Local Self-Organizing, Urban Civil Society and Church Norms: Alexandreia and Antiocheia in the Roman Empire

这一分项目涉及公元1世纪至7世纪罗马帝国两个主要城市的自治团体。埃及的亚历山大和叙利亚的安提阿都让我们得以一窥充满活力的城市社区的运作。这些城市中那些不受国家监管的部分可以最准确地被概念化为城市公民社会。这一分项目的工作假设是，不是国家治理，而是民间社会的运作在很大程度上决定了当地秩序配置的质量。在几个世纪的发展过程中，将跟踪自治团体之间的限制以及它们通过内部组织、规范性和集体认同而内部发展的凝聚力的社会空间进程。这一点的关键背景是与通常由州长代表的中央集权国家的关系，以及与市政当局的关系，市政当局发现这一点在市议会和地方官员中得到了最明显的体现。虽然在帝国初期，社区组织也许仍然可以被认为是自治，即自治，但随着帝国的不断加强，它有效地发展到了地方政府一级，但并没有失去自治的所有要素。这个分项目的目的之一是帮助更好地理解这样的社会政治形态，这些社会政治形态很难进行分类。两个案例研究将从文献记载充分的第四世纪的条件调查开始，然后历时地追溯到帝国早期以及古代晚期。在各种各样的俱乐部、协会和邻里组织中，犹太和基督教社区是最好的证明。随着地中海世界的基督教化，后者成为占主导地位的地方群体，因为他们似乎在培养共同身份意识和提供有效的自治方面最为有效。其他群体的流离失所，特别是犹太社区的流离失所，本身并没有导致当地秩序配置的不稳定。然而，由于教会作为一个高度规范的组织的性质，在同时代人看来，它必须在其教义上与“帝国”和基督教国家完美地一致。这导致了前所未有的激烈的国家干预形式，皇帝试图通过这种形式来执行他的法规。这些尚未完全了解的对地方自治能力的攻击损害了城市民间社会，这将是次级项目的另一个重点。

This subproject deals with self-governing groups in two major cities of the Roman Empire from the 1st to 7th centuries AD. Both Egyptian Alexandria and Syrian Antioch offer a glimpse into the workings of dynamic urban communities. Those segments of these cities that are not regulated by the state can most precisely be conceptualized as urban civil societies. The working hypothesis of this subproject is that it was not state governance, but rather the functioning of the civil society that in large measure determined the quality of the local configurations of order. The socio-spatial processes of limination between the self-governing groups as well as their internal development of cohesion through internal organization, normativity and collective identity will be tracked as they developed over a period of several centuries. The crucial context for this is constituted by the relationships with the centralized state, usually represented by the governor, and with the municipal administration, which finds it clearest manifestation in city council and local office-holders. While the communal organization initially, at the beginning of the imperial period, can perhaps still be considered as self-governing, i.e. autonomous, with the increasing regulation through the Empire it effectively developed into the local government level, without, however, losing all elements of self-governance. One of the aims of this subproject is to contribute to a better understanding of socio-political formations such as these, which defy easy classification.The two case studies will commence with a survey of the conditions in the well-documented fourth century and then work their way back diachronically into the early Empire as well as forward into Late Antiquity. Among the wide range of clubs, associations and neighborhood organizations, the Jewish and Christian communities are the best-attested. With the Christianization of the Mediterranean world the latter became the dominating local group due to the fact that they seemed the most effective at fostering a sense of shared identity and providing a working self-governance. The displacement of other formations, especially of the Jewish communities, did not in and of itself lead to a destabilization of local configurations of order. However, due to the church’s character as a highly normative organization, it had to, in the eyes of contemporaries, be perfectly aligned with regard to its dogma both with the ‘Reichskirche’ and with the Christian state. This led to forms of state intervention of an unprecedented vehemence through which the emperor sought to enforce his regulations. These attacks, not yet fully understood, on the local capacities of self-governance, which impaired the urban civil society, will be another focus of the sub-project.