Holy Women, Tortured Bodies, and Imperial Politics at the Margins of Late Antiquity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22240254 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Valentina A Grasso (0000-0002-4497-0063, Bard College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 1-25 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Old World Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2667-0755 • E-ISSN: 2667-0755 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/26670755-00502004 |
| OpenAlex | W4411518749 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
From the third century CE onwards, Afro-Eurasian rulers enacted policies promoting systems of beliefs centered on a supreme entity to provide their subjects with a communal identity and to consolidate their dominions. This paper examines the relationship between Late Antiquity’s changing religious landscape and the construction of womanhood in three martyrdom narratives unsettling Eurocentric teleologies while foregrounding the politicization of gendered violence against female bodies across the Mediterranean, Armenia, and Arabia. To this end, I frame the circulation of mythicized accounts of the execution of Agatha of Catania, Hṙip‘simē of Armenia, and the women of Najrān against the broader geopolitical shifts that occurred in the period, shedding light on the antinomic articulation of gender identity in three distinct religious milieux arising at the margins of empires, between myth and historical reality
Aesthetics · Agatha · Ancient history · Art · Art history · Citizenship · Dismemberment · Foregrounding · Geopolitics · Late Antiquity · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law
The Routledge Companion to Women and Monarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Women in Late Antiquity
La lettera di Simeone vescovo di Bêth-Arsâm sopra I martiri omeriti
The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea
The constitutio Antoniniana (ad 212)
The Medieval Cult of St Agatha of Catania and the Consolidation of Christian Sicily
The Basilica of Betä Sämaʿtiʾ in its Aksūmite, Early Christian, and Late Antique Context
The Cult of the Saints
Empire to Commonwealth
The Epic Histories Attributed to Pʿawstos Buzand (Buzandaran Patmutʿiwnkʿ)
The Martyrs of Najrân. New Documents
Armenia between Byzantium and the Sasanians
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |