Romano-Germanic culture

This article covers the culture of Romanized Germanic peoples. For the political history of the medieval Roman Empire of the German Nation, see: Holy Roman Empire.

Scholar Norman Cantor uses the term Romano-Germanic to define the general culture of Western Europe, having both Roman and Germanic roots.

The term Romano-Germanic describes the conflation of Roman culture with that of various Germanic peoples under the rule of the Roman Empire. It is also sometimes used to describe Germanic kingdoms that were established upon territories previously, either wholly or in part, under Roman jurisdiction, such as the Kingdoms of the Visigoths (in Hispania and Gallia Narbonensis), the Ostrogoths (in Italia, Sicilia, Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia, Dalmatia and Dacia), and the Franks (in Gallia Aquitania, Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Belgica, Germania Superior and Inferior, and parts of the previously unconquered Germania Magna). Additionally, minor Germanic tribes, like the Vandals and the Suebi, established ephemeral kingdoms of lesser importance.

It may be important to note that under the Tetrarchy, Germany, like Belgium, was a part of Gaul, which in and of itself, was Roman in common with junior Gallic partners Britain and Spain, all of which were predominantly Celtic as opposed to Italy, Rome and Africa as the Latin hearth, but all of these were part of the Western Roman Empire, which became revived as the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne, when he had become not only the chief ruler of Celto-Frankish Gaul, but also of Latino-Langobardic Italy. Even the earlier Gallic Empire, which included Britain and Spain, held present day German Trier as capital, so the Carolingian transition to Aachen cannot be so different. Neither would the duality between Italy and Germany of the later Ottonian period be out of step with this tradition, thus merely making the case that the Western Empire's borders shifted and the focus as well.

An offshoot of this Romano-Germanic establishment, was the Latin Empire and the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well as other Latin fiefs, a military attempt to align the Byzantine Empire with the Germanised West, but which resulted in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Turks, somewhat similar to the earlier combined effects of the Germans and Huns in the West. It may be simple to define the differences between East and West as those between Greeks and Germans, between Magna Graecia and Magna Germania, the origins of Classical and Medieval Romes respectively. During the middle ages, the Byzantines called all westerners (tied to the Papacy and HRE) Franks, whereas westerners called the Byzantines Greeks, with the exception of the Latin Empire which aligned Constantinople with the Holy Roman Empire and thus, there were two Germanised Romes, West and East.

See also

• Romano-Germanic Museum
• Gallo-Roman culture
• Romano-British culture
• Germania