urban interactions Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books, an independent non-profit press, @ https://punctumbooks.com/support/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contri- butions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t find a welcoming port elsewhere. Our ad- venture is not possible without your support. Vive la Open Access. Fig . 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490–1500) urban interactions: Communication and Competition in Late Antiq- uity and the Early Middle Ages. Copyright © 2020 by the editors and au- thors. This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International li- cense, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum books endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ First published in 2020 by Gracchi Books, Binghamton, ny, an imprint of punctum books, Earth, Milky Way. https://punctumbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-1-953035-05-9 (print) ISBN-13: 978-1-953035-06-6 (ePDF) doi: 10.21983/P3.300.1.00 lccn: 2020945542 Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress Copyediting: Adele Kreager Book design: Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Cover image: Stephen Downes, Carthage punctum books spontaneous acts of scholarly combustion GRACCHI “Too many echoes, not enough voices.” — Cornel West Michael J. Kelly & Michael Burrows (eds.) Communication and Competition in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages Urban Interactions Contents Preface: Iberian Rivalries 13 Michael J. Kelly Introduction 27 Ian Wood “The Innocence of the Dead Crowned You, the Glory of the Triumphant Crowned Me”: The Strange Rivalry between Bethlehem and Lyon in Eusebius Gallicanus Sermon 11 45 Lisa Kaaren Bailey Tours vs. Bourges: The Secular and Ecclesiastical Discourse of Inter-City Relationships in the Accounts of Gregory of Tours 67 Michael Burrows Did All Roads Lead to Córdoba under the Umayyads? 109 Ann Christys Religious Conflict in Roman Nicomedia 147 Dimitris J. Kyrtatas Reccopolitani and Other Town Dwellers in the Southern Meseta during the Visigothic Period of State Formation 181 Javier Martínez Jiménez Augusta Emerita in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Its Urban Layout During the Fourth and Fifth Centuries CE 223 Pedro Mateos Cruz The So-Called “Oriental Quarter” of Ostia: Regions III.XVI–VII, a Neighborhood in Late Antiquity 265 Michael Mulryan Looking through Landscapes: Ideology and Power in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo 305 Isabel Sánchez Ramos Locating Carthage in the Vandal Era 343 Mark Lewis Tizzoni Good Neighbors and Good Walls: Urban Development and Trade Networks in Late Antique South Gaul 373 Douglas Underwood Contributors 429 Index 435 Acknowledgments To those exciting and delightful surprises that awaken your pas- sion, fill your heart, and give you reason to live. — Michael J. Kelly This project has been long in the making but I am really pleased with the results. Indeed, the relevance of this book today seems greater now than at its inception. It has been a pleasure to work with all our contributors and their efforts and patience are sincerely appreciated. My warm wishes go out to friends, col- leagues and comrades from the School of History and Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds who are now spread out across the world. I hope to see you all at future IMCs! I must also express deepest gratitude to my fellow editor Mi- chael J. Kelly, whose relentless effort has brought this project to fruition. Finally, thank you to my mother, my father, my sister, my partner and most of all to my grandma; her love and kind- ness are missed but remain an example to those who knew her. — Michael Burrows 13 Preface Iberian Rivalries Michael J. Kelly Jamona (today’s Ciudadela) vs. Magona (today’s Mahon) is one of the most famous urban rivalries of late antiquity. According to the Epistola Severi ( Letter of Severus ) — written only a month or two after the events in question (February 418) — in the latter part of the year 416 ce, the Christian theologian and historian Orosius had stopped in the Balearics, specifically in Minorca, on his return to Galicia to bring relics back to bishop Balconius of Braga. 1 He did not make it back, due to the war being waged by the Visigoths as Roman federates led by Wallia (r. 415–418) against the Alans and Vandals in the peninsula. 2 However, what Orosius did bring, straight from Jerusalem, were relics of St. Ste- 1 Severus, Ep., 4.1. For all references to and translations of the Letter of Sever- us, see Severus of Minorca: Letter on the Conversion of the Jews, ed. and trans. Scott Bradbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). On the dating of events, see the introduction. 2 On the Visigothic victories in Hispania in 417–418, see Orosius Hist., 7.43.13 and Hydatius, Chron., 24 (a. 418): “Vandali Silingi in Betica per Valliam re- gem omnes extincti.” For the Orosius, see the translation by Andrew T. Fear, Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010) and the edition of Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet, His- toriarum adversus paganos libri septem (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1990). For the edition and translation of Hydatius’s Chronicles see Richard W. Burgess, The “Chronicle” of Hydatius and the “Consularia Constantinopolitana”: Two 14 urban interactions phen (5–34), the martyr stoned in front of the eyes of the as yet unconverted Paul. 3 The rivalry between Christian Jamona and Jewish Magona apparently began with the arrival of the relics and the zeal they unleashed amongst the Christian population. This passion was presumably directed by Severus, the leader of Jamona’s small flock. The breakdown of relationships between the communities of the two cities over the course of about a year and a half, from late 416 to February 418, led to a situation in which both “sides,” i.e., the Christian and Jewish communities of each respective city, were on the point of war with one another. Although an obvious and longstanding trope, Severus claims that the Jews were even stockpiling weapons in their synagogue in Magona. 4 The Christians, on the other hand, were equally ready to de- fend their faith. This increasingly heated situation culminated in Severus leading the Christians of Jamona to Magona to “check” the synagogue for weapons. Of course, no weapons are found. Nevertheless, Severus’s flock burns the synagogue and Severus subsequently “convinces” the legitimate leader of the island, the Jewish-Roman aristocrat Theodorus of Majorca, to promise to convert himself and his people. The construction and growth of the urban rivalry between Jamona and Magona ruined the friendly relationships and pub- lic cordiality between the people of the two cities. Under Jewish- Roman authority, the people of the two cities lived peacefully, it would seem, even engaging in the mutual prayers of the other. The “miraculous” arrival of the relics of St. Stephen prompted, supposedly, a zeal in the Christian community to quickly turn against their Jewish neighbors and demand St. Stephen, or rath- Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 69–123. 3 New Testament: Acts 6–7. 4 See, for example, Philo of Alexandria, On Flaccus, ch. 11. The text here is edited and translated in Philo, Volume IX by F. H. Colson (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, 1941), 349–57. 15 preface er the bishop Severus, become their patron. 5 As such, the clear imposition from the top of a new power structure leading to the emergence of a violent rivalry and breakdown of peace is actu- ally a reflection of the will of the people, the will of God, and the emergence from historical conflict of everlasting communion under the patronus communis Stephen. 6 The attempt to replace the patron of the two cities with an- other — to place a Christian city and a Jewish city (only thirty miles apart from each other, on the same, small island) under the patronage of St. Stephen, instead of the “secular” Jewish jurist, manager of the synagogue, and defensor civitatis, The- odorus — was a clear political move by Severus to supersede the island’s imperial appointment. 7 The actions of Severus were motivated by secular matters (which is not to discount genuine religious enthusiasm, but only to add to the factors), in particu- lar, to make himself the leader of the island. However, any real rivalry between the towns was likely fueled by additional, pre- existing dynamics Severus could have exploited to encourage his smaller community to rise up effectively in revolt. At around the same modest size of c. 1,000–3000 people, the rivalry between the two cities was nevertheless a dynamic one. 8 The entire island was governed by a doctor of Jewish law and head of the synagogue, Theodorus, yet it also had a signifi- cant Christian population that included monks and at least one Christian member of the Roman provincial system, the vir hon- oratus Julius. 9 While this does not seem to have been a substan- tive issue, in his Letter Severus frames the cohabitation as an existential state of being so intense that Jews were said to be, by their very essence as Jews, unable to physically exist in Jamona: 5 Severus, Ep., 4. 6 Liber de miraculis sancti Stephani, in Les miracles de saint Étienne: Recher- ches sur le recueil pseudo-augustinien (BHL 7860–1), ed. Jean Meyers et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 263–368, at 308, 2.1 ln. 46. 7 Severus, Ep., 6.2, and 20.5. 8 Bradbury, Severus of Minorca, 28. 9 Severus, Ep., 10.1, 20.4–5. 16 urban interactions upon entering they would be stricken down in supernatural ways (i.e., killed by Christians?). 10 Beyond this rhetoric and any real religious antagonisms, which seem to have developed with the arrival of the relics, and Severus, there were also political rifts related to the authority of the groups on the island. Minorca had an established Christian community, yet it also had a more ancient Jewish population. The latter community seems clearly to have been, according to Severus’s Epistula, the more power- ful one. The persecution against Magona led by Severus was ground- ed also in an economic competition between the cities, or rather, the economic dominance of Magona. Jamona’s leader Severus was less powerful than Theodorus, and his bishopric was not particularly important. Moreover, Jamona had a less functional harbor and was a poorer city. Magona, in contrast, was the seat of the prefect and its leaders were the appointed Roman officials. This is suggested by an early imperial inscription which hints at Magona as the capital of the island. 11 Magona’s Jewish commu- nity also seems to have been more educated, or, at least, some of its leading figures were, such as Theodorus, as well as Inno- centius: “‘Brother Innocentius, you are learned not only in Latin literature, but in Greek literature as well, and you meditate con- stantly on the law.” 12 As such, Severus’s position would become more impressive if he could control also Magona, establish his see there, and expand his political influence by turning the city’s Jewish inhabitants and leaders into Christians to be shepherded by him. Speculatively, if there is any truth in the increased demand for Severus to lead the island, we could also detect in this urban rivalry a call for local control of the cities in contrast to being 10 Severus, Ep., 3.2. 11 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Volume 2: Inscriptiones Hispaniae, ed. Emil Hübner (Berlin: Georgium Reimer, 1892), 3711: “ter duumviratu in in- sula functus etiam flaminatu provinciae Hispaniae citerioris.” 12 Severus, Ep., 18.15: “Innocenti frater, qui non solum Latinis verum etiam Graecis litteris eruditus es et legem iugiter meditaris.” 17 preface ruled by a Roman defensor elsewhere. This could mirror broader late antique and early medieval patterns of people choosing the local over the international, rejecting a level of material comfort in exchange for local autonomy. Yet, if so, it is a strange sort of “thinking local” juxtaposed with the physical presence of the relics, which carried with them the universality of their mean- ing and power. 13 Most importantly, what we learn from this urban rivalry, as constructed almost exclusively by Severus, concerns a dis- sonance between the rhetorical construction of urban rival- ries — with places, things, people, and names used as metaphors to construct certain narratives of morality — and the reality of life in those cities. Most people, from the various constructed categories — Christians, Jews, etc. — lived together in ordinary fashion, living, working, marrying, eating, and even praying to- gether. This dissonance is the critical literary warning we must heed when exploring urban rivalries: even the landscape, the ar- chaeological evidence, which can suggest certain antagonisms, must be approached cautiously. Words do create life and life does create meaning (illocu- tionary and perlocutionary). This is evident in the world of late antiquity, in which the Word was the origin of authority and extra-divine substance, e.g., the Word of God to Moses; the em- peror in edicts; the bishops; the “Law of Citations” (issued 426) and the opinions of Papinian, Gaius, Ulpian, Paulus, and Mod- estinus; the oral traditions edited into the Mishnah; the com- mentary of the Talmud’s sages and rabbis, and so on. The living words of Severus effectuated an intensified urban rivalry that led to a transformed existence. 14 13 For discussions of this episode and St. Stephen’s relics see: Peter Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Robert Wisniewski, The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 103–5, 105, 124–25. 14 For more on the power of the word in creating consciousness, especially within illiterate communities, see Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 1990). 18 urban interactions A useful counterpart to the Jamona–Magona urban rivalry and its miraculous outcome is the intra- and inter-city collabo- ration and competition on the mainland of Hispania during its final Visigothic century, the seventh. In this instance, the lead- er of a mainly Christian but certainly diverse community at- tempted to effect change by creating social, urban antagonisms through a primarily narrativic revision of the Liber Iudiciorum (Visigothic Code) of one of his royal predecessor’s, Recceswinth (r. 649/653–672). The Liber Iudiciorum is a legal code and ar- tifact of Visigothic literature constructed and promulgated by Recceswinth at the Eighth Council of Toledo in 653 in the “Prae- torian Church of Sts. Peter and Paul.” 15 Early into his reign, the Visigothic King Ervig (r. 680–687) began to revise and re-nar- rate Recceswinth’s Liber Iudiciorum, and subsequently request- 15 See Chron., 754, 35; XII Toledo 4; and the opening of VIII Toledo: “Anno quinto orthodoxi atque gloriosi et vera clementiae dignitate praespicui Recesuinthi regis, cum nos omnes divinae ordinatio voluntatis euisdem principis serenissimo iussu in basilicam sanctorum apostolorum ad sacrum synodi coegisset aggregari conventum” ( CCH 5, p. 366). This church would become the site where kings were anointed and blessed before going off to war and was raised by Wamba to the status of being its own see. Thus, just outside the walls of Toledo there was a competing bishop and site of royal, ecclesiastical authority. The progress towards total royal authority in the king seems to have reached new heights, to the extent that the king created a parallel church authority. This may have been the reason for Ju- lian of Toledo apparently leading a coup to overthrow Wamba, and then in XII Toledo 4 abolishing the praetorian church and Wamba’s new diocese at Aquis (Chaves), Lusitiania. For the primary evidence of this, see XII Toledo 9, and, for discussion, see Roger Collins, Visigothic Spain: 409–711 (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 100. XII Toledo is also the council in which Gundemar’s actions over the church were reintroduced into the record. For the Chronicle of 754, see José Eduardo López Pereira, ed. and trans., Crónica mozárabe de 754: edición crítica y traducción (Zaragoza: Anúbar, 1991); The- odor Mommsen, ed., Chronica Minora, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 10, 334–60 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1894); and, Ann Christys, Christians in Al-Andalus, 711–1000, 2nd edn. (New York: Rout- ledge, 2010), 28–51, esp. 33–35. References to the Iberian councils are to the authoritative edition edited by Gonzalo Martínez Díez and (from 1982 for- ward as co-editor) Félix Rodríguez, La Colección Canónica Hispana, 6 vols. (Madrid: C.S.I.C., 1966–2002), referred to in these notes as CCH 19 preface ed approval of his laws at the Twelfth Council of Toledo (681). 16 Ervig’s new version was promulgated on 21 October 681. 17 Ervig reframed the code with both an alternative introduction and a new conclusion, which inserted thirty-four new laws — twenty- eight (eighty-two percent) of which concerned the Jewish com- munity. Ervig’s novel book — Book 12.3 — with its dozens of anti-Jewish constitutions provides an alternative ending from the original version by Recceswinth. In Ervig’s code, the new happy ending is effectively the elimination of Judaism from the Christian Visigothic kingdom and the conversion of all Jews. 18 However, Ervig’s actions seem to have further fueled an existing spirit of urban cooperation, especially between Christians and Jews, in the face of the king’s and council’s attempts at social disruption and forced homogeneity. 19 The narrative structure of Ervig’s Liber Iudiciorum is remi- niscent of that of Severus’s Letter . In both stories, there is a wise and just Christian lawmaker operating in conjunction with the authority of God (this is part also of the original narrative of Recceswinth’s Liber Iudiciorum ) 20 who eagerly converts his 16 For the canons of XII Toledo see La Colección Canónica Hispana V, ed. Gonzalo Martínez Díez and Félix Rodríguez (Madrid: C.S.I.C., 2002), 135– 204. For the Liber Iudiciorum ( LI ) see the Leges Visigothorum antiquiores, MGH Legum, ed. Karl Zeumer (Hanover and Leipzig: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1902), 33–456. 17 LI, 2.1.1 (in the 1902 composite edition of Zeumer). 18 For more on Ervig’s revision of the Liber Iudiciorum, see Michael J. Kelly, “The Liber Iudiciorum : A Visigothic Literary Guide to Institutional Author- ity and Self-Interest,” in The Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo: Concepts and Forms of Power, ed. Paulo Pachá and Sabine Panzram (Amsterdam: Am- sterdam University Press, in press). 19 The laws of Ervig, in the Liber Iudiciorum and the councils, represent the main body of evidence for his reign. 20 Although the sovereignty of the Visigothic king as derived from God is not declared as such, and certainly not in the place one would expect — the opening “Constitution” of the Code — there are several places that explain the monarch’s role as head of the people and in solemn devotion to God. See, for instance, LI, 2.14: “Quod antea ordinari oportuit negotia principum et postea populorum.”