[gothic-l] Re: Visigoths

[dirk at SMRA.CO.UK]

--- In gothic-l at y..., ingemar.nordgren at e... wrote:
> --- In gothic-l at y..., dirk at s... wrote:
>
>
> > On the other hand, the conversion to Catholicism allowed for a
> greater
> > degree of integration with the 'native' population a fact that has
> > often been stress as reason for the relative success of the
Frankish
> > kingdom.
>
> Hello Dirk,
> Yes indeed, and that is exactly what happened in the Visigotic realm
-
> the different groups melted but the preconditions were dissimilar.
> What was good in France was bad in Spain. The Goths cesed to be
Goths
> and so they also ceased to feel loyalty with the king but just with
> themselves. They were a small group of Germanic speaking nobles and
> warriors ruling a majority of Roman and Jewish population. When they
> ceased to stick together  their ethnicity and the central state
> control dissapeared gradually. At first they could have opportunity
to
> grab riches from the Jews and try to make business for themselves
but
> in lack of good trade contacts they did not succeed in the long run.
> Maybe the riches annihilated were used also for imports making a
short
> flourishing economy and then collaps. Compare Spain before the Dutch
> and British took over trade.The pope also may have contributed with
> kind of bribes making it more appealing for the kings to follow the
> dictate of Rome in spite of an increasing discontent among the
> commoners. The copper coinage may be local, isolated communities
inner
> trade after the collapse of distant trade,  earlier cared for by the
> Jews.Also note that free slave labour by the Jews might have in
short
> sight led to increased revenue of agriculture.
>
> Greetings
> Ingemar




Hello Ingemar,

you seem to hold the view that conversion from Arianism to Catholicism
was a 'bad' move  for the Visigothic state in Spain. Your argument
implies that if the Visigoths had maintained Arianism and thus avoided
integration into the majority Catholic population they would have
maintained a higher degreee of ethnic Germanic cohesion and loyalty to
the king, which in turn would have strengthen state power.


That is an interesting view, but (without knowing too much about it) I
would tend to see this differently. I thought that the change-over to
Catholicism came in fact too late for the Visigoths. If they had
adopted the religion of the majority of the population and allowed for
a higher degree of social integration they could have mobilised this
majority population to rally around the king and the ruling Visigothic
elites. Instead, they continued to alienate virtually all sections of
society, including the Roman Cathothic majority population to some
extent but the Jews in particular. The latter may not have been
essential for the survival of Visigothic power, but Visigothic policy
towards this group seems to exemplify their overall attitude towards
different ethnic and religious groups.

In my view, the adoption of Catholicism may have succeeded in buying
the Visigothic state some time, by for example removing the basis for
religiously motivated attacks by the Frankish kingdom. Thus, I believe
that adopting Catholicism at the end of the 6th century (with some
retractions under Witteric in the early 7th century) was politically
the right move, but it came far too late and was not accompanied by a
more general change of attitude.

Also, I cannot see why the conditions in the Frankish kingdom were so
different from that in the Visigothic realm that the same fundamental
policy should have produced opposite results. I believe that the
Visigothic state was weakened by a high degree of segregation among
different ethinic and religious groups. On top of this came a
continuous infighting amongs Visigothic nobles, which I don't think
would have been prevented by the maintaining of Arianism. So when the
Muslim armies attacked in the early 8th century they were only met by
different smaller Visigothic military detachments at different points
and may actually have been very welcomed as saviours from Visigothic
oppression by other parts of the population (most notably the Jews who
knew that their brethren in North Africa were generally well-treated
by the Muslims).

cheers

Dirk





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