The supernatural is an elusive category of ideas. Elusive both in terms of the considerable difficulties in even defining such a category, but also the fact that such phenomena seem to entirely evade modern empirical science and its framework for reality. Yet, such ideas have had considerable impact upon human culture, history, and lives with no small share of believers in both modern and ancient cultures. Such ideas are naturally paired with conceptions of religious thought, particularly as many definitions of religion are dependent upon the supernatural. The transitional period of Late Antiquity, a bridge between the classical Greco-Roman and the Christianized medieval period, then, serves as an apt era in which we may study transforming cultural conceptions of the supernatural and their influence. 

This volume, comprised of twelve chapters on a variety of topics that range from the second to the eighth centuries CE, engages with how Late Antique Christians thought about and lived with varying conceptions of the supernatural, such as demons, angels, miracles, and magic. For a Late Antique Christian, engaging with the supernatural was often a matter of wrestling with elements of an inherited cultural capital of their society’s thoroughly non-Christian past, but also forging ahead with new means of considering reality in line with their faith’s balance between the natural and supernatural. Living in an era of such transition from earlier accepted conceptions of knowledge, there were varied responses as to how best to orient the supernatural to make sense of the natural world within which they lived. With this volume, we hope to shed further light on the constantly shifting nature of such ideas, and their impacts upon Christians of the Late Antique period. 

Ryan Denson is Assistant Professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, working as part of the NCN-funded project “Beyond the Sacred: Conceptions of Nature in Byzantium (4th–15th centuries).” He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on folklore, cultural conceptions of the supernatural, imaginary animals, and the natural environment in the ancient Greco-Roman and Byzantine worlds. 

Charlotte Spence is a Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Oxford and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on curse tablets from across the ancient Mediterranean and northern Europe. She has published on Roman curses, Carthaginian curse tablets, ancient Greek personal religion, and the impact of letter writing on the creation of curse tablets. 

“From demons to dreams, miracles and magic, curses and mythical creatures, this volume unites a fascinating range of perspectives on Christianity and the supernatural in the late ancient world. Through diverse case studies of Christian individuals negotiating their beliefs and worldviews against a backdrop of deep-rooted ideas of supernatural forces, the editors and authors have made a truly valuable contribution to the field.” 

– Rebecca Usherwood, Assistant Professor in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Studies, Trinity College Dublin

“Just as the archetypal monk Antony wrestled with demons in the desert, so modern historians of late antiquity have struggled, not least as heirs to Enlightenment rationalism, to make sense of the period’s supernatural aspects. This was a world where, as Peter Brown put it, people routinely “shared their world with invisible beings” and we need to resist temptations to dismiss such phenomena as merely “superstitious”. In this volume, Ryan Denson and Charlotte Spence have assembled a superlative set of essays that offer wide-ranging, critically astute meditations on the theme of the supernatural and its manifold manifestations in late ancient culture and society. The scope is particularly impressive: church fathers, medical writers, historiography (both secular and sacred), satire, apocrypha, writings on magic and alchemy, a diverse range of religious traditions (‘pagan’, Christian, Manichaean), and varied experiential frameworks (dreams, encountering statues, curse tablets). Each essay makes an important contribution to its particular theme; collectively the volume does an excellent job of highlighting the sometimes uneven and contradictory evidence of supernatural experiences across late antiquity, while also offering new frameworks to make sense of this multifaceted phenomenon more broadly.”

– Mark Humphries, Professor of Ancient History, Swansea University