Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, by Sean D.W. Lafferty

Abstract

For a long time, the period of Ostrogothic rule in Italy received comparatively little attention from scholars, despite the obvious achievements of the most prominent king, Theoderic, and the relative abundance of textual sources, most notably the Variae, the rich official correspondence of the regime’s leading official, Cassiodorus. Classicists regarded such a period of Germanic rule as marginal to mainstream Late Roman history, while medievalists saw it as a dead end, which failed to match the longer-term political legacy of the Frankish, Visigothic or Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Italian historians identified more closely with the Lombards, whom they saw as initiating a new distinctively medieval society from 568 onwards. In the world of English language scholarship, however, the last quarter of a century has witnessed a revival of interest, thanks to the work of Peter Heather, John Moorhead, Patrick Amory, Jonathan Arnold, Shaun Bjornle and others, to the extent that in 2016 a Companion to Ostrogothic Italy was published.