What do the Church Fathers, Scientific Fathers, and Military Fathers have in common?

This paper will show how techniques and perspectives borrowed from other disciplines of history can answer some fundamental unanswered questions about the early Middle Ages. One such question seems simple enough, though its implications are profound: who were the Church Fathers for those living in the early Middle Ages? No one has hitherto answered this question, and indeed, it has almost never been posed. These ‘Fathers’ were invoked again and again in theological works, in Church councils, in letters, in canon law, but their identity was only ever fleetingly addressed. Knowing who these figures were (and who they were not, and how and when this changed) obviously would tell us a great deal about early medieval intellectual culture, its preferences, its idea of authority, its changeability.
To delve into this problem, techniques first applied in the history of science offer an exciting new perspective and some interesting results. Creating network graphs of co-citations between scientists, for exampl

22-10-2020 15:10 - 15:50