Clarifying the Eclipse: Ascetics, Politics, and the Poetics of Power in Post-Roman Iberia
This essay examines a literary exchange between the Visigothic poet-king Sisebut (612-621 AD) and his scholar-bishop Isidore of Seville following an anomalous sequence of eclipses. After Sisebut commissioned a scientific treatise from Isidore on such natural phenomena, he responded to the bishop�...
| Auteur principal: | |
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| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Publié: |
[2019]
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| Dans: |
Vigiliae Christianae
Année: 2019, Volume: 73, Numéro: 5, Pages: 531-563 |
| Classifications IxTheo: | CD Christianisme et culture CG Christianisme et politique KAD Haut Moyen Âge KBH Péninsule Ibérique KCA Monachisme; ordres religieux |
| Sujets non-standardisés: | B
Latin poetry
B early medieval politics B Isidore of Seville B Visigothic Kingdom B Asceticism B Sisebut |
| Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Résumé: | This essay examines a literary exchange between the Visigothic poet-king Sisebut (612-621 AD) and his scholar-bishop Isidore of Seville following an anomalous sequence of eclipses. After Sisebut commissioned a scientific treatise from Isidore on such natural phenomena, he responded to the bishop's prose with a short poem on lunar eclipses (De eclipsi lunae). This study interprets the exchange of texts not as a literary game, but as high-stakes political correspondence. It situates the king's verses in an ongoing process of cultural construction in Visigothic Spain, led prominently by Isidore himself, but also tied to a rising ascetic movement. It argues that Sisebut was attuned to Isidore's designs to manage the discourses through which Christian power was proclaimed, and shows how the king attempted to versify in accord with scientific truth so as to fit within Isidore's ascetic intellectual program. |
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| ISSN: | 1570-0720 |
| Contient: | Enthalten in: Vigiliae Christianae
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15700720-12341411 |
