VISIGOTHIC DISCOURSES OF POWER

Abstract

Gothic leader struggled to distinguish between the inhabitants of Rome and the eastern Roman army who sought to ‘liberate’ them from Gothic rule. K. also considers the general agreement amongst authors (Marcellinus Comes, Prokopios and Jordanes) that the western empire had fallen, but notes their differing reaction to the important date of 476. There is a final switch of direction in the sixth chapter, ‘Apostolic History and the Church of (New) Rome’. This chapter covers events from the divisive Council of Chalcedon in 451 and follows the rhetoric of the eastern emperors and Roman popes as the former promoted the importance of the See of Constantinople and the latter sought to protect the position of the Roman papacy. At the start of his career, Justinian had been eager to heal the Acacian schism that divided Constantinople and Rome, but as his priorities changed and his desire for unification of his empire and papal compliance grew, his role in church matters became more pronounced (reflected in the subheading From Supplicant to Master: Justinian and the Church of Rome, p. 212). K. suggests that, once the Roman west was no longer held by the Romans after 476, it was difficult for the popes to maintain their ecclesiastical importance to the Roman east. K. argues, therefore, that the politics of memory were equally important to the popes in this endeavour as they were to the Constantinopolitan writers discussed in the first five chapters. There is a lot to unpack in this complex monograph, which combines very detailed textual analysis with sweeping arguments for change in how we approach the sixth century. As it stands, K. makes a convincing argument, but we should bear in mind that, in the hope to establish a ‘non-theological intellectual history of sixth-century Constantinople’ (p. 6), he restricts his study to quite a limited pool of authors. It would be interesting, within this context, to consider other authors (such as Malalas, another bureaucrat) and to explore the links between Lydos, Cassiodorus and Priscian. K.’s consideration of the critical responses to Justinian’s version of Romanness perhaps gives a different emphasis to the monograph since its core becomes a mostly negative appraisal of the emperor’s justification for his reform legislation. However, the importance of the Roman republic in Constantinopolitans’ view of their history and the extent to which the sixth-century authors accepted the notion of 476 as a significant date for the ‘fall’ of the western Roman empire are unifying themes.