Part 11 - Barbarians Come to Missouri

Over Christmas we were fortunate enough to have our grandson Warren with us for a few days at our house in Lake St. Louis.  It was COLD outside, and the first night the house got a little bit colder than it should have.  He won’t remember because he did not wake up, but the house was cold (ok, low 60’s).

Our house was built in 1973 by Mr. Lester Lang…one of the first to build on the street and Lester worked in HVAC, which meant he did the ductwork and furnace himself.  Lester designed a beautiful system that was no problem for an HVAC professional to adjust and optimize as the seasons changed.  Let’s just say it took Warren’s Grandpa several years to figure out all the weird things that Lester had done.

Anyway, the house got cold as the outside temperatures dropped below zero and I had to go down and kick in old Lester’s afterburners, so to speak, to warm it up again. Warren was oblivious, buried under blankets and sleeping soundly.

I remember making the trip from Ellisville to Webster County, Kentucky when I was very young and we would visit my Grandpa Thurman, aka “Pap”.  Pap lived on the farm where he grew up, in an old house on KY 138 there by the Mount Pleasant church.  Pap’s house was heated by a fireplace, and he used coal, like he had for 85 years.  As a young boy a warm fireplace right there in the bedroom was an awesome thing indeed for a little firebug like me.  Our house in Ellisville did not have a fireplace.

I love the word HANGRY.  I never thought much about it when I was younger but the commercials with people acting ridiculous until they take a bite of a candy bar are based on a lot of truth.  These days I will sometimes get involved with something and skip a meal and hours later wonder why everything is stupid and everyone is an idiot…until I realize that my blood sugar is low and I am predictably angry.

There are thankfully very few of you readers who are ever truly hungry anymore.  I am not talking about blood sugar dips or skipping a meal, but true ongoing hunger is pretty rare among most of us.  I have never truly gone without food in my entire life.  There were times I had to go to bed without dinner, but not many and not because there was no food.  Things got a little tight in college, but that just meant creative budgeting, not real hunger…just cheaper food choices.

We would spend a week every summer at Boy Scout camp, where it SEEMED like we were starving, but we still had 3 meals a day, even if some of them were less than appetizing.  Sleeping outside in a tent all week would change your attitude, and your odor.  Add to that a bunch of activities like archery and survival and nature skills and it seemed as though we had gone back in time, except for the food that was provided.

Winter camping was an entirely different adventure.  Properly done winter camping is awesome, but when done wrong it can be miserable.  A winter camping trip was the closest I ever came to being truly cold and hungry and tired.  The combination of cold and hunger can seriously cloud your mind.  It’s not all bad…these kinds of situations are when people forge bonds and come to understand one another; when you face a challenging situation together and overcome it.

The area of northern Europe known now as Scandinavia has been called the “womb of nations”, because of the large number of peoples who originated in that region.  Most of the Germanic tribes appear to have originated in these northern regions and came south in search of better lands to live in.  They would come down out of these northern mountain regions and displace those who had come before them, who would move further south.

There is another “womb of nations”, which is in the Altai mountain ranges of Mongolia, where the Xiongnu and Scythians and Mongols and Huns are thought to have originated.  This is also a cold and inhospitable land, and as they move across the steppes they grow up on horseback, nomads, shooting birds from the air at a full gallop.

The Huns came from the East, and settled west of the Black Sea, north of Greece and west of the Adriatic.  They moved into the area and dominated the Germanic tribes in the area, sending refugees fleeing eastward toward Rome.  The Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople battled and negotiated and finally agreed to pay the Huns a yearly amount of gold for peace.

As Rome faced challenges and pulled back from places like Britanny, these Germanic tribes all looked to fill the void.  When the Huns came crashing into Eastern Europe they brought fear to the Germanic tribes who had never had to face such skilled cavalry and had had no choice but to flee.  The Huns killed and took what they wanted.  The German tribes fled toward Rome.

Europe was populated by a mix of peoples, many of them Celtic. Whether Gauls or Britons or whatever term the Romans used to describe them they seemed to be of common stock, whereas the Germanic tribes to the Northwest of the Gauls seemed to frighten both the Romans and the Gauls. These tribes have familiar names; the Franks and Goths and Vandals and Lombards as well as the Saxons and Angles and Jutes and many others.

Some of these people were nomadic pastoral warriors and others had permanent towns and agriculture.  As you moved closer to Rome through Gaul you would encounter progressively more of what we would consider civilization, which is to say larger and more complex cultures, with Rome at the pinnacle.

What historians have labelled the Great Migration began sometime around 375 AD and involved a massive movement of peoples throughout Europe and North Africa.  Many of these we consider Germanic tribes – Goths and Vandals and Franks and Lombards and Saxons and Burgundians and Angles and Jutes and Alans and Suebi and many more.  Each of these tribes would have originated as a family group, which grew and prospered enough to become a distinct tribe over time, through marriage and alliance with and conquest of other families.

Another name for these migrations is the Barbarian Invasions.  The Romans were the ultimate defenders of the complex social structure, as well as the actual physical structure, that they had created.  They also were the only ones writing the history of those times, although by this time there were far fewer Roman historians to choose from, with our primary source being Priscus.

Many of these “barbarians” longed for the protection and comforts of Rome, and others resented the endless Roman military incursions into what they considered their homelands.  Nomads have no cities or complex culture to protect, which is something of an advantage from a military perspective.  For those who had settled into an agricultural lifestyle, being forced to flee your home meant you were vulnerable to hunger and the elements.

The legends say that on December 31, 406 the weather was bitterly cold and the Rhine River froze, allowing a group of Alans and Vandals and Suebi to cross the river into the Roman Empire.  They fought a battle with the Franks, and the rest, as they say, is history.  Alaric sacked Rome in 410.  Geiseric and the Vandals crashed through Southern Europe and into Spain, then North Africa before taking Carthage and the Roman fleet in 439.  In 455 they would sack and plunder Rome.

Attila, meanwhile, was trying to expand his Hunnic Empire.  He attacked Constantinople in the East, but was unable to breach the city.  He attacked the Gauls throughout Europe. At some point the Emperor’s sister Honoria reportedly offered herself to Attila in marriage and he turned toward Rome.  He was eventually halted in the Battle of the Catalonian Plains, and turned back.  He later made plans to invade once again but was persuaded to turn back by Pope Leo 1, and he died soon after.

As the Romans pulled back toward Rome the Saxons and Angles and Jutes “migrated” to Brittany and pushed the native Britons into what is now Wales, and battled the Picts into Scotland.  Or so the legends tell us.  Many historians now argue it was less military invasion and more immigration, but the Germanic tribes came to the islands and lent their name and culture to the land and language. 

The Visigoths ended up in Spain.  The Lombards settled in Italy.  The Franks eventually united under Clovis, and in 508 his wife convinced him to convert to Christianity.  She was a Catholic, and the French people have had a strong Catholic connection ever since.  The Vandals were eventually thrown out of Carthage, after many decades of persecution of Catholics in North Africa.  The Vandals were Christians but they were Arian Christians and did not care for Trinitarians.

Many of the Germanic tribes were Arian Christians, and some worshipped the old pagan gods.  As Germanic tribes like the Franks converted to Catholic Christianity it obviously made a mark on the Germanic peoples but the Germanic peoples also left their mark on Christianity.  These were warrior folk, and their gods were warrior gods.  Jesus underwent something of an image makeover and eventually would be depicted carrying a sword and leading the forces of good in battle against evil.

The Western Roman Empire gave way to the cold and hungry people who had lost their homes to invading nomads.  The Germanic peoples moved throughout Europe and north Africa and blended with the Celts and Romans and Huns and Berbers and eventually created the cultures we identify with today.  It would be another 300 years before Alfred the Great, a Saxon, would defend England from invading Vikings.  It would also take that long for Charlemagne to unify Europe once again, if only briefly.

The Greeks and Romans wrote down their histories, and their biases are a part of the story they tell.  The Celts and Huns and Germanic tribes did not keep the same written histories and so we do not have the advantage of reading their perspective.  The word Barbarian came from the Greeks, who listened to their chatter and heard nothing but “Bar-Bar-Bar”.

It is easy to romanticize both the Roman Empire and the Barbarians from the North.  In one version the Romans brought order to the world, and to do so they had to overcome the Barbarian savages that fought against civilization. In the other version the freedom loving Barbarians resisted an evil empire.

In 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger starred as Conan the Barbarian and as young men we aspired to be Barbarians (and to go on adventures with sword bearing blond Nordic women).  In college I had a radio show which for at least a couple of semesters was known simply as The Barbarians.  I also got a minor in modern Celtic traditions while at Rolla and ended up with a deeper understanding of human nature as a result.

How close are the stereotypes of German and Celtic and Hunnish Barbarians to the truth of the people that actually migrated across Europe in the 5^th and 6^th centuries?  I don’t know.  I would love to think these were all freedom fighters, fiercely independent and intelligent people who looked like Arnold but with blond hair who simply chose not to write things down, but I don’t know for sure what kind of people they were.

I do know that they ended up having a dramatic effect on the history of the western world, and that these migrations framed the history of Europe to this day.  I also know that somewhere in this mixture of peoples moving about northern Europe at the end of the 500’s are my ancestors.

As the 6^th century drew to a close the Western Roman Empire had completely collapsed, and the Eastern Empire was severely weakened.  The Celtic and Germanic peoples had divided up the lands and settled in to their new adopted homelands across Europe and North Africa.  The Barbarians had won. Rome fell.

Justinian was a strong leader of the Eastern Empire in Constantinople who did send help to the West.  He had plans to restore Rome, but instead was killed by the first wave of plague to hit Europe, which set back the remaining vestiges of the Roman Empire and left another vacuum in the East.

I will never be certain where all of my ancestors were living in the year 600, but it is a good bet that many of them were former Barbarians living across Northern Europe and engaged in forming the new empires of a thousand years later that would be out subjugating others themselves.  My Grandpa Thurman undoubtedly came from people who came from northern Europe.  That means that one way or another we are likely both Celtic and German, like just about everyone from northern Europe. 

Is it possible that the fierce independence of the peoples of the north, who resisted the Roman Empire and eventually brought it down, could have imprinted itself on genetics somehow?  Or are genetics the reason they were fiercely independent in the first place?  I am sure science will provide us with some answers over time.

Even if I cannot survey all of my ancestors from the year 600, I can observe my Grandpa’s descendants.  The Rakestraws tend to be tall and loud and very direct.  And with due respect to my kinfolk, we tend to be a bit stubborn, and there seems to be a familial attraction to certain adult beverages.  

The Rakestraws are hill people, and we don’t much care how you do things where you come from.  We don’t like being told what to do, as we can be somewhat defiant in the face of authority.  I’m sure some of my cousins are wincing but none of them are going to tell me I am wrong, because they know better. 

Are those things genetic or cultural, and if they are genetic does it matter whether one is a Lombard or a Frank or a Saxon?  Keep in mind the Saxons were made up of all kinds of people, like any group.  Some were smarter and some were lazier and some were more independent than others. 

I should not paint my extended family with a broad brush, but I can certainly speak for myself, and that distrust of authority and independent, stubborn spirit seems to me to be an inherent part of who I am.  There remains a debate regarding nature and nurture, and whether such a tendency is genetic or learned.  Either way, I got it from my parents, who got it from their parents, and so it is a family thing.

We started this journey with a question about individualism, and why I have a different view of it than Pope Francis does.  There are many factors that contribute to that difference, and one of them just may be that my folks were descended from Barbarians from the north, while the Pontiff’s genetics are likely more Mediterranean, more Italian, and more Roman.  It is only one piece of the puzzle, but it is possible that my love for individualism is genetic, and it may have originated in the cold north of Europe, where people struggled to survive and developed a certain independence and sense of personal responsibility?

Our journey started at the beginning, and we are working our way toward my story, which begins in the 1800’s, some 1200 years after the close of the sixth century.  Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East are growing dark, and things are about to get darker for my ancestors.