We are delighted to share the programme of the forthcoming conference “Gregory of Nazianzus, poet of networks”, which will take place at the Faculty of Classics and Trinity College, University of Cambridge, on Thursday 4 – Friday 5 September 2025.
This will be an in-person event. Please register by 31 July at the following link:
https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/sT4m8PCN2q
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact ln294@cam.ac.uk or mjgc3@cam.ac.uk
Gregory of Nazianzus: Poet of networks
Faculty of Classics and Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Thursday 4 – Friday 5 September 2025
In recent years, the fourth-century author Gregory of Nazianzus has been the subject of intense scholarly re-assessment, which has reconfigured our understanding of his theology, political engagement, rhetoric, and of his autobiographical and self-legitimising aims (Mc Lynn 1998, McGukin 2001, Elm 2012, Simelidis 2009, Hofer 2013, and Storin 2019 to name but a few examples). Time seems ripe to draw on these insights to re-assess Gregory’s poetry. As one of Late Antiquity’s most prolific poets, writing in a variety of genres (including epigrams, hymns, autobiographical and theological poems) and metres, Gregory offers a unique window into the relevance of Greek poetry to fourth-century cultural debates.
This workshop, generously funded by the Martin Rees Conference Fund of Trinity College, will centre Gregory’s poetry to ask how literary connectivity relates to sociocultural engagement. We are especially interested in exploring Gregory’s poems as a window on dynamics of interaction between literary intertextuality and the construction of social networks.
Programme
Thursday 4 September 2025, Classics Faculty (R 1.04)
8.50 arrivals and coffee
9.10 introductory remarks
Session 1. Chair: Philip Hardie
9.20 – 10.10 Kristoffel Demoen (University of Ghent) ‘Serious Play, Self-Justification, and Counter-Invective. On metron, yet again.’
10.10 – 11.00 Gianfranco Agosti (University of Pisa) ‘Gregorius epigraphicus. Gregory’s poems in metrical inscriptions’
11.00 – 11.20 break
Session 2. Chair: Lea Niccolai
11.20 – 12.10 Matteo Agnosini (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) ‘Gregory’s Intertextual Asceticism: A Network of Allusions in Carm. 2.1.45’
12.10 – 13.00 Alessandro De Blasi (University of Padova) ‘Martyr who endured beyond the peaks of pain’. On Gregory Nazianzen’s self-depiction in Poem II 1,14 and the martyrdom of Mark of Arethusa (Greg. Naz. Or. 4, 88-89)’
13.00 – 14.00 lunch
Session 3. Chair: Ella Kirsh
14.00 – 14.50 Thomas Kuhn-Treichel (University of Heidelberg) ‘From name-dropping to networks: constructing connections through references to authors in Gregory’ Nazianzen’s poems’
14.50 –15.40 Anna Lefteratou (University of Cambridge) ‘Gregory of Nazianzus’ women: literary and social networks in Gregory’s letter-poem to Olympias and its models’
15.40 – 16.10 break
Session 4. Chair: Mary Whitby
16.10 – 17.00 Matteo Domenico Varca (University of Rome La Sapienza) ‘Grace of the Spirit, grace of the metres: the poems of Gregory of Nazianzus in the Apollinarian controversy’
17.00 – 17.50 Neil McLynn (University of Oxford) ‘Minimizing Maximus: a culture war in context’
19.30 drinks and conference dinner
Friday 5 September 2025, Trinity College (Old Combination Room)
9.00 coffee
Session 5. Chair: Simon Goldhill
9.30 – 10.20 Christos Simelidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) ‘Faith and form: Christian reservations about Gregory’s use of pagan literary models’
10.20 – 11.10 Jessica Tasselli (University of Marburg) ‘Quintus Smyrnaeaus’ legacy in Gregory of Nazianzus’
11.10 – 11.30 break
Session 6. Chair: Mathijs Clement
11.30 – 12.20 Connor Purcell Wood (University of Cambridge) ‘Dining with gods and bishops: a line from the Hesiodic Catalogue in a Christian world’
12.20 – 13.10 Estella Kessler (University of Oxford) ‘Gregory of Nazianzus and the tradition of the 7 wonders of the world’
13.10 Concluding remarks
13.30 Lunch
14.15 Wren Library tour of Gregory manuscripts
15.00 departures