Vanished Kingdoms

by Norman Davies

  In 1885, the parish was taken over by an extraordinary, not to say notorious vicar, Father Bérenger Saunière (1852–1917). Together with his neighbour and colleague, the Abbé Boudet of nearby Rennes-les-Bains, author of a bizarre volume on ancient Celtic languages,33 Father Saunière dabbled both in history and in the occult. When renovating his church, he claimed to have discovered three parchments hidden inside a Visigothic pillar and covered in coded messages. Soon afterwards, he showed signs of ostentatious and unexplained wealth; the splendid villa and fake medieval folly which he built are still in place. When he was dying, his deathbed confession so shocked his confessor that the vicar was denied the last rites. His favourite motto, reportedly, was a quotation from Balzac: ‘Il y a deux histoires: l’histoire officielle, menteuse, et l’histoire secrète, où sont les véritables causes des événements’ (‘There are two sorts of history: lying official history and secret history, where the true causes of events can be found’).34

  To be fair, the Visigoths form only one of many elements in the fantastical pot-pourri of stories that have circulated since Father Saunière’s death. They have been resurrected in the company of Cathars, Templars, Rosicrucians, the shadowy Priory of Sion, and the Holy Grail itself. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is but one of a dozen books that feed off the mysterious tales.35 According to taste, the secret Treasure of Rhedae is variously described as the ‘Jewels of the Visigoths’ carried off from Rome or from Tolosa, or the ‘Hoard of Jerusalem’, brought by the Visigoths from Byzantium. The link with the so-called ‘bloodline of Christ’ hangs on yet more far-fetched suppositions, namely that St Mary Magdalene travelled to southern Gaul and that her descendants married into local Visigothic families.

  Nonetheless, despite the efforts of the Vouglaisiens and the Rennains – not to be confused with the Rennois of Rennes-les-Bains – the modern French nation has never really warmed to the Visigoths. Their trail is far stronger in Spain than in the country where their statehood began. This is only to be expected. After the retreat from Aquitania, the Visigoths established themselves as the dominant element in Iberia. Their second realm, the Kingdom of Toledo, lasted twice as long as the Kingdom of Tolosa, and has penetrated deeply into modern Spanish consciousness.36 The Visigothic kings, including the monarchs of Tolosa, are honoured by statues in Madrid,* but not in Toulouse.

  Some imaginative method needs to be devised, therefore, for reclaiming the lost Visigothic culture of the Aquitanian era. It might be possible, for example, to work backwards from the known realia of Visigothic Spain. After all, the religious and artistic practices which the Visigoths would have taken with them from Aquitania were dominant in parts of Iberia until the late sixth century; the Gothic speech, which Sidonius heard in Tolosa, held its own in Toledo until the seventh century; and the Visigoths’ political culture as first defined by Euric continued to evolve until the eighth century. Of course, great care is needed. Not everything that bears the Visigothic label, like Visigothic Chant or Visigothic Script, derives from the Visigoths. And the Iberian cultural soil into which Visigothic customs were transplanted, though similarly Romanized, was not identical to that of Gallia Aquitania.

  Even so, there are several leads to work on. In ecclesiastical architecture, the exquisite simplicity of the Visigothic church of San Pedro de la Nava at Zamora could well have had parallels in post-Roman Gaul. Its surviving horseshoe arches and tunnel vaulting were clearly inspired by something that went before it. The symbolism and style of Visigothic sacred art has Byzantine roots and would also have passed through Tolosa. The influence of Gothic language on the indigenous population, though limited, would have been much the same on both sides of the Pyrenees. Words such as suppa (soup) or bank (bench) belong to the long list of Germanisms adopted by the neo-Latin idioms.37 And, since prayers learned in childhood are the ones remembered longest, we can plausibly assume that the Gothic form of the Lord’s Prayer, as recited at every stage of the Visigoths’ journey from the Danube to the Douro, was also recited devoutly at Nostra Domina Daurata:

  Atta unsar þu in himinam Our Father, Thou in Heaven

  weihnai namo þein Holy be Thy name.

  qimai þiudinassus þeins Thy kingdom come

  wairþai wilja þeins Thy will be done,

  swe in himina jah ana airþai. As in Heaven so on earth.

  Hlaif unsarana þana sinteinan gif uns himma daga Give us this day our daily loaf

  jah aflet uns þatei skulans sijaima And forgive us who are in debt

  swaswe jah weis afletam þaim skulam unsaraim As we also forgive our debtors.

  jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai Bring us not into temptation

  ak lausei uns af þamma ubilin But free us from the evil one.

  Unte þeina ist þiudangardi jah mahts For thine is the kingdom and might

  jah wulþus in aiwins. And glory in eternity.38

  *

  The fate of the Kingdom of Tolosa naturally prompts reflections about ‘alternative history’. What would have happened if Clovis had been defeated, and the Visigoths had won? It was quite possible for them to have done so. The alternative was a possibility, and it opens up vistas of an unrealized future. On the eve of the Battle of Vouillé, the Franks controlled perhaps one-third of post-Roman Gaul. The Visigoths, Arian Christians, were becoming overlords of Iberia as well as southern Gaul, and were linked to the Ostrogoths in Italy. The bishop of Rome enjoyed no special position among the five patriarchs of Christendom, and by far the larger part of Europe remained pagan. Had Alaric II fought off Clovis, it is entirely realistic to envisage Western Europe dominated by a pan-Gothic hegemony, while a diminished Roman Church retreated before the double advance of Arianism and Byzantine Orthodoxy. In which case, France may never have come into being, or may have developed somewhere else or in a different way. The future power of the papacy, which the Franks were destined to promote, may not have come about. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is perfectly predictable.

  Yet the endless alternative scenarios, which exist at every stage of history, do not warrant too much attention. The past is not a board game that can be played and replayed at will. What happened happened. What didn’t, didn’t. Clovis the Frank did kill Alaric the Visigoth. The Franks drove out the Visigoths, and not vice versa. It is not unreasonable to maintain, therefore, that ‘The history of France began at Vouillé’.

  The story of the ‘post-Roman twilight’ is complicated enough as it is. Historians have to take account of the sheer diversity of the ‘barbarians’, and hence of the richly polycultural and multi-ethnic flavour of their intermingling with settled populations. Numerous unexpected twists and turns occurred in their interactions. Above all, the timescale was enormous. The gap between the collapse of the Western Empire in 476 and the emergence of recognizable modern states like France or England spans five hundred years at least. The post-Roman twilight lasted twice as long as the Western Empire itself.

  In this respect, the example of the Visigoths serves as a case study for ‘Barbarian Europe’ as a whole. Their sojourn in Aquitania was but one stop on a very long road. Like their cousins, the Ostrogoths and the Lombards, and their sometime neighbours the Burgundians, they belonged to an ethnic and linguistic sub-group which has totally died out. Their customs and speech were not close to Frankish, which was the progenitor of modern Dutch and Flemish and which provided the catalyst for transforming Gallo-Roman Latin into Old French. It is unlikely that Alaric II could have conversed with Clovis at Amboise without resorting either to Latin or to an interpreter. What is more, the Visigoths encountered many other ‘barbarians’ on the road, no doubt ‘contaminating’ their language, their culture and their gene pool in the process. Among them, the Vandals were East Germanic, the Suevi or ‘Swabians’ were Central Germanic, the Huns were Turkic, and the Alans were Iranic (like the modern Ossetians).39

  Popular memory-making plays many tricks. One of them may be called ‘the foreshortening of time’. Peering back into the past, contemporary Europ
eans see modern history in the foreground, medieval history in the middle distance, and the post-Roman twilight as a faint strip along the far horizon. Figures like Alaric or Clovis remain distant, faceless specks, unless plucked from their historical setting, magnified, dressed up and lionized for reasons of latter-day politics or national pride. Clovis I, king of the Franks, the victor of Vouillé, is commemorated by a magnificent tomb in the Parisian abbey of St Denis. Alaric II, whom Clovis killed, had ruled over a larger realm than that of the Franks. Yet he has no known grave, no modern monument.

  Historical memory spurns even-handedness. The Visigoths must have known it. In their wisdom, they had buried their leaders in a traditional way which honoured the dead but which left no trace. The sepulchre of Alaric I, ‘the Ruler of All’, was washed into the sands of the sea long before his successors founded the Kingdom of Tolosa. No one but an occasional German Romantic cares to recall the moment:

  Nächtlich am Busento lispeln

  Bei Cosenza dumpfe Lieder.

  Aus den Wassern schallt es Antwort

  Und in Wirbeln klingt es wieder.

  (‘Mournful songs whisper in the night / near Cosenza, along Busento’s banks. / The waters murmur their answer, / and the whirlpools resound with singing.’)40

  * Arius of Alexandria (d. 336), the principal heresiarch of the fourth century, was condemned by the Church Council of Nicaea for denying the full divinity of Christ and hence the prevailing view on the nature of the Trinity. After Nicaea, his teaching was banned by the imperial authorities.

  * Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople in 428–31, the principal heresiarch of the fifth century, was condemned by the Council of Ephesus for holding that Christ’s nature was equally human and divine.

  * An unconfirmed site usually located in the vicinity of Châlons-en-Champagne.

  * Next to the Royal Palace in the Plaze de Oriente.

  2

  Alt Clud

  Kingdom of the Rock

  (Fifth to Twelfth Centuries)

  I

  Dumbarton Rock is not one of Britain’s premier historical sites. It does not figure in Britain’s top fifty places to visit. It is not classed in the same league as Stonehenge or Hampton Court, or its more famous Scottish neighbours, Stirling and Edinburgh. If people know it at all, they rate it as little more than a striking local landmark.

  Yet modest Dumbarton is one of those special places that have the power to conjure up the stark contrast between what is and what once was. The past is not only a foreign country that we half knew existed; it is hiding another concealed country behind it, and behind that one, another, and another – like a set of Russian matryoshki, in which larger dolls conceal smaller. Certainly, the surface is not a reliable guide to what lies underneath. In this case, the surface exhibits a country which we know as Scotland. Another country called England lies beyond the Borders. But Dumbarton beckons us to a world that flourished before England or Scotland had been invented.

  Geologically, Dumbarton Rock is just a volcanic plug, the residual core of a prehistoric volcano whose outer cone has been washed away by erosion over aeons. Ever since the last Ice Age, it has protruded through the floodplain on the north bank of the Firth of Clyde at the point where the River Leven flows down from the Highlands. Strategically, it has had immense importance. For centuries it dominated the traffic on the Firth, guarding the gateway to the country’s heartland. It deterred the invaders and intruders who sought to sail upriver from the Irish Sea, and it sheltered all those who awaited a fair wind or an ebb tide to take them downstream to the ocean. To the south, on the opposite bank, lie Paisley, Greenock and Gourock, the first of which is the site of a magnificent medieval abbey. To the east sprawls industrial Clydebank, and beyond that the great city of Glasgow. The Kilpatrick Hills and the ‘Bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond’ rise to the north. To the west, as the Firth broadens out into an imposing estuary, islands great and small come into view, Bute, Arran and Ailsa Craig, and in the far haze the desolate Mull of Kintyre. Nothing, one might believe, could be more Scottish.

  The position of Dumbarton Rock can be best appreciated from the air as one lands at Glasgow Airport. The main flight path brings planes in from the north, over the green and bracken-coloured braes towards the point on the Clyde where the narrow stream ends and the Firth begins. Looking from the right-hand window of the plane, one passes close to the modern Clyde suspension bridge, and enjoys a grandstand view of the shimmering waters beyond. The view is particularly dramatic on a fine summer’s evening. The red glow of the sunset outlines the distant lochs and islands. The broad expanse of the Firth shines silver, and the twin peaks of the Rock stand out against the light like a pair of Egyptian pyramids.1

  The Firth of Clyde is tidal. Like all the inlets and estuaries on Britain’s western coasts, it is subjected to four tides in every twenty-six hours – two flood tides and two ebb tides, whose perpetual motions have not stopped since the ocean first invaded this part of Europe. An Iron Age fort once stood atop the Rock; over the millennia, sentinels have watched the processions of coracles, boats and battleships that have sailed in on the rising tide or sailed out on the ebb. In late Roman times, they would have warned of the approach of the Hibernian pirates, whom the Romans called Scotti.* In the ninth century they would have gasped in awe at the fearsome fleets of Viking longships. In more recent times, they would have seen the troopships and merchantmen that formed the sinews of the British Empire, and the stately Cunard liners steaming out to the Atlantic.

  Not surprisingly, the town under the shadow of the Rock lived for much of its career from ship-building. The shipyard at Dumbarton was itself too small to accommodate the great ocean liners that were built at nearby Clydebank; instead, it specialized in the smaller steamships and paddleboats that have plied their trade on the Clyde for the last 200 years. Indeed, steaming ‘doon the watter’ from Glasgow has long been one of the most characteristic activities of the area.2 Europe’s very first commercial steamship service started up here in 1812, when the Comet sailed from Glasgow to Greenock. In the following decades the service was extended not only to every harbour on the Firth, but to ports as far as Oban and Stornoway. The red, white and black-tipped funnels of the steamers, mailboats and ferries of David MacBrayne’s company later established a ubiquitous presence that attracted millions of trippers and travellers. The successor company of Caledonian-MacBrayne, or ‘Cal-Mac’, still forms an essential element of the local scene.3 The saying persists: ‘The Earth is the Lord’s and all that therein is, but the Highlands and Islands belong to MacBrayne.’

  Industrial development also spread up the Vale of Leven along the five riverside miles separating Dumbarton from Balloch on Loch Lomond. Dye-works, print shops and foundries were concentrated in the factories of Alexandria, Jamestown and Bonhill. Workers from the Vale of Leven were known in Dumbarton as ‘jeelies’, because they ate their jeelies or ‘jam sandwiches’ in the yard while the locals went home for lunch.

  There is no better way of finding one’s historical and geographical bearings than by taking a steamer trip across the Firth. Even a short crossing from Wemyss Bay to Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, or from Ardrossan to Brodick on Arran, proves immensely stimulating, for in little more than half an hour it takes passengers across Scotland’s most important divide, between the Lowlands and the Highlands. Wemyss Bay, in Ayrshire, 30 miles west of Glasgow, belongs to the Lallans* homeland of Robbie Burns. Rothesay and the Isle of Bute belong to the Gaeltacht – the land of the clans, the tartans and the Gaelic tongue. The journey should be undertaken on one of the ‘bracing’ days for which the Firth is famous. A stiff breeze chops the water, blowing spray off the tips of the waves. The sturdy ferryboat bucks and rolls confidently amid the raucous cries of the seagulls and the pungent smell of seaweed. Charcoal-grey clouds scud overhead, moving too fast to drop their charge of rain; patches of blue sky release narrow torrents of sunlight that play here and there on the seawater and on the luminous gree
n of the opposite shore. The white bow waves dance with the white sails of the yachts as they speed along. Holding fast to the rail, cheeks chafed and lungs filled to overflowing, one watches transfixed at the display of colour and movement. A rainbow glistens over the Kyles of Bute. Then a sudden calm descends as the ferry enters the lee of the harbour, and one steps ashore, duly braced, in a different country.

  This is the landscape for ever associated with the name of the Harry Lauder (1870–1950), one of the most famous entertainers of the early twentieth century, and reputedly the first star singer to sell a million records. Lauder sang popular sentimental songs in a broad Scots brogue, shattering all class barriers by his unique mixture of stoicism and tenderness. Numbers like ‘I love a lassie, a bonnie Hielan’ lassie’ or ‘Keep right on to the end of the road’ brought him a fortune from which he built his mansion at Laudervale near Dunoon. His many tours to the United States would invariably start with a steamer trip up the Firth from Dunoon to the Princes Pier in Greenock.

  Roamin’ in the gloamin’ on the bonnie banks of Clyde,

  Roamin’ in the gloamin’ wi’ ma lassie by ma side.

  When the sun has gone to rest, that’s the time that I like best.