Historical Introduction

The Germanic Invasions

In the 5th century the Roman Empire suffered the Great Barbarian Invasions: several Germanic tribes cross the Rhine and the Danube and ride free through Roman territory. Rome, lacking the political and military strength to make any serious opposition to the tribes, allows them to live inside the borders of the Empire in a "federated" condition: slowly, they began replacing the imperial political authority and from 475 onwards the so far mutable borders of the Germanic territories inside the Empire are more stable. In 476, the last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, still a child, is brought down and the emperial authority is transferred to Constatinopla. In the Iberian Peninsula, there were four tribes: the Alani, the Suevi, the Vandals and the Visigoths. The first ones never actually formed a kingdom, the Suevi occupied the North west territory by a agreement with the emperor Honorius in 411 but lost and gained territory constantly, the Vandals made their way to Northern Africa and the Visigoths formed the kingdom of Toledo, eventually occupying the entire peninsula when they defeated the Suevi.

The Suevians and religion

When the Suevian established themselves in the Northwest of Iberian Peninsula they were heathens, but short after they were converted to Christianity: according to the sources of information we have, king Requiarius (448-456) was the first Suevian Christian ruler. However, in the year 465, an Aryan priest came from Gaul, arrived at the territory with the support of the Visigoths and converted the Suevian to Aryanism. Apart from this, and since the Aryan religion kept several pagan elements, in the rural areas people were still deeply heathen. Some decades latter, another king named Charrarico was confronted by his son's grave illness. Hearing of the miracles of St. Martin of Tours, he sent his emissaries to Gaul twice in order for them to request for the saint's help in healing his son: he promised that if his son was cured he would convert himself to the religion of the saint of Tours, that is, Catholic Christianity.

St. Martin

St. Martin was born in the present day Hungary. When young he left to the Oriental lands where he studied Greek and several ecclesiastical matters to the point of being taken in consideration as a great scholar. We know that latter he went to Rome and from there to Gaul where he gained the friendship of people such as the Bishop of Poitiers. Latter he went to visit the tomb of St. Martin of Tours and there he found the emissaries of king Charrarico in their second trip to Tours. Trough them he became aware of the religious situation of the Suevians and decided to follow the emissaries on their journey back, which took to the Iberian Peninsula the relics of St. Martin of Tours, as requested by the king. When they arrived, in 550, the king's son was cured and Charrarico became a Catholic Christian. This description of what happen is mixed up with legendary details (most of them I ignored) and its highly likely that the king's decision of converting to Catholicism was motivated by political reasons rather then by an illness of his son (we must not forget that the Suevian monarchy was elective and not hereditary): Charrarico needed the help of the Catholic Gaul against the Aryan Visigoths.

At Dume, near the capital city, Braga, the king built a church to St. Martin of Tours and next to it Martin founded a monastery of which de became Abbot. Latter he was made bishop and around 569 he succeeded Lucrecius as the Bishop of Braga, convoking a Council in the same city in 572. From this year onward, until his death in 579 or 580, he concentrated most of his work in pastoral activities and the Correctione was written in this period of time. It was directed to another Bishop, Polemius of Astorga, who might have asked St. Martin to write him a sermon, which could be read to those present in mass. Some, however, refuse this theory of the request of Polemius.

De Correctione rusticorum

St. Martin had one issue in his mind when he wrote the sermon: the rural populations that, despite the baptism that some of them were subject to, kept following the old ways. The text makes a short exposure of Genesis and includes Church's traditions on the origin of the angels and of the Devil. He remembers the rustic (that I, the rural people) of the meaning of baptismand then points out several pagan practices which he considers to be evil doing. However, the author does not seen to make any distinction between the heathen and the roman pagan practices (Lusitan practices are not likely to be distinguishable from those pointed out) in most of the cases. Some are clearly roman, such as the Volcans, others are more or less common to both Suevian and Romans, such as the throwing of food to the fire, and some are of a more Germanic origin, like the lighting of candles by the trees and fountains. St. Martin also doesn't make any distinction between the Germanic and the Roman gods/goddesses. The reason for this may be twofold: first, he was a Christian that considered all non- Catholic Christian beliefs as work of the Devil and, as far as he was concerned, there was no need to make a distinction of pantheons, to him just mere names to refer to the same demons; secondly, he was instructed in a classical surrounding and the ideal of the Inperium was still present in present that time, so he might have taken the Roman gods as a reference (remember that he gives their names to the demons), just like Julius Caesar names de Gaelic ones after Rome's deities. Just as a curiosity, one of the texts I consulted on St. Martin included a briefing on the practices that St. Martin refers, which still survive here in Portugal: in the North people use the laurel as a protection against the thundering, the calends survive as the Janeiras (the songs of January), and in some rural parts of the country people still keep the belief that marriages should take place at Friday, which may be connected with the association with Frigg with the family and life at home.