Rita Lizzi: The politics of apostolic primacy in Ostrogothic Rome

The proposed workshop involves five scholars from Italy to Spain and Finland who are going to investigate the transformations experienced by the city of Rome during late antiquity and how they resulted in the contemporary perception. No need to say that the symbolic purport of Rome as “eternal city” and, more generally, cultural icon, is clearly emphasized in all late antique sources, even though the eternal city was no more the political capital of the Empire. Her role, however, was by no means weakened but, on the contrary, acquired new prestige, thanks to the pontifical see and to her primacy among the Western Churches – though one should note here that such a primacy was not unanimously acknowledged in the East: for example some conciliar canons state that the see of Rome should be subjected to that of Constantinople, because Constantinople is the actual capital city or, the Nea Rhome). The five proposed communications are going to outline the tensions implied in the description of Rome, according to different literary sources. In contrast to the heavenly Jerusalem, which embodies the ultimate spiritual goal longed for by Christian writers, Rome endows strong earthly (i.e. political) values, even though universal and trans-national. This becomes particularly meaningful in the crucial context of the formation of the new realms of the so-called Romano-Germanic reigns. Dramatic or even catastrophic events during the fifth century will be assumed as starting point to establish a new identitarian perspective, as it is shown in some cases like the Christian/pagan polemic or the Roman/barbarian dialectic. The use of images from the Roman past, the dispute about political authority, or even the idea of a divine protection or wrath acting on Rome contribute to the reshaping of its literary image and witnesses to the vitality and multiformity of such meaningful cultural icon.