AMORY Names Ethnic Identity and Community in 5 6 Burgundy

VIATOR
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES

Volume 25 (1994)
PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
THE CENTER FOR MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
UNIVERSITY OFCALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY, LOS ANGELES, LONDON 1994
NAMES, ETHNIC IDENTITY, AND COMMUNITY
INFIFrH- AND SIXTH-CENTURY BURGUNDY
by Patrick Amory
Traditionally, historians have split the ruling classes of the early barbarian kingdoms
of western Europe into two ethnic groups, barbarian warriors grouped around the king,
and Gallo-Roman senators who monopolized education and the offices of the church.
But in the Burgundian kingdom of the Rhone valley (A.D. 443-534), no evidence
demonstrates that either group possessed ethnic consciousness as we understand the
term today. Moreover, little evidence points to any cultural division between the
groups. Although arguments ex silentio are undesirable, there is clearly no point in
imposing an ethnic or cultural divide upon the inhabitants of sixth-century Burgundy
when the sources fail to testify to anything like it.
On the other hand, the use of different personal names in each group might seem
to support the traditional picture of a dual society. All but one of the attested counts
bore Germanic names, and all but one of the bishops bore Greco-Latin names.' Does
this divisionin nomenclature necessarily indicate a split in ethnic consciousness between
Romans and Burgundians? or could it define some other kind of social grouping?
Thefollowing abbreviations appear: PLRE2 =]. R. Martindale, TheProsopography ofthe Later Roman
Empire 2: A.D. 395-527 (Cambridge 1981). Fiebiger-Schmidt = Otto Fiebiger andLudwig Schmidt, eds.
Inschriftensammlung zer Gesobiabse derOstgermanen, Denkschriften der philosophisch-historischen Klasse
60.3 (Vienna1917); and Fiebiger, ed., Neue Foige, Denkschriften 70.3 (Vienna1939). RlCG = Recuei]
des inscriptions chretiennes de la Gaule 1: Premiere Belgique, ed. Nancy Gauthier (Paris 1975), and 15:
Viennoise du Nord. ed. Francoise Descombes (Paris 1985). lLCV =Inscriptiones latinae christianae ueteres,
ed. E. Diehl, 3 vols. (Berlin 1925-1931). MGHSSRM = MGHScriptores rerum Merovingicarum. I amvery
grateful to Dr. Neil Wright for his advice on Avitus'sLatin. I received much usefulcommentand criticism
fromRosamond McKitterick, Peter Brown, MariosCostambeys, and Michael Reynolds, aswellasfromthe
participants in a Cambridge Medieval History Research SeminarwhereI first presentedthis paper.
IBishops: Louis Duchesne, Passes episcopaux de (ancienne Gaule, 3vols. (Paris 1894--1915): the exception
isAlbiso ofLangres, Duchesne 2.185, the predecessor of Gregory; on the name, E. Fdrstemann, Altdeutsches
Namenbuo, 3vols. (Bonn 1900) 1.66. Counts: Subscription list to the Liberconstitutionum, ed. Ludwig
RudolfvonSalis, MGHLeges sect. 1, 2.1 (Hanover 1892) 34-35. Of the counts, onlythe name "Silvanus"
appearsin the standardreference works to late Latinnames: liro Kajanto, TheLatin Cognomina. Societas
Scientiarum fenica: Commentationes humanarumlitterarum 36.2(Helsinki 1965), and idem. Supemomina:
A Study in LatinEpigraphy, Commentationes humanarumIitterarum40.1 (Helsinki 1966). Silvanus, an
extremely common Roman cognomen usedbythe Celts in the firstcentury A.D., had beenadoptedbyGoths
already in the fifth century; see Gauthier in RlCG1.212; WilhelmWackernagel. Sprache und Sprachen-
denkmaler derBurgunden. supplement to Carl Binding, Geschichte desburgundisch-romanischen Konig-
reiobs 1 [volume 2 neverappeared] (Leipzig 1868)332.
2
PATRICK AMORY
Recent works on the ethnic identity of the barbarian groups involved in the disin-
tegration of the Western Roman Empire emphasize the qifficulties of locating ethnic
community among polyethnic confederations and mercenary armies that were con-
stantly forming and re-forming before their final settlement.> These works do continue
to oppose the newly settled people to the indigenous inhabitants of the Roman
provinces.' and the concept of an orally transmitted Germanic, or at least non-Roman,
barbarian culture continues to thrive." .
Meanwhile, some commentators are resurrecting notions of discrete barbarian ethnic
identities. One article on the Burgundian law code, the Liber constitutionum, situ-
ates the composition of the work in a world of ethnic conflict between barbarian Bur-
gundians and Galle-Roman citizens who objected to rule by nonimperial authorities.'
Although this argument fails to take account of the complexity of terms like Burgun-
diones and Romani in the law code, and relies on the ungrounded assumption that
the Burgundians were a pre-state "tribe" who can be analyzed anthropologically as
such," it echoes facile oppositions still found in some textbooks on the end of the
Roman Empire.
7
More significant for this discussion is a long study by Horst Ebling, ]org]arnut, and
Gerd Kampers, which purports to identify an individual's ethnic identity from his or
2Reinhard Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung: Das Werden der/rohmittelalterlichen Gentes
(Cologne 1961); HerwigWolfram, A History o/the Goths (1979), ed. 2 rev., trans. Thomas]. Dunlap (Berke-
ley 1988); Ian Wood, "Ethnlcity and Ethnogenesis of the Burgundians," in Typen derEthnogenese unter
besonderer Berocksichtigung der Bayem I, ed. Herwig Wolfram and Walter Pohl (Vienna 1990) 53-64;
Walter Pohl, Die Awaren (Munich 1988). See further the other essaysin Ethnogenese.
3PatrickAmory, "The Meaning and Purpose of Ethnic Terminology in the Burgundian Laws," Early
Medieval Europe 2 (1993) 2 n. 6, 8 n, 32.
4A spirited defenseof a distinct Ostrogothicculture and ethnic identity: Peter Heather, GothsandRomans
332-489 (Oxford 1991) 309-330. Non-Roman or Germanic culture features in all the works listed in n. 2
above except Wood, notably in Wolfram 19-35, 209-211, and passim; similarly, Herwig Wolfram, "Ein-
leirung oder Oberlegungen zur Origo Gentis, " in Wolfram and PohI1.23-24; Hermann Moisl, "Kinship
and Orally-Transmitted Stammestradition among the Lombards and Franks," in Die Bayem und ihreNad
bam, ed. Herwig Wolfram and Andreas Schwarcz, Denkschriften der philosophisch-historischen Klasse 179
(Vienna 1985). In works on non-ethnic topics, the assumption that barbarians possessed both ethnic and
cultural differences remains general, e.g, (to choose one at random), Henry Chadwick, Boethius(Oxford
1981) 4: Goths did not appreciate a Romanized monarch or the trappings of Romanitas at the palace; "their
ideal was of a warlike leader on horseback charging the enemy."
'David Frye, "Gundobad, the Leges Burgundionum, and the Struggle for Sovereignty in Burgundy,"
Classica es medievalia 41 (1990) 199-212.
6Ibid., esp. 201-203. Opposing "tribal conceptions of law" to "Roman statutory law theory" takes no
account of the origins of the Burgundian law codes in late Roman vulgar law, on which see Amory (n. 3
above) 15-19. Frye's statement that "the Burgundians, so far as they remained a distinct people, neither
wrote nor spoke the language of the Galle-Romans' (203) is based solely on a joking remark by Sidonius
in the 470s; however, contrary to Frye's interpretation, this remark is in fact the only evidence that anyone
in Burgundy spoke a Germanic tongue. It is straining a late piece of evidence to interpret as proof of eth-
nic hostility Gregoryof Tours's remark that Gundobad established milder laws for the Burgundians so that
they would not oppress the Romans (209). As usual, Gregory is being unreliable on Burgundy: the royal
law code legislates for both Burgundians and Romans. In general, Frye assumes simple ethnic opposition
to explain the chronological development of the code, and ignores the inconsistency of its use of Burgun-
diones and Romani; see further Amory 8-15, 24.-26.
'E.g., Justine Davis Randers-Pehrson, Barbarians andRomans: TheBirth Struggle o/Europe, A.D. 400-
700 (Norman, Okla. 1983).
3
her personal name." Despite a large amount of research, this piece has the fundamen-
tal flaw that ethnicity cannot be identified from only one perspective, whether tradi-
tions of naming or anything else. For example, the authors state that in the seventh
century "kein Franke tragt einen romanischen Personennamen."? But who was a
"Frank"? Given that the sources rarely identify individuals by such apparently eth-
nic qualifiers, names are actually what most scholars use in the first place to distinguish
barbarians from Romans.w But it is exactly this correlation of names to ethnic iden-
tity that the authors are trying to prove. Despite other problems with this article,!' the
premise is worth investigating. Naming traditions were undoubtedly of great mean-
ing to medieval men and women.P
Nevertheless, a comparison of the behavior of individuals from the Latin and Ger-
manic groups in Burgundy against the expectations generated by anthropological
models of ethnicity and by traditional notions about "Germanic" and "Roman" cul-
ture shows that names attest neither personal ethnic consciousness nor cultural charac-
teristics in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire. I contend rather
that the Germanically-named counts and Latin-named bishops represent political con-
stituencies of the Rhone valley ruling classes, and not self-conscious descent-groups-
even if each group was composed of acrual familial descent-groups. This approach has
the advantage of concentrating attention on what people actually did, and, by exten-
sion, what they thought, rather than on the hazy evidence of labels and names of peo-
ples. The behavior of the elites in the region, despite the attachment of different
personal names to different professions, is consistently similar, reflecting a common
provincial culture. When neither self-consciousness nor contemporary perception of
difference ever appears, we must begin to question the usefulness of the ethnic
paradigm, and to search for an alternative.
A societydivided by profession and class, rather than by ethnic differences, matches
the picture given by the royal law code, the Liber constitutt'onum. The code uses a va-
riety of incoherent ethnographic terminology that really seems to describe functional,
non-ethnic groups among the king's subjects, that is, soldiers and civilians, descen-
dants of settlers and descendants of the indigenous population. The incoherence of
8H. Ebling et aI., 'Nomen et gens: Untersuchungen zu den Fiihrungsschichten des Franken-,
Langobarden- und Westgotenreiches im 6. und 7. Jahrhundert," Francia 8 (1980) 687-745. Their goals are
ambitious: "Since one can thus drawfrom these names certain probabilities about ethnic allegiance, ... the
divisionof Romanceand Germanic names in the ruling classes impactscertain information about their gentile
structure" (721).
9Ibid.694.
loToname only two examples, John Moorhead, Theoden'c in Italy (Oxford 1993) 86; Pierre Riche, Edu-
cation and Culture in the Barbarian West, trans. JohnJ. Contreni (Columbia, S.C. 1976) 63 (on Gudila
and Bedeulf). \
IIQuestionable application of statistics; e.g., Ebling et al. (n. 8 above) 721; arbitrary assignment of names
to the different barbarian gentes, e.g., Ansemundus ("Visigothic"), Aunemundus ("Frankish"), and
Audemundus ("Visigothic"), all three of which names appeared very early in the Burgundian kingdom,
and the last two of which were frequently confused in manuscripts anyway (on these names, see below at
nn. 107-110). The examples could be multiplied.
12Karl Ferdinand Werner, "Liens de parente et noms de personne: un probleme historique et rnethodolo-
gique," in Famitte et parentedans t'Occidentmedieval, Acres du coUoque de Paris (6-8 juin 1974), Col-
lection de l'Ecole francaise de Rome 30 (Rome 1977).
4
.pATRICK AMORY
the terminology, and a series of laws preserving military allotments, suggest that even
these distinctions were breaking down by the time the code was issued.v
The restrictions of the law codes and the behavior of aristocrats illuminate a polit-
ical culture in which the classical opposition of Roman and barbarian had long out-
lived its usefulness. The reduction of pervasive ideological categories of ethnography
to mere instruments of rhetoric reflects the century-long strains consequent upon the
contraction of a massive transnational state into much smaller political societies.e Their
culture looks like Roman culture, but it is clearly evolving into something new. In
grappling with the turmoil, external and internal, ofwar, economic decline, and demo-
graphic change, the elites of whichever origin in the Rhone valley exploited and trans-
formed imperial institutions such as the church, the bureaucracy, civic loyalty, and
classical rhetoric in order to ensure their own survival or to climb to new positions of
power. 15 This new framework necessarily marginalized the old ethnographic categori-
zation, and people who could trace their forebears to the mutually exclusive groups
of the fourth century no longer emphasized any difference. This lack of evidence issig-
nificant: the types of source material, ecclesiastical, legal, epistolary, and epigraphic,
do not change notably between the time of Valentinian I and of Sigismund. A pro-
found mental shift has taken hold already by the opening of the sixth century.
It is important to emphasize that the ethnic allegiance of the lower classes remains
unknown. The scanty written sources of the fifth and sixth centuries, literary, legal,
and hagiographical, record the activities only of the local elites that produced them.
Other voices in post-Roman society are, unfortunately, mute. A strong sense of eth-
nic difference might have existed among the coloni and slaves of fifth-century Bur-
gundy, but we shall never know. One thing is certain: the federate Burgundian soldiers
must have occupied a rung at least partway up the social ladder. The adjectives
"Roman" and "Burgundian" in the royal law code always refer to the upper levels
of society, the nobiles and the mediocres.w The colani and slaves, whatever their
familial origins, do not get ethnic adjectives. If they rose in society, they did not refer
to their origins, and the aristocratic sources never mention them. It seems likely that,
for the lowest classes, social role and geographic location were more important defin-
ing traits than ethnic identity. In the obscure rural world of the majority of the popu-
lation, allegiances and groupings must often have attached to names and localities that
have completely escaped the net of aristocratic evidence.i?
MODERN AND ANClliNT CONCEPTS OF ETHNICITY
The slippery phenomenon of ethnic identity requires a working definition. An eth-
nic group is a community bound together by belief in common descent and actual com-
mon interests. Its membership is constantly in flux, so that, despite the apparent closed
13Amory (n. 3 above) 24-26.
t40n the evolution of rhetoric, see Patrick Amory, 'Ethnic Rhetoric, Aristocratic Attitudes and Politi-
cal Allegiances in Post-Roman Gaul," Klio 76 (1994, forthcoming).
HMost recently, see Ralph W. Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul: Strategies/or Survival
in an Age a/Transition (Austin 1993).
16Liber constitutionum (n. 1 above) 4.1,4.4,6.9.
17Por one of these possible groupings, see below at n. 95.
NAMES, ETHNICIDENTITY, AND COMMUNITY
5
circle of its mythical common descent, recruitment and desertion are alwayspossible,
through marriage, conquest, or rational choice. Ethnic difference implies some kind
of cultural difference, although no specificfeature of culture, be it language, law, cus-
tom, or dress, is in itself necessary. Any or none of these may be utilized to mark the
group as different. What we need to pinpoint is consciousness of a community united
by shared ancestry, that is, consciousness of being a "race." "Race" here means "belief
in race," of course, not the vast biological divisions of the human species. Weare
searching for the subjective principle that divides Frenchman from German, and
Frenchman from]ew, not the objective one that distinguishes Caucasian from Mon-
goloid.w
It is difficult to use ancient ethnographic terminology as evidence, since ethnicity
was not a concept native to antiquity, which lacked even the anthropological concept
"different culture. "19 Rather, people divided the world into conceptual descent-
groups, that is to say, races. Under the later Roman Empire, the concept of race, gens
or natio, was peculiarly fluid, and someone could define himself equally as a Roman
citizen, of African origin, of the patriaof Caesarea, and of Phoenician descent. Other
allegiances could also enter into play, such as maternal descent, confraternity or profes-
sion, military unit, or religious affiliation.
Not all these allegianceswere determined by family and ancestry, of course, but they
could all be discussed in familial terms. When the imperial political superstructure
began to fall apart in the fifth century, people were forced to choose loyalties from
among the new smaller communities within which they found themselves. For a
senatorial bishop like Sidonius Apollinaris (ca. 434-ca. 480), this process involved
choosing between a Gallic emperor, a Roman emperor, a Gothic king, his civitas of
Clermont, and the church, successively.w Some of these loyaltiescould exist simultane-
ously under the pluralistic Empire, but over the course of Sidonius's lifetime, several
of them began to exclude the others. Although the processof choosing allegiancemight
not ultimately have reshaped Sidonius's own personal identity, it clearly had to have
some effect on his children, who were growing up in a more and more restricted world.
Choice of loyaltycould take yet more momentous forms for the small cultivators of the
massively disrupted areas of Pannonia, Moesia, and northern Italy in the 470s and 480s.
Some of them seized the opportunity to join the army of Theoderic the Great, and
by the time that king established himself as ruler of Italy in 493, they would have
become known as Gorhs.s' The switch of identity from "Roman" to "barbarian,"
which only one generation earlier had involved crossinga frontier, changing one's way
18This is necessary simplification of a complex and contested phenomenon. Seefurther Theories ofRace
andEthnic Relations, ed. John Rex and DavidMason (Cambridge 1986) 170-186, 192-193, 246-263, with
references.
19W. E. Miihlmann, "Ethnogonie und Ethnogenese: Theoretisch-ethnologische und ideologiekritische
Studie;" in Studienzur Ethnogenese, Abhandlungen der rheinisch-wesrfalischen Akademie der Wissen-
schaften72 (Opladen 1985) 18-19.
2Sidonius isone of the rarefigures to havebenefitedfromexcellent studieson hischoice of allegiances:
G. Chianea, "Lesideespolitiquesde SidoineApollinaire," Revuehistorique du droitjranyais et hranger
ser. 4, 47 (1969) 353-389; H. S. Sivan, "Sidonius Apollinaris, Theodoric II, and Gothic-Roman Politics
fromAvitusto Anthemius," Hermes 117 (1989) 85-94;]. D. Harries, "Sidonius Apollinaris, Romeand
the Barbarians: AClimateof Treason?" in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis a/Identity?, ed. John Drinkwater
and Hugh Elton (Cambridge 1992) 298-308.
21Wolfram (n, 2 above) 300-302.
6
PATRICK AMORY
of life, and laying oneself open to the sanctions of the imperial laws against treason.>
had become vastly simplified, and even perhaps necessary, once the barbarians were
routinely inside the territory of the Empire.
The question remains whether throwing in their lot with a group such as the Goths
or the Burgundians, with whom they believed they shared common interests, there-
fore gave these men and women, or their immediate offspring, belief in common
ancestry as well, with concommitant belief in cultural differences from other groups.
This political process of ethnic group formation and evolution, called erhnogenesis,
assuredly happened in early medieval Europe.s' In Burgundy, it would imprint the
gens-name of the Burgundians onto the territory of the Rhone valleyby the eighth cen-
tury at the latest.
24
The difficulty is to decide how far we can identify ethnogenesis
among the documented fifth- andsixth-century barbarian gentes bearing ethnographic
names in the Latin sources. For ethnic identity-as we understand it anthropologically
-could reside in many different types of Mediterranean social grouping: city, province,
clan, and so forth. The Latin language, lacking anthropological ideas, would natur-
ally refer to the first two as geographicalunits, and the third as a family unit. It is there-
fore only possible to identity ethnicity by analyzing individual behavior as well as
ethnographic names.
Since consciousness of common descent could exist in ancient times, ethnicity is not
necessarily an anachronisticcategoryto use in analyzing the ancient world, but we must
beware. Anthropologists would blanch at the notion of using such scanty evidence for
discussing ethnic consciousness.
But I am not primarily interested in finding where various people situated their eth-
nic identity in sixth-century Burgundy. In fact, I believe that in most cases it cannot
be found, whether it existed or not. I am merely attempting to show that ethnicity is
an inadequate categoryfor ordering the two groups that we can clearly discern in Bur-
gundian society, the counts and the senators. Given the allegiance-switching and the
rapid political changes occurring in Europe between 450 and 530, such groups as the
sources do depict are best described in other terms. For these purposes, the standard
anthropological definitions of subjective ethnicity, used in several standard histories
of the barbarian groups.w and approximating the late Roman belief in gens or natio;
will serve quite well as a testing-ground.
22A famousexample is the Roman merchantwho became a Hunnic warrior in the 440s; Priscus, [rag.
11, lines 407-510, ed. and trans. R. C. Blockley, TheFragmentary Classicising Historians oftheLaterRoman
Empire, 2 vols., ARCA 6 and 10 (Liverpool 1981-1983) 2.266-272. Many fourth- and flfth-centurylaws
penalize peoplefor consorting willingly with barbarians, e.g. CodexTheodosianus 5.7.1 (366); ibid. 9.14.3
(397); Codex]ustinianus4.41.2 (455-457), implyingthat it occurred frequently.
~ e e the references in n, 2 above.
24Wood (n. 2 above) 53-64.
2lWenskus (n. 2above) 109-110 provides salutary warnings against usingclassicial ethnography for under.
standing barbarian ethnic identity. It isimportant toemphasize that even terms likeRomanus or Aftr present
problems: to what extent did the indigenous population of the Empire, the "non-barbarians," consider
itself undifferentiated' 'Romans"?
26NotablyWenskus, Stammesbildung; Wolfram, Goths; and Pohl, DieAwaren (all n, 2 above). Mycom-
mentsherearenot meant tounderminethe conclusions of anyof thesescholars, and applyonlyto the Bur-
gundian kingdom.
BACKGROUNDAND SOURCES
7
A Burgundian army was installed by the late Roman generalissimo Aetius in territory
somewhere south of Geneva in 443. By the 460s, a Burgundian leader, who possibly
already called himself rex, was governing Geneva. Within the next decade, the adja-
cent provinces of the upper Rhone valleyalsolay within his control, including the cities
of Lyons and Vienne, in the shambling process typical of the dismantling of imperial
rule in the West. The two most prominent Burgundian kings were Gundobad (reigned
ca. 474-516) and his son Sigismund (516-523). Both continued to possess Roman
imperial titulature alongside their barbarian office of king. Gundobad, like many bar-
barian kings, belonged to the Arian sect of Christianity. Nevertheless, he reigned with
the adviceof Catholic bishops, most notably Avitus of Vienne. Sigismund, who became
Catholic under Avitus's guidance, worked with the bishop even more closelyuntil the
death of the latter in about 518.
27
In the Rhone valley, as in the rest of Gaul, there survived the wealthy and power-
ful descendants of the Roman senatorial aristocracy. Avitus, like most other Gallic
bishops, came from this class. For the purposes of this article, "senatorial" means de-
scent from an aristocratic Gallic family that still possessed enough pride in its past to
preserve classical education, Christian piety, and a sense of exclusivity.w The mean-
ing of "senator" offers fewer problems in southeastern Gaul during the opening of
the sixth century than it does in the time and region of Gregory of Tours.29 These epis-
copal dynasties were close enough in time and place to those of the late fifty-century
Sidonius Apollinaris to preserve much of his ethos. If class-consciousness is primarily
a subjective consideration, morever, then the preservation of this ethos was the best
claim to the label senator. 30
27For general background, Binding(n, 2 above) remainsthe best guide; seealsoIan Wood, "Avitus of
Vienne: Religion and Culturein the Auvergne and the RhoneValley, 470-550," D.PhiI. diss, (Oxford 1980).
2SS0 MartinHeinzelrnann, Bischofsherrschaft in Gallien: Zur Kontinuitiit romisaber Fuhrungsschichten
vom4. bis 7. Jahrhundert, Beihefteder Francia 5 (Munich 1976).
29'fhe debate overthe meaningof the wordgoes backto Godefroid Kurth, EtudesjTanques, 2 vols. (Paris
1919) 2.97-115,and KarlFriedrich Stroheker, Dersenatomche Adel imspiitantiken Gallien (Tubingen 1948);
it has beenrecently revived byFrank D. Gilliard, "The Senators of Sixth-Century Gaul," Speculum 54(1979)
685-697, and BrianBrennan, "Senators and Social Mobility in Sixth-Century Gaul," Journal0/Medieval
History 11(1985) 145-161. Strohekershowedthat sixth-century aristocrats weredescended fromimperial
senators. Gilliard696-697, supportingKurth, equates "senator" with "wealthyman," "aristocrat"; both
basetheir argumentsprimarilyon Gregory. Brennanstresses ethnic division and the presence of parvenus,
but his argument is difficult to evaluatedue to a printing error at 152. More recently, ChristianSettipani
has reemphasized consciousness of descent froma family of the lateEmpire: "Ruricius 1ereveque de Limoges
et ses relationsfamiliales," Francia 18.1 (1991) 195 n. 5.
3oT. S. Brown fruitfullysuggests that preservation of' 'senatorial values" be the keyto the use of the
term, sincesuchvalues wereprobablyalsothe keyto the survival of a self-conscious senatorialclass: Gen-
tlemen and Officers: ImperialAdministration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy A.D. 554-800
(London1984) 183-184; PatrickWormald, "The Declineof the WesternEmpire and the Survival of Its
Aristocracy, " JournalofRomeStudies66 (1976)225-226. The preservation of senatorial values perhaps
automatically presumes connections, whetherreal or fabricated, withancientRomanlines.The lateantique
families of Romesimilarly claimeddescentfromthe republicanDecii or Gracchi. Once the claimsbecame
generally accepted, their truth wasirrelevant. On the frequent earlymedieval longevity of individual family
wealthand powerregardless of ethos or class consciousness, Karl FerdinandWerner, "Bedeutende Adels-
familienim Reiche Karlsdes Grossen" (1965), translatedas "Important Noble Families in the Kingdom
of Charlemagne," in TheMedieval Nobility, ed. and trans. TimothyReuter (Amsterdam 1978) 153-173.
8
PATRICK AMORY
The sources for the Burgundian kingdom are scanty. We have Avitus's edited col-
lection of poems, homilies, and letters, three written in the name of Sigismund, dat-
ing from 490 to about 518. In the year 517, Avitus presided over the Council of Epaon,
which published an important collection of canon law. In the same year, Sigismund
collected much of the legislation issued by the Burgundian kings and published it as
a lawcode, the Liber constitutionum; as we possess it today, it contains additions dating
from the reign of Sigismund's successor Godomar. Aside from these major documents,
there is a quantity of inscription and metrical burial epitaphs, some hagiography, and
one private charter.
Through this sketchy and difficult evidence, we must try to understand how men
and women with Germanic and Latin names conceived of themselves during the
ninety-year span of the Rhone valley kingdom. Ninety years is longer than the aver-
age human lifetime, and the chronological development of mental attitudes and polit-
ical circumstance must have affected how people thought about their origins. The
questions that our evidence cannot answer must constantly remain in view. Did peo-
ple with Germanic names identify themselves with the followers of the king who
appeared in the region in 443? Did people with Latin names identify themselves with
the indigenous inhabitants of the region in 443? Even if descent did determine iden-
tity, how long were people's memories?
GERMANIC NAMES
Aside from the Burgundian royal family, a relatively small sample survives of people
with Germanic names. None of them ever describe themselves as "Burgundian."31
Furthermore, all of them take part in activities that might traditionally be described
as "Roman": leaving inscriptions, practicing Christianity (Catholic as well as Arian),
and founding churches. Rather than calling this sort of behavior' 'Roman," however,
which implies that some kind of non-Roman behavior existed from which to differen-
tiate it, we should merely characterize it as the general cultural environment of south-
eastern Gaul and the western Alps in the early sixth century. As we shall see, little,
aside from their names, differentiates these people from the senatorial aristocrats bear-
ing Latin names who also served the Burgundian king.
From the instant that a Burgundian first appears on the historical stage, we seem
to be viewing a man steeped in the formal hierarchy and ceremony of late antique
Mediterranean politics. The mid-fifth-century Burgundian ruler called by modern scho-
lars Chilperic I appears in the sixth-centurysource merely as "Hilpericus, a man of the
illustrious class and patrician of Gaul. ' '32 Vir inluster and patriCus were, of course, late
Roman titles indicating office-holding, nobility, and imperial favor,33
31The kings did call themselves "rexBurgundionum": Liber constitutionum, Constitutiones extravagantes
19, 20. Butthistitleindicates the royal leadership of the army. See Herwig Wolfram, Intitulatio I:Lateinische
Konigs- undPurstentitel biszum Ende des8. jahrhunderts, Mitteilungen des Institutsfur osterreichische
Geschichtsforschung, Brganzungsband 21 (Graz 1967) 87-89; Amory (n. 3 above) 24-26.
32Vitapatrumiurensium 92, ed. F. Martine, Viedesperesdujura, Sources chretiennes 142 (Paris 1968):
"vir inluster Galliae quondampatricius Hilpericus."
33A. H. M.Jones, TheLater Roman Empire 284-602,3 vols. (Oxford 1964) 2.528-530; T. D. Barnes,
"PatriciiunderValentinian III," Phoenix: 29 (1975) 155-170; R. W. Mathisen, "Patriciansas Diplomats
in Late Antiquity," Byzantinische Zeitschrijt 79 (1986) 35-49.
9
The appropriateness of these titlesfor Chilperic is unclear, however, sincethe source
is a hagiography dating from the 510s, or some sixtyyears after the events relared.s-
The author, moreover, was obviously havingdifficulties in describing the constitutional
arrangements of the earlierperiod, for he glosses his description of Chilperic's Roman
titles with the oblique phrase, "In that time, the commonwealth had passed under
a royal regime.' '35 .
In other words, the sixth-centuryauthor was a veryearlyexplicatorof the political
arrangements bywhichthe RomanEmpire dissolved itself into a patchwork of provin-
cial kingdoms. In its veryconfusion of Roman and barbarian titles, the description
seemsaccurateenough. The events related maywell have taken place, sincethe story
occurs in different form elsewhere.es The source, the Vita patrum iarensieoz; is an
unusually reliable and nonformulaic hagiography. The author consulted living wit-
nesses.v Moreover, he was himselfa subject of the subsequent Burgundiankings, writ-
ing for a high-bred audience at the monasteryof Agaune, refounded by Sigismund.w
His gloss that the government waspassing under a royal regime sounds like his own
explanation of the situation, from his vantage point under just such a regime.
Nobody wrote hagiographyfor the purpose of historical explication, however. The
author of the Vita patrumiurensium introduces Chilperic'stitlesin a literary set-piece.
In this section, Saint Lupicinus journeys to Chilperic'scourt to confront an oppressive
magnate, who is "swollen with the honor of courtlydignity."39 This same magnate
attacksthe saint beforethe king, claimingthat he is an impostorwho, ten years previ-
ously, had falsely prophesied the ruin of "this regionof our fathers" and the civilitas
Romani apicis.40
Lupicinus boldly replies that he had not prophesied wrongly, for lawand justice had
indeed been perverted, in the personof his adversary, the magnate himself. The saint
then continues, what couldone expect when thefasces were under the control of a skin-
clad judge?41 Despite this apparent insult to his rulership, the "patrician" Chilperic,
charmed by the saint's sincerity, judges in his favor.v
34Martine (n. 32 above) 52-57; Ian Wood suggests 512/4-515: "APrelude to Columbanus: The Monastic
Achievement in the Burgundian Territories," in Columbanus andMerovingian Monasticism, ed. H. B. Clarke
and Mary Brennan, British Archaeological Reports International Series 113 (Oxford 1981) 20 n. 10.
w'Sub condicione regia ius publicum tempore ilIo redacturn est"; Vita patrumiurensium 92. On the
difficulties of understanding Burgundian titles during the transitional period, Ian Wood, "Kings, King-
doms and Consent," in Early Medieval Kingship, ed. P. H. Sawyer and Ian Wood (Leeds 1977) 8-9, 20-
21. On the apparent ,subsequent solidification of constitutional standing, see n. 62 below.
36Gregory of Tours, Vita patrum1.5, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SSRM 1.2 (Hanover 1885); on the likely
independence of Gregory, Martine (n. 32 above) 73.
37See Martine's introduction, and 81-82; F. Masai, "La Vita patrum iurensium et les debuts du
monachisme it Saint-Maurice d' Agaune," in Festschrift BernhardBischoff, ed. J. Autenrieth and F. Brun-
holzl (Stuttgart 1971).
380n Agaune as an ascetic refuge for noblemen, Friedrich Prinz, Frohes Monchtum im Frankenreich
(1965), ed. 2 (Darmstadt 1988}89,93; Wood (n. 34 above) 4-5, 15-18. Wood warns that the presence of
wealth does not necessarilyindicate senators; but note the dedication of the Vitato an "Arrnentarius,' an
aristocratic name in the family of Gregory of Tours. Moreover, the author of the Vitaitself may be Viven-
tiolus of Lyons (ibid. 27-28 and n, 118), on whose senatorial background, Heinzelmann (n. 28 above)
116-118.
39Vita patrum iurensium 92: "honore digniratis aulicae rumens."
4Ibid. 92-93.
41Ibid. 94: "pellito sub iudice."
42Ibid. 95: "rnemoratus patricius veriratis audacia delectatus."
10
PATRICK AMORY
The author of the hagiography chose to present the barbarian king in a Roman light
as part of a general reversal of expected ethnic qualities in this passage." He therefore
emphasized Chilperic's Roman titles overhis barbarian ones, if indeed the latter existed
at all. The saint, in pleading for the poor man, has shown himself to be on the side
ofRoman law. The words ius,fas, iudex, and fasces occur and recur in the text, evoking
the ancient equation ofRomanity and justice. The Roman magnate, on the other hand,
acts like a barbarian, puffed up and corrupted by his power at court.v' The real bar-
barian in the story, Chilperic, whether or not he actually wore furs, constantly acts like
an impartial Roman judge, apatricius, and "a man of singular intelligence and remark-
able integrity."45 After the saint's speech, Chilperic delivers a long discourse to prove,
by numerous examples, that divine justice will out.
In manipulating his audience's literary expectations about "Roman" and "barbar-
ian" behavior, the sixth-centuryauthor could not deviate too far from what was known
about the barbarian kings of his own time, Gundobad and Sigismund. We know, com-
parativelyspeaking, a fair amount about each of these kings. Like Chilperic in the story,
neither one behaved like anything other than a late antique nobleman.
Gundobad, Chilperic's nephew, spent his early years mastering the convoluted
politics of Italy in the 470s. He was already magister miltum per Gallias4
6
when his
uncle, the patrician Ricimer, called him to Rome in 472 to assassinate the emperor
Anrhemius.v Ricimer died just before the new emperor, Anicius Olybrius, was raised
to the throne, and Gundobad assumed his mentor's powerful position ofpatrieius in
Italy.48 Seven months later Olybrius died, and Gundobad made his own candidate
emperor, the comes domestlcorum Glycerius.w Glyceriuslasted until the spring of 474,
by which time Gundobad had hurried back to Burgundy, presumably to assume the
kingship on the death of his father Gundioc.w
During these two years, Gundobad was operating on the center stage of imperial
politics holding the most powerful titles in the West. Needless to say, in order to navi-
gate the labyrinthine circlesof power in Ravenna, he must have been fluent in Latin
and conversant with the political stratagems of the decaying empire. In murdering the
Greek Anthemius, for example, Gundobad should have alienated that emperor's
powerful connections in Constantinople. 51 Nevertheless, the newpatricius not only
43Frye (n. 5 above) 208-209interprets this scene as evidence for the author's resentment of barbarian
rule, takingno account of his deliberatereversal of traditional stereotypes.
440npride as a peculiarly "barbarian" trait, Y. A. Dauge, Le barbare: recherches sur /a conception
romaine dela barbarie et dela civilisation, Collection Latomus 176(Brussels 1981) 433-434.
4Wita patrumiurensium 93: "vir singularis ingenii et praecipuae bonitatis."
46PLRE2 s.n. Gundobadus 1, p. 524. Hisfather had held this position before him; PLRE2 s.n, Gundio-
~ p. 523. ;
47Chronica Gal/ia a. DXI 650, ed. TheodorMommsen, MGHAA9(= Chroniea minora1)(Berlin 1892)
664; Priscus fro 64 [= John of Antiochfro 209.1], Blockley (n. 22 above) 2.372.
48Pasti Vindobonenses priores 606-608, s.a. 472, ed. Mommsen (n. 47 above) 306.
49Cassiodorus, Chronicon 1295,s.a, 473, ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGHAA11 (= Chronica minora
2)(Berlin 1894) 158; Priscusfr. 65, Blockley (n. 22above) 2.374. Presumably under Gundobad's influence,
Glycerius appointedChilperic I magister militumper Gal/ias, thus belatedly recognizing the Burgundian
absorption of Lyons; Wood (n. 27 above) 4.
,oJohn Malalas, Chronographia 374-375, trans. ElizabethJeffreys et al., The Chronicle o/John Mala/as,
Byzantina australiensia 4 (Melbourne 1986) 207; PLRE2 s.n. Gundobadus 1, p. 524.
'lAnthemius, descended from prefects and generals, was related to Marcian, LeoI, and the fourth-century
usurper Procopius, SeeAlexander Demandt, "The Osmosis of LateRomanand Germanic Aristocracies,"
NAMES, ETHNIC IDENTITY, AND COMMUNITY 11
took power smoothly, but obtained his post from Olybrius, the emissaryof the Eastern
emperor Leo and the candidate of Ricimer's enemy Geiseric, king of the Vandals. 52
By the time of Olybrius's death, Gundobad had become powerful enough to set his
own candidate on the throne. By the time that Leo sent Julius Nepos to challenge
Glycerins, Gundobad had vanished, and was consolidating his power in his father's
kingdom. We are witnessing the actions of a man well versed in late Roman politics.
Like other barbarian leaders Gundobad was an educated man. He used Heraclius,
a correspondent of Avitus, as some kind of court rhetorician, and associated with
learned senators.v He frequently discussedtheology with Avitus of Vienne, who wrote
him a treatise condemning his Arianism.e Avitus also wrote for the king a long and
learned condemnation of monophysitism, as well as theological letters in response to
specific questions on other subjects. 55 Their relationship reminds one of that between
Count Boniface and Saint Augustine, nearly a century earlier. At the end of his life,
Gunobad considered a secret conversion to Catholicism.56He was a soldier, but he was
certainly not a rude barbarian warrior.
It is thus scarcely surprising that in their rule over the former Roman provinces that
comprised Burgundy, Gundobad and Sigismund retained parts of the local Roman
adrninistration.r' and made offices available to senators.v The edicts issued by both
kings and surviving in a collection redacted by Sigismund largely consist of Roman law
modified for an empire the size of a province.w In public life in general, the Burgun-
dian kings seem to have preserved the elaborate ceremonial and triumphal displays
appropriate for successors of the Roman state.
GO
Similarly, Gundobad and his family continued to act as if they ruled by imperial
favor, and took care to cultivate correct relations with Constantinople. All the Burgun-
dian rulers from Gundioc to Sigismund received imperial titles which they used simul-
taneously with rexBurgundionum. Thus, Gundioc was magister militum; Chilperic
I, magister milt'tum and patricius Galliae; Gundobad, magister milt'tum and patricius
in DasReichunddie Barbaro, ed. Evangelos K. Chrysos and Andreas Schwarcz, Veroffentlichungen des
InsritursfUr osterreichische Geschichtsforschung 29 (Vienna 1989), table after 86.
120nOlybrius's Vandal support. PLRE2 s.n. Geisericus, p. 498.
13See belowat n. 139ff. On Gundobad's educationI differfromRiche (n. 10above) 54-55, a negative
assessment limiting the king's intellectual intereststo religion.
14Avitus of Vienne, Contra Amanos (= ep. 1) 3A, ed. R. Peiper, MGHAA6.2 p. 2; Gregory of Tours,
Historiae 2.34, ed, BrunoKrusch and WilhelmLevison, MGHSSRM 1.1, ed. 2 (Hanover 1951).
"Avirus, Contra Eutychianam haeresim (epp. 2-3) (n. 54above) 15-29;seealso Desubitaneapaenitentia
(ep. 4) 29-32, De transituftliae regis (ep, 5) 32-33, and ep. 6, 33-35. The Contra Eutychianam baeresim
was actually commissioned byGundobad; Wood(n. 27above) 202-207. The De subitaneapaenitentia was
writtenin response to the king' s querieson the efficacy of last-minutepenitenceand the doctrineof salva-
tion byfaith; Daniel). Nodes, "De subitanea paenitentiain the Letters of Faustusof Riez and Avirus of
Vienne;" Recherches de theologie ancienne et mCdievale 55 (1988) 33-34,36.
16If wecanbelieve Gregory of Tours, an untrustworthy guideto the behavior of heretics in Gaul; Historiae
2.34(n. 54above) 81-84; IanWood, "The Audience of Architecture in Post-Roman Gaul," in TheAnglo-
Saxon Church, ed, L. A. S. Butler and R. K. Morris, Councilfor British Archaeology Research Report 60
(London 1986) 76(also citing Avitus, hom. 24);Wood(n. 2 above) 59-60; and idem, "Continuityor Calam-
ity? The Constraints ofLiteraryEvidence," in Fifth Century Gaul(n. 20 above) 12-13.
17Peter Classen, Kaiserreskript undKonigsurkunde (1956; repro Thessalonica 1977) 119-122, 206.
18Below at n. 134ff.
GOMichael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership inLateAntiquity, Byzantium and the Early
Medieval West (Cambridge 1986)266-267.
12
PATRICK AMORY
(in Italy); Sigismund, patricius, having received militiae tituNfrom the emperor.v'
Gundobad's official titulature, virgloriosissimus rexBurgundionum, neatly expressed
the dual civil and military powers vested in him.
62
Sigismund retained his father's titular style, and tried to keep up good relations with
the emperor Anastasius. In three letters written via the pen of Avitus of Vienne, he
reiterated flowery declarations of Burgundy's place under imperial rule.
63
The recur-
rent phrases, Patria nostra oester orbis est-' 'My country is your world," and Vester
quidem estpopulus meus-"Indeed, my people is yours,"64 seem to underline the
king's desire to be accounted a citizen of the Roman Empire still, some forty years after
its supposed demise. He was maintaining a Burgundian tradition of looking toward
Byzantium.
But although Sigismund could describe his kingdom as part of the ancient concep-
tual Roman orbis, he was aware that political realities no longer corresponded to those
of the 400s. The royal letters to the East consciously exploit traditional connotations
of ethnographic language to convince the emperor of the king's loyalty to the emperor.
In fact, the idea of an unbroken imperium Romanumno longer matched political the-
ory in the East, which was beginning to see the West as lost territory that needed to
be reclaimed." The delicacy of Avitus's rhetoric here attests knowledge of the East-
West disjunction; elsewhere, he could call Anastasius merely Caesar Graecorum.
66
Of
course, the king's letters were actually sent,67and reflect the desire both to maintain
links with the legitimate imperial government and to keep up a traditional alliance
in the face of the intermittently hostile Frankish, Ostrogothic, and Visigothic king-
doms.
68
But they also document the dawning of the consciousness that the political
universe was no longer Roman.
Political allegiance, in the early sixth century as in Sidonius's time, was the major
concern of the rulers of Gaul in dealing with international politics. The' 'barbarian
kingdoms" .are utterly absent from Sigismund's letters to Anastasius.w The king's
sentiments combine the aristocratic language of amicitia and devo#o with the terms
of panegyric. 70 The point was to convince the emperor that Sigismund remained loyal
GIWood (n. 27above) 184-185. Asthe evidence of the Vita patrumiurensium demonstrates, the patriciate
could be emphasized overthe kingship.
G2Wolfram (n. 31 above) 87-89:patricii normally received the gloriosissimate. Bythe year 501, suchmat-
tersmayhave been constitutionally clearer than theyhad been in the 450sand 460s, when ChilpericI was
gradually assuming the powers of a provincial governor in Geneva.
eps. 78,93, and 94. On the useof Avitus, a noted epistolary stylist, asamanuensis, compare
Theoderic's useof Cassiodorus (e.g., Variac 1.1, ed. T. Mommsen, MGHAA 12), and see Wood's com-
ments, "Continuity" (n. 56 above) 17.
64Avirus, ep. 93(n. 54above) 100, lines 13, 6. On these letters, see Amory(n. 14 above).
GlWalter Kaegi, Byzantium andthe Decline a/Rome (Princeton 1968) 3-58, 176-223; Stefan Kraut-
schick, "Zwei Aspekte desJahres 476," Historia 35(1986) 358-371.
GGAvitus, Contra Eutychianam (n. 54 above) 16, line 1.
G7Avirus, ep. 94(n. 54above) 101-102 (Theoderic's interception of previous letters); ep. 46A, p. 76(the
king's agreement to the emperor'srequest tosend the Burgundian ambassador's son to Constantinople);
on the debate overthese letters, see the references in Amory (n, 3 above) 25 n, 127.
GaT. C. Lounghis, Ambassadors, Embassies and Administrative Changes in the Eastern RomanEmpire
Priorto the Reconquisra," in Das Reich (n. 51 above) 146.
G9The Burgundiankingdomiscalled., Gallicana"; Theoderic the Great becomes the rectorItaliae,' ,
representing not onlyclassicizing style, but also a deliberate attempt toshift attention away fromold Roman
ethnic ideology and onto politicalmatters: Amory (n. 14above)
70! follow Wood (n. 27 above) 186.
13
to Constantinople. None of the three participants in the correspondence, Avitus, Sigis-
mund, or Anastasius, seems to have been interested in the barbarian origin of the Bur-
gundian rulers. Indeed, by implicitly contrasting the gentes of the Persians to the loyal
populus of the provinciae feliciumsceptrorum." Avitus exploits the heathen mean-
ing of the word genst? to exalt all the inhabitants of the Christian Burgundian king-
dom, whatever their ethnic origin.
Sigismund, of course, had converted to Catholicism under the aegis of Avitus, heal-
ing any residual rifts between the monarchy and the senatorial bishops." He founded
churches, he received spiritual guidance from Pope Symmachus at Rome, with whom
he corresponded, and he established himself as a protege of the respected Avitus and
of Maximus, bishop of Geneva. Although he may not have been as devout a Christian
as he has sometimes been portrayed, Sigismund made a place for himself in ecclesi-
astical history by refounding the important monastery of Saint-Maurice-d' Agaune in
the Valais and instituting a special liturgy there borrowed from the East, the taus
perennis.t After his death, he became the first medieval monarch to be canonized.
Other members of Sigismund's family were devout Catholics, particularly his cousin
Clothild, who married Clovis, king of the Franks, and who may have been influen-
tial in converting him." Sigismund's aunt Theudelinda founded two churches, as did
his mother Caratene.ts Caratene was commemorated in a metrical Latin epitaph of 506
as a servant of Christ and a wise counselor of her husband Gundobad; the epitaph sur-
vives in a manuscript that also contains those of the senatorial bishops Avitus, Pan-
tagatus, Hesychius, and Namatius.??
In sum, the Burgundian royal family appear in all the contemporary sourcesas quin-
tessentiallate antique magnates. They exercisedpolitical power within the framework
of the Roman imperial system, they were devout and literate Christians, they engaged
in intellectual debate on the subjects of the' day. Their relations with the centers of old
Roman power, the emperor at Constantinople, and the senatorial bishops at home in
the Rhone valley, were dictated by political and religious issuesrather than ethnic ones.
One word that never appears in all of Avitus's voluminous correspondence and poetry
is "Burgundian." In his writings, Gundobad and Sigismund are simply' 'rex.' '78 The
idea that his masters did not deserve servicefrom men of distinguished senatorial lin-
eage seems not to have occurred to Avitus, except insofar as the difference pertained
71Avitus, ep. 93 (n, 54 above) 100.
72A commonusageat the time: in Avitus's poems and homilies, gensnearlyalways means "heathen";
H. Goelzer and A. Mey, Lelatin deSaint Avit (Paris 1909) 423;]ohann Ramminger, Concordantiae in Alcimi
Ecdicti' Aviti carmina, Alpha Omega ReiheA104 (Hildesheim 1990)127-128, s.v, gens.
73AIthough thereislittleevidence that Gundobadpersecuted Catholics, he quarrelled withthem, probably
overroyal confirmation of episcopal ordinationand rightsto ecclesiastical property; Wood(n. 27above)152-
154. On Sigismund's relationshipwith his bishops, see the references in n. 161 below.
740n Sigismund's conversion and pious activity, Wood (n. 27 above) 208-217.
7lGregory of Tours, Historiae 2.27-30.
76Wood (n. 27above)151;another source alsodepictsCarateneaschurch-founder; Wood (n, 56above)
76.
77Titulorum gallicanorum liber, ed. RudolfPeiper, MGHAA6.2 (Berlin1883)185-188, nos. 6, 7, 9,
10, 11 respectively. On the episcopal epitaphs, see belowat n, 145.
78Godefroid Kurth wronglyargued that Avitus rarely used the word "senator": Kurth (n, 29 above)
2.108-109, and 108n, 7, misquotingAvitus, hom. 6 (n. 54above)110, lines26-27; Kurth missedep. 27,
p. 58 line 10, and ep. 53, p. 82 line 2, letters not to senatorsin Rome.
14
PATRICK AMORY
to religion. Herehis efforts were unceasing to convert the local rulers, and he wasonce,
perhaps twice, successful.
Of the nonroyal Germanic names, Hymnemodus, a courtier of Gundobad, became
(Catholic) abbot at Grigny, and then the first abbot of the refounded Agaune."?
According to his biographer, he was "by nation indeed barbarian, but modest in the
benevolence of his manners.' 'BO This comment might have been prompted either by
Hymnemodus's earliersecular service at the court of the ArianGundobad, or perhaps
simply bythe desire for a neat antithesis, a commonrhetorical trope at the time.81 More
impressive isthe advancement of an admitted' 'barbarian" from the royal court to an
abbacy, and his orthodoxoppositionto the Arian Gundobad," probably in response
to royal attempts to take overchurch property." To judge from Avitus's dedicatory
homilyat the refounding of Agaune, Hymnemodus commanded the respect of the
foremost bishop of the realm.
B4
Of the Germanically named counts who subscribed to the Liber constitutionum,
onlyone nameappears elsewhere in contemporary sources. Aunemundus, whose name
mayoccurtwice on the subscription list,85 alsoappears on an earlier gravestonefrom
the Haute-Savoie, dating from 19 May 486.
86
He cannot be the same person as the
comes, but the name is rare
87
and he may well come from the same family.
The fifth-century Aunemundus inscription marks the first appearance of a name
subsequently destinedfor renown in the region.w Although executedin crude letters,
it isthoroughlyChristian and employs a developedconsular dating formula like the
79Vitaabbatum 1-7, ed. BrunoKrusch, MGHSSRM 7(Hanover 1919)330-334; on the
sixth-century date of this work(contraKrusch), Prinz (n, 38 above) 103n. 80; Wood (n, 27 above) 217-
218; idem (n. 34 above) 15 and nn. 127-130. Hymnemodus'ssurviving epitaph praiseshim as "sancro-
rum exemplasecutus,laudabilis vita ad laudem omnesinvitans"; Fiebiger-Schmidt no. 106.
'OVita abbatum Acaunensium 1: "natione quidembarbarus, sedmorum benignitate modestus" (n, 79
above) 330.
"Similarly, on the samepage: "Quantumque regis minaces insidiae procedebant, tantum in Christiser-
vitioacrius excellebat.' On the use of antithesisbyRuricius of Limoges, and the common use of rhetorical
figures with disregard for reality, see H. Hagendahl, Lacorrespondence de Ruricius, Acta Universitatis
Gotoburgensis: Goteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrift 58.3(Gocebcrg 1952) 67-89. Uncivilized barbarians as topos:
Dauge(n, 44 above) passim; Walter Goffart, "The Theme of TheBarbarian Invasions in LateAntique and
Modern Historiography," in Das Reich (n. 51above) 96-97.
SWita abbatum Acaunensium 1 (n. 79 above) 330.
s3Wood (n. 27above) 153-154.
lI4Avitus, Homilia in Acaunensium [= hom. 25] (n. 54 above) 144-147: the
"piisime praesul" of 146line 5might be Viventiolus of Lyons, but "praesul" could alsomean "abbot"
at this time: J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae latinatis lexicon minus, s.v, (1976; repro Leiden 1984) 842-843.
8'Themanuscripts listan "Aunemundus" and an "Audi-" or "Aumemundus"; LiberconstitutionumI
Primaconstitutio,subscription list(n. 1above) 34, nos. 2, 8, and 12; cf. the many manuscript variantson
35, none of which, however, venture beyond the nonsignificant variations "Aune/i II Aume/i" or
"Aude/i. "
86RICG 15, no. 287.
87See n. 112 below.
s8Besides the two Aunemundi in the lawcode, therewasthe mid-seventh-century bishopof Lyons, who
exercised strong power in the region; hisfather's name, Sigo, alsooccurs in the subscriptionlist. SeeActa
S. Aunemundialias Dalflni 1, 3,.ed. P. Perrier, ASSept. 7 (Antwerp1760)744; on the authentic
basis ofthis life, Paul Fouracre, "Merovingian Historyand Merovingian Hagiography," Past andPresent
127 (1990) 26-27. On Aunemund ofLyons, Patrick], Geary, Before and Germany (Oxford 1988)
189. AlfredCoville tracedall theseAunemundi to a strongregional clan: surl'bistoire deLyon
du Ve siecle au IKesieele (450-800) (Paris 1928) 376; I am grateful to Paul Fouracre for this reference.
NAMES, ETHNICIDENTITY, AND COMMUNITY 15
dated Burgundian edicts. The epitaph also contains the first dated example of the
popular formula vixit inpacein the region, later used on many gravestones with both
Latin and Germanic names.w
Aunemundus was not the only person with a Germanic name to leave a Latin
epitaph. Quite a few survive from the Rhone valley at this period.w including a vir
oenerabiiis, a vir bonestus, and a Viliaric pater pauperum.
91
An Aegioldus was a
Catholic presbyter, and we find nuns as well, whether Catholic or Arian.
92
One inscrip-
tion hints that having a "barbarian" name (like Hymnemodus) carried unfavorable
Arian associations, unsurprisingly, since the Arian liturgy was in the Gothic language.
Baptism had expunged this nastiness, even though the man did not change his name.
93
Significantly, this hint occurs in a metrical verse epitaph, similar to those of Caratene
and the senatorial bishops.P'
The only inscription to mention affiliation with a community mentions not Bur-
gundians or Romans, but a smaller and otherwise utterly unattested grouping.v' A cer-
tain "Ebroaccus of the Brandobrici" erected an inscription to Godomar, last of the
Burgundian kings, in 527. Like that of Aunemundus, it is Christian, and well versed
in consular dating formulas. The paleography is unusual, but may represent evolving
local forms.
96
Ebroaccus is given no explicit social standing, but he was clearly the leader
of a group of people called the Brandobrici, who had been redeemed by the king, pos-
sibly from the Franks in the aftermath of the war between Sigismund and Clovis's sons
(523-524).
There is nothing "Germanic" about this inscription except the linguistic origin of
the names Ebroaccus and Brandobrici. Despite these elements, and the thanks given
to the king, no "Burgundians" appear. Whoever the Brandobrici may have been-a
family, a clan, a village, a barbarian army not otherwise recorded in any source-they
were the important identity. Given the somewhat homely character of the inscription,
it is perhaps safest to identify the Brandobrici as the inhabitants of a settlement.
89Descombes at RICG 15, no. 287, pp. 733-736: "Hic requiiscit bonememoriae Aunemundus, qui vixit
in paceannus LXe minsis sexobiit de secu[lo] XIlIl KL iuniaspost consSymm." Like Coville, Descombes
connects Aunemunduswith the later bishop Aunemundof Lyons, whomshemisdates to the sixthcentury.
90Piebiger-Schmidt, nos. 74-75, 86, 88-89, 93-94, 96, 101-102, 103 (Eunandus, "a friend to all, his
humanity shouldbe greatly praised"), 105, 107-115, 116, 118, 124; Fiebiger, NeuePolge, nos. 21-22; Revue
despublications epigraphiques (in Revue archeologique) (1945) 161 no. 73; Annee epigraphique (1964)
53 no. 141.
91Fiebiger-Schmidt nos. 90 (Manneleubus virvenerabilis), 91 (Baldarid virhonestus), 98 (Viliaric).
92Fiebiger-Schmidt nos. 104 (Aegioldus), 93, 97, 123 (nuns).
9lFiebiger-Schmidt no. 116: "germinebarbarico nati, sedfonterenati." Arianliturgy: Passio sancti Sigis-
mundi regis 4, ed. BrunoKrusch, MGHSSRM 2 (Hanover 1888) 335, calls Arianism "lex Gotica," which
matches contemporary usage in Ostrogothic Italy, whence actualArianliturgical texts in Gothic survive ("lex
Gothorum" for the Arianchurches of Ravenna, injan-Olof Tjader, ed., Dienichtliterarischen lateinischen
Papyri Italiens ausderZeit 445-700 2 [Stockholm 1982] 84 line 1, no. 33; 102 line 108, no. 34). Parallel
noted by Moorhead (n. 10 above) 95 n. 139, without reference to liturgy. On the general Mediterranean
circulation and mutual influence of Gothic and Latin liturgical texts, seeM.]. Hunter, "The Gothic Bible,"
in The Cambridge History oftbe Bible2, ed, G. W. H. Lampe(Cambridge 1969) 344-354. On the early
elementsin the eighth-century Passio;seeBinding(n. 1 above) 278-290; Justin Favrod, "Les sources et la
chronologie de Marius d'Avenches," Francia 17.1 (1990) 8-9, but notethe reservations at nn, 127,182 below.
94And note yet another metrical epitaph for a man witha Germanic nameat Fiebiger-Schmidt no. 99.
9lRICG 15, no. 290.
96Discussion by Descombes in RICG15.741-743.
16
PATRICKAMORY
Becoming ransomed prisoners afterwar, often throughthe goodoffices of bishops, was
a common experience for inhabitants of Gaul at this time.:" Ebroaccus's behavior, in
linking himselfto the king, in being redeemedas a captive, and in setting up an in-
scription, is similar to that of the Latin-named elitesof the areaand in no wayevinces
any kind of culturedifferent fiom theirs. This evidence may be all the more signifi-
cant in possibly illuminating the lives of people farther down the social scale.
Two men with Germanic names outsidethe Burgundianroyal familyfigure in the
correspondence of Avitus. About one we know onlythat he bore a Romanhonorific."
but the other, Ansemundus, seems to have moved in the highest circles of royal power
and senatorial society. He received three letters from Avitus between 490 and 518in
Lyons,99 and he had endowedchurches and monasteries in Vienne by the 540s.
100
He
was a magnate of some sort, although his exact position and title remain obscure. A
ninth-century source calls himdUX,IOI a title not otherwise recorded from the Burgun-
dian kingdom. He did use the senatorial style virinluster, 102 like Chilperic I sixty years
earlier, and during the 510s he exercised the functions of a judge, perhaps in Lyons. 103
His judicial role suggests that he bore the title comes,IM but his name does not figure
among the counts who subscribed the royal lawcode in 517.
Given this omission, isAnsemundus possibly the samepersonas Aunemundus, the
subscriber to theLiber constitutiontom, assome scholars havesuggested?IO' I think not.
"Ansemundus" and"Aunemundus" really are two different Germanicnames. Nei-
ther spelling iseverattestedfor the other.lOG Bothsharethe common Germanicsuffix
97See, e.g., Aviius, ep. 35 (n. 54above)65; Vita Eptadii Cervidunensis 8-9, 11-13, ed. BrunoKrusch,
MGHSSRM 3 (Hanover 1896) 189-191.
98Ruclo or Rico, vir illustrissimus: Avitus, ep. 85 (p. 95).
99Avitus, eps, 55, 80, and 81.
lOaThe Donatio Ansemundi, usually dated to 543, is most convenientlyaccessible in J. M. Pardessus,
Dipiomata, chartae, epistolae, leges aliaque instrumenta ad res Gallo-Francicas spectantia 1 (Paris 1843).
pt. 2 no. 140. This edition is not reliable; see PatrickAmory, "The Textual Transmissionof the Donatio
Ansemundi," Francia 20.1 (1993) 166n. 22.
IOIAdo of Vienne, Chronicon s.a. 575, PL 123.111, referring to Ansemundus's survivingdonation of
543. On the problems of Ado's authority here, see Amory(n, 100 above) n. 24.
I02Avitus, eps. 55, 80, and 81.
l
0
3Avitus, ep. 55is a plea to Ansemundusregardinga criminal. Previous to the letter, the criminal had
spokento Avitus "Lugduniposito." Atthe time of the letter, presumably, both Ansemundusand the crimi-
nal remain at Lyons, whileAvitushas returned to Vienne. But their geographicallocationsare hardly obvi-
ous. In eps. 80-81, Ansemundus is conspicuous for his absencefrom his native Vienne.
I040ncounts in the Burgundian kingdom, Liber constitutionum (n. 1 above) Prima constitutio 5, 13,
and 14 with subscription list; Dietrich Claude, "Comes" 2, in Reallexikon dergermanischen Altertums-
kunde 5 (Berlin 1984) 66.
I05Most recently, Wood (n. 27above)221; idem, "Audience" (n. 56above) 77-78. Dr. Wood informs
me that he hassincequestionedidentifyingthe Ansemundusof the 540snot onlywith the signatoryof the
Liber constitutionum, but alsowith the correspondent of Avicus (d. 518), due to chronological difficulties.
But if Ansemunduswere30in 510, for example, he need be only 63 when he appears in Vienne in 543.
His historyof foundations and donations by then, in addition to his already having made a will, suggest
that he was an old man by this time.
lOG" Aunemundus" is sometimes" Audimundus" or "Aumemundus" in the manuscriptof the LCsub-
scription list (see n. 85above). The seventh-century epitaph of Aunemund ofLyons, "Anne[mundus) nobilis
qui clare" (ILCV 1074; 1:210) is a spellingerror of the fourteenth-century copyist, as we knowfrom a con-
temporary signature of the bishop (Precept of Clovis II, 22June 654; Chartae latinae antiquiores 13, ed.
R Atsmaand]. Vezin [Zurich 1981], no. 558); Descombes in RICG 15.735.
NAMES, ETHNIC IDENTITY, AND COMMUNITY 17
-munda, "protection, custody."107 But ansi- means "deity, God,"loS while auda-
means "riches" or "wealth,"109 and aun- has not been explained.vv That the two
names could exist simultaneously is shown by a fortuitous comparison from the late
Visigothic court: in 683, both Ansemundus, bishop of Lodeve in Gaul, and Aude-
mundus, virhllusterofficti'palatini, subscribed to the acts of the Thirteenth Council
of Toldeo.t!' Both names are about equally rare,l12 and it seems safe to assume that
in Aunemundus and Ansemundus we really are dealing with two different people, and
not a spelling error.
While we can only associate the names of the counts in the law code with the king,
Ansemundus also had connections with the senatorial aristocracy. He was the affec-
tionate friend of Avitus, who wrote him a long letter and two notes fiIled with florid
politesse.i In one characteristically fulsome piece, Avitus begged him to visit his native
town of Vienne.w For Avitus, Ansemundus was such a good friend and devout Chris-
tian that
for the contemplation of that piety, which we ate accustomed to wish for especially on
feast days, let us believe that your convenience should suffice for us for all the enjoyment
of the solemnities. 115
It might be tempting to dismiss this letter as an example of the grimly overelabo-
rated courtesy of the age. Interestingly, however, the people said to be lamenting
Ansemundus's absence in this letter are called servuli vestri domni nostri.11
6
Although
this phrase could have been just a rhetorical description of the clergy of Vienne, it
might also refer to Ansemundus's particular relationship with the Viennese church,
and specifically to a monastery in Vienne which he had founded.
For if we can accept Ansemundus's donation of 543, the magnate was both a great
patron of monasteries and a devout citizen of Vienne. As Ian Wood has pointed out
in reference to this document, there are few traits more characteristic of the Roman
aristocracy of Gaul than church-building-!" and devotion to one's civitas,us and it is
revealing indeed that two sources portray Ansemundus in these activities. The veryact
l07Forstemann (n. 1 above) 1.1133.
I08Ibid. 1.120.
I09Ibid. 1.185.
l10It might be a corruption of avi.. (but not ansi.. ):ibid. 1.207. Themanuscript evidence of thesubscription
list shows that the copyists continuallyconfusedaun.. and aud.. ; see n. 85 above.
1111. A. Garda Moreno, Prosopografia del reino visigodo de Toledo (Salamanca 1974)194no. 552and
36 no. 24.
lI2Forstemann (n, 1 above) 1.130 lists five Ansemundi plus several Carolingianexamples, and four
Audimundi and Aunemundi plus Carolingianexamples (1.198-199, 209). To this we can add the Aune..
mundus of the inscriptionof 486, discussed above.
I13Avitus, eps. 55, 80, and 81.
114Native town: "Cum peculiariumvernularumabsentandosuspenditis vota ... "; Avitus, ep. 81 (n,
54 above) 94.
l1lAvirus, ep. 80 (p. 93): "pro contemplationepietatisillius, quamfestis specialius optareconsuevimus,
sufficere nobis comrnoditatemvestrampro omni sollemniumiucunditate credamus."
116Ibid.
117Wood, "Audience" (n. 56 above) citing, e.g., Avitus, ep. 50.
118Ibid., and EugenEwig, "Volksturn und Volksbewulltsein im Frankenreich des7.Jahrhunderrs," 1958,
repro in his Spiitantikes undfriinkisches Gallien, 2 vols., Beiheft der Francia3 (Munich 1976-1979) 1.245;
Chianea (n, 20 above) 374-380.
18
PATRICK AMORY
of writing a donation (and the lost will for which it was a codicil)119 is also a distinc-
tively Roman practice upheld by both the local law codes.P?
The donation, as founding charter of the convent of Saint-Andre-le-Bas in
Vienne.!" shows Ansemundus making a family investment in church and city. The
Donatio is addressed by himself and his wife Ansleubana to his daughter Remila, who
is to be abbess of the new convent. Their family tomb is to be placed in the convent. 122
The city is constantly "our city." The local senate is composed of Ansemundus's "bro-
thers." The church of Vienne is called matermea and is made Ansemundus's chief
heir.
123
Remila is said to have been raised at a convent elsewhere in Vienne, where her
aunt Eubona was abbess.
124
All the imagery evokes an entwined family group of city, church, and the Anse-
mundi. The aristocratic values of devotio and amicititt have found their way into
religion. Like late Roman donations, the charter is phrased as a letter from the par-
ents to Remila; while it displays little of Avitus's rhetoric, it carries similar sentiments.
In founding the monastery, Ansemundus is fulfilling a votum, a theme which appears
in two of Avitus's letters to him. 125 The language has been carried over in Ansemun-
dus's gift to his city, And in placing the monastery under the firm control of the bishop
of Vienne, Ansemundus not only remains true to his friendship with the bishop Avi-
tus, but follows the Gallo-Roman aristocratic orthodoxy of episcopal supremacy over
monastic foundations. This influential doctrine had first been laid down locally only
twenty-six years earlier by the Council of Epaon in 517, which took place under the
leadership of Avitus himse1f.
126
Ansemundus thus appears as a consummate late Roman aristocrat. No contemporary
source makes reference to his ethnic background. Indeed, one can only deduce it from
his Germanic name.
127
Ansemundus was associated with the Burgundian king, of
course, as can be inferred from his secular office in Lyons.128 He and Sigismund shared
119Donatio Ansemundi (n. 100 above): "illasexceptas quasmatriecclesiae et sancto Petroper testamentum
legavimus." Note also the reference to "insrrumenta facta": the donation in hand?
120Liberconstitutionum (n. 1above) 43,60 (which, likeRomanlaw, alsoallows oral wills, although the
legislator considers the custom "barbarica"); Lexroman Burgundionum 31, ed. Ludwig Rudolf vonSalis,
MGHLeges sectio 1,2.1 (Hanover 1892).
mOr possibly St.-Andre-le-Haut; Francoise Descombes, "Vienne,' in Topograpbie chretienne descites
de /aGaule 3: Provinces ecctesiastiques de Vienne et d'Arles, ed.]. Biarneet. aI. (Paris 1986)26-27, 30,
contraC. U. J. Chevalier, Cartu/aire de/'abbaye de Saint-Andre-/e-Bas de Vienne, Collection de cartulaires
dauphinois 1 (Lyons 1869) xxi-xxii. .
122Donatio Ansemundi(n. 100 above): "Domnae filiae Remilae ... monasterium quod Deo vovimus,
ad sepulturamnostram inde construeres, in honoresancti Andreae apostoli.' .
mlbid.: "frarres senamnobilis Viennensis . . . urbisnostrae . . . a1tario matris Viennensis ecclesiae . . .
mater nostraViennensis ecclesia inde nostraheres fiat . . . marri ecclesiae. . . . "
I24The textisunfortunately corruptat this point; ibid.: "ubi soror nostraEubonaabbatissa praeest: cuius
in institutione nutritaer ipsum.' Wasit Eubonaor Rernila whohad been "nutrita' at the other monastery?
It seems morelikelyto have been RemiIa, sincethe point is that the newconventshould live by the rule
of the old.
eps. 80 and 81(n. 54 above) 94, lines 1, 8-9.
126Acta Concili! Bpaonensis 8, 10, 19, printed in the MGHedition of Avitus (n. 54 above) 165-175.
121A muchlatersource (albeitonecontaining early material) calls him "AnsemundusBurgundio": Passio
sancti Sigismundi 10(n. 93 above) 339-if this isthe sameperson. The date (526, betweenthe time of Avi-
tus's letters and the time of Ansemundus'swill)suggests that it probably is.
'28Avitus, ep. 55(n. 54 above) 83-85. Martin Heinzelmannpointsout that his stylevirin/uster implies
that he held highoffice; "GallischeProsopographie (260-527)," Francia 10 (1982) 554s.n. Ansemundus.
19
an interest with Avitus in apostle cults.129 Like the bishop of Vienne, this powerful
nobleman servedthe king, the church, and hispatria of Vienne equally.Ho The three
men moved in the same society, a world in which cultured aristocrats and military
leadersshared power and couldfeel equallycomfortable. There may, of course, have
been riftsin this world, due to conflicts of interest between churchand king, for exam-
ple.
13l
But so far we have seen no evidence that the resultant factions divided along
ethnic lines.
In addition, the sources showus several other men and women bearing Germanic
names, movingin less exaltedspheres of society, but similarly unconcerned with being
"Burgundian" and actingno differentfrompeople bearing Latinnames in the sources.
Thesepeople, clergymen, virihonesti, and members of the Brandobrici, act as mem-
bers of local communities and the church, and as subjects of the Burgundian kings.
Theyare occasionally aware that their non-Greco-Latin namesarenot ideal in the Latin
Catholic world of the MediterraneanWest, but they do not necessariy change them
for this reason. These individuals lived in a regional world formed by the political
demiseof the RomanEmpire, and they belongedto various class and professional divi-
sions within it, but in no way did they cleave to any ethnic divisions that could be
labeled "Burgundian" or "Germanic" by us or by themselves.
LATIN NAMES
Just as our information about people with Germanic names is necessarily dominated
by the Burgundianroyal family and aristocrats, the Latin sample overwhelmingly attests
the lives and activities of the senatorialclass, most of them bishops. This is hardlysur-
prising, since outside of the Liber constitutionum, the evidence is overwhelmingly
ecclesiastical in origin. Nonetheless, senators, whether or not they become bishops,
regularly servedthe king and the royal bureaucracy. Again, what emerges is a general
regional similarity within this sample-so far as ethnic consciousness, or the lackof it,
goes-and generalsimilarities to what wehaveseenof the behavior of peoplewith Ger-
manic names.
Almost all the men whomweknowwith Latinnames served the Burgundianking.
Thismayassume toomuchcontinuity of lateRoman hierarchical niceties after the end of the central imperial
administration.
12
9
Eugen Ewig, "Der Petrus-und Apostelkultimspatrornischen und frankischen Gallien," 1%0, repro
in hisSpiitantikes undfriinkisches Gallien (n. 118above) 2.335-336and nn. 161-162;Wood, "Audience"
(n. 56 above) 75-76.
I3Ansemundus waswealthyenough to found a nunnery, to constructa monastic church(at St-Pierre:
H. Leclercq, "Vienne en Dauphine," Dictionnaire d'archeologie chrhienneet de liturgie 15[Paris 1953)
3066), to leave money to the episcopal church of Vienne, and to havesomeleft over for hisother heirs; Dona-
tioAnsemundi (n. 100above): "Consignamustibi ad hoc opus resnostras, iIIas exceptas quas rnatri eccle-
siaeet sanctoPetroper testamentumlegavimus, et iIlas quas heredibusdimittimus, alias teraspotestarituae
concedimus. "
mOne example is the obscure conflict between Gundobad and Hymnemodus; seen. 81 above. Another
sourceof tension layin the conflicting loyalties of senators with relatives and connections far outside the
small region ruled by the Burgundian kings, leading to suspicions about Sidonius'srelative Apollinaris;
Sidonius, eps. 5.6-7, ed. and trans. W. B. Anderson, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass. 1936-1965) 2.184-194,
and in the reverse direction, about Caesarius of Aries, VitaCaesatii 1.21, ed. BrunoKrusch, MGHSSRM
3 (Hanover 1896)465.
20
PATRICK AMORY
If they did not act asroyal advisers in their role as bishops, they had often held secu-
lar office in the royal administration before their accession to the episcopate. As Mar-
rin Heinzelmann has shown, the episcopate had cometo be seenas a fitting conclusion
to the cursus honorum of a senatorin sixth-century GaUI,132 and his eventual consecra-
tion could be arranged on the basis of family connections as much as ecclesiastical
achievement. 1:13
Here, briefly, is what we know about the careers of these men. The late fifth-century
Syagrius, scion of one of the most powerful families in Gaul,134 seems to have advised
the king-in legalmatters, althoughhe mayjust as well haveserved as a citymagistrate
or provincial judge.
m
An Alethiusseems to have served some similar function. His
name is preserved on a great metrical acrostic epitaph of 500 or 501 in the Haute-
Savoie. He was Lugduni procerum nobileconsilium and alsogenus egregiumtttque
ordineprinceps. 136 He was probably a powerful senator of Lyons who advised the Bur-
gundian king.
m
Another representative of a great Gallicfamily, Gregoryof Langres,
had previously served ascount of Autun under the Burgundiankingsfor forty years. 138
These men continued to fulfill the ancient duties of their class, smoothly switch-
ing allegiance asthe political circumstances required. Indeed, in the 470s, Syagrius was
famously reported by Sidonius to have learned the barbarians' language: this is the
last recorded reference to an independent Burgundian language-although the jok-
ing style of the letter makes this evidence difficult to evaluate.P? Alethius's beauti-
fullyinscribed epitaph, showing perfect orthography and fewabbreviations, attests a
worldview splendidly unaware of any change. like the Roman legal collections being
producedincontemporary Lyons and Autun.140 In an ancient Gallic tradition, he was
buried in his countryestate far from the duties of his city. 141
l32Heinzeimann (n. 28 above) passim.
133Gregory of Langres, great-great-uncle of Gregory of Tours, servedas count of Autun under the Bur-
gundian kingsfor forty years beforehe was acclaimed bishopof Langres by the people of that city; Gregory
of Tours, Vitti patrum7.1-2; the family continued to produce bishopsfor cities all over Gaul.
134PLRE2 s.n. Syagrius 3, p. 1042;]ohn Matthews, Western Aristocracies andImperial Court A.D. 364-
42.5 (Oxford 1975) 75,340. Aegidius's sonSyagrius, the "rex Romanorum" at Soissons 465-486/7 (PLRE2
s.n, Syagrius 2, pp. 1041-1042). mayhavebeen relatedto himaswelLThe name Syagrius reappears, par-
ticularly in southern Gaul, over the next two centuries.
mSidonius, ep. 5.5.3: "novus BurgundionumSolon" (n. 131 above) 2.182; Martindale, PLRE2 s.n.
Syagrius 3, p. 1042, assumes that he was a judge.
13
6The
date, however, is uncertain due to mutilation of the inscription; Descombes, in RICG-15.226.
It isperhapsworrying that thisepitaph contains no marks of Christianity asidefromthe presence of a (rather
uncertain) date.
I37RICG 15, no. 11.The name isassociated with manyprestigiousfiguresfromthe region, for example
the acquaintance of Sidonius, ep. 2.7.2 (n. 131above) 1.444(tentativelyidentified with this Alethius by
PLRE2, s.n. Alethius2, p. 55); alsothe bishop of Vaison in 527, ActaConcilii Carpentoratensis, ed. F. Maas-
sen, MGHConcilia 1(Hanover 1893) 43, possibly identical withAvitus's deacon Aletius (ep, 41 [no 54above]
69-70); and a mid-seventh-century patricianrelated to the familyof Willebad: Fredegar, Cbronica 4.43-
44, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGHSSRM 2 (Hanover 1888) 142-143.
1;8See n. 133above. On the dutiesof comites asroyal agents, seeLiber constitutionum (n, 1 above) Prima
constitutio13, Constitutiones extravagantes 21.11.
1l9Sidonius repeatshis (apparentlytreasured)pun on "barbarus" and "barbarisrnus": "in your own
presence the barbarianisafraidto perpetrate a barbarism in his ownlanguage" (Anderson'stranslation[no
131above] 2.183); similarly, ep. 4.17 (2.126-127).
1400n the legal collections, see Amory (n. 3 above) 15 (with n. 71),16-17.
141Descombes in RICG15.224.
21
Three more typical senators active near the Burgundian kings at the turn of the cen-
tury were Laconius, Heraclius, .and Aredius. Laconius, a friendly correspondent of
Ennodius of Pavia, was probably a well-lettered, high-born individual. In 494, he was
able to assist Epiphanius of Milan in his plea to Gundobad to release Italian prisoners
of war.142 Heraclius entertained Gundobad with songs or poetry; he also corresponded
with Avitus.
143
Aredius was a virinluster who mediated between Gundobad and Clovis
around the year 500; he may have been identical to Avitus's friend and correspondent
Arigius, who founded churches. 144
A number of prominent senatorial bishops from the sixth century served in high
secular office earlier in their career, including service at the royal court. We are for-
tunate enough to know about these because we have their stylized metrical epitaphs,
which record the activities of their lives.
14S
These epitaphs swell with pride in lineage,
in high office, and in ecclesiastical glory-but not pride in being a Roman. The epi-
taphs attest every kind of satisfaction except that of ethnic awareness. Like the inscrip-
tion of Alethius, they evince no sense whatsoever of living among the barbarians.
The epitaphs attach traditional imperial titles to positions in royal service. Thus we
find Rusticus, bishop of Lyons, who died in 501, having been in saecalaris tituli
praefiguratio. He was some sort of civil servant or judge on a tribunallegtferum.
146
Similarly, Sacerdos of Lyons (bishop after 541) had been apatricius and had held some
other high civil office.147 Pantagatus of Vienne, born in the 480s, was a magnus oragtor
and held quaesturae cingulae from the kings.
148
Hesychius of Vienne, his near-
contemporary and a distant relative of Avitus, had been both quaestor and regum
habilis.
149
There were doubtless other aristocrats who held these same positions.uv
It was not necessaryfor senators to take bureaucratic office in order to take part in
the royal government, however. Two bishops advised the Burgundian kings directly:
142Ennodius, VitaEpifani168-170, ed. Friedrich Vogel, MGHAA7 (Berlin1885) 374-375; the letters:
Opp. 38, 86, 252 (eps. 2.5, 3.16, 5.24; pp. 37, 115, 197); PLRE2 s.n. Laconius, p. 653, suggests identify-
ing him with Flavius Lacanius, virconsularis after 538.
143 Avitus, ep. 53 (n. 54 above) 82 line 7: "os saecularis eloquentiae"; eps, 95-96, pp. 102-103.
144Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.32 (n. 54 above) 78-80, though Gregory'sinformationon Burgundy
isoften fallible. Avitus, ep. 50(n. 54 above) 78-79. Martindale suggests the identification of the twomen,
PLRE2 s.n. Arigius 2, p. 142. For an Aregius who wasalso spelledAridius, seeDuchesne (n. 1 above) 2.479.
Arigius couldbe Germanic (Arachis): M. Schonfeld, Worterbuch deraltgermanischen Personen- undVolker-
namen(Heidelberg 1911)24s.n. Aregius; Frederic Amory (personal communication). Alater source made
the sixth-century bishop Aridius of Gap "ex Francorumprogenie," despite his parents' Latin names: AS
Maii 1, p. 111, on whichsee Kurth (n. 29 above) 1.108 with n. 2; for a similar caseand its significance,
see n. 191 below.
1450n the significance of these epitaphs, Heinzelmann (n. 28 above) 101-102, 178-179.
14GIbid. 103-104, interpreting the "tribunal" as the Burgundian royal council, and postulating mili-
taryservice from the phrase "rnilite corde"; givenlate Roman chancery usage, this could refer merelyto
bureaucraticservice (Iones [n. 33 above] 1.104).
147Heinzelmann (n. 28 above) 130-133.
148Ibid. 227.
149Ibid. 227-228.
I5OTwo potential candidates: Alcimus,patricius in Viviers in the early(?) sixthcentury(R. W. Mathisen,
"PLREII: SuggestedAddenda and Corrigenda," Historia 31 [1982]364-386 at 365s.n.): his name and
locationsuggest a relativeof Avitus, Namatius, bishop of Vienne ca. 558-560 (b. 486), was, according to
hisepitaph, apatricius whoiuradaret, but he is generally placedin Ostrogothic or Frankish Provence: Hein-
zelmann (n. 28above)228-229; R. Buchner,Die Provence in merowingischerZeit, Arbeitenzur deutschen
Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte 9 (Stuttgart 1933)92.
22
PATRICK AMORY
Avitus and Gemellus ofVaison. Avitus has been discussedsufficiently; as a forthright
man, prolific writer, and metropolitan of one of the Burgundian royal capitals, he
exerted much influence at court. He attempted repeatedly to convert Gundobad, and
he succeededin converting Sigismund, which made the latter his protege in religious
matters.
Another bishop who appears near the king is a Gemellus named in the lawcode, m
almost certainly Gemellus ofVaison, to whom Avitus wrote a brief courtesy-note, 152
and who subscribed to the acts of the Council of Epaon.
lH
Gemellus, about whose
family we know nothing, for once, is the only Latin name
154
and the only bishop to
appear in the entire royal lawcode. At his behest, Sigismund propounded an edict con-
cerning foundlings, a perennial concernof the church. It is one of the veryfew appear-
ances of the church, or indeed Christianity, in the entire law code.
These are the senators about whom we know the most. Any of them could have led
the same careers identically under the late emperors; those who had been born before
the end of imperial control in the Rhone valley had managed to switch allegiances
rather more smoothly than some of their unlucky contemporaries. m Those who
survived the fall of the Burgundian kingdom in 534 remained prominent under the
Frankish kings, and may even have continued to hold secular offices before they
assumed the bishopric.156 None of them was the least embarrassed or compromised by
his behavior; none of them has left any record of feeling different or special due to
his Roman descent. Their prominence and self-conscious pride were due to their
senatorial descent, a more specialized category than an ethnic group.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
All the evidence examined so far depicts the elites of the Burgundian kingdom behav-
ing in startlingly similar ways, regardless of the names that they bore. They held court
offices, they founded churches, they corresponded, they left epitaphs in Latin meter.
Senators took pride in helping run the government at the king's side and at the judi-
cial bench; people with Germanic names could dedicate themselves to their cities and
debate theology. None of these people behaved as though he or she belonged to a self-
conscious ethnic community. Indeed, the saliently cultural features of all our "Bur-
gundians" are Roman-as they had to be in these long-settled regions of the Mediter-
ranean hinterland. The sourcesdepict a small group of literate, devout, Christian men
and women well schooled in the late antique politics of patronage, deference to the
saints, and generosityto the community. Our "Romans," on the other hand, all took
IlILiber constitutionum (n. 1 above) Consrirutiones extravagantes 20.
mAvitus, ep. 60 (n. 54above) 87.
IHActa Concilii Bpaonessis (n, 126above) 174.
154Except for the consuls in the dating formulae. On the count Silvanus, see n. 1 above.
mSuch as Apollinaris, upon whomthe suspicion of the Burgundiankings fell in the 470s: Sidonius,
eps. 5.6,5.7 (n. 131above) 2.184-194, or Arvandus, whowastried at Rome in 469 for plotting to turn
Gaul overto the Visigoths: Sidonius, ep. 1.7 (1.366-378).
156Suchas Pantagarus andHesychius, whodid not assume the bishopric ofVienne until ca. 549and 552;
Heinzelmann (n. 28above) 227-228 places their service under the Burgundiankings, but there was ample
time for them also to haveserved in Frankish courts.
23
intimate part in the activities of the court and administration. They were continuing,
alongside their traditional literary and ecclesiastical activities, a senatorial tradition of
public servicein the government, whether imperial or royal. If there were indeed vio-
lent barbarian warriors who spoke no Latin, or exclusivesenators who shunned their
military rulers, we know nothing of them. If such literary stereotypes did survive, no
source enables us to connect them with the groups named in the law codes. To read
ethnic division into sixth-century Burgundy is to project modern concerns back into
the Dark Ages, or classical concernsforward. In the sources, no individual displays any
kind of restricted ethnic consciousness or any apparent difference in behavior.
In light of this general picture, it is worth hypothesizing other, non-ethnic causes
for the singular difference of linguistic origin between the Germanic names of the law
code and the Latin ones of the episcopal lists. The problem partly stems from the types
of evidence that survive, which privilege the documentation of senators and counts over
anyone else.
One reason for the absence of Latin names from the law code, then, is the general
absence of bishops, with the one exception of Gemellus, mentioned in a novel. Even
the king's mentor Avitus is absent; he was preparing a complementary set of canon
laws. Sigismund, the friend of bishops and a devout Catholic, seems to have main-
tained a firm division between secular and ecclesiastical governance. 157 The Liber con-
stitutionum is distinctively free of religious legislation.w and the acts of the Council
of Epaon do not bear the royal name or any kind of secular validation, unlike, for
example, Clovis and the Council of Orleans in 511.
159
Possibly the situation in 517,
when Sigismund issued the law code, was too volatile to risk institutionalizing the
Catholic hierarchy within the government, since an alternative Arian church must still
have subsisted from the days of Gundobad. 160 Although Avitus oversawSigismund's
conversion to Catholicism and wrote three letters for the king to the emperor at Con-
stantinople, the bishop of Vienne did not govern the Burgundian kingdom, nor was
he the sole influence on Sigismund's activity.161 At the veryleast, Sigismund's slaughter
of his son Sigeric suggests that he was not the thoroughly pious king implied by Avi-
tus's letters
162
and manufactured by later hagiography after Sigismund's "mar-
mWood (n, 27 above) 221-222 has suggested the opposite, noting the probable issuance of both the
secular law code and the canons of the Council of Epaon at Easter 517.
15SOut of 109 edicts, only 5 edicts legislate for the church (14.5,70.2, 102, Constitutiones extravagantes
20 and 21.13); three others mention Christian topics (8,45,52.3, along with a few formulaic utterances
in the preface: Prima constitutio 1A or B, 1B*, 2 and the introduction to the subscription list).
159Epaon was inspired by the pope, not the king; Wood (n. 27 above) 227. The Council ofLyons in 519,
in contrast, was called by the king (ActaConci/ii Lugdunensis praef., 3, explicit, printed in the MGH edi-
tion of Avitus [no 54 above] 175-176); Avitus was not there, having died in the interim, and the royal con-
nection relates to the uncanonical marriage of a courtier; see Mathisen (n. 150 above) 384 s.n. Stephanus.
IGOActa Concilti' Epaonensis 32 (33) (n. 126 above) 172; Avitus, ep. 7; and see Wood (n. 27 above)
153-154.
IGIWood demonstrates that Sigismund did have an unusually close relationship with his bishops, par-
ticularly Avitus, Maximus of Geneva and Viventiolus of Lyons: their influence dominated the king's reli-
gious activity and his ecclesiastical foundations: (n. 27 above) 208-227, (n. 34 above) 15-18.
IGZAvitus praised Sigismund for having given up Arianism: ep. 8 (n. 54 above) 40: "sed adhuc de regi-
bus solus est, quem in bonum transisse non pudear"; eps. 31 (p. 62), 77 (p. 92), 91 (p. 99), etc. attribute
various pious virtues to him in the language of deuotio, Avitus, of course, had an interest in depicting the
king in this light, and he wasable to influence him to the extent of founding churches, Whether this influence
necessarily extended to all secular affairs is another matter.
24
PATRICK AMORY
tyrdom."163 Gregory of Tours-admittedly an anti-Burgundian-certainly did not see
Sigismund asthe tool of his bishops. 164 Neither shouldwe. Avitusno doubt was close
to Sigismund; other people were also, and it isunfortunate that their writings do not
survive in similar abundance.
More surprisingly, however, there was as little senatorial as ecclesiastical participa-
tion in the Iiber constitutz'onum. The various senators who called themselves royal
advisers, and held high official titles inherited from the imperial bureaucracy of the
Roman Empire, are absent. In light of the omission of senators' namesfrom the royal
lawcode, what can be made of their title of quaestor, legal adviser to the emperor?
Once more, the preponderance of aristocratic-ecclesiastical evidence may have
skewed the picture. The quaestorship, of all the high court positions under the late
Empireand in contemporary Ostrogothic Italy, remained peculiarly open to men of
loworigins, fromthe curiales and cohortales.
165
Moreover, its tenure wasnot long, so
the three attested aristocratic quaestors from Burgundymay be simply a drop in the
bucket.166
Both the lawschools to produce quaestors'< and the municipal and bureaucratic
institutions to support social mobility168 still existed in Burgundy. If, as seemslikely
fromthe qualityof the Burgundianlawcodes,169 the kingscalledin experienced legal
163The Passio sancti Sigismundi (n. 93 above) does not even mention Sigismund's murder of his son.
I64Gregory of Tours, Historiae 3.5-6 (n. 54above) 100-103: Sigismund's defeat bythe Franks wasdivine
retributionfor his act of filicide.
16ryones (n. 33above) 1.104, 134-135, 504-505,2.549, 576, 641. FromOstrogothic Italy, note Fidelis,
quaestor in 527-528, an advocate fromMilan (PLRE2 s.n. Fide/is, p. 469); hisfather, alsoan advocate there,
had "shone in the forum" (PLRE2 s.n, Anonymus 116, p. 1236): he was almost certainlya mere curialis,
or Cassiodorus would havementionedotherwise in hispraise for the family; Variac 8.19 (n, 63 above) 250.
I66PLRE2, pp. 1258-1260.
167The laws clearly expected advocati to appear in the courts: Liberconstitutionum (n. 1 above)Prima
constiturio, 22, 55. On law schools, see Amory (n. 3 above) 15 n. 71.
168Survival of curia: in Vienne: Avitus, hom. 6 (n. 54 above) 110, citedbyMarie-Bernadette Bruguiere,
Litterature et droit dans laGaule duVesilcle, Publications de I'Universite desSciences sociales de Toulouse,
Centre d'Histoire juridique, seriehistorique 2 (Paris 1974)242; similarly, the "nobilis senatus Viennen-
sis" of theDonatio Ansemundi, almost certainly the curia. In Lyons: the inscription of Alethius, RICG15,
no. 11. InProvence: the HolkhamCapitulary, Capita VII-XX coffectionis iuris Romano-Visigothici (Prag-
mentaGaudenza), ed. Karl Zeumer, MGHLeges sectio I, 1 (Hanover 1902)469-471; on the latter, see
Buchner(n. 150above) 25. Survival of municipal record bureaux: Ian Wood, "Disputes in LateFifth-and
Sixth-Century Gaul: Some Problems," in TheSettlement ofDisputesin Early Medieval Europe, ed. Wendy
Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge 1986) 12-14; a char/anus publicusexistedin contemporary Arles,
Vita Caesarii 2.39(n. 131 above) 497.Survival of defensor civitatis: Bruguiere 242; Jean Richard, "Le defensor
civitatis et la curiemunicipale dansla Bourgogne du VIIIesiecle, " Memoires de laSociete pour I'Histoire
du droitet des institutions des anciens paysbourguignons, comtois et romands 21 (1960) 142-145. Exis-
tence of acomplex documentary procedure forgiftsof property, monitored bythe comes civitatis and requiring
palace officials and trainedscribes: Classen (n. 57above) 121,and note the scribal colophonto the Dona-
tio Ansemundi. Similarly on wills: Classen 122, and note the testamentum mentioned in the Donatio
Ansemundi; on the directevolution of eighth-century Burgundianwills fromRoman procedure, Georges
Chevrier, "Declin et renaissance du testament en droit bourguignon," pt. 1, Memoires delasocietepour
I'histoire dudroitet des institutions desancienspaysbourguignons . . . 9 (1943)69-80, and UlrichNann,
"Merowingische Testamente: StudienzumFortleben einerromischen Urkundenform imFrankreich," Archiv
fur Diplomatik 18 (1972) 33-34, 93-100.
I69Hermann Nehlsen, "LexBurgundionum," in HandwiJrterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte 2 (Ber-
lin 1978) 1907; idem, "Lex romanaBurgundionum," ibid. 1932-1933; GeorgesChevrier, review ofW.
Roels, Onderzoek naarhet gebruik van deaangehaalde bronnen van RomeinsRechtin delex romana Bur-
25
assistance for the preparation and promulgation of their edicts, they probably dipped
into the still-extant pool of middle-class Roman legal and administrative talent in their
provinces.
We know a few of these lesser officials with Latin names. One was the Stephanus
accused of incest before the Council of Lyons, whose appeal was supported by the king.
The acts of the council give him no honorific, and later sources call him merely "ex
officio Sigismundi," manager of the SC.
170
Further potential examples of men in this
class are Agrecius, domesticus at Vienne; Apodemius, primicerius at Die between 463
and 510; Adrianus, a iudexat Chalon; and Nicasius, "who administered the common-
wealth" at Avallon.r" There must have been many more than the sources preserve.
Men with Germanic names who wanted nonmilitary positions must alsohave held civil
office. Ansemundus, for example, was a judge in Lyons, and the virhonestus in an
inscription is another possibility. '
JUSt as the names of the bishops are absent from the law code, so one should not
expect to see the names of these functionaries subscribed to the law code alongside the
counts. In a late Roman parallel, it was not the bureaucracy or the quaestors to whom
the Codex Theodosianus was presented for approval in 438, but the historic represen-
tatives of the Roman state, the Senate.Ps
These fragments of evidence immediately suggest why only one Germanic name
appears among the bishops: all the bishops were senators. The poorly documented civil
service may well have been more catholic, with a small "c," than the church. The sena-
tors, ofcourse, were only a tiny percentage of the free indigenous population of the
Rhone valley. As scholarsfrom Stroheker to Heinzelmann have demonstrated, they per-
petuated their power and their wealth by monopolizing the bishoprics. 173 The Latin
names in the episcopate represent not ethnicity, but senatorial descent. Not only Ger-
manic names, but unknown Latin ones are generally absent. Gemellus ofVaison is the
exception, not the rule.
If bias of evidence, royal ecclesiastical policy, and senatorial monopoly of the church
gundt'onum, in Bt'blt'otheque de I':Eeole des abarses 118(1960) 207-208; it should be noted that the Lex
romana Burgundt'onum may have been a private compilation.
I7Aeta Concilii Lugdunenst's praef., 1, and explicit(n. 159above) 175-176. Latersources: VitaApol-
It'naris Valentt'nenst's 2-3, ed. BrunoKrusch, MGHSSRM 3 (Hanover1896)198(copied by the Vita Avt'tt'
Viennensis 2, printed in the MGHedition of Avitus[no 54above] 178-179). Mathisen (n, 150above) 380
s.n, Palladiasuggests that Stephanus's wife Palladiawaselarissima, on the basis, I assume, of her name,
whichbelongedto a well-known Gallicaristocratic family. For the contemporaneity of the VitApQIIt'naris
(contraKrusch), Heinzelmann (n. 28 above) 222 n. 227.
I71Agrecius, domestieus at Vienne, s. V-VI: Heinzelmann(n. 128above) 549s.n. Agr(o)ecius 4; PLRE2
s.n, Agrecius 4, p. 39; Apodemius: Heinzelmann 556 s.n.; Adrianus: ibid. 544 s.n.: Nicasius,ftmulus . . .
qut'eotempore [sc. before 544] euram ret'publkae admt'nt'strabat: Jonas, Vita Iobannis abbatt's 11, ed. Bruno
Krusch, MGHSSRG [Hanover 1905] 335; Carolingian revisers raised Nicasius to the rankof clarissimus: Hein-
zelmannop. cit. 657s.n, Another nonclerical minor official froman adjoiningregionwas Proculus, aera-
riusat Clermontin the 520s: Gregory of Tours, Vita patrum4.1-2; Heinzelmann op. cit. 675s.n. Proculus
6.
172Gesta senatus Romant' de Theodosiano publkando and Codex Theodosianus 1.1.5, 1.1.6, ed. Theo-
dor Mommsen, Theodosiani It'bri XVI ~ eonstt'tutt'onibus St'rmondt'anis, 3 vols. (Berlin 1905), 1.1.1-4,
28-29.
I73Since southeasternGaul in the earlysixthcenturywascertainly the epicenter of senatorial domina-
tion of the church, Peter Brown'sreservations about this thesiscarry lessweight for the Burgundianking-
dom; see Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antt'quity (Berkeley 1982)186(with n. 71), 243-249.
26
PATRICK AMORY
explains the absence of bishops and Latin names in the law code and the
of Germanic names in the episcopate, why do almost all of the counts who subscribed
the Liberconstitutionum in 517 bear Germanic names? Given that we know at least
one senatorial comes, Gregory of Langres, and that there must have been others, the
absence of Latin counts there is startling.
I believe that the solution lies in one of the chief purposes of the law code, which
I have examined elsewhere. Sigismund produced his revised collection of Burgundian
laws above all in order to govern legal relations between the descendants of the mili-
tary settlers of 443 and their indigenous hosts. These arrangements were first organized
by the imperial government of Valentini an III, but apparently not committed to law.
When the provinces surrounding Geneva, Vienne, and Lyons became de facto indepen-
dent of Ravenna, it obviously became necessary to codify the agreements which funded
the Burgundian army and protected the native populace. To this rump of legislation,
there accrued edicts on criminal and civil issues arising from the microcosmic appli-
cation of Roman public lawto a region the size of a province. This production of law
simultaneously satisfied royal aspirations to imperial grandeur, in the end producing
the rather messy collectionof 517. But the bulk of the Iiberconstitutionum, in its con-
cern for inheritance, marriage, and sale of property, derivesfrom the desire to protect
the integrity of the Burgundian sortes or allotments, the gifts which soldiers received
in return for military service.174 Whether these allotments consisted of land or shares
of tax revenue is irrelevant for this purpose. 175 The point is that in this law code, we
possess chiefly the legislation regulating the quartering and victualling of a hereditary
army on provincial soil.
176
What was crucial were the terms of a contract binding on
a group of warriors.
The signatures of the Germanically named counts in the royal law code, then,
represent the support of the army for the agreements contained in the code. Polarized
military and civilianaristocracies were an inheritance from late Roman society.177 If we
assume that we are dealing with soldiers, it is not surprising at all that they bore Ger-
manic names, nor need this indicate a separate ethnic consciousness. Like the man of
the epitaph, "Francus ego cives, miles Romanus sub armis," 178 men with Germanic
names had dominated the Roman armies in the West from the fourth century. Like
him, they had often lost all contact with any non-Roman heritage, aside from an
ambiguous tribal name originating from allegiance to a king, 179 or from service in an
army,180 as much as any kind of ethnic identity. Such a tribal name could, of course,
become the foundation of an evolving ethnic identity, through the charisma and
174Amory (n. 3 above) 24-26; on the lawsof allotments, seeWalter Goffart, Barbarians andRomans
A.D. 418-584: The Techniques 0/Accommodation (Princeton 1980) 126-161; Jean Durliat, "Le salaire de
lapaixsociale danslesroyaumes barbares (Ve-Vlesiecles)," in Anerkennung undIntegration: Zu denwirt-
schaftlichen Grundlagen der Volkerwanderungszeit, 400-600, ed. Herwig Wolframand AndreasSchwarcz,
Denkschriften der philosophisch-historischen Klasse 193 (Vienna 1988) 49-55.
I7lLand: Wood (n. 2 above) 65-69. Tax revenues: Goffart and Durliat as in n. 174.
1170n the fifth-century Roman division betweenmilitary eliteand senators, seeDemandt (n, 51 above),
the tableafter86; PeterBrown, The War/do/Late Antiquity (London 1971) 118-120; Wormald(n, 30 above)
22l.
118Cited by Geary(n. 88 above) 79.
119Wenskus (n. 2 above) 66-72; Wolfram(n. 4 above) 30-3l.
18Wood (n. 2 above) 62-63.
27
propaganda attaching to a successful royal family and its military following.181 By the
eighth century, the name Burgundio has become an ethnic term associated with the
former regions of the Burgundian kingdom, but it applies to everyonewho livesthere,
whether they possess a Latin or a Germanic name. Although this identity was based
on territory, eighth-century men and women thought that it derived from their
"racial" descent, and they propounded fantastic theories about the fate of the former
"Roman" section of the population. 182
Soldiering in Burgundy as in the late Empire was a hereditary profession, 183 and sons
in late antiquity took their names from their families. 184 Similarly, the profession of
bishop ran in senatorial clans, producing a preponderance of Latin names in the evi-
dence. From the analysis of the behavior of all the individuals that we know, however,
nothing sugggests that a separate ethnic consciousness attached to the names of the
soldiers quartered in the Burgundian kingdom of the fifth and sixth centuries, or to
the bishops of the cities in which they lived.
Moreover, although the signatures of the counts doubtless indicate the consent of
the army to the law code, some of these counts may have considered themselves
"Romans" despite their Germanic names. In the Constitutiones extravagantes 21.11,
the king orders' 'ut omnes comites, tam Burgundionum quam Romanorum, in omni-
bus iudiciis iustitiam teneant.' Now it is certainly possible that more men bearing
Latin names had become counts since Sigismund's promulgation of the Libercon-
stitutionum, or that the requirement refers to the one count bearing a Latin name, Sil-
vanus, or that there were counts such as Gregory of Langres, count of Autun for forty
years, who simply did not happen to subscribe to the code. But it is just as plausible
that some of the Germanically named counts were considered to be Roman, that is,
that they were tax-paying consortes-the sense usually adopted by the law code.
Equally, the term "Roman" could imply that they were descended from indigenous,
even senatorial, families, who had chosen Germanic names for some of their children.
Contemporary senatorial families in other regions of Gaul displayed comparable insou-
ciance toward ethnic nomenclature in adopting the personal name "Burgundio. "185
If simlar attitudes prevailed in Burgundy, perhaps a Germanic name destined a child
for the king's service.
In his letter to his daughter RemiIa, Ansemundus addresses her as "Remilae
!!Wolfram(n. 4 above) 23, 30-31.
182Ibid. 55, 63; seefurther Ewig (n. 118 above) 256-257; idem, "DiefrlinkischenTeilungenund Teil-
reichen(511-613)," 1953, repro (n. 118 above) 1.158-159. Fate of the Romans: Passio sancsi Sigismundi
1 (n. 93 above) 333 (this workis eighth-century, although believed to contain earlierelementswithin it:
seen. 93 above); copiedbythe Vita Il Gangulji, praef., ed. WilhelmLevison, MGHSSRM 7 (Hanover 1919)
171-172.
183Jones (n. 33 above) 1.68-70, 2.738-757, 1049-1053; Durliat (n. 174 above) 54-55.
184Martin Heinzelmann, "Leschangements de la denomination latineala fin de l'antiquite," in Famille
et parente (n. 12 above) 22-24; idem (n. 28 above) 13-22; Werner (n. 12 above) 25-27.
!'Heinzelmann (n. 128 above) 572 s.n, Burgundio. The evidence of the mid-fifth-century(?) family of
Latinus, Syagria, and Gontbadusis difficult to evaluate, juxtaposing asit doesa well-known senatorial name
withthat of a Burgundian king; the Arianelementin the story isevenmoremysterious; ibid. 634s.n, Latinus
2. DespiteHeinzelmann, ibid. 592 s.n, Domitianus, the lifeupon whichthis evidence is basedreally does
looklikea late fiction concocted out of knownnamesand factsfromfifth-century Lyons; VitaDomitiani,
ASIulii 1 (Antwerp1719) 49-54. In the ninth century, AgobardofLyonsconnectedthe problemscaused
by the "Gundobadi" (men who claimed the right to trial by battle from the Liberconstitutionum) with
28
PATRICK AMORY
vocabulo Eugeniae."186 Sheis the first recorded person in the Burgundian region to
exchange a Germanic name for a Latinone, which was, significantly, the name of a
virgin saint praisedby her father's friend Avitus.
187
Although the preponderance of
Latin names among the Rhone valley episcopacy was a function of the senatorial
familial origins of the bishops, the choice for Remila'snewname emphasizes that the
available Christian names were overwhelmingly biblical, Greek or Latin-not Ger-
manic. Indeed, Germanic names may, aswehaveseen, havecarried unfavorable Arian
connotations. 188 It isimpossible to avoid the impression that Rernila'ssecond, Greco-
Latin, name either pointed her in the direction of the church, or marked her taking
of monastic vows-a commonpractice in the early Middle Ages.
189
If separate naming traditions had represented inherited membership in either the
military or the senatorial aristocracy, by the 510s eventhese divisions of social func-
tion were evidently losing meaning. The similar social and cultural behaviorof all the
magnates concerned, the gradual correlation of the interests of the local royal govern-
ment with the declining international interests of the senatorial aristocracy, and the
apparentappearance of naming strategies to destine children for secular or ecclesiastical
careers, all coincide with the attempts bythe king to strengthen the crumbling" eth-
nic" distinctions on which the finance and security of the realmdepended.190 The Bur-
gundiankingdom fell to the Franks, of course, in 534, and bythe early seventh century
the "ethnic" originof nameswouldhaveno obvious connection to either profession
or social standing.t
In thispicture, the senators standout not as an ethnicgroup, but as a self-conscious
class, markedby their family pride, classical education, and monopolyof the church.
Theirspecial position was changing over the lifetimeof the Burgundiankingdom. The
interestin Christian matters displayed by aristocrats with Germanic names and mem-
bers of the royal family encouraged book-learning, which still includedvestiges of clas-
sical culturelikemetrical epitaphs. The kings thus encouraged theological debate and
the Arianreligion of the Burgundian king: perhapsan echoof thisfound its way into the VitaDomitiani.
Agobard, Adversus legem Gundobddi 4-6, ed. L. vanEcker, Corpuschristianorum, continuatio mediae-
ualis 52 (Turnhout 1981) 21-23.
186Dondtio Ansemundi(n, 100 above): "Domnae filiaeRemilae, vocabulo Eugeniae.... "
187Avitus, Poema 6.503-515 (n. 54 above) 289-290.
'""Above at n. 93.
1"9St. Eugenia mayhave beenpopular in the area. In addition to Avitus's citation, note St. Eugendus
in the Vita patrumiurensium, and a noble Eugeniaof Marseilles, ILCV 1.179. Slightly earlier, Ereriliva,
motherofTheodericthe Great, adopted thebaptismal nameEusebia; Anonymi Vdlesiani parsposterior 12.58,
ed. TheodorMommsen, MGH AA9 [= Chronica minora 1] (Berlin 1892). On the other hand, a number
of othernunsandclergymen incontemporary Burgundy did not bothertochange theirLatin names (Fiebiger-
Schmidt, nos. 92, 97, 123), one of them definitely Catholic (Fiebiger-Schmidt no. 104).
190Amory (n, 3 above) 24-26.
191In general, see Patrick]. Geary, "EthnicIdentity asa Situational Construct in theEarly MiddleAges,"
Mitteilungen deranthropologischen Gesellschajt in Wien113 (1983) 15-26; idem, Aristocracy in Provence:
TheRhoneBasin dt the Daum ofthe Carolingian Age (Philadelphia 1985) 101-110. The family of Aune-
mund of Lyons, theseventh-century bishop, provides an interesting case. Hisfather borethe Germanic name
Sigo, the motherthe Latin namePetronia. Thehagiographer felt it necessary to specify that Aunemundwas
natione tamenRomanus," thusrhetorically emphasizing that he was .,semper . . . publicis fascibus honora-
tus' (Acta S. Aunemundi 1 [n. 88 aboveJ); hisprotest might illustrate the survival of a feeling that the family
shouldhave chosen one of its Latinnamesfor a sondestinedfor civic service and the church. Seefurther
Werner (n. 12 above) 14-18, 25-32.
29
favored literary scholars like Heraclius and Avitus. Simultaneously, the growing iso-
lation of the senatorial classwas causing decline in their Greek letters and theological
acumen, and making it difficult for them to keep up wide epistolary contacts in a
period of poor communication; accusations of treason threatened friends and relatives
in other barbarian kingdoms.t The vast cultural and political arena of the senators
was shrinking into the smaller world of regnum and civitas. By the end of the period,
there is little to differentiate the family of an Avitus from the family of an Ansemun-
dus, of a senatorial family from a military one.
All the evidence discussed has been, of course, transmitted through the medium
of writing, which necessarily "Romanizes" the subject. "Germanic" behavior has
traditionally been thought to focus on warfare, oral saga, and bonds of loyalty between
clan members and between lord and man. None of this could easilyappear in a metri-
cal poem of the early sixth century, or in a donation charter to a church.
Obviously, the evidence cannot prove anegative, that no one in the Rhone valley
between 443 and 534 behaved in a manner traditionally labeled as derived from' 'Ger-
manic" culture. But we can affirm that not one of the people whom we know from
the sources is ever described as behaving in such a manner; 193 and that none of them
defined themselves primarily according to ethnic allegiance, according to descent in
the old Roman categories of gens and natio. The major allegiances were those of
politics, class, religion, and locality. A dual categorization based on ethnic division or
divided "Roman" and "Germanic" cultures is therefore of little use in discussing Bur-
gundian societyin the early sixth century, and the appearance of "Germanic" cultural
features in the region in ensuing centuries is best explained in other ways than from
a foundation of ethnic and cultural duality.
The surviving evidence from the Burgundian kingdom points to a generally simi-
lar provincial late antique culture and social consciousness among the inhabitants of
the Rhone valley. This world need not bring only classical, or even necessarily Mediter-
ranean, associations to mind. Outside the tiny cultured circleof the elite, more bizarre
manifestations of cultural identity occur, notably the series of bronze figured belt
buckles associated with the region. They feature a man between two beasts, who may
or may not be identifiable with Daniel, and they are often decorated with Latin words,
some of which make literal sense, many of which have no grammatical meaning. Past
scholarshave seen these buckles as syncretistic, combining Christian and pagan religion,
or barbarian and Roman culture. 194 It would be better to see them as the product of
192Avitus isa keyfigurein the Gallic decline of Greek and theology, despitehispretensions in theseareas:
Pierre Courcelle, Leslettres grecques en occident de Macrobe aCassiodore (Paris 1948) 246-253, a situa-
tion that contrasted with contemporary Italy. On Avitus's misunderstanding of monophysitism, alsoWood
(n, 27 above) 201-204. On the problemsof communication, ibid. 55-61, 189-190. On treason accusations,
I am preparing a separatearticle.
193Relying heavily on the Italian evidence and on Germanicnames, Riche (n. 10above) 60-67 asserts
that barbarians were interestedonlyin military-oral and religious culture. The Burgundianevidence, as we
have seen, supports no such conclusion.
19
4
Hanz Zeiss, Studienzu den Grabfunden ass demBurgundenreich an derRhone, Sitzungsberichre
der Bayerischen Akademieder Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Abteilung 7 (Munich 1938) 52-
57; PierreBouffard, Necropoles burgondes de la Suisse: lesgarnitures de ceinture (Geneva 1945) 77-78;
R. Moosbrugger-Leu, Diefri;hmittelalterlichen Gurtelbeschliige der Schweiz (Basel 1967) 28-29, the last
with astonishing assumptions about areas inhabited by 'pure" Romanand Burgundianpopulations, with
"Kontaktzonen" in between(200-201).
30
PATRICK AMORY
their own time and place, of a distinct local culture only partially the result of the dimi-
nution of political community from a huge empire to a fewprovinces. Interlayered with
this far more alien world was the literary culture carried by the better-traveled upper
classes represented by the unopposed and complementary social groupings of the royal
court and the senatorial aristocracy. In trying to understand the complexities of this
society, the concept of an ethnic dichotomy between barbarian and Roman, or a cul-
tural dichotomy between Latin and Germanic, can only be a hindrance.
Saint]ohn's College
Cambridge CB2 1TP, England

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