Asceticism: pagan and Christian

Abstract

In a tense and ambitious age, asceticism was one possible form of achievement among many. Most important of all, late Roman asceticism would not have been so exuberantly creative if the 'statements' made by differing ascetic traditions and 'read' by those around them had not varied dramatically. To a modern reader all late antique ascetic practices can appear equal, because all seem to be equally a departure from what we have been accustomed to regard as the less ascetic, more world-affirming tone of the classical period. This chapter concentrates on the differences in meaning, attached by differing groups, to what were often commonplace ascetic practices. With Augustine the process is complete. Only through Christ and the Catholic church had the tragic gap between the world of unchanging truth and the world of time been bridged. In the next centuries, the history of asceticism, especially in the west, would increasingly coincide with the history of die Christian church.

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