The Visigoths had been settled in Aquitania II for ninety years. They have left remarkably little trace of their stay. Even the place-names formerly attributed to them have been questioned.⁷² There is nothing resembling the Germanic toponyms clustered in Suevic Gallaecia. The Visigoths did not spend their income on civic monuments, but on matters closer to themselves. Apart perhaps from their main church in Toulouse, they appear not to have built churches of their own, but shared those of the catholics. The Goth differed from most Romans in being taller and larger, with fair hair and paler skin. He was unkempt, with locks over his ears. He did not wear the toga, nor pelts, but the chlamys, the tunic of the Roman army: this was not distinctive in the Spains, where an edict of September 410 required all functionaries to appear so clad before the vicarius under pain of a large fine, thus presenting a military appearance. Their Arian bishops baptized them with Germanic names, often so distorted as to conceal their derivation.⁷³ In the Roman army, orders were transmitted in writing and interpreted by junior officers to those who did not read. Many would understand barrack-room Latin infused with numerous Germanisms. Those who served Roman landowners would know more, especially when they took wives who did not learn Gothic. Their optimates might well have become landowners, as the Vandals in Africa were doing, but for the arrival of Germanic adventurers. The infusion of more military Ostrogothic leaders took place after the marriage of Alaric and became robust only after his defeat.
The reigning dynasty of Toulouse survived, but Goths did not obey a boy-king or his mother. Command was exercised by a much older half-brother Gesaleic, debarred from ruling by illegitimacy. But regencies were unknown to the Goths, since a regent would have the same powers as a king and would usurp him rather than cede to a Goth unable to impose his own decisions.⁷⁴ Theoderic had tried to negotiate to save Alaric II and the child Amalaric, but he did not trust Gesaleic. His army in Provence was commanded by a relative Hebba or Ibba, who succeeded in putting the Visigoth to flight and in establishing an Ostrogothic protectorate in both Septimania and Tarraconensis. Franks already held Bordeaux, and when they and the Burgundians attempted to attack Gesaleic, he fell back on Barcelona, where the comes Goaric who had been prominent under Alaric was killed. Gesaleic fled to seek the support of the Vandals, who gave him money but no men. When he returned to Barcelona, he was defeated by Hebba and sought refuge with the Burgundians north of the River Durance, where he was killed.
The disaster at Poitiers brought about a redistribution of the western Goths. The court and old nobility moved into Septimania, which became known as Gothic Gaul. It was insufficient to maintain a large population, and had never belonged to the Franks. They overflowed into Tarraconensis where there had been numerous Roman villae, but the command in the Spains was exercised by the more military Ostrogoths, who now had a share in the reigning dynasty. The bulk of the Gothic population gradually moved on to reach the upper Ebro and sources of the Douro, where they would create the future county of Castile. Their tradition of oral law lasted into the Middle Ages and their epic poems, in irregular metre based on beats rather than feet, portend the Poema de mío Cid, the tale of a Castilian hero who forged a territory of his own in Muslim Valencia, which had to be abandoned on his death in 1099, no king but the very symbol of Spanish nobility,
Pues la sangre de los godos
y el linage, y la nobleza
tan crecida
por quantas vías y modos
se pierde su gran alteza
en esta vida!
Unos, por poco valer,
por quan baxos y abatidos
que los tienen!
y otros, por no tener,
con oficios no devidos
se mantienen.
The Goths who settled on the northern part of the great meseta, much poorer in resources, were of purer blood, if less noble. Some remained behind with the Gallo-Romans. Having accepted the catholic religion, Clovis died in 511 and his realms were divided between his four grandchildren, who had their seats in the distant north round Paris and made their Merovingian pantheon at St Denis. Not many Franks appear to have settled in the south, and they exercised their sway mainly through their duces or the comites appointed to govern the cities. Since they had never been Arians, the Gallo-Roman episcopacy felt some relief. The historian of the Franks, Gregory of Tours, born in the Auvergne, never identifies himself with them, and draws a vivid picture of their scandalous way of life, easily redeemed when they displayed generosity to the church of St Martin of Tours.
Theoderic the Ostrogoth was king of Italy and governed all the barbarian forces there: he received a subsidy in gold from the Emperor Anastasius (491-518): much of this found its way back through the channels of commerce. The imperial accountants were instructed to keep strict books to guard against malversation. Theoderic implanted a dual regime in which the Arian military class practised its own religion and the Roman functionaries and majority were catholics. It was the age of the Christian writers Cassiodorus and Boeotius, who enjoined the virtues of patience and forbearance. Arianism was able to survive in the Spains after it had been abandoned almost everywhere else. By ancient practice the church followed the civil divisions of the Roman empire. In the Gauls, the provincial borders had been blurred and bishops obeyed an archbishop or ruler of bishops, a term not used in the Spains, where the senior bishop of each province was its metropolitan. The provinces were not immune from change. Tarraconensis kept its name, though the Goths were chiefly at, or near, Saragossa. Cartaginensis covered a vast area with its capital at the port of New Carthage, Cartagena, and spreading to the meseta and the Tagus at Toledo: it came to have nearly a score of dioceses. Baetica, the Roman south, where the vicarius dwelled at Seville, had lost Tangier in Africa to the Vandals and contained about ten dioceses. The ancient Lusitania, also vast, was the Further Province, with its great city of Mérida. It had lost the four dioceses between the Tagus and the Douro, to the Sueves. These last, now Arians, held Oporto and Braga by imperial award, which did not extend to the conventus of Lugo and Astorga to the north. Above all, the seat of the Visigothic nobility was in Gothic Gaul, which had its capital at Narbonne, with five dioceses. The Visigoths now saw this as their kingdom, with the Spains as their province, governed by Ostrogothic delegates. The imperial law forbidding intermarriage between Romans and Goths had long since gone by the board. Landowners married their daughters to their Gothic protectors, and their children were provided for by contracts drawn up by notaries. In the poorer and less literate meseta these were rare and Goths had no difficulty in implanting their customs on their progeny.
Neither the boy Amalaric nor his Ostrogothic mother was in a position to command, and Ostrogothic practices prevailed. The survival of the Roman church came from Theoderic’s toleration and the ability of catholic bishops to convoke councils, which required the consent of the civil power. Arles had replaced Vienne, and Pope Symmachus upheld its primacy over Aix. When Symmachus made Arles the channel for communications with Rome, he was not only recognizing the eminence of Bishop Cesarius but harking back to earlier times when the pretorian prefect of the west had supervised the Spains. In 516 a council for Tarraconensis was attended by nine bishops, including the metropolitan of Cartaginensis and also Illiberi, Granada, in Baetica. In June 517 seven bishops from Tarraconensis met at Lérida, six of them had also attended the year before.
A letter of Theoderic in 516 in Ravenna throws light on his administration in Nearer Spain. It is addressed to Liuveric, a Goth, and Ampelius, a Roman illustris. It deals with the shipment of corn and such irregularities as allowing shipmasters to sell in Africa instead of Rome: Marcianus, a spectabilis, had behaved correctly but was not obeyed: book-keeping must be strictly attended to. Ten years later, the same two governors were still in place. Theoderic, nearing the end of his reign, names Ampelius before Liuveric and deals with offences contrary to law and good customs. Life must be protected, and murders, too numerous, punished: proper government depended on agriculture and peasants should work in peace. Tax-collectors must not use other than official weights. All taxes belonged to the treasury, and collectors must not demand what could not be paid. All duties on imports must be levied in the customs-house. The minting of coin was a monopoly which private persons must not invade. Taxes were farmed for three years and regulated according to the laws of Euric and Alaric without deduction. Officials were permitted to requisition houses for official use but no more than was necessary. The position of villicus, steward, should be abolished.
Pope Symmachus’ successor Hormisdas (514-523) took advantage of improved relations with the eastern church to require Bishop Sallust of Seville, as head of the church in Baetica and Lusitania, to accept Greek clergy on the grounds that this was necessary to preserve the unity of the church (April 521). The effect was soon felt. Relations between eastern merchants, particularly between cosmopolitan Alexandria and the port of Seville, continued, and merchants were soon followed by priests. However, Theoderic’s system of Arian alliances sealed by marriages was fragile. He gave daughters to Alaric and to the Burgundian Sigismund, who became a catholic, but his own succession was marred by the early death of his heir. He relied on gold coin issued in Constantinople. Anastasius’ successor Justin I (518-527) initiated a compilation of Roman law applicable to the whole world and without specific reference to religion, which, when promulgated by Justinian, was in line with the universalism of ancient Rome.
When Theoderic died in 527, Amalaric was about twenty-four and by Gothic standards of an age to command and govern. He and his court were domiciled in Narbonensis, but the Spains were in the military hands of his Ostrogothic kin. The Franks were far away, and his nobles did not forget what they had lost. It seemed safe for him to contract a catholic marriage to a daughter of Clovis. The Gothic people had spread down the Douro beyond the agger of the Seventh Legion and over the northern half of the meseta. Their presence is marked by cemeteries with the row-graves, or Reihengräber, in which the inmates are ranged in lines, recalling the bunks in a legionary dormitory. More than seventy are known, extending down the Douro as far as the frontier with the Sueves and southward to Toledo. In some, the warriors are buried with their sword-belts with zoomorphic or other decoration. The proportion with these belts is not large: many warriors served and fell elsewhere. At later levels they diminish in number: there are no inscriptions. In this area, they dominated with their native families.
A letter subjoined to the council of Toledo of 527 shows that Bishop Montanus of Cartaginensis repudiated the concession of the three sees of Segovia, Britablum (Buitrago) and Cauca (Coca), which had been granted to strangers ‘in order that their priests might not wander’. Montanus warned the clergy of Palencia that church property must not be alienated, under threat of punishment by the king through their lord Erga. At some time in the previous decade Arian bishops had been awarded these sees. Toledo was the remotest city in Cartaginensis and Palencia an ancient see nearer the Douro. The Goths were established round the city of Saragossa, famous for its Christian poet Prudentius and its eighteen martyrs, and Palencia had had experience of the Goths when it was plundered in 456. On that occasion the Goths had left a garrison at Mérida in Lusitania. Further north, the Vascones remained pagans, and despite the decree of Theodosius I, the Cantabrians were converted only by the efforts of St Emilianus, San Millán, who died in 574.
Amalaric reigned only from 526 until 531. He was then accused of maltreating his catholic wife, the daughter of Clovis, to oblige her to become an Arian. He was defeated in Narbonensis by Hildebert, a Frank, and killed by a Frankish soldier at Barcelona. There was no Visigothic successor, and the Ostrogothic general Thiudis was acclaimed in December 531.
Having promulgated his code of laws, the Emperor Justinian prepared to overthrow the Vandal kingdom of Carthage, now ruled illegitimately by Gelamir, who disputed the island of Sicily with the Ostrogoths of Italy. His army consisted of a nucleus of well-equipped knights, the milites, and a miscellany of others including Huns and other heathens. His fleet was mainly of transports contracted in Alexandria. Many contingents were commanded by leaders called comites, which Procopius notes as a quite improper use of the word. Those from Pannonia formed the advance-guard under one Martin, who played an honourable part in the taking of Carthage. The Vandal king evacuated it and it fell in a day in 532. There followed a long resistance in Libya and elsewhere. On the fall of the city, the commander Belisarius sent a contingent to occupy Ceuta and the Straits. At Ceuta, Justinian built a church dedicated to the Virgin of Africa, posted a garrison and stationed a flotilla of dromons. He did not embark on a conquest of the Spains, but ordered Belisarius to recover Italy and plunged into a long and ruinous war against the Ostrogothic kingdom. In the Spains King Thiudis had ceased sending his subsidy to the Ostrogoths and now refused to provide help or intervene. He resisted any attempt of the Greeks to land at Seville.
The handful of dromons at Ceuta sufficed to guard the Straits. Merchants reached Seville and other ports as far as the Atlantic coast. From Mértola on the Guadiana, where there are inscriptions in Greek, they unloaded their wares, since the fall at Pulo do Lobo blocks the river, for carriage overland to the cities of Évora and Mérida, where a Greek doctor named Paul so impressed the senatorial class that he was made bishop and metropolitan of Lusitania. He was followed by a boy who came with a party of merchants and he recognized marvellously as his nephew, Fidelis, and trained to become his successor. The shrine of St Eulalia was already famous, and the Greek bishops built or restored chapels, basilicas and a hospice known by the Greek name xenodoche. Mérida was said to have become the wealthiest see in the Spains.⁷⁵
The see of Beja, not far away, was occupied by Apringius, c. 540, author of a commentary on the Apocalypse, probably a Greek, and further north the Greeks probably founded the diocese of Iria, where later the relics of St James arrived.⁷⁶ Braga itself had renounced Arianism by 537, when its Bishop Profuturus wrote to Rome to ask whether converts from Arianism should be baptized again. His letter is lost. Belisarius entered Rome and removed Pope Silverius, who was followed by Vigilius on March 29 537. It fell to him to reply. He did so by sending a full account of the errors imputed to the Priscillianists: as regards penitent Arians, more than one form of baptism was permissible: what was essential was attendance at the right church. Procopius, an eyewitness and not a Christian, who completed his history of Justinian’s wars by about 550, says nothing about Byzantine Spain, since it came into existence only later. If an expedition against Seville was mounted, it failed. In 541 Thiudis was engaged in beating off a Frankish intrusion across the Pyrenees against Pamplona and Saragossa. Gregory of Tours says that the Franks retired in confusion when the inhabitants of Saragossa paraded round the walls displaying the tunic of St Vincent. They were opposed by King Thiudis and his lieutenant Thiudisclus, who stood well with the people of Tarraconensis and could then afford to secure the south against Greek intrusion.
If Thiudis chose not to intervene in Italy, the people of Baetica showed no overt wish to welcome the Byzantine army. Justinian had made no sign of returning Tangier, which had formerly belonged to Baetica. In 548 Thiudis was murdered at Seville, and in December 549 his successor Thiudisclus suffered the same fate: neither fell in battle. Gregory of Tours and St Isidore, born a little later, say that the latter died by the sword at the hands of conspirators at a feast. The Ostrogothic interlude thus ended. Thiudis had married an Hispana whose resources permitted him to raise a private army of two thousand men.⁷⁷ The extent of Ostrogothic immigration is not known, but was probably small after 527. Their most significant contribution was the official dualism which permitted Romans and Arians to co-exist. This was more effective in Gothic Gaul, where the Gothic nobles intermarried, but less so in northern Spain where Goths predominated or the south, mainly catholic. Councils of the Roman church were held at the end of the Ostrogothic predominance at Barcelona (c. 540), Lérida (August 546) and Valencia (December 546), in Tarraconensis and Cartaginensis. The royal succession then passed back to the Visigoths with Agila or Akhila, whose antecedents are not given. He was probably acclaimed by the army rather than by the nobility in Gothic Gaul, but this is uncertain. St Isidore regards him with disfavour.
The balance, if such it was, was overset when the Sueves finally abandoned Arianism and their rulers adopted catholicism. In c. 550, the approach of Profuturus to Rome was followed by the arrival of a Pannonian priest named Martin, now famous as St Martin of Dume, the royal hall close to the city of Braga. St Martin was probably born in about 520 and died on March 29 579. He had studied in the East and knew the Desert Fathers, whose monasteries stretched from Asia Minor to the Thebaid of Alexandria. There the abba set the rule for his monks. A usual form was the lavra, in which the monks dwelt in separate cells to seek the good life through abstinence and prayer. They were called to the church by a wooden clapper for the offices, and tilled their gardens or made basketware to sell at the market. Visitors would ask the abba for a cell and often begged him to say something. He might then consider and deliver an anecdote or maxim. These apophthegms were collected over a long period. Many were gathered by John Moschos, and one of St Martin’s first projects was to teach his pupil Pascasius Greek to translate more than a hundred into Latin. Their main preoccupation is not with miracles but with how to lead a good life.⁷⁸ When Martin arrived with his baggage of Eastern monasticism, the Sueves were ruled by Ariomir, whose name ends the long silence about the north-west. ‘Mir’ is powerful and ‘Ario’ means Arian: after his conversion to Roman Christianity he was Theodemir, and his son Martin’s pupil, Miro.⁷⁹ St Martin himself was considered erudite. He was not a historian but a missionary and educator. Gregory, historian of the Franks, says that Martin arrived providentially at the same time as relics of St Martin of Tours, asked for by a King Chararic to cure his little son of leprosy. Chararic is not a Suevic name but that of a leader of the Salian Franks killed by Clovis, c. 507-511.⁸⁰ Gregory, or George Florence, a small man with a lively imagination, of a noble family of the Auvergne, was then a boy of ten and became the nineteenth bishop of Tours at thirty-three in 572.⁸¹ While he respected St Martin of Dume for his learning and seniority, he liked to claim miracles for his own Martin. He does not claim to have met Martin of Dume, and there is no reason to suppose that Martin’s arrival was other than an extension of the Greek influence felt at Mértola, Mérida and Iría.
While the Suevic monarchy revived, the reign of the Visigoth Agila lasted only until 555. In his third year, it was disturbed by a rebellion in Cordova. When he attempted to suppress it, he was driven out, losing his son, his treasure and much of his army, having profaned the church of St Acisclus by stabling his beasts in it. The emperor had still few troops to spare from his activities in Italy, but sent P Liberius, an experienced Gallo-Roman, who had been prefect at Arles, with the rank of patrician. Cordova became Corduba Patricia, the brief capital of Byzantine Spain. Agila had relied on the traditionalist Goths of the meseta, but there now appeared a challenger of the old nobility, Athanagild, who was acclaimed at Seville. After a short struggle Agila was killed by his own men in the strongly orthodox city of Mérida, where the Greek Paul was bishop, or soon to become so.
Athanagild neither risked his fortunes in a great Roman city nor continued the war against the Greeks. He secured the backing of the Goths of the meseta by marrying Godeswinth, who gave him two daughters. His rebellion had lasted more than a year when Agila was defeated and killed and he became the sole ruler, making his seat at the small city of Toledo on the Tagus. For Livy, it was an ancient tribal centre strongly placed at a bend in the river. It had become a Roman cross-roads, and was the scene of councils or synods of the church. It was soon to become famous as the royal city of the Visigoths. The Greeks regarded the mass of Visigoths as unreformed barbarians, but were prepared to tolerate the nobility, provided that it adhered to Ostrogothic dualism. Their own hold on North Africa was insecure, and they have little to tell about the Far West.
Ceuta had replaced Tangier as the capital of Mauritania II, but the military command was at Carthage in Africa proper. Hierocles’ Synecdemus defines Byzantine Spain as consisting of seven cities, Sagontia, Assidona (Sidonia), Malacca, Corduba Patricia, Carthago Spartaria (Cartagena), Basti (Baza) and another unstated which may be Seville.⁸² Cordova was the only place capable of taking a lead in upper Andalusia, but any landing would require a port and safe access. Valencia had inclined towards the Goths.⁸³ According to St Isidore, when Thiudis appeared, he seized Ceuta. It was quickly recovered by the Byzantines. Athanagild now concluded a treaty with the Byzantines which permitted them to hold the ports. It was probably the work of P. Liberius, who returned to the East by the end of 552. Justinian wanted to be remembered for his buildings, churches and also castles designed for a small garrison to dominate a large area. The Goths, for their part, could travel great distances but lacked siege equipment.
Athanagild, like Amalaric, was disposed to reach an understanding with the Franks. The four seats of the Merovingians were far away. Sigisbert who inherited Rheims asked for the hand of Athanagild’s younger daughter Brunhild: she was given a rich dowry and was well received in the winter of 566, accepting conversion to catholicism. His half-brother Chilperic, who had received Soissons and already had several wives, asked for her elder sister Galswinth, who also received a dowry and abandoned her Arian faith: she was soon garrotted by her husband. Sigisbert was murdered in 585. Of the alliance, this left only the widow Brunhild with an heir and daughters. Chilperic, returning to his Frankish mistress Fredegund, survived until 594. He was the most powerful of the Merovingians, having annexed the Burgundians, who in 534 ceased to have kings of their own.
The Franks had known nothing like the general migration of the Visigoths into Gothic Gaul and the Spains. Their kings, nominally Christians, needed the services of the bishops, but conducted themselves with the violence and promiscuity attributed to barbarian conquerors. Chilperic was the most uncomfortable neighbour since he had acquired with the Burgundians a claim to the valley of the Rhone and the port of Marseille. More than half a century had passed since the Franks had seized Aquitania, and the occupation had not been legalized. Most of the cities of the old Gothic kingdom were settled on the two princesses.⁸⁴ This scarcely affected the Gothic succession, which could not pass to a woman, nor did it give control of the Franks, since female succession was expressly forbidden by Salic law. Athanagild died in 567, having survived the Emperor Justinian by two years. There followed an interregnum of several months while negotiations took place. They resulted in the accession of Liuva in Narbonensis, a member of a noble family which had intermarried with catholics. He entrusted the Spains to his brother Leovigild, who married Athanagild’s Arian widow, Godeswinth. Leovigild had already a catholic wife who gave him two sons, Reccared and Hermenegild, but the second marriage brought him the fideles or clients of the northern meseta and the city of Toledo.⁸⁵
The concept of the passage of fideles through marriage had a distant precedent in the Emperor Theodosius’s entry into the Pannonian dynasty, and perhaps on the Merovingian dynasty in Gaul, but it did not mean partition, a concept entirely repugnant to the Visigoths. Liuva’s heir was his brother whose succession would result in the union of Gothic Gaul and the Spains, Toledo becoming the royal seat.
In planting his capital at a remote corner of Cartaginensis, Athanagild had presented a problem to the catholic church. Leovigild was not only the founder of a new kingdom but the necessary continuator of the religious dualism practised by the Ostrogoths. St Isidore refers to Athangild’s campaigns against the Byzantines without giving precise dates. He notes that the struggle against the Greeks continued ‘until now’, the date of his history of the Goths, or 619, and is opposed to the Greek intrusion. Leovigild was appointed as a commander and began his career by devastating Bastetania and taking the port of Málaga. John of Biclaro places the death of Athanagild and succession of Liuva in 548 and the death of Liuva and succession of all Spain by Leovigild in 573, dating Leovigild’s marriage and reign from 569, giving his victories in Bastetania and Málaga under 570.⁸⁶ He added to his glory by taking Sidonia in 571: it was betrayed by one Framidaneus under cover of night, the Greek milites then being slaughtered.
His great feat was the conquest of Cordova, again by a night attack, and followed by the slaughter of ‘a multitude of rustics’. The Greeks lost their capital, which possessed a fortified residence as the seat of their governor. Leovigild thus attained the height of his power in 572. He owed something to the failures of the Emperor Justin II (565-578), whose armies suffered three defeats in Africa, where the Moors and Libyans killed the Byzantine prefect in 569 and two successive magistri in 570 and 571. It was only when Justin was found mad and replaced by his commander Tiberius II (578-582) who conferred the titles of Caesar and Augustus on his son-in-law Maurice (582-602) that things began to improve.
Leovigild was sufficiently powerful to uphold the dualism imposed by the Ostrogoths, while in Further Spain the church of St Martin expanded rapidly. In 561 the Suevic king Theodemir convened the First Council of Braga, attended by eight bishops, of whom the senior was Lucretius, followed by Andreas of Iría and Martin of Dume: one was Malioc or Maliosus, the bishop-abbot of the Britons of the Monastery of Maximus at Mondoñedo. This, like Iría, was beyond the conventus assigned to the Sueves: they may have included representatives of the dioceses south of the Douro or of Tuy. When King Theodemir died in 570, he was succeded by St Martin’s pupil Miro. Martin’s mission was to restore Roman Gallaecia. This is understood by Gregory of Tours and by the Italian-born poet Venantius Fortunatus, who hailed him as ‘Gallisueva salus’. At Braga II in 572, St Martin was metropolitan and received twelve bishops, Oporto, Tuy, Lamego, Viseu, Conimbriga (Condeixa) and Egitania (Idanha) in Suevic possession, and Lugo, Ourense, Iría, the Britones and Astorga, which fell outside the realm of the Sueves. The anomaly was resolved by making Lugo a metropolitan see.⁸⁷
The unique Parochiale divides the dioceses into ecclesiae, and adds in the case of Braga, Oporto and Tuy a number of pagi. Despite many attempts, many of these cannot now be certainly identified. Few of the toponyms are demonstrably Germanic and may reflect the survival of ancient tribesteads or mixed societies.⁸⁸ St Martin was a Pannonian and his formation was in the East where monasticism was general. Spanish bishops sometimes regarded it as invasive of their privileges and possibly contrary to the obedience they sought to impose. Under the influence of the Desert Fathers, he founded isolated hermitages and monasteries now forgotten.⁸⁹
The Visigothic settlements on the middle Douro extended as far as Toro, or Villa Gothorum. John of Biclaro follows Leovigild’s conquest of Cordova with a campaign by Miro against the Runcones, not certainly identified.⁹⁰ This was followed by Leovigild’s first campaign in the north in 573, against Sabaria, - not Ptolemy’s Sarabis Vaccaeorum, which was too far south, but rather Sabaria in Bragança.⁹¹ Leovigild’s were predatory raids in which plunder was an abiding motive. Toledo was not a rich city, and he required resources for his buildings and wars. He deprived local elders of their accumulated gold, mined in the auriferous belt of the north-west, much depleted in the second century. He then invaded Cantabria, took Amaia, seized its wealth and made it his province. This was the event that San Millán, who preached to the Cantabrians, warned their senate of unless they amended their ways. In 575 Leovigild entered the Aregensian Hills, the Montes de León or Bragança, capturing its lord Aspidius and his family and laying hold of their treasure. In 576 he marched against Suevic Gallaecia, where King Miro sued for peace and was granted it for a limited period.
Leovigild’s progress in the north-west was halted by the recovery of the empire with Tiberius, though its affairs in Italy suffered from the rise of the Lombards in the north. Nearer home, the catholics of Mérida were strengthened by the consecration of Bishop Mausona.⁹² There is no doubt of the orthodoxy of the city. The Greeks Paul and Fidelis had endowed the shrine of St Eulalia with splendour: the VPE says they had made it the wealthiest see in the Spains. Leovigild could not afford to ignore the place where Agila had met his end. In 573 his efforts to impose an Arian bishop Sunna were conducted by a young comes Witteric. The author of the VPE was convinced that Leovigild wanted to steal the tunic of St Eulalia for his church in Toledo. The cost of his campaigns also increased. In 577 he returned to the south to occupy the mountainous region between Baetica and Cartaginensis known as Oróspeda, where he crushed the ‘rebellious rustics’. He is said to have attacked Cartagena, which was now being fortified as the capital of what remained of Byzantine Spain. At least, the region was laid waste. The Emperor Tiberius restored Greek power in Africa, but used his wealth to bring the Lombards of Italy under control. He did not intervene militarily but received a delegation from the Frank Chilperic, which he kept for some time before sending them back in 581 with a gilt bust of himself as ‘the glory of the Romans’. The effect of this was to bring Brunhild’s son, the young Childebert II, to his camp rather than that of Guntram of Orleans.
There was nothing stable about the four Merovingian kingdoms. Brunhild had accepted the Roman religion, but remained a Visigoth by birth to whom much of Aquitania had been assigned as her portion. Her husband Sigisbert had received Rheims, but on his early death his half-brother Chilperic, the murderer of her sister, had sent his son Merovic to seize Poitiers. Merovic had then taken Poitiers and married Brunhild, but his ferocious father pursued him and killed him near Rheims. Brunhild was held for a time with two daughters in the convent of Meaux near Paris, while Chilperic claimed the parts of Aquitania assigned to her murdered sister. Brunhild hoped for the protection of Leovigild and his wife, her mother, and sent the bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne on her affairs to Spain, where he died.
The only alternative to the domination of Chilperic was his elder half-brother Guntram of Orleans, who, while less formidable than Chilperic, had the ear of Gregory of Tours. He would claim to be the protector of his young nephew Childebert, now won over by Chilperic, and of Brunhild. The Suevic King Miro, probably after the death of St Martin in March 579, sent a mission to seek the friendship of Guntram: it was arrested at Poitiers, on instructions from Chilperic, and detained in Paris for a year before being released. Meanwhile, Leovigild’s negotiations with Brunhild continued and led to the marriage of his elder son, Hermenegild, to Brunhild’s daughter Ingundis, who was very young. The pair were well received by Leovigild and her grandmother Godeswinth and sent off to govern Seville. There Hermenegild, under the influence of Bishop Leander, embraced catholicism. That a Gothic noble from Gaul should become a convert was not unusual, but Hermenegild was heir to the throne in Toledo.⁹³ If Leovigild hoped to conciliate his catholic subjects, he ran a considerable risk, but at Mérida he had taken a strong line in exiling the redoubtable Bishop Mausona. He also built Reccopolis, which he named after his second son Reccared, to control the road from Cartagena to Toledo. The author of VPE, while disclaiming personal knowledge of Leovigild, ‘long ago in the time of our forebears’, noted that, though not of the true faith, he had behaved correctly in the case of the murderers of a monk, but he had become ruled by a vile serpent that possessed his inmost soul and caused him to send many messages to Mausona bidding him to become an Arian. When Mausona spurned his offers, they were followed by threats and the appointment of Sunna, a depraved and foul-mouthed liar of horrible and hateful aspect, etc., etc. Sunna took over certain sanctuaries and, in the face of general opposition, wrote to Leovigild to suggest that he take over the whole diocese. Leovigild exiled Mausona, whose duties were performed by a priest named John. In a similar vein, Gregory asserts that Queen Godeswinth turned against her grand-daughter and attempted to compel her by physical violence to become an Arian, including having her thrown into the baptismal pool. Leovigild responded to the crisis by calling the Arian bishops to a synod at Toledo. It decided to remove the difference in the method of baptism. This John of Biclaro represents as a device to coerce catholic prelates to embrace Arianism. If so, the only known defector was Vincentius of Saragossa.
John of Biclaro places under 585 Leovigild’s conquest of the Suevic kingdom. He had summoned Hermenegild to Toledo, and when the prince refused to appear, declared him a rebel against paternal authority. Hermenegild had resources in the south, and Leovigild, after occupying Italica, was limited to restoring it and awaiting reinforcements by sea from Gothic Gaul. Hermenegild appealed to the catholic king of the Sueves and to the emperor, but was unable to save Seville and fled with Ingundis and their baby Athanagild to Cordova. He had issued gold trientes at Seville in his own name with the legend ‘a Deo Vita’, he owed his life not to Leovigild but to a higher power. At Cordova he was captured and placed under the guard of one Sisbert, who took him to Valencia. Leovigild marked his victory with a coin saying ‘Corduba bis optinuit’: he had won Cordova a second time. The only ruler to respond was Miro, who left with an army, but was too late, he turned back, and died, perhaps killed by his own men.⁹⁴
Eboric or Euric was the legal heir to Miro, married to Siguntha. In 585, he was overthrown by one Audeca, the last king of the Sueves, who had the young king tonsured and married Siguntha to legitimize himself. It was not therefore to punish Miro for his intervention, but rather to remove an illegitimate ruler that Leovigild invaded the kingdom of the Sueves.⁹⁵ No new ruler was appointed for the Sueves, but Biclaro records that in 585 one Malaric rebelled and pretended to be king, but was suppressed by Leovigild’s duces and sent to him in chains. There was a limited revival of Arianism among Visigothic garrisons but the church of St Martin survived, as did pockets of pagans in Galicia. The Arians in the Spains passed from being a minority to becoming an even smaller minority. Leovigild’s heir was now without dispute his younger son Reccared. When the Franks made an attempt to seize Narbonensis, they were resisted by Reccared, who proved himself as his father’s successor. The invasion perhaps provided a pretext for the execution of Hermenegild at the hands of his keeper Sisbert. In some places he was considered a Christian martyr, but in most of Spain he remained a rebel who had defied his father.
The Merovingian kings rarely left northern Gaul. For Gregory of Tours, the rivalry of Guntram and Childebert was confused for a time by the appearance of Gundovald, who came from the East and claimed to be the long-lost brother of Chilperic: he occupied Bordeaux and other places and was killed at Comminges in Gascony. Most of the fighting was between the governors of the cities of Aquitania. The claims of Galswinth had passed to Chilperic and on his death to her rival Fredegund, who may have been as vicious as Gregory paints her. Guntram, himself childless, made Childebert II his heir, but could rarely count on the loyalty of his clients. He ordered an invasion of Gothic Gaul, using men from the north and from the towns of Aquitania and Burgundy. They entered Carcassonne, but when their leader was killed, fled, abandoning their loot. They ravaged the country of Nîmes.
Leovigild died a natural death at Toledo in April 586. He had been ill and Gregory says that he became a catholic on his deathbed. Pope Gregory says only that he regretted the death of Hermenegild and had feared to become a catholic because of the effect it would have on his people. Reccared was at Toledo and succeeded without difficulty; he had been betrothed to Rigunth, daughter of Chilperic, who began her journey from Paris to Toulouse. There she learned of her father’s assassination and was robbed of her possessions and stranded. Her mother was the widow Fredegund, whose infant son was Lothar II. Since many of his lieges and perhaps bishops recognized the pretender Gundovald, she sought an alliance with Guntram. Leovigild’s relations with Guntram had been soured by the fate of Ingundis. His ships seized Frankish vessels sailing to supply the Sueves. Guntram did not himself visit Aquitania but left the command to Desiderius, dux in Bordeaux, who seized Toulouse and the treasure of Rigunth. It was he who invaded Carcassonne, where he was ambushed and killed. Reccared had proved his capacity to defend Gothic Gaul. His stepmother Godeswinth was the mother of Brunhild, the mother of Childebert II and still loyal to her Visigothic birthplace. Reccared sent envoys to Mâcon to negotiate. It thus came about that the Arian queen-dowager Godeswinth and her supporters joined with Reccared against Guntram, who had made no response to Reccared’s mission. His engagement to Rigunth having failed, she became a turbulent inhabitant of the Frankish convent at Poitiers. Late in 586 Reccared went to Gothic Gaul and raided Frankish territory, while Guntram appointed successors to Desiderius to oppose him. Biclaro places Reccared’s decision to embrace catholicism in the tenth month of his reign, or the spring of 587, associating it with the decision to execute Sisbert who had executed his brother. He adds that Reccared restored the churches and convents that had been sequestered from the catholics, which included the reinstatement of Mausona at Mérida. In 588 the annalist gives nothing but the punishment of two rebels, one of them Bishop Sunna, who was exiled, and the other Segga, deprived of his hands before being exiled to Gallaecia.
When Reccared had called the bishops together for a debate, which he declared the catholics to have won, he again sent envoys to Guntram and Childebert to propose a settlement. But in Septimania the Arian bishop Athaloc, together with two comites Granista and Wildgern, resisted the conversion. Reccared disclaimed any responsibility for the fate of Ingundis, and found Childebert cordial, though he hesitated to defy his uncle Guntram, whose heir he was. Reccared’s envoys suggested a marriage with Childebert’s sister, to which both Brunhild and Childebert agreed provided that Guntram approved. This was the context of the Treaty of Andelot drawn up by Gregory of Tours and Felix of Chalons. By this Guntram would protect Brunhild and her daughter and take charge of Bordeaux and the rest of the dowry of Brunhild’s murdered sister, and Childebert II would have Tours, Poitiers and other places. After the agreement, Felix revealed that Reccared had asked for Childebert’s sister, and Guntram refused his consent. This in effect offered Guntram all Aquitania and the domains of Childebert, should the latter die first. Brunhild was left with only the possession of Cahors, and Chilperic’s widow Fredegund and her baby son Lothar were excluded. Gregory of Tours had taken the lead and skilfully satisfied Guntram with only a sop to Brunhild. Childebert and Fredegund took the Emperor Maurice’s gold for a campaign against the Lombards in Italy, who sued for peace with a marriage to Childebert’s sister. He failed to crush the Arian Lombards but refused to return the emperor’s gold. There was thus no marriage alliance for Reccared in Gaul.
His catholic dux, Claudius of Lusitania, heavily defeated the Franks when they attacked Septimania from Toulouse. Biclaro says that Claudius put 360,000 Franks to flight near Carcassonne, giving the year as 589. It was this success that enabled Reccared to announce the conversion of the Visigoths to catholicism at Toledo (III) in May 589.A majority of the Arian bishops and leaders submitted, even if their rank and file remained unconvinced. The event sets the stage for the monarchy of Toledo, which dominated almost the whole of the Spains during the following century.
Toledo III was convened by Reccared, who married Baddo, a Goth, his glorious queen, perhaps related to a comes who had served in Gaul. For the church it completed the lengthy process begun 265 years before at Nicaea and brought to a successful conclusion by St Leander of Seville with Eutropius, abbot of the monastery of Servitanus, and ‘the synod of all Spain, (Gothic) Gaul and Gallaecia’, 66 bishops (Biclaro says 72 prelates), meeting in the Royal City, and representatives of the whole people of the Goths and the ‘infinite multitude’ of the Suevic people. Those who renounced and condemned Arianism were eight bishops including those of Valencia, Tortosa, Lugo, Tuy, Oporto and Viseu, and unnamed priests and deacons. For Biclaro the triumphant note is muted by the dux Argimund, a chamberlain of Reccared whose plot was betrayed: his accomplices were killed and he was whipped, shorn, deprived of his right hand and paraded through the streets of Toledo on an ass, ‘to teach servants not to be arrogant towards their lords’. The king’s stepmother Godeswinth had been involved in an attempt by a bishop Uldila or Uldida a year before and did not give further trouble. Apart from the royal family, there were five proceres, nobles, named as Gugginus, Fonsa, Afrila, Aica and Ella.
General councils of the church were a rare occurrence, but it was prescribed that metropolitans should call provincial councils of their bishops regularly: it was scarcely then foreseen that councils of Toledo would come to number fourteen in the seventh century. The eight bishops of Gothic Gaul met at Narbonne in November: the canons have been preserved and show that all, free or servile, Goths, Romans, Syrians, Greeks or Jews, must observe Sunday by not working or travelling: if they travelled, they would pay a penalty to the comes of the city, six solidi for the free or a hundred lashes for serfs. No one might celebrate the fifth day for Jove with dances. At Seville, Leander summoned the eight bishops of Baetica in 590, and the dozen bishops of Tarraconensis met at Saragossa in November 592: they allowed those who had been Arians to retain their former positions. In Cartaginensis, there was the difficulty that Cartagena was in the hands of the Greeks, and Toledo was only one of a dozen suffragans, and some parishes had been wholly Arian. It was only in June 597 that a provincial council with fifteen prelates, including the metropolitans of Mérida and Narbonne, assembled at Toledo: it enacted that parishes unable to afford a priest should be kept extant by a lay clerk. A meeting at Huesca has left no written record: proceedings of provincial councils are rarely preserved. A long interval ensued before St Isidore was able to convene Toledo IV in 633. The Greek church, while accepting the conversion of the Gothic rulers, did not reconcile itself to the customs of those it regarded as unregenerate barbarians or rabble.