Chapter 5 - ‘For Every Blade Was Red’

Summary

Chapter 5 examines Corippus’ accounts of military activity, his battle narratives and his use of violent imagery. The first part of this chapter discusses the likely sequence of John’s campaigns in 546, 547 and 548. Certain conclusions are drawn regarding the size of John’s army, its constitution and the strategic goals he followed, as well as Moorish fighting practices in the same period.The second part of the chapter considers the long battle accounts within the Iohannis, and the political function they may have had. Stylized combat sequences were a very common feature of Greek and Latin epic, and Corippus added new and visceral imagery to the poetic repertoire. Violent imagery of battle was a display of poetic virtuosity, but also a means to address the ambiguities of ‘Moorish’ identity and political fealty. Battle clarified loyalties – and hence identities – in a manner that was not otherwise possible. Violent imagery accentuated this process, essentially transforming the ‘good’ Moors into heroes, (and so comparable to their Roman allies), and the ‘bad’ into abject and dismembered body parts. If the Iohannis was intended to reconstitute the body politic in North Africa, it frequently did so in an unusually literal manner.