Une décennie de recherches historiques sur l’Italie ostrogothique

The conferences which commemorated the 1500th Anniversary of the Ostrogothic settlement in Italy opened a decade of innovative studies on Ostrogothic Italy (493-554). The resolute personality of king Theoderic the Great still concentrates, as it previously did, the attention of historians, both to his building activities and his ability to preserve “civilitas”. However, the bolder studies are to be found either in relation to the institutional definition of the power held in Italy by the Ostrogothic kings or in the debate about the ethnic character traditionnaly attributed to the Gothic people. The authors of the period under consideration, Cassiodorus, Ennodius of Pavia, Jordanes, the Anonymus Valesianus, are the subjects of numerous editions, translations and new commentaries which stimulate this growing interest in the Ostrogothic period among the specialists of late Antiquity.