Chapter 7 is focused on conversions in a family context, collecting and comparing evidence from Gaul, Hispania, and Italy. The starting point is an examination of the secular and ecclesiastical rules governing interdenominational marriages and the differences in church loyalty between parents and children. Then the conclusions drawn from the normative sources are connected with what we know about the social reality of ‘mixed’ families. Given the nature of our evidence, the chapter focuses primarily on marriages and conversions in royal contexts. It analyses the examples from the ruling house of Suevi, marriages in the Burgundian family of Gibichungs, and marriages between the Visigothic and Frankish ruling families.

Chapter 4 deals with Nicene–Homoian conversions in Italy under Ostrogothic rule. First it discusses the religious history of the Goths from the fall of the Hunnic empire to their triumph in the war with Odoacer, allowing us to better understand the nature of Gothic Homoianism in Italy and its relationship with the Nicene church. Then it examines conversions under Amal rule and the role of tolerance in their politics and ideology, and finally conversions between the Nicene and Homoian faith in the period of the Gothic War (535–54) and its aftermath.

Chapter 6 analyses how the re-emergence of Homoianism among the Visigoths, Vandals, and Suevi was interpreted in the Nicene church in Gaul and Spain and what this reception reveals about Nicene–Homoian relations in the region in the fifth century. It also examines the evidence for the development of the Homoian Church and the increase in the number of Homoians.

For centuries, the homeland of the Germanic people was in southern Scandinavia, butaround 1500 BC some of them set off on the journey that was to lead them to England – and then far beyond. The journey went down along the Jutland peninsula until by about 1200 BC Germanic-speaking people were occupying the whole of Jutland, as well as a small area of northern Germany from the mouth of the River Elbe to the mouth of the Oder. Here, they came in to contact with Celtic-speaking peoples.

This chapter argues that the military and political history and prosopography of the early fifth century cannot be reconciled with the existence of the Notitia system. Specifically, the military challenges the east Roman empire faced during this period, most notably Alaric’s depredations in the Balkans, Gaïnas’ revolt in Asia Minor, and attempts to prop up the struggling western empire, all point to a systemic under-militarization in the east that forced Constantinople to rely heavily on barbarian manpower, often with calamitous results. By the 420s, we find evidence for a gradual remilitarization taking place in the east, which set the stage for the major reforms of the 440s.

This chapter surveys the organization of the east Roman military from the failure of Julian’s Persian expedition to the death of Theodosius I in 395. It demonstrates that there is no evidence to support the emergence of the Notitia system during this period and, in fact, positive evidence indicating that the Roman military continued to operate in its fourth-century configuration, with a central reserve army, the comitatus, commanded by a magister equitum and magister peditum, while smaller regional commands were managed by local limitanei or, in exceptional cases, a comes rei militaris. The sole exception was the magister militum per Orientem, the chief general on the eastern frontier, whose office went from an ad hoc appointment to a formally constituted command during this period.

The question of Visigothic slavery has generally been treated in the context of larger studies on the Visigoths or of the Mediterranean economy rather than studies devoted to slavery. Even when it has been examined as a thing unto itself, it has tended to get folded into larger narratives of the development of social relations in the early Middle Ages. Marxist historians, such as Abilio Barbero, Marcelo Vigil, and Chris Wickham, have attempted to fit the evidence into a historical materialist narrative that posits a decline of slavery and slaveholding in the post-Roman world as states contracted and serfs or peasants replaced slaves as the primary agricultural producers. This narrative has been countered by French social historians, especially Georges Duby and Pierre Bonnassie, who argued that slavery continued to predominate in the early medieval West, giving way to serfdom only in the tenth century.

The Sack of Rome in 410 by the Gothic General Alaric was the result of years of failed imperial negotiations. It dealt a significant psychological blow to the city, but the physical damage was limited. By focusing on the actions of Rome’s civic officeholders, I demonstrate how senatorial aristocrats engaged in competitive reconstruction efforts as they also developed new ties to the imperial court and the military. In contrast, the popes of Rome had limited resources and so left wide-scale rebuilding efforts to the emperor and senatorial officeholders. Only with the return to Rome of the emperor Valentinian III (425–55) do we see a rise in the civic profile of Rome’s then bishop, Leo (440–61).

This chapter analyses the little-known fifth-century Syriac romance Euphemia and the Goth, bringing out its narrative richness to allow it to become part of a wider discourse about identity, violence, and the role of women in the late antique eastern Empire. By employing a structuralist methodology, the story is viewed as containing highly developed and also subtle contrasts, ultimately used by the author to articulate a view of an ideal Edessa. Through the use of distance, dichotomies of barbarian and civilised are set and reinforced with the complimentary distinctions of legitimate and illegitimate violence. These contrasts also allow the primary benefit of Roman rule for Edessa to be made clear, namely the rule of law which ensures justice for vulnerable female-only households against outsiders who attempt to disrupt them, albeit with a strong Edessan identity retained. The analysis finishes by shedding light on the position of women within Edessa at the turn of the fifth century and concludes that options for female-only living were perhaps more positive than for women elsewhere in the Empire.

This chapter examines the numerous meanings of ‘Gothic’ in the period before 1800 to explain how it was understood in a variety of contexts, from politics and Protestantism to architectural heritage and literary style. The ancient Goths were simultaneously seen as the barbarian destroyers of Classical civilisation, and as the northern champions of liberty against Roman tyranny and corruption. The reputed organisation of ancient Gothic society was understood to have provided the foundations for post-Roman English and later British systems of government, so influencing both the constitution and contemporary politics, especially among Whigs. The perceived links between the Goths of antiquity and the history and society of the Middle Ages and the Reformation in turn provided the basis of a national cultural identity that was increasingly celebrated and revived in the eighteenth century, and the term was adopted in broader debates on governance, cultural values, national character and the environment. The literary dimensions of Gothicism, inspired by medieval romances, added further characteristics of the supernatural and the mysterious to the term's changing meanings.

The original Goths were a Germanic people who played a crucial role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of medieval Europe. In 410, a Gothic army led by Alaric sacked the imperial city of Rome, and at the end of the fifth century kingdoms ruled by Visigoths and Ostrogoths dominated much of the post-Roman West. The last Gothic kingdom disappeared more than a thousand years ago, when Visigothic Spain fell to the Muslim Arabs in 711, yet the Gothic legacy endured. The Renaissance depiction of the Goths as destructive barbarians was balanced by the Reformation’s respect for Gothic vigour and freedom, which gathered momentum in Germany and England and inspired the cultural revival from which the modern Gothic emerged. This chapter provides an introduction to the Goths of history, from their legendary origins to the downfall of Visigothic Spain, for only against that historical background, it claims, can we understand the attraction of the Gothic from the seventeenth century to the present day.

By the end of the third century, in Asia Minor and beyond, the churches had some institutional heft. Conflict with the non-Christian majority stayed below the surface, but it was a phoney peace. The Emperor Diocletian, blaming Christians for difficulties in divination, commenced action, demolishing the church in Nicomedia. In a small town in Phrygia, the Roman army burnt a church down with the congregation inside. Valerius Diogenes, governor of Pisidia, constructed facilities for the imperial cult and dedicated an altar to ‘the pietas of our emperors’. Markos Ioulios Eugenios was tortured then discharged from the army; afterwards, about 315, as bishop of Burnt Laodicea (Ladik) he rebuilt the church, with ‘cloisters, antechambers, murals, mosaics, water fountain, entrance porch … and everything else’. Eugenios and his flock were Novatians: their church and the Montanist church were linked. The Emperor Constantine funded construction of churches in provincial capitals, including Laodicea on the Lycus. Gothic settlers came to Phrygia, including the father of Selenas, bishop of the Goths. Phrygia, still remote from the metropolitan milieu, moved beneath a Christian sacred canopy.