OSTROGOTHS

1
OSTROGOTHS

• Encountered a well-preserved system of Roman
  government when they invaded Italy in 489 AD
• King Theodoric was determined to preserve this
  system
• Program of civil government, called civilitas
  implemented under his leadership
• Aimed to preserve Roman administrative system,
  economy, and culture
• Roman tradition of orderly government was
  maintained more successfully by Ostrogoths than
  in any other Germanic kingdom

Theodoric
2
CIVILITAS

• Theodoric retained Roman administrators in order
  to continue the preexisting system
• Did not entrust these jobs to his fellow
  tribesmen
• Ostrogothic warriors given a purely military role
• Supported by land given to them by wealthy
  Italian landowners who were required to set aside
  portions of their estates for the use of the
  Ostrogoths

Ostrogoth coin
3
SOCIETY AND CULTURE

• Ostrogoths lived alongside the Romans but
  separately from them
• Under the leadership of their own chieftains and
  governed according to their own customs and
  traditons
• Also practiced their own religion
• Arianism
• Believed Jesus was inferior to God the Father
  because God the Father had created Jesus
• Theodoric tolerated the religion of his Italian
  subjects and governed them impartially

Theodoric
4
DIPLOMACY

• Theodorics ultimate ambition was to blend Roman
  and Germanic traditions and provide peaceful
  environment for the growth of culture
• Used marriage diplomacy to achieve peace
• Arranged marriage between Vandal king and his
  sister
• Married sister of Clovis, king of the Franks
• One daughter married king of the Burgundians and
  another married the king of the Visigoths
• Created an intricate system of alliances that
  involved the leaders of most of the German tribes

Clovis
5
LEGACY

• Theodorics legacy of good government did not
  last long
• Shortly after his death in 526, the armies of
  Justinian besieged Italy
• A few decades later, the Lombards invaded Italy
• Much of what Theodoric had accomplished was lost
• But some of the Roman cultural legacy that he had
  tried to preserve survived
• Notably the Roman system of education with its
  emphasis on the 7 Liberal Arts
• Logic, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry,
  astronomy, and music

Theodorics tomb
6
CLOVIS

• Rise of the Franks is closely tied to the
  parallel rise of one Frankish chieftain, Clovis
• Started as just one of many petty Frankish
  chieftains but, by his death in 511, he had
  become the powerful barbarian rule in the West
• Extraordinarily ruthless in achieving this goal
• Also successful in enlarging Frankish territory
• Took southwest Germany from the Alamanni and
  drove Visigoths out of southern France
• Controlled most of what is modern-day France and
  modern-day Western Germany by 511
• As well as Belgium, Luxembourg, and southeastern
  Netherlands

7
CONVERSION

• Converted to Christianity
• Historians doubt the sincerity of his conversion
  because it had no impact on his violent behavior
• But it did open the way for the Franks to be
  genuinely converted to Christianity by bishops
  and missionaries over the following century
• Conversion also gave Clovis a political advantage
• Gave him a justification to attack the Arian
  Visigoths

8
ADMINISTRATION

• All higher levels of Roman administration had
  collapsed before the conquests of Clovis and he
  had no idea of how to preserve what still existed
• Appointed loyal followers to rule areas of his
  kingdom
• Called counts
• Appeared as though he preserved semblance of old
  Roman administrative practices
• But his kingdom remained a primitive German
  monarchy

9
MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY

• Claimed to be descended from some pre-Christian
  god and thereby had a divine right to rule
• Real power rested on the loyalty of the counts
• Basically illiterate warriors who knew nothing of
  Roman law and government
• Viewed kingdom as private property of ruler and
  his family
• Divided up among surviving sons when a king died
• Roman tradition of maintaining order through
  efficient corps of highly trained administrators
  did not survive under these conditions
• Rational administration based on law was replaced
  by one based on personal ties

Childeric, Merovingian king
10
Kingdom divided among four sons when Clovis died
in 511 Only one son, Clothar I, survived ensuing
civil war
When Clothar I died in 562, kingdom was again
divided between his four sonsresulting in the
creation of four more-or-less independent
subkingdoms
These four sons also continually fought among
themselves Ultimate victor was Clothar II of
Neustria, who became sole ruler of reunited
kingdon
11
A LITTLE HOPE

• Violent time
• Also possible to glimpse another world where
  poets and intellectuals still tried to preserve
  Latin culture and where saints maintained high
  standards of Christian life
• Like tiny islands of peace, culture, and piety in
  a vast ocean of savage violence
• But they were there to preserve a little piece of
  civilization and culture in a world dominated by
  vicious and bloodthirsty rulers

12
FUSION

• Slow fusion of Franks and Gallo-Romans also took
  place during Merovingian Period
• Two cultures would gradually merge together to
  eventually produce an entirely new nation and
  civilization
• Frankish language and Gallo-Roman Latin merged to
  eventually become French
• Roman Church gradually modified the more brutal
  and crude Frankish traditions and customs
• But fusion did not take place in government
• Roman institutions replaced by Frankish ones
• Formed the foundation for early medieval
  government everywhere in Western and Central
  Europe

13
ROMAN THEORY OF THE STATE

• Roman idea of the state was that the fundamental
  duty of sovereign authority was to promote and
  protect public welfare
• Enacted appropriate laws and collected taxes to
  do this
• Taxes used to maintain army, a professional civil
  service, and a program of public works
• In return the citizen was expected to be loyal to
  the state

14
FRANKISH SYSTEM

• Frankish kingdom was only united by the personal
  loyalty of warrior-nobles to their king and
  through their ability to command loyalty from
  their followers
• No concept of king as public official
• He was a war leader
• Had no bureaucracy
• Counts were different from old Roman
  administrators
• Maintained order within their territory but were
  not paid by the state
• Lived instead off income king provided for them
• Relationship with king was based on personality
  loyalty
• When a king was unable to retain this loyalty,
  counts tend to become independent and defied the
  ruler

15
THE LAW

• Frankish law was radically different from Roman
  law
• Roman law based on the assumption that individual
  laws should reflect universal principles of
  justice
• Franks did not believe this
• Frankish laws were simply the ancient customs of
  the tribe
• Unwritten, handed down from generation to
  generation by word of mouth
• No concept that law of the conqueror should be
  imposed on the conquered
• A mans law was part of his inheritance and not
  to be tampered with

16
SALIC CODE

• Every crime, from smashing someones head in, to
  adultery, to murder was punishable by a fine
• Why?
• A crime against an individual had traditionally
  involved the relatives of both the criminal and
  the victim
• Duty of relatives of murdered man was to get
  vengence on murderer and his relatives
• But these sort of vendettas and blood feuds often
  weakened the fighting strength of the tribe
• Fines were devised to provide an honorable
  alternative to wiping out entire families or clans

17
GUILT OR INNOCENCE

• Only way to determine guilt or innocence was to
  appeal to the supernatural
• Compurgation
• Bunch of men would swear oath that the accused
  was not guilty
• Ordeal
• Ordeal of hot iron
• Ordeal of cold water
• Trial by combat

18
LEGAL EVOLUTION

• Frankish legal institutions common to most
  Germanic tribes
• Use of compurgation and ordeal would be the
  dominant way to determine guilt all the way to
  the beginning of the 13th century
• At that point, the Church prohibited priests from
  participating in such trials and alternative
  methods of determining guilt or innocence had to
  be devised

19
CHURCH AND STATE

• Frankish rulers realized that alliance with the
  Church was valuable
• Made generous gifts of property and privileges to
  the clergy
• Huge tracts of land
• Right to try clergy in Church courts
• Immunity
• Church gave up some independence in exchange for
  gifts
• Most rural churches had a lay patron who could
  appoint local priest
• Kings began to appoint bishops
• No longer elected by lay people
• Hierarchy of Church became increasingly Germanic
• Accompanied by decline in clerical literacy and
  religious discipline

20
A DARK AGE?

• Complex economic organization of old Roman Empire
  fell apart under the Franks
• Mainly through neglect
• Franks were basically warriors and had little
  interest in trade, commerce, and urban life
• Kings did not consider the encouragement of
  commerce to be their job
• Did not keep up roads and bridges, did not police
  trade routes, and did not protect merchants
• Trade almost completely disappeared in the
  interior of Europe as a result
• Some seaborn trade along Mediterranean coast
  survived
• France became a predominantly agricultural region
  with a localized, self-sufficient economy
• Little money in circulation and few merchants
• A Dark Age

21
RISE OF MAYOR OF THE PALACE

• Last strong Merovingian king was Dagobert
  (629-638)
• Kingdom split up again after his death and kings
  came and went with alarming frequency
• During this period of royal weakness, real power
  passed to the Mayor of the Palace
• Chief officer in the kings household
• Under King Dagobert, Pepin of Landen made
  position of Mayor of the Palace hereditary to his
  family
• Family known as the Carolingians

Dagobert
22
CAROLINGIANS ON THE RISE

• Pepin of Landens grandson, Pepin of Heristal,
  reunited kingdom
• In name of King Theodoric III
• But Pepin was real ruler of the kingdom as Mayor
  of the Palace
• Charles Martel became Mayor of the Palace in 714
• Increased size of kingdom by defeating the
  Frisians and Bavarians
• Strengthened hold over puppet Merovingian ruler
• Carolingian family was on the rise and the days
  of the Merovingians even as puppet rulers were
  numbered

Charles Martel
23
SUMMARY

• A mingling of Roman and Frankish cultures took
  place during the 6th and 7th centuries AD
• But it was accompanied by a terrible decay in the
  standards of civilization
• German kingship and primitive customary law
  replaced the institutions of the Roman state
• Roman order gave way to frequent internal warfare
• Christianity was generally accepted but in a
  debased form
• Tendencies towards local self-sufficiency and a
  primitive agrarian economy were greatly
  accentuated
• In language, Frankish German mixed with the Latin
  of Gallo-Romans to become French