Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T04:53:28.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Elites and Baptism: Religious ‘Strategies of Distinction’ in Visigothic Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Jamie Wood
Jamie Wood*
Affiliation:
Classics and Ancient History, University of Manchester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The political connotations of godparenthood and baptismal sponsorship in creating both vertical and horizontal bonds between individuals and groups in early medieval Europe have long been recognized. What follows offers a case study of sixth- and early seventh-century Visigothic Spain, asking whether the baptismal process could also serve to bring elite and popular together. Elites sought to mobilize those lower down the scale than themselves in opposition to other elites at the same time as having constantly to negotiate the elite position from which they gained their authority. In sixth-century Spain the definition and redefinition of baptismal practice in church council legislation by both Catholics and Arians was an important method for achieving this dual aim of distinction and control.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 42: Elite and Popular Religion , 2006 , pp. 3 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See the following articles in McKitterick, Rosamond, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 2: C.700-C.900 (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Nelson, Janet L., ‘The Frankish Kingdoms, 814–898: the West’, 110–41, at 128Google Scholar; Fried, Johannes, ‘The Frankish Kingdoms, 817–911: the East and Middle Kingdoms’, 142–68, at 151Google Scholar; Smith, Julia M. H., ‘Fines Imperii: the Marches’, 169–89, at 183–4Google Scholar; Lund, Niels, ‘Scandinavia, c.700-1066’, 202–27, at 208Google Scholar; Shephard, Jonathan, ‘Slavs and Bulgars’, 228–48, at 239Google Scholar; Nelson, Janet L., ‘Kingship and Royal Government’, 383–430, 31398, 428–9.Google Scholar

2 Due to considerations of space we are unable to examine the works of the mid seventh-century bishop, Ildephonsus of Toledo. He wrote an important treatise on baptism, De cognitione baptismi, and another one on instruction after baptism, De itinere deserti: San Idelfonso de Toledo. La virginidad perpetua de Santa Maria. El conocimiento del bautismo. El Camino del desierto, ed. Vicente Blanco García and Julio Campos Ruiz (Madrid, 1971), 225–436.

3 Peter Lampe argues that early Christianity was a lower class movement in From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (London, 2003), 48–66. For those higher up the social scale see Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity: a Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 29–47.Google Scholar

4 Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, IL, 1981), 32–5, 44–7, 64, 89–90.Google Scholar

5 Wherever possible the councils will be consulted in the newer edition of Gonzalo Martínez Díez and Félix Rodríguez, La colección canónica hispana, 5 vols (Madrid, 1966–92) [hereafter: Hispana]. However in some cases it will be necessary to utilize Concilios visigóticos e hispano-romanos, ed. José Vives (Barcelona, 1963) [hereafter: Vives].

6 Council of Narbonne (590), canon IX, Vives, 148: Jews were to pay a fine to the count, a secular official. Bishop Braulio of Zaragoza sent two letters to Recceswinth complaining about the travails involved in correcting a large codex the king had sent him, Epistolario de San Braulio, ed. Luis Tenero (Seville, 1975), XXXVIII-XLI, 150–3; King, P. D., ‘King Chindasvind and the First Territorial Law-Code of the Visigothic Kingdom’, in James, Edward, ed., Visigothic Spain: New Approaches (Oxford, 1980), 148 Google Scholar; it was probably a law code.

7 Stocking, R., ‘Visions of Community: Religious Diversity, Conciliar Authority, and Political Power in Visigothic Spain, 589–633’, Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1994.Google Scholar

8 Braulio of Saragossa, Vita Aemiliani, 5–6, transl, in Fear, A. T., Lives of the Visigothic Fathers (Liverpool, 1997), 24–7.Google Scholar

9 Isidore criticized Sisebut: ‘At the beginning of his reign he forced the Jews into the Christian faith, indeed acting with zeal, “but not according to knowledge”, for he compelled by force those who should have been called to the faith through reason’, Historia Gothorum, 60, trans, in Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain (Liver pool, 1990), 106.Google Scholar

10 Vives, 163.

11 Isidore, Etymologiae, IX.4.4-5, in San Isidoro de Sevilla. Etimologías, ed. Jose Oroz Reta and Manuel-A. Marcos Casquero, 2 vols (Madrid, 1993), 1: 776.

12 McKenna, Stephen, Paganism and Pagan Survivals in Spain up to the Fall of the Visigothic Kingdom (Washington, D.C., 1938), 150–2.Google Scholar

13 Hillgarth, J. N., ‘Popular Religion in Visigothic Spain’, in James, , Visigothic Spain, 3–60 Google Scholar, at 53–4.

14 Salisbury, Joyce E., Iberian Popular Religion, 600 B.C. to 700 A.D.: Celts, Romans, and Visigoths (New York, 1985), 298–9.Google Scholar

15 Hillgarth, ‘Popular Religion’, 5.

16 Castellanos, Santiago, ‘The Significance of Social Unanimity in a Visigothic Hagiography: Keys to an Ideological Screen’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003), 387–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 For translations of the five Visigothic-era hagiographie texts see Fear, Lives of the Visigothic Fathers.

18 For example, on Augustine’s concern over whether the Christian message was getting across to the faithful and those wishing to join the Church see Cooper, Kate, ‘Ventriloquism and the Miraculous: Conversion, Preaching, and the Martyr Exemplum in Late Antiquity’, in Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy, eds, Signs, Wonders, Miracles: Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church, SCH 41 (Woodbridge, 2005), 22–45.Google Scholar

19 Pohl, Walter, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Distinction’, in idem, ed., with Reimitz, Helmut, Strategies of Distinction. The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800 (Leiden, 1998), 4–6 Google Scholar. Pohl draws heavily on the theories of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, see, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, 1984), 466–84. Contra Pohl, Andrew Gillett, ‘Introduction: Ethnicity, History, and Methodology’, in idem, ed., On Barbarian Identity. Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2002), 1–18.

20 Cf.Markus, R. A., ‘The Problem of “Donatism” in the Sixth Century’, in Gregorio Magno e Usuo tempo, Studia Ephemeridis ‘Augustinianum’ 33, 2 vols (Rome, 1991), 1: 159–66.Google Scholar

21 Cohen, A. P., The Symbolic Construction of Community (London, 1985), 53–5, 75, 91, 102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Barth, Fredrik, ‘Introduction’, in idem, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organisation of Culture Difference (London, 1969), 9–38 Google Scholar. Theuws, Frans, ‘Introduction: Rituals in Transforming Societies’, in Theuws, Frans and Nelson, Janet L., eds, Rituals of Power from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), 1–13.Google Scholar

23 Lynch, Joseph H., Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 334.Google Scholar

24 Pijuan, José, La liturgia bautismal en la España romano-visigoda (Toledo, 1981), 35–100 Google Scholar; Fisher, J. D. C., Christian Initiation: Baptism in the Medieval West. A Study in the Disintegration of the Primitive Rite of Initiation (London, 1965), 88–100 Google Scholar; Akeley, T. C., Christian Initiation in Spain C.300-1100 (London, 1967), 123–200; Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 20 (2004), 422–96 Google Scholar (s.v. ‘Katechese’); 497–574 (s.v. ‘Katechumenat’).

25 Fisher, Christian Initiation, 89.

26 Burrus, Virginia, ‘“In the Theatre of This Life”: the Performance of Orthodoxy in Late Antiquity’, in Klingshirn, William E. and Vessey, Mark, eds, The Limits of Ancient Christianity. Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honour of R. A. Markus (Ann Arbor, MI, 1999), 80–96, at 95–6.Google Scholar

27 MacCormack, Sabine G., Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA, 1981), 222–66.Google Scholar

28 Jussen, Bernhard, Patenschaft und Adoption im frühen Mittelalter: künstliche Verwandtsdiaft als soziale Praxis (Göttingen, 1991)Google Scholar.

29 Conant, Jonathan P., ‘Staying Roman: Vandals, Moors, and Byzantines in Late Antique North Africa, 400–700’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 2004, 191–224 Google Scholar, convincingly demonstrated that the Arian Vandals in North Africa did attempt to convert Catholics to their faith.

30 Fisher, Christian Initiation, 28, 140.

31 Ibid., 91–2.

32 Cf. the recitation of credo on reconciliation of those who had been baptized into ‘Arian heresy’ in Le Liber ordinum en usage dans l’église wisigothique et mozarabe d’Espagne du cinquième au onzième siècle, ed. Marius Ferotin (Paris, 1904), xxxvii.

33 Thompson, E.. ‘The Conversion of the Visigoths to Catholicism’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 4 (1960), 4–35 Google Scholar; Collins, R., ‘King Leovigild and the Conversion of the Visigoths’, in idem, Law, Culture and Regionalism in Early Medieval Spain (Aldershot, 1992), II, 1–12.Google Scholar

34 Agde (506), canon 34: Lays down the number of months a Jew who wants to convert to Catholicism must wait to be baptized, Vives, 207–08.

35 The date may actually be 524: Thompson, E. A., The Goths in Spain (Oxford, 1969), 33.Google Scholar

36 Hispana, 298, 304–06.

37 The Arians saw themselves as the ‘catholic’, i.e. the orthodox party, and those who adhered to the ‘Roman’ religion (i.e. Catholics) as heretics.

38 John of Biclarum, Chronicle, 580, 2, trans, from Wolf, Conquerors and Chroniclers, 72; Juan de Biclaro, Obispo de Gerona. Su vida y su obra, ed. Julio Campos Ruiz (Madrid, 1960), 89–90.

39 Thompson, The Goths in Spain, 85.

40 Leander of Seville wrote two books condemning Arianism: Isidore, De viris illustribus, XXVIII, in El ‘De viris illustribus’ de Isidoro de Sevilla, ed. Carmen Codoñer Merino (Salamanca, 1964) [hereafter: DVI], 149–50. Another tract, written by Severus of Málaga, was directed against the apostate, Vincentius of Zaragoza, the only named convert to Macedonianism, DVI, XXX, 151. The fact that Vincentius converted suggests that some were willing to compromise.

41 Hispana, 82, 61–2, 75–99.

42 Hispana, 117–19: canons XI and XII legislate for penitents, emphasizing the role of the bishop in determining entry into and exclusion from the community. The Placitum presented to Recceswinth (649–672) by the Jews of Toledo affirms their belief in the Catholic faith. They agree not to associate with any unbaptized Jews, Leges Visigothorum, XII.2.17, ed. K. Zeumer, MGH. Leges nationum Germanicarum 1 (Hannover, 1902), 425. Some bishops continued to favour Jews in the seventh century, suggesting that the episcopal elite itself was not unified, Drews, Wolfram, ‘Jews as Pagans? Polemical Definitions of Identity in Visigothic Spain’, Early Medieval Europe 11.3 (2002), 189–207.Google Scholar

43 Vives, 167–8.

44 Velázquez, Isabel, ‘ Pro patriae gentisque Gothorum statu (4th Council of Toledo, Canon 75, A. 633)’, in Goetz, Hans-Werner, Jarnut, Jörg and Pohl, Walter, eds, Regna and Gentes. The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World (Leiden, 2003), 161–217, at 196–8Google Scholar.

45 Hispana, 183–4, 189–93, 216, 206–11: those who have fallen into heresy, have been baptized into heresy or rebaptized are excluded from entering the episcopacy.

46 It should be noted that the four councils examined here are not the only Visigothic councils to legislate on baptismal practice.