Jesus laid down the basic tenets of Christianity in first century Palestine, but the Catholic Church expanded these doctrines during the Middle Ages as a response to the people’s spiritual issues at that time. Some of the issues addressed by church fathers during this period included the sins committed by Christians, the corresponding punishments for these transgressions, and the way these punishments could be reduced in this life and beyond. The Sale of Indulgences became a Church doctrine around 700 AD according to the Biblical Timeline Poster with World History.
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These sins later evolved into indulgences which, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints.” It is also defined as the “the partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin.” Swiss theologian and historian Philip Schaff defined it simply as the “remission of the temporal (not the eternal) punishment of sin (not of sin itself), on condition of penitence and the payment of money to the church or to some charitable object.”
History of Indulgences
“The Pope as the Antichrist, signing and selling indulgences, from Luther’s 1521 Passional Christi und Antichristi”
The idea of paying an indulgence goes back to the Roman era as remissio tributi and abolito as amnesty or pardon granted by the emperor during special occasions. The bishops who attended the Council of Epaone (held in 517 AD in the Kingdom of Burgundy) later expanded the idea of indulgence with an edict that shortened or lightened the penance of the apostates. In 668 AD, Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury authorized the monetary payment to him and the church in lieu of penance and absolution in his Penitential. This marked the first instance that Christians in England offered monetary compensation for the remission of their sins.
The money the church received from the Christians in Europe were then sent to Rome and the sale of indulgences increased during the chaotic years of the Crusades. Indulgences became a regular source of income for the church. It was not until the time of Martin Luther that the validity of indulgences was challenged.
The Council of Whitby convened in 664 AD according to the Bible Timeline with World History. It was held in the Kingdom of Northumbria many years after Pope Gregory sent a successful mission to England back in 596 AD. From its initial base in Kent, the Christianity that the monk Augustine (later Archbishop of Canterbury) brought to the shores of England spread to Northumbria, Scotland, and well into Ireland. The doctrines of Christianity, however, evolved and became so complex over time that by 664 AD the Kingdom of Northumbria found itself in a debate over when they should celebrate Easter and other Christian holidays.
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Attempts to resolve the issue about the date started as early as 325 AD in the Council of Nicaea, but the debates continued for many years in Christian-dominated cities in Europe, Asia Minor, and North Africa. Another attempt was made 200 years later by Dionysius Exiguus to calculate and reconcile the date of the Easter which was later adopted by the Church of Rome. This was the date that the monk Augustine took with him to England. It was later used by the English converts for when they celebrated the Easter.
“Location of Northumbria”
But the Celtic Christians (Breton and Irish) used another date which they inherited from the Romans. They received the date from the early Christians and practiced it before communication between the island and Rome was cut off by the invasion of the barbarian tribes. The date that they followed in observance of the Easter was a week earlier than the Roman Catholic one, but there were instances when the date fell much later than the Roman. This, in turn, also affected the celebrations of other Christian holidays.
A House Divided
The royal family of the Kingdom of Northumbria was also divided on this issue: the Kentish-born Queen Eanfleda and her son, King Alchfrid on the Roman side and her husband, the King Oswiu on the Celtic/Ionan side. To settle the issue once and for all, King Oswiu invited bishops, clerics, and members of his own family to a meeting in the Abbey of Whitby in Northumbria. Abbess Hilda of Whitby presided the council and church authorities from both sides attended the meeting.
Those who favored the Roman date for Easter included the Irish missionary Ronan, Wilifrid (Abbot of Ripon), King Alchfrid, James the Deacon, a priest named Agatho, and Bishop Agilbert of Wessex. Abbot Coleman of Lindisfarne, various clerics, Abbess Hilda, and Cedd, the Bishop of Sussex made up those who favored the Celtic/Ionan date. The speakers included Abbot Colman and Abbot Wilifrid, but the Roman side won over the course of the discussion. Colman and his followers initially refused to accept the ruling and retreated to the abbey in the island of Iona where they kept the Celtic/Ionan tradition for many years. Meanwhile, the rest of England followed the decision of the Council of Whitby and celebrated Easter on the Roman calculation.
After the Lombards had broken off the siege of Rome, the city regained a bit of peace under the administration of Pope Gregory. The temporary stability allowed him to focus his energies on spiritual matters. His first mission was beyond the shores of continental Europe: the former Roman territory of Britain. England later converted to Christianity in 597 AD according to the Bible Timeline.
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Christianity had declined on the island since the collapse of Roman rule and the invasion of the fierce Saxons from the coast of Europe. Villages and churches were razed as the Saxons rampaged through the southeast portion of the island. The few churches that remained intact on the northern part were now isolated from the pope’s rule. Kent and Sussex were then ruled by Saxon kings while the Angles ruled the northeast of the island, which meant that the priests sent by Pope Gregory would meet fierce opposition from the pagan tribes.
Into Britain
He sent a Benedictine monk he knew very well: a man named Augustine, who had served in the same monastery Gregory once led. Augustine, along with other monks, traveled through the Frankish territory of Gaul. The party had to turn back after they encountered the fierce tribes who lived beyond Italy. Augustine went back to Rome and begged Gregory to let him abandon the mission, but the pope declined the monk’s request; he encouraged Augustine and the monks with a letter to continue the journey and convert the Saxons, who held Britain.
“Map of the general outlines of some of the British kingdoms about 600”
After he saw that he had no choice but to obey, Augustine and his companions crossed the English channel in 597 AD and docked on the Isle of Thanet on the eastern coast of Kent. The place was ruled by Saxon King Ethelbert who initially viewed the monks with suspicion (and superstition) and told them to stay on the island in the meantime. Ethelbert married a Christian Frankish princess named Bertha years before, and he allowed her to practice Christianity freely in England; a situation that was agreeable to Augustine and the monks. The king was not enthusiastic about the arrival of the monks, but neither did he persecute them. According to the Venerable Bede, Ethelbert told the monks that,
“Your words and promises are fair, but because they are new to us, and of uncertain import, I cannot consent to them so far as to forsake that which I have so long observed with the whole English nation. But because you are come from far as strangers into my kingdom, and, as I conceive, are desirous to impart to us those things which you believe to be true, and most beneficial, we desire not to harm you, but will give you favourable entertainment, and take care to supply you with all things necessary to your sustenance; nor do we forbid you to preach and gain as many as you can to your religion.” -Ecclesiastical History of England
Ethelbert was baptized later in Christmas of 597 AD, and Pope Gregory sent more priests to England to assist in the conversion of the Saxons and Angles. With Ethelbert’s assistance, Canterbury became Augustine’s seat in England. He was the first bishop of Canterbury in the same year. By 604 AD, Christianity had gained a strong foothold in the land of the Saxons after the king of the East Saxons, Ethelbert’s nephew, converted to Christianity.
References:
Picture By User:Hel-hama – Vectorization of File:Britain peoples circa 600.png drawn by User:IMeowbotborder data from CIA, people locations from The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1926 edition, with clarifications supplied by en:User:Everyking per references used in en:Penda of Mercia. Anglo-Saxon coastline from Hill, ‘An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England’ (1981) (the grey areas marked ‘sea, swamp or alluvium’ show where little Anglo-Saxon settlement occurred, because (according to Hill) there was at different periods either large areas of mud, marshland or open sea)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4684278
Venerable Bede. “Ecclesiastical History of England, by Bede.” : Book1. Accessed July 19, 2016. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bede/history/book1.html.
For the first 300 years of Christianity’s existence, the Roman government teetered between toleration and active persecution of the religion. Many Christians were imprisoned, driven out of their homes or churches, and their properties confiscated during this period. At its worst, they were tortured and killed by Romans who viewed Christianity as a threat to the empire’s unity. It was not until the reign of Constantine that Christianity was gradually accepted in the Roman world, and most persecutions stopped. After his conversion to Christianity, Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan which included an authorization to return properties confiscated by the government from the Christians in the previous years. The Popes secured the Independence of their territories after this which is dated at 568 AD according to the Biblical Timeline with World History.
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According to a document called the “Donation of Constantine”, the emperor himself increased the Christian church’s land holdings with various donations. These were soon followed by donations from other wealthy Roman families. The document was presented by Pope Stephen II hundreds of years later to the Frankish king Pepin the Younger to justify the church’s possession of Rome and other lands in Italy. It was alleged to be a forgery since there were no records of the document during the time of Emperor Constantine, but the document suited their needs at that time, so Pepin left the territories to the pope.
Pope Gregory and the Lombard Invasion of Rome
Christian leadership also evolved over the years. In the 6th century AD, the Popes of Rome became the supreme head of the Catholic Christians, but beyond the religious realm, they also played a great part in the empire’s politics. Rome was not the power center of Italy during this period, and a greater portion of the peninsula was held by the Byzantine emperor through an exarch stationed in the capital of Ravenna.
Saint Gregory
The Lombards had invaded Italy, and their army threatened Rome, which was then under the administration of the Pope Gregory. Gregory was a former diplomat; he was a part of the delegation the former Pope Pelagius sent to emperor Maurice in Constantinople. They begged the emperor to send additional troops to Rome that would help deliver the Romans from the Lombards. The emperor refused since he did not have the troops nor the money to send to them. Gregory became a monk after this, but he was once again pushed into the spotlight after the leaders of the city wrote to the Byzantine emperor and requested Gregory’s appointment as pope after the death of Pope Pelagius II. Gregory felt that he was more suited for a life inside the monastery, but the Romans felt that they had no choice, and there was no one else fit to lead the city during a time of great crisis.
Gregory’s protests did not help as his appointment as pope was confirmed some time later in 590 AD. He was unwilling but according to historical accounts of this period, Gregory did his best in protecting the citizens of the city from the Lombard invasion. Once again, he begged Emperor Maurice for relief troops, but none arrived. He was forced to pay the troops from church funds, as well as negotiate with and pay off the Lombard king to break the siege of Rome. His strategy paid off, and the Lombard king agreed to retreat from Rome after a prolonged siege.
From Pope to City Administrator
In the meantime, the patrimonies—the lands donated to the church and under the administration of the pope—increased in parts of Gaul, Dalmatia, Italy, Sicily, and North Africa. The patrimonies generated revenues which were then sent back to the pope in Rome by the administrators of these estates and the revenues gave the pope a measure of independence to rule their territories. It did not help that the Byzantine emperor who controlled a small portion of Italy at that time was busy warding off the Persian and Avar invaders in his own domain. The pope used the revenues to fund the construction and maintenance of churches and convents; he also needed to respond beyond the spiritual needs of the people now that the distant Byzantine government did not have the money nor the inclination to help them out. Revenues from the patrimonies were used to pay for the construction of hospitals and orphanages, as well as provide food for the Romans. As the Byzantine hold over the Roman popes faded, the territories under the church became more independent from the Eastern Empire as years passed.
The Franks entered Roman history just as the empire was on the brink of destruction. They were a part of the foederati—Germanic allies of the Romans who first appeared during the time of Julian the Apostate at a time when the empire faced the Persian threat in the east and barbarian invasions in the west. Julian knew that it would be disastrous for the Roman army to face both enemies at the same time, so he came up with a solution that would benefit them all: he allowed the Franks and other Germanic tribes to settle in some portions of Gaul (as well as claim the privilege of Roman citizenship and all the rights that came with it) and in exchange, foederati warriors would fight as Roman soldiers. The Franconian Kingdom lasted from 487 to 843 AD as recorded on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History.
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The Franks were made up of smaller groups which were led by their own chieftains, but the tribe was ultimately led by the more powerful, long-haired Salian Franks. One of the greatest Salian kings was Merovech, a semi-legendary Frankish king who fought with the Romans and the Goths against Attila the Hun during the height of the Hunnic invasion. What remained of the fragile Roman domination in Gaul was erased by the Salian Franks in 457 AD. In the same year, they established a dynasty which they named Merovingian (after king Merovech). He was succeeded by his son Childeric who further strengthened the Frankish domination over Gaul versus Saxon and Alemanni invaders, as well as the last of the Western Roman kings.
Childeric’s son, Clovis, succeeded him as king. He spent the next ten years taking territory after territory from neighboring tribes. He married the Christian Burgundian princess Clotilde in 493 AD. She was instrumental in Clovis’ conversion from paganism to Christianity during a battle against the Alemanni. Just like the Emperor Constantine many years ago, Clovis prayed to and bargained with Christ for victory against the Alemanni and in return, he would convert to Christianity. The prayer was effective and the Alemanni surrendered to the Franks soon after. Mass conversion of Franks to Christianity soon followed and the new religion would hold them together as a new nation.
“Julian the Apostate presiding at a conference of sectarians”
Clovis defeated the Arian Visigoth king Alaric II in the Battle of Vouillé and captured the city of Toulouse in 507 AD. The weakened Visigoths abandoned the city and fled to Hispania. The intervention of the Ostrogothic royal family and their troops drove the Franks out of the Visigoth’s Mediterranean territory of Septimania. To celebrate his victory over the Visigoths and his near-total domination of Gaul, Clovis established a new city as his capital: Lutetia Parisiorium, which would later become the present-day Paris. He also eliminated all other Frankish chieftains to consolidate his power and his sons—as well as the kings who succeeded them—would be known as the princes of the Merovingian dynasty.
King Clovis died in 511 AD and the crown, as well as his territories, passed on to his four sons: Theuderic claimed Reims; Childebert ruled Paris; Chlodomer received Orleans, and Chlothar took Soissons. In the years that followed, the three eldest brothers died from violence or illness, which left only the youngest, Chlothar I, as the ruler of the Frankish domain. He died in 561 AD. His territory was up for grabs for his four sons—a remnant of an old tribal rule that Frankish heirs would receive their territories through merit (most of the time, through violent means) and not through inheritance.
The struggle for domination in the Frankish territories took on a new meaning with the arrival of the Visigothic princess Brunhilda and her younger sister Galswintha. In 567 AD, one of Chlothar I’s son, Charibert, died and his territory was seized and divided by his three remaining brothers: Sigebert took Austrasia; Guntram ruled Burgundy, and Chilperic ruled Neustria. Sigebert then decided to strengthen his rule by making an alliance with the Visigoths down in Spain and proposed a marriage between himself and the Visigothic princess Brunhilda to her father, king Athanagild.
When he saw that his brother Sigebert made a formidable alliance with the Visigoths, Chilperic also made an offer to king Athanagild for the younger princess Galswintha. Eager to make another alliance with a powerful king up north, Athanagild sent Galswintha to her groom but this was a mistake she would later pay dearly with her life. Chilperic married a woman named Fredegund some time earlier, but he conveniently sent her out of the Neustrian court to accommodate his new wife. Apparently, Fredegund was still very much present in the king’s life and to Galswintha’s dismay, Fredegund freely entered the palace and showed up inside Chilperic’s chambers. The Visigothic princess was found dead in her room one day and rumors swirled around the kingdom that Chilperic and Fredegund arranged Galswintha’s death.
War broke out between Neustria and Austrasia when news of Galswintha’s death reached Queen Brunhilda. This went on for seven years and the situation worsened when Fredegund hired assassins to poison Sigebert in Austrasia. The assassins successfully carried out this mission, which left Brunhilda in charge of Austrasia as a regent for her young son Childebert II. To enlarge their territory, Queen Brunhilda also persuaded the heirless Guntram of Burgundy to leave his kingdom to her son after his death and she proved to be a good ruler of both courts.
Meanwhile in Neustria, Chilperic died and Fredegund rose to rule his kingdom upon his death. He died without an heir, but some time later, Fredegund announced that she was pregnant with Chilperic’s son, Chlothar II. Childebert II also received the kingdom of Burgundy upon Guntram’s death and he ruled it (plus Austrasia) with his mother. When Childebert II died, his mother once again assumed the position of regent for her young grandchildren who divided Burgundy and Austrasia between them. Chlothar II and her mother Fredegund took advantage of Childebert’s death and tried to take Paris but were unsuccessful; Fredegund died later and her son was left to rule Neustria on his own.
It seemed that Brunhilda’s “meddling” became too much for one of her grandchildren as Theudebert II threw her out of the kingdom after he was proclaimed king of Austrasia. She sought refuge in Burgundy, in the court of her younger grandchild Theuderic II and once again dominated the Burgundian court. She masterminded several assassinations of noblemen and officials, as well as meddled in Theuderic’s marriage to a Visigothic princess. Theuderic was exasperated and he was eager to get rid of his grandmother for good, but could not do something about it. Instead, he joined forces with his cousin Chlothar of Neustria and went to war against his brother, Theudebert of Austrasia. The cousins invaded Austrasia, killed the king’s son, and imprisoned Theudebert, while Brunhilda later had Theudebert killed in prison in revenge for driving her out of Austrasia.
Nobody benefited from all the scheming and violence in the end as Theuderic died without an heir less than a year after the invasion. Brunhilda was also executed by Chlothar II after Austrasia and Burgundy’s mayors of the palace (Warnachar and Rado) invited him into the kingdoms to prevent the old queen from recovering her power. With Brunhilda gone, Chlothar now ruled all three Frankish kingdoms but the mayors of the palace worked out a deal with him that allowed them to rule each kingdom independently. In 615 AD, Chlothar issued the Edict of Paris, a law that proved to be disastrous for the Merovingian dynasty as it included conditions that the king was not allowed to meddle in the affairs of the mayors of the palace and that they could not be kicked out from their positions. Through the Edict of Paris, Chlothar essentially gave away most of his powers over Burgundy and Austrasia.
Change of Hands: The Kingdom Under the Mayors of the Palace
The Neustrian king Chlothar sought to establish a presence in Austrasia by installing his son Dagobert as king of Austrasia, but the real power was in the hands of the mayor of the palace: Pepin the Elder. After Chlothar died, a younger son named Charibert attempted to rule Neustria but was thwarted by his brother Dagobert who later had him assassinated in Aquitaine. He continued to rule all three territories until his death in 639 AD; Neustria and Burgundy were then passed on to his son Clovis II while Sigebert III took Austrasia. But the position of the mayor of the palace also became hereditary after Pepin the Elder passed it down to his son Grimoald—a departure from the rule that the mayors of the palace should be appointed by the king.
Grimoald turned out to be more ambitious than his father when started to convince the Merovingian king Sigebert III to adopt his son, but this plot was thwarted upon the birth of Sigebert’s son. When Sigebert died, Grimoald organized a coup and banished the dead king’s heir, Dagobert II, to a monastery in England; he then declared his son (later named as Childebert the Adopted) as the ruler of Austrasia. This gave Clovis II of Neustria and Burgundy an excuse to invade Austrasia; Grimoald and the unfortunate usurper Childebert were executed during the invasion.
The banished Dagobert II never got the chance to reclaim his throne after Clovis II declared himself king of Austrasia and appointed his own official, Erchinoald, the mayor of the palace. The throne of Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy passed on to Clovis’ very young sons and for the rest of their reigns, the kings remained only as mere puppets (roi fainéant) for the more-powerful mayors of the palace.
Pepin II of Herstal, Pepin the Elder’s grandson, became the mayor of the palace in 680 AD after the death of the Merovingian ruler of Austrasia. He became the ruler of Austrasia since the throne was vacant and he shrewdly refused to elect another candidate for the king’s role. This was an act which provoked the Merovingian ruler of Neustria, Theuderic III who immediately organized an invasion into Austrasia. His troops were defeated by Pepin’s army and Theuderic was forced to concede the position of mayor of the palace of all three Frankish kingdoms to Pepin.
Now, nothing stood in Pepin’s way and he promptly crowned himself the duke and prince of the Franks. Although the Merovingians still ruled Neustria and Burgundy, it was Pepin alone who held all the real power over the Frankish lands. His death in 714 AD left the position of the mayor of the palace vacant (his legitimate sons died before him) but Charles Martel, an illegitimate son born to his concubine, contested the claim of Plectrude, Pepin’s legitimate wife, that her young grandsons should inherit the position. Plectrude had Charles imprisoned to prevent him from becoming the mayor of the palace, but he escaped and spent the years that followed fighting Plectrude and other claimants for the position.
It was not until 717 AD that he eliminated all other claimants to the position and succeeded as mayor of the palace. Charles Martel also went on to lead the combined forces of Aquitanian and Frankish forces to defeat the Arab-Berber army in the Battle of Tours-Poitiers in 732. By 737 AD, the Merovingian puppet king he appointed years before had died and Charles Martel was the sole ruler of the Frankish kingdom.
After Charles’ death in 741 AD, his sons Carloman and Pepin the Younger rose as mayors of the palace. Unlike the Merovingian brothers before them, the siblings did not go to war for territories as Carloman relinquished his kingdom, had himself consecrated as a monk, and spent the rest of his life in the monastery of Monte Cassino. In 751, Pepin removed the last of the Merovingian king from the throne and declared himself the king of the Frankish kingdom. He sent the deposed Merovingian king, Childeric III, to a monastery where he died years later and marked the end of the domination of the Merovingian dynasty.
Carolingian Dynasty
Pepin the Younger died in 768 AD and the territories were divided between his sons Charles (Charlemagne) and Carloman. The realm was now divided into two: Charles ruled the northern section of the land and Carloman ruled the southern portion that bordered Al-Andalus. Charles also strengthened his rule with his marriage to a Lombard princess but discarded his first wife for a thirteen-year-old Alemanni girl after one year. His brother, Carloman, died in 771 AD which meant that Charles was now the sole ruler of the Frankish empire.
Charlemagne subdued the Saxons in 772 AD and ended the domination of the Lombards in Italy in the years that followed. He sent the Lombard king Desiderius to a monastery (a punishment the Frankish rulers seemed to favor) and crowned himself king of Lombard Italy in its capital Pavia. He made an ill-advised treaty with the administrator of Al-Andalus in an effort to take back the city of Zaragoza from the Muslims, but Charlemagne and his troops were forced to march back to Frankish lands in humiliation after the administrator changed his mind. He besieged the Vascones who lived on the rugged Pyrenees in his humiliation, but he paid the price for his miscalculation when his troops were massacred by the tribe in revenge as they marched home. The loss of his men was so devastating that he never ventured south into Al-Andalus for the rest of his life.
Charlemagne was involved in a conflict with the Byzantine empress Irene after she broke off the engagement of her son Constantine VI to the Frankish king’s daughter Rotrude. In a bid to strengthen his own rule, Pope Leo crowned Charlemagne as the emperor and Augustus of Rome. This was a direct hit to Empress Irene who, as ruler of the Byzantines, claimed to be the rightful and legitimate heir of Rome and its former territories. The empress could do nothing and Charlemagne claimed more of Europe in the years that followed. His realm spanned from Sweden in the north to the border of Al-Andalus in the southern end, as well as the former territories of the Lombards in Italy. Before his death, he divided the kingdom between his sons but all except Louis the Pious (the ruler of Aquitaine) had died by 813 AD. Louis found himself the sole ruler of the vast Frankish kingdom consolidated by his father after his death.
Louis the Pious had planned to snip off some lands from Lothair’s (one of his sons by his first wife) domain so he could give them to a younger, more favored son by his second wife. Furious, Lothair and his brothers united against their father and the civil war which raged between them for three years unraveled all of Charlemagne’s efforts to unite the Frankish land. Louis was forced to make concessions to his other sons and left the reduced domain of Neustria to his child by his second wife, Charles the Bald, when he died in 840 AD. Civil war once again erupted between the brothers and they were forced to divide the land once again in 843 AD in the Treaty of Verdun.
References:
Picture By Edward Armitage – Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1207772
Bradbury, Jim. The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare. London: Routledge, 2004.
Costambeys, Marios, Matthew Innes, and Simon MacLean. The Carolingian World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1927.
Wood, I. N. The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450-751. London: Longman, 1994.
The Goths were known as fierce warriors who were part of the tribes that migrated from their homeland in Scandia into the frontiers of the Eastern Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. The Huns later invaded the Goths in their temporary settlement and drove them out of the Black Sea region, desperate and just as hungry as they were when they left Scandia. To ensure that their people would survive, the Gothic leaders sent envoys to Emperor Valens to negotiate a treaty that would allow their people to settle in Moesia or Thrace. In exchange, they would submit to the emperor and convert to Christianity—an arrangement that suited the Emperor Valens just fine but would come to regret later. He accepted and allowed them to settle in Moesia and Dacia Ripensis. In return, the Goths helped convert their neighbors to Arianism, the Ostrogoths, and the Gepids. These events led the Visigoths to invade Gaul and Spain between 415 – 711 AD according to the Biblical Timeline Poster with World History.
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Famine and the greed of Roman officials who handled the funds derailed the treaty between the Goths and Emperor Valens. Many of the Goths went hungry or were enslaved. This situation worsened when the Roman general Lupicinus plotted to have the Goths’ leader Fritigern killed during a banquet. The plot did not succeed, but the die was cast. The Goths felt understandably betrayed. They rampaged through the city because of this slight. This was the Goths’ entry into the fragmented Roman Empire and start of the two peoples’ complicated relationship through the years of the empire’s collapse. The Goths themselves would split into two: the people who settled near the Black Sea were called Ostrogoths while those who ventured west into Gaul and Hispania were known as Visigoths.
“Map showing the migrations of the Vandals from Germany through Dacia, Gaul, Iberia, and into North Africa, and their raids throughout the Mediterranean.”
To the West: Visigoths in Gaul and Hispania
The Visigoths went on to become some of the most feared barbarians that descended into the remnants of the Western Roman Empire. As years passed and the promise of a homeland became out of their reach, the Visigoths (who were led by the great King Alaric) rampaged into Italy and sacked Rome in 410 AD. King Ataulf later succeeded Alaric upon his death and the king’s marriage to Emperor Honorius’ sister Galla Placidia gave the Visigoths a glimmer of hope that they would soon share in the empire’s land and riches (or what remained of it).
Ataulf knew that another attack into Italy seemed far-fetched for the moment, so he set his sights on conquering Gaul which was then ruled by the usurper Constantine III. Honorius sent soldiers to Gaul to assassinate Constantine III. Ataulf took advantage of the chaos in the territory to invade in 413 AD. The Visigoths seized Narbonensis from the beleaguered Roman soldiers and made the city of Toulouse their new kingdom’s capital. The Visigoths extended their territory into northern Hispania, but for Ataulf, this did not seem enough. He longed to be a part of Roman empire, so he appointed a former Roman senator named Attalus as emperor in his territory
The act angered emperor Honorius, so he sent soldiers from Ravenna to besiege the Visigoths in Gaul and kill Attalus—which the Roman soldiers did with great success the moment they arrived in Hispania. The Visigoths were back to where they started—hungry and besieged. They were unhappy with the turn of events. Ataulf was murdered in 415 AD by a resentful member of his tribe. He was succeeded by a Visigoth warrior named Wallia (Ataulf’s murderer also crowned himself as king, but he was killed by Wallia after seven days of reign). Wallia proposed a treaty to Honorius for him to leave them in peace. This was in exchange for the hostages Alaric took from Rome years before. Which included Galla Placidia and a young boy named Aetius (who later rose as one of the Western Empire’s greatest general).
Hispania: Vandals, Suebi, and the Visigoths
Honorius agreed to the truce and left the Visigoths alone to conquer Hispania. Which, by then, was ruled by the Vandals. The Vandals later left Hispania, sailed off to North Africa, and established Carthage as their own territory; they were replaced by another barbarian tribe, the Suebi, who were easily overpowered by the Visigoths during their conquest of Hispania. There they became more powerful as the rulers of the Western Roman Empire fought off other barbarians. The empire was further weakened from internal strife. By the middle of the fifth century, the Visigoths had pushed the Suebi to a small territory on the northwest corner of Hispania and claimed almost all of the peninsula for themselves. The Visigoths then had something that they yearned for many years: a homeland.
The Visigoths reached the height of their power in Gaul and Hispania during the middle of the sixth and seventh centuries. Various kings rose and fell. The Visigoths played their cards very well against the Franks and Suebi. One Spanish Visigoth princess, Brunhilda, rose to such greatness in Austrasia after she married the Frankish prince Sigebert. Her sister, the younger Galswintha, married Sigebert’s brother and ruler of Neustria, Chilperic. But Chilperic married a woman named Fredegund some time earlier. It was alleged that the couple murdered Galswintha in Neustria so they could be together again.
The death of her sister was something Queen Brunhilda never forgave, and she spent the years that followed plotting revenge against the killers of her sister. She proved to be a capable regent for her son after the death of her husband, which the Frankish noblemen and clergy took as meddling into the affairs of the state. Brunhilda had her childless brother-in-law, Guntram of Burgundy, adopt her son which consolidated his smaller territory into Austrasia after his death. Brunhilda, however, outlived her son and continued to manipulate her grandchildren until her death.
Collapse of Visigothic Rule in Hispania and Gaul
The Visigoths went on to rule for many years until the rise of a new power in the Arabian Peninsula. The combined Berber and Arab forces, as well as the succession problems that plagued the Visigoth royal house, became their downfall. While the Visigoths were busy with their succession problems, a large Muslim army crossed from the tip of what is now Morocco into the southern coast of Spain. The divided Visigoths, now ruled by Ruderic, were easily defeated by the Arabs and Berbers in the Battle of Guadalete.Almost all noblemen who joined Ruderic in battle also perished. This left the Spanish throne vacant. With almost all Visigothic noblemen gone, the Arabs and Berbers easily overran Spain. They claimed the Iberian Peninsula as their own and named it Al-Andalus.
References:
Picture By User:MapMaster – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1234669
Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
Heather, Peter J. The Visigoths: From the Migration Period to the Seventh Century. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999.
“JORDANES.” THE ORIGIN AND DEEDS OF THE GOTHS. Accessed July 19, 2016. http://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html.
Riess, Frank. Narbonne and Its Territory in Late Antiquity: From the Visigoths to the Arabs. Ashgate Publishing Group, 2013.
The Lombards migrated out of their homeland in Scandia (modern Scandinavia) during the great migration period between the fourth and ninth centuries AD. The Lombards capital at Pavia was recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History starting in the 6th Century AD. The Romans were aware of the tribe’s presence as early as the 9th century AD, but the Lombards were part of the later tribes which streamed into Italy much later after its collapse. They were, however, some of the most resilient and successful groups that invaded Italy. They outlasted other barbarian tribes who came before them, such as the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Vandals.
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The Lombards first settled near the Danube in 487 AD after their migration from Scandia and later crossed the river to settle in overcrowded Pannonia in 526 AD. They were now at the gates of the old Roman empire. They needed to fight for available land to settle on and farm—something Pannonia did not have in abundance. As the Western Roman Empire continued to collapse, the Lombards took advantage of its weakness and closed in on Italy in the years that followed. Their domination of Italy would not have been possible if not for the sheer will and ferociousness of one man: the Lombard king Alboin.
Alboin was one of the greatest kings in Lombard history. He reigned from 560 until his death in 572 AD. He was known for his victory over the Gepids and the death of the tribe’s king Cunimund, after which he married the dead king’s daughter Rosamund. Alboin then led the Lombards from Pannonia to capture the northern part of Byzantine Italy on April 2, 568 AD. His troops entered the city of Milan (Mediolanum) in the same year. According to Paul the Deacon, they besieged and took almost all of the cities in Liguria except for the southern coastal cities.
“Alboin is killed by Peredeo while Rosamund steals his sword”
The citizens of Pavia, however, put up a valiant fight for three years while Alboin rampaged through the Italian countryside up to Tuscany. Rome, Ravenna, and other fortified cities withstood the sieges, but Alboin and the Lombards took city after city in northern Italy in such a short time. The fact that the Italians were afflicted with the bubonic plague some years before and much of the citizens were dead by the time of the invasion did not help them. In addition, the famine which occurred before the arrival of the bubonic plague worsened the people’s situation.
Lombards Capture Pavia
After three years of relentless fighting, the citizens of Pavia (then named Ticinum) finally surrendered to the Lombards. Alboin, however, would not live to see the day that Pavia would be the capital of the Lombards. He was assassinated in Verona after three years in Italy. This was done with the help of his own Queen Rosamund, the daughter of the fallen Gepid king Cunimund, as revenge for the death of her father. Rosamund fled with the king’s assassin Helmichis (who also happened to be her lover) and Alboin’s daughter by his first wife to Ravenna where they were welcomed by Longinus, the Byzantine ruler of the city. (Rosamund and Helmichis were later found dead in Ravenna after an apparent murder-suicide. Before their death, Longinus offered to marry Rosamund if she would get rid of Helmichis and she agreed to this plot. She offered a poisoned drink to Hemlichis, but her new husband figured out her plan and forced her to drink the poison before killing himself.)
The Lombard dukes voted Cleph as the king in 572 AD to succeed Alboin, but he died two years later, and the Dukes did not replace him with another king. Instead, the lands which the Lombards wrested from the Byzantines were divided into duchies and Pavia, now the capital of the Lombards was held by a duke named Zaban. The Dukes would not elect a king until ten years later and by 620 AD, Pavia was the capital of Lombardy as well as its most powerful city.
The Ostrogoths were some of the ferocious barbarian groups that descended into Roman territories just as the Western Empire was on the brink of disintegration. According to Jordanes, the Goths came from Scandza—which modern historians associate with present day Scandinavia. They were members of various tribes that streamed southward during the first century. These tribes temporarily settled in the lands north of the Black Sea until they were driven out by the Huns in 372 AD; the Goths, themselves a terror to other tribes and the Romans, were now hunted by a more brutal tribe from the east. They decided to part ways; the Goths who migrated west into Gaul (and eventually into Hispania) were called Visigoths, while those who remained near the Black Sea were called Ostrogoths. The Ostrogoths went to Italy in 534 AD according to the Biblical Timeline Chart with World History.
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The relationship between the Goths and the Roman Empire constantly shifted from peaceful cooperation to subjugation to outright hostilities. After the Huns had driven them out of their settlements north of the Black Sea, the Goths sent a delegation to the Emperor Valens to negotiate for peace and allow them to settle on Roman territory to escape the invaders. The Emperor Valens agreed to this treaty for peace and allowed them to enter Thracia, but the Empire was inadequately prepared to meet the needs of the Goths who streamed into the land in large numbers.
The Goths felt that they were betrayed by the emperor when the treaty fell apart which resulted in their angry rampage through Thracia. They reached Hadrianople where they killed the Emperor Valens and a large part of his troops in battle, but they failed in the invasion of Hadrianople and Constantinople.
Theodoric the Great
“Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy and the Balkans”
In less than a hundred years the Ostrogoths rose from refugees to rulers of the Western Roman Empire through King Theodoric the Great. The Ostrogoth king grew up in Constantinople and spent many years in the Byzantine city as a hostage for peace. The Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno later sent him westward to get rid of the usurper of the Western Roman throne Odoacer. Theodoric ruled Italy after he killed Odoacer and he was successful in keeping other Germanic tribes in check through alliances throughout his thirty-year reign.
Upon Theodoric’s death in 526 AD, the Ostrogoth-led kingdom of Italy passed on to his young grandson Athalaric with his mother, Amalasuntha, as regent. His mother insisted for him to grow up as a proper Roman—refined and civilized—but the Ostrogoth nobles in the Italian court scoffed at this and insisted that he be brought up as a warrior. He became neither and according to historian Procopius of Caesarea, he wasted away and died as an alcoholic. The Ostrogothic rule quickly disintegrated when Athalaric died in 534 AD, eight years after he was proclaimed as king. Some Ostrogoth noblemen rebelled against Amalasuntha’s rule, but the first plot against the queen failed. The following year, Amalasuntha made her cousin Theodahad as co-ruler to gain the support of the Ostrogoth noblemen. He, however, joined the second plot against Amalasuntha and exiled the queen on the island of Martana in Lake Bolsena. He ordered the murder of the ill-fated queen on the island in the same year.
Decline of Ostrogoth Domination in Italy
The Eastern emperor Justinian was fully aware of the events in Italy and he sent his chief general Belisaurus to take back the Western half of the empire from the Ostrogoths. Belisaurus first conquered Sicily and sailed toward the coast of Naples in central Italy, which he easily captured from the Ostrogoths with the help Byzantine forces in 535 AD. Meanwhile in the Italian capital of Ravenna, the elderly Theodahad was assassinated by an Ostrogoth warrior named Witigis, who then declared himself king. It was not until 540 AD that Belisaurus would capture the renegade Ostrogoth king. Witigis died in captivity while the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines fought a long battle back in Italy.
References:
Picture By Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=597014
Barnish, S. J. B., and Federico Marazzi. The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2007.
Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
“Full Text of “Procopius History of the Wars, Books V. and VI.”” Full Text of “Procopius History of the Wars, Books V. and VI.” Accessed July 15, 2016. https://archive.org/stream/procopiushistory20298gut/20298-8.txt.
“JORDANES.” THE ORIGIN AND DEEDS OF THE GOTHS. Accessed July 15, 2016. http://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html.
Few Roman emperors received the title “The Great” and one of them was the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great. He was born in the 454 AD in Pannonia where he is listed on the Bible Timeline Chart with World History. This was a period when the Western Roman Empire was on the brink of collapse. The Ostrogoth people that his father, King Theodemir ruled, were restless and hungry because of their overcrowded conditions and lack of available land that they could farm. They were also besieged by other tribes in the area which pushed them to venture outside of Pannonia and into the Eastern Roman’s Empire’s territories in search of land and food.
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When Theodoric reached seven years old, he was taken to Constantinople as a hostage to guarantee that the Ostrogoths would stop all raids on the Eastern empire’s territory. In Constantinople, Theodoric received the best education the Eastern Romans could provide, and the young Ostrogoth excelled in administration and military strategies. Later, he returned to his people in Pannonia at age eighteen and was sent back by Emperor Leo with great gifts.
Theodoric wasted no time and joined his father in a battle against the Sarmatian king Babai upon his return. Theodoric also led 6,000 Ostrogoth warriors to besiege the city of Singidunum and later joined his father in the invasion of the cities of Naissus, Ulpiana, Heraclea, and Larissa. But Theodemir decided to continue south to the Greek city of Thessalonica after he was dissatisfied with their plundered goods. To prevent a full-scale invasion, the Roman general who governed Thessalonica brokered a truce with the Ostrogoths with a provision that he would hand over some territories for the invaders. The Ostrogoths happily went on their way after they received this treaty and settled on their new lands. Theodemir died after an illness in 475 AD.
“The Ostrogothic Kingdom (in yellow) at the death of Theoderic the Great (526AD)”
Theodoric: King of Ostrogoths and Romans in Italy
Before his death, Theodemir appointed his son Theodoric as king of the Ostrogoths. Upon Theodoric’s accession as king, Emperor Zeno invited him to Constantinople and the new Ostrogoth ruler was received in the city with great honors. Zeno also appointed him as Magister militum (Master of the Soldiers) in 483 AD and Theodoric served as consul the following year. Theodoric returned to the Ostrogoth territory in 488 AD, but the restless and hungry tribe remained a threat to Emperor Zeno. The Eastern Roman emperor was also worried that Odoacer had grown more powerful in Italy after he removed the last Roman emperor of the west from his throne.
Zeno decided to solve the Ostrogoth’s overwhelming need for land and food, as well as the problem of Odoacer with one idea: he sent Theodoric West to remove the usurper from the throne and allowed the Ostrogoths to settle in Italy. Theodoric agreed to this plan and rallied a ragtag army made up of Huns, Ostrogoths, and Roman mercenaries who helped him besiege the Western Roman capital of Ravenna. It had taken three years of fighting before Odoacer and Theodoric were able to reach a truce, and both agreed to rule the west as co-emperors. As both men and their warriors celebrated the treaty, Theodoric killed Odoacer and started to rule Italy alone.
Theodoric married his way to alliances with other Germanic tribes during much of his reign. He married the Frankish princess Audofleda (sister of King Clovis I) as a way to build an alliance with the Franks, but tensions between the two tribes continued even after the union of the two. Theodoric also married his daughters (by his Moesian concubine) to Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and Sigismund, king of Burgundy. He gave his daughter Amalaesuntha to Eutharic of the Amali Dynasty of Visigothic Spain, while his sister married Thrasamund, king of the Vandals. Another daughter also married the king of the Thuringians.
Legacy
Theodoric ruled for 33 years, and his reign was generally peaceful, but his powers as king were severely limited. For example, the Goths were forbidden to legally marry Roman citizens, and he did not have the power to appoint Goths to any position in the government. They were Arian Christians and were considered as heretics by the Romans who believed in Catholicism. Theodoric also prohibited the Romans from carrying weapons and Goths were the only ones allowed to enlist in the army—a departure from the discrimination the Goths faced during the reign of earlier Roman emperors. To Theodoric’s credit, he pursued fairness in the treatment between Goths and Romans and appealed to his fellow Goths to treat the Roman citizens fairly.
Before his death, Theodoric proclaimed his 10-year old grandson Athalaric (the son of Alaric and Amalaesuntha) as king of the Ostrogoths in Italy.
References:
Picture By Droysen/Andrée; G. Kossina rev. – Allgemeiner Historischer Handatlas, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16288821
Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
Jordanes, Cassiodorus, and Charles Christopher Mierow. The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version. Cambridge: Speculum Historiale, 1960.
In 711 AD, a large group of North African Muslims and Arabs led by general Tariq bin Ziyad landed on the southern coast of Spain. First, they raided the villages which lined the Mediterranean coast, but as months passed they rampaged north until the campaign turned into an invasion. This alarmed the Visigoths who ruled Spain and they tried to defend their territory, but it was too late—the series of issues and civil wars that troubled the Visigoths exposed their vulnerability to the Muslim invaders. Spain was easily overpowered by the Muslims after the defeat and death of the Visigothic elite in the Battle of Guadalete. For the next seven years, Spain (except for the tiny kingdom of Asturias) was firmly in Arab hands. They named this new territory al-Andalus—the Land of the Vandals— this was their gateway to Western Europe. The Arabs soon entered France in 720 AD as recorded on the Biblical Timeline Chart with World History.
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By 717 AD, the Arab-Berber troops marched north past the Pyrenees mountain range and established their presence in the Rhone Valley region of Southern France. This period marked the complete disappearance of the Visigoths as the dominant power in southern France. They were replaced by the stronger Arab-Berber army. The duchy of Aquitaine which was ruled by Duke Odo was all that stood between the Arab-Berber army and Western Europe. While the Arabs and Berbers were busy conquering territories in southern France, they also sent out spies to scout Odo’s territory.
“Location of metropolitan France (dark green)– in Europe (green & dark grey)– in the European Union (green)”
Odo’s army and the Muslim troops met for the first time in the Battle of Toulouse in 721 AD. The Muslim troops were defeated by Odo’s army, and they limped back to Al-Andalus with fewer men. It was not until 732 AD that they tried once again to wrest Aquitaine from the Duke, and the Arab-Berber troops went into Aquitaine once again, but this time they were led by ‘Abd ar-Rahman Al-Ghafiqi. Odo and the Aquitaine troops ran out of luck; his forces were crushed, and he barely made it out of the battle alive. He sought refuge to the Merovingian territory of Charles Martel and swore his allegiance in return for fresh troops against the Arabs and Berbers. Charles Martel mobilized his army and together, they fought the Andalusian troops in the Battle of Tours-Poitiers on October 25, 732 AD. It was Charles who received more credit for the defeat of the Muslim troops in France, while Odo faded into obscurity. Throughout the 730s to the 750s, southern France served as the battle front between the Franks (under Charles and his son Pepin III) and the Andalusians until the Muslims were driven out completely from the Rhone Valley region.
References:
Picture By NuclearVacuum – File:Location European nation states.svgThis vector image was created with Inkscape., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8096031
Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
Watson, William E. Tricolor and Crescent: France and the Islamic World. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
