IMC 2014: Sessions

Session 814: Rome and Israel: Gildas and the Fall of Empire

Tuesday 8 July 2014, 16.30-18.00

Sponsor:	Prato Consortium for Medieval & Renaissance Studies
Organiser:	Stephen Joyce, Centre for Studies in Religion & Theology, Monash University, Victoria
Moderator/Chair:	Luca Larpi, School of Arts, Languages & Cultures, University of Manchester
Paper 814-a	'What happens when we leave?': Gildas and the End of Roman Britain (Language: English) Christopher Doyle, Department of History, National University of Ireland, Galway Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Political Thought
Paper 814-b	The Chosen People of God: Gildas and the Historiographical Imagination (Language: English) Shane Lordan, School of History, University College Cork Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin
Paper 814-c	Criticising Authority: Gildas and His Prophecy for Britain (Language: English) Stephen Joyce, Centre for Studies in Religion & Theology, Monash University, Victoria Index terms: Biblical Studies, Monasticism, Theology
Paper 814-d	Remembering the Fall: The Manuscript Reception of Gildas's De excidio Britanniae (Language: English) Kirstie McGregor, Faculty of English Language & Literature, University of Oxford Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Abstract	In his De excidio Britanniae, Gildas systematically set out to admonish the morally corrupt secular and church leaders of partitioned 5th- or 6th-century Britain, calling for repentance, unity, and obedience to God's law in order to restore his beloved patria. In doing so, Gildas – straddling the transition between the antique and the medieval – was strikingly original: E.A. Thompson notes that Gildas was the first man in the entire west to write a provincial history; Michael E. Jones notes that this provincial history must have been a conscious rhetorical innovation; D.R. Howlett notes that no-one before Gildas had identified a single Christian people as praesens Israel; Thomas O'Loughlin notes that this perception of a people as a distinct baptised nation marks an important break in the history of theology. This session will examine the historical, rhetorical, and religious innovations of Gildas within the context of the topos, the Fall of the Roman Empire.