Barbarians- Secrets of the Dark Ages

by Richard Rudgley

  The procession of saints by the Byzantine craftsmen is done in a very different fashion – flat, rigid and austere. The sensual and lifelike Gothic mosaics of the prophets were deemed too material and worldly for the Byzantine school, which strove to create images reflecting a more ascetic sense that they saw as more authentically spiritual. It is not without significance that the procession of saints is led by St Martin of Tours (to whom the church was later to be re-consecrated). St Martin was an early forerunner of the witchfinders, in that he led the persecution of those who were deemed spiritual enemies of the Church. He was the driving force behind the extermination of pagans and heretics in France.

  The creation of these mosaic masterpieces was not the only major architectural expression of Theoderic's vision. He oversaw the construction of his own memorial. Work on his mausoleum began around the beginning of the sixth century a number of years before he died. There are no written sources concerning the architects who were commissioned by their lord – we do not even know whether they were Ostrogoths or Romans. Whoever the anonymous authors of this potent statement in stone were, they were surely the leading architects of their day.

  At this time the coastline was much closer to the mausoleum than it is today. The choice of this site was anything but random – it would have been clearly visible from afar, not just from the city of Ravenna but also from the sea. The mausoleum was so dominant in the landscape that neither citizen nor visitor could ignore it. Not only was it designed to command the space around it but, as a memorial fit for a powerful leader, it was made to withstand the ravages of time. Unlike other contemporary buildings in Ravenna that were built of brick, Theoderic built in eternal stone. Some fifteen hundred years later it continues to hold pride of place in Ravenna, largely due to the quality of the workmanship involved. No mortar was used in its construction yet each stone was fitted precisely with no gaps.

  His mausoleum is a unique monument that embodies both Roman and Gothic principles. It is, in some respects, modelled on the mausoleums of the Roman emperors, especially the lower of the two storeys which varies little from standard Roman imperial architecture. The upper storey (within which the sarcophagus lies) is something of a hybrid, combining Roman features with other, entirely alien influences. Much of the decoration on the outside walls of the upper level clearly echoes the patterns and motifs used in barbarian metalwork. It is a remarkable and successful synthesis, a concrete expression of the two traditions: a Roman basis (without mosaics and other finery) capped by a Gothic roof.

  Remarkably, the roof was made from a single stone brought across the Adriatic Sea from Istria (present-day Croatia), which must have been a feat in itself. This single block is 11 metres across, a metre thick and weighs about 500 tonnes. The shape is highly unusual and, as Sauro Gelichi (a professor from the University of Venice who was kind enough to give me a guided tour of the monument) pointed out to me, is modelled on a yurt, a kind of tent used by nomadic peoples – undeniably showing that Theoderic, far from having forgotten his Gothic roots, was evoking the memory of his ancestors. What could be more fitting for his final resting place?

  Visitors to the mausoleum today will see that this single mighty stone displays a large crack that scars its otherwise pristine surface. Catholic legend, with echoes of the story of the Tower of Babel, has it that God was angry at the arrogant work of Theoderic and meted out punishment in the form of a lightning bolt that caused the crack. A more prosaic possibility, and perhaps a more likely one, was that the crack occurred when the roof was set in place.

  Although the building has survived to this day it has not survived intact. Around the whole of the upper level are a number of recesses. They are now empty but it is probable that each originally housed a statue. Whom these lost statues portrayed is a mystery, but it seems likely that they were prominent members of the Amal dynasty that linked Theoderic back to the primordial Gothic heritage. Some time after the demise of the Gothic regime the statues were unceremoniously removed and broken up for making cement. The survival of the mausoleum itself is probably only due to the fact that the upper part was reused as a chapel by the Catholics.

  The sarcophagus was imported from Egypt. It was made of porphyry, no ordinary material, but one preserved for the exclusive use of emperors and their families. Theoderic would have been acutely aware of this, and his choice of porphyry for his sarcophagus is yet another instance of him announcing his quasi-imperial status. The sarcophagus was obviously set in place to receive the body of Theoderic upon his death.

  On 30 August 526 Theoderic died suddenly after suffering severe intestinal pains. The cause of death is unknown. The fact that this was the very day on which the Catholic churches were confiscated by his order may well be no mere coincidence. The Catholics saw this as divine punishment, although the possibility that he was poisoned by an assassin for his persecution of the Catholics can hardly be dismissed.

  It seems likely, although not certain, that his mortal remains were laid to rest in the mausoleum, but they did not rest for long as they were removed some time afterwards. Legends concerning the whereabouts of his body abound. Two versions of one legend survive, one Catholic, one pagan. In the first it is said that the devil himself, in the form of a large black horse, took the body down to hell. The other says that Sleipnir, the mythical eight-legged horse of Odin (or Wodan), the high god of the Germanic tribes, transported him to the warrior heaven of Valhalla.

  There are also rumours that his final resting place may be within a stone's throw of the mausoleum, but this is a mystery that may never be solved. Even though he does not lie in its peaceful and austere embrace, the mausoleum is nevertheless a fitting architectural epitaph to the dual public persona of Theoderic the shadow emperor: a lover of all things Roman yet a man true to his Gothic roots. Stefania Salti and Renata Venturini wrote that 'anticipating history by 1,500 years Theoderic dreamt of a united Europe where different peoples could live together respecting each other's religious faiths and propagating their own cultures'. For all his faults, Theoderic was a leader of vision and his deep understanding of both the Roman and Germanic legacies undoubtedly resulted in the breadth of this vision. His defence of religious tolerance and multi-culturalism mark him as one of the prime movers in the shift away from the old Roman way towards the path to the development of the growing consciousness of being European.

  Chapter Six

  THE HELL'S ANGELS OF HISTORY

  The first the occupants of a village or a fort learned of the arrival of a hostile force of Huns was a cloud of dust, followed by the sound of horses' hooves, followed by a rain of arrows.

  Patrick Howarth, Attila, King of the Huns

  On a high hill in southern Austria, amid an unexpected and swirling mist, I walked among the ruins of Theoderic's world. On the top of the hill two churches had once stood side by side – one Catholic and the other Arian. It was only a few metres from one to the other, and in Theoderic's day the hymns and prayers of one faith must have merged with the other. This poignant reminder of the short-lived tolerance that flourished in his time was one of two reasons that I had come to the village of Globasnitz, which, nestling at the foot of the hills, is some 30 kilometres from the Moravian border.

  I stayed overnight at the only hotel in Globasnitz, and after lunch strolled across the village to have a look at the other reason for my visit. Just at the edge of the village, next to the main road, were the spoil heaps and other tell-tale signs of an archaeological dig. A large cemetery dating from the Dark Ages had been unearthed, and among the numerous human remains three highly unusual skulls were discovered. They were strangely deformed – more elongated than normal skulls. Scientific analysis of bone and tooth enamel samples suggests that their owners were probably not locals at all but immigrants from the east. Such deformed skulls are also known from other areas, including the north of Austria and Hungary, but until these three were dug up at Globasnitz archaeologists had never before found specimens south of the Al
ps. These skulls were not the result of some congenital disorder or pathological condition: they were deliberately elongated for cultural reasons.

  The skulls from Globasnitz were sent for analysis to Professor Maria Teschler-Nicola, a leading anthropologist and custodian of the world's largest scientific collection of human skulls at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. The glass cabinets that line the walls display row upon row of skulls of all kinds, from the earliest stages in human evolution onwards. The vast majority of specimens are those belonging to Homo sapiens, and have reached these spectacular corridors from all over the globe. Anthropologists, explorers and scientists have brought the skulls of the world – from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic, from New Guinea to North Africa – to their final resting place here in the heart of Europe.

  To most of us, the differences in skull shape and size of these specimens are too subtle to discern, but the curious specimens from Globasnitz, being deliberately deformed, were unmistakably different – as I could see when I met the professor in the museum. She told me that the skull was deformed by being tightly bound with bands of cloth (about five or six centimetres wide) during infancy and early childhood. Such binding resulted in the skull not being able to grow in a normal fashion, and developing instead in an artificially elongated way. As most specimens (and the earliest of them) have been found in Asia, it seems safe to surmise that this is an eastern habit brought to Europe by a migrating people – the most likely candidate being the Huns. The Greeks also knew of this curious custom in the fourth century BC, describing the 'long-heads': a group of Scythians (the blanket term used by the Greeks to characterise the nomads of the steppe) living near the Sea of Azov. This region, as we shall see later, was thought in the Roman world to be the homeland of the Huns. (The custom of skull deformation, though, is thought to be much older than even the Scythians: a close colleague of Professor Teschler-Nicola, Erik Trinkaus, has suggested that Neanderthal man was the first to do it.)

  We cannot be sure whether the deliberately deformed skulls found in Austria and also Hungary are those of Huns, or whether at least some of them belong to another ethnic group who may have copied this unusual custom from the Asiatic horsemen – perhaps as a mark of status. Among the Huns, both male and female skulls were deformed in this way, but most of the skulls unearthed alongside them are entirely 'normal'. If only a minority of Huns practised deformation, this suggests that it may have been a sign of high rank and restricted to the elite clans and echelons of the tribal confederacy.

  But we do not know for certain what the meaning of this custom was for the Huns who practised it. It could well have been done for aesthetic reasons, as it was among some Native American groups of the north-west coast of Canada. Perhaps, in some ways, deforming the skull is a Dark Ages equivalent of the current obsession among certain people with body piercing. But, whatever the reason, it was an integral part of Hunnic culture and a dramatic, irreversible and permanent marker of identity. In the shadowy world of Hun history, the skulls provide another much needed clue to trace the movements and influence of these people.

  Alongside the various nuggets of truth in the Roman accounts, there are many pieces of fool's gold that have duped generations of credulous commentators. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus, writing in or around the year 395 and relying partly on ill-informed hearsay, was clearly a victim of the effects of Chinese whispers when he tells his readers that the Huns made their clothes from the skins of field-mice! In fact, the Huns did make a significant sartorial contribution to the continent of Europe – but it did not involve a patchwork of rodent skins. They introduced a whole new style of dress by combining elements from their own cultural roots with ideas inspired by the dress codes of the Iranian nomads. High felt hats, baggy trousers with ornate belts and caftans and neck torques were the new haute couture fashion items for men. The spectacular garnet diadems worn by aristocratic women among the Huns no doubt inspired first envy and then imitation among the other barbarians.

  The Huns also had their own distinctive hairstyles – cutting their hair in a circular shape. It may be that tightly binding the skull in childhood could have impaired the subsequent growth of hair, resulting in a hairline further up the head than would have otherwise been the case, although this can only be speculation. The Huns were also said to scar the faces of their children with swords. If they actually did this, it was more likely to have been a rite of passage (like circumcision or the scarification practices of some African peoples) rather than an act of sheer cruelty as the early report of the Gothic historian Jordanes suggests.

  Probably the most popular of the anecdotes embodying misinformation on the Huns is that concerning their novel way of preparing food on the hoof. Ammianus tells us that they ate raw meat, which they heated up by putting it between their horses' backs and their saddles – a tall tale that was recycled in the time of Tamburlaine as an unsavoury habit of the Tartars, another nomadic society who were seen in later times as a threat to civilisation. It is only in recent times that the kernel of truth behind the story has been revealed. The Huns most probably did put raw meat under their saddles, not as a handy snack but in order to prevent their horses' backs from being rubbed raw by constant friction with the saddle.

  The Huns were still being misunderstood in more modern times. Half a century ago, one historian obviously thought that their deformed skulls were a natural physical trait. He suggested that this Hun characteristic has left its mark in the odd, distinctively Hunnic, shape of the skulls of the modern inhabitants of the village of Pont l'Abbé near Quimper in Brittany. He claimed that these people are the descendants of a small Hunnic community that once lived in this part of Gaul. While the Huns may well have reached this part of the world, their artificially induced skull shape could not, of course, have been genetically transmitted.

  No culture in European history has a more notorious reputation than the Huns. Their infamous leader Attila was known as the 'Scourge of God'; he was seen as a divine punishment for sinfulness and an embodiment of demonic force. If we are to believe ancient legends, then the Huns were the hideous offspring resulting from sexual intercourse between Gothic witches and evil spirits. The first signs of Huns lurking on the horizon must have inspired fear in the same way that the dust clouds and roar of motorbikes terrorised the inhabitants of small American towns in the 1960s. They may have gone down in popular history as Hell's Angels on horses, but we shall see that this is only part of their story and that there was much more to Attila and the Huns.

  Alien Invasion:

  The Building of a Nomadic Empire

  The alien customs of the Huns must have appeared strange to the writers of the time but underlying these exotic anecdotes were profound and very tangible differences in lifestyle. The settled and sedentary peoples of the ancient world – whether Egyptians, Greeks, Romans or Chinese – had cultures that were based on the twin pillars of agriculture and urban living. The whole lifestyle of pastoral nomads like the Huns was as foreign to the Romans as it would be to the city dwellers and farmers of today. Not only did the Romans see the culture of the Huns as different to their own, but they also saw it as inferior. The proudly independent Huns no doubt considered the Romans their inferiors too.

  Who were the Huns and where did they come from? These are questions that can only be answered in the vaguest of terms. I was planning to go to Hungary in search of some tangible clues to this most elusive of barbarian peoples but, before doing so, I wanted to get a clear picture of them from the history books.

  From the fourth to the sixth centuries they played a major role in European history yet they themselves left no written records of their exploits. For the details of their history and customs we rely purely on the accounts of foreign writers, many of whom were on the receiving end of Hun aggression.

  The main region into which the Hunnic hordes poured was the great plain of Hungary that stretches across much of the country and must have been a home-from-home for the newcomers, rich in
pasture and as flat as the steppe from which they came. These uninvited and unwelcome immigrants to Europe also reached the western part of the continent – even as far as Paris. When they first arrived on European soil in 375 the Huns probably numbered between 20,000 and 30,000 men, women and children. Whatever the catalysts, the direct result of this migration was the displacement of other barbarians in their wake – a domino effect that was to have great repercussions throughout the European continent.

  Yet this was more than migration: it was a strident and, as it turned out, irresistible onslaught. The raw power of the Hun assaults was awesome. Patrick Howarth, a biographer of Attila, succinctly describes the colossal scale of events: 'When early historians wrote of the sky being dark with arrows they were scarcely exaggerating. Surprise and terror were of the essence of Hun tactics. Their whole strategy was, in a number of respects, a forerunner of the twentieth-century blitzkrieg.'

  As the following chapter illustrates, their power lay in their symbiotic relationship with their mounts. With such a combination of equine and human capacities, the Huns were able to sweep aside other Iranian nomadic tribes such as the Alans and the Sarmatians in their push to the west. The Huns headed towards the territories of the Goths with their sights beyond them to the Roman empire itself. The next episode of the story of the Huns concerns their forcible entry into the Roman empire through Pannonia, the most vulnerable province on the eastern front. Today, what was Pannonia straddles Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. Its eastern frontier was marked by the river Danube. Like the Vandals and their allies who crossed the Rhine a few years later, the Huns crossed the frozen Danube in 395. Rome had a new and powerful enemy on its doorstep.