480-570(?)

Conjecture: the formation of opinions on incomplete grounds

Oxford English Dictionary

Introduction

Avitus, the future saint, was born exactly in the middle of what the French historian Fernand Braudel called, “the eight most obscure centuries in the history of France”.

Gregory of Tours wrote the only account of his life some two generations after his death. He could only have relied on information from oral histories that would have been enhanced by storytellers and he would have written in the style of the time, the Late Antiquity, when it was customary to embellish character and deeds. There may have been contemporary records about Avitus in the documents of the Abbey of St Avit-Sénieur, but they would have been destroyed when it was sacked in 1577.

Another French historian, Fustel de Coulanges, famously said of this period, “The Roman Empire had died and nobody noticed”. The head had been cut off but the body and legs continued to function. The characteristics of the time obscure our attempts to know much about Avitus, thus the title of this article, “Conjectures”. We can, however, try to reconstruct something of his life by considering the general history of his time.

‘Barbarian’ Gaul

At the time of Avitus’ birth, the Western Roman Empire had become multiple barbarian kingdoms, although mechanisms of government were still in place and many would still think of themselves as within the Empire.

Gaul was divided between the Visigoths, south of the Loire in Aquitaine, the Burgundians in the east, and the Franks, north of the Loire. Avitus was born in the barbarian kingdom of the Visigoths. “Barbarian” did not mean barbaric in the modern sense of the word. In fact it derives from a Greek word for “someone who burbles”, meaning someone you cannot understand. To the Romans it meant “foreign”.

There were three separate incursions into the Roman Empire known as the Barbarian invasions. The Goths from Eastern Europe were first in 376. They applied for and were granted entry, crossing the Danube from, what is now, Romania. The second migration was an invasion by Germanic tribes who crossed the frozen Rhine in 406; they were an invasion of a people rather than an army. Then, in about 450, the Franks began, what might be considered as the third invasion, to expand and create an empire in Northern France.

The Visigoths emerged as a distinct people after the merging of several Gothic tribes. They settled in Aquitaine in the Roman Empire after they were granted land in the Garonne Valley in return for helping the Roman army rid Gaul of the Vandals. It was common practice for barbarians to fight for the Romans; there were barbarian legions and even many of the Roman generals were barbarians. The Romans welcomed this relationship, but did not encourage immigration.

The Visigoths created their kingdom by exploiting the developing weakness in the Roman Empire, expanding it as far north as the Loire River; in 456, they invaded Spain. They learned to speak latin and took over the Roman administration several generations before Avitus’ birth. They were Arian Christian, having converted to Christianity as a condition of coming into the Roman Empire in 376. Arianism was heresy; it denied the divinity of Christ arguing that Christ was younger than God and not eternal. Therefore, to the Roman Gauls the Visigoths were heretics. As a minority in the region, the Visigoths seemed to have respected Gallo-Roman land rights and it has been suggested that their invasion of Spain was partly in search of land for settlement.

It is this that gives us our first clue of the culture Avitus was born into and what might have influenced the kind of person he became.

Avitus and the Legend

According to the legend that was told about Avitus, he was born “of good family”. Being born “of good family” implied wealth and in the Roman Empire that meant land, suggesting that Avitus’ family owned and farmed an estate. He was born at Varennes, outside the Garonne Valley; therefore he would have been considered a Gallo-Roman rather than a Visigoth. He was probably literate and a Roman Christian, the official religion of the state; otherwise, a person “of good family” would not be able to advance in that society. However, this conflicts with the legend that states that he was converted to Christianity while a slave of the Franks, but this can be explained.

The legend goes on to tell how he fought in the army of the Visigoths against the Franks in 507. He would have been drafted by the Visigoths, following the Roman tradition of demanding a levy of men from estates. Despite the fact that the Visigoths were heretics and originally foreign, the Gallo-Romans supported them against the Franks under Clovis, even though the Franks had converted to Roman Christianity and Clovis had adopted the patron saint of Aquitaine, St Martin of Tours.

The Franks

The Franks, like the Visigoths, expanded their influence by amalgamation. They developed their leadership from war bands and Clovis was one of the most successful and ruthless. He was also an astute and ambitious political thinker. Under Clovis, the Franks created a kingdom that extended north of the Loire into what are now Belgium and Holland and part of West Germany.

Clovis had attacked Aquitaine before but it was the key battle at Vouillé in 507 where the Franks defeated the Visigoth army under Alaric, who was killed, and where Avitus was captured.

The Battle of Vouillé

It is possible to understand something of the battle of Vouillé, as we know something of the weaponry and methods of each side in warfare. The Visigoths, coming from the plains of central Europe, fought on horseback. (A decisive factor in their defeat of the Roman army at Hadrianaple in 378.) They eventually developed cavalries led by a local lord and his entourage of “knights” – a precursor of the medieval lord and the feudal system.

The cavalries were supplemented by a ‘host’ of provincials levied from the population who fought on foot. There is evidence that the ‘host’ was expected to provide its own weaponry and was relatively untrained, certainly in comparison with the Roman legions of previous centuries. The host fought under local leaders and it is possible that Avitus was responsible for the levy from his estates although we have no evidence for this.

The Franks, who came from the forests of what is now Western Germany, fought on foot but, in contrast to the Visigoth host, they were all trained and experienced in war. They fought in massed columns with axes and barbed lances, which they used as missiles and followed with an immediate assault. They were said to run at the speed of their missiles giving little time for their opponents to recover from the missile storm. It is easy to imagine the ‘host’ of the Visigoths breaking from such an assault. The cavalry would be ineffective against such a column and the Visigoths could not effectively use the shock of a cavalry charge against a column presenting a wall of spears to the advancing horses.

Avitus and the Franks

Clovis had married Clothilde, a Burgundian princess who was a Christian. She tried to convert him but failed. He did convert eventually but nobody knows quite when. The manner of his conversion was reported to have been so like the conversion of Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, that Gregory of Tours called him “a second Constantine”.

Whether this account is true or not, his decision to convert to the religion of Aquitaine was clearly a political decision. This may account for the relatively benign treatment of Avitus who is said to have become a valued member of the household into which he was sold as a slave.

Slaves were valued in Frankish society. The Franks had a law code that set a comprehensive list of fines that had to be paid for damage to people and property. This system of damages was called “weregild”.

(“Were” meaning man and “gild” meaning debt or payment). Weregild was a payment to the person damaged. Slaves were treated as property, alongside cattle and cart horses and valued at 35 “solidi”, although slaves with particular skills could be valued at more than twice this sum, at 75 “solidi”. Unlike slaves in the Roman Empire, there is no evidence that slaves were mistreated. (Although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence)

It has been claimed that Avitus was converted by Clothilde. If so, he had access to Clovis’ household but this may well have been a claim inserted into his legend to increase his value as a saint.

Clovis died in 511, three years after Avitus was captured and yet he did not return to Aquitaine for another eleven years. It is possible that Aquitaine was in an unsettled state for some years as resistance to the Franks continued sporadically. It is also possible that, for part of this time, he was taking religious instruction.

When Avitus returned to Aquitaine, it was because of his decision to become a monk and it is here that we have the explanation for his release and the explanation for his “conversion”, the apparent discrepancy in the legend. According to RHC Davies (author of “A History of Medieval Europe”), when someone decided to become a monk, he was said to have been “converted to religion”.

Avitus – Monk and Hermit

Becoming a monk would automatically lead to Avitus’ release from slavery, a process known as “manumission”, allowing him the freedom to travel. A monk would also be expected to retire from the world.

There is evidence that Avitus had a strong personality; story has it that he was expelled from one monastery when he offended his fellow monks by his rigorous religious observance. This would also suggest that he was searching for a place to settle. The legend says God told him when he arrived at St Avit-Sénieur that this is where he should settle.

He became a hermit monk close to St Avit and legend has it that he lived in a cave. A hermit monk implies that he lived alone, but this is unlikely because the tradition of monasticism established in Aquitaine by St Martin of Tours (another soldier turned monk). We have a contemporary account of his monastery by his friend Sulpicius Severus.

‘Many also of the brethren had, in the same manner, fashioned retreats for themselves, but most of them had formed these out of the rock of the overhanging mountains, hollowed into caves. There were altogether 80 disciples, who were being disciplined after the example of the saintly master. No one there had anything which was called his own: all things were possessed in common. It was not allowed either to buy or to sell anything, as is the custom among most monks.

No art was practiced there, except that of transcribers, and even this was assigned to the brethren of younger years, while the elders spent their time in prayer.

Barely did any one of them go beyond their cell, unless when they assembled at the place of prayer. They all took their food together, after the hour of fasting was past. No one used wine, except when illness compelled them to do so. Most of them were clothed in garments of camel hair. Any dress approaching to softness was there deemed criminal, and this must be thought the more remarkable, because many amongst them were such as are deemed of noble rank.’

The community that existed around St Avit was probably similar, if not smaller. This would explain a number of events; why the location of his remains were known so that they could be moved to the Abbey more than 500 years after his death; the chapel Avitus had built; and the continuity between the saint’s monastic life and the establishment of the Abbey of St Avit-Sénieur some three centuries later.

When the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostelle was opened in the 9/10th century, the cult of saints had become established following the idea of a useful god. Saints had more access to god and were useful for intercession; therefore it was good to have them on your side. To do that, it was better to visit them and have close communication with them at their shrine, where they had lived or came to rest. As an existing community with the relics of a saint, St Avit-Sénieur would become a pilgrim centre. It also would have become part of the pilgrimage to Compostelle. The Abbey and monastery were built on the headland and, given its height, the Abbey would be visible from a distance in what would be relative wilderness.

Why Avitus chose his hermitage in St Avit can be explained by one final conjecture. Although in the wilderness, he would be close enough to his family estate to be supplied by it. I think he came home.

References:

I am not a scholar and have relied on the writings of those who are. The references I used are:

Fernand Braudel ‘The Identity of France’ vol. 2

Peter Brown ‘The World of Late Antiquity’

Norman Davis ‘Europe – a History’

RHC Davis ‘A History of Medieval Europe’

Robert Fossier (Ed) ‘The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages’ vol.1

Patrick J Geary ‘Before France and Germany’

Guy Halsall ‘Barbarian Migrations and the roman West’

Denys Hay ‘The Medieval Centuries’

Peter Heather ‘The Goths’

‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’

Edward James ‘The Franks’

Sir Charles Oman ‘The Art of War in the Middle Ages’ vol1

Richard Rudglley ‘Barbarians-Secrets of the Dark Ages’

And, of course, the Internet.

I would also like to thank Nancy Dawson for her helpful and pertinent comments and for her editing.

Thanks also to Hélène Déscudé for her translation into French

Ian Pickering, October 2010