<b>Homily and Christian education in Late Antiquity: body, church and city according to John Chrysostom </b> - doi: 10.4025/actascieduc.v36i1.

Abstract

Homilies, a hybrid genre of Literature, dated from the 2^nd century and extensively used in the 4^th and 5^th centuries, were one of the main tools employed by the ecclesiastical elite to convert the urban population at the end of Antiquity. It was only by the Late Antiquity that homilies were largely used to broadcast the Gospel precepts before a growing audience. Since the Church could not count on schools to stabilize the newly converts from Paganism and Judaism, the Christian leaders developed proselytism and missionary actions based on an excellent use of rhetoric by means of skillful preachers. The author discusses how homilies contributed towards the spiritual formation of Christians, with special reference to the rules that regulated the usage of the body in the church by laypeople, in contrast to the modalities of bodily exposure in the polis. John Chrysostom's pastoral work and the special case of Antioch in the last decades of the 4^th century will be investigated.