IMC 2016: Sessions
Session 1717: Objects and Objectification in the Merovingian World
Thursday 7 July 2016, 14.15-15.45
| Sponsor: | The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World |
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| Organiser: | Isabel Moreira, Department of History, University of Utah |
| Moderator/Chair: | Isabel Moreira, Department of History, University of Utah |
| Paper 1717-a | Jews in the Sermons of Caesarius of Arles (Language: English) Index terms: Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Religious Life, Sermons and Preaching |
| Paper 1717-b | Gregory of Tours and His Perception of Jews and Arians (Language: English) Index terms: Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Religious Life, Social History |
| Paper 1717-c | The Balthild Seal Matrix and the Merovingian Erotic Glance (Language: English) Index terms: Archaeology - Artefacts, Sexuality, Social History, Women's Studies |
| Abstract | Whether in the form of material objects, or in the form of objectified peoples in written sources, the Merovingian era presents the historian with images and objects that have been fashioned to promote a political representation of Christian authority and power. These images spoke to contemporary audiences in ways that can sometimes be uncovered, but which also sometimes elude interpretation. The cases examined in this session illustrate an approach that is characteristic of Christian sources in this era: to engage in a contemporary dialogue about Christian life, religion, and power (Arians, Jews, minorities, women) by casting that dialogue against the traditional and inherited forms and tropes, yet also by that means changing them. All three papers in this session present the audience with an objectified view of the less powerful individuals in society in order to explore their relationship to broadly accepted discourses of differentiation that privileged normative ideas about the locus of Christian authority and power. |