Changing Winds and Great Storms:

The Dynamics of Speech Communities and Forms of Their Linguistic Self-Expression in the Eastern Mediterranean (324-1204)

Call for papers (the cfp is now closed).

EPIDENTITY is running a series of five sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, 5–8 July 2021. We are organizing this major event in cooperation with Yuliya Minets (Jacksonville University, Fl.), Mirela Ivanova (Univeristy of Oxford, University College), and with generous support from the Oxford Centre of Byzantine Research.

The special thematic strand of this edition of the IMC, ‘Climates’, can also be referred to the topic of the linguistic change, broadly defined, in the Eastern Mediterranean (c.324–c.1204). As the surfaces of stone inscriptions are subject to weather conditions, languages and their speakers experience the winds of history and harshness of the ever-changing political, social, and religious climates. Our panelists will explore how different languages and speech communities withstood (or did not) various transformations that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean in the period from the fourth to the twelfth century. 

As a number of recent studies have demonstrated, the shifts in practices and performances of language use in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages rarely came as a result of an intentional policy from above, but were rather introduced from the bottom-up perspective. While the organized actions on behalf of political authorities may have been indeed lacking, the political climate itself, as well as the dynamics of social relationships, suggested certain opportunistic choices available for local groups, who had to compete for political favors, economic resources, and social prestige and sought to preserve their distinct religious or confessional identities. In this situation, the choice was often made for practical benefits that the language associated with power and authority provided, while the use of other languages was reduced to certain traditional communicative domains (e.g. language of liturgy). We encourage participants to address various aspects of these processes and contribute to the on-going scholarly discussion of this fascinating topic.

Preliminary programme:

Session I: Linguistic Engineering in Late Antiquity: the Case of Coptic

The session focuses on the forms of linguistic and ideological interaction in the multilingual milieu of late antique and early medieval Egypt. The papers seek to undermine the traditional interpretation of Coptic as the last stage of Ancient Egyptian, a vernacular heavily influenced by Greek; to inquire into the roles Greek and Coptic played as written prestige languages in the diffusion of ideas and representations in the ever-changing religious and cultural situation in Egypt; to challenge the pan-monastic perspective on Coptic literature by including into the scholarly discussion the previously understudied semi-literary ‘magical texts’ or ‘texts of ritual power’.

chairperson: Yuliya Minets

papers:

1. Jennifer Cromwell (Manchester Metropolitan University), The Use of Coptic in Cultural Mediation in Early Islamic Egypt (keynote paper)

2. Joanna Wilimowska (University of Warsaw), Languages in the Epigraphic Culture of Late Antique Egypt

The decline in the epigraphic production around the third century CE is often recognizable as the end of the ancient epigraphic habit. Although the epigraphic culture of Egypt was distinctly different from that of, for instance, Greek poleis, Egypt also experienced a decline in the epigraphic output in later antiquity. Yet, inscribing in Egypt continued on a smaller scale after the third century CE. Hence, this paper will attempt to present the epigraphic habit of Egypt, from the end of the third century CE to the eight century CE. It will examine epigraphic culture in Egypt through the quantitative analysis of published inscriptions that originate from its different regions and it will involve all categories of inscriptions. The main goal of this paper is to investigate language choices in epigraphic production in Late Antique Egypt. Scholars argue that the decision of what language to use in epigraphy was made intuitively. These decisions may throw light on the parties that issued the inscriptions, their preferences, and purposes of writing. This paper will take into account language shifts that occurred around the third century CE (e.g.: the demise of the Demotic script) hoping to trace the main changes in the epigraphic habit of the area. Finally, when possible, it will include graphical representations of the chronological distribution of inscriptions.

3. Przemysław Piwowarczyk (University of Silesia), Texts of Ritual Power as Voices of Non-Ecclesiastical and Non-Monastic Coptic Litterati

Without any doubt, Coptic was predominantly the language of the Christian message and the bulk of Coptic literary texts belongs to various genres of religious Christian discourse. The recent years, however, have seen the rise of a wave of what might be called pan-monastic perspective on Coptic literature, linking all literary phenomena in Coptic with monastic milieus of some sort. The pan-monastic conclusion is, however, not compelling and here and there can be reasonably cast into doubt in light of scattered source evidence. First of all, Christian does not certainly mean ecclesiastical or monastic. Secondly, in the Coptic literary panorama, there are indeed texts with no direct link with liturgical service, or monastic piety. Even when we put aside the Manichean works, there are still left pieces of wisdom and romance-like literature surveyed recently by Paola Buzi. New pieces loom all the time, as P.Oxy 5414 containing an unexpected Coptic paraphrase of a few verses of Iliad. In my paper, I would like to focus on the understudied semi-literary category consisting of text labelled “magical” or “texts of ritual power”. I would like to survey the content and material character of these pieces to detect the context in which they were produced and read with an aim to nuance the monastic interpretations dominating scholarly discourse also in this field. I also check them against the figure of a magician (exclusively non-monastic) as presented in the hagiographical sources.

Session II: Re-Configuring Languages and the Epigraphic Culture in the Levant and Egypt

The session explores the interplay between various linguistic and material features attested in the epigraphic evidence from different regions around the eastern Mediterranean. The papers seek to examine pilgrim inscriptions from religious sites in the late antique Syria and Palestine frequented by representatives of different faiths, including polytheists (pagans), Jews, and Christians, and to investigate their visual presentation as well as production; to present the preliminary results of the new quantitative and qualitative analysis of linguistic features of the epigraphic evidence from the southern Levant; to explore language choices in epigraphic production of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

chairperson: Paweł Nowakowski

papers:

1. Sean Leatherbury (University College Dublin), Pilgrim Inscriptions in Late Antique Syria and Palestine: Materiality and Production

During their visits to sacred sites, late antique pilgrims often left their mark on these holy interiors by carving, incising, or painting their names, typically paired with their prayers. These text-markers acted as traces of the pilgrims and their relatives that persisted even after the people who made them left: for example, the Latin text which the sixth-century pilgrim from Piacenza writes that he left behind on a stone couch at the site of the Wedding of Cana (John 2:1-11), memorialising the names of his parents In modern scholarship, texts like this are often referred to under the category of ‘graffiti’, implying that they are somehow illicit by analogy to contemporary practices such as tagging. However, similar inscriptions at some sites appear not to have been produced by pilgrims themselves, but by groups of trained stonecutters or painters. This paper examines the carved and painted texts from two sites frequented by pilgrims of different faiths in the late antique Levant: Elijah’s Cave on Mount Carmel, which was visited by pagans or polytheists, Jews, and Christians; and the Hammat Gader baths near the Sea of Galilee. Focusing especially on the ways in which the inscriptions were embedded into the rough stone walls and smooth floors of the two sites, the paper investigates questions of visual presentation (how the inscriptions were framed and arranged) as well as production (by pilgrims or trained professionals). By considering the inscriptions not only in terms of their verbal formulae, but also in terms of their material and visual presence, and role in the ritual lives of their sites, we may get a glimpse of the inner workings of the sacred economies of pilgrim destinations, one that makes visible the often similar ways that pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims interacted with the physical environments of pilgrimage.

2. Piotr Głogowski (University of Wroclaw), The Linguistic Aspect of the Epigraphic Culture of the Southern Levant in Late Antiquity

Through the ages, the peoples of the southern Levant produced long-lived and wealthy epigraphic cultures of a great linguistic variety (Greek, Latin, Semitic languages). This is especially apparent in Late Antiquity when the number of inscriptions appears to be exceptionally significant if compared to other regions of the Eastern Mediterranean. The aim of this paper is to present the preliminary results of my research on the development of the epigraphic culture of the southern Levant (Phoenicia, Judaea-Palestine, Transjordan) by discussing the epigraphic evidence according to its linguistic features. Therefore, I intend to examine the quantitative and qualitative aspect of the epigraphic culture of the southern Levant. In order to do that, I would like to present the epigraphic curves (graphic representation of the chronological distribution of inscriptions according to their linguistic characteristics) for the region as a whole and by its particular sub-regions and to analyze a number of their characteristics (e.g. the decline of Latin and its dynamics, Latin loanwords in Greek and Semitic inscriptions, the role of Semitic languages in the local epigraphic expression). All of this would allow us to discuss both the local diversities and common patterns in the epigraphic culture of the southern Levant.

3. Estelle Ingrand-Varenne, (CNRS, Centre de recherche française à Jérusalem / Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale), The Use of Languages in the Inscriptions of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

This paper explores the use of the different languages in the Holy Land epigraphy written in the Latin alphabet (around 310 texts), in particular the vernacular, during the 12th and 13th centuries. If we trust the epigraphic texts which give dates, we observe that the vernacular language was introduced in the middle of 13th century. This linguistic transition from Latin to French occurred at the same moment as in France, but with two differences. First, in the Latin Kingdom, the second half of the 13th century marks a real transition, with an almost radical break from Latin and a turn to vernacular French. In the region of Western France, from the second half of the 13th century, epitaphs which abandon the Latin appear to be on the increase, but it is not until the middle of the 14th century that the French language completely overtakes Latin in Western France. In the Holy Land, not only is the transition to the vernacular more sudden, but also definitive. Then, the vernacular language (the Outremer French) obviously had a different status in the Holy Land: it was both an ethnolect, used by the Frankish sociocultural group symbolically associated with it and a vehicular language, allowing communication between peoples of different native languages, especially a sociolect of the ruling elite. The linguistic diversity is not limited to only two languages in the Latin East. We can observe porosity with the other languages: Greek, Arabic, Armenian, but also Italian, German etc. Personal names or location names, realia show the interferences with the other languages and scripts, traces of the religious, ethnical and social diversity of the Levantine society, also among the Latins. Finally, in a sociolinguistic point of view, we must explore who the social strengths of the linguistic transition (laymen, role of the military orders, crusaders) were; where these inscriptions were used; and what the goal of the language change was and what the consequences were.

Session III: Code Switching in Early Byzantine Syria: Sources and Instruments

The session offers new perspectives on the study of multilingualism in early Byzantine Syria. The papers explore epigraphic findings from two synagogues in Dura Europos and Apamea, analyze their writing conventions, and draw broader conclusions about the network of Jewish communities in Syria; investigate how the choice of language works in a village society in eastern Syria, across people of different status and occupation; present a new database of the epigraphic evidence for the study of multilingualism in the late antique Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, the major product of a project run by scholars from the University of Warsaw.

chairperson: Arkadiy Avdokhin

papers:

1. Eleonora Cussini (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice), Writing conventions and epigraphic findings from two Syrian Synagogues: rediscussing the evidence from Dura Europos and Apamea

The epigraphic records from the Dura Europos and Apamea synagogues show the vitality of two communities which centered around them in the first centuries AD. Comparable epigraphic findings and similar vestiges are not available from Palmyra, where the proofs of existence of a Jewish community are less evident. Ties and connections between Palmyra and Dura Europos have long been studied; the interaction between the Apamea Jewish community and Palmyra needs to be further investigated. With the notion of the ties and interchange within this network of Jewish communities as a starting point, the paper focuses on the epigraphic evidence from the Dura and Apamea synagogues, where different writings were used: mostly Greek in Apamea; Hebrew, Aramaic and Persian in Dura Europos. Attention is given to the documented text-types – donors’ inscriptions on mosaic from Apamea; donors’ inscriptions on tiles, building inscriptions and graffiti from Dura Europos – and on gender and role of dedicants. The analysis also tackles the ‘missing portion’ from Palmyra, and includes in the discussion epigraphic records from the so-called Palmyra synagogue.

2. Paweł Nowakowski (University of Warsaw), Of Presbyters and Stonemasons, or Switching Codes in a Syrian Village.

Rasm al-Ḥajal/Rasm al-Ḥağal was a prospering village in Jabal al-Shubayt/Ğabal Šbayṭ, one of the basaltic plateaus in east Syria. It offers us an ample collection of Greek and Syriac inscriptions displayed on different buildings within this same public space, very meaningful regarding the status of people behind their composition. While skimming through this dossier one quickly comes across a wide array of dedicators, from high-ranking state officials of megaloprepestatos rank to plain workmen. In this paper, I will take a closer look at two individuals who decided to commemorate their generosity, zeal, and hard work in Syriac: the presbyter Romanos and the stonecutter Petros. In their cases, the choice of language seems not to have been dictated by the poor knowledge of Greek, as we also see them commissioning Greek inscriptions, but by other reasons. This case study may bring us closer to understanding how the choice of language works in a village society, across people of different status and occupation.

3. Tomasz Barański (University of Warsaw), Epigraphy & Identity in the Early Byzantine Middle East: A Year’s Work.

This paper will offer an insider’s view of the first year’s work on the project Epigraphy & Identity in the Early Byzantine Middle East, run by our team from the University of Warsaw under the direction of Paweł Nowakowski, and funded by the ‘Sonata’ grant from the National Science Centre, Poland (grant agreement number 2019/35/D/HS3/01872). The attendees will be familiarized with new research possibilities created by a database of sites with the epigraphical evidence for the study of multilingualism in the late antique Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, a major product of the project.

Session IV: Communities and Communication: Conceptualizing Linguistic Diversity and Self-Expression

The session focuses on various ways in which late antique and early medieval communities and representatives of literary elites conceptualized their own and someone else’s languages, explored new form of communication derived from their religious experiences and ideas, and involved language differences and their own language-related socio-cultural stereotypes into the process of constructing and negotiating their specific ethnic, regional, confessional, and social identities. The papers investigate the development of Christian views on linguistic diversity, divine languages, and the phenomenon of glossolalia, as well as the cultural importance of Greek in the early Medieval Balkans.

chairperson: Ekaterini Mitsiou

papers:

1. Yuliya Minets (Jacksonville State University):“Communities of Linguistic Sensitivities” in Late Antique Christianity

The paper discusses the applicability of a notion of “communities of linguistic sensitivities” to the study of early Christianity and Late Antiquity in general. The concept of “communities of linguistic sensitivities” is related to notions of “speech communities” and “emotional communities,” both of which occupy their rightful place in the humanities and social studies. The community of linguistic sensitivities refers not so much to a group that speaks a common language, although this is an important presupposition, as to those who share similar language-related socio-cultural stereotypes and subscribe to approximately the same views and ideas about linguistic history and linguistic diversity. Such a community includes people who are accustomed to think and to feel about other languages in the same or similar ways; who imagine the alloglottic Others and react to them in a like manner; whose imaginary taxonomies and genealogies of languages and their speakers are mostly congruent. The history of Christianity in Late Antiquity could be described in terms of the formation of such a community of linguistic sensitivities around the Mediterranean – a community whose ideas and views on languages were greatly colored by the biblical narrative, fused with cultural categories inherited from Classical Antiquity, and shaped by dramatic social and demographic transformations that occurred in this period. Moreover, given the diversity of local variations, it would rather be justified to speak about several related communities of linguistic sensitivities in early Christianity that developed dynamically, constantly readjusted, and mutually influenced each other. The paper is an attempt to systematize and contextualize literary references to speakers of different tongues (accents or dialects), and various communicative situations attested in works of Christian writers in Late Antiquity. Such an approach allows us to catch a glimpse of how language differences and language-related stereotypes were drawn into the process of constructing and negotiating Christian identities in the socio-cultural realities of the late Roman world.

2. Jodie Augustine (Catholic University of America – Washington, DC), Glossolalia as Communication

The spoken and written languages in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages were both shaped by the culture and in turn also shaped the culture as they developed. Although examining the spoken and written word is an important component in understanding the culture, we may be able to investigate these languages further by looking at the way authors during this time viewed divine languages, specifically in relation to glossolalia. By examining the way authors viewed the occurrence of glossolalia and how they interpreted the events in Acts 2, there may be an insight into how specific authors viewed languages other than their own. The question that drove much discussion on glossolalia throughout Late Antiquity is whether the miracle is found in the speaking or in the hearing. Michael Psellos, a prolific author during the eleventh century, examined this very topic. According to Psellos, the Holy Spirit enabled the disciples on the day of Pentecost to recognize the ethnicity of the people around them. In the way he understands speaking in tongues, he links it both to ethnicity and language. From this perspective of divine languages, one may see how his understanding of divine languages impacted and informed his understanding of contemporaneous languages. Thus, this is an examination in how his theological understanding of glossolalia impacted his anthropological understanding of language.

3. Mirela Ivanova (University of Oxford), Greek in the Early Medieval Balkans

TBA

Session V: The Use of Language: Navigating Religious, Gender, and Social Identities

The session explores the dynamics of language use in situations in which a variety of other factors were involved, such as religious or confessional affiliation, gender, social status, education, regional, ethnic, and institutional loyalties. Participants will discuss different aspects of resistance, adaptation, and the formation of hybrid types of identity in late antique and medieval societies. This includes the social aspects of the language use in the context of the major religious controversy in the fourth-century Mediterranean, namely “Arianism”; the use of gendered language to androgenize female bodies in medieval art and literary narratives; linguistic dynamics in Ilkhanid historiography.

chairperson: Marijana Vuković

papers:

1. Astrid Schmölzer (University of Bamberg), Understanding Early ‘Arianism’–Arius’

The ‘Arian’ Controversy, named after the Alexandrinian presbyter, is one of the best documented periods in late antique history. The early ‘Arianism’ spreaded in two different main social groups – the elite Church leaders and emperors and the people in the streets. We can prove a simplification and explanation of the topic for the lower classes. Public and private meetings, public discussions in marketplaces and songs with religious content are described in the sources. The scene of action switches back to the elite eventually, and continues as a political issue. The communities supported their bishops during elections; those elected bishops could furthermore get into politics and religious discussions on the various ecclesiastical councils and synods. From Arius’ writings we know parts of his Thalia, and three letters addressed to Eusebius of Nicomedia, his bishop Alexander and the emperor Constantine himself. Reconstruction of any historical word actually spoken or written by Arius is – as for the main part of historical people – not possible. But evidence on the social aspects of the use of language can be clearly marked by these sources cited and the stories on Arius‘ interacting with everyday people in his parish. We can determine the most important facts on the use of language: context or genre (e.g. written letters or open public speeches in the marketplaces), social environment (or audience – Church elites and the emperor next to the people of Alexandria) and the way of communication (formal letters, presentations in front of a synod or personal talk). With these existing sources and hints we can mark the registers of Arius’ language. Thus, we are able to give an inside view on the dynamics of language, use of rhetorical speech and the awareness of meeting the questions and ignorance of the people, whose support was vital in the episcopal elections.

2. Trisha D. Gupta (New York University), Penetrating, Piercing, and Androgenizing: The Linguistic Defining, Redefining, and Blurring of Gender in the Beowulf Manuscript and the Madrid Skylitzes

In The Wonders of the East, the descriptions of “obscene and disgraceful” women monsters are rooted in fear and disgust—and yet, also a lurking desire hidden under a wish to “capture” these figures (Fulk 29). While scholars such as Eileen Joy and Jeffrey Cohen recognize this revulsion and desire that the female body evokes in medieval literature, my paper, through examining passages from the Beowulf Manuscript and the Madrid Skylitzes, will explore this polarity of motivation and how language choice, with gendered connotations, constructs this dichotomy. My paper will meditate on questions such as: how does literary inversion of gendered language androgenize female bodies? If women are depicted as performing masculine actions or assuming masculine roles, does the medieval masculine desire to capture the female body imply a desire to conquer the self? In order to pursue these questions, this paper will focus on descriptions of women monsters in The Wonders of the East and analyze the fight between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother in Beowulf, in which Grendel’s mother’s strength is compared to the relative “strength of females” while she is also portrayed as penetrating and piercing (Fulk 171). Additionally, through exploring the textual and pictorial portrayals of women in the Madrid Skylitzes, this paper will place the Beowulf Manuscript in conversation with a richly illustrated manuscript with the aim of elucidating how language defines, blurs, and redefines gender. By doing so, I would like to offer a reading of medieval monstrous and human female bodies in which they are linguistically portrayed as androgynous so as to symbolize the desire of medieval characters to not only conquer and capture the female body, but also by doing so, align the self with the androgynous female body and subsequently conquer, capture, and satisfy a desire within the self.

3. Jan Jelinowski (Uni Bonn), Linguistic Dynamics in Ilkhanid Historiography: The Input of Textual Statistics

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Mongol invasions and rule heavily influenced and transformed the social structures and representation systems in the region of Anatolia, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and Iran up to its linguistic make-up. In the past thirty years, research has acknowledged the cultural, religious and political diversity of the society of the Ilkhanate (1260-1335), yet due to institutional inertia, it is still often understood as a phase in Iranian history. This categorisation holds particularly to the historical production of the time, as Persian sources represent the biggest corpus, and as the later Ilkhans sponsored Persian court historians. By challenging this categorisation and in the light of a broader view of the historical narratives produced under the Ilkhans, I will show how the classical research question about the acculturation of the Mongols could be reframed as an inquiry into the social process that made Persian the prime language for memory keeping and describing power. I will then present a first set of observations and hypotheses based on a statistical analysis of the vocabulary of a selection of Persian sources, with a particular focus on Turkish and Mongol loan words and their semantic fields.