Post-Roman Transitions

CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN
LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES

General Editor
Yitzhak Hen, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Editorial Board
Angelo di Berardino, Augustinianum–Instituto Patristico, Rome
Nora Berend, University of Cambridge
Leslie Brubaker, University of Birmingham
Christoph Cluse, Universität Trier
Rob Meens, Universiteit Utrecht
James Montgomery, University of Cambridge
Alan V. Murray, University of Leeds
Thomas F. X. Noble, University of Notre Dame
Miri Rubin, University of London

IDENTITIES IN THE LATIN WEST

Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages were a deci-

sive period for the formation of identities in the Latin
West. Presenting the results of projects and international
collaborations centred in Vienna, this sub-series of vol-
umes within the CELAMA series is devoted to explor-
ing the social context, cultural resources, and political
consequences of these new models for identification.
Series icon: ‘Silver denarius of Charlemagne’, Berlin, Münzkabinett,
Staatliche Museen, c. 800–814. Copyright: bpk / Münzkabinett,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Photo: Lutz Jürgen Lübke

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 14
Post-Roman Transitions
Christian and Barbarian Identities
in the Early Medieval West

Edited by

Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann

 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Post-Roman transitions : Christian and Barbarian identities in the early medieval West.
-- (Cultural encounters in late antiquity and the Middle Ages ; 14)
1. Ethnicity--Europe--History--To 1500.
2. Ethnicity-- eligious aspects--Christianity.
3. Identity (Psychology)--Europe--History--To 1500.
4. Identification (Religion)--History--To 1500.
5. Political culture--Europe--History--To 1500.
6. Europe--History--476-1492.
7. Rome--History--Germanic Invasions, 3rd-6th centuries--Social aspects.
8. Europe--Social conditions--To 1492.
9. Archaeology and history--Europe.
I. Series
II. Pohl, Walter, 1953- editor of compilation.
III. Heydemann, Gerda editor of compilation.
940.1-dc23

ISBN-13: 9782503543277

© 2013, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.

D/2013/0095/195
ISBN: 978-2-503-54327-7
e-ISBN: 978-2-503-54420-5
Printed on acid-free paper
 Contents

Illustrations vii

Preface
Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann ix

Christian and Barbarian Identities

in the Early Medieval West: Introduction
Walter Pohl 1

Section 1: Scripts for Identity —

Resources of the Past
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King?
Saint-Maurice d’Agaune and the Creation of a Burgundian Identity
Albrecht Diem 47

Patria, peregrinatio, and paenitentia:

Identities of Alienation in the Seventh Century
Alexander O’Hara 89

Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora

Jamie Wood 125

Adventus, Warfare, and the Britons in

the Development of West Saxon Identity
John-Henry Clay 169
vi Contents

Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! Foundation Myths

and Origines gentium in the Adriatic Arc
Francesco Borri 215

Tuscans as gens? Shaping Local Identities

and Communities in Early Medieval Tuscany
Marco Stoffella 271

Section 2: Romanness and Otherness —

Signs of Distinction and their Ambiguities
Who Were the Romans?
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy
Maya Maskarinec 297

The Fading Power of Images: Romans, Barbarians,

and the Uses of a Dichotomy in Early Medieval Archaeology
Philipp von Rummel 365

Remembering the Warriors: Weapon Burials and Tombstones

between Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in Northern Italy
Irene Barbiera 407

Who is the Barbarian?

Considerations on the Vandal Royal Title
Roland Steinacher 437

Die Wahrnehmung der nichtfränkischen Völker

in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie
Gerald Krutzler 487

Scritture nazionali e aree culturali: le epigrafi tra forme, contenuti

e trasmissioni testuali in Italia e nell’Europa altomedievale
Flavia De Rubeis 549
 Illustrations

Figures

Figure 1, p. 371. ‘The Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus’, Roma, Museo Nazionale

Romano, Palazzo Altemps. c. ad 260.

Figure 2, p. 374. ‘Victory of the Israelites over the Amorites’, Roma, Santa
Maria Maggiore. c. ad 432–40.

Figure 3, p. 382. ‘Roman’ Grave Goods from Grosseto, loc. Grancia.

Figure 4, p. 383. Characteristic ‘Germanic’ Grave Goods from Erpfting, Bavaria.

Sixth century.

Figure 5, p. 392. ‘Togatus from Ostia’, Ostia, Museo Archeologico, Scavi di

Ostia Antica. c. ad 400.

Figure 6, p. 392. ‘Monza-Diptychon’, Monza, Tesore del Duomo. c. ad 400.

Figure 7, p. 395. ‘Silver Plate from the Treasure of Isola Rizza’, Verona, Museo di
Castelvecchio, Inv. 13871. Sixth century.

Figure 8, p. 420. ‘Funerary Epigraphs from Aquileia, depicting horsemen’,

Aquilea, Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Third to fourth century ad.

Figure 9, p. 421. ‘Funerary Epigraphs from Aquileia, depicting soldiers with

shield and lance’, Aquilea, Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Third to fourth
century ad.
viii ILLUSTRATIONS

Graphs

Graph 1, p. 413. Percentage of Graves with Weapons.

Graphs 2a–2e, pp. 414–15. Types of Weapons Distributed in Northern Italy
between the First Century bc and the Ninth Century ad.

Graph 3, p. 419. References to the Status of Soldiers on the Inscriptions from

Aquileia and Concordia.

Maps

Map 1, p. 171. South-West England in the Early Saxon Period, showing major
settlements, roads, and battles recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Map 2, p. 386. Weapon Furnishings in the Southern German Region.

Tables

Table 1, p. 106. The Ethnic Terms in Jonas of Bobbio’s Hagiography

Table 2, p. 150. The Succession of Kingdoms in the Second Redaction of the

Chronica maiora

Table 3, p. 157. Persia and Persians at the End of the Chronica maiora
Table 4, pp. 428–29. Specific Information Regarding the Cemeteries Surveyed
in this Study.
 Preface

Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann

T
his volume traces the interplay between Christianity, ethnicity, and
the formation of political identities in a post-Roman World. Through
a variety of case studies, the papers explore the tenacity and the mal-
leability of Roman and Christian forms of identification and othering in the
barbarian kingdoms of the early medieval West. It is closely connected with
its companion volume, Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in
Early Medieval Europe, which appeared as volume 13 in this series. As a collec-
tive effort, these volumes represent a main result of an extraordinary project,
‘Ethnic Identities in Early Medieval Europe’. This research programme, carried
out between 2005 and 2010, was funded by the Wittgenstein prize of the FWF
(Austrian Science Fund), which created the opportunity to build up a team of
young researchers to study the role of ethnic identities in early medieval Europe
in a much broader perspective than had so far been possible.1 The volume was
finalized in the context of the SFB F42–G18, ‘Visions of Community’, also
funded by the FWF since 2011. The Institute for Medieval Research of the
Austrian Academy of Sciences provided an excellent environment and offered
indispensable infrastructure for our research. The project also profited enor-
mously from the facilities and the inspiring atmosphere at the University of
Vienna , both at the History Department and at the Institut für Österreichische
Geschichtsforschung. Both institutions made it possible to integrate the junior
researchers financed through the Wittgenstein project into an open working
group, together with junior scholars on their payroll, with graduate students,
with a number of visiting fellows from abroad, part of whom came with their

1 
See also <http://www.oeaw.ac.at/gema/wittg_pro/wittg_pro.htm>.
x Preface

own grants, and with many associated researchers. The two volumes owe much
to the lively atmosphere, the many informal discussions, and the inspiring meet-
ings in the project group, and of course to the new ideas and approaches that
were developed in their course. Most contributions were repeatedly discussed
in the Wittgenstein team at different stages, and efforts were made to link them
to each other and to the central interests of the project, even though they had
been deliberately designed to explore a wide range of very different sources and
questions within the overarching theme of early medieval identity formation.

We are grateful to the institutions that have made the experience of the
Wittgenstein project and the work on the two volumes possible. Many thanks
are due to all friends and colleagues who offered suggestions, advice, and inspi-
ration for this volume, specifically: Richard Corradini, Marianne Pollheimer,
Gerald Krutzler, Francesco Borri, and Hannes Rois helped with the prepara-
tion of the manuscript; John Clay, Jamie Kreiner, Meg Leja, Matthew Gillis,
and Timothy Scott helped with the English. The Museo di Castelvecchio in
Verona has kindly granted permission to reproduce the Silver Plate from the
Treasure of Isola Rizza as a cover image for this book, for which we are grate-
ful.2 Thanks also go to Yitzhak Hen, who accepted the volumes for his series,
and to all those at Brepols who had their share in the publishing process. It has
been a pleasure to work with this group, and we hope that, for many, it will also
be a pleasure to use and read this volume.

2 
On the plate, see Philipp von Rummel’s contribution in this volume (Figure 7), and, for
recent work on the treasure of Isola Rizza, see Margherita Bolla, ‘Il tesoro di Isola Rizza’, in
Roma e i Barbari: la nascita di un nuovo mondo, ed. by Jean-Jacques Aillagon (Milano, 2008),
pp. 392–93; and Margherita Bolla, ‘Il “tesoro” di Isola Rizza: osservazioni in occasione del res-
tauro’, in Numismatica e antichità classiche, 28 (1999), 275–303.
 Christian and Barbarian Identities in
the Early Medieval West: Introduction

Walter Pohl*

T
he story of the fall of Rome has often been told as a tale of destruc-
tion: the failure of an empire, the demolition of its infrastructure, the
end of civilization. For a long time, this account of ‘decline and fall’
was the dominant paradigm.1 But it can also be analysed as a long-term process
of transformation, accentuated not by one fatal blow to classical civilization,
but as a multitude of transitions that eventually created rather different soci-
eties.2 At a time when the paradigm of catastrophe seemed finally superseded,
it has recently and very forcefully been revived.3 A familiar polemic has subse-
*  Parts of this article are based on a number of unpublished lectures, for instance at the
University of Glasgow (2007), at the 76th Anglo-American Conference of Historians in London
(2007), at the University of Princeton (2009), and at the University of Liverpool (2010); it was
finished in the context of the SFB ‘Visions of Community’. I would like to thank my friends and
colleagues at all these institutions for giving me the opportunity to discuss my ideas on the sub-
ject with them. My thanks also go to Nicola Edelmann, Alexander O’Hara, Gerda Heydemann,
Helmut Reimitz, and Pavlína Rychterová for help with this article.
1 
For an exhaustive overview of the pre-1980s debate, see Demandt, Der Fall Roms; for a
recent pointed discussion, see Ando, ‘Narrating Decline and Fall’.
2 
Fundamental for a new appreciation of late Antiquity: Brown, The World of Late
Antiquity. The approach of a ‘Transformation of the Roman World’ was developed during a
research programme of the European Science Foundation in the 1990s, which produced sev-
eral collaborative volumes, for instance: Pohl and Reimitz, eds, Strategies of Distinction. Recent
overviews inspired by this programme: Pohl, Die Völkerwanderung; Smith, Europe After Rome;
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West; Rousseau and Raithel, eds, A Companion to
Late Antiquity; Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome.
3 
Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire; Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome; for a discussion,
see Pohl, ‘Rome and the Barbarians in the Fifth Century’.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101661
pp. 1–46 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
2 Walter Pohl

quently returned to the field. What were the reasons and the consequences of
the dismantling of the western Empire? The debate tends to fall back on the
old dichotomy: catastrophe or continuity? This either-or approach still gives
some leeway to differentiating studies and new insights. How much of urban-
ism, long-distance trade, the manufacturing of goods, the tax-system, classical
education, or artisanal skills survived the political disruption? But it risks feed-
ing back the results, however complex they may be, into a rather simple overall
frame of interpretation: classical culture is lost in a seemingly irresistible tide
of barbarians; in a major historical backlash, nature reclaims many lands where
culture has reigned for hundreds of years. The barbarians, that is the implica-
tion, are a force of nature, and ethnicity is their natural form of organization,
as opposed to the civic culture of the ancient Mediterranean.4 Or, alternatively,
the barbarians were an episode that hardly had any impact, and Roman civiliza-
tion survived under an only slightly different guise.5
Romans against barbarians — the ideology-packed Roman narrative of the
civilizing mission of the Empire in defence against the brute forces of human
nature is still there, half-hidden in the back of our intellectual mind-set. As a
matrix of interpretation, it can build directly on a good deal of the evidence;
that is an advantage, but it may also be deceptive. Roman narratives of devas-
tating barbarian raids may often be exaggerated, although they are not simply
invented. There are substantial clues in the material evidence that many cities
were really destroyed, some regions depopulated, economic activities stopped,
and cultural skills lost. But was all of that due to bloodshed and destruction?
Quite remarkably, some of the most catastrophic events in European history,
with an enormous loss of lives — the Black Plague from 1348 onwards, the
Thirty-Years War in Germany, or the Second World War — did not at all lead
to the end of civilization or to a fundamental change of culture. Furthermore,
destruction was by no means general in the Roman Empire; it mostly affected
its European parts, and even here, after the turmoil of the fifth century many
regions were able to regenerate, if to different degrees.6 While, for instance,
Aquileia was in decline after being plundered by Attila’s army, Ravenna pros-
pered and expanded. The Roman-style aristocracy disappeared in post-imperial

4 
On the way in which barbarism evolved as a central cognitive category in the
Enlightenment, see Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, iv: Barbarians, Savages and Empires
(2005). In general, see Pohl, The Barbarian Challenge.
5 
Goffart, Barbarian Tides; Goffart, ‘Rome’s Final Conquest’.
6 
Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul.
Introduction 3

Britain and kept its influence and traditional pride in Gaul.7 Simple dichoto-
mies such as Romans/barbarians, continuity/catastrophe therefore cannot go
all the way in explaining the complex process of social and cultural change in
and beyond the Empire. This is the main methodological problem with the
Roman/barbarian dichotomy: by concentrating on the great drama (which
German scholars liked to style welthistorisches Ringen, a world-historical con-
frontation) between Romans and ‘Germans’, we tend to obliterate other impor-
tant and less obvious parts of the process. There is no room for all the paradox,
the subtlety, the ambiguities in it. In many cases, Roman and barbarian officers
or peasants were not all that different from each other. Really ‘barbaric’ bar-
barians might have their moments of glory, but could not build lasting king-
doms on Roman territory. Here, Roman barbarians and barbarian Romans
competed for power within an imperial framework that could not be sustained
everywhere in the course of events. Furthermore, the focus on violence and
destruction, so attractive for the general reader, diverts attention from the
many changes and innovations of the period, so masterfully exposed by Peter
Brown and others.8 We need the whole range of forms of historical change —
destruction and discontinuation, decline and reduction, reshaping and reuse,
experiment and innovation — to explain the complex transitional phase from
pagan to Christian empire and kingdoms, with its variously contracting and
expanding periphery of pagan tribal or segmentary societies. I still believe that
‘Transformation of the Roman World’ is an adequate overall label for these
multiple changes.
In the process, some social spaces contracted, for instance the ancient city
with its intricate distinctions of status and merit, or the world of the imperial
aristocracy between the imperial court, traditional public office and its lavish
villas and extensive properties in many provinces; or the erudite world of pagan
intellectuals and schools, whose teachings had remained the noblest sign of
distinction in the classical world for so long. Other social spaces expanded or
emerged: the new networks of the barbarian military elite, the ‘soft power’ of
an episcopate between old wealth and new values,9 the fast-spreading archipel-
ago of monastic communities, or the relatively self-sufficient village economies
in many parts of Europe. Not all of these changes in the physiognomy of social

7 
Delogu and Gasparri, eds, Le trasformazioni del v secolo.
8 
Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom; Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity;
Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages; Hen, Roman Barbarians.
9 
Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle.
4 Walter Pohl

roles were necessarily confrontational; educated senators and imperial officials

could become bishops, and the villa could turn into a village, not necessarily to
the detriment of the peasants.10 We can also describe this as a transformation of
identities: the contraction of old and the emergence of new forms of identity
and community. Ethnicity was one of these emerging forms of identification.
Educated Greeks and Romans had long regarded it as a rather barbarian form
of belonging, and had prided themselves in their civic, provincial, or imperial
identities. Gradually, ethnicity came to be accepted as a mark of distinction in
former Roman provinces.
These changes of identity are the focus of the present volume. Early medi-
eval ethnicity provided the point of departure for the Wittgenstein prize pro-
ject, and it soon became clear that ethnic identities had to be studied in the
context of other forms of identity and community. The project, located at the
Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna, was financed by
the Austrian Research Fund (FWF) between 2005 and 2010. This volume
and its companion volume, Strategies of Identification, give an overview of the
results of the studies pursued in the project.11 As I have argued in the intro-
duction to the latter volume, what the term ‘identity’ provides is a set of tools
for analysis, not easily-accessible answers to our questions, and far less simple
labels for the sense of belonging of individuals to collectives.12 Identities do not
simply exist, once and for all, as quasi-natural categories. They are the result of
a series of different identifications: of an individual with a group (which can be
accepted by the group or not), of the group as such (as a collective or through
its representatives), and by outsiders in their perception and recognition of that
group (including contemporary and modern scholarly identifications). The
success of a group, and of its identity, rests on the interplay of these three forms
of identification. This requires a regular process of communication within the
group and beyond it. Such identification can happen through symbols (similar
dress, typical objects, or common rituals), but most importantly through lan-
guage; in a complex society, writing is necessary, and increasingly so the more
inclusive and abstract the social group is. A face-to-face group such as a clan or
a village can maintain its boundaries and its identity more easily than a social
class or a people. Furthermore, larger and more inclusive identities do not sim-
ply build on smaller units, they often also compete with them for the loyalty of

10 
See Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages.
11 
Pohl and Heydemann, eds, Strategies of Identification.
12 
Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’.
Introduction 5

group members. Societies maintain and develop complex discourses in which

all sorts of identifications can be expressed, accepted, refused, legitimized, and
explained. The methodological consequence for the study of the past is that our
written sources are not just more-or-less distant reflections of the social reality
of a group out there. They also represent traces of the constant process of iden-
tification and negotiation which is part of social reality. In different contexts
and situations, group identities can be more or less ‘salient’. They may matter
more or less to different individuals, in different situations, or in certain social
environments. This is important to keep in mind when we deal with the com-
plex relationship between ‘texts and identities’ in our written sources, but also
with some methodological problems in the archaeological evidence.13 It is not
always easy to tell whether an individual belongs or does not belong to a given
group. But we can find traces of, often multiple, acts of identification.
In the Latin West (the region on which the present volume focuses), three
fundamental shifts of identity roughly coincided between the fourth and the
seventh centuries. Firstly, Christianity became the dominant creed and strove
to develop forms of identification and social cohesion worthy of its high spir-
itual ambition. Secondly, in most Latin-speaking areas, Romanness ceased to
be an imperial and hegemonial identity that provided a frame of reference for
numerous civic, provincial, and regional loyalties, and was transformed in vari-
ous ways. And thirdly, new elites of predominantly barbarian origin came to
be perceived and organized according to ethnic categories. That these three
elements were fundamental for the western Middle Ages is generally acknowl-
edged. But they have mostly been regarded as separate ‘pillars’, and the interac-
tion of these three processes has never been systematically studied.
Why were different late antique and early medieval changes of identity usu-
ally studied separately? This surely has pragmatic reasons, for understanding
the intricacies of the establishment of the Christian faith often requires reading
rather different sources than the violent see-saw of barbarian histories.14 But on
the conceptual level, it is also due to rather essentialist views of social groups.
To put this view bluntly: Romans remained Romans, but they had become
subdued and lost much of their precious culture; and the victorious barbar-
ians took many centuries to become civilized, in which Christianity played an

13 
Corradini and others, eds, Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages; Pohl, ‘Archae­
ology of Identity: Introduction’.
14 
On the history of research on the post-Roman period since the eighteenth century, see
Wood, The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages.
6 Walter Pohl

important part, without, however, changing the fundamental, ‘national’ selves

of the Romance or Germanic peoples. In this view, the ascent of ethnicity in
the West has been regarded as part of the social baggage that the barbarians
brought with them from the forests of Germany: they were organized in natu-
ral groups based on common blood, unlike the classical world with its artificial
bonds to city, province, and empire. In terms of social organization, it was the
return of a ‘natural’ ethnic order that destroyed the Roman Empire. That is the
implicit background to many traditional views on the subject.
Recent research has, however, demonstrated to what extent the barbarians
were transformed before they grabbed power in parts of the West: the composi-
tion of migrating groups changed considerably, a process that has been described
as ethnogenesis.15 Loose alliances of local and tribal groupings were replaced by
medium- and large-scale kingdoms, often under the same names. The barbarian
elites gradually converted to Christendom, adapted to a written Latin language
of state, and (as the archaeological evidence shows) changed many of their
cultural features, such as costume, ornamental styles, and burial habits. Before
they founded their kingdoms, most of them (for instance Alaric’s Visigoths,
Geiseric’s Vandals, the Gibichung Burgundians, Theoderic’s Ostrogoths, or
Clovis’s Franks) had spent decades on Roman territory. Furthermore, a sim-
ple observation can be made: all these large-scale barbarian kingdoms were
founded on Roman territory, and they were Christian (or only became large-
scale after they had become Christian, as in Britain or later in Scandinavia and
the Slavic world). Apart from the transient steppe empires of Huns or Avars,16
no supra-regional realms with ethnic designation were established without a
certain Christian and Roman basis, and a degree of literacy. On the other hand,
almost all of them were distinguished by an ethnic label, with the exception of
a few smaller Roman polities (such as Raetia Curiensis, papal Rome, or some
Italian city-states). There is, thus, a lot to say for looking for the common pro-
cess behind the changes of Roman, Christian, and barbarian identities.
The present volume seeks to offer such a common perspective in this intro-
ductory essay and in a number of pilot studies, and thus to open doors for
further work in this field. The individual contributions mostly approach these

15 
Wolfram, Die Goten, p. 559 (Wolfram, History of the Goths, trans. by Dunlap, p. 587);
Wolfram and others, Typen der Ethnogenese, i; Pohl, ‘Tradition, Ethnogenese und literarische
Gestaltung’; for a fundamental critique (which does not always represent it correctly): Gillett,
ed., On Barbarian Identity, with the response by Pohl, ‘Ethnicity, Theory and Tradition: A
Response’.
16 
Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa (Pohl, The Avars).
Introduction 7

‘post-Roman transitions’ by departing from one of the major shifts of identity,

addressing ethnic, Roman, or religious communities, but in conjunction with
each other. Thus, Albrecht Diem regards Burgundian ethnicity through the
lens of a monastic community. Alexander O’Hara deals with three seventh-
century authors distancing themselves from their native identities. Jamie Wood
addresses Isidore’s Christian stylization of the Visigoths. John Clay studies
the transition from the post-Roman British realms to Anglo-Saxon Wessex.
Francesco Borri regards the barbarians as a counterfoil to emerging civic iden-
tities in the Adriatic. And Marco Stoffella sketches the relative significance of
local, regional, and ethnic identities around early medieval Lucca. All of them
raise the question of the ‘scripts for identity’ which can shape identifications,
and which have left their mark in our sources. Texts build on previous texts and
draw on the resources of the past to circumscribe the significance of present
identities, or to delineate communities of the future.17
The second part of this volume unites several studies on the manifold rela-
tionship of Romans and barbarians in late Antiquity and the early Middle
Ages. Although they deal with rather different aspects of the problem —
the changes in historiographic ‘scripts of Romanness’ in early medieval Italy
(Maya Maskarinec), differences or similarities in material culture and burial
practices (Philipp von Rummel and Irene Barbiera), Latin titles of barbarian
rulers in Roman provinces (Roland Steinacher), perceptions of barbarians in
the post-Roman Merovingian kingdom (Gerald Krutzler), or the development
of Roman epigraphic script in barbarian hands (Flavia de Rubeis) — none of
them simply pits Romans against barbarians. Several of them explicitly raise
the question: who were the Romans? Who the barbarians? And what became
of them?
This introduction seeks to provide a wider frame in which these case studies
can be read together. In the first section, it directly addresses the question of eth-
nicity, arguing that the fundamental change between Antiquity and the early
Middle Ages was not so much the emergence of new peoples and ‘nations’, but
the development of a new way of thinking about peoples, and about their roles
in history. The second section deals with what I would identify as the main rea-
son why the rule by gentes over large parts of the former Roman Empire came

17 
This is the topic of a joint research project financed by HERA (Humanities in the
European Research Area) under the title ‘Cultural memory and the resources of the past,
400–1000 ad (CMRP)’, in collaboration between the Austrian Academy of Sciences and
the Universities of Utrecht, Cambridge, and Leeds; see McKitterick and others, eds, Cultural
Memory and the Resources of the Past.
8 Walter Pohl

to be considered as natural and legitimate: a Christian world-view inspired by

the Bible. The third section explores the question of early medieval Romanness,
which at the same time constitutes a particularly delicate test-case for the the-
ory of ethnicity. Could being Roman be an ethnic identity? The very multiplic-
ity of Roman identifications defies any formal typology of ethnic, territorial,
civic, political, or religious identities. Thus, while ethnic identities represent a
point of departure, and also a constant point of reference for this volume, its
contributions explore a much wider range of shifting identities, and thus give
an impression of the great variety of post-Roman transitions.

An ‘Ethnic Turn’ of the Early Middle Ages?

Studying early medieval ethnicity requires dealing with a histoire croisée of strong
national master narratives which have lost ground but have not disappeared;18
and, at the same time, with more recent trends in research that regard nations
as a modern phenomenon, or claim that they did not matter much at all.19 But
at a first glance, we have to acknowledge that most modern European nations
have something to do with the early medieval past. A look at the map of Europe
about one thousand years ago shows mostly familiar names: France, England,
Scotland, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, the
Kingdoms of the Danes and Swedes. Most of these names had not been on
the map five hundred years before. In western Europe, most names of nations
go back to the period of the fall of Rome (or even before that); in the north
and east of Europe, many names are attested later in the first millennium. It
is remarkable how few modern European nations have been constructed on a
more recent basis of identification. Most of the relatively few nations that only
reached statehood in the late medieval or modern age have constructed partic-
ularly powerful ‘invented traditions’, such as the heroic origins of the Swiss con-
federation, the supposed Daco-Roman continuity in Romania, the Moravian
identification in Slovakia, or the ancient Belgian past that provided a new
name for the former Habsburg Netherlands in 1830 (and which increasingly
proves too feeble to create common ground for the Flemish and the Walloons).
The ancient Batavian origins of the Netherlands received much less attention.20

18 
See, for instance Pohl, ed., Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen; Bák and others, eds, Gebrauch
und Missbrauch des Mittelalters; Reimitz and Zeller, eds, Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung.
19 
For an overview, see Smith, The Nation in History.
20 
This overview is necessarily sketchy; as will be argued in what is to follow, none of the
Introduction 9

For a long time, modern historiography has therefore regarded the early
Middle Ages as the period when the European nations originated. Linear
‘German’ or ‘French’ or ‘English’ national histories took the glorious migrations
that brought Rome to its knees as their starting point. The assumption was of
an inborn essence in all of these peoples that made their success and persistence
possible. This construct was based on ancient beliefs in the common origin of
peoples, expressed in terminology (in Latin, both gens and natio are derived
from ‘birth’) and in origin myths, from the sons of Noah to Hengist and Horsa,
and was endorsed by generations of scholars who regarded the nation as the
fundamental form of human collectives.21
It is now generally acknowledged that, quite to the contrary, peoples are
not the agents of history, immutable in its course, but rather one of the most
elusive and contradictory results of historical change. The early medieval king-
doms were not at all nations in the modern sense. Military elites of some tens of
thousands of specialized warriors ruled over an overwhelming majority of civil-
ians, largely Roman provincials.22 Gradual assimilation took many centuries
until the ruling elites in Gaul or Italy had adopted the language of their sub-
jects, while these in turn took on the ethnic name of their lords. Interestingly,
the change of language, costume, and many other cultural elements was hardly
noticed by contemporary authors, and had little detectable impact on identi-
ties (which shows that language is not necessarily a key to ethnic identity).23
Our evidence makes it hard to comprehend that scholars ever found the princi-
ple of cohesion underlying these kingdoms in the blood (or the genes) of their
subjects. Feelings of identity were mostly rooted in small, face-to-face groups.
To integrate these disparate groups over large territories — the Frankish king-
dom under Charlemagne was about as big as the first European Community of
the 1960s — required both a remarkable effort of organization, and a consider-

names designated a ‘nation’ from the start. The writing of national histories in Europe was the
topic of the ESF programme ‘Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories
in Europe’ (2003–08), from which the book series ‘Writing the Nation’ resulted, for instance:
Evans and Marchal, eds, History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins. See also Berger, ed.,
Writing the Nation. For invented traditions, see Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds, The Invention of
Tradition, and Anderson, Imagined Communities.
21 
See Leerssen, National Thought in Europe; Geary and Klaniczay, eds, Medievalism.
22 
Wolfram, Das Reich und die Germanen (Wolfram, The Roman Empire and its Germanic
Peoples, trans. by Dunlap); Geary, The Myth of Nations; Pohl, Die Völkerwanderung.
23 
Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’; von Rummel, Habitus barbarus; Pohl and Zeller, eds, Sprache
und Identität.
10 Walter Pohl

able degree of abstraction and ideological legitimation, for the development of

these ‘ethnic kingdoms’ (for instance, those of the Franks or the Anglo-Saxons)
was by no means a natural process.
None of the modern nations are the direct heirs of the peoples mentioned
above; their composition changed, and the political rule exerted in their name
has a broken and ambiguous history. Medieval history is full of ethnic paradox
and changes of rulership: after 1066, England could have become La Grande
Normandie instead of Great Britain; Greece was part of a Romanía which
we call Byzantium, but that could also have turned into a Slavic or Albanian
nation, into a Frankish realm called Morea, or into an Islamic state called
Yunanistan; Spain might have remained a Gothia or a caliphate named after
a side-line of the Prophet’s family; Ireland could still be called Scotland, and
Scotland Pictland; instead of Germany, independent states of the Saxons,
Bavarians, and Swabians might have developed. The composition, territory,
and even the language of many European peoples changed; or their independ-
ent rule was resumed after long intervals, for instance in Poland, Croatia, and
Ireland. Some states even latched on to long-disappeared peoples of the distant
migration age that had little to do with them, as in late medieval Burgundy or
modern Sweden (where two of the three crowns are those of the Goths and
Vandals). Furthermore, many ethnic names that appeared in the early Middle
Ages have come to denote stable regional units: Bavaria, Lombardy, Burgundy,
or Moravia. But in spite of their widely different historical fates, most early
medieval ethnonyms have remained on the map. This indicates the success of
identity politics connected with them — the heroic past with its noble gene-
alogies and its suggestive ideas of common blood and fate seems to have proved
attractive for a wide variety of later societies. In many successive generations,
these resources of the past were used as ‘scripts for identity’. But they are essen-
tially ‘invented traditions’, although many of them may refer to historical fact.24
The identification with the presumed ‘forefathers’ of the distant past of course
hardly stands up to scholarly scrutiny.
Thus, the persistence of ethnonyms in the political landscape of Europe
cannot be due to the unity and vigour with which these peoples constructed
their kingdoms from the fifth century onwards. Research on ‘ethnogenesis’ has
shown how complex the processes of ethnic aggregation and the formation of
distinct peoples were.25 Neither was it the long-term success of Goths, Vandals,

24 
Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition.
25 
Geary, The Myth of Nations.
Introduction 11

Burgundians, Alamanni, Saxons, or Lombards that made the political model

of the ethnic kingdom last, for none of their kingdoms remained independ-
ent in the course of the early Middle Ages. No doubt the success of this model
had something to do with the Franks; but even Frankish political identity
enjoyed very mixed fortunes in the course of the early and high Middle Ages.26
In Mediterranean Europe, chiefly in Italy and Spain, the model of ethnic rule
failed after its initial success; even the late medieval Lombards only reluctantly
faced their Longobard origins, so that one thirteenth-century author wrote
that the Lombards had successfully defended Italy against the Longobard inva-
sion.27 In the tenth and eleventh centuries, it was more due to the new peoples
in the eastern and northern periphery, Swedes, Danes, Poles, Czechs, Croats,
Hungarians, etc., that the model of ethnic rule was reinvigorated. Throughout
the Middle Ages, alternative political models were always at hand: the Roman
Empire, the papacy, the regnum Italiae as a kingdom built on an ancient region,
the Italian city-states, etc. Still, in the long run, the ethnic model proved the
most vigorous, and in time became the basis of modern nations.
If the reason for this success is not the natural strength of ethnic ties and the
continuous persistence of national identities — how else can we explain why
in one thousand years of troubled history, of wars and revolutions, the ethnic
landscape of Europe has changed relatively little? We have become so accus-
tomed to see the world as a world of nations that we have taken for granted that
Europe should have developed that way, as an aggregate of independent peo-
ples. But ethnicity played a very different part in many other political cultures
before and around medieval Europe. The Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic
empire that was based on a city-state, and the populus Romanus was composed
of people of widely different origin who had acquired the legal status of Roman
citizens.28 The Byzantine Empire that grew out of Rome predominantly con-
sisted of Greek speakers who stubbornly called themselves Romans, Rhomaioi,
and distinguished themselves from many of their neighbours by their orthodox
creed, while other orthodox states, in part based on their ethnic heritage, rose
on its periphery.29 The Islamic states were based on religion and, for a long time,

26 
Pohl, ‘Zur Bedeutung ethnischer Unterscheidungen’; Reimitz, Writing for the Future;
Reimitz, ‘Omnes Franci: Identifications and Identities’.
27 
Busch, ‘Die Lombarden und die Langobarden’.
28 
See below, and Farney, Ethnic Identity and Aristocratic Competition.
29 
Page, Being Byzantine; Zacharia, ed., Hellenisms: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity, espe-
cially the contribution by Rapp, ‘Hellenic Identity, romanitas and Christianity’.
12 Walter Pohl

on the supreme legitimacy of the family of the prophet; when the Abbasid
Caliphs lost their power to regional dynasties, some of whom had strong ethnic
ties (such as the Daylamite Buyids, the Kurdish Marwanids, the Hamdanids
and other Bedouin dynasties in Iraq and Syria), a system of ethnic states could
have developed; but, very interestingly, ethnic solidarities only provided rela-
tively reliable military backing for a limited period, but no ideological legiti-
macy as they did in the early medieval West.30 China, like Rome, was an empire
with a hegemonial identity surrounded by despised barbarians; and, unlike
Rome, it managed to integrate invading barbarians almost completely into its
political and cultural matrix.31 India has a long history of shifting regional and
hegemonial powers mainly identified by their dynasties, from the Guptas to
the Mughals. Not that ethnic identities did not matter in all of these socie-
ties; sometimes they even became politicized — the very name Mughals came
from the ethnonym, Mongols. But in none of these cultural regions did a rela-
tively stable plurality of states with ethnic denomination, comparable to the
European political system, develop.
Therefore, the decisive change after the end of Roman rule in the West
was not so much the emergence of single peoples whose names were bound to
remain on the map. It was the gradual development of a system in which ethnic
rule was considered legitimate. Ethnic identities came to be used as points of
reference for political power and social cohesion in former Roman territories.
The new regna were governed in the name of a gens, to which political agency
was often ascribed (Franks or Lombards wage war or raise a king). In theory,
power was wielded by these gentes, so that the fall of the Lombard Kingdom in
Italy in 774 could be described as the passing of the kingdom of Italy from the
gens Langobardorum to the gens Francorum.32 A plurality of ethnic states had
formed a political landscape in which ethnicity provided essential distinctions.
Ethnicity is a relational category, and ethnic identification of some groups
tends to lead to ethnic perceptions of other groups, however adequate that may
have been in some cases.33

30 
Cf. Pohl, Gantner, and Payne, eds, Visions of Community; historical overview: Kennedy,
The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates; see also Lewis, The Multiple Identities of the Near East;
Crone, From Arabian Tribes to Islamic Empire.
31 
di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies; di Cosmo, ‘Ethnography of the Nomads and
“Barbarian” History’.
32 
Pohl, ‘Gens ipsa peribit: Kingdom and Identity’.
33 
On ethnicity as a relational category, see Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism; Gingrich,
‘Envisioning Medieval Communities in Asia’. An early medieval example: the diplomatic letters
Introduction 13

This political matrix developed only gradually. Of course, there had been
gentes and kings before in the periphery of the ancient world. But that was a bar-
barian political model of regional rule, and could not be transplanted directly
to Roman provinces. Barbarian invaders were of course not simply brainwashed
when they entered Roman territory, forgot their identities, and adapted to
whatever their new environment had to offer. The post-Roman regna and gentes
have certain links to previous peoples and kingdoms in the barbarian world
— the names, for instance, and, in some cases, king lists and origin myths. But
there was no barbarian precedent for their rule; the failed kingdoms founded
by Arminius and Marbod in the Augustan wars could not serve as models after
almost half a millennium.34 Barbarian identities were no self-referential con-
tinuum that imposed itself on the Roman world. Much of the legitimacy of
the post-imperial barbarian kingdoms was derived from late Roman political
language, literacy, and administration, and, of course, from Christianity. Over
time, their ethnic forms of legitimacy were refined and used with growing self-
confidence. That was a process in which bishops had an important role to play,
not least the bishops of Rome (see below).
We can establish the basic grammar of legitimation according to the most
common formula for medieval and modern royal titles: N.  Dei gratia rex
(Francorum, Langobardorum, etc.).35 Ethnicity and Christianity are combined
in this title, so that royal authority is derived both from God and the gens (or
from the land named after it). This formula took some time to spread after the
fall of western Rome.36 Most barbarian kings first preferred to underline the
universal character of their rule over Roman territories by using the ‘absolute’
title, rex or flavius rex, without any specification which would have been, at
the same time, a limitation. It is remarkable that the ancient territorial names,
Italy, Gaul, or Spain, played almost no part in the self-representation of post-
Roman rulers. Things might have developed differently, for in the centuries of

in Cassiodorus’s Variae are all addressed to kings designated with ethnic titles, for example see
Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. by Mommsen, iii. 1–4, pp. 79–81. See also Fried, ‘Gens und regnum’,
with the hypothesis that the Carolingian defeats against the Vikings were not least due to their
erroneous perception of them as coherent gentes.
34 
Wolfram, ‘Das Römische Königtum der Germanen’; Wolfram, Gotische Studien, esp.
pp. 139–73; Dick, Der Mythos vom ‘germanischen’ Königtum; Pohl, ‘Fazit: Niemand vermag zu
herrschen’.
35 
Wolfram, Intitulatio I: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel.
36 
Gillett, ‘Was Ethnicity Politicized’, is correct in maintaining that the ethnic title was not
used universally from the start.
14 Walter Pohl

empire Gallic identity had repeatedly become a political issue.37 But the ethnic
identities of the new rulers prevailed. The ethnic title was first used in con-
texts where it was mainly addressed to the army and the members of the ruling
gens, for instance on precious objects used for donatives. Roland Steinacher, in
his contribution in this volume, discusses the case of the title rex Vandalorum
et Alanorum, which is among the earliest ethnic titles attested. Ethnic titula-
ture was also used in the promulgation of laws, for instance in the Lombard
kingdom. The prologue to Rothari’s edict in 643 is an instance of elaborate
self-designation: ‘Ego in dei nomine Rotari, vir excellentissimus, et septimo­
decimum rex gentis Langobardorum’.38 The law-code was chiefly directed at the
Lombards, while the ethnic title does not appear in the preserved royal char-
ters, which were often addressed to churches and monasteries. It seems likely
that for some time barbarian kings tended to present themselves with the eth-
nic title to their gens and army, and without it to the general population. In the
British Isles, regnal titles also show some variety (although the evidence is com-
plicated by the question of authenticity in many of the transmitted charters).
In the late seventh century, in the prologue of Ine’s laws, we get ‘Ic Ine med
Godes gife Wesseaxna kyning’, while he could be rex Saxonum in his charters.39
But the development of West Saxon identity was a complicated process, as John
Clay shows in his contribution to this volume. Legislation always had ideologi-
cal functions, often reaching back to the prologues of the Theodosian Code,40
but increasingly showcasing ethnic ideology. The long prologue to the Lex
Salica, probably added in the 760s, ascribes divine origin to the entire people:
The whole Frankish people, established by the power of God, are strong in arms,
weighty in council, firm in the compact of peace, pure in body, distinguished in
form, brave, swift, and austere. Recently converted to the Catholic faith, they are
free from heresy, rejecting barbarian rites with the help of God, keeping the faith;
and according to their customs they seek the key to wisdom and desire justice.41

37 
The Expositio totius mundi et gentium, ed. by Rougé, c. 58, p. 196, remarks: ‘Gallia pro-
vincia, quae, cum maxima sit et imperatorem semper egeat, hunc ex se habet’. See Mathisen,
Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul, pp. 18–20.
38 
Leges Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, prologus, p. 1 (Lombard Laws, trans. by Fischer
Drew, p. 39). Cf. Pohl, ‘Leges Langobardorum’.
39 
The Law of King Ine, ed. by Liebermann (The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed.
and trans. by Attenborough, p. 36). For the titles in Anglo-Saxon charters, see Scharer, ‘Die
Intitulationes der angelsächsischen Könige’.
40 
Wormald, The Making of English Law, i: Legislation and its Limits (1999).
41 
Lex Salica, ed. by Eckhardt, p. 2.
Introduction 15

God and the gens thus came to form the double basis for legitimate rulership.
Increasingly, the territorial designation derived from the ethnonym could
replace that of the gens, as in rex Angliae, while on the other hand collective
names derived from territorial designations were also used like ethnonyms, for
instance Hispani or Lotharingi.42
The importance of ethnic bonds for the Latin Christian polities was not on
the same level in all cases, and neither did it experience a steady growth. There
were some periods and places in which it was pushed into the forefront in
many texts — often in times of conflict or crises of identity, for instance in late
Merovingian Francia when Neustrians and Austrasians competed for being ‘the’
Franks, or in the ninth- and tenth-century Lombard principates in southern
Italy where Lombards had in fact become assimilated to the Romance-speaking
majority, but insisted on their noble Lombard progeny all the more.43 On the
other hand, lack of explicitly attested ethnic identification may also indicate
a self-assured identity which did not have to be highlighted.44 Frankishness
could not only mean different things at different times, but also to different
people at the same time, as Helmut Reimitz has shown in detail.45 Gregory of
Tours not only omitted, but actively countered narratives on which Frankish
identifications could be built, for instance, an ancient origin narrative and an
impressive king list, which Fredegar, in the successive century, underlined. At
the same time, Fredegar was very interested in the entire ethnic landscape of
Europe, past and present. As the contribution by Gerald Krutzler in this vol-
ume shows, Merovingian texts displayed an acute awareness and an often dif-
ferentiated perception of the multiplicity of gentes that lived in and beyond
the Frankish kingdoms. The ‘ethnic’ Europe that emerged after the Empire had
faded out was a landscape in which ethnicity had become a main, although not
the only feature of distinction between groups of people on both the regional
and the supra-regional level.
A crucial period for the development of visions of community which sought
to bring political, ethnic, and Christian identities into close conjunction was

42 
For the problem of the distinction between ethnic and territorial identities, see Pohl,
‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’ , pp. 16–17.
43 
See Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung.
44 
This is a problem with the argument in Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy.
The relatively rare occurrence of Gothic identifications on, for instance, gravestones does not
prove that Gothicness did not matter; even modern nationalists rarely mentioned their nation-
ality on gravestones.
45 
Reimitz, Writing for the Future; Reimitz, ‘Cultural Brokers of a Common Past’.
16 Walter Pohl

the early Carolingian age — the passage from the Lex Salica is just one obvious
example. It was a brief period of active and coordinated political intervention
into the discourses of identity, and its political and intellectual elites sought
to reinforce a close conjunction between gens, regnum, ecclesia, and later also
imperium.46 But in a sense the very success of Carolingian politics and its impe-
rial ambitions charged the Frankish model with too many and too contradic-
tory meanings. In the course of the ninth century, once again extensive spaces
for reappropriation of traditional modes of identification by particular interest
groups opened. Still, fundamental resources had been created or at least passed
down from the previous periods in carefully-adapted form, and remained avail-
able for further uses.47
Many medievalists assume that the medieval European nations finally took
shape when the Carolingian hold on most of Latin Europe was lost.48 In this
view, Ottonian Germany, Capetian France, Alfredian England, and the new
nations of northern and eastern Europe achieved the kind of stable nationhood
that the post-Roman kingdoms in the first centuries of the Middle Ages had not
been able to attain. Leaving aside the thorny problem of terminology — ‘when
is a nation’?49 — this approach seems to have a lot to recommend it. However,
these emerging ‘nations’ of the central Middle Ages developed rather differ-
ently. None of them got through ‘1066 and all that’ (or French ‘feudal anar-
chy’, or the chronic internal discord of the Holy Roman Empire) without dra-
matic loss of cohesion or crises of identity. Moreover, the development of single
nations is not all there is. Arguably, the Norman Kingdom in Great Britain
might not have become England without the sacral ring of the name Angli/
Anglia that goes back to Pope Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede.50
France might not have overcome the centrifugal tendencies of the mutation
féodale and the Hundred Years’ War without its glorious Frankish past; and the
nineteenth-century German nation was not least built on the overwhelming
sense of history of its educated elites. Many medieval realms, and much more

46 
Cf. De Jong, ‘Ecclesia and the Early Medieval Polity’.
47 
Reimitz, ‘Nomen Francorum obscuratum’.
48 
Brühl and Schneidmüller, eds, Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Reichs- und Nationsbildung;
Bues and Rexheuser, eds, Mittelalterliche nationes — neuzeitliche Nationen, with the con-
tributions by Ehlers, ‘Was sind und wie bilden sich nationes im mittelalterlichen Europa’;
Schneidmüller, ‘Reich, Volk, Nation’; see also Pohl and Wieser, eds, Der frühmittelalterliche
Staat.
49 
Connor, ‘When is a Nation?’; Smith, The Cultural Foundations of Nations.
50 
Cf. Wormald, ‘Engla Lond: The Making of an Allegiance’.
Introduction 17

so modern nations, relied on notions of ‘who we really are’. Regardless of their

political ups and downs, the accumulated resources of the past shaped the land-
scape on which new political fortunes were built.
The approach presented here thus addresses a different level of historical
change: the development of ‘scripts for identity’, of ethnic discourse, of a model
of government in the name of a people. This regards the general way in which
the role of ethnic groups in the political landscape and within a universal reli-
gious community could acquire significance — a point that is often forgotten.
On this basis, resources for specific ethnic or political identifications could be
created, for instance, the rich body of texts that presented historical precedents
of Frankishness and its various meanings. Many of these models and discur-
sive strategies remained available throughout European history, although they
might always be modified in the course of textual transmission. Linear histories
of European nations in the course of the Middle Ages, seen as successive stages
in the unfolding of the modern nation, can hardly accommodate the multiplic-
ity of the evidence. We should therefore study the ways in which ethnic and
‘national’ discourses and visions of community developed, and in which they
were applied in politics. The hypothesis presented here is that late Antiquity and
the early Middle Ages were a formative stage in the discourse of legitimate eth-
nic rule, and that Christian ideas played an important part in this development.

Christian and Ethnic Identities

In the Old Testament, ethnicity plays a key role.51 God’s covenant was with
a people, the people of Israel: ‘“I will make a new covenant with the whole
nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land”, says the Lord’. ‘“I will put
my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God
and they will be my people”’ (Ier 31. 33). ‘You must be holy to me because
I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the other peoples to be
mine’, the Lord says in Leviticus (Lv 20. 26), framing a series of detailed norms
for the people of Israel. Belonging to the chosen people implied accepting an
enormous moral responsibility. More often than not, God’s own people strayed
from the covenant, and were duly punished. The moral and ritual drama in
which God’s protection and His punishment were enacted mainly unfolded
in scenarios of ethnic conflict. Surrounding peoples, from the Egyptians and

51 
See, for instance, Brett, ed., Ethnicity and the Bible; Grosby, Biblical Ideas of Nationality;
Smith, Chosen Peoples.
18 Walter Pohl

Philistines to Assyrians and Babylonians, served as instruments of God’s wrath.

The Latin text of the Old Testament provided numerous instances of ethnic
identification and conflict that could serve as a model in the Middle Ages: early
medieval readers could easily distinguish in it a landscape of gentes and reges
not unlike their own.
In the New Testament, this ethnic vision was turned on its head, but also,
paradoxically, reaffirmed. Paul’s epistle to the Colossians (3. 11) emphatically
states that among the Christians ‘there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised
or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in
all’. The clear implication is that Jesus Christ had overcome ethnic boundaries.
From a Pauline, and also from an Augustinian point of view, conversion made
ethnicity meaningless.52 In a sense, the Christians themselves had become God’s
new people. Ethnic metaphors were widely used for early Christian communi-
ties.53 For instance, Peter (i Pt 2. 9–10), developing the passage from Leviticus
and other Old Testament texts, addressed the early Christians: ‘But you are a
chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of His own, so that
you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his
marvellous light. You once were not a people, but now you are God’s people’.54
This people of the elect should come from all the peoples of the earth. Jesus calls
upon the disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew (28. 19): ‘Therefore go
and make disciples of all nations’; and in Mark (13. 10) he says: ‘First the gospel
must be preached to all nations’. This means that Christianity is open to all,
regardless of their origin, and in that sense the passage is usually understood.55
But it should be noted that the text does not say omnes homines, or homines
omnium nationum, or similar; omnes gentes have to receive the word of God
and be baptized.56 The gospel is addressed, in the first place, to the gentes.
This implication becomes clearer in the polemic between the early Christians
and the Jews: what, in Christian eyes, distinguishes the New from the Old
Testament is that not only the Jews, but also the gentes have a right to receive

52 
Cf. Corradini, ‘Die Ankunft der Zukunft’.
53 
Buell, Why this New Race?; Lieu, Christian Identity.
54 
‘Vos autem genus electum, regale sacerdotium, gens sancta, populus adquisitionis […] qui
aliquando non populus, nunc autem populus Dei’.
55 
For instance, Geary, The Myth of Nations, p. 54: ‘The new people of God was not bound
by any traditional ethnic, or, indeed, legal or gender category’.
56 
Cf. Sim, ‘Christianity and Ethnicity in the Gospel of Matthew’, who otherwise under-
lines the different approaches to ethnicity in the gospels of Matthew and Mark.
Introduction 19

God’s grace. This was the thrust of the argument in Tertullian’s early third-
century work Adversus Iudaeos; he wanted to counter both the idea that the
Christians were just a Jewish sect, and that they were a people of their own, dis-
tinct from both Romans and Jews.57
For he [God] has promised to Abraham that in his semen all the nations (nationes)
of the earth would be blessed, and that from the womb of Rebecca, two peoples
(duo populi et duae gentes) would issue forth, the Jews, that is Israel, and the gentes,
that is us. Therefore, both were called populus and gens, so that from the name given
none would presume to claim the privilege of grace for itself.58

The gentes, that is us. The term that was used as an outside designation in the
Hebrew Bible, goyim, translated into Latin as gentes, is here emphatically turned
into a self-identification. This shift in the role of the Jews and the gentes was
made easier by the ambivalent Latin usage and added another semantic dimen-
sion to it. In the medieval Latin West, gens/gentes could thus be used for both
one’s own people and the others. A clear distinction between populus and gens,
for which there were classical precedents and which would have offered an alter-
native, did not become current in medieval Latin.59 Through Christian usage,
the term gens became charged with a multiplicity of meanings. In Tertullian’s
view, there were two gentes, the Jews and the Christians; the latter in turn at
least notionally consisted of members of all the other gentes. That the term gens
was not just a vague collective designation for the non-Jews/pagans becomes
clear in another passage. Tertullian argues that, even in the Old Testament,
God had variously been presented as the God of all peoples. In whom else, he
maintains, should all the peoples, universae gentes, now believe but in Christ?
This is followed by an impressive list of gentes, starting with the catalogue from
the Acts of the Apostles (2. 9–10), from Parthians and Armenians to Egyptians
and Romans, to which Tertullian adds a number of further peoples of the pre-
sent, Gauls, Britons, Germans, Sarmatians, and others.60

57 
Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos, ed. by Hauses, i. 2, p. 162: ‘Nam occasio quidem defendendi
etiam gentibus divinam gratiam hinc habuit praerogativam, quod sibi vindicare dei legem instit-
uerit homo ex gentibus nec prosapia Israelitum Iudaeus’. See also Buell, Why this New Race?,
pp. 154–56.
58 
Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos, ed. by Hauses, i. 3–4, p. 164. Cf. Gn 25. 23. For the ancient
interpretations of the story of Esau and Jacob, see Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, esp. p. 14.
59 
Cf. Pohl, ‘Aux origines d’une Europe ethnique’.
60 
Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos, ed. by Hauses, vii. 4, pp. 204–08.
20 Walter Pohl

A world of gentes could thus become the theatre for the history of salva-
tion and the horizon for Christian missions.61 This becomes clear, for example,
in Prosper’s De vocatione omnium gentium, a mid-fifth-century treatise against
Pelagianism.62 Pelagius had argued that the road to salvation was in the personal
moral responsibility of each individual. His opponents, first of all Augustine,
tried to show that on the contrary, it was by God’s grace that one could attain
salvation. However, there was a problem with this argument. Why did God’s
grace work so unevenly among individuals? Divine revelation had first exclu-
sively reached the people of Israel, and even after the death of Christ, the mes-
sage of redemption had only gradually spread to other people. This is the prob-
lem that Prosper’s text raises, and subtly answers. Vocatio omnium gentium is in
fact an ambiguous phrase: it could mean that all pagans are being called upon
individually. Then, it would be impossible to prove that the just God had really
called everybody. But it can also mean the calling of all peoples, in line with
earlier usage. And this is what Prosper tries to prove: the Lord’s calling has gone
out to all peoples. Some gentes may have received it earlier and others later, but
none will be left out.
Prosper bolsters this view by an impressive array of passages both from
the Old and the New Testament to prove that omnes gentes in fact means all
peoples. The Lord’s world was not a universal church or empire without dis-
tinctions. Already the first biblical quote from Deuteronomy (32. 8–9) sets
the scene: ‘When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he
divided up humankind, he set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the
number of the heavenly assembly. For the Lord’s allotment is his people’.63 The
number of peoples corresponds to the heavenly assembly, an idea that is also
linked to the wide-spread assumption that there were only seventy two peo-
ples on earth.64 The fact that not all of them had received the revelation of the
Hebrew Bible is turned into an act of divine patience with a quote from the
Acts of the Apostles (14. 14), when Paul and Barnabas preach at Lystra: ‘In past
generations he (i.e. God) allowed all the gentes to go their own ways’. Prosper’s

61 
But see Wood, ‘“The End of the Earth”’, who argues that Bede is the first early medieval
historiographer who is interested in missionary history.
62 
Prosper, De vocatione omnium gentium, ed. by Teske (Prosper, The Call of All Nations,
trans. by de Letter); cf. Hwang, Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace. For Pelagianism, see Markus, The
End of Ancient Christianity, pp. 40–46.
63 
Prosper, De vocatione omnium gentium, ed. by Teske, i. 6, p. 84–85 (Prosper, The Call of
All Nations, trans. by de Letter, i. 5, p. 30–31).
64 
Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel.
Introduction 21

interpretation is that God ‘has never denied the gifts of his goodness to any
of the gentes’. The diversity of the gentes thus becomes a heavenly gift; and all
of them belong to God in their quality as peoples. Later, Prosper turns to the
passage from Peter addressing the ‘chosen people’, to make the point that the
Christians had not been chosen as individuals:65
What is said here, however, does not apply to the same men but to men of the same
people (genus). The call which appeared at the approach of the end of the world
has no retrospective effect on the past ages. So those about whom these things are
successively said are, in a sense, the same men and yet not the same men.66

Questions of identity, indeed.

The Bible, and its complex reception in the Latin-Christian world, can cer-
tainly help to explain early medieval modes of thought, and that is not a new
insight, although it has hardly been employed in the study of early medieval eth-
nicity so far.67 Of course, the people of Israel as a model for Christian nations
was ambiguous and highly problematic.68 The contemporary Jewish people
remained a challenge to Christian appropriations of the Hebrew Bible and its

65 
Prosper, De vocatione omnium gentium, ed. by Teske, i. 24, p. 102; Prosper, The Call of All
Nations, trans. by de Letter, i. 11, p. 50: ‘Sicut est quod sanctus Petrus apostolus scribens sui et
futuri temporis gentibus, ait: Vos autem genus electum, regale sacerdotium, gens sancta, populus
acquisitionis; ut virtutes annuntietis eius qui de tenebris vos vocavit in admirabile lumen suum:
qui aliquando non populus, nunc autem populus Dei, qui non consecuti misericordiam, nunc autem
misericordiam consecuti (i Pt 2. 9–10). Numquid cum haec praedicarentur, adhuc illi homines
permanebant quos omnes Deus in praeteritis generationibus dimiserat ingredi vias suas (Acts
14. 15), et iidem ipsi, qui prius traditi fuerant voluntatibus suis, nunc de tenebris in lumen admi-
rabile vocabantur?’
66 
Prosper, De vocatione omnium gentium, ed. by Teske, i. 24, p. 102 (Prosper, The Call of All
Nations, trans. by de Letter, i. 11, p. 50).
67 
See, for instance, Riché and Lobrichon, eds, Le Moyen Âge et la Bible, esp. Riché, ‘La
Bible et la vie politique’; Gameson, ed., The Early Medieval Bible; Cremascoli and Leonardi,
eds, La Bibbia nel medio evo, esp. Leonardi, ‘L’esegesi altomedievale’, and Cantelli Berarducci,
‘L’esegesi della rinascita Carolingia’; Contreni, ‘Carolingian Biblical Culture’; The Power of the
Word [= Early Medieval Europe, 7. 3 (1998)], with the contributions by Mayke de Jong, Ian
Wood, Rob Meens, and Yitzhak Hen; De Jong, ‘The Empire as ecclesia’; Chazelle and Edwards,
eds, The Study of the Bible in the Carolingian Era, esp. Chazelle and Edwards, ‘Introduction: The
Study of the Bible’; Depreux and Judic, eds, Alcuin de York à Tours, esp. pp. 209–318; Leonardi
and Orlandi, eds, Biblical Studies in the Early Middle Ages, esp. Noble, ‘The Bible in the Codex
Carolinus’.
68 
Heydemann, ‘Biblical Israel and the Christian gentes’; Pohl, ‘Disputed Identifications’.
22 Walter Pohl

history of salvation.69 From a Christian point of view, the biblical matrix was
inescapably dynamic: which of the gentes, and who among them, would heed the
call for salvation and join the Christian populus? Who would relapse, and who
could be part of the civitas Dei, in accordance with the unfathomable will of
God? Which of the gentes would be able to attain divine protection by its faith
and deeds? Such a dynamic sense of the mysterious workings of divine favour
and intervention among the nations could not but shape contemporary percep-
tions of the meaning of ethnic communities, and impinge on their political uses.
One element in which the Christian world of nations differed from both
the classical and the biblical view was that the Christian message tended to go
beyond ethnocentrism. Greece and Rome, curious and watchful as they had
been of the many barbarian nations beyond the boundaries of their civilization,
had basically juxtaposed ‘us and them’, Greeks (or Romans) and barbarians.70
The Hebrew Bible also worked on the basis of a rather strict divide between ‘us’,
the chosen people, and ‘them’, the goyim who venerated false gods; although
as usual in the Hebrew Bible, there are also examples to the contrary: the
‘universal horizon of biblical particularism’, as Jon D. Levenson has put it. 71
Christianity constructed a similar boundary between the church and the pagan
gentes, although, as shown above, this divide was rather dynamic. It was both
the strength and the weakness of the Christian empire of late Antiquity that it
combined the binary logic of Rome and of early Christianity in a triumphal,
but increasingly precarious ‘us’ — the orthodox Romans — and ‘them’ — the
pagan, barbarian gentes.
But then, many of these gentes became Christian too, and, roughly at the
same time, the Roman sacra res publica eroded. The dynamic relationship
between Christianity and ethnicity, which was already predisposed in the bib-
lical world-view, now acquired new spaces to unfold. The rule of gentes and
their kings was in general accepted relatively smoothly by many bishops and
Christian aristocrats. Bishop Avitus of Vienne wrote to Clovis on the occa-
sion of his baptism: ‘Let Greece, to be sure, rejoice in having an orthodox ruler,

69 
Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb; Cf. Feldman, Jews and Gentiles in the Ancient World.
70 
Harrison, ed., Greeks and Barbarians; Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical
Antiquity; Eliav-Feldon, Isaac, and Ziegler, eds, The Origins of Racism; Gruen, Rethinking the
Other in Antiquity; Pohl, The Barbarian Challenge.
71 
Levenson, ‘The Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism’; Van Houten, The Alien in
Israelite Law; Schreiner and Kampling, Der Nächste, der Fremde, der Feind; Smith-Christopher,
‘Between Ezra and Isaiah’.
Introduction 23

but she is no longer the only one to deserve such great a gift’.72 Remarkably,
the Roman empire had now become ‘Greece’ to a bishop from southern Gaul.
The fact that the Franks had been converted was duly seen as a sign of divine
providence. Avitus told Clovis: ‘God has made your people completely his own
through you’.73 Conversion of a pagan people represented divine choice. Having
been called upon by divine providence could therefore become an important
element of ethnic identity. Thus, ideas of election and the subtle compari-
son of one’s own people to biblical parallels became wide-spread in the early
medieval kingdoms. Saint Patrick called the Irish a ‘people just now coming to
the faith, which the Lord has chosen from the ends of the earth’.74 And Pope
Gregory the Great referred to divine providence in his letter to the missionary
Augustine in Britain: ‘For I know that Almighty God has displayed great mira-
cles through your Love in the nation (gens) which He has willed to be chosen’.75
Bede, writing about the period when the Angles and Saxons were pagans and
did not receive Christian teachings from the Britons, resumes: ‘Nevertheless,
God in his goodness did not reject His people whom He foreknew, but he had
appointed a much worthier herald of truth to bring the people to the faith’.76
The high-blown words that Peter had addressed to the early Christian commu-
nities were increasingly employed to flatter specific peoples. They are used, for
instance, in Pope Paul I’s letter to Pippin and in Pope Stephen III’s letter of 770
to Charlemagne, where the Franks are directly addressed as gens sancta.77 And
Alcuin, Charlemagne’s advisor, wrote that by the baptism of Clovis the Franks
had become gens sancta, populus adquisitionis.78 Ideas of providential choice and
identification with ‘God’s own people’ were especially current for the Franks
under the Carolingians. Explicit enunciations of the idea of the ‘Franks as the

72 
Avitus, Selected Letters and Prose, ed. by Wood and Shanzer, no. 46 (to Clovis), p. 370.
73 
Avitus, Selected Letters and Prose, ed. by Wood and Shanzer, no. 46, p. 373.
74 
Confessio, c. 35, in Patrick, Writings, trans. by Hood, p. 49; cf. Brown, The Rise of Western
Christendom, p. 132.
75 
Gregory I, Registrum Epistularum, ed. by Norberg, xi. 36: ‘Scio enim quia omnipotens
Deus per dilectionem tuam in gente quam eligi voluit magna miracula ostendit’ (Gregory I,
Letters, trans. by Martyn, iii, 780).
76 
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, i. 22, p. 68: ‘Sed non tamen
divina pietas plebem suam, quam prescivit, deseruit, quin multo digniores genti memoratae
praecones veritatis, per quos crederet, destinavit’.
77 
Codex epistolaris Carolinus, ed. by Gundlach, no. 39 and 45, pp. 461 and 552.
78 
Alcuin, Vita ii Vedastis episcopi Atrebatensis, ed. by Krusch, c. 2, p. 417.
24 Walter Pohl

New Israel’ may be relatively rare.79 But by implication it can already be found,
for instance, in the 730s in the Liber Historiae Francorum, and was accentuated
even more in the Continuations of Fredegar.80 In this volume, Jamie Wood reas-
sesses the evidence for Isidore’s views on the Visigoths as a chosen people.
The success of Christendom among the new kingdoms of Latin Europe was
thus not only due to the fact that they needed some Roman-type infrastructure,
and bishops could help to maintain or create it. These kingdoms also relied on
notions of ethnicity and legitimate rule over a people, which had matured in
the context of Christian discourse and were inspired by biblical precedent. In
the course of time, Christianity must have changed the ideas of what it meant to
belong. Of course, Christian identity was always propagated with much more
fervour and intensity than ethnic identifications. It was conferred through an
elaborate ritual, baptism; it implied the promise of nothing less than eternal
salvation; it required a strict code of behaviour, a rigorous control of the right
faith, and the regular presence at rituals of the Christian community. An exten-
sive literature dealt with its exact definition, and attempted to draw precise
boundaries of inclusion and exclusion.
Medieval ethnic identities were much less clearly defined and less con-
sequential. But there were many ways in which they could be influenced by
Christian visions and practices of community. Christian authors kept using
ethnic metaphors to define the (or a) Christian community.81 For instance,
Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History extolled Jesus Christ as king: ‘Who estab-
lished a nation (ethnos) never even heard of since time began, which now lies
not hidden in some obscure corner of the earth, but extends wherever the sun
shines’.82 Such uses of ethnic language for the Christians tinged the terms with
providential overtones.
On a smaller scale, monasteries did not only provide examples of commu-
nities inspired by Christian values. They also became centres of an extended
network in which the pious gifts of the laity were exchanged with interces-
sory prayer for the earthly well-being of the soul for the donors.83 In this vol-
ume, Albrecht Diem addresses an early example, the monastery of St Maurice

79 
Garrison, ‘The Franks as the New Israel?’, p. 120.
80 
Reimitz, Writing for the Future.
81 
Buell, Why this New Race?
82 
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. by Oulton, x. 4. 19, ii, p. 409. Cf. Johnson,
Ethnicity and Argument.
83 
Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle.
Introduction 25

d’Agaune, which became a royal monastery in the short-lived Burgundian

kingdom of the early sixth century. Monasteries served, as Mayke de Jong has
put it, as ‘powerhouses of prayer’;84 and some of them enjoyed royal patronage
and prayed for king and kingdom, which they might come to symbolize (in
the case of St Maurice, perhaps paradoxically, also after the Franks had con-
quered the Burgundian kingdom). Consequently, churches and monasteries
could serve as metaphors for gens and kingdom. Gregory of Tours had still
designed the spiritual topography of Gaul as an alternative to a Frankish or
Roman identification.85 But soon, gens and kingdom became firmly grounded
in the sacred topography of the realm. Paul the Deacon, who wrote after the fall
of the Lombard kingdom in 774, explained its demise in a prophecy ex eventu
to the Byzantine emperor Constans II before he attacked the Lombards in the
seventh century:
The people of the Lombards cannot be overcome in any way, because a certain
queen coming from another province has built the church of St John the Baptist
in the territories of the Lombards, and for this reason St John himself continually
intercedes for the gens of the Lombards. But a time shall come when this sanctuary
will be held in contempt and then the gens itself shall perish.86

Which is, as Paul adds, what had happened in his own day. The ethnic language in
this passage is overwhelming: three occurrences of gens and three of Langobardi
in these few lines should not leave a shadow of doubt that squandering the pro-
tection of the saint had led to the downfall of the gens Langobardorum. Saints
and martyrs turned into patrons, not only of local communities but of peoples
and kingdoms, such as John the Baptist and the Archangel Michael for the
Lombards, St Denis for the Franks, or later St Wenceslas and St Adalbert for
Czechs and Poles.
The liturgy of war is another obvious example that geared spiritual resources
to the means and ends of a political or ethnic community.87 A liturgical text in

84 
De Jong, In Samuel’s Image, p. 87; see also De Jong, ‘Carolingian Monasticism’.
85 
Reimitz, ‘The Art of Truth’.
86 
‘Gens Langobardorum superari modo ab aliquo non potest, quia regina quaedam ex
alia provincia veniens basilicam beati Iohannis baptistae in Langobardorum finibus construxit,
et propter hoc ipse beatus Iohannes pro Langobardorum gente continue intercedit. Veniet
autem tempus, quando ipsum oraculum habebitur despectui, et tunc gens ipsa peribit’. Paul the
Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, v. 6, p. 147 (Paul the Deacon,
History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 219).
87 
Pohl, ‘Liturgie di guerra nei regni altomedievali’.
26 Walter Pohl

an early eighth-century Reichenau manuscript asks the Lord to give victory to

the kings of the Franks: ‘qui sulus es rix bonus, sulus pristans, prista Francurum
rigibus victuriam’, like he had once liberated the people of Israel from Egypt.88
The Carolingians developed such liturgies further. The army regularly had to
take part in them, for instance when Charlemagne ordered three days of fast-
ing, praying, and singing psalms before his forces crossed the Avar frontier in
791.89 Increasingly, all inhabitants of the kingdom were called upon to do the
same, in order to seek divine support against the enemies of the Franks. There
are hints in the sources that such a massive involvement of the population at
large was not just a half-hearted ambition at court but also had some impact.90
Of course, the community called to reconfirm its liturgical unity in these
instances was not just the gens Francorum, but all the subjects of the kings of
the Franks, sometimes defined as populus or ecclesia. This corresponds to other
forms of symbolical integration such as the oaths that all subjects of the king
(and not only the Franks) had to swear at certain occasions, and which, accord-
ing to the studies of Stefan Esders, go back to late Roman precedents.91 Early
medieval kingdoms were not only based on ethnicity, yet the Christian popu-
lus of the kingdom created forms of identification that could also add to the
integrative potential of ethnicity. Behind the notion of populus, there was the
central experience of communion in a Christian society: Sunday Mass and the
joint celebration of the Eucharist. If a small minority of Franks were capable, in
the course of centuries, to integrate the Romance-speaking majority under the
common name of the French, this was not least due to the cohesive energy of
Christian forms of community building.

88 
‘Prista Francurum rigibus victuriam ut liberati a ribelli suo saluentur quia tu sulus pius
omnipotens eternus qui liberasti israhel de omnibus malum egipto’: Codex Augiensis ccliii, ed.
by Dold, p. 71; this Oratio pro regibus Francorum is dated by Lowe to the first half of the eighth
century: Codices Latini Antiquiores, ed. by Lowe, viii (1959), no. 1101; see also McCormick,
Eternal Victory, pp. 344–45, with a dating before 718/19 (because it refers to Frankish kings in
the plural), cf. Hen, ‘The Uses of the Bible and the Perception of Kingship’.
89 
See Charlemagne’s letter to Fastrada: Epistolae variorum Carolo Magno regnante scrip-
tae, ed. by Dümmler, no. 20 (a 792), pp. 528–29. For the context, see Pohl, Die Awaren: ein
Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, pp. 315–17; McCormick, Eternal Victory, pp. 352–53.
90 
McCormick, ‘The Liturgy of War’. See, for instance, Formulae Sangallenses, ed. by
Zeumer, no. 31, p. 416.
91 
Esders, ‘Sacramentum fidelitatis’; Esders, ‘Rechtliche Grundlagen frühmittelalterlicher
Staatlichkeit’.
Introduction 27

Romans and Barbarians after Rome

For several reasons, Romanness is relevant for the study of early medieval iden-
tities. First, the Roman state created powerful forms of representation and a
political language that deeply influenced all successive European polities.
Second, Roman identity in all its variety and ambiguity is a fascinating test case
for the study of social identity in general: it could be civic, political, imperial,
juridical, cultural, territorial, religious, and also ethnic; self-designation and
outside perceptions could differ considerably. Third, it is striking how dynamic
Roman identity was; ‘barbarians’ became Romans and, later, Romans became
‘barbarians’ on a massive scale.92 Fourth, Romanness continued after Rome,
and the variety of its forms increased after ‘central Romanness’ had lost its
hegemony.93 Studies of Roman identity in Antiquity have therefore increased
in recent years.94 Early medieval Romanness has been less thoroughly stud-
ied; the present volume offers some case studies on the subject, while broader
research is in preparation.
In the western tradition, Rome could serve as an example for a non-eth-
nic nation, defined by the legal status of its citizens and not by their com-
mon blood; in the Latin terminology of the period, as a populus and not as
a gens.95 Several classical authors expounded this argument. Livy underlined
that the inhabitants had become ‘populi unius corpus’ through the legislation
of Romulus.96 Ancient authors mostly agreed that the city had been founded
by a mixed population, essentially composed of autochthonous groups (most
importantly the Latini) and by migrants from Troy led by Aeneas. As Jordanes
and Paul the Deacon wrote after Florus:

92 
Woolf, Becoming Roman.
93 
Cf. Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 432–43.
94 
For instance, Mitchell and Greatrex, eds, Ethnicity and Culture, esp. the contribution
by Greatrex, ‘Roman Identity in the Sixth Century’; Farney, Ethnic Identity and Aristocratic
Competition; Edwards and Woolf, eds, Rome the Cosmopolis; Laurence and Berry, eds, Cultural
Identity in the Roman Empire; and the essay collection in Mattingly, Imperialism, Power and
Identity, esp. pp. 205–45.
95 
See Geary, The Myth of Nations, pp. 49–56.
96 
Livy, Ab urbe condita, trans. by Foster, i. 8, i, pp. 30–31: ‘Rebus divinis rite perpetratis
vocataque ad concilium multitudine quae coalescere in populi unius corpus nulla re praeter-
quam legibus poterat, iura dedit’.
28 Walter Pohl

He [Romulus] had made the image of a city rather than a city: the inhabitants were
missing. There was a place in the proximity: he turned it into an asylum, and at
once a miraculous force of men flowed in, Latin and Tuscan shepherds, and even
Phrygians from across the sea under Aeneas, and Arcadians under the leadership
of Evander. Thus congregated a body, as if out of different elements, and made the
Roman people.97

In Livy and in many other histories, the foundation of the city post-dated the
assimilation of these groups by several generations; they delighted in the diver-
sity of the ethnic heritage of the Romans, and felt no need to write it out of
history. In the so-called Origo gentis Romanae, probably a fourth-century text,
the foundation of the city comes only at the end, after an extensive narrative
about Ianus, Saturn, Hercules, Latinus, Aeneas, and the kings of Alba Longa.98
Eutropius compiled a different vision of the Roman past; his Breviarium, writ-
ten around 370 ce, begins with the foundation of the city by Romulus.99 It is
remarkable, as Maya Maskarinec shows in this volume, that Paul the Deacon,
when he reworked Eutropius’s text about 400 years later from a Christian per-
spective, chose to include the earlier origins that the Breviarium had omitted.
An analogy to the Origo gentis Langobardorum, which Paul used extensively
in his Lombard History, seems obvious.100 Roman histories remained impor-
tant throughout the Middle Ages, and provided a wealth of opportunities for
appropriation and identification. The great divide between Antiquity and the
Middle Ages that has become fundamental for the organization of the disci-
pline tends to obscure to what extent medieval authors understood their own
time as a continuation of what Rome had once been.
Classical Romanness was not simply a civic identity, it was based on a num-
ber of strategies of identification, solidly rooting it in divine origins, Homeric
epic, an Italian ethnic landscape (which was, however, gradually overcome and

97 
Jordanes, Romana, ed. by Mommsen, c. 90, p. 10: ‘Imaginem urbis magis quam urbem
fecerat: incolae deerant. Erat in proximo locus: hunc asylum facit, et staim mira vis hominum
Latini Tuscique pastores, etiam transmarini Friges, qui sub Aenea, Arcades, qui sub Evandro
duce influxerant. Ita ex variis quasi elementis congregavit corpus unum populum Romanum ipse
fecit’; cf. almost verbatim in Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Droysen, i. 2, p. 6. See
the contribution by Maya Maskarinec in this volume, and Dench, Romulus’ Asylum.
98 
Origo gentis Romanae, ed. by Sehlmeyer. The title comes from the ‘titulus’ of two fif-
teenth-century manuscripts of the Corpus Aurelianum, in which it has been transmitted, and
may or may not be ancient (see p. 16, assuming that it is ancient).
99 
Eutropius, Breviarium, trans. by Bird, p. 2.
100 
Cf. Pohl, ‘Memory, Identity and Power in Lombard Italy’.
Introduction 29

unified through military exploits), aristocratic genealogies, and a citizenship

that was increasingly open to many subjects of the Empire, regardless of their
origin. The tremendous success of Romanness was not least due to this multi-
plicity; but it also accounts for some of the limits of an identity that remained,
as Andrea Giardina has argued, in a sense unfinished.101 In the sixth century,
the ‘notion of Roman identity’ had become ‘extremely elastic’, as Geoffrey
Greatrex has argued, and allowed the incorporation of a number of ethnē who
also maintained their ethnic identities.102
The wide range of Romanities also facilitated their continuing uses in the
early Middle Ages. In changed political circumstances, the many different shades
of Romanness now further unfolded. The citizens of the Byzantine Empire called
themselves Romans (Rhomaioi).103 The identification with Rome must have been
attractive for Greek-speakers because the word rhōmē meant ‘force’. The name
Romani could also apply to the citizens of Rome, the Latin speakers of the West,
the inhabitants of regional ‘Roman’ units in the post-imperial world, the follow-
ers of the Roman church,104 or to the renewed western empire of the Franks and
Saxons. As the hegemony of the empire receded, Romans could increasingly be
regarded as a gens among others. Isidore, in his Etymologies, derived the name
from Romulus, ‘who founded the city of Rome and gave the name to people and
city (genti et civitati)’.105 On the whole, Roman identity had become rather weak,
and the proud self-identification as ‘Roman’ in the West faded away. Gregory
of Tours is a good example, who almost completely avoided the term ‘Romans’
in the contemporary sections of his Histories; he identified himself as a bishop,
from a family of bishops, of senatorial status.106 As Alexander O’Hara shows
in this volume, ‘identities of alienation’ could offer a way for Romans to dis-

101 
Giardina, L’Italia romana.
102 
Greatrex, ‘Roman Identity in the Sixth Century’, pp. 267–92.
103 
Koder, ‘Byzanz, die Griechen und die Romaiosynē’; Olster, ‘From Periphery to Center’.
For the problems with other identifications (Hellenes, Greeks), see Pohl, ‘Introduction:
Strategies of Identification’ , pp. 23–24.
104 
For instance, see Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. by Krusch, c. 24,
p. 502: ‘Romanos enim vocitant nostrae homines relegionis’ (Gregory of Tours, Glory of the
Martyrs, trans. by van Dam, p. 23): ‘By Romans they [i.e. Arian Goths] refer to men who accept
our [Catholic Nicene] Christianity’.
105 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, ix. 2. 84: ‘Romani a Romulo nomine
nuncupati, qui urbem Romam condidit gentique et civitati nomen dedit’.
106 
Reimitz, Writing for the Future; see also Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History;
Heinzelmann, Gregor von Tours.
30 Walter Pohl

tance themselves subtly or violently from traditional allegiances. The avoidance

of Roman identification was rarely as emphatic as in Liudprand of Cremona’s
tenth-century account of his embassy to Constantinople. Countering the west-
ern claim for empire, the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus challenged him: ‘You
are not Romans, but Lombards!’ Liudprand replied that ‘we, that is, Lombards,
Saxons, Franks, Lotharingians, Bavarians, Swabians, and Burgundians, regard
Roman! as one of the worst insults’.107 For political uses, ‘Roman’ was often
replaced by more neutral terms, for instance by the popes who variously defined
their political sphere of influence as (sacra) res publica, peculiaris populus, or res
publica sancti Petri.108 In Germanic-speaking areas and beyond, the name *wal-
hoz, which was derived from the pre-Roman tribe of the Volscae, came to be
used for Latin-speakers (but also for Britons): thus, there were or are the Welsh
in Wales, the Walloons in Belgium, the Walchen in the Alps, and the Vlachs in
South-Eastern Europe. Some (but not all) of these names eventually turned into
self-designations. Other groups styled themselves as ‘Latins’, like the Ladiner
in the South Tyrol. Still, ‘Romans’ continued to be used for distinction, both
by the in- and the out-group, for instance in what was to become Switzerland,
where the bishops of Chur ruled a semi-autonomous Roman polity until the
Carolingian take-over. Thus, a local Carolingian scribe could still see these
Romans as analogous to the Alamanni, and supplement Charlemagne’s title
patricius Romanorum with et Alamannorum, as if it had been coined for the two
groups of population in the area.109
In general, Romans under barbarian rule tended to fall back on more
particular civic or regional identities.110 As soon as the Roman army had left
Britain at the beginning of the fifth century, the name ‘Romans’ disappears
from our sources about the island, and the remaining provincial population is
regularly called Britons, although Latin-speakers and even Latin inscriptions
survived at least into the sixth century.111 In Gaul, according to the legendary

107 
Liudprand of Cremona, Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana, ed. by Becker, c. 12,
p. 182; for an excellent analysis, see Gandino, Il vocabolario politico e sociale, pp. 257–70.
108 
See Noble, The Republic of St Peter.
109 
‘Car(o)lo rege Franchorum ac patricio Romanorum et Alamannorum’: Urkundenbuch
der Abtei St  Gallen, ed. by Wartmann, i, no.  170, p.  161; Wolfram, ‘Political Theory and
Narrative in Charters’, p. 48.
110 
Geary, The Myth of Nations, pp. 104–08.
111 
e.g.  Constantius of Lyon, Vita S. Germani, ed. by Borius, p.  154: ‘Interea Saxones
Pictique bellum adversus Britannos iunctis viribus susceperunt’. In his Letter to Coroticus,
St Patrick refused to address his fellow Roman Britons who had enslaved some of his Irish con-
Introduction 31

report in Procopius, the Arborychi (probably the military units of the tractus
Armoricanus), who had served the Romans since the day of Augustus, returned
to their old identity after the end of Roman rule.112 Quite generally, civic, ter-
ritorial, and even old Gallic identities came to the forefront among the Roman
population, for instance, Aquitani or Arverni (the inhabitants of the civitas
Arvernorum).113 In his contribution to this volume, Marco Stoffella sketches
his extensive research on the significance of Tuscan regional and of more local
identities in the Lucca region. Francesco Borri, also in this volume, presents
the case of the cities along the Adriatic, mainly Venice, Grado, Spalato, and
Ragusa, which remained under Byzantine control for much longer. They traced
their origin back to the flight of the Roman population from other cities when
the barbarians arrived, a kind of negative origo gentis. It is interesting to see
that at some stage the Byzantines attempted to differentiate between Romanoi
(the Romans of Dalmatia) and the Greek-speaking Rhomaioi, as Constantine
Porphyrogenitus attests; but this distinction did not gain wide currency.114
In many contexts, early medieval Romanness was in the first place regarded
as a cultural identity that could rely on a long history of self-fashioning of cul-
tured Romans.115 It is characteristic in what way Procopius describes the fate of
the Roman troops in northern Gaul (‘the other Roman soldiers’ apart from the
Arborychi):
These soldiers, having no means of returning to Rome […], gave themselves,
together with their military standards and the land which they had long been
guarding, to the Arborychi and Germans; and they handed down to their offspring
all the customs of their fathers, which were thus preserved […]. For even at the pre-
sent day they are clearly recognized as belonging to the legions which they served
in ancient times, and they always carry their own standards when they enter battle,

verted Christians as his ‘fellow citizens’ or ‘citizens of the holy Romans’. See Flechner, ‘Patrick’s
Reasons for Leaving Britain’, p. 129 (I owe this observation to Alexander O’Hara). Cf. also
Snyder, The Britons, pp. 75–125.
112 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, v. 12. 12–16, iii, p. 121.
113 
Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, pp. 187–91; Lewis, ‘Gallic Identity
and the Gallic civitas’; Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul, pp. 20–24; Drinkwater
and Elton, eds, Fifth-Century Gaul.
114 
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. and trans. by Moravcsik
and Jenkins and Jenkins, p. 122 and passim.
115 
Hingley, Globalizing Roman Culture.
32 Walter Pohl

and always follow the customs of their fathers. And they preserve the dress of the
Romans in every particular, even as regards their shoes.116

A similar story was told by the late seventh-century second book of the Miracula
Demetrii. It relates how the Avars had resettled the captives from Roman cities
in Pannonia:
Thereafter they mixed with the Bulgars, Avars, and other heathen peoples (eth-
nikoi), had children with one another, and became a populous nation (laos). Each
son, however, assumed from his father the traditions and attitudes of his kin (genos)
toward the customs of the Romans […]. Sixty years and more after the barbarians
had subjected their forefathers, a new and different people (laos) had developed.117

Roman culture and traditions could be maintained even when Romans became
part of a ‘new and different people’.
Features of Roman culture could still confer prestige. Already in the impe-
rial period, ‘barbarians’ had frequently used them to display their status. In
the post-imperial West, the contents of this culture were transformed, and it
becomes harder to define which objects are ‘Roman’: anything following (for-
mer or contemporary) Roman models, or products of Roman workshops?
Cultural contents that contemporaries could identify as Roman, or those that
modern scholarship can class as such? When do cultural traits or ensembles
cease to be ‘Roman’, and under what circumstances can they start being used
for different identifications?118 In that sense, Flavia de Rubeis revisits the case of
the evolution of writing on the basis of an assessment of the epigraphic produc-
tion. Our palaeographical evidence offers a good overview of the gradual devel-
opment from the younger Roman cursive of late Antiquity to the early medie-
val half-cursive scripts and their regional differences (Cencetti’s ‘particolarismo
grafico’),119 until a new standardization was attempted with the Carolingian
minuscule in the ninth century. Traditional palaeography had regarded these
different styles of writing as ‘national scripts’. In the epigraphic evidence, how-
ever, particularities in script or decoration do not allow to delineate coherent
ethno-cultural areas. Rather, inscriptions in the post-Roman West, which came

116 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, v. 12. 16–19, iii, pp. 121–23.
117 
Miracula Demetrii, ed. by Lemerle, ii.  5.  285–86, i,  p.  227. Pohl, Die Awaren: ein
Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 217.
118 
Cf. the introduction in Laurence and Berry, eds, Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire,
pp. 1–9.
119 
Cencetti, ‘Dall’unità al particolarismo grafico’.
Introduction 33

to be a rather restricted elite phenomenon, respond to the same social stimuli

and necessities of representation everywhere.120 In that sense, Lombard epigra-
phy was not recognizably ‘Lombard’, as opposed to ‘Roman’; but likewise, there
was no obviously ‘Roman’ epigraphy which could serve as a cultural marker
of the Roman population of the West. There were, perhaps, certain epigraphic
styles which were particular to papal representation (such as the Capitalis
Damasiana), and, in general, the production of inscriptions was still compara-
tively intense in the city of Rome.121
The question of cultural definitions of Romanness is even thornier with
the archaeological evidence, and that is the topic of the contributions by Irene
Barbiera and Philipp von Rummel in this volume. 122 Archaeologists have
always tried to arrive at clear distinctions between ‘Roman’ and ‘barbarian’ evi-
dence. This has led to a very detailed picture, as synthesized, for instance, in
the differentiated overview by Volker Bierbrauer.123 Still, not all evidence fits
this model, and the two contributions attempt a fundamental critique of this
approach. Grave-goods, and especially weapons, have always been regarded as
one of the basic distinctive features; Roman graves in general lack grave goods.
In this respect, the statistical material from northern Italian cemeteries from
the first century bce to the tenth century ce, as presented by Irene Barbiera,
has yielded some surprising results. Weapon burials never stop in the Roman
period, although they reach a temporary low in the third/fourth centuries ce.
This corresponds to a peak in the representation of warriors with their arms on
funerary monuments. Warrior masculinity continued to be represented for the
afterlife, if in changing forms. In the sixth/seventh centuries, the percentage of
burials with weapons becomes higher again, but is certainly not exceptional in
comparison. Thus, Irene Barbiera concludes, the ‘barbarian’ period of the fifth
to eighth centuries is neither unique for its weapon burials nor for its displays
of warrior masculinity in general.
Philipp von Rummel addresses the methodological issue in a more general
and conceptual manner.124 The dichotomy between Romans and barbarians is
an ancient concept which helped to establish clear-cut boundaries that corre-

120 
See also De Rubeis, ‘La scrittura delle élites tra crisi e rinnovamento’.
121 
See Cardin, Epigrafia a Roma nel primo medioevo, a book written in close co-operation
with the Wittgenstein project.
122 
See, in general, Pohl and Mehofer, eds, Archaeology of Identity.
123 
Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen’.
124 
See also von Rummel, Habitus barbarus.
34 Walter Pohl

sponded to the logic of empire. In the early Middle Ages, the crisis of Roman
identity threatened this great divide, and the boundaries had to be redrawn,
essentially between Christians and pagans, although the ideological uses of
the concept of the barbarian continued. Modern scholars reappropriated the
clear binary logic of the Roman/barbarian distinction, and also extended it
to the early medieval period. This may not be totally inappropriate, and many
individuals may have been recognizable as either Romans or ‘barbarians’ at
the time; but in many other cases, the distinction may not be possible at all. If
Agathias, in the sixth century, writes that the Franks were ‘practically the same
as ourselves except for their barbaric style of dress and peculiar language’,125 he
still allows for some distinctions; but the differences are the exception, not the
rule. It is still likely that lavish migration-age burials with weapons in north-
ern France or Italy, relatively rare as they are, can in general be interpreted as
a trace of the barbarian warrior elite, even though it is possible that some of
them were ambitious Roman upstarts who had chosen a barbarian-type mili-
tary career, or whose family wanted to demonstrate their social status in the
barbarian way. But it is hard to tell whether in Roman-type burials, with little
or no grave-goods, actual ‘Romans’ were buried. They might also be poor or
assimilated barbarians, or the heirs of Roman provincials who had assumed a
different identity. Volker Bierbrauer cautiously speaks of Roman, Frankish, and
other ‘cultural models’, and thus avoids any whole-sale identification of ethnic
and cultural identities.126 But Philipp von Rummel doubts whether this can
solve our methodological problems, especially if lack of grave-goods is a central
criterion. Conversely, in a number of instances, it has been shown that ‘barbar-
ian’ styles and objects were also used by Roman soldiers or even civilians, or at
least produced by Romans for barbarian tastes.
In the post-Roman kingdoms, ‘barbarians’ and ‘Romans’ most likely lived
in a differentiated cultural continuum in which classical, provincial, and post-
classical Roman elements coexisted with emerging Christian forms of expres-
sion and with objects of representation which are known from barbarian graves.
These elements may have been used for various purposes, to show allegiance to a
(not necessarily ethnic) group or polity, but also to assert status or demonstrate
specialness by a display of rare and unique objects.127 The more recurrent a cul-

125 
Agathias, Historiae, ed. by Keydell, i. 2. 3–4, p. 11 (Agathias, The Histories, trans. by
Frendo, p. 10).
126 
Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen im fränkischen Siedelgebiet’.
127 
Cf. Halsall, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul.
Introduction 35

tural pattern is in our evidence, the more likely it was linked with recognizable
‘serial’ strategies of identification. Here, our concern should be to establish new
links between archaeological and textual evidence. So far, interdisciplinary col-
laboration has mainly relied on broad common categories, many of which were
dichotomies (Romans/barbarians, Christians/pagans) or ethnic designations.
It has to be acknowledged that such classification has brought important pro-
gress in establishing order in an endless variety of evidence. But there is a point
at which these classifications tend to come in the way of further differentiation.
In our scholarly language we use the term ‘barbarian’ that is so rich in ideologi-
cal overtones, because no convincing alternative terminology has yet been sug-
gested. But we have to be aware that early medieval sources, biased as they may
be, do not overwhelmingly class the population of post-imperial Europe into
Romans and barbarians, and even less, into Romans and Germans.128 Many
other strategies of identification seem to have been current in the period, and
we should be more attentive to their traces in the sources. We have used the
term ‘Roman’ for classification for so long that we should be aware when it cor-
responds to the usage of the sources, and where it results from a modern clas-
sification. This may lead to a better understanding of ‘Romanness after Rome’.
On the whole, late antique and early medieval identities in Europe were
more complex than traditional research allowed for, and we need to map them
out in a way adequate to their complexity. But they were not totally flexible or
meaningless either. Both religious and ethnic identities can entail a consider-
able degree of commitment and sense of belonging, and early medieval sources
are full of instances of strong identification with religious or ethnic groups.
Gradually, the discourse of identity changed.129 Ethnicity acquired a growing
legitimacy as a basis for political rule, and stopped being regarded as a mainly
barbarian form of organization. Perhaps this was because Christianity offered
a path of salvation to all the gentes, so that these gentes, not just one of them,
could become legitimate parts of a Christian universe.

128 
Pohl, ‘Vom Nutzen des Germanenbegriffes’, with a critique of the uncritical use of the
term ‘Germans’.
129 
For the role of ethnic discourse, see Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’,
pp. 27–43.
36 Walter Pohl

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 Who is Allowed to Pray for the King?
Saint-Maurice d’Agaune and the
Creation of a Burgundian Identity

Albrecht Diem*

[…] to what point the monks — who are called solitarii — should be able to
rejoice forever, guided by God and, living under the holy rule and sharing
the life of the blessed fathers, they should be able to pray to God more fully
for the state of the church and the well-being of the king and of the patria.1

T
his passage concludes the dispositio of a privilege issued around 637
by Bishop Burgundofaro of Meaux for the benefit of the monastery
of Rebais-en-Brie. The charter grants an extensive list of rights to the
monastery, including the protection of its possessions and all received gifts from
episcopal and royal claims, the privilege of the community to elect its abbot
and to invite a bishop of choice for ordinations and the blessing of altars, the
restriction of episcopal jurisdiction, and the immunity of the monastic space.

*  Max Harris, Gerda Heydemann, Matthieu van der Meer, Walter Pohl, Jonathan Pollac,
Helmut Reimitz, Barbara Rosenwein, Ian Wood, and Zachary Yuzwa have read and commented
different versions of this article. I am very grateful for their corrections and suggestions. This
article was completed in the Library of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto,
one of the finest resources for medieval studies in North America. After this article went to
press, I received a draft of the article by Anne-Marie Helvétius, ‘L’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice
d’Agaune dans le haut Moyen Âge’, which discusses very similar questions on the basis of the
same set of sources and comes partly to different conclusions.
1 
Privilege of Burgundofaro of Meaux for the Monastery of Rebais, in Diplomata, ed. by
Pardessus, ii, no. 275, p. 40: ‘[…] quatenus monachi qui solitarii nuncupantur, de perfecta quiete
valeant, duce Domino, per tempora exsultare, et sub ipsa sancta regula viventes et beatissimo-
rum patrum vitam sectantes, pro statu Ecclesiae et salute regis et patriae valeant plenius Deum
exorare’. The text is also available in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Migne,
lxxxvii, cols 1134c–38a. The translation is my own.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101662
pp. 47–88 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
48 Albrecht Diem

All those rights are bound to only two conditions: the monks have to live in
the tradition of the blessed fathers and according to the sancta regula, and they
have to pray for the good state of the church, the well-being of the king, and for
the patria.2
None of the elements that express the terms of this contract sounds par-
ticularly alien to anyone dealing with the history of medieval monasticism. The
sancta regula, the model of the vita beatissimorum patrum, and the requirement
to pray for the status ecclesiae and the salus regis et patriae appear in variations
in other monastic privileges issued by Frankish bishops during the seventh
and early eighth centuries;3 they appear in the Formulae-collection of Marculf
(written probably in the late seventh century),4 became standard elements of
royal charters granting immunities to monasteries,5 and eventually defined
what modern historians regard as a royal monastery — a concept that got its
definitive shape in the course of the Carolingian monastic reforms.6
The question of how we have to understand the sancta regula has been
discussed in previous contributions to the Wittgenstein project.7 The gen-
eral problem of how monasteries turned into places of collective intercessory
prayer, and its theological implications, have been addressed as well, though

2 
On the privilege of Rebais, see Ewig, ‘Das Formular von Rebais’; Rosenwein, Negoti­
ating Space, pp. 64–70; Rosenwein, ‘One Site, Many Meanings’; Diem, ‘Was bedeutet Regula
Columbani?’, pp. 77–84.
3 
For example: Privilege of Bertefred of Amiens for Corbie (664), in Diplomata, ed. by
Pardessus, ii, no. 345, pp. 126–27: ‘ut pro statu Ecclesiae, et salute regum vel stabilitate regni
et tranquillitate patriae valeant plenius pium Dominum exorare’; Privilege of Drauscius for the
Female Monastery of Soissons (667), in Diplomata, ed. by Pardessus, ii, no. 350, p. 140: ‘et supra
dicta regula viventes, et sanctarum virginum vitam sectantes, pro statu Ecclesiae et salute regis
vel patriae valeant plenius Dominum deprecari’.
4 
Formulae Marculfi, ed. by Uddholm, i. 1–4, pp. 18–42. On the date of the collection, see
also Rio, Legal Practice and the Written Word, pp. 85–88.
5 
For example Dip. no. 73 (Clovis II for Ferrières, 639–42), in DD Mer. (Merowinger 1), ed.
by Kölzer, p. 188: ‘ut melius eis dilectit pro stabilitate regni Francorum […] exorare’; Dip. no. 85
(Clovis II for Saint-Denis, 654), pp. 217–20 (p. 219): ‘sed liciat ipsi sanctae congregacioni,
quod ibidem per rictam delegacionem conlatum est, perpeter possedere et pro stabilitate regni
nostri iugiter exorare […]’; Dip. no. 124 (Theuderic III for Stablo and Malmedy, 679–91),
p. 317: ‘quo fiat ut et nobis ad mercedem pertineat et ipsos servos Dei melius delectet pro regni
nostri constantia attentius Domini misericordiam deprecari’; Dip. no. 140 (Clovis III for Saint-
Calais, 693), p. 354: ‘ut potius eis delectet melius pro stabilitate regni nostri Domini misericor-
diam exorare’.
6 
De Jong, ‘Carolingian Monasticism’, pp. 623–27, 636–40, and 647–51.
7 
Especially, Diem, ‘Inventing the Holy Rule’.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 49

certainly not completely resolved.8 For all of these problems, the privilege of
Rebais forms a key text simply because it is the first preserved charter that com-
bines all these elements to define the role and the place of monasteries within
secular and ecclesiastical structures.
This article aims at shedding light on another aspect of the requirement
to support secular rule and political structures through prayer by giving it its
history and by connecting this history with the transformation of ethnic and
political identities in sixth-century Gaul. The narratio of the privilege of Rebais
claims that the privileges, but also the responsibilities of the monasteries, have
their roots in a venerable monastic past:

And this has been decided, lest bishops in future should think that we have deter-
mined this on our own accord, because under the rule of this constitution [oper-
ated] the place of Agaune, as well as the monasteries of Lérins, Luxeuil, and the
basilica of the lord Marcellus, both as to the liberty of the inhabitants and as to
anything entrusted to that place by any persons.9

Differently from the just-described key requirements of monastic life, the refer-
ence to monasteries of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, Lérins, Luxeuil, and the basil-
ica of Saint-Marcellus in Chalons-sur-Saône had a relatively short afterlife. The
Musterklöster (model monasteries), as Friedrich Prinz called them, keep show-
ing up in a formulaic fashion in several Merovingian episcopal privileges,10 but
it seems that after about a century nobody saw the need any more to legitimate

8 
The transformation of monasteries into places of collective intercessory prayer was first
and foremost a theological challenge: what qualifies a community of unavoidably sinful human
beings to take over an individual holy man’s task to pray on behalf of the world? Latin monastic
texts from the sixth and seventh centuries were particularly creative in offering solutions for
this problem. See Diem and Müller, ‘Vita, regula, sermo’; Diem, ‘Das Ende des monastischen
Experiments’. Avitus of Vienne addresses this problem in his homily at the occasion of the
refoundation of Saint-Maurice, which will be discussed extensively below: Avitus, Opera, ed. by
Peiper, Homilia 25, p. 146: ‘Vos nunc habitaturos hic […] saecoli labor ad spem perpetuae qui-
etis invitat, quibus occupatis actione felici omne peccandi tempus excluditur; a quibus quidquid
sinistrum cessisse laudabile est, quod non delectat, caelestes si nequeat. Mundum quidem fugi-
tis, sed orate pro mundo, excluso a vobis seculo’.
9 
Privilege of Rebais, in Diplomata, ed. by Pardessus, ii, no. 275, p. 40: ‘Et ne hoc nos pro-
prii deliberationis instinctu sacerdotalis posteritas aestimet decrevisse, quum etiam sub huius
constitutionis norma Agaunensium locum, imoque et monasteria Lirinensium, Luxoviensium,
vel basilica domini Marcelli, tam de inhabitatoribus libertatem, quam a quibuscunque ibidem
aliquid delegatum, eatenus fuit sancitum’.
10 
A list is provided in Diem, ‘Was bedeutet Regula Columbani?’, p. 79 with n. 108.
50 Albrecht Diem

a well-established feature of monastic life with its alleged roots in an increas-

ingly remote past. They became a history that got out of use.11
Eugen Ewig and Friedrich Prinz assumed that the four places mentioned in
the charter held similar privileges to those Rebais would receive.12 Although we
can trace most of the specific liberties granted by the privilege of Rebais back
to at least one of these four monasteries, there is no indication that any of the
Musterklöster was in a position similar to that which Rebais received in 637. All
of them operated in different networks and balances of power with different
parties involved. Getting a grip on these different power balances may provide
us with a deeper understanding of the rise of monastic institutions, but also of
those transformations of political structures and collective identities that are
addressed in the Wittgenstein Project.
Lérins achieved the right to choose its abbot undisturbed by episcopal
claims of power and control;13 Luxeuil successfully defended the concept of the
monastery as separate space protected from non-monastic intruders;14 an epis-
copal council held at Valence around 583 granted the protection of the posses-
sions of Saint-Marcellus with words that reappear in the privilege of Rebais,15

11 
See Ewig, ‘Die Gebetsklausel für König und Reich’.
12 
Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich, pp. 85–86; Ewig, ‘Beobachtungen zu den
Klosterprivilegien’, pp. 415–16; Ewig, ‘Das Formular von Rebais’, p. 462. See also Rosenwein,
Negotiating Space, pp. 64–70.
13 
Concilium Arelatense a. 449–61, in Concilia Galliae, ed. by Munier and de Clercq, i, 133.
14 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 19–20, pp. 87–93. i. 30, p. 108, pos-
sibly summarizes a privilege issued by King Chlothar II for Luxeuil, or at least depicts the legal
status Luxeuil aimed to achieve. See Diem, ‘Monks, Kings, and the Transformation of Sanctity’,
pp. 544–46.
15 
Concilium Valentinum a. 583–85, in Concilia Galliae, ed. by Munier and de Clercq,
ii, 235: ‘et quia tam laudabili deuotioni non solum sacerdotalem, sed etiam diuinam credimus
posse conniuentiam conspirare, idcirco praesenti constitutione unanimi consensus Deo medio
synodus sancta decrevit, ut si quid basilicae sancti Marcelli uel sancti Symphoriani uel quibus-
cunque locis uel seruientibus Deo per quascunque authoritates aut scripturarum epistolas prae-
fatus dominus rex uel supra nuncupata iugalis sua filiaeque eorum siue in ministerio altariorum
siue in quibuscunque specibus, quae ad divinum cultum pertinere noscuntur, contulisse uel
adhuc conferre uoluerit, neque episcopi locorum neque potestas regia quocumque tempore suc-
cessura de eorum voluntate quicquam minorare aut auferre praesumat’. Cf. Privilege of Rebais,
in Diplomata, ed. by Pardessus, ii, no. 275, p. 40: ‘Ergo omnes unius conspirationis consensus,
antedictorum virorum postulationi sanctae religions libentissime annuentes, ita ab omnibus
decretum est ut quidquid praedicti monasterii, vel monachis ibidem sub evangelica religione
viventibus, ab ipsis eorumque parentibus, vel regio munere seu a quibuslibet Christianis, in
agris, mancipiis, ministerio, sacris volumninibus, vel quibuscumque speciebus quae ad orna-
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 51

and Saint-Maurice d’Agaune became one of the first (probably even the first)
monastery that was deliberately organized around the task of serving the king
and the kingdom through prayer.
All four themes — power, space, possession, and prayer — are worth fur-
ther investigation. If we are interested in the interplay between the transfor-
mation of ethnic identities and post-Roman political structures, the core of
the Wittgenstein project, Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, as it was shaped about one
hundred and twenty years before Rebais received its privilege, is the place to
start.16 The ‘foundation’ of the monastery of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune formed
the key moment for the creation of a Burgundian kingdom that transcended
Roman and barbarian identities; its foundation marked a profound (and vigor-
ously contested) transformation of monastic ideals, and it contributed, more
broadly, to an integration of monastic institutions into wider political struc-
tures that became a distinct feature of the Latin medieval world. As such, the
history of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune does more than reflect the ‘transformation
of the Roman world’. I hope to show that it also played an important role in
this process, at least as far as Gaul is concerned.
Communities of monks or nuns who were required to produce interces-
sory prayer for king, kingdom, or patria became a distinctively Frankish variant
within the vast diversity of ‘monasticisms’ emerging in the late and post-Roman
world around the Mediterranean Sea. Charters forged in later centuries aim at
dating the beginning of the fruitful coalition between rulers and monasteries
as far back as possible and depict it as a self-evident aspect of Frankish rule.17

tum divini cultus pertinere noscitur, aut caeteris rebus, collata, aut deinceps collatura sunt,
seu quod ad altare fuerit oblatum, ut ad quemcumque, Deo inspirante, transmissum, praesentis
vitae nostrae successorumque nostrorum, nullus sibi exinde aliquid clericorum aut pontificum,
vel regalis sublimitas suis usibus usurpare aut minuere praesumat’. Parallels are marked in bold.
See also Diem, ‘Was bedeutet Regula Columbani?’, pp. 81–82; Rosenwein, Negotiating Space,
pp. 45–46.
16 
There is a vast amount of literature on Saint-Maurice d’Agaune. See especially Rosenwein,
‘One Site, Many Meanings’; Rosenwein, ‘Perennial Prayer at Agaune’; Paxton, ‘Power and
the Power to Heal’; Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich, pp. 102–12; Wood, ‘A Prelude
to Columbanus’; Masai, ‘La Vita patrum iurensium’; Theurillat, L’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice
d’Agaune; Ueding, Geschichte der Klostergründungen, pp. 168–78.
17 
There are several diplomatic forgeries that relate the first intercessory communities
in Gaul to the Frankish king Clovis (d.  511). The monasteries of Ferrières, Saint-Mesmin
de Micy, Reôme, Saint-Pierre-le-Vif, and Saint-Hilaire in Poitiers claim to be founded or at
least supported by the first Christian Merovingian king or his wife. See the falsified charters,
Dip. nos 1–6, in DD Mer. (Merowinger 1), ed. by Kölzer, pp. 1–28. Remensnyder, Remembering
52 Albrecht Diem

Only in the Carolingian period did this model start to be exported into the
entire Latin post-Roman world.18
The ‘royal monastery’ (as historians call it), however, initially emerged as
just one among many options to give monastic life a place within secular and
ecclesiastical structures. The late ancient world knew individual holy men who
prayed for kings and emperors, cursed them, or instructed them. It also knew
various forms of interactions between monastery, church, and society, and vari-
ous ways of acting out the dynamic tensions between city and desert. It seems,
however, that only Frankish rulers managed to place monastic communities
and their collectively achieved sanctity in their service and eventually to turn
monasteries into multifunctional supporting pillars of their rule and touch-
stones of a political identity.
Royal monasteries had to be invented, and tracing the process and the cir-
cumstances of their invention gives unique access to the emergence of post-
Roman political structures and the development of new identities in the part
of the Roman world that later became the regnum Francorum. Saint-Maurice
d’Agaune, however, our first royal Musterkloster, was originally not a Frankish
monastery but a product of co-operation between a Burgundian king and the
bishops within his range of power. It became part of the Erbmasse (bulk of her-
itage) of the Burgundian kingdom that was incorporated into the expanding
Frankish world: a long-lasting success that was, as will be shown here, rather
an accidental result of the very specific political constellations that turned a
Roman region ruled by Burgundian kings into a Burgundian regnum.

1. The Foundation of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune

The story of Saint-Maurice’s foundation as it is told in the Vita abbatum

Acaunensium evolves as follows: Hymnemodus, a barbarian member of the court
of King Gundobad (d. 516), decides to become a miles Christi and attempts to

Kings Past, pp. 14–22, provides a methodological framework for analysing diplomatic forgeries
as sources on foundation myths of monasteries.
18 
The amount of literature on late antique monastic diversity is vast; seminal are: Brown,
‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man’; Brown, The Body and Society; Brown, The Rise of
Western Christendom; Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity; Dunn, The Emergence of
Monasticism; and Goehring, Ascetics, Society and the Desert. On the ‘export’ of Carolingian
monastic models: Foot, Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England; Ramseyer, The Transformation
of a Religious Landscape; Costambeys, Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 53

enter a monastery of the Grigny congregation (a group of filiations of Lérins

located close to Lyon).19 Out of fear of the king, the Abbot of Grigny initially
refuses to admit him. Yet, despite Gundobad’s resistance, Hymnemodus even-
tually becomes Abbot of Grigny.20 The royal attitude towards monasteries dras-
tically changes under Gundobad’s son Sigismund, who founded Saint-Maurice
in the year before his father’s death. The following section of the Vita, which
describes the establishment of a new monastic community at Saint-Maurice, is
quoted in full:

When Sigismund, son of King Gundobad, who was already girded with the honour
of patriciate, had abstained from the treachery of the Arian depravity, he followed
the faith of the Catholic teaching and dedicated his mind most intensely to the
pursuit of religion.
At this time did Maximus, the bishop of the city of Geneva […], incite Sigis-
mund’s heart to this piety in order that the dwellings mingled with the vulgus
promiscuum were removed from the place that the martyrs of Thebes had adorned
with fruit bearing spots of manifold red through their precious death and praised
through the spilling of their blood. And that place, which had received the bril-
liance of life through the atrocity of their passion, should regain the splendour of
the inhabitants, and the everlasting day should make its entry after the deeds of
darkness had been expelled. This should happen in such a way that with their [the
martyrs’] very protection he [Sigismund] would most safely take possession of the
kingdom and its integrity.
This was done under the condition that it would not come into his mind to
stray one step away from the path of piety and justice, because the saints protect
those of whom they know that they would by no means deviate from the good
order. This [place] has therefore deserved to be enriched with all abundance and
prosperity, and it would have owned it already for a long time if the ambushes of
the old enemy had not been so strong due to the overflowing transgressions of the
people. Therefore after holding council he [the king] willingly agreed by the full
inspiration of God that all women be removed from this place, and after getting rid
of worldly families, the family of God, that is the family of monks, be settled there,

19 
On Grigny, see Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich, p. 71. Ueding, Geschichte der
Klostergründungen, pp. 83–86, shows that Grigny consisted of several monasteries — probably
in a setting similar to that of the Jura monasteries (see below).
20 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 1, p. 330: ‘Quantumque regis minaces insi-
diae procedebant, tantum in Christi servitio acrius excellebat, adeo ut non post multum tem-
poris, sancto Caelestio abbate de hoc saeculo ad Chrstum migrante, ipse, Deo favente, ex totius
congregationis concessu, fratrum supplicationibus vix coactus, abba loco eius succederet’.
54 Albrecht Diem

who were to persist by day and by night under the norm of the rule in the divine
work and service.21

Sigismund’s conversion to Catholicism, his ascent to power, and his rule over
the entire kingdom were thus affirmed by the Catholic bishop Maximus. For
this purpose they cleansed the powerful but entirely corrupted martyrs’ shrine
of the Roman general Maurice and his legion from the vulgus promiscuum,
from women and lay people, and restored the splendour of this place by allocat-
ing monks (the familia Dei) who had to perform prayer by day and by night.
The act of turning a Roman martyr shrine, placed at a major connection route
between Italy and Gaul,22 into a place of prayer for a barbarian king and the
unity (integritas) of his rule became the bride gift of this bishop in the marriage
between the Burgundian rulers and the Catholic church.23
The Vita abbatum Acaunensium does not tell us the end of the story, which
indicates that the text was probably written rather closely after the events it
describes. Less than ten years later, in 522, Sigismund entered the monastery,
allegedly as an act of penance for the murder of his son Sigistrix. Soon after-
wards, he was killed by the Merovingian King Chlodomer (d. 524) and buried

21 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c.  3, pp.  331–32: ‘Cum Sigismundus,
Gundebadi regis filius, iam honorem patriciatus accinctus, Arrianae pravitatis perfidiam abie-
cisset, fidem catholici dogmatis consecutus, animum suum erga religionis studia intentissime
commodabat. Eo tempore Maximus Genavensis urbis antistes [omni sancitate et puritate con-
spicuus cunctaeque industriae ac strenuitate egregius, apud quem praedicatio divini sermonis
vehementer pollebat], ad hanc devotionem Sigismunde praecordia incitavit, et/ut de loco illo,
quem pretiosa morte Thebei martyres et effusione sanguinis incliti felicibus maculis rosea vari-
etate ornaverant, promiscui vulgi commixta habitatio tolleretur, et illi, cui splendor vitae per
passionis atrocitatem fuerat adquisitus, nitor habitantium remearet, exclusisque actionibus
tenebrarum, dies perpetuus habitaretur; ita fore, ut isdem patrocinantibus, et regno et regni
integritate tutissime potiretur, eo pacto, si cogitatio eius a pietate et iusticiae itinere minime
deviaret, quia hos sancti tuentur, quos sciunt a bono ordine nullatenus declinare. Quod tamen
cum omni habundantia et prosperitate habere promeruit et adhuc tempore longiore habuerat,
si non, exundantibus populorum delictis, antiqui hostis insidia valuisset. Igitur, habito consilio,
universitate Dei instinctu conplacuit, ut omnes mulieres de loco eodem tollerentur, et remo-
tis familiis secularibus, Dei inibi, hoc est monachorum, famila locaretur, qui die noctuque sub
norma regulari divinis operibus et officiis insisterent’.
22 
See Wood, ‘Liturgy in the Rhône Valley’, pp. 211–12, who argues that Italy certainly
belonged to Saint Maurice’s zone of attraction, which would explain the role of the shrine as a
place for curing malaria.
23 
See also Rosenwein, ‘One Site, Many Meanings’, pp. 273–74; Paxton, ‘Power and the
Power to Heal’, p. 101.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 55

in the monastery, where he was eventually venerated as a martyr.24 With the

defeat of Sigismund’s brother Godomar in 532 the short episode of an inde-
pendent Catholic kingdom of the Burgundians came to an end and Gaul came
entirely under Frankish rule.
We can assume that Bishop Maximus did not act by himself when he took
the initiative to purge Saint-Maurice. He may have been supported by Bishop
Avitus of Vienne, a friend and advisor of both Gundobad and Sigismund,
whose homily for the dedication of Saint-Maurice is preserved.25 The author
of the Vita abbatum Acaunensium and Gregory of Tours (our other main wit-
ness on the beginnings of Sigismund’s monastic project) obscure in different
ways that Saint-Maurice was already a thriving monastic settlement long before
its ‘foundation’ in 515, and that the king’s and the bishops’ initiative meant,
in fact, the destruction of this community.26 Gregory does not mention this
older monastic community at all, and tells us that Sigismund built the monas-
tery (aedificavit);27 the Vita abbatum Acaunensium describes the place as being
inhabited by a depraved crowd that certainly does not even deserve to be called
a monastic community.

2. Voices of Dissent
The women, lay people, and the vulgus promiscuum who were removed from
Saint-Maurice did probably not like what happened to them. We may not be
able to hear their voice, but there are indications that Sigibert’s and Maximus’s

24 
Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. by Krusch, c. 74, p. 537; Gregory of
Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch and Levison, iii. 6, p. 102; Passio Sigismundi, ed. by Krusch;
Marius of Avenches, Chronica, ed. by Mommsen, a. 522–23, pp. 234–35; Fredegar, Chronicae,
ed. by Krusch, iii. 33, p. 33. See also Paxton, ‘Power and the Power to Heal’, pp. 95–110; Wood,
‘A Prelude to Columbanus’, p. 15.
25 
Avitus, Opera, ed. by Peiper, Homilia 25, pp. 145–46. On Avitus, see the discussion by
the editors in Avitus, Selected Letters and Prose, ed. by Wood and Shanzer.
26 
The main sources on the cult of Saint-Maurice are the Passio martyrum Acaunensium,
ed. by Krusch (ascribed to Eucherius of Lyons), and the Vita Severini abbatis Acaunensis, ed.
in Theurillat, L’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, pp. 26–27. See also Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum
im Frankenreich, pp. 69–70; Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter,
i, 261–66; Paxton, ‘Power and the Power to Heal’, pp. 100–01; Rosenwein, ‘Perennial Prayer at
Agaune’, pp. 47–48; Masai, ‘La Vita patrum iurensium’.
27 
Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch and Levison, iii. 5, p. 100. Fredegar, Chronicae,
ed. by Krusch, iv. 1, p. 124, uses ‘aedificare iussit’.
56 Albrecht Diem

initiative met fierce resistance on various levels — and it appears to be very

fruitful to focus on these voices of dissent in order to understand what it meant
to transform an ancient Roman martyr shrine into an institution that became
the prototype of a royal monastery in the service of barbarian rulers. These
voices of dissent may challenge the assumption that a monastic model that
became prevalent throughout the Middle Ages somehow organically and natu-
rally evolved from the world of the sancti patres and the earliest monastic com-
munities in Gaul.
The prologue of the Vita abbatum Acaunensium makes a vigorous and
slightly nervous claim on the discursive monopoly on events at Saint-Maurice
d’Agaune: writing down this story prevents posterity from being misled by fab-
ulae vanae:
Though a belief animated by the merits of blessed men ever calls to mind the exem-
plary memory of their way of life in later generations of people, nevertheless it is
necessary to commit the truth to letters lest through a long stretch of time through
confused stories one seems to lose the true path, so that those men who, inflamed
by the ardour of faith and the love of holiness, desire to nourish their hearts with
discourse and thirstily drink up not the empty air from a cloudy haze but rather a
shower of truth. For that reason, I am convinced that, by the service of my atten-
dant pen, the life of the holy abbots Hymnemodus, Ambrosius, and Achivus ought
to be included on this page, abbots who excellently took charge of supporting the
congregation of the monastery at Agaunum; even, as the record of their righteous
charity exhorts, how the monastery itself was founded by the helpful suffrage of the
only begotten word, our Lord and God Jesus Christ. Nor in fact do I fear to describe
with indecorous speech their fertile faith, which in fear of God they exercised with
wondrous affect, because, whatever of their praises dim speech might obscure, the
very same an enlightened report makes clear by the brilliant merits of their deeds.28

28 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, prologus, pp. 329–30: ‘Beatorum virorum
sanctae conversationis imitandam memoriam quamvis opinio meritis vivificata succedentibus
populis semper insinuet, tamen, ne per longas temporum lineas, confusis fabulis, certum tram-
item videatur omittere, necessarium est veritatem litteris adsignare, ut hii, qui calore fidei et
sanctitatis amore accensi, pectora sua sermocinatione cupiunt satiari, non inanem aeram de
nebulosa caligine, sed verum imbrem hauriant sitientes. Quam ob rem vitam sanctorum abba-
tum Ymnemodi, Ambrosii et Achivi, qui suscipiendae congregatione Acaunensis monasterii
eximie praefuerunt, vel qualiter ipsum monasterium fuerit institutum, piae caritatis recorda-
tione suadente, unigeniti verbi Dei ac domini nostri Iesu Christi opitulante suffragio, stili famu-
lantis officio huic paginae credidi inserenda. Neque enim vereor fructuosam fidem eorum, quam
in timore Dei miro semper exercuerunt affectu, sermone inculto describere, quia, quicquid de
eorum laudibus dictio obscura celaverit, id, fulgentibus actuum meritis, relatio inlustrata clarifi-
cat’. This translation follows suggestions made by Zachary Yuzwa.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 57

Moreover, the author stresses in suspicious repetition the concordia and the
unanimitas of almost everyone who was involved in the project. He also
emphasizes the fact that the monastic communities themselves more than will-
ingly followed the lead of their abbots.29
One of the most outspoken voices of dissent on the developments in Saint-
Maurice comes from the Vita patrum Iurensium, even though this text does not
directly address the reformation of Saint-Maurice.30 The Vita vel regula sancto-
rum patrum Romani Lupicini et Eugendi monasteriorum Iurensium abbatum, as
the text is called in its manuscripts, describes the rise of the Jura monasteries,
a congregation of monastic foundations that had emerged in the first half of
the fifth century out of a humble community of hermits who sought to emu-
late the desert fathers in the wilderness near the Lake of Geneva. The text uses
the form of a narrative in order to provide a regula on how monastic commu-
nities can successfully turn into long-lasting institutions while retaining their
uncorrupted ideals and their original ascetic vigour. The main protagonists, the
abbots Romanus, Lupicinus, and Eugendus, represent different stages in this
process of institution forming.31
The work was commissioned by John and Armentarius, a monk and a her-
mit from Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, and it was probably written either shortly
before or shortly after the refoundation of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune. I suggest

29 
See, for example, Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 1, p. 330: ‘ex totius con-
gregationis consensus’; c. 4, p. 332: ‘qui de servitio vel de optutibus eius neququam discesserat
[…] Nisi me transitus de hac luce a te separaverit, numquam me a tuis obsequiis scias esse disces-
surum’; c. 5, p. 333: ‘qui illum semper secum unanimem habuerunt […] Sed ille, inconcussa
stabilitate cordis, de firmo proposito non discessit’; c. 8, p. 334: ‘congregatione electione […] ut
omnes abbate paene superstite illum eligerent […] cum electione congregatione abba est ordina-
tus […] cum sancto Achivio vel Probo unanimem dilectionem habuerit’.
30 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine. The authenticity of the work has been
disputed but is now widely accepted. See Martine’s introduction, pp. 14–44, and the introduc-
tion to the English translation: The Lives of the Jura Fathers, trans. by Vivian, Vivian, and Russel,
pp. 48–52. See n. 68, below, on the possible authorship of Bishop Viventiolus of Lyons and his
involvement in resolving dissent within the Jura monasteries.
31 
See Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, c. 4, p. 238: ‘Igitur, praefatorum
venerabilium Iurensium patrum actus vitamque ac regulam, quantum inibi proprio intuitu vel
seniorum traditione percepi, nitar fideliter in Chisti nimine repicare […]’. It is by no means unu-
sual to use narratives for describing how monasteries should be organized and kept on track. The
boundaries between vita and regula are often not clearly definable. For an analysis of three other
‘vitae vel regulae’ ( Jonas’s Vita Columbani, his Vita Iohannis, and the Vita Pacomii iunioris) see
Diem, ‘Was bedeutet Regula Columbani?’; Diem, ‘The Rule of an Iro-Egyptian Monk in Gaul’;
Diem and Müller, ‘Vita, regula, sermo’.
58 Albrecht Diem

that the Jura monasteries, as described in this Vita vel regula, served as an alter-
native model to the imminent or already realized changes in Saint-Maurice.
The prologue of the work gives some indication of the desperation of the two
members of the community of Saint-Maurice:

This is why, John and Armentarius, my dear devout brothers, you with twin affec-
tions knock so insistently at the door of your friend. […]. Breaking, therefore, the
modesty appropriate to an unlettered heart, I shall put myself forward for your
benefit as the narrator of the life of the three abbots of the Jura Mountains, that
is, the holy fathers Romanus, Lupicinus, and Eugendus, and I shall present it in
the form of the loaves of bread mentioned above. Your life and conduct is, to be
sure, one of spiritual contemplation: you, John, following the Apostle John of old,
recline upon the sarcophagus of Saint Maurice, head of the legion of Theban mar-
tyrs, just as the famous apostle and companion of Christ reclined upon the breast
of the author of our salvation; you, Armentarius, like the dove from the seafaring
ark, are content to remain enclosed there in the monastery in your private cell and
laugh at the swirling commotion of the world. Neither of you, however, is able,
without spiritual nourishment, to devote himself fully to these exercises without
harm. Your ‘Acaunus’, in the ancient Gallic expression, is recognized to be a rock,
as much primordially from nature as now also because of the Church, through
the truthful prefiguration of Peter. Nevertheless, may your Charity acknowledge
among the forests of pine and fir of the Jura Mountains the same rock allegorically
‘discovered’ long ago by the psalmist ‘in the fields of the forest’. There the holy
brothers, who have followed firm in their monastic stability, now tread upon this
rock, whose hidden meaning is now made clear.32

Reading the Vita vel regula of the Jura monasteries against the Vita abbatum
Acaunensium reveals differences that address core features of Maximus’s and
Sigismund’s project.
The Jura monasteries (at least the communities of monks) are, accord-
ing to the Vita patrum Iurensium, in principle open to everyone who wants
to become a monk, and they also serve guests, pilgrims, and sick people; they
were certainly not meant to be places of overall quies.33 Initially, ‘outsiders’ were
not even spatially separated from the community. Only at a very late stage the
Abbot of the Jura monasteries built dwellings that were exclusively reserved

32 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 1–3, pp. 238–40; trans. from The
Lives of the Jura Fathers, trans. by Vivian, Vivian, and Russel, pp. 97–98.
33 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 14–15, pp. 254–56; c. 22, p. 262;
cc. 27–34, pp. 268–78; cc. 68–70, pp. 314–18; cc. 122–23, pp. 370–72; cc. 147–48, pp. 396–98.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 59

to the monks.34 Avitus of Vienne, quite differently, stresses in his homily for
the dedication of Saint-Maurice especially its monastic quies and its permanent
separation from the turmoil of the world.35 The people removed from Saint-
Maurice by Sigismund and Maximus might have been of the same sort as those
who crowded the Jura monasteries.
Yet, despite its aspired quies, Saint-Maurice d’Agaune was much more
entangled with the world than the Jura monasteries. Romanus, Lupicinus,
and Eugendus kept a friendly but distinct distance from bishops and were not
happy with any of their attempts to interfere with monastic matters. Bishops
got the respect they deserved, but not more.36 Saint-Maurice, to the contrary,
was founded by bishops, populated by priests and clerics from their households,
and its rule was confirmed by a gathering of bishops. Several sources emphasize
the close connection between the monastery and the Burgundian episcopate.37
The only passages in the Vita patrum Iurensium that express an unconcealed
anger address the destructive role that priests may play in the monastery:
But as I report this about that most holy man [Abbot Romanus modestly exercising
his priestly duties], others rise up before the eyes of my heart. After making their
monastic profession, through mad ambition these attain clerical rank. Without
delay, wearing the pretentious fashions of an inflated self-esteem, these perfumed
and delicate young fellows are borne aloft, not only above their deserving equals,
but also above their elders and seniors. Uninstructed in even the most basic and
rudimentary principles, they make every effort to take advantage of their priestly

34 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, c. 170, p. 422.
35 
Avitus, Opera, ed. by Peiper, Homilia 25, p. 146: ‘[…] omnis operis necessitate seclusa,
sola erit requies sinceritas actionis […]’. For the subsequent text, see n. 47, below.
36 
Romanus was summoned to Bishop Hilarius of Arles (a former monk of Lérins). He had
to convince the Bishop of the quality of his monastic endeavour, received priesthood, and was
allowed to return to his community. In the same context the author inserts a diatribe against
Hilarius having exceeded his competence by deposing Calodonius, the Bishop of Besançon.
See Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 18–19, pp. 258–60. Romanus tries to
do his best not to be absorbed into the range of power of the Bishop of Geneva: Vita patrum
Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 49–50, pp. 292–94. Eucherius is well respected by
bishops but by no means willing to accommodate them: c. 140, p. 388.
37 
See Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, cc. 3 and 5–7, pp. 331–34. On the respec-
tive episcopal households, see Rosenwein, ‘Perennial Prayer at Agaune’, pp. 54–55. Later refer-
ences to episcopal involvement can be found in Fredegar, Chronicae, ed. by Krusch, iv. 1, p. 124;
see also the falsified foundation charter of Saint-Maurice (ninth century) ed. in Theurillat,
L’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, pp. 75–82 (at pp. 78–79).
60 Albrecht Diem

office and to preside from their seats of authority — they who, because of their
vanity and youthful lack of seriousness, still need to be disciplined and reined in!38

Romanus is, as the Vita tells us, ordained to priesthood against his will and
never uses his priestly privileges;39 Eugendus manages to escape ordination.40
With regard to the role of priest-monks Saint-Maurice d’Agaune and the Jura
monasteries could not be more different.41
The Vita patrum Iurensium and the Vita abbatum Acaunensium also dis­agree
about the role of secular rulers. The Vita patrum Iurensium describes Abbot
Lupicinus as follows: ‘He did not burst with vainglorious pride at the flattery
of state officials (iudices), nor was he ever moved or shaken from his devotion to
justice by fear of princes (principes)’.42 The Burgundian King Chilperic, probably
Gundobad’s uncle (d. c. 480), figures in the Vita patrum Iurensium as patricius and
iudex who acts within the framework of a still existing Roman Empire. Lupicinus
appears at Chilperic’s court as a terrifying and utterly respectless vir Dei. For him
the iudex and princeps Chilperic represents the party that happens to hold power
in this part of Gaul — the party he has to address in his function as interces-
sor for a group of unjustly enslaved people.43 One of Lupicinus’s other acts of
intercession saves a Roman dux called Agreppinus from being executed in Rome
for treason.44 Neither the range of actions nor the pool of recruitment of new
monks was determined by any boundary of secular rule. Romanus, Lupicinus,
and Eugendus, and their community are still Roman moines sans frontières.45

38 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, c. 21, pp. 260–62; trans. from The Lives
of the Jura Fathers, trans. by Vivian, Vivian, and Russel, p. 111. No other passage of the Vita
patrum Iurensium is as polemical as this one. Another diatribe against priests in the monastery
can be found in cc. 133–34, pp. 382–84. According to c. 151, pp. 400–02, Eugendus kept priests
separate within the community and did not allow them to get involved in disciplinary matters.
39 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 18–20, pp. 258–60.
40 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 132–34, pp. 380–84.
41 
On the transition towards monasteries as communities of ordained monks, see Nußbaum,
Kloster, Priestermönch und Privatmesse.
42 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, c. 92, p. 336: ‘Nec adulatione iudicum
uana inflatione disruptus est, nec terrore principum a tenore iustitiae excussus aut mutatus est
unquam’; The Lives of the Jura Fathers, trans. by Vivian, Vivian, and Russel, p. 144.
43 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc.  92–95, pp.  336–40. See also
Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul, pp. 122–24; Amory, ‘Names, Ethnic Identity,
and Community’, pp. 9–11; Pohl, ‘Die Anfänge des Mittelalters’.
44 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 96–110, pp. 342–54.
45 
Activities and contacts beyond the direct surrounding are described, for example, in Vita
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 61

Chilperic fully acknowledges Lupicinus’s power and provides him with

some necessary gifts for his monastery, and the saint does not request more.
Gregory of Tours turns the same story in his Liber vitae patrum into an even
more explicit praise of monastic self-sufficiency. Here Lupicinus agrees to
receive material support to nourish and vest the monks, but he explicitly refuses
to accept vineyards and fields as permanent possessions.46
In contrast, both the Vita abbatum Acaunensium and Avitus’s homily praise
Sigismund for lavishly endowing Saint-Maurice in order to ensure that the
monks will not have to worry about their material situation and can fully con-
centrate on their task to pray.47
All three holy abbots of the Jura monasteries act at numerous occasions as
intercessors for the sick, the oppressed, and the possessed outside the monas-
tery. For each of the protagonists, the Vita patrum Iurensium describes how
the community, or at least members of the community, take over their abbots’
intercessory abilities. This shows the author’s concern of depicting the Jura
monasteries as a congregatio sancta that continues and institutionalizes the vir-
tus of its founders.48 Both the transmission and the shape of this collective sanc-

patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 14 and 16, pp. 254–58; c. 128, pp. 376–78;
c. 145, p. 394; and cc. 155–60, pp. 404–10. On mobility and regionalism in late antique Gaul,
see Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul, pp. 20–24.
46 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, c. 95, p. 340: ‘Mox uero, uigoris regii
sententia promulgata, liberos restituit libertati, et Christi famulum, oblatis ob necessitatem
fratrum uel loci muneribus, honorifice fecit ad coenobium repedare’; Gregory of Tours, Liber
vitae patrum, ed. by Kursch, i. 5, p. 667: ‘“Ideo petimus potentiae vestrae, ut ad victus vestitusque
necessaria aliquid tribuatis”. Rex vero haec audiens, ait: “Accipite agros vineasque, de quibus pos-
setis vivere ac necessitates vestras explere”. Qui respondit: “Agros et vineas non accipiemus, sed,
si placet potestati vestrae, aliquid de fructibus deligate. Quia non decet, monachos facultatibus
mundanis extolli, sed in humilitate cordis Dei regnum iustitiamque eius exquerere”. At rex, cum
audisset haec verba, dedit eis praeceptionem, ut annis singulis trecentos modios tritici eiusdemque
mensurae numero vinum accipiant et centum aureos ad conparandum fratrum inumenta’.
47 
Avitus, Opera, ed. by Peiper, Homilia 25, p. 146: ‘[…] cui inter divinas laudes, omnis operis
necessitate seclusa, sola erit requies sinceritas actionis. […] [directed towards Sigismund:] Ditati
donis, pauperes verbis, percepimus magna, pauca persolvimus; ornasti ecclesias tuas gazarum
cumulo, numero populorum; struxisi sumptibus, quae muneribus cumulares altaria; numquam
quidem contulimus verba virtuti, sed cum ad praesens psalmisonum sollemne perventum est,
parum puto, si dicam verba nostra: vicisti hodie insuper et opera tua’. See also Vita abbatum
Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 3, pp. 331–32 (text in n. 21, above).
48 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, c. 51, p. 294; c. 114, pp. 358–60;
c. 148, p. 398. These passages are discussed in Diem, ‘Organisierte Keuschheit’. The expression
congregatio sancta appears in Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, c. 16, p. 256.
62 Albrecht Diem

tity and the power of intercession are profoundly different from what the Vita
abbatum Acaunensium describes.
The abbots and monks of the Jura monasteries serve people from all differ-
ent social backgrounds and origins by causing miracles and by a combination
of the saints’ prayer and the recipients’ faith.49 Organized intercessory prayer
performed by the community, however, does not figure in the Vita patrum
Iurensium. The text addresses numerous aspects of monastic discipline and
ascetic vigour, but liturgy plays a marginal role and liturgical discipline is not
mentioned at all.50 The monks of the Jura monasteries still went to the fields,
and the discipline and vigour in which they performed manual labour plays a
key role in the Vita patrum Iurensium.
The regula of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune (as it is mentioned and acted out in
the Vita abbatum Acaunensium) encompasses little besides the community’s
liturgical order and liturgical discipline. Therefore, the monks of Saint-Maurice
were endowed with possessions for the explicit purpose that they did not have
to work and could fully dedicate themselves to prayer.
The prologue to the Life of Eugendus (the third part of the Vita patrum
Iurensium) even expresses a subtle criticism on wasting too many words in too elab-
orate prayer — which could be understood as a side blow against Saint-Maurice:
Human weakness, while delighting in a chant or in music, and while admiring lovely
oratory with its appropriate utilization of vocabulary and verb tenses, is inclined
toward judgment; may the Divinity, then, who favours my undertaking, see to it
that my simple and unadorned style is not trampled upon by the boasting of arro-
gant judges with their windy verbiage. Moreover, as I have already said, I have dedi-
cated these little works especially to you, whom I know to be the disciples not of
orators but of fishermen (non oratorum, sed piscatorum). You look for ‘the kingdom
of God not in philosophic language but in virtue’, and prefer to pray to the Lord
through a pure and continuous observance (magisque pura ac iugi observantia Dom-
inum exorare) rather than to pray through a foolish and perishable eloquence (quam
vana perituraque facundia perorare).51

49 
See for example Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 41–51, pp. 284–96;
cc. 68–70, pp. 314–18; cc. 74–76, pp. 320–22; cc. 141–46, pp. 388–96.
50 
References to individual prayer and liturgical practice can be found in Vita patrum
Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, c. 10, p. 248 (prayer of Lupicinus); c. 46, p. 290 (Romanus
and the monk Palladius are singing the Hours); cc. 64–65, pp. 310–12 (Lupicinus’s private
prayer); cc. 129–30, pp. 378–80 (Eugendus prays the Hours).
51 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, cc. 118–19, pp. 364–66: ‘Sic adnuens
Diuinitas faxit, ut humana procliuior in diiudicando fragilitas dum melo delectatur aut musicis,
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 63

Both the Jura monasteries and Saint-Maurice d’Agaune claim to stand in the
tradition of the monastery of Lérins, the first outpost of Egyptian monasticism
in Gaul, and to fulfil or at least uncorruptedly adapt the ideals of the sancti
patres. According to the Vita abbatum Acaunensium, Saint-Maurice is popu-
lated with monks from the monasteries of Grigny and Île-Barbe, two monastic
communities that were founded by Lérinsian monks and probably followed
Lérinsian rules.52 The Vita patrum Iurensium is very explicit about its ties to
Lérins and its roots in the desert father tradition, but also honest about the
necessity to adjust it to new circumstances. At the end of the work, the author
expresses the hope that Agaune would return to the model of Lérins as well.53
The Vita patrum Iurensium closes with providing the two lost monks of Saint-
Maurice with an excerpt of the rule of Lérins as an addition to the Vita itself
— clearly a claim that the Jura monasteries have the authority to bring Saint-
Maurice back on the right path of tradition:
But if rustic loquacity is not able to satisfy your souls, which have already rejected
philosophy, [then] the institutes which we, at the instigation of the holy priest
Marinus, the Abbot of Lérins, have selected as your outline for the monastery,
that is for the community of Agaune, will, with Christ’s help, lavishly fulfil your
desires both for the honours of the institution and for the authority of the one who
ordered them.54

dumque oratorias uenustates, uocabulorum quoque ac temporum signata proprietate miratur,

haec nostra tapinosis nequaquam iactantia superborum iudicium uentosa superfluitate calcetur.
Porro nos, ut praefati iam sumus, uobis proprie opuscula ista dicauimus, quos nouimus non ora-
torum, sed piscatorum esse discipulos, nec in philosophia sermonis regnum Dei, sed in uirtute
prospicere, magisque pura ac iugi obseruantia Dominum exorare quam uana perituraque facundia
perorare’; trans. from The Lives of the Jura Fathers, trans. by Vivian, Vivian, and Russel, pp. 157–58.
52 
See Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich, pp. 88–117. On Grigny and Lérins, see
esp. Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae, ed. by Luetjohann and Krusch, no. vii, 17, p. 124.
53 
References to Lérins can be found in Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine,
c. 174, pp. 426, and c. 179, pp. 432–34. References and allusions to the desert fathers (especially
Anthony) are ubiquitous in the Vita patrum Iurensium.
54 
Vita patrum Iurensium, ed. and trans. by Martine, c. 179, pp. 432–34: ‘At si animos ues-
tros, spreta dudum philosophia, rusticana quoque garrulitas exsatiare non quiuerit, instituta
quae de informatione monasterii uestri, id est Acaunensis coenobii, sancto Marino presbytero
insulae Lirinensis abbate conpellente, digessimus, desideria uestra, tam pro institutionis insigni-
bus quam pro iubentis auctoritate, Christo opitulante, luculenter explebunt’. (My own transla-
tion). On this passage, see also Zelzer, ‘Die Identifizierung der Instituta de informatione’.
64 Albrecht Diem

3. Creating Consensus: Barbarians in the Monastery

The Vita abbatum Acaunensium begins, as already mentioned, with a heavily
contested monastic entry — a variation on the topos of a Roman young man
leaving his appalled family, his wealth, and political ambitions behind in order
to live a perfect monastic life.55 Hymnemodus, however, is not a promising mem-
ber of a noble Roman family but a barbarus at the court of a Burgundian king,
a barbarian by birth but nevertheless immune to all roughness, as the Vita abba-
tum Acaunensium puts it.56 This in itself indicates a major shift, though, we have
to keep in mind that barbarus does (certainly in this context) not necessarily
have a negative connotation but rather indicates a legal status that encompassed
the readiness to carry out military responsibilities.57 There are, at least for Gaul,
no previous references to any barbarus entering a monastery, let alone becom-
ing an abbot, but there are also only a few references problematizing ethnicity
in the context of monastic entry after Hymnemodus. Gregory of Tours’s Liber
vitae patrum, written at the end of the sixth century, may serve as a case in point.
He tells about monks and ascetics of diverse ethnic and social backgrounds
without ever addressing this diversity as problematic or worth of justification.58
In Gregory’s view, bishops have to be Roman and should be aristocrats, but
monks can come from anywhere.59

55 
Hymnemodus’s successors Ambrosius and Achivius had as well entered the monas-
tery against the will of their families. See Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, cc. 8–9,
pp. 354–55. Two (of many) other examples: Vita Caesarii, ed. by Krusch, pp. 458–59; Gregory
of Tours, Liber vitae patrum, ed. by Kursch, vi. 1, p. 680.
56 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 1, p. 330: ‘Sanctus igitur Ymnemodus natione
quidem barbarus, sed morum benignitate modestus, ita inmunis ab omni feritate beneficio divini-
tatis effectus est, ut sub habitu saeculari iugum Christi blanda clementiae libertate portaret’.
57 
The Liber constitutionum, the Burgundian law code issued by Gundobad and his son
Sigismund, uses barbarus in a strictly legal sense as opposed to Romanus, but particularly refers
to those in the king’s service. See, for example, Liber constitutionum, ed. by von Salis, ii. 1, p. 42:
‘Si quis hominem ingenuum ex populo nostro cuiuslibet nationis aut servum regis, natione dun-
taxat barbarum, occidere damnabili ausu aut temeritate praesumpserit, non aliter admissum
crimen quam sanguinis sui effusione conponat’.
58 
Foreign monks are mentioned in Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum, ed. by Kursch,
iii. 1, p. 672; xv. 1, p. 721; monks of a very low social background in v. 1, p. 677; ix. 1, p. 702;
xiii. 1, p. 715. A study of references to ethnicity in Jonas of Bobbio’s works is provided by
Alexander O’Hara in this volume.
59 
Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum, ed. by Kursch, iv. 1, p. 674; vi. 1, p. 680; vii. 1,
p. 687; viii. 1, p. 691; xvii. 1, p. 728.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 65

In the Vita abbatum Acaunensium, an option for upper class Roman jeu-
nesse becomes accessible to a non-Roman, 60 and, more importantly, this
‘non-Romanness’ becomes a ‘non-issue’ — already in the course of the story
that the Vita abbatum Acaunensium tells. Hymnemodus, the barbarian miles
Christi, recruits monks with Roman names (Ambrosius, Iustus, Probus, and
Ursolus) but also at least one other barbarian (Drabestio). His first successor,
Ambrosius, was a cleric and presumably came from a Roman family; his sec-
ond successor Achivus came from a soldier’s family, probably in Burgundian
service (cum patre Eracleo in Grationopolitano territorio militiam egit), but the
author of the Vita abbatum Accaunensium does not call him natione barbarus
any more.61 The foundation charter of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, an obvious
Carolingian forgery, contains a list of witnesses that lists along with four bish-
ops four comites bearing Germanic names, and, since at least three of the four
bishops’ names are correct, the list may have been taken from a contemporary
charter and still reflect the spirit of collaboration between Roman bishops and
barbarian courtiers.62
In Merovingian hagiography, Hymnemodus is not only the first but also the
last explicit barbarus who enters a monastery, with the exception of Radegund
of Poitiers who is natione barbara because she came to the Frankish court as a
Thuringian slave.63 For Hymnemodus, however, it is not so much his ‘barbar-
ian’ background but his role at Gundobad’s court that forms a major obstacle
for his monastic conversion, and he manages to circumnavigate the problem
only by becoming a monk and hermit before joining the monastery. After that,
the king still fiercely resists even his subsequent ascent to abbatial dignity.64
Ian Wood has convincingly shown that the dichotomy between Arian
Burgundians and Catholic Romans has to be regarded rather as a construct
than as a reality,65 and even the Vita abbatum Acaunensium does not excessively

60 
Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich, pp. 47–58; Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in
Barbarian Gaul, pp. 102–04.
61 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, cc. 8–9, pp. 334–35.
62 
For the list, see Theurillat, L’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, p. 81: ‘Maximus epis-
copus Genevensis; Theodorus urbis Sedunensis [Theodorus, Bishop of Sitten is nowhere else
recorded]; Victor urbis Gratinopolitanus; Viventiolus urbis Ludgunensis and Fredemarus
comes; Gondeulfus comes; Benedictus comes; Agano comes; Bonefacius comes; Theudemundus
comes; Fredeboldus comes’. See Amory, ‘Names, Ethnic Identity, and Community’, p. 14.
63 
Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Radegundis, ed. by Krusch, c. 2, p. 365.
64 
See n. 20, above.
65 
See Wood, ‘Royal Succession and Legitimation in the Roman West’, pp. 68–71; Wood,
66 Albrecht Diem

play the Arian card. King Gundobad is depicted as an unsympathetic figure

who gives the new miles Christi Hymnemodus a hard time, but he is not explic-
itly slandered because he is an Arian or a heretic. In the author’s narrative, the
critical distinction between Gundobad’s rule and that of his son Sigismund
is not so much the shift from Arianism to Catholicism; rather, it is the shift
from one political setting to another. In the new setting a Burgundian king
may regard a court member’s monastic entry as something different than deser-
tion and recognize that a place such as Saint-Maurice can actually support his
rule. The king himself became a benefactor but also beneficiary of his monastic
foundation — most notably a foundation appropriating a venerable shrine of
Roman soldier martyrs. The barbarus Hymnemodus bridges these entirely dif-
ferent settings and facilitates the transition. The notion of barbarian v. Roman
dissolves, and a formerly Roman institution becomes an integral part of the
Burgundian apparatus of power. Gundobad’s resistance — if we regard it as
more than just a rhetorical device — is consciously presented as a dissonance
that had to be resolved by the new Catholic ruler Sigismund.66
The King, however, was not the only one who needed to be brought on
board for this endeavour. According to the Vita abbatum Acaunensium, the
entire project of reorganizing and appropriating Saint-Maurice d’Agaune was
initiated by Bishop Maximus of Geneva. He assigned to Hymnemodus the
task of travelling along other monasteries and episcopal sees that were situated
in the region controlled by the Burgundian kings in order to recruit clerics,
abbots, and monks to inhabit the new monastery and to replace those who had
lived there before. Maximus’s intention was to fortify the coalition between
Sigismund and the Catholic ecclesiastical structure. Relapse into Arianism or
religious indifference was not unheard of and had to be prevented by collabora-
tively establishing a space fruitfully shared by king and church.67
At least two of Maximus’s colleagues, Victorius of Grenoble and Viventiolus
of Lyon, initially appeared to be rather unhappy with this idea and especially
disliked that Hymnemodus and his followers recruited their own clerics and

‘The Latin Culture of Gundobad and Sigismund’. See also Kaiser, Die Burgunder, pp. 152–65.
The fact that king Gundobad was probably indeed still Arian prevented neither him nor Bishop
Avitus of Vienne to enter an amicable co-operation than included even discussions on theologi-
cal matters outside the question of Arian or Catholic Christology.
66 
Kaiser, Die Burgunder, p. 160.
67 
See Concilium Epaonense a. 517, in Concilia Galliae, ed. by Munier and de Clercq, c. 29,
i, p. 31. The canon imposes severe penance on those who had fallen back into heresy.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 67

monks and abbots from their dioceses. Hymnemodus had, at least accord-
ing to the Vita abbatum Acaunensium, little problem convincing Victorius.
Viventiolus, however, who was a former monk of the Jura monasteries,68 was
not given much of a choice. The author of the Vita abbatum does not include
him in his repeated claims of overall unanimity.69
Yet Hymnemodus succeeded in populating the monastery with a significant
number of monks and clerics from places under Burgundian rule. Eventually,
the monastery’s refoundation was confirmed by a group of bishops who explic-
itly sanctioned the liturgical rule of the community.70 Maximus was probably
able to convince his episcopal colleagues that it was worth ‘sacrifying’ some of
their own people to serve in this new institution that ensured that their bar-

68 
See Wood, ‘A Prelude to Columbanus’, p. 14 and note 118, and Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum
im Frankenreich, p. 103, who suggest that Viventiolus may have been the author of the Vita
patrum Iurensium. The link between Viventiolus and the Jura monasteries is documented in
a letter of Avitus of Vienne to Viventiolus, written shortly before the death of Eugendus. The
letter indicates that Viventiolus at that time had control over the Jura fathers and that he played
some role in resolving conflicts about the course of the Jura monasteries. Avitus praises him
for holding the community together. Unfortuately, the letter is fragmentary and its meaning
unclear. Avitus, Opera, ed. by Peiper, Epistula 19, p. 52: ‘ut quo in aliis fraterna dissinsio […]
potuisset ac herimum facere in uobis studuerit paterna dilixio monatirium contenere’. Peiper
reconstructs the text as: ‘ut, quod in aliis fraterna dissensio nec potuit istic heremum facere, in
vobis studuerit paterna dilectio monasterium continere’. In Avitus, Selected Letters and Prose, ed.
by Wood and Shanzer, p. 269, Peiper’s conjectural nec is dismissed and instead the text is trans-
lated as follows: ‘although among others fraternal dissension had been able to make a desert,
among you paternal affection has tried to keep a monastery together’.
69 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 5 and c. 7, p. 333–34: ‘Idem et sanctus
Victorius Gratianopolitanae civitatis episcopus ingrate ferens, quod corpore ei absentaretur,
blandis eum sermonisbus liniebat, quem etiam postea occurrens ad sanctorum basilicam mul-
tis precibus coram fratribus precabatur, ut deberet ecclesiam vel fratres, qui eum educaverant,
visitare. Sed ille, inconcussa stabilitate cordis, de firmo proposito non discessit’. But: ‘Sanctus
vero Viventiolus urbis illius episcopus vel fratres quos ipse abba regere videbatur, memore gravi
perculsi sunt. Sed ille vir Deo [Ambrosius] plenus, ubi audivit, praecipuos viros Imnemodum
et Achivum cum sancto Probo iam ad sanctorum basilicam praecessisse, omnibus morarum
nexibus amputatis velociter cum aliis abbatibus, sanctis viris Archadio et Drabestione, cum
magno comitato ad sanctorum basilicam venit, sicque iunctus sanctis martiribus, mira caritatis
gaudia cunctis in congregatione eadem fratribus cumulavit’. The falsified foundation charter
of Saint-Maurice edited in Theurillat, L’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, p. 81, however, lists
Viventiolus as one of the witnesses for the foundation.
70 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 7, p. 334: ‘Psallendis interim vel subsistendi
regula instituta sancto Imnemodo a coetu episcoporum, qui illic ad constituendum monaste-
rium venerant, traditur, nec multum post ad Christum de hac luce migravit’.
68 Albrecht Diem

barian ruler would never ‘even think of deviating from the path of piety and
justice’ as the Vita abbatum Acaunensium puts it.71
Only about two years later the first (of two) regional councils under
Burgundian rule gathered at an unidentified place called Epao. This marked
the definitive transition towards a new regional church structure determined
by the sphere of control of a barbarian kingdom.72 At Epao, the bishops con-
sented, among other things, to keep strict control over the monasteries situated
in their dioceses and decided on a catalogue of strict regulations on incest.73 At
a second episcopal gathering that was held at Lyons only a few years later, the
king was taken by his words, and the coalition between Burgundian bishops
and Catholic Burgundian rulers was challenged, when the bishops threatened
to excommunicate Sigismund for supporting an incestuous member of his royal
court. The bishops made clear that their support for Burgundian rule was not
unconditional.74

71 
See n. 21, above.
72 
Concilium Epaonense a. 517, in Concilia Galliae, ed. by Munier and de Clercq, i, 22–37:
present were (among others) Avitus of Vienne, Viventiolus of Lyon, Victorius of Grenoble, and
Maximus of Geneva. Only seven years before, the first regional council under the auspices of
the Frankish king Clovis had taken place at Orléans: Concilium Aurelianense a. 511, in Concilia
Galliae, ed. by Munier and de Clercq, i, 4–14. See Pontal, Die Synoden im Merowingerreich,
pp. 23–46; Kaiser, Die Burgunder, pp. 160–65.
73 
Six chapters of the acts of Epao address monastic matters: c. 8, p. 25, stresses the epis-
copal control of monastic possessions; c. 9, p. 25, forbids an abbot to rule over more than one
monastery; c. 10, p. 26, forbids new foundations without notification (notitia) of bishops;
c. 19, p. 29, emphasizes the episcopal control over the deposition of abbots; c. 22, p. 29, assigns
monasteries to serve as prisons for criminal clerics; c. 38, p. 34, enforces enclosure of female
monasteries. All regulations imply that bishops exercised control or at least supervision over
the monasteries in their dioceses. For the wider historical context, see Rosenwein, Negotiating
Space, pp. 32–35.
74 
Concilium Lugdunense a. 518–23, in Concilia Galliae, ed. by Munier and de Clercq,
i,  38–41; Vita Apollinaris, ed. by Krusch, cc.  2–3, p.  198; see Pontal, Die Synoden im
Merowingerreich, pp. 46–48, and especially Wood, ‘Incest, Law and the Bible’, pp. 296–301.
Viventiolus, Maximus, and Victorius attended this council as well. Avitus was probably dead at
that time.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 69

4. Perpetual Prayer
The Vita abbatum Acaunensium is very explicit about what the bishops imposed
on the community of Saint-Maurice when they were gathering to restore the
shrine of Maurice and his Thebean Legion:
The set rule (regula) of psalm-singing and persistence [in the monastery] was given
to Hymnemodus by a gathering of bishops who had come there in order to estab-
lish the monastery.75

Hymnemodus,76 before his death, gives a last instruction to his monks never to
go astray from the good path they have chosen at that point.77 Hymnemodus’s
successor Ambrosius dedicates all his virtues to kingdom and king:
For, even though there was in him the gift of prophecy, nevertheless there was in
him plentiful humanity with the providence of all that has to be given, the strict
perseverance in abstinence, abundant dedication to brotherly love, and the distinc-
tion of loving discipline. The divine generosity conceded all these virtues during his
lifetime to the monastery of Agaune and to the regnum and to the regio.78

Subsequently, he forces his monks to cling to their liturgical discipline under all cir-
cumstances, against all dangers, sufferings, and despite adversities and prosperities.79

75 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 7, p. 334. Text in n. 70, above.
76 
Ian Wood suggests that the Latinized name Hymnemodus was in itself a reference to the
liturgical programme of Saint-Maurice: a barbarian Imnemod, Ememud, or Imnemud becomes
the embodiment of hymnus. See Wood, ‘The Latin Culture of Gundobad and Sigismund’,
pp. 377–78; Wood, ‘The Governing Class’, p. 15. See also Die Inschriften des Kantons Wallis bis
1300, ed. by Jörg, pp. 41–43.
77 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 7, p. 334: ‘De cuius sententiis vel aliquid
relatio praesens digne suscipiet, nam hos, qui aliqua scintilla religionis accendebantur, seu quos
secum habebat, sive quos ubique forsitan repperisset, paterna omnes pietate fovebat et monebat,
ut cum summa cutela ambulantes proficerent, dicens ad eos: “Videtis, fraters, aliquos inordi-
nante progredientes, qui etiam bene currentes impedire nituntur; illos oportere magis cavere et
corripi quam sectari”’.
78 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 8, p. 334: ‘Nam cum inesset gratia pro-
phetiae, erat tamen in eo larga cum omni providentia tribuendi humanitas et arta abstinendi
constantia profusaque fraternae caritatis dilectio ac piae disciplinae distinctio; omnia enim bona
temporibus eius et monasterio Acaunensio et regno et regioni largitio divina concessit’.
79 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 8, pp. 334–35: ‘Debemus persistere vigiles
in oratione vel in officio divino, et tam animo quam corpore vigilantes, exclusa a nobis invidia et
rancore diaboli, et in omnibus gratia augeatur et ne qusquam ab officio sancto terrore periculo
subtrahatur, sed omnia patienter suffere vel adverse vel prospera’.
70 Albrecht Diem

The virtues that Ambrosius’s successor Achivus deploys perfectly qualify him to
pray for other peoples’ sins.80
The liturgy and the liturgical discipline at Saint-Maurice is thus depicted as
one of the main concerns, at least in the early history of the monastery. It had to
be approved, explained, enforced, and defended — probably not only because
of the challenge of keeping up the manpower and the rigour necessary for a
ceaseless prayer of psalms, but also because there was disagreement on whether
monastic life should be reduced to a continuous ‘production’ of psalms. In the
long run, however, the Burgundian bishops and the abbots of Saint-Maurice
succeeded in implementing and perpetualizing Saint-Maurice’s liturgical ordo;
it became the ‘trademark’ and the major export product of Saint-Maurice for
at least the next two hundred and fifty years.81 Avitus of Vienne’s vision was
fulfilled:
May our Gaul flourish; let the world long for what [this] place has brought forth.
Today let there begin an eternity for devotion and dignity for the region, with
these men praising God in the present world, who will praise him equally in the
future. May death renew rather than end this action [the psalmody of Saint-Mau-
rice]. May you rediscover in heaven what customary rewards you will carry form
this land. May such great honour follow your perseverance that whatsoever effort
you expended on the task be repaid to you as a prize in recognition of your merit.82

Modern literature coined for Saint-Maurice’s liturgy the expression laus peren-
nis, a neologism avoided here.83 The Vita abbatum Acaunensium simply refers to
a ceaseless prayer of psalms, which is laid out in a regula. Other sources are more
specific about how this prayer was organized, though there is no specified ordo
psallendi of Saint-Maurice preserved. We can assume that Saint-Maurice had,

80 
Vita abbatum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 9, p. 335: ‘Alienus a culpis pro culpas tamen
pallens erubescebat alienis, pro qua puritate, quicquid pro quibuscumque necessitate patienti-
bus a Domino poposcisset, tamquam vere Dei famulus accipere merebatur’.
81 
See nn. 85, 104, and 123, below.
82 
Avitus, Opera, ed. by Peiper, Homilia 25, p. 146: ‘Gallia nostra florescat; orbis desiderat,
quod locus invexit; incipiatur hodie et devotioni aeternitas et dignitas regioni, laudantibus
in praesenti saeculo deum, laudaturis pariter in futuro; renovet magis obitus quam terminet
actionem; recognoscatis in caelo, quam de hace tellure portabitis consuetundiem praemiorum,
tantusque perseverantiam vestram honor sequatur, ut quod vobis in exercitio erit operis, hoc
solvatur in praemio pro retributione mercedis’; trans. from Avitus, Selected Letters and Prose, ed.
by Wood and Shanzer, pp. 380–81.
83 
On the laus perennis, see Gindele, ‘Die gallikanischen Laus perennis-Klöster’; Leclercq,
La Liturgie et les paradoxes chrétiens, pp. 229–42.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 71

like other monasteries, liturgical hours (prime, secunda, terce, sext, etc.) and
that at each of these hours prayer was performed by different groups of monks
in shifts. In this way, the psalm-singing could be extended over the entire time
span until the next hour of prayer.84 Several sources (on Saint-Maurice, but
also on monasteries that used its liturgy) call these shifts turmae.85 According
to the falsified foundation charter of Saint-Maurice which was produced in
the Carolingian period, these turmae consisted of monks and clerics who were
recruited from one specific monastery or episcopal see.86 I would assume that
this depiction has at least a kernel of truth. Why should a Carolingian forger
invent this aspect of Saint Maurice’s liturgy?
Barbara Rosenwein has challenged the established assumption that this
liturgical programme was copied after the liturgy of the so-called Akoimetoi
(the sleepless), monks from Constantinople who also performed a day-and-
night prayer in shifts.87 Even though there may have been contacts and cross-
influences between Byzantine and Western monks and the liturgical practice
of the Akoimetoi and the monks of Saint-Maurice shows striking similarities, I
follow her suggestion of looking closer to home for understanding the function
of Saint-Maurice’s liturgy and the intentions behind its implementation, which
may be rooted in the very specific constellation in which Saint-Maurice was
reorganized.

84 
Masai, ‘La Vita patrum iurensium’, pp. 65–67; Gindele, ‘Die gallikanischen Laus peren-
nis-Klöster’, pp. 42–44; Leclercq, La Liturgie et les paradoxes chrétiens.
85 
See Passio martyrum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, Appendix 1, p. 40: ‘Pro id ipsum die
noctuque psalmorum hymni decantatio non desistit, quae, iubente sancto et praeclaro Christi
martyre beato Sigimundo rege, est institutum hac usque hodie, Deo protegente, est conserva-
tum’; Vita Amati, ed. by Krusch, c. 10, p. 218: ‘[…] ibique opitulante Domino, multis virgin-
ibus psallentium per septem turmas, in unaquaque duodenis, psallentibus, die noctuque iugiter
instituit’. See also Vita Amati, ed. by Krusch, c. 11, p. 220; Vita Adelphi, ed. by Krusch, c. 6,
p. 227; Vita Sadalbergae, ed. by Krusch, c. 17, p. 59. On turmae, see also Masai, ‘La Vita patrum
iurensium’, pp. 64–69.
86 
Foundation charter of Saint-Maurice, ed. in Theurillat, L’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice
d’Agaune, p. 78: ‘Recte mihi videtur ut secundum plenissimam devocionem domini regis de
psallendi institucionibus fiant viiii normae, id est Granensis, Islana, Jurensis et Melvensis et
cetere; et succedentes sibi in officiis canonicis id est nocturnis matutinis, prima, secunda, tercia,
sexta, nona, vespertina in pace die noctuque indesinender Domino famulentur’. The text refers
to Grigny, Isle-Barbe, and the Jura monasteries. I could not identify the monasterium Melvensis.
87 
Rosenwein, ‘Perennial Prayer at Agaune’, pp. 39–46; see pp. 41–44 on sources about the
Akoimetoi. See also Wood, ‘Liturgy in the Rhône Valley’, pp. 208–09.
72 Albrecht Diem

Since the beginnings of communal monastic life, monks were singing psalms
at fixed hours. Numerous monastic rules prove that ‘liturgical discipline’ was
one of the key concerns of monastic discipline in general.88 Several elaborate
liturgical ordines are preserved: for Lérins, the community of John Cassian,
Caesarius’s nunnery, the foundations of Caesarius’s successor Aurelian, and the
monasteries addressed by the Regula Benedicti and the Regula magistri, and
Columbanus’s Regula monachorum.89 We can assume that regular prayer was
part of a general monastic practice, but not all our sources describe the prayer
of the community as the centre of monastic life. Liturgy does not matter very
much in Sulpicius Severus’s depiction of Martin’s monks and their eastern com-
petitors; the author of the Vita patrum Iurensium is not interested in liturgy,
as shown above; Gregory of Tours’s monastic diversity hardly defines itself by
its liturgical vigour; the monks in the Dialogi of Gregory I do all sorts of other
things. Even his description of Benedict’s monastic foundations carries very
few references to liturgy and liturgical discipline.90 Reforming Saint-Maurice
may have included transforming one aspect of monastic life into the main obli-
gation of the community by shaping an economic framework that enabled the
monks to sing psalms instead of working, and by imposing on them a regula
that forced them to do so.
Monks may have prayed psalms forever, but these psalms started to sound
different when they were produced at a shrine of military martyrs (who were
depicted as ‘in rebus bellicis strenui et virtute nobiles, sed nobiliores fide’),91 by
monks divided in squadrons (turmae). These monks were supposed to be on
ceaseless guard in serving the integritas regni, and they unanimously gathered
around a barbarian miles Christi and his successor, who fully dedicated his vir-

88 
See, for example: Regula Pachomii, ed. by Bacht, praecepta, cc. 3, 5, 9–10, and 121, pp. 82,
84, and 109; John Cassian, De institutis coenobitorum, ed. by Guy, iii. 7, pp. 108–10; Regula
Cassiani, ed. by Ledoyen, cc. 16–17 and c. 39. 2, pp. 178 and 186; Regula patrum secunda, ed. by
de Vogüé, cc. 6. 31–39, pp. 280–82; Regula Orientalis, ed. by de Vogüé, c. 12, p. 468; Caesarius
of Arles, Regula ad virgines, ed. by de Vogüé and Courreau, c. 12, p. 188.
89 
Caesarius of Arles, Regula ad virgines, ed. by de Vogüé and Courreau, cc.  66–70,
pp. 252–68 (also for Lérins); Aurelian, Ordo psallendi; Columbanus, Regula monachorum, ed.
by Walker, c. 7, pp. 128–32; Regula Benedicti, ed. by de Vogüé, cc. 8–19, pp. 508–36; Regula
magistri, ed. by de Vogüé, cc. 33–46, pp. 192–216.
90 
There are, to my knowledge, no references to liturgy or liturgical discipline in the works
of Sulpicius Severus. The only reference to liturgy in the second book of the Dialogi of Gregory I
tells about a monk who could not concentrate on prayer: Gregory I, Dialogi, ed. by de Vogüé
and Antin, ii. 4, pp. 150–52.
91 
Passio martyrum Acaunensium, ed. by Krusch, c. 3, p. 33.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 73

tues pro regno et regione.92 Sigismund could not get enough of these songs and
we should assume that he knew very well what the monks were singing on his
behalf.93 After all, many of the psalms are (or could be understood as) songs
of a people and its king imploring God for help against the threats of their
enemies.94 Monks and nuns may have sung these songs with their own battle for
perfection and the war on demons, temptations, and human weakness in mind,
but most likely they were understood much more literally when produced by
Sigismund’s monastic auxiliary troops. For example:
Ps  3.  7–9: Non timebo milia populi circumdantis me. Exsurge, Domine salvum
me fac, Deus meus | quoniam tu percussisti in maxillam omnes adversantes mihi,
dentes peccatorum contrivisti | Domini est salus, et super populum tuum benedic-
tio tua.

Ps 8. 3: Ex ore infantium et lactantium perfecisti laudem propter inimicos tuos, ut

destruas inimicum et ultorem.

Ps  78.  6: Effunde iram tuam in gentes, quae te non noverunt, et in regna, quae
nomen tuum non invocaverunt.

Ps 134. 10: Qui percussit gentes multas et occidit reges fortes.

This shift of emphasis towards praying psalms as the main monastic activity
does not exclusively grow out of a monastic tradition. Psallere is not necessar-
ily a monkish activity; it is what clerici are supposed to do — and sometimes
even the entire Christian community — if danger is afoot.95 Psalm-singing as

92 
The term turmae appears (in the military sense) in the Passio martyrum Acaunensium, ed.
by Krusch, c. 2, p. 33. See also Rosenwein, ‘Perennial Prayer at Agaune’, p. 53: ‘Thus the monks
at Agaune were organised as groups of local men conscripted into squadrons named (as had
been Roman legions) by their place of origin. Lengthy liturgy was in this way associated with
inverted militarism’.
93 
See also Gindele, ‘Die gallikanischen Laus perennis-Klöster’, p. 38. Ian Wood places the
introduction of a strictly organized monastic intercessory prayer on behalf of the ruler in yet
another specifically Burgundian context. He shows that already in the times of Gundobad,
Catholic bishops had developed a special prayer for the benefit of the king, which is reflected in
one of Avitus’s letters. See Wood, ‘Liturgy in the Rhône Valley’, p. 208, on the basis of Avitus,
Opera, ed. by Peiper, Epistula 85, p. 95: ‘Post festivitatem, in qua de presentia vel incolumitate
domni nostri vota nostra merito claruerunt’.
94 
See Wood, ‘Liturgy in the Rhône Valley’, pp. 213–14, on the generally defensive charac-
ter of the self-stylization of Burgundian kings.
95 
See, nn. 97–98, below.
74 Albrecht Diem

paramilitary activity is neither new nor exceptional.96 Augustine tells in his

Confessiones how the regular singing of hymns and psalms was installed at the
cathedral of Milan to defend the besieged church against an Arian takeover:
we shall overcome.97 Only eight years before the events at Saint-Maurice, the
singing nuns of Caesarius’s monastery joined in the defence of the city, which
was besieged by the Franks and the Burgundians.98 Gregory of Tours provides
numerous examples of clerics and entire urban populations singing psalms as
a means of military defence.99 Gerda Heydemann shows, in the companion
volume to this book, to what extent the psalms and all attempts to find their
true meaning in Christian exegesis may have contributed to processes of ethnic
identity-shaping.100

5. Excluding the Others: The ‘vulgus promiscuum’

This brings us back to one of the rather puzzling and therefore hitherto
untranslated categories appearing in the Vita abbatum Acaunensium: the vulgus
promiscuum who was not welcome any more at the king’s new martyr shrine. At
first glance the text exemplifies the vulgus promiscuum as women and secular
families (mulieres de loco eodem tollerentur, et remotis familiis secularibus), but
I suggest that the meaning of this term goes beyond that. The vulgus promis-
cuum included, besides women and lay people, also monks who did not belong

96 
See also Pohl, ‘Liturgie di guerra nei regni altomedievali’.
97 
Augustine, Confessiones, ed. by Verheijen, ix. 7. 15, pp. 141–42: ‘Non longe coeperat
Mediolanensis ecclesia genus hoc consolationis et exhortationis celebrare magno studio fratrum
concinentium uocibus et cordibus. Nimirum annus erat aut non multo amplius, cum Iustina,
Valentiniani regis pueri mater, hominem tuum Ambrosium persequeretur haeresis suae causa,
qua fuerat seducta ab Arrianis. Excubabat pia plebs in ecclesia, mori parata cum episcopo suo,
seruo tuo. Ibi mea mater, ancilla tua, sollicitudinis et uigiliarum primas tenens, orationibus
uiuebat. Nos adhuc frigidi a calore spiritus tui excitabamur tamen ciuitate attonita atque tur-
bata. Tunc hymni et psalmi ut canerentur secundum morem orientalium partium, ne popu-
lus maeroris taedio contabesceret, institutum est, ex illo in hodiernum retentum multis iam ac
paene omnibus gregibus tuis et per cetera orbis imitantibus’.
98 
Vita Caesarii, ed. by Krusch, i. 28, p. 467: ‘Concepit igitur mente homo Dei, ut semper,
regnante Domino, divinitatis instinctu non solum clericorum catervis innumeris, sed etiam vir-
ginum choris Arelatensium ornaretur ecclesia, et civitas muniretur […]’.
99 
See for example Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch and Levison, ii. 37, p. 100;
iii. 29, pp. 133–34; iv. 5, p. 145; viii. 3, p. 328; x. 1, p. 409. See also Vita Genovefae, ed. by
Krusch, c. 12, p. 219.
100 
Heydemann, ‘Biblical Israel and the Christian gentes’.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 75

there any more. After all, we know that there had been monks at this place
that the Vita abbatum Acaunensium described as so profoundly depraved, and
something had to be done with them as well. The newly allocated praying tur-
mae may indicate a ‘militarization’ of liturgy, but the expression turma has
yet another connotation. In Jerome’s translation of Exodus 12. 50, the people
of Israel consists of turmae: ‘Feceruntque omnes filii Israel sicut praeceperat
Dominus Moysi et Aaron. Et eadem die eduxit Dominus filios Israel de terra
Aegypti per turmas suas’.
With its new, regionally composed turmae at Saint-Maurice, the Catholic
Burgundian kingdom may have shaped itself as the new chosen people. About
two hundred and fifty years later the idea of a ‘New Israel’ became one of the
legitimating discourses of Carolingian rule.101 Understanding turmae as eth-
nic category would also add another meaning to the vulgus promiscuum that
was forced to leave Saint-Maurice d’Agaune. A verse from the same section of
Ex 12. 37–38 calls all those other people that left Egypt along with the people
of Israel vulgus promiscuum, and we should assume that the author of the Vita
abbatum Acaunensium had this verse in mind when he chose his words:
Profectique sunt filii Israel de Ramesse in Succoth, sescenta fere milia peditum
virorum absque parvulis. Sed et vulgus promiscuum innumerabile ascendit cum eis
oves et armenta et animantia diversi generis multa nimis.
And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred
thousand on foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up
also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.102

Not everyone is allowed and suitable to pray for the king and the kingdom.
Vulgus promiscuum may have referred to those who were regarded as unfit to pro-
vide this service and to adopt a new identity related to a regnum Burgundionum

101 
Garrison, ‘The Franks as the New Israel?’.
102 
A very similar regional understanding of vulgus promiscuum can be found in the Vita
Columbae. Columba predicts that the vulgus promiscuum will not have access to his funeral on
Iona. Indeed, a storm prevents people from outside from being present. The phrasing, especially
the combination of vulgus promiscuum and familia, could indicate that Adomnan knew the
Vita abbatum. See Adomnán, Vita Columbae, ed. by Alan O. Anderson, iii. 23, p. 230: ‘Quidam
namque aliquando unus de fratribus coram uenerabili uiro sempliciter loquens: “Ad celebran-
das”, ait ad sanctum, “tuas post tuum obitum exequias, ut putatur, totus harum prouinciarum
populus hanc Ionam remigans replebit insulam”. Quod uerbum audiens sanctus consequenter
ait: “O mi filiole, non ut loqueris sic res probabit. Nam promiscuum populi uulgus nullo modo
ad meas poterit exsequias uenire. Mei soli familiares monaci mea sepulchralia conplebunt et
exsequialia honestabunt officia”’.
76 Albrecht Diem

simply because they came from other parts of Gaul now under the control of the
enemies of the Burgundian rulers. Why, after all, should a monk from Arles or
from Tours produce songs imploring God for the integritas of the Burgundian
regnum? Those who replaced this vulgus promiscuum may have been Romans or
barbarians, but they were united by their allegiance to the two parties that sealed
their coalition through the foundation of Sigismund’s monastery: members of
the court (like Hymnemodus and probably Achivus) or members of episcopal
households under Burgundian rule and episcopally controlled monasteries.
The other side of such a new ‘territorial’ identity appears in an almost
contemporary event described in the Vita of Caesarius of Arles: in 508 the
Burgundians besieged the city of Arles. Bishop Caesarius, a proud member of
an old Roman family, suddenly turned into a suspected Burgundian spy simply
because his family came from Chalons-sur-Saône, which at that time was under
the rule of the Burgundian king.103

6. Redefining the Model: The Legacy of Saint-Maurice

The experiment of a Catholic Burgundian kingdom did not last very long.
The Frankish kingdom, which only seventeen years after the reorganization of
Saint-Maurice incorporated the Burgundian regnum, presumably went through
a similar transition from a regio under Frankish control to a Frankish regnum.
Monasteries such as those founded by Radegund (d.  586) and Chlothar  I
(d. 561) in Poitiers, Bishop Aurelian of Arles (d. 551), Childebert I (d. 558)
and his wife Ultrogotha in Arles, or Brunhild (d.  613) in Autun may have
played a very similar role in this process as Saint-Maurice did,104 but in those

103 
Vita Caesarii, ed. by Krusch, i. 3 and 21, pp. 458 and 465; cf. Klingshirn, Caesarius of
Arles, pp. 93–97. Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum, ed. by Kursch, iv. 1, p. 674, tells a similar
story about Bishop Quintianus. Other examples are provided by Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in
Barbarian Gaul, pp. 77–81.
104 
Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis, ed. by Krusch, c. 10, p. 384: ‘Semper de pace sollicita, de
salute patriae curiosa quandoquidem inter se regna movebatur, quia totos diligebat reges, pro
omnium vita orabat et nos sine intermissione pro eorum stabilitate orare docebat. Ubi eos inter
se amaritudinem moveri audisset, tota tremebat, et quales litteras uni, tales alteri dirigebat, ut
inter se non bella nec arma tractarent, sed pacem firmarent, et patria ne periret. Similiter et a
eorum proceres dirigebat, ut praecelsis regibus consilia salutifera ministrarent, ut, eis regnanti-
bus, populi et patria salubrior redderetur. Congregationi suae assiduas vigilias inponebat et, ut
sine intermissionoe pro eis orarent, cum lacrimis docebat’. See also the diptych for the monas-
tery in Arles founded by King Childebert I (d. 558) on praying for the abbots and royal found-
erts of the monastery, edited in Bernard, ‘Les Diptyques du monastères des Saints-Apôtres’,
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 77

cases no one had to be excluded or removed as being unfit to pray for the king.
A Frankish kingdom that covered Roman Gaul entirely did not have to deal
with the others.
For the Frankish world, however, we have another, slightly later voice of dis-
sent against turning monasteries into centres of political identity-formation:
Gregory of Tours. In his Decem libri historiarum, monasteries receive their
place within Frankish society, but Gregory does not allow them to play much
of a role in royal politics or for the establishment of secular or ecclesiastical
political structures. His hagiographical works depict Gaul as a colourful and
diverse ascetic and monastic landscape that reflects and continues the monastic
diversity of the Mediterranean world. Saint-Maurice appears in this landscape,
as do the Jura monasteries,105 but there are no descriptions of royal foundations
as prevalent monastic models or focal points of political or ethnic identities.
For Gregory, monasteries were useful and well-liked only as long as they did
not compete with the role bishops played in the establishment of a political
identity or break their spiritual monopoly. Gregory effectively used his discur-
sive power to write any possible ambition in that direction out of history.106
After the Frankish takeover, Saint-Maurice continued to serve as a place of
incessant prayer for secular rulers. The new Merovingian rulers of Burgundy
continued supporting Saint-Maurice. 107 King Guntram (d.  593) explicitly
used the model of Saint-Maurice for founding himself a new holy hot spot,
the basilica of Saint-Marcellus in Chalons-sur-Saône, which became another
Musterkloster for the Rebais privilege.108
It is likely that the Burgundian King Theuderic II (d. 613) and his grand-
mother Brunhild wanted to shape another Saint-Maurice by initially supporting

p. 7: ‘Simulque praecantes oramus etiam, Domine, pro animabus famulorum tuorum, patrum
atque institutorum quondam nostrorum, Aureliani, Petri […], Childeberti, Uultrogotum’. On
Brunhild’s and Theuderic’s monastic foundations, see Gregory I, Registrum Epistularum, ed. by
Hartmann, xiii. 11–13, ii, pp. 376–81. Other (mostly later) examples for political but also per-
sonal intercessory prayer are provided in Muschiol, Famula Dei, pp. 178–91, and Hasdenteufel-
Röding, Studien zur Gründung von Frauenklöstern, pp. 191–95.
105 
Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum, ed. by Kursch, i, pp. 663–68; Gregory of Tours,
Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. by Krusch, cc. 73–75, pp. 537–39.
106 
I am planning to discuss this aspect in depth in a follow-up study.
107 
Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. by Krusch, c. 75, p. 538; Fredegar, Chroni­
cae, ed. by Krusch, iv. 1, p. 124. See also Rosenwein, ‘One Site, Many Meanings’, pp. 280–81.
108 
Concilium Valentinum a. 583–85, in Concilia Galliae, ed. by Munier and de Clercq,
ii, 235. See also Paxton, ‘Power and the Power to Heal’, p. 107.
78 Albrecht Diem

Columbanus’s foundation Luxeuil.109 Yet, as Jonas of Bobbio tells us, Columbanus

(d. 615) was entirely unwilling to submit himself to the mores comprovinciales
in Theuderic’s kingdom, and particularly to the idea that kings could do with
their monasteries whatever they wanted.110 The dramatic showdown between
Theuderic and Brunhild and the Irish monk mainly circles around this problem
and the question whether monasteries could claim to be more than simply holy
hot spots in the king’s backyard. The conflict ended devastatingly for both rul-
ers and triumphally for Columbanus and the branch of the Merovingian family
headed by Chlothar II (d. 629). Chlothar had, as Jonas tells us, a better under-
standing of the role and function of monasteries within political structures.111
Jonas’s work — which can, in a similar way as the Vita patrum Iurensium,
be read as a monastic programme — skilfully redefines the balance of power
between secular rulers, bishops, and monasteries.112 It describes the rise of a
powerful new monastic network that revolved around Columbanus’s founda-
tion Luxeuil. This network of new loci sancti is empowered by King Chlothar II,
his son Dagobert I (d. 639), and members of their courts — in exchange for the
monks’ prayer. Unlike what happened a century earlier in Saint-Maurice, bish-
ops were not a party of their own any more in this new coalition. Those bishops
who were involved in the foundation of Columbanian monasteries represented
the interests of their own families rather than a structural episcopal interest or
claim for control — which brings us back to the episcopal privileges discussed
in the beginning of this essay. If we compare the limitations put on monasteries
in the acts of the councils of Orléans in 511 and Epao in 517 with the liberties
and rights granted in the privilege of Rebais (and later episcopal privileges), we
see a fundamental shift that enables monasteries to act as independent political
parties, instead of just serving as royal or episcopal tools of power.113

109 
Wood, ‘Jonas, the Merovingians and Pope Honorius’, pp. 107–15.
110 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 19, p. 88: ‘[…] conquestusque cum
eo, cur ab conprovincialibus moribus discisceret, et intra septa secretiora omnibus christianis
aditus non pateret’. For Jonas, see the contribution by Alex O’Hara in this volume.
111 
The conflicts are analysed in Diem, ‘Monks, Kings, and the Transformation of Sanctity’,
pp. 531–42.
112 
See Diem, ‘Was bedeutet Regula Columbani?’, pp. 67–71.
113 
Concilium Aurelianense a. 511, in Concilia Galliae, ed. by Munier and de Clercq, c. 7,
i, p. 7: no contact with the king without episcopal permission; cc. 19–22, pp. 10–11: episco-
pal control over monastic discipline, monastic property, and new monastic foundations; c. 9,
i, p. 26: abbots may not rule more than one monastery; c. 19, i, p. 29: disciplinary power over
the abbot. All these regulations are either undermined or abandoned in episcopal privileges.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 79

Epilogue
At the end of this article I would like to touch upon the impact that Saint-
Maurice d’Agaune had on the further development of monastic institutions
and the interplay between monasteries and secular power. For this purpose it
seems to be logical to return to the world in which the privilege of Rebais was
shaped, i.e. Columbanian monasticism. The Vita Columbani does not mention
Saint-Maurice d’Agaune at all. This can be explained as part of Jonas’s policy of
damnatio memoriae and his rather stingy way of giving Columbanian monasti-
cism a past on the Continent. Jonas claims that the monastic movement initi-
ated by Columbanus did not introduce anything new but simply restored a
monastic ideal that has been abandoned and fallen in decline for a long time
(just as the Vita abbatum Acaunensium claimed a restoration of the shrine of
Saint-Maurice to its ancient glory).114 Jonas’s claim of discontinuity and res-
toration would have been weakened by admitting how much Columbanian
monasticism was inspired by Saint-Maurice d’Agaune. Moreover, Saint-Maurice
d’Agaune had close ties to the branch of the Merovingian clan which for three
generations had been dominated by Columbanus’s nemesis Brunhild. For Jonas,
this was probably reason enough to write Saint-Maurice out of the history of
Columbanian monasticism, just as much as he deprived Childebert II (d. 595),
Brunhild’s son, from his decisive role in Columbanian history.115
Yet besides the Musterklöster-section in the privilege of Rebais mentioned
at the beginning of this article, there are several other texts that indicate
that Saint-Maurice was an important source of inspiration for Columbanian
monasticism and that the Columbanian notion of a royal monastery, as it was
developed in Jonas’s Vita Columbani, had its roots at least partly in the long-
lasting success of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune.116 Amatus (d. 630), the founder of
the Columbanian filiation of Remiremont, was, according to the Vita Amati,
recruited by Columbanus’s successor Eusthasius (d. 629) during a visit of Saint-
Maurice d’Agaune. The Vita Amati tells how Amatus introduced the liturgy of

114 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 5 and ii. 1, pp. 71 and 113.
115 
For chronological reasons we have to assume that Brunhild’s son Childebert II was the
first Merovingian king who welcomed Columbanus. Jonas replaces him by his father Sigibert I
(d. 575). See Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 6, p. 72. Ian Wood argues that
Brunhild was probably the first main supporter of Columbanus and his foundations. See Wood,
‘Jonas, the Merovingians and Pope Honorius’, pp. 107–15.
116 
On the influence of Saint-Maurice on seventh-century monasticism, see also Rosenwein,
‘One Site, Many Meanings’, p. 282.
80 Albrecht Diem

his home monastery into Remiremont.117 Saint-Maurice d’Agaune’s mode of

ceaseless psalm-singing was subsequently introduced into several monasteries
related to the Columbanian monastic movement,118 such as Sadalberga’s founda-
tion in Lyon,119 the monastery of Soissons,120 Saint-Riquier,121 Saint-Bénigne,122
and eventually Saint-Denis, which became the burial place of the Merovingian
kings, just as Saint-Maurice d’Agaune had been Sigismund’s burial place.123 It is
not unlikely that Saint-Maurice’s ceaseless psalm singing became the preferred
liturgy in the entire Columbanian monastic movement,124 and that we should
take the request to pray continuously (iugiter/plenius/indesinenter exorare) as
it is expressed in episcopal privileges and royal charters literally.125 When Saint-
Maurice’s ceaseless liturgy is mentioned in the context of Columbanian mon-
asteries, there is never a statement that marks this liturgy as different from the
liturgical practices in other Columbanian monasteries.

117 
Vita Amati, ed. by Krusch, cc. 2, 5, and 10, pp. 216–19; Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani,
ed. by Krusch, ii. 10, pp. 127–28, mentions Amatus and the foundation of Remiremont but not
his roots in Saint-Maurice.
118 
Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich, pp. 104–07, gives an overview on traces of the
liturgy of Saint-Maurice in other monasteries. In many cases, however, his assumptions are too
much based on conjecture. See also Kaiser, Die Burgunder, pp. 174–75.
119 
Vita Sadalbergae, ed. by Krusch, c. 17, pp. 59–60.
120 
Privilege of Bishop Drauscius for the Monastery of Soissons (666–67), in Diplomata, ed.
by Pardessus, ii, no. 35, p. 140: ‘[…] sub regula beatissimorum patrum, ad laudes Christi die
noctuque canendas vel pro aeterna retributione sunt conlocatae, nostrae vilitatis extremitate
supplice deprecationis petitione deposcerunt […]’.
121 
Sources in Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich, p. 106.
122 
Dip. no. 68 (Chronicle of St Bénigne), in DD Mer. (Merowinger 2), ed. by Kölzer, p. 528.
123 
Fredegar, Chronicae, ed. by Krusch, iv. 79, p. 161; Dip. no. 85 (Clovis II for Saint-Denis,
654), in DD Mer. (Merowinger 2), ed. by Kölzer, p. 219: ‘[…] eo scilicet ordene, ut sicut tempore
domini et genetoris nostri ibidem psallencius per turmas fuit instetutus vel sicut ad monasthir-
ium sancti Mauricii Agaunensis die noctoque tenetur, ita in loco ipso celebretur’. It is inserted
in Gesta Dagoberti, ed. by Krusch, c. 51, pp. 424–25. The author of the Gesta Dagoberti refers to
this liturgy two more times in his work: c. 35, p. 414; c. 44, p. 421. See also Balthild’s claim to
submit Saint-Denis and other basilical monasteries to the ‘sanctus ordo regularis […] ut melius
eis delectaret pro rege et pace summi Regis Christi clementiam exorare’: Vita Balthildis, ed. by
Krusch, c. 9, p. 494.
124 
See also Leclercq, ‘Prière incessante’, pp. 233–35; Gindele, ‘Die gallikanischen Laus
perennis-Klöster’, pp. 38–41.
125 
The phrase indesinenter exorare appears in Eligius’s foundation charter of Solignac:
Eligii charta cessionis Solemniacensis, ed. by Krusch, p. 748.
Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? 81

Jonas reveals that, after Columbanus’s death there were massive conflicts over
who could claim the heritage of Columbanus. One of the strongest voices of dis-
sent against the course chosen by Columbanus’s successor, Euthasius, came from
the monk Agrestius, who gained significant support in several Columbanian
monasteries. His main attack was directed against the liturgical practice of
Luxeuil, which he considered inflationary, and he might have shared this view
with the author of the Vita patrum Iurensium.126 Despite similarities with the
past, the Vita Columbani shows how much the attitudes towards these voices
of dissent had changed. Agrestius dies a cruel death, just as every other monk,
layman, or ruler who disagreed with the monastic model allegedly propagated
by Columbanus. God has made his decision on how monasteries should work.
The monastic experiment, Jonas tells us, is over, and the same might apply to the
processual and dynamic character of ethnic identities. The regnum Francorum
has gained its shape, structure, and identity, and monasteries have found their
place in it. Monks (and nuns) have gotten used to singing psalms for their kings.
Yet another vulgus promiscuum, monks unfit to pray for the king, had a
last short appearance at a rather unexpected moment. When Columbanus
started his tournée royale through Gaul, this world was again divided; this time
between different Merovingian kings, who were more than willing to slit each
other’s throats. All of them regarded the holy man and powerful intercessor
for their own benefit, as long as he operated within their kingdom, and as a
serious danger once he crossed over to the neighbouring kingdoms — or if he
got seriously angry. After the once hopeful coalition between Columbanus and
Theuderic II and Brunhild was shattered, Brunhild and her grandson became
very keen on shipping the holy man back to Ireland, but they had no inten-
tions to give up Luxeuil as a holy place in their service. Therefore they forced
Columbanus’s Frankish followers to abandon their exiled abbot and to stay in
Luxeuil, but allowed those monks who had joined Columbanus in Ireland to
accompany him into exile.127 Once the bonds with Columbanus were broken,
these foreigners were not suitable any more to pray for the king.
126 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, ii. 9, p. 125: ‘At ille prorumpuit, se scire
Columbanum a ceterorum mores disciscere et ipsa missarum sollemnia multiplicatione oratio-
num vel collectarum celebrare et ipsa multa alia superflua, quae cum auctori acsi heresea tradita
execrari debere’. See n. 51, above, on the views on prayer expressed in the Vita patrum Iurensium.
127 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 20, p. 92: ‘Sed cum equo animo de
custodia pastoris segregari non vellint, custodes regii inquiunt, nequaquam hinc se sequi alios
permissuros, nisi eos quos sui ortus terra dederat, vel qui e Brittanica arva ipsum secuti fuer-
int; ceteros, qui Gallico orti solo, preceptis esse regiis inibi remansuros’. See also Columbanus,
Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula 4, pp. 26–36.
82 Albrecht Diem

Works Cited

Primary Sources
Adomnán, Vita Columbae, ed. by Alan Orr Anderson (Oxford, 1991)
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Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 27 (Turnhout, 1981)
Aurelian, Ordo psallendi, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul
Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64), lxviii, cols 483–86
Avitus, Opera, ed. by Rudolf Peiper, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores anti-
quissimi, 15 vols (Berlin, 1877–1919), vi. 2: Alcimi Ecdicii Aviti Viennensis episcopi
Opera quae supersunt (1883)
—— , [Avitus of Vienne:] Selected Letters and Prose, ed. and trans. by Ian N. Wood and
Danuta Shanzer, Translated Texts for Historians (Liverpool, 2002)
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 Patria, peregrinatio, and paenitentia:
Identities of Alienation
in the Seventh Century

Alexander O’Hara*

W
riting towards the end of the seventh century in the mountains of
the Bierzo in north-western Spain, Valerius remembered the advent
of the monastic life he had chosen more than forty-two years before:
Long ago when I, an unworthy sinner, a native of the province of Asturias, engrossed
in worldly pleasures during my adolescence, eager for earthly riches, intent upon
vain learning, in my concern for these things in the darkness of this lower world,
was slackening the reins, suddenly I was driven by a desire for divine grace to attain
the beginnings of the religious life. Setting out with the supreme effort of one flee-
ing the world, like one riding on a ship, I hastened to cross the sea to the shore of
the monastery of Compludo, inflamed with an ardent desire, and terrified by the
fear of future judgment, hoping through the path of conversion to attain at length
the light of truth.1
*  This article was written during a period of research at the Institut für Mittelalterforschung
in Wien and funded by an Ernst Mach Scholarship from the Österreichische Austauschdienst.
I am very grateful to Walter Pohl and all at the Institut for their warm hospitality and for shar-
ing such a stimulating environment in which to work. Particular thanks to Walter Pohl, Gerda
Heydemann, Max Diesenberger, Richard Corradini, Marianne Pollheimer, Clemens Gantner,
Francesco Borri, and Albrecht Diem for reading and commenting on this article and for helpful
bibliographic recommendations.
1 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 1, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 69: ‘Dum olim ego, indignissimus peccator, Asturiensis provinciae indigena, intra adoles-
centiae tempora mundialibus illecebris occupatus, lucrisque terrenis inhians, vanis disciplinis
intentus, per infimi saeculi tenebras cura eorum frena laxarem, subito gratiae divinae desiderio
coactus pro adipiscenda sacrae religionis crepundia toto nisu mundivagi saeculi fretum aggredi-
ens, velut navigio vectans, ad Computensis coenobii litus properans transmeare immensi desi-

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101663
pp. 89–124 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
90 Alexander O’Hara

Valerius did not have to travel far to Compludo, the monastery founded in the
remote Bierzo region in Galicia by Fructuosus of Braga in the mid-seventh cen-
tury, yet he describes it as though he had embarked on a sea voyage to another
land.2 Although Valerius never left the confines of the Bierzo — his world is a
regional and localized one — he characterized his conversion in terms of per-
egrinatio. Ascetic exile (peregrinatio) was a voluntary form of exile that meant
abandoning the native region and/or country, the security, setting, and social
bonds into which one was born.3 As we see from Valerius’s example, in which he
uses the rhetoric of ascetic exile to express a new sense of identity as an alienus,
the experience or perception of exile could be a powerful factor in the shaping
of personal identity.
Exile is, of course, significant not only for the construction of individual
but also of collective (including national) identities. The foundation myth of
Rome as articulated by Virgil was based on a group of exiles,4 while the con-
cept of exile and alienation is central to Judaeo-Christian belief and identities.5
Abraham’s obedience to God’s command to leave his native land and kindred
for another made him and his descendants blessed, while the Jews’ experi-
ence of exile in Egypt and their covenant with God turned them into a cho-
sen people that established the basis of a sacred nationalism.6 In writing about
Columbanus’s exiled monastic community in the forests of Alemannia in the
seventh century, Jonas of Bobbio likened them to the Israelites in the Desert.

derii ardore succensus atque futuri judicii timore perterritus, confidens per conversionis itinere
tandem ad lucem pertingerem veritatis’.
2 
In actual fact, Compludo, nestled in a heavily forested valley, is only about 42 km from
Astorga, the Roman provincial capital. Valerius probably took the Roman road over Monte
Irago, which may have marked the regional boundary between Asturias and the Bierzo regions,
and which once connected the city with the rich gold mines of Las Médulas.
3 
On the practice of peregrinatio in the early Church and in the early Middle Ages in gen-
eral, see Kötting, Peregrinatio religiosa; Von Campenhausen, ‘Die asketische Heimatlosigkeit’;
Angenendt, Monachi Peregrini.
4 
Virgil, Aeneis, ed. and trans. by Fairclough, i. 1–7, i. p. 240. On the theme of exile in Virgil
and in Roman literature in general, see Bruwer, ‘The Theme of Exile in Virgil’s Aeneid’; Classen,
Displaced Persons; Doblhofer, Exil und Emigration.
5 
On the importance of exile to the development of Judaism and Christianity both in his-
torical and contemporary contexts, see Scott, ed., Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian
Conceptions; Levine, ed., Diaspora: Exile and the Contemporary Jewish Condition; Mosis, Exil,
Diaspora, Rückkehr.
6 
Genesis 12. 1–3; Exodus 3. 7–8. See also Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile;
Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, pp. 65–76.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 91

The starving monks came across a flock of birds covering the whole country-
side, ‘just as once quails covered the camp of the Israelites’.7 Jonas refers to them
as the ‘manna of birds’ and their presence there was clearly miraculous, because
they did not fly away when the monks attempted to capture them.8 In 610,
Columbanus along with the Irish and Insular contingent of his community
had been banished from Burgundy by the Merovingian King, Theuderic II.
Theuderic had followed an ethnic strategy in ridding the troublesome Irish
monk from his kingdom by banishing him and the other foreigners for not
complying with local customs. Only Columbanus’s monks who came from
Gaul were allowed to remain behind in the communities.9 The exiled, Insular
contingent, who were later joined by some of the other monks from Burgundy,
would eventually make their way to Italy where they founded Bobbio in the
Ligurian Apennines. For Jonas, Bobbio was the culmination of Columbanus’s
peregrinatio, a place chosen by God (an angel had shown Columbanus the way
to Italy), and sanctified by miracles.10 In his account of the birds in Alemannia,
Jonas linked Columbanus’s exiled community with the chosen people of Israel
in order to emphasize Bobbio’s pre-eminence over Columbanus’s Frankish
communities.11 It shows how the experience of exile could be a powerful factor
in the construction of identities.
Modern discourses on the sociology of exile offer a nuanced and varied
discussion of this social and historical phenomenon. Exile has always been a
means by which differences and boundaries between individuals and/or groups
have been monitored and maintained.12 According to Frank Parkin, hegemonic
groups use ethnicity, language, and religion as part of a strategy for them to
acquire privileges for themselves by excluding others access to needed resourc-
es.13 These processes of social exclusion are thus closely allied to the dynamics
of power. However, traditional, structuralist approaches have been modified
by more subtle understandings of the workings of exile. Political exile has been

7 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 27, p. 215: ‘velut Israhelitarum castra
coturnix olim operuit’ (alluding to Numbers 11. 31).
8 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 27, p. 215: ‘alitum manna’.
9 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 20, p. 196.
10 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 27, p. 217; i. 30, pp. 220–22.
11 
For a new reading of the Vita Columbani and the context in which it was written, see
O’Hara, ‘Jonas of Bobbio and the Vita Columbani’.
12 
See Strange and Bashford, eds, Isolation.
13 
Parkin, Class Inequality and Political Order.
92 Alexander O’Hara

recognized as only one form of exile among a number of others. We can distin-
guish other, less obvious kinds of exile in addition to religious, cultural, sexual,
economic, and penal forms. One such kind is symbolic exile, which refers to
individuals who understand their lives in terms of religious, philosophical, or
aesthetic notions of exile.14 The peregrini or ascetic exiles of the early Middle
Ages are the classic examples of this kind of exile, men who abandoned every-
thing for an ascetic ideal of alienation. To what extent did this kind of exile play
a role in the shaping of their identities and did it play a part in the construc-
tion of collective identities also? How far can we understand the experiences of
these men as reflecting the values, drives, and concerns of the societies in which
they lived? The ritual of peregrinatio as a monastic expression of the monk’s
abandonment of society and the saeculum marked a further step in the individ-
ual’s inner transformation modelled on Christian ideals. Such transformations,
often ritually enacted, can reveal the primary intuitions, drives, and conflicts
active within a culture.15
The role and dialectics of exile in the shaping of identity in the early Middle
Ages remains an understudied one. There is a surprising dearth in historical
and legal studies on exile in the early and high Middle Ages. The proceed-
ings of the 2002 International Medieval Congress at Leeds on the theme of
exile, for example, although entitled Exile in the Middle Ages, is confined to
the period c. 900–1300 and largely focuses on banishment as a form of social
punishment.16 Exile is briefly defined as ‘the banishment of a person by a
higher authority’, reflecting the limited scope of the volume and the absence
of a broader sociological approach. If we can define identity as ‘the interface
between the individual and the social group’,17 a dynamic process by which the
individual constantly negotiates and defines himself in relation to others and
social models, then voluntary exile, the conscious breaking of this bond, is also
a powerful statement of identity.

14 
Böss, ‘Theorising Exile’, p. 20. For a sociology of exile, see, e.g., Tabori, The Anatomy of
Exile; Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves; Said, ‘Reflections on Exile’.
15 
See, for example, the essays in Shulman and Stroumsa, eds, Self and Self-Transformations.
This volume considers the idea of the ‘self ’ as a cultural formation like any other and how ‘the
kind of transformation(s) a culture puts forward as a goal or possibility for human life always
expresses the primary axioms, conflicts, and intuitions that make up its particular world’:
Introduction, p. 4.
16 
Napran and van Houts, eds, Exile in the Middle Ages.
17 
Pohl, ‘Archaeology of Identity: Introduction’, p. 4. On identity in the early Middle Ages,
see also Pohl, ‘Identität und Widerspruch’; Pohl, ‘Aux origines d’une Europe éthnique’.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 93

It is rare in early medieval sources that we are able to see clear self-identifi-
cations or to get an insider view into how individuals thought of and expressed
their own sense of identity.18 There are exceptions, of course. The writings of
the Irish abbot and monastic founder, Columbanus, the Italian monk and hagi-
ographer, Jonas of Bobbio, and the Spanish hermit, Valerius of Bierzo, offer a
vivid insight into how the experience or perception of alienation shaped the
personal identities of these three men. Columbanus, who left Ireland as an
ascetic exile in 590, wrote a series of letters on the Continent to ecclesiastical
leaders in which he sought exemption from complying with Gallic ecclesiastical
norms.19 He wanted to continue in the ecclesiastical traditions he had followed
in Ireland in the face of opposition from the Gallic bishops. These letters are
the most personal expressions of how the saint conceived of his own identity.
Jonas, who grew up in a frontier town in the Italian Alps, and who became
a monk at Bobbio in 616, less than a year after Columbanus’s death there, is
unusual because, for a hagiographer, he occasionally writes about himself in his
Vita Columbani.20 Although he never characterizes himself as an ascetic exile,
Jonas wrote the Vita Columbani as a missionary on the north-east frontier of
the Frankish kingdom near the English Channel. His later career as a mission-
ary and as an abbot lay far from Italy and the town in which he was born and
remembered fondly and the monastery of his youth. One did not necessarily
have to travel overseas to consider oneself a peregrinus. As Arnold Angenendt
has discussed, leaving one’s home, family, and native region for a monastic life,
crossing the Alps to live in another land, and undertaking missionary work to
foreign peoples were all forms of peregrinatio.21

18 
Pohl, ‘Archaeology of Identity: Introduction’, p. 3.
19 
For the corpus of Columbanus’s writings, see Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker;
cf. Smit, Studies on the Language and Style of Columba; Lapidge, ed., Columbanus: Studies on
the Latin Writings. On Columbanus and aspects of his career, see, e.g., Bullough, ‘The Career
of Columbanus’; Bracken, ‘Juniors Teaching Elders’; Bracken, ‘Authority and Duty’; Stancliffe,
‘Columbanus and the Gallic Bishops’; and the contributions in Clarke and Brennan, eds,
Columbanus and Merovingian Monasticism.
20 
On Jonas and his hagiographical corpus, see, e.g.,  O’Hara, ‘The Vita Columbani
in Merovingian Gaul’; O’Hara, ‘Death and the Afterlife’; Diem, ‘Monks, Kings, and the
Transformation of Sanctity’; Stancliffe, ‘Jonas’s Life of Columbanus and his Disciples’; Rohr,
‘Hagiographie als historische Quelle’; Pagani, ‘Ionas-Ionatus’; Wood, ‘The Vita Columbani and
Merovingian Hagiography’.
21 
Angenendt, ‘Die irische Peregrinatio’.
94 Alexander O’Hara

As we have seen with Valerius, who spent all his life in a peripheral region
in the north-west of the Visigothic kingdom, he too conceived of his eremitical
life in terms of ascetic exile. In comparison to the travels of Columbanus and
Jonas, the world of Valerius can seem regional and limited. Yet Valerius has left
an autobiographical account that in its conception and originality is unique in
the early Middle Ages. Valerius lived during the second half of the seventh cen-
tury and died within a decade or so of the Muslim conquest of the Visigothic
kingdom in 711. He lived in a peripheral conflict-zone of the kingdom, where
the Visigothic kings waged frequent campaigns against the Basques and
Astures, whom they never fully succeeded in conquering.22 Nothing is known
about Valerius apart from what he tells us in his writings, the Ordo querimoniae
praefatio discriminis (Account of my Grief, Explanation of My Trials), Item rep-
licatio sermonum a prima conversione (Further Account since First Conversion),
and Quod de superioribus querimoniis residuum (What Remains from Former
Griefs), which together comprise his autobiographical writings.23 In addition
to this work, which he conceived of as a whole and wrote for other ascetics in
the Bierzo, Valerius wrote a number of other religious works and poems.24

22 
On Visigothic campaigns against the Basques and Astures, see Barbero and Vigil, Sobre
los orígenes sociales de la Reconquista, pp. 51–67.
23 
Latin edition and English translation in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne. All
subsequent quotations from his autobiographical writings refer to this edition; alternatively,
see the complete works in Valerius of Bierzo, Obras, ed. by Fernández Pousa, and the texts in
Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Migne, lxxxvii, cols 439–57. The Brazilian
scholar, Renan Frighetto, has recently published a new edition and Catalan translation of the
autobiography: Valerius of Bierzo, Autobiografía, ed. and trans. by Frighetto. I am grateful to Ian
Wood for this reference.
24 
These works are in Valerius of Bierzo, Obras, ed. by Fernández Pousa. De vana saeculi
sapientia is a short treatise on spurning worldly vanity in which Valerius gives a résumé of bibli-
cal history, an account of some esoteric royal and noble martyrs, stories from the lives of the
Desert Fathers, and a description of heaven. His Vita et epistola beatissimae Egeriae, likewise
written for the monks of the Bierzo, is an account of a fourth-century pilgrimage made to the
Holy Land by the nun Egeria, in which the nun is presented as an example of fortitude and
perseverance to the monks. Another treatise, De genere monachorum, is concerned with pseudo-
monks and the problem of landowners who forced their coloni to become monks in the monas-
teries they had established on their lands. His Dicta beatum Valeri ad beatum Donadeum scripta,
de Bonello monacho, de caeleste revelatione describes three visions of heaven and hell which were
told to Valerius by Maximus, a monk of Compludo, and two hermits of the Bierzo, Bonellus
and Baldarius. The description of heaven related to him by these monks closely resembles the
description he gives of his garden in his autobiographical accounts. Valerius also wrote hagiog-
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 95

Valerius’s story is anything but ordinary and prosaic, but a vivid and fasci-
nating portrait of a religious mind reflecting on his life as a hermit over forty-
two years. It is a candid, if eccentric, narrative of a religious exile within his
own country. Although there are numerous studies on Valerius in Spanish his-
toriography, he is little known in Anglophone scholarship.25 In considering the
question of the individual in the early Middle Ages, Walter Pohl has remarked
that ‘hardly anybody, for instance, knows the seventh-century author Valerius
of Bierzo and his repeated attempts to come to terms with his trials and grief ’.26
Valerius is one of the few cases from the early Middle Ages by which we can
study in-depth the efforts of an individual to fashion his self-identity in terms
of Christian dialectics. Roger Collins, one of the only Anglophone scholars to
study Valerius, considered him to be ‘at first sight, the oddest, certainly the least
well understood, and the most unjustly vilified’ of all the major literary figures
of Visigothic Spain.27 Others have judged Valerius as being ‘childish’, ‘tough
and intransigent’, and of having a persecution complex.28
The difficult character of Valerius is similar in so many respects to that of
Columbanus. Both were unyielding, driven in their single-minded pursuit of an
asceticism unconstrained by episcopal supervision. Both suffered persecution
and elicited conflict with ecclesiastical authorities. While Columbanus was the
archetype of the travelling, sea-faring Insular monk, Valerius was a land-locked
hermit content to endow his experiences with maritime metaphors. Both were
independent, stubborn, holy men in the true fashion of late Antiquity. Jonas,
however, is a representative of a different, more distinctly medieval kind of
monasticism. He was a product of Columbanus’s monastic experiment that
stressed the sanctity of the institution and the community above that of the

raphy and a number of interesting acrostic poems: Díaz y Díaz, ‘El corpus poético de la herencia
literaria’; on Valerius’s hagiography, see Díaz y Díaz, ‘Sobre la compilación hagiográfica’.
25 
On Valerius and his works, see Collins, ‘The “Autobiographical” Works of Valerius of
Bierzo’, repr. in Collins, Law, Culture and Regionalism, iv; Udaondo Puerto, ‘La autobiografia
de Valerio del Bierzo’; Udaondo Puerto, ‘Apuntes para una cronología’; Udaondo Puerto, ‘Las
entidades geográficas’; Ortiz de Guinea and de la Cruz Díaz, ‘Valerio del Bierzo’. The issue of
Helmantica, 48 (1997) is especially dedicated to Valerius. See also Pauli, ‘Valerius von Bierzo’;
De Bruyne, ‘L’Héritage littéraire de l’abbé Saint Valère’; and De Vogüé, ‘Martyrium in occulto:
le martyre du temps’.
26 
Pohl, ‘Introduction: Ego Trouble?’, p. 12.
27 
Collins, ‘The “Autobiographical” Works of Valerius of Bierzo’, p. 425.
28 
See Collins, ‘The “Autobiographical” Works of Valerius of Bierzo’, p. 425, citing the views
of two Spanish scholars (T. González García and Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz).
96 Alexander O’Hara

individual ascetic.29 Jonas pursued his monastic vocation within the structured
bounds of a more institutionalized monasticism, yet this did not prevent him
from occasionally writing about himself in his hagiography.
We can study these three individuals, Columbanus, Jonas, and Valerius, writ-
ing during the early, mid-, and late seventh century, respectively, as examples of
the way in which early medieval individuals wrote about and constructed their
identities. As we shall see, the theme of exile and alienation played an impor-
tant role in this. It also leads us to consider how these individual identities of
alienation can be understood within the broader context of the development of
a more distinct Latin Christian consciousness during this time.

Columbanus
When Columbanus was a young man in Ireland, he was greatly tempted by the
local lascivae puellae. Troubled by this sexual desire, he came across a female
anchorite whom he asked advice as to how he could overcome these tempta-
tions. The woman told him that for fifteen years she had been living there in
her cell but that, if she had not been a woman, she would have left Ireland for a
potioris peregrinationis locus. As he was a young man, she advised him to under-
take this course of action. He would never be free from these temptations as
long as he remained in his native land. She then reeled off a litany of biblical
femmes fatales to emphasize her point:
Do you not remember the urgings of Eve which ruined Adam, Samson’s seduc-
tion of Delilah, David’s corruption from former righteousness by the beauty of
Bathsheba, the deceiving of wisest Solomon by the love of women? Flee! O young
man flee! Escape ruin, through which you know for certain many have been ruined.
Shun the way that leads to the gates of Hell!30

Columbanus duly left his family home and his native region of Leinster (natalis
solum),31 to study first with a biblical scholar before entering the monastery

29 
On this process, see Diem, ‘Monks, Kings, and the Transformation of Sanctity’,
pp. 521–27, 556–59.
30 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 3, p. 157: ‘“Non reminisceris suasu
Evae Adam dilapsum, Samsonem a Dalida seductum, David a pristina iustitia pulchritudine
Bersabeae corruptum, sapientissimum Salomonem mulierum amore deceptum?” “Perge”,
inquid, “o iuvenis, perge, evade ruinam, per quam multos conperis corruisse, declina viam, quae
inferi ducit ad valvas”’.
31 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 3, p. 157.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 97

of Bangor on the north-east coast of Ireland. Columbanus’s departure from

his kin-group and native region made him an exile within Ireland, the lesser
grade of peregrinatio which the female anchorite herself had undertaken.32
After many years as a monk at Bangor, Columbanus was ready to undertake the
superior type of peregrinatio. Despite initial hesitation at not wanting to lose
a valuable member of the community, Comgall, his abbot, consented to allow
Columbanus to leave, as he realized that it would be beneficial for the salvation
of others. Comgall gave Columbanus twelve companions to accompany him,
and, with the blessing of the community, this elite group of monks embarked
on their voyage. They landed on the coast of Brittany, where they decided to
travel further inland into Merovingian Gaul.33 During the course of the next
twenty-five years, until his death in northern Italy in 615, Columbanus berated
Merovingian kings, shunned Gallic bishops, exhorted popes, preached against
Arian heretics, founded monasteries, and generally exerted his spiritual poten-
tia wherever he went.
Although the concept of peregrinatio was not unique to the Irish, it became
a distinctive feature of Irish monasticism during the course of the sixth, sev-
enth, and eighth centuries.34 Undertaking potior peregrinatio was a commit-
ment to spending the rest of one’s life in voluntary exile and submitting oneself
completely to the will of God. It is clear that Columbanus had no clear plan as
to where he would ultimately go on his arrival on the Continent,35 as was the
case of the three Irish peregrini who arrived at the court of Alfred the Great in
891. These men had left Ireland in a thin, hide-covered boat without any oars
and with only a week’s supply of provisions. They allowed the boat to drift on
the sea as their only concern was to be exiles wherever they happened to land.36
Such extreme, ascetic heroism was seen by the Irish as a form of martyr-
dom.37 As Jonas was aware, it was only undertaken after many years had been

32 
On the two distinctions between exile within Ireland and exile overseas, see Charles-
Edwards, ‘The Social Background to Irish peregrinatio’, p. 46.
33 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 4, pp. 159–60.
34 
On Irish peregrinatio, see Angenendt, ‘Die irische Peregrinatio’, pp. 52–79; Charles-
Edwards, ‘The Social Background to Irish peregrinatio’, pp. 43–59; Hughes, ‘The Changing
Theory and Practice of Irish Pilgrimage’.
35 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 4, p. 160.
36 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Plummer, a. 891, i, p. 82.
37 
On the various concepts of martyrdom as understood by the Irish, see Stancliffe, ‘Red,
White and Blue Martyrdom’.
98 Alexander O’Hara

spent in the monastery, and was then dependent on the permission of the
abbot.38 Underlying the practice of ascetic exile was the ritual of the monk’s
total separation from the world. Whereas Columbanus had been an ambue, an
exile within Ireland, when he left his native region, he became a cú glas, a ‘wolf ’,
a total outsider, when he undertook potior peregrinatio.39 Yet this renunciation
of the world may also have served to raise Columbanus’s legal standing in Irish
society. By the mid-seventh century, the peregrinus had attained a legal status
equivalent to that of the normal Irish king and bishop.40 This might explain
to some extent Columbanus’s indifference to the authority of the kings and
bishops he encountered on the Continent. According to Thomas M. Charles-
Edwards it is probable that this high status given to the peregrinus developed in
the second half of the sixth century (thus before Columbanus had left Ireland)
and was then codified in the seventh-century legal codes.41 It also translated
into close ties between kings and peregrini. The exile could count on the pro-
tection of kings and we see this in practice in the way that Columbanus always
went directly to royal courts on the Continent. Columbanus undoubtedly felt
that his status as a peregrinus entitled him to royal hospitality and protection.
The concept of peregrinatio as understood by the Irish substantially shaped
the way Columbanus conceived of his own identity and the way he related to
the new society in which he found himself in on his arrival on the Continent.
He still had a strong sense of being Irish and, from his letters, we can see how
determined he was to maintain Irish monastic custom and traditions. These
two identities for Columbanus, of being Irish and a religious exile, were com-
patible. In writing to Pope Boniface IV in 613 on behalf of the Lombard king
and queen, Agilulf and Theodelinda, Columbanus describes himself as a per-
egrinus Scotus.42 His neutral identity as an exile might have been seen by the
Lombard king and queen as beneficial in his role as mediator between them and
the pope in trying to resolve the divisions of the Three Chapters Controversy.43

38 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 4, p. 159.
39 
Charles-Edwards, ‘The Social Background to Irish peregrinatio’, p. 46.
40 
Charles-Edwards, ‘The Social Background to Irish peregrinatio’, p. 53. The law is Bretha
Crólige, ed. by Binchy, c. 4, p. 6. It is likely that the family and kin-group of the peregrinus also
gained in prestige. On this, see Enright, ‘Iromanie-Irophobie Revisited’, p. 372.
41 
Charles-Edwards, ‘The Social Background to Irish peregrinatio’, p. 54.
42 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula v. 14, p. 52.
43 
Gray and Herren, ‘Columbanus and the Three Chapters Controversy’. Gray and Herren
have pointed out that ‘Columbanus appears to be an honest broker and not — wittingly at least
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 99

In the opening address of the letter Columbanus lists a series of comparisons

that emphasize the contrast in status between himself and the pope, among
which is Columbanus’s awareness that he is a foreigner (peregrinus) writing to
a native (indigena).44 He further emphasizes his foreignness while at the same
time clearly expressing a strong sense of Irish identity:
For all we Irish, inhabitants of the world’s edge, are disciples of Saints Peter and
Paul and of all the disciples who wrote the sacred canon by the Holy Ghost, and we
accept nothing outside the evangelical and apostolic teaching; none has been a her-
etic, none a Judaizer, none a schismatic; but the Catholic Faith, as it was delivered
by you first, who are the successors of the holy apostles, is maintained unbroken.45

Here Columbanus is at pains to reassure the pope that the Irish are thoroughly
orthodox and that Christianity has been preserved there unadulterated. He out-
lines their veneration for Rome, not as the former capital of the Roman Empire,
but as the seat of the bishops of Rome and the site of the apostles’ relics.46 With
his customary directness, Columbanus explains his audacity in speaking out and
urging the pope to resolve the Three Chapters schism by declaring that this is
partly due to the libertas paternae consuetudinis, a tradition of free-speech in his
native land. Emphasizing the cultural differences between the norm in his coun-
try and on the Continent, Columbanus goes on to say that ‘amongst us (i.e. the
Irish) it is not a man’s station but his principles that matter’.47 While Columbanus
embraced the scriptural idea that the Christian has no true home on earth, this
did not, in practice, mean a relinquishing of his Irish identity. Rather, if any-
thing, the experience of ascetical exile reinforced his Irish identity, as he continu-
ally strove to justify his position in Gaul by recourse to Irish traditional practice.

— a partisan in the initiatives undertaken by the Lombard court’ (p. 170); see also Wood, ‘The
Franks and Papal Theology’, esp. pp. 238–39.
44 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula v. 1, p. 36. This is also evident in his letter
to Gregory the Great, where he describes himself more as a stranger than a scholar (‘magis per-
egrino quam sciolo’): i. 4, p. 6.
45 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula v. 3, p. 38: ‘Nos enim sanctorum Petri et
Pauli et omnium discipulorum divinum canonem spiritu sancto scribentium discipuli sumus,
toti Iberi, ultimi habitatores mundi, nihil extra evangelicam et apostolicam doctrinam recipi-
entes; nullus hereticus, nullus Iudaeus, nullus schismaticus fuit; sed fides catholica, sicut a vobis
primum, sanctorum videlicet apostolorum successoribus, tradita est, inconcussa tenetur’.
46 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula v. 11, p. 48.
47 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula v. 11, p. 48: ‘Non enim apud nos persona,
sed ratio valet’.
100 Alexander O’Hara

For Columbanus, remaining faithful to Irish monastic tradition was of par-

ticular importance. This is especially evident by his ridged adherence to the
Irish method of calculating the date of Easter.48 This divergence from the con-
tinental norm and his unwillingness to submit to the authority of the Gallic
bishops caused considerable tensions between Columbanus and the bishops.49
Columbanus seems to have believed that his status as a peregrinus entitled him
to complete immunity — that somehow he was outside Gallic ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, and that he was free to establish and live the same kind of monastic
life he had led in Ireland. This is most evident in a letter Columbanus wrote to
one of Gregory the Great’s successors, either Sabinian or Boniface III, in 604 or
607.50 As he was writing during a vacancy in the papacy, it is unclear to which
pope the letter was addressed. He had written to Gregory the Great in around
600 to try and secure his support in defending his stance on Easter against the
Gallic bishops, but this does not seem to have been successful.51 Columbanus
again sought this immunity from Gregory’s successor:
[…] that you may grant to us pilgrims in our travail the godly consolation of your
judgement, thus confirming, if it is not contrary to the faith, the tradition of our
predecessors, so that by your approval we may in our pilgrimage maintain the rite
of Easter as we have received it from generations gone before. For it is admitted
that we are in our native land, while we accept no rules of the Gauls, but dwelling
in seclusion, harming no one, we abide by the rules of our predecessors.52

What does Columbanus mean here when he says that ‘constat enim nos in nos-
trum esse patria’? He is clearly not in his patria anymore, yet he seems to envis-

48 
On the Easter controversy and its importance, see, e.g., Charles-Edwards, Early Christian
Ireland, pp. 391–415.
49 
On this, see now Stancliffe, ‘Columbanus and the Gallic Bishops’, pp. 205–15.
50 
Wright, ‘Columbanus’s Epistulae’, p. 29.
51 
In the letter to Gregory’s successor Columbanus bemoans the machinations of Satan
in preventing ‘the bearers of our letters’ from reaching Gregory: Columbanus, Opera, ed. by
Walker, epistula iii. 2, p. 23.
52 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula iii. 2, p. 24: ‘Ut nobis peregrinis laboranti-
bus tuae pium sententiae solatium praestes, quo si non contra fidem est nostrorum traditionem
robores seniorum, quo ritum Paschae sicut accepimus a maioribus observare per tuum pos-
simus iudicium in nostra peregrinatione. Constat enim nos in nostra esse patria, dum nullas
istorum suscipimus regulas Gallorum, sed in desertis sedentes, nulli molesti, cum nostrorum
regulis manemus seniorum’. Walker translates ‘nullas […] regulas Gallorum’ as ‘no rules of your
Frankish friends’, which I have amended.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 101

age that, by adhering to Irish tradition, he is, in some theoretical way, still in
Ireland or, at least, outside Gallic jurisdiction.
We see a similar identification between being an ascetic exile yet remaining
faithful to Irish traditions in Columbanus’s letter to the Gallic bishops which
he wrote in lieu of attending a synod of bishops to which he had been sum-
moned to defend his position over Easter. He again outlines that he has come
to Gaul for the sake of Christ as a peregrinus and that he seeks to maintain
the traditions of his predecessors.53 He asks them to show compassion on ‘your
poor veterans and aged pilgrims’54 and that, despite differences, they are all
united in Christ, ‘for we are all joint members of one body, whether Franks or
Britons or Irish or whatever our gentes may be’.55 Here, Columbanus, echoing
the Gospels and St Paul, advocates the unity of Christian identity that is not
dependent on biological or ethnic identities. This generic Christian identity is
one that is more apparent in Columbanus’s sermons, where he writes about the
Christian as having no home on earth ‘since our Father is in heaven’56 and on
the necessity for the true Christian, who has abandoned everything — home,
family, country — for Christ to ‘live as travellers, as pilgrims, as guests of the
world’.57 Yet, as we see from his letters, Columbanus did not abandon his Irish
identity when he became a peregrinus. It was compatible with his identity as
a peregrinus and one which he was forced to defend as he struggled to gain
tolerance for his Irish peculiarities. When Columbanus was finally expelled
from Burgundy in 610 and was sentenced to be deported back to Ireland, this
was above all the result of a cultural conflict. Columbanus was unwilling to
accommodate himself to both local ecclesiastical and secular customs, and so
Theuderic expelled him not only from his kingdom but from the country. 58
Columbanus was resolute that he would not return to Ireland, as by undertak-

53 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula ii. 6, p. 16.
54 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula ii. 6, p. 18: ‘veteranos pauperes et peregrinos
senes’.
55 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistulae ii. 9, p. 22: ‘Unus enim sumus corporis com-
membra, sive Galli, sive Britanni, sive Iberi, sive quaeque gentes’. I have chosen not to translate
gentes here as ‘ethnic group’ or as ‘race’, as it appears in Walker’s translation.
56 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, Instructio viii. 1, p. 94: ‘Patriam ergo non habemus
in terra, quia Pater noster in caelis est’.
57 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, Instructio viii. 2, p. 96: ‘Vivamus in via ut viatores, ut
peregrini, ut hospites mundi’.
58 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 19, p. 191: ‘ut qui ab omnium saecu-
larium mores disciscat, quo venerit, ea via repetare studeat’.
102 Alexander O’Hara

ing potior peregrinatio he knew that this entailed leaving the country for the
rest of his life: ‘I do not think it is pleasing to my Creator that I return once
again to my native land which I left behind out of fear of Christ’.59 Jonas’s words
echo those of Columbanus himself in his letter to the bishops, where the senti-
ments expressed are the same.60 While Columbanus embraced the notion he
expressed to the bishops of a common Christian unity irrespective of national-
ity which was reflected in the multi-ethnic make-up of his communities, the
Franks were less charitable. When Columbanus gave the option to his monks
of either following him into exile or remaining in Luxeuil, he was told that only
his compatriots or those who had come to him from Brittany were permitted
to accompany him. Those from Gaul were forced to remain.61 The distinction
which Columbanus would later make in his address to Pope Boniface IV, ‘for-
eigner to native’, was not mere rhetoric.

Jonas of Bobbio
While Columbanus had a strong dual identity of being Irish and a peregri-
nus, Jonas’s sense of identity is more difficult to discern. Jonas’s voice is a
more subtle one, constrained as he was by the genre in which he was writing.
Nevertheless, Jonas’s individuality is sufficiently apparent that we can get a
sense of his identity.
Jonas was born around the turn of the seventh century in the Alpine town
of Susa, which was, at that time, part of the Frankish Kingdom of Burgundy.62
The ancient Roman town, situated on the banks of the Dora Riparia below the
Alpine passes that, for centuries, had allowed travellers to cross to and from
Gaul and Italy, was a frontier outpost of the Franks.63 Susa was a town situated

59 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 20, p. 195: ‘“Non enim”, inquid, “reor
placere conditore, semel natali solo ob Christi timorem relicto, denuo repedare”’.
60 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula ii. 7, p. 18.
61 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 20, p. 196: ‘custodes regii inqui-
unt, nequaquam hinc se sequi alios permissuros, nisi eos quos sui ortus terra dederat, vel qui
e Brittanica arva ipsum secuti fuerant; ceteros, qui Gallico orti solo, preceptis esse regiis inibi
remansuros’.
62 
For the history of the Susa region in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, see Gallina
and others, ‘Dalle Alpes Cottiae al ducato longobardo’; Sergi, ‘La Valle di Susa medievale’.
63 
The eleventh-century monk Rodolfus Glaber praised Susa as ‘the oldest of Alpine towns’;
see Rodolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, ed. and trans. by France, iv. 7, p. 182.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 103

on the boundaries of Byzantine, Frankish, and Lombard territories, and was

contested by all three. However, it does not appear to have been part of the
Lombard Kingdom. It was still in Byzantine hands in the early 570s, a mili-
tary outpost that had withstood the Lombard conquest. In this respect it was
like a handful of other strategic positions in northern Italy, such as Aosta and
the fortified island of Comacina in Lake Como, which had retained imperial
garrisons. In 574, Susa was under the control of Sisinnius, the imperial mili-
tary commander in the region (magister militum). However, Gregory of Tours,
Fredegar, and Paul the Deacon all mention how Susa was ceded to the Franks
following an incident in which Lombard warlords took refuge in the town after
a failed invasion of Gaul.64 Gregory tells of how two of the Lombard leaders,
Zaban and Rodan, following their severe defeat at Embrun by the Gallo-Roman
general, Mummolus, retreated to Italy, where they took refuge in Susa. He adds
that they received a harsh welcome by the locals but, nonetheless, Sisinnius
— for a reason unknown to us — gave them asylum. Mummolus pursued the
fugitives and sent a messenger on to Susa to inform Sisinnius of his imminent
arrival, the news of which prompted the Lombards to leave. When Amo, the
third member of the raiding party who had been more successful, heard the
news of his companions’ defeat, he likewise fled Gaul.65 Neither Gregory nor
Paul, who relied on Gregory’s account, mentions the outcome of this incident,
which was the cessation of Susa to the Franks. For this we rely on Fredegar’s
account, which relates how, ‘as retribution for their audacity’, the Lombards
‘ceded the cities of Aosta and Susa, with all their lands and inhabitants, to King
Guntram’, as well as agreeing to pay a yearly tribute of 12,000 gold solidi to the
Franks, whose over-lordship they also acknowledged.66 Fredegar was mistaken
in thinking that Aosta and Susa were Lombard cities (an understandable error,
if most of the surrounding territory was under Lombard control). He also,
unlike Gregory and Paul, mentions nothing about Sisinnius or his decision
in aiding the fleeing Lombards (despite the fact that Gregory’s Histories was
one of his major sources). Wallace-Hadrill suggested that Fredegar must have
meant that the Lombards acquiesced in the town’s surrender, but there is no

64 
Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch and Levison, iv. 44, pp. 178–79; Fredegar,
Chronicae, trans. by Wallace-Hadrill, iv. 45, p. 38; Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum,
ed. by Waitz, iii. 8, pp. 116–17.
65 
Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch and Levison, iv. 44, pp. 178–79; Gregory of
Tours, The History of the Franks, trans. by Thorpe, pp. 240–41.
66 
Fredegar, Chronicae, trans. by Wallace-Hadrill, iv. 45, p. 38.
104 Alexander O’Hara

evidence for this.67 Rather, the Franks may have either seized or claimed Susa
from the Byzantines for having given refuge to the Lombard dukes. It remained
in the regnum Francorum for centuries thereafter. By the time of Jonas’s birth,
therefore, Susa was in Frankish control. Although cisalpine, its political orien-
tation had shifted northwards, as it reflected the growing rise to dominance of
the Franks.
Susa’s nodal position at the conflux of competing polities is important when
we come to consider Jonas’s ethnic identity. Jonas’s biblical name gives us no
clue as to his ethnic identity, and perhaps we should be hesitant to give him
one. He wrote of Bertulf, third abbot of Bobbio and the man who commis-
sioned him to write the Vita Columbani, that he was ‘of noble, though bar-
barian, origin’ (genere nobilis, licet gentilis) and a relative of Bishop Arnulf of
Metz.68 In other words, Bertulf was a Frank. In Fredegar, writing slightly later
than Jonas, we see a similar differentiation between ‘Roman’ and ‘barbarian’.69
This is probably no indication of ethnic allegiances,70 but it is noteworthy
nonetheless that Jonas makes the differentiation. He was a man conscious of
the classical past and of Italy’s pre-eminent position in the ancient world.71 We
can detect what perhaps may be described as Jonas’s Italian sense of identity —
his cultural ethnicity — when he notes, ‘to us of Ausonia there are, according
to the poet’ (nobis Ausoniae iuxta poetam sunt) in reference to Virgil.72 Here
Jonas borrows the poetical term used by Virgil for Italy, while he uses the term
Italia a total of eight times in his hagiography.
A similar cisalpine orientation is evident in Jonas’s interesting comments
on beer, where it is apparent that he was writing from the perspective of those
whose habitual drink was wine. Beer, he explained, was a fermented bever-

67 
Fredegar, Chronicae, trans. by Wallace-Hadrill, iv. 45, p. 38, with n. 1.
68 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, ii. 23, p. 280.
69 
Fredegar, for example, mentions Merovingian kings such as Chlothar I taking possession
of cities rito barbaro, while he sometimes differentiates between those of Frankish and Roman
birth. The patrician, Quolen, is presented as genere Francus, as is Bertoald, mayor of the palace,
while Protadius, the lover of Queen Brunhild, was genere Romanus: Fredegar, Chronicae, trans.
by Wallace-Hadrill, iv. 17, 18, and 24, pp. 11, 14, and 15.
70 
See Ewig, ‘Volkstum und Volksbewusstsein im Frankenreich’.
71 
See, for example, Jonas’s remarkable poem on Columbanus in which he praises the
saint’s fame as eclipsing the great deeds and figures of classical Antiquity: Jonas of Bobbio, Vita
Columbani, ed. by Krusch, Versus ad mensam canendi, p. 225.
72 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, Epistula ad Waldebertum et Bobolenum,
p. 148.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 105

age ‘boiled from the juices of grain or barley’, which, apart from people in the
Balkans, was drunk ‘by all the people in the world who live beside the Ocean,
that is Gaul, Britain, Ireland, Germany, and others who are not dissimilar from
them in their customs’.73 Adalbert de Vogüé has seen this as one example that
the Vita was primarily intended for an Italian audience.74 Jonas’s comments,
which he makes in the context of narrating a beer miracle that took place in
Luxeuil, are also illustrative of his ethnographic awareness. Not all people
drank beer. The Scordisci and the Dardanian peoples (gentes) in the Balkans
did not. It was only those northerners living by the Ocean — Gauls, Britons,
Irish, and Germans — who were characterized by their drinking of beer. This,
therefore, was an ethnic indicator. We see a similar ethnographic awareness
throughout the Vita, and this is the more notable because it contrasts to other
narrative sources from this period where, on the whole, it was rare for people to
be identified by their ethnic group.75 Table 1 on the following page illustrates
the variety of ethnic terms used by Jonas in his three saints’ Lives.
Jonas thus characterizes various people as ‘Lombard’, ‘Frankish’, ‘Burgundian’,
‘Irish’, ‘Brittonic, ‘Saxon’, ‘Suebian’, and ‘Syriac’. In some cases, specifically when
writing about the Lombards and Franks, Jonas used these terms when desig-
nating kings, while in others he was less status specific. Athala, for example,
was ex Burgundionorum genere,76 while the nun Willesuinda was ex genere
Saxonorum.77 Columbanus, while gathering the harvest during bad weather at
Fontaine, placed four monks at each corner of the field: Cominus, Eunocus, and
Equonanus were, Jonas notes, ex Scottorum genere, while the fourth, Gurganus,
was genere Brittonem.78 His few references to the Lombards all concern their
kings. Although Jonas (in contrast to Paul the Deacon) viewed them as Arian
heretics, he does not display the pejorative rhetoric found, for example, in
Gregory the Great’s letters.79 He did not identify with the Lombards in any way.

73 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 16, p. 179: ‘ex frumenti vel hordei
sucos equoquitur, quamque prae ceteris in orbe terrarum gentibus preter Scordiscis et Dardanis
gentes quae Oceanum incolunt usitantur, id est Gallia, Brittania, Hibernia, Germania, ceter-
aeque ab eorum moribus non disciscunt’.
74 
See the comments in his translation: Jonas of Bobbio, Vie de Saint Colomban, trans. by
de Vogüé, p. 50, n. 41.
75 
Geary, ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’, p. 21.
76 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, ii. 1, p. 230.
77 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, ii. 17, p. 268.
78 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 13, p. 174.
79 
Gregory disliked the Lombards and spoke of them as ‘the unspeakable nation of the
106 Alexander O’Hara

Table 1. The Ethnic Terms in Jonas of Bobbio’s Hagiography

Terms Frequency
Aethiopes 1
Alemanni 3
Baioarii 2
Britto genere 1
Burgundionorum genere 1
Dardani gens 1
Franci 6
Neustrasi Franci 1
Francorum reges 2
Galli 1
Hiberus 1
Populus Israhel 5
Israhelitae 1
Langobardi 4
Poenus 1
Sabaei 1
Saxonorum genus 1
Scordisci gens 1
Scottorum gens 4
Scytha gens 1
Sicambri 2
Suevi 2
Syrorum genus 2
Venetii qui et Sclavi dicuntur 2
Warasqui gens 2

Neither did he with the Franks, although he attested to their pre-eminence in

Gaul. ‘Their name’, he wrote, ‘is considered foremost before all the other peo-
ples who live in Gaul’.80 He was writing as an outsider. In narrating the time
when one of Columbanus’s gloves was stolen and returned by a raven at Luxeuil,

Lombards’, while the phrase ‘swords of the Lombards’ repeatedly appears in his letters. See
Markus, Gregory the Great and his World, p. 99.
80 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 6, p. 162: ‘quorum eximium nomen
prae ceteris gentibus quae Gallias incolunt habetur’.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 107

he noted that the Gallic name for ‘gloves’ (tegumenta manuum) was wantos.81
This piece of linguistic trivia indicates a differentiation Jonas was making
between what he called a ‘glove’ and that of the Gauls, who called it something
else. Another instance is his reference to the Neustrian Franks. Jonas mentions
Chlothar as a king who ruled over the Neustrian Franks, who, he adds, were
those Franks who lived in ‘the furthest confines of Gaul by the Ocean’.82 There
would have been no need to give a geographical idea of where the Neustrian
Franks lived for a Frankish audience, but maybe there was for Jonas’s Italian
audience. These examples are indications that Jonas was primarily writing from
an Italian perspective.83 Moreover, what these examples reflect is Jonas’s aware-
ness that he and those he wrote about lived in a multi-ethnic society, a percep-
tion that would have been reinforced by his monastic life in a mixed community
of, amongst others, Irish, Frankish, and Lombard monks. Nevertheless, these
distinctions were not highlighted by more precise descriptions of the ways in
which different peoples could be distinguished.84 In speaking of the Suebians,
for instance, he does not refer to the distinctive way in which they wore their
hair, the ‘Suebian knot’, 85 nor does he mention the famed long hair of the
Frankish kings.86 He was also silent on Lombard habits of hairstyle and dress,
such as we find in Paul the Deacon.87 Thus, while Jonas was conscious of differ-
ent ethnic groups, he was not concerned to further illustrate their differences.
Jonas’s entry into Bobbio as a monk in 616 also raises the question of
whether he took a religious name on becoming a monk. The Hebrew name
Jonas is very rare in the Middle Ages, and so we need to consider whether this

81 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 15, p. 178.
82 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i.  24, pp.  206–07: ‘qui Neustrasis
Francis regnabat, extrema Gallia ad Oceanum positis’.
83 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 15 and i. 24; cf. the translator’s com-
ments in Jonas of Bobbio, Vie de Saint Colomban, trans. by de Vogüé, p. 128, n. 6 and p. 153, n. 1.
84 
On the various ways in which Jonas could have distinguished those ethnic groups which
he wrote about, see Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’.
85 
Jonas describes how Columbanus, while walking in the forests around Annegray, heard
the voices of ‘many Suebians’ who were raiding in the area. He also notes that the neighbouring
peoples of Columbanus and his monks in Bregenz were nationes Suaevorum: Jonas of Bobbio,
Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 8, p. 167; i. 27, p. 213.
86 
His account of King Theudebert’s deposition and forced clericalization would have been
a perfect opportunity to mention the long hair of the Frankish kings, but Jonas mentions noth-
ing about this: Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 28, p. 219.
87 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Waitz, iv. 22, p. 155.
108 Alexander O’Hara

had a particular significance for its bearer: did his family single him out from
birth for an ecclesiastical career by giving him such a name, or did he himself
choose it to mark a new religious identity? Names are, of course, potent indi-
cators of identity, whether individual, ethnic, devotional, or familial, and this
was especially true of the early Middle Ages.88 In early medieval society where
the vast majority of people bore Germanic names, Jonas would have stood out
alone by his name. At Bobbio, for instance, he would have been in the com-
pany of men such as Baudacharius, Blidemundus, Fraimeris, Hermenoaldus,
Meroveus, and Theudoaldus, all of whom bore Germanic names.89 Christian
names were much less prevalent during this period than they were from the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, when a revolution in the Christianization of
naming practices took place. In sixth-century Ravenna, for example, only six
per cent of names were Christian, while the peasants of Saint-Martin of Tours
in the seventh century, with the exception of Peter, bore no scriptural names.90
Thus, while Christian names were on the whole rare, Old Testament names
were extremely rare.91 Jonas’s is the only instance of this name from Lombard
Italy.92 An idea of how rare the name was can also be shown from later monastic
books of commemoration that became popular from the Carolingian period
onwards.93 Remiremont, a Columbanian foundation in Burgundy which Jonas
mentions, began commemorating its dead by writing their names in a book in
the early ninth century.94 This Liber memorialis lists about 11,500 names, most
of which are Germanic. The name ‘Ionas’ appears three times. Likewise, the
island monastery of Reichenau on Lake Constance lists ten instances of the
name ‘Ionas’ in its famous necrology containing about 40,000 names.95 This
gives some idea of the rarity and hence significance of the name.

88 
On this see, e.g., Wilson, The Means of Naming, esp. pp. 86–114 (on Christian names);
Jarnut, ‘Avant l’an mil’.
89 
On the sixteen Bobbio monks mentioned by Jonas and the areas in which they may have
come from, see Zironi, Il monastero longobardo di Bobbio, pp. 28–46. Zironi argued on this evi-
dence that Irish monks were not prominent in the early community. However, Richter, Bobbio
in the Middle Ages, has recently re-vindicated the Irish presence in and influence on Bobbio.
90 
Wilson, The Means of Naming, pp. 86–87.
91 
Wilson, The Means of Naming, p. 88.
92 
Jarnut, Prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Studien, p. 150. On Lombard naming
practices in general, see Arcamone, ‘Die langobardischen Personennamen in Italien’.
93 
On these sources, see Huyghebaert, Les documents nécrologiques.
94 
Liber memorialis von Remiremont, ed. by Hlawitschka, Schmis, and Tellenbach.
95 
Das Verbrüderungsbuch der Abtei Reichenau, ed. by Autenrieth, Geunenich, and Schmid.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 109

Columbanus himself identified with the plight of Jonah when he was about
to be deported back to Ireland.96 The Irish saint on other occasions clearly
associated himself with the prophet. In letters to two popes, he emphasized
the spiritual nature of his name: in Latin (Columba) and Hebrew ( Jonah) it
meant ‘the dove’. In his letter to Gregory the Great he used the Hebrew version,
‘ego, Bar-iona (vilis Columba), in Christo mitto Salutem’,97 while in his letter
to Boniface IV, written from Milan, he wrote: ‘I am called Jonah in Hebrew,
Peristera in Greek, Columba in Latin, yet so much is my birth-right in the idiom
of your language, though I use the ancient Hebrew name of Jonah, whose ship-
wreck I have also almost undergone’.98 It is tempting to see in Jonas’s name a
conscious decision of the monk to identify himself with his hero. It is, however,
unlikely that Jonas took this name on becoming a monk. This practice was not
yet established during this period as can be seen from the list of Bobbio monks,
none of whom bore religious names. There was not yet a marked distinction in
terms of nomenclature between the clergy and laity. It is more probable that,
like Paul the Deacon, Jonas’s family gave him a biblical name at birth. In Italy
and elsewhere the sons of the nobility destined for the Church could be given
particular religious names. We can only speculate as to how Jonas came to have
this name and, if it was his from birth, as seems likely, why his family chose to
give him this particular name. We are more certain, however, of the particular
significance that this name would have had within the monastic community at
Bobbio and the wider Columbanian familia.
Jonas, then, is an unusual example of a cultural and religious exile. While he
is remarkably consistent in noting the ethnic identities of others, he is abstruse
when writing about his own. Although he grew up in a Frankish garrison-town
near the Lombard kingdom, he did not identify himself with either the Franks
or the Lombards. Rather, he appears to have had an Italian cultural identity.
His comments on beer, the Neustrian Franks, and the Gallic name for gloves,
all suggest that he was writing as a cultural outsider while, as a monk and mis-
sionary in Merovingian Gaul, it is likely that he also would have seen himself as
a peregrinus.

96 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula iv. 8, p. 34.
97 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula i. 1, p. 1.
98 
Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epistula v. 16, p. 54: ‘mihi Ionae hebraice, Peristerae
graece, Columbae latine, potius tantum vestrae idiomate linguae nancto, licet prisco utor
hebraeo nomine, cuius et pene subivi naufragium’.
110 Alexander O’Hara

Valerius of Bierzo
Unlike Columbanus and Jonas, we cannot detect any sense of an ethnic or cul-
tural identity in Valerius. If we can ascribe one to him at all, his was a pro-
vincial one. As we have already mentioned, when Valerius went to the monas-
tery of Compludo he characterized it in terms of exile and of leaving his native
province of Asturias. Many years later when he was a hermit in this region he
mentions how his nephew, John, came to him ‘from the land of my birth (de
terra nativitatis meae)’.99 John had been in the service of the Visigothic king
and, together with his servant, Evagrius, had left everything, including his wife
and children, in order to live a religious life with his uncle. It is evident from
this that Valerius’s family must have been of high status with connections to
the Visigothic ruling elite. Although very much living in a peripheral, frontier
region of the kingdom, Valerius mentions that he received the support of the
king on a number of occasions.100 His level of education and knowledge of legal
terminology are also evidence of Valerius’s high social level.101 Valerius, there-
fore, was not an ignorant rustic but a sophisticated, well-educated man with
connections to the Visigothic court. It is all the more interesting then that he
does not display more of an elite identity, but this may be due to the ascetic
sensibilities and conventions he had adopted.
In contrast to Columbanus and Jonas, Valerius does not identify people
according to ethnic identities. The only instance in the whole of his autobio-
graphical writings in which he distinguishes someone in ethnic terms is one
of his enemies, the priest Justus, whom he characterizes as ‘a weakling of puny
stature, and with the colour very black to behold of the barbarous Ethiopian
people’.102 Even in this case he is following an ancient ascetic and exegetical
topos in likening an evil or demonic person to the Ethiopians.103 In a separate
instance, he describes another of his enemies, the priest Flainus, as a vir barba-

99 
Valerius of Bierzo, Replicatio, c. 15, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 145.
100 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 8, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 101; Valerius of Bierzo, Replicatio, c. 15, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 147.
101 
On Valerius’s knowledge of legal terminology, see Collins, ‘The “Autobiographical”
Works of Valerius of Bierzo’, pp. 433–35.
102 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 6, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 87: ‘forma exiguae pusillitatis tantillum, ac teterrimae visionis colore barbaricae nationis
Aethiopum’.
103 
See, e.g., Byron, Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 111

rus and valde lubricus (‘very shifty’).104 Aherne thought that Valerius’s use of the
term barbarus here probably denotes a Visigoth,105 which raises the same ques-
tions as Jonas’s comment on Abbot Bertulf of Bobbio mentioned above. Given
Valerius’s family status and links with the Visigothic court, however, we cannot
infer any ethnic identity from this.
Like Columbanus, who, according to Jonas, left Ireland out of fear of Christ
(ob Christi timorem relicto),106 Valerius was driven by a similar compunction
and belief in the imminence of Doomsday. He writes how initially he was ‘ter-
rified by the fear of future judgement’107 to become a monk and, in an acrostic
poem at the end of his first autobiographical account, he asks God to forgive
him his sins at the approach of Judgement Day.108
This apocalyptic fear was coupled with a very real belief in the Devil and the
power of his agency. In contrast to Columbanus, who hardly ever mentions the
Devil, or in Jonas, where the Devil is a passive force, Valerius’s Devil is the tra-
ditional antagonist of the Desert Fathers. He is a constant presence and men-
ace in Valerius’s accounts to such an extent that the autobiographical writings
could be seen, as Collins noted, as Valerius’s In Diabolum.109 Yet, as Collins
cautions, Valerius’s accounts of the Devil ‘should not be interpreted as evidence
of peculiar personal obsessions’.110 Valerius was writing in an established ascetic
tradition of demonology and his accusations against the Devil follow the form
of a logical, Roman legal argument.111 In another acrostic poem at the end of
the Ordo querimoniae, Valerius appeals to God as the justissime judex to repeal
the legal document that places him in the Devil’s power, the ‘diabolicae cau-
tionis adversum me conscripta […] chirographa’.112 The Devil was, in a sense,

104 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 2, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
pp. 73–75.
105 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 2, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 75, with n. 29 on p. 168; on attempts to identify this Flainus, see n. 30, p. 168. On barbari in
the Visigothic laws, see Sivan, ‘The Appropriation of Roman Law’.
106 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 20, p. 195.
107 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 1, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 68.
108 
Valerius of Bierzo, Item epitameron propriae orationis, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans.
by Aherne, p. 113.
109 
Collins, ‘The “Autobiographical” Works of Valerius of Bierzo’, p. 434.
110 
Collins, ‘The “Autobiographical” Works of Valerius of Bierzo’, p. 434.
111 
Collins, ‘The “Autobiographical” Works of Valerius of Bierzo’, p. 434.
112 
Valerius of Bierzo, Epitameron proprium praefati discriminis, l. 9, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed.
and trans. by Aherne, p. 111.
112 Alexander O’Hara

an essential component of Valerius’s ascetic identity, a necessary villain to the

hermit’s heroic individualism. David Brakke has studied how conflict with
demons in late Antiquity was a central component in the discourse and for-
mation of individual and collective monastic identities.113 It was the means by
which monks asserted their spiritual prowess and what distinguished them as
holy men. In Jonas, demons and the Devil have little power but are the foils for
displays of prayer by Columbanus and his monks, often acting in concert.114
In this respect, Valerius cuts an old-fashioned, solitary figure in his independ-
ent, real struggles against the Devil. Valerius, for example, is tormented and
attacked by the Devil and demons for a whole year,115 is subjected to the Devil
farting in his face while praying,116 and is terrified by the Devil who appears in
the guise of a giant, ‘of huge stature, towering even to the clouds’.117 The Devil
is, therefore, an active, constant protagonist through the course of Valerius’s
eremitical career and is often the only figure against whom Valerius asserts his
struggle for ascetic independence.
While Valerius displays a more intimate knowledge of the Devil than does
Columbanus, his worldview was the same in many respects. Both expressed
similar philosophies on how one should live as pilgrims and shun the world,
while Valerius likewise conceived of his ascetic undertaking as peregrinatio.
He notes that copying books was for him ‘a consolation of my ascetic exile
and a correction of my way of life’.118 We see a similar polarization between
the monastic sphere and the wider world as we find in Columbanus and Jonas.
Valerius relates how, after he had been badly beaten by robbers, Christians took
him to the estate of Ebronato. He missed his former solitude and dreaded this
more social environment.119 He decided to become an inclusus, imprisoning
himself in a cell near the altar of the church, so ‘that my foot should no longer
go into the turmoil of the outside world, and that through the slave-camps of

113 
Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk.
114 
On this, see Diem, ‘Encounters between Monks and Demons’.
115 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 4, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 80.
116 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 7, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 96.
117 
Valerius of Bierzo, Replicatio, c. 5, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 127.
118 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 3, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 77: ‘pro consolationem peregrinationis meae atque correptionis disciplinae’.
119 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 4, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 77: ‘coepit anima mea rursum anxietudinum molestiis aestuare publica habitatione horrens
pavescerem’.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 113

this present life, the divine right hand should keep me from the eternal dun-
geon of the abyss’.120 When Ricimer evicted Valerius from his cell because he
wanted to make him a priest of his proprietary church, Valerius describes this in
dramatic language, ‘as if falling from heaven, rushing into hell’, he was cast, ‘out
again into the theatre of the world’.121
The way Valerius characterizes his abandonment of society, from the
‘obscene contagion of the world’,122 is also evident in his vivid descriptions of
his hermitages. These accounts reflect a keen naturalist sensibility. For exam-
ple, he compares the high mountains around him in his final place of retreat,
the cell of St Fructuosus above the monastery at Rufiana, to the Alps of Gaul.
Although there was a narrow and perilous path leading from the farms on the
other side of the mountain to his hermitage,123 Valerius characterizes this as a
place cut-off from the world and the society around him:
For it is such a place of ordered quiet like that of Paradise that, even though […]
it is surrounded by a wall of very high mountains, nevertheless it is not darkened
by the sombre shadows of any one of them, but is bright with the lovely glory of
flooding light and lush with unusually beautiful green verdure. Far from the world,
free from the distraction of anything worldly, and undisturbed by the intrusion of
women, it is quite evident to all the faithful fleeing from worldly pleasures and
business that it is prepared by the Lord for the sake of attaining perfectly the sum-
mit of holiness.124

120 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 4, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 79: ‘et pes meus commotionem ultra foris exiret, atque ut per haec presentis lautomiae castra
ab eterno voraginis carcerem me dextera divina sustolleret’.
121 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 5, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 81: ‘Me simul ruentem quasi de coelo ad infernum prolapsum, in saeculi rursum projecit the-
atrum’.
122 
Valerius of Bierzo, Item epitameron propriae orationis, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans.
by Aherne, p. 113.
123 
Valerius of Bierzo, Residuum, c. 1, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 153.
124 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 11, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
pp. 107–09: ‘Quia tantus existit congruentissimae quietis ad instar paradisi aptissimus locus, ut
etiam licet, […] sit eminentissimorum montium munitione circumsaeptus, nullius tamen instet
tetrarum umbrarum opacitate fuscatus, nisi luciflui splendoris venutissimo decore conspicuus
atque vernatissimi viroris eximia amoenitate fecundus, procul a mundo remotus, nullarum
secularium actionum tumultibus, neque feminarum occursibus infestatus, ut cunctis liquido
patescat pro adipiscendo perfectae sanctitudinis culmine fidelibus a mundanis illecebris com-
mertiisque recedentibus a Domino esse praeparatus’.
114 Alexander O’Hara

Like Columbanus, Valerius’s independence from ecclesiastical authorities led

to conflict.125 He is particularly scathing of the local priests, whom he char-
acterizes as violent drunks, and of the pseudo-monks at Rufiana. He never
became a priest and appears never to have wanted to. In his first hermitage
in the mountains between Astorga and Castro Pedroso, Valerius managed to
live there for some years until his reputation as a holy man began to attract
people who wished to help him and to bring him food. This provoked the envy
of the local priest, Flainus, who came in a rage to confront Valerius at his her-
mitage.126 Valerius is not more specific as to why this priest reacted so strongly
against him except that he was envious. Flainus succeeded in driving Valerius
away to another, more remote hermitage, where he continued to persecute the
hermit. He stole some religious books which Valerius had copied, while he
attributed being attacked by robbers to the instigation of Flainus or ‘his patron’,
the Devil.127 When Ricimer later wanted to make Valerius a priest of his new
church and built an altar on the site of the hermit’s hut, Valerius saw Ricimer’s
intention as being instigated by the Devil, as his becoming a priest would mean
being ‘ensnared by many worldly attractions, enriched by many fat offerings’,128
which would lead to his downfall. The proof of Ricimer’s wickedness was seen
when the church he was building collapsed, killing him, and leaving the hermit
once again ‘miserable in my often repeated catastrophes’.129 After this, Valerius
came into conflict with another local priest, Justus. Valerius gives a wonderful
description of this man. To his disgust, Justus was ordained a priest for no other
reason than that he was funny and was a fine musician.130 Valerius was given
aid and shelter by a local man, Simplicius, with whom he began to perform the
Divine Office. Justus could not stand this and so:

125 
On this, Santiago Castellanos has remarked: ‘Valerio y sus actividades representaban, entre
otras cosas, un conflicto permanente entre la autoridad oficial, episcopal, y sus proprias iniciativas
personales, generalmente ajenas a la acreditación official’: Castellanos, La hagiografía visigoda, p. 338.
126 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 2, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
pp. 73–75.
127 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 3, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 77.
128 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 5, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 83: ‘me quasi secularibus illecebris captum multis opulentiae stipendiis ditatum’.
129 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 5, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 85: ‘infelicitatem meam in ipsa saepe revoluta reliquit naufragia’.
130 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 6, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
pp. 87–89: ‘Per quam multorum domorum convivia voragine percurrente, lascivia cantilenae
modulatione plerumque psallendi adeptus est celebritatis melodia’.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 115

Raging, and gripped by a heavy drunkenness that could not be shaken off, he burned
in such madness of frenzied insanity that he would allow me no quiet even during
the night […]. Goaded by his arrogant madness and drunkenness, and glaring like
a mad dog, raging with teeth gnashing in unspeakable revilings, full of drink and
foaming at the mouth, [he] struggled to tear me apart with his own hands.131

This conflict reached its climax when Justus tried to cut Valerius’s throat with
a sword in church. Valerius was only saved by the intervention of other monks
there.132 Justus was completely drunk when he attempted to kill Valerius, as
afterwards he began to dance around singing ‘wicked ditties’.133 When, after
this, Valerius had settled in the Bierzo, he relates how Isidore, bishop of
Astorga, wanted to bring him to Toledo, presumably to make him a priest. For
Valerius, Isidore, even though he was a bishop, was acting in concert with the
Devil because he wanted to take him from his place of retreat. The bishop’s sud-
den death was seen as just punishment, Valerius even remarkably asserting that
‘everlasting hell swallowed him’.134
In addition to being harassed by local priests and bishops, Valerius also
came into conflict with the local population. He does not distinguish them as
Basques or Astures, but the image he presents of them is of a barbarous and semi-
pagan people. He mentions, for example, how people venerated pagan shrines
on the summit of one of the mountains, which were destroyed by Christians
and a basilica dedicated to St Felix erected on the site.135 In writing about oth-
ers, he especially distinguishes people who are Christian, which suggests that
not everyone was Christian. When robbers had attacked him, he was rescued
by ‘some very faithful Christians’,136 while he later writes of getting alms from
‘good Christians’.137 The local priests and monks at Rufiana, against whom his
treatise De genere monachorum was intended, were also dangerous, uncivilized
men. When Valerius received a gift of two horses from a vir illustrissimus, the
jealous monks stole the horses and then drove them off a cliff. When the horses

131 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 6, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 91.
132 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 6, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
pp. 91–93.
133 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 6, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 93.
134 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 7, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne,
p. 101: illum vero perpetuus absorbuit infernus.
135 
Valerius of Bierzo, Replicatio, c. 1, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 115.
136 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 4, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 77.
137 
Valerius of Bierzo, Ordo querimoniae, c. 8, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 101.
116 Alexander O’Hara

miraculously survived, one of the monks then murdered Valerius’s minister,

John, by slitting his throat. Visitors who used to come to Valerius to consult his
collection of books were also often attacked and killed by the locals. The locals
also killed Valerius’s animals, eliciting a comparison Valerius makes between
himself and the prophet Elias, writing, ‘I remained alone’ (i Rg 19. 14).138 This
is perhaps an apt biblical borrowing to describe Valerius’s plight, a man who
alone had overcome the trials and difficulties of the eremitical career he had
embraced. Valerius was a fiercely independent holy man, preoccupied with his
own ascetic struggles and wary of ecclesiastical interference. His identity was
quintessentially that of the Christian alienus. We have little idea of his own
sense of ethnic identity because he did not write about it, while he was uninter-
ested to distinguish others according to their ethnic group.
Valerius was similar in many ways to Columbanus, except that Columbanus
actually left his country as a peregrinus. This ritual shaped his identity on the
Continent and influenced his relations with others. His identity of alienation
also shaped his monastic communities, which he envisaged as independent enti-
ties separate from ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction. This would also lead to
a new type of legal document that developed in the mid-seventh century to
ensure that these communities remained independent.139 Columbanus’s unwill-
ingness to compromise his traditional Irish practices and religious observance
led to his banishment from Burgundy in 610. As we have seen, he had a strong
dual identity of being an ascetic exile and Irish. Nevertheless, he advocated the
unity of Christian identity above that of particular ethnic groups. In his letters
to Gregory the Great and Boniface IV, he refers to Europe not in a geographical
sense but as a distinct social and religious unit of which the pope is the spiritual
head.140 As Peter Brown has argued, the period between the mid-sixth and mid-

138 
Valerius of Bierzo, Residuum, c. 2, in Valerio of Bierzo, ed. and trans. by Aherne, p. 154.
139 
On the priviledge of immunity, see Rosenwein, Negotiating Space; Ewig, ‘Das Formular
von Rebais’; Ewig, ‘Bemerkungen zu zwei merowingischen Bischofsprivilegien’.
140 
In both instances Columbanus uses the phrase totius Europae in the sense of a whole,
distinct cultural area over which the Bishop of Rome has an especial religious authority. This is
very much a European, not a regional, perspective. See Columbanus, Opera, ed. by Walker, epis-
tula i. 1, p. 2 (to Gregory the Great): ‘Domino Sancto et in Christo Patri, Romanae pulcherrimo
Ecclesiae Decori, totius Europae flaccentis augustissimo quasi cuidam Flori’; epistula v. 1, p. 36
(to Boniface IV): ‘Pulcherrimo omnium totius Europae Ecclesiarum Capiti, Papae praedulci,
praecelso Praesuli, Pastorum Pastori’. We see a similar emphasis on Rome’s authority in the Vita
Columbani, where Jonas cites Matthew 16. 18 as the biblical foundation for papal primacy. This
is cited in the context of the rebel monk, Agrestius, who joined the schismatic Aquileans who
defended the Three Chapters controversy. Rome’s primacy here is clearly emphasized as Jonas
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 117

seventh century was one in which a profound change in the imagination took
place and which saw the rise of western Christendom as a religious and cultural
unit.141 Christianity became for the first time an otherworldly religion in the
true sense — one more intently focused on sin, repentance, death, and the after-
life — and which has been seen as marking the end of ancient Christianity.142
We see this in Columbanus and Valerius, men whose mentalities were distinctly
otherworldly and who were preoccupied with the problems of sin and repent-
ance. Both shunned episcopal oversight and relied to some extent on royal
patronage. This is especially true of Columbanus, whose status as a peregrinus
meant that he depended on royal patronage. This served to bring his monaster-
ies more fully into the orbit of royal and aristocratic networks and ultimately
triggered a process that led to monasteries becoming more integrated in social
power structures.
The individualism of Valerius and Columbanus comes across strongly in
their writings. Such individual ascetic careers would become increasingly rare,
however, during the course of the early Middle Ages, and it is as a representative
of a new kind of monasticism that Jonas wrote. In a way, Jonas’s monastic career
was Columbanus’s peregrinatio in reverse, taking him from Bobbio across the
Alps where he became a missionary on the north-east frontier of the Frankish
kingdom. As an assistant to Bishop Amandus, he was an important figure in
the missionary impulse of the seventh century.143 He too might well have con-
sidered himself a peregrinus. He writes, for example, about a Frankish monk
who wanted to follow Columbanus’s example and undertake potior peregrinatio
to Ireland.144 Jonas does show a remarkable ethnographic awareness, but he was

notes that, once Agrestius became a member of this schismatic group, he was ‘separated from com-
munion with the See of Rome and divided from the communion of the whole world (Romanae
sedis a communionem seiunctus ac divisus est totius orbis communione, quicumque Romanae
sedis iungerentur, damnans)’: Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, ii. 9, p. 247.
141 
Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, p. 220. Brown, ‘Images as a Substitute for
Writing’, p. 32, speaks of ‘a watershed in the Christian imagination that falls somewhere in the
late sixth century’; see also Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity. For Latin Christendom as a
theopolis, a Christian culture subordinated to a religious ideal, see Marrou, Saint Augustin et la
fin de la culture antique, p. 695; Marrou, ‘La Place du haut Moyen Âge’, p. 608.
142 
See, for example, Brown, ‘Gloriosus obitus: The End of the Ancient Other World’;
Hillgarth, ‘Eschatological and Political Concepts in the Seventh Century’.
143 
On this seventh-century missionary impulse, see Fritze, ‘Universalis gentium confessio’;
and Wood, The Missionary Life.
144 
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by Krusch, i. 11, p. 170.
118 Alexander O’Hara

not concerned to illustrate ethnic differences. He was the first, for instance, to
depict Ireland and the Irish in a wholly positive light, even though he must have
been aware of the classical ethnographic traditions that characterized Ireland
and the Irish as particularly barbaric.145 This change in perception that marks
a break with the classical and late antique ethnographic tradition undoubtedly
stemmed from Jonas’s experience in a community of exiled Irish monks. His
experience of monastic life in multi-ethnic communities that included Irish,
Briton, Frankish, and Lombard monks is also indicative of this new, idealized
Christian identity, where ethnic differences were subsumed under the over-
arching religious umbrella of Latin Christendom.
Columbanus, Jonas, and Valerius are thus individual examples that I have
chosen because they span the course of the seventh century and because of the
personal nature of their writings. Nevertheless, they are also representatives of
an ecclesiastical elite whose understanding and practice of the Gospel in terms
of ‘a therapeutics of exile and distress’146 led to the fashioning of new Christian
political and social identities.

145 
See the comments on Ireland and the Irish in Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. by
Krusch, i. 2, p. 153. For the classical and late antique ethnographic tradition, see, e.g., Freeman,
Ireland and the Classical World; Killeen, ‘Ireland in the Greek and Roman Writers’.
146 
Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, p. 82.
Patria, Peregrinatio, and Paenitentia 119

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 Religiones and gentes in
Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora

Jamie Wood*

Introduction
The Roman Empire in Spain did not fall until the 620s. It was only in this dec-
ade that the Visigothic kings managed to expel the final Roman forces from the
south. Although the political fall of Rome in Spain took far longer than has
often been imagined, the social and intellectual landscape had been in transi-
tion for many decades. This chapter uses the historical writings of Isidore of
Seville, the pre-eminent bishop and scholar of seventh-century Spain, to show
how individuals and communities managed the practical and interpretive tran-
sition from Roman to Visigothic control.
Traditionally, Isidore’s writings on historical subjects take secondary place
in analyses of his corpus behind such works as his De fide Catholica contra
Iudaeos, Sententiae, and, above all, Etymologiae, all of which were transmitted
far more widely in subsequent centuries. Isidore’s theological, pastoral, and
scientific works undoubtedly provided contemporaries with the practical and
conceptual tools to negotiate and understand a changing world, and this may
help to explain their later popularity. However, an underappreciated strand of
Isidore’s project is his effort to construct a vision of the past that was agreeable
to all of the constituent parts of the Visigothic polity. Historical writing played
a central role in this process. The volume of Isidore’s historical output should
alert us to its importance. Isidore wrote a chronicle, of which there were three
redactions, and a history, in two redactions. A number of his non-‘historical’

*  I would like to thank Drs Kate Cooper and Sam Koon of the University of Manchester for
reading earlier drafts of this paper.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101664
pp. 125–168 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
126 Jamie Wood

writings, notably the Etymologies and De viris illustribus, contain substantial,

if incidental, material on the history and geography of the ancient world and
shed an illuminating light on his more traditional works of history.1
It has long been recognized that Isidore promoted religious uniformity and
the idea that the Catholic people of Spain were united behind the Visigothic
kings and opposed to outsiders. This chapter argues that, as part of this broader
project, Isidore deliberately propagated the idea that the Visigoths were a
favoured people throughout their history. Through a broad range of historical
writing, Isidore constructed a complex historical narrative that positioned the
Visigoths as the preeminent ethno-political group at the culmination of world
history. He did this by channelling the histories of the Romans, Jews, Persians,
Scythians, and Visigoths to demonstrate both the historical and contemporary
predominance of the latter.2 At this point, it is important to make a termino-
logical point about the use of the terms ‘Visigoths’ and ‘Goths’. Throughout
this paper, I refer to the ‘Visigoths’, to the ‘Visigothic kingdom’ and its kings,
but for Isidore these people were Gothi. I have chosen to use the modern term
‘Visigoths’ in order to avoid confusion with the Ostrogoths and because it is
clear that for Isidore these were the only Goths, historically speaking, who
really mattered.
Historical writing was central to the construction and negotiation of iden-
tity in the post-Roman kingdoms. It allowed the elites of ethnically-defined
political units to articulate a version of the past that was agreed by, or at least
agreeable to, the constituent parts of their polity. Historical accounts often
focused on points of opposition to outsiders and may also have formed part of
broader efforts to encourage individuals or groups to reconcile themselves to
the proposed dominant power and its accompanying narrative. On other occa-
sions, visions of universal identities derived from Christian or Roman traditions
acted as forces for communal integration and consensus-building. However, it

1 
Borst, ‘Das Bild der Geschichte’; Truyol y Serra, ‘The Idea of Man and World History’;
Breisach, Historiography, pp. 89–96; Wood, Politics of Identity, pp. 65–85.
2 
Wood, ‘Social Relations in the Visigothic Kingdom’, p. 193: ‘by the late sixth century, if
not earlier, one can no longer investigate the ethnology of the Visigothic gens. One can study a
mixed, or even a new, society’. For the Visigoths as the culmination of world history: Hillgarth,
‘Spanish Historiography and Iberian Reality’, p. 27; Martín, ‘La Crónica Universal de Isidoro
de Sevilla’, p. 202. For the forging of a Catholic-Spanish-Gothic identity: Teillet, Des Goths à
la nation Gothique; Cazier, Isidore de Séville; Velázquez, ‘Pro patriae gentisque Gothorum statu’;
for later reception and reuse of this idea: Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain;
Castro, España en su historia; Castro, Los Españoles; Torres, ‘Political Uses of History in Spain’;
and Drews, The Unknown Neighbour, pp. 317–22.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 127

is important to stress that ‘neither “universal” nor “ethnic” communities are the
“natural” way in which human society has to be organized’; both forms resulted
from historical processes and the retrospective depiction and construction of
such processes by contemporary and near-contemporary commentators.3 The
authors of histories and chronicles thus played a central role as cultural brokers
between Roman subjects and barbarian kings, creatively communicating, nego-
tiating, renegotiating, organizing, and reorganizing categories of distinction
between insiders and outsiders.4 By unpicking historical accounts, we can thus
better understand the emergence of the post-Roman political and intellectual
world and gain some valuable insights into the rhetorical strategies that were
deployed by individuals traversing such uncertain terrain.
The histories and chronicles of the post-Roman kingdoms consistently
describe contemporaries in ethnic terms. Such a system of identification prob-
ably emerged gradually as authors sought to construct discourses that would
exclude undesirable elements and laud the distinguishing features of emergent
elites. However, such identities had to be open enough to include those whose
adherence it was desirable to attract to the cause.5 The development of a vision
of the world as divided into a number of different peoples was thus highly con-
tingent and has been described as an ‘operational tool’ for the legitimization of
rule and the organization of society.6 By examining how and why Isidore distin-
guished certain key features of particular ethnic groups as points of belonging
and difference in his historical writings, we can begin to unpick the processes
of political legitimation and social organization that led to the establishment of
the Visigothic kingdom in succession to the Roman Empire in Spain.
Isidore played a key role in fusing ancient ethnographic and biblical tradi-
tions into a system that proved influential in subsequent centuries.7 His ‘theory’
of ethnicity divided peoples according to their names, weaponry, apparel, and
hairstyles, with particular stress being placed upon language as a distinguishing

3 
Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Distinction’, pp.  14–15; Pohl, ‘Aux origines d’une
Europe éthnique’, pp. 184, 199.
4 
For a more comprehensive discussion of the concept of the cultural broker, which has
played an important role in modern anthropology, and its application in studies of post-Roman
history, see the contribution by Reimitz, ‘Cultural Brokers of a Common Past’, in Pohl and
Heydemann, eds, Strategies of Identification.
5 
Pohl, ‘Aux origines d’une Europe éthnique’, p. 190; Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of
Distinction’, pp. 3–4, 6–7; Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’, p. 20.
6 
Reimitz, ‘Omnes Franci’, p. 67.
7 
Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Distinction’, pp. 3–4.
128 Jamie Wood

feature, although his discussion of this topic is confused and in his descriptions
of a number of peoples in the Etymologies he hardly mentions language at all.8
An examination of the changing contents of Isidore’s historical writings is thus
perhaps a better way of both exploring and understanding his conception of
contemporary ethnicities and the processes by which they had emerged.
Although Isidore’s historical and theoretical writings on the topic of ethnic
identity point to the gradual divergence into multiple ethnicities over the course
of history, Isidore constructed a story that privileged the Visigoths above all
other peoples throughout history. In this process there was a significant degree
of interaction between what we might term the theoretical and practical bases
for Isidore’s writings. As an individual and an author, therefore, Isidore was in
constant interaction with his social milieu, seeking to define, refine, and rede-
fine social, political, and religious identities, including ethnicity, in response to
altered social, political and religious realities.9

Methodology and Sources

Isidore’s chronographic writings are central to understanding his attempts to
focus the entire span of world history upon the Visigoths. He narrated the his-
tories of a range of ethnic groups in such a way as to tie the Visigoths firmly
into the course of universal history, to legitimize them in religious and political
terms, and to undermine their competitors’ claims on an exalted religious status
of any sort. The two redactions of Isidore’s Chronica maiora cover the entirety
of world history from Creation to his own day and mention a large number
of peoples.10 In the process, the peoples of Isidore’s past are plotted along two
axes. Firstly, they are placed into an absolute chronological context in relation
to time since Creation. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, their position
is established in relation to the other peoples of history. By examining Isidore’s
historical writings against the framework created by his chronicles, we are thus
able to come to an overall understanding of how he related his patchwork of
specific ethnic pasts to universal salvation history.

8 
Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’, pp. 17–18, 23, 46–47, 51; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed.
by Lindsay, ix. 1. 1–2.
9 
Cf. Pohl, ‘Introduction: Ego Trouble?’, p. 13.
10 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín; for a translation of the text, see Isidore
of Seville, Chronica maiora, trans. by Koon and Wood.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 129

Isidore’s chronicles are unusual because virtually all of the sources which he
used to construct them are still extant. His use of these earlier texts reveals a
lot about how he treated his sources and how he responded to a range of alter-
native, and in some cases competing, historical models, some of which were
highly antithetical to his own vision of the past. This means that we can profit-
ably examine not only the choices that Isidore made when selecting from his
sources, but also how he integrated, and in some cases excluded, existing textual
traditions in furthering his own historical vision.
Isidore’s chronographies have received little attention from scholars in the
past, frequently being dismissed as ‘scissors and paste’ compositions derived
largely from second-hand material and offering a deficient account of world
history.11 However, it is the very ‘cut and paste’ nature of Isidore’s account of
history that makes his chronicles so interesting. Indeed, such a methodology
was perhaps more typical of how early medieval historical works were com-
posed than has previously been supposed. Why, if such an approach was not
common practice, would Gregory of Tours, a near contemporary of Isidore
from Francia, have ended his Ten Books of Histories with an explicit warning
against those coming after him reusing different part of his work?
I conjure you all, I say, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Judgement
Day feared by all sinners, that you never permit these books to be destroyed, or to
be rewritten, or to be reproduced in part only with sections omitted, for otherwise
when you emerge in confusion from this Judgement Day you will be condemned
with the Devil. Keep them in your possession, intact, with no amendments and just
as I have left them to you.12

Helmut Reimitz has recently demonstrated how the redactors of the six book
version of Gregory’s Histories were not as clumsy and derivative in their work
as used to be assumed. Instead, these and other Merovingian historical writings
were part of concerted attempts by authors and audiences to locate themselves
in particular places and times through the construction of historical, spiritual,
and social identities.13 A similar motivation and methodology underscored the
production of Isidore’s chronicles.

11 
Collins, ‘Isidore, Maximus, and the Historia Gothorum’, p. 354.
12 
Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch and Levison, x. 31, p. 449; Reimitz, ‘Social
Networks and Identities’, p. 231.
13 
Reimitz, ‘Social Networks and Identities’, pp. 242, 267.
130 Jamie Wood

The first redaction of the Chronica maiora was written under King Sisebut
in 615/16 and the second version under King Swinthila in 626. The first redac-
tion has four hundred and eighteen chapters; when writing the second, Isidore
added sixty-eight chapters, as well as expanding and editing a number of existing
entries.14 Therefore, although largely based on the earlier redaction, the second
version of the Chronica maiora represents a significant augmentation of that
text. Isidore’s De viris illustribus was written sometime between 615 and 618.
It consisted of thirty-three chapters and continued the earlier bio-bibliographic
catalogues of Jerome and Gennadius, which had defined famous men in terms
of their literary outputs while creating an image of specific authors and writings
as canonical.15 Isidore reproduced these imperatives, but also tried to generate
an image of an orthodox and literary episcopal elite for Spain in order to rem-
edy the absence of Spanish churchmen from the works of his predecessors.16
Isidore is unique among the historians of the barbarian kingdoms of the early
Middle Ages because he wrote histories of three separate peoples: the Visigoths,
the Vandals, and the Sueves. The resultant text, which came to be known as
the Historia Gothorum, probably gained its name because of its emphasis upon,
and clear preference for, the Visigoths, in the same way that Gregory of Tours’s
Decem libri historiarum came to be known as the Historia Francorum. Initially,
however, the Historia Gothorum was a history of the Goths, Sueves, and
Vandals. Indeed, that is how it is referred to in Braulio of Zaragoza’s Renotatio
librorum domini Isidori, written shortly after Isidore’s death.17 There are longer
and shorter redactions of the Historia Gothorum: the shorter ends with the
death of Sisebut in 621 and the longer in the middle of Swinthila’s reign in
625. It is generally accepted that the longer redaction is an expanded version of
its shorter predecessor.18 The text contains a lot of information about relations

14 
Martín, ‘El capítulo 39 del libro v de las Etimologías’, pp.  161–62; Martín, ‘Les
Remaniements de la second rédaction’; Codoñer, Martín, and Andrés, ‘Isidorus Hispalensis ep.’,
pp. 362–70.
15 
Rouse and Rouse, ‘Bibliography before Print’, pp.  135, 139–40; Vessey, ‘Peregrinus
against the Heretics’; Vessey, ‘The Forging of Orthodoxy’; Vessey, ‘From cursus to ductus’.
16 
Jerome had only referred to nine Spaniards. Gennadius mentioned five Spanish men,
none in the latter part of his text. Isidore therefore introduced several illustrious Spaniards to the
period covered by Jerome and Gennadius. For more on this see Wood, ‘Playing the Fame Game’.
17 
Braulio of Zaragoza, Renotatio, ed. by Martín, l. 39–41, p. 203: ‘De origine Gothorum et
regno Suevorum et etiam Vandalorum historia librum unum’. See also Goffart, ‘From Historiae
to Historia Francorum’.
18 
Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso, pp. 26–49.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 131

between the Visigoths, the Vandals, and the Sueves, about how they interacted
with the Roman Empire, and about how their respective stories related to the
unfolding of salvation history. By comparing these narratives with what Isidore
says in the Chronica maiora, we can learn a lot about his changing conceptions
of the roles of various ethnic and religious groups throughout history.
The writing of the two redactions of both the Chronica maiora and the
Historia Gothorum seems to have been largely dependent upon a rapidly
changing political and religious situation around the year 620. When the first
redactions were written, the Byzantine Empire was still in control of a por-
tion of territory in south-eastern Spain, and the ultra-orthodox King Sisebut
was in power. By the time that the second redaction was composed in the
mid-620s, the situation had changed dramatically. Sisebut’s son and successor,
Reccared II, had been deposed by King Swinthila, the Byzantine forces had
been expelled from Spain, and the bishops of southern Spain, led by Isidore,
had dealt with what they presented as a serious outbreak of heresy in the for-
mer Byzantine province.19
There can be little doubt that both the first and second redactions of the
Chronica maiora and the Historia Gothorum were primarily written for the
benefit of the Visigothic monarchy. The first redaction seems to have been com-
posed as part of a wider project intended to celebrate the triumphs of Sisebut
in the religious and political spheres, against the Jews and Byzantines respec-
tively. The second redaction amplified several elements of the first, celebrating
the religiosity of the Visigoths and their kings and undermining the Byzantines
far more effectively than the first redaction. Sisebut’s son had been deposed by
Swinthila and this dynastic change is reflected in the contents of the second
redaction of both the Historia Gothorum and the Chronica maiora, in which
Sisebut is downgraded and the achievements of Swinthila are emphasized. It
therefore seems likely that the second redactions were also written with a royal
audience in mind. We should also imagine that the text played a role in per-
suading any members of the Visigothic elite who doubted the legitimacy of
Swinthila’s rule and the greatness of his achievements. There are likely to have
been many such doubters, especially in the far-flung regions of Spain and the
recently-reconquered Byzantine territories in the south. Indeed, the rebellion
which finally toppled Swinthila from power seems to have had significant sup-
port from the nobility and the episcopacy.20

19 
Thompson, The Goths in Spain, pp. 161–80; Wood, Politics of Identity, pp. 58–65.
20 
García Moreno, ‘La oposicion a Suintila’.
132 Jamie Wood

Biblical Models and Isidorian Mould-Breaking

Alongside classical ethnographic traditions, biblical models and narratives
played a central role in the development and propagation of early medieval
notions of ethnicity. These two discursive traditions helped to explain the coex-
istence of and competition between numerous ethnically defined communi-
ties, at the same time allowing for the continuance of the universalism implicit
in the Roman and Christian traditions.21 Roman historical and ethnographic
models were frequently universalizing in scope, after all, but under the banner
of Roman political and cultural dominance.22 Likewise, the biblical narrative
of the past helped to reconcile the seeming contradiction between the fact that
there existed a diversity of peoples in the present with common origins and
ultimate shared destiny, but that believers in Judaism and Christianity held an
exalted place in God’s plan for mankind.23 For example, the biblical narratives
of the Tower of Babel and the genealogy of the sons of Noah provided inter-
pretive frameworks for understanding the existence of different peoples, their
origins, languages, and conflicts.24
In his Historia Gothorum, Isidore identifies the contemporary Goths with a
variety of historical and biblical peoples.25 Isidore’s conflation of Gog, Magog,
Goth, Getan, and Scythian has been variously interpreted. Pohl saw the con-
fusion of names as an attempt to neutralize any apocalyptic sense inherent in
the name ‘Goth’.26 Furtado read it as part of an attempt to defend the antiq-
uity of the Visgioths in opposition to their main enemies, the Romans. On
this interpretation, by creating a biblical ancestry for the Visigoths, Isidore was
able to demonstrate that their origins lay further back in time than those of the
Romans, at the same time helping him to make sense of how their history con-
nected to God’s plan for mankind.27 That Isidore intended his readers to rec-

21 
See Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel; and the papers in Brett, ed., Ethnicity and the Bible.
22 
Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Distinction’, p. 14; Pohl, ‘Aux origines d’une Europe
éthnique’, p. 197.
23 
Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’, p. 67.
24 
Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’, pp. 22–23; Pohl, ‘The Construction of Communities’,
p. 13. For Isidore on the Tower of Babel, see Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay,
ix. 1. 1; Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 22, pp. 22–25.
25 
Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso, c. 1, p. 172; cf. c. 66
(Recapitulatio), p. 282.
26 
Pohl, ‘Aux origines d’une Europe éthnique’, pp. 199–200.
27 
Furtado, ‘From gens to imperium’, p. 409.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 133

ognize the Visigoths as holding a favoured place in history is evident from the
final dating formula of the second redaction of the Historia Gothorum, which
states: ‘the kingdom of the Goths is found to have lasted, with divine favour
[Deo favente], for two hundred and fifty-six years’.28 For Furtado these chap-
ters of Isidore’s history are surface manifestations of his attempts to promote
the Visigoths in opposition to the Romans in both the religious and politi-
cal spheres. Indeed, King Swinthila, who was ruling at the time at which the
second redaction of the Historia Gothorum was written, is described as having
been chosen by gratia divina, further implying divine support for the people
and their rulers.29
There were specific reasons for the changes which Isidore made to his
account of the Visigothic past in the second redaction of the Historia
Gothorum. One such reason was a desire to laud Swinthila and his achieve-
ments. When analysis of these chapters is coupled with exploration of Isidore’s
coverage of a whole range of ethnic histories in his chronicles, it soon becomes
evident that he was also making a wide-ranging effort to situate the Visigoths
within, and ultimately at the culmination of, universal history. In order to
achieve this objective when writing historically, Isidore chose not only to privi-
lege the Visigoths above all other peoples, but to denigrate any possible com-
petitors for an exalted status. Primarily, this involved demonstrating that both
the Jews and the Romans had, through their actions, lost any entitlement to
an exalted religious status, although some effort was expended in demonstrat-
ing the illegitimacy of other barbarian peoples and in emphasizing the impor-
tance of the Visigoths. Particular emphasis was placed on the military prow-
ess of the Visigoths in opposition to the Romans, while Isidore also devoted
significant attention in later portions of the Chronica maiora to illustrating a
steady breakdown in Roman power and legitimacy, especially in the West —
territories are lost, revolts and civil wars abound, and heresies arise.30 Roman

28 
Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (second redaction), c. 65,
pp. 278, 280; Furtado, ‘From gens to imperium’, p. 411.
29 
Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (second redaction), c. 62,
pp. 274, 276.
30 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 368, pp. 176–77;
c. 372, pp. 178–79; c. 373, pp. 178–79; c. 377, pp. 180–81; c. 382, pp. 182–83; cc. 411–12,
pp. 200–03; Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (first redaction), c. 409, p. 200;
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 414a, p. 203. On the
power of the Goths, Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (both
redactions), cc. 1–2, pp. 172, 174; Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez
134 Jamie Wood

failure to deal with external and internal threats is thus juxtaposed to a steadily
expanding Visigothic power, culminating in the expulsion of the Romans from
Spain at the close of the Chronica maiora. The other key signifier of Visigothic
ascendancy at the end of the Chronica maiora, the conversion of the Jews to
Christianity under King Sisebut, represents the culmination of his efforts to
demonstrate the illegitimacy and disempowerment of the Jews. As in the case
of the Romans, Isidore sought to show how the Jews had gradually lost all
power in the secular and religious spheres as history unfolded.

Jewish History
Isidore’s narration of both the distant and recent past was intimately connected
to his efforts to position the Visigothic kings in relation to internal and exter-
nal competitors for leadership. Following the conversion of the Visigoths from
Arianism to Catholicism in 587–89, the Jews replaced the Arians as the major
figures of concern for the Church and the state in Spain, both of which were
entrusted with promoting and protecting the orthodoxy of Spain.31 Any group
standing outside the orthodox consensus was automatically placed in a vulner-
able position. Not only was their loyalty put in question almost by default, but
their very existence suggested that the king had failed in his duty to protect
and propagate the faith. The Jews were in a particularly vulnerable position
because they hindered the identification between regnum and ecclesia that writ-
ers such as Isidore were eager to promote for the benefit of ecclesiastical and
royal elites. Indeed, the establishment and maintenance of religious authority
was frequently linked to the justification or consolidation of social and politi-
cal power, and it is thus very difficult to make a distinction between ‘political’

Alonso (second redaction), c. 3, pp. 174, 176; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay,
ix. 2. 89, see also ix. 2. 63 for the Massagetae as the ‘strong Getae’. Hillgarth, ‘Historiography
in Visigothic Spain’, pp. 295–99; Reydellet, La Royauté dans la littérature latine, pp. 524–54.
31 
For the Jews in Visigothic Spain: Juster, La Condition légale des Juifs; Bachrach, ‘A
Reassessment of Visigothic Jewish Policy’; Gil, ‘Judíos y cristianos en la Hispania’; Saitta,
L’Antisemitismo nella Spagna visigotica; González Salinero, ‘Catholic Anti-Judaism in Visigothic
Spain’; Barcala Muñoz, Biblioteca antijudaica. For Isidore and the Jews, Katz, The Jews in the
Visigothic and Frankish Kingdoms; Blumenkranz, Les Auteurs chrétiens latins, pp.  88–101;
Albert, ‘Isidore of Seville’; Albert, ‘De fide catholica contra Judaeos’; Cohen, Living Letters of the
Law, pp. 95–122; Drews, Juden und Judentum bei Isidor von Sevilla; Drews, ‘Jews as Pagans?’;
Drews, The Unknown Neighbour; Barcala Muñoz, Biblioteca antijudaica, ii, 2, pp. 333–400
(with detailed bibliography on pp. 398–400).
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 135

and ‘ecclesiastical’ narratives in the early Middle Ages.32 This interlinking of

religious and political identity — and loyalty — led the Visigothic literati to
create an idealized image of society that completely excluded the Jews.33 In his
theological writings on the Jews, Isidore tried to show that their beliefs and
practices were false because they had rejected Christ’s ministry and sought to
limit Christian contact with them in the present.34 In his De fide Catholica con-
tra Iudaeos, for example, Isidore argued that the Jews did not merit the name
Israel because they did not believe in Christ and therefore that the Christians
were the true chosen people.35 In his historical works, Isidore built a similarly
negative picture of the Jews at the same time as using them to demonstrate the
special position of the Visigoths in God’s plans. In order to lend depth to this
picture, Isidore also took various liberties with his account of the Jewish past.
The Jews appear consistently throughout the earliest parts of the Chronica
maiora, with Jewish patriarchs and kings forming the chronological framework
at the start of the work. By recording the succession of Jewish patriarchs back
to Adam, Isidore placed the Jews, and those who succeed them, in a prime posi-
tion in his account of salvation history.36 Nonetheless, at no point in the nar-

32 
Reimitz, ‘The Art of Truth’, p. 91.
33 
Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, p. 107; González Salinero, ‘Catholic Anti-Judaism in
Visigothic Spain’, p. 128; Barbero and Loring, ‘The Catholic Visigothic Kingdom’, p. 352. In his
later writings Isidore went so far as to label them as foreigners, Drews, The Unknown Neighbour,
pp. 252–92.
34 
Isidore’s De fide Catholica contra Iudaeos was ‘concerned with controverting Jewish beliefs
and arguments against Christianity, on the basis of passages from the Old Testament used to
show that the Jews were confounded by the authority of their own scriptures’: Collins, Early
Medieval Spain, p. 63; Albert, ‘De fide catholica contra Judaeos’; Katz, The Jews in the Visigothic
and Frankish Kingdoms, p.  35. Isidore of Seville, De fide Catholica, Ep.  dedicatoria, 1–2,
cols 449–50: ‘I believe, on the the basis of the strength of knowledge from numberless small dis-
coveries, that the authority of the faith of the prophets confirms grace and proves the ignorance
of the treacherous Jews, which things were announced in advance concerning the Nativity of the
Lord and our Saviour according to the divinity, concerning his embodiment, also concerning
the passion and death, or concerning the resurrection, the kingdom and the judgement’.
35 
Dahan, La Polémique chrétienne, pp. 126–27; Collins, Early Medieval Spain, p. 139.
36 
Each patriarch is linked to his predecessor, his successor, and the people who are sup-
posed to have descended from him; e.g. Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both
redactions), c. 20, pp. 20–21: ‘Arfaxat annorum cxxxv genuit Salam, a quo antique Samaritae
uel Indii’ (Arfaxat, 135 years, begot Salam, from whom the Samaritans or Indians descend)’;
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 21, pp. 22–23: ‘Sala
annorum cxxx genuit Heber, a quo Hebrei nuncupati sunt’ (Sala, for 130 years, brought forth
Heber, from whom the Hebrews are named)’.
136 Jamie Wood

rative does Jewish history predominate. This was not due to lack of informa-
tion, because Isidore could have derived plenty of material on the Jewish past
from Eusebius-Jerome’s Chronicon or a Latin translation of Josephus’s Jewish
Antiquities, which he had at his disposal. Although this may have been due to
the summary nature of the Chronica maiora, it also seems to have been part of
a conscious decision to minimize references to the actual facts of Jewish his-
tory. In order to account for the apparent ambiguity in Isidore’s account of the
Jewish past, it may be useful to distinguish between the roles of Jews as histori-
cal agents and their position as actors within salvation history. Isidore did his
best to discredit the Jews as actual historical agents, but was content to allow
them a position within the history of salvation as this was necessary to demon-
strate the succession of the Christians to the status of chosen people.
Those features of Jewish history which Isidore did mention were not
intended to suggest an exalted position for the Jews in the divine plan. From
the one hundred and forty-four year long Jewish servitude in Egypt to the cap-
ture of Jerusalem by Pompey, the work is peppered with references to setbacks
for the Jews. Taken together, these references suggest that the Jews were not
just oppressed politically and defeated militarily; their homeland was con-
trolled and inhabited by other peoples.37 This is not to say that Isidore’s entries
concerning the Jews were wholly negative. A number of ‘positive’ events from
Jewish history are recorded, possibly due to the constraints imposed by audi-
ence expectation and the need to make narrative sense out of his text. If the
Jews were to function as a model for the Christians, who were supposed to take
their place in salvation history, then it is unsurprising that they were granted
some ‘positive’ features.38
In his ostensibly more balanced entries on the Jewish past, Isidore focused
particular attention upon the authorship of scripture, instances of prophecy,
and the lives of the prophets. These issues were particularly important to Isidore
because they helped to indicate the truth of the Christian message and there-
fore to further undermine Judaism. For Isidore, the Incarnation was inextricably
linked to the end of the Jewish regnum, while the fact that the Jews had prophet-

37 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 44, pp. 34–35;
c. 102, pp. 56–57; c. 147, pp. 72–73; c. 161, pp. 78–79; c. 164, pp. 80–81; c. 167, pp. 82–83;
c. 193, pp. 94–95; c. 197, pp. 96–97; c. 207, pp. 100–01; c. 213, pp. 102–03; c. 227, p. 108–09.
38 
Even some of the ostensibly ‘positive’ chapters serve to undermine Jewish claims to divine
favour; for example, three of the positive chapters refer to the freeing of the Jews from various
captivities, Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 55, pp. 40–41;
c. 171, pp. 84–85; c. 201, pp. 98–99.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 137

ical foreknowledge of these events but still chose to ignore their import further
undermined Jewish legitimacy.39 So, even those entries which are not pointedly
anti-Jewish were useful to Isidore’s overall aim of discrediting the Jews.
When Isidore’s depiction of the history of Jewish temporal power is exam-
ined, a similar strategy of selective inclusion and exclusion is apparent. This is
most striking when we compare Isidore’s choices with his sources’ depiction of
the Jewish kingdom. So, while the Chronicon of Eusebius-Jerome stated that
David was the first to rule among the Jews, Isidore simply states that David
ruled for forty years.40 Isidore was much less reticent when it came to report-
ing the end of the kingdom, happily following Eusebius-Jerome and noting the
fulfilment of Daniel’s prophecy about the end of Jewish temporal and spirit-
ual power. Eusebius-Jerome, however, had continued to maintain the Jewish
filum (a column) in the Chronicon after this date, and on four subsequent occa-
sions referred to leaders of the Jews, one of whom is termed rex.41 It was not
until several reigns later that the filum on the kingdom of the Jews disappears,
when Jerusalem is captured under Vespasian.42 Isidore mentioned the capture
of Jerusalem in his Chronica maiora, but neither made reference to the Jewish
regnum nor ascribed any religious significance to the event. This is strange,
because in his De fidei Catholica contra Iudaeos the destruction of Jerusalem
and the ending of Jewish religious rights is described as having been prophesied
by Daniel and is interpreted as divine punishment for the Jews’ failure to accept
Christ’s message.43 In the Chronica maiora, therefore, Isidore deliberately chose

39 
Drews, The Unknown Neighbour, p. 71: ‘[In the De fide] Isidore’s exegesis is based on the
assumption that Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and that Old Testament
types point to the gospel and to the teaching of the church’.
40 
Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, ed. by Helm, a. 1077 a. Chr., p. 67a; cf. Isidore of Seville,
Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 107, pp. 58–59.
41 
Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, ed. by Helm, a.  34 p.  Chr, pp.  160–61 (fulfillment of
prophecy); later references to Jewish leaders: a. 4 p. Chr., p. 170 (Iudaeorum dux); a. 13 p. Chr.,
p. 171 (Iudaeorum principatum); a. 37 p. Chr., p. 177 (Iudaeorum princeps); a. 44 p. Chr., p. 179
(Iudaeorum rex).
42 
Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, ed. by Helm, a. 70 p. Chr., p. 187.
43 
Isidore mentioned that Titus took Jerusalem, but did not refer to the end of the king-
ship of the Jews, Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 251,
pp. 120–23. Isidore of Seville, De fide Catholica, i. 5. 5–11, cols 461–62; ii. 7–12, cols 512–18.
For Isidore and prophecy, see Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, ed. by Cazier, i. 18. 7, p. 63: ‘Often
those things which are going to occur happen just as though they are narrated in the sacred
scriptures […]. But why are future events written as if past, unless because those things which to
138 Jamie Wood

to ignore his source for earlier entries on the Jewish kingdom and to exclude an
interpretation of the events at Jerusalem that would have been well-suited to
his polemical purposes. By excluding this and earlier references to the kingdom
of the Jews, Isidore uncoupled the Jewish people from the flow of universal
history — their kingdom had no clear beginning or end, and it was difficult
to gauge the true extent of their power.44 By choosing to ignore the exegetical
interpretation of the fall of Jerusalem that he had propagated in the De fide
Catholica, Isidore focused attention on the Incarnation as the exact moment
at which the Jewish covenant with God ended and the mantle passed on to the
Christians. The reference to Jerusalem in the De fide Catholica was well placed
in such a polemical work but was redundant in a text like the Chronica maiora,
which was underpinned by a teleological rationale that saw history as moving
inevitably towards a single end-point.
Subsequent entries on the Jews in the Chronica maiora reinforce the impres-
sion that they had lost divine favour with their denial of Christ, an event that
was central to Isidore’s account of salvation history. This mirrors the attitude of
Isidore’s other works towards the Incarnation. The illegitimacy and impotency
of the Jews is repeatedly emphasized in the sections after the Incarnation: they
did not control the Temple, they had no legitimate leadership, and rebelled
against rightful authority.45
The last three references to the Jews in the Chronica maiora all discuss
instances of Jewish conversion to Christianity and illuminate Isidore’s changing
conception of the status of the Jews as history neared his own day. In the first
two cases, Isidore reports instances of divine intervention resulting in Jewish

his point should be written in the work, have now happened in divine predestination. Therefore
those things happen to us due to the passage of time, which are foreseen by the creator of every­
thing without [reference to] time’; i. 18. 8, pp. 63–64: ‘For this reason the revealed prophecy
of future things mixes with present things, in order that that future thing is thus believed, just
as it is determined that such a thing has been fulfilled. For by its custom it speaks through the
present about future times […]’.
44 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 237, pp. 114–15.
45 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 241, pp. 116–17:
Caligula ordered a statue of Jupiter to be placed under his name in the Temple of Jerusalem;
c. 251, pp. 120–23: Titus took and destroyed Jerusalem. 1,100,000 Jews died by famine and
the sword and another 100,000 were publicly sold [into slavery]; c. 261, pp. 126–27: Domitian
ordered that all of the line of David be killed; c. 269, pp. 130–31: the Jews rebelled, were subju-
gated by Hadrian, and Jerusalem was renamed Helia after Hadrian. Isidore does not, however,
link these disasters to Jewish responsibility for the death of Christ, as Orosius had done, see
Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity, pp. 202–06.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 139

conversion to Christianity.46 The third reference to the conversion of Jews

occurs at the very end of the Chronica maiora, where Isidore mentions that they
were converted to Christianity under the Visigothic King Sisebut.47 Isidore
had already implanted the idea that Jewish conversion resulted from the direct
intervention of God against those believing and acting wrongly, leading them
to realize their error and accept orthodoxy. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume
that he intended the conversion of the Jews at the end of the Chronica maiora
to be seen as one of the culminating points of God’s plan for the Visigothic
people.48 The conversion of the Jews represented the fulfilment of divine wishes
that had previously been demonstrated by the direct intervention of God in
history. Indeed, in his De fide Catholica contra Iudaeos, Isidore specifies that
the Jews will come to believe in Christ at the end of the world.49 The depiction
of Jewish conversion to Christianity in the Chronica maiora therefore served a
triple purpose, allowing Isidore to demonstrate the errors of the Jews, to praise
the orthodoxy of the ruling monarch and the Visigothic people, and to demon-
strate that at the end of the Chronica maiora the Visigoths and their kings had
assumed the role of God’s agents in the arena of conversion, carrying out his
wishes by converting the Jews.50

Religion and Empire: Romans and the Church

There is virtually no variation between the depictions of the history of the
Jews in the two redactions of the Chronica maiora. This indicates that Isidore
thought that the first redaction succeeded in disempowering the Jews histori-

46 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 345, pp. 162–65;
c. 379, pp. 180–83.
47 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 416, pp. 204–05:
‘et Iudaeos sui [Sisebut] regni subditos ad Xristi fidem convertit’ (he [Sisebut] converted the
Jews who were the subjects of his kingdom to Christianity); Cohen, Living Letters of the Law,
p. 108; Drews, The Unknown Neighbour, p. 202; more generally, see González Salinero, Las
conversiones forzosas de los judíos.
48 
It is worth noting another instance of divinely inspired conversion in the Chronica
maiora: Barbas, an Arian bishop in the Vandal kingdom, was confronted by a miracle when bap-
tising using a non-Catholic formula, resulting in the conversion to Catholicism of the person
he was hoping to baptise, Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions),
c. 393, pp. 190–91.
49 
Isidore of Seville, De fide Catholica, ii. 5, cols 508–10.
50 
Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, p. 108.
140 Jamie Wood

cally, gradually moving them from the mainstream of salvation history. There
was thus no point in altering the second redaction of the Chronica maiora.
When we turn to examine Isidore’s depiction of Roman history, however, we
see that he was far less faithful to his earlier account of the past when writing
the second redaction. These changes were aligned with alterations in the politi-
cal and religious context within which he was writing. The main contextual
factor was the conflict between the Visigoths and the Byzantines in the south
of Spain, which culminated in the expulsion of the latter in the 620s. This was
quickly followed by doctrinal conflict between the ecclesiastical leadership of
the recently united regions.
Since the time of Eusebius, Christian chroniclers had sought to reconcile
church and empire by emphasizing that it was the role of the emperor to protect
the church, promote orthodoxy and combat heresy. Isidore, however, sought to
give the church an existence largely independent of the emperor in order to
demonstrate that the Romans had no legitimate claim to Christian leadership
and therefore were in no way superior to the Visigoths in the field of religion.
With this motivation in mind, it is unsurprising that both redactions of the
Chronica maiora refer to persecution of Christians under a number of pagan
Roman emperors, as well as the Arian Constans (actually Constantius II).51
These episodes served a number of important purposes: they allowed Isidore
to discuss important episodes in the early history of the church, to demonstrate
the punishments God gave to persecutors, to denigrate the Romans as perse-
cutors, and to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity over paganism and
orthodoxy over heresy.
After describing the persecutions, Isidore made further and consistent efforts
to illustrate the turbulent nature of the relationship between the Roman state
and the church. Even the conversion of Constantine was no panacea. In both
redactions, Philip the Arab, who was ruling when Rome’s millennium occurred,

51 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 247, pp. 118–21,
c. 258–61, pp. 124–27 (including c. 259a, p. 127 of the second redaction); c. 299, pp. 142–43;
c.  310, pp.  146–47; c.  312, pp.  148–49; c.  317, pp.  150–51; c.  325, pp.  152–53; c.  336,
pp. 158–59; c. 344, pp. 162–63; c. 370, pp. 175–76, c. 390, pp. 188–89 (= persecution under
the Arian Vandal King Thrasamund); also Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, vi. 16:
‘times of persecution’. Isidore also refers to the fates of several victims of persecution, including:
Peter (crucified), Paul (killed by the sword), Simon Cleopas (crucified), Cyprian (martyred):
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 247, pp. 118–21; c. 266,
pp. 128–29; c. 310, pp. 146–47. Vandal persecution: c. 377, pp. 180–81; c. 390, pp. 188–89.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 141

is described as the first Christian emperor.52 By noting that the Empire was
ruled by a Christian at the time of its one thousandth year, Isidore stayed true
to his sources, Jerome and Orosius, who argued that this conjunction proved
that the Roman Empire was ultimately a Christian project. Additionally, how-
ever, it allowed Isidore to undercut Constantine’s central role in the story of
reconciliation between Christianity and Rome. Although Isidore does men-
tion several of the key events of Constantine’s reign, the last of the entries on
this emperor refers to his deathbed baptism into Arianism and concludes: ‘Alas,
what pain: he started well and ended badly!’53 This has the effect of casting fur-
ther doubts upon the authenticity of what several of Isidore’s sources had seen
as a key turning point in Christian history. Furthermore, by referring to the
Emperor Philip as a Christian and stating that Constantine had converted to
Arianism from orthodoxy, Isidore reinforced the power of later entries, which
depict the Romans as having fallen away from this pristine state. The subse-
quent conversions of Constans (actually Constantius II) to Arianism and of
Julian to paganism, and their mistreatment of Christians, serve to dissociate the
Empire and Christianity and dent Constantine’s watershed reputation.54 The
story of Roman religion, therefore, is one of movement away from Catholicism
and towards heresy, the reverse of that which Isidore attempted to tell about
the Visigoths.
Isidore devoted considerable attention to augmenting this narrative of
decline when he came to write the second redaction of the Chronica maiora
in the mid-620s, at the very moment when the Visigoths were expelling the
Roman Empire from southern Spain. However, this was not the end of Isidore’s
attempts in the second redaction of the Chronica maiora to demonstrate that
the Roman Empire was confessionally deviant. In the second redaction of the
text he depicts a number of sixth-century Byzantine emperors as heretics. This
was part of a concerted effort to rewrite the history of imperial Christianity,
and was intimately connected to Isidore’s personal interactions with heretics in
southern Spain in the late 610s.

52 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 303, pp. 144–45.
53 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 334, pp. 156–57:
‘Heu pro dolor: bono usus principio et fine malo!’
54 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 334, pp. 156–57;
c. 336, pp. 158–59; c. 344, pp. 162–63; cf. c. 330, pp. 154–55; c. 347, pp. 164–65; Isidore of
Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 401b, p. 197.
142 Jamie Wood

The Byzantine Empire and Heretics

Isidore’s main line of attack against the Romans was fairly blunt: to under-
mine their religious legitimacy by suggesting that their emperors were here-
tics. Isidore showed particular interest in the theological disagreements that
resulted from the Council of Chalcedon, the Three Chapters Controversy, and
the development of the heresy of the Acefali.55 The Three Chapters Controversy
developed in the aftermath of the Emperor Justinian’s decision, in 543, to con-
demn Theodore of Mopsuestia and certain works of Theodoret of Cyrrhus
and Ibas of Edessa, even though they had been reinstated by the Council of
Chalcedon (451) after condemnation at Ephesus II (449). The resulting council
(Constantinople II, 553) was followed by dissent, discord, and schism between
Monophysites and supporters of Chalcedon, with most western churchmen,
including the papacy, in the latter camp.56 The Acefali (‘headless ones’) were
an extreme group of Monophysites who refused to accept the Henotikon pub-
lished by the Emperor Zeno in 481. Originating in Egypt, they received their
name because they were originally in communion with none of the five patri-
archs of the Empire. In Isidore’s mind the Acefali included anyone who rejected
Chalcedon, and he conflated them with those who were in favour of the Three
Chapters of Justinian, as his comments on the heresy in the Etymologiae make
clear:
The Acefalites are so called, that is, without a head whom the heretics follow —
for their founder, from whom they originated, is not known. Opposing the Three
Chapters of the Council of Chalcedon, they deny the individuality of the two sub-
stances in Christ and preach that there is a single nature in his person.57

In the first redaction of the Chronica maiora, Isidore devotes little more atten-
tion to the Acefali than he did to other heretical groups. By the time he came

55 
Madoz, ‘El Concilio Calcedonia en San Isidoro de Sevilla’, pp. 196–99: the ‘doctrinal-
theological atmosphere’ in seventh-century Spain was deeply influenced by African traditions of
opposition to the emperor and support for the Council of Chalcedon.
56 
Gray and Herren, ‘Columbanus and the Three Chapters Controversy’, for Western views
of the Three Chapters and the fifth ecumenical council at Constantinople (553), held under
Justinian. Rejection of Constantinople (553), and the orthodoxy of Justinian, may have been
more to do with emphasising support for Chalcedon (451) than with rejecting the substance of
the later council. See also Chazelle and Cubitt, eds, The Crisis of the Oikoumene.
57 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, viii. 5. 66; cf. Isidore of Seville, De ecclesi-
asticis officiis, ed. by Lawson, ii. 3, p. 54; Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, p. 241.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 143

to write the second redaction of the text, Isidore’s interest in the matter of the
Acefali had increased exponentially.58
Isidore emphasized imperial error by referring repeatedly to the emperors’
attitudes to Chalcedon in the second redaction. His implicit argument here
is that the emperors had rejected the decisions of an ecumenical council and
caused the Three Chapters Controversy. Anastasius even found fault with and
corrected the gospels.59 The growth in interest in the Acefali is particularly note-
worthy because Isidore did not usually emphasize the connections between
emperors and religion. In the second redaction of the Chronica maiora, however,
he consistently records whether the ruling emperor supported or opposed the
Acefali, suggesting that he was deliberately using adherence to Chalcedon and
attitude towards these particular heretics as markers of Roman unorthodoxy.
Isidore devoted a number of chapters to presenting Justinian as a heretic
in the second redaction of the Chronica maiora. This was probably because
Justinian had sanctioned the Byzantine invasion of Spain in the mid-sixth cen-
tury, an event which has posed a severe threat to the integrity of the nascent
Visigothic state and, in Isidore’s eyes at least, to the orthodoxy of the Catholic
population of Spain. Isidore’s first strategy, therefore, was to present Justin I,
Justinian’s predecessor, more favourably in the second redaction of the Chronica
maiora than the first. Isidore accomplished this aim by deliberately interpolat-
ing a detail stating that Justin was a lover of Chalcedon and had abandoned
the Acefali.60 Further additions to the second redaction throw this into sharper
relief: Justinian, receiving the heresy of the Acefali, compelled every bishop in
his empire to condemn the Three Chapters of Chalcedon; then the Theodosian
and Gaianan heresies appeared in Alexandria.61 Imperial abuse of the church
thus led to new heresies. Although the first redaction of the Chronica maiora
made no reference to religion in the reign of Justin II, the second reported that

58 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (first redaction), cc. 384–85, p. 184;
cf. Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), cc. 384–85, p. 185;
c. 386a, p. 187; c. 389a, p. 187; c. 394a, p. 191; c. 397a–b, p. 193; c. 401a, p. 197.
59 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 389a–b, p. 187.
60 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 394a, p. 191.
John of Biclarum, Chronicon, ed. by de Hartmann, p. 59, praises Justin II.
61 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 397a–b, p. 193.
Moorhead, ‘The West and the Roman Past’, pp. 157–58, for further examples of Isidore’s dis-
like for Justinian, his concern for the Three Chapters controversy, and general disdain for
Byzantium; Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, p. 230, for the changes made to the creed at
the council of Toledo (589), which ignored innovations in the East.
144 Jamie Wood

Justin II destroyed those who had published in opposition to Chalcedon and

ordered the celebration of the memory of the council.62 According to Isidore,
therefore, this was a complete reversal of the situation under Justinian and the
reaffirmation of orthodoxy had positive consequences: the Armenians first
become Christian.63 By adding entries on the war against the Ostrogoths in
Italy and the invasion of Spain, Isidore reminded his audience of exactly why
they disliked Justinian: not only was he a heretic who ignored the rulings of
councils, but he had defeated fellow Goths in Italy and had invaded Hispania.64
Isidore therefore depicted selected emperors as supporting the Acefali and
opposing Chalcedon as part of his wider efforts to demonstrate the problem-
atic nature of the relationship between the Empire and the church, especially
relating to the negative role of the emperors in the Three Chapters Controversy
and the rise of Acefali.
For Isidore, Justinian seems to have stood as the prototypical ‘bad’ emperor,
who interfered in the life of the church, overturned synods, and adopted hereti-
cal beliefs. To western eyes this demonstrated how the correct relationship
between empire and ecclesia had been corrupted by contemporary Romans.
This will be discussed in more detail below, but it is unsurprising that in his
other works Isidore’s approach to Justinian was equally as negative as in his
chronicles. Justinian did not live up to Isidore’s ideal of what a ruler should
be and how he should act. 65 In the Etymologiae, Isidore listed four venera-
biles synodi (the ecumenical councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and
Chalcedon), while in the Chronica maiora he referred to five councils (the ones
outlined above and the non-ecumenical council of Carthage). However, by the

62 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 401a, p. 197:
‘He destroyed those things which had been published against the synod of Chalcedon and he
ordered the profession of faith of the 150 fathers to be celebrated at the time of the offering’.
63 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 401b, p. 197.
64 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 399a–b, p. 195.
For Roman military intervention in Spain, see Vallejo Girves, Bizancio y la España tardo anti-
gua; García Moreno, ‘The Creation of Byzantium’s Spanish Province’; for Isidore and Byzantine
religious deviance, see MacCoull, ‘Isidore and the Akephaloi’, pp. 172–74; Fontaine, ‘Isidoro
de Sevilla frente a la España bizantina’; Moorhead, Justinian, pp. 125, 132–34, 173. Justinian’s
predecessor and successor, Justin  I and Justin  II, were both defenders of Chalcedon and
Justinian was not an acephalite (or monophysite) until the end of his life, if ever. Justinian’s wife,
Theodora, was sympathetic to the heretics; see Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium,
pp. 42–46.
65 
For more background to the Three Chapters Controversy, orthodoxy, and imperial
authority, see Maas, Exegesis and Empire; Maas, ‘“Delivered from their Ancient Customs”’.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 145

time Isidore wrote these texts there had actually been five ecumenical coun-
cils: the four referred to in the Etymologiae and Constantinople II, held under
Justinian in 553. Constantinople II was also excluded from the Hispana, a col-
lection of the acta of church councils, which Isidore is thought to have edited
in the early seventh century. Isidore was definitely aware that this council had
taken place because there are references to its proceedings in the records of the
second council of Seville (619), over which Isidore presided.66 All of this sug-
gests that Isidore knew that Justinian was not a heretic and deliberately decided
to ignore that fact when writing the second redaction of his Chronica maiora,
instead painting a picture of the emperor as a supporter of heresy and excluding
all reference to the ecumenical council over which Justinian had presided.
Perhaps the key to understanding the changes between the two redactions
of the Chronica maiora is Isidore’s own involvement with a Bishop Gregory.
This interaction is recorded in the acts of the second council of Seville, held in
619 in the period between the writing of the first and the second redactions of
the Chronica maiora. Gregory came from Roman territory in southern Spain
which the Visigoths had recently reconquered from the Empire. At the council,
Isidore and his fellow bishops described Gregory as an adherent of the heresy
of the Acefali and interpreted his presence in Spain as a dire threat to uniform-
ity and orthodoxy. They devoted a significant amount of space to refuting his
views. That the Acefali continued to blight the Roman Empire is made clear
in both redactions of the Chronica maiora, which states that many in the East
languish in the heresy up to Isidore’s own time.67
Isidore’s reconstruction of imperial religious history conflated the identities
of the two main enemies of the contemporary Hispano-Visigothic church and

66 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, vi.  16.  5–10; Madoz, ‘El Concilio
Calcedonia en San Isidoro de Sevilla’, pp. 193, 195; Munier, ‘Saint Isidore de Seville’. MacCoull,
‘Isidore and the Akephaloi’, pp. 175–76, demonstrated how Isidore used part of the records of
Constantinople 553 in the records of the second council of Seville, held in 619. Moorhead,
‘The West and the Roman Past’, pp. 157–58; Hillgarth, ‘Historiography in Visigothic Spain’,
p. 297 and n. 149. Isidore’s De viris illustribus presents Justinian negatively, specifically over the
issue of the Three Chapters, and his power is presented as being equal to that of the Visigothic
king, Athanagild: Isidore of Seville, De viris illustribus, ed. by Codoñer Merino, cc. 18–19 and
25, pp. 144, 147; cf. c. 22, p. 146: ‘Justinian held imperium in the empire and Athanagild in the
Spains’. Cf. Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, p. 241. Facundus of Hermiane and Victor
of Tunnuna were both rated illustrious by Isidore due to their defence of the Three Chapters,
Isidore of Seville, De viris illustribus, ed. by Codoñer Merino, c. 19, p. 144, c. 25, p. 147.
67 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 385, p. 185:
‘Cuius heresis peste plurimi actenus Orientalium languent’.
146 Jamie Wood

state, the Roman Empire, and eastern heretics.68 Particular emphasis was placed
on undermining Justinian because he had ordered the invasion of Spain and, by
precipitating the Three Chapters Controversy, had, to Spanish eyes, supported
the Acefali, who had so recently blighted Spain. He aimed to increase awareness
of the threat posed by easterners to the orthodoxy and security of Hispania. It
is no coincidence that Isidore’s earliest biographer, Braulio of Zaragoza, consid-
ered Isidore’s confrontation with Gregory at the second council of Seville to be
among his greatest achievements:
With what a flood of eloquence, with what barbs of divine scriptures and proofs
from the Fathers he confounded the heresy of the Acephalites, is revealed in the
acts of the council which met under his leadership at Seville, in which he estab-
lished the catholic truth against Gregory, the leader of said heresy.69

Visigothic Religion: A Catholic Heritage

At the same time as denigrating the Romans and their leaders as heretics, Isidore
moulded the religious history of the Visigoths into a narrative of orthodox per-
fection. His Visigoths were as ‘Catholic’ as possible throughout their history,
not solely after they had actually converted from Arianism to Catholicism in
the late 580s. Again, he intensified his efforts to create a Catholic past for the
Visigoths in the second redaction of the Chronica maiora. This was related to
the conflicts between the Byzantines and the Visigoths in southern Spain in
the late sixth and early seventh centuries. Neither of the two redactions of the
Chronica maiora refers to Visigothic paganism; Isidore is only interested in the
Christian past of the Visigothic people, and in focusing that past upon their
Catholic heritage. The first redaction of the Chronica maiora described how
Fritigern, the apparent victor in a civil conflict between two Visigothic groups,
was convinced, in exchange for help from the Byzantine Emperor Valens, to
convert from Catholicism to Arianism along with his people.70 In this account,
therefore, one Visigothic faction was complicit in the conversion. The second
redaction, however, simply states that through persuasion the Visigoths were
made heretics by Valens; responsibility is placed squarely at the feet of the

68 
MacCoull, ‘Isidore and the Akephaloi’, pp. 177–78, for the Acefali.
69 
Braulio of Zaragoza, Renotatio, ed. by Martín, l. 62–66, p. 206.
70 
Cf. Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, ed. by Helm, a. 367 p. Chr., p. 245; Orosius, Historiae
adversum paganos, ed. and trans. by Arnaud-Lindet, vii. 32. 9, iii. p. 86.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 147

emperor.71 There is also variation in the exact confessional allegiances of the

Visigoths between the two redactions: the first suggests that the Visigoths con-
verted from Catholicism to Arianism, while the second remained silent on this
issue, implying that the Visigoths converted from paganism to become heretici
of an unspecified variety. The second redaction of the Chronica maiora thus
offers a clearer account of the conversion of the Visigoths to heresy than its
predecessor, blaming the Romans, removing any hint of Visigothic culpability
or apostasy and ignoring their Arianism.72
The differences between these conversion narratives led to a small but
important alteration to the description of the conversion of the Visigoths from
Arianism to Catholicism at the end of the text. While the first redaction of
the Chronica maiora describes the Visigoths as ‘reverting’ to the Catholic faith,
the second redaction has them ‘converting’ to Catholicism from an unspecified
heresy.73 In the first redaction of the Chronica maiora, Isidore was suggesting
that the Visigoths had a ‘Catholic’ past to which they were returning as his
own day neared. This strategy was abandoned in the second redaction, presum-
ably because Isidore realized that the story he had earlier told of conversion
from Catholicism to Arianism and then back again was not very flattering,
for it implied apostasy: straightforward conversion from heresy to Catholic
orthodoxy was a better option.74 It was vitally important that Isidore get this
story right because, as Furtado has acknowledged, the final conversion of the
Visigoths to Catholicism under Reccared is one of the hinges upon which

71 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (first redaction), c.  349, p.  166;
cf. Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 349a, p. 167.
72 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (first redaction), c. 350, pp. 166, 168
reports the deeds of Ulfilas, the Arian Gothic bishop. This is omitted from the second redac-
tion, probably due to Isidore’s desire to play down the Visigoths’ Arian past and his idealization
of the office of bishop in the Chronica maiora, an image he may not have wanted to undermine
by referring positively to a heretical bishop. Interestingly, Cassiodorus-Epiphanius appears to
have adopted a similar strategy in his Historia Tripartita.
73 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (first redaction), c. 408, p. 200: ‘Gothi
[…] ad fidem catholicam revertuntur’ (the Goths are turned back to the Catholic faith); Isidore
of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 408, p. 201: ‘Gothi […] ad
fidem catholicam convertuntur’ (the Goths are converted to the catholic faith). Cf. Isidore of
Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (first redaction), c. 349, p. 166.
74 
Furtado, ‘From gens to imperium’, p. 412, emphasizes how, in the Historia Gothorum, the
conversion of Reccared acts as a bridge between the distant past of the Visigoths, when signs of
their religious orthodoxy were already clear, and Isidore’s own day, when this had been firmly
established.
148 Jamie Wood

Isidore hangs his account of the place of the Visigoths in salvation history.75 As
was noted previously, Isidore saw a definite place for divine intervention in the
case of conversion from Judaism to Christianity, and his somewhat selective
depiction of the Visigothic conversion from Arianism to Catholicism should
be interpreted as receiving similar divine sanction.76 The precise delineation of
the confessional history of the Visigoths was of prime importance, because the
claims of the Visigothic monarchy to Catholic orthodoxy were central criteria
for both religious and political integration in the seventh-century kingdom.
Royal legitimacy stemmed as much from the credibility of kings’ claims to be
defenders and propagators of orthodoxy as from their actual abilities and suc-
cesses in those fields.77

The Succession of Kingdoms

It is clear, therefore, that Isidore saw the Visigoths as occupying an exalted
place in God’s plan for mankind, a place which the Jews and the Romans no
longer merited. In order to bolster the impression of Visigothic supremacy,
Isidore adopted the idea of a succession of kingdoms. This allowed him to place
the Visigoths as the dominant power at the culmination of universal history.
Isidore also retrojected Visigothic supremacy onto the distant past by empha-
sizing the historical supremacy of the kingdoms of peoples that were closely
associated with the Visigoths. Isidore thus positioned the Visigoths as one of
the dominant powers throughout history, not simply in the present.
To gain a better understanding of this issue we need to explore a number of
intertexts between the Chronica maiora and Isidore’s other writings. The suc-
cession idea originated from analyses of the prophetical writings of Daniel. The
succession of kingdoms theory had also been adopted by a number of Isidore’s
sources.78 Although Isidore never states explicitly that the succession of king-

75 
Furtado, ‘From gens to imperium’, pp. 408, 412–14.
76 
Isidore’s depiction of the conversion, perhaps the defining moment in the history of
late sixth-century Spain, was as selective as his earlier accounts of the Christian past; cf. Wolf,
Conquerors and Chroniclers, pp. 1–24.
77 
Castellanos, Los Godos y la cruz, pp. 191–267.
78 
Reydellet, ‘Les Intentions idéologiques’, pp.  387–88; Daniel  2.  31–45 recounted
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, in which he sees a statue made from various metals. This was often
interpreted as representing a succession of four kingdoms. The Donatist Liber Genealogus,
another of Isidore’s sources, also mentioned the succession. Orosius, Historiae adversum paga-
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 149

doms is guiding his presentation of history in the Chronica maiora, in the

Etymologiae he is clear that such a process had occurred in the past:
Every nation has had its own reign in its own times — like the Assyrians, the
Medes, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks — and fate has so rolled over their
allotments of time that each successive one would dissolve the former. Among all
the reigns on earth, however, two reigns are held to be glorious above the rest —
first the Assyrians, then the Romans — as they are constituted differently from one
another in location as much as time. For as one began first and the other later, so
one was in the East, the other in the West. Indeed, the beginning of the latter came
close upon the end of the former. Other reigns and other kings are considered mere
appendices of these two.79

Examination of the Chronica maiora reveals that Isidore did chart the rise and
fall of a number of different kingdoms, although there is considerable confu-
sion about the relationships between them and their overall place in history, as
Table 2 reveals.
Isidore’s sources were not consistent in their presentation of the succes-
sion of kingdoms either. It may, therefore, have been the very openness of his
sources’ presentation of the succession that appealed to Isidore. It allowed him
to vary the succession to meet his own objectives.80 Reydellet explained the
confusion by suggesting that, in the Chronica maiora, Isidore was not inter-
ested in charting the history of a succession of hegemonic kingdoms, but in
charting a spiritual succession. This helped to explain his lack of focus on the
Persian kingdom, for example.81 While this might help to explain the halting
nature of Isidore’s application of the succession, it is directly contradicted by

nos, ed. and trans. by Arnaud-Lindet, ii. 1. 3–6, i, 84–85; vii. 2. 1–15, iii, 17–20. Jerome,
Commentariorum in Danielem, ed. by Glorie, i. 2. 31–35, pp. 793–95.
79 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, ix. 3. 2–3.
80 
Isidore’s vocabulary (for example, in chapters 103 and 105) is far from definitive on the
question of a succession. The fall of some of the kingdoms is not referred to at all, others seem
to exist at the same time (Assyrians and Lacedaimonians), and the names of some kingdoms are
confused (Medes and Persians, Alexandrians and Greeks), while some last for an extremely short
period of time. Although the Egyptian kingdom assumed principium and the kingdoms of the
Assyrians and Sicyonians are stated to have arisen, Isidore continued to structure the Chronica
maiora according to the reigns of the Jewish patriarchs. The overarching regnal structure is as fol-
lows: Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), cc. 4–166, pp. 8–91:
Jewish rulers; cc. 167–69, pp. 82–83: Hebrew captivity; cc. 170–94, pp. 84–95: Persian emper-
ors; cc. 195–232, pp. 94–111: Greek kings; cc. 233–418, pp. 110–209: Roman emperors.
81 
Reydellet, ‘Les Intentions idéologiques’, p. 388.
150 Jamie Wood

Table 2. The Succession of Kingdoms in the Second Redaction of the Chronica maiora

Chapter
26 Under whom [= Seruch] the Scythian kingdom [regnum] began [exortum est],
where Tanus first ruled.
28 The Egyptian kingdom [regnum], where Zoes ruled first, assumed the principal rule
[sumit principium].
30 Under whom [= Thara] the kingdom [regnum] of the Assyrians and the Sicinians
arises [exoritur]. But also Belus ruled first in Assyria, whom some believe to be
Saturn; and Agialeus [ruled] first among the Sicinians, from whom Agialea is
named, which upto now is called the Peloponnese.
103 And the kingdom [regnum] of Sicyon is ended [finitur].
105 The kingdom [regnum] of the Lacedaimonians arises [exoritur].
137 And the Assyrian kingdom [regnum] is transferred [transfertur] to the Medes.
194 Up to this point the Persian kingdom [regnum] stood firm [stetit], thereafter the
kings of the Greeks begin [reges Graecorum incipiunt].
195 Alexander the Macedonian reigned for 5 years. Indeed, in his last 5 years, as they are
reckoned in order, he obtained [obtinuit] the monarchy of Asia [monarchiam Asiae],
having destroyed the kingdom [regnum] of the Persians, for his 7 earlier years are
computed alongside [years of ] the kings of the Persians [Persarum reges].
Thereafter the kings of Alexandria begin [Alexandriae reges incipient].
234a Following the civil war against Pompey, when he [= Gaius Julius Caesar] had been
invited, he obtained the monarchy of the entire Roman Empire [monarchiam totius
imperii Romani obtinuit], from whose name the following emperors were called
‘Caesar’. After him emperors follow.
237 And with the ceasing of the kingdom and priesthood of the Jews [cessante regno ac
sacerdotio Iudaeorum] the Lord Jesus is born of the Virgin in Bethlehem in the forty-
second year of his rule.

the statement on the matter in the Etymologiae. The table above also suggests
that Isidore was interested in the rise and fall of the Persians. So, although it is
difficult to discern a succession of kingdoms, Isidore was experimenting with
the idea in the Chronica maiora. He established a complex web of relationships
between the Visigoths and the Persians and Scythians in order to underline the
succession. These relationships will be explored in greater detail later in this
paper, but it is enough to note here that, by developing an ethnic genealogy for
the Visigoths, Isidore was able to further position them at the centre of world
history from the earliest times.
As the Chronica maiora neared his own time, Isidore shifted his history
of the Roman Empire and his chronological framework to the East. This was
a deliberate attempt to demonstrate that the Visigoths had succeeded the
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 151

Romans as the dominant force in the West. Significantly, this shift occurs imme-
diately after the Visigothic sack of Rome (410, under Honorius). Prior to the
sack, Isidore referred to both eastern and/or western Roman emperors in the
regnal dating chapters which form the chronological framework of the text.82
After the sack of Rome, only Byzantine emperors are mentioned. Isidore defi-
nitely knew that both eastern and western empires continued to exist after this
point because he refers to Valentinian III (ruler 425–55) as Occidentis impera-
tor when writing about Vandal history.83 By no longer referring to the western
emperor in the Chronica maiora after Rome had been sacked by the Visigoths,
Isidore suggested that the Visigoths had superseded the Romans in the West.
Thereafter, he focused his attention on discrediting the eastern emperors. The
sack of Rome is also emphasized in the first redaction of the Historia Gothorum,
which states that those who had come under Visigothic control after the sack of
Rome preferred Visigothic domination to that of the Romans:
And from then up to this point in time the Romans, who remain in the kingdom
of the Goths, embrace them to such a degree that it is better for them to live poor
with the Goths than to be powerful among the Romans and bear the heavy yoke
of tribute.84

Isidore thus devoted considerable textual energy to demonstrating the replace-

ment of Roman by Visigothic power in the West.
Isidore demonstrated Visigothic supremacy by showing that the Visigoths
had defeated the Romans in the military sphere and by suggesting that the
Visigoths were no longer a barbarian ‘other’. They could now govern the
Roman population for the benefit of both parties.85 By the simple act of no
longer mentioning the western Roman emperors after Rome had been sacked
by the Visigoths, Isidore denied them any place in history after that event. The
Visigoths became by default the main power in the West because they were the
only political group that was referred to in any detail after the sack of Rome.
This also enabled Isidore to devote all of his attention to undermining the
Byzantine emperors.

82 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 372, pp. 178–79.
83 
Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (both redactions), c. 74, p. 294.
84 
Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (first redaction), c. 16,
p. 196: ‘Unde et hucusque Romani, qui in regno Gothorum consistent, adeo eos amplectuntur,
ut melius sit illis cum Gothis pauperes vivere quam inter Romanos potentes esse et grave iugum
tributi portare’.
85 
Pohl, ‘The Construction of Communities’, p. 13.
152 Jamie Wood

Spain was the main contemporary arena for the competition between
Byzantines and Visigoths. 86 The Chronica maiora culminates with the
Visigothic conquest of the Byzantine province in southern Spain.87 Isidore’s
changing depiction of this event reveals a great deal about the methods he
employed in constructing the Chronica maiora and the reasons which may have
underlain those methods. The first redaction of the Chronica maiora states:
Sisebut, the most glorious princeps of the Goths, made many cities of the Roman
military in Spain subject to himself by warfare, and he converted the Jews who
were the subjects of his kingdom to Christianity.

The second redaction of the Chronica maiora has the following to say:
Also, in Spain Sisebut, king of the Goths, took many of the same cities of the
Roman military, and he converted the Jews who were the subjects of his kingdom
to Christianity. After which Swinthila, the most religious princeps, began a war
with the remaining Roman cities and, with a swift victory, was the first to obtain
the monarchia of Spain.88

Isidore was keenly aware of the symbolic significance of the terminology he was
deploying in these extracts.89 Most importantly, the second redaction of the
Chronica maiora emphasizes how Swinthila was the first to obtain the monar-
chy (monarchia) of the whole of Spain. This is thrown into further relief when
we compare it to the use of similar terminology earlier in the text. Alexander of
Macedon is stated to have obtained monarchia in both redactions.90 Although
86 
See Furtado, ‘From gens to imperium’, p. 411, on the centrality of conflict with Rome to
the construction of the Historia Gothorum, and the focus upon Spain in that text.
87 
Cf. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, xv. 1. 67: ‘But now it [Cartagena] has
been overthrown and reduced to desolation by the Goths’.
88 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (first redaction), cc. 415–16, p. 204:
‘Sisebutus Gothorum gloriosissimus princeps in Spania plurimas Romanae militiae urbes
sibi bellando subiecit et Iudaeos sui regni subditos ad Xristi convertit’; cf. Isidore of Seville,
Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), cc. 415–16b, p. 205: ‘In Spania quoque
Sisebutus Gothorum rex plurimas eiusdem Romanae militiae urbes cepit et Iudaeos sui regni
subditos ad Xristi convertit. Post quem religiosissimus Suinthila princeps bellum cum reliquis
Romanis urbibus iniit celerique victoria Spaniae monarchiam primus obtinuit’; cf. Isidore of
Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (second redaction), c. 62, pp. 274, 276:
‘totius Spaniae intra oceani fretum monarchiam regni primus idem potitus, quod nulli retro
principium est conlatum’.
89 
Furtado, ‘From gens to imperium’, p. 411, for the significance of such political terminol-
ogy for Isidore in the Historia Gothorum.
90 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), c. 195, pp. 94–97.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 153

Julius Caesar had been described as the first Roman to obtain sole principa-
tus in the first redaction, in the second he is said to have obtained ‘monarchia
totius imperii Romani’.91 Importantly, a reference to the conquest of certain
areas of Spain by the Visigothic king Leovigild which had been present in the
first redaction of the Chronica maiora was removed from the second version of
the text, no doubt with the intention of further amplifying the achievement
of Swinthila. Intertextual inquiry can deepen our understanding of this issue.
At the beginning of the Historia Gothorum, he says that Alexander and Caesar
(along with Pyrrhus) were particularly respectful of the military power of the
Visigoths.92 Isidore therefore demonstrated the power of the Visigoths and
their kings by creating links to earlier figures of great power and through the
use of loaded vocabulary about political sovereignty.93

A Scythian regnum
Isidore’s histories of peoples were presented in similar ways to his accounts of
individual rulers. An examination of the first regnum that Isidore mentions at
the start of his world history — the Scythian kingdom — helps to underline the
special role that Isidore carved out for the Visigoths in world history. A number
of writers before Isidore, such as Orosius, Jerome, and Jordanes, had linked the
Goths, the Getae, and the Scythians. Isidore developed this association further
and added something new to the canon: the Persians. It should be remembered
at this point that the Scythians were the ‘odd one out’ in the list of peoples asso-
ciated with Gothic origins at the start of the Historia Gothorum. As the quin-
tessential ‘Other’, the Scythians played an important role in the definition of
group and individual identities in Greek and Roman ethnographic traditions.94
In Isidore’s Chronica maiora, however, they were more fully integrated into the

91 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (first redaction), c.  234, p.  112,
cf. Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 234a, p. 113; Isidore
of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (second redaction), c. 235a, p. 113, in which Isidore
states that Augustus triumphed over Spain.
92 
Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (both redactions), c. 2,
pp. 172, 174; Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (second redac-
tion), c. 3, pp. 174, 176.
93 
Reydellet, La Royauté dans la littérature latine, pp. 518–23, for the significance of the
term monarchia for Isidore.
94 
For the Scythians in the classical ethnographic tradition, see Isaac, The Invention of
Racism, pp. 55–168.
154 Jamie Wood

course of universal history. Isidore narrates the rise of the Scythian kingdom in
a highly selective manner. Isidore did not derive the first entry on them from
Prosper of Aquitaine, his main source for the earliest part of the text, or from any
other of his most frequently-used sources. Instead, he modified an entry from
Justinus’s Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi: ‘There were in these
times the ancients Vezosis the Egyptian, and Tanaus, the King of Scythia, of
whom one died in Pontus and the other [died] all the way in Egypt’.95 So, while
in Justinus’s Epitoma the Egyptian and Scythian kingdoms are treated together,
Isidore uncoupled the two and placed the Scythians before the Egyptians. This
entry is of vital importance because it helped to connect the Visigoths and their
kingdom into the flow of history at the earliest possible moment, because, for
Isidore, the Visigoths were Scythians. This is made plain in both redactions of
the Historia Gothorum, most forcefully in the first, where Isidore states: ‘The
kingdom of the Goths is certainly very ancient, because it arose from the king-
dom of the Scythians’.96 According to Isidore, therefore, the people from whom
the Visigoths were descended had established the world’s first regnum. Isidore
therefore modified deliberately an entry in order to place the Scythian ancestors
of the Visigoths at the summit of power at the very start of history. Importantly,
the fall of the Scythian kingdom is never referred to in the Chronica maiora —
the Scythians remained undefeated, just like the Visigoths.
A number of references in the Etymologiae suggest that Isidore was attempt-
ing to position the Visigoths at the centre of a matrix of ancient ethnic groups
by genetic and geographical association. He explains that the Dacians were off-

95 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín (both redactions), cc. 26, 28, pp. 26–27:
‘Sub quo Scitarum regnum exortum est, ubi primus regnavit Tanus […] Aegyptiorum regnum
sumit principium, ubi primus regnavit Zoes’; cf. Justinus, Epitoma historiarum, ed. by Seel,
i. 1. 6, p. 3: ‘Fuere quidem temporibus antiquiores Vezosis Aegyptius et Scythiae rex Tanaus,
quorum alter in Pontum, alter usque Aegyptum excessit’.
96 
Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (first redaction), c. 1,
p. 172: ‘Gothorum antiquissimum esse regnum certum est, quod ex regno Scytharum est exor-
tum’; Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (second redaction), c. 66
(Recapitulatio), p. 282: ‘Gothi de Magog Iapheth filio orti sum Scythis una probantur origine
sati, unde nec longe a vocabulo discrepant. Demutata enim ac detracta littera Getae quasi
Scythae sunt nuncupati’ (the Goths originated from Magog, the son of Japeth, and have been
proved to have a common origin with the Scythians. That is why they are not much different in
name: with one letter changed and one removed, ‘Getae’ becomes ‘Scythae’). See also Isidore of
Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, ix. 2. 27, for common origins of Scythians and Goths. For a
detailled survey of other antique and medieval interpretations of the origins of the term ‘Goth’,
see Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths, pp. 21–53, 232–34.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 155

shoots of the Goths, that the Goths are said to have been called Getae by the
ancients, and that the Massagetae are Scythian in origin and are known as the
‘strong Getae’.97 Elsewhere in the text, Isidore creates a link between the Goths
and the Scythians by stating that both peoples originated from Magog.98 The
Scythians and the Massagetae are stated to live in the same region. Furthermore,
the regions of the Goths and the Scythians are both said to have been named
after Magog.99 The Scythians were integral to Isidore’s efforts to place the
Visigoths in an early place in history and to connect them to a biblical and
ethnically diverse past. Although this was in order to construct the Visigoths as
the main ingredient of Isidore’s historical melting pot.

Persians and Parthians

Isidore’s effort to place the Visigoths at the centre of a network of ethnic his-
tories was deepened further by relating them to the Persians and the Parthians
through the Scythians. In the Etymologiae, Isidore has the following to say about
the Parthians: ‘The Parthians likewise take their origin from the Scythians, for
they were Scythian exiles, which is still evident from their name, for in the
Scythian language exiles are called Parthi’.100 For Isidore the Persians and the
Parthians were very closely related. Although Parthia and Persia are described as
neighbouring regions in the Etymologiae, due to the ‘invincible strength of the
Parthians’ other adjoining areas, such as Persia, came to be included under the
name ‘Parthia’.101 Isidore’s conception of the role that the Persians had played in
history is made plain in the second redaction of the Historia Gothorum, which
describes the Persians as the agents of God’s wrath:
It should be noted that, while every battle is damaging to the peoples involved, the
Huns actually served a purpose by perishing. This is because they had been raised
up for the discipline of the faithful, just like the nation of the Persians. For they
were the rod of the wrath of God. As often as his indignation went forth against
the faithful, he punished them with the Huns, so that, chastened by their suffering,

97 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, ix. 2. 90; ix. 2. 63; ix. 2. 89.
98 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, ix. 2. 27; ix. 2. 89.
99 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, xiv. 3. 31; xiv. 4.6.
100 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, ix. 2. 44; see also ix. 3. 9.
101 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, xiv. 3. 8–12.
156 Jamie Wood

the faithful would force themselves away from the greed of this world and from sin
and claim the inheritance of the celestial kingdom.102

Elsewhere in the Etymologiae, Isidore connects the Persians and the Huns to
the Visigoths through their neighbours the Massagetae and the Scythians, who,
as we have already seen, were both related to the Visigoths.103 Again, geographi-
cal and genealogical proximity served to position the Visigoths at the centre
of a network of ethnic groups, into the central flow of world history, and as a
people who had been selected by God for a special role in history.
Importantly, a layer of entries seem to have been added deliberately to the
final part of the second redaction of the Chronica maiora in order to underpin
this very point. The Persians act consistently to punish persecuting and hereti-
cal emperors, as can be seen from Table 3.
In the second redaction of the Chronica maiora, the Persians, distant rela-
tives of the Visigoths and agents of God’s wrath, punished those emperors who
oppressed the church. Their victories towards the end of the text (chapters 413
and 414) suggest implicitly that the transition from Roman to Visigothic power
(reported in chapters 415 and 416) had divine sanction. The only reference
to Roman victory over the Persians under Christian emperors (by Belisarius,
Justinian’s general) in the first redaction of the Chronica maiora is removed
from the second redaction because Isidore wanted to denigrate Justinian as a
heretic in that version of the text. Mention of the fortunate nature of the vic-
tory could have led to the suggestion that, even under a heretical emperor, the
Romans had divine support and it therefore had to be expunged.
Interestingly, the penultimate chapter of the Chronicon of John of Biclarum,
one of the main sources for the last part of Isidore’s chronicle, stated that the
Persians had converted to Christianity and signed a peace treaty with the
Emperor Maurice.104 If Isidore’s main intention in writing the Chronica maiora
had been to chart the growth and triumph of Catholicism, this event should
surely have been included in his work. However, this would have undermined
his attempts to use the Persians to demonstrate that the replacement of Roman
with Visigothic power was divinely sanctioned. Hence the conversion story
was excluded and Persian victories over Rome were emphasized in its place.

102 
Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. by Rodríguez Alonso (second redaction),
cc. 28–29, pp. 216, 218.
103 
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, ix. 2. 62; ix. 2. 66.
104 
John of Biclarum, Chronicon, ed. by de Hartmann, c. 92 [a. 589], p. 82.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 157

Table 3. Persia and Persians at the End of the Chronica maiora

First redaction Second redaction

312. Valerian, stirring up a persecution of
Christians, was captured by the king of the
Persians and grew old there in the disgrace
of his life.
— trembled to such an extent that they ran to
—
— Persians, Julian died, having been hit by a
—
398. Belisarius the patrician triumphed
marvellously [mirabiliter] over the Persians.
413. Also, [under Phocas] most serious
Persian wars are stirred up against the
Republic. By which, when the Romans had
been strongly subdued, many provinces and
even Jerusalem were lost.
—
312. Valerian, stirring up a persecution of
Christians, was captured by the king of the
Persians and grew old there in the disgrace of
his life.
329a. He [Constantine] prepared a war with
the Persians. At the approach of which they
meet him as supplicants promising to carry
out his orders.
335a. Constans, terrible in the cruelty of his
habits, endured many things from the Persians.
345a. But, while proceeding against the
javelin as the attack was happening.
347a. and he [ Jovian] returned, having signed a
peace with the Persians […].
—
413. Also, [under Phocas] most serious Persian
wars are raised against the Romans. By which,
when the Romans had been strongly subdued,
certain eastern parts were lost.
414a. Heraclius completes the sixteenth year
of his imperium. At the start of which [reign]
the Slavs took Greece from the Romans, the
Persians Syria and Egypt and many provinces.

Of course, Isidore may have had a more prosaic reason for the ways in which
he told the stories of the Jews, Romans, Scythians, and Persians. The Scythians
were very far away from Spain and could in no way offer a serious threat to
the Visigoths. Conversely, the Romans and Jews were a very real and present
danger to the political and religious integrity of the seventh-century Visigothic
kingdom. ‘Scythian’ was an ancient ethnographic umbrella term for ‘outsid-
ers’ more than an actual people to identify with, and could thus be appropri-
ated without significant rhetorical risk. The fact that Isidore knew that the
Persians were engaged in contemporary conflicts with the Romans may also
have influenced him to conjure up connections with the Visigoths, on the basis
of something approaching the maxim that ‘the enemy of your enemy is your
158 Jamie Wood

friend’. Nonetheless, in so carefully constructing a series of links between these

ancient peoples and the Visigoths, I suggest that Isidore moulded consciously
his depiction of the origins of the Visigoths in order to carve out a special niche
for them in the divine scheme. He did this through associating them with a
host of ancestors of great diversity and antiquity. By creating a range of his-
torical, geographical, and genealogical relationships between the Visigoths and
other ethnic groups, Isidore created an origin myth that could function as an
integrative force in the Visigothic kingdom. He distinguished the Visigoths
from their competitors and demonstrated to their subjects that the kingdom
had an ancient and a legitimate past.

Conclusion
Throughout his writings Isidore attempted ‘to establish certain sets of cultural
values and social norms across a rather varied population’.105 His annexation
of the histories of a series of different ethnic groups served to create for the
Visigoths an ancient and biblical past. The historical identity that was con-
structed for the Visigoths and their kings helped to reconcile divergent inter-
ests within the kingdom of the early seventh century, mediating between those
who had already reconciled themselves to the fact of Visigothic rule — espe-
cially the controversial rule of Swinthila — and those who were undecided. In
this case, therefore, the writing of history was an integrative act, functioning to
understand, explain, and construct contemporary political, social, and spiritual
identities and relationships through reference to a variety of pasts.106
Isidore targeted the Jews and the Romans because he was attempting to
show that the Visigoths were favoured by God throughout history. These two
peoples therefore had to be discredited in the Chronica maiora, in order that
the Visigoths could later succeed them in the political and religious spheres.
The second redaction of the Chronica maiora was a far more thorough effort
at achieving the separation of church and empire than the first redaction. In
this text, Isidore did his best to uncouple empire and church by presenting
several Roman leaders as heretics and demonstrating that God had used the
Persians as a divine scourge for the Romans. However, in writing about the suc-

105 
Cf. Pohl, ‘Archaeology of Identity’, p. 3.
106 
Corradini, ‘The Rhetoric of Crisis’, pp. 296, 321; Callow, ‘Reconstructing the Past in
Medieval Iceland’, pp. 299–301; Dumville, ‘Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists’; Reimitz,
‘Omnes Franci’, pp. 54, 66.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 159

cession of the Visigoths to a favoured status, Isidore did far more than abuse the
Romans and the Jews and laud the Visigoths. Our intertextual investigations
have revealed that, through the creation of a matrix of interrelated histories of a
range of different ethnic and religious groups, Isidore positioned the Visigoths
and their rulers at the centre of universal history. The depiction of the Arians
and Acefali in the Chronica maiora was a way of attacking the Romans as sup-
porters of heresy while undermining what were, in Isidore’s eyes, the two great-
est historical threats to orthodoxy of the Visigoths and Spain. The Jews were
also attacked due to the perceived threat that their errors posed to orthodoxy
in contemporary Spain and the disruption they caused to the establishment of
a confessional state. Isidore further suggested that the victories of his favoured
people were God-given by charting the numerous victories of the Persians —
distant relatives of the Visigoths in Isidore’s eyes, as well as a divine scourge —
over the Romans. The political replacement occurred when Swinthila expelled
the Roman forces from Spain, reaffirming the Scythian-Visigothic ascendancy
signalled at the start of the Chronica maiora. In the religious sphere the process
culminated with the Visigothic conversion to Catholicism under Reccared I
and the subsequent conversion of the Jews by Sisebut. This final event dem-
onstrated that the Visigoths had successfully taken on the Roman mantle of
extending the Catholic faith to other peoples.
In constructing his account of world history, Isidore engaged in a delicate
balancing act; he had to uncouple the universal Christian message from the
political universality that was inherent in the Roman historiographical tradi-
tion. While the first of these was potentially useful to Isidore’s efforts to buttress
his Visigothic past, its Roman counterpoint was highly dangerous. This the-
matic and interpretive balancing act was forwarded through a dual approach.
Firstly, some sources were deliberately excluded, misread, or misrepresented in
order to put a pro-Visigothic slant on world history. Secondly, a raft of typo-
logical and intertextual relationships were created between the Visigoths and
other peoples in furtherance of what we might term a political theology that
placed the Visigothic people at the culmination of world history.
An exploration of the relationship between the varying contents of the two
redactions of the Chronica maiora and the changing contexts of production
reveals that Isidore was seeking to comment actively on and influence contem-
porary affairs through altering his accounts of universal history. When these
relationships are viewed from the perspective of other Isidorian writings, this
active engagement comes into even sharper relief. Isidore was not simply experi-
menting with universal Christian history: he was focusing its entire span on the
Visigoths. This was accomplished by demonstrating the exemplary role which
160 Jamie Wood

the Visigoths and their kings had played throughout history, by denigrating
any groups or individuals who had challenged the Visigothic supremacy and
by propagating ideas about the central role of the Visigothic people and their
ethnic relations in the distant and not so distant past. In Isidore’s account of
universal history, the Visigoths did not simply stand as the dominant power in
his own day, but were positioned in a predominant place throughout history.
Isidore was also attempting to create a unified Visigothic identity, building
upon the foundations laid by Leander of Seville, his brother and predecessor at
Seville, at the Third Council of Toledo and by John of Biclarum’s Chronicon.
Isidore sought to retroactively impose unity upon a historical situation in
which there had been very few instances of the Visigoths acting in a unified
manner. This was part of a broader attempt to normalize Visigothic royal con-
trol. Isidore was writing to persuade several different constituencies at once:
Hispano-Roman, Catholic and Visigothic, and to unify them under a single
identity. The construction of an image of the Visigoths as a favoured people was
one way by which he could appeal to all of these groups at once.107 Of course,
none of these groups were unitary. Regional identities, at least partially the
result of geographical factors, served to disaggregate any Spanish political unit
and thus had to be overcome when attempting to create an image of a histori-
cally unified peninsula.108
Although Isidore rejected contemporary Roman claims to universal politi-
cal and religious leadership, he utilized terminology derived from Roman polit-
ical thought in order to parallel Visigothic kings with emperors and to legiti-
mate their succession to the empire. Therefore, although Isidore was largely
opposed to the Romans, he still worked within historiographical and political
paradigms which they had created.109 Eusebius had tied the fate of the Roman
Empire to that of the church and subsequent writers, such as Orosius, largely
followed him.110 Isidore was one of the first chronographers to move beyond
this interpretative framework by demonstrating that the Roman Empire and

107 
See Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’, pp. 63, 67, for the existence of overlapping systems of
identification, which resulted in the development of ‘flexible’ and ‘largely virtual’ identities in
order to encourage loyalty.
108 
Cf. Pohl, ‘Regnum und gens’, p. 440; Wood, Politics of Identity, pp. 33–65.
109 
Smith, Europe after Rome, p. 273, for later reception of Isidore’s ideas about empire,
which drew heavily on classical influences.
110 
On Eusebius and the glorification of the Christian Roman Empire, Baynes, Byzantine
Studies and Other Essays, pp.  9–10, 17–18, 33, 48–50, 168–72; Fowden, Empire to
Commonwealth, pp. 80–99.
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 161

the Catholic church were not necessarily bound into a reciprocally-beneficial

relationship.111 For Isidore, the Romans, like the Jews, were a central part of
the divine plan (and thus of his narrative), but were ultimately dispensable. The
pasts of these two groups had to be reported in order to make sense of universal
history, but the way in which Isidore recounts their histories demonstrates his
largely hostile attitude towards them.
Through linking the Visigoths with the Persians Isidore posed a subtle ques-
tion about the role of the Persians in Roman history as God’s scourge, espe-
cially in the context of contemporary Persian victories over the Romans. At the
same time he emphasized the role of God in the destiny of nations and that this
could be activated by or transferred to other nations. The implied relationship
between Visigoths and Persians makes this connection more attractive, but it is
unlikely that Isidore intended the Visigoths to be seen as the direct descendants
of the Persians and thus as a divine scourge themselves.
In his Chronica maiora Isidore managed to blend successfully two discursive
traditions that were potentially in conflict. The first of these traditions privi-
leged the universal and orthodox viewpoint of the Catholic church.112 Isidore
inherited this strand of his historical project directly from predecessors such
as Orosius and Eusebius-Jerome. The second tradition was much newer and
aimed to establish the supremacy of particular successor kingdoms over the
Romans and other ethnically-defined competitors. Isidore differed significantly
from his predecessors in promoting a move away from the universalism implicit
in Roman claims to political leadership and, as we have seen, he preferred the
Visigoths to the Romans. Nonetheless, this was not an insurmountable tension,
and it does not seem to have bothered Isidore. All he had done was alter the
content, not the form, of this discourse. Roman historians had always privi-
leged one people — their own — over all others, and the universal message
implicit in Christianity had simply provided them with further ammunition
to back up their claim to an exalted status. Within this framework, therefore,
Isidore simply replaced the Romans with the Visigoths. The addition of the
claim to a special status for his Visigoths was one of the next logical steps in
achieving the total replacement of Romans with Visigoths.

111 
Cf. John of Biclarum’s Chronicon, which has been seen as an intermediate stage between
those who placed themselves within the imperial tradition and those, like Isidore, who sought to
move away from it; cf. Wolf, Conquerors and Chroniclers, pp. 5–6.
112 
Pohl, ‘Regnum und gens’, pp. 440–49.
162 Jamie Wood

The term ‘Roman’ held a multiplicity of meanings and possibilities for medi-
eval authors, as is shown by Maya Mascarinec elsewhere in this volume in rela-
tion to the meaning and use of Roman-ness in early medieval Italy. ‘Roman’ was
a slippery concept for Isidore, but was also laden with possibilities. There were
inherent tensions (just as there are now interpretive tensions) between ‘impe-
rial’ Roman identity, ‘Hispano-Roman’ identity, ‘eastern’ Roman identity (or
‘Greek’ identity) compared to ‘western’ Roman identity. We can add to the mix
the ‘Romans’ from the city of Rome. I have argued that one of Isidore’s basic
aims was to persuade the ‘Romans’ from Spain that the imperial Roman past was
no longer a legitimate point of reference in either political or religious terms.
Instead, for Isidore, the Roman past becomes the venue in which Visigothic his-
tory is played out and against which Visigothic legitimacy is constructed.
The fragility of Visigothic control meant that Isidore’s offering had to be
acceptable to as many as possible of the people who mattered within contempo-
rary Spain. These included: Hispano-Roman ecclesiastical elites, the Visigothic
ruling elite, and various regional elites, especially those in the south-east who
had been so recently under Byzantine control. All of these groups had to be rec-
onciled if the Hispano-Gothic kingdom was to survive, and this is why Isidore
tailored his account to meet the requirements of each of them. Orthodoxy,
historical pedigree, geographical, proximity, and political unity were all essen-
tial elements in the Visigothic identity which Isidore moulded in the Chronica
maiora, as each of these elements could act as an integrating factor for the con-
stituent parts of the Visigothic polity.
This is not to say that there were no Visigoths in Spain, or that there was no
sense of historical or contemporary ‘Visigothic’ identity aside from that con-
structed by writers like Isidore. But that is not what has concerned me in this
paper. An analysis of Isidore’s writings reveals that Visigothic identities in sev-
enth-century Spain were actively appropriated and modified to meet contem-
porary social and political challenges and to create and influence a meaningful
social world. Indeed, the fact that such active engagement took place suggests
that Visigothic identity discourse was alive and well when Isidore was writ-
ing: it was dynamic and available for exploitation, perhaps with a ready-made
audience willing to buy into Isidore’s particular adaptations. We should not,
however, assume that ‘ethnicity’ was a permanent means of social integration,
always out there and waiting to be moulded by any intellectual who was willing
and able to do so. The structural role of ethnic discourse, as a tool for political
integration, only emerged within the post-Roman kingdoms through the work
of intellectuals like Isidore and owes a lot to religious, especially Christian, dis-
course. The specific activation of a Gothic identity discourse at the moment at
Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora 163

which Isidore was writing may thus point to something particularly significant,
remarkable even, about the contemporary context. Isidore worked within an
established discourse that was based on existing ideas about Gothic identity.
His perception, use, and transformation of that identity discourse were largely,
if not wholly, conditioned by concrete contemporary contexts and conflicts.
In writing a history of his favoured people, Isidore helped contribute to the
creation of a type of ethnically defined but religiously derived historical identity
which was to have a significant afterlife. Isidore was thus a key transitional fig-
ure in the historiography of the early medieval West, acting as a cultural broker
both at the time at which he was writing and between the Roman and post-
Roman thought worlds.

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Wood, Ian N., ‘Social Relations in the Visigothic Kingdom from the Fifth to the Seventh
Century: The Example of Mérida’, in The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the
Seventh Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. by Peter J. Heather (Woodbridge,
1999), pp. 191–208
Wood, Jamie, ‘Playing the Fame Game: Bibliography, Celebrity and Primacy in Late
Antique Spain’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 20 (2012), 613–40
—— , The Politics of Identity in Visigothic Spain: Religion and Power in the Histories of
Isidore of Seville, Brill’s Series on the Early Middle Ages, 21 (Leiden, 2012)
 Adventus, Warfare, and the Britons in
the Development of West Saxon Identity

John-Henry Clay*

Introduction
Among the many debts of gratitude which historians of Anglo-Saxon England
owe to the Venerable Bede is that, thanks to him, we can witness the term ‘West
Saxon’ come into use as a political and ethnic group name. Bede, writing before
731, twice mentioned in the Historia ecclesiastica that the West Saxons of the
late seventh century had formerly been known as the Gewissae.1 The signifi-
cance of the name-change, which occurred at a moment of dynastic transition
and rapid development in the complexity of Anglo-Saxon kingship, has long
been recognized and commented upon.2 It is unclear why Bede chose (twice)
to clarify a dynastic name-change which had happened some forty or more
years previously. We might reasonably assume that he obtained his information
directly from Bishop Daniel of Winchester, his chief source for West Saxon his-
*  The writing of this paper was facilitated by a visiting research grant from the Institut für
Mittelalterforschung, Wien. I would like to thank Prof. Walter Pohl and all of his colleagues at
the Institute for their generous support and kindness during my visit; invaluable thoughts on
an earlier version of this paper were offered especially by Prof. Pohl, Gerda Heydemann, and
Richard Corradini.
1 
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, iii. 7 and iv. 15, pp. 232–33,
380–81.
2 
Collingwood and Myres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements, pp. 403–04; Walker,
‘Bede and the Gewissae’; Yorke, ‘The Jutes of Hampshire and Wight’, pp. 93–94; Yorke, Wessex
in the Early Middle Ages, p. 34; Coates, ‘On Some Controversy Surrounding Gewissae/Gewissei’;
Kleinschmidt, ‘The Geuissae and Bede’; Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, p. 38.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101665
pp. 169–213 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
170 John-Henry Clay

tory, and it may be that his purpose as a historian was primarily to avoid confu-
sion. The name Gewissae is itself curious: in Bede’s own time it seems that the
West Saxons explained it by reference to a dynastic Stammvater called Gewis,
a personal name which is unattested in any other contemporary source;3 more
likely is an antiquated group-name with a root in Old English gewiss, ‘certain,
sure, trustworthy’,4 which might render a meaning such as ‘the strong ones’, or,
as Chadwick suggested in 1907, ‘confederates’.5
Bede, however, finds little support in the late seventh-century sources. First
of all, the term rex Gewissorum appears in only one surviving charter, a relatively
late donation of King Cuthred dating from 745, who appears to have been using
it as a consciously archaic term.6 The first ‘Gewissan’ king to leave behind a gen-
uine charter, King Centwine, who ruled between 676 and 685, styled himself
rex Saxonum, as did his successor King Cædwalla (685–88).7 Abbot Aldhelm
of Malmesbury, later bishop of Sherborne (d. 709), poetically referred to both
Centwine and Cædwalla as rulers of the imperium Saxonum,8 and Bede himself
also records that Cædwalla’s funerary inscription in Rome gave him the title
rex Saxonum. There is therefore little doubt that the ‘Gewissan’ kings of the
seventh century tended to refer to themselves simply as kings of the Saxons.9
As significant as this name change is, one may wonder whether it has much
helped to elucidate the origins of Wessex, so threadbare and tangled are the

3 
Gewis appears in the genealogy of the West Saxon king Ine (688–726) from the Anglian
Collection list of royal genealogies (see below).
4 
Coates, ‘On Some Controversy Surrounding Gewissae/Gewissei’.
5 
Chadwick, Origin of the English Nation, p. 147, n. 2. In Collingwood and Myres, Roman
Britain and the English Settlements, p. 403, n. 2, Myres attempted to rehabilitate Gewiss as a
genuine historical figure, but modern consensus has leaned firmly towards Chadwick’s view that
he is entirely mythical and derived from a pre-existing group name. For a recent discussion, see
Kleinschmidt, ‘The Geuissae and Bede’, pp. 95–98. An alternative meaning of ‘westerners’ has
also been suggested (see Walker, ‘Bede and the Gewissae’, p. 178, n. 18), while Wood, ‘Before
and after the Migration to Britain’, p. 50, has entertained the possibility that the name is Celtic
in origin.
6 
See Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 256. We should not ignore the possibility that
Cuthred was in fact encouraged to employ the name by its appearance in Bede’s work.
7 
For occurrences of rex Saxonum, see Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos 235 and 237.
8 
Aldhelm, Carmina ecclesiastica, ed. by Ehwald, iii, pp. 14, 16.
9 
Walker, ‘Bede and the Gewissae’, pp. 183–84, suggests that the term rex Saxonum was
preferred in the early charters because the Gewissan kings held a virtual dominion over the
other Saxon kingdoms of the South; only when this domination proved to be temporary and
the future of the Gewissae was found in western expansion was the term ‘West Saxons’ adopted.
 the Development of West Saxon Identity

Map 1. South-West England in the Early Saxon Period, showing major settlements, roads,
171

and battles recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

172 John-Henry Clay

strands of evidence in which it is ensnared. The historical evidence comprises

the scanty narrative of Bede, who provides our first trustworthy chronologi-
cal anchor with the conversion of King Cynegils to Christianity in 635 but
has virtually nothing to say prior to that, and a loose collection of later annals
and genealogical and regnal lists. These texts are the written detritus of ninth-
century dynastic myth-making, which celebrates the forging of the West Saxon
kingdom at the hands of Germanic pirates who landed on the Solent coast of
Hampshire at the end of the fifth century and embarked on a centuries-long
programme of expelling or subjugating the British population. The archaeo-
logical evidence, as noted long ago by E. T. Leeds, contradicts this West Saxon
propaganda.10 It places the earliest Saxon activity of the region decisively not
in southern Hampshire c. 500, but in the upper Thames valley several decades
earlier. J. N. L. Myres attempted to reconcile the evidence with a geographi-
cal contortion, suggesting that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s account was largely
reliable, but that the Gewissan invaders of Hampshire, leaving behind precious
few archaeological traces of themselves, swiftly absorbed the pre-existing Saxon
groups of the Thames valley into a West Saxon confederacy.11 Martyn Whittock,
one of the numerous medievalists of the last century who have peered into this
particularly dim and enticing corner of Anglo-Saxon history, asserts that any
straightforward account of what Myres called ‘the problem of Wessex’ is likely
to be a poor one;12 and the fact that his own narrative, derived largely from the
work of Myres,13 differs in fundamental points from the contemporary efforts
of Barbara Yorke only illustrates his point.14
The problem of Wessex, put briefly, is the mutual antagonism of historical
and archaeological sources. Regrettably, the West Saxons produced no narrative
sources comparable to the Kentish adventus legend transmitted by Nennius in

10 
Leeds, The Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements, pp. 52–53; Leeds, ‘The West Saxon
Invasion’. Later refinement and expansion of the Anglo-Saxon archaeological corpus has vali-
dated Leeds’s observation that the earliest Saxon material in later Wessex appears at Dorchester-
on-Thames in the first half of the fifth century. See Chadwick Hawkes and Dunning, ‘Soldiers
and Settlers’; Meaney, A Gazeteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites; Dickinson, ‘The Anglo-
Saxon Burial Sites’; Chadwick Hawkes, ‘The Early Saxon Period’; Eagles, ‘The Archaeological
Evidence for Settlement’; Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 31–34.
11 
Collingwood and Myres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements, pp.  403–05.
Cf. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 26, who leaves the question open.
12 
Whittock, The Origins of England, p. 186.
13 
Collingwood and Myres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements, pp. 394–410.
14 
Yorke, ‘The Jutes of Hampshire and Wight’.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 173

his ninth-century Historia Brittonum,15 but rather a series of annals, a number

of genealogies of individual rulers, and the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List,
a short text which recalls the names, regnal lengths, and pedigrees of every West
Saxon ruler in continuous succession from Cerdic to King Æthelwulf (d. 858).
Each of these three sources, which have been discussed at length by David
Dumville, is associated with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, whose archetype was
compiled towards the end of King Alfred’s reign (871–99): the annals comprise
much of the early material of the Chronicle, while the genealogies of individual
rulers are interspersed throughout it and three of the nine extant copies of the
Genealogical Regnal List were incorporated into Chronicle versions a, b, and
g.16 In addition, we have a genealogy of King Ine from the Anglian Collection,
a compilation of royal genealogies, and regnal lists covering most of the Anglo-
Saxon kingdoms.17 Critical analysis of the annals and genealogical and regnal
lists by Sisam, Sims-Williams, Dumville, Moisl, and Yorke has revealed the
extent of chronological manipulation and corruption to which they had been
subjected and all but eroded their remaining credibility as authentic histori-
cal accounts.18 They are now regarded not as genuine recollections of kingship
and conquest stretching back into the fifth century, but as products of identity
formation which in their present form date from the ninth century. Later in
this article, I will discuss the likelihood that they were partially based on mate-
rial from an earlier stage of identity formation which can be related to the late
seventh-century name-change from Gewissae to West Saxons.
In this respect, provided one is interested in questions of identity, the value
of these sources has only increased as their credibility has diminished. Yet even
the ninth-century architects of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, whose interests
apparently included throwing their dynastic hooks as far back into the Solent

15 
Nennius, Historia Brittonum, trans. by Morris.
16 
Dumville, ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’, pp. 22–34.
17 
The collection survives in four manuscripts, the earliest of which dates from c. 934×37,
although Dumville has argued for its original creation in Mercia or Northumbria towards
the end of the eighth century, and the fact that the West Saxon list ends with Ine implies that
the genealogy was composed during his reign. Dumville, ‘The Anglian Collection of Royal
Genealogies’, esp. pp. 25–26.
18 
Sisam, ‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies’; Sims-Williams, ‘The Settlement of England’,
repr. in Sims-Williams, Britain and Early Christian Europe; Dumville, ‘The Anglian Collection
of Royal Genealogies’; Dumville, ‘Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists’; Dumville, ‘The
West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’; Moisl, ‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies’; Yorke, ‘The
Jutes of Hampshire and Wight’; Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, pp. 130–37.
174 John-Henry Clay

past as possible, only reached the end of the fifth century, giving Cerdic an
adventus in the year 495; and an earlier version of the myth, according to the
original (shorter) regnal lengths reconstructed by Dumville,19 reached only as
far back as the early or mid-sixth century, a hundred years shy of the archaeo-
logical evidence. From the perspective of a text-deprived late seventh-century
king, in other words, living memory could reasonably account for perhaps four
generations, and mythology add a couple more. Anything before that belonged
to a Germanic past which lay reliably hidden behind the fogs of time and the
English Channel. If we seek the origins of the West Saxons in the Gewissan
past, therefore, it does not help to stand at the end of the seventh century and
squint backwards. We must return to the fifth and start from there. The aim
of this paper is to examine the two centuries which preceded the emergence
of the Gewissae into recorded history, to trace the processes which eventually
gave rise to their southern hegemony, and then to explain why, at the end of
the seventh century, Ine and his peers chose to portray the past in the way they
did. I will argue that, while the West Saxon origin story was a fiction, it was
also a deliberate and canny manipulation of existing traditions; furthermore, its
constituent elements — the glorification of warfare and the violent subjugation
of the native Britons — had a certain parabolic quality, which echoed both the
realities of the late seventh century and, whether Ine and his followers knew it
or not, the realities of the fifth.

Gildas and the adventus Saxonum

We do not know how long a group called the Gewissae had existed under that
name by the late seventh century. The appearance of the fictional ancestor
Gewis in the genealogy of King Ine (688–726), however, suggests that it car-
ried considerable political weight, especially considering that Gewis was placed
two generations before Cerdic, the mythical founder of the West Saxon gens.
We might further suppose that Bede would not have felt the need to explain
the name-change from ‘Gewissae’ to ‘West Saxons’ were the former not already
well established. Kleinschmidt suggests that the name ‘Gewissae’ was originally
a broader ethnic term which only became restricted to a particular dynasty once
the term ‘West Saxons’ came into use,20 although the absence of terms such as

19 
See below; Dumville, ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’, pp. 39–40, 46.
20 
Kleinschmidt, ‘The Geuissae and Bede’, pp. 97–98.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 175

rex Gewissorum in the charter tradition makes this uncertain.21 It is equally

plausible that ‘Gewissae’ had always been a dynastic name, or referred to a local
territorial grouping of the sort recorded in the Tribal Hidage, albeit one which
came to achieve exceptional influence over its neighbours.22 The foundation of
the first Gewissan bishopric at Dorchester-on-Thames in 635 would lead us to
locate the Gewissan ‘homeland’ in the upper Thames valley, and the appearance
of very early continental Saxon material culture in precisely this area might
even encourage us to trace the name ‘Gewissae’ itself back to the fifth century.
Indeed ‘Gewissae’, should it mean something akin to ‘the strong ones’, sounds
like just the sort of name a band of young mercenaries, newly-settled, politically
embryonic, and tactically vulnerable, might give themselves.23
By this point, of course, we have left our evidence behind, but it may at least
have pointed us in the right direction. The earliest Saxon settlement in the
upper Thames took place in the immediate aftermath of Rome’s withdrawal
from Britain c. 410. The historical sources for fifth-century Britain, while bet-
ter than for the sixth, are highly problematic. The only insular source of use to
us here is the De excidio Britanniae of Gildas, a fierce moral polemicist who set
his criticism of several contemporary British kings within the framework of a

21 
See above. There are so few reliable charters from late seventh-century Wessex, however,
that it would be unwise to make any strong judgements on this point. King Centwine left a
single charter in his name, and Cædwalla just six, only two of which are broadly regarded as
authentic. The two genuine charters are in Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos 231 and 235;
the inauthentic charters, which may be based to varying degrees on authentic seventh–century
material, are nos 230, 232–34. For a discussion of the charter material, see Finberg, The Early
Charters of Wessex; Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury, pp. 240–43; and
Edwards, The Charters of the Early West Saxon Kingdom. We must also take into account the
flexibility in the use of royal titles before the ninth century: Dumville, ‘The Terminology of
Overkingship’, p. 347.
22 
Dumville, ‘The Tribal Hidage’. The Tribal Hidage, which varies from 300 to 100,000
hides in its tax assessments of different groups, portrays a highly varied social landscape which
could allow for numerous levels of group- and self-identity. It is likely that the vast 100,000 hide
assessment of the West Saxons conceals numerous smaller social units, of whom the Gewissae
may originally have been one. See Pohl, ‘Ethnic Names and Identities in the British Isles’.
23 
My thanks to Walter Pohl for this suggestion. On the dynamic processes inherent in the
formation of early medieval barbarian tribes, see Wolfram, The Roman Empire and its Germanic
Peoples, trans. by Dunlap, p. 8. It is interesting to note that young men aged between about
twenty and thirty seem to have been accorded the highest social status at the early Saxon com-
munity of Dorchester, receiving wealthier grave assemblages and enjoying a richer and more
varied diet than men over thirty. See Privat and O’Connell, ‘Stable Isotope Analysis’, p. 788.
176 John-Henry Clay

providential interpretation of the island’s history.24 A major concern of histori-

ans has been to establish the chronology of his account by means of a few con-
tinental references to contemporary events in Britain, later traditions, and the
structure and contents of the text itself. Most scholars have tended to place the
composition of the text in the early or mid-sixth century, with Wood opting for
an earlier bracket of 485/520.25 Higham has made a case for the relatively early
date of 479/84, which he reached by freeing the text from a pair of chronologi-
cal anchors: the use of unreliable later Welsh and Irish traditions, which tended
to pull it into the sixth century, and the traditional association of the British
appeal to Aëtius (‘Agitius’ in Gildas’s text) with his third consulship, that is
between 446 and 454.26
While there are numerous debatable aspects of Higham’s interpretation of
the text,27 the chief virtue of his chronological reckoning is that it brings the
De excidio Britanniae into closer harmony with the continental sources, the
archaeological evidence, and the learned late Latin context in which it was

24 
Higham, The English Conquest, pp. 7–34. The standard critical edition is Gildas, De
excidio Britanniae, ed. by Mommsen (Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, trans. by Winterbottom).
25 
For the traditional dating, see Dumville, ‘Gildas and Maelgwyn’, pp. 51–60; Dumville,
‘The Chronology of De Excidio Britanniae’. Lapidge, ‘Gildas’s Education’, judging that Gildas’s
Latin would have been notably archaic at so late a date, prefers to place the composition earlier
in the sixth century. See also Wood, ‘The End of Roman Britain’.
26 
For the appeal, see Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, ed. by Mommsen, c. 20, p. 36; Gildas, The
Ruin of Britain, trans. by Winterbottom, pp. 23–24. Higham, The English Conquest, pp. 119–41,
was developing his earlier subscription to a date of c. 500: Higham, ‘New Light on the Dark Age
Landscape’, p. 364. Jones, ‘The Appeal to Aetius in Gildas’, suggested that the appeal to ‘Agitio ter
consuli’ was intended not for the thrice-consul Roman general Aëtius, but for Aegidius, who was
active in the Loire region c. 456–65, and that the Britons were refugees in Gaul who were seeking
protection from Saxon, Burgundian, or Visigothic attacks; yet see also Casey and Jones, ‘The Date
of the Letter of the Britons’, where Jones argues alongside Casey that the addressee was indeed
Aëtius, but dates the appeal to an earlier phase of his career in the late 420s, with the ter con-
suli being an anachronistic interpolation by Gildas. Higham, The English Conquest, pp. 124–36,
takes this line of argument further with the plausible suggestion that the entire address and letter
which Gildas ‘quotes’ was in fact his own poetic reconstruction of oral tradition.
27 
In particular his argument that Gildas repeatedly alludes to the Saxons, who are explic-
itly mentioned only once in the text (Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, ed. by Mommsen, c. 23,
pp. 38–39; Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, trans. by Winterbottom, pp. 26–27), through a variety
of metaphors, and that the obscure reference to a ‘pater diabolus’ relates to a purported Saxon
high king who exercised some form of hegemony over much of the British people and church.
Higham, The English Conquest, esp. pp. 160–66. There is little concrete support in the text for
such an interpretation.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 177

seemingly written. His attempt to locate Gildas in the south west (specifically
in the region of later Dorset and Wiltshire), against the older opinion, which
tended towards the north and extreme west, is more convincing.28 These chron-
ological and geographical adjustments, while the former in particular must be
accepted with a degree of caution, greatly increase Gildas’s authority as a con-
temporary witness of events in fifth-century southern Britain.
This has implications for our interest in the earliest Gewissae (or their pre-
decessors) in the upper Thames valley. Although the provinces of Britain had
been suffering economic decline and political disruption since the late fourth
century, culminating in the messy usurpation of Constantine III in 407 and his
withdrawal to the Continent of most of Britain’s remaining army, the departure
of imperial adminstration c. 410 appears to have led to social, political, and eco-
nomic fragmentation of a degree and suddenness quite unparalleled elsewhere
in the Empire.29 The economic impact is best illustrated by the archaeologi-
cal record, which demonstrates the final cessation of new coinage, the collapse
of the pottery industry, and the almost complete abandonment of villas and
towns, both large and small, by c. 430.30 The end of Roman Britain was, in the
words of A. S. Esmonde Cleary, ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ — but, pointedly, it
came about chiefly through long-term economic and political factors,31 exac-

28 
Thompson, ‘Gildas and the History of Britain’, pp. 214, 225, argued vociferously in
favour of a northern context for Gildas. Wright, ‘Gildas’s Geographical Perspective’, pp. 100–05,
criticized this view, and Higham further developed the argument in favour of a southern con-
text: Higham, ‘New Light on the Dark Age Landscape’, p. 369; Higham, The English Conquest,
pp. 90–113. Meanwhile, Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and the Anglo-Saxons’, pp. 1–5, made the
important observation that the subject of Gildas’s writing was Britain as a whole, and one should
not try to limit his geographical horizons by imposing upon him a parochial mindset. Breeze,
‘Where Was Gildas Born?’, giving credence to later medieval traditions surrounding Gildas, has
recently argued for his birth near Arclid, Cheshire.
29 
For two useful comparative perspectives, see Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages,
pp. 306–10; Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome, pp. 123–24.
30 
Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain, pp. 140–42. The evidence for the continued occu-
pation of towns into the second half of the fifth century, for example in Verulamium, Lincoln,
Exeter, and Wroxeter, is so isolated and limited in scale compared to fourth-century urban life
that it serves best to highlight the totality of the collapse surrounding it: Cleary, The Ending of
Roman Britain, pp. 148–54.
31 
Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain, p. 161; Arnold, From Roman Britain to Anglo-
Saxon England, pp. 159–61. See also Jones, The End of Roman Britain, who develops a model
of political and cultural ‘de-Romanisation’ which allowed the Anglo-Saxons to achieve rapid
dominance.
178 John-Henry Clay

erbated by a severe famine and plague,32 not, as Gildas later imagined, mainly
because of barbarian raids.33 The settlement of Anglo-Saxon warbands was a
consequence, not a cause, of British collapse.
If we were to follow Higham in his early dating of the De excidio Britanniae,
the British despatch to Aëtius must have occurred in the late 420s or early 430s,
around which time he was regaining control of northern Gaul after twenty years
of barbarian control.34 This success may well have given some Britons hope that
their own province might be restored to the Empire, and prompted them to
send a formal appeal.35 Gildas states that, although Aëtius failed to send any
military assistance, the Britons were nonetheless able to defeat the barbarians
themselves, winning a temporary respite.36 This portrayal of events finds some
corroboration in Constantius’s Vita Germani (written c. 480), which describes

32 
Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, ed. by Mommsen, c. 20, p. 36; Gildas, The Ruin of Britain,
trans. by Winterbottom, pp. 23–24, refers to the ‘famis dira ac famosissima’ which struck around
the same time as the widespread abandonment of the cities, while in c. 22, pp. 25–26, he refers
to a ‘pestifera lues’ which struck shortly afterwards. While precise dating is impossible, these
events must have occurred after the Roman withdrawal of 409 and before the British appeal to
Aëtius, which is dated to c. 425×435 by Higham, The English Conquest, p. 137. Stevens, ‘Gildas
Sapiens’, p. 363, relates the pestifera lues to the great plague of 442/3 reported by Hydatius; but
see also Todd, ‘Famosa pestis and Britain in the Fifth Century’, pp. 320–21, whose a priori dis-
missal of Gildas as an ill-informed polemicist inclines him to distrust his authority on this mat-
ter. Todd also remarks (p. 323) that no other contemporary source, insular or continental, refers
to a plague reaching Britain in the fifth century. There is little reason to connect Gildas’s pestifera
lues specifically with the plague of 442/3, nor to assume that it never happened because of a
lack of direct corroboration. The late second-century mass burial outside Roman Gloucester of
almost one hundred individuals, apparently victims of a major pestilence, indicates that Britain
may have been visited by the infamous Antonine Plague of ad 165–80 (or a similar outbreak)
without mention of it being made in historical sources. See Chenery and others, ‘Strontium and
Stable Isotope Evidence’, p. 157.
33 
Cf. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, p. 13. This is not to say that barbarian raids
could not have a devastating local impact: several villas along the vulnerable Bristol Avon were
violently destroyed in the late fourth century, and some were not reoccuppied; occupants of the
villa at North Wraxall were murdered and their bodies thrown down a well. Yorke, Wessex in
the Early Middle Ages, pp. 9–10; Chadwick Hawkes and Dunning, ‘Soldiers and Settlers’, p. 32.
34 
Wood, ‘The Fall of the Western Empire’, p. 257.
35 
Higham, The English Conquest, p. 137. Wood, ‘The Fall of the Western Empire’, p. 257,
follows precisely the same reasoning when, in accordance with the conventional later dating of
the De excidio Britanniae, he connects the British appeal to Aëtius’s second recovery of northern
Gaul in the mid-440s.
36 
Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, ed. by Mommsen, c. 20, p. 36; Gildas, The Ruin of Britain,
trans. by Winterbottom, pp. 23–24.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 179

the first visit of Germanus of Auxerre to Britain in 429 in order to combat

Pelagianism. In the vita, the Britons of the south east are not yet subject to
Saxon rule but are threatened by barbarian raids; they have soldiers, but lack
organization and military expertise. Germanus obligingly takes command of
the British forces, has them baptized, and wins a bloodless victory over a Pictish
and Saxon warband.37 The fact that Germanus also met with an official ‘of the
rank of tribune’ (tribuniciae potestatis)38 may indicate that Aëtius did at least
send a formal representative of the Empire (apparently with his family) across
the Channel, while Germanus’s expulsion of the defeated Pelagian heretics
demonstrates that Britain, at least to some degree, still lay within the horizons
of imperial authority in the late 420s.39
After the second visit of St Germanus c. 435, during which he purport-
edly met not a tribune but a more vaguely described ‘chief man of the region’
(regionis illius primus),40 the next secure date relating to events in Britain is
the entry in the Gallic Chronicle of 452 under the year 441: ‘The provinces of
Britain, which to this day have endured various misfortunate events, are made
subject to Saxon rule’.41 The reliability of this entry has survived the scrutiny
of the Chronicle’s numerous flaws, and can safely be regarded as referring to an
event of sufficient import to have been noted by contemporaries in southern
Gaul.42 In the view of the anonymous Gallic chronicler, the year 441, not c. 410,
represented the true end of Roman Britain.43 The entry appears to describe the
formal establishment of Saxon rule over at least a significant part of southern

37 
Constantius of Lyon, Vita Germani, ed. by Levison, cc. 17–18, pp. 263–65.
38 
Constantius of Lyon, Vita Germani, ed. by Levison, c. 15, pp. 261–62.
39 
Wood, ‘The Fall of the Western Empire’, p. 252.
40 
Constantius of Lyon, Vita Germani, ed. by Levison, c. 26, p. 270.
41 
Chronica Gallica ad a. 452, ed. by Burgess, a. 441, p. 80: ‘Brittanniae usque ad hoc tem-
pus uariis cladibus euentibusque latae in dicionem Saxonum rediguntur’.
42 
Muhlberger, ‘The Gallic Chronicle of 452’, pp. 30–32; Jones and Casey, ‘The Gallic
Chronicle Restored’; Burgess, ‘The Dark Ages Return to Britain’. Despite Burgess’s intention
being to invalidate the Gallic Chronicle’s usefulness as a source for fifth-century British history
(contra Jones and Casey), he acknowledges the accuracy of the entry for 441. He is somewhat
too hasty to dimiss it, however, as bearing no meaningful relation to events in contemporary
Britain (p. 192, n. 26). We may accept it as marking an event of singular importance to contem-
poraries without regarding it as the watershed moment at which Britain ‘became’ Anglo-Saxon.
43 
Muhlberger, ‘The Gallic Chronicle of 452’, p.  32. Chrysos, ‘Die Römerherrschaft in
Britannien’, p. 268, similarly suggests that the event of 441 was of special significance to a Gaulish
audience because it ended any foreseeable prospect of a Roman reoccupation of the island.
180 John-Henry Clay

Britain, and Higham has associated it with the end of the war which started,
according to Gildas, with the rebellion of Saxon mercenaries brought by
Vortigern to eastern Britain.44 Such a view logically places Vortigern’s initial
invitation to the Saxons some time in the early 430s, allowing roughly a decade
for their rebellion, the subsequent war, and the truce of 441. This chronology
is significantly earlier and more compressed than in previous interpretations
of Gildas’s narrative, not least that of Bede, who placed the adventus Saxonum
in 449 and the decisive battle of Mons Badonicus in 493.45 Such a late date for
the adventus, however, is rendered unlikely by the archaeological evidence. The
chief virtue of Higham’s hypothesis is that it corrects this disjunction without
doing damage to the essential structure of Gildas’s narrative.46

The First Saxons of the Upper Thames: Fifth to Sixth Centuries

As mentioned above, some of the earliest continental Saxon material away from
the east coast appears in the furnished cemetery of Berinsfield, on the outskirts
of Dorchester-on-Thames. The cemetery was small, comprising perhaps 150 to
200 burials in total, 114 of which were excavated in 1974–75. Artefact typol-
ogy, particularly of continental-style women’s brooches, allowed its period of
use to be placed between the mid-fifth century and the late sixth or early sev-
enth century,47 with some of the material dated by Böhme to as early as 420.48
The cemetery at Berinsfield has attracted special interest, both because of its
early date and because of its proximity to the late Romano-British cemetery
of Queenford Farm, some six hundred metres to the south. Queenford Farm,
44 
Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, ed. by Mommsen, c. 23, pp. 38–39; Gildas, The Ruin of
Britain, trans. by Winterbottom, pp. 26–27. It is this association of the end of the war with the
Gallic Chronicle’s entry for 441 which leads Higham to an approximate date of c. 479×484 for
the composition of the De excidio Britanniae, by adding the forty-four years which Gildas states
(albeit in a grammatically problematic passage) had passed since the battle of Mons Badonicus
in the latter stages of the war: ‘quique quadragesimus quartus ut noui orditur annus mense iam
uno emenso, qui et meae natiuitatis est’ (Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, ed. by Mommsen, c. 26,
p. 40; Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, trans. by Winterbottom, p. 28).
45 
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, i. 15–16, pp. 48–55.
46 
See, for example, Stevens, ‘Gildas Sapiens’, pp. 361–63, who attempted to resolve the dif-
ficulty by arguing that Gildas had misplaced the British appeal to Aëtius within his narrative,
believing that it had preceded the adventus Saxonum, when in fact it had come after the Saxon
rebellion. His chronology was criticized by Myres, ‘The adventus Saxonum’.
47 
Boyle and others, Two Oxfordshire Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries, p. 126.
48 
Böhme, ‘Das Ende der Römerherrschaft in Britannien’, p. 522.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 181

which may have contained as many as 2000 burials, was partially excavated in
1972 and 1981, and was almost exclusively composed of unfurnished west-east
inhumations.49 It appears to have been one of the main extramural cemeteries
of the small Roman town of Dorchester.
The original carbon-14 dates supplied by a number of the Queenford Farm
burials appeared to demonstrate the continuity of the cemetery into the sixth
century, which provoked some comment in the literature; Yorke remarked
upon the oddity of a British community which continued unfurnished bur-
ial even in the midst of such concentrated Saxon settlement,50 while Thomas,
Stumpf, and Härke cited Queenford Farm as evidence for an apartheid-like
social division between Saxon and British populations.51 A recent reanalysis of
the skeletal material from Queenford Farm, however, has corrected the original
flawed data and confirmed that the cemetery fell out of use at the beginning
of the fifth century. The same researchers undertook carbon-14 analysis of the
population of Berinsfield cemetery, and concluded that it was founded very
soon afterwards, possibly, though not certainly, with a brief period of overlap.52
Whether or not the population buried at Berinsfield were immigrants from
across the North Sea is another question, but the sudden and total shift in burial
customs and location, the intrusive nature of the Berinsfield material culture,
and the significantly higher average stature of the Berinsfield burials compared
to those of Queenford Farm makes it overwhelmingly likely that they were.53
Heinrich Härke undertook a comparative analysis of a number of burials from
early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, including Berinsfield, and made the important
observation that males buried with weapons in the fifth and sixth centuries were
on average 2–5 centimetres taller than those buried without; his conclusion, in
the absence of any obvious dietary or health factors which might have created

49 
See Chambers, ‘The Late- and Sub-Roman Cemetery’; Booth, ‘Late Roman Cemeteries
in Oxfordshire’.
50 
Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 46–48; see also Härke, ‘Ethnicity, “Race” and
Migration’, p. 15.
51 
Thomas, Stumpf, and Härke, ‘Evidence for an Apartheid-like Social Structure’, p. 2654.
52 
Hills and O’Connell, ‘New Light on the Anglo-Saxon Succession’, pp. 1104–06. The
carbon-14 dates from eleven burials from Queenford Farm and five from Berinsfield clearly
demonstrate only that the shift between the two cemeteries was sudden and complete; there was
neither an extended transition phase nor an extended period when neither cemetery was in use.
53 
Hills and O’Connell, ‘New Light on the Anglo-Saxon Succession’, p. 1106, faced with
the sharp break in local burial practice, express this view with caution; Yorke, Wessex in the Early
Middle Ages, pp. 30–31, takes it for granted.
182 John-Henry Clay

such a difference, was that the men buried with weapons were descended from
Germanic immigrants, or were immigrants themselves. Crucially, the observed
height difference breaks down by the end of the seventh century.54
While his observations were in general valid, Härke did not comment on
one anomaly in his data set, namely that the men buried without weapons at
Berinsfield, in contrast to the other early cemeteries, were just as tall as the men
buried with weapons.55 According to Härke’s hypothesis, the weaponless men
at Berinsfield were either unusually tall Britons, or, rather more likely, Saxons
filling the lower social roles elsewhere filled by Britons. Might we not relate this
anomaly to Berinsfield’s unusually early date, and suggest that the local com-
munity, at least in the fifth century, was chiefly composed of Germanic immi-
grants of all social levels, and that they had moved, whether by invitation or
invasion,56 into a district whose former occupants had already left, as the new
dating of the Queenford Farm cemetery could suggest? It may not be a coinci-
dence that one late fourth-century burial from Dorchester contained a belt set
of a type common in military graves of north-east Gaul and the Rhine fron-
tier, suggesting that late Roman Dorchester may have been home to a garrison
of settled continental troops.57 Even if there was no direct continuity between
these troops and the later Saxon settlement (there is certainly no direct archae-
ological connection between them), both Britons and Saxons must have long
known that Dorchester controlled a strategically important Thames crossing at
the junction of Dubonnic, Atrebatic, and Catuvellaunic territory.

54 
Härke, ‘“Warrior Graves”?’, pp. 39–40; Härke, ‘Changing Symbols in a Changing Society’,
pp.  154–55. Härke’s conclusion rests upon the similar average height difference between
the prehistoric and Roman-period ‘Celtic’ populations of western Europe and neighbouring
Germanic populations.
55 
The difference between the two groups was a negligible 0.2 cm, compared with a dif-
ference of 2.2  cm at Pewsey, 4.7  cm at Worthy Park, 3.8  cm at Abingdon  I and 2.4  cm at
Empiringham II. Härke, ‘“Warrior Graves”?’, p. 39, table 4.
56 
Present evidence does not allow a judgement either way on this question. Yorke, Wessex
in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 31–32.
57 
The evidence for this comprises four famous burials from Dorchester-on-Thames: a male
‘military’ inhumation at Dyke Hills, south of the town, which included a set of late Roman belt
fittings directly paralleled by examples from the Rhineland; and three female burials, two near
the male burial and another north of the town, which together contained five brooches of unam-
biguously Germanic design. See Kirk and Leeds, ‘Three Early Saxon Graves from Dorchester’;
Chadwick Hawkes and Dunning, ‘Soldiers and Settlers’, pp. 4–17. Cleary, The Ending of Roman
Britain, pp. 142–44, points out that the remaining garrisons of Roman Britain would have soon
evaporated once their pay stopped.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 183

It would then conceivably follow that the political success of these ‘pro-
totype’ Gewissan warriors enabled them either to expel or to establish direct
control over surrounding British communities whose own elites had fled.58 As
Coates points out, it is not difficult to encourage a defenceless population to
vacate desirable land: the invaders need only destroy their agricultural base by
burning their crops or stealing their cattle, and such terror tactics might cause
a disproportionate number to flee the area, leaving it open for newcomers with
no archaeologically detectable break in land use.59 If, on the other hand, the
Saxons desired to control land rather than resettle it, they could extract tribute
by force from the native population. There was early Saxon occupation at the
nearby Romano-British villas of Shakenoak Farm and Barton Court Farm, but
not necessarily direct continuity.60 The Romano-British cemetery at Frilford
continued directly into the Anglo-Saxon period, but again the nature of the
continuity is uncertain.61 These Saxons, as they moved into new areas of the
upper Thames valley, continued the Berinsfield tradition of furnished weapon
burial as one means of asserting and advertising social dominance, which may
have taken on a new ethnic significance when practised among a predominantly
British lower-status population.62

58 
The upper classes of Roman Britain must have stood to lose most from the turbulence
of the fifth century. They also would have had access to greater portable wealth than the landed
majority, which suggests that the mid-century flight of Britons to north-west Gaul included
many of the elite. Contemporary historical accounts from Gaul refer to nobles, at least one
bishop, and an army 12,000 strong among their number. See Thompson, ‘Gildas and the
History of Britain’, pp. 221–22; Stevens, ‘Gildas Sapiens’, p. 369. Gildas, De excidio Britanniae,
ed. by Mommsen, c. 4, p. 29; Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, trans. by Winterbottom, p. 17, himself
laments that those books which had not been burned had been taken overseas by his exiled
countrymen, who evidently belonged to the literate class: ‘quantum tamen potuero, non tam ex
scriptis patriae scriptorumue monimentis, quippe quae, uel si qua fuerint, aut ignibus hostium
exusta aut ciuium exilii classe longius deportata non compareant, quam transmarina relatione,
quae crebris inrupta intercapedinibus non satis claret’. See also Liebeschuetz, ‘The Refugees and
Evacuees’, pp. 77–79, who observes how lands described as ‘deserted’ in early medieval sources
could have been political vacuums devoid of large-scale administrative structures rather than
unsettled wastelands.
59 
Coates, ‘Invisible Britons’, p. 185.
60 
Brodribb, Hands, and Walker, The Roman Villa at Shakenoak Farm; Miles, Archaeology
at Barton Court Farmed.
61 
Williams, ‘Ancient Landscapes and the Dead’, p. 8.
62 
Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity, p. 122. It is now commonly acknowledged that eth-
nicity may have played a part in the expression of identity through early medieval burial ritual,
but it was never the only factor, and perhaps rarely a significant one. Stoodley, ‘From the Cradle
184 John-Henry Clay

The best future hope for scientifically identifying first-generation continen-

tal immigrants in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries seems to be through stable isotope
analysis, but this is still very much a developing field in early medieval archae-
ology.63 Until such a study is made of the Berinsfield population, we must rely
on more traditional approaches of inferring migrant populations from mate-
rial evidence.64 Yet however practically and theoretically problematic such
approaches are,65 Berinsfield offers an unusually compelling example of a com-
munity composed largely of incomers with few pre-existing social or cultural
ties to the surrounding population. The model proposed here, which may have
occurred along similar lines elsewhere in southern and eastern England,66 is of

to the Grave’, for example, has examined how certain early Saxon grave-goods served to differ-
entiate particular life-stages among both males and females; Crawford, ‘Votive Deposition’, has
suggested that furnished burials may have provided a public forum for votive deposition, thus
fulfilling a pagan religious function; King, ‘Grave-Goods as Gifts’, has reviewed the evidence
that some grave-goods were offerings made at the open grave as part of a symbolic public dis-
course; Devlin, ‘Social Memory’, has discussed the importance of constructing social memory
through burial ritual; and Gowland, ‘Beyond Ethnicity’, p. 56, has called for a further shift of
interest away from ethnicity towards such approaches. Hakenbeck, ‘Situational Ethnicity and
Nested Identities’, p. 26, has undertaken an informative analysis of two large fifth- to seventh-
century Bavarian cemeteries, and judges that the sheer variety of burial customs within and
between each cemetery can only be explained by considering ethnicity alongside other facets of
personal, communal, social, and supra-regional identity.
63 
Archaeologists both in favour of and against models of large-scale Anglo-Saxon immigra-
tion have expressed enthusiasm for the potential of stable isotope analysis to help resolve the
debate. See Härke, ‘Ethnicity, “Race” and Migration’, pp. 16–17; Gowland, ‘Beyond Ethnicity’,
p. 59; Higham, ‘Britons in Anglo-Saxon England’, pp. 13–14. For a discussion of stable isotope
analysis and the results of its application in a number of prehistoric and medieval British con-
texts, see Budd and others, ‘Investigating Population Movement’. Evans, Stoodley, and Chenery,
‘A Strontium and Oxygen Isotope Analysis’, p. 271, have confirmed the broad archaeological
attribution of a group of ‘intrusive’ burials in a late fourth-century Winchester cemetery to first-
generation immigrants from Pannonia, but also revealed unexpected complexity in the precise
origins of the immigrants and their relationship with the local population. Chenery and others,
‘Strontium and Stable Isotope Evidence’, pp. 158–59, have used a similar approach to examine
the diversity of origins of the population of Roman Gloucester.
64 
Privat and O’Connell, ‘Stable Isotope Analysis’, have employed the technique to inves-
tigate the dietary habits of the early Saxon Berinsfield population, but not its geographical
origins.
65 
Whether and to what degree ethnicity can be inferred from archaeological assemblages is
an old and ongoing debate. For a recent summary and discussion, see Härke, ‘Ethnicity, “Race”
and Migration’; for a discussion from a historical perspective, see Pohl, ‘Archaeology of Identity’.
66 
Cf. Scull, ‘Before Sutton Hoo’, p. 8; Wood, ‘Before and after the Migration to Britain’, p. 46.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 185

a pocket of relatively concentrated Saxon immigration focused on a warband

near Dorchester, followed by the rapid expansion of Saxon control over British
communities left demoralized after the critical political and economic collapse
of the first half of the fifth century.67 Many Britons, indeed, may have thought
Saxon rule no worse an alternative than the return of Roman government,68
and it is entirely plausible that influential locals judged their best option to
be co-operation and alliance with the foreigners rather than resistance. In
such cases, individuals may have subscribed to such rites as furnished weapon
burial as part of a developing political and social discourse which was strongly
informed by both late Roman and Germanic martial customs.
The war between Britons and Saxons appears to have ended in a stalemate
in 441. We need not project Gildas’s vision of universal devastation across the
entire island in order to accord him the respect he deserves as a near-contem-
porary commentator, especially with regard to his well-informed depiction of
the hiring of Saxon mercenaries.69 There is ample independent evidence for
widespread urban abandonment in the early fifth century, 70 for the emigra-
tion of British elites across the Channel,71 and for a shift towards a less inten-
sive agricultural and settlement landscape.72 Lowland Britain, while far from
deserted, offered space for those communities who were abandoning en masse
the increasingly marginal Frisian littoral,73 and there were plenty of opportuni-
ties for martially-minded young men hoping to better their social situation in
a rich and vulnerable country.74 Gildas’s complaint that he was unable to reach
the shrines of St Alban at Verulamium and St Aaron and St Julius at Caerleon

67 
Higham, Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons, pp. 228–29; Härke, ‘Invisible Britons,
Gallo-Romans and Russians’, p. 67.
68 
Thompson, ‘Gildas and the History of Britain’, p. 213; cf. Pohl, ‘The Construction of
Communities’, p. 7; Higham, Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons, pp. 233–34.
69 
Thompson, ‘Gildas and the History of Britain’, pp.  217–18; Higham, The English
Conquest, pp. 36–42; Wolfram, The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples, trans. by Dunlap,
p. 243; Chrysos, ‘Die Römerherrschaft in Britannien’, pp. 266–67.
70 
Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain, pp. 144–48.
71 
Thompson, ‘Gildas and the History of Britain’, pp. 221–22; Stevens, ‘Gildas Sapiens’,
p. 369.
72 
Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain, p. 158; Higham, ‘Britons in Anglo-Saxon Eng­
land’, p. 8.
73 
Bartholemew, ‘Continental Connections’, p. 26; Scull, ‘Before Sutton Hoo’, p. 8.
74 
Higham, The English Conquest, pp. 166–69.
186 John-Henry Clay

due to the ‘division of the barbarians’ fits well with the expansion of Saxon set-
tlement in the upper Thames valley by the end of the fifth century.75
Yet even supposing that there was some degree of Saxon unity following
the initial rebellion and war of the 430s, there is little evidence that it lasted.
On the contrary, the archaeological evidence speaks of considerable variation
in burial customs around Dorchester in the fifth and sixth centuries as well as
across south-east Britain as a whole, and this may reflect a high degree of het-
erogeneity in cultural and political identity at the regional level.76 The expan-
sion of established warbands such as those of the upper Thames provided the
necessary friction for conflict, and the continued immigration of new indi-
viduals and communities from across the Channel and North Sea provided
the fuel. With no surviving structures of Roman administration to give uni-
versal form and stability to the exercise of power, the result was a political
landscape of great fragmentation and fluidity which lasted until the end of
the sixth century.77

75 
Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, ed. by Mommsen, c. 10, p. 31 (Gildas, The Ruin of Britain,
trans. by Winterbottom, p. 19): ‘Clarissimos lampades sanctorum martyrum nobis accendit,
quorum nunc corporum sepulturae et passionum loca, si non lugubri diuortio barbarorum
quam plurima ob scelera nostra ciuibus adimerentur, non minimum intuentium mentibus
ardorem diuinae caritatis incuteren: sanctum albanum uerolamiensem, aaron et iulium legio-
num urbis ciues ceterosque utriusque sexus diuersis in locis summa magnanimitate in acie christi
perstantes dico’. See Higham, The English Conquest, pp. 103–06.
76 
Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 44–45; Wood, ‘Before and after the Migration
to Britain’, p. 42; Hines, ‘The Becoming of the English’, p. 54; Moreland, ‘Ethnicity, Power and
the English’, p. 33. Bearing in mind the fact that personal and group identity can operate on
several different levels at once, there is no need to adopt Moreland’s view (pp. 34–35) that this
variety in burial custom invalidates any notion of a common Saxon identity. Semple, ‘Polities
and Princes’, pp. 422–23, has argued that the clustering of South Saxon burial mounds around
particular hills and coastal inlets is symptomatic of a fragmented political landscape which
lasted from the fifth to the eighth century.
77 
Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp.  89–90, observes no clear continuity in
administrative organization between the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods in the south-east, in
contrast to the south-west, where the counties of Dorset, Somerset, and Devon appear to have
arranged according to former Roman civitas capitals. Howe, Migration and Mythmaking, p. 49,
also comments on the fact that Anglo-Saxon historiographers never sought to invent a ‘Roman’
past for their gens, instead perpetuating a strong tradition of migration and adventus. A sharp
contrast to the situation in early Anglo-Saxon England is offered by the Visigothic kingdom,
which was established within a surviving late Roman framework of law, culture, and urban life.
Wolfram, Die Goten, pp. 234–36.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 187

If the Saxons of the south-east were a fractious, quarrelsome kaleidoscope

of competing groups, much the same could be said of contemporary British
rulers, whose propensity for mutual aggression, rendered as ‘civil war’ by his
late Roman mindset, so appalled Gildas.78 Numerous prehistoric hillforts, for
example at South Cadbury, Cadbury-Congresbury, Old Sarum, and Uffington
Castle, were reoccupied by British elites at this time.79 The post-Roman earth-
work of West Wansdyke may have been constructed in the late fifth or sixth
century as a physical delineation of British and Saxon territory;80 it is interest-
ing to note that the enormous Roman temple and bath complex at Bath, which
lies immediately north of West Wansdyke, was systematically demolished and
left in ruins at some point between 450 and 500, perhaps in a symbolic polit-
ical gesture.81 On the far side of Selwood, Bokerley Dyke cut the road from
Durotrigan territory to Old Sarum and Winchester, both of which have con-
centrations of early Saxon furnished burials. At Silchester, one of the largest
towns of Roman Britain and the hub of its southern communications network,
a similar dyke severed the road to Dorchester-on-Thames, and proved so suc-
cessful that the road fell permanently out of use. For a space of between twelve
and thirty kilometres in every direction around Silchester there is scarcely a
single early Saxon burial, producing a large and conspicuous void in distribu-
tion maps.82 Ongoing excavations suggest that the city was deliberately aban-
doned in the late sixth or early seventh century, its wells filled in and the site left
to waste.83 There is some evidence that its immediate post-Roman hinterland
was preserved as a single territorial block, even though the settlement itself was
never reoccupied.84 Given this archaeological evidence, it would not be unrea-
sonable to suspect that Silchester was the centre of a British enclave which sur-
vived until well into the sixth century.

78 
Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, ed. by Mommsen, c. 27, p. 41 (Gildas, The Ruin of Britain,
trans. by Winterbottom, p. 29): ‘reges habet britannia, sed tyrannos […] belligerantes, sed ciuilia
et iniusta bella agentes’. Laycock, Britannia, the Failed State, has recently argued that Britain
suffered from incessant inter-tribal conflict throughout the Roman occupation, and that these
conflicts worsened during the ‘balkanization’ that followed the Roman withdrawal.
79 
Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 19–26.
80 
Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, p. 24.
81 
Gerrard, ‘The Temple of Sulis Minerva’, pp. 159–60.
82 
Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, p. 13, figure 4.
83 
Fulford, Life and Labour in Late Roman Silchester, p. 281.
84 
Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain, p. 198.
188 John-Henry Clay

The Emergence of Gewissan Kingship: Sixth to Seventh Centuries

There is little doubt that the second half of the fifth century was a period of
considerable upheaval across the south. Not until the late sixth century do we
begin to see increasing archaeological evidence of social polarization and the
consolidation of new hierarchies in Saxon areas. Furnished burials become
fewer overall, while a small number display continued wealth, suggesting a sig-
nificant shift in the nature of burial practice,85 and there appears to have been
an increase in the number of permanent boundaries within settlements, which
may be interpreted as a greater tendency towards the delineation and control
of space.86 The late sixth century also saw the appearance and spread of mound
burial within the territory of what would become Wessex, a custom which con-
tinued for a century and left parts of southern England peppered with barrows.
Among the richest and largest mound burials are those at Cuddesdon, Taplow,
and Lowbury Hill near Dorchester, and in Wiltshire at Swallowcliffe Down
and Rodmead Hill.87 A number of archaeologists have made the argument that
such burials, which tend to be situated in physically prominent positions, often
near important communication routes, are symptomatic of an elite attempting
to establish an indelible and highly visible claim on a contested landscape. As
Tania Dickinson puts it, ‘there is every reason to link the appearance of the
grandest of Early Saxon burials in the late sixth and early seventh century with
the emergence of regional kingship’.88
The distribution of burial mounds is therefore of some importance in iden-
tifying areas of special political stress in the emergent kingdom of the Gewissae.
Two of the densest concentrations are in the upper Thames valley, particu-
larly along the chalk ridgeline of the Icknield Way, and in southern Wiltshire.

85 
Geake, ‘Burial Practices in Seventh- and Eighth-Century England’, pp. 84–85.
86 
Reynolds, ‘Boundaries and Settlements’, pp. 130–31.
87 
Meaney, A Gazeteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites, esp.  pp.  49, 59, 207, 273;
Dickinson, Cuddesdon and Dorchester-on-Thames; Alcock, Economy, Society and Warfare,
pp. 271–72; Speake, A Saxon Bed Burial on Swallowcliffe Down; Fulford and Ripon, ‘Lowbury
Hill, Oxon’; Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 34–35; O’Brien, Post-Roman Britain to
Anglo-Saxon England, ref. 1111; Williams, Death and Memory, pp. 27–35, 202–04; Pollington,
Anglo-Saxon Burial Mounds, pp. 163–66, 168–71, 178–82.
88 
Dickinson and Speake, ‘The Seventh-Century Cremation Burial at Asthall’, p. 121. See
also Williams, ‘Monuments and the Past’, p. 104; Semple, ‘A Fear of the Past’; Semple, ‘Burials
and Political Boundaries’; Semple, ‘Polities and Princes’, pp. 422–23; Härke, ‘Early Anglo-Saxon
Social Structure’, pp. 150–51; Carver, ‘Reflections on the Meaning of Anglo-Saxon Barrows’.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 189

Dickinson and Speake have discussed that the Asthall Barrow cremation burial
(Oxfordshire), which dates from 710/40, ought to be understood in the con-
text of the contemporary political struggle between Mercia and Wessex for
control of the region north of the upper Thames.89 Similarly, Semple argues
that the barrows of northern Wiltshire represent Saxon attempts to assert
increasingly direct control over a border region,90 and the same is likely true of
southern Wiltshire, where the custom of burial mounds spread from the early
Saxon settlement area of Old Sarum. The proportion of surviving Celtic place-
names does indeed suggest that western Wiltshire, in contrast to the east, was
largely British-speaking until a relatively late date.91
Ceawlin, who died in 593 according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is the
first Gewissan king of whose existence we can be confident.92 His prominence
in the Chronicle is echoed by Bede, who wrote that he was the pre-eminent
Southumbrian king of his day. 93 He also gains some credibility from the
Chronicle’s mention of his victory (s. a. 568) at the unidentified Wibbandun
against King Æthelberht of Kent, the first Anglo-Saxon ruler to convert to
Christianity following St Augustine’s arrival in 601. The entry s. a. 591 states
that a certain Ceol took the throne and held it for five years, and Ceawlin’s last
battle, recorded under the following year at Woddesbeorge (possibly Adam’s
Grave in northern Wiltshire), resulted in his defeat, expulsion, and, s. a. 593,
death. This ignominious end to a successful king, from whom King Ine claimed
direct descent as the basis of his legitimacy, adds a final layer of historical plau-
sibility. Ceawlin’s existence, therefore, is not in doubt, but the chronology of
his career is much less certain. David Dumville has observed that Ceawlin’s
reign, which lasted for seven or seventeen years according to the Genealogical
Regnal List, was greatly extended to thirty-two years when this tradition was
incorporated into the annalistic format of the Chronicle.94 While this had the
effect of projecting the battles associated with his name further into the past,

89 
Dickinson and Speake, ‘The Seventh-Century Cremation Burial at Asthall’, p. 123.
90 
Semple, ‘Burials and Political Boundaries’.
91 
Eagles, ‘Britons and Saxons’; Coates and Breeze, Celtic Voices, English Places, pp. 112–16;
Draper, ‘Old English wīc and walh’.
92 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a. 593, p. 25.
93 
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, ii. 5, pp. 150–51.
94 
Dumville, ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’, pp. 39–40, 46. Dumville suggests,
that Ceawlin’s reign was lengthened because a longer reign was thought more fitting for such an
important and successful king (pp. 62–65).
190 John-Henry Clay

rendering the Chronicle dates unreliable, it is quite possible that the sequence,
locations, and protagonists of the battles were accurately preserved.
We can therefore accept that Ceawlin died c.  593 and consider the
Chronicle’s record of his activity without lending credence to particular dates.
He first appears s. a. 556, fighting alongside his (probably mythical) father
Cynric against the Britons in northern Wiltshire. Under the year 568 appears
his victory against Æthelberht of Kent, and he went on to capture numer-
ous British towns to the east, west and north of the upper Thames by the end
of his reign. There is a record of expansion in every direction except towards
Silchester in the south, perhaps because its fall, if it happened near the begin-
ning or middle of the sixth century, was simply too early to survive in those oral
traditions which were later adapted into the annals of the Chronicle. We receive
the picture of an active, aggressive king who was able to extend Gewissan con-
trol in several directions at once, largely at the expense of neighbouring British
leaders, and to lay the foundations for a style of rule which, in its scope and
complexity, began to resemble more closely the Frankish territories.95
As mentioned, the Chronicle claims s. a. 591 that Ceawlin was succeeded
by Ceol, who ruled for five years; he was succeeded by Ceolwulf, who reigned
until Cynegil’s accession in 611. From this point on we enter surer historical
territory. In 628 at Cirencester, which Ceawlin had captured from the Britons
a generation earlier, the Gewissae were fought to a stalemate by Mercia; even an
attempt by King Cynegils to forge an alliance with Northumbria, culminating in
the foundation of a bishopric at Dorchester under Northumbrian sponsorship
in 635 and the marriage of his son Cenwalh to King Penda of Mercia’s sister,96
could not protect the Gewissan heartlands. In 645, Penda drove Cenwalh, now
king, into exile for three years, and in 661 Penda’s son ravaged Dorchester and
the downlands along the Icknield Way.97 Even as the ancient Gewissan grip on

95 
See Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, p. 35, who discusses the evidence for increas-
ing riverine trade and the minting of runic coinage in the upper Thames region from the begin-
ning of the seventh century. It is reasonable to suspect that economic and political changes in
Wessex at this time were the result of contact with Francia via Kent, which had lain well within
the Frankish sphere of influence throughout the sixth century. See James, The Franks, p. 103;
Wood, ‘Before and after the Migration to Britain’, pp. 47–49; Wood, ‘Frankish Hegemony in
England’.
96 
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, iii. 7, pp. 232–35.
97 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, aa. 645, 661, pp. 29–30. The annal for 661
states that King Wulfhere, son of Penda, invaded as far as Ashdown (oþ Æscesdune), an ancient
name for the Berkshire Downs.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 191

the upper Thames was loosening, however, Cenwalh was pushing south and
west, permanently transferring his bishopric to Winchester and defeating the
Britons at Bradford on Avon in 652, Penselwood in 658, and Posbury in 661,
breaking through the British-Saxon border, which had endured for two centu-
ries, and annexing the later counties of Dorset, Somerset, and Devon.98
The Chronicle states that Cenwalh died in 672 and was succeeded for
one year by his widow Seaxburg, who was followed by Cenwalh’s distant
cousin Æscwine (674–76), who was in turn succeeded by Cenwalh’s brother
Centwine (676–85/86).99 According to Bede, conversely, Cenwalh’s territory
was divided between a number of sub-kings for about ten years.100 This appar-
ent contradiction between our sources is most likely a result of the fluid nature
of seventh-century Gewissan politics, which allowed for a number of ‘kings’ to
reign simultaneously, any one of whom might exercise supremacy over some or
all of the others.101 The custom of joint rulership would come to a virtual end
in 685/86 with Cædwalla, following whom it appears to have been a particular
concern of West Saxon kings, especially Ine and Alfred, to establish their right
to exclusive rule by tracing a direct lineage of kingship down their bloodline to
Ceawlin and the adventus of the mythical founder Cerdic.102
The accession of Cædwalla was a pivotal moment that marks the true
beginnings of Wessex. His father Cenberht appears to have been a sub-king
of the Gewissae before his death in 661, when Cædwalla was still an infant.103
Cædwalla was sent into exile in the Chilterns and the Weald, the sparsely set-

98 
See the relevant dates in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, aa. 652, 658 and 661,
pp. 29–30; also Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 52–59; Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms,
p. 136; Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, p. 51.
99 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, aa. 672, 674 and 676, p. 30.
100 
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, iv. 12, pp. 368–69.
101 
Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, p. 136; Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 64–66;
Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, pp. 115–16; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 66–67.
102 
The ruling relationship of Ine to his father Cenred is uncertain. Ine promulgated his law
code under his own name while acknowleding the assistance of his father: The Law of King Ine,
ed. by Liebermann, prologue, pp. 88–89, but in a South Saxon charter of 692 Cenred subscribes
as rex Westsaxonum, while Ine appears beneath him with no title, implying that Cenred was the
senior of the two (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 45). Neither Bede, obtaining his informa-
tion directly from Bishop Daniel of Winchester, nor the Chronicle (except in Ine’s genealogy)
mention Cenred at all. Since Ine probably had a strong influence over both of these sources, it
may be that he preferred posterity to minimize the role of his father during the early years of his
reign. See Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, p. 120; Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, p. 84.
103 
Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, pp. 100–01. Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave
192 John-Henry Clay

tled and densely forested regions to the north and south of the lower Thames,
where he remained until his mid-twenties. In 685, he emerged from exile at
the head of a warband, and went on to overcome his rival rulers in Wessex
and to conquer Sussex, Kent, Surrey, and the Isle of Wight before his abdica-
tion in 688.104 He and his successor Ine claimed to be second or third cousins
descended from Ceawlin himself,105 unlike the previous six kings, who, with
the exception of Æscwine, had been descendants of Ceawlin’s brother Cutha.
Cædwalla’s coup may therefore have been represented by his supporters as the
‘restoration’ of exclusive Gewissan kingship to the house of Ceawlin.
Cædwalla’s determination to sweep the board clear of rival pieces is clear
from the course and consequences of his short but bloody career. There is,
first of all, Bede’s notorious account of the conquest of Wight, during which
Cædwalla mercilessly hunted down and executed the two surviving princes of
the Jutish royal house.106 Bede also remarks prosaically that Cædwalla ‘defeated
and banished’ the Gewissan sub-kings,107 and we may gauge his success from
the fact that the line of Ceawlin’s brother Cutha, which according to the
Chronicle had monopolized rule of the Gewissae for three generations, vanishes
from our sources following the withdrawal (or banishment) of King Centwine

and Mynors, v. 7, pp. 468–73, gives Cædwalla’s age at death in 689 as about thirty, which places
his date of birth c. 659.
104 
Stephanus, Vita sancti Wilfrithi, ed. and trans. by Colgrave, c. 42, pp. 84–85; Bede,
Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, iv. 15, pp. 380–81. For further discussions
of Cædwalla, see Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 69–70; Yorke, ‘The Jutes of Hampshire
and Wight’, pp. 89–90; Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, pp. 137–39; Yorke, Wessex in the Early
Middle Ages, pp. 57–59; Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, pp. 41–42, 100–01; Sharpe, ‘King
Ceadwalla’s Roman Epitaph’.
105 
This is according to the genealogies contained in the Chronicle, which appear to repre-
sent the tradition of the late seventh century. Cædwalla’s great-grandfather is named as Cutha
(The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a. 685, p. 32), Ine’s great-grandfather as Cuthwine
(a. 688, p. 32). Since Cutha could be an abbreviation for Cuthwine, these may be the same
person, which would make Cædwalla and Ine second cousins (see Kirby, The Earliest English
Kings, p. 223). It could also help explain the later insertion of an ancestor named Cutha beneath
Cuthwine in Ine’s genealogy (a. 855, p. 45), if a later annalist was attempting to reconcile two
versions of Ine’s genealogy, one of which gave his great-grandfather as Cuthwine, the other
in abbreviated form as Cutha. In the Anglian Collection this additional Cutha is changed to
Cuthwulf.
106 
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, iv. 16, pp. 382–83; Yorke, ‘The
Jutes of Hampshire and Wight’, p. 90; Hase, ‘The Mother Churches of Hampshire’, p. 45.
107 
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, iv. 12, pp. 368–69: ‘devictis
atque amotis subregulis’.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 193

to a monastery.108 Where Ine later suffered rebellion against his rule, it appears
to have come from his close family, including his own wife Æthelburg, who led
an insurrection in the west, and a certain Ealdberht, who may have been his son
or cousin.109

The Survival of Seventh-Century Traditions in Ninth-Century Sources

As Jacqueline Stodnick has remarked, the very name ‘West Saxons’ implic-
itly evokes ‘contemporary notions of Anglo-Saxon migratory history’.110
Unfortunately, the dynastic origin myths of the ninth-century West Saxons sur-
vive only in the barest fragments. These sources provide a skeletal narrative of
invasion and warfare, which presumably once formed the frame around which
the flesh of dynastic propaganda was wrapped: stories and songs intended to
fire the hearts of nobles and assert the legitimacy of their rule, such ‘valiant
deeds of ancient heroes’ as inspired the seventh-century St Guthlac, a fiery
teenage scion of Mercian royalty before his monastic conversion, to lead his
warband across the wild British borderlands.111 These stories, if they were ever
written down at all, have been lost, but some of their flavour survives even the
terseness of the annalistic format.
The Chronicle account of the West Saxon adventus begins with the year 495,
when ‘two ealdormen, Cerdic and Cynric his kinsman, came to Britain with five
ships to the place called Cerdicesora, and on the same day they fought with the
Britons’.112 Six years later another party, led by Port and his two sons, landed at
Portsmouth (Portesmuþa) and slew a young British nobleman. In 508, Cerdic
and Cynric fought and killed a British king named Natanleod, capturing the

108 
Aldhelm, in the third of his Carmina ecclesiastica, celebrates Centwine’s entry into the
monastic life, although it may well have been less than voluntary. Aldhelm, Carmina ecclesias-
tica, ed. by Ehwald, iii, ll. 2–5, p. 14.
109 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, s. a. 722, p. 34.
110 
Stodnick, ‘The Interests of Compounding’, p. 350.
111 
Felix, Vita sancti Guthlaci, ed. by Colgrave, c. 16, pp. 80–81: ‘Igitur cum adolescentiae
vires increvissent, et iuvenili in pectore egregius dominandi amor fervesceret, tunc valida pris-
tinorum heroum facta reminiscens, veluti ex sopore evigilatus, mutata mente, adgregatis satel-
litum turmis, sese in arma convertit’. See Yorke, ‘Anglo-Saxon Origin Legends’, pp. 18–19.
112 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, s. a. 495, p. 19: ‘Her cuomon twegen aldormen
on Bretene, Cerdic  Cynric his sunu, mid .v. scipum in þone stede þe is gecueden Cerdicesora 
þy ilcan dæge gefuhtun wiþ Walum’.
194 John-Henry Clay

territory from Netley Marsh (Natanleaga) to Charford (Cerdicesford). In 514,

‘the West Saxons came to Britain with three ships to the place called Cerdicesora,
[and] Stuf and Wihtgar fought with the Britons, who fled’.113 In 519, Cerdic and
Cynric ‘began to rule, and in that same year they fought with the Britons at the
place named Charford (Cerdicesford)’,114 in 527 at Cerdicesleaga,115 in 530 they
took the Isle of Wight,116 and in 552, after Cerdic’s death, Cynric defeated the
Britons at Old Sarum.117 The link between this mythical phase of West Saxon
history and the historically plausible reign of Ceawlin is formed by the battle
of Beranbyrg (probably Barbury Castle in north Wiltshire) s. a. 556, where a
young Ceawlin supposedly fought alongside his father Cynric. The annalistic
format remains consistent as it moves towards the seventh century, with each
annal typically identifying the West Saxon protagonist(s), the antagonist, and
the place at which the battle was fought.118
Two features of the Chronicle in its ninth-century form are of particular
interest to us here. First, the early annals present a narrative of continual Saxon
conquest and expansion throughout the sixth century, primarily against the
Britons. Second, almost every ‘West Saxon’ king, both in the Chronicle itself
and in the Genealogical Regnal List associated with it, is explicitly linked by pat-
rilineal descent to Cerdic, who was, as Dumville puts it, the ‘crucial legitimising
factor’ for any prince who aspired to the throne of Wessex.119 Thus the annals
for 552 and 597 trace the genealogies of Cynric and Ceolwulf respectively via
Cerdic back to Woden; Cynegils (s. a. 611) is traced to Cynric; Cynegils’s suc-
cessor Cenwalh (643–72) is given no genealogy, and only in Chronicle version
e (s. a. 641) and in the Genealogical Regnal List is he recorded as Cynegils’s son;

113 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a. 501, p. 20: ‘Her cuomon Westseaxe in
Bretene mid .iii. scipum in þa stowe þe is gecueden Cerdicesora, Stuf  Wihtgar, fuhton wiþ
Brettas  hie gefliemdon’.
114 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a. 519, p. 20: ‘Her Cerdic  Cynric rice onfen-
gun on þy ilcan geare hie fuhton wiþ Brettas þær mon nu nemneþ Cerdicesford’.
115 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a. 527, p. 21: ‘Her Cerdic  Cynric fuhton wiþ
Brettas in þære stowe þe is gecueden Cerdicesleaga’.
116 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a. 530, p. 21: ‘Her Cerdic  Cynric genamon
Wihte ealond  ofslogon feala men on Wihtgarabyrg’.
117 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a. 552, p. 22: ‘Her Cynric gefeaht wiþ Brettas
in þære stowe þe is genemned Searobyrg  þa Bretwalas gefliemde’.
118 
On this formulaic feature of the Chronicle as a whole, see Stodnick, ‘The Interests of
Compounding’, pp. 344–45.
119 
Dumville, ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’, p. 23.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 195

Æscwine (s. a. 674), Cynegils’s second cousin twice removed if the genealogies

are to be believed, is traced back via Ceawlin’s brother to Cerdic; Centwine
(s. a. 676) is traced back to Ceolwulf; Cædwalla (s. a. 685) is traced back via
Ceawlin to Cerdic; and Ine (s. a. 688) also via Ceawlin to Cerdic. Ine abdicated
in 726, and the Chronicle does not provide any genealogical information for
the next four rulers. The fifth is Beorhtric (s. a. 783/84), whose ‘direct pater-
nal line goes to Cerdic’.120 His successor Æthelwulf, however, is given a fully
Christianized pedigree (s. a. 858), which links him via Ine’s brother Ingild and
Ceawlin not only to Cerdic, or even Woden, but to Noah and ultimately Adam.
Æthelwulf owes his important place in the Chronicle chiefly to having
fathered King Alfred the Great, during whose reign the text was originally com-
piled. When we see the history of the West Saxons as embodied in the Chronicle,
it is from the point of view of Alfred and those of his contemporaries to whom
it spoke. It is evident that the compilers drew on earlier annals and genealogical
material, but the nature and provenance of this material is extremely uncertain.
Dumville and Whitelock have suggested that the West Saxons began to keep
annals and regnal lists from the mid-eighth century at the latest,121 while Moisl
has argued that the preservation of myths and genealogies was based on oral
traditions that reached back well into the pre-Christian period.122
The immediate question here is whether, and to what degree, the Chronicle’s
account of the kings prior to Ine was already in existence at the end of the sev-
enth century, when the West Saxon name first came into use. We should not
expect too complete an answer. The annals of the Chronicle, the individual
genealogies it contains, and the Genealogical Regnal List are inconsistent with
regard to dates and regnal lengths, both compared to one another and between
different versions of the same text. Dumville demonstrated that the Genealogical
Regnal List, which lists each king of Wessex along with the length of his reign,
embodied an older tradition than that incorporated into the Chronicle. Once
the difficulties of the internal textual variations are resolved as far as possible, it
is a straightforward matter to count backwards from Cynegils, the earliest king
whose reign is fairly securely dated, subtracting the regnal lengths of each king

120 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, s. a. 783/4, p. 39: ‘his ryhtfędren cyn gęþ to
Cerdice’.
121 
Dumville, ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’, pp.  22–23; see The Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, trans. by Whitelock, p. xxii. On the dating of the Chronicle, see Bately, ‘The
Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’.
122 
Moisl, ‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies’.
196 John-Henry Clay

as given in the Genealogical Regnal List. This results in a date of 538 for Cerdic’s
adventus, far short of 495, the date given by the Chronicle, and 494, the date
supplied by the Genealogical Regnal List itself. Two kings in particular had their
careers drastically lengthened when they were fitted, not altogether happily,
into an annalistic format: Ceawlin’s reign was extended from seven or seventeen
years to thirty-two years, as already mentioned, and the period from Cerdic’s
landing to the founding of Wessex grew from six to twenty-four years.123
The reasons for these extensions are no more obvious than the date at which
they were made. Yorke has suggested that the beginning of Ceawlin’s reign
was placed earlier so that he should clearly precede King Æthelberht of Kent,
since, according to Bede, Ceawlin was the second king to hold dominion over
the southern kingdoms, and Æthelberht the third.124 This, however, may have
depended upon a misreading of Bede, who appears to have placed the begin-
ning of Æthelberht’s life, not his reign, in 560, but expressed himself in a way
that was open to misinterpretation.125 If the scribe responsible for establishing
an absolute chronology for the West Saxon tradition believed incorrectly that
Æthelberht’s reign had begun in 560, it is not surprising that he was forced to
extend Ceawlin’s reign to match it. This would have taken place after Bede’s
Historia Ecclesiastica, completed in 731, was widely disseminated.
Aside from the fact that Ceawlin’s reign lasted for seven or seventeen years
according to the Genealogical Regnal List and thirty-two years according to the
Chronicle, there are also the fingerprints of an extension within the Chronicle
itself. Stenton noted that the Chronicle appears to duplicate the arrival of the
West Saxons (in 495 and again in 514) and the foundation of their kingdom
six years later (500/01 and 519 respectively),126 an interval that mirrors, and

123 
Dumville, ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’, pp. 39–40, 46.
124 
Yorke, ‘The Jutes of Hampshire and Wight’, p. 87.
125 
Brooks, ‘The Creation and Early Structure of the Kingdom of Kent’, pp. 65–67. Bede,
Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, ii. 5, pp. 150–51, writes: ‘Anno ab incar-
natione dominica dcxvi, qui est annus xxi, ex quo Augustinus cum sociis ad praedicandum
genti Anglorum missus est, Aedilberct rex Cantuariorum post regnum temporale, quod l et vi
annis gloriosissime tenuerat, aeterna caelestis regni gaudia subiit’. (‘In the year ad 616, twenty-
one years after Augustine had been sent with his companions to preach to the English people,
King Æthelberht of Kent, after the earthly realm which he had held for fifty-six years, entered
the eternal joys of the heavenly realm’). Brooks, observing that a regnal length of fifty-six years
both grants Æthelberht unusual longevity and is incompatible with independent continental
evidence, argues that Bede was using poetic licence here, and by regnum temporale meant the
entirety of Æthelberht’s life.
126 
Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 19–23.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 197

perhaps imitates, the arrival of Hengist and Horsa in Kent in 449 and the start
of their rule in 455.127 Kenneth Harrison identified a further duplication of a
battle of Cerdic and Cynric against the Britons (508 and 527), and suggested
that this feature was the result of two versions of one narrative which had been
disjointed by an interval of nineteen years. This was the length of both the
Dionysiac Easter cycle, within tables of which the earliest annals were recorded,
and the lunar cycle which Harrison argued provided the chronological frame-
work for West Saxon oral history.128 It is unclear whether this duplication was
a deliberate attempt to alter the date of Cerdic’s adventus, or was caused by the
technical difficulties of fitting variant versions of oral tradition into an absolute
chronology. These extensions of regnal lengths demonstrate, on the one hand,
the readiness of scribes to manipulate an existing chronology in response to
present political concerns, and on the other a certain degree of respect for the
body of the traditional narrative. The precise length of a king’s reign, that is,
was apparently more negotiable than his position in the genealogy, or else the
annalists could have inserted new kings instead of extending reigns.129
The genealogical traditions enshrined in the seventh-century annals of
the Chronicle are not straightforward to interpret, especially since the relent-
less conservatism of alliterative names and the occasional use of nicknames or
abbreviations means that it is not always clear which member of the family is
being referred to.130 Yet one can quite easily draw a family tree of Ceawlin’s
descendants from the information contained in the Chronicle and find it to be
internally consistent down to the end of the seventh century, provided that

127 
Sims-Williams, ‘The Settlement of England’, pp. 26–41; Yorke, ‘The Jutes of Hampshire
and Wight’, pp. 87–88.
128 
Harrison, ‘Early West Saxon Annals’. See also Story, ‘The Frankish Annals of Lindisfarne
and Kent’, pp. 84–90.
129 
While there are contradictions between the various genealogies, they are relatively
minor compared to the chronological manipulations. The only clear contradiction in the gene-
alogies of the seventh-century kings is between the Chronicle’s genealogies of Ine under the years
688 and 855; the former lists five generations between Ine and Cerdic, the latter seven, inserting
one ancestor named Cutha as Ine’s great-grandfather and another named Creoda as Cerdic’s
son. The five-generation version appears under both 688 and 855 in Æthelweard’s Latin transla-
tion of the Chronicle: Æthelweard, Chronicon, ed. by Campbell, pp. 20, 33; the seven-generation
version (with the name Cuthwulf in place of Cutha) also survives in the Anglian Collection. It
is likely that the shorter genealogy, which evidently appeared under both 688 and 855 in the lost
version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle used by Æthelweard, and which was left unaltered only
under 688 in the surviving Old English versions, is the earlier.
130 
For further discussion, see Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, pp. 40–44.
198 John-Henry Clay

one is prepared to accept, for instance, that Ceawlin had both a brother and
a nephew by the name of Ceolwulf, and that he named one of his sons Cutha
after his other brother, and that his grandson and great-nephew were called
Cynegils. Alliteration among members of one dynasty was not unusual among
Anglo-Saxons. If the Gewissae of the seventh century seem to have been strik-
ingly, perhaps suspiciously, fond of the custom, we should note that five of the
six known third-generation descendants of Ceawlin and this brothers were
named Cenwealh, Centwine, Cenred, Cenfus, and Cenberht, and there is no
reason do doubt that any of these lived; the first three are historically attested
kings, and the remaining two the fathers of kings, if not kings themselves.131
The seventh-century genealogies also survive in a discreet cluster within the
Chronicle, distinct from the obviously mythical elements of the sixth century
and the information void of the eighth, and are tied to the ninth century only
by a delicate patrilineal thread between Ine’s brother Ingild and King Alfred’s
grandfather Egbert. It is unlikely that the seventh-century genealogies were
fabricated in all their complexity in the ninth century, and equally implausible
that they were devised by those five eighth-century successors of Ine whose own
pedigrees the Chronicle ignores.

Mythical Origins: Britons and Saxons in the Reign of King Ine, 688–726
While we should remain wary of a source which bears so many fingerprints
of later scribes, it does seem that the genealogies of the Chronicle largely pre-
serve late seventh-century traditions of Gewissan descent from King Ceawlin.
Beyond Ceawlin, however, the story is very different: the rot begins with his
alleged father Cynric, and sets in deeply with the mythical Cerdic. It also seems
likely that the tradition of Cerdic’s adventus and the subsequent expansion
of Wessex through conquest was well-established in Ine’s day, not least since,
according to the Anglian Collection, Ine appears to have promoted himself as

131 
Cenwealh is well attested in both the Chronicle and Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by
Colgrave and Mynors, iii. 7, pp. 232–37; Centwine was king from 676 to 685 and was referred
to in a poem by his contemporary Aldhelm, Carmina ecclesiastica, ed. by Ehwald, iii, l. 3, p. 14;
Cenred, aside from his identification in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a. 688, p. 32,
as the father of King Ine (688–726), is also named in The Law of King Ine, ed. by Liebermann,
prologue, pp. 88–89, and appears as rex Westsaxonum when confirming a 692 charter of King
Nunna of Sussex (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 45); Cenfus is named by The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a. 674, p. 31, as the father of King Æscwine (674–76), and Cenberht
(a. 685, p. 32) as the father of King Cædwalla (685–88).
the Development of West Saxon Identity 199

a direct descendant of Cerdic.132 This tradition may have included the relative
chronology as it survives, but by no means the absolute dates of the Chronicle,
which are broadly reliable only back to Cynegil’s reign.133 One consequence of
pushing the West Saxon adventus from 538 to 495 was to associate Cerdic and
his kinsmen more closely with the Kentish and South Saxon founders, who,
according to the Chronicle’s narrative, had arrived in 455 and 477 respectively.
The West Saxon adventus tradition, however, is more textually complicated
than either of these, consisting as it does of not one, but three arrivals.
We noted above that two features of the surviving West Saxon dynastic
propaganda stand out: the importance of Cerdic as the font of regal legiti-
macy, and the role of the Britons as the perpetual victims of West Saxon aggres-
sion. We can relate both of these features to the political situation in which
the Gewissae found themselves in the late seventh century, and thereby better
understand the way in which elite identity was formulated according to con-
temporary needs and concerns. The first feature reflects a desire to push the ori-
gins of the West Saxon kingdom two generations further back than Ceawlin, to
an ancient landfall on the Hampshire coast. As already discussed, the narrative
actually records three separate landfalls, beginning with the arrival of Cerdic
and Cynric in 495, which was followed by a second adventus at Portsmouth of
one Port with his two sons in 501, and finally the arrival of Stuf and Wihtgar
in 514. Barbara Yorke has emphasized the clearly mythical elements in each
arrival: the recurrence of two brothers, the set-piece battle upon landing which
quickly routs the local Britons, and the obvious later derivation of personal
names from geographical locations. ‘Port’ appears to derive from Latin portus,
probably referring to Portchester, ‘Wihtgar’ from Uectis, now the Isle of Wight,
and the British ruler ‘Natanleod’ from Natanleaga, probably Netley Marsh.134
The Chronicle’s account of the mythical Cerdic’s arrival also links his activities
to three local places: Cerdicesora, Cerdicesford and Cerdiceslea (only the second
132 
Yorke, ‘Anglo-Saxon Origin Legends’, p. 17.
133 
This is not to say that there are no discrepancies with independent sources, for example
the death of Bishop Hæddi of Winchester, which the Chronicle places in 703 and Bede, Historia
ecclesiastica, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, v. 18, pp. 514–15, in 705.
134 
Yorke, ‘The Jutes of Hampshire and Wight’; Yorke, ‘Anglo-Saxon Origin Legends’,
pp. 17–19; see also Brooks, Anglo-Saxon Myths, pp. 88–89; Copley, The Conquest of Wessex,
pp. 165–68. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 20, n. 2, argued that Port was a genuine historical
figure, notwithstanding the toponymical coincidence of Portsmouth; Alcock, Economy, Society
and Warfare, pp. 225–26, is inclined to support him on this point. With regard to Hengist and
Horsa, some historians have considered their role as archetypal ‘divine twins’, mythical figures
woven into a historical fabric. See Yorke, ‘Fact or Fiction?’.
200 John-Henry Clay

of which survives as modern Charford on the river Avon south of Old Sarum).
Like the Chronicle’s other suspicious etymologies, this probably represents the
shaping of myth around existing place-names. Because of the threefold occur-
rence of the extremely rare personal name element Cerdic- in such a small area,
Stenton plausibly suggested that the place-names did indeed derive from a sin-
gle historical individual, though probably a post-Roman British ruler rather
than a Saxon invader.135
Even if we accept that Cerdic may have been a genuine figure, how and when
he became a Saxon invader and grandfather of Ceawlin is impossible to ascer-
tain, except that he was known as such by the end of the seventh century. The
origins of Port, Stuf, and Wihtgar are equally obscure, but Yorke suggests that the
odd triple adventus of the West Saxons may conceal further Jutish legends which
the West Saxons appropriated and incorporated into their own dynastic myth.136
There are good reasons to support this view. Having three similar mythical arriv-
als, one after the other, seems unnecessarily complicated, especially considering
that the very purpose of adventus legends is to provide a particular ruling dynasty
with a clear moment of origin.137 The three arrivals also reflect the three political
groupings of the Solent: Cerdic and Cynric for the West Saxons, Port arriving
at Portsmouth for the Jutish province of the Meon valley, and Stuf and Wihtgar
for the Jutes of the Isle of Wight, which the Chronicle (s. a. 534) claims was later
granted to Wihtgar by Cerdic. According to the sequence of events, Cerdic,
and by implication his lineage, was quite clearly senior to the later arrivals. This
would have had obvious benefits for the Gewissae, for it legitimized the seventh-
century Saxon conquest — or reconquest, according to the Chronicle’s narrative
— of vulnerable Jutish territory, which gave them valuable access to continental
trade links and a breathing space from Mercian pressure on the Thames.138 It also
directed the socially embedded martial inclinations of all English-speaking noble-
men, Saxon and Jute alike, towards an outside and ancient enemy: the Britons.
The actual relationship between the British and early Saxon populations of
the south between the fifth and seventh centuries is a fraught question, par-
ticularly the degree to which the Britons — who are, problematically, virtu-
ally invisible in the archaeological record — underwent either replacement

135 
Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 24–25.
136 
Yorke, ‘The Jutes of Hampshire and Wight’, pp. 95–96.
137 
Cf. Howe, Migration and Mythmaking, p. 61, who writes that ‘the migration was cher-
ished as a source of political order’.
138 
Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 58–59.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 201

or acculturation. Since the 1980s, there have been influential arguments for a
model of elite emulation and acculturation by which small but powerful Saxon
warbands gradually established cultural dominance over the majority British
underclass.139 The British influence on aspects of Saxon material culture is also
more widely acknowledged than it was forty years ago.140 Now Higham, one of
the architects of the acculturation model, expresses the fear in his recent edited
volume on this topic that ‘an elite dominance interpretation of cultural change
is becoming the new orthodoxy’.141 Opposing voices have maintained that the
Germanic immigration was larger in scale than a few isolated warbands,142 that
the immigrants ‘moved into a landscape from which a major withdrawal had
taken place’,143 and that ‘the significance of ethnic barriers [between Britons and
Saxons] has been underplayed in the early medieval historiography of Britain’.144
The most persistent challenge to theories of acculturation has been presented
by the English language itself, which shows remarkably little influence from
Celtic, although there is also disagreement among linguists on this issue.145
Faced with such complexities, it is perhaps best to agree with Ian Wood’s
multifaceted conclusion that ‘some places saw rapid takeover with minimum
disruption, others saw instances of carnage, and yet others saw a slow, destruc-

139 
See in particular Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement; Cleary, The Ending of Roman
Britain; Higham, Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons; Dark, Britain and the End of the Roman
Empire; Ward-Perkins, ‘Why Did the Anglo-Saxons Not Become More British?’; the trend
culminated in John Moreland’s assertions that ‘the “English” are not biologically descended
from the Germanic stock of Bede’s account’, and that up until Bede’s time the terms ‘Angles’
and ‘Saxons’ only ever referred to a restricted warrior elite. Moreland, ‘Ethnicity, Power and the
English’, pp. 25, 46–49. For recent summaries and discussions of the debate, see Hills, Origins of
the English; Higham, ‘Britons in Anglo-Saxon England’.
140 
Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship, p. 22, dismissed the possibility of British
influence on the Anglo-Saxons in half a paragraph; since then a considerable amount of archae-
ological work has been done on detecting British technical and artistic influence on Anglo-
Saxon metalwork in particular. For a full review and discussion, see Laing, ‘Romano-British
Metalworking’, pp. 42–56.
141 
Higham, ‘Britons in Anglo-Saxon England’, p. 12.
142 
Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, p. 48.
143 
Coates, ‘Invisible Britons’, p. 185.
144 
Smyth, ‘The Emergence of English Identity’, p. 31.
145 
Coates, ‘Invisible Britons’, regards the lack of Celtic loan-words in English as proof of
mass population replacement; Tristram, ‘Why Don’t the English Speak Welsh?’, argues that
there is evidence for Celtic influence on English at the level of phonology and morphosyntax
rather than vocabulary.
202 John-Henry Clay

tive infiltration’.146 The original arrival of the Gewissae in the upper Thames,
according to the archaeological evidence, likely preceded or immediately fol-
lowed the first war between Saxons and Britons in the 430s; this may have
been one instance of ‘carnage’, although direct and unambiguous evidence of
such episodes is notoriously difficult to detect in the archaeological record.
The expansion of Gewissan control up the Thames valley and beyond likely
involved a complex combination of violence and relatively peaceful capitula-
tion, depending on time and place. The same could be said of the Gewissan
annexation of the British west in the seventh century. It was heralded by the
battles of Bradford-on-Avon in 652 and Penselwood in 658, in the wake of
which the Britons were driven ‘as far as the Parret’, a river in central Somerset.147
This saw the end of British rule in the region, but there is no reason to believe
that there was a mass expulsion of the native population. Padel has invoked
the dominance of English place-names in western Wessex in order to support
the model of a ‘major replacement of population, language, and place-names
[occurring ] over a large area in a comparatively short space of time’.148 The
assumption that early medieval place-names are necessarily representative of
the ethnicity of the inhabitants, however, is invalidated by C. P. Lewis’s study
of Mersete hundred on the eleventh-century Welsh Marches. The hundred con-
tained nineteen manors, all with English names (the majority being -tun place-
names, as in Padel’s study of Devon), yet the vast majority of its population was
Welsh: fifty-eight households compared to thirty-two English households, with
most of the latter concentrated in a single royal manor.149 Had we a Domesday
Book for seventh-century Wessex, we might equally find a surprising number
of Britons populating an overwhelmingly ‘English’ toponymic landscape for
several generations before English became the dominant language.
The evidence of Ine’s Law Code (written 688/93) also describes Britons of
several classes living under Saxon rule, and this aspect of the text should prop-
erly be related to the newly acquired British lands to the west, not necessarily
to Wessex as a whole.150 Following the conquest, large numbers of Britons sud-

146 
Wood, ‘Before and after the Migration to Britain’, p. 46.
147 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Bately, a.  658, p.  30: ‘Her Cenwalh gefeaht æt
Peonnum wiþ Walas,  hie gefliemde oþ Pedridan’.
148 
Padel, ‘Place-Names and the Saxon Conquest’, p. 228.
149 
Lewis, ‘Welsh Territories and Welsh Identities’, pp. 134–36.
150 
Grimmer, ‘Britons in Early Wessex’, pp. 108–11. Far less should Ine’s Law Code be used
as evidence for an apartheid-like social structure which was applied across Anglo-Saxon England
the Development of West Saxon Identity 203

denly found themselves at the mercy of a Saxon elite, newly arrived from the
east, who had taken over tracts of land as the spoils of victory. Among these
Saxon incomers were the parents of St Boniface, born c. 675 near Exeter. The
much lower wergeld of a Briton compared to a Saxon of equivalent rank, as
promulgated at several points in the Law Code, clearly demonstrates the legally
and socially inferior status of the British population under West Saxon rule.151
While the Law Code does not define the criteria for distinguishing between
Britons (wealas) and Saxons (englisc), the fact that such a distinction could be
externally imposed through legal structures demonstrates that it was seen, at
least by Ine and his advisors, as a meaningful and important one.152
Ine inherited the legacy of the previous generation of Gewissae who had
conquered these expansive British territories by the sword. The most popular
songs and stories of military glory in his court may well have been about this
successful war in the west, less often about the ignominious Gewissan retreat
from the upper Thames. By tracing his own lineage directly back to Cerdic,
who was overthrowing British rulers almost from the moment his feet landed
on the shores of the Solent, Ine promoted a dynastic identity whose legitimacy
was self-evident. The defeat and oppression of the Britons was a present reality,
codified in law and forming the very basis of West Saxon power; it provided a
mirror in which Ine could see himself as the sole king of a unified, victorious
Saxon people, just like Cerdic before him. It is of course ironic that the name
‘Cerdic’ appears not to be Anglo-Saxon at all, but is probably derived from
British ‘Ceretic’. There are echoes of this down the seventh-century genealogies,
for the first historical king of the Gewissae, Ceawlin, also seems to have borne
a British name, as did Cenwalh and Ine’s own predecessor Cædwalla.153 In Ine’s
time, however, it is unlikely that the British origin of these names was acknowl-
edged, or, if it was, that it was held to be of much importance. The primary
concern of the earliest West Saxon annalists was to narrate the steady expulsion
and subjugation of the native Britons, and they left no room for accounts of the
intermarriage or alliance which likely had occurred.

in general. See, for example, Härke, ‘Early Anglo-Saxon Social Structure’, p. 149; Thomas,
Stumpf, and Härke, ‘Evidence for an Apartheid-like Social Structure’, p. 4; Woolf, ‘Apartheid
and Economics’, pp. 127–29. See The Law of King Ine, ed. by Liebermann.
151 
Alexander, ‘The Legal Status of the Native Britons’.
152 
Grimmer, ‘Britons in Early Wessex’, p. 113.
153 
Parsons, ‘British *Caraticos, Old English Cerdic’; Coates, ‘On Some Controversy
Surrounding Gewissae/Gewissei’.
204 John-Henry Clay

Conclusion
We can see that the West Saxon origin myth of Cerdic, perhaps inspired in con-
tent by a similar Kentish myth,154 fulfilled two important political needs. First,
it planted the origins of the Gewissan dynasty firmly in southern Hampshire,
passing over the fact that the region had formerly been ruled by a Jutish
dynasty, and that the Gewissae had been shouldered out of the upper Thames
by Mercia. Second, it justified Saxon rule over the Britons of Dorset, Somerset,
and Devon, a sizeable area which had been conquered with relative swiftness
between 652 and 661. The triumphant adventus myth of Cerdic helped but-
tress this social reality by portraying the Saxon advance as inevitable, and the
battles of Cenwalh and Ine in the west as a natural continuation of the deeds
of their ancestors. In a sense, although the tradition had become disjointed
from the past, it was not entirely inaccurate. The earliest Saxon groups, presum-
ably including those settled at Dorchester-on-Thames, had managed to con-
quer the south-east with relative swiftness in the middle of the fifth century,
as evidenced by Gildas and the Gallic Chronicle of 452. Two centuries later it
was the Gewissae, also based in the upper Thames, who conquered most of the
remaining British territory in the south-west. Tradition and myth, far from
being purely ideological fabrications, were adapted to fit and account for his-
torical forces which had long outlasted living memory, but whose momentum
was still felt.155 The Cerdic myth was a fitting and plausible explanation as to
how, when, and why the ancestors of the Gewissae had come to Britain: not as
mercenaries, but as conquerors from the outset.
We should regard the Chronicle’s story of West Saxon origins as an extremely
valuable source, not for fifth-century history, but for the dynastic myth-making
of later centuries. The ninth-century compilers of the Chronicle, luckily for us,
were not overly conscientious when it came to reconciling the tangle of annals,
traditions, and genealogies they had inherited. In this article we have teased apart
these threads and peered between the confusions and contradictions in order to
win a glimpse of an earlier stage of dynastic propaganda, to which the Alfredian
chroniclers looked back and sought to connect their own rulers. They found
that this earlier story, tailored to the political needs of the late seventh century,

154 
Yorke suggests that the inspiration was ultimately Gothic in origin, and arrived in Kent
via the person of King Æthelbert’s father Irmenric, who had a Gothic name: Yorke, ‘Anglo-
Saxon Origin Legends’, pp. 25–28.
155 
See the contribution of Francesco Borri in this volume for a similar observation con-
cerning the origin myth of early medieval Venice.
the Development of West Saxon Identity 205

still fitted well in the ninth. It bore the colours of antiquity, continuity, and vic-
tory. Alfred took it up just as he took up the Law Code of Ine and appended it to
his own laws; in both cases he was claiming the authority of the past in much the
same way as his seventh-century forebears had attempted to do when they first
planted their unsteady feet in the Jutish south and the British west.

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208 John-Henry Clay

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 Arrivano i barbari a cavallo!
Foundation Myths and
Origines gentium in the Adriatic Arc

Francesco Borri*

O
ne of the most vivid images in Venetian history is of the Romans flee-
ing from the inland cities on account of the barbarians to the marshes
and lagoons where Venice was destined to be built.1 While the bar-
barians conquered and pillaged the Italian cities, the Romans, from then on
called Venetici or Venetians, built a unique town destined to marry the sea and
to preserve the Roman traditions through the ‘Dark Ages’.
These images, although seriously criticized by historians, still constitute an
important part of popular narrative, and continue to appear in academic debates.2
It is not my intention to refute these dramatic events. I agree that the barbar-
ians did not come just for a cup of tea, as Bryan Ward-Perkins pointed out.3

*  I would like to express my gratitude to Gerda Heydemann, Walter Pohl, and Herwig
Wolfram, who kindly read my manuscript and offered precious suggestions and criticism to make
my thoughts more understandable. I also wish to thank Richard Corradini, Max Diesenberger,
Meg Leja, Maya Maskarinec, Marianne Pollheimer, and Ian Wood, who discussed with me the
topics explored here, offering important help and advice.
1 
Kretschmayr, Geschichte von Venedig, i: Bis zum Tode Enrico Dandolos, p. 19: ‘Das Jahr 568
kann man einzig nennen, will man von einem Geburtsjahre Venedigs sprechen’; Cessi, Storia
della repubblica di Venezia, pp. 7–14.
2 
Grubb, ‘When Myths Lose Power’; Rando, ‘Venedigs “Früh”-Mittelalter in der Moderne’.
For an example of the traditional view concerning the oldest myths of Venetian history, see the
otherwise excellent book, Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, p. 4. On the subject, see the considera-
tions of Reimitz, ‘Positivismus’.
3 
Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome, pp. 82–83, along with Pohl, review of Ward-Perkins,
The Fall of Rome, and Halsall, review of Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome. Halsall, ‘Movers and

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101666
pp. 215–270 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
216 Francesco Borri

Nevertheless, the traditional interpretations of the ‘Age of Migrations’ and the

origins of Venice are burdened by many methodological weaknesses.4 The very
idea of the violent destruction of a city and the consequent foundation of a new
one in a safer and more defendable place is, to a great extent, an historiographical
construction. We know that very few cities met their end as a result of violent con-
quest, and Stefano Gasparri used to say that, with the exception of Carthage and
Sodom, the examples are very small in number. Contemporary events also dem-
onstrate that the complete destruction of a city is a rather uncommon phenom-
enon even with modern weapons and technology. Moreover, specifically in the
Venetian case, the idea that the marshes and the water could stop the barbarians
because they were unable to sail, presupposes the old-fashioned topos of Roman
sea power (following Alfred Thayer Mahan) and of the very barbarian nature of
the barbarians, who were so uncultivated that they were incapable of manoeu-
vring a ship — an image proposed by many classical authors up to Procopius and
still utilized by Henri Pirenne and J. B. Bury at the beginning of the last century.5
Finally, it is questionable why Venice should be considered an Italian unicum, and
why the ‘Venetian way’ was not imitated in other parts of the peninsula when,
according to classic historiography, the barbarians were pillaging and burning
many centres of old Roman civilization.
The strongest argument for accepting and maintaining these old foundation
traditions is that many literary sources actually mention them. We notice, in
fact, that from the end of the eighth century many chroniclers and historians
describe the transfer of the Aquileian episcopal see to Grado, and, later, the
settlement of the Roman population in Cittanova, Torcello, Metamaucum/

Shakers’, is also very helpful, although written before the publication of Ward-Perkins’s book.
For a critique of the ‘negationist’ approaches to the end of the Roman Empire, see Wickham,
‘La Chute de Rome’, and, more recently, Gasparri, ‘Tardoantico e alto medioevo’. For a more
historiographical approach, see Wood, ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’.
4 
See the discussions: Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West; Pohl, Die
Völkerwanderung, pp. 13–39. More specifically on the Venetian case: La Rocca, ‘Città scom-
parse in area veneta’; La Rocca, ‘Le “invasioni”’, pp. 56–57.
5 
For a recent perspective on the barbarians and the sea: Giunteschi Conti, ‘Barbari e
navi nel Mediterraneo’; for a critique: Starr, The Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History.
On Mahan’s influence on the historical discourse: Hattendorf, ‘Introduction, Theories of
Naval Power’. The quotations are to be found in Bury, ‘The Naval Policy of the Roman
Empire’, p. 23: ‘the Lombards did not take to the sea’; and Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne,
pp. 145–47: ‘il n’y avait pas de flotte chez le Francs’. On this, see Horden and Purcell, The
Corrupting Sea, p. 155. On Horden and Purcell’s book there has been much debate, recently:
Algazi, ‘Diversity Rules’.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 217

Malamocco and Rivus Altus/Rialto. Upon closer inspection, however, the var-
ying storylines in these sources, including the shifting role of the barbarians,
reveal these narratives for what they are: an effort to find an explanation for a
present situation in the past, a sort of idol of origins, as Marc Bloch would say,
with the function of clarifying the present.6 These narratives, therefore, were
not ‘campfire stories’ (or in this case ‘forum stories’) memorializing a long-lost
‘Age of Migrations’ (again, the term ‘Age of Flight’ would be more appropri-
ate), but a way of rationalizing the urban discontinuity that the Adriatic area
experienced between the third and seventh centuries. They can thus help us to
understand the social and cultural situation in which they were born and the
questions they were supposed to answer.7 As noted by Chris Wickham: ‘cities
get burned by enemies, or hit by earthquakes, throughout their history, but if
they are not rebuilt afterwards it is because of longer-term causes than one dis-
aster encompasses on its own’.8 The foundation traditions examined here were
efforts to explain also these longer-term causes of discontinuity.
Most interesting is that those stories were not peculiar to Venice, but were
shared in a much wider area, namely the Adriatic arc of Roman/Byzantine tra-
dition. We are able to trace them already in the tenth century, up to the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries, noticing strong regional variations, especially
in Split and Venice, the cities where literary culture was flourishing and doc-
umentation is more abundant. From this perspective as well, although this is
sometimes not recognized in modern historiography, Venice was not ‘un altro
mondo’, but was part of a wider and integrated area, a region with peculiar
characteristics that was later overshadowed by the city’s dynamism.9

6 
Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien, pp. 19–23. The idea of a flight instead of
a migration can also be found in many traditions linked to Steppenvölker; see Diesenberger, ‘Die
Steppenreiter aus dem Osten’; Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, pp. 27–30.
7 
On the construction of a common past, see Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing
Traditions’. See also Goetz, ‘Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit’; Wolfram, Gotische Studien,
pp. 225–40. On the early medieval perception of the past: Innes, ‘Introduction: Using the Past’;
Pohl, ‘The Construction of Communities’.
8 
Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, p. 13. See also: Pohl, ‘Conclusione: il v secolo’.
Among the many reviews of Wickham’s book, see Haldon, ‘Framing Transformation’.
9 
I refer here to the very important book of that title: Cracco, Un ‘altro mondo’. Challenging
the traditional view on the oldest of Venetian history, I follow the direction suggested in
Gasparri, ‘Venezia tra i secoli viii e ix’; Gasparri, ‘Venezia tra l’Italia bizantina’; and Gasparri,
‘Come nasce Venezia?’.
218 Francesco Borri

1. Defining the Area: The Adriatic Arc in the Early Middle Ages
Between the third and seventh centuries, the Adriatic arc (Dalmatia, Istria, and
northeast Italy) experienced an intense discontinuity in urban life, which had its
roots in the powerful social, economic, demographic, and political changes tak-
ing place in late Antiquity.10 The extent of these transformations may be grasped
by considering that the names of two of the major administrative provinces
that covered the Adriatic basin, Venetia and Dalmatia, underwent a peculiar
semantic evolution, which finally resulted in them referring to different, or par-
tially different, regions than in Roman times.11 The major Roman centres of the
region suffered severe urban decline, both in terms of population and in terms
of the preservation of architectural richness, while smaller towns, more suited
to contemporary needs, began to emerge. In this process, two of the ecclesiasti-
cal metropolises on the Adriatic, Salona and Aquileia, lost their urban charac-
ter, the latter becoming the regional paradigm of the abandoned Roman city.12
In contrast to narrative sources, which explain discontinuity in Salona and
Aquileia by means of a migration myth,13 archaeological evidence suggests a
remarkably different picture, one that does not confirm the violent and total
destruction of these two cities. The archaeological evidence points to intense
decline and urban discontinuity, but also signs of weak urban life up to the
middle of the seventh century,14 a pattern very similar to that observed in sev-
eral Mediterranean centres.15 Such findings puzzled many archaeologists, who,

10 
Dunn, ‘The Transition from Polis to Kastron’; La Rocca, ‘Città scomparse in area veneta’,
p. 290; Lotter, Völkerverschiebungen, pp. 193–204; Wickham, ‘Conclusions’.
11 
On the Venetiae: Azzara, Venetiae, pp. 137–41; La Rocca, ‘Le “invasioni”’, pp. 60–61. On
Dalmatia: Borri, ‘La Dalmazia alto medievale’, pp. 48–51; Steindorff, ‘Deutungen des Wortes
Dalmatia’, pp. 250–51.
12 
La Rocca, ‘Le “invasioni”’, p. 58; Sotinel, Identité civique et christianisme, pp. 1–2.
13 
La Rocca, ‘Le “invasioni”’, pp. 58–59. For a sceptical approach towards the very existence
of a migration myth, see Heather, ‘Ethnicity, Group Identity, and Social Status’, pp. 31–32.
14 
On Aquileia: Marano, ‘La città tardo antica’; Villa, ‘Aquileia tra Goti’, pp.  614–17,
621–25; Magrini, ‘Archeologia del paesaggio suburbano’. On Salona: Duval and Marin, eds,
Manastrine, pp. 653–56; Nikolajević, ‘Salona christiana aux vie et viie siècles’, p. 92; Dunn,
‘Heraclius “Reconstructor of Cities”’.
15 
On urban decline in the seventh-century Mediterranean, see Hodges and Whitehouse,
Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe, pp. 20–53, as well as the new up-dated
French edition: Hodges and Whitehouse, Mahomet, Charlemagne et les origines de l’Europe,
trans. by Morrisson. See also: La Rocca, ‘Lo spazio urbano tra vi e viii secolo’; and Wickham,
Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 690–92. On the debate on urban continuity/discontinuity:
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 219

trusting narratives that were common in historiography, searched for the traces
of the barbarian Wanderung, and dated the layers according to the written
sources discussed here, thereby creating a circular argument.16
The Adriatic arc was, after the seventh century, a relatively backwater prov-
ince of Byzantium, apparently linked to Constantinople by elite exchange and
the commerce of luxuries. Nevertheless, between the eighth and ninth centu-
ries the settlement of powerful Frankish elites in the newly conquered prov-
inces in Italy and the western Balkans integrated the Adriatic into a wider
network of exchange, which connected the eastern Mediterranean to central
Europe and the Baltic Sea.17 The presence of rich aristocrats, and the conse-
quent demand for wealth, brought about the rapid enrichment of the Adriatic
region and a profound change in the fabric of social structures.18 The sud-
den growth in the Venetian lagoons (the place where most of the wealth was
gathered and redistributed), the formation of the Croatian dukedom, and the
rise of the Dalmatian cities should all be understood as different aspects of
the same development, the extent of which is evidenced in the foundation of
Benedictine monasteries along the sea-routes, the rise of Dalmatian piracy, and
the great prosperity mentioned by the testament of the dux Venetiarum John,
who died in 831.19
Adriatic communications relied on the Dalmatian, Istrian, and Venetian
harbours offering an infrastructure that allowed safe navigation up to the Po
Valley, Ravenna, and Comacchio.20 The emergence of systems of exchange along
the Adriatic and the availability of greater wealth strongly influenced local soci-

Ward-Perkins, ‘Continuists, Catastrophists, and the Town’. See also the response of Hodges,
Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne, pp. 24–27.
16 
See, for example, the difficulties of finding evidence for a break in urban life: Marasović,
Diocletian’s Palace, pp. 45–46. See also n. 94, below.
17 
Wickham, ‘Conclusions’, pp. 324–25. On the development of the Adriatic regions, see
Budak, ‘Die Adria von Justinian’; on communications, see Ferluga, ‘Navigation et commerce
dans l’Adriatique’; McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 523–31.
18 
Wickham, ‘Aristocratic Power’. On the Dalmatian elites: Lienhard, ‘Les Combattants
francs et slaves’.
19 
John’s testament is edited in SS Ilario e Benedetto e S Gregorio, ed. by Lanfranchi and
Lanfranchi Strina, pp. 21–24. Literature regarding the rapid growth of Venice between the
eighth and ninth centuries has become very rich lately, see Ammerman, ‘Venice before the Grand
Canal’, pp. 155–56; Gelichi, ‘The Eels of Venice’; McCormick, Origins of the European Economy,
pp. 523–31, 763–67; and Pavan and Arnaldi, ‘Le origini dell’identità lagunare’, pp. 442–46.
20 
Pryor, Geography, Technology, War, pp. 93–94.
220 Francesco Borri

eties, bringing about the rise of powerful new social groups in the major nodes
of the Adriatic arc. These groups shared striking similarities, including com-
parable origines gentium. It was the very nature of premodern navigation, con-
ducted without instruments and only during the daylight, thus requiring stops
at night, that provided the contact and exchange necessary for the develop-
ment of mutual likenesses among communities separated by many sea miles.21
One important characteristic of these Adriatic-Byzantine elites was their
inclusion among the few Latin/Romance-speaking subjects of the Byzantine
Empire, which was otherwise populated by Greci.22 It is possible to find virtu-
ally unique Latin epigraphs from the beginning of the ninth century praising
Byzantine emperors, as well as documents dated according to the years of the
reigns of the same rulers.23 There apparently even existed similar expressions,
attested in Istria and Dalmatia, describing imperial authority. Moreover, these
elites sought prestige through similar avenues, travelling to Constantinople and
obtaining imperial dignities in order to boast of their status in a local society: a
very suggestive relationship between the centre and the north Adriatic periph-
eries.24 The extent of these shared similarities can be understood from the Plea
of Rižana, a well known placitum which took place close to the river Rižana in
Istria (today Slovenia) in the first decade of the ninth century. The placitum
consisted of a long complaint by the Byzantine elites of Istria, who were facing
profound changes brought about by the Frankish conquest of the peninsula.
On this occasion, the Istrians referred to Venetians/Venetici and Dalmatians as
‘relatives’ (parentes) and neighbours, thereby highlighting a sense of belonging
which linked men who were close to Byzantium on the Adriatic arc.25
The extent of this shared sense of identity is, however, difficult to assess, and
the difficulty is similar to that which we encounter when describing Byzantine-
Italian identities.26 One major issue is the lack of a common name: it seems that

21 
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 402–30; Vernet, ‘La navigaciòn en la
alta adad media’.
22 
Ortalli, ‘Venise et Constantinople’; Ortalli, ‘Realtà veneziana e bizantinità latina’. On the
Greci the literature is very wide; see the article by Gantner, ‘The Label “Greek”’.
23 
Mihaljčić and Steindorff, Namentragende Steininschriften, pp. 95–95.
24 
Borri, ‘Gli Istriani e i loro parenti’; McCormick, ‘The Imperial Edge’.
25 
The most updated and complete edition is Placitum Rizianense, ed. by Krahwinkler, with
extensive commentary. Recent contributions to the issue are: Margetić, ‘L’Istria bizantina ed
alcuni problemi’; Esders, ‘Regionale Selbstbehauptung’.
26 
Pohl, ‘Invasion and Ethnic Identity’, pp. 25–27. For an alternative view, see Cosentino,
Storia dell’Italia bizantina, pp. 383–89.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 221

these men referred to themselves according to their provinces of provenance

or, less often, to the cities to which they belonged.27 A broader definition of
identity could have been that accorded by the term milites. This evidence comes
from Venice, and, later (in the eleventh century), Dalmatia: the militia, the
army, conceived more in an ideological than factual fashion, was the backbone
of these Latin-Byzantine communities and of hegemonic power within soci-
ety.28 Indeed, the Adriatic-Byzantine elites did not occupy a territorially coher-
ent area because the unity of the Adriatic arc relied on a network of commu-
nication routes and sea lines. It is easy to recognize that the Istrians and their
neighbours shared an identity that could hardly be called ethnic, since it lacks
many of the elements listed by Anthony D. Smith or Raoul Naroll as definitive
of ethnic groups.29
Still, in spite of these difficulties, it appears that these men developed com-
mon traditions of common descent. I will not venture into the question of the
actual level of faith placed in these traditions, but it is clear that the origines dis-
cussed here represent markers of identity and the legitimization of contempo-
rary social and cultural roles.30 The richest and most developed evidence origi-
nates from Venetiae and Dalmatia; apparently, the Frankish conquest of Istria
in 791, and its consequent transformation of the local elites, altered the role of
these origin traditions and their successive developments.31

2. The ‘Negative’ of a Barbarian History?

The oldest traces of these traditions date to the first half of the ninth century.
The core of all these stories was the destruction of a glorious city at the hands
of a famous barbarian and the consequent dispersion of the Romans to recently
founded, or less prestigious, centres. The popularity of the barbarian leader —

27 
On the importance of ethnic names, see Pohl, ‘Aux origines d’une Europe ethnique’,
pp. 205–07; and Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, pp. 22–24.
28 
Borri, ‘Gli Istriani e i loro parenti’, p. 16; Gasparri, ‘Venezia tra i secoli viii e ix’, p. 5;
Harrison, ‘The Development of Elites’, pp. 299–300.
29 
Naroll, ‘On Ethnic Unit Classification’; Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, pp. 21–46.
For a critique of this approach, which is described as a collection of ‘checking lists and tick-
boxes’: Heather, ‘Ethnicity, Group Identity, and Social Status’, pp. 39–40.
30 
Veyne, Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes?, pp. 34–36.
31 
On the Frankish conquest of Istria, see Margetić, ‘Istra 751–791’; and recently, Štih,
‘L’Istria agli inizi del potere franco’.
222 Francesco Borri

who had many faces and could be depicted as Alboin, Attila, or Totila — was
apparently considered a direct reflection of the importance of the old urban
centre, which became the long-lost fatherland.32 In contrast with the barbarian
origines gentium, we find no Scandinavian or Scythian Urheimat, nor a Trojan
legend; rather, the origins of these traditions were sought in an old Roman
city,33 whose ruins still covered the Italian and Dalmatian landscapes.34 After
the conquest of Aquileia, its inhabitants moved to Istria, the Venetian lagoons,
and Ravenna; similarly, the Salonians escaped to the coastal cities, settling
Spilt, Kotor, Trogir, Zadar, Rab, Krk, Osor, and Dubrovnik/Ragusa.
In the construction of these traditions, the Byzantine elites on the Adriatic
arc, apparently beginning with the Venetiae, looked to the barbarian origines
gentium, mainly to the works of Paul the Deacon, in order to understand their
own past. They managed to develop what I call the ‘negative’ of a barbarian his-
tory.35 The stories did not borrow facts from the Historiae Romanae, which cir-
culated widely, and the Scipios, the Caesars, and the pagan gods are not present,
reappearing only in much later narratives. These traditions were instead built
out of a mould provided by the barbarian histories, using the latter as their main
source and model; this could also explain their late development. What appears
interesting is that, due to the political continuity and the urban discontinuity in
the Adriatic arc, these stories were apparently specific to certain communities.
What occurred was, essentially, a turnover of perspectives, with the bearded
forefathers of the early medieval kingdoms becoming the ‘famous destroyers’:
the villains necessary for the transition between past and present conditions.
At the same time, the anonymous male and female objects of the conquest grew
to be the heroic founders of the medieval Adriatic towns, becoming less and
less anonymous as the traditions developed, and eventually gaining names and

32 
La Rocca, ‘Città scomparse in area veneta’, pp. 288–92.
33 
On barbarian traditions: Hauck, ‘Carmina antiqua’; Pohl, ‘Der Gebrauch der
Vergangenheit’. On the Trojan myth: Anton, ‘Troja-Herkunft’; Barlow, ‘Gregory of Tours’.
The classic alternative view, strongly influenced by Hayden White, is Goffart, The Narrators of
Barbarian History. For an answer to Goffart, see Anton, ‘Origo gentis: Volksgeschichte’. See also
Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, pp. 291–307, where the barbarian histories are
discussed as being entirely fictional.
34 
See the review article: Lekson, ‘Landscape with Ruins’.
35 
On origines gentium: Wolfram, Gotische Studien, pp. 206–24; Wolfram and others, ‘Origo
gentis’. See also: Bickerman, ‘Origines gentium’; Angenendt, ‘Der eine Adam’; Plassmann, Origo
gentis. For an argument against the existence of a genre called origo gentis, see Goffart, ‘Two
Notes on Germanic Antiquity Today’.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 223

personalities that served to glorify contemporary families and powerful groups.

Therefore, men who did not picture themselves as the successors of the barbar-
ian kings and warriors drinking mead in a frozen landscape tried to build an
alternative past whose roots laid in Roman times. These men did so in order to
explain their present condition, one in which, despite many changes, they still
lived in the orbit of the Empire, gaining power and prestige thanks to relations
with Constantinople.
It is possible that a nucleus of these legends concerning the myth of flight
and rebirth was in existence prior to the spread of Paul the Deacon’s History
of the Lombards and the consequent development of the origines; the evi-
dence comes from the Cosmography of Aethicus Ister — a text probably writ-
ten in the second half of the eighth century whose obscurity is well known.
The Cosmography is the fictional account of a wandering Scythian philosopher
and able seaman called Aethicus, a native of Ister, who, upon taking a journey
around northern Europe, is lucky enough to meet demons, monsters, and other
such creatures. The text was supposedly edited by a second fictional character
called Jerome, whom we are meant to believe is the famous translator of the
Bible. There has been extensive debate about Aethicus/Jerome’s origin among
scholars: while the name Ister could suggest a Danubian origin, Ian Wood has
recently proposed, with good evidence, that Aethicus’s homeland could have
been ‘what an innocent reader of the work’s title might expect it to be’, namely,
the Istrian peninsula. In the Cosmography, we read a fantastic story about how
the wars between Francus and Romulus devastated Istria; the author reports
that, after these violent times, into the middle of the eighth century, many
lands of the Adriatic peninsula were still burnt ruins from the effects of pil-
laging. Following Wood’s idea, we can see how the Istrian Aethicus/Jerome,
like other more real authors after him, apparently found in the past a mythical
time of conflict between Romans and barbarians, which served as the justifica-
tion for the shifting geography of the Adriatic settlements. As a consequence of
these raids, the former population fled to the sea, returning home only during
Aethicus/Jerome’s time:
My laziness will not let me omit how his [Romulus’s] breed in that time went from
Istria to the island of Cassiopea [Corfu] as prisoners, returning after many years to
this unreachable wasteland covered with nauseating mud and the ashes of burnings
[Aethicus/Jerome refers to Istria], with great sorrow and tedium, and until the day
of my birth the land that once was cultivated was left abandoned.36

36 
Aethicus Ister, Cosmographia, ed. by Prinz, p. 233: ‘Quid subolis ignaviae meae meruerit
224 Francesco Borri

It is possible that, even in Istria, traditions centred upon a ‘famous destroyer’

were developed, but the only evidence for this comes from folkloric material
that links the character of Attila to some demonic masks carved in ecclesiastical
and private buildings and dating back to the twelfth century.37 This evidence is,
clearly, very problematic.

3. Patriarch on the Run

The origines that link the settlement of the Adriatic arc to the flight of the
Roman population to marshes, islands, and safer places apparently developed
from the narrative traditions of the retirement of patriarch Paul of Aquileia
(sometimes called Pauline), who moved to Grado in the aftermath of the
Lombard conquest of Venetiae (569). In the years of patriarch Elias (575–87),
and after the synod of Grado, the island was renamed Aquileia Nova and
became the patriarchal see until the first years of the seventh century, when
the Lombard kings and dukes of Friuli elected John, who resided in Cividale,
patriarch of Aquileia. Meanwhile in the Byzantine lagoons, an alternative can-
didate, Candidianus, was chosen.38 From now on, two sees, broadly oriented
towards Pavia and Constantinople, competed for the heritage of the Roman
metropolis. It would be pointless to follow the endless rivalry between the two
centres, but it is from these events that the idea of the birth of Venice, and later
of other Adriatic centres, originated.39 The events are relatively obscure: in 559
Pelagius I (556–61) addressed a letter to the patrician Valentinian mentioning

non praetermittam, cum eo tempore captivati ab Histria Casiopas insolas pervenerunt, post
multa annorum curricula vix ad vastam et inviam, caenum ac pulverum ustionem cum magno
merore et taedio repedaverunt, et usque in diem nativitatis meae culta quae dudum fuerunt, in
solitudinem redacta sunt’. Casiopas is propably Corfù (n. 935). I am grateful to Andreas Zajic,
who discussed the passage with me. The war between Francus and Romolus is on pp. 230–33.
For a summary of the debate, see pp. 2–9 and Herren, ‘The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister’.
See also Smolak, ‘Notizen zu Aethicus Ister’. The quotation is from Wood, ‘Aethicus Ister: An
Exercise in Difference’, p. 205.
37 
Zar, ‘Figure apotropaiche in Istria’; Brioni, ‘La leggenda di Attila’.
38 
Cammarosano, ‘Aquileia e Grado nell’alto medioevo’; Fedalto, Aquileia, pp. 111–22;
Rando, Una chiesa di frontiera, pp. 13–14. On the synod, see Margetić, Histrica et Adriatica,
pp. 135–35 (‘Il sinodo gradente di Elia (572–77)’); and Sotinel, Identité civique et christianisme,
pp. 346–54.
39 
See the essays in Chazelle and Cubitt, eds, The Crisis of the Oikoumene, which has helped
to frame the discussion on the subject in the most recent international debate.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 225

patriarch Paul (the one who later moved to Grado) as apparently still residing
in Aquileia, while a few decades later Gregory the Great named Severus patri-
arch of both Aquileia and of Grado, and from one of his letters we understand
that Severus had his see in the lagoons.40
With the exception of the Acts of the Synod of Grado — which was suppos-
edly composed in the sixth century, but is only attested, in heavily interpolated
fashion, in the eleventh-century History of the Venetians and, subsequently, in
the Chronicle of the Patriarchs of New Aquileia — the oldest source describing
the transfer of the bishop of Aquileia to Grado is the History of the Lombards
written by Paul the Deacon at the end of the eighth century.41 Paul set the story
in the first years of the Lombard invasion of Italy, narrating that the patriarch
Paul, fearing the incoming Lombards, left Aquileia to take refuge on the island
of Grado, bringing with him the church treasure: ‘Also the blessed patriarch
Paul, who presided over the city of Aquileia and its people, fearing the barbar-
ity of the Lombards, fled from Aquileia to the island of Grado, carrying away
with him all the treasure of his church’.42
Paul’s story was destined to be the core of the Venetian tradition, but his
narrative contains significant differences from later developments. First, there
is no mention of a fleeing population, only of a bishop moving to the imperial
lands after Alboin’s conquest of Italy; nor does Paul describe the widespread
and terrible devastation that the later historiography associates with this epi-
sode. Second, the flight to Grado is, in Paul’s account, merely a temporary phe-
nomenon, lasting until the Patriarchate of Aquileia was restored under King
Agilulf (590–616).43

40 
Pelagius I., Ep. 59, ed. by Gassó; Sotinel, Identité civique et christianisme, pp. 289–90.
Gregory I, Registrum Epistularum, ed. by Norberg, i. 16, p. 16; and xiii. 34, pp. 1035–37
(Gregory I, Letters, trans. by Martyn, i, p. 131 and iii, pp. 850–51). The acts are edited in
Documenti relativi alla storia di Venezia, ed. by Cessi, i, pp. 7–13.
41 
John the Deacon, Historia Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, i. 6, pp. 54–56; Chronica de singulis
patriarchis, ed. by Monticolo, p. 8.
42 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii.  10,
p.  78: ‘Aquileiensi quoque civitati eiusque populis beatus Paulus patriarcha praeerat. Qui
Langobardorum barbariem metuens, ex Aquileia ad Gradus insulam confugiit secumque
omnem suae thesaurum ecclesiae deportavit’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans.
by Foulke). On Paul the Deacon the literature is extensive: Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian
History, pp. 329–431; Pohl, ‘Paulus Diaconus und die Historia Langobardorum’; McKitterick,
‘Paul the Deacon and the Franks’. See also the papers in Chiesa, ed., Paolo Diacono; and in Paolo
Diacono e il Friuli altomedievale.
43 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iv. 33, p. 127.
226 Francesco Borri

A seemingly similar tradition is narrated in the Translation of Saint Mark

(BHL 5283–85).44 For a long time, the text was understood to be an eleventh-
century compilation, largely quoting the History of the Venetians, written by John
the Deacon at the court of the Venetian duke Peter II Orseolus (991–1008),
but the discovery of a manuscript dating from the ninth century altered this
view, turning the Translation into one of the sources upon which John was able
to rely.45 The Translation is a unique text, describing the theft of Mark’s body in
Alexandria and its journey to Rivus Altus. The episode is supposed to have taken
place in the years 827–28, and the text was probably compiled in reaction to
the decision taken at the synod of Mantova (827) to abolish the archiepiscopal
rights of Grado.46 The theft was also recorded, in a much less positive way, in the
Travels of the monk Bernard and the Life of Luke (BHL 4894).47
The anonymous author of the Translation wrote just a generation after Paul,
but quoted parts of the History of the Lombards in order to set the theft of the
relics in a historical framework. Therefore, the oldest Venetian history follows
the narrative of Paul the Deacon; but in the Translation of Saint Mark it is
also possible to notice the first overturning of perspectives mentioned earlier.
If, in Paul’s narration, the Lombards who provoked Paul’s flight were perceived,
with a certain degree of approximation, as the ancestors of the author, in the
Translation they represented the climax of three successive destructions of
Aquileia, and they appear in the narrative only as the reason for the flight of the
Venetian forefathers.48 Moreover, the transfer of the patriarchal see became, for
the first time, the flight of the entire population. The anonymous author wrote:

44 
Translatio sancti Marci, ed. by McCleary, pp. 235–64, which is used here. There is also
a more recent edition: Translatio Sancti Marci, ed. by Dennig-Zettler. On the Translatio, see
Cracco, ‘I testi agiografici’; and Dennig-Zettler and Zettler, ‘La traslazione di San Marco’.
45 
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, p. 238 n. 2. On the previous dating, see
Monticolo, ‘I manoscritti e le fonti della cronaca’. For an introduction to the source, see Geary,
Furta Sacra, pp. 88–94.
46 
Fedalto, Aquileia, pp. 52–53; Rando, Una chiesa di frontiera, p. 18.
47 
Vita Leuci, p. 363: ‘Et in his seditionibus, christi fedem nimium colentes; venerunt nautes
depredati veneticorum genere se vocitantes. et intus civitatem miserunt illos elemosinam ei
facientes. Et illi post multos dies abstulerunt reliquias beati marci plus quam medias absconse. et
fuga petierunt’. Another edition is Acta Sanctorum, Jan. I ( Jan. 11), pp. 667–73. On the Vita, see
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, p. 268, n. 113. Bernard the Monk, Itinerarium,
ed. by Tobler and Moliner, p. 311: ‘Venientes vero Venetij navigio tulerunt furtim corpus a cus-
todibus eius & deportaverunt ad suam insulam’; McCormick, Origins of the European Economy,
pp. 134–38.
48 
On Paul’s identification with the Lombard past: Pohl, ‘Paul the Deacon’, pp.  113,
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 227

When the Lombards were crossing to Italy, the people, fearing their swords, fled to
the near islands. Thus they gave the name Venetiae, which is the land from which
they fled, to the islands they settled.49

A minor element in the History of the Lombards was, a few decades after its
composition, developed and expanded by the Venetian historiography in order
to become one of the central elements of local history.
A second major development is a document issued by the chancellery of
Louis II (844–75) in 855, in which the character of Attila is, for the first time,
linked to the foundation of the Venetian settlement:
For the reason that the same city [Aquileia], due to the sins of its inhabitants, suf-
fered for the conquest of Attila and the wild Huns, in the days when many other
cities are known to have been destroyed by the sieges and the havoc of the pagans,
Paul, the blessed bishop of the city, fled to the island called Grado with the church
treasure. Honoratus, the Archbishop of Milan went to Geneva for the same fear.50

The document was Louis  II’s confirmation of the rights of the bishops of
Aquileia in Istria, rights that were decided during the council of Mantova (827).
However, the acts of the council, on the other side, justified the existence of the
bishoprics in Grado, just as Paul the Deacon did: ‘Paulus […] fearing the bar-
barity of the Lombards […] fled to the island of Grado’.51 It is striking that in
less than thirty years the Lombards of Alboin mutated: here the barbarorum
rabies is the one of Attila and the Huns.
The transfer of the bishopric of Aquileia was, therefore, in Louis  II’s
diploma, anachronistically set back by more than a century. Paul, as we saw,
did not link the move of Paul of Aquileia to Grado to the Hunnish invasion,

116–17, who points out the difficulties of presenting Paul just as an exponent of a form of
Lombard heritage.
49 
Translatio sancti Marci, ed. by McCleary, p. 245: ‘At vero cum langobardi Italiam introis-
sent, hic inde populi multitudo eorum gladios formidans ad proximas insulas transiit’.
50 
Ludovici II. Diplomata, ed. by Wanner, DD. Lu. ii. 17, p. 98: ‘Siquidem cum cogentibus
peccatis habitatorum suorum eadem civitas Attile sevissimi Hunorum regis esset iam manibus
tradita, quo in tempore plures quoque civitates Italie obsidionem vastationemque gentilium
passe esse noscuntur, accidit, ut eiusdem urbis beatus Paulus antistes ad insulam, que Gradus
nuncupatur, cum omni ecclesie thesauro confugeret; Honoratus etiam Mediolanensis archiepis-
copus eodem metu Ianuensem urbem expeteret’.
51 
Concilum Mantovanum a. 827, ed. by Werminghoff, p. 585: ‘Aquileiensi quoque civi-
tati eiusque populo Paulus patriarcha preerat, qui, Longobardorum barbariem et immanitatem
metuens, ex civitate Aquileiensi et de propria sede ad Gradus insulam, plebem suam confugiens’.
228 Francesco Borri

but to the Lombard one. It is puzzling to understand why the Hunnish con-
quest of Aquileia replaced the later invasion of Alboin. Even if at the moment
it appears difficult to describe a clear chain of mental developments behind the
transformation of the story, it is possible to frame the intellectual milieu in
which Attila became the starting point of the Venetian origo gentis.

4. Barbarian Mutants I. Lombards to Huns

Attila the Hun may well be the most famous barbarian of all times. Even today
he is one of the paradigmatic characters of ancient history. Like Hannibal, he
embodies the ideal of Rome’s enemy, yet his character has many roles, includ-
ing the fictional archetype of the proud heathen king (and I like to picture him
as Jack Palance in The Sign of the Pagan) or, together with his Huns, the most
ferocious and ruthless destroyer of civilizations, where he becomes a sort of
eternal paragon for every atrocity.52 It is well known that Bram Stoker’s Dracula
claimed Attila as one of its forefathers, and even the Germans, called Huns by
the allies in World War I, were associated with the savage conqueror.53
If we limit our investigation to the Venetian traditions, it seems that the rise
of the figure of Attila followed the diffusion of the Roman History of Paul the
Deacon, and the core of the tradition was Paul’s description of the Hunnish

52 
On the historical Attila, see Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns, pp. 94–144, and
passim; Pohl, ‘La sfida attilana’, pp. 69–91; Sirol, ‘The Historical Attila’; and Wirth, Attila.
On his Nachleben, see d’Ancona, ‘La leggenda di Attila in Italia’; De Boor, Das Attilabild in
Geschichte; Thierry, Histoire d’Attila, ii, pp. 221–422; Wood, ‘“Adelchi” and “Attila”’ (I would
like to thank Ian Wood, who sent me a copy of his text and also discussed the subject with
me); Zecchini, ‘Attila: una figura epocale?’; Bertini, ‘Attila nella storiografia tardo antica’; and
Bertini, ‘Attila nei cronisti del medioevo latino’, pp. 229–41; Wirth, Attila, pp. 145–50. Many
contributions to both of these aspects are collected in Koch, ed., Attila und die Hunnen.
53 
Bram Stoker, Dracula, p. 27: ‘We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows
the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirl-
pool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor
and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of
Europe, aye, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the werewolves themselves
had come. Here, too, when they came, they found the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the
earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old
witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What
devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?’ On the Germans/
Huns: Dickson, War Slang, p. 70. See also Stickler, Die Hunnen, pp. 111–14; Ridley, ‘Attila the
Hun and King Arthur’.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 229

conquest of Aquileia in 452.54 Attila’s siege of the metropolis of Venetiae was

mentioned in many narratives, but Paul, who relied primarily on Jordanes’s
Getica, significantly enriched this account in the fourteenth book of his History
with material that is otherwise unknown to us. According to Paul, the siege of
Aquileia took three years instead of the general ‘long time’ proposed by Jordanes,
and its outcome was also different: while, in Jordanes’s narration, the Huns
‘just’ pillaged the city, in Paul’s, the city was completely destroyed.55 Moreover,
Paul added the anecdote of the young girl, ‘forma quidem eximia sed candore
pudicitiae amplius decorata’, throwing herself from a tower in order to avoid
the lust of the (wicked, we suppose) Huns (sordidissimis hostibus ludibrium).56
Not only in his Roman History did Paul show interest in the Hunnish King;
Attila is also mentioned in the Deeds of the Bishops of Metz as the ravager of
Gaul,57 and even in Paul’s masterpiece, the History of the Lombards, there is an
element in the well-known episode of the Lombard conquest of Treviso trace-
able to the King.58 This episode requires a broader discussion.
The Deacon mentions an encounter between the bishop of the city, Felix,
and King Alboin at an unknown place along the river Piave. The episode clearly
resembles the meeting between Attila and Pope Leo described in the Chronicle
of Prosper of Aquitaine.59 The aftermath was, however, completely different.

54 
Jordanes, Getica, ed. by Mommsen, cc. 219–21, p. 114 ( Jordanes, Gothic History, trans.
by Mierow).
55 
Jordanes, Getica, ed. by Mommsen, c. 221, p. 114: ‘Aquileiam […] spoliant, dividunt vas-
tantque crudeliter, ita ut vix eius vestigia ut appareant reliquerunt’; Paul the Deacon, Historia
Romana, ed. by Droysen, xiv. 11, pp. 113–14: ‘vicinas Aquileiae civitates illius instar demoliens
solo coaequavit’. See Cornford, ‘Paul the Deacon’s Understanding of Identity’, and the contri-
bution of Maya Maskarinec in this volume. On the differences of Paul’s narration from that of
Jordanes’s Getica, see La Rocca, ‘Città scomparse in area veneta’, pp. 289–90.
56 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Droysen, xiv. 10, pp. 113–14.
57 
Paul the Deacon, Liber de episcopis Mettensibus, ed. by Pertz, p. 262: ‘Eo igitur tempore
cum reverendus hic praesul vitam cunctis virtutibus decoratam duceret, Attila rex Hunorum,
omnibus belluis crudelior, habens multas barbaras nationes suo subiectas dominio […] ad uni-
versas deprimendas Gallias suae saevitiae relaxavit habenas’.
58 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 12, p. 79:
‘Igitur Alboin cum ad fluvium Plabem venisset, ibi ei Felix episcopus Tarvisianae ecclesiae
occurrit. Cui rex, ut erat largissimus, omnes suae ecclesiae facultates postulanti concessit et per
suum pracmaticum postulata firmavit’. On the episode: Gasparri, ‘Dall’ età longobarda al secolo
x’, pp. 6–7.
59 
Prosper, Epitoma chronicon, ed. by Mommsen, a. 1367, p. 482; Maenchen-Helfen, The
World of the Huns, pp. 140–41.
230 Francesco Borri

Alboin, in opposition to Attila, behaved like a gentleman (‘erat largissimus’),

granting church properties to the bishop in a written document. Felix, also,
unlike his predecessor, did not stop the conquering King, but implicitly blessed
the rest of his march. If, for Attila, the encounter with the Bishop of Rome sig-
nalled the end of his good fortune, for Alboin, the meeting with Felix initiated
his glorious progression. Even the length of the siege of Aquileia, three years
according to Paul, may recall the Lombard conquest of Pavia.60 This could be
the key to understanding Paul’s Attila — Cristina La Rocca has suggested that
the historian aimed to build a parallel narrative between the two kings, who
advanced into the same territory but with strikingly different outcomes: ‘Attila
che soltanto distrugge è costretto a ritirarsi; Alboino che rispetta e patteggia
può proseguire il suo cammino di occupazione’.61 In Paul’s view, Alboin and
Attila were two sides of the same coin, a coin that depicted a conquering king
acting in radically different ways.62
Paul’s Attila played a further role, in which he became the reason for the con-
tinuity/discontinuity of the settlement of Venetiae. In his Roman History, the
Deacon, after narrating the destruction of Aquileia, included two lists of cities,
the pillaged and the destroyed ones. These elements, unknown to Jordanes, were
a projection into the past of a situation contemporary to the author. Attila’s
destructions were, quite simply, a literary way of explaining the stark disconti-
nuity in the Italian settlement and the reason why there existed towns that had
lost many of their urban aspects in the days of the Deacon. Paul created a time
before and a time after the conquests of Attila, adopting the Hunnish King as
a chronological watershed for the history of settlement in north-eastern Italy.63
Even the most famous of Attila’s Italian conquests was a largely fictional epi-
sode; archaeological excavations in Aquileia have not discovered the massive
destruction described by the literary sources, but Paul found in Attila the justi-
fication for the marbles of Aquileia looming among the vegetation.64
After Paul’s History, interest in the Hunnish King seems to have spread
quickly, and Paul’s narrative was apparently at the root of a sort of ‘Attila revival’

60 
Pohl, ‘Premesse e conseguenze’, pp. 150–51, 160. He also points out the parallels between
Alboin’s conquest and that of King Theodoric. See also Settia, ‘Aureliano imperatore’.
61 
La Rocca, ‘I Longobardi’, p. 154. I would like to thank Cristina La Rocca for allowing me
to read her manuscript.
62 
See also the considerations of Pohl, ‘Premesse e conseguenze’, pp. 156–58.
63 
La Rocca, ‘Città scomparse in area veneta’, pp. 289–90.
64 
On the lack of layers of destruction see n. 14, above.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 231

during the ninth century. Sources dependent on the Roman History show great
concern with the episode of the siege of Aquileia, which was a central feature
of the Verses for the Destruction of Aquileia, attributed alternately to Paulinus of
Aquileia or to Paul the Deacon.65 In the Verses, there is no relationship between
Attila and the rise of Grado to a patriarchal see, nor between Attila and the set-
tlement of the lagoons, but there is the idea of a massive and total destruction
brought about by the Huns and their king. The author of the Verses was very
well acquainted with the narratives of Jordanes and Paul the Deacon (and, for
this reason, it is possible he was Paul himself ), quoting many elements already
present in both of the accounts, such as the massive size of the Hunnish army
(500,000 soldiers),66 or the sagacity of the king, who understood from the fact
that birds were flying away from the walls of Aquileia that the city was doomed
(the same anecdote of Jordanes was reported by Procopius, as is often the case).67
A second poem, also on the conquest of Aquileia but written a few dec-
ades later and dedicated to Louis II (Ernst Dümmler dated its composition to
844–55), shows many similar elements, but also suggests certain differences.
Here, too, the destruction of the city is complete, but we find no mention of
Attila. The barbarians are Avars (probably the Huns), Goths, and Lombards.68
The poem therefore describes the three subsequent destructions mentioned in
the contemporary Translation of Saint Mark. The idea that the Avars/Huns, the
Goths, and the Lombards were successive scourges sent by God in retribution
for the sins of the Aquileians became an alternative tradition to the story of
Attila. It was repeated for a long time and still proposed, after two centuries, in
John the Deacon’s History of the Venetians.69

65 
Versus de destructione Aquilegiae, ed. by Dümmler. See also De Nicola, ‘I versi sulla distru-
zione di Aquileia’; Everett, ‘Paulinus, the Carolingians and famosissima Aquileia’; Fedalto, ‘La
lettera di s. Leone Magno’, pp. 217–19.
66 
Versus de destructione Aquilegiae, ed. by Dümmler, cc. 6–7, p. 142: ‘Fremens ut leo, Attila
sevissimus, | ignorans deum, durus, impiissimus, | te [Aquilegiam] circumdedit cum quigentis
milibus | undique giro. | Gestare vidit aves fetus proprios | turribus altis per rura forinsecus
| prescivit sagax hinc tuum interitum | mox adfuturum’. Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by
Dewing, iii. 4, ii, pp. 39–45.
67 
On the many similarities between Procopius’s and Jordanes’s works, see Svennung,
Jordanes und Scandia.
68 
Carmen de Aquilegia, ed. by Dümmler, pp. 150–53. On the equivalence of the names
of the Avars and Huns: Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, i, pp. 165–69; Pohl, Die Awaren: ein
Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, pp. 4–10.
69 
For a comparison with other competing traditions, see Reimitz, ‘Die Konkurrenz der
Ursprünge’.
232 Francesco Borri

Other ninth-century sources also show an interest in the pagan king, fol-
lowing the great historiographical impact of Paul the Deacon’s History of the
Romans. In the Life of Saint Geminianus (BHL 3297), Attila, while attempting
the destruction of Modena, is, for the first time, called ‘scourge of God’ (flagel-
lum Dei).70 In the Life, there is also a fascinating mention of the Caspian Gates,
behind which Alexander the Great enclosed the Huns during his anabasis.71
Attila also plays a role in Agnellus’s Book of Pontiffs, written in the middle of the
ninth century. Here, the action of Pope Leo is quoted again, but it is transferred
to Ravenna due to Agnellus’s antagonism to the Roman see.72 More interesting
is that, in this source, Attila is not the evil destroyer but a wise king bearing the
symbols of imperial authority, who, like Alboin in Treviso, grants wealth to the
church, even faking the conquest of the city in order to spare Ravenna, while
still maintaining the oath he gave to his soldiers.73
The first complete attestation of the Venetian tradition comes from the
Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (913–59), who wrote about
it in his treatise On the Administration of the Empire. It is striking to find Attila’s
legend written in Greek so far away from the Venetian lagoons, but Emperor
Constantine was able to rely on many sources unknown to us. These sources
are generally understood to be imperial dossiers redacted from provincial
authorities on the field that furnished rich data on the Adriatic arc. In Chapter
twenty-eight, dedicated to the Venetiae, Attila, the King of the Avars, comes
from the north to destroy Aquileia: here, like in the Translation of Saint Mark,
the modality of the settlement is changed.74 The transfer of the bishopric does

70 
Vita Geminiani, iii. 13, p. 1099: ‘Cui foris Attila respondens, Si tu es, inquit, seruus Dei;
ego sum Attila flagellum Dei: serui autem inobedientes, & sui Domini iussa contemnentes, mer-
ito verberantur & flagellantur’. Cf. Zecchini, ‘Attila: una figura epocale?’.
71 
Vita Geminiani, iii. 13, p. 1099: ‘Hunnorum gens, quæ quondam, ut in Annalibus reu-
oluitur gestis ab Alexandro Macedone Magno, inter Caucasos montes fuerat inclusa, erupit a
Pannonia cum Rege suo impiissimo Attila: & vastata pene omni Gallia & Germania, tandem
peruenit in Italiam’. On this subject: Anderson, Alexander’s Gate; Manselli, ‘I popoli immagi-
nari’; Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns, pp. 2–5; Wolfram, Die Goten, pp. 39–41.
72 
Brown, ‘The Church of Ravenna’.
73 
Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, ed. by Deliyannis, c. 37,
pp. 189–90 (Agnellus of Ravenna, The Book of Pontiffs, trans. by Deliyannis, pp. 139–44). On
this episode: Pizarro, Writing Ravenna, pp. 101–19.
74 
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. and trans. by Moravcsik
and Jenkins and Jenkins, c. 28, l. 4–11, p. 118: ‘Οἱ δὲ νῦν καλούμενοι Βενέτικοι ὑπῆρχον Φράγγοι
ἀπὸ Ἀκουϊλεγίας καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἑτέρων τόπων τῆς Φραγγίας, καὶ κατῴκουν εἰς τὴν ξηρὰν ἄντικρυ
τῆς Βενετίας. Τοῦ δὲ Ἀττίλα, τοῦ βασιλέως τῶν Ἀβάρων, ἐλθόντος καὶ πάσας τὰς Φραγγίας
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 233

not occur, and the narrative focuses on the Venetians (called Φράγγοι by the
Emperor) finding their way to the lagoons.
A good comparison to Constantine’s story comes from Liudprand’s
Antapodosis. Liudprand of Cremona was a contemporary of the Emperor
and had the chance to meet him personally during his diplomatic activi-
ties in Constantinople.75 Even when mentioning the violent conquest of the
city, Liudprand does not link the episode to the foundation of Venice. It
seems, therefore, that those traditions were mostly local ones, at least until the
great success and wide circulation of Andrea Dandolo’s Extended Chronicle.
Apparently, the episode of the destruction of Aquileia was well known, but we
cannot say the same of the tradition concerning the birth of Venice. Landulfus
Sagax, who wrote his Roman History (or Historia Miscella after the edition of
Pierre Pithou in 1569) between the tenth and eleventh centuries, also provided
a very vivid account of the siege of Aquileia without mentioning the successive
flight of its inhabitants to the lagoons.76
Moreover, if today the role of Attila in the origins of Venice is widespread in
non-academic contexts, and most of the students of Venice’s grammar schools
learn that the founders of their city fled from the ‘Barbari a cavallo, con due
corni per cappello’ in the last tragic days (according to the teachers) of the
Roman Empire, in the eleventh century John the Deacon, adhering to Paul the
Deacon’s narrative, still linked the flight of the patriarch to Alboin’s march.
However, John did enrich Paul’s History, following the later traditions, and
added the escape of the population, as had already happened in the Translation
of Saint Mark:

καταληϊσαμένου καὶ ἀφανίσαντος, ἤρξαντο φεύγειν μὲν πάντες οἱ Φράγγοι ἀπὸ Ἀκουϊλεγίας καὶ
ἀπὸ τῶν ἑτέρων τῆς Φραγγίας κάστρων, ἔρχεσθαι δὲ πρὸς τὰς ἀοικήτους νήσους τῆς Βενετίας καὶ
ποιεῖν ἐκεῖσε καλύβια διὰ τὸν τοῦ βασιλέως Ἀττίλα φόβον’. On the Emperor’s work, see Ševčenko,
‘Re-Reading Constantine Porphyrogenitus’. On the composition of his treatise, see Beaud, ‘Le
Savoir et le monarque’; Howard-Johnston, ‘The De Administrando Imperio’. On Φράγγοι, see
Carile, ‘Roma e Romània dagli Isaurici ai Comneni’; Hitchner and Kazhdan, ‘Frankoi’.
75 
Liudprand of Cremona, Antapodosis, ed. by Becker, pp. 66–67 (Liudprand of Cremona,
Antapodosis, trans. by Squatriti, pp. 113–14). On Liudprand, see Gandino, Il vocabolario politi­
­co e sociale. On Liudprand in Constantinople, see Mayr-Harting, ‘Liudprand of Cremona’s
Account’, with wide-ranging bibliography.
76 
Landolfus Sagax, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xv.  6–7, ii,  pp.  6–7; Prelog,
‘Landolfus Sagax’.
234 Francesco Borri

The people of the same province, refusing the Lombard lordship, went to the neigh-
bouring islands, and, in this way, the name Venetia, from where they fled, was given
to the same islands, and the people who are still living there are called Venetici.77

The shifting name of the province was already mentioned by Paul the Deacon
and the Anonymous of Ravenna, but neither of them mentioned the migration
of the population.78 Therefore, the elements constituting this tradition matured
slowly, with many alternatives being offered.
Not just the identity of the famous destroyer was debated, or the number
of pillagings necessary to demolish a Roman city, but also the very location of
the Venetian origins. Some evidence indicates that the city destroyed before the
settlement of the lagoons was Altinum. The best-known evidence comes from
the twelfth-century Chronicle of Altinum and Chronicle of Grado. The Chronicle
of Altinum mentions the Hunnish destruction of Aquileia, even describing the
sack of a pagan temple dedicated to Behel, but this source claims that it was
only after the destruction of Altinum that the Venetici were finally convinced
to settle Torcello in the Venetian lagoons.79 Neither of the chronicles, however,
mentions a clear relation between Attila and Altinum; rather, the destroyers
of the city are nameless. Yet, in Paul’s Roman History, the town figures among
those destroyed by the King, a piece of information unknown to Jordanes.80 The
bond between Attila and Altinum also appears in the Cosmography of Ravenna,
where the only mention of the Hunnish King is as the destroyer of the city.81

77 
John the Deacon, Historia Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, i. 5, p. 52: ‘Populi vero eiusdem
provintie penitus recusantes Longobardorum ditioni subesse, proximas insulas petierunt.
Sicque Venetie nomen, de qua exierant, eisdem insulis indiderunt, qui et actenus illic degentes
Venetici nuncupantur’.
78 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 14, p. 81:
‘Venetia enim non solum in paucis insulis, quas nunc Venetias dicimus, constat, sed eius ter-
minus a Pannoniae finibus usque ad Adduam fluvium protelatur’. Anonymous of Ravenna,
Cosmographia, ed. by Schnetz, iv. 30, p. 67: ‘Item in regione Veneciarum est civitas ipsa Venecia
appelata’. On the difficulties in dating the Cosmography, see Dillemann, La ‘Cosmographie’ du
Ravennate, pp. 26–27.
79 
Chronicon Venetum, ed. by Simonsfeld (on Behel’s temple, see p. 15). See also Rosada,
‘Storia di una cronaca’; Fasoli, ‘I fondamenti della storiografia veneziana’; Carile, ‘Chronica
gradensia’.
80 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Droysen, xiv. 11, p. 114.
81 
Anonymous of Ravenna, Cosmographia, ed. by Schnetz, iv. 30, p. 67: ‘Altinum [quae et
Altilia quondam dicebatur, antequam ab Attyla esset capta]’.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 235

Eventually, however, the idea of Attila destroying the glorious Aquileia

before the settlement of the lagoons was, as we have mentioned, destined to
have great success. The tradition of Attila appears in the Chronicle of Otto of
Freising, which, surprisingly enough, may be the first Latin chronicle to clearly
report it. We see here the traditional elements of the birds leaving the walls and
the consequent, brutal conquest of Aquileia, but then Otto continues:
Without Attila noticing it, the inhabitants fled to the sea, to the island called Ven-
ice after their name, Venetici. They moved with them the relics of the saint Herma-
coras, the first of their bishops, and they began to live there. That is the reason why
until today there is a quarrel concerning the patriarchal dignity between Grado and
Aquileia. The siege of the city was so massive and prolonged, and the multitude of
soldiers so great, that the inhabitants say that an incredibly high mountain, called
Utinus, that I myself saw, was built by the army as a wall.82

Otto was apparently able to visit the places and listen to locals. Nonetheless,
after him, other authors reported the Venetian tradition that survived until
our own time. Like Otto, the first modern historians of Venice, Henri Pirenne
among them,83 preferred the Attila tradition to the possible alternatives. Still
today in Torcello, in front of the church of Santa Maria Assunta, there is an old
stone chair called Trono di Attila.84

5. The Strange Fall of Salona (and of Other Smaller Places)

Roman cities on the opposite shore of the early medieval Adriatic also suffered
severe discontinuity; for example, the centre of Roman life, the metropolis of
Salona, must have been, like Aquileia, in very bad shape. Determining the rea-

82 
Otto of Freising, Chronicon, ed. by Wilmans, iv. 27, p. 210: ‘Elapsi enim per mare ipso
[Attila] ignorante, in insula, quae Venetia ex hinc ex Venetorum inhabitatione dicitur, translatis
secum cum patriarchali sede beati Hermachorae, primi illius urbis episcopi, reliquiis, habitare
coeperunt. Unde usque hodie inter Gradenses at Aquileienses de patriarchali dignitate lis esse
cognosciuntur. Tanta autem in obsidione huius urbis eius et mora et multitudo fuit, ut mirae
magnitudinis montem Utinum dictum, quem ipse vidi, in modum aggeris ab exercitum com-
portatum incolae usque hodie affirment’.
83 
Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne, pp. 154–55. For a discussion, see Carile, ‘La città di
Venezia’, pp. 143–44.
84 
In the Venetian tradition, Attila has normally been studied from a regional perspective,
see Carile, ‘Una “vita di Attila” a Venezia’; De Blasi, ‘Leggenda e storia nelle origini di Venezia’;
Ozoeze Collodo, ‘Attila e le origini di Venezia’.
236 Francesco Borri

son for this decline is difficult due to the poverty of the evidence: sources on the
city become scarce after the letters that Gregory the Great addressed to its bish-
ops. Later sources, the oldest one being again Constantine Porphyrogenitus’s
On the Administration of the Empire, explained this long silence by reference to
a violent destruction, which apparently took place in the first half of the sev-
enth century. The Emperor reported two slightly different versions of the fall of
the city, both largely archetypical, in which the villains are the barbarian tribes
from beyond the Danube: at the beginning of the account, they are said to be
wandering without knowledge of what lies on the northern shore of the river,
but once provoked by the inhabitants of ancient Dalmatia, called ῾Ρωμᾶνοι, the
barbarians cross over and take Salona.85
After the conquest, the Salonitans escape to an Adriatic island, eventually
asking Emperor Heraclius (610–41) for permission to settle the abandoned
palace built by Diocletian (284–305) in Split. According to Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, therefore, both Aquileia and Salona were conquered by the
Avars, and the fall of the two cities was at the origin of the early medieval set-
tlement of the Adriatic arc. A very important difference is that the foundation
myths of the eastern Adriatic shore did not include a ‘famous destroyer’ until a
very late period, even if J. B. Bury proposes that Attila may be implicitly men-
tioned in the traditions of the foundation of Ragusa/Dubrovinik, as we will
soon see.
The destruction of Salona is not referred to in any other narrative until the
thirteenth century. Contemporary sources do not exist, and the metropolis of
Dalmatia is never mentioned after the beginning of the seventh century and
earlier than the brief entry ‘Ἰωάννης τῆς ἀγίας Σαλονηντιανᾶς’, in the acts of the
second council of Nicea in 787, the only exception being the Cosmography of
Ravenna.86 From the seventeenth century onwards, many historians tried to
find a solution to the disappearance of Salona and, relying on Constantine
Porphyrogenitus and Thomas Archdeacon, a thirteenth-century Dalmatian
historian, they imagined a terrible conquest — a vision strengthened by the
many stereotypes regarding nomadic and Slavic violence.87 Essentially, it was

85 
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. and trans. by Moravcsik
and Jenkins, c. 29, l. 14–22, p. 122. Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 265.
86 
Anonymous of Ravenna, Cosmographia, ed. by Schnetz, v.  14, p.  95; Lamberz, Die
Bischofslisten des vii. Ökumenischen Konzils, p. 48. That the mention of a bishop does not prove
urban continuity is well demonstrated by Brandes, ‘Byzantine Cities’; La Rocca, ‘Città scom-
parse in area veneta’, pp. 292, 298.
87 
Ostrogorski, Byzantinische Geschichte, p. 64: ‘Um 614 wurde Salona, das Zentrum der
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 237

thought that the fall of Salona must have happened between the last entry in
Gregory’s register, or an epigraph that can be dated to the second decade of the
seventh century,88 and the pontificate of John IV (640–42), a Dalmatian pope
who sent a certain Abbot Martin to the Balkan coast in order to ransom the
prisoners of the barbarians and collect the relics stolen by the pagans.89
Even if this passage has been universally used as the terminus ante quem for
the destruction of the city, it is clear that neither Salona nor Avars and Slavs are
mentioned in the Book of Pontiffs, and Martin’s mission could well be linked to
John’s Dalmatian origin, instead of being the reaction to an unmentioned con-
quest of the city.90 However, the event was thought to be connected to Isidore’s
entry on the Slavic conquest of Graecia,91 and Salona was supposed to have
been conquered in 614, as the archaeologist Frane Bulić maintained, or in 639,
according to more recently discovered numismatic evidence.92

römisch-byzantinischen Verwaltung in Dalmatien, zerstört, und damit war der Verfall der
römisch-byzantinischen Herrschaft und Kultur auch im Westen der Halbinsel besiegelt’. See
also Praga’s description of the Slavic conquest of the Balkans: Praga, Storia di Dalmazia, p. 41:
‘L’orda sempre più avanzava, sempre più minacciava, sempre più premeva. Il bruciante zoccolo
dei cavalieri avari, la rude piota dei pedoni slavi, calpestavano già l’ubertoso agro salonitano,
avevano già distrutto i castelli della via Gabiniana, se ne potevano già vedere le facce paurose,
quando, nella visione della imminente rovina, un soldato della guardia suburbana incise su
un pilastro la cristiana implorazione ‘Sy, Kyrie, òra’. Tu, Signore, guarda! Cristo e Roma! Con
queste due parole si chiude la storia dell’antica Dalmazia, con esse si apre la storia dell’evo medio’.
On stereotypes of barbarian violence, see Pohl, ‘Konfliktverlauf und Konfliktbewältigung’.
88 
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, iii. 9551; Katičić, ‘Die Literatur des frühen kroa-
tischen Mittelalters’, p. 29; Gabričević, ‘Question de la datation du sarcophage’, suggests dating
the inscription to the sixth century.
89 
Liber Pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne, ( John IV), i, p. 330: ‘Hic temporibus suis misit per
omnem Dalmatiam seu Histriam multas pecunias per sanctisimum et fidelissimum Martinum
abbatem propter redemptionem captivorum, qui depredati erant a gentibus’ (The Book of
Pontiffs, trans. by Davies); Nikolajević, ‘The Redemption of Captives in Dalmatia’, pp. 76–77.
90 
Liber Pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne, ( John IV), i, p. 330: ‘Iohannis, natione Dalmata’;
Borri, ‘La Dalmazia alto medievale’, pp. 31–32.
91 
Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. by Martín, v.  827, p.  203: ‘Scalui Graeciam
Romanis tulerunt’. On Graecia interpreted as the Balkan peninsula, see Charanis, ‘Graecia in
Isidore of Seville’.
92 
Bulić, ‘Sull’anno della distruzione di Salona’; more recently, see Marović, ‘Reflections
about the Date of the Destruction of Salona’. Jakšić, ‘Constantine Porphyrogenitus’, dates the
conquest to 622–26. Finally, for a wider view, see McNally, ‘Split in the Byzantine Empire’. A
good survey of Byzantine coins in the Balkan region is Curta, ‘Byzantium in Dark Age Greece’.
238 Francesco Borri

Bulić, who was writing more than a century ago, wondered why the chroni-
clers dealing with Italy, such as the ‘Copenhagen Continuator’ of Prosper of
Aquitaine, the Fredegar-Chronicles, or, later, Paul the Deacon, did not describe
the conquest of Salona.93 In effect, the tragic fate of the city, which later chron-
iclers and contemporary historians imagined to be havoc and flames, left no
trace in the extant documentation. The reason for this lack is, as far as I am
concerned, quite simple; it is that Salona was never conquered. The causes of
Salona’s decline, instead of being found in the Avar’s proverbial siege, should
be sought in the less exciting and often mentioned transformations that the
great urban centres underwent at the end of Antiquity. The idea of a violent
bloodshed, however, was so influential that, even after the first archaeological
excavations found that continuity and a slow decline were more indicative of
the fate of the city during the first half of the seventh century, a brutal conquest
was still invoked in the same survey, although this survey included no evidence
to support such an idea.94 Moreover, the breathtaking site of Salona suffered as
a result of the work of modern excavations, which were mainly conducted in
order to uncover the early imperial layers; this work destroyed the early medi-
eval ones and obstructed a deeper understanding of that era of the city’s histo-
ry.95 The research is, therefore, very much oriented towards classic Christian
archaeology, following the path shown by Ejnhard Dyggve more than half a
century ago.96 A very similar forma mentis can also be perceived in the stud-
ies of Diocletian’s palace in Split, but here as well, the layers show continuity
through the first half of the seventh century, and continuous settlement from
the fourth century onwards, not the sudden migration of frightened Romans
described by the chronicles.97
If we return to literary sources, the first traces for the development of the
idea of a violent conquest of the ancient episcopal cities in Dalmatia comes
from a letter of Pope Stephen VI (896–97) to Bishop Theodosius of Nin, the

93 
Bulić, ‘Sull’anno della distruzione di Salona’, pp. 268–70.
94 
Chevalier, Ecclesiae Dalmatiae, ii, pp. 27–29; Clairmont, ed., Excavations at Salona,
pp. 1–7.
95 
Hodges, Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne, p. 28. See also the considerations of
Ward-Perkins, ‘Urban Continuity?’, pp. 7–9.
96 
Dyggve, History of Salonitan Christianity, and the criticism of Dunn, ‘The Transition
from Polis to Kastron’, p. 69. On the work of Dyggve, see Duval, ‘Hommage à Ejanar et Ingrid
Dyggve’.
97 
Dvoržak Schrunk, ‘Dioklecijanova palača’; Belamarić, ‘The First Centuries of
Christianity’; McNally, ‘Split in the Byzantine Empire’, p. 254.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 239

future Archbishop of Split. In this letter, the Pope mentions the destruction of
the ecclesia and its consequent restoration:
We strongly desire that the church of Salona, which you, with the help of God,
claim to have restored, will return to its former condition. Moreover, with assidu-
ous prayers, we beg for the restoration of all the churches destroyed by the fury of
the barbarians, so that the edification of new churches should not overcome the
restoration of the old.98
Stephen’s testimony is extremely important: two decades earlier, the church of
Salona was already linked to the town of Split, but was represented only by an
archpresbyter; unfortunately, we do not know of any bishop there. In a letter of
John VIII (872–82), dated to 879, the salutation reads:
To the most reverend and holy bishops Vitalis of Zadar, Domenicus of Osor and
to John, archpresbyter of the Salonian church, and all the elders and citizens of the
town of Split, and also Zadar (Beograd na moru?) and the other towns.99
Stephan’s mention of the destruction/restoration of the city could therefore
be suggestive of the ongoing process of the appropriation of Salonitan metro-
politan rights by the community of Split. These claims may finally have borne
fruit at the beginning of the tenth century, when the synod of Split (925) estab-
lished the authority of the Salonian bishop, sitting in Split, over the Dalmatian
sees and also over the episcopus Chroatensis, the bishop of Nin.100 The idea is,
unfortunately, speculative due to the difficult transmission of the acts of the
synod, which survive only in an enlarged version of the chronicle of Thomas
Archdeacon, the Historia salonitana maior, a sixteenth-century compilation;
the synod was unknown to Thomas himself.101 If this were not the case, the

98 
Stephen V., Fragmenta registri, ed. by Caspar, epistula 30, p. 351: ‘Salonitana ecclesia,
quam Deo auxiliante restitutam asseris, ut ad pristinum gradum redeat, inhianter cupimus et
omnes ecclesiae, quae barbarorum rabie destructae sunt, assiduis precibus ut restaurentur implo-
ramus, ita tamen ut in novarum ecclesiarum restauratione neglectus non proveniat antiquarum’.
The letter is traditionally dated to 888. An archbishop of Salona was already mentioned in a
letter to the patriarch of Aquileia (epistula 24, p. 346).
99 
John VIII, Registrum, ed. by Caspar, epistula 196, pp. 156–57: ‘Reverentissimis et sanc-
tissimis episcopis Vitali Iadransi, Dominico Absarensi ceterisque episcopis Dalmatinis seu
Iohanni archipresbytero sanctę sedis salonitanę omnibusque sacerdotibus et senioribus populi
habitatoribus Spalatensis civitatis atque Zadarensis ceterarumque civitatum’.
100 
Waldmüller, Die Synoden in Dalmatien, pp. 25–43; Zimmermann, ‘Die ersten Konzilien
von Split’. On the complexity of the sources, see Soldo, ‘Die Historiographie der Spliter Konzile’.
101 
Historia Salonitana maior, ed. by Klaić, pp. 96–105. Margetić, ‘Historia Salonitana i
Historia Salonitana Maior’.
240 Francesco Borri

synod of Split could be a very good terminus ante quem for the development of
the tradition of the Salonians’ flight to Split. It may not be by chance that the
first complete narrative of Salona’s fall, and the consequent birth of Split, was
compiled in the same years as the synod (a narrative reported in Constantine
Porphyrogenitus’s On the Administration of the Empire).
In the same Acts, there is also mention of a common older origin for the
sees of Ragusa/Dubrovnik and Kotor, perhaps a reference to the Roman see
of Epidaurum, as we will now see.102 The narrative about the foundation of
Ragusa/Dubrovnik presents, in fact, many similar elements to the narratives
about Split. Like the Split legend, it survives in Constantine Porphyrogenitus
and in a much later text, the so-called History of the Duklja, a history composed
primarily of mythical material. Both the identity of its author and the year of
composition have been debated, but later historiography identified the writer
as Bishop Gregory of Rab, who lived at the end of the twelfth century.103 This
date, although widely accepted, remains a hypothesis, and the first proof of the
chronicle’s existence is the Extended History of Andrea Dandolo, who was able
to quote from it in the first half of the fourteenth century.
According to Constantine, Ragusa/Dubrovnik (῾Ραούσιον) was founded in
the aftermath of the destruction of Epidaurum (Πίταυρα). The fleeing popula-
tion, as in the account of Salona, established the city of Ragusa, a better-fortified
and safer town. Constantine apparently relied on a source that reported a list of
the families of noblemen who fled from Epidaurum. The Emperor wrote that the
foundation of Ragusa occurred five hundred years before his time (c. 449–51)
— this was the element that J. B. Bury read as a trace of Attila’s myth.104

102 
Kunčević, ‘The Oldest Foundation Myth of Ragusa’, pp. 24–26.
103 
Anonymous of Duklja, Chronicon, ed. by Šišić. On its date of composition, see Curta,
Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, pp. 14–15; Steindorff, ‘Die Synode auf der Planities
Dalmae’, pp. 279–80. See also the recent theory of Bujan, ‘La Chronique du prêtre de Dioclée’.
Bujan believes the Chronicle to be a creation of the humanist Mauro Orbini (from the fifteenth
to sixteenth century), who is traditionally considered the first author to publish an Italian trans-
lation of the work. Bujan proposes that Orbini summarized older accounts deriving from the
Annals of Ragusa and the Chronicle of Maurilius in order to build a false account of earliest
Dalmatian history.
104 
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. and trans. by Moravcsik
and Jenkins, c. 29, l. 233–35, p. 134: ‘φ’ οὗ δὲ ἀπὸ Σαλῶνα μετῴκησαν εἰς τὸ Ῥαούσιον, εἰσὶν ἔτη
φʹ μέχρι τῆς σήμερον, ἥτις ἰνδικτιὼν ζʹ ἔτους ͵ςυνζʹ’. Bury, ‘The Treatise De administrando imperio’,
pp. 556–57. On the relation between Dubrovnik/Ragusa and Epidaurum, see the important
article by Kunčević, ‘The Oldest Foundation Myth of Ragusa’. In addition, see Rapanić, ‘Il patri-
monio dell’antichità’; Škok, ‘Les Origines de Raguse’.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 241

As in the case of Split, Constantine linked the birth of a new city to the
destruction of another ancient and more prestigious city, and he presented the
birth of the new city as a result of the flight of the population. These two nar-
rative elements are, in this case as well, largely fictional. The city of Ragusa/
Dubrovnik, like Split, was already in existence and populated before the sup-
posed conquest of Epidaurum, and the story was a later attempt to explain a
more complex transformation and to claim a glorious heritage for the town. The
ongoing process of association between Ragusa/Dubrovnik and Epidaurum is
attested, perhaps for the first time, in the Cosmography of Ravenna, but it is well
known that the text is heavily interpolated. The anonymous cosmographer (or
anonymous interpolator) wrote: ‘Epidaurum, that is Ragusa’.105
For Constantine Porphyrogenitus, therefore, the medieval settlement of
the Adriatic arc was explained according to a common pattern. Aquileians
(Φράγγοι), Salonians, and Epidaurians (both ῾Ρωμᾶνοι) survived the Age of
Migration by fleeing to new, previously empty locations: the islands of the
Venetian lagoons, the empty halls of Diocletian’s palace, or the rocks where
Ragusa/Dubrovnik was destined to be built. It seems clear that an Age of
Flight followed the much more famous Age of Migrations. According to the
traditions, the Empire played a role in this; indeed, it is striking that Emperor
Heraclius, who gave the Salonians permission to live in the palace of Split, also
appears in the Venetian tradition as the emperor who sent the chair of Saint
Mark to Grado.106 The actions of allowing the settlement of Diocletian’s palace
and of sending Mark’s chair are only superficially different. In both situations,
Heraclius is the ruler who confirms and grants rights to the new community,
and who acts as the preserver of continuity in the face of the discontinuity
experienced by the settlers.107

105 
Anonymous of Ravenna, Cosmographia, ed. by Schnetz, iv. 16, p. 55. The traditional
view is, in any case, very widespread: Šašel Kos, ‘Epidaurum’, col. 1099: ‘Ca. 600 n. Chr. flohen
die Bewohner vor den einfallenden Slawen und Avaren nach Ragusium’.
106 
John the Deacon, Historia Veneticorum, ed. by Berto, i. 4, p. 52: ‘Ad cuius roborem
Heraclius post hec augustus beatissimi Marci sedem, quam dudum Helena Constantini mater
de Alexandria tulerat, sanctorum fultus amore direxit, ubi et actenus veneratur pariter cum
cathedra, in qua beatus martir sederat Hermachoras’.
107 
A partial discussion of Heraclius’s role is Kaegi, Heraclius, pp. 318–19.
242 Francesco Borri

6. Thomas Archdeacon: Barbarian Mutants II

The narrative of Thomas Archdeacon is the first work focused on the history
of Dalmatia, with the possible exception of the Chronicle of Duklja, whose date
of composition, as I will shortly explain, I believe to be later.108 Thomas was
a native of Split who travelled widely and took an active part in the political
life of the city during the years that saw the wars against Trogir, the Mongol
invasion, and the consequent flight of Béla IV (1235–70) to Dalmatia. The
Archdeacon reached the pinnacle of his career in 1243, when he was elected
archbishop of Split. However, his election did not please the Hungarian party
in the town, and Thomas had to resign from his post; it may have been for this
reason that the Archdeacon vented his frustration in literature, leaving us a his-
tory of the bishops of Salona and Split from the bishoprics’ origins up to his
own days.109 Thomas was especially concerned with events contemporary to his
own lifetime, for which events he is a very valuable and entertaining source. His
account of the early history of his town, however, is largely imaginative, due to
his lack of sources. Nevertheless, Thomas did a good job of describing life in
ancient Dalmatia, quoting Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, Jerome’s Vita
Hilarionis, Lucan, and Virgil. However, his account of the events following the
end of Gregory’s letters becomes very obscure. This situation was not unique to
Thomas; other authors who were interested in Dalmatia, such as Peter Damian
(c. 1007–72), could only report the sixth- and seventh-century struggle between
the pope and the bishops of Salona, Maximus and Natalis, due to the scanty
nature of sources describing early medieval Dalmatia, sources which are also
very difficult for us to trace and identify.110 This lack of otherwise widely-circu-
lated early medieval chronicles and annals can perhaps be explained by the fact
that Thomas, like us, could find no mention of Salona; yet, even characters like
Borna, described as dux Dalmatiae in the Royal Frankish Annals, whom we would
expect to be interesting for Thomas, are not mentioned by the Archdeacon.111

108 
Thomas Archdeacon, Historia, ed. by Karbić; see also the classic edition of Thomas
Archdeacon, Historia Salonitana, ed. by Rački.
109 
On Thomas, see Cocci, ‘Venezia e il Medio-Adriatico’; Curta, Southeastern Europe in the
Middle Ages, pp. 16–17; Kršnjavi, Zur Historia Salonitana; Selem, Tommaso Arcidiacono. A recent
contribution with an extensive bibliography is Matijević Sokol, ‘Archdeacon Thomas of Split’.
110 
Peter Damian, Briefe, ed. by Reindel, iv. 2: Epp. 41–90 (1988), no. 71, p. 325.
111 
Annales regni Francorum, ed. by Kurze, aa. 818–21, pp. 149, 151–52, 155. On Borna,
see Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, pp. 135–37; Depreux, Prosopographie de
l’entourage, pp. 146–47.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 243

The core of the first section of the History is the now well-known motif of
the conquest of Salona and the settlement of Split, which followed the destruc-
tion of the Roman centre. In his account, Thomas follows Augustinus’s model,
painting the barbarians as God’s retribution for the Salonians’ sins and wicked
ways; interestingly, in the History, the barbarians who conquer the Roman
metropolis are the Goths of King Totila.112 The Archdeacon places the destruc-
tion of Salona in a chronologically confused timeline, describing the Gothic
conquest of the city after the Maximus affair, which was at the beginning of sev-
enth century, many decades later than the end of Gothic rule in the Balkans.113
In the History, we read that Totila came from the north (the land between
Germany, de partibus Teutonie, and Poland) with an army of Goths.114 From
the mountains of Croatia, the barbarians descended to the sea, placing the
city under siege and, after few dramatic pages, conquering it. When the Goths
entered the metropolis, as we might expect, panic erupted, and the inhabitants
fled to the sea, taking refuge on the islands for a while and eventually settling
the deserted palace of Emperor Diocletian in Split.115
We do not know of any sources that contain the elements elaborated by
Thomas. It appears that the author was transcribing a tradition intended to jus-
tify the rights of Split as ecclesia Salonitana as well as the Salonitan origin of the
Archdeacon’s town-fellows. If many elements of Thomas’s narration were also pre-
sent in Constantine Porphyrogenitus’s On the Administration of the Empire, it is
striking that the Avar/Slav protagonists of the Emperor’s treatise are, in Thomas’s
account, Goths. As in the Venetian tradition, where the Lombards mutated to
Huns, in Thomas’s piece, the Avars became the more prestigious Goths.
The notion of Goths conquering Salona puzzled many historians, par-
ticularly because the presence of Totila in Dalmatia was corroborated by the
Chronicle of Duklja, which spoke of three brothers, the principes Gothorum
Brus, Ostroyllus, and Totilla (sic), who decided to declare war on the kings of
Istria and Dalmatia during the reign of Anastasius (491–518).116 Given this

112 
See Corradini, ‘Die Ankunft der Zukunft’.
113 
An account of the Gothic presence in Dalmatia is offered by Heather, ‘The Goths in the
Roman Balkans’; Schwarcz, ‘Die Goten in Pannonien’; Wolfram, Die Goten, pp. 315–24.
114 
Thomas Archdeacon, Historia, ed. by Karbić, c. 7, p. 34: ‘Gothorum tempore, qui Totila
duce de parti bus Teutonie et Polonie exierunt’.
115 
Thomas Archdeacon, Historia, ed. by Karbić, cc. 7–10, pp. 32–52.
116 
Anonymous of Duklja, Chronicon, ed. by Šišić, c. 1, p. 293: ‘exiit quoque gens a septentri-
onali plaga, quae Gothi nominabantur, gens ferox et indomita, qui erant tres fratres principes, filii
regis Svevladi, quorum nomina sunt heac: primus Brus, secundus Totilla, tertius vero Ostroyllus’.
244 Francesco Borri

evidence, it has sometimes been proposed that Thomas was reporting the
Croat migration, which, according to traditional historiography (that relies on
Constantine Porphyrogenitus), took place in the first or the second quarter of
the seventh century.117 The evidence has been used in the most uncritical way
possible, and it has been assumed that the Croats were indeed a lost Gothic
Stamm that forgot its language but still had pure Germanic blood running
through its veins. From this argument, many racist theories were born, which
were very popular among the Ustaša fascists during World War II and many
‘exiled’ Croatian historians up to the 1970s.118 Croatian Gothicism, although
a very interesting phenomenon, has never been thoroughly studied.119 But it is
clear that the Croats and Goths can be equated only in ideologically oriented
works, not only because the ‘Gothic theory’, as it is termed in some of the histo-
riography, is a blatant and xenophobic mythe aryen, but also because it relies on
an imprecise reading of the History of the Bishops of Salona and Split.120 Thomas
mentions a Croatia already in existence when the Gothic King came from the
north and, due to the country’s richness, decided to conquer it. Moreover, the
Archdeacon searched for Croatian origins in ancient ethnography, quoting
Virgil and Lucan and implicitly linking the Croats to Crete due to the conso-
nance of their names.121
The Goths in Dalmatia were apparently part of a new tradition, unknown
before Thomas’s time. Yet Thomas’s brilliant narrative enjoyed only moderate
success, since it was quoted and elaborated only by Thomas Tuscus at the end

117 
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. and trans. by Moravcsik and
Jenkins, cc. 30–31, pp. 138–52.
118 
The theory was formulated at the beginning of the twentieth century: Gumplowicz,
‘Die politische Geschichte der Serben’, but attained its most developed form in Šegvić, ‘Die
gotische Abstammung der Kroaten’. On this, see Bartulin, ‘The Ideology of Nation and Race’,
pp. 176–223, 245–51; Yeomans, ‘Of Yugoslavian Barbarians’. After WW II, the idea was pro-
posed again (as one example) by Guldescu, History of Medieval Croatia. See also: ‘Goti’, in
<http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goti>, and <http://www.raceandhistory.com/Science/croatia.
htm> [both websites accessed on 6 March 2009].
119 
Paul, ‘Gotizismus’; Svennung, Zur Geschichte des Gotizismus. For a general introduction
to the phenomenon, see Zellhuber, Der gotische Weg in den deutschen Krieg, pp. 19–24, 35–40.
120 
On this subject, the classic is Poliakov, Le mythe aryen; more recently: Olender, Les
langues du paradis. See also: Banti, ‘La nazione come comunità di discendenza’; Smith, Chosen
Peoples, pp. 166–217.
121 
Thomas Archdeacon, Historia, ed. by Karbić, c. 7, p. 36: ‘qui nunc dicuntur Chroate,
dicebantur Curetes vel Coribantes’. The Coribantes were the mythical warriors protecting the
baby Zeus in Crete. See Gordon, ‘Kureten’.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 245

of the thirteenth century and by Andrea Dandolo in the fourteenth.122 The

Gothic tradition was otherwise forgotten until the Dalmatian humanists dis-
covered it.
In order to comprehend Thomas’s narrative, we must understand the role of
the barbarians in the conquest of Salona. Thomas equates Goths to Slavs (but
not just the Croats), something that is surely suggestive.123 However, rather
than the Goths, we should take Totila as the starting point to understand the
Archdeacon’s account. Totila was, in fact, the barbarian leader who formed
the central aspect of the tradition, and the barbarians themselves were shaped
according to the role of their king, in a striking example of barbarian loyalty,
which, however, was destined to mislead generations of historians.124

7. Totila’s Bow
Totila’s myth is not comparable to that of Attila. It has been noted that both
rulers embodied the archetypal proud and fierce persecutor of the Christians,125
but the Gothic King was famous primarily through the writings of Procopius,
and, before he became the hero of Felix Dahn, who wrote about him in A Battle
for Rome, his deeds were not very popular, being less well-known than those of
his Hunnish colleague.126 Totila was mentioned in the Latin sources dealing
with the Gothic War — principally, in the continuator of Count Marcellinus,
in Jordanes’s Romana, and, more extensively, in Gregory the Great’s Dialogues,

122 
Thomas Tuscus, Gesta imperatorum et pontificum, ed. by Ehrenfeuchter, p. 491: ‘Sed civi-
tate Salona destructa per Totilam, archiepiscopatus cum archiepiscopi corpore in iam dictum
palatium est translatus, ibique civitas fabricata, que Spalatum est vocata’.
123 
Thomas Archdeacon, Historia, ed. by Karbić, c. 7, p. 38: ‘Gothi a pluribus diceban-
tur et nichilominus Sclavi’; Anonymous of Duklja, Chronicon, ed. by Šišić, c. 5, p. 298: ‘id est
Gothi, qui et Sclavi’; Andrea Dandolo, Chronica, ed. by Pastorello, viii. 3, p. 148: ‘erant enim
Sclavi adhuc gentiles, quia a Gothis originem duxerant’. On the association of Slavs/Goths, see
Kampfer, Stichel, and Zernack, eds, Das Ethnikon ‘Sclavi’, p. 34.
124 
On the Gothic king, see Bertolini, ‘Baduila’; Moorhead, ‘Totila the Revolutionary’;
Reichert and Krautschick, ‘Totila’; Wolfram, ‘Totila’, col. 901; Wolfram, Die Goten, pp. 352–59;
Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, iii.  2: ad 527–641 (1992),
pp. 1328–32.
125 
Lanzoni, Le diocesi d’Italia, ii, pp. 19–20.
126 
On Felix Dahn’s view, see Kipper, Der Germanenmythos im Deutschen Kaiserreich,
pp.  118–53. On Ein Kampf um Rom, see Esch, ‘“Una lotta per Roma” di Felix Dahn’, i,
pp. 183–94, on Totila, pp. 186–91.
246 Francesco Borri

where the King faces many of the protagonists of the Pope’s hagiographical col-
lection, namely, Benedict, Sabinus, Cassius of Narni, Cernobius of Populonia,
Fulgentius of Otricoli, and Herculianus of Perugia.127 Moreover, Totila did not
experience such a rich and fruitful Nachleben as other barbarian kings, such as
Theodoric or Alboin. Regardless of his heroic feats, the Gothic King was rela-
tively neglected by the later literary tradition.
Despite this situation, the name Totila appears quite often in Latin sources.
Even a superficial overview, however, makes it clear that the name Totila does
not always describe the Gothic King, but rather indicates the much more
popular Attila the Hun.128 It is possible that the confusion originated from the
consonance between the two names, but it is difficult to understand how this
barbarian crisis of identity began.
An early attestation of these shifting identities may be found in Godfrey
of Viterbo’s work. Godfrey (1125–95/1200) was an historian who worked
as court notarius under Frederick Barbarossa (1152–90) and Henry  VI
(1190–97). In his Memoria seculorum, he described Attila and Totila as two
kings of the Hungarians. He wrote:
We read that two were the kingdoms of the Hungars. The first, ancient one was
close to the swamps of the Maeotis at the frontiers between Europe and Asia, and
the second, more recent one is in Pannonia and derives from the former; therefore,
some call Pannonia New Hungary. The Hungarians are also called Huns. Under
Attila and Totila, who once ruled over them, they laid waste many kingdoms in
Gaul and Italy.129

Many elements are blended in this short account. It is sufficient to say that
Godfrey identified the Huns and Hungarians and considered Attila the ances-
tor of both peoples, as Lambert of Hersfeld (before 1028 — after 1081) had
already done.130 Godfrey narrated the well-known episodes associated with

127 
Carnevale, ‘Totila come perfidus rex tra storia e agiografia’. I would like to thank Laura
Carnevale, who kindly sent me a copy of her article.
128 
Bertoni and Foligno, ‘La guerra d’Attila’, pp. 85–86; Carnevale, ‘Totila come perfidus rex
tra storia e agiografia’, p. 60; Maissen, ‘Attila, Totila e Carlomagno’.
129 
Godfrey of Viterbo, Memoria seculorum, ed. by Waitz, p. 102: ‘Ungarorum regna duo
esse legimus, unum antiquum aput Meotidas, paludes in finibus Asie et Europe, et alterum quasi
novum ad primo regno in Pannonia derivatur, quam Pannoniam nonnulli novam Hungariam
vocant. Ungari etiam Huni sunt appellati. Sub quorum viribus Atili et Totila quondam reg-
nantes multa regna in Italia et in Galliis desolaverunt’. Dorninger, Gottfried von Viterbo.
130 
Lambert of Hersfeld, Annales, ed. by Hesse, a. 1071, p. 184.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 247

the battle of Chalons fought by Attila and Aëtius in Gaul (451) and the
consequent Hunnish invasion of Italy, which ended with the famous meet-
ing between Attila and Pope Leo. Godfrey, however, added a character to the
story, namely, King Totila: he made Attila and Totila two co-protagonists, who
both performed Attila’s deeds, known thanks to many attestations in Prosper,
Jordanes, and Gregory of Tours. I do not believe that Godfrey depended on
a chronicle that is now lost; rather, it seems that in his own days there were
already conflicting traditions according to which the two names were used in
similar contexts to describe Attila. Quite simply, there must have been versions
of Paul’s or Landulfus’s Roman History, or other narratives, in which the King
of the Huns was called Totila. Geoffrey probably had access to both of them,
and, in order to find a solution to these multiple personalities, he transformed
the Hunnish King Attila/Totila into two distinct characters: Atili [sic] et Totila.
In a later chronicle, Totila was again identified with Attila: Martin of
Troppau (d. after 1278) described Totila as rex Wandalorum (and it is very
interesting that in many sources of the twelfth century the Huns are called
Vandals, who were, at the time, identified with the Slavs).131 It is Totila who is
said to have met with Pope Leo after having burnt down Aquileia, and it is again
Totila’s broken bow, which appears to the sleeping Emperor Marcian (451–58),
that announces the King’s death.132 At the beginning of the fourteenth century,
Giovanni Villani, writing about the origins of Florence, remembered the vio-
lent conquest of Totila as a flagellum Dei; he was, however, describing Attila’s
feats.133 The names had become so interchangeable that the name Attila was
also used to describe the king who died at Tagina.134
The tradition was even stronger among Hungarian historians.135 One of the
most exemplary statements comes from Heinrich von Mügeln (living in the

131 
On the evolving meanings of the name Wandali: Steinacher, ‘Wenden, Slawen, Vandalen’.
132 
Martin of Troppau, Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, ed. by Weiland, p. 418: ‘ Hic
Leo Totilam regem Wandalorum […] personaliter adiit ipsum’; p. 454: ‘In nocte vero mortis
Marcialis imperator, qui tunc Constantinopoli morabatur, vidit in sompnis archum Totile frac-
tum, ex hoc intelligens ipsum esse mortuum’. Von den Brincken, ‘Studien zur Überlieferung der
Chronik’; Ikas, ‘Martinus Polonus’.
133 
Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica, ed. by Porta, i. 1, i, p. 3; Luzzati, ‘Villani, Giovanni’,
cols 1678–79; Ragone, Giovanni Villani e i suoi continuatori.
134 
Cronica apostolicorum, ed. by Holder-Egger, a. 540, p. 280: ‘Sed a Narse patricio post-
modum occiso receptus est Attilla’; a. 565, p. 281: ‘Narses patricius, postquam sub Iustiniano
augusto Totilam regem Gotorum in Ytalia superavit’.
135 
Macartney, The Medieval Hungarian Historians, pp. 41–42.
248 Francesco Borri

fourteenth century), who wrote in his chronicle: ‘After this battle Attila, whom
someone called Totila, was chosen by the Huns as their king’.136 An even more
striking comparison comes from a letter sent by the Hungarian King Béla IV to
Pope Innocent IV (1243–54), in which the King described the havoc brought
by the Mongols to his land and quoted a memory of the past:
Let us take as an example Totila, who advanced, conquering, from the East to the
West, establishing his court in the middle of the kingdom of Hungary; fighting the
Caesars coming from the West to conquer the East, he founded many strongholds
that defined the frontiers of our kingdom.137

Totila is Attila once more.138

The Hungarian tradition, moreover, furnishes us with a further element that
enables better understanding of Thomas the Archdeacon’s account of the con-
quest of Salona. The Deeds of the Hungarians, written in the second half of the
thirteenth century (the terminus ante quem is May 1285) by Simon of Kéza,
a cleric living at the court of Ladislaus IV of Hungary (1272–90), describes
King Attila pillaging the eastern Adriatic coast, an element that never appears
in older narratives. According to Simon:
Then [Attila], after holding his formal court, marched from Pannonia through Sty-
ria, Carinthia, and Dalmatia until he reached the Adriatic by the cities of Salona
and Split, both of which he ordered to be destroyed and burned. Finally he left and
seized the city by the sea […] and many other towns in the mountains, until finally
he reached Aquileia.139

136 
Heinrich von Mügeln, Chronicon rhythmicum, ed. by Domanovszky, c. 8, p. 238: ‘post
hunc conflictum Athylam, | Quem quidem vocant Thotilam, | Huni assumunt regem’. On
Heinrich’s Chronicon, see Macartney, The Medieval Hungarian Historians, pp. 144–46.
137 
Béla IV, Ep. ad Innocentium IV papam, in Codex diplomaticus, ed. by Fejér, iv. 2, p. 222:
‘Totila (Atila) in exemplum veniat, qui ex parte Orientis ad Occidentem veniens subiugandam,
in medio regni Hungariae sedem suam principaliter collocauit; et contra Caesares, qui ex occi-
dente ad sibi submittendum oriens dimicabant, quam plurima ad constructionem exercitus
faciunt, infra regni nostri terminos deponebat’. On this, see Birnbaum, ‘Attila’s Renaissance’,
p. 93, n. 9.
138 
On the relationship between Béla IV and the papacy, when the latter was under threat
from the Mongol invasion, see Berend, At the Gates of Christendom, pp. 163–71. The relation-
ship between the Mongols and Béla IV also comprise a central role in Thomas Archdeacon. See
Sweeney, ‘Thomas of Spalato and the Mongols’.
139 
Kézai Simon, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Veszprémy, c. 15, p. 54: ‘curiaque solemni
celebrata egressus est de Pannonia per Styriam, Carinthiam et Dalmatiam pertransiens, apud
urbem Salonam mari Adriatico et Spaletum se coniunxit, ubi ambas urbes dirui fecit et cremari.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 249

The same modality of conquest was already present, in a much simpler ver-
sion, in the Chronicle of Magister P., the anonymous notary of King Béla IV
(1172–96). The Magister wrote: ‘The mighty King Attila, in the year of the
Lord’s incarnation 451, descending from the Scythian Land with a strong army,
came to Pannonia, and, after having put the Romans to flight, he gained the
kingdom’.140
Simon of Kéza’s Attila, therefore, embodied a tradition in which Attila
conquered Dalmatia along with Salona; this tradition was perhaps intended
to legitimize the Hungarian takeover of the eastern Adriatic coast at the begin-
ning of the twelfth century.141 Writing a few decades before Simon, Thomas
reported the same tradition of Attila destroying Salona, giving to his Totila
an itinerary very similar to that of the Hungarian Attila. He wrote: ‘The same
duke [Totila], before bringing war to Italy, wasted the region of Dalmatia and
moved to Salona, which he partially destroyed’.142 A thirteenth/fourteenth-cen-
tury source, moreover, the so-called Hungarian-Polish Chronicle, made Attila
(called Aquila) the conqueror of Croatia, exactly as Thomas the Archdeacon
did with Totila.143
It seems, therefore, that Thomas the Archdeacon, like many modern histo-
rians, positioned the destruction of Salona during that period of time in which
his sources became more meagre, that is, after Gregory the Great’s death, and
relied on the contemporary tradition of Attila/Totila in Dalmatia. Moreover,
Thomas found a solution to the conflicting traditions concerning the King’s
name by cutting him in two: he wrote of an Attila who was ancestor of the
Hungarians, ‘ferocissimus persecutor Christianorum’, and of a Totila who was
conqueror of Salona. In the process, the Archdeacon established Totila once
again as King of the Goths.

Egressus tandem circa mare […] civitatem ac cetera multa oppida occupans in montanis, per-
venit tandem Aquilegiam’. For the use of Attila’s myth during the Middle Ages in Hungary, see
Berend, At the Gates of Christendom, pp. 205–10; Birnbaum, Humanists in a Shattered World,
pp. 144–46; Randy, ‘Recollecting Attila’.
140 
Magister P., Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by Veszprémy and Silagi, c. 35, p. 32: ‘potentissimus
rex Athila, qui anno dominice incarnationis ccccli° de terra Scithica descendens cum valida
manu in terram Pannonie venit et fugatis Romanis regnum obtinuit’.
141 
Engel, The Realm of St Stephen, pp. 36–37.
142 
Thomas Archdeacon, Historia, ed. by Karbić, c. 7, pp. 34–36.
143 
Chronicon Hungarico-Polonicum, ed. by Deér, p. 303: ‘Movit autem inde se et exercitus
suos et petransivit Alpes Carinitie et venit in terminos Chrvacie et Sclavonie inter fluvios Savam
et Dravam’; on the Chronicon, see Macartney, The Medieval Hungarian Historians, pp. 173–82.
250 Francesco Borri

It is now possible to see that the reference in the Chronicle of Duklja to

Totilla (sic) as one of the three Ostrogothic brothers who conquered Dalmatia
can no longer be interpreted as a confirmation of Thomas’s account, but rather
should be considered a quotation from it. There was no libellus Gothorum, as
the author mentions in his introduction, because there was no Gothic tradition
in Dalmatia. It was Thomas who gave Attila/Totila the role of a Gothic king
and who thereby puzzled generations of scholars. Following Thomas, the Priest
of Duklja constructed his Gothic history. The error of modern scholars was to
compare Thomas’s account merely with Constantine’s On the Administration of
the Empire, without considering the cultural framework of thirteenth-century
Dalmatia. Instead, the traditions associated with the fall of Salona collected
around the character of Attila — who in some cases was called Totila — as is
attested in many chronicles from the time of Goeffrey of Viterbo. If we keep in
mind the Attila tradition, Totila’s conquest in Dalmatia can be explained with-
out relying on the nonsensical association between Goths and Croats.

8. Conclusions: Andrea Dandolo, the Two Totilas, and Attila’s Twisted Ways
This paper has traced origin traditions from their first attestations to their later
developments. The foundation myths were apparently a method of explain-
ing the peculiar urban discontinuity and the profound transformations of the
social, economic, and political structures of late Roman life, as well as a method
of legitimizing the new Byzantine/Adriatic elites who rose to power between
the eighth and ninth centuries. Even if these origines have often been under-
stood as peculiar to Venice, this paper suggests how they were, rather, shared
among many urban centres of the Byzantine Adriatic.
Essentially, the origines centred upon the destruction of a large Roman city,
an event that took place during the obscure Age of Migration: after the con-
quest of the city in question, the citizens settled a new community during what
I have called the Age of Flight. The creation of this past was primarily a means
to answer contemporary questions of identity and to validate present condi-
tions by constructing a bond with a glorious past and claiming, at the same
time, the episcopal rights of an ancient Roman see.
What is more striking is that these traditions were not developed indepen-
dently and did not rely on a detailed account of previous events but were an
elaboration of the barbarian histories — mainly that of Paul the Deacon — for
which they constituted a negative. It is, in fact, possible to follow a reversal of
perspectives, whereby the objects of conquest became the founding fathers of
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 251

the cities in the Adriatic arc. On the other hand, the very heroes of the bar-
barian histories, such as Attila or Alboin, acted as the deus ex machina that
explained the discontinuity of the Adriatic arc — a discontinuity that unfolded
through a pattern of violent destruction, flight, and the subsequent foundation
of a new city.
In the tenth century, this tradition was already evident in Venice, Split,
Ragusa/Dubrovnik, and, perhaps, Istria. We have seen that, for a long time,
many alternative versions, which dealt with the modality of the conquest, the
name of the protagonists, and many other secondary elements competed with
one another, until they reached their mature forms around the twelfth or thir-
teenth century. A crucial role was played by Attila, whose popularity appar-
ently spread after the diffusion of Paul the Deacon’s works. The Hunnish King
was already regarded as the famous destroyer in the legend of the origin of
Venice composed by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and it seems that Thomas
Archdeacon described the King’s conquest in order to construct a fictional
flight of the Salonians to Split. A complication lies in the fact that Thomas’s vil-
lain is a certain Totila, King of the Goths, but we have also seen that in the high
Middle Ages both the names Totila and Attila could have been used to describe
the King of the Huns. These shifting personalities were one of the main rea-
sons why the common origins of these traditions have not, until now, been rec-
ognized. Very soon after Thomas’s History began to circulate, matters became
rather messy; a good example comes from Andrea Dandolo’s Extended History.
Writing in the fourteenth century, Andrea developed a historical narrative
that dealt primarily with Venice and covered the period from the first century
ad to the year 1280. Collecting material ranging from the first days of the
Roman Empire until the coming of age of the Venetian Republic, the historian
had to deal with most of the characters we have encountered in this article.
Andrea, however, was no longer able to recognize the single matrix of these tra-
ditions, which he painstakingly tried to frame into a coherent picture. The sim-
ilarities and contradictions of the combined traditions resulted in the presence
of two men called Totila in different sections of Andrea’s work. One of them
was the King of the Ostrogoths, who died in Italy fighting Narses; the second,
more unusually, was Totila, King of the Goths, who sat in Dalmatia and became
the forefather of the Moravian princedom, and for whose description Andrea
depended on the Chronicle of Duklja, which was first attested in this text.144

144 
Andrea Dandolo, Chronica, ed. by Pastorello, v. 5, p. 61, and viii. 5, p. 156. On Andrea
Dandolo, see Arnaldi, ‘Andrea Dandolo doge-cronista’; and Ravegnani, ‘Dandolo, Andrea’.
252 Francesco Borri

The name Totila appeared, therefore, in two different contexts, and the
presence of a Totila in Dalmatia influenced Andrea’s account of Attila. Andrea
wrote: ‘In fact Attila [Athila], King of the Huns, after having collected his men,
marched along the sea, conquering Trogir, Sibenik, Beograd na moru, Zadar,
Nin, Senji, Pula, Poreć, Ljublijana, Trieste’, before heading towards Aquileia.145
It is easy to recognize how the itinerary of Andrea’s Attila echoed that of Simon
of Kéza’s narrative, but it should also be noted how Salona, the most impor-
tant (and presumably rich) centre of late Roman Dalmatia, is missing from the
list of the destroyed towns. This element may cause us to wonder about Attila’s
twisted ways. If something strange did occur, however, it was not on the part of
Attila, but in Andrea’s mind.
Andrea, being acquainted with Thomas the Archdeacon’s narrative, knew
that Salona was destroyed by Totila, King of the Goths.146 As an historian, how-
ever, he was no longer able to recognize behind Thomas’s account the Attila
tradition that he himself was reporting in order to explain the origin of Venice.
Following this apparent confusion, he created this peculiar route for the
Hunnish King. Salona must have been absent from Attila’s conquering march
because Andrea, following Thomas, thought that the city had been conquered
by Totila and his Goths. Meanwhile, Andrea the historian fused the narrative of
Thomas with that of the Chronicle of Duklja, as many scholars did after him. In
doing so, he made a completely distinct character out of the Dalmatian Attila/
Totila. Hence, in his story, there are two Totilas, as well as an Attila who has a
rather unusual sense of direction.
If we follow the long history of these traditions and their roots in the social
changes taking place on the Adriatic arc between the eighth and ninth cen-
turies, we realize how, for a fourteenth-century historian, the single matrix of
these foundation myths was irredeemably lost. Andrea was, in fact, puzzled by
how the Venetian traditions overshadowed much older and more widespread
ones; his confusion, in the end, contributed to the creation of the Venetian
legend, a myth that was destined to be long lasting.

145 
Andrea Dandolo, Chronica, ed. by Pastorello, v. 5, p. 58: ‘Nam, Athila rex Hunorum,
reasumptis viribus, circa mare pertransit, cepitque Tragurium, Sibinicum, Belgradum, Iadram,
Nonam, Signiam, Polam, Emonam, Parencium, Emonam, Tergestum’.
146 
Andrea often quoted Thomas’s Historia. See, for example: Andrea Dandolo, Chronica,
ed. by Pastorello, iv. 3, p. 15: ‘Hec quidem sedes in Spalato, destructa Salona, cum corpore pon-
tificis translacta est’.
Arrivano i barbari a cavallo! 253

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Zecchini, Giuseppe, ‘Attila: una figura epocale?’, Rivista storica italiana, 114 (2002),
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Zellhuber, Andreas, Der gotische Weg in den deutschen Krieg: Gustav Adolf und der schwed-
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 Tuscans as gens?
Shaping Local Identities and
Communities in Early Medieval Tuscany

Marco Stoffella
To Lara and Tommaso

The Ambiguous Character of Local Identity

The concept of local identity has been broadly examined and has, at times, been
used to excess and therefore misused. In recent years it has been at the centre of
various political discourses and has also been used by the scientific community,
in particular by sociologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists.1 The cul-
tural and political importance of the two concepts of identity and community
has arisen from the uncertainties of globalization; the answers to these same
uncertainties have been found in a symbolic anchoring to local peculiarities,
which have been often ‘rediscovered’, and in the ideological and political valori-
zation of the concept of community.
It is possible, in the local dimension, to find symbols that corroborate the
feelings of identity and the sense of belonging to single communities. More
than other concepts, therefore, that of local identity has been characterized by
perceptions of separateness and by the search for a genuine ‘authenticity’. The
logic behind this research has been that of aut…aut, which has aimed to remove
ambiguities — but it is precisely such ambiguity that constitutes the concept
of identity.

1 
Riccio and Brambilla, eds, Transnational Migration. For archaeological approaches to this
subject see Revell, Roman Imperialism and Local Identities. See also the conference organized in
memory of Corinne Crawford at the UC Berkeley Department of Classics in 2008 on ‘Local
Identities in the Ancient Mediterranean’.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101667
pp. 271–295 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
272 Marco Stoffella

We can describe collective identity as a social representation and a symbolic

construction in which a plurality of persons — who are part of the same com-
munity and who are planning their existence within it — recognize themselves.
Identity, therefore, is a system of consciousness, communication, and action,
which is expressed as a common sense, as a narrative construction which struc-
tures exchange and which forms political discourses.2 Furthermore, commu-
nities need to symbolize common identity elements, which they believe to be
shared, just as single individuals need to symbolize the constitutive elements
of their own identity.3 In conclusion, it is possible to state that local identity
is a representation that a specific community has of itself that does not reflect
reality, but contributes to the construction of reality. This same representation
is not only a mental construction, but has strong practical implications since it
directs behaviour and practices.4
Moreover, to grasp the ambiguous character of local identity requires over-
coming the dichotomy that describes it as either an open or a closed system.
For this reason it can be useful to define local communities as complex systems
which co-evolve in the space of their possibilities. Thus, local communities are
‘closed’ because they have a particular social organization and a propensity to
reproduce themselves; but local communities are also ‘open’ because they are
influenced by external and disruptive elements. To a static and exclusive image
of collective identities we do not, therefore, need to oppose an open image, but
an evolutive and flexible one.
Collective identities are not immutable, but evolve through processes that
cause discontinuities and instabilities. Individuals who belong to the same com-
munity share repertories of traditions, stories, behaviours, and relations which
are continuously re-signified and reinvented according to the circumstances.5 In
addition, individuals or groups in a community have different aims which are
pursued through competing representations of their collective identity, selected
according to these same aims. Identity, in fact, is in constant evolution and is
thus a temporary outcome of political, historical, and social constructions.6
These general reflections on the characteristics of local identities allow us to
tackle important issues related to the links between the construction of local

2 
Serge Moscovici, Le rappresentazioni sociali.
3 
Augé, Non-lieux.
4 
Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity; Bauman, Intervista sull’identità.
5 
Gianluca Bocchi and Ceruti, ‘Introduzione: la sfida della complessità’.
6 
Bodei, Destini personali.
Tuscans as gens? 273

identities, the management of political issues, and the different forms of com-
munities during the early Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the area of
northern and central Italy. In the following analysis, I will concentrate my atten-
tion on issues that are also common and transverse to many of the other realities
which were part of the Carolingian Empire. Based on a broad scholarly litera-
ture, we can assert that in Tuscany between the eighth and eleventh centuries
complex processes of construction of distinct identities took place that origi-
nated with some major socio-cultural developments. Firstly, the emergence in
the first decades of the ninth century of a new elite that we could define as ‘colo-
nial’. This new elite, which was in some cases of transalpine origin and in others
of Lombard extraction but had in common a strong political pro-Carolingian
attitude, absorbed the local elites, settled in the territory during the phase of the
strengthening of Carolingian rule, and integrated itself into the regional and
local context, establishing itself in the pre-existing substrate.7 Secondly, we can
observe the construction of an identity among the Tuscan native population
under the impact of Carolingian and post-Carolingian rule and the affirma-
tion or even invention of local traditions and cults in accordance with the new
political conditions.8 Finally, one of the most interesting aspects of politics in
Tuscany during the early Middle Ages was the attempt, by those we can call
regional leaders, to create a specific regional or provincial discourse of develop-
ment that entailed the reformulation of regional or provincial identities.

Regional Identity as the Identity of a People

Historiography has stated that regionalism or provincialism, which I consider
here to be synonymous, are two aspects that are in competition with the unity
of the so-called ‘early medieval state’, thoroughly discussed at the conference
in Vienna in 2007.9 However, an investigation of the regional or provincial
development in Tuscany during the early Middle Ages suggests that identitar-
ian politics at a regional level, and indeed even more so at a local one, are more
complex and finely nuanced than might initially seem to be the case. Tuscan
regional identity was neither exclusive nor opposed to others, but was one of

7 
Hlawitschka, Franken, Alemannen, Bayern und Burgunder; Stoffella, ‘Crisi e trasformazi-
one delle élites’.
8 
For a general overview, see Lucca e la Tuscia nell’alto medioevo.
9 
Pohl and Wieser, eds, Der frühmittelalterliche Staat. See also Airlie, Pohl, and Reimitz,
eds, Staat im frühen Mittelalter.
274 Marco Stoffella

a series of multiple and overlapping identities. These were structured within a

hierarchy of places and local identities that reached down to, and interacted
with, county and village level, as well as up to what we could, anachronistically,
call the ‘national level’. At the same time, it is clear that the appeal of localism
began to influence the ways in which regional leaders participated in ‘national
politics’. Moreover, there are indications that the emphasis on localism may
have had tangible results in the county and in the town or city, becoming more
significant to identity formation than regionalism, although the consequences
of this for regional and local politics remain unclear. In order to explain these
general considerations, we need to consider some examples and analyse them.
In the early Middle Ages, narratives of the origins of peoples have often
been included in identity discourses to dignify their vicissitudes or to legiti-
mate their role in specific political contexts.10 Very broad and accurate research
has been carried out on these narrative typologies and the Wittgenstein Projekt
has produced fundamentally important results.11 Within the identitarian nar-
ratives it has sometimes been possible to individuate explicit references to the
construction of identities which refer to smaller social groups than those usu-
ally defined as gentes. The so-called Frankish Table of Nations or Genealogia gen-
tium is an imaginary bridge between the Frankish context, Carolingian Europe,
and early medieval Tuscany. As is well known, it is a text where numerous peo-
ple of Germanic origin are enumerated, who all lived between late Antiquity
and the early Middle Ages.12 Some variants of the so-called Frankish Table of
Nations that have been independently transmitted include explicit identitarian
references to peoples of a regional or sub-regional character.
In fact, in one variant of the genealogy — transmitted by two manuscripts
revised in Italy — the name of the people of Turingi was replaced by that of the
Tusci, meaning precisely the inhabitants of early medieval Tuscany.13 Thanks to
the ability of clever intellectuals and copyists, therefore, between the tenth and
eleventh centuries, the identity of a ‘people’ was attributed to the inhabitants
of Tuscia and full dignity given to the Tusci compared with the other peoples
mentioned in the Table. By analysing the Italian variants of this genealogy some

10 
Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’.
11 
Among the many texts produced during the last years of research at the Österreichische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, see for example Corradini and
others, eds, Texts and Identities.
12 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’.
13 
Le Jan, ‘Mémoire thuringienne et opposition politique’.
Tuscans as gens? 275

questions can be posed. Was this text an intellectual elaboration that corre-
sponds to other documentary or narrative sources, or was it a clumsy attempt
to misrepresent a remote or non-existent reality? Was it a sign of an ongoing
identity-process, or the mistake of an inaccurate or inventive writer? In order
to answer these questions and to understand more profoundly the ‘Italian’ ver-
sion of the Frankish Table of Nations, we first need to examine the genealogy,
the manuscripts, as well as the institutions which produced or preserved them.

The Frankish Table of Nations

Interpreted by scholars from the second decade of the nineteenth century as
the ‘fränkische Völkertafel’,14 it is today better known as the Frankish Table
of Nations following Walter Goffart’s exhaustive study.15 Goffart’s analysis has
fixed some important points: the text was written around 520 in Ostrogothic
Italy or in Constantinople, then copied and enlarged in Francia around 700.
From Francia it returned to Italy, where different versions were reproduced and
have survived.16 The Table of Nations, in fact, is transmitted in the illustrated
Codex legum Langobardorum which comes from La Cava, Archivio della Badia
della Santissima Trinità, 4 (henceforth referred to as Cavensis 4). Six other ver-
sions exist in diverse manuscripts and are preserved both north and south of the
Alps. An eighth version is included in the ninth-century Historia Brittonum.17
All these versions can now be confronted, thanks to Goffart’s comparative edi-
tion in which they are all reproduced.18
The so-called Frankish Table of Nations continues from Tacitus Germania’s
threefold division of the Germans into Ingaevones, Herminones, and Istaevones
and enhances the origins of the Germans. 19 According to Goffart, how-
ever, the gentes mentioned within it — among which are the Goths, Vandals,

14 
The first published notice was given by Pertz, ‘Populorum Germanorum generatio’.
A list of the editions from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards is in Goffart, ‘The
Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. 133 and 134, n. 11. Krusch, ‘Der Bayernname, der
Kosmograph von Ravenna’, speaks explicitly of a ‘fränkische Völkertafel’.
15 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. 132–65.
16 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 138.
17 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, p. 133.
18 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. 135–42. Goffart here names
La Cava, Arch. del. Badia del. Sant.Trinità, MS 4 as version e.
19 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 138.
276 Marco Stoffella

Thuringians, Lombards, Bretons, and Franks — ‘belong more to the neigh-

bourhood of the sixth, rather than to the one of the second century’.20 It is
also worth noticing, as already underlined by Goffart, that each version dif-
fers in some respects from the others, and that they are preserved in different
contexts.21 There is, however, one exception, because two of them are almost
identical: these are the versions in the Cavensis 4 and the Casinensis 384, the
latter being a patristic florilegium (Florilegium patristicum ordine litterarum
a — q dispositum) which dates back to the early tenth century.22 The common
elements of the ‘fränkische Völkertafel’ in the two codices are: the list of names
of gentes, which follows exactly the same order, the fact that both texts differ
from all the other extant versions in presenting Tuscans, instead of Thuringians,
as close relatives of the Lombards, Burgundians, and Bavarians, the fact that
they both recognize Mulius as the common ancestor, and finally that they list
twelve, rather than thirteen, peoples.23
Walter Goffart has traced the peculiarity of these two versions back to the
Beneventan area, where Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MS Reichenau
ccxxix — the version f of his edition — also originated.24 All three versions of
the Table of Nations mentioned embody a more emphatically modernized cata-
logue of peoples than any of the other transalpine recensions: Casinensis 384
and Cavensis 4, respectively m and e of Goffart’s edition, displace the Lombards
and introduce the Tuscans, whereas the older f embodies even more drastic
changes, one of which places the Franks almost at the head of the list.25 In con-

20 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, p. 133; Pohl, Die Germanen, p. 56.
21 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. 135–47. See also Pohl, ‘The
Con­struction of Communities’ p. 13.
22 
Montecassino, Arch.del.Badia, MS 384; Inguanez, Codicum Casinensium manuscripto-
rum catalogus, ii, pp. 246–47; Dold, Zur Ältesten Handschrift des Edictus Rothari, pp. 45–46;
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp.  140–41; Pohl, Werkstätte der
Erinnerung, p. 142.
23 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. 144–47; Pohl, Werkstätte
der Erinnerung, p. 138, for the text of the Genealogia gentium: ‘Mulius rex tres filios habuit,
quorum nomina hec sunt, Armen, Tingus, Ostius. Singuli genuerunt quat[erna] generationes:
Arme<n> genuit Gothos, Guandalos, Brigidos, Saxones. Tingus genuit Tuscos, et Langobardos,
Burgundiones, Baioari<os>. Hosti(us) genuit Romanos, Brittones, Francos et Alamannos’ (La
Cava, Arch. del. Badia del. Sant.Trinità, MS 4, fol. 1v).
24 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. 141–44, 148–49. f indicates
the manuscript of Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibl., MS Aug. 229.
25 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, p. 149.
Tuscans as gens? 277

trast, the version preserved in the Vaticanus Latinus 5001, a copy of a historio-

graphic miscellany, dated around 1300, can be traced back to the transalpine
group. This Vatican version was produced in Salerno from a manuscript written
in southern Italy (c. 974) which can be traced back to Montecassino or to some
previous codices written there.26
The version in the Casinensis 384 can be considered to be the model for
that of Cavensis 4, even if the Frankish Table of Nations precedes a glossary of
the Leges both in the Vaticanus Latinus 5001 and in the Cavensis 4.27 It is not
surprising, therefore, that the Table of Nations copied in the Casinensis 384,
nearly identical in the Cavensis 4, can be definitively traced back to southern
Italy, presumably to Montecassino. Walter Pohl has already shown in detail
how both codices he analysed that still preserve the so-called Frankish Table of
Nations — respectively Cavensis 4 and Vaticanus Latinus 5001 — were assem-
bled to assist specific strategies of memory and identity-building in or around
St Benedict of Montecassino.28 We need, therefore, to concentrate our atten-
tion on the most interesting and most studied of the two codices which main-
tained the pro-Tuscan version of the genealogy.

The Cavensis 4
The illustrated Codex legum Langobardorum from La Cava, Archivio della
Badia della Santissima Trinità, MS 4 is a famous manuscript of Lombard law,
written c. 1005, which also includes a collection of Carolingian capitularies.29
Its content has been inventoried many times because of its illuminated por-
traits of the different legislators and the plurality of texts it transmits.30 At the
very beginning of the codex is the Table of Nations, named by the copyist as
Genealogia gentium (‘genealogy of peoples’).31 The text, however, is written on

26 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. 135–37; Pohl, ‘History in
Frag­ments’, pp. 355–56; Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 138–39.
27 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 139.
28 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 138–39.
29 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 109.
30 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, p. 140. A detailed description of
its content is in Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 113–16. The portraits of the legislators are
described and reproduced in Rotili, La miniatura nella Badia di Cava, ii, pp. 7–20; Fobelli, ‘In
margine a due noti manoscritti’.
31 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 115 and 138; Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish”
Table of Nations’, pp. 140–41.
278 Marco Stoffella

a separate fragment; this leaf, one-third as large as those of the Cavensis 4 that
follow, is sewn to the front of the codex and numbered fol. 1.32 Scholars have
deduced that it has been written in a different hand from that which compiled
the main manuscript;33 analogies have been found between the hand who wrote
the Table of Nations and that of the last quaternion.34
However, as already mentioned, this version of the Table of Nations is a
peculiar one because it states that Tuscans, rather than Thuringians, are the rel-
atives of Lombards, Burgundians, and Bavarians.35 Tuscans have traditionally
been part of the Lombard kingdom, and of the subsequent kingdom of Italy
(regnum Italiae), too. At the very beginning of the eleventh century, however,
the anonymous writer of the Cavensis 4 placed Tuscans on the same level as the
Burgundians, Bavarians and, even more strikingly, the Lombards. The Tuscans
were explicitly distinguished from the latter. As Walter Pohl has recently
stressed, ‘medieval texts are much more ambiguous and full of contradictions
than we tend to think’, and ‘manuscripts offer privileged access to such contex-
tual traces, while editions often eliminate them, removing the scars of time to
create a smooth, seamless text’.36
Therefore, concentrating our attention simply on major works of early
medieval historiography could be misleading. In order to answer the main
issues raised above, we need to understand more about the Cavensis 4, its ori-
gins, and the cultural milieu in which it was produced. Only after making this
analysis will we be able to proceed with a further discussion on the nature of
a presumed Tuscan identity, which emerged at the beginning of the eleventh
century, due to the name swap by the anonymous writer in the very first part
of Cavensis 4. We will need to go back from the eleventh century to the early
Middle Ages in order to find out if and when a Tuscan identity ever existed,
and to what extent it is possible to describe it.
The manuscript-text Cavensis 4 is special in many respects:37 in the first
place, together with a second codex written in the first half of the eleventh

32 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, p. 140; See the praefatio in Leges
Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, p. xxxi; Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 138.
33 
Dold, Zur Ältesten Handschrift des Edictus Rothari, pp. 45–46.
34 
See the praefatio in Leges Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, p. xxxi.
35 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 138. See also above, n. 23.
36 
Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’, p. 353.
37 
Badia di Cava de’Tirreni, Bibl.del. Badia, MS 4.
Tuscans as gens? 279

century in Byzantine Bari (now in Madrid),38 it contains one of only two pre-
served original texts from the Leges Langobardorum written in southern Italy.39
Secondly, together with a third law book — a copy of the Leges collection made
by Lupus of Ferrières for Eberhard of Friuli and now preserved at Modena — it
contains the miniatures of the legislators.40 The Cavensis 4 is also one of the
three Law Codes in which the Origo gentis Langobardorum precedes Lombard
law itself. Furthermore, among many texts only the Cavensis 4 preserves the
most southern collection of Carolingian capitularies, which institutes a direct
connection between Lombard and Carolingian law.41 Finally, the Cavensis 4’s
collection of capitularies is also identical with the collection in Codex Città
del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi F. iv. 75, which was
completed around the year 1000 in central Italy, probably in San Paolo fuori le
Mura in Rome.42
The law book itself, although still classified as Cavensis 4 for its modern
provenance, could not have been written at the Cava de’Tirreni, since the mon-
astery was founded in the first half of the eleventh century.43 Moreover, the
existence of MS Trinità di Cava is attested for the first time in a diploma issued
by Guaimario III and his son Guaimario IV, Princeps of Salerno, in 1025, by
which time the codex was two decades old.44 The manuscript was kept at the
monastery of Cava de’Tirreni after 1263, taken there from Sant’Angelo di
Casalrotto near Mottola, one of Cava’s minor dependencies in Apulia.45 It is

38 
Madrid, Bibl. nac. de España, MS 413; Cavallo, ‘Per l’origine e la data del Cod. Matrit.
413’, i, pp. 135–42; Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’, p. 360.
39 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 108.
40 
Modena, Bibl.Capit., MS O.I.2; Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum
manuscripta, pp.  256–58; Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp.  122–29; Pohl, ‘History in
Fragments’, p. 360.
41 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 117–22.
42 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 108, n. 6. Both codices can be traced back to a common
source, probably a north Italian collection composed after 832. For the inventories see Goffart,
‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, p. 140. See also Rotili, La miniatura nella Badia di
Cava, p. 59; Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 113–16; Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’, p. 355.
43 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 109, n. 13. On the monastery of Trinità di Cava see
Loré, Monasteri, principi, aristocrazie, pp. 13–24, especially pp. 17–18, where the author stresses
the importance of the cave Arsicia, where Alferio founded the monastery and where also Liuzio,
previously monk in Montecassino, lived for some years around 1011. He was then replaced by
the same Alferio.
44 
Codex Diplomaticus Cavensis, ed. by Morcaldi, v, no. 764.
45 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 110, n. 18.
280 Marco Stoffella

improbable that the manuscript originated in Apulia, given the kind of script
used.46 Guided by its content, Lowe located its writing in Benevento, an ascrip-
tion that has been accepted, with some adjustments, by many scholars.47 Its
production has therefore been variously attributed to Benevento, Salerno, or
Capua, where palace-courts were active and where such a law-book could have
been required for practical use.48
Convincing textual parallels with two other manuscripts, originally pro-
duced at the monastery of St  Benedict of Montecassino (Montecassino,
Archivio della Badia, MS 175 and Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticana, MS lat. 5001), however, clearly indicate the origin of Cavensis 4 at
Montecassino, or at least within its cultural milieu.49 A systematic analysis of
the manuscript conducted by Walter Pohl has recently shown that, based on
some shorter texts copied into it and the marginal notes they contain, the codex
can be precisely traced back to St Benedict of Montecassino, to some codices
previously written in the famous monastery or to the monks who moved tem-
porarily from Montecassino to St Benedict of Capua.50 We need therefore to
look more closely at the contents of the codex in order to establish some pos-
sible connections with the Tuscan milieu.

Connections between Montecassino and Tuscany

The Cavensis 4 begins with the already mentioned version of the Genealogia
gentium which states that Tuscans are relatives of the Lombards, Burgundians,
and Bavarians;51 the genealogy is followed by the Origo gentis Langobardorum,52
and by the mass of the Leges Langobardorum illustrated with colour miniature
portraits of the legislators. Its other content includes shorter texts, such as reg-
nal lists — a Catalogus regum Langobardorum from Alboin to Henry II and a

46 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 111, n. 24.
47 
Lowe, The Beneventan Script, p. 52.
48 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 111–12, nn. 26–37; Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’,
pp. 360–61.
49 
The existence of common elements in these three codices has been underlined by Cilento,
‘La cronaca della dinastia capuana’, p. 288, n. 36. A detailed analysis of the three codices is now
in Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 142.
50 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 112–13; Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’, p. 355.
51 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, p. 146.
52 
Origo gentis Langobardorum, ed. by Waitz, pp. 1–6.
Tuscans as gens? 281

Catalogus principum Beneventi — texts of treaties, and a glossary; among the

narrative texts is also the Capua Chronicle (Chronica comitum Capuae), also
contained in Casinensis 175.53 The rest of the codex is filled with a selection of
Carolingian capitularies issued for Italy derived from the mid-ninth-century
collection of northern Italy, which is itself a copy of the Leges collection made
by Lupus of Ferrières for Eberhard of Friuli now in Modena.54
Walter Pohl, in his detailed study of the Cavensis 4 and of the two other
manuscripts from the cultural milieu of contemporary Montecassino,55 has
reasserted that the last historical event which enables us to date the codex is
the capture of Pavia by King Henry II and the withdrawal of Arduin in 1004,
an episode that is mentioned at the very end of the king list (fol. 176r).56 The
Capua chronicle, instead, ends its narrative four years earlier, with the capture
of Capua between November 999 and March 1000 by Ademar — Otto III’s
favourite, who had been promoted the previous year to become the head of
the march of Spoleto.57 Most significantly, the chronicle contains the story of
the murder of Prince Landenulf of Capua, an episode which is also described
in the Casinensis 175 in a later and more detailed addition. The narrators of
Cavensis 4 and Casinensis 175 refer to how Landenulf, son of Princess Aloara,
widow of Prince Pandulf I Ironhead, was murdered in the spring of 993 in
front of the church of St Marcello Maggiore in Capua as a result of a local con-

53 
On the Capua chronicle see Cilento, ‘La cronaca dei conti e dei principi longobardi’;
Cilento, ‘La cronaca della dinastia capuana’, pp. 286–88, where he provides a history of the pre-
vious editions together with a new edition. See now Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 84,
103–06, 141–42.
54 
Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta, pp. 98–111; see also
above, n. 40. The will of Eberhard of Friuli, in which the collection is mentioned, has been dis-
cussed by La Rocca and Provero, ‘The Dead and their Gifts’.
55 
For Montecassino, Arch.del.Badia, MS 175 and BAV, MS Lat. 5001, see the comments
and detailed analysis in Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 77–107 and 14–76.
56 
For the text, see Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 109: ‘Ardoynus factus est rex in Italia,
et regnavit an(nis) non pleniter duo. Et pugnavit in Italia cum exercitu Henrici regis, qui fuit
dux de Baioaria. Iste Henricus post discessum superscripti Ottoni factus rex Totonicoru(m), et
post perdicione exercitui eius, ipse per semedipsum venit in Italia, et omnes Lambardi mentiti
sunt Arduini regis, et subdiderunt se Henrici regis. Et ipse applicuit usque urbem Papia, et igne
cremavit eam, et sic reversus est in Totonicu(m) regnum suum’ (La Cava, Arch. del. Badia del.
Sant.Trinità, MS 4, fols 175v–176r).
57 
Cilento, ‘Ademario’; a more precise reconstruction of the events is in Cilento, ‘La cronaca
della dinastia capuana’, pp. 345–46.
282 Marco Stoffella

spiracy.58 The efficacy of the contemporary military expedition led by Hugh,

Marquis of Tuscia and lieutenant to Otto III in Italy, however, is mentioned
only in the version of the Chronica comitum Capuae in the Cavensis 4. Here,
the positive role played in 993 by Hugh of Tuscia at Capua is described in detail
and his successful efforts in exercising justice and persecuting those guilty of
murder are recorded and exalted.59
Even monks of Montecassino are positively described, having played a piti-
ful role when Prince Landenulf ’s position was violently usurped by his brother
Laidulf, Count of Teano. Landenulf ’s corpse was left to lie naked, until the
monks of St Benedict rescued and buried him in their monastery; soon after,
miracles began to happen.60 This piece of political hagiography, as Pohl has
stressed, might go back to the time of Abbot Manso of Montecassino, who
was a cousin of Prince Pandolf I Ironhead, a relative to the Princess of Capua
and supporter of Landenulf and Aloara.61 While in the Life of St Nilus Abbot
Manso is negatively represented as an aristocrat who dined with music while
St Nilus prayed at St German, a monastery on the slopes of Cassino,62 in the
Capua Chronicle this cynical depiction is missing. Absent as well are the epi-
sodes of 996, three years after Landenulf ’s murder and the succession of his
brother Laidulf as Prince of Capua. During this same year Abbot Manso was
blinded by his enemies while he was in St Benedict of Capua. He was forced to
resign from Montecassino and died in the spring.63

58 
Chronicon comitum Capuae, ed. in Cilento, ‘La cronaca della dinastia capuana’, pp. 306–08.
59 
Chronicon comitum Capuae, ed. in Cilento, ‘La cronaca della dinastia capuana’, p. 308:
‘Nam per eodem tempore venit Ugus marchio cum suos exercituos et Transmundo magni ficus
comes. Obsederunt Capuam per aliquantis diebus et postea recesserunt Mefino. Missis direxit
suis ad Capuam peragendi placita. Dum omnes fuerunt placito, et homicidia invicem, statimque
ipsi Franci apprehenderunt illis pariter. Vinctos perduxerunt eos ante Ugonem marchius in
Mefino, ubi aderat. Inquisiti ibi omnes per ordinem de homicidium, quod facerat. Cumque
inquisitim habuisset illos Ugonem marchio cum suis consulibus de morte huius principi, misit
eos in Romaninam et suspendi fecit illos per loca viarum singula’.
60 
Cilento, ‘L’istituzione della metropoli di Capua (966)’, p. 193; Cilento, ‘La cronaca della
dinastia capuana’, pp. 343–45.
61 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp.  144–45; Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’, p.  359;
Beolchini, ‘Mansone’; Cilento, ‘La cronaca della dinastia capuana’, p. 281, n. 9.
62 
Vita s. Nili iunioris, c. 12, col. 142: ‘invenit eundem […] lotum et prandentem in coe-
naculo […] audit ingressum esse citharistam fidibus canentem in coenaculo’. See also Beolchini,
‘Mansone’, p. 154; Bloch, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, i, pp. 10–12.
63 
Beolchini, ‘Mansone’, p. 155.
Tuscans as gens? 283

As illustrated in the episodes above, it was a highly conflictual time, both

within the principality of Capua and inside the abbey of Montecassino: a
group of monks who had been exiled by Abbot Manso or had escaped because
they were dissatisfied with his rule, returned to the abbey and seized control.64
Therefore, Otto III’s intervention in southern Italy in 999 may initially have
been welcomed by many monks, but Otto and Ademar soon dashed these
hopes, not least by taking hostages from many noble families and deporting
them to north of the Alps.65 Among these was Atenulf, son of Pandulf III
and brother of the powerful Prince of Capua Pandulf  IV, a future leader
at Montecassino and abbot of the monastery.66 Atenulf was offered to Otto
and Ademar by local nobility and sent to Germany; he succeeded in escaping
from German custody, returned to his family’s land, and was elected abbot of
Montecassino in 1011.67 The last episodes mentioned in the Capua Chronicle
of Cavensis 4 are, respectively, Ademar’s investiture with Capua by Otto III and
the former’s four-month rule over the principality.68
According to Walter Pohl, the last lines of the Catalogus regum Lango­
bardorum in the Cavensis 4 make it clear that Otto’s arch-enemy, Arduin of
Ivrea, had the sympathies of the manuscript’s compiler, who may have been
opposed to the intervention of King Henry II, since the German ruler con-
tinued the policy of the earlier Saxon emperors towards Montecassino and the
southern principalities.69 This position in the monastery of St Benedict may
have been reversed in 1014, after Henry II’s imperial coronation in Rome and
the issue by the emperor’s chancellery of a diploma for Montecassino;70 moreo-
ver, it became anachronistic after 1022 with the emperor’s visit to the monas-
tery to supervise the election of Abbot Theobald, Atenulf ’s successor and one
of those who had left Montecassino in 985/86 when Manso was elected leader
of the monastic community after the death of Abbot Aligern.71

64 
Bloch, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, i, pp. 11–12; Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 145.
65 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 145–46.
66 
Hoffmann, ‘Die älteren Abtslisten von Montecassino’, pp. 295–300.
67 
Bloch, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, i, p.  15. On Atenulf see also Leccisotti,
‘Atenulfo’.
68 
Cilento, ‘La cronaca della dinastia capuana’, p. 310.
69 
Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, p. 147; Bloch, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, i, p. 15.
70 
Heinrici II. et Arduni Diplomata, ed. by Bresslau, no. 287, pp. 342–45. Further comments
in Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 142–43.
71 
Hoffmann, ‘Die älteren Abtslisten von Montecassino’, pp. 295–300; Beolchini, ‘Man­
284 Marco Stoffella

The illustrated law book Cavensis 4 with its selection of Carolingian capitu-
laries, therefore, may still reflect concerns about the German kings: it is remark-
able that the historiographical texts reporting contemporary events are cautious
in recording conflicts with the Teutonic rulers and extremely careful in the
selection of episodes. Moreover, hagiography is used to introduce the murder
of Landenulf, while the blinding of Abbot Manso is not even mentioned. The
account of Otto III’s and Ademar’s actions are meticulously reported in neu-
tral tones, even if disappointment can be discerned between the lines.72 From
the last lines of the Chronicon comitum Capuae, however, one hero positively
emerges: this is Hugh, the Marquis of Tuscia and Otto III’s lieutenant in Italy.73
Hugh is represented as the protagonist of a reconciliation process within the
conflict-ridden principality of Capua immediately after the turmoil of 993.74
This role which, among others, portrays Hugh, one of the political leaders of
tenth-century Italy and the most influential officeholder of Tuscany and central
Italy, as a very positive character, requires further discussion.
The use of Montecassino material at Salerno and other monastic and politi-
cal centres demonstrates that Montecassino’s memories were disseminated
more widely; moreover, the Montecassino vision of its political environment
was in many respects the only narrative that survived from Lombard southern
Italy.75 If within this monastic cultural milieu Tuscans were raised to the status
of gens, the questions already raised can now be modified and posed once more.
At the end of the tenth century two different versions of the Table of Nations
were available at Montecassino. Why did the author of Cavensis 4 choose the
version in which Tuscans displace Thuringians? Is there a connection between
the promotion of the Tuscans to the rank of people and the character of Hugh,
Marquis of Tuscia, exalted in the last part of the Capua Chronicle copied in
the Cavensis 4? One possible answer could rest on the fact that political and
cultural connections between Beneventan and Capuan areas and Tuscan ones
were highly complex. A good example of such connections is the marriage in
the second half of the tenth century between Willa, the daughter of Prince

sone’, p. 155; Bloch, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, i, pp. 11, 15–18; Pohl, Werkstätte der
Erinnerung, p. 109.
72 
Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’, p. 359.
73 
The figure of Hugh has been briefly sketched by Sergi, ‘The Kingdom of Italy’, p. 364;
Puglia, ‘Vecchi e nuovi interrogativi’.
74 
See the text at note 59, above.
75 
Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’, p. 374.
Tuscans as gens? 285

Landulf IV of Capua and Benevento, and Rodulf II, a member of the impor-

tant Aldobrandeschi family that controlled a large part of southern Tuscany.
Gemma, another daughter of Prince Landulf IV, married the Tuscan count
Cadolo, a member of the Cadolingi family.76
Moreover, we must take up the issue raised by the Table of Nations and pose
a more general question, to investigate if and how communities and identi-
ties in early medieval Tuscany were shaped. This is a particularly hard task to
fulfil, because we lack historical narratives for Tuscany/Tuscia from either the
Lombard or the Carolingian period.77 The information we have comes almost
exclusively from subsequent periods and from texts produced in other regions
than Tuscany. Information can be deduced from such diverse sources as private
charters, diplomas, placita, as well as hagiographic texts, some of which have
been investigated in recent years.78 From the perspective of these sources, the
decades of the late tenth century and early eleventh century appear to be cen-
tral in shaping a regional Tuscan identity and to be a kind of turning point in
this process.79

Tuscan Identities during the Eighth and Ninth Centuries

The nature of this multifaceted Tuscan identity emerges from many aspects at
the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh centuries, but it can also
be located in the previous centuries. Recent research has demonstrated that,
between late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, there existed the concept
of Tuscia as a particular territory, distinct from other regional or provincial
areas of the Italian Peninsula and politically organized in the homonymous
march of Tuscia from the earliest years of the Carolingian period. However,
although from an administrative and political point of view, the use of the con-
cept of Tuscia can be corroborated in the sources, it is more difficult to make
this territory coincide with an unambiguous popular identity. Studies carried

76 
Collavini, Honorabilis domus et spetiosissimus comitatus, pp. 89–91; Pescaglini Monti,
‘I conti Cadolingi’, p. 194; Cilento, Le origini della signoria capuana; Cortese, Signori, castelli,
città, p. 84.
77 
Gasparri, ‘The Fall of the Lombard Kingdom’, p. 61.
78 
A detailed list, even if not complete, of the available sources in which the identity of
Tuscany emerges, is in Kurze, ‘Dall’età franca al Mille’; Gasparri, ‘The Fall of the Lombard
Kingdom’, pp. 60–61.
79 
Ronzani, ‘La nozione della Tuscia’.
286 Marco Stoffella

out mainly on private charters, in fact, have emphasized how difficult it can be
to detect the concrete existence of a Tusci people between the early and high
Middle Ages. The analysis of some specific elements — such as the dating used
immediately following the Carolingian conquest, or the reception and trans-
mission in Tuscany of a particular version of the Liber Pontificalis — have high-
lighted peculiarities and attempts to affirm identity processes in a ‘provincial’
dimension, that is in a regional or sub-regional area.80
More specifically, the analysis conducted many years ago by Wilhelm Kurze,
for example, revealed that the terms Tuscia and Tuscany were used throughout
the early and high Middle Ages.81 Moreover, the regional and political concept
of Tuscia seems to have been used with particular emphasis during the second
half of the eleventh and twelfth centuries by local political elites, especially
newly-emerged communal elites such as those in Pisa or Lucca. During the
same period, there is also a lack of positive references to the regional political
authority of the march of Tuscia itself.82
However, the existence of a regional identity, different from the northern
identity which extended to Lombard Austria and Neustria, has been recently
discussed by Stefano Gasparri, mainly through an analysis of the dating of
Tuscan private charters.83 The historian noted that 774 — the year of the
Carolingian conquest — coincides with a clear change in the dating of docu-
ments in Tuscia. Between the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth
centuries, in fact, Tuscan notaries — those from Lucca and Pisa in particular
— constantly referred to Charles’s conquest of the Lombard kingdom and the
years of his reign after the taking of Pavia.84 With several secondary variations
— like the mention of Charles’s reign ‘over the Lombard people’ — this dating
appeared in Lucca and Pisa immediately after the conquest but, strikingly, did
not appear elsewhere in the Peninsula.85 It seems possible to affirm, therefore,

80 
Gasparri, ‘The Fall of the Lombard Kingdom’, pp. 59–61.
81 
A detailed list, even if not complete, of the available sources in which a sort of regional
identity of early medieval Tuscany emerges, is in Kurze, ‘Dall’età franca al Mille’, pp. 35–52.
82 
Ronzani, ‘La nozione della Tuscia’, pp. 72–76.
83 
Gasparri, ‘The Fall of the Lombard Kingdom’, pp. 59–60.
84 
The numerous charters of Lucca are edited in Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, ed. by
Bruckner, xxx–xl; the first charter issued in Lucca after the Frankish conquest is dated
16 July 774 and is in xxxvi, no. 1047; see also nos 1057–58. For Pisa, see xxxiv, nos 753, 756,
758, 767, 773.
85 
Gasparri, ‘The Fall of the Lombard Kingdom’, pp. 60–61.
Tuscans as gens? 287

that for some decades a certain way of dating was typical of Lombard Tuscia. It
is a way of dating that emphasizes the Lombard identity in Tuscany and that,
especially in northern Tuscia, kept the memory of the events of 774 alive.
Even the uses of typical Lombard expressions and formulae in placita that
were celebrated in early medieval Tuscany immediately after the Carolingian
conquest, show that many categories — such as that of Arimanni — were used
to recall the recent Lombard past.86 We can therefore affirm that Tuscia had an
exclusive way of memorializing the events of the late Lombard kingdom and its
fall, including the continued use in the early Carolingian period of Lombard
epithets such as gasindus.87 Finally, important reflections on the existence
of a regional Tuscan identity, and, more generally, the regional identities of
eighth-century Italy, come from Paolo Delogu, who has stressed the existence
of regional economic differentiations.88 For instance, beginning from King
Liudprand, there was an autonomous minting in Tuscany and in Benevento
of coins which were different in kind and weight to royal ones.89 Spoletans,
Beneventans, Friulans, and Tuscans, therefore, appear to have identified them-
selves through their regionally-based coinage and through autonomous mint-
ing, also differentiating themselves from other Lombards of the Kingdom.90

Regional or Local Identities?

With the example of ethnic communities used by the late Romans that in no
way reflect natural facts in mind, we must ask ourselves if the awareness of a
distinctive feature of an ethnic Tuscan group or community returned with
the Carolingians as a deliberate imperial policy. The Carolingian Empire gave
some room to regional identities, often based on revived ethnic traditions and
expressed through law and costume.91 The Frankish Table of Nations, therefore,

86 
Gasparri, ‘Nobiles et credentes omines liberi arimanni’, pp. 32–38.
87 
It is the case, for example, of Perisundu gasindus domni regi, who subscribed a document
issued in 793 in Lucca, 8 January; see Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, ed. by Bruckner, xxxix,
no. 1136.
88 
Delogu, ‘Il regno longobardo’, p. 130.
89 
Bernareggi, Il sistema economico, pp.  92ff.; Bernareggi, ‘Le monete dei Longobardi’,
pp. 66ff.; Arslan, Le monete di Ostrogoti, p. 19.
90 
Delogu, ‘Il regno longobardo’, p. 130.
91 
Pohl, ‘History in Fragments’, p. 358, where the manuscript which contains the Lombard
law and comes from the Cava monastery is cited.
288 Marco Stoffella

could be considered as one of these forms of expression, representing Tusci as

distinct from other people while at the same time setting them in a broader
category similar to the Franks, Lombards, Burgundians, and Bavarians.92 From
the eighth century onwards, however, we must emphasize the numerous ref-
erences to deep-rooted identities of minutely local character. These identities
were linked to individuals belonging to a particular diocesan, urban or village
community. From this point of view, references from the different territories
that were part of early medieval Tuscia are varied.
For example, beginning with the Lombard period there are mentions of
disputes between different neighbouring communities, but all from the same
Tuscan regional area: the disputes between Arezzo and Siena, Pisa and Lucca,
Pistoia and Lucca are well known.93 Furthermore, even the analysis of some
hagiographical texts highlights the existence of local communities organized at
an urban, valley, or village level, where it is possible to recognize an identitarian
character sometimes found in the shared religious cult or rite.94 Moreover, this
cult or rite was consciously modified or transformed in order to influence the
process of the identitarian construction of a specific community.95
We need to consider, therefore, how people regarded their place in society
and how, and by whom, it was defined. Taking a wide range of approaches and
case studies into account makes it possible, for example, to describe conflicts
of identity based on gender, wealth, class, status, place of residence, political
or religious affiliation. Among the subjects that can be analysed using this
approach are the transformation of neighbourliness and what happened during
the processes in which membership in communities was defined.96 Moreover,
the conflicts between ecclesiastical and civil jurisdiction, local and city-based
identities both in the territories and the county and diocesan border areas of
Tuscany can be more thoroughly investigated.
There was certainly a strong link between the religious feelings of a com-
munity and its local identities. Saints’ cults as well as pilgrimage to basilicas or
patronage to churches, for instance, represent significant instances of the social

92 
Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. 133–66.
93 
Tabacco, ‘Arezzo, Siena, Chiusi nell’alto medioevo’, pp. 163–66; Gasparri, ‘Il regno lon-
gobardo in Italia’, pp. 7–16. On the dispute between Arezzo and Siena, see also Bougard, ‘A
vetustissimis thomis’.
94 
Susi, ‘Africani, cefalofori e “saraceni”’; Zaccagnini, Vita Sancti Fridiani; Grégoire, ‘Aspetti
culturali’.
95 
Collavini, ‘Da società rurale periferica’.
96 
Wickham, Community and Clientele.
Tuscans as gens? 289

mechanisms of local, sometimes ethnic, and always religious identifications.97

Although religion was not the prominent marker of local feeling of belonging,
at the same time, these were cultural patterns which served as a basis for new
‘invented traditions’; they were the expression of strong local affiliations during
a period of transition that brought uncertainty not only in economic or social
terms but also in terms of identity.98 The analysis of religious aspects can be par-
ticularly profitable because it allows us to highlight both the processes of iden-
titarian construction from the bottom up — as for example, within secondary
ecclesiastical districts or those of baptismal churches — and the existence of
processes of identity creation through the writing or collation of particularly
meaningful texts.99 From this perspective, therefore, the analysis of local iden-
tities can be fruitful both to contextualize within specific areas the multiple
identitarian phenomena during the early Middle Ages, and to evaluate those
more general phenomena of identitarian construction which can be found in
some major narratives from the same period.
At the same time, however, the appeal to a local identity can also be con-
nected with the more general political need for regional or national authori-
ties to establish control over local societies. The regional leadership’s appeal to
localism would seem to have had a significant impact at more local levels in
cities, towns, and villages, and especially at the county/diocesan level. Here, the
consequences for politics within the province/region are less clear, and indicate
the need for further research. The new entrepreneurs and ‘managers’ who were
stimulated by the Carolingian and post-Carolingian reform agenda in Tuscany
were characterized and motivated by an intense localism, as indeed, somewhat
differently, were the officials working in the system as it began to change.

Conclusions
Research on local, diocesan, and regional elites suggest that the county and the
town or city were considerably more significant for local identity formation
than the province/region itself.100 Moreover, whereas in urban areas there was
a strong social and economic identification with the town or city, in rural areas
97 
Stoffella, ‘Aristocracy and Rural Churches’.
98 
Caroli, ‘Bringing Saints to Cities and Monasteries’; Vocino, ‘Santi e luoghi santi al
servizio’.
99 
Violante, ‘Le strutture organizzative’; Violante, Ricerche sulle istituzioni ecclesiastiche,
pp. 105–265.
100 
Collavini, ‘Spazi politici e irraggiamento sociale’, pp. 334–37.
290 Marco Stoffella

social identification was with the village, although it was the county/diocese
which was seen as the key political and economic community. Even a prelimi-
nary attempt to create an index of localism, based on the background of these
local or regional elites, immediately helps us to explain the apparent strength of
a sense of attachment to the local.101
Localism is usually defined, even by elites themselves, as meaning either
native place, duration of living and working in a local area or in the family home.
Those county-level leadership officials can be recognized as significant ‘managers
of change’ on the frontline of economic and social development, and thus also
as politically important. Certainly, their career paths would seem to indicate
the overall importance of the county/diocese level. Unlike officials at regional,
district, or local levels, county or diocesan-level officials were more likely to be
upwardly mobile; moreover, serving as a county-level leadership, those elites
were the most significant testing ground for further political advance.102
There is some evidence that the provincial leadership’s encouragement of
a discourse of localism had a considerable impact on the development of col-
lective identity at the more local, and particularly at county/diocesan, level.
Various interpretations of Tuscan identity have stressed the strength of local
cultures which can be found within the regional area; it seems therefore pos-
sible that counties/dioceses may represent the fundamental building blocks of
culture and identification within Tuscany. These observations all draw atten-
tion to the county/diocese level, and suggest the importance of monitoring
the impact of the regional leadership’s management of identity politics on the
development of the county/diocese level and its localism.
In conclusion, one inference that emerges clearly from the analysis of
Tuscan multiple identities in the early Middle Ages is that ‘national’, regional,
and more local levels of identification have been intended to be very perme-
able. Identification with one’s native place is, to a large extent, presented as
both entailing a regional and regnal identification. This may prove to have
been a strength but also a weakness of the political system: a strength because
it encouraged people to act and socially ‘invest’ in the localities: a weakness,
however, when there were fewer resources and sharper competition for them.
Under the latter more competitive circumstances, a strong local identification
may have led to conflicts over political identities between the local and the pro-
vincial/regional, or the provincial/regional and the regnal elites.

101 
Stoffella, ‘Per una categorizzazione delle élites’, pp.  326–30; Stoffella, ‘Crisi e tras-
formazione delle élites’.
102 
Stoffella, ‘Per una categorizzazione delle élites’, pp. 326–27.
Tuscans as gens? 291

Works Cited

Manuscripts and Archival Documents

Badia di Cava de’Tirreni, Biblioteca della Badia, MS 4
Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi F. iv. 75
Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Lat. 5001 [Vaticanus Latinus 5001]
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MS Augiensis 229
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MS Reichenau ccxxix
La Cava, Archivio della Badia della Santissima Trinità, MS 4 [Cavensis 4]
Madrid, Biblioteca nacional de España, MS 413
Modena, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS O.I.2
Montecassino, Archivio della Badia, MS 175 [Casinensis 175]
Montecassino, Archivio della Badia, MS 384 [Casinensis 384]

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Century, ed. by Albert Bruckner and Robert Marichal, 49 vols (Dietikon, 1954–98)
Codex Diplomaticus Cavensis, ed. by Michaele Morcaldi, Mauro Schiani, and Sylvano De
Stefano, 8 vols (Milano, 1875–93)
Heinrici II. et Arduni Diplomata, ed. by Harry Bresslau and others, Monumenta Germaniae
Historica: Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, 18 vols (1879–), iii: Hein­­rici
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 Who Were the Romans?
Shifting Scripts of Romanness
in Early Medieval Italy

Maya Maskarinec*

I
n early medieval Italy ‘Roman’ was an ambiguous term that could have
various significations: civic — Romans as inhabitants of the city of Rome
—, regional — the Romans as inhabitants of Italy, or other former Roman
provinces, in contrast to the Lombards and other newer ‘barbarians’ —, and the
Romans of the progressively regionalized Roman Empire (or, as it is called today,
the Byzantine Empire), increasingly, however, referred to as Gr(a)eci.1 This mul-
tiplicity of meanings was not new, but the fact that these categories no longer
coincided was. The overarching framework of the Roman Empire as a mono-
lithic supra-ethnic category encompassing the vast extent of the Mediterranean
world belonged to the past; the remaining fragments of ‘Romanness’ no longer
fit together so neatly. In this article, I wish to bring out some of the texture of
this change with an example of how Roman history was written and reconfig-
ured in early medieval Italy to reflect contemporary perceptions of ‘Romanness’.
I will look at various reworkings of Eutropius’s Breviarium, which were among
*  This paper has seen many versions and I would like to thank Gerda Heydemann, Helmut
Reimitz, Walter Pohl, Francesco Borri, and Michael Maas for their support. I am grateful to
the Institut für Mittelalterforschung in Wien for their funding as well as for the many thought
provoking comments I have received there.
1 
Although it is anachronistic, I generally use the conventional term ‘Byzantine’ for the
sake of clarity when referring to the Roman Empire post-Justinian. These different meanings of
‘Roman’ are found in Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz
— Romans as inhabitants of Rome: vi. 34, pp. 175–76; Romans as inhabitants of Italy: ii. 4,
p. 74; Romans as inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire: iv. 36, p. 128 (For an English translation
see Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke).

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101668
pp. 297–363 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
298 Maya Maskarinec

the most widely circulating Roman histories in the medieval West, considering
their shifting historical conceptions of ‘Romanness’.
Eutropius’s ten-book Roman history, written in the late fourth century, was
subsequently modified and continued in the eighth by Paul the Deacon, who
turned it into a sixteen-book Roman history. Although Paul had promised that
he would continue his Roman history, he did not, instead writing a History of
the Lombards. Roughly by the end of the ninth century, however, excerpts from
Paul’s Lombard History were turned into a seventeenth book that was added
to the Roman History. The Appendix to this paper summarizes these texts and
indicates their relationships.2
I will begin by considering how Paul the Deacon modified Eutropius’s text;
Section 1 examines Paul the Deacon’s new opening to Eutropius’s text wherein
the focus of Roman history is shifted towards the Romans as a people (not, as
for Eutropius, a city). Although by doing so Paul the Deacon does not deny
the exceptionality of the Roman Empire stressed by Eutropius, he presents the
Romans in their origins as more similar to other peoples, past and present,
of the Mediterranean world, explaining their formation, as a unified Roman
people and an Empire, as a process. Paul the Deacon supplements Eutropius’s
nearly secular text by adding an ingredient he considers key to the Romans’
success: their chosen role in God’s plan for the spread of Christianity. Section 2
addresses Paul the Deacon’s Christianization of the Romans, demonstrating
how, although fundamentally Christianizing Roman history, Paul layered
Christianity lightly onto the Roman Empire, leaving it easily imaginable that
the two could become disentwined. In his Lombard History, Paul does pre-
cisely this, severing the bond between the Byzantines and Christianity and
introducing a discontinuity between the Roman Empire of the past and the
Byzantines of his day; this is the subject of Section 3. Thus for Paul the ancient
Roman Empire retains its unique exceptionality. At the same time, Romani are
left to inhabit Italy. Finally in Section 4, I turn to an alternate reading of the
Roman Empire, examining how the seventeenth book, although almost exclu-

2 
Eutropius’s Breviarium is cited here according to Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini,
and is available in English: Eutropius, Breviarium, trans. by Bird. There are two standard edi-
tions which consider Paul the Deacon’s modifications of Eutropius’s text: Eutropi Breviarium et
Pauli Landolfique additamentis, ed. by Droysen, and Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by
Crivellucci, but no English translation of Paul the Deacon’s expanded Historia Romana exists. I
am grateful to Marianne Pollheimer for helping me with the Latin translations throughout. For
the Historia Langobardorum, I have followed Foulke’s translation, though I have used ‘Lombard’
rather than ‘Langobard’ and have translated gens as ‘people’, rather than ‘nation’ or ‘heathen’.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 299

sively excerpted from Paul’s Lombard History, posits a much longer lasting, but
regionally restricted, Roman Empire in the East, whose relationship with the
Christian church headed by the pope is increasingly strained. Nonetheless the
Empire is prolonged up to iconoclasm in the early eighth century, at which
point the text leaves us hanging.
From Eutropius to the seventeenth book, I will follow the tug between
the interpretation of the Romans as something exceptional — a unique world
imperium — and the contemporary early medieval reality of a Christianized
world populated by diverse peoples within which it was increasingly question-
able if and where the Romans and their distinctiveness were to be found.

1. Paul the Deacon’s New Beginning for the Historia Romana

How did the Roman people, the populus Romanus, come to be? This was a pro-
cess that Eutropius took for granted in the fourth century, but was no longer
so clear to Paul the Deacon in the eighth. Here I focus on how the beginning
of Paul the Deacon’s Historia Romana modified the fourth-century text of
Eutropius on which Paul the Deacon’s history was based in order to explain the
formation of the Roman people.3 I will first examine Eutropius’s text to under-
stand its model of Roman history and the reasons Paul the Deacon may have
chosen it as the basis for his history, before addressing the ways in which Paul
the Deacon found it inadequate.4
Eutropius’s Breviarium, written between 364 and 375, is a perspective on
Roman history from within.5 Dedicated to the Emperor Valens, the text serves

3 
A version of this section was presented at the Text and Identities Workshop in Auxerre,
17–19 October 2008, and I am grateful to the participants for their suggestions. Naturally the
formation of Roman identity was a much more complex process. See Giardina, L’Italia romana,
and Dench, Romulus’ Asylum.
4 
The most thorough recent work on Paul the Deacon’s modifications of Eutropius is
Cornford, ‘The Idea of the Roman Past’. Also fundamental is Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian
History.
5 
For an introduction to Eutropius see Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity,
pp. 49–59, and Den Boer, Some Minor Roman Historians, pp. 114–72; for a more optimis-
tic reconstruction of what we can know about Eutropius contrast with Bird, ‘Eutropius: His
Life and Career’, and Bird’s introduction to Eutropius, Breviarium, trans. by Bird, pp. vii–lvii.
The dating is derived from Eutropius’s dedication of the text to the Emperor Valens. Bird sug-
gests he presented the work to Valens when Valens celebrated his triumph over the Goths and
assumed the title Gothicus Maximus in late 369 (p. xiii). Although little about Eutropius’s life is
300 Maya Maskarinec

as a guide for the emperor to follow the examples of his illustrious predeces-
sors.6 As the opening lines of his text explain, Eutropius understands Rome
as a unique phenomenon: ‘The Roman Empire — human memory is scarcely
able to recall anything smaller in its beginning nor greater in its growth in the
whole world — had its beginning from Romulus’.7 This model of Roman his-
tory — Rome as a unique power — is developed by Eutropius in his sparse
summary of the Romans ab urbe condita up to the late fourth century. In his
history, Eutropius almost completely eliminates Roman religion.8 In a way that
would have been unimaginable for Livy, Eutropius’s primary source, Eutropius
manages to tell Roman history with rarely any mention of religious events.9
For example, when telling of the Romans’ victory in the Second Punic War,
Eutropius does not mention how the Magna Mater was brought to Rome, an
event crucial to Livy’s narrative.10 In Eutropius’s text the model emperor is a
successful general and an astute politician acting in cooperation with the sena-
torial elite: the Roman gods are not lurking in the background.11

verifiable, as mentioned in the Breviarium, he certainly accompanied the Emperor Julian on his
Persian campaign in 363 and served as magister memoriae under the Emperor Valens, to whom
he dedicated his history.
6 
For the dedication: Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini, praefatio, p. 2. This dedication was
at times, but not consistently, included in manuscripts containing Paul the Deacon’s expanded
version of Eutropius’s Breviarium. Eutropius’s text is based primarily on Livy and Suetonius —
these two authors explain the difference in the feel between the two halves of Eutropius, with the
latter (based on Suetonius) being more focused on suggesting the model for an ideal emperor.
For the structure of Eutropius see Bird, ‘Structure and Themes in Eutropius’ Breviarium’.
7 
Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini, i. 1. 1, p. 3: ‘Romanum imperium, quo neque ab
exordio ullum fere minus neque incrementis toto orbe amplius humana potest memoria record-
ari, a Romulo exordium habet’.
8 
In general, ‘pagan’ historiography of the fourth century was characterized by its lack of
religious content, a phenomenon which Momigliano addresses, demonstrating how easily such
texts could be Christianized, though his emphasis is on how fourth-century Christian historiog-
raphy disregarded political history, instead following the models of ecclesiastical history created
by Eusebius: Momigliano, ‘Pagan and Christian Historiography’.
9 
Only infrequently does Eutropius mention the construction of temples and when he does
these are remarked upon as urban constructions, not religious occurrences, see for example
regarding Domitian: ‘Romae quoque multa opera fecit, in his Capitolium et Forum transito-
rium, Divorum porticus, Isium ac Serapium et Stadium’ (Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini,
vii. 23. 5, p. 49).
10 
Livy, Ab urbe condita, ed. by Foster, xxix. 10–11 and 14, viii, pp. 243–49 and 256–63.
11 
Augustus (Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini, vii.  8–10, pp.  43–44) and Trajan
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 301

Eutropius’s text traces the successive territorial expansion of what began as

a small city founded by Romulus. He begins with Rome’s foundation, which
he dates threefold: as eleven days before the Kalends of May, the third year
after the sixth Olympiad, and three hundred and ninety-four years after the fall
of Troy.12 It is an event that predates the development of Roman laws or cus-
toms, or even a fully formed Roman people. Throughout his history Eutropius
continues to emphasize the importance of the city of Rome, characterizing
the foundation of Constantinople as a dangerous attempt to rival Rome.13 For
Eutropius, Roman history is that of the rise of a world imperium, centred on
the city of Rome and held together by the emperor.14
Eutropius’s text became a standard of Roman history in late Antiquity
and continued to circulate on its own in the Middle Ages, while also consti-
tuting the basis for Paul the Deacon’s text in the late eighth century and then
of Landolfus Sagax’s around 1000.15 Eutropius’s text was certainly popular on

(viii. 2–5, pp. 50–51) are presented as ideal emperors, lauded for their temperament and coop-
eration with the elite, but particularly for their military accomplishments. Emperors such as
Caligula (vii. 12, p. 45), Vitellius (vii. 18, p. 47) or Domitian (vii. 23, p. 49) are described as
despised by all and subsequently die gruesome, and in Eutropius’s opinion, deserved, deaths.
12 
Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini, i. 1. 2, p. 3: ‘Is cum inter pastores latrocinare-
tur, decem et octo annos natus urbem exiguam in Palatino monte constituit, xi Kal. Maias,
Olympiadis sextae anno tertio, post Troiae excidium, ut qui plurimum minimumque tradunt,
anno trecentesimo nonagesimo quarto’.
13 
Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini, x. 8. 1, p. 67: ‘primusque urbem nominis sui ad
tantum fastigium evehere molitus est, ut Romae aemulam faceret’. Constantinople is understood
as a rival to Rome, but neither as the new capital of the Empire and replacement for Rome, nor
even as another, second capital. Rome remains the point of reference through which this city’s
new status is referenced and understood. Constantinople has yet to acquire significance on its
own terms. Throughout Eutropius notes the senatorial aristocracy’s role in ratifying new emper-
ors through whom Rome’s expansion occurred.
14 
The expansion of the Empire is recorded only in terms of military conquest. Eutropius
shows little interest in the subsequent Romanization of provinces. For example, he makes no
mention of the Constitutio Antoniniana in ad 212 granting all freemen in the Empire citizen-
ship; indeed he writes that apart from the construction of baths in Rome Caracalla did nothing
memorable (Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini, viii. 20, p. 56).
15 
A valuable list of Historia Romana manuscripts has been compiled by Mortensen,
‘The Diffusion of Roman Histories’, though for descriptions of the manuscripts themselves
see Crivellucci’s notes in preparation for his edition: Crivellucci, ‘Per l’edizione della Historia
Romana’. For an overview of the textual transmission of Eutropius see Reynolds, Texts and
Transmission, pp. 159–63. Recently completed is a close analysis of one particularly interest-
ing compilation which includes the Historia Romana: Kretschmer, Rewriting Roman History.
302 Maya Maskarinec

account of its brevity and its easily accessible style, but the text also allowed
Roman history to be read as a model for a uniquely successful military and
political imperium.16 Alternate models of Roman power existed and competed
with Eutropius’s secular optimism, particularly Orosius’s Historiae Adversum
Paganos, a Christian universal history, which included a critical view of the
Romans’ pagan past.17
The abundance of surviving manuscripts of Eutropius testifies to the popular-
ity of Eutropius’s narrative.18 Even in northern Italy, almost contemporary with
Paul the Deacon, the compilers of the famous Epitome Phillipsiana from Verona,

For the medieval production and use of Latin ‘classics’ (though not including Eutropius) see
the essays in Chavannes-Mazel and Smith, eds, Medieval Manuscripts of the Latin Classics, and
Olsen, L’Étude des auteurs classiques latins.
16 
Regarding the Historia Romana in the twelfth century, Mortensen, ‘The Texts and
Contexts of Ancient Roman History’, and Mortensen, ‘Working with Ancient Roman History’,
argue on the basis of the manuscripts that it was used as a reference book, a quarry for his-
torical, geographical and military knowledge. Chiesa, ‘Storia romana e libri di storia romana’,
in contrast, emphasizes the literary aspect of Roman history in the ninth- to eleventh-century
manuscripts, suggesting that they were read as romance-like literature, primarily at court, rather
than in the monastery. Regarding historical culture in the ninth century, see Werner, ‘Gott,
Herrscher und Historiograph’, who stresses history’s function as the continuation of the Old
and New Testament’s demonstration of the works of God in the world, in particular to pro-
vide examples of behaviour and the interpretation of signs for Christian rulers. That classical
Antiquity could provide both models for admonition as much as for emulation is brought
out in Nees’s study of uses of Hercules at the Carolingian court: Nees, A Tainted Mantle.
For introductions to the understanding and use of the past in the Carolingian world see
Goetz, ‘Vergangenheitswahrnehmung’; McKitterick, History and Memory; and McKitterick,
Perceptions of the Past. The nuanced use of history for the construction of identity is brought out
in Reimitz, ‘The Art of Truth’, as well as by the essays in Hen and Innes, eds, The Uses of the Past.
17 
For the popularity of Orosius, see Mortensen, ‘The Diffusion of Roman Histories’, as well
as Hillgarth, ‘The Historiae of Orosius’. For Orosius’ negative interpretation of Roman history
see Chiesa, ‘Storia romana e libri di storia romana’. Regarding Orosius as historia and its implica-
tions for our understanding of the concept, see Werner, ‘Gott, Herrscher und Historiograph’,
pp. 7–16.
18 
From the ninth century there survive an equal number (3) of manuscripts of Eutropius’s
and Paul the Deacon’s Roman history. Eutropius: Gotha, Forschungs- und Landesbibl., MS
Memb. i. 101; Leiden, Bibl.der Rijksuniv., BPL. 141-iv; Epitome Phillipsiana: (St Petersburg,
Nat.Libr. Russia, Class. Lat. Q.v.9, St Petersburg, Nat.Libr.Russia, Class. Lat. Q.v.iv.5, Berlin,
Staatsbibl., Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS Phillipps 1885 (a), Berlin, Staatsbibl., Preußischer
Kulturbesitz, MS Phillipps 1896 (b)). Paul the Deacon: München, Bayerische Staatsbibl., Clm
3516; Lucca, Bibl. Capitolare Feliniana, MS 27; BnF, MS Baluze 270 (fragments). No earlier
manuscripts survive.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 303

chose Eutropius’s — not Paul the Deacon’s — Historia Romana, though they
made use of Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum.19 Particularly telling is
a ninth-century manuscript, now in Gotha, that combines Eutropius’s text with
that of his contemporary, Rufus Festus, who wrote an even shorter Breviarium,
similarly focused on Rome’s military exploits (but concentrating on the Empire’s
eastern half ).20 The combination of Eutropius and Festus reemphasizes the pres-
entation of the Romans as an exceptional world imperium.21 In addition, this
manuscript includes excerpts from Frontinus’s Strategemata, a handbook of
military stratagems, thus uniting the example of a militarily successful Roman
Empire with a technical guide of how to achieve the Romans’ feat.22
When Paul the Deacon undertook to write a Roman history in the mid-/
late eighth century, he added to Eutropius’s text six new books that brought
Roman history up to the age of Justinian, inserted about two hundred brief
interpolations into it (disproportionally in the first book), and added a sec-
tion preceding Eutropius’s history that extended the beginning of Roman his-
tory to back before Rome’s founding (see the Appendix).23 According to the
account that Paul the Deacon gives in his work’s dedication, he sought to
improve the text after he had recommended it to Adalperga, the daughter of

19 
The Epitome Phillipsiana is a historical compendium of sorts, most probably from
ninth-century Verona, which assembled a wide variety of excerpts from Jordanes, Eusebius, and
Isidore, among others. See McKitterick, History and Memory, pp. 52–57.
20 
Gotha, Forschungs- und Landesbibl., MS Memb. i. 101: see Bischoff, Katalog der festlän-
dischen Handschriften, i, p. 297; Schipke, Die Maugérard-Handschriften, pp. 59–60.
21 
The conflation between between ‘Rome’ and ‘Empire’ that often occurred in medieval
perceptions of the Roman past is brought out by Lhotsky, ‘Das römische Altertum’, iii, pp. 9–25.
22 
Frontinus explains the function of the Strategemata as a handbook for military com-
manders in the preface to Book i (included in the Gotha manuscript): ‘[…] deberi adhuc insti-
tutae arbitror operae, ut solertia ducum facta, quae a Graecis una στρατηγημάτων appellatione
comprehensa sunt, expeditis amplectar commentariis. Ita enim consilii quoque et providentiae
exemplis succincti duces erunt, unde illis excogitandi generandique similia facultas nutriatur’
(‘I still feel under obligation, in order to complete the task I have begun, to summarize in con-
venient sketches the adroit operations of generals, which the Greeks embrace under the one
name strategmata. For in this way commanders will be furnished with specimens of wisdom and
foresight, which will serve to foster their own power of conceiving and executing like deeds’).
Frontinus, Strategemata, ed. by Bennett, i. praefatio, pp. 2–3. The selections used in the Gotha
manuscript are primarily the introductions to each of Frontinus’s four books.
23 
Composed after the poem dedicated to Adalperga when she had only one child (at the
time of the Historia Romana, she had three) and before the Historia Langobardorum: Cornford,
‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, p. 10. For a summary of Paul the Deacon’s life and work, see Pohl,
‘Paulus Diaconus’, and Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, Chapter 5.
304 Maya Maskarinec

King Desiderius, who found Eutropius’s text unsatisfactory — that is, too short
and lacking in Christianity.24 From his additions to Eutropius’s text, it is clear
that Paul the Deacon had access to a variety of other texts, including Orosius,
as well as older Roman historians, such as Livy; yet Paul the Deacon preferred
Eutropius, despite finding parts, including its beginning, insufficient.
Paul the Deacon’s new beginning to Eutropius’s Roman history, derived pri-
marily from Jerome’s Chronicle, is not extensive, but with it Paul the Deacon
expands Roman history by more than four hundred years, narrating the mythi-
cal prehistory of the Romans, the reign of Janus, the arrival of Saturn, Aeneas’s
flight from Troy and the many kings who preceded Romulus.25
An interpolation in the second chapter of Eutropius’s text suggests the rea-
son for this expansion. Eutropius explains that: ‘When the city was founded,
it received its name Rome, from his name [Romulus]’.26 Paul the Deacon how-
ever expands this explanation, adding ‘and it is from that that the name for the
Romans is derived’.27 The naming of the city Rome is unsatisfactory for Paul
the Deacon; significant for him is how the Roman people acquired their name.
Whereas most of Paul’s interpolations are lifted directly from his sources, there
does not seem to be any direct precedent for this explanation.28
This interest in the Romans as a people — in contrast to Eutropius’s focus
on Rome as a city — is found throughout Paul the Deacon’s beginning. Paul
explains the origins of the Romans in terms similar to those used for contempo-
rary peoples, such as the Lombards. In addition, using Jerome’s Chronicle, Paul

24 
See section II below.
25 
Paul the Deacon’s other sources include: Orosius, Jordanes’s Historia Romana, Virgil’s
Aeneid or Servius’s commentary on Virgil, Augustine’s City of God, Isidore’s Etymologiae, and
perhaps Aurelius Victor’s Origo Gentis Romanae and De viris illustribus. For a complete list,
see Crivellucci’s edition (Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci). In Crivelluci’s
edition this beginning encompasses eighty-six lines of new text. Paul the Deacon also adds
approximately thirty-four lines of text within the first two chapters of Eutropius’s first book,
thus roughly doubling their former length. In no subsequent chapter of the Historia Romana
does Paul the Deacon include such extensive interpolations.
26 
Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini, i. 2. 1, p. 3: ‘Condita civitate, quam ex nomine suo
Romam vocavit […]’.
27 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 2, p. 11:
‘Condita ergo civitate, quam ex nomine suo Romam vocavit, a qua et Romanis nomen inditum
est […]’ (italics are my own).
28 
Cf. the editor’s comment: Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann
and Waitz, i. 2, p. 11, with n. 2. Authors such as Virgil, Aeneid, ed. by Conte, i. 277, p. 12, do,
however, express similar ideas.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 305

the Deacon’s new beginning synchronizes the Romans with the history of other
world peoples of the past. Thus the Romans are made more comparable to
other peoples, both those of the past as well as the regionally restricted ethnic
identities of the eighth century. Yet, as we shall see, in modifying Eutropius’s
text, Paul does not deny the exceptionality of the Romans. Unlike other peo-
ples past and present, the Romans managed an extraordinary feat, coalescing to
form a unified people, the basis for empire.
Paul’s new beginning explains who the Romans were before they became
Romans and how they were melded together to become one people. Thus, Paul
reaches into a mythical — and pagan — past, a period that Roman histori-
ans, such as Livy, had traditionally treated as more legend than fact.29 It is a
time when humans mingle with the divine. Janus and Saturnus, the first kings
of Rome, were gods worshipped by the Romans; King Picus is transformed
into a bird by the renowned sorceress — famosissima maga — Circe. While
he includes these mythical associations, Paul introduces them with qualifica-
tion: ‘First in Italy, as it pleases some — ut quibusdam placet — Janus ruled’,
or, as he tells of Picus’s transformation into a bird, he writes, ‘Picus, about
whom it is reported fabulously […]’.30 Once Eutropius’s text begins, Paul even
adds additional scepticism. Where Eutropius had already expressed doubt that
Romulus was the son of Mars, Paul additionally questions whether Rhea Silvia
was Romulus’s mother.31
Although Paul the Deacon treats these stories as unbelievable, he appears to
regard them as necessary components of Roman history. A similar technique is
found in Paul the Deacon’s Lombard History, in which he characterizes as a rid-
icula fabula the story of how the Langobardi acquired their name, but proceeds
nonetheless to narrate it.32

29 
Livy, Ab urbe condita, ed. by Foster, i. praefatio 6, pp. 4–5: ‘Quae ante conditam con-
dendamve urbem poeticis magis decora fabulis quam incorruptis rerum gestarum monumentis
traduntur, ea nec adfirmare nec refellere in animo est. Datur haec venia antiquitati ut miscendo
humana divinis primordia urbium augustiora faciat […]’ (‘Such traditions as belong to the time
before the city was founded, or rather was presently to be founded, and are rather adorned with
poetic legends than based upon trustworthy historical proofs, I purpose neither to affirm nor to
refute. It is the privilege of antiquity to add dignity to the beginnings of cities […]’).
30 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, ia, p. 5: ‘Primus in Italia, ut quibus-
dam placet, regnavit Ianus’. ia, p. 6: ‘Picus […] de quo fabulose dicitur […]’.
31 
Adding ‘ut praemissum est’ (Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, i. 1, p. 10).
32 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 8, p. 52:
‘Refert hoc loco antiquitas ridiculam fabulam’. See Pohl, ‘Tradition, Ethnogenese und liter-
arische Gestaltung’.
306 Maya Maskarinec

There are further similarities between Paul the Deacon’s narrative of the
beginnings of the Romans in his Historia Romana and that of the Lombards in
the Historia Langobardorum. Considering these two origin stories in contradis-
tinction reveals similarities not only between Paul’s narrative technique in both
texts, but also in how he understands the two peoples, Romans and Lombards.
Many of the same elements appear in both: earlier names, the naming of the
people, their geographical location, migration, crossing of boundaries, and the
development of customs and culture. These similarities may be more generally
associated with Herwig Wolfram’s criteria of an origo gentis, motifs frequently
found in the explanation of the origins of people. 33 Roman ethnographers
interpreted ‘barbarian’ gentes, both inside and outside the Empire, as tightly
knit groups of people defined by genealogical descent — in supposed contrast
to the ‘civilized’ populus Romanus, a category defined politically by citizen-
ship.34 The model that they developed for describing these peoples provides a
framework for analysing the commonalities of the origins of the Lombards and
the Romans.
Examining Paul the Deacon’s beginning in terms of these criteria suggests
the extent to which the categories once used by the ‘universal’ Roman Empire
for describing barbarians who had not advanced to the political ‘sophistica-
tion’ of the Romans have been turned around and used to describe the Romans
themselves. The Roman populus, defined by citizenship — attachment to the
city of Rome in Eutropius’s model — are interpreted by Paul as similar to a
gens, that is, a people bound by genealogical ties. This inversion evidences the
instability of ‘Romanness’ in the eighth century, which Paul the Deacon com-
bats with his attempt to define more precisely who the Romans are.
Paul the Deacon’s beginning fulfils the criteria of an origo gentis well. At its
core, it is an explanation of the origins of the Romans. The Romans did not always

33 
Wolfram, ‘Origio Gentis’; Plassmann, Origo gentis, especially pp. 191–242, regarding Paul
the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum; see further Pohl, ed., Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen.
Regarding earlier Greek and Roman interpretations of the origins of barbarians, see Bickerman,
‘Origines gentium’.
34 
This is particularly the case for Tacitus’s Germania. On the terminology and ideology of
populus and gens, see Adams, The ‘Populus’ of Augustine and Jerome, esp. pp. 109–21; Zientara,
‘Populus — Gens — Natio’; Geary, The Myth of Nations; Pohl, ‘Gentilismus’. Geary in particular
emphasizes that gens/populus should not be seen as clear distinguishing markers between bio-
logically versus constitutionally organized peoples, but rather terms that viewed the world from
a Roman perspective — the Romans as a people produced through a historical process and held
together by law, in contrast to the ‘static’ peoples outside the Empire.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 307

exist, nor did they suddenly appear. The Romans, like the Lombards, slowly
gained their identity. In his Historia Langobardorum, Paul tells of the Lombards,
that they were formerly known by another name, the Winnili, who had their ori-
gins among distant Germanic peoples;35 their population slowly increased with
freed slaves and adopted strangers, including even one of their kings, Lamissio,
during their migration south.36 Similarly, for the Romans, Paul the Deacon tells
of a time ante urbem conditam, when kings ruled who were not yet Romans,
but from whom the Romans originated, and he presents the Romans as consti-
tuted by an astonishing abundance of peoples melded together by intermarriage,
including the Latins, Etruscans, Phrygians, Arcadians, and Sabines.
Paul the Deacon shows considerable interest in geographically locat-
ing the prehistory of both the Lombards and the Romans. In the Historia
Langobardorum, Paul begins by describing the northern regions and the
abundance of peoples this cold climate produced, locating the origins of the
Lombards (then still the Winnili) in the far northern Scadinavia.37 In the
Historia Romana, Paul the Deacon similarly orients the reader from the first
line of the text: ‘Primus in Italia’. Describing the reign of Saturn, the second
of the early kings, he writes that Saturn ruled in the city of Saturnia, the ruins
of which can still be seen ‘today’ not far from Rome itself.38 Similarly Paul the
Deacon pinpoints the foundations of other early kings, thus constructing an
archaeology of the pre-Roman past.39
The story of many gentes, such as the Lombards, is one of migration. Paul
the Deacon records the migration of the Winnili (who became the Lombards)

35 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 1, p. 48:
‘[…] Winnilorum, hoc est Langobardorum, gens, quae postea in Italia feliciter regnavit, a
Germanorum populis originem ducens […]’.
36 
A slave, in return for fighting against the Assipitti in single combat, is freed: Paul the
Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 12, pp. 53–54; slaves are freed
to increase the number of warriors: i. 13, p. 60; i. 15, pp. 54–55: Lamissio is the son of a prosti-
tute, abandoned and discovered by King Agelmund who becomes king of the Lombards.
37 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 1, pp. 52–53.
The Historia Langobardorum also contains a description of the Italian provinces, similarly attest-
ing to Paul’s interest in the later geographical location of the Lombards: ii. 14–24, pp. 81–86.
38 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, ia, p. 5: ‘Deinde Saturnus, Iovem
filium e Grecia fugiens, in civitate, quae ex eius nomine Saturnia dicta est, cuius ruinae actenus
cernuntur in finibus Tusciae haut procul ab Urbe’.
39 
The later King Aremus Silvius positions a ‘praesidium’ among the Alban mountains,
‘ubi nunc Roma est’ (Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, ia, p. 9); Aventinus
Silvius is buried ‘in eo monte, qui nunc pars Urbis est’ (ia, p. 9).
308 Maya Maskarinec

south from the insula Scadinavia, locating their progress along the way.40
Particularly significant is a river-crossing made possible by the mythical
Lombard King Lamissio’s victory over the Amazons.41 Paul’s Roman prehis-
tory too includes migrations, although in the Roman case this process is better
described as waves of immigration, as peoples congregated in Italy and became
integrated, forming a new people. Both Saturn and later Aeneas migrate across
the Mediterranean to become kings of Italy.
How a people acquires its name is significant for Paul the Deacon. As
we have seen, Paul added to Eutropius’s explanation of the derivation of the
name of Rome from Romulus in order to explain that it was from this that the
Romans were named. Of Lombards he tells at length of the tale whereby the
god Godan bestows the name of Lombards (Langobardi) and victory on the
women dressed up with long beards who appear before him at dawn, though
Paul proceeds to scorn the tale as a ridiculous fable.42
Even with the foundation of Rome — and the beginning of Eutropius’s text
— Roman identity is not yet stabilized. In the second chapter of Eutropius’s
text, Eutropius describes briefly, in two sentences, how the Romans had invited
neighbouring peoples (nationes) to games in Rome, seized their wives and con-
quered their neighbours. Paul expands this story considerably: ‘then the Romans
established friendship with the Sabines so that the king of the Sabines, Tatius,
ruled equally with Romulus, and the Sabines and the Romans were caused to
be one people, unus populus’.43 The rape of the Sabine women forms the basis
for the expansion of Roman identity. This specific interest in unus populus does
not appear to come from any of Paul’s sources. Although Jerome, Jordanes, and

40 
From the insula Scadinavia (Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann
and Waitz, i. 1, p. 48) they depart to Scoringa (i. 7, p. 52). Then they continue to wander through
Mauringa, Golanda (i. 11–13, pp. 53–54), cross a river (i. 15, p. 55) and come to Rugiland
(i. 19, p. 57).
41 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 15, p. 55.
This passage has often been remarked upon as a crucial point in Lombard history. Goffart, The
Narrators of Barbarian History, p. 383, calls it ‘the symbolic dividing line between, one might
say, their mythical and their heroic periods’. Though Paul tells the story, he follows it quickly
with his own scepticism: ‘Constat sane, quia huius assertionis series minus veritate subnixa est.
Omnibus etenim quibus veteres historiae notae sunt, patet, gentem Amazonum longe antea,
quam haec fieri potuerint, esse deletam’.
42 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 8–9, pp. 52–53.
43 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, i. 2, p. 12: ‘Pepigere tamen Romani
cum Sabinis, quorum filias rapuerant, amicitias, adeo ut Sabinorum rex Tatius pariter regnaret
cum Romulo Sabinique et Romani unus populus efficerentur’.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 309

Aurelius Victor all tell of the friendship of the Sabines and Romans, none use
this expression: ‘Sabinique et Romani unus populus efficerentur’.44 The Sabines
do not diminish the ‘Romanness’ of the ‘original’ inhabitants. On the contrary,
not only are the Romans and Sabines together unus populus, but the Romans
acquire many of their ‘Roman’ customs from the Sabines. Paul explains, again
supplementing Eutropius, that the Romans proceeded to exchange names and
‘it held from that custom that no Roman is without a praenomen’.45
The Romans even acquire another name for themselves, Quirites, from
their association with the Sabines. Quirites, Paul explains, now using Jerome’s
chronicle, is derived from the Sabine word for a particular type of spear which
Romulus customarily carried and from this spear — or from the Sabine name
for Romulus, Quirinus (similarly derived from the name for the spear) — the
Romans are called Quirites. Unlike for Eutropius, the foundation of the city
itself is not the defining moment of Roman history: the city has been estab-
lished, but the Romans as a people are still developing their identity.
Throughout these migrations, before and after the founding of Rome, the
Romans are acquiring their customs and civilization. It is from Saturn that
they learn agriculture, the minting of coins, and acquire civilization (humanis
moribus) — having before been semiferi. It is the mother of Faunus, Carmentis
Nicostrata, who invented the Latin letters/language (litteras), while King
Latinus improved/reformed the Latin language (Latinam linguam correxit).46
Thus Paul’s beginning of the Historia Romana also explains the development
of the Romans as a people in terms of the gradual acquisition of their culture.
Paul the Deacon does not invent any of these components of Roman pre-
history; all have a precedent, many in the most renowned of Roman myths,
Virgil’s Aeneid. But by selecting, reorganizing and supplementing Eutropius’s
text with them, Paul the Deacon has subtly reconfigured the identity of the

44 
Jerome, Chronicon, ed. by Helm, aa. 729–35 a. Chr., p. 90a; Aurelius Victor, De viris
illustribus, ed. by Pichlmayr, ii. 10, p. 26; Jordanes, Romana, ed. by Mommsen, c. 92, p. 11.
45 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, i. 2, p. 12: ‘et ex illo consuetudo
tenuit, ut nemo Romanus sit absque praenomine’. Paul’s source here is unclear. Crivellucci
(nn. 10–13), suggests that Paul may have had Valerius Maximus’s text on which Iulius Parrus’s
epitome De Praenominibus was based, since Iulius Parrus suggests but does not explain how the
Romans acquired a praenomen.
46 
Paul has no need to explain how the Romans acquired other laws and customs as
Eutropius already explained that Numa Pompilius established leges Romanis moresque, as well
as organizing the year into twelve months and founding temples and sacred spaces (sacra ac
templa) throughout the city: Eutropius, Breviarium, ed. by Santini, i. 3. 2, p. 3.
310 Maya Maskarinec

Romans, or to be more precise, the pre-Roman Romans. He has made these

people understandable in comparable terms to those used in reference to other
contemporary ‘barbarian’ peoples, regionally restricted gentes around the
Mediterranean. To be sure, in name the Romans never become a gens; in both
the Historia Romana and Historia Langobardorum, Paul the Deacon contin-
ues to use populus to describe the Romans and gens to describe the Lombards,
Vandals, or other non-Roman peoples, but the Romans, at least in their origins,
have become more comparable to other gentes.47
By the end of the Historia Romana and in the Historia Langobardorum, the
similarity between the Romans (or as we know them, the Byzantines) and other
peoples, such as the Lombards again becomes more pronounced. I will discuss
this in more depth in Sections 2 and 3, but one example indicates the phenom-
enon. In Paul the Deacon’s sixteenth and last book, describing Justinian’s treaty
with the Lombards in 548, he writes: ‘At this time the gens Langobardorum in
Pannonia were living in friendship with the populus Romanus’.48 The Romans
are still a populus and the Lombards a gens, but these categories, populus versus
gens, and the peoples, Lombards v. Romans, have become comparable.
As well as telling of the prehistory of the Romans, Paul the Deacon’s new
beginning also expanded the scope of his history in another way. Using Jerome’s
Chronicle, Paul the Deacon synchronized Roman history with biblical history
and contextualized his Roman history within world history. This framework
embeds the Romans, as one of many peoples, in a Christian world.
Paul the Deacon situates the reign of Latinus among an impressive selection
of eleven comparative chronological events:
Troy was captured by the Greeks, Labdon was in the third year of his rule among
the Hebrews, Tautanes ruled among the Assyrians, Thous among the Egyptians, it
was 4019 years from the beginning of the world, 777 years since the flood, 835 years
since the birth of Abraham and the forty-third year of the reign of Ninus among
the Assyrians, 310 years from the birth of Moses, 303 years before the founding of
the city of Rome, [and] 306 years before the first Olympiad.49

47 
Most often, however, Paul the Deacon prefers to refer to the Romans simply as Romani:
Cornford, ‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, p. 195.
48 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvi.  20, p.  236: ‘Hac etiam
aetate gens Langobardorum amica tunc populi Romani apud Pannonias degebat, quibus in
regni gubernaculo Audoin praeerat’. Paul the Deacon is referring to Justinian’s foedus with the
Lombards in 548. This treaty is one of many fifth-/sixth-century treaties by which the Lombards
were integrated into Italy, although the Byzantine Empire formally continued to consider the
territory part of its empire until Constantine IV. See Pohl, ‘The Empire and the Lombards’.
49 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, ia, pp. 6–7: ‘Regnante tamen
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 311

In part, this passage, with its mention of the capture of Troy by the Greeks,
transitions nicely to the subsequent section which narrates how Aeneas came
to Italy after the fall of Troy. But such a narrative technique does not suffice
to explain the eleven comparative chronological events from world history,
including those from the past, such as the beginning of the world, and those in
the future, such as the founding of Rome, among which Paul situates the reign
of Latinus. Rather than simply reading Jerome’s Chronicle for a specific year,
Paul the Deacon has looked back and also forward so that he can include vari-
ous peoples from Jerome’s chronicle. He has chosen primarily, but not exclu-
sively, biblical events. Thus he positions the Romans within a universal history,
among the various other peoples of the world that existed before and contem-
poraneously with the Romans.
Describing the foundation of Rome, which Eutropius had triple-dated, Paul
the Deacon adds an alternate Orosian calculation for the years since the fall of
Troy (‘419 years after the fall of Troy, or, as it pleases Orosius, 404 years’),50 as
well as synchronizing the date with Old Testament history (‘six years before the
ten tribes of Israel were transferred by Sennacherib, the King of the Chaldeans,
into the mountains of the Medes’).51 By using Orosius’s dates, Paul introduces
uncertainty into the date of Rome’s foundation. Whereas in Eutropius’s text
this was the crucial moment when Rome’s history began, for Paul it is an event
in the distant past difficult to situate precisely among the other significant
events of world history.
As with the founding of Rome, so too during the reigns of the first kings
of Rome, Paul supplements Eutropius with concurrent world history, usually,
but not exclusively, biblical history. During the reign of Numa Pompilius, Paul

Latino, qui latinam linguam correxit et Latinos de suo nomine appellavit, Troia a Grecis capta
est, cum apud Hebreos Labdon tertium sui principatus annum ageret et apud Assyrios Tautanes,
apud Aegyptios Thous regnaret, expeletis a mundi principio annis quattuor milibus decem et
novem, a diluvio annis mille .dcclxxvii., a nativitate Abraham et quadregesimo tertio anno
Nini regis Assyriorum annis .dcccxxxv., a nativitate Moysi annis .ccccx. ante Urbem autem
conditam annis .cccciiii., ante primam quoque olympiadem annis .ccccvi.’.
50 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, i. 1, p. 10: ‘anno .ccccxix. post
Troiae excidium, sive ut placet Orosio, .cccciii.’. Neither 419 years, nor 404 years corresponds
to Eutropius’s text which gives 394 years. Nor does it correspond to Jerome who records the fall
of Troy in 835 and the foundation of Rome in 1261 or 1263, which would give 428 or 426 years
from the foundation of Rome. Other manuscripts variously have 414 for the former or later
date, but this does not resolve the dating either.
51 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, i. 1, p. 10: ‘ante sex annos, quam
decem tribus Israel a Sennacherib, rege Chaldeorum, transferrentur in montes Medorum’.
312 Maya Maskarinec

records that Hezekiah was ruling among the Hebrews; during that of Tullus
Hostilius he notes that, ‘in these times the city of Byzantium was founded
which afterward was called Constantinople’.52
Thus, Paul’s new beginning reduces the exceptionality of the people who
would later become the Romans. They are portrayed as one strand among the
many peoples who constitute world history. What distinguishes the Romans
from other peoples — past and present — is the feat that they accomplished;
the formation of a unified people, the basis for empire. Although as the
Lombards migrate south they come into contact with other peoples, such as
the Suebi, these different groups never coalesce into one entity.53 And though
the Lombards arrive in Italy as a group of mixed peoples, Paul the Deacon
claims that the names of the villages in Italy still preserve their diverse identi-
ties.54 The Saxons, who are said to have come to Italy with the Lombards, even
decide to return to Gaul, since the Lombards will not let them live under their
own rule.55
The Romans, however, do succeed. As Paul the Deacon describes, using
Jordanes’s Roman History:
The Latin and the Etruscan herdsmen, and even from across the sea the Phrygians
under Aeneas and the Arcadians under the leadership of Evander, all flowed in. Thus
congregated a body, as if out of different elements, and made the Roman people.56

Here we have the recipe for Roman identity; the populus Romanus are not
homogeneous in origin, but are composed out of various pre-existing peoples

52 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, i.  4, p.  14: ‘His temporibus
Bizantium civitas est condita, quae postea Constantinopolis est appellata’.
53 
One such integration is when King Wacho conquers the Suebi (Paul the Deacon,
Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 21, pp. 59–60). Later, however, the
Historia Langobardorum describes a Suebian man, Droctulft, who though he grew up with
the Lombards, is said to have remembered his Suebian identity and accordingly deserts to the
Romans (iii. 18, pp. 101–02).
54 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 26, p. 87:
‘Certum est autem, tunc Alboin multos secum ex diversis, quas vel alii reges vel ipse ceperat, gen-
tibus ad Italiam adduxisse. Unde usque hodie eorum in quibus habitant vicos Gepidos, Vulgares,
Sarmatas, Pannonios, Suavos, Noricos, sive aliis huiuscemodi nominibus appellamus’.
55 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii. 5–6, pp. 94–95.
56 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, i. 2, p. 11: ‘Latini denique Tuscique
pastores, etiam transmarini Friges, qui sub Aenea, Arcades, qui sub Evandro duce, influxerant.
Ita ex variis quasi elementis congregavit corpus unum populum Romanum efficit’ (= Jordanes,
Romana, ed. by Mommsen, c. 90, p. 10).
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 313

that have been mixed together. Yet their varied origins do not undermine their
unity; the Romans became unus populus, a body of distinct elements integrally
connected. Whereas Eutropius had taken Roman unity for granted, Paul did
not; on the contrary, his new beginning explains this process.
It is worth returning to the beginning of the Historia Romana once more
to consider how Paul’s recipe for Roman unity works. Most of the legends Paul
relates can also be found in the first book of Livy’s Roman history, and yet a
brief comparison between these texts brings out some significant differences in
their relative conceptions regarding the formation of the Roman people. The
‘ingredients’ suggested by Livy’s history are numerous, including the migration
of the Trojans, the opening of an asylum to collect inhabitants for the early
city, and the rape and marriage of the Sabine women.57 But without question
the crucial components for unifying the city are in Livy’s text the physical city
of Rome, religion, custom and, perhaps most importantly, law. After Romulus
founded the city and as his first act fortified the Palatine, Livy relates that
‘when Romulus had duly attended to the worship of the gods, he called the
people together and gave them the rules of law, since nothing else but law could
unite them into a single body’.58 Indeed, Rome’s rise to greatness could be seen
in the state’s flexibility in giving citizenship to meritorious foreigners.59 Paul’s
model of unification, in contrast, has a much stronger emphasis on the organic,
biological formation of a people. The early kings and the migrations of people
indicate the Romans as a people interrelated by blood. Distinctly missing is the
legalistic emphasis of Livy; religion, customs, and the physical city are also of
minimal importance. In the early chapters of Eutropius’s history, Paul adds the
story of the opening of the asylum and the tale of the rape of Sabine women
that paves the way for the subsequent incorporation of the whole Sabine peo-

57 
Livy, Ab urbe condita, ed. by Foster, i. 1, pp. 8–11; i. 8, pp. 30–33; i. 9, pp. 32–39.
58 
Livy, Ab urbe condita, ed. by Foster, i. 8. 1, p. 30: ‘Rebus divinis rite perpetratis vocataque
ad concilium multitudine quae coalescere in populi unius corpus nulla re praeterquam legibus
poterat, iura dedit’ (trans. by Foster, p. 32). The importance of the physical city of Rome is par-
ticularly emphasized by Camillus’s plea, after the sack of the city, not to abandon Rome for Veii
(end of Book v).
59 
For example, as the plebeians advocate for the right of intermarriage with the patricians,
Livy gives a long speech to a Canuleius, a tribune of the plebs, who begins by emphasizing that
plebs and patricians alike dwell in the same city, then turns to Roman history to demonstrate
how Rome’s power grew by allowing meritorious foreigners into the city and giving them citi-
zenship: ‘Ergo dum nullum fastiditur genus in quo eniteret virtus, crevit imperium Romanum’
(Livy, Ab urbe condita, ed. by Foster, iv. 3, p. 266). This is, however, a plebeian and not Livy
speaking; there are patrician speeches with different viewpoints.
314 Maya Maskarinec

ple. Thus Paul imagines the formation of a unified Roman people as the pro-
cessual mixing and melding together of peoples, not the institutionalization
emphasized by Livy.
Whatever the ingredients needed to form a people, there was no doubt that
for the Romans the mixture had been just right. It is no longer prominently
placed at the forefront of the history, but Paul the Deacon’s Historia Romana
still includes Eutropius’s beginning — that human history can remember noth-
ing greater in its growth, in the whole world, than the Roman Empire: the
Roman Empire remains unique. Situated after the description of Rome’s pre-
history, Eutropius’s explanation of the Romans has taken on a different nuance
of meaning. No longer does the Roman Empire appear out of nowhere with
Romulus; rather the migration of peoples was a slow, continuous process form-
ing unus populus. Like any other people, the Romans are a constructed entity, a
mixture of various peoples. Unlike others, the Romans managed to coalesce to
form one people; otherwise there is nothing fundamentally different between
them and any other, such as the Lombards.
Paul the Deacon’s Romans are a model of empire achieved through the unity
of peoples. It is a recipe for how to turn ethnic identity into a politically and
militarily successful unity, how to become unus populus and how to become a
world imperium, a feat to which none of the peoples in Paul the Deacon’s con-
temporary world could lay claim.60 But why, according to Paul the Deacon, did
the Romans succeed? To understand this, we must turn to Paul the Deacon’s
Christianization of the Roman Empire.

2. Paul the Deacon’s Christianization of Eutropius’s Roman Empire

The Romans, as presented in Eutropius’s Breviarium and in the modifications of
Paul the Deacon, are an unparalleled success story. What enabled the Romans
to establish a unified people and expand into an astounding Empire, an endeav-
our in which other peoples had and would continue to fail? To understand
this phenomenon and its consequences, I turn in this part to how Paul the
Deacon integrated Christianity into the Roman Empire he had inherited from
Eutropius’s text.61 As I will show, although for Paul the Deacon Christianity

60 
Here it should be emphasized that Paul the Deacon was certainly writing the Historia
Romana before Charlemagne’s coronation in 800 and most probably also before the Carolingian
conquest of Italy in 774: Pohl, ‘Paulus Diaconus’, p. 529.
61 
Sestan, ‘Qualche aspetto della personalità’, remains the most thorough study of Paul’s
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 315

is the key to the expansion of the Roman Empire, Paul layered Christianity
subtly onto the Roman Empire. In particular, heresy begins to unravel the bond
between the two, threatening the success of the Roman Empire (and perhaps
even its very existence). This possibility becomes increasingly plausible towards
the end of the Historia Romana, as the Roman Empire shrinks and a power vac-
uum develops in the West, while Christianity becomes increasingly detached
from the Roman Empire.
In his continuation of Eutropius’s Roman history, Paul the Deacon retained
Eutropius’s focus on empire as the basis for his understanding of Roman his-
tory. Although Paul the Deacon concentrates on events in the western half of
the Empire, like Eutropius, he structures his text around Roman emperors.
When there are two emperors, Paul the Deacon reports on both. After the
deposition of Romulus Augustulus (476) he reverts to the emperor in the East.
Although upholding Eutropius’s structure, what Paul the Deacon consid-
ered lacking in the text, as he relates in the work’s dedication, was Christianity.
Having given Adelperga the text of Eutropius to read, he tells us that she com-
plained to him of its brevity and its lack of any mention of the history of ‘our
religion’, recommending that he expand the text and add ‘something from the
text of the sacred scriptures, by which the times of his [Eutropius’s] narration
would be manifest more clearly’.62 Paul the Deacon tells us that he complied
and added congruences from divine law (ex divina lege) and thus ‘I rendered it

interpolations, particularly with respect to their Christian content. The shadows of Eusebius,
Jerome, and Augustine and their repositioning of Rome with respect to Christianity loom large
throughout this section, although I will not pursue the question of Paul’s links with them here.
The bibliography regarding the relationship of Romanness and Christianity is vast. Some useful
introductions include Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire; Inglebert, Les Romains
chrétiens; Schott, Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion.
62 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, Epistula dedicatoria, pp. 3–4:
‘Cum ad imitationem excellentissimi comparis, qui nostra aetate solus paene principum sapien-
tiae palmam tenet, ipsa quoque subtili ingenio et sagacissimo studio prudentium arcana rimeris,
ita ut philosophorum aurata eloquia poetarumque gemmea tibi dicta in promptu sint, historiis
etiam seu commentis tam divinis inhaereas quam mundanis, ipse, qui elegantiae tuae semper
fautor extiti, legendam tibi Eutropii historiam tripudians optuli. Quam cum avido, ut tibi moris
est, animo perlustrasses, hoc tibi in eius textu praeter immodicam etiam brevitatem displicuit,
quia utpote vir gentilis in nullo divinae historiae cultusque nostri fecerit mentionem; placuit
itaque tuae excellentiae ut eandam historiam paulo latius congruis in locis extenderem eique
aliquid ex sacrae textu Scripturae, quo eius narrationis tempora evidentius clarerent aptarem.
At ego, qui semper tuis venerandis imperiis parere desidero, utinam tam efficaciter imperata
facturus quam libenter arripui’.
316 Maya Maskarinec

[Eutropius’s history] harmonious with the most sacred history’.63 As we have

seen in Section 1, this harmonization meant inserting temporal correspond-
ences between Roman and biblical events. However, Paul’s Christianization
of Eutropius’s text was not limited to meshing Roman and Christian time. His
aim was more ambitious.
In the seventh book of Eutropius’s Roman history, in the midst of lav-
ish praises of Augustus’s reign, Paul the Deacon undertook a fundamental
Christianization of Eutropius’s text:
During these days, across the Tiber, out of a lodging inn, a spring of oil overflowed
from the earth and for the whole day it flowed with an enormous stream signifying
out the people for the favour of Christ. Then indeed there appeared to the sight a
circular rainbow in the sky around the sun. Therefore in the forty-second year of
the most firm and true peace brought about by Caesar, the lord Christ was born in
Bethlehem, whose arrival that same peace served.64

‘Christianization’ for Paul the Deacon did not mean merely indicating what
Christian events had occurred during Roman history. Instead, by compressing
these passages of Orosius and Jerome, Paul the Deacon incorporates their views
into Eutropius’s distinctly secular text: the city of Rome, the Roman Empire, and
Christianity are inextricably stitched together.65 The Empire created through
the Augustan peace was there to spread Christianity; Christ in turn manifested
his birth through miracles in the city of Rome. Thus the Roman Empire and
Christ are shown to be part of the same fabric of history preordained by God.

63 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, Epistula dedicatoria, p. 4: ‘Ac
primo paulo superius ab eiusdem textu historiae narrationem capiens eamque pro loci merito
extendens, quaedam etiam temporibus eius congruentia ex divina lege interserens, eandem sac-
ratissimae historiae consonam reddidi’.
64 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, vii. 8, pp. 100–01: ‘His diebus
trans Tiberim de taberna meritoria fons olei e terra exundavit ac per totum diem largissimo rivo
fluxit significans ex gentibus gratiam Christi. Tunc etiam circulus ad speciem caelestis arcus circa
solem apparuit. Igitur cum quadragesimo secundo anno firmissimam verissimamque pacem
Caesar composuisset, Christus dominus in Bethleem natus est, cuius adventui pax ista famulata
est’; translation based on Cornford, ‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, p. 120. Cf. Orosius, Historiae
adversum paganos, ed. by Zangemeister, vi. 18. 34, p. 223; vi. 20. 5, p. 226; vi. 22. 5, p. 231;
Jerome, Chronicon, ed. by Helm, a. 41 a. Chr., p. 158; a. 1 a. Chr., p. 169.
65 
The Christian idea of Roman universalism, ‘the firm belief that somehow the oikoumene
and the basileia shared common space’ (Olster, ‘From Periphery to Center’, p. 94), had a long tra-
dition and continued in Byzantium. See Markus, Saeculum, pp. 47–53; Inglebert, Les Romains
chrétiens, pp. 153–295 (Eusebius and Jerome), pp. 507–99 (Orosius).
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 317

From Paul’s perspective the Romans succeeded in building an empire because

they were meant to. Roman exceptionality was part of God’s plan.
Although Paul adds the dimension of Christianity to the Roman Empire, it
is astonishing how few other modifications Paul made to the subsequent chap-
ters of Eutropius’s text. There is little to describe the process through which the
Roman Empire became Christian. We hear of Christ’s death during the reign
of Tiberius, the martyrdom of Peter and Paul under Nero, and the persecutions
under Decius.66 Astonishingly, using Eutropius verbatim, Paul the Deacon
makes no mention of Constantine’s conversion, and even retains Eutropius’s
comment that ‘[ Julian] persecuted the Christian religion too much, but never-
theless in such a manner that he abstained from bloodshed’.67
We find the same, rather unstable and at times even ambiguous Christian­
ization of the Roman Empire in Paul’s six-book continuation of Eutropius. On
the one hand, it becomes clear that, from Paul’s perspective, Christianity has
become integral in defining the Romans; it is the ‘glue’ that keeps their Empire
together. And yet, as quickly becomes evident in the Historia Romana, Paul
does not regard the Roman Empire and the Christian oikoumene as so straight-
forwardly identical.
When Paul the Deacon’s continuation of Eutropius’s Roman history opens
with the reign of Valentinian in 364, Paul seemingly takes for granted that a
unique bond between Christianity and the Roman Empire has been estab-
lished.68 We hear that Valentinian maintained his undiminished Christian
faith, while Gratian returns Italy, plagued by the Arian heresy, to the true
faith.69 Often the Roman people and the Christian people are presented as

66 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, vii. 11, p. 106; vii. 15, p. 108;
ix. 4, pp. 126–27.
67 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, x.  16, p.  147  =  Eutropius,
Breviarium, ed. by Santini, x. 16. 3, p. 70: ‘nimius religionis Christianae insectator, perinde tamen,
ut cruore abstineret’ (English translation from Eutropius, Breviarium, trans. by Bird, p. 69).
Eutropius’s description of Constantine: Historia Romana, x. 5–8, pp. 142–44 = Breviarium,
x. 5–8, pp. 66–67.
68 
Cornford, ‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, p. 222, writes that the subject of the Historia
Romana is the ‘Catholic oikoumene, of which Italy and Africa essentially form the Western half,
and in which Italy is treated as an entity on a par with the eastern Empire itself ’. I am much
indebted to Cornford’s work on Paul the Deacon’s continuation of the Historia Romana in this
section, though I would suggest a more complex view of the relationship between the Roman
Empire and the Christian oikoumene.
69 
Valentinian: Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xi. 1, p. 151: ‘Qui
[Valentinianus] cum sub Iuliano Augusto christianitatis integram fidem gereret, cum, ut dictum
318 Maya Maskarinec

one and the same, while enemies of the Romans are enemies of the Christian
faith. The most straightforward example of this equation whereby Empire
and Christianity are opposed to barbarism, heresy, and paganism is Africa.
The Vandals are most often portrayed as cruel heretical barbarians persecuting
true Christians and working to ruin the Empire.70 Elsewhere we find usurpers
frequently described as perfidious, while the terror of the Roman world, the
Scythians, who set into motion the inundation of Italy by Radagaisus and his
Goths, are described as barbarians who have vowed to furnish their gods with
all the blood of the Roman genus.71
The ‘Christianization’ of the Roman Empire is particularly evident in Paul’s
presentation of emperors. Along with a narrative account of the significant
events of an emperor’s reign, as in Eutropius’s text, Paul the Deacon often pre-
sents short biographical sketches of the emperors that include an account of
their character, death, and the span of their reign. But now the most significant
aspect of a Roman emperor is his Christian faith.
Good emperors are idealized as the servants of Christ on earth, conquering
under the sign of the cross. An example of a Roman emperor par excellence,
Theodosius, can demonstrate the extent to which the well-being of the Empire
is shown to depend on the Christian piety of the emperor. Theodosius trusts

est, scutariorum tribunus esset, iussus ab imperatore sacrilego aut immolare idolis aut militia
excedere, sponte discessit; nec mora Iuliano interfecto Iovianoque mortuo, qui pro nomine
Christi amiserat tribunatum, in locum persecutoris sui accepit imperium’. Gratian: xi. 13,
pp. 157–58.
70 
In particular, Geiseric and his capture of Carthage are presented in dramatically nega-
tive terms as working to destroy both the Roman province as well as the Christian faith: Paul
the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xiii. 14, pp. 186–87. Negative portrayals of
Vandals also include: xiii. 6, p. 179; xiii. 10–11, pp. 18284; xiii. 14–15, pp. 186–87; xiv. 1,
p. 190; xiv. 16–18, pp. 200–02; xv. 19, p. 223; and xvi. 3–4 and 7, pp. 226–28. Cf. Cornford,
‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, pp. 202–04, 223.
71 
Perfidia used to describe heretics and usurpers: Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by
Crivellucci, xi. 11, p. 156, xi. 13, pp. 157–58; xii. 11, p. 169; xv. 19, p. 223; xvi. 3, p. 226. The
description of Rufinus neatly ties together barbarism, heresy, and usurpation (xii. 11, p. 169:
‘Interea Rufinus, cui a Theodosio Orientalis aulae cura commissa est, malo perfidiae depravatus,
cum barbarorum solaciis regnum temptaret invadere, morte iustissima poenas luit’), as do the
descriptions of the usurper Maximus (xi. 16, p. 160), and Ricimer (xv. 3, p. 207). Scythians:
xii. 12, pp. 169–70: ‘Inter haec omnium antiquorum praesentiumque hostium longe inmanis-
simus Radagaisus rex Gothorum totam repentino inundavit Italiam impetu. Nam fuisse in eius
populo plus quam ducenta milia Gothorum ferunt. Hic supra hanc incredibilem multitudinem
indomitamque virtutem barbarus erat et Scytha qui omnem Romani generis sanguinem diis suis
propinare devoverat’.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 319

to the mercy of God to repair an empire afflicted by the wrath of God and
places all his trust in the work of Christ. Seeing the virtue and benevolence of
Theodosius, all the Gothic peoples give themselves to the Roman Empire. Even
the Parthians and the barbarian nations who had up to then been enemies of
the Roman name send embassies requesting peace.72 In battle against the usurp-
ers Eugenius and Arbogastes, although overwhelmed in numbers, Theodosius
joins battle under the sign of the cross and a holy wind turns away the enemy
and gives him the victory.73
Yet most emperors are not ideal Christians like Theodosius, and the Roman
Empire is shown to suffer the consequences. In the process, Paul the Deacon
makes clear that the Roman Empire is not the bulwark protecting Christianity
which, from Paul’s perspective, it ideally should be. Throughout Paul’s continu-
ation there is an emphasis on the effects of Christian impiety and heresy on
the Empire’s well-being. Emperor after emperor strays from the path of true
Christianity and usually suffers the consequences — military defeats or grue-
some deaths. Most dramatic is the case of Valens, who after the disastrous defeat
of the Battle of Adrianople burns to death ignobly in a hut. Paul, following his
source, Orosius, characterizes these calamities as just punishment for Valens,
since he had sent Arian bishops to the Goths, thus corrupting them with the
Arian heresy.74
Throughout Paul’s six-book continuation heresy never lurks far away, con-
tinually threatening the relationship between God and the Roman Empire. Paul
shows that through their heretical thinking and impiety, the emperors cause the
Roman Empire to fragment and lose its distinctiveness. The Romans are again
becoming, as they had appeared in Paul’s account of their origins, more similar
to other gentes. As the Roman Empire shrinks, barbarian ‘imperial’ figures take
power, often described in more depth than the Roman emperors themselves.
Christian piety remains crucial for success, but a particular bond between the
dwindling Roman Empire and Christianity is ever more elusive.
Particularly from Book xiii onwards, the borders of the Roman Empire
contract dramatically. Geiseric and his Vandals capture Carthage, a scene of
devastating destruction.75 With the Anglo-Saxon invasion, the whole island

72 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xi. 15, pp. 158–59.
73 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xii. 4, p. 164.
74 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xi. 11, p. 156: ‘Iusto itaque Dei
iudicio ab illis igne crematus est, quos ipse perfidiae succenderat igni’.
75 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xiii. 14, pp. 186–87.
320 Maya Maskarinec

of Britain, from east to west, is irrevocably lost to the Romans.76 Non-Roman

‘imperial’ figures rivalling the Roman emperors enter the picture — most
prominently Attila. As the powerful king of the Huns and many other con-
quered peoples, Attila is described as having set his mind on demolishing the
Empire in the West.77 The battle of the Catalaunian Plains, where Attila and his
Huns fight the Romans commanded by Aëtius to a standstill, is an encounter
between near equals: ‘There assembled from here and there the strongest peo-
ples, the battle lines were set, and there was a battle so harsh and pertinacious
such as scarcely is narrated by any history’.78
The figures of both Attila and Aëtius are profiled in considerably more depth
than their contemporary emperors Marcian and Valentinian. When Attila dies
(after deciding not to advance to Rome, swayed by the intercessions of Pope
Leo), his death becomes known to the emperor in Constantinople through a
dream of a fractured bow; of Aëtius’s death, quoting Bede, Paul writes that,
‘thus Aëtius, a most warlike man and formerly the terror of the most power-
ful King Attila, lay dead, with which equally the Empire of the West and the
safety of the Republic collapsed and thus far it has not had the power to rise
up again’.79 No longer are the Roman emperors so distinctively unique. Hand
in hand, one can trace the rise of military commanders similar to the emperor
(whether fighting for or against the Romans) and, correspondingly, the

76 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xiii. 17, pp. 187–88. Paul the
Deacon’s rather isolated references to Britain have been variously interpreted. Goffart, The
Narrators of Barbarian History, p. 264, writes, ‘The apparent function of each entry is, as type to
antitype, to offer a capsule summary of the next book. The British event anticipates in miniature
what would take place on a large scale in the heartland of the Empire’. Cornford, ‘The Idea of
the Roman Past’, pp. 154–55, suggests that Paul included all the information on Britain that was
available to him, pointing out that Paul includes all but one of the entries about Britain found
in Bede’s Chronicle.
77 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xiv. 2, p. 191: ‘fultus itaque fortis-
simarum gentium, quas sibi subiugarat, praesidio ad Occidentale demoliendum animum inten-
dit imperium’.
78 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xiv. 6, pp. 193–94: ‘Conveniunt
hinc et inde fortissimae nationes, conseruntur acies, fit bellum acre nimis et pertinax, quale vix
ulla narratur historia’.
79 
Dream of a fractured bow announcing Attila’s death: Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana,
ed. by Crivellucci, xiv. 13, p. 198. Aëtius’s death: xiv. 15, pp. 199–200: ‘Ita vir bellicosissimus
Aetius et quondam Attilae regis potentissimi terror occubuit, cum quo pariter et Occidentis
imperium salusque reipublicae corruit nec ultra actenus valuit relevari’ (translation by Cornford,
‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, p. 206).
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 321

decreasing importance of the Roman emperor, who now rules his patch of the
Mediterranean like any other ruler.
As various provinces fall away from imperial control, even the old heart
of the Roman Empire, Italy and Rome herself, do not remain unscathed.
Although Rome was no longer the Empire’s capital, Paul the Deacon treats the
sacks of the city as highly significant, at times emphasizing these events more
than his sources. Of Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410, Paul writes that the city was
burned and devastated, even supplementing a precise date of the event dated
from Rome’s foundation.80 When Geiseric and the Vandals sack Rome in 455,
though Pope Leo’s pleading mitigates their plunder, the devastation is none-
theless underlined.81 A crucial caesura is Odovacer’s deposition of Romulus
Augustulus. Paul boldly proclaims, having dated the event from Rome’s foun-
dation, that this is the end of the power of the Romans in Rome.82
The sack prompts Paul, beginning in Book xvi, to switch, explicitly, his dat-
ing schema. This is an independent decision on Paul’s part, not done by any of
his sources: ‘With the cessation already of the Empire of the city of the Romans
it appears expedient and suitable to me, to deduce the line of counting from the
years of the incarnation of our Lord, by which it is more easily possible to recog-
nize the time than that which had been used’.83 Even time itself, the fabric onto

80 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xii. 13, p. 171: ‘Capta itaque
Roma est anno millesimo centesimo sexagesimo quarto conditionis suae. Die sane tertia sponte
Gothi Urbe discedunt, facto aliquantarum aedium incendio, sed ne tanto quidem, quantum
olim a Caesare factum est’.
81 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xiv. 16–17, pp. 200–01.
82 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xv. 10, p. 215: ‘Ita Romanorum
apud Romam imperium toto terrarum orbe venerabile et Angustalis illa sublimitas, quae ab
Augusto quondam Octaviano cepta est, cum hoc Augustolo periit, anno ab Urbis conditione
millesimo ducentesimo nono, a Gaio vero Caesare, qui primo singularem arripuit principatum,
anno quingentesimo septimo decimo, ab incarnatione autem Domini anno quadringentesimo
septuagesimo quinto. Igitur deiecto ab Augustali dignitate Augustulo Urbem Odovacer ingres-
sus totius Italiae adeptus est regnum’. Cornford, ‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, pp. 208–10,
emphasizes how although Paul the Deacon follows his sources (the chronicle of Marcellinus and
Jordanes’s Historia Romana/Getica) in describing the events of 476 he gives it particular empha-
sis. The Historia Romana makes a clear step in the direction of treating the date as a caesura of
Roman history. Regarding the creation of 476 as a turning point see Croke, ‘ad 476’, who shows
that this tradition originated in Constantinople, not in the West.
83 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvi. 1, p. 225: ‘Cessante iam
Romanae urbis imperio utilius aptiusque mihi videtur ab annis dominicae incarnationis sup-
putationis lineam deducere, quo facilius quid quo tempore actum sit possit agnosci’ (Cornford,
‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, p. 209).
322 Maya Maskarinec

which history is mapped, must be changed to reflect the changed circumstances:

Christian time has superseded Roman time. Paul’s switch to dating from Christ’s
birth rather than from the founding of Rome is indicative of the relationship
between the Roman Empire and Christianity that is developing. Roman history
occurs within Christian time, but the Romans no longer define this time.
Nowhere in Paul’s text is an explicit, or even implicit, break between the
Roman Empire and the Christian oikoumene portrayed. However, the Roman
Empire is less and less a universal empire and the similarities between the
Roman emperor and ‘barbarian’ kings, such as Odovacer, become more explicit.
The Romans are one of many peoples in the Mediterranean world. They are
Christians, but neither the only Christian people, nor necessarily God’s favour-
ite. Meanwhile the papacy in Rome is given a more pronounced role, plead-
ing with these new barbarian leaders or influencing the emperor. For example,
Pope Leo uses his influence to provide for the safety not only of Rome, but all
of Italy, while the Emperor Justinian having lapsed into the Euthycian heresy is
corrected by Pope Agapitus.84
Yet the tensions in the text should not be exaggerated. Throughout the most
turbulent times in the Historia Romana, the persistence of the Roman Empire
is not questioned. Difficulties were, after all, nothing new in Roman history; in
the second to last chapter of his text, Eutropius wrote of Jovian’s ignominious
defeat and treaty with the Persians: ‘before his time this had never happened
in practically one thousand one hundred and eighteen years since the Roman
Empire had been founded’.85 Still Paul the Deacon managed to continue the
history of the Roman Empire for over a century past this point. The division
into eastern and western parts of the Empire with two emperors, Honorius
and Arcadius (395), is seen as just that: one empire with two seats.86 Although

84 
Leo: Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvi. 12, p. 197. Agapitus:
xvi. 13, p. 232.
85 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, x.  17, p.  148  =  Eutropius,
Breviarium, ed. by Santini, x. 17. 1, p. 70: ‘Qui iam turbatis rebus exercitu quoque inopia labo-
rante uno a Persis atque altero proelio victus pacem cum Sapore, necessariam quidem, sed igno-
bilem, fecit, multatus finibus ac nonnulla imperii Romani parte tradita. Quod ante eum annis
.mc. et duobus de viginti fere, ex quo Romanum imperium conditum erat, numquam accidit’
(Eutropius, Breviarium, trans. by Bird, p. 69).
86 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xii. 9, p. 168: ‘Anno ab Urbe con-
dita millesimo centesimo quadragesimo nono Archadius Augustus in Oriente, Honorius frater
eius in Occidente quadragesimo secundo loco commune imperium, divisis tantum sedibus,
tenere coeperunt’. As Cornford, ‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, p. 247, writes: ‘It soon becomes
clear that for Paul, though the Empire might have two thrones, the Republic is a single body’.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 323

Odovacer is presented as an enemy conquering Roman territory and with the

deposition of Romulus Augustulus (476) the power of the Roman Empire is
said to cease in Rome, Theodoric is presented as an ally of the Roman peo-
ple. He is commended to the senatus populusque Romanus by the emperor and
restores the province to the Empire. Only subsequently, as an Arian heretic,
does he lose his legitimacy.87
Most significantly, Paul’s Roman history ends with a snippet that re-empha-
sizes the unique success of the Romans as a Christian empire: a brief summary
of the restored Roman-Christian Empire of Justinian.88 Paul describes how,
as soon as he came to power, Justinian turned his attention to restoring the
respublica. Paul reports Belisarius’s victories against the Persians, the defeat
of the Vandals, the reconquest of Carthage, and, in greater depth, the Gothic
wars in Italy.89 Justinian’s success is undeniable, and through his restoration the
Roman Empire is shown, to an extent, to regain its earlier splendour.

3. The ‘Romans’ in Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum

Paul the Deacon had introduced Christianity into Eutropius’s almost secular
text, explaining the success of the Roman Empire through its chosen role in
spreading the Christian message. By the end of the Historia Romana, what per-
sists is undoubtedly still a Roman-Christian Empire. But its borders have con-
tracted and its relationship to Christianity — only tenuously linked by Paul the
Deacon to the Empire to start with — has become increasingly detached. After
Justinian, though, what comes next?
At the end of the sixteenth and last book of the Historia Romana, Paul the
Deacon promises, as he had already done in his dedication, that he will con-

Mortensen, ‘Impero romano’, argues forcefully against Goffart that Paul the Deacon did not see
the Roman Empire as having come to an end.
87 
Cornford, ‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, p. 222.
88 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvi. 23, p. 238: ‘Is ad Italiam ven-
iens magno cum Gothis certamine conflixit. Quibus ad internicionem poene consumptis regem
Totilam, qui ultra iam decem annos regnaverat, interfecit universamque Italiam ad reipublicae
iura reduxit’. Cornford, ‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, p. 226, points out that though the con-
clusion of book sixteen is based for the most part on the Liber Pontificalis, ‘it is Paul, however,
who introduced the concluding remarks about the restoration of the Republic, and thus he who
introduced the terms reduxit (to bring back, or to restore) and Respublica’.
89 
Victories against the Persians: Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci,
xvi. 11, p. 231. Victories in Africa: xvi. 15–19, pp. 233–36; and xvi. 22–23, pp. 237–38.
324 Maya Maskarinec

tinue his Roman history with a forthcoming book.90 Instead, Paul chose a dif-
ferent subject for his subsequent historical work: the history of the Lombards
— a text which, as I discussed in Section 1, begins by telling of the origins of the
Lombard people.91 It also continues their history up to the death of Liudprand
in 744 (see Appendix B). That is, Paul’s Lombard History covers the very time
period, post-Justinian, that Paul had promised he would narrate in a subse-
quent book of Roman history and even contains much material that would

90 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, Epistula dedicatoria, p. 4: ‘promit-
tens, Deo praesule, si tamen aut vestrae sederit voluntati, aut mihi, vita comite, ad huiuscemodi
laborem maiorum dicta suffragium tulerint, ad nostram usque aetatem eandem historiam pro-
telare’; xvi. 23, p. 238 (end of Book xvi): ‘Quia vero restant adhuc quae de Iustiniani Augusti
felicitate dicantur, insequenti Deo praesule libello promenda sunt’.
91 
The bibliography on the Historia Langobardorum is vast; fundamental are Goffart, The
Narrators of Barbarian History, pp. 378–431, and Pohl, ‘Paulus Diaconus und die Historia
Langobardorum’. Two recent volumes about Paul the Deacon include much material: Chiesa,
ed., Paolo Diacono. Various hypotheses have been devised to explain why Paul did not continue
the Historia Romana. In his dedication to the Historia Romana, Paul the Deacon had promised
to continue granted his text was pleasing to his patroness and that he found sufficient sources
to continue. Mortensen, ‘Impero romano’, pp. 364–66, has hypothesized that the latter had
applied: Paul was unable to find sources to continue his text and thus abandoned the task until
he was motivated to begin on a different project, the Historia Langobardorum. Most ingeniously
Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, p. 378, has posited that the two texts should be read
together as the history of Italy: ‘As Paul’s first instalment is Roman mainly because of Eutropius,
so the Lombards of the second instalment are prominent rather than fundamental: the subject
of both is Italy’. There is certainly a close connection between the two texts; after all, the Historia
Langobardorum does tell of the reign of Justinian as Paul the Deacon had promised he would.
However, as already the name, Historia Romana, attested to in most manuscripts, indicates, the
two works have different foci — the Roman Empire and the Lombard people — although both
emphasize events occurring in Italy, and both include much material not directly related to their
primary subject. (For the way in which the Historia Langobardorum situates Lombards into the
larger contours of the past see especially Pohl, ‘Paolo Diacono’.) Certainly the shift must lie in
the changing circumstances of Paul’s life. The precise dating of the Historia Langobardorum is
uncertain, but as Pohl, ‘Paolo Diacono’, p. 376, has demonstrated, it was certainly completed
before 795/6. Whereas the Historia Romana was written for Adelperga, the daughter of King
Desiderius and the wife of Arichis II, duke of Benevento, it is unclear for whom or why the
Historia Langobardorum was written. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, pp. 344–47,
who firmly believes that the text is unfinished, suggests that it was written for a Beneventan
audience and in particular Grimuald III. In contrast McKitterick, ‘Paul the Deacon and the
Franks’, argues that the Historia Langobardorum is not unfinished and should be seen in relation
to, even written for, a Frankish audience, in particular Pippin of Italy. Undoubtedly, as Walter
Pohl demonstrates, Paul had a complex personality, and his diverse texts bear witness to differ-
ent registers of identity: Pohl, ‘Paul the Deacon’.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 325

seem suitable for such a continuation. But, rather than attempting to continue
his Roman history, Paul shows the Roman Empire fading away; ‘Byzantine’ his-
tory post-Justinian is less and less interpreted as ‘Roman’ history. Though the
Romans were not Paul’s primary focus in the Historia Langobardorum, in the
process of telling the history of the Lombards, he shows a change occurring:
the ‘Byzantines’ cease to be the Romans. Through their heresies the Byzantines
complete their transformation into a regionalized identity — one of the many
coexisting gentes of the early medieval world.
One way to observe this shift occurring in the Historia Langobardorum is
Paul’s changing terminology for the framework of the ‘Empire’. Justinian is
described as ruling over the imperium Romanum, the Roman Empire; in 602,
Phocas — and all subsequent emperors — controls the regnum Romanorum, the
Kingdom of the Romans.92 After Phocas we do still hear of an imperium, but we
never find it coupled with Romanus; we only hear of a regnum Romanorum.93
Unlike the framework of empire under Justinian, where vast territories and peo-
ples are described as coexisting under the umbrella of the imperium Romanum,
by the end of the Lombard History it is the kingdom of the Roman people that
coexists alongside various others of the Mediterranean world.
The first Roman emperor discussed by Paul in the Historia Langobardorum
appears towards the end of Book i: Justinian, about whom Paul had promised
to tell in his forthcoming book of Roman history. Consistent with this prom-
ise and his brief summary of Justinian’s reign at the end of the sixteenth book
of Roman history, Paul praises Justinian and presents his reign as a restora-
tion of the Roman Empire. Justinian conquers the gens Wandalorum, the gens
Gothorum, and other gentes. Thus the Roman Empire is presented as a compa-
rable entity to that found in the Historia Romana. The Empire is an umbrella
encompassing a wide array of different gentes. The reason for Justinian’s success
in restoring this imperial framework is stated clearly: ‘This Emperor [ Justinian]

92 
Phocas: Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iv. 36,
p. 128. Regnum Romanorum: iv. 36, p. 128; v. 30, p. 154; vi. 11–12, p. 168. Already in the
fourth century, regnum had been used to describe the Roman Empire. Significant here is not the
term per se, but the shift in progress within Paul’s text.
93 
We always continue to hear of an imperator; he never slips into a rex like kings who are
described ruling their regna on the territory of the former Roman Empire. Respublica is also
used infrequently in the text (e.g. Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann
and Waitz, ii. 4, p. 74). The choice of terminology seems also to reflect, in part, Paul’s choice of
sources; where Paul quotes Gregory of Tours almost verbatim he uses Gregory’s terminology,
that is, imperium (Tiberius and Maurice). When using Bede’s Chronicle, which does not specify
either term, he most often inserts regnum Romanorum (Phocas, Constans II, Justin II, Leo III).
326 Maya Maskarinec

in fact was Catholic in his faith, upright in his deeds, just in his judgments,
and therefore to him all things came together for good’: Christian piety brings
about imperial success.94
Already under Justinian’s successor, Justin II, however, the orthodoxy and
the unity of the Roman Empire begin to falter and here, for the first time in the
Historia Langobardorum, the Byzantines, for specificity’s sake, are referred to
by a new category of reference, the ‘Greeks’:95
Now the whole people of the Goths having been destroyed or overthrown, as has
been said, and those also of whom we have spoken having been in like manner
conquered, Narses, after he had acquired much gold and silver and riches of other
kinds, incurred the great envy of the Romans although he had laboured much for
them against their enemies, and they made insinuations against him to the Emperor
Justin and his wife Sophia, in these words, saying, ‘It would be advantageous for the
Romans to serve the Goths rather than the Greeks wherever the eunuch Narses
rules and oppresses us with bondage, and of these things our most devout emperor
is ignorant: Either free us from his hand or surely we will betray the city of Rome
and ourselves to those peoples’. When Narses heard this he answered briefly these
words: ‘If I have acted badly with the Romans it will go hard with me’.96

In their anger, in order to articulate the distinction between the non-Gothic

inhabitants of Italy and the state in the east that is supposed to represent their
interests, but no longer does, the enemies of Narses reach for the term Greci.

94 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 25, pp. 62–63:
‘Erat enim hic princeps fide catholicus, in operibus rectus, in iudiciis iustus; ideoque ei omnia
concurrebant in bonum’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 47).
95 
Paul does use grecus earlier in the Historia Langobardorum in reference to the Greek
language, as in describing that Justinian had built the church called in Greek Hagia Sophia:
‘Extruxit quoque idem princeps intra urbem Constantinopolim Christo domino, qui est sapien-
tia Dei patris, templum, quod greco vocabulo Agian Sophian, id est sanctam sapientiam, nomi-
navit’ (i. 25, p. 63).
96 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 5, p. 75:
‘Igitur deleta, ut dictum est, vel superata Narsis omni Gothorum gente, his quoque de quibus
diximus pari modo devictis, dum multum auri sive argenti seu ceterarum specierum divitias
adquisisset, magnam a Romanis pro quibus multa contra eorum hostes laboraverat, invidiam
pertulit. Qui contra eum Iustiniano augusto et eius coniugi Sophiae in haec verba suggesserunt
dicentes quia: “Expedierat Romanis Gothis potius servire quam Grecis, ubi Narsis eunuchus
imperat et nos servitio premit; et haec noster piissimus princeps ignorat. Aut libera nos de manu
eius aut certe et civitatem Romanam et nosmet ipsos gentibus tradimus”. Cumque hoc Narsis
audisset, haec breviter retulit verba: “Si male feci cum Romanis, male inveniam”’ (Paul the
Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, pp. 58–59).
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 327

Narses’ enemies in Italy seek to demonstrate that the state in the east no longer
pays heed to the well-being of all its Roman citizens. It is no longer acting as the
Roman Empire, but as a regional power. These Easterners, the Greci, are placed
parallel to the gentes, the surrounding world of Goths, and other ‘barbarians’
whom the inhabitants of Italy claim it would be equally advantageous for them
to serve, if they are to serve, rather than be (free) members in an imperial frame-
work. The administrators of the Roman Empire are expected to act in the inter-
ests of the whole overarching Empire; since they do not behave accordingly,
they face the moral consequences, losing their claim to represent the Empire.
Thus they lose their Romanness and the former Roman Empire shrinks into a
narrower category of reference: Greci.
Grecus was an outside denomination, with derogatory potential, that by the
ninth century had become the predominant western term of reference for the
‘Byzantines’.97 (From the Byzantine perspective though Grecus would always
remain an insult as the Byzantine Empire strove to retain the term ‘Roman’.)98
In the Historia Romana, Paul the Deacon had used the term Greci once before
with respect to the Romans.99 The Ostrogoths complain to Theoderic, who is
tarrying in Constantinople, that while they are nearly starving he is stuffing
himself with Greek delights.100 Here the term clearly refers to regional special-

97 
See the contribution by Gantner, ‘The Label “Greek”’; cf.  Borri, ‘Neighbours and
Relatives’, p. 20, with n. 78; Duboisson, ‘graecvs, graecvlvs, graecari’; Wickham, ‘Ninth-
Century Byzantium’, p. 248, points to Einhard’s Vita Karoli (where the Byzantine emperors, the
‘Roman emperors’, are jealous of the title of emperor that Charlemagne has received) and the
Council of Paris in 825 as some ‘of the very few times a western writer uses the word “Roman”
for the Byzantines after 800’. Regarding Western perspectives of the Byzantines more generally
see Arbagi, ‘Byzantium in Latin Eyes’, with a discussion of Paul the Deacon’s Lombard history
at pp. 15–17.
98 
Wickham, ‘Ninth-Century Byzantium’, argues that, while during the ninth century the
Byzantines were willing to address the Frankish emperor as basileus or imperator, they strived to
keep ‘Roman’ to themselves, as demonstrated by the title basileus ton Romaion, which starting with
Michael I (811–13) was put on coins: ‘It appears, that is to say, that as long as Romanity belonged
to the east, the west could have emperors too’ (p. 246). The ‘Byzantine’ attachment to Romanness
should not, however, be overemphasized: Mango, Byzantinum, esp. Chapter 1, emphasizes that in
Byzantium the ‘main links of solidarity were two: regional and religious’ (p. 30).
99 
A reader of the Historia Romana would also have encountered Grecus earlier in Eutropius’s
text in a neutral sense: the Greek-speaking inhabitants of Greece (Eutropius, Breviarium, ed.
by Santini, iii. 12. 2, p. 19; x. 8. 3 p. 67). Paul the Deacon also uses Greci in this sense in his
new introduction to Eutropius’s text, reporting that ‘Troia a Grecis capta est’ (Paul the Deacon,
Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, ia, p. 6).
100 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xv. 14, p. 218: ‘qui dicerent quas,
328 Maya Maskarinec

ties. When the enemies of Narses reach for the term, they likewise intend it as a
regional specification with similarly pejorative overtones that, at its core, avoids
linguistic confusion. With Romani it would not have been clear to whom
Narses’ enemies were referring. As a result, though, it becomes more evident
that the Mediterranean world is fragmenting into various groups that include
Goths, Greeks, and Romans who no longer have an overarching structure hold-
ing them together.
Slowly the term Greci begins to creep into the Historia Langobardorum to
describe the Byzantines. Of the Emperor Maurice, late sixth century (582–602),
Paul the Deacon relates that he was the first Greek emperor.101 This phrase ‘pri-
mus ex Grecorum genere’ is particularly significant in that it is Paul’s addition to
what is otherwise an almost verbatim quotation from Gregory of Tours.102 From
this point on in the Historia Langobardorum, the ‘Byzantines’ are generally
referred to as Greci, though the term does not lose its pejorative overtones.103
This linguistic transformation is indicative of the shift that has occurred,
whereby, from Paul’s perspective in the late eighth century, the eastern emperors
become regionalized, losing their prerogative to rule over a Roman Empire.
For Paul the Deacon the reasons for the Empire’s increasing fragmentation
are nothing new. The change is the result of the same processes that had been
at work in the later books of Paul’s Roman history whereby heresy causes ter-

dum ipse Grecorum epulis superflueret, inopiae miserias sustinerent’. The passage comes from
Jordanes, who, however, uses the term Romanus in the passage: ‘quam ipse otiose frui regni
Romani bona et gentem suam mediocriter victitare’ ( Jordanes, Romana, ed. by Mommsen,
c. 290, p. 133).
101 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii. 15, p. 100:
‘Quo defuncto, Mauricius indutus purpura, redimitus diademate, ad circum processit, adclama-
tisque sibi laudibus, largita populo munera, primus ex Grecorum genere in imperio confirmatus est’.
102 
Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch and Levison, vi. 30, pp. 298–99. Goubert,
Byzance avant l’Islam, p. 41, points out that the label is Paul’s doing, suggesting that it is the
result of Maurice being from Cappadocia, rather than a European town. He, however, also points
to the fact that Evagrius makes him a Roman, although from a family residing in Cappadocia.
103 
As noted above, n. 93 the term regnum Romanorum does continue to be used. Also dur-
ing Phocas’s reign we hear of Roman provinces (Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum,
ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iv. 36, p. 128) and Constans II is described as the foremost of
the Romans, v. 30, p. 154: ‘Romanorum regnum Constantinus, Constantii augusti filius, sus-
cepit regendum, Romanisque principatus est annis decem et septem’. Greci: iv. 46, p. 135; v. 7,
pp. 147–48; v. 10, p. 190; v. 11, pp. 149–50. These passages all are negative portrayals of the
Greci, but generally very little positive, or even neutral, material is related about the Byzantine
Empire in the seventh and eighth centuries.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 329

ritorial and political regionalization. The bond between the eastern Empire and
Christianity, already presented in Paul’s Roman History as tenuous, unravels
further. The Byzantines relinquish their position as defenders of the Christian
church. It is the increasingly independent papacy in Rome which heads the
Christian church and preserves Christian orthodoxy, even at times in oppo-
sition to the Easterners. Meanwhile the power vacuum in Italy that had been
shown developing in Paul’s Roman History is, in part at least, filled by others,
such as the Lombards.104 Like the Lombards, or any other people, the Byzantines
are now liable to succeed or fail in accordance with their Christian piety (or
impiety). No longer are they accorded any unique Christian advantage.
The Lombards’ invasion of Italy demonstrates clearly how the Byzantines
become a regional player as a result of their Christian impiety. The Emperor
Justin II, described as having lapsed into the Pelagian heresy as well as being a
‘man given to every kind of avarice, a despiser of the poor, a despoiler of sena-
tors’, quickly credits Narses’ enemies’ accusations against him.105 Consequently,
motivated by hate and fear, Narses invites the Lombards into Italy, tempting
them with gifts of Italian fruit. The arrival of the Lombards is foreshadowed
in ominous terms: ‘In Italy terrible signs were continually seen at night, that
is, fiery swords appeared in heaven gleaming with the blood which was after-
wards shed’.106
The fragmentation of the Roman Empire is not blamed on Narses or the
Lombards, about whom the text assures us that, ‘during all the time the Lombards
held Pannonia, they were the allies of the Roman state against its rivals’; it is the
emperor who is implicitly blamed for turning against Narses.107 Narses receives

104 
Neither the Lombards nor the papacy are, however, portrayed as successors to the
Romans in Italy. In particular, Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, p.  419, notes
the comparative absence of the popes from the second half of the sixth book of the Historia
Langobardorum despite the fact that Paul undoubtedly had the sources (esp. Liber Pontificalis).
In a sense the Historia Langobardorum (as well as the later books of the Historia Romana) could
also be characterized as emphasizing the power vacuum.
105 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii. 11, p. 97:
‘Vir in omni avaritia deditus, contemptor pauperum, senatorum spoliator’ (Paul the Deacon,
History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 106).
106 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 5, p. 75:
‘Continuo aput Italiam terribilia noctu signa visa sunt, hoc est igneae acies in caelo apparu-
erunt, eum scilicet qui postea effusus est sanguinem coruscantes’ (Paul the Deacon, History of
the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 61).
107 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 1, p. 72:
‘Omnique tempore quo Langobardi Pannoniam possiderunt, Romanae rei publicae adver-
330 Maya Maskarinec

lavish praise, in particular for his Christian virtues, with a description far more
elaborate than that which even the well-liked Justinian had received: ‘For he
[Narses] was a very pious man, a Catholic in religion, generous to the poor, very
zealous in restoring churches, and so much devoted to vigils and prayers that he
obtained victory more by the supplications which he poured forth to God, than
by the arms of war’.108 In contrast, about Justin II we hear that ‘when he turned
away the ear of his heart from the divine commands he became mad, having
lost the faculty of reason by the just judgement of God’.109 It is the heresy of the
emperor that has led Italy to be severed from the Empire.
From Paul’s perspective, the Byzantines no longer have a monopoly on
Christianity. The ‘Roman Empire’ in the East would continue to claim a
unique bond with Christianity. In the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 681–82,
Constantine IV asserted that the Empire existed wherever ‘Christ established
his church as if it were his own house’.110 No matter its actual boundaries, the
Byzantine Empire as the Christian Empire maintained a theoretical claim to all
Christian lands. Paul the Deacon would not have agreed. Pious emperors are
able to harness Christian energy into preserving the Roman Empire. Tiberius,
for example, as he is particularly generous in his almsgiving, repeatedly discov-
ers hidden treasures.111 But when Constans II attempts to (re)conquer Italy, a
prophecy states in no uncertain terms that the Romans do not have a monop-
oly on divine favour. Since John the Baptist is interceding for the Lombards,
they will momentarily retain Italy.112 The Byzantine Empire must compete with
the Lombards and other peoples both for land and for divine favour.

sum aemulos adiutores fuerunt’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke,
pp. 53–54).
108 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 3, pp. 73–74:
‘Erat autem vir piissimus, in religione catholicus, in pauperes munificus, in recuperandis basilicis
satis studiosus, vigiliis et orationibus in tantum studens, ut plus supplicationibus ad Deum pro-
fusis quam armis bellicis victoriam obtineret’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans.
by Foulke, p. 56). Compare with the description of Theodosius’s victory, section ii.
109 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii.  11,
pp. 97–98: ‘Hic cum a divinis mandatis aurem cordis averteret, iusto Dei iudicio amisso rationis
intellectu amens effectus est’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 107).
110 
Quoted in Olster, ‘From Periphery to Center’, p. 99.
111 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii. 12, p. 98.
112 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, v. 6, pp. 146–47:
‘Gens Langobardorum superari modo ab aliquo non potest, quia regina quaedam ex alia provin-
cia veniens basilicam beati Iohannis baptistae in Langobardorum finibus construxit, et propter
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 331

One of the most climactic demonstrations of the transformation the former

Romans have undergone is the description of the Byzantine expedition to Italy
in 663–68.113 From their arrival on Italian soil the Byzantines are referred to
almost exclusively with reference to the Emperor Constans II. When the group
is referred to collectively Greci is used, or referring to one specific Byzantine,
Greculus. At one point, a certain Lombard, Sesuald, is captured by the Greeks,
but chooses nonetheless to carry out his task and announce to the besieged
Lombards in Benevento that aid is on its way. Sesuald adds a plea for his family,
since this faithless people (perfida gens) — that is, the Byzantines — will surely
now kill him.114 In the West, perfidy was becoming an increasingly common epi-
thet for the Byzantines.115 Nonetheless, the phrase stands out. Two terms, gens
and perfidia, which the Roman-Christian Empire had traditionally used to charac-
terize its enemies in contrast to its own Christian Empire — gens as a sub-impe-
rial, usually barbarian, grouping; perfidia as a trait characteristic of usurpers and
heretics — have now been turned around and thrown back at the Byzantines.116
When the Emperor Constans  II is militarily unsuccessful against the
Lombards, he heads to Rome where the Byzantines, referred to as Greci, are
greeted by the population of Rome, the populus Romanus, headed by the pope.
This is anything but a joyful reunification of different Roman peoples. Instead
the Byzantines spend the next twelve days looting the ancient ornamentation of
the city. Disregarding even the sanctity of the Christian church, they strip the
tiles off the church of the Holy Virgin, the Pantheon.117 The situation is clear;
these are not Romans looting Rome, but impious and perfidious foreigners.

hoc ipse beatus Iohannes pro Langobardorum gente continue intercedit’. See also n. 126.
113 
Regarding Constans II and the expedition see Corsi, La spedizione italiana, and Corsi,
‘La politica italiana di Constante II’.
114 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, v. 8, p. 148:
‘Tantum obsecro, ut misericordiam exhibeas cum mea uxore et filiis, quia gens ista perfida me
vivere non sinebit’.
115 
Along with a whole host of other derogatory qualities including invidia, fraus, falsi-
tas, sublimitas: Wickham, ‘Ninth-Century Byzantium’, p. 248. On perceptions of difference
between Greco-Romans and Italo-Byzantines (primarily attributed to nature or language) see
Hunger, Graeculus perfidus, italos itamos.
116 
Regarding perfidia in the Historia Romana, see n. 71.
117 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, v.  11,
pp. 149–50, loosely following Liber Pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne, Vitalianus, i, pp. 343–45. The
Liber Pontificalis does not use the term Greci here, which also explains in part why Paul does not
use the term Greci for the Byzantines while they are in Rome. However Paul, when describing
332 Maya Maskarinec

Yet, as this passage well demonstrates, for Paul the shift from a Roman
Empire to eastern Greeks inhabiting a kingdom does not mean the end of the
Romans. Or rather, to be more precise — with ‘Roman’ being such an ambigu-
ous term — it does not mean the end of the Romani. Romani still appear in
Paul’s text as inhabitants of Rome and the Byzantine (non-Lombard) territo-
ries in Italy more generally.118
In the first two books of the Historia Langobardorum we still meet Romani
as the ‘native’ inhabitants of Italy. During the Lombard invasion, Paul the
Deacon tells that ‘the Romans had then no courage to resist because of the
pestilence which occurred at the time of Narses […]’.119 Two passages about
the fate of the Romans after the Lombard invasion have been much discussed.
First, of the Lombard King Cleph, Paul remarks that ‘of many powerful men of
the Romans some he destroyed by the sword and others he drove from Italy’;
and in the following chapter, in the time of the Lombard dukes, Paul writes:
‘In these days many of the noble Romans were killed from love of gain, and the
remainder were divided among their “guests” and made tributaries, that they
should pay the third part of their products to the Lombards’.120

Constans II’s plundering of the western provinces, has added the phrase ‘Grecorum avaricia’.
118 
My interpretation here is much indebted to the analyses of Cornford, ‘Paul the Deacon’s
Understanding of Identity’; see Cornford, ‘The Idea of the Roman Past’, pp. 196–97, and Pohl,
‘Le identità etniche nei ducati di Spoleto e Benevento’, esp. p. 95, which looks at the meaning
of ‘Roman’ in Paul the Deacon. Apart from the specific references to ‘Romans’ that I discuss
here, ‘Roman’ also is used in a generic sense, as in referring to customs of dress (Paul the Deacon,
Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 4, p. 54; iv. 22, p. 155), as well as with
reference to the ancient Romans (i. 1, pp. 47–48; i. 9, pp. 52–53; ii. 14, p. 81; ii. 23, pp. 85–86).
Regarding the description of the city of Rome in the Historia Langobardorum: Gatto, ‘Città e vita
cittadina’, pp. 201–04.
119 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii.  26,
pp. 86–87: ‘Nec erat tunc virtus Romanis, ut resistere possint, quia et pestilentia, quae sub
Narsete facta est’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 80).
120 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 31, p. 90:
‘Hic multos Romanorum viros potentes, alios gladiis extinxit, alios ab Italia exturbavit’ (Paul
the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 86); ii. 32, pp. 90–91: ‘His diebus
multi nobilium Romanorum ob cupiditatem interfecti sunt. Reliqui vero per hospites divisi,
ut tertiam partem suarum frugum Langobardis persolverent, tributarii efficiuntur’ (Paul the
Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, pp. 87–91). Regarding Roman/Lombard
relations: Wickham, Early Medieval Italy, pp. 67–73; Delogu, ‘Longobardi e Romani’; Capo,
‘Paolo Diacono’. These passages seem to all derive from Secundus of Trento. See Gardiner, ‘Paul
the Deacon’; Pohl, ‘Heresy in Secundus and Paul the Deacon’.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 333

From Book iii onwards, Romani appear as the inhabitants of Byzantine

(non-Lombard) territories in Italy more generally.121 As the Narses episode
demonstrates, these Romani are not equal members of the Empire, but sub-
jects of the Byzantines. But Paul’s Lombard History does not emphasize this
relationship of the Romani to the Greci; the Romani are most often portrayed
as a substantially independent collective waging war and making treaties with
the Lombards in Italy. Yet, though presented as distinct from the Greci, they
are not presented in more favourable terms. In fact, arguably the opposite is
true. The Romani are frequently presented as malicious, treacherous and cun-
ning, if generally unsuccessful in their scheming. For example, Gregory, patri-
cian of the Romans, kills the sons of Gisulf by ‘crafty treachery’ (dolosa fraude);
or in Ravenna ‘a drink was given him [the Lombard Aio] by the malice of the
Romans which made him lose his reason, and from that time he was never of
full and sound mind’; even in the last (sixth) book of the Lombard History,
telling of events of the early eighth century, we hear of Romans ‘swollen with
accustomed pride’ attempting to attack the Lombards.122 All in all the Italian
Romani are a regional identity in Italy, rather equivalent to other regional iden-
tities, though quite similar in temperament at least to their Greek masters.
A narrower, more particular, but little mentioned group of Romani are the
inhabitants of Rome, who, as in the episode of Constans II’s visit to the city, are
referred to as the populus Romanus.123 Headed by the pope, these Romani show

121 
Passages referring to the inhabitants of Byzantine territory: Paul the Deacon, Historia
Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii. 19, pp. 102–03; iv. 3, p. 117; iv. 8, pp. 118–19;
iv. 16, pp. 121–22; iv. 28, pp. 125–26; iv. 32, p. 127; iv. 33, p. 127; iv. 38, pp. 132–33; iv. 42,
p. 134; iv. 45, p. 135; v. 27, p. 154; v. 28, p. 154; v. 37, p. 157; vi. 27, p. 174; vi. 40, pp. 178–79;
vi. 49, pp. 181–82; vi. 51, pp. 182–83; vi. 54, pp. 183–84; vi. 56, p. 185. McCormick, ‘The
Imperial Edge’, addresses the question as to what extent there existed a distinct ‘Italo-Byzantine’
identity, arguing that there was a difference in outward appearance, names, language, and even
perhaps genetics, but also pointing to the movement of peoples, communication, and processes
of static integration (in particular, imperial ceremonies and church services) that knit Italy into
the Empire at large.
122 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iv.  38,
pp. 132–33; iv. 42, p. 134: ‘Ad hunc regem Arichis dux Beneventi filium suum Aionem direxit.
Qui cum Ravennam venisset, Ticinum pergens, ibi ei Romanorum malitia talis potio data est,
quae eum mente excedere faceret; atque ex eo tempore numquam pleni sanique sensus fuit’ (Paul
the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 198). vi. 54, p. 184: ‘Insequenti quoque
tempore Romani, elatione solita turgidi, congregati universaliter, habentes in capite Agathonem
Perusinorum ducem, venerunt ut Bononiam conprehenderent, ubi tunc Walcari, Peredeo et
Rotcari morabantur in castris’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 298).
123 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii.  24,
334 Maya Maskarinec

greater independence from the East. When Philippicus Bardanes (711–13)

sends ‘letters of perverted doctrine’ to Pope Constantine, the Pope rejects
them and:
The Roman people determined that they would not take the name of the heretical
emperor upon their documents, nor his likeness upon their coins. Hence his image
was not brought into the church, nor was his name mentioned in the solemnities
of the mass.124

Here the populus Romanus as a collective act forcefully and determinedly,

emphasizing their opposition to the Emperor — and it is worth emphasizing
again that Paul gives them, and not the Emperor, the adjective Roman. Apart
from this incident, however, the populus Romanus are given little agency in
Paul’s text. Elsewhere we hear of them dying of the plague and being divided
into seven parts by Pope Gregory.125 Thus, throughout the Lombard History,
even the Romani who inhabit the city of the pope do not appear remarkably
distinctive from other civic or regional identities in Italy.
In a sense we could parallel the Roman situation in Italy to that of the
‘death’ of the Lombard gens as foretold by a hermit’s prophecy in the Historia
Langobardorum: ‘But a time shall come when this sanctuary [the church of
John the Baptist] will be held in contempt and then the people itself (gens ipsa)
shall perish’, the accuracy of which Paul confirms.126 As Walter Pohl has argued,

pp. 104–05; v. 11, pp. 149–50; vi. 31, p. 175; vi. 34, pp. 175–76. Populus is generally used
throughout to describe the inhabitants of other cities. Much more frequent than references
to the city of Rome are those more specifically regarding the Roman church: i. 25, pp. 62–63;
ii. 10, pp. 78–79; iii. 20, p. 103; iii. 26, pp. 105–06; iv. 36, p. 128; vi. 4, pp. 165–66; vi. 29,
pp. 174–175; vi. 43, pp. 179–80.
124 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, vi.  34,
pp. 175–76: ‘Hic Filippicus Constantino papae litteras pravi docmatis direxit, quas ille cum
apostolicae sedis concilio respuit’. vi. 34, p. 176: ‘Statuit populus Romanus ne heretici imperato-
ris nomen aut chartas aut figuram solidi susciperent. Unde nec eius effigies in ecclesia introducta
est, nec nomen ad missarum sollempnia prolatum’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards,
trans. by Foulke, p. 227).
125 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii.  24,
pp. 104–05; v. 31, p. 154.
126 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, v. 6, pp. 146–47:
‘Veniet autem tempus, quando ipsud oraculum habebitur despectui, et tunc gens ipsa peribit.
Quod nos ita factum esse probavimus, qui ante Langobardorum perditionem eandem beati
Iohannis basilicam, quae utique in loco qui Modicia dicitur est constituta, per viles personas
ordinari conspeximus, ita ut indignis et adulteris non pro vitae merito, sed praemiorum datione,
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 335

this death of the Lombard gens is not the end of the Lombard people, but the
end of the Lombards as a political identity. With the Frankish conquest, the
rule of the regnum of Italy and the Lombard people has passed into the hand of
the gens Francorum. In this kingdom, ‘the gens Langobardorum was not its sub-
ject any more but its object; still, the Lombards retained their ethnic identity
and some of the political potential that history had created’.127
Similar, but rather more complicated, is the situation of the Romani in Italy.
Likewise, they are no longer politically autonomous; rather, they are ruled over
by the Byzantines. The Romani are now the objects of rule, not co-subjects of
an Empire. In this transition with Romani — one regional identity — subordi-
nated to the Greci — another regional identity — we can locate the end of the
Roman Empire. Still, as in the case of the Lombards, loss of political authority
is not equated with the end of the Romani: Romani still persist in Italy, thus
retaining their ‘political potential’ and ‘regional’ identity.
Yet one should not push the comparison too far. In the end, examining the
passages referring to Romans in the Historia Langobardorum establishes fewer
conclusions about these Romans and the nature of Roman identity than empha-
sizing that the text is a history of the Lombards, not of the Romans. Paul’s focus
throughout is not on telling the story of the Romans. Perhaps Paul even pur-
posely minimizes the ‘Romanness’ in his history, offering less of a resource of
Roman identity for any of the contemporary powers of his day (Byzantines,
Franks, or papacy) to assert themselves as the successors of the Roman Empire.
Nonetheless he does not go so far as to eliminate Romani from his text.
To summarize; by the end of Paul’s Lombard history, the rather less remark-
able eighth-century Byzantines are no longer presented as the unique Roman
Empire of the past. Instead, they are a regional power; they are Christians, but
without an exclusive bond to Christianity. There remain civic and regional
‘Roman’ identities in Italy, but Paul the Deacon does not allow the survival of
a Roman imperial identity. Naturally, even in Italy, this was only one way to
interpret Roman history. In my final section, I will turn to an alternate reading
of Roman history; the so-called seventeenth book, a text that, remarkably, uses
excerpts of Paul’s Historia Langobardorum to tell a different story.

isdem locus venerabilis largiretur’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke,
p. 219). See also n. 112.
127 
Pohl, ‘Gens ipsa peribit’, p. 75.
336 Maya Maskarinec

4. Prolonging the Roman Empire:

A Seventeenth Book to the Historia Romana
Sometime before 900, that is, roughly within the century after Paul the Deacon,
an anonymous compiler undertook the task of continuing Paul the Deacon.128
Stitching together passages of Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum that
discuss the Romans, the compiler constructed a continuation of the Historia
Romana from Justinian (527–65) to 730. Placed after Paul the Deacon’s sixteen
books of Roman history, this text, assembled from the words of Paul himself,
became the seventeenth book of the Historia Romana. This remarkable text,
although constructed almost exclusively from Paul’s Lombard history, manages
to offer an alternative reading of the history of the Roman Empire. The com-
piler accomplished this by selectively choosing passages and combining them
into a self-sustaining text added on to Paul’s Roman history.129 As I will show
in this section, the seventeenth book manages to prolong the Roman Empire
up to what the text characterizes as the start of Byzantine iconoclasm in 730,
even as it restricts this Empire, politically and territorially, to the East and, in
the words of Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum, shows the religious
and political dimensions of this constricted Roman Empire visibly unravel-
ling. As the Roman Empire becomes more elusive, so do its Romans, leaving it
questionable whether and where Romans can still persist without an empire to
contain them.
It is difficult to contextualize the seventeenth book. The oldest manuscript
that includes this text has been dated to the late ninth or early tenth century, and

128 
More substantial and well-known is the continuation of the Historia Romana by
Landolfus Sagax around 1000, which expanded the Historia Romana into twenty-six books
that continue the history up to 813. Landolfus probably worked in southern Italy. His pri-
mary source for the later history was Anastasius Bibliothecarius’s Latin version of Theophanes
Homologetes. Recently discussed in Chiesa, ‘Storia romana e libri di storia romana’, pp. 247–50.
129 
The text of the seventeenth book is included in the edition of the Historia Romana by
Crivellucci. Martini, A Catalogue of Manuscripts, n. 26, corrects some of Crivellucci’s readings
of the oldest manuscript. The passages of the Historia Langobardorum include: i. 25–26 (up to
‘virtutibus effulsit’); ii. 1–3, 4 (only beginning ‘Inter haec Iustiniano’)–5, and 11; iii. 11–12,
15, 17–18, 20, 22–26; iv. 26, 33, 36, 49–50 (only up to ‘suam patriam repedavit’); v. 6–14,
30; vi. 4, 11–14, 23, 31–32, 34, 36, 41, 47, 54, 49 (the ending has been rearranged by the com-
piler). Apart from minor wording changes (in cc. 10, 39, 51–53) the only text not from Paul
the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum is a sentence in c. 49, taken from Bede, Chronica, ed. by
Mommsen, a. 589, pp. 319–20, and the incipit and first half sentence of the text. I will discuss
these changes in more depth below.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 337

its production has been located in a northern Italian scriptorium.130 In this man-
uscript, immediately following the sixteenth book, the text segues: ‘Here begins
the seventeenth book, which we have excerpted from the history of the Winnili
[that is, the Lombards], which certainly was composed by the author earlier
mentioned’.131 We know little more to anchor the context or circumstances of
the text’s formation than the indications the text itself gives. It presents itself as
the little book (libellus) that Paul the Deacon promised but never completed,
self-consciously using the text of Paul the Deacon’s Lombard history.
As the likely north Italian provenance of the earliest manuscript suggests, the
origins of the text are most probably to be placed in ninth-century north Italy.
In particular, the excerpts of the seventeenth book are extremely similar, though
not identical, to the excerpts of Paul the Deacon’s Lombard history found in a
well-known and fascinating miscellany, the Epitome Phillipsiana from ninth-
century Verona.132 As Laura Pani has demonstrated, these two texts must be
related since both share a short excerpt from Bede (located at precisely the same
point in the text) — one of the two lines in the seventeenth book not taken
from Paul the Deacon.133 But since both the excerpts in the Verona miscellany
and the seventeenth book contain passages of the Historia Langobardorum not
included in the other, both compilers must have had access to more complete
versions of the Lombard history and it is impossible to postulate securely which
of the two textual versions came first. In any case, this relationship suggests that
the seventeenth book was constructed in northern Italy. Similar excerpts, again
including the sentence from Bede, but also not identical to either those of the

130 
Virginia, Private Collection (formerly Oslo, Schøyen, MS 50). The most thorough
description is found in Martini, A Catalogue of Manuscripts, no. 26; also see Kraus, Cimelia,
pp. 138–39. Bernard Bischoff consulted by Kraus hypothesized that it was written in ninth-/
tenth-century north Italy. I am grateful to David Ganz, Richard Corradini, and Laura Pani for
examining some plates. They agree that this dating/localization is probable. A north Italian prov-
enance is also made more probable by the fact that this manuscript is listed in the Nonontola
catalogue of 1355 and possibly already in that of 1002–35: Gullotta, Gli antichi cataloghi, p. 82,
n. 100, and pp. 161–63.
131 
Virginia, Private Collection (formerly  Oslo, Schøyen, MS 50), fol.  93 r: ‘INCIPIT
LIBER .xvii. QUEM EX VVINILORUM [historia] DECERPSIMUS | A PRAEFATO QUAE CONSTAT
AUCTOR E EDITA’. Above ‘winilorum’ there is an explanatory note: ‘.i. langobardorum.’.
132 
See above nn. 18–19.
133 
Pani, ‘La transmissione dell’Historia Langobardorum’, pp. 399–403, includes a com-
parison of the excerpts in both, but does not offer her own hypothesis, noting only that the
passage from Bede excludes the possibility that the two compilations were entirely unrelated
(pp. 383–84).
338 Maya Maskarinec

seventeenth book or the Verona miscellany, are likewise found in another north
Italian text, John the Deacon’s Chronicon Venetum.134 A north Italian context
for the seventeenth book’s formation is further supported by the half sentence
seemingly independently composed by the compiler — a half sentence not
included in the Verona miscellany. Here the term Pelasgum is used to refer to
the Greeks.135 This is an unusual term neither found in Paul the Deacon nor in
most other texts of the period. Agnellus of Ravenna does, however, use the term
Pelasgi for Byzantines twice in his Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, writ-
ten in the 830s/840s, again suggesting a north Italian origin of the text.136
The underlying logic of the seventeenth book is easily identifiable. The text
assumes the imperial model of the earlier books of the Historia Romana and
attempts to situate the text of Paul’s Lombard History within such a frame-
work. As a result the compiler forms a continuous, if sometimes rather stac-
cato, narrative that includes an assortment of material. The Byzantine Empire
is understood as the continuation of the Roman Empire, the rise of which had
been traced by Eutropius and the continuation of which had been followed by
Paul the Deacon. As the earlier sixteen books had done, the seventeenth book
arranges itself according to the succession of emperors. Like the earlier books
of the Historia Romana, the result is a text punctuated at marked intervals by
the depositions, deaths, and ascensions of new Roman emperors. In the earliest
surviving manuscript, this framework of imperial succession was particularly
reinforced by a list of Roman emperors, from Augustus to Leo III (717–41),
immediately following the seventeenth book.137

134 
John the Deacon, Chronicon Venetum, ed. by Pertz, pp. 4–38. These excerpts also do not
include the seventeenth book compiler’s independent half sentence nor the compiler’s other
textual changes.
135 
The Pelasgians were considered to be the inhabitants of Greece before they were
Hellenized. There also existed a legend, however, that inhabitants of Italy, especially the
Etruscans, were descended from the Pelasgians. See Briquel, Les Pélasges en Italie.
136 
Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontifialis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, ed. by Deliyannis, c. 143, p. 321:
‘Post mortem uero Iustiniani augusti leuauerunt super se Pelasgi nouum imperatorem, et constitu-
erunt eum dominum uniuersae terrae, ac imperium confirmatum fuit in manu eius’. Agnellus also
uses Bizantini (e.g. c. 153, p. 331), Greci (e.g. c. 86, p. 253), Danai (c. 140, p. 317) and Mirmidoni
(c. 143, p. 322) for the Byzantines. These diverse terms seem to be part of Agnellus’s use of classical
sources, in particular Virgil, to lend rhetorical weight to his text. Virgil uses the term Pelasgi for the
Greeks throughout the Aeneid and even tells that they were the first to have held the Latin borders
(‘qui primi finis aliquando habuere Latinos’): Virgil, Aeneid, ed. by Conte, viii. 600–03, p. 252. I
am grateful to Francesco Borri for alerting me to Agnellus of Ravenna’s use of Pelasgi.
137 
Virginia, Private Collection (formerly  Oslo, Schøyen, MS 50), fols  107 r–109 v:
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 339

To construct this continuation of the Roman Empire, the compiler excerpted,

generally speaking, only those passages of the Historia Langobardorum referring
to Byzantine history. He omitted most of the Lombard History with its descrip-
tions of Lombards, Franks, and other peoples of the Mediterranean. The result-
ing text is about a fifth of the size of the Lombard History. Nonetheless, the
seventeenth book is still on the long side in comparison to the earlier books of
the Historia Romana; it is more than double the length of any of books eleven
to sixteen. Not surprisingly, given that the text is constructed out of a Lombard
history, it necessarily focuses, even more so than Paul the Deacon’s continua-
tion of Eutropius, on events occurring in the West, and in particular in Italy
(although as I will argue the compiler’s interest was not Italy per se).
Although upholding the ‘Byzantine’ Empire as the continuation of the
Roman Empire, the compiler had a very particular understanding of this
Empire — restricting it, territorially and politically, to the East. This is already
signalled in the opening line of the seventeenth book, which is also the com-
piler’s only independent half-sentence:
Thus as it was described, when the Empire of the Romans had already ceased
among the Itali and many peoples were raging against them [the Itali], so that
it [the Empire] had gone over to Greek jurisdiction (ius…Pelasgum) at this time
by good fortune, Justinian Augustus was ruling this same Roman Empire.138
[Bold = Compiler; Regular = Paul the Deacon]

With ‘ut premissum est’ the compiler refers back to the passage in the fifteenth
book of the Historia Romana where Paul had described how the power of the
Romans ceased in Rome.139 Unlike Paul, however, the compiler does not refer
to Rome, but to the Itali, the inhabitants of Italy. Thus the compiler has region-
alized and broadened the category over which Roman power is said to have
ceased. The compiler also similarly shifts Roman identity, referring to an impe-
rium Romanorum, the empire of the Romans, not the imperium Romanum, the

‘Augustus regnauit annis .lvi. uixit annos lxxv obit morte communi in opido campaniae attel-
lae | Tiberius regnauit […] Leo regnauit annos constanter viiii’.
138 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 1, p. 239: ‘Quum iam, ut
premissum est, Romanorum desineret apud Italos imperium plurimeque gentes irruerent
contra ipsos ad iusque pertransierat Pelasgum, hac tempestate Iustinianus Augustus Romanum
eundem felici sorte regebat imperium’ [in part Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed.
by Bethmann and Waitz, i. 25, p. 62]. Bold = Compiler; Regular = Paul the Deacon.
139 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xv. 10, pp. 214–15. Discussed
above n. 82.
340 Maya Maskarinec

Roman Empire Paul had described Justinian ruling. This is done even as the
compiler emphasizes by inserting ‘eundem’ (‘the very same’) that the empire
Justinian rules over is the very same — though to a reader of the Historia
Romana it may appear rather different — as the Roman Empire which has
irrevocably lost power among the Itali. These modifications indicate the phe-
nomenon of the seventeenth book: although interpreting the ‘Byzantines’ as
Romans, the compiler considers this Empire in much narrower terms, as com-
prising a particular people and, from the start, relegated to the Pelasgi.
Where the compiler came across passages in Paul’s Historia Langobardorum
that discuss Romani in Italy, he generally chose not to include them, only
excerpting the passages referring to eastern Byzantine history. It seems that
when the compiler came across Romani in Italy, he ‘translated’ them as Itali,
and thus not part of the Empire of the Romans (the Byzantines) nor relevant
to a Roman history. This is the case already at the beginning of the seventeenth
book. During the reign of Justinian, the History of the Lombards includes a long
description of a plague in Liguria, concluding that, ‘these evils happened to the
Romans only and within Italy alone, up to the boundaries of the peoples of the
Alamanni and the Bavarians’.140 But the seventeenth book does not include any
of this passage. Instead the compiler chose to excerpt only the text that immedi-
ately follows: ‘Meanwhile, the Emperor Justinian departed from life and Justin
the younger undertook the rule of the state (respublica) in Constantinople’.141
During the reign of Justinian, the compiler even, in one of very few
instances, modified the text of Paul the Deacon for the purpose of eliminating
Romani from the text. In the Narses episode (which I discussed above),142 the
compiler has changed Romani in their first occurrence to the vaguer ‘them’:
‘[…] Narses, after he had acquired much gold and silver and riches of other
kinds, incurred the great envy of them (ab his)’ [changed from ‘of the Romans
(ab Romanis)’].143 The change, however, makes the passage harder to under-

140 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 4, p. 74: ‘Et
haec quidem mala intra Italiam tantum usque ad fines gentium Alamannorum et Baioariorum
solis Romanis acciderunt’; (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 58).
141 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii.  9, p.  243: ‘Inter haec
Iustiniano principe vita decedente, Iustinus minor rem publicam apud Constantinopolim reg-
endam suscepit’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 58). Paul the
Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 4, p. 74; Bede, Chronica, ed.
by Mommsen, a. 521, p. 308.
142 
See above n. 96.
143 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 10, pp. 243–44: ‘Igitur
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 341

stand and it would seem that the compiler too recognized this, choosing not to
change the subsequent uses of Romani in the passage.
As the seventeenth book continues it tells of the Lombards’ entrance into
Italy. However, the compiler does not include the passages (from Book ii) of
Paul’s Lombard History that tell of the Romans’ lack of courage to resist the
invasion, nor of how the Lombards destroy and expel the Romans from Italy.144
Instead, having told of Narses’ death and the transport of his body and wealth
to Constantinople, the compiler picks up with a passage from Book iii of the
Historia Langobardorum with Justin ruling in Constantinople.145
Throughout the rest of the seventeenth book, the compiler continued,
quite comprehensively, to eliminate passages referring to Romani in Italy.146
Thus we neither hear of strife nor treaties between the Lombards and Romans.
For example, we do not hear of Rothari capturing ‘all the cities of the Romans
which were situated upon the shore of the sea from the city of Luna in Tuscany
up to the boundaries of the Franks’.147 Nor do we hear of any of the treacher-
ous deeds of the Romans, nor does the compiler tell us when the Roman peo-
ple are dying from pestilence. More generally, the compiler excluded passages
of Paul’s Historia Langobardorum that refer to the history of Italy, such as the
description of the reason for its name as well as the description of the Italian

deleta, ut dictum est, vel superata Narsis omni Gothorum gente, his quoque de quibus diximus
pari modo devictis, dum multum auri sive argenti seu ceterarum specierum divitias adquisisset,
magnam ab his [changed from ab Romanis] pro quibus multa contra eorum hostes laboraverat
invidiam pertulit’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 58). Cf. Paul the
Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 5, p. 75; cf. Bede, Chronica,
ed. by Mommsen, a. 523, p. 308; Liber Pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne, Iohannes III, pp. 305–07.
144 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii.  26,
pp. 86–87; ii. 31–32, pp. 90–91. See nn. 119–20.
145 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 12, pp. 244–45 [Paul the
Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii. 11, pp. 97–98].
146 
Passages referring to the ‘Italo-Byzantines’ in Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum,
ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, that are excluded in the seventeenth book: iii. 19; iv. 3; iv. 8;
iv. 16; iv. 28; iv. 32; iv. 38; iv. 42; iv. 45; v. 27; v. 28; v. 37; vi. 27; vi. 40; vi. 44; vi. 49;
vi.  51; vi.  54; vi.  56. Included is Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci,
xvii. 24, p. 254 = Historia Langobardorum, vi. 33, p. 127, which probably refers to the ‘Italo-
Byzantines’: in Gradus, Candidianus is ordained bishop by the Romans. Yet it is somewhat
ambigious whether this refers to the Byzantines or the church in Rome.
147 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iv. 45, p. 135:
‘Igitur Rothari rex Romanorum civitates ab urbe Tusciae Lunensi universas quae in litore maris
sitae sunt usque ad Francorum fines cepit’ (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by
Foulke, p. 199).
342 Maya Maskarinec

provinces.148 In another of the few subtle changes to Paul’s text, the compiler
eliminated a mention of Italy: ‘While these things occurred [in Italy (in Italia)
is omitted], a heresy arose in Constantinople […]’.149 This is a textual change
that makes the narrative flow more smoothly since the previous line in the sev-
enteenth book does not refer precisely to Italy (it relates how the Archbishop
Theodore and the Abbot Adrian are sent by Pope Vitalian to Britain and how
Theodore described the penance necessary for sinners) — but this in itself is yet
another indication that the compiler’s interest is not Italy per se.
As a result, what we have is a rather paradoxical situation; to constitute a
Roman history the compiler incorporates text that discusses Greci. At the same
time, insistent that this Roman Empire exists only in the East, the compiler has
omitted many of the western Romani that could be found in Paul the Deacon’s
Lombard History, as well as ‘Italian’ history more generally. So whereas Paul
in his Lombard History maintained civic and regional ‘Roman’ identities in
Italy, the compiler eliminated these. Instead the compiler constructed a Roman
Empire that is remarkably long lasting, but which, composed only of rather
ineffectual Greci in the East, in its geographical extent and political ability is
rather unremarkable. This is the result of the interpretation of the inhabitants
of Italy as Itali, not Romani, but also suggests a particular relationship between
Empire and Romanness: Romans inhabit an Empire. Romans, the compiler
implies, can exist only where there is an empire to contain them.
The seventeenth book does not set itself an easy task and unsurprisingly
struggles in its attempt to keep the Roman Empire alive. As the compiler never
modified the text of Paul’s Lombard History by inserting text, the seventeenth
book inevitably charts a dissolute and dissolving Empire. Particularly strained,
however, is its effort to retain the Christian dimension of the Roman Empire.
This is especially the case since the pope in Rome — and not the emperor in
Constantinople — is acknowledged as the guardian of the Christian faith.
This leads us to the highly significant dimension of the seventeenth book,
which I have not yet addressed: the compiler’s inclusion of Roman religious

148 
Excluded passages: reason for Italy’s name, Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum,
ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, ii. 24, p. 86; description of Italian provinces: ii. 14–23, pp. 81–86;
generic references to the Romans and references to Roman history: i. 1, pp. 47–48; i. 4, p. 49;
i. 9, pp. 52–53; ii. 14, p. 81; ii. 23, pp. 85–86; iv. 22, p. 124.
149 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 38, p. 262: ‘Dum haec [in
Italia omitted] geruntur, heresis apud Constantinopolim orta est’ (Paul the Deacon, Historia
Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, vi. 4, pp. 165–66; Paul the Deacon, History of the
Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 253).
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 343

history. Whereas Paul was content to separate imperial and Christian his-
tory and portray the Christian church with its authority, the pope in Rome,
as overlapping less and less with the Empire, the compiler continues to regard
Christianity as integral to the Roman Empire and relevant to a Roman his-
tory. Put another way, the seventeenth book interprets both the Byzantine
Empire and Christianity as ‘Roman’, but recognizes the Roman emperor as the
Romans’ political authority and the pope in Rome as the Romans’ religious
authority. The compiler struggles to tell both tales of Romanness, since, despite
the tensions between the two, he refuses either to conflate them or eliminate
one as a category of Romanness.
In order to tell Roman religious history the compiler included, interspersed
among the passages about the Byzantines, numerous excerpts that refer primar-
ily, or exclusively, to important Christian events and persons, in particular the
papacy.150 Not surprisingly given that most of Paul’s passages about the papacy
had been taken from the Liber Pontificalis, correspondingly they often strive to
legitimize and praise the papacy.151 The compiler makes no attempt to smooth
over this growing divergence between Constantinople and Rome. For exam-
ple, in a passage that makes no reference to the eastern Empire, the compiler
includes excerpts about Gregory the Great organizing all the people of Rome
into a sevenfold litany to exterminate the pestilence and sending missionaries
to Britain.152 Described in depth is the Three Chapters Controversy — which
may again be an indication of the text’s north Italian’s provenance, since these
passages make reference to north Italy. Although, as Walter Pohl has demon-

150 
Passages focusing on Christian events include: Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed.
by Crivellucci, xvii. 5, p. 241 [Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and
Waitz, i. 26, pp. 63–64]; xvii. 17, p. 250 [Historia Langobardorum, iii. 20, p. 103]; xvii. 19–22,
pp. 251–53 [Historia Langobardorum, iii. 23–26, pp. 104–08]; xvii. 24, p. 254 [Historia
Langobardorum, iv. 33, p. 127]; xvii. 37, pp. 261–62 [Historia Langobardorum, v. 30, p. 154].
However, not all passages about the papacy from the Historia Langobardorum are included.
References to popes not included are ii. 10, pp. 78–79; iv. 5, p. 117; vi. 29, pp. 174–175; and
vi. 43, pp. 179–80.
151 
For an overview of shifting papal ideology and foreign relations in the seventh to ninth
centuries see Noble, ‘The Papacy in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries’; Delogu, ‘The Papacy,
Rome and the Wider World’.
152 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 20–21, pp. 251–52 (Paul
the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii. 24–25, pp. 104–05;
iii. 24 = much shortened version of Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch and Levison,
x. 1–2; Historia Langobardorum, iii. 25 = Liber Pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne, Gregorius I,
pp. 312–14, also quoted in Bede, Chronica, ed. by Mommsen, a. 531, p. 309).
344 Maya Maskarinec

strated, Paul the Deacon has misrepresented the issue, presenting passages both
in support and against the schism, the compiler included all the relevant pas-
sages, thus further propagating Paul’s confusion.153 Close details of the event
and establishing their accuracy were not the compiler’s interest, but rather he
sought out all the passages that tell of the controversy. Again it is the pope who
is portrayed in the most favourable light as the upholder of orthodoxy.
Thus the seventeenth book’s primary subjects, the Byzantines, are presented
in an increasingly unfavourable light, while the papacy is accorded respect and
authority. As the seventeenth book progresses, the passages incorporated by
the compiler show the growing independence of the papacy from the eastern
Empire.154 When Rome is besieged, we see that Pope Pelagius can be ordained
pontifex Romanae Ecclesiae without the authority of the emperor.155 Upon Pope
Boniface’s request, the emperor confirms that Rome as the ‘see of the Roman
and Apostolic Church should be the head of all churches’.156 Constans II’s
expedition to Italy and his ‘sack of Rome’ are described in full detail, as are the
Roman people’s refusal to follow the orders of Philippicus Bardanes.157

153 
Pohl, ‘Heresy in Secundus and Paul the Deacon’, pp. 243–64. Passages included are Paul
the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 17, p. 250 [Paul the Deacon, Historia
Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii. 20, p. 103] (from a papal perspective, but mis-
understands the events); xvii. 22, pp. 252–53 [Historia Langobardorum, iii. 26, pp. 105–07]
(Secundus of Trento, a schismatic view); xvii. 44, p. 264 [Historia Langobardorum, vi. 14,
pp. 168–69] (Bede’s Chronica/Liber Pontificalis).
154 
There is a vast literature regarding the development of ideas of papal primacy. A useful
place to begin is Noble, The Republic of St Peter. See also Mordek, ‘Der Römische Primat’, and
other essays in the same volume.
155 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 17, p. 250 [Paul the Deacon,
Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iii. 20, p. 171; Liber Pontificalis, ed. by
Duchesne, Pelagius II, pp. 309–11].
156 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 25, p. 254: ‘Hic rogante
papa Bonifacio statuit sedem Romanae et apostolicae ecclesiae ut caput esse omnium eccle-
siarum, quia ecclesia Constantinopolitana prima se omnium ecclesiarum scribebat’ (Paul the
Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, pp. 177–78). Paul the Deacon, Historia
Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, iv. 36, p. 128; Liber Pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne,
Bonifatius III., p. 316, also quoted in Bede, Chronica, ed. by Mommsen, aa. 535–36, p. 310.
157 
Constans’ expedition to Italy: Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci,
xvii. 28–34, pp. 256–61 [Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and
Waitz, v. 6–12, pp. 146–50]. Philippicus Bardanes: xvii. 46, p. 265 [Historia Langobardorum,
vi. 3, p. 165].
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 345

The growing tension comes to the fore in the last chapter, which describes
the start of Byzantine iconoclasm. Unlike in the rest of the excerpts, however,
the compiler does not follow the exact order of Paul’s Lombard History:
[Historia Langobardorum, vi. 49 (second half )]: At this time the Emperor Leo
burned the images of the saints placed in Constantinople and ordered the Roman
pope to do the like if he wished to have the emperor’s favour, but the pope disdained
to do this thing.158 Also the whole of Ravenna and of Venetia resisted such com-
mands with one mind, and if the pope had not prohibited them they would have
attempted to set up an emperor over themselves. [vi. 49 (first half )]: At this time
King Liudprand besieged Ravenna and took Classis and destroyed it. Then Paul the
Patrician sent his men out of Ravenna to kill the Pope, but as the Lombards fought
against them in defence of the pope and as the Spoletans resisted them on the Sala-
rian bridge as well as the Tuscan Lombards from other places, the design of the
Ravenna people came to naught. [vi. 54 (near end)]: Again when Hildeprand the
nephew of the king and Peredeo the duke of Vincentia got possession of Ravenna,
the Venetians suddenly attacked them. Hildeprand was taken by them and Pere-
deo fell fighting manfully. [vi. 49 (end)]: During the same time the Emperor Leo
went on to worse things so that he compelled all the inhabitants of Constantinople
either by force or by blandishments, to give up the images of the Saviour and of his
Holy Mother and of all the saints wherever they were, and he caused them to be
burned by fire in the midst of the city. And because many of the people hindered
such wickedness from being done, some of them were beheaded and others suffered
mutilation in body. As the Patriarch Germanus did not consent to this error he was
driven from his see and the presbyter Anastasius was ordained in his place.159

158 
It is worth noting that Paul the Deacon was clearly writing with hindsight here. For a re­
assessment of iconoclasm in the East see Haldon and Brubaker, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era.
159 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 51–53, pp. 267–68: ‘[Paul
the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, vi. 49, pp. 181–82
(second half )]: Hac tempestate Leo imperator apud Constantinopolim sanctorum imagines
depositas incendit Romanoque pontifici similia facere, si imperialem gratiam habere vellet, man-
davit. Sed pontifex hoc facere contempsit. Omnis quoque Ravennae exercitus vel Veneciarum
talibus iussis uno animo restiterunt, et nisi eos pontifex prohibuisset, imperatorem super se
constituere sunt adgressi. [vi. 49, p. 181 (first half )]: Eo tempore rex Liutprandus Ravennam
obsedit, Classem invasit atque destruxit. Tunc Paulus patricius extra Ravennam misit qui pon-
tificem interimerent; sed Langobardis pro defensione pontificis repugnantibus, Spoletanis in
Solario positis et ex aliis partibus Langobardis Tuscis resistentibus, consilium Ravennantium
dissipatum est. [vi. 54, pp. 183–84 (near end)]: Rursus quum Ravennam Hildeprandus, regis
nepos et Peredeo Vicentinus dux optinerent, inruentibus subito Veneticis, Hildeprandus ab
eis captus est, Peredo viriliter pugnans occubuit. [vi. 49, p. 182 (end)]: Per idem tempus Leo
Augustus ad peiora progressus est, ita ut compelleret omnes Constantinopolim habitantes tam
vi quam blandimentis, ut deponerent ubicumque haberentur imagines tam Salvatoris quamque
346 Maya Maskarinec

[Not Included: Middle of vi.  49: Also king Liudprand attacked Feronianum,
Mons Bellius, Buxeta, and Persiceta, Bononia and the Pentapolis and Auximum,
fortresses of Emilia. And in like manner he then took possession of Sutrium but
after some days it was again restored to the Romans.160]

The compiler’s rearranging is not dramatic, but it has reoriented Paul’s text.
First the compiler switched around the order of two passages of Paul’s text to
increase the emphasis on Byzantine iconoclasm. He describes Leo’s iconoclasm
and then he tells how the Lombard King Liudprand fought in defence of the
pope, rather than vice versa.161 This suggests that the Lombards’ actions were in
response to Leo’s iconoclasm, rather than an unrelated event that preceded it.
Then, as done throughout the seventeenth book, the compiler omitted a pas-
sage referring to Romani in Italy: how Liudprand and his Lombards attacked
the Romani. Instead the compiler jumped forward to include a passage about
Ravenna and the Venetians; this likely reflects the interests and context of the
north Italian compiler. In the last line of the seventeenth book, the compiler
returns to events in Constantinople and tells of the increasing wickedness of
the Emperor Leo and the unwillingness of both the people and the church of
Constantinople to comply with the heretical emperor. The Roman Empire, it
seems, is falling apart. In Constantinople the final shreds of its Christian legiti-
macy are now under attack by the emperor.
What we are left with is no longer an empire as a reader of the Historia
Romana would have come to recognize it. It is an empire neither as a frame-
work encompassing various territories and peoples, nor as the upholder of
orthodoxy encompassing all Christians. Instead, there are heretical Greci in
the East. At this point, we can almost see the compiler visibly throwing up his
hands in despair. Imperium has given way to regnum, Romans to Greeks; now

eius sanctae genitricis vel omnium sanctorum, easque in medio civitatis incendio concremare
fecit. Et quia plerique ex populo tale scelus fieri praepediebant, aliquanti ex eis capite truncati,
alii parte corporis multati sunt. Cuius errori Germanus patriarcha non consentiens, a propria
sede depulsus est, et eius in loco Anastasius presbiter ordinatus est’ [Historia Langobardorum,
vi. 49, pp. 181–82; Liber Pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne, Gregorius II, i, pp. 396–410] (Paul the
Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, pp. 289–93; 297–98).
160 
Not Included: Middle of Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by
Bethmann and Waitz, vi. 49, pp. 181–82: ‘Rex quoque Liutprand castra Emiliae, Feronianum
et Montembellium, Buxeta et Persiceta, Bononiam et Pentapolim Auximumque invasit. Pari
quoque modo tunc et Sutrium pervasit. Sed post aliquot dies iterum Romanis redditum est’
(Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, pp. 290–93).
161 
A useful overview of events is provided by Anastos, ‘Leo III’s Edict’.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 347

the emperor himself has renounced the Roman church. What is left to hold a
Roman history together?
After this point, there were no more passages about the Byzantines in Paul’s
Lombard History for the compiler to excerpt, so on one level the end of the
seventeenth book is simply due to the lack of a source. (Paul the Deacon’s
Historia Langobardorum only carries on for another decade or so. There was
one more episode involving Romans that the compiler could have included:
‘the Spoletans uniting with the Romans brought great disasters on the king’s
[Liudprand’s] army’.162 But again the compiler chose not to include Romani
in Italy as part of Roman history.) Nonetheless, it is tempting to suggest that,
with iconoclasm, even the compiler, who unlike Paul was willing to prolong the
Roman Empire into the eighth century, identified a breaking point — with the
papacy significantly positioned.
What comes next? One passage in the seventeenth book would seem to
offer a very subtle hint as to what might succeed the Roman Empire. Earlier
in the narrative, before the iconoclastic struggles between the pope and the
emperor had begun, the compiler retained a tantalizing sentence of Paul the
Deacon’s text about the Franks: ‘At this time in Gaul, in the kingdom of the
Franks, Anschis, the son of Arnulf, who is believed to be named after Anchises
the former Trojan, conducted the sovereignty under the title of steward of the
palace’.163 Since the Franks claim to possess an eponym that, like the lineage of
the Romans, can be traced back to Troy, might not they be legitimate succes-
sors of the Roman Empire? However, the seventeenth book, quite noticeably,
does not elaborate or expand on this idea. On the contrary, quite pointedly, the
Franks are not shown as the successors of the Roman Empire, either in the text
itself or in the list of emperors that follows the text in the oldest manuscript.
The absence of the Franks is especially evident when the seventeenth book
is contrasted with the excerpts included in the Epitome Phillipsiana. Although
almost identical in every other respect, the Epitome Phillipsiana continues past

162 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, vi. 56, p. 185:
‘Spoletini se cum Romanis sociantes, magna incommoda regis exercitui intulerunt’ (Paul the
Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 301).
163 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, xvii. 43, p. 264: ‘Hoc tempore
apud Gallias in Francorum regnum Anschis, Arnulfi filius, qui de nomine Anschise quondam
Troiani creditur appellatus, sub nomine maioris domui gerebat principatum’ [Paul the Deacon,
Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, vi. 23, p. 172] (Paul the Deacon, History
of the Lombards, trans. by Foulke, p. 266). On the reuse of the Trojan origin myth, see Reimitz,
‘Die Konkurrenz der Ursprünge’, and Anton, ‘Troja-Herkunft’.
348 Maya Maskarinec

Leo’s iconoclasm, subsequently including an excerpt that shows Charles Martel

sending his son Pippin to the Lombard King Liudprand and the Franks and
Lombards waging war together against the Saracens.164 By including passages
that emphasize the relationship between the Franks and the Lombards, the
Epitome Phillipsiana acknowledges the Franks. By not including them, the sev-
enteenth book pointedly chooses not to acknowledge the Franks as the succes-
sors of the Romans.165
Instead, what the seventeenth book has done, in a delicate manoeuvring act,
is use the text of the Historia Langobardorum to prolong a much less excep-
tional Roman Empire (and the Historia Romana) all the way up to the start
of Byzantine iconoclasm in 730. The relationship of this Empire with the
Christian church headed by the pope becomes increasingly strained. Yet the
compiler continued to emphasize the Christian dimension of ‘Romanness’.
Simultaneously, however, from the start the compiler has restricted the Roman
Empire exclusively to the East, interpreting the Italian Romani whom he found
in Paul’s text as neither part of this Empire nor relevant to a Roman history
(that is, not Romans). Yet as the text ends iconoclasm appears to break apart
the Roman Empire in the East, leaving only narrower regional and civic identi-
ties in its wake.

164 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, vi. 53–54,
pp. 183–84 (up to ‘ad Italiam rediit’). Noticeably the Epitome Phillipsiana does not include the
subsequent passage, also not included in the seventeenth book, which shows Liudprand waging
war against the Romani, nor the sentence that is included in the seventeenth book in which
Hildeprand and Peredeo, taking possession of Ravenna, are killed by the Venetians.
165 
Another telling contrast is a comparison of the seventeenth book with an 871 let-
ter from Louis  II to Basil  I, transmitted only in the so-called tenth-century Chronicon
Salernitanum, though generally considered, at least in its outlines, authentic: for an edition of
the letter alone, see Ludovici II. imperatoris epistola, ed. by Henze; cf. Chronicon Salernitanum,
ed. by Westerbergh, c. 107, pp. 101–21. Discussion: Wickham, ‘Ninth-Century Byzantium’,
pp. 253–54; Musca, L’emirato di Bari, pp. 118–23. In this letter Louis II defends his use of
the title of Roman emperor at length using many themes similar to the seventeenth book: the
‘Greekness’ of the Byzantines, the Byzantine emperors’ loss of legitimacy through their heresies,
and the pope’s authority in legitimizing a Roman emperor. The Greeks, the letter argues, have
themselves to blame for their loss of the Roman Empire. Had it not been for their heresies, all
the external challenges they faced would have been negligible. Their wrong opinions (kacodo-
sia), their abandonment of the seat of Empire, Rome (sedes imperii), the Roman people (gentem
Romanam), and the Roman language, Latin, have resulted in the transfer of the Roman Empire
elsewhere. The parallel is especially intriguing in that the Byzantine emperor is advised to con-
sult history, mainly biblical, but also Roman. Yet, though much of the logic resounds with the
text of the seventeenth book, the letter uses these examples to support the Frankish claim to
have become the new Roman emperors.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 349

In the end, the seventeenth book does not seem to establish any basis for
the continuation of the Roman Empire. None of the peoples of the seventeenth
book are presented in wholly favourable terms.166 The papacy is certainly pre-
sented most favourably, but as the upholder of orthodoxy, not as a political
power capable of establishing a new empire.167 The compiler, as the task of con-
tinuing the Historia Romana suggests, was on the search for Romanness. But
in the end he seems unable to find many Romans. Nowhere does the compiler
leave many resources of ‘Romanness’ in place for a continuation or reconstruc-
tion of a Roman Empire.168 Already in the opening line we are told that the
power of the Romans had ceased in Italy, and throughout the text no Romani
are left in Italy upon which a new Empire could built. ‘Romanness’ has vanished
from the West: it is not still lurking there for a new western Roman Emperor
to associate himself with. With iconoclasm and the corresponding loss of legiti-
macy of the Byzantines as the Roman Empire, Romanness seems also to have
vanished from the East. The seventeenth book does not suggest that the Roman
Empire will be resurrected in either East or West; the Roman Empire has irre-
trievably faded.
In the collapse of the Roman Empire, as understood by the seventeenth
book, the peculiarity and uniqueness of imperial Roman identity comes most
clearly into perspective. As I argued above, we could compare the ‘death’ of the

166 
Much material regarding Lombard strife with the Byzantine Empire (or with the papacy)
is excised, and when discussing the Lombards the seventeenth book could be said generally to
have a pro-Lombard attitude. However, it seems more accurate to characterize the seventeenth
book as uninterested in them. There is a relative abundance of material relating to Benevento,
but it seems probable that this is more the result of an interest in Constans II’s expedition to
Italy, than an interest in Benevento per se. About the interest in Benevento, see the introduction
in Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, pp. l–li.
167 
Paul the Deacon does not include much in the Historia Langobardorum that could be
construed as establishing the Roman church as the new Roman state, nor does the compiler seem
to have made an effort to include what little there was. For example he omits a passage showing
Liudprand confirming the patrimony of the Cottian Alps to the Roman church (Paul the Deacon,
Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, vi. 43, pp. 179–80). However, not all pas-
sages referring to the papacy are included (see n. 150). The favourable treatment of the papacy,
however, did lead Crivellucci to hypothesize that perhaps the seventeenth book was the product
of a clergyman; see his introduction in Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci, p. li.
168 
It should be noted for clarification that, of course, an Empire need not be Roman:
although the Romans were firmly entrenched as the prototype for Empire, there also circulated
throughout the Middle Ages ‘Rome-free’ imperial ideologies: Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire’.
350 Maya Maskarinec

Lombards and of the Romans in Paul’s Historia Langobardorum.169 Ruled over

by different peoples (Franks/Byzantines), the Lombards and Romans cease to
operate as a political body, though Romans and Lombards still continue to pop-
ulate Italy. The compiler of the seventeenth book, however, does not maintain
such a reservoir of Roman potential. ‘Romanness’ belonged to a certain mode
of imperial belonging; without an imperium to inhabit, the Romans too disap-
pear.170 The populus Romanus does not have the same durability as other forms
of identity. Instead of remaining Romans without an empire, the inhabitants of
the former Empire retain only their non-Roman, ethnic, civic, or regional iden-
tity — with the significant exception of the inhabitants of Rome, who, as still
today, remain Romans in a much more limited civic sense of the word.
Thus, the seventeenth book could be characterized as delegitimizing
‘Romanness’ as a potential resource for political organization. As a delegiti-
mizing text, the seventeenth book resonates well with the cultural climate of
ninth-century north Italy, where definite sympathies are hard to pin down.
For example, one could compare it with Agnellus’s Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae
Ravennatis, in which the Byzantines, the papacy, and the Lombards all receive
their share of abuse.171 For a more specific context of the seventeenth book’s for-
mation two speculations present themselves:
1) An early ninth-century date, with the seventeenth book as a reaction against
Frankish attempts to use Romanness and the Empire.172

169 
See end of section III above.
170 
For the sixth century see Greatrex, ‘Roman Identity in the Sixth Century’, who points
to empire as the key to Romanness, ‘the fundamental definition of a Roman in the empire of
Justinian was that of loyalty to the Emperor,’ as well as noting the importance of Christianity
(p. 268). On account of these two factors Greatrex argues for the elasticity of the category
of Romanness, suggesting that ‘ethnicity’ is peculiarly unhelpful in coming to grips with the
notion of Romanness or Roman identity in the sixth century (p. 278).
171 
See the introduction to Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontifialis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, ed. by
Deliyannis, pp. 3–19; Pizarro, Writing Ravenna. Regarding Byzantine and Roman traditions in
Ravenna see Brown, ‘The Interplay between Roman and Byzantine Traditions’. For the situation
in Italy more generally see Classen, ‘Italien zwischen Byzanz und dem Frankenreich’; Brown,
Gentlemen and Officers; Brown, ‘Byzantine Italy’. Regarding how peoples in the West, in par-
ticular in Italy, came to perceive themselves as inhabiting a post-Roman world, see Moorhead,
‘The West and the Roman Past’.
172 
As suggested by Peter Brown, perhaps the text could even be imagined as reacting to
Charlemagne’s taking of spolia from Ravenna after 787 (when Pope Hadrian I gave permission
for Charlemagne to take mosaics, marbles, and other materials from the palace at Ravenna). See
Brenk, ‘Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne’, pp. 108–09; Kinney, ‘Roman Architectural
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 351

2) A second possibility would be a much later date towards the end of the ninth
century, at the time of Louis II or later, as it became clear that the Frankish
experiment of a Roman Empire would not hold.
I cannot find concrete evidence for either of these ideas. However, the earliest
manuscripts associated with the excerpts that constitute the seventeenth book
do indicate the way in which the seventeenth book was involved in an ongoing
and ever more pressing search to legitimize the post-Roman world constituted
of ethnic kingdoms.
The ninth-century Epitome Phillipsiana, whose excerpts from Paul’s Historia
Langobardorum are otherwise almost identical to those of the seventeenth
book, continues further to show the Lombards and Franks collaborating for
the defence of Italy against the Saracen threat.173 This and the other histori-
cal selections included in the miscellany tell of a post-Roman world of gentes
(which includes the Franks) in the West, whose responsibility it now is (fol-
lowing the end of the Roman Empire) to act in defence of Christianity. The
oldest manuscript including the seventeenth book as such, from the ninth cen-
tury, evidences a similar urge to legitimize this post-Roman world of gentes.174
Following the seventeenth book and the list of Roman emperors up to Leo III
(717–41) is an exceedingly brief summary (roughly three hundred and thirty
words) of Lombard history from the Historia Langobardorum. This overview of
the Lombard migrations and kings, from their origins up to Rothari, provides
historical material relevant to a compilation focused on Italy and presents the
Lombards as among the gentes that replaced the Roman Empire.175 Both manu-

Spolia’, esp. pp. 147–49.

173 
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, vi. 53–54,
pp. 183–84 (up to ‘ad Italiam rediit’).
174 
See n. 130.
175 
This epitome is included in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica volume: Paul the
Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, p. 195. Like the seventeenth
book, this summary is extracted from Paul’s Lombard history. It is entitled De Regibus qui prae-
fuerunt winolis et statione eorum (‘Regarding the Kings Who Ruled Over the Winnili and their
Places of Residence’). The text, having clarified that the Winnili are the Lombards, enumerates
the kings of the Lombards and describes the locations through which the Lombards migrated
on their path southward from Scandinavia to Italy. Also provided are such details as the kings’
lengths of rule, their relationships, and their deaths. This brief text summarizes the basic outlines
of Lombard history which are entirely absent elsewhere in the compilation. The Lombards are
not, however, positioned as the successors to the Roman Empire. The Lombard leaders are con-
sistently referred to as kings, not emperors, ruling a regnum, not an imperium, nor is any other
352 Maya Maskarinec

scripts show a more articulated expression and legitimization of a post-Roman

world whose potential outlines are already discernible in the seventeenth book.
So who were the Romans?
In the first century ce, even before the establishment of the Roman Empire
of Augustus, Cicero wrote of Romanness as a second layer of identity:
I do indeed think that all municipal men have two homelands, one by nature and
the other by citizenship. […] So we too regard that place where we were born and
that place where we have been enfranchised as our homeland. But it is necessary for
the latter to stand first in our affection, to which the name ‘Republic’ has attached
itself to us all. For this we must die, for this we must give ourselves entirely, and
for this we must give all our possessions as though for sacrifice. But that homeland
which raised us is not much less sweet than that which has adopted us. Thus I
shall never say that this is not my homeland, though that one is greater and this is
contained in it.176

Roman identity, as described by Cicero, had a particular, almost paradoxical,

quality. Although one’s acquired, externally received identity, not one’s ‘inborn’
identity, one’s patria, the homeland to which one was assured to feel a natu-
ral bond, ‘Romanness’ (here defined as Roman citizenship in particular) over-
arched and overrode other forms of identity.
Throughout the centuries, the Roman identity described by Cicero had
changed dramatically. As Eutropius’s Breviarium indicates, by the late fourth
century Roman identity had lost its emphasis on citizenship and had become
closely bound up with the emperor and empire. By the eighth century when
Paul the Deacon came to rework Eutropius’s text, Roman identity had changed
contours yet again. The Roman Empire had become a Christian Empire and a
Christian dimension could not be omitted when telling Roman history. Yet as
the former Romans in the East came to be understood by Westerners as ‘Greeks’,

attempt made to assert their primacy. By ending with Rothari (636–52) and not Liudprand, the
last king described in Paul’s Lombard history and even mentioned in the seventeenth book, the
compilation further re-enforces its presentation of the Lombards as a historical phenomenon,
not as a contemporary power with which to be reckoned.
176 
Cicero, De legibus, II. 5, quoted and trans. by Farney, Ethnic Identity and Aristocratic
Competition, pp. 6–7: ‘ego mehercule et illi et omnibus municipibus duas esse censeo patrias,
unam naturae, alteram civitatis […] sic nos et eam patriam ducimus, ubi nati, et illam, a qua
excepti sumus. Sed necesse est caritate praestare, qua rei publicae nomen universae civitatis est;
pro qua mori et cui nos totos dedere et in qua nostra omnia ponere et quasi consecrare debemus.
Dulcis autem non multo secus est ea, qua genuit, quam illa, quae excepit. Itaque ego hanc meam
esse patriam prorsus numquam negabo, dum illa sit maior, haec in ea contineatur’.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 353

and post-Roman kingdoms that defined themselves in non-Roman terms estab-

lished themselves in the West, ‘Romanness’ became increasingly difficult to
find — as is demonstrated by the so-called seventeenth book of Roman his-
tory added on to Paul’s Historia Romana. In the East, the Byzantines continued
to vaunt themselves as Romans; in the city of Rome the inhabitants remained
Romans and, at times, ‘Roman’ was still used in contrast to the newer elites in
the ethnic kingdoms built out of former Roman provinces. But ‘Romanness’ as
a second overarching layer of identity had essentially slipped away.
Where Romanness survived, and even thrived, was in the manuscripts of
Roman history which continued to be copied throughout the Middle Ages.
They indicate that the peculiarity of Roman identity continued, despite (or
perhaps even because of ) the changed world, to captivate readers. The different
layers and interpretations of Roman history which were built onto Eutropius’s
text did not supplant each other, but offered a plurality of interpretations from
which medieval western audiences could choose. Eutropius’s ten-book Roman
history, Paul’s sixteen-book Roman history, Paul’s Lombard history, and the
seventeen-book Roman history all provided similar but differently nuanced
interpretations of the Roman past. They offered a profusion of Romans to
choose from, from mythic prehistory up to the eighth century: areligious
pagans, Christians, and heretics, in Rome, Italy, Constantinople, and the wider
Roman Empire. They more or less stressed the exceptionality of the Roman
Empire and reconfigured its relationship to Christianity. A range of readings of
the Roman Empire was made possible, from understanding the Roman Empire
as contemporary history, the history of the neighbouring Byzantine Empire,
to ancient history, an unparalleled singular achievement of the past. Nor were
these texts the only versions of Roman history available. Eutropius, Paul the
Deacon, or the seventeenth book could be expanded or contracted and situ-
ated in diverse manuscript combinations — and naturally other Roman his-
tories circulated too, such as Orosius, Livy, Lucan, or Josephus. These remind
us that the Roman Empire possessed and brought forth many histories. In the
fourth century, the pace of historical writing began to quicken, as a changing
world knotted itself more firmly to the Roman past, producing a vast and ever
growing corpus of Roman histories onto which later authors would continue to
build. Roman identity, in a plurality of interpretations, remained tangible and
actual, a force delineating the construction of past communities and offering
potentials for the future.
354 Maya Maskarinec

Appendix:
Summary of Texts and their Relationships
Texts:
Eutropius, Breviarium (10 Books) (ad 364–75)
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana (16 Books) (ad c. 770)
= New Beginning + Eutropius’s Breviarium (Bks 1–10) + Bks 11–16
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum (before ad 795/96)
Anonymous north Italian compiler, Historia Romana (17 Books)
(ninth century)1
= Paul’s Historia Romana (Bks 1–16) + 17th book
(excerpts of Paul’s Historia Langobardorum)

Appendix A: Versions of the Roman History2

Bold: Eutropius; Regular: earlier sources; Underlined: Paul the Deacon;
Underlined and Bold: 17th book (anonymous compiler)

Dedication: Paul the Deacon to Adalperga (often missing)

Preface: New Beginning of Book 1: Janus, Saturn > Romulus
Jerome’s Chronicle
Dedication: Eutropius to Valens (often missing)
Book 1: Foundation of Rome > Gallic Sack of Rome
Book 2: > End of the First Punic War (c. 241 bc)
Book 3: > The Defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War (c. 201 bc)

1 
A number of arguments suggest a ninth century north Italian compilation: the earliest
surviving manuscript containing this text, an Italian history book regarding the Roman past,
Virginia, Private Collection (formerly Oslo, Schøyen, MS 50), seems to be from ninth-century
north Italy; the similarity of the excerpts to those found in the Epitome Phillipsiana from ninth-
century Verona; the use of Pelasgi for the Greeks in the compiler’s only independent half sen-
tence, a term also found in Agnellus of Ravenna’s early ninth century Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae
Ravennatis.
2 
Based in part on: Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, ed. by Crivellucci; Cornford, ‘The
Idea of the Roman Past’.
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 355

Book 4: > Jugurthine War (c. 105 bc)

Book 5: Sulla and Marius (81 bc)
Book 6: Pompey and Caesar (ad 44)
Bks 1–6; Livy
Book 7: > Death of Domitian (ad 96)
Book 8: > Severus Alexander (ad 235)
Book 9: Maximus > Diocletian (ad 303)
Book 10: > Jovian (ad 364)
Bks 7–10; Suetonius, Enmann’s Kaisergeschichte
(hypothesized as common source for Aurelius Victor/Eutropius)
In Books 1–10, Paul the Deacon adds interpolations to Eutropius roughly 200
times (c. 3000 words)
Orosius’ Historiae Adversos Paganos, Epitome de Caesaribus, Jerome’s Chronicle
Book 11: Valentinian I > Theodosius I (ad 364–92)
Book 12: > ‘Barbarians’ cross into the Spanish Peninsula (ad 392–409)
Bks 11–12; Orosius (Bk 7), Epitome de Caesaribus
Book 13: > Death of Theodosius II (409–50 ad)
Orosius (Bk 7), Prosper
Book 14: > Marcianus (450–57 ad)
Prosper, Jordanes’ Getica
Book 15: > Zeno Augustus (457–91 ad)
Jordanes’ Getica
Book 16: > Justinian: ‘Quia vero restant adhuc quae de Iustiniani Augusti felici­
tate dicantur, insequenti Deo praesule libello promenda sunt’. (ad 491>552)
Liber Pontificalis
Book 17: Justinian > Leo III (Byzantine Iconoclasm) (>ad 730)
Excerpts of Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum3

3 
See n. 129, above.
356 Maya Maskarinec

Appendix B. Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum

Book 1: Winnili (who become the Lombards) in Scadinavia > Alboin’s rule, his
victory over the Gepids and marriage with Rosamund
Book 2: > Death of Alboin and the time without kings (ad 574–84)
Book 3: > Agilulf (ad 615)
Book 4: > Grimoald (ad 662)
Book 5: > Cunincpert (ad 700)
Book 6: > Death of Liudprand (>ad 744)
Unfinished?

Sources: Origo Gentis Langobardorum, Gregory of Tours’s Historiarum Libri Decem,

Liber Pontificalis, Secundus of Trento’s Historiola de Gestis Langobardorum (lost)
Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy 357

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 The Fading Power of Images:
Romans, Barbarians, and the Uses of a
Dichotomy in Early Medieval Archaeology

Philipp von Rummel*

T
he role of ethnic identities in the early Middle Ages has been a much
debated issue not only among historians, but also in archaeology.1 As
a result of this debate, the intricacy of ethnicity and ethnic identity as
analytical categories is now widely acknowledged. The number of studies which
aim at reconstructing ancient ethnicity from distribution maps and cultural
models alone is fortunately decreasing, whereas those who still have faith in
traditional methods occasionally complain that recent critical tendencies jeop-
ardize the status of archaeology as a historical discipline. The discussion within
this area of archaeology is fuelled by the problem that there is little consen-
sus on what we actually mean by ethnicity. To avoid terminological problems
as far as possible,2 it should be noted at the outset that the following discus-
sion relates to ‘ethnicity’ and ‘ethnic identity’ as expounded by Walter Pohl.3
In particular, we need to be aware of the fact that an ethnic name does not
correspond automatically and permanently to a stable group. Ethnic identity is

*  This work originated as part of the Wittgenstein Prize Project, which is supported by
the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) and led by Walter Pohl at
the Institut für Mittelalterforschung of the Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in
Wien. I would like to thank Walter Pohl, Roland Steinacher, Gerda Heydemann, Paul Zanker,
Henner von Hesberg, and Richard Neudecker for their critique and suggestions.
1 
Cf. most recently with bibliography: Pohl and Mehofer, eds, Archaeology of Identity; Pohl,
‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’.
2 
For more detail cf. von Rummel, ‘Gotisch, barbarisch oder römisch?’.
3 
Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101669
pp. 365–406 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
366 Philipp von Rummel

not an intrinsic quality, but something that must be constantly reproduced in a

respective discourse.4 This is also true for the central problem of this discussion,
that is, Roman ethnic identity and its analytical value in early medieval studies.

1. The Problem and its Relevance

In the following, I do not intend to discuss the fall of the Roman Empire. This
paper does not call into question the existence of Goths or Vandals, or other
groups with ethnic names, nor does it doubt that between the third and the
eighth centuries massive political, social, and economic changes took place.
Rather, I will focus on one particular problem, that is, on the transformation of
the interpretative framework through time. I would like to raise the question
of whether the familiar dichotomy between Roman and non-Roman is a useful
foundation upon which to base our explanation of archaeological phenomena
in the early Middle Ages. Taking its cue from the title of a famous book by
Paul Zanker,5 this paper questions the power of Roman images as our point of
departure for explanatory models in post-Roman Europe.
The key problem here is the image of Romanness in both a specific and a
wider sense — in its material representations and the ideas which they con-
vey. Images and other archaeological artefacts can be viewed as constituting a
body of social knowledge. They form part of an ‘order of discourse’, as Walter
Pohl explains.6 Like texts, images belong to the symbolic language that allows
to mark, communicate, legitimize, affirm, deny, or negotiate identity and differ-
ence among ethnic groups. Not only do they belong to this discourse, but they
also serve to translate the complexity of societies into more clearcut forms. The
Roman period was characterized by an ingenious handling of images, which
was tied to complex networks of social communication.7 Images were geared
towards representing the needs of the community; but since experience of the
present largely depends on knowledge of the past, contemporary imagery was
rife with traditional views. For centuries, the Augustean vision of Romanness
and the image of the ‘Other’ were of great importance in the Roman Empire.
This vision was itself largely bound to the Hellenistic binary division of the

4 
Pohl, ‘Archaeology of Identity’; Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups.
5 
Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus.
6 
Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’, pp. 27–32, 39.
7 
For an overview cf.  Hölscher, ‘Bildwerke: Darstellungen, Funktionen, Botschaften’;
Bergmann, ‘Repräsentation’.
The Fading Power of Images 367

world into Greeks and/or Romans on the one hand, and barbarians on the
other. Even if a homogenous Roman identity had always been an ideal rather
than reality,8 the gens togata, as a manifestation of Romanness, remained a liter-
ary and iconographic topos right into the fifth century and beyond, as did the
contrasting depiction of the barbarian. The political changes of the late fourth
and fifth century, however, led to a profound crisis of representation. Whereas
the fourth-century answer to this crisis was a strong emphasis on Roma aeterna,9
the fifth century brought about a need to redefine Rome in changed political
and social surroundings.10
Despite the growing body of scholarly work from different fields within
late antique and early medieval studies which addresses the crisis of Roman
identity in the West, it is surprising that even nowadays, much of it is based
on explanations better suited to the Augustan period than to the early Middle
Ages. ‘Roman’ in its essentialist meaning is still widely considered an objec-
tive parameter for the interpretation of early medieval problems. It is usually
combined with a non-Roman factor to form simple binary systems: Roman v.
barbarian, Roman v. German, Roman v. Gothic, Roman v. Lombard, and so
forth. It goes without saying that the counterparts of ‘Roman’ are also usually
conceived as essentialistic units. Many Roman authors would take much pleas-
ure in knowing how readily some modern historians and archaeologists buy
into their intellectual concepts. But it is also distressing to see just how much
impact, contrary to better knowledge, the generalized dichotomy between
Roman and barbarian/Germanic still has on almost every aspect of research
on the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, from historiography to
disciplinary boundaries to the establishment of research networks.11 Despite
various recent publications dedicated to problems of Romano-Germanic accul-
turation, it is well known today that, from a theoretical point of view, tradi-
tional methods developed in acculturation studies are not easily transferable
to the field of history. As defined by the anthropologists Redfield, Linton, and
Herskovits,12 the study of acculturation requires certain preconditions which

8 
Giardina, L’Italia Romana; Dench, Romulus’ Asylum.
9 
Cf. Paschoud, Roma aeterna.
10 
Maas, ‘Ethnicity, Orthodoxy and Community’; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the
Roman West; Pohl, Die Völkerwanderung.
11 
Cf. Pohl, ‘Die Anfänge des Mittelalters’; Pohl, ‘Vom Nutzen des Germanenbegriffs’;
Gillett, ‘The Mirror of Jordanes’.
12 
Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits, ‘Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation’, p. 149:
368 Philipp von Rummel

are, at least for the subject to which this volume is dedicated, almost impos-
sible to meet. The problem is rather straightforward: is it not possible to define
either clearly separated ‘different cultures’ nor ‘first contacts’ between cultures
in late antique and early medieval Europe.13
Nevertheless, the question of how new groups in Roman territory differed
from others, and how this difference varied in the course of time, remains an
important and legitimate one. More appropriate theoretical concepts, such as
hybridity or liminality, allow for a much more open-minded approach to these
problems.14 As a concept in late antique studies, hybridity is, however, feasible
only if it is not bound to the same sort of essentialist models that prevail in
traditional studies of acculturation.15 Recent archaeological studies on early
medieval cemeteries and settlements across Europe provide a wide range of
examples for the ways in which essentialist ethnic models serve as a starting
point for explaining the evidence. Critical approaches towards this practice are
usually countered with the allegation that, if archaeology were to follow recent
critical tendencies, it would lose its capacity to work historically, and that the
discussion poses a real threat to archaeology’s status as an independent aca-
demic field. Besides, the discussion has again become increasingly politicized;
this shows that different conceptions of the Migration Period largely depend
on one’s understanding of ancient ethnicity and identity. Historians, therefore,
face the constant challenge to assess the multiple levels of ‘collective memory’
and ‘social memory’ of different generations.16 Reassessing familiar presup-
positions does not inevitably lead to the disastrous outcomes that have been
predicted by some European scholars in recent years. Ancient societies can be
imagined in a number of different ways, and thus reveal the varying importance

‘Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals hav-
ing different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the
original culture patterns of either or both groups’.
13 
On the distinction of cultural groups, see Brather, ‘Kulturgruppe und Kulturkreis’. ‘First
contact’ did not exist in late antique and early medieval Europe, as every acting ‘foreign’ group
in this period had contact with the Roman Empire before entering Roman territory, or was a
product of the Roman Empire itself. For acculturation as a problem of methodology in histori-
cal research, see Gotter, ‘Akkulturation als methodisches Problem’.
14 
See, for example, Bhabha, The Location of Culture.
15 
As to these problems cf. Pieterse, Globalization and Culture.
16 
Cf. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. by Coser; Fentress and Wickham, Social
Memory; Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis; and on late Antiquity in particular Diefenbach,
Römische Erinnerungsräume, esp. pp. 1–19.
The Fading Power of Images 369

of the classical world for the explication and structuring of the modern world.
It is crucial to study and to discuss the rules according to which the differences
and similarities of human beings were shaped.
For the study of ethnic identity in this period, it is important to recognize
that traditional ways of thinking about rulership and Roman identity within a
Roman imperial framework underwent significant changes from the fifth cen-
tury onwards. They did not, however, disappear entirely. Ethnographers were
still able to describe the traditional distance between the uncivilized peoples
and their own society in ways that had not changed much since the time of
Herodotus. Time-honoured models persisted, yet the world which they were
supposed to explain was constantly changing. The discourse within which the
old models were used had to be continually adjusted to new circumstances, a
process that continues to the present day. Ancient Roman conceptions of social
classification still form part of our social memory, mainly by virtue of the sur-
viving Roman texts and their cultural authority which was reinvigorated since
the Renaissance. This also holds true for the sharp distinction between Romans
and barbarians discernible in different genres of Roman art and literature. If we
use dualistic models of Romanness and ‘Otherness’ to explain early medieval
phenomena, we need to consider the historical changes and continuities of the
concepts of ‘Roman’ and ‘barbarian’. To this end, we can distinguish three gen-
eral phases:
(i) Imperial Roman conceptions of Romans and barbarians
(ii) Ambiguities and challenges to the concept in the post-imperial West
(iii) Modern uses of the binary system
Of course, within these phases, modifications occurred in the perception and
depiction of barbarians. The important point for us, however, is that the general
aspects of the conceptual dichotomy between Romans and barbarians survived
surprisingly unchanged from Roman times right into modern historiography.
It seems that the redefinition of Romanness in the time of Augustus, its later
permanence, and its transformation in Christian thought has a much wider
impact on recent historiography than we usually tend to admit.17 The question
therefore is about the heuristic value of this concept for modern historiography
and archaeology, especially for interpreting cemeteries, which will be discussed
in Section 4 of this paper. Sections 2 and 3 lead up to this question by discuss-

17 
Paschoud, Roma aeterna. As to the transformation in Christian thought, cf. Corradini,
‘Die Ankunft der Zukunft’, and the contribution by Maya Mascarinec in this volume.
370 Philipp von Rummel

ing the apparent immutability and yet steady transformation of the contrast
between ‘Roman’ and ‘barbarian’. Section 5 concludes with a bid for a more
prudent use of the term ‘Roman’ in early medieval archaeology, and for an
explanatory framework that is more suitable to the period under consideration.

2. The Power of Images: Imperial Conceptions

of Romans and Barbarians (Phase I)
Within the Roman Empire, it had been common for centuries to set one’s own
Roman position within a binary system which was derived directly from Greek
thought, but which also built upon traditions that can be traced back as far as
Egypt and the Near East in the fourth century bc.18 According to this model,
the Greco-Roman world was surrounded by barbarians who embodied the
qualities, both positive and negative, of the Other. Imperial art and literature
forcefully instantiated this Gegenwelt, a clearly delineated opposite that illumi-
nated the uniqueness of the Roman world.19 It was a construct that had always
been based more on a theoretical discourse than on practical experience.
The model provided a neat and easily understandable means of express-
ing belonging and difference. Multifarious phenomena were thus reduced to
simplified images, which lent structure to their complexity and made it easier
to articulate them. The number of visual representations of outsiders rose dra-
matically under the Emperor Augustus. From then on, they would be among
the most popular themes of Roman representational art, and can be found in
almost every type of monument. The internal consolidation of the principate
demanded external success in order to legitimize Augustus’s reconfiguration of
the political structures of the Empire.20 The public expressions of the contrast
between outsiders and Romans, as well as of the subjugation of the Other, also
served to underline the ideology of Roman world domination, stressed at the
time and claimed throughout the following centuries.21 This contrast between
Roman and barbarian, and the overthrowing of the latter, remained a constant
theme in texts and images during the consolidation of the Empire under the
tetrarchs, as well as under the Constantinian and Theodosian dynasties. It

18 
Moscati, Historical Art in the Ancient Near East; Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of
the Ancient Orient, pp. 33–35 and 43–44.
19 
Zanker, ‘Die Gegenwelt der Barbaren’.
20 
Kienast, Augustus, pp. 92–100.
21 
Cf. Schneider, ‘Barbar II (ikonographisch)’.
 The Fading Power of Images

Figure 1. ‘The Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus’, Roma, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Altemps. c. ad 260.
Photo: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Rom, Inst. Neg. 58.2011.
371
372 Philipp von Rummel

clarified Rome’s mission to civilize the barbarians and simultaneously justified

Roman imperialism. This Roman self-image was unimaginable without the
sharp otherness of the barbarian.
The well-known Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus, dating from c. ad 260, is a
prime example of this iconography. The Roman army’s triumph which it depicts
hardly looks like a real battle. It is more a representation, almost a caricature,
even — which is just as purposeful — of the humiliation of two defeated hordes
of barbarians. The barbarian enemies, relegated to the lower section, are por-
trayed in wild disorder through gesture, facial expression, clothing, and weap-
onry, while the Romans proceed above them upright and in disciplined lines.22
The Roman Empire’s unique identity was continually called to mind and repro-
duced in different genres of art and literature, through the marked contrast with
the Other, the outsider. The ‘Other’ was a stereotype, moulded, in part, after
form inherited from Greek art; it did not describe a ‘real world’ which existed in
opposition to the Roman Empire. It was an ideological construct which formed
part of the conceptual background of every fairly well-educated Roman.23
At the same time, everyone who had actually come into contact with the
‘outsiders’ or had taken part in a battle knew that the contrasts were not quite
as clear as they tended to be represented in image and text. Romans in the dif-
ferent regions of the Empire were very different from one another and often
hardly ‘Romanized’ at all outside the regional centres, while their neighbours
and those further beyond the frontiers were seldom as barbaric as artists and
writers liked to claim.24 Such propagandistic images must have seemed gro-
tesque in situations where their distance from reality was obvious. Lactantius’s
description of the encounter between the Sassanid King Shapur and the Roman
Emperor Valerian vividly makes this point. According to Lactantius, whenever
Shapur wanted to mount a horse or climb into a carriage, he commanded the
captured Emperor to bend over, so that the King could then set his foot on the
Roman’s back and say, laughing reproachfully, that this was the real world, not
what Romans liked to depict in paintings and on walls.25

22 
See the entry by Lucilla de Lachenal, in Giuliano, ed., Museo nazionale Romano, i, 5,
no. 25, p. 56; Künzl, Ein Traum von Imperium.
23 
Christ, ‘Römer und Barbaren’; Dauge, Le Barbare.
24 
Cf. for example Woolf, Becoming Roman, who states (p. 241) that nothing was more
characteristic of life in the Roman Empire than being ‘culturally peripheralized’; Kulikowski,
Rome’s Gothic Wars, pp. 34–43.
25 
Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, trans. by Städele, v. 2–3, pp. 100–03: ‘Hic captus
a Persis non modo imperium, quo fuerat insolenter usus, sed etiam libertatem, quam ceteris
The Fading Power of Images 373

3. A Long Life: Ambiguities and Challenges to

the Concept in the Post-Imperial West (Phase II)
Even as the military situation of the Roman Empire became increasingly tense
in the late fourth and above all early fifth centuries, this did not bring an end to
the old images. On the contrary, against the backdrop of a renewed intensifica-
tion of the ideology at the end of the fourth century, the old image of the bar-
barian became especially vital for describing the positive and distinctive quali-
ties of Romanness. In the late fourth and first half of the fifth centuries, the
answers that the intellectual elite developed in response to the pressing ques-
tion about the continuity of the Empire were not trendsetting but traditional.
Given the rapidly increasing regionalization of the Empire and the differences
between the various barbarian groups who both faced and settled within it
from the late fourth century onwards, the old Roman/barbarian dichotomy
became wholly divorced from reality. Still, this did not prevent the contin-
ued success of the concept.26 The Suda contains a story of Attila’s disgust over
Roman images of victory, which precisely captures the inadequacy of the old
Roman iconographic vocabulary:
Milan: A city filled with men, which Attila took and whose population he sold into
slavery. When he saw a picture of the Roman emperor sitting on a golden throne
with dead Scythians lying at his feet, he called a painter and demanded that he
himself be depicted on a throne with Roman emperors carrying sacks of gold on
their shoulders and emptying them at his feet.27

This story underlines the power of images. Even the most conservative icono-
graphic patterns cannot be dismissed as mere rhetoric removed from contem-
porary reality, but need to be understood as forms of representation which

ademerat, perdidit vixitque in servitute turpissime. Nam rex Persarum Sapor, is qui cum ceperat,
si quando libuerat aut vehiculum ascendere aut equum, inclinare sibi Romanum iubebat ac terga
praebere et imposito pede supra dorsum eius illud esse verum dicebat exprobans ei cum risu, non
quod in tabulis aut parietibus Romani pingerent’.
26 
Cf. for example Heather, ‘The Barbarian in Late Antiquity’, p. 242; Dewar, ‘We’re All
Romans Now’.
27 
Suda, Adler mu 405, s.v.  ‘Μεδιόλανον’:πολυάνθρωπως πόλις, ἣν καταλαβὼν Ἀττήλας
ἠνδραποδίσατο. ὡς δὲ εἶδεν ἐν γραφῇ τοὺς μὲν Ῥωμαίων βασιλεῖς ἐπὶ χρυσῶν θρόνων καθημένους,
Σκύθας δὲ ἀνηρημένους καὶ πρὸ τῶν σφῶν ποδῶν κειμένους, ζητήσας ζωγράφον ἐκέλευσεν ἁυτὸν μὲν
γράφειν ἐπὶ θάκου, τοὺς δὲ Ῥωμαίων βασιλεῖς κωρύκους φέρειν ἐπὶ τῶν ὤμων καὶ χρυσὸν πρὸ τῶν
αὑτοῦ χέειν ποδῶν’. <http://www.stoa.org/sol> [accessed 1 June 2010]. Cf. Priscus, Fragmenta,
xxii. 3, in The Fragmentary Classicising Historians, trans. by Blockley, ii, p. 314.
374 Philipp von Rummel

Figure 2. ‘Victory of the Israelites over the Amorites’, Roma, Santa Maria Maggiore. c. AD 432–40.
Reproduced after Brandenburg, Die frühchristlichen Kirchen Roms, p. 187, Abb. 104.

were discussed and taken seriously as agents of identity. As part of a broader

discourse, they help to define the boundaries within which identity and other-
ness are continually negotiated and adjusted.
In a slightly different vein, this is also true of the nave mosaics of Santa
Maria Maggiore in Rome, created between 432 and 440, which also underline
The Fading Power of Images 375

the persistence of old imagery. The depiction of the first victory of the Israelites
over the Amorites (Ios. 10. 9–10) draws upon a model comparable to the relief
on the above-mentioned Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus.28 In the case of Santa
Maria Maggiore, the ancient symbolism and motifs of the Roman/barbar-
ian theme are transferred to a Christian context and projected onto the Old
Testament. A similar interplay between biblical texts, traditional Roman prin-
ciples of order and contemporary realities can also be observed with regard to
late antique exegesis of biblical texts.29
Even after the fall of the western Empire in 476, when there were no more
western Roman emperors left to appear in triumphal iconography, the ancient
images and their underlying notions continued to flourish. The process of social
and political change did not significantly alter the strategies deployed for anti-
barbarian propaganda in representational art, which by definition catered to
the political need to legitimize Roman rule.30 Romanness and ‘barbarianness’
therefore retained their appeal as tools for mapping the world. They were even
adopted by the Empire’s successor states. The Byzantine historian Procopius
of Caesarea transferred the old role models to the context of the Vandal king-
dom, with the Vandals fulfilling the part traditionally played by the Romans
and the Moors taking the barbarian side.31 The educated Roman senators in
the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy likewise hearkened back to the ancient imag-
es.32 One of the most famous depictions of defeated barbarians is the Barbarini
ivory, dating to the reign of Justinian. The ivory depicts the mounted Emperor
in armour with a cruciform sceptre, trailed by a barbarian leader in much
smaller scale, all beneath Christ, who bestows blessings upon the scene. In the
lower panel, two lines of defeated barbarians flock together to pay homage.33
Although there is a marked decline in the number of depictions of barbar-
ians produced in reliefs and sculptures, this does not mean that the concepts
associated with them lost their relevance. Instead, elites changed their strate-
gies of representation. Not only did the barbarian topoi remain in use, there is

28 
Deckers, Der alttestamentliche Zyklus von S. Maria Maggiore, no. r 17a, pp. 253–59.
29 
Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’, pp. 32–38; Heydemann, ‘Biblical Israel
and the Christian gentes’.
30 
Schneider, ‘Barbar II (ikonographisch)’, p. 944.
31 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. Dewing, iii. 25. 5–8, ii, pp. 200–03.
32 
von Rummel, Habitus barbarus, pp. 76–82.
33 
Delbrueck, Die Consulardiptychen und verwandte Denkmäler, no.  48, pp.  188–96;
Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike, pp. 47–48 (no. r. 48 with table 26).
376 Philipp von Rummel

also evidence from the sixth-century West that the concept of Romanness con-
tinued to function as a category to order the contemporary world. In his mid-
sixth-century account of Justinian’s Gothic wars, Procopius reports on Gaul:
Now other Roman soldiers, too, had been stationed at the frontiers of Gaul to serve
as guards. And these soldiers, having no means of returning to Rome, and at the
same time being unwilling to yield to the enemy, who were Arians, gave themselves,
together with their military standards and the land which they had long been
guarding for the Romans, to the Arborychi and Germans; and they handed down
to their offspring all the customs of their fathers, which were thus preserved, and
this people has held them in sufficient reverence to guard them even up to my time.
For even at the present day they are clearly recorded in the traditional registers to
which they were assigned when they served in ancient times,34 and they always
carry their own standards when they enter battle, and always follow the customs of
their fathers. And they preserve the dress of the Romans (σχῆμα τῶν Ῥωμαίων) in
every particular, even as regards their shoes.35

Procopius thus affirms that, in fifth-century Gaul, there were still soldiers who
were recognizably Roman from their outward appearance. Agathias, writing
some decades later, adds one further point in support of seeing outward appear-
ance as a criterion of distinction. With regard to the Franks, he states:
[…] the Franks are no nomads, as indeed some of the barbarian peoples are, but
their system of government, administration, and law is modelled more or less on
the Roman pattern, apart from which they uphold similar standards with regard
to contracts, marriage, and religious observance. They are in fact all Christians and
adhere to the strictest orthodoxy. They also have magistrates in their cities, and
priests, and celebrate the feasts in the same way as we do, and, for a barbarian peo-
ple, strike me as extremely well-bred and civilized and as practically the same as
ourselves except for their uncouth style of dress and peculiar language (μόνον τὸ
βαρβαρικòν τῆς στολῆς καὶ τò τῆς φωνῆς ἰδίάζον).36

34 
Dewing translated ‘they are clearly recongnized as belonging to the legions to which
they were assigned’. I changed this as the original ‘ἔκ τε γὰρ τῶν καταλόγων ἐς τόδε τοῦ χρόνου
δηλοῦνται, ἐς οὕς τὸ παλαιὸν τασσόμενοι ἐστρατεύοντο’ does not refer to a legion as an army unit
but to lists, registers (κατάλογοι).
35 
Procopius, Bella, trans. Dewing, v. 12. 16–19, iii, p. 123. For ethnography in Procopius,
see Cesa, ‘Etnografia e geografia’.
36 
Agathias, Historiae, ed. by Keydell, i.  2.  3–4, p.  11 (Agathias, The Histories, trans.
by Frendo, p. 10). Cf. Cameron, Agathias; Maas, ‘“Delivered from their Ancient Customs”’,
pp. 171–74.
The Fading Power of Images 377

The old elements of distinction — otherness, dress, and appearance — once

again fulfil a crucial function here. As before, ‘Roman’ and ‘civilized’ were
an inseparable pair; Agathias puts Catholic Christian orthodoxy to the fore-
ground as a unifying bond. This clearly demonstrates a change in priorities
during the sixth century. The dichotomy between civilization and barbaricum
still functioned as an interpretative framework, but its structure had changed.
Other criteria had now replaced the contrast between Romans and barbarians
as the main object of interest.37
But what does the difference between Roman and barbarian mean in the
light of these changes? With regard to the usefulness of the Roman/barbar-
ian binary model in the early Middle Ages, it is significant that, according to
Procopius, there were Gaulish Romans who distinguished themselves from
their neighbours not only by their appearance, but by their lineage. Before the
passage about the remaining Romans, Procopius writes of the Arborychi, who
were in the service of Rome. As he moves on to the passage just cited, he com-
ments that there were also ‘other Roman soldiers’ (καὶ στρατιῶται δὲ Ρωμαίων
ἕτεροι) on the frontiers of Gaul. This is a common feature in Procopius. When
writing on the wars, he regularly describes soldiers in Roman service as Romans,
even when it is clear that they are not actually Romans, but people of different
origin. Nonetheless, these ‘Romans’ are on the emperor’s payroll and under his
orders, which accounts for their political loyalty as Romans. Among the Gauls,
this is clearly not the case. While they have allied themselves, faute de mieux,
with the Franks, they also preserve the traditions of the Roman army, including
outward appearance. This information provided by Procopius is much more
difficult to integrate with our wider understanding of this problem than the
passage from Agathias. Other sources, in contrast to Procopius’s observations,
much more often point towards the conclusion that within the military sphere
in particular, sharp divisions between Romans and non-Romans were not
easy to come by. Rather, ‘military’ and ‘barbarian’ became closely intertwined
notions.38 It is especially interesting to note that Procopius alludes to tradi-
tional lists or personnel rosters (κατάλογοι). Hence Procopius adds another
dimension to the social and professional aspect of the military, namely the
category of ancestry, which brings his perception of this group of ‘Romans’ in
Gaul close to a gens in the original meaning of the word. As a consequence of

37 
Cf. e.g. Greatrex, ‘Roman Identity in the Sixth Century’; Maas, ‘“Delivered from their
Ancient Customs”’; Newbold, ‘Attire in Ammianus and Gregory of Tours’.
38 
von Rummel, Habitus barbarus.
378 Philipp von Rummel

political events in Gaul, the Roman military unit was apparently compelled to
act independently, and the strategies they developed to do so made them com-
parable to barbarian groups that had developed from army units.39
If Procopius is reliable, some Gaulish Romans drew on traditions of the
Roman army; yet as ‘Romans’, they were no longer part of a large interregional
organization, but formed a group of small or middling size, not dissimilar from
other gentes which surrounded them. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure as to
what these soldiers really looked like, or, most importantly, whether their dress
indeed differed from that of their Frankish neighbours in aspects beyond the
use of ancient unit emblems (and perhaps other military features which were
no longer common elsewhere). It is nonetheless clear that Romanness in this
case could no longer be conceptualized as part of a binary pattern, but had to
be redefined as merely one unit among many within a world of gentes.

4. A Successful Reanimation: Modern Uses of the

Roman-Barbarian Binary Model (Phase III)
If we can thus observe a remarkable persistence in concepts from the imperial
period (Phase i) in late Antiquity, they also had to be constantly adapted to
new circumstances (Phase ii). Nonetheless, modern historical and archaeologi-
cal discussion still mainly employs the two poles of ‘Roman’ and ‘barbarian’ as
they were used in Phase i. A so-called ‘Germanic’ fibula, for instance, regu-
larly becomes ‘Roman’ in archaeological interpretations if there are enough
examples of the type in the Mediterranean. The main point of contention with
regard to Childeric’s grave still remains the question of whether it is ‘Roman’
or ‘barbarian’, or both, while a Grubenhaus is so utterly un-Roman that it is
uncritically taken as the final proof of the end of Roman civilization. But is
this really the question we should be asking? The fact that ancient terminology
survived into the early Middle Ages does not imply that phenomena of this
period can be interpreted like second- or third-century problems. Romans and
barbarians should rather be analysed as part of a shared world, differentiated
between centres and peripheries, not as separate, clearly distinguishable cul-
tures.40 In Roman literature, we can observe a conscious debate about this idea
of cultural change. Writers of the Greco-Roman East, for example, described

39 
Cf. Steinacher, ‘Zwischen Rom und den ‘Barbaren’.
40 
Cf. Dick, Der Mythos vom ‘germanischen’ Königtum; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and
the Roman West, pp. 63–162.
The Fading Power of Images 379

how intellectuals of Roman, Celtic, or Syrian origin, through their acceptance

of Greek paideia, gained membership within a prestigious group of scholars
and acquired skills in Attic Greek.41 Transformation was indeed possible, not
least from an intellectual point of view. Barbarians did change, and Romans
also changed. Following the rapid political developments of the late fourth and
fifth centuries, Roman intellectuals were forced to readjust their Romanness,
not only (albeit mainly) in the Roman West. To be Roman had lost one of its
most important qualities in the late fifth-century West, namely that of being
part of the political and administrative system represented by the Roman
Empire. Other elements of the complex phenomenon that we call ‘Rome’ sur-
vived, but in the sixth and seventh centuries it became increasingly difficult
to define what was Roman and what was not.42 It was now no longer possible
— even if we assume that this had ever been the case — to distinguish easily
between barbarian and Roman, a development that already became apparent
with Cassiodorus’s effort to combine Gothic rule and Italian romanitas.43 What
did survive, of course, was the binary system that set the boundaries between
‘Us’ and ‘the Others’; it was, after all, very convenient. But both poles of the
binary model had changed.
In archaeology, the particular persistence of the Roman/barbarian dichot-
omy was based on the assumption that old concepts retained their meaning,
but that the channels and media of transmission shifted from text and image
to archaeological finds. As the evidence from literary and iconographic sources
declines in quantity from the second half of the fifth century onwards, the
number of large cemeteries with richly furnished graves increases, a phenom-
enon found in every part of the former western Empire with the exception of
North Africa.44 And the building blocks of the new political order, the barbar-
ian successor states, were at least nominally ethnic.45 While most archaeologists
agree that it is difficult to distinguish between single Germanic groups in the
archaeological evidence, the contrast in the later fifth century between Romans

41 
Cf. Swain, Hellenism and Empire; Goldhill, ed., Being Greek under Rome; Steinacher,
‘Transformation und Integration’.
42 
Cf. the paper by Maya Maskarinec in this volume.
43 
Moorhead, Theoderic in Italy, pp. 66–89; Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy,
pp. 43–78; Hen, Roman Barbarians, pp. 27–58
44 
Ament, ‘Reihengräberfriedhöfe’.
45 
Pohl, ‘Die Anfänge des Mittelalters’; Pohl, ‘The Politics of Change’; Pohl, ‘Regnum und
gens’; Goetz, ‘Introduction’.
380 Philipp von Rummel

and barbarians is widely considered to be more obvious than in the preceding

centuries.46 Based upon authors such as Procopius and Agathias, who suggest a
distinction between ‘Roman’ and ‘non-Roman’ forms of costume and outward
appearance, early medieval archaeology, from its very beginnings as a discipline,
has ventured to identify material evidence according to this binary model.47
Our point of departure is thus a paradox: whereas the groups which origi-
nated in the political disintegration of the Roman Empire ultimately prevailed
as a structuring principle for supra-regional order, pointing towards a Europe
of nation states,48 the number of sources describing the visual expressions of
belonging to one of these groups declines. Simultaneously, archaeological finds
which are interpreted as strategies of differentiation increase in number from
the sixth century onwards, particularly burials. The so-called Reihengräber (row
graves) and new forms of material objects now dominate the picture; they even
appear in regions where barbarian influence was weaker than it was in northern
Gaul, southern Germany, or along the Danube.49 Thus, within certain spheres
of material culture, there seems to appear a clear contrast between the graves
attributed to the Roman population on the one hand, 50 and the barbarian
migrants on the other. The contrast on which this powerful image rests is an
old friend: the contours of barbarian, or un-Roman, culture are defined and
identified only against the backdrop of traditional Roman culture. In view of
this situation, it is debatable whether we are dealing with a change in media of
transmission. Can we really still trace the old dichotomy between Romans and
barbarians after the political collapse of the western Roman Empire, albeit now
with archaeological finds instead of texts and images?
Scholarly debate on this question turns above all on the distinction between
northern barbarian influences and Roman peculiarities in material culture.
Similar problems and questions, which arise in other parts of the Empire,
for example in Africa, Egypt, Arabia, or the Asian frontier, have been com-

46 
Cf. Bierbrauer, ‘Zur ethnischen Interpretation’, esp. pp. 50–57.
47 
Fehr, Germanen und Romanen im Merowingerreich; von Rummel, Habitus barbarus,
pp. 18–64.
48 
Geary, The Myth of Nations.
49 
See for example Zeiß, Die Grabfunde aus dem spanischen Westgotenreich; Ripoll López,
Toréutica de la Bética; Sasse, ‘Westgotische’ Gräberfelder auf der iberischen Halbinsel; Jepure,
‘Interpretationsprobleme der Westgotenarchäologie’; Barbiera, Changing Lands in Changing
Memories; Gastaldo, ‘I corredi funerari nelle tombe “tardo romane”’; Bierbrauer, ‘Archäologie
der Langobarden in Italien’.
50 
Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen’, p. 212.
The Fading Power of Images 381

paratively neglected. With regard to the question of the distinction between

Germans and Romans, Volker Bierbrauer has recently compiled all the rel-
evant data on the archaeology of Roman burial customs for the Reallexikon
der Germanischen Altertumskunde.51 He persuasively demonstrates that burial
customs varied widely, even within relatively small regions. This makes estab-
lishing a norm difficult. The general taste was for west-east oriented graves,
sometimes stone-lined in varying ways, crypts, or slab graves with the corpse
lying on its back. In contrast to so-called ‘Germanic’ burials, grave goods are
generally absent from these ‘Roman’ graves.52 With respect to the overwhelm-
ing lack of grave goods, Roman graves are distinctive, according to the widely
accepted traditional view, first and foremost due to the lack of weapons in male
burials, and the absence of substantial metal finds in certain positions in female
burials.53 The identification of Roman elements thus proceeds largely from the
definition of so-called Germanic material. The migration-period horizon of the
Lombards in Italy is commonly regarded as an especially clear example of this
distinctiveness. It is distinguished by ‘the initial appearance of an external cul-
tural facies within a completely differently structured environment, that is, the
otherness of the Roman environment’.54 Out of two fixed frames of reference,
therefore, one immigrant and one native, only one is — supposedly — precisely
defined. The often-invoked ‘Roman cultural model’ takes shape primarily with
reference to the ‘Germanic model’.
Coherence is derived not with reference to one culture — however multi-
faceted and varied in itself — but by its contrast with the Other. The element
of alterity within this binary system, formerly conceived as the barbarian world
outside the Roman Empire, is transformed into Vandal, Ostrogothic, Lombard,
or Frankish culture within the borders of the former Empire. In early medieval
archaeology, therefore, the overwhelming lack of ‘Germanic’ features remains
the decisive criterion for the identification of Roman graves.
There is a well-established consensus among scholars on the outward
appearance of the Other, the non-Roman groups, at least with regard to bur-
ial archaeology, from which most of the relevant evidence is derived. Above
all, rich personal furnishings are taken to be incompatible with the Christian
belief that the modes of burial will not make a difference in the life to come.55
51 
Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen’, passim.
52 
Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen’, p. 213.
53 
Riemer, Romanische Grabfunde, p. 21.
54 
Bierbrauer, ‘Archäologie der Langobarden in Italien’, p. 25.
55 
Cf. now Bierbrauer, ‘Christliche Jenseitsvorstellungen’, passim.
382 Philipp von Rummel

Figure 3.
‘Roman’ Grave Goods
from Grosseto, loc.
Grancia. Reproduced
after Riemer, Romanische
Grabfunde, Tafel 62.

Traditional scholarship regarded the Romance-speaking population as largely

Christian, whereas the immigrant barbarian groups, despite their superficial,
or partial, Christianization, were thought to have preserved their pagan herit-
age, along with a belief in the importance of endowing their dead with goods.
Grave goods in general were therefore seen as signs of the Other. Grave goods
which were, and still are, singled out for their non-Roman character include
certain types of weapons in men’s graves, above all two-edged slashing swords
and shields, and certain types and combinations of brooches (the ‘peplos dress’
or ‘multiple brooch dress’), jewellery and belt fittings among women.
The ‘Roman cultural model’ (romanisches Kulturmodell), by contrast, is pri-
marily defined by the lack of these features. This can complicate the distinction,
given that, for example, Gothic men’s graves are likewise defined by the lack of
The Fading Power of Images 383

Figure 4. Characteristic ‘Germanic’ Grave Goods from Erpfting, Bavaria. Sixth century.
Reproduced after Wührer, ‘Das frühmittelalterliche Gräberfeld von Erpfting,
Stadt Landsberg am Lech’, p. 312, Abb. 6.

weapons, while there are, of course, occasionally unfurnished graves to be found

among barbarian groups. Difficulties also arise when the number of grave goods
in burials increases, but not according to a ‘Germanic model’.56 Furthermore,
there is a logical problem with the identification of Roman graves: it is hard to see

56 
Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen’, pp. 213–14.
384 Philipp von Rummel

how Roman burials should be distinguishable through both the accumulation

of Roman objects and the overwhelming lack of grave goods at the same time.57
Two examples may serve to illuminate the difficulties of making the distinc-
tion. In what remains the standard work on Roman grave goods in Italy, Ellen
Riemer devotes an entire chapter to ‘Germanic brooches’.58 The Silberblechfibeln
(silver plate fibulae) of Castel Bolognese, the cloisonné-decorated pair of
Vogelwirbelfibeln (bird-shaped fibula) from Imola, Villa Clelia Grave 185, or
the pair of silver Zikadenfibeln (cicada-shaped fibula) from Ladispoli Grave c
come from cemeteries with otherwise Roman material. Yet these finds are auto-
matically attributed to Germanic graves, on the basis of the brooches’ form
and type. Why the brooches should be taken as signs of ethnic differentiation,
however, is not explained. A detailed argument as to what exactly makes these
brooch types, and not others, signifiers of non-Roman group identity has yet to
be made. The fact that these objects are found in Roman as well as supposedly
Lombard cemeteries, also challenges this line of thinking. This is a general prob-
lem when dealing with the Migration Period: to our current state of knowledge,
‘distinctive cultures’, with clearly definable groups as bearers of these cultures,
did not exist in early medieval Europe. If only individual elements could be
designated as ‘foreign’ with some confidence, this could contribute in impor-
tant ways to our understanding of the coexistence of immigrants and natives.
However, most of the criteria distinguishing ‘Roman’ from ‘Germanic’ mate-
rial culture have been in use since the nineteenth century and have been rather
uncritically adopted. Archaeologists in turn have combined these criteria with
a selective presentation of burial finds to build up working hypotheses which
are presented as if they rest on well-grounded evidence. Hence, to interested
non-specialists, it is impossible to assess the adequacy of the conclusions pre-
sented without conducting further extensive research.
The problem of weapon furnishings, which in German-speaking literature is
often regarded as a ‘Germanic’ ritual, is another case in point.59 Since, in most
cases, the assessment of the material begins with the assumption that the lack
of weapons is a valid criterion for identifying ‘Roman’ male burials, it comes
as no surprise that archaeologists hardly ever find weapons in ‘Roman’ graves.
Otherwise, these graves would by definition not be Roman. It is therefore all
57 
Riemer, Romanische Grabfunde, p. 21.
58 
Riemer, Romanische Grabfunde, pp. 133–36.
59 
Bierbrauer, ‘Archäologie der Langobarden in Italien’, p. 26; Bierbrauer, ‘Alboin adduxit
Langobardos in Italia’. Weapons in graves not specifically Lombard: Brogiolo and Possenti,
‘Alcuni riscontri archaeologici’, p. 170; Settia, ‘Longobardi in Italia: necropoli altomedievali’.
The Fading Power of Images 385

the more remarkable that catalogues of ‘Roman’ grave goods list significant
numbers of male graves which do include weapons. In order to safeguard the
theory of ‘Germanic’ weapon furnishings, many weapons (above all one-edged
swords [scramasax] and arrows) are denied the status as weapons. In this way,
the graves in which they appear can still be categorized as ‘Roman’. Yet when
counting the graves listed in Riemer’s catalogue which contain saxes, sparthas,
lances, or arrowheads,60 fourteen out of seventy-one definitely male burials with
grave goods in Italy exhibit weapons, seven of them swords or lances. To these
one might add, depending on the respective ethnic identification, the weapon
burials from the ‘mixed’ cemetery of Romans d’Isonzo and other more recently
discovered cemeteries. Altogether, considering the total number of catalogued
graves, this adds up to a significant amount. Do these represent ‘Roman’ graves
with exceptional status, or minimally furnished ‘Germanic’ graves? With
regard to this question, five of the Sardinian graves that Riemer lists as dis-
playing weapons are particularly noteworthy. These graves pose a challenge to
traditional interpretations, since, according to the written sources, there was
no Lombard settlement on the island. Further research is needed to determine
whether these are really ‘exceptional cases’ which break ‘the rule of weaponless
burials’.61 Irene Barbiera, in her contribution to this volume, demonstrates from
a different angle that weapon burial was not a ‘foreign’ element which was only
brought to Italy by the immigrants in the sixth century.62
Other types of grave goods, such as earrings, buckles, combs, or gold-leaf
crosses, present similar problems. In many publications, the relevant crite-
rion for labelling individual finds as ‘Roman’ as opposed to ‘Germanic’ is not
revealed. This further complicates any assessment of the situation as a whole,
since only those familiar with the material are in a position to judge how many

60 
Cf.  Riemer, Romanische Grabfunde, p.  242: Firmano, grave  5 (no.  1: arrowheads);
Romans d’Isonzo (no. 7, grave 118: arrowhead); Laino d’Intelvi (no. 23: scramasax); Imola,
Villa Clelia grave 165 (no. 59: lance); Fiesole, via Riobico (no. 67) grave 4 (lances) and grave 11
(lance); Grosseto, loc. Grancia grave 61 (no. 72: scramasax); no. 104: arrowheads); Borutta
(no. 184: lances, scramasax or sword); Bultei (no. 185: lances); Laerru (no. 186: scramasax);
Nuoro (no. 195: lances); Tonara (no. 196: lance).
61 
Riemer, Romanische Grabfunde, p. 243. Cf. the different view of Barbiera, ‘La morte del
guerriero’, p. 358: ‘Dunque, come è stato già in altre occasioni evidenziato, anche alla luce di
questi dati, mi pare si possa affermare sempre con maggior sicurezza che le sepulture con armi
non sono l’espressione di gruppi di longobardi in contrapposizione ad autoctoni, quanto sem-
mai l’espressione di gruppi aristocratici (autoctoni, longobradi, o altro che fossero) che si anda-
vano affermando o riaffermando in aree interessate da nuovi sviluppi sociali’.
62 
Cf. the paper by Irene Barbiera in this volume.
386 Philipp von Rummel

Map 2. Weapon Furnishings in the Southern German Region.

Reproduced after Rettner, ‘Baiuaria romana’, p. 261, Abb. 5.

relevant finds are not taken into account due to unstated premises. The recur-
ring assertion that such furnished graves should be regarded as exceptional and
merely departing from the ‘typically unfurnished character of Roman graves’
becomes highly questionable given the considerable number of known fur-
nished graves of non-Germanic character.
For the Bavarian region, Arno Rettner has recently enlarged the set of criteria
for identifying Roman populations, adding a paucity of certain features as char-
acteristic, including a low number of weaving swords, food offerings, or animal
burials.63 In addition, there is the criterion of weapon furnishing, an analysis
of which demonstrates that these occurred more than twice as frequently out-
side of Bavaria than within the region.64 Rettner thus concludes: ‘Anyone who
crossed the Iller from the west or from the Danube from the north between the
fifth and sixth centuries would have entered a region which followed a different
burial custom. Though the grave goods themselves, for example the brooches
used in female dress, are wholly comparable in their form, the frequency with

63 
Rettner, ‘Baiuaria romana’.
64 
Rettner, ‘Baiuaria romana’, p. 259.
The Fading Power of Images 387

which they were included in burials is not’.65 The presupposition of certain

burial practices as Roman in turn led Rettner to conclude that there was a
large Roman population in Bavaria, which successfully introduced the newly
arrived immigrants to their own fashions and customs: the latter thus would
have abandoned burial mounds and chambers, furnishings indicative of social
rank, opulent foodstuffs and animal burials, as well as extensive weapon assem-
blages, and buried their dead ‘according to the late Roman pattern’ (Map 1).66
In southern Bavaria around c. 500, we cannot detect a significant break from
its late Roman development, but rather clear continuity. In contrast to other
regions north of the Alps, typically ‘Merovingian’ cemeteries appear in Bavaria
only in the middle of the sixth century.67 This observation is of particular rel-
evance with regard to our question. It underlines the fact that the processes of
economic and social change during the fifth and sixth centuries followed a very
different course in different regions. Yet, when attempting to refine the defini-
tion of ‘Roman’ material in contrast to non-Roman material, it does not take
us much further. This holds true at least until we arrive at a better understand-
ing of the reasons for the different developments of particular regions. Was
Romanness still strong enough in some regions to influence the newcomers?
This may have been the case — but exactly what do we mean by ‘Romanness’?
Despite archaeologists’ reluctance to discuss terminology, it is nonetheless
important to remain constantly aware of the problem. ‘Romans’ and ‘Germans’,
with all the different implications these concepts carry with them, exert a perva-
sive influence on archaeological research. The concept of ‘Germans’,68 as well as
its Roman counterpart, presumes the existence of large groups known by these
names, or implicitly constitutes them as such. In combination with the equally
problematic concept of archaeological cultures and the deep-rooted but ulti-
mately unprovable premise of a Roman-Germanic dualism,69 the ‘Germanic’

65 
Rettner, ‘Baiuaria romana’, p. 261: ‘Überschritt man zwischen dem 5. und 6. Jahrhundert
von Westen her die Iller oder von Norden her die Donau, betrat man einen Raum, wo ein
anderes Brauchtum gepflegt wurde. Die Formen der Beigaben an sich, zum Beispiel Fibeln der
Frauentracht, bleiben durchaus vergleichbar, nicht aber die Häufigkeiten, mit denen sie in den
Gräbern vorkommen’.
66 
Rettner, ‘Baiuaria romana’, p. 261: ‘eben ganz nach spätrömischem Schema’.
67 
Rettner, ‘Baiuaria romana’, p. 270.
68 
Pohl, ‘Der Germanenbegriff vom 3. bis 8. Jahrhundert’; Pohl, ‘Vom Nutzen des Germanen­
begriffes’; Jarnut, ‘Germanisch’.
69 
Cf. the synthesis in Brather, ‘Kulturgruppe und Kulturkreis’.
388 Philipp von Rummel

still continues to figure as the subject of archaeological-historical narratives.70

Yet, there never existed a group of this name, or at least no group which ever
considered or identified itself as ‘German’. The same is true of ‘eastern’, ‘western’,
or ‘northern Germans’. Jörg Jarnut, therefore, has justly argued that the term
‘Germanic’ should be abandoned in early medieval studies.71 While the con-
cept of the Germans has been convincingly deconstructed, the complementary
concept of the Romans has not yet been sufficiently problematized, and it is still
too often used in an essentialist sense. No doubt there were indeed ‘Romans’.
Within the Roman Empire, however, the conceptual distinction between popu-
lus and gens points to a more differentiated relationship to ethnicity than in
the barbarian regna.72 The — at least theoretical — importance of the Roman
populus headed by the senate, as a political actor, rapidly diminished from the
middle of the fifth century onwards. Since the middle of the sixth century, it
was no longer possible to relate the concept of ‘Romans’ to any meaningful
political unit in the western Empire; its meaning becomes increasingly blurred.
Romanness remains as a linguistic, Christian, and historical-symbolic category.
These aspects, however, can only to a certain extent be used as a contrast to
Goths, Lombards, and Franks. The concept of Romans or Romanness, at least
a priori, has only limited heuristic value for archaeology. It is therefore only
slightly more useful than the concept of Germans that Jarnut rejected.
One can also hear and read of the ‘Roman world’, in which particular things
were common or uncommon. ‘Germanic’ or ‘barbaric’ elements are generally
recognized by the fact that they were unknown in the Roman world. Barbarian
culture is thereby sometimes credited with a remarkably strong resistance to
absorption by the Roman world. Yet Vandals, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, but also
Franks and Lombards, no matter how far it is possible to trace their origins
outside the imperium Romanum, were not just products but also part of the
‘Roman world’. In archaeology, the ‘Roman world’, which also functioned as
the frame of reference for the barbarians, therefore does not seem particularly
suitable as an analytical category, at least not if our focus remains within the
borders of the Empire. This does not mean, however, that questions about
migration, foreigners, and ethnicity within the Roman world are not feasible
ones. Even less it is intended to deny ruptures and fundamental processes of
change between late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.73
70 
Pohl, ‘Ursprungserzählungen und Gegenbilder’, pp. 32–34.
71 
Jarnut, ‘Germanisch’.
72 
Geary, Europäische Völker im frühen Mittelalter.
73 
Cf. for example Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome; Valenti, ‘Ma i “barbari” sono veramente
The Fading Power of Images 389

The archaeological problem begins even before the point of applying labels,
that is, with assessing which of the features identified in the archaeologi-
cal record provide access to past identities, and which do not. If a engages in
trade with b and b thus acquires an object which is common in a’s region, this
does not necessarily tell us anything about any relation of identity or alterity
between a and b. Only once the phenomena keep recurring and can be grouped
according to regular patterns can we attempt to proceed to farther-reaching
claims. Still, when it comes to considering possible expressions of Roman iden-
tity in material culture, this is precisely the problem. We cannot observe either
sufficient frequency nor homogeneity; quite the contrary is the case. The vast
Romania of the sixth century, stretching from North Africa to Spain, Gaul,
and beyond Italy to the Danube, displays a high degree of archaeological vari-
ation. Statistically significant clusters of grave goods can be observed only at a
regional level, but certainly not in general. Homogeneity seems totally absent.74
This is not a distinctively late antique or early medieval phenomenon. Even the
intact Roman Empire was characterized by a high degree of cultural diversity
which nevertheless tends to be eclipsed by striking trans-regional similarities,
especially with regard to public representation. For various reasons, Roman
identity always remained ‘incomplete’.75 Provincial and regional characteristics
remained strong under the cover of a unified and highly visible imperial culture.
As Chris Wickham has shown, the post-imperial development of the different
regions of the Empire had more to do with their specific pre-imperial history
than with their fate in late Antiquity. Thus, North Africa experienced a differ-
ent development than Italy, Gaul, or Britain: ‘Social change is overwhelmingly
the result of internal factors, not external influences’.76
If we assume that grave goods reflect forms of familial self-perception, the
heterogeneity of the archaeological record fits well with the observation drawn
from written sources that self-perception was differentiated and could empha-
size a delimited place of origin (town or region) as well as broader claims to
imperial or supra-ethnic rule.77 The very heterogeneity of that which is labelled
‘Roman’ in the post-imperial era, as well as earlier, dooms to failure any attempt

arrivati in Italia?’.
74 
Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen’, passim.
75 
Giardina, L’Italia romana; Pohl, ‘Regnum und gens’, pp. 439–40.
76 
Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, p. 831. Cf. also Wickham, The Inheritance of
Rome.
77 
Pohl, ‘Regnum und gens’.
390 Philipp von Rummel

to define one single, specific form of Roman dress and burial. Until now, the
response to this problem has consisted in describing and unifying this ‘Roman’
heterogeneity by defining it in contrast to the Other: the Germanic element,
which was thought to be securely identifiable. Romanness, therefore, was
defined by not being Germanic. This tactic of explaining one unknown by ref-
erence to another is, however, hardly satisfactory in the long term.
Fortunately, archaeology does offer an alternative to this uncomfortable
situation. The nature of the material record allows archaeologists to determine
communication networks and cultural-geographical contexts at a deeper, more
focused level than is possible on the basis of surviving written sources. One
can detect in many places the dissatisfaction among archaeologists who sense
the impossibility of reconstructing a homogeneous concept of ‘Romanness’.
Yet, there is no need for this dissatisfaction, which proceeds from a concep-
tion which ascribes to ‘the Romans’ a uniform way of behaving as a culturally
homogeneous ethnic community. If we put aside this implicit conception of
homogeneity, which is supported by neither the written nor the archaeological
sources, a whole range of new interpretative possibilities is revealed. Thus the
most important result of Ellen Riemer’s catalogue of ‘Roman’ grave goods is
precisely her finding that individual regions, such as the district of Grosseto,
stand out due to the highly idiosyncratic customs of dressing the dead for
burial.78 An ‘archaeology of identity’ seems indeed possible, but ‘Romanness’,
defined in an ethnic or linguistic sense, is a category much too imprecise to
adequately describe these phenomena. Addressing regional phenomena, how-
ever, is still problematic, for the written sources provide hardly any concrete
information on which to base identification, and the graves themselves, in
the absence of inscriptions, do not provide appropriate evidence concerning
the social identity of the deceased. Consequently, it remains unclear whether
groups that are archaeologically visible represent emic groups, that is, whether
they are meaningful points of reference to members of the social group, Wir-
Gruppen, which can be described from the perspective of the members them-
selves. A priori assumptions about ethnic differentiation cannot serve as a basis
of argument here. The etic perspective, that of the external observer, which
modern archaeologists and historians are forced to take, also meets its limits
when they attempt to label and interpret recognized phenomena and to inte-
grate their findings with the written sources. This is especially true with regard
to ethnic interpretation. Archaeological interpretations of ‘culture’ and their

78 
Riemer, Romanische Grabfunde; Bierbrauer, ‘Christliche Jenseitsvorstellungen’, pp. 45–49.
The Fading Power of Images 391

incorporation into ‘culture models’ differentiated according to ethnicity can-

not simply be based on the premise that these groups existed as recognizable
entities.79 In these cases, early medieval archaeologists must consider the mate-
rial evidence using methodologies for prehistoric archaeology, meaning that
they should analyse temporal and spatial congruencies of a sum of features and
finds, and classify the material according to prehistoric criteria.
This may sound disappointing if we consider the passage from Procopius
cited earlier, who claims that Roman soldiers in Gaul retained the σχῆμα τῶν
Ῥωμαίων in every detail.80 If there was such a distinctly Roman appearance, this
must have been more true in Italy than in Gaul. Yet it still awaits discovery
there, despite the identification of so-called Lombard cemeteries. Not far from
Rome, the centre of abstract Romanitas, there are cemeteries dating to the late
sixth and seventh centuries, which, though they arguably demonstrate a degree
of heterogeneity, are also very reminiscent of furnished row-grave cemeteries
as are found in early medieval southern Germany, France, Spain, and along
the Danube.81 These burials, accordingly, are usually identified as belonging
to incoming ‘Germans’. Again, the argument in favour of this interpretation
essentially consists of two parts: first, the custom of burying the dead richly fur-
nished, for example with offerings of food and drink; second, the type of goods
and their particular combination in costume, which point towards a northern
origin. We have already seen the difficulties associated with the first aspect.
But the second aspect is also hard to substantiate. Comparison between the
finds from the monastic workshop in the Crypta Balbi in Rome with those of
necropolises reveals that it is difficult to divide Italian craftwork of the seventh
century into Roman and Lombard forms,82 while forms of clothing also defy
grouping according to a distinct Roman-Germanic dichotomy.83 With regard
to row-grave cemeteries, an increasing number of scholars are now arguing that
the clothing and weapons which they preserve should no longer be regarded as

79 
The term ‘cultural model’ (Kulturmodell) was first used in this context of funerary archae-
ology by Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen im fränkischen Siedelgebiet’.
80 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, v. 12. 16–19, iii, pp. 122–23.
81 
Cf. for Nocera Umbra: Paribieni, La necropoli barbarica di Nocera Umbra; Rupp, ‘Das
langobardische Gräberfeld von Nocera Umbra’; Rupp, Das langobardische Gräberfeld von
Nocera Umbra; Castel Trosino: Mengarelli, ‘La necropoli barbarica di Castel Trosino’; Paroli,
‘La necropoli di Castel Trosino’.
82 
Ricci, ‘Relazioni culturali e scambi commerciali’.
83 
Cf. the contrary view of Bierbrauer, ‘Zur ethnischen Interpretation’, esp. pp. 50–53.
392 Philipp von Rummel

Figure 5. ‘Togatus from Ostia’, Ostia, Museo

Archeologico, Scavi di Ostia Antica. c. ad 400. Figure 6. ‘Monza-Diptychon’, Monza, Tesore del
Photo: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Duomo. c. ad 400. Reproduced after Volbach,
Rom, Inst. Neg. 67.1076. Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike, Tafel 19.

expressions of ethnic identity, but as evidence of social competition.84 There is

no need to assume that the necropolises of Nocera Umbra, Castel Trosino, or
Collegno stand out from their surroundings due to the ethnic differentiation

84 
The traditional interpretation of row graves was first suggested by Werner, ‘Zur
Entstehung der Reihengräberzivilisation’. As to the recent discussion see amongst many oth-
ers: Brather, Ethnische Interpretationen in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie, passim; Halsall,
Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul, pp. 91–197; Fehr, Germanen und Romanen im
Merowingerreich.
The Fading Power of Images 393

between Roman and barbarian culture,85 when there could be various other rea-
sons for this difference.86 They could, for instance, indicate a process of social
reorientation within which burials became one form of expressing social claims
within a military group.87 To once again prevent a common misunderstanding:
Supporting this view does not mean that there were no ‘barbarian’ groups on
Roman soil, nor that they could not have been distinctive in their clothing and
other strategies of identification. The reinterpretation proposed here merely
addresses the question of why they might have differed. Clearly, this cannot be
attributed to their being ‘alien’ to their immediate environment. The furnished
burials of Italy, Gaul, or Spain all belong to a shared post-imperial ‘Roman’
world. These finds cannot be used to build a model which could then serve to
define ‘Romanness’. Quite to the contrary, distribution maps of the so-called
row-grave cemeteries show that the phenomenon was roughly coincident with
the frontiers of the Roman Empire, and that the majority of cemeteries lay
inside, not outside, the Empire.
To understand Procopius’s σχῆμα τῶν Ῥωμαίων, we can take a look back into
a time when Roman habitus was still represented with utter self-confidence. A
statue from the forum baths in Ostia, dated to c. ad 400, depicts a man who
is probably to be identified with the praefectus annonae Ragonius Vincentius
Celsus (Fig. 5). Above his tunic, the man is wearing a toga with u-shaped umbo
and equestrian calcei. His clothing embodies the Roman ideal.88 This ideal is
emphasized by the bundle of scrolls, which often form the base of toga statues.
On the one hand, the scrolls underline the role of the togatus as an office holder;
on the other hand, they symbolize the education which was one of the defining
features of the late Roman aristocracy.89 Παιδεία also provided the possibility
of actively incorporating the topoi associated with the barbarians for centuries
in literary and iconographic tradition into the conflict between the senatorial
elite, with its civilian traditions, and those who had risen from imperial admin-
istration and the military. Whereas the Romanitas of the traditional elites
was symbolized by the toga, the military uniform of their competitors could

85 
As to Nocera Umbra and Castel Trosino, cf. n. 81; Collegno: Pejrani Baricco, ‘Longobardi
da guerrieri a contadini’. Cf. also Irene Barbiera in this volume.
86 
Cf. Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’, pp. 8, 50.
87 
Cf. Kossack, ‘Prunkgräber’, pp. 3–33.
88 
von Rummel, Habitus barbarus, pp. 83–96; Goette, Studien zu römischen Toga­darstel­
lungen.
89 
Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity.
394 Philipp von Rummel

be placed firmly in the barbarian corner, whenever it seemed necessary.90 The

military-civilian conflict can also be detected in certain laws contained in the
Codex Theodosianus, which forbade wearing elements of military costume in
Rome.91 In 1741, Jacques Godefroy, followed by dozens of scholars, described
these elements as ‘barbarian’. And they were indeed barbarian, but only in
the sense that they did not symbolize the civilian romanitas of the toga.92 The
civilian/military distinction and the blurring of ethnic differentiation is also
evident in narratives about symbolic change of clothing. Olympiodorus, for
example, writes that the Visigothic King Athaulf, who according to Orosius
regarded himself as the preserver of Romanitas,93 wore a chlamys at his wedding
to Galla Placidia as an expressly Roman vestment.94 The description functions
like a painting. The husband of Galla Placidia, the emperor’s daughter (σχήματι
βασιλικῷ), was naturally expected to wear a chlamys, just like the officer on
the diptych of Monza (Fig. 6) or Justinian in San Vitale in Ravenna. The mar-
riage between the Goth and the imperial princess, between the barbarian and
Rome, was thus framed in a rhetorical image, without any intention to imply
that Athaulf had not been wearing Roman military dress before the wedding
as well. In a similar vein, Theoderic, who, according to Jordanes’s narrative, put
aside the dress of his own people after the conquest of Italy and adopted regal
costume as a ruler of both Goths and Romans.95 In this case, too, the integra-
tion of new, barbarian aspects with Roman tradition is depicted in writing.
Theoderic, who had previously spent some years in Byzantium, was not used to
wearing non-Roman tribal dress. Still, he was recognizable as the leader of his
troops, the Ostrogothic army, which was a necessary precondition to his rule.
In Ravenna, the army general had to reinvent himself as the ruler of an entire
region, one which also formed the centre of the old Roman Empire. The King
adopted the insignia of his rule over Goths and Romans, thereby symbolizing

90 
von Rummel, Habitus barbarus, passim.
91 
von Rummel, Habitus barbarus, pp. 156–66.
92 
Godefroy, Codex Theodosianus cum perpetuis commentariis, v, pp. 237–38.
93 
Orosius, Historiae adversum paganos, ed. by Zangemeister, vii. 43. 5–6, p. 560.
94 
Olympiodorus, Fragmenta, xxiv, in The Fragmentary Classicising Historians, trans. by
Blockley, ii, pp. 186–89: ‘ἔνθα προκαθεσθείσης Πλακίδιας ἐν παστάδι τε Ῥωμαικῶς ἐσκευσασμένῃ
καὶ σχήματι βασιλικῷ, συγκαθέζεται αὐτῇ καὶ Αδαοῦλφος ἐνδεδυμένος χλανίδα καὶ τὴν ἄλλων
Ῥωμαίων ἐσθῆτα’.
95 
Jordanes, Getica, ed. by Mommsen, c. 57, p. 134: ‘Suae gentis vestitum reponens, insigne
regii amictus, quasi iam Gothorum Romanorumque regnator adsumit’.
The Fading Power of Images 395

Figure 7.
‘Silver Plate from the Treasure
of Isola Rizza’, Verona, Museo
di Castelvecchio, Inv. 13871.
Sixth century. Reproduced with
the permission of the Museo.
Photo: G. Stradiotto.

his position in between the competing civilian and military elites, a position
formerly occupied by the Roman emperor. This did involve the continual nego-
tiation of distinctions, but these were not necessarily ethnic differences. In all
of these cases, clothing served as a convenient means of symbolically expressing
the most pressing social conflicts of the time.
Two hundred years later, the situation had changed. While the senate in
Constantinople continued to function, the senate of Rome, under Gothic
rule, still embodied the antique traditions; one need only think of Boethius or
Cassiodorus. This tradition, however, had disappeared by the second half of the
sixth century. The senatorial class, as the bearers of Roman tradition par excel-
lence, had been unable to sustain the conflict in which they had been so actively
engaged around 400. The western Empire had ended, the last senatus consul-
tum was issued in 533. With the exception of the prefect of the city in Rome,
Justinian had abolished all senatorial officials in 554, and in 590, Pope Gregory
could state that there was no longer a senate.96 Bishops such as Gregory of

96 
Demandt, Geschichte der Spätantike, pp. 265–66. Gregory I, Homiliae in Hiezechielem
prophetam, ed. by Adriaen, ii. 6. 22, p. 12: ‘senatus deest, populus interiit […], vacua ardet Roma’.
396 Philipp von Rummel

Tours, Venantius Fortunatus, or Avitus of Vienne continued to be recruited

from the circles of the senatorial aristocracy, but at the same time, a new form
of rulership, based on military power, had asserted itself. ‘Romanness’ had to
be reconceptualized, and the old senatorial elite needed to adapt itself to new
circumstances.97 The toga and the chlamys could no longer function as a pair
of opposites.
Yet elements of the old iconography survived, as illustrated by the silver plate
from the treasure of Isola Rizza (Fig. 7), dating from the (later) sixth century.98
The central decoration of the plate shows a rider aiming a lance at a fleeing
figure. The mounted warrior is wearing a helmet and plate armour fastened by
a belt. The two figures attacked by the rider have beards and belted tunics with
clavus and trousers. They are armed with shields, while the fallen figure holds a
sword in his hand.99 According to iconographical convention, the two warriors
on foot represent subjugated barbarians, whereas the rider would be identified
as a triumphant Roman.100 One might think of a battle between Byzantines
and Lombards, with the Byzantines continuing the iconographic traditions of
ancient Rome. So far, so good. The problem is, however, that the rider’s weap-
onry is of the sort typically found in graves which are identified as burials of
barbarian leaders. Examples include a grave from Niederstotzingen in mod-
ern Baden-Württemberg (Germany), or grave 119 from Castel Trosino (Ascoli
Piceno, Marche, Italy).101 Segmented armour and helmets were used across
Europe and as far as East Asia throughout a long period; they are characteris-
tic pieces of equipment for mounted warriors.102 In Italy, it is above all Castel
Trosino grave 119, which, like many graves from the necropolis with rich fur-
nishings and military character, points towards a Lombard context. Even if the
deceased was a Lombard, there is no doubt that his armour and helmet were of
the type also worn by soldiers in the Byzantine army.103 Thus, it remains unclear

97 
Cf. Reimitz, ‘Cultural Brokers of a Common Past’.
98 
La Rocca, ‘Piatto di Isola Rizza’. For an earlier dating of the treasure and the plate, see
Bolla, ‘Il “tesoro” di Isola Rizza: osservazioni’; Bolla, ‘Il tesoro di Isola Rizza’.
99 
von Hessen, I ritrovamenti barbarici, pp. 68–70, with pl. 41–42.
100 
Interpretation as barbarians: Volbach, ‘Il tesoro di Canoscio’; von Hessen, I ritrovamenti
barbarici, p. 69.
101 
Paulsen, Alemannische Adelsgräber, pp. 133–39; Paroli and Ricci, La necropoli altomedi-
evale di Castel Trosino, pp. 79–86, pl. 83–110.
102 
Kory, ‘Schuppen- und Lamellenpanzer’.
103 
Kory, ‘Schuppen- und Lamellenpanzer’, pp. 391, 399.
The Fading Power of Images 397

whether the mounted figure on the plate from Isola Rizza actually depicts a
Byzantine or Lombard warrior. We certainly cannot rule out the possibility
that he is a Lombard: the so-called ‘Plaque of Agilulf ’ from the Val di Nievole
in the Museo Bargello, Florence, depicts a ruler identified by embossed letters
as Agilulf, flanked by two warriors wearing helmets and armour which closely
resemble that of the rider of Isola Rizza. It is therefore conceivable that on the
plate of Isola Rizza, Lombards are cast in the traditional role of the triumphant
victor, while the barbarians have been depicted in a style similar to that seen
on Theodosius’s obelisk in Constantinople.104 Yet, it is equally possible that the
plate is a wholly conventional depiction of the victory of a Byzantine warrior
over Lombards.
These difficulties of interpretation could hardly be more illustrative of our
problem: with the old dualism between cultured civilization (Kulturwelt) and
barbarians fading away, received images of this dichotomy have lost much of
their power as interpretive models, for they had lost their univocal meaning. The
plate from Isola Rizza shows that the images lived on, but the actors depicted
had become interchangeable. Barbarians, within the same social milieu, could
look like Romans, and Romans like barbarians. The σχῆμα τῶν Ῥωμαίων was
a recollection of the past rather than a depiction of the present, a fact that is
also underlined by the passages from Procopius and Agathias quoted earlier. In
the early medieval period, costume which we usually describe as Germanic or
Roman was not a medium for expressing membership in a group defined by a
common language. The structural changes which led to the end of imperial rule
in the West in the fifth century meant that tools for ordering and categorizing
which had still been meaningful in the fourth century could not be sustained
two hundred years later.105

5. The Faded Power of Roman Images:

Other Ways of Explaining the Evidence
If we return with this discussion in mind to our original question about the
power of images and the problem of ethnicity, and ask how far sources on dress
and outward appearance can provide information about the role of ethnicity as
a constituent part of early medieval societies, our conclusion is sobering. First
of all, the evidence is too heterogeneous to allow the definition of clear archaeo­

104 
Bruns, Der Obelisk und seine Basis.
105 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Late Roman West, pp. 499–518.
398 Philipp von Rummel

logical groups. This is, however, a prerequisite of archaeological interpretation.

‘Ethnicity without groups’, in Roger Brubaker’s words, cannot be traced by
archaeology,106 even if it certainly existed. In the sixth and seventh centuries, the
situation of confrontation depicted three hundred years earlier on the Ludovisi
Sarcophagus simply did not exist anymore within the borders of the former
Roman Empire; along with it any straightforward dichotomy which allowed
certain cultural phenomena to be ascribed to one side or the other had vanished.
There is no archaeological means to distinguish ethnicity from other possi-
ble forms of expressing identity and of defining it apart from them. Archaeology
can no longer work autonomously at this level of historical interpretation. The
limits of plausible argumentation are defined not only by archaeological mate-
rial, but as much by texts and images. Archaeology, in its attempt to address and
describe the material evidence, has to rely on terminology derived from writ-
ten sources; yet both historians and archaeologists need to acknowledge that
developments which appear in their respective sources may follow different
rhythms, even if they form part of a shared discourse. In the sixth and seventh
centuries, Roman and non-Roman became increasingly ambiguous categories
and are thus highly problematic as a starting point for archaeological expla-
nation. This is not to say, however, that archaeology cannot contribute to the
question of ethnic identification. On the contrary, archaeological sources can
provide information about all three categories defined in Walter Pohl’s essay on
strategies of identification in the companion to this volume. They can describe
the individual act of expressing allegiance to a social group; they can give hints
as to the collective self-representation of a group; and they sometimes provide
insight into the classification of social groups by outsiders. The basis and the
precondition for such studies have to be archaeological finds that clearly belong
to a specific person or group. A grave, for example, is a deliberate statement
made by the group burying the dead, and a cemetery is the sum of such specific
statements. The finds can therefore be seen as traces of a ‘process of communi-
cation’, and a ‘body of social knowledge’.107 However, this raises other problems.
In contrast to texts, archaeological finds offer insights into a process of commu-
nication that became completely silent with the death of the people involved.
Whereas texts provide names of groups, and more or less clear hints to the
rules of discourse and the grammar according to which a society communicates
about these social groups, such information, in archaeology, is already the result
of a complex process of interpretation. This begins with the classification, typo­

106 
Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups.
107 
Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Identification’, p. 6.
The Fading Power of Images 399

logy, and the dating of finds — what belongs together and what not? — and it
continues with the verbalization of these results. Until they can be understood
as ‘repertoires’ for a symbolic language that allowed the negotiation of identity
and difference among groups, archaeological finds have already been (silently)
subjected to extensive interpretation. Archaeological methodology has always
insisted on the necessity of separating purely archaeological work from histori-
cal interpretation. In Germany in particular, this claim is regularly combined
with the famous directive voiced by General Helmuth von Moltke: ‘getrennt
marschieren und vereint schlagen’, march separately, strike together. This is very
true. What remains open to debate, however, is the starting point of the joint
strike. Marking a fibula as Germanic, or a belt as a Roman, already ventures
deep into the field of combined action.
Presumably, this is why archaeological discussion about ethnic interpre-
tation has become quite polemical in recent years. This does not, however,
absolve us from the duty to clarify the implicit foundations of our explicit
concepts. The term ‘Roman’ in early medieval archaeology is in sore need of
a phase of deconstruction. The material evidence should be evaluated in all its
complexity, rather than forced into systems which do not suit the period we
hope to explain. Archaeologists are in fact able to distinguish between different
groups, and they can recapture some of the complexity and variety of the early
medieval social world, but in doing so, they should respect the fact that the
Roman images had, in both a material and a virtual sense, by then lost much of
their ancient authority.

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The Fading Power of Images 403

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 Remembering the Warriors:
Weapon Burials and Tombstones
between Antiquity and the
Early Middle Ages in Northern Italy

Irene Barbiera

1. Early Medieval Warriors and Idealized Masculinity

Funerary habits were supposed to have changed significantly in Italy between
the end of the fifth and the middle of the sixth centuries. New types of objects
began to be deposited in graves, brooches in those of females and weapons
as symbols of warrior identity in those of males. Simultaneously, these graves
began to be arranged in rows, a pattern documented in the northern European
‘Germanic’ tradition.1 All these novelties are typically explained as the result
of the immigration of barbarian groups into the peninsula. In this view, Goths
and later Lombards invaded Italy and settled down, burying their dead as their
ancestors in a Germanic manner, very differently from the Roman tradition.
According to the traditional interpretations, Romans were buried without
significant artefacts in general, such as weapons or brooches that were special
symbols of identity. Germans, on the other hand, were warriors in death as in
life, and their wives displayed the power of kin groups through wealthy and
showy brooches. The idea that warrior identity was strictly linked to the ethnic

1 
The traditional interpretation of row graves as those of laeti was first suggested by Werner,
‘Zur Entstehung der Reihengräberzivilisation’. For a second look at the interpretation of such
cemeteries and for the impossibility of assigning them to ‘German’ immigrants, see Halsall, ‘The
Origins of the Reihengräberzivilisation’.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101670
pp. 407–435 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
408 Irene Barbiera

identity of barbarians is modern,2 having clear roots in early twentieth-century

archaeological studies and later being closely linked to the idea of masculinity
developed between the two World Wars, particularly in Germany. The image of
ancient warriors has often been used to create heroes and to promote a type of
masculinity, particularly functional during time of war.
The emergence of a new ‘myth of war experience’ has been documented
already from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From this time on the
re-emergence of warrior values and the praising of warrior heroes became
particularly important because in previous centuries soldiers were mercenar-
ies with little interest in the cause they fought for, but from this time on wars
were fought by citizen-armies mainly composed of large numbers of volunteers
who were committed to the cause of war and were attached to their patria.3 In
this context, the glorification of war and the celebration of warriors become
particularly significant in justifying human sacrifice. The images of warriors
were employed, quite universally, to personify ‘honour, loyalty, duty, obedi-
ence, endurance, strength, sexual potency, courage, and camaraderie’, and these
attributes were also synonyms of manliness.4 Moreover, masculinity became a
political instrument and warrior virility the symbol of the nation: male citizens
were sacrificing themselves for their countries. The image of military mascu-
linity was further strengthened during the First and particularly the Second
World War, when the ‘real man’ was indissolubly linked to war; in fact ‘to the
fascist there was no difference between a real man and a warrior’.5
The archaeological interpretations of warrior graves of the past that devel-
oped between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
centuries can be better understood in this context. Afterwards, archaeological
discoveries of the past in general, and in particular warrior graves, became more
common, and their interpretations were most often adapted to present con-
cerns. Weapon burials, and the image of ancient warriors which they generated,
were perceived as tangible proofs of glorious, warlike pasts.
The region of the Loire was especially richly endowed with a great num-
ber of early medieval cemeteries having such lavish grave goods. These were

2 
For an analysis of the social and political context in which these ideas developed in the
early twentieth century in Germany, see Fehr, ‘Volkstum as Paradigm’.
3 
Mosse, Fallen Soldiers; Mosse, The Image of Man; and Riall, ‘Eroi maschili, virilità e forme
della guerra’.
4 
Resic, ‘From Gilgamesh to Terminator’.
5 
Resic, ‘From Gilgamesh to Terminator’, p. 425.
Remembering the Warriors 409

employed in order to reconstruct the national costume of ancient Germans,

characterized by showy and wealthy dress elements, especially in shiny metal
items: weapons for males and jewellery for females.6 In this frame, early medi-
eval weapon graves were perceived as a sign of German masculinity: ‘Nordic
man has always been, and always will be, led by his lust for competition, for
culture, for leadership, and for distinction’,7 writes Hans Gunter in 1927, and:
‘The Nordic race seems to show special aptitude in the domain of military sci-
ence owing to its warlike spirit’.8 In this perspective, it became a conviction that
only Nordic men could be buried with weapons, the tangible proof of their
warlike masculinity. Such studies served the Nazis’ expansionism well, since
they could be used to prove that the lands which barbarians had occupied in
the past ‘[…] are old German lands which were stolen from us and which we
can rightfully demand to be given back to us’, as Hitler claimed in May 1942
after reading archaeological reports.9 The idea that warrior graves reflected the
ethnicity and the warlike spirit of German males remained so deeply rooted
in archaeological interpretations that even in the 1950s weapon graves were
defined as ‘nationales Inditium’.10
In contrast to these idealizations of warrior graves that developed in
Germany during the first half of the twentieth century, in Italy early medie-
val grave goods were negatively interpreted. Weapons and jewellery were also
attributed to barbarians, but were presented as a sign of violence and barba-
rism. Such weapons were said to belong to the ‘fierce dominators of Italy’ who
were ‘pagan and crudely savage’.11 Their weaponry equipment was in fact not
even developed enough: ‘From these poor finds we can deduce that barbarians
were not using the helmet at the time of invasions’.12 At that time, it was Roman
soldiers who represented the model for Italian ideal masculinity. The glory of

6 
Recently, the meaning of these cemeteries has been completely reviewed. The associated
artefacts as well as the types of graves are now believed to date from the late antique local cul-
ture, rather than being an expression of the Germans. Also, grave goods are related to social
changes rather than to mere ethnic identity. For a detailed study of these issues, see Halsall, ‘The
Origins of the Reihengräberzivilisation’, pp. 196–207.
7 
Gunter, The Racial Elements of European History, p. 51.
8 
Gunter, The Racial Elements of European History, p. 51.
9 
Fehr, ‘Volkstum as Paradigm’, p. 190.
10 
Werner, ‘Zur Entstehung der Reihengräberzivilisation’, pp. 23–32.
11 
Paribieni, La necropoli barbarica di Nocera Umbra, p. 351.
12 
Moretti, ‘Torricella Peligna (Chieti)’, p. 478.
410 Irene Barbiera

imperial Rome was associated with Mussolini’s power, and at the same time it
was also used to create an Italian shared identity, against regional and local par-
ticularism and free from foreign inspiration. Ancient Roman symbols, like the
saluto romano, or the fasci littori, the Roman insignia of the public office, were
used to connect fascism with imperial Rome.13 Mussolini himself was described
as the ‘reincarnation of a Roman legionary’, since he owned a ‘wide Roman
breast and the concise lucidity of the Latin mind’,14 representing all the power
of the maschia romanità (manly Romanitas). Roman legionaries depicted on
ancient monuments could show ‘the majestic posture, the severe tracts of the
dominating race’,15 and through them ‘we can see again its [Rome’s] best sons
carrying the worlds of justice and equality in faraway lands’.16 The ‘Roman
soldier propaganda’ was perfectly suited to reinforce the ideal of masculinity
which fascists were eager to promote as a national symbol, since ‘Mussolini’s
new man was to be inspired by the war experience and indeed he lived in a state
of permanent war’.17 The attributes of fascist virility were heroism, braveness,
and courage, to be demonstrated not in ordinarily circumstances and everyday
life but in war.
In the official propaganda, obesus Etruscus (the fat Etruscan) and the sav-
age barbarian stand opposed to the Roman hero.18 The first was presented as
a flabby man, who belonged to a decadent and sick race, annihilated by the
Romans. The defeat of the Etruscans was an important step towards the uni-
fication of the peninsula under Roman power, dismantling the local separate
autonomous areas that characterized ancient Italy. The second anti-hero, the
barbarian, was more problematic: on the one hand, according to German histo-
rians, the barbarian invasions meant the end of the Roman Empire, and on the
other hand they were heroes of the Germans, allies of Mussolini during World
War II. In particular, although the myth of Rome functioned extremely well in
the promotion of war, it became problematic when the Germans in 1935 initi-
ated a research programme dedicated to the archaeology of the Ostrogoths and
Lombards in Italy through the German Archaeological Institute of Rome.19 For

13 
Giardina and Vauchez, Il mito di Roma.
14 
Sarfatti, Dux, p. 10.
15 
Giglioli, ‘Il Museo dell’Impero Romano’, p. 14.
16 
Giglioli, ‘Il Museo dell’Impero Romano’, p. 14.
17 
Mosse, The Image of Man, p. 160.
18 
Manacorda, ‘Per un indagine sull’archeologia italiana’, p. 467.
19 
Fröhlich, ‘The Study of the Lombards’; and Barbiera, ‘Die bekannten Soldaten’.
Remembering the Warriors 411

this reason, while archaeological findings about the early Middle Ages were
described in negative terms as opposed to Roman ones during the first decades
of the twentieth century, after the thirties a diplomatic silence fell on barbarian
history and archaeology.20
Both German and Italian interpretations of ancient soldiers aimed to create
an ideal of warlike masculinity, a pointedly positive model that could be alter-
natively Roman or barbarian according to the context. These attitudes were
linked to three assumptions. The first, largely revised in the last few decades,
is that grave goods were employed to underscore ethnicity, and that weapons
deposited in graves made it a routine matter to identify barbarian warriors
as opposed to Romans. The second is that the weapons found in graves were
owned by the particular buried dead warrior. Closely tied to these two hypoth-
eses is a third one, currently supported by archaeologists, namely that weapon
burials were a novelty introduced into the Roman Empire by ancient German
warriors during their invasions. In Italy weapon burials are dated to the period
after the Lombard invasion in ad 569, since supposedly Goths did not bury
weapons in their graves.21
Halsall and Härke have recently critiqued the hypotheses that graves with
weapons strictly mirror warrior and barbarian identities, arguing that they
were rather employed by elite groups for social differentiation.22 Moreover, it
has been shown that such graves were more often present in areas and periods
which experienced substantial social change and stress.23
The following analyses of northern Italian cemeteries seem to confirm this
new hypothesis but also further complicate it. The most interesting conclusion
to be drawn from and about the data collected in this study is that weapon
burials did not represent a novelty introduced by the Lombards on their arrival
in Italy. The evidence suggests, I will show, that weapons were always deposited
in graves, even though fluctuations are visible across the centuries. During later
Antiquity, the identity of soldiers was just more stressed than during the early
Middle Ages, especially in the funerary inscriptions. Let us now consider the
evidence in more detail.

20 
This silence was broken in Italy in the seventies; see Barbiera, ‘The Valorous Barbarian’.
21 
For a specific study on Gothic funerary rituals, see Barbiera, ‘Le dame barbare e i loro
invisibili mariti’.
22 
Härke, Angelsächsische Waffengräber; Härke, ‘“Warrior Graves”?’; Härke, ‘The Circul­a­
tion of Weapons’; Halsall, Settlement and Social Organisation; Halsall, Warfare and Society in
the Barbarian West.
23 
Theuws, ‘Grave Goods, Ethnicity and the Rhetoric of Burial Rites’.
412 Irene Barbiera

2. Weapon Burials in the Long Term

In order to better clarify the extent to which weapon burials represented a nov-
elty in the funerary discourse and reflected social change, I started focusing on
graves displaying warrior attributes over a significantly long time span and wide
area. In particular, I have collected material from cemeteries excavated in north-
ern Italy (Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, also including western Slovenia, which was
part of Italy at the time, Veneto, Trentino-Alto-Adige, Lombardy, Piedmont
and Emilia Romagna regions have been considered here). I collected data from
sixty-six cemeteries, dated from the first century bc until the ninth century ad,
for a total of 6014 graves (Graph 1 below and Table 4 at the end of the article).
The number of graves in each of the selected cemeteries varies from 19/20 to
550. The great variety in cemetery size reflects the fact that cemeteries were
larger during Roman times, becoming smaller during later antiquity and the
early Middle Ages. In general, I could include 1287 graves dated between the
second century bc and the first century ad, and 1150 dated between the first
and the fourth centuries ad. The time span between the fifth and the seventh
century ad is represented in my sample by 2942 graves, and for the following
period, including the eighth and ninth centuries, I have another 635 graves, but
this is also a shorter time span than the others. The goal of future study is to go
on collecting more material, particularly pre-fifth-century-ad-sites, so I will be
able to amplify my conclusions in terms of a more balanced sample. It should
also be stressed that most of the cemeteries discussed here were used for long
time spans, often for centuries. Since a precise dating was not always defined for
the excavated graves, the chronology of transformations here discussed are best
estimates and should be taken as fluid.
I concentrated my investigation on trying to understand the transforma-
tions in the display of warrior and male identities in the context of cemeteries,
and their problematic relation to ethnic issues. The initial puzzle to which I
dedicated attention was how the identity of soldiers or warriors was expressed
in cemeteries, and how it changed through time. The first observation which
emerged after some extended fieldwork was that weapon burials in northern
Italy were not a novelty of the early Middle Ages. In point of fact, weapons
were always deposited in graves, even though the percentage of graves with
such items varied, and often considerably, over time (Graph 1).
The highest concentration of such graves is to be found between the second
century bc and the first century ad. The percentage of graves with weapons
diminished during the third and fourth centuries, but from the sixth century
it increased, reaching a new plateau during the end of the sixth century/begin-
Remembering the Warriors 413

Graph 1. Percentage of Graves with Weapons from a sample of 6014 excavated graves in
66 cemeteries in northern Italy; the percentages of graves with weapons have been calculated
against the total number of graves excavated in each cemetery. The chronology of cemeteries
has been plotted by estimating the average time span of cemetery use.

ning of the seventh. However, at this time the frequency of weapons in graves
is not as high as it was during the first century ad. Furthermore, Table 4 clearly
shows that, over the entire time span under review, there were always cemeter-
ies without weapon graves. It is noteworthy that when you take into account
the entire sample of sites and graves I studied, the highest number of cemeteries
without weapons dates to the sixth and seventh centuries. This may be related
to a distortion in my collected sample, since it often happened that I could not
include cemeteries with weapons because precise information on artefacts and
grave findings is often unpublished, thus making it difficult to clarify precisely
how many graves with weapons have been found.24 Contrarily, it was easy to
include in my study information about cemeteries without weapons, or more
generally without grave goods at all, since this information is usually included
even in short reports about the findings.
However, bearing these limitations in mind, the percentage of cemeteries
without weapons is temporally distributed as follows: during the first cen-

24 
For example, this was the case for the cemetery of Leno in Lombardy, where several
weapon graves have been found but not yet properly published. See De Marchi and Breda, ‘Il
territorio Bresciano’.
414 Irene Barbiera
Remembering the Warriors 415

Graphs 2a–2e. Types of Weapons Distributed in Northern Italy

between the First Century bc and the Ninth Century ad.
Only cemeteries with weapon graves have been included in these graphs.
416 Irene Barbiera

tury bc and the first century ad, fourteen per cent of the cemeteries (one
among eight) did not display weapons; between the first and the fourth centu-
ries ad the percentage of cemeteries without weapons grew to sixty per cent of
the available cemeteries. An even higher proportion of cemeteries occurs later,
between the fifth and the eighth centuries ad, when sixty-seven per cent did
not display weapons. However, since after the eighth century weapon graves
are undocumented, if we exclude this time span and only consider the period
between the sixth and the end of seventh centuries, when weapon graves are
proportionally more numerous than either before or after, we find again that
fifty-seven per cent of the cemeteries did not include weapon graves.
It is apparent that overall weapons never stopped being buried, and that this
practice was simply less frequent during the third and fourth centuries. It is
crucial to recognize the overriding fact that cemeteries without weapons rep-
resented more than half of the sample, almost constantly from the first cen-
tury ad until the end of the seventh. These trends indicate that weapon burial
rites were widely diffused during the early imperial period, and only became
less frequent later on. It is important here to stress that the increase of weapon
burials from the sixth century onwards was not an increase of cemeteries with
weapons, but rather an increase of the number of graves with weapons within
particular cemeteries.
If we consider the types of weapons (Graph  2) deposited through the
centuries, we find that the sax was routinely present. However, its frequency
increases during the seventh century. The lance almost disappeared from the
fifth century, while the sword, the shield, and the axe were less evident between
the second/third and the fourth/fifth centuries,25 when weapon graves become
generally less frequent. Horses and horse equipment (bit and stirrups), arrows,
and bows were found only sporadically in the considered sample, and thus are
not included into the table.
Likewise, in this study I excluded belts for hanging the weapons though
they are recurrent, particularly from the early Middle Ages. Another important
element are brooches, which indeed were a symbol of warrior identity during
Roman times and only became a female attribute from the fifth century ad
onwards. As Mary Harlow and Dominc Janes have shown, crossbow brooches
were used to fasten cloaks by soldiers until the third century.26 Civilian offi-

25 
For the recurrent presence of swords in graves from the late Bronze age in Italy, see
Guaitoli, ‘La dimensione di guerriero’.
26 
Harlow, ‘Clothes Maketh the Man’; Janes, ‘The Golden Clasp of the Late Roman State’.
Remembering the Warriors 417

cials began wearing them from the fourth century, and by the fifth century they
became a symbol of imperial authority.27 It is possible that the change of value
of these items, in particular their employment as symbols of a very high status,
and thus their exclusive value, might have determined the disappearance of this
specific type of brooches from male graves. A little bit later, from the fifth cen-
tury ad, the ‘barbarian type’ of bow brooches started to appear in graves as an
exclusive female attribute.28 Understanding these transformations in the social
and gender meaning of such objects would require a long-term study.
Returning to weapons, regional differences are also visible in their distri-
bution. For instance, in the Friuli region, weapons are totally missing during
the first centuries ad, and appear later, from the sixth century, but only in the
area located to the east of the river Tagliamento, while they are absent in the
cemeteries found in the area western to the Tagliamento river.29 On the con-
trary, it seems that in Lombardy weapon graves were always present across the
centuries, while in Piedmont and Veneto they were less frequent during the
early Middle Ages as compared to Friuli and Lombardy. These observations
on regional diversities are tentative, preliminary working hypotheses requiring
further data.
Also the degree and nature of the difference between towns and countryside
is difficult to define precisely. Roman period cemeteries in Aquileia do not dis-
play weapons, while few graves with weapons have been found near the basilica,
dated to the sixth century ad.30 In contrast, in Ravenna weapon graves are not
documented from any of the centuries in the collected sample. Christian ceme-
teries generally display a very low number of grave goods, particularly weapons,
although a few weapon graves are also documented within churches.31

27 
Janes, ‘The Golden Clasp of the Late Roman State’, pp. 127–53.
28 
For a study on Gothic brooches, see Barbiera, ‘Le dame barbare e i loro invisibili mar-
iti’, pp. 37–79. In general, see Meineke and others, ‘Fibel und Fibeltracht’. For a description of
changes in the use of brooches, see Barbiera, Memorie sepolte, pp. 164–70.
29 
For a discussion on this phenomenon and its possible relation to frontiers, see Barbiera,
‘La morte del guerriero’.
30 
Villa, ‘Aquileia tra Goti, Bizantini e Longobardi’.
31 
In most of such cases few graves interpreted as those of the church founders were buried
inside the church. Given the fact that such burials represent isolated graves or very small clus-
ters of graves, they have not been included in this study. For a consideration of such graves in
Fiuli-Venezia-Giulia, see Barbiera, ‘La morte del guerriero’. For the presence of wealthy graves
related to churches in the Piedmont region, see also Pantò and Pejrani Baricco, ‘Chiese nelle
champagne del Piemonte’.
418 Irene Barbiera

All these trends should be verified by further research. However, they are
particularly interesting because they show that weapon graves were not a nov-
elty introduced into northern Italy by barbarians during the ‘Great Migration
Period’; to the contrary, they show that weapon graves were constantly dis-
played in cemeteries before the first century bc and that this ritual lasted until
the end of the seventh century ad,32 becoming less frequent only between the
third and fourth centuries.
The relative lack of weapons in cemeteries during this last time span seems
particularly intriguing and it shifts the traditional question of ‘Why did
weapon graves appear during the sixth century?’ to a set of new ones: ‘Why
did weapon graves become so rare during the third and fourth centuries?’, and
‘Why did weapon burials disappear, after such a long recurrence, definitely dur-
ing the eighth century, together with all the other grave goods?’ In this study I
will deal with the first of these questions.
Some insights can be gathered when considering Roman period funerary
monuments in stone. At this stage of my research, I have been able to carry out
detailed work on funerary stone monuments from Aquileia and Concordia,
which will be discussed in the following.

3. Soldiers on Stone
In Aquileia about four hundred of the four thousand inscriptions that have
been discovered were funerary inscriptions. I collected and included in this
study four hundred and eighteen funerary inscriptions.33 Of these, fifty are
dated between the first century bc and the beginning of the first century ad,
two hundred and ninety-seven are dated between the first and the second cen-
turies ad, while seventy-one are dated between the third and the fourth cen-
turies ad. Among the oldest funerary inscriptions, only two were dedicated to
soldiers and neither bears any iconographical representation; later, between
the first and the second centuries ad, just over ten per cent of the funerary
monuments were dedicated to soldiers, among which just two displayed carved
weapons (Graph 3).

32 
Weapon graves are documented in Italy from the second millennium bc; see Guaitoli, ‘La
dimensione di guerriero’, p. 19.
33 
See Inscriptiones Aquileiae, ed. by Brusin. A wide sample is also published in Lettich,
Itinerari epigrafici aquileiesi.
Remembering the Warriors 419

Graph 3. References to the Status of Soldiers on the Inscriptions from Aquileia and Concordia.

Many inscriptions in this period report in detail the soldier’s role and hon-
ours received. Graves of commanders were surmounted by big and sumptuous
monuments, with divinities depicted.
During the third and fourth centuries, the number of funerary monuments
found in Aquileia drastically decreased, and by contrast a much higher percent-
age of inscriptions were dedicated to males in the army (almost thirty per cent,
see Graph 3). Half of these carried the portrait of the soldier or the horseman
standing with his equipment; simple soldiers were also commemorated by these
figurative monuments, suggesting they were not the sole prerogative of only
the highest ranks. Horsemen and centurions were usually represented together
with the horse and the groom, the inscription confirming their role in the army
as raiders and leaders (Figure 8). According to Franzoni, the figurative compo-
sition of these funerary monuments reproduces late antique medallions where
the emperors are depicted with a profiled horse in the background.34 This same
composition, including the horse and the groom, is documented in Rome, on
tombstones of equites singulares, and in Mainz.35 Simple soldiers were depicted
standing with weaponry: shield, spear and sax (Figure 9). It is interesting to

34 
Franzoni, Habitus atque habitudo militis, pp. 124–25.
35 
Hope, Constructing Identity, p. 43; see also Franzoni, Habitus atque habitudo militis. For
an analysis of horse graves in southern Italy, probably connected to horse breeding in that area,
see Provesi, ‘Uomini e cavalli in Italia meridionale’.
420 Irene Barbiera

Figure 8.
‘Funerary Epigraphs
from Aquileia,
depicting horsemen’,
Aquilea, Museo
Archeologico
Nazionale. Third to
fourth century ad.
Reproduced after
Lettich, Itinerari
epigrafici aquileiesi,
nos 103 and 104.

note that the posture and the placement of the weapons reflect once again coe-
val representations of highly ranked generals, the best known of which is the
diptych of Stilicho.36
It is also interesting to note that portraits of the dead, depicting children,
women, and civilian officers on stone monuments also appear in Aquileia dur-
ing the first and second centuries.37 However, it is only from the third century
onwards that portraits are mainly reserved for soldiers, with only very few excep-
tions. From the time inscribed stone monuments became rarer, a large percentage
of them were dedicated to soldiers and half of these with warlike equipment.38
36 
Franzoni, Habitus atque habitudo militis, p. 128.
37 
Lettich, Itinerari epigrafici aquileiesi.
38 
Franzoni, Habitus atque habitudo militis, pp. 133–34.
Remembering the Warriors 421

Figure 9. ‘Funerary Epigraphs from Aquileia, depicting soldiers with shield and lance’,
Aquilea, Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Third to fourth century ad.
Reproduced after Lettich, Itinerari epigrafici aquileiesi, nos 108 and 113.

Franzoni, in a general study dedicated to the funerary monuments of sol-

diers in northern Italy, showed that similar trends as those noticed in Aquileia
are reflected in his sample: portraits of soldiers become particularly frequent in
the Padanian region from the third century ad, after being particularly scarce
during the first and second centuries.39 However, differently than in Aquileia,
the Franzoni sample shows that figurative tombstones were produced to com-
memorate mainly high rank soldiers. Unfortunately, most of such funerary
monuments came from disparate sites in northern Italy and cannot be stud-

39 
Franzoni, Habitus atque habitudo militis, pp. 129–39.
422 Irene Barbiera

ied in situ where they were originally; in this way it is not possible to investi-
gate their relation to the remaining graves within single contexts. Moreover,
Franzoni underlines a fundamental point — that the tradition of portraying
soldiers on stone monuments was most probably imported from Rome, where
during the second century ad it was frequently used to commemorate soldiers
belonging to the cohortes of Rome.
The cemetery of Concordia, dated from the end of the fourth century to the
middle of the fifth, is called the cemetery of militia because a high percentage of
the inscriptions was dedicated to soldiers. The sample discussed here represents
the phase following that of Aquileia. Two hundred and seventy graves have
been excavated in Concordia, most of which were in stone sarcophagi without
any inscription.40 Out of the one hundred and two inscribed gravestones, one
third was dedicated to soldiers (Graph 3) and none of these carried an icono-
graphic representation of weapons or portraiture. So, if the epithet of cemetery
of the soldiers is not appropriate for this cemetery because only fourteen per
cent of the total graves were dedicated to soldiers, it is clearly still significant
that more than one third of the more elaborate monuments carrying an inscrip-
tion were dedicated to soldiers.
Both in Aquileia during the third and fourth centuries and in Concordia
during the end of the fourth and the first half of the fifth centuries, one third of
the dead commemorated by stone monuments and inscriptions were soldiers.
Soldiers are distinguished in Aquileia by being portrayed with their equipment,
while in Concordia they are remembered by an epitaph, when this practice is
becoming rare. In general, the role of soldiers was particularly stressed on the
stone monuments in Aquileia and Concordia, starting from the third century
ad, a period when weapon depositions were especially infrequent. Weapon
burials returned thereafter, but inscriptions no longer mentioned soldiers.
The evidence is that from the fifth century onwards the number of inscrip-
tions decreased in the entire peninsula.41 At this time epitaphs were mostly
Christian, praising the spiritual merits of the dead rather than the details of
career or social position.42
Unfortunately, it was not possible to include in this study documentation
of a properly excavated cemetery detailing complete graves, including bones,
grave goods, and the associated funerary monuments. In some cases, subter-

40 
Lettich, Le iscrizioni sepolcrali tardo antiche.
41 
De Rubeis, ‘Rappresentatività sociale delle epigrafi’.
42 
Petrucci, Le scritture ultime; Carletti, ‘Dalla pratica aperta alla pratica chiusa’.
Remembering the Warriors 423

ranean graves have been excavated, but grave stones were missing; they were
probably robbed and reused in the past. In the case of Milan, for instance, it is
well known that a vast quantity of funerary stones were employed in the con-
struction of the town walls.43 In some other cases, like in Aquileia, gravestones
were collected in the past without a proper excavation of the complete grave.
So, even if very limited in space, the epigraphic materials I have considered
seem to indicate a relation between the use of depositing weapons in graves
and the habit of funerary inscriptions. When stone monuments become popu-
lar, weapon graves happen to be particularly rare, becoming even rarer when
equipped soldiers start to be portrayed on their tombstones. As soon as stone
monuments are no longer widely employed for commemoration, grave goods
(in our specific case weapons) become once again a tool for expressing identi-
ties in the context of cemeteries.

4. Discussion
The data here collected challenge the traditional interpretation of weapons in
early medieval barbarian graves as an expression of their ethnic identity and
warlike spirit. In fact, the identity of a warrior had always been clearly mani-
fested through the centuries, although with different strategies. Apparently
weapon burials became rare in northern Italy when stone monuments were
substituted as enduring grave markers that, through inscriptions and portraits,
could stress the status of military men, specify their rank, legions, and years of
service. Why did stone monuments became common in northern Italy from
the first century ad and portraits of the deceased soldier only later, from the
third century? And why did they cease to be employed later on?
The hypothesis that weapon burials belonged to Germanic groups could
explain why they become less frequent in north Italy, replaced by stone monu-
ments as a result of Romanization which spread new funerary rituals. However,
this account crumbles when one recognizes that the Romanization of the
northern Italian areas was in fact a process that actually began in the first cen-
tury bc, and that many equites (equestrians) and senators began to be recruited
from the xth region (Venetia and Histria) from before the reign of Claudius.44
Consequently, the drastic decrease of weapon graves from the second century

43 
Sannazzaro, ‘Attestazioni di militari e militaria a Milano’.
44 
Eck, ‘La riforma dei gruppi dirigenti’; Migliario, ‘Le Alpi nell’impero’.
424 Irene Barbiera

ad does not seem directly linked to the conquest and the reorganization of
northern Italian lands under the Romans.
An alternative explanation could be that the rise and abandonment of
funerary inscriptions was related to economic changes. A broad study on funer-
ary monuments in the western Empire, carried out by Sallers and Shaw, sug-
gested that the erecting of stone inscribed monuments was quite cheap dur-
ing the Principate,45 and therefore, even though it was mainly employed by the
wealthiest groups, poorer members of society could also afford it. Towards the
end of Antiquity the price charged for stone monuments may have increased
because quarrying the stone and the manufacturing of the monuments was
more expensive. This was possibly connected to the third-century crisis which
saw a general rise of prices,46 but it can also be linked to changes in stone exploi-
tation. Historians agree that Roman marble production increased in the late
first century and early second century ad and then tapered off in the third
century ad.47 These trends seem to be confirmed also by a study of statuary in
the eastern Mediterranean: the volume of statues, and therefore the quantity
of marble employed, was quite low from the Hellenistic period until the first
century ad. It start to gradually increase and improve in the late first to early
second century, with a peak in the Hadrianic period, decreasing throughout
the Antonine period, and then returning to a lower level in the Severan peri-
od.48 These trends are consonant to the recurrence of tombstones recorded in
Aquileia. An increase in the cost of funerary monuments is confirmed here, as
five of the military monuments dated to the beginning of the fourth century
were made from reused first century stone monuments.49 Besides, in one of the
epitaphs (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, v. 895) the cost of the tombstone
is clearly specified, showing on the one hand that the price deserved attention,
and on the other that, according to Franzoni’s calculations, its cost was near
the annual pay of an ordinary soldier.50 Moreover, in the sixth century, King

45 
Sallers and Shaw, ‘Tombstones and Roman Family Relations’.
46 
Lo Cascio, ‘Fra equilibrio e crisi’.
47 
Fant, ‘The Roman Emperors in the Marble Business’. For a study of the Roman mentality
behind the spread of inscriptions and their importance for political propaganda, especially in
towns, see Cracco Ruggini, ‘La città imperiale’.
48 
Kane and Carrier, ‘Relationship between Style and Size of Statuary’.
49 
Franzoni, Habitus atque habitudo militis, pp. 135–36.
50 
See Franzoni, Habitus atque habitudo militis, pp. 135–36. For more general consid-
erations on the costs of tombstones in imperial Rome, see Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the
Roman Empire, p. 130.
Remembering the Warriors 425

Theodoric complains about the high price grave cutters in Ravenna charged for
the preparation of monuments, which citizens were often not able to afford, in
a letter transmitted by Cassiodorus.51
It seems that the use of stone monuments to commemorate the dead grew
in popularity in a directly symbiotic relationship to networks of both stone
exploitation and transportation, allowing for distribution and thus availability.
Before and after this phase of economic integration, when commemoration was
not relying on engraved epitaphs and iconographic representations, identities
were symbolized by grave goods.
It is, however, important to stress that when funerary monuments become
rare, and probably unaffordable for low class civilians, members of the army
were still able to produce distinguishing monuments, stressing their military
career. This indicates once again that ‘military ranks and titles were special’.52
The presence of a collegium of veterans in Aquileia could effectively function
as a social organization making provisions for burial; this of course testifies to
the military’s unique sense of symbolic belonging and might explain the spread
of standardized portraits on the tombstones.53 It has been revealed that mili-
tary portraiture in Pannonia and Noricum recurred on monuments dedicated
by brothers, companions in arms, freedman, heirs, or those left unmentioned,
showing that kinship was not relevant. The emphasis on the dead as a single
individual missing family connections, stressed by his portrait in military
dress, contrasts data on civilian tombstones, where family bonds are normally
highlighted through epitaphs and iconography.54 This differentiation among
civilian and military, on the contrary, has not been noticed in other regions
of the Empire such as northern Africa, where indeed monuments of soldiers
as those of civilians did stress kin membership. The lack of family bonds on
soldiers’ monuments of Pannonia and Noricum has been explained by peculiar
patterns of distant postings and external recruitment of local garrisons; as a
consequence, soldiers were detached from their kin of origin and did not create
a new family during their service.55 The result was that their own career would

51 
Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. by Mommsen, iii. 19, p. 89; see the forthcoming Italian transla-
tion by Cristina la Rocca, to whom I am grateful for showing me this text.
52 
Hope, Constructing Identity, p. 49.
53 
Hope, Constructing Identity, p. 47.
54 
Sallers and Shaw, ‘Tombstones and Roman Family Relations’, pp. 140–45; Scheidel,
‘Marriage, Families and Survival’.
55 
Sallers and Shaw, ‘Tombstones and Roman Family Relations’, pp. 142–43.
426 Irene Barbiera

be stressed in death. The same lack of family bonds in soldier tombstones can
be generally found in the sample from Aquileia, though the origin of soldiers
is not expressed in any of the monuments carrying military portraiture. In con-
trast, the names of soldiers written on the monuments dated to the first and
second centuries indicate they were mainly of Italian origin. So, in the case of
Aquileia as well, the emphasis of military status against that of civilian could be
explained in terms of the special social role of this category. This pattern leads
me finally to raise the following question: why was portraiture of the military
so predominant in Aquileia and more generally in northern Italy from the
third century onwards?
It is very tempting to argue that from the third century the spread of mili-
tary portraiture on funerary monuments was closely tied to changes in the army
and the relations between military ranks and both central and local power.
Historians agree that from this period on senators lost the privilege of assum-
ing positions of military command, and this increased the distance between
military and civilian authority. During this period of civil wars and invasions,
emperors became progressively more involved in the army, and ‘the military
nature of the emperor’s position was now revealed much more starkly’.56 The
growth in the role of the army and imperial guidance might well be reflected in
the emphasis given to military members in the epigraphic material of Aquileia.
However, it should be stressed that, while in northern Italy military portrai-
ture became frequent from the third century ad, in other areas of the Empire
such the Rhine region these monuments were already popular two centuries
before.57 We need to learn more about the relationship between weapon burials
and funerary monuments of soldiers also in these areas in order to better clarify
the link between changing strategies of warrior commemoration and the social
role of soldiers.
One possible and especially intriguing clue is that the emphasis on soldiers
in Aquileia and Concordia, occurring from the third century, might be related
to a change in troop locations. As Whitby pointed out, during the earlier cen-
turies of the Empire most troops had been stationed in distant frontiers, and
most military action occurred near the frontier zones. In the late Empire ‘a
higher proportion of troops was located in internal provinces, and the location
of conflict had changed with more fighting occurring inside the Empire, often

56 
Whitby, ‘Emperors and Armies’; Brizzi, ‘Il potere e l’esercito’, pp. 470–71.
57 
Hope, Constructing Identity, and Franzoni, Habitus atque habitudo militis.
Remembering the Warriors 427

deep inside it’.58 This shift might explain why the emphasis of military status on
graves occurred first in the Rhine frontier and only later in north-east Italy.59
Later on, the emergence of weapon graves from the sixth century has been
explained with reference to the rise of a new aristocracy of warrior-landown-
ers. A new military aristocracy of landowners emerged during this phase, dis-
placing the older senatorial elite, which had possessed very large estates. The
instability provoked by wars dismantled large properties scattered in different
provinces of the Empire. This brought about the emergence of local elites who
acquired military, civil, and religious power on a regional scale.60 These changes
led inevitably to a fundamental reorganization of the army. The large costs were
no longer paid by the state through taxation, but ‘private’ bands of warriors
who were paid through booty and newly conquered lands.61 The weapons they
used were no longer given by the state; soldiers themselves had to provide their
equipment.62 Some weaponry elements such as swords were routinely given as
gifts to establish fidelity bonds between warriors and their leaders.63 Weapons
thereby became unique symbols of specific social links. While their display
could thus express belonging to the category of warriors in general, it was also
and perhaps mainly to underline the social role of that particular warrior in
that particular social reality. In this way, the role of soldiers was transformed
from a state career to a perceived privilege of rich people, which had multi-
layered social implications. The means to mark this status changed during the
early Middle Ages, becoming less standardized and more vague over the centu-

58 
Whitby, ‘Army and Society in the Late Roman World’, p. 527; Whittaker, Frontiers of the
Roman Empire.
59 
For a discussion on troops stationed in Concordia and Aquileia, see Lettich, Le iscrizioni
sepolcrali tardo antiche, pp. 35–36; Buora, ‘Le necropoli di Iutizzo’.
60 
Gasparri, ‘The Aristocracy’; Harrison, ‘The Development of Elites’; Liebeschuetz,
‘Warlords and Landlords’. Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, pp.  40–70;
Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, pp. 262–71.
61 
The matter of how soldiers were paid and settled during the early Middle Ages is however
disputed; see Goffart, Barbarians and Romans; Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian
West, pp. 40–70; Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 84–116; Goffart, Barbarian
Tides, pp. 119–86.
62 
For late Antiquity, see Van Sickle, ‘The Salarium of Claudius Gothicus’, and Janes,
‘The Golden Clasp of the Late Roman State’, pp. 132–33; for the early medieval period, see
Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, p. 146; Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian
West, pp. 174–76 and 95–102; Gasparri, ‘The Aristocracy’, pp. 59–84.
63 
Härke, ‘The Circulation of Weapons’, pp. 377–400; Theuws and Alkemande, ‘A Kind of
Mirror for Men’.
428 Irene Barbiera

Table 4.

Number of excavated
Specific Information Regarding the

graves/individuals

Number of graves
Cemeteries Surveyed in this Study.

weapon graves
with weapons

Percentage of
Region Cemetery Chronology
VEN Isola Rizza 2nd–1st BC 112 18 16%
VEN Valeggio 2nd–1st BC 33 4 12%
VEN S. Maria di Zevio, Mirandola (Vr) 2nd BC–1st AD 171 31 18%
PIE Ornavasso, S. Bernardo 2nd BC–1st AD 158 33 20.8%
LOM Nave 1st BC–1st AD 51 2 1.9%
PIE Ornavasso, Persona 1st BC–1st AD 163 23 14.1%
SVIZ Locarno 1st BC–2nd AD 49 6 12.2%
VEN Verona, Porta Palio 1st BC–3rd AD 550 0 0.00%
EMR Voghenza 1st–3rd AD 67 0 0.00%
TAA Tires 1st–3rd AD 52 4 7.60%
EMR Sarsina 1st–3rd AD 96 1 1.00%
EMR Casalecchio di Reno (Bo) 1st–3rd AD 55 0 0.00%
FVG Aquileia, Ponte Rosso 1st–3rd AD 32 0 0.00%
FVG Iutizzo 1st–4th AD 69 0 0.00%
LOM Lungone 1st–4th AD 97 7 7.2%
FVG Aquileia Belinga 1st–4th AD 58 0 0.00%
FVG Sclaunicco 1st–4th AD 45 1 2.20%
FVG Aquileia, Colombara 1st–5th AD 24 0 0.00%
EMR Ravenna, Ca' Lunga 2nd–5th AD 33 0 0.00%
LOM Campo Olivello 2nd–5th AD 30 1 3.33%
TAA Aica 2nd–3rd AD 28 2 7.10%
LOM Milano, Cortili Università Cattolica 1 3rd AD 169 0 0.00%
EMR Casalecchio di Reno (Bo) 4th AD 25 0 0.00%
LOM Milano, Cortili Università Cattolica 2 4th AD 205 1 0.4%
FVG Firmano e. 3rd–b. 7th AD 38 2 5.20%
EMR Classe, vasche dello Zuccherificio 4th–5th AD 27 0 0.00%
VEN Concordia 4th–5th AD 270 0 0.00%
LOM Milano, Cortili Università Cattolica 3 5th AD 122 1 0.8%
PIE Frascaro 5th AD 17 0 0.00%
SLO Dravlje 5th AD 48 1 2.0%
PIE Chieri 5th–6th AD 48 0 0.00%
SLO Kranj 5th–7th AD 504 16 3.1%
VEN Oderzo, ex carceri 5th–7th AD 20 0 0.00%
Remembering the Warriors 429

Number of excavated
graves/individuals

Number of graves

weapon graves
with weapons

Percentage of
Region Cemetery Chronology
LIG Savona, Primar 5th–7th AD 87 0 0.00%
PIE Centallo 6th–7th AD 162 0 0.00%
LOM Quingentole 6th–7th AD 70 0 0.00%
VEN Treviso via dei Mille 6th–7th AD 65 0 0.00%
PIE Ticineto 6th–7th AD 160 0 0.00%
EMR Ravenna, via D’Azzeglio 6th–7th AD 51 0 0.00%
SVIZ Castione h. 6th–7th AD 72 1 1.38%
FVG Cividale, S. Stefano h. 6th–7th AD 43 3 6.9%
FVG Romans h. 6th–7th AD 125 12 9.6%
PIE Collegno e. 6th–7th AD 139 9 6.4%
LOM Sacca di Goito e. 6th–7th AD 238 6 2.5%
FVG Liariis e. 6th–7th AD 53 0 0.00%
FVG Buja 6th–8th AD 51 0 0.00%
LOM Guidizzolo 7th AD 93 0 0.00%
LOM Casalmoro 7th AD 59 0 0.00%
VEN Breda di Piave 7th AD 34 0 0.00%
PIE Carignano, Boatera 7th AD 140 4 2.80%
PIE Carignano, Fornace (To) 7th AD 30 0 0.00%
LOM Montechiaresa (Montichiari) 7th AD 20 1 5.00%
FVG Lovaria 7th AD 105 5? 4.70%
PIE Rivoli-Perosa e. 7th AD 36 0 0.00%
PIE Rivoli, corso primo levi e. 7th AD 80 0 0.00%
PIE Mombello 7th–8th AD 41 1 2.40%
LOM Santi di Sopra (Calvisano) 7th–8th AD 87 2 2.20%
PIE Pacetto di Valenza (Al) 7th–8th AD 19 0 0.00%
FVG Pradamano 7th–8th AD 19 0 0.00%
FVG Invillino, Colle Santino 7th–8th AD 23 0 0.00%
PIE Gozzano 7th–8th AD 60? 0 0.00%
SLO Iskra 7th–9th AD 279 0 0.00%
LOM S. Giulia di Brescia 7th–9th AD 27 0 0.00%
PIE Desana 7th–9th AD 73 0 0.00%
PIE Testona, S. Maria 7th–10th AD 37 0 0.00%
EMR Classe, S. Severo 7th–10th AD 30 0 0.00%
430 Irene Barbiera

ries. Because of the lack of inscriptions, from this time on grave goods assumed
a more important role in the expression of identities, but at the same time their
message was much more fluid. Explicit written labels of the status of a war-
rior or horseman disappeared; weapon depositions were substituted, but their
symbolic meaning seems less clear and normalized than before. This might be
linked to a period of fluidity in the role of soldiers, whose status was mixed up
with or superimposed on that of aristocrats.
In conclusion, there is still data to be collected and analysed (especially
on grave stones), and there are still several open questions to be answered. At
present, it seems legitimate to generalize about what we have learned in our
work in progress: the data show that grave goods, especially weapons, became
particularly rare when stone monuments became popular. This indicates that
changing ways of commemoration were first of all conditioned by economic
trends — in our case the cheap availability of stone as a consequence of quarry-
ing organization during the imperial period seems to have been a precondition
for the spread of stone funerary monuments. Even if the manner of arranging
the tombs changed, the identity of soldier and warrior was constantly expressed
in the context of surveyed cemeteries. However, that being said, the collected
data also strongly indicate that in connection with the diverse social roles and
power of soldiers, stress on military identity changed and evolved over time
and across varying regions. In any case, this line of reasoning seems worth pur-
suing. It would be a mistake to cling to the myth that the visible changes in
commemoration strategies, particularly striking from the sixth century, have
been imported by immigrating foreigners. And even if early medieval grave
assemblages appear showier to the eyes of the modern archaeologist than those
of Antiquity, nevertheless in the context of cemeteries late Roman soldiers were
more visible to the living community than early medieval warriors.
Remembering the Warriors 431

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 Who is the Barbarian?
Considerations on the Vandal Royal Title

Roland Steinacher*
Dedicated to the memory of Yves Modéran
who died suddenly on 2 July 2010 in Paris

T
he Vandal royal title Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum is known from the
reign of King Huneric (477–84) from two decrees preserved in Victor
of Vita’s History of the Vandal Persecution. This Catholic polemic pam-
phlet itself derives from the eighties or nineties of the fifth century. As tradi-
tional diplomatics throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries con-
sidered these decrees as rather authentic, the title was seen as an important
case to understand the transformation of the Roman world in the late antique
Mediterranean via the ‘ethnic’ titles of its new rulers. Furthermore, there is a
silver bowl bearing the same title for King Gelimer (531–33), the last Vandal
king. This means that the title is comparatively well attested in our sources. But
is it really possible to define Hasding royal titulature and especially the two-
fold title as a special and unique case, where the use of ethnic labels occurred
at an earlier stage and more prominently than in any other kingdom emerging
from Roman provinces throughout late Antiquity? The royal title ‘King of the
Vandals and Alans’ was in use and implied certain political contexts. We do not
know yet how exactly these backgrounds may be characterized. So the twofold
*  Walter Pohl funded the research time for this article with his Wittgenstein award and
provided for years an open and challenging ambience for young scholars. It was possible to
write this text as part of a writing bursary funded by the Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung. Timothy Scott
(Macquarie University, Sydney) assisted with the English and thus deserves many thanks for his
dedicated work. Julia Ess (Wien) helped with the bibliography and proof reading. Andrew H.
Merrills (Leicester) sent me his manuscripts and exchanged ideas. Philipp von Rummel (Roma),
Guido M. Berndt (Erlangen), and Francesco Borri (Wien) helped enormously with many long
discussions, by reading the text, giving ideas, and suggesting improvements.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101671
pp. 437–485 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
438 Roland Steinacher

title as well as the single ethnic title ‘King of the Vandals’ has to be discussed
again. This article will offer some considerations, by trying to put Vandal his-
tory back into its Roman and its local context.
Some years ago, Andrew Gillett presented a study in which he asked whether
ethnicity was politicized in the earliest medieval kingdoms. His results were
based on a count of ethnic labels in royal titles in Italy, Spain, Gaul, and Africa.
The clear minority of the titles used ethnic labels. This is true as well, as we
will see, for the Vandal kingdom. ‘The question here is not whether ethnicity
was innate or constructed, but whether it was a central and motivating political
force’. At the same time, Gillett characterized the Vandal twofold title as a spe-
cial case, exceptional for using strong ethnic markers.1 But there have been other
strong markers of ethnic affiliation in use as for example in the Burgundian and
the Lombard case. Gillett is right in stressing the fact that this was not very fre-
quently the case, and he is right to call into question the importance of ethnic
titles, which older research has tended to overemphasize. But ethnic titles were
in use for specific purposes: they have to be understood. Their backgrounds can
be explained — at least in some cases. Walter Pohl has pointed out that the
Lombard kings used the title Flavius rex in charters, and the contrast to the
strong ethnic accentuation Rex gentis Langobardorum in the Leges. This hints at
a situational use of such ethnic titles for a specific audience interested in a cer-
tain position within late Roman society.2 Generally speaking, federate soldiers
had taken over the political power in Roman provinces throughout Gaul, Spain,
and Africa. Ethnicity, and in our case titles with an ethnic affiliation, might help
us to understand the specific structures of these regions at the time.

Scyths or Goths? Roman Stereotypes on Barbarians

in the Late Antique Mediterranean
Before we discuss specific sources attesting the royal titles from Vandal North
Africa or try to understand how an ethnic name could have been used as part
of a political identity, we have to summarize the Roman view on groups from

1 
Gillett, ‘Was Ethnicity Politicized’, p. 109.
2 
Gillett, ‘Was Ethnicity Politicized’, p. 109. For a situational use of ethnic titles and gen-
eral considerations: Pohl, ‘Ethnicity, Theory and Tradition: A Response’; for the Lombard
leges and the charters in Northern Italy: Pohl, ‘Geschichte und Identität im Langobardenreich’,
pp. 564–65; Pohl, ‘Memory, Identity and Power’; the material for Northern Italy: Wolfram,
Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, pp. 90–107; considerations for the Frankish
case: Reimitz, ‘Die Konkurrenz der Ursprünge’.
Who is the Barbarian? 439

outside the Empire. Roman and Greek ethnography had built up certain stere-
otypes as well as literary patterns long before, Vandals, Goths, Burgundians, or
Franks had entered the Empire in the fourth and fifth century as armed forces
and built up new political entities in Gaul, Italy, Spain, and Africa.
At the end of the fifth century, sources use the term ‘Gothic’ to label peo-
ples as different as the Goths in Gaul, Spain, and Italy, the Vandals in Africa,
the Gepids and Heruli along the Tisza and the Danube, the Rugians, Sciri,
and Burgundians, even the Sarmatians, and Iranian Alans. Greek and Latin
authors had already used Gothi/Gothoi, or gentes Gothicae after the third cen-
tury ce as a general term for peoples north of the Black Sea. These peoples were
most often classified as Scyths using ethnographical basics dating back to the
Greek ethnographers Hekataios, Herodotus, Erasthosthenes, and many oth-
ers. Unlike the late antique sources, nineteenth- and twentieth-century schol-
arship included the so-called Gothic peoples within the idea of widespread
Germanic unity. The Gothic peoples were classed as ‘East-Germanic’ peoples
(Ostgermanen). The development of linguistics in the early nineteenth cen-
tury had a deep impact on historical considerations and was one of the reasons
for these assumptions.3 Another reason was the deeply rooted wish to trace
national origins back into a past as ancient as possible.4 This suggested a uni-
formity of different barbarian groups which had never existed. No one in late
Antiquity would have known what was meant.5
Procopius’s introduction to his Vandal War is a good example of the Roman
(or Rhomaian) ethnographical point of view. Even after a century of barbarian
rule in Africa or Italy, a Roman intellectual classed kings and elites according to
barbarian groupings. The Byzantine author described the biggest tribes of the
Gothic peoples: the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Alans, and Gepids. Long
ago (πάλαι), all these peoples were, according to Procopius, called Sauromatai
and Melanchlainai, or Getae all together (Γετικά ἔθνη). According to him, the
Gothic peoples had different names but were similar in their habits and beliefs.

3 
Geary, The Myth of Nations.
4 
A good example is the work of Ludwig Schmidt. Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen
Stämme, i: Die Ostgermanen; and ii: Die Westgermanen. In the second revised edition of his Die
Ostgermanen of 1934, Schmidt changed parts of his classification data for the ‘East-Germanic’
peoples. He did not do so for the ‘West-Germanic’ peoples. Schmidt tried hard to apply ethno-
graphic categories. Furthermore, he considered delineating ‘Germanic’ history together with
Roman history as a handicap.
5 
Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’, p. 39; Heather, Goths and Romans, pp. 135–40; Wenskus,
Stammesbildung und Verfassung, pp. 462–84; Steinacher, ‘Heruli, People, Third-Sixth c.’.
440 Roland Steinacher

All Procopian Goths had white skin, blond hair, were tall and very good looking,
had the same laws, and were Arians. They spoke one Gothic tongue. Initially,
this united people settled at the Ister river, the lower Danube. The single peo-
ples then separated, taking their new names from the names of their leaders.6
The Sauromatai are known from Herodotus. He tells a story that made them
descendants of Scythian men and Amazon women. According to Herodotus,
the female fighters had been eagerly looking for strong fathers for their chil-
dren. Melanchlainai could be translated as ‘those with black coats’. This eth-
nic name appears in Herodotus’s Histories and later in the Orationes of Dion
Chrysostomos. Based on these Herodotean origin legends, ancient ethnogra-
phers defined Getae, Massagetae, Sakoi, Issedonoi, as well as the Gothic peoples
mentioned above as the offspring of the Sauromatai and Melanchlainai. Most
ancient ethnographers located these peoples near the Lake Mæotis (Sea of
Azov) and the Tanais (Don).7 In the sixth century, such ethnographic knowl-
edge became a basis for the Gothic/Getic history of Jordanes and Cassiodorus,
so much discussed in modern scholarship.8 Did it also influence the ethnic
royal titles discussed here?
In Italy, a new elite needed a political and historical identity and Cassiodorus
was eager to create one. As the followers of Theoderic were confronted with
strong traditional identities in the Roman centre, the intellectual frame had to
be far reaching. In a complicated text, Cassiodorus or Jordanes managed to give
the Goths an ancient and condign history using the literary motifs available.
The Getic history was one tool to link a rather young confederation that had
evolved at the Roman borders opposite the Dacian and Moesian provinces to
the old Herodotean tales of origin for barbarians from the north. ‘The notion
that the Goths were Getae gave the Romans a framework within which to
respond to them’.9 One of the aims of this article will be to understand at least
partly why the rulers of Africa had no similar origin legend created.

6 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, iii. 2. 3, ii, pp. 11–12; Engels, ‘Geten’.
7 
Herodotus, Historiae, ed. and trans. by Godley, iv. 20. 100–02 and 110–16, ii, pp. 87,
90–91; Dion Chrysostomos, Orationes, ed. and trans. by Cohoon and Crosby, xxxvi. 3, iii,
p. 362; Cf. Engels, ‘Geten’, pp. 563–68; Eggers and Ioniţâ, ‘Sarmaten’; Procopius, Bella, ed. and
trans. by Dewing, iii. 11. 9, ii, p. 105, refers to the ‘Massagetae whom they now call Huns’.
For further characteristics of these men in Procopius’s history, see Dewing’s index on p. 478,
s.v. Massagetae.
8 
Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History; Goffart, ‘Jordanes’s Getica’; Goffart,
Barbarian Tides; Wolfram, Gotische Studien; Wolfram, Die Goten.
9 
Wood, ‘Conclusion: Strategies of Distinction’, p.  302. Cf.  Steinacher, ‘Gruppen und
Who is the Barbarian? 441

Procopius explained the migration of the ‘Gothic’ Vandals too. As they were
hungry, the Vandals and Alans moved to the Rhine and fought the Germanoi,
who are called Franks in Procopius’s times.10 Germanoi is usually limited to the
Rhine area and to Frankish ancestors. Procopius never would have thought that
‘Gothic peoples’ were Germanoi. Nor did he define the Franks of his days as such.
Likewise neither Cassiodorus nor Jordanes knew Germani.11 Procopius knew
and used Caesar’s term. He described the situation as follows: In old times, on
both sides of the Rhine, different peoples had lived, all together named Germanoi
(Γερμανοί). The description of ancient Germans at both sides of the Rhine could
be due to an attempt to explain the Frankish territory of the sixth century by
historical considerations. Another possibility for understanding the passage is to
think of the territorial name Germania used for the Roman provinces west and
east of the Rhine. Be that as it may, this passage asserts that Procopius reduced
the term Germanoi to the Franks and associated it with the Rhine area.12 Shortly
afterwards, Agathias referred to Frankish barbarians formerly called Γερμανοί in a
similar manner. These Franks inhabited Gaul in his lifetime.
The Franks (τὸ γένος τῶν Φράγγων) have a common frontier with Italy. They may
reasonably be identified with the people who in ancient times were called Ger-
manoi (Γερμανοί), since they inhabit the banks of the Rhine and the surrounding
territory, and though they occupy most of Gaul, it is a later acquisition since they
did not previously live there; and the same is true of the city of Massilia, which was
originally settled by Ionians.13

Procopius located the Vandals’ place of origin around the Maeotian Lake,
where already Herodotus had placed the encounter of the Scythians with the

Identitäten’, p. 254.
10 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, iii. 3. 2, ii, p. 23.
11 
Cf. Pohl, ‘Der Germanenbegriff vom 3. bis 8. Jahrhundert’; Pohl, ‘Vom Nutzen des
Germanenbegriffes’; Pohl, Die Germanen; Jarnut, ‘Germanisch’, p. 108; Steinacher, ‘Rome and
its Created Northerners’.
12 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, v. 11. 29, iii, p. 117: ‘After this he began to
gather all the Goths from every side and to organize and equip them, duly distributing arms
and horses to each one; and only the Goths who were engaged in garrison duty in Gaul he was
unable to summon, through fear of the Franks. These Franks were called Germanoi in ancient
times. And the manner in which they first got a foothold in Gaul, and where they had lived
before that, and how they became hostile to the Goths, I shall now proceed to relate’. Cf. Pohl,
‘Der Germanenbegriff vom 3. bis 8. Jahrhundert’, p. 171.
13 
Agathias, The Histories, trans. by Frendo, i. 2. 1, p. 10.
442 Roland Steinacher

Amazons. Contrary to research opinions of the last two centuries, Procopius

therefore defined the origin of the fifth- and sixth-century Vandals not at the
Baltic Sea but exactly from where all Scythian nations were derived. It may
be noted that the late antique historian could not see a difference between
the Vandals and the Alans and therefore did not consider that the simulta-
neous action of the Vandals and Alans called for comment. Furthermore, in
Procopius’s view Goths and Vandals were just the same: they were Scythian
barbarians causing problems in the Roman West.
When Geiseric tried to secure his position in the Mediterranean in the sec-
ond half of the fifth century, Vandal fleets annually attacked the Italian coasts.
When spring came, strong Vandal naval formations (numerosa classis) attacked
the Roman shores. Considering the political situation, the Gallic aristocrat
Sidonius Apollinaris saw the world order turned upside down. The Byrsa —
the hill in Carthage where the proconsul’s palace was located, and therefore
the political centre of the African provinces — was governed by the Caucasus.
Once again Sidonius alluded to the Scythian as the barbarian identity of the
Vandals.14
In 534, Justinian promulgated his Corpus Iuris Civilis. The opening
sequence of this collection of laws lists the emperor’s titles. After the Vandal
kingdom was destroyed by Belisarius in 534, Justinian used the triumphal titles
Alanicus Vandalicus Africanus in various sections of the Digesta, the Novellae,
the Institutiones, and the Codex Justinianus, as well as in inscriptions. The
Emperor appeared as the vanquisher of different barbarian gentes, such as the
Alamanni and Franks in the provinces of Germania prima and secunda at the
Rhine, the Goths in Italy and Spain, the Antes at the Black Sea and, last but not
least, the Alans and Vandals in the African provinces (‘Iustinianus Alamannicus
Gothicus Francicus Germanicus Anticus Alanicus Vandalicus Africanus’).15

14 
Sidonius Apollinaris, Carmina, ed. and trans. by Anderson, ii. 348–52, i, pp. 38–39:
‘Hinc Vandalus hostis | urget et in nostrum numerosa classe quotannis | militat excidium, con-
versosque ordine fati | torrida Caucaseos infert mihi Byrsa furores’. Priscus, Fragmenta, xxx-
viii. 1–2, in The Fragmentary Classicising Historians, ed. and trans. by Blockley, ii, pp. 341–43.
15 
Institutiones, in Corpus Iuris Civilis, ed. by Behrends and others, Constitutio
Imperatoriam: praefatio, i, p. xiii: ‘In nomine Domini nostri Jhesu Christi Imperator Caesar
Flavius Iustinianus Alamannicus Gothicus Francicus Germanicus Anticus Alanicus Vandalicus
Africanus pius felix inclitus victor ac triumphator semper Augustus’. Cf. Alemany, Sources on
the Alans, pp. 192–93; Gillett, ‘Was Ethnicity Politicized’, p. 109, n. 30; Pohl, ‘Justinian and
the Barbarian Kingdoms’, pp. 448–76. Cf. the inscriptions Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum,
iv. 8636 and Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, iii. 13673 (from ancient Miletus, today Akkoy/
Balat near Söke, province of Aydın). The second, partly Latin inscription from Miletus reads:
Who is the Barbarian? 443

Since the time of Augustus, such language of power had been used when neigh-
bouring groups acted against the centre’s wishes.16 Justinian wanted to make his
fellow Romans believe that the world had returned to how it had been for cen-
turies. Rome ruled the world and all the gentes were beaten and under control:
even if these gentes had ruled Roman provinces for more than a century and in
the end managed to keep up a Roman order in these parts of the West.17
In this world view, gentes were bound to Rome by treaties and duties, and
in some cases war was necessary to put things right again at the periphery. The
world (orbis terrarum) and Rome (orbis romanus) were seen as one. The depend-
ent client states or gentes were seen as part of the Empire, whether within or
outside the Roman borders. The Laterculus Veronensis lists about hundred
provinces and twelve dioceses trying to give an overview of the Roman Empire
at the beginning of the fourth century. As a matter of course, this list also
names thirty-five gentes at the Roman borders and even notes that these peo-
ples were formed, or evolved, under Roman influence and reacted to Roman
structures.18 In the eyes of the Roman elites in Ravenna and Constantinople,
the Vandals and Alans in the African provinces never were more than barbar-
ians under Roman rule. Whether in the provinces a different view existed or

‘Iustinianus Alaman(icus) Gothicus Fragicus Germanicus, Gallic(us A)lanicus Euandalicus

Africanus’. Cf. Inschriftensammlung, ed. by Fiebiger and Schmidt, no. 54, pp. 38–39, and no. 55,
pp. 39–40. Franks and Alamanni appear apart from Germanicus and Gallicus. As two provinces
are named, this should be seen as a geographical allusion, not as an ethnic label. The appearance
of Africanus strengthens this view. Of course, the inscription is orientated on the promulga-
tion of the CIC. Anticus: The much-discussed Antae can be located north of the Black Sea.
Justinian made them allies, and between 545 and 602 the Antae co-operated with the Empire.
Cf. Pritsak, ‘Antae’; Curta, The Making of the Slavs, pp. 78–89, and the index, p. 451; Pohl, Die
Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 513 (index). Jordanes has only three victory titles
cited: Jordanes, Getica, ed. by Mommsen, c. 316, p. 138: ‘Sed victor ac triumphator Iustinianus
imperator et consul Belesarius Vandalici Africani Geticique dicentur’.
16 
Krierer, Antike Germanenbilder.
17 
Meier, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians, pp. 150–82, 309–20.
18 
Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, ed. and trans. by Rolfe, xxix. 5. 46, iii, pp. 274–75:
Valentinian is ‘orbis terrarum dominus’. The Laterculus Veronensis, ed. by Seeck, pp. 247–51,
has a list of thirty-five ethnonyms including Vandali, Sarmatae, Sciri, Scythae, and Gothi ending
with the Persae. The list is headlined with the remark: ‘Gentes barbarae, quae pullulaverunt sub
imperatoribus’. Cf. Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty, pp. 277–335; Demandt,
Die Spätantike, pp. 321, 323, and n. 189; Dick, Der Mythos vom ‘germanischen’ Königtum,
pp. 159–202; Wirth, ‘Rome and its Germanic Partners’, pp. 16–25; Schulz, Die Entwicklung des
römischen Völkerrechts.
444 Roland Steinacher

not is not totally clear. Nevertheless, both Romans and barbarians were part of
a transforming Roman world.
After 533, the Vandals and Alans disappeared as a political and military
power. What remained were uses and reuses of these ethnonyms throughout
European history that are not easy to explain.19 The triumphal epithets Alanicus
Vandalicus Africanus used by Justinian put the Vandals and Alans, former rulers
of the Roman provinces Proconsularis, Byzacena, Numidia, Mauretania, and
Tripolotana back into a barbarian context. They became simply gentes from the
periphery beaten by a Roman emperor.
The literary statements discussed so far played an important role in the way
late Antiquity has been seen in the Modern Age. The harsh antique images
and stereotypes in use made it easier for scholars to use and abuse historical
structures. Until the 1970s, scholarship put the story roughly like this: Roman
inhabitants with a clear awareness of their identity resisted, or at best co-
operated with, a culturally different and strongly separated group of conquer-
ors from the north. Germanic barbarians settled in the countryside and had
their problems with the alien yet sophisticated Roman culture. They used some
Romans, who had to serve them and were supposed to take care for a working
late Roman society, to acquire food and money, to be rich and powerful.20
Was the social and political gap between so-called Romans and so-called
barbarians as wide as some sources would have us believe? What was the role
of ethnic labels in the organization of Roman provinces in the fifth and sixth
centuries? Can we trace specific strategies for the use of ethnic labels in our
sources? All this is being discussed in detail in recent research. In the following
section, certain aspects of Vandal rule in the African provinces will be analysed
against the background of ethnic labels appearing in the titles of the Vandal

19 
Donecker and Steinacher, ‘Der König der Schweden, Goten und Vandalen’; Steinacher,
‘Wenden, Slawen, Vandalen’; Steinacher, ‘Vandalen im frühneuzeitlichen Ostseeraum’;
Steinacher, ‘Vandalen: Rezeptions- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte’.
20 
For example Schmidt, Geschichte der Wandalen. Schmidt’s work has a remarkably high
level of discussion of the sources, but sticks to a strong dichotomy between ‘Germans’ and
‘Romans’. Similarily the French tradition: Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique. Cf. on recent crit-
ics of Courtois: Merrills, ‘Introduction: Vandals, Romans and Berbers’, pp. 7–8, and nn. 17–20;
Steinacher, ‘Gruppen und Identitäten’, pp. 243–44. Recently, Maier, Amtsträger und Herrscher
in der Romania Gothica, used such stereotypes again. A discussion of the same problems in
archaeology can be found in Fehr, ‘Romanisch-germanische Sprachgrenze’; and Bierbrauer,
‘Romanen’. Cf. recently on the problem Fehr, Germanen und Romanen im Merowingerreich, and
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Late Roman West, pp. 35–62.
Who is the Barbarian? 445

kings to illustrate the great variety of possible political solutions in this age of
Mediterranean history.

The Vandal Royal Title 1: Gelimer’s Basin and its

Possible Background Compared to Similar Objects
As has been mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Vandal royal title
Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum is known from two decrees preserved in Victor
of Vita’s History of the Vandal Persecution written in the eighties or nineties of
the fifth century.21 According to diplomatics, these decrees can be viewed as
authentic and were defined as very close to Roman imperial decrees with regard
to their language, style, and juridical background.22
Some fifty years later, the last of the Hasding kings was celebrated as
‘Geilamir Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum’ in an inscription on a valuable sil-
ver basin found in 1875 in northern Italy in the ruins of the Castle of Artèn
(Fonzaso, BL, Veneto). The round basin with a low base as a separate piece has
an engraved rosette with an aperture of approximately twenty cm in its centre.
Around this rosette, the inscription was engraved in between two striations.
Together with this basin, a second one was found. It has an allegory with a
woman, a man, and a child standing around an altar and is preserved today
in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, like the bowl of Gelimer. The treasure
included furthermore some copper fibules.23

21 
Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae, ed. and trans. by Lancel, ii. 39,
pp. 139–40, and iii. 3–14, pp. 175–81 (Victor of Vita, History of the Vandal Persecution, trans.
by Moorhead).
22 
Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, pp.  79–87; Heuberger,
‘Vandalische Reichskanzlei und Königsurkunden’, pp.  93–105; Wolfram, Die Goten,
pp. 295–99; Pohl, Die Völkerwanderung, p. 137.
23 
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Cabinet des Médailles et Antiques, no. bb 849. The basin
weighs 3030 g, is 7 cm high, with an aperture of 49 cm. Cf. Morrisson, Brenot, and Barrandon,
‘L’Argent chez les Vandales’, with a detailed technical analysis; Erbelding, ‘Kat. no. 329’; Eger,
‘Silbergeschirr und goldene Fibeln’, pp.  72–73; Inschriftensammlung, ed. by Fiebiger and
Schmidt, no. 51, p. 37; Maculevič, Byzantinische Antike, p. 52; Calvi, ‘Il piatto d’argento di
Castelvint’; De Longpérier, ‘Le missorium de Geilamir’; Fiocco, ‘Ultime voci della Via Altinate’,
pp. 374, 376, and a picture of the second basin tab. li. Fiocco furthermore gives some consid-
erations on when the silver objects could have come to the castle of Artèn, discussing also their
modern history.
446 Roland Steinacher

The basin of Gelimer is an example of antique ceremonial silver dishes

labelled missoria. They were frequently used as gifts of largess (largitio) to
persons close to the emperor or foreign ambassadors. Luxury articles (dishes,
plates, cups, and bowls in silver) were prepared for imperial celebrations such
as accession to the throne and anniversaries, and handed over by the emperor
on these occasions to high-ranking dignitaries of the empire. A good example
is the basin found in 1721 near Geneva which bears the inscription ‘Largitas D
N Valentiniani Augusti’. On the engravings, the emperor appears in between
six soldiers protecting him, wearing an armour and a paludamentum (a cloak or
cape fastened at one shoulder, worn by commanders) to demonstrate his mili-
tary power.24
Concerning Gelimer‘s basin, Andrew H. Merrills recently assumed that the
piece could have been sent to the Ostrogothic court as a diplomatic gift. Other
scholars have conjectured that the piece was Hasding royal property or a pre-
sent prepared during the battle of Ad Decimum in 533 by Gelimer’s followers
to be presented to victorious Vandal leaders. After their wishes remained unful-
filled due to Belisar’s victory, the piece may have come to Italy with Byzantine
troops.25 A third possibility is that it was a gift handed to the Vandal king by
foreign rulers to honour his position.
Be that as it may, the eye-catching inscription hints at a representative,
official, or diplomatic use. Procopius’s description of Belisarius’s triumph in
Constantinople in 533 points to the sheer quantity of maybe similar objects
plundered by Byzantine troopers in Africa:
For he [Belisarius] had the fortune to be advanced to the office of consul, and
therefore was borne aloft by the captives, and as he was thus carried in his curule
chair, he threw to the populace those very spoils of the Vandalic war. For the people

24 
Generally on largitio, cf. Enßlin, ‘Largitio’; Bauer, ‘Prestigegüter und Kaisernähe in der
Spätantike’. Bauer lists also rings, fibules, and belt-buckles as gifts to signal proximity to the impe-
rial house. The basin of Valentinian: Genèva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Inv. c 1241; Toynbee
and Painter, ‘Silver Picture Plates’; Wölfel, ‘Mythos und politische Allegorie’, pp. 18–19 and
n. 88; for further reading on the basin, see Baratte and Painter, Trésors d’orfèvrerie gallo-romains,
no. 236, pp. 271–72.
25 
Merrills and Miles, The Vandals, p. 96. Morrisson, Brenot, and Barrandon, ‘L’Argent chez
les Vandales’, pp. 126–27, and Calvi, ‘Il piatto d’argento di Castelvint’, pp. 353–416, mention
other valuable objects (amongst them another silver bowl) and coins found in the near ambi-
ence. The last coin (an Ostrogothic tremissis) was struck between 555 and 565. All this hints to
a possible concentration of armed forces in the area hiding their donativa from whatever enemy
or comrade in arms.
Who is the Barbarian? 447

carried off the silver plates (ἀργυρώμα) and golden girdles and a vast amount of the
Vandals’ wealth of other sorts as a result of Belisarius’s consulship.26

Three more objects have to be discussed here, before the Vandal royal titles
themselves can be considered. The first piece is a sapphire engraved ‘Alaricus
Rex Gothorum’. The stone bears a stylized portrait and may have been used as a
seal similar to the Merovingian signet rings. Most probably, the engraved stone
is related to Alaric II (484–507). The reason why this inscription has been
examined so carefully in research is that, in a similar way to the Vandal king-
dom, the royal titulature in Visigothic Spain was normally used without any
ethnic marker. Before the seventh century, the Visigothic kings used the royal
epithet Flavius introduced by Odovacar and Theoderic in Italy. Other possi-
bilities have been a simple rex combined with the ruler’s name, dominus (noster,
meus), especially on coins, or princeps. The famous Gothic King Alaric, who
had conquered Rome in 410, had Roman military ranks (magister militum) or
was simply called rex. Neither the rulers of the kingdom of Toulouse nor the
law giver Euric (466–84) used ethnic labels in their own political statements.
So, before the late sixth and the seventh centuries, an ethnic title is attested in
Visigothic Spain in an engraved form only on this one piece.27
The second object forms another exception and leads us back to a Roman envi-
ronment. It is the only archaeological example we know for non-imperial largitio
in the form of silver basins or bowls and it is bigger than most of the other known
objects. Flavius Ardaburius Aspar celebrated his consulship with the basin, found
near Orbetello (GR, Tuscany) in 1769 and kept today in Florence. No stamps or
signs were found, but archaeologists suggested Carthage as the place of manu-
facture for stylistic reasons. Aspar was granted the consulship of the year 434 in

26 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, iv. 9. 15, ii, p. 283. The booty from Africa is
described shortly before, explicitly naming the silver (iv. 9. 4–5, ii, pp. 279–81): ‘And there was
booty — first of all, whatever articles are wont to be set apart for the royal service —, thrones of
gold and carriages in which it is customary for a king’s consort to ride, and much jewelry made
of precious stones, and golden drinking cups, and all the other things which are useful for the
royal table. And there was also silver weighing many thousands of talents and all the royal treas-
ure amounting to an exceedingly great sum (for Gizeric had despoiled the Palatium in Rome, as
has been said in the preceding narrative)’. Cf. Berndt and Steinacher, ‘Minting in Vandal North
Africa’, p. 260; Steinacher, ‘Gruppen und Identitäten’, p. 257.
27 
Inschriftensammlung, ed. by Fiebiger and Schmidt, no. 250, p. 120; Kornbluth, ‘The Seal
of Alaric’; Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, i, pp. 217–19; Wolfram, Intitulatio
i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, pp. 77–78; Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, i:
Die Ostgermanen, p. 426 and n. 2. Cf. the lists in Gillett, ‘Was Ethnicity Politicized’, pp. 100–02.
448 Roland Steinacher

Carthage, when he tried to defend the city against the Vandals and Alans in the
African provinces. The inscription on the basin reads ‘Fl(avius) Ardabur Aspar
vir inlustris com(es) et Mag(ister) Militum et Consul Ordinarius’.28
The third object is only known from written sources. Gregory of Tours
refers to an impressive basin made from gold and jewellery as heavy as fifty
pounds. The Frankish King Chilperic I praises himself for having ordered the
basin made to honour the Franks. According to Gregory, the piece had the
inscription ‘I (Chilperic) made this to adorn and to ennoble the gens of the
Franks’ (‘Ego haec ad exornandam atque nobilitandam Francorum gentem
feci’). Immediately thereafter, Gregory describes another basin, in this case a
gift of the Emperor Tiberius II Constantine (574–82) bearing the latter’s por-
trait and the inscription Gloria Romanorum.29
Military leaders — be it a king with a barbarian background or a high rank-
ing Roman officer of the same descent — had their new honorary positions
celebrated with prestigious and valuable presents of largesse to their closest fol-
lowers. On these objects is a title, which in the case of Aspar, according to writ-
ten sources, equates to official use. In the case of Alaric and Gelimer, the royal
title differs from what we know from coins, inscriptions, or official documents.
Only in the Vandal case can some other supporting documents be discussed.
How should Gelimer’s basin be interpreted? As a possibility, we could think
of a person of high military rank acting closely around the Hasding king as the
receiver of the basin. At least this was the purpose of the comparable objects
discussed above. If this is the case, the engraved title was used in a special envi-
ronment and forms only one possibility of political representation of a Vandal
king. Why was the twofold ethnic royal title used and engraved in a valuable
object deriving from the context described above? Was Gelimer wishing to
stress a specific kind of political identity? We shall return to these questions in
the conclusion.

28 
Firenze, Museo Archeologico, Inv. 2588. Aperture: 42 cm, weight: 1900 g; the right brim
and the basis are lost. Cf. Toynbee and Painter, ‘Silver Picture Plates’, no. 17, p. 28; Wölfel,
‘Mythos und politische Allegorie’, pp. 23–25; Delbrueck, Die Consulardiptychen und verwandte
Denkmäler, i, no. 35, pp. 154–56; Salomonson, ‘Kunstgeschichtliche und ikonographische
Untersuchungen’, pp. 66–68; Musso, Manifattura suntuaria e committenza pagana, pp. 19–20.
Cf. for Aspar: ‘Fl. Ardabur Aspar’, in Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire,
ii: ad 395–527 (1980), pp. 164–69.
29 
Gregory of Tours, Historiae, ed. by Krusch and Levison, vi. 2, pp. 266–67. Cf. Hardt,
Gold und Herrschaft, pp. 102–03.
Who is the Barbarian? 449

The Vandal Royal Title 2: The Written Sources Apart from Victor of Vita
In the following, I will discuss other sources using either the title Rex
Vandalorum et Alanorum or simply rex Vandalorum. The next step has to be to
present the evidence for royal Vandal titles that do not include ethnic labels,
and to compare them to the evidence from other former Roman provinces
under barbarian rule in the fifth and sixth centuries. As Victor’s comparatively
dense History of the Vandal Persecution needs detailed analysis, it will be dis-
cussed in a separate section.
Prosper’s chronicle normally calls King Geiseric simply ‘King of the Vandals’
(Gisiricus rex Wandalorum).30 The so-called Laterculus Regum Wandalorum
et Alanorum uses an ethnic label for Geiseric (Geisericus UUandalorum rex)
in the ninth-century manuscript deriving from the monastery of Reichenau.
The thirteenth-century Madrid version, like the fifteenth-century version from
Augsburg, label the Vandal kings just by their proper name and the title rex.31
Thrasamund appears as a king of the Vandals in the Anonymous Valesianus when
he marries the Gothic princess Amalafrida. The same is true for the Consularia
Italica in a passage where the King orders the closure of Catholic churches.32
Sixth-century sources provide a similar picture. Jordanes names Geiseric fre-
quently (and Thrasamund once) rex Vandalorum.33 The letters of Cassiodorus
constantly use rex Vandalorum to address Thrasamund and Hilderic.34 It is,
however, far from clear how near to the original text the headings in the Variae

30 
Prosper, Epitoma chronicon, ed. by Mommsen, a. 1327, p. 475: ‘In Africa Gisiricus rex
Wandalorum, intra habitationis suae limites volens catholicam fidem Arriana impietate subver-
tere […]’.
31 
Laterculus Regum Wandalorum et Alanorum, ed. by Mommsen, p. 458; Laterculus Regum
Wandalorum et Alanorum, ed. by Steinacher, pp. 165, 167. Only the ninth-century Reichenau
version uses the ethnic label: ‘Post consulatum Theodosii et Festi Geisericus UUandalorum rex
Carthaginem ingressus est die xiiii kal. Nov’. The thirteenth-century Madrid version (Madrid,
Bibl. Univ. Complutense, Matr. Univ. 134, fol. 47v) has only: ‘Gersericus tribus annis Ypone
regio exemptis Cartaginem occupat sub die xiiii kalendas Novembris’.
32 
Excerptum Valesianum II, ed. by Mommsen, c. 68, p. 324: ‘Item Amalafrigdam germa-
nam suam in matrimonium tradens regi Wandalorum Trasimundo’; Consularia Italica, ed. by
Mommsen, c. 21 (a. 492 post consules), p. 269: ‘Inter Africam Trasemundus rex Wandalorum
catholicas ecclesias clausit et cxx episcopos exilio Sardiniam mittit’.
33 
Jordanes, Getica, ed. by Mommsen, cc. 153, 167, 184, 235, 244, 299 (Thrasamund),
pp. 98, 101, 106, 118, 120, 135.
34 
Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. by Mommsen, v.  43 and 44, pp.  170 (Transimundo regi
VVandalorum Theodericus rex); ix. 1, pp. 267 (Hilderico regi VVandalorum Athalaricus rex).
450 Roland Steinacher

are. This means that there remains the possibility that later scribes added them
to give the different letters a clear geographical and dynastical structure.35
The dual Vandal-Alan royal title is known from Victor, Procopius, and
one Latin chronicle. Geiseric is labelled a ‘King of the Vandals and Alans’ (rex
Wandalorum et Alanorum Geisericus) in an addition to Prosper’s chronicle
deriving from the late fifth century, that is, in a text written about the same
time when Victor composed his History. Maybe Victor of Vita’s History was
known and used by the author or the authors of the Continuatio of the Codex
Alobaciensis. Nevertheless, the text is not contemporary with Geiseric’s rule and
it is possible that a Catholic writer labelled the famous founder of the Vandal
kingdom in the same way Victor did with his son Huneric. Victor’s text was
comparatively widespread. We know about forty manuscripts, and this makes
it probable that the text was known and used in late fifth- or early sixth-century
Italy or Spain.36 Be this as it may, the dual title was known and in use for Vandal
kings also outside Africa.
Aside from Victor’s diplomas and Gelimer’s silver bowl, Procopius provides
another attestation for the twofold royal Vandal title in our sources. Procopius
used the title ‘King of the Vandals and Alans’ once. The title appears in an
account of a letter sent by Tzazon, a Vandal general attacking the usurper Godas
on the island of Sardinia, to his royal brother Gelimer. Reporting that the island
was under control again and that Godas had been captured, Tzazon addressed
his brother as ‘O King of the Vandals and Alani’ (ὦ Βανδίλων τε καὶ Ἀλανῶν
βασιλεῦ).37 Herwig Wolfram considered the way in which Tzazon addressed his

35 
Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, p. 81 and note 31: ‘Doch
bleibt die authentische Form der “superscriptio” in den Variae epistolae wegen ihrer starken
Stilisierung unklar’. Cf. Classen, ‘Kaiserreskript und Königsurkunde’; Heuberger, ‘Vandalische
Reichskanzlei und Königsurkunden’, p. 97; Mommsen, ‘Ostgotische Studien’, pp. 476, 536.
36 
Prosper, Epitoma chronicon, ed. by Mommsen, a.  455, p.  487: ‘Rex Wandalorum et
Alanorum Geisericus regn(avit) post mortem Valentiniani imperatoris annis xxi’. Cf. Wolfram,
Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, p. 81 and n. 31; Courtois, Les Vandales et
l’Afrique, p. 237, n. 7. For the manuscripts and the transmission of Victor’s text cf. Schwarcz,
‘Bedeutung und Textüberlieferung der Historia Persecutionis Africanae Provinciae’.
37 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, iv. 24. 3, ii, pp. 196–97: ‘Γώδαν ἀπολωλέναι
τὸν τύραννον, ὑπὸ ταῖς ἡμετέραις γεγονότα χερσὶ, καὶ τὴν νῆσον αὖθις ὑπὸ τῇ σῇ βασιλείᾳ εἶναι, ὦ
Βανδίλων τε καὶ Ἀλανῶν βασιλεῦ, ἴσθι καὶ τὴν ἐπινίκιον ἑορτὴν ἄγε. τῶν δὲ πολεμίων, οἳ ἐτόλμησαν
ἐς τὴν ἡμετέραν στρατεύεσθαι, ἔλπιζε τὴν πεῖραν ἐς τοῦτο ἀφίξεσθαι τύχης, ἐς ὃ καὶ πρότερον τοῖς
ἐπὶ τοὺς προγόνους τοὺς ἡμετέρους στρατευσαμένοις ἐχώρησε’ (‘Know, O King of the Vandals and
Alani, that the tyrant Godas has perished, having fallen into our hands, and that the island is
again under thy kingdom, and celebrate the festival of triumph. And as for the enemy who have
Who is the Barbarian? 451

brother as a literary strategy chosen by Procopius to illustrate the ethnic (read

barbarian) diversity in the Vandal realm. Africa was seen as the home of three
kinds of barbarians: Vandals, Alans, and Moors. Justinian’s Novellae explicitly
listed these three barbarian groups.38 At the same time, this direct translation to
the Greek supports our evidence from the Latin sources concerning the use of
the title as we know it.
Procopius frequently mentioned different barbarians in Africa. The major
part of the third and fourth book of his History of the Wars deals with the
Moors, not with the Vandals. Furthermore, he had an interesting idea concern-
ing the identity of barbarians in Africa:
However, after that time by their natural increase among themselves and by associ-
ating other barbarians with them they came to be an exceedingly numerous people.
But the names of the Alani and all the other barbarians, except the Moors, were
united in the name of Vandals.39

Together with a remark in the Life of Saint Augustine referring to the Vandals,
Alans, and Goths, and other different persons fighting with them, this passage
has often been seen as a proof for the mixed nature of late antique barbarian
groups. Possidius puts it like this:
But a short time after this it came about, in accordance with the divine will and
command, that a great host of savage foes, Vandals and Alans, with some of the
Gothic tribe interspersed, and various other peoples, armed with all kinds of weap-
ons and well trained in warfare, came by ship from the regions of Spain across the
sea and poured into Africa and overran it.40

had the daring to march against our land, expect that their attempt will come to the same fate as
that experienced by those who in former times marched against our ancestors’).
38 
Novellae, xxx. 11. 2, in Corpus Iuris Civilis, ed. by Behrends and others, iii, pp. 234–35:
‘[…] Et apud Persas agere pacem Uuandalosque et Alanos et Maurusios religare et Africam
universam insuper et Siciliam possidere’. Cf. Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und
Fürstentitel, p. 81 and n. 29.
39 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, iii. 5. 21, ii, p. 53; Berndt, Konflikt und
Anpassung, pp. 142–43.
40 
Possidius, Vita Augustini, ed. and trans. by Geerlings, xxviii. 4, p. 82: ‘Verum brevi con-
sequenti tempore divina voluntate et potestate provenit, ut manus ingens diversis telis armata
et bellis exercitata, immanium hostium Vandalorum et Alanorum commixtam secum habens
Gothorum gentem, aliarumque diversarum personas, ex Hispaniae partibus transmarinis navi-
bus Africae influxisset et irruisset’ (English translation: Possidius, Vita Augustini, ed. and trans.
by Weiskotten, p. 227). Cf. the speech of the rhetor Synesius to his emperor Arcadius. The
Scythian barbarians are strangers but nevertheless get the highest ranks in the Roman army.
452 Roland Steinacher

Possidius wrote the Life of Augustine roughly hundred years before Procopius
composed his History of the Vandal War. He intended to outline his and
Augustine’s view. It was the way the Catholic church would have liked the polit-
ical organization of the African provinces to be at the time when a new military
elite took over and changed their structures. Augustine had been in contact
with count Boniface, one of the big players in the first third of the fifth century
in the western Roman Empire. It can be shown that Augustine had clear politi-
cal aims and tried to influence the count. The arriving barbarians thwarted this
attempt to offer guidance to the powerful in the African provinces as well as
overseas. Moreover, the Vandal King Geiseric attracted Arian clergymen from
all over the Roman Empire who tried to build up a new African church, a heret-
ical one in Possidius’s eyes.41
As different as these two authors may be, they share similar views on barbar-
ian soldiers. On the one hand, there is truth to what Procopius and Possidius
tell us; the Roman army had always been open for many different peoples and
individuals from diverse backgrounds fighting together. On the other hand,
these remarks represent a kind of arrogance on Procopius’s and Possidius’s
part towards the barbarians. In the end these had no specific political identity.
Scythian soldiers had come to the African provinces. They were just subjects
of Rome who had forgotten that. Having written his account as a member of
Belisarius’s invasion force, Procopius needed to cast doubt on the political sys-
tem of the African provinces before 533.42 As a man of the church, Possidius

This is dangerous and dishonourable. Furthermore, barbarians who appear north of the Black
Sea are never new. The barbarians just astutely invent new names to fool the Romans and scare
them. Synesius of Cyrene, De Regno, ed. and trans. by Lacombrade, cc. 20–23, pp. 60–63.
Cf. Wolfram, Die Goten, p. 23 and n. 77; Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 4
and n. 2; Heather, ‘The Anti-Scythian Tirade’; Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe, pp. 142–43.
41 
Modéran, ‘Une guerre de religion’; Clover, ‘The Pseudo-Boniface and the Historia
Augusta’; Diesner, Studien zur Gesellschaftslehre; Diesner, ‘Die Laufbahn des comes Africae’.
42 
Rodolfi, ‘Procopius and the Vandals’, demonstrates how Procopius created social and
political realities: ‘What one has tried to show is nevertheless that, reading Procopius, one does
not have to see a sudden and real crisis of identity in sixth century’s Vandal Africa, but instead
a strenuous propagandistic effort of creating three African identities (friends, barbarians,
Romans), each one aiming at satisfying different political and diplomatic needs of the Byzantine
court. Among these needs, the necessity to answer to the preoccupation that Africa might be
a difficult country to “recover”, or better to conquer, exactly because there appears to be many
more social and cultural differences between African inhabitants and the Byzantine newcomers,
than between those same Africans and their previous barbarian rulers, the Vandals’ (p. 242).
Who is the Barbarian? 453

tried to put the emerging new elite of federate soldiers back to the social status
they belonged to in his view.
Another letter can be found in Procopius’s History of the Vandal War.
Justinian intervened against King Gelimer in the interest of Hilderic and
the Vandal general Hoamer. After a coup bringing Gelimer to the throne,
King Hilderic had been dethroned and imprisoned together with his cousin
Hoamer. The Emperor in Constantinople defined this as an act of aggression as
Hilderic was his ally. Interestingly enough, Justinian used, at least in Procopius’s
account, Geiseric’s succession order as an argument. When Gelimer answered,
he used the same title as the Emperor: ‘King Gelimer to the King Justinian
(Βασιλεὺς Γελίμερ Ἰουστινιανῶ̣ βασιλεῖ)’.43 Yves Modéran indicated that the titles
of rulers normally did not appear in letters in the sixth century.44 So it cannot
be excluded that Procopius simply depicted the coup as a motive for attacking
the Vandal King.45 Procopius aims at justifying Justinian’s wars, and an allega-
tion seems likely. However, Gelimer was a kinsman of the Theodosian imperial
house, and he may have alluded to this by putting himself on equal footing with
the emperor in Constantinople. No Vandal king ever bore a Roman military
title like so many other barbarian leaders.46 Whether Procopius imputed the
barefacedness of claiming equal rank with the emperor to Gelimer or Gelimer
deliberately did so himself is difficult to judge under these circumstances.

43 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, iii. 9. 20, ii, pp. 88–89. Dewing translated
‘King Gelimer to the Emperor Justinian’ as did most translators. See Merrills, ‘The Secret of my
Succession’, pp. 150–52.
44 
Modéran, ‘L’Établissement territorial des Vandales’, p.  97. Cf.  Steinacher, ‘Gruppen
und Identitäten’, pp. 257–58. Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique, p. 245, accepts the title as it
is. Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, pp. 81–82, 134–35; Classen,
‘Kaiserreskript und Königsurkunde’, p. 5 and n. 20.
45 
Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, p. 135: ‘Man könnte daher
vielleicht sagen: Prokop hatte die Absicht das “bellum iustum” des Kaisers gegen den vandalis-
chen Usurpator, der nicht nur die Nachfolgeordnung Geiserichs, sondern auch das Imperium
selbst störte, zu demonstrieren’.
46 
Modéran, ‘L’Établissement territorial des Vandales’, pp. 87–97; Clover, ‘Timekeeping
and Dyarchy in Vandal Africa’; Clover, ‘Geiseric the Statesman’, pp. 65–102; Merrills and Miles,
The Vandals, pp. 56–82; Schulz, Die Entwicklung des römischen Völkerrechts, pp. 92–96, 185,
and nn. 81–85.
454 Roland Steinacher

The Vandal Royal Title 3: Victor of Vita’s History of the Persecution

in the African Provinces and the Depiction of the Vandal Kings
Victor of Vita’s History of the Persecution in the African Provinces provides the
richest source that we have concerning fifth-century Africa. This fact makes it
very difficult to put Victor’s view in context, let alone to confront his account
with other evidence. The African Bishop outlined a longstanding religious con-
flict between barbarian Arians and Romano-African Catholics. He used every
occasion to stress the strong and impregnable difference between these groups.
Victor’s account can be understood as a nearly nostalgic attempt to reclaim a
position of patient suffering for a Catholic church which, for roughly one and
a half centuries, had not only been fully accepted by the Roman emperors, but
which also become the main, leading, and powerful religious community in
the Empire. His extremely hostile account not only attacked everybody co-
operating with the Vandals severely, it also questioned the political system in
Africa after 439 as a whole.47 And exactly this fundamental quest helps us to
understand the basic conditions of Vandal North Africa as well as the use of the
twofold royal title with a strong ethnic affiliation.
Whether the two edicts given in Victor’s account are fully authentic or not
cannot be clarified as his text is our only source. Victor has the Überlieferungs­
hoheit. The language used is pseudo-imperial. The Vandal King Huneric is
styled as a ruler with divine legitimacy: ‘We do not wish for scandal in the
provinces granted us by God!’ (‘provinciis a Deo nobis concessis scandalum
esse nolumus’).48
Richard Heuberger argued in the 1920s that the notaries had been Romans
who knew the set phrases necessary to promulgate edicts. Furthermore, he rea-
soned that the title Rex Hunirix Vandalorum et Alanorum has to be authentic
as the correct Germanic wording Hunirix was used.49 But the core problem is
whether Victor tried to denounce Huneric’s edict as an act of barbarism per-
formed by a tyrant by styling the king’s title as a truly barbarian one, or whether
this title was actually in use in official documents. As there are no coins or
inscriptions for the reign of Huneric, let alone other documents, absolute

47 
Merrills and Miles, The Vandals, pp. 190–91; generally for Victor: Howe, Vandalen,
Barbaren und Arianer.
48 
Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae, ed. and trans. by Lancel, ii. 39,
pp. 139–40 (Victor of Vita, History of the Vandal Persecution, trans. by Moorhead, pp. 37–38).
49 
Heuberger, ‘Vandalische Reichskanzlei und Königsurkunden’, pp.  84–98; Wolfram,
Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, p. 80.
Who is the Barbarian? 455

certainty about the issue cannot be attained.50 That the title existed and was
in use remains a matter of fact. Gelimer’s basin together with what we know
from Victor’s text hints to a use in certain circles and for certain circumstances.
Apart from this, it remains a possibility that Huneric exploited the title in a
heated situation to demonstrate Hasding power on a special occasion. Due to
the long-standing discussions on religious practice in the Proconsular province,
the king may have employed a title normally reserved for internal use in the
inner circles of Hasding followers. It is difficult to judge how many persons
belonged to this inner circle; maybe all soldiers labelled Vandals or only some
very powerful men near to the king and the other Hasdings? Throughout his
text, Victor gives a discussion of how the African provinces should be organ-
ized, especially concerning the role the Catholic church should have. Such
discourses touched the core interests of the leading Vandals and the Hasding
house. In such a situation, the twofold royal title could have been used willingly
by Huneric to stress the right of federate soldiers — or their rich and privi-
leged leaders — to get what they thought to be their right. Research has not yet
been able to explain what happened under Geiseric in the first decades of the
Vandal regime. But the imperial lands and vast parts of the senatorial property
had been allocated amongst Geiseric, the Hasding family and their followers;
this constituted the real basis of the system that the Vandals had established in
the rich African provinces. As we still do not understand this system in detail,
this is a risky argument. But we can observe that juridical power and possession
rights in certain provinces, as well as an Arian religious creed, are the two basic
principles needed to understand the title’s background.
This article is not the place to discuss in any detail the background of the
Arian policy followed by the Vandal kings in the African provinces.51 Only
one aspect has to be stressed. In the royal edict of 484 which concerns us here
and which is transmitted only by Victor, King Huneric invoked the theologi-
cal adjudications of the councils of Ariminum (Rimini) and Seleucia from the
year 359 on the provinces under his rule.52 Doing this, the Arian church was
seen as the only, holy, apostolic, and catholic (in the original sense of being
universal) church with full legitimation. This reads as follows in the text of the
royal edict of 484:
50 
Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique, pp. 262–65, 395–96; Diesner, ‘Vandalen’, p. 957.
51 
Howe, Vandalen, Barbaren und Arianer, pp. 263–82; Modéran, ‘Une guerre de religion’,
pp. 184–92.
52 
For Ariminium/Rimini cf. Brennecke, ‘Lateinischer oder germanischer “Arianismus”?’;
Brennecke, Studien zur Geschichte der Homöer, pp. 5–22.
456 Roland Steinacher

On the first day our venerable bishops proposed to them [i.e. the Catholics] that
they prove the homousion in a proper fashion from the divine Scriptures, just as
they had been asked to, failing which they would certainly condemn something
which was done away with by a thousand and more bishops from the whole world
at the council of Ariminum and Seleucia.53

Defending the only church, Huneric persecuted Manichaeans. For this he was
even praised by Victor.54 The fact that Victor relates King Huneric’s edict as
promulgating a ban of Catholic liturgy in the so-called sortes Vandalorum in
the Proconsularian province has been discussed intensively for more than one
hundred and fifty years. At the beginning of the edict, the King again alludes to
the truth of Arian Christology:
It is well known that not once but quite often your priests [Huneric addresses the
Catholic clergy] have been forbidden to celebrate any liturgies at all in the territory
of the Vandals (in sortibus Vandalorum), in case they seduce Christian souls and
destroy them.55
Whether these sortes can be seen as a territory of a Vandal settlement, how-
ever such may be defined, or whether the wording implies a certain juridical
definition remains unclear.56 In any case, the text does not seem to refer to the
entire territory of the kingdom. Different areas of jurisdiction may have existed
in the African provinces. Maybe only in the territory of former imperial and
senatorial latifundia of the Proconsular province now in the possession of the
Hasdings did the king have full juridical power. At the same time, it was in the

53 
Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae, ed. and trans. by Lancel, iii. 5,
p. 176 (Victor of Vita, History of the Vandal Persecution, trans. by Moorhead, p. 38).
54 
Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae, ed. and trans. by Lancel,
ii. 1–2, p. 121.
55 
Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae, ed. and trans. by Lancel, ii. 39,
p. 139; iii. 4, p. 175 (Victor of Vita, History of the Vandal Persecution, trans. by Moorhead,
pp. 38, 65).
56 
Cf.  the chapter ‘Die sortes Vandalorum/kleroi Bandilon und die Organisation der
Provinzen nun unter vandalischer Herrschaft’ in Steinacher, Die Vandalen. Dahn, Die Könige
der Germanen, i–ii: Die Vandalen, pp. 189, 204–10 and n. 7, started the discussion in many
aspects. From then on, the sortes were seen as the settlement grounds of a Vandal people by
the majority of scholars. Recently, Modéran, ‘L’Établissement territorial des Vandales’, stressed
this again. Wolfram, Gotische Studien, p. 189, took an intermediate position, and Goffart, ‘The
Technique of Barbarian Settlement’, pleaded for a term meaning a certain system of taxation
only. Paolo Tedesco (Roma) is preparing an extensive article where he attempts to explain the
African system in a broader context, which might contribute to a better solution.
Who is the Barbarian? 457

Hasding’s interest to secure and prolong the possession and allotment rights
they had achieved. Arianism may have been a central ideological strategy for
achieving this end.
Like Constantius II, who intended to change the results of Nicaea, the Vandal
King Huneric attempted this for the parts of the African provinces under his
full control and, in some respects, also for the rest of the Empire. He acted like
a Roman emperor and the edicts cited by Victor deploy a juridical terminology
known from late antique imperial chancelleries. As Peter Heather explains:
Like many mainline Roman churchmen of the mid-fourth century, the fifth-cen-
tury Vandals should be seen, therefore, as adherents of a more conservative theol-
ogy, unhappy with the potentially embarrassing connotations of homoousios.57

That is to say, no rude barbarians tried to impose their strange and foreign reli-
gion on fettered Romans. The Vandal kings just had become patrons of fol-
lowers of a certain Christology which was, after 381, no longer supported by
other elites in Ravenna or Constantinople. Arians came from different social
groups. Foederati, for example, were not subject to the religious laws issued
by Theodosius on the accepted doctrine after 381. During the first two dec-
ades of the fifth century, the Gothic army acting in Illyricum, Italy, Gaul, and
later in Spain became something like a role model for barbarian armed forces
acting inside the borders of the Roman Empire. It can be observed that for
decades the Vandals were in fierce rivalry with prestigious Gothic groups, but
this only demonstrates that they struggled for prestige, power, and influence in
the Roman world and that they developed a specific set of skills for their group
identity. Becoming a barbarian soldier inside the imperial borders required spe-
cific ‘strategies of distinction’, and accepting the creed of Ariminium/Seleukia
was one of them.58 After 439, remaining an Arian meant having used the oppor-
tunities of the Vandal realm. It was much harder to live and work in parts of
the Roman Empire not dominated by a military-barbarian elite. Africa, Spain,
parts of Gaul, and later Italy offered what was no longer possible outside these
provinces.
Furthermore, Geiseric and Huneric performed policy to support Arian cir-
cles all over the Empire. When the Emperor Zeno tried to negotiate for the
ordination of a new bishop in Carthage, Huneric had a condition:

57 
Heather, ‘Christianity and the Vandals’, p. 138.
58 
See the essays in Pohl and Reimitz, Strategies of Distinction.
458 Roland Steinacher

The bishops of our religion who are at Constantinople and throughout the other
provinces of the East are to have […] the right to preach to the people in whatever
language they wish in their churches and to practise the Christian religion, just as
you will have this right, here [i.e. Carthage] and in the other churches which are in
the provinces of Africa, to celebrate mass, preach and do the things which pertain
to your religion, in whatever way you wish.59

One of the claims brought forward to the emperor is free choice of language
for the homily. It is likely that the Arian clergy in Africa used the Gothic idiom
as the language of liturgy. One of the differences between Catholic and Arian
liturgy was the possible use of a vernacular in church instead of Latin or Greek.
The Gothic liturgy and the Gothic Bible should not be interpreted as con-
scious responses to the needs of a Germanic cultural context, but must rather be
understood as consequences of the linguistic pluralism of the eastern churches.
It remains one pattern of a military and barbarian identity to be Arian and to
see Gothic as a language of church service.60
In general, Victor used two strategies to denounce the Vandal kings. First, he
pictured them like Roman emperors persecuting the Christians. For example,
two royal officials (comites) tried to convince Catholics to change their confes-
sion. The true Christians — according to Victor — claimed Christiani sumus
and confessed the trinity according to Nicaea and Constantinople.61 This word-
ing and the whole scene is reminiscent of the imperial persecutions during the
third century, and the Vandal king appears as a cruel persecutor like Diocletian
or other pagan emperors. This implied depicting the Vandals as tyrants, rul-

59 
Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae, ed. and trans. by Lancel,
ii. 2–4, pp. 122–24 (Victor of Vita, History of the Vandal Persecution, trans. by Moorhead,
p. 25); Malchus, Fragmenta, xvii, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians, trans. by Blockley,
ii, pp. 425–27, does not mention the Arian case in the East. He focuses on Huneric’s plead
for peace and his proposal to drop all outstanding claims against the emperor and the Roman
treasury. These claims derived from Eudocia’s inheritance and provided a long standing conflict
between Carthage and Constantinople.
60 
Cf.  Brennecke, ‘Lateinischer oder germanischer “Arianismus”?’, pp.  136–38; Howe,
Vandalen, Barbaren und Arianer, pp. 269–70; Mathisen, ‘Sigisvult the Patrician’, exemplifies
such on a bishop called Maximinus acting in Geiseric’s environment. Before joining Geiseric,
Maximinus had been with Sigisvult and his Gothic troops coming to North Africa to fight
count Boniface. He was styled episcopus Arianorum and his function seems to have been to serve
as a kind of high-ranking army chaplain. For the use of the Gothic idiom in the African prov-
inces cf. Reichert, ‘Die Sprache der Wandalen in Afrika’.
61 
Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae, ed. and trans. by Lancel, ii. 28,
p. 134.
Who is the Barbarian? 459

ers without any legitimacy to wield power in a Christian world. At the same
time, Victor styled the Vandal kings as Ariani, nearly denying that they were
Christians at all. Now exactly these bad guys had — again according to Victor
— the chutzpa to use laws rightful Christian emperors like Theodosius the
Great had proclaimed to protect the Catholic church against Arians and other
heretics. Victor is quite explicit in this:
They did not blush for shame in deploying against us a law which our Christian
emperors, seeking to do honour to the Catholic church, had previously issued
against them and other heretics, to which they added many things of their own,
just as seemed good to their tyrannical power.

Like an emperor, Huneric dared to impose laws that had been created to pro-
tect the church against the African Catholics. Victor then goes on to cite the
edict under discussion.62 This forms the background that we have to keep in
mind while discussing the text presented by Victor. To sum up: the twofold
title handed down by Victor may have been used by Huneric’s court to stress
and to defend the basic interests of the Vandal elite in the African provinces.
The conflicts with the Catholic clergy were a harsh quest for power. When
the core interests of the former federates, their allotments and their payment
were under question, one knew how to act: a Vandal identity was used as an
expression of a strong political ‘strategy of distinction’. At the same time, the
Vandal quest for power in the western Roman provinces changed the political
language in use. After Huneric’s marriage with Eudocia, the possibilities of a
Hasding king or prince as well as the chance for acceptance in the African prov-
inces had changed dramatically. We shall return to this point in the conclusion
of this paper.

62 
Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae, ed. and trans. by Lancel, iii. 2 and
3–14, pp. 174–81 (Victor of Vita, History of the Vandal Persecution, trans. by Moorhead, p. 64);
Codex Theodosianus, ed. by Mommsen, xvi. 5. 16–66, pp. 256–58. For the imperial laws used
in Victor’s text cf. Overbeck, Untersuchungen zum afrikanischen Senatsadel, pp. 74–82; Dahn,
Die Könige der Germanen, i, pp. 255–57. A detailed discussion of Victor’s strategies to barbarize
the Vandals: Howe, Vandalen, Barbaren und Arianer, pp. 229–39, 302–10. An overview of the
persecutions: Modéran, ‘L’Afrique et la persécution vandale’; Diesner, ‘Vandalen’, cols 962–69;
Heather, ‘Christianity and the Vandals’, pp.  137–46; Vössing, ‘“Barbaren” und Katholiken’,
pp. 181–88; Spielvogel, ‘Arianische Vandalen, katholische Römer’, pp. 204–11; Courtois, Les
Vandales et l’Afrique, pp. 223–25, 289–310; Schmidt, Geschichte der Wandalen, pp. 102–13.
460 Roland Steinacher

The Vandal Royal Title 4: What Have the Moors Got To Do with This?
Procopius refers to fighting in the Aurès mountains at the end of Huneric’s
reign. Moorish leaders are said to have feared Geiseric, but after his death they
‘both did much harm to the Vandals and suffered the same themselves’. After a
short summary of Huneric’s cruel persecution of the Catholics, Procopius tells
us that
[…] by that time the Moors dwelling on Mount Aurasium had revolted from the
Vandals and were independent […]; and indeed they never came under the Vandals
again, since the latter were unable to carry on a war against Moors on a mountain
difficult of access and exceedingly steep.63

It is on the eastern foothills of the Aurès mountains that the Bir Trouch ostraka
from the time of Gunthamund’s reign were found. This shows that the neigh-
bouring regions of the Aurès had been under control from Carthage around
the year 493. It seems likely that Procopius is trustworthy in his account and
that the uplands of the Aurès after 484 developed their own political solutions
as the lowlands still remained governed from Carthage. From the Aurès we
know a late fifth-century inscription related to a dux and maybe later imperator
Masties which reads:
I, Masties the dux am now in the age of sixty-seven years and imperator for ten
years [or: ruled for ten years], never perjured myself nor broke faith with either the
Romans or the Moors, and was prepared in both war and peace, and my deeds were
such that God supported me well.

The problem with this inscription is that the characters IMPR could mean
both, imperavit or imperator. Recent research, however, tends to accept the
reading imperator.64 The inscription can be read as a very diplomatic act to cover

63 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, iii. 8. 1–5, ii, pp. 72–75.
64 
Modéran, Les Maures et l’Afrique romaine, pp. 373–75, 396–415 (p. 374 and n. 239 on
the ostrakon, pp. 398–412 on the inscription with a picture): ‘Masties fut donc imperator, le
seul titre qui pouvait exprimer à la fois la réalité sociale de son peuple et les ambitions de son
pouvoir’ (p. 407); Merrills and Miles, The Vandals, p. 127 (English trans. by Andy H. Merrills
except the first phrase, which Merrills translated, ‘I, Masties, dux for 67 years and imperator
for 10 years’): ‘D[IS] M[ANIBUS] S[ACRUM] EGO MASTIES DUX | ANN[IS] LXVII ET
IMP[E]R[ATOR] ANN[IS] X QUI NUN | QUAM PERIURAVI NEQUE FIDE | FREGI
NEQUE DE ROMANOS NEQUE | DE MAUROS, ET IN BELLU PARUI ET IN | PACE, ET
ADVERSUS FACTA MEA | SIC MECU[M] DEUS EGIT BENE | EGO VARTAIA HUNC
EDIFICIUM CUM FRATRI[BUS] ME | IS FECI | IN QUOD EROGAVI SIL CENTU’; for the
Who is the Barbarian? 461

all possibilities available in the African provinces of the time. Classical Roman
religion (diis manibus) is used side by side with Christian overtones, or with
potentially Christian overtones at least, as also a pagan maybe liked the deus of
the inscription. Masties tried to welcome all Romans, pagan and Catholic ones.
Everybody not satisfied with the Vandal world order was addressed:
All this is a hint that Masties’s break from Vandal authority may well have been
prompted by the onset of Huneric’s persecution. Faced with these horrors, the for-
merly loyal lieutenant in the south of Numidia revolted from the Vandals and per-
manently removed his territory from the control of the Arian Hasdings.65

But there are other possible interpretations, among them that rather poor
herdsmen in the mountains used every possible language of power they knew
at the same time.
Be this as it may, Masties may have called himself imperator. This means that
he did not any longer recognize any supraregional power. As small as his sphere
of power may have been, it is worth looking at the possible backgrounds. To do
this, a glimpse at another inscription from Altava in Mauretania is necessary.
The stone celebrates a certain Masuna as the king of the Moors and the Romans
(rex Masuna gentium Maurorum et Romanorum). The inscription is dated
around 508, and is thus roughly twenty years later than the one of Masties.66
Yves Modéran confronted the twofold Vandal ethnic title with Masuna’s
solution. His conclusion was to see the Vandal titulature as a sign of a severe
separation of Vandal conquerors and conquered Romans in social and religious
matters. In Modéran’s view, Vandals and Alans had become the new masters,
while the so-called Romans had been excluded from the language of power. The
king of the Vandals and Alans would have claimed power over the Romans, the
latter not being included in the official title in use. Conversely, Masuna’s con-
cept of political and social organization had included the Romans. Integrating
the Romans in a similar manner in their royal title would have been a possibil-
ity for the Vandals in the core regions of Africa.67

first publication of the inscription Carcopino, ‘Un “empereur” maure inconnu’.

65 
Merrills and Miles, The Vandals, p. 127.
66 
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, viii. 9835; Marcillet-Jaubert, Les inscriptions d’Altava,
no.  194, pp.  126–27 (with illustration): ‘Pro sa(lute) et incol(umitate) reg(is) Masunae
gent(ium) Maur(oru)m et Romanor(um)’.
67 
Cf. Modéran, ‘L’Établissement territorial des Vandales’, p. 95: ‘Mais cette formule limita-
tive avait plus pour fonction d’affirmer le maintien d’un strict cloisonnement ethnique et reli-
gieux entre conquérants et conquis que de témoigner d’une reconnaissance de la souveraineté
462 Roland Steinacher

It remains a possibility that the two Moorish inscriptions hint to an alterna-

tive which had developed by the end of Huneric’s reign in the periphery of the
Vandal realm. The political and cultural environment of these Moorish polities
shared many similarities with the core regions of Africa. At the very least, Latin
inscriptions were in use according to a traditional Roman way. However, they
remained at the periphery, with much less resources and without the opportu-
nities for Mediterranean politics that the Hasdings in Carthage possessed. If
Huneric went too far in his measures for establishing an Arian region in the
Proconsularis and supporting Arian circles not only throughout Africa but in
the whole Mediterranean, Moorish rulers at the periphery may have developed
solutions that were more open to accommodate all groups in the African prov-
inces during a phase of dense conflict in the core regions. The importance of
these alternatives for the African situation as a whole is difficult to judge. Their
political language appears to be more in line with what a Catholic would have
preferred of Vandal politics in the time of Huneric. Not only were the Romans
explicitly included in the groups supporting Masties’s or Masuna’s rule; Masties
furthermore used different religious and cultural elements to attract disap-
pointed Africans. If this interpretation is correct, we can deduce that titles
with an ethnic affiliation had their importance and signalled distinct possibili-
ties to organize political systems in the African provinces of the fifth and sixth
centuries. This would also affirm an interpretation of Victor’s text and the use
of the twofold ethnic title Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum in a heated situation.
Huneric’s successors looked for other solutions and went much further in their
acceptance of the important role of the Catholic church in the late antique
Mediterranean world. This change in Hasding church-policy may have affected
the use of royal titles too.

impériale sur les Romains’. Similar arguments: Vössing, ‘“Barbaren” und Katholiken’, p. 180.
Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, pp. 82–83 and nn. 39–40, inter-
preted Masuna’s title as an imitation of the Vandalic royal formula: ‘Die Römer werden zu
einer gens wie jede andere’. Furthermore, he compares the formula with βασιλεὺς Βουλγάρων καὶ
Ῥωμαίων, a title used by the Bulgarian zar Simeon in 925. Recently, Herwig Wolfram expressed
the idea during a talk with the author that Masuna might have been a Vandal dissident imitat-
ing the title of his Hasding king. This argument derived from Wolfram’s observation that the
very name Masuna was in use in Visigothic Spain. A similar name is not enough but the idea of
switching identities and a possible Vandal background of Masuna remains a possibility. For the
Moorish polities on the periphery of Vandal North Africa cf. Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique,
pp. 333–49; Modéran, Les Maures et l’Afrique romaine, pp. 541–64; Rusworth, ‘From Arzuges
to Rustamids’, pp. 86–88.
Who is the Barbarian? 463

The Vandal Royal Title 5: Dominus noster rex

and Allusions to Imperial Status
An inscription from Henchir Koréiba near Ain Mlîla in the province of
Numidia labels Gelimer ‘Domn(us) Gei| lime| r’.68 This inscription represents
the majority of titles used by Vandal kings in the available sources. No inscrip-
tion, coin legend, or dating formula using an ethnic title is known.69 This is true
for all the kingdoms in the transforming Roman West before the sixth century.
The titulature of rulers in the former Roman provinces of the West used terms
familiar from late imperial usage. As long as they were not named along with
the emperor, kings of barbarian descent were labelled domini nostri. In the fifth
century, even Ricimer could be a princeps, which shows a shift in terminol-
ogy formerly reserved exclusively to the emperor. Later in the fifth century,
Theoderic was addressed as a princeps Romanus too. He defined himself as the
princeps of the West, fighting for the right of the res publica. At the same time he
was entitled Flavius Theodericus rex as the ruler in Italy.70 Other possibilities to
label a ruler in Italy, Spain, Gaul, or Africa were dominus with different attrib-
utes or — concerning the Gothic kings and Odacer — Flavius. Along with
these late imperial terms rex was used frequently, often together with dominus.
Most images depicting fifth- and sixth-century kings on material objects, such
as the seal of Childeric, the medallion of Theoderic, or the visor of Agilulf carry
inscriptions styling the kings simply rex. The engraved sapphire of Alaric and
Gelimer’s basin do use ethnic terminology to specify the king’s background.
There were thus different possibilities, different languages of power which may
have been addressed to specific social groups.71

68 
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, viii. 10862; viii. 19210 = Inschriftensammlung, ed. by
Fiebiger and Schmidt, no. 50, p. 37; cf. Traube, Nomina sacra, p. 192. Cf. the commentaries on
the use of dominus in Inschriftensammlung, ed. by Fiebiger and Schmidt, no. 42, p. 34.
69 
Inschriftensammlung, ed. by Fiebiger and Schmidt, no. 42, p. 34 = Corpus Inscriptionum
Latinarum, viii. 2013 and viii. 16516: The date is followed by ‘do(mini) n(ostri) Trasamundi’;
no. 48, p. 36 = viii. 10516: ‘anno iiii d(omini) n(ostri) regis Ildirix’.
70 
Wolfram, Gotische Studien, pp. 160, 166 (Flavius rex), 141, 143, 163, 166, and n. 133
(patricius and magister militum); Wolfram, Die Goten, pp.  288–90 (theory and reality of
Theoderic’s reign); Princeps: Werner, ‘Völker und regna’; Goffart, Barbarians and Romans,
pp.  58–102 (Italy ruled by Theoderic); principalis potestas: Hauck, ‘Von einer spätan-
tiken Randkultur’; Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, pp. 148–51
(Merovingian uses of princeps).
71 
Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, pp.  56–75, especially
pp. 69–70; Gillett, ‘Was Ethnicity Politicized’, pp. 90, 110–11; Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen
464 Roland Steinacher

Not surprisingly, the Vandal kings used the portentous honorific dominus
or rex. From Gunthamund’s reign onwards, dominus began to appear on silver
coin issues, which is in itself an important ideological declaration. At the same
time, no gold coins were issued in Africa, although the currency was based on
the imperial solidus. Vandal coinage appears as a provincial issue: the emperor
cared for the gold, the Vandal king guaranteed the silver and bronze issues used
in daily life and economics.72
One of the Tablettes Albertini has the title rex invictissimus. These tablets
are, unlike Victor’s account, legal documents without any transformation due
to literary aims.73 Furthermore, the acts of the council held in 525 at Carthage
during Hilderic’s reign transmit a dating ‘anno secundo gloriosissisimi regis
Hilderici’.74 When Fulgentius of Ruspe had a theological dispute with king
Thrasamund, he addressed the king as a ‘rex clementissimus’ or ‘piissimus’. 75
The attributes invictissimus, gloriosissisimus, clementissimus, and piissimus are
known from the Roman senatorial order of rank or the imperial court as well as
from other late Roman kingdoms with a barbarian elite. Late antique emperors
were frequently addressed as imperator or princeps, and the title was often used
in conjunction with attributes such as piissimus, clementissimus, sapientissimus,
or invictissimus.76

und Staatssymbolik, i, pp. 213–34; Bullough, ‘Imagines regum’, pp. 228–36. Lately, Italian schol-
ars discussed arguments whether the plate of Agilulf could be a modern falsification: La Rocca
and Gasparri, ‘Forging an Early Medieval Royal Couple’.
72 
Morrisson, ‘Caratteristiche ed uso’; Berndt and Steinacher, ‘Die Münzprägung im
vandalenzeitlichen Nordafrika’; Berndt and Steinacher, ‘Minting in Vandal North Africa’,
pp. 255–58.
73 
Tablettes Albertini, ed. by Courtois, i. 1, i, p. 215: [Ann]o nono d(omi)n(i) invictissimi
regis xv k(a)l(endas) octob(res) tab(ella) […]’. Cf. the list ‘Titulature royale’ (i, p. 315). On all
other tablets ‘domini (nostri) regis’ is used. The very name Gunthamund is written in several
different ways. Only i. 1 has ‘invictissimi regis’.
74 
Concilium Carthaginense a. 525, in Concilia Africae a. 345–a. 525, ed. by Munier, p. 255:
‘Anno secundo gloriosissimi regis Hilderici, nonas februarias Kartagine in secretario basilicae
sancti martyris Agilei’. Cf. Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique, pp. 304–09; Massigli, ‘Primat de
Carthage’.
75 
Fulgentius of Ruspe, Ad Trasimundum regem Vandalorum, i. 1 and 2. Cf. Modéran,
‘L’Établissement territorial des Vandales’, p. 96 and nn. 61–63.
76 
Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. by Mommsen, i. 1. 1–2, pp. 10–11 (Theoderic to Anastasius
clementissime and pissime imperator); x. 19. 3, p. 310 (Theodahad to Justinian piissime impera-
tor); x. 9. 1, pp. 297–98 (Theodahad to Justinian sapientissime imperator); viii. 1. 1, p. 231 and
x. 1. 1, p. 298 (Athalaric and Amalaswintha to Justin I. and Justinian clementissime principum).
Who is the Barbarian? 465

Gloriosissimus was used initially during the time of Diocletian as a means

to address a Roman emperor. In the course of the fourth century, it became a
term for high-ranking magistrates or bishops. All persons who bore the right
to be labelled gloria vestra were allowed to use the attribute gloriosissimus. Such
titles were drawn from the senatorial order of rank, the cursus honorum. Roman
citizens were divided into three classes, and for members of each class a dis-
tinct career path was available. The magistracies of the consulship, praetorship,
plebeian tribunate, aedileship, quaestorship, and military tribunate were only
available to citizens of the senatorial class. So a vir gloriosissimus and a vir excel-
lentissimus were of the highest magisterial rank. The exarch in Italy was a vir
excellentissimus in the Byzantine order of ranks. Barbarian kings or generals
often held first ranks of the cursus honorum, like the office of a magister militum
or even a consulship, and were thus entitled to the attributes gloriosus/issimus,
excellentissimus, or praecellentissimus. Theoderic or Hilderic were gloriosissimus
rex, like the Burgundian King Gundobad.77 The latter was Ricimer’s nephew
and his successor as the patricius of Italy. Furthermore, he held the office of a
magister utriusque militiae per Gallias.78 Yet, no Vandal king ever held a high
ranking Roman office. It is noticeable that only after Huneric’s marriage with
the imperial princess Eudocia there appears titulature known for barbarian
kings and accepted by Roman authorities. This is not the case for Huneric, only
for his nephews Gunthamund and Thrasamund and his son Hilderic.
Gunthamund appears as a rex invictissimus on one of the Tablettes Albertini.
Invictissimus derives clearly from imperial terminology. What German scholar-
ship called the ‘Invictie’, the distinction of a victorious commander, was a distinc-

77 
An overview of the senatorial titles: Demandt, Die Spätantike, pp. 333–36; Vössing,
‘“Barbaren” und Katholiken’, pp.  189–91; Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und
Fürstentitel, pp. 63–65 and nn. 46, 48; s.v. ‘gloriosus’, in Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, vi (1925–34),
cols  2099–2107; Koch, ‘Die byzantinischen Beamtentitel’, pp.  58–62, 90–93; Hartmann,
Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Verwaltung, pp. 44, 47. Ep. Theodericianae,
no. 4, in Cassiodorus, Variae, ed. by Mommsen, p. 390: Pope Gelasius to Ereleuva, Theoderic’s
mother: ‘Qui pro victu pauperum domino filio meo excellentissimo regi […]’; Cassiodorus,
Variae, ed. by Mommsen, x. 2. 1, p. 298: Theodahad addresses Justinian as ‘piissime impera-
tor’ and Amalaswintha is labelled ‘praecellentissima domna’. Epistolae Romanorum pontificum,
ed. by Thiel, ii. 12, p. 266: Emperor Anastasius labels Theoderic ‘gloriosissimus rex’ and Pope
Hormisdas a ‘beatissimus papa’. Cf. Helm, ‘Untersuchungen über den auswärtigen diploma-
tischen Verkehr’, pp. 384–86, with further examples in the notes.
78 
Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, pp.  64 (n.  48), 87–89;
‘Gundobadus 1’, in Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, ii: ad 395–527
(1980), pp. 524–25.
466 Roland Steinacher

tive rating frequently used by emperors in Antiquity. Commodus, furthermore,

created the epithet of a Hercules Romanus. The god Mithras, so popular among
the military in the Roman Empire, was also entitled as invictus. In the Greek
East, emperors were celebrated as ἀνίκητος in inscriptions, the Greek equation of
the Latin invictus. This Greek term is known since the rule of Emperor Trajan
(r. 98–117 ce). It needs to be stressed that the epithet had not been in use in highly
official bureaucratic texts such as Roman military diplomas. But we can find it
frequently in inscriptions. Emperors from Septimius Severus up to Constantine I
were labelled as the unbeaten sun god, the Ἥλιος ἀνίκητος. The emperor repre-
sented the victorious sun god as the sol invictus/helios aniketos. From the struggle
with the powers of gloom the ruler emerged as the great victor. Leo Berlinger thus
described the emperor as an ‘incarnated supreme stellar goddess’.79
One further title deserves consideration, since the mistaken assumption that
it could have been an official royal Vandal title is still expressed in recent pub-
lications. Frequently, scholars considered the Vandal king a ‘King of Land and
Sea’ (König des Landes und des Meeres). This originates from a misinterpreta-
tion of a passage from the chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, a ninth-century
Byzantine historian. Already in the eighteenth century, Conrad Mannert, the
author of the first Vandal history in modern scholarship, assumed that Geiseric
had styled himself as a ‘King of Land and Sea’ (Land- und Wasserkönig) after
the conquest of Carthage in 439 ce. In the middle of the nineteenth century,
Felix Dahn considered Geiseric a ‘King of the Sea’ (Meerkönig).80 The passage
in Theophanes runs as follows:
In the same year a certain Gizerich, who had become powerful amongst the Van-
dals, named himself rex. He took over land, sea, and many islands, previously pay-
ing tribute to the Romans. This grieved Theodosius.81

79 
S.v. ‘invictus’, in Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, vii (1956–79), cols 185–90; Berlinger,
Beiträge zur inoffiziellen Titulatur, p. 22: ‘fleischgewordener oberster Gestirngott’; Imhof,
‘Invictus’; Ehrhardt, ‘Maximus, invictus und victor als Datierungskriterien’; Berrens, Sonnenkult
und Kaisertum, pp. 205–42.
80 
Castritius, ‘Wandalen § 1’, p. 198; Miltner, ‘Vandalen’, col. 317; Schmidt, Geschichte der
Wandalen, p. 96: ‘Es klingt überspannt, wenn er [Geiseric] sich, wie Theophanes angibt, König
des Landes und des Meeres genannt hat’. Dahn, ‘Genserich’: ‘See- oder Meerkönig’. Concerning
this title cf. also Papencordt, Geschichte der vandalischen Herrschaft, p. 75; Mannert, Geschichte
der Vandalen, pp. 60–61. For an abuse of these approaches by right-wing extremists cf. Berndt,
von Rummel, and Steinacher, ‘Rezension zu’, p. 314.
81 
Theophanes Confessor, Chronographia, ed. by de Boor, a.m. 5941, p. 146: ‘Τῷ δ’ αὐτῷ ἔτει
Γιζέριχος τῷ Οὐανδαλικῷ πλήθει πολὺς γενόμενος καὶ ῥῆγα καλέσας ἑαυτὸν γῆς τε καὶ θαλάσσης καὶ
Who is the Barbarian? 467

Theophanes only tells us that Geiseric became king. The Byzantine chronicler
refers to the Greek form of the Latin rex, nothing more. Turning this short pas-
sage into an official titulature remains a postulate of modern research.
There may be a different way to understand Theophanes’ allusion. In Roman
literature and epigraphics, we can trace a certain tradition that focuses on men-
tioning both land and sea in order to stress the power of a ruler. Theophanes
alludes, albeit indirectly and polemically, to an ancient and pagan praise of
an emperor. Roman emperors were labelled ‘master of land and sea’. We know
inscriptions celebrating, for example, Emperor Aurelian (r. 270–75) as the
‘ruler of the land, the sea and the whole ecumene’ (ὁ γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης καὶ πάσες
οἰκουμένης δεσπότες). A similar, but slightly shorter, wording is attested for
Probus (276–82): ‘ruler of the land and the sea’ (ὁ γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης δεσπότες).
Vespasian (69–79) appears as ‘the deity of land and sea’ in an inscription.82
Ammianus Marcellinus reports a letter written by Constantius II (337–61) to
the Persian Shah Shapur II (309–79), where Constantius is styled a victor terra
marique: ‘I, Constantius, victor by land and sea, perpetual Augustus, to my
brother King Sapor, offer most ample greeting’. Constantius II was the emperor
supporting the Arian clergy and organizing the councils of Ariminium and
Seleucia. Before he died, he was baptized but still styled divus Constantius after
his death.83
It is likely that Priscus was Theophanes’ source in this case. Priscus tended
to show his knowledge of Latin by including Western terminology in his writ-
ings. Theophanes went one step further. Putting a barbarian rex, who had
persecuted the rightful Catholic church in the North African provinces, near
pagan Roman emperors was meant to convey a message. To be sure, it was an

νήσων πολλῶν τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ὑποτελῶν κατασχὼν ἐλύπει τὸν Θεοδόσιον’ (Theophanes Confessor,
Chronographia, trans. by Mango and Scott, p. 157). Cf. Clover, ‘Timekeeping and Dyarchy in
Vandal Africa’, pp. 59–61.
82 
İplİkçİoğlu, ‘Zwei Statthalter vespasianischer Zeit’, pp. 75–76 and 80, published an
inscription from Olympos (Lycia, near modern Kumluca in the south east of Turkey): ἐπιφανὴς
θεὸς γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης (Vespasian appears as the epiphany of the god of land and sea).
83 
Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, ed. and trans. by Rolfe, xvii. 5. 9, i, p. 337; Kienast,
Römische Kaisertabelle, pp. 314–18; Cf. Helm, ‘Untersuchungen über den auswärtigen diplo-
matischen Verkehr’, p. 378 and n. 3; Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel,
p.  84 and n.  43: ‘Die Titulatur Geiserichs steht jedoch […] in der Tradition der antiken
Herrscherakklamation. Darum muß Geiserichs literarisch überlieferte Appellation nicht
falsch sein; aber sie ist keine Selbstaussage’. Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, i: Die
Ostgermanen, p. 113, n. 1.
468 Roland Steinacher

indirect allusion, but it worked. The reader was reminded of pagan titles and he
knew what was meant by a cruel, heretical barbarian king. Victor of Vita used
similar tactics, as described above.84 On the one hand, the Vandal kings, like
other barbarian rulers in the West, tried to act as ‘vice-emperors’ themselves in
their provinces and were accepted by local societies as such. On the other hand,
Catholic writers used this position at a time when Arianism was used to por-
tray the kings in question as having acted like the pagan persecutor emperors.
But the situation is even more multi-faceted. We can compare Theophanes’
strategy to denounce Geiseric with a depiction of King Theoderic on a mosaic
known to us only from a ninth-century description. The iconography from
Ravenna could provide another example of the use of imperial signs of dignity
by barbarian rulers. Agnellus in his Liber Pontificalis, a history of Ravenna’s
diocese, describes the mosaic in the attic of Theoderic’s palace in Ravenna. In
the gable above the main entrance the Gothic king appeared — according to
Agnellus — on a high horse wearing his armour, shield, and lance. To the right
and to the left, the impersonations of the cities of Rome and Ravenna appeared.
Near this mosaic another picture is described in Agnellus’s text. On the apse
behind the main entrance, the king was depicted again on a high horse. This
time the patricius Theoderic has one leg over the sea and the other over land.85
This example illustrates the complexity of the problems discussed here quite
well. In every case we have to distinguish carefully whether a Christian writer
tried to depict a king, whom he believed to be a heretic, according to one of
two particular traditions: that of the famous Roman imperial persecutors of
the Christians or that of a ruler in the late antique Mediterranean who has
adopted long-standing traditions and ancient symbols of power. In the case of
the ‘ruler of the land and sea’, both is true.

84 
Markschies, ‘The Religion of the Late Antiquity Vandals’, p. 93, points to Domitian
(emperor between 81 and 96 ce). Christian writers frequently criticized his title ‘Dominus
ac Deus’. The Book of Revelation was written with Domitian in the back of the author’s mind.
85 
Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontifialis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, ed. by Deliyannis, c. 94,
pp. 258–59: ‘Unde vero telum tenensque fuit, Ravenna tessellis figurata, pedem dextrum super
mare, sinistrum super terram ad regem properans’. Cf.  Goltz, Barbar — König — Tyrann,
pp.  533–34; Deichmann, Ravenna, i: Geschichte und Monumente (1969), p.  120; ii.  3:
Topographie, Kunst und Kultur (1989), pp. 51–53, 74–75.
Who is the Barbarian? 469

Conclusion: The Vandal Royal Title Understood in the

Context of the Power Struggle in the Hasding Family
The strong ethnic marker as a self-assertion of a king, which appears on an
engraved piece of self-representation, leads us into the question of transmis-
sion. Sources derived from the military environment of Vandal or Gothic rulers
are rare, and it is therefore difficult to get a coherent picture of the exact role of
titles with an ethnic label within these societies. If it were not for Victor of Vita,
a letter given by Procopius and an entry in an edition of Prosper’s Chronicle, the
situation for Vandal North Africa would be much more difficult.
The Vandal royal title with ethnic labels represents one possibility among
the political terminology in use in the North African provinces ruled by the
Hasdings. The Vandal kings did not act differently from other barbarian leaders
who took over Roman provinces. Like Theoderic in Italy, they knew how to use
Roman titles to express their power and position within late Roman society.
The peripheral role played by the Vandals in the origin stories of Europe results
in modern research seeing them as a unique case.86 Can we detect any ‘African’
reason for the different ways to express royal power?
In Africa, the top of the Roman senatorial elite lost their power after the
changes of the first half of the fifth century. How Geiseric changed the system
of land tenure and the basic economic and social conditions that were always
a concern for the small ruling class remains a matter of debate. Victor of Vita
and Procopius, our main sources concerning these changes, put them in a dark
light and use the stereotypes of Roman versus barbarian. The bishop Victor
did this in defence of the Catholic church, the Byzantine officer Procopius to
justify Justinian’s war. As a matter of fact, Geiseric managed to concentrate
enough property to enable his Hasding family to act as a ‘big player’ in the
Mediterranean from the middle of the fifth century onwards. Geiseric was
concerned to provide for all of his sons in organizing the newly acquired vast
property. After the rebellion of 442, no threat to the Hasding power came from
outside the royal family. Huneric had powerful rivals among his own relatives,
and Hilderic’s reign saw the emerging of new alliances within the family. After
Geiseric and Huneric had managed to get rid of their competitors within the
army, who had prevailed in the complicated situation of the African provinces

86 
Two examples: Wolfram, Das Reich und die Germanen, pp. 233–47: ‘Ein vandalischer
Sonderweg?’; Castritius, ‘Barbaren im Garten “Eden”’
470 Roland Steinacher

in the first half of the fifth century, the family itself became the battleground of
power struggles in the African kingdom.
Huneric had a chance to be accepted into the kingdom, even by the
Catholic church. The Nicene church welcomed a persecution of Manichaeans;
it was, after all, what was expected from a rightful ruler. After twenty-four
years a bishop was ordained in Carthage again. All this shows that Huneric
tried several ways to organize his kingdom. Something went wrong, however.
Victor relates murders in the royal family and the exile of others. Huneric’s
brother Theoderic died in exile and his wife and son were killed. The Arian
Patriarch Jucundus was burnt in public because he was an adviser of Theoderic
at the latter’s court. Many counts and nobles close to Theoderic were perse-
cuted. Huneric ordered to burn some of them and to execute others. Finally,
King Huneric exiled Godagis, the son of his younger brother Genton. Mighty
Vandals were tortured and removed from power as they were accused of partici-
pating in a plot against the ruling king. Victor reports that Huneric deprived of
power Geiseric’s comitatus, a group of the latter’s closest advisers.87
Following this, Huneric tried to convince the African Catholic bishops to
support a change in Geiseric’s succession order in favour of his son Hilderic.
Victor stressed that the violence within the royal family and the leading circles
of the Vandals was motivated by Huneric’s wish to secure the succession of his
own son Hilderic to the Hasding throne. This would have violated the prin-
ciple of agnatic seniority, which Geiseric had introduced. One interpretation
suggests that Victor told the story this way in order to limit the King’s con-
cern regarding resistance within the royal house against his own rule. Securing
the position of his son would have been only of secondary importance in this
reading. Victor’s interest in referring to the violence amongst the royal and
other leading Vandals was intended to highlight the barbarity and cruelty of
Huneric and his followers. By concentrating his coverage of the political action
performed by Huneric on the dynastic pretensions against the constitutio of
Geiseric, Victor managed to present the king as an illegitimate ruler according
to his own Vandal standards.88

87 
Victor of Vita, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae, ed. and trans. by Lancel,
ii. 2–6, 12–16, pp. 122–28; cf. Merrills, ‘The Secret of my Succession’, pp. 143–45, with new
considerations on Geiseric’s constitutio; Merrills and Miles, The Vandals, pp. 74–77; Howe,
Vandalen, Barbaren und Arianer, pp. 56–78; Courtois, Victor de Vita et son œuvre, pp. 16–17;
Costanza, ‘“Uuandali-Arriani”’; Costanza, ‘Vittore di Vita’; Schmidt, Geschichte der Wandalen,
pp. 100–02.
88 
Merrills, ‘The Secret of my Succession’, pp. 143–48.
Who is the Barbarian? 471

This fits well with Victor’s textual strategies. However, there remains the
possibility that Huneric really intended to change the succession order in the
interest of the new legitimacy which became possible for his son only if he were
the son of an imperial princess. The high prestige of Huneric’s and Eudocia’s
offspring made a major difference to Hasding possibilities before. At the same
time, all this may have caused a need to address the ‘old Vandals’, the military
leaders in Geiseric’s following who may have been disappointed with the power
struggles and the executions amongst them. Huneric was in need to assert him-
self as the real Vandal king, the Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum. It may well be
that Victor of Vita refers to a title with a political background from the time of
Geiseric, which his son took up for specific purposes in his own reign to attract
and convince the privileged Vandal land owners in the African provinces who
had been upset by the new political solution developed by Geiseric’s son. What
we can trace are the power struggles in the African elites of the time. The use
of the strong ethnic title by Huneric testifies to these struggles. Victor did not
invent or create a title; he gives, maybe unwillingly, a trace of the problems of his
age inside the barbarian, military elite in Africa at the end of the fifth century.
Huneric did not prevail. After his death his nephew Gunthamund, our rex
invictissimus, acceded to the Hasding throne. Other circles took over and fol-
lowers of Huneric’s policy may have been persecuted themselves. The Latin
poet Blossius Aemilius Dracontius was imprisoned for having supported the
wrong ruler. For a long time, research defined Dracontius’s situation as being
motivated by supporting the Roman emperor overseas. But the background of
the Satisfactio ad Gunthamundum Regem fits all too well into the picture of
a power struggle between members of the African elite. Dracontius had writ-
ten for Huneric, and the new king did not like this. This was the reason for
the poet’s imprisonment.89 We also find a deliberate analogy with the imperial
position in the Satisfactio. Gunthamund is compared to Caesar, Augustus, and
Titus, who are famous for their clemency.90
As we do not know much about Gunthamund’s reign, the situation after
the end of Victor’s account is difficult to explain. What we do know is that
the few sources we have did not use the title Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum.
On the contrary, Gunthamund, Thrasamund, and Hilderic are labelled as rul-

89 
Merrills, ‘The Perils of Panegyric’; Claude, ‘Probleme der vandalischen Herrschafts­nach­
folge’, p. 346, analyses Dracontius’ imprisonment as a proof of an anti-Vandal Roman bourgeoi-
sie celebrating the emperor as their master.
90 
Dracontius, Satisfactio, ed. by Moussy, i–ii. Cf.  Merrills, ‘The Perils of Panegyric’,
pp. 152–62.
472 Roland Steinacher

ers in the western Roman Mediterranean with a political language comparable

to what we know from Gaul, Spain, or Italy. But such a ‘Roman’ language of
power was present in Huneric’s time too. It was Huneric who adopted an air of
unmistakable imperial arrogance in renaming an African city in his own hon-
our. Hadrumentum was known as Uniricopolis for the duration of his reign.
After the end of the Vandal realm, the city was renamed as Justinianopolis. 91
Gunthamund, Thrasamund, and Hilderic all had panegyrics composed in their
honour, as a Roman emperor would have.
Hilderic was a special case. The son of Valentinian’s daughter Eudocia and
the Vandal King Huneric could claim direct descent from the imperial and
prestigious Theodosian house. This lineage may have been stressed in the wall
paintings of a new palace complex in the Carthaginian suburb of Anclae. The
poet Luxorius celebrated Hilderic as the mighty Vandal king and offspring
of the imperial house. This made him the heir of a twin crown (‘Vandalirice
potens, gemini diadematis heres’). Valentinian’s victorious grandson had finally
beaten all the enemies of Rome (hostes and gentes), at least in the described
wall paintings of a palace near Carthage.92 The offspring of barbarian feder-
ates stresses his maternal Roman rights more than his barbarian roots. In Italy,
Theoderic was labelled domitor gentium and victor gentium, which recalls the
praise addressed to Hilderic.93 After Belisar’s victory, the Vandal King Gelimer
and his followers were taken to Constantinople. In Procopius’s account the
deposed King is clothed with a purple coat and treated as a relative of the great
emperors of the Theodosian dynasty. Gelimer is offered a landed estate north
of the capital where he could live in peace with his family. It is only because
he does not convert to the Catholic faith that he cannot become a senator of

91 
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, p. 262; Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique,
pp. 345–47.
92 
Carmina codicis Salmasiani 206 (In Anclas), in Carmina in codicibus scripta, ed. by
Shackleton Bailey, p. 154: ‘Vandalirice potens, gemini diadematis heres, | ornasti proprium per
facta ingentia nomen. | Belligeras acies domuit Theodosius ultor, | captivas facili reddens cer-
tamine gentes. | Adversos placidis subiecit Honorius armis, | cuius prosperitas melior fortissima
vicit. | Ampla Valentiniani virtus cognita mundo / hostibus addictis ostenditur arte nepotis’.
On this passage, see the translation and discussion in Merrills, ‘The Secret of my Succession’,
pp. 152–53; cf. Steinacher, ‘Gruppen und Identitäten’, p. 258.
93 
Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, pp. 54 (n. 103) and 56 (n. 1);
Wirth and Wolfram, ‘Augustus’; Neumann, ‘Augustus’; Inschriftensammlung, ed. by Fiebiger
and Schmidt, p. 193; Gold coin of 500: Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, i,
pp. 227–28; Kraus, Die Münzen Odovacars und des Ostgotenreiches, p. 82, n. 1.
Who is the Barbarian? 473

Constantinople. One might expect a different treatment of a beaten and con-

quered barbarian king.94
The emphasis on imperial ideology that we find in Luxorius’s poem illustrates
the range of opportunity of Hasding policy after the marriage of 455 quite well.
The four sons of Geilarith, Tzazo, Gunthimer, Ammatas, and the later King
Gelimer were not, however, directly related to the imperial Theodosian house.
This made a difference, even if Gelimer was treated in the way it is reported
by Procopius in Constantinople. Hilderic’s propaganda may have indicated
the new direction he wished the Vandal monarchy to take. Hilderic’s obvious
attempts to reposition the Hasding monarchy along pseudo-imperial lines may
have caused Gelimer’s fear of disinheritance in favour of Hoamer or Hoageis,
Hilderic’s nephews. Hoamer was praised by Procopius as the Achilles of the
Vandals and appears to have been a distinguished military leader.95 This would
explain Gelimer’s usurpation and the harsh treatment of his relatives. Hilderic
was killed and Hoamer blinded. The fact that after the coup close relatives of
Gelimer, such as Tzazon and Ammatas, staffed important positions in the king-
dom and replaced the nephews of Hilderic strengthens this point of view.
There are similar structures behind the problems Huneric had with his family
and Gelimer’s usurpation. In both cases, the Theodosian lineage after Huneric’s
marriage with Eudocia could be the background. Two rulers saw murder and
heavy conflicts within the royal family: Huneric and Gelimer. As has been pro-
posed here, it seems likely that this had to do with the various claims to the
throne by different branches of the family. One part operated with the impe-
rial lineage and obviously preferred titles common to other provinces of the
transforming Roman West as a language of power. In opposition to this branch
of the family around Huneric and his lineage, a kind of ‘Vandalicity’ may have
been stressed by other Hasdings in order to convince certain Vandal circles of
the validity of their bid for power in the African provinces.96 At the same time,
Huneric would have been in need to stress his support of certain rich Vandals
and their interests by using the twofold title with its strong ethnic affiliation.
There are two supporting documents for the use of the title Rex Vandalorum et
Alanorum. Victor of Vita attests the use of the title for Huneric. Huneric may
have imposed such a title to emphasize his rigour in acting against the Catholic

94 
Procopius, Bella, ed. and trans. by Dewing, iii.  9.  4–10, ii, pp.  85–87; Steinacher,
‘Gruppen und Identitäten’, p. 257.
95 
Merrills, ‘The Secret of my Succession’, pp. 155–57.
96 
Liebeschuetz, ‘Gens into regnum: The Vandals’, pp. 56 and 82–83.
474 Roland Steinacher

church. More likely, however, the ethnic title was intended to demonstrate to
the Vandal elites that the son-in-law of an emperor knew how a true Vandal
king should articulate his power. At the same time, Huneric’s church policy can
be understood as an attempt to establish a strong Hasding rule with an Arian
church in the interest of military circles around the Mediterranean.
A similar explanation is possible for Gelimer. When he took power, he had
to stress certain aspects of Vandal identity once more. The silver bowl can be
interpreted as part of a quest for power by groups in opposition to Hilderic’s
policy. It reveals the situation: one branch of the royal family against the other,
a power game within rather small cliques in the African provinces.
The title may have sparked memories of Geiseric and evoked feelings of
glory and power in the hearts of certain privileged offspring of members of the
Vandal-Alan army of the first half of the fifth century. Or it may have been
an invention of Huneric’s advisers trying to convince followers of his brother,
or other royals as mighty Vandals, that this king was also supporting them
and their privileges. At the same time, Huneric had the ability to widen the
Hasding circles of power beyond the African provinces, and to be accepted in
these provinces as a ruler married to an emperor’s daughter. This in itself may
have caused conflicts in the inner circles of Vandal power, who may have feared
for their system of allotment and their privileged position as military leaders
in a late Roman society. We lack detailed knowledge about this. The first half
of the fifth century was an agitated period and identities emerged and disap-
peared quickly. The late Roman society in the African provinces between 439
and 533 had attenuated the harsh conflicts between military barbarian groups
and other elites in the Western Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centu-
ries. Much of Geiseric’s and Huneric’s reign was focused on solving problems
related to these tensions. The history of the twofold Vandal royal title can be
explained in such terms. No self-perpetuating memories of a glorious Vandal
past are involved — rather, it should be viewed against the background of a
struggle for power and wealth in the African provinces, most likely the disputes
within a single royal family, whose different branches operated with two differ-
ent languages of power.
Who is the Barbarian? 475

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Roland Steinacher, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 13 (Wien, 2008),
pp. 254–56
—— , ‘Heruli, People, Third-Sixth c.’, International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages
Online: A Supplement to LexMA-Online, Brepolis Medieval Encyclopaedias, <http://
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Kulikowski and Philipp von Rummel (Oxford, forthcoming)
—— , Die Vandalen. Aufsteig und Fall römischer Barbaren (Stuttgart, forthcoming 2014)
—— , ‘Vandalen: Rezeptions- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte’, in Der neue Pauly: Enzyklo­
pädie der Antike, ed. by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, 16 vols (1996–2003),
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—— , ‘Vandalen im frühneuzeitlichen Ostseeraum: Beobachtungen zur Rezeption antiker
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Methoden, Ergebnisse und Rezeption, ed. by Karl Strobl, Altertumswissenschaftliche
Studien Klagenfurt, 2 (Klagenfurt, 2005), pp. 279–98
—— , ‘Wenden, Slawen, Vandalen: eine frühmittelalterliche pseudologische Gleichsetzung
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Die Wahrnehmung der nichtfränkischen
Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen
Historiographie

Gerald Krutzler*

Problemstellung
Dieser Artikel beschäftigt sich mit der Wahrnehmung kollektiver und ethnischer
Identitäten in fränkischen historiographischen Quellen der Merowingerzeit,
die nicht mit dem Frankennamen verbunden sind oder neben diesen, teilweise
in Verbindung mit ihm, teilweise in Abgrenzung zu ihm, gestellt werden.1 Die
wichtigsten verwendeten Quellen sind die Historiae des Gregor von Tours
(6.  Jahrhundert), die Chronik des sogenannten Fredegar (7.  Jahrhundert),
der Liber Historiae Francorum und die Continuationes Fredegarii (jeweils
8. Jahrhundert).2 Nur ergänzend wird auf merowingerzeitliche bzw. zeitnahe
*  Mein Dank gilt Prof. Walter Pohl, der mir die Möglichkeit gegeben hat, diesen Artikel im
Rahmen des Wittgenstein-Projektes zu verfassen, sowie Helmut Reimitz, Richard Corradini,
Maximilian Diesenberger, Gerda Heydemann, Marianne Pollheimer, und Clemens Gantner. Sie
alle haben mich bei der Abfassung des Textes unterstützt, mich zu neuen Überlegungen inspi­
riert und mich auf hilfreiche Literatur hingewiesen.
1 
Komplementär zu meinem Artikel vgl.  den Beitrag von Reimitz, ‘Cultural Brokers
of a Common Past’, über die Franken. Unter Merowingerzeit ist der Zeitraum zwischen
dem Erscheinen Childerichs I. auf der politischen Bühne Galliens um 450 und dem Sturz
Childerichs III. 751 durch den Karolinger Pippin III./I. zu verstehen. Zu dieser Periodisierung
vgl. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms.
2 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, pp. 1–168;
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, pp. 215–328; Continuationes Frede­garii, hrsg. v.
Krusch, pp. 168–93. Der Name Fredegar wurde erstmals 1579 in der Erst­publikation durch
Fauchet mit dem anonym überlieferten Werk in Verbindung gebracht; Collins, Fredegar, p. 1.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101672
pp. 487–547 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
488 Gerald Krutzler

Quellen auch aus anderen Gebieten oder mit anderer Thematik zurückgegrif-
fen. Untersuchungsgegenstand sind vor allem jene gentes, die in möglichst vie-
len der genannten Quellen behandelt werden. Von besonderem Interesse sind
dabei ethnische, politische und soziale Prozesse und ihre Rezeption, wie die
Abstammung, Verwandtschaft, Zusammensetzung, Identifikation, territori-
ale Verbreitung und politische Strukturierung der gentes, ihre Hintergründe
und Auswirkungen, und die eventuell auftretenden Veränderungen in der
Wahrnehmung dieser Faktoren in den jeweiligen Quellen.

Die untersuchten Quellen und ihre Unterschiede

Die Historiae des Gregor von Tours und die Fredegar-Chronik führen die
Weltgeschichte auf Basis der christlichen Weltchronistik bis in ihre jeweilige
Gegenwart fort. Der Liber Historiae Francorum beschäftigt sich primär mit
fränkischer Geschichte, und die Continuationes Fredegarii setzen die Fredegar-
Chronik bis zum Regierungsantritt von Karl d. Gr. und Karlmann fort.3 Gregors
Historiae dienten der Fredegar-Chronik und dem Liber Historiae Francorum
als Quelle, die Fredegar-Chronik war dem Autor des Liber Historiae Francorum
hingegen nicht bekannt.4 Die ersten zehn Kapitel der Continuationes Fredegarii
sind vom Liber Historiae Francorum abhängig.5 Bei der Wahrnehmung fremder
gentes in diesen Quellen gibt es, was Quantität und Qualität der überliefer-
ten Informationen betrifft, gravierende Unterschiede. Dafür sind zum Teil die
unterschiedlichen Zielsetzungen der Autoren verantwortlich. Weil Gregor von
Tours und Fredegar die Geschichte der Welt von den Anfängen, wie sie im
biblischen Weltbild grundgelegt sind, bis in ihre eigene Gegenwart behandeln,
beinhalten ihre Werke die Namen vieler gentes, wobei die Informationen meist

3 
Zur unterschiedlichen Bedeutung des Begriffs Franci in den verschiedenen Quellen
vgl.  Reimitz, ‘Die Konkurrenz der Ursprünge’; Reimitz, ‘Omnes Franci’; Reimitz, ‘Social
Networks and Identities’; Wood, ‘Defining the Franks’; Pohl, ‘Regnum und gens’, p. 445; Goetz,
‘Gens, Kings and Kingdoms’, pp. 308–19, 334–40; Goetz, ‘Zur Wandlung des Frankennamens’.
Vgl. dazu außerdem Reimitz, ‘Cultural Brokers of a Common Past’.
4 
Fredegar und dem Liber Historiae Francorum lagen gekürzte Versionen von Gregors
Historiae vor, die nur die ersten sechs Bücher bis zum Tod Chilperichs I. 584 überlieferten;
Reimitz, ‘Die Konkurrenz der Ursprünge’, pp. 195–96 mit Anm. 21–22; Gregor von Tours:
Zehn Bücher Geschichten, übers. v. Buchner, i, p. xxiv.
5 
Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, cc. 1–10, pp. 168–74; vgl. Liber Historiae
Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, cc. 43–53, pp. 315–28.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 489

aus den verwendeten Quellen übernommen wurden.6 Funktion dieser gentes

ist es häufig, die biblische Geschichte mit dem chronologischen Modell der
griechisch-römischen Historiographie zu synchronisieren.7 Die so geschaffe-
nen chronologischen Fixpunkte können eine zeitliche Einordnung historischer
und biblischer Ereignisse ermöglichen. Im Liber Historiae Francorum und in
den Continuationes Fredegarii werden viele der bei Gregor präsenten gentes
nicht mehr genannt, was auf eine Einengung des fränkischen Gesichtskreises
hinweist. Während Gregor von Tours und Fredegar noch zeitgenössische
Ereignisse aus dem ganzen Mittelmeerraum und dem vorderen Orient berich-
ten, beschränken sich neue Nachrichten des Liber Historiae Francorum und
der Continuationes Fredegarii fast ausschließlich auf Gallien, Germanien und
Italien. Gründe dafür können die Abnahme der diplomatischen Kontakte zum
Oströmischen Reich und eine Beschränkung der fränkischen Außenpolitik auf
die unmittelbar benachbarten gentes infolge der politischen Desintegration der
fränkischen Teilreiche seit der Mitte des 7. Jahrhunderts sein.8

6 
Gregor von Tours gibt Hieronymus und Orosius als Quellen für seine weltgeschichtli-
chen Informationen sowie Sulpicius Alexander und Renatus Profuturus Frigiredus für die
Geschichte der Franken an; Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 36, i. 41, pp. 27–28
(Hieronymus, Orosius); ii. 8, p. 50; ii. 9, pp. 52, 55 (Sulpicius Alexander, Renatus Profuturus
Frigiredus); v. praefatio, pp. 193–94 (Orosius). Fredegar nennt Hieronymus, Hydatius, Isidor,
und Gregor von Tours als seine Quellen; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. prologus,
p. 123. Eine weitere wichtige Quelle Fredegars ist der Liber Generationis des Gegenpapstes
Hippolytus (217–35). Zu seinen weiteren Quellen vgl. Collins, Fredegar, pp. 5, 20–21; siehe
die Einleitung zur deutschen Übersetzung: Fredegar, Chroniken, übers. v. Kusternig, pp. 16–17.
7 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 17, p. 16, stellt biblischen Anführern
Herrscher der Assyrer, Sikyonier, Ägypter, Argiver, Athener, Latiner, Lakedaimonier, Korinther,
Makedonier, Lyder, Babylonier, und Römer sowie von Attika gegenüber. Fredegar, Chronicae,
hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 9–14, 16–17, pp. 47–50 stellt die Könige der Latiner den Königen der
Hebräer bzw.  Juden gegenüber. Vgl.  Gregor von Tours: Zehn Bücher Geschichten, übers. v.
Buchner, i, p. xxv.
8 
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, Capitulatio zu c. 44, p. 240 bezeichnet die
Regierungszeit Chlodwigs II. (639–57) als „Zeit des Zusammenbruchs des Frankenreichs“:
„Quo tempore regnum Francorum concidit“. Nach dem bei Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch,
iv. 62, p. 151 überlieferten Friedensvertrag zwischen Dagobert I. und Kaiser Heraklius ber-
ichten die untersuchten Quellen nichts mehr über diplomatische Beziehungen der Franken zum
Oströmischen Reich, bis König Pippin I. wieder Gesandtschaften mit Kaiser Konstantin V. aus-
tauscht; Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 40, p. 186. Beide Versionen der fränkischen
Reichsannalen berichten zum Jahr 757 von einer Gesandtschaft Kaiser Konstantins an Pippin;
Annales regni Francorum/Annales qui dicuntur Einhardi, hrsg. v. Kurze, a. 757, pp. 14–15, ebenso
der Liber Pontificalis, hrsg. v. Duchesne, Stephan II., cc. 43–45, i, pp. 452–53. Eine frühere
oströmische Gesandtschaft an Pippin II. überliefern die Annales Mettenses priores, hrsg. v. Simson,
490 Gerald Krutzler

Konstruierte Verwandtschaften: Die Franken als Verwandte fremder Völker

Die Ableitung gentiler Gruppen von einem Stammvater ist ein altes
Erklärungsmuster in antiker Ethnographie und jüdisch-christlicher Tradition.9
Gregor von Tours überliefert die biblische Abstammung aller Völker von Noah
und die Abstammung der Nachkommen Isaaks von Esau und Jakob, dem
Ahnen der zwölf Stämme Israels.10 Auch Fredegar tradiert den Stammbaum
der Söhne Noahs, ordnet der biblischen Genealogie aber auf Basis des Liber
Generationis zahlreiche gentes der antiken Geschichte zu und ergänzt noch wei-
tere Namen.11 Wichtig ist dabei Cetthin, der einmal als Sohn Japhets, einmal

a. 692, p. 15. Deren Authentizität wird jedoch bezweifelt, Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in
Mitteleuropa, p. 308. Zu den Annales qui dicuntur Einhardi vgl. Kaschke, Die karolingischen
Reichsteilungen, pp. 283–89. Es wird von einem Abreißen der diplomatischen Beziehungen
zwischen Frankenreich und Imperium zwischen 668/75 und 756, der Gesandtschaft im Liber
Pontificalis, ausgegangen, auch der Handel hätte einen Tiefpunkt er­reicht und nur kirchliche
Kontakte seien durch abendländische Pilger in geringem Maße erhalten geblieben; Ewig, Die
Merowinger und das Imperium, p. 56 mit Anm. 238. Ebroin hatte 668 Hadrian, den Begleiter
Bischof Theodors, für einen legatus imperatoris gehalten, der gegen das Frankenreich gerichtete
Botschaften des Kaisers an die reges Brittaniae überbringe; Beda, Historia ecclesiastica gentis
Anglorum, hrsg. und übers. v. Spitzbart, v. 1, pp. 316–20. Da die Reisen von Pilgern wie dem gal-
lischen Bischof Arculf in den 680er Jahren und Willibald, dem späteren Bischof von Eichstätt,
in den 720er Jahren, die auch Konstantinopel aufsuchten, organisierte Unternehmungen waren,
bei denen die durchaus größeren Pilgergruppen, wie auch Diplomaten, auf Handelsschiffen
transportiert wurden, erscheinen diplomatische Kontakte zwischen dem Frankenreich und
Ostrom auch in dieser Zeit möglich, wobei auch Kaufleute als diplomatische Vertreter fungiert
haben könnten. Arculf: Adomnán, De locis sanctis, hrsg. v. Bieler, iii. 1–5, pp. 177 [Datierung],
226–34 [Konstantinopel]; Beda, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, hrsg. und übers. v.
Spitzbart, v. 15, pp. 480, 482. Willibald: Hugeburc, Vita Willibaldi, hrsg. v. Holder-Egger. Zu
den Reisenden, ihrem Transport, Routen von Konstantinopel nach Gallien, Arculf, Willibald
und der Datierung ihrer Reisen vgl. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 111,
130, 172, Anm. 74, 272 mit Anm. 5; 275, 356, 456–57, 460, 508, 539, Anm. 56, 587, 800, 806,
865–67.
9 
Wolfram, ‘Origo gentis: allgemeines’, p. 174.
10 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 7 (Noah, vgl. Gn 10); i. 8, pp. 9–10
(Esau); i. 9, p. 10 ( Jakob). Gregor führt zwar das Herrscherhaus der Burgunder auf den als rex
Gothorum bezeichneten Christenverfolger Athanarich zurück, stellt aber keine Verwandtschaft
zwischen Goten und Burgundern her; ii. 4, p. 45 „Athanaricus Gothorum rex“; ii. 28, p. 73:
„Gundovechus rex Burgundionum ex genere Athanarici regis persecutoris“. Zur kirchenge-
schichtlichen Tradition Gregors vgl. Reimitz, ‘Cultural Brokers of a Common Past’.
11 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, pp. 21–23; vgl. Gn 10. 2–4; Liber Generationis,
hrsg. v. Mommsen, cc. 58–75, p. 96. Die Ergänzungen bei Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch,
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 491

als dessen Enkel von Iuvan erscheint.12 Vom Japhet-Sohn Cetthin stammen im
Liber Generationis die Macedones ab, Fredegar stellt ihnen die Wörter Trociane,
Frigiae voran.13 Vom gleichnamigen Iuvan-Sohn stammen im Liber Generationis
die Romani, qui et Latini sowie, in Verschreibung der biblischen Dodani, die
Rodii ab, bei Fredegar wird aus Rodii Rodivivi und dazu et Priami ergänzt.14
Durch die gemeinsame Abstammung von Noahs Nachkommen Cetthin wer-
den die Trociane, Frigiiae, Macedones und die Romani, qui et Latini, Rodivivi
et Priami miteinander verknüpft.15 Die biblische Völkergenealogie wird so mit
der heidnisch-römischen Vorstellung einer Abstammung der Römer von den
Trojanern, deren König Priamus war, verbunden.16 Die trojanische Herkunft
der Römer ist für Fredegar deshalb wichtig, weil für ihn auch die Franken von
den Trojanern abstammen, wofür er sich auf historiarum libri bzw. Hieronymus

i. 5, p. 21, zum Liber Generationis wurden erst im Zuge der Entstehung der Fredegar-Chronik
hinzugefügt; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, p. 21, Anm. 2; Krusch, ‘Die Chronicae des
sogenannten Fredegar’, pp. 464–65; Schnürer, Die Verfasser der sogenannten Fredegar-Chronik,
pp. 4, 203, 232–33; Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings, pp. 76, 79.
12 
Bereits im Liber Generationis wurde Cetthin fälschlich doppelt gezählt, einmal, entspre-
chend der biblischen Evidenz, als Enkel Japhets von Iuvan, und einmal, dem widersprechend,
als Sohn Japhets; Liber Generationis, hrsg. v. Mommsen, cc. 58, 66, 71, 74, pp. 96: „filii Iafet
[…] Cetthyn, unde Macedones. […] et filii Iuuan. […] Cithii, de quo Romani, qui et Latini“;
vgl. Gn 10, 2–4 „filii Iafeth Gomer Magog et Madai Iavan et Thubal et Mosoch et Thiras
porro filii Gomer Aschenez et Rifath et Thogorma filii autem Iavan Elisa et Tharsis Cetthim et
Dodanim“. Anton, ‘Troja-Herkunft’, p. 20.
13 
Liber Generationis, hrsg. v. Mommsen, c.  66, p.  96: „Cetthyn, unde Macedones“;
vgl.  Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i.  5, p.  21: „Cetthin, unde Trociane, Frigiiae,
Macedones“.
14 
Liber Generationis, hrsg. v. Mommsen, cc. 71, 74–75, p. 96: „et filii Iuuan. […] Cithii, de
quo Romani, qui et Latini. Rodii“; vgl. Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 21: „Et filii
Iuvan: […] Cythii, de quo Romani, qui et Latini, Rodivivi et Priami“. Die Wörter Rodivivi et
Priami könnten eine Verschreibung von Rodii, qui et Priami sein; Krusch, ‘Die Chronicae des
sogenannten Fredegar’, p. 464.
15 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 21: „Filii Iafeth: […] Cetthin, unde Trociane,
Frigiiae, Macedones, […]; Et filii Iuvan: […] Cythii, de quo Romani, qui et Latini, Rodivivi et
Priami“; Anton, ‘Troja-Herkunft’, p. 20.
16 
Zur Abstammung der Römer von den Trojanern und ihren verschiedenen Varianten
vgl. Hillen, Von Aeneas zu Romulus. Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, ii. 2, pp. 460–61 sieht
hingegen in Fredegars fränkischer Trojaherkunft eine gegen das biblische Modell entworfene
Herkunftsgeschichte, da er keine Vereinigung, sondern eine Konkurrenz biblischer und antik-
heidnischer Ursprungsmodelle annimmt.
492 Gerald Krutzler

und Vergil beruft.17 Gregor von Tours überliefert die trojanische Abkunft der
Franken noch nicht, sondern berichtet über Erzählungen von ihrer Herkunft
aus Pannonien.18 Auch der Liber Historiae Francorum kennt die trojanische
Abstammung der Franken, doch unterscheidet sich diese inhaltlich weniger
komplexe Darstellung stark von Fredegars Versionen und beinhaltet keine wei-
teren Völkerverwandtschaften.19
Der mit der jüdischen Geschichte synchronisierte trojanische Krieg ist für
Fredegar Ursprung der Franken und Römer.20 Priamus, nach antiker Tradition
König von Troja, ist bei Fredegar der erste König der Franken.21 Die Eroberung

17 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 4–8, pp. 45–47; iii. 2, p. 93. Beide Versionen der
fränkische Trojasage weichen in den Details voneinander ab. Auf die möglichen Quellen einer
fränkischen Trojafiliation, gallische Vorbilder, burgundische Parallelen und Reminiszenzen an
Franken im Dienste des Römischen Imperium, wird hier nicht näher eingegangen, vgl. dazu
Krutzler, ‘Fremdwahrnehmungen in der frühmittelalterlichen Ethnographie’, pp.  152–68;
Barlow, ‘Gregory of Tours’, pp. 87–88; Ewig, ‘Trojamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’,
pp. 1–2, 17 mit Anm. 70; Anton, ‘Origo gentis: Franken’, pp. 191, 193; Anton, ‘Troja-Herkunft’,
pp. 2, 25–26; Wood, ‘Defining the Franks’, pp. 51–52; Wood, ‘Origo gentis: Burgunden’, p. 196;
Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, p. 34; Goetz, ‘Gens, Kings and Kingdoms’, p. 340. Zur fränki­
schen Trojasage und ihrer Rezeption vgl. weiters Wolf, Troja sowie Coumert, Origines des peuples.
18 
Fredegar verändert den Text Gregors an der Stelle, wo die Frage nach dem primus rex
Francorum thematisiert wird, gravierend, um seine trojanische Herkunft der Franken ein-
zuschieben. Obwohl die ihm vorliegende Sechs-Buch-Version von Gregors Historiae mit ihrer
Verschreibung von ullatinus zu Ualentinus im Gegensatz zum Urtext den primus rex Francorum
namentlich benannt hätte, erklärte Fredegar statt dessen unter Berufung auf Hieronymus und
Vergil Priamus zum ersten König der Franken; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 2,
p. 93; vgl. Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 9, p. 52 mit Anm. b und d (primus
rex Francorum), p. 57 (Pannonien); Reimitz, ‘Die Konkurrenz der Ursprünge’, pp. 191, 200;
Reimitz, ‘Social Networks and Identities’, p. 240.
19 
Die Franken sind hier Nachkommen der Trojaner, die Valentinian, der impera-
tor Romanorum ac gentium, nach einem für ihn errungenen Sieg über die Alanen in Franci
umbenannt hatte; Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, cc. 1–3, pp. 241–43. Während
die Alanen bei Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 7, p. 50; ii. 9, pp. 55–56 und
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 50, pp. 70–71; ii. 60, p. 84, Teil der Ereignisgeschichte
Galliens und Spaniens sind, kommt ihnen im Liber Historiae Francorum, cc. 2–3, pp. 242–43,
die Funktion zu, in einer fernen, mythischen Vergangenheit von den Trojanern in einer primor-
dialen Tat besiegt zu werden, die daraufhin einen neuen Namen erhalten.
20 
Die Kapitelüberschrift dazu lautet „De captivitate Troge et inicium Francorum et
Romanorum“, doch fehlt im Kapitel selbst jeder Hinweis auf die Römer; Fredegar, Chronicae,
hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. Capitulatio (c. 4), p. 42; ii. 4, pp. 45–46.
21 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 4, p. 45 (Priamus erster Frankenkönig und Räuber
der Helena); iii. 2, p. 93 (Priamus erster Frankenkönig).
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 493

Trojas setzt Fredegar, dem die griechische Zeitrechnung nach Olympiaden

zu je 4 Jahren bekannt war, nach Hieronymus 405 bzw.  406 Jahre vor der
1. Olympiade an.22 Nach dem Fall Trojas und der Abwanderung der Trojaner
ist Friga der Nachfolger des Priamus, unter ihm kommt es zur Teilung der gens:
Der eine Teil wurde nach Friga Frigii genannt, der andere sei nach Makedonien
gezogen, wurde nach diesem Land Macedones genannt und zeichne sich durch
tapfere Kämpfer wie die Könige Philipp II. und Alexander d. Gr. aus. 23 Die
Abstammung von Römern und Franken aus Troja wird mit dem Auszug
von dort unter Priamus und Friga verbunden. 24 Eine verwandtschaftliche
Verbindung zwischen Römern und Franken wird durch die Aussage hergestellt,
dass Friga und Aeneas, der aus Troja geflohene König der Latini, die später
Romani genannt wurden, Brüder gewesen sein sollen.25 Friga wurde als Heros
eponymos der Phryger oder der Friesen interpretiert oder als Entsprechung des
nordgermanischen Gottes Freyr/Fro.26 Frigii wurde als latinisierte Form des

22 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 18, p. 29 (Olympiade zu 4 Jahren); ii. 6, p. 46 (406
Jahre); ii. 18, p. 50 (405 Jahre); vgl. Hieronymus, Chronicon, hrsg. v. Helm, Eusebii interpretata
praefatio, a. 1182 a. Chr., a. 777 a. Chr., pp. 11, 18, 60a (406 Jahre), p. 86a (405 Jahre). Der
Fall Trojas fand nach der antiken Berechnung um 1200 v. Chr. statt; Ziegler, ‘Troia’. Fredegar
kommt bei seinen aus Hieronymus entnommenen 405 bzw. 406 Jahren vor der 1. Olympiade
auf 1181 bzw. 1182 v. Chr., da er, wie die auf Alexander d. Gr. bezogene Berechnung in Fredegar,
Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 18, pp. 28–29 ergibt, wusste, dass die 1. Olympiade 776 v. Chr. statt­
fand. Er bewegt sich damit im von der antiken Historiographie errechneten Bereich und kann
den Ursprung der Franken und Römer somit genau datieren. Die Addition der Olympiaden vor
Alexander mit jenen zwischen Alexander und Christus, aus der sich die 776 Jahre ableiten lassen,
findet sich nicht explizit bei Hieronymus, kann aber aus dessen Angaben berechnet worden sein.
23 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 4, pp. 45–46; iii. 2, p. 93.
24 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. Capitulatio (c. 8), p. 42: „De captivitate Troge et
egressionem exinde Priamo et Friga, unde Romani et Franci fuerunt“ — „Über die Eroberung
Trojas und den Auszug von dort unter Priamus und Friga, woher die Römer und Franken
ge­wesen sind“. Möglicherweise soll damit auch eine Abstammung der Römer von Priamus und
die der Franken von Friga angedeutet werden.
25 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. Capitulatio (c. 8), p. 42; ii. 8, p. 47 (Friga und
Aeneas Brüder); vgl. iii. 5, p. 94 (zweite Version der fränkischen Trojasage, wo erstmals eine
genealogische Verbindung zwischen Priamus, Friga und Francio hergestellt wird).
26 
Phryger: Namensformen des phrygischen heros eponymos sind Brigos, Phryx/Bryx
und Phrygios; Ewig, ‘Trojamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’, p. 3, Anm. 18; Pohl, Die
Völkerwanderung, p. 183. Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, ii. 2, p. 460, Anm. 67. Plassmann,
Origo gentis, p. 151. Friesen: Runde, Xanten im frühen und hohen Mittelalter, pp. 137, 146–47
mit Anm. 350. James, The Franks, p. 235: Verwechslung der Phryger mit den Friesen. Krusch,
‘Der Bayernname, der Kosmograph von Ravenna’, p. 59: Verwechslung von Frigiones mit Phryges.
494 Gerald Krutzler

Friesennamens Frisii gedeutet und soll außerdem die fränkische Bezeichnung

für die reges criniti, die gelockten Könige, gewesen sein.27 Die Ergänzung Frigiae
zum Liber Generationis legt eine Identifikation der Frigii mit den Phrygern
nahe, da durch ihre gemeinsame Nennung mit den Trociane und Macedones
sowie mit den zu Rodivivi et Priami gewordenen Rodii, also den Rhodiern, der
geographische Kontext der Ägäis beschrieben wird, in den sich die Romani, qui
et Latini durch ihre Abkunft aus Troja einfügen.28
Durch die Abstammung von den Trojanern und die Verwandtschaft mit
Phrygern, Makedonen und Römern ist eine Beziehung der Franken zu den in
der Chettin-Genealogie genannten Völkern hergestellt und ihre Einordnung
in das biblische Weltbild vollzogen.29 Seit Hieronymus die Weissagung Daniels
auf Babylonier, Meder, Perser, Makedonen und Römer gedeutet hatte, galten
Römer und Makedonen als die beiden letzten großen Herrschaftsvölker der
Geschichte.30 Die Abstammung der Franken von Römern und Makedonen
begründete den Anspruch auf deren Nachfolge. Eine Abstammung von den
Phrygern erlaubte eine Anbindung an die Anfänge der Menschheit, denn die
Phryger galten im Altertum als das Urvolk der Geschichte, über die Frigii
konnten die Franken als Nachkommen Japhets und Noahs mit dem Neubeginn
der Menschheitsgeschichte nach der Sintflut verbunden werden.31
Trotzdem kann die Erinnerung an eine Tradition einer Verbindung von
Franken und Friesen zur Aufnahme der Frigii in die trojanische Genealogie
geführt haben.32 Sprachlich wäre eine Gleichsetzung der Frigii mit den Friesen

Zöllner, Die politische Stellung der Völker im Frankenreich, p. 70: Gelehrte Konstruktion nach
Vergil und germanische Überlieferungen. Freyr/Fro: Wenskus, ‘Religion abátardie’, pp. 234–40.
27 
Schnürer, Die Verfasser der sogenannten Fredegar-Chronik, p. 197.
28 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 21. Rhodos: Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel,
ii. 2, p. 459.
29 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 21. Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, ii. 1,
pp. 460–61, sieht hingegen in der Trojaherkunft bei Fredegar II eine zwar von Fredegar I inspi-
rierte, aber als Reaktion dagegen entworfene Darstellung, da er keine Vereinigung, sondern eine
Konkurrenz biblischer und antiker Ursprungsmodelle annimmt.
30 
Dn 7; Fredegar, Chroniken, übers. v. Kusternig, p. 84, Anm. 12.
31 
Ewig, ‘Trojamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’, p. 6.
32 
Zu schwankenden Zuordnungen der frühen Franken, Friesen und Sachsen und den
Schwierigkeiten, sie archäologisch voneinander abzugrenzen vgl. Wenskus, Stammesbildung
und Verfassung, pp. 519, 530, 550; Lebecq, ‘Franken und Friesen’, p. 338; Pohl, Die Germanen,
pp. 33, 109, 115; Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings, p. 148; Springer, Die Sachsen, pp. 42,
99, 167.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 495

möglich.33 Wegen des geographischen Bezugs der Frigii zu den Phrygern ist zu
hinterfragen, ob sich Fredegar überhaupt bewusst war, dass Friesen und Phryger
verschiedene gentes waren. Die Gleichsetzung gentiler Gruppen, u. a. aufgrund
des Gleichklangs ihrer Namen über Zeit und Raum hinweg, zählte zu den
Denkmustern der antiken Ethnographie.34 Ein Autor im Frankenreich könnte
Vergils Berichte über aus Troja ausziehende Phryger deshalb mit den Friesen
assoziiert haben, die irgendwann ihre nunmehrigen Wohnsitze erreicht haben
mussten. Aus den trojanischen Phrygern könnten so die Vorfahren der Frigier/
Friesen am Unterrhein geworden sein.35
Von den Frigii spaltet sich in der Trojasage am Ufer der Donau zwischen dem
Ozean und Thrakien eine weitere Gruppe ab, die nach ihrem König Torquotus/
Turquotus bzw. Torcoth als gens Torcorum, gens Turquorum bzw. Turci bezeich-
net wird, während der verbliebene Rest der gens nach Frigas Nachfolger Francio
Franci genannt wird. 36 Torquotus/Turquotus wurde mit einem römischen
Konsul Torquatus bei Hieronymus identifiziert, den auch Fredegar erwähnt.37

33 
Für die Friesen sind die Formen Frigones, Frigiones, Frisiones, und Frisii belegt, analog zu
Frisiones = Frigiones müsste auch Frisii mit Frigii gleichzusetzen sein; Schnürer, Die Verfasser der
sogenannten Fredegar-Chronik, p. 197. Obwohl Schnürer hier sprachlich für eine Gleichsetzung
von Frigii mit Frisii argumentiert, identifiziert er die Frigii bei Fredegar nicht ausdrücklich mit
den Friesen. Wagner, ‘Zum “g” in Frigones “Friesen”’, pp. 230–32, macht eine bereits um 400 bei
Vegetius Renatus, Digestorum Artis Mulomedicinae, hrsg. v. Lommatzsch, iii. 6, p. 249 im Wort
Frigiscos feststellbare Alternanz von s(i) und g(i) für friesische Namensformen mit g verant-
wortlich, die auf romanischen Lautentwicklungen beruht. Auch Wolfgang Haubrichs bestätigt,
wie er mir dankenswerterweise mitgeteilt hat, dass sich in einem lateinisch-romanischen
Kontext (nicht im germanischen) die Möglichkeit eröffnet, Frigio als hyperkorrektes *Frisio
und Frigii als hyperkorrektes *Frisii aufzufassen, obwohl auch die für ihn wahrscheinlichere
Auflösung *Phrygio/*Phrygii weiterhin möglich bleibt. Zusammenfassend lässt sich also sagen,
dass Friesen und Phryger beide als Frigii bezeichnet werden konnten. Beide Gruppen über die
Gleichung Frisii = Frigii = Phrygii miteinander zu identifizieren, wäre also möglich gewesen.
34 
Wolfram, ‘Origo gentis: allgemeines’, p. 177; Wolfram, ‘Origo gentis: Goten’, pp. 178–79
mit Beispielen. Die Vorstellung von der Unveränderbarkeit der gentes geht auf Plinius zurück;
Geary, Europäische Völker im frühen Mittelalter, pp. 61–62.
35 
Runde, Xanten im frühen und hohen Mittelalter, p. 147, Anm. 350.
36 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii.  6, p.  46 (gens Torcorum, gens Turquorum,
Torquotus, Turquotus, Donau, Ozean, Thrakien); iii. 2, p. 93 (Turci, Torcoth, Donau). Die
Ableitung des Frankennamens von einem Anführer findet sich bereits beim Oströmer Johannes
Lydus (d. c. 570) und bei Isidor von Sevilla (d. 626); Johannes Lydus, De magistratibus pop-
uli Romani, hrsg. v. Wuensch, iii. 56, p. 145; Isidor von Sevilla, Etymologiae, hrsg. v. Lindsay,
ix. 2. 101; Barlow, ‘Gregory of Tours’, p. 92.
37 
Konsul Torquatus: Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 28, p. 53; vgl. Hieronymus,
496 Gerald Krutzler

Ein anderes Vorbild könnte der türkischen Khagan Tourxanthos (Tούρξαθος/

Türkshad) sein.38
Die Turci/Torqui wurden mit den Türken identifiziert, einer mächtigen,
im Altertum unbekannten gens, die im letzten Drittel des 6. Jahrhunderts
mit Ostrom in Kontakt trat und von der die Franken über diplomati-
sche Beziehungen zu den Byzantinern erfahren haben sollen, weshalb ihr
Auftauchen in der Trojasage als spätere Zutat zu einem älteren Kern angesehen
wurde.39 Daneben gibt es Gleichsetzungen der Turci/Torqui mit den Teucri und
den Thüringern.40 Die Nachricht der Trojasage, dass die Franken, als sie sich am
Rhein niedergelassen hatten, gegen Torquotus viele Kämpfe bestreiten mussten
und dabei schwere Verluste erlitten, könnte eine Reminiszenz an Kriege zwi-

Chronicon, hrsg. v. Helm, a. 333 a. Chr., p. 123; Lüthgen, Die Quellen und der historische Wert
der fränkischen Trojasage, p. 41; Krusch, ‘Die Chronicae des sogenannten Fredegar’, p. 474;
Schnürer, Die Verfasser der sogenannten Fredegar-Chronik, p. 175.
38 
Ewig, ‘Trojamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’, p.  27 mit Anm.  108, der eine
Angleichung an den lateinischen Namen Torquatus für denkbar hält; Wagner, ‘Die Torci bei
Fredegar’, p. 408; Zur Herrschaft des Tourxanthos über die Onoguren: Pohl, Die Awaren:
ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, pp.  40, 273; Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, i, pp.  65, 76;
Szádeczky-Kardoss, ‘Tούρξαθος’. Kurtiguren als ‚Nördliche Türken‘: Kollautz and Miyakawa,
Geschichte und Kultur, p. 159. Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 25, kriti­
siert die allgemein üblichen Identifizierungen der Onoguren, Kutriguren und Utiguren mit
den Bulgaren oder zumindest als bulgarische Stämme, da sie Verhältnisse des 7. auf das 6.
Jahrhundert übertragen.
39 
Ewig, ‘Trojamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’, pp.  7–8, 27–28; Ewig, ‘Zum
Geschichtsbild der Franken’, p. 44; Pohl, Die Völkerwanderung, p. 183; Borst, Der Turmbau
von Babel, ii. 2, pp. 653, 697; Plassmann, Origo gentis, pp. 151, 154; Hummer, ‘Franks and
Alamanni’, pp. 13–14, meint, die Ansiedlung an der Donau und die Verwandtschaft mit den
Türken erinnere an die Absorbierung orientalischer barbarischer Elemente im 5. Jahrhundert.
Gedacht wurde auch an Bulgari in Pannonien (Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 72,
p. 157), Kutugur-Bulgaren (Ewig, ‘Trojamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’, p. 7, Anm. 34),
Donaubulgaren (Wagner, ‘Die Torci bei Fredegar’, pp. 407–10).
40 
Teucri: Lüthgen, Die Quellen und der historische Wert, p. 43. Obwohl Lüthgens Teucri-
These bereits von Schnürer, Die Verfasser der sogenannten Fredegar-Chronik, p. 174, Anm. 1
aus sprachlichen Gründen abgelehnt wurde, wurde sie von Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired
Kings, p. 81 wiederaufgegriffen. Ewig, ‘Trojamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’, p. 7, lehnt
eine Identifikation mit den Teucri ab. Turci = Thuringi: Schnürer, Die Verfasser der sogenannten
Fredegar-Chronik, pp. 180–81. Beziehungen: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 9,
pp. 57–58 (Ansiedlung der Franken bei den Thoringi); ii. 12, pp. 61–62 (Flucht Childerichs I.
zum Thüringerkönig Bisin); iii.  7, pp.  103–04 (Rede Theuderichs  I. über Gräueltaten der
Thüringer). Vgl. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, pp. 37–39; Lebecq, ‘The Two Faces of King
Childeric’, pp. 120–21.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 497

schen Franken und Thüringern darstellen.41 Fredegars mögliche Assoziation

der für ihre Pferde berühmten Thüringer mit einem Reitervolk wie den Türken
könnte auf Erinnerungen an Verbindungen der Thüringer zu den Hunnen beru-
hen.42 Eine direkte Verbindung zwischen Troja und Thüringen stellt Venantius
Fortunatus her, bei dem die thüringische Frankenkönigin Radegunde den
Untergang ihrer Heimat im Zuge der fränkischen Eroberung beklagt und mit
dem Ende Trojas vergleicht.43
Franken und Turci gehen beide nach dem Tod Frigas aus den Frigii her-
vor. Sie stellen in einer Völkergenealogie als Brüder die Kinder der Frigii dar,
als deren Brüder die von ihnen in der Zeit Frigas abgespaltenen Macedones
und die mit den Römern identifizierten Latiner erscheinen, da der latinische
König Aeneas und Friga als Brüder bezeichnet werden. Dieser Stammbaum
wäre unverständlich, wenn mit den Turci nur die neu in Europa aufgetauchten
Türken und mit den Frigii die antiken Phryger gemeint wären. Er wird jedoch
nachvollziehbar, wenn damit die Thüringer und Friesen gemeint sind, denn die
Franken konnten sich, sei es aufgrund alter Traditionen oder aufgrund sprach-
licher Gemeinsamkeiten, diesen gentes sicherlich näher verwandt fühlen als
Makedonen oder Römern, an die sie ideologisch anknüpfen wollten.
Warum aber gerade Friesen und Thüringer in die fränkische Trojasage aufge-
nommen worden sein sollen, ließe sich aus der politischen Situation des austra-
sischen Frankenreiches um 660, zur Zeit der Entstehung der Fredegar-Chronik,
erklären. Fredegar selbst berichtet über die Unabhängigkeitsbestrebungen
des thüringischen dux Radulf, der eine eigenständige Politik betrieb, sich als
König seines Landes betrachtete und nur eine formelle Oberherrschaft des
Frankenkönigs anerkannte.44 Mit der Niederlage gegen Radulf wird auch das

41 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 7, pp. 13–14; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg.
v. Krusch, ii. 6, p. 46. Schnürer, Die Verfasser der sogenannten Fredegar-Chronik, p. 181.
42 
Die erste Erwähnung der Thüringer bei Vegetius am Ende des 4. Jahrhunderts rühmt ihre
Pferde; Vegetius Renatus, Digestorum Artis Mulomedicinae, hrsg. v. Lommatzsch, iii. 6, p. 249.
Im 5. Jahrhundert gerieten die Thüringer in den hunnischen Macht- und Kulturbereich, von den
Hunnen übernahmen sie die bei Reitervölkern vorkommende Sitte der Schädeldeformation;
Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung, pp. 557, 567–68; Wolfram, Die Germanen, p. 17;
Maçzyńska, Die Völkerwanderung, pp. 198–99; Schlesinger, ‘Das Frühmittelalter’, p. 321. Nach
Sidonius Apollinaris, Carmina, hrsg. v. Luetjohann, vii. v. 323, p. 211 kämpften die Thüringer
in der Schlacht auf den Katalaunischen Feldern 451 auf der Seite Attilas.
43 
Venantius Fortunatus, De excidio Thoringiae, hrsg. v. Leo, vv. 19–20, p. 271. Ob das ein
Indiz für eine thüringische Trojatradition darstellt, ist fraglich. Unklar ist, ob der Dichter hier
Radegundes Worte wiedergibt oder ob der Trojavergleich nur eine literarische Reminiszenz ist.
44 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 87, pp. 164–65.
498 Gerald Krutzler

Ende der fränkischen Herrschaft über die Friesen in Zusammenhang gebracht,

die damit verbundene friesische Expansion gegen die Franken kann durch das
Abbrechen der fränkischen Münzprägung in Dorestad auf um 650 datiert wer-
den.45 Es erscheint deshalb durchaus möglich, dass ein klassisch gebildeter und
mit der aktuellen politischen Lage vertrauter Autor sein Wissen über die trojani-
sche Herkunft der Phryger bei Vergil, die er womöglich ohnehin für die Friesen
hielt, und über türkische Gruppen im Schwarzmeergebiet, die ihm vielleicht als
Ebenbilder der Thüringer erschienen, in den Dienst der politischen Propaganda
stellte, indem er diese Elemente in seine Version der Trojasage aufnahm und so
über den Gleichklang der Namen das Ziel der Wiedereingliederung der Friesen
und Thüringer in das Frankenreich auf Basis einer gemeinsamen Abstammung
aus Troja und einer zumindest teilweise identischen Migrationsgeschichte
ideologisch zu untermauern versuchte. Dieser Ansatz konnte nicht nur den
fränkischen Herrschaftsanspruch über Friesen und Thüringer legitimieren,
sondern diesen auch, nachdem sie militärisch unterworfen worden waren, ihre
Reintegration in das Frankenreich erleichtern.46

Abstammung als Element zur Abgrenzung —

die slawischen Wenden und die Awaren
Fredegar berichtet, dass die Awaren bei den auch Wenden genannten Slawen
überwinterten und mit ihren Frauen und Töchtern schliefen; die Söhne aus
diesen Verbindungen aber ertrugen die Unterdrückung nicht, erhoben sich
gegen ihre Väter und machten 623/24 den tapferen fränkischen Kaufmann
Samo zu ihrem König.47
Dass es bei Einquartierungen awarischer Krieger bei Slawen auch zu mehr oder
weniger freiwilligen sexuellen Kontakten zwischen den Awaren und den Frauen
und Töchtern ihrer „Gastgeber“ kam, ist ebenso anzunehmen, wie dass aus die-
sen Vereinigungen auch Kinder hervorgingen.48 Eingriffe der Awaren in die sla-

45 
Ewig, Die Merowinger und das Frankenreich, pp. 143–44.
46 
Nach Pohl, Die Völkerwanderung, p. 183 konnten sich die Franken durch die Trojasage
wie andere gentes einer weiten Wanderung rühmen, deren verschiedene Stationen Gruppen
anderer Herkunft die Möglichkeit gaben, sich ebenfalls zugehörig zu fühlen.
47 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 48, p. 144, datiert die Reise Samos zu den Slawen
ins 40. Regierungsjahr Chlothars II., also auf 623/24. Eine weitere Gleichsetzung von Slawen
und Wenden findet sich Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 68, p. 154.
48 
Die altrussische Nestorchronik, übers. v. Trautmann, p.  6 betont die besonders bru-
tale Behandlung der Frauen der slawischen Dudleben durch die Awaren. Zur möglichen
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 499

wische Gesellschaftsstruktur führten jedenfalls dazu, dass eine Zwischenschicht

entstand.49 Diesen Prozess scheint Fredegars Erzählung von den Awarensöhnen
abzubilden. Hintergrund ihres Aufstands scheint die Rebellion einer lokalen
Führungsgruppe an der westlichen Peripherie des Awarenreiches gegen die awa-
rische Zentralmacht zu sein. Ob die Rebellen nun awarisch-slawische Mischlinge
waren, zu Awaren gewordene Slawen oder „echte“ Awaren, die zu den Slawen
geschickt worden waren, ist letztlich nicht so wichtig, die Vermischung zweier
gentiler Elemente diente Fredegar vielleicht nur dazu, um den Separationsprozess
zu erklären.50 Das Awarenreich umfasste neben ursprünglichen ethnischen
Einheiten auch regionale Gruppen, aus denen mit Duldung des Khagans neue
„Völker“ entstehen konnten.51 Fredegars Aufstand der Awarensöhne stellt des-
halb vielleicht den „ethnogenetischen Mythos“ der Wenden dar.52 Tendenzen
zur Herausbildung militärischer Eliten in der slawischen Gesellschaft entspra-
chen den strategischen Interessen der Khagane, führten aber auch vielfach zu
Konflikten mit den Awaren.53 Dass die „Awarensöhne“ die Awaren besiegen

Abhängigkeit der Nestorchronik von Fredegar vgl.  Curta, ‘Slavs in Fredegar and Paul the
Deacon’, p. 150. Die Frauen des Feindes zu vergewaltigen stellt ein archaisches Verhalten der
psychologischen Kriegesführung dar, die dem Gegner seine Ohnmacht vor Augen führen
soll; Wolfram, Die Germanen, p. 21. Archäologische Befunde beinhalten Hinweise auf die für
Reitervölker typische Exogamie auch für die Awaren, die mit Beziehungen zu Sklavinnen und
der bei Nomaden üblichen Sippenexogamie begründet wird; Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk
in Mitteleuropa, pp. 113, 218, 412–13, Anm. 25. Die Beisetzung ‚europäischer‘ Frauen mit ‚asi-
atischen‘ Kriegern spricht aber, bei aller gebotenen Vorsicht gegenüber ethnischen Zuordnungen
aufgrund anthropologischer Schlüsse, gegen eine nur auf der Vergewaltigung von unterwor-
fenen Frauen basierende Praxis der Repression, sondern legt eine Vermischung beider Gruppen
nahe. Das schließt nicht aus, dass diese Frauen als Sklavinnen zu den Awaren gekommen waren,
da Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, hrsg. v. Bethmann und Waitz, iv. 37, p. 128, die
Versklavung der gefangenen Frauen anlässlich der Eroberung Cividales berichtet.
49 
Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p.  114; vgl.  dazu auch Fritze,
Untersuchungen zur frühslawischen und frühfränkischen Geschichte.
50 
Zu den vielfältigen kulturellen Ursprüngen der Awaren, den verschiedenen anthro-
pologischen Typen in awarischen Gräbern und den Schwierigkeiten aufgrund archäologi­scher
Befunde ethnische Zuordnungen vorzunehmen vgl.  Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in
Mitteleuropa, pp. 89–92, 226. Vermischung als Erklärungsmodell: Curta, ‘Slavs in Fredegar and
Paul the Deacon’, p. 151.
51 
Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 218.
52 
Winedi geht auf die germanische Fremdbezeichnung für die Slawen zurück. Einen
Bedeutungsunterschied zu Slawen sieht Curta, ‘Slavs in Fredegar and Paul the Deacon’,
pp. 151–52 (‚ethnogenetic myth‘); Curta, The Making of the Slavs, p. 60.
53 
Pohl, ‘Die Beziehungen der Awaren zu den Slawen’, p. 351.
500 Gerald Krutzler

konnten, setzt militärische Kenntnisse und Fähigkeiten voraus, die angesichts

der Schwierigkeiten der Oströmer und Franken mit den Awaren wohl nur in
der awarischen Kampfweise selbst, also zu Pferd, bestanden haben können.54 Da
die Ausrüstung eines Reiterkriegers kostenintensiv war und seine Ausbildung
permanentes Training erforderte, muss es sich bei den Rebellen um Angehörige
einer Elite gehandelt haben, die Zeit und Mittel dafür aufbringen konnten. Im
Osten hatten Slawen als Reiterkrieger Erfolg, auch wenn ihre Abgrenzung von
den Awaren in den byzantinischen Quellen nicht immer klar und sicher ist, und
sie normalerweise mittelfristig die angesehenere awarische oder bulgarische
Tradition übernahmen.55 Eine solche lokale militärische Elite beanspruchte die
Führung über die slawischen Wenden. Ihre angebliche Abstammung könnte die-
sen Anspruch ideologisch untermauert haben: Slawische Mütter verbanden sie
mit der zu beherrschenden Gruppe, die angesehenere awarische Tradition ihrer
angeblichen Väter hob sie, trotz der für die Begründung der Unabhängigkeit
notwendigen Distanzierung davon, über das gewöhnliche Volk hinaus. Durch
die Wahl Samos zum König der Wenden sicherten sich die Separatisten die
Rückendeckung der Franken für ihre Unabhängigkeitsbewegung und vermieden
zugleich Machtkämpfe in den eigenen Reihen.56

Die Vereinigung zweier gentes — Alemannen und Sueben

Gregor von Tours setzt im Kontext des Zuges der Vandalen nach Spanien (409)
die ihnen folgenden und Galicien einnehmenden Sueben mit den Alemannen
gleich.57 Ihr namentlich ungenannter Anführer trägt den Titel Alamannorum

54 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv.  48, p.  144, berichtet, dass die Awaren die
Wenden als befulci einsetzten. Curta schließt daraus, dass Winedi die Bezeichnung einer mili­
tärischen Einheit der awarischen Armee und zugleich ein mit politischer Handlungsfähigkeit
verbundener Begriff war, während er befulci mit der Reinterpretation eines wahrscheinlich ein-
heimisch-wendischen Berichts durch Fredegar verbindet; Curta, ‘Slavs in Fredegar and Paul the
Deacon’, pp. 149, 151–52; Curta, The Making of the Slavs, p. 60. Fredegar sagt nicht, ob befulci
Kavallerie- oder Infanterieeinheiten waren.
55 
Pohl, ‘Die Beziehungen der Awaren zu den Slawen’, pp. 346–47 (mit byzantinischen
Quellen), 349. Bulgaren waren freie Reiterkrieger zumeist ost- und zentraleuropäischen
Ursprungs, die unabhängig operierende Verbände in der awarischen Armee bildeten, aber
über ein geringeres Prestige verfügten als die Kriegerelite der Awaren. Auch Krieger, die das
Awarenreich verließen, wurden oft Bulgaren genannt; Pohl, ‘A Non-Roman Empire in Central
Europe’, pp. 579, 581.
56 
Vgl. Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 257.
57 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 2, p. 39: „Suebi, id est Alamanni“.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 501

rex, sein Vorschlag eines Zweikampfes beendet den Krieg mit den Vandalen,
die unterliegen und Spanien deshalb verlassen. 58 Bereits zuvor erwähnt
Gregor Alemannen für die Zeit der Kaiser Valerian (253–60) und Gallienus
(253–68), die unter dem Kommando des Alamannorum rex Chrocus Gallien
verwüsten.59 Wenn der Tyrann Eugenius an die Rheingrenze zieht, um mit den
Alamannorum et Francorum reges die alten Bündnisse (foedera) wie gewöhn-
lich zu erneuern, wird die Herkunft der Alemannen aus dem rechtsrheinischen
Germanien deutlich, sie erscheinen danach als Verbündete diverser römischer
Prätendenten.60 Der Bericht über den Alemannenkrieg Chlodwigs I., bei dem
der namentlich ungenannte rex Alamannorum getötet und seine gens von den
Franken unterworfen wird, sowie die Erklärung, der Frankenkönig Sigibert
„der Lahme“ habe seinen Beinamen aufgrund einer Verletzung erhalten, die
er in einer Schlacht gegen die Alemannen bei Zülpich erlitten hatte, sind ihre
letzten Erwähnungen in den Historiae.61 Im Liber Vitae Patrum verwendet
Gregor die geographischen Termini Alamannia, Alamanniae terminum und
Alamanniae regiones.62 Die nach Spanien gezogenen Sueben werden später
nicht mehr mit den Alemannen, sondern mit dem Königreich Gallicia iden-
tifiziert, die direkte Verbindung als Suavi Galli wird in den Virtutes sancti
Martini hergestellt.63 Ihre Könige, von denen Gregor Chararich, Miro, Eurich
und Audica nennt, tragen nun den Titel rex Galliciensis bzw. rex Galliciae.64
Andere Sueben werden von Chlothar I. und Sigibert I. in Gebieten angesiedelt,
die von nach Italien gezogenen Sachsen verlassen wurden, was zum Krieg zwi-
schen beiden gentes führt, als die Auswanderer zurückkehren.65 Die politische
58 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 2, pp. 39–40.
59 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 32, i. 34, pp. 24–26. Nach Aurelius Victor,
Epitome de Caesaribus, hrsg. v. Pichlmayr, c. 41. 3, p. 166, fand der Einfall des Chrocus hingegen
um 306 statt.
60 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 9, pp. 55–56.
61 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 30, pp. 75–76; ii. 37, pp. 87–88.
62 
Gregor von Tours, Liber vitae patrum, hrsg. v. Kursch, i. 1 (Alamannia), i. 2 (Alamanniae
terminum), i. 3 (Alamanniae regiones), pp. 664–65.
63 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v. 41, p. 248. Gregor von Tours, Liber de
virtutibus sancti Martini, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. Capitulatio (c. 11): „De Gallis Suavis conversis“,
p. 584. Aus dem dazugehörigen Kapitel i. 11, pp. 594–96 ergibt sich, dass hier gallicische und
keine gallischen Sueben gemeint sind.
64 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v. 41, p. 248 (Mirus rex Galliciensis), v. 43,
pp. 314–16 (Miro, Eurich, Audica). Gregor von Tours, Liber de virtutibus sancti Martini, hrsg.
v. Krusch, i. 11, p. 594 (Chararicus rex Galliciae); iv. 7, p. 651 (Miro rex).
65 
Die Sueben besiegen die Sachsen dabei zweimal; Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v.
502 Gerald Krutzler

Struktur dieser Sueben wird nicht thematisiert, sie standen offenbar unter dem
Kommando des Frankenkönigs und werden für einst zum Thüringerreich gehö-
rende Nordschwaben gehalten oder auch in Nordwestfrankreich lokalisiert.66
Mit den Alemannen am Rhein werden sie nicht in Verbindung gebracht. In den
späteren Annales Mettenses priores sind in Germanien beheimatete Nordsueben
ein Teil der Sachsen.67
Bei Fredegar erscheinen die Alemannen mehrmals als Feinde der Römer
bzw. als Invasoren des Reichsgebietes.68 Auch Fredegar berichtet von Chrocus,
bezeichnet ihn allerdings als rex Wandalorum, der mit Sueben und Alanen die
alten Wohnsitze verlässt, den Rhein überquert und eine Spur der Verwüstung
durch Gallien zieht. 69 Unter Chrocus’ Nachfolger Thrasamund wird der
Konflikt zwischen Vandalen und Alemannen durch einen Zweikampf entschie-
den. Der vandalische Kämpfer wird besiegt, Vandalen, Sueben und Alanen
verlassen Gallien und ziehen nach Spanien.70 Während bei Gregor Alemannen
und Sueben dieselbe Gruppe in Spanien bezeichnen, übernimmt Fredegar
diese Gleichsetzung nicht, bei ihm stehen sich beide gentes sogar als Feinde
in Gallien gegenüber. Die chronologisch nach ihrem Abzug aus Gallien anzu-
setzenden Nachrichten über den Einfall der Vandalen, Alanen und Sueben in
Spanien und ihre Konflikte schildert Fredegar bereits vor dem Bericht über
Chrocus unter Verwendung der Chronik des Hydatius.71 Der Herrscher der

Krusch, v. 15, pp. 213–14.

66 
Bereits Theudebert I. beanspruchte in einem Brief an Kaiser Justinian I. die Herrschaft
über die Norsavi; Epistolae Austrasiacae, hrsg. v. Gundlach, nr 20, pp. 132–33. Zur Identifikation
als Nordschwaben vgl. Schmidt, ‘Das Königreich der Thüringer’, p. 293. Springer, Die Sachsen,
pp. 101–10, 120, wendet sich gegen die traditionelle Lokaliserung dieser Sueben und Sachsen in
Germanien und verortet sie in Nordwestfrankreich.
67 
Annales Mettenses priores, hrsg. v. Simson, a. 748, p. 41: „Saxones vero qui Nordosuavi
vocantur“. Trotz ihres bei Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v. 15, geschilderten
Sieges wurden diese Sueben, sofern sie in Germanien zu lokalisieren sind, also im Laufe der Zeit
in ihre sächsische Umwelt integriert.
68 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 40, p. 64; ii. 41, p. 66; ii. 47, p. 68
69 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 60, p. 84. Dass Fredegar Chrocus in die Zeit
des Rheinüberganges von Vandalen, Alanen und Sueben 406 datiert und als rex Wandalorum
bezeichnet, kann daran liegen, dass er Nachrichten über Gregors älteren Alemannenkönig mit
Berichten über einen gleichnamigen späteren Vandalenkönig kombiniert, unter dem Bischof
Antidius 411 das Martyrium erlitt; Fredegar, Chroniken, übers. v. Kusternig, p. 66, Anm. 77.
70 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 60, p. 84.
71 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 50–56, pp. 70–77; vgl. Hydatius, Continuatio
chronicorum Hieronymianum, hrsg. v. Mommsen, pp. 17–35. Anton, ‘Troja-Herkunft’, p. 17.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 503

Sueben trägt in diesen Exzerpten den Titel rex Suaevorum, ihr Reich heißt
regnum Suaevorum.72 Nur Miro wird in einer auf Gregor von Tours zurück-
gehenden Stelle rex Galliciae genannt.73 Terminologische Unterschiede in
der Bezeichnung der gallicischen Suebenkönige und ihres Reiches sind somit
auf Fredegars Quellen zurückzuführen. Dass die Sueben, zusammen mit den
Vandalen, auch als Feinde Theoderichs des Großen erscheinen, dürfte an des-
sen Verwechslung mit dem Westgotenkönig Theoderich durch Fredegar lie-
gen.74 Fredegars letzte Erwähnung von Sueben bildet Gregors Bericht über
ihren Krieg mit den aus Italien zurückgekehrten Sachsen.75 Gregors Nachricht
über den Alemannenkrieg Chlodwigs I. ergänzt Fredegar um die Aussage, dass
die Alemannen nach ihrer Niederlage und dem Tod ihres anonym bleiben-
den Königs ihr Land für neun Jahre verließen, um vergeblich Verbündete zu
suchen, und sich schließlich doch der Herrschaft Chlodwigs unterwarfen.76
Die neun Jahre könnten eine Reminiszenz an die Zeit zwischen der ersten
Alemannenschlacht um 496 und der angenommenen zweiten um 506 sein, als
sich ein Teil der Alemannen in den Schutz Theoderichs d. Gr. begab und nach
Noricum zog.77 Nach der Unterwerfung durch die Franken wird bei Fredegar
die Änderung der politischen Struktur der Alemannen deutlich: Gegen
Thrasamund und Chlodwig I. werden die Alemannen von anonymen Königen
angeführt, in späterer Zeit stehen sie unter der Herrschaft von duces, die von
den fränkischen Königen ein- und abgesetzt werden.78

72 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 51, pp. 72–73 (rex Suaevorum); ii. 55, p. 76 (reg-
num Suaevorum).
73 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 83, p. 116; vgl Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg.
v. Krusch, v. 41, p. 248 (Mirus rex Galliciensis), vi. 43, pp. 314–16 (Miro und seine Nachfolger
Eurich und Audica). Nicht von Gregor stammt Fredegars Nachricht, dass der Streit um die
Nachfolge Miros zwischen Eborich und Audeca zur Eroberung des Reiches durch die Goten
führt.
74 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 57, p. 81; vgl. ii. 54–55, pp. 75–76 (Sueben im
Krieg mit Westgotenkönig Theoderich).
75 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 76, p. 113; vgl. Gregor von Tours, Historiae,
hrsg. v. Krusch, v. 15, pp. 213–14.
76 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 21, p. 101.
77 
Cassiodor, Variae, hrsg. v. Mommsen, ii. 41, p. 73 (Schutzsuche bei Theoderich d. Gr.);
iii. 50, pp. 104–05 (Noricum); Fredegar, Chroniken, übers. v. Kusternig, p. 108, Anm. 42.
78 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii.  60, p.  84 (Thrasamund); iii.  21, p.  101
(Chlodwig); iv. 8, p. 125 (dux Leudefred, dux Uncelenus); iv. 68, p. 155 (dux Chrodobert),
iv. 88, p. 165 (dux Leutharius).
504 Gerald Krutzler

Der Liber Historiae Francorum berichtet, dass Chlodwig  I. gegen

Alamanni Suevique Krieg führte, wobei deren rex getötet und die gens der
Tributpflichtigkeit unterworfen wurde.79 Die Alemannen werden im Liber
Historiae Francorum nicht mehr erwähnt, die Sueben werden einmal als Gegner
Pippins II. genannt.80 Da Alemannen und Sueben im Krieg gegen Chlodwig
gemeinsam genannt werden und unter der Herrschaft eines rex stehen, verstand
sie der Autor wohl als politische Einheit, was vielleicht auf den synonymen
Gebrauch beider Gentilnamen in seiner Zeit hinweist.81
Die Continuationes Fredegarii lokalisieren die als treulose Feinde der
Franken charakterisierten Alemannen und Sueben jenseits des Rheins und
an der Donau; ein alemannischer dux wird, ohne Erwähnung seiner gentilen
Zugehörigkeit, in den Alpen lokalisiert.82 Durch ihre gemeinsame Nennung
wird die Synonymität der Begriffe Alamanni und Suavi greifbar, bestätigt wird
sie anlässlich der Reichsteilung zwischen Karl Martells Söhnen, als Karlmann
die Suavia erhält, ein Gebiet, das nun Alamannia genannt werde.83
Die Gleichsetzung der Begriffe Alamanni und Suavi bezeugt wohl keine
alte, auf eine Zeit vor dem Erscheinen der Alemannen am Rhein zurückgehende
Identität beider gentes.84 Sie beruht eher auf einer Allianz von Alemannen und

79 
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, cc. 14–15, pp. 261–62; vgl. Gregor von Tours,
Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 30, pp. 75–76, wo nur die Alemannen erwähnt werden.
80 
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 49, pp. 323–24.
81 
Zur Synonymität der Namen vgl.  Keller, ‘Alamannen und Sueben’, pp.  95–97, mit
Anm. 35, 37 und 41.
82 
Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 12, p. 175 (Alamanni und Suavi jenseits des
Rhein und an der Donau); c. 25, p. 180 (Alemannen jenseits des Rhein und an der Donau); c. 27,
pp. 180–81 (Theudebald, Sohn des dux Gottfried in den Alpen); c. 29, p. 181 (treulose Alemannen).
83 
Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 23, p. 179: „Suavia, que nunc Alamannia dicitur“.
84 
Die Ethnogenese der Alemannen fand erst in der Alamannia statt, dem jenseits von Rhein
und Donau gelegenen Gebiet der römischen Provinzen Germania inferior und Raetia, das von
Kaiser Probus (276–82) aufgegeben und polyethnischen Foederarten überlassen worden war;
Geuenich, Geschichte der Alemannen, pp. 11, 21, 23, 111; Nuber, ‘Zur Entstehung des Stammes
der Alamanni’, pp. 367, 370, 378–79. Agathias, Historiae, hrsg. v. Keydell, i. 6. 3, p. 17, zufolge
verweist der Name Alamanni nach dem Zeugnis des Asinius Quadratus auf den polyethnischen
Charakter der neuen gens als zusammengewürfeltes Volk. Ammianus Marcellinus unterscheidet
die Suebi von den Alamanni, die als politisch in mehrere Gruppen mit eigenen reges zersplittert
erscheinen, sich aber bei Bedarf, etwa anlässlich der Schlacht von Straßburg gegen den römischen
Caesar Julian, unter der Führung eines Oberkönigs zusammenschließen konnten; Ammianus
Marcellinus, Res Gestae, hrsg. und übers. v. Rolfe, xvi. 10. 20 (Sueben), xvi. 11. 3 (Alemannen),
xvi. 12 (Schlacht bei Straßburg), i, pp. 180, 184–204; Keller, ‘Alamannen und Sueben’, p. 93.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 505

Sueben gegen die Ostgoten im 5. Jahrhundert.85 Nach ihrer Niederlage werden

diese Sueben ihre Wohnsitze an der Donau verlassen und bei den weiter westlich
siedelnden Alemannen Aufnahme gefunden haben.86 Das legt v. a. die Person
des Hunimund nahe, der bei Jordanes als dux Suavorum bzw. rex Suavorum
bezeichnet wird, während in der Vita Severini ein Hunimund ohne Titel
als Anführer einer Gruppe Barbaren erscheint, die Passau besetzen.87 Diese
Ereignisse fallen mit dem militärischen Höhepunkt der Alemannen zusam-
men, als ihre Macht von Troyes in Gallien bis Passau in Noricum reichte, was
auch durch den Zuzug suebischer Krieger erklärbar wäre.88 Als die Alemannen
496/506 den Franken unterlagen, könnten suebische Traditionen unter frän-
kischer Herrschaft in den Vordergrund getreten sein.89 Doch vereinigten sich

85 
Jordanes, Getica, hrsg. v. Mommsen, c. 55, p. 130, mit Lokalisierung der Sueben zwi­
schen Bayern, Franken, Burgundern und Thüringern, also in Germanien, und der Alemannen
in den Alpen. Zur Problematik der Ethnogenese der Donausueben in Pannonien aus Resten
der Markomannen und Quaden, ihre nicht mehr nachvollziehbare Kontinuität zu den frühkai-
serzeitlichen Sueben in Germanien und ihre eine gemeinsame Identität formende Allianz mit
den Alemannen vgl.  Hummer, ‘The Fluidity of Barbarian Identity’, pp.  14, 16–19, 23, 26;
Hummer, ‘Franks and Alamanni’, pp. 16–17. Wolfram hält hingegen eine ältere, auf die Zeit der
Entstehung des Alemannen-Namens im 3. Jahrhundert verweisende Verbindung zum Sueben-
Namen für denkbar: Er interpretiert die Alemannen als neugebildeten Verband von Heerhaufen
nicht zuletzt suebischer Herkunft, im wesentlichen elbgermanische Zuwanderer, die den
Hermunduren-Namen verdrängten und verbliebene Hermunduren in ihre neu gebildete gens
integrierten; Wolfram, Das Reich und die Germanen, pp. 80–82; Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume,
p.  291. Zum Zusammenhang von Sueben mit Markomannen und Quaden vgl.  Wolfram,
Gotische Studien, pp. 232–34. Der Suebenname zeigt durch seine vielfältigen Verbindungen
zu Elbgermanen, Semnonen, Hermunduren, Markomannen, Quaden und letztlich Alemannen
eine ähnliche Dynamik und Unschärfe wie der Germanenname.
86 
Jordanes, Getica, hrsg. v. Mommsen, c.  53, p.  129, lokalisiert Suavia als Dalmatien
benachbart und nicht weit von Pannonien entfernt; c. 54, p. 130, lokalisiert die Niederlage der
Sueben in Pannonien; Keller, ‘Alamannen und Sueben’, pp. 95, 98–99.
87 
Jordanes, Getica, hrsg. v. Mommsen, c. 53 (dux Suavorum), c. 54 (rex Suavorum), p. 129;
Eugippius, Vita sancti Severini, hrsg. v. Sauppe, c. 22, p. 19. Zur Identität des Hunimund bei
Jordanes mit dem bei Eugippius vgl. Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 37; 385–86, Anm. 100.
88 
Die Fragen nach der Personengleichheit der in Noricum und bei Troyes erscheinenden
Könige Gibuld und Gebavult und eines aus einer solchen Personengleichheit eventuell abzulei-
tenden einheitlichen alemannischen Königtums sind nach wie vor umstritten; Eugippius, Vita
sancti Severini, hrsg. v. Sauppe, c. 19, p. 17 (Gibuld); Vita Lupi, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 10, pp. 300–01
(Gebavult); Keller, ‘Alamannen und Sueben’, pp. 98–99. Zur Kontroverse um ein alemannisches
Einheitskönigtum vgl. Castritius und Geuenich, ‘Zur alemannischen Reichsbildung’; Geuenich,
Geschichte der Alemannen, pp. 72–75.
89 
Keller, ‘Alamannen und Sueben’, p. 99. Heather hat nachgewiesen, dass gentile Gruppen
506 Gerald Krutzler

keinesfalls alle Sueben mit den Alemannen, wie nicht nur die Nordsueben bele-
gen. Auch Prokop weiß Mitte des 6. Jahrhunderts von der Existenz mehrerer
suebischer Gruppen: Während er eine Gruppe geographisch in einem panno-
nischen Kontext lokalisiert, seien andere Sueben von den Franken unterjocht
worden.90 Weiters nennt er Sueben gemeinsam mit Alemannen als Nachbarn
der Thüringer.91 Beide Angaben stehen im Kontext der Lokalisierung verschie-
dener gentes in der Frühphase des Gotenkrieges. Da Prokop Alemannen und
Sueben gemeinsam als Nachbarn der Thüringer nennt, ist es wahrscheinlich,
dass sich die Nachricht über die unterjochten Sueben auf die Unterwerfung
der Alemannen durch die Franken 496/506 bezieht. Diese beiden Nachrichten
belegen, dass, zumindest aus der Sicht der Oströmer, die Vereinigung der beiden
gentes in der ersten Hälfte des 6. Jahrhunderts noch nicht abgeschlossen war.
Gregor von Tours wird der Zusammenschluss beider gentes bekannt gewesen
sein, doch ordnete er ihn chronologisch zu früh 409 und territorial unrichtig
in Spanien ein, während ein Bezug zu den vereinigten Alemannen und Sueben
in Germanien in seinem Werk fehlt, was im Liber Historiae Francorum, viel-
leicht aufgrund der Kenntnis des Autors, korrigiert und in den Continuationes
Fredegarii übernommen wurde oder auch bekannt war.

Ethnographische Tradition — Hunnen und Awaren

Hunnen werden in den untersuchten Quellen bei Gregor von Tours, Fredegar
und im Liber Historiae Francorum erwähnt, Awaren werden nur bei Fredegar
namentlich genannt.
Gregor von Tours erwähnt aus Pannonien kommende Hunnen (Chuni)
unter Führung des rex Chunorum Attila erstmals anlässlich ihrer Angriffe auf
Gallien (451) und Italien (452).92 Fredegars Bericht über die Hunnenschlacht

ihre Traditionen in Zeiten politischer Unselbständigkeit erhalten und bei Gelegenheit auch
wieder reaktivieren können, unabhängig davon, ob die Unselbständigkeit nun unfreiwillig ist
oder, wie im Fall der zu den Alemannen gezogenen Sueben angenommen, freiwillig; Heather,
‘Disappearing and Reappearing Tribes’, pp.  100–02. Allerdings ist zu bedenken, dass der
Alemannenbegriff unter fränkischer Herrschaft keineswegs zugunsten des Suebenbegriffs aus
den Quellen verschwindet.
90 
Prokop, Bella, hrsg. und übers. v. Veh, v. 15. 25–27, ii, p. 122.
91 
Prokop, Bella, hrsg. und übers. v. Veh, v. 12. 11, ii, p. 94.
92 
Gregor von Tours bezeichnet Attilas Hunnen als gens incredula und sieht in ihnen eine
Strafe Gottes, die er mit Verwüstung des Landes, Plünderung und Brandschatzung der Städte
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 507

von 451 beruht auf Gregor, doch wurde er zur Verherrlichung des Aëtius stark
mit Legenden ausgeschmückt.93 Nach Attilas Tod 453 führten Nachfolgekämpfe
zum Zusammenbruch seines Hunnenreiches 454 in der Schlacht am Nedao.94
Dennoch bezeichnet Gregor nicht nur die historische gens Attilas als Hunnen,
sondern auch die zeitgenössischen Awaren, die in der Regierungszeit Sigiberts I.
(561–75) zweimal den Osten des Frankenreiches angreifen. Als diese Chuni
561/62 zum ersten Mal auftauchen, werden sie von Sigibert besiegt, ihr König
erlangt jedoch später durch Gesandte seine Freundschaft.95 Bei ihrem zweiten
Angriff 565 schlagen die in magicae artes bewanderten Chuni das fränkische
Heer in die Flucht, indem sie ihm verschiedene fantasiae zeigen, und umzingeln
Sigibert, der sich durch die Kunst des Schenkens (ars donandi) freikaufen und
mit dem rex Chunorum einen Friedensvertrag auf Lebenszeit abschließen kann.96
Das verwirrende, als Ergebnis magischer Künste angesehene Manöver, das zu

Metz und Aquileia sowie der Ermordung der Einwohner und Priester an den geweihten Altären
verbindet; Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 5–7, pp. 45–50.
93 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 53, pp. 73–75; iii. 1, p. 92; vgl. Gregor von Tours,
Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 5–7, pp. 45–50.
94 
Jordanes, Getica, hrsg. v. Mommsen, cc.  49–50, pp.  123–27; Pohl, Die Awaren: ein
Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 22.
95 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 23, p. 155. Datierung: Pohl, Die Awaren:
ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 45.
96 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 29, pp. 161–62. Auch der byzantinis-
che Geschichtsschreiber Menander berichtet über diesen Kriegszug. Aus seiner Darstellung
geht hervor, dass es sich bei dem ‚Hunnenkönig‘, der als Sigiberts Gegner erscheint, um Baian
handelt, den einzigen namentlich bekannten Khagan der Awaren; Menander, Historiae, hrsg.
v. de Boor, 14 m, 23 m, übers.: Menander, Historiae, übers. v. Doblhofer, pp. 121, 141–42;
Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, pp. 1, 46 (Datierung). Menander über-
liefert als Bestimmungen des Friedensvertrages, den er zugleich als Bündnisvertrag auffasst,
Lebensmittellieferungen der Franken an die Awaren, konkret die Bereitstellung von Mehl,
Hülsenfrüchten, Schafen und Rindern, und im Gegenzug den Abzug der Awaren innerhalb
von drei Tagen; Menander, Historiae, hrsg. v. de Boor, 23 m (Menander, Historiae, übers. v.
Doblhofer, p. 142). Im Westen verbindet erst der langobardische Geschichtsschreiber Paulus
Diaconus die beiden Angriffe mit den Awaren. Beim Sieg der Franken im ersten Kampf, den er
in Thüringen, an der Elbe lokalisiert, nennt er die Feinde Hunni, qui et Avares, bei der Niederlage
der Franken in der zweiten Schlacht in derselben Gegend, nur Avares; Paulus Diaconus, Historia
Langobardorum, hrsg. v. Bethmann und Waitz, ii. 10, pp. 78–79. Paulus Diaconus, Historia
Langobardorum, hrsg. v. Bethmann und Waitz, iv. 11, p. 120, überliefert noch eine weitere
Niederlage der Franken in Thüringen gegen die „Hunni quoque, qui et Abares dicuntur“ im
Jahr 596, von der die fränkische Historiographie nichts berichtet. Eine weitere Gleichsetzung
„Hunni, hoc est Avari“ mit cacanus als awarischem Königstitel findet sich bei Paulus Diaconus,
iv. 37, pp. 128–29.
508 Gerald Krutzler

Sigiberts Gefangennahme führte, war wohl die Scheinflucht, die als hunnische
Taktik galt, obwohl sie auch von den Oströmern angewandt wurde, und deren
Ziel die Umzingelung der Feinde war.97 Wenn Gregor erklärt, der Hunnenkönig
werde gaganus genannt, denn alle Könige dieses Volkes würden mit diesem
Namen bezeichnet, überliefert er den Titel des awarischen Herrschers, Khagan.98
Dass Gregor die Awaren als Hunnen bezeichnet, kann verschiedene Gründe
haben. Die Gleichsetzung zeitgenössischer mit vergangenen Völkern entspricht
den Vorstellungen der Bibel und der Tradition der antiken Ethnographie, beide
gingen davon aus, dass es sich bei neuen Gruppen in bekannten Territorien
nur um neue Namen, nicht um neue Populationen handelte, da aufgrund ihrer
genealogischen Perspektive Völker nur zerstört werden, in weit entfernte Länder
auswandern oder ihre Namen wechseln konnten, etwa um ihre Feinde zu täu-
schen.99 Die Gleichsetzung mit einem bekannten Volk beraubte einen unbekann-
ten Angreifer seines schrecklichsten Aspekts, seiner Fremdheit, war er bekannt,
brauchte er nicht gefürchtet zu werden.100 Der Hunnenname war seit dem Fall
des Attila-Reiches und dem Abzug der Goten nach Westen zunehmend zum
Synonym der alten Sammelbezeichnung „Skythen“ für die Steppenvölker gewor-
den.101 Nach Agathias sind Skythen und Hunnen beides allgemeine Namen,
zusammenfassende Bezeichnungen für die Kutriguren, Utiguren, Ultizuren,
Burugunden und andere.102 Das Strategikon des Maurikios, ein um 600 entstan-
denes byzantinisches Militärhandbuch, betitelt ein Kapitel mit „Wie man sich
den Skythen anpassen muss, d. h. den Awaren und Türken und den anderen hun-

97 
Maurikios, Strategikon, übers. v. Dennis, iv. 2, p. 194 (Scheinflucht dient der Umzingelung
der Feinde); xi. 2, p. 364; Agathias, Historiae, hrsg. v. Keydell, i. 22, pp. 38–39 (Scheinflucht als
hunnische Taktik, hier von den Römern angewandt).
98 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 29, p. 162: „Vocabatur [rex Chunorum]
enim gaganus. Omnes enim regis gentes illius hoc appellantur nomine“. Das Wort gaganus
wird von Gregor offenbar als Titel aufgefasst, denn sonst würde die Aussage im Widerspruch
zur Evidenz bei Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 7, p. 48 stehen, wo Attila als
Chunorum rex bezeichnet wird, dieser also einen anderen Namen als Gaganus trägt.
99 
Geary, Europäische Völker im frühen Mittelalter, pp.  61–62; Pohl, ‘Telling the
Difference’, p. 25; Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 4; Pohl, ‘Die Rolle der
Steppenvölker’, pp. 95–96; Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, p. 6; Müller, Geschichte der antiken
Ethnographie, ii, pp. 304, 439–40.
100 
Maenchen-Helfen, Die Welt der Hunnen, pp. 5–6.
101 
Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 23.
102 
Agathias, Historiae, hrsg. v. Keydell, v. 11, p. 177.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 509

nischen Völkern mit derselben Lebensweise“.103 Theophanes bemerkt zu ihrer

Ankunft in Konstantinopel 558, dass die Awaren zwar eine andere Haartracht
hatten, ihre übrige Tracht aber jener der anderen Hunnen ähnlich war.104 Für
die Belagerung von Konstantinopel 626 macht er „Hunnen, die man Awaren
nennt“ verantwortlich.105 Wenn Gregor von Tours den Awarennamen kannte,
verschwieg er ihn vielleicht aufgrund der ethnographischen Tradition zugunsten
des Hunnennamens. Da die Awaren aber erst 558, kurz vor ihren Angriffen auf
die Franken, in Konstantinopel eintrafen, ist auch vorstellbar, dass Gregor weder
den Awarennamen noch die Awaren kannte. Sie wurden zwar im Oströmischen
Reich als neue hunnisch-skythische Gruppe mit eigenem Namen wahrgenom-
men, möglicherweise aber noch nicht im Frankenreich. Woher die Gegner
Sigiberts kamen, sagt Gregor nicht. Die beiden Angriffe auf das Frankenreich
fanden vor 568 statt, also vor der Niederlassung der Awaren in Pannonien.
Gregor verbindet den Zug der Langobarden unter Alboin nach Italien weder
mit Pannonien noch mit Hunnen bzw. Awaren.106 Es ist deshalb möglich, dass er
eine Kontinuität der Hunnen in Pannonien von Attila bis in seine Zeit annahm
und die Awaren nicht als neu eingewanderte gens wahrnahm.
Die in Byzanz bekannte Gleichsetzung von Hunnen und Awaren muss spä-
testens zwischen dem Tod Gregors 594/95 und der Fertigstellung der Fredegar-
Chronik um 660 im Frankenreich bekannt geworden sein, denn Fredegar setzt
beide Namen mehrmals gleich.107 Öfters erwähnt er nur Hunnen, aber auch

103 
Maurikios, Strategikon, übers. v. Dennis, xi. 2, p. 360.
104 
Theophanes, Chronographia, hrsg. v. de Boor, a.m. 6050, p. 232; Theophanes, Chronicle,
übers. v. Mango, p. 232.
105 
Theophanes, Chronographia, hrsg. v. de Boor, a.m. 6117, p. 315; Theophanes, Chronicle,
übers. v. Mango, p. 315.
106 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 41, p. 174: Alboin verlässt regio sua und
zieht mit seinen Langobarden nach Italien.
107 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 57, p. 80; iv. 48, p. 144; iv. 72, p. 157. Tod
Gregors von Tours: Gregor von Tours: Zehn Bücher Geschichten, übers. v. Buchner, i, pp. x–xi.
Entstehung der Fredegar-Chronik: Goffart, ‘The Fredegar Problem Reconsidered’; repr. in
Goffart, Rome’s Fall and After, pp. 319–54 (pp. 353–54, Anm. 162–69); Wood, ‘Fredegar’s
Fables’, p.  359. Collins, Fredegar, pp.  2–3, 41; Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians,
pp. 13–30. Der Hunnenbegriff hatte bei Gregor, Fredegar und im Liber Historiae Francorum
nicht dieselbe Funktion eines Oberbegriffs für alle skythischen Völker wie in Byzanz, sondern
bezeichnete so nur die ursprünglich aus der Steppe stammenden Bewohner Pannoniens, die man
mit einem anderen Namen auch Awaren nennen konnte. Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch,
iv. 72, p. 157, setzt nur die Awaren mit den Hunnen gleich, im Gegensatz zu byzantinischen
Quellen aber nicht die Bulgaren. Spätere Quellen setzten dagegen Hunnen mit Bulgaren und
510 Gerald Krutzler

der Awarenbegriff findet ohne Verbindung zum Hunnenbegriff Anwendung.108

Erstmals erscheint der Awarenname in der römischen Siegesmeldung, Kaiser
Septimius Severus habe Parther und Awaren besiegt.109 Theoderich  d.  Gr.
kämpft mit Feinden, die sowohl Awaren als auch Hunnen genannt werden,
möglicherweise eine Erinnerung an Kämpfe der Ostgoten mit Gepiden in
Pannonien oder Bulgaren.110 Ein außerordentlich tapferer Krieger ist dabei
der freiheitsliebende, immer als Aware bezeichnete Xerxer, der seine Feinde

Ungarn gleich, letztere konnten auch als Awaren bezeichnet werden; vgl. Pohl, Die Awaren: ein
Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, p. 324.
108 
Hunnen: Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 48, p. 69 (Hunnen verwüsten Gotenland);
ii. 51, p. 72 (Hunnen als römische Verbündete); ii. 53, pp. 73–75; iii. 1, p. 92 (Schlacht auf den
Katalaunischen Feldern 451); iii. 11, p. 95 (Gefangenschaft Childerichs bei den Hunnen); iii. 55,
p. 108; iii. 61, pp. 109–10 (Awarenkriege Sigiberts I., Awaren als Hunnen bezeichnet); iii. 65,
p. 110 (Wanderung der Langobarden durch das Hunnenland). Awaren: Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg.
v. Krusch, ii. 38, p. 63 (Awaren und Parther); ii. 57, p. 80 (Xerxer); iv. 58, p. 150.
109 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 38, p. 63: „Severus Partus et Avarus super-
avit“. Da die Awaren erst 558 nach Konstantinopel kamen, ist diese Nachricht chronologisch
unmöglich. Avarus ist eine Verschreibung für Adiabenos; p. 63, Anm. i zu Fredegar, Chronicae,
ii. 38. Die Nachricht bezieht sich auf die römisch-parthischen Kriege, in deren Verlauf Septimius
Severus nach der Unterwerfung der Adiabener, der Bewohner des von den Parthern abhän-
gigen Königreiches Adiabene, das territorial etwa dem alten Assyrien entsprach, im Jahre 195
den Titel Adiabenus annahm; Sontheimer, ‘Adiabene’. Vielleicht liegt eine Verwechslung der
Awaren mit den Arabern vor. Der Text bei Hieronymus, der dieser Fredegar-Passage zugrunde
liegt, ist länger und berichtet auch, dass Severus das Gebiet der Araber, zwischen Parthern und
Adiabenern gelegen, zur römischen Provinz gemacht habe und nennt seine Siegestitel: „Seuerus
Parthos et Adiabenos superauit. Arabas quoque interiores ita cecidit, ut regionem eorum
Romanam prouinciam fecerit. Ob quae Parthicus, Arabicus, Adiabenicus cognominatus est“;
Hieronymus, Chronicon, hrsg. v. Helm, aa. 198–200 p. Chr., p. 211. Fredegar könnte auf­grund
des ähnlich klingenden Namens (Arabi/Arabes — Avari/Abari/Avares/Abares) beide gentes
miteinander identifiziert und die ihm unbekannten Adiabener gestrichen haben. Dass Fredegar
die Araber möglicherweise für Awaren hielt, könnte auch begründen, warum er sie nicht mit
den Sarazenen gleichsetzte, sondern beide gemäß dem Liber Generationis als Völker mit eigener
Sprache auflistete; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 6, p. 24; vgl. Liber Generationis, hrsg.
v. Mommsen, c. 197, p. 107: „Arabes. […] Saraceni“.
110 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 57, p. 80. Die Ostgoten kämpften 504 mit dem
Gepidenkönig Thrasarich in Pannonien; Jordanes, Getica, hrsg. v. Mommsen, c. 58, p. 135;
Fredegar, Chroniken, übers. v. Kusternig, p. 57, Anm. 53. Aber auch eine Erinnerung an den
Konflikt zwischen Theoderich und dem von Bulgaren unterstützten Kaiser Zenon 486/87 ist
möglich; Wolfram, Die Goten, pp. 277; 480, Anm. 15. Ennodius, Panegyricus dicto Theodorico,
hrsg. v. Vogel, p. 205, erwähnt dazu einen Zweikampf Theoderichs mit einem bulgarischen
Anführer. Dessen Name, Busan, ist bei Paulus Diaconus, Historia Romana, hrsg. v. Droysen,
xv. 15, p. 124, überliefert.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 511

zu Pferd und unter Anwendung der Scheinflucht besiegt, Schmeicheleien,

Drohungen und Reichtümern widersteht und sich schließlich freiwillig
Theoderich unterwirft.111 Bei der Darstellung der Awarenkriege Sigiberts I.
nennt Fredegar die Gegner der Franken wie seine Vorlage Gregor nur Chuni.112
In Fredegars Version der langobardischen Ursprungsgeschichte übernehmen
die Hunnen die Rolle der Gegner der künftigen Langobarden, die in lango-
bardischen Quellen den Vandalen zukommt, und erscheinen wie diese als
Wodansverehrer.113 Da Fredegar die Hunnen bereits für die Zeit Theoderichs d.
Gr. mit den Awaren assoziiert, bedeuten diese Bezeichnungen keine Unkenntnis
ihrer Identität, sondern können auch nur unkommentierte Übernahmen aus
den jeweiligen Quellen sein. In den Berichten über den Aufstieg des fränki-
schen Händlers Samo zum König der Wenden und über den Krieg zwischen
Awaren und Bulgaren werden Awaren und Hunnen miteinander identifiziert:
„Avari coinomento Chuni“; im Samo-Kapitel wird auch ihr König gaganus
genannt.114 Dieser Vorstellung einer Identität von Hunnen und Awaren ent-
spricht die Vorstellung ihrer territorialen Kontinuität in Pannonien von der
Zeit Attilas bis in die Gegenwart Fredegars.115 Anders als die byzantinischen

111 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 57, pp. 80–81. Die Unterwerfung Xerxers ist
äußerst ungewöhnlich, da aufgrund der außerordentlich starken Bindung des Awarennamens
an die Verfassung des Khaganats kaum ein Aware bekannt ist, der für Byzanz oder eine westli-
che Macht gekämpft hätte; Pohl, Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, pp. 17, 175–76;
Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, p. 307. Zum persischen Namen Xerxer, wohl eine Variante des
persischen Königsnamens Xerxes, vgl. Fredegar, Chroniken, übers. v. Kusternig, p. 57, Anm. 54.
112 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 55, p. 108; iii. 61, pp. 109–10; vgl. Gregor von
Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 23, p. 155; iv. 29, pp. 161–62.
113 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii.  65, p.  110; Vandalen in Origo gentis
Langobardorum, hrsg. v. Bethmann und Waitz, c.  1, pp.  2–3; Paulus Diaconus, Historia
Langobardorum, hrsg. v. Waitz, i. 7–8, p. 52.
114 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 48, p. 144; iv. 72, p. 157.
115 
Attilas angebliche Verstärkung in der Schlacht auf den Katalaunischen Feldern soll aus
Pannonien eingetroffen sein, er zieht sich dorthin zurück; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch,
ii. 53, p. 74. Theoderich kämpft gegen Awaren oder Hunnen, die aus Pannonien kommen;
ii. 57, p. 80. In Fredegars Version der langobardischen Ursprungslegende greifen die künftigen
Langobarden die Hunnen in Pannonien an, das diese als ihr Land bezeichnen, und besetzen es
teilweise, ehe sie, von Narses gerufen, unter Alboin nach Italien weiterziehen; iii. 65, p. 110. Da
auf den Sieg der Langobarden und die Inbesitznahme eines Teiles Pannoniens gleich ihr Abzug
nach Italien folgt, ist diese Überlieferung zeitlich nicht, wie die entsprechende Schlacht mit den
Vandalen in der langobardischen Überlieferung, in grauer Vorzeit anzusiedeln, sondern wohl gän-
zlich in den Kontext der Ereignisse der 560er Jahre zu stellen; vgl. Origo gentis Langobardorum,
hrsg. v. Bethmann und Waitz, c. 1, pp. 2–3; Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, hrsg.
512 Gerald Krutzler

und langobardischen Quellen wusste Fredegar offenbar nicht, dass zuerst die
Langobarden in Pannonien siedelten und dann erst die Awaren dorthin kamen,
sondern ging davon aus, dass die Hunnen dort seit der Zeit Attilas ununterbro-
chen lebten, während die Langobarden in dieses Land der Hunnen für ihn nur
kurz eindrangen, um sogleich nach Italien weiterzuziehen.116
Im Liber Historiae Francorum stehen die Hunnen (Chuni) zur Zeit
Merowechs unter der Herrschaft ihres rex Attila.117 Zur Zeit Sigiberts I. ist
Caganus der hunnische König, mit dem sich der Frankenkönig durch amicicia
verbindet.118 Die beiden „hunnischen“ Angriffe bei Gregor werden im Liber
Historiae Francorum zu einem Ereignis verbunden.

Politische, sprachliche und regionale Identitäten —

Römer und Griechen
Während Gregor von Tours, der Liber Historiae Francorum und die Con­
tinuationes Fredegarii sich nicht damit beschäftigen, wird bei Fredegar die
polyethnische Struktur der Römer deutlich 119. Fredegar setzt, wie seine
Vorlagen, mehrmals Römer und Latiner gleich und zählt als gentes et inhabi-
tationes Romanorum die Etrusker, Aemilianer, Picener, Campanier, Apulier
und Lucaner auf.120 Die Gleichsetzungen von Römern und Latinern stehen

v. Bethmann und Waitz, i. 7–8, p. 52. Auch in der Zeit Dagoberts I. leben die auch Hunnen
genannten Awaren in Pannonien; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 72, p. 157.
116 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii.  65, p.  110. Zur Ansiedlung der Awaren
in Pannonien vgl. Menander, Historiae, hrsg. v. de Boor, 9 m; Menander, Historiae, übers. v.
Doblhofer, p. 93 (Awaren lehnen Ansiedlung in Pannonia II ab); 25 m, p. 143 (Awaren fordern
Gepidenreich); Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, hrsg. v. Bethmann und Waitz, i. 27,
p. 69 (Awaren fallen im Gepidenreich ein); ii. 7, p. 76 (Alboin überlässt Awaren Pannonien).
117 
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 5, p. 246.
118 
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 30, p. 289; vgl. Gregor von Tours, Historiae,
hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 29, p. 162.
119 
Quelle dafür ist der Liber Generationis, der bereits die christliche Herleitung der Römer
vom biblischen Cetthin mit der Gleichsetzung der Römer mit den Latinern und anderen eth-
nischen Gruppen in Italien verbindet; Liber Generationis, hrsg. v. Mommsen, c. 74, p. 96; c. 83,
p. 97; c. 85, p. 98; c. 197, p. 107; c. 210, p. 109.
120 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 21, „Cythii, de quo Romani, qui et Latini,
Rodivivi et Priami […] Latini, qui et Romani […] Latini, qui et vocantur Romani“; i. 6, p. 24:
„Gentes autem quae linguas suas habent haec sunt: […] Romani, qui et Latini, […]“; i. 7, p. 24:
„Romanorum, qui et Cithiensium, gentes et inhabitationes haec sunt: Tuschi, Emeliensis,
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 513

bei Fredegar im Kontext der trojanischen Herkunft, sie haben aber auch
Bezüge zur römischen Tradition und Geschichte.121 Romani, qui et Latini
bezieht sich auf den Ursprung Roms, das eine latinische Stadt neben ande-
ren war.122 Die Identifikationen „Latini, qui et Romani; Latini, qui et vocan-
tur Romani“ und „Latini, qui et postea Romani nuncupati sunt“ kehren diese
Zuordnung um, die Latiner werden zu Römern, beide Begriffe austauschbar.123
Durch die Bezeichnung der Etrusker, Aemilianer, Picener, Campanier, Apulier
und Lucaner als „gentes et inhabitationes Romanorum“ drückt Fredegar die
Zusammensetzung des römischen Volkes aus mehreren Einheiten aus und bil-
det, ohne näher darauf einzugehen, den Zustand des populus Romanus nach
Ende des Bundesgenossenkrieges (Bellum sociale) von 91–89 v. Chr. ab, in dem
die rebellierenden Bundesgenossen (socii), alle bisher nicht eingebürgerten ita-
lischen Gemeinwesen, in der Lex Plautia Papiria das römische Bürgerrecht,
die civitas Romana, erhalten hatten.124 Da diese gentes keine Latiner, sondern
Etrusker und Italiker sind, übernimmt Fredegar aus dem Liber Generationis
einen Beleg dafür, dass die römische Identität, was schon in der Gründungssage
Roms grundgelegt ist, auf rechtlicher Zugehörigkeit und nicht auf biologischer
Abstammung basierte, weshalb sie bereits in der Antike als Resultat eines kon-

Picens, Campani, Apoliensis, Lucani“; ii. 8, p. 47: „Latini, qui postea Romani nuncupati sunt“;
vgl. Liber Generationis, hrsg. v. Mommsen, c. 74, p. 96: „Cithii, de quo Romani, qui et Latini“;
c. 83, p. 97: „Latini qui et Romani“; c. 85, p. 98: „Latini qui vocantur Romani“; c. 197, p. 107:
„Romani qui et Latini“; c. 210, p. 109: „Romanorum qui et Citiensium gentes et inhabita-
tiones hac sunt: (1) Tusci. (2) Emilienses. (3) Piceni. (4) Campani. (5) Apulienses. (6) Lucani“;
vgl. Hieronymus, Chronicon, hrsg. v. Helm, a. 1182 a. Chr., p. 62b.
121 
Der Bezug zur Trojasage wird durch Zusätze wie et Priami hergestellt; Fredegar,
Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 21.
122 
Rom wurde der antiken Überlieferung nach vom Latiner Romulus gegründet; Livius,
Ab urbe condita, hrsg. und übers. v. Hillen, i. 7. 1–3, i, p. 22. Auch die moderne Forschung
zählt, trotz Betonung der wichtigen Rolle der Etrusker für die Entwicklung der Stadt Rom,
die Römer zu den Latinern, zu derjenigen der beiden indogermanischen Volksgruppen, die um
1200 aus dem Donauraum nach Italien eingedrungen waren, in Latium siedelten und Latinisch,
also Latein, sprachen; Demandt, Antike Staatsformen, p.  385; Rix, ‘Lateinisch A: Äußere
Geschichte’, col. 1679.
123 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 21; ii. 8, p. 47.
124 
Zu den verschiedenen rechtlichen Abhängigkeitsverhältnissen mit ihren Rechten und
Pflichten gegenüber Rom, dem römischen Bürgerrecht und dem Kampf um seine Erringung
durch die schlechtergestellten socii bis zum Bundesgenossenkrieg vgl.  Demandt, Antike
Staatsformen, pp. 385–86, 396, 405; Ogilvie, ‘Das frühe Rom und die Etrusker’, pp. 181–82;
Crawford, Michael, ‘Die römische Republik’, pp. 46–49, 58–59, 136, 140, 147, 151, 159–65,
170–71; Dench, Romulus’ Asylum, pp. 93–151; Pohl, ‘Regnum und gens’, p. 435.
514 Gerald Krutzler

tinuierlichen politischen Verschmelzungsprozesses betrachtet wurde.125 Die

Einbürgerung der Italiker als Resultat des Bundesgenossenkrieges stellt eine
wichtige Etappe in diesem Prozess dar. Mit der Ausdehnung des Imperium
Romanum erfolgte auch eine Ausbreitung der Römer. Römische Bürger wan-
derten aus und gründeten Kolonien; lokale Eliten, verbündete ausländische
Fürsten und ganze Städte oder gentile Gruppen erhielten in der Kaiserzeit
ebenso das römische Bürgerrecht wie barbarische Krieger, die in den römi-
schen Legionen dienten.126 Am Ende dieser Entwicklung stand die Constitutio
Antoniniana des Kaisers Caracalla, in der 212 allen freien Reichsbewohnern
das römische Bürgerrecht verliehen wurde.127 Dieser Prozess förderte nicht nur
die Ausbreitung des Römertums, er führte auch zur Entwicklung multipler
städtischer, provinzieller und regionaler Identitäten, die einander nicht aus-
schlossen, aber je nach Bedarf in den Vordergrund treten und auch (re-)ethni-
siert werden konnten, d. h. man konnte Römer und Bürger seiner irgendwo im
Imperium gelegenen Heimatstadt oder einer barbarischen gens zugleich sein.128

125 
Liber Generationis, hrsg. v. Mommsen, c. 210, p. 109. Trotz seiner Gründung durch den
vom Trojaner Aeneas abstammenden Latiner Romulus soll Rom der antiken Überlieferung
nach von Anfang an auch für Zuwanderer anderer ethnischer Herkunft offen, also polyethnisch,
gewesen sein; Livius, Ab urbe condita, hrsg. und übers. v. Hillen, i. 7. 1–3, i, pp. 22 (Gründung
Roms); i. 8. 1, i, pp. 26 (bei Stadtgründung anwesende Menge kann allein durch Gesetze zu
einem Volk zusammenwachsen, Romulus stellt auf Versammlung Rechtsnormen auf ); i. 8. 4–6,
i, pp. 28 (asylum für Fremde); i. 11. 1–4, pp. 34 (Leute aus Caenina, Antemnae und Crustumeria
eingebürgert); i. 13. 4–5, i, pp. 40 (Vereinigung mit Sabinern); iv. 3. 13–15, ii, p. 14 (Weil nie-
mand wegen seiner Herkunft abgelehnt wurde, der tüchtig war, wuchs das Römische Reich, die
sabinischen Claudier wurden sogar Patrizier und stellten Konsuln). Nach Romulus, c. 15, in
Plutarch, Vitae parallelae, übers. v. Ziegler, i, pp. 95, hat nichts so zur Vergrößerung Roms beig-
etragen, wie die Sitte, Besiegte aufzunehmen und einzugliedern. Vgl. Geary, Europäische Völker
im frühen Mittelalter, p. 62.
126 
Caesar verlieh die civitas Romana den transpadanischen Kelten Oberitaliens und das
la­tinische Recht an die romanisierten Provinzen Sizilien, Narbonensis und Südspanien, die
Kaiser verliehen in der Regel die civitas Romana solvo iure gentis, d.h. die Reichsangehörigen
wurden staatsrechtlich Römer, blieben aber steuerpflichtig; Demandt, Antike Staatsformen,
pp. 405, 444, 465. Auf die Integration in das Römertum durch Kriegsdienstleistung für das
Imperium kann jener Grabstein aus Aquincum verweisen, dessen Besitzer sich als Franke, Bürger
und römischer Soldat unter Waffen bezeichnet; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, iii. 3576:
„FRANCVS EGO CIVES ROMANVS MILES IN ARMIS“.
127 
Hauptnutznießer dieser Reform waren der Fiskus und das Militär, denn nun konnte
praktisch jeder Mann zum Militärdienst eingezogen werden und wurde steuerpflichtig, während
das Bürgerrecht selbst dadurch erheblich an Bedeutung verlor; Geary, Europäische Völker im
frühen Mittelalter, pp. 77–78.
128 
Geary, Europäische Völker im frühen Mittelalter, pp.  77, 120, mit Beispielen; Pohl,
‘Regnum und gens’, p. 435. Zu römischen Identitäten im frühmittelalterlichen Italien vgl. den
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 515

Die Ausbreitung der Römer und ihres Reiches dokumentiert die Lokalisie­
rung der Romani in den merowingerzeitlichen Quellen. Gregor von Tours
erwähnt Römer in Thrakien, Gallien, am Rhein und in Burgund, Fredegar
außer in Italien auch in Gallien und Spanien, der Liber Historiae Francorum
in Pannonien, Gallien und an der Maeotis, die Continuationes Fredegarii außer
in Rom auch in Aquitanien.129 Um die Stadtrömer von anderen Römern abzu-
grenzen verwenden die Fredegar-Chronik und die Continuationes Fredegarii
den Begriff Romensis — „stadtrömisch“ — im Gegensatz zu Romanus.130 In
Gallien ist, als deutlicher Hinweis auf einen wachsenden Regionalismus, ab
dem 4. Jahrhundert eine Anknüpfung an vorrömische Identitäten erkenn-
bar. 131 Organisationsform der gallischen Romanen war die civitas. Dieser
regionale Verband römischen Ursprungs ist aufgrund seines intensiven
Gemeinschaftslebens mit einer kleinen gens vergleichbar, ermöglichte aber
auch Nichtrömern, sich einzuordnen.132
Gregor von Tours, der den bedeutenden überregionalen Identitäten im
Gallien seiner Zeit generell wenig Raum gibt, und für den Gallia(s) auch nach
dem Tod Chlodwigs I. der fundamentale Begriff bleibt, verbindet den Begriff
der patria am ehesten mit den einzelnen civitates.133 Er ordnet die romanische
Mehrheitsbevölkerung Galliens, zu der er ja selbst gehörte, präzise ihrer jeweili-

Beitrag von Maya Maskarinec in diesem Band.

129 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 41, p. 28 (Thrakien); ii. 9, pp. 52–58 (am
Rhein); ii. 11–12, pp. 60–62, ii. 18–19, p. 65, ii. 27, p. 71 (Gallien); ii. 33, p. 81 (Burgund);
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 57, pp. 78–79, iv. 69, pp. 155–56 (Italien); iii. 11–12,
pp. 97–98, iii. 15, p. 98, iii. 18, p. 99, iv. 28, p. 132 (Gallien); iv. 33, p. 133 (Spanien); Liber
Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 2, p. 242 (Maeotis), cc. 3–4, pp. 243–44 (Pannonien),
cc. 5–6, pp. 246–47 (Gallien); Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 25, p. 180 (südlich
der Loire); c. 36, p. 183, c. 38, p. 185 (Rom).
130 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 59, p. 83 ( Johannes I. [523–26] papa Romensis);
Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 36, p. 183 (Stephan II. [752–57] papa Romensis);
Definition: Fredegar, Chroniken, übers. v. Kusternig, p. 64, Anm. y.
131 
Geary, Europäische Völker im frühen Mittelalter, pp. 120–21.
132 
Ewig, Volkstum und Volksbewußtsein, pp. 3–4, 58.
133 
Gregor verwendet etwa Francia/Frantia überaus selten, zweimal als Entlehnung aus
Sulpicius Severus für das Gebiet jenseits des Rheins, Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v.
Krusch, ii. 9, pp. 53, 55; als Bezeichnung für des Reich Theudebalds, iv. 14, p. 145; als Name
des östlich des Rheins gelegenen Gebietes, in dem die Stadt Deutz liegt, iv. 16, p. 150; und als
Terminus des Vertrags von Andelot, ix. 20, p. 437; Reimitz, ‘Social Networks and Identities’,
pp. 238–39, mit Anm. 53. Civitas als patria: Heinzelmann, ‘Die Franken und die fränkische
Geschichte’, p. 344.
516 Gerald Krutzler

gen civitas oder Region zu, was terminologisch oftmals einen Rückgriff auf den
Namen einer keltischen Gruppe aus der Zeit vor der Eroberung des Landes durch
Julius Caesar bedeutet, bezeichnet diese cives aber nicht kollektiv als Romani.134
Er verwendet die Bezeichnung Romanus/Romani und das Adjektiv romanus/-
a/-um nur selten135. Im Buch I der Historiae beruhen die Erwähnungen der
Romani sämtlich auf der Darstellung der römischen Geschichte in der Chronik
des Hieronymus, wobei Gregor die erwähnten Kaiser selten direkt mit dem

134 
Agathenses: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, vi. 2, p. 266; Agennenses:
ix. 31, p. 450; Albigenses: v. 44, p. 253; vi. 29, p. 295; viii. 22, p. 389; Andecavi/Andegavi:
v. 26, p. 232; vi. 31, p. 299; x. 25, p. 517; Aquinsi: iv. 44, p. 179; Arelatenses: i. 30 p. 23;
Arverni: i. 30, p. 23; i. 47, pp. 30–31; ii Capitulatio (c. 13), p. 35; ii. 20, p. 66; ii. 37, p. 88;
iii. 9, p. 106; iii. 11, p. 107; iv Capitulatio (c. 30), p. 134; iv. 7, p. 139; iv. 30, pp. 162–63; v. 49,
p. 262; vi. 26, p. 293; viii. 30, pp. 394, 397; Aurilianenses: vii. Capitulatio (c. 2), p. 321; vii. 2,
p. 327; vii. 13, p. 334; vii. 21, p. 340; vii. 24, p. 344; Baiocassini: v. 26, p. 232; Biturgi: v. 49,
p. 262; vi. 12, p. 282; vi. 31, p. 300; vii. 12, p. 333; vii. 13, p. 334; vii. 24, p. 344; viii. 30,
p. 393; Blesenses: vii. 21, p. 340; Burdigalenses: ix. 6, p. 418; ix. 31, p. 450; Caenomanni/
Caenomannici: v. 1, p. 195; v. 4, p. 199; v. 26, p. 232; vi. Capitulatio (c. 9), p. 264; vi. 9,
p. 279; viii. 39, p. 405; x. 25, p. 517; Campanenses: v. 14, p. 213; x. 27, p. 520; Carcassonenses:
viii. 30, p. 394; Carnoteni: vii. Capitulatio (c. 2), p. 321; vii. 2, p. 327; Dunenses: iv. 50, p. 187;
Ecolesenenses: viii. 30, p. 393; Lemovicini: i. 30, p. 23; v. 28, p. 234; Lignonici: v. 5, p. 202;
Massilienses: ix. 22, p. 442; Namnetici: vi. 31, p. 299; ix. 18, p. 431; x. 25, p. 517; Parisii: i. 30,
p. 23; Petrocorici: viii. 30, p. 393; ix. 31, p. 450; Pectavi/Pictavi: i. 48, p. 32; v. 26, p. 232;
vi. 31, p. 299; vii. 12, p. 333; vii. 13, pp. 333–34; vii. 28, p. 346; viii. 26, p. 390; ix. 9, p. 423;
Rhedonici: viii. 42, p. 408; Rothomagenses: vii. 16, p. 337; viii. 31, pp. 398–99; viii. 41, p. 407;
Sanctonici: viii. 30, p. 393; ix. 31, p. 450; Tolosani/Tholosani: vii. 32, p. 353; viii. 30, p. 394;
ix. 31, p. 450; Villavi: vi. 26, p. 293. Die Bewohner von Tours bezeichnet er selten als Toroni/
Thoroni/Turoni, zumeist jedoch als Toronici bzw. Turonici. Toroni: Gregor von Tours, Historiae,
hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 1, p. 38; Thoroni: ix. 9, p. 423; Turoni: ii. 39, p. 89; Toronici/Turonici: i. 30,
p. 23; i. 48, p. 32; ii. 1, p. 38; iv. Capitulatio (c. 11), p. 133; iv. 15, p. 147; iv. 50, p. 187; v. 18,
p. 219; v. 26, p. 232; v. 49, p. 262; vi. 31, p. 299; vii. 12, p. 333; vii. 13, pp. 333–34; vii. 28,
p. 346; viii. 26, p. 390; ix. 30, p. 449; x. 31, p. 526.
 
Zur Herkunft Gregors vgl. Wood, Gregory of Tours, pp. 4–11, 30, 36–46; Heinzelmann,
Gregor von Tours, pp. 7–26; Plassmann, Origo gentis, pp. 116–22. Nach Ewig verstand sich die
Zugehörigkeit zur Romanitas seit Caracalla von selbst; Ewig, Volkstum und Volksbewußtsein,
pp. 1, 23. Zöllner, Die politische Stellung der Völker im Frankenreich, pp. 79–80, betont, dass
das spätantike Römertum keine Einheit mehr darstellte. Ob sich Gregor von Tours selbst als
„Gallorömer“ verstanden hat, ist nicht gesichert; Heinzelmann, ‘Die Franken und die fränkische
Geschichte’, p. 344. Gegen eine römische Identität Gregors: Goffart, ‘Foreigners in the Histories
of Gregory of Tours’, pp. 277, 282, 291; Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, pp. 192, mit
Anm. 342, 213. Zu den Römern als Mehrheitsbevölkerung Galliens vgl. Zöllner, Die politische
Stellung der Völker im Frankenreich, p. 79; Goetz, ‘Gens, Kings and Kingdoms’, pp. 321, 328.
135 
Vgl. dazu die Einleitung von Walter Pohl in diesem Band.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 517

Romanum imperium verbindet.136 Die Berichte über die Kämpfe der Romani
am Rhein in Buch II beruhen auf Sulpicius Alexander und Renatus Profuturus
Frigeridus.137 Eine Verbindung zwischen der gallischen civitas Arvernum und
dem römischen Reich stellt Kaiser Avitus dar: Der Senator Avitus, ein arver-
nischer Bürger, übernimmt ehrgeizig das Romanum imperium. 138 Bei der
Beschreibung der politischen Geographie Galliens zur Zeit des Frankenkönigs
Chlogio erscheinen die Romani neben den Thoringi, Burgundiones, Gothi und
Franci als gens neben anderen gentes.139 Nach dem Sturz Kaiser Avitus’ wird der

136 
Das liegt daran, dass Gregor die Formel, mit der Hieronymus die Darstellung
der Regentschaft jedes Kaisers einleitet, nur bei Valerian und Gallienus, Diocletian und
Konstantin  I. verwendet. Hieronymus charakterisiert die Herrschaft eines Kaisers mit
„Romanorum [Ordnungszahl] regnauit [Name] [Regierungsdauer]“ bzw. Varianten davon.
Zu den bei Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 18–19, i. 21, i. 24–28, i. 30, i. 32,
i. 35–39, i. 41, pp. 16–27, genannten Kaisern vgl. Hieronymus, Chronicon, hrsg. v. Helm, aa. 49,
44 a. Chr., aa. 13, 37, 40, 54, 68, 78, 81, 96, 97, 117, 137, 160, 179, 192, 193, 210, 217, 218,
222, 235, 238, 244, 251, 252, 254, 269, 271, 276, 277, 283, 285, 306, 337, 363, 364 p. Chr.,
pp. 156–157, 171, 177, 179, 181, 186, 189, 192–193, 197, 202, 204, 208, 210, 213–218,
220–225, 228–229, 234, 243–244. Valerian und Gallienus: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg.
v. Krusch, i. 32, p. 24: „Vicinsimo septimo loco Valerianus et Gallienus Romanum imperium
sunt adepti“; vgl. Hieronymus, Chronicon, hrsg. v. Helm, a. 254 p. Chr., p. 220: „Romanorum
·xxvii regnauit Ualerianus et Gallienus ann ·xv“. Diocletian: Gregor von Tours, Historiae,
hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 35, p. 26: „Sub Diocletiano, qui tricesimo tertio loco Romanum rexit impe-
rium, gravis contra christianos per annos quattuor persecutio exagitata est“; vgl. Hieronymus,
Chronicon, hrsg. v. Helm, a. 285 p. Chr., p. 225: „Romanorum ·xxxiii· regnauit Diocletianus
ann ·xx“. Konstantin I.: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 36, p. 26: „Romanorum
tricesimus quartus imperium obtinuit Constantinus, annis triginta regnans feliciter“; vgl.
Hieronymus, Chronicon, hrsg. v. Helm, a. 306 p. Chr., pp. 228–29: „Romanorum ·xxxiiii· reg-
nauit Constantinus ann ·xxx·mens x“. Weitere Herrscher, die Gregor nach Hieronymus mit den
Romani in Zusammenhang bringt, sind Servius und Valens: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg.
v. Krusch, i. 17, p. 16 (Servius beherrscht als sechster die Römer); i. 41, p. 28 (Valens kommt bei
schwerer Niederlage der Romani in Thrakien gegen die Goten um); vgl. Hieronymus, Chronicon,
hrsg. v. Helm, a. 582 a. Chr., p. 101a (Servius), aa. 375–78 p. Chr., pp. 247–49 (Valens).
137 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 9, pp. 52–58.
138 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 11, pp. 60–61: „Avitus enim unus ex
senatoribus et — valde manefestum est — civis Arvernus, cum Romanum ambisset imperium,
[…]“. Die Senatoren von Arvernum aber glänzten durch ihre Abstammung vom römischen Adel,
wie Gregor von Tours, Liber in gloria confessorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 5, p. 751, bezeugt. Nach
Ewig, Volkstum und Volksbewußtsein, p. 4, Anm. 8 war mit der Standesbezeichnung Senator im
Frankenreich auch die nationale Zugehörigkeit zu den Romani ausgedrückt.
139 
Die Romani grenzen an die Thoringi an und beherrschen das Gebiet bis zur Loire,
Chlogio vertreibt sie aus der civitas Cambrai und aus dem Gebiet bis zur Somme; Gregor von
Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 9, p. 58. In dieser Konzeption Gregors sind die Romani eine
518 Gerald Krutzler

Romanus Aegidius von der res publica zum magister militum bestellt und nach
Gallien gesandt, wo ihn auch die Franken während der Vertreibung Childerichs I.
als ihren rex annehmen.140 Nach Aegidius’ Tod ist ein comes Paulus Anführer der
Romani, nach dessen Tod wird Syagrius, der wie sein Vater Aegidius in der civitas
Soissons residierende Romanorum rex, von Chlodwig besiegt, der die Nachfolge
in seinem regnum antritt.141 Der zeitgleiche Burgunderkönig Gundobad erlässt
ein Gesetz zum Schutz der Romani.142 Damit verschwinden Romani und impe-
rium Romanorum/Romanum aus Gregors Historiae.143
Für Gregor bedeutete die Machtübernahme Chlodwigs keinen Bruch in
der Geschichte der Galliae. Er war, wie andere Frankenkönige vor ihm, gentiler
Fürst, römischer Offizier und auch Oberhaupt der römischen Zivilverwaltung in
weiten Teilen Nordgalliens, dessen Herrschaft nach 508 von Kaiser Anastasius
durch die Verleihung des Patriziats oder, wahrscheinlicher, (Ehren-)Konsulats
legitimiert wurde, weshalb er von nun an consul aut augustus genannt worden
sei.144 Dass Gregor die Römer nach dem Ende ihres rex und der Nachfolge des

gens, die mit Franci und Gothi auf der gleichen kategoriellen Stufe stehen; Heinzelmann, ‘Die
Franken und die fränkische Geschichte’, p. 342, mit Anm. 75.
140 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 11–12, pp. 60–62. Zum ‚fränkischen
Königtum‘ des Aegidius vgl. Jarnut, ‘Gregor von Tours’.
141 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 18, p. 65 (Syagrius Sohn des Aegidius,
comes Paulus); ii. 19, p. 65 (Tod des Paulus), ii. 27, p. 71 (Syagrius Romanorum rex, Sohn des
Aegidius, Nachfolge Chlodwigs). Zum Titel rex Romanorum vgl. Fanning, ‘Clovis Augustus’,
pp. 332–33; Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel, p. 35; Geary, Die
Merowinger, p. 88; Heinzelmann, ‘Die Franken und die fränkische Geschichte’, p. 342, Anm. 75.
142 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 33, p. 81.
143 
Eine Ausnahme bildet nur Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv.  2,
pp. 266–67; vgl. Heinzelmann, ‘Die Franken und die fränkische Geschichte’, p. 342.
144 
Remigius von Reims gratulierte Chlodwig nach dem Tod seines Vaters Childerich I. als
dessen Nachfolger zur Übernahme der Administration in der Provinz Belgica Secunda; Epistolae
Austrasiacae, hrsg. v. Gundlach, p. 113. Zur Stellung Childerichs I. als Frankenkönig, römischer
General und Chef der Zivilverwaltung in der Belgica II vgl. Lebecq, ‘The Two Faces of King
Childeric’, pp. 120–21, 123, 126. Gregors Terminologie zur römischen Ehrung Chlodwigs ist
inkonsistent: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. Capitulatio (c. 38), p. 35: ‘De
patriciato Chlodovechi regis’; ii. 38, pp. 88–89 (consulatus, consul aut augustus). Mit der Ehrung
durch Kaiser Anastasius bestätigte Ostrom Chlodwigs Stellung in Gallien und durchbrach
gleichzeitig das Prinzip der Alleinverantwortlichkeit Theoderichs d. Gr. für den Westen, woge-
gen der Ostgotenkönig, dem derselbe Kaiser 497 eine entsprechende ornamenta palatii verlie-
hen hatte, brieflich protestierte, ohne Chlodwig namentlich zu nennen; vgl. Goetz, ‘Gens, Kings
and Kingdoms’, pp. 311, 321. Fanning, ‘Clovis Augustus’, pp. 321–35; McCormick, ‘Clovis
at Tours’; Plassmann, Origo gentis, p. 136. Zum Zusammenhang mit Theoderich: Cassiodor,
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 519

Frankenkönigs in ihrem regnum nicht mehr erwähnt, hat Parallelen bei ande-
ren gentes, deren Herrscher von ihm als reges bezeichnet werden.145 Das Ende
des rex wurde von Gregor offenbar mit dem Ende der gens assoziiert.146
Obwohl Gregor auch über zeitgenössische Ereignisse im oströmischen
Reich berichtet und dabei römische Terminologie gebraucht, vermeidet er kon-
sequent das Attribut „römisch“.147 Die Herrschertitel sind imperator bzw. caesar,
jedoch ohne begrifflichen Bezug zu Rom oder den Römern.148 Die zeitgenössi-

Variae, hrsg. v. Mommsen, i. 1. 1, pp. 10–11; Wolfram, Intitulatio i: Lateinische Königs- und
Fürstentitel, p. 54, Anm. 103, p. 110; Ewig, Die Merowinger und das Frankenreich, p. 28.
145 
Auch Alemannen und Thüringer werden von den Franken unterworfen bzw. ein rex
Francorum tritt die Nachfolge ihres besiegten und getöteten gentilen Königs an. Alemannen:
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 30, pp. 75–76; ii. 37, pp. 87–88. Thüringer:
iii. 7–8, pp. 103–06. Gregor sagt zwar anlässlich des Todes des Abts Brachio, dieser sei genere
Thoringus gewesen, ansonsten verwendet er aber anstelle des jeweiligen Gentilnamens für die
spätere Zeit eine von diesem abgeleitete Territorialbezeichnung; iii. 9, iv. 10, pp. 106, 141
(Thoringia), v. 12, pp. 206–07 (Brachio); Gregor von Tours, Liber vitae patrum, hrsg. v. Kursch,
i. 1 (Alamannia), i. 2 (Alamanniae terminum), i. 3 (Alamanniae regiones), pp. 664–65. Eine
Ausnahme bilden die Burgunder, denn Burgundiones nennt er auch nach der fränkischen
Eroberung des Burgunderreiches und dem Tod der autochthonen reges Burgundionum; Gregor
von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, viii. 30, p. 393.
146 
Obwohl in verschiedenen origines gentium auch königslose Zeiten überliefert werden,
garantierten Könige vornehmlich, wenn auch nicht ausschließlich, die gentile Existenz;
Wolfram, Gotische Studien, p. 209; Wolfram, ‘Origo gentis: allgemeines’, p. 175. Wurde der
rex im Zuge einer militärischen Niederlage getötet, war das Weiterbestehen der gens infrage
gestellt, sie konnte untergehen, obwohl ihre Mitglieder physisch weiterlebten und in ihrem
Namen weiter, allerdings von den Eroberern, Herrschaft ausgeübt wurde; vgl. Pohl, ‘Telling the
Difference’, p. 25; Pohl, ‘Regnum und gens’, p. 443 mit Beispielen zu Langobarden und Goten
bei Paulus Diaconus und Isidor von Sevilla.
147 
So nennt er den römischen Staat nach wie vor res publica und anstelle des für vergangene
Zeiten gelegentlich gebrauchten imperium Romanum bzw. imperium Romanorum tritt nun aus-
schließlich imperium. Res publica: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 42, ii. 3, ii. 12,
v. 19, vi. 30, x. 2, pp. 28, 45, 62, 225, 298, 483; Romanum imperium: i. 32, i. 35, ii. 11, pp. 24,
26, 60; Romanorum imperium: i. 36, p. 26.
148 
Imperator für oströmische Kaiser nach Chlodwig I.: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg.
v. Krusch, iii. 32, p. 128; iv. 8–9, p. 140; iv. 40, p. 171; v. 19, p. 225; v. 30, pp. 235–36; vi. 2,
p. 266; vi. 30, p. 298; vi. 42, p. 314; vi. 43, p. 314; vii. 36, p. 358; viii. 18, p. 384; viii. 28,
p. 390; ix. 20, p. 440; ix. 25, 444; x. 1, p. 487; x. 2, pp. 482–83; x. 3, p. 485; x. 4, p. 487.
Imperator ist der von Gregor am häufigsten gebrauchte Kaisertitel, er verwendet ihn auch schon
vor bzw. während der Regentschaft Chlodwigs I. im Frankenreich für zahlreiche römische
Kaiser: i. 18, p. 16; i. 21, p. 18; i. 25, p. 20; i. 28, p. 21; i. 30, p. 22; i. 42–43, p. 28; i. 45, p. 29;
ii. Capitulatio (c. 11), p. 35; ii. 8, p. 52; ii. 21, p. 67; ii. 38, p. 88. Den Titel Caesar verwendet
Gregor für den von Justin II. zum Mitkaiser erhobenen Tiberius II. vor dessen Alleinherrschaft:
520 Gerald Krutzler

schen Träger des Römischen Imperiums bezeichnet Gregor dort, wo er einen

Gentilnamen verwendet, als Griechen (Greci).149 Auch Cartaginenses, bezogen
auf die Einwohner der damals oströmischen Stadt Karthago, bezeichnet zeitge-
nössische Personen, die staatsrechtlich Römer sind.150 Wie die Bewohner der
gallischen civitates im Frankenreich werden die Karthager von Gregor als regio-
nale Identität aufgefasst.151 Die Bewohner des ostgotischen Italien nennt Gregor
Itali, die zeitgenössischen Einwohner der Stadt Rom nur plebs und populus.152
Auch zwischen Römern und Latinern stellt Gregor keinen Bezug her.153
Die einzige Verwendung eines die Oströmer einschließenden Römer-
Begriffes, seine einzige zeitgenössische Verwendung in den Historiae überhaupt,

iv. 40, p. 172; v. 19, pp. 225, 227; v. 30, p. 235.

149 
Die Bezeichnung der Oströmer als Greci ist thematisch auf den Konflikt zwischen dem ari-
anischen Westgotenkönig Leuvigild und seinem katholischen Sohn Hermenegild beschränkt und
territorial auf Spanien begrenzt. Die Greci sind die Truppen des kaiserlichen Statthalters (praefec-
tus imperatoris) in Spanien, denn Hermenegild hatte sich mit dem imperator verbündet und hoffte
auf seine Unterstützung; Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v. 38, pp. 243–45; vi. 40,
p. 310; vi. 43, p. 316. Einen ausdrücklichen Hinweis auf die römische Identität dieser Griechen
gibt Gregor nicht. Auch ob Gregor unter Greci noch etwas anderes verstand als die zeitgenös-
sischen Oströmer, lässt sich aus seiner Darstellung nicht ableiten. Bei der Gegenüberstellung
von biblischen Personen und antiken Herrschern erwähnt er zwar die Athenienses, Argivi,
Corinthii, Lacidaemoni, Sicioni, das Land Attica und ihre jeweiligen Könige, dass es sich dabei
um die Bewohner antiker griechischer Stadtstaaten handelt, geht aus dem Text jedoch nicht
hervor; i. 17, p. 16. Zu griechischen Identitäten vgl. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity;
Hall, Hellenicity; Dihle, Die Griechen und die Fremden, sowie Gantner, ‘The Label “Greek”’.
150 
Kaiser Maurikios ist imperator vestrum der Cartaginenses und er schickt jene
Cartaginenses, die fränkische Gesandte ermordet hatten, als Gefangene zu Childebert  II.;
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, x. 2, x. 4, pp. 482–83, 486–87.
151 
Gregor kennt jedoch auch die weitere Bedeutung des Karthager–Begriffes, denn er
schreibt unter Berufung auf Orosius, dass Stadt und Reich (civitas et regio) der Carthaginenses
nach 700 Jahren aufgrund von Zwietracht untergegangen seien; Gregor von Tours, Historiae,
hrsg. v. Krusch, v. praefatio, pp. 193–94; vgl. Orosius, Historiae adversum paganos, hrsg. v.
Zangemeister, iv. 23. 6, v. 8. 1, pp. 273–74, 295–96.
152 
Dass Itali die politisch berechtigten Bewohner Italiens in der Zeit des Ostgotenreiches
meint, ergibt sich aus dem Kontext: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. Capitulatio
(c. 31): „De filia Theodorici regis Italici“; iii. 5: „Theodoricus rex Italicus“; iii. 31: „Theodoricus
Italiae rex“; Itali erheben Theodad von Tucsia gegen Theoderichs Tochter zum König, pp. 96,
100, 126–27; Gregor von Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c.  77, p. 540:
Theodoricus rex Italicus. Die Bewohner der Stadt Rom werden anlässlich der Papstwahl Gregors
I. plebs und populus genannt; Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, x. 1, pp. 477–79, 481.
153 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 17, p. 16. Die Herrscher der Latiner und
Römer gehören hier verschiedenen Zeitebenen an.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 521

ist die Beschreibung eines Aureus des Augustus Tiberius II. mit der Legende
GLORIA ROMANORUM.154 Tiberius II. ist jener oströmische Kaiser, des-
sen Rechtgläubigkeit Gregor ausdrücklich lobt.155 Rom, das er einmal „Stadt
der Städte und Haupt der ganzen Welt“ nennt, war für Gregor eine Stadt der
heiligen Märtyrer und Päpste.156 Gregor bezeugt außerdem, dass die Goten
die Rechtgläubigen Romani nennen. 157 Gregor verwendet Latini, um die

154 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 2, pp. 266–67. Auf einen umfassenderen
Wortsinn von ‚römisch‘ verweist auch die Erwähnung der lex Romana; Gregor von Tours, Liber
vitae patrum, hrsg. v. Kursch, viii. 5, p. 695. Münzen mit der Legende GLORIA ROMANORUM,
erstmals unter Konstantin I. geprägt, sind von Anastasius I., Justin I., Justinian I. und Justin II.
bekannt, also von allen unmittelbaren Vorgängern des Tiberius II. seit 491; Hahn, Moneta
Imperii Byzantini, iii, p. 288; s.v. ‘GLORIA ROMANORUM’, in A Dictionary of Roman Coins,
hrsg. v. Stevenson, Roach Smith und Madden, p. 423. Aufgrund der Angabe Gregors, ein einzel-
ner aureus sei ein Pfund schwer gewesen, wird davon ausgegangen, dass es sich um keine gewöhn-
lichen Münzen gehandelt hat, sondern um prunkvolle Medaillons, besondere Geschenke des
jeweiligen Kaisers an auserlesene Empfänger, vergleichbar jenen, die 1797 in Szilágysomlyó
gefunden wurden; Wood, ‘The Exchange of Gifts’, p. 312; Schramm und Mütherich, Denkmale
der deutschen Könige, i, p. 18. Die Medaillons von Szilágysomlyó sind Kaisern aus dem 3. und
4. Jahrhundert zuzuordnen und tragen teilweise auch die Aufschrift GLORIA ROMANORUM,
so auch das größte, das nicht als römische Prägung, sondern als barbarische Nachahmung
gilt, aber mit 327,45 g Gold dem Gegenwert von 72 Solidi oder einem römischen Pfund ent-
sprach; Wolfram, ‘Imitatio imperii’, pp.  10–12; Bernhard-Walcher, ‘Der Schatzfund I von
Szilágysomlyó’, p. 20; Dembski, ‘Die Goldmedaillone’, pp. 31, 33, 35–36; Bursche, ‘Die Rolle
römischer Goldmedaillone’, pp. 39–40, 46; Martin, ‘24 Scheiben aus Goldblech und 17 gol­
dene Medaillons’, pp. 113–15. Während von Tiberius II. selbst nichts gefunden wurde, was der
Beschreibung Gregors entspricht, ist von seinem Nachfolger Maurikios ein eine Unze oder 6
Solidi schweres Medaillon mit einer Quadriga und der Umschrift GLORIA ROMANORUM
erhalten; Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy, p. 263, mit Anm. 42.
155 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 40, p. 172.
156 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v. praefatio, p. 193: „urbs urbium et totius
mundi caput“; vgl. Gregor von Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 82, p. 544:
„caput orbis urbs Roma“. Märtyrer und Päpste in Rom: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v.
Krusch, i. 27, i. 30, i. 32, ii. 1, iv. 26, v. 20, vi. 6, x. Capitulatio (c. 1), x. 1, x. 31, pp. 21–22,
24, 38, 158, 227, 274, 275, 475, 477–81, 526, 528, 537. Gregor von Tours, Liber in gloria mar-
tyrum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 82, p. 544. Anstelle den Kaiser oder das Reich ‚römisch‘ zu nennen,
spricht Gregor in Buch i mehrmals von der städtischen ecclesia Romana; Gregor von Tours,
Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 27, i. 30, pp. 21–22.
157 
Gregor von Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 24, p. 502: „,Ingenium est
Romanorum‘ — Romanos enim vocitant nostrae homines religionis“; c. 78, p. 541: „Quid putatis,
quid isti nunc Romani dicant?“. Da Romani eine gotische Fremdbezeichnung für die Rechtgläubigen
sei, wurde bezweifelt, dass Gregor sich selbst so bezeichnet habe; Goffart, ‘Foreigners in the
Histories of Gregory of Tours’, p. 282; Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, p. 213.
522 Gerald Krutzler

Anhänger der römischen Kirche in einer umfassenden Weise zu bezeichnen.158

Mit Latinum bezeichnet Gregor auch seine Sprache, das Lateinische.159 Die
lingua Latinorum stellt auch Gregors einzigen Hinweis für die Anwesenheit
von Romanen im merowingerzeitlichen Gallien dar, als in Orléans auch auf
Latein König Guntchramn bejubelt wird.160 Chilperich I. hatte dem in Gallien
verwendeten Alphabet neben anderen Zeichen auch ein ω, wie es die Graeci
haben, hinzugefügt.161 Gregors Definition der Oströmer als Griechen basiert
also auf ihrer anderen Schrift, dem griechischen Alphabet, und wohl auch
darauf, dass sie Griechisch sprachen, und nicht die Lingua Latinorum wie die
Gallier. Dass die griechischsprachigen Oströmer die römische Identität verin-
nerlicht hatten, war für ihn nicht von Belang.162 Dagegen, dass Gregor mit der
Bezeichnung Graeci Zweifel an der Rechtgläubigkeit der Oströmer ausdrücken
wollte, spricht, dass deren Unterstützung des rechtgläubigen Hermenegild in
Spanien 580, in der Regierungszeit des rechtgläubigen Kaisers Tiberius II.
begann.163 Dass Gregor weder die meisten heidnischen Kaiser noch alle byzan-
tinischen außer Tiberius II. mit dem Attribut „römisch“ in Verbindung bringt,
kann, ebenso wie die Vermeidung der Bezeichnung Romani für die zeitgenössi-
schen Bewohner Roms, darauf hinweisen, dass für ihn mit diesem Begriff eine
gewisse sakrale Konnotation verbunden war, weshalb er ihn in der Gegenwart
lieber vermied, auch wenn er sich seiner Bedeutung als Fremdbezeichnung

158 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, x. 23, p. 515.
159 
Gregor sagt von sich selbst, die Passio der sieben schlafenden Märtyrer von Ephesos ins
Lateinische übersetzt zu haben: Gregor von Tours, Passio sanctorum martyrum septem dormien-
tium, hrsg. v. Krusch, p. 853: „EXPLICIT PASSIO SANCTORUM MARTYRUM SEPTEM
DORMIENTIUM APUD EPHYSUM, TRANSLATA IN LATINUM PER GREGORIUM
EPISCOPUM INTERPRETANTE IOHANNE SYRO, QUAE OBSERVATUR 6.  KAL.
AUGUSTI“; Gregor von Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 94, p. 552: „Quod
passio eorum, quam Siro quodam interpretante in Latino transtulimus, plenis pandit“.
160 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, viii. 1, p. 370. Da Latein die Sprache der
ursprünglich latinischen Stadt Rom ist, sind jene, die sich ihrer bedienen, die romani­sierten
Bewohner von Orléans. Tatsächlich galten die Bewohner der westlichen Reichshälfte im
5./6. Jahrhundert auch als Romani im Sinne der lateinischen Sprachgemeinschaft, während man
im Osten weiter Griechen, Syrer und Ägypter unterschied; Ewig, Volkstum und Volksbewußtsein,
p. 1, Anm. 2, p. 23.
161 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v. 44, p. 254.
162 
Vom 2. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert nannten sich die Griechen selbst Rhomäer — Römer;
Dihle, Die Griechen und die Fremden, pp. 52, 84.
163 
Zur frühchristlichen Konnotation des Hellenen- bzw. Griechennamens mit Heidentum
und Häresie vgl. Müller, Geschichte der antiken Ethnographie, ii, pp. 260–61.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 523

für die Rechtgläubigen bewusst war. Der Untergang des römischen regnum
in Gallien kam ihm dabei entgegen. Politisch-rechtliche oder sprachliche
Zusammenhänge der Römer mit Latinern, Griechen, Karthagern oder den
Bewohnern gallischer civitates thematisiert Gregor nicht, sie werden nur ange-
deutet und erst durch die Synopse des gesamten Werkes deutlich.
Im Gegensatz zu Gregor von Tours kennt Fredegar auch in der Zeit des
Frankenreiches Römer in Gallien, die zudem wichtige staatliche Funktionen
ausüben.164 Fredegar weiß aus dem Liber Generationis um die polyethnische
Struktur der Griechen und sieht in den Greci (und den zu Hionis verschrie-
benen Iones) Nachkommen des Japhet-Sohnes Ivan; unter den Nachkommen
Japhets zählt er aber Hellenes und Greci nacheinander auf, identifiziert beide
also nicht miteinander.165 Als Grecorum gentes nennt er die Ionas, Arcades, Beoti,
Aeoli und Lacones, und zählt Länder, Städte und Inseln auf, die sie bewoh-
nen.166 Die Bezeichnung der in Spanien engagierten Oströmer als Greci über-
nimmt Fredegar nur einmal von Gregor.167 Sonst nennt er auch die Byzantiner
Romani.168
Im Liber Historiae Francorum wird der Herrscher Trojas, der tyrannus
Aeneas, von den reges Grecorum besiegt und zieht nach Italien, andere Trojaner
unter Priamus und Antenor kommen nach Pannonien und besiegen die Alanen
für Valentinian, den imperator Romanorum ac gentium, der ihnen daraufhin den
Namen Franci verleiht, was in der Attica lingua „die Wilden“ bedeuten soll.169
Der römische Kaiser bedient sich also der griechischen Sprache, doch ist unklar,
ob dem Autor des Liber Historiae Francorum bewusst war, dass Attisch den in
Athen gebräuchlichen ionischen Dialekt der griechischen Sprache bezeichnet.

164 
Chlodwigs I. Brautwerber in Burgund, Aurelianus, ist ex Romanis ingenio, Claudius, der
maior domus Theuderichs II., ist genere Romanus; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 18,
p. 99 (Aurelianus); iv. 28, p. 132 (Claudius).
165 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 21; vgl. Liber Generationis, hrsg. v. Mommsen,
cc. 58, 62, 83, pp. 96–97.
166 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 7, p. 24; vgl. Liber Generationis, hrsg. v. Mommsen,
cc. 204–09, pp. 108–09.
167 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 87, p. 117; vgl. Gregor von Tours, Historiae,
hrsg. v. Krusch, vi. 43, pp. 314–16. Da sich Fredegar in anderen Kapiteln über diesen Konflikt
ausdrücklich auf das Imperium oder die Römer bezieht, scheint diese Griechen-Nennung nur
eine unreflektierte Übernahme zu sein; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 47–48, p. 106;
iv. 33, p. 133.
168 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 33, p. 133; iv. 69, pp. 155–56.
169 
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, cc. 1–2, pp. 241–43.
524 Gerald Krutzler

Ansonsten stellt der Liber Historiae Francorum keine Verbindung zwischen

Griechen und Römern her, auch Aeneas wird nicht mit Rom verbunden.
Die Continuationes Fredegarii bezeichnen mit Romani die Bewohner
Roms und die Bewohner des jenseits der Loire gelegenen Aquitanien.170
Dabei erscheinen die Begriffe Romani und Wascones austauschbar: Als sich die
„Wascones in regione Aquitania“ erheben, überschreiten Karlmann und Pippin
mit ihrem Heer die Loire und werfen die Romani nieder.171 Das überrascht,
weil die Wascones, die Basken, bei Gregor von Tours und Fredegar, der sie zu
den Völkern Spaniens zählt, als untreue, plündernde, brandschatzende, alles
verheerende Bergbewohner geschildert werden, typische Barbaren, die das
genaue Gegenteil eines zivilisierten Römers darstellen.172 Die Continuationes
Fredegarii überliefern außerdem, dass die Wascones, die jenseits der Garonne
leben, in alten Zeiten Vaceti genannt wurden.173 Ebenfalls mit den Wascones
werden zu der Zeit, als die Auvergne unter der Herrschaft Waifars steht, die
Arverni, die Bewohner von Gregor von Tours Heimatstadt Clermont, gleichge-
setzt.174 Arverni dient hier als Bezeichnung für eine lokale Gruppe der Wascones.
Die Gleichsetzung der Arverner mit den Wascones ist, neben ihrer Identifikation
mit den Romani, ein Indiz dafür, dass Wascones eine pejorative Bezeichnung für
die romanische Bevölkerung Südgalliens außerhalb der fränkischen Herrschaft
war. Die Gleichsetzung der romanisierten Aquitani mit den als barbarisch
bekannten Wascones in Quellen, die der fränkischen Zentralgewalt naheste-
hen, ist deshalb wohl gegen das sich in zahlreichen Aufständen manifestierende
aquitanische Sonderbewusstsein gerichtet.175

170 
Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 25, p. 180 (Romani jenseits der Loire);
c. 36, p. 183, c. 38, p. 185 (Romani in Rom).
171 
Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 25, p. 180.
172 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, vi. 12, p. 283; ix. 7, pp. 420–21; Fredegar,
Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 8, p. 25; ii. 51, p. 73; iii. 87, p. 117; iv. 21, p. 129; iv. 54, p. 148;
iv. 57, p. 149; iv. 67, p. 154; iv. 78, pp. 159–60. Grundlegend zu den Basken: Collins, The
Basques.
173 
Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 47, p. 189. Vaceti ist möglicherweise die
Reminiszenz an eine frühere ethnische Differenzierung zwischen aquitanischen Romanen
und Basken, wobei Vaceti eine Bezeichnung für die baskischen Bergbewohner sein könnte, im
Gegensatz zur stärker romanisierten Bevölkerung zwischen Loire und Garonne.
174 
Waifar beherrscht Auvergne: Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 42, p. 187
(Nach der Eroberung von Arvernum werden viele Vascones gefangengenommen und getötet),
c. 45, pp. 188–89, c. 47, pp. 189–90 (Der comes Arvernorum Cilpingus überfällt das Königreich
Burgund, nach seinem Tod aber fliehen die Wascones).
175 
Die Bezeichnung Aquitani kennen die Continuationes Fredegarii nicht, von ihnen ist erst
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 525

Territoriale und institutionelle Vielfalt — Sachsen

Die Sachsen sind Bewohner der Germania und leben jenseits des Rheins.176
Daneben werden in der merowingerzeitlichen fränkischen Historiographie mit
Saxones aber auch verschiedene Gruppen in Gallien und Britannien bezeichnet.
In Gallien leben in der 2. Hälfte des 5. Jahrhunderts Sachsen auf Inseln in
der Loire, unter der Führung des Adovacrius, die von Childerich I. besiegt
werden.177 Eine weitere sächsische Gruppe in Gallien sind die Sachsen von
Bayeux.178 Als Garonne-Sachse wird der als dux Chlothars II. und Dagoberts I.
in Aquitanien 626/27–637/38 nachweisbare Aeghyna identifiziert, der auch
eine wichtige Rolle im Konflikt mit den Basken spielte.179 Die Sachsen in
Gallien sind Nachfahren sächsischer Piraten und Krieger, die seit der spät­
römischen Zeit die Küsten Nord- und Westgalliens plünderten und sich ab
dem 3. Jahrhundert an den großen Flussmündungen festgesetzt hatten.180
Die nach Britannien ausgewanderten Sachsen erscheinen in der merowin-
gerzeitlichen fränkischen Historiographie nur peripher. Von Angelsachsen
verfasste Quellen unterscheiden deutlich zwischen kontinentalen und britan-
nischen Sachsen, indem sie die kontinentalen Sachsen als Antiqui Saxones bzw.
Altsaxones bezeichnen.181 Die angelsächsischen Quellen betonen, vor allem im

relativ spät, etwa in den Annales Mettenses priores, regelmäßig die Rede; Pohl, ‘Zur Bedeutung
ethnischer Unterscheidungen’, p. 201.
176 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 6, p. 46 (Germania), iv. 38, p. 139 (Sachsen
unter gentes transrhenani Theudeberts II.); Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 27,
p. 286 (Sachsen von Weser durchflossen, Thüringen benachbart), c. 31, p. 292, c. 41, pp. 311–13
(Sachsen Heiden jenseits des Rheins, der Weser); Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch,
c. 19, p. 177 (jenseits des Rheins).
177 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 18, p. 65 (Adovacrius von Childerich I.
besiegt); ii. 19, p. 65 (Inseln). Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 12, pp. 97–98. Liber
Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 8, p. 250 sagt ausdrücklich, diese Sachsen seien mit dem
Schiff über das Meer gekommen. Es handelt sich also möglicherweise um eine neu in Gallien
erschienene Gruppe.
178 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v.  26, p.  232; x.  9, p.  492; Fredegar,
Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 80, p. 115. Der Liber Historiae Francorum und die Continuationes
Fredegarii erwähnen die Sachsen von Bayeux nicht mehr.
179 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv.  54–55, p.  148; iv.  78, pp.  160–61; Ewig,
‘Volkstum und Volksbewusstsein im Frankenreich’, p. 13, Anm. 37.
180 
Wolfram, Die Germanen, pp. 80, 116.
181 
Altsaxones: Bonifatius, Epistolae, hrsg. v. Tangl, nr 21, p. 35. Antiqui Saxones: Beda,
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, hrsg. und übers. v. Spitzbart, i. 15, p. 58; v. 9, p. 452; v. 10,
526 Gerald Krutzler

Kontext von Heidenmission und Migrationsgeschichte, die Verwandtschaft

der als einheitliche gens aufgefassten Angeln und Sachsen in Britannien mit
den kontinentalen Sachsen, aber auch mit anderen gentes in der Germania.182
In den untersuchten fränkischen Quellen werden die Angelsachsen terminolo-
gisch nicht von den kontinentalen Sachsen unterschieden.183
Die in Gallien lebenden Sachsen erscheinen nach der Niederlage des
Adovacrius als treue Untertanen der fränkischen Könige.184 Die Sachsen in
der Germania sind den Franken tributpflichtig, sie erscheinen als rebellische,
treulose und beutegierige heidnische Plünderer, die Gebiete verwüsten, brand-
schatzen, Menschen und Tiere rauben, in der Niederlage aber furchtsam sind.185

p. 458; v. 11, p. 462. Land Antiqua Saxonia: Bonifatius, Epistolae, hrsg. v. Tangl, nr 73, p. 150;
Anonymus Ravennatus, Cosmographia, hrsg. v. Schnetz, v. 31, p. 105.
182 
Bonifatius, Epistolae, hrsg. v. Tangl, nr 46–47, pp. 74–76 (Mission); nr 80, p. 173: ‚gens
Anglorum et Saxonum in Brittania insula‘. Beda, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, hrsg. und
übers. v. Spitzbart, i. 14–15, pp. 58–60 (Migration nach Britannien, synonyme Verwendung
von Angeln und Sachsen), v. 9, p. 452 (Angeln und Sachsen in Britannien mit Friesen, Rugiern,
Dänen, Hunnen (= Awaren), Altsachsen, Brukterern verwandt).
183 
Bei Gregor von Tours und Fredegar sind überhaupt keine Sachsen in Britannien fassbar.
Gregor berichtet über die Hochzeit der Merowingerin Bertha mit König Aethelbert von Kent
ohne Hinweis auf den angelsächsischen Charakter des Landes und seine Lage in Britannien;
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 26, p. 157; ix. 26, p. 445. Angelsachsen kön-
nen nur aufgrund der Evidenz in anderen Quellen identifiziert werden: Balthild, die Gemahlin
Chlodwigs  II., ist im Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c.  43, p.  315 „de genere
Saxonorum“. In den Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 1, p. 168 wird über ihre auslän-
dische Herkunft nur noch „de genere alienigenarum“ — „aus einem fremden Volk“ gesagt, der
Bezug zu den Sachsen geht verloren. Dass sie Angelsächsin war, ergibt sich nur aus den beiden
Versionen ihrer Vita: Vita Sanctae Balthildis a, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 2, p. 483: „Quam de partibus
transmarinis divina providentia advocans, […] Et cum esset ex genere Saxonum, […]“ — „Die
von den überseeischen Gebieten durch göttliche Vorhersehung herbeigerufen, […] sie sei aus
dem Geschlecht der Sachsen […]“; Vita Sanctae Balthildis b, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 2, p. 483: „Que
siquidem beata de partibus transmarinis divina providentia depredata, […] progenita Saxonum
demonstrabatur“ — „Denn die Heilige wurde nämlich von den überseeischen Gebieten durch
göttliche Vorhersehung geraubt, […] Tochter der Sachsen wurde sie genannt“. Ob Nanthilde,
die im Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 45, p. 315 als „de genere Saxonorum“
bezeichnete Gemahlin Dagoberts I., Angelsächsin oder kontinentale Sächsin war, geht aus den
untersuchten Quellen nicht hervor; vgl Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 60, p. 151;
iv. 76, p. 159.
184 
Springer, Die Sachsen, pp. 53, 100, 102, 120; Wolfram, Die Germanen, p. 112.
185 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 10, p. 141; iv. 14, pp. 145–46; iv. 16,
pp. 149–50; iv. 42, pp. 175–76; evtl. v. 15, pp. 213–14; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch,
ii. 6, p. 46; iii. 51–52, p. 107; iii. 68, p. 111; iv. 74, p. 158; Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 527

Die negative Charakterisierung der rechtsrheinischen Sachsen ist ein Fixpunkt

der merowingerzeitlichen fränkischen Historiographie. Bei Fredegar findet
sich allerdings auch eine Nachricht, die eine ambivalente Wahrnehmung der
Sachsen widerspiegelt: Als Pompeius den Rhein überquert und die Germanen
wie die Gallier unterwirft, erheben sich von den unterworfenen Völkern
Germaniens nur die Franken und ihre Verbündeten (amici), die Sachsen, um
ihre Freiheit zu bewahren.186 In dieser auf die Rheinübergänge von Pompeius’
Gegner Caesar anspielenden Legende, die Fredegar miteinander verwechselte,
erscheinen die rechtsrheinischen Sachsen den Franken gleichgestellt, doch
diese Gleichstellung ist singulär, es dominiert ein topisches Bild der rechtsrhei-
nischen Sachsen als heidnische Barbaren.187
Uneinheitlich sind auch die politischen Strukturen der verschiedenen säch-
sischen Gruppen. Die Loire-Sachsen sind ein Beispiel für die seit der Spätantike
auf Gallien erfolgten Überfälle durch militärisch strukturierte Verbände; ihr
Anführer Adovacrius trägt bei Gregor keinen Titel, bei Fredegar ist er rex und
im Liber Historiae Francorum dux.188 Die Sachsen von Bayeux haben keinen
eigenen Anführer, sie stehen unter dem direkten Befehl des Frankenkönigs
Chilperich I. bzw. seiner Witwe Fredegunde.189 Der dux Chulderich ist der ein-
zige Sachse, den Gregor von Tours mit einem Titel bezeichnet, er ist jedoch
kein dux einer sächsischen Gruppe, sondern wird von Childebert II. im südli-
chen Aquitanien in dieses Amt eingesetzt.190

v. Krusch, cc. 27, 31, 41, pp. 285–86, 292, 311–14; Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch,
c. 11, p. 175; c. 19, p. 177; c. 27, p. 180; c. 31, p. 181; c. 35, p. 182.
186 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 6, p. 46; ii. 31, p. 55.
187 
Zur Verwechslung von Pompeius mit Caesar vgl.  Krusch, ‘Die Chronicae des soge­
nannten Fredegar’, pp.  474–75 unter Bezugnahme auf den Sprachgebrauch in Fredegar,
Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 31, p. 55 (Caesar Pompegius); vgl. Hieronymus, Chronicon, hrsg. v.
Helm, aa. 61–60, 56 a. Chr., pp. 154–55.
188 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 18–19, p. 65; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg.
v. Krusch, iii. 12, p. 97; Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 8, p. 250.
189 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v. 26, p. 232 (Chilperich I.), x. 9, pp. 491–92
(Fredegunde); Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 80, p. 115. Ihre Unterwerfung wird nicht
berichtet, die Sachsen von Bayeux werden erst erwähnt, als sie schon lange zum Frankenreich
gehören.
190 
Chulderich tritt zuerst als Anführer einer Kriegergruppe in Gallien in Erscheinung,
fällt bei König Guntchramn in Ungnade, geht zu Childebert II. über, der ihn zum dux über die
Städte südlich der Garonne ernennt, und stirbt schließlich, nach vielen Morden und anderen
Verbrechen, infolge übermäßigen Weingenusses nachts den Erstickungstod; Gregor von Tours,
Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, vii. 3, p. 328 (erstmalige Erwähnung); viii. 18, p. 385 (fällt bei
528 Gerald Krutzler

Die Sachsen in der Germania schicken bei Gregor von Tours als Ganzes
Gesandte, um mit Chlothar I. Frieden zu schließen.191 Die kollektiv erschei-
nenden Sachsen unterscheiden sich von den anderen gentes in Germanien,
denn Alemannen, Thüringer und Dänen haben bei Gregor Könige.192 Auch bei
Fredegar und in den Continuationes Fredegarii agieren die rechtsrheinischen
Saxones ausschließlich kollektiv, ohne dass etwas über ihre politische Struktur
gesagt würde.193 Im Liber Historiae Francorum wird Bertoald, der Anführer
der rebellierenden rechtsrheinischen Sachsen, gegen den Chlothar  II. und
Dagobert I. an der Weser kämpfen, dux genannt, er kommandiert ein Heer,
das aus „vielen Völkerschaften“ (gentes plurima) besteht, also polyethnisch
ist.194 Wenn der um 623 datierte Bertoald eine historische Persönlichkeit ist,
ist er der früheste namentlich belegte Anführer der rechtsrheinischen Sachsen
in einer fränkischen historiographischen Quelle.195 Auch die gleichzeitige
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum des Angelsachsen Beda überliefert, dass
die antiqui Saxones keine reges hatten, sondern viele gleichberechtigte satrapae,
die an der Spitze ihrer jeweiligen gens standen und bei Kriegsausbruch durch
das Los einen der ihren zum dux wählten, dem sie sich nur für die Dauer des
Krieges unterstellten.196 Diese politische Zersplitterung der Sachsen wird als

Guntchramn in Ungnade, wird dux Childeberts II.); x. 22, p. 514 (Tod). Die späteren Quellen
erwähnen Chulderich nicht mehr.
191 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 14, p. 146.
192 
Zur politischen Struktur der rechtsrheinischen Sachsen vgl. Mohr, Das Wissen über die
Anderen, pp. 284–90.
193 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 6, p. 46; iii. 51–52, p. 107; iii. 68, p. 111; iv. 38,
p. 139; iv. 74, p. 158; Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 11, p. 175; c. 19, p. 177; c. 27,
p. 180; c. 31, p. 181; c. 35, p. 182.
194 
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 41, pp. 311–14. Die Nachricht über den
Krieg mit dux Bertoald wurde teilweise als unglaubwürdig angesehen und versucht, sie mit
Theuderichs II. Hausmeier Bertoald und seinen Tod im Kampf gegen die Truppen Chlothars II.
bei Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 25–26, pp. 130–31, in Verbindung zu bringen;
Fredegar, Chroniken, übers. v. Kusternig, p. 181, Anm. 23. Archäologische Befunde könnten
den Bericht des Liber Historiae Francorum Ewig zufolge hingegen erhärten und als Schilderung
eines Zusammenstoßes mit Engern im Diemelgebiet kurz nach der Errichtung von Dagoberts
Unterkönigtum 623 erweisen; Ewig, Die Merowinger und das Frankenreich, pp.  122–23.
Zur Polyethnie der Sachsen vgl. Becher, ‘Verfassung und Ethnogenese’, p. 31; Capelle, ‘Zur
Kontinuität der Sachsen’, pp. 78–79; Pohl, Die Germanen, pp. 40, 114–15.
195 
Allerdings liegen auch hier zwischen dem berichteten Ereignis und seiner Aufzeichnung
100 Jahre.
196 
Beda, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, hrsg. und übers. v. Spitzbart, v. 10, p. 458.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 529

Ursache dafür angesehen, dass Karl d. Gr. für die Eroberung Sachsens 30 Jahre
benötigte, während die Errichtung einer administrativen Ordnung und die
Christianisierung durch die Franken wahrscheinlich einen neuen Schub in der
sächsischen Ethnogenese bewirkten.197 Als satrapae, ursprünglich Titel persi-
scher Provinzgouverneure, bezeichnet Beda in seinen theologischen Werken
die Stadtkönige der Philister, die sich zu militärischen Aktionen zusammen-
schlossen.198 Die sächsischen Satrapen sind also Kleinkönige, die einzelnen pagi
bzw. kleineren gentilen Einheiten vorstanden und militärisch nur dann etwas
erreichen konnten, wenn sie sich zusammenschlossen.199 Ein derartiger „Satrap“
wird der in den Jahren 743, 744 und 748 als Gegner der Franken genannte
Sachse Theoderich gewesen sein, der in den Einhardsannalen als primarius von
Hochseeburg, in den Annales Mettenses priores sogar als dux bezeichnet wird.200
Der gewählte sächsische dux ist vielleicht mit dem angelsächsischen bretwalda
vergleichbar, dem obersten Anführers der sächsischen Könige in Britannien im
Krieg.201 Möglicherweise ist Bertoald deshalb, ungeachtet eines gleichnamigen
Franken bei Fredegar, im Liber Historiae Francorum nicht als Personenname
aufzufassen, sondern als kontinentalsächsische Entsprechung des angelsächsi-
schen bretwalda-Titels.202

Der Liber Historiae Francorum wurde 726/727 abgeschlossen; Das Buch von der Geschichte der
Franken, übers. v. Haupt, p. 333. Bedas Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum reicht bis 731, er
starb 735; vgl. die Einleitung zur deutschen Übersetzung von Spitzbart, pp. 1–2. Die Wahl des dux
mag auf einer Versammlung der ‚Satrapen‘ geschehen sein, wie sie in der Vita Lebuini antiqua für
den Ort Marklo geschildert wird; Vita Lebuini antiqua, hrsg. v. Hofmeister, cc. 4–6, pp. 793–94.
Kritisch zum Quellenwert der Vita Lebuini antiqua: Springer, ‘Was Lebuins Lebensbeschreibung’.
197 
Becher, Rex, Dux und Gens, pp. 26–27.
198 
Satrapae der Philister: Beda, In primam partem Samuelis, hrsg. v. Hurst, i. 5. 11, pp. 50;
i. 6. 16, pp. 54; i. 7. 7, pp. 61; iv. 29. 2, pp. 258; iv. 29. 6, pp. 259. Zum Begriff Satrap und seiner
inhaltlichen Entwicklung vgl. Duchesne-Guillemin, ‘Satrap’; Wood, The Missionary Life, p. 116.
199 
Dass die sächsischen satrapae den selben Herrschertitel tragen wie die wichtigsten
Feinde des Volkes Israel betont das sächsische Heidentum und den Gegensatz zu den christli-
chen Angelsachsen; Becher, ‘Verfassung und Ethnogenese’, pp. 10–11, 28; Pohl, Die Germanen,
p. 40.
200 
Annales regni Francorum, hrsg. v. Kurze, aa.  743, 744, p.  4; Annales qui dicuntur
Einhardi, hrsg. v. Kurze, aa. 743 (primarius) und 744, p. 5. In den Annales Mettenses priores,
hrsg. v. Simson, a. 743, p. 35; a. 744, p. 36, wird Theoderich als dux bezeichnet; a. 748, p. 41,
erscheint er ohne Titel. Becher, ‘Verfassung und Ethnogenese’, p. 29 nimmt für Theoderich
zumindest eine königsähnliche Stellung an.
201 
Becher, ‘Verfassung und Ethnogenese’, p. 15.
202 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 25–26, pp. 130–31.
530 Gerald Krutzler

Politische Strukturen und ihre Wahrnehmung — Bretonen

Auch mit Britanni bezeichnet Gregor von Tours gentile Gruppen in ver-
schiedenen Territorien, nämlich die Bretonen und einmal auch die Briten,
ohne beide voneinander zu unterscheiden; Brittania ist dabei für ihn die
Bretagne, das Land der Bretonen, nicht aber die Insel Britannien, die er nicht
erwähnt.203 Zwischen den keltischen Briten und Bretonen bestand ein enger
Zusammenhang, vom 4.  bis zum 6.  Jahrhundert wanderten Gruppen von
Britannien nach Armorica, die spätere Bretagne, aus.204 Im 6.  Jahrhundert
wurden die Bretonen von mehreren Männern, zumindest teilweise Mitglieder
derselben Dynastie, beherrscht, von denen Chanao und Macliav durch
die Beseitigung ihrer Verwandten die Alleinherrschaft erringen wollten. 205
Analoge Konzentrationsprozesse überliefert Gregor für Franken, Burgunder
und Thüringer.206 Im Unterschied zu diesen vergleichbar strukturierten gen-
tes nennt Gregor die Herrscher der Bretonen aber nicht reges, sondern comi-
tes, was er damit begründet, dass die Bretonen seit Chlodwig I. immer unter
der Oberherrschaft der Franken gestanden wären.207 Im Gegensatz zu Gregor
203 
Briten: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 43, p. 28 (Der römische Gegen­
kaiser Maximus unterdrückt die Britanni); Bretonen: ii. 18, p. 65; iv. 4, pp. 137–38; iv. 20,
pp. 152–53; v. 16, p. 214; v. 26, pp. 232–33; v. 29, pp. 234–35; v. 31, p. 236; ix. 18, pp. 431–32;
ix. 24, p. 444; x. 9, pp. 491–94.
204 
Dillon und Chadwick, Die Kelten, pp. 103–04. Über die Auswanderung eines Teils der
Bevölkerung aus Britannien über das Meer, allerdings ohne Angabe des Ziels, klagt Gildas, De
excidio Britanniae, hrsg. und übers. v. Winterbottom, c. 25, p. 98. Auch Prokop berichtet, dass
Britannier und andere Bewohner der Insel Brittia in großer Anzahl alljährlich in das Land der
Franken gesandt wurden und dort in den dünnbevölkerten Gebieten als Kolonisten ansiedelt
wurden; Prokop, Bella, hrsg. und übers. v. Veh, viii. 20. 7–9, p. 864.
205 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 4, pp. 137–38 (Comes Chanao tötet
drei seiner Brüder, nur Macliav entkommt, flieht zu comes Chonomor, wird Kleriker, tritt aber
nach Chanaos Tod dessen Nachfolge an); v. 16, p. 214 (Macliav vertreibt nach dem Tod seines
Mitherrschers Bodich dessen Sohn Theoderich, der kehrt zurück, tötet Macliav und seinen
Sohn Jacob und teilt mit Macliavs zweitem Sohn Waroch die Herrschaft).
206 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii.  28, p.  73 (Gundobad ermordet
seinen Bruder Chilperich), ii. 32, pp. 78–80 (Godegisel mit Chlodwig gegen seinen Bruder
Gundobad), ii.  33, pp.  80–81 (Gundobad siegt, Tod Godegisels); ii.  40–42, pp.  89–93
(Chlodwig beseitigt Verwandte); iii.  4, pp.  99–100 (Herminefred bekriegt seine Brüder,
z. T. mit fränkischer Unterstützung). Im Gegensatz zu den bretonischen Prätendenten nehmen
burgundische und thüringische Teilherrscher die letztlich fatale Hilfe der Franken in Anspruch,
während der bretonische comes Chonoober umgekehrt den fränkischen Prätendenten Chramn
gegen dessen Vater Chlothar I. unterstützt, was ihn allerdings das Leben kostet; Gregor von
Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 20, pp. 152–53.
207 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 4, p. 137.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 531

und den anderen fränkischen Historiographen, die nicht überliefern, wie

die Bretonen unter fränkische Oberhoheit kamen, erwähnt der Byzantiner
Prokop die Kämpfe der Franken gegen die Armoricani, er nennt sie Arborycher
(Άρβόρυχοι), und berichtet, dass beide gentes auf Vorschlag der Franken ein
Bündnis und Blutsbrüderschaft eingingen, sodass die beiden christlichen
Völker durch ihre Vereinigung zu großer Macht gelangten.208 Das spricht eher
für eine Vereinigung gleichberechtigter Partner als für eine Unterwerfung durch
die Franken. Tatsächlich ist die Abhängigkeit der Bretagne vom Frankenreich
meist recht lose.209 Die fehlende Kontrolle der Franken zeigt sich in den immer
wieder aufflammenden Konflikten mit den Bretonen, die dabei sehr destruktiv
agieren, nächtliche Überfälle verüben, den offenen Kampf aber furchtsam ver-
meiden.210 Die bretonischen comites brechen ihr Wort, selbst wenn sie Geiseln
stellen.211 Fränkische Strafaktionen rufen nur noch größere Wut der Bretonen
hervor.212 Die Franken versuchten also immer wieder, den Frieden, den sie
militärisch nicht durchsetzen konnten, durch Verträge mit den Bretonen zu
erlangen. Das beinhaltete wohl die formale Unterwerfung der bretonischen
comites unter den Frankenkönig, hatte aber in der Praxis kaum Auswirkungen
auf deren Handlungsfähigkeit. Über die Staatsform der Bretonen bevor sie
unter fränkische Oberhoheit gelangten, sagt Gregor nichts, er berichtet nur,
dass die Britanni zur Zeit Childerichs I. von den Goten aus Bourges vertrie-
ben wurden.213 Jordanes berichtet über dieselbe Schlacht, dass der Brittonum
rex Riotimus für Kaiser Anthemius (467–72) mit 12,000 Mann gegen den
West­g otenkönig Eurich kämpfte, jedoch unterlag.214 Die Stärke der Armee
des Riotimus beweist, selbst wenn sie übertrieben ist, dass er ein machtvoller
Herrscher war, der nicht nur von einem ostgotischen Geschichtsschreiber mit
208 
Prokop, Bella, hrsg. und übers. v. Veh, v. 12. 13–17, ii, p. 96.
209 
Gregor von Tours: Zehn Bücher Geschichten, übers. v. Buchner, i, p. 198, Anm. 1.
210 
Verwüstung und Verheerung ganzer Gebiete: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg.
v. Krusch, v. 29, p. 234; x. 9, p. 491; von Äckern: v. 31, p. 236; von Höfen: ix. 18, p. 431;
Menschenraub: v. 29, p. 234; v. 31, p. 236; ix. 18, p. 431; ix. 24, p. 444; Plünderung: v. 29,
p. 234; ix. 18, p. 431; Brandschatzung: v. 29, p. 234; Wegführung unermesslicher Beute: v. 31,
p. 236; Beraubung der Weingärten: v. 31, p. 236; ix. 18, p. 431; ix. 24, p. 444. Zerstörung der
Saaten: ix. 24, p. 444; Nächtliche Überfälle: iv. 20, p. 153; v. 26, p. 232; Furcht vor offenem
Kampf: iv. 20, p. 153; ix. 18, p. 431.
211 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v. 26, p. 232; v. 31, p. 236; ix. 18, p. 431;
ix. 24, p. 444; x. 9, p. 493.
212 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, v. 29, pp. 234–35.
213 
Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 18, p. 65.
214 
Jordanes, Getica, hrsg. v. Mommsen, c. 45, pp. 118–19.
532 Gerald Krutzler

dem Königstitel bezeichnet wurde, sondern ihn wohl auch selbst führte, was
dann auch für seine Nachfolger gelten könnte. Das legt, ebenso wie das selb-
ständige Agieren der Bretonen in den Kämpfen mit den Franken nahe, dass
Gregor den Inhaber eines regnum, den er nicht als rex klassifizieren kann und
möchte, comes nennt.215
Bei Fredegar sind die Bretonen Nachkommen Japhets, die auch Inseln
bewohnen und eine eigene Sprache haben.216 Wo Fredegar Informationen von
Gregor von Tours verarbeitet, behält er dessen Terminologie bei und bezeich-
net die Herrscher der Bretonen als comites.217 Anlässlich der Unterwerfung des
Judicaël unter Dagobert I. ändert Fredegar seine Terminologie. Judicaël kommt
aus seinem regnum Britanniae und trägt den Titel rex Brittanorum, er weigert
sich wegen seiner Frömmigkeit und Gottesfurcht mit Dagobert zu essen und
wird trotzdem am nächsten Tag mit Geschenken entlassen und kehrt in das reg-
num Brittaniae zurück.218 Die geänderte Terminologie beschreibt vielleicht eine
Änderung des politischen Verhältnisses zwischen Franken und Bretonen, die
vielleicht die Konflikte zwischen Chlothar II., Theudebert II. und Theuderich II.
genutzt hatten, um sich aus ihrem Abhängigkeitsverhältnis zu befreien und
auch formell ihre Unabhängigkeit, ausgedrückt durch den Titel rex, zu erringen.
Dafür spricht neben der Betonung der Stellung des rex Britannorum Judicaël
in seinem regnum Britanniae auch die Nennung der „Grenze der Bretonen“
als Außengrenze des an Theuderich II. fallenden Gebietes.219 Möglicherweise
brachte erst Dagoberts I. Abkommen mit Judicaël die Bretonen wieder stärker
unter fränkischen Einfluss.220

215 
Anton, ‘Troja-Herkunft’, p. 8, Anm. 17.
216 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, i. 5, p. 21 (Nachkommen Japhets, wohnen auch auf
Inseln); i. 6, p. 24 (Volk mit eigener Sprache).
217 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 12, pp. 97–98 (Goten vertreiben Bretonen aus
Bourges); iii. 54, p. 107 (Chramn flieht zu comes Chonoober); iii. 77, pp. 113–14 (Kämpfe
um Nachfolge comes Bodichs); iii. 80, p. 115 (Comes Waroch überfällt Sachsen von Bayeux);
iv. 11, p. 127 (Krieg im 30. Jahr Guntchrams); iv. 12, p. 127 (Tod des Beppolenus); vgl. Gregor
von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 18, p. 65; iv. 20, pp. 152–53; v. 26, pp. 232–33; x. 9,
pp. 491–94.
218 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 78, p. 160. Judicaël war der heilige Fürst der
Bretonen, gestorben 647/58; Fredegar, Chroniken, übers. v. Kusternig, p. 251, Anm. 49.
219 
Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 20, p. 128 (Britannorum limes).
220 
Dass es sich der von Fredegar trotz rex-Titel sehr unterwürfig dargestellte Judicaël leisten
konnte, Dagobert I. zu brüskieren und ohne Folgen dessen Essenseinladung auszuschlagen, und
er dann trotzdem mit Geschenken verabschiedet wurde, spricht für eine nach wie vor starke
Position der Bretonen gegenüber den Franken.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 533

Im Liber Historiae Francorum erscheinen die Bretonen nur einmal als

Verbündete Chramns im Konflikt mit seinem Vater Chlothar I. Ihr Anführer
Conober, der vom Schlachtfeld flieht und getötet wird, trägt den Titel rex
Brittanorum, während die Vorlage Gregor von Tours und der davon abhän-
gige Fredegar Chonoober comes nennen. 221 Möglicherweise spiegelt diese
geänderte Terminologie die Realität der Entstehungszeit des Liber Historiae
Francorum wider. Der Autor „verbesserte“ vielleicht Gregors comes zu rex, weil
die Bretonen seiner Zeit eine formelle Unabhängigkeit erlangt hatten oder ihre
Herrscher vielleicht, unabhängig vom tatsächlichen Grad ihrer Abhängigkeit
vom Frankenreich, spätestens seit Judicaël reges genannt wurden. Jedenfalls
waren die bretonischen Herrscher, mit denen die Merowinger zu tun hatten,
mächtige Männer, deren Sitze Zentren von Reichtum, Konsum und einer rudi-
mentären Administration waren.222
Vergleichbare terminologische Abweichungen gibt es bei Römern, Loire-
Sachsen, Bayern und Friesen. Syagrius wird bei Gregor von Tours als rex
Romanorum bezeichnet, bei Fredegar als patricius Romanorum, sein Vater
Aegidius ist bei Gregor von Tours magister militum, im Liber Historiae
Francorum rex Romanorum, bei Fredegar bleibt er in den aus Gregor entlehn-
ten Kapiteln ohne römischen Titel, in einem Exzerpt aus Hydatius wird aller-
dings der Tod eines zeitlich passenden comes Aegidius durch Gift gemeldet.223
Die Herrscher der Bayern werden in fränkischen und angelsächsischen Quellen
als duces bezeichnet, bei Paulus Diaconus daneben aber teilweise auch als reges
oder principes.224 Auch die Herrscher der Friesen sind, von einer Ausnahme

221 
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 28, pp. 287–88; vgl. Gregor von Tours,
Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iv. 20, pp. 152–53; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 54, p. 107.
222 
Smith, Province and Empire, p. 21.
223 
Syagrius: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 27, p. 71; Fredegar, Chronicae,
hrsg. v. Krusch, iii. 15, p. 98. Aegidius: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 11,
p. 61; Fredegar, Chronicae, hrsg. v. Krusch, ii. 56, p. 77 (comes Aegidius); iii. 11–12, pp. 95–97;
Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch, c. 6, p. 247.
224 
Merowingerzeitliche fränkische Quellen: Gregor von Tours, Historiae, hrsg. v. Krusch,
iv. 9, p. 141 (Garivaldus dux = Garibald I.; vgl. Origo gentis Langobardorum, hrsg. v. Waitz,
cc. 4 und 6, pp. 4–5; Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, hrsg. v. Bethmann und Waitz,
i. 21, p. 60 („[…] uni ex suis, qui dicebatur Garipald […]“), iii. 10, p. 97, iii. 30, p. 109. Gregor
von Tours stellt aller­dings keinen Bezug zu den Bayern her). Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg.
v. Krusch, cc. 25–26, p. 180 (dux Odilo), c. 38, p. 185 (dux Tassilo III.). Angelsächsische
Quellen: Bonifatius, Epistolae, hrsg. v. Tangl, nr. 45, p. 72; nr. 80, p. 178 (dux Odilo); Willibald,
Vita Bonifatii, hrsg. v. Levison, c. 6, p. 35 (dux Hugbert), c. 7, pp. 37–38 (dux Odilo); Lex
Baiwariorum, hrsg. v. Schwind, iii. 1, p. 313 (duces). Karolingerzeitliche fränkische Quellen:
534 Gerald Krutzler

abgesehen, in den fränkischen Quellen duces, während sie in angelsächsischen

Quellen zumeist als reges bezeichnet werden.225

Schlussbemerkung
Der Ursprung und die Herkunft von Völkern sind ein wichtiges Thema in der
frühmittelalterlichen Historiographie. Ursprungs- und Migrationsgeschichten,
Völkergenealogien, Verwandtschaften zwischen Völkern, die Identifikation
verschiedener Völker miteinander und die damit oftmals in Zusammenhang
stehende Änderung von politischen Strukturen sind altbekannte Elemente der
antiken Ethnographie, die von frühmittelalterlichen Autoren aufgegriffen wur-
den, um ihre gentile Umwelt zu systematisieren und ins biblische Weltbild zu
integrieren. Derartige ethnographische Informationen über fremde gentes in
der fränkischen merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie können reale ethnische,
politische oder soziale Prozesse abbilden oder auch nur biblisches Wissen oder
gelehrte Konstruktionen ohne unmittelbaren Bezug zur Realität sein.
So beschreibt die Gleichsetzung von Alemannen und Sueben einen realen
ethnischen Prozess, den Zusammenschluss zweier gentiler Gruppen, die zum

Odilo (dux): Annales regni Francorum, hrsg. v. Kurze, a. 743, p. 4; Annales qui dicuntur Einhardi,
hrsg. v. Kurze, aa. 741, 743, pp. 3, 5; Tassilo III. (dux): Annales regni Francorum, hrsg. v. Kurze,
a. 748, p. 6; a. 757, p. 14; a. 763, p. 20; a. 781, p. 58; a. 787, pp. 74, 76; a. 788, p. 82; Annales
qui dicuntur Einhardi, hrsg. v. Kurze, a. 748, p. 9; a. 757, p. 15; aa. 763, 764, p. 23; a. 781,
p. 59; a. 787, pp. 75, 77; a. 788, p. 81. Bayern (ducatus): Annales regni Francorum, hrsg. v. Kurze,
a. 748, pp. 6, 8; Annales qui dicuntur Einhardi, hrsg. v. Kurze, a. 748, p. 9. Päpstliche Quellen:
Liber Pontificalis, hrsg. v. Duchesne, Gregor II., c. 4, p. 398 (dux Theodo). Langobardische
Quellen: Rex-Titel für Garibald I. und Tassilo I.: Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum,
hrsg. v. Bethmann und Waitz, iii. 10, p. 97 („Garibaldus Baioariorum rex“), iii. 30, p. 109
(Garibaldus rex); iv. 7, p. 118 („Tassilo […] aput Baioariam rex“). Andere Titel: iv. 37, p. 131
(princeps Baioariorum); iv. 39, p. 133 („Tassilo [I.] dux Baioariorum“); iv. 44, p. 180 („Theudo
Baioarium dux gentis“).
225 
Merowingerzeitliche fränkische Quellen: Liber Historiae Francorum, hrsg. v. Krusch,
cc.  50–52, pp.  324–26 (dux Radbod); Continuationes Fredegarii, hrsg. v. Krusch, cc.  6–9,
pp. 172–74 (dux Radbod), c. 17, p. 176 (dux Bubo), c. 31, p. 181 („reges Winidorum seu
Frigionum“). Angelsächsische Quellen: Willibald, Vita Bonifatii, hrsg. v. Levison, c.  4,
pp. 16–17: „Redbodus rex Fresonum“; c. 5, p. 23: „Raedbodus Fresonum rex“; Alcuin, Vita
Willibrordi, hrsg. und übers. v. Reischmann, c. 5, pp. 54; c. 9, pp. 60; c. 10, pp. 62; c. 11, pp. 64.
Radbod rex. Beda, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, hrsg. und übers. v. Spitzbart, v. 9–10,
p. 456 (Radbod rex); Pseudo-Ionas, Vita Vulframni, hrsg. v. Levison, cc. 4, 6 (Radbod dux); c. 9
(Radbod princeps), pp. 664, 666, 668.
nichtfränkische Völker in der merowingerzeitlichen Historiographie 535

Zeitpunkt des ersten Gebrauchs in einem zu frühen und räumlich unpassenden

spanischen Zusammenhang bei Gregor von Tours noch nicht lange zurücklag.
Die Gleichsetzung von Hunnen und Awaren bei Fredegar identifiziert hinge-
gen zwei Völker miteinander, die nichts miteinander zu tun hatten, sich aber
in ihrer Lebensweise ähnelten und, im zeitlichen Abstand von 100 Jahren, mit
Pannonien dasselbe Land bewohnten. Das Muster der antiken Ethnographie,
alle Steppenvölker unabhängig von ihren Eigennamen, als Skythen oder
Hunnen zu bezeichnen, führte bei Fredegar, vielleicht auch schon bei Gregor
von Tours, zur Vorstellung einer hunnischen Kontinuität in Pannonien von
Attila bis in die eigene Gegenwart.
Die Gleichsetzung der Römer mit den Latinern bei Fredegar dient in erster
Linie dazu, eine Verbindung zwischen Römern und Trojanern herzustellen, die
er für seine fränkische Trojaherkunft braucht. Gleichzeitig ist sie die Abbildung
eines realen ethnischen Prozesses, der Gründung Roms durch Latiner. Daneben
tradiert er die polyethnische, rechtlich begründete und durch einen politischen
Prozess entstandene Struktur des populus Romanus, die diesen befähigte, sich
im ganzen Mittelmeerraum auszubreiten, sodass sich schließlich multiple
Identitäten, begründet auf römisches Bürgertum und regionale oder gentile
Zugehörigkeit, herausbilden konnten.226 Die Römer sind für Fredegar ebenso
eine gens der Vergangenheit wie der Gegenwart, ihre Angehörigen in ihrem
eigenen Reich ebenso zu finden wie im Frankenreich. Gregor von Tours ist sich
der sprachlichen oder politischen Zusammenhänge von Galliern, Karthagern
und Griechen mit den Römern zwar bewusst, er verschweigt sie aber und sucht
nach alternativen Identifikationsmöglichkeiten, vielleicht weil er mit Rom eine
sakrale Komponente verbindet, und lässt die Römer deshalb, dem Konzept
des Untergangs der gens mit Ende ihres letzten rex folgend, im Frankenreich
Chlodwigs verschwinden.
Ein territorialer und institutioneller Pluralismus ist mit sächsischen Gruppen
verbunden. In Gallien unterstanden sie der Herrschaft der Frankenkönige. In
Germanien stellten sie diese aber permanent in Frage. Dabei stützten sie sich
auf eine kleinräumige und polyethnische Struktur von Kleinkönigen oder
„Satrapen“, die sich nur im Notfall einem dux, vielleicht dem angelsächsischen
bretwalda vergleichbar, unterordneten.
Auf die unterschiedliche Wahrnehmung von politischen Strukturen ver-
weist das Beispiel der Bretonen. Dass Gregor von Tours ihre Herrscher comi-
tes und nicht reges nennt, hat ideologische Gründe und soll einen fränkischen

226 
Ein vergleichbares Phänomen stellt die spätere Kategorisierung von Bayern, Thüringern
usw. als Franken dar.
536 Gerald Krutzler

Herrschaftsanspruch dokumentieren, der jedoch nie gänzlich durchgesetzt

werden konnte. Die Evidenz bei Fredegar und im Liber Historiae Francorum,
wo der Herrscher der Bretonen als rex bezeichnet wird, spricht für eine auch
terminologische Anerkennung der faktischen Unabhängigkeit der Bretonen.
In diesem Zusammenhang erweist sich die Wichtigkeit auch nicht originäre
Textstellen zu beachten und auf mögliche Überarbeitungen zu untersuchen.
Denn während Fredegar in seinen Exzerpten aus Gregor von Tours den comes-
Titel übernimmt und erst in seiner eigenen Darstellung zum rex Brittanorum
übergeht, verändert der Liber Historiae Francorum einen auf Gregor basieren-
den Text von comes auf rex.
Die Wahrnehmung fremder gentes in merowingerzeitlichen Quellen erweist
sich somit als ein überaus komplexes und uneinheitliches Konglomerat, das auf
übernommenem alten Wissen biblischen oder heidnischen Ursprungs, neue-
ren Informationen, eigener Anschauung und jeweiliger Intention basiert.

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 Scritture nazionali e aree culturali:
le epigrafi tra forme, contenuti
e trasmissioni testuali in Italia e
nell’Europa altomedievale

Flavia De Rubeis

Assalonne aveva iniziato a fare costruire per sé, ancora vivente,

la stele che si trova nella Valle dei Re,
poiché aveva detto: ‘Non ho figli per perpetuare il mio nome’.
E così diede il suo nome alla stele
(ii Sm 18. 18; Gn 35. 20).

I
l processo della trasformazione da scrittura di ceppo romano a scritture
nazionali in ambito epigrafico è stato accompagnato da un parallelo cam-
biamento sia in ambito testuale che nella pratica della trasmissione dei
testi.1 alla trasformazione scrittoria si affianca una nuova percezione dei conte-
nuti e delle scritture che se da una parte crea una evidente cesura con quanto il
mondo romano aveva coltivato nel corso dei secoli, dall’altra ne ricalca le pras-
si.2 Questo processo di trasformazione quindi porta in sé un bagaglio culturale
imponente costituito da tendenze culturali ora in nitida opposizione fra di loro,
ora in sintonia reciproca.3 E da tale processo di fusione, differenziato per aree

1 
Sulla trasformazione scrittoria e il particolarismo grafico v. Cencetti, ‘Dall’unità al parti-
colarismo grafico’; sulle scritture nazionali v. De Rubeis, ‘Schriftkultur und Formen graphischer
Vermittlung’; De Rubeis, ‘La produzione epigrafica’.
2 
De Rubeis, ‘La scrittura delle élites tra crisi e rinnovamento’.
3 
Cf. ad esempio la ritualità della memoria funeraria orale, gestuale e scritta, De Rubeis, ‘La
memoria e la pietra’.

Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl
and Gerda Heydemann, CELAMA 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.1.101673
pp. 549–580 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS
550 Flavia De Rubeis

culturali e per cronologie, scaturiscono nel corso del primo medioevo le specifi-
cità nazionali in un movimento di continuo rinnovamento.
Questo modello interpretativo propone una ricostruzione che in realtà
percorre non solo l’alto medioevo, ma attraversa buona parte del medioevo e
presuppone da un lato una consapevole ripresa di costumi più o meno distanti
nei secoli, dall’altro l’adattamento inconsapevole degli stessi schemi culturali a
nuove esigenze o meglio, a vecchie esigenze riproposte in nuove vesti e matrici.
In questo panorama in trasformazione si colgono alcuni punti fermi, o dive-
nuti tali nella letteratura di settore. Fra questi, il motivo ricorrente della decre-
scita numerica della produzione epigrafica legata invariabilmente alle trasfor-
mazioni sociali e culturali sopravvenute nel corso dei secoli v–viii.4
Traducendo in termini numerici il fenomeno, per la sola città di Roma Carlo
Carletti propone c. 40,000 iscrizioni prodotte tra iii e v secolo,5 a fronte delle
90,000 classiche contate da Werner Eck il quale ne annovera c. 35,000 per il
periodo tardo antico sottolineando inoltre come il 94 percento di queste ultime
siano funerarie — dato che peraltro è confrontabile con la produzione prece-
dente con la medesima percentuale di iscrizioni funerarie.6 Per Luca Cardin la
stima della produzione epigrafica romana legata ai cristiani si aggira intorno a
33,000 iscrizioni per l’arco cronologico compreso tra il iv e il x secolo.7 Nella
città di Roma al dato numerico è possibile anche associare un dato distributivo
per secoli, con una concentrazione massima nella metà del secolo iv e, pro-
porzionalmente, un declino progressivo che raggiunge il punto critico verso il
secolo viii.8
Spostando l’analisi numerica ad altre aree, Mark Handley,9 nel periodo com-
preso tra iv e viii secolo e con riferimento alle epigrafi funerarie dei cristiani,
annovera circa 1250 iscrizioni per la Spagna e circa 1500 per la Gallia.

4 
De Rubeis, ‘La scrittura delle élites tra crisi e rinnovamento’. Sull’analfabetismo altomedie-
vale e la sua analisi in seno alle sottoscrizioni dei documenti privati, si rinvia a Petrucci e Romeo,
Scriptores in urbibus, dove viene indagato sotto più profili, epigrafico, librario e documentario.
5 
Carletti, ‘Spazio e parola’, p. 81; per Roma, v. Carletti, Epigrafa dei cristiani in occidente,
pp. 48–50.
6 
Eck, ‘Iscrizioni sepolcrali romane’, p. 227; Eck, ‘Epigrafi e costruzioni sepolcrali sotto
s. Pietro’, p. 251.
7 
Cardin, Epigrafia a Roma nel primo medioevo, p. 27.
8 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 14–17.
9 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 4–22.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 551

All’interno di queste cifre, è possibile cogliere una più capillare distribu-

zione, come ad esempio la Gallia che dimostra un vero e proprio crollo circo-
scrivibile entro gli inizi e la prima metà del vii secolo e, sotto il profilo distri-
butivo per area geografica, dove la concentrazione epigrafica fino al secolo viii
riguarda principalmente le regioni della valle del Rodano, le aree di Marsiglia,
Arles, Lyon, con una iniziale rarefazione epigrafica diffusa (sec. iv) cui si
oppongono i secoli vi–viii con una maggiore presenza epigrafica.10 In opposi-
zione, il caso di Trevi che conserva 921 epigrafi per il periodo tardo antico, ossia
la massima concentrazione per la Gallia,11 per declinare però immediatamente
dopo. Si tratta complessivamente, per la Gallia e per il mondo merovingio, di
una produzione relativamente contenuta e prevalentemente concentrata in area
urbana, specie se posta in relazione con le vaste necropoli che risultano essere
sostanzialmente anepigrafi, quali ad esempio quelle di La Turraque, La Grande
Oye a Doubs, Frénouville, per citarne alcune. La necropoli di Luxeuil con c. 60
sepolture, reca meno di 10 iscrizioni e tutte relative solo a nomi per la fase
merovingia; compatibilmente con i risultati degli scavi, allo stato attuale, per il
periodo successivo ci si limita a tre casi della fine del secolo viii più articolati e
tutti in scrittura libraria.12
In area visigota, il declino per la produzione latina inizia con il secolo v
e subisce una sollecitazione in concomitanza con la conquista araba della
penisola sebbene le avvisaglie di una differenziazione produttiva si possano
già riscontrare per il secolo v (sebbene siano state espresse anche numerose
perplessità circa la responsabilità assoluta della crisi epigrafica attribuita alla
conquista araba e circa la attendibilità dei dati cronologici raccolti nei corpora
epigrafici iberici).13 Sarà con il vii secolo che il quadro muterà radicalmente
quando, dopo una iniziale ripresa circoscrivibile tra gli inizi e la prima metà del
vii secolo, seguirà un primo rallentamento, entro la fine di quel secolo e quindi
un crollo deciso tra inizio e fine viii, dati che sono stati criticamente affron-
tati e sui quali grava il sospetto di una attribuzione eccessivamente larga per il
periodo antecedente il 711 e al contrario eccessivamente stretta per il periodo
successivo.14 Tenendo conto delle osservazioni di Mark Handley, in ogni caso
una flessione generalizzata che coinvolge non solo la Spagna e la Gallia, ma

10 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 184–85.
11 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 4–5; Halsall, ‘Burial Writes’, pp. 225–26.
12 
Koch, Inschriftenpaläographie des abendländischen Mittelalters, pp. 61–64.
13 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 184–85.
14 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 184–85.
552 Flavia De Rubeis

anche altre aree dell’Europa continentale ed insulare lascerebbero supporre in

ogni caso una tendenza al basso. Oscillazioni che sia per la Gallia che per la
Spagna trovano spiegazione nelle alternanze, specie nel passaggio tra vii e viii
secolo, delle élites locali al potere. L’instabilità e il frequente avvicendamento
dei ‘potenti’ su base locale determinerebbe così una ulteriore flessione della
produzione epigrafica.15
Per l’Italia il quadro complessivo, in termini numerici per la tarda antichità
e con l’esclusione della città di Roma, appare vario.16 La cautela segnalata da
Handley circa l’attendibilità complessiva dei dati offerti dai corpora epigrafici
per la tarda antichità rimane valida, non essendo stato effettuato alcun censi-
mento esaustivo dei materiali epigrafici italiani. Ciononostante, ad una ana-
lisi parziale, i materiali nella cronologia comprensiva tra periodo tardo antico
e primo medioevo evidenziano la consueta concentrazione di iscrizioni per
i grandi centri urbani e una rarefazione per le aree rurali. Un numero soste-
nuto di epigrafi tardo antiche appartiene ad Aquileia (410),17 dopo Roma la
seconda — allo stato attuale delle ricerche — città italiana, seguita da Milano,
Napoli, Concordia, Como e altre aree. I dati, sebbene non inclusi nel computo
di Handley, indicano un netto declino per l’alto medioevo,18 con una flessione
decisa a partire dalla fine del vi secolo fino al secolo vii. Con il secolo viii e poi
il ix si assiste ad una inversione di tendenza (non diffusa in modo omogeneo
sul territorio) anche se per questo periodo occorre sottolineare come la pro-
duzione complessiva sia da assegnare ai centri urbani (quali Pavia, Benevento,
Como, Napoli, Salerno, Roma) con eccezioni nel territorio — quali i centri

15 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 181–86.
16 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 16–17.
17 
Conto complessivo che annovera anche le iscrizioni musive dedicatorie; Handley, Death,
Society and Culture, pp. 16–17.
18 
Non essendo possibile, allo stato attuale, eseguire un computo dei materiali epigrafici
conservati in Italia per l’alto medioevo, ho utilizzato i dati desunti da un insieme di pubblica-
zioni relative alla epigrafia altomedievale in Italia. Fra questi ne ricorderò alcuni. Per il Veneto,
Ravenna, Lombardia i materiali censiti dal gruppo di lavoro facente capo all’Università Ca’
Foscari di Venezia, per la preparazione dei volumi delle Inscriptiones Medii Aevi Italiae (se­coli
v–xii), in preparazione per il Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto). Per il
Veneto: Inscriptiones Medii Aevi Italiae, iii: Veneto, Belluno, Treviso, Vicenza, ed. De Rubeis. Per
il Lazio: Inscriptiones Medii Aevi Italiae, i. 1: Lazio, Viterbo, ed. Cimarra et al.; e per l’Umbria:
Inscriptiones Medii Aevi Italiae, ii: Umbria, Terni, ed. Guerrini. Sono stati censiti inoltre i 23
volumi del Corpus della scultura altomedievale, il repertorio offerto da Le iscrizioni dei sec. vi–
vii–viii esistenti in Italia, ed. Rugo; i materiali del sito archeologico di San Vincenzo al Volturno,
editi parzialmente in Mitchell, ‘Late Antique and Early Medieval Carved Inscriptions’.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 553

monastici di San Vincenzo al Volturno e Montecassino, o le chiese legate a pic-

coli centri nel territorio.
I dati qui presentati, corrispondenti allo stato attuale delle ricerche — e
quindi suscettibili di eventuali oscillazioni —, non possono essere presi così
come sono senza una riflessione critica. Ora se è vero che l’alfabetismo è stato
più capillarmente diffuso nella società romana e che i primi secoli del medio-
evo conoscono un rallentamento e una mutazione profonda nell’ambito della
produzione scrittoria e nella percezione di questa, è altrettanto vero però che
il metro di giudizio attualmente applicato alla produzione epigrafica nel suo
complesso deve tenere anche conto di fattori diversi non quelli esclusivamente
legati all’alfabetismo stesso della società. Fra questi, a rendere il metro di giu-
dizio poco preciso, o quanto meno poco definibile nei propri contorni, un
ruolo importante lo ha svolto la distruzione dei materiali epigrafici avvenuta
nel corso dei secoli. A questo processo sarà possibile applicare quello che è stato
definito da Horst Bredekamp come ‘il principio della distruzione produttiva’,19
con riferimento all’operazione messa in atto da Bramante di distruzione della
vecchia basilica costantiniana di San Pietro in Roma a favore di una nuova basi-
lica, nascente quasi dalle rovine — provocate — della precedente.
In questo processo ben documentato e assai praticato di distruzioni e di
ricostruzioni, diversi furono i manufatti destinati a subire misera sorte special-
mente quando il loro destino era legato a strutture la cui funzione appariva in
declino o già lo era: colonne, iscrizioni, altari, materiali distribuiti tra la tarda
antichità e il primo medioevo non più utili o riutilizzabili e destinati ad una
dispersione imponente. È il riflesso di un atteggiamento forse più diffuso di
quanto non si possa pensare ed è un atteggiamento che ha le sue radici lontane
nell’attitudine già romana e ancora prima proto-romana e già greca al riuso, o
allo spoglio sistematico dei monumenti o delle strutture non più in uso.20
Un secondo elemento è quello relativo ai manufatti sui quali si trova con
maggiore frequenza la scrittura esposta.
Ivan Di Stefano Manzella, nel capitolo dedicato alla classificazione dei
reperti che possono essere corredati di epigrafi e su di una cronologia che
arriva fino al tardo antico, dedica ben 30 pagine ai tipi di manufatti che

19 
Dal titolo del libro di Bredekamp, La fabbrica di San Pietro.
20 
Cf. la normativa in uso: Codex Theodosianus, ed. Mommsen, ix. 17, pp. 463–66 (De sep-
ulchri violati); Paulus, Sententiae, ed. Baviera, i. 21. 8, ii, p. 335: ‘Qui monumento inscriptos
titulos eraserit vel statuam everterit vel quid ex eodem traxerit, lapidem columnamve sustulerit,
sepulchrum violasse videtur’.
554 Flavia De Rubeis

recano iscrizioni e individua 83 tipologie testuali epigrafiche collegate a que-

sti manufatti.21
Osservando i tipi di manufatti elencati e le varietà testuali individuate e
ponendo a confronto l’insieme con la complessiva produzione altomedievale,
è possibile una prima ed immediata considerazione: intere classi di manufatti e
intere classi di tipologie testuali sono scomparse. Ad esempio, i cippi di acque-
dotti che ne indicano il tracciato e che ne seguono anche le sorti quando queste
strutture cadono in abbandono o comunque non vengono più costruite ex novo.
I cippi segnaletici, ossia dedicati a rivendicare o a tutelare la proprietà, i quali
con il venire meno delle strutture per le quali essi costituiscono il naturale cor-
redo (quali ad esempio possedimenti terrieri, o monumenti familiari, tutelati
da precise norme giuridiche) ne seguono la sorte cessando di essere prodotte.
Questa classe documenta anche una prassi specifica, ossia la pratica di acquisto
in vita delle sepolture per se stessi e per eventuali congiunti o appartenenti al
proprio gruppo — tramite un formulario grosso modo fisso caratterizzato dal
sibi fecit et suis, o se vivente, o nelle varianti se vivus.22 Tale pratica di acquisto
‘sé vivente’ della sepoltura non è comune in età precostantiniana, mentre lo
diviene a partire dalla seconda metà del secolo iv per raggiungere con il secolo
v e vi la massima diffusione, in coincidenza con il massimo sviluppo del culto
martiriale nelle catacombe e della tendenza sempre più diffusa a farsi seppellire
ad sanctos:23 questo uso conosce una flessione numerica a partire dal secolo vi
e sono rari i casi di sepolcreti familiari documentati per l’alto medioevo con
l’esplicita menzione della proprietà o dell’acquisto della sepoltura stessa.
In seno ai monumenti funerari familiari poi, la prassi scrittoria nel medioevo
viene ad occupare un posto secondario, quando non del tutto inesistente: veri
mausolei visibili della memoria di un gruppo ristretto di persone, tali monu-
menti appaiono prevalentemente privi di memoria scritta, salvo casi particolari
o iscrizioni celebrative di personaggi appartenenti alle élites.24 Ricorderò l’e-
sempio dell’Ipogeo dei Duni a Poitiers datato variamente tra vii–viii secolo
dove una élite locale, recuperando e reinterpretando manufatti di età romana,

21 
Di Stefano Manzella, Mestiere di epigrafista, pp. 75–115.
22 
Attestato anche nella forma se bibus: Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae, ed. Silvagni,
ii. 5791 (a. 382), iscrizione funeraria di Serbulus. Per le caratteristiche epigrafiche di questo
manufatto, cf. Cardin, Epigrafia a Roma, p. 30. Cf. inoltre Carletti, Epigrafa dei cristiani in occi-
dente, pp. 97–100.
23 
Carletti, Epigrafa dei cristiani in occidente, pp. 97–99.
24 
De Rubeis, ‘La scrittura delle élites tra crisi e rinnovamento’.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 555

lascia memoria scritta di sé.25 Al contrario, quando in Italia settentrionale tra

viii e ix secolo Totone da Campione e il suo gruppo familiare realizzano per
se stessi un mausoleo familiare, alla preoccupazione di redigere correttamente
i testamenti per evitare confusioni nelle trasmissioni patrimoniali non affian-
cano la necessità di affidare alla memoria scritta epigrafica i propri defunti.26
Ma Totone non appartiene alla alta società longobarda dove al contrario già
con la fine del secolo vii i vertici fanno redigere per se stessi, nei propri mau-
solei familiari, carmina funerari articolati e formalmente ben definiti sia sotto
il profilo testuale che sotto il profilo formale — scrittura e apparato decorativo
—, sia in Italia settentrionale sia in quello meridionale, come a Pavia, Salerno o
a Benevento.27
Di diversa natura è invece l’epigrafia che documenta la proprietà di un ter-
reno, quale che sia la destinazione di uso del terreno medesimo e la sua esten-
sione, o disposizioni relative a monumenti sepolcrali. Questa particolare tipo-
logia testuale, volta alla esposizione di un titolo di proprietà diviene rara fino a
quasi scomparire con l’alto medioevo: un esempio tardo di iscrizioni relative al
possesso di un territorio, o di beni terrieri si trova oggi nel territorio veronese.
Si tratta di due cippi segnaletici relativi ad un bosco di proprietà del mona-
stero di San Pietro in Valle, con una datazione posta tra x e xi secolo.28 Da
questa particolare classe epigrafica a carattere segnaletico e relativo ai titoli di
proprietà si deve distinguere poi la donazione pro anima che non appartiene
alla prassi tardo antica e che invece progressivamente conosce una certa diffu-
sione, almeno a partire dal secolo viii–ix, e che arriverà non solo a divenire
consuetudine, ma consuetudine con proprie regole di ‘topografia’ epigrafica,
ossia collocazione strategicamente mirata delle iscrizioni su luoghi deputati,
quali i portali delle chiese e comunque all’esterno degli edifici.29

25 
Cf. Cécile Treffort, Mémoires carolingiennes, p. 134; Palazzo-Bertholon and Treffort,
‘Pour une relecture de l’hypogée’.
26 
Sul mausoleo familiare di Totone da Campione cf. Gasparri e La Rocca, Carte di famiglia.
27 
De Rubeis, ‘La produzione epigrafica’, pp. 404–22; De Rubeis, ‘La tradizione epigrafica
longobarda’.
28 
Sui cippi di San Pietro in Valle cf. Saggioro, ‘Ricognizioni, paesaggi ed esperienze di
ricerca’, p. 81, n. 58; sul monastero di S. Pietro cui si riferirebbero entrambe le epigrafi, Saggioro,
Casagrande, e Marastoni, ‘San Pietro in Valle’.
29 
Per la prima fase del documento epigrafico, cf. Nicolaj, ‘Documento in epigrafe’. Sulla
produzione epigrafica di documenti, v. ad esempio il quadro delineato per Roma da Carbonetti
Vendittelli, ‘Sicut inveni in thomo carticineo’.
556 Flavia De Rubeis

Ora, senza proseguire nella esemplificazione delle classi di epigrafi scom-

parse o mutate nel corso dei secoli v–viii, vorrei solo sottolineare come nella
valutazione del fenomeno di contrazione si debba tenere conto delle distru-
zioni intenzionali o casuali dei materiali epigrafici; e che tali variabili conse-
guentemente debbano indurre cautela nella interpretazione dei dati numerici e
quantitativi, fermo restando che senza nessun dubbio la produzione epigrafica
medievale se posta a confronto con quella di età romana risulta in ogni caso
perdente, sotto il profilo quantitativo.
Tenuto conto di queste variabili, anticipo qui i risultati proposti.
Il confronto tra scritture e aree di insediamento di gruppi estesi dopo una
iniziale fase di adattamento, cui corrisponde una linea evolutiva della prassi
epigrafica sostanzialmente omogenea nelle forme e nei contenuti in ambito
europeo (variabile per luoghi, gruppi e dinamiche di assorbimento delle culture
scritte), permette di riconoscere aree scrittorie uniformi all’interno di territori
definiti e riconoscibili come di pertinenza di gruppi specifici (merovingi, lon-
gobardi, visigoti, britanni e poi anglo-sassoni per macro aree scrittorie, con le
rispettive scritture merovingiche, visigotiche, longobarde e insulari). Questo
fenomeno trova poi assoluta corrispondenza con quanto si andava precisando,
nelle medesime cronologie, in ambito librario.30
In queste macro aree scrittorie estese e omogenee al proprio interno (per i
sistemi grafici lì utilizzati) è possibile riconoscere un legame esistente tra gruppi
sociali e scritture in uso. Tale legame, all’interno di una cronologia collocabile
tra v e vii secolo (ma con dinamiche differenziate per aree come si vedrà qui di
seguito), inizialmente appare instabile ma, con i successivi secoli tra viii–ix, si
consolida fino a permettere il riconoscimento di dirette e precise relazioni tra
gruppi sociali e iscrizioni appartenenti o prodotte nei loro territori.
Il riconoscimento del preciso legame élites/epigrafi permette di meglio com-
prendere i momenti e le modalità delle oscillazioni quantitative che interessano
il periodo nel suo complesso, ossia v–ix secolo.
La rarefazione della produzione epigrafica, il cui picco al basso è general-
mente circoscrivibile al secolo vii, si accompagna ad un parallelo fenomeno di
differenziazione sociale degli individui presenti nelle epigrafi, fenomeno che è
possibile seguire secondo uno schema evolutivo preciso. In particolare questa
selezione ‘naturale’ dei committenti e dei gruppi sociali orienta progressiva-
mente l’utilizzo della scrittura alle sole élites, indipendentemente dalla fun-
zione, dalle forme e dai contenuti delle epigrafi medesime e, parallelamente,

30 
De Rubeis, ‘Schriftkultur und Formen graphischer Vermittlung’, pp. 33–38.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 557

elimina del tutto gli individui non ascrivibili a quei livelli sociali dal contesto
della produzione epigrafica.
Questo processo di divaricazione della committenza alta da quella media
o bassa inizia con il v secolo e sfocia nel vii con la totale scomparsa dei livelli
sociali bassi dalla produzione epigrafica (si veda il caso di Roma con il massimo
di produzione, in ambito funerario dei cristiani e relativamente a iscrizioni
datate, nella metà del secolo iv, indipendentemente dal committente, dato che
porterà alla scomparsa delle classi meno abbienti dalle testimonianze scritte a
partire dal vii secolo).
In stretta corrispondenza con il legame stabilito tra committenza e produ-
zione epigrafica la scrittura sembra infine arrivare, a partire dal secolo vii in poi
(sempre per aree e con modalità differenziate), ad essere utilizzata in maniera
consapevole per manifestare l’appartenenza dei committenti a precisi livelli
sociali e sembra essere legata — in riferimento alla scrittura nella sua accezione
morfologica — a esigenze di carattere ‘pubblicistico’.
In conseguenza di questo ultimo dato la scrittura appare direttamente legata
a gruppi sociali specifici, finendo con l’indicare una corrispondenza tra pro-
duzione grafica e identità culturale, area per area e divenendo in tal modo un
marcatore culturale.31
Da tale tendenza evolutiva del rapporto scrittura-società, è possibile poi
identificare la presenza di fenomeni di instabilità grafica legati direttamente
a episodi di ‘turbolenza’ sociale. In particolare, a periodi di maggiore instabi-
lità socio-politica corrisponde una rarefazione nella produzione epigrafica e,
in alcuni casi, anche di mutamenti grafici o cambiamenti — al basso — della
qualità scrittoria.32
Esemplare sotto questo profilo è il territorio italiano (per la cronologia che
partendo dal secolo vii arriva fino al secolo ix) al cui interno si distinguono
differenti sistemi scrittori legati ai territori longobardi — o sottoposti all’in-
fluenza culturale di questi — o sottoposti all’influenza della cultura romana.
In generale la distribuzione territoriale delle iscrizioni sembra indicare una
maggiore concentrazione di epigrafi all’interno dei centri urbani rispetto alle
aree rurali le quali generalmente risultano povere in fonti epigrafiche, salvo casi
sporadici: ricordo ad esempio le iscrizioni di, o concentrazioni legate a, mona-
steri distribuiti in aree rurali (cito per esempio Montecassino, Bobbio o San
Vincenzo al Volturno). All’interno di questo territorio, il quadro distributivo

31 
De Rubeis, ‘La cultura per le élites’. Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 181–86.
32 
De Rubeis, ‘Epigrafia femminile’.
558 Flavia De Rubeis

delle epigrafi rivela delle oscillazioni legate a specifiche aree, in particolare il

cosiddetto corridoio bizantino (ossia quella area che, attraversando diagonal-
mente l’Italia, congiunge Ravenna e Roma), e l’Italia meridionale longobarda e
bizantina. Nel primo caso, ossia il corridoio bizantino, le instabilità e le oscilla-
zioni scrittorie sono attestate quasi esclusivamente nella fascia di collegamento,
mentre ne risultano quasi esenti le città alle estremità opposte. In area longo-
barda, ad una fase iniziale di adattamento della società longobarda alla cultura
grafica romanica preesistente, si possono individuare aree di maggiore stabilità
nella scrittura e nei formulari (corrispondenti generalmente ai grandi centri
urbani quali ad esempio Pavia, Brescia, Benevento, Salerno), in opposizione
ad aree di maggiore variabilità scrittoria (con una accentuazione per l’Italia
centro-meridionale nel ducato di Spoleto e, per periodi specifici di crisi sociale,
Benevento e Salerno) direttamente connessa con le instabilità sociali legate a
quelle aree.
Il medesimo atteggiamento, ma con variazioni decisamente più evidenti,
si può cogliere in seno alla produzione epigrafica nelle Isole Britanniche nel
periodo tra v e vi secolo e, più tardi, fino al vii secolo. Qui il passaggio tra scrit-
ture di derivazione romana verso forme ibride (sia sotto il profilo grafico che
impaginativo)33 assume dimensioni macroscopiche e il fenomeno poi assume
maggiore peso se valutato in ordine alla distribuzione geografica delle epigrafi.
Queste infatti risultano essere concentrate in quelle aree dove più lontana era
stata la presenza romana e sono iscrizioni prevalentemente funerarie con un
formulario ridotto ai soli dati biometrici dell’inumato: per queste specifiche
caratteristiche e per la loro area di produzione il fenomeno è stato posto in col-
legamento con gli spostamenti massicci delle popolazioni sotto la pressione sas-
sone verso aree prima scarsamente romanizzate.34
Oscillazioni nella produzione epigrafica poi sono state rilevate anche con
riferimento alla complessiva produzione merovingia e visigota, 35 laddove
Handley analizzando le oscillazioni pone l’accento in particolare sulle commit-
tenze laiche ed ecclesiastiche e sulla loro capacità di intervenire sulla comples-
siva produzione epigrafica. Le tabelle riportate dallo studioso indicano in effetti
una discrepanza oggettiva tra iscrizioni connesse con gli ambiti produttivi laici
e quelli religiosi evidenziando anche, attraverso l’analisi delle titolature ripor-

33 
Koch, Inschriftenpaläographie des abendländischen Mittelalters, pp. 88–98.
34 
Tedeschi, Congeries lapidum, i, pp. 4–5.
35 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 35–64, in particolare il capitolo 4 dedicato alla
complessa relazione tra produzione epigrafica e aristocrazia, laica ed ecclesiastica.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 559

tate dai materiali presi in esame, la linea di tendenza che vede progressivamente
in ascesa le epigrafi legate alle élites laiche ed ecclesiastiche rispetto a quelle
prive di qualifica sociale specifica. E in secondo luogo si possono rilevare con
precisione all’interno di questo spostamento della produzione epigrafica verso
la fascia alta della società lo stacco progressivo che indica per i laici una posi-
zione numericamente ridotta rispetto a quella degli ecclesiastici (o comunque
di individui di sesso maschile e femminile agenti nel quadro complessivo della
sfera religiosa). Il quadro offerto da Handley volutamente non tiene conto delle
qualità grafiche e scultoree delle iscrizioni riportate a campione, argomento che
riveste tuttavia una precisa valenza sociale per le aree esaminate, come si vedrà
qui di seguito.
Diversamente dalle tendenze evolutive che, come si è visto, indicano note-
voli differenze tra le varie aree prese in esame, un elemento le accomuna tutte:
lo spostamento da spazi aperti — di tradizione romana — verso spazi chiusi,
secondo quel fenomeno che è stato definito da Armando Petrucci di ‘ecclesia-
lizzazione’ della scrittura.36
Il fenomeno dello spostamento degli spazi riveste un ruolo particolare e pre-
ciso in seno alle società che quelle epigrafi hanno prodotto.
Se, come è stato sostenuto, il processo di esposizione delle scritture tende a
privilegiare, per l’alto medioevo, gli spazi chiusi e più in particolare le strutture
ecclesiastiche (siano esse connesse con le chiese siano esse monastiche), tutta-
via ritengo che questo processo sia legato non solo ad un fenomeno di alfabe­
tismo sempre più vicino agli ecclesiastici e sempre più lontano dai laici. Ritengo
infatti che lo spostamento sia da porre in stretta correlazione con il nuovo
rapporto che nel corso del medioevo si andava instaurando tra Chiesa e poteri
locali. E tra ecclesiastici e laici, dove lo spostamento dei centri di potere acqui-
sisce all’epi­grafia nuove topografie che non prevedono più un unico baricentro
— sia esso laico sia esso ecclesiastico — dove collocare le scritture, quanto piut-
tosto differenti topografie epigrafiche strettamente correlate con il momento
di produzione, l’autorità locale e i rapporti che questa o queste intrattengono
fra di loro. Si assiste in questo caso ad una vera strategia topografica degli spazi
delle scritture, una rappresentazione grafica voluta e non casuale.
Poiché esigenza prima di chi fa apporre un’iscrizione all’interno di determi-
nati contesti non è tanto quella di celebrare la propria memoria o la memoria
del proprio agire mediante iscrizioni poco visibili, o poco fruibili, quanto piut-
tosto rendere visibile ad altri il proprio operato, ne consegue che la collocazione

36 
Petrucci, Le scritture ultime, p. 50.
560 Flavia De Rubeis

assume un ruolo di primaria importanza: sotto tale aspetto la scelta del luogo
dove apporre iscrizioni è fondamentale. In linea di massima le scritture compa-
iono laddove è più probabile che lettori occasionali, e non, possano accedere,
almeno visivamente, come le recinzioni presbiteriali, le pergulae, per non par-
lare di portali e finestre, o programmi decorativi; più raramente altari, e ancora
più raramente le iscrizioni dedicatorie apposte sugli altari stessi. In secondo
luogo, tali scritture oscillano, nella presenza, tra periodi a maggiore concentra-
zione numerica e periodi dove le scritture sono quasi solo limitate alle iscrizioni
didascaliche, con buona pace dei committenti.
Ora, mentre per le scritture didascaliche non si afferrano sensibili differenze
con le eventuali collocazioni delle iscrizioni che compaiono all’interno delle
strutture ecclesiastiche, per le due categorie successive (dedicatorie e comme-
morative), al contrario, è possibile cogliere attraverso i secoli tendenze fra di
loro differenti.
Le iscrizioni dedicatorie designano, per definizione, il committente, o i
committenti, di un determinato altare o arredo ecclesiastico. Non è frequente
per i secoli dell’alto medioevo avere notizia di committenti registrati su altari;
al contrario, sarà con il secolo x, e con maggiore vigore a partire dal secolo xi,
che si avrà una vera e propria impennata scrittoria, con un numero crescente
di iscrizioni dedicatorie (ferma restando la cautela imposta dalle scomparse di
manufatti), anche se occorre precisare che il luogo privilegiato per le iscrizioni
dedicatorie rimane comunque quello più accessibile allo sguardo del lettore
occasionale, generalmente individuabile in luoghi elevati tali da consentire una
lettura a distanza del testo inciso, o in alternativa, una collocazione in posi-
zione tale da rendere quasi obbligata al visitatore (alfabeta, ovviamente), la let-
tura del testo.
Sotto questo profilo vorrei citare il caso del Santuario di Santa Maria in
Vescovìo, presso Farfa nel Lazio, in particolare l’area del presbiterio che ha
subito nel corso dei secoli vari rimaneggiamenti, a partire dal secolo viii exeu-
nte. Conseguente uno dei rimaneggiamenti, al di sotto dell’altare, alla mede-
sima quota della cripta anulare è visibile una iscrizione realizzata su materiale
di reimpiego, inserita a ridosso delle reliquie dei martiri. Lungo il margine, in
senso di lettura opposto rispetto al lettore occasionale, corre una iscrizione
dedicatoria di un laico, un non identificato conte Giovanni. Sempre sul mede-
simo altare, ma questa volta nell’area del presbiterio, probabilmente esito di
rimaneggiamenti dei secoli xi–xii, corrono altre iscrizioni, questa volta con
sola funzione didascalica o esegetica lungo il lato destro dell’altare. Una terza
iscrizione, rivolta verso la navata, anch’essa in origine probabilmente con mede-
sima funzione esegetica sovrastava le due figure.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 561

Nessuna iscrizione corre lungo il lato rivolto all’abside, rendendo così, di

fatto, i testi visibili e destinati alla comunità.
Spostando l’attenzione invece sulle iscrizioni commemorative, il quadro
diventa più complesso.
Esemplari sotto questo profilo le iscrizioni legate agli altari.
Innanzitutto le scritture degli altari e per gli altari hanno due collocazioni
fisiche diverse — e come tali anche le scritture sono profondamente differenti,
come ho già ricordato in precedenza. Una prima tipologia epigrafica, normal-
mente residente internamente alle casse reliquiario, consiste nella maggior
parte dei casi in tabelle plumbee, o comunque metalliche, atte a raccogliere la
notizia del santo o dei santi lì conservati in forma di reliquia. Raramente tali
iscrizioni assurgono al rango delle iscrizioni lapidee e per morfologia scrittoria
sono generalmente poco curate e in ogni caso assumendo la qualifica di iscri-
zioni ricognitive e chiuse con le reliquie stesse non sono destinate alla lettura
pubblica; per questi manufatti sarà opportuno ricordare che una significativa
impennata si ha a partire dal secolo x ma soprattutto dall’xi. Ricordo anche
qui a titolo esemplificativo la memoria dei Santi Vittore e Corona presso l’omo-
nimo santuario a Feltre (Belluno), una tabella di piombo eseguita nel secolo xi
exeunte che riferisce della traslazione delle reliquie ad opera di Teodoro martire,
nonché della deposizione ad opera del vescovo Solino, lamina eseguita con ogni
probabilità per volere del vescovo Arpone. Sempre sul medesimo santuario, l’i-
scrizione commemorativa della consacrazione del santuario ai santi Vittore e
Corona ad opera del vescovo Arpone e la ricognizione delle reliquie ad opera
del vescovo di Feltre e Belluno, Iacobo giunta in copia del 1355, in veste epigra-
fica, di un testo del 1101. In questo caso, la volontà precisa da parte del vescovo
è di dare visibilità completa alla propria opera e allo scopo l’iscrizione viene
collocata all’esterno dell’altare (ritengo la collocazione attuale del manufatto
identica a quella del perduto originale)37 e, perché possa essere letta da tutti,
rivolta verso la navata.
I casi che ho citato qui a pura esemplificazione di altre realtà indagate per
il territorio italiano indicano per gli altari una prudente campagna di scrittura,
che vede comunque protagoniste assolute le iscrizioni esegetiche, quindi le
iscrizioni didascaliche e in terza posizione, le iscrizioni legate ai committenti.
E fra questi ultimi, una micro gerarchia, che vede i laici in netta minoranza
rispetto agli ecclesiastici, a conferma che a poter agire nel cuore del sacro siano
solo gli ecclesiastici e i laici possano intervenire, generalmente, solo in posi-

37 
Inscriptiones Medii Aevi Italiae, iii: Veneto, Belluno, Treviso, Vicenza, ed. De Rubeis, no. 2 e 4.
562 Flavia De Rubeis

zione subordinata. Varrà la pena di rilevare come la presenza delle iscrizioni

legate ai laici sia, di norma, su strutture di arredo ecclesiastico in posizione mar-
ginale rispetto a quelle degli ecclesiastici.
Una conferma, sotto questo specifico aspetto viene da una classe particolare
di manufatti, le casse reliquiario e le mense di altare.
A Verona, presso S. Fermo e Rustico, è conservata la cassa reliquiario dei due
martiri. La cassa, plumbea, reca lungo i lati esterni, la ricognizione delle reli-
quie e la data presunta di arrivo delle reliquie, ossia immediatamente a ridosso
del 774, essendo nominati il re longobardo Desiderio e il figlio correggente.
Unitamente alla ricognizione delle reliquie, compaiono firme, o meglio i nomi
di numerosi personaggi, circa quaranta fra uomini e donne, i quali personaggi
fanno incidere il proprio nome all’esterno della cassa; all’interno, a diretto con-
tatto delle reliquie, la firma di un presbitero.38 Si tratta di un documento che
assume quasi valore ufficiale, non la semplice ricognizione delle reliquie. Non è
certamente una pratica devozionale, ma riproduce su scala decisamente ridotta
la stessa dinamica di collocazione fisica delle scritture distinguendo quasi l’area
dei laici (esterna al contatto con le reliquie dei martiri) rispetto a quella eccle-
siastica (interna e a diretto contatto con le reliquie medesime). Un caso analogo
è testimoniato in Francia per il x secolo a Vivès en Roussillon,39 dove sulla cassa
in stucco si riscontra la medesima mappatura grafica di Verona: i presbiteri sono
collocati internamente, mentre i laici compaiono, uomini e donne, ma anche
presbiteri, all’esterno. Si registra una anteriorità della cassa di Verona rispetto
alla cassa di Vivès en Roussillon, discrepanza confermata anche dalla documen-
tazione che per le aree d’oltralpe, quali la Francia, registra tale pratica a partire
dal secolo x o xi e con una concentrazione maggiore nell’area meridionale, in
Catalogna e tenuto conto che il più antico testimone di questa pratica della
registrazione su lipsanoteca è fatto risalire ad una datazione incerta tra vii e
ix secolo, scoperta a Roc d’Enclar e conservata a Santa Colonna (Andorra)40 e
reca non una sequenza di nomi bensì una citazione biblica.
E a stabilire una ulteriore differenza, i nomi incisi sulla cassa di Verona sem-
brano più legati, a mio parere, ad una documentazione relativa alla ricognizione

38 
I graffiti sono stati già riprodotti, e pubblicati alla metà del xviii secolo dall’abate Vallarsi
in occasione della ricognizione sulle reliquie: Vallarsi, Sacre antiche iscrizioni; su culto dei mar-
tiri, cf. Golinelli, ‘Passione e traslazione dei Santi Fermo e Rustico’. La riapertura dell’altare nel
2005 ha permesso il rilievo completo dei graffiti e la loro disposizione sul manufatto a cura della
scrivente, lavoro in corso di studio.
39 
Treffort, Mémoires carolingiennes, pp. 50–52.
40 
Treffort, Mémoires carolingiennes, pp. 50–51.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 563

delle reliquie che non ad una pratica devozionale che vede coinvolti eventuali
committenti, come sembrerebbero essere invece i casi francesi.
Un caso differente è costituito, come ho già richiamato in precedenza, dai
graffiti incisi o scritti a inchiostro, direttamente sulla mensa d’altare.
Questa pratica è nota anche al di là delle Alpi, come il caso scoperto nel
1978 a Reichenau-Niederzell, sul lago di Costanza, 41 con incisi o scritti ad
inchiostro, i nominativi di presbiteri a partire dal secolo ix, per citare uno fra i
più noti. Alla medesima cronologia si deve legare ancora una volta il santuario
di Santa Maria in Vescovìo, dove sulla mensa d’altare sono registrati, scritti ad
inchiostro, i nominativi di presbiteri in minuscola carolina.
La topografia delle testimonianze scritte sulla mensa d’altare del santuario
di Vescovìo appare analoga a quella della Reichenau: una maggiore concentra-
zione ai margini della mensa d’altare, presumibilmente intorno al calice o alla
patena, zona privilegiata per accogliere tali registrazioni, come è stato rilevato
da Cécile Treffort. La maggiore concentrazione dei nomi di Vescovìo appare
distribuita lungo il margine sinistro della mensa d’altare e un numero esiguo
nel lato destro (tracce esigue), con una assenza totale nella area centrale della
mensa. Questo uso sembrerebbe essere legato alla pratica memoratoria, con
la recitazione delle preghiere per i presbiteri registrati sulla mensa d’altare al
momento della liturgia, come è stato suggerito per le mense d’oltralpe.42
Sembrerebbe così potersi ipotizzare una topografia delle scritture, legata
di volta in volta ad esigenze differenti. Dalla pratica memoratoria delle mense
d’altare, che sembrerebbe essere concentrata nei secoli ix–x per poi declinare
progressivamente nei secoli successivi, si passa alla logica delle collocazioni che
vedono una precisa mappatura legata alla sacralità del supporto scrittorio.
In questa topografia delle iscrizioni, il posto assegnato ai laici sembrerebbe
essere di coronamento rispetto a quello pertinente l’area del sacro, intendendo
con questo anche le iscrizioni esegetiche e didascaliche. Questa pratica dello
scrivere sui manufatti, almeno per i secoli alti del medioevo, sembra inoltre
preferire collocazioni visibili anche a distanza, mentre per gli altari tali prassi
sembrerebbe essere meno praticata, ai fini della visibilità a distanza e conse-
guentemente trova maggiore spiegazione se ricondotta all’ambito strettamente
ecclesiastico (ad esempio, con la pratica della lettura memoratoria, delle pre-
ghiere per i defunti).

41 
Si veda Geuenich e Neumüllers-Klauser, Die Altarplatte.
42 
Treffort, Mémoires carolingiennes, pp. 58–63.
564 Flavia De Rubeis

Lo spostamento fisico delle scritture dei laici, come dimostrano gli esempi
qui citati, prevede quindi una sorta di ‘area di rispetto’ per le iscrizioni legate
agli ecclesiastici che, almeno in una cronologia collocabile per i primi secoli del
medioevo, porta ad ampliare il concetto di ecclesializzazione della scrittura così
come inteso da Armando Petrucci, introducendo al fianco dello spostamento
fisico della scrittura all’interno degli spazi ecclesiastici, anche il concetto di
scritture legate agli ecclesiastici e gli spazi ad essi dedicati — o riservati.
In questa ottica, gli spostamenti degli spazi dedicati ad accogliere le epigrafi
se messi in stretta correlazione con i committenti delle epigrafi inoltre permet-
tono di identificare aree geopolitiche piuttosto definite.
In Croazia e in Italia settentrionale alto-adriatica e poi, più in generale
nell’Italia longobarda settentrionale e meridionale, è possibile osservare una
significativa presenza laica attiva soprattutto nell’atto di dedica e di donazione
di arredi ecclesiastici, se non di fondazione di strutture ecclesiastiche o monasti-
che. Tale presenza acquista proporzioni degne di essere ricordate. In particolare
la produzione a cavallo tra ix e x secolo indica una consistente presenza di laici
per l’area della Dalmazia, cui si devono numerosi elementi di arredo liturgico,
con una presenza di iscrizioni dedicatorie attestata intorno al 70 percento della
complessiva produzione tra ix e xi secolo;43 di queste, per il secolo ix, su 22
iscrizioni dedicatorie, ben 17 appartengono ai laici e sono eseguite all’interno
di materiali destinati agli arredi liturgici.44 Fra i laici, una massiccia presenza di
iscrizioni dedicatorie datanti all’era del sovrano (dux); alle élites appartengono
le epigrafi con le menzioni anche del gruppo familiare (moglie, figli eventuali).
Il numero maggiore delle epigrafi compare con la seconda metà del secolo ix,
ossia successivo all’879, anno del riconoscimento del duca Branimiro da parte
del papa Giovanni viii e, come è stato suggerito da Vedrana Delonga, questa
crescita e concentrazione tra ix e x secolo potrebbe essere l’esito di una strate-
gia della visibilità da parte dell’appena riconosciuto sovrano croato.45
Alla medesima strategia si possono poi ascrivere le menzioni, in sede di data-
zione, dei sovrani sia in ambito merovingio, sia in ambito longobardo.
Un atteggiamento analogo si riscontra in Italia, dove però si può risalire
già al secolo viii per individuare laici attivi in ambito epigrafico. Alle attività
del re Liutprando (713–44) e alla prolissa produzione epigrafica legata alla sua
persona individuata da Nick Everett,46 sarà indispensabile affiancare ed esten-

43 
Delonga, The Latin Epigraphic Monuments, pp. 285–86 e 307–09.
44 
Traggo i dati dal catalogo di Delonga, The Latin Epigraphic Monuments.
45 
Delonga, The Latin Epigraphic Monuments, pp. 341–42.
46 
Everett, Literacy in Lombard Italy.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 565

dere a diverse epoche e a diversi sovrani e alle élites longobarde tale attitudine.
A Cividale del Friuli, presso la basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, è conservato
l’altare del duca Ratchis (737–44), sul quale compare una lunga iscrizione dedi-
catoria databile agli anni di ducato; sempre presso la medesima basilica è con-
servato il battistero del patriarca Callisto (737–56): gli evangelisti che vi com-
paiono, resi mediante simboli, recano codici aperti sui quali sono state incise
delle citazioni dal Carmen paschale di Celio Sedulio; sempre sul medesimo
manufatto compare l’iscrizione dedicatoria del patriarca Sigualdo (756–86).47
A Murano, presso la chiesa dei Santi Maria e Donato, un gruppo di iscrizioni
risalenti ad una cronologia collocabile entro la prima metà del secolo ix ricorda
le donazioni di arredi da parte di più gruppi familiari, fra i quali se ne riconosce
uno, probabilmente da identificare con quello del tribuno Domenico e della
moglie Costanza ricordati nell’iscrizione di una pergula parzialmente reimpie-
gata all’esterno dell’abside nel restauro del secolo xii. Ad una cronologia prece-
dente si devono le epigrafi del gastaldo Radoald, vir magnificus, incisa su di una
vasca di età romana e da questo stesso fatta riconvertire in vasca per la pubblica
utilità48 attribuita al secolo viii e coeva all’iscrizione dedicatoria dell’arredo
liturgico di San Giorgio in Valpolicella del gastaldo Refol,49 opera del magi-
ster Ursus. Scendendo poi verso l’Italia centrale, si ricorderà la committenza del
duca Ilderico registrata su di un pluteo in San Pietro in Valle a Ferentillo (Terni)
della prima metà del secolo viii.50 L’elenco potrebbe estendersi ulteriormente
passando verso l’Italia meridionale. Per i territori fuori dalle due aree indicate,
le testimonianze di manufatti da collegarsi all’evergetismo laico sono più rari.
Situazione che appare confermata, sebbene in ambito differente, anche dalle
iscrizioni funerarie presenti in Gallia e in Spagna dove il rapporto tra laici ed
ecclesiastici appare in netto favore per questi ultimi: le tabelle di Handley indi-
cano infatti per la Gallia tra tarda antichità e primo medioevo un rapporto di
152 iscrizioni che menzionano laici a fronte di 312 epigrafi per gli ecclesiastici;
per la Spagna, a parità di cronologia, 60 laici e 390 ecclesiastici; tra vii secolo
e prima metà del secolo viii in Gallia si registrano 17 epigrafi con la esplicita

47 
De Rubeis, ‘La scrittura epigrafica in età longobarda’; De Rubeis, ‘Le forme dell’epigrafia
funeraria longobarda’.
48 
Inscriptiones Medii Aevi Italiae, iii: Veneto, Belluno, Treviso, Vicenza, ed. De Rubeis,
no. 63.
49 
Figura in Tedone, ‘Dati e riflessioni sulle tombe altomedievali’, Figg. 60–63.
50 
Guerrini, Umbria, Terni, no 35. Per la datazione, De Rubeis, ‘La tradizione epigrafica
longobarda’, pp. 491–92.
566 Flavia De Rubeis

menzione di laici a fronte di 44 epigrafi menzionanti ecclesiastici ed in Spagna,

per la medesima cronologia si registrano 14 epigrafi per i laici contro 90 per
gli ecclesiastici,51 secondo un rapporto percentuale che si mantiene stabile nel
corso dei secoli. Le cifre riferite sono da collocarsi all’interno della produzione
funeraria, ma se si sposta l’indagine sul profilo della produzione di altra catego-
ria (dedicatoria in primo luogo), si noterà che l’epigrafia laica tende a scendere
ulteriormente quasi alla scomparsa per il periodo che intercorre tra vii e viii
secolo per le aree indicate, mentre per l’Italia longobarda la presenza dei laici
all’interno dell’epigrafia altra che non la funeraria appare rimanere piuttosto
stabile (sebbene sia doveroso richiamare l’attenzione che rispetto alla comples-
siva produzione epigrafica per i secoli vii–viii exeunte il rapporto percentuale
tra epigrafi funerarie ed epigrafi di altro contesto indica una netta superiorità
per le prime sulle seconde).
Sempre rispetto al medesimo concetto di spazi aperti e spazi chiusi inoltre
occorre una ulteriore precisazione, ossia verificare se sotto il profilo della pro-
duzione epigrafica sia lecito parlare di solo e semplice spostamento degli spazi
e dei contenuti delle epigrafi, o se non sia più corretto pensare a piuttosto ai
processi di diversificazione, di trasformazione o di adattamenti di modelli ‘epi-
grafici’ e ai moventi, ossia alla scelta selettiva degli spazi da occupare.
Come già sottolineato, sembrerebbe potersi individuare spazio connesso
con il sacro — di norma occupato da ecclesiastici — e spazio connesso e con-
cesso ai laici. L’esempio delle scritture collocate sulle casse reliquiario sembrano
infatti riverberarsi su più ampia scala sugli edifici stessi delle chiese, laddove
all’interno la presenza dei laici appare più rarefatta rispetto a quella degli eccle-
siastici mentre, al contrario l’esterno delle chiese sembra porre a pari condi-
zioni laici ed ecclesiastici. Dal piccolo spazio costituito dal reliquiario, si passa
all’altare e quindi al ciborio. L’altare, come si è già visto, appare riservato agli
ecclesiastici, mentre sui cibori visibili a distanza, sono possibili i nomi dei
laici, come testimoniano le numerose iscrizioni apposte su pergulae e cibori in
Croazia, nel corso del secolo ix, che sembrano costituire una eccezione quasi
(per l’elevato numero), anche se occorre precisare come in Italia non manchino
esempi di cibori recanti dediche dei laici. Il fenomeno non appare nei manufatti
provenienti dalla Gallia e pochi sono quelli provenienti dalla Spagna, dove la
collocazione cronologica deve essere fatta risalire ai secoli vi–vii.
Per l’Italia inoltre una particolare produzione isola la cultura grafica rispetto
alle realtà qui prese in esame, una consuetudine legata ad una vera e propria

51 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 45–64.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 567

strategia della visibilità. Mi riferisco in particolare all’uso delle iscrizioni monu-

mentali apposte all’esterno degli edifici dove i committenti o i dedicatari pos-
sono appartenere ad entrambe le categorie — ecclesiastici e laici —, sempre
rimanendo a livello di élites, beninteso.
Si tratta di tre iscrizioni monumentali,52 più una quarta andata probabil-
mente perduta nel corso del secolo xvi, attribuibili ai secoli viii–ix (in almeno
due casi una valenza fortemente ideologica, ossia le due iscrizioni dedicatorie di
laici apposte su strutture ecclesiastiche, l’epigrafe dedicatoria del re Liutprando
sul San Salvatore di Brescia e l’iscrizione del principe di Benevento Arechi II
— 774/87 — a San Pietro a Corte a Salerno).53 Queste iscrizioni, caratterizzate
da particolari tecniche di lavorazione di tradizione romana classica (lettere in
bronzo dorato incastonate con perni di sostegno all’interno di solchi incisi a
sezione rettangolare), non trovano riscontro in altre aree almeno fino al secolo
ix, quando appariranno iscrizioni dedicatorie all’esterno dei monumenti prive
della caratteristica della monumentalità delle iscrizioni longobarde e realizzate
solo su lastre e non su fasce iscritte.54 Alla ripresa ideologica della monumen-
talità dell’epigrafe arriveranno i Carolingi in una epoca successiva cui affian-
cheranno anche l’uso della capitale epigrafica ripresa puntualmente dalla tradi-
zione epigrafica imperiale romana.55 Si noterà tuttavia che l’uso delle iscrizioni
monumentali, così come presso i Longobardi, non conoscerà presso i Carolingi
la medesima filologica e puntuale ripresa dal mondo romano: l’unica iscrizione
monumentale conosciuta allo stato attuale deve essere datata alla fine del secolo
ix, proveniente da Corvey sul Weser, in bronzo dorato, probabilmente desti-
nata alla chiesa abbaziale.56

52 
Tempietto al Clitunno (Spoleto), sec. viii; San Vincenzo al Volturno (prov. Isernia), San
Vincenzo maggiore, sec. ix in.; San Pietro a Corte (Salerno), sec. viii ex.
53 
Si tratta dell’iscrizione di Salerno, San Pietro a Corte, per la quale cf. Peduto, ‘Insediamenti
longobardi del ducato di Benevento’, pp. 321–25; Mitchell, ‘Le iscrizioni dedicatorie su edifici’,
e in partic. schede nn. 199, 200, 202; per Brescia, l’iscrizione dedicatoria del re Liutprando per
la chiesa di San Salvatore, perduta, per la quale si ha tradizione indiretta e non confermabile per
via testale, cosicché non potrà essere utilizzata in seno al presente lavoro.
54 
Si rinvia a Die Inschriften des Landkreises Bergstraße, ed. Scholz, nos 1–8, pp. 3–11. Sulle
iscrizioni monumentali e le loro specificità in ambito longobardo, cf. Mitchell, ‘Le iscrizioni
dedicatorie su edifici’, pp. 127–31.
55 
Una ampia rassegna di iscrizioni in capitale antiquaria carolingia è in Scholz,
‘Karolingische Buchstaben in der Lorscher Torhalle’; Die Inschriften des Landkreises Bergstraße,
ed. Scholz, pp. xxxix–xli, e nos 1–8, pp. 3–11.
56 
Münster, Westfälisches Museum für Archäologie. Immagine in Mitchell, ‘Le iscrizioni
dedicatorie su edifici’, figure 80, p. 130.
568 Flavia De Rubeis

Alla committenza dei laici, che, come si è visto, appare piuttosto articolata
per luoghi e cronologie, si potrà poi affiancare la medesima presenza dei laici in
un differente contesto, quello dei sistemi di datazione su usi locali, al sovrano.
Il sistema, come è noto, ha sostituito il precedente sistema di datazione di età
romana, andando ad affiancare l’indizione in sostituzione dell’età del conso-
lato, sebbene con modalità e tempi differenziati.57
Come è stato sottolineato, a proposito dei committenti laici e della loro
crescita in sede di produzione epigrafica in Croazia tra la fine del secolo ix e
la prima metà del secolo x, la presenza dei laici nel corso dei secoli vii–viii,
in sede di datazione, assume anche questa una differente connotazione se vista
nell’ottica della relazione tra cronologia, territorio e insediamenti.
Alle tipizzazioni sociali della produzione epigrafica infatti, si aggiungono
usi localizzati testuali per i quali la mappatura, partendo da un terreno comune
di formulari standardizzati e diffusi, assume una fisionomia variegata per aree
e cronologie differenti, aderente alla distribuzione cronologica e topografica
brevemente riassunta in precedenza.
Si prendano gli usi cronologici di datazione dove, come ha evidenziato
Jean Durliat58 e dove è tornato Mark Handley,59 sono ben visibili tali locali-
smi: Gallia e Spagna datano al sovrano locale già con la metà del secolo vi (per
la Spagna al regno di Atanagildo a. 558,60 per la Gallia, al regno di Teuderico
a. 511 o 526,61 o per Durliat già con il 496); in Italia le iscrizioni recanti la
datazione al regno goto già con il 538 (iscrizioni dei re Teoderico, Atalarico ad
esempio, realizzate su manufatti edilizi)62 e poi di età longobarda (iscrizione del
re Agilulfo, a. 590–616).63 Il gruppo delle epigrafi datanti al sovrano, inoltre,
sono generalmente iscrizioni dedicatorie e più raramente ritrova questo speci-
fico sistema di datazione su iscrizioni funerarie. In Spagna su 19 epigrafi recanti

57 
Durliat, ‘Épigraphie et société’, pp. 174–75.
58 
Durliat, ‘Épigraphie et société’, pp. 170–78.
59 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 110–38.
60 
Iscrizione proveniente da Asan, Tarragona, ed. Vives, no. 284.
61 
Iscrizione proveniente da Coudes (Puy–de–Dôme), conservata attualmente presso
il Museo Bargoin a Clermont-Ferrand: Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule
viii:Aquitaine première, ed. Prévot, no. viii. 52, pp. 183–85.
62 
Ad esempio, per Atalarico: Pavia, Museo Civico: Le iscrizioni dei sec. vi–vii–viii esistenti
in Italia, ed. Rugo, v, no. 110.
63 
Milano, Museo Civico; Le iscrizioni dei sec. vi–vii–viii esistenti in Italia, ed. Rugo, v,
no. 12.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 569

l’era del sovrano, solo 7 sono funerarie; in Gallia le iscrizioni recanti la men-
zione del sovrano per la data sono invece tutte funerarie.64
In Croazia le iscrizioni datanti all’era del sovrano partono dall’888 e si regi-
stra una netta crescita dell’uso dell’era del sovrano a partire da questa data.65
Delle 17 iscrizioni dedicatorie appartenenti a laici, ben 8 recano la datazione
secondo l’era del sovrano, con una cronologia compresa tra 888 e fine del secolo
ix. Poche le epigrafi funerarie recanti questo sistema di datazione.
Presso i Longobardi su c. 14 iscrizioni recanti l’era del sovrano, solo 4 sono
funerarie. La percentuale di iscrizioni recanti la datazione al sovrano longo-
bardo inoltre è concentrata in Italia settentrionale e centrale comprensiva del
Ducato di Spoleto, e copre l’intero periodo da Agilulfo fino alla doppia tito-
lazione di Desiderio e Adelchi (anni 759–74),66 mentre per l’Italia meridio-
nale tale uso appare limitato, sopravvenendo come uso cronologico l’era della
Natività.
All’era di Carlo Magno si farà risalire un frammento di arco di ciborio, conser-
vato a Cortona e datato tradizionalmente sulla base testuale all’800–14:67 ma si
tratta di un manufatto eccezionale, sotto il profilo della datazione all’era del sovrano
carolingio, così come lo saranno i manufatti datati all’era dei sovrani successivi.
Si dovrà aspettare il secolo ix perché un uso singolo torni ad essere diffuso
al di sopra delle singole aree culturali, ossia l’anno della Natività,68 criterio
che riporterà con differenti tempi e modalità ad una unificazione formulare
destinata a rimanere salda nel corso del medioevo. La consuetudine di datare
all’anno della Natività in ambito epigrafico si diffuse, in realtà, solo a partire
dal secolo ix per le aree d’oltralpe, mentre in Italia cominciò a divenire pratica
comune con la metà del ix: risalgono a questo periodo infatti alcuni fra i più
antichi testimoni, quali le iscrizioni di Pola (857), di Como (893), di Parma
(895), Brescia (897), quindi Milano, a partire dal 900.69 In Croazia, come già
ricordato, si ha la prima attestazione all’anno della Natività con l’888 (Muc,
Dalmazia centrale) in una epigrafe dedicatoria del duca Branimiro.70

64 
Handley, Death, Society and Culture, p. 124.
65 
Traggo i dati da Delonga, The Latin Epigraphic Monuments.
66 
Ad esempio, Sirmione, Castello Scaligero, arco di ciborio con iscrizione, datato 756–74
all’era del sovrano Desiderio associato con Adelchi.
67 
Cortona, Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca.
68 
Favreau, ‘Épigraphie médiévale’, 173–74.
69 
Favreau, ‘Épigraphie médiévale’, pp. 173–74.
70 
Delonga, The Latin Epigraphic Monuments, no. 91, pl. xlii, p. 133.
570 Flavia De Rubeis

È evidente da questa esemplificazione, che l’era locale datante ai sovrani è

direttamente collegata non tanto ai primi insediamenti nei territori romanizzati
da parte di nuovi gruppi sociali, quanto piuttosto ad una fase di stabilizzazione
di queste popolazioni nei nuovi territori e soprattutto al loro riconoscimento
‘ufficiale’ (si pensi al caso qui citato dell’epigrafe di Carlo Magno). Per le popo-
lazioni romaniche l’utilizzo dell’età dell’impero non risultava possibile anche e
soprattutto in riferimento ai nuovi gruppi che si andavano sostituendo ai Romani
stessi. E del resto, come è stato sottolineato da Jean Durliat, una datazione all’era
locale del sovrano sarebbe stata poco accorta in una fase di consolidamento dei
nuovi poteri e di ricostruzione di nuovi equilibri e solo con il consolidamento
e il riconoscimento ufficiale si arriva alla datazione secondo il nuovo sistema.71
Sotto questo profilo la tabella cronologica comparativa dello stesso Durliat
dimostra inequivocabilmente la necessità di utilizzare un sistema di datazione
legato all’autorità locale riconosciuta.72 Il dato poi assume maggiore significato
se incrociato con i contenuti e si ricorderà che normalmente le epigrafi datanti
all’era del sovrano rivestono carattere ufficiale (commemorative, dedicatorie),
mentre le iscrizioni recanti menzione del sistema di datazione all’indizione sono
normalmente funerarie (salvo il caso della Gallia che reca menzione del sovrano
in contesti quasi esclusivamente funerari). Sotto questo profilo l’impiego delle
epigrafi risponde pienamente e consapevolmente alla strategia della visibilità,
sia nei contenuti sia nelle formule, mentre apparentemente sembrerebbe rispon-
dere con minore vigore al ruolo di marcatore culturale data la diffusione della
consuetudine epigrafica celebrativa. In realtà, proprio per questo ruolo così for-
temente connotante le attività delle élites, le epigrafi ben presto appaiono con-
notate da impiego di scritture e impianti decorativi locali tali da renderle veri e
propri marcatori culturali ed elementi di riconoscibilità sociale.73
Sempre con gli usi cronologici poi si possono avere delle differenziazioni
che tuttavia non sembrano rivestire il carattere di marcatore culturale (sotto
il profilo delle identità nazionali), quanto piuttosto sembrano potersi mettere
in relazione — nel suo utilizzo più tardivo — con usi locali legati a particolari
tipologie testuali o ambiti di impiego.
In particolare l’indicazione del giorno secondo il sistema delle idi, none e
calende di tradizione romana viene sostituito progressivamente in tutta l’Eu-
ropa. Ma tale cambiamento vede inizialmente Roma in prima posizione con
una attestazione al 301 del giorno del mese secondo l’uso progressivo del com-
71 
Durliat, ‘Épigraphie et société’, p. 175.
72 
Durliat, ‘Épigraphie et société’, pp. 172–73.
73 
De Rubeis, ‘La scrittura delle élites tra crisi e rinnovamento’, pp. 99–126.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 571

puto; poi la Gallia e la Spagna con il corso del secolo vi e vii arriveranno alla
sostituzione complessiva del sistema. Pur conoscendo tale consuetudine una
frattura e pur adeguando il computo dei giorni a nuovi sistemi semplificati,
non appare totalmente perduto come sembrano indicare soprattutto le iscri-
zioni graffite commemorative presenti in alcune aree, quali l’Italia settentrio-
nale (il caso dei graffiti risalenti al secolo viii–ix attestate sulle colonne dei
Santi Felice e Fortunato di Vicenza74 — graffiti obituari — e, per la medesima
cronologia, quelli presenti nell’ipogeo di Santa Maria in Stelle in Valpantena
presso Verona, dove l’uso compare in particolare per la memoria della consa-
crazione del sacello),75 anche se tale consuetudine appare in netto declino già
con i secoli precedenti. La particolare localizzazione dei graffiti, ma soprattutto
la natura del testo lascerebbero ipotizzare una continuità di uso per la memo-
ria dei morti o per usi legati comunque alle pratiche religiose. Un esempio di
graffiti funerario-commemorativi datanti con il sistema romano compare già a
partire dal secolo vi a Parenzo, normale per il periodo. Lo stesso uso compare
poi a distanza di circa due secoli a Vicenza, nelle già ricordate epigrafi graffite
sanfeliciane. In questo caso non sembra potersi parlare di vero e proprio sistema
di identificazione sociale, quanto piuttosto di ambito specifico di utilizzo, in
seno all’epigrafia funeraria memoratoria. Ricorderò, ad esempio, il testo tardo
dell’iscrizione funeraria Ermingarda, figlia di Lotario II, a Santa Giustina di
Lucca o,76 l’iscrizione funeraria di Dauferada, moglie di Roffredo, referendario
di Sicario e gastaldo di Avellino, dell’849.77 Sempre al secolo ix appartengono,
con la medesima tipologia testuale, le iscrizioni dei re carolingi conservate a
Milano, iscrizioni di Pipino, figlio di Carlo, morto nell’anno 806, di Bernardo,
re d’Italia, ucciso nell’anno 819, iscrizioni sulle quali però grava il sl;./ospetto
di rifacimenti quattrocenteschi.78
Una continuità in questo specifico caso che travalica i confini territoriali e
culturali e che sembra prassi legata quindi piuttosto a specifici ambiti di uso che
non a peculiarità locali.

74 
Inscriptiones Medii Aevi Italiae, iii: Veneto, Belluno, Treviso, Vicenza, ed. De Rubeis,
no. 30–55.
75 
De Rubeis, ‘Il corpus dei graffiti in Santa Maria in Stelle (Verona)’.
76 
Epitaphium Ermingardis, in Tituli Italici, ed. Strecker, p. 1007.
77 
Iscrizione tradita in forma indiretta, Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
MS lat. 5001, fols 104v–105r: cf. Russo Mailler, Il senso della morte nei carmi epitaffici.
78 
Circa i dubbi sulla genuinità delle iscrizioni, cf. Armando Petrucci, ‘Scriventi e scritture
in Padania: Milano e Bergamo’, in Petrucci e Romeo, Scriptores in urbibus, pp. 64–65.
572 Flavia De Rubeis

Conclusioni
Il quadro riassuntivo qui esposto offre la possibilità di riflettere sulle possibilità
che testi e contesti possono offrire in seno all’ipotesi iniziale di questo lavoro:
la produzione epigrafica può essere considerata come un marcatore di identità
culturale o è un fenomeno di più ampio respiro all’interno del quale i confini
culturali possono essere coincidenti o meno con i confini socio-politici?
La risposta alla domanda si deve necessariamente articolare su più punti,
riprendendo alcuni dei passaggi esposti e sui quali ho fermato l’attenzione per
evidenziare affinità e diversità nelle consuetudini epigrafiche.
In primo luogo la questione, a mio parere, deve essere spostata dalla scarsità
di fonti al piano della produzione epigrafica, ossia il progressivo declino e la
parallela selezione dei tipi di epigrafi e dei committenti.
La progressiva selezione ha dimostrato come nel corso dei secoli vi–viii
il fenomeno di rarefazione sia un fenomeno legato da una parte a problemi di
carattere più ampio (quali il collasso delle officine lapidarie, localizzabile in
aree estese, ma articolato secondo tempi differenti, cui si deve però associare la
scomparsa di intere classi di oggetti recanti, fino a quei secoli, epigrafi), legati
però indissolubilmente ai mutamenti culturali generali (sociali quindi, quali le
differenti prassi funerarie, ad esempio) che queste aree hanno attraversato.
L’Inghilterra dimostra, con lo spostamento di gruppi verso aree non roma-
nizzate, il processo di trasferimento di consuetudini epigrafiche memoratorie.
Parallelamente, la Gallia dimostra un declino della stessa pratica legata ad un
differente sentire della memoria scritta, laddove le necropoli merovingiche
appaiono povere di iscrizioni funerarie a fronte di ingenti quantità di inumati
distribuiti in concentrazioni territoriali vaste. In Italia il declino si registra nei
secoli vi–vii con un picco concentrato nel secolo vii, al pari della Spagna.
Se per la seconda tradizionalmente il fenomeno appare legato ai rivolgimenti
sociali profondi (l’arrivo degli Arabi coincidente in buona parte con la scom-
parsa della prassi epigrafica funeraria), per la prima, ossia per l’Italia, il quadro
appare più articolato e vede un periodo di declino al di fuori della città di Roma
imponente, coincidente con l’arrivo dei Goti prima e dei Longobardi dopo. Per
i primi la consuetudine però si mantiene in linea con la prassi romana, anche
se il declino numerico appare significativo. Con i Longobardi dopo una prima
fase di assestamento, la consuetudine appare in ripresa già con i primi decenni
del secolo vii.
Al di là dei dati numerici, però, e qui riprendo un secondo punto trattato,
con la ripresa della pratica memoratoria scritta si assiste generalmente in tutta
l’area trattata ad una selezione verso l’alto dell’uso della scrittura. La consuetu-
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 573

dine infatti vede scomparire definitivamente le categorie dei meno abbienti in

favore di una netta produzione legata quasi esclusivamente alle élites.
Il fenomeno appare più marcato nell’Italia longobarda e nei territori sot-
toposti direttamente o indirettamente all’influenza della cultura romana. Le
testimonianze scritte infatti appaiono oramai modellate su un tipo preciso di
pratica memoratoria, quella del carme celebrativo, cui si affiancano, ma preva-
lentemente in ambito ecclesiastico, le semplici iscrizioni con i soli dati biome-
trici del defunto. La divisione è significativa, laddove permane per i membri del
clero e per i monaci una consuetudine ininterrotta con la pratica di tradizione
romana tardo antica, in particolare con le epigrafi dei cristiani dei secoli iii–v.
Una eccezione appare Montecassino, dove al dato biometrico viene aggiunta
poi anche la provenienza dei singoli defunti lungo il periodo che va dal secolo
viii al ix. Dato che letto sulle provenienze permette di identificare un numero
piuttosto elevato di soggetti provenienti dall’Italia settentrionale, in coinci-
denza con il 774 e l’arrivo dei Franchi nella Langobardia maior. La differente
pratica memoratoria induce a considerare il ruolo che l’epigrafia ha svolto in
ambito longobardo e che altrove appare più sfumato, almeno fino al secolo ix
quando la prassi diventa patrimonio più ampio esteso anche ai Franchi.79
La divisione tra laici ed ecclesiastici in seno alla complessiva prassi funeraria
è confermata anche dai numeri offerti dalle indagini di Handley per la Gallia e
per la Spagna e indica la medesima direzione sottolineata per l’Italia.
Diversamente però dalla produzione funeraria che appiattisce sul dato
quantitativo il problema, i contenuti delle epigrafi offrono un quadro molto più
articolato.
Le iscrizioni funerarie memoratorie, infatti, appaiono questa volta sì come
connotanti un quadro culturale differente.
È stato sottolineato come la consuetudine longobarda abbia con una certa
precocità fatto proprio il carmen celebrativo, inserendosi sulla falsariga della
consuetudine ecclesiastica. E attraendo all’interno della propria pratica quello
che già con il secolo v e vi gli ecclesiastici praticavano per i propri morti. Ma,
a differenza di questi, la composizione funeraria amplia la memoria inseren-
dovi dati legati all’agire in vita degli inumati e accogliendo eventualmente — in
seno alle iscrizioni legate ai membri della Chiesa — le suggestioni provenienti
dall’area della vita morale dei defunti. Le iscrizioni longobarde, connotate gra-
ficamente e testualmente appaiono così come un elemento di identificazione

79 
Si rinvia a Treffort, Mémoires carolingiennes, e all’analisi della studiosa sul cambiamento
di percezione in seno al mondo franco carolingio per i secoli viii–xi.
574 Flavia De Rubeis

preciso, sia sotto il profilo dell’appartenenza ai ranghi elevati della società (si
ricorda che la produzione è legata direttamente con gli esponenti dell’alta
società) sia sotto il profilo dell’appartenenza etnica, laddove il richiamo al
ceppo familiare sottolinea l’origine sociale del defunto. Un atteggiamento
peraltro che conosce sfumature e diversità per gli individui di sesso maschile e
le figure femminili.
La diversità inoltre appare sostenuta fortemente anche dagli usi linguistici
che, per i Longobardi, si possono ricondurre con frequenza al sistema ritmico
testuale (il testo rispetta metricamente l’accentuazione naturale delle parole e
non la quantità sillabica che spezza le parole in favore del verso).80
E che la produzione longobarda sia stata legata direttamente, almeno per i
secoli vii–viii in Italia settentrionale, ad un tipo specifico di testo/epigrafe lo
dimostra il cambiamento sopravvenuto nel corso del secolo ix, quando il testo
ritmico scompare radicalmente e viene sostituito dalla pratica del verso in seno
alla cultura carolingia, non più ritmico ma esametrico. L’iscrizione del prete
Tafo, datata all’anno 899 e conservata a Brescia, presso i Civici Musei, ne è elo-
quente esempio: non solo sotto il profilo strettamente grafico, che si dimostra
ormai pienamente carolingio nell’acquisizione completa delle forme scrittorie,
ma anche nei contenuti, laddove i richiami ad Alcuino e a Venzanzio Fortunato
evocano inequivocabilmente una presenza culturale ormai consolidata.81
Le élites così dimostrano di avere pienamente acquisito una vera e propria
strategia della visibilità e mettono in pratica consapevolmente tali strategie.
Sotto questo profilo le diversità indicano con precisione i confini e marcano
allo stesso tempo l’appartenenza ad un comune ambito culturale.
Le consuetudini cronologiche vanno in questa direzione anche se, occorre
sottolinearlo, l’atteggiamento appare comune a tutte le aree prese in esame.
L’uso dell’era locale del sovrano appare infatti ovunque non appena questo
venga riconosciuto ufficialmente: la Croazia, la Francia merovingia, l’Italia
longobarda. Il tempo così trova un punto di riferimento in ambito epigrafico
nel sovrano riconosciuto, al pari della documentazione che scandisce il tempo
sull’era locale. Sarà difficile in questo ambito preciso cogliere delle diversità su
sede locale.

80 
Rinvio sul tema agli atti del convegno Stella, Poesia dell’alto medioevo europeo.
81 
De Rubeis, ‘La tradizione epigrafica in Paolo Diacono’, sui riferimenti testuali all’interno
dell’epigrafia longobarda. Una panoramica sulle trasformazioni grafiche in Italia settentrionale è
curata da Sannazzaro, ‘Epigrafia e chiese tra ix e x secolo’.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 575

Se le diversità e le affinità individuano quindi aree culturali e geo-politiche

ben delineate su di un piano ideale orizzontale, si possono poi cogliere all’in-
terno di questi dispiegamenti di atteggiamenti espressivi delle vere e proprie
topografie sociali, delle micro aree distributive delle epigrafi.
Mi riferisco in particolare ad un punto preciso che ho individuato, ossia la
diversa collocazione delle epigrafi legate ai laici e agli ecclesiastici.
Si è parlato di processo di ‘ecclesializzazione’ della produzione epigrafica
con riferimento al passaggio da spazi aperti a spazi chiusi delle epigrafi e della
produzione legata alle due diverse componenti dei committenti. Ho cercato di
dimostrare che questo processo, peraltro concretamente tangibile nel corso dei
secoli trattati, ha in realtà alle spalle anche un preciso disegno.
L’analisi della collocazione fisica delle epigrafi (ovviamente riferita ai mate-
riali conservati in situ), sembra indicare l’esistenza di una distribuzione di aree
riservate piuttosto definita.
Lo spazio riservato ai laici, infatti, appare legato a precise collocazioni in
seno alle strutture ecclesiastiche, uno spazio fisico dove la visibilità diventa
uno dei principali crucci dei committenti. La visibilità deve essere garantita,
infatti, dalla possibilità della lettura a distanza, ossia da chi — laico — non
poteva accedere all’area sacra della chiesa. La scrittura così viene rivolta verso
i fedeli, collocata generalmente in luoghi di facile accesso visivo, ossia epigrafi
posizionate alte. Questo atteggiamento è direttamente legato ai committenti
laici appartenenti alle élites, i quali compaiono con le loro iscrizioni dedicato-
rie collocate generalmente lontane dallo spazio più sacro (l’altare), ma quando
vicine a questo, elevate per la lettura a distanza. In tal modo è garantita la visi-
bilità nel pieno rispetto però dell’area sacra generalmente riservata agli eccle-
siastici. Una manifestazione anche di quella strategia della visibilità alla quale
ho fatto riferimento per le iscrizioni funerarie. L’evergetismo così si traduce in
forme di potere. E che lo spazio della visibilità sia lo spazio del potere, lo dimo-
strano anche le iscrizioni degli ecclesiastici in quelle aree dove il ruolo politico
è delegato proprio a loro. I patriarchi di Grado, i pontefici a Roma, gli abati nei
monasteri utilizzano i medesimi spazi dei laici per lasciare memoria delle pro-
prie dediche (e donazioni). Il medesimo atteggiamento investe le chiese quando
i sovrani longobardi fanno realizzare iscrizioni monumentali per l’esposizione
esterna alle chiese, come a Salerno o a Brescia. Del pari gli abati a San Vincenzo
al Volturno, senza che altra spiegazione possa essere a mio parere addotta se
non questa, quando l’abate Giosuè fa incidere una iscrizione monumentale per
essere collocata all’esterno della basilica di San Vincenzo Maggiore. Un mede-
simo atteggiamento che trova riscontro sul piano degli usi cronologici e che si
riverbera nei committenti, laici o ecclesiastici che essi siano.
576 Flavia De Rubeis

Sarà difficile individuare contesti specifici nelle topografie delle epigrafi e

nei contenuti stessi di queste tali da indicare con precisione aree etno-culturali
specifiche. Queste si possono ricondurre su piani differenti, quali le consuetu-
dini funerarie. Una linea di demarcazione precisa, quindi, non potrà passare
esclusivamente attraverso i testi e i formulari.
Il punto preciso che, al contrario, indica una demarcazione culturale, lo si
deve individuare in seno agli atteggiamenti grafici, agli impianti decorativi, a
prassi linguistiche. Dati dove non è un generico sentire a definire la diversità
ma sono gli aspetti più tecnici, dove l’intervento del singolo riesce ad orientare
una produzione complessiva e a definire quella che altrove ho indicato come
strategia della visibilità. L’uso di scritture diverse, il ricorso a impaginazioni
specifiche, ad elementi decorativi rendono i contenitori veri e propri marcatori
culturali. Al contrario, i moventi che ne determinano la realizzazione (i com-
mittenti, la visibilità, l’appartenenza a determinati livelli sociali o gruppi social-
mente riconoscibili — laici ed ecclesiastici —) sembrano rispondere ovunque
e con coerenza alle medesime spinte sociali e alle medesime esigenze di rappre-
sentatività.
Una volta individuati i due piani, sarebbe tuttavia un errore considerarli
separatamente, poiché dall’uno scaturiscono come conseguenza gli atteggia-
menti dell’altro.
Così, se nell’Ipogeo dei Duni a Poitiers le epigrafi ricordano il gruppo e i
suoi componenti, inserendolo così su di un piano più vasto, parimenti la scrit-
tura ne fornisce le coordinate e ne identifica con precisione il contesto culturale
di appartenenza, l’epigrafia merovingia.
In tale ottica le iscrizioni costituiscono un marcatore culturale complessivo
individuando nelle forme e talvolta anche nei contenuti gruppi estesi su macro-
aree coincidenti con gli assetti politico-amministrativi di riferimento (quali
i Merovingi, i Longobardi, i Visigoti) all’interno delle quali agiscono però
microaree. Queste ultime frammentano ulteriormente il quadro in gruppi che
sembrano interagire fra di loro di concerto, secondo spazi marcati con preci-
sione e ruoli definiti.
In altre parole, medesimi gli intenti, diverse le modalità di attuazione, risie-
dendo in questo il concetto di marcatori culturali.
Scritture nazionali e aree culturali 577

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 Cultural Encounters
in Late Antiquity
and the Middle Ages

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic
grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned
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Titles in Series

De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and
Literature in Honour of Amnon Linder, ed. by Yitzhak Hen (2001)
Amnon Linder, Raising Arms: Liturgy in the Struggle to Liberate Jerusalem in the Late
Middle Ages (2003)
Thomas Deswarte, De la destruction à la restauration: L’idéologie dans le royaume d’Oviedo-
Léon (VIIIe-XIe siècles) (2004)
The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries): Proceedings of the
Inter­national Symposium held at Speyer, 20-25 October 2002, ed. by Christoph Cluse
(2004)
Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, ed.
by Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (2006)
Carine van Rijn, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian
Period (2007)
Avicenna and his Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy, ed. by Y. Tzvi Langermann
(2010)
Writing ‘True Stories’: Historians and Hagiographers in the Late Antique and Medieval
Near East, ed. by Arietta Papaconstantinou, Muriel Debié, and Hugh Kennedy (2010)
Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella: Ninth-Century Commentary Traditions
on ‘De nuptiis’ in Context, ed. by Mariken Teeuwen and Sinéad O’Sullivan (2011)
John-Henry Clay, In the Shadow of Death: Saint Boniface and the Conversion of Hessia,
721–54 (2011)
Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter
Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (2013)

In Preparation

Between Personal and Institutional Religion: Self, Doctrine, and Practice in Late Antique
Eastern Christianity, ed. by Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Lorenzo Perrone
Ehud Krinis, God’s Chosen People: Judah Halevi’s ‘Kuzari’ and the Shī‘ī Imām Doctrine
D’Orient en Occident: Les recueils de fables enchâssées avant les Mille et une Nuits de
Galland (Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina clericalis, Roman des Sept
Sages), ed. by Marion Uhlig and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens
Conflict and Religious Conversation in Latin Christendom: Studies in Honour of Ora
Limor, ed. by Israel Yuval and Ram Ben-Shalom