Gastvortrag Prof. Dr. Paulo Pachá (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro): "The politics of episcopal mobility in Visigothic Iberia"

21. Oktober 2025

Foto: Prof. Dr. Sabine Panzram

Der westgotische König Rekkared I. mit Bischöfen am III. Konzil von Toledo (Codex Vigilanus)

"Over the past three decades, scholars from various fields have investigated the development of episcopal power during Late Antiquity. Only recently, however, has mobility been considered an essential dimension of episcopal power, as bishops used it to project and strengthen their authority. Most of this attention has focused on long-distance mobility, such as travel across the Mediterranean. Yet it is equally important to understand how bishops created and reproduced power networks through more frequent movements on a smaller geographical scale. Drawing on a variety of sources, we will present a typology of episcopal mobility in Visigothic Iberia. In doing so, we seek to address two related questions: (1) how episcopal mobility contributed to the development of episcopal power in the Iberian Peninsula; and (2) how episcopal mobility served as a mechanism for bridging the gap between episcopal power at the local and supralocal levels, from the episcopal see to the kingdom as a whole. Our central hypothesis is that mobility was vital to episcopal authority, enabling bishops to participate in power networks and assert influence beyond the local level of their sees."

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• Wann? 21.10.2025, 16 Uhr c.t.
• Wo? Hörsaal F Philosophenturm, Von-Melle-Park 6, 20146 Hamburg