Skip to main content

IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 1122: Secular Networks and Actors: Linking Late Antique and Early Medieval Lifeworlds

Wednesday 5 July 2023, 11.15-12.45

Organiser:Roland Steinacher, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Moderator/Chair:Thomas Brown, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Respondent:Philipp von Rummel, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin
Paper 1122-aNegotiating with His Imperial Majesty in the Name of My King: African and Italian Ambassadors in the 5th and 6th Centuries
(Language: English)
Roland Steinacher, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Index terms: Administration, Byzantine Studies, Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 1122-bExchange and Transfer of Knowledge: Networks and Entanglements of Aristocratic Communities in the Late Roman Empire
(Language: English)
Veronika Egetenmeyr, Arbeitsbereich Alte Geschichte Historisches Institut Universität Greifswald
Index terms: Education, Political Thought, Politics and Diplomacy, Social History
Paper 1122-cSacred Networks: The Exchange of Relics between East and West
(Language: English)
Nadine Viermann, Exzellenzcluster 'Kulturelle Grundlagen von Integration', Universität Konstanz
Index terms: Politics and Diplomacy, Religious Life
Abstract

Throughout the 5th and 6th centuries the Western Roman Empire disintegrated. While in Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, and Britain successor states emerged, the East with Constantinople as its capital prolonged the imperial structures. Secular as well as ecclesiastical protagonists continued to perceive the Roman Empire as an unity. Elite networks not only provided an exchange of ideas and transferred knowledge, such linkages also created communities beyond political boundaries. Secular as well as ecclesiastical actors entangled their various 'lifeworlds' as part of a transformation of the Roman world. The networks and entanglements of both parts of the Roman Empire, fostered and nourished through individual actors, will be in the focus of our two sessions. The first session focuses on ecclesiastical networks, which discussed for instance questions of faith as well as the role of the church. The second session is dedicated to military, diplomatic, and aristocratic secular networks.