Jean-Paul Laurens:
C'étaient de ces figures étranges qui avaient parcouru la Gaule au temps d'Attila et de Chlodowig
They were one of these strange figures who had traveled Gaul in the time of Attila and Chlodowig (1887)

" … some vestigial memory created forty-seven or eight generations ago …"

My Fambly tree starts petering out around my 47th and 48th great-grandparents. That any record of them still exists amounts to either a significant miracle or a minor research error, though the record had withstood some scrutiny. Contrary to what I'd always heard, the end of the Roman Empire was not some cataclysmic fall. As with all enormous bureaucratic institutions, the end was prolonged and featured unexpected bedfellows. In my notion of that history, ravening hoards tore down walls and took no prisoners. In the real world, even the conquerors understood that vanquishing an army would win much less than half of any battle. The population would need to be governed, and not merely by military dictators, for commerce and trade would continue to be an essential part of any post-status quo arrangement.

My 47th Great-Grandfather seems to have been just such a character, a political operator capable of working across aisles and collaborating with once-sworn enemies to accomplish mutually beneficial ends. Such was the reputation of Tonantius Ferreolus, Praetorian Prefect of Gaul. He was the Roman Emporor's man in Gaul during the difficult transition from Roman rule and whatever followed. He built a Roman-Gothic alliance that defeated Attilla's attempt to overrun Gaul. He even resisted the attempts of Visigothic king Thorismund to take advantage of the situation to obtain more territory or privileges. He successfully walked tightropes.

He was from a patrician Roman family. He would have had to have been since Prefect positions were only open to the highest-born Romans. Prefects were more than mere administrators, though administration must have been one of their chief responsibilities. They also engaged in the highest-level diplomacy. They also held authority over the military and could direct generals and troops where needed to support policy priorities. In many ways, Prefect seems like an impossible position. That our patrician thrived and succeeded in the position says an awful lot about him. He was a dude.

" … subsequent to the fall of the Burgundian Kingdom in the early 530s, the Austrasian Franks under Theodoric quickly took control of Burgundy and Provence as far as the Mediterranean and along the coast from at least Uzes on the west to the Italian border on the east leaving Narbo, except for one or two brief incursions, in Visigothic hands. The familial control of the See of Uzes, within whose borders much of the property of the Ferreolan villa of Prusianum was included, began during the time of Tonantius Ferreolus. Although Tonantius Ferreolus was not noted for any particular political or ecclesiastic initiative, his survival and that of his family and properties following the loss of Gaul, first by the Roman Empire and then the Visigoths, was to have important repercussions for the durability of Gallo Roman political identity, autonomy, laws and customs during the Merovingian and subsequent eras." Wikipedia

Of all the miracles that make up my extended Fambly tree, the miracle that liberated our Prefect of Gaul's family up and out of the calamity probably serves as the most extraordinary stroke of luck. I suspect it was underlaid with great skill as well. To create a legacy one's enemy feels compelled to help continue says everything to me. Beating Attilla The Hun serves as another one of those badges of pride and honor I'll horn in here to claim some of as my own. Maybe my life's work building project communities sprang from some vestigial memory created forty-seven or eight generations ago when Rome was collapsing during the fifth century, a millennia and a half ago.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz