The Domestic Dimension of Religious Conflict in the Ancient Mediterranean

The Domestic Dimension

of Religious Conflict in the Ancient Mediterranean

Day 1, August 12 

Arrival 

17:45-18:00 Karl Dahm (Durham University), Welcome & Introduction

18:00-19:00 Keynote Lecture: Prof Kate Cooper (Royal Holloway), Religious Conflict in the 

Ancient Mediterranean Household: The cast of characters

19:00-19:30 Wine Reception

 

Day 2, August 13 

Session 1: Households Between Private and Public 

Chair: Karl Dahm

09:00-9:40 Alex Antoninou (Glasgow University), Religious Conflicts and Crises within the 

Late Republican Home at Rome

09:40-10:20 David Addison (Liverpool University), Reputation Management: The Clerical 

Household and the Fragility of Authority in the Late Antique West

10:20-11:00 *Amal Shehata (Royal Holloway), Class over Church? Family Matters, Class, and 

Asceticism in Cyril of Alexandria

 

11:00-11:30 Coffee break 

 

Session 2: The Dangers of Domestic Magic 

Chair: Ilaria Bucci

11:30-12:10 Iria Souto Castro (Universidad de Alcalá), Deviance, Conflict, and Magico-

Religious Practice in the Houses of Karanis

12:10-12:50 Murdo Homewood (Edinburgh University), Medicine, Magic, and Domestic 

Religious Conflict in Christian North Africa

12:50-14:00 Lunch Break 

 

Session 3: Paternal Authority at the Test

Chair: Nadine Viermann

14:00-14:40 Mathijs Clement (Cambridge University), Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 18, and 

Paternal Tyrants

14:40-15:20 *Ville Vuolanto (Tampere University), Household Divided: Narrating and 

Negotiating Parent–Child Conflict in Late Ancient Christian Asceticism

15:20-16:00 Carl Rice (Vassar College), Religion, Slavery, and the Law in the Late Roman 

Household: Preliminary Considerations

 

16:00-16:30 Coffee Break

 

Session 4: The Economic Strictures of Western Households

Chair: Prof Francis Watson

16:30-17:10 Becca Grose (Edinburgh University), Siblings, Co-owned Land and Domestic 

Resistance to the Church in the Latin Mediterranean, IV-VII centuries

17:10-17:50 Marta Szada (Toruń University), Books and Readers in Late Antique Christian 

Households: The Role of Family Reading in Doctrinal Controversies in 

the Late Roman West

 

17:50-18:00 Coffee Break

 

18:00-19:00 Keynote Lecture: Prof Virginia Burrus (Syracuse University), Defiant Daughters: 

Intergenerational Conflict in Ancient Christian Literature

 

19:00-19:40 Wine Reception

 

20:00 Conference Dinner at The Cellar Door

 

Day 3, August 14

Session 5: Acts of Female Resistance  

Chair: Jacob Lollar 

09:00-09:40 *Ed Creedy (Durham University), Rejecting and Remaking a Matriarchal Model: 

Thecla and the Family

09:40-10:20 Priscilla Buongiorno (Durham University), A Powerful Death: Domestic Images of 

Martyrdom as Identity Markers

10:20-11:00 Scarlett Kiaras-Attari (King’s College London), Genlis, Voltaire, and the Tradition 

of Thecla: Competing visions of the Family and Religious Devotion in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

 

11:00-11:30 Coffee break/Elevenses 

 

Session 6: Eastern Afterlives

Chair: Prof Alberto Rigolio

11:30-12:10 Matthew Peters (Oxford University), Marginal Land, Extended Family: The Role of 

the Family in the Construction of a Christian Community in the Western Galilee in Late Antiquity 

12:10-12:50 Simon Pierre (Ifpo/Orient et Méditerranée), Raising Sons as Muslims and 

Daughters as Dhimmīs: Household and Gender across Religious 

Boundaries in Early Islam

12:50-13:30 Anna Giaconia (Ghent University), Family Law and Religious Boundaries: 

Išoʿbokt of Rew Ardašir and the Legal Ordering of East Syriac Households

 

13:30-13:40 Final Remarks