transformation, or oblivion. The figures encountered here, both real and fictional, are largely ‘ordinary’ people, rather than (Romantic) ‘others’ or self-avowed ‘philosopher-drinkers’, and offer glimpses of the themes and representations which in the twentieth century contribute to the figure of the Existential drinker that is discussed in the following chapters.

Western countries witnessed a sharp decline in their literary output, including the kinds of ecclesiastical writing that provide evidence about the state of contemporary liturgy and chant, in the later fourth century. The notable exception is monastic rules, such as from Gaul, Caesarius of Arles, and Aurelian of Arles, and, from contemporary Italy, the Rule of the Master and the incomparable Rule of St. Benedict. The sermons of Caesarius of Arles and the historical works of Gregory of Tours furnish many scattered remarks about ecclesiastical song in Gaul, and while the majority of these are more relevant to the Office, there are a number of valuable references to the Mass. Later-fourth-century Mass psalmody, certainly, is lector chant, whereas the Roman Mass Proper of the seventh and eighth centuries is schola chant. The lector declaims a psalm and the congregation responds, in some pattern or another, with the response verse. Schola chant involves the creation of a large body of chant and its maintenance from year to year, related tasks that can be accomplished only by an established group of quasi-professional musicians.

This chapter addresses the reception of Augustine’s theology in the context of Gallic anti-Arian positions. It argues that the theologians who were formed at the monastery of Lérins were Augustinian theologians, though they had a limited understanding of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology. While other modern scholars have argued that Faustus of Riez and Caesarius of Arles are bad Augustinians, this chapter argues that the Lérinians never knew certain facets of Augustine’s theology. They are not “bad” Augustinians because they rejected anything, but rather, they were ignorant of Augustine’s second exegetical rule. Just as Prosper’s Augustinianism was focused in a particular (Pelagian) controversy, the Lérinian theologians demonstrate another kind of Augustinianism which was focused on Gallic Arian controversies. This chapter argues that Caesarius’ theology is not directly responsible for canons adopted at Orange because they rely on a different pneumatological focus than Caesarius demonstrates in his texts.

This chapter studies the texts that served as guidelines for monastic life at Karlburg and Kitzingen during the eighth century, before the rise of prescriptive rules (such as the Rule of Benedict) in the ninth century and after. These included Isidore of Seville’s Synonyms (in the case of Karlburg, combined with narratives concerning the transvestite saint Eugenia and the boy martyr Potitus), the florilegium known as the Liber Scintillarum, a handful of sermons (primarily by Caesarius of Arles), and an abbreviated cento of Jerome’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes. For the most part, these texts were universalizing in terms of gender, and thus equally appropriate for (and ultimately equally popular with) male, female or mixed monastic communities who could, for instance, engage in devotional penance as an unmediated experience with God, using the script provided by Isidore’s Synonyms, or follow Isidore’s strategies for avoiding fornication through vanquishing libido. However, the chapter also uncovers some gender-specific aspects to the texts, including feminist re-writings of particular passages and anxiety over lesbian desire at Karlburg. The chapter also discusses the illuminations in the Kitzingen Isidore, a series of meaning-enhancing images produced by the theologian-artist who created the Kitzingen crucifixion miniature.

This chapter discusses the following: the obelisk that now stands in the Piazza di San Giovanni — the largest surviving obelisk in the world, with a height of 32 metres (83 ft) and weighs 455 tonnes; Constantine I 's removal of another obelisk from Egypt and set up in Arles (France); and Constantius II as the last Roman emperor to bring an obelisk to Rome.

This chapter examines the varieties and methods of Christian conversion in early medieval Europe. Christians made repeated attempts to adjust Christian convictions to the realities of people who practiced a variety of nature religions. Two cultural worlds interacted in a reciprocal process of adding and subtracting, creating and destroying. One way to understand the perspective of missionaries and the conundrum they faced is to think in terms of a sliding scale, varying in time and place; some aspects of pre-Christian beliefs were deemed incompatible whereas other pre-Christian rituals were accepted by absorption and adoption. At the bare minimum, conversion meant a transfer of loyalty or allegiance, confirmed by baptism. If there was rudimentary instruction, conversion meant familiarity with the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer and the acceptance of church authority. Methods of conversion varied, from “words” (proclamation of the word) to “deeds” (conversion through miracles and profaning paganism).

Otherwise known as the Vicarello Cups, these four vessels have been studied for their engraved itineraries, rather than for their materiality and design. At a time when pictorial maps existed but were rarely used for travel, such itineraries instrumentalized mobility through formulaic lists of destinations and distances. The place names evoke the journey’s multilingual soundscape, while also offering a framework for comparing sites connected by the Roman road system and its milestones (which the cups resemble). The Vicarello itineraries begin in Gades (Cádiz, Spain) and end in Rome, after passing through such famous sites as Tarragona, Nîmes, Arles, and Rimini. The chapter argues that the sumptuous silver cups, rather than being travel tools themselves, commemorate aspirational mobility. The cups’ owners are unknown, but the trajectories of the texts can be connected to a long history of provincial influence on Rome.

The Latin poetic output of Late Antiquity contains, in addition to polymetric collections, polymetric poems that combine different meters in a single work. Focusing on this particular development of late Latin poetics, this chapter explores the peculiar characteristics of these individual poems, and inquires into the possible meanings and implications of the recourse to polymetry. Most problematic are the reasons that may have inspired the choice of a given metre. In certain cases, literary genre can make this clear, as happens in Cyprianus Gallus’s heptateuchos and in Ennodius’s epithalamium of Maximus. The examination of polymetric poetry casts a brighter light on the relationship of the authors concerned, both with each other and with the rest of the Latin poetic tradition.

This chapter provides a case study discussing the professional associations in the harbour economy of Arles, showing that there was a clear hierarchy of professional associations, with the navicularii at the top, but with key occupations, particularly negotiatores and mercatores, almost completely lacking from the record. The chapter argues that the specific context of Arles meant that these people played a central role in the local community as, for example, seviri augustales, and preferred to refer to their political, rather than to their occupational, identity. At Arles, these people constituted a ‘plebeian’ elite, whose existence emphasizes the integration of crafts and trade into the urban community.