...Samuel Cohen This introduction frames a collection of four papers, originally presented at the 13th Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity conference, that examine late antique episcopal responses to disaster, typically military defeats caused by the barbarians. To contextualize what follows...

... Donatists in North Africa. The present article analyzes these episodes as case studies in how the late Roman government reacted to disasters and crises in the religious sphere. These episodes are particularly puzzling because they go against the tendency of increasing coercion against schismatics...

...Samuel Cohen This essay explores how Gregory I (bishop of Rome, 590–604) depicted two Lombard sieges of Rome, traditionally dated to 592 and 593. These events, when they are discussed, are typically presented in a litany of disasters that befell Rome at the end of the sixth century. Plague, famine...

.... The incident that triggered the diversification of languages was normally associated with the biblical story about the Tower of Babel (Gen 11.1–9), the single dramatic event that once and for all changed the linguistic makeup of humanity and could be considered a disaster par excellence . And yet...

...Matthew J. Chalmers This article treats the intersection of a “peripheral people”—specifically Samaritan Israelites—with scholarly narratives of disaster concerning Late Antiquity. A disaster is not so much a one-off event as an ongoing series of collective experiences, patterned and repatterned...