Visigoth

The Visigoths were one of two main branches of the Goths, an East Germanic tribe (the Ostrogoths being the other). Together these tribes were among the loosely-termed Germanic peoples who disturbed the late Roman Empire during the Migration Period. After the collapse of the western Roman Empire the Visigoths played a major role in western European affairs for another two and a half centuries.

Visigoths as "Tervingi"

The naming of this people is problematic. Some time shortly after 291 Mamertinus made a eulogy of Emperor Maximian (285-308) in which he says that the "Tervingi, another division of the Goths" (Tervingi pars alia Gothorum) joined with a band he calls the Taifali to attack the Vandals and Gepidae (Genethl. Max. 17, 1). The term "Vandals" may have been erroneous for "Victohali" because, around 360, the historian Eutropius reports that Dacia was currently (nunc) inhabited by Taifali, Victohali, and Tervingi (Eutr. Brev. 8, 2, 2) ^*. But about a hundred years later the term changes to Vesi. Correspondingly, the other branch was originally called Greutungi (cf. Jordanes' Evagreotingi, i.e. Island Greotingi in Scandza), but this was soon replaced by Ostrogothi ("gleaming goths"), and from the 390s and onwards the earlier terms are only found in epic poetry (Hervarar saga).

By the 5th century the two main branches were known as Vesi and Ostrogothi whenever sources cared to specify them more specifically than Goths. When Cassiodorus wrote the history of the gothic peoples in the early sixth century, he interpreted Ostrogothi as "East Goths" and invented the term Visigothi to denote "West Goths." There was some logic in this invention, since, at the time, the Vesi ruled the Iberian Peninsula and the Ostrogothi parts of Italy. This usage has continued to this day, though since the 1970s, modern historians have started to use the contemporary terms instead of Cassiodorus' interpretations. Some scholars associate the name Visi with "Wise".

Early history

The Visigoths first appeared in history as a distinct people in the year 268 when they invaded the Roman Empire and swarmed over the Balkan peninsula. This invasion overran the Roman provinces of Pannonia and Illyricum and even threatened Italia itself. However, the Visigoths were defeated in battle that summer near the modern Italian-Slovenian border and then routed in the Battle of Naissus that September. Over the next three years they were driven back over the Danube River in a series of campaigns by the emperors Claudius II Gothicus and Aurelian. However, they maintained their hold on the Roman province of Dacia, which Aurelian evacuated in 271.

Settled in Dacia, the Visigoths adopted Arianism, a branch of Christianity that believed that Jesus was not an aspect of God in the Trinity, but a separate being created directly beneath God. This belief was in opposition to the tenets of mainstream Catholicism, which achieved a religious monopoly in the 4th and 5th century. The Iberian Visigoths adhered to Arianism until 589, when King Reccared (Recaredo) converted his people to Catholicism. For the role of Arianism in Visigothic kingship, see the entry for Liuvigild.

Gothic War (377-382)

The Goths remained in Dacia until 376, when one of their two leaders, Fritigern, appealed to the Roman emperor Valens to be allowed to settle with his people on the south bank of the Danube. Here, they hoped to find refuge from the Huns, who lacked the ability to cross the wide river in force. Valens permitted this, and even helped bring the Visigoths over the river. However, a famine broke out and Rome was unable to supply them with the food they were promised nor the land; open revolt ensued leading to 6 years of plundering and destruction throughout the Balkans, the death of a Roman Emperor and the destruction of an entire Roman army.

The Battle of Adrianople was the most significant part of the war. Acting on a false message, Valens was completely unaware of the Goths' numbers. The Roman forces were slaughtered; the Emperor Valens was killed during the fighting, shocking the Roman world and eventually forcing the Romans to negotiate with and settle the Barbarians on Roman land, a new trend with far reaching consequences for the eventual fall of the Roman Empire.

Alaric

The new emperor, Theodosius I, made peace with Fritigern in 382, and this peace held essentially unbroken until Theodosius died in 395. In that year, the Visigoths' most famous king, Alaric I, took the throne, while Theodosius was succeeded by his incapable sons: Arcadius in the east and Honorius in the west.

Over the next 15 years, occasional conflicts were broken by years of uneasy peace between Alaric and the powerful German generals who commanded the Roman armies in the east and west, wielding the real power of the empire. Finally, after the western general Stilicho was murdered by Honorius in 408 and the Roman legions massacred the families of 30,000 barbarian soldiers serving in the Roman army, Alaric declared war. After four attempts to storm the city, Alaric remained unsuccessful. He resolved to cut Rome off by capturing its port. On August 24, 410 however, a traitor or group of traitors within Rome opened the Salarian Gate, letting the Visigoths in. While Rome was no longer the official capital of the Western Roman Empire (it had been moved to Ravenna for strategic reasons) its fall severely shook the empire's foundations.

Visigothic Kingdom in Aquitaine

From 407 to 409 the Vandals, with the allied Alans and Germanic tribes like the Suevi, swept into the Iberian peninsula. In response to this invasion of Roman Hispania, Honorius, the emperor in the West, enlisted the aid of the Visigoths to regain control of the territory. And, in 418, Honorius rewarded his Visigothic federates by giving them land in Gallia Aquitania on which to settle. This was done probably under hospitalitas, the rules for billeting army soldiers (Heather 1996, Sivan 1987). The settlement formed the nucleus of the future Visigothic kingdom that would eventually expand across the Pyrenees and onto the peninsula.

Political strength in a charismatic monarchy depends upon the personal character of the king. The Visigoths' second great king, Euric, unified the various quarreling factions among the Visigoths and, in 475, forced the Roman government to grant them full independence. At his death, the Visigoths were the most powerful of the successor states to the Western Roman Empire.

At its greatest extent, before their defeat at the Battle of Vouillé in 507, the Kingdom of the Visigoths included all of Iberia except for small areas in the north (belonging to the Basques) and in the northwest (the Suevi kingdom), plus Aquitania and Gallia Narbonensis in what is today France.

Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia

The Visigoths soon became the dominant power in Iberia. They quickly crushed the Alans and by 429 they forced the Vandals from the peninsula into north Africa. By 500, the Visigoths controlled most of Iberia with the exception of the Suevi kingdom in the northwest,the northern regions and the southern Mediterranean coast (a Byzantine province). At first the Hispanic territories were governed from the Visigoth capital at Toulouse, in the south of France.

At Vouillé in 507, the Franks wrested control of Aquitaine from the Visigoths. King Alaric II was killed in battle, and after a temporary retreat to Narbonne, Visigoth nobles spirited his heir, the child-king Amalaric to safety across the Pyrenees. From 511–526, Visigoths and Ostrogoths were reunited under Theodoric the Great, ruling from Ravenna. The center of Visigothic rule shifted first to Barcelona, then inland and south to Toledo.

In 554, Granada and southernmost Hispania Baetica were lost to representatives of the Byzantine Empire who had been invited in to help settle a Visigothic dynastic struggle, but who stayed on, as a hoped-for spearhead to a "Reconquest" of the far west envisaged by emperor Justinian I.

There was a gulf in Hispania between Arian Visigoths and their Christian subjects. Among the Catholic population of the peninsula, deep splits had led to the martyrdom of the ascetic Priscillian of Avila by orthodox Catholic forces in 385, and the following generations suffered persecution as "Priscillianist" heretics were rooted out. At the very beginning of Leo I's pontificate, in the years 444-447, Turribius, the bishop of Astorga in Galicia, sent to Rome a memorandum warning that Priscillianism was by no means dead, that it numbered even bishops among its supporters, and asking the aid of the Roman See. The distance was insurmountable in the 5th century. Somewhat later, Pope Simplicius (reigned 468 - 483) appointed as papal vicar Zeno, the Catholic bishop of Seville, so that the prerogatives of the papal see could be exercised for a more tightly disciplined administration. Nevertheless Leo intervened, by forwarding a set of propositions that each bishop was required to sign: all did. As elsewhere, bishops confronted secular military lords over hegemony in the territory. But if Priscillianist bishops hesitated to be barred from their sees, a passionately concerned segment of Christian communities in Iberia were disaffected from the more orthodox hierarchy and welcomed the tolerant Arian Visigoths. The Visigoths scorned to interfere among Catholics but were interested in decorum and public order. The Arian Visigoths were also tolerant of Jews, a tradition that lingered in post-Visigothic Septimania, exemplified by the career of Ferreol, Bishop of Uzès (died 581). Visigothic persecution of Jews had to wait for the conversion to Catholicism of the Visigothic king Reccared, and the same synod of Catholic bishops in 633 that usurped the Visigothic nobles' right to confirm the election of a king declared that all Jews must be baptised. The Visigothic Code of Law (forum judicum) which had been part of aristocratic oral tradition, was set in writing in the early 7th century— and survives in two separate codices preserved at the Escorial. It goes into more detail than a modern constitution commonly does and reveals a great deal about Visigothic social structure.

The last Arian Visigothic king, Liuvigild, conquered the Suevi kingdom in 585 and most of the northern regions (Cantabria) in 574 and regained part of the southern areas lost to the Byzantines, which his heir conquered completely in 624. With the Catholicization of the Visigothic kings, the Catholic bishops increased in power, until, at the synod held at Toledo in 633, they took upon themselves the nobles' right to select a king from among the royal family. The kingdom survived until 711, when King Roderic (Rodrigo) was killed while opposing an invasion from the south by the Umayyad Muslims in the Battle of Guadalete on July 19. This marked the beginning of the Muslim conquest of Iberia in which most of peninsula came under Islamic rule by 718.

A Visigothic nobleman, Pelayo, is credited with beginning the Christian Reconquista of Iberia in 718, when he defeated the Umayyads in battle and established the Kingdom of Asturias in the northern part of the peninsula. Other Visigoths, refusing to adopt the Muslim faith or live under their rule, fled north to the kingdom of the Franks, and Visigoths played key roles in the empire of Charlemagne a few generations later.

A list of Visigoth kings was quoted in Spain as an egregious example of rote memorization in school during the time of Francisco Franco's dictatorship.

Kings of the Visigoths

Early kings

Fritigern (369–380)
Athanaric (369–381)

Balti dynasty

Alaric I (395–410)
Ataulf (410–415)
Sigeric (415)
Wallia (415–419)
Theodoric I (419–451)
Thorismund (451–453)
Theodoric II (453–466)
Euric (466–484)
Alaric II (484–507)
Gesalec (507–511)
Regency of Theodoric the Great (511–526)
Amalaric (526–531)

Later kings

Doubtful kings

Agila II (711–714?)
Ardo (714?–718?)

Selected bibliography

Bachrach, Bernard S. "A Reassessment of Visigothic Jewish Policy, 589-711." American Historical Review 78, no. 1 (1973): 11-34.
Collins, Roger. The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710-797. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1989. Reprint, 1998.
Constable, Olivia Remie. "A Muslim-Christian Treaty: The Treaty of Tudmir (713)." In Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable, 37-38. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
Constable, Olivia Remie, and Jeremy duQ. Adams. "Visigothic Legislation Concerning the Jews." In Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable, 21-23. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
Glick, Thomas F. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages: Comparative Perspectives on Social and Cultural Formation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Heather, Peter. The Goths. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.
Kennedy, Hugh. Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus. Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1996.
Mathisen, Ralph W. "Barbarian Bishops and the Churches ‘in Barbaricis Gentibus’ During Late Antiquity." Speculum 72, no. 3 (1997): 664-697.
Mierow, Charles Christopher (translator). The Gothic History of Jordanes. In English Version with an Introduction and a Commentary, 1915. Reprinted 2006. Evolution Publishing, ISBN 1889758779. ^*
Nirenberg, David. "The Visigothic Conversion to Catholicism." In Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable, 12-20. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
Rosales, Juratė. Los Godos. Barcelona, Ed. Ariel S.A., 2nd edition, 2004. (edition in Spanish)
Sivan, Hagith. "On Foederati, Hospitalitas, and the Settlement of the Goths in A.D. 418." American Journal of Philology 108, no. 4 (1987): 759-772.
Velázquez, Isabel. "Jural Relations as an Indicator of Syncretism: From the Law of Inheritance to the Dum Inlicita of Chindaswinth." In The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seventh Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. Peter Heather, 225-259. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1999.
Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, ed. and trans. Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain. Vol. 9, Translated Texts for Historians. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.
Wolfram, Herwig. History of the Goths. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

External links

Visigothic Law Code: text. The preface was written in 1908 and should be read with reservations.

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