Theodoric the Goth

T >> Thomas Hodgkin >> Theodoric the Goth

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

The most powerful factor in this change, the man who more than all
others was responsible for the conversion of the Germanic races to
Christianity, in its Arian form, was the Gothic Bishop, Ulfilas
(311-381), whose construction of an Alphabet and translation of the
Scriptures into the language of his fellow-countrymen have secured for
him imperishable renown among all who are interested in the history of
human speech. Ulfilas, who has been well termed "The Apostle of the
Goths", seems to have embraced Christianity as a young man when he was
dwelling in Constantinople as a hostage (thus in some measure
anticipating the part which one hundred and thirty years later was to be
played by Theodoric), and having been ordained first Lector (Reader) and
afterwards (341) Bishop of Gothia, he spent the remaining forty years of
his life in missionary journeys among his countrymen in Dacia, in
collecting those of his converts who fled from the persecution of their
still heathen rulers, and settling them as colonists in Moesia, and, most
important of all, in his great work of the translation of the Bible into
Gothic. Of this work, as is well known, some precious fragments still
remain; most precious of all, the glorious Silver Manuscript of the
Gospels _(Codex Argenteus),_ which is supposed to have been written in
the sixth century, and which, after many wanderings and an eventful
history, rests now in a Scandinavian land, in the Library of the
University of Upsala, It is well worth while to make a pilgrimage to
that friendly and hospitable Swedish city, if for no other purpose than
to see the letters (traced in silver on parchment of rich purple dye)
in which the skilful amanuensis laboriously transcribed the sayings of
Christ rendered by Bishop Ulfilas into the language of Alaric. For that
_Codex Argenteus_ is oldest of all extant monuments of Teutonic speech,
the first fruit of that mighty tree which now spreads its branches over
half the civilised world.

With the theological bearings of the Arian controversy we have no
present concern; but it is impossible not to notice the unfortunate
political results of the difference of creed between the German invaders
and the great majority of the inhabitants of the Empire. The cultivators
of the soil and the dwellers in the cities had suffered much from the
misgovernment of their rulers during the last two centuries of Imperial
sway; they could, to some extent, appreciate the nobler moral qualities
of the barbarian settlers--their manliness, their truthfulness, their
higher standard of chastity; nor is it idle to suppose that if there had
been perfect harmony of religious faith between the new-comers and the
old inhabitants they might soon have settled down into vigorous and
well-ordered communities, such as Theodoric and Cassiodorus longed to
behold, combining the Teutonic strength with the Roman reverence for
law. Religious discord made it impossible to realise this ideal The
orthodox clergy loathed and dreaded the invaders "infected", as they
said, "with the Arian pravity". The barbarian kings, unaccustomed to
have their will opposed by men who never wielded a broadsword, were
masterful and high-handed in their demand for absolute obedience, even
when their commands related to the things of God rather than to the
things of Caesar; and the Arian bishops and priests who stood beside
their thrones, and who had sometimes long arrears of vengeance for past
insult or oppression to exact, often wrought up the monarch's mind to a
perfect frenzy of fanatical rage, and goaded him to cruel deeds which
made reconciliation between the warring creeds hopelessly impossible. In
Africa, the Vandal kings set on foot a persecution of their Catholic
subjects which rivalled, nay exceeded, the horrors of the persecution
under Diocletian. Churches were destroyed, bishops banished, and their
flocks forbidden to elect their successors: nay, sometimes, in the
fierce quest after hidden treasure, eminent ecclesiastics were stretched
on the rack, their mouths were filled with noisome dirt, or cords were
twisted round their foreheads or their shins. In Gaul, under the
Visigothic King Euric, the persecution was less savage, but it was
stubborn and severe. Here, too, the congregations were forbidden to
elect successors to their exiled bishops; the paths to the churches were
stopped up with thorns and briers; cattle grazed on the grass-grown
altar steps, and the rain came through the shattered roofs into the
dismantled basilicas.

Thus all round the shores of the Mediterranean there was strife and
bitter heart-burning between the Roman provincial and his Teutonic
"guest", not so much because one was or called himself a Roman, while
the other called himself Goth, Burgundian, or Vandal, but because one
was Athanasian and the other Arian. With this strife of creeds
Theodoric, for the greater part of his reign, refused to concern
himself. He remained an Arian, as his fathers had been before him, but
he protected the Catholic Church in the privileges which she had
acquired, and he refused to exert his royal authority to either threaten
or allure men into adopting his creed. So evenly for many years did he
hold the balance between the rival faiths, that it was reported of him
that he put to death a Catholic priest who apostatised to Arianism in
order to attain the royal favour; and though this story does not perhaps
rest on sufficient authority, there can be no doubt that the general
testimony of the marvelling Catholic subjects of Theodoric would have
coincided with that already quoted (See page 128.) from the Bishop of
Ravenna that "he attempted nothing against the Catholic faith".

Still, though determined not to govern in the interests of a sect, it
was impossible that Theodoric's political relations should not be, to a
certain extent, modified by his religious affinities. Let us glance at
the position of the chief States with which a ruler of Italy at the
close of the fifth century necessarily came in contact.

First of all we have _the Empire,_ practically confined at this time to
"the Balkan peninsula" south of the Danube, Asia Minor, Syria, and
Egypt, and presided over by the elderly, politic, but unpopular
Anastasius. This State is Catholic, though, as we shall hereafter see,
not in hearty alliance with the Church of Rome.

Westward from the Empire, along the southern shore of the
Mediterranean, stretches the great kingdom of the _Vandals,_ with
Carthage for its capital. They have a powerful navy, but their kings,
Gunthamund (484-496) and Thrasamund (496-523), do not seem to be
disposed to renew the buccaneering expeditions of their grandfather, the
great Vandal Gaiseric. They are decided Arians, and keep up a stern,
steady pressure on their Catholic subjects, who are spared, however, the
ruthless brutalities practised upon them by the earlier Vandal kings.
The relations of the Vandals with the Ostrogothic kingdom seem to have
been of a friendly character during almost the whole reign of Theodoric.
Thrasamund, the fourth king who reigned at Carthage, married Amalafrida,
Theodoric's sister, who brought with her, as dowry, possession of the
strong fortress of Lilybaeum _(Marsala),_ in the west of Sicily, and who
was accompanied to her new home by a brilliant train of one thousand
Gothic nobles with five thousand mounted retainers.

In the north and west of Spain dwell the nation of the _Suevi,_ Teutonic
and Arian, but practically out of the sphere of European politics, and
who, half a century after the death of Theodoric, will be absorbed by
their Visigothic neighbours.

This latter state, the kingdom of the _Visigoths,_ is apparently, at the
end of the fifth century, by far the most powerful of the new barbarian
monarchies. All Spain, except its north-western corner, and something
like half of Gaul--namely, that region which is contained between the
Pyrenees and the Loire, owns the sway of the young king, whose capital
city is Toulouse, and who, though a stranger in blood, bears the name
of the great Visigoth who first battered a breach in the walls of Rome,
the mighty Alaric. This Alaric II. (485-507), the son of Euric, who had
been the most powerful sovereign of his dynasty, inherited neither his
father's force of character (485-507) nor the bitterness of his
Arianism. The persecution of the Catholics was suspended, or ceased
altogether, and we may picture to ourselves the congregations again
wending their way by unblockaded paths to the house of prayer, the
churches once more roofed in and again made gorgeous by the stately
ceremonial of the Catholic rite. In other ways, too, Alaric showed
himself anxious to conciliate the favour of his Roman subjects. He
ordered an abstract of the Imperial Code to be prepared, and this
abstract, under the name of the _Breviarium Alaricianum_[92] is to this
day one of our most valuable sources of information as to Roman Law. He
is also said to have directed the construction of the canal, which still
bears his name _(Canal d'Alaric),_ and which, connecting the Adour with
the Aisne, assists the irrigation of the meadows of Gascony. But all
these attempts to close the feud between the king and his orthodox
subjects were vain. When the day of trial came, it was seen, as it had
long been suspected, that the sympathies and the powerful influence of
the bishops and clergy were thrown entirely on the side of the Catholic
invader.

[Footnote 92: Sometimes called the _Breviarium Aniani,_ from the name of
the Registrar whose signature attested each copy of the _Breviarium._]

Between the Visigothic and Ostrogothic courts there was firm friendship
and alliance, the remembrance of their common origin and of many perils
and hardships shared together on the shores of the Euxine and in the
passes of the Balkans being fortified by the knowledge of the dangers to
which their common profession of Arianism exposed them amidst the
Catholic population of the Empire. The alliance, which had served
Theodoric in good stead when the Visigoths helped him in his struggle
with Odovacar, was yet further strengthened by kinship, the young king
of Toulouse having received in marriage a princess from Ravenna, whose
name is variously given as Arevagni or Ostrogotho.

A matrimonial alliance also connected Theodoric with the king of the
_Burgundians_. These invaders, who were destined so strangely to
disappear out of history themselves, while giving their name to such
wide and rich regions of mediaeval Europe, occupied at this time the
valleys of the Saone and the Rhone, as well as the country which we now
call Switzerland. Their king, Gundobad, a man somewhat older than
Theodoric, had once interfered zealously in the politics of Italy,
making and unmaking Emperors and striking for Odovacar against his
Ostrogothic rival. Now, however, his whole energies were directed to
extending his dominions in Gaul, and to securing his somewhat precarious
throne from the machinations of the Catholic bishops, his subjects. For
he, too, was by profession an Arian, though of a tolerant type, and
though he sometimes seemed on the point of crossing the abyss and
declaring himself a convert to the Nicene faith. Theudegotho, sister of
Arevagni, was given by her father, Theodoric in marriage to Sigismund,
the son and heir of Gundobad.

The event which intensified the fears of all these Arian kings, and
which left to each one little more than the hope that he might be the
last to be devoured, was the conversion to Catholicism of Clovis,[93]
the heathen king of the _Franks_, that fortunate barbarian who, by a
well-timed baptism, won for his tribe of rude warriors the possession of
the fairest land in Europe and the glory of giving birth to one of the
foremost nations in the world.

[Footnote 93: I call the Frankish king by the name by which he is best
known in history, though no doubt the more correct form is either
Hlodwig or Chlodovech. It is of course the same name with Ludovicus or
Louis I do not know whether the barbarian sound of Hlodwig offended the
delicate taste of Cassiodorus, but in the "Various Letters" he addresses
the king of the Franks as Ludum. It seems probable that there was some
harsh guttural before the L which Gregory of Tours endeavoured to
represent by Ch (Chlodovech), while Cassiodorus, receiving the name from
the Frankish barbarians, thought it safer to leave it unrepresented
(Ludum). In any case his _n_ must have been due to some defective
understanding of the final sound.]

As we are here come to one of the common-places of history, I need but
very briefly remind the reader of the chief stages in the upward course
of the young Frankish king. Born in 466, he succeeded his father,
Childeric, as one of the kings of the Salian Franks in 481. The lands of
the Salians occupied but the extreme northern corner of modern France,
and a portion of Flanders, and even here Clovis was but one of many
kinglets allied by blood but frequently engaged in petty and inglorious
wars one with another.

For five years the young Salian chieftain lived in peace with his
neighbours. In the twentieth year of his age (486) he sprang with one
bound into fame and dominion by attacking and overcoming the Roman
Syagrius, who with ill-defined prerogatives, and bearing the title not
of Emperor or of Prefect, but of King, had succeeded amidst the wreck of
the Western Empire in preserving some of the fairest districts of the
north of Gaul from barbarian domination. With the help of some of his
brother chiefs, Clovis overthrew this "King of Soissons". Syagrius took
refuge at the court of Toulouse, and the Frankish king now felt himself
strong enough to send to the young Alaric, who had ascended the throne
only a year before, a peremptory message, insisting, under the penalty
of a declaration of war, on the surrender of the Roman fugitive. The
Visigoth was mean-spirited enough to purchase peace by delivering up his
guest, bound in fetters, to the ambassadors of Clovis, who shortly after
ordered him to be privily done to death. From that time, we may well
believe, Clovis felt confident that he should one day vanquish Alaric.

About seven years after this event (493) came his memorable marriage
with Clotilda,[94] a Burgundian princess, who, unlike her Arian uncle,
Gundobad, was enthusiastically devoted to the Catholic faith, and who
ceased not by private conversations and by inducing him to listen to the
sermons of the eloquent Bishop Remigius, to endeavour to win her husband
from the religion of his heathen forefathers to the creed of Rome and
of the Empire. Clovis, however, for some years wavered. Sprung himself,
according to the traditions of his people, from the sea-god Meroveus, he
was not in haste to renounce this fabulous glory, nor to acknowledge as
Lord, One who had been reared in a carpenter's shop at Nazareth. He
allowed Clotilda to have her eldest son baptised, but when the child
soon after died, he took that as a sign of the power and vengeance of
the old gods. A second son was born, was baptised, fell sick. Had that
child died, Clovis would probably have remained an obstinate heathen,
but the little one recovered, given back, as was believed, to the
earnest prayers of his mother.

[Footnote 94: More accurately Chrotchildis.]

It was perhaps during these years of indecision as to his future
religious profession, that Clovis consented to a matrimonial alliance
between his house and that of the Arian Theodoric. The great Ostrogoth
married, probably about the year 495, the sister of Clovis, Augofleda,
who, as we may reasonably conjecture, renounced the worship of the gods
of her people, and was baptised by an Arian bishop on becoming "Queen of
the Goths and Romans". Unfortunately the meagre annals of the time give
us no hint of the character or history of the princess who was thus
transferred from the fens of Flanders to the marshes of Ravenna. Every
indication shows that she came from a far lower level of civilisation
than that which her husband's people occupied. Did she soon learn to
conform herself to the stately ceremonial which Ravenna borrowed from
Constantinople? Did she too speak of _civilitas_ and the necessity of
obeying the Roman laws, and did she share the "glorious colloquies"
which her husband held with the exuberant Cassiodorus? When war came
between the Ostrogoth and the Frank, did she openly show her sympathy
with her brother Clovis, or did she "forget her people and her father's
house" and cleave with all her soul to the fortunes of Theodoric? As to
all these interesting questions the "Various Letters", with all their
diffuseness, give us no more information than the most jejune of the
annalists. The only fact upon which we might found a conjecture is the
love of literature and of Roman civilisation displayed by her daughter,
Amalasuentha, which inclines us to guess that the mother may have thrown
off her Frankish wildness when she came into the softening atmosphere of
Italy.

We return to the event so memorable in the history of the world, Clovis'
conversion to Christianity. In the year 486 he went forth to fight his
barbarian neighbours in the south-east, the Alamanni, The battle was a
stubborn and a bloody one, as well it might be when two such
thunder-clouds met, the savage Frank and the savage Alaman. Already the
Frankish host seemed wavering, when Clovis, lifting his eyes to heaven
and shedding tears in the agony of his soul, said: "O Jesus Christ! whom
Clotilda declares to be the son of the living God, who art said to give
help to the weary, and victory to them that trust in thee, I humbly pray
for thy glorious aid, and promise that if thou wilt indulge me with the
victory over these enemies, I will believe in thee and be baptised in
thy name. For I have called on my own gods and have found that they are
of no power and do not help those who call upon them". Scarcely had he
spoken the words when the tide of battle turned. The Franks recovered
from their panic, the Alamanni turned to flight. Their king was slain,
and his people submitted to Clovis, who, returning, told his queen how
he had called upon her God in the day of battle and been delivered.

Then followed, after a short consultation with the leading men of his
kingdom, which made the change of faith in some degree a national act,
the celebrated scene in the cathedral of Rheims, where the king, having
confessed his faith in the Holy Trinity, was baptised in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, the poetical bishop uttering the
well-known words: "Bow down thy head in lowliness, O Sicambrian; adore
what thou hast burned and burn what thou hast adored". The streets of
the city were hung with bright banners, white curtains adorned the
churches, and clouds of sweet incense filled all the great basilica in
which "the new Constantine" stooped to the baptismal water. He entered
the cathedral a mere "Sicambrian" chieftain, the descendant of the
sea-god: he emerged from it amid the acclamations of the joyous
provincials, "the eldest son of the Church".

The result of this ceremony was to change the political relations of
every state in Gaul. Though the Franks were among the roughest and most
uncivilised of the tribes that had poured westwards across the Rhine, as
Catholics they were now sure of a welcome from the Catholic clergy of
every city, and where the clergy led, the "Roman" provincials, or in
other words the Latin-speaking laity, generally followed. Immediately
after his baptism Clovis received a letter of enthusiastic welcome Into
the true fold, written by Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, the most eminent
ecclesiastic of the Burgundian kingdom. "I regret", says Avitus, "that I
could not be present in the flesh at that most glorious solemnity. But
as your most sublime Humility had sent me a messenger to inform me of
your intention, when night fell I retired to rest already secure of your
conversion. How often my friends and I went over the scene in our
imaginations! We saw the band of holy prelates vying with one another in
the ambition of lowly service, each one wishing to comfort the royal
limbs with the water of life. We saw that head, so terrible to the
nations, bowed low before the servants of God; the hair which had grown
long under the helmet now crowned with the diadem of the holy anointing;
the coat of mail laid aside and the white limbs wrapped in linen robes
as white and spotless as themselves.

"One thing only have I to ask of you, that you will spread the light
which you have yourself received to the nations around you. Scatter the
seeds of faith from out of the good treasure of your heart, and be not
ashamed, by embassies directed to this very end, to strengthen in other
States the cause of that God who has so greatly exalted your fortunes.
Shine on, for ever, upon those who are present, by lustre of your
diadem, upon those who are absent, by the glory of your name. We are
touched by your happiness; as often as you fight in those (heretical)
lands, _we_ conquer".

The use of language like this, showing such earnest devotion to the
cause of Clovis in the subject of a rival monarch, well illustrates the
tendency of the Frankish king's conversion to loosen the bonds of
loyalty in the neighbouring States, and to facilitate the spread of his
dominion over the whole of Gaul. In fact, the Frankish kingdom, having
become Catholic, was like the magnetic mountain of Oriental fable, which
drew to itself all the iron nails of the ships which approached it, and
so caused them to sink in hopeless dissolution. Seeing this obvious
result of the conversion of the Frank, some historians, especially in
the last century, were disposed to look upon that conversion as a mere
hypocritical pretence. Later critics[95] have shown that this is not an
accurate account of the matter. Doubtless the motives which induced
Clovis to accept baptism and to profess faith in the Crucified One were
of the meanest, poorest, and most unspiritual kind. Few men have ever
been further from that which Christ called "the Kingdom of Heaven" than
this grasping and brutal Frankish chief, to whom robbery, falsehood,
murder were, after his baptism, as much as before it (perhaps even more
than before it), the ordinary steps in the ladder of his elevation. But
the rough barbaric soul had in its dim fashion a faith that the God of
the Christians was the mightiest God, and that it would go well with
those who submitted to him. In his rude style he made imaginary bargains
with the Most High: "so much reverence to 'Clotilda's God,' so many
offerings at the shrine of St. Martin, so much land to the church of St.
Genovefa, on condition that I shall beat down my enemies before me and
extend my dominions from the Seine to the Pyrenees". This is the kind of
calculation which the missionaries in our own day are only too well
accustomed to hear from the lips of barbarous potentates like those of
Uganda and Fiji. A conversion thus effected brings no honour to any
church, and the utter selfishness and even profanity of the transaction
disgusts the devout souls of every communion. Still the conversion of
Clovis was not in its essence and origin a hypocritical scheme for
obtaining the support of the Catholic clergy in Gaul, how clearly so
ever the new convert may have soon perceived that from that support he
would "suck no small advantage".

[Footnote 95: Especially Dahn ("Urgeschichte der germanischen Voelker",
iii., 61).]

The first of his Arian neighbours whom Clovis struck at was the
Burgundian, Gundobad. In the year 500 he beseiged Dijon with a large
army. Gundobad called on his brother Godegisel, who reigned at Geneva,
for help, but that brother was secretly in league with Clovis, and at a
critical moment joined the invaders, who were for a time completely
successful. Gundobad was driven into exile and Godegisel accepting the
position of a tributary ally of his powerful Frankish friend, ruled over
the whole Burgundian kingdom. His rule however seems not to have been
heartily accepted by the Burgundian people. The exiled Gundobad
returned with a few followers, who daily increased in number; he found
himself strong enough to besiege Godegisel in Vienne; he at length
entered the city through the blow-hole of an aqueduct, slew his brother
with his own hand, and put his chief adherents to death "with exquisite
torments". The Frankish troops who garrisoned Vienne were taken
prisoners, but honourably treated and sent to Toulouse to be guarded by
Alaric the Visigoth, who had probably assisted the enterprise of
Gundobad.

The inactivity of Clovis during this counter-revolution in Burgundy is
not easily explained. Either there was some great explosion of
Burgundian national feeling against the Franks, which for the time made
further interference dangerous, or Gundobad, having added his brother's
dominions to his own, was now too strong for Clovis to meddle with, or,
which seems on the whole the most probable supposition, Gundobad
himself, secretly inclining towards the Catholic cause, had made peace
with Clovis through the mediation of the clergy, and came back to Vienne
to rule thenceforward as a dependent ally, though not an avowed
tributary, of Clovis and the Franks. We shall soon have occasion to
observe that in the crisis of its fortunes the confederacy of Arian
states could not count on the co-operation of Gundobad.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28