Theodore de Bruyn

Theodore de Bruyn’s research has focused on various aspects of ancient Christianity. He has translated two important early Latin commentaries on Paul’s Letter to the Romans into English—first, by Pelagius (Oxford, 1993; rprt. 2002) and, more recently, by Ambrosiaster (SBL, 2017). He has published numerous articles on interactions between institutional forms of Christianity and the production of amulets in late antique Egypt, culminating in a book-length study, Making Amulets Christian: Artefacts, Scribes, and Contexts (Oxford, 2017). He is currently investigating individual identity formation among Christians in Gaza in the sixth century, drawing on a collection of letters of two monastic spiritual advisors, Barsanuphius and John. This project, supported by an SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2019-2021), seeks, first, to elucidate how individual Christians in various positions and circumstances negotiated challenges to their sense of identity; and, second, analyze how these Christians, in negotiating challenges to their identity, interacted with the religious system in which they participated. Professor de Bruyn is also a partner in a major collaborative project, led by researchers from Macquarie University and funded by the Australian Research Council (2020-2022), on how both leaders and citizens in the eastern Roman Empire responded to and managed crises of apocalyptic scale over the long transition from the ancient to the medieval periods (250-1000 C.E).