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IMC 2018: Sessions

Session 1244: Memory and 6th-Century Gaul, I: Remembering Saints and Heretics

Wednesday 4 July 2018, 14.15-15.45

Organiser:Tamar Rotman, Department of General History, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva
Moderator/Chair:Yaniv Fox, Department of General History, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan
Paper 1244-aIn cordis membrana: Memory, Writing, and Living Tradition in the Prose Lives of Venantius Fortunatus
(Language: English)
Kent E. Navalesi, Department of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Index terms: Hagiography, Religious Life
Paper 1244-bThe Memory of Praise in Venantius Fortunatus's Life of St Martin
(Language: English)
Lorenzo Livorsi, Department of Classics, University of Reading
Index terms: Hagiography, Language and Literature - Latin, Religious Life
Paper 1244-cGregory of Tours and 7th-Century Merovingian Historiography on Arianism
(Language: English)
Anna Gehler, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Historiography - Medieval
Abstract

The works of Gregory of Tours and Venantius Fortunatus are an inexhaustible resource for scholars who wish to examine early Merovingian history, culture, society, and in regard to this year's theme - Merovingian memory as well. This session will examine the different methods the two authors used in order to create and preserve the memory of saints and heretics. Opening the session, Kent Navalesi will then look into Venantius Fortunatus's prose vitae and explore the literary strategies he used in order to facilitate the remembrance of the stories of the saints. Then, Lorenzo Livorsi will examine the redeployment of late Latin panegyrics and secular praise poems in Venantius Fortunatus's Vita Martini in the context of cultural and aesthetic memory. Finally, Anna Gehler will examine how Gregory of Tours influenced 7th-century historiography and how historiographic and narrative sources dealt with and 'memorised' Arianism on the basis of Gregory of Tours' writings.