Professor Karla Pollmann, Head of Classical & Archaeological Studies, recently gave lectures in Budapest at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and at the University of Pecs. During her visit in March, she gave talks on how the conflict between science and religion was handled in the early Christian church, and explored general patterns of authority and how they were used by the early Christian church to establish itself as a new cultural force in the later Roman Empire.
Regarding the fundamental controversy whether science and faith are in conflict or rather complementary, she outlined some of the less well-known thoughts of the fifth-century Christian bishop and intellectual Augustine of Hippo. His position gives considerable room to reason as a path to truth next to faith and postulates that in the face of certain demonstrable scientific facts Biblical interpretation should find a way of accommodating rather than contradicting them.
Early Christianity as a rising religious and cultural movement in the first century AD had to find ways of ascertaining its standing in the face of the hegemony of the surrounding pagan culture. Using Max Weber’s threefold definition of authority as charismatic, traditional, or legal, Karla analysed various ingenuous ways in which Christianity created authority for itself until it finally established itself as the only legal religion of the Roman Empire. Her conclusion was that such strategies of legitimisation needed to be constantly renewed and accepted in ever changing historical circumstances.
As a special highlight, in Pecs she was given the opportunity to visit Sopianae, a UNESCO world heritage site of the remnants of a large 4th-century early Christian cemetery containing several burial chambers with ancient wall-paintings.