Is there any evidence that the coming of christianity kind of made them less warlike? I think in the fourth century, there was absolutely no way they could stop fighting. There were several different gothic tribes and various germanic groups not in total agreement about who was going to have that bit of land. They were fighting each other as much as a as the romans. But they did press constantly on the frontiers of the roman empire because they wanted,. they wanted to occupy more fertile land. Who wouldn't? You'd been sluck north of the danube for centuries. And they wanted that those facilities, baths and all.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the form of Christianity adopted by Ostrogoths in the 4th century AD, which they learned from Roman missionaries and from their own contact with the imperial court at Constantinople. This form spread to the Vandals and the Visigoths, who took it into Roman Spain and North Africa, and the Ostrogoths brought it deeper into Italy after the fall of the western Roman empire. Meanwhile, with the Roman empire in the east now firmly committed to the Nicene Creed not the Arian, the Goths and Vandals faced conflict or conversion, as Arianism moved from an orthodox view to being a heresy that would keep followers from heaven and delay the Second Coming for all.
The image above is the ceiling mosaic of the Arian Baptistry in Ravenna, commissioned by Theodoric, ruler of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy, around the end of the 5th century
With
Judith Herrin
Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Emeritus, at King's College London
Robin Whelan
Lecturer in Mediterranean History at the University of Liverpool
And
Martin Palmer
Visiting Professor in Religion, History and Nature at the University of Winchester
Producer: Simon Tillotson