Episodes

  • Andrew Jotischky, "The Monastic World: A 1,200-Year History" (Yale UP, 2024)

    Andrew Jotischky, "The Monastic World: A 1,200-Year History" (Yale UP, 2024)
    Feb 21 2025
    From the late Roman Empire onwards, monasteries and convents were a common sight throughout Europe. But who were monasteries for? What kind of people founded and maintained them? And how did monasticism change over the thousand years or so of the Middle Ages? Andrew Jotischky traces the history of monastic life from its origins in the fourth century to the sixteenth. He shows how religious houses sheltered the poor and elderly, cared for the sick, and educated the young. They were centres of intellectual life that owned property and exercised power but also gave rise to new developments in theology, music, and art. The Monastic World: A 1,200-Year History (Yale UP, 2024) brings together the Orthodox and western stories, as well as the experiences of women, to show the full picture of medieval monasticism for the first time. It is a fascinating, wide-ranging account that broadens our understanding of life in holy orders as never before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    29 mins
  • Shane Bobrycki, "The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    Shane Bobrycki, "The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages" (Princeton UP, 2024)
    Feb 17 2025
    By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And yet, as Shane Bobrycki argues, the influence and importance of the crowd did not disappear in early medieval Europe. In The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton UP, 2024), Bobrycki shows that although demographic change may have dispersed the urban multitudes of Greco-Roman civilization, collective behavior retained its social importance even when crowds were scarce. Most historians have seen early medieval Europe as a world without crowds. In fact, Bobrycki argues, early medieval European sources are full of crowds—although perhaps not the sort historians have trained themselves to look for. Harvests, markets, festivals, religious rites, and political assemblies were among the gatherings used to regulate resources and demonstrate legitimacy. Indeed, the refusal to assemble and other forms of “slantwise” assembly became a weapon of the powerless. Bobrycki investigates what happened when demographic realities shifted, but culture, religion, and politics remained bound by the past. The history of crowds during the five hundred years between the age of circuses and the age of crusades, Bobrycki shows, tells an important story—one of systemic and scalar change in economic and social life and of reorganization in the world of ideas and norms. New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review Shane Bobrycki is assistant professor of history at the University of Iowa Michael Motia teaches in the classics and religious studies department at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • Glen L. Thompson, "Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China" (Eerdmans, 2024)

    Glen L. Thompson, "Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China" (Eerdmans, 2024)
    Feb 15 2025
    Many people assume that the first introduction of Christianity to the Chinese was part of nineteenth-century Western imperialism. In fact, Syriac-speaking Christians brought the gospel along the Silk Road into China in the seventh century. Glen L. Thompson introduces readers to the fascinating history of this early Eastern church, referred to as Jingjiao, or the “Luminous Teaching.” Thompson presents the history of the Persian church’s mission to China with rigor and clarity. While Christianity remained a minority and “foreign” religion in the Middle Kingdom, it nonetheless attracted adherents among indigenous Chinese and received imperial approval during the Tang Dynasty. Though it was later suppressed alongside Buddhism, it resurfaced in China and Mongolia in the twelfth century. Thompson also discusses how the modern unearthing of Chinese Christian texts has stirred controversy over the meaning of Jingjiao to recent missionary efforts in China. In an accessible style, Thompson guides readers through primary sources as well as up-to-date scholarship. As the most recent and balanced survey on the topic available in English, Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China (Eerdmans, 2024) will be an indispensable resource for students of global Christianity and missiology. Glen L. Thompson is professor emeritus of New Testament and historical theology at Asia Lutheran Seminary in Hong Kong. He has retired to Milwaukee, where he researches, works with students, and expands his Fourth-Century Christianity website. New Books in Syriac Studies is presented by Kristian Heal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • Eric Cline, "After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations" (Princeton UP, 2025)

    Eric Cline, "After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations" (Princeton UP, 2025)
    Feb 7 2025
    At the end of Eric Cline's bestselling history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone by invasion, revolt, natural disasters, famine, and the demise of international trade. An interconnected world that had boasted major empires and societies, relative peace, robust commerce, and monumental architecture was lost and the so-called First Dark Age had begun. Now, in After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations (Princeton UP, 2025), Cline tells the compelling story of what happened next, over four centuries, across the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean world. It is a story of resilience, transformation, and success, as well as failures, in an age of chaos and reconfiguration. After 1177 B.C. tells how the collapse of powerful Late Bronze Age civilizations created new circumstances to which people and societies had to adapt. Those that failed to adjust disappeared from the world stage, while others transformed themselves, resulting in a new world order that included Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, Neo-Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians. Taking the story up to the resurgence of Greece marked by the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C., the book also describes how world-changing innovations such as the use of iron and the alphabet emerged amid the chaos. Filled with lessons for today about why some societies survive massive shocks while others do not, After 1177 B.C. reveals why this period, far from being the First Dark Age, was a new age with new inventions and new opportunities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    34 mins
  • Vittorio Bufacchi, "Why Cicero Matters" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

    Vittorio Bufacchi, "Why Cicero Matters" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
    Feb 4 2025
    Why Cicero Matters (Bloomsbury, 2023) shows us how the Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius, better known as Cicero, can help realize a new political world. His impact on humanitarianism, the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers of America is immense. Yet we give Julius Caesar all our attention. Why? What does this say about modern politics and political culture? This book gives us Cicero as an antidote to the myth of the strong man of history. Reading Cicero's On Duties alongside two more introspective philosophical texts, On Friendship and On Old Age, we see how Cicero turned politics into a higher, intellectual form of art, believing in education, in culture and above all in the power of philosophy to instil morality. Cicero has reassuring words on the indispensable work philosophers make, and why the common good needs philosophy. In an age when anti-intellectualism runs rampant, Why Cicero Matters introduces us to an ancient thinker who argues culture is, or ought to be, the foundation of any modern democracy, and books its building blocks. Vittorio Bufacchi is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Cork, Ireland. He works in moral and political philosophy. He is the author of Violence and Social Justice (2007); Social Injustice (2012); and Everything Must Change: Philosophical Lessons From Lockdown (2021). Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • Sarah E. Bond, "Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire" (Yale UP, 2024)

    Sarah E. Bond, "Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire" (Yale UP, 2024)
    Feb 4 2025
    Historian Sarah E. Bond retells the traditional story of Ancient Rome, revealing how groups of ancient workers unified, connected, and protested as they helped build an empire From plebeians refusing to join the Roman army to bakers withholding bread, this is the first book to explore how Roman workers used strikes, boycotts, riots, and rebellion to get their voices—and their labor—acknowledged. Sarah E. Bond explores Ancient Rome from a new angle to show that the history of labor conflicts and collective action goes back thousands of years, uncovering a world far more similar to our own than we realize. Workers often turned to their associations for solidarity and shared identity in the ancient world. Some of these groups even negotiated contracts, wages, and work conditions in a manner similar to modern labor unions. As the world begins to consider the value—and indeed the necessity—of unionization to protect workers, Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire (Yale UP, 2024) demonstrates that we can learn valuable lessons from ancient laborers and from attempts by the Roman government to limit their freedom. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Sarah E. Bond is the Erling B. “Jack” Holtsmark Associate Professor in the Classics in the Department of History at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean. She lives in Iowa City, IA. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 20 mins
  • Anand Venkatkrishnan, "Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    Anand Venkatkrishnan, "Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History" (Oxford UP, 2024)
    Jan 30 2025
    Where is the "life" in scholarly life? Is it possible to find in academic writing, so often abstracted from the everyday? How might religion bridge that gap? In Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History (Oxford UP, 2024), author Anand Venkatkrishnan explores these questions within the intellectual history of a popular Hindu scripture, the Bhagavata Purana, spanning the precolonial period of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries in India. He shows that Brahmin intellectuals writing in Sanskrit were neither impervious to the quotidian religious practices of bhakti, nor uninterested in its politics of language and caste. They supported, contested, and repurposed the social commentary of bhakti even in highly technical works of Sanskrit knowledge, and their personal religious commitments featured in a language and genre of writing that deliberately isolated itself from worldly matters. The religion of bhakti bound together the transregional discourse of Sanskrit learning and the local devotional practices of everyday people, though not in a top-down manner. Rather, vernacular ways of being, believing, and belonging in the world could and did reshape the contours of Sanskrit intellectuality. Venkatkrishnan revisits the historiography of the Bhagavata Purana to expand our knowledge of the many different religious and philosophical communities that interpreted and laid claim to the themes of the text. While most associated with the traditions of Vaisnavism, Love in the Time of Scholarship brings to light how the Bhagavata was also studied by Saivas, Saktas, and others on the periphery of the text's history. This is an open access title available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International licence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    38 mins
  • Joel M. Rothman, "The Cosmic Journey in the Book of Revelation: Apocalyptic Cosmology and the Experience of Story-Space" (T&T Clark, 2023)

    Joel M. Rothman, "The Cosmic Journey in the Book of Revelation: Apocalyptic Cosmology and the Experience of Story-Space" (T&T Clark, 2023)
    Jan 28 2025
    Cosmology and cosmic journeys play a significant role in biblical and extra-biblical texts, especially in apocalyptic narratives. What about for the book of Revelation? The answer is yes. Join us as we speak with Joel Rothman about his recent book, The Cosmic Journey in the Book of Revelation: Apocalyptic Cosmology and the Experience of Story-Space (T&T Clark, 2023). Joel Rothman recently earned his PhD at the University of Divinity in Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    21 mins