De laude Pampilone epistola facts for kids

The De laude Pampilone epistola means "Letter in Praise of Pamplona." It's a special old text found in a book called the Roda Codex. This book was written about 1,000 years ago in a place called Navarre. The "Letter" is actually two different writings put together. The person who copied them into the Roda Codex might have thought they were one text, or they found them already joined.

What's Inside?

A Letter from Emperor Honorius

The first part of this old text is a real letter from a Roman emperor named Honorius. He wrote it to the soldiers in Pamplona around the year 410 AD. This letter was an official message to troops across a large area called Hispania (which is mostly modern-day Spain and Portugal). Only the beginning of the letter was specific to the soldiers in Pamplona. Other groups of soldiers in Hispania would have received similar letters, but with their own names at the start.

The letter from Pamplona is special because it's the only one like it that survived from that time and place. A high-ranking official named Sabinianus delivered it. He was chosen by the emperor to be the main commander of all the soldiers (both cavalry and infantry) in Hispania. The letter was probably kept in Pamplona until it was copied into the Códice de Roda. This likely happened in the late 900s at the royal court of Navarre in Nájera.

The words in the letter are a bit hard to understand, and they might have gotten mixed up over time. It doesn't tell us much about the soldiers in Pamplona. The only clue about what was happening in the area is a mention of "the infestation of barbarians." This probably refers to invaders like the Alans, Suevi, and Vandals, who crossed the Pyrenees mountains in 409 AD.

A Description of Pamplona

The second part of the work is a short text that praises the city of Pamplona. It was probably written in the 600s. At that time, a group called the Visigoths ruled most of Hispania. However, Pamplona itself might have been controlled by the Franks. The unknown writer of this praise text believed that cities like Pamplona were important and continued to thrive even after the fall of the Roman Empire.

The description shows how much Pamplona had been changed by the Roman Empire's efforts to build strong city defenses. Its walls were very tall, about 84 feet high, and had 67 towers built into them. The text also says the city was protected spiritually by the bones of important religious figures called martyrs.

The main enemies of Pamplona, according to the text, were the rural and non-Christian Vascones (also called Vaccaei). These were people living outside the city, and they were seen as a military threat. Inside the city, there were also "heretics," who were probably Arians. Arians were Christians who had different beliefs from the main church at the time. The idea of patron saints or martyrs protecting a city was very common across the Mediterranean world in the 600s.

The term Vaccaei might have been a specific group within the Vascones (who are now known as the Basques). However, it was probably just another word for them. This shows that the people living in the city of Pamplona no longer saw themselves as the same as the people living in the countryside.

See also

In Spanish: De laude Pampilone para niños

• List of literary descriptions of cities (before 1550)