Gallo-Roman culture
As Gallo-Roman culture of that is ancient Roman civilization in Gaul influenced culture called. This developed in the course of the Romanization of Gaul in the time after Augustus . The southern and central regions of Gaul, such as Gallia Narbonensis , which later developed into Occitania , Aquitaine and Auvergne were particularly influenced by the Gallo-Roman influence . The north of Gaul was less Roman in comparison, but the cultural influence of Rome was also noticeable here, for example in Augusta Treverorum ( Trier ), which belonged to Gallia Belgica and in the 3rd / 4th centuries. Century rose to the imperial residence.
Several amphitheaters and aqueducts can still be visited in southern France today , which demonstrate the high degree of Romanization in this area. Cities such as Arles ( seat of the Gallic Praetorian prefecture from the beginning of the 5th century ), Autun , Cassinomagus , Narbonne , Nîmes , Lyon , Orange and Vienne were influenced by the Romans . Since the reign of Emperor Claudius , many Gallic aristocrats rose to the Senate and thus went from ruled to rulers. The Gallic elites had long been thoroughly Romanized by this time.
During the crisis of the empire in the 3rd century, Gaul was part of the Imperium Galliarum for a few years , which had broken away from central Roman authority (260–274) until it could be reintegrated by Emperor Aurelian . Around this time there were also unrest in the less strongly Romanised rural population (see Bagauden ).
In the course of late antiquity , when Germanic warriors came to the Imperium Romanum in the course of the so-called migration of peoples and established their own rulers in Gaul after the collapse of Western Rome , there was a transformation of Gallo-Roman culture, although the remains of Roman civilization are mainly in the south could last longer than in many other parts of the crumbling western empire. The upper class of Gaul rivaled that of Italy in the middle of the 5th century and tried in 455 in the form of Avitus to enforce one of their own as emperor. After the failure of Avitus and the death of his successor Majorian , the Gallo-Roman elite, whose members had risen to the highest imperial offices, especially in the 4th century, finally lost their influence on the emperor. The church increasingly assumed the role of the collapsing Western Roman state as authority in the mid to late 5th century.
The most important Gallo-Roman of the 5th century was Sidonius Apollinaris , who was classically educated. His letters give a good insight into the conditions in Gaul in late antiquity. He was in contact with several other distinguished Gallo-Romans, including the Bishop Ruricius of Limoges , who in turn also maintained contacts with Caesarius of Arles .
In the course of the state collapse of West Rome, the Gallo-Romans looked for other fields of activity, which made the Catholic Church a meeting point. Gallo-Romans, who had previously embarked on a secular Roman official career, now entered church services. This mainly affected members of the Gallic senate aristocracy , whose ancestors (regardless of their origin) had held higher Roman state offices in the 4th and 5th centuries and had risen in imperial service. They belonged to the noblest strata of Gallo-Roman society and were important bearers of late antique cultural traditions in the period that followed. They tried to preserve their prominent social position by exercising local or church offices.
In northern Gaul, independent Roman dominions under Aegidius , Paulus and Syagrius established themselves in the period from 461/62 to 486/87 , while comes Arbogast the Younger held the region around Trier for some time after the Visigoths , Burgundy and Franconia became larger and larger Roman areas brought under their control. When the Frankish rex Clovis I , who rose to become the most important ruler in Gaul from 486/87 to 511, converted to Christianity , this made it easier for the Franks to integrate into Gallo-Roman society. The Merovingians used the Gallo-Roman elites (primarily the bishops, such as Caesarius of Arles or Remigius of Reims around 500 ) for their administrative apparatus, which for a long time was based on the Roman model. Up until the 7th century, the Gallo-Roman ruling class in southern Gaul was an important power factor, especially due to the relatively strong position of the bishops in the civitates .
The withdrawal of the Gallo-Roman culture, which was based on antiquity, was already heralded at this time, but classical education was still an elite mark in the late 6th century , through which men like the poet Venantius Fortunatus or the Gallo-Roman bishop and important historian Gregory of Tours (who himself came from a senatorial family) tried to stand out from the warlike “barbarians”. This was all the more true as Gaul was ruled by the Catholic Merovingians in the early Middle Ages , so that the denomination was no longer a distinguishing feature.
literature
- Helga Botermann : How the Gauls became Romans. Life in the Roman Empire. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-608-94048-0 .
- Steffen Diefenbach , Gernot Michael Müller (ed.): Gaul in late antiquity and early Middle Ages. Cultural history of a region (= Millennium Studies. 43). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-026005-2 .
- John Drinkwater, Hugh Elton (Eds.): Fifth-Century Gaul. A Crisis of Identity? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1992, ISBN 0-521-41485-7 .
- Marcello Ghetta: Late Antique Paganism. Trier and the Treverland (= history and culture of the Trier country. Vol. 10). Kliomedia, Trier 2008, ISBN 978-3-89890-119-2 (also: Trier, University, dissertation, 2005).
- Joachim Gruber : Gaul . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 4, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-7608-8904-2 , Sp. 1092-1094.
- Ralph W. Mathisen, Danuta Shanzer (Ed.): Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul. Revisiting the Sources. Ashgate, Aldershot et al. 2001, ISBN 0-7546-0624-4 .
- Roman-Germanic Central Museum : Gaul in Late Antiquity. From Emperor Constantine to Childerich, King of the Franks. With a foreword by Kurt Böhner and an introduction by Konrad Weidemann . Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1980, ISBN 3-8053-0485-4 .
- Karl Friedrich Stroheker : The senatorial nobility in late antique Gaul. Alma-Mater-Verlag, Tübingen et al. 1948 (Unchanged reprographic reprint, special edition Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1970).
