Memory of the Eyes. Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000).
45 See Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, chap. 6.
46 The Italian historian Santo Mazzarino used the term ‘democratisation of culture’: see J.-
M. Carrié and Gisella Cantino Wataghin, eds., La ‘démocratisation de la culture, dans l’antiquité
tardive, in Antiquité tardive 9 (2001).
47 See E. Kitzinger, ‘The cult of images in the period before Iconoclasm’, Dumbarton Oaks
Papers 8 (1954), 85–150; Nilus: Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Era 312–1453.
Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs, JN: Prentice Hall, 1972, repr. Toronto, 1986),
33.
48 For icons, see Averil Cameron, ‘Images of authority: elites and icons in late sixth-century
Byzantium’, Past and Present 84 (1979), 3–25; ‘The language of images: the rise of icons and
Christian representation’, in Averil Cameron, Changing Cultures in Early Byzantium (Alder-
shot: Variorum, 1996), XII; Chapter 9 below.
49 L. Cracco Ruggini, ‘The ecclesiastical histories and the pagan historiography: providence
and miracles’, Athenaeum n.s. 55 (1977), 107–26; ead., ‘Il miracolo nella cultura del tardo
impero: concetto e funzione’, in Hagiographie, Cultures et Sociétés, IVe–XIIe siècles (Paris: Études
augustiniennes, 1981), 161–204; Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, chap.
6.
50 See Richard Finn, Asceticism in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009), 9–32.
51 See É. Rebillard, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity, Eng. trans. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2009); shorter treatment by Rebillard in Rousseau, A Companion to Late
Antiquity, 220–31 (‘The church, the living and the dead’).
52 See Kate Cooper, ‘Gender and the fall of Rome’, in Rousseau, ed., A Companion to Late
Antiquity, 187–200, at 192.
53 Melania: Elizabeth A. Clark, The Life of Melania the Younger (New York: Edwin Mellen Press,
1984); on the issues, see the excellent introduction by Judith Evans-Grubbs, ‘Late Roman
marriage and family relationships’, in Rousseau, ed., A Companion to Late Antiquity, 201–19
(for Melania, see 208–9).
54 Many of the substantial corpus of surviving letters tell us nothing directly on the subject,
and are semi-public and literary in character; however, see Evans-Grubbs, art. cit., for a
discussion based explicitly on personal narratives (Evans-Grubbs, 201). The best source of
actual private letters is the papyri, which often preserve fragments of letters written to each
other by ordinary people, though these too can sometimes be diffi cult to interpret.
55 The problem of the evidence is discussed by E. Patlagean, Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale
à Byzance, IVe–VIIe siècles (Paris: Mouton, 1977), 145–55.
56 Brent D. Shaw, ‘Latin funerary epigraphy and family life in the later Roman empire’, His-
toria 33 (1984), 457–97; contraception: id.,‘The family in late antiquity: the experience of
Augustine’, Past and Present 115 (1987), 3–51, at 44–7; infanticide and sale of infants: ibid.,
43f. R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity. A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995) puts forward the theory of a demographic increase among Chris-
tians on the grounds that they cared for the sick and did not practise infanticide; this seems
over-simplistic.
57 City of God, 19.16.
58 See Shaw, ‘The family in late antiquity’, 10f. and esp. 28–38; Evans-Grubbs, art. cit.,
213–17.
59 Kate Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride. Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), and cf. ead., The Fall of the Roman Household (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Kate Cooper and Julia Hillner, eds., Religion,
Dynasty and Patronage in Early Christian Rome 300–900 (Cambridge; Cambridge University
Press, 2007).
60 But there is much late antique material in Arietta Papaconstantinou and Alice-Mary Talbot,
eds., Becoming Byzantine. Children and Childhood in Byzantium (Washington, DC: Dumbarton
NOTES TO CHAPTER 6