Visigothic identity of Spain

[ualarauans]

Hails Iggwimer!

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Ingemar Nordgren <ingemar at ...> 
wrote:
>
> <...>
> 
> ualarauans wrote:
> > The impact of a liturgy in the native language was indeed 
different
> > from one in Latin. Typologically, we probably may compare 
historic
> > fortunes of Slavic nations – Orthodox and Catholic respectively –
 to
> > figure out hypothetical chances for Goths - staying Arian or
> > converted to Catholicism - to survive and preserve their 
ethnicity.

Thanks for your kind reply. I think I must disavow my statement 
above of a parallel between the Goths and the later Slavs. Both the 
Catholic and the Orthodox Slavic nations developed original 
cultures, they kept their languages and ethnic identities, whereas 
both Arian Ostrogoths and converted Catholic Visigoths must have 
undergone a significant, if not a complete, Romanization before they 
fell victims of a foreign conquest. The main factors were probably 
their relatively small number, the attraction of the Roman high 
culture etc, which were pointed out on this list before.

It would be interesting to speculate upon an alternative scenario... 
What if the Ostrogoths would have succeeded beating off the 
Byzantines and establishing a Gotho-Italian state with the Arian 
church as an official confession ("creed of the kings"), preserving 
the Theodoric-style climate of tolerance towards the Catholic 
majority and other groups? The Arian doctrine attracting more and 
more non-Gothic neophytes, would it spread the Gothic language 
liturgy also upon them? In which case Gothic wouldn't have died so 
soon. Maybe it wouldn't have died at all?

Ualarauans




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