Koinonia 36 (2012)
Rivista dell'Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi
Napoli, D'Auria, 2012, 320 p., Codice:11251 / ISBN:ISSN:0393-2230, 90€ (IVA inclusa)
Sommaire et résumés
- Isabella Baldini, I gruppi sociali subalterni: un problema di visibilità archeologica
The identification and the analysis of the documentation concerning the subordinate classes is one of the problems which, in the last few years, the archaeological researches are trying to face in a systematic way. Similar typologies, depending on places and periods, can be adopted by different social levels, and only the analysis of the context and the comparison on a regional scale offer the possibility to interpret them correctly. A conventional system of distinctive signs and specific representative codes, however, exists, even if in the context of a multifaceted framework. The social hierarchization is visible through the architectural documentation, the necropolises, the written mentions, the figurative repertoire. If the vision of the archaeological reality is certainly incomplete, anyway it reflects tangible aspects of the daily life of the subordinate classes which, in most cases, are not evident in the classificatory terminology of the juridical sources and in the perception of the narrative sources.
- Chiara Corbo, Tra Italia e Africa: la legislazione di Costantino sugli inopes parentes
The communication analyses two constitutions of the emperor Constantin collected in the Theodosian Code under the title De alimentis, quae inopes parentes de publico petere debent. These two laws, CTh. 11, 27, 1 (issued in 315) and CTh. 11, 27, 2 (issued in 322), are directed to Italy and Africa, respectively. CTh. 11, 27, 1 orders that fiscus and res privata principis be utilized without discrimination to provide clothing and food to destitute parents, in order to limit the crime of children killing. CTh. 11, 27, 2 compels imperial officials in Africa to provide, by means of fiscus, alimentary relief for indigent parents, who otherwise might be driven to sell or pledge their children. These two Constantinian laws evidence a special attention of the emperor to the problem of paupertas, with particular regard to poor childhood.
- María Victoria Escribano Paño, Pauperes en el libro 16 del Codex Theodosianus
This paper carries out a casuistic analysis of the references to pauper and paupertas made in the laws compiled in book 16 of Codex Theodosianus, dealing entirely with religious matters. The figure of the poor person is at the core of Christian discourse in the fourth and fifth centuries, with the predominant and limiting meaning of beggar or poor person who is only helped by the church. The imperial chancery, however, did not take on Christian terminology on poverty nor reflect the social significance of charity and alms in legal regulations from Constantine onwards. References to pauperes in laws are scarce, almost always secondary, and do not contain an univocal notion of the poor: along with those assisted by the church, there also appear those who are not seen as fitting by the curia, the poor in general, those with a servile status, the false poor or those who became poor after punishment. Moral principles did not inspire legislation regarding paupers. As legislators, Christian emperors did not impose or ensure compliance with Christian ethics on poverty. From Constantine onwards, the law did not set forth charitable assistance to the poor nor linked the granting of privileges to the clergy to the charitable role of the church, except in the case of chrysargyrom. Between the interests of the res publica and those of the ecclesia, emperors always opted for the former while taxation always overruled charity amongst their concerns.
- Arnaldo Marcone, «La differenza del cristianesimo». Spazi di assistenza nella città tardoantica
This paper explores the emergence in late Roman society of “the poor” as a distinct social class, one for which the Christian church claimed a special responsibility. It is the story of how a society came to see itself as responsible for the care of a particular class of people – a class that had not previously been cared for – and of who benefited from that shift in interests. A concerted effort was made to define poverty in the patristic period. Economic and voluntary poverty were valued differently, and these differences lie at the heart of understanding the shifting roles of wealth and poverty in society from the fourth century onward. John Chrysostom and the fourth century Cappadocians, particularly Basil of Caesarea, are perhaps the best-known Greek examples of patristic beneficence. Chrysostom invited his audience to take on the self-ordained priestly dignity that accompanies the role of stewards of the poor. Among the many issues that characterize the tensions between wealth and poverty in Late Antiquity and early Byzantine period the question of trade, profit and salvation appears particularly important.
- Valerio Neri, Tra schiavi e liberi: aspetti della mobilità sociale tardoantica
The article aims to analyze some aspects of the transition in the late antiquity of free persons belonging to the lower classes of the Roman society to the condition of slaves and vice versa, particularly in ways overtly illegal or at least not completely legal, as the flight of slaves to build up for themselves a false free identity or the sale into slavery of sons and other members of the family by the paterfamilias. The relative ease of these movements is linked to a lowering of the legal and social position of the humiliores, particularly in some professional situations, and their increased closeness to the social and economic conditions of the slaves. From this point of view is analyzed CTh. 4, 6, 3 = CJ 5, 27, 1 and the problem of its interpretation in Nov. Marc. 4, 2-4, which raises the question whether the expression vel humili vel abiecta can be read as an allusion to pauperes as a whole or only to the specific professions mentioned in the constitution. The article takes then into account the laws about the flight of slaves who, pretending to be free, get jobs and even contracts of colonate in the countryside. To counter this phenomenon the state requires, starting from a constitution of Arcadius and Honorius (CJ 11, 48, 12, 1), from the owners and their administrators a responsible attention in accepting strangers in their landholdings. Finally, this study is concerned with the legislative evolution in the fourth and fifth centuries on the sale of children as slaves, focusing in particular on the situation witnessed in Aug., ep. 10*. It proposes the hypothesis that the twentyfive years contract of locatio-conductio operarum to which Augustine makes hint was thought as a compromise between the intangibility of the free status and the social and economic reality in which the needs that drove the poors to the sale of their children were linked to the interests of the rich to buy up cheap labour force under conditions of relative safety.
- Salvatore Puliatti, Samaritas atroces et adversus Christianos elatos. Il problema religioso e politico del samaritismo in età giustinianea
The present essay deals with the study of that particular form of marginalization that, during the Late Roman Empire, consists of the legal measures adopted against heterodox minorities. Within the overall framework of non-Catholic movements, a place for itself was occupied by Samaritism, for reasons related to its enclosed nature, unaffected by any form of compulsion and jealously positioned in defense of its religious traditions. This work is specifically devoted to the study of Justinian's legislation, which focused more organically than others on the phenomenon of Samaritism. For the legislator, in fact, the Samaritism did not constitute only a religious issue, but a source of economic and social conflicts and political claims. Hence the special attention devoted to it and the extent and severity of the measures designed to limit freedoms, individual rights and legal capacities, to the point of putting in question the very possibility of survival. This harsh treatment will diminish only at the end of the reign of Justinian, to resume with renewed force under his successor Justin II.
- Boudewijn Sirks, Did poverty lie at the origin of the colonate?
Was the colonate part of a fiscal reorganisation under Diocletian, or was it a legal institution of its own? And if of its own, what lay at its origin? Several, but certainly not all texts, connect the colonate with poverty in the sense that somebody enters the relationship of the colonate to escape the worst consequences of poverty. In other cases the colonate is just a condition, while the person subjected to it may exercise a job or be in the imperial service. Further, was poverty in general the reason to create the institution of the colonate? It is suggested that indeed, be it on individual level, the colonate was developed to secure for poor people the payment of their taxes and by that protect them against the worst consequences of poverty, and further, that the colonate was already in substance existing in 293/294
- Alfredina Storchi Marino, Schiavi e uomini di vile condizione nel senatoconsulto claudiano in età tardoantica
I investigate here the constitutions written in the fourth century to regulate the marriages between freeborn women and other owners’ slaves. The imperial constitutions, preserved in the Theodosian code 4.12, innovated upon the sc Claudianum, which forbid such unions since 52 AD. They show a widespread interpenetration between free and slave, both horizontal and vertical, both in the countryside and in the cities. The characteristic feature of these constitutions is the distinction made within the categories of slaves (Constantine cancelled the penalty only for the freeborn women who married imperial slaves primarily engaged in agriculture) or the extension of the interdict to free men, but those of almost servile status (perhaps actores and procuratores privati with the emperor Julian; workers of the corpora, monetarii and gynaecearii under the Valentinians). Even among women these laws explicitely select the unions which concern “ladies” of some rank, especially those of the curial order. Another feature that characterizes the legislation of the IV century is the explicit attention to the will of the woman. So the sc Claudianum proves to be a flexible instrument for the control of social mobility also in the late antiquity.
- Domenico Vera, Una carità razionale: provvedimenti di carestia e finanza pubblica nel Tardo Impero
A well known Constantine’s constitution relating to Africa (CTh. 11, 27, 1) provides gratuitous distributions of money and fiscal food-stuffs to the hungry people during a great famine, in order to avoid the poor selling their sons. The examination of the measures adopted on the occasion of famine, as well as in financial matters, in Late Antiquity points out that the praxis of the gratuitous distributions was not at all usual. As a rule, during situations of alimentary crisis, the imperial authorities had to guarantee the disposability of the supplies, prevalently of the grain, at prices which were certainly moderate, but never leaving out of the consideration of the increasing of the prices on the free market. Moreover, these operations, if they were carried out through the fiscal grain, did not cause a loss of the Treasury; on the contrary, they resulted profitable in that they were carried out at prices which were beyond both the tariff of acquisition of the grain intended for the distribution and that one for the re-establishement of the supplies.
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Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi
Avendo in mente tali pensieri e trovandosi d'accordo su alcune linee operative, un gruppo di studiosi ha fondato, nel 1975, l'Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi, la quale si propone di continuare anche fuori delle mura accademiche i discorsi sui temi culturali del tardoantico, di promuoverne nei modi più diversi la conoscenza, di costituire un punto di incontro, senza preconcetti e preclusioni. IL Consiglio Direttivo
- Prof. Lucio De Giovanni, Presidente, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
- Prof. Francesco Paolo Casavola, Presidente onorario, Presidente emerito della Corte Costituzionale
- Prof. Antonio Garzya, Presidente onorario, Presidente emerito dell'Accademia Pontaniana
- Prof. Franco Amarelli, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
- Prof. Fabrizio Conca, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Milano
- Prof. Ugo Criscuolo, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
- Prof. Giovanni Cupaiuolo, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Messina
- Prof. Riccardo Maisano, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Napoli-L'Orientale
- Prof. Claudio Moreschini, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Pisa
- Prof. Antonio V. Nazzaro, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
- Prof. Stefano Pittaluga, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Genova
- Prof. Giovanni Polara, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
- Prof. Salvatore Puliatti, Consigliere, Università degli Studi di Parma
- Prof. Maddalena Buono, Consigliere, Centro Bibliotecario
Koinonia
Rivista dell'Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi
Comitato scientifico:
Franco Amarelli (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) – Jean-Michel Carrié (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris) – Francesco Paolo Casavola (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Presidente emerito della Corte Costituzionale) – Fabrizio Conca(Università degli Studi di Milano) – Lellia Cracco Ruggini (Università degli Studi di Torino) –Ugo Criscuolo (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Direttore) – Giovanni Cupaiuolo(Università degli Studi di Messina) – Lucio De Giovanni (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Presidente dell’Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi, Condirettore) – Lietta De Salvo (Università degli Studi di Messina) – Emilio Germino (Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli) – Juan Antonio López Férez (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid) – Riccardo Maisano (Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale) – Pierre-Louis Malosse (Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier) – Claudio Moreschini (Università degli Studi di Pisa) – Antonio V. Nazzaro (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) – Laurent Pernot(Université de Strasbourg) – Stefano Pittaluga (Università degli Studi di Genova) –Giovanni Polara (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Condirettore) – Salvatore Puliatti (Università degli Studi di Parma) – Helmut Seng (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main) – A. J. Boudewijn Sirks (University of Oxford) – Luigi Tartaglia (Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale) – Domenico Vera (Università degli Studi di Parma) – Nigel G. Wilson (University of Oxford).
