Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of rulers
- Terminology and vocabulary
- List of abbreviations
- Map of Ostrogothic Italy
- Introduction: Studying the barbarians in late antiquity
- 1 Ethnicity, ethnography and community in the fifth and sixth centuries
- 2 The Ravenna government and ethnographic ideology: from civilitas to bellicositas
- 3 Individual reactions to ideology I: names, language and profession
- 4 Complementary and competing ideals of community: Italy and the Roman Empire
- 5 Individual reactions to ideology II: soldiers, civilians and political allegiance
- 6 Catholic communities and Christian Empire
- 7 Individual reactions to ideology III: Catholics and Arians
- 8 The origin of the Goths and Balkan military culture
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 The inquiry into Gundila's property: a translation and chronology
- Appendix 2 The Germanic culture construct
- Appendix 3 Archeological and toponymic research on Ostrogothic Italy
- Appendix 4 Dress, hairstyle and military customs
- Prosopographical Appendix: A prosopography of Goths in Italy, 489–554
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth Series
5 - Individual reactions to ideology II: soldiers, civilians and political allegiance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of rulers
- Terminology and vocabulary
- List of abbreviations
- Map of Ostrogothic Italy
- Introduction: Studying the barbarians in late antiquity
- 1 Ethnicity, ethnography and community in the fifth and sixth centuries
- 2 The Ravenna government and ethnographic ideology: from civilitas to bellicositas
- 3 Individual reactions to ideology I: names, language and profession
- 4 Complementary and competing ideals of community: Italy and the Roman Empire
- 5 Individual reactions to ideology II: soldiers, civilians and political allegiance
- 6 Catholic communities and Christian Empire
- 7 Individual reactions to ideology III: Catholics and Arians
- 8 The origin of the Goths and Balkan military culture
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 The inquiry into Gundila's property: a translation and chronology
- Appendix 2 The Germanic culture construct
- Appendix 3 Archeological and toponymic research on Ostrogothic Italy
- Appendix 4 Dress, hairstyle and military customs
- Prosopographical Appendix: A prosopography of Goths in Italy, 489–554
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth Series
Summary
Around the year 539, a soldier named Gundila lost his property to the armies of the emperor Justinian. He regained it by petitioning Belisarius and converting to Catholicism under Pope Vigilius, in the year of Byzantine triumph, about 540. The Arian bishop of Rome certified that Gundila no longer belonged to his faith. Gundila immediately donated some of his land to the Catholic church of St. Maria in Nepi.
In the early 540s, Totila's armies swept back through central Italy, taking Nepi along with the rest of Umbria. Totila seized the land of Gundila and gave it to one of his officers, a comes named Tzalico. In 544 or 545, Belisarius reoccupied Nepi, and Gundila enlisted his support to regain his property. Belisarius, who may have forgotten about Gundila, gave the remaining property to the Catholic monastery of St. Aelia in Nepi. Gundila, now desperate, went back to plead with Pope Vigilius, who furiously informed the monks of St. Aelia that the property ought to return to the hapless soldier, who had already shown himself a good Catholic by donating part of it to the church. Once Gundila received his property back for the second time, he gave part of it to the monastery of St. Aelia anyway, and another part to the monastery of St. Stephanus. In the late 540s, Nepi fell into the hands of the Goths again, and Tzalico may have occupied Gundila's property for a second time.
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- Information
- People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 , pp. 149 - 194Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997