10 Arnold, Bjornlie, and Sessa
life is an important question explored by Squatriti in this volume. These overall
patterns of change in the countryside are linked causally to the demography
and, ultimately, to the conditions and culture of urban settings. In their respec-
tive contributions Deliyannis and Marazzi discuss Italian urban history during
the 5th and 6th centuries, paying close attention to the Ostrogothic regime’s
contributions to, and rhetorical use of, cities’ physical condition, past tradi-
tions, and beauty.
Religious and Cultural Trends
As in many other post-Roman barbarian kingdoms (e.g. the Vandal and the
Visigothic), the Amal dynasty and presumably most Ostrogoths were Arian
Christians. On a certain level, therefore, Theoderic’s formation of a govern-
ment in Italy represents the creation of an Arian state, though precisely what
this meant and how it impacted religious relations remains difficult to know.
Generally speaking, our sources give little notice to theological, and presum-
ably liturgical, differences (though evidence on Arian rites is utterly lacking
for Italy) that supposedly divided Arian from Nicene Christians in Ostrogothic
Italy, and even the most devoted Nicene sources remained silent on Theoderic’s
‘heretical’ spiritual status, at least until the end of his reign when criticisms of
this nature first appear. In fact, as Lizzi Testa shows in Chapter 16, Theoderic
deliberately privileged Nicene churches in Italy and southern Gaul as a means
both to garner political support and to access their extensive patronage net-
works. The relative tranquility of both rhetoric and practice (as Cohen notes
in his chapter on religious diversity in Ostrogothic Italy, we have no evidence
for anti-Nicene actions taken by the state, nor for Nicene Christian persecu-
tions of Arians) has given rise to a scholarly model of the Ostrogothic regime
as a polity that embraced ‘religious tolerance’, wherein Nicene and Arian
Christians, along with Jews and others, were permitted to worship in peaceful
independence. To what extent this paradigm accurately describes the histori-
cal situation is a question addressed by both Cohen and Sessa in their chap-
ters. Finally, the Ostrogothic period also witnessed the emergence of the first
monastic rules in Italy (e.g. the Regula Magistri and the Regula S. Benedicti)
as well as certain ecclesiastical institutions and practices, such as the regula-
tion of private villa or estate churches and the shaping of diocesan and met-
ropolitan boundaries, issues explored by Sessa and Lizzi Testa (in Chapter 17),
respectively.