Charles M. Odahl

Review of "Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge"

Charles Odahl — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:02:55 PST

Book Review of Raymond Van Dam, Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, in The Ancient History Bulletin Online Reviews, Vol. 2 (2012), pp. 8--13.

Review of "Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity"

Charles Odahl — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:36:57 PDT

Book Review of Gary B. Ferngren, Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, in The Ancient World, vol. 42, 2 (2011), pp. 260--62.

Review of "Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity"

Charles Odahl — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 09:13:22 PDT

Book Review of Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2007), published in The Ancient World, vol. 40, 2 (2009), pp. 226-227.

Review of "Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church"

Charles Odahl — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 09:08:28 PDT

Book Review of Volker L. Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2008, in The Ancient World, vol. 42, 1 (2011), pp. 112--14.

Christian Symbolism on Constantinian Coinage

Charles Odahl — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:46:49 PDT

During his arduous military campaign to wrest control of Rome from the tyrannical usurper Maxentius six years after his acclamation as the northwestern emperor, Constantine felt the need for supernatural assistance to overcome the substantial armed forces and the superstitious religious rites being used by his enemy. Nothing that the previous generation of emperors who had venerated the pagan deities and persecuted the Christian Church had come to unhappy ends, Constantine raised his eyes to the sky and invoked the "Highest God" of the universe in prayer for assistance in his time of trial. he later confided to Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea what followed, and wore on oath that his story was true. He reported that just after midday "he saw with his own eyes in the heavens a trophy of the cross arising from the list of the sun with the message "Conquer by This'" (Hoc Signo Victor Eris in the Latin account of the emperor, but Τουτω Νικα in the Greek version of the bishop). Constantine did not fully comprehend the meaning of this vision; but that night he had a dream in which Christ appeared to him and admonished him to use a sacred symbol of the Christian faith as a defensive talisman for his army. As Constantine had been a protector of Christian believers in his domains, there were Christian clergymen traveling with his forces and praying for the success of his campaign. He questioned them on the import of his revelations and on the sacred signs of their religion. They responded that the cross was the symbol of the victory over death won through the passion of Christ. They probably also informed him that Christians were marked with the sign of the cross at baptism, and were instructed to invoke the name of Christ when they felt endangered by demonic forces. The emperor therefore learned that the crux et nomen Christi were potent apotropaic devices which could be deployed against the forces of evil. Constantine probably remembered the famous incident during a religious rite at Antioch a dozen years earlier when the failure of a haruspex to find any signs in a sacrificial lamb had been blamed on the hexing of the sacrifice by a Christian palace worker making his forehead with the symbol of the cross. He certainly also recalled that the pagan emperors who had used all the powers of their offices to destroy Christianity thereafter had been struck down through terrible deaths over the past decade - Diocletian, for example, by insanity, and Galerious by penile cancer. The emperor must have reasoned that if Christian signs were more potent than pagan rites and that if the pagan persecutors were not able to destroy the Christian cult, then the Christian Deity would seem to be the Deus Summus, and the sacred symbols of Christ would be able to overcome the superstitiosa maleficia being used against him by Maxentius. At this moment, Constantine committed himself to the Christian God.

Review of "The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius & Rome"

Charles Odahl — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:03:50 PDT

"Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, a recent Ph.D. in ancient history from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1996), and a current assistant professor for Roman history at McGill University in Montreal, proffers an interesting and controversial analysis of the Divine Institutes of Lactantius in The Making of a Christian Empire. Historians of early Christianity will welcome this detailed treatment of the Institutes of Lactantius in the English language, and will appreciate this thorough assessment of that work within the religious debates of the fourth century. However, as is often the case with dissertations expanded into first books, the author overlooks some important questions and sources, and pushes her thesis further than the evidence allows. "

Book Review of Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius & Rome. Cornell University Press, 2000, published in The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 87, 3 (2001), pp. 479-81.

Review of "Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch"

Charles Odahl — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 08:59:11 PDT

Book Review of Jaclyn Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch. Cambridge University Press, 2006, published in The Ancient World, vol. 39, 1 (2008), pp. 71--73.

Constantine the Great and Christian Imperial Theocracy

Charles Odahl — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 08:44:49 PDT

From his Christian conversion under the influence of revelatory experiences outside Rome in A.D. 312 until his burial as the thirteenth Apostle at Constantinople in 337, Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of the Roman world, initiated the role of and set the model for Christian imperial theocracy. Through his relationship with the Christian Divinity, his study of the Bible and apologia with leading Catholic intellectuals, and his assessments of divine interventions in imperial history, the emperor came to feel that he had been placed in power by the Almighty God of Christianity, that he had been chosen as a special servant of that God, and that he had been entrusted with a mission to protect the Catholic Church in the empire and to propagate the Christian faith throughout the world. This article surveys the reign of the first Christian emperor and examines how he developed the role of the Christian imperial theocrat in his public letters and imperial actions, how Lactantius in the west and Eusebius in the east codified that role in their writings to and about Constantine, and how the role pioneered by him in Late Antiquity served as a model for Byzantine emperors in eastern Europe and for medieval kings in western Europe over the next millennium. Illustrations from the Roman, Byzantine, and medieval periods reveal how the concept of imperial theocracy was conveyed in contemporary art.

Review of "The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine"

Charles Odahl — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:41:22 PDT

Book Review of Noel Lenski (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine. Cambridge University Press, 2006, in published in the New England Classical Journal, vol. 34, 2 (2007), pp. 178-82.

Review of "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony"

Charles Odahl — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:34:48 PDT

Book Review of Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Eerdmans, 2006, published in The Ancient World, vol. 38, 2 (2007), pp. 150-51.

Christian Minters at Constantinian Arles

Charles Odahl — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:31:14 PDT

The town of Arles, situated along the east bank of the Rhone River in the south of Roman Gaul, was initially constructed in the late first century B.C. as a colony for the sixth legion, and was officially designated in Latin as the Colonia Julia Paterna Arelate Sextanorum. Like other Roman provincial towns in this region, such as Arausio (Orange) and Nemausus (Nimes), favored by the first emperor Augustus and his Julio-Claudian Dynasty (31 B.C. - A.D. 68), it was a model city meant to showcase the amenities of civilized urban living among barbarians subjects. It was early outfitted with the stone structures typical in a model imperial colony.

Constantinian Arles and Its Christian Minters

Charles Odahl — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:13:09 PDT

Constantin Şi Imperiul Creştin

Charles Odahl — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:08:20 PDT

A Romanian paperback translation of Constantine and the Christian Empire.

Saint Sylvester I

Charles Odahl — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:27:59 PDT

Eusebius of Caesarea

Charles Odahl — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:25:50 PDT

Edict of Milan

Charles Odahl — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:23:11 PDT

Battle of the Milvian Bridge

Charles Odahl — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:19:51 PDT

The Catilinarian Conspiracy

Charles Odahl — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:06:25 PDT

Early Christian Latin Literature: Readings from the Ancient Texts

Charles Odahl — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:03:06 PDT

Constantine and the Christian Empire, 2nd ed.

Charles Odahl — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:58:40 PDT