Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a rough
periodization (c. 300-600 AD) used by historians and other scholars to describe the interval between high
Classical Antiquity and the
Middle Ages in
Europe and the
Mediterranean world - between the
decline of the western Roman Empire from the
3rd century AD onward, to the
Muslim Conquests, and the re-forming of
Eastern Europe under the
Byzantine Empire. The term
Spätantike, literally "late antiquity", has been used by German-lanuage historians since its popularization by Alois Riegl in the late 19th century. It was given currency in English partly by the writings of
Peter Brown.
The continuities between imperial Rome as it was reorganized by
Diocletian and the Early Middle Ages are stressed by writers who wish to emphasise that the seeds of medieval culture were already developing in the Christianized empire, and indeed continued to do so in the Eastern, or "
Byzantine" Empire, while Germanic tribes such as the
Ostrogoths and
Visigoths saw themselves as perpetuating the Roman tradition. While the usage "Late Antiquity" suggests that the social and cultural priorities of
Classical Antiquity endured throughout
Europe into the
Middle Ages, the usage "
Early Middle Ages" emphasizes a break with the classical past, and the term "
Migrations Period" emphasizes the disruptions in the same period of time.
If there was a singular important transformation in Late Antiquity, it was the formation and evolution of the
Abrahamic religions:
Christianity, post-diaspora
Judaism, and eventually
Islam, which marked a decisive end to Late Antiquity wherever it reached.
The rise of Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire, starting with the conversion of Emperor
Constantine the Great in
312, clearly marked an end to the Classical world. By the late 4th century the "Christian revolution" had almost completely reversed over a millennium of
pagan culture, transforming the Classical Roman world "rustling with the presence of many divine spirits" (Brown,
Authority and the Sacred).
The birth of
Christian monasticism in the deserts of Egypt in 4th century, which initially operated outside the authority of the main Church, would become so successful that by the 8th century it penetrated the Church and became the primary Christian rule within. Monasticism was not the only new Christian movement to appear in Late Antiquity, others would also serve to test the faith of the most devout Christians including the
Grazers, holy men who ate only grass and chained themselves up like barnyard animals; the
Holy Fool movement, in which acting like a fool was considered more divine than folly; and the
Stylites movement, where one practitioner lived atop a 50-foot pole for 40-years.
Islam appeared in the 7th century and the
Muslim conquests fundamentally changed both the Eastern and Western empires in different ways. See also
Pirenne Thesis.
Late Antiquity marks the decline of
Roman state religion, circumscribed in degrees by edicts inspired by Christian advisers to 4th century emperors, and a period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with many
syncretic sects, some formed centuries earlier, such as
Gnosticism or
Neoplatonism and the
Chaldaean oracles, some novel, such as
hermeticism.
Many of the new religions relied on the emergence of the
parchment codex (bound book) over the
papyrus volumen (scroll), the former allowing for quicker access to key materials and easier portability than the fragile scroll, thus fueling the rise of synoptic
exegesis.
Laity vs clerical
Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be seen between the laity and a celibate male leadership, who were removed from the traditional Roman motivations of public and private life marked by pride, ambition and kinship solidarity, and who were wholly unlike the married pagan leadership. Unlike later strictures on priestly
celibacy, celibacy in Late Antique Christianity tended to take the form of abstinence from sexual relations
after marriage, and it came to be the expected norm for urban clergy. Celibate and detached, the upper clergy became an elite equal in prestige, to their admirers, to the traditional prestige of urban notables, the
potentes (Brown 1987 p 270).
|
The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius, 1883: John William Waterhouse expresses the sense of moral decadence that coloured the 19th century historical view of the 5th century. |
The Late Antique period also saw a wholesale transformation of the
political and
social basis of life in and around the
Roman Empire.
The Roman citizen elite in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, under the pressure of taxation and the ruinous cost of presenting spectacular public entertainments in the traditional
cursus honorum, had found under the
Antonines that security could only be obtained by combining their established roles in the local town with new worldly ones, as servants and representatives of a geographically distant Emperor. After Constantine centralized affairs in Constantinople in the early 4th century, the Late Antique upper class was divided among those who had access to the far-away centralized administration (in concert with the
great landowners), and those who did not—though they were well-born and thoroughly educated, a classical education was no longer the path to success, rather it was one of access, privileged and often corruption in the centralized and bureaucratic state. Room at the top of Late Antique society was smaller and more status competitive, the plain toga that had identified all members of the ruling class indifferently was replaced with silk gowns, court vestments and massive jewelry.
Cities
This period saw the decline of the Western
Roman empire into city-states (Rome, Ravenna, Triers, etc) and independent units (Francia, Britannia, Hispania). Concurrently, the continuity of the
eastern Roman empire at Constantinople meant that the turning-point for the Greek East, came later, not until Constantinople turned its back on the lost Middle East in the 8th century and looked toward the Balkans.
Public building
In the cities the strained economics of Roman over expansion stopped growth. New public building in Late Antiquity came directly or indirectly from the emperors and their representatives, and the privileged supplies of grain and oil, available only to the citizen class, needy or not, was unbroken until the 5th century. But the elite appeared less often in the forums; they withdrew in the cities to an opulent
domus but more frequently to the private luxuries of the
villa. The
basilica of the great man, from Africa to Britannia, functioned in the 4th century as a substitute for the stoas and public basilicas associated with forums and traditional outdoor public life. In the Christianized basilica, the bishop took the chair in the apse reserved in secular structures for the magistrate—or the Emperor himself— as the representative here and now of
Christ Pantocrator, the Ruler of All, his characteristic Late Antique
icon.
Late Antiquity saw a decisive move away from classical idealized realism to an iconic style that emphasized
frontal representation. Unlike classical art, Late Antique art does not emphasize the beauty and movement of the body, but rather, hints at the spiritual reality behind its subjects.
*
Arch of Constantine*
SpoliaIn the field of literature, Late Antiquity is known for the declining use of classical Greek and Latin, and the rise of literary cultures in
Syriac,
Armenian,
Arabic,
Coptic,
vulgar Latin and, in some cases,
Romance dialects. It also marks a shift in literary style, with a preference for encyclopedic works in a dense and allusive style, consisting of summaries of earlier works often dressed up in elaborate allegorical garb (e.g.
De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae (The Marriage of Mercury and Philology) of
Martianus Capella, and the
De Arithmetica,
De Musica, and
Consolatio Philosophiae of
Boethius—both later key works in Medieval education).
*
Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity Ad 150-750, 1989, ISBN 0393958035
*Peter Brown, 1987. "The World of Late Antiquity Ad 150-750" in
A History of Private Life: 1. from Pagan Antiquity to Byzantium, Paul Veyne, editor, ISBN 0393958035
*Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred : Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0521595576
*Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity 200-1000 AD, Blackwell, 2003, ISBN 0631221387
*
Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire: Ad 284-430, Harvard University Press, 1993, ISBN 0674511948
*Averil Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity Ad 395-600 (Routledge History of the Ancient World), 1993, ISBN 0415014212
*Averil Cameron et al. (editors),
The Cambridge Ancient History, vols. 12-14, Cambridge 1997ff.
*Bertrand Lancon, Rome in Late Antiquity : AD 313 - 604, Routledge, 2001
*
Worlds of Late Antiquity, from the
University of Pennsylvania*
Mosaic, source documents and key themes in Late Antiquity.
*
The End of the Classical World, source documents from the
Internet Medieval Sourcebook*
Overview of Late Antiquity, from ORB [
1]
*
ORB Encyclopedia's section on Late Antiquity in the Mediterranean from ORB [
2]
