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.

"Italo-Celtic" Western vs "Romano-Germanic" Holy Roman Empires

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 Germanized 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. The thoroughness of difference between these two Europes is said to have underlined the eventual Cold War, between Communists in the Greek tradition and Capitalists in the German tradition.

Anglo-Saxon supersessionism of the Romans in Britain

Although the Anglo-Saxons are counted as very important for the foundation of England and very much has been made of this since the Victorian era, the Historia Regum Britanniae compiled by Geoffrey of Monmouth was a significant source of the notion that the English people are originally "Italo-Celtic" (much like Western Rome in general), albeit with significant Belgian or German influences in particular having developed over time. Cornish popular legend holds that some of their ancestry stems from the Phoenicians (like Carthage) and also the Greeks (like Marseille), through the tin trade route, whereas the Germanic tribes were dependent upon the amber trade and had extensive Scythian links, links which are not dissimilar to those attested by the Scots and Irish as Gaels beyond the Hadrianic and Antoninic walls, but which are different from those held to be the case by the Brythonic peoples, divided only much later by the smaller fortifications known as Offa's Dyke. In the Matter of Britain, Brutus of Troy and Corineus are essentially, the ancestors of the English and Welsh respectively. The more widely understood and accepted circumstances of Vortigern and Rowena with the employment of foederati or laeti, are held to be stemming from a much older dynastic "betrayal", by Locrinus having an affair with Estrildis. The nature of the stories seem to be a range spanning between Roman Hellenism to the convolution of "Dark Ages" myth. In fact, the Anglo-Saxon bridge between the Continental and Insular tribes, was merely a late Roman expression of the pre-Roman British Belgae in what much later became known as Wessex, with a capital at Winchester that the Tudor dynasty claimed was King Arthur's Camelot, much as the later Danelaw and Norman relationship was a continuation of these same trans-aquatic tribal patterns. In summary, the English are intimately bound to the conventions of what may be deemed Romano-Germanic culture, which neither simultaneous nor subsequent Byzantine easterners and Germans proper had or have in their constitutional make-up. On the other hand, Englishness is perhaps more "Romano-Celtic", for the pre-Norman symbol of England was the White Dragon, even as the symbol of Wales was the Red Dragon, but the French and Germans have an attachment to the Roman eagle, which is absent from England and Wales. There is in essence, no way in which the English character can be described or function as one to the exclusion of the other and still be recognisable as English, for Englishness is still a symbiosis which the Holy Roman Empire even did not become.

Kingdom of England

Anglo-Saxons took over Roman Britain, changing the nature of the political situation of Sub-Roman Britain via Vortigern and the Saxon Shore, which is well rooted in British history. The English nation was born not only in the specific toe-hold of the Saxon Shore, but also the provinces known as Caesariensis; Maxima and Flavia, whereas the Welsh nation is the remnant from the provinces known as Britannia; Prima and Secunda. This is not only due to the conditions of Late Antiquity in which Britain, like other parts of Western Rome, became transformed by migration, but also because of the close interaction of the English nation to other ex-Roman countries throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, whether or not this can be said to have a reason in the Norman conquest of England in 1066, with as much Romanising effect in Britain as the Marca Hispanica and Reconquista had for Spain, since England developed a junior position to France in a similar fashion to that held by Roman Britain in relation to Roman Gaul. England associated primarily with the kingdoms of France, Portugal, Spain, Sicily and the Crusader states, with its most Germanic relations usually in either Flanders or Burgundy, themselves each with heavy Romance roots. The English people then result primarily as a hybrid nation with both influences, Mediterranean-oriented at length, with occasional heavy-yet-brief interactions with the Nordic world, such as the time of the Danelaw (cf. Saxon Shore) and Canute the Great. Unlike proper Germanic nations, the English did and still do not have any direct interactive integration with the Baltic region, nor an establishment of the Hanseatic League; although there were kontor ports for the Hanse in England, England's trade and foreign relations typically stretched from the Rhine in the North to the eastern Mediterranean in the South. England did in fact have a German lobby, in the Electoral Palatinate, where Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall was chosen to be King of the Romans.

Language of England

The descendent of the Old English language today is the most latinate of all Germanic languages, retaining Germanic grammar as its most signifying remnant of its roots, but otherwise more adaptable to admixture with other Romance languages, all spoken in regions where the Roman Empire was once the establishment. That is to say, Latin influence in English is stronger than Latin influence in other languages of Europe not historically tied to Roman territory, as Anglo-Saxon England emerged in the wake of Roman Britain, because a single Germanic language and people did not exist before their long presence in said Roman territory, much like the situation of Franks in Gaul or Goths in Spain and Italy, although unlike the Vandals in Africa, as that people and their language was lost before hybridisation resulted in common with the others. On the other hand, English and French share the same pronunciation of the letters "v/w", but different from both Latin and German, even as German has less in common over all, with English, French and Latin. Due to the mixed heritage of the English language, its spread throughout the British Isles alongside the power of the English since integration with Normandy (itself once having a Saxon Shore, especially at Bayeux), meant that the Celtic nations (inc. Brittany) would likewise adopt a Romano-Germanic veneer and part of this was to do with the earlier Viking invasions of Celtic outliers; even the Welsh would impart this culture to Ireland, beginning with Strongbow.

Church of England

Although the Anglo-Saxons disrupted Roman rule in Britain, the effect was more of a far reaching coup d'etat, as they revived Christianity with ties to Rome and the revival of Latin at the expense of the Welsh, those former Roman Britons responsible for the spread of Celtic Christianity on par with their revival of Celtic languages, in variance with Roman customs until the Synod of Whitby. England also for a long time, had a very comfortable and habitual understanding with the Papacy, beginning with Peter's Pence. Pope Adrian IV was as vital for English purposes as some Popes in the Counter-Reformation period were with the then Catholic powers, although England's connection with the Papacy was not broken until the death of Reginald Pole, once being even stronger under Henry Beaufort and Antony Bek, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. Much later, John Wycliffe began a brief theological alliance with Jan Hus of Bohemia (Richard II of England was then married to Anne of Bohemia and England's enemy, France, was allied with the Avignon Papacy), which was revived when Henry VIII of England initiated a lukewarm Protestant alliance with Lutheran princes of Germany by the marriage to Anne of Cleves. This continued when Elizabeth I of England became regent of the Netherlands during the Dutch Revolt which resulted in the defeat of the Spanish Armada with the help of the Puritan faction, which later moved to Holland (as the "Pilgrims") and furthered with the rule of William III of England even though his Dutch-Orangist background was a Calvinist parallel to the Catholic Flemish-Burgundian establishment that England usually consorted with, especially during the Hundred Years' War. The Calvinist connection eventually steered the English government to the rule of Foreign Protestants (aka Lutherans), officially commencing with the Act of Settlement 1701. As it stands, the spiritual situation of the English people today is in common with other Calvinist-prone peoples, with a much less Germanic background than those countries which adopted Lutheranism.

See also

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