IMC 2008: Sessions
Session 506: The Vitae Patrum Emeretensium and Early Medieval Spain
Tuesday 8 July 2008, 09.00-10.30
| Organisers: | Javier Arce, Université de Lille III - Charles de Gaulle Roland Steinacher, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien Philipp von Rummel, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Roma |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Ian N. Wood, School of History, University of Leeds |
| Paper 506-a | Ethnicity in the Vitae Patrum Emeretensium (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Hagiography |
| Paper 506-c | The Vitae Patrum Emeretensium Compared to North African Texts (Language: English) Index terms: Hagiography, Historiography - Medieval, Social History |
| Abstract | The Vitae Patrum Emeretensium were written in Spain around AD 630 reflecting the life and vicissitudes of the church of Emerita (the ancient capital of the Dioecesis Hispaniarum in the 4th century). The Vitas (or Vitae) are a collection of biographies of the urban bishops from AD 530 to AD 605. The Vitae Patrum Emeretensium are rich, invaluable, and at the same time neglected sources for the study of society, urbanism, political, and religious conflicts in an early medieval city and with the Visigothic Kings Leovigild and Reccared. The greater background is the 'Transformation of the Roman world', the smaller the rivalry between Emerita and Toledo, the new capital of the Visigothic kingdom in Spain. The session will try to prepare a broader study of the document in all possible aspects, as a literary genre, as an hagiographical text, as a pamphlet of ecclesiastical policy, as a witness (or not) of the urban setting of the city, as a mirror of its population, society, religious life, and economy, in the framework of Spain during the crucial reigns of Leovigild and Reccared in the 6th century. |