It is striking that Christians were so successful. They had internal dissension; lacked relics; had no common temple; came from less educated classes and the periphery of the empire; Jews and pagans harassed, even persecuted them. Because they did not offer sacrifices, excluding them from offices and festivals, and were unable to maintain certain family traditions they appeared antisocial. Yet Christ-followers succeeded in winning over non-Jews as well. The persecutions welded Christians together, and martyrs served as role models, even to those who had manifested weakness. In areas such as sexual morality, Christians sought to demonstrate that they were superior to contemporaries of other faiths. They also formed transregional networks. The opportunity to gain prestige in Christian communities also attracted people. Various forms of authority competed with each other, especially the charismatic and spiritual authority of those who excelled in ascetic practices. That in the end monarchical bishops were to become the decisive figures in Christianity was by no means clear from the beginning. That Roman emperors would support Christianity was an unlikely development that changed Christianity significantly. But the tradition of a defiant piety that defined the beginnings was not lost, so that Christianity continued to renew itself.

The first section addresses the debate between Julian’s supporters and detractors following his sudden death in 363. Christian preachers turned Julian’s propagandistic use of his life into proof that Roman history was regulated by Christian providence. However, they also had to confront Julian’s re-assessment of the power dynamics between the ruler and the priests in the post-Constantinian empire. I argue that Julian was wary of how the identification of religious allegiance as the criterion for determining whether an emperor was a philosopher-ruler affected the interaction between the emperor, now decentred from his religious structures of choice, and the ecclesiastical leaders. The second section shows that that the episcopal engagement with philosophical ideas both provided clerics with a weapon against Julian’s attempts to re-centre the ruler in religious matters and shaped the relationship between the bishops and emperors in addressing heresy - a key challenge faced by Christianity in its self-construction as perfect system of knowledge. Episcopal appeals to an exclusive control of knowledge also affected the public role of non-conforming philosophers, which I illustrate with a case study of Synesius of Cyrene.

A member of the Isma’ili Sulayhid dynasty (eleventh–twelfth century) in Yemen, Sayyida Hurra Queen Arwa was a unique Muslim woman leader: she held both political and spiritual authority simultaneously. She governed Yemen first as a queen consort in collaboration with her husband, then as regent of her son, and finally as a sovereign in her own right until her death in 1138. She balanced her allegiance to the Fatimid Isma’ili imam-caliphs in Cairo with a degree of administrative independence and autonomy in Yemen. She demonstrated self-confidence and acted decisively to preserve her throne, whether against her state’s enemies or insubordinate family members. Faced with the momentous prospect of a contested succession to the Fatimid caliphate in Cairo, she established the position of the supreme missionary, which safeguarded the continuity of the Tayyibi Isma?ili community. She managed to keep the powerful and competitive Yemeni tribal leaders in check, while delivering justice and stability to her people. Not only was the alleged Prophetic hadith not invoked in opposition to her leadership, the imam-caliph al-Mustansir elevated the queen as a religious leader, a hujja. Did Yemen suffer under her sovereignty? Evidently not! She was “immensely popular” and people called her “their Mistress.”