Not content with bringing you the
CfP for the January 2015 issue of the journal, we have also finalised the program for next week's symposium: Networks and Neighbours II, Curitiba, Brazil. Abstracts for all the papers are also included.
Thursday, 3
April
9:30-10:30 Coffee and Registration at ‘Homero
de Barros’ Room
10:30-10:45 Opening Remarks by Otávio Luiz Vieira
Pinto and Richard Broome
10:45-12:45
Panel 1: Methods of Capital
Moderator: André Szczawlinska Muceniecks, Universidade
de São Paulo, Brazil
Tommaso Leso, Università ‘Ca’ Foscari’ Venezia,
Italy
Neighbourhood, Marriage,
and Political Strategies: Franco-Visigothic Royal Marriages in the Sixth Century
Paulo Pachá, UFF/NIEP-PréK,
Brazil
Gift and Conflict: Modes of Domination
in the Iberian Early Middle Ages
Janira Feliciano Pohlmann, Universidade
Federal do Paraná, Brazil
A Family’s Identity In De excessu
fratris I, of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan
12:45-1:45 Lunch
1:45-3:45 Panel 2: Structures of
Authority: From Text to Temple
Moderator: Alfonso Hernández, CONICET, Argentina
Jonathan Perl Garrido, Pontificia Universidad Católica de
Valparaíso and Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile
‘The Others’ in the Continuations of Fredegar’s
Chronicle: Memory, Historiography and the
Legitimation of Carolingian Power in the Mid-Eighth Century
Renan Marques Birro, Universidade
Federal do Amapá and Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
The Topography
of Power in Medieval Norway: Saint Óláfr and the Halls of Norwegian Kings
Danilo Medeiros Gazzotti, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil
The Royal Power of Suebi in the Diocésis
Hispaniarum: Some Interpretations About Hydatius’s Chronicle
3:45-4:15 Coffee
4:15-6:15 Keynote
Seminar 1
Moderator: Ralph
Mathisen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Ian Wood, University of
Leeds, UK
National Arguments over the Fall of
Rome
7:15 Dinner at Café Mafalda
Friday, 4 April
10:30-10:45 Coffee
10:45-12:45 Panel 3: Matters of Eloquence:
Writing in the Early Middle Ages
Moderator: N.
Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds, UK
Selene Candian dos Santos, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
The Reception and Recasting of
Classical Rhetoric in the Early Middle Ages
Monah Nascimento Pereira, Universidade
Federal do Paraná, Brazil
King Alfred’s Translation Works: Discussing
Authorship and Royal Practice in Anglo-Saxon England
Rodrigo Rainha, Universidade Estácio de Sá, Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
Reflections
About Public and Private on Medieval Letters: A Case Study of Power Relations
in a Visigoth Epistolary
12:45-1:45 Lunch
1:45-3:45 Panel 4: Hints of the Bible
Moderator: Paulo Duarte, Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Gesner Las Casas Brito Filho, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Word Hoard and
Image Hoard: Codicological Notes on Writings Between the Images in MS Junius 11
(Bodleian Library, Oxford)
Philipp Dörler, Universität
Wien, Austria
The Conversus and the Bible.
Biblical Allusions in Jordanes’s Works
Vinicius Cesar Dreger de Araujo, Unicsul/Anhanguera, Brazil
The Saxon Saviour - New Readings on
the Ninth Century’s Biblical Epic, The Heliand
3:45-4:15 Coffee
4:15-6:15 Keynote Seminar 2
Moderator: Ian
Wood, University of Leeds, UK
Ralph Mathisen, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, USA
Whatever Happened to the Dark Ages? How the Barbarians Saved Classical Civilization
6:15-6:30 Concluding Remarks by Renan
Frighetto and Michael J. Kelly
6:30-7:30 Coffee
Abstracts
Panel 1: Methods of Capital
Moderator:
André Szczawlinska Muceniecks, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Tomasso Leso, Università ‘Ca’ Foscari’ Venezia, Italy
Neighborhood, Marriage, and Political Strategies:
Franco-Visigothic Royal Marriages in the Sixth Century
This paper is
going to focus on the cases of royal intermarriage between the Visigothic and
Frankish royal families during the sixth century. The marriages involving
members of the royal families of the early medieval kingdoms are, in fact, one
of the aspects of the broader issue of neighbourhood in the Early Middle Ages:
marriage was a powerful instrument through which personal and collective
identities were built, social ties were given shape to, and political
strategies were put into practice. This is true at all level of society, but
especially at its highest, apical point: marriages involving the royal power
were eminently political acts, which were carefully planned by all the parties
involved and were loaded with expectations and consequences. The choice of one
marriage partner instead of another answered to different needs, offered
different possibilities, and implied different strategies for the family and
the kingdom; different context prompted different strategies, depending on the
contingent political situation and balance of power.
The period (the
sixth century) and the area (the Visigothic and Frankish kingdoms) I selected
as a case- study presents several interesting features: both kingdoms were, as
scholarship has long pointed out, markedly inhomogeneous and subject to
divisions and centripetal tendencies; in Francia, the kingdom was divided among
members of the Merovingian family in a fluid situation that was never really
fixed until the seventh century, and in Visigothic Spain royal power was never
firmly into the hand of a single dynasty as the powerful aristocratic factions
of the different areas of the kingdoms struggled to take control of the crown.
In such a context, marriage alliances (although, as I am going to argue in this
paper, labelling these marriages as ‘alliances’ can be highly misleading) were
one of the key fields in which the political strategies of the ruling families
were put into action.
One of the key
advantages of the sixth century marriages involving members of the Visigothic
and Frankish ruling families is that they are more often than not recorded by
more than one source (mainly, but not only, Gregory of Tours, Venantius
Fortunatus and John of Biclaro) a luxury that does not often happens when
dealing with early medieval marriages – even royal ones. The information that
the different sources chose to register and transmit – and, opposingly, their
very significant silences on other events – and the possibility to confront
them give us the possibility to better understand the various points of view
and interests at stake.
By carefully
looking at each of the seven marriages (or unsuccessful marriage proposals)
that took place between the early 530s and the first decade of the seventh
century, putting them into their specific context, one can try to grasp their
meaning(s) and purpose(s) – and, thus, try to shed some light on the broader
political issues of the period. Unsuccessful marriage proposal are as
interesting as the unions that were achieved, insofar as they show the complex
political interactions between neighbouring kingdoms; moreover, it can be shown
that royal marriage strategies, besides their role in foreign affairs, had a
deep impact on the internal politics of the kingdoms involved – and, often,
they were undertaken as a way to deal with internal problems via an external
enterprise.
Paulo Pachá, UFF/NIEP-PréK, Brazil
Gift and Conflict: Modes of Domination in the Iberian
Early Middle Ages
The concept of
the gift was welcomed as a lost son
by the medievalists in the last decades and is now a highly popular one. Since
the publication of the classical essay by Marcel Mauss – Essai sur le don – in 1924, the concept was developed and
approached in several different ways. In the hands of medievalists it was
transformed in inspiring and innovative ways, challenging old models and
presuppositions: gift-exchange is now a manifold act, a plastic relation and,
above all, negotiation. However, amidst all the innovation, one cannot but to
notice that a central element in Mauss work is gradually absent: the gift as a
mode of domination (not only symbolic but also material), a mean for the
creation and strengthening of hierarchies. In a nutshell, we have observed a
displacement from the relationships framed by the gift to the language and the
symbols involved in these relationships
During the
Iberian Early Middle Ages, a context of political fragmentation and local
circumscription of the aristocratic powers, one of the main dynamics was the
expansion of the aristocratic properties (lay and ecclesiastical) on the
expenses of the independent peasantry. This dynamic, we will argue, was related
to gift-exchange as a fundamental mode of domination of the peasantry by the
aristocracy. Our analysis will focus on how gift-exchange, in this context,
created and strengthened a series of relations of personal dependence. Even
though the relations of personal dependence were relations present through the
whole society, our analysis will demonstrate, precisely because they were
expressed by gift-exchange, how they were stronger as relations between
peasants and aristocrats than as intra-aristocratic relations.
The main
objective of this paper will be the development of an analysis of gift-exchange
as a relation rooted in the conflict, highly hierarchical and primarily a form
of domination. Gift-exchange is a way not only to create or preserve unequal
social positions, but of doing it by means of binding people through relations
of personal dependence. This form of domination is distinguished from other
early medieval forms because it is a product of the relation of exchange
itself, and not one of its effects or conditions.
To achieve
these objectives we will analyze the relations expressed by the gift-exchange
in a set of hagiographies produced in this historical context (Vitas sanctorum patrum emeretensium, Vita Sancti Fructuosi and Vita Sancti Aemiliani) and in the royal
legislation that frames these relations. In this way, this paper aims to be a
contribution to a larger analysis about the conflict and the modes of
domination in the Iberian Early Middle Ages.
Janira Feliciano Pohlmann, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil
A Family’s Identity in the Excessu fratris I of
Ambrose, Bishop of Milan
Despite
belonging to a Christian family, when Aurelius Ambrosius was acclaimed bishop
of Milan in 374, he was deprived of family nobility and he was a stranger in
the town that he had been chosen to lead an important ecclesia.
From one
instant to another Ambrose was not anymore a political official, under the
leadership of the praetorian prefect Petronius Probus, in the service of the
Roman Empire. By acting as consularis
and trying to sort the conflicts between Nicenes and Arians, he was acclaimed
bishop and he became the principal clerical agent in that distinguished city.
In the case of Ambrose, all these new responsibilities and changes in his life
were not supported neither in the illustrious past nor in a family that was perceived
to be a center that defended the Christian essences of the Nicenes, as
martyrdom, baptism and detachable actions towards Christianity. To circumvent
the potential problems that these deficiencies could mean in his career,
Ambrose elaborated some arguments in two of his works (De virginibus and De
exhortatio virginitatis) that linked his family to Soteris, a noble virgin
who became a martyr when she needed to face her pursuers.
In the funeral
oration, De excessu fratris,
proclaimed in the occasion of the Satyrus’ burial, Ambrose’s brother, were
abundant the examples of defense of Christian’s faith perpetrated by Ambrose’s
family. From a series of rhetorical arguments and some specific actions,
Ambrose managed to prepare a speech that placed emphasis on the attitudes of
his family about the Christian faith and, furthermore, he established between
the Milanese community and his family links of relationships that exceed the
blood’s limits. In this work, we observed some of Ambrose’s ways to win a new
and big family to lead and a patria
to belong to.
Panel 2: Structures of Authority:
From Text to Temple
Moderator:
Alfonso Hernández, CONICET, Argentina
Jonathan Perl Garrido, Pontificia Universidad Católica de
Valparaíso and Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile
‘The Others’ in the
Continuations of Fredegar’s Chronicle: Memory, Historiography and the Legitimation
of Carolingian Power in the Mid-Eighth Century
The paper
addresses the problem of the representations of alterity, from the analysis of
the records on the continuations of Fredegar’s Chronicle. The specific alterity to be studied is the one composed
by the peoples of peripheral territories from the north-east of the Frankish
kingdom, peoples who even though being part of the Frankish and Christian
sphere of influence, were not yet (or not fully) integrated into the political
and territorial Frankish unit.
The
continuations of Fredegar’s Chronicle
are particularly interesting considering the historical context of its
production. At that time, the political and cultural Frankish-Christian and
Carolingian project required elements of legitimacy, and historiography played
a crucial role in that process. The proposed analysis is from the perspective
of Frankish ethnogenesis, which will allow us to inquire about the incidence
(or not) of the Chronicle in the
construction and legitimation of Carolingian power, particularly in terms of
the presentation of an alterity (or alterities), which were used in the
aforementioned processes, lies in the intention to achieve the identification
of the Frankish community under the rule of the Carolingians in addition to
Latin Christendom.
Renan Birro, Universidade
Federal do Amapá and Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
The Topography of Power in Medieval Norway: Saint
Óláfr and the Halls of Norwegian Kings
In this
communication I analyze the image and the location of the shrine of saint Óláfr
and their association with Norwegian royal halls in the eleventh century. My sources
are the skaldic poetry, Latin chronicles and Icelandic sagas. Óláfr is the
royal saint and martyr of Norway, remembered as a protector of local monarchy.
He was killed in a civil war with foreign promotion, mainly by Knutr, the
Danish king at that time. After his death, some cures and miracles made of
Óláfr a saint: his cult spread fast and he was a symbol against the Danish
control over Norway. To improve their powers and control over the country, the
following kings adopted and promoted the devotion of Óláfr. Thus, they built
royal halls in the neighborhood of Óláf’s shrine to share his holiness,
legitimacy and power. Every new hall constructed was followed by some deeds to
increase the links between the new kings and the beloved royal martyr.
Danilo Medeiros Gazzotti, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil
The Royal Power of the Suebi in the Diocesis
Hispaniarum: Some Interpretations about Hydatius’ Chronicle
In our
presentation we will deal with the conceptions of royal power among the Suebi
in the province of Gallaecia during
the fifth century, in the period that we call Late Antiquity. In order to
achieve our objective we will use the chronicle of Hydatius, a political and
religious character from the Galacian region
who was a direct and indirect witness of the events that took place throughout
the fifth century. In Hydatius chronicle, the events are related to the daily
and social life of the Late Roman World describing its problems and
confrontations. One finds many pieces of information about the Christian ecclesia, which go from the nomination
of the bishops of Rome in the course of the period his chronicle embraces, to
information, for example, about events with bishops of the West and the East.
In our work we will discourse about the recognition and legitimization of the
Suebi royal authority in the presence of the Roman imperial authority. Finally,
we also intend to raise questionings, throughout our research, about the
possibility that a Suebi reign has existed in the Diocésis Hispaniarum during the fifth century.
Panel 3: Matters of Eloquence: Writing in the Early
Middle Ages
Moderator: N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, University
of Leeds, UK
Selene Candian dos Santos, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
The Reception and Recasting of Classical Rhetoric in
the Early Middle Ages
This paper aims to discuss the
reception of classical rhetoric in the Early Middle Ages, focusing on the
period between the sixth and the eighth centuries. Several authors wrote about
rhetoric in this period, such as Boethius, who, in the sixth century, produced
the influential work De topicis differentiis. In this text, the
authorities of Cicero and Aristotle are invoked to discuss rhetoric and
dialectic and rhetoric is used as a tool to interpret the Scripture, following
in the tradition of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana. Still in the
sixth century, Cassiodorus, Boethius’s successor as magister officiorum in
Ostrogothic Italy, wrote Expositio Psalmorum, in which he not only
applies rhetorical theory to hermeneutics, but also recasts the classical
genres of oratory (i.e. the deliberative, judicial, and demonstrative genres).
In the seventh century, Isidore of Seville composed his Etymologiae,
whose second book is dedicated to rhetoric and whose sources, in turn, are
Augustine, Boethius, and possibly Cassiodorus. Bede, in the eighth century, in De
schematibus et tropis, combines grammatical teaching with rhetorical theory
and Christianizes figures and tropes by recognizing the rhetoricity of the
Scripture, upholding the tradition of some of the aforementioned authors. In
the same spirit, Alcuin wrote, also in the eighth century, Disputatio de rhetorica
et de virtutibus, a dialogue in which Alcuin teaches Charlemagne the rules
of the art, with a view to contributing to Charlemagne’s education policy.
By referring to these authors and
writings, we will advance the arguments that classical rhetoric was not only
received but also, to some extent, recast in the Early Middle Ages and that the
knowledge of rhetoric was, at the same time, cumulative, since authors
oftentimes read one another’s works and quoted each other, and a mosaic, in the
sense that different rhetorical theories did not necessarily supersede previous
ones, but rather coexisted.
Monah Pereira, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil
King Alfred’s Translation Works: Discussing Authorship
and Royal Practice in Anglo-Saxon England
Amidst the debate around the sources
often used to study the Alfredian period, are the translation works attributed
to the king himself. Throughout the years, scholars have defended different
points of view regarding the authorship of such texts. There are those who
suggest that the king did write them, or at least a fraction of them. Others,
such as M. Godden, question this assertion, pointing to the possibility that
none of the texts would have been written by Alfred.
The aim of this paper, on the other
hand, is to problematize the importance given to this discussion, suggesting
that another interpretation line, already underlined by historians like D.
Pratt, could be taken into consideration. The texts produced during Alfred’s
reign can be understood as part of a broader context that comprises not only
the translations and the educational program by itself, but also a political
project, identities and ideas that are being forged in Anglo-Saxon England.
The use of important Christian
texts, such as Boecio’s De Consolatione
Philosophiae and Augustine’s Soliloquia,
conferred legitimacy to the reign of Alfred, establishing a link with the
Christian tradition on the continent, strengthening the position of the king as
ruler. Moreover, the texts produced in the Alfredian period denote the gradual
construction of an identity and unity of the Anglo-Saxons. Regardless of the
authorship of the texts, it is noticeable the existence of a single discourse,
in which Alfred plays an important part. Therefore, we do not intend to present
definite answers but rather put this theoretical approach in focus, discussing
its possibilities and limitations.
Rodrigo Rainha, Universidade Estácio de Sá, Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
Reflections about Public and Private in Medieval
Letters: A Case Study of Visigothic Letter-Writing
The
considerations presented in this article are based on the analysis of
documentation, produced in the period known as the Late Antiquity, in which we
propose to reflect on an issue that is certainly not exhausted neither in the
field of historiography, nor philology: the public or private in medieval
correspondence, giving a historical perspective to understand epistles in the
visigoth kingdom.
We understand
that faced to Visigoth social-political context in the seventh century, in
which bishops were seen wrapped up in political disputes, some prominent
members of the episcopate sought to strengthen the precise discourses of the
Church’s specific action spaces. Isidore of Seville, for instance, reinforces
the master-disciple relationship and education as a way to regulate and
indicate positions of the clergy for the society, establishing hierarchies and
legitimacy.
This project,
like we understand it, had to face, however, the pragmatism of Braulio of
Zaragoza and the role played by his disciples recognizing that the proposition
had gained recognition and recurrence, and repeated the same formula,
affirmation of relation of master and disciple, in their confrontations against
rival groups. Eugene and Tajo give continuity to this proposal.
But, for that to
be possible, we must answer a question first: how do we understand the
importance of letters in VII century? And, most importantly: is it a particular
or a public document?
Panel 4: Hints of the Bible
Moderator: Paulo Duarte, Paulo Duarte, Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Gesner Las Casas
Brito Filho, Universidade
de São Paulo, Brazil
Word Hoard and Image Hoard:
Codicological Notes on Writings Between the Images in MS Junius 11 (Bodleian
Library, Oxford)
MS Junius 11 (Bodleian
Library, Oxford - called in the past
as ‘Caedmon Manuscript’) is an Anglo-Saxon manuscript written in the late tenth
or early eleventh century. There are in it four poems: Genesis (divided in Genesis A
and B), Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. All the poems are
written in Old English language and they are paraphrases of biblical or
apocryphal texts. The Manuscript displays forty-eight completed drawings in the
pages of Junius 11, illustrated possibly by two artists, all in beginning, near
to the Genesis poem, with forty-six drawings spaces left in blank after. We
find thirteen space for drawings in Exodus and thirty-three in Daniel. No space
was left for drawings in Christ and Satan.
Scholars have tended to
miss the manuscript’s thematic unity because the drawings seldom reflect a
literal interpretation of the poetry. Professor Karkov, nevertheless, defends the apparent separation of text and picture
as a project of creation for another narrative altogether. In fact, literary and
history scholars have widely disregarded the illustrations of medieval literary
manuscripts and disregard these illustrations is disregard the manuscript as it
was intended to be used in society which has had produced it. Karkov
demonstrate this complex relationship essentially by defending that the
drawings of Junius 11 represent a ‘translation’ of the text they accompany,
acting as a visual gloss or exegesis of the text, not just an illustration (Karkov,
2001).
Professor Karkov bases on the ideas about
relationships between images and textual according to Meyer Schapiro. These
images cannot be seen just as illustration of the poem or the biblical text.
The pictures can be product of exegesis of the biblical texts as well the poems
are:
Besides the differences between text and picture
arising from the conciseness or generality of the word and from the resources
peculiar to verbal and visual art there are historical factors to consider: (a)
the changes in meaning of the text for successive illustrators, though the
words remain the same, and (b) the changes in style of representation, which
affect the choice of details and their expressive import. (Schapiro, 1973, p.
13).
There are in the MS Junius 11 almost 46 drawings.
We found spread words or phrases in Old English or Latin in at least eight of
these pages, sometimes besides, sometimes inside the drawings. They were
depicted as our modern ‘explanatory text’ or ‘explanatory legend’ about the
pictures or they were instructions made for the artist or artists? The aim of
this article is to present this problem and propose some answers or ways to
answer these questions. We believe in trying answering theses questions can
help understanding how the manuscript were planned and created putting together
text and images in the pages of this Anglo-Saxon Manuscript.
Philipp Dörler, Universität Wien, Austria
The Conversus and the Bible. Biblical Allusions in
Jordanes’s Works
The sixth-century Gothic scholar
Jordanes is well known as the author of a Gothic (De origine actibusque
Getarum) as well as a Roman history (De summa temporum vel origine
actibusque gentis Romanorum). As such, his dependency on Cassiodorus and
other authors is still highly discussed. He is rarely considered as an
independent author even though he was a complex character, who was in close
contact to the court in Constantinople and spent his last years as a conversus.
His entire work is influenced by the biblical-Christian conception of the
society he lived in. As yet, however, the role of the Christian influence on
Jordanes’ work has (with the exception of O’Donnell) hardly been researched. In
my paper, therefore, I will focus on Jordanes’ use of the Bible in his texts; I
will investigate how Jordanes as a Christian author was influenced by biblical
narrations, biblical ideas and the religious characterisation of the society he
lived in in general.
Vinicius Cesar Dreger de Araujo, Unicsul/Anhanguera, Brazil
The Saxon Saviour - New Readings on the Ninth Century’s
Biblical Epic, The Heliand
The Heliand (Saviour) is an epic poem in Old Saxon probably
written in the mid-ninth century. The poem itself is a Biblical paraphrase that
recounts the life of Jesus (in the tradition of the Diatessaron, an
harmonisation of the four Gospels created by Tatian in the second century) in
the alliterative verse style of a Germanic epic.
The poem was
rediscovered and studied in the context of the German nationalist turmoil of
the nineteenth century, and the ideologically loaded interpretations of the
text prevailed until the end of World War II. However, studies of the text were
taken up, mainly by Anglo-American academy, and between the 1980s and 1990s,
the main interpretation of the text is given in the debate concerning
Germanization of Christianity vs. Christianization of the Germans, after the
analysis of Ronald Murphy and James C. Russell. The twenty-first century
brought a number of new interpretations and debates about the Heliand, like Dennis Green, James Cathey
and Valentine Pakis.
The focus of our presentation is to analyse the
major new lines of study, to summarize the connections of the poem with their
context of Christianization of Saxony in the ninth century and to point some
possible interpretations.
