The Empire would also have been keen to aid civic order and a central control over potential raiders from Ireland. It had backed up centralised rule by pro-Roman leaders to control their warlike inferiors on the Rhine and in Britain in the early empire, as well as making these alliances with local kings the mainstay of its eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern foreign policy from the late Republic onwards. For a start, it was cheaper than annexation. As has been seen earlier, it is probable that Valentinian I (via Count Theodosius) resorted to this expedient beyond Hadrian’s Wall after 367. Indeed, it was late Roman practice to build up supposedly controllable and Romanised kings to control the threatening Germanic peoples, including Alaric as the Gothic ruler before 395. The Irish were part of the coalition that attacked Britain in 367, whether or not any High Kingship existed at that time to direct raiding, and the archaeological evidence shows that they were settling in the Lleyn peninsula, Pembrokeshire, and Cornwall in the fifth century. The traditional Dyfed royal pedigree linked the southwest Wales Irish leadership to the royal house of Leinster.
Backing a pro-Roman kingship in Ireland, or at least in provinces whose inhabitants were raiding Britain, in the fifth century would have followed normal practice. According to John Morris’ theory, the British ruler Vortigern’ of the 430s established this sort of link with the ‘High King’ Loeghaire.26 Thus a surviving Western Empire would have seen the value of supporting the fifth and sixth centuries High Kings of the ‘Ui Niall’ dynasty, at least once the threat posed by Attila had passed and such alliances could be considered at leisure. This is subject to the caveat that we cannot be certain how powerful the High Kingship based at Tara-Temhair actually was in the fifth and sixth centuries. Did it really establish a form of control or leadership of the sub-kings of the Five Provinces, or was its real power restricted to the eastern province of Midhe where it was based?
It was subsequently claimed that the line of Niall ‘of the Nine Hostages’ (d. 405?) had been powerful over-kings until the eclipse of the central kingship in the 550s, when a coalition of provincial rulers aided by St. Columbcille (Columba) brought down Diarmait mac Cerbhall and reduced his successors to nominal national power. But modern historians would prefer to contend that the centralised power of Niall’s line had always been ephemeral beyond the plains of central Ireland and the kingdom of Midhe. Their alleged control of their allies was an anachronistic myth promoted by tenth and eleventh century writers who wanted to look back to a Golden Age of royal power.27 The Church, too, found it useful to claim that one centralised kingship had served as the ally of the national apostle St. Patrick, thus presenting a template of secular-religious co-operation for later kings to follow. Did later writers create the myth of a powerful fifth century High Kingship for contemporary rulers to follow, as they undoubtably exaggerated, or maybe invented, the earlier kingship of the Golden Age of Cormac mac Airt in the third century?
It is possible that a Roman military expedition would assist a pro-Roman client High King in defeating his rivals and becoming a reliable ally in return for aid in ending all raiding on Britain. This political and military support could have proved crucial in mid-sixth century High Kings of Niall’s line in resisting their dynastic and provincial enemies successfully, and securing domination for their kingdom of Midhe over its neighbours with the aid of Roman troops and/or weaponry. The Roman Church could order its local Catholic bishops to assist the King and promote the kingship’s role, as in seventh century Britain. As in reality, tribal dynastic families would provide a number of the leading clerics; powerful abbots would gain land and influence for their monasteries. But a Roman-influenced British state(s) and Church would still be in existence across the Irish Sea, and British clerics would play a part in encouraging the Irish Church to develop on Roman lines (e.g. adopting the Roman dates for Easter). Ireland did not have towns to serve as the seats of bishoprics in the Roman manner, however, so a Roman pattern of urban sees could not develop; the bishops would still have been attached to the tribal royal courts.
Thus it is possible that in the crucial confrontations around 560 Diarmait mac Cearbhall would have prevailed over decentralising provincial rivals, not least St. Columba and other Ui Niall princes, and preserved the High Kingship as a strong force for the coming decades. It is less certain that a hereditary kingship could have emerged, due to the comparative strength of the provincial under-kings who would have resisted that. A dynamic ruler would have had to establish a centralised army to enforce his will, possibly with Roman or British mercenaries. The main provincial kingdoms of Leinster (under the two rival lines of the ‘Ui Dunlainge’ and ‘Ui Cennselaig’), Munster (under the descendants of the mid-fifth century king of Cashel, Cormac Corc), Connacht (under the family of mid-fifth century High King Aillel), and Ulster (under a branch of the ‘Ui Niall’ based at Ailech), should have survived as the main political units, with a mass of minor local tribal kings. Unless the Roman Empire had annexed southern Scotland permanently, under Agricola around 80–4 or Septimius Severus in 208–11, the lands of Argyll (‘Coast of the Gael’) would still have been available for settlement in the fifth and sixth centuries by eastern Ulster peoples pushed out of their homeland by the ‘Ui Niall’. The Irish settlers’ kingdom of ‘Dalriada’ would thus have evolved as in reality, though a powerful central British kingship ruling to Hadrian’s Wall would have restricted southern raiding or conquest by them or their Pictish neighbours.
Dalriada and the Irish overseas
It has been suggested that the post-367 Roman military recovery in the North involved setting up pro-Roman border kingdoms of Celtic allies in Strathclyde and Lothian (Gododdin) to block Pictish raids, as implied by the Roman names of their alleged dynastic founders (maybe Clemens and Paternus) and late fourth century dating.28 Lothian had a strong military tradition, with its prince Cunedda being called South to drive the Irish out of Gwynedd (in 400 or 440?) and a famous heroic campaign led by its warriors against the invading Angles at ‘Catraeth’ (Catterick?) around 600 commemorated in the poem ‘The Gododdin’.29 If so, a strong post-Roman authority in Britain should have been able to assist these kingdoms as a buffer to Pictish and Dalriadan power. Alternatively or in conjunction with this, Roman Church missionaries would have sought to convert the Pictish and Dalriadan kings to Christianity and to make them reliable, non-raiding Roman allies. An imposition of central control and order on Ireland by a pro- Roman dynasty in the fifth or sixth centuries would have encouraged those chieftains and warriors who did not wish to co-operate to emigrate to free Argyll and bolster the manpower of Dalriada. An ambitious Irish princely missionary like St. Columba would have been a logical choice for the Roman Church to use in converting his fellow-Irish-speakers in Dalriada.
Lacking the large-scale legionary forces to hold down both Ireland or the Saxon-Jutish lands in the long term, the Empire would naturally co-opt the missionary zeal of the Church to civilise its potential enemies as the figures in the actual Church did with lands beyond the fifth and sixth century Christian frontier (Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England, and the Goths) in reality. The military power of the Empire would help to tie the new bishoprics in Ireland and Denmark into the fabric of the Western Imperial Church administrative system. But in semi-independent vassal Ireland, local tradition would assist in the continuing evolution of powerful monasteries rather than urban-based bishoprics as the centres of Christian civilization.
In real life, the Irish clerics provided a major stimulus of manpower and enthusiasm for re-converting Western European lands that had once been Christian but had now reverted to Germanic paganism. They were active across both Britain in the sixth century and newly Anglo-Saxon England in the early-mid seventh century, as hagiographies and Bede’s account make clear. In due course they moved on to Gaul, with St. Columbanus’ mission extending as far as modern Switzerland. Had the Western Empire survived, southern Britain and Gaul as far as the Rhine would have remained Roman Christian through these centuries. But the Roman
Church had shown little or no interest in converting the Germans beyond the Imperial frontier in the fourth and fifth centuries, the crucial Arian mission of Ulfilas to convert the Danubian Goths came from Constantinople and there was no equivalent on the Rhine. Would the missionary zeal of the wandering Irish monks have led to missions beyond the Western Roman frontier in central Europe?
One logical target for conversion would have been the Saxon peoples, fiercely devoted to paganism on the Continent in real life until Charlemagne the Frank sought to convert them by the sword in the 770s and chopped down their sacred tree Erminsul. Their central German neighbours had been converted earlier in the eighth century by Germanic-speaking Saxons from England, led by St. Boniface. If the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain had not occurred, the real-life political leadership of their kings, who sponsored the Church in seventh England, are unlikely to have emerged to provide invaluable backing to such missionaries. As Bede makes clear, the adherence of the local king to conversion was crucial to its success; where a new king returned to paganism, as several times in Essex, and nearly in Kent in 616/17, the mission faltered. But as far as can be judged it was the political and military needs of the new Germanic polities in Britain which gave the real-life Anglo-Saxon dynasties the opportunity to emerge. On the Continent, the only royal line to have held any sort of prestige or power was that of Mercia’s ‘Icelingas’ under shadowy rulers such as Offa of Angel. If the patriotic Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus was using genuine tradition in his later accounts, there may also have been Danish overlords for zealous Christian missionaries to approach.
Western Christianity – Emperor and Pope
A Roman Emperor ruling in Italy would necessarily have meant that the Church in Rome of Gregory the Great’s time was more like the real Church in Constantinople, submissive to the politics of the Court and theological whims of the Emperors. But the solid Catholic theology of most of Western Europe means that once Arian German rulers had been persuaded to recant by Imperial military power under a concerned Emperor, in this scenario probably Justinian after 536/40, it is less likely that Western Emperors would have sought to interfere theologically in high Church politics as the Eastern rulers did in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. Without the usurpation of local power by an Arian German tribal elite, the leadership of the West would have continued to be Catholic. Catholicism had been unchallenged as the dominant Western theological doctrine at Court since the end of the Arian regency of Justina for Valentinian II in Italy (375–87), when Bishop (St.) Ambrose of Milan had earned heroic status for defying her attempts to assist her co-religionists. The final pagan Emperor had been the usurper Eugenius in 392–4, and even then the alleged assault his regime had launched on the Church was probably exaggerated in retrospect by his defeaters.30
The triumph of Catholicism and creation of one state doctrine had then been finalised by Theodosius I, with his legislation against pagan temples and worship accompanied by similar orthodox moves to marginalise Christian heresy. Any residual sympathy for pagan religious practices, apart from rural conservatism in customs, would have centred on the pull of centuries of tradition, and the good luck pagan religious observance had brought the Romans, among the aristocracy. The latter had led religious observance in the annual round of ritual observance in Rome, due to monopolising the priesthoods, and their conversion to Christianity was clearly a gradual matter over generations despite official legislative prodding by zealous Emperors, principally Theodosius. Pagan resentment of the latter had played a part in the revolt of 392–4, in which great aristocrats like Nicomachus Flavianus had had a leading role, though it has been exaggerated. The cause of the ‘Altar of Victory’ in the Senate House, whose removal on Imperial orders was resisted by leading aristocrats in the 380s, was an example of the physical separation of the worlds of the Senate and the (non-resident) Christian Emperors.31Most of the Senate appears to have adapted to the new religion during the early fifth century and the ban on old rituals enforced the change of the old Rome to the city of Ss. Peter and Paul, but the survival of the Senate would have aided the notion of a traditional aristocracy at a distance from the Court.
The new attacks on official doctrine about Grace and Predestination by Pelagius in the early fifth century had never been popular enough with those possessing influence in court or in the clergy to stand a chance of Imperial support and protective legislation, and had eventually been banned after intensive orthodox lobbying. In the East, in contrast, the rival Nestorian theology had been a serious threat around 430, with a risk of Imperial backing from the easily influenced Theodosius II who shortly before his death (450) took up Monophysitism. His sister Pulcheria quickly re-asserted Catholic control of State Church dogma and office in 450–1, but two further Emperors backed the Monophysites, Basiliscus in 475–6 and (tentatively) Anastasius in the 500s, causing orthodox revolts. The Monophysites remained predominant in Syria and Egypt, and Justinian was apparently on the point of enforcing his own third way to reunite the two hostile dogmas when he died in 565. He would probably have infuriated both parties and achieved the hostility of both. Heraclius and Constans II attempted a similar theological reconciliation by Imperial fiat and doctrinal innovation in the 630s and 640s. But this problem did not exist in the West, where even Pelagianism only seems to have been rampant beyond the Imperial frontier, in Britain, if Constantius’ nearcontemporary life of St. Germanus is to be believed, by the 430s.32 Catholicism would have maintained a theological dominance aided by State power, and it is unlikely that a Western Emperor would have been keen to support an Eastern Monothelete or Iconoclast enthusiast by calling a Church council to change Western doctrine in his support.
Eastern Orthodox theologians offended by their Monothelete or Iconoclast ruler’s heresy would have been likely to call on a Catholic Western Emperor to invade and depose the blasphemer, particularly determined persecutors such as Constans II in the 650s, Constantine V in the 760s and 770s, and Theophilus in the 830s. It is not impossible that an ambitious adult Western Emperor with no pressing military problems and hopes of unifying the Empire would have listened to them, though two of the three most determined Iconoclast Emperors (Constantine V and Leo V) were good generals which would have discouraged this sort of adventure. Bearing this threat in mind, the Eastern Emperors would have been likely to secure their Western counterparts’ neutrality before embarking on major doctrinal changes, and the practical requirements of military alliance against the Arabs between the Empires in all doctrinal controversies.
The Western Emperors might well have intruded court favourites into the Papacy, although the absence of the Emperors from Rome made their interest in the state’s principal see less than was occurring in contemporary Constantinople. Constantius II was the only fourth century Emperor to actively interfere in papal appointments; the see of the Court residence, Milan, was more at risk. Imperial nominations to sees of the fourth century had been stimulated by a need to support the Emperor’s own doctrine against its rivals at a time when the Catholic victory over Arianism was not assured, as seen in Constantius’ and the regent Justina’s Arian appointments and Theodosius’ Catholic reaction; this conflict was now over. But an Emperor with interests in theology or Church personnel would undoubtably have interfered with Church promotions to favour their own court candidates, at least in areas close to the Imperial residences.
A great Roman aristocrat with diplomatic experience such as Gregory the Great would have been a natural choice as Pope in 590, but he would have had less of a political role as there was still an Emperor in Rome, Ravenna, or Milan and and there would be no Lombard invasions of Italy. An ambitious and talented Pope such as Gregory would have been more of a court adviser like Ambrose of Milan in the 380s, encouraging the Emperor against heresy and able to send out more missionaries (e.g. to Saxony, Denmark, and Dalriada and Pictland). But whether the Emperor was resident in Rome, Ravenna, or Milan the Popes would have been under his eye and incumbents who defied his
wishes would have faced the deposition which Constans II inflicted on Martin I in 649 for opposing the ‘Type’. In real life the weakening Imperial power in Italy led to Pope Sergius defying attempts to evict him by Justinian II’s troops, the arresting officer allegedly had to hide from the Rome city mob under the Pope’s bed, and in the eighth century the Popes defied Iconoclasm openly.33 This divergence between Emperor and Pope added to Imperial inability to defend Rome from the Lombards, and led to the Papacy calling in the Carolingians from Francia as its new, Catholic military ally from 751. This would have been inconceivable in a continuing Western Empire with an Emperor still resident in Italy.
There would certainly have been no succession of disreputable ninth and tenth century Popes set up and deposed by noble factions in Rome with accompanying poisonings and massacres, as the city would have been under continuing strict Imperial governance. At the worst, there would have been factional intrigue and rioting on the occasions of disputed Papal elections when the Emperor was preoccupied elsewhere, as in the 360s. The continuation of the great Senatorial dynasties of the fourth and fifth centuries, now fully Christianised, could have led to the sort of struggle between them over the Papacy that occurred between similar wealthy Roman dynasties in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, at least when the Emperor was not sufficiently interested to impose his own candidates. The later Orsini, Pamphili, and Barberini Popes would have had their dynastic equivalents; the most powerful and wealthy dynasty of fifth century Rome was the Anici.
What of secular power and influence in Rome? The great dynasties survived the collapse of the Western Empire in real life, with the Senate functioning, and consuls being appointed, under Odovocar and Theodoric. The Gothic kings had adopted a Roman court lifestyle and titles and continued to be advised by great Roman aristocrats, most famously by Cassiodorus and the executed philosopher Boethius. Ironically, it was Roman reconquest not Gothic rule that fatally damaged their world, as the Gothic army managed to recover from its defeat by Belisarius in the 536–40 campaigns and launched a fight-back under Totila that led to Italy’s devastation. This commenced before the great plague and the combined threats of Persia and Balkan raiders had already caused Justinian to reduce his military commitment to Italy by 542, but the loss of manpower and revenues in the epidemic made the war longer and more ruinous. The Senate seems to have ceased functioning in the 540s as a result of the dislocation and flight caused by the Gothic wars, when Totila captured Rome and drove out the inhabitants in 546. The landed aristocracy and many rural estates were ruined; this would not have occurred in a continuing Western Empire without a Gothic war, or in an uninterrupted Justinianic reconquest. Justinian’s suspicious character and alleged miserliness, made much of by the savage pen of Procopius in the ‘Secret History’, hindered the Empire’s ability to tackle Totila, or contemporary rebels in North Africa, quickly in the 540s.34 But without adequate manpower, or money to hire Germanic or nomad mercenaries if the Empire was short of troops, even a fully-trusted Belisarius would have had to rely on luck and his strategic genius to kill Totila and wipe out his main army quickly and limit the damage to Italy.
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