GALLIC–BRITON–GERMAN PRELUDES
IN MAKING THE “WEST”

A PAMPHLET FOR TURN OF PATTERNS

László Várady

GALLIC–BRITON–GERMAN PRELUDES
IN MAKING THE “WEST”

A Pamphlet for Turn of Patterns

ISBN 978 963 05 9140 9

© László Várady, 2009

Published by Akadémiai Kiadó

Member of Wolters Kluwer Group

P.O. Box 245, H-1519 Budapest, Hungary

www.akademiaikiado.hu

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without the written permission of the publisher.

I. Historical Outlines with Modern Pamphleteering Concerns

The Roman preconditions for the birth of modern civilization in military and economic policy were expounded in my previous work where also the issue of separation of the West was duly tackled.[1] The here published renderings of the material comprehend characterizing cases from the sources immediately, occasionally with analyses, but always consistently giving an interpretation which differs in full or in relevant details from those of other researchers.

The scope of dissolution and debacle of the West Roman Empire, the revolutionary epochal process of establishment of the new nationlike or “pre-national” states on Roman territories and their peripheral regions was in its entire complex elaborated earlier in my detailed source-analytic research-publications.[2]

The military as a cardinal aspect for assessment of historical processes is specifically justified in the case of the last world empire of history which came into being and thereafter dissolved necessarily through military actions in a specific militarily determined ethnic-geographic milieu, that is in a world-wide mass of peoples “under arms”. Thus, the new Europe, the Western Civilization grew from this military background, of course, interwoven with a dense complex of socio-political and economic factors.

The process is despite the epochally determined differences yet paradigmatic for the modern age whereas we are still far-off from living in a widely civilized world, therefore also the whys and hows are in many relations the same as in the epochal change from the Antiquity to the Middle Ages.

In the dichotomic dualism of the civilized “Oikoumenē” and the underdeveloped “Barbaricum” the survival of the narrow high civilized core being in permanent opposition to an enormous mass of offensive peoples “under arms” was possible only by great military efforts and expenditures, altogether as an absolutely imperative must. The underdeveloped peoples, primarily their ruling groups, were and are always being strongly motivated by coinciding domestic and foreign milieu factors to integrate themselves in or dominate over the high civilization zone.

From this starting point, through an array of intervening historical periods, there was arranged the present network of socio- and economico-geographic universalization with a highly specialized system of institutions. By this development the “roughness” of military facts was “palliated” to some degree, and the methods of power politics became more “civil”. Nevertheless, in spite of these palliative and mediative factors the basic formula and future-forming design remained valid and shape historical processes with merciless consistency. The present-day world is also being unchangeably “under arms”. The irresistible process of civilizational universalization is by these arms part fostered and enhanced, part yet hindered. Certainly, some realizations which are implicated in the former statement may be not sympathetic and popular for moralizing historical and political thought.

The Thucydidian maxims of the constraint of power are yet inevitable. Looking at the whole historical scene, a disillusioning “ugly” and “hard” background process conflicts with the irresistible realization of the civilizational progress. Both of them depend on the “uncertainty relations” – rule of the conflict between the ever contemporary legal-ethical norms and the policy yielding to force of the Thucydidian constraint.

The military in the above casted double but contrasting role accompanies and in some concrete cases also governs the economic development and the growth of the living standard, that is the basic features of civilization. The latter role of military appears, on the one hand, when it defends outdated structures, partial political interests and aggressions; the former role occurs, on the other hand, when it overcomes the above negative phenomena, and defends modern achievements. However, it is commonly known, just this defence of the civilizational achievements and their diffusion is often understood owing to meagre historico-political culture as questionable when it implicates also military actions. A higher standard of historico-political culture presupposes the in-depth insights into power policy, as well as an updatingly radical renewal of international law.

The armies of the new post-Roman states in Western Europe wore down the Roman military forces having been the obstacles of their integration in the West-European zone of civilization; however, thereafter the same military forces grew to defend this zone, its cultural goods and its institutions. No doubt, the same armies were used also as tools of power aspirations of the single states in the highly scattered network of the Christian Medieval political scene, just as it happened in the subsequent epochs up to the 20th century.

The developmentally positive and negative functions of the military can be observed clearly and consequently throughout history. The armies are always quasi extracts of the whole social complex from where they are organized, and also their actual use and actions of historical relevance are characteristic concentrations of efforts of the whole social complex backing them, as well as the effects of their operations have a condensed historical significance. When perceiving this the concern of the following chapters will be surely discovered. These considerations and concepts are to be integrated in my new applied theory of history and policy with an array of case studies in Greek and Roman history expounded in a five-volume cycle.[3]

Permit me a brief trajectorial notice on the design of the above works from the viewpoint of methodology.

The well-known termini of the sciences: “basic research” and “applied research” can not be used for historiography. I practise namely a theoretical approach in history on the bases of research results of case studies, on the one side, and apply these integrative insights reciprocally in the case studies themselves when presenting a representative material, on the other.

Thus, neither the theory nor its practical application belong to the notions “basic” and “applied” in strict exclusiveness. A specific scientific approach characterizes our discipline. The cause lies in the innermost social concern of historiography and its basic branch, the political history in an extended scope.

I newly conceptualized this concern that the basic function of our branch focuses on the enhancement of the historico-political culture which broadly and deeply impacts the living standard. Consequently, the “history” as a complex of knowledges offers a tool for all members of a society, especially for those engaged in political, military and civil activities, to enhance the level of the living standard, the economic growth and the international qualification. Self-evidently, “history” must be taught on every stage of the educational system in a radically modernized concept that equalizes it with every “exact science”.

All these above do not mean the winding-up of all accessorial tools of the traditional construction of historical science. To that construction the new concept of historiographic system can be easily compatible with new insights and integrated knowledge without any oversophistication forgetting the concrete social function of historical science.

Taken the five-volume cycle as a whole it covers a cumulative display of a new historiology. Its cardinal scopes conclude to a comprehensive “re-interpretatology” of history. These pivotal areas embrace: a politico-chrematologic and a progressofunctional assessment of historical phenomena while the historical processes are concretized by analyses of significant cases, differing from encyclopaedic historiography supporting in its whole the genuine historiology.

However, in the modern concept of history and its scrutinizing exploration, i.e. the research, there lies a heavy danger for the actual perception of the real essence of this branch. This is the erroneous belief of the almightiness of computerization. The digital-cybernetic approach to history as method of research and for interpretation distorts the real perception of history as well as its adequate knowledge. The computerized visualization by tele-screen decisively hampers the deep insights through carefully thinking and further developing of thoughts. The high complexity of phenomena and processes spontaneously forbids the digital approach, apart from the use of a digital data bank. Among the disturbing factors there are two main technical barriers: the luminous intensity and the digital moving instead of the holding the whole textual material (the total contents to be studied) in the hands with simultaneous variative handling liberty in the case of printed text published as books or other forms of printing. Our branch of science demands special care in dealing with itself.

There is no other branch of science which is engaged in the totality of the natural socio-economic and socio-political environmental factors of the mankind in historical deepness and breadth. Therefrom follows the granting a uniquely broad spectrum of knowledge and spectrum of abilities for its students to achieve flexibility and mobility as to the concrete adoption of any profession or the successful engagement in any activity on every civil field.

*

A relevant point of Late Roman Age must be still brought up in passing: the concern of the religion backing tacitly, but obviously characterizing the socio-political and also the military phenomena both on Roman and foreign or alien (“barbarian”) side. The religious concerns were regarded on governance level as motives and tools simultaneously in policymaking or warfare.

The below featured Roman Empire was already “the” Christian Empire which perceived Christianity as the adequate compensative religious parallel and pendant to the monarchic imperial structure and thereby a controllable psychological-intellectual refuge sphere for the “ordinary subjects” feeling themselves helpless, surrendered or even factually hurted by the political and social powers. (Otherwise, the “arrogance of power” is an ever actual problem of the “lower echelons” up to present age.)

Other religious sects, inclusively the previous state religions of empires, did not possess such a plenty of parallels to the Roman imperial state (the last and greatest of this kind) as Christianity since they were mostly representatives of too local socio-political interests, and were too nearly bound on regional folklore traditions. The universality of the Christian religion is due to many triggering factors by coordination of a lot of eclectic, syncretic elements of Greek and Near Eastern religions, sects, cults and philosophies, facilitating its diffusion in the Empire and beyond that in the peripheral Barbaricum.

It must not be forgotten the high relevance of some seemingly only “accessorial” factors in the Christian thought and practice. Such were the “calm” ideas relating to the charis, that is the ideas of kindness, loveliness, charity, gratitude, but also pleasure. They considerably helped the diffusion of Christianity among all strata of society and all ethnē since it mattered to spontaneous natural claims of people to intimacy and homeliness. The thought of charity, the Christian love, let be named “agapetics”, were unique values of Christianity, unparalleled among religions and philosophies while the democratism of Stoicism represented already a segment of that concept. Anyway, mankind sympathized throughout ages with harmony and adhered to quieting formulas to achieve comfortable feeling of life in belief and thought too.

The key figure of Christianity, Jesus, was realized in himself as a suggestive ideal of humanliness and simultaneously an approach to super-humanliness; the Gospels suggest he was bearer of much more depth-psychologic human traits than the posterity has accepted and canonized.[4]

The Bible as literary presentation of Jewish and Christian thoughts has yielded a plenitude of human relations, aspects and situations of life the richly coloured picturesqueness of which address Everyman. The Jewish parts of the Bible, the Old Testament, did not jeopardize the Christian interests in self-identity because the Jews remained to be “Jews” in their ethnic and religious self-isolation. Thus they did not make the Christians quasi half-Jews, quasi Jewish-bound in religious, ethnic and social habit.

All in all, Constantine I and his governance staff with their ecclesiastic “advisory board” under the head of Ossius of Cordoba have made a circumspect choice. The Christian sect of Arianism was for the beginnings of German Christianization a religious realization of their spirit of independence, self-sufficiency, self-assurance, but later, after establishment of their own statehood, they recognized the advantages of the orthodoxy as guarantee of security of their monarchic system, of their “Europeanism” and unity of their statehood.

II. Aspects of the Roman Notions
“Foreign Land” and “Foreigners”

The Greek distinction of the foreign land and foreigners or aliens by the terminus and notion of “barbaroi” or “ethnē” became with the Romans somewhat “palliated” due to the Hellenistic cosmopolitism, openmindedness and enlightenmental philosophy about ethnic differences. The “Barbaricum” (currently used from the 4th century AD) grew to change its character also in the course of multifarious experiences both of Greeks and Romans in socio-political, economic and intellectual interconnections. Even already in the 5th and 4th century BC Greek thinkers admitted “barbaroi” must not be ranged uniformly as a homogenous entity and the division of mankind in “Greeks” and “Barbarians” is certainly ab ovo a nonsense why the mankind has empirically many races and thus its division into two parts is logically infeasible (Plat. pol. 262d–e).

Consequently, in Roman legal thought the foreign land and foreign peoples appear in territorial categories (i.e. not in inland relation where they occur as peregrini) with the specific palliative denotions as “externals” ~ “external peoples” or “enemies”, i.e. in a state of war (externi ~ externae gentes or hostes). Correspondingly the Romans, their territorial inland and citizens appear with the parallel forms in Latin as Nostri and Fines Imperii, that is the “Ours” ~ “Territories of our Empire” (all in the Digesta, in articles on the postliminium, see also below).

When Romans fought against Romans, i.e. in a civil war, the situation in juridical thought was similar to the Greek distinction of a war among Greeks where distinguished norms were applied as to captives and other proceedings between belligerents, namely all Greeks were qualified if partners in hostilities as physei philoi, “friends out of nature”, i.e. out of common ethnicity. Genuine “war” (polemos) could occur only between Greeks and “Barbarians”, being physei polemioi, i.e. “natural enemies”. The notion polemos was not be applied and understood theoretically inter-Greek hostilities. These were denoted as “factional discords”: staseis (Plat. rep. 470c–d).

Completely the contrary was the case looking at the sharp dichotomic dualism of sphere of “high culture” and neighbouring “barbarian” world, and thereby its necessary consequence: the experiences of a permanent threat of war which characterized across the entire Ancient History as a general militarism the international law practice. This basic view realized itself in the Roman law of postliminium, i.e. the law on the loss and restoration of civil right in cases of crossing the Roman frontiers out- and backwards both in state of war and in peace if no treaty or treatylike relation with the Romans are in existence.

The most significant legal principle of Roman international law was the sharp distinction between the status of foreign peoples according to their differently regulated treaty relations to the Roman state: the status of “friend” (amicus populi Romani); of the “hospitality” (hospitium); of “alliance of friendship” (foedus amicitiae causa factum); of “confederate and free status with recognition of Roman superiority” ([being] foederatus et liber comiter conservans maiestatem nostrum).[5]

The scope of the subsequent chapters does not require to take all ethnic groups into account that had contacts with the Romans in this period: only the historically preponderous relations matter in this context. The mentioned ethnic groups are featured in sketches pointing up the thematically relevant traits, and backed only by especially portraying sources. The featurings offer in comparison with the literature either on the whole or on detail points different characteristics.

Understandably the lack of survived and contemporary written sources from the “barbarians” themselves which would present their own interpretation of the events related to them make difficult the authenticity and thoroughness of our historiography, nonetheless the modern source-microanalyses and a new casuistic-casuologic method yield approximately objective insights. In some cases we have exceptionally even immediately contacts also with the “barbarian” views too.

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