Although numerous sources exist from the second half of the fourth century that show concern for the situation in the Church in Hispania, perhaps the most passionate and eloquent is the Libellus precum by Faustinus and Marcellinus (hereafter, LP) In a particularly harsh manner, the authors detailed and denounced the opportunism, ambition, and worldly interests of many clerics who falsely proclaimed themselves as Catholics and, at the same time, persecuted those who remained faithful to the Nicene Creed with unusual cruelty. In a previous work, I described the verisimilitude of the events chronicled in the LP in the style of a pleading brief presented at court, and formally addressed to the three reigning emperors at that time (Valentinian II, Theodosius, and Arcadius). The authenticity of the story is also supported by the rescript, or Lex augusta (hereafter, LA), which offered an official response to the libellus , taking the truth and the seriousness of its content for granted.

Perhaps the most original aspect of this text is its recalling of the historical past in order to explain the current situation, particularly the doctrinal rectitude of some Nicenist loyals, who were unjustly persecuted by Catholic opportunists. To this end, its story highlights the most favourable events in their cause, and silences others that could have done it harm. The result could only be a particular reworking of the past, as we aim to show in the following pages.

Pedro Castillo Maldonado began his essay on ‘Catholics and Arians in Visigothic Spain: The Conformation of a Unified System of Domination’ by referring to the historical painting by José Martí y Monsó, found in the Spanish Senate, which praises Reccared’s conversion to Nicene Catholicism in 589: ‘Due to its iconographic imagery, which was a bit outmoded, quite static and of dubious artistic quality, the spectator gets the impression of watching a historical event, the Third Council of Toledo, solemn and peaceful’. We prefer to remember the work by Antonio Muñoz Degrain on the same subject, also commissioned by the Senate in 1888, and, thanks to its success, according to Tomás Pérez Veo, became the ‘true’ image of the historical event, even displacing that of Martí y Monsó, the traditional painting until that time. However, as Pérez Viejo himself recalls, ‘Reccared’s presence in the symbolic buildings of the State, temples of the nation, was not limited to the Senate. The Visigothic monarch is among those who appear on the decorated ceiling of the sessions hall of the Congress (work of Carlos Luis de Ribera), in the company of – to make the reasons for his presence clear – Saint Isidore of Seville’. Somehow, each of them tried to illustrate the idea of the official historian of the period, Modesto Lafuente, considered to be the most important figure of the liberal and conservative Spanish historiography.

Introduction

One of these was Christian, more like a Roman (unus Christianus propiorque Romano ), and as events have proved, less savage in his slaughter through his fear of God. The other was a pagan and barbarian, a true Scythian (alius paganus barbarus et vere Scytha ), whose insatiable cruelty loved slaughter for slaughter’s sake as much as glory and plunder. This is how the Roman writer Orosius compares two Gothic warlords in the seventh book of his Histories Against the Pagans . Why is the leader of one attacking enemy group, Alaric, presented as propiorque Romano , ‘nearer to being Roman’, even though his troops sacked the city of Rome in 410? And why is Radagaisus, the leader of another attacking Gothic force, which devastated Italy in 405–406, described as a barbarian and vere Scytha , ‘a true Scythian’, as Goths were habitually called by Greco-Roman writers?

What is the difference between the two Gothic leaders? Orosius describes Radagaisus as insatiably cruel and bloodthirsty, while Alaric is depicted as ‘less savage in his slaughter’ because of his Christianity. Furthermore, Orosius states that Alaric was a Christian and Radagaisus a pagan. Thus, in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, one criterion for being Roman, at least for the Christian writer Orosius, was religious adherence.

As historians have rightly suggested, the religious freedom granted by the Edict of Milan in 313 allowed for a fundamental change in status for Christianity. Inasmuch as the Church was no longer regarded an illegal ‘sect’, Christianity became free to expand its influence within the Empire, gradually supplanting paganism and becoming the customary religion. Towards the end of the fourth century – during the reign of Theodosius – the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 and the Council of Constantinople in 382 imposed Nicene Christianity as the ‘state religion’. These events led to a major change in perspective. After this time, the spiritual superiority of Christianity over paganism and the suppression of pagan traditions are key elements in our understanding of Christian historiography. Drawing clear lines of demarcation between orthodoxy and heterodoxy almost immediately became a necessary condition to neutralise both manifestations of religious dissidence and expressions of diversity. This paper will examine two fundamental parameters that were commonly regarded as indicators of orthodoxy: coherence of behaviour and knowledge of doctrine. These concepts only emerged gradually though, and were adapted to the historical circumstances from time to time. Norms and decrees issued by the ecclesiastical hierarchy and constitutions promulgated by emperors are important sources from which to detect and analyse provisions directed against heretics and pagans. The examination of the situation in Hispania, most notably during the last decades of the fourth century, provides an interesting picture of both this cultural transition and the conflicts it caused.

In the unsettled socio-political and literary spheres of Late Antiquity, the Chronicle of Hydatius represents reliable and important evidence for the reconstruction of the political and military events that occurred in the Iberian peninsula during the fifth century. The Bishop of Aquae Flaviae (present-day Chaves in Portugal) pursues the previous historiographical works of the ‘holy and very erudite Fathers’ (patres sancti et eruditissimi ), Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome, and traces a chronological period that goes from 379 to 468: with a dark stylistic expressionism and a marked pessimistic vein, he makes a detailed report about the salient episodes of the barbarian penetration beyond the Pyrenees, of the violent conflicts between the Sueves and the Goths, and the restless relationship between the barbarian tribes and the native population. In that climate of uncertainty and precariousness, the Galician bishop developed a dramatic awareness of the demise of the empire: after having led an embassy to the general Aetius, between 431 and 432, and after assuming, thanks to his personal prestige and his episcopal office, the role of political mediator between the claims of the Ibero-Roman communities and the court of Ravenna, Hydatius seems to be aware of the weakness of imperial power and the inability of the central authority to stem the barbarian invasions.

The historical-apocalyptic conception of the Chronicle

It is not surprising, therefore, that Hydatius’s refined political knowledge, gained from the direct experience of leading diplomatic delegations, corresponds to an articulated historical conception, which, in some respects, presents very interesting elements of novelty. In this regard, Richard W. Burgess enthusiastically portrays Hydatius as one of the pioneers of the Latin chronograph genre.

Chapter two delineates ‘the science of language’ as it developed from the philosophical speculations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder to the establishment of the ‘New Philology’ in the 1860s. Even as philosophers recognised significant continuities between birdsong, speech and poetry, they also, however, increasingly turned their attention to the internal, mental faculties as the distinguishing marks of an evolved and uniquely human language. This chapter examines the wider implications of a developing equation of language and thought in the long nineteenth century. The apparent absence of language in animals was widely seen to reflect a lack of intelligence, reason or even consciousness. Since language reflected the unique faculties of the human mind, philosophers of all stripes raced to discover an intrinsic set of principles common to all human languages throughout time and across continents. According to this same principle, however, differences between languages were also seen to reflect or even determine differences in the minds of their speakers. As they responded to these larger debates, scientists and poets throughout this period, from William Wordsworth to Charles Darwin, reflected on their personal experiences and the notorious difficulty they habitually encountered in attempting to translate their own thoughts into words.

John Clare’s transcription of the nightingale’s song has been praised as ‘the most accurate rendering in words of any bird’s voice for nearly a century’. But the so-called ‘peasant poet’ was not naïve. Chapter four argues that Clare’s educational background and multifarious interests in poetry, science and natural history made him singly alert to the difficulties inherent within his own attempt to ‘syllable the sounds’ of the nightingale. The chapter places Clare’s writing in a pivotal, though pre-Darwinian, stage of the ‘science of birdsong’: a period in which all kinds of ‘facts’ about birdsong were being collected, compared and vigorously disputed. Watching the bird closely as it inwardly mutters its undersong, or stammers or hurries over ill-remembered passages, Clare witnessed the kind of behaviour which would ultimately challenge the ‘foolish lyes’ uttered by both poets and philosophers regarding how and why birds sing. By exploring the deep connections which Clare draws between the ‘muttering’ of the bird while practising its songs and his own processes of composition, the chapter seeks to challenge and break down some of the binary distinctions which have framed responses to the writings of this so-called ‘peasant-poet’: ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, ‘instinctive’ and ‘learned’, ‘spontaneous’ and ‘premeditated’ art.

This chapter places Thomas Hardy’s writings in the context of the heated arguments that arose between Charles Darwin and his most outspoken adversary, the philologist Max Müller, regarding the relationship between language and thought. While Müller insisted on a close, coeval relationship between the ability to frame ideas and the ability to express those ideas in words, Darwin throughout his writing demonstrates a lively fascination with the diverse and dynamic kinds of thinking that human beings and other animals appear able to perform ‘manifestly without the aid of language’ (Descent of Man, 1871). This chapter argues that Hardy’s writing is centrally concerned with the tragi-comic consequences of a world in which there is both language without thought and thought without language. It begins by exploring Hardy’s responses to these larger concerns in his novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891-2) and concludes by examining his return to this theme in his poetry. The chapter discusses a wide range of Hardy’s poems, from canonical pieces such as ‘The Darkling Thrush’ (1900) to lesser-known works, including the series of short poems that Hardy is believed to have contributed to his second wife Florence Emily Dugdale’s volume for children, The Book of Baby Birds (1912).