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
5 - Excolentes sacra fontium vel arborum: Pagan Cults, Kinship, and Regimes of Sacralization in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo
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
In the case of the Visigothic realm, information about tree and fountain ‘pagan’ cults is particularly terse, limited to a handful of conciliar canons and scarce allusions in scientific treatises and hagiographies. In any event, the existence of some non-ecclesiastical regimes of sacralization can be detected. They activate other ways of promoting religious authority and other cultic actors. These regimes of sacralization uphold memories and powers of parental or local communities that locate effective points of articulation in the soil and its signs. In this chapter, I explore the regimes of sacralization instituted by these actors and examine which logics they could be articulating through their practices.
Keywords: Idolatry, Regimes of Sacralization, Central Powers, Local Powers
In 693, during Egica's rule, the bishops congregated in the sixteenth council of Toledo claimed:
On the subject of idol worshippers: it is manifest that the enemy of the human race, according to the words of the Apostle, runs around the world roaring and seeking whom he may devour, since using various tricks and distortions and deceiving many fools, he never ceases to ensnare them in its ties; and even though the Lord commands that you shall not make any sculpture for yourself, nor any image of what is in heaven above or on the earth below, etc., and still in another part: ‘Thou shalt not make any idol nor sculpture, nor raise sanctuaries, neither shalt thou place a distinguished stone in your land to adore it’, and later: ‘Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve Him only’, these fools, deceived by various persuasions, become idol worshippers, stone devotees, torch igniters, and they worship sources and trees as holy places, they become seers or enchanters, and many other things that would be very lengthy to tell.
This text is one of the meagre sources of information that we have regarding practices considered ‘idolatric’ in Visigothic times. In contrast with other regions, such as Britain and Gaul, the hagiographic, epigraphic, and archaeological documentation related to parallel cults in seventh-century Iberia is lean and oblique. In response to this scarcity, a frequent practice is to resort to extrapolations, decontextualizations, and generalizations of the available data.
The obvious bias carried by textual sources is yet another barrier that can be added to this shortage of information.
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- Information
- Framing Power in Visigothic SocietyDiscourses, Devices, and Artifacts, pp. 109 - 132Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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