Somewhat surprisingly, the figure of Clement of Rome enjoyed a more developed and diversified afterlife in the east than in the Latin West. A mythical figure of an idealised early Christianity, stemming or linked to an idealised place, Clement found new life and set new roots at the end of late antiquity and beyond in radically different spaces. This paper discusses the main landmarks of Clement’s trajectory on the other side of the Mediterranean.

Dan Batovici is senior researcher at the University of Vienna. 

The letter collection of Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, documents an otherwise dark period: the first state-orchestrated persecution of Christians in the mid-250s CE. Through a frequent exchange of letters with his counterparts in Rome, the letters not only illuminate the mobility of a minority religious group but also provide a unique opportunity to explore how Christ followers and their communities responded to distress. Utilizing Social Network Analysis, this presentation aims to reconstruct their cross-continental network and examine how these networks were used to mitigate the impact of persecutions.

András Handl is SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bern.

The Biblical exodus does not technically end with the conquest of the holy land. Until the temple of Jerusalem was built by Solomon, we are told that the Jewish sacred objects like the Ark of the Covenant, the Menorah, and the Altar of Incense were kept in the movable Tabernacle. Similarly, the destruction of the Temple, first under the Babylonians and then the Romans, forms the backdrop for the anti-Semitic myth of the Wandering Jew, who has returned to an endless roaming in the desert. This paper will argue that this narrative, giving precedence of the sedentary over the mobile, determined Christian Roman politics over Jerusalem until the conquest of the city by the Persians in 614 and the Arabs in 637, and that it was both subverted and reconfirmed by Early Islam.

Olof Heilo is historian and director of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul.

Taking written and material evidence from various areas of the Mediterranean, including Rome, and the Black Sea region as key sources, this paper examines the mobility of Thracian people both in and outside Rome, as well as the movement of (pagan and Christian) religious ideas and images through case studies. It focuses primarily on the Roman imperial periods, spanning the 1st to the 4th century CE. The paper addresses the following key questions: Who were the Thracians who moved over the centuries, and what motivated their movement? In what ways does their mobility provide insight into Thracian religion and cultural identity? How did these aspects evolve over the centuries? On a more general and methodological level, what has already been done on this topic, and what still needs to be explored? Considering that the issue has understandably been explored mainly—if not exclusively—through epigraphical sources, with Rome as the primary geographical focal point, what contribution can an integrated analysis of literary and iconographical sources, along with a comparative approach across a broader geographical context, provide? Additionally, can we apply the same methods used to study similar phenomena in later periods?

Consuelo Manetta is assitent professor of classical archaeology at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa.

The talk will assess how religious “rights” and “freedom” were negotiated and became the subject of diplomatic agreements between Rome and Iran. Such agreements could protect not only religious communities but also individuals, shaping both voluntary and forced mobility across the border between the two states.

Ekaterina Nechaeva is Junior Professor of Late Antiquity at the University of Lille.

How should we envisage the changing dynamic between mobility and religion in the Roman world and its successor states? In my lecture I explore two basic assumptions. Firstly, it is a fair guess that the rise of the church and the creation of new centres of power led to modifications in mobility patterns. Secondly, it is commonly assumed that the expansion of the Roman Empire opened up new possibilities for mobility, and its corollary would be that with the fragmentation of the empire in Late Antiquity geographical horizons contracted again. In my lecture I discuss these changes on the basis of three textual snapshots: firstly, an inscription from Puteoli set up by a statio of Tyreans; secondly, St. Augustine, who described in his autobiographical Confessiones how he in the later fourth century AD moved from his hometown in North-Africa to the imperial court in Milan; thirdly, a brief foray into the sixth-century world of incessant regional mobility portrayed by Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks. Together, the three texts show significant changes in the dynamics between religion and mobility, but at the same time we should remain cautious: part of the changes might be due to the changing nature of our sources.

Rens Tacoma is associate professor of ancient history at Leiden University.

This paper follows the trajectory of a peculiar letter of Basil of Caesarea to Amphilochius of Iconium, which gets included in West Syriac context as a “Letter from Italy to the bishops of the East.” There are four 8-9^th century collections which contain this letter in slightly different forms, but in all cases with this title and no mention of Basil, even though the same collections also include other letters of Basil. This paper discusses then an interesting case where a letter written in a Greek context around Caesarea, initially aimed as a set of rules for the community in Iconium, made its way in Edessa in a Syriac context as a “Letter from Italy to the bishops of the East,” losing in this translatio the authority of a major patristic figure, but gaining the authority of an ecclesiastical canon.

Madalina Toca is a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Bamberg.