940.1 D83g2 v.l 62-06827 Duckett The gateway to the Middle Ages Italy KANSAS CITY, MO PUBLIC LIBRAE MAlOCTZS )j(fljNOV061993 THE GATEWAY TO THE MIDDLE AGES ITALY The Gateway to the Middle Ages ITALY by Eleanor Shipley Duckett ANN ARBOR PAPERBACKS THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS FIRST EDITION AS AN ANN ARBOR PAPERBACK 1961 COPYRIGHT BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 1938 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS AND SIMULTANEOUSLY IN TORONTO, CANADA, BY AMBASSADOR BOOKS LIMITED MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO MARY ELLEN CHASE AND OUR CAMBRIDGE FAMILY CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND 1934-1936 ABBREVIATIONS PL Patrologia Latina PG Patrologia Graeca M.G.H Monumenta Germaniae Historica M.H.B Monumenta Historica Britannica R.LS RerumltalicarumScriptores (Muratori) Script, rer. Merov. Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum Script, rer. Lang. Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum C.S.H.B. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae C.S.E.L Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum P.L.M Poetae Latini Minores P.W Real-Encyclopadie, ed. Pauly-Wissowa C.M.H Cambridge Medieval History H.S.C.P Harvard Studies in Classical Philology C.P Classical Philology Schanz .... Schanz-Hosius-Kriiger : Geschichte der romischen Literatur, IV, 2, 1920 Manitius . M. Manitius : Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, I, 1911 Bardenhewer . O. Bardenhewer: Geschichte der alt- kirchlichen Literatur, V, 1932 PREFACE THE GATEWAY TO THE MIDDLE AGES is made up of three parts. This one deals with Italy in the sixth century. This with the of seat of "gateway" opened passing Italy, government of the Western part of the Roman Empire, into rude barbarian hands, when Ravenna and Rome, chief cities of this Roman Empire in the West, fell in 476 to the invader Odovacar and his Germanic hordes; when, in his turn, Odovacar was forced, some seventeen years later, to yield to another barbarian conqueror, who seized his throne at Ravenna, overran his kingdom, killed him by his own hand, and thus became lord of Italy and its people. Here, then, stretching before us, we see the Middle Ages. This Gothic barbarian was to be known as Theodoric the Great. Ignorant himself both of diplomacy and of culture, face to face with the skill and experience of the Romans whom he was to rule, his mind conceived the ideal of an Italy under himself as king, supported in counsel and in learning by the finest of his Roman subjects. His should be a twofold state, uniting the young barbarian energy of muscle and daring with the Roman genius and knowledge in matters of law and administration. And so he worked until he died in 526, and Italy once more fell upon strife. The Roman Empire of the East, ruled from Constantinople, sent out its armies to regain from barbarian control this Western portion of its im perial dominion. For more than sixty years battle and siege, PREFACE hatred and fear, famine and massacre, pass before us in these pages, while commanders of Constantinople s counter- invasion, Belisarius and Narses, fight the Gothic kings who succeed one another on Italy s throne. Victory and defeat fall to either side. At length Roman power driving from the East prevails, and Italy is once more wholly united under Rome s imperial law, ruling from Constantinople. Yet not for long. Toward the end of the sixth century, the Lombards, a new barbarian host, pour down upon the land, seize its northern cities, and in 599 compel Constanti nople to strike treaty of partition. Italy in days to come is to be divided: its north under Lombard chieftains, its cen ter and south under the Roman Empire of the East. From out this land ruled by barbarian kings have come writings of deep interest and worth to readers of history: the letters and other documents which Cassiodorus the Roman wrote as official secretary for his Gothic sovereigns; the story by Jordanes, himself a Goth, of his Gothic people; the picture of Theodoric drawn by Ennodius, bishop of Pavia in northern Italy. Above all, the reign of Theodoric the Great has left for us the thought of Boethius, who, noble Roman though he and was, devoted to his Catholic Church, served loyally under Theodoric, heretic and barbarian; who was accused of treachery, thrown into prison, and in 525, under Theo doric, was put to death. From his prison has come to us that dialogue with the Lady Philosophy, the famous Con solation of Philosophy, which lived for the scholars and poets of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which still lives for all who would look into the mystery of man s soul and its hope. As John Bunyan long after him, so here the captive Boethius strives in meditation to discover the mean ing of his fate. Here at last philosophy draws him up from PREFACE his misery to understand the riddle of human life; to look away from his sorrow to the Perfect Goodness, the One ness, the God for Whom all creatures yearn, do they know it or not; to reach an insight into the problems that have beset all thinkers in all time: of Providence and Predestina tion; of Fortune and Freewill; of God s foreknowledge and of man s final destiny. In these records of her history, in this wrestling with philosophy, Italy of the sixth century opens out a way to the struggles and the victories of medieval ages to come. As in the original book, I again acknowledge here with gratitude permission to quote from the Loeb edition of the Theological Tractates of Boethius. E.S.D. Northampton, Massachusetts, 1960 INTRODUCTION The fifth century of our era in Europe makes sad and dreary reading. Its records are filled with death and decay, destruction of lands and wasting of resources, the misery of the poor, the careless ease of the rich. Its preachers pointed the thoughts of men away from this world s false dream of evil to a City not built with hands, eternal in the heavens. Monastic enclosure, retirement from secular affairs, was the refuge of its devout layfolk, choosing rather to save their own souls than to hand down to children the burden they themselves had borne. Its thinkers, Augustine, Orosius, Salvian, each gave a different answer to the many who asked why God dealt thus with a Christian State of Rome ? Its poets turned back to the story of man s fall from innocence, the drop of evil which long ago had tainted at its source the stream of human history. Its rulers ended the line of the Roman Empire in the West. The thread of the sixth century s narrative is no less caught in an unending tangle of siege and battle, of famine and murder, distress of nations gripped in duel throughout its time. During its years the Roman Empire, still surviving in the East, struggled from Constantinople to defend Italian lands from the Eastern Goths, who first with triumph and afterward with despair clung to the Italian crown and territory they had seized by force of arms. At its ending both Romans and Goths yielded place to another wave of barbarians from the north. In Gaul the sons and grandsons of Clovis wrote a century s full chapter of rest less fighting for land and wealth. Along the Rhine German tribes exulted within the ruined towns from which the last Roman defenders had now been banished by death or exile. In Spain INTRODUCTION the successors of Alaric the second gave rein to an ambition which stopped at nothing in its desire. In Britain the Celts had fled to their mountains and caves before their conquerors from overseas. Yet once the old as it again passed from life into history gave 1 to birth the new. First, in things political. The dream which Theodoric the Great now longed to realize in a marriage of young barbarian vigour with ancient Roman civilization found its fulfilment later under Charlemagne. Even now a fresh na tional spirit was emerging through the settling of different peoples in Europe on their own chosen soil. The sixth century saw the in Lombards occupation of northern Italy, saw the broad fields of France taken and retaken by the Merovingian Kings : in preparation for the time when Franks and Lombards united under the same Charles the Great should make his brief of one dream barbarian empire splendid throughout mediaeval times. Spain became for a period the battle-ground of the Visigothic monarchs. Britain in these days of harrying learned to know herself as motherland of the children of her Saxon conquerors. But the tide of new life its rising came to fullness in the things of religion. In the Far East this century saw the birth of Ma homet and the dawning of Islam, soon to lay violent hands upon a Catholic West. In the nearer East the buzzings of theologians were for attack or busy for defence over the fruit gained by the Church in the fifth century at the Council of Chalcedon. Catho lic and were still Monophysite contending stubbornly around the of the Mystery Christ; schism still for many years divided Patriarchs in Constantinople from Popes in Rome. In the the world of West, always practical energy rather than specu lative, it was secular conflict that vexed the Church. Neverthe- * For a discussion of general this see Ferdinand Lot, The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages, 193 1. INTRODUCTION less, as the wordy debates of the East gradually disclosed positive truth among the dross of repartee and discord, so amid strife in Western lands new visions were born.