Book contents
- Social Control in Late Antiquity
- Social Control in Late Antiquity
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Women and Children First
- Part II ‘Slaves, be subject to your masters’
- Part III Knowledge, Power, and Symbolic Violence
- Part IV Vulnerability and Power
- Bibliography
- Index
Part IV - Vulnerability and Power
Christian Heroines and the Small Worlds of Late Antiquity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020
Book contents
- Social Control in Late Antiquity
- Social Control in Late Antiquity
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Women and Children First
- Part II ‘Slaves, be subject to your masters’
- Part III Knowledge, Power, and Symbolic Violence
- Part IV Vulnerability and Power
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Part IV explores what Conrad Leyser has called a ‘rhetoric of vulnerability’ among the Christian writers of late antiquity, who saw personal vulnerability as a claim, under certain circumstances, to enhanced moral authority.1 The righteous suffering of martyrs2 and the fragile autonomy of virgins3 offered powerful new symbolic capital to the Christian imaginary.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Control in Late AntiquityThe Violence of Small Worlds, pp. 275 - 336Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020