Antiquité Tardive - Late Antiquity - Spätantike - Tarda Antichità

The knowledge of Isidore’s sources did not stop progressing these last years, in particular thanks to the electronic databases. However, the list of these sources is not closed: this article begins with a list of recently discovered sources. It also shows how the criteria generally established to distinguish certain and uncertain, direct and indirect sources are not always valid; to this purpose, the reconstruction of Isidore’s library is not only a result of the search for his sources, but also, rather often, an essential prerequisite for this research. The article ends by suggesting new paths for future research, in particular about the history of the texts which converged into Isidore’s library.

This paper deals with some aspects related to the works of Isidore of Seville that were revised by the author, as well as to other Isidorian works that were altered by copyists, introducing spurious interpolations and other modifications. This kind of study mainly focuses on the textual tradition and the extant manuscripts, but it should also take into account internal inquiry of the texts themselves, the sources used by the author, the aims of the works and their late tradition. Within this perspective, we make some considerations concerning the double recension of the De origine Gothorum (or Historia Gothorum) and its manuscript tradition.

Isidore of Seville tried to support the survival of the Visigothic Kingdom in two fundamental political concepts: unity and peace. To obtain unity, which should encompass all matters affecting the people (religion, social community, law, economics and politics), it was first necessary to end the Arian heresy and restore rule under a single religion; it was also necessary to include all the population whether Goths or Hispani; to have the same law in force for the entire territory of the kingdom and strengthen the monarchy to guarantee political union. Isidore reported this necessity in the History of the Goths, with concrete examples from the past, which caused disunity, a weakening of political power and the decline of the Visigothic Kingdom. Peace was always a consequence of social and political unity and social justice leading to a legal whole. For peace and unity in the Visigothic Kingdom, Isidore of Seville did not hesitate to accept and justify actual situations that could have been qualified as unfair, such as the coup of Sisenandus.

In what follows, the widespread idea of “Isidorian Renaissance” will be critically revised. The cultural floruit which marked Visigothic history in the 7th century had important roots already in the 6th century, i.e. in the time when Isidore himself was born, grew up and formed his own eruditio. For this development during the 6th century, the conflict between the Arian king Leovigild and the Catholic church played a decisive part and influenced the following era more than generally expected.

“Isidorus of Seville in his world” is different from “Isidore in his world”or “Isidore’s world” by putting the emphasis not on realia or on Weltanschauungen, but on the relations between Isidore’s writings, his classical and biblical culture and his public. Isidore had to describe a new Visigothic world with ancient Latin words. It was sometimes easy because the world was not so very different, such as astronomy or zoology, even if their meaning needed to be understood in relation to the Bible. In some cases though, the world was very different from that of Rome, in the case of, for example administrative geography, political ethnography or history. In the face of the imperial Constantinopolitan inheritance, Isidore praised the Visigothic Catholic kingdom using cultural geography, biblical ethnography and providential history. Finally, Isidore’s interest in integrating the classical culture in the definition of the new Christian knowledge showed he was more a ‘late antique’, than a ‘medieval’ man.

Quelle portée avait la gens Gothorum dans les écrits d’Isidore et dans le monde dans lequel il vivait ? Cet article aborde la façon dont les Goths apparaissent dans l’Historia Gothorum, les Etymologiae et les Actes de Tolède III et IV. Le règne des Goths et l’existence d’un monde politique de gentes y apparaissent banals. Isidore promeut la vision d’une unité catholique de l’Espagne et de ses différents peuples sous l’autorité gothique, mais continue de distinguer les Goths comme un peuple à part entière. Leurs victoires et leur conversion au catholicisme donnent une légitimité à leur règne sur l’ensemble de la péninsule où ils doivent rechercher l’appui des évêques en tant que représentants de la patrie hispanique. Cette vision n’est pas vouée à masquer les différences entre les Goths et les autres populi d’Espagne, mais à trouver un équilibre fondé sur les valeurs du christianisme. Isidore était conscient des problèmes qu’avait engendré par le passé le règne des Goths etespérait contribuer à ce que leur autorité s’exerce de manière plus responsable dans le futur.

The monastic thought of St. Isidore is scattered in various works of different genres, each one demonstrating signs of an internal coherence that results from real-life experience and observation of monastic structures, coupled with a rigorous knowledge of the literary tradition. However, his contemporaries or immediate successors almost forgot the legacy of Isidore regarding the government of the monasteries. The purpose of this article is to identify some characteristics of the monastic vision of St. Isidore determined by a literary tradition, his observation of reality, and his need to convert monasteries into useful and positive communities transposed into the Visigothic church and Visigothic society.

This paper aims to present a review of the “state of the art” concerning the problem of the legal sources (above all the ancient Roman law sources) used by Isidore of Seville in composing his works, mainly the Etymologies. First, the teaching of Law in the Early Middle Ages in the western former Roman Empire is briefly discussed, as well as how Isidore may have gained his his legal competence in the framework of the Medieval artes liberales. The content of the two principal works of Isidore which demonstrate knowledge of the Law (Etymologiae liber V de legibus and Differentiae liber I) is then described, and some comments are made about his methods of composition. To finish there is a brief description of the various works in Antiquity which could have inspired the writing of the juridical lemmata considered in the two books.

In Isidore’s Etymologies there are very few references to the rural contemporary habitat. However, there are some worthy to be commented on and to be considered in the light of the archaeological work carried out in recent years. So, the present article is a study of the buildings mentioned by Isidore as part of the countryside and, eventually, their archaeological identification. The article deals also with problems of the different meanings of the vocabulary used to designate such buildings, as, for example, villa/castellum, villulae, castra, diversorium and so on, and the evolution of their meaning from the 5th to the 7th centuries in the Iberian Peninsula.

This inevitably basic contribution tries first of all to provide an overview of Hispano-Christian religious architecture, such as it appeared after a long development, in the eyes of the contemporaries of Isidore’s time. A distinction is made between urban and suburban churches on the one hand, and temples of the rural domain on the other. In addition, as the decades around 600 stand for a twofold occurrence - firstly, they serve for drawing a balance of what has been achieved, and secondly they give rise to new constructive ideals -, a comment is made on the important innovations of the 7th century, especially the structures made of ashlarblocks, which today are extant or prevail as examples of of the architecture of the kingdom of Toledo. Such a perception is presumably partial since it is almost exclusively based on the monumental examples of the rural environment while we know practically nothing about the public urban architecture of the 7th century.

The study of the Old Hispanic rite as a means of understanding Late-Antique and Early Medieval Hispanic churches has been very fruitful since the publication in 1965 of a pioneer work by A. Rodríguez G. de Ceballos. However, in most recent years there have arisen some errors of perspective that tend to reduce liturgical arrangement of space to the architectural typology and morphology of church buildings, forgetting that the organisation of ritual space was commited to liturgical furniture as much (and even more) as to architectural forms, whether structural or typological. This paper identifies some recent misinterpretations of important liturgical-architectural matters, such as the hierarchical division of sacred space or the multiplication of altars within a same building, in order to permit a more realistic approach to liturgical space, less biased by the typological abstractions and stylistic assumptions of (non-liturgical) disciplines, such as the old History of Art and the new “archaeology of architecture”. From this point of view, it can be said that, in terms of liturgical space, Iberian architecture from the 6th to 11th centuries is in essence identical to the rest of Western architecture of the same period.

The memory of the Gothic past is an essential component of Hispanic historical conscience. It has two dimensions: one political, the other religious. Political Gothicism as an ideological tool helped legitimize the territorial expansion of Hispanic Christian kingdoms in the Middle Ages. It’s character was both dynastic and ethnic. Religious Gothicism also had two facets: the cult of saints Isidore and Ildefonso and the bases of the rights of episcopal sees, especially the primacy of Toledo. The following stages can be observed in the evolution of hispanic Gothicism: foundations (the development of dynastic Gothicism in the Asturian chronicles of the 9th century and the origins of ethnic Gothicism), maturity in the great historians of the 13th century (Lucas de Tuy, Jiménez de Rada and Alfonso X), decline in the royal chronicles of the 14th century, and finally revival in the 15th century, which was linked to the international prestige of Castile and to the role of Alonso de Cartagena as statesman and scholar.

Cet article explore l’organisation et l’infrastructure matérielle du réseau de l’annone militaire dans l’empire Romain de l’Est, sur la base d’inscriptions et d’entrepôts publics. Les informations les plus anciennes sur les pratiques et l’infrastructure de l’annone militaire viennent de l’Anatolie méridionale. Les fameux horrea d’Hadrien à Patara et Myra pourraient être mieux expliqués comme des édifices reliés à l’approvisionnement de l’armée impériale plutôt qu’à l’annone civique ou au commerce, comme on le croyait jusqu’à maintenant. Cela était certainement le cas durant l’Antiquité tardive, quand l’inscription d’Eutolmius Tatianus incisée sur l’horreum de Myra décrit les procédures de collecte et entrepôt temporaire de l’annone militaire dans les entrepôts de l’état. Les deux grands ports lyciens s’inscrivent parmi d’autres sur les côtes méditerranéennes où on concentrait les produits provenant des provinces côtières avant de les envoyer aux frontières de l’empire, comme on le voit aussi sur une inscription de la province d’Achaïe/Grèce. Des exemples d’entrepôts publics de l’époque tardoromaine, localisés sur des sites d’Anatolie méridionale (Maximianopolis, Korasion), à Caesarea Maritima et au port de Maronea sur la côte égéenne de la Thrace, pourraient être aussi associés au même réseau annonaire.

L’impact de l’annone militaire sur la vie des populations provinciales se retrouve dans les inscriptions de primipilaires trouvées à Novae et Oescus en Moésie Inférieure, qui préservent la mémoire des officiels qui voyageaient des provinces Méditerranéennes au Danube en assurant le service de l’organisation, du transport et de la livraison des provisions annonaires. La manifestation la plus tardive des efforts de l’état pour maintenir le réseau annonaire est l’affectation de l’annone de Thrace à la quaestura exercitus sous Justininien.

Selon la théorie économique, le colonat aurait connu un important développement durant l’Antiquité tardive en lien avec les interventions de l’état romain concernant les marchés du crédit. Celui-ci avait imposé des mesures pour assurer légalement la sécurité des fermiers à la recherche d’emprunts et pour limiter les taux d’intérêt qui pouvaient être demandés par les bailleurs. À la suite de ces interventions, les propriétaires terriens ont pu bénéficier de meilleures conditions sur le plan légal pour obtenir des prêts leur permettant d’engager de petits fermiers que ne l’étaient les bailleurs ordinaires pour tirer avantage des prêts accordés aux petits fermiers indépendants. Ces conjectures s’appuient sur des lettres écrites par des fermiers (Anoup et Pieous) et des quittances, ainsi que par des discussions de Césaire d’Arles et de Salvien.

Roman urbanism experimented, in Late Antiquity, a fundamental transformation of its structural principles and organisation of space. However, the process - the context in which it took place and its phases - is currently imprecise and its guidelines remain difficult to determine. Taking the Iberian Peninsula as a case study, this article analyses the variants of these transformations, which seemed to be partially perceived by contemporary citizens. Moreover, and following our investigation of Hispanic urban centres, the article outlines the elements that define the characteristics of the Late Antique city and its projection onto the social imaginary: first, a different assessment of urban space, and secondly, a new conception of the horizontal and vertical lines of the construction project of cities.

This paper will assess the urban reality of Toletum within the overall process of transformation which is manifest in Hispanic cities, as well as other cities in the western Mediterranean during Late Antiquity. The urban landscape of Toletum inherited from the classical period had undergone major modifications, given that there had been fundamental changes in the reorganisation and concept of the ancient suburbium with regard to its buildings and function. Christianity, being a long-lasting phenomenon, was one of the most decisive elements in the transformation of society and, hence, the urban landscape during the 4th to 5th centuries. A few centuries later, the consolidation of the Visigothic capital had also particular consequences in the spatial planning and structurisation of new public and representational spaces as well as private space. Episcopal and royal evergetism contributed to the development of a new monumental architecture that defined a particular late Antique topography of urban and suburban landscape in which civil palatial architecture was combined with an urban liturgy and the so-called sacred itinerary by which the Christian city was defined.

From almost 800 Christian inscriptions bearing direct quotations of Biblical texts between the 4th and the 8th century AD collected in the corpus of the Biblia Epigraphica, more than a half is related to contexts of public use. By this expression one refers to those inscriptions which have as their first purpose - by their position, typology, quality, writing - the visibility and the readability of the widest possible audience: we will consider the “epigraphic adornment” (Ramsay) of public spaces and buildings, first of all - but not only - in churches and religious contexts.

Using a series of examples from both the West and the East of the orbis christianus antiquus, ranging from the end of the 4th century to the first decades of the 8th century, the aim of this paper is to illustrate the use and reception of Biblical texts from inscriptions made for an audience which deeply changes from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages and Early Byzantium.

Judaism and its followers are a usual target of the invectives of Chromatius of Aquileia. In fact, with reference to common stereotypes from aduersus Iudaeos literature, his Sermones and his Tractatus in Mathaeum offered an extremely depreciating image of the Jewish religion and its members. Nevertheless, several scholars have asserted that sermo XIII involved a reaction to the Jewish presence in the city, based principally on the fact that Chromatius linked the contemporary Jews to the stoning of the prophets and the murder of the Just. The aim of this paper is to reconsider this interpretation. I will maintain, on the one hand, that the crimes denounced by Chromatius in sermo XIII did not transcend the clichés of the aduersus Iudaeos literature; and on the other hand, that the imputation of these crimes to the contemporary Jews is not sufficient evidence to accept that the homily was historically motivated, since the attribution of the sins committed by the Jews of the past to the Jews of the present is a usual rhetorical practice in Chromatius’ work.

Heresiological discourse has turned the simulatio of Manicheans into a recurrent topic. The integration of this issue into imperial legislation during the reign of Theodosius I was accompanied by the incorporation of denunciation as a method to uncover Manicheans and by the instituting of harsh penalties against those who persevered in their error. Nonetheless, from Constantine onwards, heretics could elude the punishment set forth in the laws through public abjuration of heresy. In the case of Manicheans, Honorius in 407 ratified the possibility of freeing them from their guilt provided they agreed to make public and voluntary condemnation of their error.

The implementation of the laws left ample margin for interpretation, elusion and adaptation to various contexts. Augustine, a former Manichean auditor and an expert in the simulatio strategy, reports a process of the implementation of anti-Manichean laws which both included non-exclusive options: the Manicheans’ abjuration of their heresy would only be credible as long as it was accompanied by the denunciation of the highest possible number of co-religionists. This paper examines the iter followed by a commonplace in heresiological discourse after it was incorporated into the laws and the implementation of anti-Manichean legislation in Africa based on the testimony of Augustine.

Le 22 septembre 417, l’évêque de Rome Zosime écrivit une lettre aux évêques d’Afrique, de Gaule et d’Espagne (Ep. 4 - Cum aduersus ; JK 331). Cette lettre faisait suite à un synode lors duquel il avait été question du refus de certains évêques de Gaule à se soumettre à l’autorité grandissante de Patrocle, évêque d’Arles, que Zosime avait soutenu les jours suivant son élection en mars de la même année (Ep. 1 - Placuit apostolicae ; JK 328). La question avait porté en particulier sur l’ordination par Procule, évêque de Marseille, de deux évêques, Tuentius et Ursus, et sur la création à leur intention de deux nouveaux diocèses, initiatives que la lettre condamnait également. Alors qu’on situait habituellement ce synode à Rome, David Frye a voulu qu’il se soit tenu à Turin et que Zosime s’y soit déplacé. Récemment, Michael Kulikowski est revenu à l’interprétation traditionnelle. Cum Aduersus est la première lettre parmi de nombreuses autres écrites en l’espace d’une semaine et répondant à l’accueil négatif fait aux projets de Zosime et Patrocle concernant la Gaule. Dans cet article, je souhaite proposer une nouvelle lecture de cette lettre, notamment en la rapprochant d’une autre lettre écrite la veille (Ep. 3 - Posteaquam a nobis ; JK 330) et adressée à Aurélien de Carthage au sujet de la controverse pélagienne et de la réhabilitation par Zosime de Caelestius : selon moi, lors des synodes de Rome tenus cette année-là, les débats sur le pélagianisme et sur la restructuration des églises de Gaule se sont agrégés au point d’exacerber l’esprit de l’évêque de Rome sur leur sérieux.

Histoire et archéologie de l’Antiquité tardive

P. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle (Richard Westall) ; C. Kelly (dir.), Theodosius II. Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity (Sylvain Destephen) ; A. D. Lee, From Rome to Byzantium AD 363 to 565 (Sylvain Janniard) ; A. Perrot (dir.), Les chrétiens et l’hellénisme (Camille Gerzaguet) ; I. Wood, The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages (Agnès Graceffa)

Régions

C. Balmelle et al., Carthage, colline de l’Odéon (Nicolas Lamare) ; R. Bockmann, Capital continuous (François Baratte) ; N. Gauthier, E. Marin, F. Prévot (dir.), Salona IV. Inscriptions de Salone chrétienne iv^e-vii^e siècles (Marc Heijmans) ; A. G. López, Shenoute of Atripe and the uses of poverty (Christel Freu) ; P. Thonemann (dir.), Roman Phrygia (Sylvain Destephen)

Philologie et sources

Amphiloque d’Iconium, Homélies. Tome I. Homélies 1-5, Amphiloque d’Iconium, Homélies. Tome II. Homélies 6-10 (Sylvain Destephen) ; I. Bochet (dir.), Augustin philosophe et prédicateur (Pierre Descotes) ; J. Chameroy, Les fouilles de la cathédrale de Rouen, 1985-1993. Tome 1, Le numéraire antique (Vincent Drost) ; C. Corbo, Constitutio Antoniniana (Antonino Metro) ; Eunape de Sardes, Vies des philosophes et des sophistes (François Paschoud)