Goths Through the Ages
The many faces of the Gothic (from the fall of Rome to the present), and some thoughts on the evolution of language.
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The word “goth” conjures a variety of images in one’s head: dark, dramatic makeup, black clothing, perhaps a listless melancholy. I’m particularly fascinated by the manner in which words can transform over time, and “goth” is a quintessential example. The Gothic is a shape-shifter, at once the vanquisher of Rome and the ornate style of a towering cathedral, a 19th century poet and a 1980s musician.
But long before The Cure gave us “Just Like Heaven” and “Boys Don’t Cry,” the Goths were a source of genuine terror, and they played an instrumental role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. (The Eastern half of the empire, what historians today call the Byzantine Empire, would soldier on for another thousand years before the Ottomans conquered it in the 1400s.) The Visigoths and Ostrogoths were Germanic tribes who terrorized the Roman Empire’s northern frontier. Their origins are somewhat muddled; prior to the medieval period, these were largely illiterate societies, and as such, we don’t have the paper trail (or papyrus trail, if you will) that allows us to know so much about the Greeks and Romans.
The causes of Rome’s downfall are multifaceted: geographic and bureaucratic expansion, rampant inflation, the decline of regional leadership in favor of a transient military class… The Gothic tribes saw the Empire’s vulnerability and capitalized upon it, but they are certainly not the only cause of Rome’s decline.* Something I find fascinating is that in the final centuries of Western Rome’s existence, the army expanded its practice of recruiting federati—soldiers from the very Germanic tribes who posed a threat on the northern frontier. As these “barbarian” soldiers rose the ranks of the Roman military, the Legions grew increasingly indistinguishable from the forces they wished to defeat.
But as with all empires, defending a vast territory is expensive and complicated. With its territorial reach under constant threat, and with all the weaknesses we’ve explored above, the Western Roman empire met its end at the beginning of the fifth century, culminating in the sack of Rome in 410 by Alaric I, the first king of the Visigoths. (Alaric himself was a former federati.)
The reign of the Goths would be short lived; the Huns would soon after invade, pushing the Visigoths into what is now France and Spain. The Ostrogoths would eventually take the Italian Peninsula in the 6th century, but their influence would likewise flounder as Europe plunged itself into the cacophonous early Middle Ages.
Thus, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths were absorbed into the fray of warring tribes and kingdoms that typified this chaotic period. But the Gothic would metamorphize in the late medieval period through what we now call Gothic art and architecture. Gothic architecture rose in prominence during the High Middle Ages, particularly in France, beginning roughly in the 1100s. Notre-Dame cathedral and Sainte-Chapelle (pictured above), both in Paris, exude the flair of the Gothic in religious architecture: pointed arches, flying buttresses, stained glass windows, etc. Architectural developments allowed builders to create towering structures, with spires pointed heavenwards as an artistic homage to their religious devotion.
The art of the period was deeply religious in focus, and was less preoccupied with visual accuracy than with symbolism and storytelling. Remember that the vast majority of people in medieval Europe were illiterate—thus, the rich visual culture of the Catholic Church allowed ordinary people to follow along the stories of the Bible without reading the text itself.
What does this artistic and architectural movement, so wrapped up in Christian imagery, have to do with ancient Germanic tribes?
Like many artistic movements, from Rococo to Impressionism, the labeling of late medieval art as “Gothic” was a pejorative. The term was coined after the fact by Italian architect and artist Giorgio Vasari, who claimed in his 1550 series of artist biographies (Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects) that the architecture of the High Middle Ages was created by Goths, who destroyed the buildings of ancient Rome and built new monuments in their places. Vasari was incorrect: by the time this “Gothic” architecture grew fashionable, the Gothic tribes had long faded as distinct cultural groups, having assimilated into the regions they had conquered (and subsequently, being conquered themselves). But with the arrival of the Renaissance, the leading artists and thinkers of Europe rediscovered the artistic styles of the ancient world, and tastes changed, as they always do.
Renaissance art and architecture found inspiration from the balance and realism of the ancient Greek and Roman masters. Suddenly, the great churches of the Middle Ages seemed downright gaudy and overly-ornate. After all, hadn’t those vicious Goths destroyed the ancient world? With their ignorance and illiteracy, weren’t they responsible for the downfall of a great civilization? As we’ve already explored, the history is far more complicated than that. But “Gothic” had come to define all things dark, barbaric, and anti-classical. With renewed interest in classical architecture, the public could kiss the Gothic goodbye.
Or so they thought. Two hundred years later, the Gothic would shape-shift again, flying in on bat wings and dripping in uncanny dread. Emerging in the latter half of the 18th century and continuing into the Victorian period, Gothic literature was Romanticism’s evil twin. Romanticism, if you’re unfamiliar, emerged as a response to the Enlightenment, which championed reason and rationality, civil liberties, and constitutional government. While the Age of Enlightenment brought enormous progress, writers like William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, and Percy Shelley felt that the Enlightenment philosophers’ focus on rationality was too cold, and didn’t accurately reflect the scope of human emotion. The Romantics instead emphasized the importance of an individual’s emotions and spirituality (while often bucking traditional religiosity). They held immense reverence for the natural world, and they were particularly interested in sublime and uncanny experiences—these poets and writers knew the power of vast landscapes, how standing at the edge of an overlook in the Alps made one feel impossibly small, teetering on the brink of infinity.
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
-Percy Shelley, “Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni”
Gothic fiction was initially an offshoot of Romanticism and featured many of the same qualities, though additionally defined by its preoccupation with fear, the supernatural, and the past—especially the Middle Ages. The genre continued to grow popular in tandem with the rise of Neo-Gothic architecture, which looked back to medieval structures for inspiration. Gothic writers like Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Brontë, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allan Poe dared to explore darker sides of humanity and the impact that brushing up against the uncanny would have on one’s psyche. From the Gothic, genres like fantasy and horror would later find their footings.
By the end of the 19th century, the word “Gothic” was synonymous with all things spooky, dark, and terrifying. But it also carried the melancholy and isolation of Romanticism, and that characterization would morph once again in the 1970s and especially the 1980s. The term “Gothic rock” was first used in 1967 by the music critic John Stickney to describe the Doors. Gothic rock later grew to define a certain kind of post-punk band whose dark makeup and theatrical clothing was paired with a wistfulness that the 19th century Gothic writers also possessed. Bands like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Bauhaus defined the sub-genre, and the word “goth” became a catch-all term for those who dressed like them.
With each iteration, the Gothic has the power to instill both revulsion and inspiration, compelling us to confront that which makes us uncomfortable. The Gothic holds a mirror to society: the Gothic tribes reflected the internal chaos of Rome in its decline, the medieval Gothic reminded Renaissance thinkers of the ancient knowledge that had been lost to time, the 18th and 19th century Gothic forced readers to address the limits of reason, and the modern Gothic asks audiences to interrogate the status-quo.
What the Gothic has demonstrated, across all these eras, is that a bit of dissonance will always have its place within the human spirit. The Gothic remains stubbornly with us—the only question is, what will it tell us next?
*For more on Rome’s decline, I highly recommend listening to Professor Paul Freedman’s lectures from his course “The Early Middle Ages, 284-1000” on Open Yale Courses.
So interesting to think about how different philosophical and artistic movements developed in reaction to one another! I wonder what era we are in now..