Recent scholarship has documented in great detail incidents of religious
violence in Augustine’s North Africa and explored how they arose within
the broader system of the late Roman Empire. It is widely recognized,
however, that although ancient secular and ecclesiastical historians
were largely interested in the sectarian violence between religious
groups and the deaths inflicted by imperial military force, neither of
these were the primary experience of violence suffered by most people.
Ordinary individual homicides, fistfights, brawls, beatings, rapes, and
robberies were more pervasive. Because our historical sources take these
things for granted, they have made it difficult for scholars to find
material to illumine the dynamics of the most pervasive forms of
violence in Roman North Africa. I will argue that throughout Augustine’s
many sermons, one finds a widespread attention to the social dynamics
of shame (that is, the rich vocabulary of Roman pudor which has
to do with how one perceives oneself as being seen by others). Augustine
is particularly attuned to the attractiveness of traditional Roman
remedies to redeem shameful experiences ranging from revenge to suicide.
Although Augustine, by no means, sets aside sensitivity to shame as an
ingredient in all proper social relations, he constructs exegetical
exercises in a number of sermons that provide non-violent, alternate
means for shame’s redemption where perceived humiliation is transformed
into humility. In this way, Augustine addressed everyday violence not
just in specific moral admonitions, but also by “re-rooting,” as it
were, the Roman self.
No comments:
Post a Comment