Constantine's Dream: Belonging, Deviance, and the Problem of Violence in Early Christianity
Initial Project Overview (July, 2009)
Kate Cooper, Centre for Late Antiquity, University of Manchester (UK)
A half-century ago, Arnaldo Momigliano argued that in electing Christian bishops to a privileged role in the Roman state, the emperor Constantine (d. 337) made a tragic mistake. On Momigliano's view, Constantine's dream of a peaceful empire united under a single God was destined to fail, because monotheist religious institutions by their very nature undermine the political and social pluralism necessary to a multi-cultural social order. Monotheism, Momigliano suggested, leads inevitably to either-or decisions about truth. The polytheistic worship of the Greco-Roman pantheon, by contrast, had fostered a different and more pluralistic sociology of knowledge. Rival gods had allowed for rival religious institutions, and rival ideas of truth, to jostle productively in the Roman empire without any single faction gaining decisive dominance.
Yet how monotheism changed the landscape of the possible in the Roman empire is still an open question. Is it true to say that while Christian ideas about 'Orthodoxy' and 'Heresy' were fluid in the first three centuries of its existence as a 'counter-cultural' religious movement, the need for orthodoxy and eradication of deviance began to 'spin out of control' once Christian bishops were involved in steering the religious policies of the Roman state? Equally important are a number of theoretical questions. Is there reason to accept Momigliano's general idea that monotheism and multi-culturalism are fundamentally incompatible? Is the modern scholarly study of ancient religion distorted by its reliance on insufficiently historicized concepts of 'belonging' and 'belief'?
Constantine's Dream, a three-year collaborative research project based in the University of Manchester, will address these questions, thanks to funding from Research Councils UK through the Global Uncertainties: Ideas and Beliefs scheme sponsored by two of its member councils, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). A core research team based in Manchester's Centre for Late Antiquity is directed by Dr. Kate Cooper and includes established scholars, post-doctoral fellows, and doctoral students, who will pursue individual and collaborative publications while at the same time organizing research workshops to bring together distinguished and early-career scholars from the UK, EU, and overseas, along with horizon-scanning workshops to foster inter-disciplinary collaboration and intellectual exchange among scholars and individuals working in media, government, and NGO contexts.