To Be Roman

 As I discussed back when I first started this blog, it is wrong to think of the Roman Empire of antiquity as "falling" to barbarian hordes.  Rather, Germanic peoples moved into the Roman Empire, dropped their Germanic language and much of their Germanic culture like hot potatoes, and established client kingdoms within the Empire.

This happened for example with the Visigoths in Spain and the Franks in what is now France, where Clovis (d. 511) is now considered the first French king.  He wore a toga, had his people's laws written down in Latin, wrote off to the Roman emperor in Constantinople for a special commendation, and converted to the Roman religion of Christianity.  Sure looks Roman to me.

Medieval people certainly considered themselves as continuing Rome's traditions.  Latin continued to be the language of learning and the law.  Most cities in western continental Europe had been provincial capitals under the Empire; most still had their Roman walls.  Roman roads were still the main arteries of communication and transportation.

Western Christianity was headquartered in Rome itself, with the pope.  Medieval people knew that there were Roman emperors in Constantinople, and after 800, when Charlemagne was crowned Roman emperor, by the pope in Rome, there were perfectly good Roman emperors right nearby.

 (That's one of Charlemagne's coins, portraying him as a Roman emperor of antiquity.)

In the tenth century, after Charlemagne's descendants lost much of their pizzazz, and there had been several Italian princes claiming to be Roman emperors, the title settled down with the German kings.  Germany and, to the extent that they could keep control of it, Italy, became known as the Holy Roman Empire in the twelfth century.  It is perhaps ironic that Germany, which was never part of the original Roman empire, became the center of the medieval Roman empire (which segued into the Austro-Hungarian empire, which persisted in one form or another until World War I).

And it wasn't just emperors who wanted to be Romans.  In the late Middle Ages, stories grew up both in Lithuania and in Ireland, asserting that the original populations of their countries had originally come from Rome.  Now neither Lithuania, up on the Baltic, nor Ireland, across the Irish Sea from Great Britain, had ever been under Roman rule in antiquity.  But that didn't stop the myth-makers.

According to their creative re-working of the past, scholars in both of these countries were able to assert that the first settlers of their territories were Romans, refugees from a war or adventurous pioneers or something, but at any rate Romans.  How could anyone think the Roman empire had fallen when Rome's descendants were still there, in the farthest reaches of Europe?

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on the medieval Roman empire, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages. Also available in paperback.