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IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 108: Ethnicity and Religion in Late Antiquity

Monday 1 July 2019, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut für Geschichte, Freie Universität Berlin / Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Organiser:Gerda Heydemann, Geschichte der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Moderator/Chair:Philipp von Rummel, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin
Respondent:Helmut Reimitz, Department of History, Princeton University
Paper 108-aEthnicity and Religion in Late Antique and Early Medieval Europe
(Language: English)
Walter Pohl, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Index terms: Mentalities, Political Thought
Paper 108-bExegesis and Ethnicity: The Gentes in Biblical Commentaries between Ambrose and Bede
(Language: English)
Gerda Heydemann, Geschichte der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Index terms: Biblical Studies, Mentalities, Political Thought
Abstract

The session explores the interrelation between religious and ethnic identities in the late antique and early medieval political communities. How did religious discourses and institutions frame the construction of ethnic and political communities, and how were they in turn framed by them?
The first paper by Walter Pohl will introduce the session by looking at the tension between ethnic/political identities and their religious framing which emerged after the expansion of Christianity in the Latin West. It argues that we should not simply try to assess whether or not religious attitudes and discourses were an important part of ethnic identities. It is more productive to examine the relationship of Christianity with ethnic communities as a field of tension which is inescapably dynamic. The second paper (Gerda Heydemann) focusses on the rich yet underexplored corpus of biblical exegesis. It traces the shifting attitudes towards the role of the people(s) within the Christian people of God in the work of selected Latin exegetes between the 4th and the 7th Centuries.