Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- 1 Texts, Discourses, and Devices: Reading Visigothic Society Today
- 2 Presence of Augustine of Hippo in Isidore of Seville: Some Provisional Remarks
- 3 The Bishop and the Word: Isidore of Seville and the Production of Meaning
- 4 Unearthing Peasant Societies: Historiography and Recent Contributions in the Archaeology of the Rural World during Visigothic Times
- 5 Excolentes sacra fontium vel arborum: Pagan Cults, Kinship, and Regimes of Sacralization in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo
- 6 Ervig and Capital Penalties: The Way of Exile
- 7 ‘Put All Your Trust in Ansemundus’: A Look at Distrust in Visigothic-Byzantine Diplomatic Relations
- 8 Visigothic Currency: Recent Developments and Data for Its Study
- Index
1 - Texts, Discourses, and Devices: Reading Visigothic Society Today
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- 1 Texts, Discourses, and Devices: Reading Visigothic Society Today
- 2 Presence of Augustine of Hippo in Isidore of Seville: Some Provisional Remarks
- 3 The Bishop and the Word: Isidore of Seville and the Production of Meaning
- 4 Unearthing Peasant Societies: Historiography and Recent Contributions in the Archaeology of the Rural World during Visigothic Times
- 5 Excolentes sacra fontium vel arborum: Pagan Cults, Kinship, and Regimes of Sacralization in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo
- 6 Ervig and Capital Penalties: The Way of Exile
- 7 ‘Put All Your Trust in Ansemundus’: A Look at Distrust in Visigothic-Byzantine Diplomatic Relations
- 8 Visigothic Currency: Recent Developments and Data for Its Study
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This volume examines how power was framed in Visigothic society and how a culturally diverse population was held together as a single kingdom. Through this dynamic process a new early medieval society emerged. This transformation involved the deployment of an array of political and cultural resources: the production of knowledge; the appropriation of Patristic literature; controlling and administering rural populations; reconceptualizing the sacred; capital punishment and exile; controlling the manufacture of currency; and defining Visigothic society in relation to other polities. This volume brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines to rethink frameworks of power in the Peninsula in both historical and archaeological as well as anthropological terms, offering a new understanding of Iberian society as a whole.
Keywords: Late Antiquity, Early Medieval, Visigothic Spain, Power, Society, Interdisciplinarity
Around 582, King Leovigild summoned Bishop Masona of Mérida to his court at Toledo. After trying unsuccessfully to get him to embrace Arianism, he demanded that Masona hand over the precious tunic of Saint Eulalia of Mérida to him, so that it could be kept in an Arian basilica in Toledo. But the bishop refused to hand over the relic, which he had concealed by wrapping it around his stomach, under his clothes. Suddenly, the clear sky resounded with God's thunder, causing Leovigild to fall from his throne onto the ground. Enraged, the king sentenced Masona to exile and ordered that he leave on an untamed horse, in the hope of seeing the holy bishop fall ‘and give him a great spectacle.’ But Masona mounted the horse with ease, which the Lord had made ‘like a gentle lamb’ for him and he rode off into exile without suffering any mishap.
This confrontation between the Arian Visigothic king and the most powerful Hispanic bishop of the time can be read, in a rather traditional fashion, as a conflict between the church and the state, or between the spiritual and secular powers, or otherwise between ‘centre and periphery’. Yet, there are still more ways to understand the story and to frame the conflict between Masona and Leovigild without confronting ‘church and state’ or ‘centre and periphery’.
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- Information
- Framing Power in Visigothic SocietyDiscourses, Devices, and Artifacts, pp. 9 - 22Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020