Gothic monk and historian. His chief work was a history of the Goths, De origine actibusque Getarum (c.551, On the Origins and Deeds of the Getae), condensed from a lost book by Cassiodorus. It is important as a contemporary source on both the Goths and the Huns.
Iordanis, known in English as Jordanes (also Jordanis or even Iornandes, 'bold as a boar'), was a 6th century churchman who turned his hand to history later in life. The book most of interest to us now is De origine actibusque Getarum (The Origin and Deeds of the Goths), written about 551 AD. The accidents of life and time have rendered it the only source remaining to us concerning the origin of the Gothic people who occupied the shores of the Baltic Sea around todays Poland, extended southward to the Black Sea, formed a distinct empire and a distinct language, Gothic, were defeated by the Huns and gradually dispersed throughout Europe, to disappear by assimilation.
Jordanes was asked to write this book by the church as a summary of a lost multi-volume history of the Goths by the statesman, Cassiodorus. The major factors in the selection of Jordanes for this task were his interest in history (he was working on a history of Rome), his ability to write succinctly and his own Gothic background.
Other authors wrote extant works on the later history of the Goths; As the only remaining work on origins, Jordanes' Getica (as it is called in short) has been the object of much critical review. Jordanes wrote in late Latin, known for its non-conformance to the rules of classical Latin.
The reader should be aware that all the topics mentioned in the previous paragraph are controversial.
Life and times before conversion
Disposition of Danubian lands after Attila
Attila the Hun died in 453 AD, of natural causes, so the major sources say.
The Gepidae won sovereignty in Dacia with Roman blessings.
Formation of a mixed province under Candac
Candac did not own a Gothic name.
Candac had an unnamed sister who married into the Amali, a noble family of the Goths. As this little state was or became part of the Roman empire, Baza is probably the same as the Batza of pseudo-Marcellinus Comes.
Ancestry of Jordanes
This is the historical context of Jordanes' famous statement about himself and his associates in Origin and Deeds of the Goths, Chapter 50, Line 266. Candac had a secretary (notarius), Paria, grandfather of Jordanes and father of Alanoviiamuth. The latter word does not have the form of the names of the times.
The most plausible reconstruction of the third word above is Alan. The sentence would then read:
"of which Candac, chief of the Alans, Paria, father of my father Veihamoths, that is my grandfather, (was) secretary...."If this reconstruction is true, we learn that Candac was chief of the Alans in that region (which name could have included all the ethnicities) and that Jordanes' father was a Goth. As Jordanes was notarius, or secretary to Gunthigis, his office was probably hereditary.
Social status and education
Jordanes, however, describes himself as agramaticus before his conversion. To read between the lines, his stressing "before my conversion" may be an effort to please the church, as all Goths at the time were suspected of heresy (Arianism, see also under Ulfilas).
The key factor is perhaps that he was not a converted rustic drawn up out of his class, but a Gothic noble who had held a high office of state.
Conversion and after
Paganism conversion theory
Jordanes was the notarius of Candac's nephew, the Gothic chief Gunthigis, ante conversionem meam ("before my conversion"). By implication, it involved leaving his post as notarius and travelling to Italy with stays at various times in Rome.
The conversion was probably not from paganism to Christianity. The Goths had been converted with the assistance of Ulfilas (a Goth), made bishop on that account. It is possible that the state of mixed peoples in which Jordanes had been notarius remained somewhat pagan despite the Gothic connection.
Arianism conversion theory
During Ulfilas' career, however, the church branded the doctrine to which he had been converted as heretical. Some claim that the issue continues today, although there is no historical descent of today's unitarianism (the philosophic doctrine, not the church in New England, which derives from Puritan times and the Swiss reform) from Arianism.
A conversion to the Nicene creed (trinitarian) and a trip to Rome to clear himself is a better explanation Jordanes' conversion. The word interrogatio, which derives from Roman jurisprudence and typically involved torture in that context, referred in the church to the first step of a process that became terrible to many, which we still call inquisition.
If that is what happened, Jordanes, a high Gothic official, may have been invited to Rome, where he took the hint, so to speak, as he seems to have received the blandishment of church offices and comradeship as one of the inner circle.
Monasticism conversion theory
The idea that Jordanes converted to a monkish way of life is not compatible with his subsequent church career.
Success in the church
Not much of Jordanes' career is known, but he seems to have been successful. Pope Pelagius mentions a Jordanes defensor ecclesiae Romanae, "Jordanes, defender of the Roman church", which may be him. By 551 Pope Vigilius, under detention in Constantinople, had been joined by Bishop Jordanes of Crotona (Bruttium, Italy), again probably him.
Publications
The initial stages of writing
The two remaining publications of Jordanes were written nearly together in 551 AD while Pope Vigilius and he were being detained at Constantinople by Justinian for refusal to cooperate.
At Constantinople the churchmen were continually badgered and their lives were threatened. In the first sentence of Getica, Jordanes compares the composition of Romana to a fishing trip, in which he glides his boat by the
"oram tranquilli litoris", the "bank of a peaceful shore"catching the little fish of the ancients.
The political environment at Constantinople
Justinian had come to power as associate emperor in 527, soon taking full and sole control at the natural death of his predecessor. Italy at that time was a mixture of former Romans and Italians and Goths.
Justinian was known as the emperor who never slept. They achieved limited success, and therefore he is known as the last Roman emperor and she the empress Theodora.
The rise of Vigilius
An astute statesman, Justinian readily understood the necessity of winning over enemies by making concessions.
Subsequently Justinian's military chief of staff, Belisarius, garrisoned the city of Rome. Justinian, however, who acted essentially without conscience himself (believing that reasons of state took precedence), had not counted on Vigilius' conscience.
Crisis in the papacy
The Three-Chapter Controversy, best left to another article in Wikipedia, was a complex affair within the circle of Christian churches.
Vigilius refused to sign. Justinian wished to keep him out of the wars with the Goths and violent politics that were now engulfing Italy.
The involvement of Jordanes in the crisis
How and when Jordanes came to join Vigilius in Constantinople remains unknown. After he joined Vigilius for whatever reason, he would not have been allowed to leave, as he shared Vigilius' conciliatory policy concerning the remaining Huns and the Goths.
Romana was begun then to lighten the burden and while away the long hours. It is a hasty compilation that was begun before, but published after, the Gothic history of 551, covering the history of the world from the Creation, based on Jerome and other writers, but of some value for the century 450-550, when Jordanes is dealing with recent history.
Reassignment to Getica
Jordanes did not intend Romana for his own eyes only, as he dedicated it to Vigilius. Before it was done, Jordanes was pulled off it and put on the Getica, which was to be a summarization of a voluminous work by Cassiodorus.
To leave Romana unfinished and suddenly take up a difficult task on a dangerous subject argues for a higher policy than his own; Jordanes said that he started the Getica at the urging of "brother" Castalius, who insisted he leave his figurative fishing trip and set sails upon the deep.
Jordanes tells us that he did not even have access to Cassiodorus' work at that time, and presumably could not obtain it due to his detention.
Jordanes' political stance
The De origine actibusque Getarum of Jordanes does not share the anti-Gothic sentiment at Constantinople of the times. Jordanes perhaps absorbed into his work a fundamental idea of Cassiodorus (known from surviving works), that the only way to secure for the Goths a prosperous future was to bring about their peaceful absorption into the Roman Empire. Cassiodorus' view was shared by the churchmen of Rome, which is the reason why the pope was being detained in Constantinople.
Jordanes has little to say of the inner history and policy of the previous Italian kingdom of Theodoric: his interests lie, according to Mommsen, within a triangle defined by the three points Sirmium, Larissa and Constantinople.
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