[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
The links between Visigothic Iberia, Byzantium, and Rome are close and tight, no matter the angle from which you look at them. This is an inevitable consequence of historical circumstances, since the Visigothic kingdom coexisted with the cultural, economic, and military force that was the (coeval) eastern Roman Empire, and the interactions between east and west followed the patterns that the (preceding and unified) Roman Empire had put in place in previous centuries. Within the field of Visigothic studies, the importance and influence of Byzantium has been perceived through the lens of imitatio or aemulatio imperii, with Constantinople as a model to copy or imitate in every aspect involving the monarchy, from court ceremonial to coin design and even urban planning.
The very concept of imitatio imperii, together with its associated baggage and preconceptions, is the subject of this book, which is the long-awaited publication of a workshop organised at Princeton in 2019. The volume offers thirteen thought-provoking chapters by leading scholars in the field that cover the period from the fifth century and the Kingdom of Toulouse to the eighth century and the aftermath of the Umayyad conquest.
The editors open with an introduction in which they discuss the concept of “imitation” beyond acculturation, underlining the importance of local agency, reception, and perception of this process in the western post-Roman milieu. The editors also introduce a discussion on the changing concept of “Romanness” (and “Gothicness”) before discussing the structure of the book. Paired with this introduction is Martin’s exceptional bibliographical essay, which analyses the evolution of Byzantinism within Visigothic studies in Iberia and beyond, from the beginnings of the discipline in the nineteenth century to the post-Franco period. In this first chapter, we see how Spanish “exceptionalism” and the historiographical concept of “Byzantium” went hand in hand with different historical trends, and how this exceptional marriage has only recently been questioned and broken up.
The next five chapters form a tight block focused on the Visigothic monarchy and the way it projected an image that was politically Roman. Wood’s chapter gives us a brilliant assessment of the contextual dialectics of royal representation as seen in fifth-century hagiographies and the importance of traditional aristocratic convivia (banquets) as a means of engaging in royal politics beyond court ceremonial and other regalia. Eisenberg looks at the Visigothic process of state formation through the lens of local coinage in the fifth century. This process is presented as a series of legal and currency experiments intended to cement a new non-Roman administration in Gaul within a fifth-century Roman system of reference. Vallejo’s chapter compares Roman and Visigothic uses of exile and the crimes that could prompt such punishment, and he concludes that, despite its form, Visigothic exile responded to an independent legal tradition that broke with its Roman precedents. Hilsdale takes the Guarrazar Treasure, the collection of votive hanging crowns that visually represents the Visigothic monarchy, and contextually reassesses the design and composition of the crowns, concluding that despite our outsiders’ understanding of these items as Visigothic objects, the original emic understanding of the crowns was simply Roman in a political sense. Chapter 6, by Fernández, closes this section with a study of the notion of “capitalhood” in the Visigothic monarchy, in which he proposes that Toledo became the indisputable capital in the mid-seventh century only as a result of the lobbying of the church in a city with thoughts above its station. This novel interpretation will undoubtedly ruffle a few feathers amongst some Spanish archaeologists.
The second half of the book is less coherent when compared to the previous cluster of chapters, and it moves further away from a direct interaction between Iberia and ideas of “Byzantium.”
Lester, for example, underlines the untapped importance of rites and liturgy to understand the continuing relevance of the Roman past in Visigothic Iberia via the church and the various meanings of “Roman” in Christian, post-imperial contexts. Buchberger’s excellent chapter focuses on Isidore’s ethnic terminology, demonstrating that the bishop of Seville balanced in his writings Classical Roman descriptive language with new and different, seventh-century understandings of those old Latin terms to justify the Gothic rule over Iberia.
The next three chapters look at religious narratives from different perspectives although, interesting as they are, they are only tangential to the issue of Visigothic Iberia and the eastern Roman Empire. Addison investigates martyr cults and their passiones as ways of keeping the Roman past alive through the re-imagination of late Roman townscapes and the validation of place-based civic identities. Castellanos explains how, in seventh-century hagiographies, “Rome” can be experienced and perceived in different ways: from ideas about townscapes to notions of parentage. However, the key idea is that by this period Romanness was simply a cultural background rather than a central, defining element. Barret dissects the Lives of the Fathers of Mérida (VSPE) to uncover a text written by two hands that represent two opposed parties in the civic and political life of sixth- and seventh-century Emerita Augusta.
In the next, penultimate chapter, Wood analyses the well-established late antique connections between the Greek east and the Mérida-Mértola axis, looking at the material record (mostly pottery assemblages) and written evidence (textual and epigraphic alike). The volume concludes with Christys’ short chapter , in which the author points at lead seals with Arabic inscriptions and the first series of dinars minted in al-Andalus as the last elements of Byzantine influence in Iberia.
Individually, all the chapters are strong essays with convincing arguments and are largely up-to-date in their bibliographies. Combined, they form an interesting volume that will be a reference for all future contributions in Visigothic studies. Naturally, there are certain elements in the volume that can raise some eyebrows and, as an archaeologist, I feel that the overly text-based approach is the most important. The usual archaeological topics that arise in the study of Byzantine influence on the Visigoths, like marble carvings, metalworking, military architecture, church design or urbanism, are hardly mentioned, or else covered only tangentially. Key sites such as València la Vella, El Tolmo de Minateda, Elche, or Ceuta are absent from the index and the discussions. The lack of an archaeological dimension is perhaps most shocking in Fernández’s chapter, which deals directly with Toledo as a capital city. These absences, however, can be excused considering the thoroughness with which the other topics are covered and the nature of the original workshop. Perhaps a second book, more focused on the material record, would be a good future companion to this volume.
Authors and Titles
- Damián Fernández, Molly Lester, and Jamie Wood. “Introduction”
- Céline Martin. “Visigothic Spain and Byzantium. The story of a special (historiographical) relationship”
- Ian Wood, “The development of the Visigothic court in the hagiography of the fifth and sixth centuries”
- Merle Eisenberg, “Experiments in Visigothic rulership. Minting and monetary reforms under Alaric II”
- Margarita Vallejo Girvés, “A comparison of roman and Visigothic approaches to exile”
- Cecily Hilsdale, “The Roman jewel in the Visigothic crown. A reassessment of the royal votive crowns of the Guarrazar treasure”
- Damián Fernández, “Capitalhood in the Visigothic kingdom”
- Molly Lester, “Making rite choices. Roman and eastern liturgies in early Medieval Iberia”
- Erica Buchberger, “Ethnicity and imitatio in Isidore of Seville”
- David Addison, “Re-imagining Roman persecution in Visigothic passions”
- Santiago Castellanos, “Romanness in Visigothic hagiography”
- Graham Barrett, “Empire and the politics of faction. Mérida and Toledo revisited”
- Jamie Wood, “The agents and mechanics of connectivity. The Mediterranean World and the cities of the Guadiana Valley in the sixth century”
- Ann Christys, “Staying Roman after 711?”