BOOK: Damián FERNANDEZ, Molly LESTER, Jamie WOOD (eds.), Rome and Byzantium in the Visigothic Kingdom Beyond Imitatio Imperii (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023), ISBN: 9789463726412

(Image source: Amsterdam University Press)

ABOUT THE BOOK

This volume interrogates the assumption that Visigothic practices and institutions were mere imitations of the Byzantine empire. Contributors rethink these practices not as uncritical and derivative adoptions of Byzantine customs, but as dynamic processes in dialogue with not only the Byzantine empire but also with the contemporary Iberian context, as well as the Roman past. The goal of the volume is to approach Visigothic customs not as an uncritical adoption and imitatio of contemporary Roman models (an "acculturation" model), but as unique interpretations of a common pool of symbols, practices, and institutions that formed the legacy of Rome. The contributors argue that it is necessary to reconsider the idea of imitatio imperii as a process that involved specific actors taking strategic decisions in historically contingent circumstances.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Molly Lester is Assistant Professor of History at the United States Naval Academy. She is a historian of late antique and early medieval Christianity and has published on orthodoxy and heresy, liturgy, and canon law in Visigothic Iberia. Her current book project is The Word as Lived: Orthodoxy and Liturgy in Early Medieval Iberia.

Jamie Wood is Professor of History and Education at the University of Lincoln. He has published extensively on Isidore of Seville’s historiography, bishops in Visigothic Hispania, and the social functions of violence. His current project explores political, economic, and religious connections between the Iberian Peninsula and the Byzantine world in late antiquity.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction (Damián Fernández, Molly Lester, and Jamie Wood);

1. Visigothic Spain and Byzantium. The story of a special (historiographical) relationship (Céline Martin);

2. The development of the Visigothic court in the hagiography of the fifth and sixth centuries (Ian Wood);

3. Experiments in Visigothic Rulership: Minting and Monetary Reforms under Alaric II (Merle Eisenberg);

4. A comparison of Roman and Visigothic Approaches towards Exile (Margarita Vallejo Girvés);

5. The Roman Jewel in the Visigothic Crown: A Reassessment of the Royal Votive Crowns of the Guarrazar Treasure (Cecily Hilsdale);

6. Capitalhood in the Visigothic Kingdom (Damián Fernández);

7. Making Rite Choices: Roman and Eastern Liturgies in Early Medieval Iberia (Molly Lester);

8. Ethnicity and Imitatio in Isidore of Seville (Erica Buchberger);

9. Re-imagining Roman Persecution in the Visigothic Passions (David Addison);

10. Romanness in Visigothic Hagiography (Santiago Castellanos);

11. Empire and the Politics of Faction: Mérida and Toledo Revisited (Graham Barrett);

12. The agents and mechanics of connectivity: The Mediterranean world and the cities of the Guadiana valley in the sixth century (Jamie Wood);

13. Staying Roman after 711? (Ann Christys).

More information can be found here