On Thursday evenings, we have a little gathering at the local parish where, over the course of an hour, I attempt to go over the feasts and saints of the upcoming week. About 20-25 people show up, which I can only explain by mentioning that there are snacks, often prepared by my beloved wife or some other good cook.
These little presentations do tend to lead me off into philosophy, history, art, music, architecture and so on. Like the prehistoric seas, my knowledge in these areas is, at best, broad and shallow.
Hey! I spent most of a year at an art school! Been to the Uffizi – twice! I’ve read Tacitus! And Herodotus! More than once, even! And a bookcase or two full of pretty much random history, art and philosophy books. And – I got nothin’.
Even more surprising than there being 20-25 people willing to show up for this is that, repeatedly, I’ve been told by these dear souls that they *like* the digressions into art and history and such.
The snacks must figure into this, somehow, but it’s tricky to see how.
The danger here is that – you, my 12.5 regular readers, will be shocked – I *like* rambling on about things I kinda maybe understand a little. There are dangers in encouraging me to blather, similar to the dangers associated with throwing gasoline on a flame, as observed by Dr. Lazarus.
The other danger: I’ll be having a thought, know that I don’t know, hit the interwebs, and come up for air an hour or two later, my head full of half-understood, poorly contextualized (is that a word? Probably shouldn’t be.) FACTS.
Oh, boy. This is how I came to be thinking about Geats. Actually, not Geats, per se, but all those scary Germanic tribes that ended up strongly represented in the gene pools of just about anybody with European ancestry.
And how, one might ask, did I get to thinking about Geats in a presentation on feasts and saints? St. Isidore of Seville, naturally. He was more or less a Visigoth – a Western Goth, as opposed to Ostrogoth, an Eastern Goth. The words Goth and Geat are closely related, along with a number of other similar terms. Jutes might be Geats, too. There is no end to speculation, invariably the case when the topic is interesting and the facts few. Doubly so when smart guys are involved.
Anyway, dipping a toe into the shallow sea: in 410, when Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome, the The Romans cut some sort of a deal where the Visigoths got a nice chunk of Gaul, the central western part, in exchange for going away.
The funny thing: the Romans could not have been sacked by a nicer, as it were, bunch of barbarians. The Visigoths had for a long time been mercenary partners with the Empire, fighting its wars and defending its frontiers. The Visigoths, especially Alaric, had understandably begun to think of themselves as Romans for all practical purposes. They didn’t just want the money, although they certainly did want to be paid. They wanted respect.
Alaric’s beef with the Empire was that they were happy to treat him like a Roman when they needed his army to save their necks, but treated him like, well, a barbarian mercenary when they didn’t. This did not go over well with Alaric, a proud Germanic king. After a series of insults and having to threaten the Empire to get paid, he started in getting even. He couldn’t sack Constantinople, which was well defended. Not that he didn’t try. So he went after Rome, by then certainly a second-class target but symbolically still the heart of the Empire.
But, as a Roman wannabe, he didn’t want to burn it to the ground and slaughter everybody, and so Rome came through the sack with surprisingly little damage.
And then Alaric died, and his troops move on to Gaul, from which they were fairly promptly driven south into Spain – by other Germanic tribes, who, in turn, were under pressure in the East from yet other Barbarians – Huns, I think, but don’t make me look it up! I’ll be gone for hours!!!
So the oddity here is that the Visigoths were the high class barbarians by the standards of the other German tribes. They proved this by settling down in Spain and putting together a nice Kingdom, comprising most of what is now Spain and a good piece of France. Into which Kingdom of the Visigoths St. Isidore was born. And so on and so forth.
(The Ostrogoths ended up settling in – Italy. Along with the Lombards, the Germanic tribe from which St. Thomas Aquinas is descended. The Ostrogoths conquered Italy by defeating Odoacer, King of Italy, who was Scirian, the Scirii being yet another Germanic tribe. This stuff never ends!)
Geats, on the other hand, were Swedes – sort of. Beowulf was a Geat, probably. Their neighbors along the shores of the Baltic and North Seas included the Jutes (Jutland being pretty much modern Denmark) , the Angles and the Saxons – who ended up in the British Isles, partly, displacing to some extent the Celts, who seem to come from Bohemia, who no doubt displaced the Picts or somebody.
It. Never. Ends. This of course occasioned a search for a quotation from Will Rogers (I’m almost sure) about how there’s not a man in the world living on land he has any real right to. But I couldn’t find it.
figured it out. Same old same old. The only fun, such as it is, is in seeing Marxists come up with new ways to explain the utter failure of reality to live down to their theories and excuse their bloodthirsty violence. Not much fun.
Yard Sale of the Mind 