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Warfare and dislocation are obvious features of the break-up of the late Roman West, but this crucial period of change was characterized also by communication and diplomacy. The great events of the late antique West were determined by the quieter labours of countless envoys, who travelled between emperors, kings, generals, high officials, bishops, provincial councils, and cities. This book examines the role of envoys in the period from the establishment of the first 'barbarian kingdoms' in the West, to the eve of Justinian's wars of re-conquest. It shows how ongoing practices of Roman imperial administration shaped new patterns of political interaction in the novel context of the earliest medieval states. Close analysis of sources with special interest in embassies offers insight into a variety of genres: chronicles, panegyrics, hagiographies, letters and epitaph. This study makes a significant contribution to the developing field of ancient and medieval communications.
At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Flight during times of persecution has a long and fraught history in early Christianity. In the third century, bishops who fled were considered cowards or, worse yet, heretics. On the face, flight meant denial of Christ and thus betrayal of faith and community. But by the fourth century, the terms of persecution changed as Christianity became the favored cult of the Roman Empire. Prominent Christians who fled and survived became founders and influencers of Christianity over time. Bishops in Flight examines the various ways these episcopal leaders both appealed to and altered the discourse of Christian flight to defend their status as purveyors of Christian truth, even when their exiles appeared to condemn them. Their stories illuminate how profoundly Christian authors deployed theological discourse and the rhetoric of heresy to respond to the phenomenal political instability of the fourth and fifth centuries.
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Gregory, bishop of Tours (573-594), was among the most prolific writers of his age and uniquely managed to cover the genres of history, hagiography, and ecclesiastical instruction. He not only wrote about events (of the secular, spiritual, and even natural variety) but about himself as an actor and witness. Though his work (especially the Histories) has been recycled and studied for centuries, our grasp of an even basic understanding of it, never mind Gregory’s significance in the history of the late antique West, has hardly yet attained a definitive perspective. A Companion to Gregory of Tours brings together fourteen scholars who provide an expert guide to interpreting his works, his period, and his legacy in religious and historical studies. Contributors are: Pascale Bourgain, Roger Collins, John J. Contreni, Stefan Esders, Martin Heinzelmann, Yitzhak Hen, John K. Kitchen, Simon Loseby, Alexander Callander Murray, Patrick Périn, Joachim Pizarro, Helmut Reimitz, Michael Roberts, Richard Shaw.
This volume explores how forced movement and exile of clerics developed over time and ultimately came to shape interactions between the late-antique Roman Empire, the Byzantine, post-Roman, and early medieval worlds. It investigates the politics and legal mechanics of ecclesiastical exile, the locations associated with life in exile, both in literary sources and in material culture, as well as the multitude of strategies which ancient and early medieval authors, and the exiles themselves, employed to create historical narratives of banishment. The chapters are revised versions of papers given at international conferences held at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, the German Historical Institute London, and the University of Alcalá in 2016 and 2017.
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A Companion to Isidore of Seville presents nineteen chapters from leading international scholars on Isidore of Seville (d. 636), the most prominent bishop of the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania in the seventh century and one of the most prolific authors of early medieval western Europe. Introductory studies establish the political, religious and familial contexts in which Isidore operated, his key works are then analysed in detail, as are some of the main themes that run throughout his corpus. Isidore's influence extended across the entire Middle Ages and into the early modern period in fields such as church governance and pastoral care, theology, grammar, science, history-writing, and linguistics – all topics that are explored in the volume. Contributors: Graham Barrett, Winston Black, José Carracedo Fraga, Santiago Castellanos, Pedro Castillo Maldonado, Jacques Elfassi, Andrew Fear, Amy Fuller, Raúl González Salinero, Jeremy Lawrance, Céline Martin, Thomas O'Loughlin, Martin J. Ryan, Sinéad O'Sullivan, Mark Lewis Tizzoni, Purificación Ubric Rabaneda, Faith Wallis, Immo Warntjes, and Jamie Wood. See inside the book.