Visigothic Kingdom Research Articles

Liturgy against apostasy: Marian commemoration and the Jews in Visigothic Iberia

One of the most remarkable features of the earliest surviving liturgy for a feast of the Virgin Mary from seventh‐century Iberia is its incorporation of polemical material directed against Jews. This polemical dimension is explored here in the context of contemporary theological polemics and Visigothic law, particularly in relation to attempts to baptize Jews by force. Evidence that ecclesiastical leaders opposed the policy but had to come up with strategies to prevent those baptized from apostatizing raises the possibility that the Marian liturgy was intended to communicate Christian doctrine and warn against Jewish error among recent converts, as well as to assert episcopal control over Christian identity in the Visigothic kingdom.

Дар пост-видения: рецензия на новые исследования о королевствах вестготов

Book Review: Aurov, O. V., and Ye. S. Marey, comps. 2017. Teologiya i politika. Vlast’, Tserkov’ i tekst v korolevstvakh vestgotov (V – nachalo VIII v.) [Theology and Politics: Power, the Church, and Text in the Visigothic Kingdoms (from the Fifth to the Early Eighth Century)]: issledovaniya i perevody [Research and Translations] [in Russian]. Moskva [Moscow]: Delo.

The collapse of the early medieval European kingdoms (8th-9th centuries)

This monographic section contains some partial approaches to the problem of the collapse of early medieval kingdoms during 8th and 9th centuries. Different cases of study are analysed: the Visigothic kingdom and Northwestern Iberia, the Lombard kingdom, Mercia, the Post-Carolingian evolution in a regional scale and the Great Moravia. The understanding of early medieval polities and their fluidity is the aim of all papers. The frequent breakdown of the kingdoms was not a proof of a supposed fragility, if not a usual solution to sociopolitical stress. Sometimes, the end of the kingdoms involved a decline of socio-political complexity, so the theoretical framework of the study of collapse could be useful.

«Qui patrie excidium intulerunt». Hispania 711: explicaciones desesperadas para un colapso inesperado

The fall of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo from the Muslim incursion in the year 711 has been generally explained by specialists as an inevitable consequence of a disintegration process in the Visigothic power structures. Historians have associated this situation to a confrontation – either direct or indirect – between Hispanic-Visigothic monarchy and aristocracy, being the standstill of the kingdom (caused by its administrative, military and judicial institutional incapacity) also considered. In this paper, as opposed to the fatalistic perspective where the idea of an inevitable end was irrationally imposed, a different explanation is proposed based on the multiple power dynamics, the Kingdom’s defense mechanisms and the last Visigothic monarchs’ legislative activity. All these ideas will be framed into the context of the (unstable) normality and the efficacy of the Visigothic institutional machinery.

El papel de los concilios visigodos en la defensa de los intereses nobiliarios frente al rey

Since 633, a number of mechanisms to safeguard aimed at members of noble estate of continuous samples of royal arbitrariness coming suffering were adopted. In that year, the Fourth Council of Toledo, which was set aside, the prohibition of various monarchs take ownership of the goods, by way of thanks for services rendered, had been donated previously met by his predecessors on the throne. Similarly, it was ordered that henceforth, no monarch could know as sole judge and sentence those cases against the nobles and had rigged the death penalty and/or forfeiture of property. Measures found repeated in successive councils, demonstrating that were consistently unfulfilled, which makes sense if you take into consideration the permanent seizure that was immersed in the Visigothic kingdom.

What does it take for a roving bandit settle down? Theory and an illustrative history of the Visigoths

A roving bandit provides exclusive (rivalrous) collective goods to members of its in-group. A stationary bandit further provides inclusive (non-rivalrous; public) collective goods to the out-group. The inclusive goods are an input to the production of the exclusive goods enjoyed by the in-group. As such, the transition from roving to stationary bandit is likely to involve the redefinition of the in-group, its collective interest, and the type of goods that it provides. To illustrate these points, I employ a case study of the roving Visigothic confederacy as it evolved during the fourth and fifth centuries towards the stationary Visigothic Kingdom. The illustration provides insights into why competition amongst roving bandits does not always (or often) lead to the emergence of a non-predatory state.

New Directions in the Study of Visigothic Spain

AbstractSince the fall of the Visigothic kingdom in 711, analysis of its history has been tied to contemporary Spanish politics. Political and economic developments in Spain since the 1970s have driven research into the late antique and early medieval period. Most notably, archaeological evidence has come to play a much more prominent role in analyses of the Visigothic period in Spain. This article synthesises archaeological and historical research from the past 20 years. It draws on recent developments in urban and rural archaeology in order to examine key avenues of research on the period: the negotiated nature of power, post‐Roman identity politics, and law and literacy.

Fiscalidad y control eclesiástico en la Hispania visigoda: supervisión de almas e impuestos

El paulatino crecimiento de la autoridad episcopal en la Hispania tardoantigua hasta llegar a la época visigoda, tiene una importante relación con cuestiones fiscales de la vida ciudadana. Hasta el momento, la investigación en esta materia se ha detenido en asuntos relativos a otros aspectos del poder episcopal y sus relaciones sociales. En el presente artículo, trataremos de analizar la participación del obispo en materias de índole fiscal relativas a la supervisión de la exacción de impuestos del municipio.

Visigothic Retinues: Roving Bandits that Succeeded Rome

A roving bandit provides exclusive (rivalrous) collective goods to members of its in- group. A stationary bandit further provides inclusive (nonrivalrous; public) collective goods to the out-group. The inclusive goods are an input to the production of the exclusive goods enjoyed by the in-group. As such, the transition from roving to stationary bandit is likely to involve the redefinition of the in-group, its collective interest, and the type of goods that it provides. To illustrate these points, I employ a case study of the roving Visigothic confederacy as it evolved during the fourth and fifth centuries towards the stationary Visigothic Kingdom. The illustration provides insights into why competition amongst roving bandits does not always (or often) lead to the emergence of a non-predatory state.

SÍMBOLOS E RITUAIS: OS MECANISMOS DO PODER POLÍTICO NO REINO HISPANOVISIGODO DE TOLEDO (SÉCULOS VI – VII).

A Antiguidade Tardia (séculos II – VIII) é caracterizada pela historiografia mais recente como um período histórico marcado por significativas transformações e readequações políticas e institucionais. Mudanças que foram provocadas, em grande medida, pela definitiva fixação dos grupos bárbaros na Pars Occidentalis do mundo imperial romano a partir de meados do século IV. De fato, a presença de elementos aristocráticos bárbaros e o contato destes com seus congêneres romanos provocou uma reconfiguração das relações de poder promovendo, de forma paulatina, a institucionalização da realeza entre os bárbaros. Os regna romano bárbaros, constituídos graças à concessão da autoridade romana, colocavam-se como herdeiros imediatos do passado imperial romano tardio e, ao mesmo tempo, assumiram os antigos problemas de natureza política que antagonizavam os reges e os vários grupos aristocráticos que resistiam a autoridade e poder daqueles. Por esse motivo os reis romano bárbaros lançaram mão de estratégias pragmáticas, como o estado permanente de conflito, e teórico-imagéticas, como a readequação de símbolos e rituais anteriormente existentes, para reforçarem e legitimarem seu poder e sua condição política. Como exemplo efetivo destas ações práticas e teóricas, destacamos o reino hispanovisigodo de Toledo (séculos VI –VII) no período que envolveria os reinados de Leovigildo (569 – 586) e Wamba (672 – 680).

Unidad y paz en el reino visigodo. Dos aspectos del pensamiento politico de Isidoro de Sevilla

Isidore of Seville tried to support the survival of the Visigothic Kingdom in two fundamental political concepts: unity and peace. To obtain unity, which should encompass all matters affecting the people (religion, social community, law, economics and politics), it was first necessary to end the Arian heresy and restore rule under a single religion; it was also necessary to include all the population whether Goths or Hispani; to have the same law in force for the entire territory of the kingdom and strengthen the monarchy to guarantee political union. Isidore reported this necessity in the History of the Goths, with concrete examples from the past, which caused disunity, a weakening of political power and the decline of the Visigothic Kingdom. Peace was always a consequence of social and political unity and social justice leading to a legal whole. For peace and unity in the Visigothic Kingdom, Isidore of Seville did not hesitate to accept and justify actual situations that could have been qualified as unf...

The significance of chronology in the Chronica of Iohannes Biclarensis

The first part of the paper deals with the literary genre of chronica in late Antiquity and its basic characteristics, paying special attention to the chronological aspects in these works. In the second part the author Iohannes Biclarensis is introduced. He lived in the 6th and 7th century in the Visigothic kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula and his only surviving work, the Chronica, is a one-of-a-kind source for the turbulent reigns of Leovigild and Reccared at the end of the 6th century AD. In the third part I focus on the significance of chronology in this opus, I present an analysis of all the dating formulas he uses and in the conclusion I demonstrate on some examples the shift in Iohannes’ perspective through the chronicle.

Episcopal Crisis Management in Late Antique Gaul: The Example of Exsuperius of Toulouse

AbstractIn the first quarter of the fifth century the provinces of Gaul experienced their most dramatic shakeup since Julius Caesar, with the Rhine crossing of Vandals, Suebi and Alans, the retaliation from Roman forces in Britain under the usurper Constantine III, and the establishment of the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse under Wallia in 418. Exsuperius was bishop in Toulouse throughout much of this time. Most of what we know about him comes from the challenges that confronted him. Not only did he face the crisis of hostile forces besieging his city, but he faced internal ones as well, with famine resulting from the siege and, at an earlier time, dissent being expressed to the asceticism and Christian discipline he promoted. While famine and theological dissent were regular features of what bishops had to deal with, responding to a siege was not something most bishops in previous generations had experienced. This article investigates how Exsuperius responded to these crises of varying magnitudes and argues that, although he is reported by Jerome as being solely responsible for averting the external threat, he was probably part of a team of negotiators, and that, with regard to the internal threat, he allied himself with Innocent I, the Roman bishop. The literary encounter between Toulouse and Rome in Innocent’sEpistula6 reinforced Innocent’s position as the leading Western bishop, as well as offered support to Exsuperius in dealing with the crisis he faced.

The Episcopal complex of Eio-el Tolmo de Minateda (Héllín, Albacete, Spain). Architecture and spatial organization, 7th to 8th centuries AD

The episcopal complex of Eio, located in El Tolmo de Minateda, was built between the end of the 6th century and the beginning of the 7th century, possibly as a political decision taken by the ecclesiastical authority in the capital of the Visigothic kingdom (Toletum). With the comprehensive study of the whole complex presented below (construction cycles, furniture, decoration and location of spaces), we can interpret the function of each space in the basilica and the domus episcopi, the liturgical and general movement routes, the existence of some hierarchical environments, and specify the chronological development of the buildings. After the Arab-Berber conquest of Hispania in the early 8th century, the whole complex will experience a series of transformations that will convert the religious and monumental public area into a private, residential and industrial Islamic quarter.

The Muslim invasion of the Iberian peninsula in the year 711 and the fleet of Ifriqiya

The invasion of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo came about through the expansion of the Muslim Empire, but the real possibility and ease with which it occurred was brought about by the pact made with Count Julian and the help of the Witizan faction. Everything seems to indicate that the Muslim fl eet of Ifriqiya did not participate initially, despite the interpretation made by some, of several references from certain Muslim authors. We believe that the ships in which Ayyash (Abbas) Ibn Sharahil (Ujayl, Akhyal) sailed from Al-Andalus to Ifriqiya were those that Musa Ibn Nusayr had built in vast numbers on the shores of Africa, after Tariq Ibn Ziyad set sail for the Iberian Peninsula, and which were used to send him reinforcements, so that Musa himself could cross the Straits of Gibraltar in the year 93 of the Hegira, and also to transport the spoils of war that Musa took to Tangier in the year 95 of the Hegira.

Creating new Constantines at the end of the sixth century

The emperor Constantine I (d. 337) was important not only during his reign, but also in the following centuries when he was taken as a political role model by several Roman emperors and barbarian kings. This article looks at two of those barbarian kings: Clovis, king of the Franks at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth century, and Reccared, king of the Visigoths (d. 601). Both of these kings converted to Catholicism, and both were compared with Constantine. This article analyses the meanings of these comparisons in the political, religious and ideological contexts of the Frank and Visigothic kingdoms.

O diabo na vida de um santo: uma análise complementar da autobiografia de Valério do Bierzo

This text is linked to the aspects of power relations in the Vita Sancti Aemiliani in Vita Sancti Fructuosi and autobiography of Valério of Bierzo: Christianization and ecclesiastical reorganization of the Visigothic kingdom in the seventh century, funded by CNPq. Among other assumptions, this research recognizes that the ecclesiastical authorities at the beginning of the Middle Ages worked for the promotion of a comprehensive education program, which was associated with standardization and education of lay and clergy. In this process, the hagiographic literature has assumed a prominent place. Considering the autobiography written by Valerius of Bierzo as an expression of the hagiographic genre, it is intended in this article, based on the historiographical reflections of ecclesiastical activity in the Hispanic peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries, discussing the role played by the devil in such a report, sometimes more sharply expression a literary topos, now speaker of the specific situation of the author.

The Visigoths in History and Legend, by J.N. Hillgarth

It is a heartening thought for early medieval historians that the last of the kings of ‘the Goths, the Sueves and the Vandals’ died less than forty years ago. This is despite the fact that the peoples normally associated with those names vanish from historiographical view at various points between the sixth and early eighth centuries. Until the accession in 1973 of King Carl XVI Gustaf, who finally renounced the titles, their memory was constitutionally better preserved in Sweden, their entirely legendary place of origin, than in the Iberian Peninsula, where their actual kingdoms had once existed. While the Sueves and Vandals had been eliminated long before, any chance of a new common Gothic identity being fully absorbed by the social élites of what we call the Visigothic kingdom in Spain was destroyed by the Arab conquest of 711. At a practical level, the descendants of those who, prior to 711, may have thought of themselves as Goths were, after that date, no longer under the authority of a single monarchy. Some were ruled by Muslim amirs and then caliphs; others lived under Christian monarchs in the north, none of whom was able to call themselves king of (all) the Goths. In any case, they might not have wished so to do, as another legacy of the conquest was the need to understand why God had permitted it to happen, and here the sins, real and imaginary, of the last kings of the old Visigothic realm became the most favoured explanation. On the other hand, the legal, literary, religious and other cultural inheritances of the former kingdom conditioned most aspects of the life and thought of the Christian communities of Spain after 711, even of those under Muslim rule. So, there remained a tension, never fully resolved over succeeding centuries, between the positive and the negative aspects of the memory of the Goths. Even in modern times, influential Spanish historians continued to criticise the Visigothic kingdom for its supposed decadence and moral decline, while General Franco praised it as the source of Spaniards’ well-known ‘love of law and order’.

The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim and Jewish Conflict, by Patricia E. Grieve

Scholarly attention to the practice and uses of historical writing in the past, its interaction with literary works and its role in shaping local or national consciousness has emerged as a major trend, and recent books by Anthony Grafton, Chantal Grell and Richard L. Kagan, among others, confirm its vitality. Patricia E. Grieve, a literary historian, has devoted a richly documented book to one such case: the ‘fall of Spain’—that is, the defeat of the Visigothic kingdom by Muslim invaders in 711 and the subsequent dominion by the latter over most of the Iberian Peninsula. While the Visigoths had previously suffered from political instability, the chronicle tradition focused instead on a highly personalised drama, involving four main characters: Don Rodrigo, the last Visigothic king; Don Julián, one of his closest aristocratic followers; Florinda La Cava, the latter's daughter, whose rape by the king prompted her father to seek revenge by aiding the Moorish invasion; and Don Pelayo, a noble of Visigothic ancestry who, shortly thereafter, began to resist the Muslims from his northern redoubt in Asturias. The latter's exploits were eventually seen as the first step of the Reconquista, the centuries-long struggle of the Iberian Christian kingdoms to expel the Muslims, and which the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, finally brought to a triumphal end in 1492. Thus, the sin and defeat of 711 eventually gave way to virtue and rebirth, and, in so doing, became a powerful founding myth for Christian Iberia and particularly Spain.

The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim and Jewish Conflict (review)

Reviewed by: The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim and Jewish Conflict Jonathan Burgoyne Grieve, Patricia E. The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim and Jewish Conflict. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. 312 pp. ISBN-10: 0-8018-9036-9 In The Eve of Spain, Patricia Grieve has produced a tour de force of erudition. The scope of the book spans the eighth to the twenty-first centuries, covering a rang of cultural production from medieval chronicles to nineteenth-century Romantic art, Civil War propaganda, political cartoons, and authors such as Alfonso X, Ahmad al-Razi, Gonzalo de Berceo, Pedro de Corral, Lope de Vega, Fray Luis de León, Washington Irving, Walter Scott, Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Juan Goytisolo, to name only a few of the numerous references to artists, histories and historians, paintings, plays, poetry, myths and legends that tie the stories of the fall of the Visigothic kingdom to Spain's traditions of neo-Gothic nationalism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and maurophobia. The book is divided into three "acts" —"Fall and Redemption" (711-1492); "Promise and Fulfillment" (1492-1700); "Imagining Spain (The Enlightenment to the Present)"— and six chapters, each with separately titled subsections, plus a prologue, interlude, and epilogue. It is accessible to a general audience, revisiting many of the familiar histories of Spain from 711 to the present, but The Eve of Spain is also professionally prepared with extensive endnotes, a critical bibliography and a helpful index that will aid scholarly readers in new research projects that the book will certainly inspire. In spite of its ambitious breadth and what Grieve describes as a "vast array of texts examined and referenced" (207), the author never loses sight of her main subject matter, the myriad recastings of legends and their intersections with cultural anxieties about the nation's gendered, racial, and religious genealogies, many of which are also linked to the histories of the Castilian monarchy. [End Page 220] Grieve outlines the broad goals of her book in the prologue, where she states that it is a history of Spain studied through the lens of its foundational legends, or myths of origins. While the book does indeed explore various legends —such as the story of the Jewess of Toledo, and other notorious lies that stand at the heart of Spain's darkest national atrocities, such as the legend of the Santo Nino de la Guardia— the foundational myth that receives the most critical attention is the popular story of Rodrigo, the last king of the Visigoths, and La Cava, whose rape lead to the revenge of her father, Julián, and the Muslim conquest. Of particular interest to the author in this legend is the character of La Cava, who is gradually transformed into the eroticized temptress that causes the fall of Spain; in essence, she is a new Iberian Eve. In the same development of the legend, Grieve shows how over time, in chronicles, ballads and modern histories, Rodrigo became a morally ambivalent character, led astray by a seductive woman and his own human —and ultimately pardonable— frailties. Grieve is at her best when studying La Cava and the representation of women in general: women's bodies and their sexuality, race and religion as they are rebranded and implicated in both popular and official narratives of Spain's national identity. Characters like La Cava, Leocadia, and the Jewess of Toledo, or real women like Queen Isabel, are studied as templates upon which are inscribed fears of loss and domination, of racial and religious impurity, of subversive sexual impulses that threaten the Christian kingdom from within. They also represent the embodiment of the nation itself in her dichotomized representations: as fallen Eve or redemptive Eva; as the lost Christian nation or the risen new monarchy; or as empire, dictatorship, or modern democracy. Grieve traces the development of this legend in the first three chapters (ch. 1, "Setting the Stage"; ch. 2, "Granada Is the Bride"; ch. 3, "Blood Will Out"), beginning with the earliest Christian and Muslim versions that tend to highlight the notion of God's punishment on one hand and, on...