Bowes, Kimberly
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Publication “...Nec Sedere in Villam.” Villa-Churches, Rural Piety, and the Priscillianist Controversy(2001-01-01) Bowes, KimberlyWhat was the relationship between Priscillianism and Villas? Did Priscillianists meet and worship in villas? Archaeologists and historians have both made this suggestion more than once, although never in a rigorous manner, and perhaps now is the time for a real appraisal of the evidence.Publication Personal Devotions and Private Chapels(2005-01-01) Bowes, KimberlyThe phenomena of private chapels and private ritual during the late antique period remain as cloaked in shadow as Melania's private midnight vigil. Indeed, the Christianity of the fourth through sixth centuries is typically characterized as rejecting the private for the public, as the church emerged from the homes that had sheltered it during the persecutions to assume the mantel of state-sponsored religion of empire. And yet, by defining the "triumph of the church" as the triumphal procession away from privately based cult to public religion, we have almost wholly overlooked one of late antique Christianity's most important substrands, the continuation and flourishing of private cult and the significant challenge it posed to a nascent institutional church.Publication Introduction to Private Worship, Public Values and Religious Change in Late Antiquity(2008-07-01) Bowes, KimberlyIn Constantinople sometime in the 440s, the empress Pulcheria stood at the edge of an excavation trench. She was there under orders from none other than Saint Thyrsus, who had appeared to her in a dream and instructed her to find the relics of forty Christian soldiers who had perished on the ice of an Armeman Lake. Aided by clergy and palace officials she began a massive excavation, complete with its own public relations director, local church historian Sozomen, who recorded the event for prosperity. The excavation eventually uncovered a casket which, when opened, emitted the sweet odor of myrrh: the martyrs had been found. The day was proclaimed a public festival, the martyrs' relics were processed through the city streets, and, with the empress and bishop standing by, the Forty were laid to rest alongside the relics of Thyrsus himself. Thus were the Fort Martyrs of Sebaste enrolled among the capital's saintly citizens.Publication Christian Worship(2011-01-01) Bowes, KimberlyWhen in 313 the emperor Constantine declared his support for the Christian religion, he was taking a risk. An earlier generation of church scholars had supposed that in the three hundred years since the death of Christ, his followers had manage to expand to the point that Constantine's declaration of support was simply a recognition of the inevitable--Christian triumph by sheer force of numbers. Recent work suggests a more complex reality. Christianity was very slow to get going: by about 200, perhaps as many as 200000 Christians existed on the earth. Even by maximum estimates of expansion, Christian populations in the early years of the 4th century probably totaled only about 6 million, perhaps as much as 10 percent of the Roman population. That 10 percent was unequally distributed: in cities, particularly in Rome and the big cities of the eastern empire, and among the poorer and, above all, more middling classes--merchants, lower-level bureaucrats, soldiers, and their wives-- who aspired to rank and prosperity. Christianity had more limited progress among the senatorial elite and in vast expanses of the countryside where about 90 percent of Romans lived out their lives as poor farmers. By 313, in other words, Christianity had a notable presence among urbanites climbing the social ladder, but among both old aristocratic elite and the rural majority the new religion was a vague form on a distant horizon. Constantine's support of Christianity in 313 was no capitulation to an inevitable surge of Christians, but rather a gamble, not only on a faith but also on a class of people on the move.