Emperor Honorius’ letter to the Army in Hispania: historical and philological notes on the Epistula Honorii

Abstract

This article deals with a rare imperial document: a letter by the Emperor Honorius commonly known as the Epistula Honorii. According to its incipt, it was addressed to the soldiers stationed in Pamplona during the barbarian invasions of the first decade of the fifth century. Building upon the existing scholarship on this text, this work re-examines the Epistula’s textual transmission and content, offering new readings of it. In addition to a comparative analysis with other Late Antique and Early Medieval sources, primarily of legal nature, a special similarity to what have been called imperial adlocutiones, due to both the text’s form and its content, will be shown. Consequently, this approach opens up a new avenue for understanding of this text.

Keywords

• Imperial texts
• Barbarian invasions of the fifth century
• Hispania
• Honorius
• imperial adlocutiones