Gallo-Roman culture

[4] The barbarian invasions began in the late 3rd century and forced upon Gallo-Roman culture fundamental changes in politics, economic underpinning and military organization.

Based upon mutual intelligibility, David Dalby counts seven languages descended from Gallo-Romance: Gallo-Wallon, French, Franco-Provençal (Arpitan), Romansh, Ladin, Friulian, and Lombard.

On the local level, it was composed of civitates, which preserved, broadly speaking, the boundaries of the formerly-independent Gaulish tribes, which had been organised in large part on village structures, which retained some features in the Roman civic formulas that overlaid them.

The pre-Christian religious practices of Roman Gaul were characterized by syncretism of Graeco-Roman deities with their native Celtic, Basque or Germanic counterparts, many of which were of strictly local significance.

Eastern mystery religions penetrated Gaul early on, which included the cults of Orpheus, Mithras, Cybele and Isis.

Gregory of Tours recorded the tradition that after the persecution under the co-emperors Decius and Gratus (250–251), the future Pope Felix I sent seven missionaries to re-establish the broken and scattered Christian communities: Gatien to Tours, Trophimus to Arles, Paul to Narbonne, Saturninus to Toulouse, Denis to Paris, Martial to Limoges and Austromoine to Clermont.

Most Gallo-Roman bishops were drawn from the highest levels of society as appropriate non-military civil roads to advancement dwindled, and they represented themselves as bulwarks of high literary standards and Roman traditions against the Vandal and Gothic interlopers.

The identification of the diocesan administration with the secular community, which took place during the 5th century in Italy, can best be traced in the Gallo-Roman culture of Gaul in the career of Caesarius, bishop and Metropolitan of Arles from 503 to 543.

[12] The last record of spoken Gaulish deemed to be plausibly credible[12] was when Gregory of Tours wrote in the 6th century (c. 560–575) that a shrine in Auvergne which "is called Vasso Galatae in the Gallic tongue" was destroyed and burnt to the ground.

[15][18][19] The Vulgar Latin in the region of Gallia took on a distinctly local character, some of which is attested in graffiti,[19] which evolved into the Gallo-Romance dialects which include French and its closest relatives.

[20] Roman culture introduced a new phase of anthropomorphized sculpture to the Gaulish community,[21] synthesized with Celtic traditions of refined metalworking, a rich body of urbane Gallo-Roman silver developed, which the upheavals of the 3rd and the 5th centuries motivated hiding away in hoards, which have protected some pieces of Gallo-Roman silver, from villas and temple sites, from the universal destruction of precious metalwork in circulation.

At Périgueux, France, a luxurious Roman villa called the Domus of Vesunna, built round a garden courtyard surrounded by a colonnaded peristyle enriched with bold tectonic frescoing, has been handsomely protected in a modern glass-and-steel structure that is a fine example of archaeological museum-making (see external link).

Visitors are offered a clear picture of the daily life, economic conditions, institutions, beliefs, monuments and artistic achievements of the first four centuries of the Christian era.

Wall fragment with fresco of a Gallo-Roman man, from Evreux , 250–275 AD
Gallo-Roman figures found in Ingelheim am Rhein
Northern Gaul " sou ", 440–450, 4240mg. Hotel de la Monnaie .
A Gallic warrior dressed in Roman lorica hamata ( chainmail ) with a cloak over it. Wearing a torc around his neck, he also wields a Celtic-style shield although the proportions of the body and the overall realism are more in line with Classical and Roman art than with the Celtic depictions of soldiers. [ 9 ]
Gallo-Roman Christian sarcophagus , Rignieux-le-Franc ( Ain ), late 4th century. Louvre Museum
The Gallo-Romance languages today, in the broadest definition of the term.
Overview of the re-assembled tablet of the Coligny calendar , a lunisolar calendar created in the 2nd century with native Gaulish text
The "Endymion sarcophagus", early 3rd century, found in 1806 at Saint-Médard-d'Eyrans , in Roman Gallia Aquitania ( Louvre )
Model reconstructing the Pillar of the Boatmen in the Musée de Cluny , an example of synthesis between Celtic and Roman art
Bust of a Gallo-Roman, from Lausanne , Switzerland, about 200 AD
Cityscape of Gallo-Roman Divodurum Mediomatricum, ancestor of present-day Metz (second century AD)
The Gallo-Roman museum in the amphitheatre of Lugdunum in today's Lyon