Os concílios de Elvira e Arles na configuração do Cristianismo Tardo-Antigo Manaus - Amazonas

Abstract

This dissertation deals with a crucial period in the history of Christianity and of the Western World. In this moment, a particular institution, the council, was consolidating itself as the most effective instrument to achieve resolution of conflicts, homogenize rules and behavior in distant communities, and as an occasion to the meeting of the Élite of the Christians, primarily the bishops. Both councils that will be analyzed here, Elvira and Arles, happened in a period of great importance to the Roman World, the transition from a pagan empire to a Christian one. It s my intention to analyze the laws edited in those events to understand what was going on in the local communities at this moment of intense transformation in which the Roman World and the Christian Religion. At the same time, my purpose is to examine the ways through the Christian communities, mainly their leaders, dealt with the external world of polytheists, Jews, heretics and, of course, the Roman Administration. My expectation, thus, with this analysis is to know other aspects of the development of Christendom, based upon concrete practices in the small communities that formed the Christian Church. To accomplish that, the concepts of clergy, identity, and otherness will be put to use along with elements of Gender Studies. In doing so, I hope to extract information from the sources that may relocate the events of the councils as great windows to the new configurations of the beginning of Late Antiquity.