Prison, Punishment and Penance in Late AntiquityThis book traces the long-term genesis of the sixth-century Roman legal penalty of forced monastic penance. The late antique evidence on this penal institution runs counter to a scholarly consensus that Roman legal principle did not acknowledge the use of corrective punitive confinement. Dr Hillner argues that forced monastic penance was a product of a late Roman penal landscape that was more complex than previous models of Roman punishment have allowed. She focuses on invigoration of classical normative discourses around punishment as education through Christian concepts of penance, on social uses of corrective confinement that can be found in a vast range of public and private scenarios and spaces, as well as on a literary Christian tradition that gave the experience of punitive imprisonment a new meaning. The book makes an important contribution to recent debates about the interplay between penal strategies and penal practices in the late Roman world. |
Contents
Philosophical and domestic foundations | 25 |
Punishment and reform in early imperial legal thought | 45 |
Christian principles of punishment | 64 |
Punishment reform and penance in late Roman law | 89 |
Conclusions | 113 |
The public prison in late antiquity | 119 |
Private power and punitive confinement | 151 |
Exile and confinement | 194 |
Exile prison and the Christian imagination | 242 |
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accused Alexandria Ammianus Marcellinus Antioch argued ascetic Athanasius Augustine authority behaviour bishops Boor Caesarea carcer Chalcedon Christian Chronicle church clerics Constantinople Constantius context convicts Council crime criminal CSCO CSEL custodia militaris custody death penalty described Donatists Ecclesiastical History Egypt emendare emendatio emperor Eusebius Eusebius of Vercelli example exile forced labour fortress fourth century Gregory Gregory’s hence imprisonment John Chrysostom John of Ephesus jurists Justinian Krause late antique late Roman laws Loeb Malalas Marcellinus ment MGH AA Miaphysite monastery monastic confinement monastic penance monks NJust offenders Palladius particularly Pelagius penal penance place of banishment Plato PLRE poena practice prison penalty Procopius public judge public penalty public prison public punishment punitive reference reform rhetoric Roman law Rome Rule Seneca sent sixth century slaves social Sozomen space term Theodoret Theodosius Theodosius II Theophanes Ulpian Victor of Tunnuna wrongdoing καὶ