Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

History Associates talk by Elizabeth Depalma Digeser | "Constantine the Crusader: The Roman Emperor as Christian Soldier"
2023-04-16 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Goleta Valley Library, Multipurpose Room 500 N. Fairview Avenue, Goleta, Goleta Valley Library, Goleta, CA, 93106, United States
Constantine I (306-37) was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity. Almost two millennia later, we may not be surprised that Constantine promoted an image of himself as a Christian military commandant. Nevertheless, this image is strikingly opposed to the previous conception of the Christian hero, that of the martyr, a person known for enduring—not promoting—violence. This talk will explore why, despite its novelty, this new image of the emperor became one reason for Constantine’s long and ultimately stable reign. The longevity of this image, in fact, is testimony to its success, as European monarchs from Charlemagne to Elizabeth I all strove to be the “new Constantine.”
Elizabeth DePalma Digeser is a professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a leading authority on early Christian thought. Her focus is on the intersection of religion and philosophy with Roman politics and the process of religious conversion in late antiquity. Digeser is the author of The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (2000) and A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution (2012), which explores the interactions of Platonist philosophers and Christian theologians leading up to the Great Persecution of 303-311 CE.
Date: Sunday, April 16, 2023
Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: Goleta Valley Library, Multipurpose Room 500 N. Fairview Avenue, Goleta
History Associates talks are free and open to the public. Light refreshments provided. Please RSVP to historyassociates@ia.ucsb.edu

The Pasha's New Clothes: The History Section of an 18th-Century Library from Acre - Lecture by Prof. Dana Sajdi (Boston College)
2023-04-17 16:00 - 18:00 | HSSB 4080, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, 93106, United States
This is an exploration of the history booklist found in a recently discovered ‘library catalogue’ from a college in 18th-century Acre. Endowed by the notorious Ottoman governor of the region Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (d. 1804), the library seems to have been one of the largest in the Ottoman Levant. In addition to introducing the larger ‘al-Jazzar Library Project’, I will argue that the eclectic nature of the history collection exceeds the purposes of a college curriculum or the needs of local readers. Despite their variety, the books were carefully chosen and cUrated to reflect the colorful career of the patron himself and to construct a heroic and royal image of him resembling that of imperial rulers. This is a vanity collection that the Pasha used to display his new clothes.
This event is organized by the King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies.
