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Family Rural Churches in Late Antique Palestine and the Competition in the ‘Field of Religious Goods’: A Socio-Historical View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2018

JACOB ASHKENAZI
JACOB ASHKENAZI*
Affiliation:
Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Jordan Valley 15132, Israel; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

An intriguing phenomenon of late antique Palestine is the abundance of rural churches located outside village boundaries yet obviously in close contact with them, having been constructed by wealthy local patrons. What led to the establishment of such churches and how did they differ from similar building initiatives within the village boundaries? In answering these questions, this article takes a sociological stance, using Pierre Bourdieu's ‘theory of fields’ (‘champs’) to suggest that such construction was the product of symbolic and economic competition in the ‘field of religious goods’ between the rural ‘lay’ elite and the provincial ecclesiastical hierarchy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 709 - 727
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

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27 This study is in preparation. For the beta site see <http://huji.hagitbagno.co.il/users/guest>.

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30 Like the church at Kissufim: Di Segni, ‘Dated Greek inscriptions’, 678–9.

31 This is demonstrated in the inscriptions discovered in the excavated village churches at Suhmata, Horbat Bata, Anab el Kabir and Evron (see n. 28 above). A similar example outside Palestine can be found in the church at Hass in the Idlib region in north-west Syria: Donceel-Voûte, Les Pavements des églises byzantines, 117–19.

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51 An example for such initiative, though in a city, can be found in the private monastery built by the Lady Mary in Scythopolis: G. M. Fitzgerald, A sixth century monastery at Beit-Shan (Scythopolis), Philadelphia 1939.

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