Ciudad y territorio, ortodoxia y disidencia religiosa en el Imperio romano cristiano (siglos IV-V)

Abstract

After a short introduction to some sociological explanations of the slow Christianization of Roman countryside -as compared to that of urban centers- it is studied how this process was affected by power conflicts between the main agents involved in it: the imperial authorities, ecclesiastical hierarchies, charismatic "holy men" often outside the institutional church and great Christian landlords. Such conflicts took sometimes the appearance of a clash between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. By the early Fifth Century, we find the development of a symbolic geography in which the city is seen as the fortress of Christian orthodoxy, unlike the countryside where religious dissent finds refuge.