Conversion et culture dans le monde grec du IVe siècle ap. J.-C.

Abstract

Conversion –as a concept, as an event and as a deed – was seldom as imporant as it was during Forth Century AD, from the conversion of an emperor (Constantine) to the conversion of the whole Empire. In the Greek speaking and thinking East, religious conversion came across philosophical conversion model, which had been known and admitted for a long time. So, philosophical conversion could affect religious one, and, at the beginning of Fourth Century, christian conversion was not something new. But the novelty is the stress on the problem of relations between conversion and traditional culture, which was called then paideia (i.e. education and culture). The writers who were concerned with this problem dealt in turn with it in form of exclusion, competition and complementarity.

Keywords

• christian literature
• Constantine (Roman emperor)
• greek literature
• greek philosophy
• Julian (Roman emperor)
• late Antiquity