Visigothic identity of Spain

[macmaster at RISEUP.NET]

Actually, I'd put up the spread of Islam and the Arabic language in
counterpoint where a group of post-Roman barbarians who were relatively
small in number and possessed a distinctive faith that had its own writing
system were able to, over the course of several centuries, bring the
language of the ruling minority into general usage and have their faith
adopted by the Christian majority in quite a large area (all of North
Africa, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, etc).  The early Caliphate (634-750) in many
ways resembled the Arian kingdoms of the preceding era in terms of
sub-Roman culture, relative tolerance, and a small warrior elite relying
on the old bureaucracy

I'd guess that, had the Byzantine reconquest failed, one would have seen
the western Mediterranean gradually become Arian in religion and "Gothic"
in language.  I'd guess that there'd be a steady stream of conversion to
Arianism by Catholics wishing for social advantage and, slowly, the old
aristocracy would merge into the new; 'Romans' would give their sons
Gothic names and send them to learn the Gthic language ... slowly, more
and more law would be done in Gothic.  The 'classics' would slowly be
translated into Gothic and so on (as was done with Arabic).  It would
likely take a few centuries but I'd guess eventually a 'Gothic' West would
emerge

Tom MacMaster


Ingemar Nordgren wrote:
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>>
> Hails Ualarauans!
>
> Interesting thought but I am dubious in certain aspects. If they had
> won the wars, yes they would have stayed in power and so had the Arian
> church. The Gothic liturgical language may well have survived at least
> with Germanic neophytes. Concerning non Germanic neophytes I think
> there is a limit depending, as you say, on the small number Germanics
> in contrary to the latin speaking. I think you must have established a
> Latin liturgy as well and, in the long run, Gothic would still have
> been a minor language but it probably would  have survived among the
> Goths themselves to a certain degree and definitely in ecclesiastical
> documents. What concerns legal documents and other more private
> scriptures we might have had at least a feasible archive but probably
> Latin would have been the normal for official documents. The Slavic
> et.c. peoples you referred to earlier had the advantage that they all
> had the same language and hence there was no danger of minorization in
> their case.
>
> Best wishes!
> Iggwimer
>
>
>
>> Hails Iggwimer!
>>
>> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Ingemar Nordgren <ingemar@>
>> 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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