Kay Boers
Dr. Kay Boers is employed as Lecturer in Ancient and Medieval History by the Department of History and Art History (Faculty of Humanities) at Utrecht University. He is a board member of the Utrecht University Centre for Medieval Studies and affiliated with the Toletum Red para la investigación sobre la Península Ibérica en la Antigüedad. He specializes in various aspects of Late Antique literature and culture (i.e. from 150 to 750 CE) which includes work on a variety of topics such as citizenship, erasure, violence, and victimhood.
His current research focuses on the global seventh-century and investigates the cultural and religious interactions of this period from a comparative and transregional perspective with a heavy emphasis on the relation between (inter)text and community.
PhD-Thesis: CIVIS. Rhetoricity, Citizens, and Citizenship in Seventh-Century Hispania
This PhD-Thesis, financed by the Faculty of Humanities and the Dutch Research Council (NWO), investigates how Christians in seventh-century Hispania used the term "civis" to structure heuristic and rhetorical argument, and explores how literary technicians strategically used the term's rhetoricity to understand and alter the social, political and religious realities of their contemporaries.
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Leonard Rutgers (Utrecht University, Prof. dr. Peter Schrijver (Utrecht University), Dr. Janneke Raaijmakers (Utrecht University, and † 2021)
Address: Utrecht University
Drift 6
Room 2.17
3512 BS
Utrecht, The Netherlands
His current research focuses on the global seventh-century and investigates the cultural and religious interactions of this period from a comparative and transregional perspective with a heavy emphasis on the relation between (inter)text and community.
PhD-Thesis: CIVIS. Rhetoricity, Citizens, and Citizenship in Seventh-Century Hispania
This PhD-Thesis, financed by the Faculty of Humanities and the Dutch Research Council (NWO), investigates how Christians in seventh-century Hispania used the term "civis" to structure heuristic and rhetorical argument, and explores how literary technicians strategically used the term's rhetoricity to understand and alter the social, political and religious realities of their contemporaries.
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Leonard Rutgers (Utrecht University, Prof. dr. Peter Schrijver (Utrecht University), Dr. Janneke Raaijmakers (Utrecht University, and † 2021)
Address: Utrecht University
Drift 6
Room 2.17
3512 BS
Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Books by Kay Boers
TRIVENT publishing
June 2024
Out now in Open Access: https://trivent-publishing.eu/home/185-345-erasure-in-late-antiquity.html#/27-cover-paperback
Erasure was, paradoxically, a conspicuous phenomenon in Late Antiquity. This is evidenced by the practices associated with so-called damnatio memoriae, changes in physical space, and broad processes of religious and cultural change. While the theme of erasure is attracting increased interest across a wide range of disciplines, there have been few attempts to consider erasure as a more general phenomenon, to study it from a multidisciplinary perspective and to ask what, if anything, was unique about erasure in Late Antiquity?
This volume, edited by Kay Boers, Becca Grose, Rebecca Usherwood, and Guy Walker, brings together eight essays, each reflecting on the phenomenon of erasure and the various methodologies used in its investigation. Taking a broad theoretical, chronological, and thematic scope, the contributions to this volume reflect on the processes of erasure, and the strategies, agencies, and authorities behind them. Collectively, the contributions seek to understand erasure as a flexible and diverse phenomenon that is identifiable in various discursive fields of late antique visual, material, and textual cultures.
Earmarked for publication. To consult the original version, please direct your request to K.Boers@uu.nl or contact Utrecht University Library for accessing the thesis archived in the repository (https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/452209)
Publications by Kay Boers
Pre-print. To consult, please contact k.boers@uu.nl
Dissertation Chapters by Kay Boers
Conference Presentations by Kay Boers
Materials in Medieval and Early Modern Societies
7 November 2024, 10.00-16.00 | Utrecht University Library, sixth floor, Bucheliuszaal
July 3rd 2024
This round table launches and expands on the edited volume titled Constantinople through the Ages: Visuality and Urban Perspectives from Prehistory to the Present Age, in the series Cultural Interactions in the Mediterranean (Brill). Starting with the medieval 'visible city', the round table aims to map Constantinople as a Mediterranean and cosmopolitan centre, shaped by geographical circumstances and human actors, in situations of migration, trade, diplomacy, and conflict. The discussion focuses on the long lines of history: from the geological underground and its position between various traffic roads to the repercussions on the city's existence as the second political centre of Turkey in the 20th century, to its rise as a global city in the 21st century.
The participants will address the interaction between the layers of time and culture: how later inhabitants received, and appropriated, the legacy of their predecessors; how disputes between divided groups were contested, and how these marked the visual remains of the city, and how this heritage has been perceived and (ab)used. Contributions that deal with formative, yet less tangible, events of the city's history, address the spatial organisation and/or accessibility of the material, and reflect on the parallels between past situations and the present.
Participants include Kay Boers (Universiteit Utrecht), Diederik Burgersdijk (Universiteit Utrecht), Mark Humphries (Swansea University), and Shaun Tougher (Cardiff University).
"Textual Communities in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages:
Formation, Influence, and Afterlife"
Jerusalem, 5-7 September 2023
at The Hebrew University and Institute for Advanced Studies
https://www.facebook.com/people/Forum-of-Early-Medieval-Studies/100067416064151/
https://www.youtube.com/@theisraeliforumofearlymedi8123/featured
Earmarked for publication
TRIVENT publishing
June 2024
Out now in Open Access: https://trivent-publishing.eu/home/185-345-erasure-in-late-antiquity.html#/27-cover-paperback
Erasure was, paradoxically, a conspicuous phenomenon in Late Antiquity. This is evidenced by the practices associated with so-called damnatio memoriae, changes in physical space, and broad processes of religious and cultural change. While the theme of erasure is attracting increased interest across a wide range of disciplines, there have been few attempts to consider erasure as a more general phenomenon, to study it from a multidisciplinary perspective and to ask what, if anything, was unique about erasure in Late Antiquity?
This volume, edited by Kay Boers, Becca Grose, Rebecca Usherwood, and Guy Walker, brings together eight essays, each reflecting on the phenomenon of erasure and the various methodologies used in its investigation. Taking a broad theoretical, chronological, and thematic scope, the contributions to this volume reflect on the processes of erasure, and the strategies, agencies, and authorities behind them. Collectively, the contributions seek to understand erasure as a flexible and diverse phenomenon that is identifiable in various discursive fields of late antique visual, material, and textual cultures.
Earmarked for publication. To consult the original version, please direct your request to K.Boers@uu.nl or contact Utrecht University Library for accessing the thesis archived in the repository (https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/452209)
Pre-print. To consult, please contact k.boers@uu.nl
Materials in Medieval and Early Modern Societies
7 November 2024, 10.00-16.00 | Utrecht University Library, sixth floor, Bucheliuszaal
July 3rd 2024
This round table launches and expands on the edited volume titled Constantinople through the Ages: Visuality and Urban Perspectives from Prehistory to the Present Age, in the series Cultural Interactions in the Mediterranean (Brill). Starting with the medieval 'visible city', the round table aims to map Constantinople as a Mediterranean and cosmopolitan centre, shaped by geographical circumstances and human actors, in situations of migration, trade, diplomacy, and conflict. The discussion focuses on the long lines of history: from the geological underground and its position between various traffic roads to the repercussions on the city's existence as the second political centre of Turkey in the 20th century, to its rise as a global city in the 21st century.
The participants will address the interaction between the layers of time and culture: how later inhabitants received, and appropriated, the legacy of their predecessors; how disputes between divided groups were contested, and how these marked the visual remains of the city, and how this heritage has been perceived and (ab)used. Contributions that deal with formative, yet less tangible, events of the city's history, address the spatial organisation and/or accessibility of the material, and reflect on the parallels between past situations and the present.
Participants include Kay Boers (Universiteit Utrecht), Diederik Burgersdijk (Universiteit Utrecht), Mark Humphries (Swansea University), and Shaun Tougher (Cardiff University).
"Textual Communities in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages:
Formation, Influence, and Afterlife"
Jerusalem, 5-7 September 2023
at The Hebrew University and Institute for Advanced Studies
https://www.facebook.com/people/Forum-of-Early-Medieval-Studies/100067416064151/
https://www.youtube.com/@theisraeliforumofearlymedi8123/featured
Earmarked for publication
University of Leeds
Parkinson Building, B08
"The Formation of Discourse Communities in 7th-century Iberia"
Our contribution to this seminar will focus on the formation of discourse communities in the early Middle Ages. We will explore how these groups emerge, identify the evidence for the formation and maintenance of these groups, and critically interrogate modern models and assumptions about these processes. We will focus on two themes: the dynamics by which these groups formed or converged in the early Middle Ages, and the formation or identification of discourse communities by modern scholars as a heuristic tool to understand late-antique social dynamics.
While the recent work of Irene van Renswoude and Rutger Kramer has highlighted the use of discourse communities as a model to understand Carolingian practices of disputation, we investigate how well it can help us investigate communication practices in earlier medieval communities that are less associated with reformist tendencies. The two case studies we will present will suggest that early medieval discourse communities were neither static nor uniform, even if they were couched in those terms. Although participants deployed images and language they thought their peers would understand and (mostly) accept, this was not necessarily true nor did the use of shared language necessarily necessitate that a contributor or contribution would be accepted by others. Moreover, membership in the same discourse community did not necessitate an equal or shared form of participation and not all participants would necessarily have realized or intended that their work would be read within any given community. By comparing our two case studies, we will identify a series of similarities and differences, and raise some questions about the extent to which these different dynamics can usefully be studied together as early medieval discourse communities or if we need new terms and distinctions to comparatively approach early-medieval dynamics.
We warmly invite participants to reflect with us on the value of discourse community as a concept, its use in understanding and comparing early-medieval communication and debate, and how these problems intersect with their own research.
Abstract
This paper investigates and compares the seventh-century lives of St. Desiderius of Vienne and their early medieval reception. It seeks to explain how and why Desiderius was “good to think with” in seventh-century Gaul and Hispania and attempts to identify the objectives of the various literary representations of the bishop’s life. By navigating the intertextual connectivity of these representations, the paper will expose various intersecting definitions of episcopal authority and norms governing its proper relationship with kings and other figures of worldly authority. In addition, this paper will demonstrate how in the subsequent reception of the various lives of Desiderius, authors not only tended to promote their own spiritually and politically functional interpretations of the bishop’s career, they also took inspiration from the rhetorical structures of these lives as a means to fashion new texts on other bishops, and as a means to explore their own tense relationships with figures of worldly authority
Theme: Reflections
This paper investigates how seventh century Hispano-Roman churchmen used the logic of citizen wellbeing to articulate and evaluate the exercise of episcopal and royal power. It proposes that within the discourse community of the seventh century church and court, cives were used as a special and privileged group whose variable state of wellbeing functioned as a soundboard to articulate royal and episcopal power, and served as a prism through which past and contemporary political tensions could be interpreted, represented and addressed. As a case study, this paper will discuss how churchmen used the lexeme civis to frame and reevaluate the reign of king Leovigild (r. 568 – 586 CE), exposing how the contested memory of this Arian king’s rule presents a paradigmatic example of how civis and related citizenship terminology could be mobilized to (A) articulate and critique royal authority in the present, and (B) reflect on the preconditions for subject-wellbeing.
Programme
Amsterdam, Friday 4 November
Part 1: Oudemanhuispoort
9.30-10.00 Registration, coffee/tea
10.00-10.10 Welcome by UvA (Serena Ferente)
10.10-10.30 Welcome by Onderzoekschool Mediëvistiek (Claire Weeda)
10.30-11.15 Plenary 1: Keynote Gerard Wiegers: Between “Medieval” Convivencia and forced conversion: Granada.
11.15-11.30 Break
11.30-12.30 Sessions 1 | Optional: pop-up expo at Allard Pierson
Architectuur en pracht
Huub Kurstjens: Een historiografische benadering van Castel del Monte
Dirk Jan de Vries (ULeiden): Gezichten op gevels van huizen
Mats Dijkdrent (UCLouvain): Betekenissen van magnificentia
Words and religion
Iris Denis (RU): Distorted reflections? Exploring Pseudo-Augustinian sermons in early-medieval collections
Robin Moens (RWTH Aachen): Dictatus Papae en actiones papae. De reflectie van het denken van Gregorius VII in het pauselijk handelen (in Lotharingen)
Reflecting on the past
Kay Boers (UU): Remembering Leovigild: Reflecting on Citizens and Homoian Kings in Seventh Century Hispania
Alex Collin (UvA): From a Window to a Mirror: Thinking about the Hanse in Late Medieval and Early Modern Bremen
12.30-14.00 Lunch and book exhibition | Optional: pop-up expo at Allard Pierson
14.00-15.00 Sessions 2 | Optional: pop-up expo at Allard Pierson
Land, people and the economy
Silvio Ruberto (UU): Reflection in and on Audoin’s Vita Eligii: St Eligius’s Role as a Commentary on Sanctity in Merovingian Gaul and as Testing Ground for Ian Wood’s “Temple Society” Thesis
Jim van der Meulen (Ghent/Oxford): Lordship and Agrarian Capitalism in the Low Countries, c.1350 – c.1650
Rombert Stapel (IISH): Replication in a Humanities Context: Reconstructing the Population of the Low Countries in the Middle Ages and Beyond
Reflective art
Sumihiro Oki (UvA): Double Reflection: Konrad Witz and Jan van Eyck
Jesús Rodríguez Viejo (RUG): Lost Shine: An Eleventh-Century Spanish Chest-Reliquary and its Former Metallic Cover
15.00-15.30 Break / move to Singelkerk
Part 2: Singelkerk
15.30-16.30 Plenary 2: Annemieke Romein & Jan Burgers: Paleografie 2.0? AI en nieuwe mogelijkheden met digitale handschriftherkenning.
16.30-17.15 Concert: Ensemble Corona performs a selection of pieces from the 13th to the 15th centuries, accompanied by readings of medieval texts.
17.15-18.00 Drinks
When: Fr 21-10-2022
Where: University of Amsterdam, Bushuis E1.01E
An activity of the research group Cities and Settlements in the Ancient World, in cooperation with Late Antiquity and Byzantine Studies. Organised by Sofie Remijsen and Daniëlle Slootjes.
About
While major changes unfolded in the late-antique Mediterranean, life in cities and villages went on. Despite major regime changes, the arrival of new people or shifts in the (local) religious landscape, the inhabitants of the cities and villages were in their daily lives still faced with the same questions of how to feed their families and to protect them from visible and invisible threats. The ways they did so, show not only the impact of the big historical processes on their daily lives, but also their active participation in the shaping of a new world.
This workshop aims to counter the top-down perspective that often seems inevitable in the study of large-scale historical changes. Rather than looking at the role of civil, military and religious leaders, it aims to foreground the role of ‘ordinary people’ in urban and rural communities, that is the large group of individuals ranging from local patrons and clergymen to men and women without education or position of power. How did the big historical processes of Late Antiquity affect the daily life of these people? And can we to trace the agency of ordinary people to enact change in the sources?
Programme
welcome and coffee from 10h00
10h30-11h15: Lucinda Dirven: Reconstructing lived religion in late antique Egypt and Syria. Problems, Possibilities, Projects
11h15-12h00: Patricia Kret: Using amulets to cope with life. Religious change and the (dis)continuation of amulets in Late Antiquity
Lunch
13h15-14h00: Sofie Remijsen: Lived Time: Coping with change by means of temporal practices
14h00-14h45: Kay Boers: Navigating the Agency of Postclassical Citizens, 150 - 750 CE
Coffee
15h15-16h00: Mike Flohr: Making sense of silence? Tabernae in later antiquity
16h00-16h45: Stijn Heeren: From Germania inferior to Germania secunda and beyond. Urban collapse, rural depopulation and the agency of new immigrant communities in the Late Antique northwest frontier (3rd to 6th century)
the Early Middle Ages:
Formation, Influence, and Afterlife
Workshop
Jerusalem, 5-7 September 2023
Organized by Shachar Orlinski, Mor Hagbi, and Kay Boers
In Late Antiquity, various groups forged or adopted common idioms or language to communicate shared ideals. This IMC 2023 strand focuses on the formation of these discourse communities in the sixth and seventh centuries AD and queries how these groups emerge, what evidence we possess for formation and maintenance of these groups, and to what extent do modern models and assumptions about these processes inform our understanding of late-antique societies? To do so, we focus on two themes: the dynamics by which these late antique groups formed or converged, and the formation or identification of discourse communities by modern scholars as a heuristic tool to understand late-antique social dynamics. Late antique discourse communities were neither static nor uniform, even if they were couched in those terms. Although participants deployed images and language that he or she thought his or her peers would understand and accept, this was not necessarily true nor did the use of shared language necessarily necessitate that a contributor or contribution would be accepted by others. Moreover, membership in the same discourse community did not necessitate an equal or shared form of participation. We suggest that these dynamics and tensions may be particularly apparent during the emergence or fragmentation of new discourse communities, but welcome debate and contributions challenging this hypothesis.
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The OIKOS research groups Late Antiquity and Byzantine Studies and Cultural Interactions in the Ancient World organize a yearly masterclass: a one-day event organized by and for graduate and postgraduate students with the support of the coordinators of the research groups. This masterclass offers participating graduate students and PhD candidates an unique opportunity to interact-and share their ideas with leading scholars in the field.
In these sessions we hope to investigate conflicts revolving around, or making use of the concept of sacred space, and in particular debates surrounding the violent intrusion of ecclesiastical space. In the Late Antique and Early Medieval worlds, churches were generally regarded as sacred and were meant to be kept free from any kind of pollution, and in particular, worldly violence. The shedding of blood within its enclosed confines was not only regarded as a serious violation of the sacredness of the church building, but it was also a transgression of the legal provisions of asylum. These norms, however, did not stop people from using violence in churches and sometimes killings took place even inside the church’s most sacred areas. This peculiar type of violence not only created great scandal, it also produced highly charged debates extolling the victims and exonerating the perpetrators
In these papers we would like to shed more light on the conflicts leading to up to violence and bloodshed in sacred spaces, the debates produced by it, and the many ways in which these acts of violence could be represented in written and visual media, not only to cast blame on the perpetrators or acquit the victims, but also to articulate normative frameworks regarding the use of violence, the proper functioning of church and society, and each and everyone’s place in it. As such, we would like to focus in particular on the articulation and rhetorical use of space in the rendering of such a violent event and explore the discussions which took place in its aftermath. Secondly, we would like to explore the ways in which these conflicts could be represented in writing and art, and understand how these images informed and structured debates not only about normative frameworks regarding violence and correct behavior within the confines of the church, but also regarding the proper boundaries between society, church and state. Correspondingly, our papers intend to pursue questions such as: what were the repercussions of such a such a violent act? Did such a public act of violence have wider implications, for example involving public authorities such as a bishop or king? What rhetorical strategies were applied to narrate and explain such acts of violence? Who was to blame? How did one try to blame or exonerate a particular party? Was it possible to get away with murder in a church? How did these images of violence impact the articulation of the imagined inviolability and sacredness of the church and its adjoining spaces? And to what extent did the renditions and discussions following these acts of violence contribute to the in-and-exclusion of certain groups and individuals?
Session 1219: Erasure in Late Antiquity, I: Erasing Text and Image?
Erasure entails not only destruction but also replacement and rewriting. This session focus on the Eastern Roman Empire to explore what scholars miss when using the concept of erasure to understand late-antique and Byzantine manuscript palimpsests and altered mosaics. The first paper (Rossetto) explores the processes of erasure and overwriting identified in monastic palimpsests from the Sinai, highlighting overwritten and previously unknown texts. The second paper reinterprets mosaic alteration, through analysing changes as interactions with and subversions of local Islamic aniconic trends (Sauquet) and by considering how deliberate shuffling and restricted recognisability can reinforce and emphasise the visual and material properties of mosaics (Stroth).
Session 1619: Erasure in Late Antiquity, II: Erasure, Law, and the Late Roman Court
This session will focus on alternative forms of historical, cultural, and even legislative erasure at the very highest political level: the court of the emperors’ itself. The first paper (Kybett) explores the personification of the goddess Roma in the poetry of Claudian as a rebuttal to Prudentius’ Christian portrayal of the goddess and his attempts to erase pagan culture from the political sphere. The second (Rockwell) looks at the retroactive ‘erasure’ of legislation by Justinian and its repercussions on various aspects of 6th-century life. The third (Anderson) approaches the apparent visual erasure of royal status when Theodosian dynasts adopted penitent clothing in times of crisis.
Session 1719: Erasure in Late Antiquity, III: Erasing the Dead
This panel considers the role of erasure in shaping memories of violent or conflicting pasts in Late Antiquity. Hay considers the integration and assimilation of Roman and Jewish pasts on later Christian sarcophagi. Holob considers the association of Jesus and martyrs with the ghosts of those who had died a violent death. Boers’ paper continues these themes to show how both victims and perpetrators not only rewrote but even removed physical traces of violence in attempts to control the memory of violent events in 4th-century church conflicts.
Session 1819: Erasure in Late Antiquity, IV: The Agency of Erasure
This panel addresses the agency of erasure: who commissioned it, who carried out, who interprets it as erasure. Usherwood examines the commissioners and executors of 4th-century epigraphic erasures. To complete the panel and strand, Walker considers the role of modern scholars in the act of erasure, using Nonnus to argue that disciplinary categorisation and exclusion actively erase elements that do not fit their visions of Late Antiquity.
Work-in-Progress workshop with pre-circulated chapters for edited volume Erasure in Late Antiquity.
Sponsored and hosted by Trinity College Dublin (Zoom)
Various forms of erasure have attracted significant interest in recent scholarship. Whether reassessments o fdamnatio memoriae, temple desecration and redecoration, or the deliberate denial of links to preceding movements during processes of cultural and religious change, these concerns are particularly relevant to the late antique world. Censorship, the manipulation and alteration of space, and concepts of absence in theology and philosophy are also closely connected to notions of erasure, as well as more sudden processes of replacement and change. Yet there have been few attempts to consider erasure as a more general phenomenon in late antiquity. What were the means by which inclusion and exclusion took place? Werethere commonalities in erasing processes? How can scholars recover the traces of what has been erased, and how can the academic community identify and assess its own erasures?
We invite postgraduate and early career researchers from a variety of backgrounds to present and discuss erasure across the field of late antiquity in a series of panels. The Late Antiquity Network was founded in2012 to provide a unified platform for junior researchers working on a broad range of geographical and disciplinary areas within the period. We hold workshops and organise panels at larger conferences to provide opportunities for junior researchers to build connections with others in the field, present their research in a constructive environment, and discuss key current trends and issues. Participants in these panels are encouraged to interpret ‘erasure’ in a broad sense, thinking about how the theme intersects with their own research interests. Applications from masters students, those early in their PhDs, and individuals without current institutional affiliation are particularly encouraged. Papers should be no more than 20minutes, leaving 10 minutes for discussion.
Some suggested topics for discussion, which we invite participants to read in relation to their own themes or bodies of evidence:
-‘Remembering to forget’ and self-conscious erasure
-Narrative exclusion and literary erasure-Physical and spatial erasure-Erasure and the dynamics of censorship-Erasure of boundaries (epistemological, ethnic, etc)
-Erasure and changes in religion and culture
-Partial erasure, deliberate or accidental-Erasure in manuscripts and papyri
-The removal and replacement of individuals
-Erasure and power dynamics
-Concepts of absence and erasure in philosophy and theology-Sculptural, pictorial and visual inclusion and exclusion generally
-Erasure and the problems of sources’ representation
-Erasure in or by contemporary scholarship
The Citizen in Late Antiquity
Utrecht University, 25 November 2019
Kanunnikenzaal, Faculty Club (Achter de Dom 7), Utrecht University
09.30 – 18.00
‘Citizen’ in Late Antiquity was an emotive and complex term. In the classical world, the term not only signified the distribution of rights and duties of members of city and empire, but perhaps much more importantly reflected the intricate processes of inclusion and exclusion that shaped Greco-Roman culture in a myriad of ways. Conventional historiography, which tended to focus on legal citizenship almost exclusively, once characterized citizenship as defunct by the onset of Late Antiquity: it has argued that the mass enfranchisement of the edict of Caracalla and the gradual transformation-or collapse-of the classical city, turned the ‘citizen’ into an anachronism, with its social, cultural and political significance returning only at the onset of the Renaissance. Recent scholarship however has started to contest this view by positing that neither the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west nor the transformation of the classical city brought an end to the concept of the citizen. Next to other forms of self-identification, such as gender, class and ethnicity, people in late Roman and post-Roman polities continued to imagine and conduct themselves as citizens and these categories could themselves be understood in terms of legal and social citizenship. The citizen was also omnipresent in religious discourses, most significantly in late antique Christianity where the followers of Christ could either be perceived as citizens par excellence (viz. of the civitas Dei) or as intrinsic strangers and outsiders, namely to the civitas of the transitory world. Furthermore, citizens, of whatever kind, were also represented in material and visual culture, they took part, as citizens, in economic and artistic life and they appear most frequently in a vast number of textual sources and genres. An understanding of the full spectrum of ‘citizenship’ and ‘the citizen’ in Late Antiquity thus requires the use of a wide range of sources and approaches, and the fresh insights of a new generation of scholars.
This workshop, The Citizen in Late Antiquity, aims at providing an informal, constructive environment for post-graduate and early career researchers to present their work, meet others working in the field, and discuss current trends and issues. The Late Antiquity Network provides a single platform for those working on a broad range of geographical and disciplinary areas within the period of Late Antiquity, and participants are thus encouraged to interpret ‘citizen’ in a broad sense, thinking about how the theme intersects with their own research. Papers will be of twenty minutes, with ten minutes allocated for discussion. Facilitating this will be an address by our visiting speaker, Professor Engin Isin of Queen Mary University London, an acclaimed and prolific theorist on the subject of citizenship.
The workshop is generously supported and hosted by the Dutch NWO VICI research project “Citizenship Discourses in the Early Middle Ages” and the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies(UCMS) at Utrecht University. Suggested topics for discussion were:
-Different types of citizens-Citizens and material culture and imagery
-Citizens and non-citizens, and interactions between different kinds of citizenship
-The spatial dimensions of citizenship-Citizens, universalism and cosmopolitanism
-Criteria for becoming or ceasing to be a citizen
-Alternatives to citizenship discourse
-Citizens and the city-Citizens and religion
-Poverty and citizenship
-Citizens in different literary genres
-Citizens and law-making
Contemporary media bombard modern audiences on a near daily basis with stories and images of sacred and highly symbolical spaces that have been violently desecrated. These are usually accompanied by pleas for help directed at fellow believers around the world or at policy makers at home and abroad. Inevitably, modern audiences have become all too familiar with these stories and the standard repertoire of prejudice, inter-communal strife, and physical horrors they contain. Closer scrutiny of such narratives and images in Late Antiquity reveals that, regardless of whether these were fashioned by orthodox or heterodox Christian communities, such stories tend to exhibit very similar characteristics and employ some of the very same rhetorical strategies to frame the ways in which they convey their sense of victimhood to the outside world. There are nuances and differences, of course, but what emerges overall is a common idiom that readily cuts across Christianity’s religious boundaries, and similar ways in which victimhood and outrage at the violent desecration of symbolic space and imagery is expressed, or, in fact, produced. In this thesis I want to uncover and explain the nature and dynamics of this remarkable phenomenon. As such, my thesis is centred on the hypothesis that this common desecration idiom has its roots in the first half of the fourth century C.E., that it specifically arose out of the new religious constellation characteristic for this period, and that the parameters that were set then and there help explain why the typical reporting on the desecration of Christian religious space assumes the standardized format it does throughout Late Antiquity. In practical terms, my thesis seeks to unravel these developments by studying and comparing the narratology and symbolism of a carefully selected set of late antique stories that describe the violent desecration and destruction of religious space
https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/24020?show=full
This thesis re-interprets Orosius' narrative on the sack of Rome through the prism of late antique epistolary narratives of violent church atrocities