Galla Placidia

Galla Placidia and her children on an intermediate gold glass ( Brescia , Museo di Santa Giulia). The naming is not secured.

Aelia Galla Placidia (* 388 in Thessaloniki , † November 27, 450 in Rome ) was a daughter of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I , granddaughter of Valentinian I , mother of the future Emperor Valentinian III. and as such, de facto regent of the Western Roman Empire for several years .

Life

Childhood and youth

Aelia Galla Placidia was born in Constantinople around 390 as the daughter of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I and his second wife Galla . Galla was the daughter of Emperor Valentinian I and sister of Valentinian II ; in the form of Galla Placidia, the new Theodosian dynasty joined the ruling family up to now. She had two older half-brothers, later Emperors Honorius and Arcadius , both of whom had emerged from Theodosius' first marriage to Aelia Flavia Flaccilla . While her half-brothers were named Augusti one after the other , she received the title of Nobilissima as a small child , which emphasized her rank as the daughter of the emperor. In 394 Galla's mother succumbed to the consequences of a miscarriage, on January 17th, 395 Theodosius died. The ten-year-old Honorius thus became emperor of the western half of the empire and, together with Galla Placidia, was probably under the care of the army master Stilicho and his wife, their cousin Serena . Galla presumably received the same upbringing as Serena's daughters, the later wives of Honorius, who, in addition to reading the Bible and traditional female housework, may also have included classical poetry. There was considerable tension in these years at the court of her brother Arcadius, who ruled the Roman East and rejected Stilicho's claim to be his guardian as well.

In 405, Galla Placidia was betrothed to Stilicho's son Eucherius, but without a marriage. O'Flynn suspects that Stilicho did not want to patronize Eucherius too early in order not to make him a competitor of his hoped-for grandson from the marriages of his daughters with Honorius, and therefore did not promote his career and marriage. In 408 Eucherius was killed in a palace intrigue, as was his father Stilicho and his wife shortly before. Zosimos reports that Galla Placidia personally approved Serena's execution by the Roman Senate .

Hostage and Queen of the Visigoths

With Stilicho's death, Honorius and the western court had tried to free themselves from the overpowering influence of the military. But soon after the Western Roman Empire was robbed of its supreme army master, mutinous Visigoth foederati , led by Alaric , invaded Italy and finally plundered Rome (410). Numerous Roman aristocrats were captured, including Galla Placidia, who apparently no longer lived at the imperial court in Ravenna . Obviously, Alaric planned to use the princess as a hostage; but presumably he also intended to marry into the imperial family through her. In any case, the Visigoths moved south from Rome to cross the Strait from Messina to Sicily . The enterprise failed and Alaric died in 410. He was succeeded by his brother-in-law Athaulf , who led the Visigoths to Gaul in 412 . There he conducted negotiations with Honorius about the admission of his troops into the imperial army and the right of the Gothic warriors to be supplied by the Roman state. In return, the emperor, who was now under the dominance of the new army master Flavius ​​Constantius , demanded military support against the usurper Jovinus and the return of his sister Galla Placidia, whom Constantius wanted to marry.

Athaulf provided the promised military aid: He killed Jovinus' brother Sebastianus and the Roman general Sarus , who wanted to help the usurper, and finally handed Jovinus over. However, Constantius now attacked the Goths and forced them to evade. Athaulf therefore refused to send Galla Placidia back to the Romans and married her in January 414 in Narbo according to Roman custom. Priscus Attalus , the city ​​prefect of Rome who was appointed by Alaric as a counter-emperor and who was also abducted after the sacking of Rome, possibly wrote an epithalamium on this . The marriage of an emperor's daughter to a “barbaric” general who adhered to Arian Christianity was an affront for some contemporaries. In retrospect, the Spanish bishop Hydatius saw the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy Dan 11.6  EU . Athaulf intended with this marriage possibly to force a contract with Emperor Honorius, who had not been ready until then to approve the supply of the Goths in Gaul. However, that did not succeed; rather, the Visigoths felt compelled to withdraw to Spain under the pressure of the attacks of the Roman army master Constantius. At the end of 414, Galla Placidia gave birth to a child in Barcelona named Theodosius, who however died as an infant. His body was exhumed 35 years later and presumably buried in the so-called Honorius Mausoleum (consecrated to St. Petronilla from 757) on the south side of the transept of St. Peter's Church in Rome.

In 415 Athaulf was murdered. His short-lived successor Sigerich also murdered Athaulf's sons from his first marriage and abused his widow, but was overthrown by Wallia after a few days . He concluded a new peace treaty with Honorius in 416, under which Galla Placidia returned to the Romans.

Return to the Romans

Medallions of Honorius and Galla Placidia

Upon her return to the imperial court, Galla Placidia assumed the role of woman at the side of her unmarried imperial brother Honorius. On January 1, 417, she was forced to marry the actual ruler in Ravenna, the army master and patricius Constantius, who took up his second consulate on the same day . According to Olympiodorus of Thebes , the wedding took place despite Galla Placidia's express protest. This marriage had two children, Honoria and Valentinian .

When Pope Zosimus died at the end of 418, Galla Placidia took part in the dispute over the succession and supported Eulalius, who was confirmed by the Roman city prefect Symmachus . An agreement in the sense of the emperor at a synod in Ravenna failed, however, so that Honorius invited to a second synod, including Galla Placidia, as the emperor's sister, personally letters to some African bishops, etc. a. to Aurelius of Carthage and Augustine of Hippo . In these letters she expressed her regret over the failure of the Synod in Ravenna, but did not express any preference for either candidate. Also Paulinus of Nola invited them. However, since Eulalius did not adhere to the requirement to stay outside Rome until the agreement was reached, Honorius was ultimately forced to confirm Boniface I, who was elected by the majority of the presbyters . The Church was also very important to her. Olympiodoros attributes the destruction of pagan cult images to her and reports that she even threatened her husband with a divorce if a well-known pagan magician or priest was not executed.

In 421 Honorius finally elevated his brother-in-law Constantius to Augustus at his urging . Galla Placidia became Augusta . Her son Valentinian thus effectively became heir to the throne. A little later, on September 2, 421, Constantius III succumbed. a pleurisy , shortly before he could embark on a campaign against the Eastern Roman Empire, which did not accept his elevation to the emperor. After the death of her husband, some historians, such as Olympiodorus, on whom Zosimos relied, assumed an incestuous relationship with her unmarried brother Honorius, which, through intrigue, led to a quarrel that also took place between Gothic mercenaries, Galla Placidia's former subjects, and Roman soldiers was carried out. Obviously a conflict had arisen because of the unresolved question of succession, because the childless Honorius seems to have refused to make his nephew Valentinian officially heir to the throne by raising him to Caesar or Augustus . In this situation, the influential people were grouped around Honorius on the one hand, and Galla and her son on the other. The army master Flavius ​​Castinus stood against them, while the comes Africae Bonifatius stood on their side. Galla Placidia recently fell out of favor and lost the Augusta title. Jutta Meischner suspects that Honorius, who had been dominated by Constantius for a decade, wanted to finally free himself from paternalism.

At the beginning of 423 she left Ravenna with her two children and sought refuge in Constantinople, where her nephew Theodosius II had succeeded his father Arcadius. But soon after Galla's departure, Honorius died on August 27, 423 without leaving a successor. When a court official named Johannes was proclaimed emperor in the western empire after four months of being emperor, Theodosius II appointed his nephew Valentinian a nobilissimus and betrothed him to his only two-year-old daughter Licinia Eudoxia . In the autumn of 424 Valentinian was appointed Caesar in Thessaloniki , before Theodosius sent him with his mother and sister, who had been raised again to Augusta, together with a strong army under the Eastern Roman army master Aspar to preserve the legitimate dynasty to Italy. After a brief civil war, Johannes was overthrown by his own generals and handed over to Galla Placidia. The usurper was cruelly executed. On October 23, 425 Valentinian III. proclaimed Augustus of the West in Rome at the age of six . As his auctor imperii and senior Augustus , Theodosius continued to claim supremacy over the entire Roman Empire .

Regent of the Roman West

A coin minted on behalf of Galla Placidia, depicting her son Valentinian III on the obverse . shows. On the back there is a cross, typical of all coins related to Galla Placidia, which is intended to illustrate her Christian faith.

The influence of the generals

Since Valentinian III. Galla Placidia tried to control the fortunes of the western empire. The sphere of power that she ruled for her son was considerably smaller than that of Honorius: During the reign of the usurper John, the Visigoths had spread into Gaul and the Vandals in Spain conquered Seville and Carthago Nova . During the negotiations before the campaign against John, she may have had to cede parts of Illyria , about which there had been arguments during Honorius and Arcadius' lifetime, to Theodosius II; perhaps this did not happen until 437. She was initially supported by the first army master Felix and the comes Africae Bonifatius. The latter had already supported them in exile in Constantinople, while Felix, who was soon promoted to Patricius in place of the well-deserved Boniface , was presumably installed by Theodosius II and tried to enforce his interests. Their fiercest competitor was Aëtius , who had once recruited 60,000 Huns as mercenaries for John . So that he did not use this army against the empire, Aëtius was accepted into Roman service as a comes and the Huns generously compensated. Soon he became magister militum per Gallias .

In 427, as Prosper suspected, Boniface was accused by Felix and declared an enemy of the state. According to Stickler, it is unlikely that the intrigue came from Aëtius, who tried to play him and the regent off against each other, as Procopius assumed, because he was in Gaul at the time. Allegedly Boniface declared himself independent in Africa . According to Prokop and Jordanes , he sought the support of the Vandal warriors in Spain against the army that Placidia sent against him. The Vandals then crossed to Africa. An exchange of letters between Augustine and the imperial ambassador from 428/429 has been preserved. In view of the growing threat from the Germanic mercenaries, Bonifatius soon fought the invaders again in agreement with the regent.

In 430 Aëtius succeeded, meanwhile as magister militum per Gallias almost on a par with Felix, in eliminating and killing him. This also significantly reduced the Eastern Roman influence. Aëtius, whom the Empress still regarded as a threat, rose to become the most powerful man in the Western Roman Empire. While he was fighting against invaders and insurgents in the north of the empire, the Eastern Roman general Aspar supported Bonifatius in the vain fight against the vandals in Africa . After a defeat at Hippo Regius in 431, Galla Placidia called Bonifatius back to Italy and appointed him patricius and first army master (that is, the de facto head of government) in 432 , while Aëtius held the consulate in the same year. Aëtius, who realized that the imperial mother was playing Boniface against him, withdrew his army from Gaul to Italy, which triggered the first civil war of the Roman imperial era, which was not fought for the empire but for the office of the highest military and actual ruler . Boniface won the Battle of Ariminum , but died three months later from the wounds he suffered. Galla Placidia made his son-in-law Sebastianus his successor. But Aëtius, who had fled to the Huns, returned in 433 with strong troops of the Hun king Rugila and with their help forced the office of master for himself. Sebastianus was forced into exile, and Aëtius married Boniface's rich widow, the goddess Pelagia. Placidia, who now had no other capable general, made him Patricius in 435 of necessity . This meant that the entire western Roman army was under his control, which made Placidia's influence rapidly waning even before her son came of age. The civil war had also caused considerable damage to the reputation of the Western Roman Empire.

Law, religion and family

In 426 the so-called citation law was enacted in the name of Placidias and Valentinians in order to enforce the authority of the law , in which it was laid down which writings by Roman jurists should have greater authority in court. Three years later the court made the famous declaration that the emperor was bound by law and that his authority depended on that of law.

As a devout Nicene Christian, Placidia had churches built. In Ravenna she had San Giovanni Evangelista erected as a thank you for her and her children when they returned to Italy in 425, in Rome Saint Paul Outside the Walls and in Jerusalem the Church of the Holy Sepulcher restored. The Bishop of Ravenna, Petrus Chrysologus , praised her as the mother of Christians and, in parallel to the divine Trinity, as the embodiment of an imperial trinity as the daughter, wife and mother of an emperor. When in 432 the newly elected Pope Sixtus III. was attacked by an unidentifiable man named Bassus, she enforced a more severe punishment for Bassus than the synod she had ordered on behalf of her son. At the latest with Aëtius' factual takeover of power in 433, it was limited to the area of ​​religion.

Later sources often saw Augusta negatively: Prokop accused Galla Placidia above all, Valentinian III. Having effeminates, Cassiodorus blamed her for the downfall of Rome under her son's reign. In the autumn of 437 the wedding of the now adult Valentinian III. with Licinia Eudoxia in Constantinople. Thus the senior Augustus Theodosius II was the father-in-law of his cousin. Since the real sphere of influence of the western Roman government had decreased considerably in size since the engagement (Britain and large parts of Africa , Gaul and Spain were under the control of foederati , Pannonia had been given to the Huns by Aëtius), the conditions had to be new to be negotiated. Galla Placidia was probably not present at the wedding, but Sivan suspects that she gave her daughter-in-law a precious gift, the Ashburnham Pentateuch . The fact that the young imperial couple had their own palace built while their mother continued to live in the old residence (see: Placidia Palace ) has been interpreted as evidence that their influence on their now adult son was rather small.

Old age and death

As Valentinian III. was in principle old enough to take over the affairs of government, Placidia withdrew more and more from the political stage. She spent her twilight years in Rome, while the real power remained with Aëtius. In the last year of her life, her daughter Honoria, who was still unmarried at the age of 31, had an affair with a court official named Eugenius. When she became pregnant, the emperor and army master felt threatened and reacted harshly. Honoria lost the Augusta title and had to marry an insignificant man while her lover was being executed. Thereupon she and her followers apparently called the Huns for help: According to later sources, she allegedly offered marriage to Attila, king of the Huns, and half of the Western Roman Empire if he would help her. According to John of Antioch , the ring that Attila promised to marry, according to the report of contemporary Priskos , who himself had accompanied an embassy to the Huns, was only an addition to the bribe that was supposed to keep the Huns away from Rome . Only later historians, who also accused Licinia Eudoxia of having called the Vandals to Rome a few years later, interpreted the affair as an attempt by Honorias to take revenge for their treatment. How credible the story is at its core is controversial. While Valentinian had betrothed his only six-year-old daughter Eudocia 442 to Hunerich , the son of the Vandal King Geiserich , he fought the unauthorized politics of his sister. Galla Placidia reportedly protected her daughter from her brother's wrath. The battle on the Catalaunian fields that followed this affair and in which Aëtius was able to defend himself against Attila, she did not live to see.

Galla Placidia died on November 27, 450 in Rome and was buried there (not in the mausoleum in Ravenna that was wrongly attributed to her ). Shortly before, she had the coffin of her son from Athaulf, Theodosius, transferred to the family grave next to Constantius III, Honorius and his two wives. In the end, despite all her efforts, she had been unable to maintain the power of her dynasty; she, Honorius and Valentinian III. always remained playballs for the powerful military. Four years after her death, Valentinian III tried. to turn the tide by killing Aëtius himself, but this only led to his own murder and the end of his family's rule in the Roman Empire.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sirago: Galla Placidia: la nobilissima (392-450). P. 13, based on the marriage age of Roman women at 12 , assumes 392 as the date of birth.
2. ^ Sivan: Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. P. 31.
3. ^ John Michael O'Flynn: Generalissimos of the Western Roman Empire. University of Alberta, 1983, p. 61.
4. ^ Zosimos 5:38.
5. ^ Sivan: Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. P. 21. However, based on the careful formulation in Olympiodoros of Thebes, this is not certain.
6. ^ Sivan: Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. P. 11.
7. ^ Liber Pontificalis I, 465 (vita Pauli)
8. ↑ All three letters are quoted in Sivan's: Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. Pp. 75-77.
9. ^ Sivan: Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. Pp. 80-85.
10. ^ Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Cape. 33 (online)
11. ^ Börm: Westrom. P. 64 ff.
12. ↑ Jutta Meischner: The Missorium of Theodosius in Madrid. In: Yearbook of the German Archaeological Institute 111 (1997), pp. 389-435, p. 420.
13. ↑ Timo Stickler: Aëtius. Scope of design for an army master in the late Western Roman Empire. Munich 2002, p. 37.
14. ↑ Timo Stickler: Aëtius. Munich 2002, p. 28.
15. ↑ Sirago: Galla Placidia: la nobilissima. P. 265f.
16. ↑ Timo Stickler: Aëtius. P. 43.
17. ↑ Prokopius: Vandalenkriege 3, 14-19. 24–29, cited in: Sivan: Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. Pp. 105-107.
18. ^ John Michael O'Flynn: Generalissimos of the Western Roman Empire, p. 80.
19. ↑ Timo Stickler: Aëtius. P.56.
20. ↑ Petrus Chrysologus: Sermo 130, 3.
21. ^ Liber Pontificalis 46.
22. ↑ Prokopios: Vandal Wars 1.3.
23. ↑ Angela Matti: Galla Placidia Augusta: Representation of female power in the historiography of the 5th century . GRIN-Verlag, 2007, p. 20.
24. ↑ Chronicon Paschale ad ann. 437. The information given by the chronicler Marcellinus Comes , who is the only one who claims that the celebration took place in Thessaloniki, is probably due to the fact that Valentinian only consented at short notice to travel to Constantinople. See Chronicon Paschale 284-628 AD. Translated with notes and introduction by Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby (= Translated Texts for Historians . Volume 7). Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 1989, ISBN 0-85323-096-X , p. 72, note 242.
25. ↑ Gottlob Reinhold Sievers , Gottfried Sievers: Studies on the history of the Roman emperors . Berlin 1870, pp. 461-462.
26. ^ Sivan: Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. P. 120.
27. ^ Sivan: Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. P. 133.
28. ↑ Angela Matti: Galla Placidia Augusta: Representation of female power in the historiography of the 5th century. P. 23.
29. ↑ John of Antioch, Fragment 84.
30. ^ Börm: Westrom. P. 86 ff.
31. ^ Sivan: Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. Pp. 152-157.

literature

• Henning Börm: Westrom. From Honorius to Justinian. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-17-023276-1 .
• Anja Busch: The women of the Theodosian dynasty. Power and representation of imperial women in the 5th century (= Historia - individual writings. Volume 237). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-515-11044-0 .
• Irvin Oost: Galla Placidia Augusta. A Biographical Essay. University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1968.
• Hans-Karl Siebigs : The tomb of Galla Placidia. Attempt to explain. Karin Fischer, Aachen 2003, ISBN 3-89514-418-5 .
• Vito Antonio Sirago: Galla Placidia. La nobilissima (392-450). Jaca, Milano 1996, ISBN 88-16-43501-1 .
• Hagith Sivan: Galla Placidia. The Last Roman Empress. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-537912-9 ( specialist review ; PDF; 152 kB).

Web links

Commons : Aelia Galla Placidia  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Galla Placidia in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ralph W. Mathisen: Short biography (English) at De Imperatoribus Romanis (with references).