IMC 2022: Sessions

Borders in Late Antiquity were not exclusively physical. The period 230-700 saw many ideological changes that progressively departed from the Classical World and laid the foundations of the medieval years. Depictions and role models of noblewomen were not indifferent to these changes, which operated in every level in which power and social pre-eminence were affected. New forms of Christian lifestyle combined with the emergence of non-Roman power figures shaped gender. Common women underwent deep changes during this time; although Late Antique literary sources were far more concerned with noblewomen, empresses, and queens. Their role models, despite all the continuities, were newer and more different from their Classical predecessors.

This session provides three examples of the evolution of women in power in Late Antiquity, women who lived between two worlds: the case of an imperial princess between her barbarian origins and her Roman husband; the conflicting identity and political role of a Byzantine empress married to a man regarded as a barbarian by her fellow subjects; and the accomodation of a Visigothic queen between a repressing clerical role model and courtly alternatives. Three features of change and continuity in the ideological borders of Late Antiquity: Roman/Barbarian, both in the 3rd- and 5th-century Roman East and West; and Clerical/Courtly role models in Barbarian 6th- and 7th-century West.