4. Germanic Influence
In trying to form an idea, of the influence of the Germanic races on the culture of Gaul during the later Empire, we must again be satisfied with only a few stray references in the contemporary authorities. Philologists think that as early as the first century A.D. the German races must have influenced the Romans. They establish indisputable cases, but it is admitted that the whole question is difficult and complicated in the extreme.[122]
The question of German influence may be looked at from two opposite points of view—from the constructive and the destructive. The latter is by far the more prominent and will be dealt with at a later stage. The former is far the more difficult, and nothing is attempted here except to set down in bare outline one or two of its aspects. It would be far easier to describe the influence of Roman civilization on the barbarians.
Yet there is something to be said. If the Roman generals prescribed a Roman form of government for the barbarians, as Corbulo did for the Frisians in A.D. 47, German fashions intruded into the Roman world and the Roman ladies wore barbarian costume and coiffure.[123] On the Rhine frontier these barbarians developed to such an extent and so many towns sprang up—Cologne the prosperous, Bonn, Coblentz, Strassburg—which grew out of the Roman camps but drew their life from the neighbouring tribes, that the law forbade the selling of certain commodities to barbarians.[124] On the other hand, the Empire needed them as cultivators and soldiers, and the Panegyrici Latini show us that it was part of the imperial policy to make them settle in the provinces.[125] Social history shows that the Germanic peoples stood on a fairly high level of culture even in the first centuries of our era. They possessed a traditional religious cult which promoted the noblest virtues—conjugal love, friendship, hospitality—a body of legends about gods and heroes, an ancestral poetry, in which clan and family feeling plays a large part.[126] In these respects they were capable of influencing the Romans, who admired their courage and feared their strength.
Besides the casual intermingling of people for various reasons, there were three main sources of intercourse: the army, the administration, and trade. The first need not be dwelt on, nor the well-known question be raised how far the German element in it was responsible for the fall of the Empire. Of the second we may mention as an instance Pliny’s picture of Trajan dispensing justice in Germany—sometimes without an interpreter—while the influence of the trade in furs, wine, and fish in introducing Germanic words into Latin has been amply established.[127]
Turning to Gaul in particular, we find many avenues of Germanic influence; for, besides the big invasions of the third and fifth centuries, we find the Goths officially settled in Aquitaine in A.D. 419, and the Burgundians about the same time, in the north and north-eastern parts. It is not surprising, therefore, to catch from Ausonius glimpses of fairly familiar intercourse between German and Gallo-Roman in the fourth century. His enthusiastic praise of Bissula, the Suebian maid who was captured beyond the Rhine[128]—‘Barbara, sed quae Latias vincis alumna pupas’—is an indication of this. Now there is a law of Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, given in A.D. 370, forbidding all intermarriage. ‘Nulli provincialium’, it says, ‘cuiuscumque ordinis aut loci fuerit, cum barbara sit uxore coniugium: nec ulli gentilium (foreigners, i.e. not Roman) provincialis foemina copuletur. Quod si quae inter provinciales atque Gentiles adfinitates ex huiusmodi nuptiis exstiterint, quod in his suspectum vel noxium detegitur, capitaliter expietur.’[129] This law, however, as Lavisse remarks,[130] does not seem to have had much effect. Such laws very rarely have. We may assume, therefore, that there was considerable intercourse even before the Visigoths were settled in Aquitaine.
Not only had points of contact been multiplied, but the standard of civilization among the invaders had risen. Orosius notes that the Burgundians were mild and modest enough to treat their Gallic subjects as brothers,[131] and their laws dating from the sixth century show a considerable culture. Roman civilization and Christian morality had raised them to this level, but they still had their own contribution to make. For they still had their own national character and traditions and language, and these produced blends and combinations in the already richly blended Aquitaine which have played their part in the shaping of the whole. Such influences cannot be reduced to specific items, but it is plain that they were there. They left their mark (all the more effectively because the Goths welcomed Roman culture with open arms) on the character of the people, on their literature, and on their language.[132] Even in Cicero’s day Gallic Latin had a distinctive flavour. To Brutus he says that when he comes to Gaul he will hear words not used at Rome, though the differences are not fundamental.[133] By the time of Sidonius Germanic influences have accentuated these differences. To such an extent, says this lover of Rome to his friends, had the host of idle and careless people increased, that they would soon have to weep for the extinction of the Latin language, were it not for the tiny band of scholars who might save the purity of the Roman tongue from the rust of undignified barbarisms.[134] To Arbogast Sidonius declares[135] that Latin has perished from Belgium and the Rhine; and though this may be a rhetorical preparation for the antithesis ‘in te resedit’, we cannot fail to hear in it and in the phrase ‘our vanishing culture’ the tramp of the approaching barbarians.
The contribution of Germanic to the peculiar character of Gallic Latin is traced by modern philology to the following spheres: proper nouns, weapons and military terms, administration and jurisdiction, animals and plants, terms of domestic economy, and, what is more, certain abstract names (affre, hâte, guise, orgueil, &c.), and a good number of adjectives and verbs.[136]
Looking at this Germanic influence from the point of view of French, the decadence of Gallic in the fifth century and the preponderance of Germanic, to omit Latin for the moment, are accomplished facts. But from the point of view of the fourth and fifth centuries, what we find is that philologists have never clearly distinguished between those Germanic words which came in after the third-century invasions and those which were imported in the fifth century. The fact that most of the Germanic words recognized in French are Frankish seems to point to the conclusion that the most important German influence came with Chlodowig—i.e. after our period. Here, then, is a point which we would recommend for philological research: an estimation of the relative importance of Germanic influence in Gaul, after the third-century invasions and after those of the fifth.
Sidonius has given us a few glimpses of Gothic life in Gaul towards the end of the fifth century. Theodoric, whose ‘civilitas’ he commends,[137] does not load his table with tasteless profusion: ‘maximum tunc pondus in verbis est’. And it is to his credit that in his case, ‘cibi arte, non pretio placent’.[138] A wise balance is kept: ‘videas ibi elegantiam Graecam, abundantiam Gallicanam, celeritatem Italam.’ He does not go in for those cheap amusements which were all too common as meal-time entertainments: there is no hydraulic organ, no choir, no flute, or lyre or performing girl.[139] If we take this with Salvian’s panegyrics on the morals of the Goths, it may not perhaps be unjustifiable to conclude that the Gothic element gave some stability to the moral education of Southern Gaul.
Intellectually, too, they stood high. It is not without significance that Arbogast (391-2) made his nominee for the Empire a former teacher of rhetoric. Seronatus speaks of ‘literature among the Goths’,[140] and Sidonius praises Arbogast, who, though ‘potor Mosellae’ is famous for his Roman eloquence and commits no barbarism, in spite of living among barbarians.[141] The greater part of the nobility understood Latin well, though Gothic was probably spoken in ordinary intercourse. The lower classes among the Goths understood Latin very imperfectly. At the collapse of the conspiracy vaguely mentioned by Sidonius[142] an interpreter is used. The persons concerned were clearly Goths. And Ennodius speaks of an interpreter at an interview between Euric and Epiphanius, when the latter made a speech in Latin.[143] But Latin was preponderant. It was the language of diplomacy[144] and legislation; it was the language of a mighty civilization, and of Placidia, the wife of Ataulf. Theodoric II was trained by Avitus in Latin literature, and Euric encourages the teaching of classical literature. Lampridius sang in praise of the Gothic kings at Bordeaux, and Leo, Euric’s minister, was famous as a rhetorician. In fact, the Visigothic court became the last refuge of Roman letters.[145] Nor did the activity of the Goths end with literature. In 484, feeling the complexity and difficulty of the Theodosian code, they called a conference of lawyers and ecclesiastics who produced an abridged form, with interpretations, which was destined[146] to replace the older code throughout the country occupied by the Goths. That there were schools of jurisprudence in this part, notably at Arles, we gather from Sidonius.[147] Fauriel thinks this revised form, published A.D. 506, bore traces of the Germanic spirit and tradition, and was, in comparison with the Roman code, ‘plus concise et mieux rédigée’.
There is no doubt that a large number of people in Gaul welcomed the government of the Goths, whose influence was thereby extended to the classes whose interest did not reach to books and codes. For the poor, crushed by the cast-iron imperial system, looked to the Goths as their deliverers, and the middle classes, oppressed with taxation, welcomed any change, while many eagerly sought the service of the Gothic government.[148] ‘Sed Gothicam fateor pacem me esse secutum’, says Paulinus of Pella,[149] who, though a nobleman, preferred Gothic rule, because he felt how uncertain imperial protection was becoming. He also mentions the ‘summa humanitas’ which the Goths showed in shielding the people on whom they were billeted.[150] Generally speaking, he was satisfied with Gothic rule: it was quite profitable, in spite of his many and great sufferings.[151]
Under these circumstances it was easy to forget Rome. ‘Rome était si loin de Bordeaux’, remarks Rocafort.[152] And so Gallo-Romans very often came to treat their Gothic neighbours on terms of friendliness and equality.
But among the upper classes of the Gallo-Romans generally Roman pride was still very strong. They held high offices at the court of the barbarians, for whom they cherished a secret contempt, or else retired to their great châteaux[153] (ruins of which are still to be seen[154]) and bewailed to one another the encroachment of the Goths, who retained, to a large extent, their lawless and roving instinct. There is a feeling that literature and religion (in both of which we see, though in different degrees, the growth of a ceremonious externalism) are the only things left. Sidonius asks Basilius to see to it that the bishops obtain the right of ordination in those parts which the Goths have taken, so that there may be, at any rate, a religious if not a political bond.[155] And both in religion and literature they despised the Goths. For the Goths were Arians, and their jargon was barbarous. The well-known epigram of the Latin Anthology[156] expresses the attitude of mind:
Inter hails goticum, scap jah matjan jah drigkan
non audet quisquam dignos educere versus.
How can one write poetry, exclaims Sidonius, among people who put rancid oil on their hair? ‘The Muse of the six-foot metre has scorned her task, since the appearance of patrons seven feet high.’[157] And to Philagrius he confesses: ‘barbaros vitas quia mali putentur: ego etiamsi boni’.[158]
How sensitive men of Sidonius’s class were to the charge of barbarism we may see from Avitus’s letter to Viventiolus.[159] Rumour whispers that in one of his sermons he has slipped into a ‘barbarism’, and his friends are openly criticizing. ‘I confess’, says the bishop with wounded pride, ‘that such a thing may have happened to me. Any learning I may have had in more youthful years is now the spoil of age, “omnia fert aetas”’—a Virgilian quotation to indicate that, in spite of his profession to his friend, his ‘studia litterarum’ still remain to mark his culture. The barbarism at issue is the quantity of the middle syllable of ‘potitur’, to which he devotes most of the letter.
Thus to the nobleman of the fifth century, even if he was a churchman and might, therefore, be expected to take the wider Christian view, culture meant something essentially Roman. By the side of this Roman culture Germanic influence must seem small, and yet, when we remember the attitude of men like Paulinus of Pella to the Goths, and allow a margin for Sidonius’s prejudice, it cannot seem unimportant in the civilization of Gaul.