“Ta sa ek tōn sōn” (your things from your things) is inscribed on a sixth-century Byzantine chalice now in the Dumbarton Oaks collection in Washington D.C. It gnomically expresses the subject matter of Caner’s excellent new book. In what Caner calls “the first complex and affluent Christian society” (xix)—that is, Byzantium from the age of Constantine to the eve of the Islamic conquests—God’s merciful philanthropia (love of humanity), the Christian inflection of an ancient ideal, rained down benefits on and through the whole of creation. This “sacred wealth” circulated in various forms—a spiritual economy—and ultimately, however imperfectly, the debt was repaid to the divine creditor (1). Caner’s substantial monograph, long in the making, and correspondingly mature and thoughtful, is not therefore a study of “the early Byzantine gift,” although entirely secular giving is an occasional background presence. Nor is it quite a study of “the early Byzantine religious gift,” because,...
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Summer 2022
June 01 2022
The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium by Daniel Caner Unavailable
The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium
. By Daniel
Caner
Berkeley
, University of California Press
, 2021
) 410 pp. $34.95
Peregrine Horden
Peregrine Horden
All Souls College
University of Oxford
Search for other works by this author on:
Peregrine Horden
All Souls College
University of Oxford
Online ISSN: 1530-9169
Print ISSN: 0022-1953
© 2022 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc.
2022
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc.
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2022) 53 (1): 146–147.
Citation
Peregrine Horden; The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium by Daniel Caner. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2022; 53 (1): 146–147. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01803
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