Religion in Rural Late Antique Iberia

José Carlos López Gómez, Antón Alvar Nuño

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040365304
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This volume examines the dynamism and complexity of religious expressions in rural settings across Late Antique Iberia.

Chapters demonstrate that the rural world was a dynamic space which formed an integral part of the multi-directional process of religious exchange on the Iberian Peninsula in Late Antiquity, thus refuting the idea that rural spaces, and in turn rural religious practices, were static and unchanging, anchored in tradition and resistant to any process of religious change. The chapters present a series of case studies that examine phenomena such as the multi-locality of certain religious groups that moved periodically between the city and the countryside, the strategies that local agents used to shape religious expressions in rural areas (significantly marked by the permeability between the urban and rural worlds), the creation of religious landscapes as spaces imbued with cultural meanings by religious authorities that conceive the rural world as a place of refuge and spiritual experience, or the analysis of trans-local religious networks that connected rural and urban settings, facilitating the transmission of rituals and practices between these two spheres. Finally, both the introduction and the final chapter discuss the concept of "rural religion" and its applicability to the sphere of Late Antiquity.

This volume provides a much-needed resource for students and scholars of religion in Late Antique Iberia, and in the post-Roman world more broadly, as well as anyone working on rural religion in the ancient, Late Antique and Medieval worlds.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• 1 Religion in Rural Late Antique Iberia. An introduction
• 2 Spontaneous worship or control of piety: pilgrims of proximity in Late Antique Hispania
• 3 Transhumance and devotions: shepherds and their saints in a rural territory: a case study from Southern Italy (Gargano)
• 4 Servitude and salvation: the Church in rural Hispania
• 5 Christian worship in rural Hispania: re-evaluating archaeological evidence on oratories, mausolea and churches in Late Antique Villas
• 6 Cemeteries, churches and other religious manifestations in the late Roman and Visigothic rural environment of the Middle Ebro Valley: an archaeological approach
• 7 Sacrarium nullo paratu extrinsecus: the slow arrival of Christianity in the Lusitanian countryside
• 8 Managing death in Visigothic Iberia (6th–7th centuries): religious and institutional issues
• 9 The ecclesiastical criticism of rural priests in Hispania during Late Antiquity
• 10 Pimenius and his network: the glocal dimension of rural Iberian Churches
• 11 The agenda of saintmakers. The case of the Vita Aemiliani in Visigothic Hispania
• 12 Metaphorical landscapes in rural Hispania. The transformation of religious geographies in Visigothic hagiography
• 13 Exploring the genealogy of “rural religion” between the cult of “nature” and subaltern religion. A history of religions perspective
• Index Rerum
• Index Sources