St. Walburga's Abbey

In the 1930s, two Benedictine abbeys were formed from the original in Eichstätt, Bavaria. One was in Thanet, where the nuns of Eichstätt bought and renovated the original 7th century complex founded by Domne Eafe. The other was in Colorado, where three nuns from Eichstätt purchased land considered by the monks that owned it to be un-farmable. With help from m ore nuns, they turned the land into a working farm; 60 years later they relocated (see illustration) to Virginia Dale, Colorado, where they remain a thriving community.

In both cases, the reason from branching out from Eichstätt was to flee from spreading Nazism.

This was not the first time nuns from the Eichstätt abbey took on a mission to America, however. A missionary monk from Bavaria challenged the nuns of St. Walburga's in 1851 to go to America to provide proper religious instruction to German immigrants. Three nuns took a steamer a year later, arriving in New York during the July 4th celebrations. They settled in St. Marys, PA. Not longer after, joined by reinforcements from Eichstätt, they created communities in the northwest territory that would soon become the state of Minnesota.

The origin of these nuns was the Abbey of St. Walburga, founded in 1055 to properly house the relics of Walburga (c.710-779). Her tomb in her last home of the abbey of Heidenheim had originally fallen to neglect. During renovations by Bishop Otkar of Eichstätt, she appeared to him in a dream and asked him why her remains were being “trampled upon by the dirty feet of builders.” He had her remains transferred to a new building which became the current Abbey of St. Walburga, populated by Benedictine nuns. This is where her bones started to exude miraculous Oil of Saints.

"Walburga" sounds like "Walpurgis"; is there a connection? Let's find out tomorrow.

Domne Eafe, Mother & Saint

The mother of Saint Mildred was Domne Eafe—also Domneva, or Lady Eva—a great-granddaughter of King Æthelbert of Kent. She married King Merewalh of Mercia. They had at least three children, three daughters who all became abbesses and saints. There was supposedly a son who died early (called Merlin in some later legends).

Domneva had two brothers— Æthelbert and Æthelred who were being raised by King Eorcenbert of Kent, —a grandson of Æthelbert through Eadbald. When he died, Eorcenbert's son Ecgbert killed Æthelbert and Æthelred. Feeling guilty, Ecgbert gave Domneva land in Thanet as wergild to build an abbey.

A later legend goes into detail about the land granted by King Ecgbert: she was to be given as much land as her pet deer could run around in a single lap. The result was 80 sulungs of land. A sulung was a local Kentish unit of measurement, the amount that could be ploughed by four ox-pairs. Put another way, a sulung was two hides, and a hide was the equivalent of 120 acres, the amount a household needed to thrive. To the Anglo-Saxons, a hide was also the unit on which public obligations (taxes, supporting the lord in times of war, etc.) were based.

So she got an enormous space to use. To be fair, it is unlikely that the legend is true and she got that much (19,200 acres), but there was enough land to give her standing in the wider community as well as the status that being an abbess offers. Her name appears in many charters of the time as a witness, as well as the beneficiary of grants.

Domneva ran the abbey along Benedictine rules. She was succeeded by her daughter, St. Mildred. Mildred was followed as abbess about 733 by Eadburga, a friend and student of Mildred who also became a saint. You can see Domneva in the illustration, flanked by her two successors. By Eadburga's time the abbey had 70 nuns. She secured some royal charters to ensure its growth and continuation, and built a new church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, which housed the relics of St. Mildred.

Although the abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII and had various uses over the years, it was bought in 1937 by Benedictine nuns from St.Walburga's Abbey in Eichstätt in Bavaria. Why did Benedictine nuns in Bavaria want to revive an abbey in England? This was not just a 20th century story, nor just a European story. I'll explain that tomorrow.

Saint Mildred

Well, that is what a modern world would call her. To the Anglo-Saxons, she was Mildrith (also Mildthryth or Mildryth). Her father was a king: King Merewalh of Magonsaete (a sub-kingdom of Mercia, in modern Hereford; his father might have been Penda). A great-great-granddaughter of Æthelbert (through his and Bertha's son, Eadbald), she was born about 660 and lived about 70 years.

A hagiography in the 11th century says that she was educated at the Abbey at Chelles, suggesting that she was linked to the Merovingian royal line, probably through her mother, Domne Eafe. While there, a young nobleman asked for her hand in marriage, but she replied that she was there to learn, not be married. The abbess tried to persuade her by every possible means to be married, but Mildred refused. The frustrated abbess threw her into a hot oven, but after three hours Mildred was unscathed.

The abbess then beat her and tore out a hank of her hair. Mildred wrote to her mother, enclosing the hair that had been torn out, and her mother immediately sent ships to rescue her. Mildred escaped the abbess on her own and found passage back to England, leaving her footprint embedded in a stone at the place where she first disembarked from the ship. She then joined her mother at Minster-in-Thanet  (which her mother had established). Mildred became abbess in 694.

She was popular on the continent: there are several shrines/mentions of her in the Pas-de-Calais area of northern France. She died in Minster-in-Thanet some time after 732 after a lingering illness and was buried at the Abbey's Church of St. Mary.

Mildred's remains were moved to a new abbey church of Saints Peter and Paul, built by her successor as abbess, Edburga, by 748. She was a very popular saint and her relics drew attention from worshippers and pilgrims.

When the Danes invaded England they captured Minster-in-Thanet in 1011. The abbey was abandoned and the church downgraded to a parish church. Mildred's relics were transferred to Canterbury and the Church of St. Augustine.

Her sisters (Milburga of Much Wenlock and Mildgyth) were also saints, but it was her mother who was really interesting. We'll look into her next time. 

St. Augustine's Abbey

When Augustine came to England in 597 to begin the process of turning its inhabitants to Christianity, one of his first acts was to found (in 598) the Monastery of Saints Peter and Paul.

The land and building (formerly a temple) was given to Augustine by King Æthelbert, whose wife (Queen Bertha) was Christian. The king gave it so that Augustine and his followers had a place to live, and gave gifts to the endeavor. They also intended it to be a special place where important people (kings, abbots, bishops) would be buried. Initially it would have been built of wood, like most Saxon buildings. A stone building, such as Augustine was accustomed to in Rome, took longer, and the stone church (whose remains can be seen in the illustration) was dedicated by Æthelbert about 613.

It was the only important religious house in Kent for two centuries following its founding, and was a missionary school where classical learning was taught. It became known over time for an extensive library of both religious and secular texts, many of them produced in its own scriptorium.

In the mid-10th century, Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury (959 - 988), reorganized the abbey along strict Benedictine rules and renamed it for St. Augustine. Another rebuilding plan was put in place after the Norman Conquest, when William had churches enlarged as imposing Romanesque structures. Unfortunately, a fire in 1168 destroyed a lot of the abbey's records, but another rebuilding campaign restored it.

After that, the complex expanded to include a great hall, a lady chapel, a brewhouse and bakehouse, land for a vineyard, and more. It succumbed to the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, who appropriated all their land and assets.

The abbey was treated better by the invading Danes: King Cnut in 1027 spared the place and granted it the possessions of the town Minster-in-Thanet, including the body of Saint Mildred. Mildred's body had miraculous powers and brought even more attention to the abbey. She was a great-great-granddaughter of Æthelbert, and I'll tell you more tomorrow.

The Liudhard Medallion

Bishop Liudhard, who followed Bertha to Kent when she married King Æthelbert, is treated like a footnote in the story of Christianizing England, but his footnote has another footnote.

In the public museum in Liverpool, England, is an exhibit of several gold medallions. They were found c.1844 in a grave at St. Martin's Church in Canterbury, the oldest Christian Saxon church in England still in use. One of these commemorates Bishop Liudhard; it was probably minted after his death but before the death of his patroness, Queen Bertha, in 601.

One side (shown here) shows a figure and the Latin inscription for Liudhard, "LEUDARDUS"; also included are the letters "EPS" denoting "EPiscopuS" (bishop). The obverse side shows a patriarchal cross: a cross with a smaller horizontal bar above the main crossbar. It is the earliest datable coin that depicts a patriarchal cross, especially one that has circles hanging from its arms.

The assumption, especially because each coin or medallion has a loop for hanging it as jewelry, is that they were part of a necklace from the grave of a woman who converted to Christianity. The other coins make for an interesting collection:

...an Italian tremissis of Justin II, a Germanic tremissis of unsure origin, a Merovingian solidus struck by Leudulf at Ivegio vico and two tremisses from southern France, the first from Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, the second from Agen. [link]

(A tremissis is a gold coin that is worth one-third of a solidus, hence the name which means "a third of a unit.")

The existence of the Liudhard medal requires us to see his presence in England as far more significant than the history books would typically suggest. His two-decade sojourn at the court of Æthelbert and Bertha must have made serious progress in spreading Christianity for him to have had a medallion made with his name.

After Liudhard's death, his remains were transferred from the churchyard of St. Martin's to the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. That church was later converted to St. Augustine's Abbey. It is now a school, but let's take a look at its life as an abbey tomorrow.

Bishop Liudhard

Saint Augustine gets a lot of credit for the Gregorian Mission to the court of King Æthelbert of Kent and the mass conversions to Christianity that followed. As fertile as his efforts were, the ground had been prepared by someone else. Twenty years earlier, the Frankish princess Bertha had become Æthelbert's queen, and brought to England the Catholic Bishop Liudhard.

Originally from Senlis on the continent, he created a new parish by restoring a Roman church east of Canterbury. He dedicated it to St. Martin of Tours, making it the first Christian Saxon church in England. (The illustration is a view of the church as it exists today.)

Bede, who is the chief source of the story of the Gregorian Mission, does not say much about Liudhard at all, and we think he died not long after Augustine's arrival in 597. Liudhard would have been preaching in Kent for 20 years at that point, so might have been advanced in years. Augustine's successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, Laurence of Canterbury, had Liudhard's remains removed from St. Martin's Church and buried at the Abbey Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, which had been founded by Augustine (and was later named for him).

Thought of locally as St. Liudhard, he is given credit for a miracle in the 11th century. An artist, Abbot Spearhafoc, was given a ring by Edith of Wessex, queen of King Edward the Confessor. He lost it, and it was only found again after Spearhafoc prayed to St. Liudhard. Spearhafoc created statues for Liudhard's tomb. Liudhard was also credited for bringing rain when needed.

In the 19th century, a gold medallion was found in a grave in Canterbury with Liudhard's name on it.That sounds simple and straightforward, but it's pretty interesting. I'll explain more next time.

Saint Bertha

Augustine's mission to Christianize King Æthelbert of Kent in 597 was clearly successful, but we cannot discount the fact that he had help. He did not go alone, of course. Also, he had a powerful advocate when he arrived in Kent: Æthelbert's wife, Queen Bertha.

Bertha was a Frankish princess, the daughter of Charibert I of Paris and Ingoberga, and a granddaughter of Clovis I and Clotilde (who became a saint). Part of the marriage arrangement allowed her to bring a bishop with her, Liudhard. Bertha and Liudhard re-established a church from Roman times just outside of Canterbury dedicated to St. Martin of Tours.

By the time of Augustine's arrival, she and Æthelbert had been married about 20 years, and Christianity was not a new concept for the citizens of Kent. A biography of Bertha (unusual for women to have biographies in that era, but her royal status and connection to the Mission made for an exception) claims that, under her influence, Æthelbert actually requested Pope Gregory to send missionaries. No letters of the time support this, but the anecdote told here that precipitated the mission is considered by many to be a spurious argument of the mission created by Bede.

Bertha's ancestry might also have aided the mission in other ways: Frankish royals gave their support to the mission by adding interpreters and priests to Augustine's group as they traveled. The Franks likely also wanted Britain across the Channel (especially Kent, the closest and most powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom), to be friendlier to the continent. (On the other hand, Gregory might have been hoping for a distant land to be more allied with the papacy than with the Franks.)

Whatever the case, Gregory wrote to Bertha in 601, complimenting her on her faith and her knowledge. The mission surely had a smoother reception than it might have if Bertha and Liudhard had not created an atmosphere amenable to Christianity for years.

Bertha had two children. Eadbald was King of Kent from 616 until 640. Æthelburh was the second wife of King Edwin, who was converted by St. Cuthbert. The date of Bertha's death is not known. She is commemorated in many places in Kent.

Another whose Christian influence on Kent should be noted is the bishop she brought with her, Liudhard. Let's take a look at this neglected man next.

Augustine's Mission and Bertha

Augustine (early 6th century - c.26 May 604) was a prior of the Abbey of St. Andrew in Rome when he was chosen by Pope Gregory to travel to Britain to bring Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons.

His chief goal was to convert King Æthelbert of Kent. The illustration shows Kent to be a fairly small area, but Æthelbert was powerful as a bretwalda and was respected and listened to by neighboring kingdoms. He was also married to a Frankish princess, Bertha. This link to the continental kingdom not only helped his influence, it made him open to Christianity, since Bertha was a practicing Christian.

Æthelbert allowed the missionaries to preach and use a church dedicated to St. Martin as a base. Æthelbert did convert, and was probably baptized at Canterbury. We don't know when he converted, but letters dated 601 from Gregory refer to him as "my son" and mention his conversion.

With the king's conversion, a community-wide conversion became possible. Augustine mentions making lots of conversions within a year of his arrival. In 598 Augustine wrote to the patriarch of Alexandria claiming he had baptized more than 10,000.

With many conversions progressing, Augustine sent one of his companions, Laurence, back to Rome with questions for Gregory about organizing the church in Britain: who could marry whom, how to deal with church robbers, consecration of bishops, relations between the churches of Britain and Gaul, etc. Messengers from Rome eventually brought a pallium from Gregory to Augustine, making him a bishop.

One bit of advice was to shift feast days of the locals to days celebration Christian martyrs, and to turn religious sites to shrines for saints.

Obviously the Gregorian Mission worked, and Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury for his efforts. There is someone else who should get more credit for Britain's conversion, however, and that is Bertha. I'll tell you more about her next time.

Not Angles, but Angels and Other Wordplay

One of the anecdotes about Pope Gregory "the Great" that is most often repeated is how it came about that he sent missionaries to England.

Supposedly, about 597, he was walking through Rome and came upon a slave market where some fair-skinned and blonde-haired children were being sold. He asked what they were and was told "Angli"; that is, they were Angles. His reply was Non Anglo, sed Angeli, meaning "Not Angles but Angels." Asking where they came from he was told "Angle-lond." He decided this "Angel-Land" needed to know all about Christianity, so he sent Augustine and a contingent of missionaries to England.

Furthermore, when told that their province was Deira and their king was Aella, he replied that they would be rescued de ira ("from wrath") and that Alleluia should be sung in that land.

This story is told by Bede in 732—the illustration above of the incident is from Westminster Cathedral—and whether it actually happened is up for debate. In the illustration you can see the monk Augustine standing to the right with a staff.

There is at least one other anecdote about Gregory involving wordplay. It recounts that Gregory wanted to go to England himself to spread Christianity. At a break in his journey, while reading his Bible, a locust startled him by landing on the edge of the book. He exclaimed locusta! and then thought it was a sign to loco sta, to "stay in your place/locus."  As it happened, someone from the papal palace arrived an hour later to tell him he was needed back in Rome.

The Gregorian Mission to England by Augustine and company transformed the island. After Gregory's death he was referred to in Britain as "our Gregory," and the first biography of him was written at the monastery in Whitby. It was in England at the Synod of Whitby that customs such as the calculation of the date of Easter were made firm, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was one of the most powerful Christian offices after the pope. I'll summarize Augustine's spread across England tomorrow.

Gregory the Great

Saint Gregory the Great (c.540 - 12 March 604) started as Pope Gregory I in 590. Earlier than that he started as a prefect of Rome, though he established a monastery on the family estate (on a major road linking the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus; his father was a Roman senator), and lived as a monk for awhile before becoming a papal ambassador. He was well-educated and, thanks to his family connections we assume, probably well-versed in Imperial law.

Under his predecessor, Pelagius II, Rome and the country were in dire straits due to incursions from the Lombards that had ravaged the country. Rome was filled with poor refugees, and the Lombards were "at the gates" and overrunning the peninsula. Pelagius sent emissaries (including Gregory) to Constantinople (the seat of the Empire) to send help.

Constantinople was not helping, and when Gregory became pope in 590, he took matters into his own hands. Rome was overcrowded with people who were starving and destitute. Gregory turned out to be a very effective administrator, possibly from the influence of his father's political knowledge. He started organizing ways to help the citizens.

Charitable relief was one of his greatest triumphs, using profits from donations to churches to help the poorest among the population. He demanded that each parish seek out those in need and keep track of them. Gregory encouraged his rich acquaintances to expiate their sins by making donations to aid the poor. If his staff (the papacy already had an accounting department) and followers would not cooperate, he replaced them. In one of his letters, he reprimands a subordinate:

I asked you most of all to take care of the poor. And if you knew of people in poverty, you should have pointed them out ... I desire that you give the woman, Pateria, forty solidi for the children's shoes and forty bushels of grain."

Famine was a large problem. The church owned over 1300 square miles of farmland which produced goods that were sold. Gregory set quotas for production, urged the people tending the land to do more, and had the results shipped to Rome to be distributed to the needy. The starving crowds in Rome started to receive—free of charge—necessities such as cheese, fish, grain, meat, oil, and wine.

Gregory was responsible for many other reforms, both political and religious. He made some changes to the order of the Mass which still pertain today, and maybe I will get to those details some day. In yesterday's post, however, I teased that he set in motion something that would make a profound change to the whole of English history. Tomorrow I'll tell you what he did outside of Rome and Italy. Stay tuned.

Basilica of San Zeno

Theodoric as King of Italy did not just want to be king of the land; rather, he wanted to be seen as king or custodian of or successor to the Roman Empire. He therefore restored and renovated many public buildings as well as building new ones.

One of these new buildings was a small church built for St. Zeno. Zeno of Verona (c.300 - 371) was an early saint with a couple of backstories. One says that he came from Mauretania, an area in Africa known for Berbers, where he tutored children in their schoolwork and taught them about Christianity. Another theory was that he was a follower of Athanasius, an opponent of Arianism, who visited Verona in 340. The style of the nearly 100 sermons we have from Zeno support an African origin. One tradition says he was the eighth bishop of Verona, and Gregory the Great calls him a martyr.

Zeno supposedly—among his other good works—converted man from Arianism to Roman Christianity. Despite this, the Arian Christian Theodoric thought it wise to build a church for Zeno. The place was expanded into a basilica under King Pepin of Italy (Charlemagne's son) in the 9th century. In the 10th century, Zeno's body was moved to a different church after the building was damaged by Magyars, but it was returned eventually to its original crypt. The church was rebuilt with the patronage of Holy Roman Emperor Otto I. The current expanded building was completed in 1398.

You can learn more about the church and see its interior here. The church's sculptures show scenes from Theodoric's life. One scene is Theodoric riding into Hell (see it in the previous post), but also there are depictions of Theodoric's fight with Odoacer. Not depicted, however, is a famous story having nothing to do with Theodoric but known to all. The crypt below the church, where St. Zeno's bones lie buried, is supposed to be the crypt where two young lovers killed themselves because their families denied them their union. These two families of Verona were the Montecchi and Cappelletti, although you may know them as the Montagues and Capulets.

Regarding Gregory the Great: he has been mentioned only a few times in this blog, but he made a decision once that affected the whole of English History (and probably Western Civilization) forevermore. I'll explain next time.

Theodoric Lives On!

Long after the death of Theodoric in 526, legends rose of the Germanic warrior who led his people to conquer various armies. (Theodoric even shows up on the Rök Stone.) As time passed, however, he wasn't called Theodoric of Ravenna: he was called Dietrich von Bern (of Verona). The name "Dietrich" means "Ruler of the People," which is the same definition as "Theodoric." The legends come from the late Holy Roman Empire and are largely written in Middle High German.

As is typical with the oral tradition of tale-telling, the details got muddled. Theodoric was born shortly after Attila the Hun died and a century after the Gothic King Ermanaric; he later invaded Italy and became its "king" by defeating Odoacer (the previous invader), with his capital in Ravenna. Dietrich, on the other hand, was the king of Italy already, ruling from Verona, but was forced into exile by his evil uncle, Ermenrich, and winds up at the court of Etzel (Attila) and the Huns. The switch from Ravenna to Verona suggests that the legends arose from the Lombards, whose capital was Verona (Ravenna was still part of the Byzantine culture).

Dietrich also differed from Theodoric in that he sometimes was depicted as breathing fire. This suggests a hint of the demonic. There may be an origin of this in some of the ideas about Theodoric. A 12th-century German chronicler, Otto of Freising, wrote that Theodoric rode to Hell (while alive) on an "infernal" horse. (See the illustration, thought to represent that ride of Theodoric, who is here labeled regem stultum, "stupid king," on the church portal of San Zeno Maggiore in Verona.) Some traditions called Theodoric a son of the devil. Because Theodoric was a practicing Arian, the prevailing Roman Christianity had reasons to "demonize" him.

An early (c.820) German heroic lay, Hildebrandslied, includes the story of the main character's flight alongside Dietrich to escape Odoacer, one of the few people that handed Theodoric defeats (until Theodoric negotiated a treaty and then slew Odoacer during the celebratory feast). Later legends become less and less historical, with Theodoric/Dietrich slaying a dragon, or fighting dwarves and giants.

The Church of San Zeno Maggiore, whence comes the above illustration, has a few more interesting historical tidbits I'd like to share. At first I thought it might be linked to Zeno, the Byzantine Emperor who put Theodoric in charge of the military and set him against Odoacer, but it turns out that it's a lot more interesting than that. See you tomorrow.

Theodoric's Mausoleum

Once Theodoric was King of Italy and essentially in charge of the Western Roman Empire, he did what he could to manage Rome as it would have been managed at the height of the Roman Emperors. He embarked on an extensive building/re-building project, restoring many buildings and refurbishing aqueducts, the Senate's Curia, and other valuable infrastructure.

To manage government services, he hired Boethius, a Roman aristocrat, Christian, and "renaissance man." Things were running smoothly enough that the Eastern Emperors during Theodoric's time let him be. After all, he was "letting Romans be Romans" with their own laws, while his Goths lived under their own customs and laws. Tolerance was practiced: when a synagogue in Ravenna was destroyed by a mob in 519, he ordered the city to rebuild it.

A new Eastern Emperor, Justin I, was less open to allowing the Western Empire to function independently. In 522, a problem with the Senate looked like a conspiracy against Theodoric, so he had his chief administrator, Boethius, and Boethius' father, Symmachus, arrested in 523. While in prison, Boethius wrote his Consolation of Philosophy. He was executed in 524.

Two years later, Theodoric died of dysentery while planning to attack the Vandals after their King Hilderic killed Theodoric's sister, Amalafrida (well, she was trying to change succession rules after her husband, the Vandal King Thrasamund, died). With no male heir, Theodoric's grandson Athalaric succeeded him; Theodoric's daughter and Athalaric's mother was regent.

Theodoric's Mausoleum (pictured above) was part of his Roman rebuilding campaign. In it, his sarcophagus consists of a porphyry tub from a Roman bath situated in the center of a second story. Made of very large stone blocks from a quarry 249 miles away, it has a roof made from a single piece of stone 33 feet in diameter. The roof alone weighs 230 tonnes (a metric tonne is 1000 kilograms or 2205 pounds). Its Gothic style is unlike Roman or Byzantine. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is the only example of a 6th century royal tomb.

Theodoric's long reign, success in leading his people, and his management of the Western Roman Empire made him an important Germanic figure; so much so, that he lived on later as a German hero, Dietrich von Bern. Let's look at those legends tomorrow.

Theodoric's Successes

Odoacer was a Germanic soldier who overthrew the Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustus (who was only a pre-teen) and declared himself King of Italy. The Eastern Roman Emperor, Zeno, asked Theodoric of the Ostrogoths to deal with the Odoacer situation. The two leaders battled for a couple years before finally negotiating a treaty to share the rule of the Western Empire and ignore Zeno's demands.

Theodoric went to Ravenna, where a feast was planned for 15 March 493 to celebrate their treaty. Theodoric made a toast to honor his co-ruler, drew his sword, and sliced Odoacer from collarbone to thigh. His men killed Odoacer's retainers, and Theodoric proclaimed himself King of Italy.

He was now King of the Ostrogoths (since 471), and King of Italy, so he had room in which his people could settle. He realized the danger of spreading some tens of thousands over too wide an area, rendering them less able to defend themselves and more difficult to gather together if he needed an army. He concentrated the Ostrogoths in Ravenna (his capital), Pavia, and Picenum. Theodoric ruled Italy from 493 until his death in 526.

Of all the "barbarian" groups that overtook Rome, Theodoric and the Ostrogoths were the ones who most wanted to maintain Roman culture. Theodoric issued his own coins (see illustration), he made laws that ensured fairness for Goths and Romans, and he mandated religious tolerance. Romans were Trinitarian Christians (literally "Roman" Catholics), while Theodoric and the Goths were Arians. He also promoted rebuilding of Roman cities, especially in Ravenna, where he rebuilt walls, aqueducts, churches, baths, and other structures and amenities.

One of his enduring buildings is his mausoleum, one of those ancient edifices that causes modern architects to ask "How did they do that?" I'll talk more about Theodoric's end tomorrow.

Theodoric's Troubles

After Theodoric (454 - 526) was made commander of the Eastern Roman Empire's forces by Emperor Zeno, you might have thought that his future was assured. Zeno, however, was annoyed when Theodoric dealt with a famine by asking—not conquering, asking—Zeno for permission to expand into new land where they might produce more food. Zeno's retaliation was to offer command of the forces to Theodoric "The Squinter" Strabo, the person whose defeat by our Theodoric earned him the command in the first place!

Theodoric was not going to suffer this insult quietly or let his people starve, so he invaded communities in the Rhodope Mountains in southeastern Europe (Bulgaria), slaughtering peasants and taking supplies. Their savagery drew an attempt from Zeno to make a truce, but Theodoric was not satisfied. He sent an emissary to Zeno, who was in Epidaurum at the time.* Meanwhile, Zeno sent soldiers to attack Theodoric's people, stealing (supposedly) 2000 wagons of supplies and capturing 5000 Ostrogoths.

Zeno made many bad political decisions—including losing the Western Roman Empire—and in 483 he offered Theodoric the position of absolute top military commander and made him consul in 484. Consuls were the chief magistrates of the Roman Republic. This position did not mean hostilities ended between Theodoric and Zeno. Theodoric continued to plunder Eastern Empire territories, approaching Constantinople itself.

Zeno engaged the Bulgars to attack Theodoric; the Bulgars were defeated. Theodoric besieged Constantinople, hoping to pressure Zeno into giving him land for the Ostrogoths. Zeno was having trouble with Odoacer, the Germanic ruler who was king of Italy, and offered Theodoric to defeat Odoacer and take Italy. Theodoric initially lost against Odoacer in 490; the two rulers spent the next few years fighting across Italy, finally negotiating a co-ruler treaty to stop the hostilities.

One of the two never intended to honor the treaty. I'll tell you which one next time.

*Epidaurum would be devastated two centuries later by Avar and Slavic invaders; citizens would flee north several miles and found a new city, Ragusa.