nicyar

I just want to make a few comments about some of the historical claims made in this article: 1.) Edwardson’s attempt to match ten ancient, Germanic tribes with modern nations does not work in this case. Modern Portugal barely touches the boundaries of the old Suevian kingdom, and most of Portugal’s territory would have fallen under the Visigothic kingdom. The Alamanni’s territory maybe took up a fourth of today’s Germany, and modern Germany originally descended from a Frankish kingdom made up of Franks, Anglo-Saxons, Thurinigians, among other tribes. Switzerland’s territory would have been divided up between the Burgundians and the Alamanni. The Lombards weren’t even in the Western Empire between 371-476. Today’s Spaniard would have Celtic, Visigothic, Suevian, Gallo-Roman, and Moorish blood running thru their veins. So Edwardson’s list is an inconsistent amalgamation of consecutive and concurrent tribes, some of which were not established by 476AD, and his list does not coincide with the political geography of today’s Europe. 2.) Edwardson defined the three horns as the Heruli, Vandals, and Ostrogoths, and he quoted Bishop Newton saying that the three horns fell before the papacy, but Newton believed the three horns were the Duchy of Rome, the Duchy of Ravenna, and the provinces around Tuscany, areas that were donated to the papacy in the 8th Century by the Carolingian monarchs. So Edwardson used Newton’s quote out of context even though Newton was not talking about the Germanic tribes of the 5th/6th Century. 3.) Edwardson claimed most of the barbarian nations had accepted Catholicism but three nations remained Arian, but this is entirely false. Of the ten barbarian kingdoms Edwardson listed within the Roman Empire, none of those nations had accepted Catholicism at the time when the first “horn” was destroyed in 493AD. The first barbarian tribe to convert to Catholicism was the Franks in 496AD, three years after the end of Odovacer’s “Heruli” kingdom. Even when Justinian became emperor in 527AD, only two of the “10 tribes” (the Franks and Burgundians) had accepted the Catholic faith. All of the other barbarian kingdoms of the Western Roman Empire were still either Arian or pagan. And after the fall of the Ostrogothic kingdom, the Visigoths, Sueves, and Lombards were still Arian, and the Lombards invaded Italy and established an Arian kingdom in 568AD.