Jean-Félix Aubé-Pronce (Univ. Quebec, Montreal), “Were the Carolingians Pseudo-editing?”
Thirty years ago, Mark Vessey claimed that Erasmus was editing the Church fathers in a modern and “scientific” manner. In contrast, in the Middle Ages, “every scribe or writer would be in a position to be his own ‘editor’ of the patristic canon.” The Carolingians demonstrated such capability. We found evidence that the De Excidio Hierosolomytano was ascribed to Josephus in the Early Middle Ages. However, from the second quarter of the ninth century, manuscripts increasingly attributed this work to Hegesippus. In some manuscripts, Josephus was even replaced by this moniker in an ungraceful manner. Despite not being a Church father, Josephus’ influence was significant and recognized throughout Christendom. This begs the question: “Did the Carolingians edit the De Excidio and, if so, how ?” While this change of authorship is striking, we risk to miss the forest for the trees. Numerous annotations are frequently shared between manuscripts produced in West Francia between the second quarter and the middle of the ninth century. Therefore, we aim to demonstrate, using statistics derived from the complete corpus of surviving De Excidio manuscripts, compared to its counterpart the Bello Iudaico, that the Carolingians were full-fledged editors of this heavily Christianised version of the Jewish War.
Andrew Cain (Univ. Colorado, Boulder), “The Translator as Author in Late Latin Literature: Rufinus of Aquileia and his Historia monachorum in Aegypto“
Rufinus of Aquileia was one of the most prolific Christian translators of Latin Late Antiquity. Among the many notable titles in his extensive portfolio is the Historia monachorum in Aegypto (Inquiry about the Monks in Egypt), a creative and decorous rendering of an anonymous late fourth-century work of monastic hagiography in Greek which heroicizes some three dozen great monks of the Egyptian desert. In this paper I will first of all argue that Rufinus blurred the lines between translator and author by releasing the Historia monachorum under his own name—and thus ostensibly as his own composition—so as to bolster his credentials as an eyewitness narrator and thereby to offer his readers the illusion of near-direct access to the Egyptian monks. Building on this proposal, I then suggest that Rufinus composed this work, if not also to challenge contemporary western hagiographers such as Jerome and Sulpicius Severus, then certainly to rival Athanasius of Alexandria by setting forth a collective model of holiness which surpasses the single figure, Antony, who occupies the spotlight in his Greek Life of Antony.
Martina Carandino (Univ. Oxford), “The Destiny of Unborn Children in Late Antiquity”
Early Christian writers faced the difficult task of defining a doctrine of life and death. However, presenting a coherent and prescriptive eschatological framework within a deeply unsettled religious landscape offered noteworthy challenges, and led to countless disputes. This paper will explore in greater detail a controversial aspect of this debate: the destiny of unborn children. While it is important to recognize that not all writings on the subject have survived to the present day, it remains feasible to infer how intense the debate was at the time. Indeed, this discussion was not solely rooted in theological considerations: it emerged from issues directly stemming from everyday concerns. They wondered what the place of unborn children in the eschatological scheme was, and whether they had the right to resurrect and join the heavenly paradise. Should they not achieve salvation, there was a question about what the reason was for their damnation, and what sin they were punished for. Several late antique Christian writers – including Tertullian, Pelagius, and Augustine (to name a few) – firmly expressed their opinions on this subject. My paper aims to explore these different viewpoints and to better understand where the African rhetorician Pomerius (fl. ca. 500 C.E.), author of treatises De vita contemplativa and De anima, stood in this debate.
Catherine Conybeare (Bryn Mawr College), “Song, Self, and Sonority in Paulinus and Nicetas”
In a suggestive little treatise on philosophy and listening, Jean-Luc Nancy wrote, « Toute la presence sonore est ainsi faite d’un complexe de renvois dont le nouage est la resonance ou la « sonnance » du son » (À l’écoute, p. 36). This paper will play with the connection between “renvoi” and “resonance” as it vibrates within and between disparate but connected works of Paulinus of Nola and Nicetas of Remesiana. Carmen 17 of Paulinus is an extended propemptikon in Sapphics which sends Nicetas on his way back to Dacia after a visit to Campania and Paulinus. Its very length seems to delay departure, yet the end anticipates a spiritual return. Concordant song is a recurrent theme—as befits Nicetas, who delivered a sermon on the benefit of singing hymns. Each man in his own way reaches through the resonating space between source and ear to construct a harmonious cycle of returns to God and the self into which all are invited.
Sabina Druce (UBC), “Influence and Critique: Origins and Impact of Henri-Xavier Arquillière’s L’Augustinisme Politique“
In 1926, Pope Pius XI publicly condemned the French far-right political group, L’Action française (AF). However, AF had held itself as a Catholic movement since its founding in 1899. It promoted integralism, the belief that the Catholic faith should be the foundation of law and society. Clergy participating in the league presented their participation in AF, and therefore, the temporal and political domains, as the logical compliment to their spiritual commitment to the Church. The troubled relationship between the Vatican and a fringe French nationalist group provides the setting in which Henri Xavier Arquillière proposed his theory of political Augustinism. While the Church in France allied itself with the secular state, condemning the AF movement, Arquillière grappled with the historical relationship between Church and State in the Middle Ages. Arquillière built on the thought of francophone historians Mandonnet and Giles in developing a theory of continuity between the medieval conception of connection between secular and ecclesiastical power and the vision of the state Augustine proposed in Book 19 of De civitate Dei. Arquillière’s book, L’Augustinisme politique: Essai sur la Formation des théories politiques du Moyen-Age, argues that the conflation of the powers of church and state in the Middle Ages results from political Augustinism. Understanding the enmeshment of the secular and ecclesiastical is, according to Arquillière, vital to understanding the Christianization of the West, and even the modern state. Arquillière intended his work on Augustine to contextualize a more extensive work on Gregory VII. However, L’Augustinisme politique became the better-known work. In my paper, I will examine the social and political milieu which led Arquillière to write L’Augustinisme politique and its reception in Francophone and Anglophone scholarship. Arquillière’s ideas have been lauded by some historians, such as Robert Markus and Conrad Leyser, as a foundational theory for interpreting Medieval understandings of Augustinian theology, particularly to understand any perceived conflict between Augustinian and Carolingian writings. On the other hand, Arquillière’s critics, for example Henri de Lubac, Wayne Hankey, and John Contreni, have criticized Arquillière for dominating analysis of Augustine’s reception with a thesis rooted in contemporary political argumentation. It’s undeniable that Arquillière’s work has been highly influential; this paper seeks to examine to what end.
Susanna Elm (Univ. California, Berkeley) “Civitas capta:’ Augustine’s Cross-references to Livy in the City of God (Book 1)”
Taking its cue from Augustine’s sermon On the Sack of Rome, this paper will focus on his use and reworking of the urbs capta motif, including in the City of God. Here, the figure of Job will also play a role as Augustine grapples with the impact of war and the sack of cities, Rome included, on the civilian population. The fact that now both those doing the attacking and those suffering the effects are Christian and that the city sacked is Rome deeply affect how he makes the urbs capta motif universal.
Simeon Faehndrich (UBC), “‘With a Familiar Violence’: Becoming the Reader in Augustine’s Confessions“
While reading Augustine’s Confessions, what is the reader’s relationship to the text supposed to be? In this paper I argue that Augustine invites the reader in first by witnessing a closet drama, then invites them into the performance—though also constantly maintaining the readers’ responsibility as individuals with techniques of epic theatre—to then finally let his text go into the drama of life. Augustine had seen the antithesis of invitational desire when Alypius’ opened his eyes at the roar of the gladiatorial games, and then going on to drag others there. But Alypius would also come to mimic many of Augustine’s conversional moments. At Augustine’s indication in Milan, Alypius reads the same passage, and follows a similar conversion. In fact, Augustine himself recounts hearing four conversion stories prior to his own conversion, mirroring what he provides Alypius—and his readers: a provisional script that asks the readers to actively inhabit a relational journey. Reading the Confessions is witnessing a drama between Augustine and his Master. In prayer, in dialogue, in action. But in his purest communion with the Other, Augustine nears silence, and he knows his textual presentation is far too constructed. He wishes the Manicheans could see him reading his beloved Psalms without his knowing. Yet Augustine uses this difficulty in precluding a passive audience. Rather than total emotional identification, intellectual distance forces the reader to take on the story in their own way. Augustine’s human attempt at story is imperfect in his own eyes, and could be interpreted as many ways as Moses’ texts, but with his knowledge of God’s directorial role, Augustine is able to hand the script off for a new stage. This paper is an exploration of how the Confessions works upon a circular economy (divine management) of reading/hearing/performing that Augustine conceives as follows: God calls out, Augustine hears, so Augustine cries out, others hear, and they cry out, and this is heard by God, bringing us full circle. It is desire that Augustine seeks to evoke in the reader, but this is a task fraught with moral hazards and which hits the limits of expression, and is ultimately beyond Augustine’s control. Augustine keeps the reader in a tension between fully accepting and rejecting the text by pulling them into a totalizing involvement, while at the same time, creating distance so the reader cannot be fully emotionally invested in his discourse—they must think about their attraction. Augustine ultimately sets the text adrift from his control as author to play out in the lived lives of his readers.
Marina Giani (Univ. Milan), “Augustine’s Reception in Medieval Lexicography: An Overview through Case Studies”
The formation of lexica and glossaries in the early Middle Ages remains a largely obscure process. Various theories have been put forward, emphasising, for instance, continuity with the tools for learning Latin in the ancient school, or the formation as glossae collectae from the margins of manuscripts of Bibles and Classics. In fact, we preserve numerous lexica and glossaries in early medieval codices, heirs to both classical scholarly tradition and Late-antique exegetical tools. This paper, starting from the Liber glossarum to the collections of Papias and other medieval lexicographers, aims at mapping the circulation of materials explicitly attributed to Augustine and found in glossaries and vocabularies, in order to study the diffusion and impact of the Bishop of Hippo’s thought on medieval linguistic instruments.
Mor Hajbi (Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem), “The Post-Augustinians on Time, History, and Eschatology”
In his paper “Opus Imperfectum: Augustine and his Readers, 426-435 A.D.,” Mark Vessey examined Augustine’s theological reception, and asked: how did Augustine and his followers prepare for the post-Augustinian era in Latin literature? How did his readers, sympathetic or critical, adjust to the new reality of his now never-to-be-extended literary oeuvre? And how did they begin to adjust that oeuvre to their own ends? The essay follows a trail of the readerly reactions by Florus of Hadrumetum, Prosper of Aquitaine, and Vincent of Lérins and details the constructions of the opus Augustinianum. Vessey claims that Augustine’s later works and his revisions of existing works are “textual bridges” designed to carry Latin readers over the rift between the saeculum Augustinianum and the succeeding age. Augustine’s success was partial and dependent upon the readers’ personal circumstances. Building on Vessey’s seminal paper, my doctoral project studies many of the same questions, but widens the scope of the historical figures examined and the number of theological issues studied. In this paper, I will examine Augustine’s perception of time, apocalypse, eschatology, and history. I shall claim that his novel ideas were only partially followed by his closest associates, each according to their own circumstances – a conclusion much resembling that of Mark Vessey. What follows is a comparison of a few intellectual figures: Paulus Orosius, Quodvultdeus of Carthage, Prosper of Aquitaine, and Salvian of Marseille. I shall present their sources of intellectual influence and social attachments in order to reconstruct an intellectual network of the fifth-century West. Thus, I aim to place Augustine in his historical circumstances, elevate neglected historical figures, and expose another layer of the fifth-century intellectual world.
Sean Hannan (MacEwan Univ.), “Rereading Augustine as Algerian”
One of the defining features of Augustine’s legacy is his Africanness, which is usually prized not for Africa’s own sake, but rather as a curious reminder of how much medieval ‘European’ Christianity owes to someone who lived most of his life in what’s now Algeria and Tunisia. Over the last few decades, however, there have been increasing attempts (made by scholars like Karla Pollmann, Amina Boukail, Claudia Gronemann, and Isabel Trevor) to resituate Augustine as Algerian, whether as a mere “provocation” or as a more substantive attempt at putting Augustinian ideas into conversation with indigenous Amazigh or postcolonial culture and literature. Even the website of the Algerian Embassy to the United States boasts of Augustine as an Algerian and the “bard of the unified official church.” Inspired most of all by Gronemann’s work and Assia Djebar’s sly appeal to Augustine in her literary quasi-autobiography Fantasia: an Algerian Crusade, my paper will argue for a more constructive revival of Augustine’s Algerian legacy, with an eye to exploring how Augustine, living a double life as homo afer and homo romanus, was able to make the case for emancipatory universal values while retaining his uniquely North African situatedness.
Sabrina Inowlocki (Univ. Haifa), “Enemas, Parasites, and the Empty Book: To Write or Not to Write as a Philosopher in the Roman World”
The question of the author, dead or alive, has been the subject of much scholarship since the works of Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes. Yet the ancients’ understanding of this question seems to have differed from ours at a basic level. Since Plato’s Phaedrus, the concerns about the hazards associated with writing were widespread. As some philosophers self-consciously decided not to write, others left behind massive literary production. A notable citation from Longinus found in Porphyry’s Vita Plotini 20, reveals that a clear distinction was drawn between philosophers who wrote and those who refrained from it. In this passage, Longinus presents a paradox: philosophers who eschewed writing could, in some cases, be the most erudite and well-versed individuals, as seen in certain Peripatetics. Conversely, those considered writers might produce insignificant works, such as compilations and treatises on exceedingly niche topics. This paper aims to explore this paradox, using it as a launching point to gain a deeper insight into how late ancient authors and philosophers, both Christian and non-Christian, grappled with the fundamental question: “qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?”
Anika Islam (UBC), “‘Together We Shall Carry the Cross (Just Each in His Own Way)’: Repentance and Salvation in Augustine’s Confessions and Their Incarnations in Christian Literature”
Saint Augustine’s Confessions is in part a book of deep repentance in search of salvation—what Augustine terms the “divine grace.” As his prestige as a Church father grew in the centuries that followed, the Christian literary and reformative canon succeeding the patristic age dealt heavily with the appropriations and reshapings of this concept. What once seemed such a neatly unifying idea in Augustinian theology took on several different angles in interpretation as Christianity continued to break off and branch out into its several factions. What does divine grace mean for Martin Luther as he invoked Augustine’s name in his advocacy for the Protestant Reformation? How does John Calvin make use of divine grace to inform his own theory of irresistible grace during the creation of Calvinism? This paper aims to explore the idea of repentance and salvation especially through the mode of divine grace as it was received and cemented into the Christian literary tradition after the age of Augustine, and the impact his Confessions specifically had in making this topic so popular. Additionally, this paper investigates the different ways and factions into which these ideas were adopted, the overarching themes as well as the subtle differences.
Jesse Keskiaho (Univ. Helsinki), “The Nature of the Soul from Augustine to Gregory the Great”
Augustine defined the soul as incorporeal (immaterial), and from the late fifth century onwards that definition seems to have stuck. Claudianus Mamertus famously opposed Faustus of Riez, who imagined the soul as corporeal, and everyone writing on the soul subsequently agreed that it was incorporeal. However, what the soul’s incorporeality meant was another matter. Previous scholarship has approached the early development of ideas about the soul by discussing the influence of texts or schools of philosophy. The motivations that different authors had for putting forward certain views about the soul have received less attention. While it is generally well understood that incorporeality was central to Augustine’s anthropology and theology, its meanings in late antiquity and early middle ages have been less explored. Faustus, for example, felt that the reality of postmortem punishment was easier to accept if the soul was in some way material. In this paper I will look at fifth- and sixth-century Latin discussions about the soul, culminating in the writings of Gregory the Great, and show how Augustinian incorporeality was often accepted yet tempered to accommodate pastoral concerns. At the same time, others chose to accentuate incorporeality, pursuing intellectual aims. Both modes of reading Augustinian thought on the incorporeality of the soul would find continuation in the early Middle Ages.
Conrad Leyser (Univ. Oxford), “Unfinished Business: Augustine and his Monastic Readers, 425-435”
My title refers to Mark Vessey’s essay “Opus imperfectum: Augustine and his readers, 425-435.” I will follow in the footsteps of this pioneering piece, looking at the ways in which Augustine and his biographer and literary executor Possidius curated Augustine’s works. My particular focus will be the so-called Rule of Augustine, which has been dated to the 390s since the magisterial intervention of Luc Verheijen in the 1960s. I will argue that the Rule fits better in the context of the late 420s, as Augustine and Possidius sought to fix his legacy, and to quiet concern about his teachings as expressed by monks in North Africa and southern Gaul.
Riccardo Macchioro (Univ. Toronto), “The Words of the Fathers, the Words of the Compiler: Patristic Texts in Paul the Deacon’s Homiliary”
Patristic homiliaries are a most prominent example of compilative works in the Middle Ages, and a particular influential one. As collections of patristic texts (specifically, sermons) they raise the problem of authority at a multiple level, especially if we know the name of the compiler. This is the case, for instance, of the renowned Homiliary of Paul the Deacon (assembled by the Lombard monk towards the end of the 8th century), bu its compilation and transmission criteria have not yet been thoroughly explored. Several questions still lie unanswered: a) Which text of the Fathers features in the Homiliary? Scholarship has for long inclined to believe that Paul was a mere copyist; more recently is has been suggested that he consistently reworked the texts he had available in his sources. But – as shown by work by Zachary Guiliano and myself – the truth is, there is no rule, and his attitude needs to be ascertained on a case-by-case basis. b) Was the authority of the Fathers preserved in later copies of the Homiliary, or did copyists modify the texts of the homilies? And c) To which extent is the name of the authoritative compiler – Paul the Deacon – transmitted in later manuscripts? Does this preserve the original structure of Paul’s compilation, making copyists less keen on modifying the selection of patristic homilies, and/or their text? This paper will address these questions by exploring overlooked manuscript evidence, hoping to contribute helpful insights to their solution.
Neil McLynn (Univ. Oxford), “Marcella’s Jerome”
This paper responds to Mark Vessey’s seminal article on ‘Jerome’s Origen’ on Jerome’s edition of his letters Ad Marcellam, and to the discussion that this has generated, in the works of Andrew Cain in particular.The first part will re-examine the evidence for the date and context of publication, and will propose something more precise (and slightly earlier) than the current consensus has accepted. This in turn will yield suggestions about some of the constraints operating upon Jerome both when conducting the correspondence and when publishing it; his canvas, it will be argued, was considerably less blank than Vessey allowed. A second section will explore the indications concerning relations between Marcella and Jerome in the early years after his establishment in Bethlehem (especially the prefaces to his commentary on Galatians, and the letter attributed to Paula and Eustochium), and will argue for a position somewhere between the opposite views championed by Nautin (claiming a complete severance) and Letsch‐Brunner and the current mainstream, who assume more or less untroubled continuity of friendship. Examination of the questions answered in Ep. 59 to Marcella will provide corroboration for this more nuanced position. A final section will look briefly at the Origenist controversy as it developed in Rome, and it will be suggested that Jerome’s influence is not required to explain the activities of his Roman acquaintances, particularly Marcella.
James J. O’Donnell (Arizona State Univ.), “What Was Christianity?” [keynote lecture]
Everyone knows what Christianity is. Could we be wrong? One way to begin to answer that question is to disregard everything we know about things called Christianity after, say, 28 August 430 C.E. and ask a focused question: What was Christianity?
Hilmar Pabel (Simon Fraser Univ.), “Who Owns History? Peter Canisius’ Catholic Claim on Ancient Christianity against Protestant Revisionists”
In 1577, Peter Canisius, SJ (1521-1597), published his massive treatise on the Blessed Virgin Mary, De Maria Virgini incomparabili et Dei genetrice sacrosancta, libri quinti. A revised edition appeared in 1583 as the second of two installments in Commentariorum de verbi Dei corruptelis, tomi duo. Canisius concluded what he called his bellum Marianum with a history in reverse of Marian devotion. He worked his way backwards from Renaissance to Ancient Christianity to assert the validity of Mary’s intercessory stature among Christians. His targeted opponents were the Magdeburg Centuriators, a team of Lutheran historians, and any Protestant theologians who rejected the authority of the historical record of Marian intercession. Against their impious revisionism Canisius vehemently and tendentiously laid claim to ancient Christian liturgy and theology as evidence for a correct Catholic reading and ownership of history.
Matthieu Pignot (Univ. Namur), “Rediscovering the Enchiridion of Rufinus of Aquileia”
After his return to Italy at the end of the fourth century CE, Rufinus embarked on a large project of translating Greek texts for his network of Latin-speaking friends. This activity was directly linked to the recent outbreak of the Origenist controversy and Rufinus’ defence of Origen and his supporters. In this context, Rufinus composed a work entitled Enchiridion or Anulus, a manual which he sent to an aristocratic woman from the family of the Roman senator Apronianus, a close friend of Rufinus. In the preface, Rufinus details the content of his work: the Sentences of Sextus, which some attribute to the bishop and martyr Sixtus of Rome, translated into Latin, followed by an additional selection of sayings. The Sentences of Sextus are well-known: thought to have been composed at the turn of the second century in a Christian milieu in Alexandria, they were known and praised by Origen. The second part of the Enchiridion, however, is considered lost: scholars have argued that it might have contained sayings of Evagrius Ponticus. Jerome knew the full work: in the early 410s, he harshly criticised Rufinus’ Enchiridion as a translation of a pagan work and related it to the promotion of apatheia and impeccantia. Recently, a new perusal of all extant manuscripts of Rufinus’ Enchiridion (68 in total) has made it possible to identify a single manuscript, copied in late fourteenth-century Bohemia, which contains both parts of Rufinus’ work intact. The discovery shows that the second selection of sayings mentioned by Rufinus in his preface corresponds to a Latin translation of the Greek Pythagorean Sentences, a gnomological collection closely related to the Sentences of Sextus. After a presentation of the newly discovered text, this paper will discuss the impact of the discovery for our understanding of the troubled context in which the Enchiridion was composed, between the Origenist and Pelagian controversies and the conflict opposing Jerome to Rufinus.
Éric Rebillard (Cornell Univ.), “Redescribing the Triumph of Christianity”
Building on Stanley Stowers’ theory of Mediterranean religion, cognitive science of religion, and Peter Heather’s new understanding of Christianization, I suggest that the notion of triumph of Christianity ought to be broken down into two distinct elements. The first one is the political hegemony achieved by bishops with the support of the imperial state, a “triumph” that had important consequence for the empire but not for “religion.” The second one is the use of Christian signs in what cognitive science of religion describes as cognitively entrenched religious representations. This paper will present the theoretical prolegomena that ground this redescription.
Paolo Sachet (Univ. Geneva), “Jerome’s Letters Hit the Press: A Reappraisal of the First Five Editions”
Jerome’s official debut on the printed book market came relatively late but was certainly sensational. Within a couple years, between 1468 and 1470, readers were suddenly offered a bulky collection of the saint’s letters, translations and short treatises in no less than five different editions produced in Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. Their chronological order and interdependence are unclear. The uncertainty has given rise to numerous interpretations about the veritable editio princeps: was it that attributed to Sixtus Riessinger in Rome or that published, also in the Eternal City, by Schweynheym and Pannartz in December 1468? In a recent article, Paul Needham has convincingly ruled in favour of the latter. This paper offers further proofs for Needham’s theory and attempts to shed new light on the three subsequent editions (Strasbourg ca. 1469, Rome 1470, and Mainz 1470). On the one hand, I will take advantage of the description of textual and paratextual contents in the AGAPE database to draw comparison and detect patterns. On the other, I will analyse the material evidence of one particular copy of the 1470 Roman edition now held in Basel University Library.
Josh Timmermann (UBC), “Jesus as Writer? The Pericope adulterae in Late Antique and Early Medieval Exegesis and Modern Biblical Criticism”
For well over a century, scholars of the “Historical Jesus” – both secular and religiously committed – have sought to piece together the authentic words and ideas of the early first-century CE Galilean preacher and cult leader Jesus of Nazareth. For some scholars a radical apocalypticist, for others a Cynic sage, a Jewish reformer, or perhaps just a rather typical magician/exorcist with messianic proclivities, Jesus remains ultimately a shadowy, archly cryptic figure whose social identity and core message(s) are obscured by disharmonious textual layers that accrued decades after his death ca. 30/33 CE. Frustrating any efforts at a more definitive image of Jesus is the fact that he – unlike Paul and the authors of the Gospels, Acts, and the other texts that came to make up the New Testament – wrote nothing…or rather, nothing that survives intact. For in one of the most famous yet controversial passages in John’s Gospel, the so-called Pericope adulterae (7:53–8:11, judged by many modern biblical critics to be a later interpolation, though adopted in the Vulgate despite Jerome noting its absence in some textual witnesses), Jesus did write something – although, alas, with his finger in the dirt, and unfortunately the Johannine evangelist (or interpolator) does not tell us what Jesus was writing while quarrelling aloud with the Pharisees and scribes concerning the treatment of a woman accused of adultery. As a canon of Christian literature and authoritative Christian writers – scriptural and extra-scriptural – gradually took shape between the fourth century and the ninth, what sense did Latin exegetes from Augustine and Jerome to Bede and Alcuin of York make of this striking, singular example of Jesus as writer – or author? What did they think he wrote with his finger on the ground?
Graeme Ward (Univ. Tübingen), “Orosius and the Reading of Ancient Christian History in Eleventh-Century France”
Orosius’s Histories against the Pagans (completed c. 418) was one of the most widely diffused works of Christian historiography in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Work on the text’s extensive reception has focused on how different authors, from the fifth century onwards, drew on Orosius not only as a source of information but also as a model for how to write history. As such, Orosius has been situated within the rhetorical tradition of historiography. My paper, by contrast, is concerned with reading rather than writing; it looks to grammar instead of rhetoric. In what contexts did readers encounter Orosius’s Histories? How did they approach and make sense of the text? What did they know of Orosius’s biography or the context of his work’s creation? To explore these questions, I will focus primarily on one specific copy of the Histories produced at the southern French abbey of Moissac c. 1050 (Paris BnF lat. 4871). I will pay close attention to the array of paratexts (such as annotations and accessus) which served to frame the global meaning of the text as well as gloss its contents. Furthermore, I will trace parallels with other annotated copies of Orosius, produced around about the same time in different, mostly northern French monastic centres. Taken together, these codices help us refine our understanding of the authority of Orosius, as perceived by medieval readers in general and not writers of history in particular.
Crispin Wellburn (UBC), “The Hun and the Holy Man: The Reception and Transformation of Leo the Great’s Meeting with Attila the Hun”
Attila the Hun was one of the most dangerous threats to the territories of the Roman empire in Late Antiquity. In 452, the conqueror pushed south into Italy, presenting a novel danger to the safety of the city and citizens of Rome. Yet there was no sack of Rome by Attila in 452, he was repelled, not by military means but by a diplomatic delegation comprised of Roman officials, who were accompanied by the bishop of Rome, Pope Leo. In this paper, I will examine how the meeting between Leo the Great and Attila was re-invented by its recipients over the centuries, how it was transformed from Prosper’s flattering depiction of Leo as a master diplomat and civic bishop, to a legendary encounter where Leo is a conduit for apostles Peter and Paul who descend from the heavens to banish Attila from Italy. I argue that this transformation occurred because it became an exemplar for Leo’s papal legacy and spiritual power, or more accurately, Leo’s legacy in the minds of his successors and later Carolingian historians.