Theodoric the Great

Flavius Theodoric the Great (Latin: Flavius Theodorīcus, Greek: Θευδέριχος, Theuderijos, Gothic: Þiudareiks, Old English: Þēodrīc and Old Norse: Þjōðrēkr or Þīðrēkr), also known as Theodoric the Amalo > (Dacia, May 12, 454-Ravenna, August 30, 526), was king of the Ostrogoths (474-526), ruler of the prefecture of Italy between 493-526, regent of Hispania (511-526) and patrician of the Empire. One of the most powerful sovereigns of his time, in his moment of greatest splendor he ruled over a large part of the western territory of the Empire, from Hispania to the provinces of the Danube, coming to be considered an heir of the Roman emperors of the West, leaving evidence of that Italian colleagues called him Augustus in their writings, although he himself never adopted that title, recognizing Zeno as sole emperor of both parts of the Empire.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Theodoric was originally from a branch of the Germanic people of the Goths. His lineage, the Amalos, had settled after the breakup of the Hunnic Empire in the western Carpathians, roughly present-day Hungary, his father was the warlord Theodomir and his mother his concubine, Erelieva Eusebia..

As a young boy, Theodoric was sent to Constantinople as a hostage in 463 (a common practice to ensure that his people respected their agreements with the Empire). But within the metropolis he enjoyed great freedom of movement, alternating with the imperial court and also with Roman citizens, attending shows and religious services, in addition to receiving an education in the Greco-Roman tradition similar to that received by the children of the Roman elite.

King of the Ostrogoths

Theodoric returned to the Carpathians with his people at the age of eighteen, at a time when tensions in the Balkans were rising. This situation was the result of complex political games at the court of Constantinople, which led to the meteoric rise of Zeno the Isauric, first as a strongman after the throne in 471, and then as emperor in 474. But this led to the destabilization of the ancient political balances in the area, causing numerous political conspiracies and the revolt of the Thracian Goths, who were harmed by the new distribution of power.

Since the Carpathian region had very limited resources, which created stiff competition among its inhabitants, Theodomir followed the advice of his newly arrived son and headed around 472 into the interior of the Balkans, penetrating the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire with all its people, made up of about 10,000 warriors and a larger number of non-combatants. Theodoric's hope was to reach an agreement with the emperor Zeno and replace the Thracian Goths as allies of the empire. After the death of his father and the leader of the Thracian Goths, the young warlord was able to unite all the Goths of the east. under his rule in 484, thus commanding some 20,000 combatants. Although this simplified the Balkan political map, relations with Emperor Zeno were always tense, and in 487 the situation deteriorated to such a degree that Theodoric he led his warriors to the gates of Constantinople.

Since Theodoric was unable to take the imperial capital by force and Zeno lacked the forces to win a decisive victory over the Ostrogoths, the two sides eventually reached an agreement. The leader of the Ostrogoths was thus named patrician and magister militum by the emperor, who sent him to the Italian peninsula to put an end to the government of Flavio Odoacer, who had reached his position seventeen years ago after deposing the usurper Romulus Augustus, although Odoacer had served as a vassal of the emperor, over time he began to become more autonomous, until he caused a complete break with Zeno when he supported the usurper Leontius and his magister militum Flavio Illos. The move satisfied the wishes of both sides. On the one hand, Zeno drove away from his provinces the Ostrogoths, who represented an element of instability, and finished off the traitors; and for his part, Theodoric obtained the necessary legitimacy to seize the rich Italian territories.

King of Italy

Edictum Theodorici regis of the year 512. The continuity of the imperial administration under the government of Theodorico earned him the support of the Roman elites.

The Italy to which Theodoric led his people in 488 was a tremendously desirable booty. Its abundance of fertile land made it, at a time when wealth was measured in the agrarian power of a territory, much more prosperous than Greece and the Balkans. The commercial network that connected the peninsula, although weakened due to the fragmentation of the western part of the empire, continued to be important. In fact, despite the fact that Rome was no longer the most populous city in the world, its size was still prodigious, and it was quite possibly the second largest city in the Roman realm, behind only Constantinople.

The Ostrogothic monarch had no problem defeating Odoacer's Herulian forces, first during the crossing of the Alps in August 489 and a month later near Verona, besieging Odoacer's impregnable capital, Ravenna, in 492. Cornered, the Herulian warlord reached a pact with Theodoric in February 493 to share power, and ten days later, after entering the city, the monarch decided to organize a banquet in Honorius's imperial palace to celebrate the agreement, with the intention of having some of his followers close by to assassinate Odoacer. But since this plan went astray, Teodorico decided to kill him with his own hands; After making a toast, he drew his sword and plunged it into Odoacer's clavicle, after which he, dying, asked: "Where is God?", to which the monarch replied: "This is what you did to my friends". It is said that Theodoric stood over the corpse of his dead rival and said: "Certainly there was not a bone in this unfortunate fellow."

According to John Antiochenus, "that same day, all the members of Odoacer's army who could be found were killed by order of Theodoric, as well as his entire family." Odoacer's wife, Sunigilda, was drugged to death, and her brother Onulfo was killed by archers while seeking refuge in a church. His son Thela was exiled to Gaul, but when he tried to return to Italy, Theodoric ordered that he too be killed. Upon Odoacer's death, Theodoric effectively became King of Italy.

Based in Ravenna, Theodoric's reign enjoyed greater legitimacy than that of his predecessor for various reasons. In the first place, he ruled in the name of Zeno and accepted his superior rank, although in practice he had full autonomy to act both in his kingdom and in the rest of Western Europe. Another legitimizing element was the fact that he kept intact the Roman administrative structures, thus receiving the support of the Senate of Rome. In fact, he respected the Roman aristocracy, who managed to keep the vast majority of their lands (being compensated when they took losses) and develop a career as civil servants at the Ravenna court. On the other hand, his Gothic followers were satisfied with the land distributions that were made and with the military posts, destined for them in their vast majority.

Regent of Hispania

The territories controlled directly by Theodorico and, in a softer tone, the kingdoms upon which hegemony exercised in 523. Saving the Gaul and Britannia, their hegemony covered all the other lands of the western Roman Empire.

Settled in the kingdom of Italy, Theodoric developed an important diplomatic policy both with other Germanic peoples and with the Eastern Roman Empire. However, stability and peace were shaken in 507 by the Battle of Vouillé, which pitted the Frankish king Clovis I against the Visigothic king Alaric II, Theodoric's son-in-law by marriage to his daughter Theodegoda. The result of this clash was the defeat of the Visigoths, their withdrawal from Gaul (present-day France) and the death of Alaric II himself.

After the defeat, Theodoric intervened in the Visigothic kingdom to protect the interests of his grandson Amalric, son of the late ruler and heir to the crown. At the same time, the Ostrogothic forces drove the Burgundians out of the Visigothic possessions they had occupied in Provence, but were careful not to encroach on Frankish-held territories, thus avoiding a full-scale conflict.

Although the legitimate ruler of the Visigothic kingdom was Amalric, in practice Theodoric ruled Hispania until his death in the year 526, appointing the officials of the administration and the army, collecting tribute and reorganizing the peninsular government using again the imperial model Roman, which improved the efficiency of the Hispanic administration; In addition, he ensured that his forces in the Spanish territory did not behave like a conquering army. All this made both the Visigoths and the Hispano-Romans look favorably on his government.

In this way, the Ostrogothic monarch united Italy, Hispania, Mediterranean Gaul and the Danube provinces under his rule. This allowed him to have a reserve of warriors and material resources far superior to those possessed by the last Western emperors, which explains the important role that the Ostrogothic king played in those years. In fact, this allowed the monarch to extend his influence over the Vandal kingdom and the Burgundian kingdom, as well as over other Germanic peoples such as the Thuringians or the Bavarians. Thus, when he died in the year 526, Theodoric left an impressive kingdom that directly or indirectly controlled a good part of what had been been the Western Roman Empire.

Theodoric and religion

The Ostrogoths were Christians of the Arian confession, although Theodoric did not attempt to impose the religious beliefs of his people on his subjects. On the contrary, in Italy he quickly reached an understanding with the Roman religious authorities, which favored internal stability and the coexistence of the Gothic and Roman communities. The monarch himself played an important role as arbitrator in ecclesiastical disputes, such as during the 498 schism, caused by the simultaneous election of two popes.

This good understanding between the two communities, called the Ostrogothic Compromise, only began to fragment in the last years of Theodoric's reign, when tensions with the eastern emperor Justinian increased by outlawing this Arianism, possibly as a maneuver to undermine the authority of the Italian monarch over his Roman subjects. This led Theodoric to launch his own persecutions of Orthodox Christians as a way of putting pressure on Justinian.

Political and cultural legacy

The Mausoleum of Theodorico in Rávena, an example of the classical architectural tradition put at the service of Germanic power.

The use of Roman political structures and Theodoric's interest in classical culture earned him the admiration of the Romans in his time, to the point that it was said of him that he "looked like a philosopher dressed in purple", purple being the color that distinguished the emperors. In fact, a significant number of historians still consider him to this day an example of a German barbarian inspired by the Latin civilization, although other researchers estimate that his adoption of the Roman tradition it was due more to a practical criterion, not leaving aside their Germanic customs.

But if the figure of Theodoric has survived to the present, his reign had a much shorter lifespan. In part, this was the result of his own longevity, which made him survive the husband of his daughter Amalasunta, the Visigoth Eutaric. The already elderly monarch was counting on Eutaric becoming his heir and holding the Visigoths and Ostrogoths together, but who finally inherited the throne in 526 was his son, Athalaric. The Visigoths could hardly have accepted as king a boy who lacked the slightest military prestige (of great importance among the Germanic peoples) and firm dynastic rights.

On the other hand, the legitimate heir to the Visigothic crown was still alive. Amalric, politically marginalized for years by his grandfather Theodoric, was now a grown man (so the fiction of a regency in his name could hardly continue to be maintained) and enjoyed the support of Theudis, a high-ranking Ostrogothic military official who had created strongholds. links with the Visigothic elites during his time in service in Hispania. Faced with the rise of this new monarch, the Ravenna court had no choice but to restore the Spanish royal treasury and renounce the tributes it had collected during the reign of Theodosius. In return, the Visigoths withdrew from Provence, which officially became part of the Kingdom of Italy.

The Ostrogoths' loss of power and their own internal division was taken advantage of less than ten years after Theodoric's death by the Emperor Justinian, who, having easily conquered the Vandal kingdom of North Africa, launched himself in 533 to conquer the kingdom of Italy. Ostrogothic defeats followed, losing first Sicily in 535 and then Ravenna in 540. After twenty years of hard warfare, the Goths were subdued and Italy came under the direct rule of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Theodoric in medieval legend

Theodoric is an important figure in medieval literature. In Germanic legends he is called Theodric, Thidrek or Dietrich von Bern (i.e. "of Verona"), who is exiled from Lombardy, his kingdom, and receives the help of Etzel (Attila) against the usurper, his uncle Ermenrich, although in some versions Odoacer appears as his antagonist; these legends, spread from Germany to Scandinavia, England and Iceland portray him in a heroic way.

Sources for the study of Theodoric the Great

Historians mainly use two written sources to study the figure of Theodoric the Great. The first of these is the Variae, a work divided into twelve books that compiles a total of 468 letters, edicts and letter models (formulae) from the reign of Theodoric and his successors. Athalaric (526-534), Theodatus (534-536) and Vitiges (536-540). The compiler of these texts was Cassiodorus, a Roman aristocrat who served as a high official in the administration of the Ostrogothic kingdom on two occasions, first between the years 507 and 511, and later from the year 524 to the year 538 or 539, shortly before the collapse. of the Ostrogothic kingdom at the hands of the Eastern Roman Empire. These texts, while considered authentic, were carefully selected in 539 or 540 by Cassiodorus to justify both his and other Roman potentates' collaboration with the Ostrogothic kingdom, thus offering a particularly positive view of Theodoric.

The other text that has survived to the present is the Getica (Origin and facts of the Goths), written in Constantinople in the year 551 by Jordanes, a member of the of the administration of the Byzantine Empire. The text is based in part on a history of the Goths written (and now lost) by the aforementioned Cassiodorus, who, being in the service of the monarch of the Ostrogothic kingdom, cannot be considered a neutral narrator.

Since both the Variae and Getica are based on the opinion of a high official who served and prospered under Theodoric the Great, historians often insist on the need for carefully take the statements made in both texts, preferring to analyze them in light of the political facts of the time and the testimonies given by other types of more objective sources. In this regard, the numerous private documents from Ravenna stand out, which although They do not always speak directly about Theodoric, but they do show the situation in Italy in the years in which he and his successors ruled. Similarly, archeology plays a fundamental role in learning about elements such as the wealth of agriculture, the survival of trade or the development of urbanism, with the remains of this period found in Italy being among the most important in the Mediterranean, only behind those discovered in Jordan.

Theodoric the Great in popular culture

The figure of Theodoric the Great has enjoyed some popularity in historical novels, including the books Ravenna was the tomb of Rome, which the Hungarian writer László Passuth published in 1963, and Hawk, by American Gary Jennings, published in 1993.