| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,600,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
My research has been centered on rereading the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris. At the same time, I have been a member of the Study Group of the Theodosian Code, and have translated and annotated the laws in it for many years. I reconsidered literacy in late antiquity from these legal-texts and specific cases in the late 3rd- and 4th- century Gaul, and confirmed the following points: 1. The legal texts show the increasing reliance on documentation in the Later Roman Empire, and it is difficult to infer from these sources the rapid decline of literacy in Late Antiquity, as William V. Harris assumed. 2. The acquisition of high-level literacy opened the way to the imperial bureaucracy and thus contributed to the formation of the senatorial aristocracy in the late 3rd- and 4th- century Gaul. Furthermore, sharing "correctly written words" produced a sense of solidarity, regardless of the sharer's origins and ethnicity, which I confirmed form the letters of Sidonius. Meanwhile, what induced me to re-read the texts of Sidonius was J. Harries' hypothesis on the consecration of Sidonius, and my argument against it led me to the reconsideration of Sidonius' attitudes to "Germanismus" and Arianism. I think that the clue to elucidate them can be found in the composition of Book 7 of his Epistulae, and in the letters exchanged between Sidonius and the four bishops, including Faustus of Riez, who were involved in the conclusion of the treaty between the Western Roman government and the Visigoths in 475, which was treacherous and brutal from Sidonius' viewpoint. However, I still need to deepen my research on the problem of Arianism in late antique Gaul, and read more letters exchanged among bishops and other texts written by them.
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