Sixth Century Chronology

R. Grant Jones has compiled a church chronology of 20 centuries. It's an enormous amount of work - I've cribbed here just the references to Gaul and a few others pertinent to the Face of the Goddess series. I disagree with Jones on some of his interpretations, but am grateful for and impressed by the sheer amount of information he's amassed.

501 During this century, inhumation replaced cremation in Northern France (as seen in evidence from the grave yard at Hordain).

507 Clovis, king of the Salian Franks (481-511), sent messengers with gifts to the shrine of St. Martin of Tours, seeking a sign from heaven. As his men entered the church, the chanter sang, “For thou hast firded me with strength unto battle; thou has subdued under me those who rose up against me” (Psalm 18.39). In the summer, Clovis defeated Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, at Voille (near Poitiers). The Catholic nobles of southern Gaul had supported their Arian king (Alaric). The Visigoths managed to retain control over a strip of land from the Pyrenees to the Rhone, with their capital at Narbonne. They spread into Spain, and ruled there until their kingdom was destroyed by the Saracens in 711.

508 Caesarius, bishop of Arles (502-43) set up a convent built against the city wall for his sister Caesaria. Around 200 women , recruited from the aristocracy, lived in the Convent of St. John. The holiness of these nuns, kept in total seclusion, was believed to protect the city. (Caesarius had been trained in the monastery at Lerins (see 410).)

508 On Christmas Day, Remigius, bishop of Rheims, baptized Clovis, king of the Salian Franks, and his entire army (as many as 3000 men). The Franks thus accepted Orthodox, rather than Arian, Christianity.

508/9 The emperor Anastasios (491-518) wrote to Clovis, king of the Salian Franks, making him an honorary consul. This is indicative of the east Roman diplomatic efforts among the Germanic kingdoms during this era (in particular, against the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy). Clovis celebrated this honor by donning the purple costume of consul and tossing coins to a crowd in Tours as he enacted the “Adventus” ritual of the Roman emperors. The occasion for Anastasios’s congratulatory letter was Clovis’s victory over the Visigoths at Vouille. (The Salian Franks had become Orthodox, while the Visigoths were still Arians at this time.)

511 Clovis, king of the Salian Franks, presided over a church council at Orleans.

516 Sigismund (516-23) king of the Burgundians. During his reign, the Burgundians renounced the Arian heresy and became Orthodox.

523 The Jews of Yemen, under Yusuf Dhu Nuwas, massacred the Christian population of that country. They were revenged by Elesbaan, King of Abyssinia, who conducted a terrible slaughter of Jews in Yemen.

524 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (~470-524) executed at the order of the Ostrogoth king Theodoric. Boethius may have been suspected of having conspired with the Justin I, the Orthodox Roman Emperor, perhaps to end the schism over the Henoticon. (Theodoric was an Arian, and it was to his advantage that the Orthodox Roman population of Italy (roughly 90% of the total) view the Empire to the east as heretical.) While in prison, Boethius wrote his most important work, The Consolation of Philosophy. It is said to be the most influential book in the western Church during the medieval period, after the Bible. The Consolation transmitted the main doctrines of Platonic philosophy to the Middle Ages. Boethius’ solution to the supposed conflict between God’s foreknowledge and human freedom, contained in Book Five of the Consolation, relies upon a distinction between conditional and simple necessity.

529 Council of Orange (Auriculum). Taught that (a) as a result of Adam’s transgression both death and sin have passed to all his descendants; (b) man’s free will is so weakened that he cannot believe in or love God without the assistance of grace; (c) the Old Testament saints owed their merits to grace, not any natural good; (d) the grace of baptism enables all Christians to accomplish all that’s needed for salvation; (e) predestination to evil is to be anathematized; and (f) in every good action the first impulse comes from God, and it is this impulse that causes us to seek baptism and, with God’s help, fulfill our duties.

531 In the summer of this year, the empress Theodora convinced Justinian (527-65) to end the persecution of the Monophysites. Groups of monks were recalled from exile.

535 On 14 November, at the insistence of the empress Theodora, an edict was issued that banished pimps and keepers of brothels from all major cities of the empire.

535 A large volcanic eruption caused temperatures to remain colder than normal through 550. 535-536 was one unceasing winter. The volcano responsible for this temporary change in climate may have been Krakatau.

539 The Goths razed Milan, reportedly killing 300,000 adult males and giving the women to their Burgundian allies as slaves.

542 The emperor Justinian (527-65) published a condemnation of Origenism and the mystical speculations of Evagrius (see above, year 375). This to quell the controversy in Palestine surrounding the teachings of the Orgenist New Laura community (see 531 above, St. Sabbas), which had become a dispute between the patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem.

Justinian’s anathemas against Origen: “(1) Whoever says or thinks that human souls pre-existed, i.e., that they had previously been spirits and holy powers, but that, satiated with the vision of God, they had turned to evil, and in this way the divine love in them had died out and they had therefore become souls and had been condemned to punishment in bodies, shall be anathema; (2) If anyone says or thinks that the soul of the Lord pre-existed and was united with God the Word before the Incarnation and Conception of the Virgin, let him be anathema; (3) If anyone says or thinks that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was first formed in the womb of the holy Virgin and that afterwards there was united with it God the Word and the pre-existing soul, let him be anathema; (4) If anyone says or thinks that the Word of God has become like to all heavenly orders, so that for the cherubim he was a cherub, for the seraphim a seraph: in short, like all the superior powers, let him be anathema; (5) If anyone says or thinks that, at the resurrection, human bodies will rise spherical in form and unlike our present form, let him be anathema; (6) If anyone says that the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the waters that are above heavens, have souls, and are reasonable beings, let him be anathema; (6) If anyone says or thinks that Christ the Lord in a future time will be crucified for demons as he was for men, let him be anathema; (8) If anyone says or thinks that the power of God is limited, and that he created as much as he was able to compass, let him be anathema; (9) If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema.

542 In the summer, the plague appeared in Pelusium, a port on the Mediterranean that received Indian Ocean and African trade coming up the Red Sea.

542 (541?) The bubonic plague hit Constantinople. Several tens of thousands died. Apparently, cooler temperatures due to the volcanic eruption in 535 allowed the plague to become active in fleas in Africa. These were carried north with the ivory trade. It has been estimated that the population of Europe dropped by 50 to 60 percent from 542 to 700 due to successive waves of bubonic plague. Cities on the Mediterranean coast were hit more severely than the hinterland. This fact favored the Monophysites in Syria, whose strength there lay in the villages.

549 Samaritans and Jews staged a bloody revolt at Caesarea. They murdered Stephanus, proconsul of Palestine. Their leaders were subsequently executed. The Samaritans, who had recently been reported to have adopted Christianity, openly resumed their traditional worship.

549 John of Ephesus (see 542) denounced a group of senators, grammarians, sophists, lawyers and physicians. They were accused of paganism, tortured, whipped, and imprisoned.

549 Seventy-one bishops met at Orleans. They reaffirmed the bishop of Rome’s earlier condemnation of Eutyches and Nestorios.

549 Totila, king of the Ostrogoths, again captured Rome. By the end of 550, Totila’s forces had captured all of Sicily and Italy, except Ravenna and a few towns along the coast.

558-61 A second outbreak of plague in the Roman Empire.

559 Pagans in Constantinople were ridiculed - marched in a mock procession. Their books were burned.

561 Radegund (520-87), the estranged wife of King Chlothar of Neustria (northwestern Gaul), moved to Poitiers and founded a convent there. It was known as the convent of the Holy Cross because the Roman (Byzantine) emperor Justinian (527-65) sent her a relic of the True Cross. Radegund kept the relic in an chapel deep within the convent.

565 The emperor Justin II (565-78), at some point during his reign, decreed that the birth of the Savior should be celebrated on 25 December throughout the empire.

573 The Persians invaded the Roman Empire, seizing the city of Dara on the Tigris. Among the 292,000 captives taken were included 2000 beautiful Christian virgins the Persian emperor, Chosroes, intended to present to the Turkish Khan. (This is the first mention of the Turks in the history of the West.) At a river, the Christian virgins separated from their captors to bathe, then drowned themselves rather than enter the Khan's harem.

573 Gregory of Tours (Georgius Florentius) became bishop of Tours (573-94). Gregory authored a History of the Franks.

579 A revolt by the city of Baalbek (between Damascus and Tripoli) suppressed. Some who were tortured revealed that several high-ranking officials were involved in pagan cults. The governor of Edessa, Anatolios, was implicated. He was accused of having commissioned a portrait ostensibly of Christ, but actually of Apollo, so that he could surreptitiously worship the pagan god.

580-82 The third outbreak of plague in the Roman Empire.

588-91 The fourth outbreak of plague in the Roman empire. The direction of movement this time was from Spain to France and Italy, the reverse of its normal course.

~590 Columbanus (545-615) left the monastery in Bangor, Ireland, and established monasteries in Gaul: Annegray, Luxeil, and Les Fontaines, all near the Vosges mountains (in the northeast of France). He later relocated across the Alps in Italy, founding a monastery in Bobbio. Monasticism and missionary activity were connected in this era. Columbanus wrote of his “vow to make” his “way to the heathen to preach the gospel to them.”

591 Pope Gregory I (590-604) criticized the bishops of Arles and Marseilles for allowing the forced baptism of Jews in Provence.

599-600 The fifth outbreak of plague in the Roman empire.

599 After a synagogue in Caraglio, northern Italy, had been desecrated, Pope Gregory I (590-604) wrote to insist that the Jews be compensated for their loss.

600 Sometime during the 6th century the scratch plough was replaced in northern Europe by a plough with a moldboard, allowing it to cut into thick soil. The new plough first appeared in western Europe in the Rhineland and the Siene basin. This eventually led to a population rise in northern Europe. In the early centuries of Christian history, the population was most dense along the eastern Mediterranean.

From around this year until approximately 1200, there were few literate laymen in the West. In the East, by contrast, literate laymen continued to serve as administrators of the Roman Empire.