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violence and belief in late antiquity militant devotion in christianity and islam
p in violence and belief in late antiquity thomas sizgorich seeks to understand why and how violent expressions of religious devotion became central to the self understandings of both christian and muslim communities between the fourth and ninth centuries . sizgorich argues that the cultivation of violent martyrdom as a path to holiness was in no way particular to islam ; rather it emerged from a matrix put into place by the christians of late antiquity . paying close attention to the role of memory and narrative in the formation of individual and communal selves sizgorich identifies a common pool of late ancient narrative forms upon which both christian and muslim communities drew.in the process of recollecting the past sizgorich explains christian and muslim communities alike elaborated iterations of christianity or islam that demanded of each believer a willingness to endure or inflict violence on gods behalf and thereby created militant local pieties that claimed to represent the one real christianity or the only pure form of islam . these militant communities used a shared system of signs symbols and stories stories in which the faithful manifested their purity in conflict with the imperial powers of the world .
hardcover university of pennsylvania press 2008 isbn13 9780812241136 isbn10 0812241134
abridged n isbn 13 9780812241136 number in series 1 number of pages 398 publisher univ of pennsylvania pr release date 62135769600000 series title divinations rereading late ancient religion