Authority beyond the Law: Traditional and Charismatic Authority in Antiquity and the Middle Ages - 0

We warmly invite graduate students and early career researchers in Classics, Medieval studies, Near Eastern studies and other disciplines to submit abstracts for a one day workshop on traditional and charismatic authority in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, to be held on Saturday, 3 December 2016 at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies in Oxford.

In Economy and Society, Max Weber theorised three ideal types of authority: charismatic, traditional and legal. While legal authority has been well-explored in modern scholarship and most resembles the structures of authority in our own world, more recent work has indicated the importance of the charismatic and traditional ideal types as lenses for viewing Ancient and Medieval authority. Thus, in his 2016 monograph, Dynasties, Jeroen Duindam stresses the importance of charisma to royal power, exploring the pageantry of power, ritual actions undertaken to safeguard the harvest or control the weather, and the personal delivery of justice, while Kate Cooper, especially in The Fall of the Roman Household, has argued that power in the ancient world was inseparably linked to individual households in a way similar to Weber’s theorisation of traditional authority, making the (late) Roman ‘state’ seem significantly smaller than it has tended to before.

FECHA/DATE/DATA: 03/12/2016

LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOCO: Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, Oxford (England)

ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: David Barritt ; Panayiotis Christoforou ; Chris de L'isle

INFO: authoritybeyondthelaw@gmail.com

INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: gratis/free/gratuito

Es necesario enviar un email a /please contact/ si prega di contattare authoritybeyondthelaw@gmail.com

PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:

Registration (9:00-9:15)

Introduction (9:15-9:45) David Barritt (Oxford, UK), Workshop introduction

Session 1 (9:45-11:15): Chair: Pan Christoforou

Max Lau (Tokyo, Japan), From usurpers to unquestioned autokrators: the construction of Komnenian authority under emperor John II Komnenos

Daniel Unruh (Cambridge, UK), Controlling the source: Dionysius I of Syracuse and the spring of Arethusa

Stefano Bernardinello (Florence, Italy), The construction of authority works through an ecclesiastical connection: de Raude family and the church of Milan during the eleventh and twelfth century

Coffee Break (11:15-11:30)

Session 2 (11:30-1:00): Chair: Chris de L’isle

Martin Krijgsman (Oxford, UK), ‘He was robed in the fearsome radiance of kingship’: charismatic and traditional authority in Babylon between god and king

Graham Andrews (Oxford, UK), A Crisis of Tradition: The Roman Senate in the Early Third Century CE

Antoine Chabod (Paris, France), Music and wisdom beyond Spartan law

Lunch (1:00-2:00)

Session 3 (2:00-3:30): Chair: David Barritt

Chris de L’isle (Oxford, UK), Charismatic failures: the collapse of ancient Greek tyrannies

Pan Christororou (Oxford, UK), The curious case of the Caesars: Roman emperors as Weberian shape-shifters

Adam Howe (Oxford, UK), The substitute king ritual: killing the king to deter the killing of the King

Coffee Break (3:30-3:45)

Session 4 (3:45-5:15): Chair:

Darja Šterbenc Erker (Berlin, Germany), Augustus’ charisma as reflected in Ovid’s Fasti

Agata Paluch (Berlin, Germany), Authority and new interpretations: some remarks on authorising strategies in Jewish mystical texts

Monika Belucz (Budapest, Hungary), The authority of a hidden monk-bishop

Coffee Break (5:15-5:30)

Keynote address (5:30-6:30)

Kate Cooper (Manchester, UK)

Pub trip