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- Herausgeber: Firenze University Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
The victory of Justinian, achieved after a lacerating war, put an end to the ambitious project conceived and implemented by Theoderic after his arrival in Italy: that of a new society in which peoples divided by centuries-old cultural barriers would live together in peace and justice, without renouncing their own traditions but respecting shared principles inspired by the values of civilitas. What did this great experiment leave to Europe and Italy in the centuries to come? What were the survivals and the ruptures, what were the revivals of that world in early medieval society? How did that past continue to be recounted and how did it interact with the present, especially in the decisive moment of the Frankish conquest of Italy? This book aims to confront these questions, and it does so by exploring different themes, concerning politics and ideology, culture and literary tradition, law, epigraphy and archaeology.
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Reti Medievali E-Book 43
Reti Medievali
Editors-in-chief
Maria Elena Cortese, University of Genoa, Italy
Roberto Delle Donne, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Thomas Frank, University of Pavia, Italy
Paola Guglielmotti, University of Genoa, Italy
Vito Loré, Roma Tre University, Italy
Iñaki Martin Viso, University of Salamanca, Spain
Riccardo Rao, University of Bergamo, Italy
Paolo Rosso, University of Turin, Italy
Gian Maria Varanini, University of Verona, Italy
Andrea Zorzi, University of Florence, Italy
Scientific Board
Enrico Artifoni, University of Turin, Italy
María Asenjo González, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
William J. Connell, Seton Hall University, United States
Pietro Corrao, University of Palermo, Italy
Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Sorbonne Paris IV University, France
Christopher Dartmann, University of Hamburg, Germany
Stefano Gasparri, University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Italy
Patrick Geary, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, United States
Jean-Philippe Genet, Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris 1 University, France
Knut Görich, University of Munich Ludwig Maximilian, Germany
Julius Kirshner, University of Chicago, United States
Maria Cristina La Rocca, University of Padua, Italy
Michel Lauwers, Côte d’Azur University, France
Isabella Lazzarini, University of Molise, Italy
Annliese Nef, Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris 1 University, France
Beatrice Pasciuta, University of Palermo, Italy
Annick Peters Custot, University of Nantes, France
Giuseppe Petralia, University of Pisa, Italy
Walter Pohl, Technische Universitaet Wien, Austria
Flocel Sabaté, University of Lleida, Spain
Roser Salicru i Lluch, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Barcelona, Spain
Francesco Vincenzo Stella, University of Siena, Italy
Giuliano Volpe, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
Chris Wickham, All Souls College, Oxford, United Kingdom
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All published e-books are double-blind peer reviewed at least by two referees. Their list is regularly updated at URL: http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/rm/referee. Their reviews are archived.
RULING IN HARD TIMES
Patterns of power and practices of government in the making of Carolingian Italy
2
Between Ostrogothic and Carolingian Italy Survivals, revivals, ruptures
edited by Fabrizio Oppedisano
Firenze University Press 2022
Between Ostrogothic and Carolingian Italy : survivals, revivals, ruptures / edited by Fabrizio Oppedisano. – Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2022.
(Reti Medievali E-Book ; 43)
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ISBN 978-88-5518-663-6 (Print)
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The volume has been published thanks to the contributions of the Department of Humanities and Philosophy of the University of Trento and the Ministry of University and Research, Project of Relevant National Interest, call for proposals 2017 - project code 2017ETHP5S, Ruling in hard times. Patterns of power and practices of government in the making of Carolingian Italy. The project leader is Giuseppe Albertoni (University of Trento); the editor of the volume, Fabrizio Oppedisano, is the project leader at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa.
Front cover: Nicholas and workshop: Theodoric hunts in hell, c. 1100-1150 (Verona, facade of the basilica of San Zeno). Photo credit: Fabio Coden, by permission of the Ufficio per i beni culturali ecclesiastici, Diocese of Verona (17 Jan. 2023).
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Firenze University Press Editorial Board
M. Garzaniti (Editor-in-Chief), M.E. Alberti, F. Vittorio Arrigoni, E. Castellani, F. Ciampi, D. D’Andrea, A. Dolfi, R. Ferrise, A. Lambertini, R. Lanfredini, D. Lippi, G. Mari, A. Mariani, P.M. Mariano, S. Marinai, R. Minuti, P. Nanni, A. Orlandi, I. Palchetti, A. Perulli, G. Pratesi, S. Scaramuzzi, I. Stolzi.
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© 2022 Author(s)
Published by Firenze University Press
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Ruling in hard times.Patterns of power and practices of governmentin the making of Carolingian Italy
Project Coordinator Giuseppe Albertoni
1. Networks of bishops, networks of texts. Manuscripts, legal cultures, tools of government in Carolingian Italy at the time of Lothar I, edited by Gianmarco De Angelis, Francesco Veronese, 2022
2. Between Ostrogothic and Carolingian Italy: survivals, revivals, ruptures, edited by Fabrizio Oppedisano, forthcoming
3. Carolingian frontiers. Italy and beyond, edited by Maddalena Betti, Francesco Borri, Stefano Gasparri, forthcoming
4. Aristocratic networks. Elites and social dynamics in the age of Lothar I, edited by Giuseppe Albertoni, Manuel Fauliri, Leonardo Sernagiotto, forthcoming
5. Patterns of power and practices of government in the making of Carolingian Italy, edited by Giuseppe Albertoni, Gianmarco De Angelis, Stefano Gasparri, Fabrizio Oppedisano, forthcoming
Index
FUP Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOI 10.36253/fup_best_practice)
Fabrizio Oppedisano (edited by), Between Ostrogothic and Carolingian Italy. Survivals, revivals, ruptures, © 2022 Author(s), CC BY 4.0, published by Firenze University Press, ISBN 978-88-5518-664-3 (PDF), DOI 10.36253/978-88-5518-664-3
FUP Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOI 10.36253/fup_best_practice)
Fabrizio Oppedisano (edited by), Between Ostrogothic and Carolingian Italy. Survivals, revivals, ruptures, © 2022 Author(s), CC BY 4.0, published by Firenze University Press, ISBN 978-88-5518-664-3 (PDF), DOI 10.36253/978-88-5518-664-3
Preface by Fabrizio Oppedisano
FUP Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOI 10.36253/fup_best_practice)
Fabrizio Oppedisano (edited by), Between Ostrogothic and Carolingian Italy. Survivals, revivals, ruptures, © 2022 Author(s), CC BY 4.0, published by Firenze University Press, ISBN 978-88-5518-664-3 (PDF), DOI 10.36253/978-88-5518-664-3
In 488, the Germanic tribes gathered around Theoderic the Great abandoned the inhospitable Pannonian lands and set out towards Italy. Following in the footsteps of Alaric and Attila, tens of thousands of individuals crossed the Alpine border and prepared for a clash with Odoacer. The war, which was uncertain despite the field victories achieved by the Goths, was resolved after three years, and then only thanks to a stratagem: declaring that he accepted peace and shared command, Theoderic was welcomed in Ravenna, and here, during a banquet, he treacherously killed his enemy. Now master of Italy, the Gothic king launched the ambitious project of a society in which the best qualities of the peoples composing it would serve the common good, beyond secular barriers and prejudices. The Gothic soldiers would defend with arms the values of civilitas Romana, while the functioning of the state would be entrusted to the political and administrative culture of the Italian ruling classes. With the necessary precautions taken not to offend the feelings of his men, Theoderic did everything to preserve the Roman profile of Italy: the institutional and administrative system, the political careers, the distribution of wealth, the circulation of goods, and the role of the ruling classes still retained, even in the sixth century, the forms typical of the late antique state. At the same time, the official communication, the outward manifestations of power, as well as the care of public monuments, had the function of making visible the continuity between the Gothic kings and the Roman emperors. The message of Theoderic was intended for both Italy and the outside world: to his subjects, he was to communicate his own willingness to act with the virtues typical of the princeps civilis; to the other monarchies, an ethical and political primacy of the Gothic kingdom in Western Europe; to the empire, a position of autonomy of the Amal king in his relationship with the basileus. During the 520s, a series of events, interconnected in various ways, showed the first signs of weakness of this great system: the death of Eutharic (Theoderic’s son-in-law designated to succeed him to the throne), the crisis of relations with the neighbouring kingdoms of the Vandals and Burgundians, and the Emperor Justin’s anti-Arian and anti-Gothic policies all generated strong turbulence. In Italy, relations with the senate and the Church spiralled into a climate of distrust and suspicion, which passed the point of no return when the regime condemned the Pope, John I, and the senators Albinus, Symmachus and Boethius for high treason. At that moment, the compromise between monarchy and senate, and between Arianism and Catholicism, on which Theoderic had built his Italy, was shattered, and the image of the king began to lose the luminous contours of the civil prince to take on the grim features of the tyrant. Over time, the Gothic monarchs proved increasingly incapable of interpreting the role devised by Theoderic in their relations with the empire, and were unable to contain the increased aggression of Justin and Justinian: although the conflict entrusted to Belisarius was not intended to annihilate the Goths and to bring Italy back under the control of the Roman emperor, its developments went in precisely that direction. The Gothic war was long and lacerating, and the absorption of the peninsula among the provinces of the Byzantine oecumene determined, in many ways, the end of Roman Italy.
What remained of this world in Italian society in the centuries to come? What was Theoderic’s legacy to medieval political culture? How was that past reworked and recounted, and how did it interact with the present, especially at the decisive moment of the Frankish conquest of Italy? These are the historical questions around which this book was originated. The contributions that compose it have been conceived in order to grasp and interpret the elements of survival, the ruptures and the revivals of the Roman-Gothic society in the medieval period, and in particular in the Carolingian age. To this end, we have privileged a variety of viewpoints and disciplinary skills. The first, introductory, essay is dedicated to problems of an ideological order connected to the relationship between Ostrogoths and Franks (Fabrizio Oppedisano); the second focuses on the reception of Roman law and Ostrogothic legislation in the years of Lothar I (Stefan Esders); the third on the construction of the ethnic identities of the Ostrogoths and Lombards (Robert Kasperski); the fourth on the problem of the equestrian statue known as “Regisole”, and the revival of the Theoderician model from the time of the Lombards to that of the Franks (Carlo Ferrari). This is followed by a section consisting of three essays dedicated to the two great authors of the Ostrogothic age, Boethius (Danuta Shanzer) and Cassiodorus (Marco Cristini and Dario Internullo). Finally, the last two essays reflect on the continuous presence of the Goths in early medieval epigraphy (Flavia Frauzel), and on the evolution of the centres of public power between the Ostrogothic and Carolingian periods (Federico Cantini). The conclusions (Stefano Gasparri) enhance some of the book’s key themes and provide an overview of them. The authors discussed these issues at a conference held in Pisa, at the Scuola Normale Superiore, on 25 and 26 November 2021.
Ostrogoths vs. Franks: Imagining the Past in the Middle Ages by Fabrizio Oppedisano
This introductory essay aims at highlighting some aspects concerning the connections between the Ostrogoths and Franks in the Middle Ages. To this end, cases from different contexts and chronologies have been examined: firstly, Giovanni Villani’s chronicle, which conveys a polarized image of the Gothic and Carolingian worlds; and then some testimonies from the ninth century, that use the Ostrogothic model in connection with the present in a more complex and ambivalent manner. The various interpretations of the Gothic world are linked by a tendency to emphasize historical analogies, that leads to an overall and protracted disinterest in the specific forms of Ostrogothic society and in the work that most documents it, i.e. Cassiodorus’ Variae.
Middle Ages; Communal Age; Carolingian Age; Florence; Giovanni Villani; Walahfrid Strabo; Cassiodorus; Franks; Ostrogoths; Political Use of History.
Fabrizio Oppedisano, Scuola Normale of Pisa, Italy, [email protected], 0000-0002-4259-6282
Referee List (DOI 10.36253/fup_referee_list) FUP Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOI 10.36253/fup_best_practice)
Fabrizio Oppedisano, Ostrogoths vs. Franks: Imagining the Past in the Middle Ages, © Author(s), CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.36253/978-88-5518-664-3.04, in Fabrizio Oppedisano (edited by), Between Ostrogothic and Carolingian Italy. Survivals, revivals, ruptures, pp. 1-18, 2022, published by Firenze University Press, ISBN 978-88-5518-664-3 (PDF), DOI 10.36253/978-88-5518-664-3
1. Goths and Franks in the Chronicle of Giovanni Villani
In Giovanni Villani’s Nuova Cronica, Totila is the protagonist of one of the darkest moments in the history of Florence: besieged and taken by deceit, the city suffers looting and devastation; its bishop is beheaded and many of its inhabitants are slaughtered as they attempt to flee1. The reader is not surprised by such cruelty. From the very first pages of the work, in fact, a series of anticipations allowed him to recognise in Totila the prototype of barbarism, whose destructive fury had caused immense catastrophes in important cities (Florence, Perugia, Arezzo)2 and, above all, the loss of a collective memory that the author of the chronicle now proposes to remedy:
con ciò sia cosa che per gli nostri antichi Fiorentini poche e nonn-ordinate memorie si truovino di fatti passati della nostra città di Firenze, o per difetto della loro negligenzia, o per cagione che al tempo che Totile Flagellum Deila distrusse si perdessono scritture, io Giovanni cittadino di Firenze, considerando la nobiltà e grandezza della nostra città a’ nostri presenti tempi, mi pare si convegna di raccontare e fare memoria dell’origine e cominciamento di così famosa città, e delle mutazioni averse e filici, e fatti passati di quella3.
The presence, in the proem of the work, of the name Totila next to that of Villani contributes to emphasizing the role and identity of the chronicler by opposition; on the other hand, it reinforces the exemplary value of the figure of the Gothic king, defined – here and in many other passages of the work – with the terrible epithet Flagellum Dei, which suggests a true hybridization with the Hun Attila4. Confusion between the two names occurs quite frequently in the literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries5, as they also do in the Florentine chronicles: in a section of Martin of Opava’s work entirely dedicated to Pope Leo, Totila replaces Attila; before that, in the Chronica de origine civitatis Florentiae, Totila is evoked in the context of the Gothic war, but with the epithet Flagellum Dei6. In Villani such overlaps take on greater proportions: Totila, whose real name was Bela, was known for his savagery, of which his fratricide was the most abominable testimony. His actions – apart from distortions and hagiographic inserts taken out of context – are placed in the mid-fifth century: they partly relate to the Hunnic invasion of 452 (the battle of the Catalaunian Plains; the entry into Italy and the siege of Aquileia; the invasion of the north-eastern regions and cities of the Peninsula), they partly refer to the movements of the Goths during the war against Justinian (the alleged destruction of Florence, dated here to 28 June 450, with the rebuilding of Fiesole; the expedition towards Rome, with the destruction of many cities and the killing of many bishops, including Herculanus of Perugia). About the end of Totila’s raids, says Villani, two different versions circulated: according to some, he had died suddenly in Maremma; according to others, it was the prayers of the Pope, Leo, that had freed Italy from his infesting presence («alcuno altro dottore scrisse che ’l detto Totile per li prieghi a Dio di santo Leo papa che allora regnava si partì d’Italia, e cessò la sua pestilenza»)7.
Those who were acquainted with Paul the Deacon noted the inconsistency of these reconstructions: Bartholomew of Lucca points out the error of Martin of Opava: «istum autem regem, quem Martinus vocat Totilam, Casinensis, qui eandem historiam refert, Attilam appellat»8. Giovanni Boccaccio, in his Esposizioni sopra la Commedia di Dante, observes, more generally, how the chronicles handed down a tale tainted by anachronisms: «Sono oltre a questo molti che chiamano questo Attila Totila, i quali non dicon bene, perciocché Attila fu al tempo di Marziano imperadore, il quale fu promosso all’imperio di Roma, secondoché scrive Paolo predetto, intorno dell’anno di Cristo 440, e Totila, il quale fu suo successore, fu a’ tempi di Giustino imperadore, intorno agli anni di Cristo 529»9. Even when one grasps these inconsistencies, however, one struggles to make distinctions in the barbarian amalgam traditionally associated with these names: thus, for Boccaccio, Totila is nevertheless a successor of Attila, in the idea that Huns and Goths of the Amal dynasty should be placed in the same chronological context. This was a deep-rooted idea in Italy, and in medieval culture in general. In a passage of Frutolf of Michelsberg’s chronicle (who, for the history of the Goths, relies on Jordanes and Paul the Deacon)10, the author stated that the error of associating Theoderic, Attila and Ermanaric was common to tales handed down in unwritten form («vulgaris fabulatio et cantilenarum modulatio») and to chronicles11. Among these was perhaps the Chronicon Gozecense (although the chronological relationship with Frutolf’s chronicle is uncertain), in which Theoderic, the founder of Verona, is attributed the title of rex Hunnorum12, according to information obtained precisely in Italy («ut ab indigenis accepimus»: it is not entirely clear whether reference is made only to the news of the foundation of the city, or, more likely, also to those of the relationship between Theoderic and the Huns).
In Villani, the tendency to confuse the names of the kings and peoples who entered Italy becomes more pronounced, leading to an almost total dissolution of the historical background to which these protagonists belonged: in the Cronica their actions are inserted into a single great barbarian horizon, capable of exerting such an attractive force as to encompass figures who were completely foreign to it. When the narrative shifts from Totila to his supposed successor, Theoderic (the Visigoth Theoderic II), the figure of the Eastern Roman emperor Leo I, who takes on the features of the eighth-century basileus Leo III, bursts into the story. Together with the Gothic king, he invades Italy, enters Rome and contaminates it with his iconoclastic fury:
Il sopradetto Teodorigo che passò in Italia prese Roma, e tutta Toscana, e Italia, e allegossi con Leone imperadore di Gostantinopoli eretico ariano; il quale Leone passò in Italia e venne a Roma e trasse di Roma tutte le “magini de” Cristiani e arsele in Gostantinopoli, a dispetto del papa e della Chiesa. E quello Leone imperadore e Teodorico re de’ Gotti guastaro e consumaro tutta Italia, e le chiese de’ fedeli fecero tutte abattere, e lo stato de’ Romani e dello ’mperio molto infieboliro13.
If in the immediately preceding pages, dedicated to the years of Alaric and Radagaisus, Villani had adhered fairly faithfully to the contents of Orosius’ work14 (with the addition of a hagiographic part linked to the figure of Zenobius15), in this section one struggles to find connections with late antique or early medieval sources. At the end of paragraph six, the author advises those who wish to enrich their knowledge of those facts to look for a work to which he refers with a brief quotation: «chi vorrà più stesamente sapere le battaglie e le geste de’ Gotti cerchi i libro che comincia “Gottorom antichissimi etc.”». This book («oggi non identificabile», according to Franca Ragone16) is probably the treatise on the Goths by Isidore of Seville17. The incipit of this work changes from one redaction to another: «Gothorum antiquissimum esse regnum certum est» is the form attested in the recensio brevior; «Gothorum antiquissimam esse gentem certum est», that of the recensio prolixior; «Gothorum antiquissima origo de Magog» is what we read in the recapitulatio18. The quotation of the first two words of this sentence in the form «Gottorom antichissimi» leaves room for some considerations. The quotation of the adjective both in the vernacular and the noun form seems to be caused by the extrapolation from the original sentence, which, moreover, was not fixed in the tradition19. Villani probably did not have Isidore’s work at hand, since the latter conveys a positive image of the Goths without the anachronisms and overlaps that distinguish the chronicler’s narration20. He cites it because he knew of its existence and of the themes with which it dealt (perhaps he had heard of it, or had found it cited in a catalogue, in a list, in a repertory, such as the entry on the Goths in the Liber Glossarum21), without however having a precise knowledge of its contents22. He may also not have known who the author was, whose name is not always mentioned in the manuscripts (it is absent, for example, in all the copies that contain the shorter version of the History of the Goths)23. All this is consistent with the way Villani deals with ancient authors, to whom he often refers even when he does not know their work (see, for example, the cases of «Escodio maestro di storie» and «Omero poeta»24), or at least does not know them directly.
For the invasion of Italy and the destruction of Florence, having exhausted the reservoir of Orosian information, Villani’s sources are predominantly medieval. He uses Martin of Opava, the Chronaca de origine civitatis Florentiae, hagiographic works, chronicles of other cities, placing himself in general as the end point of a chain which, with regard to the history of the Goths, had by then lost contact with the fundamental testimonies of Jordanes, Procopius and Cassiodorus25. It was precisely these authors that were to be the focus of the rediscovery of the Gothic world by the humanists of the following century: when publishing De bello Italico adversus Gothos, Leonardo Bruni declares that he was led to pursue that endeavour precisely by the fact that there were no known works in Latin on the history of the Goths. In the proem of his epitome of Jordanes’ Getica (this is the missive to cardinal Juan de Carvajal), Enea Silvio Piccolomini recalls how his interest in that people arose from the unreliability of the information circulating about them («nam in ore hominum sepe de Gothis est sermo, sed nec perfectus, nec tanta re dignus»). Finally, Blondus Flavius, author of a translation of Procopius’ Gothica, is said to have underlined the importance of a little-used source, Cassiodorus’ Variae26.
Until then, the reconstruction of Gothic world remained predominantly subordinate to a political interpretation of the present, and Villani’s work is an example of this phenomenon. He moulds the early medieval past of Florence around a great dichotomy: to that terrible moment, in which the civilization built by the Romans and then by the Church had run the risk of being overwhelmed by a plethora of ungodly enemies – Totila, Theoderic, Leo –, the author contrasts the positive action of Charlemagne, the great Christian builder and re-founder of the city of Florence27. There is a high degree of intentionality in the definition of this contrast: Villani accentuates the nefarious picture of the devastation of «Totile Flagellum Dei», amplifies the impression of a large and indistinct barbarian agglomeration, and introduces the theme of the re-foundation of Florence by Charles, of which there seems to be no trace in his sources28. In this way, he proposes to his readers a vision of the past in which good and evil are polarized around two different moments, confused in their historical specificities and endowed with a certain symbolic charge, which seems to want to convey a clear message: «Firenze è sempre stata, è, e sempre sarà guelfa, legata ai papi e alla casa reale di Francia»29.
2. Myths of origins
The contrast between the age of invasions and the Carolingian age appears to be reinforced by the description of the Trojan origins of the Franks, which opens an unbridgeable gap between this people and the other barbarian peoples (Goths, Vandals, Huns), lumped together in a pagan and heretical ethnic skein30. This myth, first attested in Pseudo-Fredegarius, was widespread in the late Middle Ages31. In Villani, one can perceive the influence of the narrative contained in the Liber historiae Francorum (1-4), probably composed in the Neustrian area in the 820s32: the references to the war with the Alans (as in Gregory of Tours33), the collaboration with Valentinian, the liberation from the tribute imposed by Rome, and then the conflict with the empire when the Roman tax collectors reappeared after ten years of suspension of the taxation, coincide. Taking up the themes of this tradition, Villani reinforces the positive link of the Carolingian world with the Roman past and with Florence, which descended from Rome and shared its Trojan origins.
In that perspective, those tales which, by contrast, configured a kinship between Franks and Goths could evidently find no place. First and foremost of these was the legend of Theoderic’s Macedonian and therefore Trojan origins34, which presupposed a competitive relationship between the Franks and Rome and a sought-after bond of brotherhood between the Goths and the Franks35. Similarly, the tale of the common Scandinavian origins of Franks and Goths, which had been popular in the Carolingian age alongside the myth of Trojan origins36: «alii vero affirmant» writes Frechulf of Lisieux «eos de Scanza insula, quae vagina gentium est, exordium habuisse, de qua Gothi et caeterae nationes Theotiscae exierunt: quod et idioma linguae eorum testator»37, was also left out. In this latter case, it is evident that the proximity of Goths and Franks is part of a perspective that seems to privilege a sort of “pan-germanism” (the insula Scanza is «vagina gentium» and from it «Gothi et caeterae nationes Theodiscae exierunt»), supported by the use of a unifying idiom («quod et idioma linguae eorum testator»). This would have, therefore, drawn a sharper fault line between their world and Romanitas, broadly understood as the Roman past and the Byzantine present38.
3. Goths and Franks in the Carolingian age
The Frankish Carolingian world had elaborated its relationship with the Gothic past in a complex manner, unlike the schematic image conveyed by later authors. On the one hand, one senses an inclination to recover and reestablish the link with that world, which is demonstrated by several phenomena, which have been extensively studied39. They include the myths relating to the origins of these peoples, as we have seen; the dissemination of tales celebrating the heroic character of the figure of Theoderic40; the interest in the language41 and culture of the Goths, e.g. in Jordanes’ Getica, whichFrechulf evidently knew and which Alcuin wished to read (he asked Angilbert, a man close to Charlemagne, for a copy: «Si habeas Iordanis historiam, dirige mihi propter quarumdam notitiam rerum»42); Agnellus’ work, created in a context – the Veronese one – peripheral but nonetheless linked to the court43; and the construction of a symbolic link between the Carolingian and the Amal monarchy through recalling the places and symbols of Ostrogothic power44. On the other hand, we see how it was possible to put forward a very different view of the Goths and of Theoderic, leading to seeing the revival of that model as an insidious parallel. This is the case with what Michael Herren has called «the most challenging political poem of the Latin Middle Ages»45, the De imagine Tetrici composed by Walahfrid Strabo in his early twenties in 829. In this poem, the ghost of Theoderic’s unholy monarchy – which is to say the equestrian statue that Charles had had relocated to Aachen46 – haunts the present, coagulating around it the evil that threatened the integrity of the kingdom. In the depiction of this image and its complex symbolism, there is a desire on the part of the author to recall the darker aspects of the Gothic king’s reputation: some of them of great resonance, others less so. In this way, Walahfrid’s Tetricus is distinguished not only by his impiety and cruelty, but also by his corruption, a detail not entirely common, on which Walahfrid’s poetry repeatedly insists, loading it with allegorical meanings and a dense fabric of correspondences with contemporaneity (in reference to Louis the Pious Louis the Pious and Hilduin first of all, and then to the plethora of detractors and court flatterers)47. It is also in this perspective that Walahfrid makes the force of Boethian reminiscences felt in the work, a hypotext that evidently acts as a warning for the present48.
The relations between the Franks and the Goths as expressed by Walahfrid in De imagine Tetrici are consistent with that which emerges from the Excerpta codicis Sangallensis, the epitome obtained by Walahfrid from the very same manuscript from which the Vienna codex of the Fasti Vindobonenses priores and posteriores49 descends. In this miscellany, the story of the Gothic kingdom contributes to sketching a gloomy picture, which is only partly common to the tradition of the Consularia Italica fromwhich Walahfrid draws his inspiration, notably because the image that these texts convey is far from univocal50. Walahfrid seems to choose aspects of the tradition that would allow him to express a clear position within a polemic between the intellectuals of the Ludovician circle and the Carolingian court: in the miscellany, he does so by merely selecting the material transmitted by the Consularia, while in the poem dedicated to the equestrian statue of Theoderic he does so through a more creative form of reworking. In this way, the poet animates a clearly topical debate on the use of an ideologically relevant model for the monarchy51; a model endowed with flexible symbolic meanings, so as to make it susceptible to new semanticisations from time to time, of which his contemporaries were evidently aware (it is perhaps the ambiguity of the figure of Theoderic that prevents the comparatio with the Carolingian monarchs from going as far as full identification)52.
4. Conclusions: Cassiodorus, the Variae and the evanescent memory of Roman-Ostrogothic society
Medieval culture interpreted the figure of Theoderic and the Ostrogothic world in different ways, sometimes through the reception of literary traditions that had settled over time, sometimes through more circumstantial and conscious operations of selection and rewriting of the past. With regard to relations with the Carolingian world, as we have seen, two broad tendencies prevailed: one inclined to emphasize distinctions, and one that, on the contrary, seeks analogies and elements of continuity, to the point of imagining, albeit in various ways, common origins. These strands do not lend themselves to a clear-cut differentiation on a geographical basis, although it is undoubtedly true that in Italy a somewhat ghostly vision of the Ostrogothic past predominated throughout the Middle Ages, marked by what Fiorella Simoni has called «un’impressionante damnatio memoriae ecclesiastica» (which is not, however, without exceptions, as the case of Verona, for example, demonstrates)53. In the Frankish world, on the other hand, a greater fluidity and more accentuated nuances are perceived. There is, in any case, an element that unites these perspectives, and it concerns the relationship between the Gothic world and the Roman world. This is an important point, which has only partly been dwelt on here. In the medieval works that reconstruct, celebrate or stigmatize the history and image of the Ostrogoths in Italy, one can detect the absence of a perspective capable of perceiving the specificities of Roman-Ostrogothic society: there is a lack of details, references, reconstructions, that would reflect – even if only in a fragmentary way – an image of sixth-century Italy as a laboratory of a new society, marked by the prospect of a stable coexistence of different groups. In short, there is a lack of what we could call a “Cassiodorean perspective”.
The reasons for this absence are manifold. The authors who favour a viewpoint hostile to the Goths (starting with the late antique and early medieval works such as the biography of Pope John in the Liber pontificalis, Gregory, Bede, the Consularia Italica) give a strong emphasis to the serious conflict of 523, are attracted by the figure of Boethius, and are led to identify theOstrogothic experience tout-court with the moment in which Arian barbarism had prevailed, with its blind violence, exercised against figures who embodied the fundamental institutions of the late antique res publica, the Church (Pope John I) and the senate (Boethius and Symmachus). In this anti-Gothic tradition, there can be no consideration for the Roman-barbaric compromise of 476 with Odoacer, and revived by Theoderic a few years later. And although such a perspective does not necessarily result in a pro-Byzantine outlook, it does share the tendency to make a systematic distinction between Romans and Goths, through drawing a picture of the period between 476 and 554 as a long «barbarian interlude», the signs of which had to be removed in the name of a Roman and Catholic re-appropriation of Italy54. On the other hand, authors who express a positive view of the Goths by celebrating a kinship with the Franks inevitably end up emphasizing the emancipation of the Germanic peoples from Rome55. This split has repercussions, for example on the connections between Theoderic and the monuments of ancient Italy, which extends well beyond the sixth century: much of what is Roman – in particular the symbols of power (palaces, equestrian statues) – may appear Theoderician, and thus provide an expression of a more autonomously Germanic experience56. Finally, even when Theoderic and the Goths become a positive model for the construction of a new Carolingian kingdom in Italy, there is no perceived need to explore the form of Ostrogothic society within it (the relations between the Gothic people and the Romans, or between the Amal monarchy and the senate). The focus is shifted, if anything, to external relations with the Byzantine empire, because that is the horizon that most urgently activates a comparison between the present and the past; and it does so, in this case, with the otherwise extremely rare quotations from the documents of Cassiodorus’ epistolary works that concern relations with Byzantium, starting with Variae,I, 157. What, on the other hand, concerns the social, administrative, and institutional fabric of sixth-century Italy – on which the Variae offer the most ample testimony – goes beyond the interest of the culture and politics of the Carolingian age. In the contents of those texts, one can hardly find elements capable of evoking a comparison with the present.
This discourse can be extended to a wider context and period: compared to the other works of Cassiodorus, his letters circulate late in medieval Europe (no witnesses known to us date back to before the eleventh century)58. Among these readers, Cassiodorus’ epistolary collection is rarely used to make a political or ideological point. Specific interests prevailed, which favoured the formation of florilegia and anthologies: they were linked at times to the encyclopaedic contents of the work59, at others to the chancery formularies elaborated by Cassiodorus, which was taken up in the circles of the administration, the chanceries and the notaries from the tenth-eleventh centuries (first in Rome and Latium60, later also in other areas61). In some cases, there are revivals in a political context, but these are limited to individual letters, in particular the first of the Variae, which probably circulates independently from the rest of the work (from the Frankish Carolingian world, as we have seen, to fourteenth-century Italy)62. The relationship between medieval readers and the Ostrogothic world shifted more sharply between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the richness and complexity of Roman-Ostrogothic society, the Amals’ commitment to defending Roman civilitas in its various forms, and Cassiodorus’ role in shaping this complex reality, began to be appreciated. At this point, the Variae burst in among the sources of the history of the Goths, and so, while Villani had addressed his readers by directing them to «i libro che comincia “Gottorom antichissimi etc.”», Blondus Flavius advised his audience to read the twelve books of Cassiodorus’ epistles:
Nam Theodericus Ostrogothorum rex licet Ravennae sedem habuerit, amavit tamen ornavitque urbem Romam, et multa publice providit ac neglectae instaurationis supra fidem eorum qui barbarum fuisse meminerint maximam suscepit curam. Quod qui a fideli et copiosissimo teste voluerit certius intelligere, legat Cassiodori eius epistularum scriptoris Variarum libros, in quibus videbit ipsum regem religionis christianae, sacrorum locorum ceromoniarumque et pontificum romanorum dignitatis curam gessisse63.
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