Vox Populi: Popular Opinion and Violence in the Religious Controversies of the Fifth Century A.D.

"After discussing the reasons serving to explain why individuals accepted one theological position over another, Professor Gregory turns to the complex question of why the inhabitants of the late Roman cities became involved in religious disputes in the first place and gained thereby some measure of political force. He concludes that the uneducated populace of, for example, Constantinople, could not possibly have understood either the nature of populist power or the philosophical basis of a dispute over complex theological questions concerning the unity of divine and human elements in the person of Christ. But what the sailor and the shopkeeper who participated in that formal debate did understand was the personal importance of the controversy itself. They took sides in it, not because they were recalcitrant by nature and simply like a good fight, but because they recognized that on its resolution depended their personal salvation"--From book jacket.