¹ Colley, Linda, Captives (New York: Pantheon, 2002)Google Scholar.

² A good starting point is Lieu, Samuel N. C., “Captives, Refugees and Exiles: A Study of Cross-Frontier Civilian Movements and Contacts between Rome and Persia from Valerian to Jovian,” in The Defense of the Roman and Byzantine East, Part 2, ed. Freeman, Philip and Kennedy, David, 475–505 (Oxford: British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 1986)Google Scholar.

³ For a helpful discussion of the connection as well as the distinction between these terms, see Wood, Ian, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050 (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 3–5Google Scholar. I will be using this terminology in a similar manner: “conversion” primarily for the spiritual change of an individual, though I will sometimes refer to the “conversion” of a nation or land; “mission” primarily for the evangelization of pagans; and “Christianization” for what is generally deemed a longer process involving the transformation of communities or whole lands that may already be superficially Christian. The term “evangelization” will be used interchangeably with “mission” and may be more helpful since the latter “implies a plan” (Wood, 4) that is not always evident in the relevant accounts.

⁴ Nock, A. D., Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion form Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933), 7Google Scholar.

⁵ This approach is perhaps best exemplified in the edited volume, Grafton, Anthony and Mills, Kenneth, eds., Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2003)Google Scholar. See also Van Dam, Raymond, Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lamenting the many deferential studies that ignore the disruptive impact of the new religion on a traditional society, Van Dam sets out to examine the practical, immediate aspects of conversion while essentially ignoring “doctrines, asceticism, monasticism, and spirituality” (3–4).

⁶ Morrison, Karl F., Conversion and Text: The Cases of Augustine of Hippo, Herman-Judah, and Constantine Tsatsos (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992), viii–xGoogle Scholar. See also Fredriksen, Paula, “Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self,” Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986): 3–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Muldoon, James, ed., Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 1–2Google Scholar, for the editor's description of a “conversion spectrum.” Terminology of moment and process has also been used with reference to Gregory Nazianzen's idea of conversion. See Susanna Elm, “Inscriptions and Conversions: Gregory of Nazianzus on Baptism (Or. 38–40),” in Conversion, ed. Mills and Grafton, 1–35.

⁷ See the introductory comments on conversion in Curta, Florin, ed., East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 18–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ von Harnack, Adolf, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, vol. 1, Theological Translation Library, trans. Moffatt, James (New York: Putnam, 1908)Google Scholar; MacMullen, Ramsey, Christianizing the Roman Empire (a.d. 100–400) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. See also the special volume of essays responding to Stark's book, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 2 (1998); and the recent reassessments in Harris, William V., ed., The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁹ Hinson, Glenn, The Evangelization of the Roman Empire (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1981), 10Google Scholar. Hinson emphasizes major institutional forms of the church as the pivotal factors in Christian expansion and suggests that his study is “predicated on the assumption, now widely accepted in ecumenical circles, that the church is mission” (2). See also Green, Michael, Evangelism in the Early Church, rev. ed. (1977; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004)Google Scholar. The one-volume survey by Neill, Stephen, A History of Christian Missions (New York: Penguin, 1964)Google Scholar, also stresses the inherently missionary nature of the church (especially 13–25) and “the continuance of the Pauline pattern” in the post-apostolic period (30–31).

¹⁰ In particular, Goodman, Martin, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994)Google Scholar; see especially his comments on 18–19 and 106–7. Curran, John, “The Conversion of Rome Revisited,” in Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity, ed. Mitchell, Stephen and Greatrex, Geoffrey, 1–14 (London: Duckworth, 2000)Google Scholar describes it as a commonplace in recent scholarship that Christianity was not notably missionary in the first two and a half centuries. Focusing on the first two centuries, Matthews, Shelly, First Converts: Rich Pagan Women and the Rhetoric of Mission in Early Judaism and Christianity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar challenges this “new consensus” and the “minimal definition of what constitutes missionary activity” (3).

¹¹ Frend, W. H. C., “The Missions of the Early Church, 180–700 ad,” in Baker, Derek, ed., Miscellenea historiae ecclesiasticae 3: Colloque de Cambridge, 24–28 septembre 1968 (Louvain, 1970), 3–23Google Scholar.

¹² Russell, James C., The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Brown, Peter, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, a.d. 200–1000, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Richard, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Wood, Missionary Life.

¹³ Although there has been no major English monograph devoted to eastern mission or Christianization equivalent to studies on the West (see note 12), several recent articles have examined the subject either in specific regional contexts or from a comparative angle. Especially relevant to this article are Horn, Cornelia, “St. Nino and the Christianization of Pagan Georgia,” Medieval Encounters 4, no. 3 (1998): 243–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horn, , “The Lives and Literary Roles of Children in Advancing Conversion to Christianity: Hagiography from the Caucasus in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” Church History 76, no. 2 (2007): 262–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Haas, Christopher, “Mountain Constantines: The Christianization of Aksum and Iberia,” Journal of Late Antiquity 1, no. 1 (2008): 101–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also indicative of rising interest in eastern Christianization is an essay by Sergey Ivanov, A., “Religious Missions,” in the new Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, c.500–1492 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 305–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, covering the middle Byzantine period. Oddly, there is no comparable treatment of mission in volume 2 of the Cambridge History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), which covers the period from Constantine to c.600.

¹⁴ On the relation between monotheism and world empire in late antiquity, including insights on the implications for Christian mission, see Fowden, Garth, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, especially chap. 5, “The First Byzantine Commonwealth: Interactions of political and cultural universalism,” 100–37. For missiologists’ treatment of eastern missions, see the comments of Bosch, David J., Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991), 205Google Scholar, who has noted the tendency of most western missiologists to ignore or belittle the significance of eastern missions. His chapter, “The Missionary Paradigm of the Eastern Church,” 190–213, is exceptional in its attempt to discern distinctive theological features of an Orthodox or eastern approach to mission. See also Stamoolis, James, Eastern Orthodox Mission Theology Today (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1986)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Shepard, Jonathan, “Spreading the Word: Byzantine Missions,” in The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. Mango, Cyril (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 230Google Scholar. Two pages later, however, Shepard explains that, in fact, “Emperors do not seem to have sponsored major missionary undertakings in any quarter between the seventh and early ninth centuries.” Similarly, writing over forty years ago, Byzantine historian Hans-Georg Beck presented the common understanding of Byzantine missions: “Jede Ausbreitung des Reiches ist potentiell eine Ausbreitung des Christentums und jede Ausweitung des christlichen Raumes potentiell ein Zuwachs zum römischen Reich.” Beck, H. G., “Christliche Mission und politische Propaganda im byzantinischen Reich,” in La conversione al Cristianesimo nell'Europa dell'alto medioevo, vol. 14, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, 1967), 654Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Ivanov, S. A., Vizantiiskoe missionerstvo: Mozhno li sdelat’ iz “varvara” khristianina? [Byzantine Missionary Activity: Is It Possible to Make a Christian out of a “Barbarian”?] (Moscow: Iazyki Slavianskoi Kutury, 2003)Google Scholar. On a smaller scale, Ivanov's argument was articulated by Thompson, E. A. in “Christianity and the Northern Barbarians,” in The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. Momigliano, Arnaldo, 56–78 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963)Google Scholar. For a more nuanced treatment of the spread and organization of Christianity among the barbarians, both east and west, see Mathisen, Ralph W., “Barbarian Bishops and the Churches ‘in barbaricis gentibus’ during Late Antiquity,” Speculum 72, no. 3 (1997): 664–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Ivanov, Vizantiiskoe missionerstvo, 59. In a recent essay he put it this way: “Even the last words of Jesus “Go teach all nations,” which in later centuries became the slogan of mission, were interpreted by the Byzantines in all possible ways except the missionary one.” Ivanov, Sergey A., “Casting Circe's Pearls before Swine: The Byzantine View of Mission,” in Mélanges Gilbert Dagron, Travaux et Mémoires 14 (Paris, 2002), 298Google Scholar. Despite judgments of this sort in both the article and his much fuller monograph, Ivanov states that he is interested in mission as a “cultural pheonomenon” and therefore does not intend to consider “the theological aspect” of missionary activity. Vizantiiskoe missionerstvo, 12.

¹⁸ Brown, Peter, “Conversion and Christianization in Late Antiquity: The Case of Augustine,” in The Past Before Us. The Challenge of Historiographies of Late Antiquity, ed. Straw, Carole and Lim, Richard, 103–17 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004)Google Scholar. Though Brown uses Augustine as a case study in this essay, the conceptual questions he explores in the first half of his essay are very close to those I am pursuing here for the east.

¹⁹ Gregory, Timothy E. and Ševčenko, Ihor, “Missions,” in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium 2nd ed., ed. Kahzdan, Alexander P., et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, 1380–81 (hereafter cited as ODB). The authors add that “missionaries also worked consistently among the people after the ‘official’ conversion” (my emphasis), but missionary initiative is clearly from above.

²⁰ Ivanov, Vizantiiskoe missionerstvo, chapter 2, especially 31–34.

²¹ Seth Schwartz, “Roman Historians and the Rise of Christianity: The School of Edward Gibbon,” in Spread of Christianity, ed. Harris, 151. By “psychological maximalism” Schwartz refers to A. D. Nock's understanding of conversion as a dramatic spiritual, intellectual, and emotional turning, a psychological moment as opposed to a process of transformation. Schwartz also speaks of almost all Gibbon-derived scholarship, including that of Ramsey MacMullen, as characterized by “psychological minimalism” in interpreting accounts of mission and conversion, that is, the tendency to reduce mission and conversion to a relatively simple process explicable in terms of group motivation or other sociological factors. He suggests that this approach too is beginning to run its course. In the same volume, see also H. A. Drake, “Models of Christian Expansion,” 1–13.

²² Haas, “Mountain Constantines,” 125–26, concludes his essay with a model of Christianization that includes nine “distinct phases” and “took at least two centuries to complete.” Though one might quibble with the precise wording or order of these phases (and his own title emphasizes conversion from above), Haas also recognizes the importance of gradual Christianization from below in both Axum and Iberia.

²³ Burrus, Virginia and Lyman, Rebecca, “Shifting the Focus of History,” in A People's History of Christianity, vol. 2, Late Ancient Christianity, ed. Burrus, Virginia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 22Google Scholar. At the same time the authors acknowledge the ways in which “Christian communities embraced imperial patronage and affirmed class privilege while generating their own class distinctions along a variety of gradients.” Besides this introduction to the volume, the essays in part 1, “Hierarchy and Subversion,” are especially relevant to themes considered in this article.

²⁴ For the Armenian text and English translation, see Agathangelos: History of the Armenians, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson (Albany: State University of New York, 1976). On the identity of Agathangelos, see Thomson's introduction, xxiv–xxvi.

²⁵ Agathangelos, History, §48.

²⁶ Though the date of this conversion was long held to be c.301, scholarly consensus now places these events c.314. See Siebt, Werner, ed., Die Christianiserung des Kaukasus: The Christianizaion of Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Albania), Referate des Internationalen Symposions (Wien, 9–12 Dezember 1999)Google Scholar (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2002), especially Siebt's essay, “Die historische Hintergrund und die Chronologie der Christianisierung Armeniens bzw. Der Taufe König Trdats (ca. 315),” 125–33. On the historical circumstances surrounding Trdat and Gregory the Illuminator, see Chaumont, Marie-Louise, Recherches sur l'histoire de'Arménie de l'avènement des Sassanides à la conversion du royaume (Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1969), 131–46Google Scholar, and Redgate, A. E., The Armenians (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 113–39Google Scholar.

²⁷ On Rhipsime's centrality for the conversion of both Armenia and Georgia, see Michel van Esbroeck, “Die Stellung der Märtyrerin Rhipsime in der Geschichte der Bekehrung des Kaukasus,” in Christianisierung des Kaukasus, ed. Siebt, 171–79. The origin of the name Rhipsime is unknown, although Agathangelos, §175, suggests it derives from the Greek ῥίπτω, “to throw.” One scholar suggests that the verb may have the meaning “imprison,” thus implying that Rhipsime was a captive. Thomson, however, discounts this “folk-etymology.” Thomson, Agathangelos: History, 472 n. 2.

²⁸ For the virgins’ flight to Armenia and discovery by Trdat's nobles see Agathangelos, History, §§149–161. On the “vat-stores” in which they hid see Agathangelos, History, §150, and the editor's comment on 469, §150, n. 2.

²⁹ Agathangelos, History, §§180–82.

³⁰ For example, Agathangelos, History, §§233, 237–39. These references to Rhipsime and the martyrs’ testimony form part of Gregory's preliminary exhortations to the king and his court. The sermon continues in what has been described as an “elaborate catechism” that is longer than the rest of the History combined and became known as the “teaching” of St. Gregory. This text went through various recensions before reaching its final form in the early seventh century and has been published separately as The Teaching of Saint Gregory, rev. ed. trans., comm., and intro. Robert W. Thomson (New Rochelle, N.Y.: St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, 2001). Here too the role of Rhipsime and the martyrs is emphasized.

³¹ Agathangelos, History, §§759–60. For an analysis of the architecture and later history of the chapels built in honor of the virgin martyrs, see Khatchatrian, A., L'architecture arménienne du IVe siècle au VIe^esiècle (Paris: Klincksieck, 1971)Google Scholar, especially 32–33, 37, on the martyrium of Rhipsime which was rebuilt twice by the early seventh century and was said to be the site of many healings. See also Khatchatrian's Appendix, 103–8, for a collection of all the passages in Agathangelos that have to do with architecture.

³² For general background on Georgia in late antiquity, see Toumanoff, Cyril, Studies in Christian Caucasian History (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1963)Google Scholar, and Braund, David, Georgia in Antiquity: A History of Colchis and Transcaucasian Iberia, 550 BC–AD 562 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994)Google Scholar. On Georgia's conversion see Thelamon, Françoise, Païens et chrétiens au IVe siècle. L'apport de ‘l'Histoire ecclésiastique’ de Rufin d'Aquilée (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1981)Google Scholar, especially 85–122, and several essays in Seibt, ed., Christianisierung des Kaukasus.

³³ Rufinus, Historiae ecclesiasticae 10.9–10, in Schwartz, Eduard and Mommsen, Theodore, eds., Eusebius Werke. GCS 2, n.f. 6,2 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999), 971–73Google Scholar, (hereafter cited as HE); English translation in Amidon, Philip R., SJ, trans., The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia, Books 10 and 11 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 18–20Google Scholar. The account of Iberia's conversion follows in HE 10.11: Schwartz and Mommsen, 973–76; Amidon, 20–23.

³⁴ Rufinus, HE, 10.11: Schwartz and Mommsen, 974, lines 19–20; Amidon, 21.

³⁵ For the mission of the one-time hostage Theophilus “the Indian,” sent out by the pro-Arian emperor Constantius II (337–361), see Philostorgius, HE III.4; English translation in Amidon, Philip, SJ, trans., Philostorgius, Church History, Writings from the Greco-Roman World 23 (Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 40–41Google Scholar.

³⁶ The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu, trans. R. H. Charles (London: Williams & Norgate, 1916), chapter 77.106. For the Ethiopic text and French translation, see Chronique de Jean, Évêque de Nikiou, trans. H. Zotenberg (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883).

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Descriptions of the actual role that Christian queens played have been softened in more recent literature, and the motif of “conversion by marriage” has been questioned. See, for example, Armstrong, Dorsey, “Holy Queens as Agents of Christianization in Bede's Ecclesiastical History: A Reconsideration” Medieval Encounters 4, no. 3 (1998): 228–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Armstrong summarizes, “In Bede, queens do not convert peoples—kings and bishop do” (239).

³⁹ On the portrayal of Helena in hagiographic literature, see Coon, Lynda L., Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 95–103Google Scholar. On Mavia, see Trimingham, J. Spencer, “Mawiyya: The First Christian Arab Queen” in The Near East School of Theology Theological Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (Beirut, 1978), 3–10Google Scholar, and on her Christianity, Shahid, Irfan, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1989)Google Scholar, 188–90 passim.

⁴⁰ Gregory and Ševčenko, “Missions,” in ODB 2:1380–81.

⁴¹ See, for example, Warren, F. M., “The Enamored Muslim Princess in Orderic Vital and French Epic,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 29, no. 3 (1914): 241–358CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where the medieval use of the topos is traced from roots in Seneca and the Greek Sophists through medieval Islamic literature like the Arabians Nights. In medieval European accounts, however, the captive women protagonists end up abandoning their religion (Islam) rather than converting others to Christianity.

⁴² “Is it surprising that I too, admiring the fairness of her form and the grace of her eloquence, desire to make that secular wisdom which is my captive and my handmaid, a matron of the true Israel?” Jerome, Letter 70.2; cf. Letter 21.13. For an illuminating discussion of the use of this captive women motif by Origen and Jerome, see Chin, Catherine M., Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 75Google Scholar, 82–85.

⁴³ David Stern, “The Captive Woman: Hellenization, Greco-Roman Erotic Narrative, and Rabbinic Literature,” Poetics Today 19, no. 1, Special Issue: Hellenism and Hebraism Reconsidered: The Poetics of Cultural Influence and Exchange I (Spring, 1998), 91–127; here 99. For the rabbis, too, the exegesis of Deuteronomy 21 is prominent. See especially 113–18 for Stern's comparison of Jerome's allegorical interpretation of the passage with those of the rabbis. He suggests that in different ways all use the captive women as an allegory of cultural influence.

⁴⁴ Thomson, introduction to Agathangelos: History, lxxxix–xl, and Garsoïan, Nina G., The Epic Histories Attributed to Pawstos Buzand (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, 11, concur on a date of c.460 for Agathangelos's History.

⁴⁵ See Thomson, introduction to Agathangelos: History, especially xc–xciii, regarding the author's context and motives.

⁴⁶ Agathangelos, History, §§12–13. See Thomson, introduction, xxiv–xxvi, for further discussion of “Agathangelos,” who comes to be known as the author of the History in the later fifth century.

⁴⁷ For the whole journey, Agathangelos, History, §§873–81; an alliance between the two rulers is mentioned in §877. On this alleged journey to Rome see Chaumont, Marie-Louise, “Une visite du roi d'Arménie Tiridate III à l'empereur Constantin a Rome?” in L'Arménie et Byzance. Histoire et Culture (Paris: Sorbonne, 1996), 55–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hewsen, Robert H., “In Search of Tiridates the Great,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 2 (1985–1986)Google Scholar, especially 22–23.

⁴⁸ The accounts of Koriun, Faustos Buzand, and Moses of Khoren are discussed and compared to Agathangelos's narrative on this issue in Thomson, Robert W., “Mission, Conversion and Christianization: The Armenian Example,” Harvard Ukranian Studies 12/13 (1988/1989), 34–35Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Jean-Pierre Mahé, “Die Bekehrung Transkaukasiens: Eine Historiographie mit doppeltem Boden,” in Christianisierung des Kaukasus, ed. Siebt, 108–9, points to the more than coincidental similarities between Agathangelos's history and Greco-Roman novels like Apuleius's Golden Ass. Mahé also refers also to another of his articles, inaccessible to me, in which he compares the details of Agathangelos's account with ancient novels: “Agathange et la destruction des sanctuaires païens,” École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sciences historiques et philologiques), Livret 10 (1994–1995), 32–35. See also Peeters, P., “St. Grégoire l'Illuminateur dans le calendrier lapidaire de Naples,” Analecta Bollandiana 60 (1942): 102–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where he speaks of the “Roman de Ste. Hripsime.”

⁵⁰ On Agathangelos's history as hagiography and its dependence on hagiographical topoi and themes, see Thomson, introduction to Agathangelos: History, xliv, xlv, lxxxv; on the parallels between Agathangelos and the Books of Maccabees, lxxxii–lxxxiv. Both Thomson, xlv, and Mahé, “Die Bekehrung Transkaukasiens,” 109, refer to Gregory's life as recounted by Agathangelos as an “epic passion” as defined by Delehaye, Hippolyte, Les Passion des martyres et les genres littéraires, 2nd ed., Subsidia hagiographica 136 (Brussels, 1966)Google Scholar, 171, 222–23.

⁵¹ For parallels and discussion of Syrian influence see Thomson, “Syrian Christianity and the Conversion of Armenia,” in Christianisiering des Kaukasus, ed. Siebt, 159–69. In addition to the Syriac Teaching of Addai, the Greek church history of Eusebius, which was well known in Armenia in Syriac translation, also recounts this narrative of Abgar's conversion by the Apostle Thaddeus. (Eusebius HE 1.13) Thomson emphasizes the importance of Eusebius for Armenia and the formative role of the Thaddeus-Abgar account for the story of Gregory and Trdat.

⁵² See Burris, Catherine and van Rompay, Lucas, “Some Further Notes on Thecla in Syriac Christianity,” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 6, no. 2 (July 2003)Google Scholar, [10].

⁵³ For the influence of Thecla's cult in Asia Minor, see Albrecht, Ruth, Das Leben der heiligen Makrina auf dem Hintergrund der Thekla-Traditionen: Studien zu den Ursprungen des weiblichen Mönchtums im 4. Jahrhundert in Kleinasien (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986)Google Scholar. Although she focuses on the model of Thecla in the spread of female monasticism, see 246–77 on the genre of Apostolic Acts in general and the Acts of Thecla in particular; 267–71 on Thecla's “missionarisch-apostolische Tätigkeit.” Davis, Stephen J., The Cult of St. Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, traces the spread and indigenization of Thecla's cult in Egypt. Similar work remains to be done for Syria and Armenia. A critical edition of the Armenian text of the Acts of Thecla is forthcoming by Valentina Calzolari Bouvier for Corpus Christianorum–Series Apocryphorum.

⁵⁴ Agathangelos, History, §237. He also speaks of the ongoing power of their intercessions. See also §239 where he speaks of “their testimony”; he calls the Armenian nobles to be reconciled to God “through them” repeating that they died “to be come witnesses to the Godhead” (§238).

⁵⁵ This theme of the witness and apostolic mission of the virgin martyrs is especially emphasized in The Teaching of Saint Gregory. See especially Teaching, §§514–18, 541–42, and 544.

⁵⁶ See for example, Agathangelos, History, §§168–69, where the “loud voice” with which Rhipsime prayed is repeated along with the posture of her prayer, for she “stretched out her arms in the form of a cross.” See also §174 for the loud prayers of all the virgins while encircled by a throng of royal servants.

⁵⁷ Agathangelos, History, §176.

⁵⁸ Agathangelos, History, §§75–98 for Gregory's prayers during his second torture; §99 for the phrase atenakal dpirk‘n nshanagrats‘n, which Thomson translates, “scribes of the tribunal.”

⁵⁹ Commenting on the alleged scribes recording Gregory's words in prayer, Thomson, Agathangelos: History, 465, §99 n. 1 suggests that this reference to scribes writing down the prayers of Gregory and Rhipsime (cf. §176) “is to be taken no more seriously than Agathangelos’ own claim to have been an eyewitness.” He notes that there are “close parallels” in the Martyrdom of Shmona and Guria, §39, and the Martyrdom of Habib, §39. In his introduction, xliv, Thomson affirms that the claim that scribes or secretaries accurately recorded all that was said is a characteristic of hagiography with which Agathangelos was well acquainted. The broader question of authorial intention will be discussed in further depth in a subsequent article, but multiple references to the use of scribes to record the words of Christian prayers in similar situations of persecution certainly warrant further consideration.

⁶⁰ Thomson, Robert W., “Architectural Symbolism in Classic Armenian Literature,” in Studies in Armenian Literature and Christianity (Ashgate: Variorum, 1994), IX.114Google Scholar; for this first reference to the “vat-stores,” Agathangelos, History, §150.

⁶¹ Agathangelos, History, §§201, 224, 737, 759.

⁶² See Murray, Robert, “The Vineyard, the Grape, and the Tree of Life,” chap. 3 in Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 95–130Google Scholar. The association of the winepress with the passion and ascension of Christ is especially prevalent in patristic exegesis of Isaiah 63:1–3. On the architectural symbolism in Agathangelos's History, see Khatchatrian, Architecture Arménienne, 73–86, and specifically on the spiritual symbolism of the martyrs’ chapels, Thomson, “Architectural Symbolism in Classical Armenian Literature,” in Studies IX, 106–8, and on the vat-store and the winepress, 114.

⁶³ Rufinus, HE 10.11. The three fifth-century Greek descriptions of Iberia's conversion occur in Socrates, HE 1.20; Sozomen, HE 2.7; and Theodoret, HE 1.24. Citations are from the Sources chrétiennes editions of these texts: Socrate de Constantinople. Histoire Ecclésiastique, Livre I, trans. Pierre Périchon and Pierre Maraval, SC 477 (Paris: Éditions du cerf, 2004); Sozomène. Histoire ecclésiastique, livres I–II, ed. J. Bidez, trans. André-Jean Festugière, SC 306 (Paris: Éditions du cerf, 1983); Theodoret de Cyr. Histoire Ecclésiastique, ed. L. Parmentier, G. C. Hansen, J. Bouffartigue, Annick Martin, and Pierre Canivet, SC 501 (Paris: Éditions du cerf, 2006). For English translations of Socrates and Sozomen, see respectively A. C. Zenos and Chester D. Hartranft, trans., Ecclesiastical History, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1957). For Theodoret, see Jackson, Blomfield, trans., The Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989)Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted, English translations are my own.

⁶⁴ A detailed comparison of the four historians’ narratives is central to the second part of this article, “‘Representing’ Mission from Below: Historians as Interpreters and Agents of Christianization,” Church History 80, no. 2 (forthcoming). On Rufinus, whose account of the conversion of Iberia is foundational and whose work as a translator and historian has begun to be reevaluated in recent decades, see Humphries, Mark, “Rufinus's Eusebius: Translation, Continuation, and Edition in the Latin Ecclesiastical History,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 16, no. 2 (2008), 143–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁵ Bacurius, vir fide, pietate, virtute et animi et corporis insignis. Rufinus, HE 11.33: Schwartz and Mommsen, 1038, line 17; Amidon, 88. Similarly here in 10.11 Rufinus affirms that his “chief concern was for religion and truth,” Amidon, 23.

⁶⁶ Socrates, HE 1.20.

⁶⁷ For the identity and background of Bacurius, whom we encounter in the writings of Libanius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Zosimus, among others, see Braund, Georgia in Antiqutiy, 246–48; and Woods, David, “Subarmachius, Bacurius, and the Schola Scutariorum Sagittariorum,” Classical Philology 91, no. 4 (1996): 365–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the Syriac Life of Peter the Iberian Bacurius appears as the grandfather of the saint and is described as “the first Christian king who ruled that country, having led that whole nation to the fear of God.” See Vita Petri Iberi, §§6–7 in the new edition and translation of Horn, Cornelia B. and Phenix, Robert R., Jr., John Rufus: The Lives of Peter the Iberian, Theodosius of Jerusalem, and the Monk Romanus (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), pp. 7–8Google Scholar; also §11, p. 13. The editors also note the possibility that John Rufus has confused Bacurius with King Mirian (xxiv). Other views on Bacurius and his role in the conversion of the Georgians to Christianity are briefly discussed in Horn, Cornelia B., Asceticism and Christological Controversy in Fifth-Century Palestine: The Career of Peter the Iberian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 58–59, and 115–17. See, too, the older but thorough discussion of the problem in Peeters, P., “Les débuts du christianisme en Géorgie d'après les sources hagiographiques,” AB 50 (1932), 5–58Google Scholar; here 30–38.

⁶⁸ Khorenatsi, Moses, History of the Armenians, trans. Thomson, Robert W. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, 3.34, 322, relates that Mashtots, after having invented an alphabet for the Armenians, went to the Georgians and was favored by the Iberian king, Bacurius. On this basis Thelamon surmises that Bacurius reigned in Iberia in the early fifth century, that is, at the very time Rufinus was writing. See Thelamon, Païens et chrétiens, 93–96.

⁶⁹ On the deliberate chronological imprecision of Rufinus and the other pro-Nicene church historians, especially with respect to the reign of Constantius II and his “zelo missionario filoariano,” see Ruggini, Lellia Cracco, “Universalità e campanilismo, centro e periferia, città e deserto nelle Storie ecclesiastiche,” in La storiografica ecclesiastica nella tarda antichità. Atti del Convegno tenuto in Erice (December 3–8, 1978) (Messina: Centro di studi umanistici, 1980), 159–94Google Scholar; here 178–80. See also Amidon's introduction, xvii, for his harsh criticism of Rufinus on this point.

⁷⁰ Ammianus Marcellinus, 21.6.8 in Hamilton, Walter, trans., Ammianus Marcellinus: The Later Roman Empire, a.d. 354–378 (New York: Penguin, 1986), 215Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Frend, W. H. C., “The Church in the Reign of Constantius II (337–361): Mission – Monasticism – Worship,” in L’Église et l'empire au IVe siècle, ed. Dihle, Albrecht (Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1989), 73–111Google Scholar, especially 75–85.

⁷² Several scholars have suggested that the name Nino has its origins with the Latin word “nonna” (meaning nun or ascetic), the Greek νννα, or the Armenian nounè. On diverse interpretations of the origins of Nino's name, see Synek, Eva Maria, Heilige Frauen der frühen Christenheit. Zu den Frauenbildern in hagiographischen Texten des christlichen Ostens (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1994), 135–38Google Scholar; also Gippert, Jost, “St. Nino's Legend: Vestiges of Its Various Sources,” Gelatis Ak'ademiis Moambe 3 (1997): 2–4Google Scholar at http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/personal/jg/pdf/jg1997je.pdf (accessed November 30, 2009); English translation of original in Enatmecnierebis sak'itxebi 1–2 (2006), 104–22. Gippert points to evidence suggesting that Nino originally came from Cappadocia to the Jewish community in Mcxeta and that her mother tongue was Syriac. Horn, “St. Nino and Christianization,” 250, also suggests that she may have been “a native of Cappadocia.” Both authors, however, focus on the later legends of St. Nino rather than the fifth-century church histories.

⁷³ On the complex relations between Iberia, Rome, and the Sassanians in this period, see Braund, Georgia in Antiquity, 238–67 and Dignas, Beate and Winter, Engelbert, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 128–29, 188–92. Despite the absence of details about the woman's identity, scholars continue to refer to her as a Roman captive. For example, Haas, “Mountain Constantines,” 106–9, describes her as a “captive Roman woman,” “a young captive,” and “a slave girl, a Roman captive … [who] impressed her Iberian owners,” although neither Rufinus nor the other fifth-century church historians says anything explicit about her nationality, her youth, or her alleged Iberian slaveholders.

⁷⁴ Socrates, HE 1.20.2.

⁷⁵ Sozomen, HE 2.7.1.

⁷⁶ Theodoret, HE 1.24.1: Jackson, Ecclesiastical History, 3:418. In the secondary literature on St. Nino, Fairy von Lilienfeld makes the clearest connection between the captive's ascetic and apostolic calling. Pointing out that that the captive woman bears no similarity to a prisoner of war, she proposes translating Rufinus's “captiva” with a Georgian term that she renders in German, “Fremdland wandernde (d.i. die altmonastische ξενιτεία übende) asketische lebende Frau.” See von Lilienfeld, Fairy, “Amt und geistliche Vollmacht der heiligen Nino, ‘Apostel und Evangelist’ von Ostgeorgien, nach den ältesten georgischen Quellen,” in Horizonte der Christenheit. Festschrift für Friedrich Heyer zu seinem 85. Geburtstag, Oikonomia 34, ed. Kohlbacher, Michael and Lesinski, Markus (Erlangen, 1994), 224–49Google Scholar; here 226, n. 10.

⁷⁷ See Thelamon, Païens et chrétiens, 101, though by the end of this chapter she seems to have forgotten this point, emphasizing instead the political implications of the conversion.

⁷⁸ Hence, he would have edited out the idea of the woman's possession, which from the Christian perspective could only be demonic. For an analysis of the whole account, see Thelamon, Païens et chrétiens, 86–122; on the underlying motif of the kadag in Rufinus's account, 107–10. On the role of the kadag (shaman) in ancient Georgian paganism, see Charachidzé, G., Le système religieux de la Géorgie païenne (Paris: Maspero, 1968), 115–95Google Scholar, on which Thelamon bases her analysis of Rufinus's account. See also Synek, Heiligen Frauen, 80–132.

⁷⁹ For the most serious challenges to Thelamon's theory, see Bäbler, Balbina, “Die Blick über die Reichsgrenzen: Sokrates und die Bekehrung Georgiens,” in Die Welt des Sokrates von Konstantinopel, ed. Bäbler, Balbina and Nesselrath, Heinz Günther (Munich: Saur, 2001), 159–81Google Scholar. For alternative explanations, see Horn, “St. Nino and Christianization,” 253; and Synek, Heiligen Frauen, 85. Among the passages cited are James 5:14–15, John 14:12–13, and Acts 3:6. See also the comments of Amidon, The Church History of Rufinus, 47–48 n. 21.

⁸⁰ Mgaloblishvili, Tamila and Gagoshidze, Iulon, “The Jewish Diaspora and Early Christianity in Georgia,” in Ancient Christianity in the Caucasus, ed. Mgaloblishvili, Tamila (London: Routledge, 1998), 39–48Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Besides Mgaloblishvili and Gagoshidze, “The Jewish Diaspora,” in Ancient Christianity in the Caucasus, see in the same volume, Ernst Bammel, “Die Ausbreitung des Christentums in Georgien,” 18–23, and Michel van Esbroeck, “La place de Jerusalem dans la ‘Conversion de la Georgie,’” 59–74. See also Jean Pierre Mahé, “Bekehrung Transkaukasiens: Eine Historiographie mit doppeltem Boden,” in Christianisierung des Kaukasus, ed. Siebt, 107–24; Dan Shapira, D. Y., “‘Tabernacle of Vine’: Some (Judaizing?) Features of the Old Georgian Vita of St. Nino,” Scrinium: Revue de patrologie, d'hagiographie critique et d'histoire ecclésiastique 2 (2006): 273–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Haas, “Mountain Constantines,” 110–12.

⁸² For more on this theme see Horn, “Lives and Literary Roles of Children,” especially 272–73.

⁸³ Eusebius, HE 1.13.

⁸⁴ Rufinus reserves the designation “apostles and prophets of our times” for certain orthodox bishops and monks, despite the difference in their status and function. For an analysis of those he places in this category in his church history, see Thelamon, Françoise, “‘Apôtres et prophètes de notre temps:’ Les évéques et les moines présentés comme apôtres et prophètes contemporains dans l'Histoire ecclèsiastique de Rufin,” Antichità altoadriatiche 39 (1992): 171–94Google Scholar. Although the captive evangelist of Iberia fits these characteristics, Rufinus does not include and Thelamon does not discuss any women among his “apostles.”

⁸⁵ nondum initiatus in sacris fit suae gentis apostolus. Rufinus, HE 10.11, Schwartz and Mommsen, 975, line 20; Amidon, 22. Cf. Socrates, HE 1.20.12: κήρυκα τοῦ Χριστο

⁸⁶ Rufinus, HE 10.11: Schwartz and Mommsen, 975, lines 16–17; Amidon, 22. Sozomen, HE 2.7.8, includes a similar caveat while Socrates omits any mention of the captive's teaching function.

⁸⁷ See Albrecht, Das Leben der heiligen Makrina auf dem Hintergrund der Thekla-traditionen, 267–71, for an analysis of Thecla's role as a missionary and apostle. Albrecht mentions Nino (as she became known in medieval Georgian texts) at several points as a type of the wandering apostle, teacher, preacher, and evangelist in the model of Thecla (25, 223–25). While Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla, traces the influence of the Acts of Thecla on traditions of women's piety, he does not explore the question of its influence on eastern missionary activity. Examining the later Life and Miracles, itself a “literary paraphrase” of the Acts, Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald, The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study (Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2006)Google Scholar, is suggestive in this regard. Showing how different aspects of the Thecla legend were appropriated by late antique authors, Johnson includes an analysis of a group of “miracles leading to conversion” (153–60), the goal of which was to bring praise to Thecla “for converting people to Christianity” (153).

⁸⁸ Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret all introduce the captive woman with a description of her ascetic practices, though only Theodoret (HE 1.24.1) explicitly links her asceticism with her apostolic gifts. On the parthenoi theou, literally “virgins of God,” which had already developed into a distinct order by the later fourth century, see Elm, Susanna, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994)Google Scholar, especially 54–55, 59, 139–40. Elm, however, does not discuss the connection between asceticism and apostolicity. On this connection, especially in the context of third-century Syria, see Caner, Daniel, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 50–82Google Scholar. See also Albrecht, Das Leben der heiligen Makrina, 305–7, on the prophetic and apostolic model of the female parthenos.

⁸⁹ Rufinus, HE 10.11, Schwartz and Mommsen, 976, lines 16–18; Amidon, 23.

⁹⁰ Thelamon, Païens et chrétiens, 106; also, 122, where she concludes that “Pour Rufin, comme pour ses contemporains, la christianisation impliquait la romanisation.” Thelamon also cites Thomson, “Christianity and the Northern Barbarians,” 75–78, in this regard as Thomson uses Georgia, among other barbarian nations, to argue that the religious history of the barbarian peoples cannot be separated from their political relations with the Roman Empire. For a slightly different interpretation of Rufinus's account of Iberia, see Chauvot, Alain, Opinions romains face aux barbares au IVe siècle ap. J.-C. (Paris: De Boccard, 1998), 456–58Google Scholar.

⁹¹ ́Ιβηρϵς τὸν Χριστὸν πγνωσαν, καὶ ϵἰστι νῦν πιμϵλῶς σβουσιν. Sozomen 2.7.12: Hartranft, Ecclesiastical History, 264. This and other descriptions of mission and conversion in Sozomen contrast with the approach of Socrates. This contrast will be developed in greater detail in Sterk, “‘Representing’ Mission from Below,” (forthcoming).

⁹² Sozomen's more nuanced approach to the different stages of Christianization brings into question common comparisons of the two historians. See, for example, Rohrbacher, David, The Historians of Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2002), 234–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who equates Sozomen with Socrates in his connection of Christianization with imperial politics. Though she does not focus on Christianization, Theresa Urbaincyzk presents a more nuanced comparison of the two historians. See Urbainczyck, T., “Observations on the Differences between the Church Histories of Socrates and Sozomen,” Historia 46 (1997): 355–73Google Scholar; also Urbainczyck, , “Vice and Advice in Socrates and Sozomen,” in The Propaganda of Power: The Role of Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. Whitby, M. (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 299–319Google Scholar, where she notes that Sozomen's narratives tend to “give the emperor a less important role” (308).

⁹³ Theodoret, HE 1.24.10–13. Indeed, he concludes the account of Iberia's conversion with a comment about the emperor's solicitude for the Christians in Persia. His next chapter (25), taken from Eusebius's Vita Constantini 4:9–13, is the text of the letter from Constantine to Shapur II concerning the persecution of Christians in his realm.

⁹⁴ The full texts of these Georgian and Armenian accounts of the conversion of Georgia have been placed on the same page in English translation in Thomson, Robert W., Rewriting Caucasian History: The Medieval Armenian Adaptation of the Georgian Chronicles: The Original Georgian Texts and the Armenian Adaptation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 84–152Google Scholar; for the commissioning and reassurances of St. Nino, 93–96. Not surprisingly, the later Armenian version also emphasizes Armenia's political and ecclesiastical pretensions over Georgia.

⁹⁵ Von Lilienfeld, “Amt und geistliche Vollmacht,” especially 238–49. She notes, however, that unlike the medieval Georgian sources, Rufinus failed to honor the captive woman with the title of “apostle,” reserving that title instead for King Mirian and relating that “the men believed because of the king, the women because of the queen” (237). For the content and complicated textual history of the Conversion of Kartli, see 227–36.

⁹⁶ On the medieval Georgian tradition of St. Nino and the centuries of silence about her apostolic role, see also Synek, “Die heilige Nino,” in Heiligen Frauen der frühen Christenheit, 80–138; and Horn, “St. Nino and Christianization,” especially 258–61. On medieval Georgian historiography see Rapp, Stephen H., Jr., Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts and Eurasian Contexts, CSCO 601, Subsidia 113 (Louvain: Peeters, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Synek, Eva M., “The Life of St. Nino: Georgia's Conversion to its Female Apostle,” in Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed. Armstrong, Guyda and Wood, Ian N. (Turnhout, Belgium: Breposls, 2000)Google Scholar. Synek also points out that for some time the nobly born Gregory the Illuminator had served as “an honorable substitute for the slave woman” while the Armenian and Georgian churches were in concord (7–8). After the division over Christology, however, the notion of a common apostle was abandoned, and St. Rhipsime, once deemed Gregory's co-apostle to Armenia, is now transformed into the godchild and disciple of St. Nino.

⁹⁸ Not least of these was St. Mary Magdalene, who was used in Georgian hagiography to exalt the role of their unconventional female apostle. Synek, “Life of Nino,” 12–13. The Conversion of Kartli also includes Georgian Jewish women, noble female converts of St. Nino; Empress Helena; Nino's mother, who served in ecclesiastical office in Jerusalem; and Nino's teacher in Jerusalem who is described as the “best contemporary theologian” (10). Recent studies suggest that Georgia's rediscovery and rehabilitation of its female apostle corresponded with a general improvement in the social status of women in medieval Georgia and reached a high point during Georgia's “golden age” under the rule of a woman, Queen Tamar (1184–1213). See von Lilienfeld, “Amt und geistliche Vollmacht,” 247–48; Horn, “St. Nino and Christianization,” 261; and Synek, “Life of Nino” 11–12.

⁹⁹ John of Nikiu's main sources for the Chronicle were John Malalas, John of Antioch, and an unknown author of the Chronicon paschale. For an English translation of Malalas, see Jeffreys, Elizabeth, Jeffreys, Michael, Scott, Roger, et al. , The Chronicle of John Malalas: A Translation, Byzantina Australiensia 4 (Melbourne: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1986)Google Scholar. For a recent edition of John of Antioch, see Roberto, Umberto, Ioannis Antiocheni Fragmenta ex Historia chronica. Introduzione, edizione critica e traduzione. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 154 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the Chronicon paschale, Whitby, Michael and Whitby, Mary, Chronicon Paschale 284–628 a.d. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. On John of Nikiu's sources, see Zotenberg, “Mémoire sur la chronique Byzantine de Jean de Nikiou,” Journal Asiatique ser. 7, 10 (1877), 451–517; 12 (1878), 245–347; 13 (1879), 291–386. Stratos, A. N., Byzantium in the Seventh Century, vol. 2, trans. Ogilvie-Grant, Marc (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1972), 219–20Google Scholar, gives a brief, largely unfavorable assessment of John's Chronicle, but much work remains to be done on both the text and its author.

¹⁰⁰ On Axumite missionary efforts in southwest Arabia, see Trimingham, J. Spencer, Christianity Among the Arabs in Pre-Islamic Times (London: Longman, 1979), 287–93Google Scholar, though Trimingham does not mention this brief account in John of Nikiu's Chronicle. On the problem of “India” in late antiquity, see Mayerson, Philip, “A Confusion of Indias: Asian India and African India in the Byzantine Sources,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 113, no. 2 ( April–June 1993): 169–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Such a maneuver recalls the later attempts of the Bulgar khan Boris to seek ecclesiastical advice from the pope in Rome rather than the patriarch in Constantinople and the Moravian ruler Rastislav seeking missionaries from Byzantium rather than Rome despite the Frankish priests already at work in his territory. On the political context of these decisions, see Dvornik, Francis, Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970), 100–103Google Scholar.

¹⁰² John's bitterness toward imperial Chalcedonian Christianity, enforced by the emperors in Constantinople, is evident throughout the Chronicle. Indeed, he sees the Muslim invasions as God's punishment for the empire's apostasy in accepting and enforcing Chalcedon: “When they rejected the orthodox faith, which is our faith, in like manner were they rejected from the imperial throne. And there has followed the undoing of all Christians that are in the world.” John of Nikiu, Chronicle, 120.56.

¹⁰³ Text in Le Synaxaire arabe jacobite (rédaction copte), ed. and trans. Rene Basset (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1905) PO 1:277–79. On the Synaxarion see also “Synaxarion, Copto-Arabic,” in The Coptic Encylopedia, vol. 7, ed. Aziz S. Atiya (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 2171–73. This text is based on three fragmentary and conflicting Coptic texts discussed by Michel van Esbroeck, “Theognosta, Saint” in Coptic Encylopedia, 7:2243–44. Van Esbroeck speculates that in John's account Iberia, through the medium of Ethiopic, has been transformed into the Yemen or India.

¹⁰⁴ Braund, Georgia in Antiquity, 253–54, emphasizes the importance of hunting for the Sassanian context of Georgia just as Nina Garsoïan, “The Iranian Substratum of the ‘Agathangelos’ Cycle,” in Armenia between Byzantium and the Sassanians (London: Variorum, 1985), 12:151–89, discusses its significance for the similar context of Armenia.

¹⁰⁵ Coptic Synaxarion (Hinsdale, Ill.: St. Mark and St. Bishoy Coptic Orthodox Church, 1987), 4:26.

¹⁰⁶ Von Lilienfeld, “Amt und geistliche Vollmacht,” 237–38, 248, points out that in contrast to later Georgian sources, Rufinus resists referring to the woman as an “apostle” while freely assigning this title to the king. Agathangelos and Sozomen, however, put more emphasis on the apostolic role of their female protagonists, and Theodoret, HE 1.24.1, specifically attributes “apostlic gifts” to the captive woman.

¹⁰⁷ Sozomen, HE 2.6.2; Rufinus, HE 10.9; al-Tabari, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden: Aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari übersetzt, trans. T. Nöldeke (Leiden, 1879), 177–82. The Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre also makes a vague claim that a woman slave converted the Himyarites c.305, noted in Nau, F., “Analyses des parties inédites de la chronique attribuée de Denys de Tellmahré,” Revue de l'Orient chrétien 2 (1897), 49Google Scholar. On Theophilus's mission to southern Arabia, see Philostorgius, HE 3.4–5.

¹⁰⁸ See Salzman, Michele Renee, “Aristocratic Women,” chap. 5 in The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 138–77Google Scholar. Salzman's conclusions should temper any confident assertions about women's Christianizing influence in what was in both east and west a predominantly patriarchal world.

¹⁰⁹ Ihor Ševčenko, “Religious Missions Seen from Byzantium,” Harvard Ukranian Studies 12–13, Proceedings of the International Congress Commemorating the Millennium of Christianity in Rus’-Ukraine (1988/1989), 20–27. While we are relatively well-informed of missions “on the higher governmental and ecclesiastical levels,” Ševčenko notes that we know very little about “the nuts and bolts of these enterprises” (18–19), for example, questions of language and missionary methods.

¹¹⁰ “The blending of genres and experimentation with form can be read as definitive of late antique literature,” Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald, “Reviving the Memory of the Apostles: Apocryphal Tradition and Travel Literature in Late Antiquity,” in Revival and Resurgence in Christian History, ed. Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008)Google Scholar, 23 n. 92. Johnson has also developed this argument about late antique “literary hybridity” in an article and the introduction to his edited volume, Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), and in Johnson, , “Apocrypha and the Literary Past in Late Antiquity,” in From Rome to Constantinople: Studies in Honour of Averil Cameron, ed. Amirav, Hagit and ter Haar Romeny, Bas (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 47–66Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ Cameron, Averil, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 93Google Scholar. Chapter 3, 89–119, entitled “Stories People Want,” discusses the significance of early Christian apocryphal writings for the diffusion of Christianity in late antiquity.

¹¹² Johnson, “Reviving the Memory of the Apostles,” 3–4, describes a “revival of interest in apostolic traditions” that stimulated patristic writers to address the subject of Christian history. Moreover, “this awareness of the value of the history of the apostles … offers an early example of reaching back into the historical past of the Christian Church for inspiration in the present.” Both here and in “Apocrypha and the Literary Past,” 64, Johnson examines the diverse forms in which the revival of apostolic history was expressed and emphasizes the influence of apocryphal texts on diverse new Christian genres (for example, Lives, homilies, dialogue poems, travel literature). He says nothing, however, about the impact of this revival on the writing of church history.

¹¹³ See Rapp, Claudia, “Storytelling as Spiritual Communication in Early Greek Hagiography: The Use of Diegesis,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 3 (1998): 431–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rapp argues that this type of storytelling “finds preferred application in hagiographical writing” (437) and especially in collections of such writings like the Historia monachorum and Theodoret's Historia religiosa (433).

¹¹⁴ Rufinus, HE, Preface, in Schwartz and Mommsen, 951–52: Amidon, 4. On modern scholars’ negative evaluation of Rufinus's work, see Humphries, “Rufinus's Eusebius,” especially 146–51. Humphries is one of several historians who have reassessed Rufinus's historical work in a more positive light. See also Torben Christensen, Rufinus of Aquileia and the Historia ecclesiastica, Lib. VIII–IX, of Eusebius, Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser 58 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1989), especially his conclusion, 333–36; Françoise Thelamon, Païens et chrétiens; and more recently, Thelamon, , “Écrire l'histoire de l’Église: d'Eusèbe de Césarée à Rufin d'Aquilée,” in L'Histoire de l’Église des premiers siècles, ed. Pouderon, Bernard and Duval, Yves-Marie, Théologie historique 114 (Paris: Beauchesne, 2001), 207–35Google Scholar, where she makes the following comparison between Eusebius and Rufinus: “Nos deux historiens en effet n'entend pas faire une histoire purement documentaire—même s'ils ont le souci qu'elle soit véridique et bien documentée—, mais ils veulent construire un récit qui fait apparaître le vrai sens de l'histoire de l’Église” (209). On the aims and approaches of the other historians’ conversion narratives, especially as revealed in their prologues, see Sterk, “‘Representing’ Mission From Below,” (forthcoming).

¹¹⁵ The past generation has seen an outpouring of scholarly literature and diverse hermeneutic approaches devoted to the analysis of both misogyny and feminism in patristic writings about women. For a discussion of some of the dominant trends from the 1970s to the 1990s, see Lynda Coon's introduction to Sacred Fictions. The emphasis of Coon's own study, she explains, “is not on the historical lives of the subject saints but on the theological and didactic agendas of their authors” (xv). Kate Cooper, among others, has rightly cautioned about the rhetorical use of women by late antique male authors, even suggesting that the challenge posed by Christianity in such texts is “not really about women.” See Cooper, Kate, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 55Google Scholar. While Cooper is referring here to the highly rhetorical Life of Thecla, like others, I take issue with her overly neat distinction between rhetoric and reality in male-authored texts about women.

¹¹⁶ On the representation of missionary women in Josephus and Luke–Acts, see Shelly Matthews, First Converts; also the review of Matthews by Haines-Eitzen, Kim in Church History 72, no. 3 (2002)Google Scholar. For a more skeptical reading of these same texts, with a focus on women converts rather than missionaries, see Lieu, Judith M., “The ‘Attraction of Women’ in/to Early Judaism and Christianity,” JSNT 72 (1998): 5–22Google Scholar, which Matthews does not discuss.

¹¹⁷ Though neither focuses on women evangelists per se, two essays in A People's History of Christianity, vol. 2, note the same emphasis in patristic literature. Elizabeth A. Clark, “Asceticism, Class, and Gender,” 28, cites a number of biblical and patristic passages that show how Christianity “complicated the usual status markers of Roman society” based on its “central theological confession: if God had lowered himself to become human, then humble abasement received divine sanction.” Similarly, on the representation of apostolic power in the Apocryphal Acts, Judith Perkins, “Fictional Narratives and Social Critique,” 58, remarks: “The narratives convey a message that the seeming powerlessness of those who have been traditionally discounted on the basis of their lack of wealth, good looks, or status, may be an illusion.”

¹¹⁸ See Agathangelos, History, §§186–87, where he cites or alludes to Phil. 2:8, Luke 1:52, and 1 Kings 17:40. See also his description of the monk Albianos, §§845–46, one of several pagan priests’ children whom Gregory appointed as bishop “to increase the preaching of the gospel.” With his pupils he frequently retreated to deserted mountains where they devoted themselves to severe mortifications “because they looked to the consolation of the apostolic sayings: ‘When I am weak for Christ, then I am strong’” (2 Cor. 12:10).

¹¹⁹ “Her very perseverance made the common women [mulierculis] wonder if she were deriving some benefit from such great devotion.” Rufinus, HE 10.11: Schwartz and Mommsen, 974, lines 5–6; Amidon, 21. Although Amidon translates mulierculae as “common women,” it might equally be rendered “weak” or “foolish women.” Thelamon, Païens et chrétiens, 87, translates mulierculis with “faibles femmes.” It was also these women who witnessed the captive's first healing miracle and spread the word about this marvel so that the news soon reached the queen. Jensen, Anne, God's Self-Confident Daughters: Early Christianity and the Liberation of Women (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 77Google Scholar, has commented that this passage from Rufinus suggests that “the Christianization of Iberia began from below, not from above, as indicated by the official report.”

¹²⁰ Building on the oft-quoted statement of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Elizabeth A. Clark discusses a similar approach to the representation of pre-Nicene women in “Thinking with Women: The Uses of the Appeal to ‘Woman’ in Pre-Nicene Christian Propaganda Literature,” in Spread of Christianity, ed. Harris, 43–51.

¹²¹ I use the term “apocryphal” here in two senses: first, as it is commonly used in English to mean fictitious or of questionable authenticity, but also “in the sense of belonging to the imaginary worlds of Christian Acta.” On usage of this term, see also the comments of Johnson, “Reviving the Memory of the Apostles,” 13.

¹²² For example, “they want and are able to convince only the foolish, dishonorable and stupid, and only slaves, women and little children.” Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 3:44. Cf. 3:50 and 3:55.

¹²³ Origen, Contra Celsum, 3:50. For further discussion of this passage and related texts see Osiek, Carolyn and MacDonald, Margaret Y., “Women as Agents of Expansion,” chap. 10 in A Woman's Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 220–43Google Scholar. While recognizing the rhetorical use of such pagan critique of Christianity in the first few centuries, Osiek and MacDonald have analyzed similar passages in the context of earlier Christian texts and the broader Greco-Roman social setting. They take a mediating position between Cooper's extreme pessimism about the “topos of womanly influence” and sociologist Rodney Stark's bold claims about women's numeric preponderance and significant influence on church growth (“The Role of Women in Christian Growth,” chap. 5 in Rise of Christianity). They argue that “household life” was the unifying factor in the diverse roles women played contributing to the spread of Christianity.

¹²⁴ Horn, “The Lives and Literary Roles of Children.”

¹²⁵ Though a survey, Moffett, Samuel Hugh, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 1, Beginnings to 1500, 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1998)Google Scholar, especially part 1, sections 1–3, pays special attention to the role of Syrian Christianity in mission beyond the borders of the East Roman Empire. For a more specific study of Syrian influence in Armenia, see Robert W. Thomson, “Syriac Christianity and the Conversion of Armenia,” in Christianisierung des Kaukasus, ed. Seibt, 159–69. For Arabia, Shahid, Irfan, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1989)Google Scholar, especially part 2 on Arabic and Syriac sources. George Hatke's forthcoming Princeton dissertation, “Africans in Arabia Felix: Aksumite Relations with South Arabia, 300–600,” argues forcefully for the primary role of Syrian rather than Axumite Christianity in the Christianization of South Arabia. However, none of these studies devotes significant attention to the role of women in accounts of mission and conversion.

¹²⁶ On the content, provenance, and influence of these writings, see Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks, 50–82. For the wandering Syrian ascetics, Caner explains, “following Christ meant active engagement, as Christ's representatives, with the ‘world’ they had renounced” (56). Caner emphasizes the missionary zeal of the followers of Mani, who were similarly inspired by these writings and whom he considers at least partly responsible for the spread of the Christian message along the roads and to “the far-flung villages and towns of third-century Syria and Mesopotamia” (77). Unfortunately, he says little more about the missionary impact of more “orthodox” Syrian ascetics and apostolic wanderers; neither does he discuss the involvement of women in such apostolic ministries except to note that the Letters to Virgins “discuss ministrations provided only by other ‘brothers’” (66 n. 77). However, the fact that they address “virgins of either sex” (Letter I, Chapter 1) and refer to female virgins and communities of virgins, if only to warn against mixing with them (Letter II, Chapters 1, 2 and 4), suggests that ascetic life and at least some forms of apostolic ministry were practiced by women as well as men. For an English translation, see Two Epistles Concerning Virginity, trans. B. P. Patten (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978), 51–66.

¹²⁷ For a recent reassessment of the provenance and dating of the Acts of Thomas, see Myers, Susan E., “Revisiting Preliminary Issues in the Acts of Thomas,” Apocrypha 17 (2006), 95–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Based on her analysis of the major themes of the work, Myers dates the redaction of the whole work to the mid- to late third century in Nisibis.

¹²⁸ Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks, 56, 80–81, links the apostolic ascetic tradition of the Acts of Thomas and the Letters to Virgins to the ministries of the Syrian Bnay and Bnat Qyama, an older institution which became increasingly organized and formalized in the fourth century.

¹²⁹ Amidst the growing body of secondary literature on women and their roles in Syrian Christianity, see especially Harvey, Susan, “Women in the Syrian Tradition,” in Woman in Prism and Focus. Her Profile in Major World Religions and Christian Traditions, ed. Vazheeparampil, Prasanna (Rome: Mar Thomas Yogam, 1996), 69–80Google Scholar; also Eva Maria Synek and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Syrian-Christian Women,” in Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, Katherina M. Wilson and Nadia Margolis, 2:871–77 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004), which includes a bibliography of relevant primary as well as secondary sources. It is noteworthy also that these accounts of captive women and conversion all take place in or beyond the eastern empire, where the role of women in both pagan and Christian religion tended to have greater scope. See, for example, Ruggini, L. Cracco, “La donna e il sacro, tra paganesimo e cristianesimo,” Atti del II convegno nazionale di studi su la donna nel mondo antico (Torino, 1988), 243–75Google Scholar.

¹³⁰ For example, according to the fifth-century testimony of Prosper of Aquitaine, “quidam ecclesiae filii ab hostibus capti dominos suos Christi Euangelio manciparunt.” De vocatione omnium gentium ii, 33, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 51:717. For comments on this passage and related references, see the broader discussion of E. A. Thompson, “Christianity and the Northern Barbarians,” 56–58.

¹³¹ Sozomen, HE 2.6. In particular he emphasizes the role of “many priests” among the Roman captives who healed the sick and impressed the barbarians by their virtuous way of life. This passage immediately precedes his account of the conversion of Iberia.

¹³² See Lee, A. D., “The Role of Hostages in Roman Diplomacy with Sasanian Persia,” Historia 40, no. 3 (1991): 366–74Google Scholar. See also Matthews, John F., “Hostages, Philosophers, Pilgrims, and the Diffusion of Ideas in the Late Roman Mediterranean and Near East,” in Tradition and Innovation in Late Antiquity, ed. Clover, F. M. and Humphreys, R. S. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989)Google Scholar, though Matthews's treatment of hostages in the late Roman period is very brief.

¹³³ S. N. C. Lieu's excellent article, “Captives, Refugees and Exiles” (see note 2), is among the few treatments of the subject that considers the interchange of religious ideas resulting from civilian movements across the Roman-Persian frontier.

¹³⁴ For references and further discussion see Lieu, “Captives, Refugees and Exiles,” 476–86.

¹³⁵ The Syriac account, likely composed in the early fifth century, is edited with an English translation in Brock, “A Martyr at the Sasanid Court under Vahran II: Candida,” AB 96, no. 2 (1978), 167–81. Lieu, “Captives, Refugees and Exiles,” 483–84, following Brock, suggests that Candida's parents were captives who had been deported and settled in one of the new Sassanian foundations where they raised the girl as a Christian.

¹³⁶ See especially Ammianus Marcellinus, 19.1–9 and 20.6 and 7 for the sieges of the cities of Amida, Singara, and Bezabde involving massacres, pillaging, and the deportation of captives.

¹³⁷ See Lieu, “Captives, Refugees, and Exiles,” especially 484–87 and 495–99, for the fate of deported Roman captives and examples of their Christianizing influence. Lieu draws primarily from accounts in the anonymous Arabic Chronicle of Seert, also known as the Nestorian Chronicle, ed. and trans. Addai Scher, PO 4 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1908), and the Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum, 7 vols., ed. P. Bedjan (Paris, 1890–97).

¹³⁸ See Bäbler, “Die Blick über die Reichsgrenzen,” 163–64.

¹³⁹ Woolf, Greg, “World-Systems Analysis and the Roman Empire,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 3 (1990): 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Woolf emphasizes the importance for pre-modern historians of “symbolic systems,” a category of world-system “in which supra-regional dominance is achieved” and “in which symbolic or religious power has subordinated political and economic interests to its own” (54). See also Peter Brown's discussion of this exchange of “symbolic goods” which, he suggests, “lay behind ‘the age of the missionaries’ in early medieval Europe. Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, 16.

¹⁴⁰ Horn, “Lives and Literary Roles of Children,” 275, suggests that an emphasis on “bottom-up” conversion through the family in early medieval Georgian hagiography may have been used during a period of Islamic domination as part of a polemic against the conversion of families to Islam, “which was more of a ‘top-down’ affair.” For a recent multi-layered paradigm of the Christianization process, see Haas, “Mountain Constantines,” especially 125–26.

¹⁴¹ The shaping of these texts, the perspectives and goals of the historians who composed them, and their further influence in the process of Christianization forms the subject of the second part of this article, “‘Representing’ Mission from Below,” (forthcoming).

¹⁴² See in particular her analysis of The Female Captive, a mid-eighteenth century autobiographical narrative. Colley, Captives, 125–31.

¹⁴³ It became increasingly meaningless to speak of barbarians as over against Romans since this status was so readily susceptible to change, as indicated by a sixth-century Latin inscription from Lyons: “germine barbarico nati, sed fonte renati.” See Geoffrey Greatrex, “Roman Identity in the Sixth Century,” in Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity, ed. Mitchell and Greatrex, 277–78; also Michael Maas, “‘Delivered from their Ancient Customs’: Christianity and the Question of Cultural Change in Early Byzantine Ethnography,” in Conversion, ed. Mills and Grafton, 152–88. The accounts of our fifth-century historians suggest that this change in viewing barbarians and the ethnē was already evident at least a century earlier. Regarding the church fathers’ perspectives on barbarians from the late fourth to early fifth centuries, see Chauvot, Opinions romaines faces aux barbares, 429–59. Ivanov, Vizantiiskoe missionerstvo, 62–72, argues that perspectives changed dramatically with the conversion of the Roman Empire. A kind of primitive pre-Constantinian Christian “internationalism” disappeared, and John Chrysostom's preservation of such an ideal is an anomaly among the fathers.

¹⁴⁴ See Cameron, Rhetoric of Empire, 145–51, on the significance of the increased role of women in Christian hagiography from the fourth century onward. As an example Cameron refers to the church fathers’ use of the “heavily charged” life of Thecla as a model of asceticism for the imitation of their readers (147).