Date/Time
Date(s) - 12 Apr 2013
11:00 AM - 12:45 PM
Location
Italian Academy - Columbia University
Category(ies) No Categories
The Center for the Ancient Mediterranean presents:
“Households, Bishops, and War in Late Antique Italy,” A lecture by Kristina Sessa (Ohio State University).
Friday, April 12 at 11 a.m.
5th Floor Conference Room, Italian Academy
A short reception will follow. All are welcome!
How did the bishop of Rome become one of late antique Italy’s most powerful and preeminent leaders? And how was this leadership challenged – and reshaped – during periods of prolonged crisis, such as war? Whereas past scholarship has focused on the Roman bishop’s rise as a civic official, his erection of churches, or his ideological formation as Peter’s heir, this paper presents an alternative approach. It will suggest that the Roman bishop’s relationship to the domestic sphere played a central and defining role in his emergence as a strong ecclesiastical official in fifth and sixth-century Italy. The first section of the paper will discuss household management as a key discourse of Roman episcopal authority. Then, through two case studies, it will examine some of the challenges that Roman bishops encountered – and endeavored to surmount – when they tried to govern the households of other women and men. The last section will examine how the Gothic War (535-552/4) created a string of domestic crises for the Roman bishop Pelagius I (556-561). Looking forward toward a new project on the Justinianic Wars and their impact on religious and social experience, the paper will conclude with some speculative remarks about church life and war in sixth-century Italy.