RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Goths Q-otteskasten
being successfully upheld. The Arian Goths appear in sharp contrast to the splendid organization of the Catholic Church. Their spiritual life was perhaps higher than that of their opponents, and their moral standards were admittedly superior. They were more tolerant and their theology was simple and based on the Scriptures. As a young nation they rejected asceticism and monasticism. But on the other hand their clergy, cut off, as they were, from the learning of the ancient world, were inferior to the Catholic priesthood and showed with time actual degeneration. More than this, the Arian Church had no unity inasmuch as each Gothic kingdom possessed its national Church.
Over both churches the Gothic kings asserted sovereign powers. Thus Theodoric intervened in contested papal elections and exercised the right of deposition over bishops; among the Visigoths of France and Spain the decision of the national synods needed the royal confirmation. 5. The But whereas the relations between the Gothic king and his Arian followers were Kings, simplified by the immediate dependence of the latter upon their sovereign, his policy toward the Catholics was made difficult by the fact that the justifiable exercise of authority might be denounced as persecution and lead to difficulties with the power of the Catholic Byzantines or Franks to whom the subjects of Arian rulers looked for protection. Indeed, however tolerant the Arian ruler may have been, his Catholic bishops were sure to be engaged in chronic conspiracy with outside powers, forcing their sovereign finally to acts of violence. This is exemplified in the case of Theodoric, who, an Arian, ruled impartially over Arians and Catholics during the early part of his reign. The persecution of Arians by the Byzantine emperors Justin and Justinian led Theodoric to send an embassy to Constantinople to intercede for his fellow believers. The mission met with failure but the bishop of Rome, John, who was one of the ambassadors, was received with conspicuous honors. The fact aroused Theodoric's resentment, John was thrown into prison, and a number of the leading Roman senators were put to death, among them Boethius and Symmachus. The feud between Goths and Romans which thus broke out prepared the way for the overthrow of the kingdom by the Byzantines under Belisarius and Narses.
In the Visigothic kingdom the relations between the two sects were more friendly in the beginning, owing to the fact that the Goths had arrived in Gaul as defenders of the provinces against foreign invasion. Dissension first appears under Euric (460-485) who was driven by political 6. The Visi- need to violent measures. Danger goths. appeared when Clovis, king of the Franks, a convert to Catholic Christianity, after overthrowing the Romans in Gaul under Syagrius (486), began his attack on the Visigothic kingdom. Alaric II. (485-507) sought to gain the good-will of his Catholic subjects by a policy of mildness and concession, but was impelled to persecution by the traitorous negotiations between his bishops and the Franks. In the battle of Vougle he lost life and kingdom, and, though the V.— 3
intervention of Theodoric saved some remnant of the Visigothic power in France for the time, the end came under Amalric (531) when the Visigothic kingdom was restricted to the Spanish peninsula. In Spain there ensued a period of comparative quiet during which the Catholic Church profited by the full toleration it enjoyed to extend and confirm its power while the Gothic kingship grew weaker in the strife between the rulers and the rebellious nobility. After the fall of the Vandal and Ostrogothic kingdoms and the conversion of the Suevi and the Burgundians the Visigoths were the only Germanic people of Arian faith. Leovigild (569- 586) restored the old splendor of the kingdom by bringing the entire Iberian peninsula under his sway, but his son Reccared (586-601) embraced the Catholic creed and thereby initiated a process of rapid assimilation between Goths and Romans which was to result in the development of the Spanish people. Church and State were brought closely together and the ascendency of one over the other depended entirely upon the personality of the kings. These, however, showed little ability to check the forces of disorder and dissolution. Seventeen kings ruled during the last century of Visigothic power and the end came in 71 1 when the Gothic army under Roderic was overwhelmed by the Arabs under Tarik at the Wady Bekka.