Our project has three distinct, but interrelated research strands. Every research strand will be dedicated to researching selected normative texts documenting institutional developments of the late antique Church in light of the quantitative information on spatio-geographical networks of banished clerics provided by the database, in order to address the three key research questions. In this way, institutional sources will be analysed against the background of the author’s and audiences’ networks.
Legal Strand (main responsibility: Dr Julia Hillner)
Julia Hillner will examine late Roman public legislation, in particular on religious behaviour and heresy, against the quantitative evidence on patterns of behaviour of exiles at their place of banishment, networks of communication and frequencies of return, to understand how experiences and events during exile of clerics affected subsequent imperial law on religious dissidence.
Theological Strand (main responsibility: Prof Jörg Ulrich)
Prof Ulrich will extract information from the database on the frequency, geographical distribution and hierarchies of relationships of clerics exiled during the various religious controversies of late antiquity, and apply this information to a re-assessment of the content and literary expression of normative sources of these debates, such as council acts an exile attended upon return or theological treatises he wrote.
Cultural Strand (main responsibility: Dr Jakob Engberg)
Dr Engberg will use database results on exile networks to assess the development of exile cults and the construction of their sanctity through hagiography, relics and buildings, for example that of John Chrysostom in both fifth-century Pityus and Constantinople.