Christine Shepardson, "A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity" (U California Press, 2025)

Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast · Sep 15, 2025 · 1h 20m

A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity (U California Press, 2025) traces the rhetorical strategies of religious radicalization that encouraged fifth- and sixth-century miaphysite Christians to be willing to suffer physical deprivation and harm rather than abandon the church that the late Roman Empire defined as heresy after the Council of Chalcedon in 451. These Syriac texts created genealogies of orthodoxy and heresy, represented their heroes as martyr saints, and reminded their followers of God's coming judgment. Later they…