Symposium 3 (2018-2020)

Visigothic Symposium 3, 2018-2020: Communication and Circulation (PDF) (*En Español aquí)

To what extent did rural and urban populaces around the Visigothic Kingdom interact with each other? How did they share stories and relate memories? To what degree did they visit and house relatives and friends from other communities? What about beyond the ‘borders’ and / or at the peripheries, of the Peninsula, of the towns, of the roads, of the mind, of families and communities sharing the same urban centers? How common was communication between nearby, everyday or distant neighbors? To what extent was there a meta-sense of belonging in the region, whether locally or by shared sensibilities of Mediterranean existence, by Jewish belief and heritage, by fidelity to Catholic theology, by practices of rural religion, by languages and dialectics, or even by a sense of ‘barbarian’ identity, an imagined pan-Gothicness?

Expressions, desired associations, networks of thoughts and meanings and their traversal within and between individuals, institutions, texts and ‘architexts’ form the core of the intended discussions of VgS 3, the third Visigothic Symposium. VgS 3 will interrogate these issues by offering essays across the themes: ‘communication’ and ‘circulation’. The aim is to elicit examples of what we may call personal and communal ‘neighboring’ in early medieval Iberia, the broader Visigothic Kingdom(s?) and the wider Mediterranean region. We envision the essays of VgS 3 pursuing, lifting from the land of the period’s narrations – literary and material – that which exposes also the modes of transference, connection and representation that characterized real and imagined lives. Interdisciplinary in our reading of Visigothic Iberia, VgS 3 extends the scope of analysis and historiography to the gaze from the ‘outside’ – Ostrogothic Italy, Rome, Vandal-Visigothic Sardinia, Lombards, Corsica – of the Iberian tableaux vivant.

ISSN 2475-7462

Editors: Dolores Castro & Michael J. Kelly

Program 

Introduction

• Rebecca Devlin, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Louisville
  • Introduction, pp. i-xv

Panel 1: Communication

• Liubov Chernin, Independent Scholar / Jerusalem (HUJI)
  • Visigothic Jewish Converts: A Life in Between, pp. 1-18

• Alberto Ferreiro, Professor of History, Seattle Pacific University
  • The Bishops of Hispania and Pope Innocent I (407-417), pp. 19-35

• Javier Martínez Jiménez, Associate Researcher, Faculty of Classics, and Postdoctoral By-Fellow of Churchill College, University of Cambridge
  • Engineering, aqueducts, and the rupture of knowledge transmission in the Visigothic period , pp. 36-54

• Jason Osborne, Instructor, University of South Carolina
  • A call to arms: cross-regional communication and the Visigothic military, pp. 55-71

• Fernando Ruchesi, Universidad National del Nordeste & CONICET, Buenos Aires
  • Military Matters in the Visigothic Kingdom: Initial Considerations, pp. 72-87

Panel 2: Circulation

• Tomás Cordero Ruiz, Postdoctoral Researcher, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
  • At the center and the periphery of Lusitania: The Evolution of the City of Egitania and its territory (4th-8th centuries), pp. 88-111

• Pablo C. Díaz, Professor in Ancient History, Universidad de Salamanca
  • Sociability and sense of belonging: Community interaction in the work of Valerius of Bierzo, pp. 112-129

• Luís Fontes, Head Researcher, Universidade do Minho
  • The circulation of models in the construction of Christian Identity in the Northwest Iberian Peninsula: architecture and hagiotoponymia in the Braga region, pp. 130-150

• Luciano Gallinari, Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea – Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
  • Indigenous peoples in Sardinia and the Iberian Peninsula in the Early Middle Ages: A Comparative Historiography, pp. 151-164

• Andrew Kurt, Associate Professor of History, Clayton State University
  • Visigothic Currency in its Making and Movement: a Varying State of Circumstances, pp. 165-197

Response Papers