Arianism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the form of Christianity adopted by Ostrogoths in the 4th century AD, which they learned from Roman missionaries and from their own contact with the imperial court at Constantinople. This form spread to the Vandals and the Visigoths, who took it into Roman Spain and North Africa, and the Ostrogoths brought it deeper into Italy after the fall of the western Roman empire. Meanwhile, with the Roman empire in the east now firmly committed to the Nicene Creed not the Arian, the Goths and Vandals faced conflict or conversion, as Arianism moved from an orthodox view to being a heresy that would keep followers from heaven and delay the Second Coming for all.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Judith Herrin 2 episodes
  Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Emeritus, at King's College London
• Robin Whelan No other episodes
  Lecturer in Mediterranean History at the University of Liverpool
• Martin Palmer 22 episodes
  Visiting Professor in Religion, History and Nature at the University of Winchester

Reading list

• Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology
  Lewis Ayres (Oxford University Press, 2004) Google Books →
• The Great Heresies
  Hilaire Belloc (Sheed and Ward, 1938) Google Books →
• Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed
  Guido Berndt and Roland Steinacher (eds) (Routledge, 2014) Google Books →
• 'Begotten, Not Made': Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity
  Virginia Burrus (Stanford University Press, 2000) Google Books →
• The Triumph of Christianity
  Bart D. Ehrman (One World, 2018) Google Books →
• The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian controversy 318-381
  R.P.C. Hanson (Baker Academic, 2006) Google Books →
• The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies
  Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter (eds) (Oxford University Press, 2008) Google Books →
• The Formation of Christendom
  Judith Herrin (Basil Blackwell, 1987) Google Books →
• Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
  Judith Herrin (Allen Lane, 2020) Google Books →
• The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea
  Young Richard Kim (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2021) Google Books →
• The Legend of Arius' Death: Imagination, Space and Filth in Late Ancient Historiography
  Ellen Muehlberger
• Christian Beginnings from Nazareth to Nicaea AD 30 - 325
  Geza Vermes (Penguin, 2013) Google Books →
• Being Christian in Vandal Africa: The Politics of Orthodoxy in the Post-Imperial West
  Robin Whelan (University of California Press, 2018) Google Books →
• Arius: Heresy and Tradition
  Rowan Williams (SCM Press, 2002) Google Books →

Related episodes

• The Roman Empire’s Collapse in the 5th century
  
  5 Apr, 2001 930 History of the Ancient World
• Byzantium
  
  19 Jul, 2001 940 History of Europe
• The Lindisfarne Gospels
  
  20 Feb, 2003 270 History of Christianity
• The Pelagian Controversy
  
  21 Apr, 2011 270 History of Christianity
• Justinian’s Legal Code
  
  17 Nov, 2016 340 Law
• Baltic Crusades
  
  24 Nov, 2016 940 History of Europe
• The Schism
  
  16 Oct, 2003 270 History of Christianity
• Constantine the Great
  
  5 Oct, 2017 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Volga Vikings
  
  11 Nov, 2010 940 History of Europe
• Gnosticism
  
  2 May, 2013 270 History of Christianity

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: m000v2w7

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v2w7

Auto-category: 270 (Christian church history)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In the 4th century AD, Roman missionaries converted the Ostrogoths to Christianity in the form known as Arianism as a way of integrating them into the Roman Empire.