Royal Historical Society Workshop Grant

Graham Barrett (Senior Lecturer in Late Antiquity) and Jamie Wood (Professor of History and Education), both in the School of Humanities and Heritage, have been awarded one of six prestigious Royal Historical Society Workshop Grants for 2024, to hold a one-day meeting on ‘Present and Precedent in the Church Councils of Late Antique Iberia’.

The seventh-century Visigothic kingdom in Iberia was ruled by a compact between Church and crown, and the key source for the dynamics of this relationship is known as the Hispana, a collection of debates and decisions of Church councils from the fourth century onwards. These records of canon law define dogma on orthodoxy and heresy, spirituality, liturgy and monastic practice, the administration of the Church, and place limits on the monarchy.

Scholarly attention has focussed on the general councils held at the Visigothic capital of Toledo from the kingdom’s initial consolidation in 589 until its final collapse in 711, but the compilation is much larger, including the acts of councils from the Greek East, North Africa, Gaul, and pre-Visigothic Iberia. Its influence also extended beyond the fall of the Visigothic kingdom, with significant engagement across Carolingian Europe and in medieval and early modern Iberia.

Written in dense and difficult Latin, however, the Hispana has never been translated into English, nor the modern critical edition into any language. Our goal is to change this by forming a research network aimed at making the Hispana accessible via English translation, commentary, and contextual studies, in the process opening a new field.

See here for further information: https://royalhistsoc.org/society-awards-six-rhs-workshop-grants-2024/.

Story submitted by Graham Barrett
gbarrett@lincoln.ac.uk