Faith and piety in late-antique conciliar practice and output

What is it about?

Eusebius of Caesarea’s letter CPG 3502 is one of the earliest narratives about the Council of Nicaea (325) that describes procedures and documents used at meet-ings between bishops and the emperor Constantine. This chapter looks at pro-cesses of religious individualisation in the reception of the letter from the fourth to the seventh century and asks which mechanisms of religious pluralisation shaped the transmission of this seminal text for the history of Christianity. It thus questions the context of its twentieth century publication. Analysing also Cyril’s letter CPG 5320, the chapter scrutinises the reliability of the narrative implied by the texts that have usually been regarded as sources for the councils of Nicaea and Ephesus (431). It does this by pointing to the processes of religious individualis-ation that shaped lived Christian faiths and pieties in Late Antiquity. The chapter directly engages with processes of institutionalisation that, at first glance, seem to attest singularisation rather than its opposite, but points to neglected practices of individualisation in late ancient circum- Mediterranean Christianity.

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Why is it important?

The terms ‘individualisation’ and ‘religion’ contain an implicit agenda that often associates Europe with secularised modernity, and religion in Europe and elsewhere with collectivity. This agenda is often activated in the form of historical narratives, which constitute an important means for individuals and religious groups to create both inclusion and exclusion and, thus, to construct their identities.