Chapter 10 - Religious Violence in Late Antiquity: Current Approaches, Trends and Issues

Summary

Late Antiquity, it has long been assumed, is the historical period in which we first observe the widespread rise of religious intolerance.¹ Hand in hand with this view goes the premise that there is a direct causal relationship between religious intolerance and religious violence. That is, intolerance leads to conflict; conflict leads to violence.² Late Antiquity, in which Constantine’s conversion to Christianity is viewed as a watershed moment,³ is thus the period to which scholars look to observe religious violence and its origins.⁴ In the past decade and a half there has been a move to unpack these entrenched ideas, with a growing number of scholars concluding that these assumed relationships – between the rise of Christianity and religious intolerance, and between religious intolerance and religious violence – are neither inevitable nor simple.