It is in fact limited to the analysis of three nearly contemporary case studies: John Chrysostom and Antioch, Cyril and Jerusalem, and Ambrose and Milan-although few parallels are drawn between them. Amid the huge amount of scholarship on demonology in Late Antiquity, this book aims to fill a neglected area in the study of the late ancient, "enchanted, animistic" city (12).ĭespite what might be inferred from the title, City of Demons is not a comprehensive study of the phenomenon of demonization of religious opponents by urban church hierarchies in the vast period of Late Antiquity. While Late Antique scholarship, largely influenced by Peter Brown, has concentrated on the fight against demons by ascetics in a non-urban environment, beyond the control of ecclesiastical institutions, the phenomenon of spiritual warfare against the demonic in the city has been neglected in historiography due to scholars' inclination to imagine the Late Antique city as a "disenchanted and secularized" space (11). Hence, through diabolizing others' forms of ritual and rhetoric, bishops gained authority and control in and over the Late Antique city. The author bases her argument on the assumption that urban rituals of engagement with demons were different from those performed outside the city, e.g.
Kalleres investigates this developing discourse and the church-sponsored rituals that went along with it, showing how shifting ecclesiastical demonologies and evolving practices of exorcism profoundly shaped Christian life in the fourth century.City of Demons attempts "a cultural history of urban demonologies" in the post-Constantinian city (6) to show that the demonization of religious opponents performed by ecclesiastical leaders, in both the discursive and ritual spheres, was a powerful strategy for urban Christianization in Late Antiquity. During this period of upheaval, when congregants seemingly attended everything but their own "orthodox" church, many ecclesiastical leaders began simultaneously to promote aggressive and insidious depictions of the demonic. When the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the realm, bishops and priests everywhere struggled to "Christianize" the urban spaces still dominated by Greco-Roman monuments and festivals. Although it would appear in studies of late antique ecclesiastical authority and power that scholars have covered everything, an important aspect of the urban bishop has long been neglected: his role as demonologist and exorcist.
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