History of society in late antiquity, Authorial publishing in late antiquity, History of epistemology, Psychology and medicine in late antiquity, Social history of ecclesiastic institutions in late antiquity, Church propaganda and censorship in late antiquity,  Migration in and out of the Roman Empire, Social life on the Roman frontiers (Sassanian and Armenian borders).

Project title: “Called by the Trumpet: Influence of Ecclesiastical Propaganda on the Migratory Behavior and Social Attitude of the Romans Towards Their Sasanian Neighbors”

Aim: The project explores the impact of ecclesiastical propaganda on migration and social attitudes of the Romans towards the Sassanids. It highlights the role of religious self- identification in the migration behavior of the inhabitants of the upper Mesopotamian region (Osrhoene and Roman Armenia).

SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT

Due to its geographic location on the crossroads between the two powerful states (Roman and Persian empires), various ethnic groups, and important trade routes, the region of upper Mesopotamia had a vibrant migration profile. The amount of various competing interests and forces, that were active in this region, creates the specific complexity of its status quo. Thus, within the general arc of Roman-Persian competition for influence and control, featured the local interests of various Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, and Jewish communities along with the different religious institutions, groups. In these circumstances the questions of educational, social and cultural exchange, migration, and even spoken language and literacy attracted a lot of attention from various lay and ecclesiastic political actors.

For example, historical sources attest to the existence of two ‘ethnic’ schools in Roman Edessa: the school of the Persians and the school of the Armenians. Since from the period of late antiquity onwards, the curriculum of the majority of schools in the Roman state revolved around biblical and theological literature, the influence of ecclesiastic politics was prominent in the life of educational institutions. To explore the history and compile the prosopography of the associates of these schools, I study a variety of documents ranging from the Greek, Latin, Syriac and Armenian historiographic sources, epistolography, acts of the ecclesiastic councils, thematic treatises. My chronological focus is on the period of the fifth and sixth centuries when important and rather dramatic ecclesiastic debates had a significant impact on identity formation and political allegiance of different ethnic groups, especially those living in Osrhoene and Roman Armenia.

In the fifth century, theological and political competition between the schools of thought and church power centers in Antioch, Alexandria, and also Constantinople took the shape of the so-called Nestorian controversy. This ecclesiastic battle had a major impact on the relations with the Christian churches in Persian Armenia and in the Sassanian realm and by extension on the international politics and diplomatic relations in the region. The importance of the church institutions in the general framework of borderland politics, among other things, was based on the highly developed ecclesiastic network of horizontal connections between the clergy, the social influence of bishops on their flock, and the efficient postal system of ecclesiastic letter delivery and publication. Local centrifugal interests sometimes concurred with the centralization efforts of the government and sometimes went against them. At the same time, very often ecclesiastic authors used both types of centrifugal (emphasis on local identity) and centralizing (emphasis on Christian unity) rhetorics depending on the circumstances and the objectives of their writings. The task of my project is to reconstruct the scholarly network in the upper Mesopotamian borderland, to identify and detect its main actors, and to compile prosopographic data about these persons. This data will help to elucidate the tactics and impact of church propaganda on migration behavior of the frontier population and on the transformation of their self-identity.