![]() ![]() Most provocatively, the city sphere in late antiquity emerges as a way of spiritually perceiving, even confronting, demons in direct public battle. As such, John, Cyril, and Ambrose preoccupied themselves in sermons and baptismal lectures with the complex task of Christianizing urban spaces co-inhabited by Greco-Roman paraphernalia and custom, and thus demonic infestation. Focusing on the fourth-century figures of John Chrysostom in Antioch, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Ambrose of Milan, Kalleres stresses how urban bishops were also significantly adept demonologists and exorcists. ![]() ![]() These soldiers of Christ engaged in strategic “spiritual warfare” against a horde of malevolent spirits plaguing post-Constantinian Christianity. She foregrounds the rhetorical, ideological, and ritualized construction of Christian identities as baptized Christian soldiers, equipped to battle the demonic in the city. Where City of Demons contains a great deal of vivid detail on the physical geography of the late antique city-maps of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Milan precede the introduction and chapters 1, 4, and 7 include painstaking, descriptive research-this is of marginal importance to Kalleres’ argument. This rich and tantalizing book explores how demonically embattled cityscapes in the late Roman world were creatively structured and restructured by Christian ecclesiastical leaders. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. City of Demons: Violence, Ritual, and Christian Power in Late Antiquity. ![]()
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