Christianity’s development beyond the borders of the Roman Empire was also significant, showing the thorough spread of the spiritual leaven. East, west, and even north, to the lands of Persia, India, Mesopotamia, and the barbarian regions beyond the Rhine and Danube, one form of Christianity or another took root. And, finally, Christian barbarians, of the Arian persuasion, having amassed great numbers and strength, invaded the empire.
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 9: The Barbarian Element
For eight podcasts, our history has focused on the origin and development of Christianity within the borders of the Roman Empire, for it was in fact born within that empire, as a direct result of the Messianic Israelites who were under Roman rule, and from whom early Christians borrowed heavily. Catholics, Protestants, and even Eastern Orthodox Christians all have the Roman Empire in common when it comes to tracing their early Christian heritage, which sits a tainted mess. But facets of Christianity, some considered heretical, developed beyond the borders of the Roman empire as well. Prior to the invasion of the so-called “barbarians,” Christianity was already being accepted by Germanic peoples to the north. And to the east, where Syriac was predominantly spoken, the expansion of Christianity continued, well outside the empire.
Syriac was the language of trade and international commerce, a language akin to Aramaic. The Israelites of the diaspora, as we pointed out in our very first podcast in this series, had lost their ancient Hebrew language, and the Hebrew Scriptures that were read in Synagogues could only be understood by a scant few. Before Christianity emerged, Israelites had already ceased speaking Hebrew by and large, and thus the need for Aramaic translations of both the Scriptures and written forms of oral traditions, such as those embodied in the Targums, became a priority. Just as the Septuagint benefited Greek-speaking Christians in the east, Aramaic translations of portions of Scripture found their way into the hands of Christians in that region who spoke Aramaic. Later, the Scriptures would be translated directly into Syriac to accommodate the many Christians in the east who existed beyond the reach of Rome.
Notably, the Mesopotamian city-state of Edessa, located in what is now southeastern Turkey, embraced Christianity early on, albeit a Manichaean-influenced version. Tall tales and invented legends concerning the spread of Christianity to that city persist to this day, with the core of the tale being that Yeshua himself corresponded with the city’s king, Abgar V, before the emissary Thomas was allegedly dispatched to convert the nobility.
In his book, Pagans and Christians, Robin Lane Fox writes concerning this:
“A king’s Christianity deserved a noble ancestry, so the Edessans invented one. Perhaps we can also pin down their emphasis on ‘Judas Thomas,’ the city’s supposed evangelist. We have learned recently that the heretical prophet Mani corresponded with the people of Edessa in the mid-third century and sent them his ‘apostle’ Addai, also called ‘Thomas,’ as the preacher of his new missionary gospel.”
Also, east of the Roman Empire, Armenia embraced Christianity prior to Constantine’s conversion, and the Armenians produced a version of Scripture in their language. They were instrumental in spreading Christianity to the kingdom of Georgia as well. The spread of Christianity even penetrated Persia at an early date, and history shows that it was present in India as early as the second century. The Christian teacher Pantaenus, who taught the church father Clement in Alexandria, is said to have traveled to India around the year 180, and one of the attendants at the Nicene council of 325 was “John the Persian,” said to be of India. By the fifth century, Christianity was firmly established in India.
And far west, still focusing beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, there existed Irish Christianity, brought there by the renowned St. Patrick, the former slave of Great Britain who later witnessed to his Irish captors. Since Ireland was bypassed by the barbarians in their conquest of Europe, many monasteries that were established in the country were later accessed for their stores of classical knowledge and literature; knowledge and literature that had been destroyed or lost when the Germanic tribes swept through the Roman Empire and its many territories.
Among those Germanic tribes, north of Constantinople, were people who practiced the “heretical” Arian form of Christianity (we covered Arianism in parts 6 and 7 of this podcast series). After being introduced to the religion by their captive Ulfilas, the Goths then spread Arianism to other Germanic tribes who later settled the old frontiers of the Roman Empire. Thus, many of the barbarian invaders were Christians, though not of the perceived orthodox persuasion.
In his book Medieval Europe, Chris Wickham writes:
“The northern boundary of the Roman Empire ran right across what is now Europe, along the rivers Rhine and Danube, plus in Britain, Hadrian’s Wall, marking a sharp north-south contrast, not just in political allegiance, but in culture and the economy, which outlasted the end of the western empire by centuries. . . .
“The contrast with what the Romans called the ‘barbarian world’ to the north was considerable. There, the economy was far simpler, and so was local material culture. Political groupings were much smaller and simpler too, and often indeed very fluid, with identities changing as different ruling families rose and fell. Immediately north of the Rhine and Danube, most of these groupings spoke Germanic languages. . . .
“Not surprisingly, barbarian peoples, especially their leaders, were very interested in the wealth of Rome, and tried to get some of it either by raiding, even invasion, or by taking paid service in the Roman army. There was a gray area along the frontier, more militarized on the Roman side, more influenced by Roman styles on the barbarian side as a result. But broadly, the boundary marked by the two great European rivers was a sharp one. What happened in the fifth century in the Western Roman Empire, put succinctly, is that barbarian incursions from the north, although they had been a feature of most of imperial history, this time led to political breakdown. Armies which did not call themselves Roman took over the different western provinces and carved out kingdoms for themselves.”
Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome in 410, and around the time Augustine parted this world, in the year 430, the Vandals were at the gates of his city, Hippo. And following that time, in the year 452, Pope Leo, as we mentioned, was negotiating with invading Huns. In 455, the Vandals then sacked Rome worse than the Visigoths had done forty-five years earlier. By 476, largely due to invasion, the Western Roman Empire effectively collapsed. The time of the barbarians was at hand, in other words. While they had long been a presence in the empire, both as enemies and allies, they were now showing their strength and essentially overrunning the realm in great numbers, seizing pockets of control. This displaced much of the old Roman order, and the increased population of barbarian outsiders also impacted Christianity in the western regions.
While the Byzantine empire to the east was built on ancient Greek culture, Roman institutions, and church life that was cherished by its mostly Hellenized citizens, the civilization of the Medieval world in the west was built on the culture and Latin literature of the ancient Roman Empire, where Roman law and governmental institutions were central, alongside the existence and importance of the western church, which was largely adopting the theology of Augustine of Hippo. The papacy was slowly rising in preeminence as well, but now the barbarian invasions helped to shape the future of the Roman world.
The western empire, which began with the inauguration of Augustus, who ruled from 27 BCE to 14 CE, ended with Romulus Augustulus (or Little Augustus) who was deposed by a Germanic commander, Odovacar. The Germans now ruled the former Western Roman Empire. It would seem that the Germanic tribes, the so-called “barbarians,” came out of nowhere, but these diverse groups of people did in fact have a history separate and distinct from that of the Christianized Roman one we have been covering, and their history figures prominently in the overall Medieval narrative. Thomas F. X. Noble, professor of history and chair of the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame, raises a few key points concerning the barbarians.
“Well there are several fundamental issues at stake when we discuss the barbarians. We can ask for example in the first place, ‘Who are we talking about? Exactly what people do we have in mind?’ Another question we can ask is, ‘How do we study these people?’ The point is that, their remote past takes place outside the Roman world, and wasn’t noticed by people in the Roman world, so how do we study these people?
“That leads on, rather naturally, to another question: ‘What do we actually know about these barbarians?’ We know a good deal about them once they enter the Roman world and begin to interact with the Romans; what do we know about them before? And then, finally, and this is really the fundamental issue, how—at least in the Roman west—do we get from an empire with that vast institutional structure, to a world where there is a series of barbarian kingdoms? We’re going to trade provinces, if you will, for kingdoms. And then, we can reflect just a little perhaps, on what connections, if any, might exist between the barbarian kingdoms that were created in the late Roman world, the world of Late Antiquity, and the states of later Europe? Are there connections at all, and if so, do they matter in any meaningful sense?
“So, in discussing the barbarians, there’s a whole series of things that are at stake.”
Indeed there are, and we will be looking at those series of things, as well as their important connections, particularly prophetic ones, during the course of this podcast series. So, in answer to the question, how do we study the barbarians, a preliterate people who did not have any writings to speak of prior to, say, Ulfilas, and his gothic translation of portions of Scripture? Well, we must turn to the Romans, who wrote extensively about them, but we must do so cautiously, seeing that the writing was done, at times, with a layer of prejudice and discrimination applied, as well as certain embellishments.
And just who were the barbarians? Well, to the Greeks, since the people outside the Greek Empire spoke no Greek and were foreign to their culture and language, they were considered barbaros, Greek for “foreign,” the word mainly referring to incomprehensible speech. To the Greeks, and later the Romans, who adopted the term “barbarian” for the same reason, the people beyond the borders spoke a foreign language that was considered gibberish. This made the barbarians inferior in the eyes of the Greeks and Romans.
These various groups of people were also lumped together by the Romans and were called Germani, Germans, collectively, which derives from a Latin word meaning, “related,” that is, of the same parents, signifying the generality that was applied to these foreigners. Of this, Professor Noble says:
“The Romans weren’t interested in doing any kind of careful, scientific analysis of the people who lived beyond their frontiers, and so they didn’t develop an elaborate, sophisticated, detailed, descriptive vocabulary for talking about them. So, broadly speaking, who are the barbarians? They are, in a way, ‘them,’ they are not ‘us.’ They are foreigners.”
Today, we know that from archaeological evidence and written historical sources that these northern barbarian, Germanic tribes, which is the way we will continue to refer to them for the sake of consistency, mostly occupied lands in or near Scandinavia. They have even been given distinction by historians, being named by tribal order. Will Durant, writing in his book, The Age of Faith: The Story of Civilization Volume 4, says:
“In the heart of Europe—bounded by the Vistula, the Danube, and the Rhine—moved the restless tribes that were to remake the map and rename the nations of Europe: Thuringians, Burgundians, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Gepidae, Quadi, Vandals, Alemanni, Suevi, Lombards, Franks. Against these ethnic tides, the empire had no protective wall except in Britain, but merely an occasional fort and garrison along the roads or rivers that marked the frontier limit (limes) of the Roman realm. The higher birthrate outside the empire, and the higher standard of living within it, made immigration or invasion, a manifest destiny for the Roman empire then as for North America today.”
We’ll be back with more exciting scriptural history . . . in a moment.
[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
We now continue with our podcast.
What little we know of the Germanic peoples who occupied Scandinavia prior to crossing into the Roman world is derived from a rather conventional historical source.
“What do we know about these people before they enter the empire? We know something from archeology.”
Says Professor Paul Freedman, who teaches history at Yale University.
“But as they moved around, they’re not nomadic, they have settlements, but they’re not very urban settlements. They have grave sites. People who have grave sites with a lot of graves are not moving around a lot. So that’s one indication. And, among other things, they show that they had trade with the Roman Empire, because they’ve got Roman artifacts in them. But we actually don’t find out that much about them. The main written source for pre-invasion—let’s call them—Germanic tribes—delicately—is Tacitus, the Roman historian best known for his very pessimistic annals of the history of the Roman Empire, but also the author of a brief work called, Germania, about the German tribes.
“Before they entered the empire they lived in little villages. They cultivated grain but they were more cattle raisers. They’re skilled at iron working. They also supplemented their income by a spot of raiding and warfare; opportunistic warfare.”
Giving us further insight into the inner tribal structure of the Germanic people, Professor Noble says of them:
“They were communities that appear to have been regulated by councils of elders, over whom, some kind of a headman exercised authority. There were leaders, we find in the sources—we call them thiudans, rhix, reiks, not unlike the Latin word, rex; kuning, not unlike the word, king—who were perhaps, once hereditary, sacral rulers, but who then were supplanted by an aristocratic warrior class with sworn companions around them. Many of these people had subgroups. The Franks, for example, were a confederation of Chamavi, Chattuari, Bructeri, Amsivarii, and so on. So, a lot of people made up Franks. Raiding and plundering was always a way of life for these people. But my key point, is that beyond the Roman world there was a kaleidoscopic and volatile region, with which the Romans, in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth centuries, began to enter into relations.”
In the end, it was necessity that forced many of the Germanic peoples from their Scandinavian lands and into Roman territories. This is partly because a food shortage was created when their population grew beyond sustainability. Wars also erupted between various tribes, and those who were defeated were driven out, forced to seek new lands in the south. That is when the Germanic people happened upon the Roman frontier and spied the empire’s refined culture, obvious wealth, advanced technology, and even tasted of the realm’s agreeable Mediterranean climate. With this in view, they did not seek the empire’s destruction, as has been pointed out, but rather, they wanted to partake of the lofty Roman lifestyle.
From the Roman perspective, the barbarians were bent on destroying the empire after looting it. Resistance, therefore, was the first order of business, and the barbarians were repelled by Rome’s forces for decades. Many of the tribes wandered the frontiers until they settled on lands that either suited them, or, in the case of a few, they were forced to accept due to the superior strength of other invaders who restricted them to a certain area. As a case in point, Kevin Madigan writes:
“[T]he Germans had been pushed from their homelands near the Baltic Sea to the border of the Roman Empire by the truly menacing Huns, a nomadic tribe that had been routed by the Chinese and, in the wake of defeat, pressed westward. By ca. 375, the Huns had defeated the Ostrogoths, whom they would then dominate for nearly a century. The Germans, by contrast, were, by and large, not belligerent. Rather, they were attracted by qualities of Roman life, including the relative ease of agricultural production and trade. Very recent archaeological evidence suggests that the ‘border’ between the Germans and Romans was somewhat porous, and some intermarriage occurred. In effect, the Germans were looking for a suitable homeland, free from the terror of domination by the Huns. In fact, one of the Germanic groups, the Visigoths, hoping to escape Hunnish control, applied to the Romans for permission to cross the Danube and enter imperial territory, a request that was granted.
“Nonetheless, conflicts sometimes broke out. One, the battle of Adrianople has been vested with special significance. It was there that the emperor Valens lost his life and his army to the very Visigoths his predecessors had allowed into western imperial territory. With the benefit of hindsight, we may say that this was the battle that began the ‘wandering of the German peoples’—or, if you like, the Germanic or barbarian invasions—into the western empire.”
Following their victory over the Romans in the battle at Adrianople in 378, the Visigoths—Arian Christians, until they converted to orthodox Christianity—then moved through the Balkans for years before being the first to sack Rome in 410, as stated. Emboldened by their successive victories, they set their sights on Spain after the Vandals vacated it, and that territory was theirs until the early eighth century, when they suffered defeat at the hands of the Muslims.
Over time, other Germanic peoples settled other Roman territories. Of this, Chris Wickham writes:
“By 500, the Balkans, in the eastern empire, were under Roman control again; the west, however, was very different. There, a sector of the Goths . . . called by us the Ostrogoths, controlled Italy and the Alps; Burgundians controlled the Rhone Valley; . . . a set of small-scale Frankish kings controlled most of northern Gaul; and south-east Britain, a province actually abandoned by the Romans already in the early fifth century, was in the hands of tiny-scale tribal communities called generically by us—and perhaps by themselves—Angles and Saxons.
“There were others too, in smaller areas. Territories of the former western empire which were not under the control of military elites originally from outside its borders were very few and scattered: Mauretania (roughly modern Morocco), parts of the central Alps around Chur and western Britain, particularly Wales, plus Brittany; none of these had any link with the others, still less with the Roman empire in the east, and they lost a Roman identity fairly quickly too, except around Chur. . . .
“Although, as can already be heard, there was now a confusingly large number of ‘barbarian’ groups, many more than in previous centuries. This was not by any means a dangerous strategy in itself, as long as the Roman leadership kept control of the whole process. At the beginning of the century, for the most part, they did. The problem was the Vandals, whose confederacy had entered the empire from the north across the Rhine in 407, and moved across Gaul and into Spain in the next decade. Although partially crushed in 417, they were not subdued, and invaded North Africa in 429, under their new king, Geiseric. Their settlement in 435 was by no means accompanied by military defeat, and their new territory, not in itself a very fertile one, was right on the edge of the western empire’s chief source of grain and olive oil, the rich lands around the great Roman city of Carthage, in what is now Tunisia.”
Carthage fell to the Vandals in 429, and North Africa was thereafter their portion, a Vandal kingdom that stretched from the Straits to the very borders of Egypt, with Carthage being their headquarters. A little more time passed before the Vandals took to the sea, taking possession of Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia. We’ve already discussed their sacking of Rome, the stronghold of the western church, in 455. And being Arian Christians for the most part, in that they rejected the eternal nature of Yeshua, and his position within the Elohim, they saw Catholics as the enemy. Both Catholics and Donatist Christians alike were persecuted in North Africa by the Vandals, in the midst of their ongoing debate about the episcopal authority of bishops who had buckled during persecution. The Vandals ruled for almost a century before being conquered.
We have already learned that the barbarians would effectively redraw the map of Europe, and this would be a recurring practice as, over time, new conquering powers would sweep in to displace the old ones. With the arrival of the barbarians, the imperial western powers diminished, being substituted by the church, headed by bishops, which took over many established public services, such as education. Monasteries sprang up all across the new territories, and monasticism joined the papacy in exercising authority over the masses, both benefiting from the agriculture of the locals, to which they were tied.
The barbarian invasion was seen as a judgment against the imperial Roman government, and indeed this was evident given the manner in which the barbarians stormed in, with textbook precision in accordance with past national judgments pronounced by Yah’s prophets against a wayward Israel, who suffered a similar fate. The nation sent by Yah to judge Israel was always a foreign one, whose language they did not understand. This is how Yah always operated, even with non-Israelite nations. The Medo-Persians invaded the Babylonians, the Greeks the Medo-Persians, and so on. Now the Romans were being invaded by a foreign people whose gibberish language they could not comprehend, and which led to them calling the Germanic peoples, “barbarians.”
With the arrival of the Germanic tribes, the old western empire crumbled, and many of its institutions vanished, save that of the church itself, which not only survived, but began to take on new importance. Many Germanic peoples would eventually abandon their Arian Christianity for the orthodox, Nicene Catholic variety, further strengthening the church. The barbarians, therefore, were used primarily to remove the imperial powers in the west and carve out a unique space for the church, which it filled according to prophecy. These warlike Germanic peoples were a means to an end, and thus did not effectively establish sophisticated Medieval European states with defined politics along the complex lines of the old order. Those kinds of states would not begin to take shape until the eight and ninth centuries, and they would not rise to the level of perceived greatness until midway into the eleventh century. And that greatness would be achieved through ecclesiastical intervention, as the Roman church would demonstrate authority superior to that of the primitive German concept.
Daniel chapter 7 establishes the very prophetic history we are looking at, when it describes a fourth beast with ten horns, or kings that shall arise within the same kingdom. This is none other than western Rome, where all the Germanic tribes stormed into the realm, overthrew the established order, and set up a patchwork of barbarian kingdoms.
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: Targums, Edessa, St. Patrick, Germanic tribes, Odovacar, Romulus Augustulus, barbarous, Germans, barbarian, thiudans, rhix, reiks, Franks, Chamavi, Chattuari, Bructeri, Amsivarii, Daniel 7, ten horns, barbarian kingdoms, churchianity, two thousand years of leaven, history of Christianity, church history, Hebrew history, kp, kingdom preppers
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