Richard Flower - Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity

This book would not exist without the support and assistance of a number of individuals and organizations. Early versions of most of the chapters were delivered at two conferences held at the University of Exeter: the first, on 24, 25, and 26 July 2015, had the title of Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity, while the follow-on event, Constructing Christians: Rhetorics of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity, took place on 27 June 2016. Both of these meetings were funded as part of the Early Career Leadership Fellowship awarded to Richard Flower by the UKs Arts and Humanities Research Council for a project entitled Cataloguing Damnation: The Birth of Scientific Heresiology in Late Antiquity, with the University of Exeter providing additional financial support. Neither event would have been possible without the fantastic administrative work of Amelia Hurtley and the help of four postgraduate studentsTaylor FitzGerald, Giovanni Hermanin De, Maria Kneafsey, Paschalis Gkortsilas, and Reichenfeldall of whom have now completed excellent doctoral theses. Alongside the scholars whose work appears in the volume, we would also like to thank the other participants at these events for their contributions to some excellent discussions.

Karen Raith at Oxford University Press has been an extremely helpful Commissioning Editor throughout the entire process and the two anonymous readers provided very useful and generous feedback that improved the individual chapters and the volume as a whole. Dr Marcelina Gilka and Dr Helen John both performed extremely important editorial work, for which the University of Exeter and the St Lukes College Foundation provided funding. Jen Hinchliffe, who copy-edited the whole volume for the Press, combined precision and accuracy with good humour. They have all corrected many errors and rectified many problems; responsibility for those that remain lies with us.