Read an Excerpt
Preface
Two moments in time bracket the period covered by this book. The first is in the second half of the fifth century, when the elite of Tarraco, one of the most important cities in Hispania, declared their loyalty to the Roman emperors, shown by a dedicatory inscription found there. At that time, the imperial administration had virtually ceased to exist in most of the West. In Hispania it controlled only some areas in the northeast, specifically in the province of Tarraconensis. This same zone was soon to pass into the orbit of the Gothic kingdom of Euric, based in southern Gaul. The Gothic offensive took place around 472, shortly after the inscription was placed in Tarracon. The second time point falls almost two hundred years later, in the mid-seventh century, when King Chindaswinth, together with his son and successor, Recceswinth, carried out a series of in-depth reforms to the administration of their kingdom. By that time, the regnum Gothorum was firmly established in Iberia.
This book addresses specific questions relating to the two centuries that passed between these moments. How did the kingdom of the Goths manage to establish itself in Hispania? What were the keys to this process? In doing so, the book offers an overview of the long phase between the end of the fifth century and the middle of the seventh. During this time the regnum Gothorum maintained an interest, at first in certain enclaves within late Roman Hispania from its base in southern Gaul and later in the totality of what had been the provinces of Hispania, where it eventually established itself. The Gothic kings in Iberia gave themselves the title of rex Gothorum, but during the period covered by this book, they came to associate with this the concept of Spania as a geopolitical reference to which they could add Septimania, part of southern Gaul, which remained part of the Gothic kingdom when its center of gravity shifted southward in the early sixth century.
The term "Spania" demands some explanation. "Spania" is used with some frequency in the texts of the Visigothic kingdom that occupied what had previously been Roman Hispania, and it can be collated in the editions of these texts and in numerous later manuscripts that copied them. Spania derives from Hispania, as do the words "España" and "Spain"; however, Spain did not exist in the Visigothic period of the sixth and seventh centuries that forms the subject of this book. Nor indeed did Portugal, also within Iberia, or the other European nations of modern and contemporary history. It is true that in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries various attempts were made to find a direct origin for these nations in the regna, or kingdoms, of post-Roman Europe. For our purposes, however, the equation of Spania with Spain is unhelpful; accuracy would require present-day Portugal to be included because it lies inside what was once Hispania. Moreover, by "Spania" I do not mean the term sometimes used to refer to the Hispanic Byzantine domains, but the term that, in the sources for the Visigothic kingdom, alludes to the set of territories of that kingdom in ancient Roman Hispania. Between late Roman and Visigothic times, the term "Spania" was frequently used as a kind of shorthand for an evolving geographic entity.
It is worth briefly mentioning another question of terminology. "Visigoths" is to be found consolidated in sources only after much of the sixth century had elapsed. Official texts of the kingdom preferred the concepts Gothus, rex Gothorum, and gens Gothorum, even if there are some odd examples of the use of "Visigoths." (To cite just a few instances, it is employed in hagiography from Mérida dating from the seventh century, and by Procopius writing in Greek in Constantinople and Gregory the Great in Rome in the sixth century, among others.)
This book is not a complete overview of the history of the Visigoth kingdom but rather a thematic study of how the kingdom rooted its structures in what had been Roman Hispania. Consequently, the chapters concentrate on a specific time span, from the final years of the fifth century through to the mid-seventh century. The establishment of the Goths in Hispania was a complex historical process, not an episode or the immediate outcome of an event such as their defeat by the Franks in 507. This process has left traces in sources from the last third of the fifth century and the first third of the sixth. Gothic interests in Hispania had originated in the fifth century, starting under the umbrella of their foedera (treaties, pacts) with the Roman Empire, and thereafter with considerable room for maneuvering. Once the empire had disappeared in the West, through to the mid-sixth century, these interests gradually became more extensive. It was only in the second half of the sixth century that they were definitively consolidated. The final point chosen for the time horizon of this book, the mid-seventh century, is explained by the intensity of lawmaking and reforms undertaken just after that point by Chindaswinth and his son Recceswinth. This is no longer the construction phase of the kingdom but a reform and reconstruction phase, the starting point for a new stage in its history.
My objective in this book is to show how this process developed and how it involved problems, splits, and contradictions. Over the course of this long period a pact between dominant sectors of the Gothic aristocracy and the local elites led to the conversion of the Gothic kingdom from Arianism to Catholicism. It was from that point on that Catholic bishops produced a narrative of the process, a discourse of power, which they tried to introduce into the collective awareness at many different levels. The anchoring of these two processes—construction and invention—is the theme of this book. By the construction of the kingdom I mean its articulation and operation in the initial and central phases of its consolidation in Roman Hispania. Its subsequent evolution, from the reigns of Chindaswinth and Recceswinth onward, is a clearly different phase that saw profound reforms in the administration of the kingdom. These lie outside the processes addressed by this book. By the invention of the kingdom I mean the creation of a system of values, of ideological projections, which included the definition of what a king was, what a kingdom was, how and why they should be obeyed, and the place that the past history played in that design.
The book begins with a look at the collapse of the Roman Empire (Chapter 1), focusing on some of the changes that took place in Iberia, particularly their consequences for the period that immediately followed. Next I provide (Chapter 2) an overview of the political route taken by the regnum Gothorum from its last moments in Gaul until it was firmly installed in Iberia, while retaining Septimania north of the Pyrenees. The rooting of the kingdom in Iberia is covered by two chapters: Chapter 3 investigates local powers and those dependent on them; Chapter 4 highlights the impositions and negotiations of central authority with regard to them. Finally, in Chapter 5 I consider the invention of the kingdom as such, on the basis of the adaptation of ethnicity, the construction of a linear history, and the projection by the elite of politico-religious messages that gave a shape to the identity of their own political system.
Most of the primary sources for the Visigothic period in Iberia come from the ecclesiastical and monastic sphere. For the chronological period covered by this book, perhaps the most systematic narratives are the chronicle of John of Biclar, probably written in the first years of the seventh century, and the History of the Goths by Isidore of Seville, written in at least two redactions some years later. With differences, both authors exalt the kingdom of the Goths as a synthesis of a territorial domain in ancient Roman Hispania with its Catholic identity, acquired at the end of the sixth century. This symbiosis between kingdom and Catholicism has its roots in the speech given by Leander of Seville, brother and predecessor of Isidore in the bishopric, during the Third Council of Toledo of 589. The hagiographies, in particular the Lives of the Holy Fathers of Mérida and Life of St. Aemilian, are very pertinent here. Both written in the seventh century, they project an image of the local world that interested their issuers, respectively, the ecclesiastical and monastic community of St. Eulalia and Braulio, bishop of Saragossa and friend of Isidore. In all these cases the authors wrote in the service of Catholic power, which from the end of the sixth century was connected with the political. One of the central themes of this book is to analyze how the "invention" of the kingdom was the product of this connection.
John of Biclar was of Gothic origin and came from Lusitania. He was to end his days in northeastern Iberia as abbot of the community at Biclarum and bishop of Gerona. In his youth he had traveled to Constantinople to study and spent seven years there, probably in the 570s. It is known that John was exiled to Barcelona by Leovigild, doubtless because of the religious rivalry between Arianism and Catholicism that saw peaks of tension during Leovigild's reign. John was still alive well into the 610s, as is known from his acting as signatory to minutes of meetings and episcopal documents. John's chronicle, probably written at this late stage in his life, is a synthesis of the new ideology that was to shape the invention of the kingdom. In this instance it is crucial to pay attention to its use of the past, particularly the reigns of Leovigild and Reccared, in the creation of a linear account of history, a long way from the real complexities of the facts that it selectively presents.
Isidore's family came from the province of Carthaginiensis, which from the mid-sixth century onward was in the hands of troops sent by the Eastern Roman Empire. By the last third of the century his family had settled in the province of Baetica. His elder brother, Leander, was bishop of Seville, while another of his brothers, Fulgentius, held that same office in the diocese of Écija; his sister Florentina was an abbess. Isidore was to succeed his brother in the episcopal see of Seville from approximately 600 or 602 through to his death in 636. He wrote many works, of which the best known is his Etymologiae, an authentically encyclopedic production, extensively copied throughout Europe. However, Isidore wrote in numerous literary genres, such as history, chronicles, letters, poems, theology, and monastic rules, among many others. His brother Leander had been involved in Hermenegild's uprising against his father Leovigild, but nevertheless also had an active role in the Third Council of Toledo in 589. This, under Reccared, brought with it the official conversion of the Gothic kingdom to Catholicism. Isidore likewise played an active part in the relationship between bishops and monarchs in the first third of the seventh century, and his contribution to the invention of the kingdom was crucial.
Other sources include texts of a biographical, ecclesiastical nature and letters, wills, and treaties of various kinds. Sometimes it has been necessary to contrast the information coming from within the kingdom with that emanating from abroad—from Jordanes, Procopius, Gregory of Tours, Gregory the Great, and Fredegar, among others. In addition, the laws issued by the Visigothic kings and the Formulae show how the setting of norms and protocols for action can be the expression of social problems, though not through a literal reading, which would lead to a superficial view. Something similar happens with the councils, which in their efforts to insist on certain prohibitions may suggest a high frequency of the behaviors that they were trying to prevent.
Information provided by some particularly relevant inscriptions has been used. And it has also been important to study the so-called Visigothic slates, which often lack archaeological context. These are slates inscribed with text in cursive script or with numerals or drawings, which contain fascinating information of various different types, such as religious contexts, learning, and school exercises. Here we are interested especially in those that refer to the social and economic structure of the west-central zone of the Iberian peninsula.
All this leads us to a high density of very different kinds of sources. One of the constant concerns of this book is to explain the new archaeological records in the general context of the political, social, and ideological history of the construction and consolidation of the Visigothic kingdom in Iberia.
While Leander, Isidore, and their colleagues were shaping the invention of the kingdom, peasants were burying their dead in cemeteries associated with villages. In the very same communities, other dead were thrown into disused storage pits or onto garbage dumps. While such events occurred in villages, games of political and ideological power were played out elsewhere. Leander delivered his homily at the Third Council of Toledo in 589, John of Biclar wrote his chronicle covering the years 567 to 590, and later, in the first part of the seventh century, Isidore wrote his history of the Goths. This book aims to bring together both sorts of information. Recent public construction projects for airports, highways, and railroad lines for high-speed trains have led to excavations yielding major new empirical evidence. Indeed, one of the objectives of this book is to attempt to link the two sets of materials: written sources, arising overwhelmingly from court or church, and archaeological records. Laws, letters, histories, hagiographies, and records of councils are expressions of the very top level of society. They come from the world of Isidore and his colleagues, of magnates and of kings. The unfortunates who in death were flung into abandoned silos in villages were from the least privileged classes. Between the two were various intermediate levels. Hence the study of the construction and invention of the kingdom must look at how these two processes were anchored between the horizon of local notables and the structures of the underlying peasant base.
