Abstract:
This thesis examines attitudes toward religious violence in Western Europe between c.400 and c.700 CE, with a focus on Italy and Gaul. Violence was, at one and the same time, something used to punish sinners yet also to mark out the faithful. Suffering and pain were inescapable features of life in the late antique world, but not only heathens were expected to suffer. Some Christians mortified their flesh as a safeguard against sin, others chose the long martyrdom of asceticism, and many more still participated in ritual re-enactments of the suffering and deaths of the martyrs, seeking the ‘palms of blood’ which inspire the title of this work. Sinners were disciplined with religiously sanctioned violence and festival celebrations were, at times, accompanied by outbursts of mob violence and rioting. Though Christianity was imbued with attitudes toward violence which are sometimes surprising to the modern mind, these attitudes and the mentalities behind them are fundamental to any consideration of the religious culture of the post-Roman world.
