IMC 2012: Sessions

This session examines representations of orthodoxy and religious controversy in the post-Roman Mediterranean. Robin Whelan discusses a series of imaginary dialogues written by Nicene African clerics seeking to undermine a homoian self-presentation as the orthodox church. Emphasizing the ecclesiastical dimensions of the conflict, he shows how their authors drew on the resources, discourses and tactics of previous debates about imperial orthodoxy to contest the status of the true Church in the Vandal kingdom. The second paper (Mark Tizzoni) creates the bridge between Vandal Africa and Visigothic Spain. It compares attitudes to biblical accuracy and orthodoxy in the poetry of Dracontius with those in the works of Eugenius of Toledo, placing the differing approaches within the particular contexts of their poetic and religious cultures. The final paper (Mary Lester) looks at the implications that the Catholic construction of a new Gothic religious identity in 7th-century Spain had for the retrospective reconstruction of the ‘heterodox past' of the 6th century. It argues that the firm differentiation between Arianism and Catholicism results from the literary strategies used by Catholic writers who faced the need to react to the uncomfortable permeability between Arianism and Catholicism by projecting back set Gothic and Hispano-Roman religious identities. Taken together, the three papers demonstrate not only the intricate relationship between religious, political and ethnic identities, but also what was at stake in defining and contesting Christian orthodoxy between ‘Arians' and ‘Catholics'.