THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW ORDER 13thenceforth the emperors, or rather the military dictators who con-
trolled them, lacked the power to enforce their will in those prov-
inces, although their theoretical suzerainty over them was not overtly
challenged. Much of the civil administration remained, and not just
at a local urban level. Germanic kings, invested with military author-
ity in the provinces, may have filled not only the roles of the former
Roman Masters of the Soldiers, but also those of their civilian coun-
terparts the Praetorian Prefects.
In terms of constitutional theory the Empire remained alive, even
when the last of the western emperors were deposed and murdered,
in 476 and 480 respectively, in the course of civil war in Italy; for the
two halves, divided since 395, were reunited under rule from Con-
stantinople. That the eastern emperors could only reimpose their
authority on North Mrica and Italy, and that not until half a century
had passed, made the transition from the fiction of imperial rule in
the fifth century, to the reality of independent Germanic kingdoms
in the sixth, all the easier. Furthermore, much as the Roman intel-
ligensia may have despised the Germans as 'Barbarians', outsiders
denied and incapable of the benefits of the Empire's culture, they
could appreciate the benefits conferred by their new masters' military
skills, which were quickly employed in the defence of frontiers and
the maintenance of internal order. The Germans too, from centuries
spent on the fringes of the Empire, had come to share much of the
material culture of Roman provincials and some proved willing to
master some of its intellectual heritage as well. The Church in par-
ticular was quick to assess the ways in which the new rules were open
to guidance, and notions of the duties and obligations of kings within
a Christian context were developed under the impetus of these op-
portunities. Thus Romans who had consented to serve the Germanic
kings as delegates of the emperor, were, in the passing of genera-
tions, able to see them instead as rulers in their own right, defenders
of justice and of the Church, who could take on some of the symbolic
significance of the emperors, not as representatives of a universal
empire, but as the embodiments of the cultural self-consciousness of
its individual former provinces. Such a process led to the emergence
of the remarkable Romano-Gothic kingdom in Spain in the late sixth
century, but its roots lay in a decade of violence and destruction. The
unclear, and also highly controversial nature of the events in the
period of transition from Roman to Visigothic rule makes some de-
tailed consideration of them necessary.