Compositions moved Augustine, and nowhere is that more evident than in his Confessions. I argue that in this late-fourth-century biography-cum-protreptic, Augustine tries to replace earlier philosophical (Cicero’s Hortensius) and Christian (Athanasius’s Vita Antonii) protreptics with an updated version – his Confessions, which, in part, seeks…[Read more]

Previous research on continued religiosity in children of Jewish-Christian parents has provided mixed results. Most research indicates decreased religiosity, while recent research suggests a reverse of that trend among millennials. Through anecdotal evidence, we surmised that Jews raised in the Midwest by interfaith parents did not leave religion…[Read more]

Unlike other modes of Christianity in late antiquity, monks and nuns in the eastern part of the Roman Empire practiced a careful disengagement from imperial politics. While political figures tried to draw monks into their spheres of influence and use their popular power for political ends, monks practiced political renunciation in almost all…[Read more]