[While I was at the Austrasia conference, a number of people mentioned the problem of knowing why Metz was chosen as the capital, or chief urban royal residence, of that realm. As part of my on-going, irregular attempt to put all my unpublished 'back-catalogue' on-line I present this paper from 2001, in which I attempt to answer that question by looking at why Trier was not established as the capital, given its imperial past. The argument is essentially that the very Romanness and imperial pretensions of Trier made it very difficult for the Merovingians to inscribe their political identity over that. More to the point, the bishops of Trier had a tradition of standing up to secular power, most stridently visible, perhaps, in the career of the long-live St Nicetius. After the Justinianic wars (this is one of the earliest, tentative steps towards the argument I have been espousing more recently) it was easier for the Merovingians, and other post-imperial rulers, to choose lesser Roman towns that had the trappings of a royal capital but without too heavy baggage from an imperial past. It was originally the last in a series of seminars on towns held at the Institute of Classical Studies and notionally co-organised by me and Richard Alston (in fact Richard did about 80% of the organisation), so the specific references here and there to other scholars works is to their papers in the series. Naturally it is pretty much viva voce and lacks any apparatus, but I hope you might find it of interest.]
The reasons for this paper are several. On the one hand I thought it would be as well
for me to get away from talking about Metz – indeed when they heard I was
speaking in this series, more than one person commented ‘I suppose you’ll be
talking about Metz then’. Well, how
better to avoid this unfortunate pigeon-holing than by getting completely away
from that city, writing about another city and its region entirely? And where better than Trier, which is a good
seventy-five kilometres away from Metz, as the crow flies, significantly more
if you go via the Mosel?
 |
| Now rather old plan of Trier by Kurt Böhner |
More seriously, Trier features prominently in the
secondary literature, often as a sort of paradigmatic north-east Gaulish city,
largely as a result of the fact that it has been so often, so thoroughly and so
well worked over by very prominent Romanists and medievalists, historians,
numismatists, epigraphers and archaeologists: Edith Wightman, Eugen Ewig, Kurt
Böhner, Nancy Gauthier, H.H. Anton and so on.
And this in turn is largely because Trier is very well served with
evidence of diverse kinds. Yet when I
was writing my doctoral thesis on Metz I noticed that Trier was different from
Metz; at the time, and when I wrote the book based upon the thesis, I thought
this was because Metz was unusual (which it is), but what has struck me
increasingly since then is just how profoundly different and unusual – indeed just plain weird – Trier itself is,
far more so than Metz. This
individuality, and it seems to be a conscious individuality, would seem to be a
theme running throughout late antique and early medieval Trier: The city is,
obviously, important in the Late Roman period, and its distinctiveness remains
very clear in the Merovingian period, as I shall argue, but it doesn’t stop
there; in the Carolingian period, the Trierer aristocracy is very
self-consciously independent, and by the end of the first millennium this area
is at the heart of a new regional identity, that of Lotharingia, the Middle
Kingdom. For this reason Matthew Innes
and I decided that the Triererland would make a good project upon which we
could test out our ideas about Merovingian and Carolingian society and
politics, nicely situated between, but different from, the regions of Metz and Mainz
upon which we have worked individually.
Thus what I am going to say today represents very much, not even work in
progress, but some initial ideas, formulations and questions.
Something else, which has intrigued me for a long time,
ever since my Metz work, has been why the Merovingian kings of Austrasia
settled upon Metz as their principal urban seat. After all, why not Trier, the former imperial
capital, just down the Mosel? Then it
has become apparent to me that this is only part of a wider phenomenon:
post-Roman kings did not choose leading Roman political centres as the capitals
of their kingdoms. The Visigoths in
Spain chose Toledo, not the more important cities of Cordoba, or Mérida, or
Tarragona, or Barcelona. The Lombards in
Italy could not, obviously, use Rome or Ravenna, but nor did they make much use
of Milan. Instead Pavia became their
royal centre. And the Merovingians
eschewed Trier, Rheims, Arles or Lyons, in favour of Paris and Metz, neither of
which (it may come as a surprise to Parisiens) was very significant at all in
the Roman period. Now this seems to be true mainly for the later phase of
post-Roman kingdoms. The Ostrogoths in
Italy used Ravenna, and the Vandals made their base in Carthage. Kingdoms of the sixth century, however, as
stated, seem to have steered clear of the major Roman political centres. Given the general quest by early medieval
kings for that modern commodity, Romanitas,
this seems all the more surprising, but the case of the Merovingians and Trier
may permit a way into exploring this problem.
And the distinctiveness of the Triererland turns out not to be unrelated
to this issue. Alas, this does mean
talking somewhat about Metz. It is
difficult to talk about why one town was not adopted as a capital without some
discussion of the neighbouring city which was
chosen.
Finally, I must state at the outset that I was inspired,
and put on to the track towards much of what I am about to say today, by
examining the PhD thesis of Mark Handley, on the early medieval inscriptions of
Gaul, Spain and Britain. What I am going
to say regarding inscriptions is derived from his work, and I’d like to make
that debt clear from the outset.
Trier, in many ways, needs no introduction but some
reminder of the background will still be useful. Situated on the right bank of the Mosel, it
was one of the great cities of Roman Gaul.
For today’s purposes it is worth noting at the outset that the Treveri
were always a rather unusual group within Roman Gaul. They were one of the very few northern civitates to produce senators, and in
the third century the prosperity of the region’s aristocracy seems to be
manifest in the large, and much debated, monuments which they erected, such as
the famous Igelsaüle.
Trier was at the heart of the late Roman Empire. From the late third century and the period of
the Gallic emperors through to 388 and the suppression of the usurper Magnus
Maximus Trier was frequently the capital of the western Empire. Indeed its use as a capital can be argued to
have been a key factor in the continuing survival of the western Empire. As a result of imperial presence, the city
was endowed with several splendid monuments: the Kaiserthermen, built by
Constantine, and the famous Aula Palatina.
Here we see the Aula Palatina, built, according to a coin of Severus
found in a wall, some time shortly after 305.
In some ways I think the Aula Palatina stands as a metaphor of the late
Roman Empire and its historiography.
Seen here it seems, especially alongside the rather twee baroque
Archbishop Elector’s palace, like a huge imposing monolith, a building to sum
up the A.H.M. Jones image of the late Roman state. However, just as subsequent generations have
been less impressed by the efficiency of the late Roman Empire or taken in by
its rhetoric, it is as well to remember that originally, the interior of the
Aula Palatina was covered with frescoes and mosaics, and the outside was
plastered, whitewashed, painted with false joinery, and appointed with all
sorts of, to use the technical term, twiddly bits, making it look much less of
a monster. Even more of the time, I
imagine, it looked a bit shabby and run down.
This was part of a huge palatine complex at Trier, including a circus,
refurbishment to the amphitheatre and the construction of a large
double-cathedral. The provision of
imperial ceremonial and spectacle was clearly very important; the association
of palace and the other elements is reminiscent of the slightly later new
imperial capital at Constantinople.
Other building associated with the imperial presence took place under
Valentinian I and Gratian, involving riverside warehouses and modifications to
the other major structures, with the imperial baths possibly being used as a
palatine barracks.
The imperial presence was a decisive factor, just as Hugh
Kennedy showed that the difference between the fates of Scythopolis and Gerasa
was related to the presence of imperial government and its money. Other northern Gallic towns, as was mentioned
last week, are, in the late Empire characteristically much reduced with small
walled administrative redoubts at their core.
Very little, if any, new public building was done and the extent to
which the areas outside the walled circuits were still occupied is still
debated and, though it was doubtless more common than was once supposed, we
should remember that the walls usually enclosed areas of 20 Ha or less. At Paris the defended areas were the Île de
la Cité and the left bank’s forum. The
centrality of imperial patronage is also, as it happened, graphically
demonstrated at Metz, the next city on Trier’s lifeline to the south. Here there is an unusually large walled
circuit, possibly the largest late Roman circuit in the north, given that Trier’s
enormous walled circuit was built early in the Roman period, and may well have
been more a curse than a blessing; it would be difficult to defend it all. Metz also has fourth-century public building,
this civic basilica at St-Pierre-aux-Nonnains being constructed probably in the
reign of Valentinian I and clearly modelled upon the Trier basilica. It may well be the last such piece of new
civic building in the western Roman Empire north of the Alps at least.
This continued prosperity was carried over into the rural
areas of the region. The Treveri, like
the Mediomatrici to their south, survived the crises of the late third century
pretty well. Overall, about half of the
villas known in the region continue to be occupied through the fourth century,
although there are regional variations, with the west of the civitas suffering worse than the areas
immediately around Trier itself.
Fourth-century occupation is particularly well attested in the lower
Eiffel. More to the point, perhaps, some
of the late Roman villas of the Trier region are very impressive affairs. There is the palatial, possibly imperial
villa at Konz, the three-storey and defensible, if not fortified, villa at
Pfalzel, Welschbillig, Nennig and Echternach.
Imperial ownership has been suggested for Konz and possibly Pfalzel. Welschbillig appears to be the focus for the
huge estate surrounded by the Langmauer.
Since this earthwork was constructed by troops (primani), an imperial connection of some sort seems likely, though
it could also (if perhaps with less likelihood) have been access to imperial
patronage by a leading palatine aristocrat which produced this source of
labour. Again, this repays comparison
with neighbouring regions, and may very well have a bearing on later developments. The well-known changes in ideology which so
affected Roman towns after the third century, and which were revisited by John
Haldon in the first paper in this series, may have been less important
here. The local aristocracy may have
otherwise been as unwilling as another to invest in their city – the impressive
private monuments are an index of that change from private money going on
public monumental munificence to private houses – but they were just as keen to
acquire imperial patronage, and the heart of the distribution of that patronage
was at their city. The vici in the region also survive the
third-century crisis fairly well.
After the suppression of Maximus, no legitimate emperor
ever returned to Trier. The fifth
century is an obscure period. The Roman
infrastructure of the region survives better than in other areas, which is
probably related to the wealth and power of the aristocracy. In the late fifth century, Trier was ruled by
a Count, Arbogast, who received a letter from Sidonius Apollinaris praising his
Roman-ness, and a praise poem from the bishop of Toul. This apparently independent Roman rule is
important for our purposes.
This part of the world was incorporated into the
Merovingian realms at some point before 511, though we have no way of knowing
when: the old methods of trying to map Frankish conquest by plotting the
distribution of certain types of grave, or even artefact, although still
employed in some quarters, are unacceptable.
For one thing, these burial styles cannot be equated with the Franks;
for another the one chronological fixed point in these archaeological attempts
at political history, the burial of king Childeric in Tournai in 481/2 has been
shown (by me) to be nothing of the sort.
Childeric could have died five years before, or ten years after, this date. When Clovis died in 511, however, the Moselle
valley was under Frankish control. His
eldest son, Theuderic ruled the area.
Indeed, Theuderic may have been ruling the region even before his
father’s death. In the seventh century,
Fredegar said that Theuderic had Metz as his capital, but he appears to have
been projecting the situation of his own day back to the 511 division. Merovingian kings never developed the idea of
a permanent capital as their Lombard and Visigothic contemporaries did, but a
principal urban base seems to have been chosen. As far as we can tell,
Theuderic’s was Trier. This is the town
in which he is mentioned as ruling by Gregory of Tours in the Vita Patrum.
Theuderic’s son and successor Theudebert, rex magnus francorum is associated with
Trier as well, but he also appears to have had some connection with
Verdun. When he died, there was rioting
in Trier and the stoning to death of his tax-collector, Parthenius, but the
implication of Gregory’s account, which is puzzling, interesting and amusing in
equal measure, is that the king was not there when he died, even if some of the
administrative machinery may have been.
Theudebert’s son and successor, Theudebald held court at Metz. With the death of Theudebald, the
conveniently alliteratively-named first Austrasian dynasty came to an end, and
the kingdom passed to his great uncle, Chlothar I. Chlothar too had some connection with Trier,
but as king, by this stage, of most of Gaul, he spent most time elsewhere and
is mostly associated with Soissons.
When, by that time king of the whole regnum
francorum, he died in 561, in the eventual division of the kingdom between
his four sons, Austrasia fell to Sigibert, and Sigibert moved his court to
Rheims. By 566, however, he was holding
church councils and celebrating his marriage to Brunhild at Metz, and Metz
remained the principal Austrasian royal urban residence for as long as we have
information on the subject.
Thus, although the Austrasian kings flirted with the idea
of establishing themselves in the old Imperial capital, their association with
the city was brief and, as we’ll see, unhappy; they appear to have toyed with
various other capitals, including, briefly, the other principal northern city
of Roman Gaul, Rheims, but within fifty years or so had definitively settled
upon Metz, and equally definitively abandoned Trier. So pronounced was this shift that by the end
of the Merovingian period Trier even lost its Metropolitan status, and the bishops
of Metz briefly became archbishops. So
what had gone wrong? Why did the
Frankish kings give up on Trier?
The principal reasons are episcopal and ideological; more
particularly they are Nicetius of Trier, or Nicetius of the Treveri as Gregory
of Tours calls him in his Vita Patrum,
which is possibly significant, as we shall see.
Nicetius, possibly of Aquitanian origin, was appointed bishop of Trier
by Theuderic in about 525, and remained bishop for the next forty years or so. When Nicetius became bishop he felt a weight
settling upon his neck, which he realized was the burden of episcopal
dignity. However he may have been
weighed down by the responsibilities of his office, Nicetius was never unduly
burdened by doubts about his own importance.
According to Gregory, or his informant Aredius of Limoges, Nicetius’
former assistant, even before he was bishop Nicetius used to berate King
Theuderic for his sinful behaviour. In
Gregory’s Life of the bishop, this was allegedly why Theuderic made him bishop. This is rather odd, not just because it seems
to be asking for trouble, but also because Theuderic usually comes across as a
nasty piece of work in Gregory’s writing.
By contrast his son Theudebert is usually given a glowing write up by
the bishop of Tours but in the Life of
Nicetius he is the bishop’s most sinful royal adversary. This is revealed most clearly by the showdown
in the cathedral described in Gregory’s Life
of the Fathers, where Nicetius excommunicated the king and his fellow
debauchees. The king refused to leave
the church whereupon a possessed man proclaimed that the king was indeed a
sinner and too proud, whereas the bishop was a holy and humble man, and God
would decide this in due course. After
this display, the king, unsurprisingly, stalked out of the church and Nicetius
healed the possessed man, although he could nowhere be found afterwards. Many people, says Gregory, said this showed
that he had been sent by the Lord. We
might wonder, perhaps too rationally, if it wasn’t just that the king’s men
found him first...
This, is possibly a good place to revisit Mark Humphreys’
theme of the provision of spectacle. We
assume that the Merovingian kings had set up in the former imperial
palace. As we have seen, this was a
complex which included amphitheatre and circus but also the bishop’s
cathedral. The two were close neighbours
and thus in competition for control of this vital component of the city. What, if any, spectacles were put on in the
former amphitheatre, which may have been turned into a form of stronghold in
this period, or the circus, is unknown.
Childebert II staged bear-baiting in Metz, presumably in the small
amphitheatre there; another Merovingian king allegedly restored the circuses at
Paris and Soissons because he wanted to present spectacles to the people; Theudebert
himself is said by Procopius to have staged horse races in the circus at
Arles. Whatever these games were, they
appear to have been trumped by great religious spectacles, especially those
which involved the dramatic humbling of
the king and miraculous healings – even if any rash ‘volunteers from the
audience’ may have found themselves sleeping with the fishes shortly
afterwards. In terms of the competition
of impresarios, there can be little doubt about who won here.
And maybe it wasn’t just the bishop but the community
which he had won over who presented the problems. Theudebert had been betrothed to a Lombard
princess called Wisigard but instead ran off with a Roman noblewoman from the
south called Deuteria. The Merovingians’
irregular marital practices do not generally appear to have alarmed people,
other than a very small number of bold, and possibly over-self-confident,
clerics. Yet, according to Gregory,
Theudebert eventually put aside Deuteria and made good his promise to Wisigard,
because ‘the Franks’ thought this was, in Lewis Thorpe’s translation, a
‘scandalous situation’. I have suggested
elsewhere that this outrage may have stemmed from a resentment of the fact that
the Merovingians studiously avoided intermarriage with their Frankish
aristocrats. More significantly for us,
perhaps, is the fact that the next time that Gregory mentions ‘the Franks’ in
the context of the reign of Theudebert, it is as the mob at Trier who stone to
death Parthenius the tax collector – who must, Simon Loseby was telling me last
week, have been aged about eighty at the time: he’s a grandson of the emperor
Avitus. The Franks hated Parthenius
because he had taxed them during Theudebert’s reign. Gregory hated him partly because he was a
member of Avitus’ family, of whom he had no great opinion, but also, rather
charmingly, because he was a great glutton and used to ‘fart in public without
any consideration for those present’.
Some would say that stoning him to death was going a little far... Some, and in this case I would include
myself, would say that it was a bit churlish to kill Parthenius because of the
king’s almost certainly entirely legal – if possibly more rigorous than
expected – taxation policy.
Either way, Theudebert cannot have felt that Trier, its
bishop and its locals, was a welcoming place.
This was unfortunate because Theudebert was one of those Merovingians
with real pretensions to Romanitas. He minted solidi
with his own image on them, much to the disgust of Procopius, sent letters to
Justinian which styled himself in such a way as to compete with the Emperor in
titles, and indeed to deny the Emperor his assumption of various titles, not
least francicus! There seems to be a real competitive dialogue
between the two in this correspondence. He sent an embassy to Constantinople
including examples of all the peoples over whom he claimed overlordship. The Angiloi
present caused merriment by falling off their horses: the awkwardness of being
an Englishman in New Rome. Theudebert
led an army in the Italian wars with some success, taking advantage of both the
Ostrogoths and the Byzantines: he adopted the not untypically Frankish policy
of getting round the fact that he had made an alliance with both the Goths and the East Romans as King of the Franks, by initially dispatching
an army of subject Burgundians and Alamans!
In Arles, as mentioned, he put on a display of horse racing in the
circus, which was probably as close as he could get to an imperial display in
the last capital of the Gallic prefecture.
How galling, then, if you’ll excuse the pun, that he could never make
Trier his own. Small wonder, perhaps,
that he decided to move to Verdun, a small town – indeed only a civitas capital since Diocletian’s
reforms – with no such grandiose pretensions.
Not much of a surprise either that his son Theudebald
who, by all account, would not have seen eye-to-eye with the morally rigorous
bishop of Trier, set up shop in Metz.
Theudebald, however, reigned only a few years, whereupon the north-east
passed to the formidable Chlothar I.
Even an old savage like Chlothar could not expect an easy ride from
Nicetius, however. Nicetius continued to
denounce Chlothar and excommunicate him, even as the king responded by threats,
eventually carried out, to send the bishop into exile. Again there is a comment in Gregory’s Histories which possibly fleshes out the
account in the Vita Patrum. When he took over Theudebald’s kingdom – the
Kingdom of Francia, as Gregory calls it, interestingly – Chlothar also took
over Theudebald’s widow, Vuldetrada (who, incidentally, was the sister of the
Wisigard who had been married to Theudebald’s father Theudebert: such are the
labyrinthine Merovingian marital politics).
Says Gregory (or rather Lewis Thorpe) in another marvellous, if
unintentionally hilarious, phrase, ‘he began to have intercourse with
Vuldetrada but he stopped when the bishops complained.’ Again I think we can detect Nicetius’ role
here. As Nicetius was leaving for exile,
accompanied by a sole deacon, whom we might suppose was Aredius of Limoges,
messengers arrived from Chlothar’s son Sigibert saying that Chlothar had died,
just as Nicetius had predicted. Sigibert
invited the bishop, by these letters, to return to his see. Sigibert, however, made his capital at Rheims
and then Metz, as we have seen. He was
astute enough to court Nicetius’ favour, but far too astute to want him as a
near neighbour.
Nicetius’ ex cathedra fulminations against the kings were
not the whole story, either. He also
declared that he had had a vision in which he saw a great and many-windowed
tower with God at the summit. Through
one of the windows, an angel read out from a book and declared the names of the
Kings of the Franks and how long they would reign, the nature and length of
their life. Nicetius did not keep this
to himself for, as Gregory says, ‘And for each king it happened just as
Nicetius declared in his revelation.’
Romanists, especially late Romanists, amongst you will appreciate that
this was a startlingly dangerous dream to own up to having had, let alone to
keep harping on about in public. Yet
Nicetius does not appear to have been bothered by this.
Nicetius, it must be said, took a maximalist
interpretation of his pastoral responsibilities. In 564 he wrote to Chlodosind, queen of the
Lombards and daughter of his recently deceased adversary Chlothar, to enjoin
her to convert her pagan husband, Alboin.
This letter gives us an interesting alternative account of Clovis’ conversion
from that given by Gregory. Nicetius
also saw no problem in writing to the Emperor Justinian, accusing him of
falling into the Eutychian and Nestorian heresies. This letter is interesting largely for the
fact that it shows that Nicetius had got completely the wrong end of the stick,
doubtless confirming Byzantinist views of the uncouth West. None of this, however, would prevent someone
as grand as the metropolitan bishop of Belgica Prima from writing a hectoring,
if ill-informed, tract to the mere ruler of the Roman Empire. Justinian’s response is unrecorded. What chance did a mere rex francorum have? I think
now we begin to understand the exasperation of Theudebert and Chlothar.
Nicetius also worked as an impresario of cult. Mark Handley has shown quite clearly how the
church and the cult of SS Maximinus and Paulinus were promoted in the sixth
century by Nicetius, although he also makes the interesting point that the
bishop may have been building upon an existing local veneration of these
saints. Handley makes a persuasive case
that the relics of Paulinus were translated to Trier before 550, during
Nicetius’ long episcopate. He also makes
clear that the church and cemetery of St-Maximinus took over from that of St
Eucharius as the post popular choice of burial place. Epigraphic evidence from this cemetery
underlines the growing popularity of the cults of Maximinus and Paulinus in the
sixth century. This cemetery was, as
Handley demonstrates, growing in popularity by the fifth century but I think
its dominance can be put down to Nicetius, who is associated with the church of
Maximinus in several miracles, and in the end chose to be buried there. The growth in popularity of the northern
cemetery may be down to the fact that it was closer to the cathedral, and to
the fact that occupation appears to have been concentrated in the northern part
of the walled zone. Nicetius was thus
adapting to his environment. Nicetius used the cult of Maximinus in a struggle
with one of his deacons. Given that his
own cult became popular too, this only strengthened the importance of this
site. We shall return shortly to
consider why Nicetius should have chosen to favour Maximinus and Paulinus
instead of the first bishop of Trier, Eucharius, who appears to have been
venerated by some at least of Nicetius’ predecessors. For now, the power of Nicetius over his flock
is what should be stressed.
Thus far I have dwelt upon Nicetius’ spiritual and high
political activities, but it is worth drawing attention to other aspects of his
work, which equally spelt difficulty for any competitors for authority in the
Triererland. In a poem addressed to
Nicetius, Venantius Fortunatus dwells at length about Nicetius’ ‘castellum’ on the Mosel. This place, called Mediolanum, is ringed by
walls with thirty towers and sits overlooking the Mosel on a dominant
crag. The bishop has organized mills to
grind flour, to feed his flock, and has planted vines to ensure wine. Quite where this castellum was is not
entirely clear. If Ross Samson is right,
however, rather than being a newly constructed private fortification, it was
the site of a Roman castellum or burgus.
This seems to be the more common way of reading this passage and, though
there is no decisive evidence, it seems plausible enough. If so, then we see the bishop’s famed humilitas at work again. A Roman castellum
would, presumably, have been public land and thus have passed to the king. Nicetius appears to have taken over this land
and used it to his own purposes, especially providing bread and wine for the
locals. Again, this is precisely the
sort of thing which, as Richard said in his paper, might undercut other
attempts to create links of patronage and dependence.
The burdens of episcopal office could be considerable, as
Nicetius said. However, there was no automatic
reason why a bishop should feel duty bound to be such a thorn in the side of
his kings. The Merovingian Church seems
to have generally adopted a somewhat flexible approach to the demands of its
rulers. In this, as well as drawing upon
traditions of having to work with possibly pagan Frankish rulers in the fifth
century, after 507 it took up the baton from the Visigothic Gallic church,
which had found similar theological elasticity (or, in Gregory of Tours term,
‘flattery’) to encompass close working relationships with Arian kings. Nor, as we shall see, was it a foregone
conclusion that bishops who took a more ideologically rigorous line would win
out. Theuderic wanted a saintly cleric
as bishop for his capital, and apparently imported other southern Gallic clergy
to staff the Trierer churches. However,
I think he expected that the bishop would be beholden to him for this, and
become a yes man, or perhaps, to borrow a joke first cracked I think by Paul
Kershaw a ‘yes minister’. What was it
that made Nicetius so awkward?
Here we must return to why Nicetius chose to promote the
cults of Maximinus and Paulinus, fourth-century bishops of Trier. Both had been
outspoken critics of Arianism, and thus of emperors. Gregory of Tours says that Maximinus was a
powerful bishop in the reign of Constans, information possibly derived from his
Trier sources. He was a vocal supporter
of the anti-Arian party. Paulinus died
in exile. As Handley says, it seems to
have been Nicetius who brought his relics back for burial in Trier, though
whether it was his ill-judged letter to Justinian which facilitated this is
perhaps less likely. When he (if it was
he) acquired or invented relics of Paulinus it is important to note that,
unlike Kate Cooper’s Roman cult impresarios, Nicetius ‘discovered’ not a
martyr, but a local bishop who had been exiled for his firm stance against
worldly rulers. Furthermore, Nicetius
had an attachment to the cult of St Martin, another saint who, by the late
sixth century had acquired anti-Arian credentials. In his letter to Chlodosind, he says that it
was because of miracles at the church of St Martin in Tours that Clovis was
converted. As he will have known from
the highly influential Life of Martin by Sulpicius Severus, Martin was an outspoken
critic of backsliding Emperors, not fearing to tackle Magnus Maximus. And where did Martin do this, other than at
Trier? For a naturally zealous prelate
like Nicetius, these traditions, in the physical environment, however run down,
of the old imperial capital and palace, could indeed settle heavily upon your
neck.
Nicetius was not just a problem whilst he was alive. After his death some time in the mid 560s,
his cult rapidly became very popular.
Gregory tells us, in the Glory of
the Confessors of the many miracles which took place at his tomb. These included the freeing of prisoners from
their chains, so even from beyond the grave, Nicetius could present
difficulties for the agents of secular law and order. Nicetius’ cult, obviously, was promoted by
his successors, and they inherited the burden of tradition, obviously even
heavier for Nicetius’ sterling efforts during his forty-year episcopate. His successor Magneric, though he does not
appear to have been a particularly politically effective figure, outside Trier
at any rate, nevertheless also intervened in royal efforts to control the
church. When Theodore of Marseille – an
unfortunate, though, it has to be said, politically inept prelate – was brought
north on one of his periodic trials, Magneric intervened on his behalf, praying
for his release and putting about stories which claimed how demons had
pronounced this bishop to be a holy man: the resonance with the story of
Nicetius’ clash with Theudebert is fairly clear. He also tried to save the life of Guntramn
Boso but with less success. His
opponent, Childebert II, despite or because of his tender years, being only 18
or 19 at the time, had a more robust approach to dealing with difficult bishops
than his relatives. He ordered his troops
to set fire to Guntramn’s house, and if Magneric didn’t come out, well, then he
could go up in smoke too. The church
where Magneric prayed for the release of Theodore was the Church of Maximinus,
so he too was continuing to promote this cult, now of course strengthened by
having Nicetius’ remains interred there.
Difficult though the episcopal tradition at Trier was for
Merovingian kings to deal with, it still is not the whole story. Bryan Ward Perkins discussed the problems
which might arise from attempting to impose a new ideology upon the built
remains of a previous one, to which one was opposed. I think Bella Sandwell’s discussion of
Antioch demonstrated clearly why temples might not have been such a huge problem
as Bryan supposed. In Trier the Altbachtal
cult site appears to have simply been allowed to fall down, and have private
houses built all over it by the Merovingian period. In the west, buildings associated with
spectacle appear to have been more problematic, as I mentioned after Bryan’s paper
and as Mark Humphreys’ paper showed much more lucidly. In the Trier context, the diatribe of the
ex-pat Treverus Salvian against his former compatriots and their hankering
after circuses in the dark days of the fifth century takes on particular importance. Here, the fact that the circus and
amphitheatre lay next to the cathedral was probably a boon to Nicetius, but not
to his royal rivals, as we have seen.
Yet the problem of the existing built environment did not only arise
where one wished to impose a new and antagonistic ideology. It could arise when one wanted to adopt but
adapt the old ideology. As many
commentators have shown, and is increasingly the standard view, Merovingian
royal ideology was very Roman, but the very fact that Trier had been the Roman capital itself made
difficulties. In his poems composed
during various visits to the north-east, Venantius Fortunatus described Trier as ‘noble capital of a noble people’
and ‘the noble capital of ancient times.’
In, or perhaps amidst, an environment so clearly and so obviously
imperial, how could post-Roman kings inscribe their own political identity?
Then I wonder if there was not a general case of what we
might term, again using technical historical vocabulary, the post-Justinianic
jitters? Patrick Amory has demonstrated
clearly the very real political importance of the new Constantinopolitan
ideology about the ‘lost west’ and the need for reconquest from the 520s onwards. These ideas were translated into bloody
reality in the middle decades of the century, with the expulsion of the Vandals
from Carthage and of the Ostrogoths from Italy.
Indeed mention of the Ostrogoths and the well-known buildings of Ravenna
might bring up very clearly the problem of imposing new ideologies on old
ones. All this may well have made
post-Roman kings, who were no less keen on Romanitas
than their predecessors, somewhat less easy about inhabiting the ideological
centres of the Roman Empire. After all,
that Empire had just waged dreadful war against such interlopers. All this might help us understand why the
Anglo-Saxon kings seem later to have had less of a problem with using
York. As we saw last week, there was –
or seems to have been – a significant break between York’s existence as a Roman
city and its reuse by the Romanising kings of Northumbria.
The jitters can be seen as late as the 580s, long after
the Empire had ceased to have any real ability to interfere militarily in the
west, during the Byzantine-backed revolts of Hermenegild and Gundovald. This may well be why after the middle of the
sixth century ‘barbarian’ kings stopped living in major Roman centres. The case of the embattled Lombards,
perpetually at war with the Empire is particularly unsurprising; the Visigoths,
who now adopted Toledo had also been on the receiving end of Justinian’s
ideology. To this one might add that the
bishops of Milan obviously had their own highly significant model of forthright
intervention against secular rulers: Ambrose himself. Roger Collins has demonstrated the problems
which the Visigoths had in dealing with the bishops of Mérida. The Visigoths also had recent problematic
confrontations with Roman aristocratic groups.
All this was particularly acute for the Lombards and Visigoths,
both of whom had to contend with imperially controlled territories providing
rival political foci and, especially in Italy, rather more convincing claims to
Roman identity. Yet it was clearly a
problem for the Franks too. Here we
return to the Treveri themselves. The priest confounded by St Maximinus in a
miracle during the reign of Theudebert was called Arbogast. It does not seem unlikely that the dynasty
descended from the fourth-century usurper and fifth-century count was still
present in the city and proclaiming its identity. Arbogast’s opponent was just ‘a Frank’,
another intriguing reference to ‘Franks’ in Trier in Theudebert’s reign. More usually, however, the Treveri took a
particularly Roman identity. It is
interesting to note that Gregory calls Nicetius ‘Bishop of the Treveri’ and not
Bishop of Trier. I think it does suggest
his link with a particular, Romanising community. The wealth of the Trierer aristocracy was
noted at the beginning of my paper. It
is possibly demonstrated by the continuing frequent use of Roman names
throughout the Merovingian period on Trier epitaphs. It is also shown by those epitaphs
themselves. If one plots the
distribution of Merovingian epitaphs in northern Gaul we have a few here, a few
there, as many as twenty or so in Metz, but, at the latest count, over 800 in
Trier. Mark Handley says that this is
over a third of the entire corpus of Gallic late antique inscriptions. This was a community which proclaimed an
adherence to Roman traditions in death and I would argue one which proclaims a
greater confidence in status and identity.
This was going to be the competing communities part of this project,
because I wanted to compare this tradition with the burial of grave-goods in
the rural areas of the civitas. There are interesting comparisons and
contrasts between these forms of competitive memorialisation. As is clear though, I don’t have time to go
into this.
The comparative power of the Treveri aristocracy might
also be shown by the comparatively better rate of survival of villas and other
sites into the fifth century. Largely
the evidence is not very good and still only seems to go as far as the mid
century, but this is still better than the areas all around – here we’re still
talking about the Mosel valley rather than the peripheral regions of the civitas.
And the evidence of continued occupation at Trier itself, though hardly
deafening, is better than that for certain other Gallic towns I could mention,
or any British town. Most interestingly
of all is the reference in the Vita
Germani Grandivallensis to the fact that Germanus came from a family of
‘senators’. This reference to senators
is, as far as I am aware, unique in Merovingian northern Gaul, and note, again,
his Roman name. Not quite as interesting,
but still fairly interesting, is the Vita
Gaugerici with its statement that Gaugeric came from a family of ‘Romans’
of middling status in the civitas of
Trier. Here, however, his parents gave
him a Germanic name. Another point is
the survival of Roman place-names in the region and the fact, long known, that
the area of Trier was a bastion of Romance language, another index of
self-conscious, socio-culturally powerful Roman identity in the post-Roman
world.
I wonder if the repeated reference to ‘Franks’ in Trier
in Gregory’s works is suggestive.
Gregory’s sources for Trier were almost entirely to do with Nicetius,
probably almost entirely Aredius of Limoges.
Nicetius probably, and Aredius certainly, were Aquitanian Romans, like
the Arvernian Gregory himself. Nicetius
and Aredius possibly felt some common identity with the Roman Treveri. Given the Roman names and collective identity
of the Treveri, it may be that the stories about ‘Franks’ which made it back to
Gregory were stories about ‘outsiders’.
After all, the Frank in the miracle involving the deacon Arbogast is at
the end of the story simply called ‘barbarus’.
The Trierer aristocracy appears to have remained powerful
and comparatively wealthy throughout the Merovingian period. The power of the Merovingian realm was
largely based upon the importance of royal patronage and office. The Treveri do not appear to have felt they
needed this, and yet were sufficiently self-assured to feel they belonged at
the centre of power. Possibly the best
way to combat this and bring them to heel was to adopt the solution which bound
the even more powerful and confident southern Gallic Roman aristocracies into
the Merovingian polity: to remove them from the centres of politics.
With all this in mind it is perhaps easy to see why the
‘King of the Franks’ may not have felt at ease in Trier, especially after
Justinian’s wars. Thus he moved to
Metz. Brief study of Metz sheds extra
light on the problem, not least because it highlights its complexities. Metz was a large city and a prosperous one as
we’ve seen, central within Austrasia and more easily defended than Trier. It did not, furthermore, have Trier’s Roman
ideological baggage. It did have, like Toledo, the merit of
absolute blandness. This allowed the
kings to proclaim their Romanitas but
to inscribe their own political identity on the town. Now, interestingly, they seem to have tried
to recreate a royal complex very similar to that at Trier. It had a centre for spectacle in the small
amphitheatre, probably like that at Trier, incorporated into the walls. It had a large basilical building, which was
probably the centre of the palace complex, and it had the cathedral of St
Stephen in close proximity. But bishops
weren’t a problem at Metz. There were no
awkward local saints or traditions of episcopal antagonism. What’s more, the Merovingians, practically as
soon as they moved to Metz, simply installed trusted former palatine officials
as bishops. Practically every bishop of
Metz that we know anything at all about has a close link with the royal
court. The most problematic bishop,
Arnulf does not appear to have been popular with the locals and seems to have
been driven out. His cult did not take
off until his descendants, the Carolingians, gained political control, and it
took them a while to bring Metz to heel.
The difficulties of bishops were still revealed, however. Although the evidence is almost non-existent,
it seems that Charles Martel, when he gained control of Metz, had to put up
with a bishop, Sigibald, who had been a member of the opposing faction, and was
clearly venerated in the region.
Sigibald inconveniently remained bishop for the rest of Charles’ period
of rule. When he died Charles’
successors quickly installed one of their followers, Chrodegang, who
assiduously refounded Sigibald’s monastic foundations.
The Messin aristocracy was also less wealthy than that in
neighbouring regions. The king and the
bishop would appear to have retained tight control of the lands of the Plateau
Lorrain throughout the Merovingian region, and the region remained socially and
politically dependent upon Metz and the patronage dispensed there. This was much more like it.
So, post-Roman kings liked to act the Roman Emperor but
they didn’t want any latter day Ambroses on their doorsteps stealing the
show. Merovingian kings liked to take
role of Roman ruler; they were not keen on the supporting cast
playing the part of the citizens of the res
publica with too much gusto.
