IMC 2013: Sessions
Session 1610: Texts and Identities, VI: Barbarians, Arians, and Other Monsters
Thursday 4 July 2013, 11.15-12.45
Sponsor: | Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien / Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies, Universiteit Utrecht / Faculty of History, University of Cambridge |
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Organisers: | E. T. Dailey, School of History, University of Leeds Gerda Heydemann, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien / Institut für Geschichte, Universität Wien |
Moderator/Chair: | Yitzhak Hen, Department of History, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva |
Paper 1610-a | 'Barbara ferocitas et haeresis Arriana': Barbarians and Arians in Vandal Africa (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Historiography - Medieval, Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Mentalities |
Paper 1610-b | Monstrous Geography: How Monsters Were Used to Define gentes in the Early Middle Ages (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities, Pagan Religions |
Paper 1610-c | Gods, Vixens, and Kings: Paul the Deacon and the Lombard Past (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities, Pagan Religions |
Abstract | This session investigates the use and function of the monstrous, the barbarous, and the hideous in early medieval historical narratives. Robin Whelan examines the conflation of barbarian identity and homoian (Arian) belief in texts written by Catholic authors such as Victor of Vita in Vandal North Africa. By examining their literary strategies, he seeks to establish a more complex understanding of the relationship between the two. Jason Berg examines the issue of 'monstrous rhetoric' as a literary tool used to vilify the 'other' in two important Early Medieval historical narratives: Jordanes's description of the Huns in his Getica, and Bede's claim that the Picti originated in Scythia in his Historia ecclesiastica. Francesco Borri focuses on Paul the Deacon's long and wondrous account of the Lombards migrating from Scandinavia, arguing that Paul utilised the tropes of ancient ethnography in order to present the Lombards as 'true barbarians' from a 'truly barbarian' past - an interpretation that was taken up, for particular reasons, in Frankish discourse to reinforce the Carolingian 'narrative of triumph'. |