If interested, please contact Anders-Christian Jacobsen ALJ@teo.au.dk
The course focuses on the historical and philologi-
cal investigation of the 4-5 orations of St Gregory of
Nazianzus against Julian the Emperor. During the
course we are going to reconstruct the history of St
Gregory's work in detail, in order to: suggest a new
dating of the orations, compare parallels in the con-
temporary works of St Gregory, Julian and Libanius,
understand the complex genre of St Gregory's ora-
tions and find out the antique routes and the speci-
ficity of St Gregory's rhetoric. Trying to interpret the
authors’ message of the 4-5 orations we will put our
attention to a wide context of the so-called Second
Sophistic movement and by the means of the ex-
amination of some relevant places from Julian's
and Libanius' works we will see the fine points of
the pagan-Christian polemic.