THEODORIC KING OF ITALY
493-526
The Ostrogothic race—Character of Theodoric—His Administration of
Italy—Theodoric in Rome—Foreign Policy of Theodoric—His wars with
the Franks and Burgundians—His supremacy in Western
Europe—Misfortunes of his later years—Death of Boethius—Failure of
Theodoric’s great schemes.
From the formal and constitutional point of view the substitution of
king Theodoric for king Odoacer, as ruler in Italy, made no change in
the position of affairs. From the practical point of view the change was
important, for the new Teutonic kingdom was very much stronger than the
old. Its ruler was a younger and a far abler man, the wisest and most
far-sighted of all the Germans of the fifth and sixth centuries.
Moreover, the military power of the Ostrogoths was far greater than that
of the mixed multitude of _Foederati_ who had followed Odoacer. They
were a numerous tribe, confident of their own valour after a century of
successful war, and devotedly attached to the king, who, for the last
twenty years, had never failed to lead them to victory. While they
preserved their ancient courage, they had acquired, by a stay of three
generations within the bounds of the empire, a higher level of
civilisation than any other of the Teutonic tribes. Their dress, their
armour, their manner of life, showed traces of their intercourse with
Rome; they had been Christians for a century, and had forgotten many of
the old heathen and barbarous customs of their ancestors. They
possessed, too, first of all Teutonic peoples, the germ of a written
literature in the famous Gothic Bible of Ulfilas. There are documents
surviving, written in the character which Ulfilas had devised for his
people, which show that there were Gothic clergy and even laymen who
could commit their contracts to paper in their own tongue. Theodoric
himself never learnt to write, but there must have been many among his
subjects who could do so. Though the king actually discouraged the Goths
from giving themselves up to book-learning, yet in the generation which
followed him there were Goths skilled both in Roman and Greek
literature,—some even who called themselves philosophers and claimed to
follow Plato.
Of all the German nations it seemed that the Ostrogoths were the most
suited to form the nucleus for a new kingdom, which should grow up a
young and strong yet civilised state on the ruins of the Roman empire.
And if any one man could have brought such a consummation to pass,
Theodoric was certainly the most fitted for the task. [Sidenote:
Character of Theodoric.] Ten years spent as a hostage at Constantinople
had shown him the strong and the weak points in the Roman system of
administration; twenty years spent in the field at the head of his
tribesmen had won him an experience in war, both with Roman and
barbarian, that made him unequalled as a general. Italian statesmen
found him a master-mind who could comprehend all difficulties of the
administration of an empire. Gothic warriors looked up to him not only
as the most skilful marshaller of a host, but also as the stoutest lance
in his own army. Alike when he smote the Gepidae by the Danube, and when
he drove the _Foederati_ of Odoacer into the Adige, the king had himself
headed the final and decisive charge that broke the shield-wall of the
enemy. But Theodoric was even more than a great statesman and warrior:
he was a man of wide mind and deep thought. His practical wisdom took
shape in numerous proverbs which his subjects long treasured. And, in
spite of one or two deep stains on his character, we may say that his
brain was inspired by a sound and righteous heart. The essential justice
and fairness of his mind shines out in his official correspondence, even
when enveloped in the obscure and grandiloquent verbiage of his
secretary Cassiodorus. Among all the Teutonic kings he was the
_justissimus unus et servantissimus aequi_, who set himself to curb the
violence of the Goth, no less than the chicanery of the Roman, and
taught both that he was no respecter of persons, but a judge set upon
the throne to deal out even-handed justice. Alone among all rulers,
Roman or German, in his day, he was a believer without tending in the
least to become a persecutor. No monarch for a thousand years to come
could have been found to echo Theodoric’s magnificent declaration that
‘religion is a thing which the king cannot command, because no man can
be compelled to believe against his will.’ [Sidenote: Theodoric’s
religious views.] Though an Arian himself he employed Catholics, Gothic
and Roman, as freely as those of his own sect. Even the Jews got strict
justice from him, when every other state in the world dealt hardly with
them. The abuse which he won from fanatical Christians for resenting the
mobbing of a Rabbi, or the profanation of a synagogue, is one of the
highest testimonies in his praise. ‘The benefits of justice,’ he said,
‘must not be denied even to those who err from the faith.’ Yet he was
not, as were some others who tolerated Jews, a semi-pagan or an
agnostic; the very rescripts which grant temporal justice to the
oppressed Hebrews end with an appeal to them to leave their
hard-heartedness and flee from the wrath to come.
In managing the settlement of his victorious tribesmen on the soil of
Italy, Theodoric showed much ability. The third of the land, which
Odoacer had confiscated seventeen years before, seems to have sufficed
for their establishment. The greater part of the _Foederati_ who had
been holding this third, had fallen in battle, and those who escaped the
Gothic sword seem mostly to have perished in a simultaneous outbreak of
riot and murder, by which the Italians celebrated the downfall of
Odoacer, when they heard that he had finally been shut up in Ravenna.
[Sidenote: Settlement of the Ostrogoths.] Hence Theodoric was able to
provide for his countrymen without further spoliation of the native
proprietors. He threatened indeed for a moment to deprive of their lands
and rights those Italians who adhered too long to Odoacer, but better
counsel prevailed, and even those men were spared. So the Goths settled
down with little friction among their new subjects: they lay thickly
along the valley of the Po, and in Picenum, more sparsely scattered in
Tuscany and central Italy; into the south few seem to have penetrated.
Nearly all settled down to farm the country-side; only in the royal
towns of Ravenna, Pavia, and Verona did the Goths become an appreciable
element in the urban population.
Theodoric’s plan for dealing with the government of conquered Italy
deserves careful study. He did not abolish the remains of the Roman
administrative system which he found still existing, nor did he, on the
other hand, endeavour to subject the Goths to Roman law. He was content
that, for a time, two systems of administration should go on side by
side. The Goths were to be ruled and judged by his ‘counts,’ the Gothic
governors whom he set over each Italian province, his ealdormen, as an
Anglo-Saxon would have called them, according to the traditional
folk-right of their tribe. The Romans looked for justice to magistrates
of their own race. If a Goth and a Roman went to law, the case was heard
before the count and the Italian judge, sitting together on the same
bench.
In the central administration the same mixture of systems was seen.
Theodoric’s court was like that of another German king in many ways; he
had about him his personal retinue of military retainers, the king’s
men, whom the Goths called by the name of Saiones, but whom, in writing
our own English history we should call thegns or gesiths. The Saiones
went on the king’s errands, served him in bower and hall, and acted as
his body-guard on the battle-field. [Sidenote: Central Government.]
Above their rank and file rose two or three more prominent followers who
seem to represent the great officers of the household of the later
Middle Ages; such were the chamberlain, _regiae praepositus domus_, and
the great captains who in Roman usage were styled _magistri militum_,
and the king’s high-butler and steward.
But beside his Teutonic court—‘the hounds of the royal hall,’ as
Boethius called them—Theodoric kept up a full establishment of Roman
officials, bearing the old titles that had been used under the
empire—praetorian praefects, masters of the offices, quaestors, and
notaries. He showed great skill and discretion in choosing the most
honest among his Italian subjects for these posts, so that his courtiers
never became an oppressive official clique, as had habitually been the
case under the later emperors. He even chose as his praetorian praefect
Liberius, who had adhered to Odoacer to the last, and told him that he
esteemed him all the more for his fidelity to his first master. The best
men in Italy were undoubtedly set to administer the central government;
but it was Theodoric’s misfortune that the better the man the more
likely he was to indulge in vain dreams of old Roman glory, and to
resent in his heart the wise rule of the Ostrogoth. Boethius, the last
of the Romans as he may be called, served Theodoric all his life without
learning true loyalty to him.
We have not space to notice half of Theodoric’s reforms in the
administration of Italy. Most wise among them was the careful
restoration of the old roads, aqueducts, and drainage canals, which had
been the glory of the early empire. He was himself a great builder, and
erected royal palaces at Verona and Ravenna, of which, alas! only the
smallest fragments survive. But he spent even greater care in keeping up
ancient edifices. In Rome he set apart every year two hundred pounds
weight of gold pieces for the repair of palaces and public buildings. He
took under his protection even statues and monuments, and added
representations of himself to the crowd of effigies which adorned Rome.
So thoroughly did he put himself in the place of the Caesars that he
even took care to celebrate games in the circus, and harangued the
assembled people in the Forum. [Sidenote: Theodoric in Rome.] He
attended and took part in the debates of the Senate, and endeavoured to
strengthen it by the appointment of a few Gothic senators. If he showed
some unwisdom in arranging for the resumption of the bread-dole, which
had been such a curse to Rome, he atoned for it by a liberal scheme for
the rearrangement of taxes, which at once relieved the people and filled
the treasury. At his death the royal hoard at Ravenna amounted to no
less than 40,000 pounds weight of gold, £1,600,000 in hard cash.
Theodoric’s wise administration at home was accompanied by an equally
firm and able foreign policy. His first care was to establish friendly
relations with the Eastern Empire. Even before Odoacer had met his
death, he despatched an embassy to report to Zeno that he had carried
out his commission of conquering Italy, and claimed an imperial
confirmation of his title. But the embassy found Zeno just dead, and his
successor, Anastasius, engrossed in the suppression of riots and
rebellions. It was not till 497 that the emperor recognised the king of
the Goths as ruler in Italy. Then, however, Anastasius made up for his
tardy recognition by sending to Theodoric the regalia which Odoacer had
forwarded to Zeno twenty years before, the robes and palace ornaments,
which had last been used by the boy Romulus Augustulus.
During the thirty-three years of the Amal’s reign in Italy he had only
one dispute with the emperor: this was a frontier quarrel in 505, caused
by troubles in Illyricum. Theodoric had taken in hand the restoration of
the bounds of the Western Empire towards the East, and his generals,
having subdued Pannonia as far as Sirmium and Singidunum, trespassed on
to Moesian soil, and came into contact with the East-Roman armies. There
was some trouble for three years, but no great war, though in 508 two of
Anastasius’ generals made a destructive raid on Apulia. But peace was
ultimately made on the terms that the boundary should be drawn, as in
the days of the Western Empire, at the Save and Danube.
Much more important were Theodoric’s dealings with his neighbours to
west and north. He took over the task of Odoacer in guarding the old
Roman districts beyond the Alps, which had once composed the provinces
of Rhaetia and Noricum. Both were now becoming Teutonic rather than
Latin-speaking lands. Into Rhaetia had fled many of the Alamanni, or
Suabians, when Chlodovech the Frank in 496 drove them out of their lands
on the Main and Neckar. This people gladly acknowledged Theodoric as
over-lord, in return for his protection against the pursuing Franks,
whom the Ostrogoth bade halt at the line of the upper Rhine, between
Basel and Constanz. Farther east, in Noricum, the place of the emigrant
Roman provincials had now been taken by a mixed Teutonic population, the
remnant of the broken clans of the Rugians, Scyrri, and Turcilingi, who
were just beginning to call themselves by the common name of Bavarians,
under which we know them so well a few years later. They, too, like the
Alamanni, were glad to acknowledge Theodoric as suzerain, and pay him
tribute.
To the west, Theodoric at his accession found his kingdom bounded by the
Alps, for Odoacer had given up to the Visigoths Marseilles, and the
other towns which had obeyed the emperor down to the year 476. Beyond
the Alps, Alaric the Visigoth now held the mouths of the Rhone and the
Provençal Coast, while Gundobad the Burgundian ruled on the middle and
upper Rhone, from Avignon as far as Besançon and Langres. North of both
Burgundian and Visigoth, and far from the Alpine borders of Theodoric,
lay the new Frankish kingdom of Chlodovech, now reaching as far as the
Loire and the upper Seine.
With all these three monarchs the king of the Ostrogoths had many
dealings. At the very beginning of his reign he asked for the hand of
Augofleda, the sister of Chlodovech, and hoped that by this alliance he
had bound the clever and unscrupulous Frank to himself. By Augofleda he
became the father of Amalaswintha, the only child born to him in lawful
wedlock, though he had two elder daughters by a concubine ere he came to
Italy. [Sidenote: Marriages of Theodoric’s family.] Soon after his own
marriage with the Frankish princess, Theodoric wedded one of these
natural children to Sigismund, the son and heir of the Burgundian
Gundobad, and the other to Alaric the Visigoth. Thus all his neighbours
became his relatives.
But this did not secure peace between the new kinsmen of Theodoric. In
499 Chlodovech fell on Gundobad, to strip him of his realm, routed him,
and shut him up in Avignon, the southernmost of his strongholds; but
after many successes the Frank lost all that he had gained, and turned
instead to attack the king of the Visigoths. Theodoric strove
unsuccessfully to prevent both wars, and was not a little displeased
when, in 507, his brother-in-law Chlodovech overran southern Gaul, and
slew his son-in-law Alaric in battle. Burgundian and Frank then united
to destroy the Visigoths, and might have done so had not Theodoric
intervened. The heir of the Visigothic throne was now Amalric, the son
of Alaric and of the king of Italy’s daughter. To defend his grandson’s
realm Theodoric declared war both on Chlodovech and on Gundobad, and
sent his armies over the Alps to save the remnants of the Visigothic
possessions in Gaul. One host crossed the Cottian Alps, and fell on
Burgundy; another entered Provence, and smote the Frank and Burgundian
besiegers of Arles. With his usual good fortune, Theodoric recovered all
Gaul south of the Durance and the Cevennes (509), so that the conquests
of Chlodovech were confined to Aquitaine. The way was now clear for the
Ostrogothic armies to march into Spain, to support the claims of the
child Amalric against Gesalic, a bastard son of Alaric II., who had been
proclaimed king of the Visigoths at Barcelona. After two years of
guerilla fighting, the pretender was hunted down and slain, though he
had sought and obtained some help from the Vandal king Thrasamund (511).
For the next fourteen years, till Amalric reached manhood, Theodoric
ruled Spain in his grandson’s behalf. [Sidenote: Theodoric king of the
Visigoths.] He was recognised as king of the Visigoths, in common with
Amalric, and ruled both halves of the Gothic race—reunited after an
interval of two hundred years—with equal authority, and his royal
mandates ran in Spain as well as in Italy. His delegate was Count
Theudis, an Ostrogothic noble, who was made regent, and ruled at
Narbonne over all the Visigothic realm west of the Rhone; while the
Roman Liberius, named praetorian praefect of Gaul, administered
Visigothic Provence from the ancient city of Arles.
Theodoric’s power was now supreme from Sirmium to Cadiz, and from the
upper Danube to Sicily. He ruled the larger half of the old Roman Empire
of the West, and exercised much influence in Gaul and Africa, the two
parts of it that were not absolutely in his hands. After the war of
507-10 Clodovech the Frank had died, and his four sons, who parted his
realm, made peace with the Ostrogoth; while Gundobad, the Burgundian
king, had been fain to follow their example even earlier.
Twelve years of peace followed (511-523) before Theodoric, now in
extreme old age, had occasion to interfere in Gaul. Sigismund, the
husband of Theodoric’s elder natural daughter, was now king of the
Burgundians. He was a gloomy and suspicious tyrant, and drew down the
wrath of Theodoric by murdering his own heir, Sigeric, who was the
Gothic king’s eldest grandson. To punish this crime Theodoric leagued
himself with the Franks, and attacked Burgundy. He conquered, and took
as his share of the spoil the lands between Durance and Drôme, with the
cities of Avignon, Orange, and Viviers, the farthest extension to the
north-west of the Ostrogothic empire.
The circle of family alliances which Theodoric had made with his
European neighbours was extended even beyond the Mediterranean. He
married his sister, Amalafrida, a widowed princess, no longer in her
first youth, to Thrasamund, the old king of the Vandals. In virtue of
this connection he seems to have treated Thrasamund as a younger
brother, if not as a vassal. When the Vandal dared to help the usurper
Gesalic in Spain, Theodoric imposed a tribute on him, and bade him for
the future do nothing without the counsel of his wife Amalafrida.
Thrasamund did not resent this treatment, and for the future did all he
could to propitiate his brother-in-law.
The Vandal state, indeed, was not in a condition to risk a quarrel with
Theodoric. Ever since the death of Hunneric it had been steadily on the
decline. In the reigns of Gunthamund (484-496) and Thrasamund himself
(496-523) it was continually losing ground to the insurgent Moors of
Atlas. Gunthamund, who was not a persecutor like his predecessor
Hunneric, had endeavoured to win the favour of the Catholics by allowing
them to recall their exiled bishops and open their churches. But these
boons did not check the falling away of his subjects, and during his
reign the Moors conquered from him the whole sea-coast from Tangiers to
the gates of Caesarea. [Sidenote: Vandal Persecutions in Africa.] His
brother Thrasamund tried the opposite policy, resumed the persecutions,
deported two hundred Catholic bishops to Sardinia, and renewed the
horrors of the days of Hunneric. Naturally, he was no more fortunate in
dealing with the native rebels than his brother had been. A quarrel with
Theodoric would have meant ruin, so he kept himself from all foreign
war. He died in 523 at a great age, killed, it is said, by the news of a
great defeat which his armies had suffered at the hands of the Moors.
His successor was his cousin Hilderic, the son of Hunneric and the Roman
princess Eudocia, the last scion of the house of Theodosius the Great.
Educated by a Catholic mother, Hilderic was himself the first orthodox
Vandal king, and ended the long African persecutions. But his reign was
not happier than those of his two cousins. His enthusiastic championship
of the Catholic cause brought him into collision with the bulk of his
Vandal subjects, and he was attacked by a rebellious party, headed by
Theodoric’s sister, the queen-dowager Amalafrida, who wished to proclaim
as king of Africa one of her late husband’s nephews. Hilderic had the
better of the fighting, defeated the rebels, and captured Amalafrida,
whom he consigned to a dungeon, to the great wrath of her brother, the
king of the Goths (523). As long as Theodoric lived he merely kept her
in close confinement, but the moment he heard of the old man’s death, in
526, he had the cruelty to slay the aged queen, a deed which alienated
for ever the Vandals and the Ostrogoths.
The captivity of his sister was not the only sorrow which clouded the
last few years of Theodoric’s long life. He was left in some trouble as
to the succession to his crown. He had married his only legitimate
child, Amalaswintha, to a Visigothic prince named Eutharic, of whose
prudence and valour much was expected. Theodoric intended him to reign
with his daughter as colleague and king-consort, but in 522 Eutharic
died, leaving as his heir a boy of only five years of age. Theodoric
could not but see that on his death the accession of a woman and a child
to the throne would be fraught with the gravest danger, more especially
as his nephew Theodahat, the nearest male heir of the Amal house, was
known to be an unscrupulous intriguer.
It was perhaps owing to a temper embittered by these family troubles
that Theodoric was led, during the last few years of his life, into an
unhappy quarrel with some of the best of his Italian subjects. Rightly
or wrongly, he had imbibed a notion that the Italians would take
advantage of his death to stir up the emperor at Constantinople against
his infant heir. The idea was very justifiable; for, in spite of all
Theodoric’s wisdom and goodness, most of his Roman subjects never learnt
to look kindly upon a ruler who was at once an Arian and a Goth, and it
seems that some, at least, of the Senate were secretly corresponding
with the emperor Justin. That monarch, the first Eastern Emperor for
fifty years who was undisputedly orthodox, had fired the enthusiasm of
Catholics all over the world by his attempts to suppress Arianism, and
the faithful in Italy were undoubtedly contrasting his action with the
strict impartiality of Theodoric, to the latter’s disadvantage.
[Sidenote: The Misfortunes of Boethius.] In 524 the patrician Albinus
was accused by Cyprian, the _magister officiorum_, of sending disloyal
letters to Constantinople. At his trial he was defended by the Consular
Boethius, at once a great official and the best-known author of the day,
noted as philosopher, theologian, astronomer, and mechanist—in short,
the chief representative of the intellect of Italy. Boethius resented
the impeachment of Albinus in the most fiery terms. ‘If this man is
guilty,’ he cried, ‘then both I and all the Senate are guilty too.’ The
accuser, Cyprian, proceeded to take him at his word, and brought forward
further evidence to prove that Boethius himself had been one of the
senators in correspondence with Justin, or had, at least, done his best
to suppress evidence against those who actually were so engaged.[3] Such
an accusation, even if not fully proved, seems to have fired the anger
of the old king. He could not tolerate disloyalty in a man whom he had
always distinguished by his favour, and preferred to the highest
offices. By his orders Boethius was put on his trial before the Senate,
and there condemned. For a year Theodoric kept him in prison—a year
invaluable to future ages, for in it the captive composed his
_Consolation of Philosophy_, a work which was to be the comfort of many
a noble but unhappy soul in the Middle Ages, and to find countless
readers from King Alfred down to Sir Thomas More. At the end of a year’s
confinement Boethius was tortured and put to death. Possibly he was
altogether innocent of the charge laid to his account, that of secret
correspondence with Constantinople; but more probably he had actually
written harmless letters into which a treasonable purpose was read by
the malice of his accusers and the fears of the king.
Footnote 3:
This would seem to have been the charge which Boethius himself
expressed by saying that he was accused of ‘having endeavoured to
preserve the senators.’
The death of Boethius was followed by another execution, that of his
aged father-in-law, Symmachus, the chief of the senate, whom Theodoric
put to death on the mere suspicion that he resented his son-in-law’s
cruel end. There seems to have been no further charge laid against him,
and no formal trial, so that this action ranks with the murder of
Odoacer as the second unpardonable sin of Theodoric’s life (525).
Others also suffered during the last two years of the old king’s reign.
In anger at Justin’s persecution of the Arians, he threatened reprisals
against the Catholics of Italy, and charged John the bishop of Rome to
sail at once to Constantinople, and inform the emperor that further
persecution would mean war with the Goths, and involve an attack on the
orthodox throughout the Ostrogothic dominions. Moved by these threats,
Justin suspended his harrying of the Arians, and treated the Pope with
such respect and distinction that he roused the suspicions of the king
of Italy. Theodoric thought that John had been too friendly with the
emperor, and suspected that the honours and reverence shown him at
Constantinople were part of a plan for seducing away the allegiance of
his Roman subjects. When the Pope returned he was thrown into prison,
where, being already in ill-health, he soon died. He was at once hailed
as a martyr by all the Western Church (526).
The Italians thought that the execution of Symmachus and the
imprisonment of Pope John foreboded a general persecution throughout
Italy. It was rumoured that the Arians had won from the king his consent
to an edict closing the Catholic Churches, and that the Goths were to
take arms against their fellow-subjects. Considering the tenor of the
whole of Theodoric’s previous life, it is most improbable that he had
any such wild scheme of intolerance in hand. [Sidenote: Death of
Theodoric, 526.] But he had certainly grown gloomy, suspicious, and hard
in his declining days, and it was well for his own fame, as well as for
his subjects, that he was carried off by dysentery not long after the
death of Pope John. It would have been still better, both for king and
people, had the end come three years earlier, before his first harsh
dealings with Boethius. His unpopularity at the moment of his death is
shown by the survival of several curious legends, which tell how holy
hermits saw his soul dragged down to hell by the injured ghosts of John
and Symmachus, or carried off by the fiend himself.
So, after reigning thirty-three years over Italy, and twelve years over
Spain, Theodoric died, aged seventy-two, and was buried by the Goths in
the round mausoleum outside the gate of Ravenna, which he had built for
himself many years before. His body has long disappeared, but his empty
tomb still survives, well-nigh the only perfect and unbroken monument
that recalls the sixty years of Gothic dominion in Italy.
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