The Social and Cultural Meanings of Names in Late Antique Italy, 313-604

325 Pages·2017·1.92 MB·English

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Master's Theses Graduate College
6-2014
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Eric Ware
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THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL MEANINGS OF NAMES IN LATE ANTIQUE
ITALY, 313-604

by

Eric Ware

A thesis submitted to the Graduate College
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Arts
History
Western Michigan University
June 2014

Thesis Committee:

Dr. Luigi Andrea Berto, Ph.D., Chair
Dr. Robert F. Berkhofer, III, Ph.D.
Dr. E. Rozanne Elder, Ph.D.
Dr. Anise K. Strong, Ph.D.
THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL MEANINGS OF NAMES IN LATE ANTIQUE
ITALY, 313-604

Eric Ware, M.A.

Western Michigan University, 2014

This thesis examines many uses of names in Italian culture and society between
the years 313 and 604. Through an anthroponymic study of names in Late Antique Italy,
I explore the relationships between names and religion, social groups, gender, and
language. I analyze the name patterns statistically and through micro-historical studies.
This thesis argues that, contrary to studies emphasizing the late antique decline of the
Roman trinominal system, Italian names demonstrated continuity with classical
onomastic practices. The correlations between saint’s cults and local names and the
decline of pagan names suggests that saints’ names replaced pagan ones as apotropaic
names as paganism. declined The introduction of Christianity brought only moderate
change to naming practices, as Christians preferred to adapt the meanings of existing
names. The senatorial elite continued to use names as a means of tracing family lineage
and clung to traditional names. Women’s names became more varied during this period
but still derived from male names and their role as transmitters of lineage did not improve.
Finally, despite the decline of Greek names in Italy during this period, those regions that
maintained classical economic, social, and political practices retained use of these names,
suggesting a link between the two. Together, these arguments demonstrate endurance
and importance of classical anthroponymic customs in Late Antique Italy.
Copyright by
Eric Ware
2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1
Historical Overview ................................................................................................................ 1
The Interest of Names and Italy ............................................................................................... 7
Historiography and Theory .................................................................................................... 12
Sources and Thesis ................................................................................................................ 24
The Database ........................................................................................................................ 28
CHAPTER I – Saints’ Names, Saint’s Cults, and Anthroponymic Practice ............................... 35
Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 35
Biblical Names...................................................................................................................... 39
Non-biblical Saints ................................................................................................................ 45
Saints’ Names as Taboo ........................................................................................................ 57
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 58
CHAPTER II – Christianity and Names .................................................................................... 62
Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 62
The First Generations: Names 313-392 .................................................................................. 64
Ecclesiastics and Laypeople .................................................................................................. 72
Names at the End of Late Antiquity, 573-604 ........................................................................ 90
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 94
CHAPTER III – Gender and Names .......................................................................................... 98
Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 98
Males, Names, and Family .................................................................................................. 101
Women’s Names and Kinship ............................................................................................. 104
Senatorial Cultural Conservatism: A Case Study ................................................................. 112
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 116
CHAPTER IV – Greek Names in Italy .................................................................................... 119
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 119
Greek Names in Social Contexts ......................................................................................... 122
ii
Table of Contents – continued

Greek Names in an Urban Context ...................................................................................... 126
Byzantine Influence ............................................................................................................ 128
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 141
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 144
APPENDIX I: The Foreigners ................................................................................................. 149
APPENDIX II: The Constitutum Silvestri ................................................................................ 152
APPENDIX III: Tables and Figures ........................................................................................ 156
APPENDIX IV: List of Names ............................................................................................... 167
Part 1: Ecclesiastical Males ................................................................................................. 167
Part 2: Lay Males ................................................................................................................ 251
Part 3: Ecclesiastical Females .............................................................................................. 297
Part 4: Lay Females............................................................................................................. 303
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 314
Primary Sources .................................................................................................................. 314
Secondary Sources .............................................................................................................. 315

iii
1
INTRODUCTION

Historical Overview
To say that Late Antiquity was an era of significant change in the Mediterranean
world would be to risk understatement. At the beginning of the fourth century, when this
period dawned, the Roman Empire still dominated the whole of the Mediterranean basin,
calling the sea Mare Nostrum, “Our Sea.” To be sure, the crises of the third century had
weakened the empire, but, to all appearances, Diocletian had restored order and found the
path to effective government by dividing the state’s rule between four men, the
“Tetrarchs”. Yet, an enduring peace was not to be. Even within Diocletian’s own
lifetime –he retired from the post of emperor in 305 – Rome sank back into another round
of civil wars, first to decide who would succeed Constantius Chlorus and, later, to
determine who would be sole emperor. After several more civil wars the Roman Empire
was permanently split between East and West in 395, and the fates of the two halves
began to diverge.
The Western Roman Empire, unlike its Eastern counterpart, disintegrated
relatively rapidly. The central government in Ravenna lost control of the outlying
provinces in less than a century. The Romans abandoned some, such as Britannia, lost
control of others to native factions, like the bagaudae in northern Gaul, ceded control of
still others to foreign entities formally acting on behalf of the Empire, as in the Visigothic
Kingdom of Toulouse, or in a few cases lost them to outright conquest, like the province
of Africa to the Vandals. By the mid-fifth century, the Western emperors essentially
controlled only Italy. Additionally, enemies twice sacked the city of Rome, once the
capital of the empire, still one of its largest cities, and still the symbolic heart of empire.
2
These destructive events dealt a strong blow to the morale of the empire’s citizens.
Finally, the Western emperors lost their authority as rulers and by 476 were so marginal
that Odovacer, a general at the Western court, deposed the ruling emperor, Romulus
Augustulus, and decided to take the rule of Italy himself. By the early sixth century,
what was once the Western Roman Empire had become a patchwork of kingdoms, mostly
ruled by Germanic peoples who had moved into or invaded the empire in the preceding
centuries.
Although the Eastern Empire, based at Constantinople, endured, constant
struggles with external encroachment along its northern frontier and internecine warfare
with its eastern neighbor Persia sapped its strength. The emperors at Constantinople were,
after 476, the de jure suzerains of the West, too, but they could enforce these claims only
in a nominal fashion, such as by bestowing titles upon the rulers of the West that
ostensibly put them in service of the Empire. Only the Justinianic Wars in the mid-sixth
century managed to enforce these claims of sovereignty over North Africa, Italy, and
parts of Iberia, but they yielded by and large only temporary success. By the end of the
sixth century, the Byzantines1 had lost all of the Iberian conquests and half of Italy, and
their authority in the regions of Italy which they held against the Lombard invaders,
including the City of Rome and its environs, was often tenuous. Thus, the political
landscape at the end of Late Antiquity differed vastly from affairs at the beginning of the
period.

1 From this point on, I shall generally refer to the Eastern Roman Empire from the sixth century onward as
the “Byzantine Empire,” and its inhabitants as “Byzantines.” This is a matter of terminological
convenience, used to distinguish the denizens of the Eastern Empire from those of the city of Rome,
without recourse to extra, and often awkward, adjectives. I do not intend this usage in any way to
contribute to the debate about when the Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire. I only use it
to avoid semantic complications.
3
Nor were all of the changes solely political; society and culture also witnessed
significant transformations. For example, although the senatorial aristocracy endured,
new men entered the ranks of elite society through the new administrative system begun
under Diocletian. Although the old senatorial order continued to prosper in the short
term, the development of an aristocracy bound to patronage at the imperial palace spelled
doom for many of the old landowning families, at least in Italy.2 This period also
witnessed the rise of a new religion. In 300, Christianity was a minority faith, persecuted
by the authorities. Yet, in 313, the emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which
legalized Christianity. Thereafter it spread rapidly, enjoying varying levels of imperial
patronage, so much so that by 393 Theodosius issued edicts severely curtailing pagan
practices and making Christianity the only legal religion. At the end of Late Antiquity,
Christianity was dominant in the Empire, and nominally the main religion in most of the
successor states – some of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britannia excepted.3
The Germanic invasions brought their own types of social and cultural
metamorphosis as well. In Italy, for example, the arrival of the Lombards heralded many
changes, particularly at the top strata of society. During the interregnum, when the
Lombard dukes held ultimate authority because they refused to name a king, the remnants
of the old Roman aristocracy were killed or driven out of Lombard-held lands.4 Not only

2 T.S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy
AD 554-800 (Hertford: Stephen Austin and Sons Ltd, 1984), 21-38. Chris Wickham, Framing the Early
Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 155-168
and 202-219.
3 Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 54-75
provides a brief overview of this process.
4 Neil Christie, The Lombards, (Oxford [UK]: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1995) 82-84, and Chris Wickham,
Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400-1000 (Totowa [NJ]: Barnes & Noble Books,
1981), 31-32 give introductions to this period. The destruction is perhaps best characterized by Paulus
Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum , ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS. rer. Germ. 48 (1848) II.32; trans Foulke
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 86-93.
4
did this upset the normal social hierarchy, as one elite replaced another, but it also led to
the weakening and destruction of much of the Roman cultural heritage from monumental
building to naming practices.
These dramatic changes tend to hide underlying threads of continuity. The
traditional view of this period, classically set forth by Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, depicts this era as one of dramatic transformation. He particularly
sees a fundamental shift from the “classical” or “antique” world to a “medieval” one.
More recently, scholars championing the idea of “Late Antiquity,” Peter Brown being the
foremost among them in English-speaking circles, have come to the fore. Rejecting
established ideas about the sudden, catastrophic “Fall of Rome” in 476 that left an
entirely new, medieval world (often in the pejorative sense) in its wake, scholars of Late
Antiquity emphasize traditions, institutions, and other socio-cultural constructs that
persisted from the classical period and slowly into the medieval one.
One topic that has, in many ways, resisted the late antique paradigm is
anthroponomy. Anthroponomy is the study of human names in a social and cultural
context, and seeks reasons behind and the effects of names and their uses. This field
operates on two levels. First, it is interested in large systems of names and how they
operate in particular cultures. So, for example, some anthroponomists study the
relationship between the early medieval Germanic naming system and kinship structures.
The second level is at the individual level, seeking what a single name can tell us about
the individual who bore it. For instance, the name “Flavius” became associated with the
highest echelons of Roman society, and so the assumption of the nomen by the Lombard