This article is about the culture of Romanized areas of Gaul. For the political history of the brief "Gallic Empire" of the third century, see Gallic Empire.
Wall fragment with fresco of a Gallo-Roman man, from Evreux, 250–275 ADGallo-Roman figures found in Ingelheim am Rhein
Gallo-Roman culture was a consequence of the Romanization of Gauls under the rule of the Roman Empire. It was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman culture, language, morals and way of life in a uniquely Gaulish context.[1] The well-studied meld of cultures[2] in Gaul gives historians a model against which to compare and contrast parallel developments of Romanization in other less-studied Roman provinces.
The barbarian invasions began in the late 3rd century and forced upon Gallo-Roman culture fundamental changes in politics, economic underpinning and military organization. The Gothic settlement of 418 offered a double loyalty, as Western Roman authority disintegrated at Rome. The plight of the highly-Romanized governing class[5] is examined by R.W. Mathisen,[6] the struggles of bishop Hilary of Arles by M. Heinzelmann.[7]
Into the 7th century, Gallo-Roman culture would persist particularly in the areas of Gallia Narbonensis that developed into Occitania, Cisalpine Gaul, Orléanais, and to a lesser degree, Gallia Aquitania. The formerly-Romanized northern Gaul, once it had been occupied by the Franks, would develop into Merovingian culture instead. Roman life, centered on the public events and cultural responsibilities of urban life in the res publica and the sometimes luxurious life of the self-sufficient rural villa system, took longer to collapse in the Gallo-Roman regions, where the Visigoths largely inherited the status quo in 418. The Gallo-Roman language persisted in the northeast into the Silva Carbonaria, which formed an effective cultural barrier with the Franks to the north and the east, and in the northwest to the lower valley of the Loire, where Gallo-Roman culture interfaced with Frankish culture in a city like Tours and in the person of that Gallo-Roman bishop confronted with Merovingian royals, Gregory of Tours. Based upon mutual intelligibility, David Dalby counts seven languages descended from Gallo-Romance: Gallo-Wallon, French, Franco-Provençal (Arpitan), Romansh, Ladin, Friulian, and Lombard.[8] However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Rhaeto-Romance languages, Occitano-Romance languages and Gallo-Italic languages.
Gaul was divided by Roman administration into three provinces, which were subdivided during the later 3rd-century reorganization under Diocletian, and divided between two dioceses, Galliae and Viennensis, under the Praetorian prefecture of Galliae. On the local level, it was composed of civitates, which preserved, broadly speaking, the boundaries of the formerly-independent Gaulish tribes, which had been organised in large part on village structures, which retained some features in the Roman civic formulas that overlaid them.
Over the course of the Roman period, an ever-increasing proportion of Gauls gained Roman citizenship. In 212, the Constitutio Antoniniana extended citizenship to all free-born men in the Roman Empire.
A Gallic warrior dressed in Roman lorica hamata (chainmail) with a cloak over it. Wearing a torc around his neck, he also wields a Celtic-style shield although the proportions of the body and the overall realism are more in line with Classical and Roman art than with the Celtic depictions of soldiers.
During the Crisis of the Third Century, from 260 to 274, Gaul was subject to Alamannic raids during a civil war. In reaction to local problems, the Gallo-Romans appointed their own emperor, Postumus. The rule over Gaul, Britannia and Hispania by Postumus and his successors is usually called the Gallic Empire although it was just one set of many usurpers who took over parts of the Roman Empire and tried to become emperor. The capital was Trier, which was used as the northern capital of the Roman Empire by many emperors. The Gallic Empire ended when Aurelian decisively defeated Tetricus I at Chalons.
The pre-Christian religious practices of Roman Gaul were characterized by syncretism of Graeco-Roman deities with their native Celtic, Basque or Germanic counterparts, many of which were of strictly local significance. Assimilation was eased by interpreting indigenous gods in Roman terms, such as with Lenus Mars or Apollo Grannus. Otherwise, a Roman god might be paired with a native goddess, as with Mercury and Rosmerta. In at least one case, that of the equine goddess Epona, a native Gallic goddess was also adopted by Rome.
The imperial cult, centred primarily on the numen of Augustus, came to play a prominent role in public religion in Gaul, most dramatically at the pan-Gaulish ceremony venerating Rome and Augustus at the Condate Altar, near Lugdunum, annually on 1 August.
Gregory of Tours recorded the tradition that after the persecution under the co-emperors Decius and Gratus (250–251), the future Pope Felix I sent seven missionaries to re-establish the broken and scattered Christian communities: Gatien to Tours, Trophimus to Arles, Paul to Narbonne, Saturninus to Toulouse, Denis to Paris, Martial to Limoges and Austromoine to Clermont.[10]
In the 5th and the 6th centuries, Gallo-Roman Christian communities still consisted of independent churches in urban sites, each governed by a bishop. Christians experienced loyalties that were divided between the bishop and the civil prefect, who operated largely in harmony within the late-imperial administration. Some of the communities had origins that predated the 3rd-century persecutions. The personal charisma of the bishop set the tone, as 5th-century allegiances for pagans and Christians switched from institutions to individuals. Most Gallo-Roman bishops were drawn from the highest levels of society as appropriate non-military civil roads to advancement dwindled, and they represented themselves as bulwarks of high literary standards and Roman traditions against the Vandal and Gothic interlopers. Other bishops drew the faithful to radical asceticism. Bishops often took on the duties of civil administrators after the contraction of the Roman imperial administration during the barbarian invasions of the 5th century by helping fund building projects and even acting as arbiters of justice in the local community. Miracles attributed to both kinds of bishops, as well as holy men and women, attracted cult veneration, sometimes very soon after their death. A great number of locally-venerated Gallo-Roman and Merovingian saints arose from 400 to 750. The identification of the diocesan administration with the secular community, which took place during the 5th century in Italy, can best be traced in the Gallo-Roman culture of Gaul in the career of Caesarius, bishop and Metropolitan of Arles from 503 to 543. (Wallace-Hadrill).
Before the Roman incursion, most of Gaul spoke Celtic dialects that are now considered to be the Gaulish language with considerable variation. The south-western region that would later become Gascony spoke the Aquitanian language, which may have been the parent language of Basque,[11] and parts of the coast near Marseille spoke Ligurian with some Greek-speaking colonies on the Mediterranean coast, notably including Massilia. In the northeastern zone of Belgica, there may have been some presence of Germanic languages, but that is disputed. During the late empire, there was some settlement in Gaul by tribes speaking Germanic or Eastern Iranian languages, such as the Alans.
The Gaulish language is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture.[12] The last record of spoken Gaulish deemed to be plausibly credible[12] was when Gregory of Tours wrote in the 6th century (c. 560–575) that a shrine in Auvergne which "is called Vasso Galatae in the Gallic tongue" was destroyed and burnt to the ground.[13] Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques (including oui,[14] the word for "yes"),[15] sound changes,[16][17] and influences in conjugation and word order.[15][18][19]
The Vulgar Latin in the region of Gallia took on a distinctly local character, some of which is attested in graffiti,[19] which evolved into the Gallo-Romance dialects which include French and its closest relatives. The influence of substrate languages may be seen in graffiti showing sound changes that matched changes that had occurred earlier in the indigenous languages, especially Gaulish.[19] The Vulgar Latin in the North of Gaul evolved into the langues d'oïl and Franco-Provencal, and the dialects in the South evolved into the modern Occitan and Catalan tongues. Other languages held to be Gallo-Romance include the Gallo-Italic languages and the Rhaeto-Romance languages. Latin epigraphy in Gaul has peculiarities such as the occasional variant ⟨Ꟶ⟩ instead of ⟨H⟩.[20]
Gallo-Roman art
The "Endymion sarcophagus", early 3rd century, found in 1806 at Saint-Médard-d'Eyrans, in Roman Gallia Aquitania (Louvre)Model reconstructing the Pillar of the Boatmen in the Musée de Cluny, an example of synthesis between Celtic and Roman art
Roman culture introduced a new phase of anthropomorphized sculpture to the Gaulish community,[21] synthesized with Celtic traditions of refined metalworking, a rich body of urbane Gallo-Roman silver developed, which the upheavals of the 3rd and the 5th centuries motivated hiding away in hoards, which have protected some pieces of Gallo-Roman silver, from villas and temple sites, from the universal destruction of precious metalwork in circulation. The exhibition of Gallo-Roman silver highlighted specifically Gallo-Roman silver from the treasures found at Chaourse (Aisne), Mâcon (Saône et Loire), Graincourt-lès-Havrincourt (Pas de Calais), Notre-Dame d'Allençon (Maine-et-Loire) and Rethel (Ardennes, found in 1980).[22]
Bust of a Gallo-Roman, from Lausanne, Switzerland, About 200 AD.
At Périgueux, France, a luxurious Roman villa called the Domus of Vesunna, built round a garden courtyard surrounded by a colonnaded peristyle enriched with bold tectonic frescoing, has been handsomely protected in a modern glass-and-steel structure that is a fine example of archaeological museum-making (see external link).
Lyon, the capital of Roman Gaul, is now the site of the Gallo-Roman Museum of Lyon (rue Céberg), associated with the remains of the theater and odeon of Roman Lugdunum. Visitors are offered a clear picture of the daily life, economic conditions, institutions, beliefs, monuments and artistic achievements of the first four centuries of the Christian era. The "Claudius Tablet" in the Museum transcribes a speech given before the Senate by the Emperor Claudius in 48, in which he requests the right for the heads of the Gallic nations to participate in Roman magistracy. The request having been accepted, the Gauls decided to engrave the imperial speech on bronze.
In Metz, once an important town of Gaul, the Golden Courtyard Museums displays a rich collection of Gallo-Roman finds and the vestiges of Gallo-Roman baths, revealed by the extension works to the museums in the 1930s.
In Martigny, Valais, Switzerland, at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, a modern museum of art and sculpture shares space with Gallo-Roman Museum centered on the foundations of a Celtic temple.
Other sites include:
Towns
Cityscape of Gallo-Roman Divodurum Mediomatricum, ancestor of present-day Metz (second century AD.).
↑ Modern interpretations are revising the earlier dichotomy of "Romanization" and "resistance", especially as viewed, under the increased influence of archaeology, through the material remains of patterns of everyday consumption, as in Woolf 1998:169–205, who emphasised the finds at Vesontio/Besançon.
↑ Oaks, L. S. (1986). "The Goddess Epona: Concepts of Sovereignty in a Changing Landscape". In Henig, Martin; King, Anthony (eds.). Pagan Gods and Shrines of the Roman Empire. Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monographs. Vol.8. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp.77–83. ISBN0-947816-08-9.
↑ Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul: Strategies for Survival in an Age of Transition (University of Texas Press) 1993.
↑ M. Heinzelmann, "The 'affair' of Hilary of Arles (445) and Gallo-Roman identity in the fifth century" in Drinkwater and Elton 2002.
↑ David Dalby, 1999/2000, The Linguasphere register of the world’s languages and speech communities. Observatoire Linguistique, Linguasphere Press. Volume 2. Oxford.
↑ Historia Francorum, i.30. Later local traditions inserted locally venerated bishops into this group, to establish parity with the seven churches of Gaul.
1 2 Laurence Hélix (2011). Histoire de la langue française. Ellipses Edition Marketing S.A. p.7. ISBN978-2-7298-6470-5. Le déclin du Gaulois et sa disparition ne s'expliquent pas seulement par des pratiques culturelles spécifiques: Lorsque les Romains conduits par César envahirent la Gaule, au 1er siecle avant J.-C., celle-ci romanisa de manière progressive et profonde. Pendant près de 500 ans, la fameuse période gallo-romaine, le gaulois et le latin parlé coexistèrent; au VIe siècle encore; le temoignage de Grégoire de Tours atteste la survivance de la langue gauloise.
↑ Hist. Franc., book I, 32 Veniens vero Arvernos, delubrum illud, quod Gallica lingua Vasso Galatæ vocant, incendit, diruit, atque subvertit. And coming to Clermont [to the Arverni] he set on fire, overthrew and destroyed that shrine which they call Vasso Galatæ in the Gallic tongue.
↑ Peter Schrijver, Studies in the History of Celtic Pronouns and Particles, Maynooth, 1997, 15.
↑ Henri Guiter, "Sur le substrat gaulois dans la Romania", in Munus amicitae. Studia linguistica in honorem Witoldi Manczak septuagenarii, eds., Anna Bochnakowa & Stanislan Widlak, Krakow, 1995.
↑ Eugeen Roegiest, Vers les sources des langues romanes: Un itinéraire linguistique à travers la Romania (Leuven, Belgium: Acco, 2006), 83.
↑ Matasovic, Ranko (2007). "Insular Celtic as a Language Area". Papers from the Workship within the Framework of the XIII International Congress of Celtic Studies. The Celtic Languages in Contact: 106.
1 2 3 Adams, J. N. (2007). "Chapter V – Regionalisms in provincial texts: Gaul". The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC – AD 600. Cambridge. pp.279–289. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511482977. ISBN9780511482977.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ A. N. Newell, "Gallo-Roman Religious Sculpture" Greece & Rome3.8 (February 1934:74–84) noted the esthetic mediocrity of early Gallo-Roman sculpture in representations of Gaulish deities.
↑ Exhibition "Trésors d'orfevrerie Gallo-Romaine", Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine, Lyons, reviewed by Catherine Johns in The Burlington Magazine131 (June 1989:443–445).
Gaul was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of 494,000 km2 (191,000 sq mi). According to Julius Caesar, who took control of the region on behalf of the Roman Republic, Gaul was divided into three parts: Gallia Celtica, Belgica, and Aquitania.
In Gallo-Roman religion, Epona was a protector of horses, ponies, donkeys, and mules. She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, ears of grain, and the presence of foals in some sculptures. She and her horses might also have been leaders of the soul in the after-life ride, with later literary parallels in Rhiannon of the Mabinogion. The worship of Epona, "the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome itself", as the patroness of cavalry, was widespread in the Roman Empire between the first and third centuries AD; this is unusual for a Celtic deity, most of whom were associated with specific localities.
Lugdunum was an important Roman city in Gaul, established on the current site of Lyon. The Roman city was founded in 43 BC by Lucius Munatius Plancus, but continued an existing Gallic settlement with a likely population of several thousands. It served as the capital of the Roman province of Gallia Lugdunensis and was an important city in the western half of the Roman Empire for centuries. Two emperors, Claudius and Caracalla, were born in Lugdunum. In the period 69–192 AD, the city's population may have numbered 50,000 to 100,000, and possibly up to 200,000 inhabitants.
Lepontic is an ancient Alpine Celtic language that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul between 550 and 100 BC. Lepontic is attested in inscriptions found in an area centered on Lugano, Switzerland, and including the Lake Como and Lake Maggiore areas of Italy. Being a Celtic language, its name could derive from Proto-Celtic *leikwontio-.
The Celtic calendar is a compilation of pre-Christian Celtic systems of timekeeping, including the Gaulish Coligny calendar, used by Celtic countries to define the beginning and length of the day, the week, the month, the seasons, quarter days, and festivals.
The Pillar of the Boatmen is a monumental Roman column erected in Lutetia in honour of Jupiter by the guild of boatmen in the 1st century AD. It is the oldest monument in Paris and is one of the earliest pieces of representational Gallo-Roman art to carry a written inscription.
Roman Gaul refers to Gaul under provincial rule in the Roman Empire from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD.
The Continental Celtic languages are the now-extinct group of the Celtic languages that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central Anatolia, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of the British Isles and Brittany. Continental Celtic is a geographic, rather than linguistic, grouping of the ancient Celtic languages.
Gallo-Roman religion is a fusion of the traditional religious practices of the Gauls, who were originally Celtic speakers, and the Roman and Hellenistic religions introduced to the region under Roman Imperial rule. It was the result of selective acculturation.
The name France comes from Latin Francia.
Romanization or Latinization, in the historical and cultural meanings of both terms, indicate different historical processes, such as acculturation, integration and assimilation of newly incorporated and peripheral populations by the Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire. The terms were used in ancient Roman historiography and traditional Italian historiography until the Fascist period, when the various processes were called the "civilizing of barbarians".
Alba-la-Romaine is a commune in the Ardèche department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Southern France. In 2019, it had a population of 1,464.
Gaul was an important early center of Latin Christianity in late antiquity and the Merovingian period. By the middle of the 3rd century, there were several churches organized in Roman Gaul, and soon after the cessation of persecution the bishops of the Latin world assembled at Arles, in AD 314. The Church of Gaul passed through three dogmatic crises in the late Roman period, Arianism, Priscillianism and Pelagianism. Under Merovingian rule, a number of "Frankish synods" were held, marking a particularly Germanic development in the Western Church. A model for the following Frankish synods was set by Clovis I, who organized the First Council of Orléans (511).
The Amphitheatre of the Three Gauls of Lugdunum (Lyon) was part of the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls dedicated to the cult of Rome and Augustus celebrated by the 60 Gallic tribes when they gathered at Lugdunum. In 1961, it was classified as a monument historique.
The Gauls were a group of Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period. Their homeland was known as Gaul (Gallia). They spoke Gaulish, a continental Celtic language.
Lugdunum, formerly known as the Gallo-Roman Museum of Lyon-Fourvière, is a museum of Gallo-Roman civilisation in Lyon. Previously presented at the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon and the Antiquarium, the municipal Gallo-Roman collection was transferred to a new building designed by Bernard Zehrfuss and opened in 1975, near the city's Roman theatre and odeon, on a hill known as Fourvière, located in the heart of the Roman city. Internally, it is formed of a concrete spiral ramp descending and branching out into the display rooms. It is managed and operated by the Metropolis of Lyon jointly with the archaeological museum of Saint-Romain-en-Gal. As well as displaying its own permanent collections of Roman, Celtic and pre-Roman material, a plan-relief of the ancient town and scale models of its major monuments such as the theatre and the Odeon, it also regularly hosts temporary exhibitions. On November 8, 2017, the museum was renamed Lugdunum.
The Sanctuary of the Three Gauls (Tres Galliae) was the focal structure within an administrative and religious complex established by Rome in the very late 1st century BC at Lugdunum. Its institution served to federalise and develop Gallia Comata as an Imperial province under Augustus, following the Gallic Wars of his predecessor Julius Caesar. The distinctively Gallo-Roman development of the Imperial sanctuary and its surrounding complex are well attested by literary, epigraphic, numismatic and archaeological evidence.
Gaulish is an extinct Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul. In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe ("Noric"), parts of the Balkans, and Anatolia ("Galatian"), which are thought to have been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish.
Latin and Greek were the dominant languages of the Roman Empire, but other languages were regionally important. Latin was the original language of the Romans and remained the language of imperial administration, legislation, and the military throughout the classical period. In the West, it became the lingua franca and came to be used for even local administration of the cities including the law courts. After all freeborn male inhabitants of the Empire were universally enfranchised in 212 AD, a great number of Roman citizens would have lacked Latin, though they were expected to acquire at least a token knowledge, and Latin remained a marker of "Romanness".
The Galatians were a Celtic people dwelling in Galatia, a region of central Anatolia surrounding present-day Ankara, during the Hellenistic period. They spoke the Galatian language, which was closely related to Gaulish, a contemporary Celtic language spoken in Gaul.
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