Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T06:18:24.720Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Individual and Collective Salvation in Late Visigothic Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

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

Extract

Bishop Julian of Toledo is remembered primarily as a key actor in the processes of king-making and -unmaking that went on in the Visigothic kingdom of the 670s. In the early part of the decade Julian’s Historia Wambae Regis legitimated King Wamba’s hold on the throne in opposition to a rebellion. The text also provides us with the first reference to unction in the early medieval West, while Julian’s actions in putting the same king through penance when he appeared to be on the brink of death in 680 and then insisting that the king could not resume his royal duties when he recovered have long attracted the attention of scholars of penance and conspiracy theorists alike. As the Bishop of Toledo, capital of the Visigothic kingdom, Julian was the main ecclesiastic in Visigothic Spain, presiding over four councils of Toledo (from the twelfth in 681 to the fifteenth in 687). Perhaps as a result of his historical significance in a poorly documented era, Julian’s plentiful writings about the end of time have been largely ignored; after all, they seem not to deal with ‘historical’ events. This is a shame, since Julian’s Liber prognosticum futuri saeculi was the most widely disseminated work of late seventh-century Spain: hundreds of manuscripts survive and there are well over one hundred references to the work in medieval library catalogues. The great success of the Prognosticum can be attributed to the contents of its three books, which deal with the origins of human death, the fate of the soul after death, and the fate of the body at the resurrection, and thus address a series of theoretical and practical issues connected to death and its aftermath.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 45: The Church, the Afterlife and the Fate of the Soul , 2009 , pp. 74 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2009

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 For the most recent bibliography on Julian, see Ferreiro, Alberto, The Visigoths in Gaul and Iberia. A Supplemental Bibliography, 1984-2003 (Leiden, 2006), 238–42.Google Scholar

2 Pizarro, Joaquín Martinez, The Story of Wamba. Julian of Toledo’s Historia Wambae Regis (Washington, DC, 2005).Google Scholar

3 Hillgarth, J. N., ed., Sancti Iuliani Toletanae Sedis Episcopi Opera. Pars I, CChr.SL 115 (Turnhout, 1976), xxv–xxxvii Google Scholar; idem, ‘St. Julian of Toledo in the Middle Ages’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958), 7–26, at 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See, for example, Goffart, Walter, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A. D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, NJ, 1988)Google Scholar; Pohl, Walter, ‘History in Fragments: Montecassino’s Politics of Memory’, Early Medieval Europe 10 (2001), 343–74 Google Scholar; McKitterick, Rosamond, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Hillgarth, J. N., ‘Eschatological and Political Concepts in the Seventh Century’, in Fontaine, J. and Hillgarth, J. N., eds, Le septième siècle: Changements et continuités / The Seventh Century: Change and Continuity (London, 1992), 212–31, at 225 Google Scholar; Moreno, L.A. García, ‘Expectatives milenaristas y escatolólogicas en la España tardoantigua (ss. V-VIII)’, in Spania. Estudis d’antiguitat tardana oferts en homenatge al professor Pere de Palol i Salellas (Barcelona, 1996), 103–09.Google Scholar

6 Fredriksen, Paula, ‘Apocalypse and Redemption in Early Christianity. From John of Patmos to Augustine of Hippo’, Vigiliae Christianae 45 (1991), 151–83, at 157.Google Scholar

7 Jorge, A. M., ‘Church and Culture in Lusitania in the V-VIII Centuries: A Late Roman Province at the Crossroads’, in Ferreiro, Alberto, ed., The Visigoths: Studies in Culture and Society (Leiden, 1999), 99–122, at 115.Google Scholar

8 Isidore, , De viris illustribus, 17, in. Merino, C. Codoñer, ed., El ‘De viris illustribus’ de Isidoro de Sevilla (Salamanca, 1964), 143.Google Scholar

9 Gryson, R., ed., Commentaria minora in Apocalypsin Johannis, CChr.SL 107 (Turnhout, 2003), 11–97.Google Scholar

10 Fourth Council of Toledo, canon 17, in Diez, G. Martínez and Rodríguez, F., eds, La colección canónica hispana, 6 vols (Madrid and Barcelona, 1966-2002), 5: 205–06 Google Scholar (the translation is mine).

11 Isidore of Seville, Defide Catholica contra Iudaeos, 2.5 (PL 83: 508–10).

12 Isidore, , Chronica maiora, 418, in Martín, J. C., ed., Isidori Hispalense Chronica, CChr.SL 112 (Turnhout, 2003), 206–09 Google Scholar; Landes, Richard, ‘Lest the Millennium be fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chronography 100–800 CE’, in Verbeke, W., Verhelst, D. and Welkenhuysen, A., eds, The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages (Leuven, 1988), 137–211.Google Scholar

13 Braulio, , Epistolae 25–26, in Terrero, L. Riesco, ed., Epistolario de San Braulio: Introducción, edición crítica y traducción (Seville, 1975), 122 Google Scholar; Collins, Roger, ‘Literacy and the Laity in Early Mediaeval Spain’, in McKitterick, Rosamond, ed., The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe (Cambridge, 1990), 109–33, at 115, repr. in Collins, Roger, Law, Cultureand Regionalism in Early Medieval Spain (London, 1992)Google Scholar, ch. 15.

14 Braulio, , Epistolae 43 Google Scholar ( Terrero, Riesco, ed., Epistolario, 164 Google Scholar): ‘mundi iam termino propinquante’.

15 Hildefonsi responsio (PL 96: 196).

16 Taionis Caesaraugustani episcope sententiarum libri quinque, praefatio (PL 80: 727–30); cf. Recceswinth, De omnium heresum erroribus abdicatis, in K. Zeumer, ed., Leges Visigothorum, 12.2.2, MGH Leges nationum Germanicarum 1 (Hannover, 1902), 412–13.

17 For example, Isidore, Etymologies 11.2.31-37, in Lindsay, W. M., ed., Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX (Oxford, 1911)Google Scholar; Isidore, Sententiae 1.27-31; 3.66, in Cazier, P., ed., Isidorus Hispalensis Sententiae, CChr.SL III (Turnhout, 1998), 81–90, 328–30.Google Scholar

18 Isidore, , Chronica 418 Google Scholar ( Martín, , ed., Isidori Hispalensis Chronica, 206–09 Google Scholar).

19 Toledo, Felix of, Vita luliani 7–10 Google Scholar (PL 96: 445–52).

20 Julian of Toledo, De comprobatione sextae aetatis libri tres 3.10.35 (Hillgarth, ed., Sancti Iuliani, 212). For the wider context of production, see Campos, J., ‘El “De comprobatione sextae aetatis libri tres” de San Julián de Toledo’, XXVII Semana española de teologia (La patrología Toledano-Visigoda) (Madrid, 1969), 245–59 Google Scholar, esp. 245–50. For the Prognosticon futuri saeculi, see T. Stancati, ‘Alle origini dell’Escatologia cristiana sistematica: Il Prognosticon futuri saeculi di San Giuliano di Toledo (sec. VII)’, Angelicum 73 (1996), 401–33.

21 Campos, , ‘El “De comprobatione”’, 254–57 Google Scholar; Hillgarth, , ed., Sancti Iuliani, lxv–lxvi.Google Scholar

22 Toch, M., ‘The Jews in Europe 500–1050’, in Fouracre, P., ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, 1: c. 500-c. 700 (Cambridge, 2005), 547–70.Google Scholar

23 Julian, De comprobatione, praefatio, 1.2.3 ( Hillgarth, , ed., Sancti Iuliani, 145).Google Scholar

24 Cazier, Pierre, Isidore de Séville et la naissance de l’Espagne catholique (Paris, 1994), 295–308.Google Scholar

25 Julian, De comprobatione 3.10.34 ( Hillgarth, , ed., Sancti Iuliani, 211 Google Scholar); Campos, cf., ‘El “De comprobatione”’, 254–57.Google Scholar

26 The identifiable sources of Julian’s Prognosticum ( Hillgarth, , ed., Sancti Iuliani, 11–126 Google Scholar) are: Ambrose, Expositio evangelii Lucae; Augustine, De civitate dei, De cura pro mortuis gerendo, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, De doctrina Christiana, De Genesi ad litteram, De Trinitate, Enchiridion, Enarratio in Psalmos, Epistolae, In Ioannis evangelium tractatus, Retractationum libri II, Sermones; Cassian, Conlationes; Cyprian, Ad Fortunatum de exhortatione martyrii, De mortalitate; Eugenius of Toledo, Fragmentum ex aliquo opere suo deperdito; Gregory the Great, Dialogi, Homilia in evangelia, Moralia in Job, Homiliarum in Ezechielem prophetam libri duo; Ildefonsus of Toledo, De cognitione baptismi; Isidore, De ecclesiasticis officiis, Differentiarum libri II, Etymologiae, Sentential, Iulianus Pomerius, De natura animae vel qualitate eius. De animae natura dialogus; Jerome, Epistolae, Commentariarum in epistulas ad Ephesios, Commentariorum in Ioelem liber unus, Contra lovinianum; John Chrysostom, Homilia prima de cruce et latrane; Origen, Homilia VII in Leviticum; Taio of Zaragoza, Sententiarum.

27 Hillgarth, , ed., Sancti Iuliani, xviii.Google Scholar

28 Collins, Roger, Early Medieval Spain. Unity in Diversity, 400-1000 (Basingstoke, 1983), 78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Hillgarth, , ed., Sancti Iuliani, 41–76.Google Scholar

30 Ibid. 77–126.

31 Chapters 3 and 43 show further opposition to attempts to determine how long the Final Judgement will last and what will happen during it.

32 Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988)Google Scholar; Stofferahn, S. A., ‘The Power, The Body, The Holy: A Journey through Late Antiquity with Peter Brown’, Comitatus 29 (1998), 21–46.Google Scholar

33 Hillgarth, , ‘St. Julian of Toledo in the Middle Ages’, 15–17.Google Scholar

34 Julian, Prognosticorum futuri saeculi libri tres, praefatio, 1.45, 55, 61, 65 ( Hillgarth, , ed., Sancti Iuliani, 12–13).Google Scholar

35 Idalius of Barcelona, Epistola Idalii ad Iulianum 1.68-73 ( Hillgarth, , ed., Sancti Iuliani, 5 Google Scholar); in his Epistola Idalii ad Sunfredum 1.7 ( Hillgarth, , ed., Sancti Iuliani, 7 Google Scholar), Idalius states that the work was written with ‘remarkable and new brevity’.

36 Isidore, Sententiae 3.14.8, in P. Cazier, ed., Isidorus Hispalensis Sententiae, CChr.SL III (Turnhout, 1998), 240 (the translation is mine).

37 Fourth Council of Toledo, canon 26, in Martínez Díez and Rodríguez, eds, La colección canónica hispana, 5: 216 (the translation is mine).

38 Goffart, , The Narrators of Barbarian History, 432–37 Google Scholar; Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’.