The Fortification of Gaul and the "Crisis of the 3rd Century"

[Eleatic Guest]

Here we have one author who claims that the effort that the central state mustered to fortify Gaul against the barbarian tide, along with the parallel cathedral building program by the rising church (what do we know of that?) proved that Gaul was still very much prospering in the 3rd-4th centuries AD. What do we make of that?

It hardly seems unfair to suggest that scholars would be hard put to identify any comparable century in the history of Roman Gaul where a greater investment was made in monumental construction. The military and religious construction effort dwarfed governmental building projects executed in a similar period of time in the history of Roman Gaul that took place when both the economy and the population are seen to be on the increase. In light of what would seem to have been a very rapid “recovery” from the “Crisis of the Third Century,” it seems reasonable to suggest that we should reevaluate its supposedly devastating impact on the population and economic infrastructure in Gaul.

From: Bernard Bachrach, The Fortification of Gaul and the Economy of the Third and Fourth Centuries, Journal of Late Antiquity, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2010, pp. 38-64

[Nathan Ross]

the effort that the central state mustered to fortify Gaul against the barbarian tide... proved that Gaul was still very much prospering in the 3rd-4th centuries AD.

It's interesting that the scale of the effort indicates that Gaul was worth defending, but also that the threat was real!

What evidence do we have that Gaul was not prospering though? The agri deserti in northern Belgica were real enough, although in places the problem seems to date from the later 2nd century, and perhaps relates to land impoverished by over-farming, and/or turned over to sheep pasturing, rather than barbarian devastation. Diocletian's prices edict mentions wool from the Atrebatic and Nervian lands.

Nico Roymans' Villa Landscapes in the Roman North: Economy, Culture and Lifestyles (2011) suggests that even in the north of Belgica many larger villas continued in operation, particularly along the fertile loess soil belt between Koln and Bavay. The movement of the imperial court to Trier stimulated a lot of new development in the Moselle valley as well, which suggests that this area was not considered a dangerous frontier zone at the time.

While many of the fortified cities contracted to a much smaller plan, that does not necessarily mean that they were poorer or less prosperous. Besides, several of these fortifications turn out to date from the mid 4th century, rather than the mid 3rd.