As a woman, she had no direct precedent that allowed her to assume the Ostrogothic throne in her own right. Amalasuintha recognized the need for a new institutional structure.
Amalasuintha’s Institutional Position in Ostrogothic Italy: The Status Quaestionis
In late 534, bearing the title of regina, Amalasuintha introduced the newly elected King Theodahad to Emperor Justinian and to the Roman Senate as consors regni, joining him to the throne in an unparalleled manner as an unmarried consort. But was this her first moment as queen? When did her queenship begin? Our sources, both Eastern and Western, do not offer clarity about her institutional position in the Ostrogothic kingdom, and so this simple question has attracted scholarly attention for more than a century. But the canonical answer to this question, that Amalasuintha assumed the queenship upon the death of her son, places us in a logically awkward position: we must believe that she created this new position of consort and selected the recipient herself immediately upon the death of her son, and that they forced it upon a hostile Gothic nobility who had no particular reason to accept it. But a careful examination of the problem suggests that Amalasuintha’s queenship was not a speedy and desperate measure in the aftermath of Athalaric’s death. Rather, it had its roots as early as the reign of Theoderic. Such a radical revision requires careful explanation.
The hypothesis that Amalasuintha did not officially take the title of regina before the death of Athalaric is generally based on the virtual absence in the Variae of the name of Queen Amalasuintha before late 534. It has thus been generally assumed that she declared herself regina through usurpation on the day of Athalaric’s death, on 2 October 534, and that, because the co-regency with Theodahad turned out to be short lived, she was a queen for only a very limited time.39 In an article published in 1889, Pflugk-Harttung gave a speculative but balanced explanation of Amalasuintha’s position: “As long as Athalaric lived, she did not have any rights in this regard, because she was not queen but only queen mother; first after his death she was able by usurpation, perhaps in cooperation with palace officials and partisans, to declare herself a real queen. It is possible, of course, that in ordinary life, by virtue of her birth and position, she was called queen, and that she only gave public expression to the (actual political) situation.”40 Almost a hundred years later, Dietrich Claude reconsidered Pflugk-Harttung’s observations in his article on the elevations to the throne of Ostrogothic kings. This work represents the most solid contribution on the subject, and most scholars agree with its conclusions.41 Claude accepted Pflugk-Harttung’s assumption that, on the day of Theodahad’s election, Amalasuintha’s queenship was of recent origin, beginning at the earliest upon the death of Athalaric.
At first glance, our sparse sources seem to support this chronology. The Variae do not include documents in the name of Amalasuintha that predate the election of Theodahad, but if she had ruled as queen prior to that election, we might expect to find more evidence in the Cassiodoran collection. Certainly Amalasuintha was regina when she raised Theodahad to the throne. Claude’s chronology contains some inconsistencies, however, and should be revisited. Claude rightly accepts Agnellus of Ravenna’s statement that Theodahad was elected king the day after Athalaric’s death, and I shall demonstrate that Agnellus is correct on this point;42 yet if Amalasuintha became regina only upon her son’s death, then we are faced with real difficulties concerning both chronology and legitimacy. For it seems extraordinary that Amalasuintha could have changed her status of regent with the institutionalized title of regina, and then, without consulting the Gothic nobility, immediately elected a new king in the space of one or two days at most, without generating a strong reaction at the palace. It is true that things had changed at the court, that she had by this time got rid of her fiercest enemies,43 and that part of the Gothic nobility close to her was heavily Romanized. But these would have been truly extraordinary actions. If we follow this chronology, we must believe that she took a royal title that had never been recognized by the Goths and then elected without consultation a king to take part in a previously unheard-of Gothic co-regency, and that she did all this without seeking any formal approval from the Gothic nobility. Such actions needed a consolidated power, such as the queenship. Claude himself was forced to admit, “The question of how Amalasuintha earned her kingdom is nowhere answered…. The silence of Amalasuintha about the origin of her kingdom could be interpreted as an indication of a degree of uncertainty. Her legitimacy was probably not beyond doubt. The transition from the political leadership as regent to the kingdom does not seem to have been unproblematic.”44
And yet, if Amalasuintha declared herself queen under such conditions, the total silence of our authors about this point when referring to her novel and groundbreaking political activity is indeed strange. Procopius dedicated a few pages of the Gothic War to Amalasuintha’s regency, but he never writes that the first lady of the kingdom proclaimed herself a queen; instead, he points out that Amalasuintha invited Theodahad to the throne.45 Neither of Jordanes’s works makes any reference to it either. In the four Cassiodoran epistles in the names of Amalasuintha as regina and Theodahad as rex announcing Theodahad’s elevation to the throne to Justinian and to the Senate, the events of Athalaric’s death and of Theodahad’s election are both mentioned,46 but there is no indication that Amalasuintha’s own status had changed. Apparently she did not even see fit to report to the emperor and to the Roman senators about her “new” position, the very one upon which her authority to elect the new king was based!
The speculation that Amalasuintha’s queenship began after the death of her son relies primarily on two passages from the Cassiodoran letters announcing Theodahad’s election to Justinian. Both of these passages, however, need to be reinterpreted.
The first is a sentence from the letter in the name of Theodahad to Justinian, in which the newly elected king asks the emperor to approve the election: “Therefore, receive with an affectionate mind also our beginning [of the reign] (primordia) and approve the decision of our lady sister, whom you especially prefer. For if you love me the same way, you will make me in some way equally king.”47 Commenting upon these lines, Pflugk-Harttung interpreted the use of the term “primordia” to imply that Amalasuintha’s dominion was something new since the death of Athalaric.48 Claude followed this interpretation, stating that Theodahad meant here that the beginning of Amalasuintha’s kingdom was “synchronous” with his own.49 But this interpretation is unsatisfactory. First of all, the reference to primordia does not signify that Amalasuintha’s reign had just started, nor does it indicate when it began. Rather, it announces the beginning of the reign of Theodahad as her coregent, and the new king is perfectly aware of the limits of his claim in front of Justinian.50 The same word is used in a similar way in the letter-panegyric for Amalasuintha dating from the year before, in which Cassiodorus refers to military events going back to the beginning of Amalasuintha’s regency for Athalaric (in ipsis primordiis).51 Second, and more important, primordia here refers only to Theodahad’s reign, and the new king is simply asking the emperor, through the usual royal plural, to support Amalasuintha’s decision to elect him; his hope is that an approval by the emperor would make him a king as beloved as Amalasuintha was as queen.
The second passage appears in Amalasuintha’s letter to Justinian announcing Theodahad’s promotion, in which the queen asked the emperor to extend the terms of the peace that she enjoyed, “so that the peace, which is always in your thoughts and which you remember was already conferred to me in a special way, you can further extend in time.”52 Claude interpreted this passage as an indication that while Athalaric was dying, Amalasuintha had negotiated with Justinian for a renewal of the foedus upon her son’s death. This may find support from Procopius, who tells us that Amalasuintha consulted the physicians about her son’s health, and that by summer 534 she knew his death was imminent.53 Claude believed that she did this because she expected that it would take months to receive imperial acknowledgment of her new position as queen, though Justinian was basically in favor of confirming her position on the throne.54
But did this unrecorded foedus of the second half of 534 really
