This diploma thesis is devoted to the situation of Christians living in the Roman Empire in the first four centuries AD. Every new religion has to face a number of problems in its beginnings, its misunderstanding and its position in society must be gradually enforced. However, the very beginnings of Christianity are not easy to grasp, since so many sources have not been preserved to this day. Likewise, many events are perceived through Christian optics and thus interpreted unilaterally. These are, above all, martyrological texts that have been extensively modified over time and authenticity is now relatively difficult. This diploma thesis is divided into several chapters, while in the first one I try to describe the Roman society and the Roman religion with which the Christian faith was confronted. Further chapters and chapters are devoted to the rise and spread of Christianity, the person of Jesus Christ, and the Church Fathers who report to us about the first centuries of Christian faith. The most extensive part of this diploma thesis is devoted to the main topic of persecution of Christians in the first four centuries AD. To date the individual stages of the persecution of Christians, I will help them by dividing them according to G.E.M. de Ste. Croixe. Chapters to describe the three stages of...

This essay takes its starting point in Legenda Aurea, a hagiographical compendium written in the thirteenth century by an Italian catholic friar, Jacobus de Voragine. The essay aims to find out how the Roman history in the third century is shown in Legenda Aurea, a Christian book written about a thousand years later. The purpose of this essay is to show how a part of the history of the Roman Empire is understood and remembered during the Christian hegemony that was during the thirteenth century. The main results of this essay show that the history of the Roman Empire during the reign of named emperors is remembered as a violent, brutal and authoritarian history, but also that Christianity seems to have been widespread within the Roman Empire during this time.

This dissertation reconstructs Ashkenazi and Sephardi German Jews’ intensive pursuit of civil and religious rights before Germany’s Imperial Supreme Court (Reichskammergericht, the Imperial Chamber Court) in the context of the wide-ranging religious and legal reforms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through my systematic analysis of 75,000 court records and my examinations of manuscripts and early printed materials from more than thirty archives across three continents, I study hundreds of previously untapped Supreme Court cases alongside religious and legal sources in German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin. I take an integrative approach to this wealth of sources to argue that by using the Supreme Court in numbers that far exceeded their proportion of the population, including in matters that pertained to Jewish law, this litigious minority generated grounds for inter-religious exchanges with the court’s Christian lawyers and judges. These lawyers endeavored to understand and incorporate Jewish law into imperial procedure, not merely due to their commitment to conflict resolution, but also due to their interest in advancing the universal applicability of Roman law as a sophisticated tool to conjoin the different limbs of the empire into a cohesive state. These efforts led the Supreme Court, and therefore the state, to protect rabbinic law and secure the continuation of a Jewish presence in Germany, thus moving in an opposite direction from key religious reformers and local authorities. This dissertation reveals that the study of Jews’ surprising strategies of interconnecting law and religion in defense of themselves and their religious laws promoted Jews’ civil rights in radical ways, and attained a de facto status of imperial citizenship for Ashkenazi and Sephardi-Portuguese Jews. Unearthing knowledge from the archives, this dissertation redraws the porous boundaries between Jewish and non-Jewish legal cultures and calls for a reconsideration of early modes of Jewish citizenship. Showing how Jewish women and men, including Iberian refugees, employed litigation as an anti-nomadic tool against pending expulsions, this dissertation also challenges prevalent conventions on weak Jewish responses to persecution, forced migration, and the agency that ethnic and religious minorities can wield in state-building processes.

Cette thèse se propose d’étudier dans le cadre d’une mise en série les différents procès incorporés à la collection de papyrus communément appelée Acta Alexandrinorum, sorte de corpus inclassable regroupant plusieurs documents de nature administrative, judiciaire ou diplomatique ayant trait aux relations entretenues entre l’Empire Romain et la cité d’Alexandrie aux deux premiers siècles de notre ère. Au nombre de cinq, ces procès, retrouvés uniquement à l’état fragmentaire et rédigés en grec, souvent après un travail de réécriture trahissant le parti pris des auteurs alexandrins, apportent un éclairage inédit sur les tensions entre les deux entités politiques et posent quantité de problèmes juridiques, tant sur le plan du droit privé que du droit public. L’arrière-plan égyptien place en outre ces procès à la croisée de trois traditions juridiques pouvant s’influencer et s’imbriquer mutuellement. Ces documents illustrent par ailleurs les débats qui marquaient alors la pensée politique et philosophique véhiculée par la Seconde Sophistique puisqu’ils proposaient le plus souvent un affrontement direct, dans le cadre du procès, entre les intellectuels grecs attachés aux valeurs traditionnelles de l’hellénisme et le pouvoir romain incarné par l’empereur lui-même. Il paraît donc particulièrement intéressant d’analyser au prisme du droit et des sources juridiques ces procès, très politiques, qui n’ont jusqu’alors bénéficié d’aucune étude d’ensemble dans l’historiographie française, ni même par ailleurs d’une traduction complète, et qui ne connurent à l’étranger qu’une approche essentiellement philologique. / This thesis aims at studying the various trials incorporated in the papyrus collection commonly known as Acta Alexandrinorum, an unclassifiable corpus regrouping several administrative, judicial or diplomatic documents concerning the relationships between the Roman Empire and the city of Alexandria during the first two centuries AD. These trials, recorded in Greek, were found unfortunately in a very poor state of conservation, and are characterized by a process of rewriting which reveals the partiality of the Alexandrian authors. They bring a new insight to the tensions between the two political entities and cause legal problems both in terms of private and public law. Moreover, the Egyptian context places these trials at the center of three legal traditions which could influence and interact together. These documents enlighten also the debates around the political and philosophical thought conveyed by the Second Sophistic through a direct confrontation between the Greek intellectuals attached to the traditional values of Hellenism and the Roman power incarnated by the emperor himself. Therefore it seems particularly interesting to analyze these very political trials under the perspective of law, since these sources, which were mainly studied only by philologists abroad, have never been the subject of a complete study in France until now and even never completely translated.

The Influence of William of Ockham teaching to the politics of Louis IV of Bavaria The aim of this work is to find out how far was the King of the Romans and Emperor Louis IV of Bavaria willing or able to use the idea fulfilled in work of the Franciscan monk William of Ockham while patterning his state policy. William of Ockham was living for many years at Louis's court and he reacted to the actual political situation in the Roman Empire by his work. Two elections took place after the death of the Roman Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg. Louis of Bavaria and Friedrich of Habsburg became two Kings of the Romans and enemies to each other, too. This was followed by many years lasting fight for the throne which paralysed all Empire politics and was only finished when Friedrich was taken captive in the battle of Mühldorf. The new Pope John XXII was elected after two years lasting sede vacante in 1316. When Louis of Bavaria began exercise his right to the Italian part of the Empire after the battle of Mühldorf fully, he got into a disagreement with John XXII. It was ended up not only by a denial of king's right to the Northern Italy but also to Germany and Burgundy and to the start of the trial against the person of Louis IV. The king refused all Pope's demands through three appellations - of Nuremberg,...

The presence of roman coins outside of the Roman Empire during the Iron Age is a curiousthing. One would assume they represent a giant trade confederation of sorts, and one would notbe completely wrong in assuming so. The trade aspect of the Roman Empire to the north is stillsomething unknown. But this essays focus lies instead with how the coins were used in specificplaces in Scandinavia. This essay focuses on two central places, Gudme in Denmark, andUppåkra in Sweden, while also looking at stray coins in the northern part of Sweden todetermine if there is a correlation between a central place and stray finds out in the wilderness. The analysis of this essay showed a similar yet different use of the roman coins at the twocentral places. In Gudme the norm was to use the coins, as they were, in the metal workshops,or use them as clippings for using a smaller amount of metal in the rework of new items. InUppåkra the norm was instead to melt all coins down to metal bars for an easier storage and useof specific wights and metal in making new items. The correlation between the stray coins anda central place is that hunters or tradesmen travelled through the country and dropped coins.The analysis showed that the travellers where hunting and trading fur that were most likely soldin a central place like Uppåkra and then brought back to settlement in the north / Närvaron av romerska mynt utanför romarriket under järnåldern är en underlig sak. Antagandetsom har gjorts är att de representerade ett handels förbund av ett slag, och en har inte helt fel iatt anta så. Handelsaspekten av romarriket i norr är fortfarande okänt. Fokuset för denna uppsatsligger i stället hur de romerska mynten användes vid specifika platser i Skandinavien.Uppsatsen fokuserar på två centralplatser, Gudme i Danmark och Uppåkra i Sverige, detkommer även kolls på ströfynd i norra delen av Sverige för att ta reda på om en korrelationmellan centralplats och ströfynden i utmarken. Analysen av Uppsatsen visade på en liknande användning av mynten men ändå en olikhetvid de två centralplatserna. I Gudme var normen att använda mynten som de var imetallverkstäderna, eller använda dem som klippningar för att använda en mindre mängd metalli tillverkningen av nya föremål. I Uppåkra smältes mynten i stället ner till metalltackor förenklare förvaring samt att kunna använda en specifik metall eller mängd för att tillverka nyaföremål. Korrelationen mellan utmarksfynden och en centralplats var att jägare ellerhandelsmän reste genom landet och tappade mynt. Analysen visade att de jagade efter päls föratt sälja på centralplatser och fick romerska mynt som betalning och tog mynten till derasbosättningar i norra Sverige.

Диссертация посвящена эволюции военно-административной системы Римской империи в восточных провинциях в I в. н. э. Состояние источников позволяет утверждать, что регион Ближнего Востока наиболее репрезентативен для изучения данной проблемы. В I в. н. э. Рим начал переход от завоевательной стратегии к обороне границ. Одновременно с этим, провинции стали играть важную роль во всех сферах жизни Римского государства. Эти процессы обусловили значительные преобразования в римской армии. Автором установлено, что особенности римской военной системы на Востоке империи – дислокация армейских контингентов, организация обороны границ, снабжение и комплектование воинских подразделений – зависели от внешнеполитической ситуации и комплекса внутриполитических причин. / The dissertation is devoted to evolution of the Roman military-administrative system in the Eastern provinces of the Empire in the first century A. D. During the studied period, Rome was beginning transition from offensive wars to defense of the frontiers. In the same time, the provinces of the Empire began to play a greater role in the state. These processes contributed to transformation of the Roman armed forces, which were evolutionary character. Roman foreign policy activity in the Near East allows suggesting, that this region is the most representative for research of evolution of the Roman military organization in the first century A. D. The author ascertained that special aspects of the Roman military machine in the Eastern provinces of the Empire (dislocation of the armed forces, organization of defense of the frontiers, supply and recruitment of various military units) depended on foreign policy situation and complex of internal political reasons.

Ce mémoire s’articule autour de trois sections distinctes : dans la première, nous examinons la figure divine de Liber Pater et la perception de cette divinité dans l’Italie romaine. Liber ne cesse de surprendre les chercheurs entre autres grâce à son association avec Dionysos, c’est pourquoi il est nécessaire de s’attarder à une question simple, mais cruciale : qui est Liber Pater? Nous soulignons à travers cette section que Liber est une divinité agraire reconnue au sein du panthéon de Rome et recevant ainsi un culte public à travers les Liberalia et la triade qu’il forme avec Cérès et Libera. La pérennité de Liber sur la libertas y est aussi remise en jeu : plutôt que de concevoir une liberté politique, il faut s’attarder à une liberté physique et mentale. Dans la deuxième section, nous établissons une connexion sur le territoire italien entre Liber et Dionysos-Bacchus grâce au processus d’acculturation qui s’est concrétisé avec l’arrivée de Dionysos en Grande-Grèce au VIIIe et VIIe siècle av. J.-C. Nous explorons par la suite, à travers la tutelle de Liber et Bacchus sur le vin ainsi que la répression des Bacchanales, les formes hétérogènes qu’ont pu prendre les rituels et les cultes dédiés à ces divinités. Finalement, notre dernière section se penche sur le culte de Liber en Italie au Haut-Empire. Pour y parvenir, nous utilisons le cadre méthodologique de la lived ancient religion qui s’intéresse au spectre des stratégies religieuses pouvant être mises en place pour communiquer avec Liber, que ce soit à travers le don, la prière, le geste, le sacrifice, etc. Ce modèle d’analyse nous donne l’opportunité de nous intéresser au culte vécu de Liber, nous rapprochant ainsi de l’expérience religieuse des individus. Nous démontrons, grâce à un corpus épigraphique comportant plusieurs types d’inscriptions, que de nombreuses stratégies de communication étaient utilisées, notamment les rituels du votum, de la dedicatio, et de la consecratio à travers le don d’objets tels des autels et des statues. En groupe, ces stratégies se complexifient puisque le phénomène associatif produit une diversification cultuelle significative : plusieurs associations romaines, toutes différentes les unes des autre dans leurs pratiques et leur composition, honoraient Liber et ses bienfaits. / This dissertation is structured in three distinct sections: in the first one, we examine the divine figure of Liber Pater and the perception of this divinity in Roman Italy. Liber never ceases to surprise scholars, mostly because of his association with Dionysus, so it is necessary to address a simple but crucial question: who is Liber Pater? We emphasize in this section that Liber is an agrarian deity recognized within the pantheon of Rome and thus receives a public cult through the Liberalia and the triad that he forms with Ceres and Libera. The tutelage of Liber on libertas is also questioned: rather than understanding it in terms of political freedom, we must rather focus on a physical and mental freedom. In the second section, we establish a connection on the Italian territory between Liber and Dionysus-Bacchus thanks to the process of acculturation that took place with the arrival of Dionysus in Magna Graecia in the 8th and 7th century BC. We then explore, through the tutelage of Liber and Bacchus over wine as well as the repression of the Bacchanalia, the heterogeneous forms that the rituals and cults dedicated to these deities may have taken. Finally, our last section dives into the cult of Liber in Italy in the Early Empire. To do so, we use the methodological framework of lived ancient religion, which focuses on the spectrum of religious strategies that can be put in place to communicate with Liber, be it through donation, prayer, gesture, sacrifice, etc. This model of analysis gives us the opportunity to focus on the lived worship of Liber, therefore bringing us closer to the religious experience of individuals. We demonstrate, through an epigraphic corpus comprising several types of inscriptions, that numerous communication strategies were used, notably the rituals of votum, dedicatio, and consecratio through the donation of objects such as altars and statues. In groups, these strategies become more complex since the associative phenomenon produces a significant cult diversification: several Roman associations, all different from one other in their practices and composition, honored Liber and his benefits.

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Ce mémoire porte sur la continuité des rituels divinatoires païens dans le cadre du culte chrétien en Gaule du IVe au VIe siècle. Il comporte une introduction rapportant notre problématique, notre terminologie, notre méthodologie ainsi que nos sources principales. Par la suite, le développement aborde les rites divinatoires des Sortes Sanctorum, des Sortes Sangallenses et les rites d’incubation dans le culte de Saint Martin de Tours. Pour chacun de ces cas, nous étudions leur provenance, leurs sources, leur déroulement, leur évolution et les similarités qui permettent de faire un lien avec des rituels païens déjà existants. Nous avons vérifié l’existence de cette continuité et déterminé qu’elle passait par plusieurs phénomènes, l’acculturation gauloise des rituels gréco-romains, l’importation de rites christianisés en Orient et l’assimilation des pratiques païennes locales par le culte chrétien pour répondre à une demande de divination par la population. / This Masters’ thesis concerns itself with the continuity of pagan divination rituals within the new context of the Christianized Gaul of the IVth to VIth centuries. It is composed of an introduction detailing our hypothesis, terminology, methodology and sources. Afterwards, we study three cases of divination rituals, the Sortes Sanctorum, the Sortes Sangallenses and the incubations within the cult of St. Martin of Tours. We detail their origins, sources, proceedings, evolution and the similarities linking them to previously existing pagan rites. In conclusion, we synthesize all elements and we were able to draw from our cases to establish the continuity of these rituals by several means, the Gallic acculturation of Greco-Roman rituals, importation of Christianized rituals from the East of the Empire and assimilation of local pagan practices within the Christian religion to answer the popular demand for divination.