Els Rose: Libertas in the triangle of the apocryphal Acts, early Latin hagiography and the liturgical cult of saints

• Centre for Advanced Studies
• Fellows Brunch

In my research on Citizenship Discourses in the Early Middle Ages, I study semantic changes in citizenship vocabulary after the end of the Western Roman Empire and, thereby, the presupposed end of citizenship as a legal, political and social distinguisher. One of the central concepts in citizenship discourse is libertas. In my presentation to the Beyond Canon group, I propose to present work in progress on the (changes of) meaning of libertas in the Christian discourse of the apocryphal Acts, early Latin hagiography, and Latin liturgy. In these textual and performative sources, apostles and semi-apostolic saints embody different aspects of libertas, including freedom of speech and thought (parrhesia); freedom as opposed to captivity and slavery; individual and collective freedom from tyranny. These different expressions of freedom in a selection of sources bring into profile the Christian reconfiguration of libertasin the early post-Roman West.