Social Worlds of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century Merovingian bishop, composed extensive historiographical and hagiographical corpora during the twenty years of his episcopacy in Tours. These works serve as important sources for the cultural, social, political and religious history of Merovingian Gaul. This book focuses on Gregory's hagiographical collections, especially the Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers, which contain accounts of saints and their miracles from across the Mediterranean world. It analyses these accounts from literary and historical perspectives, examining them through the lens of relations between the Merovingians and their Mediterranean counterparts, and contextualizing them within the identity crisis that followed the disintegration of the Roman world. This approach leads to groundbreaking conclusions about Gregory's hagiographies, which this study argues were designed as an 'ecclesiastical history' (of the Merovingian Church) that enabled him to craft a specific Gallo-Christian identity for his audience.

The aim of this book is to approach the manifestation and evolution of the idea of Rome as an expression of Roman patriotism and as an (urban) archetype of utopia in late Roman thought in a period extending from AD 357 to 417. Within this period of about a human lifetime, the concepts of Rome and Romanitas were reshaped and used for various ideological causes. This monograph is unfolding through a selection of sources that represent the patterns and diversity of this ideological process. The theme of Rome as a personified and anthropomorphic figure and as an epitomized notion 'applied' on the urban landscape of the city would become part of the identity of the Romans of Rome highlighting a sense of cultural uniqueness in comparison to the inhabitants of other cities. Towards the end of the chronological limits set in this thesis various versions of Romanitas would emerge indicating new physical and spiritual potentials.

Social Worlds of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

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Hagiography, Historiography, and Identity in Sixth-Century Gaul

The Idea of Rome in Late Antiquity

Social Worlds of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

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2 results in Social Worlds of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Hagiography, Historiography, and Identity in Sixth-Century Gaul

The Idea of Rome in Late Antiquity