This communication is intended to highlight a few important aspects in
the study of history in the context of sociological and literary
theories, and their potential usefulness for the historian. More
specifically, I will present a few selected problems which I have
encountered in my recent study of the Chalcedonian Acts, to be published
by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Göttingen) in the course of 2015. The
central focus of my study is a detailed discourse analysis of a selected
number of proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD). As will be
further discussed, being verbatim records, these proceedings
should be studied as a piece of theatre, in which the different actors
played their role. The discourse analysis which is applied to the texts
at issue is concerned with the dynamics of interaction and
communication, verbal and gestural, between the delegates,
ecclesiastical and imperial, between the delegates and the audience of
onlookers, and most importantly, between the emperor and his imperial
entourage and the leadership of the ecclesiastical establishment. Such
an approach to the proceedings can further our knowledge, among other
issues, of ancient ritual (both conscious and unconscious); the
internalization and exercise of social codes distinctive to Late Antique
society, such as the attaining of harmony within Christian communities
as a token of Divine Providence; and the special role which the emperor
had in achieving this goal.
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