The Latin West

Abstract

Abstract The sixth century saw the final collapse of what remained of the Roman empire in the West. In Italy the relatively enlightened rule of Theodoric (493-526) was given distinction by the two most notable figures of the transition period from the ancient to the medieval world, Boethius and Cassiodorus; but it was followed by the destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom by the Byzantines and a spectacular cultural decline. The provinces were to fare little better. North Africa, now in Vandal hands, was soon to pass beyond the pale of Western culture; some of its literary achievement, such as the Latin Anthology, was transmitted in time to Europe and so to posterity. Spain, prey to external attack and internal strife, was to see a revival ofVisigothic culture in the later sixth and early seventh centuries, reaching a modest peak in Isidore of Seville, but it too was to succumb in the early eighth century to the Moslem invaders. Though traces of the older Roman culture lingered on among the upper classes in Gaul, the Frankish Merovingian dynasty founded by Clovis (481-5II) was grotesquely ill-suited to foster any cultural continuity.