Amalasuintha’s role in the kingdom is amply attested for the later period. In a praeceptum of Pope Felix IV dated August 530 (one of the years for which the Variae are silent) the pope addressed the two rulers as domini nostri regnantes.103 Cassiodorus does the same by using the expression communes domini in his letter-panegyric of late 533,104 and he also makes frequent references to Athalaric and Amalasuintha as domini/regnantes and principes in letters written in 533–534.105 In addition, he highlights the activity of Amalasuintha in the government and her beneficial caritas by putting it in opposition to the passive role of Athalaric: “The king is on holiday, and his mother’s affection holds rule (matris regnat affectio); thereby, she so acts in everything that we may feel the protection of a universal love (generalis caritas). He to whom all things are subject accords this lady a glorious obedience…. But we must ascribe this wonder to the characters of them both; for such is his mother’s intelligence (genius maternus), whom even a foreign prince should rightfully obey.”106 Jordanes confirms the views of the Cassiodoran letter in the Romana, where he makes a similar statement: “Although living as a minor (pueriliter) for eight years, he was passing the time (degebat) with his mother Amalasuintha ruling.”107 When, in late 534, Theodahad’s promotion was announced, both he and Amalasuintha made reference to this previous time, when she made decisions alone and carried the weight of the kingdom upon her shoulders. Amalasuintha “previously bore the burden of the state in solitary cogitation (solitaria cogitatione)” and “ruled alone (imperavit sola) with her little child.”108
The Eastern sources confirm the active role of Amalasuintha that we understand from the Western authors. Count Marcellinus refers to her as the regina creatrix of Theodahad, while the Constitutio Pragmatica confirms that Amalasuintha, like Athalaric, intervened on behalf of the Romans. In this document her name is associated with her son rather than with Theodahad.109 This is because she had ruled for many years beside Athalaric, while it is unlikely that anything significant was done on behalf of the Romans during the few short weeks of the co-regency, which the emperor never approved.
In the thirty-five years that separate the settling of the Goths in Italy from Amalasuintha’s regency, much had changed at the Gothic court. Amalasuintha built her position as a female ruler of the kingdom of Italy progressively, responding to the political realities of the Gothic court. She was definitely more than a royal Gothic viduvo (widow);110 she was more than a qens (γυνή), and more than a mother (aiþei, μήτηρ) living at the court.111 She was the “royal mother” (regia mater), the “regent” (ἐπίτροπος, regens), the tutor and the counselor; she was the Gothic ragineis who, as domina regnans and most likely as regina, ruled for her son during the entire length of his reign.
Chapter 2
Amalasuintha at the Palace of Ravenna
The Making of a Queen
From her youth, indeed probably from the moment of her birth, Amalasuintha had been an important part of Theoderic’s political plans. Naturally her inevitable future as the wife of a king had been clear since her childhood—we may also wonder whether Theoderic dreamed of joining her to the imperial family. But slowly it became apparent that the aging king would have no son, and that Amalasuintha should marry the successor to the Gothic throne. In his plan for her education, the king prepared his daughter to be the future queen of Italy.
Amalasuintha’s education was the foundation of her future government and the basis of her political choices. Her marriage was determined by Theoderic’s ambition to reunify the two Gothic peoples (Ostrogoths and Visigoths) under the Amal name and the government of Ravenna. And even if the Romans would ultimately have cause to regret her marriage to the Spanish Amal Eutharic, it still served to restore good relationships between Italy and the empire: Emperor Justin had adopted Eutharic per arma, and the two were consuls for the year 519. Things seemed to be moving in the right direction.
It would be Eutharic’s sudden death that threw the succession into crisis, and the final three years of Theoderic’s reign stood in stark contrast to the relative peace Italy had enjoyed for three decades. The king himself, angry and disillusioned with his Roman and imperial relationships, turned to embrace a traditional and conservative Gothic view. He was now an old man; Amalasuintha, a widow with two little children, unexpectedly became once again a central part of his plans. As he lay dying in the palace of Ravenna, Theoderic named his young grandson Athalaric as successor. Perhaps the king, in his last days, relived his disappointments of the past—including fifteen years earlier his ill-fated decision to entrust his other grandson Amalaric in Spain to his armiger. Maybe this explains why, rather than entrusting Athalaric to a member of the Gothic aristocracy, Theoderic took the unusual step of instituting the child’s own mother as regent—and likely with the title of regina.
The burden of the kingdom now rested on the shoulders of Amalasuintha. While the Goths must have looked at a female regency as an unusual decision, it would have seemed less so to Theoderic, whose own experience as a hostage in Constantinople during his youth had put him in touch with powerful female figures, such as the empress Ariadne (see Chapter 5). Not by coincidence, this woman would represent a significant model for Amalasuintha as a ruling woman and an agent in the transmission of power. And perhaps Theoderic was confident that Amalasuintha was as prepared as it was possible for her to be for such a task. After all, he himself had shaped her education on the Roman model that had so deeply informed his own reign.
Born and Raised on Italic Soil
Amalasuintha came into the world sometime between late 494 and 497.1 She was the last daughter of Theoderic, but the only one born and raised in Italy. Her two older stepsisters, Theudigotha and Ostrogotho Areagni, were both born in Moesia to a different mother, perhaps a concubine of Theoderic or (less likely) a wife who later died.2 It is possible that by the time Amalasuintha was born, her stepsisters had already left Italy and were married, Theudigotha to Alaric II, the king of the Visigoths, and Ostrogotho to Sigismund, the son of the king of the Burgundians.3 Amalasuintha was the only child that Theoderic had from Audefleda, sister of Clovis, the king of the Franks.4 Theoderic was almost forty years old when this marriage took place, perhaps around 493/4, during the last stage of his conquest of Italy, or at the latest in 495/6;5 in any case the event took place before Clovis had converted to Catholicism. Through his marriage to Audefleda, the Amal king tied his people to the Franks, thus securing an alliance with this powerful tribe in continental Europe against the Burgundians, whose kingdom lay between the Frankish and Gothic territories. Perhaps it was the Burgundians’ recent aggression against Italy that convinced Theoderic to give his daughter to Sigismund, son of their king Gundobad, in order to calm the situation; through the marriage he did achieve the release of six thousand prisoners who had been kidnapped during a raid in the north of