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Lisa Bailey:
A Christian Dialogue: Texts and Audiences in the Fifth and Sixth Century West
Master of Arts by Research, Department of History, University of Auckland (submitted; under examination).
Supervisor: Professor Philip Rousseau
Both contemporaries and historians have struggled to define the meaning and implications of being Christian in the fifth and sixth century West. This thesis examines the contemporary debate as it was conducted through certain religious texts, specifically saints' lives, sermons and church council records. It seeks to understand the ways in which the interpretations of the Christian message offered by these texts were formulated as part of a dialogue with their audiences, both lay and religious. It argues that the tendency by some historians to overlook the shaping force of audience responses to these interpretations has affected their understanding of the meaning and significance of the texts.
Chapter one surveys the sources and concludes that the pressures of genre and the atypical positions of the authors influenced both their participation in and depictions of the debate over being Christian. It argues for a reevaluation of the evidence they provide in the light of the interaction with their audiences. These audiences are the subject of chapter two, which argues that although no reconstruction of audience perspectives and reactions is possible, a sense of the dialogue pressures is still both necessary and achievable. The thesis then moves on to an analysis of three strategies by which authors engaged in the debate over the meaning and implications of being Christian. Chapter three considers the strategy of providing exempla which enacted particular interpretations of the Christian message. Chapter four focuses on authorial attempts to redefine how Christians should understand their world and the tools they should use to think about and describe it. Chapter five centres on a discussion of how these models and interpretations could be enforced and the impact that enforcement strategies had on the visions and versions of Christianity which authors conveyed. None of these strategies alone provided an entirely 'satisfactory' answer to the problems which authors faced. They needed to be used in conjunction with each other and the tensions and ambiguities this caused influenced the development of Late Antique Christianity.
