Product Description
Preaching Bondage introduces and investigates the novel concept of doulology, the discourse of slavery, in the homilies of John Chrysostom, the late fourth-century priest and bishop, to determine how it shaped early Christianity. The dynamics of enslavement in Chrysostom's theology, virtue ethics, and biblical interpretation are examined, thereby showing that human bondage as a metaphorical and theological construct had a profound effect on the lives of institutional slaves. Slavery, a highly corporeal and gendered discourse, was necessarily central in Chrysostom's discussions of the household, property, education, discipline, and sexuality. De Wet investigates the impact of doulology in these contexts, and disseminates the results in a new and highly anticipated language that serves to bring the more pervasive fissures of ancient Roman slaveholding to light. The corpus of Chrysostom's public addresses provide much of the literary evidence for slavery in the fourth century, and De Wet's convincing analysis is a groundbreaking contribution to the studies of the social world in late antiquity.