Ravenna and Toledo, two models of "imperial capital"

Abstract

The Germanic invasions gave way to a new political reality inside the Roman Empire: the emperors and their courts had to be travelling wherever the military crisis required the presence of the sovereign. These constant moves would explain why some cities, closer to the frontiers of the Empire, became royal residences – the predecessors of the future sedes regiae. The new Germanic rulers tried to make their residences into something like an imperial capital, building or adapting their residences following the Roman model reflected in that moment in Constantinople. The western barbarian kings, aware of the splendorous of the eastern capital, sought to emulate it into their sedes regia – the imitatio imperii or exemplar unici imperii according to the definition of Cassiodorus. In this way, the model of the Theodoric’s reign was Bizantyum and the Bizantine Empire. The ostrogothic King, once he imposed his supremacy over the rest of Italy, made Ravenna his capital following the models of Roma and Constantinople. Ravenna satisfied all the titles to be also heiress and perpetuator of the Empire as capital of the Ostrogothic kingdom. The model Theodoricus settled in Ravenna was continued by Leovigildus in Toledo about half century later, when he hastened to provide the institution with firm material and ideological mediums that would consolidate it like the supreme and only government institution. In order to reinforce his undisputed legitimacy, Leovigildus too resorted to the strengthening of royal power through the practice of imitatio imperii.