IMC 2016: Sessions

Session 1720: Rome and After, III: Food for Diverse Palates

Thursday 7 July 2016, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:	Prato Consortium for Medieval & Renaissance Studies
Organiser:	Christopher Doyle, Department of History, National University of Ireland, Galway
Moderator/Chair:	Danuta Shanzer, Institut für Klassische Philologie, Mittel- und Neulatein, Universität Wien
Paper 1720-a	Pretium inpone carni humanae: Instances of Cannibalism in Roman Cities during Barbarian Sieges in the 5th Century (Language: English) Christopher Doyle, Department of History, National University of Ireland, Galway Index terms: Anthropology, Language and Literature - Latin, Military History, Rhetoric
Paper 1720-b	Feasting with Attila (Language: English) Mark Humphries, Department of History & Classics / Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research, Swansea University Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Geography and Settlement Studies, Language and Literature - Greek, Social History
Paper 1720-c	Ravenous Wolves and Slaughtered Sheep: Gildas and the Wicked Shepherd (Language: English) Stephen Joyce, Centre for Studies in Religion & Theology, Monash University, Victoria Index terms: Biblical Studies, Language and Literature - Latin, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Religious Life
Paper 1720-d	Prayer and Plenty: Food, Feeding, and Spiritual Authority in the Lives of Female Saints - Considering the Case of St Brigit (Language: English) Shane Lordan, School of History, University College Dublin Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Hagiography, Religious Life
Abstract	Paper -a, assesses whether Late Roman accounts of cannibalism within cities under barbarian siege were actually literary tropes that had far earlier origins. Paper -b discusses Priscus of Panium's account of his 449 diplomatic mission to Attila the Hun's court, re-examining the fragments of his work pertaining to feasting, in order to elucidate Priscus’ rhetorical strategies in his depiction of the Huns. Paper -c examines the description of the Wicked Shepherd and a 6th-century British Church dominated by wolves slaughtering and feasting on their flocks in Gildas' de Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, charting this imagery's later influence on others including Columbanus and Gregory the Great. Paper -d, considers one of St Brigit's most iconic cultic motifs, the theme of food and feeding, within the wider patristic and early-medieval intellectual traditions from which her hagiography developed and offers suggestions for re-evaluating how Brigit and other female saints are presented as both patron saints and sources of spiritual authority.