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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's p...

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Published in:Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 73; no. 5; pp. 531 - 564
Main Author: Ungvary, David
Format: Article
Published: Brill Academic Publishers 2019
Subjects:
Bishops
Lunar eclipses
Eclipses
Christians
Scholars
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Clarifying the Eclipse: Ascetics, Politics, and the Poetics of Power in Post-Roman Iberia.
      aug:
        au: Ungvary, David
        affil: Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, USA
      su:
        Bishops
        Lunar eclipses
        Eclipses
        Christians
        Scholars
      sug:
        subj:
          Bishops
          Lunar eclipses
          Eclipses
          Christians
          Scholars
      keyword:
        asceticism
        early medieval politics
        Isidore of Seville
        Latin poetry
        Sisebut
        Visigothic Kingdom
      ab: 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.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
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      src: R
    language: English
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