With monasticism firmly established, the church sets about converting the pagan territories of the Picts and Scots in Scotland, the Angles and Saxons in England and other tribes in western Europe. Also, the barbarian Franks rise to fulfill a key prophecy. Meanwhile, the three horns that are plucked up in Daniel chapter 7 are made known, that being three barbarian tribes which successfully establish kingdoms that are eventually uprooted.
Show Transcript
Shalom, and welcome to our history podcast. This is a production of Kingdom Preppers.org. I’m your host, Kingdom Prepper, and you’re listening to: Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. We continue with our history.
Part 11: Conquest and Conversion
With monasticism firmly established, monks would act as the agents of Christianity, spreading the message of the church to distant lands and effectively converting many to the religion. Ireland was instrumental in converting neighboring Britain, for instance. An Irish monk named Columba established a chain of monasteries that crossed the sea. Three of his most famous ones existed in Derry, Darrow, and Iona, an island off the southwest coast of Scotland that became the center of Columba’s missionary efforts. Iona was also the central base from which Celtic Christianity spread to Scotland and northern England. Another Irish monk named Columbanus established monasteries in eastern France and northern Italy, and he evangelized the barbarous Suevi who were settled around Lake Constance. In his book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, historian Thomas Cahill says of the Irish monk:
“Any question of Columbanus’s balance is swept away when you take a serious look at his achievements: at his death in 615 he left behind a considerable body of work—letters and sermons … instructions for the brethren; poems and lyrics, including a jolly boat song; and the even larger legacy of his continental monasteries, busily engaged in reintroducing classical learning to the European mainland. At this great distance in time, we can no longer be sure exactly how many monasteries were founded in Columbanus’s name during his lifetime and after his death. But the number, stretching across vast territories that would become in time the countries of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, cannot be less than sixty and may be more than a hundred…. He had been on the continent for just twenty-five years.”
Public penance, which was quite shaming (and which we covered in episode 5) would give way to a private penitential system of discipline throughout the European continent after Columbanus brought Irish books that demonstrated this new private form of penance. This is also around the time confessions began to be made in private to a priest, who would determine what action needed to be taken on the part of the penitent—this could range from a simple reading of the Psalms, to taking a pilgrimage, paying a monetary sum, or even self-flogging. This new system was developed in Irish and Welsh monasteries during the fifth and sixth centuries.
In episode 9 of this podcast series, we mentioned that many monasteries in Ireland were later accessed for their stores of knowledge and literature following the destruction of such literature due to the barbarian invasion of the Western Roman Empire. Irish books like the ones Columbanus brought along were highly valued, therefore, but toting such books had become something of Irish tradition.
“Wherever they went, the Irish brought with them their books…”
Writes Thomas Cahill.
“… many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies’ heads. Wherever they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization.”
That civilization truly did need saving following the barbarian invasions. With the coming of the Germanic tribes, centuries of history and development had been thrown into chaos, and cherished knowledge was lost. This is the point at which prophecy truly begins to unfold in clear and dramatic fashion as well. In episode 9, we discussed the rise of the Germanic Vandals, from which the term vandalism derives, based on their senseless destruction as seen in the 455 sacking of Rome. Their king, Geiseric, as we have shown, led them to a successful invasion of North Africa in 429, with Carthage eventually acting as their headquarters. Thus, Geiseric was among the first of the new barbarian kings, but neither he nor the Vandals were one of the three horns to be rooted up in Daniel’s prophecy, as some contemporary Christians believe.
Now, while the Western Roman Empire effectively collapsed in 476,
“The empire did not disappear in the fifth century.”
Writes Richard Fletcher, in his book, The Conversion of Europe.
“It is true that there was no emperor in the west after 476, but no one at the time could have guessed that this was more than a temporary hiatus. Authority reverted, at least in theory, to the emperor in Constantinople, where the Roman empire would survive for another millennium. But the western provinces did effectively come under new masters. They arrived by a variety of means. Whenever and wherever possible, the imperial government tried to control, or at least to influence and shape, the process of arrival.”
This is important to note because the prophecy contained in Daniel chapter 7 focuses on horns that arose within an established kingdom, and those horns did not form a new kingdom by supplanting the old, as had been seen with the succession of nations from Babylon to Rome. Rome itself, that fourth terrible beast, never really fell; its western half was merely taken over by barbarian rulers who formed subsidiary kingdoms and thereby redrew the map of Europe.
The number 10 is also representative of Yah’s complete order, it doesn’t mean that the ten horns represent just ten actual barbarian kingdoms. That number reflects the completeness of the barbarian takeover of the Western Rome Empire that came as a judgment. But the three horns that were plucked up by the roots in Daniel 7:8 did represent three individual barbarian kingdoms that were established by three barbarian rulers or tribes, but they were established over a specific territory, which many fail to see. And, as we will show, all three uprooted horns, or kings and their kingdoms, are in fact barbarian non-Romans.
In episode 9, we also made mention of the last Roman emperor in the west under the old order, Romulus Augustulus (or Little Augustus) being deposed by a Germanic commander named Odovacar. This occurred in the year 476, which marked the end of the western empire in its ancient imperial form. With this, the central base of power in the empire shifted back to Constantinople in the east, also known as Byzantium. Odovacar was a barbarian mercenary hired by the father of Romulus Augustus to aid him in seizing the western throne from the current weak emperor. But Odovacar turned on his employers and, at the head of his barbarian mercenaries, marched for Ravenna to seize a western Roman throne for himself. He became king of Italy and thereafter ruled as a client of the emperor Zeno in Constantinople. He is the first barbarian non-Roman king to rule Italy, thus he is also the first of the three horns to be plucked up in Daniel 7.
As the newly minted king of Italy, Odovacar soon ignored the authority of the eastern emperor and did as he pleased. The very next year of his reign, 477, Odovacar confronted the rival Vandals and conquered Sicily, which had been in their possession under Geiseric. Emperor Zeno saw these ambitions as a dangerous threat to his supremacy, and when another barbarian power, the Ostrogoths, moved toward Constantinople threatening invasion, Zeno saw an opportunity. Thus, he turned to that tribe, led by a barbarian named Theodoric, to deal with Odovacar.
Professor Thomas F. X. Noble picks up our historical thread.
“At the same time in 476, and for a few years after this, the eastern court simply hadn’t the means, it hadn’t the possibility of doing anything about what had happened in Italy. Now the Ostrogoths present them with a fine opportunity. Here you’ve got these Goths, who have been in various relations with the Romans for a long time, Theodoric, moreover, amongst those contending factions of Goths, Theodoric’s faction had actually won out.
“Theodoric had spent about ten years in Constantinople as a hostage, he knew the players, they knew him, he spoke Greek, he was fairly well-educated. So, an opportunity was presented to the emperor Zeno, and then to his successor Anastasius, to use the Goths to displace Odovacer in Italy to be able to restore some kind of imperial authority in Italy, and at the same time, to get this potentially threatening group of people out of the Balkans and into the west. So, from various points of view, at Constantinople, this looked like a good deal. Theodoric entered Italy in 489. It took him about four years of fairly hard struggle to gain the upper hand.”
In his book, Heart of Europe, Peter H. Wilson adds:
“Byzantium was obliged to secure Rome by relying on the Ostrogoths, another tribe displaced by the Huns’ eruption into central Europe in the fifth century. Following established practice, Byzantium offered status and legitimacy in return for political subordination and military service. The Ostrogoth leader, Theodoric, had been raised in Constantinople and combined Romanized culture with the Gothic warrior ethos. Having defeated Odovacar, he was recognized as ruler of Italy by Byzantium in 497.”
With Odovacar defeated and his followers crushed, he becomes the first of the three horns to be rooted up to make room for the coming papal power, per the prophecy in the book of Daniel.
[8] “Just as I was thinking about these horns, a smaller horn appeared, and three of the other horns were pulled up by the roots to make room for it….”
—Daniel 7:8
And Theodoric, by displacing Odovacar, became yet another barbarian to gain a throne in the empire of the fourth beast, but only the second to rule Italy, thus, he and the Ostrogoths are the second of three horns that will be rooted up to make room for the growing papal power that would rule from the same territory. However, concerning the Ostrogothic Italian kingdom and the ruling power in the east,
“Cooperation broke down during the reign of Emperor Justinian, who capitalized on his temporary reconquest of north Africa to try to assert more direct control over Italy.”
Writes Peter H. Wilson.
“The resulting Gothic War (535 – 562) saw the eventual defeat of the Ostrogoths and the establishment of a permanent Byzantine presence in Italy.”
Here, the Ostrogoths are officially plucked up, leaving one more horn to be established in Italy and plucked up as well, but Byzantium, or Constantinople, which took control of the territory, does not count, since it is essentially a major component of the fourth beast itself. Of Justinian’s new governmental structure, Peter H. Wilson goes on to say,
“Known as the Exarchate, this had its political and military base at Ravenna in the north, with the rest of the peninsula divided into provinces, each under a military commander called a dux—the origins of both the word ‘duke’ and the title duce taken by Benito Mussolini.
“Success proved temporary as the Lombards, another Gothic tribe that had served as Byzantine auxiliaries in the recent war, launched their own invasion of Italy in 568. Unlike Odovacar’s Goths, they failed to take Rome, or the new Byzantine outpost at Ravenna, but nonetheless established their own kingdom based initially in Milan, and then Pavia from 616. Italy was now split in three. The invaders’ new kingdom of Langobardia extended along the Po valley, giving that region its modern name of Lombardy. Lombard kings exercised only loose control over southern Italy, which was largely organized as the separate Lombard duchy of Benevento. The remainder was known as the Romagna, or ‘Roman’ territory belonging to Byzantium, and surviving today as the name of the region around Ravenna.”
With this, the Lombards became the third horn that would be plucked up, being the third and final non-Catholic barbarian tribe to establish a kingdom in Italy, the territory of the growing papal power that would become “the little horn” of Daniel 7.
We’ll be back with more exciting scriptural history . . . in a moment.
[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
We now continue with our podcast.
In Daniel 7:24, an interpretation is given concerning the three horns being uprooted. First, we are told that ten kings truly would arise in this fourth beast kingdom, which resulted, as we have already shown, in the various barbarian kingdoms that were raised up to judge the Roman Empire. Then the verse goes on to say that after (achar in Aramaic, word H311), after these kingdoms are established, then another little horn would arise, being different from the first three horns, or kings. And those three kings will be shaphel, word H8214, cast down or brought low, in the sense of being humbled. Some Scripture translations use words that do not bear this out. Shaphel, as used in Daniel 7:24 is an Aramaic word whose origin is found at H8213, shaphel, an ancient Hebrew root meaning humility; to become (or be brought) low.
This means that the little horn power does not in fact subdue or destroy the three horns, or barbarian kingdoms, itself, through the use of its own power, as some have stated. According to the same verse, the little horn would not come to power until after those kings. What shaphel indicates is a humbling, in other words, not destructive power on the part of the little horn, even though destructive power is used to remove them, as seen in Daniel 7:8, with the violent uprooting carried out by others. The humbling comes in the sense that the three horns lose their seats of power to another horn that would retain that power in their stead.
Yeshua illustrated something along this line in a parable he spoke in the hearing of a group of lawyers and Pharisees one Sabbath.
[7] Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, [8] “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, [9] and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place.”
—Luke 14:7 – 9
Odovacar and his followers were forcibly put down by the Ostrogoths, at the urging of the eastern Roman emperor Zeno, and the Ostrogoths took their place as the rulers of Italy. Some years later, the new Roman emperor in the east, Justinian, waged war on the Ostrogoths and forcibly put them down, but the Lombards swept in and established a third barbarian kingdom in Italy.
“During Justinian’s reconquest of Italy …”
Writes Kevin Madigan.
“… Lombards served as mercenaries in the eastern Roman army. In 568, they invaded Italy. By 572 they had subdued the entire Po Valley. Soon most of the peninsula, excepting Venice, Ravenna, Rome, and other coastal areas, fell under Lombard domination. For a time, it seemed as if all Italy might fall. But in 774, the Lombards faced and were destroyed by the most powerful of the Germanic kingdoms, that of the Franks.”
The Franks, having converted to Catholicism, defended Papal possessions by destroying this final kingdom, paving the way for the Papacy to rise. Three non-Roman, non-Catholic horns that occupied the peninsula, from which the Roman popes would rule, had to be removed, and this in fulfillment of prophecy. But for the church, the path to securing the allegiance of the Franks was a long one.
Gregory of Tours, a bishop born to an elite family in Clermont in central Gaul, is the chronicler who recorded the history left to us of the Frankish kingdom. When they first marched on the frontiers of the Roman Empire as part of the prophesied barbarian invasions, the Franks were not baptized Christians. They were a collection of independent tribes that eventually split into two distinct coalitions, a western and an eastern branch. The western coalition, known as the Salian Franks, occupied the lower Rhine region, spreading across parts of Gaul and Germany. They became allies of Rome during the reign of Julian the Apostate (who we discussed in episode 7) and were charged with defending and securing the frontier on which they lived. In fact, since the third century that very region was named for them, being called “Francia,” or land of the Franks.
Early on, the Salian Franks, having been afforded recognition by the emperor, enjoyed good relations with the Romans, and some of them were granted high positions in the Roman administration. In the year 451, an alliance was formed with the Romans when the Salian Franks were called in to help defend the empire against an invasion of the Huns led by Attila.
“After the costly defeat of Attila …”
Writes Susan Wise Bauer.
“… the Salian Franks had straggled back westward to their lands west of the Rhine. The battle with the Huns had weakened them; but now they regathered their strength.
“The semi-legendary Merovech died, probably around 457, and was succeeded as chief of the Salian Franks by his son Childeric. But although Childeric claimed the title ‘King of the Franks’ and established his court at the northern city of Cambrai, he was merely one chief among many. The other Frankish tribes still kept their independence, even while acknowledging the long-haired Salians as leaders of the coalition. There were minor Frankish kings scattered across the landscape, and Roman kings too; after the Romans had given up full control of Gaul, renegade Roman warleaders had set up their own little domains in the land north of the Loire.
“Childeric was forced to battle against these rival kings, against Odovacer of Italy, against Alemanni invaders to the east, and against Saxon pirates sailing into the Loire. When he died in 481, he was merely chief of the Salians despite his royal title.
“But he was succeeded by his fifteen-year-old son, Clovis.”
Clovis would prove to be a key figure in the annals of medieval history. By age twenty, he became a capable leader, and he moved to expand the territory of the Franks by attacking a Roman kingdom nearby whose land he annexed. This was but the first of many victories to come. In ten years, he would add to his territory lands from the rival Thuringii, Burgundians, and Alemanni. Many tribal leaders began to look to Clovis as a central authority. He was wise to align himself with his rivals through a marriage contract as well by taking the daughter of a Burgundian king. His wife, a Germanic princess named Clothilda, was Catholic, having been raised thus after her people were converted through the work of Christian missionaries.
It would be Clothilda who would attempt to convert her husband to the Catholic religion. Initially, her efforts, and the efforts of her fellow Catholics, were resisted by Clovis. But her insistence that he consider worshipping the deity the Christians served, for the sake of military victory, struck home during one decisive battle against the Alemanni. On the strength of this, Clovis made a kind of pact with the being to whom the Christians devoted themselves and was …
“… catechized secretly by Remigius, bishop of Reims.”
Writes Kevin Madigan.
“Finally, at a gathering of his warriors, Clovis persuaded them to convert; more than three thousand are said to have done so between 496 and 506.
“This was a momentous development. The man who now controlled most of central and northern Gaul and who ruled the only stable kingdom in the center of western Europe had linked destinies with Catholic Christianity. A single, militarily powerful kingdom now had a Catholic ruler, soon recognized by the eastern emperors as consul. In their eyes, the kingdom of the Franks (regnum Francorum) continued the presence of Roman authority and tradition.”
This would ultimately lead to a marriage between the Franks and the Catholic church, and that marriage would result in mutual power and status for both parties. The Franks would secure the place of the Papacy and essentially be the main vehicle used to fulfill the prophecy found in the book of Daniel. Emperor Justinian had been instrumental in regaining some control of the Italian peninsula, but his victory was reversed when the last exarch of Ravenna was killed by the Lombards. The Duchy of Rome was thereafter cut off from the Byzantine Empire and the popes were left vulnerable. They turned to the Franks for defense.
On the other hand, when Clovis became king and ruled over a unified Frankish kingdom, he needed something that would bind that union. This is the very problem that a certain Roman emperor had.
“For Gregory, Clovis is the Frankish Constantine. And Clovis was indeed following Constantine’s lead.”
Writes Susan Wise Bauer.
“Like Alaric’s Goths, the Franks were a confederacy, not a nation: they were held together by custom, by geography, and by necessity. They had lived within Roman boundaries for over a century, and their adoption of Roman practices … was the strongest bond holding them together.
“But the Roman empire had crumbled in the west, and the bond of Romanness was crumbling with it. Like Constantine, Clovis saw that a stronger bond was needed to hold his people together (and to allow him to claim the right of kingship over them all). Christianity would serve as the new glue of the Frankish nation.”
While the three horns or barbarian tribes had stormed into the realm and conquered Italy, seizing Roman territory for themselves, the Franks acted on behalf of the popes on that very peninsula by annihilating the final horn that remained a viable threat to them: the Lombards.
“The marriage of the Kingdom of the Franks and the Catholic Church was arranged by necessity.”
Writes Kevin Madigan.
“Both sides needed something from the other. The Franks needed a rightful, indeed sacred, authority as respected and prominent as the bishop of Rome to recognize their legitimacy as kings of the Frankish realm. The Church needed a defender and a force capable of returning lands taken from it, unjustly by its lights, by the Lombards.”
As far as I have seen over the years, no other set of historical events so neatly and harmoniously unfold to fulfill the three-horn prophecy contained in Daniel 7:8 and 7:24.
That wraps it up for this episode of Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. A production of Kingdom Preppers.org, this episode was written, produced, and hosted by yours truly, Kingdom Prepper. All praise, honor, and glory are due to my boss, Yah Elohim, and to his right hand, Yahushua HaMashiach. You can access the transcript for this episode on our website. Yah willing, our history will continue in the next podcast. Shalom.
Keywords: Columba, Columbanus, Derry, Darrow, Iona, Celtic Christianity, penance, Theodoric, Zeno, Anastasius, Ravenna, Lombards, Ostrogoths, three horns plucked up by the roots, Daniel 7 8, Daniel 7 24, three horns, little horn, Clovis, Clothilda, churchianity, two thousand years of leaven, history of Christianity, church history, Hebrew history, kp, kingdom preppers
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