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the community of the realm 447
in the sections which follow, how the manipulation of the Roman heritage
in religion and law, to take two fundamental aspects of kingship, helped bond
together the élites of the successor kingdoms.
(a) Religion
According to the ideology of the late empire, the Divinity (after
Constantine, the Christian God) was the chief upholder of the state, and
the state existed to further the divine plan for mankind. Emperors were
thus much more than secular rulers, and the fully-fledged Byzantine
definition of the emperor as God’s vicegerent on earth was only the final
stage in a long process of development: the combination of New and Old
Testament images and Hellenistic concepts of kingship. 32 The end of
empire in the west substituted several kings for one emperor, but led to
little diminution in the ideological claims being made. Visigothic and
Ostrogothic kings, Frankish, Burgundian and others, all, as they converted
to Christianity, presented themselves as appointed by God. 33 In the longer
term, this ideological stance had some entirely practical effects in heightening
a sense of community in the new realms.
Monarchs were responsible, for instance, for calling church councils.
Particularly in the Visigothic kingdom of the later sixth and seventh
century, and the Merovingian of the sixth century, this resulted in a
regular sequence of councils when a large proportion of the religious
leadership of the kingdom gathered together to discuss and legislate on
the issues of the day. There was an international dimension to such activity,
of course, because the church always regarded itself as not confined
by political boundaries. A kingdom’s extent, however, both decided participation
– which bishops should attend – and dictated certain formal
elements of behaviour. Surviving proceedings suggest, for instance, that
councils opened with prayers for the king, whatever his brand of
Christianity. Thus a Catholic Roman synod of 499 began with prayers for
the Arian Theoderic. The priests shouted thirty times ‘Hear us Christ.
Long live Theoderic.’ 34 Where a regular pattern of assemblies was established,
religious leaders became used to operating as a defined body and
to responding to a particular leadership. On these levels, assemblies added
a sense of religious community to the political boundaries of the new
kingdoms. 35
32 See, for instance, Dvornik (1966) esp. ch. 8, 10–12; Liebeschuetz (1979) 197ff.
33 The Variae of Cassiodorus and Ennodius’ Panegyric make this claim about Theoderic; cf. Heather
(1993). Julian of Toledo’s Historia Wambae and the councils of Toledo are some of many texts making
the same claim about Visigothic kings: cf. Collins (1977). Merovingians: Wood, Merovingian Kingdoms
66ff. 34 Acta synh. habit. Romae 1, in MGH, AA 12,p.405.
35 On Merovingian and Hispanic councils, see respectively Pontal (1989) and Orlandis and Ramos-
Lissen (1981). Anglo-Saxon church councils were less restricted to individual kingdoms, but royal
influence, and particularly that of overkings, was still substantial: Cubitt (1995) 39ff. This may well have
contributed to the development of a wider Anglo-Saxon (later English) consciousness.
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