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

这个子项目涉及公元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。这些城市中不受国家管制的部分可以最准确地被概念化为城市公民社会。这个分项目的工作假设是，在很大程度上决定地方秩序结构质量的不是国家治理，而是民间社会的运作。将跟踪几个世纪以来自治团体之间的社会空间消除过程及其通过内部组织、规范性和集体认同的内部凝聚力发展。这一点的关键背景是与中央集权国家（通常由州长代表）和市政府（在市理事会和地方官员中表现得最为明显）的关系。虽然在帝国时期初期，公社组织最初可能仍然被认为是自治的，即自治的，但随着帝国越来越多的监管，它实际上发展成为地方政府一级，但没有失去自治的所有要素。这两个案例研究将从文献记载良好的第四世纪开始，然后按时间顺序追溯到帝国早期和古代晚期。在各种各样的俱乐部、协会和社区组织中，犹太人和基督徒社区是最好的证明。随着地中海世界的基督教化，后者成为当地的主导群体，因为他们似乎最有效地培养了一种共同的认同感，并提供了一种有效的自治。其他群体，特别是犹太社区的流离失所，本身并没有导致当地秩序结构的不稳定。然而，由于教会作为一个高度规范性组织的性质，在同时代人的眼中，它必须在其教义方面与“帝国教堂”和基督教国家完全一致。这导致了前所未有的国家干预形式，皇帝试图通过这种干预来执行他的法规。对地方自治能力的这些攻击尚未得到充分了解，它们损害了城市民间社会，这将是该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.