A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy

A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy

Brill’s Companions to European History VOLUME 9

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bceh

A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy Edited by

Jonathan J. Arnold M. Shane Bjornlie Kristina Sessa

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Mosaic from the naïve of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, depicting the harbor and urban landscape of Classe, the port city of Ravenna. Photo courtesy of Mark Johnson. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016008190

Want or need Open Access? Brill Open offers you the choice to make your research freely accessible online in exchange for a publication charge. Review your various options on brill.com/brill-open. Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2212-7410 isbn 978-9004-31376-7 (hardback) isbn 978-9004-31593-8 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Foreword vii List of Figures viii List of Contributors ix 1 Introduction 1 Jonathan J. Arnold, M. Shane Bjornlie, and Kristina Sessa

part 1 The State 2 The Ostrogothic Kingdom: Ideologies and Transitions 17 Gerda Heydemann 3 Governmental Administration 47 M. Shane Bjornlie 4 Ostrogothic Provinces: Administration and Ideology 73 Jonathan J. Arnold 5 Ostrogothic Cities 98 Federico Marazzi 6 The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy 121 Christine Radtki 7 The Law 147 Sean Lafferty 8 The Ostrogothic Military 173 Guy Halsall

part 2 Culture and Society 9 Goths and Gothic Identity in the Ostrogothic Kingdom 203 Brian Swain

vi

contents

10

Urban Life and Culture 234 Deborah M. Deliyannis

11

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy 263 Cam Grey

12

The Heroine and the Historian: Procopius of Caesarea on the Troubled Reign of Queen Amalasuentha 296 Kate Cooper

13

Intellectual Culture and Literary Practices 316 Natalia Lozovsky

14

Art and Architecture 350 Mark J. Johnson

15

Barbarizing the Bel Paese: Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy 390 Paolo Squatriti

part 3 Religion 16

The Roman Church and its Bishops 425 Kristina Sessa

17

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 451 Rita Lizzi Testa

18

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy 480 Rita Lizzi Testa

19

Religious Diversity 503 Samuel Cohen Glossary of Select Sources 533 Index 542

Foreword The genesis and completion of this volume is indebted to the avid interest of a great many people who realized that a comprehensive and systematic treatment of Ostrogothic Italy was lacking in English scholarship. For all the diligent and careful attention given to the Ostrogoths in recent decades, and in as much as so many debates about the end of the western Roman Empire and the emergence of early medieval Europe are contingent upon an understanding of the Ostrogothic kingdom, it is something of a surprise that scholarship has not produced a more recent comprehensive collection of essays representing the many perspectives and approaches present in the field of Ostrogothic studies. The opportunity to seriously discuss this lacuna with interested colleagues arose on the occasion of the 47th meeting of the International Congress on Medieval Studies at the University of Western Michigan (Kalamazoo), where Deborah Deliyannis organized three panels dedicated to Ostrogothic Italy. For her good instincts and her role in facilitating that meeting, we owe Deborah a cheerful debt of gratitude. We would also like to thank the series editors at Brill with whom it has been a constant pleasure to work. Julian Deahl initially shepherded this volume through its various growing pains until his retirement from Brill in 2015. We would like to thank Julian for answering the endless queries from the volume’s editors with both good humour and good advice. Similarly, we very much want to thank Kate Hammond and Marcella Mulder for seeing the project through to production and publication after Julian’s retirement. Their task was equally weighty. Finally, this volume would not have been possible but for the many fine scholars who contributed their patience, dedication, and expertise in the form of the chapters contained within it. Although the volume editors are deeply gratified by the quality of the published book, we are more appreciative of the friendships that have grown out of this collaboration. Ennodius, Boethius, and Cassiodorus would have envied such an opportunity. Jon Arnold, M. Shane Bjornlie, and Tina Sessa December 2015

List of Figures 1.1 Map of Europe and the Mediterranean, ca. 500 2 1.2 Map of Ostrogothic provinces, ca. 525 4 1.3 Map of 6th-century Rome 11 1.4 Map of 6th-century Ravenna 12 8.1 Map of supposed Ostrogothic burial sites in Italy and Dalmatia 190 12.1 Genealogical chart of the Ostrogothic Amal family 298 14.1 Jewellery from a female burial at Domagnano in San Marino, ca. late 5th or early 6th century 351 14.2 Marble female portrait, possibly the eastern Empress Ariadne or Amalasuentha 354 14.3 Ivory portraits of Athalaric and Amalasuentha, upper leafs of the Diptych of Orestes (consul 530) 355 14.4 Senigallia Medallion, portrait of Theoderic 356 14.5 Bronze nummus of Theodahad, ca. 534 356 14.6 Map of eastern half of Ravenna, early 6th century 360 14.7 Marble column capital with monogram of Theoderic 361 14.8 Santo Spirito, basilica and baptistery, Ravenna 362 14.9 Plan of Santo Spirito, Ravenna 363 14.10 Mosaic, baptistery of Santo Spirito, Ravenna 364 14.11 Plan of Theoderic’s palace, Ravenna 366 14.12 Mosaic fragment, possible paving from Theoderic’s palace, Ravenna 369 14.13 Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, basilica interior, Ravenna 371 14.14 Mosaic of the Palatium and the city scape of Ravenna, basilica ­interior, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna 374 14.15 Fragmentary mosaic, possibly of Theoderic, basilica interior, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna 377 14.16 Mausoleum of Theoderic, exterior, Ravenna 379 14.17 Plan of the Mausoleum of Theoderic, Ravenna 380 14.18 Mausoleum of Theoderic, reconstruction of De Angelis d’Ossat 381 14.19 Apse mosaic, church of SS Cosmas and Damian, Rome 385

List of Contributors Jonathan J. Arnold is Associate Professor of History and Director of Classics at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His research focuses on the late antique and early medieval West, particularly the disintegration of the western Roman Empire and questions of identity at this time. He is currently translating works from Ennodius of Pavia for the series Translated Texts for Historians, in addition to publishing Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration (Cambridge 2014). M. Shane Bjornlie is Associate Professor of Roman and Late Antique History at Claremont McKenna College in Los Angeles. His research focuses on intersections of rhetorical representation and historical reality from the 4th through the 7th century. He has published Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople: A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527–554 (Cambridge 2013) and he is currently working on a study of the memory of Roman Empire in the early Middle Ages. Samuel Cohen is an Assistant Professor of History at Sonoma State University, California. His interests focus on late and post-Roman Italy, with particular attention to social and religious deviance and its reconciliation. His current research considers the problem of Ostrogothic ‘Arianism’, the language of heresy, and the development of the institutional authority of the early medieval bishops of Rome. Kate Cooper is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Manchester. She writes and teaches about the world of the Mediterranean in the Roman period, with a special interest in daily life and the family, religion and gender, social identity, and the fall of the Roman Empire. Her previous publications include The Fall of the Roman Household (Cambridge 2007) and Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women (Atlantic Press 2013). Deborah M. Deliyannis is Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington. She has published an edition and translation of Agnellus of Ravenna’s Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis, and also authored Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge 2010).

x

list of contributors

Cam Grey is Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in the social history of rural communities in Late Antiquity. Recently, he has focused upon the intersection of social history, environmental science, and disaster studies in approaching the transformations that this world experienced. He is the author of Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside (Cambridge 2011). Guy Halsall is Professor of History at York University. He has published on subjects including gender and age, death and burial, ethnicity, and warfare and violence in the early Middle Ages. His current research focuses on western Europe in the period around AD 600 and on the application of contemporary philosophy to history. Past publications include Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge 2007) and Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages (Oxford 2013). Gerda Heydemann is a researcher at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Her dissertation (University of Vienna 2013) examines Cassiodorus’ commentary on the Psalms in relation to 6th-century political and theological debates. She is the co-editor (with Walter Pohl) of Strategies of Identification: Religion and Ethnicity in Early Medieval Europe (Turnhout 2013) and Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West (Turnhout 2013). She currently holds a fellowship at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Freie Universität Berlin, where she works on the impact of biblical exegesis on the development of Carolingian legal culture. Mark J. Johnson is Professor of Art History at Brigham Young University. He specializes in the history of architecture and monumental decoration of Late Antiquity and his recent publications include The Roman Imperial Mausoleum in Late Antiquity (Cambridge 2009) and The Byzantine Churches of Sardinia (Wiesbaden 2013). Sean Lafferty is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. His research includes law, social, and religious history in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. His previous publications include Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici (Cambridge 2013).

List Of Contributors

xi

Natalia Lozovsky is a Research Associate at the Office for the History of Science and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley. Her publications include ‘The Earth is Our Book’: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West, 400–1000 (Ann Arbor 2000) and over fifteen articles and book chapters. Federico Marazzi is Professor of Archaeology and History at Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples. His research interests have included the church of Rome, the excavations of San Vincenzo al Volturno, and monastic settlements in southern Italy. His publications include The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, co-edited with Samuel Barnish (Boydell 2007) and Le città dei monaci: Storia degli spazi che avvicinano a Dio (Jaca 2015). Christine Radtki is an historian and researcher at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen and the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Her previous research has focused on the imperial representation of Ostrogothic rulers (Ein Herrscher und seine Schreiben—die Variae Cassiodors im Rahmen der Herrschaftsdarstellung Theoderichs des Großen, PhD diss.), while her current project aims to develop an historical and philological commentary for the chronicle of John Malalas. Kristina Sessa is Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on the history of late antique religions and society, with particular emphasis on the intersection between classical Roman culture and early Christianity in the late Roman West. Her current project examines the effects of war and crisis on the formation of ecclesiastical institutions and ideals in the West. Her publications include The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy: Roman Bishops and the Domestic Sphere (Cambridge 2012). Paolo Squatriti is Associate Professor of History and Italian at the University of Michigan. His current research attempts to understand the transition from a Roman hegemony to early medieval Europe using a rural perspective that reconstructs the role of landscapes in sustaining communities. His previous publications include Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy: Chestnuts, Economy, and Culture (Cambridge 2013) and “The Floods of 589 and Climate Change at the Beginning of the Middle Ages: An Italian Microhistory”, Speculum 85 (2010).

xii

list of contributors

Brian Swain is an Assistant Professor of History at Kennesaw State University. He studies the barbarians and late Roman historiography, and is the author of “Jordanes and Virgil: A Case Study of Intertextuality in the Getica”, Classical Quarterly 61.1 (2010). He is currently writing a monograph entitled Empire of Hope and Tragedy: Jordanes and the Invention of Roman-Gothic History. Rita Lizzi Testa is Professor of Roman History at the Università di Perugia. Her research includes the conversion and Christianization of the Roman Empire, the function of political rhetoric in late antique literature, and the transformation of political institutions from Constantine to Theodosius I. Her many publications include Le Trasformazioni delle élites in età tardoantica (L’Erma di Bretschneider 2006).

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Jonathan J. Arnold, M. Shane Bjornlie, and Kristina Sessa The transformation of the ancient world has long been associated with the geopolitical fragmentation of the late Roman Empire and the rise of barbarian kingdoms in the West. Among the most successful was the Ostrogothic kingdom, a regime that lasted for more than sixty years and encompassed at its height the whole of the Italian peninsula, the island of Sicily as well as sections of southern Gaul, Hispania, and the Balkans (see Figure 1.1). By all accounts, Ostrogothic Italy was a multi-cultural state comprised of Romans and barbarians, Latin, Greek, and Gothic speakers, Nicene Catholics and Arians, pagans and Jews. The Ostrogoths ruled Italy during a period marked by economic contraction, demographic decline, urban violence, and war. Yet they also oversaw considerable social and religious stability as well as some remarkable achievements, especially in the areas of literary and intellectual culture and church building. While the rise and fall of Ostrogothic Italy has long been recognized as a significant chapter in late antique and early medieval history, recent research has dramatically revised and reshaped our understanding of this polity and period. Thanks to archaeological discoveries and new methodological approaches to the sources, we now have more nuanced and complex understandings of Ostrogothic ethnicity and identity, social and political relations among Romans and non-Romans, administrative structures and military cultures, ecclesiastical figures and modes of religious authority, material landscapes, economic trajectories, and the environment. Ostrogothic Italy has long played a central role in the framing of Late Antiquity as a historical epoch. Was it a period marked by continuity or discontinuity? Was it a time of transformation or an era of crisis and catastrophe?1 For some scholars, the Ostrogothic regime functions as a peaceful interlude or buffer between the breakdown of imperial military and administrative authority in the West during the 5th century and the permanent fragmentation of Italy into Byzantine and Lombard polities in the late 6th century, when many

1  For a general discussion of the ‘continuist’ and ‘catastrophist’ narratives of Late Antiquity: Ward-Perkins, “Continuists, Catastrophists” and Marcone, “A Long Late Antiquity?”

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_002

2

Arnold, Bjornlie, and Sessa

Figure 1.1 Map of Europe and the Mediterranean, ca. 500 Map by Ian Mladjov

Roman structures and ideas endured.2 Alternatively, other scholars underline the essential ‘barbarism’ of Ostrogothic Italy as a warlord society lying beneath a thin veneer of classical Roman civilization, and as a state whose emergence marks the beginning of the early Middle Ages.3 Both the ‘continuist’ and the ‘catastrophist’ schools have their shortcomings. For one, they inevitably cast the Ostrogothic period as either a long Indian summer of classical civilization or an abrupt rupture that heralded the ‘Dark Ages’. Moreover, neither approach fully acknowledges the important structural changes to society that Ostrogothic Italy inherited from the 4th and 5th centuries. Consequently, these studies sometimes obscure the ways in which various continuities and discontinuities may have been normative well before the arrival of the Ostrogoths in 489. One reason for such polarized treatments of the same period is the abundance of rich contemporary evidence, which in some cases supports both 2  See e.g. Moorhead, Theoderic and O’Donnell, Ruin of the Roman Empire. 3  Gibbon, Decline and Fall is perhaps the most infamous example of this perspective, but see more recently Heather, Empires and Barbarians; Kaylor’s introduction to Companion to Boethius; and Ward-Perkins, Fall of Rome.

Introduction

3

sides of the debate. By all accounts, the history of the Ostrogothic regime is messy with contradictions; but it is also central to a better understanding of Late Antiquity’s longue durée. Indeed the disparate manners in which later sources of the early Middle Ages filtered Ostrogothic Italy speak to many of the same issues of interpretation. For example, Gregory of Tours, an inhabitant of Frankish Gaul born during the early years of the Gothic War (ca. 538/9), preferred to see the period in terms of the political ascendancy of barbarism and heretical (Arian) Christian belief. Conversely, in the 8th and early 9th centuries, the Frankish king and emperor Charlemagne cultivated the memory of Ostrogothic Italy as a means of appropriating the imperial past. For interlocutors with Ostrogothic history then and now, understanding 5th- and 6thcentury Italy requires grappling with a chimaera of various personalities. This volume seeks to make accessible the range of these historical interpretations, both modern and pre-modern, to non-specialists and to offer specialists new topics as well as new analyses of traditional questions. As readers will see, consensus and consistency are not features of either the late ancient evidentiary or the modern scholarly record.

A ‘Long’ and ‘Wide’ Ostrogothic Italy

Many of the chapters in this volume approach the Ostrogothic era expansively in both time and space. Rather than focus solely on Theoderic’s reign in Italy (489/93–526), they examine a longer period, beginning with Odovacer, the first non-Roman ruler of Italy, who deposed the last Roman emperor of the West in 476, and ending with the ‘official’ conclusion of the Gothic War in 554, when Justinian issued the Pragmatic Sanction. In truth both of these chronological parameters invite criticism. Arguably, Julius Nepos was the last western emperor and his death in 480 marks the true end of the western Roman Empire as a political entity. Likewise, even after the Pragmatic Sanction, hostilities continued between Gothic and eastern Roman forces in regions north of the Po for several more years, with substantial Ostrogothic resistance to the eastern Roman presence in Italy not ending until the capture of Verona in 562. But they nevertheless provide generally acceptable termini, which expand the inquiry beyond the regnal dates of the Amal dynasty. Geographically, the chapters examine not only the Italian regions of the Ostrogothic kingdom (i.e. the peninsula and Sicily) but also the southern Gallic, eastern Spanish, and Illyrian provinces (see Figure 1.2). Theoderic fought and negotiated to control these extra-Italian regions, making their inclusion in this volume not simply relevant but required.

4

Arnold, Bjornlie, and Sessa

Figure 1.2 Map of Ostrogothic provinces, ca. 525 Map by Ian Mladjov

A broad approach is especially warranted given recent scholarly emphasis on the deep foundations of barbarian regimes within the late Roman Empire.4 Moreover, although not every chapter in this volume takes a ‘continuist’ position on classical antiquity’s durability in the later 5th and 6th centuries, they collectively endeavour to move away from the binaries of rise and fall that often accompany rigid chronological and geographical parameters and unnuanced histories of the period. This is not to suggest that previous scholarship has not contributed significantly to our understanding of the Ostrogoths, or that they are all oriented around the binary of rise and fall. On the contrary, the work represented in the present volume rests on numerous key contributions from a wide range of international scholars. For instance, the specialist essays in several collected volumes, such as Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia (1993), Teoderico e i Goti tra Oriente e Occidente (1995), and The 4  See especially Goffart, Barbarians and Romans; id., Barbarian Tides; Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire; Barnwell, Emperor, Prefects and Kings; Mathisen/Shanzer (eds.), Romans, Barbarians; and Pohl (ed.), Kingdoms of the Empire.

Introduction

5

Ostrogoths: From the Migration Period to the Sixth Century (2007), offer important insights into s­pecific debates and topics, including the economy and settlement archaeology of Ostrogothic Italy. Moreover, there are a number of excellent monographs on the period, which provide what our volume does not: the complete social, religious, and political narrative. Broad studies of Ostrogothic political and military history include H. Wolfram, History of the Goths (1979), T. Burns, History of the Ostrogoths (1984), P. Heather, The Goths (1996), and most recently G. Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West (2007). Additionally, readers may turn to more focused studies on these topics, such as J. Moorhead, Theoderic in Italy (1992). Important work has also been done on the period’s Christian ecclesiastical and cultural developments, from the relevant chapters in J. Richards, Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages (1979) to T. Sardella, Società, chiesa, e stata nell’età di Teodorico (1996), and J.J. O’Donnell, Cassiodorus (1979), which also offers extensive treatment of the period’s intellectual history. P. Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy (1997) is a sophisticated treatment of Ostrogothic social history, which further engages with the thorny issues of ethnicity and identity. And finally, for a narrative of the Gothic War (535–54), one may still fruitfully consult volume 4 of T. Hodgkin’s Italy and Her Invaders (1880–99) and the more abridged account in J. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (1923). In contrast to these foundational specialist studies and comprehensive narrative histories, the present volume offers a broader range of topics than previous collected editions. It also extends consideration of these topics beyond many of the previously mentioned specialized studies. The following contributions present entirely new approaches to Ostrogothic history (e.g. Squatriti’s chapter on Ostrogothic environmental developments and Cohen’s chapter on religious diversity), dedicated analyses of underexplored topics (e.g. Arnold’s chapter on Ostrogothic provinces), and revisionist responses to traditional questions, many of which continue to vex historians (e.g. Bjornlie’s and Sessa’s respective discussions of the civil administration and Roman church). Most significantly, many call for a shift in approach to the period of ca. 476–554, from one oriented around a narrative of rise and fall to one that views the Ostrogothic kingdom not as a discreet and well-defined historical period but as a continuation and/or consequence of the policies, developments, and crises of the late Roman Empire. Readers, however, will not find complete consensus among the authors on certain key matters of interpretation, particularly on the question of the Ostrogothic kingdom’s historical connections with earlier practices and institutions. Given the discordant nature of Ostrogothic studies in general, such

6

Arnold, Bjornlie, and Sessa

heuristic divergence is not only unavoidable but also more accurately reflects the current state of the field. Additionally, the volume presents a variety of approaches to the ‘handbook’ format. Whereas many of the authors offer nuanced syntheses of the most recent scholarship on a particular topic (e.g. Heydemann, Arnold, Marazzi, Halsall, and Sessa), a few use the platform to advance original readings of the evidence (e.g. Bjornlie, Squatriti, Cooper, and Lizzi Testa). Because of this variation, the volume speaks to an exceptionally wide range of readers, both specialists in the field and students new to the Ostrogothic era. The chapters in this volume describe and evaluate many fundamental developments in virtually every area of life in the Ostrogothic kingdom. To help orient readers unfamiliar with the period, this brief introductory section outlines major developments in the realms of politics and the army, ethnicity and social relations, the environment, cities, the economy, religion, and culture. It also alerts readers to the relevant chapters in the volume to which they may turn for further reading.

Politics and the Army

Odovacer’s deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 marked the temporary end of direct Roman imperial rule in Italy and the beginning of a seventyfive-year experiment in non-Roman (or perhaps quasi-Roman) regional government. During this period, a series of barbarian leaders, many of whom hailed from a single dynasty (the Amals), oversaw the armies and administration of Italy, and at times even undertook imperial projects of their own (e.g. Theoderic’s successful expansion into regions of Gaul and Western Illyricum—a topic explored by Arnold in this volume). As studies have shown, Odovacer (who was a barbarian, but not a Goth) and the Ostrogothic kings did not simply replace Roman soldiers and administrators with ethnically distinct barbarians, nor did they demolish all of the many still-functioning Roman institutions and structures that had been used to govern Italy for centuries. On the contrary, they improvised on changes already taking place. For example, a division between the army and civil militia had its origins in the Diocletianic reforms of the late 3rd century and had become increasingly significant in Italy during the 5th century, when direct control of the Italian military became a crucial component of regional political power. Theoderic, like earlier generalissimos (e.g. Aetius or Ricimer), independently controlled his army, comprised mainly of non-Roman troops personally loyal to him, and delegated

Introduction

7

significant non-military administrative posts to local Roman elites. As recent work has shown, this trend in the administrative and military history of Italy may be traced to policies of emperors from the dynasties of Valentinian I and Theodosius I, and hence pre-dates the Ostrogothic regime by over a century.5 Of course a neat distinction between Gothic soldiers and Roman civil administrators in Italy belies a more complicated reality. Key administrative posts awarded by the Ostrogothic court often involved both military and civil authority, while many Romans found opportunities in the Ostrogothic military. For instance, after the first victory of the Gothic king Totila against the Byzantine army in 541, he seems to have focused on the recruitment of slaves and peasants, many of whom were likely ethnically Roman.6 Consequently, while a theoretical division of Goths and Romans into military and civil posts existed in Late Antiquity, it fails to describe the more fluid situation on the ground. Readers interested in further examining the complex relationship between Roman and Ostrogothic military and political cultures can turn to the contributions of Radtki on the Senate, Halsall on the army, Bjornlie on civil administration, and Heydemann on political ideology, as well as Lafferty’s related chapter on law and legal practice.

Ethnicity and Social Relations

Just as it is problematic to oversimplify the ethnic compositions of the Ostrogothic army and administration, so it is troubling to maintain easy distinctions between ‘Goth’ and ‘Roman’ as ethnic and social categories. As is well known, the army that Theoderic led into Italy in 489 was not an ethnically ‘pure’ corps of Ostrogoths, but a hodgepodge mix of barbarian soldiers, most of whom had been fighting on behalf of the empire for some time. It is possible to imagine Theoderic and his ‘Ostrogoths’ as a natural extension of the kind of class described by Alexander Demandt, as a highly fluid social stratum in which military membership mattered more than ethnicity.7 Moreover, the very concept of ethnogenesis (the idea that ethnicity is never an essential or static category of identity, but a fluid and constructed set of characteristics that are acquired by a people through both passive and active developments) calls attention to the relative nature of barbarian identity. What it meant to 5  McEvoy, Child Emperor Rule. 6  Moorhead, “Totila” and Noyé, “Social Relations”. 7  Demandt, “Osmosis”.

8

Arnold, Bjornlie, and Sessa

self-identify as ‘Goth’ and/or ‘Roman’ probably shifted from generation to generation, region to region, and perhaps even from individual to individual. As the contributions of Swain and Halsall show in this volume, ethnicity in Ostrogothic Italy was an extraordinarily complex matter that continues to provoke heated debate among modern scholars. Social relations, too, were in flux during this period, and again, we must look to the 4th and 5th centuries for insight into patterns that were arguably intensified under the Ostrogoths. The expansion of the imperial administration and the addition of a second Senate in Constantinople under Constantine massively expanded the numbers of salaried official posts and hence the number of wealthy men who qualified for aristocratic status. Changes in how senatorial status was achieved soon followed under Valentinian I, which directly rewarded men who had served in the government with higher senatorial honors and which subsequently demoted birth or marriage as the primary means of acquiring elite status. Barbarians, we know, were among the beneficiaries of these changes to the Roman system of social ranking and honour acquisition. Landowning, always the chief medium of wealth in the ancient world, also continued to structure Ostrogothic society, as Grey’s discussion of property ownership and peasant labour in this volume shows. However, the influx of men with money from lucrative civil careers or from highly remunerable positions in the army allowed for a new generation of landowners to emerge in Italy, whose elite status was no longer tied to a purely Roman aristocratic lineage. Again, some of these new landed elites were barbarians. One well-known example is Flavius Valila, vir illustris and magister utriusque militae, who founded and endowed a private church on his extensive properties outside of Rome.8 This is not to say that traditional Roman senatorial aristocrats—the Anicii, the Decii, and so on—disappeared during the Ostrogothic period. On the contrary, many found advantageous positions in the Ostrogothic regime based in Ravenna.9 Moreover, the Roman Senate continued to function as a powerful local governing centre, as Radtki’s chapter demonstrates. However, these families now had to compete with a range of new elites, including the wives, sisters, and daughters of barbarian leaders. Cooper’s contribution argues that some royal barbarian women, such as Theoderic’s daughter Amalasuentha, exercised agency in political affairs through marriage alliances and their influence as regents for young barbarian kings. As she notes, however, female regency 8  For Flavius Valila see Martindale, Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (cited as PLRE hereafter) 2, p. 1147 and Pietri/Pietri (eds.), Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire (cited as PCBE hereafter) 2.2, pp. 2247–8. 9  See also Barnish, “Transformation and Survival”.

Introduction

9

and the diplomatic significance of marriage alliances were hardly Ostrogothic inventions; rather, they were central features of several 4th- and 5th-century imperial courts.10

Demography, the Environment, and the Economy

The barbarian kings and queens of Italy rose to power in an age marked by demographic decline and the narrowing of economic horizons, especially with respect to interregional trade. The remarkable downward trajectory of the city of Rome’s population, from ca. 500,000 in 400 to less than 50,000 after the Gothic War (535–54) is perhaps an extreme example. As Squatriti argues here, in what is the first study of Ostrogothic environmental history, a population like classical Rome’s was “ecologically unsustainable” without dramatic forms of state intervention, which it received through the first half of the 5th century, when African grain and oil poured into the city without difficulty. However, its loss of people is part of a less dramatic demographic decline that occurred throughout the peninsula (and beyond), in both urban and (somewhat less clearly) rural locations.11 These population changes were well underway by the late 5th century, when Theoderic entered Rome, and continued apace into the 7th century long after the Ostrogoths had ceased to rule Italy. Studies have also shown that the climates of Europe and the Mediterranean became colder and wetter during the 5th and 6th centuries, though responses to and outcomes of these environmental changes varied enormously from region to region within the Ostrogothic kingdom. Nevertheless, a colder, wetter, and less populated Italy was also one whose material needs were shifting. The Ostrogothic period witnessed the gradual abandonment and/or repurposing of Italy’s once extensive and, in some cases, luxurious villas (with notable exceptions such as San Giovanni in Ruoti) as well as shifts toward more extensive forms of agriculture, woodland crops (e.g. chestnuts), and animal husbandry. And as ceramic evidence shows, while a few coastal Italian cities such as Rome, Ravenna, and Naples still received oil, wine, and other products from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, inland areas were slowly cut off from such commodities and became increasingly reliant on local production centres. Whether people were actually healthier living a more narrowly circumscribed material 10  McEvoy, Child Emperor Rule. 11  African food imports dwindled substantially after 439 by which time the Vandals controlled Carthage and the North African fleet and deliveries of the annona became increasingly irregular and dependent upon troubled diplomacy between Italy and Africa.

10

Arnold, Bjornlie, and Sessa

life is an important question explored by Squatriti in this volume. These overall patterns of change in the countryside are linked causally to the demography and, ultimately, to the conditions and culture of urban settings. In their respective contributions Deliyannis and Marazzi discuss Italian urban history during the 5th and 6th centuries, paying close attention to the Ostrogothic regime’s contributions to, and rhetorical use of, cities’ physical condition, past traditions, and beauty.

Religious and Cultural Trends

As in many other post-Roman barbarian kingdoms (e.g. the Vandal and the Visigothic), the Amal dynasty and presumably most Ostrogoths were Arian Christians. On a certain level, therefore, Theoderic’s formation of a government in Italy represents the creation of an Arian state, though precisely what this meant and how it impacted religious relations remains difficult to know. Generally speaking, our sources give little notice to theological, and presumably liturgical, differences (though evidence on Arian rites is utterly lacking for Italy) that supposedly divided Arian from Nicene Christians in Ostrogothic Italy, and even the most devoted Nicene sources remained silent on Theoderic’s ‘heretical’ spiritual status, at least until the end of his reign when criticisms of this nature first appear. In fact, as Lizzi Testa shows in Chapter 16, Theoderic deliberately privileged Nicene churches in Italy and southern Gaul as a means both to garner political support and to access their extensive patronage networks. The relative tranquility of both rhetoric and practice (as Cohen notes in his chapter on religious diversity in Ostrogothic Italy, we have no evidence for anti-Nicene actions taken by the state, nor for Nicene Christian persecutions of Arians) has given rise to a scholarly model of the Ostrogothic regime as a polity that embraced ‘religious tolerance’, wherein Nicene and Arian Christians, along with Jews and others, were permitted to worship in peaceful independence. To what extent this paradigm accurately describes the historical situation is a question addressed by both Cohen and Sessa in their chapters. Finally, the Ostrogothic period also witnessed the emergence of the first monastic rules in Italy (e.g. the Regula Magistri and the Regula S. Benedicti) as well as certain ecclesiastical institutions and practices, such as the regulation of private villa or estate churches and the shaping of diocesan and metropolitan boundaries, issues explored by Sessa and Lizzi Testa (in Chapter 17), respectively.

Introduction

11

Finally, the age’s artistic and intellectual achievements have always been central to the study of the Ostrogoths, in large part because of the prominence of Cassiodorus and Boethius—the two ‘giants’ of Ostrogothic intellectual and literary history—in western medieval thought. Lozovsky’s chapter offers a ­synopsis of their work as well as the contributions of other intellectual figures, such as Ennodius of Pavia, while Heydemann’s chapter on Ostrogothic ideology and the state surveys important developments in political thought by figures like Cassiodorus. In terms of the visual culture of the Ostrogothic regime, the ruins of Theoderic’s palace and mausoleum in Ravenna, and the numerous churches there and in Rome built and/or renovated during the Ostrogothic period have long fascinated scholars interested in questions about the continuity of classical artistic forms and techniques, and the emergence of a ‘barbarian aesthetic’, the existence of which most scholars (including those in this volume) tend to question (see Figures 1.3 and 1.4). The chapters by Johnson and Deliyannis offer foundational syntheses of the period’s major works of art and architecture along with insights into their relationship to the Ostrogothic’s regime role as a purveyor of Roman culture.

Figure 1.3 Map of 6th-century Rome Map by Ian Mladjov

12

Arnold, Bjornlie, and Sessa

Figure 1.4 Map of 6th-century Ravenna Map by Ian Mladjov

Bibliography

Secondary Literature

Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought), Cambridge 1997. Barnish, S., “Transformation and Survival in the Western Senatorial Aristocracy”, Papers of the British School at Rome 56 (1988), 120–55. Barnish, S./Marazzi, F. (eds.), The Ostrogoths: From the Migration Period to the Sixth Century, An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge, MA 2007. Barnwell, P.S., Emperor, Prefects and Kings: The Roman West, 395–565, Chapel Hill, NC 1993. Burns, T., A History of the Ostrogoths, Bloomington, IN 1984. Bury, J., History of the Late Roman Empire, 2 vols., New York 1958. Carile, A. (ed.), Teoderico e i Goti tra Oriente e Occidente, Ravenna 1995. Demandt, A., “The Osmosis of Late Roman and Germanic Aristocracies”, in E. Chrysos/ A. Schwarcz (eds.), Das Reich und die Barbaren, Vienna 1989, pp. 75–88. Gibbon, E., The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J.B. Bury, 3 vols., New York 1946; first published as The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols., London 1776–88.

Introduction

13

Goffart, W., Barbarians and Romans: Techniques of Accommodation, Princeton 1980. ———, Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Middle Ages, Philadelphia 2009. Halsall, P., Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568, Cambridge 2007. Heather, P., The Goths, London 1998. ———, Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe, Oxford 2012. Hodgkin, T., Italy and Her Invaders, vol. 4: The Imperial Restoration, 2nd ed., Oxford 1896. Kaylor, N./Phillips, P. (eds.), A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, Leiden 2012. McEvoy, M., Child Emperor Rule in the Late Roman West, AD 367–455, Oxford 2013. Marcone, A., “A Long Late Antiquity? Considerations on a Controversial Periodization”, Journal of Late Antiquity 1.1 (1998), 4–19. Martindale, J.R., The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2: AD 395–527, Cambridge 1980. Mathisen, R./Shanzer, D. (eds.), Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World, Surrey 2011. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. ———, “Totila the Revolutionary”, Historia 49 (2000), 382–6. Noyé, G., “Social Relations in Southern Italy”, in S. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths: From the Migration Period to the Sixth Century, An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge, MA 2007, pp. 186–91. O’Donnell, J.J., Cassiodorus, Berkeley 1979. ———, The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History, New York 2009. Pietri, C./Pietri, L. (eds.), Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 2 vols.: Prosopographie de l’Italie chrétienne (313–604), Rome 1999–2000. Pohl, W. (ed.), Kingdoms of the Empire: The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity (Transformations of the Roman World 1), Leiden 1997. Richards, J., Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages, London 1979. Sardella, T., Società, chiesa, e stata nell’età di Teodorico, Messina 1996. Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia (Atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’Alto. Medioevo), 2 vols., Spoleto 1993. Ward-Perkins, W., “Continuists, Catastrophists and the Towns of Post-Roman Northern Italy”, Papers of the British School at Rome 65 (1997), 157–76. Ward-Perkins, W., The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford 2005. Whittaker, C.R., Frontiers of the Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study, Baltimore 1994. Wolfram, H., History of the Goths, trans. T. Dunlap, Berkeley 1988.

Part 1 The State

⸪

CHAPTER 2

The Ostrogothic Kingdom: Ideologies and Transitions Gerda Heydemann Introduction The history of Ostrogothic Italy has complicated beginnings, reaching back well before the year 493, when Theoderic the Great established himself as a ruler over the peninsula. In 476, the general Odovacer overthrew Orestes as the leader of the army in Italy and deposed the emperor Romulus Augustulus, the latter’s son, an event which serves as one of the conventional dates for the end of Antiquity and the transition to the Middle Ages. There was nothing new in the seizure of power by a barbarian military commander, which had occurred many times before during the 5th century. In contrast to his predecessors, however, Odovacer did not attempt to install an emperor of his own choice, but instead sent the imperial insignia to the emperor Zeno in Constantinople, henceforth ruling over Italy as a rex.1 Roman authors of a later generation retrospectively interpreted these events as the end of the empire in the West and cast Odovacer as a barbarian usurper—yet the empire persisted as a framework for Italian politics well after 476.2 The last western emperor to be recognized as such by his eastern colleague Zeno, Julius Nepos, died only in 481 in exile in Dalmatia, and Odovacer acknowledged both Nepos’ nominal authority and the suzerainty of the emperor in Constantinople. Theoderic in turn seized power over Italy by mandate of the eastern emperor, and it seems that for him and many of his subjects Ostrogothic rule over Italy was perceived as perfectly compatible with the imperial order. By 488, tensions between Zeno and Odovacer had mounted to such an extent that the emperor decided to send Theoderic and his army to Italy to 1  For the events Stein, Bas-Empire, vol. 2, pp. 39–58; Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 238–47; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 6–11; Henning, Periclitans, pp. 57–70 (with bibliography). 2  Marcellinus Comes, Chronicle, a. 476, ed. Croke; Jordanes, Romana 344, ed. Mommsen. See Croke, “AD 476”, with the comments in Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 281–2. Fanning, “Odovacer”, stresses Odovacer’s Roman and imperial profile.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_003

18

Heydemann

remove Odovacer from power. Theoderic, who had emerged successfully from a power struggle between various competing groups of Goths and their leaders in the Balkans in the course of the 470s and 480s, had recently plundered Thrace and was at the time threatening Constantinople. For Zeno, dispatching Theoderic to fight Odovacer in Italy provided a way to deal with two problems at once.3 Theoderic entered Italy in 489 and prevailed over Odovacer after a period of intense warfare. In 493, following a protracted siege of the capital Ravenna whence Odovacer had retreated, the two generals agreed to share rule over Italy. Theoderic, however, murdered Odovacer shortly after entering the city (allegedly with his own hands) and had many of his followers killed. Thereafter, Theoderic’s army, the exercitus Gothorum, proclaimed him king.4 Theoderic had been king of the Goths already since 474, and the renewed proclamation in 493 was probably meant to underline his claim to power over Italy and all of its inhabitants. Theoderic ruled until his death in 526, but the Italian realm outlasted him by only two decades, being decisively destroyed in 552 by the emperor Justinian’s army. Although it existed for little more than half a century in total, it has profoundly influenced our understanding of the transition from the Roman Empire to a post-imperial world in western Europe. By the end of the 5th century, barbarian kings had come to rule Roman provinces all over the West, in North Africa, Spain, and Gaul. Ostrogothic Italy, the former heartland of the empire, is usually seen as the most ‘Roman’ (and most ‘imperial’) of these western ‘successor states’. At the same time it has been a paradigmatic case in the study of barbarian ethnicity, settlement, and political integration. This has resulted in quite diverse, and only partially overlapping, narratives for framing Ostrogothic history, which continue to elicit lively debates among historians. Did the emergence of Ostrogothic rule mark the end of the Roman Empire in the West, and its replacement by a barbarian kingdom the transition to a different early medieval world? Or was it rather the short-lived renaissance of the western empire? How was the position of the Ostrogothic state defined in relation to the empire in the East? Should we stress the continuity with the political and cultural traditions of the Roman Empire or the barbarian alterity of this polity, its ‘Romanness’ or its ‘Gothicness’? The main aim of this chapter

3  For the agreement between Zeno and Theoderic see Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 17–19; Haarer, Anastasius, pp. 76–9; Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 63–71. 4  Anonymus Valesianus 12 (57), ed. Rolfe.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

19

is to present a brief outline of the political history of the Ostrogothic kingdom between 493 and 554, but also to address some of these issues.5 One important problem should be addressed from the outset: very often, the questions posed by modern historians (and the answers they provide) are informed by a set of underlying dichotomies, which also characterize broader debates on the period: continuity vs. change, decline vs. transformation, peaceful integration vs. violent conquest, Romans vs. barbarians. As many of the traditional views associated with the ‘fall of Rome’ and the barbarian migrations (Völkerwanderung) have effectively been criticized in recent decades, it has become clear that we need to move beyond such dichotomies and analyse the Roman continuities of the barbarian kingdoms, and the processes of social, political, and economic change in a world for which the Roman Empire continued to function as a point of reference.6 This is especially important regarding the most pervasive of these dichotomies: that between ‘Romans’ and ‘barbarians’, which continues to shape the selection and interpretation of the late antique evidence in often problematic ways.7 Recent work has demonstrated that the barbarian peoples who established power in the Roman West were not the stable and coherent entities imagined by previous generations of nationalist historians, and has emphasized the Roman (and Christian) foundations of the emerging barbarian polities.8 On the other hand, the multiple levels and changing conceptions of Roman identity have come into sharper view. There were eastern and western, military and civil, central and regional interpretations of Romanness and political legitimacy, only some of which overlapped.9 Instead of finding a verdict on the Roman or barbarian nature of Ostrogothic society and its rulers, it is more interesting to look at 6th-century conceptions of empire and Roman and Gothic identity, and to study the ways in which 5  Fundamental works include: Wolfram, Goths, pp. 247–362; Heather, Goths, pp. 216–76; Amory, People; Barnish/Marazzi (eds.), Ostrogoths. Important aspects regarding the practice of government and administration in the Ostrogothic regnum are discussed in later chapters in this volume: see Bjornlie, Lafferty, Halsall. 6  Pohl, Völkerwanderung; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations; Brown, Rise; see the series The Transformation of the Roman World (1997–2004), published by Brill. The paradigm of decline and fall has been forcefully revived by Ward-Perkins, Fall of Rome; Heather, Fall. For comment see Pohl, “Rome”. 7  Pohl, “Rome”, p. 99; for the archaeological evidence, von Rummel, “Fading Power”. 8  Pohl, “Strategies of Identification”; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 35–45; and the sometimes polemical contributions in Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity. For a critique of nationalist paradigms, Geary, Myth of Nations, pp. 15–40; Wood, Modern Origins. 9  Brown, Through the Eye, pp. 392–4; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 470–82; Heather, Fall, pp. 432–43; Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 74–6 for Ostrogothic Italy.

20

Heydemann

contemporary actors interpreted, negotiated, and legitimized the political and ideological shifts and transitions. Indeed many of the issues at stake in modern debates were already discussed in similar terms by the authors of our sources. Another closely related problem concerns certain narratives that have become almost canonical in modern accounts of Ostrogothic history. For example, the history of the Ostrogothic kingdom is usually told in two parts: first a period of consolidation and prosperity under a strong and emperor-like Theoderic, and second, from the 520s onwards, a time of mounting tensions and crises in the latter part of his reign, eventually leading into further decline and the outbreak of war under his successors. This of course reflects the nature of the available (written) sources, the specific perspectives of their authors, and the interpretations which they seek to promote. These were texts written to explain, legitimize, or criticize, but also influence, the social and political developments of their time. It is therefore important to bear in mind the extent to which our understanding of the Ostrogothic state is conditioned by narratives and ideologies of transition created in the 6th century.

Theoderic’s Imperial Kingdom

For Theoderic, as for Odovacer before him, recognition by the emperor in the East was crucial. Embassies seeking confirmation of his position had been sent to Constantinople even before Theoderic had achieved undisputed control over Italy. However, Zeno died in 491 and his successor Anastasius was reluctant to acknowledge Theoderic’s rule. The elevation as king over Italy therefore happened without imperial consent, and it was only in 498, after protracted negotiations, that Anastasius finally recognized Theoderic’s rule.10 The Anonymus Valesianus reports that Theoderic “made peace with the emperor Anastasius with regard to the presumption of the rule (presumptio regni) and Anastasius sent back to him all the ornaments of the palace, which Odovacer had transferred to Constantinople [in 476]”.11 This symbolic act of returning the ornamenta palatii in 498 signalled the acceptance of Theoderic’s independent rule in the Italian provinces.12

10  See Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 35–9; Haarer, Anastasius, pp. 80–2. 11  Anonymus Valesianus (12) 64, ed. Rolfe. 12  Anonymus Valesianus (12) 64, ed. Rolfe; see Kohlhas-Müller, Rechtsstellung, pp. 143–6. Börm, “Kaisertum”, p. 54 interprets this as an invitation to Theoderic to nominate a new western emperor.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

21

If the conditions for this agreement were laid down in a formal treaty, no written record has survived. This has caused vigorous debate among scholars about Theoderic’s constitutional position and the precise definition of the Ostrogothic kingdom as a political entity in relation to the empire.13 What kind of legitimate authority could Theoderic and his successors claim for their exercise of power over Goths and Romans in Italy? Was his role that of a ‘barbarian king’ similar to other rulers in the West, or did he fulfil a properly imperial function on a par with his senior colleague in the East? Theoderic, who was a Roman citizen and had received the consulate and the title of patrician, came to Italy as a representative of the emperor and as a royal leader of his Gothic army. He would go on to exercise his rule over all the inhabitants of Italy as a king, based on the election by the exercitus and, eventually, the recognition by the emperor. While in older research Theoderic’s kingship was seen as part of a supposedly ‘Germanic’ tradition of kingship, this view has meanwhile justly been discarded.14 More recent approaches instead emphasize the Roman traditions underlying political rule not only in Ostrogothic Italy, but in all the kingdoms established in the former provinces, for which the models were imperial rather than non-Roman.15 Many elements associated with barbarian kingship which scholars used to interpret as ‘Germanic’ traditions are now seen as being derived from imperial precedents. It is therefore more appropriate to speak of ‘post-imperial’ kingship.16 Moreover, as Walter Pohl has observed, kingdom and people (regnum and gens) were two distinct social spaces in the post-Roman kingdoms.17 In Ostrogothic Italy the gens was roughly equivalent to the Gothic army, or more specifically to those members of the Gothic military elite who elected the king and gave their consent to military expeditions. It deserves emphasis that this was by no means a homogeneous group in terms of ethnic identification.18 The regnum, by contrast, comprised the inhabitants of all of Italy and its provinces, including the Roman population. Accordingly, Theoderic used as an official title simply rex (without any ethnic or territorial specification), complemented 13  Jones, “Constitutional Position”; Wolfram, Gotische Studien, pp. 139–44, 159–70; ProstkoProskýnski, Utraeque res publicae; Arnold, Theoderic, especially pp. 72–91. 14  Notably (but not exclusively) in the works of German-speaking scholars such as Ensslin, Theoderich; Dahn, Die Könige der Germanen. For a critique see Dick, Der Mythos. 15  Pohl, “Regnum”; Wolfram, Gotische Studien, pp. 139–73; Esders, Römische Rechtstradition; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 488–94. 16  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 488–90. 17  Pohl, “Regnum”, p. 443. 18  See Swain and Halsall in this volume.

22

Heydemann

by the gentilicium Flavius, which conveyed a distinctly Roman (and perhaps imperial) flavour.19 To assume kingship would have provided a way to exert independent rule over a Roman region without openly challenging the position of the emperor or continuity with the empire and its institutions.20 Imperial legitimation and kingship were thus closely intertwined aspects of Theoderic’s authority. Our various sources are mostly of a later date and transmit selective and sometimes conflicting accounts, thus giving rise to vigorous debates among modern historians; we should therefore perhaps resist the urge to harmonize them.21 Theoderic’s strategies of representation suggest that he was deliberately exploiting the ambiguity of his position as king.22 While he abstained from using the imperial title (imperator or Augustus), official documents such as those contained in the Variae, often describe Theoderic as a princeps with the full range of imperial attributes.23 Theoderic also seems to have respected certain ceremonial prerogatives, such as the right to issue coins with the ruler’s portrait. The fact that he legislated by means of edicts (edicta) rather than through laws (leges) is usually interpreted in this sense as well, but his legislative activity clearly followed imperial models.24 The anniversary of his reign in 500 was celebrated in Rome in truly imperial fashion, including games, a speech in front of the Senate, and a visit to St Peter’s.25 Theoderic also stepped into the role of a Christian emperor, quite irrespective of his non-Nicene (‘homoean’) creed.26 He sponsored the building of churches and acted as a mediator in doctrinal debates and conflicts of succession within the

19  Wolfram, Goths, pp. 286–8; idem, Intitulatio, pp. 61–2, 67–70; Prostko-Proskýnski, Utraeque res publicae, pp. 63–74. The use of an ‘ethnic’ title (such as rex Gothorum) by barbarian kings was the exception rather than the rule in the 5th and 6th centuries: Gillett, “Was Ethnicity”; Pohl, “Regnum”, pp. 440–1. 20  Pohl, Völkerwanderung, p. 136; Barnish, “Cuncta Italiae Membra”, p. 319. 21  Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 39–51 provides a helpful discussion of the different viewpoints in the sources. 22  Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 27–28 and pp. 88–91 who emphasizes the overlap between royal and imperial language and titles; Fanning, “Odovacer”, pp. 47–51. For a general overview: McCormick, Eternal Victory, pp. 267–84. 23  Reydellet, La royauté, pp. 214–22; Giardina, Cassiodoro, pp. 146–8; Kohlhas-Müller, Rechtsstellung, pp. 88–99, 107–37. 24  Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 28–9 and passim; Kohlhas-Müller, Rechtsstellung, pp. 235–45. 25  Anonymus Valesianus 65–7 (12), ed. Rolfe; Vitiello, “Teoderico”; McCormick, Eternal Victory, p. 273. 26  Heather, Goths, pp. 223–5. See also Lizzi Testa in this volume.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

23

Catholic Church. The acts of a Roman synod held in 499 show the assembled Catholic bishops extending acclamations to Theoderic as if to an emperor.27 A famous inscription set up by a distinguished Roman senator celebrated Theoderic as “illustrious king” and “perpetual Augustus”, showing that even if he did not openly style himself an emperor, his subjects certainly could imagine him in this role.28 Theoderic and his courtiers in Ravenna used both the language of kingship and the language of empire to articulate the legitimacy of the Ostrogothic government. In Cassiodorus’ Variae the terms regnum and imperium are used interchangeably for both the Italian realm and the eastern Empire, sometimes differentiating “our realm” from the “eastern realm”, but never with an ‘ethnic’ qualification such as ‘kingdom of the Ostrogoths’. Continuity with the Roman Empire is also conveyed by the frequent use of res publica, a term which could express both claims to distinctiveness vis-à-vis other barbarian kingdoms and claims to shared traditions and equality vis-à-vis the eastern Empire.29 The works of Ennodius likewise display a sense of imperial self-assurance on the part of the senatorial and clerical elite.30 Eastern emperors clearly acknowledged Theoderic as a ruler with legitimate authority over the Italian realm. In his correspondence with the Senate in Rome Anastasius referred to Theoderic as the “exalted king (excelsus rex)”, who is entrusted with the “power and solicitude of governing you”.31 Similarly, Justin I referred to him as “preeminent king”.32 Eastern observers were also well aware of the ambivalence of Theoderic’s status. The Latin historian Jordanes, who composed a Gothic History and a brief Roman History in Constantinople in the early 550s, carefully weighed the language of barbarian kingship against that of the Roman imperial tradition when he characterized the beginning of Theoderic’s rule in Italy.33 His writings also alert to the contrast between the imperial legitimation of Theoderic’s takeover and the idea, which he borrowed from the chronicler Marcellinus Comes, that the western empire had ended 27  Acta synhodorum, Synod of 499, ed. Mommsen, p. 405; Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 54. See Sessa in this volume. 28  Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (hereafter CIL) X, 6850–52; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 47–48; Giardina, Cassiodoro, pp. 73–99, who suggests a connection with Cassiodorus and the court. 29  Suerbaum, Staatsbegriff, pp. 247–67; Giardina, Cassiodoro, pp. 124–31; Prostko-Postkynski, Utraeque res publicae, pp. 75–101. 30  Ennodius, Theoderich-Panegyricus, ed. Rohr; Näf, “Zeitbewusstsein”; Amory, People, pp. 112–20. 31  Collectio Avellana 113, ed. Günther, p. 507. 32  Collectio Avellana 199, ed. Günther, p. 658; Wolfram, Intitulatio, pp. 54 n. 103. 33  Jordanes, Romana 348–49; Jordanes, Getica 289–95, ed. Mommsen.

24

Heydemann

in 476.34 Procopius, writing in Greek, carefully exploited the tensions between king and emperor, tyranny and imperial authority, when he noted in his Wars that Theoderic, like a barbarian ruler, used the title ρήξ (rex/rhix), but that he showed himself to be a true emperor over Goths and Romans through his deeds—even if he had been a tyrant in name.35 Both Jordanes and Procopius of course wrote with hindsight: their accounts of the beginning of Theoderic’s reign and his rule were shaped by the climate of the 550s, when the legitimacy of Ostrogothic rule over Italy had become an explosive issue against the background of Justinian’s attempt to restore direct imperial control over the West. Procopius’ account of war-time negotiations between Gothic ambassadors and the eastern general Belisarius demonstrates that the question to which extent Theoderic’s assumption of power had been authorized by the emperor (and could therefore be seen as conforming to imperial traditions and prerogatives) was a crucial argument for delegitimizing the Gothic war.36 Already in the 6th century, there were thus diverse vocabularies of power available to characterize the rule of Theoderic and his successors. The balance between kingship and empire, between military leadership and Roman civil power, was constantly renegotiated by different political players throughout Theoderic’s reign and that of his successors. So was the shifting status of the Ostrogothic state between barbarian kingdom and empire restored, and the definition of its relationship with the eastern Empire.

Organization of Power and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy

The Gothic envoys who made the case for the legitimacy of Ostrogothic rule of Italy in Procopius’ account made their point by underlining continuity with imperial traditions of government, most of all with regard to the careful preservation of Roman law and of the institutions of the civil administration, which continued to be in the hands of Roman officials.37 Modern historians tend to concur. The Ostrogothic kingdom is often singled out among the ‘barbarian successor states’ of the 6th century for its remarkably Roman profile. The policies and ideologies promoted by Theoderic point to his strong commitment to 34  Jordanes, Romana 345; Getica, 243, ed. Mommsen. 35  Procopius, Wars 5.1.26–30, ed. Dewing; Wolfram, Intitulatio, pp. 40–1, suggested a transliteration of either a Gothic or a Latin term, but see now idem, Gotische Studien, p. 140; Reydellet, La royauté, pp. 202–5. 36  Procopius, Wars 6.6, ed. Dewing. 37  Procopius, Wars 6.6.17–20, ed. Dewing.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

25

the idea of the integration of the Goths into the existing political framework and of consensual rule over Goths and Romans along the lines of Roman imperial traditions. As a ruler of Italy, Theoderic inherited two centres of government: Ravenna, where the imperial administration was located, and Rome, the seat of the Senate.38 The balance of power and influence between these centres required careful attention from the king, as had been the case for his predecessors.39 Given the enormous influence of the senatorial elite in terms of wealth and patronage, Theoderic needed to carefully ensure their support by showing respect for their privileges and for the political traditions connected with the care of the res publica. They continued to enjoy nominations to the consulate and the associated social prestige, and the Senate was left with its traditional political prerogatives.40 Appointment to offices within the palatine bureaucracy was generally bestowed upon members of the Roman aristocracy, which meant that traditional structures of patronage and career options remained largely intact. Although some Roman aristocrats seem to have kept a certain distance from the Ostrogothic court, many others, such as Liberius or Boethius, were involved in government through the assumption of high offices as praetorian prefect or magister officiorum. The distinctiveness of the political traditions of the senatorial elite in Rome and that of the court-centred aristocracy in Ravenna thus persisted.41 The great families seem to have been particularly important during the early phase of Theoderic’s reign, but he also promoted persons of less exalted origins, many of them from northern Italy, a policy that seems to have caused tensions among the senatorial elite.42 The civil administration continued to function largely along late imperial models, although there were also significant modifications in response to the changed economic and military situation in Italy.43 This was essential, since taxes needed to be collected and public order upheld. Cassiodorus’ Variae provide exceptionally rich information about the administration under Ostrogothic rule. The picture they present is one of continuity—the Ostrogothic 38  In addition, other Italian cities functioned as royal residences, most notably Pavia and Verona, see Bjornlie in this volume. 39  Bjornlie, Politics, 127–34; Wickham, Italy, pp. 15–19. 40  Barnish, “Senatorial aristocracy”; Schäfer, Senat; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 140–72; Radtki in this volume. 41  Schäfer, Senat, pp. 149–69; Matthews, “Boethius”, pp. 26–31. 42  Schäfer, Senat, pp. 170–211; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 147–58. 43  For details, see Bjornlie in this volume. Barnwell, Emperor, pp. 140–69 puts greater emphasis on change underlying a façade of continuity.

26

Heydemann

state emerges as essentially Roman. While it is clear that Cassiodorus shaped his collection to deliberately convey such a message, it is also fairly certain that there was actual continuity to a remarkable degree.44 The changes that Theoderic introduced are probably less ‘un-Roman’ than they have been often made out to be. Rather, they point towards the creation of a reduced governmental apparatus, which became more tightly centred on the royal court, and to the blurring of boundaries between military and civil functions.45 An essential aspect of securing the consensus of both the senatorial and the Gothic elite was the provision and accommodation of the Gothic army.46 There has been fierce debate among historians about whether the barbarian armies who established their rule in the Roman territories received land for settlement or rather a share of the tax revenues. Recent work tends to emphasize that tax shares and landed property were not mutually exclusive models.47 For Ostrogothic Italy, the limited evidence that we have indeed suggests a combination of tax-based salaries and the redistribution of land, both of which would have resulted in a process of administrative decentralization. This matter is of obvious importance for how we imagine the distribution of power and wealth between the Roman landowners and the Gothic military elite. The task had to be handled in such a way as to avoid alienating the former, while giving the latter access to land and more or less direct control over its resources, which probably intensified the integration of the Gothic elite into the social fabric of Italy. Whatever our judgement about continuity and change in Italy after 476/493, it is clear that careful argument was needed to persuade the wider public of the new government’s political authority and legitimacy. The texts produced at the court to this end, notably the works of Ennodius and Cassiodorus, show that intense rhetorical efforts were made to explain the functioning of the Ostrogothic polity to the different political actors involved, and to convince them that this was a polity which deserved their support and loyalty. The rhetoric of civilitas was employed profusely to suggest the ‘Romanness’ of the Ostrogothic state, in which political culture and civil society functioned

44  For the political message of the Variae see Giardina, Cassiodoro; Kakridi, Cassiodors Variae; and most recently, Bjornlie, Politics. 45  Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes”, p. 158–60 and in this volume. 46  Halsall in this volume. See also Innes, “Land”; Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes”, and Porena (ed.), Expropriations. 47  See also Halsall in this volume.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

27

according to Roman patterns.48 The rule of (written) law was the main ingredient of an ideology of government focused on civilitas, that is, the preservation of just and lawful government and jurisdiction.49 Apart from lawful government, civilitas was demonstrated by the ruler himself through dispensing justice, taking care of the poor, and investing in public infrastructure and the urban fabric. It also included the display of a measured approach in religious matters, including the protection of the rights of religious minorities such as the Jews and respect for the privileges of the Nicene church.50 A closely entangled problem was how to conceptualize the social and political role of the new ‘Gothic’ ruling elite and its relationship to the rest of Italian society. The basic answer provided by the court in Ravenna was the idea of a functional division, where the ‘Goths’ represented the military elite responsible for the defence and security of Italy, while the ‘Romans’ were entrusted with the maintenance of civil government and culture. ‘Goths’ and ‘Romans’ thus played complementary social roles.51 There has been much debate about the implications of this notion for our understanding of Gothic identity and of the distinctiveness of the Gothic gens.52 What is important here is that while Gothic identity indeed seems to have been mainly functional in that it referred to membership of a military elite, the distinction between ‘Goths’ and ‘Romans’ clearly represented an oversimplification of a much more diverse (and dynamic) social and political reality.53 Moreover, it is crucial to recognize that the image projected by the government of the respective roles of Goths and Romans was not only an argument about distinction but also about the reciprocity of the different groups within Italian society. It is true that some Goths needed to be reminded to live up to the norms of civilitas (or to be persuaded of its benefits), but so did some Romans. While the praetorian prefect Liberius received high praise from Cassiodorus for his achievement regarding the accommodation of the army, Cassiodorus’ letter also suggests that the possessores needed to be reminded of the benefits of this arrangement.54 48  Giardina, Cassidoro, pp. 39–43; Kakridi, Variae, pp. 327–73; Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 216–53 and 306–28. 49  Reydellet, “Théoderic et la civilitas”; Saitta, La Civilita; Kakridi, Variae, pp. 339–446. 50  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 2.27 and 10.26, ed. Mommsen; see Sessa and Cohen in this volume. 51  Amory, People, pp. 43–85 is misleading in his conflation of what he calls the “ethnographic rhetoric” of functional division with civilitas, and in his suggestion that civilitas rhetoric was replaced by a stress on ‘Gothicness’ since the 520s. For critique, see Kakridi, Variae, pp. 293–325, 339–47; Arnold, Theoderic, p. 172. 52  See Swain in this volume. 53  Rightly emphasized by Amory, People, passim. See Pohl, Völkerwanderung, pp. 140–4. 54  Cassiodorus, Variae 2.16.5, ed. Mommsen.

28

Heydemann

However, the main message of the documents collected in the Variae (or the writings of Ennodius) was to emphasize the compatibility between Gothic rule and Roman traditions.55 According to this vision, the Goths differed from other peoples (gentes) in that they were not barbarian, but were capable of combining military strength with Roman law and culture.56 A similar argument underlies the efforts to demonstrate the prominent role of the Goths within Roman history, as evidenced by Cassiodorus’ historiographical projects.57 The warlike features and military power of the Goths, on the other hand, were not necessarily in contrast to their ‘Romanness’, but rather complemented it. After all, martial valour had been at the origin of the Roman Empire itself, and ‘arms and laws’ formed a central motif in Justinianic conceptions of imperial success.58 Another key element of Ostrogothic ideology was the promotion of the pre-eminence of their ruling dynasty, the Amals. From what we can tell about the contents of Cassiodorus’ lost Gothic History, the construction of a genealogy of the Amal kings which extended seventeen generations back in time, was an essential part of his effort to turn “Gothic origins into Roman history”.59 Cassiodorus himself viewed this project as a piece of cultural brokerage, designed to bring about consensus by stressing the compatibility between Gothic and Roman traditions.60 The heroic past of the Amals, to be sure, was largely fabricated, but it served to underline the ancient prestige of both the Gothic people and their rulers.61 This could have helped to render Amal rule more acceptable to self-conscious Romans,62 but also to mobilize the loyalty and cohesiveness among the Goths themselves by underlining the singular claim of the Amal family to rule over them. As Peter Heather has rightly emphasized, the Goths were not a homogeneous group whose loyalty towards

55  Giardina, Cassiodoro, pp. 25–46; Kakridi, Variae, pp. 160–91, 318–26. Barnish, “Roman Responses” and Bjornlie, Politics, suggest an eastern audience for this message. 56  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 3.23.3, 7.25.1, ed. Mommsen; Kakridi, Variae, pp. 293–347; Teillet, Des Goths, pp. 281–303; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 66–89. 57  See Reimitz, “The Historian”, pp. 43–5; Heather, “Historical Culture”, pp. 342–52. 58  Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 121–41; Maskarinec, “Clinging to Empire”. 59  This seems fairly certain even if it is difficult to extrapolate from Jordanes’ Getica. See Heather, “Cassiodorus”; Barnish, “Genesis”; cf. Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1; for summaries of the debate about the relationship between Cassiodorus and Jordanes, see Croke, “Latin Historiography”, pp. 361–7. 60  Cassiodorus, Variae 9.25.4–6, ed. Mommsen; Reimitz, “The Historian”, p. 43. 61  Heather, “Cassiodorus”. But see now Martin/Grusková, “Dexippus”. 62  Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 160–74; Wolfram, Gotische Studien, p. 154. In general, see Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, p. 489.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

29

Theoderic could be taken for granted.63 As a strategy of legitimation, the rhetoric of Amal legitimacy was situational and tuned to the aims and audiences of the respective texts—much as the stress on civilitas, the functional division of Goths and Romans, the martial valour of the Gothic gens, or the imperial quality of the Ostrogothic state. In a complex political environment in which the Amal rulers had to negotiate the loyalties and interests of diverse groups, there was need for both strategies of integration and strategies of distinction.

Kingdom and Empire

The Ostrogothic kingdom formed part of a complex political landscape, and its position (and that of its rulers) needs to be considered in relation not only to the eastern emperor, but also to the competing powers in the West. Frankish Gaul and Vandal North Africa shared many features with Ostrogothic Italy: they followed Roman models of government and representation, and strove for recognition and legitimation by the eastern emperor. Theoderic’s claims to imperial status were reinforced in the years around 500 through the recovery of lost territory of the former Italian prefecture. His claims to hegemony over the western powers were strengthened through a series of dynastic marriages, which created a network of alliances with the ruling families of Franks, Vandals, Burgundians, and others.64 These aspirations were effectively checked by the rising power of the Franks under Clovis, and the interventions of the court in Constantinople. In 507, the Franks defeated the Visigoths in the famous battle of Vouillé and killed King Alaric II, Theoderic’s son-in-law. Shortly after this victory, the Emperor Anastasius rewarded Clovis with an honorary consulate and patriciate, and it may not be a coincidence that an eastern fleet ravaged the Italian coast precisely in 507/8.65 However, in the aftermath of Vouillé, the Ostrogoths succeeded in expanding their territory, establishing control over the area south of the Durance (Provence), as well as over the remainder of the Visigothic kingdom on the Iberian peninsula. There, Theoderic, acting on behalf of his grandson Amalaric, removed Gesalic—the son of Alaric II by another mother—from power. Gesalic received support from the Vandal and Frankish kings, but was defeated in 511 and again in 513. As a result, Spain was ruled as part of the Ostrogothic 63  Heather, Goths, pp. 236–48, Wiemer, “Goten”, pp. 606–15. 64  See Arnold in this volume. 65  Mathisen, “Clovis”; Heather, Goths, p. 232; Marcellinus Comes, Chronicle, s.a. 508, ed. Croke.

30

Heydemann

kingdom until Theoderic’s death, allowing access to Visigothic treasure, taxes, and military resources.66 The major theme in relations between Italy and the East, apart from Constantinople’s role as a power broker in the West, was ecclesiastical politics. During the later part of Anastasius’ reign, a series of attempts were made to solve the Acacian schism and settle the disagreement between the eastern churches and Rome over the acceptance of the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon (451).67 The reunion of the churches was finally effected after the Chalcedonian Justin succeeded the anti-Chalcedonian Anastasius in 518. While it has been suggested that this made it easier for the bishop of Rome and the senatorial aristocrats to turn to Constantinople as a political alternative, it is doubtful whether the newly established concord would have weakened Theoderic’s position in Italy.68 Indeed, in 519, Justin demonstrated his approval of Theoderic’s chosen successor Eutharic by accepting him as a partner in the consulate and adopting him as a son-at-arms.69

Succession and Narratives of Failed Consensus

To secure the succession within the Ostrogothic kingdom was one of Theoderic’s major problems during the latter part of his reign. After it had become apparent that there would be no male heir, Theoderic found a suitable candidate in Spain in the person of Eutharic, who was called to Ravenna and married Theoderic’s daughter Amalasuentha in 515.70 Strong efforts were made to present Eutharic as the most legitimate and desirable heir to the Ostrogothic throne. According to Cassiodorus and Jordanes, Eutharic was of Amal descent, which modern historians tend to disbelieve and rather interpret as a genealogical fabrication.71 Apart from the genealogical links it allowed to construe, Eutharic’s Spanish origin could have eased his accession over a united kingdom

66  Collins, Visigothic Spain, pp. 40–5; Diaz/Valverde, “Goths”, pp. 360–4. 67  Haarer, Anastasius, pp. 115–83; Meier, Anastasios, pp. 250–319; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 194–200. 68  Amory, People, pp. 206–19; Noble, “Papacy”, p. 417. See also Sessa in this volume. 69  Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 199–200. See Cassiodorus, Variae 8.13, ed. Mommsen; contrast idem, Chronicle s.a. 519, ed. Mommsen. 70  On Eutharic, see Wolfram, Goths, pp. 328–9; Heather, “Theoderic”, pp. 167–8. 71  Jordanes, Getica 251 and 297–9; Heather, “Cassiodorus”, pp. 106, 115; idem, “Theoderic”, pp. 167–8; Diaz/Valverde, “Goths”, pp. 365–7.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

31

of Italy and Spain.72 Approval by the eastern emperor was equally important, which was signalled through the joint consulship and Eutharic’s adoption as a son-at-arms by Justin, as mentioned above. Cassiodorus rose to the occasion to write a brief world chronicle culminating in this event, stressing that the magnificence of the consular games held by Eutharic in Rome was apt to impress even the emperor’s envoy.73 Eutharic died prematurely in 522/3, leaving behind a son by his wife Amalasuentha, the eight-year-old Athalaric. Establishing Athalaric’s claim to the throne turned out to be a difficult task. Indeed the most infamous event of Theoderic’s reign, the trial and execution of the philosopher Boethius in 523, followed by that of his father-in-law Symmachus, was probably connected to conflict over succession.74 The charges brought forward against Boethius (and the senator Albinus, whom he had risen to defend) were of high treason and secret negotiations with Constantinople. It has been assumed that Boethius was part of a group harbouring plans to formally restore the empire, and James O’Donnell has suggested that Boethius himself was striving for the imperial title.75 A more likely explanation is that Boethius was part of a senatorial faction who wanted to see Theoderic’s nephew Theodahad on the throne, and sought support for that position in the East; moreover, tensions between Boethius and members of the courtly elite in Ravenna undoubtedly played a role.76 A long-standing dissatisfaction of Boethius, or indeed of a group of Roman traditionalists, with Amal rule seems an unfounded assumption. These events cast a long shadow over Theoderic’s reputation. The narrative of the last years of his life is almost inevitably told in the form of a grim epilogue to an otherwise prosperous reign. This is due to the fact that there are very few sources covering this period, and those which have been preserved were written from an extremely hostile perspective. Their version of events was sometimes highly selective and stylized, responding to political circumstances and concerns of their own.77 Boethius, in his Consolation of Philosophy, written during imprisonment, denounces the injustice and lawlessness of the court in Ravenna and laments the loss of Roman political freedom (libertas Romana) 72  Heather, “Theoderic”, p. 168 and Arnold in this volume. Contrast Barnish, “Cuncta Italiae Membra”, p. 331 with n. 59. 73  Cassiodorus, Chronicle s.a. 519, ed. Mommsen. 74  Matthews, “Boethius”; Robinson, “Dead Boethius”, summarizes 6th-century accounts. 75  O’Donnell, Ruin, pp. 166–7. 76   Barnish, “Maximian”, pp. 29–31; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 232–5; Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 138–41. 77  On the literary image of Theoderic, see Goltz, Barbar-König-Tyrann.

32

Heydemann

under tyrannical rulers.78 The Anonymus Valesianus inserts the Boethius affair into the broader context of a narrative about the ultimate failure of Theoderic’s imperial experiment in Italy. He styled the crisis of the 520s in terms of religious antagonism between Catholic Romans and a heretical king.79 Religious differences were also a touchstone in deteriorating relations with the eastern empire. Shortly after the trial, Theoderic sent an embassy led by the bishop of Rome, John, and a number of high-ranking senators to Constantinople in order to dissuade the emperor from pursuing measures against the ‘Arian’ (non-Nicene) churches in the East. The exact nature of such measures remains unknown, just as the precise outcome of the embassy.80 The Liber Pontificalis describes the bishop’s visit to Constantinople in triumphant terms, contrasting the honours he received from the emperor with the cold welcome the envoys received on their return to Italy. John died shortly after his return, and the Liber Pontificalis turns his death (much as that of Boethius and Symmachus) into the death of a martyr for the Catholic cause in the hands of a heretical king (rex hereticus).81 Given the biases of our sources, we should be very cautious in drawing conclusions about a long-standing antagonism between ‘Arians’ and ‘Catholics’, or between pro-imperial traditionalists and pro-Gothic loyalists for that matter. But we also need to take note of the fact that such antagonistic language was available, and that orthodoxy and heterodoxy, Roman libertas and barbarian oppression, could become buzzwords in describing the diverging views of different interest groups in the kingdom. Indeed the trial of Boethius and related events of the mid 520s, and the fault lines which emerged in this context, became the touchstones in the discussions about Theoderic’s legacy and the legitimacy of Amal rule during the Gothic Wars and beyond.82 These events, moreover, occurred in a period of external tensions. In Burgundy King Sigismund murdered Sigeric, his son by Theoderic’s daughter Ostrogotho in 522; shortly thereafter, the Merovingian king, Chlodomer, attacked Burgundy. Sigismund lost his life, and an Ostrogothic army under Tuluin managed to expand the area under Ostrogothic control in southern

78  Moorhead, “Boethius”, pp. 19–20; idem, “Libertas”. 79  Anonymus Valesianus, 14–16 (81–94), ed. Rolfe; Barnish, “Anonymus Valesianus”. 80  Greatrex, “Justin i”, pp. 78–81. 81  Liber Pontificalis 55.5–6, ed. Duchesne, with Noble, “Papacy”, pp. 418–23; Goltz, BarbarKönig-Tyrann, pp. 400–25; Amory, People, p. 220; Sessa discusses the event in more detail in this volume. 82  Robinson, “Dead Boethius”; Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 147–84; Vitiello, “Cassiodoro anti-Boethius?”.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

33

Gaul.83 At the same time relations with the Vandal kingdom became strained after King Hilderic succeeded to the throne in 523; he pursued a policy of reconciliation towards the Nicene church in an effort to develop an alliance with the emperor. At some point before 526 his predecessor’s widow Amalafrida, Theoderic’s sister, was murdered. In response to the threat posed by this shift in diplomatic allegiances, Theoderic developed the plan to construct a fleet, which remained unfinished at his death in 526.84

Theoderic’s Successors

Much as for Theoderic’s last years, the kind of story we can tell for the reign of his successors as kings of Italy is largely determined by the limited range of documentary and narrative sources that have survived. When Athalaric succeeded his grandfather in 526, he was still a young boy and his mother Amalasuentha acted as regent on his behalf.85 Her position depended on her control of the prince and on the careful management of loyalties.86 Documents from the beginning of the reign preserved in the Variae show the efforts to consolidate support for Athalaric’s rule by a strong emphasis on (dynastic) legitimacy and consensual rule, suggesting that there had been difficulties in asserting his claims. On his accession, Athalaric sent letters to the Senate and the people of Rome, Italy, Dalmatia, and Gaul.87 In these letters the king demanded an oath of fidelity from all his subjects, including the Senate, pledging in return to uphold the rule of law and the rights granted by Theoderic, and to continue his grandfather’s policies and equitable government.88 Athalaric (or his advisors) also used this occasion to make an argument about his legitimacy as heir to the throne. The letters stress that he had been designated as such by Theoderic, and they deliberately evoke the consent of the magnates at court. In the letters to the Senate and the Gothi, his descent from the Amal family, this most glorious royal line, was emphasized.89 83  Wolfram, Goths, p. 312; Wood, Merovingian Kingdoms, pp. 51–3. 84  Procopius, Wars 4.9.3–4; Cassiodorus, Variae 9.1 and 5.17 (on the fleet), ed. Mommsen; Merrills/Miles, The Vandals, pp. 132–4. 85  Wolfram, Goths, pp. 322–37; Heather, Goths, pp. 260–3. 86  For further consideration of Amalasuentha’s precarious position and manoeuvring, see Cooper in this volume. 87  Cassiodorus, Variae, 8.2–8, ed. Mommsen. 88  Esders, “Rechtliche Grundlagen”. 89  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.2.3 and 8.5.2, ed. Mommsen.

34

Heydemann

Other letters show the need to conciliate and contain potential rivals to the throne, not least Theoderic’s nephew Theodahad.90 A letter in which he was granted a gift of land by the new king included a warning to comport himself well.91 Likewise, when the general Tuluin was appointed as commander-inchief of the army (patricius praesentalis), he was reminded in no uncertain terms to act strictly in the interests of the young king and not to seek power for himself.92 A gesture of reconciliation was also extended towards the families of Boethius and Symmachus, whose properties were restored by Amalasuentha, but at the same time, the architects of their downfall figure in positions of honour in the Variae in letters dated to shortly after the beginning of her reign.93 Despite these efforts at re-establishing consensus, the stability of the new regime remained precarious. Amalasuentha faced considerable opposition at court. At stake was control over the young king and his policies, possibly paired with concerns about his viability as a military leader at such a young age. Following Procopius’ account in the Wars, this has often been interpreted as a conflict between Amalasuentha’s Roman advisors and Romanized Goths on the one hand and a vigorously ‘pro-Gothic’ party on the other who resisted the Romanization of the Gothic elite. Procopius framed this conflict in anecdotal form as a struggle about the prince’s education—Roman letters or Gothic military skills.94 His use of oppositional rhetoric (‘Roman’ vs. ‘barbarian’ values) should, however, not be taken literally. Together with his praise of Amalasuentha, it is best placed in the context of his overall strategy to legitimize Emperor Justinian’s war in Italy.95 Procopius’ rhetorical strategies apart, Amalasuentha was put under considerable pressure by her opponents. The queen’s strategy was to seek a deal with Justinian to secure her personal safety.96 Eventually, she managed to survive the crisis, by removing her major opponents (among them likely Tuluin) from Ravenna, sending them on military campaign to be subsequently killed.97 In 533, she installed Liberius as a new patricius praesentalis, while Cassiodorus became praetorian prefect of Italy.98 The letter in which Cassiodorus signalled his accession to the Senate is 90  Heather, “Theoderic”, p. 169. 91  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.23, ed. Mommsen. 92  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.9.7–8, ed. Mommsen. 93  Procopius, Wars 5.2.5, ed. Dewing; Cassiodorus, Variae, 8.16–17, 8.21–22, ed. Mommsen. 94  Procopius, Wars 5.2.1–20, ed. Dewing. 95  Joye/Knaepen, “L’image”, pp. 230–44. 96  Procopius, Wars 5.3.10–30, ed. Dewing. 97  Procopius, Wars 5.2.21–22, ed. Dewing; Wolfram, Goths, p. 336; Heather, Goths, pp. 260–1. 98  Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1, ed. Mommsen.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

35

actually a panegyric of Amalasuentha, in which he highlighted the legitimacy of her rule on behalf of Athalaric as well as her excellent qualities as a skilled and educated ruler.99 Cassiodorus did his best to emphasize the achievements of the Gothic army under her regency, but the overall situation must have seemed less secure. In 530, the dux Witigis had to fight back Gepid and Herul armies who had invaded Pannonia Sirmiensis. The counter-attack led into eastern territory, probably not to the satisfaction of the emperor, who may have instigated the conflict.100 In Spain the political union was dissolved upon Athalaric’s succession and kingship passed on to Theoderic’s grandson Amalaric, which meant the loss of Visigothic revenue and manpower. Amalaric was killed in 531 after a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Franks and was succeeded by Theudis.101 The Franks also took control over the Thuringian and Burgundian kingdoms in 531 and 532–34, respectively. Henceforth, they were a direct (and increasingly powerful) neighbour of the Ostrogothic kingdom.102 When Justinian invaded the Vandal kingdom in 535, Amalasuentha allowed his fleet to use Sicily as a basis, probably in return for his support of her regency. Tensions persisted, however, as the Ostrogoths took advantage of the situation to reclaim the Sicilian city of Lilybaeum.103 In 534 Athalaric died, leaving his mother in a precarious position. She decided to elevate her cousin Theodahad, who had previously been outflanked in the competition for the throne, as her co-ruler. In their official announcements both of them emphasized their will to concord and respect for each other, but Procopius reports that Amalasuentha required a secret oath from Theodahad, according to which effective power would remain with her.104 Theodahad had built up a considerable power base of his own in Tuscany, in part by relentlessly alienating property.105 The studied concord between the two rulers did not last very long, for Theodahad soon had Amalasuentha imprisoned, and by early 535 she was dead. 99  Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1, with Fauvinet-Ranson, “Portrait”; Vitiello, “Nourished”. 100  Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1.10 and Procopius, Wars 5.3.16–30, with Arnold in this volume. 101  Heather, Goths, pp. 276–8; Diaz/Valverde, “Goths”, pp. 368–70. 102  Wood, Merovingian Kingdoms, pp. 51–4. 103  Procopius, Wars 5.3.10–29, ed. Dewing, who also claims that Amalasuentha harboured secret plans to surrender Italy to Justinian. 104  Cassiodorus, Variae 10.3–4, ed. Mommsen; Procopius, Wars 5.4.8, ed. Dewing; La Rocca, “Consors”. See now the study by Vitiello, Theodahad. 105  Cassiodorus, Variae 4.39, 5.12, 10.5, ed. Mommsen; Procopius, Wars 5.4.1–11, ed. Dewing. On Cassiodorus’ portrayal of Theodahad, see Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 311–20; Krautschick, Cassiodor, pp. 127–30; Vitiello, Il principe, pp. 114–62.

36

Heydemann

To Justinian, this represented a pretext for intervening in Italy, for he had given his consent to the arrangement and claimed that Amalasuentha was under his protection.106 A senatorial embassy sent by Theodahad to conciliate the emperor fell apart, with the patrician Liberius (by now an old man) defecting to the imperial side.107 While it is unlikely that Justinian had a longstanding plan to “reconquer the western Empire” as an earlier generation of scholars believed, a discourse which delegitimized barbarian rule in the western Mediterranean had slowly built up in the East from the 520s onwards, employing tropes about barbarous tyranny, heterodoxy, and the end of the western empire in 476.108 Against the backdrop of a swift success of the imperial army in North Africa, where the Vandals had been removed from power by 534, Justinian mounted pressure against Theodahad’s increasingly fragile regime. In June 535, Belisarius landed with a fleet in Sicily, while the Gepid general Mundo led an offensive in Dalmatia.

The Gothic War

Negotiations between Constantinople and Ravenna continued as Justinian dispatched armies to Dalmatia and Sicily. Belisarius’ quick success in Sicily prompted Theodahad to seek an agreement with Justinian. The details of the proposed agreement as reported by Procopius reveal some of the points of contention between the Amal king (and probably his predecessors) and the emperor. These included full jurisdiction over senators and the right to bestow the highest senatorial offices as well as certain ceremonial prerogatives.109 From Procopius’ narrative, Theodahad emerges as a fickle leader who was subsequently intimidated into secretly offering all of Italy in return for his personal safety and property, whereas he then decided to forfeit all agreements and fight after Ostrogothic armies had scored a victory over Mundo 106  Procopius, Wars 5.4.22–31, ed. Dewing; cf. ibidem, 5.5.8–10 and Procopius, Secret History 16, ed. and trans. Dewing, where he claims that the murder was instigated by the empress Theodora; Jordanes, Getica 307. 107  Procopius, Wars 1.4.23–25, ed. Dewing. 108  Croke, “AD 476”; Amory, People, pp. 135–47; Mirşanu, “Imperial Policy”. Barnish, “Cuncta Italiae membra”, p. 332 notes that already during the early 530s, Justinian “occasionally legislated with Gothic Italy in mind”. 109  Procopius, Wars 5.6.1–5, ed. Dewing; Chrysos, “Amalerherrschaft” and Prostko-Proskýnski, Utraeque res publicae, pp. 171–211, who may be overestimating the extent to which it is possible to extrapolate from this the terms of previous agreements, cf. Heather, Goths, p. 220.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

37

in Dalmatia.110 Soon afterwards, Belisarius took Naples and Theodahad was deposed and subsequently killed. He was replaced by Witigis, a man of military pedigree but not of Amal descent.111 The few official documents preserved in his name use a rhetoric of military prowess (alongside divine providence) to rally support.112 Although Witigis claimed that proximity to Theoderic through deeds was more important than kinship, he nevertheless married an Amal princess, Athalaric’s sister Matasuentha.113 Witigis restructured the Gothic forces and was able to besiege Rome in 537, but he was forced to lift the siege after imperial forces had attacked Picenum (an area of strong Gothic settlement) and then advanced as far as Rimini. Witigis had to retreat to Ravenna, where he was besieged by Belisarius. An offer regarding the division of Italy (this time along the line of the river Po) reached Ravenna from Constantinople, but whereas Witigis and the Gothic exercitus consented, Belisarius refused to accept the terms.114 Negotiations continued, resulting in Witigis’ surrender to Belisarius, who marched into Ravenna in May 540. The Gothic king and his entourage were captured and brought to Constantinople, while Belisarius was recalled. According to Procopius, Belisarius had tricked the Goths into opening the gates by creating the expectation that he was prepared to become king (or emperor) in Italy himself. Whatever Belisarius’ real intentions, the opportunity of preserving political independence from Constantinople may indeed have been attractive to members of the Italian elite.115 Jordanes, by contrast, described these events as a straightforward capitulation, which to him marked the end of “the famous regnum and the most courageous gens of the Goths”.116 What seemed like a swift victory for Justinian, similar to the conquest of North Africa, turned into a protracted and dreadful war, which was to last another fifteen years. There is no need to recapitulate in detail the course of the war, for which Procopius’ Wars provide the main narrative.117 From this narrative, indecisiveness and rivalry among the military leadership paired with a lack of adequate reinforcements and resources to provide for the payment of 110  Procopius, Wars 5.6.6–27, ed. Dewing. 111  On Witigis: Wolfram, Goths, pp. 342–9. 112  Cassiodorus, Variae 10.31, ed. Mommsen; Cassiodorus, Reliquae orationum, ed. Traube, pp. 473–6. See also Procopius, Wars 5.11, ed. Dewing; Jordanes, Getica 309–10, ed. Mommsen. 113  Cassiodorus, Variae 10.31.5 and 10.32.3, ed. Mommsen; Heather, Goths, pp. 263–4. 114  Procopius, Wars 6.29.1–6, ed. Dewing. 115  Procopius, Wars 6.29–30, ed. Dewing; Wolfram, Goths, p. 349. 116  Jordanes, Getica 313, ed. Mommsen. 117  Detailed summaries: Wolfram, Goths, pp. 349–62; Heather, Goths, pp. 263–71; Wiemer, “Goten”, pp. 616–26.

38

Heydemann

the Italian army, itself exacerbated by the fact that the Persian war reopened in 540, emerge as the main causes for the imperial forces’ failure to consolidate control over Italy. Moreover, the repressive policy of the eastern administration in Italy, including rigorous tax demands, alienated the support of the landowning elite.118 This allowed the Gothic forces to regroup. After the brief and unsuccessful reigns of Hildebald and the Herul king Eraric, Totila was elevated as a king by the army in 541.119 Totila was a very efficient military leader who achieved a series of victories, thus realigning the support of the Gothic military elite. Within a short time, Totila regained control over much of Italy, taking Rome twice in 546 and 550; Ravenna remained in imperial hands throughout the war. Choosing loyalties was probably much less clear-cut than any straightforward division between ‘Romans’ and ‘Goths’ would suggest.120 Some members of the political elite transferred their allegiance to the emperor early on (for example, Liberius), while others continued to support the Ostrogothic government. Cassiodorus, who probably stayed with Witigis until the capitulation of 540, is a well-known example.121 The senators were among the crucial players, and therefore most vulnerable to threats and suspicions of disloyalty. Both Witigis and Totila committed brutal massacres against members of the Senate, and many fled to Constantinople.122 The bishop of Rome Vigilius clearly supported the imperial cause, although by the late 540s he would come into sharp conflict with Justinian over the Three Chapters controversy.123 Vigilius’ predecessor Silverius had been deposed by Belisarius following accusations of pro-Gothic treason during the siege of Rome in 537.124 Procopius’ Wars also reveal that the civilian population suffered brutally at the hands of both sides. Support for the imperial armies seems to have been strong in southern Italy during the early phase of war (although there were notable exceptions, for example in Naples), but eroded due to the relentless policies of the governmental officials and the brutality of the imperial army. It is also questionable whether the imperial army would have seemed any more ‘Roman’ to the 118  See Wolfram, Goths, p. 352; Heather, Goths, pp. 267–8. 119  On Totila, see Wolfram, Goths, pp. 353–61; Moorhead, “Totila”; Carnevale, “Totila”. 120  Moorhead, “Loyalties”; Amory, People, pp. 165–94. 121  Cassiodorus’ trajectory between 537 and 550 is difficult to reconstruct: see O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 105–7, and the suggestions in Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 13–19. 122  Procopius, Wars 5.26.1; 7.21.12–17; 7.34.1–8, ed. Dewing. Schäfer, Senat, pp. 263–75. 123  Sotinel, “Autorité pontificale”; Sessa in this volume. 124  Liber Pontificalis 60.7–8; Procopius, Wars 5.25.14. For the Catholic clergy, see Amory, People, pp. 225–7.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

39

i­ nhabitants of Italy than the Gothic forces, given that it contained large contingents of barbarian soldiers.125 In 550, with the Persian war drawing to a close, Justinian was finally able to intensify the western campaign. He appointed a new commander-in-chief for Italy, namely his cousin Germanus. It has been suggested that the latter’s marriage to Theoderic’s granddaughter Matasuentha signalled the will to find a compromise between imperial and Gothic traditions regarding the reorganization of the western realm.126 In any case, Germanus died on the way to Italy in 550. He was replaced by Narses, who quickly regained lost ground for the imperial side. King Totila lost his life at the battle of Busta Gallorum (Taginae) in 552, and his successor Teia was killed only a few months later in the last decisive battle of the war on Mons Lactarius, whereafter his forces submitted to the emperor’s authority.127 There was continued resistance on a smaller scale from Gothic units mainly in northern Italy, some of which held out as late as 561.128 The official end of the war was marked by the promulgation of the Pragmatic Sanction in 554, by which the emperor Justinian restored direct imperial control over Italy.129 This is an interesting document for what it tells us about the measures taken in the face of economic and social instabilities caused by war, but also for the retrospective imperial view of the legitimacy of Ostrogothic government. The emperor explicitly confirmed all legal transactions and concessions made by legitimate kings on the request of the Romans or the Senate, that is Theoderic (called rex) and his successors, while those of Totila (called a “most abominable tyrant”) were declared void.130 The Sanction was issued on the request of Vigilius, then in Constantinople, and some of its provisions reflect the concerns of the senatorial and ecclesiastical elite. Bishops and local notables were given a role in the election of provincial governors and some control over economic policies.131 Justinian ostentatiously reclaimed imperial prerogatives and the traditional markers of civilitas such as coinage, taxes, care for the annona, public buildings, and most importantly, legislative authority. The Justinianic Code and all subsequent Novels were to be valid in Italy

125  Pohl, “Justinian”, pp. 463–4. 126  Notably by Momigliano, “Cassiodorus”, based on Jordanes, Getica 314. 127  Procopius, Wars 8.35, ed. Dewing. 128  Heather, Goths, p. 271. 129  Corpus Iuris Civilis (hereafter as CIC), Nov. Iust., App. 7, ed. Schoell/Kroll; Pilara, “Aspetti”. 130  C IC, Nov. Iust., App. 7.1–2, eds. Schoell/Kroll. 131  C IC, Nov. Iust., App. 7.12 and 18–19, eds. Schoell/Kroll; see Stein, Bas-Empire, pp. 613–19.

40

Heydemann

r­ etroactively. This was a potent signal that Italy was now part of a single res publica again, reunited by God’s will.132 Bibliography

Primary Sources

Acta synhodorum habitarum Romae a. CCCCXCVIIII, ed. T. Mommsen, in Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894, pp. 393–415. Anonymus Valesianus, ed. and trans. J.C. Rolfe, in Ammianus Marcellinus, vol. 3, London 1939, pp. 506–69. Cassiodorus, Chronicle, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora saec. IV.V.VI.VII, vol. 2 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 11), Berlin, 1894, pp. 109–61. ———, Orationum reliquae, ed. L. Traube, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894, pp. 457–84. ———, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894; Engl. trans. S. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae (Translated Texts for Historians 12), Liverpool 1992. Corpus Iuris Civilis, ed. P. Krueger/T. Mommsen/R. Schoell/W. Kroll, 3 vols., Berlin 1872– 95 (repr. 1988). Collectio Avellana, ed. O. Günther, Epistulae imperatorum pontificum aliorum inde ab a. CCCLXVII usque ad DLIII datae. Avellana quae dicitur collectio, 2 vols. (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 35), Vienna 1856–98. Ennodius, Panegyric to Theoderic, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felicis Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885; ed. and German trans. C. Rohr, Der Theoderich-Panegyricus des Ennodius (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte 12), Hannover 1995. Jordanes, Romana, ed. T. Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 5.1), Berlin 1882, pp. 1–52. Jordanes, Getica, ed. T. Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 5.1), Berlin 1882, pp. 53–138; Engl. trans. C. Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes, New York 1915 (repr. 1966). Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, Le Liber pontificalis, 2nd ed., 3 vols., Paris 1955–57; Engl. trans. R. Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715 (Translated Texts for Historians 6), 2nd ed., Liverpool 2000. 132  C IC, Nov. Iust., App. 7.11, eds. Schoell/Kroll.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

41

Marcellinus Comes, Chronicle, ed. and trans. B. Croke, The Chronicle of Marcellinus, Sydney 1995. Procopius, Wars, ed. and trans. H.B. Dewing, Procopius, 5 vols., London 1915–28 (repr. Cambridge, MA 1959–62). Procopius, Secret History, ed. and trans. H.B. Dewing, Cambridge, MA 1935.



Secondary Literature

Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554, Cambridge 1997. Arnold, J., Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, Cambridge 2014. Ausbüttel, F., Theoderich der Große, Darmstadt 2003. Barnish, S., “The Anonymus Valesianus II as a Source for the Last Years of Theoderic”, Latomus 42 (1983), 572–96. ———, “The Genesis and Completion of Cassiodorus’ Gothic History”, Latomus 43 (1984), 336–61. ———, “Transformation and Survival of the Senatorial Aristocracy, c. AD 400–700”, Papers of the British School at Rome 56 (1988), 133–50. ———, “Maximian, Cassiodorus, Boethius, Theodahad: Literature, Philosophy and Politics in Ostrogothic Italy”, Nottingham Medieval Studies 34 (1990), 16–32. ———, “Cuncta Italiae membra componere. Political relations in Ostrogothic Italy”, in id./F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 317–37. ———, “Roman Responses to an Unstable World. Cassiodorus’ Variae in context”, in id./L. Ruggini/L. Cuppo/R. Marchese/M. Breu (eds.), Vivarium in Context, Vicenza 2008, pp. 7–22. Barnish, S./Marazzi, F. (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007. Barnwell, P., Emperor, Prefects and Kings. The Roman West, 395–565, London 1992. Bjornlie, S., Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople. A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527–554, Cambridge 2012. ———, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes in Ostrogothic Italy: A Case for Continuity, Adaption and Departure”, Early Medieval Europe 22 (2014), 138–70. Börm, H., “Das weströmische Kaisertum nach 476”, in id./N. Ehrhardt/J. Wiesehöfer (eds.), Monumentum et instrumentum inscriptum. Beschriftete Objekte aus Kaiserzeit und Spätantike als historische Zeugnisse, Stuttgart 2008, pp. 47–69. Brown, P., Through the Eye of a Needle. Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD, Oxford 2012. ———, The Rise of Western Christendom. Triumph and Diversity, AD 200–1000, 10th Anniversary Revised Edition, Chicester 2013. Carnevale, L., “Totila come perfidus rex tra storia e agiografia”, Vetera Christianorum 40 (2003), 43–70.

42

Heydemann

Chrysos, E., “Die Amalerherrschaft in Italien und das Imperium Romanum. Der Vertragsentwurf des Jahres 535”, Byzantion 51 (1981), 430–74. Collins, R., Visigothic Spain, 409–711, Oxford 2006. Croke, B., “AD 476—The Manufacture of a Turning Point”, Chiron 13 (1983), 81–119. ———, “Latin Historiography and the Barbarian Kingdoms”, in G. Marasco (ed.), Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity, Leiden 2003, pp. 349–89. Dahn, F., Die Könige der Germanen—Das Wesen des ältesten Königtums der germanischen Stämme und seine Geschichte bis auf die Feudalzeit, 11 vols., Würzburg/ Leipzig 1861–1911. Diaz, P./Valverde, R., “Goths Confronting Goths: Ostrogothic Political Relations in Hispania”, in S. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 353–76. Dick, S., Der Mythos vom “germanischen” Königtum. Studien zur Herrschaftsorganisation bei den germanischsprachigen Barbaren bis zum Beginn der Völkerwanderungszeit (Reallexikon für Germanische Altertumskunde Ergänzungsband 60), Berlin 2008. Ensslin, W., Theoderich der Große, München 1947. Esders, S., “Rechtliche Grundlagen frühmittelalterlicher Staatlichkeit. Der allgemeine Treueid”, in W. Pohl/ V. Wieser (eds.), Der frühmittelalterliche Staat. Europäische Perspektiven (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 16) Vienna 2009, pp. 423–32. ———, Römische Rechtstradition und merowingisches Königtum. Zum Rechtscharakter politischer Herrschaft in Burgund im 6. und 7. Jahrhundert (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 134), Göttingen 1997. Fanning, S., “Odovacer ‘rex’, Regal Terminology, and the Question of the End of the Western Roman Empire”, Medieval Prosopography 24 (2003), 46–55. Fauvinet-Ranson, V., “Portrait d’une régente. Un panégyique d’Amalasonthe (Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1)”, Cassiodorus 4 (1998), 267–308. Geary, P., The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe, Princeton 2002. Giardina, A., Cassiodoro politico, Rome 2006. Gillett, A., “Was Ethnicity Politicized in the Earliest Medieval Kingdoms?”, in id. (ed.), On Barbarian Identity. Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, Turnhout 2002, pp. 85–122. ——— (ed.), On Barbarian Identity. Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, Turnhout 2002. Goltz, A., Barbar-König-Tyrann. Das Bild Theoderichs in der Überlieferung des 5. bis 9. Jahrhunderts (Millennium-Studien 12), Berlin 2008. Greatrex, G., “Justin I and the Arians”, Studia Patristica 34 (2001), 72–81. Haarer, F., Anastasius I. Politics and Empire in the Late Roman World, Cambridge 2006. Halsall, G., Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376–568, Cambridge 2007. Heather, P., “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals. Genealogy and the Goths under Hun Domination”, Journal of Roman Studies 78 (1988), 103–28.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

43

———, “The Historical Culture of Ostrogothic Italy”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia. Atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, Spoleto 1993, pp. 317–54. Heather, P., “Theoderic, King of the Goths”, Early Medieval Europe 4 (1995), 145–73. ———, The Goths, Oxford 1996. ———, The Fall of the Roman Empire. A New History, London 2006. Henning, D., Periclitans res publica. Kaisertum und Eliten in der Krise des weströmischen Reiches 454/5–493 n. Chr. (Historia Einzelschriften 133), Stuttgart 1999. Innes, M., “Land, Freedom and the Making of the Early Medieval West”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 16 (2006), 39–73. Jones, A.H.M., “The Constitutional Position of Odoacer and Theoderic”, Journal of Roman Studies 52 (1962), 365–74. ———, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602, Oxford 1964. Joye, S./Knaepen, A., “L’image d’Amalasonthe chez Procope de Césarée et Grégoire de Tours: portraits contrastés entre Orient et Occident”, Le Moyen Âge 111 (2005), 229–58. Kakridi, C., Cassiodors Variae. Literatur und Politik im ostgotischen Italien (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 223), Munich 2005. Kohlhas-Müller, D., Untersuchungen zur Rechtsstellung Theoderichs des Großen, Frankfurt 1995. Krautschick, S., Cassiodor und die Politik seiner Zeit, Bonn 1983. La Rocca, C., “Consors regni: A Problem of Gender? The consortium between Amalasuntha and Theodahad in 534”, in J. Nelson/S. Reynolds/S.M. Johns (eds.), Gender and Historiography. Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford, London 2012, pp. 127–43. Lafferty, S., Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great. A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge 2013. McCormick, M., Eternal Victory. Triumphal Leadership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West, Cambridge 1987. Martin, G./Grusková, J., “ ‘Scythica Vindobonensia’ by Dexippus (?). New Fragments on Decius’ Gothic Wars”, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 54 (2014), 728–54. Maskarinec, M., “Clinging to Empire in Jordanes’ Romana”, in H. Reimitz/ G. Heydemann (eds.), Historiographies of Identity: Post-Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities, Turnhout (in prep.). Matthews, J., “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius”, in M. Gibson (ed.), Boethius. His Life, Thought and Influence, Oxford 1981, pp. 15–43. Mathisen, R., “Clovis, Anastasius and Political Status in 508 CE”, in R. Mathisen/ D. Shanzer (eds.), The Battle of Vouillé, 507 CE. Where France Began (MillenniumStudien 37), Berlin 2012, pp. 79–110. Meier, M., Anastasios I. Die Entstehung des Byzantinischen Reiches, Stuttgart 2009. Merrills, R./Miles, A., The Vandals, Chicester 2010.

44

Heydemann

Mirşanu, D., “The Imperial Policy of Otherness: Justinian and the Arianism of Barbarians as a Motive for the Recovery of the West”, Ephimerides Theologicae Lovanienses 84 (2008), 477–98. Momigliano, A., “Cassiodorus and the Italian Culture of His Time”, in id., Studies in Historiography, New York 1955, pp. 181–210. Moorhead, J., “Boethius’ Life and the World of Late Antique Philosophy”, in J. Marenbon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, Cambridge 2009, pp. 13–33. ———, “Italian Loyalties during Justinian’s Gothic War”, Byzantion 53 (1983), 575–96. ———, “Libertas and Nomen Romanum in Ostrogothic Italy”, Latomus 46 (1987), 161–8. ———, Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. ———, “Totila the Revolutionary”, Historia 49 (2000), 382–6. Näf, B., “Das Zeitbewusstsein des Ennodius”, Historia 39 (1990), 100–23. Noble, T., “Theoderic and the Papacy”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia. Atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, Milano 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993, pp. 395–4. O’Donnell, J., Cassiodorus, Berkeley 1979. ———, The Ruin of the Roman Empire. A New History, New York 2009. Pilara, G., “Aspetti di politica legislativa giustinianea in Italia: proposta di riesame della Pragmatica Sanctio pro petitione Vigilia”, in E. Plebani (ed.), Società e cultura in età tardoantica e altomedievale: Studi in onore di Ludovico Gatto, Roma 2006, pp. 137–56. Pohl, W., Die Völkerwanderung. Eroberung und Integration, Stuttgart 2002. ———, “Justinian and the Barbarian Kingdoms”, in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge 2005, pp. 448–76. ———, “Rome and the Barbarians”, Antiquité tardive 16 (2008), 93–101. ———, “Regnum und Gens”, in id./V. Wieser (eds.), Der frühmittelalterliche Staat— Europäische Perspektiven (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 16), Wien 2009, pp. 435–50. ———, “Strategies of Identification. A Methodological Profile”, in id./G. Heydemann (eds.), Strategies of Identification. Ethnicity and Religion in the Early Middle Ages (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 13), Turnhout 2013, pp. 1–64. Porena, P. (ed.), Expropriations et confiscations dans L’Empire tardif et les royaumes barbares. Une approche régionale (Collection de l’École française de Rome 470), Roma 2012. Prostko-Proskýnski, J., Utraeque Res Publicae: The Emperor Anastasius’ I Gothic Policy (491–518), Poznan 1994. Reydellet, M., La royauté dans la littérature latine de Sidoine Apollinaire à Isidore de Séville (Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 243), Rome 1981.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

45

———, “Théoderic et la civilitas”, in A. Carile (ed.), Teoderico e i Goti tra Oriente e Occidente, Ravenna 1995, pp. 285–96. Reimitz, H., “The Historian as Cultural Broker”, in A. Fischer/I. Wood (eds.), Western Perspectives on the Mediterranean. Cultural Transfer in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (400–800), London 2014, pp. 41–54. Robinson, P., “Dead Boethius: Sixth-Century Accounts of a Future Martyr”, Viator 35 (2004), 1–21. Rummel, P. von, “The Fading Power of Images: Romans, Barbarians and the Uses of a Dichotomy in Early Medieval Archaeology”, in W. Pohl/G. Heydemann (eds.), PostRoman Transitions. Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 14), Turnhout 2013, pp. 365–406. Saitta, B., La Civilitas di Teoderico: Rigore amministrativo, “tolleranza” religiosa e recupero dell’antico nell’Italia ostrogota, Roma 1994. Schäfer, C., Der weströmische Senat als Träger antiker Kontinuität unter den Ostgotenkönigen (490–540 n. Chr.), St. Katharinen 1991. Sotinel, C., “Autorité pontificale et pouvoir impérial en Italie byzantine au temps de Justinien: le pape Vigile”, Mélanges des Écoles Françaises de Rome et d’Athènes 104 (1992), 439–63. Stein, E., Histoire du Bas-Empire, 2 vols., Paris 1959. Suerbaum, W., Vom antiken zum frühmittelalterlichen Staatsbegriff. Über Verwendung und Bedeutung von Res publica, regnum, imperium und status von Cicero bis Jordanis (Orbis Antiquus 16/17), 3rd ed., Münster 1977. Teillet, S., Des Goths à la nation gotique. Les origines de l’idée de nation en occident du Ve au VIIe siècle, Paris 1984. Vitiello, M., “Nourished at the Breast of Rome. The Queens of Ostrogothic Italy and the Education of the Roman Elite”, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie N.F. 149 (2006), 398–412. ———, Il Principe, il filosofo, il guerriero. Lineamenti di pensiero politico nell’Italia ostrogota, Stuttgart 2006. ———, “Cassiodoro anti-Boethius?”, Klio 90 (2008), 461–84. ———, Theodahad. A Platonic King at the Collapse of Ostrogothic Italy, Toronto 2014. Ward-Perkins, B., The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford 2005. Wickham, C., Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000, London 1981. Wiemer, H.-U., “Die Goten in Italien. Wandlungen und Zerfall einer Gewaltgemeins­ chaft”, Historische Zeitschrift 296 (2013), 593–628. Wolfram, H., Intitulatio 1: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel bis zum Ende des 8. Jahrhunderts (Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung Ergänzungsband 21), Köln/ Wien 1967.

46

Heydemann

———, History of the Goths, trans. T. Dunlap, Berkeley 1988. ———, Die Goten. Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 6. Jahrhunderts, 5th rev. ed., München 2009. ———, Gotische Studien. Volk und Herrschaft im frühen Mittelalter, München 2005. Wood, I., The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages, Oxford 2013. ———, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751, London 1994.

CHAPTER 3

Governmental Administration M. Shane Bjornlie* Introduction The assessment of Ostrogothic administrative practices has long served as an index for the extent to which late 5th- and early 6th-century Italy may be regarded as either a direct continuation of the Roman state or something fundamentally different in terms of its political culture. The common view of the 6th century as a watershed between late antique and early medieval Italy has naturally encouraged much interest in the apparatus of the Ostrogothic state. For some scholars aspects of the administration—the collection of taxes, the presence of diverse public offices, the fairly replete numismatic record, and so on—that survived the economic and political vicissitudes of the 5th century serve as evidence for the survival of an essentially Roman system of government.1 Others have drawn attention to substantial departures from Roman political and administrative habits, which often originated in Roman responses to conditions of the 5th century, prior to the arrival of the Ostrogoths.2 Only scholarship uninflected by the debates of recent decades would continue to insist upon a view of the administration of 6th-century Italy as having experienced ‘collapse’ and ‘disintegration’ at the hands of invading ‘barbarians’.3 As more sensitive examinations of the topic have tended to acknowledge, the very purpose of governmental administration has made it difficult to place Ostrogothic Italy on a simplistic axis of ‘continuity’ and ‘decline’. At a basic level the purpose of the administration was to maintain of a set of practices * The scope of this chapter, in as much as it concerns administrative personnel, overlaps with other chapters in this volume on the administration of cities (Marazzi) and provinces (Arnold) and the Senate (Radtki). 1  e.g. Bertolini, Roma di Fronte, pp. 1–9; Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, pp. 60–102; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 136–8; Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, pp. 114–17; Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 80–124. 2  Sinnigen, “Administrative Shifts”, pp. 457–66; Morosi, “I comitiaci”, pp. 77–111; Marazzi, “Destinies”, pp. 119–59; Tabata, “I comites Gothorum”, pp. 67–78. 3  Carney, Bureaucracy, p. 108; Burns, History of the Ostrogoths, p. 163.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_004

48

Bjornlie

for the redistribution of state resources and to exercise justice, the most essential interface between a government and the governed.4 However consistently comprehensible the administration attempted to make these functions to the governed, the means arrogated by the state to exercise fiscal and legal authority nonetheless required constant justification. For this reason the other fundamental function of an administration was the production of rhetoric (or an ideology) by which the governed understood themselves to be justly ruled.5 Day-to-day administrative practices required the accompaniment of a rhetorical presentation of the state that justified the government’s involvement in the resources and prerogatives of individuals and that explained the allocation of power visible in the distribution of material resources by the state. It is this rhetoric produced by the Ostrogothic government that frequently infuses so much contemporary evidence and makes it difficult to distinguish between actual administrative practices and ideological pretensions.6 The enormous cultural value placed on continuity with the past, which late antique government recognized, renders locating Ostrogothic administration on the axis of continuity and decline even more problematic.7 The extent to which the state voiced the (perhaps antiquarian) governmental principles of imperial Rome might give the impression of continuing a venerated tradition while at the same time masking important departures and innovations in regular practices.8 An example of this last point can be found in the first letter of Cassiodorus’ Variae, by far the most important source for understanding Ostrogothic administration. In Variae 1.1, addressed to the eastern emperor Anastasius, Theoderic promises to harmonize his governance of Italy with the traditions of imperium set on display by the example of the eastern court at Constantinople, “Our government is an imitation of yours” (regnum nostrum imitatio vestra est).9 The letter suggests a mirroring of the eastern empire by Theoderic’s kingdom and the scrupulous preservation of a Roman form of government, which also agrees with a common refrain in Cassiodorus’ collection referring to Italy as 4  For law and justice, see Lafferty in this volume. 5  Cecconi, Governo imperiale, p. 11; for the ideology of the Ostrogothic state see Heydemann in this volume. 6  As noted, e.g. Barbieri, “La concezione politico-economica”, p. xiv; Colace, “Lessico monetario”, pp. 159–76; De Salvo, “Rifornimenti alimentary”, p. 411; De Salvo, “Politica commercial”, pp. 99–113; Di Paola, “L’organizzazione”, p. 97; Barnish/Lee/Whitby, “Government”, p. 166. 7  On the rhetoric of the past in late antique government, Maas, John Lydus; Bjornlie, Politics and Tradition, pp. 216–53. 8  For an excellent study of the production of imperial ideology: Noreña, Imperial Ideals. 9  Cassiodorus, Variae 1.1.3, ed. Mommsen.

Governmental Administration

49

the Roman Republic (res publica).10 The familiarity Theoderic had gained with Roman political culture during the period of ten years that he spent as a political hostage at the eastern court would certainly support the notion that his government preserved Roman practices.11 Nonetheless, however familiar Theoderic and his followers may have been with the eastern Roman administration, the Italy that they encountered in 489 had undergone political, economic, and military changes on a scale scarcely witnessed in the East.12 Even if the rhetoric of veneration for Rome’s imperial past mirrored the scrupulous implementation of Roman practices, the structural changes that had occurred in Italy since the early 5th century necessitated that Roman traditions of administration would have been adapted to substantially different conditions.13

The Dimensions of Administrative Service

One of the conditions that sets the Ostrogothic administration apart from earlier imperial governance and the contemporary eastern administration, and which is itself a consequence of fundamental economic differences between the 6th century and the earlier Roman periods, is the scale of administrative operations, represented primarily by the numbers of bureaucratic personnel. Viewed through the baroque rhetoric of a text like the Variae the bureaucracy appears hierarchically complex and numerous, and indeed gives the impression of being on par with the eastern civil service.14 The swelling of governmental apparatus and personnel was certainly one of the defining features of late antique society. By the end of the 4th century the state provided civil positions for an estimated 40,000 across the empire.15 For the eastern empire of the 6th century Procopius reports that the court at Constantinople employed 5500 scholares, in addition to the domestici and protectores.16 And Procopius does not mention the exceptores and scrinarii that filled the officium of the 10  Variae 1.1, 1.4, 2.1, 2.26, 3.31, 4.6, 4.13, 5.5, 5.13, 5.16, 9.2, 9.18, 12.4, 12.17, ed. Mommsen. 11  On the imperial character of Theoderic’s Italy, Giardina, Cassiodoro, pp. 73–159; Arnold, Theoderic. 12  More generally on the difference in structural changes experienced between east and west: Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall; Ward-Perkins, “Old and New Rome”, pp. 53–78; on departures originating prior to Theoderic’s arrival: Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 1–13. 13  Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes”. 14  On this rhetorical function of the Variae: Bjornlie, Politics. 15  Heather, “New Men”, pp. 18–25. 16  Procopius, Anecdota 24.15–20 and 24.24–26, ed. Dewing; for the function of these and other administrative offices: Jones, Later Roman Empire.

50

Bjornlie

­ raetorian prefect in Constantinople.17 Several considerations, however, mitip gate against assuming such robust figures for Ostrogothic administrative centres. First, the growth of bureaucracy at Constantinople had been continuous since the founding of the city, while its western counterpart had shifted at various moments between four or five different imperial centres, dislocating with each change the networks of patronage and kinship, often regionally based, that supplied civil personnel. Second, the partitioning of the western empire into ‘successor’ states over the course of the 5th century entailed a loss of tax revenues by which the imperial court supported the bureaucracy. The economic truncation of the Italy that Theoderic assumed control over in 493 is visible in the numismatic profile of Italy, the reduction of tax revenues, and in the manner by which Ostrogothic soldiers were accommodated through land settlement.18 That a downsizing of state personnel followed Theoderic’s arrival in Italy can be inferred from Procopius, who notes that Theoderic allowed the previous corps of silentiarii, domestici, and scholares present at Rome to retain a subsistence-level stipend for the sake of tradition, implying that they had ceased to hold anything beyond an honorary function.19 Similarly at Ravenna, Theoderic appears to have purged the palace of former supporters of Odovacer, if not by execution then at least through a loss of the privileges that had formerly attended palatine service.20 An assessment, however provisional, of the finances allotted to the maintenance of the civil service also suggests reduced administrative personnel. Administrative personnel received payment in the gold solidus, for which the Variae offer a modest range of comparative evidence. For example, the salary of domestici assigned to comites on military campaign amounted to 250 solidi and ten portions of the annona (rations received from the collection of taxes), although this was an amount supplemented in order to compensate officials for service in time of war and does not by itself provide a firm basis for calculating the regular expenses of the administration.21 The payment of pensions 17  On the bureaucracy in Constantinople: Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire; Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 39–81. 18  On coinage: Csaki, “Cassiodorus”, pp. 53–64; Colace, “Lessico monetario”, pp. 159–76; Stahl, “Ostrogothic Coinage”, 753–5; for bibliography on the debate about taxes and land settlement: Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes”. 19  Procopius, Anecdota 26.27–28, ed. Dewing; Variae 2.15, 2.16, 11.31, ed. Mommsen, likewise describe the domestici at Rome in strictly honorary terms; contrast to Variae 5.14, 6.11, 8.12, 9.13, which describe the domestici assigned to comites in terms of administrative function. 20  Anonymus Valesianus 11.56, ed. Moreau; Ennodius, Life of Epiphanius 122, ed. Vogel. 21  Variae 9.13.2, ed. Mommsen; contrast Variae 5.10 and 5.11, which offers soldiers a supplemental allowance of three solidi while on campaign.

Governmental Administration

51

to officials from the officium of the praefectus praetorio (praetorian prefect) may offer a better picture. In a series of four letters, three addressed to cancellarii and one to a canonicarius, Cassiodorus ordered the release of pensions to individuals upon retirement from tenure in upper grades of the civil service.22 Of these letters, 11.36 discloses the actual amount paid: 700 solidi to a cornicularius. The other letters refer to the payment of “so many solidi” (tot solidorum). As the head of the judicial branch of the praetorian officium, the cornicularius was only slightly junior in grade to the princeps augustorum (letter 11.35), meaning that this represents the higher end of compensation for a lifelong career in civil service.23 In the East the same official received one pound of gold per month (864 solidi per year), making the western pension of 700 solidi less than the annual salary of the eastern counterpart.24 This may seem particularly modest when weighed against legal fines used to penalize the officium of the praefectus praetorio for various offences. Such penalties were typically assessed in pounds of gold in multiples of ten (or multiples of 720 solidi with 72 solidi to the pound of gold).25 However, when the pension of the cornicularius is weighed against its source a different perspective emerges. Each letter (11.35–11.38) instructs the official’s pension to be drawn from the “third portion” (illatio tertia) of taxes collected in a particular province. This fund corresponds to the schedule by which provincials paid their taxes, the tertia being a third portion thereof rendered every four months.26 Several letters of the Variae provide some sense of the range of income expected from a province as payment of the tertia. Letter 11.39 discusses the contribution of the province Lucania-Bruttium as “annual payments” (annuis praestationibus) in the amount of 1000 solidi, which if this represents one of three annual payments, indicates a total annual income for the state of 3000 solidi from this province. Similarly, the 1500 solidi remitted to the provincials of Liguria in letter 2.8, if representative of the illatio tertia owed by the province, would indicate that Liguria owed a total of 4500 solidi annually. As comparanda, a letter of Pope Pelagius from the mid 550s claims that the church had received 2160 solidi annually from the province of Picenum in the time of Theoderic.27 Although 22  Variae 11.35 for princeps augustorum, 11.36 for cornicularius, 11.37 for primiscrinius and 11.38 for subadiutor. 23  On the cornicularius: Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 563–6, 587–93. 24  On eastern pay: Jones, Later Roman Empire, p. 591. 25  Variae 2.26.3 (a penalty of 30 pounds), 3.20.4 (a penalty of 50 pounds), 10.28.3 (a penalty of 30 pounds). 26  e.g. Variae 2.24.3, 11.7.3, 11.35.3, 11.36.4, 11.38.6, 12.2.5, 12.16.3, ed. Mommsen. 27  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 37.

52

Bjornlie

the church could not collect revenues on the scale of the Gothic state, it was nevertheless the next-largest revenue-collecting institution in Italy and the figure of 2160 solidi may approximate a level just below the minimum collected by the state in some provinces. Of course another letter (5.7) concerns the arrears owed by a manager of estates (a certain Thomas) of the Ostrogothic patrimony in Apulia to the sum of 10,000 solidi, exceeding by far the amount suggested for the collection of taxes in Lucania-Bruttium and Liguria. It is worth noting, however, that letter 5.7 indicates that Thomas had managed to evade payments for at least several years (indictionibus illa atque illa). A similar letter (5.31) names individuals who had avoided their tax payments for six years (indictionum octavae nonae undecimae primae secundae et quintae decimae), making it highly unlikely that the 10,000 solidi owed by Thomas represents anything approximating the upper range of a province’s annual taxes. Relying on what can be estimated for the taxes owed by Lucania-Bruttium as the lower range of fiscal revenue received by the government (3000 solidi) and that of Liguria as the upper range (4500 solidi), and reckoning by eighteen provinces under Ostrogothic control, returns a tentative average estimate of 67,500 solidi per annum in tax revenues from municipal collections.28 To put this into perspective the annual tax revenues of the Gothic court probably amounted to about 940 pounds of gold, only a fraction of the 11,000 pounds of gold paid by Justinian as a one-time indemnity to the Persian emperor Chosroes.29 Of this sum probably only two-thirds (45,000 solidi) would have been available to the Ostrogothic state for the salaries and pensions of civil servants and military personnel. Whereas the illatio tertia represented a thrice yearly schedule of tax collection, it also corresponded to the trina illatio, a computation of the division of municipal revenues, which allotted one-third of revenues to the maintenance of the civitas where taxes were collected and surrendered the remaining two-thirds to agents of the Ostrogothic court.30 The Variae clearly indicate that the urban leadership of Rome (praefectus urbi) and each civitas (honorati, curiales, and defensores) drew upon a local fiscal budget

28  For Ostrogothic provinces: Barnish, Cassiodorus, p. 204, lists eighteen; this list could be supplemented after 511 with the acquisition of provinces in transalpine Gaul and Spain, but Variae 3.40 and 5.39 indicate fiscal exactions in these regions may not have been regular. 29  Procopius, Wars 1.22, ed. Dewing. 30  On this: Ward-Perkins, Urban Public Building, pp. 22–7; Durliat, “Cité, impôt et integration”, pp. 153–80; supported by Theodosian Code 4.13.7 and Novella 5.2–4 of Valentinian, both in C. Pharr, The Theodosian Code and Novels, Princeton 1952.

Governmental Administration

53

for their needs (albeit often at the direction of the Gothic court).31 Perhaps even more interesting is that one-third of the proposed annual income (the portion allotted to local municipal budgets) is quite close (22,500 solidi) to the 21,600 solidi that Theodahad proposed as annual tribute to Justinian as a concession at the beginning of the Gothic War.32 The consumption of fiscal revenues at the local level obviously narrows the resources available for palatine expenditures. Calculating two-thirds of the hypothetical income of the state with the salaries of common soldiers, who received a salary compatible with lower-level bureaucrats, may bring the scale of the bureaucracy into better focus. Letters 5.10 and 5.11 stipulate the payment of 3 solidi per soldier in preparation for the campaign in Gaul in 507. Unfortunately, it is not known whether this was merely a supplement for the occasion, a monthly allowance, or an annual salary. A popular charioteer received 2 solidi per month while sailors were offered a donative of 5 solidi for enlistment.33 For the sake of argument, one might postulate the 3 solidi a thrice annual payment, which would correspond to the traditional schedule for payments to Roman soldiers. In this case the court’s annual income of 45,000 could support 5000 civil servants, a small group of officials by comparison to Constantinople but a respectable corps nonetheless. However, many officials (such as the domestici of letter 9.13) will have received higher pay than the average soldier. Using an estimate for earlier imperial bureaus, in which the lower grades of palatine staff comprised three-quarters of the various officia and drew salaries commensurate with that of Roman soldiers and the remaining senior officials received considerably higher pay, the fiscal revenues of the Ostrogothic court would have supported somewhat fewer than 4000 officials.34 This estimate only calculates the payment of annual salaries and not the end-of-career pensions to civil servants or the cost of the military. Although Gothic soldiers received land as compensation for their role as the military caste of Italy, they also received annual distributions of a donative and supplemental pay from the annona when serving actively either on campaign or in frontier garrisons.35 Keeping in mind the expenses of an active campaign (such 31  Variae 1.17.1–3, 2.34, 5.9.2, 10.27, ed. Mommsen; on the use of this fund at the municipal level, see Marazzi in this volume. 32  Procopius, Wars 5.6, ed. Dewing. 33  Variae 2.9 for the charioteer; 5.16 for sailors. 34  For the estimate of three-quarters of an officium at soldiers’ pay see Jones, Later Roman Empire, p. 591. 35  For the receipt of the annona by soldiers see Variae 2.5, 3.42, 5.11, 5.13, 5.23, 11.16, ed. Mommsen; for the donativum, Variae 1.10, 4.14, 5.26–27, 5.36, 7.42, 8.26.

54

Bjornlie

as that in Gaul), based on the pay of 9 solidi per year to each soldier a meagre force of 5000 soldiers would cost the entire fiscal income drawn from the provinces (45,000 solidi). It is perhaps best to reckon that at least one-third of the trina illatio had been reserved for purely military expenses.36 With one-third of the fiscal revenue of the state reserved for municipal use and another third reserved for the Gothic military, this would halve the earlier estimate of palatine officials to less than 2000 (costing the state 22,500 solidi per year). As seen in Variae 11.35–38, the cost of pensions for high-ranking officials must also come out of this sum. Assuming that these four letters represent the average number of retirements in a given year, at 700 solidi per pension, the state would have approximately 19,700 solidi for annual salaries. Again calculating that threequarters of the personnel would receive the equivalent of low-ranking soldiers’ pay, the Ostrogothic administration shrinks to fewer than 1700 officials. It will be obvious that the preceding figures and claims are speculative at best. The evidence available simply does not permit an exact calculation of the Ostrogothic state’s administrative resources. That said, something of the potential scale of Ostrogothic administration emerges from the exercise. The corps of palatine officials available to a Gothic ruler little resembled the mirror image of Constantinople, as suggested by regnum nostrum imitatio vestra. Procopius’ claim that Amalasuentha had at her disposal 400 centenaria37 of gold (perhaps 40,000 pounds) should not inflate estimates of the dimension of Ostrogothic administrative capabilities. Amal rulers had resources available to them that did not derive from the taxation organized by civitates in the provinces. The comitiva patrimonii nostri managed the private estates of Amal rulers and revenues from these properties could be used to supplement shortages in the regular fiscal budget, which normally covered the expenses of the military and civil service. For example, the letter of the Variae concerning the increase in salary for domestici accompanying the Gothic army (9.13) was addressed to the comes patrimonii nostri who administrated royal estates. Similarly, Theoderic’s initiative to build a fleet had tapped resources drawn from his personal estates.38

36  Jordanes, Gothic History 302, ed. Mommsen, claims that the Goths destroyed 30,000 Franks in Gaul; granted the hyperbole common to such estimates it is still probable that the Gothic force sent to Gaul was substantial—at the very least 5000 strong. 37  Procopius, Wars 5.2.26, ed. Dewing; the exact measure of centenaria is unknown. 38  Variae 5.18 and 5.20, ed. Mommsen.

Governmental Administration



55

The Impact of Reduced Administration

The important point to recognize is that fiscal resources budgeted for the military and civil service on a more regular basis were not sufficient to support an administration anywhere near the scale of that in the East. Indeed the difference between the comparative handful of officials at Theoderic’s court and the overawing spectacle of the court in the East seems to be manifest in the literary habit for celebrating rulers. Martial prowess figured as the primary source of praise for Theoderic in Ennodius’ panegyric, in contrast to a tradition that typically made the courtly attributes of a ruler complementary to his excellence in war.39 The contemporary panegyric to Anastasius by Priscian, for example, builds praise for the emperor first by describing his military campaigns and then by elaborating on the successes of his legal and administrative accomplishments, which reaches a crescendo in the description of his court as a home for “associates in the just administration of affairs”, where adornment in eloquence, learning, and wisdom preserves Roman law.40 Somewhat later, Corippus would praise the eastern emperor with even greater attention to the (celestial) qualities of his court.41 It would seem that Ennodius remained silent in this respect because Theoderic did not fit the model of a ruler who mediated his authority through the conspicuous drama of a highly elaborated bureaucracy. In fact rather than sedentary and embedded in urban ritual, as with the case of the eastern emperor, there are indications that the Ostrogothic court behaved in an itinerant manner, for which a much-reduced administrative apparatus was an advantage. Smaller officia permitted the Ostrogothic court to move with ease between royal seats of government, something that a perspicacious ruler would prefer over leaving a potentially ambitious corps of personnel to its own devices, equipped as it would have been with the tools of manipulating the military (through control over money and provisions). Evidence for the itinerant nature of the Amal court comes from diverse sources. The Anonymus Valesianus and later Fredegar speak of royal complexes 39  Ennodius, Panegyric to Theoderic 17.78–81, 19.83–86 and 20.87–88, ed. Rohr, in particular, compares Theoderic to Alexander and Roman commanders of the Republic; cf. Latinus Pacatus 2.15, on the wisdom displayed by Theodosius in his choice of court attendants, and Claudius Mamertus 3.16, 3.20, 3.22, on the court of Julian, both in C.E.V. Nixon and B. Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors, Berkeley 1994; Claudian on the fourth consulship of Honorius, 122–53, focuses on Honorius’ rearing at court, in M. Platnauer, Claudian, Loeb Classical Library. 40  Priscian, In Praise of Anastasius, especially 239–53, ed. Coyne. 41  Corippus, In Praise of Justin 1.249, 2.189–199, 2.285–95, 3.70–84, 3.179–87, 3.219–30, 4.90– 130, 4.240–45, 4.365–74, ed. Cameron.

56

Bjornlie

(palatia) used by Theoderic at Ravenna, Verona, and Pavia.42 Similarly, hagiographical tradition associates Theoderic with a substantial residence at Galeata, approximately thirty miles south-west of Ravenna.43 Letter 10.28 of the Variae deals with the provisioning of royal mansiones in Rome and Ravenna, but also at properties near Pavia, Piacenza, and “other places” (sive per alia loca). Given the lengthy manifest of foodstuffs considered in this letter, it seems clear that the itinerary of the court and the management of the king’s personal resources were intimately connected. It was probably while Athalaric was in residence at Verona that Cassiodorus ordered the canonicarius to supply the court with a wine distinctive to that area (acinaticium).44 The medieval legend of Dietrich von Bern (“Theoderic of Verona”) certainly suggests that it was the historical association of the Amal family with Verona, not Ravenna, which left a literary residue that persisted at least until the 10th century.45 Another letter of the Variae suggests that the Amal court maintained a substantial presence at Pavia and Tortona, where the control of horrea (granaries) there provided the Amals with leverage over key zones of military settlement.46 The proximity of Epiphanius and Ennodius to the affairs of Theoderic’s court also attests to the importance of Pavia to the Amals. The fact that Boethius was tried for treason in Verona and then spent his last days in confinement outside of Pavia similarly describes the peripatetic nature of the court.47 That the Gothic ruler’s mobile administration (comitatus noster) would receive petitions and execute the business of state outside of the presumed administrative centre of Ravenna is patent in the Variae. Letter 2.20 requisitioned the transport of grain from Ravenna to Liguria, where the presence of Theoderic’s officials (comitatus) had attracted crowds of petitioners (catervas observantium).48 Similar to the importance of maintaining the royal presence near horrea outside of Ravenna, the higher frequency of coins minted at Milan (as opposed to Ravenna) speaks to a strategy for disbursing the instruments of military power (coin and grain) 42  Anonymus Valesianus 12.71, ed. Moreau; Fredegar, Chronicles 2.57, ed. Krusch; on the importance of these centres to an Amal administrative strategy: Mor, “La riforma amministrativa”, pp. 70–4. 43  Bolzani, Teoderico e Galeata; De Maria (ed.), Villa di Teodorico a Galeata. 44  Variae 12.4, ed. Mommsen. 45  De Azevedo, “Verona Gota”, p. 187. 46  Variae 10.28, ed. Mommsen; on the importance of these granaries, Ruggini, Economia e Societá, pp. 326–40, and Settia, “Le fortificazioni dei Goti”, p. 130; on the concentration of Gothic settlements in northern and central Italy, Bierbrauer, Die Ostgotischen Grab- und Schatzfunde, pp. 29–64. 47  Anonymus Valesianus 14.87, ed. Moreau. 48  Variae 2.20.1, ed. Mommsen.

Governmental Administration

57

that required a smaller, more mobile administrative apparatus.49 Additionally, the Variae include a formula for warrants that admit petitioners to the presence of the Gothic ruler (princeps), where the location of the princeps is designated as illam urbem (“such and such city”).50 Rather than viewing Ravenna as the embedded seat of a densely bureaucratic government, it seems more realistic to view Ravenna as serving the Gothic regime as an entrepot for resources (taxes) travelling to the various points of the Po River valley that served as residences for the comitatus of Amal rulers as they endeavoured to remain in constant contact with heavier areas of Gothic settlement (muster zones of the military). Instructions commanding the fleet (the dromonarii) at Ravenna to assist servants of the public transport system (cursus publicus) with conveyance along the Po River strengthen this picture.51 There is no doubt that Ravenna played a crucial role in the propaganda of the Gothic regime, as attested by the building programme of the city, but it seems likely that this attention to the fabric of Ravenna may have masked a strategy for governing Italy that was strikingly different from that of the emperor at Constantinople. Attention to parallels between building projects at Ravenna and architectural elements at Constantinople may suggest that Ravenna served as a stage for diplomacy with the eastern empire.52 Ennodius, on the rare occasions when he mentioned the palatine bureaucracy, associated it with the city of Ravenna. Of course Ennodius’ references were limited to the excubitores, Romans holding more or less honorary positions as the ‘palace guard’.53 And while the imprint of Felix Ravenna on Gothic coins attests to the importance of the city to Gothic imperial propaganda and to relations with the east, it is significant that the letters of the Variae, despite the attention received by Ravenna in individual letters, never designate Ravenna as the principal capital of the Amals.54 Indeed the prolongation of 49  On the mint at Milan, Arslan, “La struttura delle emissioni”, pp. 517–39. 50  Variae 7.34, ed. Mommsen. 51  Variae 2.31, ed. Mommsen, on dromonarii and the cursus publicus; 5.17–19 on the assembly of the fleet at Ravenna; on this fleet, Cosentino, “Re Teoderico costruttore di flotte”, pp. 347–56. 52  On the semiotics of imperium in the architecture attributed to Theoderic: Johnson, “Theoderic’s Building Program”, pp. 73–96; on the imperial and post-imperial history of building at Ravenna more generally: Deliyannis, Ravenna; for comparisons of Ravenna to Constantinople, see Johnson in this volume. 53  Ennodius, Letter 2.27, 6.21, ed. Vogel. 54  On Felix Ravenna in the numismatic record, Grierson/Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, p. 28, attribute this iconography to Odovacer; Arslan, “La monetazione dei Goti”, pp. 23–4, that it originates with Theoderic; on Ravenna as the stage setting in relations

58

Bjornlie

the Gothic War after the capitulation of Ravenna attests to the fact that Gothic power derived from a strategy that did not depend upon a centralized seat of government (Totila ruled most of Italy for almost twelve years after Ravenna fell to eastern control in 540). In terms of administrative strategy, the Amal court seems to have preferred a style of governance in which an administrative nucleus (referred to in the Variae as comitatus noster and officium nostrum), including the staffs of such senior officials as the praetorian prefect, attended the itinerant ambit of the Gothic ruler. Indeed the formula for the comes patrimonii suggests that this official did not require formal instruction in traditional precepts because the office received instruction through personal attendance upon the ruler.55 This strategy corresponds to the need for royal power to be seen regularly in regions of military settlement where the idea of the Amal dynasty as a cohesive political entity required constant reinforcement in the face of competing patronage and kinship affiliations that might develop locally.56 The frequent references in the Variae to comitatus noster, the traditional language for a mobile military retinue, when applied to administrative apparatus, indicate a definite shift to a style of administration that was not as palace-bound as its eastern counterpart.57 Similarly, the development of officium nostrum as a means of addressing the Amal court suggests that the direct attendance of the comitatus upon the Amal ruler involved a transition in which administrative functions had ceased to transmit through clearly delineated departments but rather through the king discharging the functions of state according to the proximity of suitable individuals (not necessarily according to the nature of offices that they held).58 Indeed, in parallel to the officium nostrum as a conflation of palatine departments, the Gothic ruler could occasionally refer to

between the Amals and the eastern empire: Johnson, “Theoderic’s Building Program”, pp. 95–6. 55  Variae 6.9.1, ed. Mommsen. 56  On the disaggregate nature of Gothic identity and its impact on Amal policy, Heather, “Rise of the Amals”, 122–6; iterated again in Heather, “Theoderic”, pp. 144–5, and “Gens and Regnum”, pp. 86–91. 57  Variae 1.7.3, 1.8.3, 1.27.2, 2.18.3, 2.20.1, 3.22.1, 3.28.1, 3.36.2, 4.9.1, 4.39.5, 4.40.2–3, 4.44.2, 4.45.1, 4.46.1, 5.12.3, 5.15.1, 5.27.1, 5.32.3, 7.31.2, 7.34.1, 7.35.2, 8.32.1, 9.15.7, ed. Mommsen; on comitatus: Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 49–50, 366–73, 459–60, 566–86. 58  On the frequency of officium nostrum in the Variae and its relationship to the conflation of competences associated with specific offices: Morosi, “I comitiaci”, pp. 101–9; also on officium nostrum and the comitiaci: Giardina, Cassiodoro Politico, pp. 47–71.

Governmental Administration

59

specific officials simply as noster miles.59 A similar situation would eventually obtain in the eastern empire under Emperors Maurice and Heraclius.60 The combination of economic reasons for reducing the numbers of administrative personnel and a peripatetic administrative strategy changed the traditional function of public offices in Ostrogothic Italy.61 The change is best described as a shift from institutionally defined administrative practices to an increasing tendency to assign administrative duties on an ad hoc basis by the king. The relative shortage of personnel had the effect of conflating traditional administrative competences, such that the execution of state affairs depended on the delegation of tasks to particular attendants at hand. The basic organs of government remained essentially unchanged, with most offices and bureaus of the late Roman government visible to some degree, and the basic functions of the administration as a whole seem to address the same range of activities.62 The Variae provide a rich tableau of appointments to office, tax collection, the investigation of legal disputes and maintenance of legal order, the maintenance of urban and regional infrastructure, the provisioning and deployment of the army, and diplomatic relations with other states—in short, the full spectrum of matters pertaining to a late Roman administration. Nonetheless, the availability of smaller numbers of officials to execute this range of activities required more flexibility in the scope of administrative functions attended to by some members of civil service. In some ways it is possible to view, in spite of the façade of governmental traditionalism present in the Variae, how the dependence of the royal court on a smaller cohort of officials required widening the authority of many offices. This trend in the government of 6th-century Italy may parallel processes in the evolution of the legal culture of the state. The simplification of law, particularly visible in a text such as the Edictum Theoderici, probably has as much to do with the administrative needs of a bureaucracy with fewer specialized civil servants as it does with the evolving needs of the people who depended upon the state for justice.63 The same may be said of other ‘successor’ states of the West that evolved regional bodies of law. 59  e.g. Variae 1.7.2, ed. Mommsen. 60  Haldon, Byzantium, pp. 173–207. 61  A healthy body of scholarship has already addressed aspects of change in the Ostrogothic administration: Boak/Dunlap, Later Roman and Byzantine Administration; Sinnigen, “Administrative Shifts”, pp. 456–67; Barnwell, Emperor, pp. 159–69; Tabata, “I comites Gothorum”, pp. 67–78. 62  The formulae of Books 6 and 7 of the Variae provide a template for this basic structure. 63  On this trend from the legal perspective: Lafferty, “Law and Order”, pp. 260–90.

60

Bjornlie

Probably the most readily available example of this kind of administrative culture can be found with Cassiodorus. During the course of more than thirty years, Cassiodorus held three of the most important posts in the Ostrogothic administration: quaestor, magister officiorum, and praefectus praetorio. Cassiodorus’ steady advancement in palatine service is, in part, explained by the personal nature of his family’s attachment to the Amal court.64 As a valued member of the inner circle of the Amal regime, Cassiodorus had been entrusted with involvement in the full range of administrative affairs which, as represented in the Variae, bears a remarkable degree of consistency from one period of his career to the next (irrespective of the office that he held at any particular moment). There is of course some debate concerning the degree of agency implied by Cassiodorus’ penning of letters on behalf of Amal rulers.65 Regardless of whether one views Cassiodorus as merely the amanuensis of Gothic rulers, writing the responses of the Gothic court to such a wide array of administrative concerns implies the dependence of the court upon person, rather than the specialized competence of a particular office. The fact that various Gothic rulers entrusted the same range of matters to the pen of the same individual in three different offices, regardless of the traditional competence corresponding to those offices, speaks to the simplification of the allocation of personnel. Neither should it be thought that such a situation was unique to Cassiodorus. Variae 1.12 explains how the promotion of a quaestor to the office of magister officiorum would involve the transference of this official’s former duties to the new office.66 The conflation of duties associated with more than one office to a trusted person speaks not only to the exigencies of managing palatine service on a truncated budget, but also to the increased emphasis on intimacy with the Amal ruler. As stated in the preface to the Variae, “and just as with lesser officials, the princes seem to set upon you, above any other office holder, those matters needing attention, and which the appropriate ministers are unable to unravel”.67 It is worth noting that the velut mediocribus fascibus of this statement implies that the habit of transgressing traditional departmental boundaries was a feature of civil service particular not only to the higher magistracies, but common throughout the lower offices.

64  For a reconstruction of the context of Cassiodorus’ public life: Bjornlie, “Variae of Cassiodorus”. 65  On this, Bjornlie, “Variae of Cassiodorus”. 66  Variae 1.12.4, ed. Mommsen. 67  Variae, praefatio 1.7, “et velut mediocribus fascibus insudanti illa tibi de aliis honoribus principes videntur imponere, quae proprii iudices nequeunt explicare”, ed. Mommsen.

Governmental Administration



61

Administrative Functions in Action

The remaining portion of this chapter will illustrate some of the ways in which the conflation of boundaries between personnel is visible in the Ostrogothic period. Cassiodorus accorded the office of praefectus praetorio a dignity above all other offices, and indeed the praetorian prefect was closely associated with the comitatus of the Gothic ruler.68 Having authority over both legal and financial personnel of the administration, the prefect commanded the most numerous branches of the bureaucracy (exceptores and scrinarii). His competence covered the collection of taxes in all provinces, the local officials involved in its collection, the distribution of taxes as payment to military and administrative personnel, the maintenance of the public food supply, oversight in local finances, and rendering final judgement in legal disputes.69 Given the breadth of the praetorian prefect’s involvement in various affairs throughout Italy, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Gothic court would direct him to undertake tasks traditionally delegated to other ministers. For example, in Variae 2.9 and 3.51, Theoderic orders the prefect to take charge of fairly minor matters pertaining to public spectacles in Milan and Rome (something that might have pertained to the tribunus voluptatum or vicarius urbae Romae).70 Similarly, in Variae 11.5, the prefect directs his deputy assistant (vices agenti) to administer the annona in Rome, without mention of the authority that the praefectus annonae would have had in the matter.71 It may have been the case that the appointment of specialized officials to govern such matters as public spectacle and the annona was only periodic and that the Gothic ruler typically required the praetorian prefect, as the highest-ranking minister attendant in the comitatus, to act in the absence of such personnel. Other high ministers of the comitatus, however, with competences that were traditionally much more circumscribed, similarly display evidence of operating in a wide ambit, or at other times having their traditional roles assumed by others. The relative ease with which traditional administrative roles were conflated among the comes sacrarum largitionum, the comes patrimonii nostri, and the comes privatarum speaks to a habit of appointing officials to tasks based 68  As described in the formula for praetorian prefect: Variae 6.3.4, ed. Mommsen; on the itinerant nature of the office: Variae 11.5.1–3. 69  For descriptions of the duties of the praetorian prefect: Variae, praefatio 1.5–6, ed. Mommsen; Variae 1.4, 2.5, 2.37, 2.38, 4.36, 4.38, 4.50, 5.34, 6.3, 12.2; also, Morosi, “Praefectus praetorio”, pp. 71–93. 70  Cf. formulae at Variae 6.15 for the vicarius and 7.10 for tribunus voluptatum, ed. Mommsen. 71  Cf. formula for the prefect of the annona at Variae 6.18, ed. Mommsen.

62

Bjornlie

on either the suitability of the individual or the magistrate’s availability at a given moment. In the Roman administration of the 4th and 5th centuries the comes sacrarum largitionum had a role of chief importance, exercising authority over the mint (and thereby over the distribution of donatives to the military and benefactions of the ruler to civilians), mines (linked to coin production at mints), the production of royal vestments, and customs and taxes from foreign trade.72 Despite the fact that the formula for the comes sacrarum largitionum in the Variae (6.7) outlines these same traditional competences, numerous cases make it clear that this minister’s duties were regularly appointed to other officials. With respect to the oversight of goods associated with foreign trade, specific cases could be delegated to the praefectus praetorio (Variae 1.34) and the comes siliquatariorum (Variae 2.12). Similarly, the comes patrimonii nostri could be directed to search for new gold mines.73 Where it appears that the ships of the state (dromonarii) pertained to the authority of the comes sacrarum largitionum (Variae 2.31), it is also clear that matters pertaining to the fleet could be handled by the comes privatarum (Variae 4.15), the praefectus praetorio (Variae 5.16–17), or the comes patrimonii nostri (5.18–20). A similar blurring of roles may be seen in the case of the comes privatarum, the formula for which included duties concerning laws pertaining to slaves, sexual morality, the protection of the dead, intestate land, and the discovery of abandoned treasure.74 In contrast to the duties ascribed in the formula for this post, the Variae describe the comes privatarum in various instances providing a water surveyor with a salary drawn from the annona (3.53), crediting the accounts of agents of grain shipments in compensation for shipwreck (4.7), investigating quarrels between the taxpayers (possessores) and local officials (curiales) of a civitas (4.11), and providing provisions for the army posted in Pannonia Sirmiensis (4.13), all activities more regularly undertaken by the praetorian prefect. Similarly, the Variae often describe other officials engaged in activities more properly pertaining to the authority of the comes privatarum: the investigation of grave robbing by a Gothic comes (4.18), the investigation of the status of intestate property by a Gothic saio (4.32) or a governor (consularis) (5.24), an investigation into reports of buried treasure by a Gothic saio (4.34), and handling a case of adultery by a Gothic dux (5.33). With respect to the comes patrimonii, whose authority extended to the management and collection of rents from properties owned by the Amal family (and the supply of the court with provisions from those properties), it appears that his ­authority 72  Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 369–70, 427–38, 624–5. 73  Variae 9.3, ed. Mommsen. 74  Variae 6.8, ed. Mommsen.

Governmental Administration

63

could at times extend to the collection of regular taxes from a province (again, the purview of the praetorian prefect).75 In turn the praetorian prefect was at liberty to requisition provisions for the Gothic court through his agent (a canonicarius), as opposed to acting through the comes patrimonii. Finally, the magister officiorum, who formally held authority over the cursus publicus, regularly found that role assumed by the praetorian prefect and saiones.76 The special competence that the magister officiorum had in controlling the prices of goods at the marketplace of the Gothic residence similarly could become subject to the authority of the praetorian prefect.77 This tendency for high ministers of the palatine bureaucracy to exercise broader administrative powers than might have been the case in a traditional Roman administration represents the ad hoc appointment of ministers to administrative needs by the Gothic ruler on the basis of the most suitable personality available at a given moment. A natural extension of this tendency is visible in the provinces with the range of authority available to Gothic comites.78 Rather than a separate branch of specifically military authority, the Gothic comites are better understood as an additional layer of administrative authority representing the Gothic court in various regions under Gothic control. A distinctly separate branch of military authority seems to have pertained to the pre-Gothic period, concerning which the Anonymus Valesianus mentions Odovacer’s military commanders holding the office of magister militum.79 Notably by contrast, the Valesianus describes Theoderic’s military commanders as comites or duces even after the war with Odovacer, reflecting what had become administrative reality by the end of the Gothic period in Italy.80 The Variae similarly describe Gothic comites, particularly in the formulae, where several distinct competences appear.81 In each case these comites are described in terms of legal and judicial authority combined with military power. Variae 7.25, 7.27, and 7.28 in particular are formulae announcing to the local municipal administration (honorati, defensores, curiales) the judicial competence of the Gothic comites assigned to them. Attention to the role of 75  On the collection of taxes in Dalmatia and Savia: Variae 9.9.3, ed. Mommsen, with Arnold in this volume; cf. formula for this office at Variae 6.9. 76  Cf. the formula for the magister officiorum: Variae 6.6, ed. Mommsen; for the cursus publicus being managed by other officials: Variae 4.47, 5.5, 11.12, 11.14, 12.15, 12.18. 77  Variae 11.11, ed. Mommsen. 78  On this phenomenon: Tabata, “I comites Gothorum”, pp. 67–78. 79  Anonymus Valesianus 11.51 and 11.54, ed. Moreau. 80  Anonymus Valesianus 12.68, ed. Moreau. 81  Variae 6.22, 6.23, 7.1, 7.3, 7.26, ed. Mommsen.

64

Bjornlie

the comes in m ­ anaging the annona suggest that these appointments involved superintending the collection and distribution of taxes.82 The comites with the widest such powers were the comites provinciarum assigned to specific provinces, usually those in regions subject to military threat such as Pannonia and Dalmatia. The formula for this post emphasizes the balance of military and judicial powers, explicitly noting the distinction of this authority above that enjoyed by governors in other provinces and indicating that the comes provinciae was in fact a branch of the civil administration.83 Descriptions of the comites Gothorum per singulas civitates assigned to specific cities such as Syracuse and Naples indicate that these officials also enjoyed the same range of judicial, administrative, and military powers, albeit restricted to the jurisdiction of a particular city.84 Gothic officials could also be assigned to presumably less important municipalities as comites diversarum civitatum, holding rank secondary to other Gothic comites (in illa civitate comitivae honorem secondi ordinis).85 Similar to the comites provinciarum, urban centres warranted the administration of a comes on the basis of strategic needs that required the presence of a substantial Gothic garrison. It is important to note that not every province or city had a comes; such appointments were selective and often based on military considerations. Nevertheless, it is clear that these appointments substituted layers of administration present in other provinces and cities. Each comes, whether of a province or a city, had a civilian princeps militum assigned to superintend his administrative officium.86 The importance of these comites to the Gothic administration is underscored by the sheer number of letters in the Variae attesting their various activities.87 The frequent reappearance of specific individuals in various capacities as comites again suggests an administration based on central personalities affiliated with the Gothic court, as opposed to an elaborate institutional hierarchy. One of the obvious advantages to granting administrative competence to military comites is that it reduced the need in many regions for potentially expensive gubernatorial officia. In fact evidence seems to indicate that the presence of actual provincial governors was far less regular than in earlier ­periods of Roman government or in the contemporary provinces of the eastern 82  Variae 7.25, ed. Mommsen; similarly, Gothic comites were involved in fiscal matters in Variae 3.25, 3.26, 4.19, 5.14, 5.15, 5.39, 9.11, 9.14. 83  Variae 7.1, ed. Mommsen. 84  Variae 6.22, 6.23, 7.3, ed. Mommsen. 85  Variae 7.26.3, ed. Mommsen. 86  Variae 6.25, 7.24, ed. Mommsen. 87  Variae 1.5, 1.40, 2.7, 2.29, 3.23, 3.24, 3.25, 3.26, 3.45, 4.9, 4.12, 4.16, 4.19, 4.21, 4.23, 4.23, 4.49, 5.14, 5.15, 5.29, 5.35, 5.39, 8.26, 8.28, 9.8, 9.9, 9.11, 9.14, ed. Mommsen.

Governmental Administration

65

empire. The Variae refer to a small host of dignitaries having authority in the legal or financial administration of provinces: iudex, rector, consularis, praeses and corrector. The term iudex tends to be a rather generic referent for someone with either judicial or financial competence either as a part of the local civitas administration or as an agent of the Gothic court sent to a particular place, and not in the specific sense of a person who might be considered a civilian analogue to the Gothic comes provinciae. The Edictum Theoderici refers to a iudex eiusdem loci, in the sense of a magistrate of a particular civitas.88 Cassiodorus uses iudex to refer to either a senior palatine minister (Variae 1.4) or unspecified officials in the provinces having some role in tax collection (Variae 2.24, 11.7, 12.2). Elsewhere in the Variae it becomes clear that iudices provinciarum can apply to the cancellarii assigned to provinces from the officium of the praetorian prefect (11.14, 12.15). Similarly, the corrector appears to have been a tax official charged with the collection of the bina et terna (a land tax) for the office of the comes sacrarum largitionum, not a magistrate with general gubernatorial competence over a province.89 Nonetheless, this agent also seems to have been vested with the authority to pass sentence in civil cases, again an indication of the evolving flexibility with which administrative authority could be applied in the provinces.90 Another indication of this flexibility and a shift away from an annually appointed ‘governor’ for each province is the presence of separate formulae for the rector, consularis, and praeses, each with authority limited to the bounds of a province. Of the three offices the consularis (Variae 6.20) had sweeping administrative powers in a province, while the responsibilities of the rector seem to have been confined to judicial duties (Variae 6.21) and the authority of the praeses was limited to fiscal matters (Variae 7.2). Even with the firm identification of the consularis as a provincial governor, by comparison to the activity of the comes Gothorum, the governor of a province seems to have been an occasional figure in the Gothic administration.91 Given the emphasis that the formula for consularis places on the derivation of the title of the office from the honour of the consul, it is quite likely that consulares were appointed by the Gothic court on an ad hoc basis (as opposed to annually) from among local elite such as the honorati, perhaps to compensate for periodic shortages of administrative personnel in a particular region.92

88  Edict of Theoderic 64, ed. Baviera. 89  Cf. Variae 7.20 and 3.8, ed. Mommsen. 90  Variae 3.47, ed. Mommsen. 91  Only Variae 3.27, 4.10, 4.32, 5.8 and 5.24, ed. Mommsen, refer matters to the attention of the consularis; cf. note # 88 for the activities of Gothic comites. 92  Variae 6.20.1, ed. Mommsen.

66

Bjornlie

An explanation for the only incidental reliance upon provincial governors may be found in the more consistent use of other personnel with a broad range of authority. The saiones of the Gothic court probably best exemplify this policy.93 Like Gothic comites, the saiones possessed both military and administrative authority. The letters of the Variae attesting to this range of administrative function indicate that in each case the saio received his appointment directly from the Gothic ruler. In contrast, however, rather than having ‘standing’ institutional authority in military and administrative matters after the fashion of a comes provinciae, saiones were assigned with specific authority to supervise a given task. They represent the retinue of noble Goths who attended the Gothic ruler’s comitatus and who satisfied the roles of other magistrates when occasion required. In fact the Variae do not contain a formula for the saio, but rather a formula by which civilians might petition for the assistance of a saio in a particular (unspecified) situation. The fact that the formula stipulates that the petitioner must promise property as a bond for the services of the saio underscores the importance of the personality of proximity to the royal court.94 It was through the personal attachment of the saiones to the Gothic court, as opposed to the constitutionality of office, that the saiones were capable of operating in such an impressive array of capacities. The Variae describe the saiones mobilizing military personnel for campaign or for the annual receipt of the donative, providing legal and physical protection for tax collectors, arresting delinquent taxpayers and individuals accused of various crimes, collecting ships for the transport of grain, investigating titles to property and transferring property to private citizens, superintending the fortification of new settlements, collecting taxes, supervising the remission of taxes, investigating reports of buried treasure, managing the cursus publicus, managing the personnel and resources of the fleet, protecting litigants in civil cases, investigating the various complaints of provincials, and censuring and arresting other public officials.95 Whereas the award of the title of saio was limited to Goths in the service of the royal court, this does not necessarily mean that the same range of ­administrative function was limited to Goths or saiones. Other agents sent from the Gothic court to investigate specific matters in the provinces such as comitiaci and apparitores appear to have a similar range of authority, albeit not 93  For previous literature on the saiones: Morosi, “I saiones”, p. 150–65; Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes”. 94  Variae 7.42.2, ed. Mommsen. 95  Variae 1.24, 2.4, 2.13, 2.20, 3.20, 3.48, 4.14, 4.27, 4.28, 4.32, 4.34, 4.47, 5.5, 5.10, 5.19, 5.23, 5.27, 8.24, 8.27, 9.2, 9.10, 9.14, 9.18, 12.3, ed. Mommsen.

Governmental Administration

67

inclusive of managing military personnel or their affairs.96 A similar tendency is observable with respect to officials embedded in the provinces as representatives of the officium of the praetorian prefect such as cancellarii or canonicarii, which were often delegated to investigate matters similar in nature to the affairs attended by comitiaci and apparitores.97 Indeed it may be that a comitiacus or apparitor would be sent from the Gothic court only when a cancellarius or canonicarius from the officium of the prefect was not at hand in the province to attend to a particular matter. This illustrates a tendency for the Gothic administration to accommodate itself to fewer officials by granting personnel a wider field of operation in which magistrates representing the Gothic court had authority over the same range of judicial and financial activities when circumstances required it. The final aspect of Gothic administrative behaviour that again illustrates the degree to which bureaucracy had been downsized is the tendency to rely upon persons in ex officio positions of authority. In keeping with the culture of the comitatus, which derived its authority from proximity to an Amal ruler, the Gothic court could expect individuals not properly vested in office to conduct business of the state. Often, as seen in the Variae, these individuals were among the highest ranking in society—men with patrician, illustris or spectabilis rank. Obviously, fulfilment of such requests depended upon the prestige that an individual would obtain through association with the Gothic court. The court in turn relied upon the status of these individuals to grant the authority needed to pursue legal and administrative affairs in ex officio capacity. The interplay of prestige sharing between court and individual is underscored in formulae for honorary appointments (such as patrician status), which specify the honour of attaining rank without official obligations.98 Nonetheless, the Variae describe elites throughout Italy ‘assigned’ to various roles: the production of costly goods and building materials, the guardianship of property rights and the adjudication of property disputes, the coercion of payments from recalcitrant taxpayers, quelling civil disturbances associated with games in Rome, investigating the fraudulent use of public funds, arbitration in legal disputes and the investigation of criminal cases, the maintenance of political hostages, assistance in the repair of fortifications and other urban infrastructure, investigating vandalism to pubic monuments, maintaining order and 96  Variae 2.10, 2.21, 3.20, 5.6, ed. Mommsen. 97  For the activities of the cancellarii, Variae 11.10, 11.14, 11.39, 12.1, 12.3, 12.10, 12.12, 12.15, ed. Mommsen; on the canonicarii, Variae 11.38, 12.13, 12.4, 12.7, 12.13. 98  Variae 6.2, ed. Mommsen, describing the rank of patrician; 6.10, for vacantes proceres; 6.11, for illustris vacantis.

68

Bjornlie

safety in the countryside, and even managing local aspects of the annona and cursus publicus.99 This tendency to ‘outsource’ legal and administrative duties was not limited to the secular elite. It is evident that the same relationship that depended upon the reciprocal acknowledgement of status and prestige was also operative between the court and the local bishops who, at the bequest of the court, could be found involved in the distribution of largesse and in the repair of urban infrastructure such as aqueducts.100 With respect to ex officio administrative assignments delegated to lay persons, it may be the case that some letters of the Variae address individuals who have actual offices that for various reasons have not been recorded. In the majority of cases, however, it is clear from the context described in the letter that the court had developed a habit of delegating specific administrative duties to individuals who required only the prestige of acknowledgement by the government as payment. Conclusion Rather than attempt to assay the full spectrum of administrative activities in Ostrogothic Italy, this chapter has instead directed attention to what was different about the administration in relation to its eastern imperial neighbour. Ostrogothic governmental administration is best understood in its 6th-century context as a consequence of the steady contraction of the western imperial economy over the course of the 5th century.101 As noted above, the basic structure (in terms of kinds of offices employed) and activities (financial and judicial) remained the same as the earlier Roman administration, but operated on a much smaller scale and with certain definite consequences to administrative culture. Public officials frequently operated outside of what would have been standard competences in earlier Roman government and usually did so at the discretion of the Gothic ruler, as opposed to through institutional sanction. More dramatically, the use of provincial governors as a system for extending the reach of the administration beyond the court appears to have been supplanted, not entirely but in large part, by Gothic comites and ad hoc appointments such as represented by saiones, comitiaci, and prefectural cancellarii. What this means is that Ostrogothic administration represents a stage 99  Variae 1.2, 1.15, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.21, 1.23, 1.25, 1.27, 1.39, 2.7, 2.14, 2.22, 2.35, 3.10, 3.13, 3.36, 3.52, 4.6, 4.41, 8.29, 8.30, 8.31, 8.32, 8.33, 12.18, ed. Mommsen. 100  Variae 2.8 and 4.31, ed. Mommsen; note also the level of interaction between Epiphanius, the bishop of Pavia, and Theoderic’s court in Ennodius, Life of Epiphanius 109, 122–46, 182–89, ed. Vogel; on bishops more generally, see contributions by Rizzi in this volume. 101  As noted by Marazzi, “Destinies”, pp. 119–59, and Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes”.

Governmental Administration

69

of ­governmental development during which Gothic rulers attempted to use previous Roman administrative tools in a repurposed workshop, where adjusting and tinkering with the available tools was a regular part of producing governance. Bibliography

Primary Sources



Secondary Literature

Anonymus Valesianus, ed. J. Moreau, Anonymus Valesianus; Excerpta Valesiana (Teubner), Leipzig 1961. Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894; Engl. trans. S. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae (Translated Texts for Historians 12), Liverpool 1992. Corippus, In Praise of Justin, ed. A. Cameron, Flavius Cresconius Corippus: In Laudem Iustini Augusti Minoris, London 1976. Edictum Theoderici, ed. J. Baviera, Fontes Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani, vol. 2, Florence 1940. Ennodius of Pavia, Vita Epiphanii, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felicis Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885. ———, Panegyricus Theoderici, ed. and trans. C. Rohr, Der Theoderich-Panegyricus des Ennodius (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte 12), Hannover 1995. Fredegar, Chronicles, ed. B. Krusch, Fredegarii et Aliorum Chronica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum Rerum Merovingicarum 2), Hannover 1888. Jordanes, Getica, ed. T. Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 5), Berlin 1882. Priscian, In Praise of Anastasius, trans. P. Coyne, Priscian of Caesarea’s De Laude Anastasii Imperatoris, Leweston 1991. Procopius, Anecdota, trans. H.B. Dewing, Procopius: Secret History (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge 1935. ———, Wars, trans. H.B. Dewing, History of the Wars, 5 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge 1914–28.

Arnold, J., Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, Cambridge 2014. Arslan, E., “La monetazione dei Goti”, Corso di cultura sull’arte Ravennate e Byzantinea 36 (1989), 17–59. ———, “La struttura delle emissioni monetary dei Goti in Italia”, in Teoderico Il Grande e I Goti d’Italia. Atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, Spoleto 1993, pp. 517–39.

70

Bjornlie

Barbieri, G., “La concezione politico-economica di Aurelio Cassiodoro”, in Verona in Età Gotica e Longobarda, Verona 1982, pp. 295–301. Barnish, S./Lee, A.D./Whitby, M., “Government and administration”, in A. Cameron/ B. Ward-Perkins/M. Whitby (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, AD 425–600, Cambridge 2000, pp. 164–206. Barnwell, P.S., Emperor, Prefects and Kings: The Roman West, 395–565, Chapel Hill 1992. Bertolini, O., Roma di fronte a Bisanzio e ai Longobardi, Bologna 1941. Bierbrauer, V., Die Ostgotischen Grab- und Schatzfunde in Italien, Spoleto 1975. Bjornlie, S., Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople: A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527–554, Cambridge 2013. ———, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes in Ostrogothic Italy: A Case for Continuity, Adaptation and Departure”, Early Medieval Europe 22.2 (2014), 138–70. ———, “The Variae of Cassiodorus: depingere modo historico colore”, in C. Sogno/ B. Storin/E. Watts (eds.), A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide to Letter Collections in Late Antiquity, Berkeley (forthcoming). Boak and Dunlap, Two Studies in Later Roman and Byzantine Administration, New York 1924. Bolzani, P., Teodorico e Galeata: un’antologia critica, Rome 1994. Burns, T., A History of the Ostrogoths, Bloomington 1984. Carney, T.F., Bureaucracy in Traditional Society: Romano-Byzantine Bureaucracies Viewed from Within, Lawrence 1971. Cecconi, G., Governo imperiale e élites dirigenti nell’Italia Tardoantica: problemi di storia politico-amministrativa (270–476 d.C.), Como 1994. Christie, N., From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy, AD 300–800, Aldershot 2006. Colace, P., “Lessico monetario in Cassiodoro: simbologia della moneta e filosofia del linguaggio”, in S. Leanza (ed.), Cassiodoro: dalla corte di Ravenna al Vivarium di Squillace, Soveria Mannelli 1993, pp. 159–76. Cosentino, S., “Re Teoderico costruttore di flotte”, Antiquité Tardive 12 (2004), 347–56. Csaki, L., “Variarum I.X of Cassiodorus as a program of monetary policy”, Florilegium 9 (1987) 53–64. De Azevedo, M., “Verona Gota e Longobarda”, in Verona in Età Gotica e Longobarda, Verona 1980. De Salvo, L., “Rifornimenti alimentari e trasporti marittimi nelle Variae di Cassiodoro”, in S. Leanza, Atti della settimana di studi su Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro, Rome 1983, pp. 409–20. ———, “Politica commerciale e controllo dei mercati in eta teodericiana: su alcune ‘formulae’ cassiodoree”, in S. Leanza (ed.), Cassiodoro: dalla corte di Ravenna al Vivarium di Squillace, Rome 1993, pp. 99–113.

Governmental Administration

71

Di Paola, L., “L’organizzazione del sistema dei trasporti nelle Variae di Cassiodoro: nova et vetusta”, in S. Leanza (ed.), Cassiodoro: dalla corte di Ravenna al Vivarium di Squillace, Soveria Mannelli 1993, pp. 85–97. Deliyannis, D., Ravenna in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2010. Durliat, J. “Cité, impôt et integration des barbares”, in W. Pohl (ed.), Kingdoms of the Empire: The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity, Leiden 1997, pp. 153–79. Giardina, A., Cassiodoro Politico, Rome 2006. Goffart, W., Barbarians and Romans: AD 418–584, The Techniques of Accommodation, Princeton 1980. Grierson, P./Blackburn, M., Medieval European Coinage, vol. 1: The Early Middle Ages (5th–10th Centuries), Cambridge 1986. Haldon, J., Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture, Cambridge 1990. Heather, P., “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals: Genealogy and the Goths under Hun Domination”, Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989), 103–28. ———, “New Men for New Constantines”, in P. Magdalino (ed.), New Constantines: The Rhythm of Imperial Renewal in Byzantium, 4th–13th Centuries, Cambridge 1994, pp. 11–33. ———, “Theoderic King of the Goths”, Early Medieval Europe 4.2 (1995), 145–73. ———, “Gens and Regnum among the Ostrogoths”, in H.W. Goetz/J. Jarnut/W. Pohl (eds.), Regna and Gentes: The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, Leiden 2003, pp. 85–135. Johnson, M., “Toward a History of Theoderic’s Building Program”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988), 73–96. Jones, A.H.M., The Later Roman Empire, 284–602, 2 vols., Baltimore 1964. Kelly, C., Ruling the Later Roman Empire, Cambridge, MA 2004. Lafferty, S., “Law and Order in Ostrogothic Italy”, Journal of Late Antiquity 3.2 (2010), 337–64. ———, Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge 2013. Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.G., The Decline and Fall of the Roman City, Oxford 2001. Maas, M., John Lydus and the Roman Past: Antiquarianism and Politics in the Age of Justinian, London 1992. Marazzi, F., “Destinies of Late Antique Italies: Politico-economic Developments of the Sixth Century”, in R. Hodges/W. Bowden (eds.), The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution and Demand, Leiden 1998, pp. 119–59. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. Mor, C., “La riforma amministrativa di Teodorico”, in Verona in Età Gotica e Longobarda, Verona 1980, pp. 70–4.

72

Bjornlie

Morosi, R., “L’attivita del ‘praefectus praetorio’ nel regno Ostrogoto attraverso le ‘Variae’ di Cassiodoro”, Humanitas 27 (1975), 71–93. ———, “I saiones, speciali agenti di polizia presso i Gothi”, Athenaeum 59 (1981), 150–65. ———, “I comitiaci, funzionari romani nell’Italia Ostrogota”, Quaderni Catanesi 3.5 (1981), 77–111. Noreña, C., Imperial Ideals in the Roman West: Representation, Circulation, Power, Cambridge 2011. Ruggini, L., Economia e Società nell’‘Italia Annonaria’, Bari 1961. Settia, A., “Le fortificazioni dei Goti in Italia”, in Teoderico Il Grande e I Goti d’Italia, Spoleto 1993, pp. 101–31. Sinnigen, W., “Administrative Shifts of Competence under Theoderic”, Traditio 21 (1965), 457–66. Stahl, A., “The Ostrogothic Coinage in Italy from AD 476”, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18 (2005), 753–5. Tabata, K., “I comites Gothorum e l’amministrazione municipale in epoca Ostrogota”, Antiquité Tardive 3 (2002), 67–78. Ward-Perkins, B., From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy, AD 300–850, Oxford 1984. ———, “Old and New Rome Compared”, in L. Grig/G. Kelly (eds.), Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2012, pp. 53–80.

CHAPTER 4

Ostrogothic Provinces: Administration and Ideology Jonathan J. Arnold Introduction This chapter focuses on the non-Italian lands that were part of the Ostrogothic kingdom, here referred to as ‘provinces’, but not to be confused with the provinces that constituted the two dioceses of Italy. Indeed, those Italian lands were at the core of the Ostrogothic realm and so synonymous with it that the term ‘Ostrogothic Italy’ is commonly used. Yet even in its earliest years, the Ostrogothic kingdom included lands that lay beyond the diocesan boundaries of Italy and were thus, strictly speaking, not Italian. Moreover, through military campaigns and acts of annexation, these territories increased, particularly during the reign of Theoderic (compare Figures 1.1 and 1.2). To the north and east, the Ostrogothic regime claimed the Illyrian provinces of Noricum, Pannonia Savia, and Dalmatia, later capturing Sirmium and re-establishing Italian control over Pannonia Sirmiensis. To the west, it annexed portions of eastern Gaul (Mediterranean Provence), later adding the entirety of the Visigothic kingdom and expanding into Burgundy. A realm of this magnitude had not existed in the West since the mid 5th century, and both the Ostrogothic administration and its Italian subjects, as self-conscious heirs to the western Roman Empire, celebrated these achievements as a bona fide imperial restoration. Theoderic, it was claimed, had conquered the barbarians and returned civilitas and libertas to the Gauls; Amalasuentha, likewise, had made the Danube Roman again. As former imperial territories, the very acquisition of these provinces helped to legitimize contemporary understandings of the Ostrogothic kingdom as a revived Roman Empire. But as reintegrated provinces governed according to a Roman scheme, their possession and administration were also important and lent further legitimacy to the Ostrogothic regime. That Sirmium produced coins associating Theoderic with an unconquered Rome is significant; so, too, the facts that Gaul and Spain were ruled again by a praetorian prefect and a Gallo-Roman served as consul. No less significant were the taxes and resources that provincials were expected to yield to the Ravenna government and its

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_005

74

Arnold

r­ epresentatives nor the justice and acts of succour that they were supposed to receive in exchange.1 This chapter, therefore, will provide an overview of these non-Italian lands, focusing on their acquisition and administration, ideological importance, and finally loss. Indeed, though the Ostrogothic kingdom claimed many nonItalian lands and prided itself on their possession, none of these provinces remained within its grasp beyond the opening years of Justinian’s invasion. In the end, and despite its lofty claims and achievements, this revived Roman Empire remained at its core an ‘Empire of Italy’.2

Provinces from Odovacer to Theoderic

By 476 the western Roman Empire had been greatly reduced in size, becoming essentially a truncated version of the prefecture of Italy. To the south, Africa had been lost to the Vandals, who wrested the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and possibly Sicily from Italia Suburbicaria. To the north, the Alpine reaches of Raetia and Noricum had been overrun by peoples like the Alamanni and Rugi and were devolving to self-rule. And to the west and east, only a handful of provinces bordering Italy remained, the rest having been lost piece by piece over the course of the 5th century.3 Following his successful coup, Odovacer yielded Italy’s remaining Gallic territories to the Visigoths, who had overrun Provence in the interim. At the same time he secured a treaty with the Vandals, who relinquished their claims to most of Sicily in exchange for an annual payment of tribute. Odovacer’s dealings with the former imperial territories to the north and east of Italy, in the diocese of Western Illyricum, were more complicated. Across the Adriatic, Dalmatia was ruled independently by Julius Nepos, who was still viewed in Constantinople as the legitimate emperor of the West. At the insistence of the eastern emperor Zeno, therefore, Odovacer agreed to rule Italy as Nepos’ subordinate and agent and did so, at least nominally, until the exiled emperor’s

1  For an elaboration: Arnold, Theoderic, especially pp. 231–3. 2  For the term, which was used in reference to the late western empire and the Ostrogothic kingdom: Prostko-Prostyński, Utraeque res publicae, pp. 100–1, and Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 15, 22, 43–4. 3  Broadly: Stein, Bas-Empire 1, pp. 377–97; also Alföldy, Noricum, pp. 213–24; Heuberger, “Rätien”, pp. 83–8; Clover, “Bluff”, pp. 236–8; and Drinkwater, Alamanni, pp. 331–44.

Ostrogothic Provinces

75

assassination in 480. Consequently, Dalmatia was invaded and conquered in 481/2 and its fictive unity with Italy gave way to an actual political union.4 Odovacer’s expansion into Dalmatia, however, may have raised some concerns in Constantinople and contributed to Zeno’s decision to send the neighbouring Rugi against him in 486. The attack, led by King Feletheus, was crushed the following year and met with a counter-attack and invasion of Noricum in 487/8. The region was occupied briefly, but then evacuated of its Roman population and abandoned as indefensible in 488.5 That same year Theoderic and Zeno came to the agreement that the former should invade Italy and depose Odovacer. Save for the Gepids established at Sirmium and some wandering Sarmatians, Theoderic and his Goths encountered little resistance in their march through Illyricum, suggesting that Odovacer had temporarily abandoned the region in order to concentrate his forces in Italy.6 Other temporary losses during the ensuing conflict are better evidenced and include Sicily, which the Vandals seized, only to be defeated by Theoderic’s army in 491. Subsequently, they not only agreed to relinquish all claims to the island but also abandoned their demands for tribute.7 Hence, when Theoderic assumed control over a war-torn Italy in 493, his kingdom consisted of little more than the two dioceses of Italy, minus the Vandal-held islands of Corsica and Sardinia and the Alpine regions of Raetia and Noricum. Dalmatia might or might not have been part of this kingdom, but soon it and other Illyrian territories were added, becoming a staging ground for Theoderic’s first acts of imperial restoration.

Dalmatia and Pannonia Savia

When exactly Theoderic assumed control over Dalmatia and neighbouring Pannonia Savia is uncertain. As a former territory of Odovacer’s kingdom, however, Dalmatia probably fell to Ostrogothic rule shortly after Theoderic’s victory, if not sooner, while expansion into Savia was a logical step, conforming to the defensive policy established along the Ostrogothic kingdom’s other frontiers (discussed below). Both provinces, at any rate, had come under the 4  Stein, Bas-Empire 2, pp. 46–52; Wilkes, Dalmatia, pp. 421–2; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 9–10; and Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 61–3. 5  Stein, Bas-Empire 2, pp. 52–4; Alföldy, Noricum, pp. 224–6; Wolfram, Goths, pp. 278–9; and Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 10–11. 6  See Ennodius, Pan. 28–35, ed. Rohr, with Wolfram, Goths, pp. 279–80. 7  Stein, Bas-Empire 2, p. 57; Clover, “Bluff”, p. 239.

76

Arnold

aegis of Ravenna by the opening years of the 6th century, as indicated by the Variae and other sources.8 In terms of administration, Dalmatia and Savia were ruled jointly from Salona, the capital of Dalmatia, and placed under the authority of a single Gothic comes of illustrious rank, known as the comes Dalmatiae et Saviae. Despite the innovation, the combined provinces appear to have functioned according to the same Roman administrative scheme as elsewhere, with similar civil and military offices.9 Lesser officials are attested at both the regional and urban level and were tasked with defending their spheres of command, ensuring justice, and preventing corruption. These included comites (both Gothic and Roman) at Siscia, Salona, and on the islands of Curitana and Celsina (modern Krk and Cersina), consulares (praesides) and principes, local and itinerant judges, and city-based officials charged with a number of duties, but most notably tax collection.10 At least for a while there was probably also an official mint-master at Siscia, given the minting of early Theoderican coinage in this city.11 The most prominent of these officials are mentioned by name in a handful of Variae letters, and these in turn reveal the bulk of what is known about Dalmatia-Savia under Ostrogothic rule. Osuin, for example, served as Theoderic’s comes Dalmatiae et Saviae from at least 507/11 until the accession of Athalaric, who renewed his position and praised his prior conduct.12 In an earlier letter, Theoderic instructed him to procure arms for the soldiers at Salona and to ensure that they were drilled, urging that, “the true safety of the Republic is a well-armed defender”.13 A similarly defensive rationale was also, in part, behind Theoderic’s order that Osuin provide assistance to a lesser comes named Simeon, who was directed to Dalmatia in 510/11.14 Simeon had been commanded to investigate the iron mines of Dalmatia, from which “the defence of [our] country is derived” and “both profits are produced for us and

8  Cf. Wozniak, “Illyricum”, pp. 365–70; Wilkes, Dalmatia, p. 424; Wolfram, Goths, p. 320; and Schwarcz, “Westbalkanraum”, pp. 62–3. 9  For an elaboration: Bjornlie in this volume; also Ensslin, Theoderich, pp. 172–9, 191–3; Wolfram, Goths, pp. 290–2; and Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 103–20. 10  Cassiodorus, Variae 1.40, 3.25–26, 4.49, 5.14–15, 5.24, 7.16, 7.24, and 9.8–9, ed. Mommsen. 11  Demo, Ostrogothic Coinage, pp. 133–6. 12  For the appointments, Variae 1.40 and 9.8. All Variae dates in this chapter have been taken from Mommsen’s MGH edition. For possible revisions: Krautschick, Cassiodor. 13  Variae 1.40.1: “fida rei publicae salus est defensor armatus.” 14  Variae 3.25–26.

Ostrogothic Provinces

77

death is procured for our enemies”.15 These instructions reveal not only the military importance of the region but also its economic value. Dalmatia was a source of raw materials, like iron, which might be turned into weapons in state-owned factories or, as Theoderic claimed, be manufactured into tools, such as ploughs.16 Other goods produced at this time may have included salt and fish, which would have been consumed at home or traded abroad, and the presence of a mint at Siscia and coin finds along the coast point to the importance of trade and exchange in the region.17 Indeed, beyond looking into mining operations, Simeon himself was enjoined by Theoderic to review the siliquaticum tax owed by Dalmatia for the past three indictions and to correct any abuses, a task that speaks again to the economic value of the province. Theoderic hoped to “acquire monetary gain” from the audit and to “arrest the behavior of [wicked] subjects”.18 This desire for peace and profits was also expressed to officials stationed in Savia and reiterated to their subjects. Fridibad, for instance, who seems to have been a subordinate of Osuin, was introduced to the population of Siscia and Savia in 507/11 and was supposed to establish law and order in the region by punishing animal rustlers, reducing homicides, and condemning thefts.19 “Live peacefully,” Theoderic told his subjects, “live governed by good ­customs . . . He who commits depraved acts should be exposed to our vengeance.”20 Lawlessness, as in the past, was seen as a condition of barbarism and not in keeping with Roman rule. And while such behaviour was not a new phenomenon, the Ostrogothic regime claimed that it kept it in check both at home and abroad as part of its programme of just and recognizably Roman governance; civilitas, the rule of law, had to be maintained.21 Severinus, who 15  Variae 3.25.2: “Hinc auxiliante deo patriae defensio venit. . . . per quam et nobis generantur lucra et hostibus procurantur exitia.” 16  For tools: Variae 3.25.2; state-owned factories: Variae 7.18–19; factories at Salona: Wilkes, Dalmatia, p. 424, and Wozniak, “Illyricum”, p. 367. 17  See Wilkes, Dalmatia, p. 425; for coin-finds: Demo, Ostrogothic Coinage, p. 168–9, and Kos, “Numismatic Evidence”, p. 113. 18  Variae 3.25.1: “quia non tantum lucra quaerimus, quantum mores subiectorum deprehendere festinamus”. 19  Variae 4.49, with Wolfram, Goths, p. 320 and 518 n. 426, and Amory, People and Identity, pp. 375–6. 20  Variae 4.49.1: “Vivite compositi, vivite bonis moribus instituti . . . Necesse est vindictae subiaceat qui pravis moribus obsecundat.” 21  See Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 126–32; also Heydemann in this volume. Whether the regime was successful is another matter altogether. Cf. Castritius, “Korruption”, and Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 154–5.

78

Arnold

was sent to Savia late in Theoderic’s reign, provides another case in point.22 His instructions included a list of local abuses that were of long-standing duration. In particular, the machinery of tax collection in the region was corrupt, with many paying less than they should, funds embezzled, rates applied unevenly, records doctored, and false exemptions offered, all to the injury of the fisc and the increasingly overburdened provincials. In addition, itinerant judges, who were supposed to be a source of Roman law and order, were extorting resources and overstaying their welcome. Not only was this a violation of Roman law, according to Theoderic, but also it was unjust and patently un-Roman: “Our ancestors,” he explained, and by this he meant Roman ancestors, “wanted the travels of judges to exist not for the burden of provincials but for their profit.”23 Ostrogothic rule in Dalmatia-Savia, therefore, was idealized as a continuation or restoration of Roman rule, as a source of protection and justice, both essential to civilized life. As the possessores of Savia were told, even Theoderic’s court in Italy was available to all, much like the emperors’ of old, and some of these provincials appealed directly to it.24 Yet, as Theoderic also claimed, his “innate piety” (an imperial quality) endeavoured to “provide remedies to the oppressed” and “take away the fatigue of a long journey”.25 Hence, agents like Severinus and Osuin were critical to the Ostrogothic position in this double province; they served as both administrators for and representatives of a distant regime and in the process hopefully lived up to the assertion that they were “gifted in arms and glorious in justice”.26 Beyond these details, however, little more can be said about Ostrogothic rule in the region. Noricum When and to what extent Theoderic assumed control over Noricum is a matter of some debate, as the sources are quite meagre.27 Like Dalmatia-Savia, the earliest administrative records demonstrate an Ostrogothic claim to the region 22  Variae 5.14–15 and 9.9. 23  Variae 5.14.7: “Maiores enim nostri discursus iudicum non oneri, sed compendio provincialibus esse voluerunt.” 24  For possessores, Variae 5.15; Dalmatians appealing to court, Variae 3.7, 5.24, and 8.12. 25  Variae 5.15.1–2: “ingeniosa pietate repperimus . . . fatigationem longi itineris abrogare . . . speret remedium qualibet pressus iniuria.” 26  Variae 9.9.1: “qui sunt armis praediti et iustitia gloriosi.” 27  See Wolfram, Goths, pp. 315–16; idem, “Westillyrien”, p. 316; and Heuberger, “Rätien”, pp. 77–82.

Ostrogothic Provinces

79

by the opening years of the 6th century. An earlier date, however, is likely, given the importance of Noricum to the greater Alpine frontier, which protected the Ostrogothic kingdom’s north Italian core and was the object of extensive attention following Theoderic’s victory over Odovacer.28 Forts on the Italian side of this frontier were described as the “gates” and “bulwarks” of Italy, protecting its provinces from “hostile tribes” and “barbarians whose oaths could not be trusted”.29 To their north were the two provinces of Raetia, the date of Ostrogothic annexation again unknown, but part of the diocese of Italia Annonaria and ruled by a dux with the rank of spectabilis.30 His forts were seen as the “barriers for Italy”, while his soldiers, perhaps local recruits rather than Goths, were “stationed against fierce and very savage peoples” and “guarded the tranquility of the kingdom”.31 Unfortunately, letters like these to an official in command of the frontier in Ostrogothic Noricum do not survive, and so it is largely on inference from Raetia that a similar ducatus of Noricum has been posited. In the case of the former, its duces were charged with more than just defending their region (and thus Italy) from external aggressors. As elsewhere, they were supposed to assure peaceful conditions and the rule of Roman law. One such dux, Servatus, was even charged by Theoderic in 507/11 with looking into the petition of a certain provincial, who claimed that local tribesmen had taken his slaves. The appeal to Theoderic’s justice is revealing, so, too, Theoderic’s response: “Suffer there to be no violence in the province over which you rule, but compel all to the justice by which our Empire flourishes.”32 As for Servatus’ Norican analogue, whose responsibilities would have been comparable, many have found him in a vir spectabilis named Ursus, who is known from a series of ornate mosaics that he and his wife, Ursina, dedicated in a church in Teurnia (the capital of Noricum Mediterraneum) sometime in the early 500s.33 The reconstruction is speculative, since Ursus’ official capacity in Noricum (if any) and 28  See Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 357–64; also Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 241–2. 29  Variae 2.5.2: “porta provinciae . . . in procinctu semper erit, qui barbaros prohibere contendit . . . quos fides promissa non retinet”; and 3.48.2: “claustra provinciae . . . quia feris gentibus constat obiectum.” 30  See n. 27 (above). The territorial extent of both Raetian provinces is unknown. 31  Variae 7.4.2–3: “Raetiae namque munimina sunt Italiae . . . contra feras et agrestissimas gentes . . . disponuntur. . . . tranquillitas regni nostri tua creditur sollicitudine custodiri,” with Wolfram, Goths, p. 316. 32  Variae 1.11.1: “per provinciam, cui praesides, nulla fieri violenta patiaris, sed totum cogatur ad iustum, unde nostrum floret imperium.” 33  Cf. Alföldy, Noricum, p. 216, with pl. 58; Wolfram, Goths, pp. 316–17; Heuberger, “Rätien”, p. 81; and Prostko-Prostyński, “Ostgotischer Statthalter”.

80

Arnold

the origin of his rank are not stated in the dedication. But if not Ursus, someone still commanded this region on behalf of the Ravenna government. And if not an independent dux along the model of Raetia, perhaps this individual was the subordinate of an official elsewhere, as was the case in nearby Savia. Regardless, the inhabitants of Noricum did receive orders from the Ostrogothic king. The sole surviving example comes from around 507, when these provincials were ordered to trade cattle with refugee Alamanni travelling through the region.34 A threatening letter directed to the Frankish king Clovis around the same time demonstrates that Theoderic had welcomed these refugees into his territory following their annihilation by the Franks, while a later source suggests that they were settled within the Alpine frontier, likely in Raetia, Noricum, and possibly Savia.35 Ennodius also treated the event in his panegyric, focusing on its ideological significance. Here Theoderic was cast in the role of a Roman emperor and the Alamanni as new federates, former barbarians who would defend the empire from its aggressors. “How is it possible,” he asked, “that you enclosed the multitude of Alamannia within the boundaries of Italy without any damage to Roman possessions? Having always run riot with their plundering of our lands, they have been transformed into guardians of the Latin Empire.”36 Ennodius’ words, therefore, speak as much to the perceived Romanness of ‘Ostrogothic Italy’ as to the defensive value of Alpine lands like Noricum to it. Beyond these notices, however, little more can be said about this province.

Pannonia Sirmiensis

While the details surrounding Theoderic’s expansion into Dalmatia-Savia and Noricum are shadowy, those for Pannonia Sirmiensis are far clearer. The region had fallen to the Gepids after the Goths’ own departure in 474, and relations with their king, Thraseric, grew strained by the opening years of the 6th century. Fear of a Gepid offensive against neighbouring Savia might have provoked Theoderic’s decision to invade, but in keeping with current ideologies of Roman rule, Ennodius and others imagined the act as a deliberate attempt to 34  Variae 3.50. 35  Variae 2.41 and Agathias, Histories 1.6, trans. Frendo, pp. 14–15; also Heuberger, “Rätien”, pp. 100–2; Wolfram, Goths, pp. 317–18; and Drinkwater, Alamanni, pp. 344–7. 36  Pan. 72: “Quid quod a te Alamanniae generalitas intra Italiae terminos sine detrimento Romanae possessionis inclusa est? . . . Facta est Latiaris custos imperii semper nostrorum populatione grassata.”

Ostrogothic Provinces

81

restore a former Roman province and imperial residence.37 “Sirmium was once the boundary of Italy,” Ennodius explained, “where earlier emperors used to keep watch, lest the wounds of neighbouring peoples amassed there extended into the Roman body”.38 Through imperial neglect, the city had been lost, but now Theoderic, as the heir of these emperors, was impelled to reclaim it: “Since your empire grew not”, Ennodius claimed, “you reckoned it diminished.”39 The invasion began in 504 and was led by two Gothic comites, Pitzia and Herduic, who captured Sirmium (and presumably its associated province) with ease. In keeping with his motif of imperial restoration Ennodius celebrated the fact that Pitzia had returned this land to Italy, rather than conquered it, and that he chose to preserve it under his watchful guidance, rather than ravage it as a spoil of war.40 Cassiodorus later recorded a similar act of restoration in his chronicle, writing that “Italy regained Sirmium through the valor of our lord King Theoderic, after the Bulgars had been defeated.”41 His laconic account, typical of the genre, however, conflated the seizure of Sirmium with events that transpired the following year, when Pitzia came to the assistance of a nearby Gepid prince and warlord named Mundo, an ally of Theoderic who had been attacked by an eastern Roman army augmented with Bulgars.42 The ensuing battle in Moesia Superior was celebrated in epic proportions in Ennodius’ panegyric, as a test of Gothic virtus that resulted in the Bulgars’ slaughter and a disgraceful Byzantine retreat.43 Yet Pitzia’s victory immediately led to a state of hostility between Ravenna and Constantinople that was not resolved until 510 or 511, and at the cost of a portion of Theoderic’s new Pannonian province, specifically the city of Bassianae, which was yielded to the emperor.44 37  Cf. Wolfram, Goths, p. 321; Wozniak, “Illyricum”, pp. 368–70; Pohl, “Gepiden”, p. 294; Schwarcz, “Westbalkanraum”, pp. 62–3; Prostko-Prostyński, Utraeque res publicae, pp. 220–2. 38  Pan. 60: “Sermiensium civitas olim limes Italiae fuit, in qua seniores domini excubabant, ne coacervata illinc finitimarum vulnera gentium in Romanum corpus excurrerent.” 39  Pan. 60–1: “Haec postea per regentium neglectum in Gepidarum iura concessit. . . . Minui aestimas quod non crescit imperium.” 40  See Pan. 62, with Schwarcz, “Westbalkanraum”, p. 63; and Pohl, “Gepiden”, p. 294. 41  Cassiodorus, Chronica, a. 504, ed. Mommsen: “virtute dn. regis Theoderici victis Vulgaribus Sirmium recepit Italia.” 42  For reconstructions and commentary: Prostko-Prostyński, Utraeque res publicae, pp. 223– 36; Wozniak, “Illyricum”, pp. 371–3; Wolfram, Goths, p. 322; and Croke, “Mundo”, pp. 129–31. 43  Pan. 64–9. Cf. Jordanes, Getica 300–1, ed. Mommsen; and Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 505, ed. Mommsen. 44  See Stein, Bas-Empire 2, p. 156; Wolfram, Goths, pp. 322–3; and Prostko-Prostyński, Utraeque res publicae, pp. 241–4.

82

Arnold

Despite the concession, the Sirmian campaign was still celebrated at the time and continued to be important long after the fact. “Roman powers”, Ennodius exclaimed, “return to their former limits”, while Theoderic, like a good Roman emperor, “dictated instructions to the inhabitants of Sirmium in the custom of our ancestors”.45 The coins that were soon minted in this city echoed such sentiments, associating Theoderic’s monogram with an unconquered Rome.46 Other individuals, both Goths and Romans, were eulogized for their actual roles in the war. Pitzia, for instance, “was worthy to be honored forever”, according to Ennodius.47 Nearly two decades later, the noble Goth Tuluin was praised before the Senate for having given “death to the Bulgars, terrible to the whole world” in an early test of his martial prowess.48 Likewise, the senator Cyprian was remembered as a “warrior” on the “then barbarous Danube”. “The throng of Bulgars did not terrify you”, he was told by Athalaric, and “it was exceptional that you attacked the resisting barbarians and pursued them as they fled in terror.”49 The evidence for the reconquest of Pannonia Sirmiensis and its ideological meaning, both in the short and long term, is thus comparatively rich. However, the history of its administration following the Sirmian War is much less complete. Indeed only three letters in the Variae deal specifically with this province, with two additional letters likely referring to some of its Gepid inhabitants, who served in the Ostrogothic army and were later redeployed to Gaul.50 The three letters in question demonstrate that this province, like Dalmatia-Savia, was placed under the command of single military comes of illustrious rank, who was based in the city of Sirmium. When exactly this comitiva was established is not certain, but beginning in 507/11 it was held by Colosseus, whose length of tenure is unknown. His ethnicity is likewise a matter of some debate, given his Latin name and military/Gothic office;51 but whatever his background, he was imagined as the chief source of law, order, and defence in this dangerous

45  Pan. 69: “ad limitem suum Romana regna remearunt: dictas more veterum praecepta Sermiensibus.” 46  Demo, Ostrogothic Coinage, pp. 136–8, 140–1. 47  Pan. 68: “celebrandus saeculis Pitzia”. 48  Variae 8.10.4: “emeritam laudem primis congressibus auspicatus neci dedit Bulgares toto orbe terribiles.” 49  Variae 8.21.3: “Vidit te adhuc gentilis Danuvius bellatorem: non te terruit Bulgarum globus . . . Peculiare tibi fuit et renitentes barbaros aggredi et conversos terrore sectari.” 50  For Gepids: Variae 5.10–11, with Sirago, “Ostrogoti”, pp. 72–4. 51  Cf. Wolfram, Goths, p. 321; Amory, People and Identity, p. 368–9; Lafferty, Law and Society, p. 103.

Ostrogothic Provinces

83

frontier province, which was viewed in Ravenna as having become thoroughly barbarized in the absence of Roman rule. Upon his appointment, Colosseus was instructed not only to defend this province but to order it by laws, “so that, among the perverse customs of various peoples, you might demonstrate the justice of the Goths”, who have “the prudence of Romans and the courage of barbarians”.52 “Let our customs”, Theoderic continued, “be implanted into savage minds, until the ferocious spirit grows accustomed to live in a suitable manner.”53 Just as in other provinces, the need to decrease violence and have recourse to the laws was thus pressing. The soldiers under Colosseus’ command were also of some concern, doubtless because their ranks drew heavily from local recruits. Efforts were made, therefore, to ensure that soldiers were properly provisioned, “according to ancient [i.e. Roman] custom”, and paid in coin, “lest [the army] be forced to ponder what it might take away by force”.54 Similar concerns about barbarization and the need to live like Romans or at least civilized Goths, were also communicated to the inhabitants of this province. Decrying acts of violence, vengeance, and vendetta and assuring them of the availability of legal recourse courtesy of Colosseus and his subordinates, Theoderic enjoined these Romans and barbarians to continue in their obedience and to “acquiesce to justice, by which the world is made happy”. “Do not rage against yourselves but the enemy . . . Imitate our Goths, who know how to conduct battles abroad but live modestly at home.”55 Beyond this, little more can be said about the administration of Sirmiensis during the reign of Theoderic. However, his death witnessed some disruption in the region, most notably a Gepid attack on Sirmium in the late 520s, which provided yet another opportunity to celebrate ideologies of Roman victory under Gothic rule. Not only did the future king Witigis, a proven veteran of the first Sirmian War, defeat the Gepids at this time, but he also pursued them deep into east Roman territory, taking the city of Singidunum from the Heruli 52  Variae 3.23.2–3: “provinciam armis protege, iure compone . . . ut inter nationum consuetudinem perversam Gothorum possis demonstrare iustitiam: qui . . . et Romanorum prudentiam caperent et virtutem gentium possiderent.” 53  Variae 3.23.4: “Quapropter consuetudo nostra feris mentibus inseratur, donec truculentus animus belle vivere consuescat.” 54  Variae 4.13.1–2: “iuxta consuetudinem veterem victualia praebeantur . . . Habeat quod emat, ne cogatur cogitare quod auferat.” 55  Variae 3.24.2–4: “parientiam vestram saepius approbatam . . . monstrate. . . . Adquiescite iustitiae, qua mundus laetatur. . . . Imitamini certe Gothos nostros, qui foris proelia, intus norunt exercere modestiam.”

84

Arnold

and inadvertently attacking the Byzantine city of Gratiana in the process.56 Once more, the act of aggression raised alarms in Constantinople, heightening tensions and leading to many acts of diplomacy.57 Yet back in Rome the events were commemorated in a short panegyric, which praised Athalaric’s regent and mother, Amalasuentha. Nearly a century prior, the western empress and regent for Valentinian III, Galla Placidia, had ceded Illyricum to the East, “a division lamentable to the provinces”. But now it was Amalasuentha who “made the Danube Roman again, contrary to the wishes of the [eastern] princeps”.58 Later, a panegyric of Cassiodorus’ eulogized Witigis’ own valiant achievements along the Danube in epic fashion, while Witigis himself (along with some eastern Romans) cited these campaigns as the principal rationale for his selection as king in a time of war.59 “I was chosen in wide open fields . . . sought after by blaring trumpets, so that the Getic people of Mars might discover for themselves a [real] king.”60

Gaul and Spain

Ostrogothic expansion into Gaul, and with it Spain, is far better evidenced than any of the provinces discussed thus far and was the consequence of Theoderic’s failed diplomacy combined with the intrigues of the eastern Roman court.61 Despite his best efforts, war came suddenly in 507 and with disastrous results. The neighbouring Visigoths, who were Theoderic’s longstanding allies, were crushed at the battle of Vouillé and their kingdom began to disintegrate;62 worse still, Theoderic himself was unable to intervene, caught off guard by Byzantine and Burgundian raiders, who harassed his kingdom in

56  For reconstructions: Stein, Bas-Empire 2, pp. 307–8; Wozniak, “Illyricum”, pp. 377–9; Wolfram, Goths, p. 335 and 343; and Sarantis, “War and Diplomacy”, pp. 21–3. 57  See Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1.11, and Procopius, Wars 5.3.15–21, ed. Dewing. 58  Variae 11.1.9–10: “amissione Illyrici . . . factaque est coniunctio regnantis divisio dolenda provinciis. . . . Sub hac autem domina . . . contra Orientis principis votum Romanum fecit esse Danuvium,” with Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 48–51 and 300. 59  See Cassiodorus, Orationum reliquiae, ed. Traube, pp. 473–6; Variae 10.31; and Procopius, Wars 5.11.5. 60  Variae 10.31.2: “in campis late patentibus electum me esse noveritis . . . tubis concrepantibus sum quaesitus, ut . . . regem sibi Martium Geticus populus inveniret.” 61  See Arnold, “Vouillé,” pp. 119–25; idem, Theoderic, pp. 262–8; Ensslin, Theoderic, pp. 139– 42; and Meier, Anastasios, pp. 226–30. 62  On the event: Mathisen/Shanzer (eds.), Vouillé.

Ostrogothic Provinces

85

a two-pronged assault.63 For the first time since the defeat of Odovacer, Italy had been attacked. And while vindicating lost provinces had been an avowed motivation in prior acts of expansion, the security of Italy was far more important, indeed paramount, to the Ostrogothic regime. Hence, when the raiders had been checked and the army given its marching orders for Gaul, its Goths were idealized as the “defenders of Italy” and were dispatched across the Alps, not to restore another province, but to ensure “public utility” and the “security of everyone” back home.64 Despite such defensive avowals, the invasion, led by the Gothic duces Ibba and Mammo, quickly developed into a war of conquest that, by its completion, was hailed as the greatest of Theoderic’s imperial restorations. In 508, the Franks and Burgundians were defeated in Mediterranean Provence and the region was annexed, recreating the buffer yielded by Odovacer decades earlier. If this did not establish a state of war between Theoderic and the current king of the Visigoths, Gesalec, events the following year surely did, when Ibba captured the Visigothic capital of Narbonne and sent its royal treasure to Ravenna. Soon Theoderic also began supporting his young grandson, Amalaric, as the rightful heir to the Visigothic throne, dividing the Visigoths in their loyalty. Consolidation in Gaul and expansion into Spain followed. To be sure, Gesalec remained a nuisance until his death in 514; likewise, there continued to be regional skirmishes for decades, which allowed the Ostrogothic kingdom to expand its possessions further, pushing the Burgundian frontier to the Drome or Isere and capturing newly Frankish cities like Rodez.65 Yet for all intents and purposes, the campaign proper was over by 511, and in this very year Theoderic announced his triumphs through his choice for the consulship: a Gallo-Roman aristocrat appropriately named Felix (the prosperous one), the first GalloRoman to hold this office in over fifty years. “What could be thought more desirable”, Theoderic asked Emperor Anastasius, “than that Rome is gathering back to her bosom her very own nurslings and numbers the Gallic senate in the company of her venerable name?”66 63  For Byzantines: Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 508, with Variae 1.16 and 2.38. The Burgundian raid is hypothetical. See Schwarcz, “Restitutio Galliarum”, pp. 789–90, with Delaplace, “Guerre”, p. 82, and Arnold, “Vouillé”, 125–6. 64  Variae 1.24.1: “pro communi utilitate exercitum ad Gallias constituimus destinare”, and 4.36.3: “pro defensione cunctorum . . . Italiae defensoribus”. 65  For reconstructions: Schwarcz, “Restitutio Galliarum”, pp. 791–4; Delaplace, “Guerre”, pp. 83–7; Diaz/Valverde, “Goths”, pp. 360–1; and Arnold, Theoderic, p. 270–2. 66  Variae 2.1.2: “Quid enim vobis credi possit optatius quam ut alumnos proprios ad ubera sua Roma recolligat et in venerandi nominis coetu senatum numeret Gallicanum?” See also Variae 2.2–3, with Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 29–4.

86

Arnold

To judge from the Italian evidence, there was little more desirable or worthy of celebration at the time, and even long after the fact these achievements remained a major source of pride that did much to legitimize Theoderic and his successors. “Bravo, untiring celebrator of triumphs”, Cassiodorus declared in a panegyric delivered in Theoderic’s honour. “While you fight, the tired limbs of the Republic are revived and blessedness is returned to our age. We used to only read in the annals that Gaul had once been Roman.”67 Around the same time the illustrious senator Basilius Decius chose to “preserve the glory of so great a lord” in a series of inscriptions erected along the Appian Way, referring to Theoderic as “victor and celebrator of triumphs, always Augustus, born for the good of the Republic, guardian of liberty, propagator of the Roman name, and conqueror of the barbarians”, words that speak as much to the reception of Theoderic as his transalpine victories.68 Theoderic, too, promoted his achievements in Gaul and Spain, believing that they were a source of great praise and would “sow the fame of [his] name”.69 His commissioning of a series of triple solidi, represented today by the Senigallia Medallion, likely celebrated these victories (see Figure 14.4 in Chapter 14). These commemorative coins bore his likeness standing in the act of adlocutio and holding a globe straddled by a wreath- and palm-bearing victory, the latter enlarged and facing in the opposite direction on the reverse. Roman victory and dominance on a grand scale were implied by such iconography and reiterated through the inscriptions, which described Theoderic as an “always most invincible princeps” and “conqueror of barbarians”.70 Soon, a similar looking victory appeared on the coinage minted in Ostrogothic Gaul, probably at Narbonne.71 Nor was Theoderic the only representative of the Ostrogothic regime to be celebrated for Gaul’s restoration. Upon returning to Italy in 509/11, for instance, 67  Orationum Reliquae, p. 466, ln. 14–19: “Macte, infatigabilis triumphator, quo pugnante fessa rei publicae membra reparantur et ad saecula nostra antiqua beatitudo revertitur. Galliam quondam fuisse Romanam solis tantum legebamus annalibus,” with Romano, “Cassiodoro panegirista”, pp. 14–17. 68  Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 827, ed. Dessau: “Theodericus, victor ac triumfator, semper Augustus, bono rei publicae natus, custos libertatis et propagator Romani nominis, domitor gentium . . . ad perpetuandam tanti domini gloriam,” with Variae 2.32–33. 69  Variae 3.16.2: “quos nostris laudibus specialiter credimus adquisitos”, and 3.38: “ipsa initia bene plantare debent nostri nominis famam”. 70   On the medallion’s date and significance: Grierson/Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage 1, p. 35; Delaplace, “Guerre”, pp. 84–5; Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 111–13 and 273; and idem, “Mustache”, pp. 152–5 and 182–3. 71  See Tomasini, Barbaric Tremissis, pp. 39–44; Grierson/Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage 1, p. 48–49.

Ostrogothic Provinces

87

the illustrious comes Arigern was eulogized before the Senate as a skilled helmsmen, whose “mature counsel” had “restored the glory of civilitas [to the Gauls], while still displaying the emblems of war”.72 Similar statements were made about the praetorian prefect of Gaul, Liberius. In 514, Ennodius praised him in a private letter for having corrected the Gauls, “who happened not to taste of Roman liberty before you came”, and for having “conveyed civilitas [to them] after the passing of many years”.73 Other sources, meanwhile, make it clear that Liberius was a “military man”, just like Arigern, and bore “beautiful” scars as a testament to his deeds in Gaul.74 So did the noble Goth Tuluin, who had already proven himself during the Sirmian campaign a few years earlier. In Gaul, however, Tuluin became a hero, who “took risks most willingly” and captured and then held Arles’ pontoon bridge against the Franks.75 Later, his wounds were eulogized as a “testament to his courage,” and he was celebrated for his defence of Gaul, which “acquired a [new] province for the Roman Republic”.76 As for the administration of these newly acquired provinces, the greatest evidence (namely from the Variae) comes from the earliest period (508–11), when the rudiments of the Ostrogothic regime were being established there.77 This evidence focuses on key cities and speaks broadly in terms of Gaul and Spain, rather than the individual provinces of these regions, most of which had lost some of their territorial integrity.78 Nor for that matter does the evidence distinguish between the provinces that Theoderic had annexed to Italy (east 72  Variae 4.16.1: “eius maturitate consilii . . . et gloriam civilitatis retulit . . . et bellorum insignia reportavit.” 73  Ennodius, no. 447 (Ep. 9.23), ed. Vogel, pp. 307–8: “ordinatis illis, quibus civilitatem post multos annorum circulos intulisti, quos ante te non contigit saporem de Romana libertate gustare.” 74  Variae 11.1.16, with Vita Caesarii 2.10, ed. Krusch. 75  Variae 8.10.6: “Ammonet etiam expeditio Gallicana, ubi . . . pericula promptissimus ingerebat.” 76  Variae 8.10.7–8: “vulnera factorum suorum signa susciperet: vulnera . . . propria lingua ­virtutis . . . Mittitur . . . ad Gallias tuendas . . . Adquisivit rei publicae Romanae . . . provinciam.” 77  For commentary: Sirago, “Ostrogoti”, pp. 66–75. 78  As in Illyricum, the exact boundaries are unclear. Ostrogothic Provence included portions of Alpes Maritimae, Narbonensis II, and Viennensis; Septimania included much of Narbonensis I, some of Aquitania I, and possibly some of Aquitania II–III; and Spain included much of Tarraconensis and Carthaginensis, and possibly some of eastern Lusitania and Baetica. Cf. Ewig, “Fränkischen Teilungen,” pp. 123–4; Schwarcz, “Restitutio Galliarum”, p. 793; Kulikowski, Late Roman Spain, pp. 261–2 and 265–6; and Diaz/Valverde, “Goths”, p. 362.

88

Arnold

of the Rhône) and those that he ruled on behalf of his grandson Amalaric. Indeed all of these provinces became part of the re-established prefecture of the Gauls, while the Spanish sources make it clear that Theoderic was the king of the Visigoths, not the regent of his grandson, about whom nothing is heard until after Theoderic’s death.79 It may be that the union of both kingdoms was supposed to be permanent, and Theoderic’s choice of a successor at this time, Eutharic, an Amal suddenly “discovered” living among the Visigoths, married to his daughter, and adopted by the emperor as his son-in-arms, is certainly suggestive of this possibility.80 At any rate the actual date for the re-establishment of this Gallic prefecture is a matter of some debate, but there was clearly a prefect ruling from Arles (the old prefectural capital) no later than 510/11, namely Liberius, who held this office until 534.81 The Variae provides surprisingly few details about Liberius and his functions at this time, but other sources attest to the fact that he was the chief representative of the Ostrogothic regime in the region and that his sphere of command included important civil and military functions.82 Far more is known of Gemellus, who was also based at Arles and served as vicar to the prefect beginning in 508. Perhaps initially a subordinate of the prefect of Italy, his instructions make abundantly clear the importance of Gaul to Theoderic, who desired to sow sentiments of just and Roman rule among his newest subjects, just as he did in other provinces. “Decline avarice”, Gemellus was told, “so that the tired province may accept you as the kind of judge it knows a Roman princeps might send. Prove that she may rejoice in being conquered; let her feel nothing just as nothing was suffered when she asked for Rome.”83 The Gauls themselves were also informed of Gemellus’ appointment and enjoined to live like Romans, much like the “barbarized” inhabitants of Pannonia Sirmiensis. “Roman custom”, Theoderic explained, “must happily be obeyed by you who have been restored to it after a long time. Recalled to your ancient liberty, clothe yourselves in the morals of the toga, cast off barbarism, 79  See the opening minutes for the councils of Tarragona and Gerona, ed. Vives, pp. 34 and 39, with Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum 39, ed. Mommsen. Cf. Chronica Caesaraugustana, a. 513, ed. Mommsen. On the Second Council of Toledo, which probably places the fifth year of the reign of Amalaric in 531 (rather than 527): Schäferdiek, Kirche, pp. 84–5. 80  See Diaz/Valverde, “Goths”, pp. 364–7; also Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 215–18. 81  Cf. O’Donnell, “Liberius”, pp. 44–6, and Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 270–1 n. 46. 82  See O’Donnell, “Liberius”, pp. 46–8, and Delaplace, “Provence”, pp. 496–9. 83  Variae 3.16.3: “avara declina, ut talem te iudicem provincia fessa suscipiat, qualem Romanum principem transmisisse cognoscat. . . . Effice ut victam fuisse delectet. Nihil tale sentiat, quale patiebatur, cum Romam quaereret.”

Ostrogothic Provinces

89

and abandon cruel minds; it is not right that you live like foreigners in our just times.”84 Again, and as in other provinces, the perceived and actual availability of Roman law and justice were crucial to such understandings. In Spain, for instance, Theoderic sought to curb homicides and theft, informing his representatives that “a life is truly human when preserved through the order of law”.85 Back in Gaul, provincials were assured that the vicar Gemellus would punish abuses and provide them with remedies;86 indeed, some did appeal directly to Gemellus and later Liberius for such assistance.87 Others sought legal recourse from Gothic officials, who often worked in partnership with Romans like Gemellus and are attested in cities like Narbonne, Avignon, Marseille, and Barcelona. One such official was asked rather bluntly by Theoderic, “Why else did we accomplish the removal of bewildered barbarians, if not so that [these provincials] might live according to [Roman] laws?”88 Another was enjoined to “let our army live civilly with the Romans”, much as Colosseus was instructed to do at Sirmium.89 Yet another, the mighty general Ibba, was praised by Theoderic for being “famous in war”, but instructed to render himself “more extraordinary in civilitas” and to restore properties that had been taken wrongfully from the church of Narbonne.90 Finally, at Marseille, the Gothic comes Marabad was to prove himself “zealous for justice”. “May he bring solace to the lowly”, Theoderic told the inhabitants of the city, and like Servatus in Raetia, “compel all to the justice by which our Empire always flourishes.”91 Nor were these the only sources of Roman justice and assistance available to Theoderic’s Gallic provincials. Despite persistent concerns about the length of the journey, Theoderic’s own comitatus in Italy provided another source, and 84  Variae 3.17.1: “Libenter parendum est Romanae consuetudini, cui estis post longa tempora restituti . . . Atque ideo in antiquam libertatem . . . revocati vestimini moribus togatis, exuite barbariem, abicite mentium crudelitatem, quia sub aequitate nostri temporis non vos decet vivere moribus alienis.” On the perceived ‘barbarization’ of Gaul, Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 235–61. 85  Variae 5.39.1: “illa vita vere hominum est, quae iuris ordine continetur.” 86  Variae 3.17. 87  See Variae 3.18 and 4.12; Ennodius, no. 457 (Ep. 9.29); and Avitus of Vienne, Ep. 35, ed. Peiper, p. 65. These remedies included the ransoming of captives. 88  Variae 3.43.1: “Quid enim proficit barbaros removisse confusos, nisi vivatur ex legibus?” 89  Variae 3.38.2: “Vivat noster exercitus civiliter cum Romanis.” 90  Variae 4.17.3: “qui es bello clarus, civilitate quoque reddaris eximius.” See also Lizzi Testa in this volume. 91  Variae 3.34.2: “curam possit habere iustitiae, minoribus solacium ferat . . . omnes cogat ad iustum, unde semper floret imperium.” See also Variae 4.12 and 4.46.

90

Arnold

some in Gaul availed themselves of it.92 One such legal claimant was informed by Ennodius that he had drawn the attention of a “most invincible lord” and that from his losses “the notice of a glorious princeps” had been acquired.93 Another, bishop Caesarius of Arles, who was sent to Ravenna under suspicious circumstances, was not only exonerated by Theoderic, but gifted handsomely by him; later, while in Rome, the Senate and pope honoured him as well, the latter making Caesarius papal vicar to Gaul and Spain in 514, providing an ecclesiastical analogue to the prefect Liberius, with whom he worked closely.94 These examples, moreover, were not exceptions. Indeed, and especially in the early period, whole communities in the prefecture benefited from acts of benevolence, which were designed to endear newly acquired provincials to the Ostrogothic regime and assist war-torn regions in their recovery, just as they did elsewhere.95 These acts ranged from cancelling tribute for entire regions or specific cities between 508 and 511; to supplying provisions like grain for the army and, later, for local consumption; to cancelling the siliquaticum and ordering Italian merchants to sell their wares in Gaul, both, according to Theoderic, in an attempt to revive the local economy; to sending money and supplies to Arles to restore its ancient walls; to restoring certain immunities to Marseille, a prosperous city well on its way to becoming the chief emporium of the region.96 Such benevolence of course was a temporary expedient enacted, as Theoderic informed Gemellus, “while we desire to be kind to our provincials”.97 Yet once the situation in the prefecture was settled and recovery had begun, these lands were supposed to provide revenues to the state in the form of taxes and tribute. New taxpayers, Theoderic claimed, had been acquired in Gaul and Spain, but tribute would be collected from these regions only when they were at peace; until then, loyalty was payment enough.98 Clearly some individuals were already paying tribute as early as 508/9; however, the most extensive evidence comes from late in Theoderic’s reign, from two letters in the Variae dating to 523/6 and dealing with Spain. Both letters are addressed to the Gothic 92  See below, with Variae 4.46 and Ennodius, no. 71 (Ep. 3.4). 93  Ennodius, no. 270.2 (Ep. 6.5.2): “invictissimi domini . . . gratiam conparavit. . . . incliti notitia principis dispendiis invenitur.” 94  Vita Caesarii 1.36–42; Ennodius, no. 461 (Ep. 9.33); and Symmachus, Ep. 15–16, ed. Thiel, pp. 723–9, with Klingshirn, Caesarius, pp. 123–45, and Delaplace, “Provence”, pp. 493–6; also Lizzi Testa in this volume. 95  See Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 281–2. 96  See Variae 3.32, 3.41–2, 3.44, 4.5, 4.7, 4.19, and 4.26, with Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 282–9. 97  Variae 4.19.2: “nunc autem, dum provincialibus praestare cupimus.” 98  For loyalty and peace: Variae 3.32.2; taxpayers, 4.36.3. Cf. Ennodius, no. 457 (Ep. 9.29).

Ostrogothic Provinces

91

comes Liwirit and his Roman counterpart Ampelius. Their specific offices are not stated, but their respective ranks, spectabilis and inlustris, are reminiscent of Fridibad and Severinus in Dalmatia-Savia, and their orders indicate that they had analogous responsibilities and faced similar problems. The first letter demonstrates that Spain remitted some of its tribute annually in the form of grain, which supplemented the annona at Rome and seems to have been paid diligently until Theoderic’s death. “It is just”, Theoderic explained, “for Spain to furnish supplies of wheat for the City, so that under us a happier Rome might receive its ancient tribute.”99 The exception of course was the year in which this letter was dispatched, when the shippers had made a detour for Africa and sold the grain for their own profit. Theoderic was understandably furious. The second letter provides a long list of abuses, many revenue related, that Liwirit and Ampelius were instructed to investigate. Spanish provincials accused tax collectors of using false weights, extorting excessive payments from renters of royal land, exacting unjust and irregular tolls, and embezzling funds. Others were allegedly minting private coinage or demanding a host of illegal services, even from Gothic troops “sent to fight on behalf of their liberty.”100 These abuses were condemned by Theoderic, who expected Liwirit and Ampelius to correct them to the mutual benefit of his Spanish taxpayers and the royal fisc. Much more could be said about Ostrogothic Gaul and, to a lesser extent, Spain given the available evidence. Indeed it is not by accident that the Variae and other contemporary sources refer far more often to these regions than to any of the other provinces treated in this chapter. Theoderic, it seems, was right: Gaul’s restoration was a crowning achievement of his reign and did much to legitimize the Ostrogothic kingdom as a revived Roman Empire.101

The End of the Empire

The relative peace and stability of Theoderic’s reign is generally seen as coming to an end during his final years, which were typified by a series of unfortunate events.102 Chief among these, at least with respect to the integrity of his 99  Variae 5.35.1: “aequum iudicavimus Hispaniae triticeas illi copias exhibere, ut antiquum vectigal sub nobis felicior Roma reciperet,” with Procopius, Wars 5.12.47–54. 100  Variae 5.39, with Kulikowski, Late Roman Spain, pp. 262–4, and Diaz/Valverde, “Goths”, p. 363. 101  See Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 233 and 272–94. 102  See Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 212–48, and Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 295–302.

92

Arnold

empire, was the unexpected death of Eutharic sometime in the early–mid 520s. If Theoderic had intended the union of the Visigothic and Ostrogothic kingdoms to be permanent, Eutharic’s death and the resulting succession crisis threw this into question. At the time Theoderic’s chief representative in Spain, the future Visigothic king Theudis, was growing increasingly independent, to the point where a Visigothic revolt was feared. Theudis proved himself a loyal subject, but these and other factors, not least Amalaric’s long-standing claim to the throne, led to the decision that the Visigothic kingdom should go its own way. How the agreement was reached is uncertain, but upon Theoderic’s death in 526 Spain and Gaul west of the Rhône fell to Amalaric, while Italy, Illyricum, and what remained of the Gallic prefecture fell to Athalaric, the young son of Eutharic and Theoderic’s daughter, Amalasuentha. In addition, the Visigothic royal treasure was returned to Amalaric’s court, and the Goths of Gaul and Spain, who had intermarried during Theoderic’s reign, were allowed to serve whichever kingdom they wished.103 Despite the obvious loss of territory, manpower, and revenue, the Gallic prefecture remained an important component of the Ostrogothic kingdom for another decade, serving as a buffer for Italy in the face of renewed Frankish aggression.104 Athalaric’s Gallic provincials swore an oath of loyalty to him at the beginning of his reign, as did Liberius, who remained their prefect.105 Gothic garrisons likewise guarded the prefecture’s cities and frontiers, celebrating victories against the Burgundians and Franks during the regency of Amalasuentha and holding fast in Gaul into the opening years of the Gothic War.106 Indeed it was not until Justinian’s invasion of Dalmatia and Sicily in 535 that Ostrogothic rule in Gaul was placed into question. As in the past, Italy remained paramount. And in response to the Byzantine threat to Italy’s east and south, the Ostrogothic king Theodahad turned west and sought a military alliance with the Franks, promising all his possessions in Gaul and the payment of 20 centenaria of gold. Nothing came of the offer, since Theodahad was murdered before the negotiations had been concluded. However, the Franks allied with Justinian in the interim, leaving the prefecture (and thus north-western Italy) dangerously exposed. The following year, therefore, Theodahad’s successor, Witigis, renewed talks with the Franks, believing that Gaul was no longer defensible and that concentrating all available forces in Italy was the best 103  Procopius, Wars 5.12.50–5.13.9. Cf. Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum 39–40. 104  Wolfram, Goths, p. 334, may overestimate the effect that the loss of soldiers had, as it was accompanied by a significant reduction in the border length. 105  Variae 8.6–7. 106  Variae 11.1.12–13 and Procopius, Wars 5.11.28 and 5.13.19. Cf. Jordanes, Getica 305.

Ostrogothic Provinces

93

s­ trategy. He offered the same terms as Theodahad, adding the Alpine reaches of Raetia to sweeten the deal, and the Franks gladly accepted. The troops in Gaul were then recalled to Italy, along with their general Marcias, while the Gauls of Provence and the inhabitants of Raetia, including the Alamanni, became subjects of the Franks, effectively ending Ostrogothic rule in these regions by 536/7.107 By this time, other provinces had also been lost or perhaps abandoned owing to the same defensive rationale. Justinian’s invasion of Dalmatia in 535, for instance, seems to have led to a Gothic withdrawal from Pannonia Sirmiensis, which fell almost immediately to the Gepids.108 Meanwhile, the war for Dalmatia proved tenacious, with heavy casualties on both sides and victories that were only temporary and followed by hasty retreats. By 536, Salona had exchanged hands three times, and in the following year Witigis dispatched a fleet and sizeable army in what would prove to be the Goths’ final attempt at recovering Dalmatia. These forces were led by Uligisalus and Asinarius, whose failure to take Salona marks the end of an Ostrogothic claim to the region. Subsequently, Dalmatia became a Byzantine staging ground for the greater struggle unfolding in Italy.109 Asinarius’ efforts to raise additional troops in Savia prior to the attack on Salona is also the last notice of an Ostrogothic presence in this province. Following the loss of Dalmatia, most of neighbouring Savia fell to the Lombards, who also expanded into portions of eastern Noricum.110 The rest of Noricum fell to the Franks, who disregarded their alliances and attempted to conquer Italy for themselves. By the mid 540s, the Frankish king Theudebert was claiming an empire that stretched from the ocean to the borders of Pannonia, included much of northern Italy, and threatened to expand further east.111 He was likewise minting gold coinage with his own portrait and the word “victor”, much like Theoderic had done decades earlier.112 The Roman Empire of the

107  Procopius, Wars 5.13.14–29, and Agathias, Histories 1.6, with Wolfram, Goths, pp. 343–4. 108  Procopius, Wars 7.33.8 and 7.34.15–18, with Wolfram, Goths, p. 323; Wozniak, “Illyricum”, pp. 381–2; and Sarantis, “War and Diplomacy”, p. 25. 109  Procopius, Wars 5.5.11, 5.7.1–10, 5.7.26–37, and 5.16.7–18, with Wilkes, Dalmatia, pp. 425–7, and Wozniak, “Illyricum”, p. 382. For Totila’s later raid on Dalmatia, which was not an attempt at conquest: Procopius, Wars 7.35.23–9. 110  Procopius, Wars 5.16.8–16 and 7.33.10–12, with Wolfram, Goths, p. 323, and Sarantis, “War and Diplomacy”, pp. 26–7. 111  Epistolae Austrasicae 20, ed. Gundlach. p. 133; Procopius, Wars 8.24.6–10; and Agathias, Histories 1.4. 112  Grierson/Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage 1, pp. 115–16.

94

Arnold

Ostrogoths was fading, but a Frankish Empire that occasionally looked to it for inspiration would eventually take its place.113 Bibliography

Primary Sources

Agathias, The Histories, trans. J. Frendo, Berlin 1975. Avitus of Vienne, Epistulae, ed. R. Peiper, Alcimi Ecdicii Aviti Viennensis episcopi Opera quae supersunt (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 6.2), Berlin 1883. Cassiodorus, Chronica, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., vol. 2 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 11), Berlin 1894. ———, Orationum reliquiae, ed. L. Traube, Cassiodorus Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894. ———, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodorus Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894. Chronica Caesaraugustana, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., vol. 2 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 11), Berlin 1894. Concilios Visigóticos e Hispano-Romanos, ed. J. Vives, Barcelona-Madrid 1963. Ennodius, Panegyricus dictus clementissimo regi Theoderico, ed. C. Rohr, Der TheoderichPanegyricus des Ennodius (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte 12), Hannover 1995. Ennodius, Epistulae, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felicis Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885. Epistolae Austrasicae, ed. W. Gundlach, Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae 3), Berlin 1892. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. H. Dessau, vol. 1, Berlin 1892. Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., vol. 2 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 11), Berlin 1894. Jordanes, Getica, ed. T. Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 5.1), Berlin 1882. Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., vol. 2 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 11), Berlin 1894.

113  On Theoderic in the Carolingian Empire: Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, pp. 297–8, and Dutton, Charlemagne’s Mustache, pp. 24–42.

Ostrogothic Provinces

95

Procopius, Wars, ed. and trans. H.B. Dewing, Procopius, vol. 1–5 (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA. 1914–28. Symmachus, Epistolae, ed. A. Thiel, Epistolae Romanorum Pontificum Genuinae et quae ad eos scriptae sunt a S. Hilaro usque ad Pelagium II, vol. 1, Brunsberg 1868. Vita Caesarii, ed. B. Krusch, Passiones Vitaeque Sanctorum Aevi Merovingici et Antiquiorum Alioquot (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 3), Hannover 1894.



Secondary Literature

Alföldy, G., Noricum, trans. A. Birley, London 1974. Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554, Cambridge 1997. Arnold, J., “The Battle of Vouillé and the Restoration of the Roman Empire”, in R. Mathisen/D. Shanzer (eds.), The Battle of Vouillé, 507 CE: Where France Began, Boston 2012, pp. 111–36. ———, “Theoderic’s Invincible Mustache”, Journal of Late Antiquity 6.1 (2013), 152–83. ———, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, New York 2014. Castritius, H., “Korruption im ostgotischen Italien”, in W. Schuller (ed.), Korruption im Altertum, Munich 1982, pp. 215–34. Christie, N., From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy, AD 300–800, Aldershot 2006. Clover, F., “A Game of Bluff: The Fate of Sicily after AD 476”, Historia 48.2 (1992), 235–44. Croke, B., “Mundo the Gepid: from Freebooter to Roman General”, Chiron 12 (1982), 125–35. Delaplace, C., “La ‘Guerre de Provence’ (507–511), un épisode oublié de la domination ostrogothique en Occident”, in Romanité et cité chrétienne: Permanences et mutations, intégration et exclusion du Ier au VIe siècle, Paris 2000, pp. 77–89. ———, “La Provence sous la domination ostrogothique (508–536)”, Annales du Midi 115.244 (2003), 479–99. Deliyannis, D., Ravenna in Late Antiquity, New York 2010. Demo, Z., Ostrogothic Coinage from Collections in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ljubljana 1994. Diaz, P./Valverde, R., “Goths Confronting Goths: Ostrogothic Political Relations in Hispania”, in S. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 353–76. Drinkwater, J., The Alamanni and Rome 213–496 (Caracalla to Clovis), Oxford 2007. Dutton, P., Charlemagne’s Mustache: And Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age, New York 2004. Ensslin, W., Theoderich der Grosse, 2nd ed., Munich 1959. Ewig, E., “Die fränkischen Teilungen und Teilreiche (511–613)”, in id., Spätantikes und fränkisches Gallien: Gesammelte Schriften (1952–1973), vol. 1, Munich 1976, pp. 114–71.

96

Arnold

Grierson, P./Blackburn, M., Medieval European Coinage: With a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, vol. 1: The Early Middle Ages (5th–10th centuries), Cambridge 1986. Heuberger, R., “Das ostgotische Rätien”, Klio 30 (1937), 77–109. Klingshirn, W., Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul, Cambridge 1994. Kos, P., “The Numismatic Evidence for the Period from the 5th to the 10th Centuries in the Area of Modern Slovenia”, in R. Bratož (ed.), Slowenien und die Nachbarländer zwischen Antike und Karolingischer Epoche: Anfänge der slowenischen Ethnogenese, vol. 1, Ljubljana 2000, pp. 107–17. Krautschick, S., Cassiodor und die Politik seiner Zeit, Bonn 1983. Kulikowski, M., Late Roman Spain and Its Cities, Baltimore 2004. Lafferty, S., Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge 2013. Mathisen, R./Shanzer, D. (eds.), The Battle of Vouillé, 507 CE: Where France Began, Boston 2012. Meier, M., Anastasios I: Die Entstehung des Byzantinischen Reiches. Stuttgart 2009. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. O’Donnell, J., “Liberius the Patrician”, Traditio 37 (1981), 31–72. Prostko-Prostyński, J., Utraeque res publicae: The Emperor Anastasius I’s Gothic Policy (491–518), Poznań 1994. ———, “Ein ostgotischer Statthalter in Binnen-Norikum?”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 139 (2002), 297–302. Pohl, W., “Die Gepiden und die Gentes an der mittleren Donau nach dem Zerfall des Attilareiches”, in H. Wolfram/F. Daim (eds.), Die Völker an der mittleren und unteren Donau im fünften und sechsten Jahrhundert, Vienna 1980, pp. 239–305. Romano, D., “Cassiodoro panegirista”, Pan 6 (1978), 5–35. Sarantis, A., “War and Diplomacy in Pannonia and the Northwest Balkans during the Reign of Justinian: The Gepid Threat and Imperial Responses”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 63 (2009), 15–40. Schäferdiek, K., Die Kirche in den Reichen der Westgoten und Suewen bis zur Errichtung der westgotischen katholischen Staatskirche, Berlin 1967. Schwarcz, A., “Die Restitutio Galliarum des Theoderich”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia: Atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, Milano 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993, pp. 787–98. ———, “Der Nordadria- und Westbalkanraum im 6. Jahrhundert zwischen Goten und Byzantinern”, in R. Bratož (ed.), Slowenien und die Nachbarländer zwischen Antike und Karolingischer Epoche: Anfänge der slowenischen Ethnogenese, vol. 1, Ljubljana 2000, pp. 59–70.

Ostrogothic Provinces

97

Sirago, V., “Gli Ostrogoti in Gallia secondo le Variae di Cassiodoro”, Revue des Êtudes Anciennes 89 (1987), 63–77. Stein, E., Histoire du Bas-Empire, 2 vols., Bruges 1949–59. Tomasini, W., The Barbaric Tremissis in Spain and Southern France: Anastasius to Leovigild, New York 1964. Wilkes, J., Dalmatia, Cambridge, MA 1969. Wolfram, H., “Westillyrien unter Gotischer Herrschaft (490/493–537)”, in M. Kandler/ et al. (eds.), Lebendige Altertumswissenschaft: Festgabe zur Vollendung des 70. Lebensjahres von Hermann Vetters, Vienna 1985, pp. 315–17. ———, History of the Goths, trans. T. Dunlap, Berkeley 1988. Wozniak, F., “East Rome, Ravenna and Western Illyricum: 454–536 AD”, Historia 30.3 (1981), 351–82.

CHAPTER 5

Ostrogothic Cities Federico Marazzi*

Cities in Late Roman Italy: A Problem beyond the Ostrogoths

To take the concept of ‘Ostrogothic cities’ in a literal sense, there would be very little to report. The Ostrogoths (perhaps with only one exception, in Trento, discussed later in the chapter) founded no cities, nor can any feature of the cities they occupied during the period of their rule in Italy be recognized as distinctly ‘Ostrogothic’, unless we consider the slight number of churches dedicated to the Arian Christian communities. This quite simply means that there is no way to speak about specifically Ostrogothic cities, and that a more profitable discussion must focus on the nature of Italian cities during the period of Ostrogothic rule. As is well known, this period spans little less than half a century, that is to say from Theoderic’s defeat of Odovacer in 493 to the first years of the Gothic War between the Byzantines and the Ostrogoths. This war began in 535 and officially ended in 554, but in relation to this topic this chapter will consider 540 as the final date, which corresponds to the moment when Belisarius’ army conquered Ravenna and ended the regular functioning of the administrative system of the Ostrogothic kingdom as it had worked during the previous decades.1 It would be a mischaracterization of the period to underestimate the scale of the Gothic government’s interest in cities. The main written source for this period, the so-called Variae collected by Casssiodorus, provide us with a great deal of information about the attention that King Theoderic and his immediate successors lavished on the cities located within the boundaries of their kingdom.2 Italy was presumably the most densely and uniformly urbanized territory of the former Roman Empire. The density of its urban network was perhaps matched only by that existing in some provinces of the eastern Mediterranean such as Syria and Palestine, since even in Anatolia and Egypt there were vast, scarcely populated areas with few or no cities at all.

* I wish to express my deep gratitude to Shane Bjornlie for his extensive revision of my text. 1  Tate, Giustiniano, pp. 683–717. 2  Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis; Tabata, Città dell’Italia.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_006

Ostrogothic Cities

99

When the Ostrogoths entered the Italian peninsula, most of the towns that had flourished in classical times were still alive, although few of them could show much of their past splendour. Cities were expensive projects. Their development and maintenance had been possible in the number and size we find in Italy primarily because cities enjoyed a long-standing privileged condition created by the dominant political status that Rome had established for Italian regions since Augustus. Low taxation, an abundant flow of spoils from military campaigns, and the possibility of selling Italian products at very favourable prices were factors that lasted for more than two centuries. These factors gave nearly all urban communities in Italy (and particularly their most prominent citizens) the opportunity to reinvest wealth in ambitious building programmes that would be visible in both public and private spaces.3 As is well known, things began to change during the 3rd century due to several concomitant factors. Military expansion ceased and so ended the flow of war booty; Italy slowly began to lose its political primacy to provincial territories; and eventually the pressure of barbarians on the borders of the empire diverted more and more resources towards the needs of the army and the bureaucracy that supported it. One of the consequences of all this was that local communities faced reduced budgets due to the growing fiscal pressures. In turn the exactions of the central government progressively eroded the discretionary monies that had previously been available to city councils. To be a local magistrate gradually became a heavy burden, reducing the former prestige derived from the possibility of investing locally collected resources in the kind of public works that benefited urban populations and made them proud to be part of an affluent community. The disappearance of inscriptions commemorating public works sponsored by local magistrates in the course of the 3rd century speaks to this change more than anything. For the same reasons, imperial patronage of public buildings also diminished. Perhaps the fact that emperors, in general, no longer came from Italian families contributed to a disinclination to invest in the improvement of the cities of Italy. The preference of emperors for their natal origins is shown, for example, in the case of buildings erected by Septimius Severus in the towns of Libya.4 By the end of the 3rd century some Italian cities bore evident marks of material decay, due not just to the lack of newly constructed buildings, but more to growing difficulties in the maintenance of existing ones. The radical reforms of the Roman state enacted by Diocletian and Constantine between the end of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 4th became entrenched as 3  Marazzi, “Cadavera urbium”, pp. 33–66. 4  Baratte, Tunisia e Libia.

100

Marazzi

the new state of affairs in late antique cities. Local curiae remained responsible for tax collection in their territories, while the central government determined the fiscal assessment for which each city was annually responsible. At the same time the administrative subdivision of imperial territories, which included transforming the old regiones of the Italian peninsula into provinces, almost automatically selected which cities would receive the primary attention of the central government and which would be capable of making substantial investments in public works.5 Cities that hosted imperial residences, the seats of praetorian prefects and their deputies, and eventually the chief towns of each province would become the only places (together with Rome) that remained the focus of imperial attention and could hope for subventions for the maintenance of buildings and public spaces. The other cities and their councils could basically rely only on the good will of locals (potentes and patroni) who had enough influence with the central government to act as representatives of local communities for the purpose of securing tax reductions or funds assigned to specific projects, such as the restoration of damaged or decayed buildings and spaces. These people usually had held high-ranking offices in the imperial administration and were tied to a given town either as native citizens or as new landowners with economic interests in a town’s territory, and who would be personally inclined to advocate on behalf of the local community.6 Various Italian cities have yielded statues, inscribed statue bases or inscriptions celebrating these benefactors who in Late Antiquity (as opposed to earlier periods) did not derive from the ranks of the local curia. Sometimes these potentes can be identified with provincial governors who occasionally assisted cities within their competence, often following some serious natural disaster such as a flood or earthquake, in order to restore a public building, road or bridge.7 It should also be added that a number of Italian cities during the 3rd century, although mostly limited to the northern part of the peninsula, looked to their defence by erecting walls that enclosed some portion of their built areas. This, too, affected both the availability of resources previously allocated to the maintenance of civil infrastructure and the survival of buildings left outside the walls. During the 5th century things began to deteriorate seriously owing to growing political instability in the western empire, the direct impact of barbarian military expeditions, and the economic crisis caused by the progressive loss 5  Cecconi, La città e l’impero, pp. 354–58 and 365–6. 6  Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall, 104–36. 7  Complete references to these types of artifacts found in Italy can be obtained by browsing through the database provided by the “Last Statues of Antiquity” project, created by the University of Oxford (http://laststatues.classics.ox.ac.uk/).

Ostrogothic Cities

101

of the provinces (and their respective tax revenues). This last factor became particularly evident when Africa was lost to the Vandals in the years after 430.8 Archaeological evidence indicates the widespread decay of urban infrastructure for this period.9 It is also important that much of the surviving resources available to wealthy benefactors was either diverted to the embellishment of lavish private houses or invested in a new kind of public patronage: the construction of Christian churches. The church itself became a new and important player within the urban environment, investing its money not simply in the provision of spaces for worship, but also in the creation of residences for bishops and clergy and of a number of subsidiary buildings such as the hospitals, guest houses and cellars deemed necessary for the display of the charitable activities that benefited the urban population.10 All this suggests that two different kinds of problems impacted Italian cities during Late Antiquity: first, deep changes in the administrative structure of the empire, and second, the economic conditions of the western provinces, which became particularly severe in the course of the 5th century. When considering the conditions of late antique Italian cities, it becomes necessary to consider both the transformation of the cultural and institutional setting of Italy and the economic changes to the finances of the state that affected the whole of Italian society.11 Notwithstanding a general picture of decline, growth in the number of episcopal sees in Italy during the 5th century demonstrates that towns were neither dead nor deserted by their populations. In fact the very role of the bishop was predicated on the needs of the urban community. The prominent social role obtained by the church from the late 4th and during the 5th century captured many of the private resources still available for investment in urban settings. In addition, the material decline of towns could still elicit direct response from the imperial government in the form of a wide number of measures taken in order to protect derelict public buildings from improper use.12 Imperial authority sought to preserve not only pagan temples, whose function as places of worship had been banned since the end of the 4th century, but also public buildings and spaces that were considered potentially exposed to 8  Ward-Perkins, Fall of Rome, pp. 33–62. 9  Brogiolo/Possenti, “L’età gota in Italia settentrionale”, pp. 257–96; Brogiolo, Le origini della città medievale, pp. 33–76. 10  Baldini Lippolis, L’architettura residenziale, pp. 102–34; Marano, “Domus in qua manebat episcopus”, pp. 97–130. 11  Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall, pp. 369–99. 12  Janvier, La legislation du Bas-Empire Romain; Heijmans, “La place des monuments publics”, pp. 25–41.

102

Marazzi

spoliation or squatting. The laws issued to this effect represent the largest legislative corpus dealing with the protection of historical heritage before the modern era. Much of this legislation concerned Rome, but some also applied to the urban fabric more generally. One may dispute whether these measures had any real effect in preventing the reappropriation of old and derelict buildings and spaces or whether they simply exposed the impotence of state authorities to even slow these processes. Whatever the interpretation, extant laws attest that enough building projects occurred in Italian cities during the 5th century to justify dangerous and laborious activities such as dismantling edifices and transporting harvested materials. Seen from another point of view, these are also signs that cityscapes were subject to dramatic changes that affected much of what had survived from the past.

Italian Cities from the Perspective of the Ostrogothic Government

This is the situation that Theoderic encountered upon reaching Italy in 491. Nevertheless, it is evident that Theoderic recognized cities as the backbone of an administrative system in which cities and their populations helped to control a wider landscape of territories. As it has been recently pointed out, the Variae of Cassiodorus include some forty cities among the addressees of the letters sent by central offices in Ravenna.13 In most of these letters, the king or his officials addressed themselves to particular individuals or groups of people who appear as privileged representatives of the local population. These fall into four main categories: curiales, possessores, honorati, and defensores. This picture corresponds more or less to the period that precedes the arrival of the Ostrogoths. Cities had local magistrates, who sat in the curia and were responsible for administration and, more importantly, for tax collection on behalf of the central government. They were appointed to do so by virtue of having enough wealth and reputation to ensure that their obligations would be properly fulfilled. This meant that they were usually possessores, but not all possessores were necessarily enrolled in the curia. The honorati were also local notables, but these were exempt from curial obligations because they had held posts of some importance in the central administration or because they had been personally granted this privilege by the king (apparently along with honorary senatorial rank). Curiales and honorati do not necessarily comprise two distinct groups. The honorati were at times former members of the curia and the title may be used synonymously for curiales. Although not directly 13  Tabata, Città dell’Italia, pp. 43–5.

Ostrogothic Cities

103

involved in the management of city affairs, the honorati were nonetheless influential. Needless to say, there was considerable overlap between honorati, curiales, and possessores. More importantly, the Ostrogothic state followed previous imperial administrative behaviours by governing not only through these three classes, but also through other actors capable of reinforcing personal ties between the central government and local community.14 Bishops had played this role during the later empire and clearly continued to do so under Ostrogothic rule, but this administrative picture of Italian cities would be incomplete without mention of two other offices, one of which originated in the late empire, the other an innovation of Theoderic himself. The first, the defensor civitatis, was chosen by the consensus of the curiales, possessores, and honorati, although this appointment also required the approval of the praetorian prefect. The functions of the defensor were primarily judicial, but he was also involved in the crucial supervision of the gesta municipalia, the register where all business concerning rights over landed properties were recorded, thus where the tax rolls and lists of taxpayers were maintained. Second, the comes civitatis was a Gothic officer appointed directly by the king who held the military command over the city, and when a Gothic population was present, acted as a judge in legal cases involving Goths.15 In southern Italy (especially Sicily), which lacked settlements of Ostrogoths, the comes had responsibility over the military command of the entire province.16 The roles of both the defensor and the comes reflect the tendency towards a closer control of local communities by central power. This quick overview illustrates the fact that the arrival of the Ostrogoths did not produce dramatic changes in the criteria that had generated the culture of town administration in the late empire. Quite the opposite; the peaceful conditions that Italy enjoyed during the decades of Theoderic’s rule helped to consolidate the system. The only real innovation was the appointment in some cities of a Gothic military commander, although even this has a potential parallel in the late imperial military administration of frontier provinces. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated recently and conclusively that the accommodation of the Ostrogoths on Italian territory consisted of the transfer of actual land (and not simply of tax revenues) whose portions were drawn from the properties of Roman owners (or confiscated from former supporters of Odovacer) where Goths settled within the territorial boundaries of urban

14  Laniado, Recherches sur les notables municipaux, pp. 181–5; Cecconi, La città e l’impero. 15  Porena, L’insediamento degli Ostrogoti, pp. 39–57; Tabata, Città dell’Italia, pp. 71–95. 16  Porena, L’insediamento degli Ostrogoti, pp. 107–111.

104

Marazzi

centres.17 This implies once again that Theoderic depended heavily upon the regular functioning of city councils, which (under the supervision of the praetorian praefectura) determined the success of the whole system that had integrated the Goths within a city-based framework. Nevertheless, the practical approach taken by Theoderic to maintain the city-based administrative system inherited from the empire relied on a firm ideological foundation. Within a strongly centralized system, cities were both the most expedient and the most efficient mechanism for solidifying the unity of the Ostrogothic kingdom. But for Theoderic, cities also represented the ideal context in which to engineer confraternity between Romans and Goths. It was in cities that the newcomers could display their skills in preserving the prestigious traditions of the Roman Empire, thereby demonstrating their mastery of those traditions and legitimizing the place in history they had claimed by installing themselves at the heart of the former empire. From this perspective, cities were the stage where the king performed the role of the restorer of the decus (beauty) and decor (dignity) of civilized life. Cassiodorus’ Variae and a number of inscriptions bear witness to the display of the king’s personal munificence towards urban spaces and also to his sollicitudo (care) that every urban community should acknowledge its obligation to contribute to the same goal. A recent and detailed survey of the Variae made by Valérie FauvinetRanson offers a full picture of the vast range of matters Theoderic dealt with concerning construction, reconstruction, conservation, appropriate use, and management of buildings, walls, roads, and other kinds of public spaces within cities.18 What appears particularly remarkable is that Goths were involved in this task as well as Romans. For instance, between 506 and 511 a letter sent “to all Goths and Romans” required that they collect from their fields all the stones that could be considered useful for the repair of city walls (Variae 1.28). From approximately the same period the Gothic count Suna was ordered to ascertain the provenance of marble blocks destined for the repair of city walls (Variae 2.7), while another letter required the vir spectabilis Tancila to locate a statue stolen in the city of Como (Variae 2.35). Unfortunately, it is impossible to understand how and where the Ostrogoths settled within the cities. No reference to this is given in written sources, nor does archaeological evidence provide useful positive information.19 The closest available data are found in the Formula comitivae Gothorum per singulas 17  Porena, L’insediamento degli Ostrogoti. See Halsall in this volume for a more detailed discussion of the debate over the terms of accommodation. 18  Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, pp. 47–195 and 303–77. 19  Tabata, Città dell’Italia, pp. 117–24.

Ostrogothic Cities

105

civitates (“Formula regarding the appointment of the count of the Goths in each city”, Variae 7.3) and some passages of the so-called Laus Liberii (Variae 2.16), which reports the praise given by Theoderic when, around 510, he celebrated the great work of the patrician Liberius to ensure the peaceful settlement of the Goths following their arrival in Italy.20 In short, both texts make evident the fact that Romans and Goths lived side by side in towns. A potential source of problems, it was expected that mutual respect and respect for civilitas would mediate trouble. This attitude, evident in the Laus Liberii, was an essential piece of political ideology that celebrated the force of law and the interdependence of both peoples. The Variae acknowledge the judicial controversies that could arise between Goths and Romans (both with respect to property rights and various crimes committed between the two peoples) and in each circumstance, cities were the stage where legal disputes would have been resolved. It bears emphasizing that the city was the place where the two peoples would have met and where terms of cohabitation would have been forged.

Programme versus Propaganda in the Cities of Ostrogothic Italy

But what kind of framework would cities actually have provided for the king’s plans? Reuse of buildings and materials, displacement of building materials from one place to another, concessions to individuals for the use of buildings and spaces contrary to their traditional purposes, and the commencement of the restoration of existing buildings: these are topics treated by the Variae concerning the material condition of cities. It is apparent that the emphasis placed on urban dignity had to do mainly with the preservation and adaptation of existing fabric. The preservation and, where necessary, the restoration of the antique dignitas of urban fabric was in fact a key element of the governmental ideology disseminated by central authority to its officials throughout the kingdom.21 From this point of view, Theoderic acted exactly in the same way the Roman imperial government had done in the previous century. In an interesting essay written some twenty years ago, Cristina La Rocca asked whether the texts referring to the public works of the Gothic government had been realized in actual projects, and more precisely, in an actual renewal of Italian cities.22 She eventually came to the conclusion that most of what the sources report should be 20  Porena, L’insediamento degli Ostrogoti, 17–33. 21  Bjornlie, Politics and Tradition, pp. 227–30 and 240–48. 22  La Rocca, “Una prudente maschera ‘antiqua’ ”, pp. 451–515.

106

Marazzi

interpreted as well-orchestrated propaganda, the aim of which was to show that the king was in fact capable of acting exactly as his predecessors had in order to keep cities alive and functioning. Nonetheless, the propaganda should not be interpreted as an actual campaign of urban revitalization. Rather, the effort seems oriented toward restoring dignity to the role of cities and their structures by repairing the damages inflicted to them by time and lack of maintenance. The intent was to transform into ‘antique’ and ‘venerable’ what had become old and decaying. From this perspective, ‘antique’ became paradoxically synonymous with ‘modern’, since antiquity was a timeless value for which any sensible government should take care. La Rocca’s reading of Theoderic’s urban policy is essentially correct. The ‘Indian summer’ of Theodric’s reign could not have addressed anything more substantial than a careful selection of projects that would preserve existing fabric. The limited financial resources available for such undertakings simply could not accommodate directing attention to the immense architectural patrimony which virtually every Italian city had inherited from the height of the empire. Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to underestimate the importance of what Theoderic did accomplish in the urban setting. Initiatives to safeguard urban decor not only characterized the reign of Theoderic, but also continued after his death. The Variae keep account of this until the years when Justinian declared war against the Ostrogoths. Although certainly influenced by Roman officials, such as Liberius and Cassiodorus, who played prominent roles in the kingdom’s administration, the urban programme under discussion had to be shared by Theoderic in order to account for the prominence that it receives in the sources. Based on the diversity of projects described, it seems clear that towns still functioned as the vital organs in a body politic that emulated the classical urban lifestyle. Hence, the Variae attest measures for the upkeep of walls, sewers, theatres, baths, statues, and aqueducts. Given the common practice of reusing derelict urban structures in the period more generally, it should come as little surprise that the Variae describe cases that grant individuals the right to occupy, readapt and even dismantle buildings no longer considered practicable for public purposes. In other words, the measured pragmatism and flexibility of this urban programme is more interesting than the ideological framework upon which it was based. As should be expected, Rome received the most prominent attention. Since the first years of the 6th century up to the end of Theoderic’s reign, a number of measures were taken to provide funding for Rome’s maintenance and to keep active a number of offices to provide for that maintenance.23 However, by the time of the Gothic War, Cassiodorus 23  Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, pp. 227–55.

Ostrogothic Cities

107

(then in charge of the praetorian prefecture) described the limits of the urban programme with a candour scarcely seen elsewhere. Cassiodorus admits that Rome’s vast size and the grandeur of its buildings resembled oversized garments worn on a body that had become emaciated (Variae 11.39). It had to be admitted, in his words, that much of the inherited legacy of monuments and edifices was no longer necessary to actual city life. Cassiodorus’ thoughts appear to mark a sharp contrast in comparison to efforts made toward the upkeep of cities. But upon consideration the contrast is not as contradictory as it may seem. Cassiodorus, coming to terms with reality, did not deprive the endeavours undertaken under Theoderic of the value of their intentions. Urban civilization had to be kept alive despite the problems posed by contemporary conditions, and propaganda had a real function in this context—not as a mask to conceal reality, but as a statement of principles that would guide officials in undertaking efforts to reclaim something of the classical urban culture. Just a small percentage of Italian towns is mentioned in the corpus of official letters collected in the Variae, and such a representation would prevent definitive conclusions about actual urban conditions. The archaeological evidence by itself seems to show that the negative trend of the 5th century had not changed. Cassiodorus indicates that the maintenance of Rome was a great challenge for the Ostrogothic government. Much of this difficulty resulted from the disproportion between the quantity of urban fabric surviving from the past, the resources readily available for restoration projects, and the shortage of manpower, which made many urban projects unsustainable in the long term. It is difficult to say (but reasonable to suspect) whether these realities might have played a greater role in changing the strategy of Ostrogothic rule, particularly in the 530s after Theoderic’s death, and when the political and dynastic fortunes of the kingdom had been called into question. But it is also legitimate to consider whether the centrality of towns to Italian social life was recognized by the entire population under Ostrogothic rule. Unfortunately, it is not known how and where exactly Goths settled. Cities were certainly privileged loci for contacts with the Romans, but it is not possible to reconstruct how many Goths preferred urban as opposed to rural life.24 Gian Pietro Brogiolo has pointed out that some of the prominent late Roman fortresses discovered by archaeologists on the Italian side of the Alps were still functional during the Ostrogothic period.25 Some of them, such as Monte Barro (situated north of Milan near the eastern end of the lake of Come), were more 24  Tabata, Città dell’Italia, pp. 117–24. 25  Brogiolo, “Dwellings and Settlement”, pp. 114–17.

108

Marazzi

than simply a military stronghold. They hosted buildings that could be used as residences for the Gothic commander and as housing for the local garrison. It is difficult to say whether the Gothic commander lived there permanently or preferred a nearby town where he might have owned an urban residence. But it is to be expected that he would have spent a good deal of time with his soldiers and servants. Permanent residence is clearly suggested by the archaeological evidence, which includes an extensive area protected by a walled enclosure at the top of the mountain that was suitable for grazing pigs, cows, and horses.26 Monte Barro, although quite exceptional in its size, is not an isolated case and it raises the question of where the Ostrogothic elite (whose primary task was commanding the military forces of the kingdom) had established its regular headquarters. Perhaps, rather than taking part in local city life, they might have preferred direct contact with the capital and the king’s court. Romans and especially their elite had traditionally deep ties with city life, but there has been a debate about the possibility that, despite official encouragement, many of its members at the beginning of the 6th century would have preferred the countryside and the release from urban habits. Once again, the discussion has been invigorated by a letter from Cassiodorus (Variae 8.31). In a letter addressed in 526 or 527 to the governor of Lucania-Bruttium, King Athalaric reprimanded the curiales and possessores who preferred to dwell in their country estates in disregard of the cities to which they had been assigned.27 The city, states Athalaric, is the cradle of civilization, where people meet to peacefully settle disputes and where the traditional intellectual and cultural life was preserved. People who lived in towns were like peaceful birds, which flocked in order to live harmoniously, whereas those who preferred the countryside adopted the attitude of predatory birds. The lack of interest in city life is portrayed as a serious danger to the rest of society as a whole. Claude Lepelley, who has provided perhaps the best commentary for this text, says that Cassiodorus’ letter should be read together with an edict issued by the royal chancery more or less in the same period (Variae 9.2).28 There the king censures the fact that members of city councils were often the targets of abuse from state officials, Romans, and Goths. Indeed this situation appears to have compelled many of them to sell their properties in order to repay the debts imposed on them by the corrupt practices of the administration of the central government. According to Athalaric (and Cassiodorus, who wrote the text), 26  Brogiolo/Gelichi, Nuove ricerche, pp. 22–31. 27  For an overview on Calabrian cities in Late Antiquity: Raimondo, “Le città dei Bruttii”, pp. 519–98. 28  Lepelley, “La survie de l’idée de cité republicaine”, pp. 71–84.

Ostrogothic Cities

109

the disturbance caused by illegal practices against important members of the urban population could endanger the health of the whole body of the state. As stressed by Lepelley, problems of this kind had been quite common since at least the 4th century and were the effect of changes to the organization of the fiscal levy introduced by Diocletian and Constantine. By the 6th century more than two centuries had passed since the municipal (and fiscal) system of the earlier empire had been replaced. The various problems caused by the implementation of the new system in the late 3rd and early 4th century had never been completely resolved. Ostrogothic Italy used essentially the same system and it is somewhat surprising, at least in view of the encumbrances associated with this system, that municipal councils could be found functioning at all in the second quarter of the 6th century. Of course, as Lepelley reminds us, city councils were not comprised of people of equal social position and the tasks required of them would not have been equally burdensome for each member. Those who could count on influential ties with the central government, such as honorati, would inevitably find ways to manage and even profit from the obligations expected of them.29 The structural inequality among the various actors paradoxically helped the system to survive and cope with its contradictions. But the price paid was exactly what Cassiodorus stressed in the two letters mentioned above: cities generally lacked the power to negotiate their relationship with central government within a flexible and open political, institutional, and fiscal framework. A tightly hierarchical and centralized state structure imposed conditions from above, making demands mainly to meet the needs of the army and bureaucracy, and room for negotiation was limited to individual interactions dependent on personal prestige. With reduced local funds and little room for collective bargaining with the central government, it is unsurprising that elites would be hard pressed to view cities as attractive environments in which to spend time and invest efforts and resources. More than anything, these factors explain why municipal life declined throughout Late Antiquity, especially in the West where general economic conditions worsened visibly from the first half of the 5th century. But this was not enough to suppress completely the existence of cities. Central administration relied upon cities, and effective propaganda was necessary in order to show that, despite what one could see in everyday life, the state went to great lengths to preserve the wellfare and spirit of urban communities.30 As Cassiodorus recalled, cities incarnated the very essence of civilized Roman life and to advertise programmes that could 29  Bjornlie, “Law, ethnicity and taxes”, pp. 150–3. 30  Dubouloz, “Acception et défense”, pp. 53–74.

110

Marazzi

here and there sustain their dignity and role would ameliorate the realities that Italian cities experienced in the 6th century. As La Rocca has wittily remarked, one could say that “in order to make everything change, everything had to look as if it was all the same.”31 This picture implies that, where possible, the Ostrogothic government made (or at least claimed to have made) all possible efforts to keep the decus of Italian cities alive. Of course the first place where the effects of this attention would have been displayed was the seat of royal power, where the king resided. Four letters of the Variae (1.6, 3.9, 3.10, 5.8) disclose how Theoderic had repeatedly ordered that marbles, stones, and other building materials should be transported to Ravenna where they would have been reused for the restoration of existing buildings or the erection of new ones. The opening sentence of letter 1.6 clarifies what Theoderic had in mind. It states that it was the obligation of the prince to contribute “to the enhancement of the State with the embellishment of its palaces, obtained through new building endeavors”. In this case, the king had ordered the prefect of Rome to send to Ravenna marmorarii peritissimi, that is to say craftsmen specialized in the handling of marble, who would restore a basilica dedicated to Hercules. On another occasion, the king asks that columns and other precious stonework should be sent to the capital from other Italian cities (including Rome) because he had become aware of their disuse. To avoid misunderstandings, he stated that to raise new buildings was as important as preserving old ones, for which reason modern construction should not be made through the mutilation of those already in existence (Variae 3.9). But this stipulation could be circumvented if buildings had fallen irrecoverably into ruin and their materials abandoned to evoke nothing but sorrow and nostalgia for past grandeur. In such a case, it was appropriate for the king to make all possible efforts so that “forgotten beauty” could be appreciated again as ancient splendour.32 The rhetoric of these letters conceals the pursuit of a very practical purpose and, at the same time, reveals that there was a clear awareness of the long-term decay to which many cities had been subjected. The upkeep of the historical heritage represented a considerable challenge. Everything around Italian cities spoke of the “past splendor” of the Empire’s zenith when Italy had enjoyed a privileged fiscal regime that had allowed local communities and their most affluent members to invest resources in the “great beauty” of their cities. However, the monumentality of the past eventually became an unsustainable burden. Local councils of the 6th century had 31  La Rocca, “Una prudente maschera ‘Antiqua’ ”, p. 466. 32  Dubouloz, “Acception et défense”, pp. 53–74.

Ostrogothic Cities

111

little or nothing to invest and their notables had little incentive to contribute their own resources. The state could not lavish support on every city in need of repairs and choices had to be made about which projects to privilege. In a letter written possibly between 523 and 526 (Variae 5.9) Theoderic ordered the possessores of Feltre (modern northern Veneto) to render their contribution to the construction of a new city in the nearby area of Trento by building a portion of the new city’s walls with the use of the king’s own treasury (domus divina). It is interesting that the request does not address the city council of Feltre, but the wealthier members of the local community. It is equally remarkable that the central government apparently could not afford the cost of the whole operation and opted to distribute the expense among people who, in addition to their ‘civic’ obligations, were considered capable of lending money and manpower. Unfortunately, it is not possible to locate the settlement that corresponds to the new ‘city’ and so it is not possible to speculate on the actual nature and size of the new foundation. Nonetheless, this case illustrates how cities constituted a crucial part of the political ideology of the kingdom, while their promotion depended on a more complex range of factors than a mere assertion of ideological principles.33 On the other hand, the evidence also makes it clear that efforts were especially made in favour of those cities such as Rome and Ravenna, whose reputation was directly linked to the king’s name. Although it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of the attention dedicated to Rome and its proportionality to the needs of the urban populace, Ravenna was an easier environment to manage. It was far smaller and had enjoyed the privilege of being a capital of the (now declining) western empire for more than a century. Ravenna had therefore been the consistent concern of emperors and their officials, albeit

33  The quote given by the 7th century anonymous author of the Cosmographia (the so-called Anonymus Ravennate) regarding the existence of a city named Theodericopolis, presumably located in the Alpine region of Raetia, remains a mystery, since it is never mentioned by sources contemporary with Theoderic. However, it is possible that if such a city ever existed it might have been some kind of military outpost towards the northern frontier of the Gothic kingdom, something similar in size (but not necessarily in terms of monumental grandiosity) to the city of Iustiniana Prima founded by Justinian in southern Serbia, near to his birthplace. The possible foundation of a new city baptized in the name of the king shows once again Theoderic’s interest in portraying himself as a typical Roman ruler, capable of spreading civilization through the dissemination of new urban settlements. See Saitta, La civilitas di Teodorico, p. 117; see also Arce, “La fundación de nuevas ciudades”, pp. 31–62.

112

Marazzi

excepting the second half of the 5th century.34 In Ravenna it would have been much easier for the king to transform propaganda into reality and to present the city as a mirror to his own prestige. Some years ago Ian Wood remarked that “there is next to nothing that can be identified as being specifically Gothic in the architecture and architectural decoration of Theoderic’s Ravenna”.35 The single reasonable exception is the decorative frieze that runs around the top of the mausoleum, the ornament of which can unquestionably be paralleled to Germanic metalwork. From this point of view, it would seem that the scanty evidence still legible from Theoderic’s building activity in Ravenna describes a mimesis with both his predecessors on the western imperial throne and with his contemporaries holding power in Constantinople. The complex of the Arian cathedral and its baptistery must have looked very similar to that of the Orthodox community, both in terms of its architecture and its iconography. Even more interesting is what can be said about the original iconography of the palace church dedicated to Jesus Christ (dedicated to Saint Martin after the fall of the Ostrogoths and then renamed Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in the early Middle Ages). The building suggests a careful imitation of previous examples of imperial patronage found in Ravenna (mainly the churches of the Holy Cross and of San Giovanni Evangelista built by Galla Placidia and her son Valentinian III), with emphasis on the relationship between the ruler and the celestial powers and on the ruler’s role as acting intermediary between heaven and earth.36 The use of sculpted materials ordered from Constantinople for its decoration testifies to the blending of old imperial western iconography with a studied interest in the architectural tastes displayed in what was the contemporary solium imperii. With this in mind, it should be remembered that the construction of the church of San Vitale (and likewise the famous mosaic panels portraying Justinian and Theodora), typically associated with the decades after the Byzantine recovery of Italy, in fact commenced under bishops Ecclesius and Victor between the third and the fourth decade of the 6th century.37 In other words, it can be assumed without fear of straying too far from reality that Ravenna served not as the capital of ‘barbarians’, but rather the site where an Ostrogothic king had been able to attain the supreme power, dignity, and splendour that had once belonged to Roman emperors. Whether or not 34  Gelichi, “Ravenna, ascesa e declino”, pp. 109–34; Augenti, Palatia; Cirelli, Ravenna, pp. 51–140; David, La basilica di Santa Croce. 35  Wood, “Theoderic’s Monuments”, p. 250. 36  Wood, “Theoderic’s Monuments”, pp. 255–60. 37  Cirelli, Ravenna, pp. 98–100.

Ostrogothic Cities

113

this belief was entirely shared by Theoderic’s Roman contemporaries (particularly the Roman inhabitants of Ravenna) cannot be said with certainty. Nevertheless, the king made every possible effort to impress them with a display of power that was infused with his personality, but which also communicated seamless continuity with the imperial past.

The Invisible Guest: Church and City in Ostrogothic Italy

Theoderic’s building programme in Ravenna indicates a distinct interest in church building. Nonetheless, one of the most striking features of the Variae is the absence of reference to the king’s activities on behalf of church maintenance or building.38 This omission has been explained by noting the king’s cautious attitude towards religious matters. Given that he and his people were Arian Christians, it may be that he did not wish to (or could not) act as Roman emperors had done by favouring the Nicene church.39 In fact all churches in Ravenna bearing some direct relationship with him pertain either to the palatial compound or to the place prepared for his burial. The Arian cathedral must have been supported by and associated with the king, but there is no clear evidence for his patronage of building activities concerning the erection of other Arian churches in Ravenna or elsewhere. On the one hand, as Thomas Brown noted, one can also detect a clear abatement in the construction of new Nicene churches at Ravenna during Theoderic’s reign.40 On the other, there is no indication that an anti-Nicene policy had caused any hindrance to the construction of new churches.41 Renewed interest in church building at Rome during this period is indicated by the erection of the two churches of S Stefano Rotondo (in the second half of the 5th century) and SS Cosmas e Damian (under pope Felix IV in the late 520s). It then seems that bishops and churchmen could maintain the prominent spiritual, political, and economic position gained during the 4th and 5th centuries, thus representing one of the major players within contemporary Italian society.42 At the dawn of the 6th century a bishop could be found in almost every Italian city. The Italian diocesan network had become well developed 38  Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 248–49. 39  Azzara, Teoderico, pp. 67–73. However, see Lizzi Testa, Chapter 16, in this volume for an alternative interpretation of Theoderic’s relationship with the Nicene churches. 40  Brown, “Role of Arianism”, pp. 423–42. 41  Pietri, “Aristocrazie e clero”, pp. 287–310. 42  Otranto, “Civitates propriis”, pp. 33–43.

114

Marazzi

between the late 4th and the first half of the 5th century.43 Giorgio Otranto has calculated that by 450 some 250 episcopal bishoprics were active, with a remarkable disproportion between the Italia Suburbicaria (central—southern Italy), which contained about 75 per cent of Italian bishoprics, and the Italia Annonaria (the Po Valley and the Alpine region).44 It is well known that the Italian peninsula had been more densely urbanized from earliest antiquity, with Greek and Phoenician colonies and the rise of Etruscan urban centres pre-dating the rise of Rome and its municipia. By contrast, nearly all towns of northern Italy had been created by the Romans from the 2nd century BC with Rome’s expansion beyond the Apennines. Since most late antique dioceses in Italy are attested only incidentally in the sources, it is impossible to say whether Otranto’s estimation can be considered representative of steady diocesan development or whether these bishoprics were only intermittently active. The signatures of bishops from the three synods at Rome between 499 and 502, although presumably not representing the entire body of the Italian Nicene church, provide a good indication for the territorial distribution of episcopal sees. With some exceptions, the signatures name bishops coming from central and southern Italy, which vary between 65 and 76 bishops for each meeting. Not every bishopric is attested consistently, although it is possible to enumerate a total of 120 attested bishoprics. The survey of sources dating between Theoderic’s conquest and the end of the Gothic Wars made by Tabata increases this figure to 171 bishoprics.45 The diffusion of bishoprics in late antique Italy clearly demonstrates that cities had not lost their central function as administrative centres. Comparing this picture with evidence for problems faced by cities in this period reveals the transformation process experienced by the Italian urban network from another perspective. It is quite apparent that every episcopal see (even the smaller ones) was an entity dependent on a firm economic foundation. Money was required to support the bishop and clergy, for the maintenance of churches and other functional buildings, and for the management of all the charitable activities in the urban setting. This distribution of church resources to four types of expenditure—bishop, clergy, buildings, and charity—the so-called quadripartitus, is commonly attributed to Gelasius I, whose episcopacy at Rome (492–96) corresponded with the early years of Theoderic’s reign. In earlier years there had been much contention (mainly in Rome) about whether 43  Lizzi Testa, Chapter 17 in this volume, presents an extensive discussion of the diocesean networks in Ostrogothic Italy. 44  Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica Cristiana, pp. 93–6. 45  Tabata, Città dell’Italia, pp. 339–59.

Ostrogothic Cities

115

individual benefactors should have any residual rights over how properties they had donated to the church should be used by bishops and other churchmen. Regulations issued by Gelasius have been considered a response to donors’ ability to interfere with church administration through the arrogation into the bishop’s hands of the ultimate power to decide, by a clear set of rules, how to use available resources. The protracted and violent conflicts between Gelasius’ successor Symmachus and his opponent Lawrence were caused by the wish of a powerful faction within the Senate of Rome to reverse Gelasius’ policy and to establish at Rome a bishop who would prove more receptive to the influence of Roman aristocrats over the administration of the sizeable patrimony that the see of Rome had accumulated over nearly two centuries since Constantine began favouring Christianity.46 Struggles between the supporters of the two candidates, and the attendant disruption caused in Rome, occasioned the only instance in which Theoderic intervened in affairs of the Nicene church. Theoderic mediated between the two factions, attempting to ameliorate heated passions, although it is interesting that at some stage he sided with the Laurentian faction, which claimed Symmachus had squandered episcopal finances. Symmachus apparently favoured the ‘Gelasian’ method for administrating church patrimonies. The schism indicates that the matter of church finances could not be left entirely in the bishop’s hands and that those like the members of the Roman aristocracy who had acted as benefactors to the church, should not have been deprived of an active role in the management of their donations. The church was clearly the focus of political contention because of its finances, and at Rome the conflict was particularly heated because it was the wealthiest of the Italian bishoprics. However, a provincial Italian city like Canosa (Canusium, the main centre of late antique Apulia), reveals more or less the same picture. In the later years of Ostrogothic rule its bishop Sabinus (perhaps since 514, but certainly from 531 to 552) acted not only as the most prominent local political figure, but also as the most dynamic patron of city decor and invested conspicuous amounts of money in the renewal of Canosa’s urban landscape.47 Of course he interpreted his role from a particularly Christian perspective and, as demonstrated by recent archaeological investigation, his efforts focused on the construction of new churches and a number of non-ritual buildings directly connected with

46  Cessi, “Lo scisma laurenziano”, pp. 1–229; Pietri, “Le Sénat, le peuple chrétien”, pp. 122–40; Pietri, “Aristocratie et société cléricale”, pp. 417–67; Marazzi, I “Patrimonia”, pp. 47–78. 47  Volpe, “Architecture”, pp. 131–68; Volpe, “Venerabilis vir restaurator”, pp. 23–52.

116

Marazzi

them.48 Nevertheless, it is impressive how quickly he brought to completion the works he had planned, including an extremely elaborate construction, the tetraconch church of San Leucio—the architecture of which finds parallels in a number of similar buildings in the eastern Mediterranean (between Syria, Greece, and Macedonia) and is comparable to the Milanese church of Saint Lawrence built at the end of the 4th century under imperial patronage.49 Although gifted with a charismatic personality that may have helped him gain widespread support for his endeavours, it should be remembered that Sabinus was still the bishop of a middling town of southern Italy, something that makes his achievements even more remarkable. Evidence for building programmes undertaken by local churches indicates that despite a prolonged process of economic transformation a good deal of resources remained that could be invested in urban environment. Of course these resources now rested in hands quite different in social and cultural terms from those that had contributed to the classical foundation of many Italian cities. Much had changed by the 6th century and the stage was now occupied by actors whose influence on the urban scene depended on power derived from sources outside the traditional dynamics of municipal institutions. The so-called ‘Indian summer’ of Theoderic’s reign lasted too short (the span of barely two generations) to allow the full fruition of some aspects of urban development outlined in these pages. It is impossible to say whether in the long term Gothic aristocrats would have played a more active role in urban life and whether they would have conformed to late Roman customs in the patronage of urban buildings, spaces, and churches. As previously mentioned, there is little evidence for their interaction with cities and this could contribute to notions that they might not have been deeply interested in urban activities. However, it is clear that the central government actively urged local communities to maintain and improve cities. Much of what can be read, for example, in Cassiodorus’ letters can be interpreted as propaganda when compared with the archaeological record of many Italian cities at the dawn of the 6th century. Then again, it is difficult to say what the results would have been had the Ostrogoths had more time to consolidate their position before the showdown with the eastern empire. What is true is that when Justinian ordered that public buildings of Rome should be repaired and maintained in 554 with his Pragmatic Sanction (section 25) he referred to damage done not by 48  Giuliani, “Modificazioni dei quadri urbani”, pp. 129–66; Giuliani/Leone/Volpe, “L’area sacra di San Giovanni”, pp. 731–42. 49  Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals, pp. 129–48; D’Alessio/Gallocchio/Manganelli/ Pensabene, “La basilica di San Leucio”, pp. 677–85.

Ostrogothic Cities

117

the neglect of the Goths, but by the consequences of the war he had unleashed over Italy.50 Whatever the results of the attention given to cities in Italy by Theoederic and his successors, they had surely been obliterated by an incarnation of the same empire whose traditions and example the king had held so high during his reign. Bibliography

Secondary Literature

Arce, J., “La fundación de nuevas ciudades en el Imperio romano tardío: de Diocleciano a Justiniano (s. IV–VI)”, in G. Ripoll/J.M. Gurt (eds.), Sedes regiae (ann. 400–800), Barcelona 2000, pp. 31–62. Augenti, A. (ed.), Palatia. Palazzi imperiali tra Ravenna e Bisanzio, Ferrara 2002. Azzara, C., Teoderico. Storia e mito di un re barbaro, Bologna 2013. Baldini Lippolis, I., L’architettura residenziale nelle città tardoantiche, Roma 2005. Baratte, J.F., Tunisia e Libia. L’Africa settentrionale in epoca romana, Milano 2014 (originally published in German as Die Römer in Tunisia und Lybia. Nordafrika in Römischer Zeit, Mainz 2012). Bjornlie, S., Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople. A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527–554, Cambridge 2012. ———, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes in Ostrogothic Italy: A Case for Continuity, Adaptation and Departure”, Early Medieval Europe 22.2 (2014), 138–69. Brogiolo, G.P./Gelichi, S., Nuove ricerche sui castelli altomedievali in Italia settentrionale, Firenze 1996. Brogiolo, G.P./Possenti, E., “L’età gota in Italia settentrionale, nella transizione tra tarda antichità e alto medioevo”, in P. Delogu (ed.), Le invasioni barbariche nel meridione dell’impero: Visigoti, Vandali, Ostrogoti, Soveria Mannelli 2001, pp. 257–96. Brogiolo, G.P., “Dwellings and Settlement in Gothic Italy”, in S.J.B. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths, from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 113–42. ———, Le origini della città medievale, Mantova 2011. Brown, T.S., “The Role of Arianism in Ostrogothic Italy: The Evidence from Ravenna”, in S.J.B. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths, from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 423–42. Cecconi, G.A., “Honorati, possessores, curiales: competenze istituzionali e gerarchie di rango nell’età tardoantica”, in R. Lizzi Testa (ed.), Le trasformazioni delle élites nell’età tardoantica, Rome 2006, pp. 41–64. 50  Coates-Stephens, “La committenza edilizia bizantina”, pp. 299–316.

118

Marazzi

———, La città e l’impero. Una storia del mondo romano dalle origini a Teodosio il Grande, Rome 2009. Cessi, R., “Lo scisma laurenziano e le origini della dottrina politica della Chiesa di Roma”, Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 42 (1919), 1–229. Cirelli, E., Ravenna. Archeologia di una città, Firenze 2008. Coates-Stephens, R., “La committenza edilizia bizantina a Roma dopo la riconquista”, in A. Augenti (ed.), Le città italiane tra la tarda antichità e l’alto medioevo, Firenze 2006, pp. 299–316. D’Alessio, A./Gallocchio, E./Manganelli, L./Pensabene, P., “La basilica di San Leucio a Canosa di Puglia. Fasi edilizie, apparati musivi, necropolis”, in A. Coscarella/P. De Santis (eds.), Martiri, santi, patroni. Per un’archeologia della devozione. Atti X Congresso Nazionale di Archeologia Cristiana, Cosenza 2012, pp. 677–85. David, M. (ed.), La basilica di Santa Croce. Nuovi contributi per Ravenna tardoantica, Ravenna 2013. Dubouloz, J., “Acception et défense des loca publica, d’après les Variae de Cassiodore. Un point de vue juridique sur les cités d’Italie au VIe siècle”, in M. Ghilardi/C.J. Goddard/P. Porena (eds.), Les cités de l’Italie tardo-antique (IVe–VIe siècle). Institutions, économie, société, culture et religion, Rome/Paris 2006, pp. 53–74. Fauvinet-Ranson, V., Decor civitatis, decor Italiae. Monuments, travaux publics et spectacles au VIe siècle d’après les Variae de Cassiodore, Bari 2006. Gelichi, S., “Ravenna, ascesa e declino di una capital”, in G. Ripoll/J.M. Gurt (eds.), Sedes regiae (ann. 400–800), Barcelona 2000, pp. 109–34. Giuliani, R., “Modificazioni dei quadri urbani e formazione di nuovi modelli di edilizia abitativa nelle città dell’Apulia tardoantica. Il contributo delle tecniche costruttive”, in G. Volpe/R. Giuliani (eds.), Paesaggi e insediamenti urbani in Italia Meridionale fra tardoantico e altomedioevo, Bari 2010, pp. 129–66. Giuliani, R./Leone, D./Volpe, G., “L’area sacra di San Giovanni a Canosa di Puglia dalla tarda antichità al medioevo”, in A. Coscarella/P. De Santis (eds.), Martiri, santi, patroni. Per un’archeologia della devozione. Atti X Congresso Nazionale di Archeologia Cristiana, Cosenza 2012, pp. 731–42. Hejimans, M., “La place des monuments publics du Haut-Empire dans les villes de la Gaule méridionale Durant l’Antiquité Tardive (IVe-VIe siècles)”, Gallia 63 (2006), 25–41. Janvier, Y., La legislation du Bas-Empire Romain sur les edifices publics, Aix-en-Provence 1969. Krautheimer, R., Tre capitali cristiane. Topografia e politica, Torino 1987 (originally published in English as Three Christian Capitals. Topography and Politics, Berkeley/Los Angeles/ London 1983). La Rocca, C., “Una prudente maschera ‘antiqua’. La politica edilizia di Teoderico”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia, Spoleto 1993, pp. 451–515.

Ostrogothic Cities

119

Laniado, A., Recherches sur les notables municipaux dans l’Empire protobyzantin, Paris 2002. Lepelley, C., “La survie de l’idée de cité republicaine en Italie au début du VIe siècle, dans un édit d’Athalaric rédigé par Cassiodore (Variae, IX, 2)”, in C. Lepelley (ed.), La fin de la cité antique et le début de la cité médiévale. De la fin du IIIe siècle à l’avenement de Charlemagne, Bari 1996, pp. 71–84. Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.G., The Decline and Fall of the Roman City, Oxford 2001. Marano, Y.A., “Domus in qua manebat episcopus: Episcopal Residences in Northern Italy during Late Antiquity (4th to 6th centuries AD)”, in L. Lavan/L. Özgenel/ A. Sarantis (eds.), Housing in Late Antiquity. From Palaces to Shops, Leiden 2007, pp. 97–130. Marazzi, F., I “Patrimonia Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae” nel Lazio (secoli IV–X). Struttura amministrativa e prassi gestionali, Rome 1998. ———, “Cadavera urbium, nuove capitali e Roma Aeterna: l’identità urbana in Italia fra crisi, rinascita e propaganda (secoli III–V)”, in J.U. Krause/C. Witschel (eds.), Die Stadt in der Spätantike: Niedergang oder Wandel?, Stuttgart 2006, pp. 33–66. Otranto, G., Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica cristiana, Bari 2009. ———, “Civitates propriis destitutae rectoribus: città, giurisdizione e territorio diocesano nel V secolo”, in G. Volpe/R. Giuliani (eds.), Paesaggi e insediamenti urbani in Italia Meridionale fra tardoantico e altomedioevo, Bari 2010, pp. 33–43. Pietri, C., “Le Sénat, le peuple chrétien et les partis du cirque à Rome sous le pape Symmaque (498–514)”, Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire 78 (1966), 122–40. ———, “Aristocratie et société cléricale dans l’Italie chrétienne au temps d’Odoacre et de Théodoric”, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, Antiquité 93.1 (1981), 417–67. ———, “Aristocrazia e clero al tempo di Odoacre e di Teoderico”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.1: Dall’età bizantina all’età ottoniana. Territorio, economia e società, Venezia 1991, pp. 287–310. Porena, P., L’insediamento degli Ostrogoti in Italia, Roma 2012. Raimondo, C., “Le città dei Bruttii fra tarda Antichità e Altomedioevo: nuove osservazioni sulla base delle fonti archeologiche”, in A. Augenti (ed.), Le città italiane tra la tarda antichità e l’alto medioevo, Firenze 2006, pp. 519–98. Saitta, B., La civilitas di Teodorico. Rigore amministrativo, “tolleranza” religiosa e recupero dell’antico nell’Italia ostrogota, Rome 1993. Tabata, K., Città dell’Italia nel VI secolo d.C., Rome 2013. Tate, G., Giustiniano. Il tentativo di rifondazione dell’Impero, Rome 2006 (originally published in French as Justinien. L’épopée de l’Empire d’Orient [527–565], Paris 2004). Volpe, G., “Architecture and Church Power in Late Antiquity: Canosa and San Giusto (Apulia)”, in L. Lavan/L. Özgenel/A. Sarantis (eds.), Housing in Late Antiquity. From Palaces to Shops, Leiden 2007, pp. 131–68.

120

Marazzi

———, “Venerabilis vir restaurator ecclesiarum”, in L. Bertoldi Lenoci (ed.), Canosa. Ricerche storiche 2007, Martina Franca 2008, pp. 23–52. Ward-Perkins, B., The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford 2005. Wood, I., Theoderic’s Monuments in Ravenna, in S.J.B. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths, from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 249–78.

CHAPTER 6

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy Christine Radtki Introduction Several sources report Theoderic’s solemn entry into the city of Rome in the form of an adventus to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his reign in the year 500.1 The Anonymus Valesianus in particular indicates the detailed course of this celebration.2 After having contributed to the restoration of peace within the Roman church, Theoderic entered Rome first to visit the tomb of Saint Peter. On his way to the city he was approached by the pope, the entire Senate, and the Roman people. Immediately after his entry he visited the Senate, addressed the people at a place called ad palmam, and promised to follow the model of the previous emperors in all his deeds. Furthermore, he distributed grain and allocated money for the renovation of the city walls.3 We know nothing about the exact procedure of the games that took place, but the fact that Theoderic staged games says much about his concept of rulership or, better, about his endeavour to be in dialogue with his subjects. The Roman Senate played an important role in this strategy of communication. By preserving the previous structure of the prefecture of Italy, Theoderic accepted the existing Roman administration together with its still valid and functioning political organs. Following his declaration of imitatio imperii, found at the beginning of the Variae,4 Theoderic kept the differentiated structure of provinces and the specialized bureaucracy needed for it.5 He did not remove Roman institutions, nor did he completely recast them, but instead layered Gothic institutions onto the Roman. To the Roman bureaucracy was added the comitiva Gothorum, adapted from the military structure of the Gothic army. The king embodied the central administration together with a set of viri 1  Ensslin, Theoderich, pp. 107ff., Wolfram, Die Goten, pp. 288ff., Vitiello, Momenti di Roma ostrogota, pp. 39ff., Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 204–9. 2  Anonymus Valesianus 65–67, ed. König. 3  See also Paulus Diaconus, Historia Romana. 15.18, ed. Droysen. 4  Cassiodorus, Variae 1.1.3, ed. Mommsen. 5  Wolfram, Die Goten, pp. 290ff. See also the chapters in the present volume on the Ostrogothic provinces by Arnold and the Ostrogothic administration by Bjornlie.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_007

122

Radtki

­illustres. This administration was presided over by the magister officiorum, who exercised jurisdiction over subordinate officers and functioned as master of ceremonies. At his side worked the quaestor sacri palatii who was in charge of diplomatic correspondence and of issuing laws, edicts, and letters of appointment. The provincial administration presided over by the praefectus praetorio remained without major alterations of competence.6 Because of Theoderic’s wish to continue Roman tradition, the dignity and power of the oldest political committee, the Senate, was preserved, even if in restricted fashion. According to the Variae, Theoderic intended to involve the Senate with his decisions, thereby presenting himself as a respectful preserver of the ­political and institutional order (vindex libertatis) that envisioned a participatory Senate.7 Before covering the political, economic, and cultural role of the Senate and its members in the Ostrogothic period, a brief examination of the Senate’s development in Late Antiquity and under Theoderic’s predecessor, Odovacer, is provided in order to clarify who constituted the ‘Senate’ and what differentiated a more general elite with senatorial status, the ordo senatorius, from members of the Senate.

The Late Antique Senate

With regard to the Senate’s political position and its constitution, the developments of Late Antiquity continued a set of processes that had begun in the early principate. Already at that time the Senate had lost a considerable amount of power and influence to the newly installed princeps, but nonetheless kept its social prestige and its role as the central decision-making body. Within Late Antiquity further changes occurred. Although Constantine valued the Senate, he changed its composition in a crucial way by installing the clarissimate as a new broadened upper class involving the equestrian elite and the municipal aristocracy.8 Furthermore, he created a second Senate in Constantinople.9 Instead of the classical hierarchy of offices, a new 6  Ausbüttel, Theoderich, p. 80. 7  See e.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 1.3, 1.4, 1.12, 1.13, 1.30, 1.42–44, ed. Mommsen or for more examples Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 209f. 8  Panegyrici Latini 2(12).20.1, ed. Müller-Rettig. 9  There is considerable scholarship on this aspect, but given this chapter’s focus on the 6th century, the references here are limited to general introductions on the Senate under Constantine, such as Heather, “New Men” and “Senators and Senates”.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

123

distribution was i­mplemented with the ranks of clarissimus, spectabilis, and illustris. From the year 440 onwards, only the highest rank, viri illustres,10 sat in the curia and were entitled to vote.11 Traditionally, the majority of the senators received their rank through inheritance. Since the time of the principate, sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons in the male line had been counted within the ordo senatorius by birth. Over the course of Late Antiquity, this political and social elite turned into an ever more closed circle that no longer included the real ‘policy-makers’ such as the Germanic rulers who were involved in Roman affairs throughout the 4th and 5th centuries. This development led to the further deflation of the Senate’s political power. Changes in the numbers of active Senate members also impacted its position. While the number of active senators at Rome had increased significantly (perhaps to as many as 2000) under Constantine,12 it had decreased substantially by the Ostrogothic period to 110 active members.13 Additionally, because of the city of Rome’s diminished role as an imperial capital, the Senate lost its former position as an imperial institution and gradually transformed into a municipal council under the control of the praefectus urbi.14 It is hard to define precisely the Senate’s role in politics and administration in Late Antiquity. In addition to managing basic administrative needs at Rome, the Senate could be used to disseminate laws (leges generales). The senatus consulta were still valid, but needed the emperor’s confirmation to be implemented. Thus the Senate could not act as an independent legislative 10  See below for which offices would lead to the status of vir illustris. 11  For a broad overview of the late antique Senate and its composition see Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 329–33 and 523–62. 12  Whether or not it increased its number up to 2000 members is questionable, as it is based on a speech given by Themistius half a century later. See Themistius, Orationes 14.13, ed. Schenkl/Downey/Norman; Chastagnol, Sénat Romain, p. 45, who considers this number to be correct. For further details see Näf, Senatorisches Standesbewusstsein, p. 14. 13  Demandt, Spätantike, p. 256. For all of the following prosopographic data see Sundwall, Abhandlungen, pp. 84ff., Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 9ff. and Martindale, Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). 14  Kierdorf, Senatus, p. 404. For the special position of the city of Rome with regard to its administration, presided over by the praefectus urbi, see Demandt, Spätantike, pp. 349f. This diminished role of Rome as a capital becomes evident if the overall development from the early principate into Late Antiquity is taken into consideration, even though Gillett demonstrates that a number of 5th-century emperors ruled from Rome on a permanent and semi-permanent basis. See Gillett, “Rome, Ravenna and the Last Western Emperors”, passim and Bulgarella, “Il senato”, p. 125.

124

Radtki

body,15 and it was rarely called upon to debate important political issues (and in those rare cases it was its moral support that was sought).16 The late antique Senate gathered on twenty-five days per year with fifty members required as the minimum for a quorum. We do not know much about the content of their meetings, but we possess the verbatim record of the proceedings in the Senate when the Theodosian Code was promulgated as a body of law in 438, indicating a detailed procedure of acclamations after the senatorial discussion and decision-making.17 In the year 446 the Senate was officially given permission by Theodosius II and Valentinian III to participate in legislative activity, but it is not certain whether this was simply a token gesture.18 Compared to its previous role as a constitutional body, the late antique Senate’s political power was very limited. However, because of its role in the history of the early Roman republic, the Senate remained an institution that conferred the dignity of tradition and a degree of legitimacy to the state.19 New emperors could exploit this legitimating role during episodes of a succession crisis. As a consequence, although the western Roman Senate lacked actual power, it retained considerable political importance during various crises of the 5th century. For the western Roman emperors after Valentinian III, the Senate became a source of stability and, next to the army and the eastern Roman emperor, remained an important legitimating instrument. Magistri militum like Stilicho, Aetius, and Ricimer were well aware of this and therefore strove for cooperation with the Senate, and individual actions by certain emperors/magistri militum are known that strengthened the Senate’s position (e.g. Maiorian withdrew the control over construction work from the praefectus urbi to give it to the Senate).20 In addition to that, a number of 5th-century emperors were even drawn from the Roman Senate, e.g. Attalus, Maximus, and Olybrius.21 As John Matthews fittingly observed, “viewing the Roman Senate of the time of Odovacer and Theoderic, one might have been forgiven for m ­ istaking 15  Henning, Periclitans, p. 271. For a general overview of the western Roman Senate’s development in Late Antiquity see Henning, Periclitans, pp. 271ff., Näf, Senatorisches Standesbewusstsein, and Chastagnol, Sénat Romain. 16  Jones, Later Roman Empire, p. 329. 17  Codex Theodosianus (cited hereafter as CTh), Gesta Senatus. For a detailed description of this record see Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 330f. and Demandt, Spätantike, p. 255. 18  Codex Justinianus (hereafter CJ) 1.14.8. 19  Otherwise there would be no explanation for Constantine also establishing a Senate in his new capital. See Henning, Periclitans, p. 271 and Matthews, Western Aristocracies. 20  Nov. Maiorian 4 (458); Henning, Periclitans, p. 273. 21  This is an observation corresponding to the growing significance of the Senate within the context of a contracting imperial court newly relocated to Italy, see Gillett, “Rome, Ravenna and the Last Western Emperors”, pp. 148ff.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

125

it for the Senate of the late Republic, as a few great families dominated the public life of the city”.22 It was the members of the old senatorial families who formed the senatorial elite—a relatively exclusive pool of people open to few new members. In the absence of an emperor the Roman elite of Italy were apt hands at putting themselves in the limelight of imperial power, and saw themselves, in spite (or indeed because) of the absence of an emperor, as the centrepiece of the imperium romanum.23 One of the most numerous, prosperous, and socially outstanding families was the Decii, a noble family tracing its origins back to republican times. Its members were, with few exceptions, courted with consulships at very early stages of their careers.24 Another very influential family, with a number of important branches, were the Anicii, probably the most prominent and well-researched family.25 Other traditional families who still held relevance in the 5th and 6th centuries were, to mention only the most important ones, the Petronii, the Ceionii, the Lampadii, the Symmachi, the Acilii Glabriones, and the Corvini.26 The importance of all these families was based on the possession of huge estates. The research done on those families has often emphasized the open rivalries between the different gentes. As Alan Cameron has shown, though, certain rivalries had more to do with particular individuals than with the involvement of whole familial groups.27 It is therefore problematic to assume that the Anicii were per se a ‘philobarbarian’ and the Decii a ‘probyzantine’ family, even though a certain pattern of preferences among family members can be analysed by examining the awarding of offices by Odovacer and Theoderic. The rivalries that existed between the families have to be regarded not so much as ideologically motivated, but rather as a result of antagonism between established and less-established families and between a Rome-focused aristocracy and a new palatine elite at the Ravennatic court. The modern reconstruction of the senatorial groups and the constitution of the Roman senatorial elite after the year 476 thus show a complex situation of single interests and favours often based

22  Matthews, “Boethius”, p. 19. 23  In this context, consider the manner in which Boethius celebrated and staged the consulship of his two sons: Boethius, Philosophiae Consolatio 1.4, ed. Bieler; MacCormack, “Latin Prose Panegyrics”, pp. 188f. 24  For examples see Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 149ff. 25  See especially Cameron, “Anician myths”. Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 124–34. 26  Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 149ff. For figures of major families in offices of senatorial rank from the death of Theodosius I to the post-Theoderican Gothic period see Barnish, “Transformation and Survival”, pp. 124ff. 27  Cameron, “Anician Myths”.

126

Radtki

on economic issues.28 What can be said in any case is that all aristocrats living under Odovacer and the Ostrogothic kings collaborated with their barbarian masters to their own profit.

The Senate under Odovacer

It is in the context of the interplay between the prestige of the senatorial elite and the legitimization of rule in Italy that Odovacer and Theoderic’s behaviours must be understood. Both rulers used the senatorial elite to negotiate the legitimacy of their respective positions with the eastern Roman emperor. The period of Odovacer’s reign can be seen as a peak in the courting of the Senate and its members—a development that had started in the years of crisis in the mid 5th century in the western half of the empire. Odovacer’s first official act was to dispatch a senatorial embassy to the emperor Zeno asking for the title patricius and for his acceptance as ruler of the prefecture of Italy.29 Odovacer’s unclear legal position played a crucial role because it demanded a multilayered legitimization on the part of the domestic elites, the deposed emperor Nepos, and the eastern Roman emperor. His first step was to seek the support of the local elites and the senators, many of whom were willing to represent Odovacer’s interests in Constantinople from the very beginning. Following a description given by Malchus, in the year 476 a delegation made up of senators and several of Odovacer’s confidants reached the imperial court and announced that there was no need for a western emperor and that they had chosen Odovacer as their guardian instead. They requested that Zeno confirm their election by bestowing on Odovacer the honour of the patriciate and conferring on him the leadership of the prefecture of Italy.30 The Senate thus functioned as a legitimate messenger for the announcement of a usurper.31 The senatorial elite came to terms with Odovacer quite quickly in exchange for a liberal disposition in the distribution of high administrative offices. Furthermore, Odovacer honoured the Senate and its tradition. 28  See especially Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 141ff.; Chastagnol, La préfecture urbaine, pp. 187ff. 29  For details with regard to Odovacer’s person and career see Henning, Periclitans, pp. 58ff. Zeno effectively accepted Odovacer, but directed him to Nepos to gain the title; see Malchus, FHG (Fragmente der griechischen Historiker) 4, p. 119, frag. 10 = frag. 14, ed. Blockley. Bulgarella, “Il senato”, p. 126 notes: “La decadenza dell’lmpero d’Occidente emanava, almeno formalmente, da un voto del Senato di Roma, contrario a ripristinarne la parvenza sotto un fantoccio d’imperatore”. 30  Malchus, frag. 14, ed. Blockley; Henning, Periclitans, pp. 60f. 31  For the several phases of legitimization see Henning, Periclitans, pp. 60ff.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

127

For example, the senatorial embassy of 476 was entitled to act autonomously, not simply as Odovacer’s delegation. He also avoided emphasizing his power too strongly when it came to his self-representation. He did not wear imperial vestments, he forewent certain imperial reminiscences within his title, and he used a building project in Rome more to court the Senate than to promote ­himself.32 Odovacer’s official and ostentatious respect for the traditional assembly must have granted him sympathy, of which we can possibly get a glimpse in the Anonymus Valesianus, which describes Odovacer as praised by nobiles.33 Additionally, he strengthened the Senate’s position by partially depriving the praefectus urbi of his power. Under the emperors, the prefect of Rome had possessed many competences and functioned as the president of the Senate. The prefect’s dependency on the single emperor by whom he was elected and for whom he functioned as a kind of point man had brought the possessor of this office discredit. Through depriving the office of the praefectus urbi and establishing the office of the caput senatus, to whom he gave some of the former’s competences, Odovacer supported the Senate in its wish to act more independently. This new office was given according to the principle of seniority to the eldest living senator and was therefore out of the emperor’s reach and influence. Furthermore, Odovacer bestowed the Senate with the right to mint coins and to lobby the church (although possibly only theoretically and as part of a royal campaign, respectively).34 Finally, he secured Sicily from the Vandals, an island full of senatorial estates, and made it accessible to the senators once again.35 As a consequence, with the continuation of the western line of consulship in the year 479—if not earlier—the Senate at Rome was on Odovacer’s side.36

Senatorial Composition and Membership in the Ostrogothic Period

To analyse the Senate’s position under the reign of the Ostrogothic kings it is necessary to define the circle of aristocrats sitting in the curia, because not all 32  Henning, Periclitans, p. 179; Chastagnol, Le Sénat Romain, pp. 24ff.; Näf, Senatorisches Standesbewusstsein, p. 195. 33  Anonymus Valesianus 48, ed. König; additionally see Eugippius, Vita Sancti Severini 32, ed. Sauppe. 34  Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 253f. 35  Henning, Periclitans, pp. 178f and 274; Chastagnol, La préfecture urbaine à Rome, pp. 66–8. 36  For a chronological analysis of the list of office holders showing distinct phases in Odovacer’s relationship with aristocratic families see Henning, Periclitans, pp. 178f. and Sundwall, Abhandlungen, pp. 180ff.

128

Radtki

members of the senatorial elite would automatically have earned the right to speak within the assembly. In fact, as in the East, only men with the rank of illustris had a seat and a voice in the Senate.37 Clarissimi and spectabiles were excluded from this privilege, although they might have been allowed to attend the meetings within the curia as mere listeners.38 In general, holding the highest public offices granted the rank of illustris. Designation as consul, patricius, praefectus praetorio, praefectus urbis Romae, quaestor sacri palatii, magister officiorum, comitiva sacrarum largitionum, the comitiva rerum privatarum, and the comitiva patrimonii provided this rank. In addition, the king could elevate a candidate per codicillum vacans into the rank of a former consul, prefect, or quaestor, so that he might gain the title of vir illustris and the right to vote in the Senate even without having actually held the office. The bestowal of the illustres offices was the king’s prerogative; it was even possible for him to appoint someone to the Senate directly.39 In this regard, Theoderic obviously depended upon the practices of earlier Roman emperors, which granted him significant influence over the membership of the assembly.40 With very few exceptions, however, Ostrogothic nobles bestowed with the title of vir illustris were not allowed in the curia, since being a member of this traditional assembly required Roman citizenship.41 On the basis of prosopographical data for these office holders, it is possible to estimate 110 members of the Senate for the period between 490 and 540.42

37  In this I am following the detailed analysis undertaken by Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 1ff. 38  Cassiodorus, Variae 7.37, ed. Mommsen indicates this with “atque ideo te spectabilitatis nitore decoramus, ut sententiam tuam in conventibus publicis spectandam esse cognoscas, cum inter nobiles decorus assederis . . . ” For further details see Cracco Ruggini, “Il senato fra due crisi”, p. 347. 39  See the “Formula de his qui referendi sunt in senatu” (Cassiodorus, Variae 6.14, ed. Mommsen). 40  Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 2–3; Cracco Ruggini, “Il Senato fra due crisi”, pp. 347–8. 41  One, but not the only example, was the Goth Tuluin, who was accepted into the curia after his promotion to patricius praesentalis. See Cassiodorus Variae 8.9–11, ed. Mommsen, PLRE II, p. 1132, Sundwall, Abhandlungen, p. 261, Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, p. 8. Other examples include Arigern (Martindale, PLRE II, pp. 141f.) and Eutharic (PLRE II, p. 438), consul of the year 519. 42  See all these men enlisted in Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 9–117.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy



129

Senatorial Curricula

As Matthews has shown, two types of senatorial biographies appear under Ostrogothic rule in Italy, best exemplified by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius43 and Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator.44 With Boethius, we find a ‘classical’ senator characterized by a typical career in public offices (consul ordinarius sine collegam in 510, magister officiorum in 522), the maintenance of a long family tradition, and a focus on Rome in his life and work. Especially in the Ostrogothic period, a second career type can be identified, eminently seen in the case of the long-standing court officer Cassiodorus.45 The family of the Cassiodori can be viewed as social climbers, newcomers to the late antique senatorial aristocracy.46 Members of this family were long associated with service to the western emperors and their successors in Ravenna.47 As with members of the traditional aristocracy, the Cassidori were affiliated with the Senate in Rome. The centre of their political service, however, became oriented on political life of Ravenna.48 Members of the Cassiodori were in palatine service for four generations, and Cassiodorus Senator and his father enjoyed direct contact with Odovacer and Theoderic. These positions allowed them to work in the direct surroundings of these kings and to exert influence on their rule as mediators of Roman norms and values, as Cassiodorus himself describes it in Variae. 1.4.49 It seems career progression at the royal court in Ravenna created new opportunities to members of the senatorial elite, especially to members of less-established families.50

Administrative Function of the Senate

As already indicated, it is difficult to capture the exact role of the late antique Senate and similarly that of the Senate in Ostrogothic times because of a lack 43  PLRE II, pp. 233ff. 44  PLRE II, pp. 265ff.; Matthews, “Boethius”, pp. 26ff.; Bulgarella, “Il senato”, pp. 157ff. 45  For his offices see Cassiodorus Variae praefatio 13, ed. Mommsen. 46  At the time of Ostrogothic rule they can be seen as established, however. 47   For a detailed information on the family members see Cassiodorus Variae 1.4, ed. Mommsen. 48  Matthews, “Boethius”, pp. 25ff. 49  Cassiodorus about his father as advocate of justice and morality in Cassiodorus, Variae 1.4.5, ed. Mommsen. 50  For less-established senatorial families in Ostrogothic times and their involvement at the royal court, see Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 170ff.

130

Radtki

of sources. We do have the Variae and with them a direct insight into the diplomatic and administrative correspondence of the Amal kings, but on a very selective basis, as Cassiodorus chose only certain letters to be part of his collection published at the end of his political career. In this collection we find several letters explicitly directed to the Senate, and others addressed to single members of the Senate on account of their offices or functions such as comes, magister officiorum or praefectus praetorio.51 Members of the Senate often received access to the curia via the respective offices, and the work in service played an important role in many senatorial lives that would need to be taken into consideration when analysing this elite.52 More relevant to the focus of this chapter, however, are the letters directed to the entire Senate firstly giving two important pieces of information: first, the Senate at Rome continued to meet throughout the Ostrogothic period, and second, Theoderic honoured the committee at least theoretically. The Senate is addressed or mentioned in many crucial situations of Ostrogothic history. For example, Theoderic mentions that the emperor Anastasius exhorted him to love the Senate.53 Theoderic’s death and Athalaric’s accession in 526 are announced in a series of eight letters, the second of which to the Senate follows immediately after a letter to the emperor Justin. This is a pattern found throughout the collection, possibly reflecting the order of official announcements and thus underlining the Senate’s importance.54 Letters to the Senate are full of flattering words regarding Theoderic’s humble reverence. They highlight Theoderic’s restraint (continentia, moderatio, modestia), his concern for senatorial opinion, and emphasize his commitment to the prudent selection of its members. These letters concern a multitude of different topics. The largest group contains notifications of appointments to office, for which the Amal kings sought the Senate’s assent and which it was unlikely that the Senate could have denied.55 This corresponds to the fact (already mentioned) that the bestowal of illustres offices was the king’s prerogative. In fact only two letters request the Senate’s assistance as a body: Variae 3.31, when it was asked to pay for the repair of 51  Barnwell, Emperor, pp. 155ff. 52  As they do not relate to the question of the role of the Senate as an institution, they shall be left out here. For detailed information on the administrative offices in Ostrogothic times see Barnwell, Emperor, pp. 134ff. and Sinnigen, “Administrative Shifts”. See also Cracco Ruggini, “Il Senato fra due crisi”, pp. 347–8 and Bjornlie in this volume. 53  Cassiodorus, Variae 1.1.3, ed. Mommsen. 54  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.2, ed. Mommsen. 55  Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 144ff. Letters containing these announcements are Cassiodorus, Variae 1.4, 1.13, 1.30, 1.43, 1.44, 2.3, 2.16, 3.6, 3.12, 4.4, 4.16, 5.4, 5.22, 8.10, 8.14, 8.17, 8.19, 8.22, 9.23, 9.25, ed. Mommsen.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

131

public buildings in Rome; and 4.43, when it was commanded to investigate an attack on a synagogue.56 An evaluation of these letters needs care, as the Variae comprise a collection of selected letters without an easily determined purpose behind their publication. Nevertheless, the letters collectively suggest that the Senate, as a corporate body, contributed little to Ostrogothic government, and its actual participation in state affairs seems to have been very much reduced. Even the respect Theoderic declared for the Senate cannot obfuscate the institution’s lack of real power. Indeed for the Amal kings what mattered most was not the Senate as a body, but rather certain holders of senatorial rank, who were involved in all aspects of political, ecclesiastical, and diplomatic interaction.57 Members of the Senate occupied themselves with ecclesiastical politics, for example, when they became involved in the disorder attending the elevation of Symmachus to the bishopric of Rome in 502, against the priest Laurentius and his supporters. The evidence suggests that the rival pope Laurentius had been ­supported mainly by members of the senatorial elite in the city, who had invested much in the churches under Laurentius’ guardianship.58 Symmachus, on the other hand, was supported by families and single persons with estates based in the north of the peninsula.59 Members of the Senate also played important roles in diplomatic missions, such as the negotiations between Theoderic and Zeno. They were also heavily involved in lobbying the Emperor Anastasius to acknowledge the Amal king’s official status as the emperor’s substitute in the West.60 Already at a very early stage in his campaign against Odovacer in the year 490, Theoderic sent an embassy led by the famous and influential Flavius Rufius Postumius Festus,61 at that time caput senatus, to Constantinople. This mission was followed by another embassy in 497, led by Flavius Anicius Probus Faustus Iunior Niger,62 a man of no less political importance.63 Certain members of the Senate became highly important for Ostrogothic rule through 56  Barnwell, Emperor, p. 157, note 8. 57  Bulgarella, “Il senato”, p. 134. 58  Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 212ff. For an alternative treatment of partisan communities in the Laurentian schism, see Sessa in this volume. 59  The conflict between the two parties is manifest in three persons that can be identified as being supporters of the two popes: Flavius Anicius Probus Faustus Niger, who led the party of Symmachus, was opposed by Flavius Rufius Postumius Festus and Petronius Probinus, who supported Laurentius. 60  See Sundwall, Abhandlungen, pp. 200ff., Ausbüttel, Theoderich, pp. 68ff. 61  PLRE II, pp. 467ff. 62  PLRE II, pp. 454ff. 63  Anonymus Valesianus. 53 and 57, ed. König.

132

Radtki

their performance of particular offices. Cassiodorus is the best example of this type of relationship between Senate and court. Cassiodorus served the Ostrogothic kings for decades in various positions, and can be regarded as their mouthpiece.64 Lastly, members of the senatorial elite, or rather, individuals as representatives of senatorial families, played an important economic role.

Senatorial Economic Relevance

For around half of the 110 identifiable senators, it is possible to determine the geographical site of their estates—their economic basis and the prerequisite for their political and social engagement. Two major economic centres can be identified. First, as might be expected, there was a high concentration of senatorial estates in areas surroundings Rome, with a focal point in Campania, where a large number of illustres had settled. Among them we find, for example, Caecina Mavortius Basilius Decius65 and his son Flavius Vettius Agorius Basilius Mavortius,66 two members of one of the most important senatorial families. Also the patricius Flavius Rufius Postumius Festus and Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius seem to have owned land there. Although they were involved in several political actions of the Ravennate court, such as embassies, the centre of their political activities had been Rome. Campania had great importance as a substitute production zone for the food supply, after Africa and Sardinia had been lost to the Vandals.67 In the province of Samnium another branch of the aforementioned Decii can be found in the persons of Basilius Venantius Iunior68 and his sons Flavius Decius69 and Flavius Paulinus,70 which strengthens the impression that this important family had its base in very close proximity to their political home at Rome. The same can be said for the province of Valeria to the north-east of Rome; here a further branch of the Decii found its home, represented by the consul and praefectus praetorio Flavius Theodorus.71 Finally the province of Tuscia Suburbicaria et 64  Cassiodorus himself describes the position of the quaestor sacri palatii held by him for a couple of years as such; see Cassiodorus, Variae 6.5.1, ed. Mommsen. 65  PLRE II, p. 349. 66  PLRE II, pp. 736f. 67  See in this context a heavy dispute about the distribution and purchase of grain in Boethius, Philosophiae Consolatio. 1.4, ed. Bieler; Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 123ff. 68  PLRE II, pp. 1153f. 69  PLRE IIIa, p. 391. 70  PLRE IIIb, pp. 973f. 71  PLRE II, pp. 1097f.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

133

Umbria showed Decian property in the persons of the consul Faustus Albinus,72 the son of Flavius Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius Iunior.73 The permanent residence of these noblemen was the city of Rome, which emphasizes the repeated connection between the location of senatorial ownership and place of political career.74 While the rural economy in these areas was focused on the city of Rome, in the north there was a second concentration of senatorial economic power. Liguria in particular was a province where many senators owned extended estates. Among them we find the praefecti urbi Flavius Agapitus75 and Constantius,76 the comites sacrarum largitionum Cyprianus77 and his brother Opilio,78 the comes rerum privatarum Arator,79 and the comes patrimonii Iulianus.80 Last but not least, the economic base of the family of Flavius Anicius Probus Faustus Niger was located near the region of Como.81 Apart from these two main areas of senatorial landholding, further possessions could be found in: Apulia and Calabria, Bruttium-Lucania and Sicily (Cassiodori), Picenum annoniarum (Liberius82), Venetia (Venantius Opilio83), Dalmatia and Savia (Severinus84), and Gallia (Felix85). In general, the aforementioned illustres were very powerful in their provinces due to the extent of their properties. Their interest in the welfare of these properties can be seen in their willingness to become provincial governors, although such offices were below their social status.86 One very good example for this can again be found in the family of the Cassiodori. Both the famous writer and his father exercised the position of corrector Brutii et Lucaniae.87 Even the politically involved Liberius was willing to take over the prefecture of Gallia and with this a life far 72  PLRE II, pp. 91f. 73  PLRE II, p. 217. 74  Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 130f. 75  PLRE II, pp. 30ff. 76  PLRE II, p. 321. 77  PLRE II, pp. 332f. 78  PLRE II, p. 808. 79  PLRE II, pp. 126f. 80  PLRE II, pp. 640f. 81  Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 133ff. 82  PLRE II, pp. 676ff. 83  PLRE II, pp. 808f. 84  PLRE II, p. 1001. 85  PLRE II, pp. 462f. 86  Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 143ff. 87  For Cassiodorus’ biography see Jenal, “Cassiodorus Senator”.

134

Radtki

from the royal court in Ravenna. A reason for this senatorial behaviour can be found in the fact that it opened up the possibility to exert political influence over regions where the basis of their financial background, their own property, was concentrated. The great extent of senatorial properties, along with the need for a considerable number of servants to maintain them, contributed to their importance. The size of the land the senators owned can be explained by their social and political needs: land was the basis for funding political careers, as seen with the family of Flavius Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius. His sons were designated consuls continuously one after the other and Basilius had to pay for four consular games within sixteen years. If the financial resource of property had not been available, some less-established families would have found it difficult to meet the conditions of a politically active life. Given the financial profile of these great families, the Ostrogothic kings plausibly needed their collaboration in order to ensure the stability of Italy’s economy and administration.88 When nominating senators for certain positions, Theoderic without doubt took their economic position and importance into consideration; likewise, senatorial political engagement was often determined by economic needs. From an overall perspective, a division of possessions into two regions can be pointed out. While the established families were mainly based in the region of Rome, the homines novi possessed estates in the north with a focus in Liguria.89 This division into roughly northern and southern enclaves of the senatorial elite was one of the main reasons for antagonism within the order. Such friction was visible in the case of the Laurentian schism and would be seen again in the affair regarding Boethius and Symmachus in the early 520s.

Theoderic and the Senatorial Elite

In the early period of Theoderic’s reign the Amal king followed a policy of promotion of members of the established families that was very similar to Odovacer’s practices. It is likely that the senatorial elite had shifted its allegiences from supporting Odovacer to supporting Theoderic following his victory at the Adda in August 490, when several senators offered themselves to the

88  For examples see Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 195f. 89  This controversially discussed term should be used in the broader way suggested by Schäfer to describe less-established families, see Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 170f.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

135

Amal king.90 Interestingly, the father of Cassiodorus, at that time consularis Sicilae,91 was among these ‘pioneers’ and initiated a long family tradition of service to the Amals.92 It seems that Odovacer had alienated the Decii at the end of his reign, who consequently numbered among Theoderic’s first supporters.93 The Gothic ruler responded to this overture by nominating one of their family, Faustus Albinus Iunior, as consul of the year 493.94 In fact both Odovacer and Theoderic nominated a Decius as their first consul. It seems that we are dealing with a tradition which owes something to a desire to maintain an alliance with at least part of the Roman aristocracy.95 Theoderic’s consular nominees for the 490s were moderately distinguished, but they do not compare with those for the period 501–10, when only members of the most important families were designated.96 In these early and important years of Theoderic’s reign, we see an extraordinary group: out of ten western consuls, eight seem to have been the sons of consuls and seven are known to have held at some point the dignity of patricius.97 Alternatively, the consuls appointed in the period 511–21 “were men of a different stamp”.98 Felix,99 consul of 511, was a provincial from Gaul; in 513 the office passed to Probus,100 a scholarly man whose family does not seem to have been established; and Cassiodorus, consul in 514, certainly was the first consul in his family. This significant shift from the first to the second decade of the 6th century was not a singular phenomenon, as appointments to the office of praefectus urbis Romae seem to have followed a similar pattern.101 These figures show a significant turn towards homines novi in the second half of Theoderic’s reign. Apart from the relief certain senators might have felt for not being burdened by the negotium again, Theoderic’s championing of new 90  Anonymus Valesianus 53, ed. König; Malalas, Chronographia 15.9, ed. Thurn; Näf, Senatorisches Standesbewusstsein, pp. 194f. 91  PLRE II, pp. 264f. 92  Henning, Periclitans, p. 182. 93  Ibid. 94  PLRE II, pp. 51f. 95  Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 148. 96  See Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 148ff. for the complete lists of nominated consuls from 490 to the end of Theoderic’s reign. 97  For example the western consul for 501, Avienus, was a member of the Decii (PLRE II, p. 193); in 502 the office was held by Rufius Magnus Faustus Avienus (PLRE II, pp. 192f.), the son of Anicius Probus Faustus Niger, consul in 490. 98  Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 151. 99  PLRE II, pp. 462f. 100  P LRE II, p. 913. 101  Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 154f.

136

Radtki

men might not have been well received by the established Roman aristocrats. The consulship was by then the last surviving magistracy of the Republican period with any stature, and it was particularly sought after because the consul gave his name to the year. The consular office offered many possibilities for gaining popularity among the people. The consular ivories depict consuls sitting on the sella curulis presiding over circus games with bags of money ready for distribution to the people.102 In the 510s some aristocrats who for decades had been able to enjoy the prestige of high office found themselves excluded from the consulship and the urban prefecture. Aristocrats of Rome were no longer as powerful as they had been, a possible stimulus for resentment.103 It may be that Theoderic preferred the appointment of homines novi because it enabled him to create a very loyal and engaged group of officials. Compared to the serial careers of members of the established families, who could expect to reach a position granting the rank of illustris in a relatively short amount of time, some homines novi had to work in the state service for fifteen years until they were allowed into the curia. Furthermore, less-established men were willing to take over less-prestigious offices that noble families would typically refuse. In the course of working in different offices for a long period, homines novi often excelled through considerable engagement with the Gothic state (e.g. Senarius took part in twenty-five embassies!) and became strongly ‘loyal’ to the Gothic regime.104 In many respects Theoderic placed himself in a Roman tradition of rulership and the elite of the Roman Senate played a crucial role in this presentation of Theoderic’s public persona.105 For example, his care for the organization and conduct of the circus games was a very public form of communication between Theoderic and the senatorial elite (and the populus Romanus). This is true in the context not only of his adventus at Rome in the year 500, but also of the regular games organized by senators, whose peaceful execution of civic tradition was important to Theoderic.106 In the early period of his reign this communication between ruler and the economically and politically leading 102  Ibid. pp. 152–3. 103  For tensions between the senatorial and the palatine elite see Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 127–34. 104  Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 170ff. and 291f. 105  Theoderic himself frequently mentioned this tradition, to which he saw himself as connected. See e.g. Cassiodorus, Variae. 1.1.4 or 1.25.4, ed. Mommsen: “Ut antiqui principes nobis merito debeant laudes suas”. On “Theoderic’s imperial kingdom” and the ideologies he applied during his reign, see Heydemann in this volume. 106  In this context see a whole series of letters in the Variae concerning the problems arising from circus games, e.g. 1.20, 1.21, 1.27 and 1.30–33, ed. Mommsen.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

137

group seems to have worked, as evidenced in the willingness of the senatorial elite to play along. Together with the clergy and the people of Rome, senators approached Theoderic on his way into the city to welcome him. The participation of the Senate signalled the success of Theoderic’s adventus in Rome and a similar assessment can be made for the adventus of Eutharic in late 518 and for his consular games, held in the Colosseum in 519.107

Senatorial Conflicts Toward the End of Theoderic’s Reign and under His Successors

The situation changed, however, in the second part of Theoderic’s reign. What had become problematic over the years was a tension between some members of families regarded as homines novi influential at the court in Ravenna and those established old families who had long been courted, but who had somewhat lost their former position. Often these political tensions resulted from economic causes or, in some cases, from political activity that had an impact on economic viability.108 To these two dimensions of possible tension a third can be added, regarding the relation of many old senatorial families to the eastern Roman sphere and especially to the imperial court at Constantinople.109 A mixture of these various and often hardly distinguishable developments led to frequent conflicts between members of the senatorial elite themselves and between the elite and the Amal kings towards the end of Theoderic’s reign and especially after his death.

The Affair Concerning Boethius

In the late period of Theoderic’s reign several issues remained unresolved concerning Theoderic’s political position, when Boethius’ famous treason case occurred. After the resolution of the Acacian schism (itself a source of senatorial friction), which had brought a rapprochement between the churches of 107  Anonymus Valesianus 65 and 80, ed. König; Cassiodorus, Chronica 518–519, ed. Mommsen. 108  As an example of such a case the fight for the estates of Paulinus (PLRE II, p. 847) can be mentioned in which Boethius claims to have saved Paulinus’ estates from “canes Palatinae”, here possibly a disparaging expression for members of the northern Italian senatorial elite; see Boethius, Philosophiae Consolatio. 1.4.13, ed. Bieler and Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 145ff. 109  Burgarella, “Il senato”, p. 138.

138

Radtki

Rome and Constantinople, Theoderic’s political situation had changed, though not necessarily as a consequence of the schism’s resolution, as it has been argued traditionally.110 Rather, a coincidence of several external and internal factors led to the dreadful development that ended in the death of two famous members of the senatorial elite and the mistreatment of a pope.111 In 522, the patrician Albinus was accused of exchanging treasonable communication with the eastern court by Cyprianus,112 a court official at Ravenna who had risen to office through an earlier military career and had made his way through civil service in the college of tribuni et notarii before becoming a referendarius.113 Boethius decided to provide legal defence for Albinus and soon after found himself accused of treason. Thus, the main conflict arose between Boethius and Cyprianus. Boethius’ failure to inform on Albinus would not have caused such turmoil on its own, but his rash declaration for Albinus and his accusation that Cyprianus had lied—undertaken without consideration of his position at Theoderic’s court and his colleagues’ willingness to support him—escalated the conflict. As a result, Boethius was arrested in 523, tried in Pavia, imprisoned near Milan, and put to death in 524. His father-inlaw, Symmachus, shared the same sad fate in 525 for his attempt to defend Boethius.114 As Schäfer has suggested, a tacit but important element of this conflict was the rivalry for public honour that existed between a member of the old elite (Boethius) and a member of the ‘newcomers’ (Cyprianus), who felt threatened and was able to activate similarly neglected members of the ordo senatorius to act as witnesses for the prosecution. Following Boethius’ own words, the “false witnesses” included Cyprianus’ brother Opilio,115 a certain Basilius,116 and Gaudentius.117 Presumably all three were dismissed from positions at the royal court sometime before the trial. Moreover, members of the old traditional families (including possibly even Boethius, who clearly 110  On this see Kötter, Zwischen Kaisern und Aposteln, passim. 111  For an exposition of the most important factors (among them Theoderic’s diplomatic position, inner ecclesiastical conflicts and the emperor Justin’s policy against Arian Christians) see Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”, pp. 416ff. 112  P LRE II, pp. 332f. 113  Bjornlie, Politics, p. 139; Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, p. 55; on the position of referendarius see Cassiodorus, Variae 8.21.4, ed. Mommsen. 114  Procopius, De Bellis Libri 1.5.32–39, ed. Haury/Wirth; Anonymus Valesianus 87 and 92, ed. König. 115  P LRE II, p. 808. 116  P LRE II, pp. 215f. 117  P LRE II, p. 495. Boethius, Philosophiae Consolatio 1.4.26, ed. Bieler; Anonymus Valesianus 86, ed. König.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

139

played a role as delator in a trial against Decoratus,118 a man of similar background to Cyprianus) had hindered all three in their advancement through the cursus honorum.119 Additionally, these non-senatorial men were based in northern Italy and, with the exception of Cyprianus and Opilio, were far from being considered established (they seem to have struggled to become illustres). Concerning this, Schäfer observes the influence exercised by northern Italian senators on the location of the trial (Ticenum, or Pavia, in the sphere of influence of the homines novi) and its result: Boethius, a grand politician from an established family, fell from prominence as a consequence of his hostility towards several senators of the newer families. Alternatively, Cyprianus’ fellow senators saw him as a sort of pioneer, fighting against the established elite for greater influence on the part of the less-established families. Thus one important aspect of this conflict at the end of Theoderic’s reign can be found in an inner senatorial conflict: a rivalry between old and new families with regard to power and to their position in Theoderic’s favour. A completely different analysis of this episode is given by Barnish who emphasizes the succession crisis in the Ostrogothic regime with the sudden death of the designated heir Eutharic.120 Barnish suggests that after the death of the only male aspirant old enough to lead the kingdom (Athalaric was still too young), Goths and even Romans must have looked to Theodahad as the most desirable monarch (rather than Theoderic’s daughter Amalasuentha). One of the Roman supporters of Theodahad could have been Boethius. Given the possibility that the letter of Albinus concerned the question of a possible Gothic successor, it might have contained Theodahad’s name, which would explain Boethius’ vigorous fight for Albinus’ case.121 While the fate of Albinus was never recorded, the deaths of Boethius and Symmachus “were a public relations blunder of gross proportions for the Amals. Even emperors of fully acknowledged imperial legitimacy . . . had been keen to avoid the alienation of the governmental elite by executing prominent members of the senatorial order”.122 For a ‘barbarian’ basing his rule on the acceptance of the eastern emperor and the local elites, openly demonstrating

118  P LRE II, pp. 350f. 119  On Decoratus see Boethius Philosophiae Consolatio. 3.4.4, ed. Bieler; Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 247ff. 120  P LRE II, p. 438. 121  Barnish, “Maximian, Cassiodorus, Boethius, Theodahad”, pp. 28ff. 122  Bjornlie, Politics, p. 140.

140

Radtki

hostility toward the elite whom Theoderic once courted could disrupt the careful equilibrium that facilitated the governance of Italy.123

After Theoderic’s Death

Theoderic died in 526 with many problems unsolved. To restore the political harmony, Amalasuentha, acting as the guardian of Theoderic’s grandson, tried to maintain the political position of the Amal court with a policy of appeasement, evident in the restoration of properties that had been seized as a result of the condemnation of Boethius and Symmachus.124 But despite these attempts, the executions had cast a shadow on Theoderic’s last years and continued to be virulent in the years to follow. The problem facing Amalasuentha’s reign was that, apart from the loss of reputation following the execution of Boethius and Symmachus, strong divisions within the senatorial elite undermined Amalasuentha’s position as guardian of the future Amal king and later as queen. The quarrel at this time, on the eve of the conflict with Justinian, consisted of opposition from a pro-Gothic, anti-Byzantine party, which favoured affiliation with Gothic military culture,125 and a pro-Roman party interested in reconciling Gothic rule with established senatorial families. Including among the anti-Byzantine party were wellknown figures such as Cyprianus, Opilio, Decoratus, Gaudentius, and Basilius (senators who had already opposed traditional senatorial families), with their leaders Theodahad (Amalasuentha’s cousin and later co-regent) and Tuluin, the new leader of the army. On the other side were senators who still believed in a peaceful coexistence of Goths and Romans (the values of Theoderic’s reign), including the loyal officer Cassiodorus, a man with close and friendly connections to Amalasuentha, and certain senators originally advanced by Theoderic but who had been replaced by members from the other party in 527: Abundantius (in 527 dismissed from his position as praefectus praetorio),126 Ambrosius (dismissed from his position as quaestor),127 and furthermore Arator128 and Liberius. The period between 527 and 534 is hard to characterize 123  Ibid. 124  Procopius, De Bellis Libri 1.2.5, ed. Haury/Wirth; Ensslin, Theoderich, p. 325; Wolfram, Die Goten, p. 334; Bjornlie, Politics, p. 141. 125  Wolfram, Die Goten, p. 336. 126  P LRE II, pp. 3f. 127  P LRE II, p. 69. 128  P LRE II, pp. 126f.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

141

owing to lacunae in the Variae, but it seems that until 533 and Amalasuentha’s appeal for assistance from Justinian, the pro-Gothic party dominated the political scene and caused the aforementioned dismissals. Following this development, and possibly as a result of Justinian’s backing, Amalasuentha seems to have returned briefly to her previous position of influence before Theodahad finally had her murdered.129 In this brief period between 527 and 534, Amalasuentha made two important appointments: Liberius, probably her most loyal officer next to Cassiodorus, became patricius praesentalis and took command of the Gothic army in Gaul, while Cassiodorus replaced Cyprianus as praefectus praetorio. Conflict over offices still dominated senatorial motives. Competition between homines novi and established families for support from the Amal family turned into a division between supporters of a traditional Gothic versus a traditional Roman way of life. Relations with the senatorial elite deteriorated under the reign of Theodahad.130 With his own political ambitions restricted by his vow to accept Amalasuentha as his queen, Theodahad’s only recourse to the direct exercise of power was to arrange Amalasuentha’s murder. This act was devisive in various ways. It proved unpopular with the senatorial elite (presumably out of appreciation for Amalasuentha’s tactful interventions as a ruler), and provided the casus belli for the eastern Roman emperor.131 But apart from his drastic means of eliminating a political opponent, it was Theodahad’s behaviour in general that alienated the traditional families. Theodahad departed from previous minting practices by issuing coins with a stronger representation of himself as imperator. Similarly, the mistreatment of members of the senatorial elite (e.g. capturing members of eastern Roman embassies) strained relations.132 By these actions, Theodahad failed to reassure the Roman elite of his ability to follow Theoderic’s example; on the contrary, anxiety over Theodahad’s intentions probably inclined the traditional elite to turn away from the Ostrogothic regime and entertain pre-existing ties to the East.

129  Wolfram, Die Goten, p. 336. The Franks had invaded Burgundian territory and taken over Arles—events that did not even need a pretext for Amalasuentha to send away important military leaders, Tuluin among them, see Procopius, De Bellis Libri 1.13,15, ed. Haury/ Wirth. 130  Procopius De Bellis Libri 1.4.4f., ed. Haury/Wirth and Cassiodorus, Variae 10.2 and 3, ed. Mommsen. 131  Cassiodorus, Variae 10.19, ed. Mommsen, and Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 141f. 132  Bjornlie, Politics, p. 142; Hahn, Moneta 1, p. 90; Wolfram, Die Goten, p. 540.

142

Radtki

The Destruction of the Senatorial Elite

Belisarius invaded Ostrogothic territory in 535 and in the following year factions of the Roman aristocracy welcomed him into Rome, while others preferred to demonstrate their support for the Amal regime.133 In 540, Belisarius dissolved the Amal court at Ravenna and transported Witigis and his wife Matasuentha to Constantinople.134 Interestingly, even in the time of the Gothic War the main features of a conflict between members of the north Italian and the Rome-based families remained in force. Those senatorial inhabitants of the city of Rome who could still be located during the war appear on the side of Justinian from very early on, and were supported by some northern illustres like Flavius Rufius Gennadius Orestes,135 a relative of Faustus Niger, and Liberius, who, after supporting the Amal regime for generations must have become disappointed by the direction of Ostrogothic policy.136 Some members of this group like Flavius Decius, Flavius Anicius Faustus Albinus Basilius Iunior, and Flavius Rufius Petronius Nicomachus Cethegus were able to leave Italy in the early 540s and found a new home at Justinian’s court, where they sought involvement in plans for the future administration of Italy.137 Others such as Opilio (whose loyalty to the Ostrogothic regime was evident from his role in an embassy to Justinian),138 Ambrosius, Arator,139 and Cassiodorus remained loyal to the Gothic cause. In Cassiodorus’ case, Witigis’ capitulation seems to have marked the end of his political career after a long period of loyalty to the Amals. He may have left Italy with Belisarius.140 The ongoing military conflicts on Italian soil were the main reason for the disappearance of the Senate as an institution141 and the senatorial elite as 133  Cassiodorus, Variae 10.31, ed. Mommsen; Bjornlie, Politics, p. 143. 134  Procopius, De Bellis Libri 7.1.1–2, ed. Haury/Wirth. 135  P LRE IIIb, p. 956. 136  Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 263ff. 137  On this see Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 144ff. 138  Procopius, De Bellis Libri 1.4.23, ed. Haury/Wirth. 139  P LRE II, pp. 126ff. 140  Cassiodorus is mentioned in a letter written by pope Vigilius dated to 550, which described him as “vir religiosus”. For questions of Cassiodorus’ political involvements and aspirations at the eastern Roman court, see Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 7ff.; Momigliano, Cassiodorus, p. 219; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 105ff., Krautschick, Cassiodor, pp. 11f.; Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, pp. 270f. 141  There are scarce references to senatorial meetings after the war: the last detailed testimony comes in 587 and 580 when it sent two embassies to Tiberius II, see Brown, Gentlemen, pp. 21f.

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

143

a class, even though individuals were able to survive.142 The personal losses caused by several punitive actions against the senatorial elite under Witigis, Totila, and Teia143 irreversibly fractured the social structure of the Senate, which had been relatively solid up to that point.144 This was accompanied by the incremental destruction of the economic and social structures on which the senators had based their position and life. Both the Gothic and Byzantine parties liberated a great number of the slaves and coloni, on which senatorial estates depended. Additionally, according to Procopius, the war provoked a rural exodus, leaving few left to cultivate the soil. Without these estates, the senatorial elite was deprived of the economic basis for status and competition. One of the lamentable results of the Gothic War was an inability on the part of the senators to play the social and political roles that had been expected of them. An unmistakable sign of this impotency is the fact that unlike Justinian’s previous policy to use western senators in the Italian administration (for example, the two western illustres initially appointed to praefectus praetorio of Italy),145 the eastern Roman government later showed a preference for eastern senators. This might express the eastern Roman government’s feeling of unease with western senators or, even worse, a feeling of superiority that made it unnecessary even to consider involving the western elite. So, the years of the Gothic War were clearly a decisive and unmistakable caesura: the influence and standing which the senatorial elite had maintained during the Ostrogothic period was gone forever. Conclusion The Roman Senate played a strong legitimizing role under Odovacer and the Ostrogoths, which can be seen as the peak of a development engendered by the general crisis of Roman rule in the western empire during the 5th century. Even though the Senate as legislative body lacked actual power, its members were involved in fields of political, ecclesiastical, and diplomatic importance. The senatorial elite based its power on a strong economic foundation (property) distributed over the whole peninsula, which made it indispensable for 142  On this see Brown, Gentlemen, pp. 21ff. 143  Procopius, De Bellis Libri 1.26.1f.; 4.34.5f.; 4.34.7f, ed. Haury/Wirth; Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, p. 283. 144  Bulgarella, “Il senato”, p. 159. 145  The two senators were Fidelis (PLRE II, p. 496f.) and Reparatus (PLRE IIIb, p. 1083), Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, p. 284.

144

Radtki

any new ruler who might seek to establish himself in the Roman West—a fact that both Odovacer and Theoderic were well aware of. Theoderic especially, at least in the first years of his reign, had been brilliant at involving the Senate in his policies, thus allowing the senatorial elite to identify with a ruler who respected their traditions. Internal senatorial rivalries, however, became manifest in several prominent issues of the Amal reign: the Laurentian schism, the affair of Albinus and Boethius, the question of cooperation with the Eastern Roman emperor, and the question of appointments to offices. The strong resentments between the old, established families of the senatorial elite living near Rome and the homines novi based in the northern part of Italy were both economically and socially grounded. While the senatorial elite had been visible in so many aspects of public life and had upheld Roman traditions, the Gothic War deprived it of economic means, and thus of the foundation for its political and social engagement. So, with the end of the Ostrogothic reign on Italian soil, the oldest Roman institution was irreparably damaged. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Anonymus Valesianus, ed. and trans. I. König, Aus der Zeit Theoderichs des Großen. Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar einer anonymen Quelle (Texte zur Forschung 69), Darmstadt 1997. Boethius, Philosophiae Consolatio, ed. L. Bieler, Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Philosophiae Consolatio, Turnhout 1957. Cassiodorus, Chronica, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Chronica Ad A. DXIX. (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Chronica Minora 2), Berlin 1894. ———, Ordo generis Cassiodororum, ed. T. Mommsen, in Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894, pp. v–vi. ———, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894; ed. Å. Fridh, Cassiodori Variae (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 96), Turnhout 1973; trans. S. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae (Translated Texts for Historians 12), Liverpool 1992. Eugippius, Vita Sancti Severini, ed. H. Sauppe, Eugippii Vita sancti Severini (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 1,2) Berlin 1877. Malalas, Chronographia, ed. J. Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 35), Berlin 2000. Malchus of Philadelphia, ed. and trans. R.C. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire. Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus, and Malchus,

The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy

145

vol. 2: Text, Translation and Historiographical Notes (ARCA. Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs 10), Liverpool 1983, pp. 402–62. Panegyrici Latini, trans. B. Müller-Rettig, Panegyrici Latini. Lobreden auf römische Kaiser, vol.1 and 2, Darmstadt 2008/2014. Paulus Diaconus, Historia Romana, ed. H. Droysen, in Eutropi Breviarium ab urbe condita (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 2), Berlin 1879, pp. 183–224. Procopius, De Bellis Libri, ed. J. Haury/G. Wirth, Procopii Caesariensis opera omnia, 4 vols. (Teubner), Leipzig 1963–4. Themistius, Orationes, ed. H. Schenkl/G. Downey/A.F. Norman (eds.), Themistii orationes quae supersunt, Leipzig 1965–1974.



Secondary Literature

Arnold, J.J., Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, Cambridge 2014. Ausbüttel, F.M., Theoderich der Große, Darmstadt 2003. Barnish, S.J.B., “Transformation and Survival in the Western Senatorial Aristocracy, c. 400–700”, Papers of the British School at Rome 56 (1988), 120–55. ———, “Maximian, Cassiodorus, Boethius, Theodohad: Literature, Philosophy and Politics in Ostrogothic Italy”, Nottingham medieval studies 34 (1990), 16–32. Barnwell, P.S., Emperor, Prefects, & Kings. The Roman West, 395–565, Chapel Hill/ London 1992. Bjornlie, S., Politics and Tradition. Between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople. A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527–554, Cambridge 2013. Brown, T.S., Gentlemen and Officers. Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy AD 554–800, Hertford 1984. Burgarella, F., “Il senato”, in Roma nell’alto medioevo. Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 48, vol. 1, Spoleto 2001, 121–75. Cameron, A., “Anician Myths”, Journal of Roman Studies 102 (2012), 133–71. Chastagnol, A., La préfecture urbaine à Rome sous le Bas-Empire, Paris 1960. ———, Le Sénat romain sous le règne d’Odoacre. Recherches sur L’épigraphie du Colisée au Ve siècle, Bonn 1966. Cracco Ruggini, L., “Il Senato fra due crisi (III–VI secolo)”, in Il Senato nella Storia, vol. 1: Il Senato nell’eta Romana, Rome 1998, 223–398. Demandt, A., Geschichte der Spätantike. Das Römische Reich von Diocletian bis Justinian 284–565 n. Chr., 2nd ed., Munich 2008. Ensslin, W., Theoderich der Große, 2nd ed., Munich 1959. Gillett, A., “Rome, Ravenna and the Last Western Emperors”, Papers of the British School at Rome 69 (2001), 131–67. Hahn, W., Moneta Imperii Byzantini, 3 vols.,Vienna 1973–81.

146

Radtki

Heather, P.J., “New men for new Constantines? Creating an imperial elite in the eastern Mediterranean”, in P. Magdalino (ed.), New Constantines. The Rhythm of Imperial Renewal in Byzantium, 4th–13th Centuries, Aldershot 1994, pp. 11–33. ———, “Senators and Senates”, in A. Cameron/P. Garnsey (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 13: The Late Empire, AD 337–425, Cambridge 1998, pp. 184–210. Henning, D., Periclitans res publica. Kaisertum und Eliten in der Krise des Weströmischen Reiches 454/5–493 n. Chr., Stuttgart 1999. Jenal, G., “(Flavius) Magnus Cassiodorus Senator (ca. 485–ca. 580 n. Chr.)”, in W. Ax (ed.), Lateinische Lehrer Europas. Fünfzehn Portraits von Varro bis Erasmus von Rotterdam, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2005, pp. 217–46. Jones, A.H.M., The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey, 2 vols., Oxford 1964. Kierdorf, W., “Senatus”, in Der Neue Pauly, vol. 11, Stuttgart/ Weimar 2001, pp. 400–5. Kötter, J.-M., Zwischen Kaisern und Aposteln. Das Akakianische Schisma (485–519) als kirchlicher Ordnungskonflikt der Spätantike, Stuttgart 2013. Krautschick, S., Cassiodor und die Politik seiner Zeit, Bonn 1983. MacCormack, S., “Latin Prose Panegyrics”, in Empire and Aftermath, London 1975, pp. 143–205. Martindale, J.R., The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2: AD 395–527, Cambridge 1980; vol. 3: AD 527–641, Cambridge 1992. Matthews, J., Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, Oxford 1975. ———, “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius”, in M. Gibson (ed.), Boethius. His Life, Thought and Influence, Oxford 1981, pp. 17–43. Momigliano, A., “Cassiodorus and the Italian culture of his time”, in id. (ed.), Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Rome 1955, pp. 192–229. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. Näf, B., Senatorisches Standesbewusstsein in spätrömischer Zeit, Freiburg, CH 1995. Noble, T.F.X., “Theoderic and the papacy”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia. Atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’Alto Medioevo Milano 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993, pp. 395–423. O’Donnell, J.J., Cassiodorus, Berkeley 1979. Schäfer, C., Der weströmische Senat als Träger antiker Kontinuität unter den Ostgotenkönigen (490–540 n. Chr.), St. Katharinen 1991. Sinnigen, W.G., “Administrative shifts of competence under Theoderic”, Traditio 21 (1965), 456–67. Sundwall, J., Abhandlungen zur Geschichte des ausgehenden Römertums, New York 1975. Vitiello, M., Momenti di Roma ostrogota: adventus, feste, politica, Stuttgart 2005. Wolfram, H., Die Goten. Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts. Entwurf einer historischen Ethnographie, 3rd ed., Munich 1990.

CHAPTER 7

The Law Sean Lafferty Introduction While the focus of this study is naturally the law and legal administration of Ostrogothic Italy, the implications engage the much wider issue of how the Roman world came to an end. Once considered a catastrophic event that marked a decisive break from the classical past and ushered in the Dark Ages, current scholarship tends to view the ‘fall’ of Rome as a gradual—and surprisingly peaceful—process of transition wherein the fundamental elements of classical civilization survived more or less unchanged in the aftermath of Rome’s political demise. Instead of words like ‘decline’ and ‘crisis’ to account for all of the complex and contested changes taking place in this time, we now have ‘continuity’ and ‘transformation’. In the context of law and legal administration, Theoderic and his successors (like most of the barbarian kings who assumed authority in the West following the break-up of the empire) appropriated several key elements of the Roman legal tradition and administration. But they also introduced important innovations that reflect significant cultural and institutional changes in Italian society between the 4th and 6th centuries. Indeed this is not a straightforward case of continuity. Nor is it simply a matter of decline and ruin. Rather, the history of Ostrogothic law and legal administration is a history of evolution—an evolution towards the simplification and popularization of the traditions and institutions of classical jurisprudence and imperial bureaucracy. A great deal of what we think we know about the laws and legal administration of Ostrogothic Italy comes to us from Cassiodorus’ Variae, a collection in twelve books of 468 letters, proclamations, formulae for appointments, and edicts related to the Ostrogothic regime, and in particular the reign of Theoderic the Great (r. 493–526). To judge by this text alone, the administrative bureaucracy of Ostrogothic Italy was a highly differentiated and specialized one comprising civil and military officers with clearly defined and separate functions along similar lines as the late imperial administration. The provincial governor or his deputy functioned as the judge of first instance in serious cases. His decision could be appealed to the vicar and in some ­circumstances, for those with enough time and money, to the praetorian prefect or even © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_008

148

Lafferty

the king himself. Under this system there was a strict jurisdictional division between Goths and Romans. Cases involving just Romans were to be handled by Roman officials, while the Gothic officers were to handle inter-Gothic disputes. Cases involving both Goths and Romans were to be handled by a pair of judges: the Gothic count (comes) and his Roman counterpart.1 This division was not an ethnographic one, however, but a functional one between soldiers (Goths) and civilians (Romans). Just as they had in the empire, soldiers and civilians fell into two separate jurisdictions, but they were not necessarily subject to different laws.2 Both in terms of ideology and organization, therefore, Theoderic sought and largely maintained the institutions and administrative procedures of the later western imperial administration as he found them.3 The same can be said of Rome’s laws. Several letters within the collection stress the need to preserve the rule of Roman law, demand respect for it, reflect upon its fundamental correctness, or even cite it.4 Theoderic, too, is often extolled as a champion of Rome’s legal heritage. In a letter to the eastern emperor Anastasius, the king reportedly remarked that his rule was in direct imitation of the emperor’s, and noted how his Gothic followers obeyed Roman law (Variae 1.1). Elsewhere in a letter addressed to his new Gallic subjects written shortly after his taking control of a large portion of southern Gaul in 510, Theoderic described his rule as Roman, contrasting it sharply with the ‘barbarous’ rule of the Visigoths: You, who have been restored to it after so long a time, should gladly obey Roman custom, for it is gratifying to return to that place from where your ancestors undoubtedly took their rise. And therefore, as by God’s grace you have been recalled to ancient liberty, adorn yourselves in the morals of the toga, cast off barbarism, throw aside savagery of the mind, for it

1  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 7.3. The Variae are cited from the MGH edition of Mommsen, Berlin 1894, pp. 1–385. For a selected translation: Barnish, Cassiodorus. 2  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 3.12. Historians have long accepted this functional division as broadly true in descriptive terms. See e.g. Moorhead, Theodericy, pp. 71–5; Amory, People and Identity, ch. 1; Heather, “Merely an Ideology?”, pp. 31–60; id., “Gens and Regnum”, pp. 88–133. 3  On the late imperial court system in Late Antiquity, see Jones, Later Roman Empire, vol. 1, pp. 479–93; Harries, Law and Empire; Matthews, Laying Down the Law; Humfress, Orthodoxy and the Courts, ch. 2; Kaser, Das römische Zivilprozessrecht, pp. 517–19. On the imperial civil service, see Kunkel, Introduction to Roman Legal, pp. 141–2; Jolowicz/Nichols, Historical Introduction, pp. 423–5; Cameron, Later Roman Empire, pp. 39–41; Kaser, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 208–10; Stein, Untersuchungen über das Officium; Delmaire, Les Institutions. 4  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 1.1, 27, 44; 3.17, 43.

The Law

149

does not befit you to abide by foreign customs while living in the justice of Our time.5 For Theoderic, or rather in Cassiodorus’ portrayal of him, Roman law was a source of prestige and authority through which he (Theoderic) sought to define and justify his rule. It was an ancient institution that symbolized a connection between his reign and those of other glorious emperors of the past, thereby reinforcing an ideology that his rule truly witnessed a renewal of all the hallmarks that once defined classical culture. But in as much as they were intended as a semi-official record of the barbarian regime, the Variae were a product of political expediency that sought to illustrate the legitimacy and suitability of the Italian bureaucracy for resuming palatine services following the conclusion of the Gothic War. To that end, Cassiodorus revised and interpolated letters from a pre-existing assemblage, and in select cases even invented new letters, to highlight the contributions of the former bureaucratic elite of Ravenna. Thus, while the core content of the Variae corresponds closely to the conditions of Ostrogothic Italy as they actually were, much of the material found in the collection represents later intervention on the part of Cassiodorus, whose selections, omissions, and interpolations were influenced by powerful currents of cultural and political exchange between Rome, Ravenna, and Constantinople.6 The elaborate rhetorical purpose for which Cassiodorus compiled the Variae required revising a significant portion of genuine chancery documents to communicate an idealized image of the bureaucratic elite of Italy as champions of Rome’s legal, administrative, and cultural traditions. From all of this there emerges a highly civilized and Romanized picture of things. A much different and more accurate picture comes to us from the Edictum Theoderici, or Edict of Theoderic, a collection and emendation of Roman law comprising 154 provisions in addition to a prologue and epilogue. Once thought to be the work of the Visigothic king Theoderic II, who ruled the kingdom of Aquitaine in southern Gaul from 453 to 466, the edict was in fact composed around the year 500 5  Cassiodorus, Variae 3.17: “Libenter parendum est Romanae consuetudini, cui estis post longa tempora restituti, quia ibi regressus est gratus, ubi provectum vestros constat habuisse maiores. atque ideo in antiquam libertatem deo praestante revocati vestimini moribus togatis, exuite barbariem, abicite mentium crudelitatem, quia sub aequitate nostri temporis non vos decet vivere moribus alienis.” See also Variae 4.26, 4.33 and 9.19 for references to Gothic kings as the successors of the Roman legal heritage. 6  On the problems of the Variae as a propagandistic text, see Bjornlie, Politics; id., “What Have Elephants to Do with Sixth-Century Politics?”, pp. 143–71.

150

Lafferty

by an unknown group of Roman legal experts working under the authority of the quaestor in Ravenna.7 Its immediate purpose was to restore peace in the kingdom by reinforcing, clarifying, and in most cases updating existing Roman law (which was at this time erratically preserved in sources that were not easily accessible to the general public at large). Theoderic, we are informed from the prologue, received complaints that laws were not being observed in the provinces. To preserve the desired peace, the edict was to be posted so that Romans and barbarians would know what was expected of them. Its authority lay in the fact that it was derived from novellae leges and vetus ius, that is to say, written enactments and ancient custom preserved in imperial codifications and juristic­ commentaries.8 To underscore the point, the epilogue concludes by stating that it was the responsibility of all, whether learned or ignorant, city dweller or countryman, officer or citizen, Goth or Roman, to uphold the rule of the law in equal measure. Romans and Goths were expected to obey the solemnity of Roman law. This is wholly in keeping with Roman tradition and the ideology of Theoderic’s regime, the consistent message of which as presented by Cassiodorus makes the point that the Goths were required to adopt the superior judicial notions of the Roman legal system.9 As Athalaric proclaimed to the Roman Senate upon his accession in 526: 7  Since the first publication of the text by Pierre Pithou in 1579, the authorship and authenticity of this document was accepted by scholars without question as the work of Theoderic the Great. In the 1950s, however, Giulio Vismara made a strong case for Theoderic II of the Visigoths (“Romani e Goti”, pp. 407–63; most notably his “Edictum Theoderici”). But it can hardly be doubted that the ET is the product of the Ostrogoth Theoderic’s administration, for it clearly mirrors aspects of the Variae in terms of its content and ideology, and three provisions address issues particular to the Italian peninsula: both ET 10 and 111 refer to Rome specifically; and ET 145 mentions capillati, an honorific term (meaning ‘long-haired ones’) used on one occasion by Cassiodorus to refer to the Goths living in the northern regions of Siscia and Suavia (Variae 4.49). See further Lafferty, Law and Society, ch. 1; Wormald, “The Leges Barbarorum”, pp. 21–53. The most accessible editions are those of Bluhme (Edictum Theoderici regis in MGH Leges 5, pp. 145–79 and Baviera (Fontes Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani II, pp. 683–710). For a review of the various editions of the ET, see Vismara, “Edictum”, pp. 9–11; Baviera, FIRA II, p. 683. 8  On this distinction between ius and lex, see Mousourakis, Historical and Institutional Context, pp. 17–18; Matthews, “Interpreting the interpretationes”, pp. 11–32 at p. 16; Stein, Roman, pp. 4, 28; For similar usages of the terms in later periods see McKitterick, The Carolingians, p. 38. 9  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 1.1.3, 27; 2.7; 3.17 (cf. 18), 31, 43.1; 4.22, 33, 42; 5.40; cf. 10.5, 7). Similarly, the Anonymus Valesianus reports (12.66) that soon after his authority was recognized by the eastern emperor Anastasius, Theoderic made an announcement to the Senate and people of Rome, “promising that with God’s help he would preserve inviolate the Roman law”.

The Law

151

We wish that before Us the Goths and Romans be judged by the same law; and there shall be no other difference between you, except that they undergo the trials of war for the common advantage, and you may increase in number through the quiet habitation of the city of Rome.10 By the early 6th century the imperial administration had largely disappeared, but, however selective and modified, the Edictum Theoderici was a practical guidebook of Roman law, which presupposed the importance of customs and formalities that had their origins in a distant and bygone culture.11 In this, Ostrogothic Italy was not unique. The adoption of a written code of law was an experience shared by most of the barbarian successor kingdoms that emerged in the former provinces of the western Roman empire over the course of the 5th and early 6th centuries. In principle, the legislation issued by the barbarian kings represents their assuming of authority and responsibility for the problems associated with their arrival. Yet the interplay between Roman and barbarian is a far more complex matter than simple confrontation and eventual replacement of the former by the latter.12 Barbarian kings alike borrowed from and adapted Roman law to maintain authority within their respective territories. Of all the legal systems borne forth from antiquity, none has left a greater impression on western legal traditions than that of Rome’s. Throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern era, the bleached bones of this dead society’s laws inspired kings, popes, and emperors in their respective roles as lawgivers and champions of justice. The well-known story of the Visigothic king Athaulf (r. 410–15) is worth mentioning here. According to the 5th-century historian Orosius (Historia adversus Paganos 7.43.2–3), Athaulf was often heard saying that his first intention was to obliterate the Roman Empire and replace it with a Gothic one. However, realizing that laws were a pre-requisite for statehood, and that his unruly followers had not yet attained such a level of civilization, Athaulf chose to defend existing Roman institutions with Gothic arms. This issue of reception has long puzzled legal historians. In its broadest sense, reception is the process in law by which one legal system adopts (“se omnia deo iuvante quod retro principes Romani ordinaverunt inviolabiliter servaturum promittit.”) For an edition and translation of the text see Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, vol. 3. 10  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.3: “Gothis Romanisque apud nos ius esse commune nec aliud inter vos esse divisum, nisi quod illi labores bellicos pro communi utilitate subeunt, vos autem habitatio quieta civitatis Romanae multiplicat.” 11  For similar views regarding administration see Bjornlie in this volume. 12  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations.

152

Lafferty

s­ubstantive or procedural rules developed by and native to another legal system. In its broadest form, reception may involve the wholesale adoption of an entire alien legal system or it may involve narrower borrowings. The Ostrogoths certainly possessed their own rudimentary laws and customs prior to their arrival on Roman soil. Concerning this tradition, Jordanes says that Dicineus, the great and mythical civilizer of the savage Goths, gave them laws by which they learned to live, and which still existed in writing in his day and were referred to as belagines.13 But it is unlikely that the Goths brought with them a coherent body of Germanic law. First, they were not a long-established political or ethnic group, but rather a happenstance collection of military units and sundry hangers-on who had migrated to and through the empire for generations before they were settled. Second, Theoderic was acutely aware that he had everything to gain by maintaining rather than upsetting the existing status quo. His followers comprised only a fraction of the overall population of Italy, the vast majority of which was Roman or at least thoroughly Romanized in terms of culture, economy, institutions, and law.14 To that end, he was eager to preserve as much of the material and cultural heritage of the Roman world as possible. For its part, the surviving Roman population was anxious to maintain as much as they could of the infrastructure associated with the highly urbanized culture of ancient Rome. In the aftermath of conquest, accommodation to the changed realities became a priority of both Romans and Goths within the newly established Ostrogothic regime. And Roman law would serve as the basis for this accommodation.

Vulgar Law

As the Edictum Theoderici illustrates, however, the Roman law of Theoderic’s kingdom was not the law of Augustan Rome or even Justinian’s eastern Roman Empire. Precisely what it was is a question intimately connected with the much larger issue of Vulgarrecht. The expression ‘vulgar law’ was first coined by the legal historian Heinrich Brunner in 1880 to designate a body of relatively 13  Jordanes, Getica 11.69, ed. Mommsen: “ . . . naturaliter propriis legibus vivere fecit, quas usque nunc conscriptas belagines nuncupant . . . ” On the legal tradition of the belagines, see Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths, p. 246. 14  Theoderic’s followers comprised some 20,000 troops and their families, a number totalling around 40,000. See further Burns, “Calculating Ostrogothic Population”, pp. 457–64; Wolfram (History of the Goths, p. 279), estimates about 100,000; and similarly, Ensslin, Theoderich der Grosse, pp. 62–4.

The Law

153

simple, perhaps customary, law which was not written down and which governed everyday legal business in the western Roman provinces from the 4th to the 6th century.15 It was an evolution or, depending upon one’s perspective, a degeneration of purely ‘classical’ Roman Civil Law, that is, the law that originally applied to the city of Rome.16 But as the application of this law was gradually extended to encompass all Roman citizens living in outlying provinces, it gradually came to take account of and to be influenced by custom or provincial practice in a process commonly referred to as ‘vulgarization’. Prior to the granting of citizenship to all the inhabitants of the empire, provincial communities were permitted to continue observing their own local systems of law and custom, provided they were not incompatible with Roman rule. As citizenship was gradually extended to ever increasing numbers of provincials, culminating in 212 with Caracalla’s constitutio Antoniniana, which granted Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire, provincial communities were required to adopt and apply the Civil Law, the rules and procedures of which were largely unknown to them. Given that the inhabitants of these communities were often reluctant to abandon the norms by which they had been governed in the past, elements of these local systems gradually crept into the Civil Law. Over time, Rome’s law lost its classical ‘purity’ and became ‘vulgarized’. The most influential voice for defining vulgar law has belonged to Ernst Levy, who drew attention to the vulgarizing tendencies inherent in the Roman laws of property that slowly emerged in the West over the course of the 3rd and 4th centuries. Vulgarizing tendencies, Levy claims, had existed at all times, but classical jurisprudence kept them in check. Although vulgar law penetrated even the legislation and was taken over by the elementary books for practitioners and students (for example, the post-classical collection of legal opinions attributed to the jurist Paul, or the Epitome Gai—an abridged version of the Institutes that did away with all of Gaius’ complex explanations of the law), the emperors of the 3rd century strove against this dissolution of the pure Roman law. The chief protagonist of this fight was Diocletian (r. 284–305), and with his 15  Brunner, Zur Rechtsgeschichte der römischen, pp. 113, 119; id., Forschungen zur Geschichte, p. 607 n. 1. The fundamental study of the development of Roman law in the East remains that of Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht. Here, the focus is on the influence of peregrine law on classical notions and principles of Roman law. For a review of the scholarship see Liebs, “Roman Vulgar Law”, pp. 35–53. 16  For this definition and a discussion of ius civile, see Mousourakis, Historical and Institutional Context, pp. 22–4; Schiller, Roman Law, pp. 366–8, 525–7; Kaser, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 130–3.

154

Lafferty

abdication this imperial policy came to an abrupt end. Now the dams broke, especially after Constantine the Great, whom Levy regards as the first official exponent of vulgar law—a sentiment shared by the emperor Julian (331/32– 63) as an “innovator and disturber of the ancient laws and of custom received long ago”.17 Vulgar law became universal in the East and the West in decrees of Constantine and Julian, of Honorius and Arcadius, even after the legislation became dual (429) in the Novels of Theodosius II and of Valentinian III.18 Levy rightly considers that the spread of vulgar law in the West over the course of the 4th and 5th centuries was due in large measure to its tendency towards popularization, away from the technicalities of the classical structure, and the desire for regulations adapted to the conditions of the time. Related to Caracalla’s universal grant of citizenship was the spreading relaxation of legal discipline. A corollary to this was a decline in legal erudition, associated with a drop in the number of skilled legal professionals. The result was the emergence of a new type of law. Adhering neither to traditional niceties nor to strict concepts, this law was unable or simply unwilling to match the standards of the artistic and comprehensive elaboration of logical construction that defined classical jurisprudence.19 The establishment of the Dominate, the economic and social revolution, and the administrative procedure of the cognitio led to a fresh law full of fertile innovation, which was better suited to the needs and understanding of the common man than the old. This was the vulgar law.20 In sharp contrast to this vulgarization of Roman law were the classicizing efforts of the jurists in Constantinople. These conservative theorists despised the heterogeneous vulgar law and continued to interpret the works of the great classical jurists and the constitutiones of the emperors by applying the old scholarly methods. Their classicizing tendencies culminated in the crowning achievement of Roman legal science, namely the Corpus Iuris Civilis of the emperor Justinian (r. 527–65).21 It was a counter-revolution against the intrusions of the vulgar law. In the West, vulgar law continued to evolve unhampered, amalgamating from the end of the 5th century with the appearance of 17  Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 21.10.8, ed. and trans. Rolfe: “novator turbatorque priscarum legum et moris antiquitus recepti.” 18  Levy, Pauli sententiae, id., “Vulgarization of Roman Law”, pp. 14–40; id., West Roman Vulgar Law. 19  Levy, West Roman Vulgar Law, p. 7. 20  Levy’s theories have found many adherents including, e.g., Fischer-Drew, “Germanic Family”, pp. 5–14; id., “Barbarian Kings”, pp. 7–29; Honoré, “Ausonius and Vulgar Law”, pp. 79–82; Sirks, “Shifting Frontiers”, pp. 146–57. 21  Stein, Roman Law, pp. 32–6.

The Law

155

the so-called leges barbarorum, a body of law that owed more to the traditions of Roman provincial practice than to the presumed primitive customs of the Germanic forests. Vulgar law certainly marked a decline in classical standards of technical precision and artistic elaboration. But it did not necessarily entail a decline in legal erudition.22 Trained lawyers and legal experts remained in high demand throughout the later Roman Empire, serving as advisors (assessors) in the late imperial scrinia.23 Only after the Visigothic sack of Rome in 410 did their availability become somewhat of a problem.24 Cassiodorus, too, attests to their continued importance in Ostrogothic Italy.25 But as the Edictum Theoderici (ET) amply illustrates, knowledge of some of the more complex and technical aspects of classical jurisprudence were no longer necessary or even practical.26 One example of a loosening of legal precision is what the compilers made of patria potestas (paternal authority). At ET 94, parents could sell children in potestate under certain conditions: “Parents who are compelled by necessity to sell their children for the sake of vital necessities shall not prejudice their ingenuus status; for the value of a free person is considered inestimable.”27 22  Wieacker, “Le droit romain”, pp. 201–23; id., “Vulgarrecht”, pp. 33–51. Wieacker reiterates his position in his Römische Rechtsgeschichte, 211–18, noting that the vulgarization of late Roman law was a matter of style rather than an indication of any sort of decline in legal erudition. Moreover, Vandendriessche in her Possessio und Dominium demonstrates convincingly that the fundamental classical differentiation between property and simple possession was still well known and respected in post-classical legislation of the 4th and 5th centuries, even if these differences were now versed in non-classical terms. See also Honoré, “Conveyances of Land”, pp. 137–52, who argues against any such notion of vulgarization. Similarly, through a systematic analysis of late imperial juristic literature and the identification of practising judicial experts between the 3rd and 6th centuries, Liebs shows that there was no decline in the standard of classical jurisprudence in Late Antiquity. See his Die Jurisprudenz im spätantiken Italien; id., “Römische Jurisprudenz”, pp. 201–17; id. (ed.), Das Gesetz in Spätantike; id., “Die pseudopaulinischen Sentenzen”, pp. 151–71; id., Römische Jurisprudenz; and id., “Roman Vulgar Law”, pp. 35–53. 23  For the use of assessores in the imperial judicial system, see the introductory notes of Liebs in his Vor den Richtern Roms. On the continuation of this institution in Late Antiquity see Humfress, Orthodoxy, ch. 3. 24  Nov. Val. 32.6 (31 Jan. 451) referring to the lack of lawyers and judges since the time of Alaric’s invasion. 25  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 1.12; 4.3; 5.4; 5.22. 26  Lafferty, “Law and Society”, pp. 377–404. 27  ET 94: “Parentes qui cogente necessitate filios suos alimentorum gratia vendiderint, ingenuitati eorum non praeiudicant; homo enim liber pretio nullo aestimatur.” This is a restatement of a legal opinion of the classical jurist Paul (PS 5.1.1), and as such develops

156

Lafferty

What is interesting here, and inconsistent with the ancient institution of patria potestas, is the use of the term parens, which could mean either parent or any close relation for that matter, and not necessarily pater.28 Though technical precision such as this would have been a concern primarily for skilled legal experts and theorists, it corresponds to an overall decline in the standards of artistry and rhetorical flourish characteristic of the Theodosian Code and the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Justinian. Indeed this was a greatly simplified law of the towns and countryside of 6th-century Italy, unconcerned with the traditional niceties of strict classical Roman law, and governed by social and economic rather than legal considerations. As such, the law remains our primary point of contact with the realities of day-to-day life experienced, or perhaps endured, by the average person of Theoderic’s Italy. Such realities, which were undoubtedly harsh and brutal at times, are mostly obscured by the smokescreen of Roman civilitas created by Cassiodorus’ selected missives. To begin with, Ostrogothic Italy was a largely rural place where the vast majority of people scratched out a living through the direct exploitation of the land.29 Not surprisingly, the bulk of the content of the Edictum Theoderici deals with the sorts of perennial problems that plague all agricultural communities, such as the usurpation of land at the hands of powerful magnates (ET 10), the destruction of crops or trees (ET 98), runaway slaves (ET 80, 84–5, 87), the lack of available manpower (ET 142), a situation made worse by recurring droughts and famines,30 the overworking of slaves or oxen of another (ET 150), cattle rustling and wandering livestock (ET 56–8), shifting boundary markers (ET 104),and malicious neighbours and careless farmhands (ET 98). The arrival of the Goths created a predictable legacy of boundary disputes that had to be settled in a timely fashion (ET 10, 47). In an effort to control the violent men of powerful warlords (disingenuously described as patrons), the compilers bemoaned that armed war bands were carrying off property, beating people with clubs or stoning them, and setting fires. Such offences were strongly condemned and subject to the harshest penalties (ET 75, 89). The compilers also had an eye to commercial matters, regulating Severan juristic arguments from the late 3rd century. See Humfress, “Poverty and Roman Law,” pp. 183–203. 28  On the decline of patria potestas as a viable legal concept in Late Antiquity, see MeyerMarthaler, Römisches Recht in Rätien, pp. 131–8; Thomas, “Vitae necisque potestas”, pp. 499–548; Harris, “The Roman Father’s”, pp. 81–95; Arjava, “Paternal Power”, pp. 147–65; id., “Survival of Roman Family Law”, pp. 33–51. 29  Lafferty, Law and Society, ch. 5. 30  Cassiodorus, Variae 4.5; 4.7; 10.27; 12.25; 12.28.

The Law

157

loans and business transactions in a bid to facilitate economic growth (ET 134, 139, 149). This was also a world where civic life, such as it was, was in sharp decline. There is nothing in the Edictum Theoderici on the repair of aqueducts or roads, public monuments and works of art, theatres or games—in short the sorts of things that characterized the highly civilized urban culture of classical Rome. To be sure, civic life continued, but on a much smaller scale. Walls, roads, and aqueducts continued to be maintained well into the early Middle Ages, at least in Rome.31 But by the 6th century this had become a matter of private initiative more so than public policy.32

Crime and the Law

While the compilers of the Edictum Theoderici devoted most of their attention to matters of Roman private law, such as legal status and personality, property (including slaves), contract and sale, ownership and possession, marriage and divorce, and succession and inheritance, they also drew inspiration from the vast compendium of Rome’s criminal law. Here, just as with private law, continuity was the rule. The laws of Theoderic’s kingdom attest to the lasting legacy of Roman criminal law in late antiquity. Roman law defined crime as any wrongful act that threatened social wellbeing and stability, and whose punishment was pursued in the interests of the community rather than the victim, who was generally expected to be responsible for his or her own safety. The penalty itself could vary. It could be flogging, exile, or death, which meant that it affected the status of the wrongdoer exclusively; or it might be sub-capital, which usually involved a fine (multa) that was paid not to the victim or his family but to the treasury. Acts that fell under this category included both crimes against the state (e.g. treason and sedition) and common law crimes that primarily affected only the injured party, such as murder, kidnapping, and adultery. This category excludes a number of wrongful acts that we might classify as criminal, such as theft, fraud, injurious behaviour, robbery, and some kinds of murder (e.g. of a slave), as well as actions that we might define as ‘white-collar crime’, like embezzlement. In these instances, it was the victim alone who benefited from the stipulated remedy. While the state provided the judicial machinery for the settlement of these delicts through the civil court, it had no vested interest in them.

31  Coates-Stephens, “Walls and Aqueducts”, pp. 167–78. 32  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 3.49.

158

Lafferty

Over time the list of offences that constituted a crime grew to reflect changing social attitudes. So, too, did the range and severity of punishments, such that by the beginning of the 4th century there was a strong desire, fuelled by considerations of public interest (utilitas publica) and expressed both in public opinion and in the minds of legislators, to increase the use of the death penalty. Emperors called for a capital penalty regardless of a person’s rank or status in cases involving such serious crimes as violence (vis); conspiracy to cause the deaths of illustres, senators, or servants of the imperial household; magic and soothsaying; murder, forgery and counterfeiting (or deliberately abetting the same); assaults on holy virgins or widows, and failing to destroy defamatory writing. Adulterers, too, could be punished by death, whereas in previous centuries adultery entailed a fine and sentence of banishment to an island.33 The laws of Theoderic’s Italy preserved the basic principles of Roman criminal law and penal policy. For serious offences, penalties ranged from the most extreme, that is death (in assorted manner),34 to exile (which entailed banishment to another region of the kingdom),35 and flogging (usually carried out in public and sometimes in lieu of another penalty).36 Financial penalties varied widely, from confiscations and fines (to the benefit of the fisc)37 to compensation in money or kind, and established according to a fixed amount (usually fourfold the amount originally taken).38 Sometimes a particularly gruesome penalty was reserved for an especially heinous act. For instance, a slave, domestic servant, or freedman who attempted to denounce his master in court was to be “cut down with swords”.39 The deterrent effect could be further enhanced if the punishment fitted the crime. Thus, an arsonist was to be burned alive.40 In addition, this was still a society where members of the upper class could rightly expect, and lawfully demand, preferential treatment in relation to their social inferiors. More than simply using his wealth to pay a fine and avoid the otherwise universally stipulated punishment for a given offence,

33  CTh 9.40.1 (314). On the subject of adultery as a capital offence in Constantine’s reign, see generally Mommsen, Le Droit pénal romain, vol. 2, p. 426; Dupont, Le Droit criminal, pp. 22–8; Bauman, “Leges Iudiciorum Publicorum”, pp. 103–233; Treggiari, Roman Marriage, p. 290; Evans Grubbs, Law and Family, pp. 95, 216–225. 34  ET 1, 9, 17, 21, 38–39, 41, 47, 48–9, 50, 56, 63, 78, 91, 97, 104, 107, 108, 110, 120, 125. 35  ET 18, 42, 75, 83, 89, 95, 97, 108. 36  ET 55, 73, 83, 89, 111. 37  ET 3, 10, 22, 24, 55, 73, 83, 84, 104, 111, 112, 115. 38  ET 2–4, 10, 11, 64, 70, 71, 80, 84, 97, 109 and 117, 141. 39  ET 48, 49. 40  ET 97.

The Law

159

a honestior could expect to be spared the more humiliating punishments dealt out to humiliores (e.g., ET 59, 64, 75, 83, 89, 91, 97, 108, 111). While all of these provisions had a basis in Roman law, significant innovations do occur. Usually this entailed a modification in the methods of punishment and a greater emphasis placed on the discretionary authority of the judge in matters of punishment. For example, on the subject of forgery ET 41 closely follows a commentary of the 3rd-century jurist Paul (Pauli Sententiae): ET 41 Anyone who produces or knowingly uses a forgery, or persuades or compels another to make one, shall suffer a capital penalty.41

PS 4.7.2 Not only shall he who tampers with, suppresses or destroys a testament, but also anyone else who knowingly with dolus malus instructs or undertakes this to be done, shall be held liable for the penalty of the Cornelian law [i.e. deportation].42

Whereas the original treats the offence as capital and punishes the guilty with deportation (presupposed by PS 4.7.1), ET 41 is purposefully imprecise in fixing a specific punishment, simply stating that the offender would be punished capitally. This could mean any number of things, including exile, deportation, and execution. The basis for all of this is the Cornelian law on forgery (mentioned specifically in PS 4.7.2),43 which was overhauled substantially by Constantine in the 4th century. But Constantine’s law applied the maximum penalty (i.e. death) only in the most serious of cases; in most instances the usual punishment was deportation.44 Documentary proof had acquired 41  ET 41: “Qui falsum fecerit, vel sciens falso usus fuerit, aut alterum facere suaserit, aut coegerit, capitali poena feriatur.” 42  Pauli Sententiae (herafter cited as PS) 4.7.2: “Non tantum is, qui testamentum subiecit suppressit delevit, poena legis Corneliae coercetur, sed et is qui sciens dolo malo id fieri iussit faciendumve curavit.” 43  This oversight was not accidental, nor was it an isolated incident. ET 83 follows closely PS 5.6.14 concerning the unlawful confinement, selling and purchasing of a freeman, but ignores the reference in the original to the source for this—the Lex Fabia, a statute of unknown date (presumably the 2nd or 1st century BC). Similarly in ET 123, a brief provision that prohibited creditors from seizing a pledge without the proper authorization of a judge, they ignored the specific reference in the original, PS 5.26.4, to the Lex Iulia de vi private. A similar air-brushing out of this Roman legal tradition is found in the Code of Euric; see Harries, “ ‘Not the Theodosian Code’ ”, p. 47. 44  Codex Theodosianus 9.19.2.

160

Lafferty

administrative significance as early as the Republic. As the imperial administration became more dependent on the use of the written word, even greater weight was accorded to the significance of documents as a means of establishing proof. Consequently, forgery became a far more serious offence and was more widely applied to include offences that under classical law constituted the less serious delictal act of fraud (dolus).45 The silence in ET 41 concerning the penal component strongly suggests that by the 6th century the matter had become one of judicial discretion. While the judge could impose a sentence of deportation in accordance with earlier imperial law, he could just as well apply the maximum penalty of death; he was not bound by the fixed limitations of the Cornelian law. Such discretion, facilitated by the growing importance of the role of the judge in deciding the outcome of a given suit (in part a consequence of the demise of the formulary procedure in the 1st century AD), was a defining feature of Theoderic’s justice system. As our sources reveal, however, these discretionary powers could be swayed by well-timed gifts or rewards from litigants hoping to obtain a favourable judgement.46 For particularly heinous crimes the tendency was to increase the scope and severity of the original penalty. Of particular concern was the illegal usurpation of property (invasio). Drawing from a decree of the emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I, and Arcadius in 389 (Codex Theodosianus 4.22.3), ET 10 punished the offender twofold the value of the stolen property (in addition to the property itself) as opposed to the simple sum prescribed in the original text.47 The theft of livestock was likewise considered a serious matter. Modelled after PS 5.18.2, ET 56 punished all such offenders capitally, whereas the punishment in the original varied from the most extreme (i.e. death by the sword or consignment to the mine) to a form of (unspecified) public labour depending upon the seriousness of the problem in general or the status of the offender specifically. Moreover, the Edictum Theoderici went beyond the original to require that the victim be compensated in the form of fourfold remuneration and that slaves or originarii that were condemned for the act were to be surrendered by their owners to be punished capitally. Conversely, the largest fine imposed upon a cattle rustler in the Pauli Sententiae was threefold the original amount.48 Both of these examples illustrate the importance of property in 6th-century Italy and demonstrate the determined concern of the Ostrogothic 45  For this development see Harries, Law and Empire, p. 108. 46  Lafferty, Law and Society, especially ch. 3. 47  For specific instances in our sources: Variae 5.29, 30; 8.28. See further Innes, “Land, Freedom”, pp. 39–74. 48  PS 5.18.3.

The Law

161

administration to protect property-holders against the open greed of others and to prevent the anarchy that would have threatened if private individuals had been permitted to take the law into their own hands.

Judges and Courts

Despite the fact that the justice system was by its nature an imperfect one, biased in favour of the wealthy and well connected, it was nevertheless a legitimate system. Where its integrity came under threat was in the actions of the judges and court officials responsible for putting otherwise abstract rules into effect. As in the later empire, the courts were administered by the central administration through provincial governors and their staff, as well as officers of the local municipalities, including the Roman defensores, duumviri, quinquennales, and the ubiquitous decurions, who had the authority to deal with civil and minor criminal matters. Also at the local level was the bishop’s court (episcopalis audientia), which had jurisdiction over cases involving ecclesiastic officials.49 But it is clear from our sources that this was a much simplified and watered-down version wherein the bulk of cases were dealt with by the provincial governor irrespective of the type of case or considerations of a person’s ethnicity or status.50 Outside the courtroom there existed several less-formal (but by no means less-legal) methods of dispute settlement. Arbitration, or other forms of dispute resolution such as mediation, negotiation, or self-help, offered an important alternative to formal litigation, which could be an expensive, unpredictable, and even risky endeavour. Unfortunately, the law took little notice of these, and what references we have in the Variae to such informal methods of dispute resolution reveal no more than one stage in what was, in most cases, a lengthy and protracted process.51 49  On the functioning of the episcopalis audientia in Late Antiquity, see Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, pp. 242–52; Lamoreaux, “Episcopal Courts”, pp. 143–67; Harries, Law and Empire, pp. 191–211; id., “Resolving Disputes”, pp. 68–82; Lenski, “Audientia episcopalis”, pp. 526–29. The most extensive work is that of Cimma, L’episcopalis. 50  Cassiodorus, Variae 5.14, 6.21; Lafferty, Law and Society, ch. 3. 51  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 5.29 (the case of the blind veteran Anduit); 5.30 (addressed in Theoderic’s name to the dux Guduin, this letter concerns the complaint of two Goths, Costula and Daila, alleging that the addressee has imposed servile tasks (onera servilia) on them; 8.28 (a letter in Athalaric’s name to Cunigast, vir illustris, that concerns the petition of the Romans Constantius and Venerius, which alleges that the Goth Tanca had seized their farm and reduced them to slavery).

162

Lafferty

A significant challenge for the Ostrogothic administration was that the supply of skilled judges and other magistrates who could effectively uphold the law was extremely scarce. Concerning provincial governors, only twelve are known for Italy between 476 and 553—a significant drop from the thirty-three governors attested for the peninsula between 394 and 476.52 Over the course of the 6th century military officers like the Gothic saio (plural saiones) and comes (plural comites) began to supersede the traditional civil service (militia Romana) in terms of importance in the overall administration of the courts.53 The jurisdiction of lesser officials was significantly curtailed as a result. The defensor civitatis, for instance, once an important feature of late Roman government, was reduced to little more than a paper-pusher: rather than serving as a local protector and representative of the central administration, by the 6th century this officer was mostly responsible for registering records in the municipal archives (gesta municipalia).54 The number of civic magistrates seems to have declined also. In ET 52, we read that transactions were to be witnessed and a record drawn up in the presence of a specified number of municipal officials, as had been done in the empire. But the compilers acknowledged that the availability of such magistrates could pose a problem: “but if these [officials] are not available, the registering of the transaction shall be fulfilled in another municipality which has these officers, or let a report of what was given be forwarded to the governor of that province.”55 Just as important as the quantity of judges was their quality. As in the later Roman Empire, officers of the royal bureaucracy were expected to fulfil any number of functions on behalf of the king. Under this administrative prerogative a judge was any officer who possessed executive authority, such as a count, duke, governor, or prefect. In other words, there was no branch of government dedicated exclusively to the maintenance of the law. This lack of a professional judiciary meant that the majority of judges performed their duties without the benefit of significant legal training or expertize. This was particularly true of the military courts. The duces and comites, before whom cases involving 52  Martindale, PLRE 2, pp. 1278–9; Barnwell, Emperor, p. 158. 53  Sinnigen, “Administrative Shifts”, pp. 456–67; Brown, Gentlemen and Officers, pp. 61–81, 93–101; Lafferty, Law and Society, ch. 3; Bjornlie in this volume. 54  ET 52. On the decline of the office of defensor civitatis in Late Antiquity, see Frakes, “Some Hidden Defensores Civitatum”, pp. 526–32; id., “Late Roman Social Justice”, pp. 337–48, where he argues that the office existed as early as 319; id., Contra Potentium Iniurias. 55  ET 52: “ . . . qui si defuerint, in alia civitate, quae haec habuerit, allegationis firmitas impleatur, aut apud iudicem eiusdem provinciae, quod donatum fuerit, allegetur.”

The Law

163

s­ oldiers had to be heard, even if they were not necessarily illiterate Goths, were normally men who had spent all their lives in the army and were therefore quite unskilled in matters of law. That the situation in the regular courts was undoubtedly better is true enough. As Athalaric proclaimed to his quaestor, Felix: “It is agreeable that the matter of justice be administered by judges experienced in the law, since he who knows fairness nor can easily become soiled by the fault of error can scarcely be able to disregard one whom learning will have purified.”56 But provincial governors and even prefects were by no means always learned in the law. Many, if not most, owed their positions to such factors as their wealth and rank, and were generally selected for their noble birth rather than any sort of demonstrable legal knowledge or ability. As Valentinian III remarked in 451 about Italy: “I have learned that both advocates and judges today are rarely if at all knowledgeable of the laws and customs.”57 That the inadequacy of judges was remedied to some extent by the use of assessores cannot be doubted.58 It would be naive to suppose, however, that judicial incompetence was not a serious problem that could result in any number of injustices.59 Judicial incompetence undoubtedly played a part in permitting injustice to flourish, but a judge whose perceived impropriety was the result of venality or abuse of power was an altogether different matter. Laws dealing with corrupt and venal judges appear with increasing regularity from the 3rd century onwards.60 Theoderic evidently took the matter very seriously. In all, a total of ten provisions of the Edictum Theoderici deal with related matters of judicial corruption and venality and the Variae document several instances of judicial 56  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.18: “Professionem constat esse iustitiae legum peritos iudices ordinare, quia vix potest neglegere qui novit aequitatem nec facile erroris vitio sordescit, quem doctrina purgaverit.” 57  CTh Nov. Val. 32.6: “Et causidicos et iudices defuisse hodieque gnaros iuris et legum aut raro aut minime repperiri.” 58  In the case of Archotamia, who made a complaint against her former daughter-in-law alleging that the latter had unlawfully squandered the assets of her children, Cassiodorus notes (Variae 4.12.3) that three assessors were to be chosen, by consent of the litigants involved, to help settle the case: “cum tribus honoratis, quos partium consensus elegerit, qui legum possint habere notitiam . . . proferatis[.]” 59  Lafferty Law and Society, ch. 3. For the problem of judicial incompetence in the later Roman Empire, see Harries, Law and Crime, 38–41; MacMullen, “Roman Bureaucratese,” pp. 364–78. For the early medieval world: Lafferty, Law and Society, ch. 3; Wormald, “Lex Scripta”, pp. 105–38; Riché, Education et Culture, pp. 229–31. 60  MacMullen Corruption; Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire; Harries, Law and Empire, ch. 8.

164

Lafferty

misconduct.61 Scholars today tend to interpret these kinds of laws not as proof that there was necessarily more corruption in Late Antiquity than there was in earlier times, but that emperors were more often prepared to say so in a bid to appear as hardliners against such governmental corruption.62 But this is an oversimplification. Heightened concern about judicial corruption reflects a greater sense of cultural and political crisis, as Theoderic and his successors struggled to maintain order without the benefit of a comprehensive bureaucracy. Thus, while not necessarily a widespread problem, judicial corruption was nevertheless a serious one. For there was no better measure of a ruler’s ability to govern than the individuals who were tasked with upholding the law: a corrupt judge not only undermined the integrity of the entire justice system, but called into question the suitability of the king as supreme lawgiver.63 Even if one were inclined to dismiss these sorts of complaints as a matter of literary convention, the fact that the subject of judicial corruption receives so much attention in the Edictum Theoderici—a relatively brief document that is conspicuously devoid of the sort of legal rhetoric found in the Theodosian Code or Variae—is a strong indicator that it posed a significant problem for Theoderic’s administration. To protect against the various dangers posed by a corrupt and negligent judge, Theoderic relied upon those whose loyalty he had no doubt, but this was no guarantee against acts of injustice and lawlessness on their part.64 That judges sometimes put their own interests before those of justice was an unavoidable consequence of the limitations inherent in the Ostrogothic administration. Like many emperors before him, Theoderic was hard-pressed to provide effective government at the local level while at the same time ensuring that local officers did not act in disregard of the central authority. Theoderic was acutely aware of this inability, but nowhere does he acknowledge the inequity of the fact that judges were first and foremost servants of the crown, usually expected to fulfil various other administrative responsibilities in addition to their judicial functions. While they were required to render justice impartially and equitably as the law demanded, they were equally, if not more so, obligated to protect the property and privileges of the king. Obviously, these duties were mutually exclusive, and while in most cases we may presume 61  ET 1–7, 55, 91, 114. For instances of judicial misconduct in the Variae, see e.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 9.20; 12.2, 3, 6. For the problem of judicial corruption in Ostrogothic Italy, see Lafferty, Law and Society, ch. 3. 62  E.g. Harries, Law and Empire, ch. 8; Pohl, “Perceptions of Barbarian Violence”, pp. 15–26. 63  Hoeflich, “Judicial Misconduct,” pp. 79–104. 64  Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 147–58; Matthews, Western Aristocracies, pp. 355, 386–8.

The Law

165

that judges recognized the need to proceed “according to the law”, in those special circumstances where the interests of the king were involved, they must have been unsure where law and custom left off and the king’s will began.65 The case of Boethius is illustrative. Accused of treason in 524, the senator was marched to Ticinium (Pavia) where he was put on trial. Despite this being a capital case, he was never called to defend himself. Instead, the presiding judge, the urban prefect Eusebius, permitted the dubious claims of a certain Opilio and Gaudentius (also discussed in Chapter 6), whose testimony secured them amnesty for previous crimes, to determine the facts of the case. In what amounted to little more than a show trial Boethius was convicted and sentenced to death.66 Under Theoderic the judicial system worked, but not without its deficiencies. The frequency of laws that deal with some form of corruption or another, negligence, or disobedience by royal officers, while demonstrating the earnestness with which the central administration addressed concerns of judicial corruption and misconduct, reveals the magnitude of the problem and the government’s inability to do anything about it. And it is all too clear that the disintegration of the justice system was already far advanced before Justinian’s forces landed in Sicily in 535. In the prologue to his edict, Athalaric outlines this disintegration from beginning to end: For a long while, now, complaints from all parts have sounded in Our ears with frequent whispering that certain people, having spurned civilitas, have chosen to live in bestial savagery, since, having returned to such a state of primitive rusticity, they have developed a wild hatred for the laws of man.67 By 552 Ostrogothic power in Italy was shattered. In the years following the death of Theoderic in 526, succeeding Ostrogothic rulers engaged in divisive fratricidal strife. Over the course of the same period, the competing kingdoms 65  Lafferty, Law and Society, ch. 3. 66  For a full account of these events see Anonymus Valesiani 14.85–87; Boethius, Consolatio Philosophiae 1.4.14–18; Procopius, Wars 5.1.32–9. That Boethius fictionalized, or at the very least embellished, these events in an effort to emphasize his suffering is certainly possible, but there is enough correspondence between Boethius’s own account and those of the Anonymus Valesianus and Procopius to conclude that the account has a basis in historical fact. 67  Cassiodorus, Variae 9.18: “diu est, quod diversorum querellae nostris auribus crebris susurrationibus insonarunt quosdam civilitate despecta affectare vivere beluina saevitia, dum regressi ad agreste principium ius humanum sibi aestimant feraliter odiosum.”

166

Lafferty

of the Franks and the Vandals began to assert their autonomy and establish dominance in regions once united under Ostrogothic control. From Athalaric onwards, the Ostrogothic regime became increasingly incapable of dealing with the dangers that threatened to pull apart the kingdom, dangers that had existed since the early days of the empire: the exercise of patronage, judicial venality and corruption, and the inability of the central administration to establish a strong presence in local communities and thereby ensure that justice was maintained equally and impartially throughout the peninsula. These problems were not unique to Ostrogothic Italy, but rather were endemic throughout the various successor kingdoms as different rulers attempted to restore peace and order without the benefit of a comprehensive judicial ­hierarchy.68 What was different in the case of Ostrogothic Italy, however, was the barbarian regime’s ability to mask these problems behind a rhetoric of Roman renewal that emphasized the perception of the order and civilitas associated with Ostrogothic rule. Conclusion The law of Ostrogothic Italy was an amalgamation of different traditions and customs that strove toward the simplification and popularization of classical law. A revealing testament to the character and vitality of this legal culture is the Edict of Theoderic. For one, it fully bears out the longevity of Rome’s ancient laws. Through their selection of topics the compilers displayed an interest in, an ability to understand, and a desire to preserve the essence of classical Roman law to a remarkable degree. Procedural rules governing criminal and civil cases, evidentiary matters pertaining to the validity of witnesses and written documents, the performance of oaths to determine the guilt or innocence of a person, the general system of succession, rules over marriage and divorce, the conveyance of property, and many other aspects of Roman public and private law were transmitted—perhaps somewhat simplified (which was not necessarily a very bad thing), but still in easily recognizably Roman form. Some might suggest that this conservatism was the result of a lack of understanding and self-confidence, so that the compilers refrained from changing the texts of the jurists and the imperial decrees of emperors merely because they did not know how to do it properly. But innovations do occur. Some were the result of developments taking place in the Roman court system, 68  Wormald, “Lex Scripta”, pp. 105–38.

The Law

167

and others were the result of changes in Italian society following the collapse of imperial authority and the arrival of the Goths in the peninsula.69 In revising existing but increasingly outdated Roman law, the compilers of the Edictum Theoderici were simply adhering to tradition. For centuries emperors, prefects, and jurists adapted Roman law according to current exigencies. While Constantine was to some extent an ‘innovator’ of the laws, as his nephew Julian described him, he was simply acknowledging the current state of affairs. By the early 4th century, the law which in fact operated in the provinces of the western Roman Empire was an admixture of civil law and local custom, differing from region to region and sharing little of the sophistication, complexity, and technical precision that characterized purely classical Roman law from earlier centuries. It is from this perspective that we should understand the Edictum Theoderici. It did not mark a break from Rome’s classical legal past, nor—more importantly—did it signify a decline in legal erudition. While the compilers lacked the artistic and rhetorical skills of jurists like Gaius, Ulpian, and Tribonian, there is nothing inherently alien or inferior about their work. On the contrary, they steered a subtle course between the strict formalities of classical jurisprudence and the demands of local custom. Their efforts offer a revealing glimpse into the profound social, political, and economic changes that marked Italy’s passage from antiquity into the Middle Ages. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, ed. and trans. J.C. Rolfe, 3 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1935–40. Anonymi Valesiani pars posterior, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., vol. 1 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 9), Berlin 1892 (repr. Munich 1981). Boethius, Consolatio Philosophiae, ed. L. Bieler (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 94), 2nd ed., Turnhout 1984. Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894; Engl. trans. S.J.B. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae (Translated Texts for Historians 12), Liverpool 1992. Codex Theodosianus, ed. T. Mommsen/P. Meyer/P. Krueger, 2 vols., Berlin 1905. Edictum Theoderici regis, ed. F. Bluhme (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges nationum Germanicarum 5), Hannover 1889, pp. 149–70; repr. by J. Baviera, Fontes 69  On these developments see Lafferty, Law and Society, especially ch. 2.

168

Lafferty

iuris anteiustiniani II, Florence 1940, pp. 683–710; repr. P.L. Falaschi, Edictum Theoderici regis Italiae, Milan 1966. Jordanes, Romana et Getica, ed. T. Mommsen (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 5.1), Berlin 1882. Novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes, ed. P. Meyer/T. Mommsen, Berlin 1905. Pauli Sententiae, ed. J. Baviera, FIRA, vol. 11, Florence 1940 (repr. 1964). Procopius, Wars, ed. J. Haury and trans. H.B. Dewing, 5 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1914–28.



Secondary Literature

Arjava, A., “Paternal Power in Late Antiquity”, Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998), 147–65. ———, “The Survival of Roman Family Law After the Barbarian Settlements”, in R.W. Mathisen (ed.), Law, Society and Authority in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2001, pp. 33–51. Barnwell, P.S., Emperor, Prefects and Kings, London 1992. Bauman, R.A., “Leges Iudiciorum Publicorum”, in H. Temporini (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 2.13, Berlin 1980, pp. 103–233. ———, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome, London 1996. Bjornlie, S., “What Have Elephants to Do with Sixth-Century Politics? A Reappraisal of the ‘Official’ Governmental Dossier of Cassiodorus”, Journal of Late Antiquity 2.1 (2009), 143–71. ———, Politics and Tradition Between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople: A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527–554, Cambridge 2012. Brown, T.S., Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy, AD 554–800, Rome 1984. Brunner, H., Zur Rechtsgeschichte der römischen und germanischen Urkunde, vol. 1: Das Privaturkund Italiens; das angelsächischen Landbuch; die fränkische Privaturkunde, Berlin 1880. ———, Forschungen zur Geschichte des deutschen und französischen Rechtes, Stuttgart 1894. Burns, T.S., “Calculating Ostrogothic Population”, Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 26 (1978), 457–64. Cameron, A., The Later Roman Empire, 284–430, Cambridge, MA 1993. Christensen, A.S., Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths: Studies in a Migration Myth, Copenhagen 2002. Cimma, M.R., L’episcopalis audientia nelle constituzioni imperiali da Costantino à Giustiniano, Turin 1989. Coates-Stephens, R., “The Walls and Aqueducts of Rome in the Early Middle Ages, AD 500–1000,” Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998), 167–78.

The Law

169

Delmaire, R., Les Institutions du Bas-Èmpire romain, de Constantin à Justinien, vol. 1: Les Institutions palatines, Paris 1995. Dupont, C., Le Droit criminel dans les constitutions de Constantin, vol. 2: Les Peines, Lille 1955. Ensslin, W., Theoderich der Grosse, 2nd ed., Munich 1959. Evans Grubbs, J., Law and Family in Late Antiquity, Oxford 1995. Fischer-Drew, K., “The Germanic Family of the Lex Burgundionum”, Mediaevalia et Humanistica 15 (1963), 5–14. ———, “The Barbarian Kings as Lawgivers and Judges”, in R.S. Hoyt (ed.), Life and Thought in Early Middle Ages, Minneapolis 1967, pp. 7–29. Frakes, R.M., “Some Hidden Defensores Civitatum in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus”, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Rom. Abt. 109 (1992), 526–32. ———, “Late Roman Social Justice and the Origins of the Defensor Civitatis”, The Classical Journal 89 (1994), 337–48. Frakes, R.M., Contra Potentium Iniurias: The Defensor Civitatis and Late Roman Justice, Munich 2001. Halsall, G., Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568, Cambridge 2007. Harries, J., “ ‘Not the Theodosian Code’: Euric’s Law and Late Fifth-Century Gaul”, in id./I. Wood (eds.), The Theodosian Code. Studies in the Imperial Law of Late Antiquity, London 1993, pp. 39–51. ———, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 1999. ———, “Resolving Disputes: The Frontiers of Law in Late Antiquity”, in R.W. Mathisen (ed.), Law, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2001, pp. 68–82. ———, Law and Crime in the Roman World, Cambridge 2007. Harris, W.V., “The Roman Father’s Power of Life and Death”, in R.S. Bagnall/id. (eds.), Studies in Roman Law in Memory of A.A. Schiller, Leiden 1986, pp. 81–95. Heather, P., “Gens and Regnum among the Ostrogoths”, in H.-W. Goetz/et al. (eds.), Regna and Gentes: the Relationship Between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, Leiden/New York 2003, pp. 88–133. ———, “Merely an Ideology?—Gothic Identity in Ostrogothic Italy”, in S.J. Barnish/ F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 31–60. Hoeflich, M.H., “Regulation of Judicial Misconduct from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages”, Law and History Review 2 (1984), 79–104. Honoré, T., “Ausonius and Vulgar Law”, Iura 35 (1984), 79–82. ———, “Conveyances of Land and Professional Standards in the Later Empire”, in Peter Birks (ed.), New Perspectives in the Roman Law of Property. Essays for Barry Nicholas, Oxford 1989, pp. 137–52.

170

Lafferty

Humfress, C., “Poverty and Roman Law”, in M. Atkins/R. Osborne (eds.), Poverty in the Roman World, Cambridge 2006, pp. 183–203. ———, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2007. Innes, M., “Land, Freedom and the Making of the Medieval West”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 16 (2008), 39–74. Jolowicz, H.F./Nichols, B., Historical Introduction to Roman Law, 3rd ed., Cambridge 1972. Jones, A.H.M., The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey, 3 vols., Oxford 1964. Kaser, M., Römische Rechtsgeschichte, Göttingen 1976. ———, Das römische Zivilprozessrecht, 2nd ed., Munich 1996. Kelly, C., Ruling the Later Roman Empire, Cambridge, MA 2004. Kunkel, W., An Introduction to Roman Legal and Constitutional History, trans. J.M. Kelly, 2nd ed. (based on the 6th German edition of Römische Rechtsgeschichte), Oxford 1973. Lafferty, S., Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge 2013. ———, “Law and Society in Ostrogothic Italy: Evidence from the Edictum Theoderici,” Journal of Late Antiquity 3.2 (2010), 377–404. Lamoreaux, J.C., “Episcopal Courts in Late Antiquity”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995), 143–67. Lenski, N., “Evidence for the Audientia episcopalis in the New Letters of Augustine”, in R.W. Mathisen (ed.), Law, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2001, pp. 83–97. Levy, E., Pauli sententiae: a palingenesia of the opening titles as a specimen of research in west Roman vulgar law, Ithaca 1945. ———, “Vulgarization of Roman Law in the Early Middle Ages”, Mediaevalia et Humanistica 1 (1963), 14–40. Liebs, D., “Roman Vulgar Law in Late Antiquity”, in A.J.B. Sirks (ed.), Aspects of Law in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2008, pp. 35–53. ———, Die Jurisprudenz im spätantiken Italien (260–640 n. Chr.) (Freiburger Rechtsgeschichtliche Abhandlungen, n.f. 8) Berlin 1987. ———, “Römische Jurisprudenz in Afrika im 4. Jh. n. chr”, Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 106 (1989), 201–17. ——— (ed.), Das Gesetz in Spätantike und frühem Mittelalter, Göttingen, 1992. ———, “Die pseudopaulinischen Sentenzen,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 112 (1995), 151–71. ———, Römische Jurisprudenz in Gallien (2 bis 8 Jahrhundert), Berlin 2002. ———, Vor den Richtern Roms. Berühmte Prozesse der Antike, Munich 2007.

The Law

171

MacMullen, R., “Roman Bureaucratese”, Traditio 18 (1962), pp. 364–78. McKitterick, R., The Carolingians and the Written Word, Cambridge 1989. Martindale, J., The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2: AD 395–527, Cambridge 1980. Matthews, J.F., Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, AD 364–425, Oxford 1992. ———, Laying Down the Law, New Haven 2000. ———, “Interpreting the interpretationes of the Breviarium”, in R.W. Mathisen (ed.), Law, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2001, pp. 11–32. Meyer-Marthaler, E., Römisches Recht in Rätien im frühen und hohen Mittelalter, Zurich 1968). Mitteis, L., Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den östlichen Provinzen des römischen Kaiserreichs: Mit Beiträge zur Kenntniss des griechischen Rechts und der spätrömischen Rechtsentwicklung, Leipzig 1891 (repr. Hildesheim 1963). Mommsen, T., Le Droit pénal romain, trans. J. Duquesne, 3 vols., Paris 1907. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, London 1992. Mousourakis, G., The Historical and Institutional Context of Roman Law, Aldershot 2003. Pohl, W., “Perceptions of Barbarian Violence”, in H.A. Drake (ed.), Violence in Late Antiquity. Perceptions and Practices, Aldershot 2006, pp. 15–26. Rapp, C., Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition, Berkeley 2005. Riché, P., Education et Culture dans l’Occident Barbare VIe–VIIIe siècles, Paris 1962. Schiller, A.A., Roman Law: Mechanisms of Development, New York 1978. Sinnigen, W., “Administrative Shifts of Competence under Theoderic”, Traditio 21 (1965), 456–67. Sirks, A.J.B., “Shifting Frontiers in the Law: Romans, Provincials and Barbarians”, in R.W. Mathisen/H. Sivan (eds.), Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, Aldershot 1996, pp. 146–57. Stein, E., Untersuchungen über das Officium der Prätorianerpräfektur seit Diokletian, Amsterdam 1962. Stein, P., Roman Law in European History, Cambridge 1999. Thomas, Y., “Vitae necisque potestas. Le père, la cité, la mort”, in Du châtiment dans la cité: Supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le monde antique (Collection de l’École française de Rome 79), Rome 1984, pp. 499–548. Treggiari, S., Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian, Oxford 1991. Vandendriessche, S., Possessio und Dominium im postklassischen römischen Recht. Eine Überprüfung von Levy’s Vulgarrechtstheorie anhand der Quellen des Codex Theodosianus und der Posttheodosianischen Novelle, Hamburg 2006.

172

Lafferty

Vismara, G., “Romani e Goti di fronte al diritto nel regno ostrogoto”, in I Goti in occidente: problemi (Settimanae di studio del Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 3), Spoleto 1956, 407–63. ———, Edictum Theoderici (Ius Romanum Medii Aevi 2.b.aa), Milan 1967. Wallace-Hadrill A. (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Society, London 1989. Wieacker, F., “Le droit romain de la mort d’Alexandre Sévère á l’avènement de Dioclétien”, Revue historique de droit français et étranger 49 (1971), 201–23. ———, “ ‘Vulgarrecht’ und ‘Vulgarismus’. Alte und Neue Probleme und Diskussionen, lecture in Siena 4th December 1979”, in Studi in onore di Arnaldo Biscardi I, Milan 1982, pp. 33–51. Wolfram, H., History of the Goths, trans. T.J. Dunlap, 2nd ed., London 1988. Wormald, P., “Lex Scripta and verbum Regis: Legislation and Germanic Kingship from Euric to Cnut”, in P.H. Sawyer/I.N. Wood (eds.), Early Medieval Kingship, Leeds 1977, pp. 105–38. ———, “The Leges Barbarorum: Law and Ethnicity in the Ostrogothic West”, in H. Goetz/et al. (eds.), Regna and Gentes: The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, Leiden/New York 2003, pp. 21–53.

CHAPTER 8

The Ostrogothic Military Guy Halsall Introduction The Ostrogothic kingdom was created and destroyed by conquest and the army remained a central feature of its politics and society. Discussing m ­ ilitary affairs in Gothic Italy therefore requires attending to seemingly unmilitary issues like the settlement and its nature and the kingdom’s ethnic politics, which have been foci for sometimes fierce recent debate. This chapter is organized according to three main chronological phases: the period of the conquest, Theoderic’s reign as king of Italy, and finally the Gothic War. This permits both the examination of change and the analysis of issues specific to each sub-period. Although the Ostrogothic Italian kingdom endured for only three generations, Theoderic’s was a long reign by any standards. The troops who accompanied him across the Isonzo in 489 were very different from those undertaking the military operations of his last years and entirely unlike those of the Gothic Wars.

The Army of the Conquest: Theoderic’s Goths—An Army or A People?

Theoderic’s forces in 489 developed from several Gothic groupings. Principally, they originated in Theoderic’s own armed following and in that of his namesake, Theoderic Strabo (‘the Squinter’).1 Neither group can be considered as ‘the Gothic people’, although later sources from within the Italian kingdom and outside attempted to create that image. The fact that as well as the Toulouse ‘Visigoths’ two Balkan Gothic groups existed gives the lie to such a supposition. Moreover, these were not only two such groups, but simply the most numerous and, therefore, the most politically and militarily significant. These bands originated in the instability that followed the fragmentation of Attila’s short-lived trans-Danubian ‘empire’ in the 450s. Attila’s polyglot subjects possessed several levels of ethnicity beneath a unifying Hunnic identity. In a justly famous story, the east Roman ambassador Priscus met a Greek in 1  Well described in Heather, Goths and Romans, pp. 227–308.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_009

174

Halsall

Attila’s camp,2 but this ‘Greek’ also regarded himself as a Hun. Famously, most known Huns bear Gothic names, not least Attila and his brother Bleda, and the material culture associated with the Hunnic kingdom emerges from local Roman and ‘barbarian’ traditions. After Attila’s death, strife broke out between his sons and other former commanders. Often depicted as a rising of ‘subject peoples’, it seems more reasonably described as a succession crisis. Opponents of the Attilan dynasty adopted non-Hunnic identities, bringing back to the surface lower-level ethnicities, like the Greek identity of Priscus’ interlocutor, which had always existed. Following the defeat of Attila’s sons, a bewildering array of ‘peoples’ came fleetingly into view in the Hunnic kingdom’s wreckage.3 For some, even a solid historical existence can be questioned. Only three named Skiri are known: Odovacer, his father, and his brother.4 It is difficult to decide whether Skirian identity ought to be considered ‘ethnic’ or familial. Nonetheless, a successful kin group’s identity might attract enough adherents for it to operate in uncontrovertibly ‘ethnic’ fashion. After all, historians are accustomed to describing post-imperial Gaul, its people, and its culture between the late 5th and 8th centuries using a familial identity originating precisely in Odovacer’s generation: Merovingian. The families of the two Theoderics apparently stressed a Gothic identity, just as other people with Gothic names had adopted or continued to proclaim Hunnic ethnicity. Others made political claims based around Gepidic, or Herulian, or Rugian identity. Whether any faction should be considered a ‘reappearing’ tribe with a long pedigree seems questionable. Whether the Goths formed ‘a people on the move’ as in traditional Völkerwanderung interpretations or as in more recent works were simply an army has recently been debated.5 Extreme interpretations are unsatisfying, not least because ‘army’ and ‘people’ are trickier terms to define than might be assumed. Consequently, between the ‘polar’ readings, conclusions are difficult to pigeonhole as either ‘army’ or ‘people’. Nevertheless, the issue is of consid2  Priscus, frag. 11.2 (Blockley), pp. 266–75. 3  Fehr/von Rummel, Völkerwanderung, pp. 75–80; Heather, Goths, pp. 240–51; id., Goths, pp. 124–9; Pohl, Völkerwanderung, pp. 118–25; Thompson, Huns, pp. 167–76; Wolfram Goths, pp. 258–68; id., Roman Empire, pp. 139–43. 4  Goffart, Barbarian Tides, pp. 203–5. 5  The debate has focused on Alaric’s Goths more than on the Ostrogoths but the same issues apply. For a clear defence of the “people on the move” see Heather, Goths, pp. 169–78. For discussion of the earlier Goths, many points of which can be made, by analogy, for the Ostrogoths, see Liebeschuetz, “Alaric’s Goths”; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 189–94; Kulikowski, “Nation Versus Army”.

The Ostrogothic Military

175

erable relevance. Gothic factions (like, presumably, the others) are described having women and children in tow,6 which has been taken as proving that they were a migrating ‘people’.7 This does not necessarily follow. Roman armies took women and children with them too, as did most armies until well into the 20th century.8 This note of caution, however, does not authorize us to disallow the view of the Goths as ‘a people on the move’. A ‘factional’ interpretation permits an intermediate course, envisaging a social group including women and children, but with young male warriors serving more established leaders forming the most important element.9 After many years of campaigning, in and out of East Roman service, three consequences can readily be imagined. One is the knitting of warrior bands into established quasi-permanent bodies, living together year-round, practising weapon use, and regularly fighting alongside one another. These would acquire most of the attributes of regular military units and the whole ­organization those of a permanent army. Indeed the Ostrogoths largely functioned as an army during the 470s and 480s. The second consequence, however, will have been the acquisition of wives, children, and undoubtably camp followers. Paradoxically, then, as the Goths increasingly took on the form and functions of an army, they will have become more socially varied. The third consequence is that young warriors got older; mature warriors became old and possibly infirm. Without an established place in eastern Roman social, military, and political structures, they could not settle down. They had little option but to continue to move and—as long as they could—fight with the rest. This made the Goths, even if originating and functioning as an ‘army’, much more like ‘a people’ than most military forces. Therefore, to see the force heading for Italy in 489 as looking rather more like ‘a people’ than a normal ‘army’, one need not envisage Theoderic’s Goths as originating as a tribe that upped and moved en masse. Once the situation’s dynamics are thought through, even a narrowly military reading of the Goths’ origins and structure (like this one) must ultimately imagine the force that arrived in Italy as something more socially variegated.

6  Malchus, frag. 20, ed. Blockley; Ennodius, Pan. 26–7. 7  Heather has repeatedly expressed this opinion, most sophisticatedly in Goths and Romans, and Goths. 8  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 190–1; Codex Theodosianus (cited hereafter as CTh) 7.1.3. 9  See Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 439, 444, 447 for the importance of age.

176

Halsall

Italian Background

The loss of direct imperial control over Africa in the 420s and 430s produced crucial changes in Italian politics.10 The seaborne threat from Carthage forced significant forces to be stationed throughout Italy, rather than (as hitherto) just in the north. A key element of 5th-century politics was the increasingly hostile separation of Italian and Gallic aristocracies. However, whereas the 4th-century Italian aristocracy had had little option but to accept the de facto shift of the imperial core to the Rhine frontier, it now had an armed force to ensure its control of the centre of politics and patronage. The Italian army became decisive in peninsular politics, as Ricimer’s long period of dominance makes clear. Although unable to establish itself over the factions based upon the Goths of Toulouse and the Burgundians on the Rhône, the Dalmatian army, or the Vandals in Africa, it nevertheless dominated Italy, expelling the Gallic/ Gothic faction in 457 and the (legitimate) Dalmatian claimant in 475, as well as fending off attacks from African Vandals and transalpine Alamanni. Recruitment remained problematic, however. Lacking effective fiscal control beyond Provence and the Narbonnaise or Tarraconensis, any Italian emperor’s income was greatly reduced. The peninsula became a political hothouse as the senators, likewise cut off from properties and revenues abroad, competed with lower-order aristocrats for honours, titles, and patronage, especially where local wealth differences were now much reduced. This made the government’s ability to levy troops as well as taxes problematic. Therefore, taxation paid for military recruitment outside Italy, especially in trans-Danubian barbaricum. These troops, at least initially, lacked local ties and were more easily employed as a coercive force. Unsurprisingly, the resources used to pay the army were referred to as the fiscus barbaricus.11 Nonetheless, crucial dynamics operated. Roman troops’ remuneration had always involved land. Late Roman forces, as noted, lived and sometimes moved accompanied by wives and children. Recruits got older, married, and settled down. Hereditary military service12 meant that any children followed their fathers into the army, which over time became as integrated into peninsular society and politics as any other group. The soldiery that serially deposed Julius Nepos and Romulus ‘Augustulus’ doubtless contained ­significant ­numbers of

10  See Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 257–83 for Italian political history, and 328–38 for social and economic conditions, with references; Humphries, “Italy, AD 425–605”. 11  Cesa, “Il regno di Odoacre”, p. 310; Variae 1.19 for its successor, the fiscus gothicus. 12  CTh 7.1.5, 7.1.8.

The Ostrogothic Military

177

men born and raised in Italy, even if serving in units with ‘­barbarian’ titles: second-generation ‘Italo-barbarians’. This discussion casts the confrontation between Odovacer and Theoderic somewhat differently from the clash of ‘barbarian’ armies sometimes imagined. Both sides originated in a specific 5th-century imperial context. Their similarities doubtless explain the drawn-out, long-indecisive nature of the struggle and the common changing of sides.13 Nonetheless, Theoderic’s troops’ military experience and long practice operating as units were probably crucial to their eventual victory.14 Hospitalitas Crucial to understanding the military’s place in Gothic Italy is what has been dubbed, perhaps misleadingly, ‘the Hospitalitas debate’.15 The name h­ ospitalitas (loosely, hospitality) came from a late Roman billeting law, describing the division of billets into thirds: the householder taking two and the soldier the ­other.16 Procopius’ Wars allege that the ‘barbarians’ appropriated a third of the land of Italy, and Cassiodorus’ Variae allude to Gothic ‘thirds’ or ‘shares’. Italy was long understood as having been divided according to that billeting law, with one-third going to the Goths. This idea fit then-dominant paradigms, seeing the 5th century’s principal feature as violent ‘barbarian’ conquest and viewing the ‘barbarians’ as land-hungry ‘tribes’. Walter Goffart’s Barbarians and Romans undermined that consensus. Goffart shaped his general theory of ‘barbarian’ settlement using the Italian evidence rather than the Burgundian, as had hitherto been more usual. The Italian data were more contemporary than the relevant clauses of the Burgundian Code. 13  Anonymus Valesianus, pars posterior, 10.50–56, ed. Rolfe; Cassiodorus, Chronicle 1320–31, ed. Mommsen; Consularia Italica (a collection of annalistic texts grouped by Theodor Mommsen under this title,which is highly misleading but convenient for citation) 639–49; Ennodius, Life of Epiphanius, 109–19. Heather, Goths, pp. 219–20; Wolfram Goths, pp. 281–4. 14  An army of Gallic ‘Visigoths’ decisively broke Odovacer’s siege of Theoderic in Pavia (Anonymus Valesianus, pars posterior 11.53). Whether this represented pan-Gothic cooperation is unlikely. It may be preferable to see the Gallic faction chancing its arm in Italian politics in established 5th-century tradition, with Alaric II following his uncle Theoderic II’s example. 15  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 422–47; for summary of the debate to ca. 2005 and references. Goffart, Barbarian Tides, pp. 119–86. 16  CTh 7.8.5 (dated 398).

178

Halsall

Aquitanian Gothic and Burgundian settlements were separated from the documents that described them by time and several phases of development. Ennodius’ and Cassiodorus’ writings offered a direct view of how ‘barbarian’ troops were settled in a Roman province. Goffart’s more famous move placed the settlement within the context of Roman taxation. He proposed that the Gothic settlers were granted not ‘thirds’ of land but ‘thirds’ of tax revenue. The Roman law of hospitalitas had, Goffart showed, concerned the temporary provision of shelter, not salary, provisioning, or settlement. Procopius’ testimony was politically motivated, the Wars legitimizing Justinian’s ‘reconquest’ of Italy. Procopius might have distorted evidence to paint Theoderic in a bad light. His reference to a third of the land might only be hyperbole, with no relationship to the tertia referred to elsewhere. Goffart turned instead to Ennodius’ and Cassiodorus’ contemporary statements that the Goths had been settled without Roman landowners feeling any loss.17 It was difficult, said Goffart, to envisage such pronouncements if the senators had really been stripped of a third of their estates. Goffart then analysed Cassiodorus’ Variae and the technical terms illatio tertiarum and millennarius.18 The former had previously been read as a levy of one-third of the revenue from land, paid by landowners whose estates had not been partitioned to house a Goth. Alongside actual expropriation, this would have represented a serious burden on the Italian aristocracy, making Ennodius’ and Cassiodorus’ rhetorical statements extremely insensitive. The aristocracy clearly retained its 5th-century prosperity under the Ostrogoths—difficult to envisage if their revenues had been so drastically reduced. Goffart suggested that the illatio was a third of the usual tax revenues, diverted to pay Gothic salaries. The ‘third’ (tertia) referred to this.19 A millenarius20 had been assumed to be a chiliarch (a commander of 1000 men). The term can mean this but Goffart pointed out that a millena was also a notional Roman tax assessment unit still used in Ostrogothic Italy.21 In specific numbers and perhaps drawn from particular fiscal assets, these were set aside for designated purposes. For Goffart, a millenarius was a Goth paid

17  Ennodius, Epist. 9.26; Cassiodorus, Variae 2.16. 18  Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, pp. 73–80. The loci classici are Variae 1.14 and 2.16–17. 19  Bjornlie, elsewhere this volume, for the straightforward fiscal connotations of the illatio tertiarum. Relating the tertia to the fiscal payment schedule simplifies the situation further. 20  Goffart, Romans and Barbarians, pp. 80–8. Cassiodorus, Variae 5.27, ed. Mommsen is key. 21  See Cassiodorus, Variae 2.37, ed. Mommsen.

The Ostrogothic Military

179

with a millena of tax revenue.22 Conflicts between Gothic soldiers and Italian taxpayers arose where the former attempted to convert a legitimate right to receive a salary into the illegitimate ownership of the land from which that salary was raised.23 Goffart’s simple reading has considerable advantages. No longer need one envisage hordes of agrimensores touring the Italian peninsula, assessing estates and their relative value before assigning measured portions to specific Goths. The state gained a standing army and lost nothing; revenue collection was simplified. Nonetheless, most historians have remained unconvinced.24 Most seriously, Goffart’s thesis as originally formulated required readers to understand terra as meaning “fiscal revenue from the land”, which, critics argued, was rather forced. In response, Goffart pointed out that even in straightforwardlooking modern legal documents, ‘land’ implies a web of relations and obligations. This excluded the proclamation that terra was ‘unambiguous’, as though ‘land’ were itself straightforward. Furthermore, Goffart’s argument relied upon more than new translations of words like terra, accounting for many other relationships frequently ignored by anti-Goffartian critiques. Most problematically for Goffart’s critics, the traditional view was rooted in the appearance of tripartite divisions in the Roman hospitalitas law and in some texts discussing ‘barbarian’ settlement. Goffart decisively showed that the Theodosian Code’s hospitalitas had no bearing on the issues confronted in 5th- and 6th-century texts describing ‘barbarian’ tertia and the rest. Therefore, even if one finds Goffart’s argument unconvincing, a return to old-style ‘expropriationist’ theses, based ultimately on that hospitalitas law, is impossible. Even in its most recent formulation, Goffart’s interpretation is not ­unproblematic.25 Some ground clearing is necessary. We must rigorously keep to the precise issue under debate and to the particular data relevant to it. Evidence, for example, of Gothic landowning does not contradict Goffart’s thesis, which concerned the ‘barbarian’ settlers’ salary and thus their relations with the state. It discussed ‘accommodation’ in that precise sense, not 22  Mommsen, “Ostgotische Studien”, p. 499, nn. 3–4, related millenarii to millenae. Lot “Du régime de l’hospitalité”, p. 1003, and nn. 5–6, thought millenarii were officers. Generally, however, it had been assumed that a millena was a fixed amount of land. 23  Goffart Romans and Barbarians, pp. 89–100. 24  Principal critiques include: Barnish, “Land, taxation and barbarian settlement”; Cesa, “Hospitalitas o altre ‘techniques of accommodation’?”; Halsall, “Technique of Barbarian Settlement”; Wood, “Ethnicity and ethnogenesis”. Goffart has responded vigorously in Barbarian Tides, “Technique of Barbarian Settlement”, and “Administrative Methods”. 25  Pace Goffart, “Administrative Methods”.

180

Halsall

‘­barbarian’ landownership. Furthermore, we need not suppose that all the land of Italy was encompassed in the discussion of ‘thirds’. The only text to say so is Procopius’ Wars. If, like Goffart, one rejects that testimony, one must logically reject it all, not pick and choose details from it. The most one may say is that Procopius’ mention of a ‘third’ might have been motivated by the legal arrangements employed. The documents need not imply a universal, ­peninsula-wide arrangement, but only that those relationships applied to those lands or resources necessary for the Gothic army’s payment. Indeed one need assume only that those relationships applied to the lands or resources necessary to pay those Goths who were paid in that way. There is no implication that all Goths were remunerated entirely in the fashion discussed in the handful of relevant documents in the Variae. Goffart’s critics have made the point before that it is unlikely that all Goths received the same payment, albeit on the mistaken assumption that a standard salary rather than a standard means of paying a salary was implicit in Goffart’s argument. Goffart’s reading of the illatio, tertia, sortes and millenarii seems reasonable. Late imperial Roman precedents existed for his system, having apparently been used to pay elite field armies such as in a general sense the Goths were.26 A Gothic warrior would be paid by a draft on taxation,27 which he collected from designated taxpayers and, as Gothic status apparently equated more or less with service in the army, this relationship would be inheritable. Most of this situation’s elements derived from the late imperial military. The relationship between Goth and Roman was crucially that of government official to taxpayer. No other relative status was implied. A Goth may have been of a higher or lower standing than the Romans earmarked to pay him his salary. The Goffart thesis’ limitation is its insistence that one system entirely sufficed in all cases, in Ostrogothic Italy and elsewhere.28 That requires complex and sometimes less-convincing argumentation. It is simpler to propose that while Goffart’s proposed system provided the Ostrogothic army’s essential salary, it was not necessarily the only means used. Different Gothic status groups may have wanted payment in different forms.29 The resources of the sacrae largitiones and res privata, including landed estates and palaces as well as revenues, surely passed directly to Theoderic. At least one Gothic family (the Amals) received land to live upon. It is plausible that, like the e­ mperors, 26  CTh 7,4.20, 22. 27  That such a system for payment was employed in Ostrogothic Italy is suggested by Edictum Theoderici (cited hereafter as ET) 126 and especially 144. 28  See Halsall, Barbarian Migrations for discussion of the problems with this assumption. 29  García Gallo, “Notas sobre el reparto de terras”; Wolfram, Goths, p. 224.

The Ostrogothic Military

181

Theoderic rewarded some of his followers from these resources. Grants of fiscal land on emphyteutic leases are reasonably well attested as a form of imperial ­patronage.30 Theoderic had other—entirely traditional—resources within the sacrae largitiones and res privata. Confiscating enemies’ property was normal after a civil war.31 It is reasonable to see Odovacer’s senior supporters being expropriated, their land used to reward some of Theoderic’s f­ ollowers.32 Contemporary sources mention massacres of Odovacer’s men.33 They had probably been paid according to a system like that proposed by Goffart but they had also lived somewhere and that landed property fell to Theoderic to retain or redistribute. We can easily imagine Theoderic’s senior or favoured followers being remunerated with land grants. This has no bearing on the documents discussed by Goffart or the precise situations they describe, or to normal Gothic military salary. A considerable swathe of agri deserti (lacking registered taxpayers) existed.34 The late Roman state had rewarded retiring veterans with land.35 Employing the agri deserti, yielding no tax revenue, for this purpose cost the government nothing. Indeed enmeshing them in a system of military obligations extended fiscal resources. This, however, is also irrelevant to discussions of sortes or ­tertia, which relate to tax revenue. Some dynamics within the Gothic army are important. Not all Theoderic’s men were warriors in the prime of life. Some had campaigned for twenty years and doubtless expected to settle down. Others may have fought on into old age or accompanied the army as infirm exwarriors for the protection provided. They would not normally draw an annual salary nor periodic donatives in return for military service.36 Land was a more appropriate reward. Nonetheless, because Gothic soldiers’ status and duties were heritable, lands so used were automatically entwined in military obligations, especially when inherited. Imagine an elderly companion of Theoderic and perhaps Thiudimir, his father, rewarded with an Italian ager desertus. He has a son serving in the army 30  Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 417–20. 31  Cassiodorus, Variae 4.32, ed. Mommsen assigns the property of the proscribed to the fisc. The Edictum Theoderici specifies the fisc’s claim to incoroporate convicted criminals’ property in some cases, where there were no heirs. ET 112–13. 32  Cassiodorus, Variae 1.18, ed. Mommsen refers more easily to the distribution of expropriated land (and abuses of that situation) when Theoderic conquered Italy than to illegitimate claims on tax revenue. 33  Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 26–7. 34  Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 812–23 is the classic basic account. 35  CTh 7.8.1. 36  See Cassiodorus, Variae 5.36, ed. Mommsen.

182

Halsall

who collects his salary from designated taxpayers; in Goffart’s terms he is a millenarius. When the old Goth dies, the son inherits his land.37 But, because he inherited his Gothic status and obligations from his father, that land is now subject to military service. This mature Goth now supports himself from the ager (no longer desertus) and his millena/e, both ultimately granted by the government. Imagine a young Goth who joined Theoderic during his c­ ampaigns, with no elderly relatives to support. After the conquest, he is paid from a designated millena. He marries an Italian woman and has children. He may or may not buy land, but when he retires he is rewarded in Roman fashion, with a landed allotment. The same features pertain as with the first Goth. His sons inherit his identity and military duties. When they inherit the ager, that land becomes part of a new type of fiscal resource—held tax-free in return for military service—and they, too, have two sources of sustenance. Note that in this hypothetical reconstruction no Roman landlord has been expropriated. Goffart’s interpretation of the standard means of furnishing a soldier’s salary remains entirely intact and no revision is required of his reading of the illatio, tertiae, or millena/millenarii. Crucially, however, this system contained the seeds of change. Within a generation, Gothic soldiers drew their salary not just from taxation: land with attached military obligations has come into the equation. This situation resembles that visible slightly later in 6th-century Merovingian Gaul.38 The growing connection between Gothic troops and landed communities reflects the dynamic suggested above, whereby earlier ‘barbarian’ recruits had become fixed in the Italian landscape. The power relations remain: the government retained a standing salaried army while simplifying aspects of revenue collection and distribution. The advantage of this reconstruction is its dynamism. Over time, salaried Gothic soldiers settled in communities with their families, with social ties beyond those of taxpayer and tax collector. They nevertheless remained an essentially military body. This allows us to retain Goffart’s interpretation and avoid having to explain away references to Gothic landownership or, alternatively, see them as compelling the rejection of Goffart’s thesis. Goffart pointed out another dynamic: the temptation to transfer the right to collect a salary from a designated fiscal asset into the latter’s outright ownership. This would completely change the relationships involved, rendering the taxpayer the Goth’s tenant. Some documents apparently represent 37  An uncle’s illegal retention and management of the paternal inheritance of an adolescent Goth of sufficient age to perform military service is discussed in Variae 1.38. This text could relate at least as easily to an inherited draft on fiscal revenue as to landed property. 38  Halsall, Warfare and Society, pp. 46–50 and refs.

The Ostrogothic Military

183

i­ nvestigations of or attempts to prevent such abuses.39 During weak, especially minority, government these can easily be imagined. If we accept Procopius’ account, it may even have been behind the demands that led to Orestes’ downfall, though, as mentioned, rejection of the whole story is probably the most consistent approach. Yet another dynamic is the purchase or acquisition of landed properties by Goths. Unlike land granted as remuneration for service, they would be liable for the capitatio and other relevant fiscal obligations. Goths might, however, want to extend tax exemption to all their lands.40 This would be a source of conflict.41 Overall, we should not see the system used to settle the Gothic army after 492 as taking a single form or imagine that the initial state of affairs remained unchanged throughout the kingdom’s existence.

The Army in the Governance of the Ostrogothic Kingdom

After his victory, Theoderic’s greatest problem was how to unify and govern Italy. Roman aristocratic power, especially below the level of the old senatorial nobility, where authority was probably more intensive within specific localities, and the potential threat posed by leading Gothic families, aggravated the difficulties with communication and the exercise of power posed by Italy’s difficult physical geography.42 To maintain authority, the king had to scatter his forces throughout the peninsula. Yet this potentially exacerbated the problem just described. A local commander (perhaps with as good a claim to nobility or even royalty as Theoderic’s) might use his troops, perhaps in alliance with regional aristocrats, to challenge royal authority. One solution might be to ensure that Goths did not perform military service in regions where they held millenae, though whether such a solution was practical in Italy is doubtful.43 Theoderic seems instead to have imaginatively employed patronage and propaganda.44 The army was seemingly assembled regularly in the principal royal centres: Pavia, Milan, and Ravenna. Here, Theoderic paid donatives (supplementary cash payments), rewarded those who 39  Cassiodorus, Variae, 8.28, ed. Mommsen. 40  Such a desire may lie behind the situations described in Cassiodorus, Variae 1.26 and 4.14, ed. Mommsen. 41  For a Gallic analogy, see Halsall, Warfare and Society, pp. 46–7. 42  For Theoderic’s concern with effective and rapid communications, see Cassiodorus, Variae 1.29, 2.19, 4.47, 5.5, etc., ed. Mommsen 43  Burgundian Code (54.1) suggests something similar being practised in that smaller realm. 44  Well analysed by Heather, “Theoderic, King of the Goths”, pp. 152–65.

184

Halsall

had done well, and punished those who had not.45 This enabled the continuous distribution and redistribution of royal patronage, not only the circulation of offices but also the geographical redeployment of personnel, preventing any family or faction from establishing a local power base. Furthermore, it made Gothic noble or royal families compete with lower-born rivals for royal favour. The assembled army was subject to manifestations of royal ideology aurally in speeches and panegyrics and visually in the pictorial and epigraphic decoration of buildings.46 The Senegallia Medallion demonstrates that some of the largesse distributed carried Theoderican propaganda.47 As Cassiodorus’ writings show, these ideological productions stressed the army’s role as a pillar of civilitas and consequently its responsibility to maintain harmonious relations with Roman civilians.48 They also stressed Theoderic’s claim (by the latter half of the reign) to represent an ancient, uniquely royal dynasty.49 Royal association or authorization trumped all other claims to legitimate authority but competition for this entailed subscription to Theoderic’s propaganda and ­ideology.50 This process undermined pre-existing social distinctions and ensured that Theoderic’s royal writ penetrated the geographically disparate local communities of Italy. Simultaneously, it assured the army’s continuing function as a state-controlled coercive force, in spite of increasingly complex and deeper-seated social ties. None of this meant uniformly harmonious relations between army and local society—such had hardly existed under the empire. The Variae mention conflicts and complaints arising from the army’s behaviour.51 Gothic troops, Cassiodorus repeatedly enjoined, should not molest, harass, or steal from provincials;52 the provincials of the Cottian Alps were compensated for depredations committed as the army passed through the region en route to Gaul 45  Cassiodorus, Variae 5.27, ed. Mommsen: bonos enim laus malos querula comitatur. See also Variae 4.14, 5.26–27, 5.36. 46  Heather, “Theoderic, King of the Goths”, pp. 162–3. Some settings for Theoderican ritual are analysed by Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical City, pp. 105–47; Wood, “Theoderic’s Monuments” (which ignores Wharton’s more theoretically sophisticated analysis, as do the discussants: pp. 263–77). On ideology, see Heydemann elsewhere in this volume. 47  Arnold, “Theoderic’s Invincible Mustache”. 48  Cassiodorus, Variae 2.8, 3.16, 3.24, 3.38, 5.26, ed. Mommsen. 49  Heather, Goths and Romans; Heather, “Theoderic, King of the Goths”. Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 162–74, stresses the early importance of Theoderic’s royalty. 50  ET 43–44 and 46 undermine the use of patronage to influence legal cases. 51  Most clearly perhaps in Cassiodorus, Variae 4.36, ed. Mommsen. 52  Cassiodorus, Variae 3.38, 4.13, 4.36, 5.10–11, 5.13, 5.26, 6.22, 7.4, ed. Mommsen.

The Ostrogothic Military

185

in 508.53 Like Roman troops, Goths on campaign were supplied with food and other necessities (annonae) by the fisc. For the kingdom’s mountainous northern frontier garrisons this was especially important. Hungry troops could easily start to take what they wanted from their civilian neighbours. Several times Cassiodorus had to order the rapid and effective payment of annonae.54 Organization The Variae, a rich source for the army’s place within Theoderic’s realm, provide no a priori evidence that much had changed at all from the late imperial situation, beyond the army’s Gothic composition. Gothic, like late Roman, soldiers were subject to their own jurisdiction. It seems preferable to read the texts discussing jurisdiction over Goths and Romans in this way rather than assuming that they refer to ancient Gothic tribal custom. Serving Gothic soldiers were possibly distinguished from civilians (as in other kingdoms) by their long hair (as capillati), a survival from the late Roman military.55 Whether this referred to a particular hairstyle or simply to serving soldiers’ typically hirsute appearance (cf. the French poilu) is unclear. The heavy chlamys (a type of cloak) continued to signify military authority.56 A possible role in male socialization will be discussed later but the late Roman army had long espoused real or invented ‘barbarian’ characteristics. Its jargon incorporated Germanic terms and the capillati’s long hair might also have manifested ‘barbarian chic’.57 The army had been a bastion of the Arian creed in late imperial Italy.58 Overall, it was well suited to maintaining the signifiers of Gothic identity, including the use (at least for specialized technical terms) of Gothic speech.

53  Cassiodorus, Variae 2.8, ed. Mommsen. 54  Cassiodorus, Variae 2.5, 3.41, ed. Mommsen. 55  Cassiodorus, Variae 4.49, though Gothicness is not specifically mentioned. Amory, People and Identity, pp. 344–6; Wolfram, Goths, p. 103; Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 113–15. 56  Cassiodorus, Variae 6.15. cf. CTh 14.10.1. The military identification of the donor/s of Variae 1.26 is suggested only by a reference to the soldier’s cloak (lacerna) in the last lines: “­tribute is owed to the purple [i.e., here, the king], not to the [military] cloak”, so a circular argument is risked by assuming mention of the cloak refers to military status. 57  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 101–10. 58  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 236–76. Robert Markus rebuked the suggestion in a review of Amory’s book, Journal of Theological Studies 49 (1998), pp. 414–7.

186

Halsall

Military organization is unclear. Theoderic supposedly disbanded the Roman guard regiments as useless ceremonial units.59 However, although the rank of comes domesticorum vacans was certainly honorific, the evidence does not suggest the guards were disbanded.60 The Variae refer to domestici and scholares.61 Royal bodyguards are mentioned, albeit with Atticising Greek terms (hypaspistai, doryphoroi), in accounts of the Gothic War. The reference to the horse and foot guards as domestici patres equitum et peditum, which perplexed Hodgkin,62 may hint at an important structuring element in the Gothic army, to which I will return. The late Roman army had been organized into a field army (comitatenses) and frontier troops (limitanei or ripenses). Whether this division persisted in Gothic Italy is unknown.63 There were certainly frontier garrisons; Theoderic referred to their role in keeping out ‘barbarians’ using traditional Roman vocabulary. The Variae, however, give no hint that they were recruited differently from the field army. The term miles is sometimes used when Goths are not referred to. Goths are more often mentioned in the exercitus, on campaign. Given the ‘barbarian’ composition of the late Roman field armies, this might support the notion. However, the formula for the appointment of the duke of Raetia makes clear that milites are simply enough soldiers in the exercitus, contrasting them with Romani and provinciales.64 Nonetheless, 5th-century Roman aristocrats—including Cassiodorus’ great-grandfather—had raised and commanded local defence forces65 and it is likely that city garrisons included Roman as well as Gothic soldiers. A distinction remains possible. The army’s ethnic component has been hotly debated, especially since Patrick Amory proposed that Gothic identity was essentially a professional appellation founded in late imperial ideology; to be a Goth was simply to be a soldier.66 Amory’s “rational choice” interpretation was forcefully criticized 59  Jones, Later Roman Empire, p. 256; Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 254. Halsall, Warfare and Society, p. 45 and n. 24. 60  Procopius, Secret History 26.27–28, says that Justinian’s officials disbanded these corps, which had been generously left in place by Theoderic, despite their uselessness. 61  Cassiodorus, Variae 1.10, 7.3, ed. Mommsen. 62  Cassiodorus, Variae, 1.10, ed. Mommsen; Hodgkin Letters of Cassiodorus, p. 150, n. 2. 63  Wolfram, Goths, pp. 316–7, referring to Variae 1.11 claims that the milites commanded by Servatus, dux of Raetia, “cannot have been Goths”. Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 118, n. 89, mis-cites the source and alleges that Servatus is “said to have led limitanei (i.e. inferior quality troops)”. Cassiodorus, Variae 1.11 mentions neither limitanei nor Romans. 64  Cassiodorus, Variae 7.4, ed. Mommsen. 65  Cassiodorus, Variae 1.4, ed. Mommsen. 66  Amory, People and Identity, especially pp. 149–94.

The Ostrogothic Military

187

by Peter Heather, who contended that the Goths were a people whose ethnic identity was grounded in a class of freemen.67 Amory’s hypothesis of entirely fluid ethnicity is too extreme, but Heather’s primordialism is overly crude. At the heart of the controversy is both sides’ failure to appreciate two points.68 Ethnic change does not imply a straight exchange of one monolithic identity for another. Ethnicity is multi-layered; change involved not the wholesale replacement of one’s entire ethnic identity but adding a level to it. Different levels of ethnicity can be situationally reordered. An identity can become that according to which one normally acts and is categorized, without one necessarily ever abandoning other identities. This process was illustrated earlier, in the formation of Theoderic’s Goths from the wreckage of Attila’s realm. The second, related point is that the process whereby someone or, better, a family might change from self-identifying primarily as Roman to self-identifying primarily as Gothic could take a long time: a generation, perhaps two or three. This problem is accentuated by the Ostrogothic kingdom’s short life. Although long, Theoderic’s reign spanned less than two generations. The subsequent succession crises, instability, and especially the outbreak of the Gothic War (only forty-six years after the Goths’ arrival on the Isonzo) doubtless put a brake on these processes. Thus it is hardly surprising that one cannot document clearcut instances of complete ethnic change. Nonetheless, the Ostrogothic evidence reveals the dynamics of such change. One index is the attestation of individuals with Gothic and Roman names. Adding a name was hardly uncommon in Late Antiquity, especially when associated with a change of status. Gregory of Tours appended the name Gregorius when he entered the priesthood; his maternal great-uncle Gundulf doubtless took that Germanic name upon entering the service of the kings of Austrasia.69 This was one means of gradually changing one’s primary ethnic identification. Amory also drew attention to the aristocrat Cyprian, who had had his sons instructed in weapon use and even had them learn Gothic.70 Significantly, this took place thirty years or so after Theoderic’s entry into Italy. The competition for royal patronage and the advantages associated with military service were seemingly causing even wealthy Italo-Romans to adopt Gothic identity. Service in local garrisons could bring a senior Gothic warrior’s patronage, entry into a military household, and thence inclusion in the exercitus. On that basis, 67  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”; Heather, “Merely an Ideology?” 68  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 35–62, 332–6. See also Swain, this volume. 69  Gregory of Tours, Histories 6.11. 70  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.21, ed. Mommsen. Full fluency in Gothic seems less necessarily implicit in Cassiodorus’ statement than a competent command of army-Gothic argot.

188

Halsall

Gothic identity might be adopted and eventually become dominant. Had the Amal kingdom lasted as long as the Merovingian, these dynamics would likely have had results similar to those observable in Gregory of Tours’ writings. The life cycle was possibly important. The Variae state that adolescent Goths came of age when they were liable to serve in the army,71 plausibly at fifteen. Cassiodorus mentions the training of iuvenes, apparently archers (saggitarii), and a mobilization order commands the Goths to bring forth their young men. Here the mention of domestici patres takes on an added significance, possibly as a reference to older warriors.72 Comparison with other post-imperial situations permits the suggestion that upon coming of age a Goth learnt his trade in the household of an older Gothic warrior or in units commanded by such veterans (like perhaps the archers of Salona). “Adoption by arms” was possibly important at this stage and would further bind military communities.73 Merovingian comites had followings of pueri; the domestici in attendance on Theoderic’s officials ought possibly to be seen the same way.74 Clearly they were paid by the fisc. At some point domestici may have graduated to more established units of milites, with a salary provided as outlined earlier. Finally, they may have married, acquired lands, and settled down, thereafter being called out only for specific campaigns but training their own households. This system appears superficially ‘primitivizing’, making the Gothic military resemble the Zulu army’s married and unmarried impis. In fact it fits a range of evidence across post-imperial Europe. Even the late Roman army’s twinned regiments of iuniores and seniores might imply similar careers. The distinction between doryphoroi and hypaspistai among Belisarius’ guards (whatever their actual designation) may suggest a similar life cycle-based career within a regular army.75 The suggested role of the life cycle adds to other dynamics to underline change through time and the evolution of military identities and systems of remuneration. Theoderic carefully ensured his armies were well equipped and supplied. Cassiodorus frequently refers to the upkeep of proper military camps, regular provision of annonae and the supervision of armourers. The king also took a close interest in ensuring his cities’ proper fortification. 71  Cassiodorus, Variae 1.38, ed. Mommsen. 72  Mommsen read the text as domestici partis equitum et peditum. This appears more logical but is not grammatically satisfactory. Patres appears to be the more common form, but the manuscripts do not really allow a decision. I am grateful to M. Maxime Emion for discussion of this point. 73  Cassiodorus, Variae 4.2, ed. Mommsen. 74  Cassiodorus, Variae 5.14, 9.13, ed. Mommsen. 75  Halsall, Warfare and Society, p. 199, n. 110.

The Ostrogothic Military



189

Archaeological Evidence

The areas where the Gothic army was settled have sometimes been suggested from the archaeological record.76 Zones of Gothic settlement have been extrapolated from the distribution of particular types of metalwork, usually found in inhumations (Figure 8.1). This straightforward interpretation cannot stand. The origins of most of this (largely feminine) material does not necessarily authorize its designation as ‘Ostrogothic’.77 Furthermore, archaeological material does not have an ethnic identity, so even if such material demonstrably came from the trans-Danubian Gothic homelands, one would not know whether someone interred with these objects was a Goth who had accompanied Theoderic to Italy or who was descended from one such. Finally, this material is found in very small quantities. If the costume associated with these objects was Gothic, not all Goths were buried in this fashion. The rite cannot therefore simply reflect Gothic settlement. The context of such isolated finds is consequently crucial. Most items were deliberately and publicly deposited with the dead. Although, as Figure 8.1 shows, about fifty Italian and Dalmatian sites contain such burials, there are usually only one or two such graves on each cemetery. Some are from urban cemeteries, frequently associated with churches, notably at major centres like Rome, Ravenna, Aquileia, and Milan. If these artefacts were associated with Gothic holders of political and military power, their display in burial ritual must be significant. Pre-Ostrogothic weapon burials and other furnished inhumations exist, especially in peripheral areas of Italy, so the custom of displaying a dead person’s status in death was not new. Nonetheless, earlier ‘barbarian’ troops had apparently not generally manifested their ethnicity like this. That the Goths did so must somehow illustrate the impact of imperial collapse and Gothic conquest upon Italian social relationships. Furnished inhumation was a public display.78 In the suburban church burials with possible Gothic connotations, its audience was possibly made up of the politically powerful. In rural contexts, as perhaps (if the find does not represent a hoard) with the lavish female burial at Domagnano (San Marino),79 it might have comprised local landowners and lesser people. The deaths of all members of certain kindreds could be marked by such displays. Families employing the ritual demonstrated the basis of their pre-­ eminence: their association with the Gothic holders of political and military 76  E.g. Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 68–9. 77  von Rummel, Habitus Barbarus, pp. 323–37. 78  Halsall, Cemeteries and Society, passim. 79  Bierbrauer, “Archeologia degli Ostrogoti”, pp. 194–202.

190

Halsall

FIGURE 8.1 Map of supposed Ostrogothic burial sites in Italy and Dalmatia Map by Guy Halsall

power. This could be linked with competition for royal patronage within local communities and among the political elite. We must also, however, conclude that people adopting this costume in public ritual were not necessarily (and possibly were unlikely to have been) Danubian incomers. Nonetheless, these burials’ fairly limited number show that while a death produced stress the threat posed to local standing was not critical. These displays nevertheless illustrate the tensions involved in establishing local power structures. The finds’ distribution thus most likely reveals where such stress and competition were most common. These surely included areas where Gothic newcomers dwelt, but the artefacts’ distribution need have no relationship to that of Gothic settlements overall. The evidence, almost invariably discovered long ago in obscure and even dubious circumstances, is of such poor quality that more detailed social and chronological analyses are impossible. Nonetheless, in however attenuated a form, these data show that the political and military power associated with the Goths reached down to local societies and their power struggles. The objects which seemingly manifested a connection with

The Ostrogothic Military

191

Theoderic’s ­government were feminine as often as masculine, suggesting a gendering of power and further supporting the suggestion that, however they were salaried, Gothic soldiers and their families became over time a fixed component of such communities and their politics. The archaeological record permits few statements about how Theoderic’s soldiers were equipped. Weapons are rare in the find complexes just discussed, not least because so many of them are female burials. Those which are known are unremarkable. Lavish items of horse harness confirm the written sources’ indications that cavalry were a key element of the Gothic army. Several fortifications were occupied in the Ostrogothic period. Invillino (Friuli) is one of the best known and most thoroughly excavated. Although no phase was directly related to the Ostrogothic period, its Period III encompassed that era.80 Theoderic’s Ostrogothic army was clearly highly organized and efficient. Its Gallic, Spanish, and Balkan campaigns were well organized, well led, and ­usually victorious. Success breeds success, warriors continued to join Theoderic, and the repeated experience of victory made Gothic troops battlehardened and confident.

The Gothic War

Accounts of the Gothic kingdom’s cataclysmic downfall provide much detailed, if problematic, data on the Gothic army in action, but we cannot use Procopius’ account to shed light upon the nature of the Goths who entered Italy in 489. Numerous dynamics were at work that made the armed forces of the 530s to 550s quite different from those of the 480s and 490s. ‘The Goths’, as they appear in Procopius’ narrative, owe their nature to the working through of those processes. Procopius’ account demands care. Although filled with the sort of detail beloved by military historians—and generally absent in early medieval ­western Europe81—it cannot be taken as straightforward description, even though Procopius witnessed some events himself. The Wars are enmeshed in traditional classical ethnographic stereotyping and Procopius strove to make his account read like the great examples of the historical genre: Thucydides and Polybius.82 Hence the appearance of doryphoroi and hypaspistai in Roman

80  Bierbrauer, Invillino-Ibligo. 81  Halsall, Warfare and Society, pp. 1–6, 177–80. 82  Cameron, Procopius; Kaldellis, Procopius of Caesarea.

192

Halsall

and Gothic armies.83 Procopius’ writing—at least initially—was imbued with Justinianic ideology about the rightness of the reconquest. His accounts of the Gothic forces, especially at the siege of Rome, must therefore be handled with caution. Procopius mocked ‘barbarians’ who wanted to be Romans— thus the tragicomic accounts of incompetently deployed Gothic siege towers and Gothic generals who fail to note the allegedly decisive military difference between the two armies, which Belisarius spotted early in the campaign: that the Romans have mounted archers and the Goths do not.84 Some descriptions are surely hyperbolic. Procopius’ account of Gothic oplitoi must surely be heavily ironic.85 Although an apt description of an armoured spearman with a large round shield, the term’s cultural baggage—the Attic hoplite, civilized citizen-soldier par excellence—and its incongruity when applied to ‘barbarian’ warriors besieging Rome would not have been lost on Procopius’ readers. Procopius’ less-critical attitude towards Totila may stem as much from Totila correctly performing the role of ‘barbarian warlord’ allotted to him by Graeco-Roman ethnography—unlike the comic philosopher-king Theodahad86 or Witigis, bumbling would-be poliorcetes—as from disillusionment with Justinianic policy.87 Close scrutiny suggests that the two sides were very alike. The possible distinction between older and younger warriors, the former acting as officers for the latter, especially within bodyguard units, has been mentioned. Warriors on both sides shared the ability to fight mounted or on foot according to the situation. This fluidity rather than a formal division into units of infantry and cavalry is characteristic of the early medieval west.88 That the Gothic army, as Cassiodorus makes clear, was a well-organized, more or less regular army on the Roman model, rather than the ‘barbarian’ horde often envisaged in Byzantine accounts or uncritical modern studies based on the latter,89 also brought the two sides closer together. Indeed, given the predominance of troops recruited from beyond the frontier in the imperial army, the ‘Goths’ may have been considerably more ‘Roman’ than the forces opposing them. This irony seems to 83  These terms appear in accounts of classical Greek hoplite warfare and, in the case of the hypaspistai, in Polybius’ description of Alexandrian Macedonian warfare. 84  Procopius, Wars, 5.18.42, resolved at Wars, 5,27.25–8, ed. Dewing. 85  Halsall, “Funny Foreigners”, pp. 111–12. 86  Vitielo, Theodahad, argues from verbal usages in Cassiodorus’ writings that Theodahad was indeed influenced by Platonic philosophy. 87  Halsall, “Funny Foreigners”, pp. 112–13. 88  Halsall, Warfare and Society, pp. 180–8. 89  E.g. Thompson, Romans and Barbarians.

The Ostrogothic Military

193

be heavily played upon in Procopius’ account. The similarities between the armies certainly facilitated the changing of sides. Soldiers in the opposing forces could be barely distinguishable from each other.90 The Gothic army’s dismal showing in the earliest phase of the war probably attests to the previous decade’s political stresses and lack of active campaigning. Most of the experienced Gothic troops were located outside Italy, in the Balkans (where they scored some important early successes against the invading Romans), in Provence, and in Spain, where they were probably involved in sometimes successful campaigning against the Franks.91 Their opponents, by contrast, were battle-hardened and confident veterans used to victory (even if frequently more by luck than judgement) under Belisarius. The dynamics of the earlier Theoderican period were reversed. They would turn back again during Totila’s long and unbroken run of success. The Gothic warrior was characteristically equipped with horse, sword, and shield, as written and archaeological evidence from Theoderic’s reign suggest. Some used bows, at least when dismounted, and spears were thrown from a distance as well as used in hand-to-hand fighting. Totila’s order that his men discard all weapons other than their swords (if Procopius is to be believed) made sound sense in the context of the battle of Busta Gallorum. A rapid charge directly into close combat would avoid the fatal temptation to exchange missiles with the Romans, who had the advantage of numbers especially in archers.92 The wars’ effects on the Italian peninsula are well known.93 Any dynamics that might have led to ethnic changes like those in Gaul and Spain (and embryonically attested in Theoderic’s reign) were surely arrested. Sharper boundaries emerged between Goths and Romans, although more on the basis of political allegiance than biological descent. Most of the rank and file of the 520s would have been born and grown up in Italy, making them significantly different from warriors born and raised within the peripatetic Ostrogothic army in the post-Hunnic Balkans. Only a handful of those mustered in Theoderic’s last military assemblies, even domestici patres, will have had any clear memory of life outside the seemingly stable confines of Romano-Gothic Italy. It would be 90  Pohl, “Telling the Difference”. 91  Gregory of Tours, Histories 3.21, refers to the Goths’ recapture of territory lost after Vouillé. This must have occurred under the leadership of Theoderic’s Spanish regent (and later Visigothic king) Theudis. 92  18th- and 19th-century commanders similarly ordered troops to attack with unloaded muskets when an advance was to be pressed briskly with “cold steel”. 93  Brown, Gentlemen and Officers, pp. 1–60, is classic.

194

Halsall

yet more mistaken to see the soldiers facing Belisarius’ troops, let alone those who confronted Narses, as shaped by anything other than late antique Italian, Provençal, or Dalmatian culture. Marriage further blurred familial and genealogical distinctions. The processes discussed earlier had already led to ItaloRomans joining the army and perhaps adding a Gothic dimension to their own hierarchy of identities. The Goths had always incorporated other groups, sometimes retaining an ethnic label,94 sometimes not. Byzantine deserters joined them during the wars, doubtless also adding a Gothic identity. Those returning to the East Romans abandoned it again. None of this implies “incomplete assimilation”95 or solid boundaries between Goths and others. We do not know whether ‘Roman’ soldiers who returned to Justinian’s armies were the same men as had deserted earlier. Roman deserters became in some ways Goths, although these troops’ non-Italian and frequently indeed non-imperial origin continued to mark them out. Given the Italian upbringing of most Goths, it was easier for them to become Roman. The dynamics stressed throughout this chapter permit a more subtle reading of the Goths’ ultimate downfall than that recently championed.96 The ­kingdom’s final demise has been claimed to reveal that the Goths were ‘a people’ with a defined identity founded in a large class of freemen with a direct link to the king. The decisive results of the defeat of a portion of the Gothic army and the threat to wives and children posed by eastern Roman military operations, have been presented as sufficient proof of this. This conclusion, however, does not emerge from the evidence. The revival of the discredited Germanist notion of a class of Königsfreie need not detain us.97 The Gothic armies’ stratification and inclusion of more numerous rank and file than leaders is hardly surprising, nor is the idea that the latter had a political role.98 Gothic military communities were embedded within peninsular society and politics. Their edges doubtless hardened during the wars and it is unsurprising that serving Goths’ families should have been more at risk than in the peaceful conditions 94  Like the Gepids of Variae 5.10–11. Late imperial units frequently bore ethnic titles. Many of these troops doubtless had Gepidic origins but one should not assume that they were any more ‘a people’ than late imperial regiments of Franci, Alamanni or Parthi, similarly redeployed with wives, children, and camp followers. 95  We should note the conservative political connotations of phrases like “incomplete assimilation”. 96  Heather, Goths, pp. 321–6. 97  Staab, “A reconsideration”. 98  Representing as a surprising and defining feature of Gothic society the suggestion that the Gothic rank and file did not blithely follow their officers and social betters’ instructions is again politically revealing.

The Ostrogothic Military

195

of Theoderic’s reign. It might have been safer to take them on campaign than to leave them behind, giving some Gothic forces a character resembling those of 489. The consequences of the Gothic forces’ serious defeats have no necessary bearing on the nature of the Italian Goths. The destruction of its field army at Adrianople (378) rendered the eastern Empire—with far greater military manpower reserves than the Italian kingdom—effectively incapable of offensive military action for perhaps a decade. The western field army’s slaughter at the Frigidus was decisive; the West never had sufficient breathing space to rebuild a substantial force of the same standard.99 Troops can be replaced in numbers but not necessarily in quality and Procopius underlines how limited manpower was a worry for both sides, dictating Gothic strategy in the 540s and 50s. The men accompanying Totila in his desperate charge at Busta Gallorum or who died with Teia in the cataclysmic battle of Mons Lactarius were doubtless the best Gothic warriors. Others died in the disastrous naval defeat of Sena Gallica in the Adriatic.100 That these defeats effectively ended Gothic resistance is less surprising than the fact that it took three bloody engagements to do so and that some Gothic garrisons continued to hold out even then. The Goths’ subsequent disappearance from history101 is easily encompassed within the dynamics discussed here, albeit in reverse. Although primarily military in composition and function, the Goths had been more than simply an army when they invaded Italy. By the time of Totila’s and Teia’s deaths, sixtyodd years later, they had—unsurprisingly—changed in many ways. Their primarily military character had, however, endured throughout. A kingdom created by the sword had perished by it. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Anonymus Valesianus, ed. and trans. J.C. Rolfe, in Ammianus Marcellinus, vol. 3, London 1939, pp. 506–69. Burgundian Code, trans. K.F. Drew, The Burgundian Code, Philadelphia 1972. Cassiodorus, Chronicle, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora saec. IV. V. VI. VII, vol. 2 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 11) Berlin 1894, pp. 109–61. 99  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 199–200, 243. 100  Procopius, Wars 8.29–32 (Busta Gallorum); 8.35 (Mons Lactarius); 8.23 (naval defeat), ed. Dewing. 101  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 314–15, for attestations of Italian Goths after the “reconquest”.

196

Halsall

———, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894; translated selections in S.J. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae, Liverpool 1992; summaries with some translations in T. Hodgkin, The Letters of Cassiodorus: Being a Condensed Translation of the Variae Epistolae of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, London 1886. Codex Theodosianus (CTh), trans. C. Pharr, The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions, Princeton, NJ 1952. Consularia Italica, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora saec. IV. V. VI. VII, vol. 1 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 9), Berlin 1892, pp. 249–339. Edictum Theoderici (ET), ed. F. Bluhme (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Legum 5), Hannover 1875–89, pp. 145–79; translation in S.D.W. Lafferty, Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge 2013, pp. 243–94. Ennodius, Life of Epiphanius, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felici Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885, pp. 84–109; trans. G.M. Cook, The Life of Saint Epiphanius by Ennodius. A Translation with an Introduction and Commentary, Washington, DC 1942. ———, Epistulae, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felici Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885. ———, Panegyricus, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felici Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885. Gregory of Tours, Histories, ed. B. Krusch/W. Levison (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1.1), Hannover 1951; trans. L. Thorpe, Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks, Harmondsworth 1974. Malchus, ed. and trans. R.C. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicizing Historians of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, Liverpool 1981, pp. 401–462. Priscus, ed. and trans. R.C. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicizing Historians of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, Liverpool 1981, pp. 221–400. Procopius, Secret History, ed. and trans. H.B. Dewing, Procopius, vol. 6 (Loeb Classical Library), London 1935. ———, Wars, ed. and trans. H.B. Dewing, Procopius, vols. 1–5 (Loeb Classical Library), London 1914–28.



Secondary Literature

Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554, Cambridge 1997. Arnold, J.J., “Theoderic’s Invincible Mustache”, Journal of Late Antiquity 6.1 (2013), 152–83. ———, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, Cambridge 2014.

The Ostrogothic Military

197

Barnish, S.J.B., “Taxation, Land and Barbarian Settlement in the Western Empire”, Papers of the British School at Rome 54 (1986), 170–95. Bierbrauer, V., Invillino-Ibligo in Friaul. Die römischer Siedlung und das spätantik-­ frühmittelalterlische Castrum, Munich 1987. ———, “Archeologia degli Ostrogoti in Italia”, in V. Bierbrauer/O. von Hessen/ E.A. Arslan (eds.), I Goti, Milan 1994, pp. 170–213. Brown, T.S., Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy, AD 554–800, Rome 1984. Cameron, A.M., Procopius and the Sixth Century, London 1985. Cesa, M., “Hospitalitas o altre ‘techniques of accommodation’? A proposito di un libro recente”, Archivo Storico Italiano 140 (1982), 539–52. ———, “Il regno di Odoacre: la prima dominazione germanica in Italia”, in B. Scardigli/ P. Scardigli (eds.), Germani in Italia, Rome 1994, pp. 307–20. Fehr, H./Rummel, P. von, Die Völkerwanderung, Stuttgart 2011. García Gallo, A., “Notas sobre el reparto de terras entre Visigodas y Romanos”, Hispania 1 (1940–41), 40–63. Goffart, W., Barbarians and Romans AD 418–585: The Techniques of Accommodation, Princeton 1980. ———, Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire, Philadelphia 2006. ———, “The Technique of Barbarian Settlement in the Fifth Century: A Personal, Streamlined Account with Ten Additional Comments”, Journal of Late Antiquity 3 (2010), 65–98. ———, “Administrative Methods of Barbarian Settlement in the Fifth Century: The Definitive Account”, S. Diefenbach/G.M. Müller (eds.), Gallien in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter Kulturgeschichte einer Region (Millennium Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr. 43), Berlin 2013, pp. 45–56. Halsall, G., “Funny Foreigners: Laughing with the Barbarians in Late Antiquity”, in G. Halsall (ed.), Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge 2002, pp. 89–113. ———, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450–900. London 2003. ———, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568. Cambridge, 2007. ———, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul. Selected Studies in History and Archaeology, 1992–2009, Leiden 2010. ———, “The Technique of Barbarian Settlement in the Fifth Century: A Reply to Walter Goffart”, Journal of Late Antiquity 3.1 (2010), 99–112. Heather, P., Goths and Romans, 332–489. Oxford 1991. ———, “Theoderic, King of the Goths”, Early Medieval Europe 4.2 (1995), 145–73. ———, The Goths, Oxford 1996.

198

Halsall

———, “Gens and Regnum among the Ostrogoths”, in H-W. Goetz/J. Jarnut/W. Pohl (eds.), Regna and Gentes: The Relationship between late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, Leiden 2003, pp. 85–133. ———, “Merely an Ideology?—Gothic Identity in Ostrogothic Italy”, in S.J. Barnish/ F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths, from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 31–60. Humphries, M., “Italy, AD 425–605”, in A.M. Cameron/B. Ward-Perkins/M. Whitby (eds.), Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Empire and Successors, AD 425–600, Cambridge 2000, pp. 525–51. Jones, A.H.M., The Later Roman Empire, 284–602, Oxford 1964. Kaldellis, A., Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity. Philadelphia 2004. Kulikowski, M., “Nation Versus Army: A Necessary Contrast?”, in A. Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, Turnhout 2002, pp. 69–84. Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.G., “Alaric’s Goths: Nation or Army?”, in J.F. Drinkwater/H. Elton (eds.), Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity, Cambridge 1992, pp. 75–83. Lot, F., “Du régime de l’hospitalité”, Revue Belge de Philologuie et d’Histoire 7 (1928), 975–1011. Mommsen, T., “Ostgotische Studien”, Neues Archiv 14 (1889), 223–49, 451–544. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. Pohl, W., “Telling the Difference: Signs of Ethnic Identity”, in W. Pohl/H. Reimitz (eds.), Strategies of Distinction. The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, Leiden 1998, pp. 17–69. ———, Die Völkerwanderung. Eroberung und Integration, Stuttgart 2002. Rummel, P. von, Habitus Barbarus: Kleidung und Repräsentation spätantiker Eliten im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr., Berlin 2005. Staab, F., “A Reconsideration of the Ancestry of Modern Political Liberty: The Problem of the “King’s Freemen” (Königsfreie)”, Viator 11 (1980), 51–69. Thompson, E.A., Romans and Barbarians. The Decline of the Western Empire, Madison, WI 1982. ———, The Huns, Oxford 1996. Vitiello, M., Theodahad: A Platonic King at the Collapse of Ostrogothic Italy, Toronto 2014. Wharton, A.J., Refiguring the Post-Classical City. Dura Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravenna, Cambridge 1995. Wolfram, H., History of the Goths, trans. T. Dunlap, Berkeley 1988. ———, The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples, trans. T. Dunlap, Berkeley 1997.

The Ostrogothic Military

199

Wood, I.N., “Ethnicity and Ethnogenesis of the Burgundians”, in H. Wolfram/W. Pohl (eds.), Typen der Ethnogenese unter besondere Berücksichtigung der Bayern, Vienna 1990, pp. 53–69. ———, “Theoderic’s Monuments in Ravenna”, in S.J. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths, from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 248–63.

Part 2 Culture and Society

∵

CHAPTER 9

Goths and Gothic Identity in the Ostrogothic Kingdom Brian Swain

Introduction: The Anxieties of Identity

This chapter will pose more questions than it answers. In this it exemplifies the state of barbarian identity studies, a sub-field of late ancient and early medieval history marked by sharp interpretive divergences.1 The literature on this subject is vast and shows no signs of abating.2 It is an energetic and sometimes acrimonious field.3 Unlike the study of, say, Roman commerce or hagiography, the question of barbarian identities carries with it a modern political relevance. One gets from ancient barbarians to contemporary politics in the following way: just who the barbarian peoples were bears directly on the nature of their early medieval kingdoms, whose development informs how we understand the emergence of European nation-states in the later medieval and early modern periods, which in turn affects our interpretation of the rise of nationalist movements in the modern age.4 Nationalist ideologies involved the conviction that some modern states and the supposed cultural distinctiveness and ethnic purity of their peoples were rooted in the barbarian kingdoms. The upheavals that resulted from 19th- and 20th-century nationalism linked what would otherwise be arcane historical issues to the most pressing debates of the post-war era. The highly controversial politics of the not-so-distant past, 1  Kulikowski, “Constantine”, p. 347 has noted that the term ‘barbarian’, despite its pejorative connotations, makes no assumptions about ethnicity. It is an efficient and uncontroversial way of referring to northern and eastern European, non-Roman social groupings. 2  To preserve space for the exposition of ideas in the text, citation of scholarly literature is kept to a minimum. James, Europe’s Barbarians, Ch. 5, though, is an excellent synthesis of the debates. 3  In his concluding comments to a recent volume on early medieval ethnicity, Chris Wickham, “Conclusions”, p. 552 remarked, “The issue of ethnicity . . . has been contested a lot, often fairly unhelpfully—exactly why it is such a hot topic in fifth- and sixth-century studies is worth a study in itself, for no one in the rest of Late Antique studies gets as upset about anything as do the five or six schools of late antique/early medieval ‘Germanic’ ethnicity.” 4  For a fuller discussion, see Wood, Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_010

204

Swain

therefore, were informed by the interpretation of barbarian history. Given our own proximity to these events and the fact that identity politics and ethnic strife still fill the headlines, it should not be surprising that modern debates about barbarian history are heated and conducted with a sense of urgency. In the aftermath of World War II, the undergirding principles of the political and social sciences were reformulated to expurgate ideas about ethnicity and history that are now widely deemed to have been both flawed and destructive. Barbarian history saw considerable re-evaluation, and it continues in this reformist vein, highly self-conscious of its former misuses and political entanglements. But some strands of current scholarship have accused others of having not moved far enough away from defunct models, while the accused counter that their detractors’ work is reductionist to the point of erasing the barbarians from history altogether. The goal of this chapter is to delineate these disagreements, as the partisans of the various positions are not in the business of producing impartial surveys of the state of the field. Its primary function is to serve as a guide to these complicated, consensus-less debates over the nature of Gothic identity in the Ostrogothic kingdom. Then, after the ancient evidence and modern interpretations have been weighed, I will offer my own suggestions for future inquiry. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, ethnicity5 and social identity were generally thought to be biologically determined, inherited traits, and thus, having immutable essences, they could be objectively measured by specific markers such as language and material culture.6 In other words, identity and culture were both conterminous and determined by ancestry. This led to the ‘intuitive’ belief that ancient barbarians moved across the map of Europe in groups that were closed, genetically homogenous, and self-reproducing, and maintained unchanging ethnic identities distinct from and uninfluenced by other groups. By contrast, after World War II, identity would be considered subjective, mutable, and socially constructed. It came to be seen chiefly as matter of perception, a ‘situational construct’, a reflection of culture and politics—not 5  Post-war scholars have used the term ethnicity in part as an alternative to race, the prevailing term in 19th- and early 20th-century scholarship that sought to classify humans into taxonomic groups based on perceived traits. Today, however, most scientists consider such biological essentialism obsolete, and terms like ethnicity imply less restrictive, more socially constructed models of categorization. Modern scholarship is justified in projecting the notion of ethnicity on to past studies because earlier scholars were grappling with many of the same questions about human groupings as their modern counterparts. For discussion, Bacal, Ethnicity in the Social Sciences; Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism. 6  Kossina, Die Herkunft der Germanen developed an archaeological model to support this view.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

205

the other way around.7 Ever changing, identity is now seen as “perpetually renewed and renegotiated through discourse and social praxis.”8 This thinking was incorporated into the study of ancient barbarians, and all serious scholarship now takes for granted this post-war understanding of ­identity.9 While the range of interpretations to be discussed in this chapter disagree about many things, they all accept that identity is socially constructed. They begin at the same point and then diverge. But that divergence happens quickly. While all acknowledge that identity is contingent and flexible, some see it as a more durable and deeply rooted phenomenon that changes slowly and can withstand substantial internal and external stresses,10 while others view it as a thin social overlay, ‘evanescent’, often a matter of mere labels and easily divestible by individuals if it is to their immediate advantage to do so.11 This interpretive spectrum concerning the ‘strength’ of identity will be presented below. Some remarks about terminology are warranted. The terms ethnicity and identity are sometimes used too loosely, over strictly, or interchangeably, and some disagreements about barbarian groups are attributable to this uneven usage. In a recent study on the construction of post-Roman communities, Walter Pohl explained the difference and interrelation between ethnicity and identity in the following cogent way. Social identities have one or more specific points of reference outside the group, such as a territory, religion, or economic advantage, which serve as the defining characteristics of that community. Ethnicity, however, implies that the feature distinguishing one group from another exists within the group itself. The group possesses a ‘symbolic essence’ derived from such things as kinship, blood, origin, and fate.12 Ethnicity, in practice, is not much more than an idea believed to be true which is then attached to other more tangible forms of community—that is, those things which constitute identity: land, religion, language, etc. So, it might be the case that Goths believed that their Gothicness was innate and 7  For the intellectual history of barbarian scholarship, Amory, People and Identity, pp. 14–18; Heather, “Ethnicity, Group Identity”, pp. 17–26; Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic Wars, pp. 44–9; Geary, “Ethnicity as a Situation Construct”. 8  Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, p. 19. 9  Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung was the first major study to do so. 10  Wolfram, Goths; Heather, Goths and Romans; Pohl, “Introduction—Strategies of Identification”. 11  Amory, People and Identity; Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic Wars; Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries famously described identity as an “evanescent historical construct not a solid enduring fact”. 12  Pohl, “Introduction: Ethnicity, Religion and Empire”, p. 10.

206

Swain

self-sustaining (and we shall discuss different views about this below), but in reality it would have only existed and reified itself because of its attachment to external factors—perhaps Arianism, the Gothic language, or membership in Theoderic’s army. Evidence for the expression of ethnicity (distinct from identity) is exceedingly hard to pinpoint in the ancient and early medieval sources, especially for non-Roman peoples.

The Nodes of Polemic

The state of disagreement in the field is such that it cannot be assumed a priori that Gothic identity was a historical reality, or that ‘Goths’ even existed—at least as they are portrayed in the ancient sources. To be sure, most scholars hold the reality of Gothic cultural distinctiveness as a positive conviction, or at least a working assumption.13 There is, however, a minority that has made strong and influential sceptical cases.14 The initial question that must concern us is not what Gothic identity was, but if it was. Differences in opinion over whether the people referred to as Goths in the sources possessed a communal identity and were in fact culturally distinct from other groups stem both from the nature of our sparse sources and from the questions that have been asked of them. Some inquiries begin with a fairly strict definition of ethnicity (e.g. belief in a common origin and a shared past, distinct language, customs, and laws, and other clear cultural indicia that separate one group from another). If the sources do not yield unassailable proof of these, Gothic ethnicity is said not to have existed.15 But opponents have noted that our sources for this period are few and written only by Romans who were usually uninterested in providing the kind of information necessary to ‘prove’ the existence of Gothic ethnicity.16 Looking specifically at Ostrogothic Italy, some have noted that contemporary Italian sources speak to the highly Roman character of Theoderic, his regime, and even his ‘Gothic’ army and following, and conclude that Goths were essentially Romans and that there were no appreciable differences between them.17 Their opponents, however, would point out that some of these Italian writers were in the service of or influenced by Theoderic’s court and reflect the Gothic king’s propagandizing 13  E.g. Moorhead, Theoderic; Heather, Goths. 14  E.g. Amory, People and Identity; Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic Wars. 15  Amory, People and Identity. 16  Heather, “Merely an Ideology?”. 17  Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

207

efforts to present his foreign military rule to Italians as a seamless return to the Roman status quo.18 Finally, some scholars have argued that there existed among Goths a deeply held sense of Gothic identity that was bolstered by distinctive cultural traits, among them the Gothic language, Arianism, military status, demographic segregation, annual donatives from the king, and a possible sense of ethnicity or at least royal dynastic genealogies.19 It has been argued, though, that these indicators of Gothicness are merely distortions of our Roman sources which, following the conventions of classical literary tradition, articulate difference among social groupings in ethnic terms even when those differences were merely political, religious, or regional.20 Broadly speaking, the various positions currently in play fall within the parameters just outlined, and focus on specific contested aspects of Ostrogothic history, namely the nature of the Goths prior to the Italian conquest, Gothic settlement in Italy, the separateness of Gothic and Italian professional roles, the Gothic response to imperial invasion, religion, and the Gothic language. What follows is a discussion of these interpretive flashpoints and their implications for our understanding of Gothic identity in the Ostrogothic kingdom.

The Goths before Italy

Just who the people were who ruled Italy from 493 to 552 has rather a lot to do with who they were before they arrived. How did they form as a group? Did they share a long history?21 Were they ‘a people’ by the time they won Italy? 18  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”. 19  Wolfram, Goths; Moorhead, Theoderic; Heather, “Gens and Regnum”. 20  Amory, People and Identity; Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration. 21  This is also a complicated issue that cannot be treated fully here. In short, there are two questions at hand: what is the earliest evidence for a people called Goths? And did these people have anything to do with the people who ruled in Italy under Theoderic? Writing in the late 1st century AD, Pliny recounts a report of the 4th-century BC Pytheas who spoke of Gutones (Natural History 4.14.99). In ca. AD 98, Tacitus mentions Gotones (Germania 44.1), and the 2nd-century Ptolemy writes about Γúθωνεζ (Geography 3.5.8). These sources, in conjunction with Jordanes’ 6th-century account and archaeological evidence in Poland, have prompted some to argue that there is evidence for the existence of Goths in the 1st century AD (Kazanski, Goths; Heather, Goths). Others suggest that these associations are too loose: the ethnonyms Gotones, et al. are not demonstrably analogous with the Goths, and the arguments for Polish archaeological evidence are ‘text-hindered’, meaning that, without Jordanes’ accounts of the Goths’ migration to the Baltic, nobody would have thought the Polish material to be Gothic (Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic Wars,

208

Swain

The story of the formation of Theoderic’s following in the Balkans is long and complicated and cannot be told in full here.22 But certain essentials must be considered. The origins of the group known as the Ostrogoths is placed either in the context of the Roman Balkans following the collapse of the Hunnic hegemony in the 450s or centuries earlier in northern Europe, well outside the territory or influence of Rome. The latter position is grounded in the belief that Theoderic’s Amal dynasty had ruled the ethnically distinct Ostrogoths for many generations before 493.23 The main evidence for this is a long Amal genealogy provided by Jordanes, himself a Goth and author of a Gothic history written in Constantinople in 551.24 Jordanes used the Gothic history of Cassiodorus, now lost, which was commissioned by Theoderic and believed by some to have contained legitimate tribal memories including the Amal genealogy. The historicity and even Gothicity of this royal genealogy, however, have been impugned by arguments that it is the product of sheer fabrication mixed with the account of the 4th-century Roman historian Ammianus.25 These arguments are made by those who prefer a Balkan provenance for the Ostrogoths, which is the majority view.26 Now, among those who aver Balkan origins, there are two main ways of understanding Ostrogothic coalescence. Both see it occurring in the chaotic period following the break-up of Attila’s short-lived confederation and as the amalgamation of different groups into a supergroup known as the Ostrogoths, but they understand the identity of these people in different ways. One position holds that in the 450s a group of Goths previously ch. 3). These dissenters propose that the earliest evidence for the Goths comes from the 3rd century: e.g. a 208 Latin inscription from Roman Arabia probably indicating Gothic auxiliaries (L’Année épigraphique 1911, no. 244); the mid 3rd-century Canonical Letter of Gregory Thaumaturgus mentions the Goths in the aftermath of their first major incursion into Roman territory (Patrologia Graeca 10.1020–1048); the lost Scythica of Dexippus detailed Rome’s 3rd-century wars with the Goths (fragments in F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker vol. IIA, Leiden 1926, pp. 452–80). The following discussion will show that there are those who believe that the 3rd-century Goths and the Goths of Ostrogothic Italy shared some measure of cultural and political relation. (Heather, Goths). Another view suggests that the Italian Goths were connected in no way to earlier groups with the same name (Amory, People and Identity). 22  For fuller treatments, Heather, Goths and Romans; id., “Gens and Regnum”; id., Restoration of Rome; Moorhead, Theoderic; Amory, People and Identity. 23  Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung; Wolfram, Goths. 24  Jordanes, Getica 79–81, ed. Mommsen. 25  Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals”. 26  Balkan Ostrogothic origins are today preferred, at least in Anglophone scholarship, e.g. Heather, Goths and Romans; Amory, People and Identity.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

209

under Hunnic control was settled in Roman Pannonia under the leadership of Theoderic’s uncle Valamer.27 These people had retained a distinct Gothic identity under Hunnic domination and reasserted it once in Roman lands. They were by no means homogenous, however.28 Valamer’s following consisted of various Gothic and barbarian warbands whom he united under his leadership. Gothic was the identity of both the ruling elite and the majority, but many retained their own separate identities (Hun, Alan, etc.) or later changed their identities to become Goths.29 Over the next three decades, these Pannonian Goths fought with and against the emperors, and variously sought their favour and concessions.30 Valamer’s group also competed with another large group of Goths in Thrace who had been part of the eastern Roman military apparatus for decades.31 This group served and sometimes sought exactions from the emperor, but generally enjoyed better relations with the empire than did the Pannonian Goths. To strengthen their own position, the emperors Leo and Zeno pitted the two Gothic groups against each other, and in 483/4, in a move motivated by mutual self-preservation, the two Gothic groups merged under the leadership of Theoderic the Amal.32 Before their unification the two groups had had separate histories for at least several generations, and potentially for ­centuries.33 It is their union that marks the emergence of the Ostrogoths that would eventually conquer Italy. Before this time, it is anachronistic to refer to this particular group as the Ostrogoths, though Jordanes’ neat Ostrogoth/ Visigoth division has been so influential that many historians project it into the past.34 It has also been suggested that more than material calculation and immediate advantage m ­ otivated the merging of the two large and independent Pannonian and Thracian Gothic groups. Either group, especially the Thracians, might have melted back into the imperial military establishment, but chose perhaps a riskier path that preserved their autonomy as a Gothic political unit. The operation of an active and shared sense of Gothicness might 27  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”. 28  Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 20. 29  That the majority had Gothic identities: Heather, Goths and Romans, ch. 7–9; Wolfram, Goths, p. 300. 30  Pannonian Goths: Jordanes, Getica 262 f.; Valamer: Getica 199–200, 252–3; Romana 331, ed. Mommsen. 31  Thracian Goths: John of Antioch: frags., ed. Roberto; Malchus, frags., ed. Blockley. 32  For a fuller account, Heather, Goths and Romans, part III; id., Restoration of Rome, ch. 1. 33  id., Restoration of Rome, p. 99. 34  For the terms ‘Ostrogoth’ and ‘Visigoth’ and their use or non-use by those eponymous groups, Gillett, “Jordanes and Ablabius”, appendix.

210

Swain

explain the choices that led to the initial Ostrogothic formation and its subsequent durability during the conquest of Italy, Theoderic’s reign, and the long war with Justinian.35 The second position that sets the formation of the Ostrogoths in the postAttilan Balkans also rejects the notion that this group was bound by a sense of cultural or ethnic distinctiveness or possessed a corporate Gothic i­ dentity.36 In this view, the sources for the late 5th-century Balkans that speak of ‘Goths’ and ‘Romans’ as separate groupings are misleading. They reflect only classicizing literary conventions that explain political alterity in ethnographic terms, and belie the fact that that these historical actors were all part of the same Balkan military culture. This was a world of merging Mediterranean and frontier societies: polyglot, amorphous, and so mixed that distinctive ethnic boundaries would have been impossible to maintain. In the absence of imperial military hegemony, various generals sought power for themselves. And with the name ‘Roman’ claimed by the emperor, rival generals chose monikers for their followings by drawing from the accumulated bric-a-brac of ethnographic terminology. They called themselves ‘Goths’ or ‘Gepids’ for the sake of political cohesion and to associate themselves with the martial prowess and ferocity that those names evoked. Similarly, outsiders would append ethnographic names to groups to denote alterity. In reality, though, Theoderic was a member of the Balkan Roman military aristocracy and his ‘Goths’ bore no relation whatsoever to the Goths of the 3rd-century sources. ‘Romans’, ‘Goths’, and other warbands bearing ‘tribal’ names were indistinguishable except for their artificially contrived names that signalled allegiance (usually temporary) to this or that general or emperor. The group that Theoderic would lead to Italy was a mercenary army, not a people.37 The wide and steep divide separating these two interpretations constitutes the intractability of the Gothic identity question.

The Road to Ravenna and Settlement in Italy

Whether a mercenary army or an ethnic group, Theoderic’s force was some 20,000 to 30,000 strong and its presence in the Balkans was a problem for the emperor Zeno. Despite their cooperation in the struggle against Zeno’s Isaurian rival Illus, relations between the emperor and the Gothic leader broke down. 35  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, pp. 101–2. 36  Amory, People and Identity, ch. 8. 37  Amory, People and Identity, ch. 8.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

211

Theoderic ravaged Thrace in 486 and a year later marched on Constantinople.38 In circumstances that are not clear, Zeno and Theoderic arrived at a mutually beneficial arrangement whereby the Goths would wrest control of Italy from Odovacer and rule there in some capacity in the emperor’s stead.39 Zeno was spared the continued nuisance of the Goths, and Theoderic avoided the risks of a struggle against a more powerful rival and gained the opportunity to establish his own kingdom in a less dangerous part of the world. Theoderic and his following struck out for Italy in 488.40 But who went with him? This is yet another flashpoint of debate. Was it just Theoderic and his army that went to Italy or were there warriors ­accompanied by women, children, and non-combatants, a group of perhaps 100,000 people?41 The answer has considerable implications for how one envisions the place of the Goths in Italian society. Without families of their own, Gothic warriors would have intermarried with the indigenous population, an action that would have quickly blurred the lines between Goths and Italians. Evidence for this is yielded by a few prosopographical examples of such intermarriage.42 At least one influential commentator has considerable doubts that Theoderic brought with him a large immigrant population.43 The picture of an entire people on the move comes from Procopius, an East Roman historian writing 60 years after the fact, whose account, it is argued, is inflected by an ethnographic migration trope and is not to be trusted. Further, building upon the arguments of Walter Goffart, who suggested that Theoderic did not grant his Goths a third of Italian lands but actually a third of tax revenues, it is held that Goths then bought land throughout the peninsula where they ensconced themselves

38  Theoderic in the Balkans: Malchus, frags. 39  Count Marcellinus, Chronicle s.a. 489; Malalas, Chronographia 15.9; Anonymus Valesianus 49; Procopius, Wars 5.1.10–11; Ennodius, Panegyric 6.25; Evagrius, Historia Ecclesiastica 3.27; Theophanes, AM 5977; John of Nikiu, Chronicle 115; Fredegar, Chronicle 2.5.7. 40  For the journey to Italy: Wolfram, Goths, pp. 279–81; Heather, Restoration of Rome, ch. 1. 41  Halsall’s chapter in this volume also addresses this question. Population based on Malchus frag. 17 f (Blockley 18.4.20); John of Antioch frag. 211; Burns, “Calculating Ostrogothic Population”; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 66–8; Wolfram, Goths, p. 279; Heather, “Merely an Ideology?”, pp. 36–40; Schäfer, “Probleme”, pp. 182–3. 42  Cassiodorus, Variae 5.32 shows two instances of Gothic men marrying Italian women: Brandila and Procula and Patza and Regina. Though, it must be said that the Roman identity of these women and the Gothicness of their husbands is conjectural and based on assumptions about those bearing Roman and Germanic names. See Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes”. 43  Amory, People and Identity.

212

Swain

into the local Italian landowning classes.44 As Theoderic’s initial invading army split up and settled in different locales, any sense of Gothic identity, had it ever existed, would have been impossible to maintain.45 But the evidence is sparse and does not allow us to demonstrate intermarriage or peaceful land purchases to any great degree. Other scholars argue for a full wagon-train migration and believe that Goths in Italy lived among fellow Goths in a few militarily strategic locations.46 Evidence for families making the trek with the Gothic army is furnished not only by Procopius but also by Ennodius, a Gallo-Roman cleric active in Ostrogothic Italy. The presence of these families is attested in two of Ennodius’ texts, one of which was a panegyric delivered before Theoderic and other Goths.47 Had the description been untrue, it would have been strange to utter it in front of those who had made the journey about fifteen years earlier.48 As for the location of their settlement, some commentators have argued that the vast majority of Goths lived in the northern half of Italy, mostly in the far north. There are various arguments for this. The northern city of Ravenna was the seat of Theoderic’s power and his permanent residence. Some have suggested that there was a particular Gothic quarter in the capital where Goths lived and worshiped, namely in the north-eastern portion of the city.49 Evidence for this is derived from Agnellus, a Ravennan cleric, who identifies a cluster of churches in that part of the capital as being Arian.50 This style of habitation would speak to an active sense of shared identity and community among Goths. Others, though, have noted that there are Arian churches elsewhere in the urban area and reckon that the evidence is too scant and inconclusive to suggest a concentration of Goths in one part of the city.51 The most important arguments for northern Italian settlement, however, hinge on the allegedly Gothic grave goods that have been located in the north in the vicinity of Pavia and Milan, and along the central to northern Adriatic coast. Meanwhile, there is an absence of such goods south of a line from

44  Goffart, Barbarians and Romans. Discussed further by Halsall in Chapter 7 in this volume. 45  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 91–7. 46  Heather, “Merely an Ideology?”. 47  Ennodius, Panegyric 26–7; Life of Epiphanius 118–19. 48  There is, however, some debate about whether Ennodius publicly delivered the panegyric: Rohr, “La tradizione”, pp. 270–4; Rota, “Teoderico”, pp. 204–6. 49  Budriesi, “Ortodossi e ariani”, p. 109; Lazard, “Goti e Latini”, p. 122. 50  More on Gothic Arianism below. 51  Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, p. 116.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

213

Rome to Pescara, in Sicily, and in the western country from Rome to Genoa.52 A number of these inhumations contain certain items, namely adornments such as eagle brooches and buckles with semi-precious stone and coloured glass inlays.53 Some have argued that these artifacts and their associated style of dress are indicative of both Gothic identity and the locations of Gothic settlement.54 Others challenge that equating material culture with ethnic and social identities is a precarious methodology that has been problematized over the past few decades.55 These dissenters have pointed out that artifacts in this “polychrome” style were being produced across the Mediterranean during this period.56 Important elements of the eagle brooch design, therefore, were adopted within the empire, and cannot be said to signify some extra-Roman, distinctly Gothic provenance. Interestingly, some who argue for a positive relation between the brooches and Gothic identity appreciate this last point. It is recognized that analysis of these items must be context-specific, and that a given artifact cannot, across time and space, remain a constant marker of identity. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the mutable nature of both identity and the function of ­symbols.57 After all, the eagle had long been a meaningful symbol among Romans and even Huns, and it is entirely plausible that this inspired Gothic usage.58 The brooches and their burials can be linked with the Goths because, within Italy, their central and mainly northern distribution maps onto the locations of Gothic settlement provided by Procopius. Procopius also associates these settlements with military deployment,59 and this makes sound strategic sense as well: the Gothic army would have covered transalpine routes into Italy, along the east coast to defend against eastern imperial aggression, and across the main east—west routes over the

52  Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 68–9; Bierbrauer, Die Ostgotischen Grab, pp. 209–15; Heather, Goths, p. 237 n. 31 notes that there are 126 such ‘Gothic’ graves. 53  For an illustrated survey of the graves: Bierbrauer, “Archeologia”. 54  See n. 49. 55  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 336–8 for arguments against mapping Gothic identity onto these allegedly Gothic burials; Curta, “Some Remarks on Ethnicity” for a summary of the debate over this archaeological methodology. 56  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, p. 337. 57  Heather, Goths, p. 311. 58  Greene, “Gothic Material Culture”, pp. 121–5. 59  The Procopian evidence was assembled by Bierbrauer, Die Ostgotischen Grab, pp. 23–41. See also Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 66–71; Heather, “Merely an Ideology?”, pp. 40–1.

214

Swain

Apennines.60 Dispersing the Goths throughout the peninsula would have reduced their military effectiveness.61 This picture of clustered military settlement has implications for Gothic identity. Procopius’ observation related to the mid 530s at the outset of the imperial invasion and suggests that, a generation after the creation of the Ostrogothic kingdom, Goths in Italy were still living in largely Gothic communities. They had not integrated into the rest of Italian society. Procopius, who spent a number of years in Ostrogothic Italy while on campaign with Belisarius, implies throughout his narrative that Goths were distinct from Italians. It has been argued that Procopius’ account is a rhetorical distortion, a tribalizing ethnographic topos.62 But no convincing motive has been given for this distortion: the distinction is made in all contemporary sources writing about the war, regardless of their politics. Others trust in Procopius’ status as an eyewitness and believe that the distinction reflects the way that his contemporaries perceived reality. In this case, an argument for Gothic identity can be made. Similar to disagreements over settlement and grave goods, debates about Gothicness have also concerned such seemingly mundane things as hats and hairstyles. In the Ostrogothic context, a case in point is the Senigallia Medallion, a commemorative coin upon which Theoderic is depicted sporting a moustache.63 Some have argued that this particular type of facial hair proclaimed, perhaps defiantly, a distinctly ‘Gothic’ appearance in conscious ­contradistinction to a more typical ‘Roman’ one.64 This, they argue, was clear proof of Gothic identity. It has been pointed out, though, that our only evidence of moustachioed Goths is limited to images of Theoderic and his nephew Theodahad. Other Ostrogothic kings appear clean-shaven or with beards, and the same goes for earlier depictions of Goths such as those on the Column of Arcadius. Moreover, it turns out that numismatic and statuary evidence yield more than a few instances of Romans with moustaches, suggesting that there is nothing distinctively Gothic about this type of facial hair.65 But even if there was something Gothic about the moustache, it is unclear how contemporaries, Roman or Gothic, would have understood it in the wider context of a Roman culture that regularly appropriated foreign habits of dress and personal 60  Heather, “Merely an Ideology?”, p. 41. 61  Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, p. 110. 62  Amory, People and Identity. 63  For general discussions of the medallion: Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, p. 35; Wroth, Catalogue, p. xxxii. 64  McCormick, Eternal Victory, p. 269; Ward-Perkins, Fall of Rome, p. 73. 65  Arnold, “Theoderic’s Invincible Mustache”.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

215

a­ dornment. Certain items of clothing could have ethnic origins and connotations (Gallic cloaks, Phrygian caps), but might, when adapted by Romans, come to signify Romanness as much as anything else. Given this, moustaches or other ethnic symbols might not have been effective at signifying an identity clearly demarcated from Roman.66

Ostrogothic Society: Civilians and Soldiers

The question of Gothic settlement is closely tied to the Gothic army—another fraught subject. Questions about the army are not self-contained, however, and touch on the nature of society in the Ostrogothic kingdom more broadly. In a statement that has become almost emblematic for later historians, Cassiodorus wrote: “While the Gothic army wages war, let the Roman be at peace.”67 Cassiodorus hereby delineates two primary roles in Italian society, soldier and civilian, and associates Goths with the former and Romans with the latter. But what did this mean in practice? Was participation in the Gothic army restricted to Theoderic’s original following and their descendants, or was there recruitment among the Italians? And, concomitantly, how did the composition of the military map onto questions of separation or integration in the rest of society? There are, again, two main approaches: scholars who accept a functional separation between Goths and Italians in both military and social spheres, and those who see strong assimilative processes at work. To take the latter first, some point to the fact that Theoderic’s army had originally come from mixed origins in the Balkans and then likely absorbed the remnants of Odovacer’s army, itself comprised of Rugians, Scirians, Sarmatians, among others, and also likely Romans. It follows that Theoderic and his successors would continue to recruit from among the Italian population.68 Further, the appearance in the sources of Italo-Romans serving in military capacities indicates that the army was integrated. In a letter by Cassiodorus in Theoderic’s name, the Italo-Roman noble Cyprian and his father Opilio are celebrated for their military service, and in another letter Cyprian is again praised for his success in both military and civilian roles, and for rearing his sons in the martial fashion of the Goths.69 66  Arnold, “Theoderic’s Invincible Mustache”; see also von Rummel, Habitus Barbarus, p. 261–3. 67  Cassiodorus, Variae 12.5.4. 68  Wolfram, Goths, pp. 300–2; Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall, pp. 364–6. 69  Cassiodorus, Variae 5.41, 8.21.1–7; Amory, People and Identity, pp. 73–4, 154–5.

216

Swain

Cassiodorus also mentions one Servatus, the dux of Raetia and arguably an officer in the Gothic army, who commanded troops perhaps drawn from the local population.70 If this holds, it is evidence that both Romans and provincials served in the Gothic military.71 It has also been noted that Procopius provides a number of accounts of Italians fighting alongside Goths. And at least one commentator has suggested that, by late in Theoderic’s reign, the military and civilian populations were indistinguishable in Italy.72 Over the years Theoderic’s original force had subsumed Odovacer’s troops, retired and bought land all over Italy, and replenished its ranks with native Italians. Certainly, a number of the descendants of the invading Goths would have joined the military, but given its many transformations the Gothic army could not have functioned as a preserve or conduit of Gothic identity for any extended period of time.73 Many other scholars, however, accept the distinction made at numerous places in the Variae that Goths filled the military role and Romans the civilian one.74 Rare instances of militarized Italians do not change this picture because close inspection reveals that the majority of these refer to local defence forces, not the regular Gothic army.75 Cyprian, admittedly, was an exception, but it has been suggested that his participation in the campaign against the Bulgars represents a specific move for political advancement rather than a general trend in recruitment.76 Beyond this, there is no evidence for any substantial Italian participation in the standing Gothic army. The example of Servatus’ Raetian troops have been explained away as limitanei, essentially an auxiliary force, and not part of the Gothic field army.77 It follows that the Gothic military was a restricted body. One means of restriction and indeed exclusivity was an annual donative paid out by Theoderic to all Gothic men of military age.78 Access to these funds would have been a jealously guarded privilege, which likely precluded recruitment from those outside of Theoderic’s original army and their offspring and perhaps even Odovacer’s forces. Further, as Theoderic would not have wanted to pay anyone ineligible, it is probable that records of Gothic 70  Cassiodorus, Variae 1.11. 71  Wolfram, Goths, pp. 316–17. 72  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 164–5; cf. Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 138–41. 73  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 152, 165. 74  Cassiodorus, Variae 6.1.5, 7.3.3, 7.4.3, 8.3.4, 9.14.8, 12.5.4; Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 71. 75  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 118; id., “Merely an Ideology?”, p. 43. 76  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 119; Cassiodorus, Variae 8.21. 77  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 118 n. 89. 78  Procopius, Wars 5.12.47–8.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

217

soldiers were kept.79 One letter from the Variae orders Gothic soldiers from Samnium and Picenum to assemble in Ravenna to be reviewed by Theoderic personally and thereafter to receive their donative. These practices suggest mechanisms for mutual identification. It is not certain that Gothic troops were summoned before the Gothic king on an annual basis, but if they were, and the Procopian evidence of annuality suggests that they might have been, the combined elements of professional exclusivity, monetary reward, and contact between soldiers and their king must have reinforced a shared and elitist sense of Gothic identity.80 Related to debates over the functional roles of Goths and Italo-Romans are questions about the laws governing them. Were Goths and Romans subject to separate juridical structures? Provisions from the Variae indicate that disputes among Goths were adjudicated by a comes Gothorum, a Gothic official appointed by Theoderic. Cases involving only Romans were settled by Roman officials, and those with mixed disputants required that the comes consult with a Roman legal expert and thereafter render a decision.81 Some see this as a clear indication that the legal integration of Goths into Italo-Roman society was not seamless, and that the Goths maintained their own traditions of dispute resolution.82 The nature of these practices remains unclear to us. Ostrogothic Italy seems never to have produced a legal code similar to those of other western successor states in which separate Roman and barbarian laws were in use.83 The Goths in Italy possibly operated with wergilds, feuds, and customs similar to those on the books in other barbarian kingdoms.84 Others disagree, pointing to specific Cassiodoran language: “We do not permit those whom we wish to defend with the same purpose to live under separate laws”; 79  Cassiodorus, Variae 5.36 records that the vir sublimis Starcedius was granted an honourable discharge and that his donative had been revoked. This suggests the keeping of a central register of the Gothic soldiery: Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 120; James, Europe’s Barbarians, p. 87. 80  Heather, “Theoderic, King of the Goths”, pp. 161–2; id., “Gens and Regnum”, p. 120; Sirago, “I Goti nelle Variae di Cassiodoro”, pp. 188–9; cf. Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, p. 135 n. 75, who contests that the donatives promoted Gothic identity. 81  Cassiodorus, Variae 3.13.2, 7.3.1, 8.3.4. 82  Ensslin, Theoderich der Grosse, pp. 231–2; Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 122; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 75–80. 83  Useful here is Lafferty, Law and Society which argues that the so-called Edict of Theoderic is based on demonstrably Roman legal practice, but adapted to the 6th-century needs of Ostrogothic Italy; the Edict’s preface states that it was intended to govern both Romans and barbarians. 84  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 122.

218

Swain

justice should be judged “in common”.85 Rather than erecting social and legal divisions, then, Theoderic sought to break down barriers between Goths and Romans by applying the same laws to all subjects. It is also argued that the legal arrangements seen in the Variae were not a Gothic innovation, but bespeak the well-established late Roman practice of maintaining separate courts for the old Roman army.86 Countering this, though, is the argument that Gothic cases were judged by Gothic officials, regardless of whether those involved were in the military. This entails, at least legalistically, that one’s status as a Goth was not determined merely by military service, but was a marker independent of social role.87

Roman-Gothic Integration

Even those who hold that Goths lived largely among each other in regional clusters, monopolized the military, and maintained their own cultural and political identity still recognize that Gothic and Roman societies were in the process of merging in Italy. The mixed marriages of Brandila and Procula and Patza and Regina have already been mentioned.88 Various inscriptions and papyri also attest to other unions between partners with barbarian and Roman names.89 Certain individuals seem to have been known by both Roman and Gothic names, and there are instances of parents with Gothic names giving their children Roman ones.90 Classical learning was adopted by some of the Gothic elite. Gothic geographers are attested in the Ravenna Cosmography.91 Theoderic’s nephew Theodahad was versed in Latin literature, Platonic philosophy, and ecclesiastical writings, and the king’s daughter Amalasuentha was fluent in Greek, Latin, and Gothic, and sought to provide her son Athalaric with a similar Roman education.92 Acculturative exchange went the other way, too. Cyprian, the Italo-Roman who served in the Gothic army, had his sons 85  Cassiodorus, Variae 3.13.2; Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 128–9. 86  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 51 n. 24, 151–65. 87  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 122; Cassiodorus, Variae 5.29. 88  See n. 42. 89  Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 85. 90  Ibid., p. 86. 91  Staab, “Ostrogothic Geographers”. 92  Theodahad: Procopius, Wars, 5.3.1, 5.6.19, 16; Cassiodorus, Variae 10.3.4f.; Amalasuentha’s languages: Variae 11.1.6; Athalaric: Wars 5.2.6. For recent work on Theodahad see Vitiello, Theodahad: A Platonic King.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

219

educated in the Gothic language at the royal court.93 And even those who think that the army was primarily a culturally Gothic institution allow that Italians were increasingly undertaking martial roles. Liberius, Cyprian, and Cassiodorus held military posts.94 It is also possible that Italo-Romans from humbler social strata found ways into the Gothic military apparatus. An oftcited, though variously interpreted, aphorism of Theoderic holds that while the rich Goth acted the Roman, the poor Roman played the Goth.95 It is possible that the range of Gothic traits adopted by lower-class Romans extended to the military, and that Gothic regiments were reinforced by Italo-Roman recruits making ‘sideways’ moves from garrisons to field armies.96 There is agreement that boundaries between Goths and Romans were being eroded, and given time Ostrogothic Italy would have experienced the same sort of socio-cultural integration that occurred in Visigothic Spain and Frankish Gaul. Some argue, though, that the outbreak of the Gothic War halted these processes, and that the preceding forty years were not sufficient to collapse cultural divisions. Staunch resistance against imperial armies for the better part of twenty years was proof that a communal sense of Gothicness continued to operate.97 It is possible, however, to interpret the Roman-Gothic dynamic in substantially different terms. Instead of merely recognizing that cultural integration was something “in the works”, some models aim to eliminate differences between Goths and Romans almost entirely. One approach gives specifically Roman answers to the question of the Gothic role in Italian society. With an emphasis on the plasticity of Romanness, it argues that Gothic traits were subsumed and renegotiated by a Roman culture that had a thousand years of imperialist experience folding outsiders into itself. The initial foreignness of Goths is not denied, but any perceived Gothic difference (bellicosity, savagery) was co-opted and recast as an established ‘Roman’ virtue (military excellence, indomitability). Goths and Gothicness came to represent martialism, which was itself the old idealized Roman trait of virtus. The Goths were heroized as Italy’s defenders, vital to the protection of what was in fact the restored Roman Empire. Under this regime, Goths and Italo-Romans became the ‘Romans’, 93  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.21.6–7. More on the Gothic language below. 94  Liberius: Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1.16; Cyprian: Variae 8.21.5; Cassiodorus: Variae 9.25.9. It should be noted, though, that the duties of these postings were markedly different. Liberius commanded soldiers in military engagements, while Cassiodorus was merely responsible for dispensing to soldiers provisions from local annonarial exactions. 95  Anonymus Valesianus 12.61. 96  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, p. 335. 97  Heather, “Merely an Ideology?”, p. 55.

220

Swain

while others remained or became barbarians. The traditional Roman worldview was thereby maintained. In the end ‘Roman’ in its inherent malleability and adaptability became the primary characteristic of ‘Gothic’.98 Another model even more emphatically blurs lines between Goths and Romans. Indeed it claims that ‘Goth’ and ‘Roman’ are but rhetorical and ideological abstractions in our sources, and unreflective of social realities. The people living in what historians term Ostrogothic Italy were substantially the same, retaining differences derived only from regional or economic variations. Here, the ‘Goths’ who conquered Italy were the hybridized Balkan mercenary army described earlier. They took on ethnographically inspired names such as ‘Goth’ to differentiate themselves from other peer armies. After their conquest of Italy, their leader Theoderic maintained this ethnographic rhetoric as part of a governmentally sanctioned ideological programme. In an effort to regularize relations between the invading army and the Italian population, Theoderic propagated an ideology that cast the army as ‘Goths’ and civilians as ‘Romans’. The latter would create and purvey respectable culture (civilitas) while the former would protect it with arms. The rhetoric was meant, “to fuse the former extera gens of the Goths to the social structure of the res publica”, and thereby to establish a consensus of governance among the settlers and indigenous ­population.99 Historians, however, have failed to disentangle ideology from social reality, with the result that prevailing models understand Ostrogothic Italy to have been populated by two distinct peoples. Rather differently, Theoderic’s army and their descendents became enmeshed in local Italian societies and quickly grew indistinguishable from everyone else. The ‘Gothic’ army, which recruited from the whole population, was not the bastion of an ethnically separate people.100 The army might have inculcated a military identity among its members, but this identity like all social identities in Italy were functions of profession and locality, not ethnicity.

Imperial Invasion and Gothic Cohesion

One imagines that a full-scale imperial invasion would serve as a convenient historical barometer for testing the ephemerality or substantiality of Gothicness in Italy. If ‘Gothic’ were merely an ideological concept, it seems likely that it would have buckled under imperial pressure. If it were a coherent 98  Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, especially ch. 5. 99  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 50, 43. 100  Ibid., p. 165.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

221

group identity, however, one might expect to see stiffer resistance. What do the sources suggest? Frustratingly, both; and lines of debate have been drawn up accordingly. On the one hand, it is argued that the pressures exerted by Justinian’s armies provide clear proof that hard allegiances to ‘Gothic’ or ‘Roman’ identities did not determine individuals’ resistance to or cooperation with invading imperial forces. Instead, immediate concerns on the local, civic, and personal levels predominated and influenced people’s choices. The terms ‘Goth’ vs. ‘Roman’ which Justinian’s war foisted upon the inhabitants of Italy were abstract and unrealistic, and people picked sides (and sometimes changed them) for the sake of survival and personal advantage. The Italo-Roman noble Liberius, originally loyal to Odovacer, later served the Gothic kings only to eventually throw in his hat with Justinian. The Gothic royals Amalasuentha and Theodahad were inclined to cut deals with Constantinople that guaranteed their safety and comfort in exchange for the surrender of Gothic Italy.101 At the start of the war the mere approach of Belisarius’ army saw the surrender of the Gothic commander Pitzias together with half the Goths in Samnium without ­resistance.102 And perhaps most strikingly, a papyrus reveals the case of a certain Gundila, a Gothic soldier and Arian whose land was seized by Justinian’s armies, was later returned upon his conversion to Catholicism, was then taken by Totila’s Gothic forces, re-taken by imperial armies, and finally, only after Gundila pleaded with the Roman bishop Vigilius, was returned to him.103 It is suggested that Gundila’s vicissitudes belie any notion of a stalwart allegiance to a ‘Gothic cause’ and instead reveal only an individual trying to remain whole in the face of a destabilizing war. Gundila shed his ‘Gothic’ military and religious identity at the drop of a hat in favour of a ‘Roman’ Catholic one purely for economic reasons. Local and immediate concerns were more potent than notions of Gothicness or Romanness and characterized the conduct of the war on both sides.104 On the other hand, opposing interpretations point out that despite the quick surrenders and swapping of allegiances, a substantial number of people who were called and self-identified as Goths resisted the armies of the empire for nearly thirty years. An aggregate of separate reactions to immediate economic advantage and personal interest cannot account for this sustained 101  Procopius, Wars 5.2.23–9, 5.3.1 ff., 5.4.11–22; Secret History 16.1. 102  Procopius, Wars 5.15.1. 103  The papyrus (PItal 49) is translated with commentary in Appendix 1 of Amory, People and Identity, pp. 321–5. 104  Amory, People and Identity, ch. 5.

222

Swain

military effort, but a coherent and widely shared Gothic identity can. One particular line of argument admits that our limited and lacunose sources cannot confirm or deny the existence of a Gothic ethnicity constituted by notions of blood ties, common origins, divine ancestry, etc. They can, however, attest to a fully functioning Gothic political identity forged by long and mutually experienced military struggle and, importantly, maintained by exclusive rights to military participation, which furnished economic benefits in the form of tax shares and royal donatives. The maintenance of Gothic identity, therefore, was an extension of the desire to maintain a position of advantage.105 Further, the primary bearers of Gothic identity can be pinpointed in the sources. Procopius routinely differentiates between two categories of the Gothic soldiery, the higher of which are called aristoi, dokimoi, or logimoi.106 While these terms refer to significant Gothic individuals and policy-makers, they are also applied to much larger Gothic military contingents. This broader military elite, it is argued, perhaps a fifth of the 20,000–30,000 strong Gothic army, were politically enfranchised and central to group cohesion and morale. Over the many years of the Gothic War this group proved durable and the eventual end of Gothic resistance should be associated with its substantial reduction.107

Gothic Language and Religion

By almost all accounts, a distinct and commonly spoken language contributes substantially to group cohesion.108 It is not surprising, then, that proponents of the existence of Gothic identity argue for the prevalence and centrality of the Gothic tongue among Goths in Italy, while detractors minimize its importance and cultural capital. Spoken Gothic is attested in various sources. Cassiodorus’ letters indicate that Cyprian knew Gothic, that Athalaric was impressed when that Italo-Roman’s children learned “our language”, and that, in addition to the 105  One notices that, at their core, both Amory’s and Heather’s arguments for the absence or existence of Gothic identity hinge upon individuals’ reactions to economic advantage. Amory’s model, though, suggests individualized, ad hoc responses to the exigencies of the moment. Heather’s economics are better thought of as an investment in Gothicness, in the notion that group solidarity, even in the face of danger, will continue to yield dividends. 106  Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 97. 107  Arguments developed in Heather, “Theoderic, King of the Goths”; id., Goths; id., “Gens and Regnum”; id., “Merely an Ideology?”; id., Restoration of Rome. 108  Pohl, “Introduction—Strategies of Identification”, p. 4.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

223

classical languages, Amalasuentha spoke her “native tongue”.109 In Procopius, Belisarius orders Bessas, an imperial commander of Thracian Gothic origin, to converse with the Goths “in the language of the Goths”, and later there is an account of Goths speaking to each other “in their native tongue” as they rescue an imperial soldier and a fellow Goth from a hole into which they had fallen.110 It is made clear that the imperial soldier could not speak Gothic. For some, the fact that the sources reveal Gothic being spoken in both military and court contexts indicates that the language was widely known by the Goths of Italy.111 Others are less convinced, arguing that every account of the spoken language that modern commentators call Gothic derives from a military setting, including those concerning Theoderic and his family because they came from the Balkan military world. Given this, ‘Gothic’ was probably the military pidgin cant of the Mediterranean armies, a mix of Greek, Latin, and Germanic elements, the product of the intermingling of soldiers of diverse backgrounds in the 5th and 6th centuries.112 It should not be thought of as widely known or as the primary language of the people our sources call Goths. Latin held that distinction, a language known by all inhabitants of Italy regardless of origin.113 This can be inferred because the sources never indicate that communication was a problem. Liberius is not known to have spoken Gothic, but had no trouble leading troops. Many of Cassiodorus’ letters are addressed to people with Germanic names and they were written in Latin. The ‘Gothic’ language (“never called ‘Gothic’ in the sources that attribute it to any given individual”) is not commensurate with a sense of communal identity among Theoderic’s original followers.114 Further, it need not have had any relation to written Gothic, which it is argued was an archaic and ritualistic formulation used only in religious and liturgical contexts. When uttered aloud in an Arian church service, it would have been perceived as a mystical and impenetrable code, just as modern Catholics encountered Latin before Vatican II.115 This latter point is disputed, however, and connected to the larger question of Gothic religion in relation to group identity. There is no sound philological 109  Cassiodorus, Variae 5.40.5, 8.21.6–7, 11.1.6. 110  Procopius, Wars 5.10.10, 6.1.11–20. 111  Wolfram, Goths, p. 325. 112  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 102–8. 113  Ibid., pp. 86 f.; so, too, Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, p. 138 and n. 91 who argues for the prevalence of Latin. Goths “might” speak Gothic, but this was not a meaningful barrier between them and Italo-Romans. 114  Amory, People and Identity, p. 107. 115  Ibid., p. 248.

224

Swain

basis for disassociating written from spoken Gothic, and the fact that the vast majority of the extant Gothic literary tradition was produced in Ostrogothic Italy means that the Goths actively cultivated a specific feature of their culture that was distinct from that of their Roman partners.116 In fact they were the first ‘post-Roman barbarians’ to do so. As an indicator of separateness, the Gothic language would have contributed to a sense of Gothic alterity and thus identity. It was given written form by the Roman missionary Ulfila sometime between 340 and his death in 381/2.117 The alphabet was based mostly on Greek letters, though a few characters probably came from Latin and runic models.118 Ulfila’s efforts were motivated by the evangelization of the Goths and he produced for them a translation of the entire Bible, excepting the Book of Kings.119 All that remains of this translation, though, are fragments of Nehemiah and portions of the New Testament. These have been preserved in several major manuscripts, most of which were probably produced in northern Italy during the Ostrogothic period.120 The most notable is the Codex Argenteus, a lavish production of the Gospels written on purple-dyed parchment with silver script and gold lettering in the initial portions. Also of importance are the fragments of a text that came to be known as Skeireins.121 It is a commentary on the Gospel of John, and intriguingly contains cadence and pause marks indicating that it was read aloud to congregants. For some, this indicates the intersection and similarity of written and spoken Gothic. Countering this, it has been argued that the Skeireins is derived from a 4th-century Greek text by Theodore of Herecleia,122 and indicates, as does the Ulfilan Bible, the artificiality of the Gothic language in its derivation from a linguistically Greek and religiously Roman context.123 Others, though, suggest that the Gothic Bible relies on Greek only in syntax and specialized vocabulary, and that the

116  Green’s comments in Brown, “Role of Arianism”, pp. 429–30. 117  Philostorgius, Historia Ecclesiastica (cited hereafter as HE) 2.5. 118  Green, “Linguistic and Literary Traces”, p. 392; Murdoch, “Gothic”, pp. 156–7. 119  Philostorgius, HE 2.5 tells us that it was feared that the book’s violent content would inflame the warlike passions of the Goths. 120  The dating and provenance of these fragments is not certain, though; Green, “Linguistic and Literary Traces”, p. 394. 121  The title was appended to the text in the 19th century. It is the Gothic word meaning explanation or interpretation. 122  That the Skeireins may be related to the text by Theodore is also attested by Green “Linguistic and Literary Traces”, p. 394. 123  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 248–9.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

225

Skeireins ­contains ­language of a more idiomatic nature, revealing that Gothic was indeed a living language.124 Another important document is a Ravenna papyrus from 551 of two deeds of sale from the cathedral of St Anastasia, part of the ecclesia legis Gothorum, in which nineteen individuals are listed: fifteen with Germanic names and four with Roman ones.125 Of these, four signed their names with Gothic characters, while seven did so in Latin. Some might argue that the writing of Gothic letters in a 6th-century context suggests that the Gothic language was not a relic of an earlier period but a living attribute of Gothic culture.126 The counterargument is that written Gothic was purely religious and ecclesiastical in nature, so it is unremarkable that the signatories, being representatives of the Gothic church, would employ their church’s archaic and institutional language.127 But who were the people who signed this document? Goths? Italo-Romans? Both? Perhaps those with Germanic names were Gothic while those with Latin ones were Romans.128 It has been pointed out, though, that it is exceedingly difficult to determine an individual’s ethnicity or group affiliation on the basis of name alone.129 Recall the Gothic parents who gave their children Latin names. But even if it is assumed that Germanic names denoted Gothicness, there are still those with Germanic names who signed in Latin script, suggesting that they did not know Gothic, or at least how to write it. This has ­ramifications for those who associate that language with Gothic identity. Or perhaps those Goths knew Gothic, but they were illiterate and Latin speakers wrote their names for them. Additionally, given that this was an official document of the Gothic church, does this suggest that all of the names belonged to Goths? If not, that would mean that some of the signatories were Italo-Romans and yet still belonged to the Gothic church. This raises questions about the nature of the Gothic church, and what if anything it had to do with Gothic identity. Gothic Christianity is classified as Arian, though its precise relationship to the theology of Arius is unclear.130 What seems certain is that the Gothic creed was a non-Nicene, Homoean form of Christianity deemed heretical by the 124  Green, “Linguistic and Literary Traces”, p. 393; Schäferdiek, “Kirchengeschichtliches”, p. 447. 125  P. Ital. 34, in Tjäder, Die nichliterarischen, p. 102. 126  Luiselli, “Cassiodoro e la storia”, p. 230. 127  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 253–4. 128  Tjäder, Die nichliterarischen, p. 95. 129  Amory, People and Identity, pp. 251–74. 130  This study, though, at times refers to the Gothic church as Arian to reflect scholarly conventions. See also Cohen’s chapter in this volume.

226

Swain

imperial Nicene church. What concerns the present study is the relationship between Gothic identity and Gothic Christianity and its church. More than other possible components of that identity, Gothic Arianism has long been considered a distinctive marker of Gothicness, and one which acted as a barrier between the Gothic and Roman communities of Italy.131 Though it seems that Theoderic did not proselytize Gothic Christianity and never interfered with the practice of Nicene Christians, he was a patron of the Gothic church and personally identified with its faith. Addressing a group of Nicene bishops, he spoke of “your religion and ours”.132 And Theoderic supported the construction of Arian churches in Ravenna.133 With its many properties and royal patronage, the Gothic church was a formidable institution, but one ultimately considered heretical by the overwhelming majority of the Italian Nicene population. This, it is argued, clearly set Arian Goths apart from their Nicene neighbours, and the maintenance of this minority sect sustained deep divisions between Goths and Romans in Italy. Some even argue that the continued practice of Arian Christianity was a way by which the Goths could underline their separation from Nicene Romans. This divide, though, was not clear-cut. There is evidence that some Goths converted to Nicene Christianity or perhaps had always been Catholics.134 And one line of argument holds that conversions went the other way as well.135 According to this interpretation of the religious landscape, the Gothic church cannot be seen as an ethnically Gothic institution or one that stood outside the rest of the Italo-Roman population. Rather, the Gothic church evidenced in the 6th-century sources was only the continuation of the Italian Arian church of the 5th century, which upon the advent of the Arian Theoderic’s rule in Italy had rebranded itself as the ecclesia Gothica in an effort to secure the protection and generosity of the Gothic king. A prosopographical collection that includes both Nicene Goths and Italo-Roman Arians shows that there was nothing inherently ‘Gothic’ or ‘Roman’ about either Arianism or 131  Chadwick, Boethius, p. 3; Burns, History of the Ostrogoths, pp. 159–61; Wolfram, Goths, pp. 324–6; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 89–97; Heather, Goths, p. 245; Brown, “Role of Arianism”, p. 423. 132  Anagnosticum regis, ed. T. Mommsen (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894, p. 425. 133  Though Amory, People and Identity, p. 246 has argued, without evidence, that the construction of some of these churches can be traced to the period of Odovacer. See also Cohen’s and Johnson’s chapters in this volume in which Arianism and Arian churches are discussed. 134  Procopius, Wars 6.6.18; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 95–7 for further examples. 135  Amory, People and Identity, p. 259.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

227

Catholicism.136 Theoderic never explicitly associated the name of Goth with his church137 because he knew that “most people who were considered Goths, like most people in Italy, were or became Catholics”.138 But reactions against this analysis have been adamant that while there were individual Arian soldiers of barbarian origin in Italy in the 5th century there is no evidence for an organized Arian church in Italy between the time of Ambrose in the 380s and Theoderic’s Arian patronage of the early 6th century. The revival of the Arian church must be associated with the coming of the Goths.139

Moving Forward

It is hoped that a tour of these seemingly irreconcilable debates does not leave the impression that the field is in a state of disarray. Quite the contrary: acute disagreement has stimulated ever more sophisticated arguments and sharpened our knowledge of the many contours and nuances of the sources. They have served as a kind of intellectual pressure cooker, with the beneficial result that this little corner of history has been more thoroughly inspected than many others no less deserving of similar scrutiny. Each of the above models has merits. Individual facets of opposed positions are, in isolation, entirely plausible and likely true. Ultimately, though, some arguments affirm that the Goths were a collectivity and possessed a sense of distinctive Gothic identity, while others hold that such a thing did not really exist. These cannot both be right. What to do? Distances between opposed positions need to be shortened. Extreme interpretive polarities have already engendered a certain degree of scholarly tribalism (if I may be allowed the pun); if allowed to deepen or become entrenched, this will inevitably result in an intellectual inertia that will hinder the cooperative growth of the field. Steps should be taken to maintain the analytical rigour that these debates have fostered, but should also work to rehabilitate untenable models built on otherwise sound analysis. Two such steps come to mind. First, the formative force that Rome exerted on barbarian peoples in and outside the empire must continue to be recognized. Scholars across the interpretive spectrum have already acknowledged this to differing degrees, and this mode ought to be maintained and even strengthened. For centuries d­ uring 136  See the prosopographical appendix in Amory, People and Identity, pp. 348–484. 137  Amory, People and Identity, p. 258. 138  Ibid., p. 274. 139  Markus, review of Amory; Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 126.

228

Swain

the Republican and early Imperial periods, barbarian societies beyond the frontiers were profoundly influenced by the economy and culture of their Roman neighbours. And from the 3rd century onward, many of these peoples lived within and served the empire as farmers, soldiers, and citizens.140 The Ostrogoths were, in significant ways, a product of late Roman politics and military policy. Rome had, a century earlier, supplied the Goths with their religion and written language. Rome had granted the Pannonian Goths land on which to settle. It was from Rome that both the Pannonian and Thracian Goths sought to extract employment and funds. And it was a Roman state apparatus that Theoderic, himself the product of a Roman education in the imperial capital, curated and promoted more than any other barbarian king. The Goths and those signs and practices that made them Gothic were demographically and culturally permeable. The instances of Italo-Roman participation in the Gothic military and the Gothic absorption of various barbarian peoples bear this out. But flexibility and permeability do not mean that Gothic identity did not exist, or that Goths did not exist before the Romans invented them. Groups with coherent identities can incorporate external elements while still maintaining their sense of distinctiveness.141 Italo-Romans would have had to join the Gothic army in staggeringly high proportions to undermine its culturally Gothic identity, and there is no evidence that this ever happened. In fact there is proof against it. Given time, the Gothic and Roman communities would have continued to merge. Perhaps the success of Theoderic’s stewardship of the Roman state combined with the Roman identity of the vast majority of the population would have seen the full assimilation of the Goths into a postimperial Roman order. But in historical fact the Ostrogoths only ceased to exist because of an act of imperial aggression. Given this, we must be careful not to project backward our knowledge of their eventual demise and let it colour views of the evanescence or fragility of Gothicness. And this brings us to the second recommended step. We face two obstacles in coming to terms with Gothic identity: poor sources and the fact the Goths do not exist today. This is a substantial degree of remove. In certain regards this distance can aid us: detached from any personal, political, or contemporary entanglements we can better do the work of dispassionate historical analysis. Conversely, it can render a subject a mere abstraction. Our subject, though, is people and the very question of their peoplehood. Declaring the non-­existence of a people by means of philological arguments is an act that should give us 140  Whittaker, Frontiers; Woolf, Becoming Roman. 141  See Woolf, “Tales of the Barbarians”.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

229

pause. Being wrong about that is substantially different from being wrong about the metre in a line of Vergil. One need only exchange the Goths with a modern-day ethnic group, embattled by a more powerful imperial state, to appreciate its rather pronounced ramifications. A certain degree of caution and circumspection is in order in future consideration of these questions. If it can be accepted that Goths thought themselves to be Gothic and that Gothicness was influenced by Roman culture, questions about Gothic identity can begin to move away from the “did it exist?” variety. Instead, we might ask: what did it look like? Or, in what ways was Gothicness substantially different from Romanness? These sorts of questions allow us more accurately to assess the cultural transitions that characterized the end of the Roman period and the dawn of the Middle Ages. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Anagnosticum regis, ed. T. Mommsen (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894. Anonymus Valesianus, ed. and trans. J. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, vol. 3 (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1952. Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodorus Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894; ed. Ǻ Fridh, Magni Aurelii Cassiodori Senatoris Opera 1 (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 96), Turnhout 1973; trans. S. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae, Liverpool 1992. Ennodius, Vita Epiphanii, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felicis Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885; trans. G. Cook, The Life of Saint Epiphanius by Ennodius, Washington, D.C. 1942. ———, Panegyricus dictus clementissimo regi Theoderico, ed. and trans. C. Rohr, Der Theoderich-Panegyricus des Ennodius (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte 12), Hannover 1995; ed. and trans. S. Rota, Magno Felici Ennodio: Panegirico del Clementissimo Re Teoderico, Rome 2002. Evagrius, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. J. Bidez/L. Parmentier, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius with the Scholia, London 1898; trans. M. Whitby, The Ecclesiatical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, Liverpool 2000. Fredegar, Chronica, ed. B. Krusch (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 2), Hannover 1888. John of Antioch, fragmenta, ed. and trans. (Italian) U. Roberto, Ionnis Antiocheni Fragmenta ex Historia Chronica (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 154), Berlin 2005.

230

Swain

John Malalas, Chronographia, ed. H. Thurn (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 35), Berlin 2000; trans. E. Jeffreys/M. Jeffreys/R. Scott, The Chronicle of John Malalas, Melbourne 1986. John of Nikiu, Chronicle, trans. R. Charles, The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu, Oxford 1916. Jordanes, Getica and Romana, ed. T. Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 5.1), Berlin 1882; trans. C. Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes, Princeton 1915. Malchus, History, ed. and trans. R. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicizing Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus, and Malchus, vol. 2: Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes, Liverpool 1983. Marcellinus Comes (Count Marcellinus), Chronicon, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., vol. 2 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 11), Berlin 1894. Philostorgius, Historia Ecclesiatica, ed. J. Bidez/F. Winkelmann, Philostorgius Kirschengeschichte, 2nd ed., Berlin 1972. Procopius, ed. J. Haury, Procopii Caesariensis Opera Omnia, Leipzig 1906; Wars, ed. and trans. H. Dewing, Procopius, vols. 1–5 (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1914–28. Theophanes Confessor, Chronica, ed. C. de Boor, 2 vols., Leipzig 1883–5; trans. C. Mango/R. Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History, AD 284–813, Oxford 1997.



Secondary Literature

Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy 489–554, Cambridge 1997. Arnold, J.J., “Theoderic’s Invincible Mustache”, Journal of Late Antiquity 6.1 (2013), 152–83. ———, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, Cambridge 2014. Bacal, A., Ethnicity in the Social Sciences: A View and Review of the Literature on Ethnicity, Coventry 1991. Barnish, S./Marazzi, F. (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007. Barth, F., (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Ethnic Difference, Boston 1969. Bierbrauer, V., Die Ostgotischen Grab- und Schatzfunde in Italien, Spoleto 1975. ———, “Archeologia degli Ostrogoti in Italia’, in V. Bierbrauer/O. von Hessen/E. Arslan (eds.), I Goti, Milan 1994, pp. 170–213. Bjornlie, S., “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes in Ostrogothic Italy: A Case for Continuity, Adaptation and Departure”, Early Medieval Europe 22.2 (2014), 138–70.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

231

Brown, T., “The Role of Arianism in Ostrogothic Italy: The Evidence from Ravenna”, in S. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 417–26. Budriesi, R., “Ortodossi e ariani: questioni ravennati (riassunto)”, Corso di cultura sull’arte Ravennate e bizantina 37 (1990), 109–20. Burns, T., “Calculating Ostrogothic Population”, Acta antique Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae 26 (1978), 457–63. ———, A History of the Ostrogoths, Bloomington 1984. Chadwick, H., Boethius, Oxford 1981. Curta, F., “Some Remarks on Ethnicity in Early Medieval Archaeology”, Early Medieval Europe 15 (2007), 159–85. Deliyannis, D., Ravenna in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2010. Ennslin, W., Theoderich der Grosse, 2nd ed., Munich 1959. Eriksen, T., Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, London 1993. Geary, P., “Ethnicity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages”, Mitteilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 133 (1983), 15–26. Gillett, A., “Jordanes and Ablabius”, Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, vol. 10, Brussels 2000, pp. 479–500. Goffart, W., Barbarians and Romans AD 418–584: The Techniques of Accommodation, Princeton 1980. Green, D., “Linguistic and Literary Traces of the Ostrogoths”, in S. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 387–404. Greene, K., “Gothic Material Culture”, in I. Hodder (ed.), Archaeology as Long-Term History, Cambridge 1987, pp. 117–42. Grierson, P./Blackburn, M., Medieval European Coinage: With a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, vol. 1: The Early Middle Ages (5th–10th centuries), Cambridge 1986. Hall, J., Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, Cambridge 1997. Halsall, G., Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568, Cambridge 2007. Heather, P., “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals: Genealogy and the Goths under Hun Domination”, Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989), 103–28. ———, Goths and Romans, 332–489, Oxford 1991. ———, “The Historical Culture of Ostrogothic Italy”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia, Spoleto 1993, pp. 317–53. ———, “Theoderic King of the Goths”, Early Medieval Europe 4.2 (1995), 145–73. ———, The Goths, Oxford 1996. ———, “Gens and Regnum among the Ostrogoths”, in H. Goetz/J. Jarnut/W. Pohl (eds.), Regna and Gentes, Leiden 2003, pp. 85–133.

232

Swain

———, “Merely an Ideology?—Gothic Identity in Ostrogothic Italy”, in S. Barnish/ F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 31–60. ———, “Ethnicity, Group Identity, and Social Status in the Migration Period”, in I. Garipzanov/P. Geary/P. Urbańczyk (eds.), Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, Turnout 2008, pp. 17–49. ———, The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders, Oxford 2014. James, E., Europe’s Barbarians, AD 200–600, Harlow 2009. Kazanski, M., Les Goths (Ier–VIIe siècles après J.-C.), Paris 1991. Kossina, G., Die Herkunft der Germanen: zur Methode der Siedlungsarchäologie, 2nd ed., Wurzburg 1926. Kulikowski, M., Rome’s Gothic Wars, Cambridge 2007. ———, “Constantine and the Northern Barbarians”, in N. Lenski (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, Cambridge 2012, pp. 347–76. Lafferty, S., Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge 2013. Lazard, S., “Goti e Latini a Ravenna”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.1, Venice 1991, pp. 109–33. Liebeschuetz, J., The Decline and Fall of the Roman City, Oxford 2001. Luiselli, B., “Cassiodoro e la storia dei Goti”, in Passaggio dal mondo antico al medio evo da Teodosio a San Gregorio Magno (Atti dei Convegni Lincei 45), Rome 1980, pp. 225–53. McCormick, M., Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West, Cambridge 1986. Markus, R., review of P. Amory (1997), Journal of Theological Studies 49 (1998), pp. 414–17. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. Murdoch, B., “Gothic”, in B. Murdoch/M. Read (eds.), Early Germanic Literature and Culture, Woodbridge 2004, pp. 148–70. Pohl, W., “Introduction: Ethnicity, Religion and Empire”, in W. Pohl/C. Ganter/R. Payne (eds.), Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1000, Farnham 2012, pp. 1–23. ———, “Introduction—Strategies of Identification: A Methodological Profile”, in W. Pohl/G. Heydemann (eds.), Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity in Early Medieval Europe, Turnhout 2013, pp. 1–64. Rohr, C., “La tradizione culturale tardo-romana nel regno degli Ostrogoti -il panegirico di Ennodio a Teoderico”, Romanobarbarica 16 (1999), 261–84. Rota, S., “Teoderico il Grande fra Graecia e Ausonia: La rappresentazione del re ostrogotico nel Panegyricus di Ennodio”, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Moyen Ȃge 113.1 (2001), 203–23.

Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom

233

Schäfer, C., “Probleme einer multikulturellen Gesellschaft. Zur Integrationspolitik im Ostgotenreich”, Klio 83 (2001), 182–97. Schäferdiek, K., “Kirchengeschichtliches und Skeireins”, in H. Jankuhn/et al. (eds.), Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, 2nd ed., Berlin 1998, pp. 445–53. Sirago, V., “I Goti nelle Variae di Cassiodoro”, in S. Leanza (ed.), Atti della Settimana di Studi su Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro (Cosenza-Squillace 19–24 settembre 1983), Soveria Mannelli (1986), pp. 179–205. Staab, F., “Ostrogothic Geographers at the Court of Theoderic the Great: A Study of Some Sources of the Anonymous Cosmographer of Ravenna”, Viator 7 (1976), 27–58. Tjäder, J., Die nichliterarischen Lateinischen Papyri Italiens aus der Zeit 445–700, vol. 2, Stockholm 1982. Vitiello, M., Theodahad: A Platonic King at the Collapse of Ostrogothic Italy, Toronto 2014. von Rummel, P., Habitus Barbarus: Kleidung und Repräsentation spätantiker Eliten im 4.und 5. Jahrhundert, Berlin 2007. Ward-Perkins, B., The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford 2005. Wenskus, R., Stammesbildung und Verfassung: Das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen Gentes, Cologne 1961. Whittaker, C., Frontiers of the Roman Empire, Baltimore 1994. Wickham, C., “Conclusions”, in W. Pohl/C. Ganter/R. Payne (eds.), Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1000, Farnham 2012, pp. 551–5. Wolfram, H., History of the Goths, trans. T. Dunlap, Berkeley 1988. Wood, The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages, Oxford 2013. Woolf, G., Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul, Cambridge 1998. ———, Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West, Chichester 2011. Wroth, W., Catalogue of the Coins of the Vandals, Ostrogoths and Lombards and of the Empire of Thessalonica, Nicaea and Trebizond in the British Museum, London 1911.

CHAPTER 10

Urban Life and Culture Deborah M. Deliyannis Introduction When examining urban life in the Ostrogothic period, we are faced with contradictory sources of information. On the one hand, there are many written sources that report ideals about cities that Theoderic and his successors wished to promote. On the other hand, archaeology, inscriptions, and documentary sources sometimes provide a countervailing picture. For example, the letters recorded by Cassiodorus in the Variae heavily promote the idea that Roman cities are being revived and even improved by Theoderic, with the full range of amenities enjoyed by Romans. There is some archaeological evidence to support that this was happening, especially in Ravenna and Rome, but in other cities there is material evidence that it was not happening.1 The most ironic testimony to the divergence between ideal and reality is Variae 8.31. In it, Cassiodorus praises cities as the location of education, culture, and government: Let the cities return, then, to their original glory; let no one prefer the delights of the countryside to the public buildings of the ancients. How can you shun in time of peace a place for which wars should be fought to prevent its destruction? Who does not welcome a gathering of noblemen? Who does not enjoy conversing with his peers, visiting the forum, looking on at honest crafts, advancing his own cases by the laws, or sometimes playing at checkers, going to the baths with his fellows, exchanging splendid dinner parties? He who wishes to lead his life in the constant company of his slaves will assuredly lack all these things. (trans. Barnish, 1992) The point of the letter, however, is to require that the possessores (landowners) and curiales (town councillors) return to their cities, and to pay a fine if they

1  For an excellent synthesis of this topic see Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, especially pp. 197–300.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_011

Urban Life And Culture

235

do not. In other words, the evocative picture of city life did not exist, either materially or functionally, or it had lost its appeal for Italy’s elite.2 In this chapter, we will examine the specific elements listed in Variae 8.31— elite residences, artisanal, commercial and legal activity, baths, and water supplies—in order to see what evidence we can find that they were still in existence in Ostrogothic cities. As we will see, while there is a certain amount of archaeological evidence for these things, our analysis will depend largely on textual sources. One reason for this is that there do not seem to be materially distinguishable changes between the 5th and the early 6th centuries, and thus while objects with dates attached to them—such as some inscriptions—can precisely pinpoint them in the Ostrogothic period, most other objects such as building materials, jewellery, or pottery that are generally dated to the “5th century” or the “early 6th century” may or may not actually be ‘Ostrogothic’.3 The textual sources are at pains to stress the continuity of Ostrogothic Italy with its Roman past, and modern scholars have agreed with that assessment, at least in the larger cities of Italy. In general, historians and archaeologists see a significant change in the 3rd century and another after the Gothic War and the Lombard invasion; thus, Ostrogothic cities are viewed as more or less the same as they had been in the later Roman Empire.4 However, while cities with origins in the early imperial period had indeed been embellished with large public buildings and decorations, such as paved streets, a forum with government buildings, statues, porticos, temples, public baths, sewers, and places of public entertainment, by the 4th century these structures were already decaying in most of Italy’s cities.5 The memory of Roman urban infrastructure remained, but much of it no longer functioned.6 Many cities in northern Italy had been devastated by invasions in the 3rd century and had not been rebuilt.7 Thus, there may not have been much material difference between cities in the Ostrogothic kingdom and in the immediately preceding period, except in the rhetoric about cities that Theoderic and his propagandists promoted.

2  See Lepelley, “Un éloge nostalgique”. 3  Brogiolo, “Dwellings and Settlements”, p. 113. 4  e.g. Humphries, “Italy, AD 425–605”. 5  Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, p. 199, citing Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, p. 12. 6  Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, p. 226. 7  Fauvinet-Ranson, idem, pp. 200–4.

236

Deliyannis

The Restoration of Cities in Ostrogothic Rhetoric

Variae 8.31 is only one of many letters in the Variae that praise cities as centres of culture. Patronage of public buildings and infrastructure was an important aspect of civilitas, a highly visible reminder of good government.8 Theoderic promoted himself as a rebuilder of the infrastructure of Roman Italy, in the tradition of Roman leaders of the past;9 he also encouraged wealthy Romans to fund these works themselves.10 A letter in the Variae states that the most worthy royal enterprise was the rebuilding of ancient cities, while another describes a desire to renew the monuments of antiquity.11 La Rocca has usefully pointed out that Theoderic’s rhetoric about revival and restoration of antiquitas was propaganda that, among other things, contrasted him with immediately preceding rulers who had let the cities decay.12 Moreover, Kalas has noted that the idea of restoration was not new to Theoderic, but had been commemorated in inscriptions at Rome for the previous two centuries and more, and was always intended to praise the present at the expense of the immediate past.13 Regardless of whether Theoderic was doing something new or traditional, the fact remains that cities were central to his concept of the Roman society and culture that he sought to preserve.14 The Variae give pride of place to Rome, of which Cassiodorus has Theoderic say:15 since he who wants to undertake the repair of ruins gives a gift to the republic, especially in that city [Rome], where it is fitting that all ­buildings 8  See Saitta, La civilitas di Teoderico, pp. 103–38; and La Rocca, “Una prudente maschera ‘Antiqua’ ”, p. 488. 9   See most recently Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 198–200. 10  Saitta, La civilitas di Teoderico, pp. 103–38; Johnson, “Toward a History”. 11  Variae 1.28 and 4.51, cited by Johnson, “Toward a History”, p. 76. See also Variae 1.25, 2.7, 3.31 and 44, 4.51, and 7.15 12  La Rocca, “Una prudente maschera ‘Antiqua’ ”, p. 466. 13  Kalas, “Writing and Restoration in Rome”. 14  See also Marazzi in this volume. 15  Variae 3.29: “. . . quia confert magis rei publicae munus quisquis diruta maluerit suscipere reparanda, in ea praesertim urbe, ubi cuncta dignum est constructa relucere, ne inter tot decora moenium deformis appareat ruina saxorum. in aliis quippe civitatibus minus nitentia sustinentur: in ea vero nec mediocre aliquid patimur, quae mundi principaliter ore laudatur.” Cf. also Variae 3.30. See Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 201–30 and 218–24; FauvinetRanson, “Le devenire du patrimoine monumental romain”, notes that Theoderic treated Rome like a museum. For Rome, see also Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, pp. 226–55.

Urban Life And Culture

237

shine, lest within such beautiful walls there might appear an ugly ruin of rocks. Indeed in other cities less beauty can be supported; in this one nothing should appear ordinary, since it is praised beyond others by the world’s mouth. Letters in the Variae state that Theoderic ordered numerous construction works for the walls, sewers, palace, Curia, Theatre of Pompey, aqueducts, and granaries.16 In many if not most of the cases, what is being done is not new construction but repair.17 Another city that is mentioned several times in the Variae is Theoderic’s capital, Ravenna, where in contrast to most of the other cities, the focus seems to have been on new construction as well as repairs, “so that our desire for the adornment of that city may be gratified”.18 The Variae also contain several other references to Theoderic’s support for the structures of Roman civic life in the cities of Arles, Abano, Catania, Spoleto, and Parma— we will examine the specific details below.19 There are many references in the Variae to ruins within cities. For example, three letters from the Variae order individuals or groups to send fine building materials to Ravenna: from Aestuna, from the Pincian Hill in Rome, and from Faenza Theoderic requests old marble and columns that are lying around.20 Others permit the use of building materials from ruins to be used by city governments or by individuals.21 There are also several letters that confer some ruined public building on a private citizen;22 the rationale is explained in a formula for this act, which states:23

16  Variae 1.21, 25, 3.29–31, 4.30, 51, 5.9, 7.7, 15. For bibliography, see Johnson, “Toward a History”, p. 77 n. 44. 17  E.g. Variae 1.25. See especially on the topic of repair, La Rocca, “Cassiodoro, Teodato”, pp. 1–7. 18  Variae 5.8. See La Rocca, “Una prudente maschera ‘Antiqua’ ”, pp. 480–4. 19  Johnson, “Toward a History”, p. 77; Variae 2.39 (Abano), 3.44 (Arles), 49 (Catania), 4.24 (Spoleto), 8.29–30 (Parma). 20  Variae 3.9 and 10, and 5.8. 21  E.g. Variae 3.49 (permits citizens to repair the city walls with stones from the ruined amphitheatre), and 4.24 (permits a deacon to pull down a ruined portico and use the materials for new building). See Bavant, “Cadre de vie”, pp. 478–87. 22  Variae 3.29 (granaries at Rome) and 4.30 (property near the Forum); see Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 227–8. 23  Variae 7.44: “Nescio quid grande de se videtur promittere, qui loca desiderat publica possidere. hoc enim ita fieri decet, si res squalida in meliorem loci faciem transferatur et revocetur ad ornatum quod pridem iacere videbatur incultum . . . age itaque ut per te

238

Deliyannis

What benefit is there to be gained from one who desires to take possession of public property? This is fitting only if a squalid property is transferred to a better appearance . . . act thus . . . so that you may deserve to be praised as a good citizen, if you beautify the appearance of your city. As a formula, this letter indicates the idea that it was not only the ruler who was supposed to adorn or restore cities, but also the good citizen.24 As already mentioned, one point of these accounts is to emphasize the decay of the Roman Empire under previous rulers and its restoration under Theoderic. In addition to the letters in the Variae, contemporary texts written about Theoderic emphasize his building activity as an element of his good ­governance.25 Cassiodorus in his Chronica says that “in his happy reign many cities were renovated, strong forts were founded, marvellous palaces rose up, and ancient miracles were surpassed by his great works”.26 Ennodius, in his panegyric to Theoderic, says “I see unhoped-for splendor rising from the ashes of cities, and palatial roofs shining everywhere under the plenitude of civilitas”.27 The Anonymus Valesianus calls him “a lover of construction and restorer of ­cities”, and lists his constructions at Ravenna, Pavia, and Verona.28 The portrayal of Theoderic as a builder was also a convincing indicator of his greatness for later historians. Fredegar, a Frankish chronicler writing in the 7th century, cites an earlier biography of Theoderic to say that “all the cities that he ruled he restored and fortified most ingeniously with wonderful works.”29 decorem sumat quod neglectum incuriosa vetustate iacuerat, quatenus boni civis laudem invenire merearis, si faciem tuae civitatis ornaveris.” 24  The concept of reusing materials from ruined buildings to beautify the city is also found in Roman law; see Dubouloz, “Acception et défense”. Cf. also Variae 8.30 and Variae 1.21.1. 25  See especially Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, pp. 261–82. 26  Cassiodorus, Chronica, a. 500. 27  Ennodius, Panegyric 11. 28  Anonymus Valesianus 71: “Hic aquae ductum Ravennae restauravit, quem princeps Traianus fecerat, et post multa tempora aquam introduxit. Palatium usque ad perfectum fecit, quem non dedicavit. Portica circa palatium perfecit. Item Veronae thermas et palatium fecit et a porta usque ad palatium porticum addidit. Aquae ductum, quod per multa tempora destructum fuerat, renovavit et aquam intromisit. Muros alios novos circuit civitatem. Item Ticino palatium, thermas, amphitheatrum, et alios muros civitatis fecit. Sed et per alias civitates multa beneficia praestitit.” 29  Anonymus Valesianus 70; Fredegar, Chronica 2.57 (MGH SRM 2, p. 82): “Civitates universas quas regebat miri operis restaurare et munire sollertissime fecit. Palatia quoque splendedissime Ravennae urbis, Veronae et Papiae, quod Ticinum cognomentum est, fabricare iussit. Tantae prosperitatis post regnum tenuit, pacem cum gentibus vicinas habens, ut

Urban Life And Culture

239

According to all these sources, the categories of structures patronized by Theoderic divide almost equally between monumental (porticos, palaces) and functionally useful (baths, aqueducts, city walls). Saitta has noted that even works that seem purely commemorative contributed nevertheless to the development of industries that benefited the infrastructure of his kingdom.30 All of the items described in the sources are secular constructions; Theoderic’s church patronage is not listed, nor is he said to have supported church construction by others. This is perhaps not surprising, given that Theoderic’s churches were built for Arian worship and all of our authors were Nicene; nevertheless, it skews our image of what was going on, since undoubtedly churches were being built in the cities of Italy at this time.31

Infrastructure of Ostrogothic Cities

Despite Theoderic’s reputation as a great patron and the rhetoric about Roman cities that appears in writings from his reign, his government contributed relatively little to most of the cities of Italy.32 Many of these urban centres had existed throughout the Roman imperial period, and still contained the buildings, infrastructure, and works of art erected in the first two centuries. However, they were in far from pristine condition. We have already seen that letters in the Variae repeatedly talk about the need to eliminate ruined buildings from cities, and archaeology has largely confirmed that a general shrinkage of urban infrastructures had taken place by the 5th century.33 Even at Rome, excavations at the Crypta Balbi have shown that public buildings such as the theatre, portico, and temples of the Largo Argentina had lost their functions and were becoming filled with debris. Some of the buildings were enclosed and reduced, and this can be seen at other places in Rome also.34 mirum fuisset.” See La Rocca, “Una prudente maschera ‘Antiqua’ ”, and Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 157–8. 30  Saitta, La civilitas di Teoderico, p. 105. 31  Bavant, “Cadre de vie”, pp. 478–87, notes that at the same time, new churches were being built. La Rocca, “Una prudente maschera ‘Antiqua’ ”, pp. 464–5 and 484–5, suggests that the omission of churches is because that kind of activity did not distinguish the king from his aristocratic subjects; secular patronage, however, by this time was viewed as the proper sphere of rulers. 32  Brogiolo, “Ideas”. 33  See Marazzi in this volume; also Marazzi, “The Last Rome” and Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall. 34  Marazzi, “The Last Rome”, pp. 286–9.

240

Deliyannis

Rome of course had been sacked in 410 and 455 and lost its grain shipments from North Africa in the 430s. Earthquakes struck Italy in the late 5th and early 6th centuries also, as recorded by an inscription dating to AD 484 or 508 that records repairs to the Colosseum.35 Elsewhere in Italy, excavations at Brescia have revealed a functioning Roman town with forum, capitolium, theatre, and a few elite houses until the 4th century; in the 5th century the public buildings went out of use and the houses were subdivided into smaller units.36 Thus, many of Theoderic’s cities were already shells of their former selves, a process that Theoderic recognized and attempted to reverse. One reason for this ‘shell’ impression is that by the late 5th century, Roman cities were defined by their walls.37 We can see this, for example, in the Ostrogothic mosaics in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, in which Classe is depicted as a set of walls with buildings inside it. According to the Variae, Theoderic was very concerned about city walls. One letter addressed to “all Goths and Romans” commands all his subjects to provide stones suitable for rebuilding city walls to his government, stating that: “The construction of a city is most worthy of royal attention, since the repair of old cities is praised in which both an adornment in time of peace is acquired, and a necessity is on guard in time of war.”38 Restorations are specifically mentioned for Arles, Catana, and Rome.39 The Anonymus Valesianus says that Theoderic built new walls at Verona and Pavia, which have been interpreted as interior walls demarcating citadels within the older city walls.40 Thus, walls built in earlier periods now surrounded buildings that were falling into ruin, and it was these that Theoderic’s propaganda targeted. The following sections will address certain types of buildings, and what we know about them.

35  Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (hereafter CIL) 6.32094; Rea, “Il Colosseo” and Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 198–9. 36  Brogiolo, “Dwellings and Settlements”, p. 117. 37  Gelichi, “La città in Emilia-Romagna”, pp. 572–3, Dey, Aurelian Wall, pp. 131–7, Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 284–99, 319–48, and 357–69, and Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, pp. 204–8. 38  Variae 1.28: “Digna est constructio civitatis, in qua se commendet cura regalis, quia laus est temporum reparatio urbium vetustarum: in quibus et ornatus pacis adquiritur et bellorum necessitas praecavetur . . . Quid est enim gratius quam videre crescere publicum decus, ubi omnium utilitas in generalitate concluditur?” 39  Variae 3.44, 3.49, and 1.25, and Anonymus Valesianus 67. Bricks stamped with Theoderic’s name were used to repair the Aurelian Walls of Rome, see Dey, Aurelian Wall, pp. 50–1 and 293. 40  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 204.

Urban Life And Culture



241

The Forum

According to Variae 8.31, “Who does not enjoy . . . visiting the forum, looking on at honest crafts, advancing his own cases by the laws, or sometimes playing at checkers (Palamediacis calculis)?” There is evidence for the persistence of the forum as a central or market space in many cities, but in others the forum may have gone out of use even before the Ostrogothic period.41 For example, at Aquileia the old Roman wall had surrounded a large area that included a palace, circus, forum, amphitheatre, and cathedral. Sometime in the 5th century a new wall was built that reduced the size of the defended city by about half; the new perimeter included the cathedral and the amphitheatre but excluded the palace, the circus, and the forum.42 The Huns destroyed Aquileia in 452, but some occupation continued in the reduced city where another wall was built sometime in the 6th century. We know that Aquileia was no longer an imperial residence and thus perhaps had no need for a palace or circus, but why jettison the forum? Aside from its practical uses, the forum in a Roman city served as a monumental display area, filled with statues and inscriptions that testified to the glory and/or benefaction of its major citizens. However, such inscriptions had not been produced in large numbers since the late 4th century.43 Most of the 6th-century inscriptions that survive were found in churches, either as dedications or as epitaphs of elite members of society.44 At Rome some inscriptions were erected in the Forum that record repairs undertaken by Theoderic or his elites, including the one mentioned above that commemorates repairs to the Colosseum.45 Tiles stamped with Theoderic’s name were used to repair the Basilica Aemilia, the Temple of Vesta, and other buildings in the Roman Forum.46 An inscription now in Ravenna states that one Gundila restored a 41  See Fauvinet-Ranson, “Le devenire du patrimoine monumental romain”, p. 209, who usefully notes that fora are not mentioned as notable places in many of our written sources, but that does not mean that they were not still in use. id., Decor civitatis, pp. 208–13, notes that in cities where excavations have taken place, such as Oderzo, Brescello, Luni, and Roselle, the basilicas had gone out of use in the 4th century, but in some of those cities the forum remained in use as a marketplace. 42  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 216 and 291–4. 43  See, e.g., Everett, Literacy in Lombard Italy, pp. 236–40, Trout, “Inscribing identity”, and Randsborg, The First Millennium AD, pp. 110–14. 44  See, for northern Italy, Witschel, “Der epigraphic habit”. 45  CIL 6.32094; see Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 225–6 and Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 198–9. 46  Pani Ermini, “Forma urbis e renovatio murorum” and Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 221–3.

242

Deliyannis

statue at Faenza that had been toppled in an earthquake.47 Thus, at least in a few cities, Theoderic was attempting to revive or continue Roman commemorative traditions. Moreover, Procopius tells a story about a mosaic picture of Theoderic in the forum at Naples.48 A letter in the Variae concerns the recent theft of a bronze statue from some public place in Como.49 However, in other cities we do not find similar inscriptions or images, except on epitaphs or church dedications. Thus, by this time, even if fora still functioned as marketplaces or central gathering spaces, they seem to have been replaced as local commemorative spaces by churches, as Ward-Perkins has noted.50 Water Cassiodorus notes that one of the glories of the Roman urban system was the provision of running water, which allowed for large public bathing complexes, a sewer system, and other amenities.51 Our textual sources imply that at the start of Theoderic’s reign many of these had gone out of use and had to be restored, and they also imply that this restoration was a crucial part of Theoderic’s programme. We also know from Procopius’ Gothic Wars that part of the siege of a city involved cutting its aqueducts, indicating that they were functional. Finally, we have evidence of bathing complexes in several Italian cities. We can see that water was part of the Ostrogothic image of what a city should be, although whether the aquatic systems actually still worked was sometimes in doubt. We have the most evidence about water from Ravenna. An aqueduct had been built in the Roman period, supposedly by the emperor Trajan (98–117), to bring in water from the south-west.52 We must assume that it still functioned when the imperial court moved to Ravenna around 402, but by 467 Sidonius

47  CIL 11.268 Ravenna; see Amory, People and Identity, p. 379. 48  Arthur, Naples, p. 44, cites Procopius’ story, BG 5.24. 49  Variae 2.35. 50  Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity; see also Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, pp. 101–50. 51  Variae 7.6. But see Scobie, “Slums, sanitation, and mortality”, who suggests that these features did not really improve life for most urban residents. 52  We know this date only from Anonymus Valesianus, ca. 71; see Prati/Antoniazzi, Flumen aquaeductus, pp. 32–4 and 44–6, and Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, pp. 34 and 122–3.

Urban Life And Culture

243

Apollinaris wrote “But the drawback is that, with water all about us, we could not quench our thirst; there was neither intact aqueduct nor filterable cistern, nor gushing spring, nor unclouded well”.53 Whether this was the situation earlier in the century, or whether it was a result of the semi-abandonment of the city after 450, we have no way of knowing. Theoderic’s restoration of this aqueduct was seen as a major feat. The Anonymus Valesianus says that “He [Theoderic] restored the aqueduct of Ravenna, which the ruler Trajan had built, and after much time he introduced water”.54 Cassiodorus in his Chronica, says “In this consulship lord King Theoderic brought water to Ravenna, whose aqueduct he fittingly restored, which had been out of use for a long time before”.55 The reconstruction of the aqueduct was confirmed in 1938 by the discovery in Ravenna of lead fistulae, or water pipes, with the inscription D[ominus] N[oster] Rex Theodericus civitati reddidit.56 Moreover, in the Variae, Theoderic declares to the landowners around Ravenna that he has a particular concern for aqueducts, and charges them to clean out all the bushes and saplings that had grown in the channel.57 Other cities also had functioning water systems. One letter in the Variae specifically comments on the restoration of the aqueducts at an unknown city. Parma, which apparently did not have an ancient aqueduct, had one built by Theoderic.58 Letters also remark on the maintenance of Rome’s aqueducts, which even had an official with the title comes formarum.59 In the formula of appointment of this official, Rome’s aqueduct system is said to be a marvel, surpassing natural marvels such as the river Nile.60 Procopius mentions that

53  Sidonius Apollinaris, Epist. 1.5.6: “nisi quod, cum sese hinc salsum portis pelagus impingeret, hinc cloacali pulte fossarum discursu lyntrium ventilata ipse lentati languidus lapsus umoris nauticis cuspidibus foraminato fundi glutino sordidaretur, in medio undarum sitiebamus, quia nusquam vel aquaeductuum liquor integer vel cisterna defaecabilis vel fons inriguus vel puteus inlimis.” 54  Anonymus Valesianus 71 (cited in n. 28). 55  Cassiodorus, Chronica, a. 502. 56  Prati/Antoniazzi, Flumen aquaeductus, p. 27 and especially pp. 46–50; Johnson, “Toward a History”, p. 78. 57  Variae 5.38. 58  Variae 4.31 (unknown) and 8.30 (Parma). 59  Variae 3.31 and 7.6. 60  Variae 7.6.

244

Deliyannis

aqueducts at Rome and Naples were cut during the Gothic Wars; at Naples he says that the Neapolitans didn’t mind as they had wells inside the walls.61 In the letter to the landowners of Ravenna, Cassiodorus includes a statement explaining the importance of having running water in a city:62 Then there will be a suitable maintenance of the baths, then the pools will swell with glass-like waves, then the water will cleanse, not stain, and it will not be always necessary to rewash things . . . if sweet water for drinking shall flow in, all that is used in our food will be better, since no food seems pleasing to human life where clear sweet water is lacking. While we know little about washing and cooking in Ostrogothic Italy, we do have some evidence for bathing.63 As usual we can start with the Variae, which mention public baths at several cities. At Ravenna, as we have just seen, a proper water supply allowed the baths to be maintained. At Spoleto Theoderic subsidized the admission fees to the public baths for the people’s health.64 At Abano, where there were natural hot springs, he sent money to pay for the repair of the baths built around them.65 The mirabilis magnitudo thermarum is noted as an example of the glory of Rome,66 so at least some of them must have been still functioning in the 5th and 6th centuries, and indeed tiles with Theoderic’s name were used to repair the Baths of Caracalla.67 The Anonymus Valesianus tells us that Theoderic built baths at Verona and Pavia.68 And finally, we know that the Porta Marina baths in Ostia were restored under Theoderic, because excavations there found brick stamps containing his name.69

61  BG 5.8 (Naples) and 5.19 (Rome). See Coates-Stephens, “ Walls and Aqueducts”, especially pp. 171–3. 62  Variae 5.38: “Tunc erit exhibitio decora thermarum, tunc piscinae vitreis fontibus fluctuabunt: tunc erit quae diluat aqua, non inquinet, post quam lavari continuo non sit necesse. . . . si ad potandum unda suavis influxerit, omnia nostro victui redduntur accepta, quando humanae vitae nullus cibus gratus efficitur, ubi aquarum dulcium perspicuitas non habetur.” 63  Variae 6.6 also notes that Rome’s aqueducts feed the baths. 64  Variae 2.37; he mentions these baths again in another letter about the city (4.24). 65  Variae 2.39; later (9.6) Athalaric sends an official on vacation to the hot baths at Baiae and Theodahad (10.29) sends another to the hot springs of Bormio. 66  Variae 11.29. 67  Pani Ermini, “Forma urbis e renovatio murorum”, pp. 220–2; Arnold, Theoderic, p. 223. 68  Anonymus Valesianus 71. 69  Boin, Ostia in Late Antiquity, pp. 48–50.

Urban Life And Culture

245

The running water provided other benefits as well. At Rome water from the aqueducts was apparently being used to power the city’s many mills, although this was a practice that was illegal.70 Another service was sewers. Here again, in the Variae Cassiodorus points out the importance of maintaining the sewer system, in the context of Parma where it had been allowed to run down, and at Rome.71 Thus, at least as an ideal, the inhabitant of a reasonably large city could assume access to fresh water and public bathing facilities, and some level of publicly regulated waste disposal.

Spectacle and Entertainment

Most cities of any size included a theatre and possibly an amphitheatre or circus, dating to the first two centuries AD. The entertainments that took place in them were extremely popular throughout the Roman period, and despite the opposition of Christian churchmen, continued to take place into the 6th century.72 The emperor Honorius was said to have ended gladiatorial combats in 404 after seeing a priest mauled to death,73 but we know quite a bit about the other spectacles thanks to Cassiodorus’ learned discourses in the Variae about chariot racing, theatrical performance, and gladiator—beast combats.74 Theoderic ostentatiously supported such entertainments in the circus and amphitheatre, at least at Rome, for which the Anonymus Valesianus tells us that he was compared to the Roman emperors Trajan and Valentinian.75 When Theoderic’s son-in-law Eutharic was selected as consul in 519, extravagant games were held in Rome and Ravenna.76 Boethius, too, describes in his 70  Variae 3.31. 71  Variae 8.29–30 and 3.30. 72  Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, pp. 92–118. 73  Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 5.26. 74  Variae 3.51 (chariot racing), 4.51 (theatre), and 5.42 (gladiator—beast combat). 75  Anonymus Valesianus 60: “exhibens ludos circensium et amphitheatrum, ut etiam a Romanis Traianus vel Valentinianus, quorum tempora sectatus est, appellaretur. . . . Per tricennalem triumphans populo ingressus palatium, exhibens Romanis ludos circensium.” Anonymus Valesianus 67 tells us that Theoderic gave circus games at Rome in honour of his thirty-year anniversary. See Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 212–18, and Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, pp. 379–440. 76  Cassiodorus, Chronica, a. 519 (MGH AA 11, p. 161): “Eo anno multa vidit Roma miracula, editionibus singulis stupente etiam Symmaco Orientis legato divitias Gothis Romanisque donatas. Dignitates cessit in curiam. Muneribus amphitheatralibus diversi generis feras, quas praesens aetas pro novitate miraretus, exhibuit. Cuis spectaculis voluptates etiam

246

Deliyannis

Consolation of Philosophy the games that he gave when his sons were raised to the consulate in 522.77 Public entertainments, at least in large cities like Rome and Milan, were under the authority of an official called the tribunus voluptatum.78 This is because charioteers, dancers, and actors were paid directly by the government. Theoderic writes several letters about the appointment of a government-paid pantomime to the Green party at Rome (one of the city’s four chariot-racing teams), he pays stipends to some retired charioteers, and he orders the consuls to pay charioteers in Milan and gladiator-hunters in Rome.79 The most popular and also the most controversial sport was chariot racing, which had become ever more popular in the 5th century, especially after the ending of gladiatorial combats. In imperial cities such as Rome, an important part of the palace complex inside the city walls was the public racecourse or circus.80 Rome’s Circus Maximus was the largest and most famous in the Roman world, but in Italy smaller circuses existed at Milan and Aquileia. It is not clear whether a circus had been built at Ravenna in the imperial period, as evidence is almost nonexistent.81 Several letters in the Variae describe riots and lawsuits surrounding the circus factions in Rome, indicating both the popularity of the sport and the partisan tensions it aroused.82 Cassiodorus says several times that chariot racing, beast—gladiator fights, and the like are deplorable in every way, but since the people want them, rulers must provide them.83 Since the spectacles continued, some structures must have remained in use. Indeed in some cities the Roman entertainment complexes still stand today, but in many cases they have largely disappeared, their stones used for other esquisitas Africa sub devotione transmisit. Cunctis itaque eximia laude completis tanto amore civibus Romanis insederat, ut eius adhuc praesentiam desiderantibus Ravennam ad gloriosi patris remearet aspectus. Ubi iteratis editionibus tanta Gothis Romanisque dona largitus est, ut solus potuerit superare quem Romae celebraverat consulatum.” 77  Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, p. 102; Boethius, Consolatio Philosophiae 2.3. 78  Variae 1.43, 5.25, and 7.10. 79  Variae 1.20, 32, and 33 (pantomime), 2.9 and 3.51 (retired charioteers), 3.39 and 5.42 (payment by consul). 80  See especially Humphrey, Roman Circuses, pp. 578–638, who documents circuses for Nicomedia, Trier, Sirmium, Milan, Aquileia, Thessalonike, and Antioch. 81  See Vespignani, “Il circo di Ravenna”, Gillett, “Rome, Ravenna”, pp. 159–60, Johnson, “Toward a History”, p. 83, Cirelli, Ravenna, pp. 90–2, and Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, pp. 59–60. 82  Variae 1.20, 27, 31, and 32, and 6.4. See Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, pp. 106–7, and Cameron, Circus Factions. 83  Variae 3.51 and 5.42.

Urban Life And Culture

247

urban buildings.84 There is archaeological evidence that many had gone out of use by as early as the 270s and certainly by 450, especially in the smaller towns;85 in others we have inscriptions that record repairs or games through the 4th century,86 and in those cities we cannot tell when these structures stopped being used.87 The Variae tell us that the amphitheatre in Catana was a useless ruin in Theoderic’s day and that he permitted the citizens to use the stones to rebuild their city wall.88 The Anonymus Valesianus says that Theoderic built an amphitheatre in Pavia,89 and a surviving inscription praises Athalaric for sponsoring games there in 528/9: “D.N. Atalaricus Rex gloriosissimus has sedis spectaculi anno regni sui tertio fieri feliciter praecepit.”90 Rome’s Colosseum continued to function, although already in the mid 5th century the upper tiers of seats had been put out of use and access to the underground rooms reduced; on the other hand, between 470 and 520 the names of the occupants were inscribed on the high-prestige seats.91 Moreover, as we have seen, an inscription from the Ostrogothic period records repairs to that stadium after an earthquake. Most scholars consider the entertainments described in the Variae and other texts as the last gasp of a dying culture. There is no evidence for any of these forms of public entertainment after the Gothic War, when there was no longer a government with an interest in paying for them. 84  The most famous example of this is the church of San Lorenzo in Milan, supposedly built from the masonry of the amphitheatre after it was closed in the late 4th or early 5th century. See Kinney, “Evidence for the Dating of S. Lorenzo”, pp. 98–101. 85  Malineau, “Le théâtre dans les cités”, provides a list of all known theatres in late antique Italy. Material evidence (stones robbed, graves or houses inside them) suggests that the following had gone out of use (been abandoned?): Rome (Theatre of Marcellus and Theatre of Balbus), Alba Fucens, Amiternum, Benevento, Gioiosa Ionica, Locri, Miseno, Nuceria Alfaterna, Scolacium Minervia, Venafro, Asolo, Albintimilium, Aquileia, Augusta Bagiennorum, Aosta, Bologna, Brescia, Civitas Camunnorum, Iulia Concordia, Pola, and Volterra. See also Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 222–3, and Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, pp. 221–5. 86  Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, pp. 95–6. 87  For example, Naples had an amphitheatre and stadium, of which no trace survives, although the Roman-era theatre and odeion still survive today. Archaeological evidence suggests that these two public structures had gone out of use by the later 6th century (Arthur, Naples, pp. 40–1). 88  Variae 3.49. 89  Anonymus Valesianus 71. 90  CIL 5.6418; The inscription was placed on a slab of a 2nd-century Roman sarcophagus. 91  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 219.

248

Deliyannis

Churches Rita Lizzi Testa discusses the role of the church in towns in this volume. Here we need only remark that by the late 5th century, regardless of the state of the rest of their urban infrastructure, most Roman cities had at least one church (usually more), often associated with a bishop. The churches were one part of the infrastructure that was not in ruins. As the public role of the bishop was enlarged in the late antique empire, his residence became a public space in which he could give audiences, judge legal cases, hold assemblies of clergy, and entertain guests. Evidence of episcopia from the 4th and 5th centuries is sparse. In places such as Milan, Rome, Geneva, Naples, Grado, Parenzo, and Aquileia, we know that one component was a large audience hall, in some cases richly decorated,92 but there does not seem to be any standard layout or type for a bishop’s residence.93 As mentioned above, churches had become the favoured objects of donations by wealthy citizens, and were often covered in inscriptions or images commemorating the donations. And while we may not be certain whether other urban facilities were still in use in the early 6th century, we can be sure that the churches were being maintained as social as well as religious hubs. Cassiodorus went out of his way to avoid mentioning churches in the Variae, but we know that in this period even some formerly public buildings were being converted to churches, presumably with official approval. The most notable example is the church of SS Cosmas and Damian in Rome. Because the building in which the church was installed was originally a secular government structure in the Roman Forum, it is usually assumed that King Theoderic or his daughter Amalasuentha must have given it to Pope Felix and authorized its conversion to a church. However, there is no evidence for this and the dedicatory inscription only mentions Pope Felix IV.94 In other cities, there is evidence of church construction taking place very actively during the Ostrogothic period, most notably in Ravenna, where there is the only surviving evidence of Arian churches as well as several notable Nicene constructions.95

92  See especially Miller, The Bishop’s Palace, pp. 33–7; Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, pp. 208–11, states that episcopal complexes strove for functionality rather than ostentation, but this was clearly not the case in cities such as Ravenna. 93  See Müller-Wiener, “Bischofsresidenzen”. 94  See Kalas, “Conservation, Erasure, and Intervention”, p. 4. 95  See Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, pp. 139–200 and Sessa in this volume.

Urban Life And Culture

249

Housing One type of change in the Italian urban habitat that has received a lot of rather inconclusive attention is the layout of houses.96 It seems clear that there were dramatic changes in the layout and construction materials of wealthy residences between the 4th and the 10th centuries, based on archaeology of the elite urban peristyle house for the early period and descriptions in documents of multistorey wooden houses with the main rooms on the upper storey for the latter.97 However, there is little evidence, written or archaeological, to explain at what point in the period between the 3rd and the 10th centuries these changes became significant. Gelichi has proposed that such structures were being built in Classe in the 7th century.98 Discussions of houses in Ravenna note that Roman house-types and building materials lasted “surprisingly late”, that is into the 6th century.99 It seems, therefore, that the elites in Ostrogothic cities continued to live in Roman-style elite houses, perhaps even more luxurious that in earlier centuries. Certainly Theoderic (or Cassiodorus as the author of the letter) recognized this as an issue, and was not necessarily in favour of it. Variae 4.51 satirically praises the patrician Symmachus for his magnificent houses:100 Since you have taken such care for private building as to create public works of a sort in your own dwelling, it is right that you should be known as he who maintains in its wonders Rome, which you have embellished by the beauty of your houses. You are are an oustanding founder and a great adorner of buildings, since each springs from wisdom—good design, and the tasteful decoration of existing works . . . Of antiquity you are the most careful imitator, of modern works the noblest founder. In a way, this is something of a slap at Symmachus, accusing him of putting too much time and effort into his houses; as a result, Theoderic gives him money and asks him to supervise the repair of the Theatre of Pompey.101 96  Ellis, “The End of the Roman House”, Gelichi, “L’edilizia residenziale”, and Baldini-Lippolis, La domus tardoantica. 97  See, e.g. Ortalli, “L’Edilizia abitativa”, Gelichi, “La città in Emilia-Romagna”, pp. 570–87, Gelichi, “L’edilizia residenziale”, and Bavant, “Cadre de vie”, pp. 509–23. 98  Gelichi, “La città in Emilia-Romagna”, p. 585 and “L’edilizia residenziale”, pp. 161 ff. 99  Gelichi, “The Cities”. 100  Variae 4.51, trans. Barnish, p. 79. 101  See Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 224–5, and Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 170–1.

250

Deliyannis

Archaeology provides evidence of such deluxe houses at Ravenna, for example, at the Via D’Azeglio excavation in the north-eastern part of the old oppidum. Since the 2nd century BC two houses had faced each other across a five-metre-wide street, but now in the late 5th or early 6th century the street was blocked off by a room that served as a monumental entrance to a new, grander house built to the north of the street, with a second equally grand house built to the south, perhaps both opening on to a street to the west. The main rooms on both the north and south sides were covered with elaborate mosaic and opus sectile floors.102 These buildings may have housed members of Theoderic’s court or the Ravennate upper class, and the modification of the imperial-era street network indicates new urban priorities at work. Big elite houses with apsidal halls and mosaic or opus sectile floors are also known from the 5th and 6th centuries at Rimini, Cesena, Faenza, Modena, and Imola.103 In the few cases in which upper-class houses can be definitely assigned to the Ostrogothic period, a new type has been identified by Gian Pietro Brogiolo. Seen in castella built by Theoderic as well as in the episcopal palace of Poreč, they consist of two-storey buildings with storerooms and porticos at the ground level and reception rooms and offices in the upper storey.104 This type of structure, however, co-existed with older Roman elite houses of the traditional style, which were reused or modified. The large house discovered on the Pincio in Rome, for example, was laid out traditionally, with a hemicycle portico, a large apsed hall, a hypocaust (heating) system, and very rich decoration; built after the sack of Rome in 410, it continued in use until it was damaged by the earthquake of 484 or 508.105 As for non-elite housing, we have very little evidence at all, largely because of the difficulties of dating occupation. In some cases, such as at Brescia, elite houses had been subdivided into smaller units already in the 5th century,106 but in other cities this seems to have happened after the end of the Ostrogothic period. All we can say is that because the Roman walls that enclosed most cities had been built for much larger populations than were living there in the early 6th century, there must have been room for everyone to spread out more than had been the case in earlier periods. 102  See Montevecchi (ed.), Archeologia urbana a Ravenna. 103  Gelichi, “L’edilizia residenziale”. 104  Brogiolo, “Dwellings and Settlements”, pp. 124–6. 105  Broise/Dewailly/Jolivet, “La fouille du Piazzale,” and V. Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, p. 98, who suggest that this was the house from which Theoderic ordered materials to be brought to Ravenna in Variae 3.10. 106  Brogiolo, “Dwellings and Settlements”, p. 117.

Urban Life And Culture



251

Granaries and Warehouses

The contributions of Bjornlie and Marazzi in this volume consider government in the Ostrogothic kingdom. Here we must simply observe that Ostrogothic government, like Roman, was based in cities, and therefore any city that had governmental offices and staff had also to maintain a population that could support these functions. This could include housing for the officials and the soldiers, warehouses to store supplies, and secure buildings for storing the local tax income and money for outlays. The letters in the Variae clearly convey that towns were expected to have these pieces of infrastructure. Government granaries in particular are said to have existed at Marseilles, Pavia, Dertona, Treviso, Trent, Rome, and Ravenna, and they are frequently mentioned in the context of royal provision of grain to areas experiencing hardship or famine.107 The praefectus annonae of Rome was expected to regulate the activities of ­bakers and distribute portions appropriately in order to please the people.108

The Urban Population

How large were Ostrogothic cities? In the absence of any definite surveys, all we have are estimates. Rome’s population, which may have once been as high as 1,000,000, might have been down to 300,000 in the late 4th century and down to 100,000 by 500, but it was still by far the largest city in Italy.109 Under Theoderic the population of Ravenna swelled to its largest size, perhaps as large as 10,000.110 Naples, too, may have had a population as large as 10,000 at this time.111 We know little about the cities of northern Italy, except that the most notable—Aquileia, Pavia, and Milan—and doubtless others had been sacked by the Huns in 452.112 What this might have done to their infrastructures and populations is not entirely clear, but certainly Theoderic at least did much to rebuild Pavia.

107  Variae 2.20 (Ravenna), 3.29 (Rome), 3.41 (Marseilles), 3.44 (Arles), 10.27 (Pavia, Dertona, Treviso, and Trent), 10.28 (Rome, Ravenna, Pavia, Piacenza), and 12.27 (Pavia, Dertona). 108  Variae 6.18. 109  Bavant, “Cadre de vie”, pp. 473–6. 110  Cosentino, “L’approvvigionamento annonario di Ravenna”, p. 411. 111  Arthur, Naples, p. 22. 112  Jordanes, Getica, 219–222. Paul the Deacon (Hist. Rom. 14.9–13) says that Concordia, Altinum, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brixia, and Bergamo were also all sacked by the Huns.

252

Deliyannis

Who was living in the cities? In general, populations seem to have remained what they had always been. In important coastal cities such as Ravenna, Rome, and Naples there were populations of people from the eastern Mediterranean.113 There were settled communities of Jews in the larger cities of Italy, as we know from accounts of urban unrest concerning synagogues in Ravenna, Rome, Genoa, and Milan, and from Procopius’ mention of Jews in Naples.114 Jewish inscriptions have been found at Ravenna, Naples, and Venosa. One striking amphora fragment found in an excavation at Ravenna contained an inscription in Hebrew, evidence perhaps of Jewish merchants in Ravenna, as may also be attested on papyrus documents from 540 and 541.115 Cities for which there is evidence of a Gothic garrison, as found in several letters of the Variae, would have had a resident population of Goths. Bierbrauer has mapped finds of ‘Gothic’ women’s jewellery found in graves and concluded that the majority of Goths were settled in northern Italy and the Po Valley, which corresponds to Germanic place names and inscriptions with ‘Ostrogothic’ names. Bierbrauer’s ideas and maps have been accepted by many scholars.116 Many of these find spots are in or just outside Roman cities, including Aquileia, Ascoli Piceno, Firenze, Milan, Parma, Pavia, Ravenna, Reggio Emilia, Rome, Trento, Udine, Brescia, Pistoia, Ravenna, and Spoleto.117 Textual sources provide additional information. People with Gothic names are mentioned in the Variae in Ascoli Piceno, Dertona, Salona, Milan, Ravenna, Cesena, Osimo, Narni, and Naples.118 In most cases they are there as government representatives. Procopius in his Gothic Wars mentions Gothic garrisons or populations in many cities also, as Bierbrauer has catalogued.119 Taken all together, we can see that while some of the Gothic population might have been settled in rural settlements or in fortresses along the borders, many cities 113  Brown, “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”; Arthur, Naples, pp. 23–4. 114  Rutgers, “The Jews of Italy”; Somekh, “Teoderico e gli Ebrei di Ravenna”, lists Anonymus Valesianus 81–2 (Ravenna) and Variae 2.27, 3.45 (Samaritans), 4.33 and 45, and 5.37. For Naples, Procopius, BG 5.8 and 10. 115  Somekh, “Teoderico e gli Ebrei di Ravenna”; for Naples and Venosa see Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, pp. 47–57 and 61–149. 116  Bierbrauer, Die Ostgotischen Grab- und Schatzfund and “Die Ansiedlung der Ostgoten in Italien”. However, Amory, People and Identity, pp. 332–7 has pointed out that jewellery found in graves does not necessarily tell us about the ethnic background of the wearer, and, moreover, that even before 489 many people in Italy might have worn similar objects. 117  This list derived from Bierbrauer, “Die Ansiedlung der Ostgoten in Italien”. 118  Lecce, “La vita economica dell’Italia”, p. 358. 119  Procopius, BG 6.11, mentions Chiusi, Orvieto, Todi, Ascoli Piceno, Osimo, Urbino, Cesena, Monteferetra, and Rimini; he also mentions their wives and children at Petra.

Urban Life And Culture

253

and especially strategically important ones would have had a population of Goths, at least soldiers but perhaps also their families in some cases. As with other aspects of urban life, we have better evidence about urban Gothic populations from Ravenna, the capital of the Ostrogothic kingdom.120 Ravenna’s central role in Ostrogothic policy can be seen in the fact that Gothic soldiers had to pick up their donatives in person in Ravenna.121 We know, however, that Goths were not just soldiers. The early 8th-century Anonymous Cosmographer of Ravenna identifies three authors of his sources as ‘Gothic philosophers’; it is usually assumed that he was using geographical texts written by Goths for Theoderic.122 One Gothic scribe who was producing books in Ravenna may have been Wiliarit (or Viliaric), identified in a papyrus document as a spodeus and bokareis and in an Orosius manuscript as a magister antiquarius. Fragments of manuscripts also attest the production of bilingual Gothic-Latin texts in Ravenna.123 Finally, Ravenna and its suburbs had several Arian churches that are assumed to have been for worship by Goths, including one that was later known as the ecclesia Gothorum.124 One often-repeated idea is that there was a Gothic zone, a particular area of the city where Goths lived and worshiped, in the north-eastern part of Ravenna.125 This has been argued primarily on the basis of maps showing the distribution of churches identified as Arian, namely the Arian episcopal complex and two other ‘Gothic’ churches. However, Arian churches also existed in other parts of Ravenna: there was a church dedicated to St Eusebius ­outside the 120  Brown, “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”, p. 82; Procopius (BG 5.11) notes a large number of Goths in the city in 536, although this was at a moment when Goths from other cities taken by the Byzantine troops had withdrawn to Ravenna. 121  Wolfram, Goths, p. 298. 122  Ravennatis anonymi cosmographia, ed. J. Schnetz, Itineraria Romana 2 (Leipzig, 1940); on this text, see Staab, “Ostrogothic Geographers” and Dillemann/Janvier, La Cosmographie du Ravennate. 123  Lazard, “Goti e Latini a Ravenna”, p. 119, has noted that no other artisans and businessmen mentioned in the surviving texts have recognizably “Gothic” names. Wiliarit is mentioned in Marini, no. 119, pp. 180–3; Tjäder, 1954, vol. 2, no. 34, pp. 91–104. The Orosius manuscript is Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, Plut. 65.1. See Bertelli, “The production and distribution of books”, p. 55. Cavallo, “La cultura scritta a Ravenna”, p. 84, notes that another manuscript, Paris lat. 2235, is in the same hand, and that two other related manuscripts may also have come from Ravenna or Vivarium. See also Tjäder, “Der Codex argenteus in Uppsala”. On the bilingual manuscripts see Radiciotti, “Codici latini di ambiente ostrogoto”. 124  These are identified only in the 9th-century Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis (ch. 86 and 121). 125  See, e.g. Budriesi, “Ortodossi e ariani”, p. 109.

254

Deliyannis

northern Porta Sancti Victoris, Arian churches in Ravenna’s suburbs of Classe and Caesarea, and Theoderic’s basilica dedicated to the Savior next to the palace. Moreover, documents show some Goths living side by side with Romans.126 Thus the evidence is too scanty and inconclusive to propose a concentration of Goths in one part of the city.127

Urban Occupations, Production, and Trade

Other than government officials and soldiers, what did the occupants of Ostrogothic cities do? Here we have little evidence except for Rome and Ravenna. Ravenna’s evidence comes from a variety of textual sources, including ­documentary papyri, as well as inscriptions and archaeology. In addition to the government and palace officials, both aristocratic and bureaucratic, a municipal elite served as the magistrates and members of the local curia, or town council.128 The documents that name them indicate that these officials consisted of notaries and tabelliones, bankers (argentarii) and businessmen, doctors, and lawyers.129 Artisans also appear both in the documents and in the Variae.130 Quantities of building materials and possibly workmen were imported from the eastern Mediterranean or were moved between cities in Italy under Theoderic; the many buildings that he erected needed a large workforce of masons and craftsmen. Workshops for luxury items in Ravenna may have continued to exist from the previous century. In particular, large numbers of stone sarcophagi from the early 6th century still survive in Ravenna, and their sculptural style and iconography show influences derived both from Constantinople and from earlier local practices.131 Theoderic gave the stoneworker Daniel a monopoly on the furnishing of sarcophagi to the inhabitants of Ravenna, but abjures him not to

126  Lazard, “Goti e Latini a Ravenna”, p. 116. 127  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 205; Brogiolo, “Dwellings and Settlements”, p. 121. 128  Brown, “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”, pp. 96–7, has traced the names of thirty men identified as curiales in the papyri from 472 to 575. 129  Pietri, “Aristocrazia e clero”, pp. 300–1; Brown, “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”. 130  See Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor civitatis, pp. 289–90. 131  Farioli Campanati, “Ravenna e i suoi rapporti con Costantinopoli”, pp. 16–19.

Urban Life And Culture

255

overcharge grieving family members for his products.132 Excavations in Classe have uncovered a ceramics kiln and a glass furnace dating to this period.133 It was clearly in the royal interest to support commerce and trade in Ravenna, both for the purposes of catering to the members of the community and for the provisioning of troops stationed there.134 Classe continued to function as an important commercial port throughout the Ostrogothic period, actively encouraged by Theoderic. Excavations at the site of Podere Chiavichetta have revealed a section of the port city that flanked the canal leading to the harbour. The island in the centre of the canal contained paved roads, shops, and food vendors, and was linked by a bridge to the city to the south. On the south bank a major street was repaved at the time of Theoderic, and buildings in this area were modified, rebuilt, and systematized with continuous porticos. A row of large warehouses and public buildings faced the canal through one such ­portico.135 From the many thousands of ceramic fragments found on these sites, we can identify imports, especially from North Africa, but also from Palestine and Syria, the Aegean and Asia Minor, Egypt, Lusitania, and Sicily (mainly wine, but also oil and honey).136 The imported ceramics are significant because in much of inland Italy they had almost entirely disappeared by this time, demonstrating the anomalous status of Ravenna.137 The harbour itself housed Theoderic’s fleet of war—and grainships, and thus must have included sailors, shipbuilders, and their families among its population.138 Rome’s administration occupied a central place in the Variae, and we thus know about many occupations and productive sectors in the city. In large cities food was bought and sold in a variety of contexts. Theodahad’s letter to the praetorian prefect confirming monopolies for various officials lists stewards and merchants of wheat, wine, cheese, meat, wine, grain, and hay, as well as general provision dealers and those who derived revenue from taverns, not just in Rome but also at Ravenna, Pavia, and Piacenza.139 The praefectus annonae was in charge of having the grain from the annona baked into bread by the 132  Variae 3.19. 133  See Bermond Montanari/Maioli, Ravenna e il porto di Classe, Maioli, “Rapporti commerciali”, Augenti, “Nuove indagini”, and id., “Ravenna e Classe: archeologia”. 134  See Cosentino, “L’approvvigionamento annonario di Ravenna”, pp. 415–19 for a detailed study of this issue. 135  See especially Augenti, “Nuove indagini”, and id., “Ravenna e Classe: archeologia”. 136  Especially Augenti, “Ravenna e Classe: archeologia”, pp. 201–6. 137  Marazzi, “Destinies”, pp. 136–41. 138  Variae 5.16, also 5.17–20. See Mauro, I porti antichi di Ravenna, for more on the fleet of Ravenna. 139  Variae 10.28.

256

Deliyannis

b­ akers (and was also in charge of the pork-butchers).140 There are also references in other letters to Rome’s enormous grain mills run by water.141 The government also oversaw industries that manufactured crucial materials such as lime (for building) and weapons.142 There was even an official known as the comes archiatrorum who oversaw doctors.143 All of these casual references in the Variae testify to the existence of a diverse set of artisans and merchants in the larger cities of the Ostrogothic kingdom. Conclusion Thus, in most of the cities of the Ostrogothic kingdom life seems to have gone on much as it had in the previous century. Walls surrounded most cities, and contained within them a set of older buildings that were perhaps crumbling, alongside newer churches and houses that testified to new evergetistic interests, new elites, and more space because of reduced populations. In the larger cities, trade and manufacturing continued as did the construction and/or restoration of Roman-style buildings in a consciously antiquarian style. Theoderic and his partners in government attempted to foster enthusiasm for Roman urban life and culture by funding both infrastructure and activities that would demonstrate its appeal. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Agnellus, LPR, ed. D.M. Deliyannis, Agnelli Ravennatis Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 199), Turnhout 2006; trans. D.M. Deliyannis, The Book of the Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna, Washington, D.C. 2004. Anonymus Valesianus, ed. and trans. J.C. Rolfe, in Ammianus Marcellinus, vol. 3, London 1939, pp. 506–69. Boethius, Consolatio Philosophiae, ed. L. Bieler (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 94), 2nd ed., Turnhout 1984.

140  Variae 6.18. 141  Variae 3.31, 11.39. 142  Variae 7.17–19. 143  Variae 6.19.

Urban Life And Culture

257

Cassiodorus, Chronica, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora saec. IV. V. VI. VII, vol. 2 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 11) Berlin 1894, pp. 109–61. ———, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodorus Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894; trans. S. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Selected Variae (Translated Texts for Historians 12), Liverpool 1992. Ennodius, Panegyric to Theoderic, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felicis Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885; ed. and trans. C. Rohr, Der Theoderich-Panegyricus des Ennodius (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte 12), Hannover 1995. Fredegar, Chronica, ed. B. Krusch (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 2), Hannover 1888. Jordanes, Getica, ed. T. Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 5.1), Berlin 1882. Paul the Deacon, Hist. Rom., ed. H. Droysen, in Eutropi Breviarium ab urbe condita (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 2), Berlin 1879, pp. 183–224. Procopius, BG, ed. and trans. H.B. Dewing, Procopius: History of the Wars, 5 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1914–28. Ravennatis anonymi cosmographia, ed. J. Schnetz, Itineraria Romana, vol. 2, Leipzig 1940. Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistolae, ed. and trans. W.B. Anderson, Sidonius: Poems and Letters, 2 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1936–65. Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, trans. B. Jackson, in P. Schaff/H. Wace (eds.), A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd series, vol. 3: Theodoret, Jerome, Gennadius, Rifinus: Historical Writings, etc., New York 1892, pp. 33–159.



Secondary Literature

Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554, Cambridge 1997. Andrews, M., “A Domus in the Subura of Rome from the Republic through Late Antiquity”, American Journal of Archaeology 118.1 (2014), 61–90. Arnold, J., Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, Cambridge 2014. Arthur, P., Naples, From Roman Town to City-state: an Archaeological Perspective, London 2002. Augenti, A., “Archeologia e topografia a Ravenna: il Palazzo di Teoderico e la Moneta Aurea”, Archeologia Medievale 31 (2005), 7–34. ———, “Nuove indagini archeologiche a Classe”, in Ravenna: Da Capitale imperiale a capitale esarcale, vol. 1, Spoleto 2005, pp. 237–52. ———, “Ravenna e Classe: archeologia di due città tra la tarda Antichità e l’alto Medioevo”, in A. Augenti (ed.), Le città italiane tra la tarda Antichità e l’alto Medioevo, Atti del Convegno (Ravenna, febbraio 2004), Florence 2006, pp. 185–217.

258

Deliyannis

Baldini Lippolis, I., “Articolazione e decorazione del palazzo imperiale di Ravenna”, Corso di cultura sull’arte ravennate e bizantina 43 (1997), 1–31. ———, La domus tardoantica. Forme e rappresentazioni dello spazio domestic nelle città del Mediterraneo, Bologna 2001. Bavant, B., “Cadre de vie et habitat urbain en Italie centrale byzantine”, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen âge—temps modernes 101 (1989), 465–532. Bermond Montanari, G./Maioli, M.G. (eds.), Ravenna e il porto di Classe. Venti anni di ricerche archeologiche tra Ravenna e Classe, Imola 1983. Bertelli, C., “The Production and Distribution of Books in Late Antiquity”, in R. Hodges/ W. Bowden (eds.), The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution, and Demand, Leiden 1998, pp. 41–60. Bierbrauer, V., Die Ostgotischen Grab- und Schatzfunde in Italien, Spoleto 1975. ———, “Die Ansiedlung der Ostgoten in Italien”, in K. Böhner (ed.), Les relations entre l’empire romain tardif, l’empire franc et ses voisins: colloque XXX: Nice, mercredi 15 septembre, Paris 1976, pp. 42–70. Bjornlie, M.S., Politics and Tradition Between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople: A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae 527–554, Cambridge 2013. Boin, D., Ostia in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2013. Brogiolo, G.P., “Ideas of the Town in Italy during the Transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages”, in id./B. Ward-Perkins (eds.), The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Leiden 1999, pp. 99–126. ———, “Dwellings and Settlements in Gothic Italy”, in S.J.B. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 113–42. Broise, H./Dewailly, M./ Jolivet, V., “La fouille du Piazzale de la Villa Médicis à Rome”, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 144 (2000), 729–50. Brown, T., “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.1: Dall’ età bizantina all’ età Ottoniana: Territorio, economia e società, Venice 1991, pp. 135–49. ———, “Everyday Life in Ravenna under Theoderic: an Example of his ‘Tolerance’ and ‘Prosperity’?”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia: Atti del XIII Congresso Internazionale di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, Milano, 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993, pp. 77–100. Budriesi, R., “Ortodossi e ariani: questioni ravennati (riassunto)”, Corso di cultura sull’arte ravennate e bizantina 37 (1990), 109–20. Cameron, A., Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium, Oxford 1976. Cavallo, G., “La cultura scritta a Ravenna tra antichità tarda e alto medioevo”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.2: Dall’ età bizantina all’ età Ottoniana: Ecclesiologia, cultura e arte, Venice 1992, pp. 79–125.

Urban Life And Culture

259

Christie, N., From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy, AD 300–800, Aldershot 2006. Cirelli, E., Ravenna: archeologia di una città, Ravenna 2008. Coates-Stephens, R., “The Walls and Aqueducts of Rome in the Early Middle Ages, AD 500–1000”, Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998), 166–78. Cosentino, S., “L’approvvigionamento annonario di Ravenna dal V all’VIII secolo: l’organizzazione e i riflessi socio-economici”, in Ravenna: Da Capitale imperiale a capital esarcale, vol. 1, Spoleto 2005, pp. 405–34. Deliyannis, D.M., Ravenna in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2010. Dey, H.W., The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome AD 271–855, Cambridge 2011. Dillemann, L./ Janvier, Y. (eds.), La Cosmographie du Ravennate, Brussels 1997. Dubouloz, J., “Acception et défense des loca publica, d’après les Variae de Cassiodore: un point de vue juridique sur les cités d’Italie au VIe siècle”, in M. Ghilardi/C.J. Goddard/P. Porena (eds.), Les cités de l’Italie tardo-antique, IVe–VIe siècle: institutions, économie, société, culture et religion, Rome 2006, pp. 53–74. Ellis, S.P., “The End of the Roman House”, American Journal of Archaeology 92 (1988), 565–76. Everett, N., Literacy in Lombard Italy, c. 568–774, Cambridge 2003. Farioli Campanati, R., “Ravenna e i suoi rapporti con Costantinopoli: la scultura (secoli V–VI)”, in C. Rizzardi (ed.), Venezia e Bisanzio. Aspetti della cultura artistica bizantina da Ravenna a venezia (V–XIV secolo), Venice 2005, pp. 13–43. Fauvinet-Ranson, V., “Le devenire du patrimoine monumental romain des cités d’Italie à l’époque ostrogothique”, in M. Ghilardi/C.J. Goddard/P. Porena (eds.), Les cités de l’Italie tardo -antique, IVe–VIe siècle: institutions, économie, société, culture et religion, Rome 2006, pp. 206–16. ———, Decor civitatis, decor Italiae: monuments, traveaux publics et spectacles au VI siècle d’après les Variae de Cassiodore, Bari 2006. Gelichi, S., “La città in Emilia-Romagna tra tardo-antico ed alto-medioevo”, in R. Francovich/G. Noyé (eds.), La storia dell’alto medioevo ialiano alla luce dell’archeologia. Atti del convegno internazionale, Siena 2–6 dicembre 1992, Firenze 1994, pp. 567–600. ———, “The Cities”, in C. La Rocca (ed.), Italy in the Early Middle Ages, 476–1000, Oxford 2002, pp. 168–88. ———, “L’edilizia residenziale in Romagna tra V e VIII secolo”, in G.P. Brogiolo/ S. Gelichi (eds.), Edilizia residenziale tra V e VIII secolo, Atti del IV Seminario sul Tardoantico e l’Altomedioevo in Italia centrosettentrionale (Monte Barro-GalbiateLecco, 2–4 settembre 1993), Mantova 1994, pp. 157–67. Gillett, A., “Rome, Ravenna, and the last Western Emperors”, Papers of the British School at Rome 69 (2001), 131–67.

260

Deliyannis

Humphrey, J., Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing, Berkeley 1986. Humphries, M. “Italy, AD 425–605”, in A. Cameron/B. Ward-Perkins/M.L. Whitby (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14, Cambridge 2001, pp. 525–51. Johnson, M.J., “Toward a History of Theoderic’s Building Program”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988), 73–96. Kalas, G., “Conservation, Erasure, and Intervention: Rome’s Ancient Heritage and the History of SS. Cosma e Damiano”, ARRIS Journal of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians 16 (2005), 1–11. ———, “Writing and Restoration in Rome: Inscriptions, Statues, and the Late Antique Preservation of Buildings”, in C. Goodson/A.E. Lester/C. Symes (eds.), Cities, Texts and Social Networks 400–1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space, Ashgate 2010, pp. 21–44. Kelly, C., “Emperors, Government and Bureaucracy”, in A. Cameron/P. Garnsey (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 13, Cambridge 1997, pp. 138–83. Kinney, D., “The Evidence for the Dating of S. Lorenzo in Milan”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 31 (1972), 92–107. La Rocca, C., “Una prudente maschera ‘Antiqua’. La politica edilizia di Teoderico”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia: Atti del XIII Congresso Internazionale di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, Milano, 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993, pp. 451–515. ———, “Cassiodoro, Teodato e il restauro degli elefanti di bronzo della Via Sacra”, Reti Medievali Rivista 11 (2010/2), 1–20. Lazard, S., “Goti e Latini a Ravenna”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.1: Dall’ età bizantina all’ età Ottoniana: Territorio, economia e società, Venice 1991, pp. 109–33. Lecce, M., “La vita economica dell’Italia durante la dominazione dei Goti nelle ‘Varie’ di Cassiodoro”, Economia e storia 3.4 (1956), 354–408. Lepelley, C., “Un éloge nostalgique de la cité classique dans les Variae de Cassiodore”, in M. Sot/et al. (eds.), Haut Moyen Âge, Culture, éducation, et société. Études offertes à Pierre Riché, Nanterre 1990, pp. 33–47. Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.G., The Decline and Fall of the Roman City, Oxford 2001. Maioli, M.G., “Ravenna e la Romagna in epoca gota”, in E.A. Arslan (ed.), I Goti, Milan 1994, pp. 232–51. ———, “Rapporti commerciali e materiali di Ravenna e Classe in epoca teodericiana”, in A. Carile (ed.), Teoderico e i Goti fra Oriente e Occidente, Ravenna 1995, pp. 227–36. Malineau, V., “Le théâtre dans les cités de l’Italie tardo-antique”, in M. Ghilardi/ C.J. Goddard/P. Porena (eds.), Les cités de l’Italie tardo-antique, IVe–VIe siècle: institutions, économie, société, culture et religion, Rome 2006, pp. 186–203. Marazzi, F., “The Destinies of the Late Antique Italies: Politico-economic Developments of the Sixth Century”, in R. Hodges/W. Bowden (eds.), The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution and Demand, Leiden 1998, pp. 119–60.

Urban Life And Culture

261

——— “The Last Rome: From the End of the Fifth to the End of the Sixth Century”, in S.J.B. Barnish/id. (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective Woodbridge 2007, pp. 279–316. Mauro, M. (ed.), I porti antichi di Ravenna, Ravenna 2005. Miller, M., The Bishop’s Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy, Ithaca 2000. Montevecchi, G. (ed.), Archeologia urbana a Ravenna: la Domus dei tappeti di pietra, il complesso archeologico di via D’Azeglio, Ravenna 2004. Müller-Wiener, W., “Bischofsresidenzen des 4.–7. Jhs. im östlichen Mittelmeer-Raum”, in N. Duval (ed.), Actes du XIe Congrès International d’Archéologie Chrétienne, vol. 1, Rome 1989, pp. 651–709. Noy, D., Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. 1: Italy (excluding the City of Rome), Spain and Gaul, Cambridge 1993. Ortalli, J., “L’Edilizia abitativa”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.1: Dall’ età bizantina all’ età Ottoniana: Territorio, economia e società, Venice 1991, pp. 167–92. Pani Ermini, L., “Forma urbis e renovatio murorum in età teodericiana”, in A. Carile (ed.), Teoderico e i Goti tra Oriente e Occidente, Ravenna 1995, pp. 171–225. Pietri, C., “Aristocrazia e clero al tempo di Odoacre e di Teoderico”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.1: Dall’ età bizantina all’ età Ottoniana: Territorio, economia e società, Venice 1991, pp. 287–310. Prati, L./Antoniazzi, A. (eds.), Flumen aquaeductus: nuove scoperte archeologiche dagli scavi per l’acquedotto della Romagna, Bologna 1988. Radiciotti, P., “Codici latini di ambiente ostrogoto: nuove osservazioni paleografiche”, Ravenna, Studi e ricerche 9.1 (2002), 189–207. Randsborg, K., The First Millennium AD in Europe and the Mediterranean: An Archaeological Essay, Cambridge 1991. Rapp, C., Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition, Berkeley 2005. Rea, R., “Il Colosseo. Detrutturazione e riuso tra IV e VIII secolo”, Mélanges de l’ École française de Rome, Moyen Âge 111 (1999), 183–95. Rutgers, L.V., “The Jews of Italy, c. 235–638,” in S.T. Katz (ed.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, Cambridge 2006, pp. 492–508. Saitta, B., La civilitas di Teoderico. Rigore amministrativo, “tolleranza” religiosa e recupero dell’antico nell’Italia ostrogota, Rome 1993. Scobie, A., “Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality in the Roman World”, Klio 68 (1986), 399–433. Somekh, A., “Teoderico e gli Ebrei di Ravenna”, in A. Carile, ed., Teoderico e i Goti fra Oriente e Occidente, Ravenna 1995, pp. 137–49. Staab, F., “Ostrogothic Geographers at the Court of Theoderic the Great: A Study of Some sources of the Anonymous Cosmographer of Ravenna”, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1976), 27–58.

262

Deliyannis

Tjäder, J.O., Die Nichtliterarischen Lateinischen Papyri Italiens Aus Der Zeit 445–700, 3 vols., Lund 1954. ———, “Der Codex argenteus in Uppsala und der Buchmeister Viliaric in Ravenna”, in U.E. Hagberg (ed.), Studia Gotica: Die eisenzeitlichen Verbindungen zwischen Schweden und Südosteuropa, Vorträge beim Gotensymposion im Statens Historiska Museum Stockholm, 1970, Stockholm 1972, pp. 144–64. Trout, D., “Inscribing Identity: the Latin Epigraphic Habit in Late Antiquity”, in P. Rousseau/J. Raithel (eds.), A Companion to Late Antiquity, Chichester/Malden, MA 2009, pp. 170–86. Vespignani, G., “Il circo di Ravenna regia civitas (secc. V–X)”, in Ravenna: Da Capitale imperiale a capitale esarcale, vol. 2, Spoleto 2005, pp. 1133–42. Ward-Perkins, B., From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy, AD 300–850, Oxford 1984. Witschel, C., “Der epigraphic habit in der Spätantike: Das Beispiel der Provinz Venetia et Histria”, in J.-U. Krause/C. Witschel (eds.), Die Stadt in der Spätantike, Niedergang oder Wandel?, Munich 2006, pp. 359–411. Wolfram, H., History of the Goths, translated by T.J. Dunlap, Berkeley 1988. Yasin, A.M., Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community, Cambridge 2009.

CHAPTER 11

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy Cam Grey Introduction Two fundamental challenges confront the study of the rural economy in Ostrogothic Italy. First, and common to almost all fields of agrarian history, the textual evidence available for reconstructing patterns of landowning and structures of labour is thinly and unevenly distributed, and filtered through a series of legal, political, religious, and cultural lenses that serve to obscure whatever realities we may imagine to have existed on the ground. Second, we must engage with questions about temporal resolution, not only as a result of the very different time-frames presented by our documentary and archaeological evidence, but also in seeking to identify legally, socio-economically, culturally, and materially the rather short period of time during which Ostrogothic kings ruled over the Italian peninsula. Is it possible to discern anything distinctively Ostrogothic about land use, agricultural practices, or labour relations in this sixty-year period? In what follows I explore this question by taking a collection of soundings into the documentary, literary, archaeological, and environmental evidence for the period. I take as my starting point the proposition that the impact of the Ostrogoths on rural socio-economic structures was in fact rather negligible and lightly felt—a proposition arrived at on the strength of the thinly scattered evidence for distinctively Ostrogothic settlement (insofar as it is even valid to make such an identification on the basis of material culture) and the continuation of what we might, with caution, describe as Roman legal categories, structures, and practices. I place alongside this proposition the fruits of recent scholarship on Ostrogothic-period agricultural practices together with environmental reconstructions of the Italian peninsula during the 5th and 6th centuries, which may allow us to nuance and expand upon our understanding of the ongoing dialectical interactions between the countrysides of the Italian peninsula and the various peoples who lived in, settled upon, and exploited those countrysides.1 1  Scattered distribution: e.g. Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 145; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 68–9. Terminology: e.g. Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, pp. 96–101. Agricultural practices:

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_012

264

Grey

My intention is not to write the Ostrogoths out of the story of the rural economy of Italy in the period. Rather, I will suggest that to impose a simple dichotomy between Ostrogothic and non-Ostrogothic elements or to choose between identifying Ostrogothic impacts or averring a complete lack of influence, is to adopt a rather limited and limiting approach. Instead, we should use the opportunity provided by this tightly constrained time period to explore the experience of rural populations in the face of a collection of political, military, economic, and environmental pressures, which together do give this period a particular flavour. I return to this proposition in the concluding section of this chapter, where I suggest that the concepts of vulnerability and resilience provide powerful analytical tools for that project. First, however, I lay out what is known or can be surmised about the physical, socio-­economic, and legal conditions of the rural economy—or, better, ­economies—of Ostrogothic Italy.

Rural Italy and ‘Ruralization’ under the Ostrogoths

Scholars seem increasingly willing to suggest that the Italian peninsula that the Ostrogoths encountered when they arrived in AD 488 was in the midst of a long-term series of processes that transformed the countryside from a world dominated by the city and the villa to one characterized by the village.2 Where disagreement does persist is over the coherence, timing, and causes of that transformation. On the one hand, studies of the documentary evidence appear to suggest that the legal terminology for different categories of exploitation and settlement continued largely unchanged into the 7th century at least, and probably later. On the other, the archaeological evidence seems to attest a breakdown in the agrarian structures and dispersed patterns of settlement that had characterized the preceding centuries, and their replacement by agglomerated settlements and (somewhat less clearly) agricultural and

e.g. Forni, “Dall’agricoltura dei Goti”; Kokowski, “Agriculture of the Goths”. Environmental reconstructions: e.g. Motta, “I paesaggi di Volterra”; Rottoli/Negri, “I resti vegetale carbonizzati”; Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 484–7. 2  Most succinctly, Francovich and Hodges, Villa to Village. Also Wickham, “Development of Villages”; Arthur, “Vicus to village”. Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, pp. 93–6, summarizes. See also the refocusing of the debate provided by Chavarría Arnau, “Changes in Scale”, pp. 123–9.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

265

pastoral practices that were subtly but fundamentally different from what had gone before.3 In recent scholarship, it has been convincingly argued that this seeming contradiction can be ascribed to differences in the temporal resolution and explanatory capabilities of these two categories of evidence. As a consequence, it would be unwise to read the evidence of the charters as providing incontrovertible support for arguments about the decline of the villa system, aggregation of peasant residences, and the emergence of demesne-style agricultural management practices.4 Certainly the documentary and legal evidence displays continuity in the terminology employed to describe areas of land, units of production, and modes of labour exploitation, but against this apparent continuity must be placed an appreciation of fundamental changes in the way that the law is functioning in the period, and in the bases upon which legal obligations were enforced.5 On the other hand, in acknowledging change we must resist the urge to assume that there was a monumental, unitary shift from one form of rural lifeway to another, for in reality processes of agrarian change in the period are by no means clear and coherent.6 Further, it seems overly simplistic to identify the Ostrogoths—or the Lombards, or indeed any single factor—as the fundamental causational factor in any observable transformations of settlement patterns or economic structures. Nevertheless, there remains a strong sense in the scholarly literature that Ostrogothic Italy was a more ‘ruralized’ society than previously. In what follows, therefore, I offer a brief and relatively unsystematic account of the archaeological evidence that has been exploited in the construction of this interpretation. However, since the longer-term fate of rural settlement on the Italian peninsula is not the principal focus of attention here, I suggest that we should not seek to place the sketchy and incomplete evidence that we currently possess for rural contexts during the Ostrogothic period within the framework provided by narratives of incastallemento, for to do so is to impose a misleading

3  For synthetic, orienting discussions of changes in agrarian regimes, techniques, and practices, Reigniez, “Histoire et techniques”; Rommelaere/Raepsaet, “Les techniques de traction animale”. 4  Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 102. 5  Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 144–5; Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 98. Koptev, “Colonate in the Theodosian Code”, p. 263. Compare Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 166–8. 6  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 427, summarizing arguments developed on the basis of the field survey evidence; Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, pp. 103–7, providing further references.

266

Grey

coherence upon what appears in reality to have been a rather incoherent collection of micro-regional experiences.7 In physical and topographical terms the peninsula of Italy is highly compressed, the product of an exceptionally complex set of tectonic interactions, which continue to be manifested today in the rather active volcanology of the peninsula. The result of these geological processes is a landscape that combines a collection of mountain ridges and slopes of varying height and steepness with a series of fertile plains and river valleys. It is the latter which tend to attract both settlement and agricultural exploitation, but our evidence suggests that there was episodic and ongoing human presence in upland regions as well.8 On the basis of both modern climatic data and the fragments of proxy indicators for late antique conditions, we should expect that this variation in physical geography was matched by climatic variation over the course of a year, from year to year, and from region to region. Indeed in recent reconstructions it has been suggested that the 5th and 6th centuries witnessed a particularly high level of variability, manifested primarily (though not solely) in warmer summers and wetter, colder winters.9 The relative absence of proxy data sets for environmental conditions in Italian contexts together with a comparable dearth of written sources that mention climatic phenomena in the period under discussion here make it difficult to arrive at anything approaching a fine-grained reconstruction of the climate of Italy during the Ostrogothic period.10 However, we do observe some evidence for potential perturbations to that climate. The considerable seismic activity of the peninsula appears to have been manifested in an eruption of Vesuvius, on the Campanian plain west of the central Apennines,

7  For the debate over incastellamento see, briefly but with further references, Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 483–5; Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, pp. 129–30 with note 7. Note Wickham’s emphasis elsewhere on micro-regional experiences: Wickham, “Conclusioni”, 353. 8  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 476–8; Citter, “Late Antique and Early Medieval Hilltop Settlements”; Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 105. 9  For broad, synthetic treatments drawing on a range of proxy data sets, see Luterbacher et al., “2000 Years of Paleoclimate Evidence”; McCormick et al., “Climate Change”. Also, for an attempt to parse out local effects of these broader trends, Del Lungo, “Paesaggio, cultura e vocazioni”, pp. 197–9. 10  Note the broader methodological and analytical cautions of attempts to extract climatological data from the textual sources of Squatriti, “Floods of 589”, pp. 800–3. Compare McCormick et al., “Climate Change”, pp. 171–2, who remain much more optimistic about the utility of the textual evidence.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

267

in AD 472 and subsequent unrest or activity around 512.11 A massive but thusfar unidentified volcanic eruption generally dated to 536 or 537 is also attested, and comparative evidence suggests that eruptive activity of this magnitude is likely to have impacted upon regional climate by limiting the quantity and quality of sunshine able to penetrate the dense cloud of fine volcanic dust.12 I return briefly to the possible implications of this phenomenon for agriculturalists in the 6th century below. For our present purposes it suffices to observe that, given the evidence for physical heterogeneity and climatic variability, we should not be surprised to discover a comparable diversity in human settlement types and patterns across rural Italy before, during, and after our period. Historically, our capacity to fully appreciate this diversity has been hampered by the tendency to accord the Roman villa a privileged position, both in archaeological survey projects and in the landscape reconstructions that are the result of those survey projects. In recent decades, with the development of more exhaustive survey practices, scholars have come to recognize a multitude of sites of varying sizes in rural contexts, and the central place of villas as the socio-economic foci of the countryside has been called into question.13 In Italy a decades-long tradition of archaeological survey has revealed an extraordinary variety of late antique landscapes undergoing a heterogeneous and messy collection of transformations. Several recent accounts have eloquently sketched the longer-term trajectories of settlement and exploitation on the Italian peninsula, so it would be redundant to attempt such a project here.14 We might quibble with the tendency in some quarters to produce an over-simplistic narrative that renders the conflict between Theoderic and Odovacer a period of widespread rural instability, equates the political peace of Theoderic’s reign with rural prosperity, and then sees inevitable rural decline attending the Gothic-Byzantine War and the subsequent arrival of the Lombards—and I return to this narrative in the concluding section of this chapter.15 Nevertheless, it seems reasonable on the basis of the survey evidence to suggest that the 11  Summary accounts of the physical evidence in Albore Livadie et al. “Eruzioni pliniane del Somma-Vesuvio”; Cioni et al., “The 512 AD Eruption of Vesuvius”. 12  Hodges, “The Year Merlin (Supposedly) Died”, providing further references. Also the essays collected together in Gunn (ed.), Years Without Summer. 13  Seminal is van Dommelen, “Roman peasants”. For late and post-Roman contexts see the crucial discussion of Bowes/Gutteridge, “Rethinking the Late Roman Landscape”. Also Lewit, “Vanishing villas”; Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 408. 14  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 401–96 offers a masterful survey and summary. See also, for complementary accounts, Cantini, “Aree rurali e centri urbani”; Negrelli, “Le strutture del popolamento rurale”; Vaccaro, “Four river basins”. 15  Note the cogent account and critique of Marazzi, “Destinies”, pp. 132–6.

268

Grey

period between the second half of the 5th century and the second half of the 6th century was, on the whole, characterized by stability or a slight increase in the number of identifiable rural sites. In Apulia, for example, recent work has identified something of a settlement boom over this period,16 and a comparable boom appears to have been underway on the Campanian plain when it was momentarily interrupted by the eruption of Vesuvius in 472.17 In Emilia Romagna and the area around Venice we observe some decline in numbers of rural sites in the period, but also significantly a reorganization in the distribution of those sites and corresponding changes to the character of settlement and exploitation in the region. Likewise in Tuscany the ceramic evidence appears to document a small but nevertheless noticeable redistribution in the number, distribution, and size of rural sites in the period, largely in favour of agglomerations that we may term villages—although, as elsewhere, whether this redistribution entailed changes in population numbers is difficult to determine.18 In proposing these processes, scholars have become increasingly aware of the implications of changing proportions of imported African Red Slip ware and local wares, for these changes may be interpreted as reflecting interruptions or perturbations of long-distance trade and a corresponding florescence of local production and distribution networks.19 Moreover, in recent scholarship the ongoing connections between the rural sites of Tuscany at least and the urban centres that continued to draw upon their produce and function as nodes for both the purchase and sale of goods have been stressed.20 Certainly, we should not assume that any imagined or actual expansion in the rural population was necessarily matched by a precipitous decline in the populations or wealth of the cities of Ostrogothic Italy. When we turn to clear indications of Ostrogothic presence in rural contexts, the evidence is sparse and unevenly distributed.21 Depending on how we wish 16  Volpe, “Paesaggi e insediamenti rurali dell’Apulia”. 17  Albore Livadie et al. “Eruzioni pliniane del Somma-Vesuvio”; Di Vito et al., “Human colonization and human activity”; Mastrolorenzo et al., “The 472 ad Pollena Eruption”. 18  Vaccaro, “Four River Basins”; Cantini, “Aree rurali e centri urbani”. For explicit discussions of depopulation, Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 217–8 (arguing in favor); Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 492–6 (suspending judgement); Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, 137–8 (offering broader geographical and methodological perspectives on the problem). 19  Loseby, “Mediterranean Economy”, pp. 608–17 provides an elegant, synthetic discussion of the problem. Also Marazzi, “Destinies”, pp. 136–41. 20  Cantini, “Aree rurali e centri urbani”. 21  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 451; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 67–9.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

269

to interpret the terms on which the Ostrogoths were settled on the land, we may choose to see a massive influx in rural contexts as Ostrogothic settlers moved onto rural estates en masse or a much smaller rural footprint with the bulk of Ostrogoths simply receiving revenues from those estates. It is not my intention here to weigh into that debate, for it is the subject of a subtle and persuasive chapter elsewhere in the present volume.22 But, for our current purposes we may observe that if the Ostrogoths did settle on the land in large numbers, they have left little in the way of a distinctive material culture behind them, and that material culture is rather geographically restricted. A relatively small number of tombs have been excavated whose (mostly female) occupants have accoutrements that appear to mark them as Ostrogothic.23 These tombs cluster in central and northern Italy and along the Adriatic coast, but are to date entirely absent from southern Italy and Sicily, and from the territory west of Rome.24 Similarly, inscriptional evidence containing Gothic personal names and modern place names with Gothic elements occur almost exclusively north of the Po River, leaving the strong impression that Ostrogothic presence on the Italian peninsula was primarily concentrated in the northern and eastern parts.25 This proposition brings into high relief questions about the purpose of the Ostrogothic settlements. It does not seem likely that only these regions were economically impoverished, so arguments that rest upon economic necessity are problematic.26 On the other hand, attempts to ascribe this distinctive pattern to military factors appear to founder on the predominance of female burials among funerary contexts that have been recognized as Ostrogothic.27 And in any event the extensive estates ascribed to Theodahad before his accession as king in Tuscia, for example, raise doubts about an overly neat equation of the distribution of Ostrogothic material culture and the dispersal of the human population.28 At the current state of knowledge these questions must remain open. 22  See Halsall, “The Ostrogothic Military” (Chapter 7) in this volume. 23  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 451, with further references. 24  Bierbrauer, Die ostgotische Grab- und Schatzfunde remains seminal. Note also the recent discussion of Ostrogothic cemeteries in De Vingo, “Archéologie du pouvoir”. 25  Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 69–70, with further references. Note, however, Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 453 with figure 96, arguing strongly in favour of settlement predominantly in rural areas. 26  Thus, for example, Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 455. 27  See also Halsall and Swain in this volume. 28  Procopius, Gothic War 1.3.2. For Theodahad’s landholdings, Vera “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 137–8; Vitiello, Theodahad: A Platonic King, pp. 31–7. See, for a comparable argument about southern Italy, Noyé, “Social Relations”.

270

Grey

Land and Its Exploitation

The survey evidence briefly explored in the preceding section encourages the conclusion that settlement patterns were undergoing a series of gradual transformations in the period. It is less easy to use that evidence to answer questions about landownership, but it seems reasonable to propose that small, medium, and large landholdings continued to coexist in the Italian countryside, just as they had done in preceding centuries.29 Further, the evidence of the charters detailing land units attached to the church of Ravenna, together with certain chapters of the Edictum Theoderici suggest the existence of a market in land, although the extent to which that market involved participants at all socio-economic levels is difficult to determine. Certainly, it is possible to identify exceptionally wealthy landowners with extensive holdings, and ecclesiastical estates are also a noteworthy feature of the Ostrogothic landscape. But it is overly pessimistic to assume that the period witnessed the widespread dispossession of small landowners and the transformation of these erstwhile free individuals into dependent tenants. In what follows, I explore practices of exploitation and patterns of landholding as they can be reconstructed from the rather limited textual evidence, leaving discussion of tenancy and other types of labour relations for the following section. Scholars now recognize that Theoderic and his Ostrogoths did not encounter agriculture for the first time when they arrived in Italy, although manifest challenges attend any attempt to establish with absolute certainty the nature of their agricultural regimes and the relationship between grains and animals in their diet.30 It is likewise difficult to untangle the impact of immigrating populations on agricultural technologies such as ploughing, although these difficulties have not discouraged scholars from engaging enthusiastically in this debate.31 In broad terms, we should expect that the agricultural regimes that the Ostrogoths did encounter in the late 5th century encompassed cultivation of cereals and other plants as well as animal husbandry. If the roughly contemporaneous Opus Agriculturae of the Gallo-Roman agronomist Palladius is anything to go by, a diversity of crops were known in the period and those crops were typically planted in combinations in three distinct plantings: wheat 29  See, for a broad survey account and fuller references, Grey, “Concerning Rural Matters”. 30  See the attempts of Forni, “Dall’agricoltura dei Goti”, especially p. 680; Kokowski, “Agriculture of the Goths”. Also, the synthesis and comments of Del Lungo, “Paesaggio, cultura et vocazioni”, pp. 213–14. 31  Forni, “Dall’agricoltura dei Goti”, pp. 700–1 dismisses a Germanic origin for the new, heavier ploughs of the period.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

271

and barley in the autumn, pulses in late winter or early spring, and a range of other crops in the summer.32 Relatively little analysis of archaeobotanical data of late antique rural contexts on the Italian peninsula has to date been undertaken, and so we are poorly placed to advance hypotheses about the combination of environmental, technological, economic, and cultural factors that might have acted upon agricultural decision-making in the period, such as have been produced for northern European contexts.33 The modern-day province of Tuscany provides a fairly rich amount of evidence, although it is difficult to determine the extent to which these results may be used as proxies and analogues for what we might expect to find elsewhere on the Italian peninsula in the period. At the Podere San Mario farmstead in the Volterra region, for example, we observe autumnsown wheat and barley, fava beans, and other pulses that can be assigned to winter or early spring, as well as evidence for a range of grasses, a small but suggestive sample of olive, and a high proportion of grapes.34 It has been suggested that the bulk of vine cultivation in Italy in this period was undertaken by smaller landowners, and the evidence from Podere San Mario adds some weight to this hypothesis.35 Elsewhere in Tuscany, archaeobotanical evidence from the excavations at the larger villa site of Filattiera-Sorano provides a complementary picture of the crops cultivated during the late antique period and of the vegetation of the surrounding hinterland. The bulk of the analysed material was from carbonized contexts, so it is possible that there is some degree of selectivity or bias in the sample. Nevertheless, the volume of remains and the combination of wood fragments, kernels, fruits, and seeds allow for the development of relatively robust hypotheses about cultivation practices and the physical environment during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. Again, we observe a combination of cereals and pulses. Wheat predominates and millet is also present, indicating autumn and late spring sowings at least. Evidence for fava beans, vetch, and peas suggest that there is likely to have been a winter or early spring sowing of pulses, which signals perhaps the existence of a three-season sowing regime.36 Noteworthy is the appearance of small amounts of rye, a grain credited with a relatively high tolerance for cool, wet soil conditions and consequently 32  Palladius, Opus Agriculturae, 2.4–6; 4.3; 10.2. 33  E.g. McCormick, “Climate Science”, pp. 83–7; Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, pp. 155–65. 34  Motta, “I paesaggi di Volterra”, p. 258. Also Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 485. 35  Ruggini, Economia e Società nell’“Italia Annonaria”, p. 180; Forni, “Dall’agricoltura dei Goti”, p. 694. 36  Rottoli/Negri, “I resti vegetale carbonizzati”, p. 207.

272

Grey

sometimes used as a marker of a change towards a colder, damper climate in northern European contexts.37 At our current state of knowledge we should be careful not to place too great an interpretational weight upon this sample, but the evidence is nonetheless suggestive. Meanwhile, high proportions of oak and in particular chestnut, suggest a certain amount of human intervention in and maintenance of woodland resources in the period—and I return to this proposition below.38 A range of animals, exploited variously for their meat, their muscle, and their milk is attested, too. Again, robust archaeozoological samples are currently few and far between, but we are served by a small number of suggestive contexts.39 At Podere San Mario, for example, the evidence hints at a small flock of sheep and/or goats as well as pigs and cattle. At the somewhat larger site of Monte Barro in the modern-day province of Lecco in northern Italy, young pig, sheep, and goat appear to have been butchered for meat, while poultry and cattle are also present along with a small sample of horse.40 It is difficult to move from these isolated samples to a systematic appreciation of the relative presence or role of these various animals in agrarian regimes, and we should not expect homogeneity either geographically or socio-economically. A rough appreciation of their relative value in the eyes of the law may be gleaned from a chapter in the Edictum Theoderici establishing penalties for rustling of livestock, which appears to present a set of rough equivalences: one stallion to two mares, two cows, ten female goats, or five pigs.41 This catalogue is clearly influenced by the estimation of the horse as a symbol of wealth and status, but it does reflect the relative value of cattle, which are undeniably the most versatile of the animals characteristically found in an agricultural context. Bovines can be used to plough fields, exploited for milk and meat, while their hide, horn, and bone can be employed in making tools, household items, ornaments, and clothing. We catch hints of the potential economic value of plough animals from a chapter contained in the Edictum Theoderici that determines a penalty of one solidus per day for the exploitation

37  McCormick, “Climate Science”, pp. 83–5; Cheyette, “Climate Anomaly”, p. 163. 38  Rottoli/Negri, “I resti vegetale carbonizzati”, pp. 201–3. Chestnut is also found in significant proportions at Monte Barro: Castiglioni/Cottini/Rottoli, “I resti archeobotanici”, p. 224. Note also the discussion of Squatriti in this volume. 39   See, for recent surveys of archaeozoological materials in Italy, Baker/Clark, “Archaeozoological Evidence”; Valenti/Salvadori, “Animal Bones”. 40  See the table in Baker, “Subsistence, Husbandry and Status”, pp. 252–3. 41  Edictum Theoderici 57. See also Edictum Theoderici 56; 58.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

273

of a cow belonging to another without that individual’s express permission.42 Meanwhile, a letter of Cassiodorus to the provincials of Noricum recommends a programme of interbreeding between their cattle and those of a group of Alemanni who had been stationed in the region.43 The stated intention of this programme is to improve the stocks of both breeds and consequently the economic robustness of the communities in question. We should be cautious about taking this single incident as an indication of a wider phenomenon in animal husbandry. But if there was any follow-through on the suggestion, this is a striking exercise in economic interventionism. It is also a reminder that cattle populations might have retained their diversity in Italy in the period, a phenomenon that appears to contrast with contexts further north in Europe, where skeleton sizes shrank markedly over the course of the early medieval period.44 Certainly, Cassiodorus reminds us that certain regions of Italy continued to enjoy a reputation for particularly robust cattle populations in the period, although our attempts to quantify or measure these claims are currently hampered by a dearth of physical evidence—and in any event it is unlikely that the effects of any intervention or any change would be discernible in the short temporal window with which we are interested here.45 We may imagine a complementary relationship between these animals and grain cultivation, perhaps as part of an articulated regime of fallowing and field rotation. It is likely also that we should take more seriously the role of forests in a household or community’s exploitation strategies, as sources of food, fuel, and other resources. Certainly, it would seem that the boundary between ager and silva in the early medieval period was rather permeable, producing an exceptionally dynamic, multidimensional cultivated landscape.46 We have observed this phenomenon already in the archaeobotanical evidence from Filattiera-Sorano, and we catch glimpses of the degree to which agricultural fields and forests might have been integrated in the Ostrogothic period from a chapter in the Edictum Theoderici concerned with apportioning damages in the event of a carelessly set fire. The text is explicit in identifying the fire as having been lit in a field (ager), but identifies the neighbouring holdings as fruit groves or woods as well as the more expected vineyards or ­grainfields 42  Edictum Theoderici 150. 43  Cassiodorus, Variae 3.50. 44  Summarized briefly but effectively by Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, 152–3. 45  Cassiodorus, Variae 2.39. 46  Squatriti, Landscape and Change, pp. 14 and 80; Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 412; Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, pp. 150–1 offers a broader European perspective on the phenomenon.

274

Grey

(arbores frugiferas, aut sylvas, vineta, vel segetem).47 While it is difficult to ascertain whether this apparent interpenetration of cultivated fields and maintained woodlands is a novelty of the period, it is nonetheless striking that it is acknowledged so explicitly in the Edictum Theoderici, for as the legislation on agri deserti reminds us the late Roman sources tend to seek to maintain a strict dichotomy between cultivated and uncultivated land.48 This does not appear to have been the case in the Ostrogothic period, and as a consequence we should resist the temptation to interpret the dissolution of this distinction as evidence for a widespread deterioration in cultivation practices or proportions of cultivable land. At any rate the mention of a dispute over damage to property invites us to consider who owned the fields and forests being exploited during the Ostrogothic period. It is certainly not difficult to find individuals and institutions possessing large and extensive holdings. The widespread holdings of Theodahad in the territory of Tuscia have already been mentioned, while the holdings of the Gothic noblewoman Ranilio seem also to have been considerable.49 Alongside these large landowners, we must imagine small-scale agriculturalists whose holdings may perhaps be visible in the seeming explosion of small sites in rural Italy over the course of the 6th century.50 Of course the archaeological evidence cannot provide definitive evidence for ownership of these holdings, but we catch occasional glimpses of small landowners in our texts, as for example, in a letter of Cassiodorus who responds to the petition of two such individuals who claim to have been forcibly dispossessed by a more powerful figure of their rightful property, a small farm, or agellus, known as Fabricula.51 This incident has been taken as evidence for the practice of invasio, or forcible dispossession of small landholders by the powerful, a phenomenon that receives a certain amount of attention in the Edictum Theoderici and which has as a consequence been identified as a particularly pressing problem under the Ostrogoths.52 However, we should not assume uncritically that large landowners completely drove out smallholders in the period, or that forcible dispossession was widespread, for the legal prominence of a phenomenon is not by any means 47  Edictum Theoderici 98. 48  Grey, “ ‘Problem’ of Agri Deserti”, pp. 362–3; 370–3. Note the contrasting interpretations of Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 422–4; Lafferty, Law and Society, p. 98. 49  Ranilio: P. Ital. 13. Fuller discussion in Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 161. 50  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 427. 51  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.28; cf. 4.44. 52  Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 229–32.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

275

a straightforward proxy for its pervasiveness in society. Certainly, we observe in the chapters of the Edictum Theoderici a keen interest in the maintenance of property boundaries, and in clearly establishing the ownership of specific fields. Thus, for example, we witness entries forbidding individuals from raising either their own titles of ownership on property belonging to another or the name of another on their own property.53 If boundary markers are tampered with, punishments are prescribed, which vary according to whether the domini of the fields in question are found to be complicit or solely the cultivators (coloni or servi) who are responsible for working those fields.54 Forcible seizure of another’s property—even it would seem in the case of debt—is singled out for particular opprobrium, and assigned a capital penalty, as a case of violentia.55 Moreover, sales and donations of property are to be publicly transacted and acknowledged, and the resulting changes in ownership entered into the municipal registers (gesta municipales).56 These concerns are entirely in step with the legislation of the 4th and 5th centuries, where the motivation for prescribing the public transaction of transfers of property and forbidding forcible expulsion of one’s neighbours was to maintain the integrity of the tax system, which had come to rest even more heavily and explicitly on establishing clear and transparent connections between particular parcels of land and the individuals who could be held responsible for the fiscal burdens assessed on that land. However, the attendant system of recording proved to be unwieldy, and difficult to reconcile with the rather more flexible land management strategies employed by large and small landowners alike, for these rested upon a fluid and dynamic market in land both for rent and for purchase.57 The expectation that responsibility for the tax burden assessed on a parcel of land would be publicly acknowledged added a fiscal dimension to these strategies that rendered them legally problematic, even in situations where the intentions of the landholders in question were not to defraud the state. Moreover, this tension between fiscal ideals and economic realities also served to colour the interpretation of a range of other peasant survival strategies in 53  Edictum Theoderici 45. 54  Edictum Theoderici 104–105. See also, for conflicts over land occasioned by changes in the courses of rivers, Cassiodorus, Variae 3.52; Ennodius, Life of Epiphanius 21–25, and, more generally, Squatriti, “Riverains et rivaux”, pp. 138–9. 55  Edictum Theoderici 75. 56  Edictum Theoderici 52; 53. See, for similar interest in public documentation, Cassiodorus Variae 5.14.7. 57  Full discussion in Grey, “Concerning Rural Matters”, pp. 633–4.

276

Grey

the period. Thus, for example, Augustine remarks upon peasants in early 5thcentury North Africa placing boundary markers belonging to their powerful neighbours on their own fields in order to take advantage of the other’s reputation, and the mid 5th-century Gallic presbyter Salvian describes small landowners seeking to take advantage of the mutual obligations and expectations that attended becoming the registered tenants of more powerful landowners.58 Each of these phenomena can be glimpsed in the collection of provisions promulgated during the reign of Theoderic. Further, documentary evidence detailing landholdings of the church around Ravenna, as well as charters from the later 6th century and beyond, reveal an ongoing concern to determine the productive capacity of particular units of land, using terminology that is redolent of the tax system of the late Roman Empire.59 While we should be careful not to rely too heavily upon the impression of continuity that this evidence provides, it nevertheless seems reasonable to suggest that the evident concern in the Edictum Theoderici to determine property rights was impelled at least in part by the need to ensure that the fiscal obligations assessed on particular parcels of land continued to be acknowledged by the individuals who had been entered into the tax rolls as fiscally responsible for those parcels of land.60 It is for this reason that we see such close attention paid to both sale of land and gifts and bequests in wills. The evident inconcinnity revealed here between the information entered into the tax rolls and the economic realities on the ground offers glimpses of a market in land that is no less fluid and dynamic than in preceding centuries. In such circumstances the maintenance of clear boundaries between properties would seem essential, both for the fiscal purposes of the state and for the economic interests of the landowners in question. A letter of Cassiodorus reveals the potential for disputes, ignorance, and confusion over the precise whereabouts of boundaries when it remarks upon the problems that might attend impermanent or mobile boundary markers.61 This letter provides a context for the directive contained in the Edictum Theoderici against the raising of boundary markers belonging to another on one’s own property. The potential 58  Augustine, Dolbeau 4.2; Salvian, On the Governance of God, 5.8.39–43, with fuller discussion in Grey, Constructing Communities, pp. 210–12. 59  E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 3.20. See the recent detailed discussion of Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, pp 96–101. 60  Cassiodorus, Variae 3.14; 5.14. For fuller discussion of the particularities of the tax system of Ostrogothic Italy as it emerges from Cassiodorus’ correspondence, see Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity, and Taxes”, pp. 147–9. 61  Cassiodorus, Variae 3.52.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

277

for confusion over boundaries is here exploited by small landowners as they employed a strategy aimed at protecting themselves against loss or predation by taking advantage of the reputation of a powerful figure—just as in the cases noted by Augustine.62 Of course this is not to say that these smallholders were immune to the depredations of larger landowners in the period, nor to suggest that this strategy was viable, or even effective. Indeed their impulse to take this action together with the legal measures against forcible dispossession offers compelling evidence that such dispossession was taking place. But we should not interpret the rhetorical force of the legal pronouncement as evidence for the prominence or extent of the practice as a socio-economic problem. After all, legal evidence documents only legal facts, and it is the legal fact of fiscal responsibility that seems most important here.

Tenancy, The Labour Market, and Economic Strategies

The labour regimes available to large landowners in exploiting their estates during the Ostrogothic period appear, as in preceding centuries, to have involved combinations of slaves, tenants, and wage labourers, sometimes overseen by a chief tenant or farm manager.63 A chapter contained in the Edictum Theoderici concerning loans of money to various individuals on an estate identifies procuratores, conductores, coloni and servi.64 We witness also originarii, individuals who appear to have been legally registered on a specific plot of land, or origo. As we shall see, the legal relationship that these individuals enjoyed both with that land and with its owner, or dominus, seems to have been considered analogous to that of liberti and servi with their owner or former owners.65 Finally, in chapters aimed at preventing a dominus from taking on another’s colonus or seeking to exercise control over another’s rusticus, we catch glimpses of an active market in casual or seasonal labour.66 In what follows, I elaborate on these propositions, and explore rural labour relations of the period as they can be reconstructed from our rather recondite and patchy sources. I will suggest that the labour market of the period continued to be 62  See, analogously, provisions against the transfer of notices of debt to a more powerful individual so as to collect the debt more easily: Edictum Theoderici 122. 63  For vilici, Cassiodorus, Variae 5.39, with Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 160. 64  Edictum Theoderici 121, which reflects and responds to CTh 2.31.1 and 2.31.2: Lafferty, Law and Society, p. 221. 65  Edictum Theoderici 48. 66  Edictum Theoderici 89; 150.

278

Grey

accessed by both the powerful and the relatively powerless as part of their customary economic regimes.67 The frequent incidence in the Edictum Theoderici of the term originarius to denote agriculturalists invites a connection with the tax system instituted in the late 3rd century under Diocletian and his colleagues in the Tetrarchy. The intricacies of this tax system need not detain us here, although it seems likely that as in other post-Roman kingdoms it continued under the Ostrogoths, at least in some form.68 Scholars generally agree that as a consequence of this new tax system there developed over the course of the 4th and 5th centuries a legal category of registered tenancy that placed obligations on both the coloni and the domini of the land upon which the coloni were registered, their origo. On the strength of this, an historical narrative has developed whereby there was progressive decline both in independent small landowners or tenants and in rural slaves in the period, and the rise of a form of dependent, obligated tenancy, the so-called “colonate of the late Roman Empire”.69 It is tempting to interpret rural labour relations under the Ostrogoths with reference to this historical narrative. This temptation should be resisted. In recent scholarship, the coherence and centrality to the fiscal process of this phenomenon have been questioned. It has been proposed that registered tenancy may be best interpreted not as an end in itself for the late Roman state or aristocratic landowners, but rather as a product of the heavy weight placed upon the origo as the cornerstone of the fiscal system of the period.70 The project of legal codification itself has come under scrutiny and it has been observed that the decisions made by the compilers of the Codex Theodosianus and the Codex Justinianus to include constitutions or fragments of constitutions under particular headings has given an impression of unity of purpose that might only be valid in hindsight or in the context of the codification process.71 It has in addition been argued that our view of the 4th- and 5th-century legislation concerning the position of coloni has been further coloured by the later Interpretationes that were attached 67   For elaborations of these principles, Grey, Constructing Communities, p. 54; Grey, “Concerning Rural Matters”, pp. 636–7. 68  Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity, and Taxes”, p. 148 offers brief comments. Also Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 109. For continuation of the tax system under the Visigothic realm in Gaul see Grey, “Two Young Lovers”, pp. 296–7, with note 49. 69  Carrié “Roman des Origines” remains seminal. Grey, “Contextualizing colonatus”, pp. 156– 61, explores the debate since Carrié. For an application of the concept in the Ostrogothic context: Schipp, weströmische Kolonat, pp. 272–310. 70  Grey, “Contextualizing colonatus”, pp. 170–5. 71  Humfress, “Cracking the Codex”, p. 243.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

279

to many of the entries in the Codex Theodosianus when those entries were incorporated within the early 6th-century Breviarium of the Visigothic King Alaric II. Those Interpretationes are aimed primarily at making a diffuse and heterogeneous set of enactments workable and intelligible in a rather different political and legal landscape.72 Finally, it has been suggested that the ‘colonate’ (as modern scholars might recognize it) was realized as a coherent concept only with the dissemination of the Codex Justinianus, the great codification of law carried out under Justinian and published in a second edition in 534, for it was in the vision of Justinian and his codifiers that the many disparate strands of registered tenancy were first linked together.73 These propositions have significant implications for our view of the position of registered tenants in the Ostrogothic kingdom. If it is the project of legal codification that imposes coherence upon this particular fiscal phenomenon, then we may legitimately ask two questions. First, what was the purpose of the Edictum Theoderici as a codification of law? And second, what relation did the legal and fiscal relations that it sketched out bear to socio-economic realities in Italy at the time? I take each question in turn. Scholars have long noted the preponderance of regulations concerning rural economic activity in this collection. But it is also difficult to discern a clear and coherent organizational structure, such as we observe in the codifications of Theodosius II and Justinian. For this and other reasons, it seems reasonable to suggest that the Edictum Theoderici was a rather different kind of legal project.74 With specific reference to rural labour relations, Justinian’s codification appears to have sought to maintain and preserve the role of the state in brokering the relationship between dominus and registered colonus. Justinian was also seeking to make new law and to shape fiscal and socio-economic relations using that law. By contrast, the provisions of the Edictum Theoderici—like the Interpretationes contained in the Breviarium of Alaric—sought largely to gloss and adapt already existent legal pronouncements, so as to render them explicable in a new and rather different fiscal and socio-economic context.75 As a result, these pronouncements are descriptive and reactive rather than prescriptive and 72  Koptev, “Colonate in the Theodosian Code”, p. 263. Also Matthews, “Interpreting the Interpretationes”, pp. 17–18. 73  Sirks, “Colonate in Justinian’s Reign”, especially pp. 121–2. 74  See now the full and detailed exploration of the Edictum Theoderici in Lafferty, Law and Society, passim, especially pp. 16–53. 75  Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 60–99 offers an essential and masterly discussion of both the sources for the Edictum Theoderici and the ways in which it adapts those sources. More succinctly: Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, 144–5.

280

Grey

­ roactive. Moreover, the perspective they take is arguably more limited, for p their objective is not to extend the scope of the law, but rather to interpret the legal implications of the socio-economic phenomena they encounter. With particular reference to rural socio-economic relations, there are both apparent continuities and evident departures from the legal constructs of the preceding centuries. In the Edictum Theoderici, originarii appear to occupy a legal position with reference to the owners of the land upon which they were registered that is analogous to that of freedmen and slaves.76 Like liberti and servi, they could not be heard in a legal case against their domini or the children of their domini.77 They were associated with servi when punishments were mandated for various crimes against property and persons.78 There is a clear conceptual slippage here between a public law arrangement (originarius and dominus) and a private law relationship (servus and dominus). But originarii were not servi, and the concern in this collection to maintain a juridical distinction between the two may be compared with that found in the Interpretationes of the Breviarium.79 Elsewhere in the Edictum Theoderici great care is taken to distinguish servi from freeborn men (ingenui), who were not to be taken by solicitation, stolen, sold, or kept as a slave, nor were they to be enslaved for debt or claimed as slaves.80 It seems therefore reasonable to conclude, with caution, that the position of originarii lay in some kind of middle space between freedom and slavery, but was neither intermediate nor transitional between the two.81 The basis upon which this legal position was grounded is difficult to establish. We might expect it to have been their origo, the land upon which they were registered, which would be in keeping with the legal position of registered tenants during the late Roman period. However, this impression is complicated by a chapter of the Edictum Theoderici which grants domini the liberty to move both servi and originarii between their estates. This chapter builds

76  See the recent exposition of Schipp, weströmische Kolonat, p. 277. 77  Edictum Theoderici 48. 78  E.g. Edictum Theoderici 56; 63. 79  For the continued separation of slavery and freedom in the Breviary: Koptev, “Colonate in the Theodosian Code”, pp. 267–8. For juridical distinctions in Ostrogothic Italy, see Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 143–5, and compare the detailed exposition of Schipp, weströmische Kolonat, 277–88 who sees somewhat more slippage. Note also the briefer comments of Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 171–2. 80  Edictum Theoderici 78; 79; 96. 81  Thus Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 145–6. Note the contrasting but not necessarily contradictory position of Koptev, “Colonate in the Theodosian Code”, p. 282.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

281

on a rescript of Valentinian III,82 and appears to acknowledge the needs of these large landowners for flexibility in the utilization of their labour force. Significantly, it directs that the right of these domini to distribute their servi and originarii according to their needs cannot be challenged by any juridical means, not even sub oppositione originis, “by the opposition of the origo”. This laconic statement has been taken by some scholars as indicating the complete dissolution of the origo as the basis for the obligation of originarii and its replacement by a personal obligation to their dominus.83 However, elsewhere in the same chapter it is observed that these individuals must be returned to the estates (praedia) from whence they were originally moved at the pleasure of their dominus. No temporal horizon is given for this requirement, and we have no further means of explicating the oppositio originis. But it seems clear that the connection with a particular unit of land is in fact preserved here. It may therefore be the case that the intention here is to prevent third parties from bringing a suit against domini with reference to the labour force on their own estates, rather than to dissolve wholesale the connection to the land. If so, the provisions of this chapter may be fruitfully connected with other chapters in the Edictum Theoderici, which treat the reception, enticement, or exploitation by domini of coloni, rustici, and servi belonging to another estate.84 At issue is the entitlement of individual domini to employ the labour of the individuals who are under their potestas (in the case of slaves), or obligated to their fields (in the case of originarii), as against the expectation among both large landowners and other inhabitants of the countryside that they could enjoy the advantages provided by a dynamic labour market, involving both legally obligated and legally unobligated individuals. We may imagine, for example, that some rustici owned small parcels of land themselves, while also taking tenancies on fields belonging to another landowner (whether large or small) and undertaking seasonal or occasional labour contracts with yet another. These individuals might in some circumstances be called rustici or coloni, while in others they were denoted as originarii. The evident terminological messiness that we encounter here reminds us that legal evidence always simplifies and misrepresents reality, and scholars of the late and post-Roman period have long wrestled with questions about the analytical weight that can be placed upon the appearance of particular words in the legal and other sources. It would appear that the immense diversity in the vocabulary used to denote registered tenancy in late Roman legislation had dissipated 82  Nov. Valent. 35.18. 83  Most recently: Schipp, weströmische Kolonat, pp. 285–6. 84  Edictum Theoderici 80; 84–6, with Schipp, weströmische Kolonat, pp. 280–4.

282

Grey

somewhat by the Ostrogothic period.85 But it is no less difficult to determine the extent to which differences in terminology reflect different legal categories, still less the relationship between whatever legal categories might have existed and socio-economic realities. In the Edictum Theoderici the word colonus seems not to function explicitly and universally as an indicator of registered tenancy. What, then, does it denote: tenancy or simply agricultural activity? Cassiodorus’ generalizing observation that “coloni sunt qui agros iugiter colunt” would seem to indicate the latter, but we should be cautious about assuming congruence in the vocabulary employed in a letter and a legal text.86 While we appear to be on firmer terminological ground in regarding originarius as an indicator of registration on an origo, it seems unnecessarily reductive to assume that this legal category excluded the possibility of these individuals also appearing in other guises in our texts. That is, we should be careful not to assume that legal categorizations reflected, still less determined, the economic strategies open to small agriculturalists.87 In this context, too, provisions forbidding domini from inducing a slave or originiarius of another dominus to leave their estate place this tension between legal-fiscal ideals and socio-economic realities in high relief. Consequently, it would appear that the provisions of the chapter concerning the oppositio originis hinge on claims about where the tenant or labourer in question is legally registered. Evidently, the act of registration continued in the Ostrogothic period to present a certain security for small agriculturalists but also to act as a potential impediment to long-standing practices of labour exploitation, which rested upon a flexible and dynamic labour market. At any rate the coincidence of a certain conceptual slippage between slavery and freedom, the employment of the vocabulary of slavery as an analogy for the obligations of registered tenants to their origo, and continuing efforts to police the boundaries between servi and ingenui may be interpreted as a continuation—albeit perhaps in a rather less nuanced form—of phenomena we see in the legislation concerning slaves and registered coloni of the 4th and 5th centuries.88 This concern to police the boundaries between slavery and freedom serve as a reminder that slaves continued to exist and their labour 85  For this terminological diversity and its implications, Grey “Contextualizing Colonatus”, pp. 170–5. For the Ostrogothic period see Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 144–5. Schipp, weströmische Kolonat, p. 285, explicitly translates originarii as “Kolonen”, thereby avoiding questions of terminology. 86  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.31. 87  Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 147–8. 88  For fuller exposition: Grey, “Slavery in the Late Roman World”, pp. 502–6.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

283

c­ ontinued to be exploited in the period. Quantification is impossible on the basis of the existing evidence and we should once again be cautious about equating the number of times they are mentioned in our legal sources with their numerical importance in rural contexts. Nevertheless, the roles that they are envisaged to play in rural contexts by our sources do not appear to be markedly different from those of preceding centuries.89 Slaves are mentioned as agents of their domini, as well as perhaps independent actors whose illegal behaviour might or might not be the responsibility of their owner.90 They appear alongside coloni on rural estates and seem also to have continued to intermarry with some of the free poor, if the concerns of our legal sources to ascribe a proper legal status to the offspring of such unions are any indication.91 We observe them also serving as bailiffs or farm managers at least at the beginning of our period in the correspondence of Gelasius.92 Of course we should not expect that the definitional contortions of our legal texts were the defining principles determining the nature of rural labour in the period. Instead, we should imagine that rustici practised a multiplicity of socio-economic strategies, which combined in a complex and multidimensional manner, in order to manage the risk of a catastrophic subsistence failure most effectively. We catch occasional glimpses of these multifaceted socio-economic strategies. The existence of mixed agro-pastoral regimes and multiple sowing seasons as well as mechanisms to take advantage of the reputation of a powerful neighbour have already been noted. Marriage is likely also to have been a useful strategy for managing risk, for it functions to expand the pool of resources a family or household can call on at need. In several chapters of the Edictum Theoderici we witness the possibility that originarii registered on different estates might marry, although it is unclear what the geographical range of such marriages might be.93 Diversification of a household’s economic portfolio is another strategy, and as noted above another chapter of the Edictum Theoderici imposes a hefty fine upon individuals who exploit the labour of a cow belonging to another. In the process it offers hints that plough animals might be rented out or loaned by an enterprising or financially fortunate farmer.94 The complaints of a certain Nimfadius that his beasts of burden were stolen by countryfolk while he slept 89  See the more general discussion of Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 157–60. 90  Edictum Theoderici 63; 104; 109; 121. 91  On estates: Ranilio: P. Ital. 13. Mixed unions: Edictum Theoderici 65–7. 92  E.g. Gelasius Ep. 22. Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 160, with fuller discussion and references. 93  Edictum Theoderici 67; 68. 94  Edictum Theoderici 150.

284

Grey

remind us irresistibly of other instances where wealthy city dwellers evinced distaste and distrust for peasants, but it is nonetheless tempting to infer that the rustici of Ostrogothic Italy were not above opportunistic theft or even banditry, particularly when it involved a resource as valuable as livestock.95 Likewise, we should take with a grain of salt Cassiodorus’ description of countryfolk raiding a market held during a fair for Saint Cyprian, but not lose sight of the evidence for rural exchange that the letter provides.96 In the same letter Cassiodorus waxes lyrical about the nature and extent of this exchange. This fair, we are told, attracts all the finest produce from the surrounding regions of Campania, Bruttium, Calabria, and Apulia, such that no person will go away unsatisfied. He includes also a particularly striking image of young boys and girls being offered for sale so that by their servitude in the city they will be freed of rural toil. While it is tempting to associate this with a chapter of the Edictum Theoderici which seeks to safeguard the free status of children sold because of their parents’ dire economic straits, and to infer widespread economic depression in rural Italy, it seems more likely that they are evidence for the continuation of long-established practices whereby a child’s labour might be sold, rented, or leased for a specified period of time.97 Be that as it may, the close and ongoing connection between city and country that Cassiodorus presents here is striking, although we should not assume that it was the only possible pattern for urban-rural relations in the period. As noted above with specific reference to ceramic typologies, for example, we should imagine that with contraction, or at the very least reconfiguration, of long-distance networks of exchange, the degree to which cities were integrated into those networks might have changed.98 Nevertheless, we should assume that some cities at least continued to function as nodes for both the distribution and the consumption of the resources of their surrounding countrysides and beyond.

95  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.32. 96  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.33. 97  Edictum Theoderici 94. For fuller discussion of the phenomenon in the late Roman period, Vuolanto, “Selling a Freeborn Child”. 98  For broader discussions of these phenomena in the period, Wickham, “Production, Distribution, and Demand”; Loseby, “Mediterranean Economy”, pp. 618–20.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy



285

Conclusion: Rural Populations under Pressure?

Broadly speaking, I have argued throughout this chapter in favour of enduring continuity in the structures and practices that constituted the rural economies of Italy under the Ostrogoths. Patterns of landownership and exploitation were heterogeneous, and that heterogeneity appears to have persisted. Strategies of labour exploitation among large landowners appear to have intersected with the socio-economic strategies of smaller agriculturalists in a labour market that continued to be dynamic and multidimensional. Market exchanges endured, even if the geographical scope over which goods travelled is likely to have contracted, together with the volume of goods that travelled. Nevertheless, rural populations of the period experienced a collection of sudden, acute events that cannot fail to have impacted upon the socio-­ economic resources available to them and upon their capacity to exploit those resources. Our sources attest instances of food shortage or famine, which are likely to have been attributable to a variety of causes. Most particularly, we observe shortages of grain in Rome caused by drought in Africa, Gaul, or elsewhere, which led to an interruption in the transportation of grain from those areas to Rome.99 These events will have placed pressure on the produce of agriculturalists in Rome’s immediate hinterland and further afield in Italy. A description by Boethius of the catastrophic effects of forced sale of grain in Campania in the early 520s, for example, gives a sense of what the local impacts of these more distant events could have been.100 We may also imagine instances where food shortages could be exploited by producers or suppliers from other regions, and a letter of Cassiodorus offers glimpses of Athalaric’s attempts to control such speculation in Gaul.101 We observe the effects of both the war between Theoderic and Odovacer and the Gothic Wars of Justinian’s generals upon urban contexts, in the form of famines and epidemics in besieged cities, and we may imagine both direct and indirect consequences of these events on rural populations as well.102 99  Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence collects primary references and secondary literature. See, in the present context, nos. 75 (pp. 246–7); 77 (p. 248); 86 (p. 261). 100  Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 1.4.12(8), with Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, p. 261. 101  Cassiodorus, Variae 9.5, with Ruggini, Economia e Società nell’ “Italia Annonaria”, pp. 262– 76; Loseby, “Mediterranean Economy”, p. 618. 102   See the series of events recorded by Procopius, Gothic War 2, and collected by Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, pp. 270–7. Note also Cassiodorus, Variae 12.28.

286

Grey

While the supply and availability of grain is the most compelling proxy for pressures on rural populations, it is by no means the only one. The socalled Justinianic Plague, which began in the mid 6th century, is likely to have impacted on population levels in some way, although the extent and acuteness of those effects in Italy (and elsewhere) remain hotly debated.103 A pair of earthquakes is attested around Ravenna in the early 6th century, and while the textual evidence is slim and our archaeological evidence non-existent (or at the very least unpublished), nevertheless it seems likely that agriculturalists in the region experienced both short- and longer-term disruption.104 The unknown volcanic eruption of ca. 536–37 noted above appears to have resulted in the widespread diffusion of a dust veil, which as described in the evocative and rhetorically coloured account of Cassiodorus produced anomalous weather conditions and interrupted sowing and growing seasons.105 Ice core evidence suggests that this event was of a level of magnitude greater than the massive eruption of Tambora in 1815—the largest eruption in recorded history—so it should not surprise us that its effects on human populations in the vicinity could linger for several years.106 In addition, archaeological evidence for the movement of sites upslope and out of river basins may imply increased flooding events in the period, either as a result of climatic disruptions caused by this eruption or as a consequence of the increase in climatic variability that has been posited for the period.107 Scholars have tended to account for the experience of the rural inhabitants of Italy in the face of these and other pressures with reference to convenient or conventional explanatory paradigms. Thus, for example, the period is taken to have witnessed a widespread and inevitable depression in the socio-­economic position of agriculturalists, who came to be dependent on the large and powerful landowners who now exploited their labour for their own purposes.108 Alternatively, famines and food shortages caused by warfare, environmental pressures, and economic inefficiencies led to depopulation and an ­increasingly 103  Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, 277–94 collects references. Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 500–4 outlines the scholarly debate. Note also the account of Sarris, “Justinianic Plague”. 104  References collected and discussed by Guidoboni, Catalogue of Ancient Earthquakes, p. 310. 105  Cassiodorus, Variae 12.25. 106  Hodges, “The Year Merlin (Supposedly) Died”, p. 75; Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 151 with notes 71–2, discusses a famine dated to this period in Italy 535–36. 107  See, for example, Hodges et al., “Vacchereccia”, 158–65; Neboit, “Les basses terrasses alluviales”, 404. 108  Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 155–6.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

287

squeezed labour market, which may briefly have advantaged small agriculturalists but also impelled large landowners towards registered tenancy as a mechanism for ensuring that they could call on the labour of their originarii.109 These explanations fit with long-established paradigms for interpreting longterm socio-economic changes in the countrysides of the late- and post-Roman world. But they lack precision when pressed into service to explain events or processes over a period of less than a century. In this concluding section, therefore, I employ a collection of concepts drawn from the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies to signal an alternative way of engaging with the experience of rural populations during the Ostrogothic period. I make no pretence of completeness or comprehensiveness, but seek rather to point towards a new set of tools for exploring the particularities of rural economies in the Ostrogothic period. Over the past several decades, scholars engaged in the study of disasters have developed a collection of concepts that serve to relocate the focus of attention from the crisis moment or hazard—for example, an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, or a military invasion—to the longer-term socio-economic structures and societal processes that together constituted a society or community’s experience of that hazard—and most importantly what that experience allows us to say about the nature of the disaster as an unfolding process.110 For our present purposes, we may briefly explore two of these concepts: first, vulnerability or “the characteristics of a person or group in terms of their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a . . . hazard”;111 and second, resilience, a measure of an individual’s, group’s, or community’s capacity to weather a sequence of hazards in quick succession.112 By employing these concepts, I suspect we will discover that the populations of rural Italy during this period were indeed vulnerable. But, because these concepts demand that we pay closer attention to the collections of physical, environmental, socio-economic, and politico-military factors that constituted the various micro-regions of the peninsula, we may be able to move 109  Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 218–20. 110  For succinct, synthetic summaries of the state of the scholarship see Juneja/Mauelshagen, “Disasters and Pre-industrial Societies”, pp. 4–7; Schenk, “Historical Disaster Research”; Lindell, “Disaster Studies”. 111  Wisner et al., At Risk, p. 11. 112  For fuller exposition of the concept as used in Disaster Studies see the recent surveys of Aldunce et al., “Framing Disaster Resilience”; Lizarralde et al., “Systems Approach to Resilience”. Note also the suggestive observation of Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 494.

288

Grey

beyond the grand narratives that have hitherto stood in for explanation and begin upon the process of constructing more nuanced and subtle accounts of the experiences of different rural communities in different parts of Italy in the period. That is, the employment of these concepts allows us to pose a series of questions about the rural economies of Italy under Ostrogothic rule. These questions can be preliminary only at this stage and they may be unanswerable. Nevertheless, I suggest they serve to reorient our attention in productive and thought-provoking ways. Thus, for example, we could ask what characteristics or qualities might render certain rural populations more or less vulnerable than others in this period? Were the inhabitants of the Campanian plain—who may be observed requesting tax relief from Theoderic in perhaps 512 on the strength of ongoing volcanic activity on Vesuvius and were the subject of forced grain sale in the 520s or 530s, but who enjoyed especially fertile and productive growing conditions precisely because of the presence of Vesuvius to their south-east—more or less vulnerable than the populations of the Po River valley—who appear to have witnessed an influx of barbarian settlers in the late 5th or early 6th century, but also perhaps to have been the victims of quite frequent flooding in the period?113 Did the presence of those barbarians stimulate economic activity—as has been inferred from the presence of large quantities of coins in areas inhabited by members of the military during the 4th century114—or was it an unsupportable economic burden that caused intense hardship to local landowners—as Theoderic seems to accept in a letter relieving taxes to the residents of the Cottian Alps?115 Did living near a large landowner such as Theodahad expand the number of survival strategies available to small agriculturalists in Tuscia, or did it enhance the risk that they would be forcibly dispossessed—as Procopius accuses?116 When we turn to the consideration of the reorientation of markets and trade networks in the period, we may ask whether production for a local ­market— or for the church of Ravenna or in response to an unforeseen grain shortage around Rome—encouraged farmers to adopt certain agrarian regimes, and whether those regimes made them more or less able to manage the risk of subsistence failure in the medium or long term—especially if changes to environmental conditions necessitated changes in the timing of sowing seasons 113  For flooding and its potential implications: Saggioro, “Late Antique Settlement”, p. 521. But note the critique of the literary tradition by Squatriti, “Floods of 589”, pp. 803–6. 114  Fulford, “Economic Hotspots”. 115  Cassiodorus, Variae 3.36. 116  Procopius, Gothic War 1.3.2.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

289

and the types of crops sown. Did living closer to a large urban centre produce opportunities for the continuation of economic strategies such as Cassiodorus describes at the fair of St Cyprian? Or did it render communities more vulnerable to the effects of the warfare and sieges and plagues and epidemics that stand like bookends at either end of our period. Or both? Fundamentally, these questions may be boiled down to this: how resilient were the rural populations of Italy in the Ostrogothic period? If, as seems likely, some households or communities did indeed crumble in the face of a succession of hazards that included food shortage, plague, fiscal super-exactions, and warfare, which ones, why, and in what circumstances? Most particularly, how might we use seemingly descriptive phenomena such as topography, climatic conditions, agricultural regimes, socio-economic structures, and cultural mores as analytical tools in pursuit of our answers? While these questions might seem disingenuous, perhaps even tendentious, they have the advantage of taking seriously the strict chronological constraints that characterize the Ostrogothic realm in Italy. They also force us to construct arguments about the fates of rural populations in this period, rather than simply falling back on generalizing assumptions of widespread decline and impoverishment that seem, increasingly, to be declining and impoverished themselves. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Augustine, ed. F. Dolbeau, Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique, Paris 1996. Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy, ed. L. Bieler, Philosophiae Consolatio, 2nd ed. (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 94) Turnhout 1984. Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894. Codex Theodosianus, ed. T. Mommsen, Berlin 1905. Edictum Theoderici Regis, ed. F. Bluhme (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges Nationum Germanicorum 5), Hanover 1889, pp. 149–70. Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, ed. W. Hartel (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 6), Vienna 1882. Gelasius I, Epistolae, ed. A. Thiel, Epistulae Romanorum Pontificum genuinae et quae ad eos scriptae sunt a S. Hilaro usque ad Pelagium, vol. 1, Brausnberg 1868 (repr. New York 1974). Novellae Valentiniani, ed. P.M. Meyer, Leges Novellae ad Theodosianum Pertinentes, Berlin 1905.

290

Grey

Palladius, Opus Agriculturae, ed. R.H. Rodgers, Leipzig 1975. P.Ital. = Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens aus der Zeit 445–700, ed. J.-O. Tjäder, 3 vols. (Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae), Lund/Stockholm 1954–82. Procopius, History of the Wars, ed. J. Haury/trans. H.B. Dewing (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1914–28. Salvian, On the Governance of God, ed. C. Halm, Salviani Presbyteri Massiliensis Libri Qui Supersunt (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 1), Berlin, 1877.



Secondary Literature

Albore Livadie, C./Vecchio, G./Mastrolorenzo, G., “Eruzioni pliniane del SommaVesuvio e siti archeologici dell’area nolana”, in P.G. Guzzo and R. Peroni (eds.), Archeologia e vulcanologia in Campania. Atti del Convegno (Pompei, 21 dicembre 1996), Napoli 1998, pp. 39–86. Aldunce, P./Beilin, R./Handmer, J./Howden, M., “Framing Disaster Resilience: The Implications of the Diverse Conceptualisations of ‘Bouncing Back’ ”, Disaster Prevention and Management 23.3 (2014), 252–70. Arthur, P., “From Vicus to Village: Italian Landscapes, AD 400–1000”, in N. Christie (ed.), Landscapes of Change: Rural Evolutions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Aldershot 2004, pp. 103–33. Baker, P. “The Animal Bones from Strs. II–VII: Subsistence, Husbandry and Status”, in G.P. Brogiolo/L. Castelletti (eds.), Archeologia a Monte Barro, vol. 2: Gli Scavi 1990–97 e le Richerche al S. Martino di Lecco, Lecco 2001, pp. 249–68. Baker, P./Clark, G., “Archeozoological Evidence for Medieval Italy: A Critical Review of the Present State of Research”, Archeologia Medievale 20 (1993), 45–77. Bierbrauer, V., Die ostgotische Grab- und Schatzfundein Italien, Spoleto 1975. Bjornlie, S., “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes in Ostrogothic Italy: A Case for Continuity, Adaptation and Departure”, Early Medieval Europe 22 (2014), 138–70. Bowes, K./Gutteridge, A., “Rethinking the Later Roman Landscape”, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18 (2005), 405–18. Cantini, F., “Aree rurali e centri urbani tra IV e VII secolo: il territorio toscano”, Antiquité Tardive 21 (2013), 243–55. Carrié, J.-M., “Un roman des origines: les généalogies du ‘colonat du Bas-Empire’ ”, Opus 2 (1983), 205–51. Castiglioni, E./Cottini, M./Rottoli, M., “I resti archeobotanici”, in G.P. Brogiolo/ L. Castelletti (eds.), Archeologia a Monte Barro, vol. 2: Gli Scavi 1990–97 e le Richerche al S. Martino di Lecco, Lecco 2001, pp. 223–47. Chavarría Arnau, A., “Changes in Scale in the Italian Countryside from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages”, in J. Escalona/A. Reynolds (eds.), Scale and Scale Change

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

291

in the Early Middle Ages: Exploring Landscape, Local Society, and the World Beyond (The Medieval Countryside 6), Turnhout 2011, 121–32. Cheyette, F.L., “The Disappearance of the Ancient Landscape and the Climatic Anomaly of the Early Middle Ages: A Question to Be Pursued”, Early Medieval Europe 16 (2008), 127–65. Christie, N., From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy AD 300–800, Aldershot 2006. Cioni, R./Bertagnini, A./Androcino, D./Cole, P.D./Mundula, F., “The 512 AD Eruption of Vesuvius: Complex Dynamics of a Small Scale Subplinian Event”, Bulletin of Volcanology 73 (2011), 789–810. Citter, C., “Late Antique and Early Medieval Hilltop Settlements in Central Italy: State of Research and Interpretations”, in H. Steuer/V. Bierbrauer (eds.), Höhensiedlungen zwischen Antike und Mittelalter von den Ardennen bis zur Adria: Atti del convegno internazionale. Freiburg im Breisgau 2008 (Lexikon für germanischen Altertumskunde, Ergänzungsband 58), Berlin 2008, pp. 749–64. Costambeys, M., “Settlement, Taxation and the Condition of the Peasantry in PostRoman Central Italy”, Journal of Agrarian Change 9 (2009), 92–119. De Vingo, P. “Archéologie du pouvoir dans les nécropoles du haut Moyen Âge du Piémont centroméridional entre occupation ostrogothe et conquête lombarde”, in J. Pinar Gil/T. Juárez Villena (eds.), Contextos funeraris a la Mediterrània NordOccidental (Segles V–VIII): Atti della Tavola Rotonda organizzata dalla Associazione per la Ricerca, lo Studio e la Diffusione della Tarda Antichità (AREDAT), Sant Cugat del Vallès (Barcellona), 1–3 ottobre 2009, Gausac 2009, pp. 59–89. Del Lungo, S., “Paesaggio, cultura e vocazioni agricole del territorio tuderte dall’antichità al medioevo”, in Todi nel Medioevo (secoli VI–XIV): atti del XVI convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 10–15 ottobre 2009, Spoleto 2010, vol. I, pp. 193–290. Di Vito, M.A./Castaldo, N./de Vita., S./Bishop, J./Vecchio, G., “Human Colonization and Volcanic Activity in the Eastern Campania Plain (Italy) between the Eneolithic and Late Roman Periods”, Quaternary International 303 (2013), 132–41. Forni, G., “Dall’agricoltura dei Goti a quella italiana al tempo dei Goti”, in Teoderico il grande e i Goti d’Italia: atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto Medioevo, Milano, 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993, pp. 679–720. Francovich, R./Hodges, R., Villa to Village: The Transformation of the Roman Countryside in Italy, c. 400–1000, London 2003. Fulford, M., “Economic Hotspots and Provincial Backwaters: Modelling the Late Roman Economy”, in C.E. King/D.G. Wigg (eds.), Coin Finds and Coin Use in the Roman World: The Thirteenth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, 25.–27.3.1993, A NATO Advanced Research Workshop (Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 10), Berlin 1996, pp. 153–77.

292

Grey

Grey, C., “Contextualizing colonatus: The origo of the Late Roman Empire”, Journal of Roman Studies 97 (2007), 155–75. ———, “Revisiting the ‘Problem’ of agri deserti in the Late Roman Empire”, Journal of Roman Archaeology 20 (2007), 362–76. ———, “Two Young Lovers: An Abduction Marriage and Its Consequences in FifthCentury Gaul”, Classical Quarterly 58.1 (2008), 286–302. ———, Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside, Cambridge 2011. ———, “Slavery in the Late Roman World”, in K. Bradley/P. Cartledge (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Slavery: The Ancient Mediterranean World, Cambridge 2011, pp. 482–509. ———, “Concerning Rural Matters”, in S. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, Oxford 2012, pp. 625–66. Guidoboni, E. (ed.), Catalogue of Ancient Earthquakes in the Mediterranean Area up to the 10th Century, trans. Brian Phillips, Rome 1994. Gunn, J.D. (ed.), The Years Without Summer; Tracing AD 536 and its Aftermath, London 2000. Hodges, R., “AD 536: The Year Merlin (Supposedly) Died”, in A.B. Mainwaring/ R. Giegengack/C. Vita-Finzi (eds.), Climate Crises in Human History, Philadelphia 2010, pp. 73–84. Hodges, R. et al., “Excavations at Vacchereccia (Rocchetta Nuova): A Later Roman and Early Medieval Settlement in the Volturno Valley, Molise”, Papers of the British School at Rome 52 (1984), 148–94. Humfress, C., “Cracking the Codex: Late Roman Legal Practice in Context”, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 49.1 (2006), 241–54. Juneja, M./Mauelshagen, F., “Disasters and Pre-industrial Societies: Historiographic Trends and Comparative Perspectives”, The Medieval History Journal, 10 (2007), 1–31. Kokowski, A., “The Agriculture of the Goths between the First and Fifth Centuries AD”, in S.J. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 221–48. Koptev, A., “The Colonate in the Theodosian Code and its Interpretation in the Breviary of Alaric”, in J-J. Aubert/P. Blanchard (eds.), Droit, religion et société dans le Code Théodosien (Troisièmes Journées d’Etude sur le Code Théodosien Neuchâtel, 15–17 février 2007, Geneva 2007, pp. 261–85. Lafferty, S.D.W., Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge 2013. Lewit, T., ““Vanishing Villas”: What Happened to Élite Rural Habitations in the West in the 5th—6th C?” Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003) 260–74. Lindell, M.K., “Disaster Studies”, Sociopedia.isa (2011): (http://www.sagepub.net/isa/ resources/pdf/disaster%20studies.pdf).

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

293

Lizarralde, G./Valladares, A./Olivera, A./Bornstein, L./Gould, K./Duyne Barenstein, J., “A Systems Approach to Resilience in the Built Environment: The Case of Cuba”, Disasters 39.s1 (2014), s76–s95. Loseby, S., “The Mediterranean Economy”, in P. Fouracre (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 1: 500–700, Cambridge 2005, pp. 605–38. Luterbacher, J./et al., “A Review of 2000 Years of Paleoclimatic Evidence in the Mediterranean”, in P. Lionello (ed.), The Climate of the Mediterranean Region from the Past to the Future, Amsterdam 2012, pp. 87–185. McCormick, M., “What Climate Science, Ausonius, Nile Floods, Rye, and Thatch Tell Us about the Environmental History of the Roman Empire”, in W.V. Harris (ed.), The Ancient Mediterranean Environment between Science and History, Leiden 2013, pp. 61–88. McCormick, M./et al., “Climate Change during and after the Roman Empire: Reconstructing the Past from Scientific and Historical Evidence”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 43.2 (2012), 169–220. Marazzi, F., “The Destinies of the Late Antique Italies: Politico-economic Developments of the Sixth Century”, in W. Bowden/R. Hodges (eds.), The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution, and Demand, Leiden 1998, pp. 119–60. Mastrolorenzo, G./Palladino, D.M./Vecchio, G./Taddeucci, J., “The 472 AD Pollena Eruption of Somma-Vesuvius (Italy) and Its Environmental Impact at the End of the Roman Empire”, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 113 (2002), 19–36. Matthews, J., “Interpreting the Interpretationes of the Breviarium”, in R.W. Mathisen (ed.), Law, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2001, pp. 11–32. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. Motta, L., “I paesaggi di Volterra nel tardoantico”, Archeologia Medievale 24 (1997), 245–68. Neboit, R., “Les basses terrasses alluviales, témoins de l’occupation des sols. Italie méridionale, Sicile” in G. Noyé (ed.), Structures de l’habitat et occupation du sol dans les pays méditerranéens: les méthodes et l’apport de l’archéologie extensive, Rome/ Madrid 1988, pp. 401–5. Negrelli, C., “Le strutture del popolamento rurale tra IV e IX secolo in Emilia Romagna e nelle Venezie”, Antiquité Tardive, 21 (2013), 51–66. Noyé, G., “Social Relations in Southern Italy”, in S.J. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 183–202. Reigniez, P., “Histoire et techniques: l’outil agricole dans la periode du haut Moyen-Age (Ve–Xe siècle)”, in M. Barcelo/F. Sigaut (eds.), The Making of Feudal Agricultures?, Leiden 2004, pp. 121–30.

294

Grey

Rommelaere, C./Raepsaet, G., “Les techniques de traction animale: De l’Antiquité au Moyen Age”, in M. Barcelo/F. Sigaut (eds.), The Making of Feudal Agricultures?, Leiden 2004, pp. 33–120. Rottoli, M./Negri, S., “I resti vegetale carbonizzati”, in E. Giannichedda (ed.), FilatteriaSorano, Florence 1998, pp. 198–212. Ruggini, L., Economia e Società nell’ “Italia Annonaria”: Rapporti fra agricoltura e commercio dal IV al VI secolo d.C., Milan 1961. Saggioro, F., “Late Antique Settlement on the Plain of Verona”, in W. Bowden/ L. Lavan/C. Machado (eds.), Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside, Leiden 2004, pp. 505–34. Sarris, P., “The Justinianic Plague: Origins and Effects”, Continuity and Change 17 (2002), 169–82. Schenk, G.J., “Historical Disaster Research. State of Research, Concepts, Methods and Case Studies”, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 32.3(121) (2007), 9–31. Schipp, O., Der weströmische Kolonat von Konstantin bis zu den Karolingern (332 bis 861) (Studien zur Geschichtsforschung des Altertums 21), Hamburg 2009. Sirks, A.J.B.,“The Colonate in Justinian’s Reign”, Journal of Roman Studies 98 (2008), 120–43. Squatriti, P., “The Floods of 589 and Climate Change at the Beginning of the Middle Ages: An Italian Microhistory”, Speculum 85 (2010), 799–826. ———, “Riverains et rivaux dans l’Italie du haut Moyen Age”, in P. Fournier/S. Lavaud (eds.), Eaux et conflits dans l’Europe médiévale et modern: Actes des XXXIIe Journées Internationales d’Histoire de l’Abbaye de Flaran 8 et 9 octobre 2010, Broché 2012, pp. 137–48. ———, Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy: Chestnuts, Economy, and Culture, Cambridge 2013. Stathakopoulos, D.C., Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire: A Systematic Survey of Subsistence Crises and Epidemics, Aldershot 2004. Vaccaro, E., “An Overview of Rural Settlement in Four River Basins in the Province of Grosseto on the Coast of Tuscany (200 BC–AD 600)”, Journal of Roman Archaeology 21 (2008), 225–47. Valenti, M./Salvadori, F., “Animal Bones: Synchronous and Diachronic Distribution as Patterns of Socially Determined Meat Consumption in the Early and High Middle Ages in Central and Northern Italy”, in A. Pluskowski (ed.), Breaking and Shaping Beastly Bodies: Animals as Material Culture in the Middle Ages, Oxford 2007, pp. 170–88. van Dommelen, P., “Roman Peasants and Rural Organization in Central Italy: An Archaeological Perspective”, in E. Scott (ed.), Theoretical Roman Archaeology First Conference Proceedings, Avebury 1993, pp. 167–86.

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

295

Vera, D., “Proprietà terriera e società rurale nell’Italia gotica”, in Teoderico il grande e i Goti d’Italia: atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto Medioevo, Milano, 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993, pp. 133–66. Vitiello, M., Theodahad: A Platonic King at the Collapse of Ostrogothic Italy, Toronto 2014. Volpe, G., “Paesaggi e insediamenti rurali dell’Apulia tardoantica e altomedievale”, in id./M. Turchiano (eds.), Paesaggi e insediamenti rurali in Italia meridionale fra Tardoantico e Altomedioevo (Foggia 2004) (Atti del Seminario Tardoantico e Altomedieovo in Italia Meridionale 1), Bari 2005, pp. 299–314. Vuolanto, V., “Selling a Freeborn Child: Rhetoric and Social Realities in the Late Roman World”, Ancient Society 33 (2003), 169–207. Wickham, C.R., “Production, Distribution, and Demand”, in W. Bowden/R. Hodges (eds.), The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution, and Demand, Leiden 1998, pp. 279–92. ———, “Conclusioni”, in G.P. Brogiolo et al. (eds.), Dopo la fine delle ville: le campagne dal VI al IX secolo, Mantova 2005, pp. 351–4. ———, “The Development of Villages in the West, 300–900”, in J. Lefort/C. Morrisson/ J.-P. Sodini (eds.), Les Villages dans l’Empire byzantin (IVe—XVe siècle), Paris 2005, pp. 55–69. ———, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800, Oxford 2005. Wisner, B./Blaikie, P./Cannon, T./Davis, I., At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability, and Disasters, 2nd ed., London 2003.

CHAPTER 12

The Heroine and the Historian: Procopius of Caesarea on the Troubled Reign of Queen Amalasuentha Kate Cooper Introduction In the fifth book of his Wars, the Greek historian Procopius tells the sad story of how Italy spun out of control after the death of Theoderic, king of the Goths. His protagonist is a wise and beautiful queen, Amalasuentha, the late king’s only daughter. After her father’s death she is besieged by a parade of villains. One of them, her treacherous cousin, arranges for her to be murdered. Naturally, her death must be avenged. As Procopius told it, the story offered a perfect justification for the Roman emperor Justinian’s invasion of Italy shortly afterward, in the autumn of 535. It is worth paying close attention to how he shapes the tale of the Gothic queen’s downfall. It offers a stylized and at times unreliable witness to the events he recounts, and we will see below that the historian’s characterization of Amalasuentha’s death as casus belli may be one of the places where historical veracity is eclipsed by the narrative impulse. It is a choice with no little significance: it was Justinian’s invasion and not the comparatively tranquil Gothic kingdom that preceded it that destroyed the economic and social infrastructure of Roman Italy.1 Yet the episode also has real interest as a starting point for considering how gender coloured the problem of power in Ostrogothic Italy. Procopius’ account of the troubled reign of Amalasuentha offers a vivid illustration of the principle that ancient writers were often far more interested in the narrative power of a troubled heroine than in understanding the challenges faced by a historical woman. Elite women had significant opportunities to control political and cultural capital in Ostrogothic society, in part because of the centrality of marriage alliances in diplomacy and dynastic legitimacy. It goes without saying that these women faced distinctive challenges on account of their gender, but to say more than this requires an exercise in source criticism. 1  Lee, “Empire at War”, pp. 113–33, offers a useful assessment of the consequences of Justinian’s Italian campaign at pp. 125–8.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_013

The Heroine and the Historian

297

Procopius suggests that war between Ravenna and Constantinople was not inevitable. During his lifetime Theoderic had presided over a kingdom well integrated, both culturally and politically, with the Roman state. Indeed it had been at the emperor Zeno’s suggestion that Theoderic conquered Italy.2 Theoderic in turn had done everything in his power to ensure that Goths and Romans lived peaceably together in a society whose outstanding characteristic was civilitas: “He preserved the laws on a sure basis, he protected the land and kept it safe from the barbarians dwelling round about, and attained the highest possible degree of wisdom and manliness.”3 Procopius wants to establish a baseline of success against which the failure of Theoderic’s successors can be measured. “Although in name Theoderic was a usurper, yet in fact he was as truly an emperor as any who have distinguished themselves in this office from the beginning.”4 Theoderic had also thought carefully about the future. Looking ahead to old age and having no sons, he had educated his daughters well and married them carefully. For Amalasuentha he chose Eutharic, about whom little is known before his marriage. By 519 he had been accepted by both Theoderic and the emperor Justin as a worthy successor to her father’s crown. In the same year, Eutharic held the consulship jointly with Theoderic, and Amalasuentha produced a healthy son, Athalaric. But Eutharic died in 522 or 523 while their son was still small (see Figure 12.1 for a genealogy of the Amal family). Procopius nods to this background by mentioning that Amalasuentha’s husband was already dead when Theoderic himself died in 526. Now the well-being of the ten-year-old Athalaric, Amalasuentha’s son and Theoderic’s grandson, depended on his mother’s ability to rule on his behalf in a way that honoured her father’s legacy. She had already begun to raise the boy in a way befitting a Roman man of letters. But, Procopius tells us, she quickly earned the enmity of a powerful faction among the Gothic nobles, who wanted to steer the boy-king away from the book learning of his chosen tutors and towards the wholesome violence of the Gothic army. “For letters, they said, are far removed from manliness, and the teaching of old men results for the most part in a

2  Procopius, Wars 5.1, ed. Dewing. 3  Procopius, Wars 5.1.27: “δικαιοσύνης τε γὰρ ὑπερφυῶς ἐπεμελήσατο καὶ τοὺς νόμους ἐν τῷ βεβαίῳ διεσώσατο, ἔκ τε βαρβάρων τῶν περιοίκων τὴν χώραν ἀσφαλῶς διεφύλαξε, ξυνέσεώς τε καὶ ἀνδρίας ἐς ἄκρον μάλιστα.” 4  Procopius, Wars 5.1.29: “ἦν τε ὁ Θευδέριχος λόγῳ μὲν τύραννος, ἔργῳ δὲ βασιλεὺς ἀληθὴς τῶν ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ τιμῇ τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ηὐδοκιμηκότων οὐδενὸς ἧσσον, ἔρως τε αὐτοῦ ἔν τε Γότθοις καὶ Ἰταλιώταις πολὺς ἤκμασε, καὶ ταῦτα ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνθρωπείου τρόπου.”

298

FIGURE 12.1

Cooper

Genealogical chart of the Ostrogothic Amal family Chart by Kate Cooper

cowardly and submissive spirit.”5 It was the queen’s attempt to accommodate these critics that led to her allowing her control of her son’s education to be challenged. This, the historian suggests, was her first error. After some time the young king died, and the queen now made her second and fatal error. Instead of choosing a ranking Amal warrior to act as her protector and marrying him, she invited a classically educated male relative, her elderly cousin Theodahad, to act as her fraternal consort, ignoring clear evidence of his despicable character. Up to this point she had managed to contain the ambitions of the Gothic nobles and to invoke the prospect of the emperor Justinian’s wrath as a credible threat to her challengers. But Theodahad was able to outwit her and colluding with her enemies had her murdered. This in turn gave an opening to Justinian. According to Procopius the emperor saw it as no less than his duty to avenge the fallen queen. So he sent his general Belisarius to invade first Sicily and then the Italian mainland.6 In telling the story, Procopius differs remarkably from the Gothic memory of the same events. Jordanes made an abridgement of Cassiodorus’ lost Gothic 5  Procopius, Wars 5.2.12: “γράμματά τε γὰρ παρὰ πολὺ κεχωρίσθαι ἀνδρίας, καὶ διδασκαλίας γερόντων ἀνθρώπων ἔς τε τὸ δειλὸν καὶ ταπεινὸν ἀποκρίνεσθαι ἐκ τοῦ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον.” 6  Procopius, Wars 5.5.8–9.

The Heroine and the Historian

299

History in the early 550s,7 and in it he covers the whole period from the death of Theoderic to that of Amalasuentha in a few lines. In this, conflict between Amalasuentha and her Gothic subjects is not a theme; instead, Jordanes’ brief treatment merely indicates that the queen co-opted her cousin out of feminine modesty and respect for their kinship.8 This is not to say that we should dismiss the Greek historian’s account as pure invention. Procopius participated in Justinian’s Italian invasion as legal advisor and secretary to the general Belisarius,9 so his access to information was as good as anyone’s. But if Procopius is a well-informed witness, he is not necessarily a reliable one. A number of scholars have commented on his tendency to resort to recurrent ethnic and gender patterns10 to style his own view of events as natural and even inevitable. There is every reason to suspect that this is the case where the Gothic Wars are concerned. His account may reflect historical reality in the sense of the propaganda broadcast at the time of Justinian’s invasion, but it is certainly a stylized account of Amalasuentha’s situation, and of her eventual fate.

Amalasuentha’s Position After the Death of Theoderic (526–34)

At the time of her father’s death in 526, Amalasuentha’s position was dangerous but not without precedent. As in her father’s reign, the civil administration at Ravenna faced the difficult task of balancing its own concerns with the claims of the Senate in Rome and those of the allied government in Constantinople, and Amalasuentha quickly reconsidered her father’s strategy. In 523 Theoderic had imprisoned and executed his magister officiorum Boethius on a treason charge and Boethius had been replaced by Cassiodorus, whose letter-book, the Variae, survives. On her father’s death Amalasuentha seems to have restored relations with the Senate.11 But why was Amalasuentha not more successful in cultivating her own coalition of generals? Here Procopius is less helpful, since it is a question 7  On the date of and context of Jordanes, the classic studies are O’Donnell, “Aims of Jordanes”, pp. 223–40, and Goffart, Narrators of Barbarian History; for discussion of more recent contributions see Gillett, “Mirror of Jordanes”, pp. 392–408. 8  Jordanes, Getica 59, ed. Mommsen. 9  Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century, p. 8. 10  Brubaker, “Sex, Lies, and Textuality”, pp. 83–101, with Kaldellis, Secret History, pp. lii–lv, and Ziche, “Abusing Theodora”, pp. 311–23. 11  Moorhead, “Culture and Power”, pp. 112–22, at pp. 116–17.

300

Cooper

which pulls against his own reading of the episode. Although he praises the queen’s administrative virtues—“wisdom and regard for justice”12—he frames her interaction with her rivals in essentially domestic terms. The queen’s allies, Procopius tells us, were “three among the old men of the Goths whom she knew to be prudent and refined above all the others”13 whom she appointed to live with her son. One imagines that these men were experienced civil officials, but as Procopius tells the story there is a whiff of a boy being held back from military training to keep company with women and old men. Amalasuentha’s position at the time of her father’s death was in principle reasonably strong, since ruling as regent on behalf of a son was a comparatively well-established position. Meghan McEvoy has shown that across the 4th and 5th centuries royal mothers and sisters were able, by working closely with trusted generals, to establish long and often stable regimes in the name of child emperors.14 When his father Arcadius died in 408, for example, the Roman emperor Theodosius II had only recently turned seven; he survived, and reigned for forty-two years. In his Variae, Cassiodorus invoked another exemplary regency, that of Galla Placidia for Valentinian III, who was six at his accession in 425.15 Placidia faced circumstances at least as daunting as Amalasuentha’s, but she was able to play the rivalry between her generals, Aetius and Bonifatius, to her son’s advantage.16 So a great deal was at stake in the education of Athalaric. Procopius suggests that a faction among the nobles tried to distance Amalasuentha from her son, and this has the ring of truth to it. To male aristocrats who had the military credentials she lacked this may well have seemed the ideal field in which to challenge the queen’s authority. Yet Procopius chooses to see this struggle for authority through a domestic rather than a political lens. This framing colours the incident that he identifies as the trigger for Amalasuentha’s loss of control of Athalaric: “On one occasion the mother, finding the boy doing some wrong in his chamber, chastised him; and he in tears went off thence to the men’s apartments. And some Goths who met him made a great to-do about this.”17 Now 12  Procopius, Wars 5.2.3: “ξυνέσεως μὲν καὶ δικαιοσύνης ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐλθοῦσα.” 13  Procopius, Wars 5.2.7: “τρεῖς τε ἀπολεξαμένη τῶν ἐν Γότθοις γερόντων οὕσπερ ἠπίστατο μᾶλλον ἁπάντων ξυνετούς τε καὶ ἐπιεικεῖς εἶναι.” 14  McEvoy, Child Emperor Rule. 15  Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1, ed. Mommsen. 16  On Cassiodorus’ comparison of Amalasuentha to Galla Placida, see Fauvinet-Ranson, “Portrait d’une regent”, pp. 267–308, and Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 47–51. 17  Procopius, Wars 5.2.9: “καί ποτε ἡ μὲν μήτηρ ἁμαρτάνοντά τι ἐν τῷ κοιτῶνι τὸν παῖδα λαβοῦσα ἐρράπισε: καὶ ὃς δεδακρυμένος ἐς τὴν ἀνδρωνῖτιν ἐνθένδε ἀπῆλθε.”

The Heroine and the Historian

301

Amalasuentha’s enemies found their opportunity. Procopius breezes past the substance of the conflict, downplaying the evidence that an ongoing struggle for control was in play. He suggests that they charged Amalasuentha of trying to poison her son, “to put the boy out of the world as quickly as possible, in order that she might marry a second husband and with him rule over the Goths and Italians”.18 But the historian guides the reader away from the poisoning charge and towards the problem of Athalaric’s upbringing. Rather than trying her for treason, he suggests, “the notable men among them gathered together, and coming before Amalasuentha made the charge that their king was not being educated correctly from their point of view nor to his own advantage”.19 It is here that Procopius offers a summary of their comments mentioned above on the contrast between barbarian ‘manliness’ and the ‘cowardly and submissive spirit’ conferred by literacy. Procopius concludes the passage with a speech in which the Gothic nobles address Amalasuentha: “Therefore, O Queen . . . give to Athalaric some men of his own age to be his companions, who will pass through the period of youth with him and thus give him an impulse toward that excellence which is in keeping with the custom of barbarians.”20 Considering the conflict from the point of view of Amalasuentha’s critics, it is not impossible that the young companions were intended to protect the boy from attempts on his life. But this is not how Procopius tells the story. To the contrary, he suggests, it was the wild behaviour of the young soldiers themselves that led Athalaric to his downfall: first to drunkenness, and then to illness and finally death.

Amalasuentha’s Dilemna

By the time her son died in 534, Procopius tells us, Amalasuentha’s conflict with her challengers had escalated dramatically. The queen had arranged for three of her most influential enemies to be murdered, and there was every 18  Procopius, Wars 5.2.10: “Γότθοι δὲ αὐτῷ ἐντυχόντες δεινὰ ἐποιοῦντο καὶ τῇ Ἀμαλασούνθῃ λοιδορούμενοι ἰσχυρίζοντο βούλεσθαι] αὐτὴν τὸν παῖδα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀφανιεῖν ὅτι τάχιστα, ὅπως αὐτὴ ἑτέρῳ ἀνδρὶ ἐς κοίτην ἐλθοῦσα Γότθων τε καὶ Ἰταλιωτῶν ξὺν αὐτῷ ἄρχοι.” 19  Procopius, Wars 5.2.11: “ξυλλεγέντες τε, ὅσοι δὴ ἐν αὐτοῖς λόγιμοι ἦσαν, καὶ παρὰ τὴν Ἀμαλασοῦνθαν ἐλθόντες ᾐτιῶντο οὐκ ὀρθῶς σφίσιν οὐδὲ ᾗ ξυμφέρει τὸν βασιλέα παιδεύεσθαι.” 20  Procopius, Wars 5.2.17: “ ‘Οὐκοῦν, ὦ δέσποινα . . . παιδαγωγοὺς μὲν τούτους χαίρειν τανῦν ἔα, σὺ δὲ Ἀταλαρίχῳ ὁμοδιαίτους ἥλικάς τινας δίδου, οἵπερ αὐτὸν τὰ ἐς τὴν ἡλικίαν ξυνακμάζοντες ἐς τὴν ἀρετὴν κατά γε τὸν βάρβαρον νόμον ὁρμήσουσι.’ ” On the rhetoric of Gothic manliness, see Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 133–41.

302

Cooper

reason to think that their allies would retaliate.21 What made her choose her elderly cousin Theodahad as an ally in this situation? She was well aware of his failings, since his neighbours in Tuscany had brought him to her for judgement for violent and unlawful actions, including wrongfully seizing both private and crown land.22 We come now to the central question: Why did Amalasuentha choose Theodahad as her partner after the death of Athalaric in October 534? Theodahad was known for his love of letters rather than his military prowess, and there was no shortage of noble Goths with strong military credentials whom Amalasuentha could have married or otherwise cultivated as allies.23 It should be noted that marriage was not her only option. Ostrogothic royal women were capable of acting as political and even military players in their own right, though it was certainly a high-risk strategy. A case in point is Amalafrida, sister of Theoderic and mother of Amalasuentha’s future consort Theodahad, who went to Africa in 500 to marry to the Vandal king Thrasamund.24 Procopius tells us that Amalafrida received the strategic Sicilian city of Lilybaeum as a wedding gift, and when she arrived in Africa for her marriage she was accompanied by an entourage of 1000 Gothic nobles and 5000 Gothic soldiers in addition.25 On Thrasamund’s death in 523, Amalafrida may have tried to put her forces into play against Thrasamund’s successor Hilderic. According to Procopius himself, the queen was accused of plotting a revolt against the new Vandal king.26 Whether the accusation was true or false, it reflects a contemporary perception that it would have been plausible for her to do so. In the end, however, she was captured and died in prison.27 Amalasuentha had inherited a number of allies as a result of the marriage diplomacy of her father Theoderic, though by the time of his death many of his alliances had lapsed or been overturned. During the early years of his reign Theoderic had sought alliances with as many of the other post-Roman kingdoms of the former western empire as possible. Through her mother Audofleda, the sister of Clovis I, Amalasuentha could in theory hope to claim support from the Franks, while the Visigothic king Amalaric was the son of Theodegotha, one of Amalasuentha’s two older half-sisters by an anonymous 21  Procopius, Wars 5.3. 22  Procopius, Wars 6.1. 23  On the options open to Amalasuentha at the death of her son, see Vitiello, Theodahad, 59–65. 24  Conant, Staying Roman, pp. 38–40. 25  Procopius, Wars 3.8.12–13. 26  Procopius, Wars 3.9.3–8. 27  Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 295–6.

The Heroine and the Historian

303

Moesian concubine. Her cousin Amalaberga was queen of Thuringia, having married its ruler Hermanfrid.28 The marriages of Audofleda to Theoderic and of Amalasuentha’s half-­ sister Ostrogotho to Sigismund of Burgundy had taken place around the time of the Burgundian king Chilperic’s death in 493, as the emerging Frankish, Ostrogothic, and Burgundian rulers sought to establish a stable balance of power. (The Frankish Clovis also married the Burgundian princess Clothild around this time.) Once established, these alliances only had value as long as those who valued them were alive and in a position to exert influence. The balance of power was unstable and the lifespans of the parties to agreements were often short. All three of Theoderic’s sons-in-law predeceased him, and by the time of his death in 526 a number of his alliances were no longer in force. An alliance with the Vandals had been settled in 500 when King Thrasamund married Theoderic’s sister Amalafrida, but after Thrasamund’s death in 523 Amalafrida came into open conflict with his successor Hilderic. Similarly, Ostrogotho had married Sigismund in the mid 490s, and up to the time of Amalasuentha’s marriage in 515 Theoderic was able to suggest to Sigismund that he and Ostrogotho might produce an heir to the Ostrogothic kingdom.29 Yet in 522, after Ostrogotho’s death, Sigismund put their son Sigiric to death as a threat to his own power;30 Sigismund himself was deposed and killed not long afterward.31 Amalasuentha’s own marriage to her father’s protégé Eutharic was informed by a different strategy, that of marrying a daughter to a powerful general or potential heir.32 This was a practice in wide currency by the Roman emperors in the years leading up to Theoderic’s reign. In 467 the Emperor Anthemius married his daughter Alypia to the magister militum Ricimer, while in 479 the Emperor Zeno offered the hand of Anicia Juliana, daughter of the short-lived western emperor Probus and granddaughter of Valentinian III, to Theoderic himself.33 At its most effective, kinship diplomacy allowed dynasties to survive in the face of adverse circumstances. A son-in-law could step in as a potential heir if a son was missing and a grandson had not yet come of age. Daughters could serve to bind promising young men to ageing mentors, a strategy which 28  The centrality of marriage diplomacy in this period has often been noticed, e.g. by Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, and more recently, Herrin, Unrivalled Influence. 29  Shanzer, “Two Clocks and a Wedding”, pp. 225–58. 30  On this episode see Wood, “Clermont and Burgundy”, pp. 119–25. 31  Gregory of Tours, Histories 3.5, ed. Krusch/Levinson. 32  On the examples that follow see MacGeorge, Late Roman Warlords, pp. 235–9. 33  Malchus of Philadelphia, pp. 401–62.

304

Cooper

Eleanor Searle dubbed ‘predatory kinship’.34 They could also serve as pledges of loyalty in alliances between rulers. Certainly, if she chose marriage, the queen held a powerful card in her capacity as the principal unmarried woman of the royal household. But it was a card one wanted to be very careful about using, since it would almost certainly displace the queen from her position as head of the royal family. The 5th-century empress Pulcheria offered an outstanding example of canny use of the marriage option, first sidestepping the expectation of marriage and then using it on her own terms. By professing herself as a virgin of the church, Pulcheria had fended off suitors in the years following her father’s death in 408. Many years later, in 450 when she was fifty-one, her brother Theodosius II died. At this point she was able to put her potential as a source of basileia to good use, on terms very different to those she might have commanded as a child bride. After extracting a promise from the general Marcian for him to respect her virginity she married him, which allowed her to control the succession at her brother’s death.35 Later sources claimed that Theodosius had chosen Marcian from his deathbed, but modern scholarship tends to see the match as Pulcheria’s own choice, with the story of her brother’s deathbed instructions a cover story.36 Placing a daughter in a potentially hostile household was a gesture of calculated vulnerability. This is especially true in that the brides were sometimes very young indeed. The bride’s position can helpfully be compared to that of a male child hostage, since her presence could strengthen the relationship between two houses, but she was at risk of harm if the parties to the alliance broke faith.37 A particularly gruesome story about the vulnerability of diplomatic brides can be found in the Getica composed by Jordanes some years after Amalasuentha’s death. It concerns an unnamed Visigothic princess, the daughter of an earlier Theoderic (who reigned over the Visigoths from 418 to 451). This princess was sent to Carthage to marry Huneric, son of the Vandal king Geiseric. Initially the match was successful and it produced more than one child. But some years into the marriage Huneric began to mistreat his wife and their children. He accused her of trying to poison him, maimed her by cut34  Searle, Predatory Kinship. 35  Holum, Theodosian Empresses, p. 208. 36  On Pulcheria see Cooper, “Empress and Theotokos”, pp. 39–51. 37  On child hostages see Lee, “Role of Hostages”, pp. 366–74. Kosto, “Transformation of Hostageship”, pp. 265–82 notes that this period sees the development of multi-directional hostage exchange.

The Heroine and the Historian

305

ting off her nose and ears, and sent her back to her father.38 A motive for this treatment may be deduced from other sources: in 442 Huneric’s father Geiseric made a treaty with the western emperor Valentinian III and sent Huneric as hostage to the Roman court. Shortly afterward Huneric was betrothed to Eudocia, the emperor’s daughter.39 This was an alliance with far-reaching consequences: decades later in 523, when he as an old man, Eudocia’s son Hilderic inherited the Vandal throne. A striking case from an earlier period but known to Procopius is that of the empress Justina (d. ca. 391). In her childhood, Justina was married to the usurper Magnentius (r. 350–3), and after his death she became the second wife of the emperor Valentinian (d. 375). She was the mother of the child emperor Valentinian II—who ruled from 375, when he came to power at age four, to 392—and of three daughters: Justa, Grata, and Galla. The Arian Justina is famous for her conflict with the Catholic bishop Ambrose of Milan in the 380s, when her son’s court was settled in that city.40 But a somewhat less wellknown episode sheds light on Justina’s expertise as a deal-broker. In 387, when the usurper Maximus invaded Italy, Valentinian fled to the protection of the eastern emperor Theodosius, in Thessalonica.41 According to the early 6thcentury Greek historian Zosimus, Justina now saw her opportunity. “Knowing Theodosius’ amorous proclivities, she set before him her extremely goodlooking daughter Galla, grasped him by the knees, and besought him not to let go unavenged the death of Gratian . . . (while saying this she pointed to the maiden, who was tearfully bewailing her fate)”.42 Once Theodosius had taken the bait and asked to marry Galla, Justina set her terms: “She insisted that she would give her to him only on condition that he make war on Maximus, avenge Gratian’s death, and restore Valentinian to his father’s empire.”43

38  Jordanes, Getica 36; 184. 39  The episode is discussed by Merrills/Miles, Vandals, p. 113. 40  The classic treatment of this conflict, written of course from Ambrose’s point of view, is Persecution of Justina 11. 41  Oost, “Count Gildo and Theodosius”, pp. 27–30. 42  Zosimus, New History 4.44: “ἐπισταμένη τὸ Θεοδοςίον περὶ τὰς ἐρωτικάς ἐπιθυμίας ἐπιρρεπές, ἐφιςτᾷ τε τὴ θυγατέρα Γἀλλαν ἐξαιςίῳ διαπρέποθσαν κάλλει, καὶ τῶν γονάτωω ἐπιλαβομένη τοῦ βασιλέως ἱκέτεθε μήτε τὸω Γρατιανοῦ τοῦ δεδωκότος οἱ τὴω βασιλείαν θάνατον περιδεῖν ἀτιμώρητον. . . καὶ ταῦτα λέγουσα τὴν κόρην ὀδυρομἐνην ἐδεικνθ καὶ τὴν ἑαυτῆς ἀποκλαίουσαν τύχην.” 43  Zosimus, New History 4.44: “οὐκ ἄλλως δὲ ἔφασκε δὠσειν, εἰ μὴ τὸν κατὰ Μαξίμου ἀράμενος τῇ τε Γρατιανοῦ τιμωρήσειεν ἀναιρέσει καὶ Οὐαλεντινιανῷ πάλιν ἀποδοίη τὴν τοῦ πατροὸς βασιλείαν.”

306

Cooper

To be sure, this vision of Justina as a master manipulator is a character sketch rather than a source of unbiased information. As Zosimus tells the story, the episode is meant to highlight the moral weakness of Theodosius in contrast to the cunning of Justina.44 And it is not clear how accurately the historian reflects the account of his source, Justina’s contemporary Eunapius. What is certain is that the narrative reflects Greek attitudes in Amalasuentha’s lifetime, since Zosimus was writing in Constantinople during the middle years of Theoderic’s reign. Zosimus offers us an idea of what Amalasuentha’s contemporaries thought was plausible, their sense of the kind of intervention a royal woman might reasonably aim at under the right circumstances. Justina probably had more than one reason for offering her daughter Galla to Theodosius rather than seeking to marry him herself. Age may have played a part. Zosimus mentions the mother’s extraordinary beauty, but she seems to have been older than Theodosius (b. 347). She was married to her first husband Magnentius in 350 or 351 so she must have been twelve (the legal age for Roman marriage) by then, though the 7th-century chronicler John of Antioch says that she was too young to bear children at the time of the marriage.45 In the summer of 387 she was probably in her late forties, while Theodosius turned forty in January of that year. Galla, by contrast, was born some time between 360 and 375, so in the summer of 387 she was in her teens or twenties, at the peak of marriageability. But age was not necessarily a barrier: we have already seen that the empress Pulcheria was fifty-one when she married the general Marcian. Justina’s proposal of Galla as a bride for Theodosius may also have reflected a preference. The position of behind-the-scenes broker and negotiator was in all likelihood more powerful than that of bride; it was certainly less exposed. Like Justina, Amalasuentha had another valuable asset to work with in her daughter Matasuentha. Her age is not known, but she must have been born between 517 (her brother Athalaric having been born the year before) and 523 (the year after her father’s death). So at her brother’s death in 534 she was between eleven and seventeen, the peak age of marriageability. In 537 Matasuentha married the powerful general Witigis, who was crowned king of the Ostrogoths following the death in 536 of Amalasuentha’s consort and murderer Theodahad. Witigis was a well-known figure in the royal entourage: he

44  On the motif of womanly influence see Cooper, “Insinuations of Womanly Influence”, pp. 150–64, with Joshel, “Female Desire and the Discourse of Empire”, pp. 50–82. 45  J. Ant. Frag. 187.

The Heroine and the Historian

307

had served as spatharius or sword-bearer to Athalaric and afterward as armiger or commander of the bodyguard for Theodahad.46 One wants to know more about relations between Witigis and Amalasuentha. We know that he was sword-bearer to Athalaric, but we do not know who appointed him. What was his relationship to the military youths placed in the household of Athalaric after Amalasuentha’s face-off with her enemies? Was he a protégé of Amalasuentha, to whom Matasuentha had been promised to seal his loyalty to the queen? This kind of promise was not unusual. But in this case, his acceptance by Theodahad after the queen’s death would need to be explained, since Theodahad was widely believed to have ordered her murder. It is likely that Witigis was an ally of Amalasuentha’s enemies, since Procopius mentions that when Matasuentha married him she did so “much against her will”.47 In this case his service to Amalasuentha’s enemy Theodahad would seem entirely natural, and his marriage to Matasuentha after her mother’s death would seem to represent the final triumph of Amalasuentha’s enemies. Still, we cannot exclude the possibility that here, too, Procopius is tailoring his evidence to suit an imperial agenda, since by the time the Wars was written, Witigis was dead and Matasuentha had remarried. This time the groom was Justinian’s own cousin Germanus.

The ‘Eye’ of Procopius

Cristina La Rocca has suggested that Amalasuentha’s choice of a non-marital partnership was an attempt to directly address the loss of standing that the acquisition of a husband would imply, and that in doing so she was seeking to create a rhetorical framework that pushed against the gender assumptions of her society. The reasoning was that she and her cousin would rule together “not because they are married, with power descending from the man to the woman through their sexual intimacy, but because the woman, already in power, has chosen the man to become not her husband, but instead her political partner.”48 In this, she had created an exception to the accepted pattern of sexual hierarchy. It was a high-risk strategy.

46  Jordanes, Getica 60, with discussion in Amory, People and Identity, pp. 161–2. 47  Procopius, Wars 5.11.27: “καὶ ἐπεὶ ἐνταῦθα ἀφίκετο, Ματασοῦνθαν τὴν Ἀμαλασούνθης θυγατέρα, παρθένον τε καὶ ὡραίαν ἤδη οὖσαν, γυναῖκα γαμετὴν οὔτι ἐθελούσιον ἐποιήσατο, ὅπως δὴ βεβαιοτέραν τὴν ἀρχὴν ἕξει τῇ ἐς γένος τὸ Θευδερίχου ἐπιμιξίᾳ.” 48  La Rocca, “Consors Regni”, pp. 134–5.

308

Cooper

To Procopius, if Amalasuentha’s respect for the classical tradition of learning made her a wise and just ruler, it was a weakness in a partner. The historian characterizes Theodahad’s romanitas dismissively as a lack of barbarian manliness. According to La Rocca, “For Amalasuentha, romanitas is connected to her respect for the emperor and for Roman culture . . . whereas for Theodahad it becomes, instead, a lack of masculinity: his ignorance of military virtues, his preference for otium, and his greed show the ‘dark side’ of romanitas as an incapacity for ruling.”49 Ironically, it is largely by drawing on Procopius that modern scholars have evidenced the high literacy of Amal women by contrast to the martial culture of the highly militarized Gothic men. Though there may be some truth to the idea,50 Procopius has shaped how we perceive his material. But among La Rocca’s most interesting suggestions is the point that unlike Procopius both Amalasuentha and Cassiodorus saw value rather than weakness in her choice of a partner steeped in the Roman ideal of literacy. Four letters preserved in Cassiodorus’ Variae—two each in the names of Amalasuentha (10.1 and 10.3) and Theodahad (10.2 and 10.4), respectively51—provide evidence of a coordinated effort by (or on behalf of) the two cousins to announce their new partnership after the death of Athalaric, both to the Roman Senate and to the emperor Justinian himself.52 The formal statements made at the time of the alliance present the wisdom and learning of Theodahad as anything but a sign of weakness or effeminacy. Ostrogothic royal women were known for their learning53 to be sure, but this did not mean that a man should be illiterate. Rather, it was a claim to continuity with the classical tradition of the just ruler, and an echo of the value placed on literacy by Theoderic himself. Frankforter has warned that the historian’s view of the Gothic queen “as a pawn in a game played by men”54 erases the historical actor in favour of a literary heroine. We are encouraged to see her “not as a protagonist in political maneuvers but as the loser in a private struggle between women for a personal prize, the love of a powerful man.”55 If Procopius sees Amalasuentha as a wise 49  La Rocca, “Consors Regni”, p. 140; on the opposition between civilitas and manliness see M.E. Stewart, “Contests Of Andreia”, pp. 21–54, and Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Restoration, pp. 121–41. 50  Vitiello, Theodahad, pp. 46–7. 51  La Rocca, “Consors Regni”, pp. 127–43. 52  Krautschick, Cassiodor gives Cassiodorus much credit for the policies (and rhetoric) of Amalasuentha’s regency and reign. Analysis along the lines opened by La Rocca may prove valuable in shedding light on the problem of authorship. 53  Vitiello, “Nourished at the Breast of Rome”, pp. 398–412. 54  Frankforter, “Amalasuntha”, pp. 41–57, at p. 42. 55  Frankforter, “Amalasuntha”, p. 42.

The Heroine and the Historian

309

and just ruler, he nonetheless takes every opportunity to present her as a helpless heroine. The historian achieves this, Frankforter argues, by looking for love interest and for rivalry among women wherever he can find it. He thus identifies the empress Theodora as the culprit behind Amalasuentha’s murder, suggesting that the empress encouraged Theodahad to kill Amalasuentha by indicating that her husband Justinian would turn a blind eye if he did so. Having indicated the method, the historian also offers a motive. Theodora, he suggests, was made jealous by the possibility that the Gothic queen might replace her as empress.56 The view of Theodora here is consistent with Procopius’ more sustained treatment in the Secret History.57 Frankforter brings evidence from the contemporary letter-book of Cassiodorus to show that the charge may have contained a distorted element of truth. Theodora was indeed in correspondence with Theodahad’s wife Gudelina around the time of Amalasuentha’s murder.58 Theodahad seems to have underestimated the danger that Justinian would seize on any harm done to Amalasuentha as a pretext for invading Italy, and it is not impossible that Theodora and Gudelina played a role in leading him to make this mistake. But it is unlikely that their motive was one of romance or sexual jealousy. It is more likely, Frankforter suggests, that the wives of Theodahad and Justinian were serving as a back channel for their husbands’ efforts to second-guess one another’s intentions. In other words, the murder of Amalasuentha was the result of a cat-andmouse game in which tension between the Goths and Romans over territorial control spun out of control thanks to rivarly within the Amal family over who would rule the Goths. On this reading, the queen tried and failed to establish a new coalition strong enough to fend off the eastern empire’s westward expansion. At the same time her cousin Theodehad in his ambition fell prey to a trap laid by the emperor and his wife. If this reading is correct, then Procopius is more than a little disingenuous in portraying Amalasuentha as a loyal ally of Rome whose murder left Justinian no honourable alternative other than to invade Italy. Indeed Procopius may be trying to draw a veil over the fact that the queen in fact died trying to defend Italy from Justinian’s predatory interest in the western territories.

56  Procopius, Secret History 16.5, with Frankforter, “Amalasuntha”, pp. 49–50. 57  Kaldellis, Secret History, p. liii, suggests that Procopius’ Amalasuentha may even be intended as an “anti-Theodora”. 58  Frankforter, “Amalasuntha”, p. 50.

310

Cooper

Toward the end of the 6th century, Gregory of Tours remembered a very different version of Amalasuentha’s downfall.59 In his version, the queen took as her lover a slave called Traguila (the name is spelled variously in the manuscripts) after her father’s death. This led to conflict between Amalasuentha and her widowed mother Audofleda, the sister of the late king Clovis of the Franks.60 The mother rejected the union as unworthy of her daughter’s nobile genus, suggesting that she marry someone more appropriate to her own rank. When Amalasuentha refused to listen, the widowed queen sent an army against Traguila and carried her daughter back to the palace. But soon afterward Amalasuentha worked her revenge by poisoning the Eucharistic chalice offered to her mother—the Arian Eucharist reserved a dedicated chalice to the royal family. After Audofleda died, her loyal servants called on Theodahad who arranged to have Amalasuentha killed in an overheated bath. The story does not appear in Jordanes, but it has many elements in common with the one told by Procopius.61 Shared elements include identification of Theodahad as Amalasuentha’s murderer, an accusation against Amalasuentha as a poisoner, and a hovering sense that the queen’s most dangerous weapon was her marriageability. In short, like Procopius, Gregory sees Amalasuentha through the lens of family drama rather than considering her success or failure in building her own coalition of generals and ministers. What else can we learn from the shared elements? To begin with, consider the poison. Both writers remember Amalasuentha’s enemies as accusing her of using or trying to use it to dispense with an inconvenient family member, though Procopius remembers the victim as her son, while for Gregory it is her mother. Because of its association with intimacy, poisoning is the perfect crime to pin on a royal woman—we have seen this above with the anonymous Gothic wife of the Vandal prince Huneric.62 But the fact that poisoning involves secrecy means that it is a crime that implies weakness. Second, Procopius and Gregory both indicate that Amalasuentha was a target of sexual speculation. Is it possible that a kernel of truth is hidden in the story of Traguila? John Moorhead has suggested that Gregory’s story was in fact 59  Gregory of Tours, Histories 3.31. 60  The episode receives brief but illuminating treatment in Loseby, “Gregory of Tours”, pp. 462–97. 61  On the relationship between the two writers’ versions of the story see Joye/Knaepen, “L’image d’Amalasonthe”, pp. 229–57. 62  See Jones, Social Mobility in Late Antique Gaul, pp. 301–4, and Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines on charges of poisoning and enchantment against royal women in the writings of Gregory of Tours.

The Heroine and the Historian

311

a garbled version of the episode of Procopius concerning the conflict between Amalasuentha and her own son, and this is certainly not impossible.63 But there is another way of looking at the elements common to Gregory and Procopius. Bruno Krusch, the 19-century editor of Gregory’s Histories, noted the unstable spelling in manuscripts of the name of Amalasuentha’s lover, and suggested that the story almost certainly refers to Triwila, a grand chamberlain (praepositus cubiculi) attested by other sources.64 A 6th-century chronicle preserved in the Anonymus Valesianus mentions him as being in office during the consulate of Eutharic, Amalasuentha’s husband, in 519,65 and it is possible that Triwila still held this role when Amalasuentha took charge of the palace in 526. The role of chamberlain was characteristically that of a senior and highly trusted slave—indeed, chamberlains were often eunuchs. It is possible that the queen’s close relationship with the senior officer of her household was scrambled in memory, and enhanced with the memorable detail of an elopement. By contrast, it may have been a desire to foreclose speculation of this kind that motivated Procopius to characterize the men into whose care Amalasuentha gave her son as aged. In any case, the queen’s enemies were probably right to watch for signs that she intended to co-opt a male ally to serve as both husband and king. Why did she not do so? One possibility is that her family’s emphasis on Amal blood was a constraint—it is a qualification which Athalaric’s father Eutharic seems to have possessed, though in all likelihood it was manufactured on his behalf.66 But Amalasuentha herself could bring this qualification to any union. It is also possible that, like the empress Justina, Amalasuentha saw more danger than value in the gambit of taking a husband.

Conclusion: The Heroine and the Historian

Assessing the silences within our sources is always frustrating, but it is also valuable and it tends to be particularly important where story lines involving female players are concerned. Writers like Procopius and Gregory knew that borrowing literary motifs from ancient romance did much to enhance a narrative, and this kind of narrative styling could quite usefully serve to distract the reader’s attention from inconvenient facts or other problems. And of course 63  Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 118. 64  Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 118. 65  Anon. Vales. 14, ed. Rolfe. 66  Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals”, pp. 103–28.

312

Cooper

the figure of the imperilled heroine as the casus belli behind a military invasion was a literary conceit that reached back to Homer. This was certainly what Procopius found interesting in the case of Amalasuentha. She had reigned as a wise and fair queen for eight years he acknowledged, but his real interest was in her downfall. As he tells the story the eight-year struggle over who would control the young king’s education is collapsed into a single episode that leads directly into the fatal period between Athalaric’s death in October of 534 and Amalasuentha’s own in April of 535. The historian’s reasons are not difficult to discern. The queen’s death by her cousin’s treachery offers a narratively powerful turning point: the impetus for Byzantine westward expansion and the downfall of the Amal kingdom. Ironically, later historians have judged Justinian’s invasion of Italy as a turning point of a different kind. Still in the 9th century Agnellus of Ravenna remembered the resulting devastation of the Italian countryside.67 Indeed modern historians have identified the Gothic Wars as an episode from which the peninsula would not recover, and have argued that it is the invasion of reconquest in 535, not the abdication of Romulus Augustulus in 476 or some other date, that should be remembered as the event marking the end of the Roman Empire in Italy.68 This renders the silences of Procopius all the more disturbing. As a participant in Justinian’s invasion, Procopius had seen the devastation of Italy at first hand. But he offered no real assessment of the fate of the fallen kingdom, only the quiet suggestion that neither Amal blood nor Roman learning could have protected the kingdom—or its queen—from a regrettable but inevitable fate. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Ambrose of Milan, Persecution of Justina, in F. Homes Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose, Oxford 1935, 270–97. Anonymus Valesianus, ed. and trans. J.C. Rolfe, in Ammianus Marcellinus, vol. 3, Cambridge, MA 1952. Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894.

67  Agnellus, Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis 95. 68  Brown, Gentlemen and Officers, pp. 6–8.

The Heroine and the Historian

313

Gregory of Tours, Histories, ed. B. Krusch/W. Levinson, Gregorii Episcopi Turonensis Historiarum Libri X (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1.1), Hannover 1937. Jordanes, Getica, ed. T. Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 5), Berlin 1882. Malchus of Philadelphia, ed. and trans. R.C. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicizing Historians of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, Liverpool 1981. Procopius, Secret History, trans. H.B. Dewing, Procopius: Secret History (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge 1935. ———, Wars, trans. H.B. Dewing, History of the Wars, 5 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge 1914–28. Zosimus, Nova Historia, trans. J.J. Buchanan/H.T. Davis, Zosimus, Historia Nova: The Decline of Rome, San Antonio 1967.



Secondary Literature

Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554, Cambridge 1997. Arnold, J., Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, Cambridge 2014. Brown, T.S., Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy AD 554–800, Rome 1984. Brubaker, L., “Sex, Lies, and Textuality: The Secret History of Prokopios and the Rhetoric of Gender in Sixth-Century Byzantium,” in L. Brubaker and J. Smith (eds.), Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300–900, Cambridge 2004, pp. 83–101. Cameron, A., Procopius and the Sixth Century, London 1985. Conant, J.P., Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439–700, Cambridge 2012. Cooper, K., “Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy”, JRS 82 (1992), 150–64. ———, ‘Empress and Theotokos: Gender and Patronage in the Christolological Controversy’, in R.N. Swanson (ed.), The Church and Mary, Woodbridge, 2004, pp. 39–51. Daily, E.T., Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and the Women of the Merovingian Elite, Leiden 2015. Fauvinet-Ranson, V., “Portrait d’une regent: Une panégyrique d’Amalsonthe (Cassiodore, Variae 11, 1)”, Cassiodorus 4 (1998), 267–308. Frankforter, A.D., “Amalasuntha, Procopius and a Woman’s Place”, Journal of Women’s History 8 (1996), 41–57. Gillett, A., “The Mirror of Jordanes: Concepts of the Barbarian, Then and Now”, in P. Rousseau (ed.), A Companion to Late Antiquity, Chichester 2009, 392–408. Goffart, W., The Narrators of Barbarian History (AD 550–800), Princeton 1988.

314

Cooper

Greatrex, G., “Roman Identity in the Sixth Century”, in S. Mitchell and G. Greatrex (eds.), Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity, London 2000, pp. 267–92. Halsall, G., Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568, Cambridge 2007. Heather, P., “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals: Genealogy and the Goths under Hun Domination”, Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989), 103–28. ———, The Goths, Oxford 1996. Herrin, J., “In Search of Byzantine Women: Three Avenues of Approach”, in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of Women in Antiquity, Detroit 1983, pp. 167–89. ———, Unrivalled Influence: Women and Empire in Byzantium, Princeton 2013. Holum, K., Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity, Berkeley 1982. Homes Dudden, F., The Life and Times of St. Ambrose, Oxford 1935. Jones, A.E., Social Mobility in Late Antique Gaul: Strategies and Opportunities for the Non-Elite, Cambridge 2009. Joshel, S., “Female Desire and the Discourse of Empire”, Signs 21 (1995), 50–82. Joye, S./Knaepen, M., ‘L’image d’Amalasonthe chez Procope de Césarée et Grègoire de Tours: portraits contrastés entre orient et occident’, Moyen Âge, 111 (2005), 229–57. Kaldellis, A., Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History, and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity, Philadelphia 2004. ———, Procopius: The Secret History, Cambridge, MA 2010. Kosto, A., “The Transformation Of Hostageship In Late Antiquity”, Antiquité Tardive 21 (2013), 265–282. Krautschick, S., Cassiodor und die Politik seiner Zeit, Bonn 1983. La Rocca, C., “Consors regni: a problem of gender? The consortium between Amalasuntha and Theodahad in 534”, in P. Stafford, J. Nelson, S. Reynolds and S. Johns (eds.), Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages, London 2012, pp. 27–143. Lee, A.D., “The Role of Hostages in Roman Diplomacy with Sasanian Persia,” Historia 40 (1991), 366–74. ———, “The Empire at War”, in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge 2005, 113–33. Loseby, S.T., “Gregory of Tours, Italy and the Empire”, in A.C. Murray, A Companion to Gregory of Tours, Leiden forthcoming, 462–97. McEvoy, M.A., Child Emperor Rule in the Late Roman West, AD 367–455, Oxford and New York 2013. MacGeorge, P., Late Roman Warlords, Oxford 2002. Merrills, A./Miles, R., The Vandals, Oxford 2009. Moorhead, J., “Culture and Power among the Ostrogoths,” Klio 68 (1986), 112–122. ———, Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. O’Donnell, J.J., “The Aims of Jordanes”, Historia 31 (1982), 223–40. Oost, S.I., “Count Gildo and Theodosius the Great”, Classical Philology 57 (1962), 27–30.

The Heroine and the Historian

315

Searle, E., Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066, Berkeley & Los Angeles 1988. Shanzer, D., ‘Two Clocks and a Wedding: Theoderic’s Diplomatic Relations with the Burgundians’, Romanobarbarica 14 (1984), 225–58. Stewart, M.E., “Contests Of Andreia In Procopius’ Gothic Wars,” Parekbolai 4 (2014), 21–54. Vitiello, M., “ ‘Nourished at the Breast of Rome’: The Queens of Ostrogothic Italy and the Education of the Roman Elite,’ Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 149 (2006), 398–412. ———, Theodahad: A Platonic King at the Collapse of Ostrogothic Italy, Toronto 2014. Wemple, S.F., Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500–900, Philadelphia 1981. Whately, C., “Militarization, or the Rise of a Distinct Military Culture? The East Roman Elite in the 6th Century AD”, in S. O’Brien and D. Boatright (eds.), Warfare and Society in the Ancient Mediterranean: Papers arising from a colloquium held at the University of Liverpool, 13th June 2008, Oxford 2013, pp. 49–57. Wolfram, H., History of the Goths, trans. Thomas Dunlap, Berkeley 1999. Wood, I.N., “Clermont and Burgundy, 511–34”, Nottingham Medieval Studies 32 (1989), 119–25. Ziche, H., “Abusing Theodora: Sexual and Political Discourse in Procopius”, Βυζαντιακὰ 30 (2012–13), 311–323.

CHAPTER 13

Intellectual Culture and Literary Practices Natalia Lozovsky Introduction In a panegyric composed in 507, Ennodius, a learned Roman cleric of aristocratic descent, hailed Theoderic, the Gothic king of Italy, for restoring peace, prosperity, and the traditional culture of eloquence.1 Although Ennodius’ rhetoric should not be taken at face value, it reveals important things about his intellectual world. For Ennodius and his peers, eloquentia signified Roman civility and refinement, and an ability of their ruler to share their values gave them hope that their social and cultural milieu would remain the same. Literary sources of the time project an image of continuity, intentionally cultivated by late 5th- and 6th-century writers but also grounded to a certain degree in their experiences. While the economy and society of Italy continued to change under Ostrogothic rulers, the cultural hierarchies of the late Roman Empire appear to have remained the same and intellectual pursuits of the educated elite developed along the same lines as those of their earlier counterparts. The senatorial aristocracy retained its position of influence, service to Ostrogothic kings continued to provide opportunities similar to those open under late Roman emperors, and traditional education was still valued as a necessary prerequisite for a career in the royal administration or in the church.2 The peaceful decades of Ostrogothic rule in Italy, and especially the long reign of Theoderic (493–526), witnessed an intense literary activity. This chapter will focus on several aspects of the intellectual culture and literary practices * I thank Shane Bjornlie, Kristina Sessa, and Emily Albu and her students for their helpful comments and suggestions. 1  Ennodius, Panegyricus, especially 74–6, with a detailed commentary by Rota on pp. 400–5. Compare Anonymus Valesianus, 12.59–60; Procopius, History of the Wars, 5.1.26–9. On the ideology of restoration see, most recently, Arnold, Theoderic and the Imperial Restoration; also Heydemann’s chapter in this volume. 2  On Ostrogothic Italy and its culture see Moorhead, Theoderic; Moorhead, “Ostrogothic Italy”; Humphries, “Italy, AD 425–605”; Riché, Education and Culture; Momigliano, “Cassiodorus”; Polara, “Letteratura”; Hen, Roman Barbarians, pp. 27–58; Everett, Literacy, pp. 19–53.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_014

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

317

of the Roman elite in Ostrogothic Italy. I will begin by discussing the traditional education of this group and then turn to a survey of their intellectual interests and literary pursuits. Next I will address the philosophical culture of the period, and finally the ways in which the intellectuals of Ostrogothic Italy negotiated the balance between antique literary culture and Christian learning. Education The traditional Roman system of the liberal arts continued to function in Ostrogothic Italy. Ultimately going back to the ideals and practices of the classical Greek paideia adopted by the Roman world centuries earlier, late antique education became increasingly focused on developing literary knowledge and rhetorical skills. Available in its full extent only to members of the elite, secular education continued to provide Christian aristocratic families with a shared culture, sense of identity, and access to power.3 After learning the basics at home, children would usually begin their studies with a grammarian who taught them further reading and writing skills, correct pronunciation, and the beginnings of rhetorical composition. When students moved on to a rhetor’s school, they would continue reading and interpreting classical Latin texts. The auctores traditionally included Virgil (most often cited by 6th-century writers), Silius Italicus, Terence, and Ovid. Students also practised rhetorical exercises and gradually progressed to composing their own orations.4 Two men, a secular statesman and a cleric, both schooled in rhetoric, emphasized the importance of such studies for the next generation of young Romans. Cassiodorus, who for several decades served in the Ostrogothic administration, praised grammar in a letter he drafted on behalf of King Athalaric. The letter, addressed to the Roman senate, argued for increasing the salaries of the teachers of grammar and rhetoric. “The school of grammar has primacy”, Cassiodorus wrote, “it is the fairest foundation of learning, the

3  For broad surveys of classical and late antique education see Marrou, History of Education in Antiquity; Riché, Education and Culture; and, most recently, Cameron “Education and Literary Culture”; Browning, “Education in the Roman Empire”; Fontaine, “Education and Learning”, and Watts, “Education”. On education and power see especially Brown, Power and Persuasion; Heather, “Literacy and Power”; Everett, Literacy. On the adaptation of secular knowledge by Christians see also Rappe, “New Math”; Chin, Grammar and Christianity. 4  Watts, “Education”, pp. 469–70; Riché, Education and Culture, pp. 23–31 and 40, n. 161.

318

Lozovsky

glorious mother of eloquence”.5 Developing his argument further, he pointed out that such instruction had a deeper moral and practical dimension because it elevated the mind and imparted traditional wisdom: “Grammar is the mistress of words, the embellisher of the human race; through the practice of the noble reading of the ancient authors, she helps us, we know, by her counsels.”6 Finally, according to Cassiodorus, this learning defined the Romans as a civilized nation. An exclusive mark of civility, which set the Romans apart from barbarians, “rhetoric is found in sole obedience to the lords of the Romans”.7 Ennodius, another highly educated Roman who pursued a career in the church, also spoke highly of grammar and rhetoric as the subjects that formed the necessary foundation of liberal studies and fostered Roman morals and Christian virtues. In a short tract known as Paraenesis didascalica, Ennodius advised two young men, Ambrosius and Beatus, exhorting them to follow the path of faith and virtue. At the beginning of this path Ennodius placed Grammar and Rhetoric, calling the former the nursemaid and the latter the mother of the liberal arts: their task was to nurture young souls, preparing them for higher knowledge and directing them toward a virtuous life.8 Teachers of grammar and rhetoric enjoyed respect and social prestige. Ennodius highly praised Deuterius who taught grammar and rhetoric in Milan at the time when Ennodius was deacon there (ca. 496–513). In one of his rhetorical compositions, Ennodius described the occupation of the venerabilis magister as “the sign of liberty, the testimony to good blood, sharpening the minds, forging the senses”. In another, he hailed the grammarian as the “glory of Italy” and the “guardian of empire”.9

5  Cassiodorus, Variae 9.21.3, trans. Barnish, p. 122: “Prima enim grammaticorum schola est fundamentum pulcherrimum litterarum, mater gloriosa facundiae . . .” 6  Ibid., 9.21.4, trans. Barnish, p. 122: “Grammatica magistra verborum, ornatrix humani generis, quae per exercitationem pulcherrimae lectionis antiquorum nos cognoscitur iuuare consiliis.” 7  Ibid.: “sola reperitur eloquentia, quae Romanorum dominis obsecundat.” 8  Ennodius, Opusc. 6.11, p. 313 (Grammar): “istae tamen prae foribus quasi nutricem ceterarum anteponunt grammaticam.” Rhetoric: ibid., 17, p. 314: “poetica, iuris peritia, dialectica, arithmetica, cum me utantur quasi genetrice, me tamen adserente sunt pretio”; Relihan, Ancient Menippean Satire, pp. 164–75 (trans. on pp. 211–19); Kennell, Ennodius, pp. 163–4; Everett, Literacy, pp. 23–4; Marconi, “Istruzione laica”. 9  Ennodius, Opusc. 85 (Dict. 9), p. 113: venerabilis magister, libertatis index, boni testimonium sanguinis, ingeniorum lima, fabricator sensuum; Opusc. 208 (Carm. 2.90), p. 168: imperii custos; Opusc. 213 (Carm. 1.2), p. 170: decus Italiae. On grammarians in late antiquity see Kaster, Guardians of Language, especially pp. 30; 267–9; Chin, Grammar and Christianity.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

319

The fact that late antique education and culture were strongly oriented towards rhetoric and literature, which has often been emphasized by modern scholars, does not mean that other areas remained entirely neglected.10 Rather, literary knowledge served as a framework and foundation for learning about other subjects, both within and beyond the scope of the liberal arts. Thus Ennodius listed not only poetry, but also law, dialectic, and arithmetic among the disciplines nurtured by Rhetoric.11 In fact students would begin picking up information about a variety of things in the course of their studies with a grammarian or rhetor while reading and interpreting the auctores of the school curriculum. An understanding of Virgil, for instance, would require not only proficiency in Latin grammar and appreciation of the text’s literary qualities, but also some knowledge of Roman history, geography, and natural sciences. Virgilian commentaries, such as those attributed to Servius, contained explanations that went beyond purely literary properties of the text.12 Those who so wished could continue their education, pursuing studies of philosophy, law, or medicine. Under Theoderic, teachers of the latter two disciplines received salaries from the state, along with teachers of grammar and rhetoric.13 Although no direct evidence about education in law and medicine survives from Ostrogothic Italy, sources testify to the traditional importance of those professions. For instance, compiling a document such as the so-called Edictum Theoderici, which most modern scholars have attributed to Ostrogothic Italy, would have required a participation of experienced jurists trained in the Roman legal tradition. The same would be necessary for drawing up other edicts issued by Ostrogothic kings, which are mentioned by Cassiodorus.14 Medicine and its practitioners must also have been in demand and commanded respect. In a formula letter for the appointment of the supervising physician of the royal household (comes archiatrorum), Cassiodorus declared

10  Riché, Education and Culture, pp. 45–8 notes decline but also emphasizes the importance of encyclopedic erudition, pp. 41–3. 11  Ennodius, Opusc. 6.17, p. 314. 12  Geography provides a good example, see Gautier Dalché, “L’enseignement de la géographie dans l’antiquité tardive”. 13  As stated in Justinian’s Pragmatic Sanction of 554: Corpus iuris civilis, Novellae, Appendix 7.22; Riché, Education and Culture, p. 140; Vitiello, “Nourished at the Breast of Rome,” p. 403. 14  The most recent treatment is Lafferty, Law and Society: for dating, see pp. 22–46; for Cassiodorus, pp. 30–1; also Lafferty’s chapter in this volume.

320

Lozovsky

medicine to be among the most useful arts.15 Although he did not describe the course of medical training, he insisted that even after its completion doctors should continue to study, turning to the comes archiatrorum as their magister, reading books, and taking delight in ancient wisdom, for “to no one is diligent reading more appropriate than to him who deals with human health”.16 In his Institutions, a work that was completed in the post-Ostrogothic period but included earlier materials, Cassiodorus continued this line of thought, recommending that the monks of Vivarium study the Herbal of Dioscorides, as well as Latin translations of Hippocrates and Galen and other medical works.17 A number of Greek and Latin medical texts, some now surviving in fragments in palimpsests and later manuscripts, appear to have been circulating at Ravenna in the late 5th–6th century. Among those texts were, for instance, a Latin translation of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, brief recommendations on treatment of diseases and diet composed by the famous Greek physician who lived in the 5th century BC, Latin commentaries to Galen and Hippocrates, and other treatises on medicine and pharmacology.18 This evidence suggests that Ostrogothic Ravenna was an important centre of medical studies, where active copying and possibly translating and commenting of Greek texts took place.19

15  Cassiodorus, Variae 6.19.1: “Inter utillimas artes, quas ad sustentandam humanae fragilitatis indigentiam diuina tribuerunt, nulla praestare uidetur aliquid simile quam potest auxiliatrix medicina conferre”; Cracco Ruggini, “Cassiodorus and the Practical Sciences”. 16  Cassiodorus, Variae 6.19.4: “habeant itaque medici pro incolumitate omnium et post scholas magistrum, vacent libris, delectentur antiquis: nullus iustius assidue legit quam qui de humana salute tractaverit.” 17  Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.31.2. On its date see Vessey, “Introduction”, in Cassiodorus, Institutions, pp. 23–6. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers, pp. 403–9, discussed the Latin translations and proposed identifications of the Vivarium manuscripts. For a more cautious approach see Cavallo, “La cultura scritta a Ravenna”. 18  For a detailed discussion of manuscript evidence see Cavallo, “La cultura scritta a Ravenna”, especially pp. 94–5 on medicine, and idem, “La cultura a Ravenna”; also Cracco Ruggini, “Cassiodorus and the Practical Sciences”, p. 28. 19  The tradition continued in early medieval Ravenna, see Palmieri, “Nouvelles remarques sur les commentaires à Galen”; Mazzini and Palmieri, “L’école médicale à Ravenne”; Everett, The Alphabet of Galen, pp. 21–6.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices



321

Intellectual Life: Centres, Careers, Interests

Cities of Ostrogothic Italy such as Ravenna, Rome, and Milan remained important centres of education, culture, and intellectual life.20 It was there at the royal court, in schools led by famous teachers, and in circles formed around influential people that young men advanced their careers, further pursued their intellectual interests, and made important connections. Ravenna, Theoderic’s fast-growing capital, was a centre of royal administration and vibrant culture. Like the great emperors of the past, Theoderic pursued an extensive programme of building and renovation throughout Italy, but Ravenna and Rome especially benefited from his attention.21 Theoderic and his family appear to have shared the education and culture of their aristocratic Roman subjects. Theoderic could hardly have been an illiteratus, as the Anonymus Valesianus claimed. During the decade that he spent as a young hostage at the imperial court in Constantinople (where he was sent when he was eight) he must have received an appropriate education, even if Cassiodorus and Ennodius exaggerated the depth of his learning and extent of his intellectual interests.22 According to Cassiodorus, Theoderic’s daughter Amalasuentha could deliver skilful orations in Greek, Latin, and Gothic: “she surpasses all in their own languages, and is equally wonderful in each”.23 Theoderic’s nephew Theodahad was reportedly interested in philosophy.24 Amalasuentha also took care of her son’s classical literary education, provoking strong objections from her Gothic advisors. As Procopius reported, the Gothic notables reproached Amalasuentha for teaching Athalaric letters instead of training him in arms. They reminded Amalasuentha that her father Theoderic would never allow any Goths to send their children to school and that he had become a great king even though he had never heard of letters. Thus they insisted that the young prince be reared more “in keeping with the customs of the barbarians”. 20  The economic and social situation in late antique cities has been much debated, see Marazzi’s chapter in this volume. On culture see Riché, Education and Culture, pp. 24–31; Liebeshuetz, Decline and Fall, pp. 318–41; and Deliyannis in this volume. 21  Johnson, “Toward a History”; Cavallo, “La cultura a Ravenna”; Hen, Roman Barbarians, pp. 35–7; Deliyannis, Ravenna, pp. 106–200; also Deliyannis in this volume. 22  Anonymus Valesianus 12.61 and 14.79; Cassiodorus, Variae 9.24, p. 377; Ennodius, Panegyricus 3; Riché, Education and Culture, pp. 57–8; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 104–5; Hen, Roman Barbarians, pp. 37–9; Vitiello, Il principe, especially pp. 22–44; idem, “Nourished at the Breast of Rome”. 23  Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1.6, trans. p. 146. 24  Vitiello, Theodahad, pp. 24–31.

322

Lozovsky

Although Procopius’ depiction of Theoderic does not agree with what we know about that king’s upbringing and policies, this story reflects the different ideas that Romans and Goths held about proper education and culture, as perceived by the eastern Roman historian.25 In addition to stories about Theoderic and his family, other surviving bits of evidence show that some Gothic scholars adopted Roman learning and shared Roman intellectual interests. A man with a Gothic name was responsible for producing a number of Latin manuscripts. A subscription preserved in a codex of Orosius’ History Against the Pagans states that the text had been copied in the scriptorium of Viliaric. Paleographers have dated this codex, as well as some others coming from the same scriptorium, to the first decades of the 6th century.26 An anonymous 8th-century compiler of a geographical treatise, the so-called Ravenna Cosmographer, mentions among his sources three “philosophers of the Goths”, Athanarid, Heldebald, and Marcomir, who had written accounts of some lands and peoples in Europe. Modern studies locate all three scholars at Theoderic’s court in Ravenna.27 Latin and Gothic sermons and commentaries preserved in palimpsests and de luxe codices, which have been attributed to Ostrogothic Italy, may have been sponsored by the royal court. Theoderic, an Arian Christian who devoted special efforts to building splendid Arian churches in Ravenna, would have supported copying texts that promoted Arian Christianity and preserved the Gothic language.28 Theoderic’s Ravenna attracted educated and ambitious Romans like Cassiodorus whose careers were tied to the Ostrogothic government. Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus (ca. 485–ca. 585), a native of Calabria, belonged to a distinguished, if not particularly old, provincial aristocratic family that rose to prominence during the 5th century. His father, a provincial governor, served as the praetorian prefect under Theoderic (ca. 500–07), and Cassiodorus began his career as a consiliarius to his father, continuing his education while assisting his father with correspondence and legal cases. Cassiodorus rose in Theoderic’s administration from quaestor to consul (514) to magister 25  Procopius, History of the Wars 5.2.6–20; Vitiello, Il Principe, 40–44; idem, “Nourished at the Breast of Rome”; idem, Theodahad, especially p. 22. 26  Florence, Bibliotheca Laurenziana 65.1, fol. 41v: “Confectus codex in statione magistri Viliaric antiquarii”; Cavallo. “La cultura scritta”, pp. 84–5. 27   Anonymus of Ravenna, Cosmographia 4.13: “ . . . Attanaridus et Eldevaldus que Marcomirus Gothorum phylosophi . . . “ The most detailed study of these Gothic sources, including bibliography and critique of the opposing views, is still Staab, “Ostrogothic Geographers”. 28  Hen, Roman Barbarians, pp. 55–7; also Cohen in this volume.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

323

­officiorum. After Theoderic’s death in 526, Cassiodorus remained loyal to the Ostrogoths, serving Theoderic’s successors as praetorian prefect. As a statesman Cassiodorus was one of those Romans who not only served in the royal administration, but also effectively created and maintained the imperial image of the ruling family. Employing such a traditional literary vehicle for imperial ideology as panegyric, Cassiodorus delivered praises to Eutharic, Theoderic’s heir, and to Witigis and Matasuentha on the occasion of their marriage.29 He also composed two works of history, the Chronicle and the Gothic History, of which only the former survived intact. In both works Cassiodorus firmly placed the Goths within the Roman tradition. The Chronicle listed the great world rulers from Assyrian kings to the Roman consuls to the Gothic kings. Cassiodorus carefully shaped his brief chronological entries to include the special contributions of the Goths and assert the legitimacy of Theoderic and his successors.30 In the lost Gothic History Cassiodorus “made a Roman history from Gothic origins”, as he had Athalaric pronounce in the Variae.31 The Variae, a collection of letters and other official documents that Cassiodorus put together and edited after he retired from service (in 537–8 or later, in the 540s) are a legacy of his administrative career. The Variae covered almost three decades in the life of the Ostrogothic kingdom, and as our main source for all sides of life from economics, politics, and ideology to the character of Theoderic and his family, Cassiodorus’ collection has received close scholarly attention and many different interpretations.32 For the purpose of this chapter, however, it is most important to point out that the Variae provide us with an exceptionally rich picture of Cassiodorus’ intellectual preoccupations and literary style. No longer a statesman at the time when he compiled the Variae, Cassiodorus was still very intent on presenting the Amals as legitimate successors of the Roman emperors of the past, which would also justify the activities of those 29  For surviving fragments see MGH AA 12, pp. 465–72; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 33–6. 30  O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 37–43. 31  Cassiodorus, Variae 9.25.5, trans. p. 128 (modified by me): Originem Gothicam historiam fecit esse Romanam . . . Cassiodorus’ history of the Goths served as the main source for Jordanes’ Getica, a work whose level of dependence on Cassiodorus has long been debated, see, for instance, Momigliano, “Cassiodorus”; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 43–54; Heather, “Historical Culture of Ostrogothic Italy”; and Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths. 32  For recent re-evaluations of Cassiodorus and his Variae, with surveys of contrasting scholarly opinions, see Giardina, Cassiodoro politico and Bjornlie, Politics. For a classical treatment see Momigliano, “Cassiodorus”.

324

Lozovsky

Romans who like himself had loyally served Ostrogothic kings. In the context of Justinian’s successful wars of conquest, those goals must have been directly connected to practical questions of survival and access to power in a post-Ostrogothic Italy.33 Thus Cassiodorus carefully crafted the image of Theoderic, not only as a wise imperial ruler who observed Roman laws and civilized customs, but also as a philosopher-king who was interested in literature, natural philosophy, and practical sciences.34 These were subjects that apparently interested Cassiodorus himself: in many digressions throughout the Variae Cassiodorus showcased his erudition, discussing natural phenomena and animals, describing various locations in Italy, and talking about the origins of the liberal arts.35 This erudition as well as knowledge of classical literature, history, and mythology resulted from the education he had received. So did Cassiodorus’ style: repetitive, rhythmic, full of classical quotations and rhetorical figures. Common to late antique writings this ornate style responded to literary tastes and expectations of the contemporary learned audiences.36 Magnus Felix Ennodius (ca. 473–521) pursued an ecclesiastical career, but his intellectual and literary interests were similar to those of Cassiodorus. Born in Provence and educated in Italy, he entered the clergy at Pavia; he then became a deacon in Milan and was later consecrated as bishop of Pavia, the city where he died in 521. According to the current scholarly consensus, most of Ennodius’s works that survive (including an extensive collection of letters, a panegyric to Theoderic, a vita of Ennodius’ patron, bishop Epiphanius, and some verses of a very secular nature) were written during the period of his deaconate at Milan.37 Unlike Cassiodorus, Ennodius never held secular office, but he also belonged to the number of educated Catholic Romans who promoted the imperial image of the Arian king. In 507, Ennodius produced a panegyric in honour of Theoderic, composed according to the established conventions of the genre. Scholars have not yet reached an agreement about the audience, aims, and method of delivery of this long rhetorical composition. Full of verbal flourishes and the usual topoi, the panegyric hailed Theoderic as an invincible general 33  On various interpretations of Cassiodorus’ goals, see Barnish, “Introduction”, p. xv; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 55–102; Gillett, “Purposes of Cassiodorus’ Variae”; Bjornlie, Politics. 34  Cassiodorus, Variae 9.24.8; Vitiello, Il Principe, pp. 28–35. 35  Riché, Education and Culture, pp. 41–2; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 88–92. 36  Roberts, Jeweled Style; Kennell, Ennodius. 37  Kennell, Ennodius; Schröder, Bildung und Briefe; Marconi, Ennodio.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

325

and enlightened ruler. According to Ennodius, Theoderic had triumphed not only over barbarian hosts but over nature itself, and he restored the empire to its former splendour, recalling the glorious traditions of the Roman past. Quoting Virgil and Lucan, Ennodius compared Theoderic to Aeneas, Alexander the Great, the victorious generals of the Punic Wars, and Cato the Younger.38 Ennodius’ letters show him busy establishing and maintaining an extensive communication network, which included a vast number of correspondents in Italy and in his native Provence. Acting as a patron for younger men, he helped them with their rhetorical exercises, advised them on further studies, and provided them with letters of recommendation when they left to pursue their secular and clerical careers elsewhere. Ennodius’ correspondence with Roman aristocrats and bishops shows that literary interests and intellectual communications in Ostrogothic Italy continued to facilitate social networking in the same way as in earlier centuries.39 While Ravenna and Milan were important centres of learning and intellectual life, Rome still appears to have been the ultimate destination for young people who wished to continue their studies and to join the most refined social and cultural circles. For Cassiodorus, Rome was “the bountiful mother of eloquence . . . the largest temple of all virtues”, and Ennodius praised Rome as “the original seat of learning” and “the city friendly to liberal studies”.40 In his Paraenesis didascalica, Ennodius advised his young protégés Ambrosius and Beatus on how to pursue their studies and join the best society in Rome. As examples for the young men, Ennodius named some acknowledged masters of eloquence and learning, men and women who belonged to the most prominent aristocratic families. Included in this list were Symmachus (to whom the tract was dedicated and whose patronage Ennodius himself wished to secure)

38  Ennodius, Panegyricus 7 (mastery of nature), 11 (education and civility), 17 (Punic Wars), 19 (victory over Bulgarians), 30 (Cato, restoration of Rome), 63 (Roman empire returned to its old boundaries), 78 (Alexander). See also the introductions in Rohr, Der TheoderichPanegyricus and Rota, Panegirico; Kennell, Ennodius, p. 124; Hen, Roman Barbarians, pp. 52–3. On late antique panegyrics see MacCormack, “Latin Prose Panegyrics”; eadem, Art and Ceremony; Whitby, Propaganda of Power. 39  Kennell, Ennodius, pp. 128–67; Schröder, Bildung und Briefe, pp. 111–34; Marconi, Ennodio; Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 105–6. 40  Cassiodorus, Variae 4.6.3: “illa eloquentiae fecunda mater, illa uirtutum omnium latissimum templum.” Ennodius, Ep. 6.15, p. 222: “natalem scientiae sedem” id., Ep. 6.23, p. 225: “urbem amicam liberalibus studiis.” For disussion and more examples see Riché, Education and Culture, especially p. 26, n. 60; Arnold, Theoderic, especially p. 14.

326

Lozovsky

and his son-in-law Boethius, Faustus Niger and his son Avienus, and also Barbara and Stephania, Faustus’ sisters.41 Symmachus, as well as Boethius, his son-in-law, appear to have been among those aristocratic intellectuals who preferred not to associate too closely with the Ostrogothic court.42 A member of an old senatorial family, Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus had a distinguished political career: son of a consul, he himself held that position together with Odovacer in 485. Cassiodorus portrayed him as an ideal Roman aristocrat endowed with both traditional Roman and Christian virtues: “Symmachus, patricius and consul ordinarius, a man of philosophy, was the newest imitator of the ancient Cato and surpassed the virtues of the ancients by the most holy piety.”43 “Most learned in both languages”, that is in Latin and Greek,44 Symmachus was involved in many intellectual enterprises, from rhetoric to philosophy. Thus he was an authority and a valuable patron for Priscian, who dedicated to him three works on Latin rhetoric. Boethius, who grew up in Symmachus’ household and later married his daughter, turned to Symmachus for advice: in his preface to De institutione arithmetica, Boethius asked Symmachus to evaluate the quality of his translation and he dedicated one of his opuscula sacra to Symmachus, again asking for his expert opinion. Ennodius also sent Symmachus copies of his writings.45 Faustus Niger, whom Ennodius recommended as an example for the young Ambrosius and Beatus, also belonged to a distinguished family. Son of a consul and a former consul himself, Faustus occupied important positions in Ostrogothic administration. He was related to Ennodius by marriage and his son Avienus was a one-time student of Ennodius. Ennodius cultivated this important connection in many letters addressed to Faustus, in which he asked for advice and recommended some of his young protégés. According to Ennodius, Faustus composed poetry and owned many Latin and Greek books on various subjects.46 41  Ennodius, Opusc. 6.20–25, pp. 314–15. 42  Matthews, “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius”, pp. 26–31; Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 5–16; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 158–61. 43  Ordo generis Cassiodorum, p. 260: “Symmachus patricius et consul ordinarius, vir philosophus, qui antiqui Catonis fuit novellus imitator, sed virtutes veterum sanctissima religione transcendit.” Cf. Boethius, Consolatio Prosa 1.4.40. 44  Boethius, De institutione arithmetica, Praef., p. 4: “utrarum peritissimus litterarum.” 45  Boethius, De institutione arithmetica, Praef., p. 5; Boethius, De Trinitate, dedication; Martindale, Prosopography, pp. 1045–6, Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 6–16. 46  Poetry: Ennodius, Opusc. 10 (Ep. 1.6), p. 15–16; books: id., Opusc. 70 (Carm. 2.3), p. 80; Martindale, Prosopography, pp. 454–5; Everett, Literacy, p. 27.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

327

Like their predecessors in earlier centuries, educated aristocrats such as Faustus and Symmachus cultivated an interest in literature and history. The Roman past and its traditions always held a great attraction for conservative intellectuals, who interpreted Roman history according to their political and cultural goals. According to Cassiodorus, Symmachus composed a Roman history (no longer extant) in seven books in imitation of his ancestors.47 A vir clarissimus, Rusticius Helpidius Domnulus (who may have been one of Ennodius’ correspondents) edited a collection of historical exempla, probably based on the 4th-century work of Valerius Maximus. He also emended the text of Pomponius Mela’s 1st-century geographical treatise.48 A certain “master Felix, orator” collaborated with Vettius Agorius Basilius Mavortius (consul 527) on emending the text of Horace’s Epodes.49 In the traditions of encyclopaedic learning, people of the time displayed their broad interests by editing and correcting texts on various subjects.50 It appears that the editor of Horace, named in another subscription as Securus Melior Felix, a “rhetor of the city of Rome”, also emended the manuscript of Martianus Capella. Martianus’ 5th-century treatise De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, written in a combination of prose and verse, discussed the liberal arts in the framework of Neoplatonic philosophy, mythology, and allegory.51 One more subscription states that Symmachus, working at Ravenna together with a vir clarissimus Macrobius Plotinus Eudoxus, corrected the text of Macrobius’ commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, which discussed the nature of the cosmos in the spirit of Neoplatonic and Stoic ideas.52 The copying of those Neoplatonic texts indicates an existence of a certain learned audience interested in the complexities presented by the authors’ language and the matters they discussed.53 47  Cassiodorus, Ordo generis Cassiodorum: “parentesque suos imitatus historiam quoque Romanam septem libris edidit.” See also Heather, “Historical Culture”; Matthews, “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius”, especially pp. 25–6. 48  Martindale, Prosopography, pp. 374–5; Jahn, “Über die Subscriptionen”, pp. 345–7; Billanovich, “Dall’ antica Ravenna”, pp. 321–2; idem, “Ancora dall’ antica Ravenna”, pp. 110– 11; Kirkby, “Scholar and His Public”, p. 52; Heather, “Historical Culture”, p. 320. 49  Jahn, “Über die Subscriptionen”, p. 353. 50  See, however, Cameron, Last Pagans of Rome, pp. 421–97, strongly objecting to overinterpretations of the evidence of subscriptions. 51  Jahn, “Über die Subscriptionen”, p. 351; Cameron, “Martianus and His First Editor”; Kaster, Guardians of Language, p. 269. 52  Jahn, “Über die Subscriptionen”, pp. 347–8; Chadwick, Boethius, p. 7; Hen, Roman Barbarians, pp. 44–5. 53  The influence of Neoplatonic philosophy on the intellectual elite will be discussed below.

328

Lozovsky

Encyclopaedic interests of the learned circles included theology, canon law, and calendric computation, the areas to which Dionysius Exiguus (ca. 470– 544) made a lasting contribution. A monk who worked in Rome between ca. 500 and ca. 540, described by Cassiodorus as a “Scythian by birth but thorougly Roman in his manner of life”, Dionysius probably came from Scythia Minor, a region roughly corresponding to today’s Dobruja. His fluency in both Latin and Greek, especially noted by Cassiodorus, may have resulted from an education acquired in one of the monasteries there.54 The meagre information that we have about Dionysius suggests that he shared an educational background and intellectual interests with a number of Scythian monks known at that time for their orthodoxy and learning as well as for their involvement in Christological controversies. Dionysius also associated with other influential and learned people in Italy, including Roman bishops such as Hormisdas, at whose invitation he compiled his collection of canonistic materials; Eugippius to whom he dedicated his translation of Gregory of Nyssa’s De opificio hominis; and the unnamed noble woman, the dedicatee of his translation of the Vita Pachomii, identified by scholars as one of the daughters of Boethius’ father-in-law Symmachus, Galla or Proba.55 Mainly working as a translator, Dionysius left behind a large corpus of work and two of his intellectual enterprises were to become particularly influential in the following centuries. Dionysius produced the first comprehensive edition of canonistic materials, translating the decrees of church councils and a selection of papal decrees. The Collectio Dionysiana, as it was known in the medieval West, was included in all subsequent collections and became the foundation of canon law.56 Dionysius also addressed the need for a Christian calendar, an important area of knowledge explored by many scholars before and after him. He compiled a table for calculating the date of Easter, choosing to number the years at the Birth of Christ. Dionysius’ Incarnation Era was eventually adopted in the West, although his computations were often challenged in the following centuries.57 54  Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.23.2–4, trans. pp. 154–6, at 1.23.2: “Dionisius monachus, Scytha natione sed moribus omnino Romanus”; Richter, “Dionysius Exiguus”; Dura, “Denys Exiguus”; Amory, People and Identity, pp. 127–31; Duta, “Des précisions”; Gometz, “Eugippius”, pp. 225–31. 55  Dura, “Denys Exiguus”, pp. 284–5; De Marini Avonzo, “Secular and Clerical Culture”; Gometz, “Eugippius”, p. 227; Troncarelli, “Afterword”, p. 531, especially n. 15; Fiery, “Collectio Dionysiana”. 56  For a comprehensive introduction to the subject see the website “Carolingian Canon Law” at http://ccl.rch.uky.edu. 57  Moschammer, Easter Computus; Verbist, Duelling With the Past.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

329

Cassiodorus’ praise of Dionysius highlights once again the intellectual and aesthetic values of the time: profound learning was especially admired when coupled with eloquent style fostered by classical education.58 Classical literature formed the very fabric of cultural life: it supplied models and sources of inspiration, and it shaped literary tastes and intellectual preoccupations of educated people, from copying classical texts to translating documents and composing poetry in traditional forms such as love elegies and biting epigrams. Ennodius’ epigrams, for instance, many of them very irreverent, let us appreciate the range of literary interests displayed by this learned cleric who was in the habit of advising young men on Christian virtues. In one epigram addressed to Boethius Ennodius wrote: In your hands the substance of a rigid sword wilts, Even steel dissolves like flowing water. The unwarlike right hand of Boethius renders swords soft . . .59 Ennodius employed classical imagery and vocabulary rich with sexual overtones seemingly to make fun of the philosopher and his amorous pursuits. It is difficult, however, to understand the meaning and purpose of this piece without knowing about the context of its composition or the intended audience; modern scholars have interpreted it in very different ways: as a vicious attack or a playful joke.60 Classical erotic themes and imagery also appeared in Ennodius’ Epithalamium, in which the poet advised his friend Maximus to stop resisting nature and get married.61 The elegies written by Maximian, a poet about whom we know very little but who according to the prevalent scholarly opinion was a younger contemporary of Ennodius and Boethius, also treated themes traditional for this classical genre: pursuit of love, abandonment of the poet by his beloved, the indignities of old age. While paying tribute to classical poetic conventions, Maximian’s work, with its baroque rhetorical style, reflected late antique 58  Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.23.2. 59  Ennodius, Opusc. 339 (Carm. 2.132), p. 249, trans. in Shanzer, “Ennodius, Boethius”, p. 183: Languescit rigidi tecum substantia ferri, Solvitur atque chalybs more fluentis aquae. Emollit gladios inbellis dextra Boeti . . .  60  An attack: Obertello, Severino Boezio, p. 36; Bartlett, “Dating of Ennodius’ Writings”, pp. 61–2; joke: Shanzer, “Ennodius, Boethius”. On poets of Ostrogothic Italy see also Raby, History of Secular Latin Poetry, pp. 117–27. 61  Discussed and translated into French in Maximien, Élégies, pp. 107–18.

330

Lozovsky

­aesthetic tastes.62 In the third elegy of Maximian’s corpus, the poet seeks to gain the love of a young woman and turns to Boethius for advice. Maximian’s elegy presented the philosopher as an acknowledged and rather cynical expert in love affairs while making allusions to Boethius’ philosophical ideas.63 Ennodius’ epigrams and Maximian’s elegies, with their elements of parody and play, reveal a lighter side of 6th-century intellectual culture, which still had a taste for erotic motifs and obscenity. The case of Ennodius, who most likely wrote his obscene epigrams while occupying an ecclesiastical office in Milan, is particularly intriguing.64

The Love of Wisdom

The encyclopaedic variety of studies pursued by learned people in Ostrogothic Italy fits under the umbrella of philosophy as it was understood in Neoplatonic thought. The philosophical tradition called Neoplatonic by modern scholars went back to the teachings of Plato, but its founders such as Plotinus (ca. 205–70) and his pupil Porphyry (ca. 232–ca. 303) departed from Plato in many respects, adding interpretations based on Aristotle. One of their main doctrines taught that the One, an ineffable and unknowable first principle of reality, was the source from which all classes of beings emanated and the ultimate destination to which they returned in the end. Philosophy, which started by considering material things and gradually progressed to contemplating things divine, was a way for a human soul to return to the One. Many late antique intellectuals, including Christians, were fascinated by this school of thought. Augustine experienced its attraction as a young man, and he devoted much attention to discussing Neoplatonic teachings. Secular writers of the 5th century, such as Macrobius and Martianus Capella, whose work was studied by Symmachus and other intellectuals in 6th-century Italy, also popularized Neoplatonic ideas about divinity, cosmic harmony, and ways leading to knowledge.65 62  Goldlust, “Introduction”, in Maximien, Élégies, especially. pp. 27–38; cf. Roberts, Jeweled Style. 63   Shanzer, “Ennodius, Boethius”, especially p. 194; Barnish, “Maximian, Cassiodorus,’ Boethius”, especially p. 27; Wasyl, Genres Rediscovered, pp. 139–45; Goldlust, “Introduction”; Vitiello, Theodahad, pp. 83–4. 64  Shanzer, “Latin Literature, Christianity, and Obscenity” (especially pp. 182–3 on Ennodius and 184–5 on Maximian) has argued that while obscenity was gradually disappearing from Latin high culture, it was still tolerated in 6th-century Italy. 65  For Augustine’s own account of his relationship with Neoplatonic philosophy see books 7 and 9 of his Confessions; see also Brown, Augustine of Hippo. Numerous s­ tudies

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

331

Boethius, who focused on philosophy to a stronger degree than his contemporaries in the Latin West, followed the Neoplatonic tradition in defining philosophy as “the love and zealous study of and a kind of friendship with wisdom”, the highest wisdom which is “the living mind and the only primaeval reason of all things”. Thus, he continued, “the study of wisdom is the study of divinity and friendship with that pure mind”.66 Boethius also discussed the division of philosophy into two branches, theoretical and practical, which ultimately went back to Aristotle and had long been adopted in classical thought. The theoretical, or speculative, branch was in its turn divided into naturalis (which considered the forms of bodies, their motion, and their constituent matter), mathematica (which investigated forms apart from matter), and theologica (which discussed the divine substance that lacked matter or motion).67 Practical philosophy, also divided into three parts, considered moral issues, from personal to political to domestic. Thus philosophy was to provide guidance not only in the intellectual but also in the practical sphere; a vir philosophicus such as Symmachus in Cassiodorus’ portrayal possessed wisdom and moral perfection, while also actively participating in the affairs of the state.68 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (ca. 475/7–ca. 525/6) shared moral, political, and intellectual ideas of his circle.69 Born into a distinguished senatorial family, Boethius lost his father at a young age and was raised in the household of Symmachus, whose daughter he later married. Like Symmachus, he seems to have kept his distance from the king and from serious involvement in political life until 522, the year in which his sons became consuls. During the celebration of that occasion, Boethius delivered a panegyric in honour of Theoderic (the text has not survived) and soon after that assumed the senior administrative post of the magister officiorum. Boethius’ fall from have addressed the role of Neoplatonism in late antiquity; for recent surveys see Cameron, “Education and Literary Culture”, pp. 680–2; Sheppard, “Philosophy”. 66  Boethius, Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge 1.3, p. 7: Est enim philosophia amor et studium et amicitia quodammodo sapientiae, sapientiae vero non huius, quae in artibus quibusdam et in aliqua fabrili scientia notitiaquae versatur, sed illius sapientiae, quae nullius indigens, vivax mens et sola rerum primaeva ratio est. Est autem hic amor sapientiae intelligentis animi ab illa pura sapientia inluminatio et quodammodo ad se ipsam retractio atque advocatio, ut videatur studium sapientiae studium divinitatis et purae mentis illius amicitia. 67  Boethius, De trinitate 2, p. 8. 68  On the influence of Neoplatonic ideas on sixth-century bureaucratic culture see Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 53–9. 69  Chadwick, Boethius, especially pp. 1–56; Kirkby, “Scholar and His Public”, pp. 57–9; Moorhead, “Boethius’ Life”, especially p. 31.

332

Lozovsky

power quickly followed that brief period in office: he was arrested for the crime of treason (the exact nature of which scholars still dispute), imprisoned, and executed; shortly afterwards, Symmachus was executed as well.70 Although we lack direct evidence about the education of the young Boethius, he would have received an excellent traditional schooling. Literary allusions in his work testify to his knowledge of classical authors, and contemporaries noted his mastery of rhetoric. Ennodius listed Boethius’ name among those learned men whose example his young protégés were to imitate, and Cassiodorus considered him “the most skilled orator in both languages”, Latin and Greek.71 This level of proficiency in Greek was noted: Boethius praised Symmachus’ fluency in both languages, Ennodius mentioned the Greek books owned by Faustus Niger, and Cassiodorus admired Dionysius Exiguus’ bilingual fluency. At the same time, a working knowledge of Greek must not have been unusual, as evidenced by official and personal contacts with Constantinople.72 Although it is uncertain whether Boethius had ever studied in one of the Neoplatonic schools, his understanding of philosophy corresponded to the way in which it was taught in Athens and Alexandria, the main centres of the time.73 In the Platonic and Pythagorean tradition practised there, mathematical disciplines were central: they led to understanding the structure of the universe and guided the mind toward higher truths.74 In his early work De institutione arithmetica, Boethius expressed the same view: “hardly anyone has been able to reach the highest perfection of the disciplines of philosophy unless the nobility of such wisdom was investigated by him in a certain four-part study, the quadrivium”, that is the four arts of mathematics. Arithmetic, the first of these disciplines to be learned, Boethius continued, “holds the principal place and position of a mother to the rest”.75 Boethius’ treatise on arithmetic was an expanded translation of the Introduction to Arithmetic by Nicomachus of Gerasa, a standard textbook in Neoplatonic schools. Boethius’ De institutione musica, written ca. 510, was also based on Nicomachus and other Neoplatonic sources. Both tracts focused on theoretical rather than practical questions: Boethian arithmetic treated relationships between numbers while his music 70  For Boethius’ last years see Obertello, Severino Boezio, pp. 85–138; Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 46–56; Moorhead, “Boethius’ Life”. 71  Ordo generis Cassiodorum, p. 260: “Boethius. . . . utraque lingua peritissimus orator fuit”; Chadwick, Boethius, p. 16. 72  On contacts between Ostrogothic Italy and Constantinople see, most recently, Bjornlie, Politics. 73  Courcelle, Late Latin Writers, pp. 273–7, 316–17, n. 129; Obertello, Severino Boezio, pp. 26–9; Chadwick, Boethius, p. 20; Marenbon, Boethius, p. 13; Moorhead, “Boethius’ Life”, p. 29. 74  Chadwick, Boethius, especially pp 20–1 and 69–70; Moorhead, “Boethius’ Life”, pp. 22–8. 75  Boethius, De institutione arithmetica 1.1, trans. pp. 71 and 74.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

333

studied musical tones and their relationships.76 Although Boethius may have translated introductory texts on all four disciplines of the quadrivium, his treatises on geometry and astronomy have not survived.77 The thought of Plato and Aristotle occupied an important place in the Neoplatonic system, and explicating their often contradictory views was a major task for philosophers.78 Students learned from commentaries on earlier works: thus Porphyry wrote his Isagoge, or introduction, as a beginner’s guide to Aristotle’s Categories. Boethius’ approach was similar: he invested most of his intellectual energy into traditional work with texts. Initially, he intended to translate and comment on all the works of Plato and Aristotle in order “to show that their opinions are not contrary in just about everything, but are in agreement in many matters of the greatest importance in philosophy”.79 This ambitious programme was never completed, but Boethius translated almost the entire corpus of Aristotle’s logical works and wrote commentaries on the main Aristotelian logical texts. He also wrote a series of logical treatises of his own.80 As a commentator, Boethius worked within the established tradition: rather than voicing their own ideas, commentators were expected to explicate the text and report various views on the work in question. What made a difference was their choices of issues to focus on and authorities to follow. Boethius focused on logic and made Porphyry his main source. That led him, among other things, to adopting Porphyry’s approach to logic and metaphysics, the essentially Aristotelian way of thinking in which metaphysical questions were linked to issues of language and cognition. Boethius’ translations and commentaries provided the scholars of the Latin West with the vocabulary and conceptual framework, which they used to discuss not only logic but other areas of philosophy as well.81

76  Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 71–101. 77  Cassiodorus’ list of authors translated by Boethius included Euclid (on geometry) and Ptolemy (on astronomy): Variae 1.45.4. See also Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 103–7. For the geometrical treatises that circulated in the Middle Ages under the name of Boethius see Folkerts, “Importance of the Pseudo-Boethian Geometria”. 78  Cf. Wildberg, “Philosophy in the Age of Justinian”. 79  Boethius, 2nd commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation 2.3, p. 80: “contempserim Aristotelis Platonisque sententias, in unam quodammodo revocare concordiam eosque non ut plerique dissentire in omnibus, sed in plerisque et his in philosophia maximis consentire demonstrem.” Boethius’ statement is translated in full in Moorhead, “Boethius’ Life”, pp. 25–6. 80  Marenbon, Boethius, p. 18. 81  Marenbon, “Introduction”, pp. 3–4; essays on logic in Marenbon, Cambridge Companion to Boethius; Kaylor, Companion to Boethius.

334

Lozovsky

Boethius himself demonstrated the many uses of Aristotelian logic when he applied it to theology. Of his five opuscula sacra, four were written in response to the contemporary controversies within the church and discussed the most complex theological issues that had been dividing Christian communities from the 4th century on. Thus Boethius’ tract “Against Eutyches and Nestorius”, probably the earliest of the five, was occasioned by an episode in the ongoing Acacian schism.82 As Boethius explained, he wrote it because he was dissatisfied with the level of contemporary debate about the nature of Christ. In 512, Boethius was present at the meeting of high clergy and Roman senators when a letter from eastern bishops to pope Symmachus was read. Since no one could provide a good explanation of the Christological issues involved, Boethius addressed them himself. Relying on Augustine as his theological authority, he demonstrated consistently that the heretical views of the eastern bishops contained contradictions in logic.83 This rigorous logical approach to theology, similar to that practised by Greek theologians from the 5th century on, differed from the usual patristic methods. Explaining his procedure to John the Deacon, Boethius wrote: “If these things are right and in accordance with the Faith, I pray you confirm me; or if you are in any point of another opinion, examine carefully what has been said, and if possible, reconcile faith and reason”.84 This formula captured the essence of a method later adopted by medieval philosophers and theologians. It also indicated potential problems associated with this method, anticipating medieval controversies about the roles of faith and reason in philosophical and theological inquiry.85 In his most famous and influential work, Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote during his imprisonment ca. 524, Boethius treated some of the same themes that he had raised in his earlier work (philosophical knowledge, divinity, virtuous life, self-investigation), but unlike his translations and scholarly tracts, Consolation is a work of literature as well as philosophy. It begins as the first-person narrator, imprisoned, bemoans his fate. At that moment a 82  For the religious controversies of the late 5th and early 6th centuries and their influence on Boethius’ work, see Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 29–46. See also the chapters of Cohen and Sessa in this volume. For a recent summary of the chronology of the opuscula sacra, see Bradshaw, “Opuscula sacra”, pp. 105–6. 83  Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 180–5; Bradshaw, “Opuscula sacra”, especially pp. 109 and 120. 84  Boethius, Utrum pater, pp. 36–7, trans. p. 37: “Haec si se recte et ex fide habent, ut me instruas peto; aut si aliqua re forte diversus es, diligentius intuere quae dicta sunt et fidem si poterit rationemque coniunge.” 85  Bradshaw, “Opuscula sacra”, p. 125.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

335

­ ajestic woman appears to him and he recognizes her as Philosophy, his onem time teacher. Philosophy reproaches him for his state of despair, which to her indicates that he had forgotten who he truly is. Having diagnosed his spiritual illness, Philosophy offers her cure: like a patient teacher, she gradually leads the prisoner to a deeper understanding of his own mind. She helps him return to the realm of philosophical pursuits, discussing the nature of fortune and happiness, the love that binds the universe together, the paths leading to God, good and evil, divine prescience, and free will. Drawing on various literary and philosophical traditions, Boethius created a unique and complex text that invites multiple critical approaches, from defining its genre to identifying its sources and understanding the nature and purpose of its argumentation.86 Written in alternating segments of prose and verse in the manner of a Menippean satire, Consolation is also a philosophical dialogue, and its title, if not its contents, goes back to the classical genre of consolatory literature.87 Reflecting literary tastes of his time, Boethius wrote Consolation in an elaborate Latin, rich with allusions to classical poets such as Virgil and Ovid. He also followed rhetorical principles of composition, evident in the structure of the entire work and in its constituent parts. The philosophical themes that Boethius developed in Consolation can be traced back to multiple sources and schools of thought, including Stoic and Aristotelian, but the Platonic worldview forms the main core. Following Neoplatonic ideas and images, Boethius described the universe, the central place of the One or the Good in it, and the way in which the human mind can ascend to the divine. In the poem that occupies a central position in the ordered structure of the work, reminiscent of Neoplatonic hymns on cosmic theology, Boethius addressed the supreme being who had created all things, from the earth and the heavens to the human soul, and to whom all things eventually returned: “Grant to the mind, Father, that it may rise to your holy foundations; Grant it may ring round the source of the Good, may discover the true light.”88 The Neoplatonic language and imagery of the Consolation contained nothing that would be incompatible with late antique Christian thought. Boethius’ last work, however, lacks specifically Christian references or discussions, apart 86   Compare interpretations in Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 223–47; Marenbon, Boethius, pp. 96–163; Relihan, Prisoner’s Philosophy. 87  For the sources and genre see discussion in Gruber, Kommentar zu Boethius; also Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 223–4. 88  Boethius, Consolatio 3, metre 9, trans. p. 72: “Da, pater, augustam menti conscendere sedem/ da fontem lustrare boni, da luce reperta/ in te conspicuos animi defigere uisus.” See also Gruber, Kommentar zu Boethius, pp. 275–6; Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 234–5.

336

Lozovsky

from several allusions to the Bible. This absence of openly Christian content in Boethius’ last work appears consistent with his approach to theology in the opuscula sacra. Four of them discussed Christian theology in the language of logic, with very few allusions to the Bible, and only one, De fide catholica, was a straightforward profession of faith. In the Consolation, Boethius also discussed theological questions as a philosopher, but using poetic rather than technical language.89 The beautiful Latin and elaborate structure of the Consolation, no less than its intricate argumentation, have made Boethius’ last work very influential, especially during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.90 Neoplatonic thought also influenced Cassiodorus’ treatise On the Soul, which as he noted later was to form the thirteenth book of his Variae.91 Linked to the collection that presented the legacy of his public career, the tract added a deeper philosophical and theological dimension to the lessons that Cassiodorus wished to impart to his audience. As he wrote in the preface, he composed the treatise in response to the entreaties of his friends, addressing twelve questions they had posed about the nature of the soul.92 In his work, Cassiodorus methodically presented the issues that had long been discussed by Greek and Latin philosophers, from the main definitions of the soul to its substance to the nature of human knowledge. Following the established scholarly tradition, Cassiodorus did not offer his own interpretations but turned to Christian and secular authorities. He made a particular effort to explain their different opinions and demonstrate the inferiority of ‘secular teachers’. While the Neoplatonic views that Cassiodorus discussed could be found in many authors, such as Macrobius and Calcidius, he largely relied on the interpretations of Augustine, the only author Cassiodorus mentioned by name.93

89  For recent discussions of Boethius’ Christianity see Chadwick, Boethius, especially pp. 247–53; Shanzer, “Haec quibus uteris verbis” (with a summary of earlier interpretations on p. 59); eadem, “Interpreting the Consolation”; Relihan, Prisoner’s Philosophy; Moreschini, A Christian in Toga. 90  Marenbon, Boethius, pp. 172–82; essays in Gibson, Boethius; Marenbon, Cambridge Companion to Boethius; Kaylor, Companion to Boethius. 91  Cassiodorus, Variae, 11, Praefatio 7; Expositio psalmorum, 145.2. 92  Cassiodorus, De anima 1. On this treatise, its purpose, and links to the Variae, see Halporn, “Magni Aurelii Cassiodori senaroris Liber de anima”; Vessey, “Introduction”, pp. 19–22; Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 194, 293–305. 93  Halporn, “De Anima”, pp. 48–9; Di Marco, “Scelta e utilizzazione delle fonti”; D’Elia, L’antropologia di Cassiodoro.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices



337

Classical and Christian Learning

Like their predecessors, lay and clerical aristocrats of Ostrogothic Italy continued to receive classical education, a mark of their status and power. They were also brought up as Christians, and some learned people such as Boethius and Cassiodorus combined their secular literary interests with a deep engagement in theology and exegesis. Individual private libraries included works written by fathers of the church. Thus Proba (commonly identified as a daughter of Symmachus and sister-in-law of Boethius) had in her library the complete writings of Augustine. When Eugippius, later abbot of Castellum Lucullanum, compiled a collection of excerpts from 40 works of Augustine, he dedicated it to Proba and specifically mentioned her extensive library in his preface.94 As with their predecessors, some classically educated people in 6th-century Italy felt the tension between secular literary culture and Christian teachings, especially when they were clerics or monks. Some radically resolved this tension, rejecting most of secular learning. Thus according to Gregory the Great, Benedict of Nursia, who started his literary education in Rome as a young man, abandoned the studies that in his view led to loose morals and dissolution. Later in life, Benedict founded monastic communities guided by his Rule, which emphasized Christian devotion, discipline, and reading of Christian texts.95 Some recognized the usefulness of secular learning and, following earlier authorities such as Augustine, sought to establish the proper place of such studies in Christian education and scholarship.96 Eugippius turned to Augustine for guidance and compiled, in the late 5th or early 6th century, what appears to be the first Augustinian florilegium. Eugippius probably did not limit his intended audience to monks but rather envisioned a broader circle of Christian scholars.97 As in other florilegia and commentaries, which were becoming the most popular genre of philosophical and exegetical works, Eugippius’ choice of excerpts was significant. Thus when excerpting the 94  Eugippius, Excerpta ex operibus sancti Augustini, Epistula ad Probam virginem, p. 1. Cf. Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.23.1. On Proba see Martindale, Prosopography, p. 907; Gometz, Eugippius, with the letter translated and discussed on pp. 86–99. 95  Gregory the Great, Dialogues 2, Prologue; for this, and for monastic education and readings see Riché, Education and Culture, pp. 50, 109–22; Everett, Literacy, pp. 45–9; Bertelli, “Production and Distribution of Books”, pp. 45–6. 96  For recent discussions of Augustine’s views on Christian education see essays in Pollmann/ Vessey, Augustine and the Disciplines. 97  The compilation has been dated to the years beetween 488 and 495 or 506 and 511, see Gometz, Eugippius, pp. 89 and 95. For the intended audience see ibid. pp. 95–6 and Riché, Education and Culture, pp. 130–1.

338

Lozovsky

De doctrina christiana, in which Augustine had discussed the nature and purposes of Christian learning, Eugippius focused on passages from Book 1 (on the truths of Scriptures) and omitted Book 4 (on Christian eloquence). Although he retained Augustine’s statement about the usefulnesss of secular knowledge, Eugippius omitted Augustine’s subsequent discussion of history, natural sciences, and astronomy.98 While useful for learning about exegesis, Eugippius’ excerpts downplayed the role of secular disciplines, which was noted by Cassiodorus. In his Institutions Cassiodorus recommended Eugippius’ works as indispensable and described him as “a man indeed not well educated in secular letters, but well read in Divine Scripture.”99 Eugippius’ monastic foundation in the south of Italy, Castellum Lucullanum, became an important centre of Christian learning and diffusion of texts.100 Following the models of Augustine and Jerome, who were struggling to reconcile the rhetorical flourishes and pagan imagery emphasized by classical learning with the humble speech (sermo humilis) of Christ’s teachings, 6thcentury intellectuals expressed similar misgivings, sometimes occasioned by external circumstances. Ennodius’ ecclesiastical office did not prevent him from praising literary studies, composing elaborate rhetorical periods, and producing obscene verses. Yet he, too, pondered the appropriateness of such occupations for a cleric.101 Thus Ennodius described his life-threatening illness and subsequent recovery that led to a spiritual awakening in a short confessional work inspired by Augustine. Recalling his earlier life, Ennodius singled out his superfluous preoccupation with rhetoric and poetry that led him away from true wisdom. In his sickness, as it turned out, secular learning was of no use; no remedies prescribed by Hippocrates and Galen could help and he was healed only through prayer before the relics of St Victor.102 That work was probably written in 510–11, but because of the uncertain chronology of Ennodius’ life it is hard to tell how the experience he described influenced his subsequent years.103 Arator, who joined the clergy after a successful career in the Ostrogothic administration, expressed similar thoughts in his letter to Parthenius when he recalled his youthful love for secular poetry and myths, the pursuits that 98  Riché, Education and Culture, p. 130. 99  Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.23.1, trans. p. 154: “virum quidem non usque adeo saecularibus litteris eruditum, sed scripturarum divinarum lectione plenissimum.” 100  Riché, Education and Culture, p. 160; Barnish, “Work of Cassiodorus”; Gorman, “Eugippius and the Origins of the MS Traditition”, especially pp. 11–12. 101  For a detailed analysis of Ennodius’ views see Marconi, “Istruzione laica”. 102  Ennodius, Opusc. 438, pp. 301–2; Everett, Literacy, pp. 42–3; Kennell, Ennodius, pp. 23–30. 103  For chronology see Kennell, Ennodius, pp. 4–42.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

339

c­ arried him off “in the power of shallowness through an empty channel”. While admiring Parthenius’ eloquence and knowledge of pagan poets, Arator praised his preference for “the true bards” (veros vates) such as Ambrose and Sidonius Apollinaris and recalled his advice “to turn the path of this voice toward praises of the Lord”.104 Like Christian poets of the previous century such as Sedulius and Dracontius, who paraphrased the Scriptures in classical metre, Arator put the Acts of the Apostles into hexameters. Describing his project in a letter to Pope Vigilius, his patron who had suggested a public recitation of the poem, Arator declared his intention to “sing in verses the Acts which Luke related” and to “disclose alternately what the letter makes known and whatever mystical sense is revealed in my heart”.105 In his long poem, influenced by both the classical and the Christian epic tradition, Arator followed the order of events described in Acts, choosing episodes that were important to the narrative and paying particular attention to the speeches of the main characters.106 The narrative sections, rich with digressions and classical allusions, were written in the ornamental rhetorical style that late antique poets and their audiences found appealing. The exegetical sections, largely devoid of literary embellishments, focused on mystical or allegorical interpretation of episodes, names, and concepts that occurred in the text.107 Whereas Arator used classical literary techniques to develop Christian poetic language and adapted the classical epic form to the goals of Christian exegesis, Cassiodorus worked on placing classical learning within the framework of Christianity. This work came to fruition in the post-Ostrogothic period, but as Cassiodorus wrote in the beginning of his Institutions, his own doubts 104  Arator, Acts of the Apostles, Epistula ad Parthenium, p. 405, trans. p. 102: “Cura mihi dudum fuerat puerilibus annis. Versibus assiduum concelebrare melos, Scribere quas etiam simulauit fabula partes Et per inane fretum sub levitate rapi.”  Ibid.: . . . “O utinam malles” dixisti “rectius huius Ad Domini laudes flectere vocis iter . . .” 105  Arator, Acts of the Apostles, Epistula ad Vigilium, p. 214, trans. p. 22: “Versibus ergo canam quos Lucas rettulit Actus, Historiam que sequens carmina uera loquar. Alternis reserabo modis, quod littera pandit Et res si qua mihi mystica corde datur.” 106  Green, Latin Epics, with the synopsis of Arator’s poem and analysis of its contents on pp. 274–6. 107  Roberts, Biblical Epic, pp. 87–92; Green, Latin Epics, pp. 298–321.

340

Lozovsky

about “zealous and eager pursuit of secular learning” went back to the years when he still was a government official. Concerned that secular disciplines flourished while Christian instruction was neglected, Cassiodorus wanted to found Christian schools in Rome after the model of Alexandria and Nisibis, which would employ “learned teachers . . . from whom the faithful might gain eternal salvation for their souls and the adornment of sober and pure eloquence for their speech”. Together with Pope Agapetus (535–6), Cassiodorus made an effort to collect money, but the war and political instability impeded the project.108 Cassiodorus also considered the place of secular learning in his De anima, written after his public career came to an end. There he weighed the opinions of ‘secular teachers’ about the nature of the soul against explanations provided by Christians, mainly by Augustine.109 In the Expositio Psalmorum, probably written while he lived in Constantinople after 540, Cassiodorus provided comprehensive explanations of the entire Book of Psalms, which he considered fundamental for Christian education. In this exegetical work he asserted that all wisdom, including secular learning, had its origins in the Scriptures and consistently pointed out the uses of liberal arts within the Psalter. Particularly focusing on rhetorical techniques employed in the Psalms, Cassiodorus proposed a hierarchy of knowledge and a method of teaching in which secular learning supported exegesis.110 Thus the educational programme for the monks of Vivarium that Cassiodorus offered in his Institutions was building on his earlier ideas, especially inspired by Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana.111 Book 2, on secular learning, may have gone through earlier redactions as a separate text, but in what appears to be its final form the two books of the Institutions were designed as an introduction to both the Scriptures and the secular letters.112 Book 1 discussed Christian 108  Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1, Preface 1, p. 3, trans. p. 105: “in urbe Romana professos doctores scholae potius acciperent Christianae, unde et anima susciperet aeternam salutem et casto atque purissimo eloquio fidelium lingua comeretur”. See also O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 179–80; Vessey, “Introduction”, pp. 22–27. 109  O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 118–30, for the sources, p. 118; Vessey, “Introduction”, p. 20; also above, p. 336. 110  O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 131–76; Astell, “Cassiodorus’s Commentary on the Psalms as an Ars rhetorica”; Weissengruber, “L’educazione profana ncll’Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro”; Halporn, “After the Schools”; Vessey, “Introduction”, pp. 28–35, 41; more bibliography in Heydemann, “Biblical Israel”, p. 152, n. 29. I have not been able to consult Heydemann’s doctoral dissertation on the Expositio Psalmorum. 111  Vessey, “Introduction,” pp. 27–37. 112  Ibid., pp. 39–42.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

341

l­earning: focusing on the study of Holy Scripture, the course began with the Psalms and progressed to patristic commentaries such as those by Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. Cassiodorus wrote: “For commentary on Scripture is, as it were, Jacob’s ladder, by which the angels ascend and descend [Gen. 28:12]; on which the Lord leans, stretching out his hand to those who are weary, and supports the tired steps of those ascending by granting them contemplation of Him.”113 He also summarized the decisions of the four church councils and discussed different divisions of Scripture and provided concrete instructions for correcting and emending the biblical text (from orthography and grammar to punctuation marks and Hebrew names).114 By the end of book 1 Cassiodorus listed additional texts that he considered useful for Christian studies. Among these were historians such as Josephus, Eusebius, and Orosius; geographers and cosmographers such as Julius Honorius, Dionysius Periegetes, and Ptolemy; and medical writers such as Dioscorides and Galen. In book 2 Cassiodorus addressed secular learning, arranging his material in the order of the seven liberal arts. Drawing on a variety of sources from Ammonius to Augustine and Boethius, Cassiodorus briefly described the contents and goals of each discipline from grammar to astronomy and gave recommendations for readings. By the end of the section on astronomy, he thus summarized his current position on the role of secular learning: “Now that we have completed the discussion of secular teaching, it is clear that these disciplines bring considerable usefulness to our understanding of divine law, as some of the holy Fathers also point out.”115 The hierarchy of Christian learning that Cassiodorus proposed in his Institutions, with secular disciplines understood as the necessary steps leading to a better understanding of Scripture, largely relied on the authority of Augustine. We do not know if the rather ambitious programme of studies that Cassiodorus compiled for the monks of Vivarium ever became reality in his lifetime, but Cassiodorus’ book 2, with its straightforward scheme of the liberal arts and concise summaries of the contents of each discipline, became a

113  Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1, Preface 2, p. 4, trans. p. 106: “ista est enim fortasse scala Iacob, per quam angeli ascendunt atque descendunt; cui Dominus innititur, lassis porrigens manum et fessos ascendentium gressus sui contemplatione sustentans.” 114  Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.15; Vessey, “Introduction”, pp. 53–4. 115  Cassiodorus, Institutiones 2.7.4, trans. p. 229: “His igitur breviter de doctrinis saecularibus comprehensis, ostenditur quia non parvam utilitatem ad intellegentiam divinae legis afferre noscuntur, sicut etiam a quibusdam sanctis Patribus indicatur.”

342

Lozovsky

popular text in medieval schools. The library of Vivarium also became a major centre of diffusion of Christian and secular texts.116 Conclusion The peaceful years of Ostrogothic rule were beneficial for cultural life in Italy. Theoderic and his family supported schools, employed classically educated people in their administration, and patronized culture. Roman cultural values continued to shape aesthetic tastes and intellectual pursuits of the educated elite, whose members’ interests ranged from philosophy to theology to erotic poetry. At the same time classically educated Christian scholars studied the Bible and fathers of the church, composing their own exegetical works and pondering a proper way of balancing classical and Christian learning. The death of Theoderic ended the years of stability, and the events that followed (the succession crisis, Justinian’s wars, and the Lombard conquest) brought devastation to Italy. By the late 6th century, the intellectual world of this region was transformed, but important links connected it to the earlier period. Manuscripts produced at Vivarium and Castellum Lucullanum were copied in medieval scriptoria all over western Europe. The works of Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Dionysius Exiguus provided medieval scholars with philosophical ideas, educational techniques, and fundamentals of canon law and calendric computation. Medical texts translated in Ostrogothic Italy were studied in 7th-century Ravenna. In the period of social, political, and cultural transformation in western Europe, the work of Ostrogothic intellectuals continued to matter.117 Bibliography

Primary Sources

Anonymus of Ravenna, Cosmographia, ed. J. Schnetz, Itineraria Romana, vol. 1, Stuttgart 1990. Anonymus Valesianus, ed. and trans. J.C. Rolfe, in Ammianus Marcellinus: Res gestae, vol. 3 (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1939, pp. 530–69. 116  Riché, Education and Culture, pp. 161–9; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 219–20; Barnish, “Work of Cassiodorus”; Troncarelli, Vivarium. 117  Numerous studies have addressed the intellectual legacy of that period and its reception in later centuries, from earlier classical treatments, such as Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages to the recent Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

343

Arator, De actibus apostolorum, ed. A.P. McKinlay (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 72), Vienna 1951; trans. R.J. Schrader/J.L. Roberts III and J.F. Makowski, Arator’s On the Acts of the Apostles, Atlanta 1987. Boethius, Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge, ed. S. Brandt, Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii In Isagogen Porphyrii Commenta (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 48), Vienna 1906. ———, De consolatione philosophiae; Opuscula theologica, ed. C. Moreschini, Munich 2005; trans. J.C. Relihan, Consolation of Philosophy, Indianapolis 2001. ———, De institutione arithmetica, ed. G. Friedlein, Leipzig 1867; trans. M. Masi, Boethian Number Theory: A Translation of the De Institutione Arithmetica, Amsterdam 1983. ———, 2nd Commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation, ed. C. Meiser, Anicii Manlii Severini Boetii Commentarii in Librum Aristotelis Peri Hermēneias, vol. 2, Leipzig 1880. ———, The Theological Tractates, trans. H.F. Stewart/E.K. Rand and/S.J. Tester (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1973. Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, Oxford 1937; trans. J.W. Halporn, Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning and On the Soul, Liverpool 2004. ———, Ordo generis Cassiodorum, ed. J.J. O’Donnell, in id., Cassiodorus, Berkeley 1979, pp. 259–66. ———, Variae, ed. A. Fridh, Magni Aurelii Cassiodori Senatoris Opera, vol. 1 (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 96), Turnhout 1973; trans. S.J.B. Barnish, The Variae of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, Liverpool 1992. Ennodius, Opera, ed. F. Vogel (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Anti­ quissimi 7), Berlin 1885. ———, Panegyricus, ed. and trans. C. Rohr, Der Theoderich-Panegyricus des Ennodius (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte 12), Hannover 1995; ed. and trans. S. Rota, Panegirico del clementissimo re Teodorico, Rome 2002. Maximianus, Elegies, trans. B. Goldlust, Maximien: Élégies: suivies de l’Appendix Maximiani et de l’Épithalame pour Maximus d’Ennode de Pavie, Paris 2013. Procopius, History of the Wars, ed. and trans. H.B. Dewing, 5 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA 1914–28.



Secondary Literature

Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554, Cambridge 1997. Arnold, J.J., Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, New York 2014. Astell, A.W., “Cassiodorus’s Commentary on the Psalms as an Ars rhetorica”, Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 17 (1999), 37–75. Barnish, S.J.B., “The Work of Cassiodorus after His Conversion”, Latomus 48 (1989), 157–87. ———, “Maximian, Cassiodorus, Boethius, Theodahad: Literature, Philosophy and Politics in Ostrogothic Italy”, Nottingham Mediaeval Studies 34 (1990), 16–32.

344

Lozovsky

Bartlett, R., “The Dating of Ennodius’ Writings”, in E. D’Angelo (ed.), Atti della Seconda Giornata Ennodiana, Naples 2003, pp. 53–74. Bertelli, C., “The Production and Distribution of Books in Late Antiquity”, in R. Hodges/ W. Bowden (eds.), The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution and Demand, Leiden 1998, pp. 41–60. Billanovich, G., “Dall’antica Ravenna alle biblioteche umanistiche”, Aevum 30 (1956), 319–53. ———, “Ancora dall’ antica Ravenna alle biblioteche umanistiche”, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 36 (1993), 107–74. Bjornlie, M.S., Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople: A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae 527–554, Cambridge 2013. Bradshaw, D., “The Opuscula Sacra: Boethius and Theology”, in J. Marenbon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, Cambridge 2009, pp. 105–28. Brown, P., Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire, Madison, WI 1992. ———, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, New ed., Berkeley 2000. Browning, R., “Education in the Roman Empire”, in Av. Cameron/et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, AD 425– 600, Cambridge 2000, pp. 855–83. Cameron, Al., “Martianus and His First Editor”, Classical Philology 81 (1986), 320–8. ———, The Last Pagans of Rome, New York 2011. Cameron, Av., “Education and Literary Culture”, in ead./P. Garnsey (eds.), Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 13: The Late Empire, AD 337–425, Cambridge 1998, pp. 665–707. Cameron, Av./Ward-Perkins, B./Whitby, M. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, AD 425–600, New York 2000. Cavallo, G., “La cultura a Ravenna tra corte e chiesa”, in O. Capitani (ed.), Le sedi della cultura nell’Emilia Romagna: L’alto medioevo, Milan 1983, pp. 29–51. ———, “La cultura scritta a Ravenna tra antichità tarda e alto medioevo”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.2: Dall’età bizantina all’età ottoniana: Ecclesiologia, cultura e arte, Venice 1992, pp. 79–125. Chadwick, H., Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy, Oxford 1981. Chin, C., Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World, Philadelphia 2008. Christensen, A.S., Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths: Studies in a Migration Myth, Copenhagen 2002. Courcelle, P., Late Latin writers and their Greek sources, trans. H.E. Wedeck, Cambridge, MA 1969. Cracco Ruggini, L., “Cassiodorus and the Practical Sciences”, in S. Barnish/et al. (eds.), Vivarium in Context, Vicenza 2008, pp. 23–53.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

345

De Marini Avonzo, F., “Secular and Clerical Culture in Dionysius’ Exiguus’ Rome”, in S. Kuttner and K. Pennington (eds), Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Berkeley, California, 28 July–2 August 1980 (Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C: Subsidia, Vol. 7), Vatican 1985, pp. 83–92. D’Elia, F., L’Antropologia di Cassiodoro tra ispirazione agostiniana e suggestioni del mondo classico: note teoretiche e filologiche sul “De anima”, Roma 1987. Deliyannis, D.M., Ravenna in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2010. Di Marco, M., “Scelta e utilizzazione delle fonti nel De anima di Cassiodoro”, Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 9 (1985), 93–117. Dura, N., “Denys Exiguus (465–550): précisions et correctifs concernant sa vie et son oeuvre”, Revista Española de Derecho Canónico 50 (1993), pp. 279–90. Duta, F., “Des précisions sur la biographie de Denys le Petit”, Revue de droit canonique 49 (1999), pp. 279–96. Everett, N., Literacy in Lombard Italy, c. 568–774, Cambridge 2003. ———, The Alphabet of Galen. Pharmacy from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Latin Text with English Translation and Commentary, Toronto 2012. Fiery, A., “The Collectio Dionysiana”, online at http://ccl.rch.uky.edu/dionysiana-article. Folkerts, M., “The Importance of the Pseudo-Boethian Geometria during the Middle Ages”, in M. Masi (ed.), Boethius and The Liberal Arts: A Collection of Essays, Bern 1981, pp. 187–210. Fontaine, J., “Education and Learning”, in P. Fouracre (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 1: c.500–c.700, Cambridge 1995, pp. 735–59. Fouracre, P. (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 1: c.500–c.700, Cambridge 1995. Gautier Dalché, P. “L’enseignement de la géographie dans l’antiquité tardive”, Klio 96 (2014), 144–82. Giardina, A., Cassiodoro politico, Rome 2006. Gibson, M. (ed.), Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, Oxford 1981. Gillett, A., “The Purposes of Cassiodorus’ Variae”, in A.C. Murray (ed.), After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History: Essays Presented to Walter Goffart, Toronto 1998, pp. 37–50. Gometz, A.K., Eugippius of Lucullanum: A Biography, PhD diss., University of Leeds, 2008. Gorman, M., “Eugippius and the Origins of the Manuscript Traditition of Saint Augustine’s De Genesi ad Litteram”, Revue Bénédictine 93 (1983), 7–30. Green, R.P.H., Latin Epics of the New Testament: Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator, Oxford 2006. Gruber, J., Kommentar zu Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, 2nd ed., Berlin 2006.

346

Lozovsky

Guillaumin, J.-Y., “Boethius’s De institutione arithmetica and Its Influence on Posterity”, in N.H. Kaylor, Jr./P.E. Phillips (eds.), A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, Leiden 2012, pp. 135–61. Halporn, J.W., “Magni Aurelii Cassiodori Senaroris Liber de anima: Introduction and Critical Text”, Traditio 16 (1960), 39–109. ———, “After the Schools: Grammar and Rhetoric in Cassiodorus”, in C.D. Lanham (ed.), Latin Grammar and Rhetoric: From Classical Theory to Medieval Practice, London 2003, pp. 48–62. Heather, P., “The Historical Culture of Ostrogothic Italy”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia: atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto Medioevo, Milano, 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993, pp. 317–53. ———, “Literacy and Power in the Migration Period”, in A.K. Bowman/G. Woolf (eds.), Literacy and Power in the Ancient World, Cambridge 1994, pp. 177–97. Hen, Y., Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West, Basingstoke, NY 2007. Heydemann, G., “Biblical Israel and the Christian Gentes: Social Metaphors and the Language of Identity in Cassiodorus’s Expositio Psalmorum”, in W. Pohl/ G. Heydemann (eds.), Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, Turnhout 2013, pp. 143–208. Humphries, M., “Italy, AD 425–605”, in Av. Cameron/et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, AD 425–600, Cambridge 2000, pp. 525–51. Jahn, O., “Über die subscriptionen in den Handschriften römischer Classiker”, Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philologisch-historische Classe 3 (1851), 327–72. Johnson, M.J., “Toward a History of Theoderic’s Building Program”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988), 73–96. Kaster, R.A., Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity, Berkeley 1988. Kaylor, N.H./Phillips, P.E. (eds.), A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, Leiden 2012. Kennell, S.A.H., Magnus Felix Ennodius: A Gentleman of the Church, Ann Arbor 2000. Kirkby, H., “The Scholar and His Public”, in M. Gibson (ed.), Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, Oxford 1981, pp. 44–69. Lafferty, S.D.W., Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge 2013. Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.G., The Decline and Fall of the Roman City, Oxford 2001. MacCormack, S.G., “Latin Prose Panegyrics”, in T. Dorey (ed.), Empire and Aftermath, London 1975, pp. 73–177. ———, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, Berkeley 1981.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

347

Marconi, G., “Istruzione laica ed educazione religiosa nell’Italia del VI secolo. Considerazioni su Ennodio e Cassiodoro”, Annali dell’Istituto italiano per gli studi storici 27 (2012–13), 3–48. ———, Ennodio e la nobilità gallo-romana nell’Italia ostrogota, Spoleto 2013. Marenbon, J., Boethius, New York 2003. ———, “Introduction: Reading Boethius Whole”, in id. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, Cambridge 2009, pp. 1–10. ——— (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, Cambridge 2009. Marrou, H.I., A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. G. Lamb, Madison, WI 1956. Martindale, J.R., The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2: AD 395–527, Cambridge 1980. Masi, M. (ed.), Boethius and The Liberal Arts: A Collection of Essays, Bern 1981. Matthews, J., “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius”, in M. Gibson (ed.), Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, Oxford 1981, pp. 15–43. Mazzini, I. and N. Palmieri, “L’école médicale à Ravenne: Programmes et methodes d’enseignement, langue, hommes”, in P. Mudry/J. Pigeaud (eds.), Les écoles médicales à Rome: Actes du 2ème Colloque international sur les textes médicaux latins antiques, Lausanne, septembre 1986, Geneva 1991, pp. 285–310. Momigliano, A., “Cassiodorus and the Italian Culture of his Time”, Proceedings of the British Academy 41 (1955), 207–45. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. ———, “Boethius’ Life and the World of Late Antique Philosophy”, in J. Marenbon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, Cambridge 2009, pp. 13–33. ———, “Ostrogothic Italy and the Lombard Invasions”, in P. Fouracre (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 1: c.500–c.700, Cambridge 1995, pp. 140–61. Moreschini, C., A Christian in Toga. Boethius: Interpreter of Antiquity and Christian Theologian, Göttingen 2014. Mosshammer, A.A., The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era, Oxford 2008. Obertello, L., Severino Boezio, 2 vols., Genoa 1974. O’Donnell, J.J., Cassiodorus, Berkeley 1979. Palmieri, N., “Nouvelles remarques sur les commentaires à Galen”, in A. Debru/ N. Palmieri (eds.), “Docente natura”: mélanges de médecine ancienne et médiévale offerts à Guy Sabbah, Saint-Etienne 2001, pp. 209–46. Pecere, O., “La cultura greco-romana in età gota tra adattamento e transformazione”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia: atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto Medioevo, Milano, 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993, pp. 355–94. Polara, G., “La letteratura in Italia nel VI secolo”, in M.L. Silvestre/M. Squillante (eds.), Mutatio rerum: letteratura, filosofia, scienza tra tardo antico e altomedioevo: atti del convegno di studi (Napoli, 25–26 novembre 1996), Naples 1997, pp. 11–36.

348

Lozovsky

Pollmann, K./Vessey, M. (eds.), Augustine and the Disciplines: From Cassiciacum to Confessions, Oxford 2005. Raby, F.J.E., A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, vol. 1, Oxford 1967. Rappe, S., “The New Math: How to Add and to Subtract Pagan Elements in Christian Education”, in Y.L. Too (ed.), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Leiden 2001, pp. 405–32. Relihan, J.C., Ancient Menippean Satire, Baltimore 1993. ———, The Prisoner’s Philosophy: Life and Death in Boethius’s Consolation, Notre Dame, IN 2007. Riché, P., Education and Culture in the Barbarian West, Sixth through Eighth Centuries, trans. J.J. Contreni, Columbia, SC 1976. Richter, M. “Dionysius Exiguus”, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie 9 (1982), pp. 1–4. Roberts, M., Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity, Liverpool 1985. ———, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity, Ithaca, NY 1989. Schröder, B.-J., Bildung und Briefe im 6. Jahrhundert: Studien zum Mailänder Diakon Magnus Felix Ennodius, Berlin 2007. Sessa, K., The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy: Roman Bishops and the Domestic Sphere, Cambridge 2012. Shanzer, D., “Ennodius, Boethius, and the Date and Interpretation of Maximianus’s Elegia III”, Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica 111 (1983), 183–95. ———, “Latin Literature, Christianity, and Obscenity in the Later Roman West,” in MacDonald, N. (ed.), Medieval Obscenities, Woodbridge 2006, pp. 179–202. ———, “Haec quibus uteris verba: The Bible and Boethius’ Christianity”, in Cain, A./ Lenski, N. (eds.), The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, Farnham 2009, pp. 57–73. ———, “Interpreting the Consolation”, in J. Marenbon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, Cambridge 2009, pp. 228–54. Sheppard, A., “Philosophy and Philosophical Schools”, in Av. Cameron/et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, AD 425– 600, New York 2000, pp. 835–54. Staab, F., “Ostrogothic Geographers at the Court of Theodoric the Great: A Study of Some Sources of the Anonymous Cosmographer of Ravenna”, Viator 7 (1976), 27–64. Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia: atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto Medioevo, Milano, 2–6 novembre 1992, Spoleto 1993. Troncarelli, F., Vivarium: I libri, il destino, Turnhout 1998. Verbist, P., Duelling With the Past: Medieval Authors and the Problem of the Christian Era, c. 990–1135, Turhnout 2010. Vessey, M., “Introduction”, in Cassiodorus, Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning and On the Soul, Liverpool 2004, pp. 1–101. Vitiello, M., “ ‘Nourished at the Breast of Rome’: The Queens of Ostrogothic Italy and the Education of the Roman Elite”, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 149 (2006), 398–412.

Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices

349

———, Il principe, il filosofo, il guerriero: lineamenti di pensiero politico nell’Italia ostrogota, Stuttgart 2006. ———, Theodahad: A Platonic King at the Collapse of Ostrogothic Italy, Toronto 2014. Wasyl, A.M., Genres Rediscovered: Studies in Latin Miniature Epic, Love Elegy, and Epigram of the Romano-Barbaric Age, Kraków 2011. Watts, E., “Education: Speaking, Thinking, and Socializing”, in S.F. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, Oxford 2012, pp. 467–86. Weissengruber, F., “L’educazione profana ncll’Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro”, in S. Leanza (ed.), Cassiodoro: dalla corte di Ravenna al Vivarium di Squillace, Rubbettino 1993, pp. 61–72. Whitby, M. (ed.), The Propaganda of Power: The Role of Panegyric in Late Antiquity, Leiden 1998. Wildberg, C., “Philosophy in the Age of Justinian”, in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge 2005, pp. 316–40.

CHAPTER 14

Art and Architecture Mark J. Johnson Introduction The history of art and architecture in Italy during the Ostrogothic period is largely the history of the artistic patronage of Theoderic and his successors.1 Little is otherwise known of artistic patronage of Ostrogoths beyond the production and consumption of traditional migration period items of jewellery and ornaments. Theoderic, however, was an active and engaged patron who harnessed art and architecture as political tools, using buildings and their decoration as a means of supporting his people in their Arian faith and especially as a projection of his belief in his own political position in the contemporary world. The evidence suggests that he was extraordinarily interested in works on an intellectual level that went beyond propaganda. His models were not his Ostrogothic ancestors nor other barbarian rulers who had established themselves in the former Roman Empire, but the Romans themselves, and in particular the art and architecture of Roman emperors. It is Theoderic, in fact, who introduces the idea of antiquarianism and revivalism into the history of artistic patronage. Very little is known about Ostrogothic art prior to the Ostrogoths’ settlement in Italy. Indeed it is difficult to say that a distinctive style of Ostrogothic art was ever developed. Their art, as was the case for other migrating tribes, consisted of decorated utilitarian objects and jewellery, which continued to be produced after their arrival in Italy. Good examples of this type of art were discovered in a tomb at Domagnano in San Marino, some 70 km south of Ravenna, which yielded a treasure of various ornaments belonging to a woman (Figure 14.1).2 These are made of cloisonné gold metalwork with garnets of a kind found throughout Europe. Ornamental patterns and animal forms fill the surfaces of these objects that include fibulae, buckles, and earrings datable to the 5th or early 6th century.

1  In general see my “Theoderic’s Building Program.” The present chapter will focus on scholarship published since that article appeared in 1988. 2  Kidd, “Tesoro”, pp. 49–59.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_015

Art And Architecture

FIGURE 14.1

351

Jewellery from a female burial at Domagnano in San Marino, ca. late 5th or early 6th century British Museum, London © The Trustees of the British Museum

352

Johnson

Though these types of objects continued to be produced, two important factors led to a major shift in the focus of Ostrogothic art. First was the Ostogoths’ settlement in Italy, where numerous ancient and early Christian monuments, churches, and works of art could be seen and emulated. Second, their leader Theoderic, who lived as a guest/hostage in the Great Palace of Constantinople while growing up, had a lively interest in artistic patronage that led him not to maintain artistic traditions of the migratory period of his own people, but to adopt prototypes from Roman—including early Christian—art and architecture and make them his own. Portraiture The change is evident in many ways and may initially be illustrated by beginning with the idea of portraiture. This is a type of art that had not existed in the barbarian world prior to their arrival in the West. It is first manifested in the Roman-inspired portrait on the signet ring of Childeric, found in his tomb, from the 5th century.3 Among the migrant tribes that settled in the West, however, the Ostrogoths were the only group to adopt the idea of life-sized portraits in stone and bronze. Sources speak of several portraits of Theoderic in Italy. Most notable was the bronze equestrian statue of Theoderic that stood in front of his palace in Ravenna.4 According to Jordanes, the emperor Zeno had ordered such a statue of Theoderic to be placed in the Augustaion square in Constantinople, and it may be that this statue was transferred to Ravenna afterwards, before later being taken by Charlemagne to stand in front of his palace in Aachen.5 Procopius noted that there were several statues of Theoderic in Rome and Isidore of Seville notes that the king was honoured with a gilt bronze statue there for his work in restoring the city’s walls.6 A base for such a statue was found in the Colosseum.7 Images of Theoderic in mosaic decorated his palaces at Pavia and Ravenna and Procopius discusses another in the forum of Naples.8 3  MacGregor, “Childeric’s Ring”. 4  Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis, 94, ed. Deliyannis, pp. 258–9; Johnson, “Theoderic’s Building Program”, p. 87 and note 143. 5  Jordanes, Getica, 289. 6  Procopius, De bello gothico, 3.20.29; Isidore, Historia gothorum wandalorum sveborum, 1.39. 7  C IL 6.32094. 8  For those at the palaces, see below. For the one at Naples see Procopius, De bello gothico, 1.24.22–27.

Art And Architecture

353

The use of stone portraiture perhaps continued with Theoderic’s successors, his daughter Amalasuentha and Athalaric, her son, for whom she acted as regent. A heavily damaged portrait head of a young man with a crown in marble was found at Forli and probably represents him.9 Three marble portrait heads of a woman with a round face wearing a crown and usually dated to the 6th century, two in Rome and the third now in the Louvre, apparently all came from Rome (Figure 14.2). Although usually identified as the empress Ariadne (d. 515), some scholars believe that they actually represent Amalasuentha, citing the fact that these are the only diademed female portraits of the period to be found in Rome, which was then ruled by the Ostrogothic queen, raising questions as to why so many portraits of Ariadne should be found in Rome and none in Constantinople.10 It is unclear whether or not any statues of Theodahad were actually erected, but his list of proposed concessions to Justinian included a commitment not to erect any statues of himself unless they were placed next to statues of the emperor.11 Portraits of Athalaric and Amalasuentha are also found on the ivory diptych of Orestes, consul in 530, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Figure 14.3).12 These are located in the upper part of each leaf, in the place where the imperial couple is portrayed on other diptychs. This particular diptych seems to be one of Clementius, consul in 513, on which the inscriptions and portraits have been recarved. The portrait of Athalaric shows a young man without diadem and an unusual costume; that of his mother shows the same round-faced woman of the marble portraits wearing a crown. The original diptych would have shown Ariadne and so the question is whether or not the portraits now seen were left unchanged as some suppose or reworked to represent Amalasuentha. Given the fact that the portraits of the consul and Athalaric are unquestionably recarved, it seems that an effort to make the female portrait look like the queen would also have been undertaken. It is also noteworthy that such works of art were commissioned and produced at this time. Elsewhere in the eastern empire and other territories formerly in the Roman Empire, portraiture in the round was a dying art form. Already declining in the 5th century, very few portraits in stone datable to the 6th century remain and of these extremely few are imperial. Yet Theoderic and his successors felt that such portraits should be made and placed on display, a telling clue as to their perception of ruler art and its place in society. 9  Fuchs, “Bildnisse”, pp. 145–9. 10  Bertelli, “Ritratti”; Schade, Frauen in der Spätantike, pp. 219–24. 11  Procopius, De bello gothico, 1. 6. 12  McClanan, Representations, pp. 78–87.

354

FIGURE 14.2

Johnson

Marble female portrait, possibly the eastern Empress Ariadne or Amalasuentha CAPITOLINE MUSEUMS, ROME. Photo by Mark Johnson

Art And Architecture

FIGURE 14.3

355

Ivory portraits of Athalaric and Amalasuentha, upper leafs of the Diptych of Orestes (consul 530) Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photo by Mark Johnson

Related to these monumental images is the appearance of royal portraits on coins issued by the Ostrogoths. Theoderic did not put his own likeness on the coins he issued in the name of the emperors under whom he ruled, but does appear on the singular gold Senigallia Medallion (Figure 14.4).13 The obverse depicts a frontal bust portrait of the king depicted with long hair and a moustache, wearing a breastplate and raising his right hand in salutation while holding a Victoriola in his left. It was apparently struck early in his reign. It was Theodahad who first issued coins with his image, showing him in profile wearing a helmet and sometimes a pectoral cross (Figure 14.5). The introduction of his image on his coins is noted in a letter of Cassiodorus, in which it is noted that the practice ensures that “our age is remembered in future centuries” and suggests to the populace that their sovereign is concerned about their

13  Metlach, Coinage, pp. 15–16; Arnold, “Mustache”.

356

Johnson

FIGURE 14.4

Senigallia Medallion, portrait of Theoderic Museo Nazionale, Rome. Photo by Mark Johnson

FIGURE 14.5

Bronze nummus of Theodahad, ca. 534 Photo by PHGCOM, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Art And Architecture

357

well-being.14 Coins of Witigis also featured his image, some in profile and others following Justinian’s lead depicting the ruler with a frontal pose.15

A Culture of Patronage and Building

Another role filled by Roman emperors had an even greater influence on Theoderic—that of builder. He was responsible not only for his own palace or palaces but also for constructing new public buildings, maintaining old ones, guarding the artistic heritage of the country, and supporting religion, in this case Arian Christianity, with the construction and decoration of churches. In this, Theoderic stands out as one of the great patrons of building in Late Antiquity. The sources talk of palaces in Pavia, Verona, and Monza, though nothing remains of those buildings. Small palaces or villas were built at Palazzolo, a few miles north of Ravenna and at Galeata.16 Various projects were undertaken in Rome, including renovations to the imperial palace on the Palatine and repairs to the city walls “for which the Senate honored him with a gilded statue.”17 This was possibly connected with a base bearing an inscription that once held a statue of Theoderic found on the Via Sacra near the Forum.18 Repairs were made to the Theatre of Pompey, the aqueducts, the sewers, and a granary in the city.19 Roof tiles bearing Theoderican brick stamps have been found in fifteen different churches as well as several public buildings in Rome.20 A bath complex and palace were repaired at Abano, near Padua and city walls strengthened in several cities.21 Many reports of these projects are found in Cassiodorus’ Variae, possibly published in 537, and what emerges from them is an important insight into 14  Cassiodorus, Variae, 6.7; Metlach, Coinage, p. 52; plate X, no. 89, and plates A–F. 15  Metlach, Coinage, p. 54 and plate XI. 16  Johnson, “Theoderic’s Building Program”, pp. 77–8; De Maria, ed., Villa di Teodorico a Galeata. 17  Isidorus, Historia gothorum wandalorum sueborum, 1.59, ed. T. Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Auctores Antiquissimi, vol. 11, p. 283. 18  Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 6, no. 1795. 19  For Theoderic’s work at Rome, see Gatto, “Teoderico a Roma”. 20  Examples collected and discussed by Westall, “Theoderic”; it is not clear if these demonstrate direct patronage on the part of Theoderic or are simply evidence of his revival of tile production noted in Cassiodorus, Variae, 1.25.2. 21  Lists of projects and comments in Bjornlie, Politics and Tradition, pp. 240–2; FauvinetRanson, Decor civitatis, pp. 199–202.

358

Johnson

how Theoderic saw his role as patron. A letter from his grandson Athalaric to Cassiodorus states that Theoderic sought “to make himself equal to the ancients”22 and another reveals his desire “to bring back all things to their former state”.23 There is a distinct awareness of the concept of antiquity versus modernity in the culture of the Theoderican court. First, the antiquarianism expressed in the apparent cognizance of the ancient world speaks of the self-awareness of living in a different epoch. Interestingly, it is at the end of the 5th century that the word modernus first appears; Cassiodorus then uses it seven times in the Variae, often to differentiate the contemporary from the ancient.24 The ancient is not only recognized, but held in esteem with the admiration of the ancient being expressed in two ways. First is in the restoration of the old, when there was a reason to restore and when the ability to do so was present. One of the roles of a Roman emperor was to construct new public buildings and take care of older ones, a role that, as mentioned, Theoderic also embraced. In one letter it is pointed out that “most worthy of royal attention is the rebuilding of ancient cities” and another expresses the king’s desire to “preserve the monuments of antiquity.”25 Similarly, the king states, “Indeed it is our intention to build new things, but even more to protect ancient things”.26 The form letter composed by Cassiodorus orders the cura palatii to study Euclidian geometry and to “see that the new work harmonizes with the old”, especially relevant in this situation in which an older palace at Ravenna was being remodelled and expanded under Theoderic.27 Another way this antiquarianism was expressed is found in the interpretation of how the ancient might benefit the modern. So the architectus publicorum of Rome was instructed to study the extant monuments of ancient Rome for inspiration.28 At times it was no longer possible to renew ruined Roman buildings, but their materials could be salvaged and reused in profitable ways. Several letters in the Variae contain instructions for sending materials to Ravenna. The people of Astuna were ordered to send columns and lapides

22  Variae 9.24; ed. Mommsen 290; ed. Fridh, 377. 23  Variae 3.51, ed. Mommsen 95; ed. Fridh, 119. 24  Kiilerich, “Antiquus et modernus”. 25  Variae 1.28, ed. Mommsen, p. 29; ed. Fridh, p. 35; and Variae 4.51 ed. Mommsen, p. 139 ed. Fridh, p. 179. 26  Variae 3.9.1; Bjornlie, Politics, p. 244. 27  Variae 7.5; ed. Mommsen p. 204; ed. Fridh, p. 264. 28  Variae 7.15 ed. Mommsen, p. 211. ed. Fridh, p. 274.

Art And Architecture

359

­vetustatis—stone components from old buildings no longer in use;29 the prefect of Rome was instructed to remove marble from the Domus Pinciana, much of which apparently ended up in the palace complex.30 Cassiodorus summed up Theoderic’s patronage by stating that, “under his well-disposed rule very many cities were renovated, the most fortified castles were built, palaces worthy of admiration arose, and the ancient wonders were excelled by his great works”.31

Churches and Palaces at Ravenna

Theoderic’s most important building projects were in his capital city of Ravenna (Figure 14.6).32 When he and his people settled in the former capital of the western empire they apparently occupied the eastern side of the city, home to the imperial palace complex. Perhaps there was more room in this area, removed from the ancient core and forum of the city and closer to the sea. The Ostrogoths were Arians and set about building churches to accommodate their worship; Agnellus mentions seven Arian churches in Ravenna and nearby Caesarea and Classe.33 Of the known churches they built, all of the urban churches were located in this part of the city with the exception of one possibly built by Amalasuentha, S. Pietro in Orphanotrophio, located somewhere in the older part of the city.34 Amalasuentha wrote a letter written to Justinian regarding the acquisition of building materials from Constantinople, perhaps for a church.35 Capitals from another building, the destroyed Ecclesia Gothorum that had stood in the north-east corner of the city, were reused in an arcade near the civic palace and bear the monogram of Theoderic, showing that he was the patron of the building (Figure 14.7). Those built outside of the walls were to the north-east and south-east of the city, with at least one in the suburb known as Caesarea. Of these, the patron is specified only once by 29  Variae 3.9. 30  Variae 3.10. 31  Chronica, s. 500, ed. Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Auctores Antiquissimi, vol. 11, p. 160. 32  Now see in general Deliyannis, Ravenna; Cirelli, Ravenna; Davide, Eternal Ravenna; Verhoeven, Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna; and Wood, “Theoderic’s Monuments”. Deichmann, Ravenna, remains fundamental for the study of any of Ravenna’s monuments. 33  Liber Pontificalis 86, ed. Delyiannis, p. 253; see Cirelli, Ravenna, pp. 98–9 and 236; Deichmann, Ravenna, vol. 2.2, pp. 325–7. 34  Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis 62, ed. Deliyannis, p. 232; Cirelli, Ravenna, p. 256. 35  Cassiodorus, Variae 10.8.

360

FIGURE 14.6

Johnson

Map of eastern half of Ravenna, early 6th century Map by Mark Johnson

Art And Architecture

FIGURE 14.7

361

Marble column capital with monogram of Theoderic Formerly located in the Ecclesia Gothorum, Ravenna. Photo by Mark Johnson

Agnellus who noted that S. Eusebio was built by the Arian bishop Unimundus in 513.36 It is possible that the excavated remains of a large basilica known as the Ca’Bianca church, found some 2 km south of Sant’Apollinare in Classe, may be one of these churches. It is datable to the end of the 5th or beginning of the 6th century and had an octagonal baptistery on its north flank.37 Perhaps the first church to be built by the Ostrogoths was their cathedral, part of an episcopal complex that included a baptistery and episcopal palace (Figure 14.8).38 The church, known today as Santo Spirito and perhaps originally 36  Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis 70, ed. Deliyannis, p. 239; Cirelli, Ravenna, pp. 98–9. 37  Deliyannis, Ravenna, pp. 197–8. 38  Verhoeven, Early Christian Churches of Ravenna, pp. 143–6; Deliyannis, Ravenna, pp. 174–87.

362

FIGURE 14.8

Johnson

Santo Spirito, basilica and baptistery, Ravenna Photo by Mark Johnson

dedicated to the Anastasis like the cathedral of the Orthodox on the other side of the city, is a small building measuring 18.5 m by 28.3 m (Figure 14.9). These are the short and wide proportions of basilicas in the eastern Mediterranean such as those of St John Studios and St Mary Chalkoprateia in Constantinople from ca. 460, but without the galleries often present in those.39 The apse is polygonal externally and semicircular on the inside; the walls are constructed of reused bricks of various sizes and colours set in thin mortar beds, a technique found in most of Theoderic’s buildings.40 The nave is separated from the side aisles by arches resting on seven columns per side, topped by capitals and impost blocks. No decoration is found in the apse or on the interior walls and it is uncertain if any ever existed. A portico, perhaps part of a lost atrium, extended westwards from the south-west corner of the church to the baptistery. The baptistery constructed of varied reused bricks in the same fashion as the cathedral is an octagonal structure as are many early Christian baptisteries, including that of the

39  See T. Mathews, Early Churches of Constantinople, pp. 11–41. 40  Righini, “Materiali”, pp. 210–13.

Art And Architecture

FIGURE 14.9

363

Plan of Santo Spirito, Ravenna Plan by Mark Johnson

Orthodox Baptistery in Ravenna.41 A new feature in baptistery design appears here for the first time: an exterior ambulatory that wraps around the inner core and provided a space for moving people through the phases of the baptismal ceremony.42 The octagonal core rose above the ambulatory, allowing a window on each side to illuminate the interior. The dome, like the vault of the cathedral’s apse, was built of brick rather than the tubi fittili used in other domes in the city.43 The interior of the baptistery has a floor level much higher than its original one. Excavations under it demonstrated the presence of a font near the centre of the space and uncovered numerous fragments of stucco sculpture as well as mosaic tesserae that formed the decoration of the walls. Only the mosaics in the dome remain therefore intact and its programme was obviously based on that of the Orthodox Baptistery, modified because of its smaller size (Figure 14.10). The Baptism of Christ is depicted in the central medallion: a nude and beardless Christ stands in the water flanked by John the Baptist and the river god of the Jordan, personifying the place in which 41  Fabbi, “Tipologie”. 42  Pellini, “Complesso episcopale”, pp. 116–17. 43  Deliayannis, Ravenna, p. 180.

364

Johnson

FIGURE 14.10 Mosaic, baptistery of Santo Spirito, Ravenna Photo by Mark Johnson

the event occurred. Above Christ’s head is the dove of the Holy Spirit. Below is a band with a throne, on which is placed a cross placed on an axis directly above Christ. This is what is known as the Hetoimasia or ‘Prepared Throne’ awaiting the second coming of Christ. From either side, the twelve apostles approach the throne. To the right is Peter holding the keys and to the left is Paul holding a scroll. The other apostles all carry crowns of martyrdom. Dressed in white tunics and cloaks, they stand on a thin patch of green grass, separated from each other by small palm trees, all against a background of gold. Peter, Paul, and the apostle next to Paul all have halos that differ from those crowning the heads of the other apostles and the palms between them have a different appearance than the others. This may indicate that the mosaic was done in two different periods as some have suggested, or perhaps by two

Art And Architecture

365

­different workshops.44 Whatever the case, the programme of the mosaics was unchanged and remains unified. Given its close affinity to the mosaics in the Orthodox Baptistery, two observations may be made. First, there was no prior Arian tradition in baptistery decoration and indeed no other Arian baptistery has been identified.45 Therefore, it is not surprising that the earlier baptistery should provide the inspiration for the latter one. Second, nothing in the mosaics suggests a uniquely Arian message and therefore nothing was changed after the building later came under Orthodox control. To the south was the destroyed Arian bishop’s palace, known in later sources as the Domus Drocdonis. Agnellus reports that it had a small oratory on its second floor dedicated to St Apollinaris.46 This would of course have echoed the palace of the Orthodox bishop, which also has a small oratory on its second floor.

The Palace Complex at Ravenna

A palace complex had existed in Ravenna from the early 5th century, when Honorius had made the city the western capital of the Roman Empire. Sources talk about two palaces, both in the eastern part of the city. The earliest was the palace “in Laureto”, which has not been excavated except in bits and pieces, but was located in the south-east quarter of the city. It may have been begun by Honorius, though Agnellus reports that Valentinian III built “a royal hall” there and he also seems to have been responsible for building a circus west of the palace—an arrangement of palace and circus that echoed that of circus and palace found in Rome and copied in other capitals including Constantinople.47 Odovacer seems to have resided in this palace, which was the place of his death. The other palace is known as that of Theoderic, located to the north of the Laureto complex, but in all likelihood together they formed one large palace complex. Excavations in the early 20th century uncovered a building believed to be this palace in the area east of the church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, which 44  Rizzardi, Mosaico, pp. 83–4 sees two phases separated by at least fifteen years. 45  The baptistery found at Ca’ Bianca may have been Arian but it survives only to just barely above the foundation level. 46  Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis 86, ed. Deliyannis, p. 253. 47  Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis 40, ed. Deliyannis, p. 198; Deichmann, Ravenna, vol. 2.3, p. 50. For an overview of the history of the palaces in Ravenna see Herrin, “Palace”.

366

Johnson

was itself a part of the palace complex (Figure 14.11).48 These revealed a large building with numerous rooms organized around a central peristyle courtyard measuring 53 m from east to west and 32.5 m from north to south. Various smaller rooms extended to the south of the courtyard, but no rooms were discovered on its east side and the excavations did not reach to the west portico and whatever rooms may have been there. The principal rooms of this building were found on the north side, with their doors facing south. In the centre of the north portico was the entry, through three arches, to a large audience hall (room L). The excavations revealed that it had originally been constructed at half its size with a much smaller apse and 48 cm lower, but then expanded with a floor raised 48 cm into a room measuring 11 m × 27 m with a much larger apse at its north end. This room was paved with opus sectile. The other significant

FIGURE 14.11

Plan of Theoderic’s palace, Ravenna Plan by Mark Johnson

48  The account for the excavations published by Ghirardini, “Scavi”, was meant as a preliminary report, but no further publication followed. Recent studies of the palace and its finds include Augenti, “Archeologia”; “Palace of Theoderic”; Baldini Lippolis, “Articolazione e decorazione”; Cirelli, Ravenna, pp. 78–89; and Savini, Scavi del palazzo di Teoderico.

Art And Architecture

367

room in this wing is the triconch triclinium (room S) in the north-east corner, entered through a square vestibule. Its floor was covered with figural mosaics, with the central panel depicting the mythological hero Bellerophon slaying the Chimera. Literary sources suggest that the palace complex extend northward to the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, with an excubitorium or guardhouse near the church. On the west, just to the south of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, was the main entrance into the complex, known as the Chalke after the entrance into the Great Palace complex in Constantinople. Indeed much about the layout of the complex and the names of its components evoked the palace where Theoderic had lived for a decade.49 The Chalke faced an open square in which was installed the equestrian statue of Theoderic mentioned earlier, echoing the square called the Augusteion in front of the palace in Constantinople and its function as a place for the display of imperial statuary. The complex extended to the south to link with the Palace in Lauretum, though proximity to the city wall and the sea meant that there were probably no buildings east of those found in the excavations. Somewhere in this complex was the as-yet-undiscovered Basilica Herculis, mentioned in a letter written in 508/509 by Cassiodorus to Agapitus, the prefect of Rome, in which he asked for “the most accomplished” marble workers to be sent to Ravenna to work on it.50 Its particular function is unknown, but a relief depicting one of the labours of Hercules now in the National Museum in Ravenna may have come from this building whose name demonstrates the interest in antiquity that was a strong part of Theoderic’s patronage.51 The excavations revealed that the peristyle building had at least five phases of construction, beginning in the 1st century AD, followed by some additions in the 4th century. Further changes seem to have been made in the 5th century, perhaps with the arrival of Honorius and the establishment of the city as his capital. Given the limited publication of the findings there has been some debate as to which parts of the building were remodelled or added under Theoderic. Most scholars agree that the triclinium is Theoderican, as is the apse of room T attached to the audience hall (room L). The date of the doubling in size of this hall is disputed, with some scholars believing that it 49  Johnson, “Theoderic’s Building Program”, pp. 82–4; followed by Verhoeven, Early Christian Churches, pp. 141–2. 50  Variae 1.6, ed. Mommsen, pp. 16–17; ed. Fridh, p. 17; Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 244–7, who notes the evocation of Tetrarchic political symbolism in this dedication, as does Kennel, “Hercules’ Invisible Basilica”. 51  Deliyannis, Ravenna, p. 123.

368

Johnson

­ appened under Honorius.52 This dating is largely based on the date of its opus h sectile floor, though the remains of the floor have not been systematically studied. Others believe the enlargement of the hall took place under Theoderic.53 The proposed earlier dating ignores the possible evidence of the masonry of the addition, which in a photograph from the excavations seems composed of various-sized bricks as found in Theoderican buildings.54 In addition, the excavator reported that the curving walls of the hall’s apse rested on palafitte, or wood poles, that were pounded into the muddy terrain to create a platform for the walls. The only other part of the complex with a similar preparation for its walls is the triclinium, which all ascribe to Theoderic.55 In a similar vein, there is a debate about the figural floor mosaics found in the porticos of the courtyard and some rooms. These mosaics are fragmentary but include hunting and mythological scenes as well as views of the circus and charioteers (Figure 14.12). One theory argues for a 5th-century date for these mosaics and a Theoderican date for the geometrical designs in the mosaics that covered them.56 The figural mosaics, with their bright colours and high level of execution, have a close affinity to the mosaic of the triclinium built and decorated under Theoderic. The geometric patterned mosaics that covered them, however, are actually very similar to the floor mosaics discovered in the basilica of San Severo in Classe, datable to the late 6th century.57 Therefore, the figural mosaics, with their bright colours and high level of execution are better dated to the period of Theoderic.58 These mosaics are the ideological fit to the antiquarian interests and imperial imitation of Theoderic. Such scenes were no longer suitable when the Byzantine governor took up residence here after 540 and so were replaced with the simpler geometric designs. Work on the palace continued even after the eastern imperial army arrived in Italy. An oration of Cassiodorus, given in 536 to Matasuentha and Witigis in celebration of a remodelling of some part of the palace or of an addition to it, speaks of marble surfaces shining with the same colour as gems, mosaics and a place where “the waxen pictures are displayed”.59 The “waxen pictures” were 52  Augenti, “Archeologia”, p. 13; Cirelli, Ravenna, p. 83; Russo, “Nuova proposta”, p. 174. 53  Baldini Lippolis, “Articolazione e decorazione”, p. 26. 54  Augenti, “Archeologia”, p. 15, fig. 7. 55  Ghirardini, “Scavi”, p. 785. 56  This is the dating proposed by Berti, Mosaici, pp. 10–86, who emphasized the relative levels in the five strata of floors to arrive at her conclusions. 57  Farioli Campanati, “Mosaici”, 71; Deliyannis, Ravenna, 274–5. 58  Rizzardi and Vernia, “Scene circensi”, pp. 124–5; Baldini Lippolis, “Palazzo”, 1997, pp. 22–5. 59  Cassiodorus, Orationum Reliquiae 2, ed. L. Taube, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Auctores Antiquissimi, vol. 12, p. 483; Deliyannis, Ravenna, p. 120.

Art And Architecture

FIGURE 14.12 Mosaic fragment, possible paving from Theoderic’s palace, Ravenna Photo by Mark Johnson

369

370

Johnson

probably paintings done on wood panels using the encaustic technique of the type that survive from the Faiyum region in Egypt, but which are mentioned in other late antique accounts. The church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, located to the west of (but close by) the excavated palace was the palace chapel of the complex. Agnellus reported seeing this inscription in the base of the apse: “King Theoderic made this church from its foundations in the name our Lord Jesus Christ”.60 Its dedication to Christ recalls that of the palace chapel built by Constantine in the Great Palace at Constantinople.61 Agnellus also mentions a baptistery associated with the church, though its remains have not been identified.62 The church is a basilica that seems to have been largely modelled on the nearby church of San Giovanni Evangelista. Originally preceded by an atrium, its nave is 21 m wide and twice as long at 42 m, with twelve columns on either side separating it from the side aisles. The original apse, destroyed in the 17th century in order to enlarge the sanctuary, was semicircular on the inside and polygonal externally. Like the buildings of the Arian cathedral complex, the walls of the church are constructed of reused brick in various sizes and colours ranging from yellow to red. One unusual detail is a raised course of brick that frames the windows on the exterior wall in the guise of moulding. The only parallel to this detail is found in the carved mouldings found in the stone churches of the 5th and 6th centuries in Syria.63 Inside, the columns, capitals, and impost blocks are of imported Proconnesian marble (Figure 14.13).64 The nave walls are decorated with colourful mosaics: some from the period of Theoderic; some from the reconciliation of the church to the Orthodox tradition following the Byzantine conquest of the city. Each wall is now divided into three zones, having lost a zone about 1.25–1.50 m high just above the arcade when the level of the floor of the church was raised without shortening the columns. At the top, alternating with the clerestory windows, is a Christological cycle set in small rectangular panels. The middle zone contains a series of saints, apostles, and prophets depicted individually dressed in white tunics with red clavi. Some of the figures hold books, others hold scrolls, and all have a halo, but none is identified with inscriptions. Both of these zones were completed in the time of Theoderic. On the north side the lowest zone depicts 60  Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis 86, ed. Delyiannis, p. 254; for this and other Theoderican inscriptions see Guerrini, “Theodericus”. 61  Johnson, “Theoderic’s Building Program”, p. 85. 62  Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis 89, ed. Deliyannis, p. 256. 63  As noted by Russo, Architettura, 45. 64  See Harper, “Provisioning of Marble”.

FIGURE 14.13 Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, basilica interior, Ravenna Photo by Mark Johnson

Art And Architecture

371

372

Johnson

the city of Classe on the west end, a procession of female saints moving toward the east, the Three Magi, and at the east end Mary dressed in purple tunic and maphorion, or mantle, enthroned with the Christ Child, with angels acting as bodyguards. On the south wall facing the depiction of Classe is a building identified by an inscription as the “Palatium” A procession of male saints heading east fills most of the zone; they approach an enthroned Christ also dressed in purple with gold clavi and who also has a group of four angels acting as bodyguards. The processions of saints were done after 540, replacing the original mosaics; a few changes were made in the Classe and Palatium scenes involving the removal of figures. The panels of the top zone on the north side contain scenes of the ministry of Christ set against gold backgrounds and depicting, starting from the west, the Healing of the Paralytic of Bethesda Casting out of Demons into Swine Healing of Paralytic of Capernaum Parable of Sheep and Goats Parable of the Widow’s Mite Parable of Pharisee and Publican Raising of Lazarus Samaritan Woman at Well Woman with Haemorrhage Healing of two Blind Men Calling of Peter and Andrew Multiplication of Fish and Bread Wedding at Cana The scenes are not arranged in chronological order and the reason behind this particular order is unclear, but it may be observed that the last scene, the Wedding at Cana in which Christ is shown changing water into wine, is closest to the apse and the sanctuary and can be read as an allusion to the wine of the Eucharist. In all scenes Christ is shown beardless and dressed in a purple tunic with gold clavi. The corresponding panels of the south wall depict the scenes of the Passion and are arranged in chronological order. Nearest the apse is another scene connected to the Eucharist, the Last Supper, in which Christ introduced the concept of the Eucharistic ritual. Moving from east to west the scenes are the: Last Supper Garden of Gethsemane

Art And Architecture

373

Betrayal by Judas Arrest of Jesus Jesus before Caiaphas Denial of Peter Repentance of Judas Jesus before Pilate Jesus on the Road to Calvary Two Martyrs and Angel at Tomb Road to Emmaus Jesus appears to Thomas and Apostles Missing in the sequence is the crucifixion, though depictions of that event are rare in early Christian art and do not become common until centuries later. Christ is again wearing the purple tunic in these scenes, but is now bearded. The usual explanation for this difference is that the divinity of Christ and his ability to perform miracles is the focus of the north wall panels, while his human nature and mortality are on exhibit in the south wall panels, with the beard somehow alluding to that.65 What is most interesting about the mosaics of the lowest band is the mixing of the sacred with the secular. Classe is paired with Mary on the north, and the Palatium, symbol of earthly rulership, is paired with the Heavenly ruler in his throne on the south side. It is impossible to say what existed in the original decoration in place of the two saintly processions, though it is often suggested that perhaps processions of Theoderic and his court or possibly of Arian saints may have been there.66 No part of the decoration has evoked more analysis than the Palatium mosaic (Figure 14.14).67 It depicts a central pavilion with three arches on piers supporting a triangular pediment, flanked by porticos on either side, above which is a second storey with windows placed above each arch. Behind the palace are represented other buildings, a church, and baptisteries with a city wall and to the right is a city gate. There are two basic interpretations of what is represented here: the first is that the façade is one side of an interior courtyard, perhaps that of the north side of the excavated palace with the pediment representing the entrance into the audience hall;68 the second is that it is the

65  Deliyannis, Ravenna, pp. 156–7. 66  Wood, “Theoderic’s Monuments”, p. 257; Deliyannis, Ravenna, pp. 156–7. 67  Carile, Vision, pp. 129–55, provides an excellent review of the various theories. 68  Rizzardi, Mosaico, p. 98.

FIGURE 14.14 Mosaic of the Palatium and the city scape of Ravenna, basilica interior, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna Photo by Mark Johnson

374 Johnson

Art And Architecture

375

façade of the main entrance into the palace, the Chalke.69 This is more likely the correct reading of the mosaic; as Cassiodorus wrote, the entrance façade of the palace was key to understanding the importance and prestige of the ruler: “these things are shown to ambassadors who are impressed and astonished, and from the facade which is seen first, the master is believed to be what is attested by his dwelling place.”70 The interpretation of this building as the Chalke may also be supported by a passage in which Agnellus mentions this building in the context of describing images of Theoderic that he had seen: Pavia, where Theodoric built a palace, and I have seen an image of him sitting on a horse well executed in mosaic in the vault of the apse. There was a similar image of him in the palace that he built in this city [Ravenna], in the apse of the dining hall that is called By the Sea, above the gate and at the front of the main door that is called Ad Calchi, where the main gate of the palace was, in the place which is called Sicrestum, where the church of the Savior is seen to be. In the pinnacle of this place was an image of Theodoric, wonderfully executed in mosaic, holding a lance in his right hand, a shield in his left, wearing a breastplate. Facing the shield stood Rome, executed in mosaic with spear and helmet; and there holding a spear was Ravenna, figured in mosaic, with right foot on the sea, left on land hastening toward the king.71 Many have seen the passage as referring to two images of Theoderic at Ravenna: one similar to that seen by Agnellus in Pavia depicting Theoderic on horseback, which would have been in the apse of the triclinium called “By the Sea”; the other would have been on the gable or pediment of the main gate of the palace called the Chalke, in which Theoderic was shown between personifications of Rome and Ravenna. Deliyannis argues that only one image was shown, Theoderic on horseback, between the personifications, with the mosaic being located on the pinnacle of the apse of the Triclinium “By the Sea”, which the text indicates was located on a second floor above the Chalke entrance gate.72 The passage seems to be confused and may be corrupt—the location of the 69  Piccinini, “Immagini”, p. 44; Longhi, “Regalità”, p. 29; idem, “Statua”, p. 189; Wood, “Theoderic’s Buildings”, p. 254. 70  Variae 7.5, ed. Mommsen, p. 204; ed. Fridh, p. 264. Procopius makes a similar remark about the Chalke in Constantinople: De aedificiis 1.10.11, tr. H.B. Dewing, vol. 7, p. 84. 71  Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis 94, ed. Deliyannis, pp. 258–9; tr. Deliyannis, pp. 205–6. 72  Agnellus, Book of Pontiffs, tr. Deliyannis, commentary on pp. 73–4.

376

Johnson

Chalke and any possible dining hall above it was not “By the Sea” but on the side of the palace opposite from the sea. The location of a mosaic on a “pinnacle”, usually translated as ‘gable’ also suggests that it was on the exterior of the building, where a gable or pediment would normally be found. If one can accept the description as referring to two images, then one of them was in the gable of the Chalke and it was the representation of this image that was obliterated during the Orthodox ‘sanitizing’ of the Palatium mosaic. Whichever interpretation, the passage remains important for its description of yet another evocation of Roman imperial imagery on the part of Theoderic. Images of the emperor with personifications were common, and if there were an image above the Chalke entrance it would have imitated the practice begun by Constantine of placing images of himself above the entrances to his palace.73 Modifications to the palace mosaic carried out after the Orthodox reconciliation, identifiable due to the use of a mortar different from the original, may be noted. Several figures that stood in the arches were obliterated except for portions of their right arms that extended over the columns.74 The centre of the pediment was also reworked; it perhaps contained a representation of Theoderic, either the one described by Agnellus or another. The entrance is filled with gold mosaic, and though some have suggested that there were also changes in this part of the mosaic that view is not supported by a technical analysis of the mosaic itself.75 A figure standing in the gate of the city wall on the right of the mosaic was also filled in. Mosaics also decorated the west wall of the nave interior, but all that remains is a fragment showing a middle-aged man from the waist up who wears a crown and a mantle pinned with an elaborately jewelled fibula (Figure 14.15). The name above his head is “Justinian”, but that is a 19th-century addition. An investigation of the underlying mortar revealed that the face was set during the period of Theoderic, but the crown and fibula were set in the Byzantine period. Speculation is that this was a portrait of Theoderic later modified into one of Justinian, but there is really no basis for assuming the original mosaic represented Theoderic as opposed to another man.76 Did the mosaics have an Arian message? When the church was reconciled to the Orthodox tradition, only limited changes were made and those changes 73  Sources collected in Johnson, “Theoderic’s Building Program”, p. 87. 74  Urbano, “Donation”, p. 96 suggests that the arms were deliberately left to remind viewers of the damnatio memoriae of images of Theoderic and his court. 75  Longhi, “Statua”, p. 191, argues the mosaic here was changed; Carile, Vision, p. 143 says no changes have been made in this area. 76  Bernardi, “Ritratto”; Baldini Lippolis, “Ritratto”.

Art And Architecture

FIGURE 14.15 Fragmentary mosaic, possibly of Theoderic, basilica interior, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna Photo by Mark Johnson

377

378

Johnson

could be ascribed to a desire to eliminate secular elements—Theoderic and his court—rather than to eliminate any content whose doctrine may have been objectionable to the Orthodox. For this reason many have argued that there was no specific Arian content in the programme.77 A thorough analysis published by Penni Iacco demonstrates that the mosaics did relate to Arian doctrine, as expressed in two of the few Arian sources to survive: the Sermo Arianorum and the Dispute of Maximinus with Augustine over the Trinity, which took place in 427.78 In particular the link between scenes depicted in the Christological scenes of the north wall, as well as to some of the Passion scenes on the south wall, and references to those very scenes in surviving Arian sources are very strong.79 For the most part these are episodes in which Christ demonstrated a dependence upon the Father, prayed to the Father, or acted in the name of the Father, which to the Arians all supported their view of Father and Son being separate and distinct, with the Son having been created by the Father. Although the reason behind the precise order of those scenes in the programme is still a mystery, the choice of these particular scenes while omitting other events of Christ’s ministry demonstrates that an Arian message was intended in the programme. Therefore, one may ask why these mosaics were not changed or eliminated in the reconciliation? The answer is simply that just as the Arian and Orthodox reader could interpret the biblical text in differing fashions so, too, could the Arian and Orthodox viewer see the same scenes but understand them differently.

The Mausoleum of Theoderic

Near the end of his life Theoderic set about preparing his final resting place, an extraordinary building that is unique in 6th-century architecture as well as very revealing about Theoderic’s influences and his perception of his own place in history (Figure 14.16). The site chosen for the monument was northeast of the city walls, near a lighthouse, and in the area of a cemetery. A bronze fence with carved stone pillars encircled the mausoleum, giving it a measure of protection and setting it off from the rest of the cemetery. The building has two levels: the lower one set at ground level is decagonal in plan, with exterior niches on each of its sides, except for that on the west c­ ontaining 77  Wood, “Theoderic’s Buildings”, p. 253. 78  Sermo Arianorum, in Patrologia Latina vol. 42, pp. 677–84; the Collatio Augustini cum Maximino arianorum episcopi, in Patrologia Latina, vol. 42, pp. 709–42. 79  Penni Iacco, Arianesimo, pp. 51–62.

Art And Architecture

379

FIGURE 14.16 Mausoleum of Theoderic, exterior, Ravenna Photo by Mark Johnson

an entrance (Figure 14.17). Inside the plan is cruciform creating rectangular niches on the north, east, and south. The second level is set back from the lower one, creating a ledge. Its plan is dodecagonal externally and internally circular with a door directly above that of the lower level on the west and a small niche that protrudes on the east. The interior is also circular.

380

Johnson

FIGURE 14.17 Plan of the Mausoleum of Theoderic, Ravenna Plan by Mark Johnson

Unlike every other building erected in Ravenna during the reign of Theoderic, the mausoleum is constructed of stone, a white limestone cut in fine ashlar blocks. The niches of the lower level give depth to the wall and heighten the stark geometric qualities of its design. Arches covering the niches are constructed using what are known as ‘joggled voussoirs’, in which the blocks ­interlock—a technique found elsewhere in the 6th century only in Syria, suggesting that the builders came from there, a place where stone was the common building material. The upper level appears unfinished, with a series of small arches carved into the stone, awaiting the placement of a roof that would have extended out over the ledge, presumably to be supported by columns as suggested by De Angelis d’Ossat in his reconstruction (Figure 14.18).80 At the top of the wall is a narrow band of carved decoration, with a ‘tong’ design repeated numerous times in each section that has parallels in Ostrogothic metalwork.81 The Anonymus Valesianus reports that to cover the building Theoderic sought out a large stone.82 He found it in the Vinkuran quarry south of Pula, across the Adriatic Sea in Istria, where it was quarried, loaded onto a ship, and

80  De Angelis d’Ossat, Studi ravennati, pp. 93–111; also, Deichmann, Ravenna, 2.1, pp. 223–9. 81  Rupertsberger, “Zangenmotiv”. 82  Anonymous Valesiana, pars posterior, c. 96, ed. Mommsen, p. 328.

Art And Architecture

381

FIGURE 14.18 Mausoleum of Theoderic, reconstruction of De Angelis d’Ossat Drawing reproduced from De Angelis d’Ossat, Studi ravennati: problemi di architettura paleocristiana (1962)

brought to Ravenna.83 The monolith, 10.76 m in diameter, 3.09 m thick, and weighing around 300 tons, was carved into the shape of a dome, curved both on its top and underside. Twelve spurs are arranged around the edge, each carved with the name of an apostle. Their original purpose is debated. Some scholars have seen the openings carved into them as possible mooring for ropes that would have manoeuvred the great stone into place atop the monument. In this case the names would have been added later as an afterthought. The fact that 83  Tabarroni, “Scienze”, pp. 129–34.

382

Johnson

there are twelve spurs may, however, reveal an intentional symbolism that will be discussed below. A large porphyry tub now displayed in the upper room of the monument is thought to have been the king’s sarcophagus, as Agnellus states that he was so buried.84 Though it has been suggested that the labrum in the mausoleum was not the sarcophagus of Theoderic, similar porphyry tubs had been used as sarcophagi for 4th-century emperors in Milan.85 In addition, various 4thand 5th-century emperors had been buried in porphyry sarcophagi in both Constantinople and Rome. In choosing a similar mode of burial for himself Theoderic was clearly following that imperial model. Given the seemingly unique nature of its design, the mausoleum has been subject to a variety of interpretations. The monument has been seen as a tribute to the Germanic origins of the Ostrogoths, with the dome representing either a burial mound or a tent, but it is any case completely foreign to the otherwise Roman tradition found in the other buildings of Theoderic and their decoration.86 Deichmann claimed that its uniqueness in and of itself made the building ‘barbarian’, implying that the Ostrogothic king had returned to his roots in his choice of a final resting place.87 The truth is in fact that the models for Theoderic’s mausoleum were the mausolea of the Roman emperors. The use of stone in the monument at Ravenna is significant as it copies the similar use of stone—or facing of stone—found in the mausolea of Augustus, Hadrian, and Maxentius in Rome.88 That of Helena in Rome was built of brick and then covered with a thick layer of plaster drafted to look like stone ashlars. In a similar vein, the inclusion of a dome in the structure is also found in the design of all late Roman imperial mausolea from those of Helena, Constantina, and Honorius in Rome and that of Constantine in Constantinople, all buildings that Theoderic could have seen. Key to understanding the design of Theoderic’s mausoleum are the imperial mausolea discovered at Gamzigrad in Serbia, attributed to Galerius and his mother, Romula.89 The Ravenna monument is close to them in design, construction, and scale. Each has a two-storey design, with a burial chamber in the podium. Mausoleum I, probably of Romula, has a square base and an 84  Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis, 39, ed. Deliyannis, p. 195. 85  David, Eternal Ravenna, p. 137; for a similar labrum used as an imperial sarcophagus for Maximian see Johnson, Roman Imperial Mausoleum, p. 214. 86  e.g. Coroneo, “Tenda”. 87  Deichmann, Ravenna, vol. 1, pp. 216–19. 88  On these buildings see Johnson, Roman Imperial Mausoleum, pp. 20, 31, 89. 89  Johnson, Roman Imperial Mausoleum, pp. 74–82.

Art And Architecture

383

o­ ctagonal upper structure with a circular interior room, but no exterior colonnade. Mausoleum II, likely that of Galerius, is dodecagonal on the lower level, which provides the floor for the upper level, but its upper structure is circular both externally and internally and was encircled by a freestanding portico. Both were probably domed. They represent the type of mausoleum Theoderic had in mind in the design of his own and demonstrate once again that his models were Roman and his intent was to associate himself with the Roman imperial tradition. The fact that his building was freestanding and not attached to a church as were many mausolea of Christian emperors is an expression of his desire to make himself “equal to the ancients”.90 On the other hand, the original mausoleum of Constantine had been built as a freestanding monument, only to have a cruciform church attached to it later. Theoderic’s building might have had an intended association with Constantine’s monument in the appearance of the names of the twelve apostles on the spurs above a twelve-sided exterior wall. Constantine’s own sarcophagus was originally set up in Constantinople in his mausoleum-church of the Holy Apostles surrounded by stelai or cenotaphs of the twelve apostles, an arrangement of which Theoderic could have known from his time in Constantinople.91 At the very least Theoderic would have been aware that emperors in the East were buried in a church dedicated to the Apostles and some emperors in the West had found their final resting space in the Mausoleum of Honorius, attached to Old St Peter’s in Rome. The link to Constantine’s tomb was but one symbol employed here. The choice of a decagonal structural to surround the burial chamber is unique and may be related to the symbolism of the number ten, which represented perfection, an idea found in both the writings of Boethius and Cassiodorus.92 The related buildings in Gamzigrad also provide a clue as to the original location of the sarcophagus of Theoderic within his mausoleum. Both had burial chambers in the lower level, as did another imperial monument found at Sarkamen, perhaps that of the mother of Maximin Daia, the Mausoleum of Diocletian at Split, as well as the so-called Tor de’ Schiavi in Rome and its close relative the Mausoleum of Maxentius.93 The cruciform arrangement of the interior space in the Mausoleum of Theoderic has many parallels in Roman 90  For other associations of the building with antiquity see Deliyannis, “Mausoleum”. 91  Johnson, Roman Imperial Mausoleum, pp. 119–20. 92  Boethius, De institutione arithmetica, 2.41, Patrologia Latina, vol. 63, p. 1146; Cassiodorus, Variae 1.10, ed. Mommsen, p. 19; ed. Fridh, p. 20–1. Johnson, “Theoderic’s Building Program”, p. 94. 93  Johnson Roman Imperial Mausoleum, pp. 59–109.

384

Johnson

funerary architecture, and in all cases the arms are used for holding sarcophagi or earlier urns. In the two-storeyed funerary monuments the lower level is always the burial chamber; the upper level functions as a memorial temple or chapel.

Other Art in the Mediterranean During Ostrogothic Rule

Theoderic and his successors were not alone in promoting the building and decoration of churches in Italy during their rule. The bishops of Rome remained active patrons during this time. Symmachus (498–514) was particularly active, building several new churches, repairing old ones, and adding oratoria, or chapels, to important churches such as St Peter’s and St Paul’s.94 One of the most important works of art from this period is found in the apse decoration of the church of SS Cosmas and Damian, a church made by converting part of the Templum Pacis. The decoration of the apse is the earliest surviving example of a type found in several early medieval apse programmes in Rome: Christ is depicted in the centre, descending from heaven in the Second Coming, flanked by Peter and Paul who present the two titular saints (Figure 14.19). The patron, Felix IV (526–30) is shown on the far left, holding a model of the church and St Theodore is depicted on the far right to balance the composition. The similarity in style and technique of these mosaics to those of the Theoderican monuments in Ravenna suggests strong artistic ties between the two cities. Other bishops in Italy carried out their own patronage of similar projects. To cite one example, Sabinus, bishop of Canosa in Apulia from 514 until his death in 566, built a new baptistery next to the old cathedral, a new cathedral complex, and the tetraconch church of San Leucio, originally dedicated to SS Cosmas and Damian.95 During this period Justinian was engaged in his great building programme, with additions to the Great Palace and the churches of SS Sergius and Bacchus and the jewel of 6th-century architecture, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, completed in in 537. In Ravenna, Justinian and his wife Theodora were depicted in mosaics in the church of San Vitale, founded in 526 but largely constructed after Belisarius had taken the city in 540.

94  Liber Pontificalis, c. 53.6–10. 95  Volpe, “Architecture”, pp. 134–54.

FIGURE 14.19 Apse mosaic, church of SS Cosmos and Damian, Rome: Christ at centre, flanked by Peter and Paul, Cosmos and Damian, Felix IV (526–30) to far left and St Theodore to far right Photo by Mark Johnson

Art And Architecture

385

386

Johnson

Conclusion In summary, the artistic patronage of Theoderic and his successors demonstrates that they saw themselves as the heirs to the Roman emperors who had preceded them in ruling Italy. The only non-Roman artistic detail found anywhere in their patronage is the small carved frieze at the top of the wall on Theoderic’s mausoleum. The influences that are expressed in their patronage are strongly identifiable with Rome and Constantinople. The art and architecture of the Ostrogothic rulers are not crude adaptations of these traditions, but sophisticated works in their own right and in line with contemporary architecture and decoration in Italy and the Mediterranean area. In their emulation of earlier prototypes—the archictecture of early Christian baptisteries and churches, mosaics in Roman churches, and the architecture of the late Roman palaces and the imperial mausolea—these works express a continuity in artistic tradition that is nearly seamless as Theoderic and his architects and artists created the new in imitation of the ancient. Bibliography

Primary Sources



Secondary Literature

Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, ed. D.M. Deliyannis (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 199), Turhout 2006; trans. D.M. Deliyannis, The Book of Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna, Washington, D.C. 2004. Anonymus Valesianus, ed. T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., vol. 1 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 9), Berlin 1892, pp. 306–29. Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumneta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1895; ed. A. Fridh, Magni Aurelii Cassiodori: Variae Libri XII (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 96), Turnhout 1973.

Arnold, J.J., “Theoderic’s Invincible Mustache”, Journal of Late Antiquity 6 (2013), 152–83. Augenti, A., “Archeologia e topografia a Ravenna: Il Palazzo di Teoderico e la Moneta Aurea”, Archeologia medievale 32 (2005), 7–33. ———, “The Palace of Theoderic at Ravenna: A New Analysis of the Complex”, in L. Lavan/L. Özgenel/A. Sarantis (eds.), Housing in Late Antiquity, From Palaces to Shops, Leiden 2007, pp. 425–53.

Art And Architecture

387

Baldini Lippolis, I., “Articolazione e decorazione del palazzo imperiale di Ravenna”, Corso di cultura sull’arte ravennate e bizantina 43 (1997), 1–31. ———, “Il ritratto musivo nella facciata interna di S. Apollinare Nuovo a Ravenna”, in F. Guidobaldi/A. Paribeni (eds.), Atti del VI colloquio dell’associazione italiana per lo studio e la conservazione del mosaico . . . (Venezia, 20–23 gennaio 1999), Ravenna 2000, pp. 463–78. Bernardi, G., “Il ritratto musivo di Sant’Apollinare Nuovo: Teoderico o Giustiniano”, in C. Barsanti/A. Paribeni/S. Pedone (eds.), Rex Theodericvs. Il medaglione d’oro di Morro d’Alba (Espera archeologia 2), Rome 2008, pp. 141–4. Bertelli, C., “Ritratti in avorio, in marmo e in mosaic”, in A. Augenti/C. Bertelli (eds.), Santi Banchieri Re. Ravenna e Classe nel VI secolo San Severo il tempio ritrovato, Milano 2006, pp. 100–7. Bjornlie, M.S., Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople. A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527–554, Cambridge 2013. Cirelli, E., Ravenna: archeologia di una città, Florence 2008. Coroneo, R., “La tenda di pietra: storia di un’idea”, in A.C. Quintavalle (ed.), Medioevo: immagini e ideologie, Milano 2005, pp. 165–77. Davide, M., Eternal Ravenna from the Etruscans to Venice, Milano 2013. De Angelis d’Ossat, G., Studi ravennati: problemi di architettura paleocristiana, Ravenna 1962. Deichmann, F.W., Ravenna: Haupstadt des spätantiken Abendlandes, 5 vols., Wiesbaden, 1969–95. Deliyannis, D.M., Ravenna in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2010. ———, “The Mausoleum of Theoderic and the Seven Wonders of the World”, Journal of Late Antiquity 3 (2010), 365–85. De Maria, S. (ed.), Nuove ricerche e scavi nell’area della Villa di Teodorico a Galeata: atti della Giornata di studi, Ravenna 26 marzo 2002, Bologna 2004. Fabbi, F., “Tipologie battisteriali nel litorale adriatico: il Battistero degli Ariani e il Battistero degli Ortodossi di Ravenna, tra premesse simboliche, archetipi architettonici e geometria”, in M. Tagliaferri (ed.), Architetture del sacro nel bacino Adriatico, Bologna 2011, pp. 165–98. Farioli Campanati, R., “I mosaici di San Severo e i mosaici di Ravenna nel VI secolo”, in A. Augenti/C. Bertelli (eds.), Santi Banchieri Re. Ravenna e Classe nel VI secolo San Severo il tempio ritrovato, Milano 2006, pp. 71–6. Fauvinet-Ranson, V., Decor civitatis, decor Italiae. Monuments, travaux publics et spectacles au VIe siècle d’après les Variae de Cassiodore, Bari 2006. Fuchs, S., “Bildnisse und Denkmäler aus der Ostgotenzeit”, Die Antike 19 (1943), 109–53. Gatto, L., “Ancora sull’edilizia e l’urbanistica nella Roma di Teodorico”, Romanobarbarica 12 (1992–93), 311–80.

388

Johnson

Ghirardini, G., “Gli scavi del palazzo di Teodorico a Ravenna”, Monumenti antichi 24 (1918), 737–838. Guerrini, P. “Theoderius rex nelle testimonianze epigrafiche,” Temporis signa. Archeologia della tarda antichità e del medioevo, 6 (2011), 133–74. Harper, J.G., “The Provisioning of Marble for the Sixth-Century Churches of Ravenna: A Reconstructive Analysis”, in R. Colella/et al. (eds.), Pratum Romanum. Richard Krautheimer zum 100. Geburtstag, Wiesbaden 1997, pp. 131–47. Herrin, J., “The Imperial Palace of Ravenna,” in The Emperor’s House. Palaces from Augustus to the Age of Absolutism, ed. M. Featherstone, et al (Berlin, 2015), 53–62. Johnson, M.J., “Towards a History of Theoderic’s Building Program”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988), 73–96. ———, The Roman Imperial Mausoleum in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2009. Kidd, D., “Il tesoro di Domagnano”, in I Goti a San Marino. Il tesoro di Domagnano, Milano 1995, pp. 49–59. Kiilerich, B., “Antiquus et modernus. Spolia in Medieval Art—Western, Byzantine, Islamic”, in A. Qunitavalle (ed.), Medioevo: il tempo degli antichi. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Parma, 24–28 settembre 2003, Milano 2006, pp. 135–45. Longhi, D., “La statua equestre di Teodorico e la raffigurazione del Palatium in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo”, Felix Ravenna, 4th series, 157–70 (2001–2004), 189–200. ———, “La cronaca di Agnello come fonte per la ricostruzione dell’immagine epurata dal timpano del Palatium in S. Apollinare Nuovo”, Atti del VII Colloquio AISCOM (Venezia, 22–25 marzo 2000), Ravenna 2001, pp. 99–108. ———, “Regalità di Cristo e regalità di Teodorico nei mosiaci di Sant’Apollinare Nuovo a Ravenna”, Ikon 5 (2012), 29–45. McClanan, A., Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses. Image and Empire, New York, 2002. MacGregor, A., “The Afterlife of Childeric’s Ring”, in M. Henig/D. Plantzos (eds.), Classicism to Neo-Classicism: Essays Dedicated to Gertrud Seidmann, Oxford 1999. Metlich, M.A., The Coinage of Ostrogothic Italy, London 2004. Pellini, G., “Il complesso episcopale ariano”, in C. Barsanti/A. Paribeni/S. Pedone (eds.), Rex Theodericvs. Il medaglione d’oro di Morro d’Alba (Espera archeologia 2), Rome 2008, pp. 105–19. Penni Iacco, E., L’arianesimo nei mosaici di Ravenna, Ravenna 2011. Piccinini, P., “Immagini d’autorità a Ravenna”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.2: Dall’età bizantina all’età ottoniana. Ecclesiologia, cultura e arte, Ravenna 1992, pp. 31–78. Righini, V., “Materiali e tecniche da costruzione in età tardoantica e altomedievale, L’edilizia abitativa”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2.1: Dall’età bizantina all’età ottoniana. Territorio, economia e società, Ravenna 1991, pp. 193–221.

Art And Architecture

389

Rizzardi, C., Il mosaico a Ravenna ideologia e arte (Studi e scavi nuova serie 32), Bologna 2011. Rizzardi, C./Vernia, B., “Scene circensi nei mosaici pavimentali provenienti dal Palazzo di Teoderico a Ravenna: ipotesi ricostruttive e significati”, in C. Angelelli/A. Paribeni (eds.), Atti del XII colloquio dell’associazione italiana per lo studio e la conservazione del mosaico (Padova, 14–15 e 17 febbraio—Brescia, 16 febbraio 2006), Tivoli 2007, pp. 119–30. Rupertsberger, E., “Zum Zangenmotiv auf dem Mausoleum Theoderichs zu Ravenna”, in D. Ahrens (ed.), Thiasos ton mouson: Studien zu Antike und Christentum: Festschrift für Josef Fink zum 70. Geburtstag (Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 20), Cologne 1984, pp. 139–45. Russo, E., L’architettura di Ravenna paleocristiana, Venezia 2003. ———, “Una nuova proposta per la sequenza cronologica de palazzo imperiale di Ravenna”, in Ravenna da capitale imperiale a capitale esarcale. Atti del XVII congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto medioevo, Ravenna, 6–12 giugno 2004, Spoleto 2005, pp. 155–90. Savini, G., Gli scavi del palazzo di Teoderico. Avanzi scoperti negli anni 1908–12, Ravenna, 1998. Schade, K., Frauen in der Spätantike—Status und Repräsentation. Eine Untersuchung zur römischen und frühbyzantinischen Bildniskunst, Mainz 2003. Tabarroni, G., “Scienza e tecnica nel mausoleo di Teoderico”, Ravenna. Studi e Ricerche 6.2 (1999), 125–34. Urbano, A., “Donation, Dedication, and Damnatio Memoriae: The Catholic Reconciliation of Ravenna and the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 13 (2005), 71–110. Verhoeven, M., The Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna. Transformations and Meaning, Turnholt 2011. Volpe, G., “Architecture and Church Power in Late Antiquity: Canosa and San Giusto (Apulia)”, in L. Lavan/L. Özgenel/A. Sarantis (eds.), Housing in Late Antiquity, From Palaces to Shops, Leiden 2007, pp. 131–68. Westall, R., “Theoderic Patron of the Churches of Rome?” Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia, 27 (2014), 119–38. Wood, I., “Theoderic’s Monuments in Ravenna”, in S. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 249–63.

CHAPTER 15

Barbarizing the Bel Paese: Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy Paolo Squatriti Introduction Is an environmental history of Ostrogothic Italy possible? The question is worth posing, for both Ostrogothicists and environmental historians have chosen to avoid this field of inquiry. Pre-modern environmental history, and not just of those Mediterranean provinces that concern us here, has had particular difficulty inserting itself into the dominant paradigms of more traditional historiography. This holds true for both the chronological and the spatial parameters that other styles of history accept as a matter of course. Thus any environmental history of Ostrogothic Italy must grapple with problems of scale that derive from the accepted ways historians have for dividing up time and space in the peninsula.1 The chronological scale of the specialist in barbarian invasions is not perfectly congruent with the rather long durations and comparatively slow processes of change that tend to occupy environmental historians. Gothic authority in Italy was concentrated in three human generations between the years 487 and 554, but phenomena like climate and pedological change are measured over far longer spans, so a specifically Ostrogothic ecology in Italy is hard to discern. Since trends of environmental change do not move in lockstep with post-classicists’ accepted chronologies, concepts like Late Antiquity lose a lot of their sharpness when applied to environmental discourse. Moreover, the great events in an environmental narrative might include a meteorite strike or the spread of a contagious pathogen, neither of which has a logical position in the usual narratives based on fluctuations of political power, theological orientation, or commercial connectivity, all focused on human agency.2

1  On scale: Delort/Walter, Histoire, p. 12; Hoffmann, “Medieval Christendom”, p. 45. 2  A large meteorite did fall on mount Sirente in Abruzzo about 400, but no contemporaries seem to have noticed: Santilli et al., “A Catastrophe”, pp. 313–20.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004312616_016

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

391

Quite like the asymmetries between the time of the Environment and the time of History are the asymmetries created by the different geographies used in ecologically informed and politically informed recreations of the past. Restricting one’s purview to those parts of a territory or ecosystem found on one side of a political frontier (itself liable to have moved a lot in late antique Italy) can produce distortion. The attempt to take the ecological particularities of places as co-evolving with people necessarily bases itself on particular topographical features such as hydrological catchment basins, mountains and valleys, coastlines and lagoons, and marshes and forested areas, marginalizing the delimitations that humans lay over them. Furthermore, the environmental history of Ostrogothic Italy, like any other environmental history, is bound to emphasize micro-topographical difference and to qualify and localize any broader claims. This is especially true for a territory as various as that of the Italian peninsula, long celebrated for the contrasts that made ‘the beautiful country’ (il bel paese in Italian). Perhaps it is exactly this inability to say much that is generally true and universally applicable to the whole peninsula or the resuscitated Roman Empire of Theoderic (extending from the Balkans to Galicia) that brings environmental history closer to other historical perspectives. Nowadays the best synthesizers of post-classical history in Italy resort to regional diversity as the only viable master narrative, the best way to make sense of a period about which we know too much to create tidy narratives.3 Because post-classical social, cultural, and economic histories hesitate to reconstruct distinctive patterns for the period following the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, they tend to resemble environmental history. Thus an environmental history of Ostrogothic Italy is possible as long as we are flexible about what we mean by environmental history and Ostrogothic Italy. If we consider the latter to have been an integral part of the western Mediterranean, within which took place various ecological processes that transcended political, linguistic, and religious boundaries, then an environmental history becomes feasible. And if we accept that environmental knowledge about pre-modern places is patchy and based on scattered sources that do not complement each other, then an Italian-Gothic story might emerge, though one in close connection to Lombard, Byzantine, and wider Mediterranean stories.

3  This is the strategy of such overviews as Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne; Arthur, “Italian Landscapes”; Zanini, Le Italie.

392

Squatriti

The Population Problem

Essential to such a history is demography. As the foremost practitioner of medieval environmental history, Richard Hoffmann, succinctly put it in his contribution to a general history of European environments, “Europe’s medieval demographic experience . . . is central to its environmental history”.4 Thus, understanding what happened to a landscape or seascape in the past, or how environmental relationships evolved in any slice of the ‘long’ Middle Ages, requires understanding the numbers and the distribution of people on the land. As the very recent past has shown us, in shaping economic and ecological patterns the sheer size of a territory’s population is at least as relevant as the technologies available and the cultural outlook. Equally powerful are the other behaviours of a population, its average life expectancy and death rates, its fertility levels, and shifts in these. In the first millennium, demographic constraints worked differently than they do in the modern world, after the ‘demographic transition’ to low birth and death rates; but, as Hoffmann argued, the importance of demographic facts in shaping environmental relations remains.5 The problem of course is that for the Italian peninsula, and even more for the 5th and 6th centuries, demographic data are scarce and unreliable. Few and intractable sources have understandably discouraged scholarly engagement in post-classical demographic history: the decline of the ancient epigraphic habit, the paucity of administrative documents, and the indifference of late antique authors to issues of population mean historians’ usual sources are of little avail.6 Yet it is demography that in the current efflorescence of post-classical scholarship remains the key unresolved question, the one that would unlock the most ‘Dark Age’ doors, not just the environmental ones. As the issue is significant, but studies few, the fragile data can be forced into the service of paradigms, and indeed there is a tendency for the theoretical models of medievalists to prop themselves up on thin demographic foundations: thus numerous significant moments in medieval history, like the end of the Roman

4  Hoffmann, “Medieval Christendom”, p. 47. See also Delort/Walter, Histoire, p. 189. 5  For an orthodox environmental history of the modern “weight of numbers” see Ponting, A New Green History, pp. 231–64, 409–11. Aside from the radically higher growth rates of the past 200 years, relevant differences between modern and pre-modern demography include medical remedies to natural checks on population, and the contemporary ability to keep population size out of balance with agricultural productivity by using fossil fuels (pp. 87–9). 6  Cassiodorus (Variae 11.39) is a partial exception: he noted that Rome’s urban fabric arose when there were more Romans around than in 533.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

393

Empire, have been connected to demographic trends despite our rather limited understanding of these trends.7 Naturally, even before the recent surge in post-classical research there already existed an orthodoxy about the period’s population, for Italy and elsewhere.8 The studies of Beloch and Russell, based on written sources and limited funerary archaeology, mirrored in demographic terms the negative, indeed ‘catastrophist’ evaluation of civilization as a whole in the wake of Rome’s ‘fall’ that held sway before the increase in post-classical research of the late 20th century.9 Whether they allowed some demographic ‘recovery’ in the 4th century or not, the classic studies represented Italian populations shrinking from the 2nd century onward, dramatically after 476, catastrophically during the Gothic War, and confidently postulated that no more than four million people lived in early medieval Italy. Both the willingness to offer ‘hard’ numerical estimates of regional populations despite the weak evidence and the equally confident use of Gibbonian rhetoric (decline, depression, dissolution) to classify trends in Italian population after 400 are characteristics of this scholarship. A major role in creating this image was played by the demography of Rome itself. Thanks to the Roman state’s involvement in supplying free food to the citizens of the imperial capital (the annona), some precise figures can be advanced for the city’s inhabitants. Records of the state’s efforts to supply grain and, increasingly in Late Antiquity, other foods for the Romans allowed reconstructions that confirmed and authorized the minimalist demographic narrative for Italy as a whole. The city famous for its bloated one million inhabitants in the 1st century seemed half as full in 400, had maybe 100,000 around 500 when Cassiodorus publicized Theoderic’s annona distributions, but barely 50,000 after 554. Thus, in 200 years (350–550), a reduction of 95 per cent took place, a catastrophe if ever there was one.10 7  Boureau, “Une histoire”, 233–4; LoCascio, “La dissoluzione”, argued for connections between Rome’s fall and decline in population. 8  See Bardet/Dupâquier (eds.), Histoire des populations, especially pp. 32, 133–67, 485–508; McCormick, Origins, p. 782 summarizes: “the overall picture . . . represents decline: dwindling populations, a mutating disease pool, lessening metal production, contracting diffusion and product range of ceramics [that] followed different chronologies in different regions.” The picture looks different viewed from the eastern Mediterranean: Banaji, Agrarian Change, pp. 201, 213. 9  Beloch, “Die Bevölkerung Europas”, pp. 406–7, 414, 421–2; Russell, “Ecclesiastical Age”, pp. 99–111; Russell, Late Ancient, pp. 36–7, 60, 93–4, 125–36, 172–6. 10  Durliat, De la ville, pp. 91–121; Paroli, “Le strutture”, pp. 3–28; Meneghini/Santangeli Valenziani, Roma, pp. 21–4.

394

Squatriti

By the late 500s most other Italian cities had also shrunk and were inhabited by many fewer people than earlier. Yet the situation of Rome was unique and must not colour interpretations of what transpired elsewhere in the peninsula (or Roman Empire). Rome’s size during the empire was ecologically unsustainable—dependent on ramified and delicate systems of long-distance conveyances of biomass that the city’s immediate hinterland could not produce in the amounts required to support a million mouths.11 For some centuries the ideological value of keeping Rome huge justified the emperors’ appropriation of resources in the provinces and their transfer to the city on the Tiber. But in Late Antiquity, when new Romes arose and few emperors spent much time in the old one, the ideological benefit of Rome’s gigantism was no longer apparent. Theoderic seems to have been the last ruler willing to organize the biomass transfers the annona required, and the last ruler who thought like an emperor about Rome and its ecological situation.12 Without the commitment of the state to its unnatural size, Rome returned rapidly to its commensurate dimension: 40,000 is about the right size for the agro Romano to sustain in pre-industrial production and transportation conditions.13 Hence Rome’s population parabola, often turned into a parable of post-classical civilization, is not indicative of fluctuations in peninsular population at all. Instead it tells us about post-Constantinian politics and how the 5th-century city failed to generate the ideological returns that made emperors’ investments in accumulation and logistics worthwhile. The singularity of Rome, and the more moderate reductions archaeologists trace in other Italian cities (and the contrary trends in places like Venice or Naples, both with signs of 5th- and 6th-century economic vitality, hence likely of population stability), reminds us that the demography of Italy’s cityscape varied vastly during the Ostrogoths’ ascendancy.14 It is possible that towns 11  For stimulating discussion see Van Dam, Rome, pp. 2–10, 43–9. For a different perspective: LoCascio/Malanima, “Cycles and Stability”, pp. 214, 223. On the annona see Jaidi, “L’annone”, pp. 83–102. A fine study of how the late antique annona affected a minor province like Calabria is Noyé, “Economia e società”, pp. 579–84, with corrections in “Le città calabresi”, pp. 477–517. 12  Brown, Through the Eye, pp. 459–63, argues that from the 6th-century papal charitable distributions perpetuated earlier emoluments. 13  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 424, connects decline in Etrurian settlement to Rome’s reduced demand for produce: the city’s size shaped Italian, not just provincial, demography. Hemphill, “Deforestation”, pp. 156–7, depicted fluctuations in forest at Civitella Cesi as the result of Rome’s demand for agricultural surplus. Thus both see cities as far more environmentally significant than Horden/Purcell, Corrupting Sea, pp. 89–122. 14  Gelichi et al., “Isole fortunate?”, pp. 47–50; Arthur, Naples; Savino, Campania tardoantica.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

395

on the coast or in well-watered plains proved more susceptible to population losses than inland places and hill settlements, which for once benefited from their relative isolation and more sluggish communications and may have been healthier.15 Similarly, an exception should be made for cities through which Eastern Roman government functioned, such as Ravenna (never a crowded place) or Otranto, whose importance to Aegean—Adriatic connectivity raised its late antique profile.16 But if diversity is this period’s leitmotif, Italian cities share some common demographic elements. Even though other cities were not, like Rome, dependent on an artificially enhanced hinterland (virtually the entire Mediterranean, not just the Italia Suburbicaria Constantine assigned to supplying Rome), archaeologists find that during Late Antiquity Italian urban communities built much less, occupied less space, and created consumption centres that were reduced by comparison to the earlier centuries of the millennium.17 Deducing from this, the shrinkage of urban populations is one general story we can tell about late antique Italy. For rural populations, the extraordinary results of decades of field surveys provide a less unanimous verdict. Post-classical pottery shards, the usual indicator of settlement (and hence of population) can be difficult to identify or date. In addition, even without ceasing to exist people can resort to more perishable containers (e.g. of wood) that elude archaeological surveyors. Moreover, south Italy and particularly Sicily seem to have enjoyed more stability than the rest of Italy.18 But 5th-century shards and more substantial proxies suggest lessened number, size, and economic complexity of rural sites in much of Italy, and this is generally thought to be a sign that fewer people inhabited the countryside than when Roman villas had structured that space.19 All told, archaeology reveals a rural Italy as depopulated in the 5th and 6th centuries 15  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 426. Much depends on the significance assigned to plague and malaria: for example, Harrison, “Plague”, pp. 30–2 provocatively argued that cultural and economic choices, not demographic change, lay behind landscape and settlement change. Meanwhile, Staffa, “I centri urbani,” pp. 449–51 gives examples of coastal towns in Abbruzzo doing far better than isolated inland communities. 16  On late antique Otranto see Wilkinson, “Summary and Discussion”, pp. 41–58; Zanini, Le Italie bizantine, pp. 116–17. 17  With late 20th-century Hong Kong as an example, it is perfectly possible for numerous vacant lots to coexist with burgeoning urban life and population: Boyden et al., Ecology, p. 113. 18  Volpe, “Villaggi”, pp. 426–35; Cacciaguerra, “Dinamiche”, pp. 441–6. 19  Lewit, “Pigs”, p. 79, warns against reading too much into archaeological invisibility. See Chapter 10 in this volume for a more cautious evaluation of Ostrogothic demography.

396

Squatriti

as urban Italy was. It is still impossible to measure the extent of this emptiness precisely (particularly for small farms) or its chronological patterns in any detail, yet the trend looks robust. Thus, whether one accepts as canonical the numbers of Beloch, Russell, or McEvedy, or the newer figures of Lo Cascio, scholars largely agree that from a high point around 150, Italy’s population curve sagged during the first millennium.20 The downward trend across Late Antiquity locates the most severe reduction in the 6th century, leading towards a 7th-century demographic nadir.21 Such orthodoxies might be nuanced, for example with regional chronologies, and divergences among demographers reveal that consensus is far from complete, but compared with either the classical period or the central Middle Ages, late antique Italy was underpopulated.22 More productive than debates about the precise extent of this depopulation are some recent demographic studies based on skeletal evidence. In 2001 Giovannini published a bold analysis of the birth and death rates prevalent in several medieval communities between the Alps and Aspromonte, whose cemeteries archaeologists had uncovered in the preceding decades.23 Since a half dozen of Giovannini’s case studies date to the 5th and 6th centuries, his findings are relevant here. Giovannini eschewed absolute numbers and avoided the urge to fit demographic findings into received chronologies and historiographic models. In tune with contemporary historical demography, Giovannini sought above all to establish micro-demographic patterns that age-at-death, treated statistically for both genders, might reveal.24 Among the surprises that looking at small population samples intensively effects is the possibility, championed by Giovannini, that the low population levels in Italy after the 4th century were a desired outcome, a deliberate strategy to balance mouths, arms, and natural resources so as to keep living standards high over the long run. 20  See note 9 above; McEvedy/Jones, Atlas, pp. 106–7, where 3.5 million is the figure for AD 600. Mordant reflections on scholars’ tendency to imagine pre-modern patterns as graphs are in Stiner et al., “Scale”, pp. 242–6. 21  LoCascio/Malanima, “Cycles”, p. 207 calculate that pre-industrial Italy had a long-term average population of about 10 million, and a carrying capacity of about 15 (pp. 213–14). 22  Even LoCascio/ Malanima, “Cycles”, pp. 205–7, who argue basic stability 1000 BC–AD 1900 with soft fluctuations coming in cycles of about 300 years, accept a reduction from ca. 16 to 8 million between AD 100 and 600. 23  Giovannini, Natalità. 24  For reviews of traditional and contemporary trends in historical demography, Livi-Bacci, “Macro versus Micro”, pp. 15–17, 21–3; Del Panta/Sonnino, “Introduzione”, pp. xxiii–xxvi, focuses on Italy.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

397

According to Giovannini the cemeteries of post-Roman Italy reveal healthy populations whose bones show little wear and tear of the kind associated with gruelling agrarian labour, and few signs of endemic disease and malnutrition. Quite unlike the teeth and bones that tend to come from similar rural sites of imperial date, the post-classical skeletons from several sites belonged to women and men who ate food sufficient in quantity, quality, and variety, and who worked less and suffered fewer illnesses than their Roman ancestors. Only a cemetery near Piana degli Albanesi in Sicily surrendered 5th-century human remains with ‘classical’ levels of pathology and malnutrition, which Giovannini attributed to the island’s more solid political and social structure—to Rome’s failure to ‘fall’ fast enough there.25 As became clear from the enamel on teeth, the porousness of crania, and body size, other late antique people at Castro dei Volsci, Savona, and Aosta had established measurably better ecological relations with the places they inhabited than one might expect from measuring human societies’ success purely by total numbers of individuals on the ground. Moreover, low incidences of child mortality and the sex ratios of the mature dead suggested to Giovannini that in early medieval rural communities birth rates were kept artificially low by delaying marriage, by prolonged breastfeeding and other means, so as to challenge the stereotyped assumption of miserable post-classical populations crushed by high death rates and ‘natural’ rates of reproduction, governed only by physiological fecundity. Instead, late Roman people in the rural and small-town locales investigated by Giovannini were few because cultural choices kept them that way, and also perhaps kept them happy. A 2007 critique of Giovannini’s rose-tinted demography by Barbiero and Dalla Zuanna confirmed some of his analysis but also refined his assertions by considerably expanding the database.26 Though the information is by definition statistically inconclusive because it was based on limited case studies, one can explain the few child burials that Giovannini thought to be a sign of low child mortality rates by cultural customs (funerary age segregation), and the life expectancy of early medieval Italians may not have improved by 20 per cent as Giovannini argued.27 In fact the growth of rural population, particularly in the Po Valley in the two centuries after 800 that Barbiero and Della Zuanna emphasize, coincided with a lowering of mortality, a consequent 25  Giovannini, Natalità, pp. 74–5. 26  Barbiera/Dalla Zuanna, “Le dinamiche”, pp. 19–42. 27  Spina/Canci, “Ferento (VT)”, p. 330, found high numbers of infant bodies in a Latial 6–7thcentury cemetery (42.6 per cent of the total), and were rightly puzzled by the unusual finding (n.20).

398

Squatriti

lengthening of average life spans, and hence an increase in average fertility. This Carolingian-era rise in population seems to have come at the same time as landlords began what Wickham calls “the caging of the peasantry”, or the reduction of rural autonomy and living standards associated with the development of villages and “incastellamento”.28 Peasant self-regulation and agency is clearly not the whole story in Italy’s post-Roman demography. Regardless, these new, sophisticated demographic analyses complicate our picture of a tiny and impoverished late- and post-Roman population caught in a “high pressure demographic regime” (high birth and death rates that erase each other, keeping overall numbers low), and basically at the mercy of every environmental force, from disease to weather. The “low pressure demographic regime” (low fertility and mortality rates) postulated by Giovannini may not modify the sense most scholars have that Italian population shrank after 300, and remained low until at least the 10th century, but it does have interesting implications for our understanding of environmental conditions in Ostrogothic times.

Secret Environmental Agents

Population collapse in 6th-century Italy can appear necessary to make sense of the wobbly states and ruling classes of that time.29 Beyond the dislocations of the Gothic War, it has been the epidemic formerly known as Justinianic Plague that has enjoyed most favour to explain 6th-century demographic and social change. Whatever it was, the Early Medieval Pandemic that erupted 541–4 and recurred in 558 deeply alarmed some contemporaries, most of them Constantinople-based.30 For Italy we lack contemporary descriptions, although pope Gregory I mentioned lethal diseases in his lists of cataclysms during the last decade of the 6th century and Paul the Deacon also described such ravages in Italy 250 years later.31 For an epidemic assigned the role of historical ‘protagonist’, the early medieval pandemic also left few direct archaeological traces of itself.32 The mass burials at Castro dei Volsci are the best evidence available. Their date is uncertain, but the skeletons were in 6th-century contexts. The dead 28  Wickham, The Inheritance, ch. 22. 29  Martin, “L’évolution”, p. 354. 30  Hoffmann, Environmental History, p. 55, advocates the new name. 31  Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 461–2, on under documentation. 32  Stathakopoulos, “Invisible Protagonists”; Stathakopoulos, “Death”, pp. 108–12.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

399

were also strangely uniform in gender and age, whereas the disease is thought to have been egalitarian.33 Thus it is the various signs of depopulation discussed above that provide the best data on the impact of the pandemic in Italy. The circularity of the logic here is evident. Italy in the 6th century does not furnish much fodder for debates on the ‘plague’ and its impact in Mediterranean Late Antiquity. As for the second most famous environmental agent in the history of the period—climate—the difficulties are opposite. The evidence is superabundant, and growing fast thanks to contemporary concern for ‘climate change’. The evidence is also contradictory, enough to discourage building causal bridges between the fairly clear fact that European and Mediterranean climates got colder and wetter (on average) in the 5th and 6th centuries and the social or economic repercussions from this.34 Moreover, the increasingly refined micro-regional knowledge palaeo-climatologists produce suggest that in a geographically varied peninsula like Italy there could be major differences in how a given landscape experienced and responded to fluctuations in climate. Such fluctuations were normal. Climate changes, always. It usually does so at a pace incommensurate with human perception, though that never discouraged people from noting weather events as unprecedented or meaningful. Since the meaning of meteorological phenomena was contested, weather rhetoric in Late Antiquity (like today) was political. Thus Cassiodorus’ celebrated letters, so full of the natural history that everyone mines to prove it rained or flooded a lot or was really cold in the early 6th century, are actually polemical texts whose inclusion of environmental detail legitimated Amal policies and justified the activities of Amal agents who, decades after the fact and exiled in Constantinople, had a lot of explaining to do.35 And, far from being naturalistic observations of what transpired, Ostrogothic meteorological sources constructed reality following late antique philosophical principles. The Variae were a tool of mid 6th-century political debates among aristocrats, and so were Cassiodorus’ accounts of nature. To take them as straightforward evidence of facts on the ground, or in the skies (like the “dust veil event”), is unwise. 33  Giovannini, Natalità, pp. 10–11. 34  Luterbacher et al., “A Review,” p. 148. Mediterranean dendro-archaeological data is scanty, making more meaningful the lack of any trace of the “dust veil event” Cassiodorus described around 537 (Variae 12.29) on the wood used to fix Constantinople’s harbours: Pearson et al., “Dendroarchaeology”, p. 3411. 35  Bjornlie, Politics, pp. 269–79. Chapters 3 and 10 in this volume follow Cassiodorus more closely.

400

Squatriti

Of course, some Italian landscape change seems congruent with the ‘average’ image of 5th- and 6th-century coldness and dampness. Grains like rye, whose popularity grew in the period, can tolerate colder, wetter (but also drier) conditions than wheat. The swamps that Theoderic’s administration claimed to dry are not attested in earlier times. Some alluviation seems to date from the late Roman period (on which, see below). Still, such signs of ‘barbarization’ or ‘worsening’ also exist for earlier periods considered florid.36 At the mouth of the Arno, for instance, stratigraphic excavation shows the river was just as turbulent, liable to flood, and erosive in the 2nd century as it was in the 5th.37 North of the Arno, unlucky Luni flooded in the latter 300s, after an earthquake, but was rebuilt and revived during the 6th century, despite a clogged port.38 Further south, two Campanian streams were most active in the 3rd century, not the 6th.39 At Reggio on the Ionian coast, 5th-century reconstruction of the artificial outlet of the S. Lucia torrent after a flood suggests builders expected less volume and flow than had the original Hadrianic channel-makers.40 And on the Adriatic coast, centuries before ‘Venice proper’, several small settlements arose on islets in the lagoon precisely at the time (400–600) when the sea invaded and streams flooded the area: the synergies between late antique climate, flooding and population were not always negative.41 Especially in the Po delta, one community’s flood was another’s opportunity, and this story of resilience successively raised up different places throughout the first millennium, before Venice emerged.42 The climatic conditions of the 5th and 6th centuries were at most one of several catalysts of change in the period. Together with demographic trends and other ecological forces they affected, but did not cause, socio-economic change, producing an array of outcomes dissimilar in the Lombard or Apulian plains, the Po estuary, the Tuscan hills, or the east coast of Sicily.

Barbarians and Hippies: The Gothic Ecological Footprint

Despite the venerable tradition of environmental determinism in post-classical studies, demographic determinisms do not suit Ostrogothic Italy. Still, fewer 36  See Luterbacher et al., “A Review”, pp. 108–11. 37  Mariotti Lippi et al., “Pollen Analysis”, pp. 462–3. 38  Christie, The Fall, p. 198; Murialdo et al., “La Liguria”, p. 29. 39  Russo Ermoli et al., “Human-Environment Interactions”, pp. 224, 228–30. 40  Raimondo, “Le città”, p. 522. 41  Gelichi, “Venezia”, pp. 164–8; Hoffmann, Environmental History, pp. 75–8. 42  Squatriti, “I pericoli”, pp. 616–17.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

401

people active in the Italian landscape after 400 and especially after 534 and the Gothic War, meant each person had at her or his disposal a greater abundance and range of resources than more people might have had. That, after all, is what the relative health of skeletons recovered from Giovannini’s burial sites imply. The abundance of available energy relative to the number of humans meant that the post-classical appropriation of land, wood, and water resources could be less intrusive and transformative than human interventions in the ‘high pressure demographic regime’ of Roman or high medieval times. In sum, the ecological footprint of populations (the impact a community’s demand for energy has on natural ecosystems) was slight and in some cases almost undetectable in Ostrogothic, Eastern Roman, or Lombard Italy.43 Low human densities in most Italian landscapes shaped a new dialectic between people and natural resources in which extensive, as opposed to intensive, exploitation was sufficient to support many rural communities. These extensive forms of resource use, carried out by few people, left thinner traces when compared with the more specialized and agriculturally oriented Roman or high medieval systems of production.44 The economic imprint on the ecology was ‘extensive’ only metaphorically, and the resource catchment of post-classical sites actually quite slight: the total amount of energy each late antique individual used was likely smaller by about a third than the energy exploited by their classical forebears, according to one calculation.45 This can help to explain the acute difficulty archaeologists still have in discerning and analysing post-classical rural settlements and their material culture, despite increasingly refined survey techniques. But one consequence of the new ways humans fit into Italian landscapes is unmistakable. Like Lombard and eastern Roman Italy, Ostrogothic Italy on the whole was a more sustainable Italy. Post-classical Italy was a distinctive ecological phase in a long history of mutual influences and co-adaptation between human, animal, and vegetable communities that began with Neolithic farming in the 7th millennium BC. In the late antique peninsula, agricultural activities were intermingled with pastoral and gathering activities in an exceptionally 43  On the concept of footprint and its application to pre-modern societies see Hoffmann, “Footprint Metaphor”, pp. 291–6. 44  As Cam Grey notes (Chapter 10 in this volume), social inequalities continued to modulate access to resources during the 5th and 6th centuries. 45  Durand, Les paysages, p. 380, proposed that “site catchment analysis” applies to medieval circumstances, and that woodland resources had to originate within 6.5 km of their place of consumption, which is another way to think about late Roman ecological footprinting. See Morris, Why the West Rules, for an estimate of postclassical people’s energy consumption (=20,000 kcal/day) compared to Roman (=30,000) or high medieval people (=27,000).

402

Squatriti

heterogeneous landscape that was humanized (subordinated to current economic needs and regulated by current demographic trends) but not human in the sense of utterly transformed by economic processes.46 Thus, fewer people resulted in economic systems that interfered with natural systems relatively little and permitted the formation of ecologies with low relative productivity (in terms of the amount of useful things humans extract from them in proportion to their area), but high biomass, high biodiversity, and containing many long-lived organisms. Nevertheless, the ‘low pressure demographic regime’ that emerged in the 5th century had other consequences.47 The people settled in the Italian peninsula were better able to choose how to live in the spaces at their disposal. Their land use, in other words, could be selective and attuned to the unique ecological possibilities of each locale. Compatibly with their cultural assumptions, they could opt to neglect types of land and styles of cultivation that generated too little energy in comparison with their demands for labour: thus both viticulture and olive cultivation lost ground from the 6th century, and wheat made room for less fastidious grains, including in southern areas where wheat had predominated during the Roman hegemony.48 Similarly, those naturally favoured pockets of land where making a living was somewhat easier attracted inhabitants to whom, we should recall, the upheavals of the 6th century offered new choices, and who could align their productive strategies with local ecological potential.49

46  Leveau, “L’archéologie”, pp. 75–7, theorized natural/human/humanized landscapes. From a different point of view so did Peterken, Natural Woodland, pp. 11–15, who sees the ‘natural’ deriving from Latin ‘nascere’ and containing in its initial state all the potential for its subsequent development, equally natural. He proposes a “scale of naturalness” (p. 15) along which Ostrogothic Italy would, I think, find itself at quite a remove from primordial conditions. 47  For this vocabulary see Simmons, Environmental History, pp. 48–52. Hoffmann, “Medieval Christendom”, pp. 63–4 outlines changes that occur when a natural system becomes an agro-ecosystem. 48  Arthur, “Italian Landscapes”, p. 109; Castiglioni/Rottoli, “Il sorgo”, pp. 486–91. Curiously, at the edge of an unusual wood in the Salento, a new 7th-century village practised viticulture: Arthur et al., “L’insediamento”, p. 373. However, the villagers were almost autarchic (pp. 376–7) and drew resources from within a walkable range. 49  In post-classical Boeotia the smaller population clustered in pockets of slightly more favourable land, where it was relatively easier to carry out economic activities (so-called Siedlungskammern: see Bintliff, “Reconstructing”, pp. 41–4). Similar demographically modulated relocations of rural settlement might explain villa-village fluctuations in Italy.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

403

An example of this sort of insertion of people into landscape might be the 7th-century dwellings excavated in the 1990s at Supersano in Lecce’s hinterland that were occupied into the 9th century. These were simple ‘Grubenhäuser,’ huts with flooring below ground level and thatch roofs supported by wood posts. The residents probably farmed a bit, exploited the local groves of oaks (Quercus robur and Quercus erica, large trees at the southernmost tip of their range in Apulia), and hunted deer in the winter, a sensible adaptation to the forested landscape in an area where woods were actually rare (nearby at Scorpo an open, savannah-type landscape with fewer trees prevailed).50 Another example is the tiny settlement at S. Filitica, near Sassari, where 7thcentury inhabitants combined a diet of the extremely large molluscs that flourished along the shore with domestic animals, deer, and mouflon (Ovis musimon).51 Such self-reliance and rejection of those ‘luxuries’ hard to grow in local contexts (in Italy the variety of cultivated fruits definitely shrank in Late Antiquity) had begun earlier. A mid 5th-century house near Allumiere in the Tolfa hills north of Rome contained charred traces of its inhabitants’ autarchy: carbonized acorns, grass peas (Lathyrus sativus), broad beans (Vicia faba), some barley, and a small amount of wheat.52 Scholars who observe this process of site selection and adaptation to environmental conditions sometimes refer to ‘marginal’ lands and their late antique abandonment. Marginality, however, is not an absolute description, but a relative situation dependent on an array of local conditions: ecological, social, and demographic. Marginality is therefore dynamic, and different land becomes marginal or central in different conditions. In the post-classical demographic slump, hillsides that had been de-marginalized by terracing and other investments in the high demographic pressure regime of Roman Empire became ‘marginal’ again to communities in need of land that did not require artificial levelling and heavy maintenance for productive purposes (communities with less muscle power to apply over a wider selection of productive spaces).53 50  Arthur/Melissano, Supersano; Arthur, “Grubenhauser”, pp. 171–7; Arthur et al., “L’insediamento”, p. 372, where overgrazing seems to have affected the landscape. For the autochthonous/foreign origins of Grubenhäuser in Italy see Brogiolo/Chavarría, Aristocrazia, pp. 103–6. A 6th-century Grubenhaus in downtown Siena: Francovich et al., “Scavi”, p. 285. 51  Rovina et al., “L’insediamento”, pp. 202–3. 52  Sadori/Susanna, “Hints”, pp. 390–2. 53  On terracing: LoCascio/Malanima, “Cycles”, p. 211; Grove/Rackham, The Nature, pp. 107–17. See also McNeill/Winiwarter, “Breaking the Sod”, p. 1628.

404

Squatriti

One much-discussed development in the late antique landscape—erosion of topsoil—is obviously related to this fluctuating marginality.54 In some river estuaries on the Italian coast late antique strata of deposits seem anomalous, and Vita-Finzi famously postulated that this “Younger Fill” was part of a general (climatically induced) trend. Other scholars indict the collapse of Roman authority and infrastructure, but agree with Vita-Finzi that late Roman alluvium is a sign of the times, of specific late antique conditions. As it turns out, thick alluvial deposits in river valleys and deltas have built up (and eroded) throughout Italy’s history, and there are several rivers and deltas that seem to have been unaffected by any late antique paroxysm.55 It seems that the re-marginalization of some landscapes caused by the abandonment of erosion-controlling techniques (a labour-saving strategy in the novel demographic conditions) was only partial. Some terraced hillsides continued to make a certain sense, while others needed more work than they were worth. Similar heterogeneity prevailed in low-lying zones in river valleys, where the daily grind of fixing and dredging drainage canals might seem too burdensome in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, when nearby alternative sites offered usable land that stayed dry of its own accord. The view from the top was different of course. Sidonius in the 5th century and Cassiodorus in the 6th wondered at the tremendous swamps of the Po valley, and their descriptions have become emblematic of a land in disarray.56 The Amal regime in fact displayed its Roman credentials by intervening in swamp control, a traditional arena of imperial activity.57 By presenting the mixture of land and water at Ravenna and near Spoleto as dire, and the government’s solicitude as active, Cassiodorus gave Theoderic an aura useful in the political negotiations of the time. Theoderic’s claims to tame nature or re-create (economically profitable) order stimulated late Roman elite compliance with his state. Marshes with deep symbolic pedigree, like the Pontine marshes south of Rome, became the targets of joint ventures between central and local potentates. The hydraulic success of these drainage schemes was a fraction of their ideological returns.58 54  Hoffmann, Environmental History, pp. 35–6, 55, 172. 55  Lucid summary of the debate in Horden/Purcell, Corrupting Sea, pp. 314–28. 56  See Squatriti, “Marshes”, pp. 1–16. 57  Ruggini, “Graduatorie”, pp. 77–83 explains the intellectual history behind Mediterranean rulers’ drainage projects. 58  Giardina, “Pubblico e privato”, pp. 35–50, nicely discusses the evidence (mostly epigraphic and literary: he argues Cassiodorus composed the famous inscription recording the drainage project) on Theoderic’s Pontine scheme, but exaggerates the project’s early medieval afterlife. See Variae 2.21, 2.32–3, with Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 10.1, 6850 and Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 8956.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

405

With a smaller bureaucratic state to support, and with a relatively unpretentious ruling class to demand rents, in the 5th and especially in the 6th century economic systems could arise that demanded less work, because in fact fewer hands were available to do it.59 The emergent economic system was more efficient in producing usable calories than were specialized agrarian regimes. The intensifications needed in agro-ecosystems were based on the willingness to spend energy (human and animal labour) to capture more usable energy in the form of low biomass, short-lived pioneer plants. While humans took a much higher percentage of available energy from such ecosystems than from the more natural ones of post-classical times, such intensifications seldom make sense to peasants and when they do, as Ester Boserup explained in a classic essay of 1965, it is only in high-pressure demographic conditions.60 If 21st-century demographic reconstructions are right, or mostly right, this situation was less an outcome of structural forces than of human agency, of choices people made in how they inserted themselves into their environments. In effect, what used to be called the barbarization of Italian societies corresponded not to a regression or ‘decline’ into ‘natural’ demographic patterns (disastrously high fertility and mortality), but to a transformation that resuscitated conditions like those enjoyed by hunter-gatherers throughout Eurasia during prehistoric centuries. Following an insight of Marshall Sahlins, some anthropologists recognize in such human communities the original ‘affluent societies’, endowed with better health, more leisure, and greater social equality than most agrarian civilizations.61 In such analyses, the ancient hierarchies of agriculture, pastoralism, and hunting/gathering no longer hold sway. Unlike Procopius, who identified agriculture with civilization and as a barrier between man and nature, or Hobbes for whom it was axiomatic that primitive lifestyles were unhealthy, contemporary critics eschew developmental teleologies and instead idealize the ecological relationships established by people (like late antique Italians) who did not rely exclusively on farmland.62 Although there is an element of wishful thinking in such reconstructions, which have been satirized as the ‘Hippie Economy’ of the Dark Ages, environmentally informed

59  Bjornlie, “Law”, pp. 148–58, surveys Ostrogothic taxation. 60  Boserup, The Conditions. On peasant production priorities see Chayanov, Theory. 61  Cohen, Health, pp. 2–3 explains how 1960s anthropologists undermined the progressive narratives of economic development. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics was classic enough by 1982 to inform Hodges, Dark Age Economics, p. vii. 62  Squatriti, Landscape, ch. 1. Simmons, Environmental History, pp. 6–8 belittles optimistic views of ‘Green’ hunter-gatherers.

406

Squatriti

analyses tend to rehabilitate post-classical Italian societies and landscapes.63 The barbarized economies and ecologies of the 5th and 6th centuries seem Edenic in the 21st.

People, Plants, and Animals

Of course the people of late antique Italy practised agriculture, raised domestic animals, produced and exchanged surplus, and never became exclusively reliant on wilderness resources. After all, wild animal bones seldom make up more than 2 per cent of skeletal remains in post-classical middens.64 Still, late ancient modes of production and reproduction created distinctive ecological relations and landscape forms. From the 5th century a new balance slowly developed between humans and aqueous as well as terrestrial resources because fewer humans, subjected to weaker extractive systems, could afford to exploit the land and seas in a different way than had the Romans. This balance no doubt shifted between 400 and 600 as human numbers fluctuated, but the deeper changes to extremely localized environmental relationships created in Late Antiquity came later, after 1000. One sign of the new way people sought out the resources they needed is the precipitous decline of marine animal remains in domestic waste: whereas sea creatures had often enough occupied tables, even quite far from the coast, at the beginning of Late Antiquity, by the 7th century beyond the shore almost no one ate marine creatures.65 The commercial networks that had made possible the movement of biomass from the seas to the hills evaporated. The result was more localized food procurement and consumption, with the emergence of ‘100-mile diets’ deriving from the weakening of the Roman state and aristocracy rather than from gastronomic fashion, as today. Post-classical ‘locavores’ also seem to have eaten less beef than their Roman ancestors. The shrinkage in average bovine height began in the 3rd century and has been correlated with the retreat of cereal agriculture: most bovines in Roman Italy were draught animals, used to plough fields to be sown with wheat or to haul cartloads to market, whose stature and muscle mass mattered to their productivity. Only at the end of their working life were these oxen butchered and eaten. Post-classical bone assemblages contain fewer bovine bones, and of smaller cattle, than earlier assemblages, presumably because big 63  Maier, “A Farewell”, p. 289. 64  Salvadori, “Zooarcheologia”, p. 203. 65  Salvadori, “Zooarcheologia”, pp. 219–22. See also Squatriti, Water, ch. 4.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

407

oxen were not as necessary. Gender ratios also suggest that post-classical cattle were more likely to be involved in dairy farming. Pigs, meantime, remained a steady presence in Italian agro-ecosystems, while sheep and goats made some advances (these animals’ sizes changed little).66 All such data are averages and do not reflect the immense heterogeneity that prevailed on the ground, where even within a modest city like Milan there could be considerable discrepancies between the animals butchered in different neighbourhoods.67 But the averages do give a sense of the broad transformations underway in the 5th and 6th centuries. Domestic animals moved short distances, mirroring localized systems of supply: they did not need to range far for forage and pasture. They were raised for protein, as meat or milk, or fibre, not for muscle power, as their bodies and gender distributions suggest. And they were one of many different ways people used the land. Part of the new environmental equilibrium of the Ostrogothic period were the considerably shrunken cities. Rome, as mentioned, was an exception, even at 40,000 inhabitants a metropolis far outstripping other urban communities in the peninsula. It exercised an unparalleled economic and ecological pull on a hinterland that the Gothic War had limited without eliminating. While Theoderic may have brought the last lions from North Africa into the Colosseum, Rome no longer could outsource ecological exploitation to remote corners of an empire. Instead, its secular and clerical elites operated estatecentred regional systems of supply.68 A 6th-century dump in the Forum was full of the bones of young plump pigs and sheep, raised for meat and unusual enough to suggest some of the privileges Rome might continue to enjoy.69 Ravenna also sustained a stable hinterland in Romagna well into the 7th century, by which time other Emilian farms had changed utterly.70 But the very substantial reduction of occupation visible in most other Italian cities from 400 onwards, and the new forms of habitation (wood and wattle, mud bricks, extensive recycling of ancient materials and spaces) had environmental dimensions. 66  Salvadori, “Zooarcheologia”, pp. 202–9. Hoffmann, Environmental History, p. 66, proposes a different explanation for dwindling domesticated animal sizes. 67  Biasotti, Giovinazzo, “Reperti faunistici”, pp. 178, 181, 182. 68  Marazzi, “Da suburbium”, pp. 733–46. On exotic animals for the games see FauvinetRanson, Decor civitatis, pp. 366–7, 380–9. The Crypta Balbi excavations prove that Rome’s elites in the latter 600s still had luxuries imported across the sea. 69  Delussu, “I reperti faunistici”, pp. 177–8. Some meat reached Crypta Balbi from quite far away: wood grouse (Tetrao urogallus) and camel are not local animals. 70  Augenti, “L’Italia”, p. 29.

408

Squatriti

The process sometimes called ‘ruralization’ meant that smaller cities throughout Italy forged tighter bonds with their immediate hinterlands whence arrived an ever increasing share of the food, fuel, and fibre that supported the urban population. If firewood, the fuel of life, had never been a trans-regional commodity and tended to reach urban hearths from within a restricted catchment area, the fibres, legumes, and grains that had circulated more widely in Roman times tended to limit their movements and to flow towards consumers in short circuits during the 5th and 6th centuries.71 This can be envisioned best for pottery, which requires clay and water and wood to make, but was transferred very far from its original place of fabrication in the classical Mediterranean, and did so much less by 500. By 600, with few exceptions in the eastern Roman-controlled territories of the peninsula, Italian urban populations had greatly reduced their connection to Mediterranean supply networks of all kinds.72 Between 400 and 600 or so, when urban sizes had to be congruent with local productive possibilities, the ecological footprint of urban demographic clusters therefore shrank in size. In the process, despite the reduction in absolute numbers of consumers, as in Rome, the regional impact of urban demand may have intensified. Poor communication infrastructure and limited state investment in the movement of resources forced urban communities to exploit what was locally available to the hilt. Unlike Roman towns, which could obtain surpluses from hinterlands and amass them for redistribution (not just for local consumption), postclassical towns did not usually export the products of their environs, at least not on a large scale. Unmaintained, sewers conveyed less waste, limiting the metabolic transfer of rich organic material beyond city walls. In this way cities became ecological sinks in their more localized hinterlands. Yet post-classical towns exercised an appropriative magnetism on the area immediately around them that modified ecologies. Thus, while rural Italy was lightly inhabited by tiny settlements that affected natural processes relatively little, closer to urban centres like Naples, Pavia, Perugia, Siponto, or Verona, pockets of more intensive ‘footprinting’, biomass removal, and landscape modification persisted. Reduced and transformed as post-classical urban communities were, they still created islands of more humanized space because, like all clusters of

71  On firewood see Galetti, “Alimentare il fuoco”, pp. 819–20. 72  How the Eastern Roman state maintained more complex circuits of supply for its Italian centres is a theme in Zanini, Le Italie, pp. 167–8, 202–8. A finely studied example is Pescara: Staffa, “Quindici anni”, pp. 159–66.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

409

consumers, they affected the flow of energy and concentration of materials in the ecosystem.73 A nice example is Otranto, whose location at the southern opening of the Adriatic lent it special strategic prominence for the eastern Roman Empire. The town however shrivelled after mid 500s and was virtually abandoned by 700, as it had been once before in the 2nd to 3rd centuries. If Otranto before the 7th century seems to confirm Zanini’s observation that Italy’s coastal communities were more cosmopolitan than inland cities, the town’s immediate needs for food and fibre nonetheless were satisfied locally. The town’s extraction of energy from its hinterland was selective: foxes, quail, crane, and roe deer became food sources in late antique Otranto, while sheep and pigs moved the hinterland’s biomass into town by grazing around it and offering their flesh, milk, and skins to people who lived inside the walls. Late antique Otrantines ate more cattle than their earlier and later fellow citizens. They also consumed local marine resources, in the form of sea bass, drumfish, and cockles, which they seem to have preferred to the sea snails more common in ancient and high medieval strata. Though there is virtually no evidence for the Murex shells Cassiodorus described as the backbone of Otranto’s economic life, the aggregate impact of this extraction was not insignificant.74 At Otranto and elsewhere, this was not just a matter of exploiting agricultural production and the gathering activities on its margins, for with very limited access to outside sources of manufactured goods, iron smelting and especially pottery production were forcibly regionalized, making an imperative of firewood extraction, even in places with little easily accessible hardwood fuel. Deposits in Swiss peat and Greenland ice suggest that airborne pollution from smelting was at its millennial low point between 650 and 950, yet the end of the empire’s fluid distribution networks intensified cities’ exploitation of nearby resources, relocating and fragmenting the (reduced) impact of urban demand to immediate hinterlands.75 Whereas underpopulated cities could exercise surprisingly strong transformative influences on their surroundings, post-classical rural settlements

73  Broich, “Wasting of Wolin”, pp. 187–99 is an eco-moral parable of unsustainability, but is also a reminder that post-classical towns could ‘waste’ their hinterlands. 74  Zanini, Le Italie, pp. 146–7, 155–8; D’Andria/Whitehouse (eds.), Excavations at Otranto 2, pp. 335–6, 340–2, 345–6, 349–52. Otrantine Murex: Giardina, “Cassiodoro,” pp. 54–61. 75  McCormick, The Origins, p. 53, on smelting pollution. See also his review of ceramic production, pp. 53–60.

410

Squatriti

created a less humanized landscape and impressed a lighter footprint.76 Admittedly, rural sites in Italy varied in size and complexity (unlike northwestern Europe), thus modulating their footprint: for instance, castra along the Adige attracted local surplus without producing much. But in rural areas removed from cities, natural ecological processes grew more evident, biomass removal attenuated, and although hunting, gathering, and fishing practices fashioned human-influenced biological communities, still the human ecological footprint formed by agrarian pursuits was shallower than near cities. Even in the more prominent rural sites linked to military interests, archaeologists find in trash heaps the carbonized traces of an astounding variety of foods, for polyculture and flexibility were prudent strategies when recourse to outside resources was sporadic.77 Rural dwellings, often simply made of wood and wattle as at Supersano, or mud brick as at Colle S. Giovanni di Atri (Teramo), are so slight that they are hard to detect, and the use of pottery seems to have been optional.78 The metabolic processes of such communities did change the surrounding land, as waste was disposed of in the most immediate vicinity of habitation and enriched the soil in archaeologically detectable ways.79 Overall, however, a simplified material culture and reduced number of cultivators meant not just more resources for each household but also less modification of the ecosystem, even when a movement toward village formation and therefore more concentrated footprinting began in some places (Tuscany) in the late-6th century. In the late antique countryside, a robust and biodiverse environment mirrored a smaller and more scattered human population that supplied itself locally.

The World of Wood

Because of the enormous cultural significance that forests and trees have in European culture, and in narratives of post-classical history, some comments 76  Wickham, Framing, p. 517, also argued for the AD 400–800 relevance of local constraints on peasantries. 77  Castiglioni et al., “I resti”, pp. 233–4: at Monte Barro there were five kinds of grains, six of legumes, four of nuts, olives, and several fruits. Likely other foods with soft seeds and flesh went unrecorded. Other examples might be S. Antonino in Liguria (Murialdo et al., “La Liguria”, pp. 60–2) or S. Maria del Mare in Calabria (Raimondo, “Le città”, pp. 546–53). 78  Arthur, “Italian Landscapes”, p. 117. 79  “Dark earth” was once the stuff of debates on urban continuity, but “terreno carbonioso” is now found in rural sites: Gelichi et al., “La transizione”, p. 65. Both reflect new garbage disposal practices.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

411

on woodland use in the anaemic demographic conditions (and weak state control) of late antique Italy are warranted. It stands to reason that in a temperate place where few people lived, and where no state attempted to build fleets or vast public works necessitating lumber, trees would do well.80 Indeed one of the central building blocks of both scholarly and popular reconstructions of early medieval landscapes is the relentless, menacing, rapid, and basically barbaric advance of the forest.81 Yet palaeo-botanical evidence, increasingly available even for Italy, does not consistently confirm the story of the general, uncontrolled re-forestation of Italian countryside. Although a post-imperial wilderness of trees covering hillsides, valley bottoms, and mountains would match our preconceptions of uncivilized and disorderly times, pollen diagrams tend to offer a more variegated and less bosky image of Italian landscapes. The notorious ‘landscapes of fear’, dark with the ominous shadow of impenetrable woods and pullulating with dangerous woodland creatures, seem to be literary creations, mostly restricted to the pages of chroniclers and hagiographers.82 Certainly there was much woodland in a sparsely populated peninsula (as there were many swamps, ample heath, grasslands, and other types of uncultivated spaces with fewer romantic associations for modern historians, who therefore neglect them), and certainly forests are dynamic, quickly adapting to climate conditions or biological invasion.83 But Italy’s forest was no awe-inspiring wilderness. Rather it was largely a managed, productive space—one form of the humanized landscape, or semi-natural landscape, that characterized Late Antiquity.84 In environmental terms, human deflection, or tampering with natural succession processes in the woodland, altered

80  Shipping is a good example of how state policies affected woodlands and their exploitation: see McCormick, The Origins, pp. 87, 95–6, 103–5, 113 and Giardina, “Allevamento”, pp. 101–5. Late antique ships were faster, more manoeuvrable, and more capable of carrying cargo than imperial-era ships; they were also cheaper and easier to build, consuming lumber more efficiently. How such improvements square with a declining commercial economy (and better lumber supply) is unclear: Gertwagen, “Nautical Technology”, pp. 158–60. Public baths, whose firewood supply Roman authorities managed, are another example: a modest bath complex required some 200 tons of hardwood per year: McCormick, The Origins, p. 97. 81  e.g. Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean Forest, pp. 42–7. The “return of nature” image remains vigorous: see Squatriti, Landscape, pp. 1–23. 82  e.g. Di Cocco, “Viabilità”, pp. 21–9, based on a literal reading of Vita S. Hilari. 83  Delort/Walter, Histoire, pp. 157–9. 84  Wickham, “European Forests”, pp. 500–1, 533–42 is still an excellent guide. He stressed property regimes as the key to the growth and contraction of woodland, pp. 486–97.

412

Squatriti

density and composition.85 For in the post-classical peninsula, the major catalyst of change in the woods were people. The Apulian Salento, for instance, whose evergreen forests had been slowly reduced from the beginning of the first millennium, seems to have become a vast olive grove in Late Antiquity, with “exponential increase” of Olea suggested by pollens found in Lago Alimini’s deposits.86 The Tavoliere, meanwhile, was a very sparsely wooded territory in Late Antiquity, with a few oaks, hazels, and elms clustering along the banks of watercourses and atop hills in a region cleared for pasture and arable use.87 Nearby in the Murge, where grain production for export mattered less, and where transhumance and pastoralism may have suffered from the contraction in the Roman state’s demand for wool, the situation was different. Woodland here was abundant, but roads, streams, and accessibility created a heterogeneous environment, exploited less or more according to the ease of passage for resource removal, and nowhere so dense as to become impenetrable.88 Contributing to this situation was the fact that in temperate climates, the growth of dense woods requires the exclusion of all browsers, usually by fencing, a challenge so great that several historical ecologists think the dominant type of Mediterranean woodland has almost always been ‘open’, with grasslands among the sparse trees.89 The Apulian evidence is symptomatic of the surprising variations between quite nearby landscapes, but also of the trend for inland and coastal areas to develop different kinds of woods. Grain flowed through Siponto from the post-classical Tavoliere, while the upper Murgia was ‘marginal’ land, too difficult for late antique investors to exploit agriculturally and hence colonized by trees, no doubt to the benefit of the local peasantry and transhumant shepherds. Indeed Theoderic had to chastise Apulia’s shepherds in a famous (but lost) inscription for wandering among the trees too far off the beaten drove tracks.90 His concern implies the presence of trees did not completely impede local land use. That is why in Apulia and elsewhere in the peninsula, tree cover was so diverse. 85  Simmons, Environmental History, pp. 56–7. 86  Di Rita/Magri, “Holocene Drought”, p. 301. 87  Volpe, Contadini, pp. 48, 301. 88  Volpe, Contadini, pp. 285, 295, 300. 89  See Rackham, “Savanna”, pp. 1–24; Grove/Rackham, The Nature, pp. 68, 213–4, 225; Vera, Grazing Ecology, pp. 371–8. 90  The inscription from Termoli, recorded in the 1800s, seems to describe south-central Apennine situations: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 9.2826. Ostrogothic kings dealt with shepherd mobility more rigidly than classical Roman predecessors: Totten, Thinking Regionally, pp. 144–58. Theoderic did not approve of shepherds in woods apparently because his government was invested in “spatial control” (ibid., p. 171).

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

413

It is worth illustrating some of this peninsular diversity. From the mid 6th century, high up the Enza valley in the Ligurian sector of the Apennines selective deforestation reconfigured what had been a mixed woodland. The result was a ‘wooded meadow system’ in which beech trees prevailed. This new woodland was maintained for over a century in the interests of herding and pasture.91 By contrast, on the Tyrrhenian coast of Tuscany, Scarlino’s human population diminished between the 5th and the 6th century, and the nearby deforested hills (which had furnished fuel for Roman mining operations on Elba, visible from Scarlino) filled again with trees, although not before erosion choked the local lagoons with silt.92 At Filattiera in the 5th and 6th centuries people drove oaks and walnuts into insignificance, fostered the chestnuts and firs they found more useful, and burned for fuel the alder wood cleared from low-lying plots they farmed.93 Just north, also in Liguria, the woods around the eastern Roman centre of S. Antonino evolved in Late Antiquity according to human strategies, to the detriment of deciduous oak but to the advantage of hornbeam.94 Across the watershed, in Piedmont, Torre S. Stefano Belbo’s pollens suggest a retreat of agriculture. Beech, fir, and pine advanced, diversifying the mixed oak woods from the 4th to the 6th century.95 Further east, around the Ostrogothic fort at Monte Barro that guarded one of the main thoroughfares from Alpine passes, people practised planned forestry before abandoning the settlement around 580. They selected wood used for heating and building according to species and age, and evidently made charcoal from coppiced beech trees cut on ten-year cycles, but always during the dormant season when such activities are least likely to damage the tree and when the wood contains the least water, and from north-facing woods whose growth was slowest and wood densest.96 Finally, the woods around S. Michele di Trino just west of Milan underwent the most dramatic anthropogene changes between the 5th and 7th centuries, with strong overall reductions of woodland, especially of oak, in favour of fields, meadows, and groves of chestnut and elm trees.97 In spite of the differences in density, species composition, and chronology of growth one salient characteristic throughout the post-classical peninsula was the full integration of woodland into economic and social systems. Whether 91  Davite/Moreno, “Des ‘saltus’ aux ‘alpes’ ”, pp. 139–41. 92  Cucini, “Topografia”, pp. 162–3. 93  Rottolo/Negri, “I resti”, pp. 201–2, 208. 94  Castiglioni, “I carboni”, pp. 620–5: fire gave hornbeam its advantage over oak. 95  Caramiello/Zena, “Analisi polliniche”, p. 43. 96  Castelletti, “L’economia”, p. 220; Castiglioni et al., “I resti”, pp. 227, 239. 97  Caramiello et al., “Analisi paleobotaniche”, pp. 592, 596–7.

414

Squatriti

as places to graze cattle or pigs, to trap game, to gather fruits, as reservoirs of fodder, or most especially as suppliers of fuel, late antique woodlands were meticulously exploited. Although harvesting for timber was rarer, both the Liber Pontificalis and Gregory I’s letters show that the roofs of basilicas needed frequent repairs in the 5th and 6th centuries and therefore required long wood beams.98 Overall, the heavy human traffic among the trees significantly modified the forests, determining which kinds of trees flourished and which instead floundered. The strikingly unnatural composition of tree cover implied by the pollen cores and carbonized remains demonstrates that the woods we know about were anything but a fearsome and unregulated natural forest. They were instead a managed resource, the result of precise selection processes. The most impressive case of woodland management in post-classical Italy, and the clearest proof that the ‘return of nature’ in that period was actually unnatural, is the chestnut.99 From the 8th century Castanea sativa was a regular feature in charters and by the 700s chestnut prevailed in Italian landscapes from the foothills of the Alps to Etna. Palynological studies have conclusively shown that the species existed in Roman Italy, although its diffusion was limited. This is ecologically understandable, for Castanea sativa is a tree that requires very specific conditions (warmth, humidity, acidic soil) to do well. Without some human assistance, the range of the tree is restricted to a few niches in the northern Apennines. It also competes ineffectively with other species, like beech or oak, in primis because its seeds do not scatter easily and need much sunlight to germinate and survive as seedlings. The pollen of Castanea sativa increased its presence at numerous sites along the peninsula in Late Antiquity; so, too, the frequency of use (or archaeological detection) of chestnut wood. In 6th-century Naples, for example, large beams of chestnut were used to build a raised walkway near the tomb of St Januarius. In the 600s, at Trezzo on the Adda River in Lombardy, three affluent gentlemen were buried enclosed in solid, well-joined coffins made of chestnut planks, the size of which reveals old trees growing at least from the early 6th century.100 The nuts themselves, rare in classical sites, are relatively numerous in excavated late antique sites like Brescia or Monte Barro. In sum, the palaeo-botanical evidence suggests that chestnut greatly expanded its presence in Late Antiquity both in northern and southern Italy. Yet the tree would not have succeeded if left to its own devices, and in fact the colonization 98   Liverani “Camerae e coperture,” pp. 13–28; Camerlenghi, “Interpreting Medieval Architecture,” pp. 259–76. 99  On chestnuts see Squatriti, Landscape. 100  On the Trezzo burial see Castelletti et al., “Legni e tessuti”, pp. 264–5.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

415

of so many hillsides by chestnut woods is not a product of neglect or abandonment. On the contrary, it is a result of the careful management of woods and trees, an aspect of that humanized but still not human landscape so typical of post-imperial Italy. The contraction of the late Roman state and of the agricultural land use it fostered and the retrenchment of populations that made labour-intensive cultivation unsustainable, created an opportunity for this kind of woodland. Chestnut woods generated abundant useful things (food, forage, fuel) without demanding intensive work in return. This kind of woodland was perfectly attuned to the demographic and social conditions of the time. In Campania as in Lombardy forests of Castanea represented the early medieval humanized, but not fully anthropomorphized, landscape of a lightly settled Italy. Thus, the peculiarities of late antique Italians’ ecological footprinting released the potential of Castanea sativa and launched the peninsular success of this species. Conclusion In a remarkable New York Times bestseller, Alan Wiesman attempted to calculate the impact of radical depopulation on humanized landscapes, urban and rural.101 His results were appropriately sensational and explain the book’s sales (so does the fluent writing). To figure out what Manhattan might look like half a century after its inhabitants had abandoned it, Wiesman visited some unnaturally de-humanized corners of the 21st-century world: the area around Chernobyl, the no-man’s land between Turkish and Greek portions of Cyprus, and the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. Wiesman found nature’s astonishing resilience and the shockingly short resistance of human artifacts left to their own devices. A human generation is enough to reduce to overgrown rubble a 1970s hotel or to return rare birds to river estuaries once rendered toxic by people. For students of late antique Italy, Wiesman’s book is a nice reminder that however ‘re-natured’ or ‘decolonized’ post-classical landscapes were, and despite the rhetoric of 5th- and 6th-century authors, they were not abandoned like some Ukrainian, Cypriot, or Korean spaces have been lately: so the post-classical archaeological remains suggest.102 To maintain the landscape of fields, ditches, riverbanks, roads, roofed buildings, terraces, 101  Wiesman, The World Without Us. 102  Hoffmann, Environmental History, p. 61 applies the concepts re-naturalization and decolonization to Late Antiquity.

416

Squatriti

and even woods that archaeologists can still detect, late antique people had to work assiduously. Only tenacious expenditure of energy prevented Ostrogothic-era towns and countrysides from being swallowed into less humanized metabolisms: Cassiodorus himself knew that “the ruin of buildings is easy once the care of inhabitants has been removed” and swift decomposition awaited “that which the presence of men does not protect”.103 Whatever else happened in the 5th and 6th centuries, human productive and symbolic systems continued to function well enough to justify an ongoing engagement with the humanized landscapes inherited from classical times. Bibliography

Secondary Literature

Arthur, P., “Grubenhauser nella Puglia bizantina”, Archeologia medievale 26 (1999), 171–7. ———, Naples, from Roman Town to City-state, London 2002. ———, “Italian Landscapes, AD 400–1000”, in N. Christie (ed.), Landscapes of Change, Aldershot 2003, pp. 103–33. Arthur, P./Melissano, V., (eds.), Supersano, un paesaggio antico del basso Salento, Galatina 2004. Arthur, P./et al., “L’insediamento in Loc. Scorpo (Supersano, LE) nel VII–VIII secolo”, Archeologia medievale 35 (2008), 365–80. Augenti, A., “L’Italia senza corti? L’insediamento rurale in Romagna tra VI e X secolo”, in G. Brogiolo/et al. (eds.), Dopo la fine delle ville, Mantua 2005, pp. 17–52. Banaji, J., Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2001. Barbiera, I./Dalla Zuanna, G., “Le dinamiche della popolazione nell’Italia medievale”, Archeologia medievale 34 (2007), 19–42. Bardet, J./Dupâquier, J. (eds.), Histoire des populations de l’Europe, Paris 1997. Beloch, K., “Die Bevölkerung Europas im Mittelalter”, Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft 3 (1900), 405–23. Bjornlie, S., Politics and Tradition Between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople (Cambridge 2013). ———, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes in Ostrogothic Italy”, Early Medieval Europe 22 (2014), 138–70.

103  Cassiodorus, Variae 4.30, ed. T. Mommsen (MGH, AA 12): “quia facilis est aedificiorum ruina incolarum subtracta custodia et cito vetustatis decoctione resolvitur, quod hominum praesentia non tuetur.”

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

417

Biasotti, M./Giovinazzo, R., “Reperti faunistici”, in D. Caporusso (ed.), Scavi MM3. Ricerche di archeologia urbana a Milano, Milan 1991, 167–84. Bintliff, J., “Reconstructing the Byzantine Countryside”, in K. Belke/et al., (eds.), Byzanz als Raum, Vienna 2000, pp. 37–63. Boserup, E., The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, Chicago 1965. Boureau, A., “Une histoire intellectuelle des populations médiévales”, Annales 61 (2006), 233–44. Boyden, S./et al., The Ecology of a City and Its People (London 1981). Brogiolo, G./Chavarría, A., Aristocrazia e campagne nell’Occidente, Florence 2005. Broich, J., “The Wasting of Wolin”, Environment and History 7 (2001), 187–99. Brown, P., Through the Eye of a Needle, Princeton 2012. Cacciaguida, G., “Dinamiche insediative, cultura materiale e scambi in Sicilia tra tardoantico e altomedioevo”, Archeologia medievale 35 (2008), 427–52. Camerlenghi, N., “Interpreting Medieval Architecture Through Renovations: The Roof of the Old Basilica of San Paolo fuori le mura in Rome”, in M. Johnson/et al. (eds.), Approaches to Byzantine Architecture and Its Decoration, Farnham 2012, pp. 259–76. Caramiello, R./Zena, A., “Analisi polliniche”, Alba Pompeia 13 (1992), 93. Caramiello, R./et al., “Analisi paleobotaniche e sedimentologiche: storia forestale, clima, ed agricoltura a Trino dall’età romana al medioevo”, in M. Negro Ponzi Mancini (ed.), San Michele di Trino (VC), vol. 2, Florence 1999, pp. 577–99. Castelletti, L., “L’economia e l’ambiente”, in G. Brogiolo/L. Castelletti (eds.), Archeologia a Monte Barro, vol. 2, Lecco 2001, pp. 219–22. Castelletti, L./et al., “Legni e tessuti”, in A. Roffia (ed.), La necropoli longobarda di Trezzo sull’Adda, Florence 1986, pp. 254–74. Castiglioni, E., “I carboni”, in T. Mannoni/G. Murialdo (eds.), S. Antonino, un insediamento fortificato nella Liguria bizantina, Bordighera 2001, pp. 617–26. Castiglioni, E./Rottoli, M., “Il sorgo (Sorghum bicolor) nel medioevo in Italia settentrionale”, Archeologia medievale 27 (2010), 485–95. Castiglioni, E./et al., “I resti archeobotanici”, in G. Brogiolo/L. Castelletti (eds.), Archeologia a Monte Barro, vol. 2, Lecco 2001, pp. 223–47. Chayanov, A., Theory of the Peasant Economy, Madison 1986. Christie, N., From Constantine to Charlemagne, Aldershot 2006. ———, The Fall of the Western Roman Empire, London 2010. Cohen, M., Health and the Rise of Civilization, New Haven 1989. Cucini, C., “Topografia del territorio delle valli del Pecora e dell’Alma”, in R. Francovich (ed.), Scarlino, vol. 1, Florence 1985, pp. 147–64. D’Andria, F./Whitehouse, D. (eds.), Excavations at Otranto, vol. 2, Galatina 1992. Davite, C./Moreno, D., “Des ‘saltus’ aux ‘alpes’ dans les Apennins du nord”, in M. Colardelle (ed.), L’homme et la nature au moyen âge, Paris 1996, pp. 138–42. Delort, R./Walter, H., Histoire de l’environnement européen, Paris 2001.

418

Squatriti

Del Panta, L./Sonnino, E., “Introduzione”, in K. Beloch, Storia della popolazione d’Italia, Florence 1994, pp. vii–xxxii. Delussu, F., “I reperti faunistici. La casa delle Vestali”, in L. Paroli/L. Vendittelli (eds.), Roma dall’antichità al medioevo, vol. 2, Milan 2004, pp. 176–8. Devroey, J., Economie rurale et société dans l’Europe franque, Paris 2003. Di Cocco, I., “Viabilità e insediamenti sull’Appennino emiliano-romagnolo”, in M. Destro/E. Giorgi (eds.), L’Appennino in età romana e nel primo medioevo, Bologna 2004, pp. 21–9. Di Rita, F./Magri, D., “Holocene Drought, Deforestation and Evergreen Vegetation Development in the Central Mediterranean”, The Holocene 19.2 (2009), 295–306. Durand, A., Les paysages médiévaux du Languedoc, Toulouse 1998. Durliat, J., De la ville antique à la ville byzantine, Rome 1990. Fauvinet-Ranson, V., Decor civitatis, decor Italiae, Bari 2006. Francovich, R./et al., “Scavi nella città di Siena”, in A. Augenti (ed.), Le città italiane tra la tarda antichità e l’alto medioevo, Florence 2006, pp. 273–98. Galetti, P., “Alimentare il fuoco: produzione, trasporto, uso di combustibili”, in Il fuoco nell’alto Medioevo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 60), Spoleto 2013, pp. 807–35. Gelichi, S./et al., “La transizione dall’antichità al medioevo nel territorio dell’antica Regio VIII”, in G. Brogiolo/et al. (eds.), Dopo la fine delle ville, Mantua 2005, pp. 53–80. ———, “Isole fortunate? La storia della laguna nord di Venezia attraverso lo scavo di S. Lorenzo Ammiana”, Archeologia medievale 39 (2012), 9–56. Gertwagen, R., “Nautical Technology,” in P. Horden/S. Kinoshita (eds.), A Companion to Mediterranean History, Oxford 2014, pp. 154–69. Giardina, A., “Allevamento ed economia della selva in Italia meridionale”, in id./ A. Schiavone (eds.), Società romana e produzione schiavistica, vol. 1, Bari 1981, pp. 87–113. ———, “Pubblico e privato nella bonifica teodoricana delle paludi pontine”, in J. Martin (ed.), Zones côtières littorales dans le monde méditerranéen au Moyen Âge, Rome 2001, pp. 35–50. ———, “Cassiodoro, Teodorico, e la porpora”, in A. de Vincentiis (ed.), Roma e il papato nel medioevo, vol. 1, Rome 2012, pp. 43–62. Giovannini, F., Natalità, mortalità e demografia dell’Italia medievale sulla base dei dati archeologici, Oxford 2001. Grove, A./Rackham, O., The Nature of Mediterranean Europe, New Haven 2001. Harrison, D., “Plague, Settlement and Cultural Change at the Dawn of the Middle Ages”, Scandia 59 (1993), 15–48. Hemphill, P., “Deforestation and Reforestation in a Central Italian Hinterland”, in R. Jones/et al. (eds.), First Millennium Papers, Oxford 1984, pp. 147–59. Hodges, R., Dark Age Economics. A New Audit, London 2012.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

419

Hoffmann, R., “Medieval Christendom in God’s Creation”, in T. Whited (ed.), Northern Europe, an Environmental History, Santa Barbara 2005, pp. 45–72. ———, “Footprint Metaphor and Metabolic Realities”, in P. Squatriti (ed.), Natures Past, Ann Arbor 2007, pp. 288–325. ———, An Environmental History of Medieval Europe, Cambridge 2014. Horden, P./Purcell, N., The Corrupting Sea, Oxford 2000. Jaidi, H., “L’annone de Rome au Bas-Empire”, in B. Marin/C. Virlouvet (eds.), Nourrir les cités de Mediterranée, Paris 2003, pp. 83–102. Leveau, P., “L’archéologie des paysages et les époques historiques”, in E. Mornet/ F. Morenzoni (eds.), Milieux naturels, espaces sociaux, Paris 1997, pp. 71–83. Lewit, T., “Pigs, Presses and Pastoralism”, Early Medieval Europe 17 (2009), 77–91. Liverani P., “Camerae e coperture delle basiliche paleocristiane”, Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome, 60–61 (2004), 13–28. Livi-Bacci, M., “Macro versus Micro”, in J. Adams/et al. (eds.), Convergent Issues in Genetics and Demography, New York 1990, pp. 15–25. LoCascio, E., “La dissoluzione dell’impero romano d’occidente”, in G. Cacciatore/et al. (eds.), Filosofia e storia della cultura, Morano 1997, pp. 157–82. LoCascio, E./Malanima, P., “Cycles and Stability”, Rivista di storia economica 21.3 (2005), 5–40. Luterbacher, J./et al., “A Review of 2000 Years of Palaeoclimatic Evidence in the Mediterranean”, in P. Lionello (ed.) The Climate of the Mediterranean Region, Amsterdam 2012, pp. 87–185. McCormick, M., Origins of the European Economy, Cambridge 2003. McEvedy, C./Jones, R., Atlas of World Population History, Harmondsworth 1978. McNeill, J./Winiwarter, V., “Breaking the Sod”, Science 304 (2004), 1627–29. Maier, T., “A Farewell to the Market!”, in J. Klápstë/P. Sommer (eds.), Processing Storage Distribution of Food, Turnhout 2011, 280–300. Marazzi, F., “Da suburbium a territorium: il rapporto tra Roma e il suo hinterland nel passaggio dall’antichità al medioevo”, in Roma nell’alto Medioveo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 48), Spoleto 2001, pp. 713–52. Mariotti Lippi, M./et al., “Pollen Analysis of the Ship Site of Pisa San Rossore, Tuscany, Italy”, Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 16 (2007), 453–65. Martin, J., “L’évolution démographique de l’Italie méridionale du VIe au XIVe siècle”, in R. Comba/I. Naso (eds.), Demografia e società nell’Italia medievale, Cuneo 1994, pp. 351–62. Meneghini, R./Santangeli Valenziani, R., Roma nell’alto medioevo, Rome 2004. Morris, I., Why the West Rules, For Now, New York 2010. Murialdo, G./et al., “La Liguria bizantina dopo un settantennio di ricerche”, in C. Varaldo (ed.), Ai confini dell’impero, Bordighera 2011, pp. 25–88.

420

Squatriti

Noyé, G., “Economia e società nella Calabria bizantina”, in A. Placanica (ed.), Storia della Calabria medievale, vol. 2, Reggio 2001, pp. 579–84. ———, “Le città calabresi dal IV al VII secolo”, in A. Augenti (ed.), Le città italiane tra la tarda antichità e l’alto medioevo, Florence 2006, pp. 477–517. Panella, C./Saguì, L., “Consumo e produzione a Roma tra tardoantico e altomedioevo”, in Roma nell’alto Medioevo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 48), Spoleto 2001, 757–815. Paroli, L., “Le strutture della popolazione romana dal tardo antico all’alto medioevo”, in E. Sonnino (ed.), Popolazione e società a Roma dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, Rome 1998, 3–28. Pearson, C./et al., “Dendroarchaeology of the Mid-first Millennium AD in Constantinople”, Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012), 3402–14. Peterken, G., Natural Woodland, Cambridge 1996. Ponting, C., A New Green History of the World, New York 2007. Rackham, O., “Savanna in Europe”, in C. Watkins/K. Kirby (eds.), The Ecological History of European Forests, Wallingford 1998, pp. 1–24. Raimondo, C., “Le città dei Brutii tra tarda antichità e altomedioevo”, in A. Augenti (ed.), Le città italiane tra la tarda antichità e l’alto medioevo, Florence 2006, pp. 519–58. Rottolo, M./Negri, S., “I resti vegetali carbonizzati”, in E. Giannichedda (ed.), FilattieraSorano, Florence 1998, pp. 198–212. Rovina, D./et al., “L’insediamento altomedievale di S. Filitica (Sorso, SS)”, Archeologia medievale 26 (1999), 179–216. Ruggini, L., “Graduatorie fra utillimae artes e saperi scientifici aristocratici nell’Italia di Cassiodoro”, Cassiodorus 6–7 (2000–1), 73–94. Russell, J., Late Ancient and Medieval Population Control, Philadelphia 1985. ———, “The Ecclesiastical Age”, in id., Medieval Demography, New York 1987, pp. 99–111. Russo Ermoli, E./et al., “Human-environment Interactions in the Southern Tyrrhenian Coastal Area”, in H. Harris (ed.), The Ancient Mediterranean Environment Between Science and History, Leiden 2013, pp. 213–31. Sadori, L./Susanna, F., “Hints of Economic Change During the Late Roman Empire Period in Central Italy”, Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 14 (2005), 386–93. Sahlins, M., Stone Age Economics, Chicago 1972. Salvadori, F., “Zooarcheologia e controllo delle risorse locali nel medioevo”, Postclassical archaeologies 1 (2011), 195–244. Santilli, R./et al., “A Catastrophe Remembered”, Antiquity 77 (2003), 313–20. Savino, E., Campania tardoantica (284–604 d.C.), Bari 2005. Simmons, I., Environmental History. A Concise Introduction, Oxford 1993. Spina, A./Canci, A., “Ferento (VT)”, Archeologia medievale 34 (2007), 329–36.

Environmental History in Ostrogothic Italy

421

Squatriti, P., “Marshes and Mentalities in Early Medieval Ravenna”, Viator 23 (1992), 1–16. Squatriti, P., Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, Cambridge 1998. ———, “I pericoli dell’acqua”, in L’acqua nei altomedievali (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 55), Spoleto 2008, pp. 583–618. ———, Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy, Cambridge 2013. Staffa, A., “I centri urbani dell’Abruzzo adriatico fra tarda antichità ed altomedioevo”, in A. Augenti (ed.), Le città italiane tra la tarda antichità e l’alto medioevo, Florence 2006, pp. 345–476. ———, “Quindici anni di ricerche archeologiche a Pescara (1990–2005)”, in R. Ranchovich/ A. Valenti (eds.), IV congresso nazionale di archeologia medievale, Florence 2006, pp. 159–166. Stathakopoulos, D., “Invisible Protagonists”, in I. Anagnostaki/et al. (eds.), Animals and the Environment in Byzantium (7th–12th c.), Athens 2011, pp. 87–95. ———, “Death in the Countryside”, Antiquité tardive 20 (2012), 105–14. Stiner, M./et al., “Scale”, in A. Shryock/D. Smail (eds.), Deep History, Berkeley 2011, pp. 242–72. Thirgood, J., Man and the Mediterranean Forest, London 1981. Totten, D., Thinking Regionally: Rural Landscapes and Economic Connections in Roman Southern Italy, Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 2011. Van Dam, R., Rome and Constantinople, Waco 2010. Vera, F., Grazing Ecology and Forest History, Wallingford 2000. Volpe, G., Contadini pastori e mercanti nella Puglia tardoantica, Bari 1996. ———, “Villaggi e insediamento sparso in Italia meridionale tra tardoantico e altomedieovo”, in A. Augenti (ed.), Le città italiane tra la tarda antichità e l’alto medioevo, Florence 2006, pp. 221–49. Wickham, C., “European Forests in the early Middle Ages” in L’ambiente vegetale nell’Alto Medioevo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 37), Spoleto 1990, pp. 479–545. ———, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Oxford 2005. ———, The Inheritance of Rome, London 2009. Wiesman, A., The World Without Us, New York 2007. Wilkinson, D., “Summary and Discussion”, in D. Michaelides/D. Wilkinson (eds.), Excavations at Otranto, vol. 1, Galatina 1992, pp. 41–58. Zanini, E., Le Italie bizantine, Bari 1998.

part 3 Religion

∵

CHAPTER 16

The Roman Church and its Bishops Kristina Sessa

Introduction: Narratives of Rise and Fall

Traditional narratives of the late ancient Roman church and its bishops underline the Ostrogothic period as a benchmark in its institutional and ideological development. The political trajectory of Ostrogothic Italy, its rise and fall as a state, has long provided scholars with both a historical and a heuristic framework for interpreting the development of Roman episcopal authority and practices. The new political landscape, characterized by a tolerant Arian king and a distant Catholic emperor, is thought to have created the conditions for the emergence of an ‘independent papacy’, through which popes more efficiently and assertively governed the church.1 However, when the Ostrogothic regime fell to Justinian’s armies and the empire in Italy was reborn, so the Roman church is said to have suffered precipitous decline. In the words of Trevor Jalland, the end of the Ostrogoths marked “the gathering gloom of Byzantine tyranny over the Church”.2 Simply put, the history of the Roman church from ca. 476 to 554 has long been written as a narrative embedded within the political and military history of the Ostrogothic government.3 Consequently, it has thematically revolved around issues of church-state relations, interecclesiastical doctrinal debate, and the mercurial relationship between ‘the East’ and ‘the West’ during an epoch marked by schism and ideological conflict pitting papal authority against imperial power in the determination of Christian truths.4

1  Jalland, The Church and the Papacy; Caspar, Geschichte des Papsttums; Ullmann, Growth of Papal Government and Short History of the Papacy; Llewellyn, Rome in the Dark Ages; Schimmelpfenig, The Papacy; Amory, People and Identity; and Sotinel, “Emperors and Popes”. 2  Jalland, The Church and the Papacy, p. 342; see also p. 353. 3  Bury, Later Roman Empire, 1, pp. 464–6 and 2, pp. 151–290 and Stein, L’Histoire du Bas-Empire, 2, pp. 40–115. 4  See, for example, Moorhead, Theoderic; Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”; Amory, People and Identity; Sardella, Società, chiesa, e stata; Sotinel, “Emperors and Popes”; and Demacopoulos, Invention of Peter.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_017

426

Sessa

There is no questioning the significance of past scholarship or the continuing interest of scholars in high political approaches to late Roman church history. However, assumptions underlying some of these studies should give us pause. The idea that the Roman church ‘rose’ during the Ostrogothic period only to ‘fall’ during the Justinianic era smacks not only of overschematization but also of a teleological perspective, which sees the late ancient Roman church as the breeding ground of the later medieval papacy. Walter Ullmann’s scholarship is the most infamous in this regard (and has been duly critiqued precisely for this flaw), but there is a lingering exceptionalism in late ancient papal studies, which uncritically posits the Roman church as different from other major sees in light of its claims to Petrine authority and which perceives Rome’s bishops as especially efficient engineers of a more unified, centralized church.5 Moreover, approaches that emphasize a rising papal authority, high politics, and/or diplomatic engagement between East and West and Rome and Ravenna can uncritically reproduce the discursive biases of the sources. During the Ostrogothic era, two important documents were produced to this precise effect: the Liber Pontificalis (ca. 535 and later) and the Collectio Avellana (ca. 556–60). Both project complementary visions of the Roman church and its bishops. While the Liber Pontificalis, a series of papal biographies beginning with Peter, presents a narrative of the papacy’s steady institutional progress, the Collectio Avellana, an epistolary corpus containing 244 letters and treatises from Damasus (366–84) to Vigilius (through 553), singularly highlights highlevel exchanges between Roman bishops, emperors, kings, and prominent clerics.6 Fortunately, more quotidian papal documents have survived, but their underrepresentation contributes to the privileging of high political approaches to the Roman church. Indeed such approaches can skew the main preoccupations and interests of Rome’s bishops during this time. As Noble stressed, “the routine business of papal government, and the duties of the pope as an Italian metropolitan, always took preference over everything else”.7 Consequently, this chapter will emphasize newer approaches and interests in the social, cultural, and discursive matrices of the Roman church and its bishops during the ‘long’ Ostrogothic period from 476 to 554. Beginning with the groundbreaking studies of Charles Pietri and P.A.B. Llewellyn on the aristocracy and its social and economic relations with Roman clergy, scholars have 5  Critiques include Richards, Popes and the Papacy, pp. 1–5; Costambeys, “Property, Ideology”; and Delogu, “Il passagio”. 6  See especially McKitterick, “Roman Texts” and Blair-Dixon, “Memory and Authority”. 7  Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”, p. 398.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

427

looked beyond the binaries of East/West and church/state for new insights into the development of Roman episcopal and ecclesiastical authority.8 Very recent work incorporates lessons of the linguistic turn, and studies such as George Demacopoulos’ book on Petrine discourse and Claire Sotinel’s essay on the representation of Vigilius masterfully deconstruct the rhetorical programmes embedded in the sources.9 Most significantly, this chapter will continue in the path forged by scholars behind the recent ‘minimalist revolution’ in late ancient papal studies. These historians describe the Roman church during our period as a significantly less sophisticated institution than previously believed, and many view Rome’s bishops less as ‘Popes’ than as struggling civic and spiritual leaders working within a highly competitive and radically changing socio-political landscape.10

The Roman Church and its Bishops: Jurisdiction

The bishop of Rome did not directly govern the whole of Italy, let alone Western Christendom. Rather, his ecclesiastical jurisdiction was geographically circumscribed to Italia Suburbicaria, the imperial administrative diocese comprising Italy’s central and southern territories, along with the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.11 Theoretically, the Roman bishop was not a metropolitan because Italy was never divided into provinces, but in practice he exercised a metropolitan’s authority over the churches and clerics in suburbicarian Italy.12 He was responsible for consecrating all bishops in the region; for convening regular councils in Rome to be attended by the suburbicarian clergy; for governing the churches according to the canons; and for casting final judgement on appeals from regional ecclesiastical courts. According to Rome, its bishop could also 8  See Pietri, “Evergétisme et richesses ecclésiastique”, “Donateurs et pieux établissments”, and “Aristocracie e société cléricale”; and Llewellyn “Roman Church”. More recently, see the collected essays in Cooper/Hillner, Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage; Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority; and Sotinel, “Les évêques italiens dans la société de l’Antiquité tardive”. 9  Sotinel, “Vigilius in the Liber Pontificalis”, and Demacopoulos, Invention of Peter. 10  See, for example, Sotinel, “Le personnel episcopal”; Delogu, “Il passagio”; Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi; Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values; and Demacopoulos, Invention of Peter. 11  The peninsular territories under Rome’s direct ecclesiastical supervision were Tuscany, Umbria, Campania, Samnium, Lucania, Bruttium, Apulia, Calabria, and Valeria. Gaudemet, L’eglise dans l’empire romain, pp. 445–6. 12  By 450, there were approximately 200 bishoprics in Italia Suburbicaria. See G. Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia, pp. 95–6.

428

Sessa

issue final judgement on appeals from churches and clerics throughout the empire. However, this particularly expansive claim to appellate authority was grounded in a canon from the Council of Serdica (343), which was not recognized by most eastern churches and was erroneously conflated with those of Nicaea in Rome’s Latin translation of the Nicene canons.13 As studies have shown, clerics welcomed Rome’s claims to supra-appellate authority when it served their needs, but ignored or even contested it when it did not.14

Rome’s Urban and Suburban Churches

Unlike most late ancient sees, Rome was not a cathedral city but a city of cathedrals. Within the city and its environs, the late 5th-century bishop oversaw some 130 churches, oratories, and monasteries, including numerous major basilicas constructed in the 4th and 5th centuries by the emperors and their families.15 Generally speaking, the Ostrogothic period did not witness any new major ecclesiastical foundations in Rome, which previously had been the result of imperial patronage. This is expected given the largely nonNicene Christian orientation of the Amal dynasty, though Theoderic made a small offering to S. Peter’s during the episcopate of Hormisdas. A few of the city’s bishops were involved in smaller-scale projects.16 Symmachus (498–514) built an extensive new chapel for S. Peter’s dedicated to the apostle’s brother Andrew, and undertook other renovations and decorative work both there and at S. Paul’s.17 Felix IV (526–30) is responsible for the only ex-novo church built in Rome during the Ostrogothic period, the diminutive but elegant basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian on the Via Sacra inside the Roman Forum. Dedicated in 527, the church was constructed by linking two formerly separate buildings, the so-called ‘Library of Peace’ (Bibliotheca Pacis) and sections of the presumably long defunct Temple of Romulus. The basilica also features a spectacular apsidal mosaic depicting the parousia (i.e. the second coming of Christ) as well 13  Serdica, c. 3. 14  Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Hess, The Early Development of Canon Law. 15  Late 5th-century Rome’s major basilicas include: Basilica S. Petri, Basilica S. Pauli, Basilica Constantiniana (S. Giovanni Laterano), S. Maria Maior (S. Maria Maggiore), Basilica Apostolorum (S. Sebastiano), and the Basilica Sessoriana (S. Croce in Gerusalemne). 16  To what follows, we might add the church of S. Stefano in Rotondo on the Caelian Hill, which was begun during the tenure of Leo I (441–61) to house the relics of S. Stephen protomartyr, but not completed and consecrated until the episcopate of Simplicius (468–83). 17  Alchermes, “Petrine Politics”.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

429

as portraits of Cosmas, Damian, and Peter along with bishop Felix (see Figure 14.9 in Chapter 14). The circumstances under which Felix gained control of the buildings inside the forum where he constructed the basilica are unclear. They were ostensibly imperial properties, hence in the king’s charge, and it is possible that a court member handed them over to Felix simply because they were derelict.18 Rome’s bishops also oversaw a special category of urban ecclesiastical foundation, the titular church or titulus. The tituli were post-Constantinian churches founded in the late 4th and 5th centuries ministered by two or three presbyters (known as titular presbyters). By 499, Rome had as many as twentynine tituli and they were haphazardly scattered all over the city.19 The uneven topographical distribution reflects the tituli’s origins as private ecclesiastical foundations built on donated land and/or with gifted funds from clerical and lay patrons.20 Indeed the term titulus likely refers to the church’s legal status, as a property that was privately founded but then legitimately transferred (with all current and subsequent endowments) to the Roman church and the bishop’s control.21 As we shall see, the tituli remained problematic institutions from the bishop’s perspective, in large part because the presbyters assigned to serve them had traditionally exercised de facto control over their rites and finances.

Administration and Personnel

Once commonly characterized as the early ‘papal chancellery’, the Roman church’s 5th- and 6th-century administration has been radically reappraised. Recent studies describe an ecclesiastical administration that was relatively small and unsophisticated, and which operated on an ad hoc basis. Moreover, it was largely directed by the pope himself along with non-specialist, (mostly) clerical personnel, rather than by corps of professionalized officials.22 It is 18  Felix IV was Theoderic’s appointee (see below), making the transference of these buildings to the Roman Church’s control more understandable. 19  The figure of twenty-nine is based on the signature list from the Roman Synod of 499, ed. Mommsen, pp. 410–15, but the Liber Pontificalis mentions only twenty-five tituli. See Guidobaldi, “Spazio ed organizzazione ecclesiastica ”, pp. 123–9 and Saxer, “La chiesa di Roma”, pp. 553–5. 20  Hillner, “Clerics, Property, and Patronage”. 21  Hillner, “Families, Patronage”. 22  See Sotinel, “Le personnel episcopal” and Toubert, “ ‘Scrinium’ e ‘Palatium’ ”.

430

Sessa

thus anachronistic to identify a ‘priestly’ and ‘administrative branch’ of the Roman church during the 5th and 6th centuries; the two were intertwined and there were no systematic attempts in this period to create separate divisions.23 Scholars have rightly emphasized the significance of the imperial administration (especially its scrinia) as a model for the Roman church’s bureaucratic development. Rome’s papal correspondence clearly reflects this influence, for it mimics imperial rescripts in both style and form.24 But further similarities are far weaker. To be sure, Roman bishops employed notarii and exceptores to assist them in writing, archiving, and delivering letters from the late 4th century (if not earlier).25 By the late 5th century, the notarii were organized into a basic hierarchy, with both a primicerius and secundicarius notariorum attested.26 Whether the notarii were men drawn from all ranks of the clergy or came to constitute a new lower clerical order remains unclear.27 However, beyond the notaries, there is no evidence for the systematic development or organization of bureaucratic officials in the Ostrogothic-era Roman church. Although the apocrisarius (Roman papal representative in Constantinople) and the vicedominus (overseer of the daily needs of the church and episcopal household) are first attested during the Ostrogothic period, these positions seem to have been temporary arrangements and not permanent, professionalized offices within the church until much later in the 6th century.28 Rather, in conducting the church’s business the Roman bishop relied on various nonspecialized Roman clerics, local aristocrats as well as visiting clergy and laymen from other regions. This can be seen most clearly in accounts describing the composition of small councils (conventicula), which Roman bishops called to assist them in making administrative decisions. Both Simplicius and

23  Pace Richards, The Popes and the Papacy, p. 289. 24  McShane, La romanitas. 25  Teitler, Notarii and Exceptores, pp. 87–9. 26  Teitler, Notarii and Exceptores, pp. 88–9 for references. In a letter preserved in the Liber Pontificalis Ravennatis, Felix IV recommended that Ravenna organize its notaries into seven administrative levels, but as B. Neil notes (“The Papacy”, p. 9), it is unclear whether Felix prescribed this arrangement because it was the norm at Rome. 27  See Teitler, Notarii and Exceptores, pp. 88–9 for references. Gelasius, Ep. 14.2, ed. Thiel, p. 363 identifies the notarii in his cursus as a clerical order, but there is no other evidence from Late Antiquity to corroborate this as a normative denomination in Rome. 28  The Roman apocrisarius was established after the Acacian schism: Richards, The Popes and the Papacy, p. 293. The first vicedominus was appointed by Vigilius as an emergency measure during his absence from Rome between 545 and 555, and thereafter the position is unattested until Gregory I’s tenure. Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 107–8.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

431

Felix IV, for instance, convened councils of clerics and senators to help them choose successors (see below). Very little is known about the location and physical buildings of Rome’s episcopal administration during the Ostrogothic period. The first reference to the Lateran basilica as the site of the bishop’s household and headquarters appears in ca. 500 in a document issued by Theoderic, wherein he refers to the de arca vero vel domo Lateranensi (‘the treasury or rather Lateran household’).29 It is obviously significant that Theoderic believed that the Roman bishop’s household and treasury were located in the Lateran neighbourhood at the Caelian, and that his domus was connected to the arca. However, this is all that we know. Archaeologists have not discovered remains of what can be positively identified as Rome’s episcopium. The absence of material evidence impairs our ability to do more than speculate about where and how the Roman bishop lived. Interestingly, 5th- or 6th-century Roman martyr narratives (the gesta martyrum) depict two pre-Constantinian bishops living in different parts of the city, suggesting alternative traditions about episcopal residential space.30 Moreover, the embattled bishop Symmachus developed the area around S. Peter’s basilica to serve as his residence during the Laurentian schism (see below). The setting and status of Rome’s ecclesiastical archives are also unclear. The Ostrogothic-era church certainly had archives, which held the writings of present and past bishops along with other documents. Moreover, the Liber Pontificalis suggests that the early 6th-century church wished to create (or had created) a personal ecclesiastical archive for clergy, in which clerics could store important private documents (e.g. wills, contracts, etc.).31 Some popes seem to have had personal archives (e.g. Agapitus). But there is no conclusive evidence that the church had centralized its archives at the Lateran basilica at this time.32 In many respects, the administration of the Roman church during the Ostrogothic period more closely resembled a private institution, such as a household. As Egyptian papyrological evidence shows, large landowning householders typically employed notaries and kept extensive archives to manage their estates and labour—just as the bishop of Rome.33 In fact some of our 29  Anagnosticum Regis, ed. Mommsen, p. 426. 30  Passio S. Pancratii 2 (Cornelius living on the Caelian Hill) and Passio S. Susannae 2 (Gaius living on the Esquiline). 31  The Liber Pontificalis claims that Pope Julius (337–52) had established such an archive (Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, p. 205), but this is surely a retrojection of 6th-century realities or aspirations. 32  Pace Richards, The Popes and the Papacy, p. 289. 33  Sarris, Economy and Society.

432

Sessa

best evidence for the administrative activities of Rome’s bishops pertains to property management. Since at least the early 4th century the Roman church was a legally recognized corporate property owner, possessing both moveable and immovable wealth, including slaves.34 During the Ostrogothic era, it owned estates throughout much of Italy, in southern Gaul, North Africa, and Dalmatia.35 These properties were valuable to the church because of the rents they generated, which had to be systematically collected and recorded. While Roman bishops had long managed properties beyond the city, the Ostrogothic period saw important developments in this particular area of ecclesiastical administration.36 Rome’s bishops now drew more regularly on established domestic terminology and administrative principles to manage the church’s land. For instance, the letters of Gelasius and his successors refer to the church’s properties as patrimonia, a term used in private households and in the imperial and royal courts to denote estates grouped together on the basis of geography and managed as a unit.37 And since the tenure of Simplicius (if not earlier), the Roman church dispersed its income according to the principles of the quadripartitum, a fourfold division of ecclesiastical revenues into funds for the bishop, the clergy, building maintenance, and charity.38 Gelasius’ correspondence also contains numerous copies of tax and income receipts, though it is unclear from later 6th-century sources whether the Roman church had already adopted a single main accounting book called the polypticha. To assist them with the legal and financial issues that large-scale estate ownership entailed, popes relied primarily on pre-existing networks of clerics and lay officials. Gelasius, for instance, looked to a layman named Agilulphus for protecting Rome’s properties in Dalmatia and to a local deacon in Picenum to make an inventory of his church’s properties in that region, while his successor Vigilius sent a Roman deacon to oversee the church’s patrimonia in Dalmatia.39 Roman bishops also increasingly relied on legal counsellors, known as defensores ecclesiae, for assistance in estate management.40 A letter from Agapitus to Caesarius of Arles presents the first reference to a defensor serving as interme34  Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 113–16. 35  Marazzi, I “Patrimonia”, pp. 111–47. 36  However, Richard’s claim (The Popes and the Papacy, p. 315) that Ostrogothic-era popes developed a “fully operational rectorial system” goes beyond the limits of the evidence. 37  Moreau, “Les patrimonies”; Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 411–27. Scholars debate whether Gelasius or Vigilius first used the term patrimonium in this manner. 38  Marazzi, I “Patrimonia”, pp. 65–9. 39  Gelasius, Frag. 2, ed. Thiel 1868, p. 484 and Ep. 4, ed. Ewald 1880, p. 10; Vigilius, Ep. 14.8, ed. Schwartz, ACO 4:1, pp. 190–1. 40  Sotinel, “Le personnel episcopal”, pp. 110–14.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

433

diary between the Roman bishop and those who rented and laboured on the church’s estates.41 However, the defensores were not necessarily clerics (many were laymen) and they did not comprise a professionalized college within the church. Indeed this was not an era when Rome’s domestic duties were simply delegated to administrators. As their letters vividly demonstrate, Rome’s bishops were engaged in the smallest matters of estate management, from issuing receipts for collected rents and taxes to adjudicating disputes between the church’s tenants and overseeing the capture and return of fugitive slaves.42

Social and Cultural Background of Rome’s Bishops

One of the most important developments within the Roman church during the Ostrogothic period was social: the entry of aristocrats into the ranks of the church. Until the last decades of the 5th century Roman prelates hailed from either non-aristocratic clerical families or households of curial status.43 However, beginning with Felix III (483–92), who was Rome’s first bishop related directly to a senatorial family, an increasing number of men from aristocratic backgrounds (both senatorial and provincial) became popes.44 To be clear, this is not an unbroken pattern. Felix’s three successors, Anastasius II, Gelasius, and Symmachus, likely did not come from aristocratic families. Nevertheless, with the accession of Hormisdas, whom Ennodius described as “pious, well-born, and rich,” high-born Roman bishops led the church until the end of our period.45 The increase in the numbers of aristocratic bishops may reflect a larger trend within the Roman church, as more early 6th-century clerics came from prosperous, influential families than before.46 Precisely why the Roman church experienced these demographic shifts remains an open question. Richards suggested that the Amals and Justinian preferred to appoint aristocrats, but this explanation only accounts for three bishops (Felix IV, John II, and Vigilius).47 The clergy certainly offered aristocrats

41  Agapitus, Ep. 7 = Caesarius of Arles, Ep. 16, dated to 535. 42  Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 116–26. 43  Sotinel, “Le recruitment des évêques en Italie”, pp. 193–204. 44  Pietri, “Aristocratie et société cléricale”. 45  Hormisdas, Felix IV, Boniface II, Agapitus, Silverius, and Vigilius all had aristocratic backgrounds. See Richards, The Popes and the Papacy, pp. 235–44. 46  Pietri, “Aristocratie et société cléricale”, pp. 434–6. 47  Richards, The Popes and the Papacy, pp. 241–3.

434

Sessa

another political system to exploit, such as when Vigilius promoted his nephew Rusticus to the deaconate. However, there were no Roman papal dynasties in Late Antiquity, and there is no evidence that senatorial families were independently orchestrating ordinations from behind the scenes. Indeed the notion of a ‘senatorial takeover’ of the Roman church grossly exaggerates the degree to which senators, let alone the Senate as a political body, came to influence church affairs. Even during moments of grave ecclesiastical conflict, such as one of Rome’s many contested episcopal elections, the loyalties of Roman senators were divided, and they were never unified behind rapprochement with the East during the Acacian schism (see below).48 Pietri’s emphasis on increasing cultural contact between aristocratic and clerical circles, therefore, may be closer to the mark.49 For example, Boethius sent several works on theology to the Roman deacon John, who was the author of a letter to the vir illustris Senarius that explained the baptismal ritual. However, this osmose culturelle seems to have been largely unidirectional, since relatively few Ostrogothic-era Roman bishops are remembered for intellectual pursuits. Gelasius, who was not from an Italian aristocratic family, is the only bishop whom the Liber Pontificalis claims authored treatises against heretics and a book of hymns.50 He also had a reputation among monks in Rome for an ascetic lifestyle. Agapitus (535–36), son of a titular priest and from a noble background, is said to been especially learned in church law and to have founded a library near the titulus Pammachi, where he had served before becoming bishop.51 He was also involved with Cassiodorus in an endeavour to found a Christian school in Rome.52 Finally, Pelagius I while still a deacon serving under Vigilius helped translate several books of the Greek monastic corpus known as the Apopthegmata Patrum into Latin. Yet beyond a few translation projects and the construction/decoration of churches, we know little about the cultural pursuits of Rome’s bishops during the Ostrogothic period.

Episcopal Elections in Rome

Choosing a new bishop was among the most potentially divisive tasks in any see, but Rome’s elections were especially fractious, particularly during the Ostrogothic era. During this time there were three double elections 48  Sardella, Società, chiesa, e stata, pp. 52–8. 49  Pietri, “Aristocratie et société cléricale”. 50  Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, p. 255. 51  Liberatus, Breviarum 21. Guiliano and Pavolini, “La biblioteca di Agapito”. 52  Cassiodorus, Inst. I, praef. 1.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

435

(Symmachus and Laurentius in 498; Felix IV and an unnamed rival in 526; and Boniface II and Dioscorus in 530); at least one case where the favoured candidate (Vigilius) of the living bishop (Boniface II) was flatly rejected by so many clerics that the pope withdrew his support; and numerous incidents of interference via bribery and canvassing. Perhaps unlike other churches, Rome’s later 5th- and 6th-century bishops were not ‘elected’ via a process whereby the city’s clergy and laity publicly acclaimed a particular candidate, who upon receiving something like a majority (if not universal) support acceded to the episcopate.53 Rather, Rome’s tradition for selecting a new pope appears to have been far more autocratic: the living bishop chose his successor while still alive and upon his death the appointed man became bishop. Simplicius, Symmachus, Hormisdas, Felix IV, and John II seem to have nominated their successors (though sometimes with resistance) and on at least three occasions the ruling secular authority made the appointment: Theoderic chose Felix IV, Athalaric named John II, and Justinian selected Vigilius. Clerics and laypeople could influence the nomination process through bribery, etc., but these sorts of interventions were typically met with suspicion and disapproval, at least from the authorities. Needless to say, Rome’s electoral system was not the most stable, and the Ostrogothic period witnessed both violent conflicts over elections and numerous attempts from various leaders, including the popes, to set limits on the process. In 483, Simplicius issued a scriptura or testamentary statement demanding that a small council of clergy and at least one senator, Basilius, select his successor upon his death.54 Assuming that this council met, they chose Felix III, Rome’s first aristocratic bishop. However, Simplicius’ recommended process was not received policy, for when Anastasius II died in 498 without nominating a successor, two men were independently selected and consecrated, the archdeacon Symmachus and titular presbyter Laurentius. Thus commenced the Laurentian schism (498–506/7), Ostrogothic Rome’s most infamous ecclesiastical conflict.55 Symmachus was initially selected by Theoderic as the legitimate bishop in 498, and in 499 he passed sweeping 53  Such a process may well have existed in Rome during earlier periods and in other sees. See Norton, Episcopal Elections. 54  This is Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius (PLRE 2: 217, Basilius 12), praetorian prefect of Italy and member of Odovacer’s court. Contra Pietri, “Aristocratie et société cléricale”, pp. 454–5, I see no basis in the evidence for interpreting Basilius’ participation in this council as an indication of the Senate’s collective (or Odovacer’s personal) intervention in the election. 55  Recent studies include Moorhead, Theoderic; Wirbelauer, Zwei Päpste in Rom; and Sardella, Società, chiesa, e stato.

436

Sessa

electoral reforms, which attempted to eradicate the interference of clergy through canvassing and bribes, and to place control of succession squarely in the hands of the living bishop.56 However, Laurentius’ supporters did not relent and pursued Symmachus to Ravenna in 501 with serious charges that included the observance of Easter on the wrong date; financial malfeasance concerning Roman ecclesiastical property; and unnamed sex crimes.57 After Symmachus refused to answer charges before Theoderic, he retreated to St Peter’s, where he remained until 506/7. During that time Laurentius controlled Rome’s churches and an outside bishop (Peter of Altinum) was dispatched to oversee the liturgical services. At Theoderic’s command a synod of Italian bishops at Rome heard the charges against Symmachus in 501 and 502, but declared that they could not judge the Roman bishop in absentia and exonerated him. However, Symmachus retook control of Rome’s churches only after Theoderic issued a fiat in late 506 or 507. The entire episode was a massive public relations disaster for Symmachus, whose legitimacy to govern the church remained in question for years. In the attempt to counter the charges against him (ritual and financial misconduct; sexual activity with a woman) and sway public opinion, Symmachus’ proponents crafted documents known to modern scholars as the ‘Symmachan Forgeries’.58 Among other things, these documents present both historical and fictional 4th- and 5th-century bishops accused of similar crimes to Symmachus, who are uniformly declared innocent by a jury of clergy, monks, and senators on the grounds that “it is unlawful to pass judgment against the pontifex” (non licet enim adversus pontificum dare sententiam).59 While the Laurentian schism is perhaps an extreme example of a botched episcopal election, and likely escalated due to unrelated issues, it was hardly the last time that Romans disagreed over who should lead their church. Moreover, Symmachus’ own regulations, decreed at the Council of 499, did little to end clerical interference or to shore up the living bishop’s control over succession. Thus in 530, Felix IV, Theoderic’s appointee in what had also been a contested election, issued a praeceptum announcing that he had handed over

56  Acta syn. a. CCCCICVIIII, ed. Mommsen, pp. 403–5. 57  Our knowledge of the charges against Symmachus derive from the so-called Laurentian Fragment, an alternative life of Symmachus that closely resembles the form of the vitae in the Liber Pontificalis, but presents a hostile assessment of his tenure. For the text, see Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, pp. 44–6. 58  On the Symmachan documenta, see Townsend, “So-called Symmachan Forgeries”, and Wirbelauer, Zwei Päpste in Rom, which includes new editions of the texts. 59  Gesta de Xysti purgatione, ed. Wirbelauer, p. 268.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

437

his pallium to Boniface II at a deathbed council with clergy and lay nobles.60 In the same year, the Senate issued a written address to the clergy of Rome (which they directed to be posted in all tituli) forbidding any discussion of succession and threatening with exile anyone who accepted a nomination for the episcopate before the death of the pope. At the very least the Senate’s act— the first of its kind—suggests that it favoured a more regular process for episcopal succession.61 Unsurprisingly, Boniface did not smoothly ascend to the see. Many Roman clerics supported the elderly Alexandrian Dioscorus, a popular deacon in Rome, who died a month later thereby ending the schism. Boniface then attempted to formalize the living bishop’s nomination of a successor by convening a synod at St Peter’s, where the attending clerics signed the pope’s decree to this effect. However, when Boniface appointed the aristocratic deacon Vigilius so many clerics objected that Boniface rescinded the decree, which he ceremoniously burned before the confessio at St Peter’s basilica.62 Precisely what had ensued during Boniface’s tenure regarding succession is hard to reconstruct, but it was problematic enough for the Senate to issue its first senatus consultum regulating ecclesiastical affairs. In a letter from Athalaric to John II, the king refers to a senatorial measure passed during Boniface’s episcopate that once again forbade bribery and other financial incentives for “procuring the bishopric”.63 Not incidentally, the letter outlines several regulations added by Athalaric, which limited the fees (sportulae) that royal officials could charge parties during a disputed Roman election (presumably for presenting their case to magistrates or the king) as well as the sums that could be paid out to the people for support of a particular candidate. It would seem that John II’s election, too, was business as usual at Rome.

Governing the Roman Church in Italy

Governing the Roman church during the Ostrogothic period was by all accounts enormously challenging. For one, it is an era bookended by warfare. 60  Cassiodorus, Variae 8.15, from Athalaric to the Senate. For the praeceptum of Felix IV, see Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, p. 282. 61  Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, p. 282 for the text of the senatorial statement. Scholars disagree on whether the statement was meant to support or censure Felix IV’s praeceptum. 62  Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, p. 281. 63  Cassiodorus, Variae 9.15. Pietri, “Aristocratie et société cléricale,” p. 465 and Barnish, Cassiodorus, p. 113, n. 5.

438

Sessa

When Gelasius became pope in 492, Italy had just emerged from a damaging conflict between the armies of Odovacer and Theoderic (489–91), which ravaged parts of the north and put demographic strains on much of Italy. From 535 to 554, Justinian’s armies fought to regain the region from Ostrogothic control. The Gothic War had a devastating impact on certain cities such as Rome, which was besieged three times, had its aqueducts cut, cemeteries violated, and population starved. Even without the exigencies of war, Roman popes struggled continuously with leading the church within Italy. Their challenges were partially rooted in the unusually dense and dispersed nature of Rome’s ecclesiastical organization. There was the episcopal city with 130 churches, chapels, monasteries, and some 200 clerics; an ecclesiastical jurisdiction (Italia Suburbicaria) containing between 140 and 200 bishoprics, and hundreds (if not thousands) of suffragan clergy; and the church’s far-flung patrimonia, which involved the oversight of thousands of peasant labourers and slaves. While the size of the Roman church undoubtedly brought it considerable honour and prestige, it also led to serious problems and tensions, which prevented Rome from governing even its undisputed jurisdictional territory without crisis and contention.64

Managing the Suffragan Clergy

During Late Antiquity, clergy at Rome and elsewhere were not neatly organized into hierarchical grades, with clearly defined roles and spheres of authority. It is simply inaccurate to talk of a ‘college of priests’ and a ‘college of deacons’, much less of a ‘suffragan clergy’, without considerable qualification. Clerics in Rome and beyond had multiple identities and allegiances: they were members of natal and marital households; friends, patrons, and clients; and spiritual experts whose primary loyalty was to those with whom they routinely interacted, namely their local bishop, parishioners, landlords, and tenants. During Gelasius’ tenure, approximately 20 per cent of Rome’s presbyters and deacons broke with him after Gelasius reinstated a bishop whom the Roman church had excommunicated in 484.65 Beyond Rome, Gelasius dealt with perennial violations of his own regulations governing ordination, with clergy who inappropriately performed certain liturgical rituals (including the case of one priest who seems to have mixed Christian rites with magical rituals), stole 64  Allen/Neil, Crisis Management and Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority. 65  Richards, The Popes and the Papacy, pp. 66 and Demacopoulos, Invention of Peter, pp. 80–4.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

439

church property, and committed sex crimes.66 Significantly, in 494 the pope issued the most comprehensive set of ecclesiastical regulations to date: a letter listing some twenty-eight canons governing virtually every aspect of clerical discipline and church order, from the proper ordination process for laymen and monks and a ban against female liturgical celebrants to procedures for consecrating private estate chapels.67 However, as subsequent letters show, his strictures were not always followed. Nevertheless, Gelasius involved himself directly in even the smallest matters of clerical discipline, suggesting that the pope viewed these infractions as serious challenges to his authority. Symmachus’ conflict with Rome’s clergy over ecclesiastical property during the Laurentian schism was equally if not more troublesome. A considerable clerical population had sided with Laurentius, and had accused the bishop before Theoderic of several crimes, including the alienation (sale, trade, or transfer) of church lands. Generally speaking, bishops were permitted to alienate ecclesiastical property under certain conditions, but in 483 the council convened at Simplicius’ directive (as mentioned above) had banned alienation outright, suggesting that some Roman clergy (and at least one Roman senator) wished to tighten the bishop’s financial reins.68 While we do not know which lands Symmachus allegedly alienated, the acts from the Roman synod of 501 suggest that they formed part of the endowments funding Rome’s titular churches. As noted, the tituli were legally part of the bishop’s church, but they were locally administered both ritually and financially. For many Roman Christians, they were the centre of their ecclesiastical experience, the place where they baptized their children and offered their alms. While it is unlikely that lay donors were behind the anti-Symmachan charges (as Llewellyn suggested), it is possible that certain titular priests formed the heart of the opposition against Symmachus (Laurentius, after all, was a titular presbyter) and that their continual partisanship was rooted in Symmachus’ more aggressive approach to estate administration.69 Symmachus clearly had the tituli in mind at the 501 synod, when he moved to regulate the alienation of church property and expressly forbade titular priests from using this or other financial tools to manage their church’s wealth.70 Moreover, several of the Symmachan Forgeries 66  Allen/Neil, Crisis Management, pp. 163–70 and Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 174–211 for a broader discussion of these issues. 67  Gelasius, Ep. 14, ed. Thiel, pp. 362–79 issued in March 494 to the churches of Lucania, Bruttium, and Sicily. 68  Acta syn. a DII [SIC], ed. Mommsen, pp. 444–5. 69  Llewellyn, “Roman Church”, with important revisions in Hillner, “Families, Patronage”. 70  Acta syn. a DII [SIC], ed. Mommsen, p. 450.

440

Sessa

depict bishops as exemplary estate managers, and these narratives may have been created to counter mistrust among Romans regarding the pope’s oversight of ecclesiastical wealth.71

Popes and lay Households

Despite aristocratic entry into the Roman church during the Ostrogothic period, there was continual tension between Rome’s bishops and Italy’s aristocrats.72 Perhaps the most infamous conflict occurred during Gelasius’ episcopate, when the bishop found himself opposing the traditions and answering the criticisms of a group of Roman senatorial aristocrats.73 A local cleric had committed adultery with a Roman woman (presumably the wife of a senator, though our sources never reveal her identity), and the senators felt that Gelasius had failed to discipline him severely enough. To make matters worse, they were planning on making this wayward clergyman the butt of public mockery during that year’s Lupercalia festival, a pagan holdover that remained part of local Christian aristocratic tradition. If nothing else, Gelasius’ letter against the Lupercalia and the senators who funded it is a remarkable record of one pope’s anger, indignation, and frustration at elite laymen over whom Gelasius had relatively little control and whose respect for him was neither absolute nor unconditional. In their view, Gelasius was clearly an untrustworthy prelate who failed to govern his clergy in an authoritative manner. Gelasius’ relations with Italian aristocrats were not always adversarial. His letters reveal moments of cooperation, wherein he bent his own rules in order to assist a vir or femina illustris on matters that pertained to the church.74 However, scholars have also argued that Gelasius inaugurated an invasive form of papal oversight over the domestic sphere. Gelasius appears to be the first Roman bishop to prescribe a regulatory regime for the building, dedication, and use of private estate chapels.75 These small churches and oratories were constructed on the estates of Italian aristocrats, in some cases dedicated to local saints, and were used by the household (including tenants and slaves) for 71  Cf. Gesta de Xysti purgatione and Gesta Polychronii in Wirbelauer, Zwei Päpste in Rom. 72  Pietri, “Aristocratie et société cléricale”, pp. 466–7 and Bowes, Private Religion, Public Values and Religious Change, especially pp. 66–91. 73  Gelasius, Ep. 100, ed. Günther, pp. 453–65. 74  Cf. Gelasius, Ep. 21 and 33, ed. Thiel, p. 388, 448. 75  Pietri, “Évergetisme chrétien et foundatins privées” and Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change, pp.125–88.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

441

a variety of ritual purposes, from baptisms to burials. Previously the landowners built without papal oversight, had turned to local bishops to dedicate the buildings, and had personally selected clergy to minister them from among those living on their estates.76 Beginning with Gelasius, however, landowners who wished to have a private chapel on their properties were required to petition the Roman bishop for permission. Local bishops, meanwhile, could not provide the householder’s religious services without the pope’s direction.77 While Gelasius’ (and his successors’) correspondence shows that this new process was both followed and resisted, it also suggests that receiving papal permission amounted to little more than a rubber-stamping.78 In fact there is no evidence that Rome ever denied a lay householder’s request to build, dedicate, or use a villa chapel. The popes’ interests in governing private estate chapels, therefore, were focused not merely on controlling the landowner’s religious life but also on limiting the authority of suffragan Italian bishops, who had previously been responsible for undertaking these ritual tasks, but who now could intervene only upon Rome’s directive. Indeed the regulation of villa churches is an illustrative example of how locally based networks of clerics and landowners routinely challenged the Roman bishop’s attempt to assert hierarchical control even within his own jurisdiction.

Kings, Emperors, and Bishops

As noted in the introduction, scholars have long studied the relationship between the Roman bishop and other titular figures of authority in Late Antiquity, namely the Ostrogothic kings, the emperors in Constantinople, members of the Roman Senate, and rival prelates of major sees. Extensive attention has been paid to Theoderic’s interactions with the Roman church, and to his so-called ‘policy’ of impartiality or neutrality, typically explained by the king’s non-Nicene Christian faith, which seemingly made him an inappropriate interventionist.79 However, in truth, it is very difficult to say much about Theoderic’s attitude toward the Roman church, let alone whether he forged 76  Late 4th-century imperial law required landowners to appoint clerics from their estates: CT 16.2.22 (398). 77  Pietri, “Évergetisme chrértien et foundations privées” outlines the Gelasian and later strictures on private chapel foundation and consecration. 78  Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 168–72. 79  Pfeilschifter, Theoderich und die katholiche Kirche; Richards, The Popes and the Papacy; Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”; and Moorhead, Theoderic.

442

Sessa

and followed an ecclesiastical ‘policy’. Cassiodorus did not preserve a single letter from the king to the Roman church or its bishops, thereby raising the question of how critical Theoderic’s relationship to the pope actually was.80 In fact the most accurate characterization of Theoderic’s relationship to Rome is that he remained uninvolved in its church affairs until there was a pressing political reason to intervene. For example, during the Laurentian schism Theoderic repeatedly took action: just after the initial double election in 498, when he selected Symmachus as the legitimate pope, and in 500, when he met Symmachus at St Peter’s to conclude his adventus; in 501, when he investigated charges levelled against Symmachus and called the pope to Ravenna for questioning; and on multiple occasions from 502 to 506/7, when he installed a visiting bishop (Peter of Altinum) to conduct Rome’s liturgical services, convened a synod in Rome of Italian clerics to adjudicate the charges against Symmachus, and ordered Laurentius and his supporters to return all of Rome’s churches to Symmachus’ control after Symmachus’ exoneration. These interventions were instigated by a number of factors. In initially weighing in on the double ordination of Symmachus and Laurentius in 498, Theoderic followed imperial precedent, wherein western emperors customarily cast the final vote in disputed Roman elections.81 His continual involvement in the synod of 502, wherein he convened the council and repeatedly hounded the bishops to make a decision, was probably prompted by a spate of violence in the city related to the schism the year before. Theoderic, like any good leader, was looking to settle a major conflict that created disorder in his realm’s largest city. Theoderic’s involvement with Rome’s bishops did not end with the Laurentian schism. He routinely called upon Rome’s clerics to serve on state embassies to Constantinople, typically on missions oriented around gaining imperial recognition of his regime, though in one celebrated case—the embassy of John I to the emperor Justin’s court in 526 —for a religious cause, a request to Justinian to suspend recent policies that forced the conversion of Arians (and Arian churches) to Nicene Christianity.82 Although John was honourably received in Constantinople, the pope had not secured the response Theoderic wanted. Shortly after returning to Ravenna, John I died. It is highly unlikely that Theoderic directly caused John’s death, as the Liber Pontificalis strongly implies (John is remembered there as a martyr).83 But the pope was 80  Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”, p. 399. 81  Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”, p. 405. Valentinian I directly intervened in the disputed election between Damasus and Ursinus in 366. 82  Discussed by Cohen in this volume. 83  Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, p. 276.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

443

clearly no longer in the king’s favour. Moreover, the incident immediately followed Boethius’ trial and execution, at a time when Theoderic was increasingly questioning the loyalty of his most powerful Roman subjects.84 It is likely no coincidence that Theoderic’s most invasive act within the Roman church occurred just after John I’s death, when he forced the ordination of his candidate, Felix IV, over a cleric preferred by members of the Senate. In sum, Theoderic’s relations to the Roman church and its bishops follow no pattern other than political contingency. The relationship between pope and emperor has often been studied as the clash between two irreconcilable conceptualizations of the church: an imperial vision, which recognized the emperor’s expansive arm in religious affairs; and a papal vision, which touted the papacy’s claims to Petrine authority as the basis for its leadership of an ecumenical church, with limited imperial participation.85 Many scholars have viewed the Ostrogothic period as an epoch of weak imperial presence in Italy, when the ‘papal vision’ was on the rise. At the centre of this questionable narrative are the Acacian schism (484–519) and the rhetorical actions of Gelasius. The Acacian schism was rooted in theological differences, which divided late 5th-century Christians over the nature of Christ and the authority of the Council of Chalcedon (451).86 While Rome and many Christians, especially in the West, upheld Chalcedon’s authority and its definition of Christ as having two natures ‘in one person’, many other churches and Christians, especially in the East, rejected the Chalcedonian formulation and insisted upon a Christology that defined Christ as having a single divine nature. When tensions between Chalcedonians and antiChalcedonians became extreme in the East during the 480s, Acacius, the bishop of Constantinople, helped the emperor Zeno publish a compromise document called the Henotikon, which the emperor demanded Rome accept. Simplicius and then Felix III balked (among other problems, the Henotikon did not acknowledge the authority of Leo’s Tome, which had been influential in the Chalcedonian formulation), and in 484 Felix III excommunicated Acacius, removing his name from the Roman diptychs. Acacius responded in like, and so the Acacian schism began. Until 518 Rome was not in communion with Constantinople (among other anti-Chalcedonian sees), and its relations with the imperial court were 84  Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”, pp. 419–23 handles this issue well. 85  See Meyendorff, Imperial Unity; Sotinel, “Emperors and Popes”; and Amory, People and Identity, pp. 196–7. 86  The literature on the Acacian schism is vast. See Gray, “Legacy of Chalcedon” for an introduction to the theological issues.

444

Sessa

strained. Rome never broke communion with the emperor, but its bishops could not accept Acacius’ justification for his more irenic stance toward the anti-Chalcedonians, that as bishop of Constantinople he needed to cooperate with the court.87 The idea of cooperation with imperial forces on this particular religious matter was especially intolerable to Gelasius, who responded by authoring what later medieval thinkers knew as the ‘theory of the two swords’.88 In a letter addressed to the emperor Anastasius and dated to 493, Gelasius declared that, “there are two primary means by which the world is governed: the sacred authority (auctoritas) of the pontiff and the power (potestas) of kings”.89 In Gelasius’ view, the auctoritas of bishops is necessarily weightier, because they ultimately render an account before God of the actions of all men, including kings. Consequently, he reasoned, even Christian emperors should bow to bishops on matters of religious doctrine. Needless to say, Gelasius’ letter to Anastasius did not end the schism (Anastasius simply ignored it), and while some of his successors took equally hardline positions (e.g. Symmachus), others were more conciliatory (e.g. Anastasius II). Roman Christians and clerics were also divided, and some scholars believe that the Acacian schism was behind the Laurentian schism.90 It was not until the emergence of a Chalcedonian emperor, Justin I (and his nephew Justinian), that the rift was officially healed. In 519, Hormisdas sent legates to Constantinople along with a document (the libellus Hormisdae), which presented the Roman church’s conditions for reconciliation (e.g. the condemnation of bishops who had accepted the Henotikon) and unambiguously underlined Rome’s total authority in matters of doctrine and faith. Bishop John of Constantinople signed the document (undoubtedly under considerable imperial pressure) and the schism ended, seemingly as a victory for Rome. However, as Sotinel has observed, the reunion between Rome and Constantinople was ultimately based on a misunderstanding of intentions, for neither emperor nor eastern bishop was going to accept Rome’s claims to primacy without equivocation.91 One bishop, Dorotheus of Thessalonica, 87  Sotinel, “Emperors and Popes”. 88  Meyendorff, Imperial Unity, pp. 161–2 and Demacopoulos, Invention of Peter, pp. 89–95. 89  Gelasius, Ep. 12.2, ed. Thiel, pp. 350–1 with an English translation in Demacopoulos, Invention of Peter, pp. 173–80. 90  Caspar, Geschichte des Papstuums, pp. 84–91; Richards, The Popes and the Papacy, pp.92–6; Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 125–6; Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”. However, the only late ancient author to link the Laurentian with the Acacian schism is the Constantinopolitan author Theodore the Lector, and not all scholars accept the connection: see Amory, People and Identity, pp. 204–5 and Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 212–3. 91  Sotinel, “Emperors and Popes”, p. 271.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

445

stridently refused to sign the libellus Hormisdae, and Justin in turn refused to force Dorotheus to stand trial at Rome, as Hormisdas demanded. All of this makes the notion of a ‘rising papacy’ during the Ostrogothic era rather difficult to accept. Justinian’s reign is the subject of numerous studies on church-state relations, largely because of the emperor’s consistently interventionist stance on religious matters, though his interests were focused primarily on the Constantinopolitan and eastern churches.92 Rome is not named in most of his laws regulating Christian practices and doctrine.93 Indeed Justinian’s courting of Rome’s bishops was often opportunistic: he used John II to endorse a new attempt at rapprochement between Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian churches (the so-called Theopaschite formula), and he leveraged Agapitus’ visit to Constantinople in 535–6 to depose Anthimus, the bishop of Constantinople. Justinian also turned to Rome for its support during the final major politicodoctrinal crisis of the Ostrogothic period, the Three Chapters controversy. Like the Acacian schism, the Three Chapters controversy has roots in the Council of Chalcedon.94 Justinian, in the hopes of preventing further misinterpretation and debate, moved to condemn certain writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa in addition to the person of Theodore of Mopsuestia in an edict published in 543 or 544. However, two of the bishops had been officially cleared at Chalcedon, thereby putting all Chalcedonian churches and especially Rome in a difficult situation. In 545, imperial soldiers abducted Vigilius from a Roman church, and he spent a year in Sicily before moving to Constantinople. Western sources from the period read this act as a blatant attempt by Justinian to force Vigilius to condemn the Three Chapters, but the Goths were about to besiege Rome and Vigilius may have been removed for his own safety.95 Initially, Vigilius refused to bow to imperial pressure, and many eminent western bishops and theologians, including Datius of Milan and the African deacon Ferrandus, supported him. However, once in Constantinople, the situation became increasingly confused and tense, and over a period of several years Vigilius changed positions many times on whether to comply with Justinian and condemn the Three Chapters or to remain in communion with the western bishops. At least twice Vigilius tried to escape, first by fleeing to a church in Constantinople (where he was attacked by imperial soldiers) and then by taking refuge in a basilica at Chalcedon. Ultimately in 554 92  Meyendorff, Imperial Unity, pp. 207–50. 93  Demacopoulos, Invention of Peter, p. 120. 94  Price, “Three Chapters and the Council of Chalcedon”. 95  Sotinel, “Emperors and Popes”, p. 281.

446

Sessa

Vigilius succumbed to imperial pressure and publicly condemned both the Three Chapters and all its defenders, including his own deacon (and future pope) Pelagius. In 555, Justinian permitted Vigilius to return to Rome, sending him back with a bundle of documents regarding Italy’s economic and political reconstruction known as the Pragmatic Sanction. Vigilius died in Syracuse and was the first Roman bishop since Leo not to be buried at St Peter’s. Vigilius’ erratic behaviour when faced with the inimitable Justinian has long been interpreted as marking the beginning of the Roman church’s political decline. Indeed many African and northern Italian churches consequently broke communion with Rome over the Three Chapters controversy, and the so-called Istrian schism lasted until the mid 7th century.96 Moreover, western sources depicting Vigilius’ actions during the controversy, including the Liber Pontificalis, are almost universally negative and are steeped in accusations of lying, secret letters, and unchecked ambition. However, as Sotinel has recently shown, our late ancient documents are not only contradictory but also in some cases reflective of later interests and concerns. The account of Vigilius in the Liber Pontificalis, Sotinel shows, refracts late 6th-century preoccupations with the Istrian schism.97 Sotinel also reminds us that Vigilius’ actions and reactions to Justinian’s commands to condemn the Three Chapters must be read within the context of the Gothic War, which directly overlaps with this religious conflict, when many Italian senatorial aristocrats, like Vigilius, had pinned their hopes for the future on a reunified empire.98 Conclusion As this chapter has shown, the ‘rise and fall’ of the papacy as an Ostrogothic religious institution is an old scholarly narrative that demands rethinking. Even within the parameters of high politics, it is difficult to accept a linear trajectory, as studies more attuned to the rhetorical nature of papal discourse and the broader historical context (such as war) have shown. By paying attention to the quotidian concerns of the Roman church and its bishops, we have also complicated the notion of papal authority as a form of limitless ecclesiastical influence within the pope’s Italian jurisdiction. The steady flow of resistance Roman bishops experienced over clerical discipline and the continued pushback the popes received from Roman clergy and laymen over episcopal 96  Sotinel, “Three Chapters”. 97  Sotinel, “Pontifical Authority and Imperial Power” and “Vigilius in the Liber Ponfiticalis”. 98  Sotinel, “Pontifical Authority and Imperial Power”, pp. 24–5.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

447

selection challenges a papal history oriented around the dynamics of ascent and descent. Moreover, the Roman church may have indirectly benefited from Italy’s gradual economic contraction during the later 6th century: with fewer large-scale property owners around, the Roman church—by attrition— became among the richest and most powerful institutions in the region.99 In other words, the Roman church may have been on the rise, at least in relative economic terms, precisely when scholars tell us it was declining. Future studies of the Roman church and its bishops will need to engage more fully with these and other material changes and explain how they do (and do not) intersect with the complex political history of the period. Bibliography

Primary Sources



Secondary Literature

Acta synhodorum habitarum Romae a. CCCCXCVIIII, ed. T. Mommsen, in Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894, pp. 393–415. Collectio Avellana, ed. O. Günther (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 35), 2 vols., Vienna 1895–8. Collectio Britannica, ed. P. Ewald,“Die Papstebriefe der britischen Sammlung,” Neues Archive (1880), 275–414. Epistolae romanorum pontificum genuinae et quae eos scriptae sunt a S. Hilaro usque ad Pelagium II, ed. A. Thiel, Brunsberg 1868. Gesta de Xysti purgatione, ed. E. Wirbelauer, Zwei Päpste in Rom, Munich 1993, pp. 262–70. Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis: Introduction, texte, et commentaire, 3 vols., Paris 1886–1957. Vigilius, Ep. 14, ed. E. Schwartz, Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum 4/1, Berlin 1933– 1937, 190–1.

Alchermes, J., “Petrine Politics: Pope Symmachus and the Rotunda of Andrew at Old Saint Peter’s”, Catholic Historical Review 81 (1995), 1–40. Allen, P./Neil, B., Crisis Management in Late Antiquity, 410–590 CE: A Survey of the Evidence from Episcopal Letters, Leiden 2013. Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, Cambridge 1997.

99  Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 275–6 and Lizzi Testa in this volume.

448

Sessa

Blair-Dixon, K., “Memory and Authority in Sixth-Century Rome”, in K. Cooper/ J. Hillner (eds.), Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900 (Cambridge 2007), pp. 59–76. Bowes, K., Private Religion, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2007. Bury, J.B., History of the Later Roman Empire, 2 vols., New York 1958. Caspar, E., Geschichte des Papsttums, 2 vols., Tübingen 1930–33. Cooper, K./Hillner, J. (eds.), Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome 300–900, Cambridge 2007. Costambeys, M., “Property, Ideology and the Territorial Power of the Papacy in the early Middle Ages”, Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000), 367–90. Demacopoulos, G., The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity, Philadelphia 2013. Delogu, P., “Il passagio dall’antichità al medioevo”, in A. Vauchez (ed.), Roma Medievale, Rome 1995, pp. 3–40. Gaudemet, J., L’Église dans l’empire romain (IVe–Ve siècles), Paris 1958. Gray, P., “The Legacy of Chalcedon: Christological Problems and Their Significance”, in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge 2005, pp. 215–39. Guidobaldi, F., “Spazio urbano ed organizzazione ecclesiastica a Roma nel VI e VII secolo”, in Atti del XIII congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana 54, vol. 2, Vatican City 1998, pp. 29–54. Guiliano, E./Pavolini, C., “ ‘La bibliotheca di Agapito’ e la basilica di S. Agnese”, in W. Harris (ed.), Transformations of Urbs Roma in Late Antiquity (JRA Supplementary Series 33), Portsmouth, RI 1999, pp. 85–107. Hess, H., The Early Development of Canon Law and the Canons of Serdica, Oxford 2002. Hillner, J., “Families, Patronage, and the Titular Churches of Rome”, in K. Cooper/ J. Hillner (eds.), Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome 300–900, Cambridge 2007, pp. 225–61. ———, “Clerics, Property, and Patronage: the Case of the Roman Titular Church”, Antiquité Tardive 14 (2006), 190–224. Jalland, T., The Church and the Papacy, New York 1944. Lizzi Testa, R., Senatori, popolo, papi: il governo di Roma al tempo dei Valentiniani, Bari 2004. Llewellyn, P.A.B., Rome in the Dark Ages, New York 1971. ———, “The Roman Church during the Laurentian Schism: Priests and Senators”, Church History 45 (1976), 417–27. McKitterick, R., “Roman Texts and Roman History in the Early Middle Ages”, in C. Bolgia/R. McKitterick/J. Osborne (eds.), Rome Across Time and Space: Cultural Transmission and Exchange if Ideas c. 500–1000, Cambridge 2011, pp. 19–34.

The Roman Church And Its Bishops

449

McShane, P., La romanitas et le Pape Léon le Grand, Tournai 1979. Mathisen, R., Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Religious Controversy in Fifth-Century Gaul, Washington, D.C. 1989. Marazzi, F., I “Patrimonia Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae” nel Lazio, Rome 1989. Meyendorff, J., Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church 450–680 A.D., New York 1989. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. Moreau, D., “Les patrimonies de l’Église romain”, Antiquité Tardive 14 (2006), 79–93. Neil, B., “The Papacy in the Age of Gregory the Great”, in B. Neil/M. Dal Santo (eds.), A Companion to Gregory the Great, Leiden 2013, pp. 1–27. Noble, T.F.X., “Theodoric the Great and the Papacy”, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia, Atti del XIII congress internazionale di studi sull’alto medioevo Milan 1990, Spoleto 1993, pp. 395–429. Norton, P., Episcopal Elections, 250–600: Hierarchy and Popular Will in Late Antiquity, Oxford 2007. Otranto, G., Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica cristiana, Bari 2009. Pfeilschifter, G., Der ostgotenkönig Theoderich und die katholiche Kirche, Munster 1896. Pietri, C., “Evergétisme et richesses ecclésiastique dans l’Italie du IVe à la fin du Ve s.: l’exemple romain”, Ktema 3 (1978), 317–37. ———, “Aristocratie e société cléricale dans l’Italie chrétienne au temps d’Odoacre et de Théodoric”, Mélanges d’École de Française de Rome 93 (1981), 417–67. ———, “Donateurs et pieux établissments d’après le légendier romain (Ve–VIIe s.)”, in Hagiographie, cultures, et sociétés, IVe–XIIe siècles, Actes du colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Paris (2–5 Mai 1979), Paris 1981, pp. 435–53. Pietri, L., “Évergetisme chrétien et foundations privées dans l’Italie de l’antiquité tardive”, in J.-M. Carrié/R. Lizzi Testa (eds.), Humana Sapit, Turnhout 2002, pp. 253–63. Price, R., “The Three Chapters and the Council of Chalcedon”, in C. Chazelle/K. Kubitt (eds.), The Crisis of the Oikoumene: the Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean, Turnhout 2007, pp. 17–39. Richards, J., The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages, 476–752, London 1979. Sardella, T., Società, chiesa, e stata nell’età di Teodorico, Messina 1996. Sarris, P., Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian, Cambridge 2006. Saxer, V., “La chiesa di Roma dal V al XI secolo”, in Roma nell’alto medioevo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 48), Spoleto 2001, pp. 493–637. Schimmelpfenig, B., The Papacy, trans. J. Sievert, New York 1992. Sessa, K., The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy: Roman Bishops and the Domestic Sphere, New York 2012. Sotinel, C., “Pontifical Authority and Imperial Power in the Reign of Justinian: Pope Vigilius”, in id., Church and Society in Late Antique Italy and Beyond, Farnham, UK 2010, pp. I.1–25; First published as “Autorité pontificale et pouvoir impérial sous le

450

Sessa

règne de Justinien: le pape Vigile”, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome Antiquité 104 (1992), 439–63. ———, “Le recrutement des évêques en Italie aux IVe et Ve siècles: Pour une enquête prosopographique”, in Vescovi e pastori in epoca teodosiana. XXV Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana Roma, 8–11 maggio 1996, vol. 1, Rome 1997, pp. 193–204. ———, “Le personnel episcopal: Enquête sur la puissance de l’évêque dans la cité”, in É. Rebillard/C. Sotinel (eds.), L’évêque dans la cité du IVe au Ve siècle (Collection de l’École française de Rome 248), Rome 1998, pp. 105–26. ———, “Emperors and Popes in the Sixth Century: The Western View”, in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge 2005, pp. 267–90. ———, “Les évêques italiens dans la société de l’Antiquité tardive: l’émergence d’une nouvelle élite?”, in R. Lizzi (ed.), Le trasformazioni delle elite nel tardoantico, Rome 2006, pp. 377–404. ———, “The Three Chapters and the Transformations of Italy”, in C. Chazelles/ K. Kubitt (eds.), The Crisis of the Oikoumene: the Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean, Turnhout 2007, pp. 82–120. ———, “Vigilius in the Liber Pontificalis: a Memory Lost or Manipulated?”, in id., Church and Society in Late Antique Italy and Beyond, Farnham, UK 2010, pp III.1–21; First published as “Mémoire perdue ou mémoire manipulée: le Liber Pontificalis et la controverse des Trois Chapitres”, in C. Sotniel/M. Sartre, L’usage du passé entre Antiquité tardive et Haut Moyen Age, Rennes 2008, pp. 59–76. ———, Church and Society in Late Antique Italy and Beyond, Farnham, UK 2010. Stein, E., Histoire du Bas-Empire, 2 vols., Paris 1949–59. Teitler, H., Notarii and Exceptores, Amsterdam 1985. Townsend, W., “The so-called Symmachan Forgeries”, Journal of Religion 13 (1933), 165–74. Toubert, P., “ ‘Scrinium’ e ‘Palatium’: la formation de la bureaucratie romanopontificale aux VIII–IX siècles”, in Roma nell’alto medioevo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 48), Spoleto 2001, pp. 57–119. Ullmann, W., The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages, New York 1955. ———, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, New York 1974. Wirbelauer, E., Zwei Päpste in Rom: Konflikt zwischen Laurentius und Symmachus (498–514), Studien und Texte, Munich 1993.

CHAPTER 17

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime Rita Lizzi Testa*

Introduction: Politics and Western Ecclesiastical Development

In a period characterized by instability and rapid change, the complexity of Ostrogothic Italy is reflected in the ambivalence with which our sources describe Theoderic. Late Roman authors represent him both as a man from a tough military tradition, at the head of a polyethnic amalgamation dominated by rival leaders, and as an eastern consul, who had spent his entire youth at the court of Constantinople;1 also as a good and just king at the beginning of his reign, but as tyrannical and cruel in his final years.2 Tyrannos by reputation but imperator in reality, Theoderic was legitimated as king of the Goths in Constantinople.3 Criticized as an inlitteratus, he was still capable of appreciating the beauty of literary form and preferred to use the Daedalian ­rhetoric of Cassiodorus in his official correspondence.4 To these ambivalences we must add his religious policy. Arian in faith, he enriched his residential city Ravenna with splendid sacred buildings for that cult, but was also a powerful patron

* This chapter could not have been published without the attentive revisions of my colleagues and friends Kristina Sessa and Jonathan Arnold. I would like to thank them both for their invaluable assistance. 1  From 459 and 469: Jordanes, Getica 52, ed. Mommsen, p. 128. Cf. Collins, “Western Kingdoms”, pp. 126–7. 2  Excerpta Valesiana, Pars Posterior 85–94, ed. Moreau, pp. 24–7: “iubente non rege, sed tyranno.” Traditional opinion about the change of Theoderic at the end of his reign can be found in Pietri, “Aristocratie”, p. 461, and more recently in Sardella, “Giovanni I, santo”, p. 485; but see contra, Moorhead, “The Last Years of Theoderic”, and Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 212–45. 3  Procopius, Wars 5.1.26–30, ed. Dewing, pp 10–13. 4  Procopius, Wars 5.2.16, ed. Dewing, p. 18; cf. Excerpta Valesiana 61, ed. Moreau, p. 17: “dum inlitteratus esset, tantae sapientiae fuit . . .” and 79, p. 23: “Igitur rex Theodericus erat inlitteratus.” Ennslin, “Rex Theodericus inlitteratus”, pp. 391–6 and Grundmann, “Litteratus illitteratus”.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_018

452

Lizzi Testa

of the Nicene church during the Acacian schism.5 While the personality of Theoderic was marked by contradictions and ambiguities, his religious policy, not unlike other areas of his administration, was characterized by a firm determination to preserve the tradition of the Roman Empire, from which Cassiodorus often declared he drew inspiration. According to a noted social theorist, however, declarations of loyalty to tradition intensify precisely when a community is faced with collapse. Nevertheless, innovations rarely appear in programmatic statements; rather, they are concealed in the interstices, under an ideology of the mos that forms part of a recognized system of customs, making them less jarring to the collective consciousness.6 The network of ecclesiastical dioceses and monasteries, which can be reconstructed with some certainty in Ostrogothic Italy (see the following chapter), is a good example of consistent stability in the face of change. Theoderic’s correspondence with select members of the Nicene clergy (e.g. the bishop of Rome, bishops of Italian towns, presbyters, and members of monastic communities) similarly reveals a strong mixture of tradition and innovation. His letters contain references to imperial traditions, which were part of a complex weave that sought to combine familiar images with the bright threads of a new policy. Because the 4th and 5th centuries did not produce evidence analogous to Cassiodorus’ Variae, the political relations that the Ostrogothic king forged with Nicene bishops might seem to be a new practice. In fact privileges granted to bishops and the church from Constantine onwards through the constitutions now collected in the Theodosian and Justinianic Codes were also the result of political relations. Not unlike his imperial predecessors, therefore, Theoderic secured the growth of a privileged church, the Nicene church, and the development of some monasteries, male and female, almost always dependent or related to that church. He realized this through the protection of ecclesiastical and monastic property, the granting of special tax exemptions, and the recognition of judicial powers to the bishops. There is much discussion among scholars about the nature of the bishop’s authority, and on the hypothetical increase of the bishop’s judicial powers in relation to the diminished authority of government. In point of fact, however, the Ostrogothic king’s judicial authority remained strong. Ancient texts can be misleading in this regard because the act of granting power and privileges to bishops celebrates the sacredness of churchmen. No longer just monks and nuns, who were considered holy by virtue of their 5  On Arianism in the Ostrogothic Kingdom, see Cohen in this volume. 6  Hobsbawn, “Social Function”, p. 3.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 453

asceticism, priests, too, in Ostrogothic Italy received fiscal privileges and judicial powers as holy men by definition, while their virtues naturally made them eligible to pursue justice. Additionally, during the 5th century clerical identity was clearly defined through an emphasis on sexual continence and the delineation of external characteristics (e.g. distinctive clothing, tonsure, and specific ritual access to the sacred orders), which made the clerical ordo recognizable as a class, distinct from the laity. In the ancient world, tax exemptions usually conferred wealth. For this reason, holiness, power, and wealth were often connected during the Ostrogothic period. The combination of these three components was a novelty at the time. The result of a long process, this combination quickly changed in the age of Gregory the Great (late 6th century), when Italy was socially and economically devastated. During the Ostrogothic period, however, as a result of the royal attitude towards granting privilege to the Nicene church, the kingdom’s Nicene bishops were in turn a source of power and a kind of protection for Theoderic and his successors.7

Bishops, Power, and Protection in the Communities of the Ostrogothic Frontier To the venerable Eustorgius, bishop of Milan, King Theoderic . . . The bishop of Aosta has been falsely accused of betraying the homeland . . . We therefore wish to strike his attackers with legitimate punishment: but because they themselves were members of the clergy, we have entrusted each decision to the judgment of Your Holiness, whose responsibility is both to bring honesty to such behaviour, and to exercise ecclesiastical coercion.8

The letter Theoderic wrote to the bishop of Milan, which the metropolitan doubtlessly received with satisfaction, raises the curtain on a sombre atmosphere of suspicion, accusations, and betrayals. The bishop of Aosta had been accused of treason, subjected to investigation by the king, and found innocent. 7  Lizzi Testa, “Rome during the Ostrogoth Kingdom”. 8  Cassiodorus, Variae (hereafter cited as Cass., Var.) 1.9, ed. Fridh, pp. 19–20, lines 8–20: “[. . .] Augustanae civitatis episcopum proditionis patriae falsis criminationibus accusatum [. . .] Volumus enim impugnatores eius legitima poena percellere: sed quoniam et ipsi clericatus nomine fungebantur, ad sanctitatis vestrae iudicium cuncta transmisimus ordinanda, cuius est et probitatem moribus talibus imponere et districtionem ecclesiasticam custodire.”

454

Lizzi Testa

Indeed this accusation had been motivated by the envy and resentment harboured by his clerics: Nothing, in fact, should be recklessly presumed about anyone who holds such a sacred office, in which, if we believe in his religious intention, even by remaining silent he would be exonerated of the crimes. Indeed, toward people with such dignity, even manifest sins are barely credible: anything, then, that is said in envy cannot be considered true.9 Since monarchic times, the crime of proditio patriae meant treachery with the enemy and was perpetrated through a wide range of offences: sedition, rebellion, defection, or other serious military crimes such as desertion or cowardice.10 In Late Antiquity the meaning did not change, but the crime acquired new significance in the period of the establishment of the Romanbarbarian kingdoms.11 Given the chronology of the letter (Mommsen places it between 507 and 511, approximately during the years of Cassiodorus’ quaestorship) and the area of northern Italy mentioned (Aosta), the story of the falsely accused bishop sheds light on similar events involving other bishops in neighbouring regions during that turbulent age. In the years preceding the outbreak of military operations, two prominent individuals had been suspected of conspiring with the Franks and exiled by the Visigothic king Alaric II: Volusianus of Tours (in 495/96) and his successor Verus (in 506).12 At the end of 504 Caesarius, bishop of Visigothic Arles (503–42), whose jurisdiction extended over an area mostly occupied by the Burgundians, was denounced by the notary of his chancellery, Licinianus, for plotting to hand over the city and its territory to the Burgundians.13 The sudden dramatic arrival of the Franks and Burgundians in the southern Gallic territories of Alaric II (defeated and killed at Vouillé, near Poitiers in the late summer of 507) created a situation that was possibly even more difficult for Nicene communities on both sides of the Alps. During the siege of Arles, Caesarius was again accused, this time by an angry

9  Cass., Var. 1.9, ed. Fridh, p. 19, lines 11–15: “[. . .] Nihil enim in tale honore temeraria cogitatione praesumendum est, ubi, si proposito creditur, etiam tacitus ab excessibus excusatur. Manifesta proinde crimina in talibus vix capiunt fidem: quicquid autem ex invidia dicitur, veritas non putatur.” 10  Fuhrmann, “proditio”, coll. 1221–30; Santalucia, Diritto e processo penale, pp. 20 and 156. 11  Lear 1965, infra. 12  Gregory of Tours, Libri decem historiarum 10.31, 7–8, ed. Oldoni, p. 598. 13  Vita S. Caesarii 1.21–22, ed. Bona, pp. 87–9.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 455

group of Jews, and imprisoned at the royal palace.14 The bishop was finally released when an intercepted letter thrown to the besiegers by a Jew revealed plans to betray the city in exchange for the protection of property and the personal safety of members of the local Jewish community.15 One can imagine that, like the Jews of Arles, the clergy of Aosta had accused their bishop of collusion with the Burgundians in order to dissociate themselves from the careless posturing of the prelate, and to prevent the victorious troops of the general Ibba upon return from Provence from dispossessing the church of its possessiones.16 Such episodes are variously described in the letters that Theoderic sent to churches and private individuals during the months of war in Provence. The sum of 1,500 solidi was sent to Severus, bishop of a region through which the Ostrogothic army passed on the way to Gaul, to be distributed to landowners who had suffered damage. The compensation was paid in 508, the same year in which the looting had occurred.17 Not long afterwards Theoderic ordered Gemellus, the vicarius praefectorum in Gaul, to reinstate the lands and possessions of the spectabilis Magnus who, having sided with the Franks during the war, decided to return to Ostrogothic rule.18 Around 509, Ibba was also commissioned to return to the church of Narbonne properties that Alaric II had acknowledged as pertaining to it, and to protect these properties from misappropriation.19 As Narbonne was also fought over by the Visigoths, Burgundians, and the Ostrogoths the appropriation of a Nicene church’s possessions may have been a retaliatory measure against a bishop who was too quick to side (or was so accused) with the Burgundians. In this situation, the clergy sought the patronage of Ibba, the same Gothic (and Arian) general to whom Theoderic had sent the letter. This is confirmed by the commendation for an act of religious piety which, according to the king, would have earned his army the helpful support of the divinity and, as an expression of civilitas, would have added to the distinction he already enjoyed for his military virtue: “Therefore, be extremely

14  Vita S. Caesarii 1.29–30, ed. Bona, pp. 94–6; Klingshirn, Cesarius of Arles, pp. 108–10. 15  Vita S. Caesarii 1.31, ed. Bona, p. 96. 16  For Ibba and the Gallic campaign, see Delaplace, “La ‘Guerre de Provence’ (507–11)”, p. 84 and Arnold in this volume. 17  Cass., Var. 2.8, ed. Fridh, p. 61: “praesenti anno exercitu nostro transeunte”; cf. Sirago, “Gli Ostrogoti in Gallia”, pp. 67–9. 18  Cass., Var. 3.18, ed. Fridh, p. 110, line 8: “ad Romanum repatriavit imperium.” 19  Cass., Var. 4.17, ed. Fridh, p. 154, lines 6–13.

456

Lizzi Testa

attentive against such actions, so that you, who are famous in war, will also be made eminent for compliance with legality.”20 Presenting the protection of church property as an act of civilitas was one of the bright new threads of Ostrogothic policy that appears in the old fabric of Italy. In the few short years between the wars in Sirmium and Provence, the term civilitas was employed with a remarkable range of meanings but in essence the propaganda that hinged on this ideology was intended to enhance Theoderic as the guarantor of the legality that he, alone among the barbarian kings of the West, was able to impose and enforce.21 The church of Narbonne was expected to be an example of civilitas because it had property (possessiones) to protect. These were safeguarded from potential usurpers because they were sufficiently numerous and productive as to place the town church among the great local landowners. The phenomenon, which grew during the 5th century, became particularly evident in Ostrogothic Italy. Among the various innovations in urban Christianity of the time is that which the archaeological data of the peninsula best demonstrates:22 the revenue of churches of the major cities, which served as imperial residences and provincial urban centres of government, such as Milan, Ravenna, Aquileia, and Rome came to match the revenue of wealthy local landowners.23 In many cases, this happened not only because those churches were able to attract larger donations (above all from emperors, officials, members of the court, and various pious people) and thus become wealthier, but also because the urban aristocracy and provincials became proportionally poorer, suffering from military incursions, political upheavals, expropriations, and the general decline of favourable living conditions, which quickly effected the lifestyles of those accustomed to living comfortably. The wealth of certain churches, therefore, came to be on par with the nobility. Ostrogothic power depended upon the support of those churches, just as it depended upon other landowners, who were willingly redeemed (such as the spectabilis Magnus) from a momentary lapse of loyalty to Theoderic’s regime.24 20  Cass., Var. 4.17, ed. Fridh, p. 154, lines 11–13: “[. . .]Esto contra talia omnino sollicitus, ut qui es bello clarus, civilitate quoque reddaris eximius.” 21  On the ideology of civilitas see Delaplace, “La ‘Guerre de Provence’ (507–511)”, pp. 88–9; also Heydemann in this volume. 22  Cantino Wataghin, “La città nell’Occidente tardoantico”, pp. 71–4. 23  Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, pp. 460 and 463–70. 24  As Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, pp. 492–6 recently made clear, “as far as wealth was concerned, there was no such thing as ‘the Church’ with a capital C . . . Most small cities shrunk: some collapsed entirely”.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 457

Economic power was intertwined with political influence, in the sense that the one might increase the other, which in turn ensured greater enrichment. Some episcopal sees such as Arles and Narbonne in Gaul and Milan, Aquileia, and Ravenna in northern Italy, saw their importance grow thanks to the new dynamics of emerging Roman-barbarian kingdoms. In a world where both the players and the games were changing quickly, these bishops assumed a decisive role in consolidating the new balance of power that the Ostrogothic administration aimed to establish. Their deeds stand out in the letters, hagiographical accounts, and legislative texts of the period, in which they often appear as holy bishops.

Powerful Bishops, Holy Bishops: Christianity in Italian Towns

Caesarius’ Life does not explain why Caesarius was called to the court at Ravenna a few years after the end of the war in Provence.25 Nevertheless, the wording of the letter with which Theoderic exculpated the bishop of Aosta from proditio patriae gives the impression that the number of Nicene bishops under investigation was larger than suggested by the case recorded by Cassiodorus in the Variae. To explain Caesarius’ summons to Ravenna, scholars have considered various possible criminal charges: the accusation of betrayal by the Jewish community during the siege of Arles;26 the sale of sacred ecclesiastical furnishings to ransom captives;27 and the excessive use of resources to rebuild the female monastery (intended for the stewardship of his sister Caesaria) whose buildings were destroyed during the siege.28 The latter two activities provoked the clergy who noted the ruthlessness with which the bishop managed ecclesiastical resources. Previously, Pope Simplicius (468–83) had regulated their use, removing Gaudentius, the bishop of L’Aquila (Aufinum) from his seat after he had performed non-canonical ordinations and for three years appropriated all the revenues of his diocese.29 As early as 475, therefore, it was established that ecclesiastical income and the offerings of the faithful were to be allocated equally to the bishop, the clergy, the construction of buildings for worship, and the welfare of the poor and pilgrims. What was known as the quadripartite (fourfold) division of church revenues was also strongly advocated by 25  Vita S. Caesarii 1.36, ed. Bona, p. 102. 26  Delage,“Le séjour de Césaire d’Arles en Italie”, p. 104. 27  Février, “Césaire et la Gaule méridionale au VIe siècle”, pp. 60. 28  Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles, pp. 124. 29  Simplicius, Ep. 1.1, ed. A. Thiel, pp. 175–7.

458

Lizzi Testa

Pope Gelasius (492–6).30 It was the bishops holding the most important sees, however, who were more likely to transgress Rome’s strictures. Ecclesius of Ravenna, for example, defrauded his clerics—sixty of whom formed a delegation that appealed to Pope Felix IV (526–30) for justice—of 3,000 solidi a year in order to fund his building ambitions.31 Some episodes in the Life of S. Caesarius suggest possible accusations. One recounts how Caesarius had striven to bring all prisoners captured by Ibba’s soldiers into the city and to welcome them at the bishop’s palace.32 As most were Burgundians, the kings Gundobad and Sigismund sent three large ships full of grain.33 However, when that aid proved insufficient, the bishop used the treasure that his relative and predecessor Eonius had accumulated, selling the valuable objects of the church, even the sacred vessels.34 Ambrose, bishop of Milan from 374 to 97, had done the same to pay the ransom for prisoners in the aftermath of the imperial defeat at Adrianople.35 There is a difference between the actions of Ambrose and those of Caesarius, however, and this demonstrates the developments that a bishop of the 5th and 6th centuries had to negotiate, and turn to his favour when possible. Ambrose had broken and sold sacred vessels to ransom Roman citizens who were faithful Nicene Christians. Caesarius, by contrast, made no distinction between Nicene prisoners, Arians, and apparently even pagans.36 Such a charitable deed, even discounting the gratitude it would earn from the Burgundian king, was not the disinterested gesture it may seem. Caesarius imposed baptism in exchange for the release of the captivi infideles brought into the city in the autumn of 508, resulting in a considerable increase in the faithful and future clientes of the church in Arles.37 If the Burgundian rulers were grateful, then Theoderic was no less pleased and he immediately recognized the signs of holiness in the bishop:

30  Gelasius, Ep. 15.2, ed. Thiel, p. 380. 31  Agnellus, Liber Pont. 60, ed. C. Nauerth, pp. 268–80; Pietri, “Aristocratie”, pp. 461–65; Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, p. 488. 32  Vita S. Caesarii 1.32, ed. Bona, p. 98. 33  Vita S. Caesarii 2.9, ed. Bona, p. 144. 34  Vita S. Caesarii 1.32, ed. Bona, p. 98. 35  Ambrose, De officiis 2.70 and 136, PL 16, col. 140. McLynn, Ambrose, pp. 55–6 seems to question the historical setting of the episode. 36  Vita S. Caesarii 1.32–33, ed. Bona, pp. 98–100. Klingshirn, “Charity and Power” identified the captivi with the Franks who were still pagan. 37  From the text it would seem that the bishop only rescued those prisoners who agreed to be baptized. See De Giorgio, “Cesario di Arles e la redemptio dei captivi infedele”.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 459

God has no mercy for those who have made a man of such innocence and holiness endure such a long journey . . . I see, he said, a face of an angel, I see a man worthy of the Apostles: I judge it a crime to think anything bad about such a venerable man.38 While Caesarius’ Life is a hagiographic account,39 the words attributed to Theoderic are not so different from those with which the Gothic king addressed Eustorgius in praise of the bishop of Aosta, who was found innocent by judicial inquiry. The same confidence in the sanctity of sacred office applies to the man: a holiness before which even manifest evidence is scarcely credible (manifesta proinde crimina in talibus vix capiunt fidem).40 This is not in fact an isolated situation. The letters of Theoderic to the bishops of Italy are studded with references to the sanctity of the Christian ministerial office. Addressing Ianuarius, bishop of Salona, who did not want to pay sixty large jars of oil to a landowner in the area, the king stated that “we order that all practice and respect the law, but to the greatest degree are required to do so . . . those who are elevated by divine office, so as to find themselves close to heavenly grace, so long as they are kept away from greed”.41 Similarly, writing to the bishop Aurigenes, whose men had invaded the property and kidnapped the wife of a layman named Julian, Theoderic affirmed: “We have confidence that, while every crime is unbearable, the most abhorrent for you is that which attacks the affection of a legitimate marriage. In that spirit, in fact, does a religious man learn that which causes hatred, even among common people?”42 And years later, probably in December 533, the Prefect Cassiodorus echoed this theme when he wrote that “the fasting of priests has removed the risk of 38  Vita S. Caesarii 1.36, ed. Bona, p. 104: “Non parcat illis Deus, qui huius innocentiae virum atque sanctitatis frustra fecerunt itinere tam longo vexari . . . . Video—inquit—angelicum vultum, video apostolicum virum: nefas arbitror mali quippiam de tam venerando viro censere.” 39  And not alone in its portrayal of Theoderic; cf. Ennodius, Vita Epifani 109–10, 116, 136–41, and 184–9, ed. Vogel, pp. 97–9, 101–2, 107–8, where the king not only recognizes the bishop’s holiness but is intimately involved in his ransoming of captives. 40  Supra, n. 7. 41  Cass., Var. 3.7, ed. Fridh, p. 103, lines 3–6: “Omnes quidam iustitiam colere et observare praecipimus, sed eos maxime qui divinis honoribus eriguntur, ut supernae gratiae fiant proximi, dum a terrena fuerint cupiditate longique.” 42  Cass., Var. 3.14, ed. Fridh, p. 108, lines 3–6: “Quamvis iudicio vestro credamus omnia facinora displicere, maxime a vobis confidimus exsecrandum quod matrimonii genialis impugnat affectum. Quibus enim animis a continentibus accipitur, quod etiam laicorum detestatione damnatur?”

460

Lizzi Testa

famine; worthy tears have warded off foul melancholy and holy men have ensured that the weight that afflicted us will not last long”.43

Defining Clerical Authority

The priests who populate the pages of the Variae and lived in Ostrogothic Italy were holy men, the undisputed heirs to the democratization of Christian sanctity. Members of a sacral class, holy men obtained superhuman intercessions to aid those who supported them with gifts and increased the wealth of churches. This was by virtue of sacral rites: they touched sacred vessels containing divine substance (the Eucharist, the privileged vehicle of intercession) thereby making them, as men, sacred. But, as Augustine had taught, the quality of the officiant and origin of the offering to God were not unknown. In order to touch those sacred vessels, the clergy had to be different from the common man: Quibus enim animis a continentibus accipitur, quod etiam laicorum detestatione damnatur?44 They had to be continentes. That Cassiodorus separated continentes and laici in a binary division of society is evidence that in Theoderic’s time the imposition of clerical celibacy was not complete. The continence of the Catholic clergy continued to rest on the honoured institution of post-matrimonial celibacy, as Pope Siricius (384–99) established. By 385, he had created order from among the many, and until then disparate, matrimonial requirements. Correlating sexual behaviour with an ecclesiastical career, he determined that among married men only those who had (or previously had) one wife and married as a virgin could become a priest, and those who while already part of the clergy married a second time, even with a widow, would be removed from the order without the opportunity of returning to the clergy.45 While already in progress, the distinction between continentes and laici became more pronounced during the 5th century, when the need to create the sacerdotal ordo and render it recognizable in society became a priority. At the time it was designated with a specific ritual, characterized by distinctive clothing, the tonsure, and sexual behaviour different from that of ordinary

43  Cass., Var. 9.2, ed. Fridh, pp. 426–7, lines 7–10: “Ecclesiasticis siquidem ieiuniis famis est exclusa popularis: decoris lacrimis tristitia foeda discessit et per sanctos viros acceleratum est, ne traheret diutius quod gravabat.” 44  Augustine, De Trinitate 4.14.19, eds. Trapé, Sciacca, and Beschin, p. 209. 45  Siricius, Ep. 1, PL 13, coll. 1142–5.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime

461

men.46 In this sense, independent of influence from monastic orders, it was the need of the laity (and their desire that gifts to churches would free them of their sins) that necessitated the constitution of the clergy as a separate and different sacral class.47 In terms of excellence measured in degrees of chastity, however, the problem of clerical continence could not but mature in the direction of celibacy tout court, especially since it became the only real distinction between the secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies, which by now were extensively involved in political affairs and secular administrative duties. Although the imposition of clerical celibacy became canonical only in the Decree of Gratian, previously Gregory the Great (590–604) had drawn upon the distinction of the tria genera hominum that Origen and Augustine had based on the models of Noah, Daniel, and Job. Gregory conceived of a society no longer divided into continentes and laici, but rather into pastores, continentes, and coniugati.48 The latter were the laity, qualified for the vocation of marriage, while the sacerdotes were distinguished from continentes (potentially married only once) by being fully celibate. But in the age of Theoderic this process was still incomplete.

The Ostrogothic Regime and Ecclesiastical Networks

Tangible factors contributed to the sanctity of the clerical group. Sanctity grew and developed through the concrete power that certain bishops were able to accumulate in the troubled early decades of the 6th century. The clergy were able to move unscathed through an international arena populated by individuals from different backgrounds, divided more than united by language, religion, and political ambitions. It is no coincidence that the most notable hagiographic accounts of the day celebrated bishops who were capable of mediating the active life and the contemplative life, according to the best recommendations of Ambrose and the Cappadocian Fathers.49 Such roles were acquired through the patronage of the faithful of their city and the sanctity obtained by means of a distinctive contemplative life. A number of these 46  On the combination of these elements see Lizzi Testa, “Tributa sunt purpurae, non lacernae”. 47  Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, pp. 517–22. 48  Gregory, Moralia 1.14, eds. Gillet/de Gaudemaris, pp. 162–4; In Ezechielem 1, hom. 8. 10, ed. Morel, pp. 289–91 and In Ezechielem 2, hom. 4. 5 and hom. 7. 3, ed. Morel, pp. 192–4 and 328–30. See also Pizzolato, “Laicità e laici”, pp. 76–80. 49  Lizzi Testa, “The Late Antique Bishop”, pp. 533–6.

462

Lizzi Testa

bishops in fact managed to sustain a certain equilibrium on both sides of the Alps, which Theoderic had hoped to achieve through a sophisticated network of marriage alliances, but which failed miserably at Vouillé.50 The new equilibrium was realized by means of highly intense diplomatic activity, effectively managed for the most part by deacons. While mention is hardly ever made of them in sources, these lower figures were very often the real agents of lateral mediation between the various churches and vertical mediation between the centre and the periphery. In the case of Caesarius’ trial, it is not difficult to believe that reconciliation with Theoderic was achieved thanks to Ennodius, then a deacon but later a bishop,51 whose activities in those years are especially well evidenced by his correspondence, including an epistle directed to Caesarius himself shortly after his exoneration.52 Nor is it unlikely that Ennodius likewise had intervened in support of the bishop of Aosta, as he was then deacon at the church in Milan governed by Eustorgius, to whom Theoderic’s letter was sent. It may be assumed that the Ostrogothic king, assisted by his quaestor Cassiodorus, adopted the same criteria used by Roman emperors (as is now clear from the study of recipients of constitutions in the Theodosian Code) in addressing their decisions to those who had actually solicited them. The intervention of Ennodius and Theoderic, which absolved the bishop of Aosta from proditio patriae, is all the more credible as the bishop can be identified with the episcopus ecclesiae Augustinae (var. Augustanae) named Iucundus (var. Iocundus). This Iocundus signed the synod of 23 October 502 at the end of the habita Romae Palmaris session of the Roman council, which had been convened by an edict of Theoderic to adjudicate the Laurentian schism (498–506/7).53 He can also be identified in connection with the council that met under the chairmanship of Bishop Symmachus in basilica Petri on 6 November 502.54

50  Perhaps the best example is bishop Epiphanius of Pavia who had served earlier as emperor Nepos’ envoy to the Visigothic king Euric and who later helped to broker Theoderic’s failed marriage alliance with the Burgundian king Gundobad. See Ennodius, Vita Epifani 82–91 and 136–76, pp. 94–5 and 101–6. 51  Ennodius was a member of the Milanese clergy from 495; after 502 he became a deacon serving the bishop Laurentius until he was elected bishop in Pavia ca. 513. See “Magnus Felix Ennodius”, in Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire (cited as PCBE hereafter) II, pp. 621–2. 52  Ennodius, no. 169 (Ep. 9.33), p. 321, ll. 3 and 24. 53  For the Laurentian Schism see Sessa’s contribution to this volume. 54  In both the first and the second signature lists from the council Iucundus appears next to Tigridius of Turin respectively at the fifty-fifth place (with Tigridius at fifty-sixth); and

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 463

The bishop of Aosta, therefore, was a pro-Symmachan bishop, just as his metropolitan Eustorgius of Milan and other bishops of north-west Italy (Tigridius of Turin, Emilianus of Vercelli, Maximus of Pavia, Cassian and then Bassus of Modena, Eustathius of Cremona, Laurentius of Bergamo, and Servusdei of Verona). He opposed Laurentius’ supporters, namely Marcellianus of Aquileia, who had urged Eustorgius’ predecessor to “renounce a nefarious error” to no effect.55 The accusation of proditio directed at the bishop of Aosta, therefore, may have been a strategy of the clergy in the wake of the Gallic military crisis to replace their prelate with a follower of Laurentius at a time when the papal schism had not yet been fully decided in favour of Symmachus.56 The action of the clergy evidently succeeded in obstructing, if not necessarily replacing, the accused bishop, as Theoderic ordered Eustorgius to reinstate him with all rights.57 The letter of Theoderic to Eustorgius implicitly confirms that modifications to the metropolitan structure of the West, which began during the 5th century, had already obtained some semblance of stability in northern Italy.58 The text also proves that Milan’s metropolitan privileges were confirmed in years of military conflict, when the geographic scope of the metropolis may have been the subject of discussion and redefinition. In fact this was what happened in Gaul, where the long-standing dispute between the bishop of Vienne (the administrative capital of Viennoise and the metropolitan see) and the bishop of Arles (the new seat of the Gallic prefecture) was resolved by the Roman bishop Symmachus in favour of Caesarius. Leaving from Ravenna after his summons, Caesarius unsurprisingly set off for Rome, where he obtained confirmation of metropolitan rights and the symbols of power (such as the right to wear the pallium). These acts made him the privileged intermediary with the pope and the representative of Rome in Gaul and Spain, once again restored in eighth place (with Tigridius in ninth): Acta Syn. Rom. 2, 6, 25 and 3, 19, ed. Mommsen, pp. 435 and 452. 55  Ennodius, no. 117 (Ep. 4.1), p. 129, lines 9–12. Eustorgius’ predecessor was Laurentius of Milan. 56  The onset of the military crisis in southern Gaul between 507 and 508 may have slowed communications between Rome and Aosta (Augusta Praetoria). 57  Cass., Var. 1.9, ed. Fridh, p. 19, lines 10–11: “qui a vobis honori pristino restitutus ius habeat episcopatus omne quod habuit.” 58  On the metropolitan organization of the church see Hall, “Organization of the Church”, pp. 731. This was implemented very slowly in the West: Bleckmann, “Arelate metropolis”. On the situation in northern Italy see Humphries, Communities of the Blessed, pp. 137–86; Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia tardo antica cristiana, and Lizzi Testa’s other contribution in this volume.

464

Lizzi Testa

to the empire.59 In turn Eustorgius, who had succeeded bishop Laurentius around 508 (not 511, as others would have it),60 also received recognition of his metropolitan prerogatives from Theoderic, who confirmed his authority to coerce the clergy of Aosta with respect to reinstating their bishop. Far from being a matter of prestige, these prerogatives for the Milanese see allowed it to control the election of provincial bishops and the presidency of local councils. Ultimately, urban Christianity in the early decades of the 6th century had become a privileged vehicle of political relations in some of the richest and most powerful centres, due to the ability of bishops to give and obtain support from newly created secular rulers in the western Roman Empire. The war in Provence, not unlike the schism between Symmachus and Laurentius, had imposed a reorganization of existing balances. The urban Christianity of Ostrogothic Italy developed in the background of the new consolidation caused by Theoderic’s victory and the resolution of the schism in favour of Symmachus.61 Among the elements that favoured Christianity as a new civic religion in the city, and which gave it the necessary impetus to conquer the countryside, were the privileges granted to the ecclesiastical possessiones by the Ostrogothic king and the limits he imposed on the jurisdiction of bishops.

From City to Countryside: The Protection of Ecclesiastical Wealth

Laurentius, Eustorgius’ predecessor in the see of Milan, had promised Pope Symmachus not only the conciliar votes of the bishops of his cities, but also such a large sum of money (400 solidi) to spend on the election campaign that many years later the deacon Ennodius was still asking, by a variety of discreet means, for its return.62 Theoderic did not forget how the bishop of Rome had prevailed with the support of Milan, one of the sees most exposed to Burgundian influence. During his episcopacy, Eustorgius was able to maintain the Milanese church with the high level of urbanity that Christians now expected of a former imperial residence. Eustorgius continued construction activity already begun by Laurentius,63 restoring (among others) the baptistery 59  Delage, Vie de Cesaire d’Arles, p. 76. 60  PCBE I, “Eustorgius 2”, pp. 719–20 and PCBE II, “Laurentius 15”, pp. 1239–42. 61  See Sessa’s chapter in this volume. 62  The last of the three letters relating to that loan was sent not later then 508 by Ennodius to Luminosus (PLRE 2, “Luminosus”, pp. 692–3 e PCBE II, “Luminosus 1”, pp. 1336–7), who moved from Milan to Rome in about 506: Ennodius, no. 283 (Ep. 6.16), p. 223. 63  Ennodius, no. 1.19 (Dictio 1.19), p. 3, lines 24–35 and no. 97 (Carmen 2. 9), pp. 120–1.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 465

of St Stephen and enriching it with a fountain equipped with a sophisticated plumbing system.64 As the great senator Q. Aurelius Symmachus had once requested the defence of his provincial possessions from governors on whose amicitia he could count, so, too, the bishop of Milan requested and received from Theoderic protection for the properties that the Milanese church possessed in disparate regions, making them more difficult to control.65 Thus Count Adila, on the orders of Theoderic, supported the lands and men that Eustorgius’ church possessed in inland Sicily, ensuring that they were not subject to excessive burdens (gravamen aliquod) and were protected from enemy incursions.66 This is the oldest record of the properties of the Milanese church in Sicily, accrued through the aggregation of portions of imperial property, alongside modest contributions from the faithful (who in troubled times preferred to surrender their property to the church, in exchange for either lifelong tenancy or a lease contract), as well as more extensive private assets, given as a legacy or as gifts by laymen or bishops.67 It was Ambrose in fact who bequeathed to his church the first Sicilian possessions and was perhaps imitated by Pope Vigilius (537–55) and Pope Gregory.68 A variety of forms of abuse and oppression threatened the revenues of such ecclesiastical possessions, such as misappropriation or embezzlement, not only by possessores or important lay tenants but also by more powerful churches, including the Roman church.69 An edict of Cassiodorus brings to light another type of abuse that had become increasingly frequent in Ostrogothic Italy and which accentuated a more general crisis: the abuse of possessores, including by churches, through the imposition of illegal taxes on the authority (real or perceived) of a higher source of power. In the province of Lucania et

64  Ennodius, no. 379 (Carmen 2.149), p. 271. 65  Symmachus, Ep. 9.6; cf. Roda, Commento storico, pp. 103 (commentary); 332 (text); and 374 (translation). 66  Cass., Var. 2.29, ed. Fridh, p. 78, lines 2–12. The incursions alluded to here must be Vandal raids. Even after the passage of the island to the Ostrogoths, the Vandals continued to govern some strategic places. Lilybaeum, given to the Vandal king when he married Theoderic’s sister, was a boundary constantly breeched by both Vandals and Goths. See Clemente, “La Sicilia nell’età imperiale”, p. 476. 67  Cracco Ruggini, “La Sicilia fra Roma e Bisanzio”, p. 13. 68  Cracco Ruggini, “La Sicilia e la fine del mondo antico”, p. 516, n. 68. 69  For a late 6th-century example of Roman abuse of Milanese ecclesiastical property, see Gregory, Ep. 1. 80 (August 591), ed. Norberg, pp. 87–8.

466

Lizzi Testa

Bruttii, a southern region that roughly corresponds with Calabria today,70 the canonicarii (employed as collectors) had exacted a part of the munera that the sacrosanctae Ecclesiae of the province would have to pay (unless otherwise exempted).71 They did this for their own profit, on behalf of accounting officers who maintained the budget estimates of tax revenues (numerarii). The prefect ordered that “he who is further stained with this fraud will be dismissed from the militia and lose access to his possessions”.72 Cassiodorus refrained from imposing the death penalty prescribed by law for abuses of this kind, but prescribed the loss of office and the total confiscation of the assets of guilty parties, giving the offence the connotation of sacrilegium.73 Since tax exemption for churches was an expression of pietas, as an offering to God made possible by the humility of the sovereign and through divine impulse (impulsu divinitatis), tax fraud at the expense of the churches was to be treated as a direct insult to God (sacrilegium).74 It is not clear from the text which churches were affected by this kind of fraud. Most likely they would have been small churches, grouped together for fiscal purposes to pay the capitatio, so as to collectively form a taxable area closer to the iugum (100 iugeri). The region was once believed to have had a high density of churches built in major cities (the six municipiae and the three coloniae of Pliny the Elder’s list) from as early as the 4th century. In reality the region only saw a real growth of ecclesiastical seats in the 5th century and above all in rural areas, as in neighbouring Apulia. The edict of Cassiodorus suggests that over time even small rural churches were granted tax exemptions, which were more essential to their survival than territorial growth. With regard to churches in southern Italy, granting exemptions was not only an expression of royal pietas. The speed of repressive measures put in place 70  Paoletti, “Occupazione romana e storia delle città”, p. 469; Buonocore, Regio III. Regium Iulium, Locri, Taurianum, Trapeia, pp. XIII–XIV. 71  Many 4th- and early 5th-century constitutions explicitly forbade the use of palatine canonicarii in the process of collection, since they were tax inspectors responsible for monitoring the fiscal work of the provincial governor and his office. (Delmaire, Largesses sacrées et res privata, p. 162 lists at least nine, dating from 385 to 458). However, from the second half of the 5th century (in both parts of the empire) only the canonicarii (in East trakteutaì or tractatores) were directly responsible for the collection of fees and taxes in the provinces, under the authority of both financial comites and the praetorian prefect (Seeck, “Canonicarius (compulsor)”, pp. 1489. 72  Cass., Var. 12.13, pp. 478, lines 20–4. 73  Gnoli “Rem privatam de sacro surripere”, and Gnoli, Ricerche sul crimen peculatus, p. 105; cf. Cass., Var. 9.16, ed. Fridh, lines 5–7. 74  Cass., Var. 12.13, ed. Fridh, pp. 477–8, lines 4–6 and 30–9.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 467

against fraudulent canonicarii and numerarii helps to illustrate the vital relationship between the government in Ravenna and the owners of these southern Italian estates. Above all, when the edict was issued—either on the eve of Belisarius’ landing in Catania (June 535) or during the subsequent arrival of the eastern Roman army in Calabria in mid 536 —reliance upon churches and southern domini seemed decisive to the Ostrogothic king. They had reorganized the urban and rural structure of these areas and were the owners of massae, with many clients who could be conscripted as soldiers. Nevertheless, it is known that Cassiodorus’ speed in treating the situation was not enough to prevent ruin—the future of Ostrogothic Italy was decided in the south by the lay and ecclesiastical domini of the region who no longer felt sufficiently protected by the Ostrogothic regime.

Granting of Privileges

Nevertheless, Theoderic had ruled the peninsula with good results for many years, maintaining a high level of loyalty to his government among the propertied classes. He succeeded, furthermore, in pursuing a policy of ‘measured privileges’ for the churches that had been typical of Roman emperors. This is confirmed in the letter to the comes Adila, in which the king assured protection for the lands of the church of Milan located in Sicily. The tuitio, which requested the spectabilis comes (tuitionem studeas . . . praestare), was an institution that pertained to every form of abuse of power.75 Cassiodorus framed the content of the letter between an excess of obligations (gravamen), from which the king could free his subjects by ensuring them an otiosa tranquillitas (peaceful tranquility), and the aggressive action of foreign nationes that the comes had to fight. Its limits were defined by the terms aequabilia (equitable privileges) and the expression salva civilitate.76 The former referred to legal privileges, which Theoderic guaranteed for those exempt by tradition such as the churches, while the latter regarded the respect for general laws to which everyone, including landowners and churchmen, were held responsible.77 Essentially, urban Christianity continued to receive 75  Cass., Var. 2.29, ed. Fridh, p. 78, line 10. 76  Cass., Var. 2.29, ed. Fridh, p. 78, lines 4–6: “tamen specialiter ecclesias ab omni iniuria reddi cupimus alienas, quibus dum aequabilia praestantur, misericordia divinitatis acquiritur.” 77  In the formula tuitionis (Cass., Var. 7.39, ed. Fridh, p. 289) salva civilitate is synonymous with salvis legibus.

468

Lizzi Testa

protection and rural Christianity developed along the same model, as 6th-century Gothic Arian rulers believed that granting privileges to the Nicene churches would obtain, in addition to their terrestrial support, God’s mercy. As Roman emperors had never (except in very rare cases) gone too far in their policy of privileges to bishops, clergy, and churches, so, too, Ostrogothic kings took great care in dealing with requests for exemptions.78 Justinian appreciated this attitude, as evidenced by a letter to the emperor from King Theodahad in 535. The latter, in the face of complaints from God’s servants, did not immediately grant the requested tax exemption, but sent an inspector to the monastery.79 The countryside in Ostrogothic Italy was also populated by female estate managers (dominae), in this case not lay owners but famulae Dei (God’s servants) who were treated as dominae in fiscal matters because the monastery was maintained through revenues of the land they had been given. It must be assumed that even the properties of viri Dei and those of male monasteries in Ostrogothic Italy were governed by those relations of ‘convenient taxation’ that Theodahad wanted to preserve as evidence of the ability of the Ostrogothic king to ensure a society functioning on a rational and civil basis. In fact the Christianity of Ostrogothic Italy remained a favoured Christianity, but legal limits to the enrichment of the churches were the same as those formerly established in imperial legislation. This continuity is demonstrated by the harsh response of Theoderic to a bishop, who assumed he would enjoy the unlimited benevolence of the king: “the landowner will be satisfied with a reduced rate of tax; tribute belongs to the purple, not to prelates wearing rich robes”.80 The Thesaurus linguae Latinae suggests an explanation of the phrase attributing metonymic value to the two terms: as purpura indicates the Roman emperor who wore robes with a purple hem, thus the lacerna as a common garment could be a reference to ordinary citizens. The expression could essentially be translated as “tribute belongs to the king, not to private citizens”.81 Yet while the metonymy expressed by purpura appears obvious, less clear is the meaning implicit in lacerna, which does not seem to have been a common enough item of clothing in Ostrogothic Italy so as to identify it

78  Constantine himself recalibrated exemptions to churches after 329. See Lizzi Testa,“The Bishop, Vir Venerabilis”, pp. 132–6. On the behaviour of Roman emperors toward economic issues see Vera, “Una carità razionale”, pp. 187–90. 79  Cass., Var. 10.26, ed. Fridh, pp. 407–8, lines 7–18. Translation by Barnish, The Variae of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, p. 141. 80  Cass., Var. 1.26, ed. Fridh, p. 34, lines 18–20. 81  TLL, s. v. lacerna, cc. 823–4.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 469

immediately with ordinary taxpayers.82 In fact the lacerna was a knee-length light cloak, which seems to have been a favourite clothing item for a certain type of cleric at the end of the 4th century.83 Moreover, Caesarius of Arles routinely directed the women in the female monastery he had established to weave him prestigious coats84 in order to have a byrrus85 and other vestimenta meliora.86 Further testimony also demonstrates that the custom of bishops to use byrri and lacernae as prestigious garments (more ornamental than functional and therefore the target of more fastidious Christians) became firmly established during the 6th century.87 Since the letter sent to the praetorian prefect Faustus rejected the exemption to a bishop because his request was deemed excessive, Theoderic did not identify all ordinary taxpayers with the lacerna. In the final part of the text the reference was evidently to those prelates of the richest and most important sees who prided themselves (and whose position ensured their particular apparel) on being able to make excessively presumptuous requests to the king. The preamble of the letter was thus addressed: “Those who, with measured requests, won the favour of our generosity, should not transcend, with excessively presumption, the terms of our concessions.”88 The identity of the bishop to whom the exemption was denied is unclear, but the text reveals that he was a bishop of an important see who, thanks to the patronage of Cassiodorus’s father, Cassiodorus the elder, had already obtained exemption for his ecclesiastical property from extraordinary charges (superindicticiorum onera titulorum).89 The mechanisms used to enrich the churches, tied to an effective patronage that guaranteed exemptions, can be read between the lines of the letter. Indeed other lands were recently added to the 82  Kolb, Römische Mäntel, pp. 69–167. 83  Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi 1.21, PL 20, col. 197B: “Ceterum, cum neque opere neque virtute conspicuus sit, si quis clericus fuerit effectus . . . uestem respuit grossiorem, indumentum molle desiderat, atque haec caris viduis ac familiaribus mandat tributa virginibus, illa ut byrrum rigentem, haec ut fluentem texat lacernam.” 84  Caesarius of Arles, Testamentum 42, eds. de Vogüé and Courreau, p. 394. 85  Vita S. Caesarii 2.12, ed. Bona, p. 148: “Tunc ergo, ut credidi Deo mihi peccatori inspirante, birrum ipsius domni mei adprehendi, et vulneri meo imposui.” 86  Caesarius of Arles, Testamentum 15, eds. de Vogüé and Courreau, p. 384. 87   Fatti, “Nei panni del vescovo”, pp. 195–205; Lizzi Testa, “ ‘Tributa sunt purpurae’ ”, pp. 380–93. 88  Cass., Var. 1.26. 89  Even the kind of tax exemptions that Unscila requested from the king is Mommsen’s conjecture, from the lessons indictitiorum vel supradictorum of K and superindictorum of DXEA. Hodgkin, Letters of Cassiodorus, p. 159, preferred onera indictorum titulorum.

470

Lizzi Testa

patrimony of what was Unscila’s church, and for those the bishop asked for the customary exemptions.90 As the reply was addressed to the praetorian prefect Faustus Niger who according to the Liber Pontificalis had been a great supporter of Pope Symmachus, it can be assumed that Unscila could then rely on the patronage of that powerful aristocrat by virtue of their shared pro-Symmachan sympathies.91 While this new patron was no less powerful than Cassiodorus’ father, the bishop received a negative answer because, for Theoderic, tax relief could not transcend the customary limits.92 In Ostrogothic Italy bishops, clerics, and churches did not become rich by obtaining greater privileges from a weak king who needed their support. If it appears so, it is simply because other (lay) domini had become poorer in the meantime.

The Jurisdictional Privileges of the Bishops and their Limits

Nor may it be said that the powers of the bishops as judges of the ecclesiastical courts were enhanced in Ostrogothic Italy. A sentence from a letter of Pope Gelasius (Si crimine respersi erant aliquo, ecclesiastica debuit examinatione cognosci . . . )93 has usually been interpreted as if the Roman bishop held that “secular authorities could not only not decide on the ordination or deposition of a bishop, but furthermore were incompetent to judge a bishop accused of a crime”.94 Taken in the context of the letter in which it belongs, however, another meaning is revealed. The letter was a serious rebuke against eastern bishops, who remained unmoved in the face of the oppression of Chalcedonians by Acacian schismatics. Gelasius, therefore, claimed the authority of papal judgement not on bishops subject to actual criminal charges, but on those who had made such doctrinal choices that other bishops (who were hostile to the bishop of Rome) judged heretical. At the time certain heresies had been classified in the category of crimina and were thus dealt with by imperial legislation;

90  Cass., Var. 1.26, ed. Fridh, p. 34, lines 7–18. 91  Liber Pontificalis 53, ed. Duchesne, p. 260, line 79 and p. 261, line 6–7: “Solus autem Faustus excons. pro ecclesia pugnabat.” PLRE II, s. v. “Fl. Anicius Probus Faustus iunior Niger” 9, pp. 454–56. It is likely that the name engraved on at least one of the loca of the Flavian Amphitheatre belongs to him. In this case, his full name was Anicius Acilius Probus Faustus. See Orlandi, Epigrafia anfiteatrale, pp. 476–8, n. 62. 92  Cass., Var. 1.26, ed. Fridh, p. 34, lines 17–21. 93  Gelasius, Ep. 27.8–9, ed. Thiel, pp. 430–1. 94  Banfi, Habent illi iudices suos, p. 277.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime

471

but they still concerned the doctrinal sphere, and remained judicial proceedings de fide. In this sense, Gelasius was correct in reiterating that the right of the bishop (in particular, the bishop of Rome) to judge such cases had been recognized by imperial laws.95 The competences of the ecclesiastical and imperial courts in the judgement and punishment of criminal behaviour by the clergy were determined over the course of two centuries, and not without uncertainties and confusion.96 The same picture from the Theodosian Code confirms that when it was enacted in 438 juridical thought was still undeveloped and when faced with the demands of the church (reinforced by everyday practice, as the interventions in the letters of Ambrose and Augustine show) left room for various and often contradictory interpretations. The five constitutions on this subject (four included under the title de episcopis and one under de religio) recognized the existence of a privileged forum, but its limits were not well defined, reflecting the uncertainty in which the issue remained.97 A novella of Valentinian III in 452 clarified the question, establishing that no jurisdictional power could be conceded to bishops for criminal matters.98 A mutilated document issued by Majorian has lent itself to conflicting interpretations, but his legislation was largely dismantled by Basil and Ricimer immediately after his death.99 The content of the Novella 35 of 452, however, was not modified and Gelasius made no attempt to disobey it under Theoderic. This is demonstrated precisely by those epistles of Gelasius which pertain to the dossier of Eucaristus and are often cited as examples of the papal claim to have jurisdiction in criminal matters.100 Eucaristus was a Christian, perhaps a deacon, in a position that allowed him to squander the assets of the church to which he belonged.101 Evidently to avoid being forced to make repayment and to escape from a just condemnation, he had attempted to obtain the bishopric 95  Gelasius, Ep. 27.8–9, ed. Thiel, pp. 430–1: “praecipue cum etiam ipsae leges publicae ecclesiasticis regulis obsequentes, tales personas non nisi ab episcopis sanxerint iudicari.” 96  Gaudemet, “La première mesure législative de Valentinien III”, pp. 130–5. 97  For the legislation see Gaudemet, L’Eglise dans l’empire romain, p. 243 and Cuena Boy, La episcopalis audientia, p. 149. 98  Nov. Val. 35 (April 15, 452), in particular: “Quod his religionis et sacerdotii veneratione permittimus. Nam notum est, procurationem in criminalibus negotiis non posse concedi.” See Crifò, “A proposito di episcopalis audientia”, p. 407 and Giglio, Patrocinio e diritto privato, pp. 158–9. 99  Nov. Mai 11 (March 28, 460). 100  Banfi, Habent illi iudices suos, p. 327, following Vismara, Episcopalis Audientia, p. 125, and Mochi Onory, Vescovi e città, p. 183, n. 131. 101  Gelasius, Ep. Fragm. 23, ed. Thiel, p. 497.

472

Lizzi Testa

of Volterra. But the means used were unlawful and for this he was accused. He had entrusted a large sum of gold to the defensor ecclesiae Faustus, in order for him to pay for the accommodation of curiales of Volterra in Rome. They were supposed to support his candidacy, thus silencing the rumours that stained his reputation, as it was said that the aspiring bishop was a parricide and (by his own admission) a counterfeiter.102 When the operation proved unsuccessful, Eucaristus demanded reimbursement for the sum, accusing Faustus of having taken possession of the money. However, Faustus was unable to go to Rome while Eucaristus was there, and so took his turn as accuser before the Roman bishop, raising the issue of those crimes that he earlier had defended Eucaristus from during the election. Pope Gelasius dealt with the controversy—not the crimes of Eucaristus, but rather the sum contested between Eucaristus and Faustus. Having proved that Faustus had already returned the sum that had been entrusted to him, Gelasius condemned Eucaristus, stripping him of his prerogatives as administrator of the assets.103 Gelasius did not arrogate authority in issuing judgements in criminal cases; this remained the responsibility of secular courts. It is known that the comes Teia had attempted to transfer Eucaristus’ case from the papal judgement to a provincial synod.104 The pope then threatened to refer the suit to Theoderic (ne nos compellas . . . ad domnum filium meum regem haec omnia missa relatione referre . . . ), not because he was certain that the Gothic king was inclined to extend papal jurisdiction to criminal cases, but because he suspected that Teia was acting in collusion with Eucaristus and was sure he himself would have the support of Theoderic in obtaining justice.105 It was also the king and the secular courts that tried secular and religious crimes in Ostrogothic Italy. In this sense, the provision given by Theoderic to the bishop Eustorgius now becomes clear.106 It has been assumed that Theoderic had entrusted Eustorgius with jurisdiction over the case, thus recognizing the bishop of Milan with an exclusive authority over members of the clergy, even in criminal cases.107 Rather, just as Gelasius, Theoderic preferred to be inspired 102  Gelasius, Ep. Coll. Brit. 45, ed. Löwenfeld, p. 22, lines 11–12. 103  Gelasius, Ep. Fragm. 23, ed. Thiel, pp. 496–7. 104  Gelasius, Ep. Coll. Brit. 2, ed. Mommsen (MGH AA 12), p. 389, lines 22–5: “quia de nostro iudicio causa deberet auferri, et ad episcopos intra provinciam positos pro Eucharisti et sociorum voluntate transferri.” 105  Vismara, Episcopalis Audientia, pp. 125–6, n. 3. 106  Cass., Var. 1.9, ed. Fridh, p. 20, lines 16–20: cf. supra, n. 6. 107  Biondi, Il diritto romano cristiano, p. 382.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 473

by Roman law, in particular Novella 35 of 452, which was the last existing provision on the subject. The king, therefore, discussed and resolved the criminal case of the bishop of Aosta and sent a letter to the metropolitan bishop to ensure that he applied what had been decided. The term districtio, generally used in the sense of ‘severity’ and ‘rigour’,108 and which in the Breviarium of Alaric II also acquired the meaning of jurisdiction,109 has the explicit meaning of coercion to be applied by the metropolitan to clerics under his control in its use at the end of the letter to Eustorgius. In this, Theoderic closely adhered to the imperial legislative tradition. Conclusion The traditional image of a late antique church that was intent on enforcing laws, on extending the exclusivity of the episcopal jurisdiction beyond cases of de religione or de fide so that bishops could also deal with criminal matters, and that enlarged the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts to include all subjects of the church now appears obsolete. Texts long interpreted in this manner lend themselves to a completely different understanding. As we have seen, Theoderic, writing to Ianuarius of Salona, asked him not to evade payment any longer, thereby offering justice to those who had sought it from the king.110 He demanded that the bishop Aurigenes punish an employee of his church (homo ecclesiae) whom Julian accused of having kidnapped his wife and usurped her properties.111 Petrus, perhaps the same bishop of Ravenna who implored Theoderic in vain about the synagogue burned by Christians,112 was solicited by the king to return to Germanus part of his paternal inheritance, which his church had claimed.113 It has been said that “Theoderic’s government was incapable of administering justice” and delegated to the bishops, who were accused by their faithful at the court of the king, to deliver justice.114 The impression given by the late ancient evidence is different. Theoderic entrusted the task 108  Cass., Var. 3.47, ed. Fridh, p. 129, line 2; Ennodius, no. 95 (Ep. 3.24), p. 119, l. 29; Gregory, Ep. 1.33, ed. , p. 40, l. 23. 109  Lex Visigot. 12.1.2, ed. Haenel. 110  Cass., Var. 3.7, ed. Fridh, p. 103: cf. supra, n. 41. 111  Cass., Var. 3.14, ed. Fridh, p. 108: cf. supra, n. 42. 112  P CBE II, “Petrus iunior 30”, pp. 1740–1. 113  Cass., Var. 3.37, ed. Fridh, p. 123. 114  De Marini Avonzo,“I vescovi nelle ‘Variae’ di Cassiodoro”, p. 256.

474

Lizzi Testa

of reconciliation with the injured party to the bishops accused by their faithful because the alleged misdeeds were so obvious that they did not to require a trial, and sometimes not even a review of the evidence. The solution was indicated in the preamble of the letters and in their conclusions. And if they had not acted accordingly, the king would have passed judgement personally.115 It does not appear, therefore, that Theoderic conceded to bishops powers that imperial laws had never granted, but that he required the collaboration of the church when it or its faithful had violated the official law because he was convinced that a holy clergy could act to restore the violated rights more quickly. In this sense, not much had changed since Constantine, but everything would have been different with an eastern emperor and without a local king capable of passing judgement with his secular court. The warp woven with an old weft and some new threads gave way to a new weft interwoven with only few old threads. At the end of the Gothic age a new era had begun and with it a new Christianity. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Acta Synhodorum habitarum Romae CCCCXCVIIII. DI. DII., ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894. Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis, ed. C. Nauerth, Agnellus von Ravenna: Liber pontificalis / Bischofsbuch, Freiburg 1996. Ambrose, De officiis, Patrologia Latina, vol. 16. ———, Epistulae, ed. M. Zelzer (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 82.3), Vienna 1992. Augustine, De Trinitate, ed. A. Trapé/M.F. Sciacca/G. Beschin, La Trinità, Rome 1973. ———, Enarratio in Psalmos, ed. V. Tarulli, Sant’Agostino. Esposizioni sui salmi, vol. 2, Rome 1970. Caesarius of Arles, Testamentum, ed. A. de Vogüé/J. Courreau, Césaire d’Arles. Oeuvres monastiques, vol. 1: Oeuvres pour les moniales (Sources Chrétiennes 345), Paris 1988. Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, Oxford 1937. ———, Variae, ed. A.J. Fridh, Magni Aurelii Cassiodori Variarum Libri XII (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 96), Turnhout 1973; trans. T. Hodgkin, The Letters 115  Cass., Var. 3.37, ed. Fridh, p. 123, lines 13–15.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 475 of Cassiodorus, London 1886; trans. S.J. Barnish, The Variae of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator (Translated Texts for Historians 12), Liverpool 1992; Variae, ed. A. Giardina, Cassiodoro. Variae, vol. II (Libri III–V), Rome 2014; vol. V (Libri XI–XII), Rome 2015. Codex Theodosianus, ed. T. Mommsen/P. Meyer, 2 vols., Berlin 1905. Ennodius, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felicis Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885 (repr. Munich 1995). Excerpta Valesiana, Pars Posterior, ed. J. Moreau, Leipzig 1968. Gelasius, Epistulae, ed. A. Thiel, in Epistolae Romanorum pontificum genuinae, vol. 1, Braunsberg 1867 (repr. Hildesheim 1974). ———, ed. G. Löwenfeld, Epistulae Romanorum pontificum ineditae, Leipzig 1885. Gregory of Rome, Registrum epistularum, ed. P. Ewald/L.M. Hartmann (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae 1–2), Berlin 1887–99 (repr. 1957). ———, Dialogi, ed. A. de Vogué/P. Antin, Grégoire le Grand. Dialogues, vol. 2 (Sources Chrétiennes 260), Paris 1979. ———, Epistulae, ed. D. Norberg, S. Gregori Magni Registrum Epistularum Libri I–VII and Libri VIII–XIV, Appendix (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 140 and 140 A), Turnoult 1982. ———, In Ezechielem 1, hom. 8, ed. C. Morel, Grégoire le Grand. Homélies sur Ezéchiel I (Sources Chrétiennes 327), Paris 1986. ———, In Ezechielem 2, hom. 4 and 7, ed. C. Morel, Grégoire le Grand. Homélies sur Ezéchiel II (Sources Chrétiennes 360), Paris 1990. ———, Moralia 1, ed. R. Gillet/A. de Gaudemaris, Grégoire le Grand. Morales sur Job (I–II) (Sources Chrétiennes 32 bis), Paris 1975. Gregory of Tours, Decem libri historiarum, ed. M. Oldoni, Gregorio di Tours. La storia dei Franchi, Milano 1981. Jerome, Epistulae, ed. J. Labourt, Saint Jérome. Lettres., vol. 4, Paris 1954; vol. 7, Paris 1961. Jordanes, Getica, ed. T. Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 5.1), Berlin 1882 (repr. 1961). Lex Romana Visigothorum, ed. Haenel, Lipsia 1849. Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, Le Liber pontificalis: texte, introduction et commentaire, 3 vols., Paris 1886–1957. Procopius of Caesarea, Wars, ed. and trans. H.B. Dewing, Procopius: History of the Wars (Loeb Classical Library), 5 vols., Cambridge, MA 1914–28 (repr. 1961). Simplicius, Epistulae, ed. A. Thiel, in Epistolae Romanorum pontificum genuinae, vol. 1, Braunsberg 1867 (repr. Hildesheim 1974). Siricius, Epistulae (Patrologia Latina 13). Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi (Patrologia Latina 20).

476

Lizzi Testa

Vita Sancti Caesarii, ed. E. Bona, Vita Sancti Caesarii episcopi Arelatensis, Amsterdam 2002; ed. and trans. M.J. Delage, Vie de Cesaire d’Arles (Sources Chrétiennes 536), Paris 2010.



Secondary Literature

Banfi, A., Habent illi iudices suos. Studi sull’esclusività della giurisdizione ecclesiastica e sulle origini del privilegium fori in diritto romano e bizantino, Milano 2005. Biondi, B., Il diritto romano cristiano, vol. 1, Milan 1952. Bleckmann, B., “Arelate metropolis: Überlegungen zur Datierung des Konzils von Turin und zur Geschichte Galliens im 5. Jahrhundert”, Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und für Kirchengeschichte 98 (2003), 162–73. Brown, P., Through the Eye of a Needle. Wealth, the Fall of Rome and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD, Princeton 2012. Buonocore, M. (ed.), Regio III. Regium Iulium, Locri, Taurianum, Trapeia, Vibo Valentia, Copia-Thurii, Blanda Iulia (Inscriptiones Christianae Italiae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores 5), Bari 1987. Cantino Wataghin, G., “La città nell’Occidente tardoantico: riflessione sui modelli di lettura della documentazione archeologica”, in U. Criscuolo/L. De Giovanni (eds.), Trent’anni di studi sulla tarda antichità: bilanci e prospettive, Napoli 21–23 novembre 2007, Napoli 2009, pp. 61–76. Clemente, G., “La Sicilia nell’età imperial”, in E. Gabba/G. Vallet (eds.), La Sicilia antica, vol. 2.2: La Sicilia romana, Napoli 1980, pp. 464–80. Collins, R., “The Western Kingdoms“, in A. Cameron/B.Ward-Perkins/M.Whitby (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600, Cambridge 2000, pp. 126–30. Cracco Ruggini, L., “La Sicilia e la fine del mondo antico (IV–VI secolo)”, in E. Gabba/ G. Vallet (eds.), La Sicilia antica, vol. 2.2: La Sicilia romana, Napoli 1980, pp. 482–524. ———, “La Sicilia fra Roma e Bisanzio”, in R. Romeo (ed.), Storia della Sicilia, vol. 3, Napoli 1980, pp. 1–96. Crifò, G., “A proposito di episcopalis audientia”, in M. Christol/et al. (eds.), Institutions, Société et vie politique dans l’Empire romain au IVe siècle ap. J.-C. Actes de la table ronde autour de l’oeuvre d’André Chastagnol, Paris, 20–21 janvier 1989, Rome 1992, pp. 397–410. Cuena Boy, F.J., La episcopalis audientia, Valladolid 1985. De Giorgio, D., “Cesario di Arles e la redemptio dei captivi infideles: Vita Cesarii I, 32–33”, Cristianesimo nella storia: richerche storiche, esegetiche, teologiche 26.3 (2003), 671–82. De Marini Avonzo, F., “I vescovi nelle ‘Variae’ di Cassiodoro”, in Atti dell’Accademia Romanistica Constantiniana. VIII Convegno Internazionale, Perugia 1990, pp. 249–60. Delage, M.J., “Le séjour de Césaire d’Arles en Italie”, Studia Patristica 23 (1989), 103–10.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 477 Delaplace, C., “La ‘Guerre de Provence’ (507–511), un épisode oublié de la domination ostrogothique dans en Occident”, in Romanité et cité chrétienne. Permanences et mutations, intégration et exclusion du Ier au VIe siècle. Mélanges en l’honneur d’Y. Duval, Paris 2000, pp. 77–89. Delmaire, R., Largesses sacrées et res privata. L’aerarium impérial et son administration du IVe au VIe siècle, Rome 1989. Ennslin, W., “Rex Theodericus inlitteratus”, Historische Jahrbuch 60 (1940), 391–6. Fatti, F., “Nei panni del vescovo: Gregorio, Basilio e il filosofo Eustazio”, in R. Lizzi Testa (ed.), Le trasformazioni delle élites in età tardoantica (Saggi di Storia Antica 28), Rome 2006, pp. 177–238. Février, P.A., “Césaire et la Gaule méridionale au VIe siècle”, in Césaire d’Arles et la christianisation de la Provence, Paris 1994, pp. 45–73. Février, P.A./et al., Topographie Chrétienne des cités de la Gaule des origines au milieu du VIIIe siècle VII. Province ecclésiastique de Narbonne (Narbonensis prima), Paris 1989. Fiaccadori, G., “Il Cristianesimo. Dalle origini alle invasioni barbariche”, in G. Pugliese Carratelli (ed.), Storia e civiltà della Campania. Il Medioevo, Napoli 1992, pp. 145–70. ———, “Calabria tardoantica”, in S. Settis (ed.), Storia della Calabria antica. Età italica e romana, Tarquinia 1994, pp. 705–62. Fuhrmann, M. “proditio”, in RE Suppl. 9, 1962, coll. 1221–1230 Gaudemet, J., “La première mesure législative de Valentinien III”, Iura 20 (1969), 129–47. Gaudemet, J., L’Eglise dans l’empire romain, Paris 1958. Giglio, S., Patrocinio e diritto privato nel tardo impero romano, Perugia 1995. Grundmann, H., “Litteratus illitteratus”, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 40 (1958), 1–65. Hall, S.G., “The Organization of the Church”, in A. Cameron/B.Ward-Perkins/M.Whitby (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600, Cambridge 2000, pp. 731–44. Hobsbawn, E.J.,“The Social Function of the Past. Some questions”, Past and Present 55 (1972), 3–17. Humphries M., Communities of the Blessed: Social Environment and Religious Change in Northern Italy, Ad 200–400, Oxford 1999. Klingshirn, W.E., “Charity and Power. Caesarius of Arles and the Ransoming of Captives in sub-Roman Gaul”, Journal of Roman Studies 75 (1985), 183–203. ———, Caesarius of Arles. The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul, Cambridge 1994. Kolb, F., “Römische Mäntel: paenula, lacerna, manduh”, Römische Mitteilungen 80 (1973), 69–167. Lizzi, R., “Ambrose’s Contemporaries and the Christianization of Northern Italy”, Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990), 156–73. Lizzi Testa, R., “Christianization and Conversion in Northern Italy”, in A. Kreider (ed.), The Origins of Christendom in the West, Edinburgh 2001, 47–95.

478

Lizzi Testa

———, “The Bishop, Vir Venerabilis: Fiscal Privileges and Status Definition in Late Antiquity”, Studia Patristica 34 (2001), 125–44. ———, “Le origini del Cristianesimo”, in P. Tozzi (ed.), Storia di Cremona. I Età antica, Cremona 2003, pp. 350–95. ———, Senatori, popolo, papi. Il governo di Roma al tempo dei Valentiniani, Bari 2004. ———, “The Late Antique Bishop: Image and Reality”, in P. Rousseau (ed.), A Companion to Late Antiquity, Oxford 2009, pp. 525–38. ———, “Tributa sunt purpurae, non lacernae: il guardaroba del vescovo tardoantico”, in A. Melloni (ed.), Tutto è grazia. Omaggio a Giuseppe Ruggieri, Milano 2010, pp. 375–96. ———, “Rome during the Ostrogoth Kingdom: its Political Meaning as Apostolic See”, in H. Harich-Schwarzbauer/K. Pollmann (eds.), Der Fall Roms und seine Wiederauferstehungen in Antike und Mittelalter, Berlin 2013, pp. 131–49. McLynn, N., Ambrose of Milan. Church and Court in a Christian Capital, Berkeley 1994. Magani, F., Ennodio, 3 vols., Pavia 1886. Marconi, G., Ennodio e la nobiltà gallo-romana nell’Italia ostrogota (Testi, studi, strumenti 27), Spoleto 2013. Martindale, J.R. (ed.), The Prosopography of Later Roman Empire, vol. 2: A.D. 395–527, Cambridge 1980. Mochi Onory, S., Vescovi e città (sec. IV–VI) (Biblioteca della Rivista di Storia del Diritto Italiano 8), Bologna 1933. Moorhead, J., “The Last Years of Theoderic”, Historia 32 (1983), 106–20. ———, Theoderic in Italy, Oxford 1992. Orlandi, S., Epigrafia anfiteatrale dell’Occidente Romano. VI. Roma. Anfiteatri e strutture annesse con una nuova edizione e commento delle iscrizioni del Colosseo, Rome 2004. Otranto, G., Per una storia dell’Italia tardo antica cristiana (Biblioteca tardoantica 3), Bari 2009. Paoletti, M., “Occupazione romana e storia delle città”, in S. Settis (ed.), Storia della Calabria antica. Età italica e Romana, Roma/Reggio Calabria 1994, pp. 467–556, spec. 469–471. Pietri, C., “Aristocratie et société cléricale dans l’Italie chrétienne au temps d’Odoacre et de Théoderic”, in Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Antiquité 93 (1981), 417–67; repr. in id (ed.), Christiana respublica. Éléments d’une enquête sur le christianisme antique, Roma 1997, pp. 1007–57. Pietri, C./Petri, L. (eds.), Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire. 2. Italie (313–604), 2 vols., Rome 1999. Pizzolato, L.F., “Laicità e laici nel cristianesimo primitivo”, in Laicità. Problemi e prospettive, Atti del 47 corso di aggioramento culturale dell’Università Cattolica, Milan 1977, pp. 57–83.

Bishops, Ecclesiastical Institutions, and the Ostrogothic Regime 479 Roda, S., Commento storico al libro IX dell’epistolario di Quinto Aurelio Simmaco, Pisa 1981. Santalucia, B., Diritto e processo penale nell’antica Roma, Milan 1982. Sardella, T., Società, Chiesa e Stato nell’età di Teoderico. Papa Simmaco e lo scisma laurenziano, Messina 1996. ———, “Giovanni I, santo”, in Enciclopedia dei papi, Roma/Città del Vaticano 2000, pp. 483–87. Savon, H., Ambroise de Milan (340–397), Paris 1997. Scaravelli, I., “La collezione canonica Anselmo dedicata: lo status quaestionis nella prospettiva di un’edizione critica”, in R. Delle Donne/A. Zorzi (eds.) Le storie e la memoria, in onore di Arnaldo Esc, Firenze 2002, pp. 33–52. Seeck, O., “Canonicarius (compulsor)”, in Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertums­ wissenschaft, vol. 3, Stuttgart 1899, pp. 1488–90. Sirago, V.A., “Gli Ostrogoti in Gallia secondo le Variae di Cassiodoro”, Revue des études anciennes 89 (1987), 63–77. Vera, D., “Dalla villa perfecta alla villa di Palladio. Sulle trasformazioni del sistema agrario in Italia fra Principato e Dominato”, Athenaeum 83.1 (1995), 189–211; 83.2 (1995), 331–56. ———, “I paesaggi rurali nel Meridione tardoantico: bilancio consuntivo e preventivo”, in G. Volpe/M. Turchiano (eds.), Paesaggi e insediamenti rurali in Italia meridionale fra tardoantico e altomedioevo, Bari 2005, pp. 23–38. ———, “Una carità razionale: provvedimenti di carestia e finanza pubblica nel Tardo Impero”, Koinonia 36 (2012), 173–90. Vismara, G., Episcopalis Audientia. L’attività giurisdizionale del vescovo per la risoluzione delle controversie private tra laici nel diritto romano e nella storia del diritto italiano fino al secolo nono, Milan 1937. Wirbelauer, E., Zwei Päpste in Rom: der Konflikt zwischen Laurentius und Symmachus, Munich 1993.

CHAPTER 18

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy Rita Lizzi Testa*

Institutional Development: Dioceses and Metropoles

At the present state of research it is not possible to draw a complete picture of the institutional development of the Ostrogothic church in all its ecclesiasti­ cal articulations. The territory under the authority of Theoderic and his suc­ cessors came to consist of two prefectures, but some areas were abandoned even before the end of the Gothic War.1 Within these boundaries, which varied over time, the organization of the various ecclesiastical provinces and dio­ ceses has not been clearly reconstructed in each case. Indeed the foundation, development, and/or disappearance of the same bishoprics is often uncertain because of the absence of reliable episcopal lists, while data from more recent archaeological or epigraphic sources are not always readily available every­ where. Nonetheless, we can try to reconstruct the ecclesiastical geography of the Italian peninsula, which in some respects is better known than other parts of the Ostrogothic kingdom, in order to understand how the church of the 5th and 6th centuries had changed since the previous period.

Metropolitan Districts

Throughout the West, the metropolitan organization of ecclesiastical prov­ inces divided into dioceses solidified slowly, moulding itself mostly on to new, Diocletianic administrative divisions.2 In Italy, the ecclesiastical metropo­ les followed the territorial divisions of the region’s two vicariates (Italia * I am indebted to my colleagues and friends Kristina Sessa and Jonathan Arnold for their thoughtful suggestions and careful revisions of this chapter. 1  See Arnold in this volume. 2  This organization was already mandated by Canon 9 of the Council of Antioch of 341, which entrusted the care of an ecclesiastical province to the bishop presiding in its capital, calling on the bishops of the region to recognize his authority.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_019

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

481

Suburbicaria and Italia Annonaria), while their metropolitan bishops tended to assimilate the functions of former vicars. Towards the end of the 4th century, bishops Damasus of Rome and Ambrose of Milan exercised juridical functions over the churches of Suburbicarian and Annonarian Italy, respectively, show­ ing a determination to control the episcopal elections of these two areas.3 This structure was consolidated over the course of two centuries, but some changes intervened serving on the one hand to limit the areas belonging to the bishop of Milan who shared with Aquileia and Ravenna control over an increasing number of dioceses in Annonarian Italy, and on the other, to enhance the authority of the bishop of Rome as apostolic primate. The rights of the metropolitan of Milan are clearly described in Theoderic’s letter to its bishop Eustorgius, including his authority to impose honest behaviour upon the bishops of his metropolis and his power of ecclesiasti­ cal coercion (districtio) over them.4 Special privileges such as the protection of ecclesiastical wealth (tuitio) and fiscal exemptions for its property in Sicily were likewise recognized by the Ostrogothic regime.5 In addition, Theoderic gave special exemptions to one of the negotiatores in charge of the food supply for the poor of the church of Milan.6 This last privilege was requested by the defensores Ecclesiae Mediolanensis in accordance with what had already been granted to the church of Ravenna,7 a detail that confirms the key role that the see of Ravenna was able to play under the Ostrogoths. Theoderic, however, synthesized the results of changes that had begun during the previous century. Indeed it seems that the bishop of Ravenna had obtained the right to appoint bishops in some churches of Aemilia inferior already in the mid 5th century, even if for some scholars this was only a kind of delegation of papal power. It is not certain whether Peter Chrysologus was the 3  On Ambrose and his authority in Northern Italy, Lizzi, “Ambrose’s Contemporaries.” Damasus organized some councils in order to regulate the election or replacement of bishops in Suburbicarian Italy; he also tried to get the emperor Gratian to recognize that the bishop of Rome had a judicial power over other bishops that was similar to the praetorian prefect. See Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, pp. 171–7. 4  Cass., Var. 1.9, ed. Fridh, p. 20, lines 8–10: “cuius est et probitatem moribus talibus imponere et districtionem ecclesiasticam custodire.” For the context see the previous chapter by Lizzi Testa in this volume. 5  See Cass., Var. 2.29, again with the previous chapter of this volume. 6  Cass., Var. 2.30.3, ed. Fridh, p. 79, lines 19–21: “nec monopolii nec siliquatici nec aurariae aliquid pensionis impendat vel quolibet gravamen ex permissa nundinatione sustineat.” 7  Cass., Var. 2.30.2, ed. Fridh, p. 79, lines 12–14: “Hoc enim nos et Ravennati ecclesiae comme­ morant motos rationabili allegatione tribuisse, quod pietatis exemplum ad suum quoque com­ modum (scl. defensores sacrosanctae Mediolanensis ecclesiae) supplicant transferendum.”

482

Lizzi Testa

first bishop of Ravenna to exercise this right. However, his authority, though not necessarily metropolitan, was known to eastern bishops. In 431, some of these asked John of Antioch to address letters in their name to the bishop of Ravenna, as well as to the bishops of Milan and Aquileia, since all three con­ demned the Apollinarism of Cyril of Alexandria.8 The growth of Ravenna into an episcopal see is not surprising. The city, where Galla Placidia and Valentinian III were living, had followed the same destiny as Constantinople over the last two decades of the 4th century, when Theodosius I was its resident. A testimony to Ravenna as a separate metropolis is also offered by the list of subscribers to the Council of Milan in 451, which Pope Leo had asked Eusebius of Milan to gather in order to publicize the good results of an embassy sent to Constantinople.9 A similar request was also given to the bishop of Arles, Ravennius, under whose presidency the same year the bishops of Viennensis, Narbonnensis, and Alpes-Maritimes were gathered together.10 Tellingly absent from the Council of Milan, however, were the bishops of Ravenna, Cervia, Rimini, Cesena, and Forlimpopoli (Regio VIII, including the province of Flaminia et Aemilia), as well as those of Faenza (Faventia), Bologna (Bononia), Modena (Mutina), Voghenza (Vicohabentia), and Imola (Forum Cornelii), which certainty existed as a diocese in 451,11 some of which Milan had extended its jurisdiction over from at least the second half of the 4th century.12 It is hard to accept that all these sees were included in the metropolis of Suburbicarian Italy dependent on the bishop of Rome. Missing from the list in fact are the bishops of Regio X (with the exceptions of Brescia and Cremona),13 over which the see of Aquileia, then the point of reference for the dioceses of Raetia Secunda, Noricum, and Pannonia Prima and Savia, had extended its influence during the second half of the 4th century.14 We should, there­ fore, believe that Leo I had also corresponded with the bishops of Ravenna 8  John of Antioch’s letter is mentioned by Theodoretus, Ep. 112, ed. Y. Azéma, p. 52. 9  The list of subscribers is preserved in the synodical letter that Bishop Cyriacus of Lodi was commissioned to deliver to Leo I. See Eusebius Med., Ep., in Leo I, Ep. 97.3, PL 54, p. 947; cf. PCBE 2.1, s. v. Cyriacus 3, pp. 521–52. 10  Leo wanted to make known in the West that his authority, undermined by the Council of Ephesus in 449, had been successfully re-established in East. See Ep. syn. Episc. Galliae 1, ed. Munier, pp. 107–10. 11  Lanzoni, Le diocesi d’Italia, vol. 2, p. 751. 12  In 386 Ambrose communicated the date of Easter to the bishops of Aemilia (Dominis fratribus dilectissimis episcopis per Aemiliam constitutis). See Ambr., Ep. Extra coll. 13, ed. M. Zelzer (23M. coll. 1026–1035). 13  Lizzi Testa, “Le origini del Cristianesimo”, p. 392. 14  Cracco Ruggini, “Storia totale di una piccola città”, pp. 285–6, n. 328.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

483

and Aquileia, requesting that they assemble councils in their respective loca­ tions, just like the bishops of Arles and Milan. Two papal letters dated to 442 explicitly reference the exercise of Aquileia’s metropolitan jurisdiction.15 Hence, it seems that during the 5th century, two other sees exercised metro­ politan functions in Annonarian Italy along with Milan: Aquileia and Ravenna. The Variae of Cassiodorus, which contain an obvious reference to the tax privi­ leges granted to the see of Ravenna,16 do not, on the other hand, provide any evidence for the 6th-century activity of metropolitan Aquileia. Indeed when a Christian accused the homines ecclesiae of the bishop of Pula of appropriat­ ing a property that had belonged to his family for at least two generations, Theoderic contacted the bishop directly, attempting to solve the issue without disturbing his metropolitan.17 Despite this silence, however, the strength of the see of Aquileia is evident in its bishops’ roles during the Laurentian schism (498–506/7) and later Three Chapters schism (from 553 onward).18 In Suburbicarian Italy the centralizing presence of the bishop of Rome, who controlled all the dioceses, makes it more difficult to see how the metropolitan organization evolved over the course of the 5th century. At the end of the 4th century at least some cities, including Capua, Canosa, Syracuse, and Cagliari, seem to have gained prominence in their respective provinces.19 From the reign of Athalaric, however, the pope’s prerogatives as Apostolic Primate were exalted far more than his metropolitan rights. Already defined by Pope Leo I in the 5th century, these were strongly supported by the successors of Theoderic, even Totila.20

Ecclesiastical Dioceses in Ostrogothic Italy

A general extension of the diocesan network during the 5th century corre­ sponded with the enrichment of metropolitan sees in northern Italy (Milan, Aquileia, and Ravenna). In comparison with the 4th century, the number of Ostrogothic churches is indicated by the subscribing and absent bishops at 15  Leo I, Ep. 1–2, PL 54, coll. 593–8. 16  See Cass., Var. 2.30, partially cited in n. 7 (above). 17  Cass., Var. 4.44, ed. Fridh, pp. 171–2. 18  See, generally, Lanzoni, Le diocesi d’Italia, vol. 2, pp. 891–4. 19  Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica, pp. 103–4. 20  On the Apostolic see and its political meaning for the Ostrogothic kings Cass., Var. 8.24, 9.15.11, and 11.2 are very important. See Lizzi Testa, “Rome during the Ostrogoth Kingdom”; also Sessa in this volume.

484

Lizzi Testa

the Council of Milan in 451. In the middle of the 4th century, Annonarian Italy was studded with a few dioceses: in the east, Aquileia, Padua, Verona, Brescia, and Ravenna; at the centre, Milan; and in the west, Vercelli, which became a point of reference for the Christians of western Regio XI, a portion of Regio IX, and those living beyond the Alps, near the border with Narbonensis.21 Quite different is the picture that we can trace in the middle of the 5th century. When Eusebius gathered the council requested by Leo I at Milan, the bish­ ops of Tortona, Asti, Alba, Genoa, and Albenga (from Regio IX) attended; as well as those of Bergamo, Lodi, Pavia, Como, Novara, Vercelli, Turin, Ivrea, and Aosta (from Regio XI); those of Brescia and Cremona (the only churches of Regio X dependent on Milan); and those of Piacenza, Reggio, and Brescello (from Regio VIII). In view of the absent sees, which were dependent on the new metropoles of Aquileia and Ravenna, the dioceses of northern Italy must have numbered around fifty at this time. Despite the vicissitudes of war and pestilence that struck the region in the second half of the 5th century, this number probably remained unchanged during the Ostrogothic era. Much higher was the number of ecclesiastical sites in Suburbicarian Italy. The councils held in Rome from 465 attest to the participation of many bish­ ops from south—central and insular Italy (with the exception of Sardinia), with numerically relevant peaks from Tuscany, Umbria, Campania, Puglia, and Lazio. Among those present in 465 were the bishops of Aveia (from Abruzzo), Capua, Atella, Cuma, Naples, Telese (from Campania), Salapia, Siponto, Canosa, Bari (from Apulia), and Squillace (from Calabria). At the Symmachan councils of Rome (499, 501, and 502) on the other hand, a greater participation of southern bishops is recorded, with the almost total exclusion of Abruzzi and Sardinia. Bishops hailing from Sardinia, however, are attested at the Council of Carthage in 484, confirming the presence of at least five episcopal sees on the island: Cagliari, Forum Traiani, Sulcis, Turris, and Senafer.22 Although the data fluctuate, by the 5th century nearly 200 dioceses can be identified in Suburbicarian Italy, with the highest density in central Italy, where the proxim­ ity of Rome, richer lines of communication, and the dense network of municipia favoured the establishment of an almost similar number of dioceses. In the Ostrogothic kingdom, the situation probably remained unchanged. Although Lanzoni dates the establishment of some dioceses to the late 6th century,23 it seems more likely that the diocesan network was complete before the outbreak of the Gothic War (535–53) and included some of those 21  Eus. Verc., Ep. 2.1–4, ed. Bulhart, p. 104. 22  Otranto, Italia meridionale, pp. 55; 79–93; Penco, Storia della Chiesa, p. 86. 23  Lanzoni, Le Diocesi d’Italia, 2 vols.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

485

sees whose first mention is found in the letters of the Roman bishop Gregory (590–604). In fact inscriptions from the 4th century confirm the activity of the bishops of Clusium in Umbria, Taurianum in Calabria, and Blanda Iulia in Basilicata,24 dioceses once attested only by Gregory the Great.25 Moreover, the establishment of rural dioceses was a peculiarity of southern Italy. In modern Puglia, of the thirty cities that developed during the impe­ rial age,26 only thirteen had become dioceses within the first years of the 5th century.27 Two vici must be added to these, Carmeianum (Gargano) and Turenum (Trani), which became episcopal sees at the end of the 5th century,28 revealing the strong vitality of the rural environment. The process followed by Turenum is well known: initially it emerged as a rural bishopric, breaking away from Canosa;29 then it acquired the institutional dimensions of a civitas, thanks to the continuous residence of its bishop and his performance of various functions.30 The development of the vicus of Trapeia (Tropea) on the Tyrrhenian Sea was not different. The organizational centre of its ecclesiasti­ cal possessions (massa Trapeiana) was endowed with an ecclesia cathedralis, a bishop or administrator of the Christian community. This collection of 24  Inscriptiones Christianae Italiae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores (cited hereafter as ICI) 7, no. 2, ed. Mennella, pp. 16–18 (on Lucius Petronius Dexter, bishop of Clusium during the 4th century); ICI 7, no. 45 (on Florentinus, bishop of Clusium during the 6th century); ICI 5, no. 8, ed. Buonocore, pp. 13–14 (on Leucosius of Taurianum, 4th century); ICI 5, no. 52 (on Iulianus of Blanda Iulia). 25  Ecclesius of Clusium and Paulinus of Taurianum are mentioned by Gr. Magn., Ep. 10.13, 11.3, and 9.135, ed. Norberg, pp. 839–40, 861, and 684–5. Romanus of Blanda Iulia was present at the Roman council of 595; see Gr. Magn., Ep. 5.57a, ed. Ewald-L.M. Hartmann, pp. 362–6. 26  See Marazzi in this volume; cf. Silvestrini, Le città della Puglia romana.. 27  Otranto, Italia meridionale, pp. 129–34. 28  Their bishops were present at the Roman councils of 501 and 502 (Acta Synhodorum habitarum Romae a. DII, ed. Mommsen, pp. 434; 437; 453). On the relationships between rural Carmeianum’s bishopric and the archeological site of San Giusto, located between Aeca and Lucera, see Volpe (ed.), San Giusto, pp. 331–8; Volpe, “L’iniziativa vescovile nella trasformazione dei paesaggi urbani e rurali in Apulia”, pp. 414–19. 29  On Canosa’s bishop Sabinus, probably a member of the embassy which Pope John I led to Constantinople in 525/526, see R. Cessi, “Un vescovo pugliese del secolo VI”, pp. 1153– 5. Sabinus was a subscriber at the Roman council of 531, which dealt with issues sur­ rounding the metropolitan of Larissa. See Blaudeau, “Un point de contact entre Collectio Avellana et Collectio Thessalonicensis?”, pp. 1–11. He was likewise part of the mission that Pope Agapetus promoted in Constantinople in 535: Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica, pp. 164–8. 30  Otranto, Italia meridionale, pp. 248–51.

486

Lizzi Testa

properties, the origin of which the Liber Pontificalis traces back to Constantine, is referred to in the correspondence of both Pope Pelagius I (556–61) and Pope Gregory, as well as in a rich body of inscriptions.31 The rural settlements of Myria and Cerillae also evolved towards urban ways of life as a result of the presence of a bishop,32 just like Canusium and other locations in southern Italy, now clearly identified by archaeologists.33 The massa Nicoterana (Nicotera) in Calabria developed similarly,34 as did Pitinum (Pettino), which was not a massa but a mansio (post station) on the Via Claudia Nova in Abruzzo, where some rural settlements even replaced the oldest urban bishoprics. Valva, for instance, which was a suburb of Corfinium, rose to the role of a diocese in the 5th century and likely replaced Corfinium itself. Likewise, Furconium (Civita di Bagno), which was a vicus, supplanted the diocese of Aveia (Fossa) perhaps in the 6th century.35 Such phenomena were so remarkable that it has been said that, in some parts of Italy, “country Christianity created towns rather than that the towns created country Christianity”.36 The replacement of old dioceses, which had been established in municipal centres, by gradually emerging rural settle­ ments can be explained by the tendency of Italians to abandon urban centres in response to barbarian incursions and raids, the Gothic War, and the arrival of the Lombards. In southern Italy, however, this took on a unique character, partly as a result of the reorganization of this territory, which was carried out after the loss of Africa to the Vandals in order to feed the two large court cities, Rome and Ravenna.37 With the increasing rarity of villas and the enlargement of those that remained, those ‘paganic’ or ‘vican’ forms of settlement (that is, villages), which had been characteristic of the pre-Roman period, regained their importance. This is because they proved to be more suitable for the new type of production that took place between the 4th and 6th centuries, which

31  ICI 5, ed. Buonocore, nos. 10–42. 32  Otranto, Italia meridionale, pp. 65–74; Otranto, “La cristianizzazione della Calabria”, pp. 364–6; 370. 33  Volpe, Contadini, pastori e mercanti, pp. 365–9; Cantino Wataghin/Fiocchi Nicolai/Volpe, “Aspetti della cristianizzazione”, pp. 87–130. 34  Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica, pp. 421; 425–9. 35  Ibid., p. 229. 36  Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, p. 520. The creation of rural Christianity was also one of the great developments of this period in Gaul and Spain; see, among others, Bowes, Private Worship, pp. 125–88; Barnish, “Religio in stagno”, pp. 387–99. 37  Vera, “I paesaggi rurali”, pp. 25–7.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

487

was based on agriculture, grazing, forestry, and breeding livestock.38 The recently discovered villa at Faragola (Ascoli Satriano, south of Foggia) was built in the late 5th century, when many villas lay deserted elsewhere.39 Sometimes the owners of such villas, the majority of which were managers (conductores) of imperial or landlord estates rather than senators, decided to build churches on these properties;40 in other cases, small villages developed on ecclesiastical lands around churches that were often built on the structures of a Roman villa. As a result, the agrarian reorganization of the region gave rise to a substantial network of rural dioceses.41 In northern Italy, in contrast, where the civitates were less numerous but more important and more territorially extended, evan­ gelization, diocesan structure, and ecclesiastical organization were almost exclusively a civic phenomenon. The Ostrogothic church, therefore, gathered the fruits of Christianity’s prog­ ress over the course of the 4th and 5th centuries, and only toward the end of this period, during a number of wars, did Italy’s network of dioceses begin to be subjected to a gradual process of destructuration, which was likely the result of the disintegration of related imperial structures. By the end of the 5th century, however, Pope Gelasius (492–6) had formulated a new criterion for belong­ ing to an ecclesiastical diocese, which surpassed the old civil administrative units based on territory and focused on a group of faithful and its bishop who administered baptism as a fundamental indicator of membership.42 This new criterion, which he elsewhere summed up in the formula territorium etiam non facere dioecesim (a territory does not make a diocese),43 was probably neces­ sary to legitimize novel developments in the practice of worship and liturgical and sacramental life, which had been provoked by changes in metropolitan and diocesan structures. These had made precarious and unstable the frame­ work of the church and its dioceses, while engendering continuing conflicts between various bishops and between bishops and their metropolitan lead­ 38  Vera, “Dalla villa perfecta alla villa di Palladio”, p. 203. For changes to the environment and agriculture in Ostrogothic Italy see Squatriti in this volume. 39  Volpe et al., “Faragola (Ascoli Satriano)”, pp. 265–90. 40  Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, pp. 471–8. 41  Otranto, Italia meridionale, pp. 149–50; Otranto, “La cristianizzazione della Calabria”, p. 363, fig. 2 and pp. 367–71; Volpe/Turchiano, “The last enclave”, pp. 542–65. 42  Gelas., frag. 19, ed. Thiel, pp. 494–5: “Quid novae aedificationi antiqua ecclesiarum poterit praeiudicare divisio, quum in ea non futura, sed quae erant praesentia finirentur?. . . . Nec enim terminis aut locis aliquibus convenit definiri, sed illud facere diocesim, quod supe­ rius continetur, ut constet commanentes, a quo fuerint lavacri regeneratione purgati.” On this development, see Violante, “Le strutture organizzazione della cura d’anime”. 43  Gelas., frag. 17, ed. Thiel, p. 492–3.

488

Lizzi Testa

ers with respect to territory and jurisdiction.44 It can be assumed, however, that thanks to Gelasius’ intervention in this delicate institutional matter, the church was able to overcome the crisis of civil administration that was already perceptible at the end of the 5th century.

Nuns, Monks, and Monasteries

Monastic foundations, which were located within cities or more often in the countryside, in both remote locations and along main roads, had multiplied throughout Italy over the course of two centuries. Nevertheless, a map of monastic settlements in Romano-Gothic Italy is extremely difficult to draw.45 Differences between Annonarian and Suburbicarian Italy in the spread of diocesan networks and in the rural development of Christianity are evident in the kinds of male monasticism that took root in these two regions during the 5th and 6th centuries: largely urban and with characteristics that combined the monastic experience and clerical life in northern Italy; of the coenobitic type and more related to the countryside in southern Italy. During the same period, eremitical installations also began to populate the central Apennine region, whereas previously they were mostly present in insular areas.46 In fact each of these forms dated back to the second half of the 4th century but was apparently preceded by early expressions of female asceticism, which there­ fore will be analysed first.

Female Asceticism

According to Jerome, Marcella first expressed her ascetic inclination when Athanasius of Alexandria was received by Pope Julius for a few months around 340/345. She was soon followed by other women in her family and then, with little chronological gap, by other young virgins or widows of her own class. Jerome’s arrival in Rome around 380, finally, gave new impetus to female 44  Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica, pp. 128–34. 45  Attempts to collate information on known monasteries in Italy before the 7th century include: Ferrari, Early Roman Monasteries; Luiselli, “La società romano-gotica”, pp. 108–13; Jenal, Italia Ascetica; and now Wood, “Entrusting Western Europe to the Church”, p. 47. 46  A very selective picture is provided in Luiselli, “La società romano-gotica”, pp. 108–13, and Jenal, “Zum Asketen—und Mönchtum”, which is an updated synthesis of Penco, Storia del monachesimo in Italia.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

489

a­ sceticism in the city.47 After a phase that was probably characterized by struc­ tural informality and fluidity of movement, female ascetics, at least in the West, were organized for two centuries according to two models of settlement, which were maintained in the Ostrogothic period. The first model was composed of urban housing units, capable of accommodating two or three young women in addition to an owner and one or more widows (univirae). Examples include Marcella, Albina, Melania Senior, Paula, and the other women known from the correspondence of Jerome, as well as the sister of Ambrose, Marcellina, her friend from Verona, the virgins residing in Vercelli, Emona, Bologna, and still others.48 The second model of female ascetic settlement was an actual monastery (monasterium). Beyond the Holy Land, these were typically estab­ lished in suburban areas close to large cities, such as the monastic communi­ ties that Melania the Younger organized around 408 on her properties in Sicily and Campania.49 Accordingly, their dimensions were such that they were able to accommodate more diverse social elements, including former slaves, give assistance to the poor, and offer hospitality to travelers and pilgrims. From the outset, therefore, the foundation of monasteries had resulted in donations and bequests of land rents, which potentially made these centres new economic units. Yet without such resources they could not survive (indeed, many did not) nor expand due to hosting an increasing number of groups of ascetics; nor could their founders maintain control, bequeathing the monasterium to their daughters and relatives.50 On female monasteries in Italy during the Ostrogothic period we have the isolated testimony of Pope Pelagius I who spoke about one such community in Capua.51 For the remaining female monasteries, the main evidence comes from the era of Gregory the Great. Next to those the pope himself built on his Sicilian properties, other monasteries dated back to an earlier age and almost all of these had a founder of senatorial rank.52 Most were in rural areas, located on the estates of noblewomen who had left part of their land to the church, 47  Jerome, Ep. 127.5, ed. Labourt, vol. 7, pp. 140–1. Jerome’s reconstruction may be tenden­ tious, as he intended to place the rise of a religious inclination in Marcella prior to Melania the Elder; see Pricoco, “Aspetti culturali del primo monachesimo d’Occidente”, p. 189, n. 1. 48  Consolino, “Tradizionalismo e trasgressione nell’élite senatoria romana”, pp. 65–125. 49  Lizzi, “Una società esortata all’ascetismo”; Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, pp. 115–20. 50  Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith, pp. 209–28. 51  Pelag., Ep. 49, ed. Gassò/Battle, pp. 130–1. Better evidence is available for female monaster­ ies in Ostrogothic Gaul, particularly the community of Caesaria the Elder at Arles. For this see Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles, pp. 117–23. 52  Rizzo, Papa Gregorio Magno e la nobiltà in Sicilia, p. 228.

490

Lizzi Testa

with precise testamentary instructions about the foundation and endowment income of the future monastery. There were also cases of monasteries built in the heart of the city within their founder’s own domus and with an adjoining oratory: in her will, for instance, the patrician Rustica assigned a third of her entire property to her monastic foundation in the city of Naples.53

Male Monasteries in Northern Italy

It was probably within the same ascetic context as Marcella, that is in Rome rather than during his exile in the East,54 that Bishop Eusebius of Vercelli, once a lector in the entourage of Pope Julius, had learned how to create a sort of monastery for consecrated virgins55 and to combine “monastic restraint with the discipline of the Church” in order to create a stricter means of devotion for his clergy.56 The result was a kind of clerical—monastic centre established on the initiative of a bishop and organized as a seminar for ascetic priests. The first of its kind in the West, Eusebius’ experiment proved very influential, and sparked a movement that spread quickly throughout northern Italy. Of the centres that soon followed, the best known are the “Cenacle of Aquileia”, which was attended by Jerome and Rufinus between 370–3,57 and the monasterium of Milan, which, as Augustine recalled in his Confessions, was located outside the walls of the city at the time of Ambrose.58 53  Gr. Magn., Ep. 3.58, ed. Norberg, pp. 206–7; Rizzo, Papa Gregorio Magno e la nobiltà in Sicilia, p. 229. 54  On the influence of Roman ascetism rather than Eastern models, Lizzi Testa, “Le origini del Cristianesimo”, p. 372; cf. Ps.-Max., Sermo 7.2, ed. Mutzenbecher, p. 23: instar orientalis propositi. 55  Ps.-Max., Sermo 7.2: “propositum virginitatis instituit . . . monachorum introduxit forte servitium.” During his exile, Eusebius also turned to sanctae sorores as well as fratres; see Eus. Verc., Ep. 2.11.1, ed. Bulhart, p. 109. For inscriptions of Vercelli’s virgines, dated between the 5th and 6th centuries, see Bruzza, Iscrizioni antiche vercellesi, pp. 309–13; 316–18, nn. 132–3; also Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 5, no. 6741, ed. Mommsen; cf. Roda, Iscrizioni latine di Vercelli, pp. 130–1. 56  Ambr., Ep. 14 extra Coll. (63M., 66 and 71), ed. Zelzer, pp. 270 and 273: “monasterii conti­ nentia et disciplina Ecclesiae . . . ut et in civitate positus instituta monachorum teneret et ecclesiam regeret ieiunii sobrietate. . . . Namque haec duo in attentiore Christianorum devotione praestantiora esse quis ambigat, clericorum officia et monachorum instituta?”. 57  Rufin., Apol. 1.4, ed. Simonetti, with Lizzi Testa, “Christianization and Conversion”, pp. 14–15, nn. 54–6. 58  Aug., Conf. 8.6.15.3, ed. O’Donnell.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

491

The survival of these ancient centres, however, is not directly documented. A direct link between the monastery of Eusebius, for instance, and the scriptorium of 10th-century Vercelli, known from the time of Bishop Atto, seems untenable.59 Nor can it be assumed that there was some relationship between the monastery of Ambrose and the auditorium mentioned by Ennodius in the 6th century, which seems rather to have been a school conducted by the rhetorician Deuterius.60 Nevertheless, during the Ostrogothic period groups of young laypeople who were devoted to an ascetic lifestyle and lived with a priest or bishop who acted as their teacher were especially prevalent in Italy. Indeed they served as a sort of model community, even beyond the Italian peninsula, as demonstrated by a proposal made at the Council of Vaison in 529, which sought to establish similar centres in Gaul, where the clergy would live a communal life and youths would begin the study of sacred texts, all in imitation of what was happening in Italy.61 The regulations of the Council of Chalcedon (ca. 4 and 26), which had submitted monks and monasteries to the jurisdiction of bishops, as well as the canons of the councils celebrated in Gaul (at Agde in 506, at Orleans in 511 and 533, and at Epaone in 517)62 and the inter­ vention of Justinian, who intensified episcopal control over monasteries in the first half of the 6th century,63 certainly encouraged the growth and spread of this kind of clerical—monastic institution, whose features could be attributed to the first male monasteries of northern Italy. 59   Levine, “Historical Evidence”, pp. 573–7; contra Scaravelli, “La collezione canonica Anselmo dedicata, pp. 46–9. 60  Magani, Ennodio, vol. 1, pp. 288–9, thought Ennodius had taught in the seminary estab­ lished by Epiphanius in Pavia, but it seems more likely that as a deacon he taught in the Milanese auditorium. See Ennod., no. 3 (= dict. 7), ed. Vogel, pp. 6–8 (school transfer in the forum); no. 59 (= dict. 8), pp. 78–80 (presentation of his nephew Lupicinus to the rhetori­ cian Deuterius); no. 85 (=dict. 9), pp. 112–15 (introduction of Arator to the same school). See also Marconi, Ennodio, pp. 76–86. 61  Concilium Vasense, c. 1, ed. Maassen, p. 56. We do not know if paroecia was still a synonym for diocese, according to the use of, for example, Paulinus of Nola, or if the term already indicated parishes in rural areas, as used by Gregory the Great; see Penco, Storia della Chiesa, p. 86. 62  A canon of the council held in Venice between 481 and 491 granted the abbot the right to give permission to the monks to live in cells outside the monastery without permission of the bishop (Conc. Venet. a. 481–491, c. 7, ed. Munier, p. 153). The Gallic councils instead were aimed at increasing the authority of the bishops over abbots and their monasteries. Cf. Conc. Agath. a. 506, cc. 27 and 38, ed. Munier, pp. 205 and 208; Conc. Arel. a. 511, cc. 7; 19; 22, ed. de Clercq, pp. 37; 10; Conc. Epaon. a. 517, cc. 8 and 10, ed. de Clerq, p. 26; II Conc. Arel. a. 533, c. 21, ed. de Clerq, p. 171. 63  Novell. Iust. 58; 131.8, ed. Schoell/Kroll.

492

Lizzi Testa

Insular Asceticism

Not long after the Council of Beziers (356) and his retirement to a monastery near Milan, which was probably just a simple cell (sibi monasterium statuit), Martin of Tours had moved to the island of Gallinara, located off the coast of Albenga. He was attracted to the new forms of insular asceticism that had begun to populate the coasts of the peninsula.64 A few years later, accord­ ing to Jerome, “bands of monks” were scattered throughout the islands and shores of the entire Etruscan Sea,65 and in 417, while returning to Gaul, Rutilius Namatianus was sadly affected by the number of lucifugi viri (men fleeing the light, i.e. monks) that had chosen to live on the inhospitable islands of Capraia and Gorgona.66 Roughly a century later, the ascetics of Ostrogothic Italy were favouring larger islands. While in exile from Vandal Africa (ca. 529), for instance, Fulgentius of Ruspe founded some monasteries near the Sardinian city of Cagliari, one of which grew up near the basilica of the martyr Saturninus and had a scriptorium.67 After some early eremitical experiments, male coeno­ bitic settlements also began to populate Sicily, although they did not always give rise to real monastic institutions.68

Male Monasteries in Central—Southern Italy

The oldest monastic experiences in southern Italy appear related to the rural or suburban areas where Paulinus of Nola spent the last forty years of life (395– 431). He enriched Cimitile with a lavish cruciform basilica and a small chapel located at the tomb of the holy bishop Felix. He also described this monumen­ tal complex in various poems and organized a community around it that he referred to as a monasterium.69 Fasting, sexual continence, prayers, and vigils governed the daily life of his community, as well as of other monastic settle­ ments, both male and female, that he recalled between Otranto and Lupiae 64  Sulp. Sev., Vita Mart. 6.4–7.1, ed. Fontaine, pp. 582–99. 65  Jerome, Ep. 77.6, ed. Labourt, vol. 4, p. 47: “insulas, et totum Etruscum mare . . . et recondi­ tos curvorum litorum sinus, in quibus monachorum consistunt chori . . . ”. 66  Rut. Nam., De reditu lines 439–440, ed. Keene, p. 144. 67  Pricoco, ‘Il monachesimo nell’età di Teoderico’, pp. 406–8; Id., Il monachesimo, pp. 90–1. 68  Cracco Ruggini, “Il primo cristianesimo in Sicilia”, pp. 112–20. 69  Chierici, “Cimitile”, pp. 125–37; Lipinski, “Le decorazioni per la basilica di S. Felice”, pp. 65–80. On the use of monachus/monasterium in Paulinus: Lienhard, Paulinus of Nola, pp. 60–9, and Trout, Paulinus of Nola, pp. 104–159; also Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, pp. 208–40.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

493

(Lecce).70 Nevertheless, at the end of 4th century, centres such as Paulinus’ monasterium remained an isolated experience in central and southern Italy; but between the 5th and 6th centuries this changed, as refugees arriving from aban­ doned areas of the Roman Empire organized new monasteries in these regions. Two of the three centres known from Naples in this period were built by Bishop Severus (d. 409) and the refugee bishop Gaudiosus, who had escaped from Vandal Africa in 439 along with Quodvultdeus, almost certainly the epon­ ymous bishop of Carthage.71 We do not know very much about Gaudiosus’ monastery, although it may be the earliest example of a new urban monastic foundation in Naples.72 Far more is known of the third monastic centre, whose abbot, Eugippius (ca. 460–535), was a disciple of Saint Severinus (d. 482), the Roman monk-apostle of Noricum. A refugee like Gaudiosus, Eugippius was among the Romans of Noricum Ripense who fled this province in 488 at the request of Odovacer. Bringing his saintly master’s body with him, he laid it to rest in a monastery that an illustris femina (Barbara or Barbaria) had founded at Castrum Lucullanum (Pizzofalcone) near Naples. In this monastery interest­ ing debates on Arianism, Augustine’s thought, and the ideals of monasticism developed,73 so that the monastic experience at Castrum Lucullanum and the literary activity of Eugippius (contemporary with the intellectual monastic life of Vivarium and the activity of St Benedict) ended up moving the creative monastic nucleus of the West from Lérins to central—southern Italy during the 6th century.74 In fact Castrum Lucullanum probably served also as a pro­ pulsive centre for the many monasteries that were built in the second half of the 6th century in and around Naples. The letters of Gregory the Great are a valuable source for some of their peculiar aspects, which included a high level of culture, extensive possessions, and close ties with the local aristocracy.75 The monastery of Eugippius was similar to Fulgentius’ centre in Cagliari, having been provided with a scriptorium,76 and became no less famous for 70  Paul. Nol., Carm. 17.85–88, ed. Hartel, p. 85; Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica, pp. 369–73. 71  Vict. Vitens., Hist. pers. 1.15, ed. Lancel, pp. 103–4, with Amodio, “La componente africana”, p. 33. 72  Fiaccadori, Il Cristianesimo, p. 164. 73  Eugippius was the author of a collection of Augustinian excerpts, the Life of Saint Severinus of Noricum (511) and perhaps a regula mixta (described below). See Pricoco, “Il monachesimo nell’età di Teoderico”, p. 407. 74  Pricoco, “Il monachesimo nell’età di Teoderico”, pp. 406–8. 75  Colantuono, “Note per una ricostruzione”, pp. 248–9. 76  On the relationship between monasticism and culture, or better monasticism and books: Cavallo, “Dallo scriptorium”, pp. 331–52.

494

Lizzi Testa

its cultural activity than Vivarium, the monastery that Cassiodorus founded on his property at Squillace in Calabria sometime after the mid 6th century.77 South of the Alessi River and the ancient town, this centre was located directly above the sea and included a church dedicated to St Martin and a hermit­ age called Castellense, which was placed in a defensive position atop Monte Castello.78 Having failed in the proposal made to Pope Agapitus around 536 to create a school of higher sacred studies in Rome,79 Cassiodorus established his monastery as a centre of religious and cultural formation, according to the ratio studiorum espoused in his Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning. This plan of study included the profane sciences and Greek literature, in addi­ tion to biblical exegesis, and placed the seven liberal arts side by side with the disciplines of history, geography, natural science, and medicine.80 The mor­ phology of medieval monastic culture was fundamentally linked to the struc­ ture that Cassiodorus gave it at Vivarium. No less influential were the monks at Vivarium, who excelled at the accurate transcription of texts and were aided in their endeavours by the instructions provided in Cassiodorus’ De orthographia. Indeed it is likely that Cassiodorus’ monastic centre helped to refuel all the great western libraries of the Middle Ages through the intermediary of the Lateran Library, where the best manuscripts of Vivarium’s scriptorium were collected in the early 7th century,81 when the monastery was in decline. According to Pope Pelagius, there were also a number of monasteries in Lucania and Samnium, although their extent and nature are unknown.82 The settlements in the central region of the peninsula, especially to the north-east of Rome, however, were mostly hermit centres. Among the Italian Fathers that populate Gregory the Great’s Dialogues,83 for instance, are many unforgettable viri Dei residing in Monteluco near Spoleto, in the Val Castorina not far from Norcia, or in the mountains of Abruzzo, around Amiternum, near l’Aquila. Here, in particular, Equitius (480/490–571) is said to have founded several monas­ tic centres.84 The second book of the Dialogues, however, is entirely dedicated to St Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–550), vir Dei, thaumaturge, healer, seer, and 77  On the history of the diocese at the end of the 5th century: Cracco Ruggini, “Società pro­ vinciale”, p. 246; Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica, pp. 445–51. Discussions of the foundation of Vivarium include O’Donnell, Cassiodorus. 78  Cass., Inst. 1.29, ed. Mynors, pp. 73–5; Fiaccadori, “Calabria tardoantica”, pp. 417–18. 79  Cass., Inst. I, praef. 1.2–13. 80  Condorelli, Cassiodoro, pp. 17–116. 81  Pricoco, “Spiritualità monastica”, pp. 357–77. 82  Pelag., Ep. 87, ed. Gassò/Battle, pp. 212–13; Otranto, Italia meridionale, p. 76. 83  Rousseau, “Monasticism”, pp. 774–7; Brown, “Holy Men”, pp. 789–94. 84  Penco, Storia del monachesimo in Italia, p. 30; Otranto, Italia meridionale, p. 76.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

495

father, and guide of twelve monasteries in Subiaco and of Monte Cassino. We do not know what influence the communities founded by Benedict, who died 21 March 547, were able to have on the Italian monastic scene during the Ostrogothic era. Indeed it was probably the exodus of the community at Monte Cassino to Rome, after the Lombard invasion destroyed the monastery in 581, that brought Benedict to the attention of Pope Gregory who in those years was leading a monastic life in his family home on the Caelian Hill, which he had transformed into the monastery of St Andrew.

Monastic Rules in Italy: Latin Translations and New Models

Although the Benedictine model, which combined prayer, meditation, and study with the exercise of complex economic activities related to the organi­ zation and control of the territory in which a monastery was built, came to dominate monastic life in the West from the 9th century, it was hardly the norm during the Ostrogothic period. Rather, late 5th- and 6th-century Italy was awash in a variety of practices and written rules, some Latin translations of Greek texts, others local creations, and still others amalgams of different monastic materials taking the form of what is known as the ‘mixed rule’. The oldest of these were the rules of Pachomius (d. 346) and Basil of Caesarea (ca. 330–79). Rufinus of Aquileia had translated Basil’s Asketikon for the monks of the monastery of Pinetum, praying that they would make copies to send “to other monasteries”.85 In 404, his contemporary Jerome produced a Latin version of the Pachomian Rule.86 John Cassian (ca. 360–410) helped to renew the same enthusiasm for asceticism in Rome (where he resided in 405) that had existed in the time of Athanasius. His Instituta and Conlationes made east­ ern traditions and spirituality accessible to the monks of the Italian peninsula (and beyond), who avidly read these works between 420 and 430.87 In fact Cassian’s works strongly influenced two of Ostrogothic Italy’s most important ‘indigenous’ rules, the Regula Magistri (ca. 500–25) and the Regula S. Benedicti (ca. 530–60). An anonymous text attributed to “the Master”, the Regula Magistri presents a highly detailed, lengthy discussion of virtually every conceivable aspect of monastic life, from the ordering of daily prayers

85  Ruf., Praef. in Reg. s. Basilii, ed. Simonetti, p. 241. 86  Jerome, Translatio Latina Regulae S. Pachomiae, ed. Boon, Pachomiana Latina. 87  Chadwick, John Cassian.

496

Lizzi Testa

to sleeping quarters and food apportioning.88 Composed near Rome (perhaps in Campania), the Regula Magistri had more theoretical impact than anything else, since there is no evidence that any monastery in Italy ever followed it. Nevertheless, when Benedict penned his eponymous rule, he turned to the Regula Magistri for insight. Benedict is believed to have composed his rule between 530 and 560, possibly for the monks at Monte Cassino, though the language of the text hints at a broader audience of monastics.89 Deriving its general pattern (the school, the disciples, the master) from the Regula magistri, Benedict elaborated a rule for his community that was nonetheless original.90 As in Egyptian coenobitism, it maintained a vertical axis of monks and their hierarchical superiors (abbot and deacons) and horizontal relationships among the monks themselves, who were to emulate each other in zeal and charity.91 The Regula S. Benedicti is arguably the most influential of all Ostrogothic-era rules; however, there is no evidence of its observance in any monasteries until the 7th century.92 In addition, Ostrogothic Italy likely produced an Italian regula mixta, a compilation of monastic materials from (among other sources) Augustine, Basil, and the Regula Magistri. Many scholars attribute this mixed rule to the early 6th-century monastic founder Eugippius, who was known for his keen interest in the works of Augustine.93 On the basis of its identification with Eugippius, the rule’s origins are placed in southern Italy, perhaps even at Castrum Lucullanum. However, recent work has called into question the

88  De Vogüé presents a good English-language introduction to the rule in The Rule of the Master, pp. 15–84. 89  On the dating of the Benedictine Rule see de Vogüé, La Règle du Saint Benôit, pp. 169–72 and Kay, “Benedict, Justinian, and Donations”, who suggests a more restricted but plau­ sible range from 537 to 555. 90  The priority of the Regula Magistri, and the reliance of the Benedictine Rule upon it, is largely but not universally accepted by scholars. Dunn, “Mastering Benedict”, argues that the Regula Magistri post-dates the Benedictine Rule. A response by de Vogüé to Dunn’s criticisms along with a final rejoinder by Dunn are published in EHR 197 (1992): 95–111. 91  Penco, Storia della Chiesa, pp. 97–11; Pricoco, La Regola di San Benedetto. 92  On the gradual reception of the Benedictine Rule in early medieval monasteries see Mews, “Gregory the Great, Benedict of Nursia, and Roman Liturgy”. There is no evidence, for instance, that Gregory or any late 6th-century monastic followed the Benedictine Rule in Rome: Hallinger, “Papst Gregor der Grosse und der Hl. Benedikt”. 93  This is the Regula handed down in Cod. Par. Lat. 12634 (6th century). See Pricoco, “Il monachesimo nell’età di Teoderico”, p. 407; Id., Il monachesimo, p. 91; and especially de Vogüé, “La Règle d’Eugippe retrouvée?”. On Eugippius’ interest in Augustine, see above n. 73.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

497

authorship, dating, and provenance of the so-called Regula Eugippii.94 Further research on this fascinating but understudied text is warranted as well as on its possible connections with the Regula Magistri and the Benedictine Rule. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Acta Synhodorum habitarum Romae CCCCXCVIIII. DI. DII., ed. T. Mommsen, in Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894. Ambrosius, Epistulae, ed. M. Zelzer (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 82.3) Vienna 1992. Augustine, Confessiones, ed. J.J. O’Donnell, Augustine. Confessions, 3 vols. Oxford 1992. Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, Oxford 1937. ———, Variae, ed. A.J. Fridh, Magni Aurelii Cassiodori. Variarum Libri XII (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 96), Turnhout 1973. ———, Variae, ed. A. Giardina, Cassiodoro. Varie, vol. II (Libri III–V), Rome 2014; vol. V (Libri XI–XII), Rome 2015. Concilia Galliae a. 511–695, ed. C. de Clercq (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 148A), Turnhout 1963. Concilia Galliae a. 314–506, ed. C. Munier, (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 148), Turnhout 1963 (repr. 2001). Concilium Vasense, ed. F. Maassen, Concilia Aevi Merovingici (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Concilia 1), Hannover 1893. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, ed. T. Mommsen, vol. 5: Inscriptiones Galliae Cisalpinae Latinae, Berlin 1872–7. Ennodius, Opera, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felicis Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Munich 1885. Eusebius Vercellensis, Epistulae, ed. V. Bulhart, Eusebii Vercellensis Episcopi quae supersunt (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 9), Turnhout 1957. Gelasius, Epistulae, ed. A.Thiel, in Epistolae Romanorum pontificum genuinae, vol. 1, Braunsberg 1868 (repr. Hildesheim 1974). Gregorius Magnus, Epistulae, ed. D. Norberg, S. Gregori Magni Registrum Epistularum Libri I–VII and Libri VIII–XIV (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 140 and 140A), Turnhout 1982.

94  Dunn, “Mastering Benedict”.

498

Lizzi Testa

———, Registrum epistularum, ed. P. Ewald /L.M. Hartmann, Gregorii I Papae Registrum Epistolarum (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae 1–2), Berlin 1887–99 (repr. 1957). ICI 5 = Inscriptiones Christianae Italiae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, vol. 5: Regio III. Regium Iulium, Locri, Taurianum, Trapeia, Vibo Valentia, Copia-Thurii, Blanda Iulia, ed. M. Buonocore, Bari 1987. ICI 7 = Inscriptiones Christianae Italiae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, vol. 7: Regio IX. Dertona, Libarna, Forum Iulii Iriensium, ed. G. Mennella, Bari 2000. Jerome, Epistulae, ed. J. Labourt, Saint Jérome. Lettres, vols. 4 and 7, Paris 1954–1961. ———, Translatio Latina Regulae S. Pachomiae, ed. Boon, Pachomiana Latina, Leuven 1932. Novellae Iustiniani, ed. Schoell/ Kroll, Corpus Iuris Civilis. Novellae, Berlin 1963. Paulinus Nolanus, Carmina, ed. W. Hartel, Sancti Pontii Meropii Paulini Nolani Carmina (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 30), Vienna 1894. Pseudo Maximus, Sermones, ed. A. Mutzenbecher, Maximi Episcopi Taurinensis. Collectionem Sermonum antiquam nonnullis sermonibus extravagantibus adiectis (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 23), Turnhout 1962. Pelagius I, Epistulae, ed. P.M. Gassò/C.M. Battle, Pelagii I papae Epistulae quae supersunt (556–561), Montserrat 1956. Regula S. Benedicti, ed. A. de Vogüé, La Règle du Benôit (Sources Chrétiennes 181–186), Paris 1971–1977. Regula Eugippi, ed. F. Villegas and A. de Vogüé, Eugipii Regula (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 87), Vienna 1976. The Rule of the Master, trans. L. Eberle, Kalamazoo, MI 1977. Rufinus, Opera, ed. M. Simonetti (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 20), Turnhout 1961. Rutilius Namatianus, De reditu suo, ed. C.H. Keene, Rutilii Claudii Namatiani De reditu suo libri duo, London 1907. Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini, ed. J. Fontaine, Vie de saint Martin, vol. 1 (Sources Chrétiennes 133), Paris 1967. Theodoretus, Epistulae, ed. Y Azéma, Théodoret de Cyr. Correspondance, vol. 3 (Sources Chrétiennes 111), Paris 1965. Victor Vitensis, Historia persecutionis, ed. S. Lancel, Victor de Vita, Histoire de la persécution vandale en Afrique suivie de La passion des sept martyrs. Registre des provinces et des cités d’Afrique (Budé), Paris 2002.



Secondary Literature

Amodio, M., “La componente africana nella civiltà napoletana tardo-antica. Fonti let­ terarie ed evidenze archeologiche”, in Atti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, ser. 3, memorie 6, Roma 2005, pp. 5–257.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

499

Barnish, S.J.B., “Religio in stagno: Nature, Divinity and the Christianization of the Countryside in Late Antique Italy”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001), 387–402. Blaudeau, P., “Un point de contact entre Collectio Avellana et Collectio Thessalonicensis? Autour du cas d’Abundantius de Démétrias”, Millennium 10.1 (2013), 1–11. Bowes, K., Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2008. Brown, P., “Holy Men”, in A. Cameron/B. Ward-Perkins/M. Whitby (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600, Cambridge 2000, pp. 781–810. ———, Through the Eye of a Needle. Wealth, the Fall of Rome and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD, Princeton/Oxford 2012. Bruzza, L., Iscrizioni antiche vercellesi, 2nd ed., Vercelli 1973. Cantino Wataghin, G./Fiocchi Nicolai, V./Volpe, G., “Aspetti della cristianizzazione degli agglomerati secondari”, in R.M. Bonacasa Carra/E. Vitale (eds.), La cristianizzazione in Italia fra Tardoantico e Altomedioevo (IX Congresso Nazionale di Archeologia Cristiana, Agrigento 20–25 nov. 2004), vol. 1, Palermo 2007, pp. 85–134. Cavallo, G., “Dallo scriptorium senza biblioteca alla biblioteca senza scriptorium”, in Dall’eremo al cenobio, Milano 1987, pp. 331–422. Cessi, R., “Un vescovo pugliese del secolo VI (S. Sabino di Canosa)”, in Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 73 (1913–1914), 1153–5. Chadwick, O., John Cassian, Cambridge 1950. Chierici, G., “Cimitile: la seconda fase dei lavori intorno alle basiliche”, in Atti del III Congresso Internazionale di Studi sull’Alto medioevo, Spoleto 1959, pp. 125–37. Clark, E.A., Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith (Studies in Women and Religion 20), Queenston, Ontario, 1986. Colantuono, G., “Note per una ricostruzione dell’identità cristiana di Napoli al tempo di Gregorio Magno”, Annali di storia dell’esegesi 21 (2004), 237–56. Condorelli, A., Cassiodoro. Le discipline matematiche e l’ordine della natura, Catania 2007. Consolino, F.E., “Tradizionalismo e trasgressione nell’élite senatoria romana: ritratti di signore fra la fine del IV e l’inizio del V secolo”, in R. Lizzi Testa (ed.), Le trasformazioni delle élites nell’età tardoantica (Saggi di storia antica, 28), Roma 2006, pp. 65–139. Cracco Ruggini, L., “Società provinciale, società romana, società bizantina in Cassiodoro”, in S. Leanza (ed.), Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro. Atti della Settimana di Studi (Cosenza-Squillace, 19–24 settembre 1983), Soveria Mannelli 1986, pp. 245–61. ———, “Storia totale di una piccola città: Vicenza romana”, in A. Broglio/L. Cracco Ruggini (eds.), Storia di Vicenza, vol. 1: Il territorio, la preistoria, l’età romana, Vicenza 1987, pp. 205–303.

500

Lizzi Testa

———, “Il primo cristianesimo in Sicilia (III–VII secolo)”, in V. Messana/S. Pricoco (eds.), Il cristianesimo in Sicilia dalle origini a Gregorio Magno. Atti del Convegno di Studi (Caltanissetta, 28–29 ottobre 1985), Caltanissetta 1987 (Quad. di presenza cul­ turale 26), pp. 85–125. Dunn, M., “Mastering Benedict: Monastic Rules and their Authors in the Early Medieval West“, English Historical Review 105 (1990), 567–94. ———, “The Master and St. Benedict: A Rejoinder”, English Historical Review 107 (1992), 104–11. Ferrari, G., Early Roman Monasteries: Notes for the History of the Monasteries and Convents at Rome from the V through the X Century, Vatican City 1957. Fiaccadori, G., “Il Cristianesimo. Dalle origini alle invasioni barbariche”, in G. Pugliese Carratelli (ed.), Storia e civiltà della Campania. Il Medioevo, Napoli 1992, pp. 145–70. ———, “Calabria tardoantica”, in S. Settis (ed.), Storia della Calabria antica. Età italica e romana, Tarquinia 1994, pp. 705–62. Hallinger, K., “Papst Gregor der Grosse und der Hl. Benedikt”, in Commentationes in Regulam Benedicti, Rome 1957, pp. 231–319. Jenal, G., “Zum Asketen—und Mönchtum italiens in der Zeit von Benedikt”, in San Benedetto nel suo tempo. Atti del VII Congresso Internazionale di Studi sull’Alto medioevo, Spoleto 1982, pp. 137–83. ———, Italia ascetica atque monastica: das Asketen und Mönchtum in Italien von den Anfangen bis zur Zeit der Langobarden (ca. 150/250–604), 2 vols., Stuttgart 1995. Kay, R., “Benedict, Justinian, and Donations ‘mortis causa’ in the Regula Magistri”, Revue Bénédictine 90 (1980), 169–93. Klingshirn, W., Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul, Cambridge 1994. Lanzoni, F., Le diocesi d’Italia dalle origini al principio del secolo VII (an. 604), (Studi e Testi 35), Faenza 1927. Levine, P., “Historical Evidence for Calligraphic Activity in Vercelli from St. Eusebius to Atto”, Speculum 30 (1955), 573–7. Lienhard, J.T., Paulinus of Nola and Early Western Monasticism, Köln 1977. Lipinski, A., “Le decorazioni per la basilica di S. Felice negli scritti di Paolino da Nola”, Vetera Christianorum 13 (1976), 65–80. Lizzi, R., “Una società esortata all’ascetismo: misure legislative e motivazioni economi­ che nel IV–V secolo D.C.”, Studi storici 30.1 (1989), 129–53. ———, “Ambrose’s Contemporaries and the Christianization of Northern Italy”, Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990), 156–73. Lizzi Testa, R., “Christianization and Conversion in Northern Italy”, in A. Kreider (ed.), The Origins of Christendom in the West, Edinburgh/New York 2001, pp. 47–95. ———, “Le origini del Cristianesimo”, in P. Tozzi (ed.), Storia di Cremona, vol. 1: Età antica, Cremona 2003, pp. 350–95.

Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy

501

———, Senatori, popolo, papi. Il governo di Roma al tempo dei Valentiniani (Munera 21), Bari 2004. ———, “Rome during the Ostrogoth Kingdom: its Political Meaning as Apostolic See”, in H. Harich-Schwarzbauer/K. Pollmann (eds.), Der Fall Roms und seine Wiederauferstehungen in Antike und Mittelalter, Berlin 2013, pp. 131–49. Luiselli, B., “La società romano-gotica”, in San Benedetto nel suo tempo. Atti del VII congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto medioevo, Spoleto 1982, pp. 49–116. Magani, F., Ennodio, vol. 1, Pavia 1886. Marconi, G., Ennodio e la nobilità gallo—romana nell’Italia ostrogota, Spoleto 2013. Mews, C.J., “Gregory the Great, Benedict of Nursia, and Roman Liturgy: the Evolution of a Legend”, Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011): 125–44. O’Donnell, J.J., Cassiodorus, Berkeley 1979. Otranto, G., Italia meridionale e Puglia paleocristiane. Saggi storici, Bari 1991. ———, “La cristianizzazione della Calabria e la formazione delle diocesi”, Vetera Christianorum 32 (1995), 339–79. ———, Per una storia dell’Italia tardo antica cristiana (Biblioteca tardoantica 3), Bari 2009. PCBE 2 = C. Pietri/L. Pietri (eds.), Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, vol. 2: Italie (313–604), Rome 1999. Penco, G., Storia del monachesimo in Italia, Rome 1961. ———, Storia della Chiesa in Italia, vol. 1: Dalle origini al concilio di Trento, Milano 1978. Pricoco S., “Aspetti culturali del primo monachesimo d’Occidente”, in A. Giardina (ed.), Società romana e impero tardoantico, vol. 4, Rome/Bari 1986, pp. 189–204. ———, “Spiritualità monastica”, in S. Leanza (ed.), Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro. Atti della Settimana di Studi (Cosenza-Squillace, 19–24 settembre 1983), Soveria Mannelli 1986, pp. 357–77. ———, “Il monachesimo nell’età di Teoderico”, in A. Carile (ed.), Teoderico e i Goti tra Oriente e Occidente, Ravenna 1995, pp. 401–14. ———, La Regola di San Benedetto e le Regole dei Padri (introduzione, traduzione e commento), Milan 1995. ———, Il monachesimo, Rome/Bari 2003. Rizzo, R., Papa Gregorio Magno e la nobiltà in Sicilia, Palermo 2008. Roda, S., Iscrizioni latine di Vercelli, Torino 1985. Rousseau, P., “Monasticism”, in A. Cameron/B. Ward-Perkins/M. Whitby (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425– 600, Cambridge 2000, pp. 745–80. Scaravelli, I., “La collezione canonica Anselmo dedicata: lo status quaestionis nella pros­ pettiva di un’edizione critica”, in R. Delle Donne/A. Zorzi (eds.), Le storie e la memoria, in onore di Arnald Esc, Firenze 2002, pp. 33–52.

502

Lizzi Testa

Silvestrini, M., Le città della Puglia romana. Un profilo sociale, Bari 2005. Trout, D.E., Paulinus of Nola. Life, Letters and Poems, Berkeley 1999. Vera, D., “Dalla villa perfecta alla villa di Palladio. Sulle trasformazioni del sistema agrario in Italia fra Principato e Dominato”, Athenaeum 83.1–2 (1995), 189–211; 331–56. ———, “I paesaggi rurali nel Meridione tardoantico: bilancio consuntivo e preven­ tivo”, in G. Volpe/M. Turchiano (eds.), Paesaggi e insediamenti rurali in Italia meridionale fra tardoantico e altomedioevo, Bari 2005, pp. 23–38. Violante, C., “Le strutture organizzative della cura d’anime nelle campagne dell’Italia centrosettentrionale (secoli V–X)”, in Cristianizzazione ed organizzazione ecclesiastica delle campagne nell’alto Medioevo: Espansioni e Resistenze, Spoleto 1982, pp. 963–1158. Vogüé, A. de, “La Règle d’Eugippe retrouvée?”, Revue d’Histoire de la Spiritualité 47 (1971), 233–65. ———, “Introduction”, in The Rule of the Master, trans. L. Eberle, Kalamazoo, MI 1977, pp. 15–84. ———, “The Master and Benedict: A Reply to Marilyn Dunn”, English Historical Review 107 (1992), 95–103. Volpe, G., Contadini, pastori e mercanti nell’Apulia tardoantica, Bari 1996. ——— (ed.), San Giusto, la villa, le ecclesiae, Bari 1998. ———, “L’iniziativa vescovile nella trasformazione dei paesaggi urbani e rurali in Apulia: i casi di Canusium e di san Giusto”, in R. Farioli Campanati/et al. (eds.), Ideologia e cultura artistica tra Adriatico e Mediterraneo orientale (IV–X secolo). Il ruolo dell’autorità ecclesiastica alla luce di nuovi scavi e ricerche. Atti del Convegno internazionale (Bologna-Ravenna, 26–29 novembre 2007), Bologna 2009, pp. 414–19. Volpe, G./et al., “Faragola (Ascoli Satriano): una residenza aristocratica tardoantica e un ‘villaggio’ altomedievale nella Valle del Carapelle: i primi dati”, in G. Volpe/ M. Turchiano (eds.), Paesaggi e insediamenti rurali in Italia meridionale fra tardoantico e altomedioevo, Bari 2005, pp. 265–97. Volpe, G./Turchiano, M., “The Last Enclave. Rural Settlement in the 5th Century in Southern Italy: the Case of Apulia”, in P. Delogu/S. Gasparri (eds.), Le trasformazioni del V secolo. L’Italia, i barbari e l’Occidente romano. Atti del Seminario di Poggibonsi, 18–20 ottobre 2007, Turnhout 2010, pp. 531–77. Wood, I., “Entrusting Western Europe to the Church, 400–700”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 23 (2013), 37–73.

CHAPTER 19

Religious Diversity Samuel Cohen*

Introduction: Religious Diversity

Ostrogothic Italy was comprised of different religious communities, the most prominent of which were Catholic Christians, Jews, and the Ostrogoths themselves who have typically been labeled as ‘Arians’ in secondary literature. Although these terms suggest that each community possessed a relatively stable set of beliefs and practices, the religious identities presupposed by ‘Jew’, ‘Catholic’, and ‘Arian’ were not self-evident or static; rather they were fluid, gradually emerging together through a process of self-definition and exclusion.1 A crucial tool in this process was the discourse of heresy and orthodoxy, which served to differentiate Christian from non-Christian and to distinguish the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kind of Christian.2 Thus, the religious labels that appear in our sources were not merely descriptive; especially in the case of Christian heretics, they were proscriptive and polemical. Arianism in particular was a flexible heresiological epithet that despite its association with Theoderic was generally not employed to describe the Goths or their faith during the early phase of the Ostrogothic kingdom. It was only in the later years of Theoderic’s reign and subsequently with Justinian’s reconquest of Italy on the horizon that Catholic authors commonly equated Arriani and Gothi. With these qualifications in mind it is the intention of this chapter to first describe the two major players on our diverse stage, the Jews and the Goths, especially in terms of their relationship with each other and with Italian Catholic religious authorities such as the bishop of Rome. As we shall see, these communities did not exist in isolation from one another. Jews, Catholics, and * I would like to thank Kristina Sessa and Jonathan Arnold for their comments, suggestions, and advice in preparing this chapter. 1  Sandwell, Religious Identity, p. 4. Iricinschi/Zellentin, “Making Selves and Marking Others”, pp. 11–21. See also Lieu, Christian Identity; Rebillard, Christians and their Many Identities; and on the overlap of Christian and Jewish identities in Late Antiquity: Boyarin, Border Lines and Dying for God. 2  Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, vol. 1, pp. 11–20; Boyarin, Border Lines, pp. 2–4; Burrus, Making of a Heretic, pp. 15–18.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004315938_020

504

Cohen

Goths formed relationships with one another and often transgressed social and religious restrictions imposed upon them. This chapter will then consider the vestiges of pre-Christian religious traditions and Christian heretics who were also part of the religious landscape in this period. Much of our evidence for these communities comes from Catholic sources, and the organized church will therefore by necessity make an appearance in what follows. However, a systematic description of the church’s development and operations has been left to other chapters of this book.3 Jews There had been Jewish communities in Italy for centuries before the advent of the Ostrogothic kingdom; however it was in Late Antiquity that Italian Jewry became, in the words of Leonard Rutgers, “the single most visible and tangible Jewish community of the entire western Diaspora”.4 The largest and oldest Jewish centre was in Rome.5 But other important Jewish communities included Palermo and Catania in Sicily, Venosa and Naples in the south, and Milan and Ravenna in the north.6 The size of these communities is difficult to estimate given the limitations of ancient demography.7 However, it does appear that the urban population, especially in Rome itself, expanded throughout the late antique period as Jews increasingly moved to cities from smaller rural areas of Italy.8 Until recently it had been commonly thought that these Jewish communities were relatively isolated from their non-Jewish neighbours. It is certainly true that as Christianity emerged as a sine qua non of social relations in the 4th and especially the 5th centuries, Jews were increasingly excluded from the networks of patronage and power that dominated the politics of the late empire.9 Laws preserved in the Theodosian Code, for example, banned Jews 3  See Sessa and Lizzi Testa in this volume. 4  Rutgers/Bradbury, “Diaspora”, p. 492. 5  See for example, Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome; Solin, “Juden und Syrer”, pp. 587–789. 6  Sicily: Rutgers, “Interaction and Its Limits”. Southern Italy: Colafemmina, “Insediamenti e condizione” and for a slightly later period, von Falkenhausen, “L’Ebraismo dell’Italia meridionale”. Northern Italy: Ruggini, “Ebrei e Orientali nell’Italia”; Brown, “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”; Somekh, “Teoderico e gli Ebrei”. 7   On the problems of Jewish demography in particular see McGing, “Population and Proselytism”, p. 106. 8  Rutgers/Bradbury, “Diaspora”, p. 494. 9  Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, p. 179.

Religious Diversity

505

from public offices (honores and dignitates) and from service in the army. Other legislation placed limits on Jewish slaveholding, forbade new synagogue construction, prohibited Jews from proselytizing, and in general attempted to inscribe and enforce boundaries separating Jews and Christians.10 In a rhetorical shift detectable by the late 4th and the early 5th centuries, Christian legislation began to describe Judaism using increasingly antagonistic terms that evoked notions of corruption, defilement, and sacrilege, and to associate Jews with other marginalized groups such as pagans and eventually heretics.11 But despite the growing restrictions imposed upon them, Jews nevertheless continued to enjoy legal recognition and protection in the later Roman period.12 Anti-Jewish laws were unevenly enforced while other legislation protected synagogues from Christian attackers and granted peaceful Jews the full protection of the state.13 Jews in Late Antiquity also found ways to transgress the limitations placed upon them. Recent archaeological and epigraphic work have convincingly demonstrated that, notwithstanding important cultural and religious differences and legal restrictions, Jews formed relationships with their pagan and Christian neighbours to a greater degree than had previously been thought and shared with them many of the same political and social expectations.14 Jews were also granted the right to employ the lex Judaeorum—that is, Jewish communities had a degree of legal autonomy with regards to civil matters. And in certain circumstances Jewish curiales enjoyed exemptions from the onera usually imposed on this class.15 The ambivalent position of the Jew in late Roman society—at once disadvantaged and protected—remained largely unchanged in Theoderic’s Italy. Indeed, although it is tempting to ascribe the particularly modern quality of religious tolerance to Theoderic, the essentials of his Jewish policy closely 10  Roman laws pertaining to the Jews are collected in Linder, Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation. 11  Linder, “Legal Status of the Jews”, pp. 149–53; Salzman, “ ‘Superstition’ in the Codex Theodosianus”, pp. 176, 182. 12  Millar, “Christian Emperors”, pp. 4–8. 13  For example, Codex Theodosianus (hereafter cited as CT) 16.8.13 (397), ed. Mommsen/ Meyer, a law of Honorius and Arcadius allowing Jews to live by their own (religious) law; CT 16.8.21 (412/418) (Codex Justinianus 1.9.14, ed. P. Krüger, Berlin 1877), a law of Honorius and Theodosius II protecting synagogues from attack. 14  See, for example, the collection of essays in Goodman, Jews in a Graeco-Roman World. On Rome see Rutgers, Jews in Late Ancient Rome. 15  At least up to 383. Bachrach, “Jewish Community”, p. 403; Rabello, “Legal Condition of the Jews”, pp. 731–3.

506

Cohen

­ irrored the principles that had been set out in Roman law.16 Theoderic’s m edictum explicitly stated that Jews were to enjoy the traditional privileges conferred upon them in Roman law, giving them legal protection for their persons and places of worship.17 A similar emphasis is expressed in letters written by Cassiodorus in Theoderic’s name to the Jewish communities of Genoa and Milan and preserved in the Variae. For instance, Theoderic confirmed the long-standing legal rights of the Milanese Jewish community to maintain their synagogue with the proviso that the Jews remain separate from the Christian community.18 To the Jews of Genoa the king granted the right to rebuild the roof of their decaying synagogue so long as the building was not expanded and no ostentatious decorations were added.19 The language and content of these letters carefully articulates the conditions under which Jews enjoyed legal protection in Ostrogothic Italy: they were to remain inferior to Christians and their places of worship smaller and less grand. It is worth noting that the king’s oft-quoted dictum to the Genoese Jews that “no one can be forced to believe against his will” also declares that the Jews were “destitute of God’s grace” and condemns their errant prayers.20 Likewise in his above-mentioned letter granting protection to the Jews of Milan, Theoderic wonders why the Jews seek quies in this world when they cannot find aeterna requies in the next.21 Still, Italy’s Jews may well have preferred the status quo maintained by Theoderic and his successors to the policies of Justinian; the Jews of Naples fought on the side of the Ostrogoths against Belisarius during the siege of the city in 536.22 16  See the introduction to and translation of Theoderic’s legislation pertaining to the Jews of Italy in Linder, Jews in the Legal Sources, pp. 200–6. On Theoderic’s policies as a return to traditional Roman imperial attitudes towards the Jews see Brennecke, Imitatio—reparatio—continuatio. 17  Edictum Theoderici regis 14, ed. F. Bluhme, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Leges nationum Germanicarum, Hanover 1889, vol. 5, pp. 145–79. English translation in Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 243–94 cited at p. 290. Some scholars are not entirely convinced that the Edictum Theoderici can be attributed to Theoderic. See Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, p. 129, n. 41. 18  Cassiodorus, Variae (cited hereafter as Var.) 5.37, ed. Mommsen. 19  Var. 2.27. 20  Var. 2.27. “. . . divinitatis gratia destituti . . .”; “damus quidem permissum, sed errantium votum laudabiliter improbamus: religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut credat invitus.” On this phrase of Theoderic’s, see Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 97 and n. 147. 21  Var. 5.37. “Sed quid, Iudaee, supplicans temporalem quietem quaeris, si aeternam requiem invenire non possis?” 22  Procopius, Bellum Gothicum, 1.8.41, 1.10.24–26, ed. and trans. Dewing, London 1919. On Justinian see de Lange, “Jews in the Age of Justinian”.

Religious Diversity

507

Rather than tolerance, Theoderic’s Jewish policy, like that of Roman emperors before him, was guided above all by a desire to preserve order. In a second letter to the Genoese Jews the king emphasized the preservation of their rights and privileges in the context of his more general desire to uphold civilitas— a word that encompasses notions of good government, stability, and the continued rule of Roman law.23 When violence or public disorder disrupted civilitas, Theoderic reacted decisively. For example, the Anonymus Valesianus reports that in 519 or possibly 520 a mob in Ravenna had attacked and burned the synagogues of the city. The Christians, it seems, had become incensed by the fact that the Jews had thrown oblata—possibly holy water intended for baptisms or perhaps something to do with the Eucharist—into the river.24 After a second wave of violence, members of the Jewish community pled their case with the help of the praepositus cubicula Triwanis before Theoderic who was then residing at Verona. Theoderic responded by ordering the Roman (i.e. Catholic) community of Ravenna to finance the rebuilding of the destroyed synagogues. Anyone lacking the financial means to contribute to the project was to be whipped through the streets of the city.25 A perennial source of tension between Jews and Christians was slaveholding. Legislation of the 4th and 5th centuries had sought to discourage Jews from keeping non-Jewish slaves.26 The concern was not of course slavery per se, but rather that Christian slaves would convert (or be converted) to Judaism so that they could better perform various household duties that were restricted to Jews under Jewish law.27 To prevent this emperors had promulgated laws throughout the later Roman period that forbade the conversion of non-Jewish slaves. Other laws banned Jews from owning Christian slaves entirely. However, these prohibitions were not consistently enforced.28 23  Var. 4.33. On civilitas see Saitta, La Civilitas di Teodorico, pp. 5–61 and more recently, Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 126–30, especially n. 28 with references. 24  For oblata as relating to the Eucharist: Moorhead, Theoderic, p. 98 and in general on this incident, pp. 98–9. See also Somekh, “Teoderico e gli Ebrei”, p. 139. 25  Anonymus Valesianus pars posterior (cited hereafter as Anon. Val.) 80–2, ed. Mommsen. 26  For example CT 16.9.1–5; 3.1.5. On the 4th century in particular see De Bonfils, Gli schiavi degli ebrei. 27  On the various laws against Jewish proselytizing—the root of Christian objection to Jewish slaveholding—see Feldman, Jew and Gentile, pp. 387–95. 28  E.g. CT 16.8.9; 16.8.21; 16.8.25–7. Enforcement does seem to have become stricter during and after the reign of Theodosius II, but there are nonetheless references to Jewish ownership of Christians slaves well into the 6th century. For a detailed discussion on Jewish slaveholding in the later Roman Empire, see Linder, Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation,

508

Cohen

The tension prompted by Jewish slaveholding persisted into the Ostrogothic period. The Vita Caesarii, for example, describes the saint redeeming Christian slaves in Ostrogothic-controlled Provence so that they would not become Arians or Jews, perhaps a reference to the likelihood that slaves would convert to the faith of their masters.29 Elsewhere, in a late 5th-century letter sent to Bishops Siracusius, Constantius, and Laurentius, Gelasius (bishop of Rome, 492–6) reports that a Jew named Judas claimed that one of his slaves had escaped and taken sanctuary in the church of Venafrana in Campania. Judas wished the slave to be returned. However, the slave declared that he had been a Christian since birth (ab infantia Christiano); he had only recently been circumcised (and presumably forcibly converted to Judaism) by his master—an act that if we believe the unnamed slave would have been in violation of Roman law. Generally speaking the right of sanctuary did not apply to runaway slaves.30 But the issue was more delicate when the faith of a Christian was threatened, as appears to be the case here. It is also possible that the slave was in fact Jewish and that he was simply attempting to escape his lot by now claiming to be Christian. In his response to this complex case Gelasius endeavours to balance the rights of a Christian and the rights of a slave owner, whatever his religion. The bishop of Rome does not prejudge the case but commands the bishops to look into it diligenter.31 A second example of the difficulties engendered by Jewish slave owning can be gleaned from another attack against a synagogue, this time in Rome itself. We learn from a letter of Theoderic preserved in the Variae that a Roman synagogue had been burned in 509 or 511 by a Christian mob that had rioted when some slaves were publicly punished for the murder of their master.32 This violent reaction makes the most sense if we assume that the slaves were Christians and the master a Jew.33 In response the king asked the Senate to investigate the destruction of a synagogue and to punish the perpetrators. Not only did Jews in Ostrogothic Italy own Christian slaves, but they also at times contravened the legal and social restrictions imposed upon them in pp. 82–5 and “Legal Status of the Jews”, pp. 164–8 with references to the often contradictory legislation on this question. 29  Vita Caesarii I.32, ed. and trans. Bona, pp. 98–9. The (re)creation of the prefecture of the Gauls under the control of the Ostrogothic kingdom is announced in Var. 3.17. 30  From the Gelasian corpus see frag. 41, ed. Thiel, pp. 505–6. 31  Gelasius frag. 43, ed. Thiel, pp. 506–7. Jews were banned from owning Christian slaves in Italy by the end of the 6th century. The results of the bishops’ inquiry is lost. On asylumseeking and the Jews see Allen/Neil, Crisis Management, pp. 47–8 and notes. 32  Var. 4.43. 33  Lafferty, Law and Society, p. 32, n. 35.

Religious Diversity

509

other important ways. Another example drawn from the Gelasian corpus is that of the vir clarissimus Telesinus. Gelasius wrote a letter of recommendation on behalf of Antonius, a relative of Telesinus, to another bishop named Quinigeius. In this letter Gelasius states that although Telesinus seems to be Jewish, he has “endeavoured to prove himself to us to such an extent that we ought to rightly call him one of us”.34 The Latin is ambiguous and the improbable relationship between a Roman bishop and a Jewish senator prompted Andreas Thiel, the 19th-century editor of Gelasius’ letters, to interpret it as an indication that Telesinus had converted to Christianity.35 This reading is certainly conceivable although perhaps not definitive. Telesinus’ relative Antonius, who is referred to by Gelasius as frater, most likely had converted to Christianity.36 However, it is possible to read Gelasius’ statement about Telesinus as a backhanded compliment (he only seemed to be Jewish). Without additional evidence it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty if Telesinus was in fact a convert. Conversion was the most obvious way for Jews to gain access to professions and patronage that might otherwise be unattainable. Antonius is an excellent example of this fact. On the other hand, the existence of a Jew of senatorial rank is unusual although not unprecedented.37 There is epigraphic evidence from southern Italy for Jews holding municipal offices in the Ostrogothic kingdom. An early 6th-century funerary inscription in Latin and Hebrew from Venosa commemorates Faustina, granddaughter of Vitus and Asellus who are described as maiores civitatis, “leaders of the community”, although it is unclear whether this was a term of general appreciation rather than an indication that they held a particular office.38 Also from Venosa we have a Latin and Hebrew epitaph from 521 for a certain Augusta, wife of 34  Gelasius frag. 45, ed. Thiel, p. 508. “Vir clarissimus Telesinus, quamvis Judaicae credulitatis esse videbatur, talem se nobis approbare contendit, ut eum merito nostrum appellare debeamus.” 35  Thiel added as a subtitle to this letter, “Judaeorum quemdam conversum probalae fidei et integritatis episcopo commendat.” 36  Gelasius frag. 45, ed. Thiel, p. 508. “et ideo fratrem supradictum [sc. Antonius] voluntatis nostrae mandatorumque respectu ita te habere convenit, ut non solum in nullo penitus opprimatur, verum etiam in quo ei opus fuerit tuae se gaudeat dilectionis adiutum.” 37  A vir clarissimus and comes named Cham is known from a funerary inscription from the late 4th or early 5th century. See Chastagnol/Gagé/Leglay/Pflaum, L’Année épigraphique, p. 67. Ruggini, “Ebrei e Orientali nell’Italia”, p. 225, n. 95. 38  Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 1, no. 86, pp. 114–15 and commentary on pp. 116–19. The history of this family, including their involvement in municipal politics and their gradual acculturation is reconstructed from the epigraphic evidence in Williams, “Jews of Early Byzantine Venusia”.

510

Cohen

Bonus, who is described as a vir laudabilis.39 The Anonymus Valesianus also mentions a Symmachus Scholasticus who was a Jewish advisor to Theoderic’s court, although Symmachus’ role is unclear.40 Burial practices in the late imperial and Ostrogothic periods also suggest that expected boundaries between religious communities were not absolute. Jews and Christians (and even pagans) in Italy and across the empire were often buried side by side well into the early medieval period.41 It was precisely the fact that Jews and Christians intermingled so much—even in death!—that so vexed Christian commentators, prompting them to endeavour to enforce stricter separation between the two faiths and to vilify Judaism in heresiological and anti-Jewish polemical writings.42

‘Arians’ and ‘Arianism’

The most obvious religious minority in Italy was of course the Ostrogoths themselves. Theoderic and many of his followers were non-Nicene Christians, generally described as adherents of Arianism, the 4th-century heresy named for the Alexandrine presbyter Arius who preached that Christ was created by and thus subordinate to God the Father. This understanding of Ostrogothic religion is problematic. First, religion in Late Antiquity was not necessarily tied to ethnic identity, an interpretation that ignores the complex mechanisms of conversion and the often regional nature of religious belief and practice. The example of Theoderic’s own mother Ereleuva, a convert to Catholicism (possibly from some form of paganism) is a clear indication that Theoderic’s own heterodoxy (from the perspective of the Roman Church) was not n ­ ecessarily

39  Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 1, no. 107, pp. 137–8 and commentary on pp. 138–40. On this inscription see also Volpe, Contadini, pastori e mercanti, pp.112–13; Colafemmina, “Insediamenti e condizione degli Ebrei”, p. 206. 40  Anon. Val. 94. Scholasticus likely designates a man of learning, but not necessarily a legal advocate. See Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, eds. Jones/Martindale/Morris (hereafter PLRE), vol. 2, Scholasticus 5. 41  Rutgers, “Archaeological Evidence”, pp. 109–15; Rutgers, “Interaction and Its Limits”, p. 255 for his conclusions on the Sicilian evidence. The latest find is a cemetery south of Jerusalem, active between the 4th and 8th centuries that contain both Christian and Jewish burials. Earlier Italian examples include somewhat ambiguous evidence from Rome and its environs, Ostia, and Sicily (the latest dating from 597). See also Rebillard, “Conversion and Burial”, p. 65. 42  Boyarin/Burrus, “Hybridity”, p. 432.

Religious Diversity

511

indicative of the faith of all of his followers.43 Moreover, as a number of recent studies have noted, ‘Arianism’ itself was not a single discrete religious phenomenon. Rather, it was an umbrella term applied by hostile orthodox polemicists such as Athanasius and Ambrose to any position that conflicted with their own Trinitarian theology.44 The pantheon of ‘Arians’, in the words of Ralph Mathisen, is comprised of three groups: the Homoiousians who against the Homoousians—the position that emerged as orthodox and which claimed that Christ was the same substance (homoousios) as the Father—argued that Christ was of a similar substance (homoiousios) to the Father; the Anomoeans who contended that the Son was unlike (anomoios) the Father; and the Homoians who rejected the usefulness of attempting to speak of the Godhead in terms of ousios.45 ‘Arian’, then, was not an objective technical label; it was a polemical term that emerged out of the 4th-century debate over the nature of the Trinity that was not meant to describe but to delegitimize and exclude. When our 43  Ennodius, Panegyricus 42, ed. and trans. Rohr, p. 226 (hereafter Ennodius, Pan.), describes Theoderic’s mother as “sancta mater” and she even exchanged letters with Gelasius. See Gelasius, Epistulae Theodericianae Variae (hereafter ETV) ep. 5, ed. Mommsen; frag. 13, ed. Thiel, p. 490. On her conversion, see Anon. Val., 58. “Mater, Ereriliva dicta Gothica, Catholica quidem erat, quae in baptism Eusebia dicta.” If we can trust this account, Ereleuva converted from paganism rather than non-Nicene Christianity given the various prohibitions against re-baptism in canon law. However, Amory argues the conversion was from Arianism, a possible but perhaps not demonstrable suggestion. See Amory, People and Identity, pp. 268–9, especially n. 138. Contra Amory, see Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 89–90. The choice of the Greek name εὐσέβεια may well allude to Theoderic’s mother’s piety, but not to her confession prior to her conversion. A mix of Catholic and non-Nicene Christianity seems to have been relatively typical among barbarian ruling families. The Lombard queen Theodelinda was Catholic and not unlike Ereleuva and Gelasius, she exchanged letters with Gregory the Great. Many of the women of the Burgundian royal family (and some men including of course Sigismund) also appear to have been Catholic. On the Burgundians see Heil, Avitus von Vienne und die homöische Kirche der Burgunder, pp. 48–57. 44  On the role of Athanasius in particular in developing the dichotomy of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘Arianism’ see Lyman, “Typography”, pp. 56–8; Gwynn, “Archaeology and the ‘Arian Controversy’ ”, pp. 231–3; Gwynn, “The Eusebians”, pp. 13–48. ‘Arianism’ as an umbrella term (Sammelbegriff ) see Brennecke, “Framing the Historical and Theological Problems”, p. 1. 45  For an overview of ‘Arianism’ and the problems associated with this term (and the so-called ‘Arian Controversy’) see Hanson, Search for the Christian Doctrine, passim, but especially pp. xvii–xi; Lienhard, “The Arian Controversy”, pp. 416–20; Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy, especially 105–31; Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition. Mathisen’s formulation and a concise overview of the parties typically refered to as ‘Arian’ can be found in Mathisen, “Barbarian ‘Arian’ Clergy”, pp. 144–7.

512

Cohen

sources for the later phase of the Ostrogothic kingdom use ‘Arian’ to describe the religion of the Goths, they are making a heresiological rather than a historical statement about the supposed Gothic fidelity to the teachings of Arius.46 But ‘Arianism’ was not merely a rhetorical construct. The discourse of heresiology could, especially through the application of law, create the very categories of disbelief it had been thought only to describe or explain.47 Indeed the label ‘Arian’ was eventually successfully applied to the Ostrogoths, but this did not occur until the last years of Theoderic’s reign and after. In contrast, our Italian Nicene sources for the early phase of kingdom conspicuously avoid using the term to describe the religion of the Ostrogoths. For instance, in the surviving correspondence of Gelasius neither ‘Arian’ nor ‘Arianism’ was ever applied to the Ostrogoths.48 Instead, Gelasius describes the religion of the Gothic comes Teia as an alter communio, a neutral phrase that discriminates between the Catholic Church and that of the Goths, but avoids condemning the Gothic faith as heretical.49 Similarly, Theoderic complaining that he did not wish to interfere in the internal affairs of the church during the Laurentian/ Symmachian schism, referred to the faith of the Roman Church as vestra religio.50 And despite his protestations to the contrary, Theoderic did play a crucial role in deciding the outcome of the schism. According to the account preserved in the Liber Pontificalis, the partisans of Symmachus and Laurence, both of whom had been elected to the episcopacy of Rome, agreed that the Ostrogothic king would adjudicate their claims.51 Aliena religio, a ­comparable expression to 46  On the problematic relationship between the teachings of Arius and those of Ulfila, for example, see Heather/Matthews, Goths in the Fourth Century, pp. 35–141, Schäferdiek, “Ulfila Und Der Sogenannte Gotische Arianismus”, 22–3. 47  Humfress, Orthodoxy and the Courts, pp. 241–2. I would like to thank Robin Whelan for his comments on this section. 48  For Gelasius, ‘Arian’ and ‘Arianism’ were epithets not applied to the Goths, but rather to the supporters of the Henotikon in the context of the ongoing Acacian schism. For what follows and in particular on Gelasius’ views of ‘Arianism’ and the religion of the Ostrogoths see the discussion in Cohen, Heresy, Authority, pp. 187–211. 49  Gelasius, ETV ep. 2, ed. Mommsen, pp. 387–92. PLRE, vol. 2, Teia 2. Also Amory, People and Identity, p. 420: TEIA/ZEIA. He is described as a vir sublisimus, comes, possibly the comes civitatis of Volaterra and/or the Gothic commander of the garrison there. Volaterra/ Volaterana is today Volterra in eastern Tuscany. 50  The phrase is contained in Theoderic’s letter preserved as the “Anagnosticum regis” = Acta Synhodorum habitae Romae 5, ed. T. Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, auctores antiquissimi, Berlin 1894, vol. 12, pp. 425–6. 51  Liber Pontificalis (hereafter LP), ed. Duchesne, vol. I, p. 255. Theoderic played an ongoing role in the schism, at first supporting Symmachus’ candidacy for bishop of Rome, then withdrawing this support, only to ultimately rule again in favour of Symmachus. However

Religious Diversity

513

that of Gelasius and Theoderic, is later used by Athalaric (or by Cassiodorus in Athalaric’s name) to describe Nicene Christianity in a speech given after August 526 to the Roman Senate in which the new king praised the senators for accepting Felix IV (526–30) who had been appointed bishop of Rome by Theoderic.52 Clearly Gelasius, Theoderic, and Athalaric distinguished the Roman Church from that of the Ostrogoths. But the careful language used to describe one another suggests that at least for these three men, Nicene Christianity and the faith of the Goths were not irreconcilably antithetical, but rather represented two possible positions on a range of acceptable beliefs. At a minimum it seems clear that during the first decades of Ostrogothic rule in Italy both the Roman Church and the Ostrogothic leadership were keen to downplay their religious differences.53 Indeed despite Gelasius’ above-mentioned suggestion that Teia was something other than Nicene, in a second letter to the same Gothic count the bishop of Rome appealed to Teia’s responsibility as a Christian to protect those who serve God (in this case Nicene clerics).54 Elsewhere, Gelasius appears to evoke Theoderic’s sense of membership in the wider Christian community by appealing to the piety of his Christian mind.55 Of course Gelasius was dealing with Theoderic’s regime from a position of weakness and it would not have been advisable for the bishop of Rome or anyone else in Italy after 493 to openly condemn the Ostrogoths for their supposed heretical beliefs. Moreover, Rome’s attention was focused on the ongoing and bitter dispute with Constantinople over the question of the Henotikon that would last until 519. Nonetheless, it is significant that the ecumenical language Noble, “Theoderic and the Papacy”, p. 407 suggests that Theoderic did his best to avoid interference in Roman episcopal politics. For an overview of the schism see, for example, Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 114–45; Wirbelauer, Zwei Päpste in Rom, pp. 9–40; Sardella, Società, Chiesa e Stato, pp. 7–39, and most recently, Cohen, “Schism and the Polemic of Heresy”, pp. 198–205. For a chronology of the sources for the early years of the schism see Wirbelauer, Zwei Päpste in Rom, pp. 21–6. 52  Var. 8.15. 53  On the attitude of the Roman Church towards the Ostrogoths before the end of the Acacian schism, see Amory People and Identity, pp. 206–16. 54  Gelasius, ep. 24, ed. Thiel, pp. 390–1. “Christianis gratum semper debet esse, quod ab eorum poscitur dignitate praestandum, quia Deo servientibus beneficium negare non convenit.” 55  Gelasius, ETV ep. 1, ed. Mommsen. “Christianae mentis vestrae pietate confisus virum spectabilem Constantium credidi vobis meis litteris intimandum, utpote qui pro quolibet homine supplicare sacerdotalis officii ratione convenior”. See letters to the comes Teia: ETV, ep. 2, 4: “ad domnum filium meum regem . . .” To Theoderic’s mother: ETV epp. 4, 5: “domno filio meo, magnifico regi illudentes;” “. . . domno filio excellentissimo regi . . .”

514

Cohen

used in Gelasius’ letters to members of the Ostrogothic regime persists in his correspondence with other Catholic bishops.56 Similarly, Theoderic’s heterodoxy does not seem to have troubled the two most famous supporters of the Ostrogothic regime: the Italian Catholics Ennodius and Cassiodorus. Ennodius’ writings in particular often use specifically Christian imagery to describe the king. The Vita Epiphanii, for example, portrays Theoderic as a pious and just Christian ruler comparable to King David (whom Theoderic surpasses).57 Throughout the text Theoderic treats Epiphanius with admiration and reverence while Theoderic’s rule is described as divinely sanctioned. The king even cites scripture in his conversation with Epiphanius.58 In short, Theoderic is depicted as a good Christian ruler. Ennodius also penned his famous panegyric for Theoderic in early 507, and even in his private correspondence he praises the king. Nowhere does Ennodius call Theoderic an Arian.59 Nor was the faith of the Goths seen as problematic for Cassiodorus, author of the Variae written on behalf of the Ostrogothic regime and as a chronicle and a history of the Goths. The chronicle in particular was carefully crafted to present the Goths in the best possible light, for instance by shrewdly substituting the ecumenical term christiana for catholica when the author thought it prudent to do so.60 Even texts from slightly further afield such as the vita of Caesarius of Arles portray Theoderic as a wise and pious king.61 This positive view of Theoderic and his regime is also echoed by other members of Rome’s Christian elite, although it must be said that public decla56  E.g. Gelasius frag. 13, ed. Thiel, p. 490 to Quinigesius and Constantinus: “ad comitatum filii mei regis . . . vir praecellentissimus filius meus Theodericus rex . . .”; frag. 11, ed. Thiel, p. 489 to bishops Gerontius and John, “ad comitatum domini filii nostri [sc. Theoderic] . . .” 57  Ennodius, Vita Epiphanii (hereafter VE) 144, ed. and trans. Cook. See also the discussion in Cesa’s Italian edition of the VE, p. 157. On the Vita Epiphanii and its depiction of Theoderic as a Christian (and Roman) ruler see Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 181–94. 58  In recounting Epiphanius’ embassy to Theoderic, which sought the restoration of legal privileges for the former partisans of the now-deposed Odovacer, the saint appeals directly to the king’s sense of himself as a Christian. Theoderic responded by pointing to Saul’s failure to exterminate the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15) before ultimately agreeing to Epiphanius’ petition. Ennodius, VE 125–35, pp. 82–7. 59  See also Ennodius’ letter to Caesarius of Arles (not Symmachus, as Vogel thought), ep. 9.30, 10 (op. 458), ed. Vogel, pp. 318–19. On the addressee of this letter see Amory, People and Identity, p. 206, n. 52. 60  For example, Cassiodorus’ Chronica, a. 380, ed. Mommsen, p. 153 renames Ambrose’ pro catholica fide, as the work is called in Prosper’s chronicle, to de christiania fide. See O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 36–43, especially pp. 38–9. 61  Vita Caesarii I. 36, ed. and trans. Bona, pp. 102–5.

Religious Diversity

515

rations of support for a militarily dominant strong-man, however enlightened he may have been, should be taken with a large grain of salt.62 Of course we would not expect a condemnation of Theoderic’s faith (or any aspect of his rule) from men deeply implicated in the regime (especially in a panegyric as in the case of Ennodius).63 But what is so fascinating about the examples of Gelasius, Cassiodorus, Ennodius, and the authors of Vita Caesarii is that these men were not tolerant of ‘Arianism’. In fact various examples from their writings show them to have been resolutely hostile to this archetypal heresy.64 Gelasius in particular specifically condemned Arianism in a number of his letters and tractates,65 and the Liber Pontificalis also claims that Gelasius composed “duos libros aduersus Arrium.”66 Cassiodorus likewise attacked the “lunatic rashness of the Arians” in his Expositio Psalmorum.67 All of these authors, writing during the first decades of Theoderic’s rule, clearly distinguished between the heresy of ‘Arianism’—a flexible and pejorative heresiological category—and the faith of the Ostrogoths. There was precedent for such a distinction. Not unlike the example of Judaism discussed above, a certain form of non-Nicene Christianity enjoyed limited protection in late Roman society. In a western law of 386 promulgated

62  For example, Theoderic is acclaimed thirty times by the attendees of the Roman synod of 499: “Exaudi Christe! Theoderico Vitam!” See “Acta synhodorum habitarum Romae”, ed. Mommsen, p. 405. 63  Ennodius, Panegyricus, ed. Rohr, p. 18. It should be noted that panegyric appears not to have been officially commissioned by the Ostrogothic regime and there is no consensus as to whether it was ever in fact recited to the king (or what he would have made of it). Rohr’s view that it was given in Rome is based on a misreading of Pan. 22. For the misreading see Schröder, “Ein falsches Argument” and in general: Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 32–6 and especially n. 108 and 109. 64  “Archetypal heresy” is a phrase borrowed from the Maurice F. Wiles book of that name. 65  Gelasius’ condemnations of ‘Arianism’ are in every case directly linked to the Acacian schism, not the religion of the Ostrogoths. See Cohen, Heresy, Authority, pp. 192–4. 66  LP, ed. Duchesne, vol. I, p. 255. These books are not mentioned in any other ancient source according to Duchesne p. 257, n. 14. If these works were actually written, they do not survive. 67  Cassiodorus, Expositio Psalmorum 54.20, ed. P.G. Walsh, Explanation of the Psalms, 3 vols., New York 1990. Ennodius, VE 92, pp. 68–9 has Epiphanius of Pavia refrain from dining with the Visigothic king Euric for fear of being polluted by his priests, although they are not called ‘Arian’. And as noted above, the authors of the Vita Caesarii describe the saint as redeeming hostages to ensure that Christians who had lost their freedom would not become “perhaps an Arian or a Jew”.

516

Cohen

by Valentinian II68 the emperor differentiated Homoianism, as represented by the Creed of Rimini (359), from the other proscribed versions of non-Nicene Christianity.69 The inclusion of this law in the Theodosian Code suggests that it was still valid more than half a century after its initial promulgation and that it was meant to remain in effect for the foreseeable future.70 Perhaps as a result of the protection they received under the law, a number of non-Nicene communities existed in Italy prior to the Ostrogothic conquest, although it is difficult to reconstruct the degree to which they survived, especially during the second half of the 5th century.71 There is also evidence of Latin-speaking Homoian communities in Illyricum on the Dalmatian coast and in parts of Pannonia.72 None of these communities would have identified themselves as

68  The law is in the names of Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius; however Humfress characterizes this law as a deliberate attack by Valentinian against “Theodosius’ definition of orthodoxy” which established an inclusive rather than exclusive definition of orthodoxy. Humfress, “Law and Orthodoxy”, p. 146. 69  The Council of Rimini (Ariminum) took place in 359. The creeds promulgated at Rimini and at the parallel Council at Seleucia, and finally in Constantinople in 360 state that Jesus was “like the Father (homoios) as the divine Scriptures teach.” The Creed of Ariminum/ Rimini is preserved in Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica 2.21. The creed accepted at Constantinople can be found in Athanasius, De Synodis 30, translated in Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, p. 293. 70  CT 16.1.4. 71  The important study by Zeiller remains worthwhile: “Étude sur l’arianisme”, especially pp. 128–36, on the non-Nicene Church in Italy and the Ostrogoths. Many non-Nicene churches such as those known for Milan and Aquileia, were 4th-century foundations and it is difficult to trace their existence into the second half of the 5th century. Possible 5thcentury non-Nicene churches have been detected (largely in literary sources) in Naples, Grado, and Spoleto. See Cecchelli, “L’arianesimo”, pp. 757–9, 761–73; Cecchelli/Bertelli, “Edifici”, pp. 235–8. Textual evidence for the communities is largely limited to the later 4th and 5th centuries and includes the Collectio Veronensis, so-called Arian scholia edited by Gryson, the Anonymi in Iob Commentarius and the opus imperfectum in Matthaeum. For scholia see: Scripta Arriana Latina: Collectio Veronensis, Scholia in Concilium Aquileiense, Fragmenta in Lucam rescripta, Fragmenta theologica rescripta, Volume 1, ed. R. Gryson, Turnhout 1982. A list of so-called Arian Latin sources can be found in the Dekkers, Clavis Patrum Latinorum, pp. 680–708. 72  Meslin, Les Ariens, pp. 59–99. Whether or not 5th- and 6th-century Italy, together with the Balkans, was an “Arian stronghold” as claimed by Patrick Amory can be debated. However it does seem likely that an indigenous non-Nicene Christianity remained part of the religious landscape long after its supposed defeat by Ambrose of Milan at the Council of Aquileia (381).

Religious Diversity

517

‘Arians’.73 However the original intent of this law was almost certainly to provide legal sanction for the faith of many of the foederati who were important members of the Roman army.74 Indeed in the second half of the 5th century Italy was dominated by the non-Nicene magister militum Ricimer (died 472) and his successor Gundobad.75 Ricimer in particular is thought to have patronized the Homoian Church and was likely responsible for the decoration of Saint Agatha in Rome.76 Yet our textual evidence is silent on the supposed religious deviance of these two men. Ennodius’ Vita Epiphanii omits any mention of Ricimer’s faith.77 This same text also presents relatively positive portraits of both Odovacer and Gundobad.78 Indeed Odovacer managed to rule Italy with little comment about his religion for thirteen years. He is not called an Arian by Eugippius in his Life of St Severinus, a text written around 511 in which

73  Palladius of Ratiara, for example, who was deposed by Ambrose in 381, denied any formal connections to Arius. Like many bishops at this time, Palladius opposed the term homoousios on the grounds that it was not scriptural. On Palladius’ rejection of the term ‘Arian’ see Barnes/Williams, “Introduction”, p. xv, n. 7. 74  Mathisen, “Ricimer’s Church”, p. 310; Gwynn, “Archaeology and the ‘Arian Controversy’ ”, pp. 258–9; Heather, Goths and Romans, pp. 182–4. 75  PLRE, vol. 2: Flavius Ricimer 2. PLRE, vol. 2: Gundobadus 1. According to Gregory of Tours, libri historiarum X, 2.32, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, Hannover 1951, vol. 1.1, p. 78, Gundobad (and “the people”) were Arians. Avitus of Vienne may well have convinced Gundobad to convert to Catholicism after he assumed the kingship of the Burgundians, although he refused to confess his new faith in public. His son and successor Sigismund, on the other hand, was a professed Catholic. For the context of Gundobad’s rule see Heil, Avitus von Vienne und die homöische Kirche der Burgunder, pp. 15–23. 76  Ricimer decorated the church (today, Sant’Agata dei Goti) with mosaics and the ILS (inscriptiones latinae selectae) 1294, preserves the inscription: “Fl. Ricimer v.i. magister utriusque militae patricius et ex cons. ord. pro voto suo adornavit.” Ward-Perkins, noting epigraphical evidence from the Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae (vol. 2, p. 438, no. 127 = Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres 1637) states that Ricimer not only decorated but actually built “the Arian church of S. Agata dei Goti (459/70).” Ward-Perkins, Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, appendix 2, p. 240. On St Agatha see also Zeiller, “Les Eglises ariennes”, pp. 19–23. St Agatha was re-dedicated to Nicene Christianity by Gregory the Great in 591 or 592. See Gregory the Great, Dialogi 3.30, ed. A. de Vogüé, Sources Chrétiennes, Paris 1978–80, vols. 251, 255, 265. 77  Ennodius does not, however, hesitate to have a group of Ligurian nobles derisibly call Anthemius, the Western Roman Emperor who had been appointed by Leo I, graeculus. See Ennodius, VE 54, pp. 52–3. 78  Odovacer: Ennodius, VE 101, pp. 72–3; Gundobad: VE 152–67, pp. 93–101.

518

Cohen

Odovacer comes off rather well.79 His religion, like that of Ricimer before him and Theoderic after, had been an unremarkable part of the Italian religious landscape for more than a century. A similar situation existed in the eastern half of the empire. The supposed ‘Arianism’ of Aspar and his son Ardabur was at least grudgingly accepted in Constantinople at the same time Theoderic himself was likely in the eastern capital as a hostage.80 But what of the Ostrogoths’ faith and their church? The exact nature of Ostrogothic theology and ecclesiology is perhaps irrecoverable due to the poor state of our available evidence.81 But some conclusions are possible. The Ravenna papyri reveal the presence of a sizeable non-Nicene clergy in the city during the Ostrogothic period—sixteen of whom were still in the service of the Gothic cathedral dedicated to the Anastasis (or possibly to St Anastasias) as late as 551—that is, long after the glory days of the Ostrogothic kingdom had passed into history.82 As the capital of Theoderic’s kingdom in earlier decades, Ravenna had become a centre of non-Nicene church building. According to the testimony of Agnellus of Ravenna, the city had two episcopal palaces (episcopia) and at least six Gothorum ecclesiae, two of which—the palatine church (today Sant’Apollinare Nuovo) built next to Theoderic’s palace complex and the above-mentioned Gothic cathedral—are still standing today, together with the famous ‘Arian Baptistery’, which was originally part of the cathedral complex.83 There is nothing particularly ‘Gothic’ or ‘Arian’ about any 79  Eugippius, Vita Sancti Severini 7.22, ed. R. Noll/E. Vetter, Berlin 1963. See also Anon. Val. 45, which cites the Vita of Severinus. Interestingly, Gelasius, ep. 26, ed. Thiel, p. 409 calls Odovacer a “barbarus hereticus” in a letter to the bishops of Dardania in 495. Presumably it was safe (and even politically advisable) to denigrate the previous regime once Theoderic had established himself in Italy. Hereticus here is plainly a polemical term, not an accurate description of Odovacer’s beliefs. This is a good example that one could ‘become’ a heretic when political circumstances shifted. 80  And like Theoderic in Italy, the Ardaburs were often called upon to intervene in the affairs of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople. See Snee, “Gregory Nazianzen”, pp. 180–1. On Theoderic in Constantinople see Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 13–14. 81  Brown, Role of Arianism, p. 417 has a rather more positive opinion of our available evidence. 82  On the dedication see Deichmann, Ravenna, pp. 301–3 (to St Anastasius); to the Anastasis (that is, the resurrection of Christ) Johnson, “Toward a History of Theoderic’s Building Program”, pp. 79–80. Clergy: Tjäder, Die lateinischen Papyri, pp. 98–104. 83  Episcopia: Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis 70, ed. O. HolderEgger, p. 326. On the non-Nicene churches of Ravenna and their later suppression see Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis 85–92, ed. O. Holder-Egger, pp. 334–6. They are also described in detail by Johnson, “Toward a History of Theoderic’s Building Program”, pp. 79–80 and especially by Deliyannis, Ravenna, pp. 143–87.

Religious Diversity

519

of the surviving buildings (the fact that they were easily converted for use by the orthodox is suggestive), although specialists have discerned subtle hints of their heterodox origins in their iconographic programmes—faint echoes of non-Nicene Christianity in tesserae. Yet what is striking is not the radical difference between orthodox and ‘Arian’ iconography but its similarity.84 The ‘Arian Baptistery’ itself was built in direct imitation of its orthodox counterpart and the baptismal rites that would have been practised there in the Ostrogothic period were also, as far as we can tell, practically identical to those of the orthodox.85 Indeed in Italy as well as in North Africa and elsewhere there are simply no detectable differences between ‘Arian’ and Nicene church construction whatsoever.86 The fact that ‘Arians’ and Catholics were happy enough to take over each other’s buildings, often leaving the decorative programmes largely intact, also suggests that there was no fundamental incompatibility, at least architecturally and artistically, between the two churches.87 On the other hand, language may have distinguished the eccelsia of the Goths from that of the Catholics. Theoderic’s church could have used the vernacular (Gothic) although a number of Gothic writers also wrote in Latin. There may have also been differences in the liturgical calendar of the Gothic church as well.88 The ascension of Justin I, the end of the Acacian schism in 519, and the eventual rise to power of Justinian signal a shift in Catholic attitudes to Gothic heterodoxy (and possibly of Theoderic’s attitude towards the organized Catholic establishment in Italy). As Brian Croke highlighted almost thirty years ago, it was only in the second and third decades of the 6th century that it became obvious to Romans in the east “that a Gothic kingdom was not part of the Roman Empire”, and so “agitation began for unification once more under a Roman emperor”.89 Anti-Arianism and the defence of orthodoxy emerged as key elements of Justinian’s renovatio ideology, which was in turn mobilized to justify and endorse his attempts to conquer Africa and Italy. In sharp contrast to the writings of Gelasius, Cassiodorus, and Ennodius referred to above in the

84  Ward-Perkins, “Archaeology and Iconography”, p. 271 states that despite subtle stylistic differences, the underlying iconography in the ‘Arian’ and ‘Catholic’ baptisteries are identical. See also Bockmann, Non-Archeology of Arianism, pp. 210–12. 85  Wood, “Merely an Ideology?”, pp. 250–1; Deliyannis, Ravenna, pp. 178–9. 86  Bockmann, “Non-Archeology of Arianism”, p. 217. 87  Ward-Perkins, “Archaeology and Iconography”, p. 267. 88  Berndt/Steinacher, “The ecclesia legis Gothorum and the Role of ‘Arianism’ in Ostorogothic Italy”, pp. 225–7. 89  Croke, “A.D. 476”, p. 86.

520

Cohen

520s and 530s and after it became increasingly common for authors to equate Arriani and Gothi. The growing tendency to view Theoderic’s regime as both politically and religiously problematic during this period helps explain the discrepant depictions of Ostrogothic Arianism in our later sources. For instance the vitae of earlier Roman bishops in the Liber Pontificalis such as Felix III (483–92), Gelasius (492–6), Anastasius II (496–8), Symmachus (498–514), and Hormisdas (514– 23) refer to Theoderic merely as rex.90 But an increasingly critical tone can be detected after the biography of Hormisdas, the Roman bishop who negotiated the end of the Acacian schism. In the biography of John I (523–6) Theoderic is described as the “heretic king” who wished to put “all of Italy to the sword”. Moreover, the Liber Pontificalis suggested Theoderic was responsible for John’s death—a fact which contributed to the Gothic king’s own death shortly thereafter.91 But the most obvious contrast in the depiction of the Ostrogothic religion can be seen in the Anonymus Valesianus. The source is problematic, not least because it presents two radically different views of Theoderic’s regime.92 On the one hand, this source famously states that Theoderic “so governed two peoples at the same time (duas gentes in uno), Romans and Goths, that although he himself was of the Arian sect, he nevertheless made no assault against the Catholic religion”.93 The Anonymus also states that during his visit to Rome in 500 the king worshiped at St Peter’s ac si catholicus.94 However, later in the same text Theoderic is said to have ordered the takeover of all Catholic churches by the “Arriani” (with the help of the Jew Symmachus)—an act which seems to have prompted a divine intervention with the result that Theoderic died ignominiously on the privy in the same way as Arius himself.95 These sources represent an obvious change in the way Theoderic and his faith were perceived—no longer as an alter communio but as Arriani. In the end it was not the Catholic churches of Italy that were seized by heretical barbarians, it was the Homoian churches that were appropriated by the Catholics. 90  Theoderic is also called a heretic in the epitomes of the vita Symmachi. 91  LP, ed. Duchesne, vol. I. p. 275. “Pro hanc causam hereticus rex Theodericus audiens hoc exarsit et uoluit totam Italiam ad gladium extinguere.” 92  The two perspectives are so different that some scholars have proposed that the work was in fact a compilation of two different texts: one in support of Theoderic and the other deeply opposed to the Ostrogothic king. On the debates surrounding the Anonymus and its authorship, see Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, pp. 65–6 and notes 22–3. 93  Anon. Val. 60. 94  Anon. Val. 65. 95  Anon. Val. 94–5. See also Barnish, “Anonymus Valesianus II”.

Religious Diversity

521

In 551, over a decade after Belisarius had recaptured Ravenna from the Goths, the indebted clergy of the Gothic cathedral in that city sold some marshland to a defensor named Peter, likely a Catholic clergyman.96 This particular sale represents the last written record of a non-Nicene Gothic church in Ravenna. That the Gothic cathedral was forced to sell its property in order to pay its debts is an obvious indication that it was in deep financial distress.97 And when Justinian’s general Narses completed the conquest of Italy in 554, it was only a matter of time before the non-Nicene churches would be suppressed in territories controlled by the empire.98 But even in its final days, there are hints that the divisions between the two churches were not as definite as we might expect. The ecclesia legis Gothorum, as the Gothic cathedral is described in the Ravenna papyri, was in fact repaying a debt it had taken from Peter sixteen years early—that is, in 535 at the beginning of the conflict with the east. Despite the rising tensions a Gothic church could (and did) borrow from Catholics, and after years of conflict, which devastated Italy, the loan was repaid.

‘Pagans’, Pelagians, and Manicheans

As we have already seen in the case of Ostrogothic ‘Arianism’, the categories of heresy and orthodoxy were not always clearly defined nor do they represent distinct and self-contained groups engaged in inevitable theological conflict with each other. This same view can be extended to our references to the remnants of traditional Roman polytheism in Ostrogothic Italy. Once we set aside essentializing definitions for religious identities that emerged in explicitly polemical contexts, the divide between ‘paganism’ (the word itself was a convenient term invented by Christians to describe and denigrate a wide range of beliefs and practices) and Christianity no longer seems absolute.99 For instance, traditional rituals and practices could continue in a Christian context, although often stripped of any particular ‘pagan’ religious 96  Tjäder, Die lateinischen Papyri, pp. 98–104. Peter (Petrus) as a Catholic: Tjäder, p. 93 and Scardigli, Sprache und Kultur, pp. 282–3. 97  On the potential value of this marshland see Squatriti, “Marshes and Mentalities”, pp. 10–3. 98  This occurred after 565. On the date of the suppression of the ‘Arian’ Church see Deliyannis, Ravenna, p. 146 and n. 42. 99  On the invention of the term ‘paganism’ and for an overview of the traditions and practices it is meant to cover see Fowden, “Late Polytheism: the World-view”, p. 521; Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity, pp. 5–6. The distortion caused by emphasizing conflict between Christians and ‘Pagans’, heretics and the ‘orthodox’, is succinctly addressed in Sandwell, Religious Identity, p. 10; Lyman, “Hellenism and Heresy”, especially pp. 209–11.

522

Cohen

sentiment.100 An example of this phenomenon can be detected in Gelasius’ letter condemning the ancient festival of the Lupercalia and its senatorial supporters, especially a certain Andromachus.101 Neil Mclynn has argued that the celebration of the Lupercalia at the end of the 5th century was not indicative of a revival of classical pagan traditions. Rather it represents a species of euergetism—an opportunity for rich aristocrats such as Andromachus and the other members of Rome’s civil administration to show off to the populace and to relive the storied past of the city. The connection between the Lupercalia and euergetism is also suggested in Ennodius’ panegyric to Theoderic, which refers to the festival in the context of the king’s efforts to renovate and restore Rome.102 Although our references to the Lupercalia do not seem to represent a kind of pagan—Christian syncretism, it is nonetheless interesting that this festival, even if devoid of its original religious significance, was still celebrated by Rome’s Christians (with the support of the city’s elite).103 Another example of so-called ‘popular religion’ that can be detected in our sources is magic. Although subject to the denunciations of Roman law and episcopal authority, magic, sorcery, and divination may well have remained an important part of religious life for many late antique men and women, allowing them the possibility of directly manipulating the supernatural world, be it for love, health, revenge, and enumerable other fears and desires.104 Even churchmen seemed to be involved if we believe a reference in a surviving letter of Gelasius to a deacon teaching magical practices (ars magicae).105 Caesarius of Arles’ sermons also attack the superstitions of the peasants, although the

100  Even practices such as animal sacrifice can be found in 5th-century Italy, see Trout, Christianizing the Nolan Countryside. 101  Gelasius, Adversus Andromachum, ed. Thiel tract. 6, pp. 598–607. The attribution to Gelasius has been challenged, but not convincingly. On its authorship see McLynn, “Crying Wolf”, p. 162, n. 9. Andromachus = PLRE, vol. 2, Andromachus 2. 102  Ennodius, Pan. 56, ed. Rohr, p. 236. 103  See the introduction in Lettre contre les Lupercales et dix-huit messes du sacramentaire léonien, ed. G. Pomarès, Sources chrétiennes Paris 1959, vol. 65; Holleman, Pope Gelasius I and the Lupercalia; Ullmann, Gelasius, pp. 252–54. However McLynn’s analysis is by far the best and the earlier works should be read with caution. See especially “Crying Wolf”, pp. 165–6 (contra Holleman), and the conclusions at pp. 172–5. 104  Frankfurter, “Beyond Magic”; Dickie, Magic and Magicians, pp. 273–321. On the denunciation of magical practices see Flint, “Demonization of Magic”; Harl, “La dénonciation des festivités profanes”. 105  Gelasius, frag. 16, ed. Thiel, p. 492.

Religious Diversity

523

polemical and formulaic nature of his condemnations make an analysis of rural religion in southern Ostrogothic-controlled Gaul problematic.106 More troubling for orthodox authorities in the Ostrogothic kingdom was the presence of Christian heretics, especially Pelagianism. Gelasius wrote a long tractate condemning the heresy, adversus Pelagiam haeresim,107 as well as a number of letters to bishops in Picenum on the north-east coast of Italy and Dalmatia, the province opposite Picenum on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea. From Gelasius’ perspective, the appearance of Pelagianism reflected serious failures of these local churches to enforce discipline—failures that prompted Rome’s direct intervention. And at least in the case of Picenum, the spread of heretical ideas was exacerbated by ‘the barbarians’—here likely a reference to the conflict between Odovacer and Theoderic that had caused devastation in northern Italy.108 To Honorius of Dalmatia Gelasius chastised the bishop for failing to properly watch over his clergy and flock—a failure that permitted the recurring weed of Pelagianism (recidiva Pelagianae pestis zizania) to resurface even after its repeated condemnation by the bishops of Rome.109 In a slightly different context the Pelagian controversy also troubled Hormisdas in 519–20 when John Maxentius and his Scythian monks, then residing at Rome, together with their North African supporters including Fulgentius of Ruspe attempted to have the teachings of Faustus of Riez condemned as Pelagian. Hormisdas was less than impressed.110 In addition to Pelagianism 6th-century Italian sources also refer the heresy of Manichaeism. The Liber Pontificalis reports that Gelasius, Symmachus, and Hormisdas discovered Manicheans in Rome, and all three bishops are said to have burned Manichean books and to have sent the heretics themselves into exile.111 But in Late Antiquity ‘Manicheanism’, like ‘Arianism’, was used by orthodox polemicists in an increasingly abstract and epithetical manner.112 For example, Symmachus himself is called a Manichean by Emperor Anastasius and Roman bishops including Symmachus commonly compared their 106  Klingshirn, Caearius of Arles, pp. 209–10. 107  Gelasius, tractatus adversus Pelagiam haeresim, ed. Thiel, tract. 5, pp. 571–98. 108  Gelasius, ep. 6.1, ed. Thiel, pp. 325–35. “sed quantum inter ipsa recentium calamitatum ferventia pericula comperimus, perniciosiorem diabolus Christianorum mentibus labem, quam corporibus hostilis feritas, irrogavit.” 109  Gelasius, ep. 4.1,3, ed. Thiel, pp. 321–3. 110  Hormasdas, ep. 124, ed. Thiel, pp. 926–31. 111  L P, ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, pp. 270–1. 112  Despite the tendency among orthodox polemicists to describe Manicheanism as monolithic, the nature of the Manichean religion, especially in North Africa, was fluid. See, for instance, Lim, “Unity and Diversity” and “Nomen Manichaeorum”.

524

Cohen

o­ pponents in the Acacian schism to the “Manichean wickedness”.113 Given the rhetorical use of the accusation of Manicheanism the references to this sect in the biographies of Gelasius, Symmachus, and Hormisdas may well owe more to the circumstances in which the Liber Pontificalis was composed, especially in the context of the Acacian and Laurentian schisms, than any particular anti-Manichean campaign initiated by these bishops.114 Nevertheless, it is true that Gelasius warned new bishops not to ordain Africans without deliberation (nulla ratione), since some of them were known to be Manicheans while others were re-baptized.115 In another letter Gelasius also reported that he had learned that congregants of the church of Squillace (Scyllaceum in Calabria) had refused to participate in the Eucharist, an accusation that echoes those made by Leo the Great and Augustine against the Manicheans.116 However, the particular superstitio in Squillace is not named. Roman bishops’ concern for heresy—especially Pelagianism and Manichaeism—was of course theological and soteriological. But it was also connected to anxieties over private religious practices that took place outside the supervision of the church.117 This was especially true in the case of Pelagianism, which had long associations with domestic religiosity, asceticism, 113  The accusation against Symmachus can be inferred from his response to the emperor written in 506. Symmachus, ep. 10, ed. Thiel, pp. 700–8. Christological error as “Manichean wickedness”, for example in Symmachus, ep. 13.6, ed. Thiel, pp. 717–22. “Declinemus sacrilegum Eutychetis errorem cum Manichaea malitia congruentem.” 114  As I argue in Cohen, “Schism and the Polemic of Heresy”. 115  Gelasius, ep. 15, ed. Thiel, pp. 379–80. Manicheanism and Donatism (presumably the target of the reference to re-baptism) were both associated with Africa. Interestingly almost 100 years after Gelasius’ letter, Gregory the Great wrote to the bishop of Squillace with the same warning, using almost identical phrasing. It is difficult to imagine that Donatists and Manicheanism continued to trouble Italian bishops at the dawn of the 7th century. See Gregory the Great, ep. 2.37, ed. D. Norberg, S. Gregorii Magni Registrum epistularum, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina vols. 140, 140a, Turnhout 1982. 116  Gelasius, ep. 37, ed. Thiel, pp. 450–2. Leo, tr. 42.5, ed. A. Chavasse, Leo Magnus Tractatus, Turnhout 1973, pp. 238–50. Augustine, de haeresibus 46.11, eds. R. Van der Plaetse/ C. Beukers, Sancti Aurelii Augustini De haeresibus, Turnhout 1969, p. 316 explains that the Manicheans avoid wine because its bitterness is a property of the prince of darkness: “Nam et uinum non bibunt, dicentes fel esse principum tenebrarum, cum uescantur uuis.” On the Manichean refusal to drink wine, see Grillmeier, “Verweigerung der Kelchkommunion durch römische Manichäer unter Papst Leo I”, pp. 151–61. 117  Late antique episcopal opposition to estate-based worship was often closely tied to broader questions of discipline and heresy. See, for example, Bowes, “ ‘Christianization’ and the Rural Home”, pp. 155–60 and Private Worship, Public Values, p. 102. Christian Roman emperors had consistently legislated against private meetings of the ‘heretics’,

Religious Diversity

525

and the aristocracy.118 Indeed the leaders of the late antique Italian church were intensely aware that domestic religious practice, especially in elite households, helped generate and preserve a model of Christian religiosity that often complemented but potentially diverged from the model of public worship controlled by bishops.119 The home could also provide a space for the propagation of teachings or practices that were considered outside the accepted norm.120 Thus it should not be surprising that in the later 5th and 6th centuries, Roman bishops made a concerted attempt to more strictly regulate private religious foundations in Italia Suburbicaria.121 This was certainly part of a wider process of professionalization and bureaucratization of the Roman Church that was underway in the Ostrogothic period.122 But interest and intervention in private religious foundations also served to demonstrate the authority of Rome’s bishops through their expertise in household management.123 It is perhaps possible that the threat of heresies such as Pelagianism provided an additional ideological justification for more clearly delineating the relationships between the bishop of Rome and Italian villa churches.124 Conclusion The use of heresiological categories to describe the religious landscape of Italy under the Ostrogoths creates an image of a world dominated by a radical division between heretics and orthodox Italians. But if we set this view aside, we are left with a far messier but perhaps more interesting religious landscape that includes Jews as well as non-Nicene Christians and other non-­conforming religious groups, all of whom from the perspective of the Nicene church occupied different positions on the spectrum of acceptable belief. Moreover, the boundaries dividing these different communities may not have been as rigidly enforced in practice as we might imagine, and the question of identity,

especially the Donatists, Manicheans, and Arians, but also others. For representative examples from the Theodosian Code see Maier, “Religious Dissent”, p. 60, n. 8. 118  Brown, “Pelagius and his Supporters”; Brown, “Patrons of Pelagius”. 119  Sessa, “Christianity and the Cubiculum”. 120  Maier, “Topography of Heresy”, pp. 241–3; “Religious Dissent”, pp. 55–6. 121  Not always successfully. See Pietri, “Évergétisme chrétien et fondations privées”. 122  Pietri, Christiana respublica, pp. 1482–94; Marazzi, I “Patrimonia”, pp. 65–79. 123  Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 161–73. 124  Cohen, Heresy, Authority, pp. 147–50.

526

Cohen

especially Ostrogothic identity, is at a minimum complicated by the diverse, at times contested, but never isolated nature of religion in Late Antiquity. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Acta Synhodorum habitae Romae A. CCCCXCVIIII. DI. DII, ed. T. Mommsen (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12) Berlin 1892, pp. 392–455. Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, ed. O. Holder-Egger, (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI–IX), Hannover 1878, pp. 265–391; ed. and trans. D.M. Deliyannis, The Book of Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna, Washington 2004. Anonymi Valesiani pars posterior, ed. T. Mommsen (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 9), Berlin 1892, pp. 306–28; trans., J.C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus: Res Gestae, vol. 3, Cambridge, MA 1939, pp. 531–69. Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894. Codex Theodosianus, eds. T. Mommsen/P. Meyer, Berlin 1905. Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens aus der Zeit 445–700, vol. 2., ed. J.O. Tjäder, Lund 1955. Ennodius, Opera, ed. F. Vogel, Magni Felicis Ennodi Opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 7), Berlin 1885. ———, Panegyricus dictus clementissimo rege Theoderico, ed. and trans. C. Rohr, Der Theoderich-Panegyricus des Ennodius (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien, Hannover 1995; ed. and trans. S. Rota, Magno Felici Ennodio: Panegirico del Clementissimo Re Teoderico, Rome 2002. ———, Vita Epiphanii, ed. and trans. G.M. Cook, The Life of Saint Epiphanius by Ennodius, Washington 1942; ed. and trans. M. Cesa, Vita del beatissimo Epifanio vescovo della chiesa pavese, Como 1988. Epistolae Romanorum Pontificum, ed. A. Thiel, Braunsberg 1868. Epistulae Theodericianae Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, in Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 12), Berlin 1894, pp. 389–92. Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. 1, ed. D. Noy, Cambridge 1993. Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis: texte, introduction et commentaire, 2nd ed., 3 vols., Paris 1955–57. The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages, ed. A. Linder, Detroit 1998. The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation, ed. A. Linder, Detroit 1987. Vita Sancti Caesarii Episcopi Arelantensis, ed. and trans. E. Bona, Amsterdam 2002; trans. W.E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament, Letters, Liverpool 1994, pp. 9–65.

Religious Diversity



Secondary Literature

527

Allen, P./Bronwen, N., Crisis Management in Late Antiquity (410–590 CE): a Survey of the Evidence from Episcopal Letters, Leiden 2013. Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554, Cambridge 1997. Arnold, J.J., Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, Cambridge 2014. Ayres, L., Nicaea and Its Legacy: an Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology, Oxford 2004. Bachrach, B.S., “The Jewish Community of the Later Roman Empire As Seen in the Codex Theodosianus”, in J. Neusner/E.S. Frerichs (eds.), “To See Ourselves as Others see Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, Chico 1985, pp. 299–422. Barnes, M.R./Williams, D.H., “Introduction”, in id./ead. (eds.), Arianism after Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth Century Trinitarian Conflicts, Edinburgh 1993. Barnish, S.J.B., “The Anonymus Valesianus II as a Source for the Last Years of Theoderic”, Latomus 42 (1983), 572–96. Berndt, G.M./Steinacher, R., “The ecclesia legis Gothorum and the Role of ‘Arianism’ in Ostorogothic Italy”, in G.M. Berndt/R. Steinacher (eds.), Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, Farnham 2014, pp. 219–29. Bockmann, R., “The Non-Archaeology of Arianism—What Comparing Cases in Carthage, Haïdra and Ravenna can tell us about ‘Arian’ Churches”, in G.M. Berndt/ R. Steinacher (eds.), Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, Farnham 2014, pp. 201–18. Bowersock, G., Hellenism in Late Antiquity, Ann Arbor 1990. Bowes, K., “Christianization’ and the Rural Home”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 15 (2007), 143–70. ———, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2008. Boyarin, D., Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism, Stanford 1999. ———, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Philadelphia 2004. Boyarin, D./Burrus, V., “Hybridity as Subversion of Orthodoxy? Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity”, Social Compass 52.4 (2005), 431–41. Brennecke, H.C., “Framing the Historical and Theological Problems”, in G.M. Berndt/ R. Steinacher (eds.), Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, Farnham 2014, pp. 1–19. ———, “Imitatio—reparatio—continuatio: Die Judengesetzgebung im Ostgotenreich Theoderichs des Grossen als reparatio imperii?” Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 4 (2000), 133–48. Brown, P., “Pelagius and his Supporters: Aims and Environment”, in id., Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine, London 1973, pp. 183–207.

528

Cohen

———, “The Patrons of Pelagius”, in id., Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine, London 1973, pp. 208–26. Brown, T.S., “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”, in A. Carile (ed.), Storia di Ravenna, vol. 2, Venice 1991, pp. 135–49. ———, “The Role of Arianism in Ostrogothic Italy: The Evidence from Ravenna”, in S.J.B. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the 6th Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 417–26. Burrus, V., Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy, Berkeley 1995. Cecchelli, C., “L’arianesimo e le chiese Ariane d’Italia”, in Le chiese nei regni dell’Europa occidentale e i loro rapporti con Roma sino all’ 800 (Settimane di Studi del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 7), Spoleto 1960, pp. 743–888. Cecchelli, M./Bertelli C., “Edifici di culto ariano in Italia”, in Actes du XIe Congrès international d’archéologie chrétienne: Lyon, Vienne, Grenoble, Genève et Aoste (21–28 Septembre 1986), Rome 1989, pp. 233–47. Chastagnol A./Gagé, J./Leglay, M./Pflaum, H.G. (eds.), L’Année épigraphique, Année 1976 (1980), no. 247. Cohen, S., Heresy, Authority and the Bishops of Rome in the Fifth Century: Leo I (440–461) and Gelasius (492–496), PhD diss., University of Toronto 2014. ———, “Schism and the Polemic of Heresy: Manichaeism and the Representation of Papal Authority in the Liber Pontificalis”, Journal of Late Antiquity 8.1 (2015), 198–230. Colafemmina, C., “Insediamenti e condizione degli Ebrei nell’Italia meridionale e insulare”, in Gli Ebrei nell’Alto Medioevo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 26), Spoleto 1980, pp. 197–227. Croke, B., “A.D. 476: The Manufacture of a Turning Point”, Chiron 13 (1983), 81–119. De Bonfils, G., Gli schiavi degli ebrei nella legislazione del IV secolo: Storia di un divieto, Bari 1993. Deichmann, F.W., Ravenna: Hauptstadt des spätantiken Abendlandes, vol. 2, Wiesbaden 1976. Dekkers, E., Clavis Patrum Latinorum, 3rd ed., Steenbrugis 1995. Dickie, M.W., The Demonization of Magic and Sorcery in Late Antiquity: Christian Redefinitions of Pagan Religions, New York 2001. de Lange, N., “Jews in the Age of Justinian”, in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge 2005, pp. 401–26. Deliyannis, D.M., Ravenna in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2010. Feldman, L.H., Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian, Princeton 1993. Fowden, G., “Late Polytheism: the World-view”, in A.K. Bowman/P. Garnsey/A. Cameron (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 12: The Crisis of the Empire, AD 193–337, Cambridge 2005, pp. 521–37.

Religious Diversity

529

Grillmeier, A., “Verweigerung der Kelchkommunion durch römische Manichäer unter Papst Leo I. (440–461). Zum manichäischen und kirchlichen Eucharistieverständnis”, in L. Lies (ed.), Praesentia Christi. Fetschrift Johannes Betz zum 70. Geburtstag, Düsseldorf 1984, pp. 151–61. Goodman, M. (ed.), Jews in a Graeco-Roman World, Oxford 1998. Gwynn, D.M., The Eusebians: The Polemic of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Construction of the ‘Arian controversy’ Oxford 2007. ———, “Archaeology and the ‘Arian Controversy’ ”, in id./L. Lavan/S. Bangert (eds.), Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity, Leiden 2010, pp. 229–63. Gwynn, D.M./Bangert, S., “Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity: an Introduction”, in id./L. Lavan/ead. (eds.), Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity, Leiden 2010, pp. 7–14. Hanson, R.P.C., The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318– 381, Edinburgh 1988. Harl, M., “La dénonciation des festivités profanes dans le discours épiscopal et monastique en Orient Chretien a la fin du IVe siècle”, in id., Le Déchiffrement du sens: études sur l’herméneutique chrétienne d’Origène à Grégoire de Nysse, Paris 1993, pp. 433–53. Heather, P., Goths and Romans, 332–489, New York 1991. Heather, P./Matthews, J., The Goths in the Fourth Century, Liverpool 1991. Heil, U., Avitus von Vienne und die homöische Kirche der Burgunder, Berlin 2011. Holleman, A.W.J., Pope Gelasius I and the Lupercalia, Amsterdam 1974. Humfress, C., “Roman Law and the Formation of Christian Orthodoxy”, in S. Elm/ E. Rebillard/A. Romano (eds.), Orthodoxie, Christianisme, Histoire, Rome 2000, pp. 125–47. ———, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity. Oxford 2007. Iricinschi, E., and H.M. Zellentin, “Making Selves and Marking Others: Identity and Late Antique Heresiologies.” in id./ead. (eds.), Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, Tübingen 2008, pp. 1–29. Johnson, M.J., “Toward a History of Theoderic’s Building Program”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988), 73–96. Kelly, J.N.D., Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed., London 1972. Klingshirn, W.E., Caearius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul, Cambridge 1994. Lafferty, S.D.W., Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: a Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge 2013. Le Boulluec, A., La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque, vol. 1, Paris 1985. Leon, H.J., The Jews of Ancient Rome, rev. ed., Peabody 1995. Lienhard, J.T., “The “Arian” Controversy: Some Categories Reconsidered”, Theological Studies 48.3 (1987), 415–37. Lieu, J., Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World, Oxford 2004.

530

Cohen

Lim, R., “Unity and Diversity among Western Manichaeans: A reconsideration of Mani’s sancta ecclesia”, Revue des études Augustiniennes 35 (1989), 231–50. ———, “The Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity”, in E. Iricinschi/ H.M. Zellentin (eds.), Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, Tübingen 2008, pp. 143–67. Linder, A., “The Legal Status of the Jews in the Roman Empire”, in S.T. Katz (ed.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, Cambridge 2006, pp. 128–73. Luiselli, B., “Dall’arianesimo dei visigoti di costantinopoli all’arianesimo degli ostrogoti d’Italia”, in Ravenna da capitale imperiale a capitale esarcale: atti del XVII Congresso internazionale di studio sull’alto medioevo, Spoleto 2005, pp. 729–60. Lyman, J.R., “A Typography of Heresy: Mapping the Rhetorical Creation of Arianism”, in M.R. Barnes/D.H. Williams (eds.), Arianism after Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth Century Trinitarian Conflicts, Edinburgh 1993, pp. 45–62. ———, “Hellenism and Heresy (2002 NAPS Presidential Address)”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11. 2 (2003), 209–22. McGing, B., “Population and Proselytism: How many Jews were there in the ancient world?”, in J.R. Bartlett (ed.), Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, London 2002, pp. 99–106. McLynn, N., “Crying Wolf: The Pope and the Lupercalia”, Journal of Roman Studies 98 (2008), 161–75. Martindale, J.R. (ed.), The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2: A.D. 395– 527 Cambridge 1980. Mathisen, R.W., “Ricimer’s Church in Rome: How an Arian Barbarian Prospered in a Nicene World”, in A. Cain/N. Lenski (eds.), The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, Burlington 2009, pp. 308–25. ———, “Barbarian ‘Arian’ Clergy, Church Organization, and Church Practice”, in G.M. Berndt/R. Steinacher (eds.), Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, Farnham 2014, pp. 145–191. Maier, H.O., “Religious Dissent, Heresy and Households in Late Antiquity”, Vigiliae Christianae 49.1 (1995), 49–63. ———, “The Topography of Heresy and Dissent in Late-Fourth-Century Rome”, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 44.2 (1995), 232–49. Marazzi, F., I “Patrimonia sanctae Romanae ecclesiae” nel Lazio (secoli IV–X), Rome 1998. Meslin, M., Les Ariens d’Occident, 335–430, Paris 1967. Millar, F., “Christian Emperors, Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora in the Greek East, CE 379–450”, Journal of Jewish Studies 55.1 (2004), 1–24. Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, New York 1992. Noble, T., “Theoderic and the Papacy”, in O. Capitani (ed.), Teodorico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia: Atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, Spoleto 1993, pp. 395–423.

Religious Diversity

531

Pietri, L., “Évergétisme chrétien et fondations privées dans l’Italie de l’antiquité tardive” in J.-M. Carrié/R.L. Testa (eds.),“Humana sapit”. Études d’antiquité tardive offertes à Lella Cracco Ruggini, Turnhout 2002, pp. 253–63. ———, Christiana respublica: éléments d’une enquête sur le christianisme antique, 3 vols., Rome 1997. Rabello, A.M., “The Legal Condition of the Jews in the Roman Empire”, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.13 (1980), 662–762. Rebillard, É., “Conversion and Burial in the Late Roman Empire”, in K. Mills/A. Grafton (eds.), Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing, Rochester 2003, pp. 61–83. ———, Christians and their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa 200–450 CE, Ithaca 2012. Ruggini, L., “Ebrei e Orientali nell’Italia settentrionale fra il IV e il VI secolo d. Cr.”, Studia, et Documenta Historiae et Iuris 25 (1959), 186–308. Rutgers, L.V., “Archaeological Evidence for the Interaction of Jews and Non-Jews in Late Antiquity”, American Journal of Archaeology 96.1 (1992), 101–18. ———, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora, Leiden 1995. ———, “Interaction and Its Limits: Some Notes on the Jews of Sicily in Late Antiquity”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 115 (1997), 245–56. Rutgers, L.V./Bradbury, S., “The Diaspora, c. 235–638”, in T.S. Katz (ed.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, Cambridge 2006, pp. 492–518. Saitta, B., La Civilitas di Teodorico: Rigore amministrativo, “tolleranza” religiosa e recupero dell’antico nell’Italia Ostrogota, Rome 1993. Salzman, M.R., “Superstition in the ‘Codex Theodosianus’ and the Persecution of Pagans”, Vigiliae Christianae 4 (1987), 172–88. Sandwell, I., Religious Identity in Late Antiquity: Greeks, Jews, and Christians in Antioch, Cambridge 2007. Sardella, T., Società, Chiesa e Stato nell’età di Teodorico: Papa Simmaco e lo scisma laurenziano, Rome 1996. Scardigli, P., Die Goten: Sprache und Kultur, Munich 1973. Schäferdiek, K., “Ulfila und der sogenannte gotische Arianismus”, in G.M. Berndt/ R. Steinacher (eds.), Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, Farnham 2014, pp. 21–43. Schröder, B.-J., “Ein falsches Argument in der Diskussion über den Anlaß von Ennodius’ Theoderich-Panegyricus (zu Ennod., opusc. 1 [263 Vogel], § 22)”, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 54.4 (2005), 499–500. Schwartz, S., Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E., Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the ancient to the modern world, Princeton 2001.

532

Cohen

Snee, R., “Gregory Nazianzen’s Anastasia Church: Arianism, the Goths, and Hagiography”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 52 (1998), 157–86. Solin, H., “Juden und Syrer in westlichen Teil der römischen Welt: Eine ethnisch-­ demographische Studie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der sprachlichen Zustände”, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 29.2 (1983), 587–789. Somekh, A., “Teoderico e gli Ebrei di Ravenna”, in A. Carile (ed.), Teoderico e i Goti tra Oriente e Occidente: Congresso Internazionale Ravenna, 28 settembre–2 ottobre 1992, Ravenna 1995, pp. 137–49. Squatriti, P., “Marshes and Mentalities in Early Medieval Ravenna”, Viator 23.1 (1992), 1–16. Ullmann, W., Gelasius I (492–496): das Papsttum an der Wende der Spätantike zum Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1981. Volpe, G., Contadini, pastori e mercanti nell’Apulia tardoantica, Bari 1996. von Falkenhausen, V., “L’Ebraismo dell’Italia meridionale nell’età bizantina (secoli VI–XI)”, in C. Fonesca/M. Luzzati/G. Tamani/C. Colafemmina (eds.), L’Ebraismo dell’Italia Meridionale Peninsulare dale origini al 1541. Società, Economia, Cultura. IX Congresso internazionale dell’Associazione italiana per lo studio del Giudaismo: Potenza-Venosa 20–24 settembre 1992, Potenza 1996, pp. 25–46. Ward-Perkins, B., From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy AD 300–850, Oxford 1984. ———, “Archaeology and Iconography of Germanic Arianism”, in D.M. Gwynn/ L. Lavan/S. Bangert (eds.), Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity, Leiden 2010, pp. 265–89. Williams, M., “The Jews of Early Byzantine Venusia: The family of Faustinus I the Father”, Journal of Jewish Studies 50.1 (1999), 38–52. Williams, R., Arius: Heresy and Tradition, London 1987. Wirbelauer, E., Zwei Päpste in Rom: der Konflikt zwischen Laurentius und Symmachus (498–514), Munich 1993. Wood, I.N., “Theoderic’s Monuments in Ravenna”, in S.J.B. Barnish/F. Marazzi (eds.), The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the 6th Century: an Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge 2007, pp. 249–77. Zeiller, M.J., “Les eglises ariennes de Rome à l’époque de la domination gothique”, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire (1904), 17–33. ———, “Étude sur l’arianisme en Italie à l’époque ostrogothique et à l’époque Lombarde”, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 25 (1905), 127–46.

Glossary of Select Sources The following glossary is a selective guide to the most essential literary sources of relevance to the Ostrogothic kingdom. Individual entries are limited to details of a biographical or historical nature, descriptions of works and their value, and major issues of scholarly debate. References to modern scholarship, editions, and translations are not provided here. Instead, readers are invited to consult the bibliographies of relevant chapters appearing in this volume. Acta Synhodorum habitarum Romae A source of great value to the history of Rome, the Catholic Church, and especially the Laurentian schism, these Acts contain the minutes and/or subscription lists for a series of synods held in Rome between 499 and 502, as well as related correspondence between members of the church and King Theoderic. Agathias of Myrina (ca. 532–80?) A lawyer by training, resident of Constantinople, and author of poetic works, his Histories in five books was begun during the reign of Justin II (565–78) as a deliberate continuation of Procopius’ Wars. A chief source for the years 552–9, the work is concerned primarily with eastern affairs, although the first two books are invaluable for their treatment of the final years of the Gothic War in Italy, during which time the general Narses faced a number of local Gothic revolts and thwarted a major Franco-Alamannic invasion of Italy led by the duces Butilinus and Leutheris. Anonymus Valesianus Pars Posterior Also known as the Chronica Theodericiana or Excerpta Valsesiana II, this is the second of two biographical excerpts originally edited and published in the 17th century by Henri Valois, whence Valesianus. The text focuses primarily on events in Italy and to a lesser extent Constantinople between 474 and 526. Its main area of coverage is the reign of Theoderic, for which it provides many unique and occasionally fabulous details: some perhaps the product of oral tradition; others possibly derived from a source (or sources) close to the court at Ravenna. Its authorship is unknown and its treatment of certain topics, particularly the reign of Theoderic, is so bipolar, so repetitive, and so seemingly contradictory that some scholars have suggested it is the work of multiple authors or that one author has clumsily combined two (or more) opposing sources. Others maintain that it is the product of one author whose apparent contradictions were deliberate. This issue of authorship is further complicated by the fact that the surviving text is an excerpt, as indicated by its 9th-century manuscript heading (Item ex libris Chronicorum inter cetera) and the absence of anything resembling an introduction or conclusion. Its date of composition is also uncertain. Some place it shortly after the death of Theoderic in 526; others as late as the 540s or even 550s.

534

Glossary of Select Sources

Boethius (ca. 480–524) A member of the famous Roman family the Anicii, Boethius was courted by the Gothic Amal family as an important link to the senatorial aristocracy at Rome. Theoderic advanced Boethius’ public career, although the stages of this career are a matter of some conjecture. Boethius received the western consulship in 510 and his sons held the consulships of the West and the East in 522, the year of his appointment as Magister Officiorum. In gratitude Boethius recited a (non-extant) panegyric addressed to Theoderic. In 523, detractors at Theoderic’s court accused a senator and ex-consul, Albinus, of treason. Boethius’ attempt to defend his colleague caused him to fall under suspicion, although various reasons have been suggested to explain his fall from favour. In any case, Theoderic placed Boethius under arrest on an estate outside of Pavia, where he was eventually executed. Boethius was survived by a lustrous scholarly reputation, earned for his translation of Greek scientific and philosophical works into Latin (for example, De arithmetica, De institutione musica, De topicis differentiis, In Porphyrium commentaria) and for a number of short theological tracts (Tractates). His lasting reputation was secured by his authorship of the Consolation of Philosophy, a philosophical dialogue between himself and Philosophia, written during his imprisonment. It is not known how the Consolation survived his execution, and its transmission during the 6th century is speculative at best. The brief biographical text known as the Ordo Cassiodororum compares the literary and public lives of Boethius, his father-in-law Symmachus (also executed for treason by Theoderic), and Cassiodorus, although the familial connection between Boethius and Cassiodorus is debated. Caesarius of Arles (ca. 469/70–542) A Gallo-Roman noble born in Burgundian Chalon-sur-Saône, monk of Lérins, abbot of Arles, and bishop of Arles from 502 until his death, he was an active promoter of Christianization and reform in Gaul and was deeply committed to preaching and an ascetic ideal. As bishop he revised the monastic rule for the monks under his charge (Regula ad monachos) and later founded the city’s first convent, for whose nuns he composed another rule (Regula ad virgines). More than 250 of his sermons survive and provide evidence for the style and content of his preaching, which were heavily influenced by Augustine. He presided over five church councils, whose canons are extant: Agde (506), Arles (524), Carpentras (527), Vaison (529), and Orange (529). Following the Ostrogothic annexation of Provence in 508/11, he was sent to Ravenna under guard but exonerated by Theoderic. Shortly thereafter, Pope Symmachus granted him the pallium, confirming Arles’ metropolitan status in 513; later, he was made papal vicar to Gaul and Spain and developed close ties with the Ostrogothic praetorian prefect of Gaul, Liberius. A handful of letters exchanged between Caesarius and his peers survive; so, too, does his testament, which sought to endow and protect the convent he founded. His Vita, finally, was written shortly after his death by five close associates. Taken as a whole, the Caesarian corpus provides invaluable insight into the social

Glossary of Select Sources

535

and cultural history of southern Gaul directly before, during, and after its period of Ostrogothic dominance. Cassiodorus (ca. 490–585) Born to an aristocratic family in Bruttium, Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator was a leading statesman and patrician of the Ostrogothic kingdom, who served as consilarius (ca. 503), quaestor (ca. 507–11), ordinary consul (514), corrector of Lucania et Bruttium (?511/33), magister officiorum (523–7), and praetorian prefect of Italy (533–7). During this career he wrote a number of works on behalf of the Ostrogothic regime, including (now fragmentary) panegyrics treating individual rulers, a Chronicle celebrating the consulship of Theoderic’s intended heir, a Gothic History in twelve books (now lost), and official documents, mostly letters penned in the name of Ostrogothic kings and queens, which were edited and published possibly as early as 537 in a collection known as the Variae. Among the most important sources for the Ostrogothic kingdom, the Variae has inspired much debate, ranging from the extent of contribution of Cassiodorus or Gothic rulers to the contents of the original letters, to the extent to which individual letters may have been later edited, augmented, or even created for publication, to the collection’s purpose and intended audience. Soon after its publication, a treatise on the soul (De anima) was appended to the Variae and described as its thirteenth book, reflecting a shift in Cassiodorus’ priorities. By the late 540s he was in Constantinople, perhaps as a refugee or hostage, where he wrote a commentary on the Psalms (Expositio psalmorum) before returning to Bruttium and establishing a double monastery (Castellum and Vivarium) on his family estate around 554. Here, until his death, he wrote commentaries on the Bible and Church Fathers, a guidebook to sacred and secular learning (Institutiones), and a treatise on spelling and grammar (De orthographia), works that had a profound influence on medieval Christian thought. He also collaborated on the Historia Tripartita, a Latin translation of three Greek ecclesiastical histories fused into one narrative. Collectio Avellana A collection of 244 documents related to the See of Rome and deriving its name from the library of Fonte Avellana, Italy, where one of its manuscripts was discovered. It was compiled sometime after 553 and its contents consist of mostly papal and imperial correspondence dating from the mid 4th through the mid 6th century. The sole text for the majority of the materials preserved within it, it is an invaluable source for the history of the church, its schisms, and especially the papacy at this time; secular affairs, not least those of imperial and senatorial interest, are also included. Of particular relevance to the Ostrogothic period are those documents that speak to the (often tense) relationship between the see of Rome and the church and emperors at Constantinople, especially during the Acacian schism, Theopaschite controversy, and early stages of the Three Chapters schism. Dionysius Exiguus (d. 540) Came to Rome in 497 from the Roman province of Scythia Minor in the context of the Acacian schism under the Emperor Anastasius

536

Glossary of Select Sources

and his affiliation with the rebel eastern general Vitalian and the Theopaschite monks. He is often called a ‘Scythian’, although this is likely a reference to his province of origin. Exquisitely educated in both Greek and Latin, Dionysius attracted the friendships of learned men in the orbit of the church at Rome, including Boethius and Eugippius. Cassiodorus studied with him for a period and the latter’s Institutiones celebrates Dionysius’ learning, written works, and ascetic discipline. At Rome he worked with the patronage of Popes Gelasius, John I, and Hormisdas to translate religious materials from Greek into Latin. He translated a range of hagiographical materials (a vita of Pachomius, the writing of Proclus of Constantinople to the Armenians, and the De opificio hominis of Gregory of Nyssa), but his Collectio Dionysiana, a compilation of sources for canon law, became his greatest work, combining eastern conciliar materials, ecclesiastical decretals, and imperial letters. Finally, his liturgical calendar later became the basis for dating according to the anno domini. Edictum Theoderici Also known as the so-called Edictum Theoderici, this legal source consists of a prologue, epilogue, and 154 statutes derived from earlier Roman legal compilations and commentaries, which were emended, updated, and generally simplified for its intended users, referred to as ‘Romans’ and ‘Barbarians’ in the text. Internal evidence demonstrates that the Edictum was compiled no earlier than 461 and a reference to the city of Rome in its 111th chapter is often taken to indicate an Italian provenance. Nevertheless, the origin of this text remains controversial. If genuinely originating in the court of Theoderic the Great, it is an invaluable source for the legal and social history of the Ostrogothic kingdom. However, strong cases have been made for other originators, including Odovacer and Theoderic II of the Visigoths. The debate is rendered all the more difficult by the history of the edict’s manuscripts, which were lost by their sole editor in the 16th century, leaving only an editio princeps. The relationship between these lost manuscripts and the modern edition is thus uncertain and has even caused some to claim that the work is a forgery. Others, while accepting the edict as genuine, have suggested that certain portions may be interpolations or additions made by the editor, not least the edict’s solitary reference to a “King Theoderic”, which is found in its explicit. That Goths are never specifically mentioned in the text has also troubled some scholars, although others have simply argued that they should be counted among the ‘Barbarians’ referenced neutrally throughout the text. Ennodius (ca. 473/4–521) From a Gallo-Roman family but raised and classically educated in Italy, Magnus Felix Ennodius served as a deacon for the churches of Pavia and Milan and was later Bishop of Pavia and a papal envoy to Constantinople. Notorious for his complex Latin style, his works were composed primarily during his deaconate (ca. 503–13) and constitute a very large corpus that has been divided

Glossary of Select Sources

537

into nine books of letters (epistulae), ten miscellaneous minor works (opuscula miscella), twenty-eight speeches (dictiones), and two books of poems (carmina). As these divisions are a modern convention not found in the manuscript tradition, many scholars cite individual works in order of their appearance in the manuscripts to a total of 470. As a whole, the Ennodian corpus is an invaluable source for the social, cultural, religious, and political history of late 5th- and early 6th-century Italy. Of particular interest are opuscula miscella 1–5, which include the Life of Epiphanius, Life of Antony of Lérins, Libellus pro Synodo, Panegyric to King Theoderic, and Eucharisticon. These works provide details of great importance to reconstructions of the fall of Rome, the reigns of Odovacer and Theoderic, the Laurentian schism, and Ennodius’ own biography. Scholarly debates are generally minor, focusing on possible dates of composition or delivery, the motivation and purpose of a particular work, and issues of accuracy or bias. Ennodius’ role as a papal envoy to Constantinople during the Acacian schism is recorded in the Collectio Avellana. His epitaph, which celebrates these missions, has also survived. Epistulae Theodericianae Variae A modern collection of nine letters edited by Theodor Mommsen in the late 19th century and included as the first of three appendices for his MGH edition of Cassiodorus’ Variae. The first eight letters were written by Pope Gelasius and are addressed to either Theoderic himself, his mother, or certain bishops. These demonstrate on the whole a positive relationship between the pontiff, the Gothic king, and his family. The final letter is written in Theoderic’s name to the senate at Rome in March of 507/8 and is of interest because of its content (of relevance to the role of the senate and church at Rome) and for being among the handful of Theoderican letters that are not part of the Variae collection. Presumably, it was written by someone other than Cassiodorus. Eugippius (d. after 533) Monk and disciple of Severinus of Noricum (d. 482), he was among those evacuated from Noricum to Italy at the order of Odovacer in 488, later founding a monastery at Castellum Lucullanum near Naples. Here, he assembled an impressive library of religious texts, which may have influenced similar libraries (e.g. at Cassiodorus’ Vivarium) and whose contents were later copied and circulated in Italy and eventually other regions. Beyond the influence of this library, Eugippius is known for his own writings. These include a collection of excerpts taken from the works of Augustine of Hippo (Excerpta Augustini), authored around 500, and his Life of Severinus, authored as a memorandum around 509/11. Both works were widely read, the former serving as a quintessential guidebook to Augustinian thought and the latter as a devotional text and an invaluable source for modern reconstructions of the mid—late 5th-century Upper Danube region. Eugippius is also known to have authored a rule for his monks, although whether the so-called Eugippii regula is in fact his own has been debated; some of his correspondence, on the other hand, does survive, including letters exchanged with such noteworthy

538

Glossary of Select Sources

figures as the nun Proba of Rome, whose library he used, and Dionysius Exiguus, who dedicated a Latin translation of Gregory of Nyssa to him. Jordanes (d. after 552) A Latin author whose biography is a matter of scholarly debate but who is usually identified as a notary of barbarian ancestry (Goth or Alan), either from the Balkans or from Italy, who later experienced a conversio (the meaning of which is another matter of scholarly debate) and who, while residing in Constantinople in the early 550s, wrote two historical works, which were joined into one volume. The first of these works is known as the Romana. It provides a world history beginning with Creation but eventually focusing on Roman history alone and concluding with a Constantinople-centred Roman Empire in the mid 6th century. Although some of the material is clearly Jordanes’ own, the Romana relies heavily on other sources for its narrative, particularly on the Chronicle of Marcellinus Comes and its continuation, as well as an unknown source, for its treatment of events from the mid 5th century forward. Of particular interest is its account of Italian history following the death of Theoderic (d. 526) and especially the events of the Gothic War. Jordanes’ second work, known as the Getica, was begun and completed while he was still composing the Romana. It provides a history of the Goths as a whole from their mythical origins to the late 4th century, at which point separate accounts are provided for the Visigoths and then Ostrogoths. The latter brings the history of both peoples to the mid 6th century, although Ostrogothic Italy itself receives a relatively short treatment at roughly twenty chapters. Like the Romana, the Getica is derivative and relies on a number of Greek and Latin sources for its narrative. Most controversial is its relationship to Cassiodorus’ lost Gothic History, a work Jordanes claims he read and epitomized from memory and to which he admits adding material of his own. The sources for and reliability of much of the Getica’s earliest material is likewise a matter of scholarly debate, as is Jordanes’ purpose and motivation in composing this work. Liber Pontificalis ‘The Pontifical Book’ presents short lives of individual popes beginning with Peter and continuing forward with each subsequent bishop of the Roman see. While some entries offer early biographical information they generally focus on developments during the bishops’ episcopal tenures with emphasis placed on liturgical innovation, church building and decoration, clerical ordinations, the pope’s death, burial, and interregnum. Transmitted anonymously, the Liber Pontificalis was most likely produced by a team of writers, presumably local Roman clerics, who had access to a range of materials and who showed familiarity with the religious topography of the city. Moreover, the Liber Pontificalis is a ‘living document’, a text that was continuously amended, added to, and abridged at ­various points across centuries, and thus eschews simple dating. Since the early

Glossary of Select Sources

539

work by Louis Duchense (1886–92), scholars have dated the Liber Pontificalis’ origins to the Ostrogothic period. Recent work identifies the version commonly used by modern scholars as a second edition likely produced during the episcopate of Vigilius (537–55). The second edition appears to be a reworking of a slightly earlier first edition produced just after 535, which included the lives of Peter to John II (533–55). After the second edition was produced, however, the entire project was abandoned until the 580s, when several additional lives were added. Writing was resumed again during the 620s and then continued sporadically through the 9th century. The Liber Pontificalis was likely not the only serial papal biography to circulate in Rome during the Ostrogothic period. Another text, known today only in fragmented form (the so-called Laurentian Fragment), seems to reflect an alternative perspective on at least one Roman bishop, Symmachus. Marcellinus Comes (ca. 480–540) Illyrian courtier, possibly soldier, and later count (comes) who rose to prominence in Constantinople under the emperors Justin (r. 518–27) and Justinian (r. 527–65). Orthodox in faith, his primary language was Latin and his sole surviving work is a consular Chronicle written as a conscious continuation of Jerome’s Chronicle. Its first edition covers the period 379 to 518; its second 519 to 534. Although noteworthy for being the first source to mention the fall of the western empire, providing two dates (454 and 476), Marcellinus’ Chronicle is primarily concerned with the East, especially Constantinople and the Balkans. It provides tantalizingly few details about the Ostrogothic kingdom; however, its anonymous continuation, which extends the second edition to 548, focuses heavily on Italy and is an invaluable source for the Gothic War. There is some debate as to when Marcellinus composed the first edition of his Chronicle (ca. 518 to as late as the mid 520s), the context in which he was writing, the prevalence of his views on western affairs, and the sources he employed. The main debate surrounding its continuation is the origin and identity of its author. Some have suggested he was Italian; others eastern, probably Constantinopolitan. Papal Letters Letters written by (and occasionally addressed to) Roman bishops constitute our most substantial body of evidence for the Roman church and its bishops during the Ostrogothic period. The subject of the letters range from official missives to clergy on matters of theology, clerical discipline, and church doctrine (i.e. the decretals), to screeds against perceived heretical threats addressed to emperors, to far more mundane exchanges that record Roman bishops’ involvement in the daily business of ecclesiastical management. Some of the letters addressed to other bishops on matters of discipline and doctrine were preserved outside of Rome from the early 5th century, but the earliest Italian collections date to the Ostrogothic period: Dionysius Exiguus’ compilations of

540

Glossary of Select Sources

papal decretals produced for the Roman titular priest Julianus during the tenure of Symmachus (498–514) and the Collectio Avellana. Modern editions of late Roman papal letters from the Ostrogothic era include A. Thiel (ed.), Epistolae romanorum pontificum genuinae et quae ad eos scriptae sunt a Hilario usque ad Pelagium II (1868); P. Ewald (ed.), “Die Papstbriefe der Brittischen Sammlung”, Neue Archive der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichteskunde 5 (1880); E. Schwartz (ed.), Vigiliusbriefe (1940); and P. Gassó/C. Batlle (eds.), Pelagii I Papae, Epistulae quae supersunt, 556–561 (1956). Pragmatic Sanction The general title given to a series of twenty-seven enactments issued by Emperor Justinian on 13 August 554 and intended to restore Roman law (as imagined in the emperor’s own legal programme) and order to a newly ‘reconquered’ Italy at the end of the Gothic War. Among other things, it confirmed the decrees and appointments of the rulers of the Amal dynasty, which were seen as lawful, but nullified those of Totila who is described as a tyrant throughout. The remaining enactments deal with such topics as property rights, the status of freed slaves, weights and measures, taxation, the legal authority of Italian bishops and especially the pope, and certain privileges for the city of Rome, such as the annona. As a whole, it is an invaluable legal source that speaks to the history of Italy during its long (and painful) transition from Ostrogothic to Byzantine rule. Procopius of Caesarea (ca. 500–?560s) From Palestine, he was classically educated and trained in legal studies, serving as secretary/legal advisor (assessor) to the Byzantine officer and later general Belisarius beginning in 527 and accompanying him on his campaigns against the Persians, Vandals, and Goths into the 540s. These experiences contributed heavily to his most extensive (and arguably most important) work, a classical history in Greek known as the Wars, originally published in seven books in 550/1, with an eighth book added sometime before 557 (the date is a matter of scholarly debate). It recounts the wars of Justinian against the Persians (books 1–2), Vandals (books 3–4), and Ostrogoths (books 5–8), providing historical details that serve as a background to these campaigns but focusing primarily on the period 527–52. It is an invaluable source for the history of Ostrogothic Italy and essential for reconstructions of the Gothic War. Generally seen as a trustworthy and straightforward account, there are some who question Procopius’ political biases, employment of ethnographic rhetoric, and use of irony, which may be products of the genre in which he wrote. There are also certain details of earlier history that appear to be inaccurate, either intentionally so or perhaps owing to faulty information or confusion. Procopius’ other works, both authored in the 550s, include the Buildings and Secret History, which while useful sources for the reign of Justinian are not especially relevant to the Ostrogothic kingdom. Symmachan Forgeries A modern title used for convenience in reference to eleven documents claiming to date from the 4th and 5th centuries but almost certainly

Glossary of Select Sources

541

written during the Laurentian schism (498–506/7). The forgeries include three redactions of a Roman synod supposedly convened in 324; four letters relating to the Council of Nicaea in 325; and four narrative accounts of fictional ecclesiastical events and trials in which bishops are investigated and exonerated of a range of charges. Partisans of Symmachus, the bishop who ultimately prevailed in the schism, seem to have authored most of these documents, although at least two reflect another point of view, presumably that of Laurentius’ supporters.

Index Aachen 352 Abano 237, 357 Abruzzo 484, 486 Acacian schism, see Christianity Acacius 443 Adila 465, 467 administration, see Ostrogoths Adrianople 195, 458 adventus 121, 136, 442 Aestuna 237 Aetius 6, 124, 300 African Red Slip ware 268 Agapitus, Pope 133, 367, 431 434, 494 Agnellus 212, 312, 359, 361, 365, 370, 375–76, 382, 518 agri deserti 181 agriculture, see rural life Alamanni 74, 80, 93, 176 Alans 209 Alaric II 29, 279, 454, 455 Alba 484 Albenga 484 Albina 489 Albinus 31, 138, 144 Alexandria 332 Amal, royal family 10, 29–40, 56–57, 60, 67, 130, 140–41, 144, 180, 208, 296–312, 428, 433. See also names of individual family members and Mausoleum of Theoderic Amalaberga 303 Amalafrida 33, 302–03 Amalaric 29, 35, 85, 88, 92, 302 Amalasuentha 8, 30, 33–36, 54, 84, 92, 140–41, 218, 221, 223, 248, 296–312, 321, 353, 359 Ambrose 227, 305, 339, 341, 458, 461, 465, 471, 481, 489, 491, 511 Ammianus Marcellinus 208 Ampelius 91 Anastasius, Emperor 20, 29–30, 48, 55, 85, 131, 148, 444, 523 Anastasius II, Pope 433, 435, 520 Andromachus 522 Anicia Juliana 303

Anicii, senatorial family of 125, 142 annona 39, 50, 53, 61, 64, 68, 91, 185, 188, 255, 393–94 Anonymous Cosmographer 253 Anonymus Valesianus 20, 32, 55, 63, 121, 127, 238, 240, 243–45, 247, 311, 321, 380, 507, 510, 520 Anthemius, Emperor 303 Anthimus of Constantinople 445 Aosta 397, 454–55, 459, 462, 464, 473 apocrisarius 430 apparitores 66–67 Apulia 52, 133, 268, 284, 384, 400, 412 aqueducts 242–45, 357 Aquileia 189, 241, 246, 248, 251, 456–57, 481–84 Arator 133, 140, 142, 338–39 Arcadius, Emperor 154, 160, 300 Arcadius, Column of 214 archaeology 189–91, 270–77, 396–99, 431 architecture, see art Ardabur 518 Ariadne 353 Arians/Arianism, see Christianity Arigern 87 Aristotle 330–31, 333 Arius 510, 512, 520 Arles 88, 237, 240, 454, 455, 457–58, 463, 482–83 art 350–86 architecture 357–84; see also Mausoleum of Theoderic churches 359–65, 384 palaces 357–59, 365–78 portraiture 352–57 Asia Minor 255 Asinarius 93 Aspar 518 Asti 484 Astuna 358 Athalaric 31, 33, 35, 37, 56, 76, 82, 84, 108, 130, 139, 150, 163, 165–66, 218, 222, 285, 297, 300–02, 306–07, 321, 353, 358, 435, 437, 483, 513 Athanasius 488, 495, 511

Index Athaulf 151 Athens 332 Attalus, Emperor 124 Attila 173–74, 187 Atto 491 Audofleda 302, 303, 310 Augusta, Jewish woman 509 Augustaion 352 Augustine 276–77, 336–38, 340–41, 461, 471, 490, 493, 524 Augustus, Emperor 22–23, 86, 99, 382 Aurigenes 459, 473 Avignon 89 Balkans 1, 193, 208, 210, 215, 391 Barbaria 493 Barcelona 89 Basil of Caesarea 471, 495 basilica Herculis 367 Basilicata 485 Basilius 86, 140 Bassianae 81 Belisarius 24, 36–38, 98, 142, 188, 192–93, 214, 223, 299, 384, 467, 506, 521 Benedict of Nursia 337, 493–94, 496 Bergamo 484 Bessas 223 Bible 336, 339–42, 494 Bleda 174 Boethius 11, 25, 31–32, 34, 56, 129, 132, 134, 137–40, 144, 165, 245, 285, 299, 326, 329, 331–37, 341–42, 383, 434, 443 Consolation of Philosophy 31, 334–36 Bologna 482, 489 Boniface II, Pope 435, 437 Bonifatius, comes 300 Brandila 218 Brescia 250, 414, 482, 484 Breviarium of Alaric 279, 473 Bruttium 51–52, 108, 133, 284, 465 Bulgars 81–82, 216 Burgundians 29, 32, 35, 73, 84–85, 176–78, 303, 454–55, 458, 464 Busta Gallorum 39, 193, 195 Caesarea, sister of Caesarius 457 Caesarea, suburb of Ravenna 254, 359 Caesarius of Arles 90, 432, 454, 457–59, 463, 469, 508, 514–15, 522

543 Cagliari 483–84, 492–93 Calabria 133, 284, 467, 485–86, 494 Calcidius 336 Campania 132, 284–85, 288, 484, 489, 508 cancellarii 51, 65, 67–68 canonicarii 51, 67, 467 Canosa 115, 384, 483, 485 Capua 483, 489 caput senatus 127, 131 Caracalla, Emperor 153 Carthage 304, 493 Cassiodorus 11, 23, 25–28, 31, 34–35, 38, 48, 56, 60, 65, 81, 84, 86, 102, 104, 106–09, 116, 129–30, 133–34, 141–42, 147, 155, 177–78, 184–86, 192, 208, 215, 219, 234, 236, 238, 243, 245–46, 249, 273, 282, 284–86, 289, 299–300, 308, 317–324, 326–29, 331–32, 336–37, 339–42, 355, 357–58, 367–68, 375, 383, 399, 409, 416, 434, 442, 451, 457, 459, 462, 465, 467, 469–70, 483, 494, 506, 513–15, 519 Cassiodorus, senior 469 Castellum Lucullanum 337, 342, 493, 496 Castro dei Volsci 397–98 Catana 237, 240, 247, 467, 504 Celsina 76 Cervia 482 Cesena 250, 482 Chalcedon 445 Charlemagne 352 Childeric 352 Chlodomer 32 Chosroes 52 Christianity Acacian schism 30, 137, 334, 434, 443, 452, 470, 519, 524 Arians/Arianism 1, 3, 10, 32, 98, 112–13, 185, 206–07, 212, 221, 223–27, 239, 248, 253, 305, 310, 322, 350, 357, 359, 361, 370, 376, 378, 425, 442, 451, 493, 503, 508, 510–21 Apollinarism 482 bishops 113–16, 425–47, 451–74 Chalcedonian 443, 445 churches (individual), see churches and classical intellectual culture 337–42 ecclesiastical administration 52, 113–16, 428–33, 437–41, 451–74, 480–88 Henotikon 443

544 Laurentian schism 115, 131, 134, 144, 431, 435–36, 439, 442, 444, 462–64, 483, 512, 524 Monasticism 488–97 Nicene 1, 27, 113, 226, 239, 248, 378, 425–47, 451–74, 503–04, 513, 519, 525 patrimonium of the Church 428–29, 464–67, 438 Pelagianism 521–25 Secular politics of 441–46, 451–74 See of Rome 425–47 Theopaschite 445 Three Chapters controversy 38, 445–46, 483 tituli churches 429, 437, 439 church councils Council of Agde 491 Council of Beziers 492 Council of Chalcedon 443, 491 Council of Epaone 491 Council of Milan 482, 484 Council of Orleans 491 Council of Serdica 428 Council of Vaison 491 churches (individual) 113–16, 248, 359–65, 384 Arian Baptistery, Ravenna 365, 518–19 Baptistery of St Stephen 465 Ca’Bianca 361 Ecclesia Gothorum 359 Hagia Sophia 384 Lateran 431 Holy Apostles, Constantinople 383 Holy Cross 112 Orthodox Baptistery, Ravenna 363, 365 S Eusebio, Ravenna 253, 361 S John Studios 362 S Lawrence 116 S Mary Chalkoprateia 362 S Paul, Rome 384, 428 S Peter, Rome 22, 121, 383–84, 428, 437, 442, 520 S Pietro in Orphanotrophio 359 S Stefano Rotondo 113 Saint Agatha 517 San Giovanni Evangelista 112, 367, 370 San Leucio 116, 384 San Severo in Classe 368 San Vitale 112, 384

Index Sant’Apollinare in Classe 361 Sant’Apollinare Nuovo 112, 240, 365, 367, 370, 518 Santo Spirito 361 SS Cosmas and Damian 113, 248, 384, 428 SS Sergius and Bacchus 384 Venafrana 508 Cicero 327 Cimitile 492 cities, see Italy civilitas 26–27, 29, 39, 73, 77, 89, 156, 184, 220, 236, 238, 297, 455–56, 507 Civita di Bagno 486 Classe 240, 249, 254–55, 359 Clementius 353 Clothild 303 Clovis 29, 80, 302–03 Codex Argenteus 224 Colle S. Giovanni di Atri 410 Collectio Avellana 426 coloni, see rural life Colosseum 352, 407 Colosseus 82–83, 89 comes archiatrorum 256 comes domesticorum 186 comes patrimonii 54, 58, 61–63, 133 comes privatarum 61–62, 180–81, 133 comes sacrarum largitionum 61–62, 133, 180–81 comitatus 56–58, 61, 66–67, 89 comites, Gothic 62–64, 68, 76, 81–82, 89, 103–04, 121, 148, 162, 217 comites, Merovingian 188 comitiaci 66–68 Como 104, 242, 484 conductors 487 Constantine, Emperor 99, 109, 115, 122–23, 154, 159, 382–83, 474, 486 Constantinople 37–38, 49–50, 53–54, 57, 75, 84, 112, 138, 142, 149, 254, 297, 299, 321, 352, 359, 362, 367, 370, 382–84, 386, 399, 430, 441–45, 451, 518 Chalke gate 375–76 Constantius II, Emperor 133 Constantius, bishop 508 Constitutio Antoniniana 153 consuls 73 countryside, see rural life Corippus 55

545

Index cornicularii 51 Corsica 74–75, 427 Cremona 482, 484 curiales 52, 62–63, 99, 102–03, 108, 472, 505 Curitana 76 cursus publicus 57, 63, 68 Cyprian, senator 82, 133, 138–39, 140–41, 187, 215–16, 218–19, 222 Cyril of Alexandria 482 Dalmatia 33, 36–37, 64, 73–78, 80, 82, 91–93, 133, 176, 432, 516, 523 Damasus, Pope 426, 481 Decii, Roman family of 125, 132–34, 142 defensores, public administration 52, 63, 102–03, 161–62 defensores ecclesiae 432, 472, 481, 521 Deitrich von Bern 56 demography/population, see Italy Dertona 251 Deuterius 318, 491 Dicineus 152 Diocletian, Emperor 99, 109, 153, 278, 383, 480 Dionysius Exiguus 328–29, 332, 342 Dionysius Periegetes 341 Dioscorides, medical writer 320, 341 Dioscorus, deacon of Rome 435, 437 Domagnano 189, 350 domestici 49–50, 53–54, 186, 188 Domus Pinciana 359 Dorotheus of Thessalonica 444 Dracontius 339 duces 62–63, 79–80, 85, 162 Eastern Empire 17–18, 30–31, 36–37, 49, 55, 74, 81, 84, 144, 221. See also Anastasius, Constantinople, Justin, and Justinian Ecclesius 112, 458 economy 9–10, 49–60, 98–117, 254–56, 263–89 land owning/countryside 263–89 taxes 50–54, 98–117, 177–83, 275–84, 465–67 Edict of Theoderic 59, 65, 149, 151–52, 155–56, 160, 163–64, 166–67, 270, 272–80, 282–84, 319, 506 education, see Italy Egypt 255, 370

Elba 413 Emilia Romagna 268, 407 Emona 489 Ennodius 11, 23, 26, 28, 55, 57, 80–82, 87, 212, 238, 316, 318–19, 321, 324–26, 329, 332, 338, 433, 462, 464, 491, 514–15, 517, 519, 522 environment/geography, see Italy Equitius 494 Eraric 38 Ereleuva 510 Eucaristus 471–72 Eudocia 305 Eugippius 328, 337–48, 493, 517 Eunapius 306 Eusebius of Caesarea 341 Eusebius of Milan 482 Eusebius of Vercelli 491 Eustorgius 459, 462–65, 481 Eutharic 30–31, 92, 139, 245, 297, 303, 311, 323 exceptores 49, 61, 430 excubitores 57 Expositio Psalmorum 515 Fabricula 274 Faenza 237, 242, 250, 482 Faragola 487 Faustina, Jewish woman 509 Faustus Niger 131–32, 326–27, 332, 469–70 Faustus of Riez 523 Faustus, defensor ecclesia 472 Feletheus 75 Felix III, Pope 433, 435, 520 Felix IV, Pope 113, 248, 428–29, 431, 433, 435, 443, 458, 513 Felix, senator 85 Filattiera 271, 413 Forli 353, 482 Forum, of Rome 241–42, 357, 428 Franks 29, 35, 80, 85, 92–93, 166, 174, 182, 188, 193, 219, 238, 302, 454–55 Fredegar 55, 238 Fridibad 91 Frigidus 195 Fulgentius of Ruspe 492–93, 523 Galeata 56, 357 Galen 320, 341 Galerius, Emperor 382–83

546 Galicia 391 Galla 305 Galla Placidia 84, 112, 300, 482 Gamzigrad 382–83 Gargano 485 Gaudentius, senator 140, 165 Gaudentius, bishop 457 Gaul 1, 18, 29, 33, 53–54, 84–91, 92, 133, 149, 176, 182, 193, 219, 285, 432, 455, 457, 463, 491–92 Geiseric 304–05 Gelasius, Pope 114–15, 432–34, 438–40, 443–44, 458, 470–72, 487–88, 508–09, 512–13, 515, 519–20, 522–24 Gemellus 88–90, 455 Geneva 248 gender, see women Genoa 484, 506 Gepids 35, 75, 80–83, 93, 174 Germanus 39, 307, 473 Gesalec 29, 85 Gothic War 3, 9, 24, 32, 36–40, 58, 91–94, 98, 106, 117, 142–44, 173, 187, 191–95, 220–22, 244, 247, 267, 285, 296, 312, 324, 342, 393, 401, 407, 438, 480, 484, 486, 506 government, see Ostrogoths governors, provincial 62, 64–65 Grado 248 Gratian, Emperor 305 Decree of 461 Gratiana 84 Greece 116 Gregory of Nyssa 328 Gregory of Tours 3, 187–88, 310–11 Gregory, Pope 337, 414, 453, 461, 465, 485–86, 489, 493–95 Gudelina 309 Gundila 221, 241 Gundobad 458, 517 Hadrian, Emperor 382 Helena 382 Heraclius, Emperor 59 Herduic 81 Hermanfrid 303 Heruls 35, 38, 83, 174 Hildebad 38 Hilderic 33, 302, 303

Index Hippocrates 320 Homer 312 honorati 102–03, 109 Honorius, bishop 523 Honorius, Emperor 154, 245, 367, 382–83 Hormisdas, Pope 328, 435, 438, 445, 520, 523–24 hospitalitas, see Ostrogoths Huneric 304–05, 310 Huns 173–74, 208–09, 213, 241 Ianuarius 459, 473 Ibas of Edessa 445 Ibba 85, 89, 455 identity, see Ostrogoths Illus 210 Illyricum 74–75, 84, 92, 516 Imola 250, 482 incastellamento 265, 398 intellectual culture, see Italy, and also art Invillino 191 Isidore of Seville 352 Istria 380 Italia Annonaria 79, 114, 481, 488 Italia Suburbicaria 114, 427, 438, 481, 488, 525 Italy environment and geography 9–10, 264–69, 285–86, 390–416, 400–15 land owning, see rural life literature/intellectual culture 316–42 centers and networks 321–30 education 317–20 philosophy 330–36 population 9–10, 251–54, 392–98 urban culture/history 98–102, 234–56; see also art, architecture housing 249–50 spectacles 245–47 spoliation 358–59 Jerome 338, 341, 488, 490, 492 Jews 1, 27, 252, 455, 503, 504–10, 525 synagogues 131, 252 John Cassian 495 John I, Pope 32, 442–43, 520 John II, Pope 433, 435, 437, 445 John Maxentius 523

Index John of Antioch 306, 482 John, deacon of Rome 334, 434 John, of Constantinople 444 Jordanes 23–24, 152, 208, 299, 304, 352 Josephus 341 Judas 508 Julian, Emperor 154, 473 Julius Honorius 341 Julius Nepos, Emperor 3, 17, 74, 126, 176 Julius, Pope 488, 490 Justin, Emperor 30–31, 130, 442, 444, 519 Justina 305–06 Justinian 18, 24, 35–39, 52, 93, 116, 140, 142–43, 154, 156, 165, 178, 221, 285, 298, 308, 309, 353, 357, 359, 376, 384, 433, 435, 444–45, 468, 491, 519, 521 Justinianic Code 39, 154, 156, 278–79, 452 Novellae 39 Justinianic Plague 286 Laurentian Schism, see Christianity Laurentius 463–64, 508 law, see Ostrogoths Lazio 484 Leo, Emperor 209 Leo, Pope 443, 482–84, 524 Libellus Hormisdae 444–45 Liber Pontificalis 32, 414, 426, 431, 434, 442, 446, 470, 486, 512, 515, 520, 523–24 Liberius 25, 27, 34, 36, 87–90, 92, 106, 133, 140–42, 219, 223 Liguria 51–52, 134, 413 Lilybaeum 35 literature, see Italy Liwirit 91 Lodi 484 Lombards 265, 267, 391, 401, 486 Lucania 51–52, 108, 133, 465, 494 Luni 400 Lupercalia 522 Lusitania 255 Macedonia 116 Macrobius 327, 330, 336 magister militum 303 magister officiorum 25, 60, 63, 122, 130, 299, 331 Magnentius 305

547 Maiorian, Emperor 124, 471 Malchus 126 Mammo 85 Manicheans 521–25 Marabad 89 Marcella 488–90 Marcellianus, bishop 463 Marcellina 489 Marcellinus Comes 23 Marcian, Emperor 304, 306 Marcias 93 Marseilles 89, 251 Martianus Capella 327, 330 Matasuentha 37, 39, 142, 306–07, 323, 368 Maurice, Emperor 59 Mausoleum of Theoderic 378–84 Maxentius, Emperor 382–83 Maximian, poet 329–30 Maximin Daia, Emperor 383 Maximus, Emperor 124, 305 Melania, senior 489 Melania, younger 489 Milan 56, 116, 138, 183, 189, 212, 246, 248, 251, 318, 324–25, 382, 453, 456–58, 462, 464–65, 467, 481–84, 490, 492, 504, 506 military, see Ostrogoths millenarii 178, 182 Modena 250, 482 Moesia 81 Mons Lactarius 39, 195 Monte Barro 107–08, 272, 413–14 Monte Cassino 495–96 Monza 357 Mundo 36, 81 Naples 9, 37–38, 242, 244, 248, 251–52, 352, 408, 414, 490, 493, 504, 506 Narbonne 85–86, 89, 455–57, 482, 484 Narses 39, 194, 521 Navy, Ostrogothic 54, 57, 62, 327, 330 332–33, 335–36 Nicomachus Cethegus 142 Nicomachus of Gerasa 332 Nicotera 486 Noricum 73–75, 78–80, 93, 273, 482, 493 North Africa 9, 18, 29, 37, 91, 101, 176, 255, 276, 285, 302, 432, 446, 486, 492, 519, 523–25

548 notarii 430 Novara 484 Novellae, 5th-century 154, 471, 473 Novellae, Justinianic 39 numerarii 467 Odovacer 3, 6, 17–18, 20, 74–75, 79, 85, 98, 103, 122, 124–27, 129, 134, 143–44, 174, 177, 216, 221, 267, 285, 326, 438, 493, 517–18, 523 Olybrius, Emperor 124 Opilio 133, 138–40, 142, 165, 215 Orestes 353 Origen 461 Orosius 151, 253, 322, 341 Ostia 244 Ostrogoths administration/government 24–30, 47–69, 98–117, 161–66, 183–88, 239–40 and the Senate, see Senate archaeology of, see archaeology economy of, see economy end of kingdom, see Gothic War extent of kingdom/provinces 73–94 and hospitalitas 177–83 identity 7–9, 20–24, 173–75, 189–91, 201–29, 350–52, 503–04 language 222–23 law 147–67 and crime 157–61 vulgar law 152–57 military 6–7, 21–22, 26–27, 53–60, 63–64, 173–95, 206–07, 210–18; see also navy modern historiography of 1–11, 201–07, 425–27 political history and constitutional position 17–24, 74–75, 207–15, 296–312 political ideology 17–40, 147–52 religion, see Christianity, Arians royal court 55–60, 357–59, 365–78 royal family, see Amals and taxes, see economy Ostrogotho 32, 303 Osuin 76–78 Otranto 395, 409, 492 Ovid 317

Index Pachomius 495 Padua 484 pagans/paganism 521–25 Palazzolo 357 Palermo 504 Palestine 255 Palladius 270 Panegyric 55, 84, 323–24, 368, 522 Pannonia 35, 64, 73, 75–78, 80–84, 88, 93, 209, 228, 482, 516 Parenzo 248 Parma 237, 243 Parthenius 339 Patza 218 Paula 489 Paulinus of Nola 492–93 Pavia 56, 138–39, 165, 183, 212, 238, 240, 244, 247, 251, 255, 324, 352, 357, 375, 408, 484 Pelagianism, see Christianity Pelagius I, Pope 51, 434, 486, 489, 494 Persia 38–39, 52 Perugia 408 Pescara 213 Peter of Altinum 436, 442 Petrus, bishop 473 Pettino 486 philosophy, see Italy, literature/intellectual culture Piacenza 56, 255, 484 Picenum 37, 51, 133, 217, 432, 523 Pitzia 81–82, 221 Plato 330, 333 Pliny the Elder 465 Podere Chiavichetta 255 Podere San Marino 271–72 Porphyry 330, 333 possessores 62, 78, 102–03, 108, 111, 234, 465 praepositus cubicula 507 praetorian prefect 25, 51, 60–63, 73, 104, 107, 122, 130, 140–41, 143, 323, 469–70 Pragmatic Sanction 3, 39, 116 Priscian 55 Priscus 173 Proba 337 Probus 303 Procopius 24, 34, 37–38, 49, 54, 177–78, 191–93, 211, 213–14, 222–23, 242, 252, 296–312, 321–22, 352

Index Procula 218 protectores 49 Provence 74, 85, 93, 193, 325, 455, 457, 464 Ptolemy 341 Puglia 484–85 Pula 483 Pulcheria 304, 306 Pythagoreanism 332 quaestor 60, 122, 140, 150, 163, 322 Quinigeius 509 Quodvultdeus 493 Raetia 74–75, 79–80, 89, 93, 216, 482 Ranilio 274 Ravenna 9, 11, 25, 36–38, 56–58, 76, 80–81, 85, 90, 98, 102, 110–13, 129, 134, 138, 142, 149, 183, 189, 212, 226, 234, 237–38, 240, 242–46, 250–53, 255, 270, 286, 297, 320–22, 325, 342, 352, 358–65, 375, 384, 395, 407, 436, 442, 451, 456–58, 467, 481–84, 486, 504, 507, 521 Ravenna Cosmographer 218, 322 Ravenna papyri 521 Ravennius 482 Reggio 400, 484 Regina 218 Regula Benedicti 495–97 Regula Eugippi 497 Regula Magistri 495–97 Religion, see Christianity and Jews and pagans Res Publica 23, 25, 39, 49, 87, 220 Ricimer 6, 124, 303, 471, 517–18 Rimini 37, 250, 482 Rodez 85 Rome 9, 25, 30–31, 33, 37–38, 90, 107, 111, 113–14, 121, 129, 136, 138, 149, 155, 189, 234, 237, 239–40, 244–46, 248, 251–52, 269, 285, 299, 337, 352–53, 375, 382, 386, 438, 446, 456, 472, 486, 504 Romulus Augustulus 6, 17, 176, 312, 391 Rufinus 490, 495 Rugians 74–75, 174, 215 rural life agriculture 400–15 archaeology of 270–77 coloni and slaves 277–84

549 economy, see economy environment, see Italy land owning 277–84 settlement patterns 264–69, 277–84, 392–98, 400–15 Rustica 490 Rusticius Helpidius Domnulus 327 Rusticus, deacon 434 Rutilius Namatianus 492 S. Antonino 413 S. Filitica 403 S. Michele di Trino 413 Sabinus 115–16, 384 saiones 62–63, 66, 68, 162, 412 Salona 76, 93, 459 Salvian of Marseilles 276 Samnium 132, 217, 221, 494 San Giovanni di Ruoti 9 Sardinia 74–75, 427, 484, 492 Sarmatians 75, 215 Savia 73, 75–78, 80, 82, 91, 93, 133, 482 Savona 397 scholares 49, 50, 186 Scirians 174, 215 scrinarii 49, 61 Scythian monks 523 Securus Melior Felix 327 Sedulius 339 Senarius 434 Senate 8, 22, 25, 33–34, 38–39, 87, 90, 121–44, 299, 308, 437, 441, 508 Senegallia Medallion 86, 184, 214, 355 Servatus 79, 89, 216 Severinus 77–78, 91 Severinus of Noricum 493, 517 Severus, bishop 455, 493 Sicily 1, 35–36, 74–75, 92, 127, 133, 165, 213, 255, 269, 395, 397, 400, 427, 465, 467, 481, 489, 492, 504 Sidonius Apollinaris 242, 339, 404 Sigeric 32 Sigismund 32, 303, 458 silentiarii 50 Silius Italicus 317 Silverius, Pope 38 Simeon, comes 76–77 Simplicius, Pope 430, 432, 435, 439, 457

550 Singidunum 83 Siponto 408, 412 Siracusius 508 Siricius, Pope 460 Sirmium 73, 75, 81–83, 88–89, 93 Siscia 76–77 slaves, see rural life Skeireins 224 Spain 1, 18, 29–31, 84–91, 92, 193, 219, 463 spectacles, see Italy, urban culture Split 383 Spoleto 237, 244 Squillace 494, 524 Stilicho 124 Subiaco 495 Suna 104 Supersano 410 Symmachan Forgeries 436, 439 Symmachi, senatorial family of 125 Symmachus, Pope 115, 131, 334, 384, 428, 433, 435, 442, 462–63, 470, 520, 523–24 Symmachus, Quintus Aurelius 465 Symmachus, Quintus Memmius 31–32, 34, 134, 138, 140, 249, 325–28, 330–32 Symmachus, Jewish scholar 510, 520 Syracuse 483 Syria 116, 255 Tancila 104 Tavoliere 412 taxes, see economy Teia 39, 143, 195, 512–13 Telesinus 509 Terence 317 Teurnia 79 Theatre of Pompey 357, see also Italy, urban culture, spectacle Theodahad 34–37, 92–93, 139–41, 192, 218, 221, 269, 274, 298, 302, 307, 309, 321, 353, 355, 468 Theodegotha 302 Theoderic 3, 6–7, 9–11, 17–18, 20, 22–24, 26, 29–32, 35, 37, 39, 48–49, 51, 54–55, 61, 73, 75–82, 84–90, 98, 102–07, 111, 113, 115, 121–22, 124–25, 128–29, 134–37, 144, 147, 149–50, 156, 163–65, 173, 175, 177, 193, 206, 210–12, 215–18, 237–38, 240, 243, 249, 267, 285, 296–97, 299, 321–22, 350,

Index 352, 362, 404, 428–29, 435, 438, 441, 443, 451, 459, 462, 464–65, 468, 474, 480–81, 483, 505, 507, 513–14, 518, 520, 523 Theoderic II, Visigothic king 149 Theoderic Strabo 173 Theodora 309, 384 Theodore of Herecleia 224 Theodore of Mopsuestia 445 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 445 Theodosian Code 124, 156, 160, 164, 278–79, 452, 471, 504, 516 Theodosius, Emperor 160, 305–06, 482 Theodosius II, Emperor 124, 154, 300, 304 Thessalonica 305 Theudebert 93 Theudis 35, 92 Thrace 209, 211, 228 Thrasamund 302–03 Thraseric 80 Three Chapters controversy, see Christianity Thuringians 35, 303 Torre S. Stefano Belbo 413 Tortona 56, 484 Totila 7, 38–39, 58, 143, 192, 195, 221, 483 Toulouse 173, 176 Traguila 310–11 Trajan, Emperor 242–43, 245 Trento 98, 111, 251 Treviso 251 Tribonian 167 tribunus voluptatum 246 Tropea 485 Tuluin 32, 34, 87 Tuscany 35, 132, 268–69, 271, 302, 400, 410, 413, 484 Ulfila 224 Uligisalus 93 Umbria 132, 484–85 Unimundus 361 Unscila 470 urban culture/history, see Italy urban prefect 52, 110, 123–24, 127, 133–34, 165 Ursina 79 Ursus 79–80 Valamer 209 Valentinian I, Emperor 7–8, 305

551

Index Valentinian II, Emperor 160, 305, 516 Valentinian III, Emperor 84, 112, 124, 154, 163, 245, 281, 300, 303, 305, 471, 482 Valila 8 Vandals 10, 29, 33, 35, 74–75, 101, 127, 166, 176, 302–04, 310, 486, 492 Venetia 133, 268 Venosa 504, 509 Vercelli 484, 489, 491 Verona 3, 56, 238, 240, 244, 357, 408, 484, 507 Verus, bishop 454 Vesuvius 266, 268, 288 Vettius Basilius Mavortius 327 Victor, bishop 112 Vienne 463, 482 Vigilius, Pope 38, 221, 339, 426, 432, 433–35, 437, 445–46, 465

Virgil 229, 317, 319 Visigoths 10, 29, 35, 73–74, 84–85, 88, 92, 151, 155, 219, 279, 302, 304, 454 Vivarium 320, 341–42, 494 Volterra 472 Volusianus of Tours 454 Vouillé, Battle of 462 Wiliarit 253 Witigis 35, 37–38, 83–84, 92–93, 142–43, 306–07, 323, 357, 368 women 296–312, 488–90 Zeno, Emperor 17–18, 20, 74–75, 126, 131, 209–11, 303, 352 Zosimus 305–06