Town and Countryside, Orthodoxy and Religious Dissent in the Christian Roman Empire (IV-V Centuries)

Abstract

After a short introduction to some sociological explanations of the slow Christianization of Roman countryside –as compared to that of urban centers– it is studied how this process was affected by power conflicts between the main agents involved in it: the imperial authorities, ecclesiastical hierarchies, charismatic “holy men” often outside the institutional church and great Christian landlords. Such conflicts took sometimes the appearance of a clash between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. By the early Fifth Century, we find the development of a symbolic geography in which the city is seen as the fortress of Christian orthodoxy, unlike the countryside where religious dissent finds refuge.