Constantine at the Milvian Bridge
Converting States
Saturday 16 January 2010
Corpus Christi College, MBI Al Jabert Auditorium
The two processes we are investigating took place within the context of state formation or radical re-orientation. Evidently religious homogeneity, but also distinctiveness from the previous situation, was of primary importance to the states concerned. The aim of this series of sessions will be to analyse the various ways in which the states concerned tackled this problem and the factors that came into play in their choices.
Session 1: East Asia
Chair and discussant: Mark Whittow (Oxford, History)
- Antonello Palumbo (SOAS):
From Constantine the Great to Emperor Wu of the Liang:
The rhetoric of imperial conversion and the divisive emergence of
religious identities in Late Antique Eurasia Abstract
Session 2: Legislation
The Late Roman Empire proceeded by legislation, the Early Islamic Empire by regulations, mirrored in reverse in the canonical collections of the Christian groups that remained within its territory. The two speakers will analyse the relevant sources in order to bring out the underlying motivations and to explore the effect those arsenals of norms produced on the respective conversion processes.
Chair and discussant: Fergus Millar (Oxford, Oriental Studies)
- Uriel Simonsohn (University of Leiden):
Conversion, apostasy, and penance: the shifting identities of the first
generations of Muslim Converts Abstract - Simon Corcoran (University College, London):
From unholy madness to right-mindedness: or how to legislate for
religious conformity from Decius to Justinian Abstract
Session 3: Incentives
Very often, conversion is seen as a way to obtain some material advantage – career has been stressed for Christianity, tax avoidance for Islam. Why was it not the other way round – or was it? Were the two states deliberately using incentives or were the conversions side-effects of other policies?
Chair and discussant: Hugh Kennedy
- Christopher Kelly (University of Cambridge):
Collusion, conformity, coercion: making Christians in late Antiquity - Petra Sijpesteijn (University of Leiden):
The Islamic state as an agent of conversion
Session 4: Propagation
Conversion was also a tool of imperialism and/or foreign policy for the big empires of late antiquity. At first sight, missions and holy war are two different avenues of approach, both practised by both religions at various times. However, holy war can also be a symbolic rather than a literal notion, while ‘peaceful’ missions can result in acute cultural violence.
Chair and discussant: James Howard-Johnston (Corpus Christi College, Oxford)
- Joel Walker (University of Washington):
How Christian was the Late Sasanian Empire?: Patterns of Conversion in the Late Antique Middle East - Michael Bonner (University of Michigan):
“Even if the unbelievers dislike it” (wa-law kariha l-mushrikūn): conversion and the early Islamic
state
Conclusions and discussion
- Richard Bulliet (Columbia University) and Chris Wickham (Oxford, History)
Poster with full programme (PDF)
This Seminar was organised with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation