The Plunder of Rome by Joseph-Noel Silvestre, 1890
Between 350 and 750, western Europe underwent a profound transformation. The Roman empire, which had dominated the ancient world for more than half a millennium, collapsed. The last Western Roman emperor was deposed in 476, while new peoples competed with the Roman population and with each other. Gothic tribes traveled across the empire to found kingdoms in France, Spain, and Italy. They were driven in turn by the nomadic Huns, whose power expanded dramatically from the east and disappeared just as suddenly. The Franks advanced from the banks of the Rhine River to carve out the only early Germanic kingdom which laid the foundation for a modern country. And in Britain, the Anglo-Saxons moved into the vacuum left by the Roman collapse to settle the lands that would become England. Historian David Gwynn traces the entangled stories of these four remarkable peoples, each of which interacted in different ways with the Roman empire and its legacy and together shaped the history of Christian Europe and Western civilization.
Gwynn is an associate professor in ancient and late antique history at Royal Holloway in the University of London and author of several books, including The Goths: Lost Civilizations and Christianity in the Later Roman Empire: A Sourcebook.
March 4 The Goths
In August 410, the imperial city of Rome was sacked by the army led by Alaric the Goth. It was an event that came to symbolize the Western Roman empire’s decline and fall, and across the next three centuries Gothic kings ruled at different times over southern France, Italy, and Spain. Gwynn brings these kingdoms to life through the magnificent art and monuments which have survived and writings of those who lived under Gothic dominion. Far from representing a “dark age” of barbarism, Ostrogothic Italy and Visigothic Spain were thriving centers of culture, cut short by the reconquests of the eastern emperor Justinian and the rising power of Islam.
March 11 The Huns
Few peoples in history are as important and yet as mysterious as the Huns, nomadic horsemen who appear abruptly in Roman sources shortly after 350 when they attacked the Goths north of the Black Sea. The Huns first drove Germanic peoples over the imperial frontiers and then—led by Attila, the greatest Hun of all—attacked the Roman empire directly. Attila’s sudden death led to civil war, however, and Hun power collapsed as swiftly as it had emerged. Citing Roman and Gothic writers who feared the Huns and their nomadic lifestyle, Gwynn explores the debates surrounding Hun origins, culture, and ethnic identity and considers what made the Huns so dangerous but their power so short-lived.
March 18 The Franks
Only one of the Germanic kingdoms which emerged during the collapse of the Western Roman empire laid the foundation from which a modern country would arise. This was the achievement of the Franks. Under the leadership of their king Clovis (ca. 481-511), the Franks converted to catholic Christianity and drove the rival Visigoths from the lands now known as France. Gwynn draws upon the extensive writings and archaeology the Frankish kingdom left behind to examine the unique survival of the Franks from the post-Roman West into medieval Europe, from Clovis and his tempestuous Merovingian descendants to the most famous Frankish ruler: the emperor Charlemagne.
March 25 The Anglo-Saxons
Britain was among the last major regions conquered by the Romans and one of the first to be lost. Yet Roman Britain flourished for 300 years, only to be abandoned as pressures grew elsewhere, and it was against this background that Anglo-Saxon England took shape. The origins and early settlements of the Anglo-Saxons remain difficult to reconstruct, partly revealed through the rich burial site of Sutton Hoo, the legends of Beowulf and Arthur, and the Christian writers Gildas and Bede. Gwynn assembles this evidence to assess the Anglo-Saxons’ achievements and set them alongside the Goths and Franks, each of whom engaged differently with the Roman legacy and left their mark on medieval Christendom.
4 sessions
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