Mattias Gassman is Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education. He was previously a research fellow at the University of St. Andrews and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on a core theme in the history of Western culture––the transformation of Roman religious ideas by Christianity. His first book was Worshippers of the Gods: Debating Paganism in the Fourth-Century Roman West (Oxford University Press, 2020). In addition, Gassman has published nearly two dozen articles in venues such as Journal of Early Christian Studies, Journal of Late Antiquity, and The Journal of Roman Studies.
Gassman’s current book project is Citizens of the Earth: Pagans and Their Gods in Augustine’s North Africa, in contract with Oxford University Press. In this book, he aims to provide the first comprehensive account of Augustine’s ideas on Roman religion, from his initial engagement with the gods of Vergil in the early 390s to the late books of City of God. Citizens of the Earth, like Worshippers of the Gods, tests modern organizing concepts such as “secularity,” “paganism,” “identity,” and “religion” itself against the ideas articulated by ancient thinkers.
He has also co-authored a book, aimed at a general audience, on fourth- and fifth-century theological controversy. Written with Brendan Wolfe and Oliver Langworthy (University of St Andrews), Arianism Revisited: An Introduction to Non-Nicene Theologies is expected to appear from Fortress Press in 2025.
“Semi-pagans? Some mutations of non-Christian thought in late antiquity,” Studies in Late Antiquity (forthcoming)
“The chronology of the final books of City of God: data and hypotheses,” Revue Benedictine (forthcoming)
“A Consul for a Heavenly Rome: Reclaiming Aristocratic Virtue in Prudentius, Peristephanon 2,” Hermes (2024)
“The Downfall of Caelestis: Salvian of Marseille and the End of Public Cult in Roman Carthage,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte (2024)
“Converting after Constantine: Firmicus Maternus and the Scriptures,” Journal of Early Christian Studies (2023)
“The composition of De consensu euangelistarum 1 and the development of Augustine’s anti-pagan arguments,” Augustinian Studies (2023)
“Christianity and Graeco-Roman Paganism,” St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (20,000-word invited contribution, open-access) (2022)
“A Late Antique Preacher in Action: Augustine, Ep. 29,” Journal of Late Antiquity 15 (2022), 130–59.
“Arnobius’ Scythians and the Dating of Aduersus nationes,” The Journal of Theological Studies 72 (2021), 832–42.
“An Afterlife of a Scholarly Epic: Frazer’s Golden Bough and Lewis’s Argument from Myth,” Journal of Inklings Studies 11 (2021), 133–152.
“An Ancient Account of Pagan Origins: Making Sense of Filastrius, Diuersarum hereseon liber 111,” Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques 67 (2021), 83–105
“Directing the Eye of the Soul: Form and Function in an Ancient Scenic Monologue (Cyprian, Ad Donatum),” Journal of Early Christian Studies 29 (2021), 371–96.
“On an Alleged Senatus Consultum against the Christians,” Vigiliae Christianae 75 (2021), 548–55.
“The Ancient Readers of Augustine’s City of God,” Augustinian Studies 52 (2021), 1–18.
“A Feast in Carthage: Testing the Limits of ‘Secularity’ in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies 110 (2020), 199–219.
“Cyprian’s Early Career in the Church of Carthage,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 70 (2019), 1–17.
“Debating Traditional Religion in Late Fourth-Century Roman Africa,” Journal of Late Antiquity 11 (2018), 83–110.
“The Roman Kings in Orosius’ Historiae Adversum Paganos,” Classical Quarterly 67 (2021), 617–30.
“The Conversion of Cyprian’s Rhetoric? Towards a New Reading of Ad Donatum,” Studia Patristica 94 (2017), 247–57.
“Et Deus et Homo: The Soteriology of Lactantius,” Studia Patristica 80 (2017), 35–41.
“Eschatology and Politics in Cyril of Jerusalem’s Epistle to Constantius,” Vigiliae Christianae 70/2: 119–33.
