La fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident. Rome et les Wisigoths de 382 à 531, by Christine Delaplace,

I return to my old interest in Late Antiquity today, thanks to Michael Kulikowski, who has written an illuminating review of Christine Delaplace's La fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident for the Medieval Review. A boring title, says Michael, and one would not be surprised if the interpretation offered was a hundred years out of date.

Ah, but it's not. Says Michael:

Perhaps the single most important thing here is the authorial willingness to define terms and exercise a realistic parsimony of interpretation with the evidence. For instance, her exhaustive treatment of treaties and their related vocabulary (pax, foedus, deditio, amicitia) usefully demonstrates that the frequent scholarly attempts to normalize the semantic content of that vocabulary are completely untenable; so too is reading back a normative definition from Procopius and Jordanes into the fourth and earlier fifth century.

Such observations are not wholly new, but actually applying their analytical insight to the narrative evidence exposes the role that fixed definitions of Roman treaties/foedera play in traditional narratives of Gothic history--thus producing a spurious aura of inevitability stretching from 382 to the settlement of some Goths in Aquitaine forty years later and on into the sixth century. In a similar vein, Delaplace correctly notes that Alaric and all the barbarian generals and condottieri of the late fourth and fifth centuries were primarily leaders of armies; their royal status was secondary, indeed often quite notional, and rarely a meaningful factor in their power. In this approach she strengthens Guy Halsall's demonstration that only Roman military office and magisteria constituted success for such people. To fall back on claims to royalty signified failure.

Perhaps the most insightful part of Delaplace's account of the early fifth century follows from the recognition that--whether or not you read Alaric's following, or those of other barbarian leaders of the time, in ethnic terms or instead as relatively heterogeneous mercenary armies--you cannot read them in terms of external diplomacy, or foreign foes. The more precise historical analogy is the late Roman Republic, when the Senate had to deal with rival armies loyal primarily to their generals rather than the state. Mutatis mutandis (for "Senate," read "imperial court"), the endless back and forth of 395 to 418 operated according to the same dynamic. Ethnic difference, still less "foreignness," are not what was at issue.

The book's systematic successes are in a similar vein. A ruthless refusal to retroject later evidence means that the Gothic settlement in Gaul is judged at its correct worth: there was nothing new about 418 that had not been at least implicit in the treaty of the king Wallia and the magister militum Constantius in 416. Wallia's (and then Theoderic I's) Goths were in effect a mercenary army, contracted by the Roman state because they were less likely to slip into the usurpation to which rebellious Gallic armies had long been prone. The Gothic zone of action effectively displaced the western Rhine limes south to the Loire, where, from Aquitaine, the Gothic army could operate in any direction necessary, against barbarians and potential usurpers alike. Thus, there was no kingdom of Toulouse for the better part of a century. There was a Gothic rex (who very rarely used that title) and there were sortes Gothicae, but there was no regnum till the fifth century had run its course.

Again, Delaplace has a firm grip on later fifth-century events. In particular she rejects the lionisation of the general Aëtius as "the last of the Romans," a sort of incomparable bulwark against the encroaching barbarian tides. Aëtius, she demonstrates, fundamentally weakened the Roman state, perpetuating constant rivalries in Gaul and Italy that militated against coherent policy. She shows how the "Gothic wars" of the 430s and 440s should not be read as a Roman defence against aggressive barbarian expansion, but rather as an extension of the civil war that brought Aëtius to power, the initial rivalry of Boniface and Aëtius, allied respectively with Theoderic and the Amal Berimond, was perpetuated in the next generation by Sebastianus (son of Boniface) and Witteric (son of Berimond), supported respectively by Theoderic and Aëtius. The peace of 439 is not a Romano-Gothic peace, nor a taming of the unruly federates by Rome, but rather a final settlement of two decades of rivalry: Sebastian was expelled by Theoderic, Witteric disappears from the pages of history (murdered, one imagines), and Aëtius married a daughter of Theoderic, having repudiated his second wife Pelagia, herself the sister of Berimond and widow of Boniface.

... The book concludes with a more cursory survey of the period from 477-531, but here too, the guiding principles are correct. In particular, Delaplace considers the battle of Vouillé as a stage in the sorting out of post-imperial factions that characterizes the earlier sixth century, rather than as a caesura in Gothic history. Greater detail in this section would have been welcome, but that was not the author's primary goal. One would not have thought it possible to write a strikingly novel history of the last century of the western empire, but that is precisely what Delaplace has done. It is a grand accomplishment.

Think of Attila as John Hawkwood!

"Two Worlds Become One: A 'Counter-Intuitive' View of the Roman Empire and 'Germanic' Migration" by Guy Halsall

This is an interesting re-interpretation of the "migration" period, part of a debate that has contemporary resonances and which has been going on for decades now.

Here is the abstract:

Abstract

The Roman Empire and barbaricum were inextricably linked throughout the Roman Iron Age. By late antiquity, Germanic-speaking trans-Rhenan areas were inundated with imperial influence. Migration was two-way and in various forms, all of which, including large-scale ‘folk movement’, were normal: part and parcel of the imperial frontier’s dynamics. The counter-intuitive conclusion is drawn from this that the relationship between the existence of a formal frontier and significant migration is quite the opposite of the one we have grown used to imagining. The collapse of the frontier took with it the mechanisms for migration. Therefore I have to modify my 2007 epigram that ‘the end of the Roman Empire produced the Barbarian Invasions and not vice versa’. The end of the Roman Empire put an end to the barbarian migrations. This conclusion helps us contribute more responsibly to modern debate on migration. It also contributes to a discussion of the formation of Germany. The end of migration changed the political dynamics of the regions between Rhine and Baltic. The latter became more inward-facing and from these, eventually, emerged ‘Germany.’

Here is the complete text

Who reads this stuff?

Back in the mid-1980s, I spun an article off my dissertation, The Fifth-century Chroniclers. The article was entitled "Prosper's Epitoma Chronicon: Was There An Edition of 443?" and was a brief discussion about...whether the 5th-century chronicler Prosper wrote an edition in A.D. 443! (As you may have guessed!) It could be taken as a fine example of scholarly nit-pickery, but it was worth doing because close scrutiny of ancient and medieval sources is and has been one of the methods we reconstruct the distant past. I thought it might help some readers somewhere while assuring potential employers that I was still at work.
But how many such readers could there be?
Well, this week I got a note from the Academia.edu site telling me that a Russian scholar was interested in having a look at the old article. I brushed it off and sent it off to the site. She saw it and thanked me.
Two days later the site has recorded 27!!!views. Good grief!
If any of you readers is really interested in the historiography of the Later Roman Empire and the origins of the medieval Latin chronicle tradition, the book version of The Fifth-century Chroniclers is still in print.
But if you are just vaguely curious about the answer to the question in the article's title: I said, probably not.
Image below: Somebody else's book on Prosper.

The new Avengers movie: How your studies in Late Antiquity helped you understand Joss Whedon's plight

This is wonderful, wonderful. Thanks, Salon and Mr. O'Hehir:

It might be accurate to say instead that superhero cinema has reached a decadent plateau, a long-term steady state of self-nourishing bigness and reverberant meaninglessness. Whedon moves on from the Marvel empire not as its Augustus or its Spartacus, but more like one of the later, non-terrible Christian emperors who won some battles, made some reforms and convinced everybody that the glory of Rome would endure forever. Was it worth doing? That depends on what you think of Rome.

Review of Burgess and Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time

This is the kind of work I was doing at the beginning of my academic career.  It's good to see this coming out.

From the Medieval Review:

Burgess, R. W., and Michael Kulikowski. Mosaics of Time: The Latin Chronicle Traditions from the First Century BC to the Sixth Century AD. Volume I: A Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from Its Origins to the High Middle Ages. Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 33. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Pp. xiv, 444. €100.00. ISBN: 978-2503531403.

   Reviewed by William Adler
        North Carolina State University
        William_adler@ncsu.edu


This impressive volume, the first of a planned four-volume series on the Latin chronographic tradition, represents a robust challenge to the widely-held and largely unchallenged assumption that the medieval annals derived from notices embedded in the margins of Easter tables of the seventh and eighth centuries. To make their case that so-called "annals" are part of a continuous and ancient pre-Christian tradition extending back long before the development of Easter tables, Burgess and Kulikowski (hereafter B. and K.) trace the development of the chronicle genre from its beginnings in ancient Egypt and the Near East, concluding with the twelfth-century universal chronicle of Sigebert of Gembloux.

Underlying the communis opinion about the medieval origins of annals is a putative distinction between "chronicles" and "annals." More sophisticated in structure and style, the former are traditionally thought to originate, either directly or indirectly, in the great Christian universal chronicles of the third and fourth centuries. The terse annotations and tabular listing of years that make up the content of annals reveal their more humble roots in medieval Easter tables. Insofar as it misleadingly reinforces an artificial disjunction between annals and the older chronicle tradition, the authors discard the category of "annals" altogether, subsuming it instead under the broader category of "chronicle." In their usage, the term chronicle encompasses works marked by a year-by-year annalistic structure, wide scope, paratactic style, and brevity in the narrative of events. Subsets of this genre would include consularia (annotated consular lists) and Paschal chronicles (chronicles written within the framework of an Easter table).

In their systematic dismantling of the received wisdom about the origins of medieval annals (or, more properly, medieval chronicles), B. and K. first demonstrate that the chronicle genre was neither uniquely nor even primarily Christian in character. Nor did the Christian adoption of the chronicle, at least initially, have anything to do with the Easter computus. For Julius Africanus (early third century), the study of chronology was at least in part a matter of providing an empirical foundation for Christian apocalyptic speculation. Following the precedent set by Hellenistic Jewish authors and representatives of other peoples of the Near East, Christian apologists also found comparative chronology a highly effective means of confirming both the antiquity of their religion and the derivative character of Greek civilization. Early Christian experiments in comparative Greco-Jewish chronology contained the seeds for more ambitious undertakings, including the great universal chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea.

Eusebius's chronicle plays a justifiably outsized role in the authors' exposition of the antecedents of the medieval Latin chronicle. His incorporation of material from Hellenistic olympiad chronicles, his fresh approach to long-standing chronological problems, and the inventive tabular structure of the second book of his chronicle (the so-called Chronici Canones) show it to be a truly original piece of scholarship. Thanks to the translation and continuation of the Canons by Jerome, the work became well-known in the Latin-speaking world, offering Christian writers in the West a vision of the past that securely integrated Christianity and Rome into the panorama of the rise and fall of nations and kingdoms. Under its influence, the chronicle soon became the dominant form of historical writing throughout the Middle Ages. At the same time, however, medieval chroniclers found it difficult to take over Eusebius's system of reckoning time without modification. In place of olympiads, regnal years and the Abrahamic era, medieval chroniclers found other systems more to their liking, including consular dating, universal years, and most significantly, the Dionysian anni domini familiar from the Easter Tables of the seventh and eighth centuries. While the so-called medieval "annals" may have introduced some new wrinkles into the genre, they have closer links with the ancient chronicle tradition than do the fuller narrative "chronicles" of the Latin West. Aside from the name, the latter have nothing in common with the chronicles of Late Antiquity.

Apart from its value as a corrective to--indeed, a complete inversion of--the conventional explanation of the origins of medieval "annals," the wide scope of this volume (and a thorough index) will make it an excellent, albeit occasionally demanding, introduction to the chronicle in Antiquity and the Middle Age. To avoid taxing readers with potentially distracting details, eight appendixes (as well as appendixes to the footnotes) elaborate at greater length topics treated in the body of the narrative. While a single thesis informs the treatment of the evidence, the authors never lose sight of the sources themselves, the analysis of which is painstaking and nuanced. In anticipation of Burgess's planned monograph on the textual relations and origins of the Irish chronicles, B. and K. set forth an original argument identifying hitherto overlooked ties between Irish chronicles and the medieval and late antique chronicle tradition. Although the overall orientation is in a westerly direction, the authors also include a brief but instructive account of the development of Byzantine chronicles. If interest in chronology is defining of the genre, many Byzantine works termed "universal chronicles" are better classified as breviaria, no more deserving of the designation "chronicle" than their medieval Latin counterparts. Why the annalistic style of recording the past virtually disappears after Theophanes in the ninth would require a study of its own. But the authors' decision to extend the scope of their analysis eastward helps to bring their findings about the Western tradition into sharper focus. To keep the study within a reasonable length and to avoid digging into subjects with which they are less familiar, the authors limit their discussion of Eastern chronicles to Byzantium (227). But as they rightly recognize, sources from the non-Greek speaking Eastern churches can offer another perspective on the survival and transmission of the ancient chronicle tradition. Because they preserve closer ties with Eusebius and Alexandrian chronography, Syriac and Ethiopic chronicles are in some ways better witnesses to this older tradition than their Byzantine counterparts.

The authors are also to be commended for their exemplary exposition of the durability of a genre often caricatured as an inferior and sub-literary form of historiography, amounting to little more than an uncritical accumulation of disjointed events. In response to the charge that they lacked any unifying narrative thread, the authors compare the structure of the ancient chronicle to a mosaic (hence the title of the book). Like the tiles of a mosaic, "the meaning of history...lay not in the details, but in the overall picture offered by the complete work" (33). Claims about the inferior literary quality of the chronicle are both true and irrelevant. As a branch of technical and scientific literature, chronicles, unlike narrative histories, were meant to be used, not to be read as self-standing literary monuments. The practical applications of the chronicle, its underlying "macro-narrative," and its treatment of the past uno in conspectus also explain the survival of the ancient chronicle tradition well into the Middle Ages. In this new setting, the genre proved flexible enough to accommodate various styles and content, ranging from brief notices inserted into Easter tables to more discursive annalistic records. The decentralization of power brought about by the collapse of the Carolingian empire had its own role to play in the spread of the genre to remote parts of the former Frankish kingdom and beyond. Historians involved in the work of fashioning national identities found the long reach and open-ended tabular structure of chronicles like Eusebius' Canons an ideal way to fuse local events with the broader sweep of world history. And because rhetorical skills or even extensive research were not mandatory, the composition of a chronicle was within the reach of writers of only modest literary aptitude. The accessibility of the genre in the Middle Ages resulted in what B. and K. call a "democratization of history": "anyone could be a historian and many took up the task" (129). At the end of their discussion, one thing is unmistakably clear: whether it served as a tool for antiquarian research, apologetic, apocalyptic speculation, or Easter reckoning, the chronicle was a highly functional instrument, in constant evolution and reinvention.

Occasional lapses and questionable claims are virtually inescapable in a work of dense technical content, ranging over more than 1300 years, and traversing so many regions and cultures. It is an overstatement to say that Philo's voluminous allegorical commentaries on the Pentateuch were intended mainly to establish the dependence of Greek philosophers and lawgivers on Moses (108). While it is true that the foundational principle of Africanus's chronicle was millennialist his interpretation of Daniel was, interestingly, non-eschatological. The terms of Daniel's apocalypse of seventy weeks were in his view completely satisfied in Jesus's ministry (cf. p. 117). In their discussion of the reception of Eusebius's chronicle, the authors state that Syncellus criticized Eusebius' Alexandrian critics Panodorus and Annianus (fifth century) for misdating the Incarnation by following pagan wisdom (i.e. Claudius Ptolemy). Syncellus actually faults only Panodorus for this failing (229).

In some cases, the authors also overplay the influence of apologetic on ancient Jewish and Christian chronicles. The two were not necessarily inseparable. From the admittedly little that survives from Demetrius the Jewish chronographer, there is little reason to suppose that he was at all interested in establishing the superior antiquity of Moses and the Jews. Sorting out chronological and exegetical problems in the biblical text, not comparative chronology, seems to have been uppermost in his mind. In their discussion of Christian chronicles, B. and K. state that "apologetic was the essential purpose of Christian chronography" (120). That observation would probably apply better to Tatian, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria than to Africanus and Eusebius. While the latter writers were undoubtedly influenced to some extent by apologetic, they were hardly beholden to it. At a certain point, the scientific requirements of the discipline required them to direct their energies elsewhere. For Africanus, the comparative dating of Moses is more a question of historical method than fodder for anti-Greek polemic. From reading the preface to Eusebius's Canons, one might reasonably draw the conclusion that "even had he wanted to," Eusebius "could hardly have dissociated himself from the apologetic tradition" (120). But his handling of conventional topoi of Christian apologetic chronology invites a different conclusion. In the first book of his chronicle, Eusebius allows that in the pursuit of chronological accuracy, no sources from the past should be exempt from scrutiny and doubt, not even the biblical record. Although initially making the de rigueur case for the overall superiority of Septuagint chronology to competing versions of the Bible, Eusebius (unlike his predecessors) does not adhere dogmatically to its testimony. And after determining that his predecessors had drastically inflated the length of time from the Exodus to the building of the temple under Solomon, Eusebius arrives at a date for Moses much later than the one sanctified by tradition. What all of this suggests is that even a writer as committed to the defense of the Church as Eusebius could dissociate himself from time-worn clichés of Jewish and Christian apologetic when he found them at odds with his own independent judgments.

To the extent that nomenclature lies at the heart of their thesis about the origins of medieval chronicles, the authors' lengthy exposition of the essential features of the chronicle genre is bound to elicit the most interest and criticism. B. and K. recognize that ancient writers are not nearly as scrupulous as they are in their terminology. They also allow that their fine-grained distinctions between "chronicles," "chronicle epitomes," "chronographs," "breviaria" and "epitomes" are unlikely to fine wide acceptance among medievalists (62). But they do make a compelling case both that the differences are substantive, and that any progress in reconstructing the development of the chronicle will require a more descriptive taxonomy than the one currently in scholarly use. There are places in the narrative, however, where the strict terminology becomes unwieldy, especially when it comes to describing hybrid works.  To remain true to their own exacting standards, many works ordinarily classified as universal chronicles now have to be categorized as something else, either as "chronographs" (Africanus and Syncellus), or as history "tricked out with the clothing of the chronicle" (Dexippus, p. 285). The more fundamental question is whether their claims about a connection between medieval "annals" and the ancient chronicle tradition are true by definition. That is, do compositional and structural similarities based on their own definition of the chronicle genre establish historical continuity? The authors have not ignored the question. As their painstaking analysis of the textual history of the Latin chronicle shows, the similarities between "annals" and ancient chronicle are not purely generic; there are also direct and traceable genealogical links.

Resurrected! Two articles from Florilegium by S. Muhlberger

Way back when -- in 1984 -- Florilegium, the journal of the Canadian Society of Medievalists, was looking for content, and I, a newish Ph.D., was looking for an opportunity to publish.  I was still mining my dissertation research on Latin chronicles of Late Antiquity, so what I had was not one but two pieces on the "Copenhagen" Continuation of Prosper, a seventh-century chronicle which preserves some interesting fifth-century and at the same time gives us access to a seventh-century point of view on the "fall of Rome."  One piece was an article-length appreciation and analysis of the Continuation; the other was a translation of the text, which despite being edited by Theodor Mommsen in the Chronica Minora, was hardly accessible in an easily readable form in any language.

Florilegium took them both, and I was very grateful.

Earlier this month I was thinking about these articles, considering whether I should perhaps turn them into an e-book.  The very next day I got a letter from the current editor of Florilegium asking for permission to reissue them electronically as part of a general reprinting of past issues of the journal!

So there it is:  and here are links to the grand reprinting project, the article "Heroic Kings and Unruly Generals: The 'Copenhagen' Continuation of Prosper Reconsidered" and the translation, "The Copenhagen Continuation of Prosper: A Translation."

Image:  from the Banks Florilegium and Wikipedia.

How one gained entree into the highest circles in 6th-century Europe

This year I returned to the early Middle Ages or late Antiquity to teach a fourth-year seminar on Gregory of Tours. Gregory was a sixth century bishop of what is now western France and who wrote a massive history of his times, the Histories, or more commonly the History of the Franks.  Gregory is a lot of fun to study because he is interested in lots of things and wrote with a great deal of personality (though how much of that personality is literary artefact is hard to say).


Gregory begins his history with this statement: "I wish first of all to explain my faith, so that whoever reads me may not doubt that I am a Catholic." This is followed by about two pages of a detailed creed or declaration of faith. Fair warning about his priorities, admittedly not very surprising from a bishop who is justifying his role as a teacher to his audience, which undoubtedly included his fellow bishops and would include in the future his successors in the church at Tours.  For some people, this declaration was an essential preamble to anything else Gregory might say.. Gregory was completely in sympathy with that point of view.


Yesterday, I was reading the letters of St. Radegund in preparation for a class discussion of this famous nun who lived at the same time Gregory did.    Radegund is a very interesting figure.  Born as a Thuringian princess, she was carted off to Gaul while still a child, after the Franks had destroyed most of her family. On reaching adulthood, she was married to King Lothar of the Franks, presumably to strengthen the Frankish claim to overlordship of Thuringia. Radegund and Lothar never got along very well, and eventually she insisted on becoming a nun and establishing a convent where she could live the ascetic life surrounded by other like minded women – and some women who were also high-ranking refugees from court life. Radegund became the foremost female religious figure in Frankish Gaul, but never completely lost her royal status.  One example of her working the system through her dual status was her acquisition of a piece or pieces of the True Cross from the Byzantine emperor. We can guess that if a random, distant nun had asked for such a fantastic gift, she would not have gotten it.  Her request would never have gotten to the Emperor.


We dod not have Radegund's request for a relic, we do have something that looks like a thank you letter that she set off to Emperor Justin (II) and Empress Sophia once she had it.  And a curious letter it is.  
Here's the beginning of her letter:


To the August Justin and Sophia 
The highest glory of the father, son, and nourishing spirit, 
one god to be adored in this trinity, 
majesty, triple person, simple substance, 
equal consort and coeval with itself, 
one force remaining the same, one power in three 
(which the father begetting , the spirit enables), 
indeed distinct in persons, joined in vigor, 
of one nature, equal in strength, light, throne, 
the trinity was always with him, ruling without time, 
lacking no use nor capable by seizing. 10 
Highest glory to you, creator of things and redeemer, 
who, just, gives Justin headship in the world. 
He claims, properly, the dominant fortress over kings, 
who pleases the heavenly king by serving. 
How deservedly he rules Rome and the Roman world 
who follows what the dogma says from the cathedra of Peter, 
what Paul sang far and wide, with one trumpet to thousands, 
to heathens and the senseless he poured out salt from his mouth, 
whose four-sided axle the wheel of his tongue circled, 
cold hearts are warm from the faith of his eloquence. 20 
Highest glory to you, creator of things and redeemer, 
who, just, gives Justin headship in the world. 
Strengthened, the disturbed faith of the church shines again 
and venerable law returns to its former place. 
Give back your vows to God, since the new purple holds whatever 
the council of Chalcedon established. 
Gaul sings this to your merits, Augustus, 
the Rhone, the Rhine, the Danube, the Elbe do. 
Beneath the western axle Galicia heard the deed, 
Biscayne brought it to the nearby Basques. 30 
The pious fable runs to the farthest people of the faith 
and the British land across the ocean is favorable. 
How well, lover, do you share the care with the lord! 
You make his causes yours, he makes yours his. 
Christ gives you the power, you give Christ the honor: 
he gives the summit, you give back the faith. 
There was nothing more on earth that he might give to be ruled, 
nor more that you could give back than nourishing faith is strong. 
Fathers sent into exile for the name of Christ 
then came back, with the diadem to you. 40 
Released from prison, residing in the former seat, 
hold you to be one general good. 
Curing so many sorrows of the confessors, 
you come as a healing to innumerable people. 


Presumably Radegund had in a previous communication established that she was the kind of person who was worthy of Imperial attention -- holy woman and influential Frankish queen.  But just in case Justin and  Sophia might have second thoughts, and be tempted to think that Radegund was only a barbarian they mistakenly had been overgenerous to, Radegund spends line after line of poetry buttering them up, showing that she is quite aware of current religious conflicts, is on the right side of them, and appreciates (weak word) Justin's role in establishing theological truth and restoring unjustly persecuted bishops to their sees.  The man is a universal hero and his wife is not far behind him.  

That's the way, or one way, that one established one's right to a place in the Big Time in sixth-century Christian Europe.  Radegund may have been a Thuringian or a Frank, she was determined to show that she was no hick. One wonders if the letter had the desired effect.


Image:  Radegund imagined by the illustrator of the Nuremberg Chronicle, 15th century.

6th century names that start with G

Gallomagnus, Galswinth, Garachar, Gararic, Garivald, Germanus, Godigisel, Godomar, Gogo, Goiswinth, Grindio, Grippo, Gundegisel, Gunthar.

Not to mention Gregory.

In other letters, let's not forget Chramn, Chundo, and Chuppa.

A delicious passage from Gregory of Tours -- or rather translator Lewis Thorpe

Here's the Latin from Histories (or The History of the Franks) 7.2:

 Quibus discedentibus, coniuncti Dunenses cum reliquis Carnotenis, de vestigio subsecuntur, simile sorte eos adficientes, qua ipsi adfecti fuerant, nihil in domibus vel extra domus vel de domibus relinquentes. 

Thorpe's English:

[Raiders from Chateaudun wreaking reprisals on attackers from Blois and Orleans] meted out to them the same treatment which they themselves had received:  they left nothing inside the houses and nothing outside the houses, and they knocked the houses down.

With apologies to the long-ago victims of this violent episode, that's pretty amazing.


Image: the same action, same country, somewhat later.

Eyes on Egypt -- the modern martyrs

Earlier this month, a demonstration by Coptic Christians in Egypt was broken up with deadly force by the army, who among other things ran over the demonstrators with tanks.

This sent a shock through Egyptian politics, throwing  a shadow over hopes that the recent revolution -- clearly incomplete -- would lead to a democratic and non-sectarian Egypt.

At the same time, I was reading Peter Brown's Cult of the Saints preparatory to teaching about the social role of martyr's cults in Late Antiquity.

When the following essay  -- martyrs' passion? -- appeared in the Arabist, I was electrified.

It is about the struggle to expose through honest autopsies, what happened to the demonstrators.

The original author is being harassed by military prosecutors.
Image:  Meena Daniel

LIVING WITH THE MARTYRS

By Alaa Abdel Fattah, al-Shorouk, 20 October 2011

A couple days spent at the morgue. A couple days amid the corpses of those struggling to preserve their martyr status, fighting against the Mubarak regime in its entirety; not just against Mubarak’s military who ran them over, not just against Mubarak’s media machine which denied them the honor of martyrdom and turned them into mere killers, and not just against Mubarak’s judicial system which denied them their rights.

These corpses are fighting to preserve the glory of their martyrdom in the gloomy morgue of a poor government hospital. They are fighting against the insanities of the Mubarak era claiming that an autopsy would harm the sanctity of the deceased and won’t bring them the triumph they deserve. They are fighting against the domination of the sultan’s theologians and priests who want us to believe that those seeking justice in this life are abandoning their right for justice in the afterlife. They are fighting against Mubarak’s politics of division, which made the poor believe their enemies lie among the poor, thus turning their attention away from those embezzling their daily bread.

A couple days spent with merciful death and merciless shame. My God, why do most of our martyrs belong to the poor? How were they discerned by the tank and the gun? Don’t we all bear the same blood and lie in the same grave? Still, it seems we have let the martyrs down, over and over again.

Our Egypt is incredible. It only picks the best of us. Meena Daniel was its right choice. It was him who sealed our triumph in the morgue.

Blessed are the meek

They came to the hospital by the hundreds, searching for wounded bodies to treat and murdered bodies to bury. They came searching for a shelter from the night that embodied all their fears. They came searching for anyone willing to share their anger and seeking strength in numbers. They came as the “church’s flock.” The hospital was surrounded by plainclothes assailants (perhaps these are the honest citizens cheered day and night by Mubarak’s military?), backed by the defenders of our security and revolution, seeking to assure these people that their only hope is to belong to the church’s flock.

We came looking for our friend from the Square, the guy with the charming smile, Meena, who belongs to us and to whom we belong. Martyrdom chose Meena as he belongs to the church’s flock as much as to the revolution. These were the words of his family members who insisted on involving his buddies in every decision – we are his buddies after all. Meena struggled from his afterlife hoping we’d be accepted by the families of the martyrs, making us a group of comrades in the same struggle. We all bleed and weep the same, don’t we? Just as the truth – hushed on television stations – kept sprinkling out of the tears of the mothers of martyrs, it shows in our tears. They understood we were Meena’s buddies; that was enough for them to forget to ask our names in their usual suspicious manner.

So the hospital issued its report on the Maspero incident: did they die of cardiac arrest or was there a fight? The priests came forward with their advice: let’s bury them quickly as it’s hot outside and there is no refrigeration in the morgue. This is where we intervened, strong with the arrogance and naïveté of our revolt: What about justice? What about punishment? This is our last chance to uncover the criminals; we need the forensic report.

How insane this was of us! Do we really mean to ask for an autopsy in our quest for justice we have never seen before, not even once? Not even by coincidence? What justice are we seeking, we, the poor? What justice are we seeking, we, the Copts? What justice are we seeking from the criminals ruling us? Don’t you understand that we’re vulnerable?
Still, Meena was one of us. His sister was the first to agree to an autopsy and this was enough to convince others, one after another. They were reluctant and we were insistent. Lawyers encouraged us amidst hours of weeping, hugs and debates. We were running against the clock, bringing every ice cube and every miserable fan we could find, hoping that our affection would be enough to maintain the purity of the bodies.

The next morning, the prosecutors arrived to find half of the families demanding an autopsy. This is when the noble judge issued his rule: I could either issue burial permits or forensic requests, aren’t we all equal in death? Of course, the priests were here to spice up the atmosphere: our monsignor will celebrate the mass for their companions in a short while; so you’d better hurry before it’s too late. Have mercy on your children, their reward in Paradise is grand.

We stood unified in our fight against the regime. This time, however, the battle field has changed. This time, it’s about reason, logic and compassion. We made it in defeating the regime which faced our resolute rows of anger, bricks and solidarity. This time, however, we needed to lead a long debate before the prosecutor agreed to an autopsy for all the corpses… provided that we take charge of the forensic work.
What a sad truth this is turning to be! We had, first, to manage the security of our demonstrations. Next, things evolved and we had to ensure the smooth running of public facilities. Now, we have the duty of ensuring the work of public servants, on behalf of the government! Why, thus, would we bother to ask the police and the army to do their job. After all, it shows clearly on the corpses of our martyrs.

We had the families understand that the autopsy is a lengthy procedure. Thus, it was wise to move the corpses to the Zeinhum morgue where the services are convenient. Fear invaded the place again; it’s true that Meena made them believe in our country, still, rumors never stopped spreading while the gangs of “gentlemen” standing outside kept on terrorizing the crowds all night long. While we didn’t admit it openly, we got the message: We won’t leave the Coptic neighborhood because God knows what evil awaits us over there.

So we had to secure the hospital. We had to ensure appropriate working conditions for the forensic team. We had to evacuate thousands of scared souls from the building and control the reactions of thousands of angry people. There were just a handful of us to manage this whole procedure. Ironically, we had to assume the role of the Central Security Forces too. It seems we have a new battlefield to take over with our only weapon being our solidarity.

The forensic team started its mission, guarded by us and supervised by our lawyers and doctors, our unseen soldiers who experienced all kinds of injustice and who knew how to unveil evidence of murder, torture, crimes and massacres, much better than forensic experts. The team began its work while we were frightened by the idea of letting a family member see the infuriating scene of a scalpel cutting through the corpse of a dear son. We were frightened by the idea of seeing our ranks crumble in the face of the “gentlemen” attacks or the outrage of the bereaved.

My kingdom is not of this world

It is true that the unity of our ranks worries all those opportunists; the traders of the cause being the most treacherous of them all. They are everywhere around us: Do you really trust this lawyer? She’s so young and unproven… I have a much broader experience, and who are these? All of these are Muslims! How could you trust them? You have warned us for months, dear Meena, when you said: it is crucial that Maspero joins forces with Tahrir Square. It is crucial that the demands of the Copts remain the demands of the people and vice-versa. The choice is so hard, dear Meena. While the oppressive authorities are hitting indiscriminately, these opportunists know well how to hit where it hurts most. So we spent the rest of the day fighting their deceitful rumors and fake accusations. Our goal was to return confidence and tranquility to the souls of our people.

In the beginning, we assumed a role we thought was similar to that of the Central security forces. We soon realized how both roles were so different. I will never understand how security forces anywhere in this world could believe that violence is the way to bring discipline back into masses of angry or scared citizens. I also wonder who recommended to the world’s governments that using guns and bullets in the face of the masses would deter them. The only thing we thought of as a weapon in front of the waves of anger surrounding us was our chests. We threw ourselves in front of the crowds and we cried for our martyrs. This is how we were able to drive out the delusions of a sectarian military reality and to spread the truthful dream of a free Egypt.

Dear Meena, our revolution is so fragile! Any stray bullet could topple it. Dear Meena, our revolution is so strong! One powerful sole would suffice to save it. Dear Meena, you made me grasp the teachings of the prophets. When will the military do the same? As soon as the forensic team started its work, complaints started on the lack of means, on the poor circumstances and on the nuisance of the surrounding guards. Still, the team had to accomplish its mission. When it was known that the team is almost done with the autopsy and is about to put up its report on the causes of death, someone began spreading rumors of false reports being prepared. Since the cause of death could refer to a single mortal wound, while the corpses are filled with scores of them, this was enough for the families of the martyrs to believe what they heard, and it was enough for the waiting crowds to burst in outrage. This was also enough to cause our ranks to collapse.

On the brink of victory, we found ourselves facing the toughest ordeal. The families believed in the dream of justice; they let us dissect the corpses of their sons while they delayed the funeral mass that was to be celebrated by the monsignor, which led in turn to another night’s delay of the burial. They made all the sacrifices we asked of them despite their initial reluctance. Now, they demand assurances; they want to experience the justice they are after. In return, all we had for them was a bunch of incomprehensible technical and legal stuff. Indeed, why does the report say run over by a “heavy vehicle” when truth is clear and we all know it was an armored tank? Why doesn’t it say it was an armored tank? Why is there a mention of fiery projectiles? Why is there no mention of “security service bullets”? Haven’t we been promised justice? Why can’t we read the name of the criminal who is known to all of us?

I didn’t grasp the victory we achieved while we were inundated by tons of details. At one moment in time, I looked around and saw that our unified ranks gained the sympathy of the hospital staff, the doctors and the priests! What have you done, dear Meena? Is it the vulnerability of our families that awakened their conscience or is it your strength that burst out their imagination? Did we really succeed in overcoming all these obstacles in just a few hours? I can claim that even the forensic doctors joined our ranks too. The only solution was to sit with each family, explain the causes of death and point out the details that will be shown in the forensic report. That’s in addition to explaining the role of the prosecutor and lawyers. Our unity was contagious enough to attract the forensic doctor who forgot he was just a public servant and who made himself our judicial representative. When he sat with the families and explained the content of the reports, something he was only used to doing with the powerful class, he may have remembered that justice is always by the side of the vulnerable. I saw them describe the features of the martyrs to their families, a way to make them believe that they are not just corpses and to prove that they know them and care for their memory. I finally witnessed the dream, for which you reached martyrdom turn into reality, even for a short moment.

On our way to the church, our victory was total. None bothered to check who carried the martyrs and who led the acclaim. Was it a Muslim who was shouting “We either bring them justice or we die like them”? What a silly question. Don’t we all have the same blood and cry out the same tears?

Turn the other cheek

Before moving to the Coptic hospital, we were in another hospital, away from the battle scene, waiting for the X-ray of Ahmed’s foot, injured with a live bullet.

We picked up Ahmed from Talaat Harb Street while he was trying to save his homeland by joining his companions gathered in the Tahrir Square. The fall of our martyrs had happened just a few hours earlier. Our youth did not bother to have a count and see which group outnumbers the other. They did not either think about what action to take in the face of the “unarmed” forces (according to the press conference) showering them with bullets.

They were only worried about the gravity of events that might follow if they left the Square to the demonstration of mercenaries shouting “Islamic! Islamic!”… a demonstration organized with the blessing of the army and the police. We all knew it was a fabricated demonstration, an attempt to bring a civilian touch to a military-driven massacre, thus directing the blame towards the Salafis.

We saw in Ahmed a mythical hero when he resisted his friends and refused to be hospitalized claiming that his wound is superficial and is just an impact of a tiny projectile. Still, we managed to convince him and take him away on our shoulders. On our way by taxi to a private hospital, away from the events’ scene, he told us how he was arrested and tortured by the “honest” military and how he was allowed a “fair” trial in a military tribunal. He told us how he got shot during the Abbassiya battle of treachery. His injuries did not prevent him from rejoining his companions who were facing the horror of live bullets.

Once at the hospital, and after we confirmed he was hit by live bullets and not just tiny projectiles, we were visited by a police investigator. Ahmed’s resolution was impressive, replying cold-bloodedly and defiantly to the officer’s questions. He impressed us further when he showed his disgust following the officer’s asking his name: “So you’re a Muslim”… Would he have refused his release from the hospital if he were e a Christian? The only moment during which Ahmed showed his vulnerability, just like ours, was when he cried while the doctor was sterilizing his wound. We haven’t noticed his young age until he replied with fear to his mother calling him on his mobile: “Maspero? What do I have to do with that Mum? I’m hanging out with my friends…”

Does Major General Hamdi Bedeen realize that some of us fear our loving mothers more than they fear bullets and tanks? Did the Marshal hear us shout “O Marshal, O Marshal, here comes another bridegroom from Tahrir” while taking Meena on his last visit to the square? Does anyone of the military realize the deep meaning out of seeing the mother of Khaled Said visiting the mother of Meena Daniel? Or did they forget the value of blood, tears, hugs and dreams? They no longer have a place amongst us but we are more tolerant towards those who let us down in the beginning.

Not to be missed: conjuring up Rome in AD 600

Dr. Beachcombing imagines the near-ghost town it must have been:

Let’s take the lowest sensible estimate for classical Rome – half a million – and the highest for Rome c. 600, about 50,000. That means that the population has not only been decimated, but that it had been decimated nine times over. And what is more these heirs of Rome (as fashionable ‘late antique’ historians call them) were resident in an echo box; a city that they no longer had the technology to repair, let alone recreate, where nine out of every ten residences were empty, where three and four story buildings gradually keeled over into the streets and where the Parthenon and the Coliseum looked down mockingly on the little people below, not so much dwarfs on giants’ shoulders, as blue-bottles buzzing around a cow’s backside.

Then, remember, perhaps the actual population of Imperial Rome was more like a million and the population of Rome c. 600 was more like  ten thousand, a hundredth of what it had been. The psychopathic Anglo-Saxon guard, the tourist from Scythia and the Pope and his tiny administration could shout as loud as they wanted and no one would have heard them in their ghost town. No one was listening, not even the red baked tiles made in a happier age.

I have recently lived across the river from Detroit...so this is evocative.  Detroit is not, however, quite so echoic.

Parthenon presumably should be Pantheon (above).

More on ancient population estimates in a later post.

Battle in the Early Middle Ages: Expertise and controversy

"Historian on the Edge" provides us with an expert summary of his views on early medieval warfare.

I say "expert" rather than "authoritative" because as he points out, there are no authorities on this subject, only controversialists.

Highly recommended for students in my upcoming fourth-year seminar.

Image:  Conan as barbaric warrior.

Goodricke and Constantine without honor in their own city

Today I went on a free guided tour of York, provided by one of the many volunteers who have been providing this service since 1950 (!). Well worth the time and I'm grateful to the organization and our guide.

However, I must say that he had me biting my tounge more than once with his version of York history (and of his weakness for terrible folk etymologies no more will be said). My faith in his knowledge of his home town's history -- and he called himself a local historian -- was given a shock when he called Athelstan a Viking king. I mean, is there a more (Old) English name? If, dear reader, you were a volunteer guide at York, I believe you would not make this mistake.

Nor, I hope, would you try to be relevant by saying that Henry VIII used the loot from the Dissolution of the Monasteries "to found the Oxbridge Consortium." Would you?

It's odd what people include, and don't. Maybe there was no archaeological or architectural hook to bring in the Pilgrimage of Grace, but I bet I could find one. (Just sitting here I now have one.) But how can you say that the late Roman HQ was found under the Minster in the late 1960s, and not mention that Constantine was elevated to the emperorship in York? This has got to be one of the most important things, on a world-historical scale, to ever happen in the city. But it went unmentioned.

And about the same time Constantine was being ignored, we were standing in front of the Treasurer's House in the old ecclesiastical enclave, also ignoring a sign that said John Goodricke worked there in the 1780s on Cepheid variables, the discovery of which eventually provided an astronomical yardstick to estimate the size of the universe. Talk about world-historical.

I should study up and volunteer myself...

Challenge: look up Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who should have got a Nobel Prize. No York connection.

Radegund's brother

As I prepare course materials for my course on Gregory of Tours, I am blessed with a blog post that relates to him and 6th century Gaul (an earlier name for France).

Medieval History Geek asks -- did the famous 6th century queen and nun Radegund, wife of the Frankish king Clothar, actually have a brother?

Here's an excerpt:

As I've read accounts of Radegund, one item has begun to trouble me. Radegund left Clothar because he murdered her brother. 1 I’ve read a theory that he was a threat because he was last of a royal Thuringian line and that he may have been active in a revolt against Clothar.

Here’s my problem with the brother. He has no name. Gregory and Fortunatus both mention him, but he’s an anonymous figure. A substantial poem, "The Thuringian War," was written either by Radegund or by Fortunatus with Radegund's input. A large portion of this poem, written from Radegund's point of view, laments her dead brother, yet he remains nameless. 2 As I've read more books on the Merovingians, Radegund is consistently mentioned and each time I've read, "left Chlothar after he murdered her brother," I asked myself, "And who was this brother, exactly?" For some time I've been wondering; Did he really exist?

I have two reasons for questioning this. First and what really stands out for me is the simple fact of his namelessness. Gregory and Fortunatus wrote after Radegund’s death, roughly 40 years after she left Clothar. They were both well acquainted with Radegund. Gregory was bishop of Tours, just down the road from The Convent of the Holy Cross and conducted her funeral, even though he wasn't her bishop. Fortunatus corresponded with her regularly and wrote poems for her. In the decades the two of them knew her, with this being the trigger; the single key, life-altering incident by which she entered into a religious life, she never mentioned him by name to either of them? If her brother's murder bothered her enough to drive her from her husband, you'd think he would be important enough to be named.

...

It puzzles me that I’ve not run across this argument before. If someone knows of anyone discussing this, please let me know. 9 The historicity of Radegund's brother seems to be unquestioned by modern historians.

Image:  Radegund entering her convent, despite the pleas of many.

Migration and ethnicity and why the 5th century matters today

Guy Halsall gave this paper --Archaeology and Migration: Rethinking the Debate -- at the conference on The Very Beginnings of Europe? Cultural and Social Dimensions of early Medieval Migration and Settlement (5th-8th centuries) that took place in Brussels on 17-19 May.

Obscure? Irrelevant?  See what Halsall has to say:

Moving from the demonstration of migration to the explanation of the downfall of the Roman Empire through appeal to migration can be highly irresponsible, at best.  Southern German newspapers have, for example, reviewed a museum exhibition set out in the traditional migrationist paradigm as showing how ‘the Roman Empire fell because it could not keep out the immigrants’ and that we can learn from this.  When a British historian places an argument that the Roman Empire fell because of the immigration of large numbers of barbarians next to arguments that the end of Rome was the end of civilisation and that we need to take care to preserve our own civilisation, when another British historian writes sentences saying ‘the connection between immigrant violence and the collapse of the western Empire could not be more direct’, and especially when the arguments of both involve considerable distortions of the evidence to fit their theories, one cannot help but wonder whether these authors are wicked, irresponsible or merely stupid.  Are they setting themselves up as ideologues of the xenophobic Right or have they simply not realised the uses to which such careless thinking and phrasing can be put?  I have already drawn attention to the worrying implications of the use of genetic data to study this period, and they do not stop with implications about monolithic ethnic identities based upon genetics.

If we accept that it is fundamentally misguided to start looking at the archaeological record primarily in terms of whether or not it demonstrates migration, broad new interpretative horizons are opened up for us.  In particular, new horizons are presented and, simultaneously, ways of contributing in more humane fashion to current debates about immigration, if we break down the set of binary oppositions that bedevil the study of the period: Romans against barbarians; Saxons against Britons; (especially importantly) the Roman empire against barbaricum; the Roman period against the Migration period; Britain versus the mainland of Europe; the Saxon migration moving simply from east to west.

You do want to read the rest now, don't you?

Fourth Annual Coptic Studies Symposium: Ottawa, February 26, 2011

I don't know if anyone who reads this blog will be interested, but just in case here's a message from Prof Greatrex.  Note that this mostly about old-time Copts (late antiquity).

I would like to draw your attention to the Fourth Annual Coptic Studies Symposium: Coptic Heritage – Dynamics and Diversity, organized by the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies (CSCS), which will take place at the University of Ottawa on 26 February 2011. The programme is as follows:

9.00-9.45   registration

9.45-10.00  welcome

Ramez Boutros, President, Canadian Society for Coptic Studies

His Excellency Wael Aboulmagd, Ambassador, Arab Republic of Egypt

Antoni Lewkowicz, Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa



10.00-10.45 Keynote lecture by Jacques van der Vliet (University of

Leiden/Radboud University Nijmegen), ‘Pesynthios of Koptos/Qift (569–632) and the Rise of the Egyptian Miaphysite Church’

10.45-11.00 discussion



11.00-11.30 Robert Edwards (University of Ottawa), ‘A Case for Martyrdom? Editorial Intention and the First Apocalypse of James (NHC V,3//AM 2)’

11.30-12.00 Timothy Pettipiece (Carleton University), ‘Towards a Manichaean Reading of the Nag Hammadi Codices’



12.00-1.30  lunch break



1.30-2.00   Anne Moore (University of Calgary), ‘Syncretism and Confrontation in Besa’s Life of Shenoute’

2.00-2.30   Theodore de Bruyn (University of Ottawa), ‘The Intercessory Function of Mary in Egyptian Amulets

and Anaphoras in Late Antiquity’



2.30-3.00   coffee break



3.00-3.30   Sabrina Higgins (University of Ottawa), ‘Divine Mothers: The Influence of Isis on the Virgin Mary in Egyptian Monastic Iconographic Programs’

3.30-4.00   Ramez Boutros (University of Toronto), ‘The Architectural Stone Carvings in the Christian Basilica of Dendara: Style and Workmanship’



4.00-4.30   stretch break



4.30-5.00   Helene Moussa (St. Mark’s Coptic Museum, Scarborough), ‘Museums as Cultural Institutions: The Experience of St. Mark’s Coptic Museum’

5.00-5.30   May Telmissany (University of Ottawa), ‘Coptic Films and Copts in Egyptian Films: Intersections and Discrepancies’

In case you would like to attend the event and for more information, please get in touch with the organizer, my colleague Jitse Dijkstra (jdijkstr@uottawa.ca).

Geoffrey Greatrex


Geoffrey Greatrex
Département d'études anciennes et de sciences des religions
Department of Classics and Religious Studies
Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa
70 av. Laurier est/Laurier Ave. East
Ottawa, ON, CANADA K1N 6N5
tél. (613)-562-5808
fax. (613)-562-5991

Any of my grad students out there?

I will be teaching a seminar in Nipissing University's Masters program in history this year. I believe that it is called HIST 5216, Topics in European History, but what it really will be is a seminar nicknamed "Medieval Historians." I do not expect that any of my students who come into this course knowing a lot about medieval historians or even the Middle Ages.

If by any chance, any of students in the fall come across this post, and has a little time on the hands, let me suggest you go here to read something I wrote back in the 90s that will help you with at least the first third of the course. It is The Overview of Late Antiquity, a brief summary of what I learned about the earliest Middle Ages, also called Late Antiquity, during the time I was a graduate student and a young professor digesting a tremendous amount of material thrown at me during my education. It is specifically aimed at an audience that needs some basic concepts and terms spelled out for it. Even though we all have to start at a pretty basic level in any subject, there are too many good short guides in any field. This was my attempt to write one.okay

If anyone else wants to read it, you're surely welcome.

Benefactors of humanity

More than once in the past I have said that Roger Pearse is a benefactor of humanity. It still seems to be true. Why is he our benefactor? He has taken it upon himself translate or commission translations of a great many early Christian works which have until now been available only to people who could read the original languages. Some people think that's fine -- if you don't know ancient Greek you would not understand these sources anyway -- but that's not my attitude, nor is it Roger's. As someone who has studied late antiquity and read a lot of obscure Christian literature from that era, I am in awe of Roger's generosity. The translations that he posts and otherwise gives away are not a complete substitute for the originals, but they make available part of the cultural and religious legacy of early Christianity to many new people.

I was inspired to say something about Roger by a blog post he published today, just one of the interesting posts of his that I've read since I discovered he had a blog. the Post announces a new translation of Hippolytus's Chronicon, one of the very first world chronicles written by Christian, in this case a third century Roman clergyman who eventually was martyred. (He is sometimes considered the first antipope.) In an earlier incarnation I had to know something about Hippolytus; it would have been nice to have this translation then.

But one of the interesting things about this new translation is that it is not, as far as I can tell, one of Roger's projects! There is another benefactor of humanity out there and this person is named T. C. Schmidt. Thank you very much, T.C.!

Image: Hippolytus being martyred, dragged behind a horse, from the Wikipedia entry on him.

Le Siècle de Libanios : littérature, culture et société du IVe siècle après J.-C. dans l'Orient méditerranéen

On the off chance one of my readers has both a reading command of French and an interest in the cultural, political, and intellectual life of the late 4th century AD, I include this link. Have fun, o lucky reader.

Gregory of Tours and Obama

A fine little essay from Magistra et Mater. An excerpt:

Historians once largely believed what Gregory of Tours wrote in his ‘Ten Books of History’ (which is how the History of the Franks is now more accurately referred to). Gregory might be naive (all that reporting of miracles), but his artlessly gory portrayals of Merovingian life told us all we needed to know about the horrors of Merovingian society.

A more recent view of Gregory, along with many other medieval historians, is that his history reflects his own prejudices or that he is writing propaganda. Nevertheless, even though his text is not transparent, we can read through it to get useful material. We can see the outlines of particular actions by his enemies through his distorted stories about them. Alternatively, for social/cultural historians, even if his stories are not true at all, but purely propaganda, they reflect what a king or a queen or a bishop could feasibly do. Propaganda, after all, needs to be plausible.

I would have adhered to such views once, but recent events have made me less certain. If you look at many of the claims circulating in the US about Barack Obama, (such as the claim that he is not a citizen) they’re not remotely plausible, and yet they’re widely accepted. One answer is that this is simply because such stories have been pushed so hard by particular powerful interest groups. But there are implausible stories which have achieved wide circulation and belief without such long term propaganda efforts: Slacktivist has an interesting example of one.

And some claims go beyond the merely deeply implausible to a different level. Take the claim that Obama’s plan for health care involves ‘death panels’, for example. You could see this as an extreme distortion of some possible plans for living wills or not paying for heroic treatment of the terminally ill, but it’s probably better to see these statements as symbolic. Obama is an evil ruler and therefore of course he is planning death panels, because that’s what evil rulers do. And, in glorious circularity, he is planning death panels and so that is ‘proof’ that he must be an evil ruler.

I’ve just been reading Martin Heinzelmann,Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century (CUP, 2001) who argues convincingly and in great detail that Gregory is using symbolic figures in the Ten Books of History: the Good King, the Bad King, the Good Bishop etc. What he doesn’t really get into is looking at how that might affect historians who actually want to know something about the sixth century (as opposed to those wanting to understand how Gregory’s mind works). If Gregory’s stories are largely symbolic, can we take anything factual from them beyond a few names and events? Or are we faced not just with a distorted mirror on the Merovingian past, but a fantasy view of it?

I have wrestled with this question before, in regards specifically to Gregory of Tours, but I increasingly find my own contemporaries at least as mysterious as people of the 6th century. Can people really believe such things (you name it)? And if they don't believe it...but perhaps that's what M&M means.