Visigothic identity of Spain

[ualarauans]

Haila(i)!

Excuse my unprofessional intrusion, but I've got an impression that, 
when discussing theological problems and, in particular, 
distinctions between different religious groups, we are often 
regarding them from the point of view most natural for nowadays but 
quite alien for the time in question. For instance, we either say 
that the difference between Catholic and Arian was so disappearingly 
small that "no one except pedantic theologists did actually care", 
or we assert that there could have been a situation then, after the 
Islamic Conquest, some people could say: "Well, our once-believed 
conception of Jesus seems closer to what Muhammad holds about him, 
so it won't be a problem for our conscience if we convert and, in 
passing, gain some social success". As though people in that time 
chose their religion after a long logical deliberation, comparing 
different views and their own intuitions, considering whether this 
or that particular confession behaved politically correct towards 
minorities and religious dissidents etc. If I remember right there 
was an opinion uttered on this list that in those times the religion 
was such an integral part of one's personal and collective identity 
in a sense like we now regard our own body part – we may like it or 
not aesthetically, but we are born with it and can't change it so 
easily because of the change of circumstances. What were otherwise 
reasons of most people taking part in the religiously motivated 
wars? – they were certainly not high-philosophical reflections, 
neither was the religious subject only a nice occasion for guys who 
in fact don't care, to start killing each other just for fun. 
Politicians may have had quite materialistic goals initiating such 
conflicts, but in order to gain support of their subjects – common 
people forming the army – they had to proclaim that, e.g. "our true 
Christian brothers in Italy, people like you and me, are cruelly 
suppressed and maltreated by these barbaric Arian infidels", and the 
average Byzantine citizen felt deeply concerned – not because he 
knew much of theology or had got a letter from an Italian friend 
which confirmed the official version – but because he took the 
foreign Catholics' trouble as his own, it was him who had been 
attacked by aliens whatever these were, and now he had to fight 
back, with sword if he was a young man, or paying an additional tax, 
if too old to fight himself, so that the God-blessed Emperor could 
hire some other Barbarians – the Huns, or the Langobards, or how 
they are all called – and let them kill each other as much as 
possible, ad maiorem Dei gloriam... You know, there was a very wide 
spread view that the right religion was the main characteristic 
feature of a human being. If you are infidel, if you give a wrong 
answer to the question of "ut credis?", you are simply non-human, 
you may be slain without me committing a mortal sin, and if you 
resist defending your errors, your destruction is a task which God 
demands me to do. That is, the main point was not theology as such, 
but the conflict of group identities, the frontline between "us" 
and "them".

When the author of Skeireins wrote: ni ibnon ak galeika sweritha 
usgiban uns laiseith (5:7); ni ibnaleika frijathwa ak galeika thairh 
thata ustaikneith (5:9), he (as a preacher) was probably aware of 
the difference between ibna(leiks) and galeiks, and the present day 
linguists may discuss the etymology, semantics and possible Greek 
equivalents of the words. But it can be doubted that this was the 
case with most Goths, or typologically, other groups as well. They 
were simply said by authoritative people whom they trusted, that 
confessing a "galeika frijathwa" is good and right and will bring 
you to heaven, whereas "ibnaleika" is a terrible error inspired by 
devil ("don't these evil Nicaean Romans adore devil in their 
hearts?") and will surely make you land in hell after death, 
whatever nice person you were in your life. And, what's important, 
people in that time put much more value upon their fate post mortem, 
than their earthly living. They would be ready to sacrifice their 
lives, still more lives of other people, if that would guarantee 
them a place in paradise. In short, they were much more religious, 
and, in a sense, much more Christian, than we who are trying to 
explain their motives proceeding from modern ideas of a secularized 
religiosity and material advantage. Not that these motives were 
quite irrelevant. We just have to take into our considerations the 
probable amount of people eager to kill and die out of idealistic 
reasons. We may say it's no sense to wage a bloody war because of 
the three letters in ibna-/galeiks. But people could have had 
another feel of sense in the middle of the 1st millennium CE.

Sorry for being too long again

Ualarauans




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