Oliver Nicholson

Associate Professor
tel.: 612-625-5030
email: opn@umn.edu

Education

M.A. Oxford University (1976)
D.Phil. Sub-Faculty of Ancient History, Oxford University (1982)

My interests lie where history meets the history of ideas, specifically in Late Antiquity, where the history is unusually vivid and the ideas unusually influential. I am at work on two books, a short thematic study of the persecution of the Early Christians, called An Anatomy of Persecution, and a full-scale study (the first in English) of the early Christian apologist Lactantius (c. 250- c. 325 A.D). Numerous Vorarbeiten to the Lactantius book have already appeared and more are in the works as well as a collection of papers from a Lactautius conference held in Spring 2000. I have written on a number of other Late Antique topics, particularly in connection with the revolutionary generation which saw Constantine establish Christianity as the dominant religion of the Roman world, and also in connection with travels in central and eastern Turkey. The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, the first single-volume reference book devoted entirely to the half-millenium from 250 to 750 A.D., is being prepared under my editorship.

I teach a wide range of Latin and ancient history courses; those at the graduate level are concerned mostly with writers and topics of the Late Antique and Early Mediaeval periods. Previous offerings include courses on Roman Religion and Early Christianity and on Roman-Persian Relations from the Rise of the Sassanians to the Rise of Islam and Latin courses on Tertullian, Augustine and Bede. At the undergraduate level (and in Extension) I run a sequence of Late Antique culture courses, covering a m�lange of topics in the Ages of Constantine the Great (c.250-363) and of Saint Augustine of Hippo (363-500).  I was until recently Director of the University's lively Center for Medieval Studies.

Selected Publications

"Constantinople: Christian Community, Christian Landscape", in Mark Williams (ed.) The Making of Christian Communities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (London, Anthem Press, 2005) 27-47 & 155-64, (to be reprinted as "Conversion of a Landscape: Constantinople and the Bosporus in Late Antiquity" in C. Kendall, O. Nicholson, W. Phillips and M. Ragnow (edd.) Conversion to Christianity: a Late Antique, Mediaeval and Early Modern Phenomenon)

"Arnobius and Lactantius" in. Frances Young, Andrew Louth and Lewis Ayres (edd.) Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 2004) 259-65

"Constantine's Vision of the Cross" Vigiliae Christianae 54 (2000) 300-23

"Caelum potius intuemini: Lactantius and a Statue of Constantine" Studia Patriotica (2001) 177-96

"Boradening the Roman Mind Foreign Prophets in the Historical Scheme of Lactantius"
Studia Patriotica (2001) 364-74

"`Civitas quae adhuc sustentat omnia': Lactantius and the City of Rome" in W. Klingshirn and M. Vessey (eds.) The Limits of Ancient Christianity (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1999)

"Doing what comes naturally: Lactantius and Libido" Studia Patristica 31 (1997) 314-21

"The Romans and the Long Causeway at Tiverton" Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Society 53 (1995) 121-29

"The Corbridge Lanx and the Emperor Julian" Britannia 26 (1995) 312-15

"The End of Mithraism" Antiquity 69/263 (June 1995) 358-62

"The 'Pagan Churches' of Maximin Daia and Julian the Apostate" Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994) 1-10.

"The Aqueduct at Amasya in Pontus" - jointly with Caroline Nicholson Anatolian Studies 43 (1993) 143-46

"The Topography and Monuments of Eastern Turkey" Journal of Roman Archaeology 6 (1993) 467-72.

"Lactantius's History of His Own Time: the First English Translation of De Mortibus Persecutorum (1687)" Studia Patristica XXIII (Leuven, 1989) 256-65.

"Flight in Persecution as Imitation of Christ: Lactantius Divine Institutes IV, 18, 1-2" Journal of Theological Studies 40 n.s. (1989) 48-65.

"Golden Age and End of the World: Myths of Mediterranean Life from Lactantius to Joshua the Stylite" in The Mediaeval Mediterranean (ed. M. Chiat and K. Reyerson; S.Cloud, Minnesota, 1989) = Mediaeval Studies at Minnesota 3, pages 11-18.

"The Source of the Dates in Lactantius Divine Institutes" Journal of Theological Studies 36 n.s. (1985) 291-301.

Classical and Near Eastern Studies
College of Liberal Arts - University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus
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