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The Making Of Saints: Discipleship Formation In The Early Church As A Way Forward For The Modern Age, Ian Wray

Masters of Theological Studies

As the modern Western Church continues to move forward through its history, an effective theology of discipleship will be vital to maintain the Church’s witness to the surrounding world and culture. Looking to the Patristic Period as a way forward can give current practitioners practical solutions and insights to replicate the effectiveness of Christianity’s first beginnings. The Early Church’s Catechumenate involved robust discipleship formation where the pagans who went through the process would leave behind their Roman habitus and embody a Christian lifestyle. By returning to the early church writers, practices, and disciplines that early Christians would have lived out …

Elite Women In The Mediterranean 31 Bc – 1380 Ad: An Investigation Into Female Agency, Identity, And Patriarchy Across Classical And Christian Paradigms, Julia Maurer

Capstone Showcase

This paper explores the responses of elite women to patriarchal regimes across the Classical Pagan and Medieval Christian paradigms in the Mediterranean from 31 BC to 1380 AD. While the current historiography acknowledges the radical differences between the two worldviews fundamental to the core values of Western Civilization, an investigation of three women that can be taken to be emblematic examples of the periods in which they lived reveals a striking continuity in the nuanced social roles available to women. This continuity contradicts expectations of significant changes reflective of this revolutionary paradigm shift.

I utilize Julia Augusti, Vibia Perpetua, and …

“‘Bere We Þe Cros’: The Persistence Of The Cross In English Ritual And Religious Practices From Bede To The Reformation”, David Black

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Long before Christian missionaries arrived in England in the 7^th century, the pagan population recognized the cross as a potent magical symbol. As a result, proselytizers shrewdly used the population’s familiarity with the cross, and their understandings of its power, to encourage converts to the new religion. Over the ensuing centuries of English Christian dominance, the magical aspects of the cross continued to develop both mythologically and theologically, without ever losing connection to their pagan origins. The Crusades, both through the propaganda of preachers and the massive influx of True Cross Relics, contributed in a substantial way to new …

1. The Heirs Of The Roman Empire: Byzantium, Islam, And Medieval Europe, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section II: Medieval, Political and Economic Development: Feudalism and Manorialism

The fall of Rome did not, as many contemporaries had expected, preface the end of the world. Rather, it was the end of a world, of a way of life which had characterized the Mediterranean basin for centuries. Amid the ruins of Greco-Roman Civilization, three new civilizations arose in the old imperial territories and their borderlands. One of these new civilizations -- the Western - is our major interest and its first phase -- the medieval -- will here demand our closer attention. The other two -- the Byzantine and the Islamic -- were Eastern and influenced rather than fathered …